The Woman in Black, page 9
It was a fitting place, no doubt. I hoped the detectives were making a beeline for it. I went on severely, conscious of an unseen audience.
“Get it and give it to Captain Lamb if he’s there. And let me speak to him. He is there, isn’t he?”
“Yes, ma’am. Jus’ havin’ a cup of coffee. He been here mos’ all night. The Sergeant, he here too.”
“I want to speak to Captain Lamb,” I said.
I recognized the burly voice of the Chief of Homicide of the District Police.
“Hello, Mrs. Latham. Where the hell are you?”
“Don’t be absurd,” I said. “I’m at the Theodore Hallets on Massachusetts Avenue. You can come out here, or if you’ll wait till I get dressed and get a cup of coffee I’ll come in there. Just don’t let anybody haul my luxurious car away—it’ll fall to pieces.”
I take it he’d read the papers too. I heard a sound that could have been noncommittal mirth.
“I’ll be out, Mrs. Latham. I’ve been worried to death about you, lady.”
11
I put the phone down. Dorothy had come to the door and was standing there, looking at me in a sort of blank bewilderment.
“I’m sorry, darling,” I said. “But after all, there’s no use my being a fool about this, is there? This is one time I’m on the side of law and order.”
She nodded. “We both are. We should have called them last night.” She went over to the breakfast tray her maid had brought with the papers and that she’d pushed to the foot of the bed when she came in my room. “Have a cup of coffee. Some more’s coming up. I’ll take a shower and get ready first. I only hope to God Theodore doesn’t wake up till they’ve come and gone.”
While I drank the coffee I read the paper again, more slowly and with a less egocentric emphasis. There were several points, I thought, that were more important to myself as a socialite—which seems to be a term applied to anybody mixed up with murder who isn’t actively on relief, and was all of a piece with my fashionable evening gown, now five years old but undoubtedly on the floor, though I’d thrown it across the foot of the bed before I dashed off to 801 I Street with Dorothy. The girl’s name was Betty Livingstone, not Bertha Taylor. There was no mention in the paper of the gray wig and the black dress and scarf. And the landlady had only seen one woman go into the house.
“Look, Dorothy,” I said. She was coming out of the bathroom, putting on her slip. “Why don’t you stay out of this? There’s no use in both of us being plastered all over the front page. Mamie Kelly only saw one of us.”
She shook her head. “It’s all right to be quixotic, dear, but there’s no point in carrying it too far. Anyway . . .” She looked up at me with grave steady eyes. “I thought we’d agreed which side we were on in all this. I don’t want to appear noble, darling . . . but I believe in the pragmatic test. I never tell a lie unless I’m sure I can get away with it.”
She went over to the closet and got out a dress.
“I wish you’d hurry. I’ll go down and be there when they come.”
I finished my coffee and toast and went into my own room. I was just coming out of the shower when Dorothy appeared in the doorway again, dressed and ready to go downstairs.
“What did I do with that note I had last night, Grace? I didn’t give it to you, did I? The one I had from Bertha Taylor.”
I shook my head. “It was in your raincoat pocket.”
“That’s what I thought, but it isn’t there now.” She looked at me thoughtfully. “I hope I haven’t lost it—I’d like it for evidence.” She hesitated. “You don’t suppose Theodore took it, by any chance?”
“For Heaven’s sake, what for?” I said. “It wouldn’t be much use in a collection of State Papers. You must have dropped it when we got out of the car.”
She shrugged. “I just thought I’d show it to Captain Lamb.”
She smiled faintly.
“This keeps Theodore from having to call in the F. B. I., anyway. But as Mr. Stubblefield says, one gets used to having kindness repaid in counterfeit coin. Come on down when you’re ready. Or wait until they get here, why don’t you? We might as well be casual about this.”
I finished dressing quickly, assuming of course that if I’d been the object of an all-night hunt around the bus terminal Captain Lamb would be over as fast as possible. The room I was in was on the side of the house overlooking the terraced bank sloping down to the road into the Park, not the balcony side. It had a bowed window arrangement, so I could see the entrance end of the drive in from the street. I went over and looked out. There was no sign of a police car as yet. I glanced the other way. The attractively redecorated stables were at the end of the flagged path, and as I looked out I saw the door open and Bill Kent come out, on his way downtown to his office. At least I assumed so, as it was twelve minutes past eight and he had a brief case in his hand.
I watched him go along the path to the street without looking back, and the reason I noticed that was, I’d seen Susan looking out of the window at him, probably waiting to wave him good-by. I glanced back at her window. She was holding the curtain a little to one side, still standing there. I heard a bus go by, and saw it as I looked the other way. When I looked back she was gone from the window. That wasn’t surprising, but before I looked away the door opened again, and Susan whipped out, hat on, gloves and bag in her hand, coming along with every outward sign of somebody in a terrific hurry to get where she was going.
As she ran out the driveway gate and across the street, a cab swerved over and braked to a stop at the curb. Susan opened the door and got in and the cab zoomed off again down Massachusetts Avenue. Which again wasn’t surprising, although the ordinary domestic procedure of a husband and wife going downtown at the same time would be for them to go together in either bus or taxi and not separately in one of each. But what happened next was surprising, or perhaps startling is a better term.
Bill Kent came suddenly into view again on the sidewalk in front of the open gateway. Whether he had missed his bus, or come back for something he’d forgotten, I had no idea. But he’d definitely seen Susan. He stood on the street watching her taxi disappear for quite a long time, so long in fact that it was more than evident he was flabbergasted by the performance. Then he tossed his cigarette abruptly out into the road and came deliberately back along the flagstone path, his head bent forward so that I couldn’t see his face. He stopped and fished around in his pocket for his key, put it in the lock, opened the door and closed it behind him. I had the impression of a bewildered and perturbed young man.
“Oh, dear!” I thought.
I didn’t have a chance to think more. Captain Lamb’s car was coming up the drive. I left the window, borrowed a handkerchief on my way through Dorothy’s room and went on downstairs, with enough on my mind to make Susan and Bill Kent’s problems unimportant for the moment. And at that point I didn’t know I had to face Sergeant Phineas T. Buck as well as Captain Lamb. Nor did I know that Theodore Hallet was so determined to spearhead Mr. Enoch B. Stubblefield’s political aspirations that he was ready to louse up everything to that end. I should use his own more polite phrase, perhaps, which was that no stone must be left unturned to bring the dastard to justice. Dorothy and I had a tacit if unspoken agreement not to mention the gun. Theodore mentioned it the minute he came into the room. But at that time I hadn’t realized how genuinely Theodore thought he’d make a first-rate ambassador to one of the less Communist-tainted of the important countries of the world, and how much Mr. Stubblefield’s campaign meant to him.
Sergeant Buck was coming up the marble stairs from the first floor as I came down them from the third. It took me an appreciable second to recognize him, because he had his hat off, which I don’t ever remember having happened before. Anyway, I’d never viewed him from the present angle. He’d done a bang-up spit-and-polish job on himself. Every mud-colored hair was aligned beside its fellow, glossed and glued down over his bald spot with military precision or as flat as a Third Avenue saloonkeeper’s. He was beside Captain Lamb, not two steps behind him as he always was with Colonel Primrose. That in itself should have told me something, but it didn’t, and I went on down, feeling a little sorry for him, as one would for any fish out of water.
Captain Lamb went into the library. Sergeant Buck, seeing me, stopped at the door. For a moment he did look slightly bereft, a stone mason’s concept of a gigantic shadow whose substance had stayed at home. I expected him to turn the color of tarnished brass that he always does when he has to speak to me, and half expected him to say it was up to me to clarify my skirts. But he did neither. The lantern-jawed face congealed, as did the viscid-gray eyes, like a fish not out of water but out of a week in the deep freeze.
He said, “The Colonel ain’t going to think much of these shenanigans, ma’am. With him sick.”
It might have been a long time ago, with me and my brothers yelling out in what is now my own back garden and my father coming out. “—Can’t you children play quietly? Don’t you know your mother has a headache?” Except that my father didn’t speak out of the corner of his mouth, nor did his voice sound like a concrete mixer in need of attention.
“I’m sorry,” I said. It was I who was the color of tarnished brass, the fish out of familiar waters.
He moved aside so I could go in the library, and came in too and closed the door. If I’d had any idea he was impressed by Captain Lamb, or overwhelmed by the grandeur of the Hallet mansion, I’d already jettisoned it. He was there in loco Primrosiensis. He and Lamb were co-equal and no nonsense.
“I don’t think the Colonel’s going to like this very much, Mrs. Latham,” Captain Lamb said soberly. “You ought not to have done it, whatever it was you did. You’re going to find yourself in real trouble, one of these days.”
“It’s entirely my fault, not Mrs. Latham’s, Captain Lamb,” Dorothy said. She looked cool and lovely and completely self-possessed. I don’t know how I looked, but I felt as if I’d got my face and hands dirty playing mud pies instead of going properly on to Sunday School. “If you gentlemen will sit down, I’m the one to do the explaining. Mrs. Latham went with me.”
I don’t remember ever having seen Sergeant Buck sitting down before. Always, he’d stood iron guard outside the door.
“This Betty Livingstone came here yesterday to a party. She called herself Bertha Taylor, Mrs. Lawrence Taylor. I’d never seen her until then, nor heard of her before. She didn’t stay long, and when she left the maid found a note she’d left in the powder room, addressed to me. It asked me to come and see her—it was urgent. And she was leaving early this morning. She had something to tell me. It did sound urgent, but I was afraid to go alone. I asked Mrs. Latham to go with me, which she did very reluctantly.”
She paused as if expecting Captain Lamb to ask several obvious questions, I suppose, but he waited silently.
“She’d given me the address of the boarding house and her room number, and it was I who opened the door when there was no answer when I knocked. I thought I’d gotten the wrong room, she looked so different, and I was too embarrassed to think of anything else until I got away a little. Then I realized that whoever it was, something was horribly wrong. That’s why we went back and looked in again. We were going to call the police then—we hurried out to do it, but the drugstores were all closed. When we got back to Mrs. Latham’s we called Sergeant Buck. He said he’d call you.”
“He did call me,” Captain Lamb said deliberately. “He didn’t get me, because I was there already, or on my way there. This Kelly dame started to yell her head off and there was a patrol car just down the street. They got here fast. It was them contacted Headquarters, not Mrs. Kelly. She just thought she did. She was too pie-eyed to call anybody.”
“She wasn’t too pie-eyed to take down my license number,” I said.
There was a brief glint in Captain Lamb’s eye. “I expect she likes to keep tab on who visits who. Might be useful some day.”
He turned back to Dorothy. “I suppose you’ve got that note, Mrs. Hallet.”
“No, I haven’t. I thought I had it, but when I went to get it this morning to show you it wasn’t in my coat pocket. I must have dropped it somewhere.”
“That’s too bad,” Captain Lamb said. I didn’t quite like the way he said it. I’d been wondering, of course, if he was just going to take Dorothy’s story as stated. I couldn’t think of anything she’d mis-stated, but it was wonderful how she’d left out everything of any real importance. And of course the whole thing must be intensely puzzling to Captain Lamb, as stated. “Maybe you can remember more of the details?” he suggested mildly. “Why it was so urgent, for instance?”
Dorothy looked over at me. “I don’t remember any particular details, do you? She said she was leaving early because the climate here wasn’t healthy. I suppose that’s why it seemed urgent—as if she knew she was in danger, of some kind.”
Captain Lamb regarded her gravely for a moment. He turned to me. “Anything to add to that, Mrs. Latham?”
“I read it very hastily,” I said. “There was something about the front door being open till 12:30, and it was after twelve then. That’s why my dress was on the floor. We had to hurry to make it.”
“I see.”
The way he said it, it sounded as if he didn’t see at all.
“I assure you, Captain Lamb, that we don’t know anything about Betty Livingstone,” Dorothy said earnestly. “We’d never heard of her, or of Bertha Taylor, until yesterday. It’s a complete mystery to both of us.”
I hadn’t been looking at Sergeant Buck, but I was aware of him now getting to his feet briskly.
“It’s like we figured, Captain,” he said. “They don’t have no information. This here’s a waste of time.”
I thought Captain Lamb looked a little surprised, but he got up too. Dorothy rose, covering up her relief very well. She started to put out her hand, and actually did have it extended. But it was directly mid-center to Captain Lamb’s broad back, for that was precisely the moment that Theodore Hallet chose to enter, both feet square in the middle of the apple cart.
“You gentlemen represent the police, I understand.” He came in in a mild flurry of nervous self-importance. “I’m delighted you’re here, gentlemen. I hope my wife has told you the whole story. We have nothing to conceal. No stone must be left unturned. We must find the person who brought the gun here. I trust Mr. Stubblefield’s people have given you a perfectly free hand in the matter, because whether the woman is mad or not, we can’t have her annoying us this way. I advised him to turn the matter over to the police as soon as I read this extraordinary note she wrote my wife. I telephoned Mr. Seymour at once about it. I——”
He stopped at last. Why in Heaven’s name he hadn’t stopped long before, I’ve no idea. Of course he couldn’t see Dorothy’s face, at first, to catch the frantic warning she was trying to flash him from behind the iron curtain of the combined backs of Captain Lamb and Sergeant Buck. But he could have felt the atmosphere, at least he could if he hadn’t been so concerned with himself and with his precious Mr. Stubblefield. I could imagine what Dorothy must have been feeling just then, as I can imagine how an architect must feel standing by while somebody picks up the foundations of a house he’s built and gives the whole thing a heave-ho into the open sea. My admiration for her was never greater. She held her peace and stood quietly erect, as tranquil as a summer sky.
Captain Lamb spoke with deceptive calm. “You saw the note, Mr. Hallet?”
“Yes, indeed.”
Theodore looked quickly at Dorothy.
“I’m sure my wife will excuse me for reading her correspondence, but it seemed very important to me to act at once. I didn’t disturb you, because you’d gone to bed, dear.”
“Do you mean you took the note out of my pocket, Theodore?” Dorothy asked quietly.
“No, dear—it fell out. When I hung your coat up. You put it on the chair. It was wet and I knew it would get wrinkled.”
“I thought you’d gone to bed.”
“I had, but I felt the list must be somewhere. I felt you couldn’t have been as lax as you pretended. I knew you were tired, and——”
“The note, Mr. Hallet,” Captain Lamb said. “Where is it now?”
“On my wife’s desk. Would you like me to get it?” “If you will, please.”
Captain Lamb watched Theodore hurry out. He turned back to Dorothy.
“Let’s begin again, now, Mrs. Hallet,” he said patiently. “The woman annoying Mr. Stubblefield? Are we talking about Enoch B. Stubblefield?”
He went on without waiting for an answer, apparently feeling the hardening resistance inside her.
“It’s your duty to tell us all you know, Mrs. Hallet.”
“It’s not my duty to go beyond that, Captain Lamb,” Dorothy said coolly. “It’s not my duty to make inferences. I told you the woman was here yesterday. I didn’t see her annoying Mr. Stubblefield, or anybody. She went up those steps and into that room, and left the same way after a very few moments. If Mr. Stubblefield was annoyed, that’s his affair, and you can take it up with him. The incident of the gun is neither here nor there. It has nothing to do with Betty Livingstone whatsoever. My husband is making inferences that seem to me entirely unjustified.”
Theodore was back, so concerned with himself that he wasn’t listening. He had his glasses on and was reading the note again.
“I’m afraid any fingerprints——”
“You can let me take care of that, Mr. Hallet.—Is this the note?”
Dorothy looked at it and nodded. Captain Lamb folded it, put it in his pocket without reading it, and turned to me.
“I’d like you to come with me, Mrs. Latham,” he said soberly. “Will you get your hat, or whatever you have to take home? I’m going to need you for a little while.”
I looked at Dorothy. I still didn’t look at Sergeant Buck. Dorothy made a move forward, but Captain Lamb stopped her. “If you don’t mind staying here, Mrs. Hallet. I’d like a few more words with you.”
