Angel's Flight (A Mercy Allcutt Mystery) (15 page)

      Feeling as if a dart had lodged in my heart, I folded the paper on my lap, set my handbag on it, folded my hands on top of them both, and stared out the window. Three minutes later, at the bottom of Angel’s Flight, I got off and walked down Broadway to the Figueroa Building, feeling perfectly awful.

      My mood didn’t improve when I found Lulu in tears again that morning. I wanted to turn around and run far, far away, but I wasn’t so poor a friend as that. Therefore, I approached the receptionist’s desk in the lobby and said, “What’s wrong, Lulu? Is it Rupert?” I couldn’t imagine what could have happened to Rupert, unless the L.A.P.D. had wired Oklahoma and discovered he was wanted for tipping over an outhouse. That seemed a remote possibility to me.

      She looked up. Her eyes were streaming, her mascara was smudged, and her nose was almost as red as her fingernails (which she’d managed to polish sometime in between bouts of tears, I guess). “Oh, Mercy, they questioned him
all night
at the police station!”

      “Why’d they do that?” It seemed a peculiarly fatuous thing to do, since Rupert was a brand-new employee at the Easthope establishment and didn’t know anybody who’d attended the séance except me.

      “I don’t know,” she wailed. “They’re gonna pin it on him! I know they’re gonna pin it on him!”

      I sat in the chair in front of the receptionist’s desk and patted Lulu’s hand. “They won’t do that, Lulu. They have no reason to. They probably only wanted to find out what Rupert could remember of the events of that night.” That made sense to me, as I intended to do the same thing.

      Sniffling pathetically, Lulu’s watery gaze surveyed me, for signs of sincerity I presume. “You really think so?”

      “Yes, I do,” I said bracingly. “In fact, I’d like to speak to Rupert myself.”

      “Oh!” Lulu seemed to forget her misery. “Is Ernie investigating?”

      Oh, boy, I hated to tell her that my hard-hearted employer had no intention of helping out Mr. Easthope. Ergo, I waffled. “I’m going to make a few inquiries for the firm.”

      “I’m so glad Ernie’s going to help!” And Lulu burst into tears again.

      With a sigh, I decided to take the stairs up to the third floor, figuring the exercise would do me good. By the time I reached my office I was puffing a little, but I felt virtuous, which was a definite improvement over how I had been feeling.

      I entered the office cautiously, fearing that perhaps Ernie had arrived early again that day, but let out a sigh of relief when I saw no sign of him. Good. That meant I could go through my morning routine of dusting and tidying without being lectured as I did so.

      As I wielded my dust cloth and tidied things that were already tidy, I mulled over what I might do to help the police catch Mrs. Hartland’s killer. I definitely needed to talk to Rupert and find out exactly what had gone on behind the scenes on the night of the murder. And if I could, I’d like to speak with Mr. George Hartland, too, and find out if he’d really been sick or had only been pretending. You never knew about people. Even if he had been faking an illness, that didn’t necessarily mean he was a murderer. Maybe he just didn’t like séances. Or his mother’s friends. Or something.

      Nuts. Investigations were so complicated.

      Ernie entered the office with Phil Bigelow about a half hour after I got to work. I’d been dreading his advent since he’d been so peeved with me the day before, but both men smiled as they sailed past my desk and on into Ernie’s office, so I guess I was forgiven for drumming up so much business. Men.

      Mr. Bigelow didn’t stay in Ernie’s office for long. He lounged out of it and over to my desk maybe five minutes after the two men arrived. Ernie was right behind him. I looked up at them with trepidation. It wasn’t like Mr. Bigelow to want to chat with me, since he was Ernie’s friend.

      “Phil has to ask you some questions, Mercy,” Ernie said, clarifying matters.

      “Me? You want to ask
me
questions?” I pointed at my chest.

      “Yeah.”

      “Oh.”

      “For Pete’s sake, Mercy, you were at the scene of the crime,” Ernie explained irritably. “Of course, he wants to ask you questions. He wants to ask everybody who was there questions.”

      That made sense. “Oh, of course. Please, Mr. Bigelow, take a seat.” I gestured at the chair beside my desk.

      “Call me Phil,” he said, smiling in a friendlier manner than he’d thus far exhibited since I saw him at Mr. Easthope’s house.

      “Thank you. Please call me Mercy.” My mother would die if she knew her daughter was on a first-name acquaintanceship with a policeman.

      He drew a notebook out of his coat pocket. “All right, Mercy. Ernie says you’re the one who got Rupert Mullins the job at Mr. Easthope’s place. Is that correct?”

      “Well . . . yes, it is. Rupert needed a job and Mr. Easthope needed to get rid of those spiritualists who’ve been bleeding his mother dry. He suspected they were crooks, and I figured putting Rupert in his home would kill two birds with one stone.” Poor phrasing. “In a manner of speaking.”

      “Right. So this Rupert kid was supposed to be kind of like a spy?”

      I thought about that. “Kind of. I thought Rupert Mullins and Mr. Easthope could help each other, if you see what I mean. Rupert, as a houseboy, might unearth some of the tricks of the d’Agostinos’ trade.”

      “d’Agostino,” said Mr. Bigelow—I mean Phil. “Right.”

      “What do you mean by that? Isn’t that their name?”

      Ernie snorted. “Not by a long shot. They’re really a pair of shysters by the name of Clyde and Maude O’Doyle, and they’re from Saint Louis, Missouri.”

      “My goodness.”

      “And they’re married.”

      “My
goodness!
” I don’t know why I was so surprised. I guess because they looked more like brother and sister than husband and wife.

      I guess Phil didn’t approve of Ernie supplying me with that sort of information, because he shot Ernie a “shut-up” look. Ernie only shrugged, and I began to recall why I basically liked him. He trusted me. If he didn’t trust me, he wouldn’t have told me the d’Agostinos’ real name and marital status, would he? No, he would not.

      “But your friend Mullins isn’t lily-white, either,” said Phil, hurrying slightly as if he were trying to prevent Ernie from leaking any more information to me. “Turns out his mother and Mrs. Hartland grew up together. What’s more, Mullins has a record.”

      “Not a very big one, though,” I said, then wished I’d taped my mouth shut before work that morning.

      Phil’s eyes narrowed into little squinty slits. “And exactly what do you know about Rupert Mullins’s record?”

      I sighed. “Not much. Only what Lulu told me this morning. I didn’t know it before, or I would have told you. She said he knocked over an outhouse, broke somebody’s arm, and left Oklahoma before his trial. I guess that makes him sort of a fugitive.”

      “Sort of?” Phil lifted an intimidating eyebrow.

      “An outhouse?” Ernie burst into guffaws. “That makes him the outlaw of the century, Phil.”

      “It’s not funny, Ernie. The kid’s a criminal.”

      “A very minor one,” I said, feeling sorry for Rupert. Even his crime was silly. I mean, if you were going to be sent up the river for something, wouldn’t you rather it be for—oh, I don’t know—robbing a bank or something like that? How’d you like it if you had to go to court and be sentenced for tipping over an outhouse? The entire gallery would laugh, just as Ernie was doing then.

      “It gives him a motive,” Phil said in all seriousness.

      I swallowed my burgeoning giggle. “You mean you think he might have killed Mrs. Hartland to keep her quiet about his outhouse caper?” It sounded far-fetched to me.

      “People have killed for less,” said Phil sententiously.

      “I think you’re grasping at straws,” I said. “What about the O’Doyles? They seem more likely as the culprits than poor Rupert.”

      “We’re looking into them, don’t worry. We won’t leave any stones unturned.”

      “You won’t? Then do you know whether or not George Hartland was really sick the night of the séance?”

      Phil frowned at me as if he didn’t appreciate my curiosity. “We’re looking into it.” Wooden. Very wooden.

      “And what about the poison? Do you know what kind of poison killed her? It must have worked awfully fast, because I sure didn’t hear anything at all. Not even a gasp or a scream or a thump when she hit the table.”

      “We’re working on that, too. It was probably some kind of alkaloid.”

      “What’s an alkaloid?” I asked before I could stop myself. What I should have done was keep my big mouth shut and visited the library on my luncheon break. Well, I could still do that.

      “It’s a poison derived from a plant,” Ernie said helpfully.

      “Oh. You mean like that poison that comes from apricot pits?”

      “Yeah. Like that,” said Phil, grunting slightly as he rose from the chair beside my desk. “Well, I can’t think of anything else to ask at the moment, Mercy. If you think of anything, please give me a ring.”

      “I will,” I promised him. “Good luck. I’m sure it wasn’t Rupert.”

      He said, “Hmm.” Not awfully encouraging, that.

      “Have fun interrogating your next witness.” Ernie snickered.

      “Huh,” said Phil, but his face flushed slightly.

      “Who’s your next witness?”

      “Miss Jacqueline Lloyd,” Ernie said with a grin.

      “Oh, are you going to her home?” I wondered where she lived, and if it was a fabulous mansion or a smaller abode, like that of Mr. Easthope.

      “Naw. Phil’s getting two birds with one stone this morning. Carstairs and Miss Lloyd, both, in Carstairs’s office.”

      Oh, boy, I wish I could sit in and hear what they had to say! Since I figured it wouldn’t hurt to ask, I did. “May I go with you and listen? I’ll be happy to take notes for you. I’m very good at shorthand.”

      I was right in that it didn’t hurt a bit to ask. Phil’s curt refusal to allow me to accompany him, in spite of my shorthand skills, stung slightly but not too much. However, I didn’t have time to fret about it, since the telephone rang. Ernie turned on his heel and headed to his office.

      As Phil exited the office, I heard Ernie flap open the
Times
and clunk his shod heels on his desk.

      “Mr. Templeton’s office. Miss Allcutt speaking.”

      The rest of the morning was busy—my advertising dollar and a half at work—and I didn’t have much of a chance to think about the Hartland/Heartwood murder. Ernie left for lunch a little early, claiming he was sick of the telephone bell and me “yammering” (his word) into the receiver. Therefore, I didn’t feel guilty at all when, a couple of minutes before noon, I scooted down to Sylvia Dunstable’s office, hoping to find out if she’d overheard any interesting tidbits when Phil interviewed Mr. Carstairs and Miss Lloyd.

      You could have knocked me over with a spring zephyr when I opened the door and saw not only Sylvia Dunstable, but Jacqueline Lloyd herself, seated beside Miss Dunstable’s desk. Both women turned to look at me. It appeared they’d been having a comfortable coze before I interrupted them.

      You’d think that since I’d come to live with Chloe and Harvey, I’d have become accustomed to seeing actors and actresses in person, but I hadn’t. Perhaps it’s because the silver screen projects such large images, but I’m always taken aback when I see a screen personage in the flesh. And nervous. I’m always nervous at such times. Such is the power of the flickers.

      “Oh,” said I. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you were busy.”

      “That’s perfectly all right, Miss Allcutt,” said Miss Dunstable in her pleasant, well-modulated secretarial voice. “Please come in.”

      Both ladies had very nice smiles. Any one of Miss Dunstable’s smiles could have made its recipient feel warm and welcome, and it did the same to me. Miss Lloyd’s smile could have illuminated the entire world with some light left over for Mars or Venus.

      This points out a fact that I’d come to appreciate fully since I moved to Los Angeles. I’ve heard it said that makeup can do wonders for almost anyone, but it takes more than makeup to create a true presence on the silver screen. I first noticed this phenomenon in a small way when my uncle Threnody (it’s too long to explain, so it’s best not to ask about the name) purchased one of those Brownie box cameras and tormented the family with it during a Christmas get-together at my aunt Augusta’s house. He took pictures of all of us, including my mother and father over my mother’s strenuous protests, which points out the strength of Uncle Threnody’s character.

      Well, when the photographs were developed, I was most awfully disappointed by the way I looked. I’m not bad looking in person, but I decided after that unfortunate episode that I’m definitely not what they call photogenic. Chloe fared much better than I, although neither of us possessed what has become known as
star quality
.

      Both Allcutt girls would have been entirely eclipsed by Miss Jacqueline Lloyd who, either in person or on film, had star quality in abundance overflowing. She was the most ethereally lovely creature I’ve ever beheld, on or off the screen.

      It was mid-August and the temperatures in Los Angeles had hovered in the upper nineties and low hundreds for days. In deference to the weather, Miss Lloyd had dressed all in white: a perfectly splendid drop-waist white suit with a tie on the side; a pair of simple white pumps that probably cost more than the Figueroa Building; and a glorious confection of a white hat that sat atop her sleekly shining dark head. She was the loveliest thing I’d ever seen. She almost took my breath away, and I’m not easily moved by human beauty.

      “Miss Allcutt,” said Sylvia Dunstable, breaking into my awestricken stupor, “I believe you’ve met Miss Jacqueline Lloyd.”

      “Er,” I said, coming back to my senses, “yes. We met at Mr. Easthope’s house.” Collecting my courage around me like a cloak, I stepped forward and held out my hand. “How do you do, Miss Lloyd? It’s a pleasure to meet you again.”