Postmark Murder (15 page)

A feminine voice replied. It’s Doris, Laura thought, and opened the door, too quickly, for the woman, Maria Brown, stood outside.

She wore the same brown coat and black beret pulled over a short fluff of dark hair. Her face was pale; again she wore no lipstick. Without knowing it Laura made a swift move to close the door but Maria Brown was quicker. She slid purposefully into the hall. She closed the door firmly behind her. She said, “Is the child here?”

Her words were strongly accented; her voice flat and toneless; it was the voice of the woman on the telephone, there was no doubt of that. It was the way she had spoken to them, briefly, on the steps of the house in Koska Street. The light on the hall table cast a glow upward into her face. This time Laura scrutinized it, telling herself she must remember details, and this time it seemed to Laura there was something Slavic in her broad cheekbones and sallow skin. She took a step nearer Laura. “Answer me. Is the child here?”

Jonny. She ought not to have opened the door. It was too late to think of that.

She must keep the woman from seeing Jonny. She must also try to hold her, try to find out where she was staying, try to find out something about her. How? The telephone stood five feet away. Could she reach it?

The woman’s hands, in shabby black gloves,’ clutched her handbag purposefully, and she stared at Laura. And suddenly Laura thought, suppose Maria Brown has a gun in that black handbag. She knew that Laura could identify her; she knew that Laura had seen her as she escaped the house on Koska Street, and murder.

For the first time a sense of personal danger caught at Laura. Maria Brown moistened her pale lips. “Why don’t you answer me?”

“Where have you been?” Laura cried. “Where did you go? Why did you telephone to me?”

Maria Brown stared at Laura with fixed, unfathomable eyes and set her pale lips firmly. Her face had strongly marked features, deeply lined, yet nevertheless it was a young face. Talk to her, Laura thought, talk to her—and try to reach the telephone. She hoped that Jonny, attracted by voices, would not come running down the hall. She grasped for words. “You phoned to me, didn’t you? Did he tell you to send for me? Where did you go? The police are looking for you.” That was a mistake; she added hurriedly, “They think you may have evidence. Something you—you saw or—”  Her stammering words fell flat, came to a full stop as Maria Brown’s gaze did not waver, and certainly revealed nothing.

Finally the woman moistened her lips, and said tonelessly, “I know the police are looking for me. I read the newspapers. They will never find me. I have had experience. I know how to hide. The police—what are they doing? They search for me; I read that. But that is all. There is too little in the paper. It is too short. There are other lines of—of inquiry. That is kept secret. What do they believe? What do they suspect? Tell me—”

“I—I don’t know.”

Marie Brown did not believe her; her dark eyes searched Laura’s with frank skepticism. Talk to her, Laura thought desperately; she wished that Matt would come; he would know what to do. Be diplomatic, she thought; be cautious. “If you
are
a witness, Miss Brown, if you have any evidence, why don’t you tell the police? They won’t hurt you. They won’t do anything to you. Don’t be afraid.”

“Bah!” Maria Brown said. “The secret police! I know them. They’ll never find me.” Scorn flashed in her face. And then she saw Laura’s slight instinct of movement toward the telephone.

“Do not touch the telephone! Do not try to call the police. I tell you I will not—”  Her stocky body moved swiftly. She clamped one hand down hard on the telephone.

She must not show fear; try to reason, Laura thought, swiftly. And keep that implacable strong figure in the hall, away from Jonny. Somehow she made her voice steady and quiet. “You can’t hide forever. It’s better to come forward now and tell them if there’s anything you know. They think you may be a witness. He was alive when you telephoned to me, wasn’t he? And then he died—”

Jonny’s fluty high voice called suddenly and in distress from the kitchen. “Laura—Suki!”

The woman’s head jerked toward the kitchen, and Laura seized her by the wrist. Maria Brown pulled away with one hard motion, swung around to the door, flung it open and was gone, her heels thudding hard down the corridor.

By the time Laura reached the door, Maria Brown had already got to the elevator. It still stood at that floor, the door open, and Maria Brown slid into it and out of sight. Laura could see only her gloved hand pushing the signal button. The door of the elevator shut irrevocably almost in Laura’s face. And from the doorway of her own apartment Jonny wailed,
“Laura!”
A flood of Polish words followed, incomprehensible except in their tone of fright and distress. Laura ran back. Jonny held the kitten in her hands, and something was very wrong with the kitten. His little body was limp, his eyes blue slits, his mouth slack and half open.

Stop the woman, Maria Brown! How? Call the police! Call Matt—but first do something about the kitten.

She managed to look in the classified advertisements of the telephone book and find a nearby veterinarian. She dialed his number and told him about the kitten. She listened to his directions.

“Sounds as if the kitten has been accidentally drugged,” he said. “Give him some very strong coffee. Pour it by the teaspoonful, into his cheek. He’ll swallow some of it. If he doesn’t start to come out of it in a few minutes, let me know. I’ll come.”

She telephoned to Matt while she was making coffee, and Jonny, holding the kitten anxiously, stood beside her.

“Maria Brown!” Matt shouted. “Hold everything. I’ll be there as soon as I can make it!”

Somehow Laura contrived to reassure Jonny. Somehow she steadied her hands and drew the kitten’s little lips away and got a few drops of coffee into his cheek. His heart was beating slowly, but beating. She tried another teaspoonful of coffee. She stroked his throat gently. At last there was a faint swallowing motion. It seemed hours; it was in fact twenty minutes before the kitten sputtered, shook his head and opened his eyes to give them a blue dazed look. By the time Matt arrived he was on his feet wobbly and uncertain.

It was like Matt to take time to lift the kitten in his hands, to examine him, to comfort Jonny, to tell her the kitten was all right. He was all right, or about to be; he achieved a weak and hoarse purr as Matt stroked his throat.

And then Matt questioned Laura swiftly and telephoned to Lieutenant Peabody. Apparently Lieutenant Peabody was either angry or skeptical, or both. Matt said, “Well, that’s the way it happened. She gave no warning of it. She just arrived. … Miss March tried to question her.

No, the woman wouldn’t answer. The only thing she asked about was Jonny ‘Is the child here?’ … She asked what the police were doing. She said you’d never find her.

She said the secret police and she said she knew how to hide, so it looks as if she’s had experience, in Poland perhaps or—well, that’s what she said! … Well, then she heard Jonny’s voice and Miss March caught her arm, she thought she might have a gun. She got away. … There was no way to stop her, Lieutenant! …All right.”

He hung up, his face hard and white.

“He doesn’t believe it,” Laura said.

Matt hesitated for a moment. Then he said, “There’s a girl at the switchboard downstairs. How do you ring her?”

There was a house-number. Laura gave it to him.

“Hello,” said Matt, “hello. I’m calling for Miss March. I wonder if you happened to notice a woman in the lobby, a short time ago. She was dark and short. She wore a brown coat and a black beret. I see, thank you.” He put down the telephone.

“She didn’t see her,” Laura said.

Matt shook his head. “She said she was busy. And, of course, this is a busy time of day with lots of people coming and going and lots of telephone calls. I wish she had seen her.”

“Lieutenant Peabody will not believe me?”

“He’ll have to believe you,” Matt said and looked at Jonny and the kitten. “Now then, what’s the vet’s number?”

Again Laura listened while he talked to the veterinarian. He turned at last from the telephone.

“He says the kitten was drugged. Says it was a kind of sedative, very strong, sleeping capsules, for instance.”

“But I have nothing of the kind, Matt! There’s nothing he could have got!”

“What did he have to drink that was different? Who gave it to him? Has anyone fed him except you?”

“No, of course not. Oh, sometimes Jonny gives him a little milk. This morning he had his usual breakfast, some cat food, fishy. I threw out the can. There’s nothing in that, that could hurt him. He lapped a little of the milk and coffee from the thermos. You know. Jonny has chocolate from one thermos and I have a kind of cafe au lait from another, early in the morning—”

“Yes I know.” Matt said. He hesitated “Did you drink the rest of it?”

“No. I didn’t want milk this morning. I wanted real coffee—”

“Was there anything else at all that the kitten could have eaten?” There was something odd in his voice, something icy and angry in his eyes.

Laura said slowly. “Jonny gave him some cream from her oatmeal.”

“Jonny had the rest of the cream on her oatmeal, right? And there’s nothing the matter with her. You didn’t drink any of the milk and coffee from the thermos— Where’s the thermos?”

“I washed it. That and the saucer the kitten drank from but I—”  A strange and terrible speculation leaped from nowhere, stood clear and unavoidable.

M
ATT WAS ALREADY AWARE
of it; it was in his face, in his questions, but he didn’t know of a door which had closed at a time when two thermos bottles stood on the kitchen table. He said quickly, “What is it, Laura? What—”

“Last night I thought someone was here—I heard something—”

She told him of it, aware of the icy anger gathering in his face. As if to conceal it, so as not to alarm her, he turned abruptly away, went into the living room, walked the length of it, stood at the window for a moment, and then came back. He paused to stroke Suki; he said, “He’s all right now, Jonny.” The kitten lifted blue eyes, and purred and snuggled against Jonny’s shoulder.

“He’s going to make it,” Matt said. He sat down in one of the lounge chairs and stretched his long legs out in his habitual posture and stared at the rug. “Now, let me get this straight, Laura. That’s all you heard? Just the sound of the door closing? What time was that?”

“I don’t know. About eleven, I think. It seemed late. I was just about to go to bed.”

“You hadn’t heard any other sound in the apartment?”

“No, nothing. It doesn’t seem possible that anybody entered the apartment.”

“Was anything disturbed? Anything—taken?”

“No, nothing. Not so far as I know.”

He rose without a word and went out to the kitchen. Laura followed; he was experimenting with the kitchen door, opening and closing it, working the lock. “You’d better keep this bolted. Night latches are very easy to open. A piece of celluloid, a thin knife. Keep it bolted. Keep the chain on.” He put the chain across the door, and came back again to the telephone.

“What are you going to do?”

“Report this to Peabody.”

This time Peabody seemed frankly skeptical, and impatient. “No,” Matt said. “She didn’t see anybody in the apartment last night. She heard a door close but the thermos was on the kitchen table then. You’d believe it if you’d seen the kitten! The vet says he was heavily drugged. Obviously that was intended for Miss March, not for Jonny. The other thermos held chocolate in it. Anybody would guess that milk flavored with coffee was meant for Miss March and the chocolate for the child. It would be a logical guess. … No, she washed the thermos and saucer. … No, there’s no proof! But it happened and it shows that somebody wanted to—” Matt checked himself, with a glance at Laura, listened for a time and then said shortly, “All right,” and hung up.

Laura said, “He didn’t believe that either!”

“He’s going to talk to you about it. Look here, Laura. I don’t want to frighten you. But—”

“I know,” Laura said. It was a nightmare; there was no reality about it; yet, as in a confused and yet terrifying dream, a fancied voice may speak words that seem clear and significant, those words emerged. “It was meant for me.”

“If it was like that,” Matt said, “then there’s got to be a reason for it. It would be easy enough for anybody to get in that kitchen door and put stuff in the thermos bottle. It would be the logical guess that the thermos with coffee in it was for you, and the chocolate was for Jonny. Laura, is there anything that you haven’t told the police that would give them an idea as to the murderer?”

Murder, Laura thought—and attempted murder. But murder was for the newspapers, for other people. It had nothing to do with her! Yet murder had touched her when Conrad Stanislowski had come to her apartment. She had brushed its skirts when she entered the rooming house and found Conrad Stanislowski in that bare, brightly lighted little room.

“No,” she said. “No. I’ve told the police everything that happened. There’s no reason—there’s
no
reason why anybody would—would—” murder me, she thought incredulously; murder
me!

“You’ll have to accept the fact that it happened, Laura. If the small amount that the kitten lapped was enough to put him asleep for the day, there must have been a pretty big amount of it in the thermos.”

Even in the pleasant, orderly room, a kind of cold and terrible disorder seemed to make itself manifest, intangibly, seeping from somewhere outside like a chill little wind. That was fear.

She took a long breath. “There is nothing I know that threatens anybody, Matt! Nothing!”

He began to pace up and down the room, restlessly, hands thrust in his pockets. “Could there be then something you know and—and don’t realize that you know? That’s possible, isn’t it? Something which, put with something else perhaps, would add up dangerously to the murderer.”

Laura’s thoughts traveled again an all too familiar path, familiar and in its way clearly outlined, yet it was like a path winding amid dark and treacherous undergrowth. “No,” she said. “No.”