Gentleman Called (8 page)

Johanson held up his thumbs on Lieutenant Greer’s command.

“As dainty as barnacles,” Greer said in deep disgust. “Get the hell out of here and you don’t have to come back.”

“That only means you’re no longer his number one suspect,” Tully said, walking out of the interview room with him. “We may need you one of these days to do some identifying. So don’t go far from home.” He waited until the man was a few steps on his way, a new man, and then called: “Johanson…I wonder if you’d mind giving me a description again of the man you saw leaving her house that morning? It won’t take long.”

“Sure,” Johanson said.

Afterwards Tully made up his more mundane description from Johanson’s reaccounting of what his Jim-dandy walking doll looked like. It read:

Height: not more than 5’ 8”, probably 5’ 6”

Weight: 160-170

Build: stocky

Complexion: Ruddy. “Like well-fed Englishman”

Hair: Uncertain. Blond probably. (possibly bald.)

Mustache: English type. Blond, curly (Edwardian?)

Glasses: Dark-rimmed. (which he took off to better see Sperling in window. Probably frequent gesture as common to people who see distances better without glasses)

Clothes: Light gray hat, gray (herringbone?) topcoat. Dark suit. Carried black umbrella rolled up. (Brief case?)

Peculiarities: Manner of walking, back on heels. Vital, lively step. (Of man of well being?) Very neat in appearance.

Tully drove Johanson home himself. He went then to the funeral parlor from which Mrs. Sperling had been buried and picked up the names of those who had called to pay condolences and had signed “the book of sympathy.” There was not such a number of them and Tully resolved to see each of them himself. He might then come out with a picture of the victim.

He expected to see a fairly complete roster of the deceased’s friends. Very few people made such calls without leaving a mark to show they had been there, even if a scented book of sympathy turned their stomachs. Within a couple of hours the witnesses began to appear at the District Attorney’s office in response to Tully’s calls.

The first man he saw was Jefferson Tope, the minister who had given the message of departure, to put it in his words.

“She was not always what I should call a church woman,” the Reverend Tope said. His parish church was on Lexington Avenue, a few blocks south of where Mrs. Sperling had lived. “But I’ve been wondering if there was not a kind of pattern in her attendance. For example, she had not been to church since August eleventh. I looked it up in her contribution record. A fairly generous woman. I mentioned that to the nieces at the funeral, by the way. They seemed to disagree, but then I should scarcely credit their views in such matters.”

Tully could guess why: it would have fallen to the nieces to contribute to his ministry after the funeral. No doubt it was a meager benefice, and likely squabbled over in his presence. “Mrs. Sperling’s church attendance,” the detective said. “How long had she been going regular before September?”

“Very nearly a year. But there’s the pattern part…some time in her rather spotty attendance before last year, she came to me and asked me what I would think of her marrying a divorced man. She was not really a very attractive woman, Mr. Tully, if I may be pardoned for speaking frankly of the dead. I mentioned that she was generous. I must temper that now to say that my own impression of her generosity was that she intended to buy something with every cent she gave, and I wonder now if she didn’t buy…friendship.”

Tully could not help but observe the cleric’s thumbs. He supposed that until this case was closed he would examine the thumbs of every human being he encountered. The Reverend’s ran to curls. They resembled two question marks.

“What about the divorced man?” the detective asked.

“Well, you see, my first question to her was: does he have a family to support? ‘He does,’ she said. ‘I would help him.’ But I don’t think anything came of their romance. Very soon she was back at church as regular as Sunday.”

“Did she mentioned the name of the man?”

“No. I suggested that she bring him to see me. She promised that she would. Naturally I didn’t mention it when she didn’t.”

“I’m not sure I see the pattern,” Tully said.

“Mrs. Sperling’s whole attendance has been a series of devout periods and lax periods.”

“Do you think she came in to pray for a husband between prospects, Mr. Tope?”

“I shouldn’t be that precise about it,” the minister said, “but I do think she returned to God in periods of loneliness.”

“Most of us do if we’re going to turn at all,” Tully said.

One thing that had come from the Reverend Tope’s testimony, he thought when the man was gone, was that the picture the two nieces tried to give of their aunt—her being a woman who would not have a man cross her threshold—was entirely inaccurate.

Another payer of last respects to Mrs. Sperling turned out to be a representative of her bank, an honest mourner no doubt, Tully thought. Appropriately, it was the lad through whom she had made her last withdrawal. Tully asked if she had seemed nervous, taking out so large a sum of money.

“I told Lieutenant Greer she seemed nervous, sir, but the more I think of it, it wasn’t a worried kind of nervousness. I mean—well, she giggled once or twice.”

Somehow Tully would never have thought Arabella Sperling to have giggled in her whole life. “But she didn’t make any excuses, any explanation for wanting five thousand dollars in small bills?”

“Oh, yes she did, sir. I went to the cashier for an okay when she wanted that much money, you see. We should have more notice. And she told him in my presence it was for a real estate investment. He looked at her in a way—I suppose you’d call it questioning. After all, in small bills. And she said, ‘My broker recommends it,’ and then gave that silly smile of hers you had to be watching to see. The cashier made her say it over again: ‘Your broker, Mrs. Sperling?’ ‘MY broker.’ And when she said it that way, that was that.”

Tully thanked him and thought about his information. It contradicted Johanson’s, though the building superintendent might not necessarily be lying about it. The bank teller quoted Mrs. Sperling as saying her “broker” recommended the cash real estate deal, whereas Johanson quoted her as saying her “broker” had turned it down. The one thing the detective was quite sure about now, Johanson did not get the money; the murderer did. If he had engineered the withdrawal of five thousand dollars, it proved premeditation: murder without passion. And everything about the house, its neatness, confirmed that.

Another signer of the sympathy book arrived, and another…several who contributed nothing to the investigation.

Then came George Allan Masters, a man visibly uneasy at the prospect of an interview with the District Attorney’s representative. He gave his age as fifty-one, his occupation, shoe salesman. In response to the routine question on his marital status, he said with hesitancy, “Ah—married.”

Tully thought he knew who he was. “Recently, Mr. Masters?”

“Yes, sir. My second marriage, that is.”

“Widowed or divorced?”

“Divorced.”

“Children?”

“Three—by my first marriage. The oldest is sixteen.”

“Between the hours of six and midnight of Friday, November 17, where were you?”

“Last Friday,” the man said slowly, and then hastily: “That isn’t difficult: I was in the store, except between six and seven, when I went out with my boss for supper. We took inventory that night. Finished up about two in the morning.”

Tully was glad to get that one out of the way himself. “Thank you.”

“Is that the time Arabella was killed?”

“Sometime before midnight,” Tully said. “At one time you and Mrs. Sperling were considering marriage, weren’t you?”

Masters looked startled but not frightened. “I didn’t know anyone knew that except Arabella herself. Yes, sir, we were.”

“What happened to it, your plan?”

“Well, I was a good deal fonder of my present wife. To tell you the God’s truth, sir, I wasn’t fond of Arabella at all, and in the end I couldn’t be a hypocrite.”

“How’s that?”

“Arabella offered to help out with the children—in a financial way—if I married her. It was tempting. I don’t make enough money to support two households. I didn’t want to come here today in case you’d speak to my boss and jeopardize my job…”

“I’m always careful not to get anybody into trouble who doesn’t deserve it,” Tully said. “I want to know about Mrs. Sperling, and you can tell me more than most people. You knew her well enough to talk about marriage…”

“She saw to that and often enough,” the man interjected.

“And yet you weren’t very fond of her. Didn’t you like her even at first?”

“Oh, yes. She could be nice. And she seemed awfully generous. But I’ll try to tell you how it got to be: well, the only way I can say it—when she’d give you something, she’d snatch it back, and maybe your arm, too. She had that awful way of getting hold of you. Not with her hands. It was just her way, her personality.”

Tully thought he understood. The same picture had come through from the Reverend Tope. It was an ungentle irony that someone had in the end got hold of Arabella—by the throat. This lad had thumbs like clothes pins, and fingernails he might use for shoehorns. He could not have grown them since the murder, and such nails would have marked the skin of the victim.

“You aren’t the first person to feel that way about Arabella Sperling,” the detective said.

“I’m glad of that,” Masters said quietly. “We don’t always see straight, trying to look round our own problems.”

“She did want to get married, didn’t she?” Tully mused.

“She sure did.”

“You wouldn’t think it’d be so hard, her having money. Where did you meet her?”

“Three years or so ago—at a place called the Mellody Friendship Club. It’s on Twenty-second Street, near Third Avenue.”

There was something rang a bell with Tully about the Mellody Friendship Club. But the harder he thought about it, the more unfamiliar it grew. He was probably reminded of something he had seen on television, he decided, for a play did begin to come back to him—a murder outside the door while all these nice, gentle people were inside dancing at arms’ length from each other.

“That’s where people go with the object of meeting somebody marriageable, isn’t it?” he said.

“I’d put it this way—I don’t think anybody who’s happily married would see much point in going there. And Mrs. Mellody wouldn’t have anybody there who was unhappily married. Not if she knew it.”

“They’re trouble, are they?” said Tully. “She wants you lonesome but not miserable.”

Masters ventured a smile. “That’s about it.”

“Now I’m a widower. I’ve got a good job—at least most kids between six and sixteen would like to grow up in it, so I guess it’s a good job—and I’m getting to the lonesome age. Do you suppose it’s the place for me?”

“I’d recommend it very highly,” Masters said with the smugness of one who no longer needed its hospitality.

“I guess I’ll go see Mrs. Mellody at that,” Tully said.

A
NYONE WHO FREQUENTED THE
Criminal Court building as regularly as did Jimmie was bound to run into Elmo Mumford, and this time Jimmie did it deliberately. Mumford was a member of that rare and distinguished breed: the trial lawyer. He had a head on him like Daniel Webster in both size and content, and he bore it with the air of one aggrieved it had not yet been sculpted by an artist worthy of the subject.

Now Jimmie had a very good friend who was a sculptor, or to be precise, a sculptress, of considerable reputation. She was spending a year in England, but Mumford didn’t know her to be out of the country. Not only did he shake Jimmie’s hand on their meeting; he threw his arm about his shoulder, and avowed they must have lunch together.

“Are you free today?” said Jimmie.

“Happens I am,” Mumford cried. “How’s Helene? It must be a year since I’ve seen her. She wanted to do me, you know. You wouldn’t mind, would you, old man?” He gave Jimmie an elbow in the ribs, then steered him out of the building and down the street two blocks to his own favorite restaurant. Jimmie wondered if the imperious manner made him a better lawyer. It certainly made him seem one.

But he was a good conversationalist and he treated Jimmie as a patron of the arts. It was quite pleasant in fact, and he allowed Jimmie to choose their wine, a compliment he avowed, which his palate allowed him to pay but rarely. It was with some reluctance that Jimmie steered their conversation around to the murder of Ellie True.

“Oh, by the Almighty, what a mincemeat we made of your old office in that one!” Mumford shook with pleasure at the recollection.

Jimmie assumed he meant the District Attorney’s office. With something understandably close to self-pity, he felt great sympathy for the prosecutor of the Reverend Alfonzo Blake. It was bad enough to have the case dismissed, but the bad publicity connected with having brought insupportable charges against a man of God…enough to stunt the ambition even of a district attorney. “Who tried that one for the Office?” Jimmie asked.

Mumford mentioned the Assistant District Attorney.

“It wasn’t old Jasper Tully who did the ground work for him, was it?”

“No. We didn’t get the top boys. I’ll say that for them. Tully and his boss were tied up in a Labor Rackets hearing at Federal Court.”

Jimmie felt much better. He was not a man who thrived on another’s mismanagements. And that was why he was not likely ever to be a trial lawyer of Mumford’s calibre: he lacked the deadly sense of competition. “Maybe you were lucky then,” he said.

“I might have been at that,” Mumford admitted with surprising humility. “Ever come across a queer little duck called Theodore E. Adkins?”

“Yes,” Jimmie said.

“Yes, what?”

Jimmie drew a deep breath. Nobody ever got anything for nothing from Elmo Mumford. “I’m about to defend him in a paternity suit.”

“Now that’s a twist! By the Almighty, that is a twist. Who is it that finally got the knife into the poor bastard? He’s been a sitting duck for years.”