Death of an Old Sinner (10 page)

High church burial, she supposed. Almost as lenient on its delinquents as Rome, and almost as Popish. Candles likely, his dark suit. She would have to see to that. He had worn it into town…

As soon as she put her feet into her slippers she picked up the phone and ordered tea sent up to her and a pot to knock up Master Jamie with as well.

Having refreshed herself with a wash, and the beverage which if it lacked the flavor of tea at least profited by the intention—it was hot—Mrs. Norris called Brooklyn. It was Mr. Robinson who answered the phone, and he was a long time giving her the opportunity to inquire after her sister.

“I was going to call you this very minute, Annie,” he started. “The poor old gentleman. Was it a heart attack?”

“Heart failure,” she said.

“Uh-huh, uh-huh. It’s what we all die of, eh Annie? But him it took sudden. I don’t suppose you know yet if he left you anything. Don’t misconstrue my meaning now. I wanted to tell you there’s a home waiting you here with your sister and me…”

That would be the day, thought Mrs. Norris. “Thank…”

“Not a word of thanks. It’s our natural duty. Was there anyone with the poor old gentleman at the end?”

He could pause long enough when he wanted an answer, she thought, and let the quiet air hang between them until he demanded, “Are you there, Annie?”

“I am. Is Mag there?”

“I thought for a minute we were cut off. The service is not what it used to be, say what you like about mechanical devices. The dial business is not like an operator. Was I rude to you the other night, Annie? It’s bothered me since.”

“You were not rude to me, Mr. Robinson, but if I was Mag….”

“Ah, I’m glad of that. I have a terrible temper, you know.”

“Mr. Robinson, will you stop chattering like a magpie. I have but a minute and I want to speak to my sister.”

“Oh, I’m very sorry, Annie. She’s out, I think. For a bit of air. She says the only time you can smell the sea is in the early morning, and you know how Mag is for a pure breath of the sea.”

“Then I’ll call her later in the day, Mr. Robinson.”

“Couldn’t she call you?”

To say just what he wanted her to say, Mrs. Norris thought. Oh, there was something wrong there all right. “I may not be near a telephone,” she said, furious with herself that she could not better cope with him.

“Annie,” he purred, and she could hear the smile in his voice, “would you like us to come out and be with you for a day or two? But of course you would. What else is a family for at a time like this? We’ll be out tonight now, and not a word, and you won’t have to trouble calling Mag today. Is there anything we can bring?”

“Not a thing,” she said. “Goodbye, Mr. Robinson.”

Beware a man with a glib tongue, she thought to herself, hanging up. What a dislike she had taken to him in the last week, and after a lifetime of toleration. It was the way he had spoken to Mag the other morning that finished it. Coming in at three a.m. with tracks the size of horseshoes under his eyes. And Mag creeping off to bed at one lash of his tongue. Not Annie Norris if he was her man. And now telling her that Mag was out for a sea breeze at eight in the morning. There was no doubt about it—he was not the gentleman she had always thought him.

But then there were not very many gentlemen left in the world. Only one that she could think of at the moment, Master Jamie. She arranged the service of his breakfast.

J
IMMIE STOOD, TEACUP IN
hand, looking down on Fifth Avenue, the green stripe running down its middle through the early traffic. Wherever over the world they were, Irishmen were gathering, and wherever democracy had sanction, the politicians had stayed up the night to help plan the celebration. St. Patrick’s Day in the morning.

In the line of such duty, his father had put on his medals before dying. It was like him, and yet bloody unlike him. If he had been alive now he would not have so much as opened the blinds upon the scene. He had always hated daylight before coffee, and Jimmie remembered a remark of his: it was better to see a country only as a terrain map if you had to attack it. When you examined the reverse side of such a nature—the one beneath the shell—it was almost lovable.

Jimmie drained the teacup as the phone rang.

“This is Helene, Jimmie. I am very sorry about your father’s death. I hope there is something I can do—that you will let me do.”

“Thanks,” he said.

“Are you hurt that I left you at the restaurant the other night?”

“Not at the moment,” Jimmie said, quite as sharply as his father might have spoken under similar circumstances.

“I guess I deserve that,” she said. “Jimmie, there is one thing you must understand for now. More later, but just now—Judge Turner and I were not strangers. I knew his daughter a long time ago.”

It must have been a long time ago, Jimmie thought, remembering that he was himself in law school when she went to live in Paris. He could not even remember her name now. “Helene…”

“Yes?”

“Later today could you drive Mrs. Norris to Nyack—in father’s car—if the police okay it, of course?”

“I’d be pleased to.”

“I’ll call you in a couple of hours.”

“Jimmie…. you are very dear to me.”

“Thank you, Helene. Thank you very much.” He hung up the phone and swallowed down the little lump of rather sad pleasure. Like an adolescent, about once a month he fell in love all over again. Except that in his case it was with the same woman.

Mrs. Norris gave a thump on the door that made him leap for the bathroom. She was soon maneuvering the breakfast cart into the room and setting up the table. At least she had been sensible and was herself having breakfast with him, she and a great tablet and pencil. The efficiency of the women in his life was frightening.

Jasper Tully arrived in time for coffee.

“S
EEMS LIKE THERE WAS
something in what you said, Mrs. Norris,” Tully started, “about the General’s drinking habits.” The preliminary report of the Medical Examiner was in. “One or two drinks was the most he had last night. Even on an empty stomach, that wouldn’t make him dribblin’ drunk, would you say?”

Both Jimmie and Mrs. Norris shook their heads.

“What does that leave us with?”

“Him pretending to be drunk?” said Mrs. Norris, and shook her head again. “He was too proud a man for that, Mr. Tully. He wasn’t as proud of drinking as he was of holding it.”

“Agreed,” said Jimmie.

“Which leaves us with the possibility that he was their prisoner and doing a very corny act maybe at gunpoint,” Tully said.

“Why?”

“Jimmie, I used to tell you when you were in office, first you got to settle on
what.
Then maybe you have a chance of finding out why.”

“What suit was he wearing?” Mrs. Norris asked in the silence that followed Tully’s lesson.

“He was wearing the gray tweed when we found him,” Jimmie said.

“He wore his dark blue into town,” she said.

“He did,” Tully confirmed, consulting his notes. “Furthermore, during this trip he wore both suits to the same…house. They’re both in the laboratory, and both had bits of blond hair. They must know by now whether Angora cat or human.”

“I could tell them and I wouldn’t need a laboratory for it,” Mrs. Norris said with a shrug. “I never knew a cat to run a brokerage.”

Mr. Tully cleared his throat.

Poor father, Jimmie thought. “That was a little joke between them, I suppose,” he said looking at Tully. “It seems when she called him, she would say it was his broker’s office.”

“I know,” said Tully. “I was talking to people at his club this morning.”

“I’d not be surprised if they know more than we do,” said Mrs. Norris. “He came home when he felt like behaving, and went to his club when he had notions.”

Tully pulled down the corners of his mouth lest they be caught going up. “You remember the clerk saying she was carrying a box, Mrs. Norris?”

“I do, the box I believe with his medals in it.”

“A fair assumption, and we’re assuming, too, he put them on before he died. But now here’s a curious thing: the medals were all mixed up. I forget what each one is called, but the man I asked knows all about these things, and he says the arrangement was like wearing a Good Conduct medal in precedence over the Congressional Medal of Honor.”

“Then she put them on him!” Mrs. Norris cried.

“Dead or alive?” said Jimmie.

Tully nodded. “That’s the question, lad. That’s it. Maybe the lab will turn up something, but not yet. The Medical Examiner says he died between seven and nine. I think we could be more exact ourselves. But maybe not. The tests are all under way, however. So you can go ahead with plans for the funeral.”

Jimmie made his call to Nyack then and there. “The voice of an undertaker,” he said, the unhappy business settled, “you can almost hear the organ playing through it while he talks.”

“I don’t approve of music at funerals,” Mrs. Norris said.

“Do you like it at weddings?” said Tully slyly.

“At weddings you don’t need it.”

True enough, Tully thought, if you looked at it that way. “The Rock’s being laid away in old time splendor this afternoon, Jimmie. The boss thought you might like to go. He’d be glad to have you drive out with him.”

“Thanks,” said Jimmie, not especially keen on spectaculars. But this one, he thought, he had better take in.

“Now,” Tully said, “I’d like you to go over the contents of the General’s pockets and suitcase with me.”

“Will you need me?” said Mrs. Norris hopefully.

“We will,” said Tully. “You’re quicker witted then the both of us.”

The right coat pocket of the General’s blue suit had contained two folded pages from the early edition of
The New York Chronicle
, March 16, according to the notation of the police property clerk.

Mrs. Norris needed to overcome a certain reluctance to look at these things which had meant something special to the General. It was like peeping through a keyhole, and with that thought her eyes rested an instant passing over the “Peeping Tom” story to concentrate on the feature of the page as Jasper Tully’s bony finger pointed it out—the plans for the St. Patrick’s Day parade, including the General’s name amongst the very important people to be in the reviewing stand.

The other page, they saw, accounted the pickup order out for Johnny “The Rock” Rocco.

“It seems curious at first, him being interested in that,” Tully said, “but down a ways there’s your name, Jimmie, and that could be it.”

Jimmie nodded and took his father’s wallet from the next box. It was something of a shock to look upon the faded picture of his mother, a woman of whom he had no recollection except as her portrait in the living room revealed her. He showed it to Mrs. Norris who sniffed a little. Then he opened the money compartment. He looked twice and then took the money out, each bill separately, and put it on the table, Mrs. Norris giving a small “Oh” at each one hundred dollar bill. Nine of them there were, as well as a fifty and some singles.

“Did you give him all that, Master Jamie?” Mrs. Norris said with deep reprimand.

“I did not. I gave him fifty dollars, two twenties and a ten.”

Mrs. Norris pursed her lips. “I wonder what’s missing from the house.”

Jasper Tully had been watching them. “Did the old gentleman have no money of his own?”

“His pension,” Jimmie said, “but it’s all tied up in his previous spendings. It will take a better lawyer than I am to straighten out his affairs.”

“Well, one thing would look to be clear from it,” the investigator said, “If he was murdered it was not for his fortune. Plainly the intention of the pair that brought him home was not to roll him.”

“I’d have said that was plain from the beginning,” Mrs. Norris snorted. “Look at her, carrying his medals and calling him Ransom. She knew what was in his pocket and the ways there were of getting it.” Mrs. Norris sat down and folded her hands. “Well, the Lord forgive me for saying it, but with all that money in his pocket, the old gentleman must have died happy.”

“He lived a good deal happier than most of us, too,” Jimmie said. “Let’s get on with this business.”

But there was nothing else of any value except the parking receipt for his car, a garage on Second Avenue and Sixtieth. The garage stamp indicated that the car had not been moved since Thursday night.

“That’s quite a ways from his club,” Tully said, “which makes you wonder awful much what it was close to.”

“Aye,” said Mrs. Norris. “Is that a wealthy neighborhood?”

“Mixed. But no real poverty,” Tully said.

“He’d be shy of that, you may be sure.”

“Can we have the car now?” said Jimmie.

“I think so,” Tully said, picking up the phone. “I’ll check and be sure.”

Jimmie turned to his housekeeper. “There’s someone I’ve wanted you to meet for a long time, Mrs. Norris, a very dear friend of mine, Helene Joyce. Mrs. Joyce will drive you home—if the car’s available.”

“How nice,” Mrs. Norris said, and brushed vigorously at her dress. It had been her opinion that for a long time he’d been wanting her not to meet Mrs. Joyce. If she didn’t watch her Master Jamie it would not be long before the old man’s shoes would need resoling. “When do you want me to leave?”

“As soon as you’re packed,” Jimmie said shortly. He had no patience now with her tantrums.

“Yes, sir,” she snapped, and flounced out of the room.

“My God,” Jimmie said, when she was gone, “almost a thousand dollars. Where did he get it, Jasp? And in crisp hundred dollar bills.”

“There’s two possibilities come to mind,” Tully said, “a bank—or the horses. All things considered, his Brooklyn jaunt and all that mess, this time, Jimmie, my boy, I’d bet on the horses.”

A
S IT TURNED OUT,
Helene was not at all what Mrs. Norris had expected. She looked like a working woman for all her delicate features. Her hand, given with a will on their introduction, had the hardness about it—not roughness but firmness—of competency. Indeed, something inside Mrs. Norris gave a sudden turn, like her soul to the wall. Here was a woman she was going to like in spite of herself, and a woman, she did not doubt, who once she got her foot in the house in Nyack, was likely to bring the other in after it and close the door.