The Case of the Murdered Muckraker (9 page)

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Authors: Carola Dunn

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After breakfast, Lambert expressed his willingness to escort her to visit any of the sights of New York she wished to see.
“No, thanks,” said Daisy. His face fell. “It's all right, you don't have to tail me,” she reassured him. “I expect you're tired of lurking round corners and behind trees.”
“I have to go wherever you go,” he said stubbornly.
“I'm not going anywhere. Unless Sergeant Gilligan has absolutely written me off as a useful witness, he's bound to get around sometime to wanting me to look at his ‘mug book,' don't you think? I'd better stay where he can find me.”
“I guess so. But you shouldn't see him alone.”
“Why on earth not?”
“Gee whiz!” Lambert ran his finger round inside his collar. “Uh, well, after all, you were there when Carmody was
killed, and you admitted to having held my gun, so your fingerprints would have been on it—not that they checked and I've polished it since, of course, but they might wonder if you just made the admission to explain the fingerprints, and if I'm protecting you by saying it's mine and I had it when Carmody was killed, not forgetting that all they know about you is what I've told them, though it hasn't been fired of course, so even if it's the same caliber bullet, but who knows if the New York cops can figure out what kind of gun it's been fired from …”
Daisy rescued him from his entangled clauses. “In short, you think they regard me as a suspect?”
“They might.”
“But I didn't do it,” she reminded him, “and I haven't done anything else nefarious which I need to conceal, unless you count taking a sip of Mr. Thorwald's revolting rye whiskey. So I have nothing to worry about.”
“Maybe you wouldn't in England, but these are American cops, remember. With the election coming up, the D.A. needs to solve the case quick, and without involving Tammany.”
“With the election coming up, the D.A. would be an absolute ass to try any funny business on the wife of a Scotland Yard detective in America on official business. Not to mention a writer whose publisher also puts out an opposition news weekly. I can imagine what our papers at home would make of that. I don't suppose yours would exactly ignore it.”
“Gee whiz, I hadn't thought of it like that. I guess you're right.”
“So I shall cooperate with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern …”
“Who?”
“Blast, I knew I was going to come out with that sooner or later! Oh well, better to you than to them.”
“To who?” Lambert asked blankly.
“Whom. Hamlet,” Daisy explained, further bewildering him. “Oh, never mind! I'll cooperate fully with the police and the district attorney when they get around to asking for my help. In the meantime, I'm going to see the Misses Cabot. I'll be perfectly safe with them, so there's absolutely no need for you to try to barge in.”
Lambert shuddered. “You won't catch me trying,” he affirmed.
D
uring Daisy's stay, she had never seen the Misses Cabot early in the morning. She had assumed they were among the late risers. However, Kevin, that inexhaustible fount of information, told her they retired early and rose early, but breakfasted in their apartment suite. When she knocked on their door, Miss Genevieve's strong voice bade her enter.
“Good morning, I hope I'm not disturbing you.”
“Good morning,” Miss Cabot greeted her, “not at all, Mrs. Fletcher, always happy …”
Miss Genevieve dispensed with such superfluities. Dropping the newspaper she was reading on top of a pile of others on the table, she said, “Ah, Mrs. Fletcher, perhaps you can tell me what's going on? I quite expected to have received a visit from the police by now.”
“I haven't seen any about this morning,” said Daisy, “except the man posted outside Carmody's room. I know they interviewed some of the staff last night. I gather they rather upset the chambermaid who attended Carmody.”
“Oh dear, poor girl! Won't you sit down, Mrs. Fletcher?”
“I suppose they will question all the staff first,” said Miss Genevieve, discontented. “If they can bully sufficient information out of them, they won't have to tackle the residents, who are better able to take care of themselves.”
“They're bound to want to speak to you,” Daisy soothed her. “Someone is sure to tell them you are acquainted with most, if not all, of the hotel's guests.”
“Tactfully put! You mean I'm a nosy old woman who makes a point of delving into everyone's business.”
“That's what a gossip columnist is supposed to do. I'll mention it to them, if you like. I've been wondering what you know about Wilbur Pitt. You told me you saw him quarrelling with Carmody, and that he had written a novel. I'm inclined to believe he might have been Otis Carmody's cousin.”
“Ha! Very likely. Their tiff had more the appearance of a family squabble than a fight between acquaintances. Mr. Pitt told me he comes from somewhere out west. Do you recall where he mentioned, sister?”
“Ohio, I think, sister,” said Miss Cabot, her forehead wrinkling in a doubtful frown. “Or was it Omaha? Or Oregon? I'm sure it began with an
O
. Oh dear, or was it Idaho? That ends with an
O,
you know.”
“Somewhere in the West,” Miss Genevieve said impatiently. “Pitt was the son of a farmer. He'd worked on the farm …”
“Colorado!” cried Miss Cabot. “Or was it?”
“ … and also as a logger and miner. He has written a novel based on his experiences, and he brought the manuscript to New York to find a publisher.”
“San Francisco?”
“He'll be lucky to get an editor even to look at it,” Miss
Genevieve continued. “A person of small education, as one might expect from his background. He need only open his mouth to be rejected.”
“Poor chap.” Daisy sympathized. She wanted to write a novel some day, but it was a dauntingly mammoth undertaking. “I dare say he was trying to persuade his cousin to recommend him to an editor.”
“I suppose,” said Miss Cabot, “it could have been Oklahoma?”
“That's it!” cried Miss Genevieve.
“I knew I should remember in the end, sister.”
“Oh, no, not Oklahoma, sister. Mrs. Fletcher's surmise as to Pitt's business with Carmody.”
“New Mexico?” Miss Cabot proposed sadly and unhopefully.
“But Carmody wouldn't have been acquainted with the right kind of editor,” Daisy went on, “only Pitt didn't believe him and thought he was just being obnoxious when he refused to help. It hardly seems an adequate motive for murder, does it?”
“There's plenty of passion goes into the writing of a novel,” Miss Genevieve observed. “Still, in my opinion, Carmody's demise is far more likely to have something to do with his wife. A pretty enough creature, of the fluttery butterfly sort which seems to appeal to many men and generally causes trouble of some kind.”
“Oh dear!”
“You mentioned that she had left him,” Daisy prompted.
“Yes, since they arrived in New York. She went off with another man.”
“Oh dear!”
“The grass was greener, if you ask me. I did not speak
to him, but he looked like a prosperous business-man of the more vulgar variety. Freelance writing is an uncertain profession, as you are aware, my dear Mrs. Fletcher, and rarely as remunerative as one might wish.”
“Alas,” said Miss Cabot for a change.
“If money was Mrs. Carmody's reason for leaving her husband,” said Daisy, “what do you suppose was Mr. Bender's reason for taking up with her? Did he genuinely fall in love with her?”
“I should call it infatuation, rather,” Miss Genevieve said tartly, “though, to be fair, I may be mistaken. I have not, after all, spoken to him.”
“Genevieve is
never
mistaken as to character once she has spoken to a person,” put in Miss Cabot.
“However, infatuation may be as powerful a motive force as true love.”
“Then if Bender wanted to marry Mrs. Carmody,” Daisy suggested, “and her husband stood in the way …”
“I dare say he might hire someone to put him out of the way. I doubt he would perform the dreadful deed himself.”
Daisy remembered the horrified face of the man who had run off down the Flatiron stairs. She simply could not believe that a hired assassin would be so distraught at the result of carrying out his assignment. “Would Bender be so inefficient as to hire a man who couldn't shoot straight?” she wondered. “The bullet didn't kill Carmody, just wounded him in the leg.”
“True,” Miss Genevieve mused. “The papers say it was the fall that killed him, and the gunman could not have guaranteed that he would fall down the elevator shaft rather than backwards onto the floor.”
“He might not have fallen at all. He was holding onto
the gate when he was shot. If he had just kept his hold he would have been all right.”
“Oh dear!”
“Maybe the shot wasn't intended to kill,” Daisy speculated. “Couldn't it have been intended just to frighten him? As a threat of what might happen if he didn't cooperate in obtaining a divorce?”
Miss Genevieve frowned. “Possibly. Otis Carmody did not strike me as a man easily frightened.”
“On the contrary, but Bender might not have realized that. Not everyone has your gift for understanding character, Miss Genevieve.”
“No gift, but an interest in people coupled with long experience of every variety of human being, down to the lowest dregs of society.”
“Oh dear!”
“The life would
not
have suited you, sister. To resume, Mrs. Carmody, however self-centred, must certainly have known her husband was not to be cowed. His work positively invited threats of retaliation. People are understandably averse to having their dirty linen washed in the headlines, and he offended powerful men.”
“In some ways, he was an admirable man, wasn't he?” Daisy acknowledged. “Without courageous reporters like him dragging corruption into the daylight, it would self-perpetuate forever.”
“A necessary breed, as I said, which doesn't make Carmody any more likable.”
Daisy sighed. “No, but it does make me think I'm on altogether the wrong track. Rather than a personal motive, it seems far more likely that one of the people he was investigating here in New York meant to warn him off, and
it went wrong. He wasn't supposed to be killed at all.”
“Tammany won't be happy,” said Miss Genevieve with glee. “Didn't I say they were mixed up in it? A homicide is much harder to sweep under the carpet than mere assault. But no doubt the police will manage it, unless someone keeps on their tail. I'm going downstairs.” Both hands on the table, she levered herself to her feet and reached for her cane.
“Oh, sister,” wailed Miss Cabot, “
you
can't fight City Hall singlehanded!”
“Maybe not, but City Hall and Tammany Hall are not quite synonymous, and there's an election coming up. What's more, I haven't completely lost touch with everyone I used to know. Come along, Ernestine.”
“Oh dear, oh dear!”
“Miss Genevieve, you needn't worry about Tammany Hall having things all their own way,” Daisy intervened. “Remember, I told you the Justice Department is sending an agent.”
“My dear Mrs. Fletcher, you can only have learned that from the police. A few of them are cunning enough to talk as if it were a done deed in order to mislead anyone who might think of calling in the feds. I shall not take it as fact until I see the agent with my own eyes.”
“Detective Chief Inspector Fletcher, sister,” murmured Miss Cabot, “of
Scotland Yard
!”
“Of course, how clever of you, sister.”
Miss Cabot blushed, beaming. “I just wondered, sister, whether perhaps …”
“Mr. Fletcher must have told Mrs. Fletcher an agent was being sent from Washington.”
“Dare we hope, Mrs. Fletcher,” said Miss Cabot hopefully,
“that Mr. Fletcher will rush to your side? I should so like to meet a Scotland Yard detective.”
“Yes, as a matter of fact, he's taking a train this afternoon. I'll be happy to introduce him to you.”
“Oh, sister!”
“We shall naturally be delighted to receive Mr. Fletcher,” said Miss Genevieve, “but at this moment, I'm going down to the lobby to be sure of catching the New York detectives.”
“I'll come with you,” said Daisy.
Lambert was seated in the lobby. Anyone but Daisy would have assumed he was reading the
New York Times,
but she knew he was just hiding behind it to keep an anxious eye on the exit in case she tried to evade him. He visibly relaxed when she appeared.
As Miss Genevieve stumped past him on her way to her favourite seat, she observed loudly, “Has that young man no business to attend to?”
Blushing, the federal agent shrank behind his newspaper.
Miss Cabot had brought her knitting, one of a pair of mittens, and while they awaited events she explained to Daisy how she created the snowflake pattern. Daisy hoped she looked as if she were listening. Actually, she was recalling the reasons Lambert had given why the police might suspect her of shooting Carmody. Now that her second meeting with Sergeant Gilligan was surely imminent, her nerves were twitching. She was quite glad to have the redoubtable Miss Genevieve at her side.
They did not have long to wait. Gilligan arrived, followed through the swinging doors by his retinue, Detective O'Rourke and the large plainclothesman, whose name Daisy thought was Larssen.
Gilligan marched straight towards the reception desk, but O'Rourke scanned the lobby, saw Daisy, and tapped the sergeant on the shoulder. “There's the dame we want, Sergeant,” Daisy heard him say.
“The
lady
, O'Rourke, the lady!” Gilligan snapped. “Let's remember the lady's husband is one of the higher-ups ‘over there.'” He advanced on Daisy with a would-be ingratiating smile. Someone must have given him an exaggerated idea of Alec's importance. “Good morning, ma'am.”
Before Daisy could respond, Miss Genevieve put her oar in: “So you made sergeant at last, Gilligan!”
Gilligan swung towards her, his expression changing to one of dismay amounting almost to alarm. “Miss Cabot? Rats!” he muttered.
“Miss Genevieve, if you please. My sister is Miss Cabot.” She waved regally.
“Delighted, I'm sure,” twittered Miss Cabot.
“Don't tell me they've put
you
in charge of the investigation into Otis Carmody's death?”
The sergeant bridled but sounded resigned. “Yes, ma'am. At least, the D.A.'s Office is on the case, too.”
“And the Justice Department, I hear.”
“That isn't in the papers!” Gilligan scowled at Daisy.
“Not yet,” said Miss Genevieve pointedly, “but I'm still in the business, you know. I keep my ear to the ground. I hear things.”
“Rats!”
Miss Genevieve's smile made Daisy think of a Cheshire cat with stolen cream on its whiskers. “I'm not on the crime beat any longer, to be sure. I have no
obligation
to turn over what I find out to an editor.”
“I guess not, ma'am.”
“At present I'm inclined to keep my knowledge to myself, for the sake of my young friend, Mrs. Fletcher. Of course, I may change my mind.”
Daisy did not rate Gilligan high on the evolutionary ladder, but a hint so broad was not beyond his comprehension.

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