The April Robin Murders

by Craig Rice

  Handsome was ushering the two police officers into the cavernous living room, which suddenly seemed darker and more dismal than it had ever been. He thought suddenly of Pearl Durzy, living alone here, never leaving the house. Not a newspaper delivered daily, no radio to listen to, no television to watch. What had she done with herself all those years?

  At the moment, Perroni didn’t seem to have Pearl Durzy on his mind. He looked at Bingo as though he had been somehow offended.

  “It checks,” Perroni said sourly. “Yes, it checks. Clark Sellers says it’s Julien Lattimer’s signature. And when he says somebody’s signature is somebody’s signature, it’s that person’s signature.” He glared at Bingo and Handsome as though daring them to dispute him.

  Bingo felt his spine stiffen. “And who is this Clark Sellers?”

  Perroni and Hendenfelder looked at him as though he’d asked who George Washington and Abraham Lincoln were.

  “Look here,” Hendenfelder said gently. “You think of doctors. Who do you think of?”

  “Mayo brothers,” Bingo said promptly.

  “You think of the South Pole, who do you think of?”

  Bingo said, “Penguins,” and Handsome said, “Admiral Byrd, but mostly also Roald Amundsen, he reached the South Pole on December 14, 1911. And the next year—”

  Hendenfelder said, “You think of electricity, you think of Benjamin Franklin. You think of wireless, you think of Marconi.” He smiled at them amiably. “And when you think of handwriting—”

  “You think of Clark Sellers,” Bingo said. “Okay, if he says this is Julien Lattimer’s writing, this is Julien Lattimer’s writing.”

  Perroni said, “Now, where’s Julien Lattimer?”

  “I don’t know,” Bingo said. In his heart he felt that if he did know, he wouldn’t tell.

  Handsome said placatingly, “Mr. Courtney Budlong must know where he is, if he got those papers signed.”

  “This,” Perroni said coldly, “is final. There is no Courtney Budlong and never was a Courtney Budlong.”

  Hendenfelder said mildly, “Once we find the man who called himself Courtney Budlong—”

  “That will be the day,” Perroni said. “The day to remember. If we do.” He glowered at Bingo and Handsome as though they were personally responsible for all the troubles he’d had in his life, including corns, stomach ulcers and income tax. “Meantime, Mr. Reddy says you can stay on. Until further notice. And I’m going to have another look around the house.”

  He stalked off toward the staircase. Hendenfelder sat down on one of the two sofas and said, “Y’know, a guy’s feet get tired even driving a car.” He shook his head sadly. “This really breaks Perroni all up. The handwriting expert, I mean.”

  Bingo said, “Maybe he signed those things a long time ago. Before he was murdered.” It was a flimsy idea, but the best he had at the time.

  “Uh-uh,” Hendenfelder said. “According to Clark Sellers’ office, those signatures were written with a liquid graphite pencil. And that pencil didn’t come on the market until sometime in 1955.” He sighed. “This is really rough on Perroni.”

  “It’s rough on a lot of people,” Bingo said, “including various people who seem to have gotten murdered.” He drew a long breath. “In fact, we were going to call you up to ask a couple of questions.”

  From overhead he could hear Perroni’s footsteps, slow, measured and patient.

  “About Pearl Durzy,” Bingo went on recklessly. “There’s a lot about her we don’t seem to know.”

  “Brother!” Hendenfelder said. “There’s a lot about her nobody seems to know.”

  “You mean,” Handsome asked, “like who murdered her?”

  “Not only that,” Hendenfelder said. “But mostly—who was she?”

  thirteen

  “She was Pearl Durzy,” Bingo said, a little helplessly.

  “Who says so?” Hendenfelder asked. He rubbed a handkerchief over his forehead.

  “But,” Bingo said, even more helplessly, “she was identified.”

  “Sure,” Hendenfelder said. “You identified her. How many times had you seen her? Once, and by your own story you weren’t even introduced. So you say she was Pearl Durzy. She was pointed out to you by someone who said she was Pearl Durzy, and now nobody knows where he is, or who he is, either.”

  Bingo scowled. “But somebody must have known her.” He added, “Everybody has somebody who knows them. Like friends. And relatives.”

  “Far’s we can see,” Hendenfelder said, “she didn’t have neither. I mean, she didn’t have nothing! Almost like she didn’t exist even. Except, we got her body in the morgue.”

  “Mr. Reddy,” Bingo said. “From the trust company. He’d know about her. She, well, she worked for him, in a manner of speaking.”

  “Mr. Reddy, he doesn’t know anything,” Hendenfelder said. “She’d been the housekeeper here for Mrs. Lois Lattimer. When the trust company took over this place, it seemed all right to keep her here as caretaker. It was,” he said, frowning, “it is a very unusual situation. He’d been told she was Pearl Durzy and he just took her word for it and kept her on here. Every month he came and looked at the place and made sure everything was all right, which it always was, and paid her her salary and went away. Then there was a man who came in two times a month to look after the lawn and the shrubbery and stuff, but he didn’t know Pearl Durzy. He just came in and did his work and went away, which was all that was expected of him. Mr. Reddy paid him with checks. From the looks of the place, he didn’t work very hard. Sure, he saw Pearl Durzy, and he knew her name was Pearl Durzy. I mean, he knew it because somebody had told him that was who she was, same way everybody else did, including you and,” he added, “us.”

  “Fingerprints,” Handsome said.

  Hendenfelder gave him a pitying look. “Sure. We got her prints. Only it looks like she never had her prints taken. Account of, hers don’t match up anywhere. People don’t just go out and have fingerprints taken so’s they can be identified properly if they are suddenly found dead or dying. They got to be booked for a crime, they got to apply for a driver’s license, they got to apply for some security job, they got to join the army. It looks like Pearl Durzy never done any of those things.”

  “But,” Bingo said, “she must have a social security card. Or a bank book. Or letters, or—something—”

  “She didn’t have a social security card,” Hendenfelder said. “On account of it seems like she didn’t need one in this type job. And Mr. Reddy paid her in cash every month. She didn’t like checks. So he would bring her out, every month, her hundred dollars in cash, and inspect the house, which she kept pretty nice. The bills for the light and the gas and everything else, why, the trust company took care of that.”

  Bingo did some rapid figuring. Pearl Durzy had been here since the trust company took over, and that had been when? 1953? 1954? Her only expenses had been for the meager groceries from the neighborhood market.

  “Where did she put all that money?” he asked.

  Hendenfelder said, “Why do you think Perroni’s giving this place another going-over right now?”

  “I thought maybe he was looking for mice,” Bingo said.

  That didn’t seem particularly funny to Hendenfelder. “She must’ve put it in a purse,” he said. “Every lady has a purse even if she don’t go out much, because she always has a lot of stuff to carry.” He frowned and said, “You should only see the stuff my wife carries in her purse. A compact, and a lipstick, and her wallet and coin purse, and keys, and chewing gum, and old letters, and Kleenex—”

  Handsome said, “Well, maybe. Only it seems like this Pearl Durzy wouldn’t need a lot of things like that. She didn’t put stuff on her face, and her coin purse was in her coat pocket, and if she almost never went out of the house, maybe she didn’t bother with keys, and probably she never got any letters from anybody, or if she did she didn’t keep them, and—”

  “The money,” Hendenfelder said. “She
would have had to put that somewhere every month, when Mr. Reddy gave it to her.” There was a small silence while each of them figured how much money Mr. Reddy must have given her, at a hundred dollars a month.

  “And she didn’t spend much for her groceries,” Hendenfelder said.

  “She could have had a bank account,” Bingo said.

  “Sure,” Hendenfelder said. “Where? Perroni’s been trying to find out about that all day.”

  Bingo started to say, “But money doesn’t just vanish!” and then checked himself, thinking of the capital of the International Foto, Motion Picture and Television Corporation of America.

  Hendenfelder sighed and said, “Usually when a person gets killed, or is found dead, they have folks or friends which turn up and make the legal identification, and claim the body. But this Pearl Durzy, she don’t seem to have anybody. And living here alone the way she did, all by herself, and not getting acquainted with the neighbors—”

  He didn’t say any more. He glanced around the great shadowy room, all but denuded of furniture. The glance took in the balcony, the rooms upstairs, the dreary emptiness in which Pearl Durzy had lived.

  “She didn’t have a radio set or a TV,” he commented. “And she didn’t get the daily papers delivered.”

  Bingo closed his eyes for a moment. He tried not to think of the house as it had been those past years, with the little gray ghostlike figure of Pearl Durzy moving through it, living her secret and dreary life. What did she do with all her waking hours? Not just for a week, or a month, but for years.

  “She certainly kept the place pretty clean, though,” Hendenfelder said suddenly. “Guess maybe she thought Mrs. Lattimer might come back sometime.”

  “If you could only find Mrs. Lattimer now,” Bingo said. He had a vague hope of cheering up Hendenfelder.

  The look Hendenfelder gave him told him that he’d failed completely.

  “And there’s never been a trace of Mrs. Lattimer?” Bingo pressed.

  “Sure,” Hendenfelder said. He reached for a cigarette, found an empty pack, accepted one from Bingo and said, “You know how it is when a person disappears. They get reported from everywhere. Kansas City, Vancouver, some place in Guatemala. We got one reliable trace from El Paso, but then she was gone again. Oh, she took off with the dough and probably married some handsome young guy, and she’s just sitting pretty some place thinking we’re a bunch of dopes.”

  “She was young and pretty,” Handsome said, “wasn’t she?”

  “Yeah,” Hendenfelder said. “She was in show business. Night clubs. Then somehow she met Mr. Julien Lattimer, who fell for her and married her, and you oughta know the rest of the story backwards and sideways by this time.” He looked tired and discouraged. “And this Pearl Durzy, who used to be her maid or something, came to work for them as a housekeeper. And then all that business happened. And instead of nobody worrying about it much as time went by, Perroni, he went on worrying. And now all of a sudden, this happens. Oh well,” he said wearily, “in this business that’s the way things are because—”

  “Because that’s the way things are,” Bingo finished for him sympathetically.

  Perroni came down the long stairs from the balcony. He looked unhappier than ever.

  “Nothing,” he said. “So now we got a motive. Murder for robbery. She must’ve had all that dough some place in the house. Well, it isn’t in the house. And when I look, I look thorough.” He looked nastily at Bingo and Handsome.

  “When I rob old ladies of their savings,” Bingo said, “I lure them into a park and hit them over the head. I don’t fool around with dry-cleaning fluid.” He added, “Besides, we have an alibi. Not just Goody-Goody’s. But the lady next door, Mrs. Waldo Hibbing”—he stressed the name just slightly—“saw Pearl Durzy leaving here before we came back with our luggage.”

  Perroni and Hendenfelder looked at each other, and then back at Bingo and Handsome.

  “You mean, she left the house?” Perroni asked. He sounded a little incredulous.

  “Why not?” Bingo said. “Maybe she wanted some fresh air. Maybe she didn’t like the company.”

  Perroni said, “But where did she go?” He didn’t say it to anyone in the room. “Why?” His brows were puzzled. “She never left the house. She almost never left the house.”

  He thrust his hands in his coat pockets and glared at Bingo and Handsome. “You guys seem to have brought all the trouble,” he said, not so much angrily as reprovingly. “Mind you, I’m not accusing you of doing anything wrong. So far.” He started for the door, paused, turned and said, “After the handwriting experts got through with those papers, I sent them to Mr. Reddy. You’ll have to work that out from there. But I’m still going to find Julien Lattimer’s body.”

  Hendenfelder shrugged and followed him out of the house.

  “Bingo,” Handsome said thoughtfully when they were gone, “maybe he will find Mr. Lattimer’s body. With Mr. Lattimer still alive in it.”

  “That would be nice,” Bingo said. “Then that would be definite proof he signed those papers. And I suppose I’d better call up our lawyer and tell him about it. And call Mr. Reddy and tell him we know what the handwriting expert said.” He paused. “And call Mr. Henkin and tell him many thanks for getting us such a fine lawyer. And call Mr. Victor Budlong just to say hello. And call up Adelle Lattimer and tell her we haven’t had any luck, but we’re still looking.”

  “Why don’t you take a nice nap while I make the pictures?” Handsome said anxiously. He dumped out the contents of the camera case, and began counting. “Plus what’s in your pocket.”

  Bingo added a heavy handful of quarters to the pile.

  “Seventeen dollars and twenty-five cents,” Handsome reported. “Plus what might come in the mail, and repeat orders. We almost never did so well as that in New York, Bingo.”

  “We almost never bought a haunted house in New York, either,” Bingo said.

  “Bingo,” Handsome said, “we got paper and everything to send out these orders, so they’re just profit. And we’ve got the car, and all our clothes and stuff, and some money left over, and it’s not such a very long drive to New York—”

  Bingo took a long look at his partner. It wasn’t Handsome who was homesick for New York.

  He said, “Let’s just print up the pictures, and talk things over later.” He drew a long breath. “Handsome, we came out here to get rich and famous, and a few little setbacks aren’t going to worry us. Not for long.”

  Handsome departed gratefully for the improvised darkroom.

  Bingo leaned back on the lumpy sofa and thought things over. If he gave Handsome his share of the convertible, plus all the camera equipment, sold his clothes and his wrist watch, and the luggage that was his, he might just be able to pay back Handsome for what he’d lost in this venture. That would give Handsome a car, and a nice financial stake for the future.

  And as far as he was concerned, he’d manage. Hadn’t he always? Hadn’t he figured a way to make a cut from all the newspaper routes around the little grocery where he’d worked after its owner, his Uncle Herman, had taken him out of the orphanage where he’d spent his first twelve years? And hadn’t he done all right at door-to-door selling, crew managing, and running concessions at county fairs? In a place like Hollywood, he’d do all right for himself.

  He eased into a more comfortable position on the sofa and began to wonder how Handsome would do for himself. And decided, not too well. That put a different aspect on things.

  He half closed his eyes and remembered back to a time when he’d made a brief stab at being a sidewalk photographer for See-Ure-Self, Inc., and resigned some thirty seconds after learning that See-Ure-Self, Inc., kept seventeen and a half cents from every quarter turned in and, furthermore, required a four-dollar deposit on all cameras.

  It had been shortly after he’d met Handsome and learned that Handsome owned two cameras and had a back week’s pay due from the newspaper where he’d worked, that the In
ternational Foto, Motion Picture and Television Corporation of America had been formed.

  But now perhaps he’d pushed their luck too far.

  On the other hand, if there was still a chance—

  He picked up the telephone reluctantly and dialed Arthur Schlee’s number. The lawyer said that the news was wonderful, that he’d already been informed by Mr. Reddy, with whom he was in constant touch. Now that there was no doubt that the signatures were genuine, the rest of the situation would not be so complex. Difficult, yes, but not impossible. He had sent a messenger over to the trust company’s office to pick up the papers from Mr. Reddy, for his own personal examination. There would, of course, be no charge for the messenger service. The retainer was adequate, as he’d said, although naturally if the case should go to court—

  Bingo thanked him, and then called Leo Henkin, who came on the line promptly.

  Bingo only wanted to thank him for recommending such a fine lawyer. Mr. Henkin said it had been a pleasure to do a favor for a friend, and how had the pictures turned out? And how soon could they talk business about that Great Property?

  “Soon,” Bingo said, wishing with all his heart there was a property. He called little Mr. Reddy.

  Mr. Reddy said the whole situation was entirely unprecedented, but he had been glad to send the papers over to Mr. Schlee, and he hoped that everything was going to be all right. He hung up before Bingo had a chance to ask him a few of the questions he had in mind about Pearl Durzy.

  At least, Bingo told himself, putting down the phone, he’d done his best for the International Foto, Motion Picture and Television Corporation of America.

  He glanced again around the big and almost empty room, at the unlighted chandelier, at the balcony. He thought of Pearl Durzy, alone here for so many years, without so much as a book or a radio or a television set, not even a daily newspaper. Seeing Mr. Reddy once a month when he came in with her hundred dollars in cash, and made his quick and perfunctory inspection. Speaking, perhaps, to the grocery boy. Not even making friends with her next-door neighbor, Mrs. Hibbing, who would undoubtedly have loved to have someone to visit with, especially someone who could satisfy her curiosity about the house next door. Hiding her money somewhere, saving it, perhaps—and for what possible future purpose? Spending her time going from empty room to empty room, endlessly dusting, polishing, cleaning. Keeping a house clean for people who would never return to it—This sort of thinking, he told himself, wasn’t going to get him anywhere.