Murder, She Uncovered

by Peg Cochran

  She managed to hail a cab on Madison Avenue and jumped in, urging the driver to hurry. The jump seats jounced as they hit a large pothole and one of them flopped open. They made swift progress until they turned to head west on Fifty-Seventh Street. Traffic was clogged at the Fifth Avenue intersection where one of the horse-drawn carriages that offered tourists rides around Central Park had tangled with a taxi. The taxi driver and the coachman stood in the middle of the street yelling and shaking their fists in each other’s faces while the horse stood by working its mouth and idly pawing the ground with its hoof.

  Elizabeth tossed some coins at the taxi driver and bolted from the cab. She ran down the sidewalk toward the limestone Beaux Arts building on the corner of Fifty-Seventh Street and Fifth Avenue that housed the venerable Bergdorf Goodman.

  She pushed open the revolving door and paused just inside to catch her breath. The atmosphere was hushed despite the chattering female shoppers and the lightly scented air was as soothing as a balm. Mellow light from the hanging chandeliers danced on the crystal bottles of perfume displayed on the glass counters in the cosmetics department.

  Elizabeth hurried toward the elevator.

  “Bridal salon, please.”

  “Yes, miss.” The elevator operator pulled the door closed and they began to ascend.

  The bridal salon was even more hushed than the main floor. A massive chandelier hung from the recessed ceiling and silk-shaded lamps lit the room with a soft glow. The walls were painted a light gray with the ornate molding done in white.

  Two striped silk brocade armchairs were grouped around a small table and a rack of pale green chiffon dresses was pushed off to the side.

  Marjorie was sitting in one of the armchairs with four girls clustered around her. Elizabeth recognized Gladys Montgomery, Ida Nevins and Rosemary Gibbs, but she’d never seen the fourth girl before.

  “There you are, darling,” Marjorie said when she spotted Elizabeth hurrying over from the elevator. “We thought you must have gotten lost.”

  “Sorry I’m late,” Elizabeth said, pulling off her gloves and putting them in her pocketbook.

  Marjorie placed a languid arm along the back of the chair. “What’s a few minutes among friends?” She motioned imperiously at the group of women standing around her. “You all know Elizabeth Adams, don’t you?”

  A petite woman with a cap of dark brown curls held her hand out shyly.

  “I’m Eva Dutton. I don’t believe we’ve met.” She shook Elizabeth’s hand. “I’m Marjorie’s cousin.”

  “Okay, girls.” Marjorie clapped briskly. “Time to try on your dresses.”

  A woman in a plain long-sleeved black dress with her gray hair pulled back in a severe chignon appeared from the shadows and moved toward the rack of clothes.

  “Where’s your gown?” Gladys said, arching a pencil thin brow.

  Marjorie laughed. “Darling, you know it has to be a surprise on the big day.”

  “Not even a peek?” Gladys said.

  Marjorie shook her finger at Gladys. “Naughty girl. Not until I’m ready to walk down the aisle.”

  The saleslady bustled over to them with a pile of pale green chiffon in her arms. She looked each of the girls up and down and handed them a dress.

  Elizabeth took hers and went to the dressing room the saleslady had indicated. She pulled off her sweater and skirt and slipped the dress over her head. The fabric was cool against her skin.

  She stepped back from the mirror and examined her reflection. The dress was slightly large in the waist and the bust. She supposed it could be taken in easily enough. The color flattered her pale complexion and dark hair, though, and the puffed sleeves gave it a youthful feel. Elizabeth was relieved. She had been to some weddings where the bridesmaids had been forced to wear a hideous dress in an even more hideous color.

  She opened the door to the dressing room and stepped out.

  Ida was standing in front of the large freestanding mirror in the salon. She was frowning and tugging at the waist of her dress.

  “I look hideous,” she said, turning around to glare at Marjorie.

  “You look marvelous, darling, don’t be silly. A few alterations and the dress will be perfect on you.”

  Ida glowered at Marjorie and then at her own reflection. “I shall have to start a slimming regimen.” She bit her lip. “I just hope there’s time.”

  The other girls came out of the dressing rooms one by one. Elizabeth thought that standing all together in their frothy green dresses, they looked like a batch of newly spun cotton candy.

  “Say,” Rosemary said. She was a tall blonde with long legs. “Did you gals know that poor Agnes Kent is back?”

  Marjorie, who had been examining her nails, looked up. “You don’t say.”

  “And she didn’t take a nine-month grand tour of Europe, if you know what I mean.” Rosemary winked.

  “Last I heard she’d been sent to visit an aunt in North Dakota.” Marjorie shivered. “Can you imagine? North Dakota?” She rolled her eyes. “Poor girl.”

  “You know what I heard?” Gladys said, positioning herself in front of the mirror again. “I heard Duff Lambert was the one who got her in the family way. She begged him to marry her, but he refused.”

  “What a cad!” Eva cried.

  “You don’t know, Duff, darling,” Gladys said, twirling before the mirror. “He wouldn’t cross the street to help someone if it didn’t benefit him in some way. I’m not surprised he left Agnes in the lurch. She was a fool for falling for him. I told her that myself.”

  “Just desserts,” Marjorie said, licking her lips. “No one will have her now.”

  “I don’t know,” Elizabeth said. “It seems rather unfair that Agnes gets her reputation ruined while Duff’s cronies all slap him on the back and proclaim good show, old man,” Elizabeth said that last bit in a deep voice.

  “Says the girl who has defied society to take a job,” Marjorie drawled, pulling a pack of cigarettes from her purse. “Next thing we know you’ll be marching down Fifth Avenue demanding equal rights for women.”

  Elizabeth thought she detected a note of awe in Marjorie’s voice.

  “I can’t imagine working,” Gladys said. “I don’t know how you find the time. Between dress fittings, the hairdresser, tennis lessons and sitting on the hospitality committee for the hospital, there wouldn’t be enough hours in the day.”

  The saleswoman approached Elizabeth. She had a tape measure around her neck and a pin cushion in her hand. Elizabeth stood still while she pinned the waist and side seams of the dress.

  Finally she was done, and Elizabeth headed to the dressing room to change.

  She was smoothing out her skirt when she heard two girls talking right outside the dressing room door. She thought she recognized Gladys’s voice. She heard her name and stopped to listen.

  “I’ve been dying to tell you what I heard from Phillips. You know Phillips, don’t you? Phillips Sloan?”

  Elizabeth couldn’t hear the other woman’s response.

  “He and Elizabeth have been going out for a while now, although what he sees in her I can’t imagine. It’s too terrible what’s become of her.”

  The other woman murmured something.

  “I saw her dining at Delmonico’s with the most unsuitable man,” Gladys continued. “And Phillips said…Well”—she paused coyly—“I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she had to visit her aunt in North Dakota like poor Agnes Kent.”

  Elizabeth put her hands to her burning cheeks. How dare Gladys insinuate something like that. Was everyone talking about her?

  The thought followed her as she bolted from the bridal salon through Bergdorf Goodman and out to the street.

  It wasn’t until she was storming furiously up Fifth Avenue that she realized she’d just picked up a very impo
rtant piece of information.

  Chapter 15

  Elizabeth ended up walking all the way home. She wasn’t aware of the blocks passing by or the noise of the traffic or the people jostling her for space on the sidewalk. She wasn’t even thinking about Phillips and how he’d started to spread nasty rumors about her—no doubt because his pride was wounded that she hadn’t been more enthusiastic about what he obviously thought of as his generous offer to marry her.

  She was thinking about what Gladys had said about Duff Lambert and how it was rumored that he was the one who got poor Agnes Kent pregnant.

  And then refused to marry her.

  If he did that to Agnes, a girl from his own set, what might he have done to poor Noeleen Donovan, a naïve girl from the Irish countryside all alone in a strange new land?

  Elizabeth was quite warm by the time she arrived home, and it wasn’t only because of her furious march up Fifth Avenue.

  “Is everything okay, miss?” the doorman said as he held the door for her.

  “Yes, fine. Thank you.”

  Elizabeth swept past him toward the elevator.

  Jones didn’t say anything as he took Elizabeth’s hat and coat and stowed them in the closet.

  “Your parents are in the sitting room,” he said in his deep voice.

  Elizabeth poked her head into the sitting room. Her mother was on the sofa nursing a gin rickey—one of her favorite cocktails—and nibbling at a plate of puffed pastry hors d′oeuvres Mrs. Murphy had placed on the coffee table.

  Her father had a martini in one hand and the newspaper in the other.

  “There you are, darling,” Helen said. “You look like you’ve been to a class at the gymnasium. What on earth have you been doing?”

  Elizabeth put a hand to her forehead. It was damp with perspiration.

  “I took a brisk walk, that’s all.”

  “There’s time for you to wash up before dinner.”

  “Thank you.”

  Elizabeth retreated and headed toward the hall to her room. Delicious smells emanated from the kitchen as she passed. She thought it might be Mrs. Murphy’s famous Irish stew. She was very proud of it.

  James’s door was closed and on impulse, Elizabeth knocked on it.

  “Come in.”

  James was sitting in the chair next to his bed, slumped over as if he was too tired to hold himself up. A suitcase was open on a luggage rack in the corner of the room.

  He looked up when Elizabeth opened the door.

  “Are you going back to school then?” she said, motioning toward the suitcase.

  “Father says I must. They’ve paid for this semester and you know how father is about money.” His mouth jerked to one side. “We can’t go throwing it around like the nouveau riche.”

  “Will you be all right?”

  James shrugged and ran a hand through his hair, brushing it back from his forehead.

  “I suppose so. I’ve got to get over it, don’t I?” He ran his finger along the piping that edged the arm of the chair. “Moping about won’t bring Theo, Whit and Bobbie back, will it?”

  “I suppose not.”

  Elizabeth longed to reach out and smooth James’s forehead the way she used to do when he was little. It would always stop him fussing or crying. Nanny used to say that she had the magic touch.

  Elizabeth took her brother’s face in her hands and kissed him on the forehead. Then she tiptoed from the room and closed the door behind her.

  * * *

  —

  Elizabeth looked in the mirror and sighed. Her mother was right—her furious walk up Fifth Avenue had left her looking as if she’d just played back-to-back sets of tennis in eighty degree weather. She washed her face with cool water, dabbed on some powder and ran a brush through her hair. She glanced at the clock. Mrs. Murphy would be announcing dinner within the half hour.

  She was passing the kitchen when she heard a loud clatter. She pushed open the baize door.

  “Is everything okay?”

  Mrs. Murphy straightened up. She had a metal colander in one hand and was brushing away a stray lock of hair with her other hand.

  “Nothing to worry about. I’m fine.” She smiled at Elizabeth.

  Mrs. Murphy turned back to the counter where she had a newspaper spread out. She picked a potato out of a bowl and began to peel it, letting the peelings drop onto the pages from the New York Daily Mirror.

  Elizabeth went up to Mrs. Murphy and gave her a hug.

  Mrs. Murphy smiled again and chucked Elizabeth under the chin the way she used to when Elizabeth was a child.

  Elizabeth glanced down at the newspaper Mrs. Murphy was using to catch her vegetable peelings. A half-page black-and-white photograph dominated one page of the tabloid. The edges were blurry where the ink had run, but the picture was clear enough.

  Elizabeth recognized Duff Lambert. He was wearing a dinner jacket, pleated white shirt and black bow tie, and had his arm around a young woman in a gown with long blond hair that brushed her bare shoulders.

  Elizabeth twisted around so she could read the caption. The words were slightly blurred where the paper had puckered, but she was able to make them out—DUFF LAMBERT AND FIANCÉE NANCY VANCE ATTEND THE END OF SUMMER BALL AT THE WESTHAMPTON COUNTRY CLUB SATURDAY NIGHT.

  Elizabeth felt her breath quicken. Did this mean…?

  She checked the date—Saturday, September 17, 1938.

  The picture was proof that Duff Lambert was on Long Island the weekend Noeleen Donovan was killed.

  And from rumors circulating in the society set, Duff had every reason to want to make sure Noeleen would not turn out to be a millstone around his neck.

  * * *

  —

  Elizabeth woke up the next morning with a sense of excitement churning in her stomach. At first she couldn’t quite put her finger on the reason for the feeling. But then she remembered—she’d uncovered good evidence that Duff might have killed Noeleen Donovan. And she couldn’t wait to share the news with Kaminsky.

  She gulped down her breakfast, earning her a stern glance from her mother, grabbed her coat and hat from Jones, earning an astonished look from him, and bolted out the door.

  It occurred to her while she was on the subway that Kaminsky might not be in the newsroom. It had never happened before. He never seemed to come down with a chest cold or a stomachache, although more than once he smelled of Vicks VapoRub or was sucking on a cough lozenge. But when she asked him if he was sick, he would insist he was perfectly fine.

  But he was sitting at his desk as usual, his feet up and a buttered roll in his hand, crumbs cascading down the front of his shirt.

  Elizabeth ran up to him without even taking off her hat and coat.

  “Whoa!” Kaminsky held up a hand. “Slow down, kid, you’re making me dizzy.”

  “You won’t believe what I found out,” Elizabeth said, somewhat breathlessly.

  “Try me.”

  “I found evidence that Duff Lambert was out on Long Island the weekend Noeleen Donovan was killed.”

  Kaminsky swung his feet off his desk and sat up. “You don’t say.”

  “There was a picture of Duff and his fiancée in the New York Daily Mirror.”

  Kaminsky frowned. “What are you doing reading the competition?” There was a twinkle in his eye.

  Elizabeth slapped him on the arm. “I’ve seen you reading the New York Daily News so don’t give me that line, buster.”

  Kaminsky grinned at her, and Elizabeth slapped him on the arm again.

  “As I was saying”—she paused dramatically—“there was a picture in the society section of the Mirror of Duff Lambert and his fiancée that was taken at an event at the Westhampton Country Club the Saturday of the weekend Noeleen was killed. And that, sir”—Elizabeth knocked on Kaminsky’
s desk—“puts him in the right place at the right time.”

  “It sure does.” Kaminsky tapped his pencil against his coffee mug. “I think perhaps we should pay this fiancée a visit, don’t you?”

  “Yes.” Elizabeth fumbled in her pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. “Her name is Nancy Vance,” she read. “And she lives with her mother in an apartment in the Carlyle Hotel.”

  * * *

  —

  “I’ve been going to all the swankiest places since I met you,” Kaminsky said as they approached the canopied entrance of the Carlyle Hotel, an elegant Art Deco building on East Seventy-Sixth Street.

  Elizabeth had called Marjorie Hicks, who had called her cousin Lily, who had, in turn, called her neighbor Diana, who knew Nancy Vance and was able to provide her address and telephone number. She had informed Elizabeth, through Lily and subsequently Marjorie, that Nancy lived in the Carlyle Hotel with her mother during the season, wintered in Palm Beach and summered on Long Island. And since early October was the start of the season in New York City, they would no doubt find her in.

  A cheerful fire burned in the marble fireplace in the hotel lobby. A gentleman in a pinstripe suit and vest sat in an armchair next to it with The New York Times held at arm’s length in front of him.

  Elizabeth approached the desk and smiled.

  “We’re here to see Miss Nancy Vance, please. Tell her it’s Elizabeth Adams calling. I’m a friend of Marjorie Hicks, who is the cousin of Lily, Miss Vance’s next-door neighbor Diana’s friend.”

  The receptionist looked slightly confused but said, “Certainly, miss.” He returned moments later. “Miss Vance will see you. Apartment two four zero one.” He motioned toward the back of the lobby. “The elevators are right this way.”

  A maid in a white cap and apron opened the door to the Vances’ apartment and ushered them into a black-and-white-tiled foyer. A tidy stack of mail sat on a spindly gilt table on the left side and an upholstered bench was against the opposite wall.