Strangers When We Meet, page 10
The chief sufferer would, of course, be the unfortunate Steve Gresham. Far from clearing him of suspicion, she had almost certainly added to the circumstantial evidence which was piling up against him; yet, at the time, she had believed that she was doing the best thing by remaining silent—the best and, indeed, ethically the only thing she could do, in the difficult situation that had faced her. Now, however, seated in Dr. Mason’s study with her untouched meal in front of her, Sarah was assailed by doubts. She poured herself a second cup of coffee and, her fingers not quite steady, lit a cigarette. She seldom smoked these days, but this seemed an occasion when, she thought wretchedly, the lapse might be forgiven, because she must force herself to concentrate, to decide on her next move. She ought, perhaps, to get in touch with Steve Gresham, tell him what had been said during her interview with Chief Hennessy and warn him that he was still under suspicion. He had been released and therefore would have returned to his hotel; if she telephoned him there, she need say very little over the phone, in case the police were having his calls tapped, but she could at least arrange to meet him somewhere in town.
There was a telephone directory in the study and, her mind made up at last, Sarah crossed to the big, untidy desk on which it stood, hunting among the stacks of files and case notes with which it was littered for a telephone directory. She found one eventually in a drawer and got through to the hotel, only to be told that Steve Gresham had left.
“He checked out about a couple of hours ago,” an indifferent male voice informed her. “And I don’t know where you can reach him, lady—I’m sorry.” The receiver at the other end was replaced.
Sarah hesitated, frowning, the directory still lying open in front of her. He had told her that he had found employment with an insurance company which, presumably would have an office in Granville, but as far as she could remember, he hadn’t mentioned the name of his company. The directory had a classified section and she started to look under insurance companies, but without success. There were a number whose telephones were listed, of course, but she could scarcely ring them all, asking for Steve Gresham—or at any rate, not now. She had one sick call to pay and must then go to Dr. Mason’s office to attend to his appointments, which didn’t leave her much time for fruitless telephone calls . . . but American telephone operators, she had learnt by experience, were invariably helpful and knowledgeable. It was worth a try, anyway. She picked up the telephone again and found, as usual, a helpful operator, who listened to her query and then said, “One moment, please.”
Sarah waited and, well within the moment for which she had been asked to hold on, the operator was back on the line again. “The Mercantile and Benevolent has a new office in the Bank Buildings on Carpenter Street. It’s not yet in the directory, but we have it listed, with a Mr. Stephen Gresham as representative . . . would that be who you want?” She supplied the number and asked whether Sarah wished to be connected.
“Yes, please.” There was a pause and she could hear the ringing tone, monotonously repeated, but, receiving no reply, was about to abandon her attempt when, with a sharp click, the receiver at the other end was lifted.
A flat voice that, for some reason, sounded oddly familiar yet unexpected acknowledged the call. It wasn’t Steve Gresham’s voice, but at first Sarah couldn’t place it. She said nothing and was thankful, afterwards that she hadn’t, for when the voice spoke again, she recognised it as that of Granville’s Chief of Police. She replaced her receiver, cutting him off in mid-sentence, and expelled her breath in a long-drawn sigh of relief.
“Dr. Hamilton—” she turned, startled, to find Miss Opitz standing beside her.
“Yes, what is it, Miss Opitz?”
“There’s a patient, Doctor, a Mr. French. He says he knows he’s out of office hours, but he’s wrenched his ankle and wonders if you’d strap if up for him. I put him in the waiting room and told him I’d ask you.” She added, as Sarah hesitated, “Doctor John sees patients out of office hours, if they’re genuinely in pain, and this one seems to be. Anyway, he’s limping.”
“Well, in that case I’d better see what I can do for him, hadn’t I?” Sarah got to her feet and the housekeeper went to open the door for her.
5
A SLIGHT, fair-haired young woman met Steve at the door of the lawyers’ entrance lobby and he was instantly struck by the fragile beauty of her face and by the friendly smile she gave him. She was dressed for the street, in hat and light showerproof duster coat, but on hearing his business, made no demur about returning to the outer office with him in order to arrange an appointment with Mr. Elbur Struthers, the firm’s senior partner.
Steve, learning caution now, told her no more than the fact that he was in need of legal advice, adding that he was a tenant on the eighth floor. The appointment noted, Mr. Struthers’ secretary accompanied him to the street door and he asked, on impulse, whether she could recommend a good place to eat.
Again she gave him her warm, lovely smile, which banished the sadness lingering in her grey-blue eyes.
“I’m on my way to lunch now, Mr. Gresham. I don’t know whether the place where I usually lunch is the kind you’re accustomed to, but it’s reasonably cheap and the food is excellent. Or at least, I’ve found it so, and it’s handy, just a block down the street.” She pointed and then, after a brief hesitation, offered diffidently, “Would you care for me to show you where it is?”
“I’d be most grateful,” Steve assented. “I’m a stranger here, you see, and to tell you the truth, I was beginning to feel kind of sorry for myself. You’re the first person who’s smiled at me all day.”
Her brows rose in a surprised curve. “I’m sorry to hear you say that. Granville’s a friendly little town.”
“Well, I’ll take your word for it. I seem to have stepped off on the wrong foot.” He sighed. “And I’ve been looking for lodgings. Those I like I can’t afford and the ones that are within my means aren’t very attractive. I’m opening up a branch of the Mercantile and Benevolent here, and . . .” as they walked, Steve told her of his plans, finding her a ready and sympathetic listener. It seemed the most natural thing in the world that, reaching the lunch place she patronised, he should ask diffidently if he might share her table. “Not if you’d rather not, of course, but I’d appreciate your company.”
She gave her consent, with a faint heightening of her colour, but insisted, a faint note of apology in her voice, that they should go Dutch. “I don’t want you to imagine that simply because I brought you here, Mr. Gresham, you have to invite me to be your guest.”
“I’ll take a rain check on that,” Steve promised. “Until we get to know each other better—as I hope we shall.”
“I hope so too,” she answered. “I . . . well, I have my troubles today, like you have, and so I’d be grateful for someone to talk to. I wasn’t looking forward to lunching alone.”
They found a corner table; the waitress came to take their order and they smiled at each other across the white-covered table. Steve became aware of her charm, liking the slender shapeliness of her figure, her small, well-kept hands and the tendrils of softly curling fair hair which had escaped from the confines of her hat. She wasn’t in the least like Janie—she was a good deal older, for one thing, and for another, she lacked Janie’s gaiety, her irrepressible spirits and ready laughter—but she suited his present mood. She was friendly and gentle, with a quiet sense of humour of her own, and her ready sympathy was balm to his wounded feelings, her interest in his affairs and her eagerness to help a badly needed boost to his shattered morale.
They talked, over a pleasant, well-cooked meal, as if they had known each other for years. To his amazement, Steve found himself telling her about the crash and the reasons which had led up to his coming to Granville as an insurance salesman. He sensed that there had been tragedy in her life, as well as in his own; it was written in her eyes, in the faintly downward curve of her lips in repose and even in her smile, but she made it clear that she preferred not to speak of this to him, and he did not press her.
Over coffee, he asked her name, astonished to realise that he did not know it.
She smiled. “How absurd! It’s Scott, Kathleen Scott, Mr. Gresham.”
He glanced down at her ringless left hand. “Miss Kathleen Scott?”
“No, Mrs. Scott.” She lowered her gaze, pleating the napkin in front of her with nervous fingers. “I’m a widow, Mr. Gresham, with a twelve-year-old daughter. My husband was killed in an accident, six years ago.”
“I’m sorry,” Steve said. “I wasn’t trying to pry.”
“Oh, I know that, so don’t apologise, please. It was a terrible shock when it happened, but I’ve got over it . . . as one does, you know, in time. You think you won’t, yet somehow you do, because you’ve got to go on living. You’ll find that out, too, Mr. Gresham—I’m sure you will.”
Steve hoped fervently that she was right. But with twenty-three human fives on his conscience and now this new nightmare concerning an unknown child . . . he mumbled something and then saw that his companion’s eyes were on her watch.
“I ought to go, I’m afraid. Mr. Struthers will be wondering what’s become of me.”
“Why, sure . . . I’ll walk you back.” He rose with her, picking up both their checks, but she shook her head at him and held out her hand for her own. Outside on the sidewalk, she seemed suddenly to come to a decision. Turning to face him, she said, “I’ve been thinking, Mr. Gresham. I know you’ve taken your room for a week, but if you find after that it’s . . . well, if you don’t really like it, I might be able to help you.”
“You might?”
“Yes. I keep house for my brother, you see, and it’s a large house, much too large, really, just for three of us. I’ve often thought that we might take a lodger, and if my brother was agreeable and if you saw the place and liked it . . . well, we might be able to do business.”
“Do you really think we might?” Steve was elated.
“I don’t see why not.” Kathleen Scott fumbled in her purse and, after some searching, brought out a printed card. “This is the address. Come round any evening and have a look at it. I’ll introduce you to my brother—he would have to approve, of course, since the house is his, but I’d tell him about you and I feel sure he won’t raise any objections. In fact I have to call him, when I get back to the office, so I’ll mention the idea to him.”
“Why, that’s wonderful! And it’s extremely good of you, when you know nothing about me. I—”
“Nonsense, Mr. Gresham.” Her voice was warm. “I know all I need to know about you, simply from talking with you. Besides, I don’t like to think of you, straight out of hospital and coming here as a stranger and then not finding a welcome. As I said when we first met, Granville is really quite a friendly little town, and I shall hope to make you believe that.”
“I’m beginning to,” Steve answered, “thanks to you.” His conscience pricked him a little, but, he told himself, within a week the police must surely realise that he wasn’t the man they were looking for, and Kathleen Scott needn’t know that they had ever supposed he was.
They entered the building and with a smiling, “Well, till three-thirty, Mr. Gresham,” she took her leave of him. Steve watched her cross the lobby, conscious of the return of his sense of loneliness and desolation, because she had gone, and not until the door of Struthers & Macklin’s outer office swung shut behind her did he turn, with a smothered sigh, and make for the elevator.
Reaching his own office once more, he set to work without enthusiasm on his unpacking, at first puzzled and then suspicious when he noticed that one or two things had been moved. His briefcase, for example, although still on the filing cabinet where he remembered flinging it carelessly when he went out for lunch, now lay neatly aligned with the top of the cabinet, with the zip closed. Since it contained only a few brochures and notes that Andy Kersten had given him, he hadn’t bothered to close it, he was almost certain. And the largest of the company’s packing cases, which had been securely nailed down when he had last tested it, now yielded to his first, tentative wrench at its lid . . . he sat back on his heels and swore vehemently under his breath. The police, devil take them, must have taken advantage of his short absence in order to subject his office and his papers to a search. Well, at least, he thought savagely, they hadn’t found anything, save proof that he was precisely what he had claimed to be . . . the newly appointed Granville representative of a nationally known insurance company.
Angrily he started to empty the opened packing case and was stacking the bundles of headed stationery and publicity handouts on the floor beside him when footsteps sounded in the outer office. They were heavy, purposeful footsteps and he spun round, startled but not entirely surprised to see, when the door opened, that they belonged to Granville’s Chief of Police.
Steve rose to his feet. “Well?” His voice was tired, but it held a defiant challenge. “So you’ve searched my office . . . what is it now, Chief Hennessy? Do you figure I’m engaged in some sort of insurance fraud?”
The tall policeman advanced on him threateningly, white with an anger he couldn’t suppress, his eyes blazing.
“Insurance fraud be damned!” he exclaimed. “I want to know what you imagine you’re going to gain by scraping acquaintance with my sister! Isn’t it enough, for any sake, that you stand accused of a hideous crime against her child—what more do you want, tell me that? Or do you have my sister in mind for your next victim? Because if you do, so help me God, Gresham, I’ll smash you right into the ground, if it’s the last thing I do!”
Steve stared at him in speechless bewilderment, too taken aback, for the first moment or two, to grasp what he was saying or to understand of what fresh crime Hennessy was now accusing him. Was the man mad, he wondered, had he suddenly gone out of his mind? But it took only a glance at the police chief’s face to see that he was in deadly earnest. Then what in the world . . . realisation slowly dawned and he felt his own cheeks slowly drain of colour.
“Your sister?” he echoed at last. “You mean—oh, for heaven’s sake, you can’t possibly mean that Kathleen Scott is your sister? The . . . the mother of that poor child?”
“Sure,” Mike Hennessy confirmed, with stark bitterness. “That’s exactly what I mean—and I’m waiting for an explanation. I warn you, it had better be convincing because I’m in no mood to listen to a pack of goddamned lies. I’ve had just about as much as I can take from you, Gresham.”
Feeling as if the ground had been cut from beneath his feet, Steve expelled his breath in a gasp of shocked dismay. His meeting with Kathleen Scott had been entirely by chance—yet another of those fantastic coincidences which he couldn’t possibly have foreseen and certainly couldn’t have guarded against . . . but would Hennessy believe him, if he said so? Would anyone believe him, in the circumstances? How could he expect them to when, even to himself, they passed the bounds of credibility?
He was silent and Mike Hennessy again moved towards him, big hands clenched at his sides, his mouth a grim, hard line. “Well? Do you have an explanation to give me? I’m waiting.”
Steve held his ground. “I’m sorry, Chief Hennessy, but I can only tell you the truth, whether or not you believe it. I hadn’t the least idea that Mrs. Scott was your sister—how could I have had, when I’m a stranger here? Still less did I imagine that she was the child’s mother. If I’d known that . . .’’he shuddered and spread his hands helplessly. In a low, shaken voice he added, “I don’t know what you take me for, Mr. Hennessy, but I swear that if I’d had the slightest inkling of who she was, I’d . . . oh, before God, I’d never have spoken to her!”
“And why did you?” the police chief demanded. “What possessed you to speak to her in the first place?”
“I figured I might need a lawyer, in view of what happened this morning. I saw the offices of Struthers & Macklin when I came into the building and the elevator man told me they were the best attorneys in town. So—” Steve sighed—“I called in there, on my way to lunch, and made an appointment to see Mr. Struthers this afternoon. Mrs. Scott made the appointment for me and then—”
“And then,” Mike Hennessy put in, with heavy sarcasm, “you took her to lunch, still not knowing who she was! Do you seriously expect me to believe that?”
“It’s the truth,” Steve answered obstinately. “Only I didn’t take her to lunch. I asked her to recommend a place where I could eat and she offered to show me the restaurant where she usually lunches herself . . . I’m sure that she’ll confirm what I’ve said, because of course she had no idea who I was. But I liked her, she was kind and friendly and I wanted to go on talking to her, so I asked her if she minded my sitting at her table. She didn’t even tell me her name until we were nearly through lunch, and then it didn’t mean a thing to me. No one told me any names, except yours, when I was at police headquarters.”
Mike Hennessy controlled himself with an almost visible effort. He said thickly, “Yet on the strength of that very brief acquaintance, you had the goddamned gall to suggest yourself as a lodger in my house!” He turned away, as if the sight of Steve’s face were repulsive to him, and started furiously to pace the floor. “For God’s sake, you’d have tried to live under the same roof as Mary Ellen! That passes all belief, why—”
Steve interrupted him, with the desperation of a drowning man clutching at a straw, “Be reasonable, Chief Hennessy— would I have done that if I’d known that Mrs. Scott was her mother? Or, come to that, if I were the guy who tried to abduct her, would I have taken the chance of letting her see me in your house?”
