Dead of Night Page 8

  Another more subdued feminine chime-in: “Yes, Mister Yaker, when’s Dow Lanerd coming? Or are we going somewhere to meet him? I’m just dying to meet that man. What is it they call him in the papers? Mister Giveaway? When is he—”

  “Dow’s not going to be able to make it, kiddies.” Yaker, trying to quiet them. “We’ll have just as much fun—”

  They put up a protest. “I wouldn’t have come if I’d known Mister Lanerd wasn’t going to be here; that’s absolutely the only reason I—”

  “Edie promised we’d meet Mister Giveaway; I’d counted on asking him some very important questions. Now you call him up, Roy boy, tell him we’re seething with—”

  “He can’t come.” Yaker, again. “I just did talk to him on the phone.”

  “You did not, either.” “You don’t even know Dow Lanerd, betcha.” “That was just a come-on.” They really went after Crew Cut.

  “He’s home and he’s going to stay home. He’s not feeling up to par—”

  “That old gag!” The second girl was contemptuous.

  “It’s the truth.” Yaker giggled. “He’s suffering from an ingrowing wife. No fooling. That’s on the level. Call up his house in Manhasset, you don’t believe me.”

  They mewed unhappily. The first girl had a suggestion.

  “Maybe if I talk to him”—she put the old oomph into her voice to illustrate how she would lure him—“he’d change his mind.”

  “He probably would,” Yaker agreed. “But you wouldn’t change Mrs. Lanerd’s mind. He got in some kind of girl jam just recently; she’s keeping a pretty close watch on him. He doesn’t even want his secretary to know he’s home. Now, I’ll tell you what—there’s a friend of mine, one of the most important statisticians in the country—”

  I left while he was still selling it. It would be easy enough to get the girls out of the hotel without incurring the guest’s animosity; I wasn’t too much concerned about his amorous tendencies: those kids weren’t schoolgirl innocents; nothing more would happen than what they’d bargained for. But I was interested in what he’d said about Dow Lanerd’s being at home.

  Yaker knew Lanerd; the girls had been arranged for with Lanerd; from what little I knew of Mister Giveaway, he wouldn’t pass up a party like that without letting Yaker know he wouldn’t be there. That remark about Lanerd’s having spouse trouble fitted in with what Ruth Moore had said. Maybe the head man of the Stack O’ Jack show had gone home without notifying Hacklin in order to avoid any further hassle with Mrs. Lanerd about being in Tildy’s suite. Or maybe he wanted to talk to his lawyers before he had a second session with Hacklin & Company.

  One thing seemed clear enough. If anybody would know where the skating star had decamped to, he’d be the one. He’d have to know, or his television show would blow up in his face.

  I had to get hold of Tildy Millett to clear Auguste, to knock down that inside-job obsession of Hacklin’s. I had to reach her before Hacklin did, too. Or they’d stop her from saying so much as hello to me.

  Fran was down in the lobby, keeping an eye out for more of Edie’s sugarplums. I complimented her on tracing the first pair to Yaker’s room, told her to get Morry, send him up with that one-two punch: Guests in the adjoining room are being disturbed, sir, and, if that didn’t send the cuties scampering, five minutes later: There’s a man down in the lobby claiming his sister is up here in your suite, sir. We’re trying to keep him from coming up, but—

  Fran said, “You won’t be around?”

  I told her where I’d be. Signaled Zingy, none of his fancy manipulations, just the ancient crook-of-the-finger come-hither.

  “What’ll it be, Mister V?”

  I described the cream-colored suit Auguste had told about.

  “Yeah.” Zingy laid one finger alongside his nose, Santa Claus style. Denoting intense concentration, no doubt. “I remember some customer—wearing a piece of custard pie like that. Lemme see, now—” He stared at the pattern in the carpet. He examined the shimmering chandelier which distinguishes the lobby. He gave up.

  I was glad to find Auguste hadn’t been making it up; had been able to see the suit if he couldn’t delineate the wearer. But it wasn’t good news otherwise. The man wouldn’t have been Al Gowriss, the narcotic addict. Zingy wouldn’t ever have forgotten a face like that.

  The individual who’d wiped his bloody fingers on Auguste’s sleeve had either been someone so ordinary, so average, so unworthy of notice that Zingy couldn’t pick him out of his memory file. Or he could be someone Zingy’d seen so often he’d been more impressed by the suit than by its owner.

  Zingy was distressed. “I’ll wreck my brain, Mister V. Maybe it’ll come to me.”

  “A week’s vacation pay’ll come with it, if it does.” I went out of the air-conditioning into the good smells of New York on a summer night—exhaust fumes, flowers in the Park, pigeons, the dejected horses between the shafts of the Victorias across the square.

  I asked Ike, our admiral at the Fifth Avenue entrance, about the cream-colored suit. He couldn’t remember anything like that.

  When I got my car rolling in the East Side express highway, I batted the whole business around my brain cells without getting any flash of intuitive brilliance.

  Tildy Millett might have run out on Hacklin because she was afraid of being murdered by Al Gowriss or someone the killer hired. But Lanerd wasn’t in any danger from that source. Or was he?

  Right down at the bottom of it, the thing that didn’t ring right to me was Roffis’s being knifed while Tildy Millett got away scot-free. Yet if Auguste had told it straight, the killer must have been in the suite with her immediately after murdering her guard. Only the maid, Nikky, would have been with her. But why, after having stuck his neck into a noose, hadn’t the man in the cream-colored suit used the steak knife on Tildy, to keep her from testifying regarding Johnny the Grocer’s death?

  I was still chewing on that one when I slid over the Whitestone Bridge, along the Parkway bordering the Sound. By the time I slewed off the Shore Drive, between the huge stone gates of Chateau Lanerd, I was no closer to a satisfactory conclusion.

  Dow Lanerd had himself fixed up right, out there on Manhasset Bay. A hundred acres, maybe more. All lawns and shrubbery, rose gardens and stables, little groves of blue spruce and winding paths. The house itself, looming against the stars and the sprinkle of moving lights out on the bay, seemed half as big as the hotel.

  It was Norman French, massive gray stone with great wide doorways and tall, arch-topped windows. Lamplight showed through a dozen of the first-floor windows.

  I parked, marched up broad stone steps, pulled at a knocker. A butler who gave the impression he didn’t care to have dealings with anyone below the rank of viscount said, “Mister Lanerd is not at home, sir. Your name, sir?”

  “Gilbert Vine. Mrs. Lanerd in?”

  His eyes roved past me down toward the white pier projecting out into the bay. “Was she expecting you, sir?”

  “Probably not.”

  “I am sorry, sir. She is not at home.”

  I thanked him, went down the steps slowly until he closed the door. Then I sauntered off in the direction of the pier as if I’d been there before.

  I expected him to be watching me as well as he could; certainly he’d notice I didn’t switch on my car lights. But probably he wouldn’t follow me.

  The path led down an easy slope to a boathouse beside the pier. I kept on the grass, off the gravel.

  When I got where I could see the pier, I could make out two figures silhouetted against the reflected glow from the water.

  A woman in slacks and halter. I couldn’t see what the fellow was wearing. But he had his arm around her shoulder, holding her as they strolled toward me. I kept still, when he got near enough for me to hear, I had another one of those jolts.

  “… make an end to it, once and for all, Marge,” he was saying, “then we’ll get married.”

  Chapter Sixteen: LOWDOWN ON A CASANOVA


  LURKING IS SOMETHING I’m clumsy at. I wouldn’t look right in one of those cloak-and-dagger outfits. Besides I doubt if espionage agents get much dope by sneaking around in the shadows.

  So I used my cigarette lighter; it must have showed up about like a firefly against that immense, dark lawn. But they saw it, stopped their intimate chatter, clicked on a light bracketed from a stanchion of the pier.

  “Dow? That you?” She had an agreeably soft voice; I couldn’t tell whether the curious breathless quality was her normal way of speaking, or whether she was afraid.

  I put an inquiry into my “Mrs. Lanerd?” though of course I’d seen her often in the Calypso Room with Mr. Giveaway.

  Glowing—that was the word for Margery Lanerd. Not beautiful. Blue eyes, an electric blue that blazed hotly under the stark brightness of the pier light. A red-and-freckles, tomboyish, sunburnished face with a mobile mouth and expressive eyebrows that seemed to be always in motion. The chestnut mane, caught around her forehead with a blue ribbon, sleeking down to bare shoulders, reminded me of coppery colts in the paddock sunlight at Belmont. She held herself tense; her left hand pressed against her slim, bare midriff. Keeping her emotions under tight control.

  “Did you want to see me?” Fear, close to the surface.

  I said I’d driven out from New York to see her husband; the servant had told me Mister Lanerd wasn’t home; could she suggest where I might get hold of him?

  No. She could not. What was my business with him?

  “Saw your husband at the Plaza Royale tonight, Mrs. Lanerd, I’m Gilbert Vine, security chief at the hotel, and a little matter has come up—” I left it vague enough to cover anything.

  She drew in her breath sharply. To hide her surprise or give herself time to think she introduced the husky customer in slacks and screamy-striped blazer.

  “Jefford MacGregory, Mister Vine. Mister MacGregory is with Lanerd, Kenson and Fullbright.”

  “Oh—Stack O’ Jack Show.” I smiled as if I’d never missed the program, knew all about him. It wasn’t hard to make a couple of close guesses about him.

  MacGregory was thick-necked and bull-chested with big-muscled arms and legs; there was a slight indication of a paunch that said he did himself well at the board. He had a huge dome head, slightly bald in front but making up for it by a black spade beard. His face was Falstaffian with round, ingenuous eyes and a mouth that could have been humorous. It wasn’t, right then.

  “You’re not the one who called me up—at the studio?”

  I said no, I wasn’t. But the other guy and I wanted to locate Mister Lanerd for the same reason.

  Marge Lanerd’s breathlessness was even more noticeable. “He telephoned me, too. Said there’d been some trouble.”

  “Yair.” I couldn’t decide whether either of them knew about the murder. “Trouble. About one of Miss Millett’s guards.”

  “Roffis?” She made it a question.

  “He was killed.” No beating around the bush. I gave it to them cold. Everything except my talk with Ruth Moore and the cryptic Seven-for-a-secret business. “I’m working for the hotel. I have to clear Auguste. Miss Millett probably saw the killer; that would have been why she asked the guard to hurry into her bedroom, just before the murderer ran out of it and bumped into our room-service captain. You see why it’s important to find her. Fast.”

  MacGregory muttered, “She’s probably out of the country by now.”

  We walked up the slope to the chateau. She kept her hand on the producer’s shoulder.

  “Don’t get mixed up in it, Jeff. You don’t have to. You run along.”

  He said sharply, “How could I be more involved than I am! I’m not going to leave.”

  “Jeff! Jeff, dear!” She shook him to get him to look at her. “I’d rather you did.”

  “No.” He was stubborn. “I’m going to sit in on this hand. I’ve been dealt out too often.”

  I was impatient to get the low-down on Lanerd, quickly. These two, batting it back and forth, didn’t seem very important. Hot-blooded youth making unsuccessful passes at neglected wife of gadabout boss. Kind of affair that goes on all the time. Not quite the way this one was going, though.

  We crossed a flagged terrace, entered a long music room with a vaulted ceiling that went up two stories. The butler appeared; there was polite chitchat about drinks.

  I asked for a rum sour, very sour. The producer ordered a Rob Roy and didn’t bother to explain how it was made; he’d been there quite a lot, evidently. When the butler left, Mrs. Lanerd went to the grand piano by the picture window looking out over the bay.

  She played as she talked, softly. I don’t know what the music was; it would have sounded all right in our Gold Room at thé musicale. The drinks came in.

  She wasn’t surprised there’d been trouble at the skater’s suite; Marge herself might have caused it. But probably Jeff had been right; Tildy Millett would be in Bermuda or on a plane to Europe by now. Dow would undoubtedly be with her. The piece she was playing was pretty doleful.

  “That,” I said, “will make it look as if he killed Roffis.”

  She admitted that to anyone who knew Dow it might look as if he was trying to help the girl get beyond the reach of the authorities. Not that her husband might not have gone abroad with Tildy even if there’d been no need for protecting her. They had planned a continental elopement—she played a little louder so I wouldn’t notice the tremors in her voice—Marge had known about it for some time. That was why she’d gone to the Plaza Royale that afternoon, to make one last attempt to scare the skater away from her husband.

  There was another interlude on the high keys, clashing discords. I asked Mrs. Lanerd if she’d had any luck with Miss Millett.

  She couldn’t say. Marge had been cold-blooded about it, had warned Tildy that plenty of girls had tried to break up Marge’s home and none had succeeded. Marge had been a show girl too long not to know how hard it was to hold a good man. Even when he wasn’t the good man she’d thought he was when she married him.

  “You couldn’t get anywhere with your husband—no reconciliation?”

  Reconciliation, of course. The usual scene, the same old promises. She knew better than to believe them. He was putty in the hands of the woman he happened to be with at the moment. So she said. She’d threatened to kill Tildy, indeed she had. At that point, Roffis—who hadn’t been at all sure he should have let her in the suite, anyway—put her out. Deep rumblings down at the left of the keyboard.

  She’d been very upset, very excited, but she hadn’t said a single thing she didn’t mean from the bottom of her heart. Tildy had mentioned a possible divorce; Marge had scorned the idea. She knew all about her husband’s playing around; had long ago determined that she’d rather have a part of Dow Lanerd than all of any other man. And would go to absolutely any lengths to keep him. At least she’d accomplished one thing, she had thought. The guard hadn’t been aware of the elopement plans; as he pushed Marge out into the corridor he’d told her, sotto voce, not to worry; the District Attorney would see to it Tildy Millett didn’t get on any outward-bound plane.

  Marge had counted on that slim consolation. But even then, as she left the hotel, it occurred to her perhaps Tildy also would fight for the man she wanted. If the person she had to battle had been Roffis—well—A crashing crescendo.

  MacGregory supplied the crusher.

  “I know Tildy killed him.”

  How did he know?

  “She was coming unstuck when she got to the studio tonight.” He tried to get Mrs. Lanerd away from the piano, but she kept right on pounding those tremendous chords. “I didn’t think she’d be able to do the show at all. She cried, stumbled over chairs as if she’d been in a car accident and was suffering from shock. I couldn’t catch all the things she was moaning while I was trying to calm her. But one thing I did hear, good and clear.”

  Marge let her hands drop from the keys. The room still echoed from the thundering piano.
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br />   “She cried, ‘I had to do it! I had to do it, Jeff! I couldn’t give him up! I couldn’t!’”

  Chapter Seventeen: FIERY FEMME

  IN MY EXPERIENCE, nobody can dope out dames. But nobody.

  Those mass-opinion pollsters who’d tied on the bib and tucker in our Crystal Room might come up with such pithy data as that on winter afternoons five out of seven femmes will prefer the north or sunny side of Thirty-Fourth Street, while in summer it’s the other way around. But they’d never be able to guarantee it in the case of any particular distaffer.

  So I had no confidence in my ability to figure out what a girl like Tildy Millett might do under any given set of circumstances. Still it didn’t seem quite rational for her to knife a man guarding her from a killer, wait around for the dead man’s partner to escort her to a studio, rattle off We Won’t Go Home Until Morning—and then elope. Not unless she had Borgian blood in her.

  There was nothing wrong with Marge Lanerd’s statement. Or MacGregory’s topper. No real flaw, except there’d been no explanation of Lanerd’s pose with the automatic, after Tildy’d left for the studio. No mention of the man in the cream-colored suit. No reference to the gay doings Lanerd had arranged with Edie Eberlein and her little et al’s. Only half a dozen other minor discrepancies left unaccounted for.

  But I had to believe Marge Lanerd. It had been hard for her to strip her emotions like that. No easier because MacGregory had been there to hear just how she felt about her husband. He didn’t look as if he’d enjoyed the recital.

  “If Mister Lanerd’s actually done a skip-out,” I said, “he’d probably get in touch with some member of his firm, let him know.”

  MacGregory doubted it. “Kenson’s in London. Frank Fullbright’s on a cruise somewhere. He’d let his secretary know, I suppose.” He glanced moodily at Mrs. Lanerd.

  I asked if I might use the phone. The butler brought it, on a forty-foot cord plugged in somewhere off in a corner. I got the hotel, asked for 21CC.