Postmark Murder (13 page)

“Matt said that you went to a drug store somewhere in the neighborhood, to phone to him. Where was that?”

“On the corner of Koska Street.”

“And you didn’t see anybody that you knew, anywhere?”

“No. I’d have told the police.” It struck her that Doris was strangely persistent. “Do you mean anybody in particular?”

Doris’ slender figure looked suddenly a little rigid. But she shook off more ashes with a casual gesture and turned to face Laura. “How silly! Of course not. I only want to know everything. Why not?” She went over to the chair again, sat down, discovered something that didn’t satisfy her about one of her fingernails and examined it minutely. “It does seem to me that you might have seen something that would be, well, evidence against this woman Maria Brown, for instance. The point is”— Doris lifted her brown eyes to look directly at Laura—“the police suspect every one of us. You and me and Charlie. They think it’s the Stanislowski money. Of course, it doesn’t bother me because I have an alibi; it never occurred to me to be thankful that I was at the dentist’s but that’s where I was all yesterday afternoon and nobody can say I wasn’t. So I’ve got an alibi. But nevertheless it’s not nice! None of us is going to be very comfortable until this thing is settled. If this man
was
Stanislowski, the police think that I and Charlie, and you, my dear, don’t forget, had a motive in doing away with him.”

“Well, I didn’t kill him!”

Doris’ slender eyebrows went up; her eyes opened wide like a child’s. “I didn’t say you did. And if the man was
not
Stanislowski, then of course it has nothing to do with any of us. That’s the point. Why are you so sure that he was Stanislowski?”

“Because I think he was!”

“You must have some reason?”

“I believed him,” Laura said again. “And Jonny cried.”

Doris shrugged lightly. “That means nothing. She could have been crying about anything.” Suddenly Doris’ soft voice became decisive. “I don’t think he was Stanislowski. And it does make a difference about the money.”

“But it goes to Jonny—”

“Why are you so determined to give that money to Jonny?”

“Why, because that was Conrad’s intention. The will is perfectly clear—”

“Oh, is it?” Doris said suddenly. “I’m not so sure about that.”

“Do you mean, Doris, that you intend to oppose Jonny’s inheritance?”

“I didn’t say that. But I do say that Conrad’s will is not at all clear. You assume that that money goes direct to the little girl. All that money! Conrad meant it to go to his nephew. He didn’t mean it to go to a child. He didn’t even know there was a child.”

Laura leaned forward. “Doris, let’s get this clear. Are you going to oppose our plan for keeping that money in trust for Jonny?”

Doris gave her a long, queerly thoughtful look. Then she rose and put out her cigarette. Her bracelets glittered. “All that has to go through the courts.” She picked up her handbag, slid the gold cigarette case into it and closed it with a decisive little snap. “Oh, I know why you’re so interested in Jonny, Laura. I know why you took Jonny in the first place! Obviously she ought to have been put in school but, no, you insisted on bringing her here. I didn’t see through it at the time but I do now.”

“I took Jonny because I wanted her—”

“I know exactly why you did it and I know exactly why you want Jonny to have that money. You intend to establish yourself as her friend, her guardian, her long-time associate. You intend to fasten upon her the way you fastened upon my husband, Conrad Stanley.”

“T
HAT’S NOT TRUE!”

“It is true! Is there any other reason why you should care whether a child like that gets any money or not! I’d see to her all her life; there’s no question of that. But why should she have such a large fortune? No, the reason you want her to have all that money is because you intend to profit by it. And that’s not all. You’ve been making a play for Matt ever since you brought that child here.”

“Doris, stop it!”

“And I’ll tell you this! Matt and I were engaged once, you knew that. We were engaged when I met Conrad. And Matt is still in love with me and I’m in love with him and we’re going to be married and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

She turned, walked into the hall, paused at the mirror to adjust her smart hat, and said, “I don’t want you to be hurt, Laura. That’s why I’m telling you about Matt and me—although, of course, you must have known. And you knew that Matt would come here to see the child and you’d see him, too! But perhaps I was hasty in saying what I did about the money. You are so set in your opinion about it that I—well, usually when anybody fights for money there’s a reason for it.”

“The reason is Jonny!”

Doris slid into her coat deliberately, looking at herself in the mirror, adjusting the collar. “You’d have to say that—wouldn’t you, darling?”

After she had strolled down the corridor, her high heels clicking lightly, after Laura had closed the door and gone back to the living room and stared for a long time out the window into the gray, heavy sky—even after all that, the traces of Doris’ perfume lingered in the room, recalling Doris’ presence.

Recalling, too, a stuffy little telephone booth in a drug store away out on the west side, and a fragrance of carnations which had brought Doris’ lovely image into Laura’s mind.

But Doris herself had not been in the telephone booth. She had been at the dentist’s all that afternoon: she had an alibi and, Laura thought rather wryly, as good an alibi as anybody could possibly establish. One, certainly, which the police could easily check. And then she thought with horror: alibis! She had none. She had found the murdered man.

The low sky seemed almost to touch the windows, yet the visibility downward to the street was fairly clear. Pedestrians were trudging along homeward, foreshortened, so they looked like toys. She thought of the persistent walker in the fog.
Had
he followed them? There was nothing definite, nothing tangible about it.

The telephone call which Charlie had reported was definite and tangible; either a warning, he’d said, or a threat.

She wished Matt would come. It was curious, in a way a commentary upon the relationship between Doris and Laura, that she had not told Doris of the man in the Park.

But there had been from the beginning a kind of instinctive antipathy between the two young women—Doris, Conrad’s wife, and Laura, who had been so much like a daughter to him. Perhaps Laura had suspected Doris’ motive in marrying a man so much older than she; Doris had now made it abundantly clear that she doubted the sincerity of Laura’s deep affection for Conrad. It was equally clear that Matt was still in love with Doris; that was not news to Laura. And in a way it was not news that Doris did not intend to give up a third of the Stanislowski fund. She intended to fight for it, not because she needed it, but simply because Doris liked and spent money.

The door buzzer sounded again, Matt’s ring, and Jonny and Suki, as if both recognized it, too, came at a gallop along the hall.

Matt’s coat and hat were damp from fog; he shook them and put them down. “It’s a foul day out. Hi, Jonny! Ouch—”  The kitten had swarmed with the aid of needlesharp claws up his trouser leg, and settled on his shoulder. Matt rubbed his leg. Jonny dived her hand into Matt’s coat pocket. Matt said, “No presents today, Jonny. I didn’t get time. Ah, a fire! Any chance for a drink?”

“I’ll get it,” Laura said and went to the kitchen. She brought back a tray with Scotch and soda, ice and a glass. Matt dislodged the kitten, poured himself a drink, sat down and stretched out his long legs with a sigh. “The only news there is, is no news. They haven’t yet found Maria Brown. And until they find her I don’t see what they can do.”

“They took me out to Koska Street this morning.”

“Why?”

“Lieutenant Peabody questioned me, asked if anything in the room was different. He asked the landlady if she had ever seen me before. She said no, of course. Matt, I think a man followed us in the park this afternoon. And then there were some telephone calls.” She told him of the shadowy, persistent walker in the fog.

Matt’s face grew hard as he listened. “Could you identify the man?”

“I couldn’t see his face. He never approached us or tried to speak to us. Perhaps it was nothing. I’m in a state of mind to jump at a shadow.”

“I don’t think you’d jump at a shadow. What do you mean by telephone calls?”

She told him of that, too. A wrong number, or at least what she took to be a wrong number, the night before; another that morning while Charlie was there, and then the second telephone call and someone speaking this time, in Polish.

“That doesn’t sound like Charlie to get the wind up over something like that. A threat or a warning,” Matt said thoughtfully, quoting Charlie’s words. “Whatever it was it means something. The point is, who phoned?”

“Matt, it’s safe here, isn’t it?”

“I think so, Laura,” he said slowly. “As safe as it would be anywhere. I’m going to talk to Charlie.”

S
HE LISTENED WHILE HE
telephoned to Charlie. When he came back, he looked puzzled. “I don’t know what to make of it. Of course, if there
is
some sort of family feud or vengeance back of this murder, it is perfectly possible that Jonny
is
—”

Laura whispered, “Another target.”

“No,” Matt said quickly. “But—perhaps a motive. The trouble is we don’t know why this man was murdered. If he was not Stanislowski, then it has nothing to do with any of us. If he
was
Stanislowski— Well, I’ll talk to Peabody about this. So will Charlie. I saw Peabody today but he wasn’t very communicative. Laura, don’t think too much of the man in the park this afternoon. If he had wanted to—”  His eyes went to Jonny. Laura suddenly whispered again. “Do you mean he may have intended to take Jonny?”

“No! But if it happens again, or anything happens that seems odd, call me, call Peabody.” He glanced at his watch briefly and sat down again. Laura thought, Doris is waiting.

He stayed, though, lingering over his drink and pouring another, talking mainly of Maria Brown. “The trouble is, she is so inconspicuous. In a city of this size a woman answering her description could disappear forever. And that seems to be what she intends to do. Well”—he looked at his watch again and rose— “I’ve got to be going. Look here, that girl downstairs at the switchboard—wouldn’t she announce callers, if you asked her to?”

“Why, yes. But people as a rule don’t stop at the desk.”

“I wish there were some way to make sure you would know just who came up here. It seems to me anybody could walk in. I’ll tell you, Laura, make sure who it is before you open the door. Not that I think anything is going to happen!”

But she must have given some evidence of the small, swift pulse of alarm that caught her, for unexpectedly he put his arm around her, kissed her cheek lightly and released her. And went to keep his dinner engagement with Doris.

The red glow of the wood fire lost its charm. Jonny and the kitten sat together, suddenly quiet and thoughtful, watching the dying embers. Jonny, who, Matt said, might be a motive for Conrad Stanislowski’s murder. Laura went to Jonny and knelt down to put her arm around the sturdy little shoulders. “All right,” she said, forcing a note of gaiety into her voice. “Now for supper.”

There was another telephone call that night.

That was after Jonny was in bed and asleep. Laura had read the evening papers and the story of Conrad Stanislowski had leapt, not to prominence, but at least to more space; her own name was there, this time. Miss Laura March, who had been a secretary to Conrad Stanley, had found the murdered man—who had claimed to be Conrad Stanislowski, a nephew of Conrad Stanley. It set a kind of seal of authenticity upon what had been nightmarish and unreal, yet real and terrible, too; Laura March, in black and white, like that.

But still the police had not told all they knew. There was nothing said of the Stanley will, although Conrad Stanley’s name alone was enough to insure the story a certain prominence. The murdered man had been supposed to have arrived very recently from Poland. The woman, Maria Brown, was still missing; there was again a description of her; the police were combing the city for her because, the account said cautiously, she might have some evidence.

Nothing was said of the telephone call to Laura. Nothing was said of Jonny, for which Laura was grateful. There was, however, in the very brevity of the account a kind of threat, as if Lieutenant Peabody were reserving his ammunition. Manifestly, he had withheld some of the facts.

She put down the papers and lighted a cigarette and the telephone rang and again no one answered.

“Who is this?”
she said sharply.
“What do you want?”

For answer the telephone clicked. She put it down. There were ways of dealing with such things; the police, the telephone company. Matt had told her to let him know, let Peabody know if it happened again.

She would tell him at once. What could he do then and there, that night? Besides, he was with Doris.

She debated for a moment and decided to tell him of it the next day. But her apartment seemed again exposed and lonely, high up in the cloud-laden city, like a target.

She turned on the radio and dance music swirled out into the room; she went back to the kitchen and went through the nightly routine of making hot chocolate for Jonny and hot milk flavored with coffee for herself. She put them as usual in the two thermos bottles, set the empty milk bottles outside the kitchen door in the service hall and went back to the living room. She was restless, as if the telephone call had touched off a deep uneasiness. She had left the radio turned on and the dance music threw its spell around her; it suggested gaiety, lights, voices, dancing; she listened, caught by the golden net of a dream.

The little French clock on the mantel chimed eleven. She turned off the radio and went to the black, glittering windows, seeing her reflection on them. A slender figure in gray skirt and white blouse.