Where Is Bianca? (7 page)

And—again, and again, and again—where was Bianca?

Corrigan's first impression of Peggy Simpson was on the negative side. His own taste in women tended toward female strength, and the Simpson girl was fragile, a pretty little thing whose prettiness seemed superficial, like a prop at a
bal masque
. Her one asset of genuine beauty was her hair, a thick honey-gold that to his practiced eye was innocent of dye or tint.

But her chief liability in his eyes was not physical. There was an eagerness to please about her that was almost fawning. Brown-noses were among Corrigan's pet dislikes. He especially disliked the female of the breed.

After the police matron made a discreet exit from the office at a nod from Corrigan, he offered Peggy Simpson a cigarette, lit it for her, eyed Chuck Baer to a chair beyond the girl's line of sight, and said, “Tell me about yourself, Miss Simpson.”

She seemed surprised. “About
me
? But I'm not important, Captain Corrigan. It's Noreen who is. She's the one with talent. It wouldn't make any difference to the world if I disappeared, but in Noreen's case—if anything's happened to her—there would be a real loss.” She had a fragile voice, too, with just the suggestion of a whine.

Baer's glance at Corrigan over the girl's head said: She's not for real. I don't believe it.

Corrigan said with a smile, “Let me be the judge of that, Miss Simpson. You're an actress, too, aren't you?”

“I want to be. Very much. I can't imagine anything more wonderful than being even a tiny part of the theater.”

It sounded infantile to Corrigan. He had nothing against the theater, and the hard work that went into it, but he had run across too many of the fringe groups that were drawn to it because it represented a dream come true. They had a need, not to fulfill, but to escape.

“How long have you known Noreen Gardner?”

“Oh, about six months,” the girl said.

“May I ask how you happened to meet her?”

“I first saw her in one of Frances Weatherly's plays. Have you ever seen a Weatherly play?”

“I'm afraid not,” Corrigan said.

“They're out of this world.” Which is why, of course, Corrigan said silently, you're attracted to them. “They cut right to the depraved core of what human beings really are. You come out afterward and the sunlight isn't quite real after what you've seen on the stage.”

“Were you in that play, Miss Simpson?”

She stared at him as if questioning his sanity. “
I?
Of course not. I'm not ready for a Weatherly play—I'm years away, years of study and soul-searching.”

“Soul-searching,” Corrigan said gravely. “I don't think I get that, Miss Simpson.”

“Oh, I'm so inarticulate! You see, Frances Weatherly gets so close to the
real
reality that she seems unreal to those who don't understand her. And that extends to the actors, too—those who aren't ready, I mean.” She went on and on. Behind her, Baer shifted his bulk restlessly.

“I take it that Noreen Gardner was one of the actors who
was
ready for a Weatherly play?”

“It was made for her, Captain Corrigan. She was
herself
. Such a wonderfully free spirit.”

“Hold it,” Chuck Baer said. “What is a wonderfully free spirit?”

Peggy Simpson turned all the way around to look at the private detective. “A free spirit, Mr. Baer, is a person who kicks over the silly rules that ruin the lives of ordinary people.” She was about to go on when Corrigan stopped her.

“If you weren't in the play, how did you meet Miss Gardner and become well enough acquainted to share an apartment?”

“Travers Proehl, the producer, was a mutual acquaintance. I come from a little factory town in the Midwest My father didn't understand or appreciate the things I wanted to do. We had terrible scenes. I finally took off for New York, met Travers Proehl, and paid him for dramatic coaching whenever he could spare the time. Through him I met Frances Weatherly and Noreen Gardner. I was so lucky. Noreen and I hit it off right away. It was she who suggested we share an apartment.”

“Who footed the bills?” Corrigan asked wearily.

The Simpson girl's brows drew together. “I did, of course. It was a privilege just to be near such a talent.” Incredibly, the girl began to cry. “If she's gone … her voice stilled forever.…” Corrigan could hardly believe his ears. As for Chuck Baer, he took out a cigar and began to chomp on it with disgust.

“When did you see Noreen last?” Corrigan said.

“Five nights ago.”

“Why didn't you report her absence sooner?”

“I didn't know what to do. I wasn't alarmed at first. Sometimes she spent a night or two with a man.”

“Any man in particular?”

“Travers Proehl, at least for a while.”

“Not recently?”

“She'd met some other man,” Peggy Simpson said. “I don't know who. She was kind of secretive and pleased about it. She said this new man was going to do big things for her in the theater. She'd developed a hostile attitude toward Travers and Frances. Travers didn't like it.”

“Oh?”

“He's very jealous. Noreen deliberately provoked him sometimes, just to get slapped around. When he … she.…”

“Yes, Miss Simpson?”

“When he slapped her around, she seemed to want to take her clothes off for him.” She flushed.

“Did he use a whip?” Chuck Baer growled.

The girl said stiffly, “I'm sure I don't know.”

“Did Noreen leave your place with Travers Proehl five nights ago?” Corrigan asked.

“No, she left alone. I think she was meeting the other—the new—man. Travers dropped in at the apartment later that night. He'd been drinking, and he acted—well—ugly. He said he ought to find Noreen and kill her, he'd be doing the world a favor. I was scared to death.”

“Because of his threat?”

“Well, of course! Wouldn't anyone be?”

“Then why didn't you report Noreen's failure to come home? I mean right away?”

“You misunderstand me. I wasn't scared that Travers would carry out his threat against
Noreen
. He always says things like that. I was afraid he'd start beating up on
me
. He's quite capable of it.”

Corrigan was getting tired of Peggy Simpson's egocentricity. “When did you get alarmed by her faliure to show up?”

“The third day. She'd never gone off so long without at least phoning me to do something or other for her. I looked for Travers and found him and asked if he'd seen her. He looked at me as if I were a bug.”

“Did he say he'd seen her?”

“He didn't say anything. He just got up and walked out of the bar.”

“What did you do then, Miss Simpson?”

“I decided to hunt up Frances Weatherly and ask her. It wasn't anything I looked forward to. Fran always makes me feel stupid and sort of—you know—Middle West.”

“Miss Simpson,” Corrigan said. “You sought out Frances Weatherly and you asked her if she'd seen or heard from Noreen. What did she say?”

It appeared that the playwright had a barn of a studio not far from Peggy Simpson's apartment in the Village. Peggy had gone there in fear and trembling and had been received graciously for a change. Apparently the Weatherly woman had always regarded Peggy Simpson as “being in Noreen's camp.”

“Noreen and Miss Weatherly didn't get along?” Corrigan asked sharply. Peggy Simpson's reply was that “geniuses clash.” He felt like throwing up his hands. They now had to listen to a rambling analysis of the difference between Frances Weatherly's temperament and Noreen Gardner's. It seemed that Frances was artistically demanding and Noreen hated rehearsals. Frances would insist on Noreen's coming to the Weatherly studio to go over lines and business endlessly, to Noreen's irritation. According to Frances, “You are a great talent, but you haven't any more discipline than a runaway express train.” Noreen felt that Fran was simply trying to make her life miserable. And so on and so on.

“But Noreen and Fran and Proehl made a tremendous combination. If only they'd managed to get Fran's new play in a Fielding theater uptown, man, would the critics have seen something!”

Corrigan tried once more to bring the girl back to the business at hand.

“You haven't answered my question, Miss Simpson. Had Miss Weatherly seen Noreen? Did she know anything about Noreen's whereabouts or movements since the last time you saw your roomie?”

“No,” the girl said. “In fact, at first Fran thought I was bringing her a message from Noreen. This was … let's see … yesterday. She hadn't seen Noreen in a week, she said. I explained that Noreen had dropped out of sight. She was very angry. Kept raving about Noreen's ‘irresponsibility,' things like that.”

“This new man Noreen had met,” Corrigan said, “the one who was going to do so much for her in the theater. Did you discuss him?”

“Frances knew no more about him than I did. We both thought that Noreen's meeting this man is what made her change her attitude toward all of us. Then people began to drop in—Vincent Lessard, Travers Proehl, one or two others—and Fran couldn't talk any more. Nobody was paying any attention to me, so I slipped away. Went home and—well—cried.”

You're a weeper, all right, Corrigan thought. He glanced over at Chuck Baer, who was making signs, thumb jerks, toward the door, with a scowl that said, “Get rid of this broad or I'll throw up right here.”

So, after eliciting the further information that, on reading the papers about the unknown girl found in the sewer, Peggy Simpson had decided to come to the police with her story, Corrigan got rid of her.

7

During her short residence in New York, Bianca Fielding Lessard had occupied a town house on the upper East Side.

Corrigan turned Car 40, NYPD, off Park Avenue onto a side street where a few genuine trees actually cast a little shade. Oh for a million bucks, he thought, as he nosed around a curbed brute of a Mercedes being worked over with a dust cloth by a uniformed chauffeur. Corrigan parked the police car before the entrance, and he and Chuck Baer got out and looked the building over.

The pile of gray stone looked like turn-of-the-century. Its façade had had a recent scrubdown. It oozed riches.

They walked over to the street-level door, a black, brassstudded monster, and Corrigan fingered the bell. A manservant in a white coat promptly opened the door.

“I'm Captain Corrigan. Mr. Lessard is expecting me.”

“This way, sir.”

They followed the man through a foyer displaying a few pieces of 19th century sculpture, and into a high-ceilinged living room. This room, too, had been done over, in cheerful colors, with light modern furniture. There were flowers on the mantel above the Italian marble fireplace. Even with the shutters closed and the artificial lighting, there was a feeling of airiness about it, and no pretentiousness at all. Corrigan was quite ready to leap to the conclusion that this was a reflection of Bianca Fielding Lessard, not the beautiful-eyed husband who rose to meet them. Lessard cheapened the room. He didn't belong here, Corrigan thought. He still doesn't.

“Drink?” Lessard said. When Corrigan and Baer declined, the man said, “If you don't mind.… Sit down, gentlemen.”

He opened a lowboy cabinet, took out a bottle of twelve-year-old Scotch, and poured himself a long one, neat He was sweating lightly. He drank the whiskey as if it were his best friend.

“This thing about the identification … Mr. Baer told me last night.… Quite a jolt, Captain.”

“Because your wife may not be dead?” Corrigan said.

He expected a hot denial. But Lessard had evidently prepared himself. “Of course we pay you people to be suspicious. No, that's not why. There are pleasant shocks, too, you know. Have you turned up anything on this Nancy Gavin?”

“Not yet.”

Baer said to his client, “Captain Corrigan passed the assignment along to the experts this morning. They'll start by finding out where and when she was born, and the sawbones who yanked her into the world. Eventually they'll be able to report what size shoe she wore and if she preferred chop suey to Bok Choy.”

“And, I hope, the name of the maniac who dropped Nancy Gavin into that sewer.”

“If she is Nancy Gavin,” Corrigan said.

Lessard looked blank. Then he paled slightly. He glanced from Corrigan to Baer and back again. “What do you mean, if? Is there any question about it?”

“In a case like this,” Corrigan said, “there are always questions, Mr. Lessard.”

Lessard's pretty face went from pallor to flush. “See here, Corrigan, I don't know that I can take much more of this! I went through the horrible ordeal of viewing that—that thing in your morgue and believing it once belonged to my Bianca. Then I was told that maybe a mistake had been made, that it
wasn't
Bianca's. Now you aren't sure it was Nancy Gavin's. What's the matter with you people?”

“We're not magicians, Mr. Lessard. Do you know a Noreen Gardner?”

Lessard, who had gone over to the lowboy to replenish his glass, hesitated in mid-stride. It was a very short hesitation, but it told the answer to Corrigan's question. Corrigan knew it, and Lessard knew it. Lessard said, “What's she got to do with this?”

“You do know her.”

“Well, yes.” He said viciously, “A nympho with sharp teeth. She appeared in Fran Weatherly's last play, the one that closed recently.”

“We understand she's on tap for Weatherly's new play, the one you favor putting into a Fielding theater.”

“Several people favor putting the play into a decent house.”

“Did your wife?”

“I didn't bother Bianca with a lot of trivia,” Lessard said pettishly.