The Philadelphia Murder Story (11 page)

We got off the streetcar at the corner of Rittenhouse Square and went along to Abigail Whitney’s.

Colonel Primrose turned to me. “Tell Mrs. Whitney, when you see her, that I’d like very much to talk to her,” he said equably. “I’ll be at her brother’s next door until I hear from her. Please tell her also that I’d like to see Myron’s room.” He turned at the door. “If you can make Mrs. Whitney understand that Myron’s being a guest in her house imposes some pretty definite obligations, it would be wise to do so. Goodbye.”

I watched the door close behind him, not entirely sure that he wasn’t saying a good deal more than was immediately apparent. He was as urbane as usual, but rather grimly so. I wondered if he thought the Whitneys were involved in either the disappearance of the manuscript or Myron’s death, whether he could hope there’d be much in the way of tangible evidence left up there by now.

I started up the stairs. At the first mirror, I was aware that if Abigail Whitney was resting, she was doing it by her own unique method of Concentrating on Something Else. And as I rounded the head of the stairs, I could see Elsie Phelps even plainer. She was standing in the door, as irritatingly smug as before, and quite in control of the situation whatever it was or was to be.

“Oh, Mrs. Latham,” she said, “my aunt would like to see you. We’re dreadfully sorry about all the trouble we’ve put you to.”

I didn’t know whether she was being callously efficient or just didn’t know. She gave me the kind of smile the lady of the manor might give to a feeble-minded member of the village canning society, and stepped back for me to go in.

Abigail Whitney was sitting up against her yellow cushions, bright-eyed and erect, alert and chipper as a sparrow. Standing in front of the carved-marble mantelpiece was Elsie’s husband, Sam Phelps, the light glancing off his polished bald head. He was looking very imposing and immaculate indeed, and if there was a smudge of graphite on him, it was certainly not visible. His ego was blooming like a cabbage rose and, in fact, there was an air of complacent triumph about both of the Phelpses that was a little hard for me to take, with the image of Myron Kane’s pallid face, the weeds from the pool dripping from his black hair, still haunting my memory.

“Oh, Dear Child,” Abigail Whitney said. She held out her hand to me. “You must forgive me for not seeing your detective. But Sam has Settled Everything.”

I looked at him, my mouth open, I suppose. He tilted back on his heels, his gold watch chain inscribing a slightly pompous arc across his pique-piped vest, and nodded his head. As irony it was superb, but I couldn’t tell. At least it seemed impossible that Elsie knew Myron was dead. She looked too pleased and proud. And Abigail Whitney was looking at Sam Phelps as I imagine she’d looked at men all her life—that sort of “isn’t he wonderful?” look that no man born of woman seems immune to at any age.

“We should have left it in this Dear Boy’s hands from the beginning.” Her voice was soft as rose-colored velvet. “He’s got Myron’s letter back for him. We’re going to get the document Laurel gave him. And there’s nothing in the Profile of my Brother anyone can seriously object to. Sam has read it. I know you will be very pleased, Dear Child. Now we can All Relax.” She started to, and stopped. “We should let All the Rest of them know,” she said brightly.

I thought Sam looked a little troubled. “There’s just one thing, Aunt Abby. I wouldn’t want the judge to know I edited the manuscript in any way. I don’t quite know how he’d like it.”

“I do, Dear Boy,” Mrs. Whitney said promptly. “He’d be livid. I won’t tell a soul. I wouldn’t think of it. Grace here is a Friend.”

Elsie and Sam Phelps looked at her and then at me, a little dubiously, I thought—as well they might.

Sam’s laugh was slightly hollow. “You know the saying, Aunt Abby—if you would keep your secret from an enemy, tell it not to a friend. I don’t mean the judge is an enemy, of course,” he added hastily. “It’s just that I prefer none of them to know I’ve seen the manuscript.”

It was startling to hear Sam quoting from
Poor Richard’s Almanack
so soon after the author’s ghost had been seen stalking the marble lobby of the magazine he founded. However, as Sergeant Buck had quoted him about lying down with dogs, it might just be something in the home-town atmosphere.

Sam looked at his watch.

“How did you ever persuade them to let you see the script?” I asked.

I’m afraid my voice was a little too brightly casual. His watch stopped in the process of being returned on its gold leash to his vest pocket.

“You’re not doubting my husband’s word, are you, Mrs. Latham?”

I’m afraid Elsie was rather brighter than she looked.

“Not at all,” I said hastily. “I was just curious.”

“Well, we can’t let the ladies be curious, can we?” Sam said. He spoke with magnanimous humor from a male Olympus. He put his watch the rest of the way into his pocket. “For your satisfaction, then, Mrs. Latham, Mr. Kane showed it to me. He explained he did not want to offend the family in any way.”

There were several other questions I’d have liked to ask him—such as when and where and why Myron showed it to him, and why him instead of Monk Whitney—but I didn’t dare.

He turned to Mrs. Whitney. “We’ll stop by and speak to the judge. Thank you for lunch, Aunt Abby.”

She looked at him blankly. “Of course, Dear Boy,” she said then. “You did lunch with me, didn’t you? I’m so forgetful. It’s Old Age. Goodbye.”

At the door, Elsie Phelps turned. “You’re sure the—the document that Laurel gave him is all right, Aunt Abby? That we are going to get it back, I mean? We must be sure, you know.”

Abigail Whitney’s blue eyes snapped fire. “Goodbye, Elsie,” she said curtly. “You may leave the door open.”

She leaned back in her yellow cushions until they’d gone. Then she turned to me.

“You look very peaked, Dear Child,” she said. “No doubt it’s the water. Philadelphia water disagrees with many people.”

Our eyes met across the table beside the curved mahogany swan’s neck that formed the arm of her day bed. Her eyes were clear and vivid-blue, and alarmingly intelligent just then, looking very calmly into mine.

“You know Myron Kane is dead, don’t you?” I asked.

For a moment I thought she was going to deny it, but she didn’t.

“It was on the radio at four o’clock,” she said quietly. “It said he had been murdered. It’s… most unfortunate.”

“Did it say the manuscript copy of the judge’s profile was missing too?”

She looked at me a little longer over that. “No. They didn’t say that.”

“Did Sam know—about Myron, I mean?”

“Not that I am aware of,” Abigail Whitney said. “They didn’t bring the matter up, and I hardly considered it my business to inquire.”

It was so calm and so cold-blooded, somehow, the way she said it, that I felt the only tears I shed for Myron Kane—and I think almost the only tears that were shed for him—spring up, burning the edges of my eyelids.

“Don’t be sentimental, Grace,” she said sharply. “ ‘An eye for an eye’ isn’t from
Poor Richard,
but it’s an older moral law.”

“How can you say that?” I cried. “Myron hadn’t killed anybody. He hadn’t even hurt anybody. If there was nothing in the manuscript and you’re getting the judge’s document back—” I stopped, staring at her.

Her blue eyes were fastened on mine. There was a smile behind them so faint that it was almost imperceptible. I thought I had recognized irony before, but there was no doubting it now. It was double-edged this time, with a little pity and rather more than a little scorn at what I realized was plain, unadulterated stupidity on my part. It had all been a kind of ghastly double-talk, every word she’d said, and even while I’d questioned it I’d let myself be taken in by it.

The horror I felt must have sounded in my voice. “You don’t—you can’t mean—”

Her voice couldn’t have been calmer, and she’d gone back to her emphasized speech. “I didn’t mean anything, Dear Child,” she said. “I’m very deeply shocked, and of course I’m more than happy to Co-operate with the Authorities in any way I can, limited as I am by These Four Walls. You may go over to my Brother’s and tell your Policeman that if he wishes to see Myron Kane’s room, you are at complete liberty to show it to him… Will you close the door as you go out?”

I started out, probably rather unsteadily.

“Of course you realize,” she said calmly, “that Laurel can now marry Travis without anxiety. You were disturbed about that last night. Surely you don’t expect the World with a barbed-wire fence around it, do you, Dear Child?”

I didn’t answer her. I just went out and closed the door, a little sick at my stomach. All I wanted to do was get out of the house, out of the orbit of that imperturbable and ruthless old fraud reclining on her yellow cushions, pretending to be bedridden—a puppet mistress, pulling the strings, ordering people’s lives without moving a step. Ordering their lives and even their deaths, for there was no possible doubt in my mind that she was responsible for Myron’s death, morally, if not actually and physically.

I went downstairs. At least I could go next door and tell Colonel Primrose he had permission to see Myron’s room. He was doing it on his time, and if he wanted to waste it, it was his privilege. Abigail Whitney, I thought, was probably on her way up there at that very moment, taking a last look to see that nothing remained that would do him or the police, when they came, the slightest bit of good.

I opened the front door. It was not quite dark outside, but the shadows were closing in and the lights were already on in the square. I stepped out and started a little. The old squirrel was there, twitching his moth-eaten tail, looking back down the steps. He flashed around, and then fled when he saw I was not his friend, the butler. It seems silly to get information from a squirrel, but that’s the way it was. As he came from the square only when someone came up on the stoop, it was evident that someone had been there. The way he was sitting, twitching his tail, looking down the steps, showed clearly that there had been an annoying hitch in the usual orderly procedure—visitor, butler, walnut—that he was accustomed to.

I looked quickly around the square. Retreating diagonally across 19th Street to the square was a small man in a gray overcoat, and I recognized him this time. Mr. Albert Top-lady was going rapidly, but not steadily.

I don’t know whether I had a sudden change of feeling about Mr. Toplady or whether it had been a cumulative process. Up to that point and in spite of everything, I’d held firmly to the idea that he was nothing really but a harmless eccentric. I couldn’t think so any longer. His being there on Abigail Whitney’s doorstep without ringing the bell and his dashing off across the square were out of the bounds of eccentricity. Added to what I could see now was actually a pretty persistent haunting job he’d been doing on Myron Kane, alive at the Broad Street Station and dead at the Curtis Building, they seemed definitely sinister.

Mr. Toplady, I thought, must be either actively involved in what was going on or he was a rather extraordinary bird of evil omen, slightly molted, but appallingly accurate. And the latter view was certainly devastatingly supported, and in less than fifteen minutes flat. For if Laurel Frazier had set out deliberately and with malice aforethought to tie a noose around Monk Whitney’s neck, she couldn’t have done a more workmanlike job on it.

I went over to Judge Whitney’s brownstone house next door and pressed the bell. A stiffly starched maid opened the door, well past middle age, gray-haired and bony, but not quite so heavily Irish as her counterpart at Abigail’s. I explained that Colonel Primrose was there and that I had a message to him from next door.

“If you’ll come in, miss,” she said. “The gentlemen are busy just now, but Miss Frazier’s here, and you can wait till they’re done.”

Laurel Frazier was in the front room to the left. She could well have been entitled Picture of a Young Lady Quietly Going Out of Her Mind. She still had on her gray fur coat. The wisp of gray felt that she used for a hat had been tossed, with her bag and gloves, onto a long table against the wall, and had fallen with one glove on the floor. The Irishwoman picked them up.

“These gloves are a sight, miss,” she said. She picked up the other one. “How do you get so dirty? I’ll just wash them out for you.”

I saw they were black—the fingers of them—the way mine had been when I came off the ninth floor of the Curtis Building.

She didn’t seem to notice they were being taken away. She was very distrait, her hair pushed back from her forehead, her eyes too bright and her face too pale. She had her hands in her coat pockets and looked as if she had been pacing up and down the rug in front of the coal fire burning in the grate. She stood there now in the middle of the room, waiting for the maid to go. When the door closed, she turned quickly to me.

“Where’s Monk?” she asked sharply. “Have you seen him? I’ve got to get hold of him! I’ve simply got to!”

I shook my head. “I haven’t seen him. Not since last night.”

She made a quick gesture of despair and hopelessness. I don’t know how to describe it, but it was terribly eloquent.

“I can’t even find Travis,” she said slowly. “His secretary said he’d heard about it—about Myron—and had left the office. I thought he’d come here. He must know we’ll need him. I don’t know what to do!” She started pacing again.

“Well, if you’ll sit down and be quiet, maybe you can think of something,” I said practically. “And what’s the matter?”

Her eyes flashed wide open as she turned toward me and came back, “What’s the matter? Don’t you know?”

“I know Myron’s dead,” I said. “I don’t know Monk needs a lawyer, if that’s what you mean by trying to get hold of Travis. You certainly don’t think Monk killed him.”

Her face was dead and blank suddenly. She stood there silently a moment. When she spoke, her “No, of course not” lacked—and very noticeably lacked—any tone of ringing conviction.

“I wish I’d never seen Myron Kane,” she said softly, after a minute. “It’s all my fault. If it hadn’t been for me—”

“Don’t be silly,” I said sharply. “You’re jumping to a conclusion that may be just frantic. A lot of people didn’t like Myron Kane.”