Postmark Murder Page 16

  “You said she was—strangled. A man—”

  “Her murderer was not necessarily a man. There was a blow, a very heavy one, at the side of her head. The medical examiner says that she was struck by some heavy weapon and probably knocked unconscious, he believes, before she was killed. Then she was strangled. An easy murder in a way. A woman could have done it.”

  The fog outside and the chill had crept into the room. Suddenly Laura shivered. Lieutenant Peabody saw her involuntary movement. “No, it isn’t very pleasant, is it? The medical examiner says that there were few abrasions on her throat, that apparently she did not struggle; and he believes the murder weapon itself to have been something like, say”—all at once he was watching her very narrowly—“a scarf, a silk scarf such as a man might wear. Or a woman might wear.”

  “I—” Laura began and made herself stop; she would not deny until she had been accused. Peabody went on in a strangely dry, matter-of-fact way, which was, Laura then perceived, too dry, too matter-of-fact, as if it were deliberately chosen to mask an implacable hatred of murder—and murderers, “We found an iron bar, a lever which stood, as a rule, near the door. We have taken it to be examined, but I feel fairly confident that the microscope will show that that is the weapon with which the woman was struck. Yes, Catherine Miller could have been killed by a man or a woman. The actual murder was done by a scarf. But perhaps the murderer knew that the iron bar stood by the door. Did you know that, Miss March?”

  “No!” Laura cried. “No!”

  “I wouldn’t expect you to say that you did. Probably we will never know why Catherine Miller returned to the apartment house; she may have thought that she had left the gas turned on the stove, there are a dozen explanations; Mrs. Grelly says she was very conscientious in all her work. But if she were followed back from the bus stop, if someone followed her into the basement corridor when she unlocked the door, it was, it seems to me, someone whom she had no reason to fear; that, however, is merely supposition. The corridor is very dimly lighted, although there are lights there all night. It seems clear that the murderer saw the iron bar, seized it and struck Catherine Miller. On such a night as last night almost anybody outdoors would be wearing a scarf.” He was speaking almost absently, as if debating and weighing facts. Now he gave a brisk nod. “Yes, it looks to me like what you might call an improvised murder. Done on the spur of the moment. But the murderer must have thought it was an extremely necessary murder. It’s an odd picture, isn’t it, Miss March?”

  It was a terrible picture. Laura said, “Did you find the scarf? Was it still around her neck?”

  Lieutenant Peabody shook his head. “The murderer would not be such a fool as that,” he said dryly, and all at once Laura knew why, when he had summoned her to the basement to look at Catherine Miller, he had first gone into her bedroom; he was looking for a scarf, hidden away but showing tell-tale wrinkles; he was looking for evidence, his trained mind noting a hundred details. He was asking himself whether or not she, Laura March, had gone out of the apartment, down the service elevator, and waited at the service entrance for Catherine Miller’s return.

  She said, “I never saw Catherine Miller before. I could not have known, Lieutenant Peabody, that she was returning from the bus stop.” She seized the strongest argument in her defense. “And besides—I would have known she was not Maria Brown!”

  Lieutenant Peabody rose and went to the window which overlooked Lake Shore Drive. He stood there for a long time, peering down through the fog. Then he came back. “I think you could have seen her, Miss March. There is a street lamp just above the bus stop and from this distance her figure would have been foreshortened, yet it might have looked, yes, it might have looked very much indeed like Maria Brown’s.”

  “You said there were lights in the basement! I’d have seen her. I’d have known she wasn’t Maria Brown—”

  “It’s very hard to say what anybody who has decided upon murder is really conscious of at that last, irrevocable, moment,” he said gravely. “It seems to me that ordinary perception, a normal sense of reality and self-preservation, must fail to exist for a murderer at the exact moment he strikes. Otherwise there would be no murders. Or course, a theory that you went down to meet her, thinking she was Maria Brown, would presuppose that you had made an engagement with her when she came to see you yesterday afternoon—”

  “I didn’t,” Laura said, “I didn’t.”

  “—and that Maria Brown herself failed to turn up. That—or of course mere chance—that is, that you only happened to see a woman you thought to be Maria Brown.”

  “Lieutenant Peabody, are you accusing me of murder?”

  “No. I’m not accusing anyone. But I've got to get evidence. You were here, in this apartment house; so you had opportunity. According to your own story Maria Brown came to see you yesterday afternoon; you could have made an appointment with her for her to return later; you could have told her to come to the service entrance; you could have been watching from the window. It’s nine stories down and it was a foggy night, but still if you saw a woman answering generally to her description, standing there under the street light, yes, you could have thought that was Maria Brown coming to keep her appointment. You could have had a motive; Maria Brown must have some sort of evidence concerning the Stanislowski murder. And you had means —the iron bar—”

  “I want a lawyer. I want to talk to Matt Cosden.”

  “I thought you would ask for him,” the Lieutenant said. “That’s all right with me. I’ll phone to him. I want to talk to Mrs. Stanley, too, and Stedman.” He said, with the disarming air of frankness he could on occasion assume, “I’ll tell you the truth Miss March, I’d like to keep this murder a secret. I’d like to keep it out of the newspapers. I’d like nobody, not even Cosden or Stedman or Mrs. Stanley, to know anything about it.”

  “Why?” Laura said, astonished.

  “For various reasons. However, it’s impossible. There are too many people who know about it. It’s all over the apartment house.” He shrugged. “Poor Catherine Miller,” he said in a somber voice. “Murdered because she happened to wear a brown coat and a black beret. Murdered because she happened to think of some small household chore.” His face again looked grim and angry. He said abruptly, “I hate murder. It’s my job and I hate it, and I—” He checked himself. He had been about to say, “I hate a murderer, too.” He went to the telephone.

  He knew Matt’s office number without even looking in the little black book which he carried in his pocket. “I am at Miss March’s apartment,” he told Matt. “I want you to come over here, Cosden, at once. No, Miss March is all right and so is the child. It’s something else. Get over here fast.” He then phoned to Doris and to Charlie Stedman, saying much the same thing. He went back to the little room where Jonny and Sergeant O’Brien were still playing checkers. Laura heard a low-voiced conversation between the two men. She rose and moved restlessly about the living room, going to the window and peering down at the corner near the bus stop. It was true that, even in the fog, even at that distance, she could have seen the figure of a woman outlined by the street light.

  Someone closer could have seen the color of the woman’s coat.

  Certainly the bus stop was near enough Laura’s apartment house for anybody to put two and two together and think, “That is Maria Brown. She is coming from Laura’s apartment house.” Or—“She is returning to it.”

  The Lieutenant came back into the room. “You say that you believed a man followed you the other day in the park. You say you did not see his face. Do you think that this man could have been Maria Brown dressed as a man?”

  Laura thought back to that shadowy figure.

  Lieutenant Peabody did not really believe that there had been such a man; he had been frankly skeptical about it; yet, clearly, he would not dismiss it without investigation. As she hesitated he said, “I realize that it sounds rather unlikely, a woman dressed as a man, but how about it? Could it have been Maria Br
own?”

  Was he, she thought, testing her, inviting her to throw suspicion upon Maria Brown?

  It was probable that he simply wanted to know the truth. She said, “I don’t think so. I’m not sure.”

  “Think, Miss March. Try to remember details. There are a hundred means by which you identify a person subconsciously, infinitely small details, so when you see a person a block away you recognize him without knowing how you do it. Didn’t you recognize anything about this person you say followed you? Didn’t you have a sort of—impression of say, familiarity, about him?”

  “No, I didn’t, Lieutenant. I told you I couldn’t see him clearly. He never came near us. He never approached us. Yet—he was always there, behind us. He did remind me a little of Conrad Stanislowski, but I think that was something about the way he was dressed. His coat—hat—something foreign about it.”

  She couldn’t tell even now whether Peabody believed her or not. The door buzzer sounded and it was Matt. “Laura—” he cried, and then he saw her. He came to her in great strides and put his hand on her shoulder. “You’re all right!” He turned to Peabody, “Good God, someone in the foyer said a woman had been murdered! The place is crawling with police. What happened?”

  Lieutenant Peabody told him.

  Matt put his arm tight around Laura; he did not move or speak until the Lieutenant had finished the short and terrible recital.

  Then he said, “So you are going to question all of us, aren’t you, Peabody? Naturally. Well, Miss March has an alibi up to eleven, or perhaps a few minutes after. That’s when I left last night.”

  “That gives you an alibi, too,” Lieutenant Peabody said neatly, and added, “Up to that time at least; we don’t know the exact time when the woman was killed.”

  “Sit down, Laura. You’re trembling.” Matt made her sit down in an armchair; he gave her a quick but absent smile. His eyes were cold gray. “That brown coat and black beret—it does look as if the murderer thought she might have been Maria Brown coming to see Laura. But if so, obviously her murderer had never seen Maria Brown herself.”

  “Perhaps. Perhaps not.”

  “Miss March had seen Maria Brown—”

  “We’ve gone all over that,” Lieutenant Peabody said, but he went all over it again, slowly and deliberately. “So there it is, Cosden. You have to look at facts. And one of the facts is that this woman was murdered in this apartment house. Where Miss March lives. She was murdered within hours after Miss March claims that Maria Brown came here to see her.”

  “She came here to inquire about Jonny—”

  “How do you know she didn’t come here to blackmail? How do you know she didn’t threaten Miss March?”

  Laura and Matt spoke at the same time, their voices mingled. “No, no,” Laura cried, and Matt said, “Laura told you the truth!” He paused, and then said more coolly, “Besides, Laura’s not a good blackmail victim. She’s got no money—”

  “She’s got the child, Jonny,” Lieutenant Peabody said obliquely.

  TWENTY-THREE

  MATT GAVE HIM A swift, slatey look. “No, you’re wrong, Lieutenant. It’s a nice theory: ‘I’ll keep quiet, if you see to it I get some of the money from Jonny’s estate.’ But Laura has told you the truth. That’s not what Maria Brown said.”

  Lieutenant Peabody shrugged. “Cosden, you may as well admit the fact that stares us in the face. Up to now there has been a possibility, a rather faint one it seems to me but a possibility, that Stanislowski was, as you suggested, murdered by orders, and his murderer was an instrument of the government he had escaped. That, or his murder was the result of some kind of feud. You suggested that Maria Brown had murdered him, that she may have been the instrument, for instance. But if Maria Brown had been the instrument of a political party, if she had received orders to murder Stanislowski, while it is possible that her later— liquidation had been planned, her murderer would not have killed another woman! Her murderer would have known Maria Brown. There would have been no mistake about it. So that removes that possibility in my mind and I think in yours. We may as well accept that. I think we can check off your suggestion that Stanislowski’s murder was in any sense a political murder. At least, failing any further evidence. You suggest that Maria Brown may have been Stanislowski’s wife, and that that accounts for his murder, and her interest in the child. Do you still believe Maria Brown murdered him?”

  “I think it’s possible. Yes.”

  “Why would she murder Catherine Miller?”

  There was a long pause. No reason, Laura thought: no reason. If Catherine Miller’s murderer had killed her by mistake, believing her to be Maria Brown, then Maria Brown was automatically cleared. Wasn’t she?

  Matt said at last, slowly, “Remember the telephone call Maria Brown made to Miss March? If she intended to involve Miss March in murder, then she is a wily and a subtle woman. Suppose she intended to supply the police with a victim, a scapegoat. Suppose it occurred to her that the best way to remove suspicion from herself would be to supply another murderer. Here was a woman dressed as Maria Brown dressed, a woman here in Miss March’s apartment house, so Miss March would be presumed to have opportunity to murder. Suppose Maria Brown reasoned that you would think exactly as you are thinking.”

  “You’re snatching at straws, Cosden. You’ve forgotten one thing. How could Maria Brown have known anything about the maid? How could Maria Brown have known that Catherine Miller would be wearing a brown coat and a beret? How could she have known that she would leave the apartment house at exactly that time, go out to the bus stop? Return? Your theory would make it necessary indeed that Maria Brown kept a twenty-four-hour watch on this apartment house, and she has not done that. We’d have picked her up,” Lieutenant Peabody said simply. “She’d be afraid to hang around that way. No, it’s a fetching theory you have evolved, and you haven’t had very much time to evolve it either, but it’s not one that you or I can seriously entertain.” The door buzzer sounded again. Peabody said, “Here is Mrs. Stanley. Or Stedman.”

  Matt went to the door. It was both Doris and Charlie Stedman. Charlie said, “You are here already! What is going on? There are police all around. Someone said something about murder!”

  Doris, her face white, clung to Matt’s arm and said nothing.

  “A woman was murdered,” Lieutenant Peabody began.

  There was a long silence after he finished. Then Charlie said, “But—but there’s no proof that this woman’s murder has any connection at all with the Stanislowski murder!”

  “None at all,” Peabody said wearily.

  Doris lighted a cigarette with hands that shook. She was beautifully dressed; her hair looked as if she had stepped that moment from the hairdresser’s, but her face below its make-up was rather drawn and tight. She shot swift glances at Peabody, at Matt, at Charlie, at Laura, and then studied the bracelet on her wrist, turning it over and over again. Doris is frightened, Laura thought, and then thought, but so am I. So are we all.

  “Nevertheless,” Peabody said suddenly, “I don’t like coincidence. I have to ask all of you for an account of what you did last night. Mrs. Stanley, were you at any time last night near this apartment house?”

  Doris lifted her eyes, shot him one glance, said, “No,” and lowered her eyes again.

  “Where were you?”

  “I was at home. I was at home all evening.” She turned her bracelet, examined one of the jewels on it, and added, “Charlie Stedman was with me. He had dinner with me. He didn’t leave until—oh, it must have been midnight. Wasn’t it, Charlie?”

  It seemed to Laura that there was a flicker of surprise in Charlie’s face. He gave Doris an astute, swift look. Then he said dryly, “Well, no, Doris. I left earlier than that.”

  Doris’ lips tightened. “I looked at the clock. It was just on midnight.”

  Charlie shook his head, half smiling. “You’ve got nothing to be afraid of, Doris. Nobody thinks you came over here and laid in wait for the very un
likely appearance of Maria Brown.”’

  “That’s as may be,” Peabody said. “What time exactly did you leave Mrs. Stanley?”

  “I think it was about eleven,” Charlie said.

  Doris turned her bracelet, her lips sulky. “I still think it was midnight, Charlie.”

  “Then you are mistaken,” Charlie said. “When I got down to the entrance and looked around for a taxi, I looked at my watch. I was wondering about how long it would take to get a taxi and whether I should ask the doorman to phone for one. It was eleven and I thought I’d take a chance, and sure enough, I picked one up.”

  “Soon?” Lieutenant Peabody said.

  Charlie gave him a rather disapproving look. “In a moment or two. On the street. I imagine the doorman saw me. You can ask him.”

  “Oh, I will,” Lieutenant Peabody said agreeably. “So you did not come anywhere near this apartment house, Stedman?”

  “I passed it in the taxi, of course. Mrs. Stanley’s apartment is farther north, as you know. I don’t remember noting this place in particular or even looking out from the taxi. I was tired and it was very foggy. I went straight on to my club. You can ask them there when I arrived.”

  “I’ll do that, too,” Lieutenant Peabody said. “The fact is, none of you four people has what I would call a real alibi for the time when this woman was killed.” He glanced at his watch, “I’ll have to get your statements—”

  “Statements!” Doris cried sharply. “Do you mean we—any of us—are suspected of murdering this woman?”

  “Somebody murdered her,” Lieutenant Peabody said. “I can’t overlook the possibility of a connection between this murder and Stanislowski’s murder.”

  Charlie said, “Look here, Lieutenant, I see your point of view. But have you explored this Catherine Miller’s life? Oh, I realize you haven’t had time. But—”