Читать книгу The Scandal - Murder Mysteries Boxed Set - Mary Roberts Rinehart - Страница 5

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Miss Potter had not located the agent for Monica's Marriage by the time the office closed, and Forsythe felt more and more uneasy as he took a taxi home. It was raining. And he was relieved, in his state of mind, that he had that rarity among well-to-do young New York bachelors, a free evening.

He lived with his widowed sister, Margery, in an old high-stooped house in the Thirties, the home in which he had been born and which, except for some necessary modernization, was much as it had been built. Margery had refused to change it, or to move to an apartment.

"I like to eat looking out on the garden," she said, the garden being a euphemism for the small plot back of the basement dining room. "And I really can't see Thomas Carlyle with a sandbox and without his lady friends. It would be sheer cruelty to animals."

Forsythe always grinned at that. He was confident that due to Thomas Carlyle—so named because of Margery's reading of The French Revolution—the district was swarming with unwanted kittens, and he frequently stated to Margery that quite commonly, coming home late at night, he met stealthy gentlemen, carrying squirming bags and on their way to the East River.

He was not grinning that night, however. Margery, plump and easygoing, looked at him with a speculative eye as she came down the stairs.

"Tired?" she asked.

"Hellish weather," he said, handing his raincoat to a neat maid. "Thank God I'm in tonight. I need a cocktail. How about you?"

She agreed, and they went back to the big living room at the back of the house. He did not relax, however, while he mixed and shook cocktails at the portable bar. Being a wise woman, Margery simply waited, sipping her drink. She was ten years older than he was, and in a sense she had reared him. So not until he had downed his second cocktail did she speak at all. Then:

"What's bothering you, Wade?" she asked. "Anything wrong at the office?"

"No. Not exactly. Just something that happened. I didn't handle it very well. Maybe I'm scared. I don't know."

She gazed at him. He was not easily scared. In fact, she thought he probably never had been.

"What's frightened you?" she asked placidly. "Is it the Government? You're always jittery this time of year."

He hesitated, but having gone so far he went on, grimly.

"I let a girl leave with a husband who has a lot to gain if he can manage to kill her. If he knows what I think he may know."

"Wade! You didn't!"

"Well, what was I to do? Call a car and chase them? Notify the police? So far as I know he hasn't lifted a hand against her as yet."

Margery stared at him.

"I don't understand," she said. "Who is she? And why did she come to you?"

"She wants to make a will. Or she wanted to. I don't even know if she got home today. Maybe he sent the car over the Palisades somewhere."

"Perhaps that's only her story. Is she pretty, Wade?"

"How in God's name do I know? She's thin as a rail and she looked desperate. If it was acting it was damn good acting. Besides I knew the man in the war. He was a murderous brute."

He was about to make himself another cocktail when Margery stopped him.

"You don't need that," she said sharply. "You need what brains you have if you're really worried. Why not call up, if she has a telephone, and see if she's there?"

"And have him suspect who it is? He followed her to the office today. Potter got rid of him, but he was suspicious as hell."

"He wouldn't know about me. What's her name, and where does she live?"

"I don't know where she lives. She rushed out in a hurry. She's Mrs. Wilfred Collier, and if you remember Bill Blake from my college days, she's his younger sister, Anne. That's why she came to see me."

"Then she may be in the Social Register. The Blakes used to be, at least until the crash."

"Better try the telephone book," he said dryly. "I don't imagine Collier rates the Register, or Dun and Bradstreet either. But I'd like to bet the police have his record somewhere. Look here," he added in some alarm as she began to look up the number, "you might get her into trouble."

"Why?" Margery said practically. "If he answers, I can pretend it was a wrong number. If she does, you'll know she's all right. In the East Fifties, Wilfred Collier. That's it, isn't it? All right, and don't look as if you'd like to choke me. If I didn't know you better I'd say you'd fallen for the girl."

She dialed deliberately, to have a male voice answer in a loud bellow. "Well, what the hell is it?" it shouted.

"I'm very sorry," Margery said politely. "I'm afraid I have the wrong number. You are certainly not the gentleman I am calling."

The immediate reaction was a string of abuse, and she was slightly flushed as she hung up.

"If that was Wilfred Collier," she said, "I'd hate to meet him in an alley on a dark night, or at any time or place. He's raging about something." Then, seeing her brother's face, "But he can't have done her any real harm, Wade. If he had, wouldn't he be out somewhere, establishing an alibi, or whatever they do?"

In spite of his state of mind he smiled at this.

"Nicely reasoned, my dear," he said. "As a matter of fact, he probably doesn't know about the will, or anything else. Just now he's only suspicious and ugly. In a day or two he'll probably have dug up the whole story. Then there may be real trouble."

He did not elaborate on that. Dinner was announced and, with the neat maid serving, the talk was casual. He was aware, of course, of Margery's burning curiosity, but in these comfortable familiar surroundings some of his own anxiety seemed rather absurd. With the after-dinner coffee Tillie, the maid, was excused, and he sat back looking through the French doors at the wet garden, with its sundial in the center and its still bedraggled March shrubbery.

"Funny," he said. "I seem to have worked myself into a fit over a girl I saw but once before, and that was ten years ago. I danced with her at a prom, and she remembered it."

"Why wouldn't she?" Margery said proudly.

He grinned at her.

"She was pretty young, and Bill almost broke his neck showing her a good time. Then, before they went overseas, he brought this Collier to see her, and when he came back—Bill didn't—she married him. He was a bad egg, but there was no one to tell her. Now she has a boy, and you can imagine how things are when she's sent the kid to an aunt in Connecticut."

"She must have money, or why a will? The Blakes didn't leave anything."

He lit a cigarette before he answered. Just how much to tell Margery was a question. But she had a hard core of common sense and in the end he told her the story. Not too much, for fear of alarming her. He left out Fred Collier in France, merely saying he had known him there, but at the mention of the radio program Margery sat up.

"I often hear it," she said. "It's really good, Wade. And it's been going on forever. She must have made pots of money. Is that what the will is about?"

"I told you she has a child. She wants the money in trust for him. Collier's not to touch it. He doesn't know about it yet. She's used another name, and I gather she only works when he's out, which is probably most of the time. But something has happened to make him suspicious. He was certainly tailing her today."

It was a relief to talk about the case. Nevertheless, he was still restless when they went up to the living room. Usually on his few evenings at home he caught up with his reading, while Margery knitted and listened to the radio. But he could not settle down. There had been something almost sinister in the way Collier had held Anne's arm that morning and almost forced her into the car, and the thought that she was alone with him now, virtually at his mercy, was not conducive to peace of mind.

He took to pacing the floor of the long room with its faded Aubusson carpets and its comfortable Victorian furniture. His hands were in his pockets and clenched into fists until he realized it and drew them out. Margery watched him.

"Thinking of killing him yourself?" she inquired blandly. "I wouldn't blame you."

"It wouldn't be the first time I've wanted to," he said. "Mind if I go out? A little air will do me good."

She didn't mind. One of the pleasant things about Margery was that she seldom minded anything he did; a reason perhaps why a good many mothers of daughters resented her bitterly. But he had a faint qualm himself. He knew how she liked the few evenings he was at home.

He agreed not to stay long, and picking up his hat in the front hall stepped out into the night. The rain had finally ceased, but the gutters were still running and a passing taxicab splashed water from a puddle over the pavement. From the areaway below a light streamed out from the kitchen, and he saw Thomas Carlyle, daintily lifting his paws as he surveyed his sodden world.

Forsythe looked down at him.

"Not a good night for love, Tom," he said. "Better stay home for once."

Tom, however disdained him and, tail high in the air, moved away.

At first, Forsythe had no definite objective. It was not until he was well up Lexington Avenue that he decided to go on. The exercise plus the fresh air had their usual effect, and he began to rationalize his situation. Why get into what Margery would have called a tizzy because ten years ago a young girl with eyes like stars and fabulous lashes had gone to her first dance in a badly fitted dress, and had remembered him? Or had put her head on his desk that day and wept for her dead brother? And why in the name of heaven believe that her husband was potentially a deliberate, cold-blooded murderer?

He swung along briskly. The rain had swept the streets clean and even the air had lost its customary mixture of smoke and fog. He liked New York at night, the lights in the tall buildings where some late office worker or cleaning woman was busy; the shop windows extravagantly showing their prodigality of clothing, of food, of the vast resources of the country, as against the poverty of the Europe he had left after the war. But this last made him uncomfortable.

The poor devils, he thought, and was surprised to find that he had reached the street which housed the Colliers. He stopped at the corner. Why go on? She was certainly still all right. Sheer curiosity, however, decided him in the end, and he found the number only a block or two from the East River. The building was a small apartment of the walk-up type, but with a smartly painted red door and a general effect of being rather better than its neighbors.

On the ground floor the tenants were having a party. One of the windows was partly raised, and he could hear laughter and the clinking of glasses. But as there was no one in sight on the street he stepped into the foyer and looked at the cards above the bells.

The first floor was Kerr, Joseph H. The second, neatly typed, was the Colliers. The third merely said bluntly "Jamison," and the fourth was evidently empty.

He was still looking at the names when a small, middle-aged man, neatly dressed and carrying an umbrella, stepped in from the street.

"Looking for somebody?" he inquired pleasantly.

Forsythe had to think fast.

"I was trying to locate a family named Blake," he said. "The William Blakes."

The stranger stepped forward and peered nearsightedly at the board.

"Don't see them," he said. "They may have moved out. The fourth floor's empty. I've only moved onto the third floor a week or so ago. Name's Jamison. That's my card there."

"I see. Well, thanks, Mr. Jamison. It isn't important anyhow. I was just taking a walk. I can call Blake in the morning."

He was about to leave when a door slammed above and someone started down the stairs. Forsythe had only time to turn his back when Fred Collier reached the foyer. He brushed roughly past the two men and out into the street, and Mr. Jamison looked annoyed.

"That's my only objection to this place," he said. "The man who just went out. He lives just below me, and when he's drunk he's nasty. The floors are thin, and I can hear him quarreling with his wife night after night. Bellows like a bull. I'm afraid he'll hurt her someday. Nice young woman, too."

Forsythe had a wild impulse to take advantage of Collier's absence to try to see Anne, but Mr. Jamison showed no inclination to move.

"I'm a bachelor," he said. "I have no family left, so I go to the movies most evenings. They fill in the time." He looked up at Forsythe. "I was wondering—if you're only taking a walk, perhaps you'd have a drink with me. The stairs are bad, but I'm only two flights up."

"I might at that," Forsythe agreed, anxious to stay in the building if possible. "Sure you want me?"

"My dear boy, if you have ever lived alone you realize what a visitor means."

The apartment when they reached it turned out to be rather bare but extremely neat. Forsythe learned that all in the building were the same, a small living room, three bedrooms, a kitchen with a dinette, and a bath.

"A little large for me, of course," Jamison explained, bringing ice from the kitchen, "but you know how things are today. Anyhow, it will look better too when I bring in my books. I'm waiting to have the shelves built."

He was a talkative little man. He said he was a bookkeeper for a real estate company downtown, and seemed not to notice Forsythe's abstraction. Forsythe was listening for sounds from the floor below, and finally they came. The door banged again, and he could hear Collier's voice raised, although not what he said.

"You see what I mean," said Jamison. "He's been out for a drink or two and probably brought a bottle back with him. Now he'll be really ugly."

Forsythe sat listening. He could see Anne in the room below, watching the great hulking brute who was her husband, but if she spoke at all he did not hear her.

"Probably locked in her own room," said Mr. Jamison, an ear cocked to the floor. "The superintendent says they don't live together. Maybe things would be better if they did. No peacemaker like a pillow," he said, and gave a cackling laugh.

All at once Forsythe disliked the little man, with his prying and spying, and disliked him intensely. He got up abruptly.

"Well, thanks a lot," he said. "My sister will wonder what's become of me. That was good Scotch, Mr. Jamison."

Jamison smiled.

"I don't drink much, but Dawson's is good Scotch. By the way, I don't think I know your name."

"Wade," said Forsythe, and got out as fast as he could. He would have stopped on the second floor on his way out, but Jamison was seeing him off from his landing. There was nothing to do but go on and out.

He slept badly that night, but when he reached the office the next morning he found Miss Potter waiting for him.

"Found the agent," she said, placing a neatly typed memorandum in front of him. "Got it from some clerk or other at the sponsor's. It's a cereal company, and her name's Simmons. Martha Simmons. That's her address there. She was kind of upset when I called her. Said she had an ironclad contract, so just to make it interesting I said there wasn't such a thing. She almost bit the telephone."

"Thanks, Potter," he said. "That's fine. I'll ring for you a little later. If a message comes for me put it through, will you?"

When it did come, however, at eleven o'clock, it was disappointing. Anne's voice was tense and hurried.

"Listen, Wade," she said. "I'm at the grocer's. Fred's outside, watching for me. I've just seen him. I don't dare to come to your office today."

He swallowed his disappointment.

"It's important. I needn't tell you that. But it's more important to know that you're all right."

"Of course I'm all right," she said, a little wearily. "He was bad last night, but he still doesn't know anything. He found my typewriter, so he thinks I'm writing a book. And he's afraid I'm getting a divorce. I'll come as soon as I can, Wade."

He worked on the tax return of the corporation the rest of the morning, indicating among other things that its salesmen itemize their expense sheets. His heart was not in it, however, and after a quick lunch he went to the address Miss Potter had given him for the Simmons woman. It was in a midtown office building, and he found her name on the directory. Her offices were on the seventh floor, a small anteroom with a covered typewriter which looked as though it had not been used lately, and beyond it a somewhat larger room, with a desk, a safe, a row of steel files, and two or three plain chairs.

Miss Simmons was behind the desk. A carton, which had contained coffee, and crumbs and waxed paper indicated that she had just finished a frugal meal, and he felt rather puzzled. After all, the agent's percentage of the Jessica Blake income over the years must have been substantial, but there was no evidence of it here, nor in the woman herself. Martha Simmons was a woman in her late thirties, rather slovenly in appearance but with a pair of very sharp eyes. She surveyed him without interest until he gave her his card.

"A lawyer!" she said. "What on earth have I done?"

He smiled.

"Perhaps you know that better than I do," he said pleasantly. "Personally I doubt if you've done anything actionable, but it makes things rather confusing. It's the Jessica Blake matter, Miss Simmons."

She gave him a hard stare.

"So what about it?" she said, her voice cold. "It's the way she wanted it. I told her at the start it was silly. She had some idea of making a man out of that hulk she married, as if even the Creator could do that! He's a total loss, if you ask me." Then she brightened somewhat. "Don't tell me she's come to her senses and is getting rid of him."

"I don't know about that," he said. "Actually, she wants to make a will."

She was jolted by this, profoundly shocked. She went pale.

"A will? For God's sake, why a will?"

"She didn't say, but I understand she has earned a rather large sum from her program." And when she merely nodded: "You see, there's a slight complication. The money was deposited under a pseudonym. That's a fact, isn't it?"

She had pulled herself together somewhat, although she was still uneasy.

"I've told you she wanted it that way. I can show you the bank deposit receipts if you like."

She got up and going to a steel file brought out a bulging folder.

"She's made plenty," she said dryly, and shoved it across the desk to him. The receipts were there, made to the account of Jessica Blake, and she watched him as he went over them.

"She left them here," she said. "Afraid her husband would find them. I wish to high heaven he'd never come back from the war."

He smiled, remembering the times he had wished the same thing.

"Well, that's out of our hands," he said. "The thing to do now is a simple matter of identification. I expected her today but she couldn't come. She says the checks were made out by you and deposited to the Blake account, so we'll need you, of course, at the bank."

She nodded dully.

"Does this mean the end of the program?" she asked.

"I don't see why. It's up to her, of course. I gather she's rather tired of it."

Her mind, however, seemed to be far away.

"Why does she want a will?" she asked. "Is she afraid of Fred Collier?"

"Most people with a hundred thousand dollars or more have wills, Miss Simmons."

"I suppose so," she said, her voice bitter. "Isn't it just my luck?"

"I don't see how a will affects you."

"I'm not talking about the will," she said hastily. "She's my best account, what with television and everything else. And it's a success, Mr. Forsythe. It's made money for years and it still goes on. What's the matter with her? Why not just leave Collier, if she's afraid he'll kill her?"

Forsythe managed a thin smile.

"I don't think it will come to that. Has he ever been here, Miss Simmons? Is there any way he could know what she's been doing?"

"Not from me," she said promptly. "Her identity is the best-kept secret in radio. She never goes to a rehearsal, she never comes here. Do you know where I meet her, Mr. Forsythe? In Central Park. Snow or rain, cold or hot, that's where I meet her. When the kid was young she brought the scripts in his pram, and believe me, one or two were wet in those days! She'd pretend to show him to me, and I'd sneak them into my muff, or what have you. Tie that if you can."

"It sounds unusual."

"Unusual! It's crazy. Don't think I just sit here and collect my commission. Know anything about radio? She's good, but who cuts if the script's too long? Who sits at rehearsal day after day? I do, Mr. Forsythe. I do."

He felt rather sorry for her as he left. He thought his call had been a considerable shock to her, although he could not imagine why. The bank deposit receipts were in order. What really startled him, however, was the amount of money at stake, enough incentive for any crime. Even murder.

He went back to his office to work that afternoon, but his feeling of apprehension remained. Suppose he went to the police? They would laugh at him, of course. Unless they had something on Collier. Anne had started to say something about his business of secondhand cars, and then checked herself. She had said, "Sometimes I wonder—" Wonder what? Was she afraid he dealt in stolen automobiles, had them painted and with new license plates shipped them out of town? Collier had done something like that in France and narrowly escaped court-martial for it.

It was unfortunate, when he finally settled down, that he opened the red-bound book at a section entitled Base Period Catastrophe.