The Case of the Murdered Muckraker (7 page)

Read The Case of the Murdered Muckraker Online

Authors: Carola Dunn

BOOK: The Case of the Murdered Muckraker
2.43Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
“What did they quarrel about?” Daisy asked.
“That I cannot tell you, alas. Mr. Pitt spoke quite quietly, and they were at some distance from us, in that area between the lobby and the registration desk. Mr. Carmody's voice was not lowered, however. He repeated several times, in different ways, that he could do nothing for him. In the end, Mr. Pitt raised his voice and called him a …”
“Sister!”
“A rude name. Several, in fact. He continued the abuse as Carmody pushed past him, heading for the street.”
“What did Mr. Pitt do then?” Daisy wanted to know.
“The manager came out and—I presume—desired him to moderate his language as there were ladies present, whereupon he departed, I assume by way of the stairs.”
“The stairs? Not the elevators?”
“He turned to the right, and I happened to have noticed young Kevin sneaking out about his nefarious business a few minutes earlier,” said Miss Genevieve dryly.
Daisy laughed. “Pitt went up by the stairs, then. Heavens, look at the time. My husband will be back at his hotel
by now. I must phone him and tell him I shan't be taking the train tomorrow. Excuse me for running off, and thank you so much for the tea.”
Returning to her room, Daisy saw that a uniformed policeman had been stationed at the next door along the passage, the door to Carmody's room. She wondered whether it had been searched already. Perhaps Gilligan was still busy with Thorwald and other possible witnesses at the Flatiron Building, such as the doormen. The sergeant might well want to search the victim's room himself, for fear of turning up evidence incriminating his bosses at Tammany Hall.
While she waited for her telephone call to be put through, Daisy paced her room. She hardly dared think what Alec was going to say, but she simply could not fix her mind on anything else, even the burning question of who had killed Carmody.
It was twenty minutes before the switchboard rang back to say she was connected. Then Alec's voice came through, crackling and scratchy but unmistakably Alec.
“Great Scott, Daisy, tell me it's not true?”
“Darling, I couldn't
help
it!”
His sigh whistled down the wire. “I know, love. You'd better not talk about it. There's no knowing who might be listening in. Just tell me, are you all right? You're not too upset? The police didn't threaten you with what they call the ‘third degree'? If they did, by God I'll have their livers and lights!”
“No, no, darling, they were fairly polite. But this isn't the moment to remind me of American police methods! Surely they wouldn't use violent methods on a respectable married lady who has been utterly cooperative? Besides, my
watchdog was by my side most of the time. I'm going to have your super's liver and lights when we get home!”
A laugh entered Alec's voice. “So you've discovered Crane's meddling, have you?”
“Alec, he didn't tell you he was going to …”
“Great Scott, no, love. The gentleman I'm working with here told me, to reassure me that you wouldn't run amok without me. Little did he know …”
“Don't be beastly, darling. I do miss you. I wish you were here.”
“Oh, I shall be. I'm taking a train to New York tomorrow afternoon. Should be there by teatime. Hoover has exacted a promise from me to protect the New York police from you.”
“Horrid beast! But I'm glad you're coming. I'll meet you at the station. What time?”
The rest of their conversation was taken up with practical details followed by sweet nothings. After she had hung up the earpiece, Daisy sat for several minutes revelling in the glow left by the latter.
Then curiosity, her besetting sin, reasserted itself. She reached out determinedly for the bell to ring for the chambermaid. It was time to find out what Bridget had to tell about the late Otis Carmody.
“
C
ome in, Bridget.” Daisy noted the girl's weary stance. It was a busy time for her, and towards the end of a long workday. “Can you spare me a few minutes?”
“O' course, ma'am. What can I do for you?”.
“Come and sit down. I would like to talk to you.”
“Oh, ma'am, I didn't ought, but faith, I'll be glad to get the weight off of me feet.” With a little sigh, Bridget sank into the easy chair Daisy indicated. She sat bolt upright, though, with her red, chapped hands folded neatly in her lap. “Is it Kevin you wanted to talk about, ma'am?” she asked anxiously. “He hasn't been fresh, has he?”
“Fresh?”
“Saucy, ma‘am. Cheeky. 'Tis how they say it here.”
“Oh yes, he's been ‘fresh,' all right,” Daisy said, laughing, “but in such a friendly way I couldn't possibly take offence. I like Kevin. Actually, I wondered whether you had spoken to the police yet.”
“Only to pass the time of day wi' the bluecoat guarding Mr. Carmody's door. Kevin says there was a detective went to the manager's office and wrote down the name and address
of all the staff and residents. I wish they'd hurry up and get it over with. Sure and I might forget what I heard.”
Daisy knew an opportunity when she saw one. “Would it help to tell me, now?” she suggested. “Then it will be fresh in your mind. Fresh in the English sense.”
Bridget was eager to oblige. She never listened at doors, she was quick to explain, but she had been putting clean towels in Mr. Carmody's bathroom. He knew she was there, but he hadn't told her to leave, and she had not dared to creep out in the middle of the Donnybrook.
“Irish that is, ma'am, that word, not American. A fight, sure enough, though being a lady and gentlemen they used hard words, not shillelaghs.”
The chambermaid had the Irish gift for story-telling. While she talked, Daisy could imagine herself cowering in the bathroom, listening involuntarily to the harsh voices.
First had come the peremptory rap on the outer door. Brisk footsteps crossed the room to answer it.
“What the heck do you want now, Elva?” That was Carmody, bored, irritated.
“We can't talk in the hallway, Otis.” A female voice, high-pitched, with a hint of a whine—Mrs. Carmody. She was a pretty woman, with an air of fragility, Bridget said.
A long-suffering sigh next reached the maid's ears. “O.K., come in then if you insist. Yes, you too, Bender. I don't know what more you think there is to say.”
“Not my idea,” spluttered the unknown Bender. “Leave it to the lawyers.”
“Honey, the lawyers can't help if Otis won't cooperate.” Mrs. Carmody now spoke in tones of sweet patience. “He's not one of your tenants to be evicted. I don't see why you won't give me a divorce, Otis.”
“I'm quite ready to divorce you, sweets.” Carmody's voice conveyed a sardonic grin. “For desertion, or adultery, whichever you choose.”
“You know that'd damn me in the eyes of the best New York society. Why can't you be a gentleman and give me grounds to divorce
you
for adultery?”
“Because I'm too much the gentleman ever to be unfaithful.”
“Oh, don't give me that hooey!”
“Now, now, Elva, don't be vulgar,” chided Carmody. “The best New York society won't stand for vulgarity.”
“Damn you! I'm sick of your sarcasm. I'm sick of never knowing when you're gonna get paid. I'm sick of playing second fiddle to your damn career, running around at all hours digging up dirt that makes important people hate your guts. I'm never coming back to you, so why won't you just go and have a fling with some little chorus girl?”
“So you can set your private dick on my tail, peering through keyholes and jumping out of closets with his Kodak to catch me
in flagrante
?” Carmody was angry now. “Sordid, Elva, sordid! No, I'm not putting myself in the wrong for your sake, so Bender's goddamn blood-sucking lawyers can strip me of what little I possess!”
“Hold it there, buddy!” bleated Bender. “I don't need your two bits to keep the little woman in furs and diamonds.”
“Maybe not, but I'm not taking the risk. And it's no good saying you'll sign a paper. I know what a smart lawyer can do with a piece of paper, and I know all the judges in this burg got elected on the Tammany ticket, and I know you're in cahoots with Tammany. So forget it, buster. You're not
gonna wring a nickel out of me, let alone two bits. Why don't you take her to Reno?”
“It takes six weeks to get a Reno divorce,” snapped Elva Carmody. “Barton can't leave his business that long. You can't expect me to go through an ordeal like that without his support.”
“Afraid you'll lose him?” sneered Carmody. “Out of sight, out of mind.”
“Bastard! Of course not. I trust Barton absolutely.” Her voice changed to a coo. “We're in love, aren't we, honey?”
“Sure thing, honey baby. Come on, let's go. It's like talking to a brick wall.”
The door to the hall had not quite slammed. Bridget heard the scrape of a match, then Carmody had drawled, “It's safe now, girl. You can come out.”
He was seated at his desk, smoking, apparently unruffled, when the chambermaid scuttled past him with her armful of dirty towels. She had not dared to face him since, making sure he was absent when she had to enter his room to perform her duties.
So much for Sergeant Gilligan's theory, Daisy thought. But that did not mean Mrs. Carmody's lover had no motive for shooting her husband, especially if he truly loved her. Surely, though, it would have been much simpler to manage somehow to take her to Reno, wherever that was.
Except that Tammany Hall had once again reared its ugly head. A Reno divorce would not solve that side of the equation.
Or maybe something had been said on the return visit, of which Daisy had heard the end, which made Carmody's death imperative. She wished she had seen more of Barton
Bender than the balding top of his head. Could he have been the man who escaped down the Flatiron Building's stairs?
“Did you see Mr. Bender?” Daisy asked Bridget. “Then or at any other time?”
“No, ma'am. 'Twas when Mr. and Mrs. Carmody first came to the hotel I saw her, before she up and left. I never seen Mr. Bender.”
“Never mind. You can tell the police his name and they'll find him. And however slow they are, I don't think there's much fear of your forgetting what they all said. You had every word down pat, and they won't expect such accuracy.”
“Yes'm. I was listening hard 'cause I was scared, so it stuck in my mind zackly what they said. But the other time I heard Mr. Carmody quarrelling, I only heard a little bit and I don't remember so well.”
“There was another time?” Daisy said hopefully.
“I was going to make up his bed,” explained the chambermaid. “The door hadn't been closed all the way. I stopped to knock, and I heard him talking to someone he called Willie. He said he couldn't help him. Well, this Willie, he gets excited and says he could if he would. He says he has no loyalty to his family and he always was a bully. I remember that. ‘You always was a bully,' he said.”
“That's William speaking?”
“Yes. This Willie called Mr. Carmody a bully. Then Mr. Carmody, he said, ‘And you were always a little tick. A real pest you were, when we were kids, and you still are. Just like a burr under a saddle. I can't do anything for you. Go away, do.'”
“You've remembered that very well,” Daisy commended her.
“Well, when I thinks back on it, it all kinda comes back to me. Anyways, when Mr. Carmody told him to go away I thought as he'd be coming out, this Willie, so I went and did the bed in the next room, not this one, the other side. But he didn't leave right away, ‘cause I heard him shouting, only I couldn't make out the words. Did I oughta tell the police about this Willie, ma'am?”
“Certainly. I suppose you didn't see him, either?”
“No, but I reckon he must be a relative, don't you, ma'am? Talking about family loyalty and all?”
“It certainly sounds like it,” Daisy agreed. “I expect the police will track him down. You'll want to get back to work now, won't you?”
“Yes, ma‘am, and thank you, ma'am. Telling you, I've got it all straight in my head for when the police come.”
Bridget left, and Daisy contemplated what she had learnt.
A relative, she thought, now that was was more in her line. An amateur sleuth hadn't much hope of solving a political assassination. Not that she was an amateur sleuth! It wasn't her fault she kept getting mixed up in murders, whatever Alec said.
When it happened at home, Alec always ended up in charge of the investigation. The Met's Assistant Commissioner for Crime considered him the only person capable of reining in Daisy once she had the bit between her teeth, not that he had much evidence for that comfortable conclusion. In fact, Alec's involvement tended to lead to Daisy's further involvement.
Here in New York, however, he would be a bystander, and when he arrived he'd make sure she played her role as a witness and nothing more.
That was not likely to be much of a role, since she was a witness whom the police did not hold in high regard. Daisy sighed. She would have liked to prove her mettle to them. Perhaps she could at least find out who William was.
If he was a resident of the hotel, Kevin probably knew all about him. So, of course, did the manager, who had already yielded his lists to the police. If he was not a resident, Daisy hadn't the slightest idea where to start looking. Blast! That was a dead end.
What about Mrs. Carmody and her presumed lover? Was there anything she might discover or deduce about them?
Her ruminations were interrupted by the ring of the telephone bell.
It was the hotel doorman. “Mrs. Fletcher, ma‘am, ge'man to see you. A Mr. Thorwald.”
“Please tell him I'll come down at once.”
So poor Mr. Thorwald had escaped from Sergeant Gilligan's clutches. Daisy hoped he had fully recovered from his encounter with the bottle of rye whiskey. As she powdered her nose, she wondered what, if anything, he had told the police. Had he observed something he had not mentioned to her? He couldn't have seen much after he tackled Lambert and lost his pince-nez, besides which the alcohol might well have achieved its intended function of blotting out unpleasant memories.
For a moment, the memory of Carmody's body was unpleasantly clear in Daisy's mind. Dismissing it with a shiver, she patted her curls into place and went to the door.
Out in the passage, a disconsolate Lambert awaited her. “Gee whiz, I was hunting for you for ages,” he said. “Where did you go?”
“When you went off to enquire about a back exit? Really, Mr. Lambert, you may have a duty to follow me, but I have absolutely no obligation to keep you informed of my movements,” Daisy pointed out a trifle tartly, continuing towards the lifts.
The young agent kept pace, his lips pursed in a sulky near pout. “It's for your safety,” he reminded her. “And now you're a vital witness to homicide, anything could happen.”
“How reassuring! The police don't seem to think I'm a vital witness. I couldn't give them a good description of the man who ran away.”
“No, but
he
doesn't know that.” Lambert pressed the button to call an elevator. “And you said you would recognize him if you saw him again.”
“I think so.” Again Daisy wondered whether “this Willie,” Carmody's presumed relative, was a hotel guest. If she had seen him about, it would explain why she had thought the fugitive vaguely familiar—if he was the fugitive.
If, if, if. The “if” phase of a murder investigation was always a lengthy and frustrating one, in Daisy's experience.
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs, and blaming it on you …
Kipling, “If.” One of those tags and snippets from her schooldays which tended to flit through her mind, called up by frequently inapposite associations. Perhaps not totally inapposite this time: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
blamed her for losing her head and not getting a precise and detailed description of the murderer for them; and they were in danger of losing
their
heads over the possible Tammany connection.
The lift arrived. Had Kevin come with it, Daisy might—in spite of Lambert's presence—have asked the boy what he knew of William. But Kevin's shift was over. The attendant was a stout, lugubrious man who wheezed as if he had personally pushed the elevator all the way from ground level. He didn't so much as glance at Daisy and Lambert as he asked them which floor they wanted.

Other books

Bouquet for Iris by Diane T. Ashley
Once by McNeillie, Andrew
At Your Pleasure by Meredith Duran
Holt's Holding by dagmara, a
Vicious by Schwab, V. E.
Night & Demons by David Drake
Maniac Magee by Spinelli, Jerry