Postmark Murder (12 page)

“Or a warning,” Charlie said. “I don’t want to alarm you, Laura, but it did seem to me that there was something threatening about it. In any event, it occurred to me that perhaps it wasn’t a good idea for you and Jonny to be here alone. Until this thing is settled, at any rate. You see, Jonny might be—another target.”

Laura’s thoughts raced. “Was it a woman’s voice? Was it Maria Brown?”

“Yes, I thought of her, too. But unless she’s got a very flat masculine voice—”

“It is flat! Toneless. Low—”

Charlie debated and shook his head. “No, I think it was a man. It wasn’t a good connection. But Jonny—Doris could see to her. Or I can take her. I’ll go to the Drake, take a suite and get somebody in to see to Jonny.”

Another person, a stranger, an outsider. Charlie would be away at his office; Jonny left alone with a complete stranger. “No,” Laura said. “I’d rather have her here.”

“As you like, Laura. But I didn’t like that telephone call.”

Laura didn’t like it either. “What did you mean, Charlie, by saying that Jonny might be another target?”

Charlie rose. “I don’t know what I meant exactly. Except if this man
was
her father and—oh, I suppose some thought of vengeance or a blood feud or something like that struck me. I’m an old maid. Don’t pay any attention to me. I’ll tell Peabody about it.” He went to the door and picked up his hat and coat. “You’re sure, Laura, that you really feel that this man was Stanislowski?”

“Yes.”

“Do you want to tell me your reasons?”

“No, I—”  There were no real and sound reasons.

Charlie said, “All right. I can see you don’t want to talk. If you do decide to send Jonny to me, only let me know and we’ll fix it up.” He gave her an absent smile which she felt was meant to be cheering and went away. But, she thought, Jonny: another target. Why?

Only then she remembered that the night before the telephone had rung and when she answered there had been no reply. A wrong number, she had thought, as Charlie had thought. But it was curious that that should happen twice within so short a space of time.

Perhaps it was the same person who, at last grown bold, spoke to Charlie. A threat—or a warning.

Suddenly her small apartment, so gay, so warm and charming and up to then so safe, was like an island besieged by an invisible, ominous force.

Matt still did not telephone. The sparse snowflakes diminished and stopped. Heavy gray clouds, tinged with yellow, lowered inexorably down over the city. Again a fog began to come in from the lake.

In the end, when it was nearly time for Jonny to wake from her nap, Laura telephoned herself to Matt’s office. His secretary answered. “Oh, Miss March. You’re back. Mr. Cosden told me to tell you that he’d like to stop in and see you later this evening. Is that all right?”

“Yes,” Laura said. “Thank you.”

It was about three when Laura and Jonny went for their usual outing, a walk this time along the lake. They were followed probably from the moment they left the apartment house.

Laura was not aware of the pursuit for some time. They turned north along Lake Shore Drive, Jonny, a bright and happy figure in her little red coat and hat, trudging along beside Laura. It was foggy and cold. Laura turned up the collar of her coat, and the scarf Matt had given her seemed to provide a particularly gentle warmth around her throat.

The sidewalk was damp from the fog. At that time in the afternoon traffic was slower but still cars swished constantly over the wet pavements. Off at the right, across the Drive, the lake was only a blank gray, almost hidden in fog. They passed various pedestrians, the women bundled in furs, walking briskly along. Jonny stopped to speak to a black French poodle scampering gaily at the end of a yellow leash, and his owner smiled and talked to Jonny as Jonny fondled the dog.

Frequently they took one of the several subway passages, long tunnels for pedestrians, which went under Lake Shore Drive and its thudding traffic, and came out at the short strip of park and Oak Street Beach. This time, however, the steps going down into the crossing at Division Street looked dark and rather forbidding. Somehow. Laura did not wish to enter the long tunnel with its echoes, its damp concrete walls, its few lights. They went on toward North Avenue, and the entrance to the park. It was as they stopped for a traffic light at Scott Street that she first saw a man trudging along through the fog about two  blocks behind them. She glanced idly at him and away as the traffic light changed and they crossed the street. Perhaps halfway down the next block Laura thought suddenly, why, he reminded me of Conrad Stanislowski!

That was odd. In spite of herself she glanced back. The figure was still there, strolling along behind them, still about two blocks away, apparently paying no attention to them! But she then knew why he had reminded her of Conrad Stanislowski for, even at that distance, there was something vaguely foreign in his appearance. Perhaps it was his bulky black overcoat, or his wide-brimmed hat pulled in a straight line over his face. He was hunched up, his hands in his coat pockets. She couldn’t see his face.

But of course, that was it; merely a chance resemblance of clothing had reminded her of the murdered man. They went on, crossed North Avenue and entered the park.

The benches were damp with fog and it was too cold to sit for long, anyway. They took a brisk pace along the winding pathways. Here, perhaps because of the foggy weather, there were not as many pedestrians as usual, fewer people exercising capering dogs, no neatly uniformed nursemaids pushing huge perambulators. Indeed the park itself began to seem oddly unpopulated. Unexpectedly, for no reason, Laura glanced back along the sloping, winding path. The man in the bulky overcoat had entered the park, too. She caught the barest glimpse of him through some bare, brown shrubbery.

And suddenly she thought, Jonny, another target!

They would go over to Lake Shore Drive. They would take a taxi home. She hastened her footsteps and Jonny’s. They reached Lake Shore Drive again. A taxi was drifting along the street. Laura signaled it. As she got in she glanced back through the glass. There was no sight of the curiously persistent, curiously ubiquitous walker in the fog.

Had he in fact followed them? They had met other people along the streets, but they passed and went on; they turned and took different ways. The figure in the dark coat had trudged on through the fog, going where they went, pausing apparently when they paused, always just far enough away so she could not see his face. Yet he had not approached them. He had not spoken to them.

It was a short ride back to her apartment house. As they drew up at the entrance, another taxi went slowly past them. Its single passenger was only a dark blur in the shadow of the back seat.

P
ROBABLY IT WAS NOT
the man in the park. Perhaps the man in the park was a policeman in plain clothes, set to watch her. Yet that, too, was rather frightening.

Suki came to greet them, complaining bitterly of their absence and consequent dire neglect of a small, long-legged Siamese kitten. But even with his reproachful welcome and with lights turned on all over the apartment, it did not seem as cheerful and safe as usual. Laura went back to the kitchen and made sure that the kitchen door was bolted. Then, to cheer herself more than anything, to rout a persistent chill little fear that was as vaguely threatening as a man’s figure trudging stubbornly behind them, she lighted the wood fire already laid in the tiny fireplace. As the kindling crackled and sparkled, the door buzzer sounded. It was Doris Stanley.

“Laura!” she said. “What a dreadful thing! How could you have let it happen!”

“I don’t see how I could have stopped it!” Laura said and heard the snap in her own voice. There was something between her and Doris which from the beginning would have made it fatally easy to quarrel.

Doris was already in the hall and sliding out of her long fur coat, a new coat and a new rosy beige shade of mink; my little Christmas present to myself, Doris had said that fall.

Doris was as always lovely. She was small and slender with a delicate face and pansy brown eyes. Her nose tilted upward delightfully; she had a charming, gentle smile. Her cheeks were now lightly pink from the cold. She wore a black dress so extravagantly simple in the lines and the way it clung to Doris’ lovely figure that Laura knew it was a very expensive dress indeed; she wore a small, chic and very expensive black hat over her blond hair. Altogether, Laura thought with mingled admiration and an obscure irritation, Doris could have appeared then and there in any fashion show as a shining example of what the perfectly dressed city woman might wear.

She stripped off white gloves; the bracelets on her small wrists clanked. Doris always wore jewelry. Conrad had heaped jewels and furs upon her, and since his death and she had had control of so much money, she had dipped into it lavishly, herself. A triple string of pearls at her lovely throat was fastened by a large cabochon emerald; her hands with their rosy fingernails flashed with rings. A fragrance like carnations wafted out from her as she dropped her gloves on her coat, and said to Laura, “I don’t suppose you could have stopped it, but I don’t see why you had to go out to that house and I don’t see why you had to take Jonny there. Laura, I want you to tell me all about it. They questioned me last night. Think of it, questioned me! What really happened? Where is Jonny?”

“I’ll give her some hot chocolate. Then we can talk. Go in the living room, Doris. There’s a fire.”

Ten minutes later, with Jonny contentedly sipping thick hot chocolate for which, perhaps, her stay in Vienna had given her an affection, Laura returned to the living room. Doris was sitting on the sofa; the primrose-yellow of the curtains behind her was scarcely more yellow than the lights the fire struck in her hair.

“Will you have tea, Doris? I can fix it in a moment.”

“No, thanks. Matt is coming to dinner and I’ve only got a few minutes, but I want to talk to you. First, Laura, what about this man?
Was
he Stanislowski?”

All of them ask the same question, Laura thought wearily. She sat down opposite Doris and wished in an odd little feminine layer of her mind that she had changed to a different dress. Her gray suit and white blouse felt like a drab, working-girl’s uniform in contrast to Doris’ perfumed and jeweled smartness. She said, “Of course he was Stanislowski!”

Doris’ gentle brown eyes became rather fixed. She watched Laura for a moment, then opened her suede handbag, got out a gold cigarette case and looked vaguely around for a light. Laura started to rise to get matches for her and again some curious feminine impulse asserted-itself. “There are matches on the table, Doris, right beside you.”

“Oh, I see. Thanks.” Doris lighted the cigarette. “You seem very certain of this man’s identity,” she said as she maneuvered the cigarette between her pretty lips, softly touched with pink lipstick.

“I’ve told Matt and the police everything I know, Doris. There’s no use in asking me anything else. Matt told you all about it, didn’t he?”

“Oh, yes. But I wanted to talk to you myself. Jonny should know whether or not he was her father. Have you questioned her?”

“No. I want to be sure that nothing that happened yesterday has—hurt her.”

“Oh, nonsense!” Doris said impatiently. “You and Matt and Charlie all act as if that child is so sensitive! The fact is she’s as phlegmatic as a potato. Aren’t the police going to question her?”

Jonny was always a little frightened of Doris. There was no real reason for it, unless she felt something of Doris’ hidden resentment. Doris had not liked admitting the fact that Jonny was Conrad Stanislowski’s child; she had not liked admitting the fact that Jonny had any sort of claim upon the Stanislowski fund. She had tried to conceal her resentment, Laura thought; perhaps Matt’s affection for the child accounted for that. She made overtures of friendship—rather few and grudging, but overtures. In Doris’ presence, however, Jonny always seemed to withdraw into the cautious stillness which was like a kind of protective coloration.

There was no use in trying to explain that to Doris. Laura said, “Lieutenant Peabody said he would bring an interpreter who would try to talk to Jonny in her own language.”

Doris said sharply, “I should think that would be the very first thing they would do. It’s so important—his identity, I mean.”

There was again something rather fixed and hard in her brown eyes. It sent a tingle of warning through Laura. She said slowly, “Why, yes, it’s important. But not so far as the money goes. I mean, all the Stanislowski fund eventually goes to Jonny anyway.”

Doris started to speak, stopped, bit her pink lower lip and then rose, walked to the fireplace and looked down at the flames. The lovely curves of her figure were outlined sharply in black against the rosy light from the fire. Her hair looked like a shining gold cap. She said softly, over her shoulder, “Well, of course that’s to be decided. However”—she turned to look at Laura— “that’s not the point right now. It’s this murdered man! I don’t understand why you didn’t phone to me yesterday? Why didn’t you phone to anybody? Oh, Matt says that this whoever he was, the murdered man, begged you to keep his arrival a secret, but didn’t that strike you as very odd?”

“I believed him,” Laura said flatly. Again she had a sense of answering the same questions, except from different people; yet certainly Doris had every right to ask them. “I believed him and I didn’t think a few days’ silence on my part would do any harm.”

“I think it was very wrong of you to take that attitude! No matter what he said I think you ought to have let us know! When was he here, about what time?”

“I don’t know exactly. It must have been about four-thirty.”

Doris leaned over the fire and carefully shook an ash from her cigarette. “That means you must have got out to the rooming house about—what time would you say?”

“I don’t know that either. Not exactly. Something after five, I think.”

“And there was nobody in this rooming house?”

“Nobody except, of course, Maria Brown. The woman I met on the steps.”