Death Before Bedtime (13 page)

The idea was outrageous, but who else? A paper chase. She was trying to give me a signal of some kind, a desperate attempt at communication because … because she was terrified … of the murderer? I wondered, though, why, if she
had
written me the note, she had not admitted it outright instead of referring so obliquely to it. A paper chase: that was exactly it. I was suddenly very tired. If only one person would stop playing his game long enough to tell the truth, I might be able to unravel the whole business to the delight of the
Globe
and the police. That she had written to me, I was sure. But for some reason she didn’t wish to be more explicit. Well, I would have to continue in the dark awhile
longer. In any case, I was better off than I had been. I knew a good deal more about the Senator’s youthful indiscretions than anyone else and I had been warned about Rufus Hollister.

After my talk with Mrs. Rhodes, I put on my overcoat and left the house. The day was bright and cold and a sharp wet wind blew down Massachusetts Avenue, making my ears ache.

The plain-clothes man at the door looked at me gloomily as I went out, his nose nearly as red from the cold as his earmuffs. I saluted him airily and headed down the avenue as though I knew in which direction I was going.

Just as I was about to hail a taxi, a young man stepped from behind a tree and said, with a big smile, “I’m from the Global News-service and I wonder.…”

“I’m from the
New York Globe
,” I said solemnly. This brought him to a full stop. He was about to walk off. Then he changed his mind.

“How come you were inside there if you’re on the
Globe
? They haven’t let any reporters in since the old bastard was blown up.”

I explained to him.

“Oh, I know about you,” he said. “You’re one of the suspects. The Senator’s public relations man.”

I said that I had been the latter, that I doubted if I was the former.

“Well, anyway, the big arrest is going to take place soon.” He sounded very confident.

“Is that so?”

“So we were tipped off … sometime in the next twenty-four hours Winters is going to arrest the murderer. That’s why I’m hanging around … deathwatch.”

“Did they tell you who he was going to arrest?” (I would
rather say “whom” but my countrymen dislike such fine points of grammar.)

“Damned if I know. Pomeroy, I suppose. Say, I wonder if you could do me a favor. You see.…” I took care of him and his favor in a few well-chosen words. Then I caught a taxicab and rode down to the Senate Office Building.

This was my second visit to the Senator’s office; it was very unlike the first. Large wooden crates filled with excelsior were placed everywhere on the floor. Two gray little women were busy packing them with the contents of the filing cabinets. I asked for Mr. Hollister and was shown into the Senator’s old office. He was seated at the desk studying some documents. When I entered he looked up so suddenly that his glasses fell off.

“Ah,” he sounded relieved. He retrieved his glasses and waved me to a chair beside his own. “A sad business,” he said, patting the papers on the desk. “The effects,” he added. There was a long pause. “You wanted to see me?” he said at last.

I nodded. I was playing the game with great care. “I thought I’d drop by and see you while I was downtown … to say good-by, in a way.”

“Good-by?” The owl-eyes grew round.

“Yes, I expect I’ll be going back to New York tomorrow … and since there’ll probably be quite a bit of commotion tonight we might not have a chance to talk before then.”

“I’m afraid.…”

“They are going to make the arrest tonight.” I looked at him directly. His face did not change expression but his hands suddenly stopped their patting of the papers; he made two fists; the knuckles whitened. I watched everything.

“I assume you know whom they will arrest?”

“Don’t you?”

“I do not.”

“Pomeroy.” I wondered whether or not I had ruined the game; it was hard to tell.

He smiled suddenly, his cheeks rosy and dimpled. “Do they have all the evidence they need?”

“It would seem so.”

“I hope they do because they will be terribly embarrassed if they’re not able to make it stick. I’m a lawyer, you know, and a very thorough one, if I say so myself. I would
never
go into court without ultimate proof, no sirree, I wouldn’t. I hope that Lieutenant is not being rash.”

“You don’t think Pomeroy did it, do you?”

“I didn’t say that.” He spoke too quickly; then, more slowly, “I mean, it would be unfortunate if they were unprepared; the murderer might get away entirely, if that was the case.”

“And you wouldn’t like to see that?”

“Would you?” He was very bland. “You forget, Mr. Sargeant, that it is not pleasant for any of us to be suspected of murder. Even
you
are suspected, in theory at least. I am, certainly, and all the family is, too. None of us like it. We would all like to see the case done with, but if it isn’t taken care of properly then we are worse off than before. Frankly, something like this can do us all great harm, Mr. Sargeant.”

“I’m sure of that.” I sat back in my chair and looked at the bare patch on the wall over the mantelpiece where the cartoon had been. Then I fired my last salvo: “Where are those papers you took from the study the other night? The night you shoved me downstairs?”

Hollister gasped faintly; he adjusted his glasses as though steadying them after an earthquake. “Papers?”

“Yes, the ones you were looking for. I assume you found them.”

“I think your attempt at humor is not very successful, Mr. Sargeant.” His composure was beginning to return and my shock-treatment had, to all intents and purposes, failed. I looked at him coolly, however, and waited. “I did
not
take the papers,” he said, smiling. “I admit that I should have liked to but someone else got them.”

“You are sure of that?”

Hollister chuckled but his eyes were round and hard despite his smiling mouth. “Perfectly sure.” At that moment the telephone rang; he picked it up and talked to some newspaperman, very sharply, I thought, for someone in public life; but then his public life was over, at least as far as the Senate was concerned. “Wolves!” he groaned, hanging up.

“Closing in for the kill.”

“Closing in for what?”

“The arrest … tonight, I am told.”

Hollister shook his head gloomily. “Poor man. I can’t think why he did it; but then he has a most vindictive nature, and a terrible temper. He depended a great deal on the Senator’s backing in Washington. It was probably too much for him to bear, being turned down like that.”

“I have a hunch that there will be a good deal of singing, though, as the gangsters say.” I was beginning to talk out of the side of my mouth, the way private eyes are meant to talk. I caught myself in time: this was, as far as I could recall, the first time in my life I had used the word “singing” in its underworld sense.

Mr. Hollister looked properly bewildered. “I mean,” I said, “that in the course of the trial a lot of very dirty linen is going to be displayed. I mean, Mr. Hollister, that all your political dealings with the Senator will become known.” This was wild; I forged ahead in the dark. “The papers you wanted and which you say someone else got will be very embarrassing
for all concerned.” I was proud of my emphatic vagueness; also of the effect I was making.

“What are you trying to tell me, Sargeant?” The soft-soap political manner was succeeded by an unsuspected brusqueness. He was near the end of the line.

“That Pomeroy is going to tear you to pieces.”

Hollister half-rose in his chair; before he could speak, the telephone rang again. He picked it up impatiently; then his manner changed. He was suddenly mild. “Yes, yes. I certainly will. Anything you say. Yes. Midnight? Fine. Yes.…” His voice trailed off into a series of “yeses” accompanied by little smiles, lost on his caller. When he hung up, he changed moods again. “I’m sorry, Mr. Sargeant, but I have a great deal of work to do, packing up the Senator’s papers and all. I don’t know if you’ve heard the news but Governor Ledbetter has just appointed himself to succeed to the Senator’s unfilled term and we’re expecting him tomorrow. Good afternoon.”

The Chevy Chase Club is a large old-fashioned building outside Washington, in Maryland. There is a swimming pool, a fine golf course, lawns, big trees, a lovely vista complete with fireflies in the early evening, in season; but we were not in season and my information as to the fireflies and so on was provided by Ellen as we taxied from Washington to the Club. She waxed nostalgic, relating episodes from her youth: in the pool, on the courts, on the course, even on the grass among the trees, though the presence of the innocent Langdon spared us a number of unsavory details.

We had had no trouble getting away that evening, to my
surprise. Mrs. Rhodes was properly hoodwinked and the Lieutenant, when we called him to ask permission to go off for the evening, gave it easily. The arrest was going to be made after all, I decided. I wondered if I should leave the dance early so that I could be on hand for the big event. Langdon and Ellen would doubtless be so absorbed in one another that my early departure would not be noticed.

Ellen looked almost regal in her black evening gown. I had never seen her in a black evening dress before, and she was a most striking figure. Her tawny hair pulled straight back from her face like a Roman matron’s and her pale shoulders bare beneath a sable stole. Langdon wore a blue suit and I wore a tuxedo; I had arrived in Washington all prepared for a real social whirl.

The Club was a handsome building with high ceilings and great expanses of polished floor. It had a summery atmosphere even though snow was on the ground outside and the night was bitter cold.

The gathering looked very distinguished … half a thousand guests at least, in full evening dress. Poor Langdon blushed and mumbled about his blue serge suit but Ellen swept us into the heart of the party without a moment’s hesitation.

Mrs. Goldmountain was a small woman of automatic vivacity, very dark, ageless, with exquisite skin carefully painted and preserved. I recognized her from afar: her picture was always in the magazines smiling up into the President’s face or the Vice-President’s face or into her dog’s face, a celebrated white poodle which was served its meals at its own table beside hers on all state occasions: “Because Hermione loves interesting people,” so the newspapers had quoted her as saying. Whether Hermione Poodle liked famous people or not, we shall never know; that Mrs. Goldmountain
did, however, is one of the essential facts about Washington, and famous people certainly liked
her
because she made a fuss over them, gave rich parties where they met other celebrities. One of the laws of nature is that celebrities adore one another … are, in fact, more impressed by the idea of celebrity than the average indifferent citizen who never sees a movie star and seldom bothers to see his Congressman, presuming he knows what a Congressman is. I looked about me for the poodle but she was nowhere in sight: the dream no doubt of a press agent. Mrs. Goldmountain retained several.

“Ellen Rhodes! Ah, poor darling!” Mrs. Goldmountain embraced her greedily, her little black eyes glistening with interest: this was a coup for her. We were presented and each received a blinding smile, the dentures nearly as bright as the famous Goldmountain emeralds which gleamed at her throat like a chain of “Go” lights. Mr. Goldmountain had been very rich; he had, also, been gathered up some years ago … or ridden on ahead, as my Miss Flynn would also say … leaving his fortune to his bride.

“I am so touched, poor angel,” said Mrs. G., holding both of Ellen’s hands tight in hers and looking intently into her face. “I know how much you cared for your poor father.”

“I wanted to see you,” said Ellen simply, the lie springing naturally to her coral lips.

“Your mother? Shattered?”

“Utterly … we all are.”

“Oh, it’s too horrible.”

“Too.”

“And the Chief Justice told me only yesterday that he might well have got the nomination.”

“Ah!”

“What a President he would have been.… How we shall
miss him! all of us. I wanted terribly to get to the funeral but the Marchioness of Edderdale and the Elector of Saxe-Weimar were both visiting me and we could hardly get away. I sent flowers.”

“Mother was so grateful.”

“Darling, I couldn’t be more upset and you
are
an angel to come.…” Then she began to speak very rapidly, looking over our shoulders at an Ambassador who was arriving with his retinue, their ribbons and orders gleaming discreetly. Before we knew it we were cut adrift as the high enthusiastic voice of our hostess fired a volley of compliments and greetings at the Ambassador and his outriders.

“
That
is over,” said Ellen, in a cool competent voice and she led us to the bar; the guests parted before our determined way. Those who recognized her looked surprised and murmured condolences and greetings; then, mild complaints at her lack of rectitude when we had passed on. I caught only a few words, here and there: mostly disparaging.

The bar was a paneled room, a little less crowded than the main hall. From the ballroom could be heard the sound of a very smooth orchestra playing something with a lot of strings.

“Now isn’t this better than being cooped up in that awful house?” said Ellen blithely, clutching a Scotch in her strong predatory fingers.

“Of course it is,” I said. “But …” And mechanically I reminded her that she was making an unfavorable impression.

“Who cares? Besides, I always do and everyone adores it: gives them something to talk about.” She smoothed her hair back, though not a strand was out of place. She was easily the best-looking woman in the room and there were, for some reason, more women in the bar then men, Washington women being, perhaps, a trifle more addicted to the grape
than their menfolk: the result of the tedium of their lives, no doubt, the dreary round of protocol-ridden days.

Walter Langdon then wanted to know who was who and while Ellen explained to him, I wandered off to the ballroom.