Murder on Wheels (13 page)

He went on swiftly through the drawers, now and then jabbing his fingers on a hairpin. He wasn’t quite sure what he was looking for anyway, but it was a cinch that he wasn’t finding it.

There were two closets opening into the room. The first contained four dresses of the type known as “useful all-around,” a pair of galoshes, a pair of rubbers, an evening dress of somewhat flighty taffeta trimmed with what the Inspector called “jittery ribbons,” two hats, both well rained-upon, and on a floor was a strange object which the Inspector realized, upon closer inspection, was a reducing girdle.

There was, strangely enough, no baggage of any kind in the closet or on the shelves.

The next closet was a different story. A whiff of mingled perfume, sachet, and good leather struck the Inspector’s delicate nose as he opened the door. The rod was jammed with dresses, light dresses and dark dresses, silks and satins and lace and everything else under the sun. The floor was littered with shoes, and more shoes hung everywhere on the inside of the door.

The shelf held a Boston bag, two overnight bags, and a suitcase … all empty. This, the Inspector decided, was Dana Waverly’s closet … and the other must be that of Miss “B. Doolittle.”

It was then that the Inspector noticed the black leather bag which lay half concealed by a heap of shoes. Someone had been through this closet in a hurry, Piper decided. Unless this young lady believed in putting her belongings away by throwing them up in the air and letting them fall.

The bag was almost empty, or seemed so on first sight. There was a crumpled package of Camels, a leather lighter without any wick in it, seven pennies, and a Geranium lipstick, well past its prime.

The Inspector was about to cast it aside as impertinent to his search when he heard something crackle in the lining. There was another pocket, a narrow compartment, just wide enough for a letter or two.

The white corner of an envelope showed … an envelope which, when finally held in the Inspector’s thumb and finger, showed itself as a little less white than when it had come from the stationers.

For the second time in this case someone had carried an envelope around until it showed signs of wear and tear.

B
UT THIS WAS NO
letter. There was no address on the envelope, and it was heavily lined and lightly scented. One of Dana’s own, the Inspector guessed.

When he had learned everything that was to be learned from the envelope, he lifted the unsealed flap and drew out the contents.

It was a photograph, a postcard size snapshot, amateurishly printed. The subjects were a young man who bore an uncanny resemblance to Lew Stait and a large collie dog still in the gawkiness of puppyhood. The young man—it must have been Laurie Stait because of the mountains in the background—was holding a stick high in the air, and the dog was caught in the act of hurling himself after it.

“A nice pup, that,” observed the Inspector. Then he reversed the picture. On the other side, in somewhat erratic typescript, was this message

‘You asked for a picture of me, Dana darling, so here it is. The dog is Rowdy, and he has adopted me. He belongs to the ranch, but it will be tough to leave him when I come back. Love—Laurie …”

The Inspector scratched his head. First a letter from Dana to Laurie at the ranch, declaring her love. Then this picture, which evidently Dana Waverly had carried about with her for months, concealed in the envelope. Somehow, this did not fit in with Dana’s marrying Lew, even if she had been engaged to him for years. With Laurie dead, did she try to find him in the twin who was so like him, or was there a darker significance?

The Inspector put the photograph back in the envelope, and the envelope into his pocket. No telling what use he could put it to later. It might be revealing to confront Dana Waverly—Dana Stait now—with it.

The Inspector gave a look around the bedroom. Nothing more here, at any rate. For that matter, there was no sign that anyone had slept here in this apartment last night, although he realized that an efficient maid could have made it look that way. The fresh towels in the bathroom gave evidence of some sort of maid service. They were folded too neatly, and hung too beautifully—and uselessly—on the racks to have been put there by the two tenants of the place.

Inspector Piper came back into the living room and proceeded to ignite a cigar with leisurely puffs at the flame of a table lighter in the shape of a silver cannon ball.

At that moment the hall door opened quickly and a large tan suitcase entered, followed by a somewhat largish girl in a Eugenie hat and a coonskin coat.

As her eyes met the Inspector’s she dropped the tan suitcase, and her mouth opened like the gaping rent of an earthquake, displaying a great deal of teeth.

The scream, which was meant to be something notable in the way of noise, “died a-borning” as Miss Withers would have said. The Inspector beat her to it with a swift “How do you do, Miss Doolittle!”

“I—I’m Bertha Doolittle. But what are you-all doing here? Where’s Dana? How did you know my name?”

“It is the business of the police to know everything,” the Inspector told her. At the same moment he displayed his shield.

Well, he had to think quickly. He had no more business in the apartment than a sneak thief, and he knew it.

Miss Doolittle had covered all of her teeth except the two front incisors, which glittered with an unpleasant whiteness at the Inspector.

“Your apartment, young lady,” he said swiftly, “your apartment has been er—burgled. Fortunately, nothing of value seems to be missing.” He pointed out to her the faint scratches on the door jamb which Georgie Swarthout’s tools had made.

“We were just having a look around,” the Inspector explained. “It seems that the prowlers were frightened away before they could do any damage.”

Miss Doolittle did not seem entirely satisfied with his explanation. “But where’s Dana ? She was heah when I left yesterday morning to spend the week with some kinfolks of mine on Long Island … tell me, did anything happen to Dana?”

“Yes and no,” said the Inspector. “Tell me, what brought you back so soon, Miss Doolittle, if you intended to stay away a week?”

The girl opened her purse and took out a clipping. From where he stood the Inspector could make out the usual headlines. It was the story of the murder of Laurie Stait on the previous evening. “Strangler Still at Large” declared the headline.

“And just why did that clipping bring you back?”

“You-all just don’t understand,” declared Miss Doolittle in a Dixie accent that struck the Inspector as being laid on with a trowel. “Dana is ma roommate, and she’s such a sweet child she needs somebody to take care of her. And a dreadful thing like this happenin’ to her! Why,
Laurie—
not Lew—Stait was the man she loved, though she was engaged to his brother. The families arranged that, you know. His grandmother and Dana’s brother Charley, a no-good if I ever saw one. He’s just white trash, that’s all, even if he is Dana’s brother. They thought a good deal of each other, though. I expect that’s where Dana is right now, she’s with Charley …”

The Inspector nodded as if all this did not interest him vitally. “So Dana Waverly loved Laurie Stait, huh?”

“Oh, yes, suh. But she didn’t love Lew. Those twins were as like as two peas, but after she got to know ’em both she loved Laurie. All the family were down on him, and I’ll bet you that they’re glad he’s daid. But all the same, he was the best of the two.”

“I see. Did Dana break her engagement to Lew Stait?”

“I don’ think so. No, I know she didn’t. But she tol’ me when I went away yesterday morning that by the time I got back she’d have some news for me. Lew was comin’ to dinner last night. I think she meant that after dinner she was going to muster up her courage and tell him that it was just no use waitin’ around. She hated to give back that diamond, too. Such a beauty that ring was!”

Suddenly the girl was galvanized into action. “I wonder if she did give it back! Or maybe the sneak-thieves got it when they broke in here. Wait a minute!”

She ran toward the bedroom, the Inspector close behind. What had happened to Swarthout he could not guess, but the boy was not in evidence. Probably he had caught a flash of the teeth, and decided to stay out of it.

Miss Doolittle was down on the floor in Dana Waverly’s closet. “She never wears the ring, you know. Except when she sees Lew, and that’s been getting less and less often lately. We’ve got a little hiding place—”

As she spoke she put her hand on a silver slipper slightly more battered than the rest. Her fingers seized upon a wad of tissue paper jammed into the toe. Inside the toe was a string of near-pearls, a class ring marked, “Savannah High School 1922,” and a small blue box. Inside the box was a diamond of moderate size and more than moderate perfection, glittering and un-flawed.

“They
didn’t
find it,” said Bertha Doolittle with a certain satisfaction. “It was my idea that we hide our jewelry this way. Nobody would think of looking here.”

“Quite right,” agreed the Inspector. “All the same, it’s strange that the ring is here now. Particularly since Lew Stait gave it, as you say, to Dana Waverly some time ago. It’s strange, don’t you think, that she didn’t wear it to be married in?”

The teeth came out again, and the Dixie accent went out of her speech.

“Wha-a-a-a-a-a-t ? Dana married?”

“This morning, in Greenwich,” Piper said quietly. “To Lew Stait. Very romantic, what? An elopement and all that sort of thing—special license and so forth. And with Laurie Stait, the man you say she loved, not yet thoroughly chilled out down on his marble slab.”

Bertha Doolittle sat down in one of the chintz chairs, hard. “I don’t believe it,” she insisted.

“Why not?”

“Roommates get to know each other pretty well. Dana used to tell me everything and I told her everything. And I tell you, I know that she didn’t have the slightest idea of ever marrying Lew Stait as long as she lived. She loved Laurie and he loved her, and I guess I ought to know. I’ve gone out to enough movies so they could be alone here together.” There was a shade of bitterness in Miss Doolittle’s voice at this point. The Inspector guessed that Bertha’s trips to the movies had not been entirely her own idea.

“Charley Waverly wanted his sister to marry Lew Stait, and so did Lew’s grandmother. But I tell you this right now, if Dana married Lew this morning she did it at the point of a gun! She didn’t love him.”

“There’s other reasons for marrying than love,” the Inspector observed. “But right now I can’t think of any reason for leaving off your engagement ring when you are married. It’s supposed to be bad luck or something, isn’t it?”

Bertha Doolittle was of the opinion that he was right. “Maybe she forgot it,” she suggested. “No, Dana wouldn’t forget it. She’s not like that.” She shook her head again.

“Mister Policeman, I tell you this right now. I’ll never believe that Dana Waverly married a poor white trash like Lew Stait, not if she tells me so herself. Unless she was drunk or drugged. Why, it was only last week that she heard indirectly about Lew’s being seen kissing the maid up at his home. Charley Waverly tried to make light of it, and Cousin Hubert—he’s a nice chap, but very deep—Cousin Hubert told Dana that it must have been a mistake, and Laurie instead of Lew that somebody saw. Which made it all the worse, you see, because she really didn’t care a hang what foolishness Lew was up to, but she did love Laurie.”

“Tell me this,” said the Inspector. “Were Lew and Laurie really so much alike?”

“Alike? I never could tell which was which, even when I saw them together!”

“But Dana, could she tell them apart?”

Bertha Doolittle was thoughtful. “If anybody could, Dana could,” she said slowly. “They looked awfully alike, and they acted alike on the surface. But in spite of the great closeness between them, they were absolutely different underneath. What they thought, I mean. Lew was gay and loud and always taking what he wanted, and Laurie was shy and willing to take the blame for most of the things that Lew did. He was like that.”

“I see.” The Inspector tossed his cigar out of the open window into the flower box. “Well, Miss Doolittle, you’ve been a great help. I’m glad that nothing is missing in the apartment.”

At that moment there was a tremendous crash in the kitchenette. Bertha Doolittle seized a pair of nail scissors and charged through the door. “There’s the sneak-thief now. Come on, policeman, don’t let him get away!”

The Inspector came on, quickly enough to save young Swarthout from complete annihilation. He explained that this was one of his assistants.

“Well, I’d like to know what he’s been doing in the kitchenette all this time,” insisted Bertha Doolittle belligerently.

The Inspector nodded. “I’m inclined to see your point of view. I’ve been too busy chatting with you to notice the passage of time, but now that you bring it up, I too wonder what he’s been doing.” He faced the “college cop” inquiringly. Swarthout stood half sheltered by the swinging door of the kitchenette, ready to duck out of range if Bertha showed any signs of opening fire with the scissors.

“By the way, Georgie, what in hell have you been doing there in that kitchenette for half an hour?”

With an air of terribly injured dignity, Georgie Swarthout produced a notebook. “Inspector, you yourself told me to make an inventory of the contents of the ice-box. You said—”

“Never mind what I said.” The Inspector took the notebook impatiently. “I still don’t see why it took you this long …”

His voice died away, and his lower lip slid forward alarmingly. This was the inventory that met his eye,—begun in Swarthout’s neat script …

One quart of milk, unopened

Two avocado pear salads, with dressing, untouched

Two cup custards with strawberries

Two baked potatoes (cold)

One pound of butter, with two butter balls beside it

Four lamb chops, uncooked

One shaker full of cocktails …

As an afterthought, the words “sidecars—stale” appeared after the last item. An addition had been made to the line—the word “three-quarters” inserted neatly after
shaker …
and before
full.