Postmark Murder
Authors: Mignon G. Eberhart
Mignon G. Eberhart
A MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM BOOK
ONE
M
ATT STOOD AT THE WINDOW
, looked out at the gray lake, the gray December sky and talked of fear. “Fear is a virus,” he said. “It’s a creeping paralysis. It stops thinking. It stops action. In the end it destroys the heart and soul.” His rangy figure, his black head were outlined sharply against the gray light beyond him. There was a bitter anger in his voice, anger at the injustice of a world which can make a child its victim.
Laura glanced uneasily at Jonny. The child was listening too. She sat very still in an armchair which was too big for her, so that her feet dangled above the rug. She looked, now, very American in her short white socks and black-strapped pumps, her simple, blue wool dress with its pleated skirt and white round collar. Her smooth brown hair was parted in the middle and two fat braids ended in neatly tied red ribbons. Only her Slav blue eyes and the generous breadth of the cheekbones in her round little face suggested her Polish blood. Her eyes were suddenly very grave, watching Matt. Her lap was full of a tangle of new hair ribbons, yellow and blue and green and red, which Matt had brought her, and her square little hands were quiet, too, holding the ribbons.
The kitten sat beside her, a watchful regard on the ribbons. His eyes were as blue as Jonny’s.
Laura said, “Careful. She’s beginning to understand more English than we think.”
“I know.” Matt swung away from the window and came back to them. The slatey look left his eyes when he looked down at Jonny. He gave her a gay, reassuring twinkle. “Everything is all right now, Jonny. Good. Understand?
Dobre.
”
Jonny’s grave gaze searched his face for a moment. Then some inner secret alarm, which his voice when he spoke of fear (rather than the words of which she understood so little) had seemed to rouse, quieted. It was as if she had asked a question and he had answered it promptly and comfortingly. Gaiety came back into her face like sunshine.
“Dobre,”
she said. “Good.” The kitten made a dab at a ribbon, and Jonny laughed.
Matt said, “Well, I’ve got to be on my way. What do you want for Christmas, Jonny?”
“We mustn’t spoil her,” Laura said, but knew that she was smiling at the child as fondly as Matt.
“No fear of that,” Matt said, rather shortly. And, of course, he was right. They knew very little really of Jonny Stanislowski’s short past but they knew that in all probability it had not included gaiety and fun, walks along the lake and visits to the zoo, hair ribbons and Siamese kittens and all the little treats and surprises Matt arranged for her. Matt brought her some sort of present almost every day, and now Jonny seized upon the gaily wrapped box with confidence. It had been that which had brought forth his outburst of anger that afternoon. Jonny had run to the door to meet him. She had flung herself upon him; she had chattered in her own rapid, excited mixture of Polish and English, which was as a matter of fact mainly Polish, only studded by the few English words she knew but lighted by her gay, expressive face and gestures. Then she had gone through his overcoat pockets confidently in search of her present. She had found there the package of ribbons. She had opened it laughing and triumphant; it was a game she and Matt understood.
As Matt watched her his mobile Irish face had sobered. “Can you imagine that, Laura, a month ago! She’s a different child.” And then unexpectedly he had talked of fear, fear which can infect even an eight-year-old child.
Jonny understood about Christmas; she and Laura and Matt had all talked of it, Laura and Matt searching for words in the Polish dictionary with which Laura had supplied herself when Jonny was placed in her care, but baffled as usual by the pronunciation of the mysteriously placed consonants, resorting to English and to what Matt called sign language. Matt had told Jonny Christmas stories, with the child listening as intently as if she understood every word of them. He had recited “The Night before Christmas,” prompted, when memory failed, by Laura. Jonny had painstakingly recited it after him, a phrase at a time, pronouncing the strange English words with great care. She was delighted with the names of the reindeer and repeated them over and over, slowly and tentatively at first, then more confidently, “Up Donner, up Blitzen—”
She laughed at Matt now. “Saint Nich—o—las—” she said, carefully dividing the syllables.
“Right,” said Matt. “Old St. Nicholas is coming down the chimney with a bag full of presents. You wait and see.” He touched the child’s brown head, tweaked the square little chin, then went into the hall, got his hat and coat. Laura and Jonny followed. Matt said, “If it is a nice day tomorrow we might go to the zoo again. How about it?”
Jonny said clearly, her high childish voice vibrant with confidence and delight, “Bears.”
“Okay, honey, the bears it will be. And hot chocolate in the little restaurant in the trees.” Matt opened the door of the outside corridor and looked down at Laura. His eyes were suddenly very blue and dancing. He said unexpectedly, “You are a honey, too. Did that ever occur to you? See you tomorrow.”
He was off down the corridor toward the bank of elevators. Laura closed the door slowly—and something very gay and yet rather mysterious went out of the day.
She stood for a moment in the small entrance hall watching Jonny who now was making a game with the kitten, dangling a red ribbon and laughing as Suki darted at it with swift, sepia-colored paws.
Matt loved Jonny and Jonny loved Matt. And the moment little Jonny Stanislowski had walked down the gangway of the plane from Vienna, clinging hard to Matt’s hand, but with something sturdy and self-reliant about the small figure, too, she had walked also into Laura’s heart.
Perhaps she reminded Laura of her own childhood, not too far away, when Conrad Stanley—born Stanislowski—had been her only friend. So it was of course Laura’s duty to offer to see to Jonny temporarily, until something could be settled, for Laura, young as she was, had been named by Conrad Stanley as one of the trustees for the perplexing Stanislowski provision in his will. It was also her duty to take the child into her small apartment, if only to discharge in some small measure the deep debt of gratitude she owed Conrad Stanley and consequently to his little great-niece.
The circumstances in which little Jonny Stanislowski had come so unexpectedly to live with Laura were simple. Conrad Stanley, dying, had left a very large fund to his nephew, Conrad Stanislowski, living in Poland. All efforts to communicate with Conrad Stanislowski had failed, but his child, little Jonny, had been found and brought to America.
Doris Stanley was the obvious person to see to Jonny; she was Conrad’s young and lovely widow. Doris quite frankly had not wanted her. Charlie Stedman, who was Laura’s co-trustee and an old friend of Conrad Stanley’s, lived a comfortable bachelor existence at his club; clearly it was impossible for him to undertake Jonny’s care. Matt would have liked to take Jonny, but again it was not practicable.
Matt was not married; he was a lawyer, his office in the Loop; he was young, he had a small but growing practice; he lived in a hotel apartment. If he had taken Jonny it would have involved a troublesome business of finding a housekeeper and, indeed, a different and larger apartment. The practical problems of undertaking a child’s care were difficult to solve. But it had been Matt who found Jonny and brought her to America, for he was Doris Stanley’s lawyer.
He had once been engaged to Doris, before her marriage to Conrad; he had known Doris for many years, but he was her lawyer, too. When Conrad Stanley died, three years before, Doris had instantly turned all her affairs over to Matt. And that of course had involved Matt in the chore of carrying out the provisions of Conrad Stanley’s will. It had proved to be, in fact, a rather onerous chore for all of them, Laura and Charlie Stedman and Matt, that is. Doris, quite comprehensibly, had not been much interested in finding Jonny’s father, Conrad’s nephew, and certainly not much interested in Jonny.
But they had all met the plane, Laura, Charlie and Doris, riding to the airport in Doris’ luxurious, chauffeur-driven car. There had been a little discussion as to what to do with the child. Doris had said flatly that Jonny should be put straight into a boarding school; she had indeed made some preliminary arrangements. Charlie had debated it, as he always debated anything, and then said that that might be the best solution. Laura had thought of her own small apartment and the tiny extra bedroom across the hall from her own; it would be easy to transform that room into a child’s room with gay chintz on the bed and at the windows, a small chair, a little table, shelves for toys—her thoughts swept irresistibly on. However, she told herself firmly, it wasn’t possible for her to take Jonny.
Laura was a secretary for a law firm; she had got the job immediately after Conrad Stanley’s death. She worked for no particular member of the firm or staff; her services and those of several other trained secretaries were called upon as and when needed. It was consequently a busy and exacting sort of job, interesting in its variations and rewarding as a challenge. But the hours were long. She was away from home all day, leaving shortly after eight in the morning, coming home in the crowded bus which stopped eventually at the corner of Lake Shore Drive, a half-block from the towering apartment house. She reached her own apartment if she were lucky at about five-thirty. She was proud of her little apartment; it was small and inexpensive but it had light and air and sunshine and a wide view of Lake Michigan, and more than anything it was home, the only real home Laura had had since she was a child, almost as young as this strange little girl they were going to meet. But there was no place in it for a housekeeper as well as Jonny; besides, it would be almost impossible to find exactly the right kind of housekeeper, a motherly, sensible woman they could trust with the child. No, she couldn’t take Jonny.
The three of them stood in a little group, watching the plane land. It was a bright, windy day. Doris’ exquisite profile was almost buried in her furs; her smart black hat hugged her blond hair. Even there, in the windy, chill space at the gate, the scent of a perfume like carnations in a summer garden drifted like a fragrant little cloud from the handkerchief in Doris’ handbag as she took out a compact and scrutinized her lovely face in the tiny mirror. She moistened her pink lips and smiled, closed her handbag and watched the incoming plane.