Four Lost Ladies (The Hildegarde Withers Mysteries)

by Stuart Palmer

  “Bad for the teeth!” Miss Withers snapped, without looking up. “Get down at once.” Talley gave her a reproachful stare, then let his furry body slide off the chair. Then he had a mercurial change of mood and danced off hopefully toward the hall closet.

  “You’ve already had your walk,” she told him firmly. “I’m afraid this is one excursion on which you’d only be in the way. I want to appear as Nemesis, not Mother Goose.” She put on her second-best hat, the one the Inspector always said resembled a runner-up float in the Rose Bowl parade, and then changed it for a more rakish bandanna. She would have liked to try the effect of a beanie, sweater and skirt, and bobby socks, but perhaps that would have been overdoing it. Starting out, she turned back and carefully draped a length of light chain around the door of the refrigerator. “Just in case,” she told the dog, “you are tempted to fall from grace again.”

  When she was gone the big poodle made a detailed prospecting trip underneath all the table tops, but it had been some time since the retired schoolteacher had had a visit from any of her former pupils, and nobody had parked any gum. The day, for Talley at least, had got off on the wrong foot.

  His mistress, however, felt a surge of hopeful confidence as she came out into the bright fall sunshine, heading briskly over toward the Park and then southward toward the theatrical district and Times Square. She had less than a week in which to perform a minor miracle—but as she reminded herself, the whole world was created in that same space of time.

  But musicians, she soon discovered, are strictly nocturnal creatures, like bats and owls and garden snails. Riff Sprott was supposed to inhabit Suite 14B at the Dube Hotel, but wasn’t home. It was not until late that afternoon that Miss Withers gingerly descended a long stair and poked her inquisitive nose into a clammy little basement just off Seventh Avenue, whose blind neon signs proclaimed it to be The Grotto Club. It still smelled of yestereve’s stale liquor and tobacco, of expensive perfume and of food, and even—she fancied—of roaches. In the deserted bar a melancholy youth left off wiping out glasses to wave a grayish towel in the direction she was to follow. Not that she needed help, for the rich and dissonant polyphony blasting forth suddenly from the inner room was guidance enough. It sounded to the schoolteacher about as harmonious as the scraping of a fingernail on a blackboard, but she marched on.

  As she gingerly made her way toward the musicians’ stand past tiny tables covered with up-ended chairs and across a dance floor about the size of her living room rug at home, she noted that there was a bored, softly plump red-head leaning against the piano and beating time to the music with heavily enamelled claws. The five men were informally clad, but the girl wore a green evening gown in spite of the fact that it was barely twilight outside—a gown with nothing much before and rather less than half of that behind, as the song went.

  The man with the trumpet—Miss Withers would have called it a “cornet”—was in his early thirties, a wiry nervous chap who wasn’t bad looking if your taste ran to a complexion like a flounder’s belly, a Hollywood shirt of many colors, and a dab of lip whisker. But he put down his horn with weary politeness when he saw that he had a visitor. “Take ten, boys,” he told the others, and stepped down from the stand with a gold-toothy smile. “What’s on your mind, sister?”

  Miss Withers took a deep breath and sang out cheerily, “Hiyah, Riff! Autograph me one, will ya? I may look like a square, but I’m not long underwear. I’m a gal that’s strictly in step with hep, yep. You know, you’ve got one of the hottest five-man combos along the alley, and I just dropped in to see if you’ve grooved any new platters lately so I can add ’em to my album of real jumping jive!”

  They were all staring at her, and the man with the tenor sax who had been improvising softly suddenly blew a shrill squeak. Riff Sprott backed warily away. “Beg pardon, sister? Come again, and cut out double-talk.”

  “Oh, dear!” The maiden schoolteacher shook her head sorrowfully. “You mean I haven’t got the patois right, even after studying Down Beat and Weekly Variety for hours?”

  “The act sounds queerer than a three-dollar bill,” Sprott told her. Then he sighed and held out his hand. “Okay, give me the summons and let me get back to rehearsal.”

  “Heavens, I’m not a process server,” admitted Miss Withers. “I only dropped by, Mr. Sprott, to see if you’ve heard the news about Midge Harrington?”

  The man gasped as if he had been kicked in the stomach by a sharp-toed shoe, and his face paled to a leprous green. Then he grasped Miss Withers by the arm and started walking her hastily back across the dance floor, out of earshot of the others. “You said Harrington?” He swallowed. “But Midge is dead!”

  “I know. But the investigation into her murder is being reopened.”

  His hand tightened on her arm, but he only said, “Oh?”

  “Friend of yours, wasn’t she?”

  “Look,” said Biff Sprott. “It’s no particular secret that Midge and I were an item in Winchell at one time, and when she gave me the air I was slap-happy enough to take a whole bottle of goof-pills. A bellboy found me and the Rescue Squad gave me the works and I didn’t start pushing up daisies after all. But that’s water over the dam, lady. I’d like very much to forget it.”

  “Sometimes the dead won’t stay forgotten. You admit you knew Midge well at one time. I’m not asking out of idle curiosity, but—what was she really like?”

  His eyes were suddenly far away, and there was an odd twist to his mouth. Yes, indeed, I could see him as a murderer, Miss Withers thought. The nympholept type, in love with an ideal of womanhood that never existed and never could exist. A jumble of nerves, too—though there was surprising strength in his pale, slender hands. She would have a black-and-blue mark on her arm tomorrow.

  “You want to know what was she like?” he said softly. “Midge was—she was like a phrase of music, just a few bars by itself, that can’t be set to words. A hunk of melody that gets under your skin and you can’t help humming it all day long till you don’t know if you hate it or love it. And you can’t decide whether you heard it somewhere or just made it up, only it’s unfinished. Maybe if you’re in the business you even try to build it into a song, but you never can.”

  “ ‘Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter …’ ” quoted Miss Withers.

  “ ‘Therefore ye soft pipes …’ ” Sprott blinked. “Poetry, yet! They beat enough of that into me in school. Anyway, Midge Harrington was a lot of girl, and all of it beautiful. You can carve that on her tombstone.”

  “But a pretty girl is just like a melody, is that what you mean?”

  Sprott was fast regaining his self-control. “That’s a moldy old Berlin number.”

  “Sorry. But you and Midge Harrington were very much in love, weren’t you? What happened?”

  “Sure, I had it bad. I don’t know what business it is of yours, but I don’t mind telling you that the only thing wrong was that she wasn’t enough in love with me. Maybe if I’d met her earlier, before some other guy put her heart in a deep-freeze, it might have been different.”

  Miss Withers nodded sympathetically. “It has been said that only once does a woman love a man, after that she is in love with love. But who was this other man, this ghost who came between you? It wasn’t Nils Bruner?”

  “Bruner? You mean the dance guy?” Sprott made a wry face. Then he reached into the pocket of his rainbow-hued shirt and took out a single cigarette, which he set afire. Drawing in the smoke as if he needed it, he eyed her with a cold and suspicious, eye. “How would I know? Who are you anyway, and why are you putting your five cents in?”

  Miss Withers told him her name. “I’m just a friend of Inspector Piper’s. Sometimes he discusses his cases with me. That’s how I learned that they are beginning to think at Headquarters that they have the wrong man locked up for Midge’s murder.”

  Sprott lighted his cigarette all over again, though it seemed to be burning well. “What? Who says so? That guy Ro
wan is guilty.”

  “No, innocent. I have it on excellent authority. It’s out of this world.”

  “Huh?”

  “In more ways than one. As a matter of fact, all of this started because of a spirit message received through a medium or clairvoyant or whatever you want to call her—somebody named Marika, up on Ninety-sixth Street.”

  “Are you kidding?” Sprott demanded.

  “Not in the least. It’s too bad the woman didn’t stay in the trance long enough to get the name of the real murderer, but at least she has touched off a chain reaction that even has upset the official minds at Centre Street.”

  He said, a little cautiously, “But what has all this got to do with me?”

  “Nothing, of course!” said the schoolteacher warmly. “As I told my friend the Inspector, you’re a well-known artist. I’ve listened to all your broadcasts, and I have some of your records. Slew-Foot Boogie and Her Tears Flowed Like Wine are my special favorites. It’s ridiculous to suspect you. And I think it’s perfectly silly assigning detectives to shadow every step you take and—but I shouldn’t have let that out, should I?”

  Sprott studied his cigarette as if it were some new invention, unique and puzzling. He opened his mouth, and then closed it again.

  “Of course,” Miss Withers wickedly continued, “you did react and turn somewhat pale when I mentioned the girl’s name …”

  “And why wouldn’t I?” cried Riff. “You went and mentioned it right in front of my wife, who happens to be standing over there by the piano waiting to run through her number.” He looked back over his shoulder. “We been married sixteen months, but she has the idea that I’m still carrying the torch for Midge Harrington. Just a mention of that name and Chloris hits the ceiling. She’ll—”

  “Come, come, young man,” interrupted Miss Withers. “Don’t try to tell me that your wife is still jealous of a girl who’s been dead since more than a year ago?”

  He nodded wearily. “Lady, she’d even be jealous of you! So please climb back on your broomstick and fly away home, will you?” Politely but firmly he edged her through the bar to the door, and she heard the lock click behind her as a signal that the interview was ended.

  Miss Withers climbed back up to the street and then paused to smooth her ruffled feathers. She stood amid signs advertising “Riff Sprott and His Funetic Five, with Chloris Klee” and a color photograph, considerably larger than life, of a curvesome female bearing some resemblance to the girl by the piano. Chloris had her mouth open and seemed about to bite the microphone off its stand.

  The schoolteacher turned her back on this overpowering exhibit and took a small notebook from her capacious handbag. She wrote: “Riff Sprott, The Grotto Club. Big reaction, dubious explanation involving wife Chloris’ supposed jealousy. Admits he carried torch for Midge and that he loved her more than she did him. Find out when Chloris started singing with band.”

  Things, decided Miss Withers, were definitely looking up. She hoped fervently that it really was Riff Sprott, not only because he had a name befitting a strangler, but because of that crack about the broomstick. If he did have a guilty conscience, her hint that the police were shadowing him ought to give him something to worry about.

  But this was no time for snap judgments, nor to let her intuition have its head. There were other candidates …

  Nils Bruner was next on her list. Dancing-masters keep more regular hours than musicians, but are considerably more difficult to locate, due to an occupational tendency to pull up stakes and move to new and more fertile fields when the going gets tough. The studios in Flatbush were closed and had been for rent since last October. No forwarding address.

  But Miss Withers had access to certain information not available to the ordinary amateur detective and sometimes not even to the police. During her twenty-odd years at P.S. 38, generations of grubby urchins had passed through her tutelage to graduate and eventually take their place in the world outside, and with as many as possible of them she kept in touch via Christmas cards. At moments like this she could call on a far-flung organization, just as Sherlock Holmes did on his Irregulars. Some of her boys and girls had risen to positions of importance and influence.

  It was little Willie Prjbwski, one in difficulties with third-grade arithmetic but now a bald, bespectacled auditor with one of the public utility companies, who called her back that same evening with the desired information.

  So it was that next forenoon—Rowan now had but five days left—Miss Withers marched up two flights of stairs above a neighborhood drugstore in the rabbit warrens of the Grand Concourse region, and rapped sharply on a door bearing the legend: “New Elite School of Professional Tap, Spanish and Rhythm.”

  No answer. She rapped again and then entered a tiny reception room, sparsely furnished and of no interest whatever. But from interior regions she could hear soft strains of music. She opened the inner door and peered in.

  She saw part of a long, bare hall, with a practice bar under the windows and a full-length mirror opposite. A ponderous, elderly automatic phonograph was grinding out The Sweetheart of Sigma Chi, and in the center of the polished floor a tall, fair man was dancing. He danced all by himself, except for the two enormous fans of tinted ostrich feather, and he wore only an undershirt and a pair of Paris-green slacks.

  “Whoops!” she gasped, and then “Excuse me!” But the solitary dancer was so engrossed that he did not turn his head. She suddenly realized that this was no pixie drag act. Apart from the soft, sinuous femininity of the gestures there was nothing effeminate about him at all. “Pssst!” she whispered.

  The man turned, stared at her with china-blue eyes, and then said without breaking the rhythm, “All right, come on in if you want to join the class. There’s extra fans in the corner over there.”

  Somebody giggled, and Miss Withers stepped inside far enough to see that there were three scantily clad young women, completely equipped with ostrich feathers, facing the teacher and trying to copy his technique.

  The music suddenly ended, and he said, “Get it, girls? The whole thing is control. And lag on the beat. As you turn, make ’em think you won’t get the fans in place at the right time, only pick it up one, two—three! See?” He looked at his watch. “Okay, it’s eleven-thirty. Only work on this at home during the week, all of you. And Irma, quit dieting or nobody will care whether you shake a fan or not.”

  The girls scampered noisily toward a dressing room, and Nils Bruner came over to Miss Withers, dropping the fans and mopping his forehead. “Yes, ma’am?”

  “I want to take a dancing lesson,” she said. “But not fan-dancing.” As she spoke she could see herself in the full mirror on the opposite wall, and realized how silly her prepared opening must sound.

  But Bruner did not smile. “Of course,” he said. “A private ballroom lesson. The waltz?”

  He was so fair that he seemed almost an albino. No trace of the pomade, the long sideburns, that she had expected. Indeed, if this tall, strange young man ever had five o’clock shadow it must look like frost or perhaps mold on his decided chin.

  “Yes, I think the waltz,” Miss Withers admitted.

  He looked sad. “Shall I make an appointment for one day next week?”

  “You couldn’t possibly make it today?” Next week would be too late, at least for Andy Rowan.

  Bruner looked sadder still. “I am sorry. But honestly, I’m booked solid. In a few minutes I have a class in tap and soft-shoe—a roomful of screaming teen-agers.”

  “Skip it,” the schoolteacher said abruptly. “Mr. Bruner, I’ll break down and confess that I really didn’t come here for a lesson, but on business. Do you remember a girl who studied with you a couple of years ago, named Midge Harrington?”

  The pale lashes flicked only once, then he said quickly, “Of course! Such a tragic end! The girl had great talent if she’d only stuck to her dancing. Such personality, such beauty …”

  “Do you happen to have a professional photogr
aph of her around anywhere?”

  This time the hesitation was noticeably longer. “I might have,” Bruner said. “Only it’s autographed, and it has certain sentimental associations. I suppose you want it for publication in some newspaper? Could you go as high as fifty dollars?”

  Miss Withers said, “No, not a newspaper.” She thought she could go as high as twenty-five. After some haggling they settled, and she received a large studio portrait of a tall young woman in heavy make-up and ornate Spanish costume, clicking castanets and grinning like La Argentinita. “To mio maestro Nils Bruner who taught me all I know, Midge,” was scrawled at the bottom in a round, childish hand. Somehow that unformed, girlish writing touched the schoolteacher’s sympathies as not even the grim morgue photograph had been able to do.

  Bruner cocked his head wisely. “You’ll want a story to go with the picture, I suppose?”

  “Why, yes,” Miss Withers admitted. “Anything that will shed light on her character might help.”

  He lowered his voice. “Of course you’ve looked it up, and you know that she was named in my wife’s divorce suit. For no real reason at all, I assure you, except that Virla wanted to hurt me professionally as much as possible. As a matter of fact, no dancing teacher should ever have a wife. Because in my profession once in a blue moon you run into real talent, a personality destined for stardom and bright lights. It is almost impossible to develop that talent, to help the rosebud open into full bloom, without appearing at least to have a personal interest. People misunderstand.”

  “You weren’t in love with her, then?”

  “Not for publication,” said Nils Bruner quickly. “But you experts understand how to write such things without—without making trouble, shall I say? Anyway, it’s the truth that I never saw Midge after the divorce, though I always knew that if she struck it rich she’d pay me for the private lessons I had to give her on credit. She never had any money, you know. No family or anything.”