“When was all this? A timetable.”
“I met Paul about seven months ago as I told you. I started with the girls about three months ago. Paul revealed his dirty scheme last Sunday.”
“And sent Weiss to collect on Monday? He must have called Jonathan first to show his hand and put on the pressure, and he told Weiss it was only a gambling debt.”
“I don't know what he did. I thought he was waiting.”
“So the blackmail was really on Jonathan, for the family. He had to move while his evidence was hot.”
“I told him Jonathan would not pay!”
“He should have listened to you,” I said dryly. “Now tell me where you were on Wednesday night. All night.”
He glared at me. He seemed like a man writhing in a net. Not scared or nervous, but desperate, unhappy.
“Why should I?”
“Because I'll hound you until I find out.”
“Oh, very well. I had tickets for the theater. I'd had them for weeks. I didn't think we should go the night before the funeral, but Mother said why not? Deirdre agreed. I have the theater stubs, I can describe the show. We stopped for drinks at Downey's. We know the waiter. We had some supper and came straight home here. George was here. We all went out for the funeral in the morning.”
“What time did you get home here?”
“About two o'clock.”
George Ames picked that moment to make his entrance. He must have been waiting in the wings. He swept into the room in an impeccable gray tweed suit with a wide black band on the sleeve. A tweed coat was draped over his shoulders, the arms hanging free.
“You are a busy man, Mr. Fortune. I once played Sherlock Holmes and barely moved from a chair all night.”
“Different times, different methods,” I said. “What time did you get home on Wednesday night, Mr. Ames?”
“Wednesday? Let me see, that was the night I talked to you out in North Chester, correct?”
“That was the night.”
“Yes. I came home early that night. It had been a strain with the family. I'd say I arrived here about midnight. I needed rest for the funeral.”
“So from two
A.M.
on only you two and Deirdre Fallon were here to alibi each other?”
“Are you implying a family conspiracy?” Ames snapped.
“Baron was a con man squeezing the clan,” I said. “You would all have considered him vermin to be expunged.”
“Then I suggest you prove that one of us was elsewhere.”
“There are other members of the family. You could have hired Baron killed.”
“You have much to work on.”
“Did you introduce Jonathan to Agnes Moore?”
“So you are a detective. Your appearance makes people underestimate you, doesn't it?” Ames said, studying me. “Yes, I failed to strike a chord in Agnes, but she liked Jonathan instantly. She and I did a TV special on old-style burlesque. I did a music hall routine. Not my forte, really, but I rather enjoyed ⦔
I heard reminiscences coming. “You knew he was seeing her?”
“I surmised he was, yes.”
“Who else knew or surmised?”
“No one, I should think. He kept his private needs quiet, as we all do, don't we?” He began to draw on a pair of gray gloves. “I enjoy talking to you, Mr. Fortune, but I'm late for the club. Routine is the opium of the elegant aged. Walter?”
Walter was at a window looking out. He was looking at the city below, but I guessed that what he saw was inside his head. His hands at his sides were clenched into fists again.
“Walter?” Ames repeated. “Shall I see you for dinner?”
“What?” Walter turned. “Oh, I don't know. I ⦠it depends on what Deirdre wants to do.”
“Let me know, will you?” Ames said. He inclined his head to me, and strode from the room. It was a good exit. Ames was always onstage, and I wondered about him. Maybe he had needed some fast money and had learned about Walter's sideline.
I said to Walter, “Can I talk to Miss Fallon?”
“She's out.” He was back at his window. “Go away, Fortune.”
“Sure,” I said, “but I just had a funny idea. What if the blackmail was only a cover? You cooked it up with Baron to have your uncle murdered, and then got rid of Baron. Tricky, eh? But I can't get it out of my mind that you seem to gain most from both murders.”
He turned. “When I got my money within a year anyway?”
“Yeh, that's the stumbling block, but I'll work on it. Of course, maybe it was to get the company. That you wouldn't have inherited until Jonathan was dead.”
“The company? I didn't want the company. I still don't.”
“Somebody could have wanted it for you. They're pushing you.”
“You're insane! Crazy!”
I said, “Or maybe the blackmail was legitimate. Just for kicks. You helped Baron work it to watch Uncle steam, and to make a fast buck. You thought it was fun to work with those girls. But it got out of hand, Uncle got killed, and you had to cover by erasing Baron. Now that's not bad. I like that.”
He stared at me and chewed his lip. I gave him a grin and walked out. My guessing at him had been pure fantasy, but it was all possible, and if there was a grain of truth in it anywhere, I might worry him into some move. That was the idea, anyway.
He looked worried enough when I left.
16
N
UMBER
47 University Place turned out to be where Deirdre Fallon had sent me to look for Paul Baron on Tuesday night. In the daylight it was a gray building without style or character. The typical New York apartment houseâno taste, only floor space. I went up to 12-C. It was the same apartment I had been to on Tuesday. This time I got an answer.
An older woman who looked like a cleaning woman, and held a dust mop to prove it, opened the door. I asked for Carla Devine. She told me to wait, she'd go ask the girls. I waited.
The large room was rich and bright, with a deep-pile yellow carpet. Everything was expensive, thick and pastel-colored. You could have seen a speck of ash for a mile. It was all arranged in separate furniture groupings like a series of private waiting rooms. There were even magazines on the coffee tables.
It was the kind of apartment where a group of girls band together to live better than most men could ever keep them. That is a way of life in New York. Most of the girls are from out of town and have ambitions. They are office workers, sub-professionals, or fringe artists serving commerce, and what they really want is “fun” and, eventually, a man who makes more money than their fathers did.
Some of these girls change along the way, usually the most beautiful. Their work becomes a token, the men they meet have a great deal more money than Dad, their fun becomes expensive fun, and they begin to make a little profit on the fun. They have to be taken to the Colony for a hamburger. When they ask for money for the ladies' room, they expect ten dollars and give no change. For this they render a reward, and that moves them across the shadow line between amateurs and at least semi-pros.
I was sure that these were the girls Walter Radford had worked with, and I was thinking about Walter and his rich friends, when an inner door opened and Deirdre Fallon came into the room.
“You again, Mr. Fortune,” she said.
She wore a black suit, a high-necked black sweater, and a smile. The suit showed her off better than even the white dress had. She walked toward me. She wore black knee boots that did things to my backbone. Her eyes were amused. I suppose I had the look of a man slapped in the face with a flounder. We all think in stereotypes.
“Maybe you're following me,” I said.
“No, this happens to be where I live. Or it's where I lived until Walter's mother invited me out to North Chester. You'd have learned sooner or later in your wanderings.”
“You live here?” I was asking about more than her address, and she knew it. Her smile became wider. I really amused her.
“How do you think I met Walter? A man with your experience shouldn't jump to conclusions on so little evidence. This isn't 1900; the world is a lot more fluid.”
“It's not 1900,” I agreed. “You met Walter when he started to work with the girls here?”
“No, earlier. Paul Baron brought him to a party soon after they met. Six months ago. We liked each other.”
She thought about it, and frowned at her thoughts. She sat down on a pink couch and held her hand out. “Do you have a cigarette?”
I gave her a cigarette and lighted it. She went on with her silent thinking. Outside the high windows heavy clouds were moving in a blanket across the sun from the north. I could hear the wind shake the windows. She smoked like a man, slow and steady.
“Genteel poverty,” she said. “The very common story of my first sixteen years. The proud and proper Presbyterian Irish. If you want to observe false pride on its narrowest level, have a good look at a minority within a minority. My father was prejudiced against everyone who wasn't Irish, everyone who was Irish if also Catholic, and everyone who mistook him for a Catholic Irishman. The only group he didn't feel superior to was the English aristocracy, and he wasn't always sure about them. He had a high opinion of himself, my mother was delicately well-bred, and I got a fine polish with the aid of richer friends. With it all, we didn't have a penny to put on the eyes of the dead.”
“It's not a new problem,” I said.
“As old as time. My father died, my mother went to Baltimore as a poor relation, and I went out into the big world. I had culture, style, and good grammar. I was straight out of
Jane Eyre.
The little lady without money, connections, or salable skills. Only I wasn't Jane Eyre, the world had changed, and the little lady had changed with it. I got work right out in public because I'm damned good-looking and there's a market for front these days. I didn't have to be a governess in a big house with a brooding master I dreamed of marrying. I could be myself.”
Her laugh was warm if not exactly genteel. “Men liked me. I'm the cool type, right? Austere and untouched. That appealed to many men, especially rich older men. I wanted what I wanted. I took it the way I could get it. I enjoyed my life. What did I have to do that I didn't want to do, that most girls don't do today? The only essential difference was that I confined my social life to rich men who could move me in rich circles, and that I didn't pretend that they loved me or that I loved them. In a way I think we're more honest here. All girls get wined, dined, and given gifts by men they don't really give a damn about; they only tell themselves they do to feel chaste. Some of what men gave me bought clothes and paid the rent, yes, but that isn't so unusual these days either. I may not have loved any of them, but I never went with a man I didn't like. I never had to; maybe I was lucky.” She stopped and seemed to be thinking about her luck. It didn't appear to make her ecstatic.
“Why tell me?” I said. “I was never ordained.”
“All men are ordained on that subject,” she said. “But I'm not apologizing. It's over now, but I enjoyed the last four years. No regrets. You're forming theories, and I want you to form the right theories. Walter seems to love me. I don't love him in the normal sense, but I've never needed love. I like him, and I like to be loved. I think I can do him good. I intend to try.”
“Especially now that he's really rich.”
“That won't hurt. I like what money can buy, and that's most of everything. Perhaps that's what I've been telling you. But he asked me to marry him some time ago, and Jonathan liked me.”
“I wouldn't know,” I said. “Were you part of the squeeze?”
“I'd hardly have been worth Paul Baron's time.”
“You would be worth a lot to Walter. Or maybe Jonathan wouldn't have liked you if he had known about the last four years.”
She smoothed her skirt over her lap. “I may have been part of Baron's pressure, yes. But not seriously. Walter knows all about me. So does Mrs. Radford, and so did Jonathan. Even George Ames knows. I told you I had no apologies. I learned that you can't live with a false front, why should you? I don't need Walter so much I would hide myself. As it happens, Mrs. Radford seems to admire me for it all, and so did Jonathan. They seemed to feel that I showed initiative and determination.”
I could believe it, from what I had seen of the Radfords. You didn't get rich a hundred years ago, or today, in a commercial society by being soft or particularly moral. To the old pirates of commerce, morality was relative. It still is.
“You knew Baron before you met Walter?”
“Of course. We were all invited to his parties to make contacts. He didn't introduce me to Walter, but I did meet Walter at that party. Are you thinking that one of us killed Paul Baron?”
“Who's us? The girls here, or the Radford clan?”
“Either.”
“I don't know the girls, but Baron was trouble for the Radfords. I think he killed Jonathan, and that gives the family two first-rate motives.”
“Revenge? Hardly,” she said, “and if one of them was going to kill Paul Baron, why not do it before he got to Jonathan?”
“Maybe Jonathan tried to do it. And then, after Jonathan was dead, Baron tried to go on with the blackmail.”
She gave me a cool frown, but said nothing.
“Tell me about Carla Devine,” I said.
“I can't tell you much. She's relatively new here. She was Paul Baron's latest conquest. He tried us all at one time or another. He dazzled Carla.”
“Did he try you?”
“Naturally. He didn't dazzle me.”
“Is Carla here?”
“She didn't come home last night, the girls tell me. She's done that before, but she was usually with Paul Baron then.”
“Do you know a friend of hers, a boy with an old, gray coupe? Thin, pale, long wild hair.”
“No. No one like that comes here.”