Postmark Murder (20 page)

He paused and looked thoughtfully at the window. But before Laura could speak, he went on. “The doorman watched her idly; he could not see her very clearly because of the fog but there’s a street lamp there. He says that suddenly she turned, as if she had forgotten something, and went back along the street beside the apartment and disappeared. She had not come into sight again by the time he finished his cigarette and went back inside the foyer; from inside the entrance he can’t see the bus stop. I asked him why he thought she had forgotten something and he said she seemed to look in her pocketbook and fumble about for a moment and then I gather made a sort of impatient gesture. In any event, he had the impression that she was one of the maids in the building, and that she came back, passed the corner and went out of sight, he thought, toward the service entrance. Now this service entrance, and this is important, is locked at eleven o’clock. That is, after eleven nobody can enter from the outside. However, the maids, or the engineer, janitors, handy-men—any of the staff for the apartment house—can get out from the inside; it’s one of those locks. But there was at that time, so far as we have yet been able to discover, no one about the service entrance, the hall there or the laundry, or any of the various utility rooms. There are dressing rooms and wash rooms, boiler rooms, the various rooms for supplies, storage lockers. The medical examiner says that Catherine Miller was killed several hours before she was found. He cannot specify the exact hour; it is his opinion, before making an autopsy, that she was probably killed before midnight. So as we have it now, the last person who admits seeing her was the doorman. He says that there were a few other people along the street, as usual. Not many. He does not remember noting anyone in particular. He says if anyone followed her, he didn’t see it.”

“But she was inside the basement—”

“I’m coming to that. The doorman goes off duty at midnight. He heard no sound whatever, that is, no scream or sound of distress, nothing that would have suggested investigation. He goes directly home, without changing clothes. Mrs. Grelly says that Catherine Miller had one of the few keys by which the service entrance can be. unlocked from the outside; the maid’s hours were irregular. Mr. Grelly travels a great deal and Mrs. Grelly goes with him. They have a dog. Consequently, during their absences it seemed desirable for Catherine Miller to have a key which would permit her to enter the apartment house at any time. So Mrs. Grelly asked for a key and the superintendent gave it to her. So you see, either the murderer followed Catherine closely enough to enter the service entrance at the same time she entered, or was already waiting in the corridor.”

“You said she was—strangled. A man—”

“Her murderer was not necessarily a man. There was a blow, a very heavy one, at the side of her head. The medical examiner says that she was struck by some heavy weapon and probably knocked unconscious, he believes, before she was killed. Then she was strangled. An easy murder in a way. A woman could have done it.”

The fog outside and the chill had crept into the room. Suddenly Laura shivered. Lieutenant Peabody saw her involuntary movement. “No, it isn’t very pleasant, is it? The medical examiner says that there were few abrasions on her throat, that apparently she did not struggle; and he believes the murder weapon itself to have been something like, say”—all at once he was watching her very narrowly—“a scarf, a silk scarf such as a man might wear. Or a woman might wear.”

“I—” Laura began and made herself stop; she would not deny until she had been accused. Peabody went on in a strangely dry, matter-of-fact way, which was, Laura then perceived, too dry, too matter-of-fact, as if it were deliberately chosen to mask an implacable hatred of murder—and murderers, “We found an iron bar, a lever which stood, as a rule, near the door. We have taken it to be examined, but I feel fairly confident that the microscope will show that that is the weapon with which the woman was struck. Yes, Catherine Miller could have been killed by a man
or
a woman. The actual murder was done by a scarf. But perhaps the murderer knew that the iron bar stood by the door. Did you know that, Miss March?”

“No!” Laura cried. “No!”

“I wouldn’t expect you to say that you did. Probably we will never know why Catherine Miller returned to the apartment house; she may have thought that she had left the gas turned on the stove, there are a dozen explanations; Mrs. Grelly says she was very conscientious in all her work. But if she were followed back from the bus stop, if someone followed her into the basement corridor when she unlocked the door, it was, it seems to me, someone whom she had no reason to fear; that, however, is merely supposition. The corridor is very dimly lighted, although there are lights there all night. It seems clear that the murderer saw the iron bar, seized it and struck Catherine Miller. On such a night as last night almost anybody outdoors would be wearing a scarf.” He was speaking almost absently, as if debating and weighing facts. Now he gave a brisk nod. “Yes, it looks to me like what you might call an improvised murder. Done on the spur of the moment. But the murderer must have thought it was an extremely necessary murder. It’s an odd picture, isn’t it, Miss March?”

It was a terrible picture. Laura said, “Did you find the scarf? Was it still around her neck?”

Lieutenant Peabody shook his head. “The murderer would not be such a fool as that,” he said dryly, and all at once Laura knew why, when he had summoned her to the basement to look at Catherine Miller, he had first gone into her bedroom; he was looking for a scarf, hidden away but showing tell-tale wrinkles; he was looking for evidence, his trained mind noting a hundred details. He was asking himself whether or not she, Laura March, had gone out of the apartment, down the service elevator, and waited at the service entrance for Catherine Miller’s return.

She said, “I never saw Catherine Miller before. I could not have known, Lieutenant Peabody, that she was returning from the bus stop.” She seized the strongest argument in her defense. “And besides—I would have known she was not Maria Brown!”

Lieutenant Peabody rose and went to the window which overlooked Lake Shore Drive. He stood there for a long time, peering down through the fog. Then he came back. “I think you could have seen her, Miss March. There is a street lamp just above the bus stop and from this distance her figure would have been foreshortened, yet it might have looked, yes, it might have looked very much indeed like Maria Brown’s.”

“You said there were lights in the basement! I’d have seen her. I’d have known she wasn’t Maria Brown—”

“It’s very hard to say what anybody who has decided upon murder is really conscious of at that last, irrevocable, moment,” he said gravely. “It seems to me that ordinary perception, a normal sense of reality and self-preservation, must fail to exist for a murderer at the exact moment he strikes. Otherwise there would be no murders. Or course, a theory that you went down to meet her, thinking she was Maria Brown, would presuppose that you had made an engagement with her when she came to see you yesterday afternoon—”

“I didn’t,” Laura said, “I didn’t.”

“—and that Maria Brown herself failed to turn up. That—or of course mere chance—that is, that you only happened to see a woman you thought to be Maria Brown.”

“Lieutenant Peabody, are you accusing me of murder?”

“No. I’m not accusing anyone. But I've got to get evidence. You were here, in this apartment house; so you had opportunity. According to your own story Maria Brown came to see you yesterday afternoon; you could have made an appointment with her for her to return later; you could have told her to come to the service entrance; you could have been watching from the window. It’s nine stories down and it was a foggy night, but still if you saw a woman answering generally to her description, standing there under the street light, yes, you could have thought that was Maria Brown coming to keep her appointment. You could have had a motive; Maria Brown must have some sort of evidence concerning the Stanislowski murder. And you had means —the iron bar—”

“I want a lawyer. I want to talk to Matt Cosden.”

“I thought you would ask for him,” the Lieutenant said. “That’s all right with me. I’ll phone to him. I want to talk to Mrs. Stanley, too, and Stedman.” He said, with the disarming air of frankness he could on occasion assume, “I’ll tell you the truth Miss March, I’d like to keep this murder a secret. I’d like to keep it out of the newspapers. I’d like nobody, not even Cosden or Stedman or Mrs. Stanley, to know anything about it.”

“Why?” Laura said, astonished.

“For various reasons. However, it’s impossible. There are too many people who know about it. It’s all over the apartment house.” He shrugged. “Poor Catherine Miller,” he said in a somber voice. “Murdered because she happened to wear a brown coat and a black beret. Murdered because she happened to think of some small household chore.” His face again looked grim and angry. He said abruptly, “I hate murder. It’s my job and I hate it, and I—” He checked himself. He had been about to say, “I hate a murderer, too.” He went to the telephone.

He knew Matt’s office number without even looking in the little black book which he carried in his pocket. “I am at Miss March’s apartment,” he told Matt. “I want you to come over here, Cosden, at once. No, Miss March is all right and so is the child. It’s something else. Get over here fast.” He then phoned to Doris and to Charlie Stedman, saying much the same thing. He went back to the little room where Jonny and Sergeant O’Brien were still playing checkers. Laura heard a low-voiced conversation between the two men. She rose and moved restlessly about the living room, going to the window and peering down at the corner near the bus stop. It was true that, even in the fog, even at that distance, she could have seen the figure of a woman outlined by the street light.

Someone closer could have seen the color of the woman’s coat.

Certainly the bus stop was near enough Laura’s apartment house for anybody to put two and two together and think, “That is Maria Brown. She is coming from Laura’s apartment house.” Or—“She is returning to it.”

The Lieutenant came back into the room. “You say that you believed a man followed you the other day in the park. You say you did not see his face. Do you think that this man could have been Maria Brown dressed as a man?”

Laura thought back to that shadowy figure.

Lieutenant Peabody did not really believe that there had been such a man; he had been frankly skeptical about it; yet, clearly, he would not dismiss it without investigation. As she hesitated he said, “I realize that it sounds rather unlikely, a woman dressed as a man, but how about it? Could it have been Maria Brown?”

Was he, she thought, testing her, inviting her to throw suspicion upon Maria Brown?

It was probable that he simply wanted to know the truth. She said, “I don’t think so. I’m not sure.”

“Think, Miss March. Try to remember details. There are a hundred means by which you identify a person subconsciously, infinitely small details, so when you see a person a block away you recognize him without knowing how you do it. Didn’t you recognize anything about this person you say followed you? Didn’t you have a sort of—impression of say, familiarity, about him?”

“No, I didn’t, Lieutenant. I told you I couldn’t see him clearly. He never came near us. He never approached us. Yet—he was always there, behind us. He did remind me a little of Conrad Stanislowski, but I think that was something about the way he was dressed. His coat—hat—something foreign about it.”

She couldn’t tell even now whether Peabody believed her or not. The door buzzer sounded and it was Matt.
“Laura—”
 he cried, and then he saw her. He came to her in great strides and put his hand on her shoulder. “You’re all right!” He turned to Peabody, “Good God, someone in the foyer said a woman had been murdered! The place is crawling with police. What happened?”

Lieutenant Peabody told him.

Matt put his arm tight around Laura; he did not move or speak until the Lieutenant had finished the short and terrible recital.

Then he said, “So you are going to question all of us, aren’t you, Peabody? Naturally. Well, Miss March has an alibi up to eleven, or perhaps a few minutes after. That’s when I left last night.”

“That gives you an alibi, too,” Lieutenant Peabody said neatly, and added, “Up to that time at least; we don’t know the exact time when the woman was killed.”

“Sit down, Laura. You’re trembling.” Matt made her sit down in an armchair; he gave her a quick but absent smile. His eyes were cold gray. “That brown coat and black beret—it does look as if the murderer thought she might have been Maria Brown coming to see Laura. But if so, obviously her murderer had never seen Maria Brown herself.”

“Perhaps. Perhaps not.”

“Miss March had seen Maria Brown—”

“We’ve gone all over that,” Lieutenant Peabody said, but he went all over it again, slowly and deliberately. “So there it is, Cosden. You have to look at facts. And one of the facts is that this woman was murdered in this apartment house. Where Miss March lives. She was murdered within hours after Miss March claims that Maria Brown came here to see her.”

“She came here to inquire about Jonny—”

“How do you know she didn’t come here to blackmail? How do you know she didn’t threaten Miss March?”

Laura and Matt spoke at the same time, their voices mingled. “No, no,” Laura cried, and Matt said, “Laura told you the truth!” He paused, and then said more coolly, “Besides, Laura’s not a good blackmail victim. She’s got no money—”

“She’s got the child, Jonny,” Lieutenant Peabody said obliquely.

M
ATT GAVE HIM A
swift, slatey look. “No, you’re wrong, Lieutenant. It’s a nice theory: ‘I’ll keep quiet, if you see to it I get some of the money from Jonny’s estate.’ But Laura has told you the truth. That’s not what Maria Brown said.”

Lieutenant Peabody shrugged. “Cosden, you may as well admit the fact that stares us in the face. Up to now there has been a possibility, a rather faint one it seems to me but a possibility, that Stanislowski was, as you suggested, murdered by orders, and his murderer was an instrument of the government he had escaped. That, or his murder was the result of some kind of feud. You suggested that Maria Brown had murdered him, that she may have been the instrument, for instance. But if Maria Brown had been the instrument of a political party, if she had received orders to murder Stanislowski, while it is possible that her later— liquidation had been planned, her murderer would not have killed another woman! Her murderer would have known Maria Brown. There would have been no mistake about it. So that removes that possibility in my mind and I think in yours. We may as well accept that. I think we can check off your suggestion that Stanislowski’s murder was in any sense a political murder. At least, failing any further evidence. You suggest that Maria Brown may have been Stanislowski’s wife, and that that accounts for his murder, and her interest in the child. Do you still believe Maria Brown murdered him?”