Call After Midnight (23 page)

The taxidriver turned a corner, escaped the heavy Third Avenue traffic and said over his shoulder, “Lucky you’ve got a friend to go to. You wouldn’t believe the times people lock themselves out or lose their keys. Here we are, miss.”

She didn’t want to get out of the taxi. She couldn’t spend the night riding around New York in a taxi.

She got out and fumbled in her handbag and the taxidriver said, “Listen, miss, you already paid me. Thanks just the same.”

The taxi thudded along down the street.

There were no lights in Cal’s house. She rang the bell and nobody answered. She rang and rang and thought she could hear the bell pealing the depths of the house. Still no one came to the door. She didn’t know what to do. Blanche’s apartment? She would probably be at home by now. A hotel? She rang the bell again.

A taxi stopped behind her, across the sidewalk. She whirled around and there was no place to hide, no archway, no shrubbery, no people passing to hear her scream. Cal got out of the taxi. She leaned against the door.

“Jenny!” Cal said, “Jenny—”

He put his arm around her—a good thing, she thought wildly, she couldn’t have walked by herself. He opened the door. He turned on lights. He took off her raincoat. He took off her scarf. He led her back to a dining room, with windows upon a scrap of a garden. He put her down in a chair. He went to a sideboard and came back with a glass in his hand. “I’ll not wait to get ice. Drink this—”

He waited a moment. Then he leaned over and gently removed her dark glasses. “Can you tell me now?”

“I phoned to Mrs. Cunningham. She wasn’t here—”

“She took Henry home. She’ll be back later.”

“You didn’t phone me—”

“I tried to this morning. Nobody answered. This afternoon I had a little detective work to do. Feeling better? All right now, tell me.”

“He said to take the pills. He said it would be easier. He said I didn’t have a chance. He said I might as well give up. She’d got a key—”

“
Who said that
?
Who got a key
?”

“The man—no, maybe Mrs. Brown—Wait a minute, Cal, give me a minute.”

He watched her; then he lighted a cigarette and put it between her lips. “All right?”

“I’d better start at the beginning.”

It was very hard. She kept forgetting and going back; she kept saying things over again. She told about the locksmith and the messenger who had been sent for her key, several times, and then like a clock ran down all at once.

Cal said, “You didn’t see anybody in the Museum you recognized?”

“No. No. Not anybody. Until Dodson came. But that was at my apartment.”

“But you’re sure somebody followed you?”

“Yes, yes. I could hear—everywhere I went in the Museum—but he was never there when I looked. Then the taxidriver said not to wear that bright dress. It was orange—”

“Yes. Didn’t Dodson give you any hint at all about this evidence he claims to have?”

“No. Only that Peter would pay for it.”

“It could be something that would help Peter.”

“Dodson wanted money. I think it is a threat.”

“Sounds more likely. I thought you were at work. Mrs. Cunningham told me that you’d had the locks changed. I was going to phone as soon as I got in the house just now. I thought you’d be home from work.”

“No, I was fired. Yesterday.”

“You’d better have another drink. No—wait, when did you last eat?”

“I don’t know. Yes, this morning. I never thought of lunch.”

“Then you don’t get another drink. Mrs. Cunningham usually leaves a cold supper.” He came back from the kitchen and put a cup of coffee on the table. “Still hot in the electric percolator. Drink it. Better than getting yourself tight.”

He brought out the cold supper.

Cal wouldn’t talk and wouldn’t let her talk until they had gone up to his comfortable study and taken more coffee with them. He turned on lights, for the spring dusk lay in the room. Then he went to a telephone that stood on the big writing table and called Peter’s house on the Sound and talked to Mrs. Brown. When he finished he looked both relieved and troubled. “She’s there. Has the letters all right. Says she’s been looking them over and there’s nothing in them. Nothing I’d be interested in, she said. She said that there were a couple of places where Fiora mentioned her will in favor of Mrs. Brown. There really wasn’t any will and Fiora really didn’t have anything to leave except some jewelry, not much. I rather think the mention of a will was simply to placate Mrs. Brown.”

“Peter will give her something to live on. He promised—Cal, who would try to make me take those pills? I wouldn’t have done that! It’s a stupid kind of attempt. Yet I felt whoever that was whispering in my ear really hoped that I might be scared enough and silly enough to do it.”

Cal went to the table to pour coffee. His face was hidden. He said quietly, “Perhaps you threaten somebody. Perhaps you are an obstacle to something somebody wants.”

“But I don’t! I’m not!”

He brought her coffee.

“I had a long and private talk with Parenti yesterday. Peter and you are still his prime suspects. But he’s looking at every angle he can get, checking them off. That black stocking you saw in the kitchen. He says the murderer
could
have used a black stocking over his face; had a pair of them, dropped one by accident in the kitchen as he came into the house, threw the other one away in the Sound. He thinks that whoever came to your apartment and tried to get in
could
have used a stocking again over his face—if he says somebody actually came there. He says criminals repeat a kind of pattern, do things the same way. But anyway that’s why you couldn’t see a face.”

“He must believe us!”

“I think he’s being thorough, he’s that kind of man. He says that it is conceivable that whoever shot Fiora the first time could hide somewhere waiting for another opportunity, but he couldn’t have hidden in the house. The police who came the first time would have flushed him out. Conceivably he could have hidden somewhere about the place without being found.”

“How would he get back in the house again?”

“The back door was unlocked. You said so.”

“Do you mean that Peter or Blanche unlocked it? Purposely? That would mean—”

“Yes, we’re back at the hired-killer notion. However, it’s possible to work a bolt from the outside, I suppose, if you know how. Somebody could have given him a signal of some kind when the police were gone and the coast was clear.”

“But there were only—”

“Peter, you, Blanche, me. And Fiora.”

“
Fiora—
”

“Oh, not suspecting that his intent was murder.”

She shook her head slowly. “I don’t think so.”

“It seems unlikely. But so does murder.”

“What kind of signal?”

“Anything. Lights. A telephone. There’s a phone in the library which is not an extension. I understand”—he looked at his coffee and stirred it—“that Peter used that one for any private conversations. Something he didn’t want Fiora to hear.”

“Yes. Parenti told me. I didn’t know it until then.”

“Somebody may have known it and used it to call the murderer. That’s only a guess. What I believe may be fact, because of the black stocking you found, is that he had returned to the house, waiting another chance by the time you went downstairs, and that was his chance.”

“He’d have had to be on the back stairs, in the hall, somewhere, where he could hear and see. Cal! I did stop, there in the hall, as if somebody was—oh, watching me. But I didn’t see anybody! I didn’t hear anything!”

“Sometimes you know, though, just the same,” he said slowly. “Instinct, something.”

“I might not have left Fiora at all. It was just chance that she asked for milk.”

“I don’t know, Fiora was the type who likes attention. Seems to me anybody might guess that she’d want something or other. In any event, it was a chance that could have occurred. And did.”

“I shouldn’t have left her at all.”

“I’m very glad you did,” Cal said soberly. “Anybody who has got himself into a state of mind for murder isn’t likely to be very sensible. It was a lucky thing you did leave. Guns carry more than two bullets. Somebody goes berserk, shoots somebody, then shoots everybody else in sight. Sure, it’s not sensible. Murder is not sensible. The murderer might have got tired of waiting, nerves strung tight, scared and given it up—but he didn’t. Parenti acknowledges all this but he’s sticking to Peter as his prime suspect. There’s one point in Peter’s favor though, with Parenti. Blanche said that she was talking to Art at the time of the first shot and that Peter was in the library. Parenti questioned Art and Art said yes, Blanche phoned him and broke off and banged down the phone; he says he didn’t hear the shot or he’d have come to see what was the trouble. It does seem to give Peter an alibi for that first shot. Parenti acknowledges that but says there could be a trick. He won’t say what. But at the same time Parenti is sure that the first attempt which failed and the second which succeeded were made by the same person. There’s another thing that he told me; he’s got a smear of a fingerprint that he can’t identify. Said it was on the table beside Fiora’s bed as if somebody had leaned over to—well, to get a straight shot.”

The room was warm; Jenny felt cold. “They don’t have Mrs. Brown’s fingerprints.”

“That’s right! I forgot that. She wouldn’t let the policeman take them. Well—I’ll remind Parenti of that. Parenti has been fair, I’ll say that for him.”

He thought for a moment. “Jenny, you said, didn’t you, that Mrs. Brown couldn’t remember anything of importance in those letters of Fiora’s?”

“That’s what she said.”

“I think she’d remember. Still—I don’t like Mrs. Brown being alone out there tonight.”

Jenny put her hands flat on the leather arms of her chair. “You’re going out there.”

Cal sat down on the footstool beside her. “I think this attempt to get you to take those pills is a sign that our murderer has got cold feet. He’s in such a panic that he’s trying the easy way, to scare you silly first and then threaten. Another thing, murder is an amateur crime. An amateur makes mistakes. I think his first attempt to kill Fiora really was that; an outright attempt to kill her then and there, which went wrong. He blundered but then succeeded. He’s blundered about you. But I think now he’s on the run.”

“You keep saying he,” she said after a moment. “I think it was a woman’s voice over the phone—”

“You’re not sure. Now there’s no chance of finding that taxicab driver who warned you. But Parenti ought to know all this. Also I want to get hold of Dodson and make him talk.”

“Suppose he’s got some evidence that will hurt Peter?”

“It could be the other way. He might know something that will help Peter.”

“Dodson knew Fiora,” Jenny said slowly, “but—oh, Cal, how can we be sure? If Parenti questions him—”

“I’ll get hold of Dodson first.” A long peal sounded through the house. Cal rose. “That’s Peter.”

“It might be somebody else!”

“Only Peter knows I’m here. Jenny, I’ve got to ask you this.
Are
you going to marry Peter again?”

She had made up her mind to that, that morning. It seemed a very long time ago. “Yes. Not now—not for a long time—”

“But sometime? Then Peter was telling the truth when he said you’d settled it together?”

“No. No, he wasn’t. We haven’t settled it.”

There was another peal of the doorbell.

“What do you mean you haven’t settled it?”

“I’ve got to wait.”

Cal had so quietly and completely reverted to his character as a friend, and only that, that she could speak directly and did. “It’s as I told you, Cal. I feel as if I’m still Peter’s wife. I know that you understand.”

“Yes,” he said after a moment. “Oh yes.” He turned abruptly and went downstairs as the doorbell pealed impatiently several times.

She heard their voices on the stairs. Peter came in, looking tired. “So this is where you’ve been, Jenny. I went to your apartment as soon as it was dark. Nobody was at home. I didn’t know where to find you. Give me a drink, Cal. This has been a hellish day. I hid out in the club all day, didn’t talk to a soul. Sneaked out past the lounge after everybody had gone to dinner. I’ve about had it.” He sank down in a chair and rubbed his hands over his eyes.

“Jenny’s had rather a day, too,” Cal said. “Help yourself to a drink, Peter. You know where it is. I’m going out to your house.”

Peter’s head jerked up. “Tonight?”

Jenny said, “I’m going too.”

“All right,” Cal said coolly, “I’ll phone for my car.” He went out.

Peter went to a cabinet, opened it, and poured himself a drink. “Well, if you’re both going out there, I’ll go too. What did Cal mean by saying you’d had a day?”

Peter, of course, still knew nothing of a messenger who was no messenger, a series of pill bottles that haunted her. And Jenny still had not asked Cal if there were reasons which Cal had not explained to her why Peter shouldn’t be told.

Peter sank down into a chair and drank, and before she could decide what if anything to say Cal came back, with a topcoat over his arm. “Here, Jenny, it’s turned cooler. You’d better wrap yourself up in this coat of mine. I’ll get your bag.”

Peter frowned. “Your bag? What’s he talking about?”

Cal was running upstairs. Jenny said, “I stayed here one night. There’s a dressing case of mine here. I suppose Cal means we’ll have to stay at your house tonight.”

“I shouldn’t think either of you would go near that damned place again. I’m going to get rid of it if I have to give it away. Not that I think anybody will take it.” A car tooted lightly outside as Cal came in with Jenny’s bag in his hand.

“That’s the boy from the garage,” he said. “Ready?”

Peter lingered to finish his drink.

They came out into the spring night; it was cooler, yet still sultry from the heat of the day. The car stood at the curb. They sat close together in the front seat, with the light from the ashtray Peter opened casting a little light on their faces. Instead of going straight across to the East Side Drive, however, Cal turned downtown at the first corner. Peter said, “Where are you going?”