Postmark Murder (27 page)

A kind of weary anger flicked her. She said with sharp impatience, “Charlie, you want me to give up Jonny. I won’t. Not now. I have to think, I have to decide what to do. I’m not going to talk about it!”

She rose. Charlie eyed her for a moment, then he put out his cigarette and rose, too. “All right,” he said, “I’ll not try to persuade you.”

She followed him into the little hall where the mirror reflected her own figure and Charlie as if there were four in the room instead of two. He took up his hat and overcoat and opened the door. Down the corridor the elevator stopped and two women, furred and gloved, emerged, chatting of a moving picture they had seen. They saw Charlie and Laura standing in the open door and instantly silence fell between them, their eyes sharpened. They walked on and around the corner toward another apartment.

The evening papers lay in the hall outside the door. They had now enormous headlines. The Stanislowski murder. Charlie bent, picked them up, and glanced at the headlines.

“The whole story’s here at last. They’re making a big thing of it. It’s the Stanley name.” He handed the papers to Laura. “I ought to tell you, Laura, that murder is something dangerous. Be very careful.”

Fear again touched her as if it had cold fingers. She said, defying it, “I’m not afraid. Besides Matt’s left me his gun.” She put the papers with their great black and red headlines on the hall table. She opened the drawer; Matt’s revolver gleamed coldly within it. Charlie lifted his eyebrows. “Good,” he said. “Well, good night, Laura.”

After he’d gone she bolted the door; she made one of her many reassuring trips back to the kitchen to be sure that that door was bolted and the chain was securely fastened across it. Jonny was sound asleep. She came back to the living room. The talk with Peabody and Charlie plucked at her nerves.

Perhaps all of them, Matt and Doris, too, believed that she must have some sound, some convincing reason, something other than weak and unreasonable instinct, for believing that the murdered man had been in fact Conrad Stanislowski.

And Peabody had said frankly that her belief in the first Conrad’s claims constituted a possible motive for murder. Surely Peabody would need more convincing evidence than that for a murder charge.

She took what comfort she could from the fact that Peabody had questioned Charlie about his lack of an alibi for the time of Conrad Stanislowski’s murder. He had questioned Doris, of course, and Matt. And he had questioned all of them concerning the murder of Catherine Miller. So that meant that Peabody did not have a strong case against her, Laura, didn’t it? He didn’t have a case which left no loopholes; he did not have what was called jury evidence. So that must mean that the investigation was not at an end. And that Peabody was not going to arrest her, not now.

Arrest
her,
she thought again, with incredulity. It was not possible. Murder wasn’t possible either, not in the orderly circumference of her life. Yet it had touched her twice.

The black headlines of the newspapers leaped at her. The story had blown up into full prominence. That was, as Charlie said, because of the Stanley will. She read her own name with again a feeling of disbelief, yet again the black and white of the newsprint seemed to set a kind of authenticity upon it, too. Miss Laura March had discovered the body. The murdered man had claimed to be a nephew of Conrad Stanley. Miss March had been his ward, according to the newspaper story, and the daughter of an old friend. She had been caring for Conrad Stanley’s great-niece, Jonny Stanislowski, the daughter of, presumably, the murdered man. His identity, however, was still not established. A date for the inquest would be announced, shortly.

There followed a résumé of the Stanley will: Doris’ name, Charlie Stedman’s name, her own. Matthew Cosden, Mrs. Stanley’s lawyer, had discovered the child, in Vienna, and brought her to Chicago. It was all at once an important, a sensational news story.

She thought of the glances the two women who had come out of the elevator had given her as she stood talking to Charlie; avid glances, sharp with curiosity.

There was, of course, no mention of the new Conrad Stanislowski. These were the early evening papers. That would probably be in the morning edition.

If the first man really had been Conrad, then of course the second man, the man who arrived that day, had to be an impostor.

Suppose he had murdered the first Conrad! Suppose he had taken the real Conrad’s papers to support his claim, a false claim, to Jonny and the money! But how would he have known about the Stanley will? How would he have known all the circumstances of the first Conrad’s life? How would he have known the background, which dovetailed exactly with the story the first Conrad had told, and with what they knew of him?

And besides, the second Conrad had a passport showing his own photograph. There was no question of that.

But more convincing than anything, Jonny had recognized him. I’m wrong, Laura thought; I’ve got to be wrong. But I’m not going to let him have Jonny. Not yet.

The little French clock had struck ten, its tinkling chime sounding hurried and breathless, as if fright were contagious, when Matt came. He brought with him a middle-aged woman, dark and heavy with a faint black mustache, who, he explained, spoke Polish. He introduced her; she was Miss Nowak. And she was to question Jonny. There was all at once a subtle difference about Matt.

It was nothing Laura could analyze; nothing she could describe, only a kind of tensely restrained energy, like latent electricity before a storm begins. He brought Jonny in, drowsy and pink-cheeked. And Miss Nowak questioned Jonny for over an hour.

Clearly Matt had coached the Polish woman in the questions she was to ask; they were in all probability much the same questions which Peabody had already asked Jonny through the interpreter he had brought. Again none of the questions produced any clear results.

The sturdy little figure in blue pajamas, red bathrobe and white bunny slippers began to droop against Matt’s arm. But Jonny still at certain questions lowered her head and replied,
“Nie—nie.”

At last Miss Nowak turned to Matt with a hopeless shrug of her massive shoulders. “She only says, no. She refuses to speak of her father. She refuses to speak in Polish at all, Mr. Cosden. That’s all she’ll say, no, no. Yet I’m sure she understands me.” She hesitated, looking at the child, and then said, “I think that you are right, Mr. Cosden. I think that she has been taught to answer no questions which have, shall I say, an official character. Perhaps it would be truer to say, no questions a stranger asks her. There’s really no more I can do. Whenever I mention her father—” She shrugged again.

There was a moment of silence. Jonny scuffed her white slipper along the rug. Her round little face, with the flush of sleep on her cheeks, was a guarded, complete blank, but as the silence lengthened, suddenly she gave a long, weary sigh.

Matt sighed, too, as if he was about to force himself to do something he did not wish to do. He gave a quick nod at Miss Nowak, rose, lifted Jonny in his arms and swung her up high. At the same time Miss Nowak burst unexpectedly into song. She had a deep, tuneless voice but the song was recognizable.
“Krakowiaczek cyją w Krakowem się rodzil—”

It was the song the man calling himself Stanislowski had sung that afternoon. But this time Jonny only gave Miss Nowak a bewildered, troubled look and buried her face in Matt’s shoulder.

He glanced at Laura over the child’s brown head. “It means ‘I’m a little Cracovian. I was born in Cracow.’ ”

Miss Nowak said in a pedantic way, “It is a Cracovian song, an old one, very well known. It sprang up during the division of Poland. Most people of my country know that song—”

Jonny buried her head still deeper in Matt’s shoulder, both arms tight around his neck. He gave her a reassuring hug and put her down. She stood, both chubby hands on the arm of the chair, looking down.

Matt turned to Laura. “What would you think of asking Miss Nowak to come here and stay for a few days? Perhaps, as Jonny grows accustomed to her, she’ll talk.” He hesitated. “It may not work. But it’s a chance.”

They had talked of an interpreter when Jonny came to live with Laura, thinking it might cushion the child’s first weeks in a strange country. Laura had been against it; it would have been a little difficult to find such a, person; and, in fact, after a few days had passed, Laura had found that instead of language being a barrier between her and Jonny, it had become a game, a point of mutual interest, something new and engrossing for Jonny to learn. A pleasant little pattern of conversation had developed at once; Laura had made it a custom to talk while she and Jonny were together, speak of what she was doing, call things by their names and point; Jonny would repeat after her, soap, sugar, dish, cat, drink, milk. Until the arrival of the first Conrad, language had not constituted a barrier between them.

But now it was very important that there should be no barrier at all. And Matt’s plan might work. Laura turned to Miss Nowak. “Will you do that, Miss Nowak? Can you come tomorrow?”

There was a gleam of interest in Miss Nowak’s eyes. Almost certainly Miss Nowak had read the newspapers. But she had lessons to give the next day, she said; they would understand that she was obliged to keep her appointments. “Perhaps the day after tomorrow? Would that help you?”

“That would help,” Matt said. He went with her to the door and gave her a bill which she tucked into a brown handbag. She turned back to say politely to Laura, “Good night, Miss March,” and she smiled at Jonny. “
Dobra noc,
Jonny.” Jonny’s eyes lifted startlingly blue, between black eyelashes. She did not reply.

The door closed and Matt came back. “Jonny’s tired,” he said and carried Jonny back into her little bedroom.

So I was wrong, Laura thought, again; the second man is the real Conrad. Only Jonny’s father could have known the gay, tender little game with the song, and Jonny had instantly responded. When Matt attempted to imitate it, she had been only troubled and silent.

It was true that the child was by then puzzled, tired, perhaps frightened by all those questions; she was also clearly on guard. Matt’s theory that she had been trained to answer no questions that in any remote way could concern her father was almost certainly the right one. But that afternoon, when the second Conrad had caught Jonny up and begun to sing, there had been no hesitation, no reluctance.

There were sounds of a romp going on in Jonny’s room. Jonny was shouting with glee. All her silence of the previous hour had gone; she was bubbling with her own special mixture of Polish and English conversation. Matt was apparently speaking for Suki —who was, as a matter of fact, quite capable of speaking for himself and usually did with great vehemence, but not in the English language. It was a long conversation which ended when Matt said in his natural voice and very firmly, “Now go to sleep. Good night, Jonny.”

Jonny’s high treble answered. “
Dobra noc,
Matt.”

After a few moments Matt came back. “She’s asleep.”

“That song—he
is
her father, Matt.”

“If he isn’t, somebody’s taken a lot of pains to coach him.”

“Somebody—what do you mean?”

“I don’t know, except if he’s an impostor somebody’s had to tell him about the real Conrad’s background, the circumstances of the Stanley will, even that little song.”

There was again a subtle flicker of excitement in Matt’s face. She said, “Matt, you know something. What?”

He looked at her for a long moment; then he came to her, put his hand under her chin and looked down into her eyes. “I’ve only got a sort of idea that this second Conrad is the impostor, the first Conrad was the real one, and so—” His face sobered. He straightened, shoved his hands in his pockets and said, “If I’m right, then of course the second Conrad’s appearance is significant, and very important.”

Something he had said to Doris over the telephone floated out of her memory. “It was in the cards, you told Doris that. You mean you expected another Conrad?”

“I thought it was a possibility. There must be some plan. Some focus—”

“But he knows that song, Matt. Charlie believes him. Doris believes him. Lieutenant Peabody believes him—”

He jerked around to look at her. “Peabody! He was at Doris’!

He talked to Stanislowski. Do you mean he’s been here again? What did he have to say?”

She told of the long talk with Peabody and the short one with Charlie. Matt listened, sitting opposite her in one of the lounge chairs, folding and refolding an empty book of matches.

He grinned rather wryly when she told him of Peabody’s reason for including Matt himself as a suspect. “He says that— that since you are going to marry Doris, her interests are your interests.”

Matt tossed the crumpled book of matches into an ash tray. “Peabody questioned me, of course. He has made no secret of the fact that he feels that anybody concerned in any way with the Stanley will is a suspect. But I didn’t know he suspected me of killing the man in order to marry money. I don’t have an alibi. I went Christmas shopping after I left here that afternoon. I didn’t go back to the office at all. Since I didn’t find anything that struck me as just what I wanted, I don’t even have a purchase or a charge account item to back me up. And of course it’s true that none of us really has alibis for the time of Catherine Miller’s murder.”

“He suggested,” Laura said in a small cold voice, “that someone already inside the apartment house might have been waiting for her when she returned.”

M
ATT SHOT HER A
quick glance. “It is far more likely that somebody followed Catherine Miller when she came back to the service entrance, close enough behind her to catch the door before it latched. Or for that matter whoever killed her could have spoken to her, made some excuse for coming in the service entrance. If she
was
murdered by mistake then she would not have known or suspected anyone.”

“Matt—who murdered her? Peabody seems to suspect you or me or Doris or Charlie, nobody else.”