The Unsuspected (2 page)

"It's a soundproof room."

"It is?" he said.

"He could have talked the noose around her neck," said Jane bitterly. "The man can talk'" She looked at her watch.

"But hanging!" he burst out. "Why not poison? Why not-"

Jane broke open a hard roll. "If the note he got her to copy happens to talk about hanging, as it did, then maybe he thought it had better be hanging." She put butter on the roll and then put the roll down on her plate and pushed the plate away. She put her fingertips to her temples. Tm not trying to believe this. If you really think I'm crazy, Fran, I wish you'd tell me so."

He said, "Honey, I don't know."

The waiter was getting nervous. Those two. They didn't eat. Now they weren't even talking. The man had looked kinda sad and tired when they came in, but now— Cripes, the guy was boiling. Whatever she told him, it sure made him mad. The waiter went over and got himself a drink of water, watching over the brim of the glass.

Jane whimpered, "I wish I hadn't said anything. Now I've got you upset, and what's the use?"

Francis turned his head and brought himself back. He'd been thinking, when they killed yours you killed them. That's the way it was in the war. But this was going to be different. He knew he had to get the anger swallowed under, and think about proof and stuff like that, think legal. Move slowly. Be sure. Put it in the department of the brain.

"Find out," he said aloud.

"The trouble is, I don't see how," said Jane. "Fran, I know there's something wrong. I know it as I know I've got a hole in the heel of my stocking, where it doesn't show. First I guessed and then I wondered, but the longer I'm up there in that house, the better I know it! I feel it! I smell it! And still I can't see what to do."

Francis beckoned and the waiter came sidling over. Take this junk away and bring us sandwiches and coffee. Any kind."

"First you think, 'Go to the police,'" Jane was saying. "All right. With what will we go to the police? I've thought and thought—"

"Walk in," he murmured, "and say, 'I'm Miss Wright's fiance and I don't think she committed suicide. I think she was murdered.'"

Jane nodded. "They'd say, 'Why?'"

"Naturally. So I say, 'Well, she didn't compose her own suicide note.'" He frowned.

"But they say," Jane took it up, “Who did it?' And you say, 'Why, that nationally known figure, Mr. Luther Grandison, the famous director, the man who staged
Dead Men Do Talk
with Lillian Jellico in 1920.'" She looked at her wrist. "Oh, quick, we're missing it. Tell him to ask the bartender. The radio. I want you to hear Grandison."

"You know what he's going to say?"

"Of course I do. But I want you to hear."

Francis hailed a busboy, and Jane gave the message. Francis said, "Where were we? The police were laughing."

 "Oh, they'd be laughing, all right," said Jane. "We say, 'We think he might have stolen some money from a ward of his, and his secretary found out and night have been threatening to expose him.' Then they laugh fit to die. They'd say, 'But Mr. Grandison made a lot of money in the theater before he retired. And in the movies. And his book.' They'd say, 'Prove it.'”

"Yeah," said Francis. His eyes had a kind of light behind them or deep within. "How are we going to prove it?"

"Well, there's a lawyer,” said Jane wearily, "who comes up once in a while. He takes care of everything. Grandy doesn't. I write all the checks to pay the house bills. Grandy signs them without even looking. He won't talk about money. He won't look at figures. He

pretends it's all so vulgar and distressing; says it affects his digestion. Says life should simply flow."

"Does he talk like that?"

"Oh, lordy, lordy, you have no idea how he talks."

"I've read his—"

Jane put up her hand. "Listen" The bartender had changed stations on the radio. Music was cut off. Instead, there was a voice. Jane's hand came down and her fingers fastened on his wrist. The place was quiet enough so that they could hear clearly. It was easy to hear and to understand that persuasive voice. If you began to listen, it caught you. It wove a musical snare for your attention, and then it spun a web of words to hold you, smooth words that came pouring without effort, pouring forth, delicately inflected, persuasive, fascinating.

"How many masks do we meet in a day?" the voice was saying. The cadences were full of regret and wonder, and a little relish. "How many ordinary human faces, two eyes, a nose and a mouth? The man on the bus, the clerk behind the counter, each has a secret.

And there are some whose secret is not innocent, but who must wear their masks until they die. I call them The Unsuspected."

Jane's nails went into the flesh on Francis' wrist.

"I myself know such a man." This was Luther Grandison speaking. This was his voice. "Yes, I know a man who has committed that gravest and most interesting of all crimes, the crime of murder, and who never has been suspected at all. No, he lives, and has lived

for years, wearing his mask, taken for one of us, ordinary, going about his daily business, and yet he did it! I say, he did it!" The voice fell. I say I know. I had better add that the authorities also know. But alas, such knowing is not legal proof." The voice was so

sorry. It was sorry about everything, but faintly pleased too.

  "You see, with all our cleverness, we do not know how to tear the mask from his face. And, indeed, were I to give his name, he might use the law itself to punish me for what he would call libel. And yet"—in a thrilling whisper—"he did it!"

A beat of silence. Then the voice said softly, and it licked its chops with relish now, "Oh, they are among us. The Unsuspected! There's many a murder, not only unsolved but unheard of, unknown . . . unknown. You may be sure, men and women have gone to their

graves, quietly assisted, with no fuss and no bother."

The voice died. It left its audience with that delicious little shudder that Luther Grandison knew how to give them. His famous trick of putting terror into the commonplace. It was like the little touches in his plays, the Grandison touches, in which he took the ordinary, and gave it just a little flip, and it was terrifying.

Jane opened her eyes. "That's Grandy. You see?"

Francis sat still with angry white face. "The Unsuspected," he murmured. "Has he got the crust to mean himself?"

Chapter Two

"Suppose I go to see this lawyer?" His voice was sharp and angry.

"You can't walk in there and say, 'Look, folks, I want to see all the dope on the Frazier fortune.'"

"The law could."

"The law won't!" she wailed. "He's unsuspected. And, Fran, if you try to stir up something that way, I can see what would happen. He'd be ever so gentle with you. But he'd treat you like a museum piece. He'd put you in his collection of psychopaths. By the

time he got through, everybody would be so sorry for the poor young fiance, unbalanced by grief."

"Like that, eh?" The rich purr of Grandy's voice hung remembered between them. "Well, let that go for a minute," snapped Francis. "Start another way. How did he do it?"

"He's even got an alibi," said Jane despairingly. "Althea was with him. I mean, she saw Rosaleen alive, and after that Grandy was with her all the time, until they found—"

"Althea saw her?"

"Well, heard her speak, anyway."

Francis' eyes lit again. "What if we could show the alibi's a fake?"

"If we could! Fran, do you think a private detective—"

Francis let his lips go into something like a smile. "I think I'll attend to this myself," he said.

Jane moaned. She took hold of his hand, but he twisted it around and patted hers reassuringly. "We're going to have to assume he did it," he said in a moment. "Because if he really did, in fact, in cold blood, then this Grandison is dangerous."

Jane agreed. "He's dangerous."

The waiter came with their new order. Francis bit into the sandwich. They were both hungry, suddenly.

"Could I get at those girls?" he asked her.

"Mathilda's drowned," said Jane, with her mouth full.

"She's what? How?"

Jane read his mind. "Oh, no, Grandy couldn't have had anything to do with it. She started out for Bermuda and the ship went down—oh, five weeks ago. They haven't heard a thing since."

"So she's drowned. That's the rich one?"

"Uh-huh."

"She was lost before this happened to Rosaleen?"

"Uh-huh."

"Who gets her dough?"

"He does."

"Grandison?"

"Yes, that's her will. Of course, they keep hoping Mathilda's still alive. They can't do anything about the money yet."

"Meanwhile, he still controls it?"

"Of course."

Francis thought awhile. "How can I get to Althea?"

"What do you mean, get to her?"

"Talk to her. Get to know her, Well enough to ask a lot of interesting questions.”

"You can't," said Jane. "There's no way." He looked at her. "Listen, Fran; in the first place, she's a bride. She and Oliver are still honeymooning. She sticks around their crowd, besides, and it's a closed crowd. Nobody could get in."

"Want to bet?"

"No, because I know. Grandy'd never bother with somebody just nice and ordinary and civilized and in between, like you, Fran. Somebody famous, maybe. Or somebody very humble. But not you. And, you see, if he didn't take you up, you'd never get to Althea."

"Is that so?" said Francis with a kind of mild surprise. "Could I get in there as a servant? I've never tried, but I don't doubt I could be a butler, for instance."

"No servants."

"No servants at all!"

"Not a one. He doesn't believe in them. He says they'd limit his complete freedom."

"No chauffeur, even?"

"Oh, no. He drives himself around in an old jalopy. He wears an old brown hat."

"I could be the gas man."

"Where would that get you?"

"Nowhere," he admitted. He drummed his fingers on the table.

"Fran," she said, "remember, I'm in there, after all."

"You lie low, Auntie Jane." He smiled. The absurdity of their relationship amused him once more. His father's baby sister, Jane was. His cute little Aunt Jane. "You keep your little old nose out of this. In fact, maybe you'd better not go back at all."

"Oh, don't worry. He thinks I'm a dumb blonde."

"Lots of people do, and they're so wrong," said Francis. "How am I going to get in there? Couldn't I pretend to be some famous character?"

"I doubt if you could hoax him. He's such a shrewd old—"

"Never mind. Would it be possible for you to lure Althea out to meet me?"

"Althea thinks the sun rises and sets with her Grandy," Jane warned him

"How about this Oliver? What kind of guy is he?"

Jane wrinkled her nose. "Oh, he's all right. He's pleasant. He's the kind of man who understands women's hats."

"Lord."

"Of course, he thinks Grandy s practically God. They all do "

"Maybe Grandy does," said Francis grimly.

They both drank some coffee. He tried again. "Could I hire myself out to that lawyer, get into his office?"

"I don't know, Fran, I don't think you'd find anything. Surely he wouldn't let there be records."

Francis shook his head. "How did Rosaleen find out?"

Jane looked blank.

"Instinct tells me I've got to get to know Althea," he insisted.

"But, Fran, how could I lure her out? What could I say? 'Come and meet somebody who thinks your guardian is a stinker'? And if you hinted anything like that, shed go straight back to Grandy—"

"Then you mustn't have anything to do with my meeting her," said Francis promptly. "I see. And yet I've got to get at her."

"You watch out for Althea. She's got silver eyes."

"Do you think," said Francis, and suddenly he looked very old, "that any woman, with or without silver eyes, is going to bother me?"

Jane drank some more coffee. Francis was looking down. She hated the drawn line of his cheek, the too-thin look of him. This wasn't the Francis she loved, who was sure of things, the one all other girls immediately assumed to be mysterious and exciting. He

wasn't mysterious to her, not even now. She was his little old Aunt Jane, and she knew what ailed him was only sorrow, and that bitter anger he was holding leashed and ready. And God knew what he'd been through in the war, besides.

But Fran, bitter and old, missing that something wild and nimble in his spirit, that quicksilver quality. She thought, outraged, He's only twenty-five. She babbled out loud, unhappily, "I'm not belittling your fatal charm, darling. But it's not a good moment to es-

tablish yourself as Althea's boy friend."

"Let it go," said Francis irritably. Then, in a minute, he lifted his head. "Suppose I were Mathilda's boy friend?"