Death of Cecilia, page 3
As he opened the door, he asked, “What was your other question?”
“Who was in charge of the Parsons case?”
He pulled down the corners of his mouth and his voice went deceptively mild. “A very efficient officer. Perhaps you know him? Lieutenant Henderson from Headquarters.” Behind the bland expression, his eyes had a schoolboy twinkle.
“I know him,” I said. “He’s my idea of dandruff.”
“Isn’t that queer! “Webster put his head back and rubbed his hand over his chin. “He heard that you might be retained by the Misses Parsons, and he made some comment that you always got in his hair.” He laughed softly. “Better treat him gently, Glenn. He might be useful to you.”
“Henderson’s as useful to me as a broken leg.” I was going out when I stopped and turned back. “How did he come to hear that I might be on this job?”
“Don’t know. I suppose the old ladies mentioned it.” He stood by the half-open door and added, “Let me know if there’s anything more I can do for you—before you reach the conclusion that you’re chasing a will-o’-the-wisp.”
I said, “Thanks for everything. And don’t worry about the things I chase—in or out of business.”
As the door was closing, he called out, “In case I don’t see you before then, Merry Christmas!”
“Same to you.” I went across the outer office and pushed through the wicket gate. There was no sign of the attractive Miss Colman, and I wasn’t too disappointed. She could wait.
The D.A.’s parting wish was running through my mind as the elevator carried me down to the ground floor and I went out into the blizzard. “Merry Christmas.” That made two in one day. The first one had carried a threat, and I’d have given a lot to know who the guy was.
Somebody had known that the two old dames had intended to call on me. They might have opened their mouths in a dozen places after Webster had referred them to me. My telephone caller had been too quick off the mark, but that made no difference to the present situation.
I turned up my collar and bent my head against the driving snow. Cabs were as scarce as modesty in a nudist camp. The subway was two blocks away. I wriggled my shoulders deeper into my coat, and joined the few passers-by hurrying in that direction.
And as I walked, I found myself instinctively looking behind, every few steps, and listening with a sense of strain that kept me on edge. Somewhere in New York there was a guy who considered me a gawdamned nuisance; he might be any one of the hunched-up pedestrians, their hats pulled down low over their eyes, who came and went like piebald wraiths in the swirling white fog.
It doesn’t pay to be careless in my business. A knife or a bullet in the back wasn’t my idea of a seasonable gift. And I wasn’t keen to let death take my holiday.
Chapter Three
We stood in the quiet sitting-room in silence for what seemed a long time. Everything was covered with a fine film of dust, and the air was stale, with a faint overhanging smell of flash-powder. If I’d been imaginative, I’d have said the place had the odour of death.
The furniture was cheap but comfortable. This had been meant to represent home to a couple of girls trying to get by in a big city. In front of the window, a tired evergreen plant wilted in an ornamental pot, gay with cubist colours; artificial flowers in a tall earthenware vase caught the light and vied with the bright reds and greens of the loose cushions on a couple of over-stuffed chairs. A photograph of a wedding group hung over the spindle-legged table, on which stood a tiny portable radio in an imitation leather case, and a reading-lamp.
Outside, the snow had banked high against the window, and the panes rattled in the gusts of driving wind. In spite of the steam heating, I felt’ cold—the cold that lays its chill hand on a room through which tragedy has stalked and left only the memory of voices and laughter and living things.
After a while I said, “This just as it was before—it happened?”
The stout, youngish woman with the restless hands moved uneasily, and looked up at me with morbid eyes. “Nothing has been touched, sir, since she—” Her voice was pitched low and she used words grudgingly, as though she were afraid of being overheard. “Her aunts said they would write to me about disposing of the few things belonging to her. Most of the furniture is Miss Hill’s—what there is of it.” She plucked nervously at her soiled, crumpled apron and kept darting little frightened glances at the half-open bedroom door. “I’ll be glad to get the place empty. The way it is, I get the creeps every time I’ve to pass the door.”
“When did Miss Hill move out?”
“The very next day, sir. She told me that she could never think of living on here after what had happened.”
“Do you know where she is now?”
“Yes. She phoned me her address soon as she fixed up in some furnished rooms.”
“Anyone else called on you to take a look at the apartment before I did?”
“No, sir. You’re the only one since the police left.”
“Sure?” I was walking slowly around the room while I was putting my questions, but I noticed that she was keeping close to the hall door. Judging by her scared expression, she expected a gibbering spectre to appear at any moment.
“Quite sure, sir.” She watched me draw the cheap drapes across the window and inspect the spot that had been marked “X” in the police picture. “I locked the door after they went, and the key hasn’t been out of my possession from that day to this.” Her features lifted in a twisted smile as she stared about her. “Who’d want to get in, anyway? There isn’t much worth stealing.”
“Just one more question,” I said, “and then I’ll let you get on with your work. I know you’re a busy woman.” By the look of the whole joint, she must have been busy playing Canasta.’ “Someone’s paying the rent until all this stuff’s taken away, I suppose? Who is it?”
“Miss Mary Parsons, sir, the older one, if you know them.”
“I know them,” I told her. “Thank you for being so patient. If you don’t mind, I think I’d like to take a look round on my own now, without troubling you any more. I’ll lock up, and fetch you the key when I’ve finished, if that’s all right with you?”
“Quite all right, sir.” She couldn’t seem to get out fast enough. “It’ll be a relief to be downstairs again. What with the snow and the wind and what happened in here to that poor young woman—” Her voice faded abruptly as the door closed behind her.
I waited until I could no longer hear her footsteps on the lino-covered passage, and then I took the flash-picture from my pocket. It showed the room I was in almost exactly as it was now, except that one of the chairs had been pushed closer to the window since it had been taken—that and the body of Cecilia Parsons lying nearly in the middle of the square, stained carpet were the only difference.
She had fallen on her back, and lay with one arm outflung. The other was close to her side, with the gun resting in the cupped palm. Her fingers weren’t clasping the butt; it looked like they had released their hold as she began to stiffen. The feet were pointing towards the outer door, and the head was in a line with the bedroom. Obviously she had been standing in the centre of the sitting-room when she died. There’s no accounting for the crazy things that suicides do, but I’d have felt more ready to be convinced if she had been found lying back in a chair. I couldn’t see this girl taking up the position she must have been in to have fallen where the picture showed her, if she had made up her mind to stick the muzzle of the gun in her mouth.
Attached to the photograph were two slips of paper. Ballistics Department reported that the bullet which had been extracted from the corpse was a .22. Tests carried out with the weapon—an English Webley—which was in the hand of the dead woman proved that the shot had been fired from that gun. Rifling marks were identical, and the indentation of the firing-pin on subsequent rounds also tallied.
The Medical Examiner’s report gave me a lot more to think about. The bullet had entered the mouth of the deceased at an angle of approximately 40 degrees from the horizontal, smashed two adjoining upper central incisors and passed in an upward and backward direction through the back of the mouth. In its further course it had fractured the anterior arch of the atlas, lacerated the modulla and had been deflected upwards on striking the posterior edge of the foramen magnum. It had finally lodged in the brain substance high in the skull, near the junction of the parietal and occipital bones. Death had occurred immediately. There were powder burns around the lips, and further traces of the discharge on the teeth and gums. Nitrate tests on the right hand of the deceased had revealed signs of exploded powder, suggesting that the weapon had been held by the deceased in such a manner as to point the muzzle towards her face. The position in which the gun lay when seen by the Medical Examiner bore out such a possibility. In the course of an autopsy, it was found that the deceased was pregnant, probably in the fourth month. In view of all the circumstances, the assumption of suicide was strongly supported by the medical evidence available.
That was the gist of what I re-read in the still, dusty sitting-room with only the flurry of snow against the window to keep company with my thoughts. I started walking aimlessly about again, but always I kept coming to a stop beside the dirty brown patch in the centre of the carpet beneath the single electric light. Had two people stood there on the night Cecilia Parsons died—or only one? Why were there traces of powder on her hand if someone else had held the gun? Why the burns on her lips? A suicide of this type puts the muzzle in her mouth; she doesn’t just point the gun at her face.
Maybe I was wrong. The telephone warning might have been merely a coincidence—or some damn fool’s idea of a joke. Even as I toyed with the idea, I knew I was kidding myself. The voice on the phone had been no joke; and there were too many “whys” about the shot that had killed Cecilia Parsons.
So far I had a cart-load of queries, in a case that was growing colder every hour that went by. Already I had a four-week handicap, and there was a guy anxious to put the skids under me if ever I got too close. It was an alluring prospect, all for the sake of a few bucks and the faculty of not being able to mind my own business. It had happened before.
When I had just about worn out the sitting-room carpet walking around and peering under or behind everything movable, I went into the bedroom and switched on the light.
There was the same fusty dead smell in there. One of the twin beds was unmade, with a hollow in the pillow where somebody’s head had rested. A couple of red smears stood out sharply against the white of the pillow-case. They could have been made by lipstick. And that would mean that the black streaks near them were mascara. Either Cecilia or her room-mate had taken a nap while wearing her war-paint. Since most dames scrub off their make-up at bedtime, it was safe to assume that the occupant had been Cecilia—it was she who had been in the apartment during the early evening.
Now I had something else to think about. In the police picture she had been wearing a fetching negligee, and I hadn’t noticed any mention of outdoor clothes. All I could see in the bedroom was a pair of soiled silk stockings hanging over a low chair that stood in front of a cheval mirror. If she had taken off her frock before she lay down—a sudden feeling of excitement swept over me, and I went hastily down the noisy stairs to the basement.
The stout woman looked surprised at my question, but she answered without any hesitation. Yes, Miss Parsons had asked about eight o’clock that night if the water was hot. She wanted to take a bath. What was she wearing? A dark blue dress with long sleeves and a high neck. Did she appear upset at all? No, if anything she had seemed to be excited, and was in good spirits. That’s what had made her suicide so shocking. Had anyone else asked about the dead girl’s clothes? No, I was the only one—and it didn’t make sense to talk about such things so long after. Why did I want to know? I made some excuse and thanked her. Then I went back upstairs.
In the clothes closet I found a long black woolly coat, a silly little black hat with a red feather curving over the crown, a dark-blue dress with long sleeves and a stand-up collar, and a pair of high-heeled black court shoes. And nothing else. A quick search in both rooms drew a complete blank. Unless Lorna Hill had taken the rest of her friend’s clothing when she moved out, all that Cecilia had had in her apartment the night she died was one complete outfit, minus a handbag—that had probably been carried away by the Homicide Squad along with the farewell letter, the fountain-pen, the gun and the box of shells. I wasn’t curious about gloves; they could have been in the handbag.
So the set-up on the night of November 18 was fairly obvious. And the only missing detail was bound to be around somewhere; all I had to do was to look hard enough.
I found it at the bottom of one of the empty drawers in the dressing-chest under some sheets of newspaper. It wasn’t much—but it left me in no doubt that the two old dames from Hopeville had been right.
A lot of things clicked into place with smooth precision as I went and sat down on the edge of the unmade bed and studied my find. My mental picture of Cecilia Parsons’ last few hours grew clearer every moment. The little square of paper in my hand was like a lens through which a lot of tiny trifles loomed up in startling perspective.
It was a baggage ticket, made out in the name of Parsons and issued by the Pennsylvania Railroad Terminus, for two grips on short-term storage. And the blue rubber date stamp was November 18. Nothing much on which to start a hunt for the slayer of the girl who had deposited the baggage—but it was enough.
I knew as certainly as though I had been present during the whole of the evening on which her short life had come to an end that the farthest thing from Cecilia Parsons’ mind had been suicide. The way it added up now was transparently simple.
She had been preparing to leave secretly, for reasons best known to herself, and she had waited until her room-mate had gone out before putting her plans into action. Then she had packed her grips with everything she possessed, except the clothes she proposed to wear, and left the house without being seen. A cab from the street corner had taken her to the depot where she had parked her baggage, probably verified the time of her train, and returned to her apartment. That much was merely inspired conjecture—the rest was built on solid fact.
Some time during the early evening she had taken a bath, put on her underwear, and lain down on the bed to rest before—before what? Suicide? It was absurd. The answer stuck out like a sore thumb. She knew she had time to spare before someone was due to call on her. The ashtray beside the bed held a couple of damped-out stubs, smudged with the same colour lipstick as the marks on the pillow. They told me that she hadn’t slept; there had been too much tension in the air to allow her to sleep.
The person she was waiting for must have arrived earlier than expected, otherwise she would have been fully dressed when she was shot. I didn’t think her appointment was the kind that called for glamorous step-ins.
After resting for a while, she had got up and started to write to the guy called Drake, who either owned or worked in Centre Garage, Hopeville. I had a darn good idea what she would have told him if she hadn’t been interrupted. In fact I had a lot of darn good ideas, but they didn’t answer one big question—or maybe it was two questions that looked like one. Was the person who had shot her the party she was expecting? That was the first half. The second half was more urgent—who was the man or woman with whom Cecilia Parsons had kept her last date?
Chapter Four
The girl in the doorway was beautiful. It’s a hackneyed adjective—Hollywood has flogged all meaning out of it with endless ballyhoo extolling wide-mouthed dames who show their tonsils in a crooning close-up while they flutter their foot-long fake eyelashes. What with cotton-wool to fluff out their dyed hair, plastered make-up, and falsies under their sweaters, a guy’ll soon need a medical certificate before he’ll believe what he thinks he sees.
But this one was different; she had what it takes, and plenty to spare. Not too tall, not too short; maybe five-five, and slim so that she could have been called thin except she was nicely rounded in the right places. She had dark hair and deep blue eyes—I thought it was a cute combination. Her cheeks were pale and slightly hollowed—any old-fashioned mother twenty years ago would have been feeding her up on beef extract. To me she looked O.K.; but then I’m not a mother and even my worst enemy wouldn’t call me old-fashioned.
Her lips were a very pretty red, although that’s nothing to go by nowadays. The old grey mare could have red, yellow or green lips if Farmer Brown was willing to spend a dollar in the local drug-store.
I stood staring at her in open admiration, and asking myself why I had to get mixed up in a murder before I could meet a tasty dish like this. She’d have been a nice Christmas present for a guy like me—or so I thought then.
When I didn’t say anything, she let me see her even white teeth in a nervous smile and opened the door an inch wider. “Yes? Who do you want, please?” Her voice would have been soft and pleasant except that it quavered a bit. Adding that to the unhappy look in her eyes, I got the notion that maybe she was scared about something.
“Miss Loma Hill?” I asked.
“I’m Miss Hill.” She wetted her lips, and her eyes had gone still and watchful.
“My name is Bowman,” I said. “I’m making some inquiries in connection with the death of a Miss Cecilia Parsons, and I thought you might be able to help me. I understand you and she were close friends?”
She took a deep breath, and some of the strain went out of her face. “Cecilia and I were friends, certainly, although not perhaps close friends—but won’t you come in?” She moved to one side.
I went past her into a room that was as much a setting for a girl like her as a pool-room is for a princess. The few bits of furniture had seen better days; the carpet had lost whatever dingy pretensions to a pattern it had once had, way back when Jefferson crossed the Delaware; a patch of damp near the window had caused the wallpaper to bulge like a wrinkled growth on the wall; and over the door, flaking plaster hung in fronds from the ceiling and fluttered in the draught from the ill-fitting window-frame. Speaking charitable, it was a dump—by comparison, the apartment she had shared with Cecilia Parsons was Fifth Avenue.
