Long Live the Dead (18 page)

When they reached Spencer Street on the outskirts of town, and found the house, he was relentlessly gleeful. He pointed to the sign in the window and said: “You see? I told you so.” The sign said “For Rent.”

Angel frowned at it. The frown was most becoming to her beauty. Edgerson gently patted her shoulders. “We still have time for the ride into the country, the swim, the—”

“Apply at 27 Brook Street,” Angel said.

“What?”

“That’s what it says. ‘For rent. Apply 27 Brook.’ That’s the next street over, Philip.” He said nothing, merely groaned and put the car in gear. Angel was silent, too, until he stopped the machine in front of a small brown cottage on Brook Street. “The trouble with you, Mr. Smith,” she said then, sweetly, “is that you give up too easily.”

He followed her up the walk, between beds of marigolds. She rang the bell. In a moment the door was opened by a plump female in flowered apron.

“How do you do?” Angel said in her nicest Sunday voice. “I’m Mrs. Smith. This is my husband.”

The woman said, “How do you do?” wonderingly, and glanced at Edgerson and stared at Angel. Women usually stared at Angel. And envied her slimness, her remarkable blond hair and her more than pretty face.

“We noticed a house over on Spencer Street, for rent,” Angel said.

“Oh, yes.”

“Is it occupied at present?”

“No.” The woman shook her head. “We had a nice young couple living there, but they’ve moved out.”

Edgerson, recovering from his shock at so casually being called “my husband” smiled slyly. He was John Smith now, and John Smith was at times a pretty fair detective. Angel, fishing for information about the nice young couple on Spencer Street, was going to encounter difficulties. The plump lady in the flowered-apron was obviously not a talker.

“We’ve looked so long for a house,” Angel said, “that I really don’t know
what
I want. You know how it is, I’m sure. You go from one place to another and simply get all worn out.”

The woman nodded sympathetically. There were chairs on the porch and she moved toward them. “Won’t you sit down, Mrs. Smith?”

“Thank you,” Angel breathed. “Thank you so much!”

“It’s really a very nice house,” the woman said. “My husband and I built it ourselves and lived in it four years. Then last year Mr. and Mrs. Burdick, the nice young couple I mentioned to you, moved in.”

Angel looked thoughtfully at the tips of her fingers. “They didn’t stay very long, did they?”

“No, they didn’t. It wasn’t because of the house, though. Mr. Burdick worked for the Glickman Company and lost his job. He had to go to another city to find work.”

“Oh,” Angel said. “That’s too bad. And they’d only been married a year?”

“Only a year.”

Angel widened her large brown eyes and looked soulfully at Edgerson. “You know, dear,” she said, sadly shaking her head, “when you hear of the misfortunes that beset other married people, it makes you realize how terribly fortunate we’ve been.” She turned the soulful eyes on the woman again. “Married only a year, and so in love with each other! I just know they were!”

“Well,” the woman said dubiously, “well, yes, I guess they were.”

“And are they coming back some day? To visit you?”

“Well, I don’t know. Theodore, that’s Mr. Burdick, said they were moving to some place near Boston. Margaret went last Wednesday to put things in order, and he went Saturday, with the furniture truck. They may come back, but of course I couldn’t hold the house for them. Now if you’d like to look at it, Mrs. Smith …”

But Angel was looking at her “husband” again. “You know, darling, perhaps Mrs.—er—” She glanced helplessly at the woman who said, “My name is Crandall.”

“Perhaps Mrs. Crandall could recommend someone to move our furniture. Those last people we had were simply unbearable. I’ll just never forgive them for ruining our twin beds.” Edgerson gulped.

“Could you recommend someone, Mrs. Crandall?” Angel cooed.

“Well, we like the Hartley people ourselves. If you’re just moving a short distance, that is. The Burdicks used the McCullen Warehouse people.”

“You saved her a lot of trouble,” Edgerson thought. “She was going to ask you that in a minute.Twin beds! Of all things, twin beds!” Angel stood up. “Would you like to look at the house now, dear, or come back tomorrow? It’s quite late, and we did promise to meet the Burrs.”

“Tomorrow,” Edgerson said.

“Will that be all right with you, Mrs. Crandall?”

“Well, yes,” Mrs. Crandall agreed.

“Then we’ll see you tomorrow… . Come, darling. I really think we’ve accomplished something!”

In the car, Edgerson drew a slow deep breath and said, “You little hellion!”

She grinned. “It worked, didn’t it?”

“It worked, but I’ve a mind to put you across those mythical twin beds and spank you.” Gnomes and pixies would have danced to her laughter. But then she was suddenly sober.

“This thing sounds ugly to me, Philip.”

“Why?”

“First, that letter. I received it Wednesday, the day she left. She must have written and mailed it Tuesday. Then, more important, why the sudden departure? If she’d known that they were leaving the city, she wouldn’t have written the letter at all. I never answer letters personally. When people write to my lovelorn column they expect to see the replies in print.”

Edgerson, silent for a moment, said, “Would it be all right with you, Angel, if I did a little detecting myself for a change? After all, I’m president of Trouble, Inc.”

“You’re not a very ambitious president.”

“I might surprise you.” He turned the car onto a main street. “The McCullen Warehouse is on Canal Street, isn’t it?”

“Yes. Why?”

“We’re going there. Between your nutty curiosity and my interest in any guy who smokes black cigs like Dubitsky did … I’ll never believe that guy’s really dead.”

It was a huge red-brick building growing out of the damp, sticky smells of the waterfront. Smith went in alone and was gone a half-hour. Returning, he had a triumphant smirk on his angular face.

“They didn’t move out of town,” he said. “Their furniture is in storage, most of it. A studio couch, two easy chairs, a table and a large double bed—not twin beds, Angel—were trucked over to this address as soon as the van reached the warehouse.” He passed her a slip of paper. She peered at it. “Gayland Avenue. That’s an apartment house district. Very snooty.”

“You know,” Smith said, putting the car in gear, “this is beginning to show signs of promise. Maybe your lovelorn wife was in trouble.”

G
ayland Street was in a district of fancy dress shops, delicatessens and pomeranians, and the figure on the slip of paper was the number of an imposing structure housing a nest of apartments. This time Angel refused to sit in the car while he investigated. She went with him up the gleaming steps into the hallway with its glittering brass mail-boxes, and she looked with him at the long list of names beside the long row of bells.

Bell number 17 had no name beside it, but Smith pushed it anyway. The studio couch, chairs, table and bed had been delivered to Suite 17.

He pushed again and frowned. “They don’t answer.”

“I’ve been wondering something,” Angel said.

“Yes? What?”

“If you were a young man fresh out of a job, Philip, would you feel able to afford an apartment in this neighborhood?” Smith shrugged. “If we wondered at all the queer things people do, we’d wind up in a chuckle college.”

“I’m serious, Philip.”

“So am I. They don’t answer.” Angel looked annoyed. She walked up two white steps and tried the door and it was locked. She said, “Damn!” and stood there glaring at it. All at once her eyes widened; she turned quickly, beckoned with an outstretched hand and said,

“C’m’ere, quick!”

At her side, Smith peered through the thick clear glass of the door and saw a man backing out of an apartment at the end of the hall. A suitcase lay beside the open door and the man was lugging out another. He closed the door and picked up both pieces of luggage and plodded down the corridor with them, staggering a little because they were heavy and he was a small, thin-legged, bald little lad without much strength.

“Plouffe, by gosh! Plouffe, of all private dicks.”

The little dick kept his head down until he reached the door, and by that time Smith had faded back on one side, Angel on the other. Plouffe put down his burdens, opened the door, held it open with a foot and picked up the suitcases. He squirmed out and the door clicked shut behind him. Then he saw Smith. He dropped the suitcases again and said, “Well, my, my! Look who is here!” Smith looked at the luggage. It was expensive but old. It was initialed.

“So you’re demoted to bellhop,” Smith said.

“Huh?”

“You make a very handsome bellhop, don’t you, Mr. Plouffe?” said Angel sweetly.

Nick Plouffe pulled a large moist handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his brow. He frowned, using his whole face, and said sourly: “At least I don’t have to give myself no fancy name like Trouble, Incorporated to get business.”

“Of course you don’t,” Angel said.

“And I ain’t a bellhop, see?”

“Of course you’re not. You live here.”

“Me? Live here? Say, are you nuts?”

“We’re looking,” Angel declared solemnly, “for my Aunt Agatha. Apartment eighteen. We have a key to Aunt Agatha’s apartment—she’s in Bermuda, you know—but no key to the door you’re leaning against. Could you let us in, maybe?”

Nick Plouffe blinked, registering suspicion. It was hard for him to register suspicion, or anything else, because his moist little face was small and V-shaped and not very elastic. He did his best, though, and then grumbled: “Well, all right.” He

fumbled for a key and unlocked the door.

“Thank you so much,” Angel cooed. “Come, John.”

She and John Smith paced down the hall without a backward glance at the suspicious Plouffe, and Smith said dryly, “There, my dear, is a scraping from the lowest stratum of the private detecting profession. Dumb but dangerous. A mouse, but a mean mouse. I met up with him on another case and caught him pretending to be a G-man. He asked me to promise not to tell on him. Did you note the initials on the two suitcases?”

“I did. M.A.B. and T.L.B.”

“The Burdicks.”

“Or a monstrous coincidence, because Plouffe came out of this apartment,” Angel declared, stopping beside a door, “and it happens to be suite 17.”

Smith glanced back, then, to make certain Plouffe had departed. Satisfied, he knocked. After a moment’s wait he knocked again.

“They don’t answer.”

“Perhaps we should tail Mr. Plouffe,” Angel suggested. “Or is it too late?”

Smith leaned against the door of apartment 17 and scowled at her. Scowled fiercely, because he knew from past experience that Miss Angelina Copeland—she had once been his secretary and had since become both the bane and the beacon of his existence—would talk him out of it unless he were savagely stubborn. “It’s too late,” he said firmly, “for absolutely everything except that drive into the country, that swim, and—”

“But tomorrow we start in again. Promise?”

“No!”

She rolled her eyes at the ceiling and tapped a toe on the tile floor. “No promise, no ride. It’s for your own good, darling. If I didn’t keep jabbing you, you’d turn into a Christmas card, and that would be such a waste of talent.” She took his arm. Smith sighed and went with her, muttering under his breath.

M
iss Miggsby, who wore large rimless glasses, placed a sheaf of papers on Edgerson’s desk and said, beaming: “We think, Mr. Edgerson, that these are simply delightful!”

Miss Miggsby had been Edgerson’s private secretary since the departure of Angel. She possessed some of Angel’s brains, none of Angel’s disturbing physical attraction, and was very, very easy on the nerves.

Edgerson gravely accepted the papers, glanced at them. The door of his private sanctum opened at that moment and he looked up. Looked up and groaned. He could tell by the grim little smile on Angelina’s lips that something had happened.

Miss Miggsby fled.Angel, radiant in something ultra modern and startlingly yellow, came around the desk and looked over Edgerson’s shoulder.

“Christmas?” she asked innocently. “Or just happy birthday to my ex-wife?”

He made sure that the door between Miss Miggsby’s office and his own was closed before he answered. Then he said firmly, “Whatever you’ve found out, it’s no go. I’m busy. I got in this morning with a prize hangover, thanks to your mania for daiquiris last night, and found enough work piled on my desk to keep three men busy for a week.”

“Oh.”

“Don’t
you
ever work?”

“Uh-huh. I just finished my column. Look, Philip. I’ve discovered the whereabouts of Margaret Burdick.”

“I’m not interested.”

“You’ve got to be. It’s terribly important.” She cleared a space for herself on his desk and sat down, swinging a most attractive leg.

“First I went over to the Glickman Company where Mr. Burdick—Teddy, that is—used to work. I smiled my prettiest and found out that Teddy wasn’t fired; he quit. He told them he had a better job offered to him in Boston. I deserve credit for that. The Glickman outfit is a big concern. They make chemicals and do a lot of work for the government. It took talent to go in there stone cold and come out with information.”

“I’m still very busy,” Edgerson muttered.

“So then,” she continued, “I went over to that little dumpy hotel where your little Plouffe lives. The clerk told me he was in, so I slipped into a phone booth and called him and talked the way you’d expect Margaret Arnold Burdick to talk—after reading that letter she wrote me—and I told Plouffe to come right over because I needed him. And he fell for it.”

Edgerson was not sufficiently surprised to show it.

“He fell for it,” Angel declared, “and when he left the hotel I followed him. He didn’t go far. He went to another grimy little hotel, the Lester, and that, Philip, is where Mrs. Burdick is hiding out.”

“You saw her?”

“No, but—”

“What about her husband? Is he living there, too?”