Angels of Mercy

by Duncan, Alice

  “So,” said Ernie, taking over, “what about Calvin, Buck?”

  Mr. Buck swallowed again. “He . . . he . . .” He pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his eyes. “The police have arrested him for murder!”

  I know my eyes went round. I didn’t drop my pencil, but it was hard to keep my mouth shut. Under the circumstances, I’m sure you can hardly blame me.

  Ernie, cool as the proverbial cucumber, said, “Who’s he accused of killing?”

  “Mr. Milton Halsey Gossett.”

  I gasped. I couldn’t help myself, in spite of the furious look Ernie shot me. But . . . Mr. Milton Halsey Gossett, for heaven’s sake! I was pretty sure it was the Gossett murder about which Phil Bigelow had visited Ernie on Monday of that same week. Mr. Milton Halsey Gossett was a gigantic name in the moving-picture industry, and his murder had shocked the entire world, rather as the murder of Mr. William Desmond Taylor had four years earlier. The Taylor murder had never been solved. It was the lousy job the L.A. Police Department had done on that particular case, in fact, that had made Ernie so disgusted he’d quit the force.

  Ernie leaned back in his chair. After that one quick glance at me, he focused his attention on Mr. Buck. Thinning his eyes slightly, he said, “What did your son Calvin have to do with Mr. Gossett, if anything, and why do the police suspect him of the killing?”

  Mr. Buck sucked in a deep breath. “Calvin worked for Mr. Gossett as a houseboy. He’s a student, but he needs to earn money for his books and stuff. Mrs. Buck and me don’t make a lot of money, and we have a girl in college in Mississippi. Even though she’s there on a scholarship,” he said with obvious pride, “we still needs to pay for her housing and so forth. So Calvin, he’s always worked hard. He’s a good boy, Mr. Ernie. He’s a good boy. He’d no more kill Mr. Gossett than fly to the moon!”

  “But he did work for Gossett?” Ernie didn’t allow himself to be sidetracked by irrelevancies like the relative goodness of individual murder suspects.

  Perhaps that’s what made him a good detective: his dogged determination to get to the bottom of things. I filed that bit of information in my brain to bring out and study later.

  “Yes, he worked for Mr. Gossett. He worked from four to eight o’clock in the evenings and all day on Saturdays. He tidied up and served dinner and things like that. Mr. Gossett has . . . had him a cook-housekeeper, but Calvin served the meals. Mr. Gossett paid him pretty good, and Calvin said he was a nice man.”

  “Was Calvin there when the cook found Gossett’s body?” Ernie asked.

  According to the articles I’d read in various newspapers, Mr. Gossett had been murdered Sunday night in the living room of his home on Carroll Street in Los Angeles. I’d visited another home on Carroll not long before, and it was a lovely street with beautiful homes. The articles didn’t mention a time of death, but they did say the cook-housekeeper who discovered the body when she went to work on Monday, about mid-day, was hysterical when she ran screaming from the house. Mr. Gossett had been shot at point-blank range, much as Mr. Taylor had been. It occurred to me that perhaps there was a maniac in Los Angeles killing motion-picture directors, but I abandoned the notion almost as soon as it flickered through my brain. It seemed highly unlikely that a homicidal maniac would wait four years between murders. If you know what I mean.

  Mr. Buck shook his head.

  “How’d the police find out your son worked for Mr. Gossett?”

  “I reckon the cook told ‘em. I think she suspected Calvin done Mr. Gossett in. In fact, she said so to the police.” Mr. Buck’s voice contained a note of bitterness for which I couldn’t fault him.

  “Why is that?” asked Ernie, as if cooks suspecting houseboys of murder was an everyday kind of thing.

  Mr. Buck looked from Ernie to me and back again, as if undecided whether or not we could handle what he was going to say.

  Ernie saved him the trouble. “The cook’s white? Therefore, she told the police your son, who’s black, must have killed Gossett?”

  After a moment, Mr. Buck nodded. “You gots it about right, Mr. Ernie. But Calvin didn’t do it! He didn’t even work for Mr. Gossett on Sundays, and that’s when the man was killed. Hell . . . sorry, Miss Mercy.”

  “Think nothing of it,” I murmured, figuring I shouldn’t mention that I heard lots worse than that from my boss on a daily basis.

  “Anyhow, Calvin, he’s studying to get into college just like Loretta—she’s our daughter—and he spends all day on Sunday studying, after we gets home from church in the morning.”

  “What church do you attend?” asked Ernie.

  “First AME on Harvard.”

  The First AME Church. Hmm. I’d ask Ernie what that was later. I’d never heard of an AME church before that morning.

  “What time does church start?”

  I didn’t see what this had to do with anything, but I dutifully wrote the question on my secretarial pad.

  “Nine in the morning. We gets out about noon and have dinner at the church. Then we goes home to Miss Mercy’s house, and Calvin does his studying until bedtime.”

  Golly, I didn’t know that!

  Ernie glanced my way. “Did you see Calvin on Sunday, Mercy?”

  I shook my head. “No. Sorry.” I wished I could have supplied an alibi for poor Calvin, but I didn’t believe I should lie about the matter, either.

  Mr. Buck hung his head. “I’m right sorry, Miss Mercy, but we didn’t know what you’d think about having a young man like Calvin in your house, so we . . . well, we didn’t tell you about him. I’m sorry, Miss Mercy. But, honest, he’s a good boy.”

  “I’m sure that’s true, Mr. Buck, and I don’t mind at all. He’s welcome to study in . . . your rooms any time he wants.”

  Which just goes to show that even the best of us—not that I consider myself the best of us—have prejudices that leap to the fore at the most inconvenient times. I’d been going to say that Calvin could study in my house any old time he wanted to, but I’d changed my wording at the last minute. The truth was that if I’d seen a young Negro man lurking around my home, I might have been suspicious of his motives for being there. It’s a wicked, unfair world, but I think I’ve mentioned that before.

  Ernie gave me an enigmatical glance before continuing his questioning of Mr. Buck. “Did the police give you or Calvin any indication as to why they might suspect him except for the fact that he worked for Mr. Gossett and is a Negro?”

  “Nobody told me nothin’,” said Mr. Buck. “They ain’t told Calvin nothin’, either. Poor Calvin’s about to lose his mind, locked up in that jail. And Lottie and me can’t bail him out because it’s a murder charge, and we don’t have money for bribes and suchlike.”

  Don’t ask me why, but his words shocked me. I knew better than to be surprised, since about the first lesson I’d learned after coming to work for Ernie was that money could buy pretty much anything in the City of Angels, from liquor to freedom from criminal charges. Angels, my foot.

  “Nobody saw Calvin near the Gossett home on Sunday?” Ernie asked. As I said before, Ernie was not easily distracted from gathering information once he started.

  Mr. Buck shook his head. “I don’t know, Mr. Ernie. Like I say, nobody’s telling me nothing.”

  “I’ll look into the matter for you, Buck. Try not to worry.”

  A short gust of air was all the benefit Ernie got from that suggestion. How could the Bucks not worry? What Mr. Buck had said about Calvin being arrested because of his race was probably very close to the truth. And—I knew this from experience—once the police had a likely, or even an unlikely, suspect in their sights, they didn’t generally bother to look for anyone else who might have committed the crime.

  Rising from my chair, I shuffled my pencil into my pad hand and held out my empty hand to Mr. Buck. “I’m so very sorry, Mr. Buck, but if anyone can clear your son’s name, it’s Ernie. He’s the best in the business, you know.”

  Mr. Buck took my hand, shook it, and nodde
d. “Thanks, Miss Mercy. That’s what I’ve heard, too.”

  I noticed his eyes were red, as if he’d either been crying or trying not to cry. My heart went out to him, and I wanted to rush home right then and comfort Mrs. Buck. But I had a job and the only bad thing about having a job—well, there might be more than one thing bad about some jobs, but not mine—was that, from eight in the morning until five in the evening, my time belonged to Mr. Ernest Templeton, P.I. Except for the hour I got for lunch, of course.

  “Please remember that. I know you can’t help but worry about your son, but Ernie will fix everything. You’ll see.” I was putting a lot of emphasis on the fact that Ernie was a top-notch investigator. I hoped I was telling the truth.

  “Thanks, Miss Mercy,” Mr. Buck said again.

  Ernie and I watched as he shambled, stoop-shouldered, from the office. Then Ernie turned to me.

  “So I’m the best there is, eh?”

  “The poor man needs all the encouragement he can get, Ernie. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to lie a little.” That last comment was meant as a joke.

  Ernie must have taken it as such, because he grinned. “But I do mean to do my best for the poor guy.”

  At that moment the outer office door opened again, and Mr. Buck reappeared. Both Ernie and I looked at him expectantly. Personally, I was hoping he’d say he’d forgotten to mention that a well-known hoodlum had been seen lurking around the Gossett home on Sunday night, but he didn’t.

  “I forgot all about money, Mr. Ernie. I’m sorry.” He stuck his hand in his pocket and hauled out a handful of bills. “I ain’t got no idea how much you charge, but—”

  Ernie cut him off. “Put your money away, Buck. I’ll send you a bill later.”

  Mr. Buck squinted at him quizzically. “I don’t want you to do nothin’ for me for nothin’, Mr. Ernie. I pays my way, and so does Calvin.”

  “I know it. But we’ll talk about it later. Right now I want to do some investigating. I’ll talk to you later about the money.”

  After hesitating, his hand full of cash, Mr. Buck said, “Well . . .”

  “I’m not taking your money right now,” said Ernie more firmly. “We’ll discuss it later, after I learn more about the case.”

  Reluctantly, Mr. Buck stuffed the money back into his pocket. “You be sure to bill me, Mr. Ernie. I don’t take nothin’ for free.”

  “Don’t worry. I never give away my services,” Ernie said with one of his more insouciant grins.

  Mr. Buck didn’t look as if he believed him, but he left the office again.

  At once, I turned upon Ernie. “You humiliated the poor man, Ernest Templeton! How could you do that?”

  Holding up a hand, Ernie said, “Take it easy, Mercy. I want to talk to Phil about this before I waste any of my time on the case. For all you know—hell, for all I know—Calvin is guilty as sin of murdering Milton Halsey Gossett.”

  I stiffened. “I don’t believe it.”

  “Huh. You’re a hell of a lot nicer than I am then. Or more gullible. That’s probably it.”

  There it was again, rather like an elephant standing in the office: my plaguey innocence of the world. I sniffed, offended, and said, “Well, I’m going to take luncheon now.”

  “You do that. I’m going to visit Phil.”

  Hopping from my high horse in an instant, I said, “Will you tell me what Phil says about the matter?” Before he could object, I reminded him, “I have a personal interest in this case, don’t forget. The Bucks work for me. Therefore, it’s important for me to know what’s going on.”

  With one of his characteristic eye-rolls, Ernie said, “We’ll see.”

  Drat the man!

  Chapter Three

  Lulu and I took our lunch that day at the counter of a drug store not far from the Figueroa Building. Lulu was all agog about Calvin Buck having been arrested for the murder of Milton Halsey Gossett.

  “Golly, Mercy, do you think he did it? Wouldn’t that be something? The Bucks live right there in your house! What if it runs in the family or something?”

  I gave Lulu a repressive frown. That day, she wore a low-waisted red flowered number with short sleeves that matched her violently red fingernails and lipstick. “Don’t be ridiculous, Lulu. The Bucks are good, upstanding citizens, and I’m sure their children are, too.”

  “Well . . . you’re probably right. And I do know that once the coppers get their hands on somebody, they hate to let him go.”

  Lulu and I both had good reason to know this. In fact, the police had arrested Lulu’s brother, Rupert, for murder once, and it had been like prying fighting dogs apart to get them to release the poor fellow. Fortunately for all, I, Mercedes Louise Allcutt, had discovered the real killer before poor Rupert had been hanged. Actually, I think California uses the electrical chair, but that’s neither here nor there.

  “Exactly, and the fact that Calvin is a Negro is a strike against him to begin with. Plus the fact that he worked for Mr. Gossett.”

  Lulu’s eyes went round. She had pretty blue eyes, although she plastered too much mascara on her lashes for my taste. “He worked for the man? Wow, that puts a different light on things, doesn’t it?”

  “Does it?” My voice took on an icy crispness.

  “Well . . . yes, it does. I know you want to believe he didn’t do it, Mercy, but if he worked for the man. Well . . .”

  “But Mr. Gossett was killed on Sunday, and Calvin Buck didn’t work for him on Sundays.”

  “He might have gone there for some reason or other,” said Lulu, taking a small bite of her tuna-fish sandwich.

  My choice that day was corned beef on rye. With mustard. I’d taken to eating corned-beef sandwiches as often as possible because my mother condemned them as remnants of the so-called “dirty” Irish who cluttered up Boston. Of course, the Irish in Boston did all the work people like my mother didn’t want to do, but she saw things in her own way and couldn’t be brought to understand she and people like her needed the worker proletariat. Probably a whole lot more than the worker proletariat needed her, as a matter of fact. I told her that once, and she called me a Socialist, which I’m not. She wears blinders, my mother, kind of like the horses that pull vegetable carts back east. If I ever got mad enough at her to tell her so, she’d probably disinherit me.

  Hmm. I’d have to think about my possible disinheritance further when I had more free time. Right then, we were discussing Calvin Buck and his false imprisonment.

  “Nonsense. Mr. Buck told Ernie and me”—I know I made it sound as if Ernie had included me in the discussion, which was perhaps wrong of me, but at least I’d been there at the time—“that Calvin spends all day Sunday after church studying. He wants to get into college like his sister Loretta,” I explained.

  “Yeah? He must be pretty smart. I wonder what he aims to do with a college education. Sweep floors?” Lulu bit into a carrot stick that had, along with a pickle spear, come with her sandwich.

  I swallowed a bite of corned beef. “Sweep floors? What do you mean? Why would a college-educated man want to sweep floors for a living?”

  Lifting a heavily penciled eyebrow, Lulu gave me a pitying gaze. “Mercy, this is nineteen twenty-six. What the heck else can a Negro boy do for work, college education or no college education?”

  After goggling at her for a moment, I thought about her words. They made me sad. “But . . . surely there are opportunities for anyone with a college degree, Lulu. Why, maybe he could teach or—”

  “Where’s he gonna teach?” Lulu interrupted with persistent logic.

  “Well . . . I don’t know. Do you mean to tell me that if a Negro man with as good an education as a white man can’t get the same kind of job the white man can?”

  Even I, in my naiveté, knew that to be a stupid question. How incredibly depressing. Before Lulu could enlighten me, I muttered, “You’re right, of course.”

  With a shrug, Lulu said, “I bet there are Negro schools and stuff where educated black
people can teach. Heck, Calvin’s sister is going to college somewhere in the south, isn’t she? Maybe Calvin will go there and then teach in that college after he gets his degree.”

  “Maybe,” I said, thinking that, while women were considered second-class citizens, at least we white women could get jobs as something other than cooks and housekeepers. Not that there’s anything wrong with being a cook or a housekeeper, but I’ve noticed more than once that male cooks are called chefs, and they earn a heck of a lot more money than female cooks, who are called cooks and earn maybe a third as much as their male counterparts.

  Every once in a while, I felt like taking a soap box to Pershing Square and hollering my frustration at the masses, like so many of the nutty folks in Los Angeles did. Only if I did it, right would be on my side, darn it.

  I took another bite of my sandwich along with a nibble of my own pickle spear and thought about the inequalities rife in the world. Then something Mr. Buck had said at the office returned to me, and after I swallowed, I asked, “Say, Lulu, have you ever heard of an AME Church?”

  She sipped her water and thought. “I don’t think so. Why?”

  “Oh, nothing. Mr. Buck said that his family attends the First AME Church on . . . I don’t remember the street. I just wondered what AME stood for, is all.”

  With a shrug, Lulu said, “Beats me.”

  “I’ll ask Ernie when I get back to the office.” Providing Ernie had returned from his visit with Phil.

  “Let me know when you find out. I wonder if it’s anything like the Angelica Gospel Hall.”

  “I don’t know.”

  A month earlier, Lulu and I had attended services at the Angelica Gospel Hall and heard the famed, acclaimed (and often ridiculed) leader thereof, Sister Adelaide Burkhard Emmanuel, preach. The experience had been interesting for me, but Lulu had been swept away by the glory of it all. She’d returned quite often to services there, according to her own reports, but eventually she’d tired of all the noise and rah-de-dah and quit.