Death of an Old Sinner (18 page)

“Well for all of me, it might not!” she cried.

“Didn’t he ever make conversation with you? Did he never refer to the woman at all?” said Tully.

“He had a saying,” the florist said. “I’m trying to think of it. Something like: ‘Blossoms for my Blossom.’ That’s not right, but something like that. Maybe her name was Rose!” Then he shook his head, turning down his own conjecture. “I’m sorry, officer.”

“Don’t mention it.” Then Tully snapped: “That big funeral wreath—how much did the gangster pay you for it?”

The shopkeeper went a little pale, and his hand trembled when he picked up the ribbon Tully threw on the counter, but he stuck to his story. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Tully saluted him, the tip of his hat with the tip of his fingers, and let the matter stand. Outdoors he said to Mrs. Norris: “I could have asked him to let me see his books. But it probably wouldn’t show anything we don’t know now. The wreath was bought there, all right, and by the big bag of cheese in the chauffeur’s uniform. I don’t really think the flower man knows anything except enough to be scared. And he is scared. That tells quite a lot, you see.”

“Poor man,” said Mrs. Norris.

“I told you we should’ve had our dinner first,” said Tully.

“What will you do now?” Mrs. Norris said as they walked the few paces down Third Avenue and turned a corner, going in a door that said
Family Entrance.
She forgot her own question for a moment: “I haven’t been in a family entrance for years!”

It was a fine old tavern-restaurant, with the smell of gravy and beer combined, white cloths on the table, pyramided napkins, thick plates and the best roast beef in New York, according to Mr. Tully. He excused himself for a moment, taking pen and notebook from pocket to make a few notations.

“Why, what will I do now? Cherchez la femme, as they say in France. We know quite a bit about her now. We know for example she’ll be disposing of some poor faded roses soon, the last of a lovely crop. You might even call her ‘The last rose of summer left blooming alone’.” He sounded very mournful. “Except I don’t think she’s blooming alone. We also know she has the services of a chauffeured car, and one that might be intimately connected with the murder of a Brooklyn gangster.”

The mention of Brooklyn again turned Mrs. Norris’ thoughts to her own family. She confided to the detective her sudden concern for her sister.

“What does he do for a living, your brother-in-law?”

“He’s a printer. And he’s always been a fine provider, Mr. Tully. And there’s times I really think it’s my own imagination. I’d put it all down to that right now if I’d only been able to talk to Mag herself. But first she was out for a walk at eight in the morning, then she was sick of the stomach, then she was…well.”

Tully nodded sympathetically. “The thing you should do is go out there without advance notice.”

“I’m doing just that in the morning.”

“Fine. I’ll drive you over myself, for I’ve an errand there. Do you like your beef rare, Mrs. Norris?”

“Just so it doesn’t kick me in the teeth,” she said.

I
T WAS NINE O’CLOCK
in the morning when the detective put her down at the corner a few doors from her sister’s. There was no use rousing Mr. Robinson’s curiosity about Mr. Tully by having him drive her up to the door. She climbed the front steps, noticing a half dozen cigarette stubs stamped out there, something Mag would not tolerate if she were herself. Mrs. Norris’ heart beat the drum of alarm. She thrust herself forward with determination and tweaked the doorbell.

Mr. Robinson came through the hall from the kitchen in his shirt sleeves. He needed to open his mouth twice before he could say anything. Then he honeyed her with sweet talk.

“I want to see my sister, Mr. Robinson. That’s all I ask.”

“Dear Annie, ask anything you like.” He drew her in the door and steered her down the hall with him, very neatly keeping her from entering the living room.

“Will you have a cup of tea with me first, and we’ll go up together and wake her?” Mr. Robinson took his handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his hands vigorously—a very nervous habit, Mrs. Norris thought.

“I’ll wait if she’s sleeping,” she said, and in the kitchen sat down to the tea he had been brewing as she came to the door. If all was not well, it would give her the sense of the house to see more of it, she thought, for somehow it was changed from when last she had been there.

“You look a bit peaked yourself, Annie. Have you not been sleeping?”

“With my eyes open, Mr. Robinson,” she said.

He threw back his head and laughed so that the roof of his denture showed. She cast her eyes down, and stirred her tea; the man was acting daft.

“Excuse me a minute, Annie,” he said, and slipped out the door into the front hall again.

She was of half a mind to follow him, but there was no sense in getting panicked. She drank the strong tea, and listened to the clock tick. The other morning Mag was out for a walk at eight, now she was still abed at nine. And the brief glimpse Mrs. Norris had got of the living room revealed the look of an all-night party, or at least occupancy by too many people. Aye, that was the whiff she got, stale smoke, cigars. She could remember it in the old days when the politicians would gather round Mr. James.

She took her teacup to the sink. A yellowed saucer showed where Mr. Robinson had had his breakfast, for she had noticed a bit of egg on the back of his hand where he had wiped his mouth on his way to admit her. She looked about now for eggshells, and found them in the garbage bucket. One egg only. But of course, Mag was still asleep.

The urge to know the truth became irresistible. She went out into the hall and up the stairs. He was in the living room, on the phone with someone. She could hear the rumble of his voice, but no words. He had shut the door. She could see the open bedroom door from the top step, the double bed gaping where someone had risen from sleep there.

“Mag?” she said softly.

No answer at all.

She went to the guest room then, for if Mag were ill, it was best to sleep alone. But the bed was as neat there as a walking stick. She hurried along then to Mag’s sewing room at the other end of the upstairs. A studio couch, she remembered there, and the morning sun. She opened the door after ever so light a tap. Mag’s sewing dummy stood fully dressed in a summer frock. It gave Mrs. Norris such a turn she let out a little moan and retreated into the hall. She had her hand on the railing to go downstairs, when Mr. Robinson spoke from the master bedroom.

“Are you sure you conducted a thorough search, Annie?”

She walked into the bedroom, her hands on her hips. “Where is my sister, Mr. Robinson?”

He was sitting on the corner of the bed, a bitter smile on his face. Suddenly he leaped to his feet and to the closet door. “Did you look in here?” he cried, flinging open the door.

Only a dress hung loose. After the start she had got from the dummy, Mr. Robinson’s intended bit of cruelty was not even a bad joke. It left her unaffected.

“I’m warning you. I’ll go to the police when I go out of this house if I don’t see Mag.”

“Where, where is the trusting friendship, Annie, that made us paragons among warring in-laws? Did I tell you Mag was up here? I did not. You leaped to your own conclusion. Come downstairs now. I’ll put on my coat and we’ll go up together. She spent the night with our next-door neighbor. The doctor has given her pills, you see, and I’d to entertain some customers here… Well, if she’s awake she’ll tell you, and if she’s sleeping, you’ll sit by her side and be her first waking vision.”

Mrs. Norris went down the stairs with sodden humility. Either she was a great fool, or he took her for one—and she must be, not to know which was the case herself.

She was introduced to Mrs. Anders, who then put her hand on Mr. Robinson’s arm. “She slept the night through like a baby.”

Little she knew of babies, Mrs. Norris thought, if she was of the opinion they slept the night through. But there was Mag sitting up, a bed jacket about her shoulders, and a tray in her lap, and her eyes lighting up for a minute when she saw her sister.

“Look who I brought with my morning kiss, love,” said Mr. Robinson, leaning over his wife, and whispering whatever else he had to say in her ear.

The light was gone from her eyes when he moved from between the women.

“Sit down, Annie,” Mag said, more whining than ever. “I’m a bit weak from nerves, that’s all.”

“I was worried,” Mrs. Norris said.

“Oh, and wasn’t she, love? She was of the opinion I’d done away with you.”

“He’s very good to me, Annie,” Mag said.

Mrs. Anders, a big woman, bounced into the room with a cup and saucer. “You’ll have some tea from your sister’s pot, Mrs. Norris.”

Her own nerves were already jangling from the cup she had had at Mr. Robinson’s, and she declined. The gesture, she thought, was made to show her that Mag’s tea was tea and nothing else. They were trying to be wonderful tranquilizers, the lot of them. But when Mag gave her the tray, and remarked that she thought it was time she got up and dressed, Mrs. Norris had very little choice but to accept things as she saw them instead of as she had imagined them.

“I’m much obliged to you, Mrs. Anders,” Robinson said, and then to Mrs. Norris. “You’ll help her over if she needs it, I’m sure, and have a fine day together the two of you. I’ll be at the shop if you want anything, Annie. Here’s my card with the phone number.”

Syrup ran no smoother than he did, but for the life of her she could not bring herself to apologize for mistrusting him. She looked at his card when he was gone:

Printing—old style and new

Quicker than you can say

Jack Robinson

493 Front St., Brooklyn, U.S.A.

Main 3-6718

O
NE OF THE PUZZLING
things about the General’s associates and activities the night before he died was the absence of fingerprints, complete and absolute, from the right door handle of his car. Someone had wiped them off. Which would seem to mean, Jasper Tully reasoned, that someone was in the car with him that day who anticipated trouble, and someone maybe whose fingerprints had a notable history.

He thought about this after leaving Mrs. Norris at her brother-in-law’s, chiefly because he was on his way to see Johnny Rocco’s man. In spite of Mrs. Norris’ assertions to the contrary, he was not entirely convinced that the General might not have had an old-time association with The Rock which, just for the hell of it, he might have been reviving. There was something about the Twenties. Well, he was over sixty himself, Jasper Tully, and to dig out the few best years of his life, he would find them there. And you couldn’t doubt that retired in the bloom of health, a man like the General would be bored. Having survived many dangers, he was likely to take risks that would shiver more timid men into their beds. No, he decided, it was not at all impossible for the General to have been in some sort of game with The Rock, a game in which he needed money quickly. Perhaps, when he found out Jimmie was headed for Albany, he decided to pull out, and had to buy his way…therefore the business deal with Fowler. Then something went awry. For The Rock, fatally awry. Was he, by any chance, hoisted on his own petard? Did he maybe get something intended for the General in that last ride from the bank? He had left the motor running in a low-slung sports car, something the General also drove.

All these things the detective turned over and round in his mind, and wondered then in summary, how close to the truth he had come in any one of them.

It was in the end, the moon-faced character, seen as the chauffeur of the General’s lady friend, that made the link for Tully. If he should turn out now to be the deceased Johnny Rocco’s bodyguard … Tully gave the revolver in his shoulder holster a pat, as though to assure himself of its company.

However, it was a man almost as tall as himself, and with a face lean-cheeked as a medieval monk’s, who opened the double doors on Johnny’s house to Tully. Rocco’s man protested that he had never heard the name of General Jarvis in this house.

“Ask me questions,” he said, “I’ll prove it. I’ll prove I tell you the truth. Anything about The Rock.”

“Was he ever married?” Tully asked.

“No. No women. Not for a long time. I tell you how it was. During prohibition, he took the pledge, no drink. During the depression, he took the pledge, no women. That way he doesn’t get into no trouble.”

“Didn’t he have any hobbies?” said Tully.

“Sure. Sports cars, absolutely authentic.”

Tully thought about that for a moment. “Absolutely authentic what?”

“I tell you how it was.” This punk, this gangster, spread out the most beautiful hands Tully had ever seen. “The Austin-Healey, you know?”

“I know. The one outside the bank.”

Rocco’s man nodded. “That one. Two in the whole world like it. Do you know who’s got the other?” Tully shook his head. “English royalty. The Duke of Glower. Absolutely authentic.”

Tully thought of the item in Python’s column which suggested an intimacy between Jimmie and English royalty. He rubbed the back of his neck vigorously. “How do you know?”

The man shrugged. “I don’t know, not me. I wouldn’t know a Hillman Minx from a baby carriage. But The Rock knew. He used to slap me on the chest and say, ‘Look at her, Slim. Me and the Duke of Glower got one.’ And it was me personal had to bathe her.”

“Wonderful,” Tully growled. “You didn’t happen to personal bathe a neat little Jaguar lately, did you? Say, the door handle on the right side?”

“Huh?”

Tully let it go. He left soon thereafter, the second door closing behind him slowly like the rising of a castle moat in a Hollywood spectacular. Maybe in the next such picture they could use a medieval monk named Slim.

He went then to see the officials at the bank where Johnny The Rock did his last business.

W
HEN AUGUST FOWLER’S BLONDE
receptionist unlocked the office door in the morning she admitted Jimmie Jarvis as well as herself. It was a nice way to start the day, a client like this, well dressed, clean shaven, and up so early in the morning. Considering the mess he had got the whole office into, Mr. Fowler should find a gentleman like this some relief, too. She hinted every way she could to find out who he was.