Call After Midnight (18 page)

She left the light turned on though, half ashamed but indulging herself nevertheless. Once she thought of going to Cal’s room, rousing him, telling him that she was afraid—but of what? A gust of wind through the room, some noise, wind and rain certainly, which had awakened her? Some small object which had been blown off some table?

If the door had opened and then closed very quietly, there would have been that momentary, stronger gust of wind through the room! That was logical. It was also illogical; she decided quickly that she was making up fancies to frighten herself.

It was a long time, however, before she fell asleep again and then slept so late that when she went down to breakfast everybody had already eaten.

Peter and Blanche came in as she was finishing her coffee. Peter was wearing a gray business suit and dark tie as a concession to the formal occasion ahead of them. Already a black band, which must have survived some other Vleedam period of mourning, was properly in place on his sleeve. He said, “Good morning, Jenny,” and looked very sober.

Blanche said, “Well, you finally woke up. Surely you don’t take sleeping pills, Jenny.”

Sleeping pills, Jenny thought with an inward shudder. “Never,” she said firmly.

“Oh?” Blanche said. “Well, I don’t see how you can sleep so late. Are you ready to go? The police said the inquest is at eleven.”

“Don’t hurry,” Peter said. “Time enough.”

Jenny did hurry though, back upstairs to find her coat. The wind had died down, the rain dwindled to a drizzle. She glanced out the window and could not see the line where the gray water met the gray sky. She did see Mrs. Brown and Cal walking along the path by the breakwater. Mrs. Brown’s plaid coat made a brilliant patch of color and she seemed to be talking. Probably she was always talking, Jenny thought, and admired Cal for what seemed to be courteously close attention.

She looked for her coat, remembered that it was in the coat closet downstairs, went to the mirror to make sure her hair was smooth and saw an empty little bottle, lying on its side, just below the turquoise blue flounce of the dressing table.

She knew what it was before she picked it up, another little empty bottle which had once held sleeping pills. There was the same label and the same directions: “Mrs. Vleedam, two for sleep.”

She was instantly and perfectly sure that it was that bottle which had seemed to click upon the glass top of the dressing table and rolled—and then dropped to the carpet, half below the dressing-table flounce so she hadn’t seen it the night before.

Had someone then very quietly entered her room? Had someone stood there in the darkness? Had someone put that empty bottle on the table—and in the darkness had not set it down evenly, so it fell over with that tiny click and rolled and dropped?

Blanche had said, not five minutes ago, surely you don’t take sleeping pills. Blanche could have entered her room, put down the empty bottle and left—why? No reason. Anybody in the house could have done it. Why?

She felt sick and frightened more by the unknown than the known. The known was that she was uninjured, unharmed, and threatened nobody in the world. The known was that her death would benefit nobody in the world.

Peter called, “Jenny” from downstairs. She put the empty bottle in her handbag and went down. The door was open and Peter’s big town car stood at the foot of the steps. There was no chance to talk to Cal alone and tell him that another bottle had turned up and when and how. He spoke to her though as they were getting into the car, very low, touching her arm. “Take it easy. It’ll soon be over.”

She must have looked stricken and pale. Nobody looked quite normal. Even Mrs. Brown, whose presence was not necessary but who was obviously going to go anyway, had a mauve cast to her fleshy face.

The inquest, however, was much worse in anticipation than in fact. As it progressed Jenny saw the reason for its routine brevity: there was no question but that Fiora had been murdered, the inquest was merely a required process of law. It was clear, too, that the investigation of the murder was to be left to the police. At first this quiet and businesslike procedure was rather comforting; presently Jenny began to feel a little too strongly for comfort that the police had already arrived at a working hypothesis as to their investigation.

Almost before she realized it the inquest was over; the fact of murder had been formally established and a verdict given, which was murder by a person or persons unknown.

There was then a stir in the room. Jenny got numbly out of her golden oak chair and for the first time noted that Mrs. Brown was sitting riveted to the edge of her chair, her mouth slightly open, and that Art Furby sat beside Peter as if Peter might need his services as an attorney or merely as a friendly support, that the room was rather small and stuffy and smelled strongly of sweeping compound and that the coroner wore an unabashed toupee of jet black hair.

The young doctor, shaven now and neat, hurried away. Captain Parenti quietly disappeared as if there were no need to stay for the verdict, as indeed there was not. There were a few townspeople but only a few; several came forward, spoke to Peter and shook hands gravely. There were little knots of photographers in the hall and around the car; Jenny thought that they came mainly from nearby towns, perhaps one or two from New York. There were town police and state troopers. It was entirely orderly and quiet and Jenny’s respect for Captain Parenti increased. He had almost certainly taken measures to insure that orderliness. Not unnaturally her fear of the swarthy, tenacious little man increased, too.

Peter drove them home a little too fast; the drizzle had turned into heavy fog. As they turned into the driveway, Blanche said, “Well, that’s over.” Cal, sitting up beside Peter, said, “It’s just begun.”

A police car stood in the driveway. Peter’s careful self-control snapped; he slammed on the brakes so hard they were all jerked forward and Mrs. Brown squealed.

Captain Parenti crawled in a leisurely way out of the police car and came to Peter. He said something which Jenny didn’t hear but its purport was clear for Peter gave an angry kind of grunt and said, “Oh, all right.” He glanced back at the others. “You’d better have lunch; Parenti wants to talk to me.”

Cal touched Jenny’s arm as she got out of the car and drew her away from the little group now on the steps; Jenny went beside him as he strolled in a casual way along the path around the end of the house. She glanced back as the path curved. Peter was preceding Parenti up the steps, across the lower terrace, indignation in every line of his soberly clad figure. Parenti was hunched over, his head sticking out like a slow but determined turtle. Mrs. Brown and Blanche came along behind, Blanche’s head up as she watched Peter and Parenti. Another car came zooming around the curve, a sports car with the top up. “It’s Art,” Cal said. “Looks like that secretary of his with him. It was decent of him to turn up and rally around Peter this morning.”

They had walked out of sight of the driveway and steps when Cal said thoughtfully, “It struck me last night that perhaps Fiora was Art’s lady of the pink silk dressing gown. But I don’t think Art—or Fiora for that matter—could possibly have taken such a risk of Peter’s discovery. And I really don’t see why Art should have shot her.”

“Art?” Jenny cried.    .

“Well, the murderer’s got to be somebody who knows the house. At least it seems like that to me. Certainly somebody who knew Fiora. People rarely take such pains to kill a perfect stranger. The secretary, Dodson, knew her but what would the motive be there? All that sounded perfectly straightforward—except,” Cal said thoughtfully, “Dodson himself. Jenny, the police picked up that empty pill bottle at my house in town and the orange juice. That’s what Mrs. Cunningham phoned to tell me about last night—” His eyes sharpened. “What’s the matter?”

“There’s another one!” Jenny dug it out of her handbag.

He took it. “
Where was this
?”

She told him quickly. “But I’m not sure,” she finished. “I’m not sure of anything. The bottle could have been there all along.”

“Why didn’t you scream? Yell? Knock over the lamp? Knock over a chair? I was right next door. Why didn’t you?”

“I thought of calling you. But nobody was there. And there was a policeman in the house—”

“He could have gone to sleep, probably did.”

Jenny gave a rather shaky laugh. “I’m beginning to feel haunted by those empty bottles!”

“There’s only one thing that makes any sense and even that really doesn’t. It goes back to the night of Fiora’s death. You know, I told you, that it seemed to me as if the stage had been set. Well, perhaps some kind of stage is being set and—the bottles are part of the properties.”

“To murder me?” Jenny whispered after a moment.

Cal put his arm lightly around her shoulders. “That’s what we’ll prevent. But you’ve got to help, Jenny. I don’t mean to scare the life out of you but you’ve got to see that if anything at all happens again, you’re to scream for help. Here comes Parenti. Tell him all about this.”

Parenti was trudging across the lawn from the terrace, his head thrust forward between his hunched shoulders, his eyelids heavy and his lower lip thrust forward too, more than ever like a turtle. He didn’t speak until he reached them and then addressed Cal. “The orange juice was analyzed, Mr. Calendar. Nothing in it. Pure, grade A orange juice. The pills were originally prescribed for the murdered—I mean the second Mrs. Vleedam. We got hold of her doctor this morning; he said that he had given her occasional prescriptions over a period of years. He looked up the records; so did the drugstore. There was nothing immoderate, nothing to indicate that she took the pills habitually. The doctor said further that she was in good health. His opinion was that she merely wanted to have medicines—pills like these—on hand in the event she should need them. He said there are people like that.”

“There are not many people who keep empty bottles,” Cal said.

“I’ve talked to Mr. Vleedam. He says that he objected to her taking sleeping pills and wanted her to throw them out. She said she would.”

“Did she?” Cal asked.

Captain Parenti shrugged. “It looks as, if she didn’t. Mr. Vleedam says he found one bottle hidden. If one bottle was hidden others could have been hidden. Did you find such bottles yourself, Miss—Mrs. Vleedam?” he said abruptly to Jenny.

“No!” Jenny cried. “No!”

Captain Parenti merely nodded as if he had expected that answer. He said to Cal, “Your nephew Henry, told the police the same story he told you. Says somebody phoned your house and said it was Western Union asking for a Mrs. Somebody. The boy says he couldn’t hear the name distinctly.” Again he addressed Jenny. “Western Union says there was no message for you.”

Cal said, “What about the lost keys?”

Captain Parenti rubbed his nose and sighed. “Mr. Calendar, if I put every available man on the job we could find a needle in a haystack—given the time. Finding a keyring between here and New York is a different thing.”

“You can inquire. You can search the house—”

“If anybody had stolen those keys do you think he’d admit it?”

“But you do believe they were stolen.”

“You say so. No, wait now, Mr. Calendar, no sense in getting worked up. My belief has got to be based on proof.”

“Young Henry tells the truth,” Cal said after a moment.

Captain Parenti said dryly, “They told me that he seemed to take a hearty interest in talking to the police. Enjoyed it, they said.” Parenti looked suddenly human and weary. “I’ve got a boy of ten myself. For the last week he’s been pretending he’s living on the moon. It’s a strain.”

“Henry was not pretending or telling a story I told him to tell. And Mrs. Vleedam
saw
the man at her apartment! She talked to him.”

“I’m not saying I
don’t
believe her, Mr. Calendar.”

“Perhaps you’ll believe this,” Cal said. “Here’s another—

Parenti’s eyelids didn’t lift but his hand shot out to grasp the empty bottle. “Where did you find it?”

“Tell him, Jenny,” Cal said and Jenny told what there was to tell, which began to seem very little under Captain Parenti’s unmoved gaze.

He didn’t ask her any questions; he looked at the bottle, slid it into his pocket, looked off toward the water and said morosely, “My boys are all so young. They’re good policemen. Fine for chasing speeders or patrolling or dealing with drunks or—but they don’t know much about murder.” He sighed and added, “Can’t say I’ve had much experience with murder myself.”

Cal said rather cautiously, “You mean the policeman in the house last night could have gone to sleep.”

Captain Parenti’s lip stuck out further. “Could have,” he said after a pause. “On the other hand, this bottle could have been in that room for a long time. May be a bottle Mrs. Vleedam hid.”

“Or someone found,” Cal said sharply.

Captain Parenti gave him a long look. “You’re not very consistent, Mr. Calendar. One minute you and—and Mrs. Vleedam try to convince us that nobody in the house that night could have killed the—the second Mrs. Vleedam. The next minute you seem to be trying to convince me that only somebody in the house could have found those two pill bottles and stolen the keys.”

“No,” Cal said slowly, “it may not be consistent. It happens to be the truth.”

“On the other hand, you two could be inventing a story which will give me considerable trouble to prove or disprove and could be designed exactly for that reason. A diversion, a clouding of facts, protection for your friend and Mrs. Vleedam’s former husband. All I can do is go by common sense. Mrs. Vleedam, how often did your former husband phone you?”

Jenny’s heart went down with such a thud she felt that Parenti could hear it. She didn’t dare look at Cal for guidance. Parenti had just had an interview with Peter; Peter might have admitted all those telephone calls. In any event, there were ways of checking them. She said, “Not very often.”

“There are numerous calls to your New York number on Mr. Vleedam’s phone bill records,” Parenti said, watching a gull. “He admits he talked to you on various occasions.”