Call After Midnight (25 page)

Peter looked startled. “Merger!”

“I got hold of something odd today. Art has been buying quite a block of the Pilgrim and Southern.”

Peter looked first blank and then indignant. “He’s counting on the merger. The Pilgrim and Southern stock would be worth more if we merge!”

Cal nodded. “It’s quite a gamble for him to take. My guess is that he’s borrowed to the hilt on his Sheraton Valley stock. If we don’t merge he’s in for a loss. Did you give him the idea that you favored the merger?”

Yes, Jenny thought; he told Blanche that, the night Fiora was shot; Fiora heard Blanche tell Art.

Peter looked uncomfortable. “No. That is—no.”

“Did you tell Blanche you favored it?”

“Not exactly. That is—oh, I may have said I’d consider it. That’s only good business.”

“If it doesn’t go through, Art is going to be a very disappointed man. If it does, I’m leaving you.”

Peter stared. “Cal! You don’t mean that. What would you be in another road? Nothing like your present job! Have you had an offer?”

“No.”

“Well, then—”

“I don’t want to leave, Peter. But that’s the way it is.”

Peter chewed his underlip thoughtfully. “Blanche is for it,” he said at last. “She’s smart. She thinks it’d be a good thing.”

Cal said, “Did you talk it over with Fiora?”

“No! I never talked business with Fiora. What are you getting at?”

Cal shook his head. “Nothing, I guess. Trying to find out whether or not Art had any quarrel with Fiora.”

Peter’s blue eyes were like ice. “Art couldn’t possibly have come here and shot Fiora! No motive, for one thing.”

“I didn’t say he did,” Cal said and Mrs. Brown came into the room carrying a clinking tray. Cal took it from her and put it on a table.

Peter said, “Blanche was talking to Art at the tune of that first shot. I heard her. She was at the phone in the hall. I was right here, by the fireplace, poking up some logs.”

“Yes, I know.” Cal poured Mrs. Brown a drink, gave it to her and said, “Did Fiora ever mention Waldo Dodson in her letters?”

Mrs. Brown frowned, thinking back, and said definitely, “No, not a word.”

“Did she ever say anything about Art?”

“Art Furby? N-no—that is, she mentioned him once or twice, counsel for the railroad, she said, lives near here. That’s all.”

“She didn’t happen to say anything about Art’s girl friend?”

“Art’s—” Peter flushed angrily. “You’re going too far, Cal. Art’s wife was an invalid for years. I wouldn’t have blamed him if he went around with another woman—or women. But he didn’t. Everybody respected him for his loyalty to his wife.” Mrs. Brown gave Cal a penetrating look. “It wasn’t Fiora,” she said, “this girl friend of Art’s, I mean. Fiora was too practical. She’d have been afraid that Peter would find out. No,” she said judicially, “Art didn’t shoot Fiora to keep her from telling Peter anything. Fiora wouldn’t have let Peter know—She’d have done anything she could to stop that. But I really don’t think she’d have taken such a chance.”

Peter stared at her. Cal said, “Are you perfectly sure there was somebody trying to get into the house tonight, Mrs. Brown?”

“Oh yes. Whoever it was tried the back door and tiptoed along the terrace and then came to the front door. I couldn’t see who it was and it was just then that you came. There was just a kind of motion in that shrubbery across the driveway. I saw that. But I heard her at the front door. That is, I think it was Blanche. May have been somebody else.”

“I don’t think there was anybody there!” Peter was suddenly red and angry. “And what I want to know is, who is trying to frame me for killing Fiora.”

Cal looked up. “Frame you?”

“Of course. Following Jenny around, leaving sleeping pills and—”

“
Huh
!” said Mrs. Brown.

Peter plunged on. “But now I see why. Jenny is my alibi. If Fiora’s murderer can get rid of Jenny then I have no alibi. Kill Jenny, charge me with murder—”

“Wait a minute, Peter. I thought of that, too,” Cal said. “It was the first thing that occurred to me. But Jenny’s already on record to the effect that she was with you when the shots were fired. Nobody’s trying to kill Jenny in order to frame you.”

“What’s this about pills?” Mrs. Brown said. “Who’s following you around?” Her bright eyes stabbed at Jenny.

“Somebody,” Cal said, “who had access to bottles of sleeping pills that Fiora hid around the house so Peter wouldn’t find them. Somebody who had access to the house—”

“Then it wasn’t Blanche,” Mrs. Brown said unexpectedly. “She couldn’t get into the house tonight. She’s got no key. But then of course if Fiora had bottles around, Blanche or anybody could have found them. Hmm,” said Mrs. Brown and lost herself in thought.

“But you aren’t sure that was Blanche,” Cal said.

The doorbell rang.

Waldo Dodson came in, his black leather jacket slung over his thick shoulders, and Art Furby came with him.

Dodson looked sulky; Art was composed but his eyes were curious. “I thought I’d come along. What’s it all about?”

Peter welcomed Art more cordially than usual, putting his arm around Art’s shoulders, and shooting a defiant glance at Cal as he did so. “Glad you came, Art. Glad you came.” He was not so cordial to Dodson but he didn’t dodge the issue either. “I hear you have something to say to me, Dodson.” His chin stuck out; his blue eyes turned icy.

“Oh,” Dodson said and wouldn’t look at Jenny.

“Drink?” Cal asked easily.

Art took a drink; Dodson slumped down in a chair and refused it with a single shake of his head. His long black hair looked as if it had grown another inch since afternoon. Peter took up a place before the hearth and eyed Dodson. “Well, let’s have it.”

“Have
what
?” Art asked.

Cal explained. “Dodson came to Jenny and told her he had some evidence about Fiora’s murder that Peter would pay for.”

“What!” Art’s composure fell away like a cloak. He whirled around to Dodson. “This is—this is shocking. If you have any evidence, Waldo, you should have told me! You should have told the police! Why you—good God, this sounds like blackmail! Don’t you know that’s against the law, that’s a criminal offense—”

“Wait a minute, Art,” Peter said. “Now look here, Dodson, I want the truth and I’m not afraid to hear it. There is nothing, simply nothing that is evidence against me in the matter of Fiora’s murder. So I’m not afraid of you.”

“And he’s not going to pay you anything,” Cal said quietly. “Understand that?”

Dodson’s raisin eyes lifted; he gave Jenny an ugly look. “You couldn’t do what I asked you to do, could you? Had to go and tell everybody, get me in trouble.”

“That’ll do,” Cal said. “Shall I call the police or do you want to talk?”

Dodson’s eyes shifted here and there; he seemed to be seeking an answer. He gave Art a long look and Art doubled his hands together, made a steeple of his forefingers, eyed the steeple and said judicially, “I think it’ll be worth your while, Waldo, to explain yourself. That is, I mean I don’t think anybody here will press blackmail charges.”

“If I can count on that,” Dodson said and made up his mind. “She paid me.”

“Who paid you?” Cal said.

Dodson took a long breath and faced Peter. “She did. Your wife. Fiora. She paid me.”

Art said nothing; Peter said nothing; Cal took Dodson by the arm. “For what?”

“You’ll wish you hadn’t made me tell it, Mr. Vleedam. She paid me to find out what woman you were seeing. So I did.”

There was another packed kind of silence, full of speculation. Then Mrs. Brown said, “It was Blanche.”

“Oh, sure,” Dodson said.

P
ETER’S FACE DIDN’T CHANGE;
his chin stuck out, his head was lifted, his eyes direct and ice blue, and he said, “That is not true.”

Peter was lying. Jenny knew it.

She looked away. Art Furby took his hands apart and leaned against a chair. Cal said coolly, “Why do you say that, Dodson?”

“Because it’s true. I’ll probably never get another job.” Dodson looked at Peter. “You’ll never give me a recommendation. But it’s true all right. I’ve seen you with Blanche many times when you told Fiora you were kept in town by some business. I’ve seen you go to her apartment and take her out to dinner and, oh, it’s true. The last three or four months.”

Three or four months, Jenny thought again, during which Peter’s telephone calls to Jenny had dwindled away.

Cal said to Dodson in a matter-of-fact way, “Did you tell Fiora?”

“No, I didn’t. Because she’d have paid me off and let it go at that and I wanted more money. So I strung her along. Said I’d seen him with a woman pretty constantly but so far I hadn’t been able to find out who the woman was. Fiora asked me the address of her apartment and I said she lived in a big hotel. Oh, I was going to tell Fiora eventually, I guess. On the other hand, Blanche had more authority about my job than Fiora had. I didn’t know just what to do and the main thing was to get as much money as I could. It didn’t hurt Fiora, paying me money; all she had to do was ask for it.”

Mrs. Brown tugged her kimono around her and did not say I told you so, but looked it.

Peter said, blustering, “There’s nothing in it!”

“Peter,” Cal, said soberly, “you’ve been taking a good-looking, blackhaired woman to nightclubs and restaurants pretty regularly during the past three months. Nobody knew her name but plenty of people knew your name.”

“Cal, do you mean to say you went around and spied on me behind my back?” Peter shouted indignantly. “You, my best friend!”

Cal nodded. “I thought there must be some woman who kept you in town on business when there wasn’t any business. I thought there must be some reason why for the last three months you all but stopped phoning to Jenny. So I made a little tour of the night spots today. Nothing drearier in the daytime. I thought it possible that since Fiora wouldn’t have given you a divorce—well, there might be some woman who insisted on marriage. And if any woman was determined enough and knew Fiora wouldn’t give you a divorce, she could have decided that there was only one way to get rid of Fiora.”

“Blanche didn’t kill her!” Peter cried. “Not Blanche!”

Cal said, “No, I don’t see how Blanche could have shot Fiora. She was in the hall when I came out of my room and there simply wasn’t time for her to come along the hall from Fiora’s room.”

“You see?” Peter said to the room at large.

“But you did give her some reason to think she might take Fiora’s place, now didn’t you, Peter?”

“No!” But Peter was still lying. Jenny couldn’t bear to look at him.

Dodson said sulkily, “All you have to do to prove that he was seeing Blanche is to ask at her apartment house!”

Cal nodded and looked at Peter and Peter met his eyes, flushed, set his jaw and said defiantly, “Oh, all right, all right. Yes, I’ve been seeing Blanche! Fiora and I weren’t getting along very well. We weren’t suited to each other at all. We had nothing in common, nothing we could talk about. Blanche is different, intelligent. Good heavens, can’t a man take a woman round to restaurants without being accused of murder?”

“You aren’t being accused of murder,” Cal said.

“You’re accusing Blanche!”

“Peter, did you ever say you’d like to marry Blanche if it weren’t for Fiora?” Cal was so quiet that he might have been talking of the weather.

“Certainly
not
!” Peter said with great dignity and then, queerly, as Cal looked at him he began to bluster, “Oh, well. You know how these things are. You get a little—sentimental, get to talking in general terms. If things were this way or that way, different. If you weren’t married. If—but that was all. You know.”

“No,” Cal said reasonably, “I don’t know. Suppose the girl—Blanche in this instance, takes all your general terms to be specific terms and serious.”

Peter shrugged. “Now, Cal, these things—why, they don’t mean anything. Not really. How could Blanche have taken all that nonsense seriously, a woman as smart as Blanche?”

Oh, Peter, Jenny thought. Oh, Peter.

As if she had said it aloud, Peter looked at her with a kind of start; he stared for a second and then came to her and put his hand on her arm. He said low, as if for her ears alone, yet of course every one in the room heard it, “It was you I wanted, Jenny. You know that. It was you—”

Cal said, “Is Blanche at your house, Art?”

Everybody, Peter included, then looked at Art. Jenny thanked Cal in her heart but she thought, oh Peter, I loved you so long.

Art had regained his composure. He said in a shocked way, “
Blanche
!
Now
?”

Cal nodded. “I thought perhaps she’d put on an apron and cooked dinner for you.”

Art’s face froze. “What are you talking about?” His eyes went around the room, fastened on Jenny, and sharpened. “You! You snooped around in my house.
You
—”

Waldo Dodson grinned a little and Jenny saw the covert amusement and knew that he had led her purposely into the bathroom adjoining Art’s bedroom; he had purposely opened that closet door displaying a woman’s clothes. She wondered briefly why. Perhaps he was simply the kind of man who hates any and all of his employers.

Cal said, again, “Is Blanche at your house now?”

“No!” Art cried. “And those clothes you”—he gave Jenny another scornful glance—”you saw, belonged to my wife. Peter, are you going to let them accuse Blanche like this?”

“They’ve had plenty to say to me,” Peter replied grumpily. His hand pressed down on Jenny’s shoulder and without knowing it she moved to escape it.

What was it I loved, she thought, what was it I loved?

But such a revelation should be a cruel and bitter thing; strangely this was not. It was not precisely revelation either; it was like a shadowy figure seen in the distance, approaching deliberately, recognized only vaguely at first but then clearly—too clearly.

Cal said, “Wait a minute, Art. No sense in hurrying away. There’s something I want to ask you.”

Art was at the door. He cast an angry glance back. “You’ve said enough.”

“Only one question. Where were you today?”

“Where was I—why, in my office, naturally. Where you ought to have been. Blanche was there, too. She’ll tell you that if you want to ask her. I came out on the five twenty-three. What business is it of yours?”