Laura (Femmes Fatales)

by Caspary, Vera

  Behrens was on guard at the door. His eyes bulged at the sight of the groceries, but he evidently thought I’d set up housekeeping.

  I had the key in my pocket. But before I entered, I called a warning.

  She came out of the kitchen. “I’m glad you didn’t ring the bell,” she said. “Since you told me about the murder—” she shuddered and looked at the spot where the body had fallen “—I’m afraid of every stray sound.”

  “I’m sure you’re the only detective in the world who’d think of that,” she said when I gave her the groceries. “Have you eaten breakfast?”

  “Now that you’ve reminded me, no.”

  It seemed natural for me to be carrying the groceries and lounging in the kitchen while she cooked. I had thought of that kind of girl, with all those swell clothes and a servant to wait on her, as holding herself above housework. But not Laura.

  “Should we be elegant and carry it to the other room or folksy and eat in the kitchen?”

  “Until I was a grown man, I never ate in anything but a kitchen.”

  “Then it’s the kitchen,” she said. “There’s no place like home.”

  While we were eating, I told her that I had informed the Deputy Commissioner of her return.

  “Was he startled?”

  “He threatened to commit me to the Psychopathic Ward. And then—” I looked straight into her eyes “—he asked if I thought you knew anything about that other girl’s death.”

  “And what did you say?”

  “Listen,” I said, “there are going to be a lot of questions asked and you’ll probably have to tell a lot more than you’d like about your private life. The more honest you are, the easier it will be for you in the end. I hope you don’t mind my telling you this.”

  “Don’t you trust me?”

  I said, “It’s my job to suspect everyone.”

  She looked at me over her coffee cup. “And just what do you suspect me of?”

  I tried to be impersonal. “Why did you lie to Shelby about going to Waldo Lydecker’s for dinner on Friday night?”

  “So that’s what’s bothering you?”

  “You lied, Miss Hunt.”

  “Oh, I’m Miss Hunt to you now, Mister McPherson.”

  “Quit sparring,” I said. “Why did you lie?”

  “I’m afraid if I told you the truth, you might not understand.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I’m dumb. I’m a detective. I don’t speak English.”

  “I’m sorry if I’ve hurt your feelings, but—” she drew the knife along the checks in the red-and-white tablecloth “—it’s hardly the sort of thing that one finds on a police blotter. Blotter, isn’t that what you call it?”

  “Go on,” I said.

  “You see,” she said, “I’ve been a single woman for such a long time.”

  “It’s as clear as mud,” I said.

  “Men have bachelor dinners,” she said. “They get drunk. They go out for a last binge with chorus girls. That, I guess, is what freedom means to them. So they’ve got to make a splurge before they get married.”

  I laughed. “Poor Waldo! I bet he wouldn’t care very much to be compared with a chorus girl.”

  She shook her head. “Freedom meant something quite different to me, Mark. Maybe you’ll understand. It meant owning myself, possessing all my silly and useless routines, being the sole mistress of my habits. Do I make sense?”

  “Is that why you kept putting off the wedding?”

  She said: “Get me a cigarette, will you? They’re in the living room.”

  I got her the cigarettes and lit my pipe.

  She went on talking. “Freedom meant my privacy. It’s not that I want to lead any sort of double life, it’s simply that I resent intrusion. Perhaps because Mama always used to ask where I was going and what time I’d be home and always made me feel guilty if I changed my mind. I love doing things impulsively, and I resent it to a point where my spine stiffens and I get gooseflesh if people ask where and what and why.” She was like a child, crying to be understood.

  “On Friday I had a date with Waldo for a sort of bachelor dinner before I left for Wilton. It was to be my last night in town before my wedding . . .”

  “Didn’t Shelby resent it?”

  “Naturally. Wouldn’t you?” She laughed and showed the tip of her tongue between her lips. “Waldo resented Shelby. But I couldn’t help it. I never flirted or urged them on. And I’m fond of Waldo; he’s a fussy old maid, but he’s been kind to me, very kind. Besides, we’ve been friends for years. Shelby just had to make the best of it. We’re civilized people, we don’t try to change each other.”

  “And Shelby, I suppose, had habits that weren’t hundred percent with you?”

  She ignored the question. “On Friday I fully intended to dine with Waldo and take the ten-twenty train. But in the afternoon I changed my mind.”

  “Why?”

  “Why?” she mocked. “That’s precisely why I didn’t tell him. Because he’d ask why.”

  I got angry. “You can have your prejudices if you like, and God knows I don’t care if you want to make your habits sacred, but this is a murder case. Murder! There must have been some reason why you changed your mind.”

  “I’m like that.”

  “Are you?” I asked. “They told me you were a kind woman who thought more of an old friend than to stand by him for the sake of a selfish whim. You’re supposed to be generous and considerate. It sounds like a lot of bull to me!”

  “Why, Mr. McPherson, you are a vehement person.”

  “Please tell me exactly why you changed your mind about having dinner at Waldo’s.”

  “I had a headache.”

  “I know. That’s what you told him.”

  “Don’t you believe me?”

  “Women always have headaches when they don’t want to do something. Why did you come back from lunch with such a headache that you phoned Waldo before you took your hat off?”

  “My secretary told you that, I suppose. How important trifles become when something violent happens!”

  She walked over to the couch and sat down. I followed. Suddenly she touched my arm with her hand and looked up into my eyes so sweetly that I smiled. We both laughed and the trifles became less important.

  She said: “So help me, Mark, I’ve told you the truth. I felt so wretched after lunch on Friday, I just couldn’t face Waldo’s chatter, and I couldn’t sit through dinner with Shelby either because he’d have been too pleased at my breaking a date with Waldo. I just had to get away from everybody.”

  “Why?”

  “What a persistent man you are!”

  She shivered. The day was cold. Rain beat against the window. The sky was the color of lead.

  “Should I make you a fire?”

  “Don’t bother.” Her voice was cold, too.

  I got logs out of the cabinet under the bookshelves and built her a fire. She sat at the end of the couch, her knees tucked up, her arms hugging her body. She seemed defenseless.

  “There,” I said. “You’ll be warm soon.”

  “Please, please, Mark, believe me. There was no more to it than that. You’re not just a detective who sees nothing but surface actions. You’re a sensitive man, you react to nuances. So please try to understand, please.”

  The attack was well-aimed. A man is no stronger than his vanity. If I doubted her, I’d show myself to be nothing more than a crude detective.

  “All right,” I said, “we’ll skip it now. Maybe you saw a ghost at lunch. Maybe your girl friend said something that reminded you of something else. Hell, everybody gets temperamental once in a while.”

  She slipped off the couch and ran toward me, her hands extended. “You’re a darling, really. I knew last night that I’d never have to be afraid of you.”
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br />   I took her hands. They were soft to touch, but strong underneath. Sucker, I said to myself, and decided to do something about it then and there. My self-respect was involved. I was a detective, a servant of the people, a representative of law and order.

  I went to the liquor cabinet. “Ever seen this before?”

  It was the bottle with the Three Horses on the label.

  She answered without the slightest hesitation, “Of course; it’s been in the house for weeks.”

  “This isn’t the brand you usually buy, is it? Did you get this from Mosconi’s, too?”

  She answered in one long unpunctuated sentence. “No no I picked it up one night we were out of Bourbon I had company for dinner and stopped on the way home from the office it was on Lexington or maybe Third Avenue I don’t remember.”

  She lied like a goon. I had checked with Monsconi and discovered that on Friday night, between seven and eight, Shelby Carpenter had stopped at the store, bought the bottle of Three Horses, and, instead of charging it to Miss Hunt’s account, had paid cash.

  Chapter 5

  “What took you so long, Mr. McPherson? You should have come earlier. Maybe it’s too late now, maybe he’s gone forever.”

  In a pink bed, wearing a pink jacket with fur on the sleeves, lay Mrs. Susan Treadwell. I sat like the doctor on a straight chair.

  “Shelby?”

  She nodded. Her pink massaged skin looked dry and old, her eyes were swollen and the black stuff had matted under her lashes. The Pomeranian lay on the pink silk comfort, whimpering.

  “Do make Wolf stop that sniffling,” begged the lady. She dried her eyes with a paper handkerchief that she took from a silk box. “My nerves are completely gone. I can’t bear it.”

  The dog went on whimpering. She sat up and spanked it feebly.

  “He’s gone?” I asked. “Where?”

  “How do I know?” She looked at a diamond wristwatch. “He’s been gone since six-thirty this morning.”

  I was not upset. One of our men had been following Shelby since I’d check with Mosconi on the Bourbon bottle.

  “You were awake when he left? You heard him go? Did he sneak out?”

  “I lent him my car,” she sniffled.

  “Do you think he was trying to escape the law, Mrs. Treadwell?”

  She blew her nose and dabbed at her eyes again. “Oh, I knew it was weak of me, Mr. McPherson. But you know Shelby, he has a way with him. He asks you for something and you can’t resist him; and then you hate yourself for giving in. He said it was a matter of life and death, and if I ever discovered the reason, I’d always be grateful.”

  I let her cry for a few minutes before I asked, “Do you believe that he committed the murder . . . the murder of your niece, Mrs. Treadwell?”

  “No! No! I don’t, Mr. McPherson. He just hasn’t got the stomach. Criminals go after what they want, but Shelby’s just a big kid. He’s always being sorry for something. My poor, poor Laura!”

  I said nothing about Laura’s return.

  “You don’t like Shelby very much, do you, Mrs. Treadwell?”

  “He’s a darling boy,” she said, “but not for Laura. Laura couldn’t afford him.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  She was afraid I had got the wrong impression and added quickly: “Not that he’s a gigolo. Shelby comes from a wonderful family. But in some ways a gigolo’s cheaper. You know where you are. With a man like Shelby you can’t slip the money under the table.”

  I decided that it was lucky that most of my cases had not involved women. Their logic confused me.

  “She was always doing the most absurd things about his pride. Like the cigarette case. That was typical. And then he had to go and lose it.”

  By this time I’d lost the scent.

  “She couldn’t afford it, of course; she had to charge it on my account and pay me back by the month. A solid gold cigarette case, he had to have it, she said, so he’d feel equal to the men he lunched with at the club and the clients in their business. Does it make sense to you, Mr. McPherson?”

  “No,” I said honestly, “it doesn’t.”

  “But it’s just like Laura.”

  I could have agreed to that, too, but I controlled myself.

  “And he lost it?” I asked, leading her back to the trail.

  “Um-hum. In April, before she’d even finished paying for it. Can you imagine?” Suddenly, for no reason that I could understand, she took an atomizer from the bed-table and sprayed herself with perfume. Then she made up her lips and combed her hair. “I thought of the cigarette case as soon as he’d gone off with the keys to my car. Did I feel like a sucker!”

  “I understand that,” I said.

  Her smile was a clue to the business with the perfume and lipstick. I was a man, she had to get around me.

  “You’re not going to blame me for giving him the car? Really, I didn’t think of it at the time. He has a way with him, you know.”

  “You shouldn’t have given it to him if you felt that way,” said the stern detective.

  She fell for it.

  “It was weak, Mr. McPherson, I know how weak I was to have done it. I should have been more suspicious, I know I should, especially after that phone call.”

  “What phone call, Mrs. Treadwell?”

  It was only by careful questioning that I got the story straight. If I told it her way, there would be no end to this chapter. The phone had wakened her at half-past five that morning. She lifted the receiver in time to hear Shelby, on the upstairs extension, talking to the night clerk at the Hotel Framingham. The clerk apologized for disturbing him at this hour, but said that someone wanted to get in touch with him on a life-and-death matter. That person was waiting on another wire. Should the clerk give that party Mr. Carpenter’s number?

  “I’ll call back in ten minutes,” Shelby had said. “Tell them to call you again.”

  He had dressed and tiptoed down the stairs.

  “He was going out to phone,” Mrs. Treadwell said. “He was afraid I’d listen on the extension.”

  At twenty minutes past six she had heard him coming up the stairs. He had knocked at her bedroom door, apologized for waking her, and asked for the use of the car.

  “Does that make me an accessory or something, Mr. McPherson?” Tears rolled down her cheeks.

  I phoned the office and asked if there had been any reports from the man who had been following Shelby Carpenter. Nothing had been heard since he went on duty at midnight, and the man who was to have relieved him at eight in the morning was still waiting.

  As I put down the phone, the dog began to bark. Shelby walked in.

  “Good morning.” He went straight to the bed. “I’m glad you rested, darling. It was cruel of me to disturb you at that mad hour. But you don’t show it at all. You’re divine this morning.” He kissed her forehead and then turned to welcome me.

  “Where’ve you been?” she asked.

  “Can’t you guess, darling?”

  He petted the dog. I sat back and watched. There was something familiar and unreal about Shelby. I was always uncomfortable when he was in the room, and always struggling to remember where I had seen him. The memory was like a dream, unsubstantial and baffling.

  “I can’t imagine where anyone would go at that wild hour, darling. You had me quite alarmed.”

  If Shelby guessed that the lady’s alarm had caused her to summon the police, he was too tactful to mention it.

  “I went up to Laura’s place,” he said. “I made a sentimental journey. This was to have been our wedding day, you know.”

  “Oh, I’d forgotten.” Mrs. Treadwell caught his hand. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, comfortable and sure of himself.

  “I couldn’t sleep. And when that absurd phone call woke us, Auntie Sue, I was too upset to stay
in my room. I felt such a longing for Laura, I wanted to stay close to something she had loved. There was the garden. She’d cared for it herself, Mr. McPherson, with her own hands. It was lovely in the gray morning light.”

  “I don’t know whether I quite believe you,” Mrs. Treadwell said. “What’s your opinion, Mr. McPherson?”

  “You’re embarrassing him, darling. Remember, he’s a detective,” Shelby said as if she had been talking about leprosy in front of a leper.

  “Why couldn’t you take that telephone call in the house?” asked Mrs. Treadwell. “Did you think I’d stoop so low as to listen on the extension?”

  “If you hadn’t been listening on the extension, you’d not have known that I had to go out to the phone booth,” he said, laughing.

  “Why were you afraid to have me hear?”

  Shelby offered me a cigarette. He carried the pack in his pocket without a case.

  “Was it a girl?” asked Mrs. Treadwell.

  “I don’t know. He . . . she . . . whoever it was . . . refused to leave a number. I called the Framingham three times, but they hadn’t called back.” He blew smoke rings toward the ceiling. Then, smiling at me like the King of England in a newsreel showing Their Majesties’ visit to coal miners’ huts, he said: “A yellow cab followed me all the way to the cottage and back. On these country roads at that hour your man couldn’t very well hide himself. Don’t be angry with the poor chap because I spotted him.”

  “He kept you covered. That was all he was told to do. Whether you knew or not makes no difference.” I got up. “I’m going to be up at Miss Hunt’s apartment at three o’clock. I want you to meet me there, Carpenter.”

  “Is it necessary? I rather dislike going up there today of all days. You know, we were to have been married . . .”

  “Consider it a sentimental journey,” I said.

  Mrs. Treadwell barely noticed when I left. She was busy with her face.

  At the office I learned that Shelby’s sentimental journey had added a five-hour taxi bill to the cost of the Laura Hunt case. Nothing had been discovered. Shelby had not even entered the house, but had stood in the garden in the rain and blown his nose vigorously. He might also, it was hinted, have been crying.