The Case of the Murdered Muckraker (10 page)

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Authors: Carola Dunn

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“There's sure no need to change your mind, Miss Genevieve, no reason at all. I just wanna go over what Mrs. Fletcher saw again, case maybe she's remembered sumpin else, and then we'll go downtown so she can check out the mug book.”
“Oh no!” said Miss Genevieve sharply. “Police headquarters is no place for a gently bred young lady.”
“Sure ain't!” Larssen agreed.
The sergeant glared at him. “O.K., Larssen, you can go get the book, pronto. And make it snappy.”
As the blond giant hurried off, looking martyred, Gilligan glanced around the lobby. It wasn't exactly busy, but a few people were coming and going, and Kevin was leaning against the wall at the corner near his elevator, keeping a watchful eye on proceedings.
“This is too public,” Gilligan grunted. “We'll go up to your room, Mrs. Fletcher.”
“Oh no!” Miss Genevieve objected again. A glint in her eye, she went on with a primness quite foreign to her, “Most improper, Sergeant. Mrs. Fletcher may be a married woman, but she is young and pretty.”
“Spare my blushes!” Daisy uttered, trying not to laugh.
She wasn't at all surprised when Miss Genevieve next suggested, in a tone as martyred as Larssen's face had been, “You'd better all come up to our suite, I guess, so that Ernestine and I can play chaperon.”
“Geez, save me from nosy old maids!” Gilligan muttered,
obviously no more deceived than Daisy. Thoroughly disgruntled, he gave in. “O.K., your place, then, if that's the way you wannit. Course, I'll hafta bring my other witness along. Hey, you, Lambert! I wanna word with you.”
“Oh dear,” said Miss Cabot, at last breaking her appalled silence.
Miss Genevieve was momentarily disconcerted. However, by the time Gilligan gave her a sly glance to see how she reacted to his adding Lambert to her invitation to her suite, she looked intrigued.
Disappointed, he turned back to Lambert, who stammered, “Who, me?”—apparently his standard response when addressed unexpectedly.
“You gotta twin brother?” Gilligan asked nastily.
As Lambert jumped up and came over, Miss Genevieve said to Daisy, “That young nonentity was a witness, too? What a coincidence! I suppose he was also visiting an editor, though he failed to mention to me any ambition in the writing line.” She bent a severe frown upon him.
“Excuse me, ma'am,” he apologized. “I don't want to intrude …”
“Come on, come on,” Gilligan interrupted. “Let's get this show on the road.”
At Miss Genevieve's halting pace, which slowed deliberately when Gilligan started to chivvy, they went across to the elevators. Kevin jumped to attention.
“Going up?” he asked eagerly, no doubt hoping to glean a few grains of information.
O'Rourke opened his mouth for the first time. “This here's the young shaver that his sister was chambermaid to Carmody, Sergeant.”
“That right? Gave you some trouble, din't he?”
“He didn't have to put the screws on, Sarge! Bridey tole him everything right off.”
“Doncha get fresh with
me,
” Gilligan snarled, reaching out to cuff the boy.
Daisy put her hand on his arm. “I'm sure he's only telling the truth, Sergeant. Bridget was eager to put her knowledge at the service of the police.”
“Oh yeah?” He stared at her. “Whadda
you
know about it?”
“She's my chambermaid, too.”
“That don't mean …”
“Come on, come on, Sergeant!” said Miss Genevieve, who with her sister had entered the lift by now. “Let's get this show on the road.”
“Aw, the heck with it!” Gilligan surrendered, to Daisy's relief. She didn't want him delving into just how much Bridget had told her.
“Third floor, please, Kevin,” she said, joining the Misses Cabot.
“Going up!” he said in his usual jaunty manner and winked at her. The men crowded in after her and Kevin shut the gates with a double clang.
“Geez, I'm glad Larssen ain't in here, too,” said O'Rourke as the laden lift creaked upward.
“The other detective?” ventured Lambert, squeezed into a corner. “Where did he go?”
“To get the mug book,” Daisy informed him, “so that you and I can try to identify the fugitive.”
“I never saw him! I swear, Sergeant, I never saw his face!”
“Then you won't reckernize any of the shots, will you?” Gilligan grunted.
“Third floor,” Kevin announced.
The Misses Cabot's sitting room was large enough to accommodate everyone easily, but by no means large enough to afford Gilligan any privacy he might have hoped for. Miss Genevieve, installed by the fireplace, listened avidly to every word as he took Daisy through her evidence again. This time he started with the overheard argument.
“Word for word, near as you can remember, including the rude word the dame used.”
“Cover your ears, sister,” advised Miss Genevieve, making no move to cover her own.
“‘You bastard,'” said Daisy, “‘I wouldn't come back to you if you made a million dollars.' Then Carmody said, ‘If I made a million dollars, you still wouldn't squeeze one red cent out of me.' More or less.”
“He said, ‘More or less'?”
“No, Sergeant,
I
say that's more or less what
they
said.”
“More or less!” said Gilligan in disgust. “It can'ta been Carmody, though, it was this guy Bender he was blackmailing said that.”
“I still think it was Carmody,” Daisy persisted.
“Sure, more or less!” the sergeant jeered.
Daisy wanted to point out that, considering what Bridget had overheard, it made perfect sense for Carmody to have been the speaker. But she didn't want to get the chambermaid into hot water. Besides, Gilligan had probably bullied the poor girl into changing her story to fit his preconceived notions.
Miss Genevieve put her oar in. “You believe Carmody was blackmailing Mr. Bender?” she asked.
“Sure thing!” said Gilligan. “There's enough stuff in
Carmody's papers up in his room to worry Barton Bender plenty.”
“Such as?”
In the face of Miss Genevieve's scepticism, the sergeant was too eager to prove his point to remember discretion. “He owns a whole lotta tenements, slum property, that he's been paying off the city inspectors not to see they're falling down. Not that that's any big deal,” he added hastily.
The inspectors must be Tammany appointees, like Gilligan, Daisy guessed.
“His tenants don't like it, they can go somewhere else.” Miss Genevieve's sarcasm was obvious.
“Yeah, and he ain't above encouraging 'em. Gotta gang of hoodlums he sends round to evict troublemakers, and he don't care who gets hurt. Well, troublemakers, I got no beef with that, but them that's a bit behind with the rent … The public don't like reading about widders and orphans getting roughed up. That gets in the papers, the Police Department's gonna sit up and take notice.”
“I should hope so!” Daisy exclaimed.
Gilligan shrugged. “It's a free country.”
“Sister, may I remove my hands from my ears now?” Miss Cabot asked plaintively.
With an impatient nod to her sister, Miss Genevieve said, “Unpleasant, but I can't see Bender killing to save his reputation. Isn't he wealthy enough to hire the best lawyers, and to pay his toughs to take the rap without splitting on him? Murder is a whole different ball-game. It would raise the stakes too high for his liking.”
“You been talking to the guy?” Gilligan demanded.
“No, but that sort of person generally runs true to type. You've talked to him, what did you think of him?” She
paused. “You
have
talked to him, haven't you, Sergeant?”
“No,” Gilligan admitted sourly. “I didn't get to Carmody's room till last night. Bender was out—some nightclub his housekeeper said, she didn't know where. I left a man to watch, but he didn't come home. I guess he musta gone on to Mrs. Carmody's hotel room, and we ain't got a line on that yet. I got men out going round the hotels. But messing with his tenants ain't all Carmody had on him.”
“No?”
“There's some funny business with mortgage loans on his properties. I turned it over to our fraud people. If it's what it looks like to me, he'll go down for a stretch anyways, even we can't pin the murder on him—though I ain't giving up on that, not by a long shot!”
“You'd do better to stick to what Carmody was digging out about Tammany's business,” Miss Genevieve declared. “What did you find in his papers on that subject?”
Gilligan turned sullen. “You know I can't discuss evidence. Give a dame an inch and she wants all hell. I didn't oughta've told you nuttin and I ain't gonna tell no more.”
Miss Genevieve had already induced the detective to reveal far more than Daisy would have dared hope for. “Eugene Cannon” must have been a first-rate crime reporter. Daisy hadn't had to lift a finger to obtain masses of information about Carmody's wife and her lover. She wished she could meet them. One learnt so much by actually talking to a person, but at least she had plenty of food for thought.
Leisure for thought she had not.
“O.K., let's get on with your story, Mrs. Fletcher,” Gilligan growled. “Maybe you'll remember sumpin useful this time around.”
W
hen Daisy reached the point in her story where Lambert irrupted onto the scene of the crime brandishing a pistol, Miss Genevieve glanced at the young man with a new interest. Possibly, her look said, he might be worthy of further acquaintance. His subsequent downing at the hands of Mr. Thorwald brought a snort of disbelief.
“Sigurd Thorwald tackled him? I remember him as a copy-boy, and he was pedantic old fusspot even then. He brought down that great lummox? There's more to the old geezer than I thought, and even less to the young one.”
“I didn't expect him to jump me,” Lambert said sulkily. “Besides, I lost my glasses.”
“
And
your gun,” said Daisy, “which I caught, by a miracle.” She was about to continue when someone knocked at the door.
“Oh dear,” said Miss Cabot, dropping her knitting, “who can that be? Were we expecting visitors this morning, sister?”
“Whatever our expectations, sister, we seem to have collected quite a crowd,” observed Miss Genevieve, as Detective
O'Rourke, who had remained standing in the archway to the foyer, turned to open the door. “The more, the merrier. Who is it?” she called. “Come in, come in!”
“Sorry to disturb you, ma'am. The elevator boy told me Detective Sergeant Gilligan is here.”
“Who … ? Oh, young Rosenblatt! You followed in your father's footsteps, didn't you? I'll never forget the time he brought you into court—eleven or twelve, you were—”
“
Please,
ma'am!”
Miss Genevieve grinned maliciously. “Oho, we mustn't upset your dignity. You're on the Carmody case, I take it, looking out for Tammany's interests.”
“Looking out for a murderer,” Rosenblatt corrected her. “We have to clear this up before the election. It would be almost as bad to have the Press saying we're incompetent as to have Tammany involved. Which they aren't,” he hastened to add.
“Well, then, you'd better get on with it. Don't mind me.”
Rosenblatt nervously smoothed his sleek, fair hair, thinning a little on top. “Good morning, Miss Cabot, Mrs. Fletcher,” he said, with a curt nod for Lambert. “Sergeant? What's going on?”
“I was gonna take another look at Carmody's room, sir, and then escort Mrs. Fletcher downtown personal, her being a foreigner. But Miss Genevieve said …”
“O.K, O.K.!”
“Detective Larssen went to get the mug book, and I was just going over Mrs. Fletcher's story with her, see if she come up with sumpin new.”
“Go ahead.”
Daisy went ahead. The only detail she was able to add
to her previous description of the fugitive was that she rather thought he had been wearing an overcoat.
“Colour?” asked Gilligan.
“Not black,” said Daisy, “and not that new shade of blue that's so fashionable at the moment. I suppose it must have been brown or grey. Or navy, possibly. No, not navy.”
“Not navy! That's a great help,” Rosenblatt said sarcastically.
“So we gotta look out for a man in a derby and a brown or grey overcoat. How many d'ya figure there are in Noo York, Mr. Rosenblatt?”
“It might have been a disguise,” proposed Lambert.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern looked at him in silent disgust.
“Yeah, sure. You come up with any new ideas about where the shot came from, Mrs. Fletcher? It coulda come from behind you?”
“Yes, but not from Mr. Thorwald. He was quite close to me. I'm sure I'd have known if he had fired.”
“Even if his gun had a silencer?”
“Yes,” said Daisy, with somewhat less certainty.
“Thorwald!” Miss Genevieve exclaimed scornfully. “Talk about clutching at straws. That man wouldn't have the guts to … though he
did
tackle Lambert,” she reminded herself. “Still, what possible motive could Thorwald have?”
“He was with me for at least an hour beforehand,” Daisy pointed out. “He had no reason to know Carmody would be there. Carmody worked for Pascoli, not Mr. Thorwald.”
“No interest in politics,” Miss Genevieve confirmed. “Words were always his passion, ‘Words, words, words,' no matter what the matter.”
Gilligan gazed at her blankly. “A word's a word. You mean Thorwald had words with Carmody?”
“No, Sergeant, I mean nothing of the sort.”
“Sergeant Gilligan,” Rosenblatt broke in, “you better check with Pascoli whether Thorwald had anything to do with Carmody or expressed any interest, but I'd say you're barking up the wrong tree. Mr. Lambert's another matter.” He turned to Lambert, who shrank.
“It wasn't me!”
“Maybe it wasn't, but there's this Washington connection we have to follow up. I've put in a telephone call to Washington to check your credentials.”
Lambert looked relieved. “Oh, that's O.K. then.”
“I'm afraid not, not the way things have been in D.C. One of the Harding crowd Carmody blew the whistle on could have hired you to put him away and used his own or his pals' influence to get you taken on as an agent, for cover.”
“I can't help feeling,” Daisy murmured, “that they would have chosen someone with decent eyesight and a better aim.”
“It wasn't like that at all,” Lambert protested. “My dad's in insurance, see, and I didn't want to go into insurance. I always wanted to be a federal agent, ever since I was a kid. My dad knows Mr. Hoover, so he …”
“Pulled strings. Yeah, maybe, but it'll all have to be checked out, which could take a while. I'll have to ask you not to leave New York, Mr. Lambert, and to notify me or Sergeant Gilligan if you move from this hotel.”
“Oh, I don't mind doing that. I can't leave before Mr. Fletcher gets here, anyway.”
“What?” demanded Miss Genevieve. “Why not?”
Daisy hastened to explain before anyone else could get their version in. “I've been involved in one or two—well, maybe three or four—of my husband's cases. Apparently his superiors at the Yard saw fit to advise Mr. Hoover to set a watchdog onto me to make sure I didn't get mixed up in anything over here.”
“In vain!” Miss Genevieve clapped her hands. “My dear Mrs. Fletcher, I just knew we were kindred souls. One of these days, you must tell me all about everything. But right now, I have to say the role of watchdog seems to me far more appropriate for Mr. Lambert than that of hired assassin.”
Everyone stared at Lambert. His ears turned red and he looked like an overgrown schoolboy.
“Yeah, sure,” said Gilligan in disgust. “O.K., let's have what you saw and heard over again. Maybe if you think real hard, you'll remember noticing sumpin Mrs. Fletcher didn't. Or even think of some other guy that coulda a croaked Carmody.”
“Orlando,” interrupted Miss Cabot. “Orlando, sister?”
“Who's this bird Orlando?” asked the sergeant suspiciously. “Sounds like an Eyetie, like that Pascoli. I figured he was in it someplace. You know sumpin we don't, ma'am?”
“Orlando,” Miss Genevieve announced, “is a city in Florida. Which is south of New York, not in the West.”
Gilligan was indignant. “I know where Florida is!”
“I dare say.” Miss Genevieve sounded not altogether convinced. “However, the latter part of my remark was addressed to my sister. She has been trying to recall where Mr. Pitt told us he comes from.”
“The guy that had an argument with Carmody in the
lobby? What he put in the register's Eugene City, Oregon. That's a hick town out west someplace, I guess.”
“Oregon is just south of Washington,” said Rosenblatt.
“That right, sir? Coulda swore it was out west someplace.”
“The state of Washington, not D.C.,” the Deputy D.A. explained impatiently. “Miss Genevieve, may I ask why Wilbur Pitt should have told you where he came from?”
“The subject arose naturally in relation to his literary opus, which I understood to be a more or less fictionalized version of his life in the wilds of the West.”
“He was a cowboy?” asked Gilligan with sudden interest. “That'd explain why he was packing heat.”
Daisy must have looked completely blank, because Lambert leaned over to whisper, “Carrying a gun.”
“Was he?” Miss Genevieve wanted to know.
“Geez, ma'am, how could he of shot Carmody if he wasn't?”
“You have no reason to suppose he did shoot Carmody. As it happens he had been a farmer, logger, and miner, leading, as far as I could gather, a life of considerable hardship and singular dullness.”
“Rats! What did he have to write a book about, then?”
“Not much. He described it as Proustian.”
“Huh?”
“Since he can hardly have meant that it concerns the doings of Parisian high society, I imagine he referred to Proust's custom of describing objects and sensations in obsessively minute detail.”
Daisy was impressed. She had once tackled Proust but given up after a very few pages.
“Geez, an intellectooal!” said Gilligan dismissively.
“So you don't believe Carmody's cousin was involved, Sergeant? I'm inclined to …”
“Wait a minute,” Rosenblatt interrupted. “He told you he was Carmody's cousin?”
“Not exactly,” Miss Genevieve said cautiously, “but I certainly have the impression they were related.”
“You didn't tell me that, Sergeant! What did Pitt have to say for himself?”
“I ain't grilled him yet, sir.” He cast an accusing glare at Miss Genevieve's bland face. “
I
didn't know they was cousins, so we ain't been looking for him pertickler. He's not the only guy had a beef with Carmody, not by a long shot.”
Daisy couldn't help thinking that if she could work out, from Bridget's report of the quarrel, that the men were related, the detective should have done likewise. It was his job, after all. Maybe he'd been sidetracked by assuming that Willie was William, not Wilbur, she thought charitably, but he ought at least to have been looking for a relative.
“How right you are, Sergeant,” said Miss Genevieve affably. “Wilbur Pitt was by no means the only person to dislike Carmody, and many had far better reason to hate his guts.”
“Oh sister!”
“Don't be so mealy-mouthed, sister, or cover your ears again.”
“Oh dear!”
“If you want my opinion, young man,” Miss Genevieve continued in the serene certainty that Rosenblatt was going to listen, willy-nilly, “this homicide has all the hallmarks of an attempt to warn Carmody off, which went wrong. Which of the Tammany bosses did he have his claws into?”
Daisy listened in admiration as the ex-crime reporter winkled the information she wanted out of the reluctant Deputy District Attorney. All Carmody's notes on his investigations had been found in his room, and Rosenblatt ended up telling Miss Genevieve exactly who was named in those papers. However, all the names were unfamiliar to Daisy, and she soon lost interest in the subsequent discussion of who was most likely to have sent a thug to scare Carmody off.
Sergeant Gilligan wasn't listening either. He had proceeded with his original intent to take Lambert through his story again. Unfortunately, Lambert had been thinking.
“And I think, just before Mr. Thorwald knocked off my glasses, I noticed the man Mrs. Fletcher was running after wasn't wearing an overcoat. He just had a short coat, a suit coat or sport coat, I guess.”
“
I
think he had on an overcoat,” said Daisy. “But you ain't neither of you one hundred percent sure,” Gilligan snarled, throwing down his hopefully poised pencil. “Could this guy maybe have been wearing a short overcoat, like an automobile coat?”
“Maybe,” Daisy and Lambert chorused doubtfully.
“Aw, what the heck! It wouldn't help much anyways 'less you was both dead certain he was running around in scarlet pajamas.”
Daisy had to stifle a giggle at a vision of a man strolling through the streets in scarlet pyjamas and a bowler hat.
“In that case,” said Lambert seriously, “he would have changed before leaving the building, or he would definitely have been noticed.”
“You don't say! Wise guy!”
“Since he wasn't wearing scarlet pyjamas,” Daisy said
soothingly, “we don't need to worry about it. But do you know, now I come to think of it, I'm sure he was wearing boots, not shoes. He made too much noise on the stairs for ordinary shoes.”

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