Puzzle of the Happy Hooligan (9 page)

That was as far as she had dared to go at the moment. But at least Miss Withers felt that she was nearing the end of the trail. She had been a neighbor of the murder victim and now she was moving into the same apartment house with the man she felt must be the killer.

Back at her hotel she paused at the desk to leave word that she was checking out. “Oh yes, Miss Withers,” said the clerk. “The studio called you and wants you to call back.”

She called the Writers’ Building, but the main-studio operator told her that Gertrude had gone for the night. Then, feeling a bit guilty about the way her loyalties had been divided, the schoolteacher asked for Mr Nincom’s office.

There a voice answered, the voice which Miss Withers remembered as belonging to the small, mousey Smythe person who had reported the story conference in Mr Nincom’s office. “Oh, Miss Withers! We’ve been trying to get in touch with you for hours! You were supposed to ride up to Arrowhead with the rest of the Nincom writers for a story conference this evening. The courier car left at five-thirty. But there’ll be another one at ten o’clock in the morning.”

Miss Withers was quickly apologetic.

“It doesn’t really matter,” was the answer, because Mr Nincom said over the phone that he wanted you especially tomorrow morning. He wants your opinion on a location set that he thinks might do for the Borden place. M.G.M. left a village standing, the one they built for
Of Human Hearts,
and Mr Nincom is thinking of taking it over and using it for
Fall River.”

“I could take a train tonight,” the schoolteacher offered. “Or hire a car?”

“That will not be necessary. Anyway, there aren’t any trains to Lake Arrowhead. Just be at the studio gate at ten tomorrow morning. You’ll see Danny—he’s the good-looking driver—in a big Buick sedan with ‘Mammoth 17’ on the door. And please be on time, because the courier is taking up Mr Nincom’s mail, and he can’t wait for you.”

Miss Withers promised. The duties of a technical expert seemed to extend to a great many things. In comparison with the problem which plagued her the ancient Borden case seemed extremely cold potatoes. But it seemed that whether she wished or not she was going to leave town.

She went up to her room and began hastily to pack. But before she could gather her things together a bellboy arrived with a telegram from New York.

“CONGRATULATIONS HILDEGARDE,”
said the Inspector, when decoded,
“YOU SEEM TO HAVE WALKED INTO A NEST OF TROUBLE. SHALL I COME OUT WITH EXTRADITION PAPERS AND ARREST HIM FOR YOU?”

That was just like Oscar Piper, she thought. He would sit there in his smug little office in Centre Street with its windows looking out on a bare brick wall and its shelves filled with grim “Exhibit As” from old murder cases and send a wire like that.

She wired back.

DON’T BOTHER, HAVE SITUATION WELL IN HAND. LEAVING FOR ARROWHEAD ON STUDIO BUSINESS IN MORNING AND WHEN I RETURN EXPECT TO LAY CASE IN HANDS OF LOCAL POLICE. ALREADY HAVE FULL DESCRIPTION OF LAVAL AND HAVE MOVED NEXT DOOR TO HIM. CASE PRACTICALLY CLOSED. LETTER FOLLOWS. HILDEGARDE.

All except just who and where Derek Laval was and how he had managed to break a man’s neck without a trace or a sound. But she could fill those blanks in later.

She moved into her new home on Cowbell Canyon Drive, a street filled now with the harsh rustle of the wind in the tops of the palms, and wasted no time at all in unpacking or rearranging. Derek Laval’s apartment was in the other wing of the building, but she hurried there at once. It was dark and presumably deserted. The schoolteacher tried her own key and found it useless. She tried a hairpin, and the lock was unpickable. She looked carefully above the doorjamb and under the mat and in every other conceivable spot where a key might be hidden, but none was there.

There was always the rear. Perhaps it would be possible to step from one porch to another, to force a kitchen window.

That also was a blank wall, and finally even Miss Withers was forced to give up her attempts at burglary for the nonce. The lair of Mr Derek Laval was impregnable unless she used blasting powder or a crowbar.

She was reluctant to call it a day, but there was nothing else for it. Perhaps, the schoolteacher hoped wistfully, she would get a suggestion from her subconscious during the night, perhaps she would dream up an answer to the entire riddle of who and how and why….

Unfortunately her subconscious suggested nothing of the kind at all, but when she woke in the bright white California sunshine she realized how, even now, she might perhaps be able to get inside that apartment and do a bit of concentrated snooping. It was late, nearly nine o’clock in fact, but she still had time. If the plan worked.

She tucked up her hair in an intentionally slovenly fashion, slipped into a morning dress of the accidental type and went out of the apartment house. Around the corner was a tiny grocery store—“market” she must learn to call them out here—and she purchased a bottle of milk, some rolls and oranges. Then she hurried back, rang the door of the manager’s apartment.

“So sorry to trouble you,” she began breathlessly. “But I’m locked out of my apartment, and the key’s inside in my handbag—”

Mrs Dermott was a plump, tired-looking woman with tiny feet and ankles. The schoolteacher was counting on that, hoping that she would avoid any extra steps. “If you have a master key,” Miss Withers suggested brightly, “I’ll run right back with it.”

It worked. Mrs Dermott produced a small key affixed to a large slab of wood. And Miss Hildegarde Withers did run right back with it, but in the two minutes’ interim she opened the door of the Laval apartment and released the lock. So far so good.

She got rid of her unwanted groceries and then calmly marched down the hall and into the apartment which, she confidently expected, would be the end of the trail. And it very nearly was.

For the first few minutes all went well. True, it was difficult to get much of an idea of the character and personality of Mr Laval from this furnished apartment. But there were numerous little things, clues which pointed the way. Or several different ways, it seemed to her.

The living room had been “straightened” without being thoroughly cleaned. Ash trays had been dumped out into the wastepaper basket and set back on the table without being wiped. A glass with half an inch of faintly sour-smelling liquid in it stood beside the couch. There was a small radio, its dial turned to an all-night station.

The wastebasket showed dozens of cigarette stubs, more than half of them lipstick smeared. The brands included four American, two English pure Virginia and one Turkish. The lipstick colors varied from a deep purple to a violent orange. Another glass, broken, was in the wastebasket.

There was a dollar and twenty-one cents in small change down behind the cushions of the divan, as well as two packets of matches with “Swing Club” on the covers, a silver pocket lighter, five blond, one red and two brown hairpins and a lady’s vanity case containing Rachel powder and a smashed mirror.

The case would have already been solved by Mr Sherlock Holmes, Miss Withers felt. From the data on hand he could give a minute description of Derek Laval, including his past from the age of six, his taste in food and literature and the color of his eyes.

Unfortunately, the image she was trying to build in her mind steadfastly refused to take shape. The straw man stubbornly refused to be anything else.

She tried the bedroom. One of the twin beds had been made hastily by a man. The other was immaculate. The bedside table contained three packs of cigarettes of three different brands and paper matches advertising half the bars and night spots of the town. There was a telephone on the floor but it was dead. Presumably cut off at the main exchange, she decided. The closet was empty.

The bath produced little more. There were towels, somewhat used. The medicine cabinet showed a cheap electric shaver, a twisted tube of tooth paste and a brush, a packet of razor blades and a tired-looking comb. A safety razor, unassembled, lay on the window sill.

The kitchenette remained. It was evident at once that no food was ever prepared here. The dishes in the cabinet showed a film of dust which was at least six weeks old, and the electric refrigerator held only two bottles of beer, a bottle of White Rock and a lemon.

Beneath the sink reposed several empty soda siphons, a dozen or so beer bottles and “dead soldiers” galore. Scotch, bourbon, gin, rum.

Mr Laval certainly had catholic tastes in liquors as well as in cigarettes. And in his lady friends, judging by the shades of lipstick, powder and hairpins.

More puzzled than ever, Miss Hildegarde Withers returned to the living room, still doggedly determined to find something which would put her on the right track. There were two closets in this room and they represented the last hope.

The smaller one by the door held a man’s hat, a green affair with a rakish Tyrolean feather. It was size 6¾. That was all.

She hurried across the room, realizing that it was late and that she must get out of here in a few minutes if she expected to make the studio by ten o’clock. She tugged at the double doors of the last closet.

There was resistance. For a moment it seemed that someone inside was holding the doors closed or that they were sticking out of pure meanness in an attempt to hinder her. She gave a heavier yank. And then the doors opened, too suddenly.

Skyrockets and Roman candles went off in her head, pinwheels spun in widening circles of red fire. “Earthquake!” Miss Withers thought just before the lights all went out.

I know death hath ten thousand several doors

FOR MEN TO TAKE THEIR EXITS;
and ’tis found

They go on such strange geometrical hinges,

You may open them both ways….

JOHN WEBSTER

“H
ERE COMES THE CAT
that ate the canary!” Lillian Gissing said.

Gertrude looked up, saw Jill Madison pushing between the tables, carrying a heavily loaded plate and wearing a soft smile. “She doesn’t look like a girl who just lost a fortune, does she?”

“She looks like a gal who just stole my writer,” Lillian came back. “I hope it makes her happy.”

Jill did look happy. She was happy all by herself in the Mammoth commissary, which is in itself something. For that vast and murky tomb, chilled by the icy blasts of its air-conditioning plant and decorated by sub-W.P.A. murals across its long and windowless walls, would seemingly put a damper on any blithe young heart. But not Jill’s. She came on, looking for a place to sit.

Even when four or five companies are working at Mammoth, and during the furious rush of the noon hour, there is usually a table or two vacant in the farthest corner from the door. The folk of Hollywood like to see and be seen, but today swarms of dress extras had been forced to alight even in this outlying nook, and for a moment it appeared that Jill would have to eat her lunch standing up.

Then Gertrude waved at her, indicating the empty chair opposite. “Put it there,” she invited inelegantly. Jill hesitated, then sat down.

“I don’t see how you get away with it,” Lillian greeted her, looking enviously at the loaded plate of smoked Virginia ham and avocados and then at the remains of her own cottage cheese and pineapple salad. “But then, you get away with everything.”

“Listen,” Jill began hotly. “I didn’t—”

“Of course you didn’t. Mr Dobie had that cablegram sent to you. He was the cause of your getting the boot, so he took pity on you. What else could he do? Besides, it will make a good story for the gossip columns.” Lillian shrugged. “I don’t mind if Virgil Dobie wants to make noble gestures. I’m assigned to another writer, anyway, so it’s no skin off me.”

“She’s working for Mr Josef, as of this morning,” Gertrude explained.

“Typing out his collection of limericks?” Jill asked.

“Well, after a year of Dobie and Stafford, I guess limericks will be easy. Wait until you find itching powder on your typewriter keys and maybe have your hat blown off by explosive caps shoved into your cigarette ends and—” Lillian stopped short. “And that wasn’t half what the ‘Katzenjammer Kids’ were always doing to me. All the rest of my life I’ll have to worry every time I sit down for fear there’s a bent pin or a poop cushion in my chair. Or no chair at all!”

“Never a dull moment,” Gertrude interposed.

“I think you’ve all got Mr Dobie wrong,” Jill said seriously. “I used to feel about him, about the both of them, just the way you girls do. But if you’ll stop and think it was Saul Stafford who thought up most of the gags.

And it was usually Virgil Dobie who tried to square it up afterwards.”

“So what? You can’t unslap a man’s face,” Gertrude said. “I’ll never get over what happened when Frankie Firsk got married and went on his honeymoon last year. They went to Sun Valley, and the first day a telegram comes calling him hack to the studio. So back the newlyweds come to find it was a gag. And they didn’t have money enough to go anywhere else, so they spent their honeymoon here in town, watching it rain for two weeks.”

“Anyway,” Jill cut in, “Dobie and Stafford have made a lot of people laugh. And they’ve kept this town from taking itself seriously. Mr Dobie says—”

“Whoa!” Gertrude leaned forward. “Rule one. Do not fall in love with boss. Underline. Exclamation point.”

Jill blinked. “Oh, don’t ever worry about my doing that!” But she stared thoughtfully at a forkful of ham and then put it down as if it appeared very new and strange to her.

“Of course, he’s got a wonderful sense of humor—and a wonderful income,” Lillian went on. “A girl could do worse. Only Virgil Dobie doesn’t go around whistling the ‘Wedding March.’ Not him. He—”

“For heaven’s sake, can’t you talk about anything else?” Jill demanded, flushing.

Lillian picked up her luncheon check and rose to her feet. “Sure I can. And one of these days I’m going to talk to Mr Virgil Dobie in a language that he can understand.” And she marched off.

Gertrude looked thoughtfully after her. “A venomous bitch,” she observed. “I think she’s worse since Mr Stafford died. Maybe we’re all a little jittery. Not that I think it was anything but an accident, only—”