Postmark Murder Page 8

  “Matt,” Laura cried, “he can’t suspect me! That handkerchief wasn’t mine. It must have belonged to Maria Brown. But he looked, he searched my apartment. He was—he was looking for evidence!”

  “Take it easy. That’s only his job. It’s a preliminary investigation. The handkerchief only proves that someone was in Stanislowski’s room and apparently tried to help him. Obviously it was the Brown woman.” Matt picked up the telephone. “I’d better telephone to Doris and Charlie and tell them about it before Peabody turns up to question them. Doris isn’t going to like it because I haven’t told her about it before now! Or Charlie either for that matter.”

  She listened as he talked, first to Charlie and then to Doris. Charlie asked incredulous and stunned questions. Doris was incredulous, too; she wouldn’t be convinced. Matt kept repeating, “… but it happened, Doris. … No, that’s all Laura knows about it. She didn’t telephone to tell you about him, she didn’t phone to any of us because he begged her not to. …She doesn’t know why but he told her it was very important and he said he’d come forward in a few days with all his credentials. … No, he only wanted to see Jonny. He didn’t speak to her, he didn’t do anything, they didn’t talk. … Jonny didn’t say a word. … Yes, it is queer but she might’ve been frightened. Then she began to cry and … well, I know that doesn’t prove anything but that’s what happened. … Then this Brown woman phoned. … I think it is perfectly clear. Laura had to go to the rooming house! She couldn’t have refused to get a doctor and go out there. … Well, she had to take Jonny. She couldn’t leave her alone. … Yes, the police are out there now and a Lieutenant Peabody was here. He’s just gone. He asked for your address and Charlie’s. … Of course, they want to talk to you. … Why? Because they’ve got to question everybody concerned with Stanislowski. … No, I can’t come now, I’m with Laura.” Here there was a long pause while Doris talked. At last Matt said, “All right, all right, I’ll come.”

  He put down the telephone and turned to Laura. “Doris is upset. She wants me to be there when the police see her. I rather think Lieutenant Peabody is on his way there now. I suppose I’d better go.”

  “Of course,” Laura said. But she didn’t want him to go. He took his coat up over his arm and in the doorway paused to give her a searching and somehow dissatisfied look as if he wanted to say something but didn’t know what. Finally he said, “You’d better eat something. Try to sleep. It’s late. I’ll let you know in the morning if there is any news.”

  She nodded and said good night.

  But after he’d gone the small apartment seemed suddenly very big and empty. Yes of course, he’d go to Doris if she wanted him, whenever she wanted him. It had always been that way.

  ELEVEN

  THERE WAS, AS IT happened, only one small evidence of pursuit that night and at the time it did not strike Laura as pursuit. That happened shortly after Matt had left.

  She was in the kitchen trying to make herself drink some hot soup when the telephone rang; she went to answer it. “Hello.” There was silence at the other end of the telephone but it was, somehow, a listening silence. Laura cried, “Hello,” again more clearly.

  There was still silence, yet it seemed to Laura that she could hear the faintest sound of rather rapid breathing at the other end of the phone. Then the telephone clicked in her ear. The dial tone came on.

  After a moment Laura put down the telephone. It was a wrong number. Her own telephone went through a small switchboard which was located in a little niche off the foyer of the apartment house. A girl sat there who took messages; if a tenant’s telephone rang for some time without an answer from the tenant, she cut in and took a message. There could have been some mistake at the apartment switchboard. Laura went back to the kitchen, tried to eat and couldn’t. She made hot chocolate for Jonny and put it in â thermos bottle. Jonny was an early riser and it was her custom to come into Laura’s bedroom very quietly in the morning and help herself to chocolate, while the kitten romped about the room. In order to keep Jonny company during that pleasant morning hour, Laura also prepared hot milk for herself, very slightly flavored with coffee, and put it in another thermos bottle. This Jonny would open, too, and serve to Laura with a gay, housewifely little air. The two of them, with the kitten chasing madly around the room, stalking objects which did not exist as well as Jonny’s bare toes or dangling braids, would sip their hot drinks and then go into the kitchen and have a real breakfast— usually urged on by Suki who had in the morning, or any time, a voracious appetite. That night, as every night, Laura heated milk, poured hot coffee into it, and poured the mixture into another thermos bottle. She set both bottles on the table.

  She cleared up the few dishes, opened the door from the kitchen to a small service hall and put out empty milk bottles. There was at last nothing more to do, nothing to require even a fraction of her thought. She drifted back to the living room.

  The tiny gilded hands of the French clock on the mantel pointed to nearly twelve-thirty. She wondered how Lieutenant Peabody was coming out with his questioning of Doris and of Charlie Stedman. She lighted a cigarette, went to the window and looked down at the now almost deserted boulevard below. The lake and the sky blended into blackness. There were street lamps along the boulevard and occasionally a car swept past, its lights spreading a wide bright fan ahead of it. The night was still foggy and the pavement far below was glittering and wet. She wished that Matt had not gone. But then, she thought again, he would always go when Doris wanted him.

  Thinking of Matt and of Doris, Laura wondered as she had wondered before why they had chosen to wait to marry until Conrad’s estate was settled, as they seemed to be waiting. Doris had been free and a lovely and desirable young widow for three years. Perhaps Matt was determined this time to make sure of Doris’ love. She had jilted him once. But he was in love with Doris all the same. He’d always go when she wanted him.

  And that was just Laura’s bad luck. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t known it either. She had walked into love with Matt with her eyes open—except it happened unexpectedly, too, between one heartbeat and the next.

  Yet there was nothing dramatic, nothing to mark it that one clear, sunny afternoon early in December, when Matt had strolled along the lake with Laura and Jonny. After a while he glanced at his watch with an exclamation of impatience and said he had a client waiting for him. He had got in a taxi to go back to the office. All at once, with the disappearance of that tall figure with its black head, the blue sky seemed less bright, the sunshine less warm. A strange and happy kind of significance about the day seemed to vanish, too.

  Suddenly Laura thought, watching the winter-blue lake, why, I’m in love with Matt!

  Then she thought, and there’s nothing I can do about it.

  Laura scooped up the hair ribbons and began to roll up the bright little bands of red and green and yellow. Almost certainly Jonny was not aware of the tragedy of the afternoon. The child’s gaiety and confidence had been growing during the past weeks, like seedlings stunted by frost but with warmth and care leaping into bloom. Conrad Stanislowski’s death, his murder must not be permitted to touch Jonny.

  It was late. She went back to Jonny’s room and opened the door. There was no sound from inside; the child was asleep. She left the child’s door open and her own, so she would hear if Jonny awakened during the night. As she drew the curtains in her room she glanced out into the fog-veiled night, and wondered where in that great city Maria Brown had gone, what refuge she had taken. Had she gone to some previously prepared hiding place because she had orders to murder Conrad Stanislowski and her escape was made ready? Or had she fled, frightened, leaving the taxi cab somewhere, hunting for another quiet, remote rooming house?

  She went to the kitchen and got the two thermos bottles and put them on her bedside table. She tried to read. Eventually she slept, for it was daylight when a soft paw touching her cheek awoke her. Suki gave a hoarse but enthusiastic yell of greeting. Jonny, in pajamas which w
ere striped in red and white like peppermint candy, was helping herself to the hot chocolate. With a rush the whole ugly and frightening shape of murder returned to Laura.

  But Jonny knew nothing of it. Laura scrutinized her gay, round face, her laughing blue eyes, as she talked in Polish to Suki and Suki replied with cries that sounded like the squawk of a rusty hinge. There was not a shadow in the child’s candid gaze.

  Morning launched itself as usual, except for the newspaper. Laura had expected headlines; there were none. She found on one of the back pages only a very brief account of the murder. Her own name and the Stanley name were omitted. She felt a wave of passionate gratitude for that.

  There were only two or three paragraphs. A man, supposed to be Conrad Stanislowski, had been found murdered in a rooming house on Koska Street. A woman, going by the name of Maria Brown, had left the rooming house; her description was given; the police were searching for her. There was no apparent motive for the murder. The police were investigating. That was all.

  Matt did not telephone. No one telephoned. But about ten-thirty Lieutenant Peabody and two policemen came. Peabody was brief and hurried; would she please repeat her statement concerning Conrad Stanislowski and her discovery of his body. One of the policemen was a stenographer.

  She had told it now so many times that it fell into a familiar pattern. When she finished, Peabody told her that it would be typed up and he would then ask her to sign it. And after he’d gone—quickly as if he had urgent business somewhere else—the second policeman said politely that he was instructed to take Laura’s fingerprints.

  She performed the little operation with a rather unnerving sense of putting herself irrevocably on record, yet it was a reasonable and matter-of-fact request. She didn’t like it, however, when they took Jonny’s fingerprints, too. Peabody had not attempted to question Jonny; he had not even asked to see her. Yet did he plan, somehow, to use Jonny in establishing a case? Jonny took a pleased interest in the proceeding. After the policemen had thanked her politely and gone away, Jonny retired to her own room, where with a box of watercolors Charlie had given her, she experimented at making her own fingerprints and paw prints of Suki’s.

  Shortly after the police had gone Charlie Stedman came.

  Charlie Stedman was perhaps forty or forty-five, much younger than Conrad Stanley, but he had been a long-time friend and indeed had joined with Conrad in some of his manufacturing enterprises. To Laura, Charlie always looked like an ultra-cautious diplomat, or an extremely conservative and discreet banker; he now looked rather like a banker who has discovered an unexpected deficit. He was dressed that morning as usual in a conservative Oxford gray suit and dark tie; he was as usual immaculate, well shaven and very neat. His thick, curly hair was gray; his figure was rather slight but very erect; his cheeks were pink from the cold. His face was imperturbable and calm; only his usually cool but astute gray eyes betrayed a glimmer of excitement. “Laura, my dear! This is a dreadful thing! I want to talk to you about it. How is Jonny?”

  Jonny heard his voice. She came running from her room, her hands still smeared with watercolors. Charlie stooped to kiss her lightly on the cheek. Laura put it to Charlie’s credit that he did not wince when he perceived a long streak of vermilion watercolor left on his otherwise immaculate shirt. He was always friendly with Jonny, in his own cool remote and impersonal way. He had brought her, even that morning, a little present, an engaging toy, a bird with a yellow head and red wings, and he must have, Charlie told Laura, a glass of warm water. When it was brought, as precisely as if he were auditing a bank statement, Charlie took the little bird, held its yellow head in the glass of water for some time, then set the bird on the table. It began to nod up and down, up and down, with an absurd and sober animation. Jonny squealed and watched, her blue eyes intent. Charlie lifted an eyebrow suggestively at Laura and nodded toward Jonny’s room.

  It was plain that he didn’t want Jonny to hear their conversation; even if she understood little of the words she might sense something of their meaning. Laura took the child back to her own room. When she returned, Charlie was sitting in a lounge chair lighting a cigarette.

  “A dreadful thing!” he said again. “It must have been a frightful shock to you. Matt told me all about it and, of course, the police Lieutenant, Peabody, came to talk to me. To question me, as a matter of fact. It’s a very unfortunate thing. I’m sorry you went to the rooming house, Laura.”

  “I had to go, Charlie.”

  “Oh, of course, of course. What about this woman, Maria Brown? Do you think that she murdered him?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, she did run away,” Charlie said thoughtfully. “There’s no getting around that. Laura, have you asked Jonny whether or not this man was her father?”

  “No. Not yet.”

  Charlie looked surprised. “Why not?”

  “I’d rather—wait. You see, Charlie, after her father left she cried so hard that I felt sure that he was her father. Seeing him had troubled and frightened her. I don’t want to upset her again. Not now. Not until it’s a little in the past.”

  “I understand Lieutenant Peabody intends to question her.”

  “He was here this morning. He didn’t question her then.”

  “He will though,” Charlie said. “He’ll have to. This is a most unusual situation, Laura. I don’t know what to say. In fact, I don’t know what to think. But just now the point seems to be, was that man Stanislowski?”

  TWELVE

  “I THINK SO, CHARLIE.” He considered that deliberately for a moment as he considered everything. Then he said, “According to Matt and Lieutenant Peabody, Jonny did not recognize him.”

  “She didn’t speak to him. But I think she may have been—oh, frightened. Surprised. It was all so sudden. You know how Jonny shrinks into herself when she’s confused, or uncertain. But then after he’d gone she began to cry.”

  “Is that your only reason for believing he was Stanislowski?”

  “N-no. That is—” Laura thought for a moment. “I can only say that I believed him.”

  “Matt says that you asked him for his credentials and he put you off. The police say there were no credentials found in his room.”

  “I know. But that doesn’t really prove anything, does it?”

  Charlie sighed, rose with his usual neat deliberation, walked to the windows and looked out. It was an overcast day, threatening rain or snow. He said, “Laura, I don’t like to say this; it was suggested by the police. Understand me, I believe every word you say; I’ve known you a long time. But the police believe that Stanislowski—if he was Stanislowski—lived for some time after he was stabbed—”

  Laura interrupted. “He had to tell Maria Brown my name and my address. Matt thinks and I think that it was after he died that she became frightened and ran away.”

  “Maybe,” Charlie said, “or maybe her telephone call to you was part of a plan. However, what I want to ask you, Laura”—he turned to face her—“did Stanislowski speak to you when you arrived at the rooming house?”

  “No! I told the police that!”

  He waited a moment, scrutinizing her face. Then he said, “The police feel that he might have talked to you.”

  “I told them exactly what happened.” Anger touched her suddenly; she knew that her voice was impatient and sharp.

  Charlie heard that sharpness. “Forgive me, Laura, for questioning you like this. But it is important, I mean the question of this man’s identity. It does seem doubtful whether or not Jonny really recognized him. There might have been some other reason for her tears. Even when we question her we may not get anything like satisfactory or convincing answers. The fact is, the child’s sobbing is no real proof of the man’s identity. He had no papers of any kind. The police say they have searched the room; I’m sure they would have overlooked nothing. And it is important to prove whether or not he was Stanislowski.”

  “But the trust fund goes to Jonny, anyway,” Lau
ra began.

  Charlie interrupted. “We can consider the fund later. The point is now that the police feel that money is the motive and that Stanislowski’s death—well, I’ll put it to you straight, the police believe that Doris, you and I had an interest in his death. We are, in short, their only suspects. So far, at least,” Charlie said, “and until they find this Maria Brown. But the case, such as it is, is built on his claim to be Stanislowski. If there were any way to prove that he wasn’t Stanislowski”—Charlie lifted one eyebrow and sighed rather wistfully—“then I must say we’d all be in a rather more comfortable position. Now, my dear, if you still insist that he was Stanislowski—”

  “I don’t insist. But I—I believed him,” Laura repeated with a sense of her own inadequacy.

  The door buzzer sounded. “I’ll go,” Charlie said.

  It was Lieutenant Peabody again, still hurried, still preoccupied. “Good morning, Stedman. Miss March, I’d like you to go out to Koska Street with me. Only to take a look at the room, see if it is as you left it. I’d like you to come out there now.”

  Charlie said, “Is that necessary, Lieutenant Peabody? It was a very shocking experience for Miss March—”

  “I’m afraid it is necessary. We’ve a car waiting, Miss March.”

  Charlie turned to Laura. “Well, it won’t take long. I’ll go with you.”

  “I don’t want to take Jonny out there again.”

  “No,” Charlie said. “No—well, then, I’ll stay with Jonny.”

  The Lieutenant did not say, “Hurry up,” but he looked it. Laura went to her room and changed quickly into her gray suit. She put on red lipstick with a kind of defiance, as if it were a banner. She put on her small gray hat and the white silk scarf Matt had given her. It folded softly and warmly under her chin; she took up her red handbag.

  They went down in the elevator quietly, Laura and Lieutenant Peabody and a policeman who was with Peabody. No one was in the foyer. The girl at the switchboard did not turn as they passed. A police car was waiting.