Murder a la Richelieu (American Queens of Crime Book 2) (3 page)

It is possible for a woman of dubious reputation to live at the Richelieu year in and year out without receiving more than a blank stare from permanent guests like myself. As a rule, however, such people become discouraged much sooner than that. We of the closed circle present too unified a front for them. I have seen more than a few quail and take to flight under our silent treatment.

None of us had cared a great deal when Stephen Lansing took Lottie Mosby for a whirl. She was a silly little piece. It was not her first indiscretion, and everyone knew that her husband was a boor when he was drinking, which he had been doing steadily for some time. Nor had anybody objected to Stephen Lansing’s brief affair with Maude Crain. She was a thin intense brunette who fancied herself the hotel siren. We had all been glad to see her get her comeuppance for once.

But Polly Lawson was something else again. Polly belonged to the inner court. She was, by way of Mary, one of us. For Polly Lawson to allow herself to be picked up by the flashy young man who was at that moment the Sheik of the Richelieu was treason in high places, and none of us could afford to overlook it.

I did not wonder that Mary looked ill. I felt slightly ill myself. I had had a bit of a weakness for Polly, with her flyaway red hair and her sweet, wilful mouth and her green-flecked, gay blue eyes.

I had known she was a little minx, but I had believed there was no harm in her outside of youth and high spirits. Now I was being forced to revise my opinion, and it stung. Howard Warren looked stung also as he rose from the table, leaving his dessert untouched.

He had been quite desperately in love with Polly. I suspected he still was, but he was the type to cut off his right hand if it offended him. He did not once glance in her direction as he strode toward the door, but her shrill mocking laughter pursued him, for I saw him wince. I could have shaken the girl, and I suppose I looked it when I stared at her, because her lips curled and she laughed again, but not before I’d seen her eyes – and they were not mocking; they were full of tears.

It was a stifled exclamation from the next table that distracted my attention. I turned and raised my eyebrows. Lottie Mosby always lunched alone, her husband being employed as a clerk in a large sporting goods house downtown. I had never liked either of the Mosby’s. They were common; no other word will express it.

Of the two, although she was a cheap young flibbertigibbet who went in for sex novels and loud dresses and coarse perfumes, I preferred the wife. At least she did not befuddle what brains she had with liquor. Just now I even felt a little sorry for her. Her small over-rouged face was puckered up as if she were about to cry. Following her glance I perceived that Mr Stephen Lansing was ushering Hilda Anthony into the Coffee Shop.

I have said that women of questionable reputation seldom stayed long at the Richelieu. The Anthony creature was the exception to prove the rule. I understand she once said that it was like running the gauntlet to walk through the lobby of the hotel in front of ‘The Knitting Brigade,’ by which she meant me and my closest friends I have no doubt. Nevertheless, she stayed. Seemingly social snubs ran off her the way an umbrella sheds water.

She had come to town originally for a divorce, attracted by our new state law which requires only a three months’ residence to procure a legal separation. She came from New York where she had been a successful gold digger. She made no secret of the three husbands she had already separated from large alimonies. With all her faults she was appallingly frank. She did not deny that she was thirty, that she blondined her hair, and that her gorgeous figure had been her fortune.

She was a thorough adventuress, as we all recognized from the first and as she made no effort to conceal. I myself heard her say once right out in the lobby that she was out to feather her nest and she did not in the least care how she did it. The only mystery about Hilda Anthony was why, having secured the divorce she came for, she remained in town.

There were no gilded playboys in our little conservative city whom she could pluck. After the fine birds she had bagged, the men she met at the Richelieu were small change. Nor did she make any effort to inveigle them, which was still more surprising, it seemed to me. She was like a buccaneer who had suddenly paused with one foot in mid-air for no adequate reason. One or two of the more charitably disposed had suggested that perhaps she had seen the error of her ways and reformed, but there was no hint of ashes and sackcloth about Hilda Anthony, nor did I think that particular leopard would ever change its spots.

She did look startlingly like a leopard as Stephen Lansing pulled out her chair for her that day, or a lithe, beautiful tigress with a tawny coat and malicious yellow eyes. “You’re too sweet,” she drawled, gazing up at him through her long artificial black eyelashes.

“It’s sweet to be sweet to you,” he murmured caressingly.

It occurred to me they were well matched, those two. I remember thinking he was a little like a beast of prey himself. I shuddered when I thought of frivolous little Polly Lawson in his clutches, and it gave me a feeling of warm satisfaction to recall that I had seen him on three separate occasions attempt to insinuate himself upon Kathleen Adair, only to have her look through him as though he were so much air.

I glanced into the mirror at the side of my table. The Adairs always sat behind me, but I could see them reflected in the glass.

The mother was toying with a dish of lemon pudding. She never ate with any appetite. Like young Howard Warren, the girl had left her dessert untouched. She was looking at Stephen Lansing from under her lashes, and her eyes were wistful, as if the man attracted her against her will, as if she could not keep from watching him.

When he leaned nearer and smiled into Hilda Anthony’s yellow eyes Kathleen caught her breath, and for a moment her face puckered as Lottie Mosby’s had done.

I can’t remember when I have ever felt more irritated. I glared across the room at the man. I am afraid I looked bloodthirsty. The Adair child was too nice to lose her heart to a cheap philanderer, I thought peevishly. To my astounded sense of outrage the young man caught my eye, lifted his glass, and with an impudent smile toasted me silently before he emptied the glass.

“Why-why the insolent young whippersnapper!” I exclaimed weakly.

Across the room Stephen Lansing winked at me.

My most intimate friends in the hotel are three widows, acquaintances of long standing. We have a bridge foursome which meets nearly every afternoon, that being one of the few interesting ways in which four elderly and unattached females can kill time. Although I do not approve of gambling we play for a quarter on the corner, merely to add point to the game, as I have explained to the members of my church circle.

I recall that on this day it was Grace Jernigan’s turn to have us in her room. In fact, as I came out of the Coffee Shop after lunch she was complaining to Pinkney Dodge, the night clerk, because her card table had not been returned since it was borrowed for a lotto party in the parlour.

“I didn’t present it to the hotel, you know,” snapped Grace.

“Yes, Mrs Jernigan,” sighed Pinkney.

“You’ll see to it at once?”

“Yes, Mrs Jernigan,” said Pinkney again.

He caught my eye and made a faint grimace. I suppose in twenty years anyone might grow a little tired of being hounded by the demands of peevish guests off duty and on, though somehow one never thought of Pinkney as having any emotions of his own. He was just somebody who was behind the desk at night to take your calls over the switchboard or hand you your key. I had never known him to obtrude his personality upon the guests, granting he had one - which seemed unlikely. His nickname Pinky was a natural outgrowth from Pinkney, but it suited his weak eyes and pinkish hair. In many ways Pinkney resembled a white rabbit more than anything else, even to the feeble twitching of his long upper lip.

“How’s your mother, Pinky?” I inquired as usual.

“The same, thank you, Miss Adelaide,” he said as he always did.

I shrugged my shoulders. I have heard it said that the way to live forever is to get an incurable disease and take good care of it.

For twenty years, that I know of, Pinkney Dodge’s mother had been in a sanatorium out on the edge of town, not expected to last the year out. He did not tell me, because he never discussed his personal affairs, but I heard somewhere that Pinkney had just graduated from law school when his father died.

If so, he had never practiced. I suppose he had to find a paying job in a hurry with a dying mother on his bands. It is quite likely that he believed it would be for only a short time. Nevertheless, he was still at the Richelieu, occupying a tiny back bedroom jammed up against the roof with meals free and enough of a salary to pay the sanatorium bills but not much more.

I had stopped at the desk to see if there was any mail in my box when Polly Lawson came dashing out of the elevator, almost upsetting old Judge Beecher, who glared at her.

“Sorry,” said Polly, making for the door.

“Where are you going, Polly?” demanded Mary Lawson, who was standing across the lobby drumming on the back of a chair with her fingertips.

“Out,” was Polly’s succinct rejoinder.

I saw Mary glance at Mr Stephen Lansing’s white and scarlet roadster, which was nonchalantly resting against the ‘Don’t Park Here’ sign before the hotel entrance, and then look quickly at me. I shrugged my shoulders, and, two spots of hectic colour in her cheeks, Mary called out to Polly in a sharper voice than she generally employed.

“You’ve forgotten your jabot,” said Mary.

Polly giggled. “You mean the pink jigger for my neck?”

“Your dress looks unfinished without it,” said Mary severely. “You can’t go out half done, Polly.”

“I’ll have to,” declared Polly with a derisive grin. “The pink jingaboo just ain’t, Aunt Mary. I looked all over for it.”

“Nonsense!” said Mary. “I saw it on your chifforobe just before lunch.”

“ 'Tain’t there now, ducky,” cried Polly and whirled through the revolving door like a dervish.

“These young things are so thoughtless,” murmured Mary to me as we went up on the elevator.

I compressed my lips, and she flushed.

“Perhaps I was mistaken,” she said defensively. “It’s possible the jabot went to the cleaners or-or something.”

I still said nothing, and Mary laughed, rather wearily, I thought.

“After all,” she said, “one’s neckwear doesn’t have wings.”

Mary has a two-room suite like mine on the fourth floor, except hers is on the front while I have the corner at the end of the back corridor. Old Laura, loaded down with carpet sweeper, dust mop, and scrub bucket, was just coming out of Mary’s bedroom when we came along. We both had to stop while the old maid got herself and her paraphernalia out of the way. That was how each of us came to spy at the same moment something frilly and pink lying on the foot of one of the twin beds in Mary’s bedroom.

“No,” I murmured dryly, “one’s neckwear doesn’t have wings.”

Mary’s lips trembled, and I put out my hand and took hers.

“Why don’t you send the child away for a while?” I asked. “Give her a chance to find her feet again in a new environment. A summer camp for girls or a cruise, say.”

Mary’s fingers were cold in my grasp and she looked at me with such despair, I started and dropped my handbag.

“On what?” she demanded.

I stared at her. “You can’t be financially embarrassed, Mary!” I exclaimed incredulously.

She released my hand as if it burned her. “No. No, of course not!” she stammered, but her eyes refused to meet mine.

“If I can help...” I began, only Mary with a queer choked sound had gone into her room and closed the door behind her.

I was puzzled and disturbed. So, apparently, was old Laura, whom I came upon halfway down the hall muttering to herself and shaking her kinky grizzled head from side to side.

“I ain’t no thief. I ain’t never stole nothing,” she was mumbling. “What would old thing like me want wid trick eyelashes?”

“What on earth are you quarrelling about, Laura?” I demanded.

She pouted her thick pale lips. “That fancy woman in 409 claim I stole something of her’n.”

Privately, I had the same opinion of Hilda Anthony, but one has to maintain one’s dignity. “Are you referring to Mrs Anthony?” I inquired sternly.

“I ain’t seen no eyelashes. I ain’t seen no little red tin box. I ain’t had nothing to do with it,” muttered Laura, rolling her eyes till they were all whites in her wrinkled face. “I ain’t no thief!”

“I can guarantee that,” I said soothingly. “If the lady has accused you of taking something of hers, she’s mistaken. Probably she’s mislaid it.”

“Is that so?” demanded a metallic voice.

I had not till that moment realized that we were standing practically outside Room 409 and that the door was slightly ajar. Sweeping it wide open, the Anthony woman confronted us, her yellow eyes blazing, looking more like a tawny tigress than ever in a cloth of gold negligee wrapped tightly about her body. Not until then had I fully understood the meaning of the word voluptuous.

“You may think it’s your privilege to poke your nose into everybody else’s business in this house,” Hilda Anthony informed me, “only I warn you, keep out of mine.”

“My dear woman ...” I began with, I’ll confess, considerable heat.

“Don’t bother to dear woman me,” she snapped. “Just stay out of my affairs, all of them.”

“In my opinion neither you nor your affairs would bear investigation,” I snapped.

“Is that so?” she repeated and whipped the train of the negligee about her like a cat lashing its tail. “Well, let me tell you, you...”

What had all the earmarks of a nasty scene was at that minute averted by a faint wail behind me. “You mustn’t quarrel! Oh dear, please don’t.”

I turned sharply. Kathleen Adair’s mother was standing on the threshold of her room next door.

“Mother can’t bear for people to be mean to each other,” explained Kathleen Adair in a breathless voice.