Postmark Murder (33 page)

The snow outside the window was increasing; it was by then almost dusk, with the early fall of December twilight. They would have to leave sometime. Surely it was safe to do so then. But again she tried Matt’s apartment. Again no one answered.

She put on her gray dress and her gray coat with its long flowing lines and its warmth, so it was like a very soft, very warm fur coat. She adjusted her little hat. Jonny with her usual sturdy self-reliance got herself into her red coat. She thanked the saleswoman who beamed. “Happy Christmas, Miss March. You look lovely in the dress.”

Laura thanked her. She led Jonny at last out of the safe and secure little refuge and a man at the outer desk stopped her. “Miss March?” he said pleasantly. “A gentleman was inquiring for you. I told him,” he smiled with an air of indulgent conspiracy, “I told him you were looking at dresses. I told him it would be some time before you were ready to go. I hope that was right?”

Laura’s heart caught in her throat. “Yes. Yes, that was right. How long ago was that?”

“Oh, at least an hour. He went away.”

“Thank you,” Laura said. An hour ago. He went away. She turned away from the desk, and behind her suddenly the man’s cordial and polite voice became warmer. “Why,” he said, “Mrs. Stanley!”

Laura whirled around. Doris was standing at the little Boutique counter. The manager advanced to greet her with cordiality. “It’s nice to see you, Mrs. Stanley. What can we do for you?”

Doris said shortly, “Oh, nothing. I’m just looking,” and then saw Laura and Jonny. She came across to them.

She wore her long mink coat; a little black hat was poised on her shining hair. She wore loose luxurious-looking suede gloves, and carried a big black handbag. But as she neared them, even in the soft and flattering light, her face below its careful make-up was drawn and rather white. Her eyes flickered uneasily. “Laura! Matt said you were going Christmas shopping. What are you doing here?”

“Looking for a dress,” Laura said shortly. Jonny as always in Doris’ presence seemed to press a little closer to Laura.

“Oh,” Doris said. She bit her lip, eyed Laura and added suddenly, “I phoned to Matt. I was—lonely. Fidgety. He said you planned to go shopping with Jonny. I—I phoned to you about two-thirty. I thought I’d go with you. But nobody answered.”

“Did you—look for us?”

“Well—yes. I thought you’d go to the toy department. But I didn’t see you. The place was packed. I didn’t expect to find you here.”

It was coincidence, nothing else. Rather, it was not so much coincidence as a perfectly natural act on Doris’ part; if she were lonely and nervous—frightened—with time on her hands, she would drift to the Fashion Shop. Besides, by no stretch of the imagination could Laura envision the smart, fashionable figure before her done up in a man’s overcoat and hat, making her way through the store, following them.

Laura said suddenly, “Have you seen anyone else you know?”

Doris did not perceive the oddity of the question. “No.” She moistened her lips. She glanced at Jonny. “I’m going home. My car is waiting. I’ll take you home.”

It was only Doris. She was not afraid of Doris. Yet Laura did not want to trust Jonny to Doris, to anyone. Not then. She said, “We’re just going to look for some other things, Doris. We’re not finished yet. Thanks just the same.”

“But you—” Doris began and stopped. Her eyes flickered. Then she said with a kind of rush, “Come with me, Laura! It’s not really safe, is it, for you and Jonny to go around like this. It’s almost dark outside and after—after all these things have happened.” Her brown eyes shot sideways toward the manager of the store, who, however, had politely stepped back and gone to the desk again. No one was within earshot. Doris said in a low voice, “It isn’t safe. It’s dreadful, all of it. Come with me. I can’t get any of it out of my mind. I’m not frightened but I don’t like to be alone—”

It was the first time that Doris had made what sounded like a genuinely friendly advance. In an odd way, however, the appeal only stiffened Laura’s resolution. “I know. But you’ll be all right. Come, Jonny.”

Jonny, mindful of her manners, said politely, “Good afternoon, Doris,” enunciating the syllables separately and carefully.

“All right,” Doris said abruptly. “If you must go, go ahead. Good afternoon, Jonny.”

She turned, with an impatient swirl of coat and gloves and perfume. Instantly the manager was aware of her movement and sprang to meet her. Laura led Jonny out of the Fashion Shop.

But a man in a clumsy, dark coat might be waiting, watching somewhere. Laura wanted to hurry back to the fitting room— where she’d bought a dress which made her into another woman. Another woman!

There were other clothing departments on the same floor: clothing for women, clothing for children, less expensive than the Fashion Shop, more widely patronized.

Perhaps thirty minutes later a young woman dressed in a brightly plaided red topcoat and a brimmed red hat, with a child in a green coat and hood, her braids tucked up under the hood, went quietly down the escalators and out into State Street and instantly got a taxi.

I
T WAS ALMOST DARK
. The brilliantly lighted windows spread great areas of light across the shoppers, across crowds of people now leaving the offices and hurrying for bus or streetcar or elevated or train. Nowhere among them Laura saw a surveillant figure hovering near like a bird of prey.

Simple, she thought, merely a change of clothes. Was it too simple?

Snow was falling steadily. The streets were wet and glistening. The traffic was so heavy that the taxi had to nudge its way along, checked at every corner for the red lights. The traffic policemen wore dark mackintoshes which glittered with wet snow. Their long two-noted whistles sounded eerie amid the rush and thud and clatter of the traffic. The taxi turned onto Michigan Boulevard, and lights in the great buildings on either side seemed to lift up into the sky, dimly veiled by the falling snow.

They went on and on, across the river and between the great bulk of the Tribune Tower, lighted to the very top, and the white façade of the Wrigley Building, lifting up into the sky on the left. When they approached her own apartment house, Laura tensed, watchfully, and thus she saw a taxicab drawn up and waiting, its lights dimmed, in the side street—the side street from which opened the service entrance to the apartment house, the side street which Catherine Miller had walked along at night, through the fog, to murder. It was too dark to see anyone in the taxi but it was parked in such a way as to command a view of the apartment house entrance.

Laura’s heart began to thud. She waited until she had paid the driver, then she hurried herself and Jonny out of her own taxi, into the lighted doorway, across the lobby and into the elevator. She didn’t stop to pick up mail or telephone messages. The elevator door closed; there was no one else in it; she pressed the button for the ninth floor with a feeling of escape.

But if anyone sat in that taxi waiting for their return, he had only a flashing glimpse of a woman in a red plaid coat, a child in green, altogether different from the clothes of the figures he would be expecting.

She unlocked the door of her apartment. There was a light in the hall, she had left it burning. The Christmas tree was still lighted, too, and spread a warm, mysterious radiance through the living room. They were safe. She bolted the door.

Suki did not come to meet them as usual, uttering hoarse cries of mingled delight at their return and indignation because they had left him alone. Jonny was hungry.

“Choc,” she began tentatively, and couldn’t say the English word and said instead,
“Czekolada.”

Chocolate was almost the same in any language.

“I’ll make some chocolate,” Laura said.

She put down her handbag, tossed the new red plaid coat and hat across a chair and started back toward the kitchen. Jonny, in the living room, called “Suki—Suki—”

The kitchen door was open; it was brilliantly lighted. Jonny was still calling, “Suki—Suki,” when Laura saw the grotesque huddle on the floor. The face was turned upward, the light full upon it. It was Conrad Stanislowski, the second Conrad Stanislowski, and he had died as the first Conrad Stanislowski had died.

This time the weapon had not disappeared, it lay on the floor, catching the light. It was a switch-blade knife, open, tough and sharp and deadly. A dark overcoat was flung half across a chair, falling down on the floor like a black and sinister stain.

For a dreadful instant Laura felt as if she were seeing a moving picture run twice, so she knew exactly what was to happen next. Jonny was coming along the hall,

Laura ran to meet her. She snatched her hand. “Come with me, Jonny. Come to your room.” Put her there, Laura thought. Close the door. Tell her to stay—then telephone for the police.

The scurry of their feet was the only sound in the silent apartment. The door to Jonny’s bedroom was closed. They had almost reached it when it opened.

It opened soundlessly and stood there, still and ajar.

The room beyond was dark. The black, faceless aperture seemed to speak. “I’ve got the gun.”

Laura’s lips moved. Only a whisper came out.
“No—no—”

“Wouldn’t it be easier to die quickly like this than to go through a trial? They’ll never let you off. Both men killed. You found the first one. This one murdered in your apartment. It’s circumstantial evidence. You had a motive. Besides, there’s that scarf. Catherine Miller was killed with a scarf. Not that one; mine. But the police will say it’s suicide, a confession.
Don’t move.”

Don’t move—so the gun could be accurately fired, so shots would not go wild and betray the fact of murder, so the first one would reach its mark. Laura whirled around. Jonny ran with her into the front hall, to the front door. Laura snatched at the door; she had bolted it. Her hands were shaking, fumbling; she could not shift the bolt.

Footsteps ran after them. “Jonny, get out of the way!”

Jonny flung both arms tight and hard around Laura, her brown head almost upon Laura’s heart.

“Go into the living room, Jonny.” There was coaxing now, a horrible, smooth coaxing. “Go on, child. In there.”

Laura’s throat unlocked itself. “You can’t! Jonny will tell them.”

“Who’d believe her? She’ll be in my care. I’ll see to that. Stop that screaming. If I miss I may get the child.”

Laura hadn’t known she was screaming. Her hands flew to her throat, and then, frantically, to Jonny’s little hands, trying to disengage Jonny’s hold, but it was sheer instinct, not reasoning or heroic motive. Jonny wouldn’t let go. She clung with all her sturdy strength.

“Jonny, please
—” Laura cried wildly.

The child hugged harder. Laura was only dimly aware of muffled distant sounds, a voice shouting something, footsteps somewhere, but when the door buzzer sounded sharply beside her, this time Jonny screamed.

Again Laura’s hand moved without volition on her part, and groped behind her for the bolt and it turned as a shoulder thudded hard against the door. The door flung inward, pushing Jonny and Laura behind it. Matt plunged down on his knees on the rug. Lieutenant Peabody shot nimbly over him; his lean gray figure disappeared toward the kitchen. Matt scrambled up and ran after Peabody.

Sounds thudded on beyond the kitchen and echoed hollowly in the service corridor.

The sounds diminished.

After a long time there was a short series of loud, reverberating crashes. Gun shots. Nothing else could sound quite like that.

Presently she moved. Jonny moved. Laura snapped on lights in the living room. She sat down as if her knees had collapsed. Jonny stood for a moment, still listening, her face very quiet but her blue eyes wide and alert. Then she cried, “Suki,” and ran to the fireplace.

Suki was standing on the mantel, his back arched, his eyes blazing garnet-red. As Jonny reached up for him he came down thankfully to her shoulder. Jonny came back to Laura, and settled down, cross-legged, at her feet. Suki crawled cautiously from Jonny’s shoulder and settled himself on Laura’s lap, facing the door.

They were sitting like that when Matt came back. He gave one look at Laura and Jonny and then his eyes went to the bright, red plaid coat. “Where in hell did you get that?”

She told him, rapidly, almost incoherently.

“You fooled me,” he said. “We were in that taxi on the side street, Peabody and I. We had tried to phone to you and nobody answered. I knew you’d planned to go shopping. We saw Blick come into the apartment house. We were going to wait for you, and stop you. That was the important thing. I saw a woman and a child run across from a taxi and into the door, but I’d never seen that.” He nodded toward the coat. “I had never seen Jonny in green. It was minutes before all at once I had to make sure.”

“Who is Blick?”

“Stanislowski. Conrad the second. I mean Conrad the second is Blick— Wait—”  She then heard sirens wailing along the Drive far below. Matt went back to the kitchen, closing the door behind him. Presently Laura heard a muffled commotion of voices and the heavy footsteps of men. It lasted a long time. At last Matt returned. “Peabody wants to talk to you later, not now. Look at this—and this.”

He gave her a piece of paper. It was a telephone message, written on a long slip of paper, and pushed under the door when she was out. It read. “Mr. Stanislowski phoned. He will come to see you about five.”

Laura looked up at Matt. “What—”

“Our murderer got here ahead of you and found that message under the door. Are those keys yours?”

She looked at the other object which Matt showed her, two keys on a little chain. “Why, I don’t—Yes!”

“Where were they? When did you lose them?”

“It’s a duplicate set. They gave them to me when I rented the apartment. I’d forgotten all about them. I put them somewhere— I think in the drawer of the hall table. I never thought of them again.”

Matt went into the hall and jerked open the drawer. “They’re not here now. It was easy enough for anybody to take them at any time during the past few weeks. The deal has been cooking since I brought Jonny back. Possibly even before that. As soon as we discovered that Jonny was in Vienna.”