Inspector Queen’s Own Case (25 page)

“Not a chance.”

“He could make it pretty hot for us.”

“He can't afford to, Abe. The last thing Humffrey wants is to stir up a full-scale investigation.” The Inspector looked up. “You know, this isn't a total loss. It's confirmed two important points. One, that he substituted the clean pillowslip that night for the dirty one, otherwise he wouldn't have spotted the discrepancy. Two, that he didn't destroy the dirty slip—he was all ready to believe we'd found it. We're not licked yet!”

Jessie stared at him. “Richard, you sound as if you're going on with this.”

“Going on with it?” He seemed puzzled. “Of course I'm going on with it, Jessie. How can I stop now? We've got him on the run.”

Jessie began to laugh. Something in her laugh alarmed him, and he stepped quickly to her side. But she stopped laughing as suddenly as she had started. “I'm sorry, Richard. It just struck me funny.”

“I don't see anything funny about it,” he growled.

“I am sorry.” She touched his arm.

“Aren't you going on with it, Jessie?” he asked grimly.

Her hand dropped to her side.

“Richard, I'm so tired … I don't know.”

Their return to the city was a strain on both of them. He seemed depressed, resentful, frustrated—a combination of things that Jessie with her throbbing head did not attempt to analyze. When he dropped her off at 71st Street, promising to park her car in the garage, he drove off without another word.

Jessie floundered all night. For once aspirin did not help, and tension made her skin itch and prickle unmercifully. Toward morning she took a seconal and fell into a heavy sleep. She was awakened by various bumps and crashes to find the clock hands standing at five minutes to noon and Gloria Sardella dumping various bags and packages on the living room floor.

Holy Mother! Jessie thought. It's the 30th!

She decided then and there.

“I'm going home, Richard,” Jessie said over the phone.

“So you've made up your mind.” And he was silent.

Jessie thought, Is it possible this is the way it's going to end?

“I've sort of had my mind made up for me,” she said, trying to sound chatty. “I'd forgotten all about Gloria's saying when she left that she'd be back on the 30th. I guess I've lost track of time, along with everything else. Are you there, Richard?”

“I'm here,” he said.

“I felt like such a ninny when she walked into the apartment this morning. The least I might have done was meet the boat! Of course, Gloria was awfully sweet—said I was welcome to stay as long as I wanted——”

“Why don't you?” He was having some trouble clearing his throat.

“It wouldn't be fair to Gloria. You know how small her apartment is. Besides, what's the point? The whole thing's been a mistake, Richard.” Jessie stopped, but he didn't say anything. “Last night in Taugus was the straw that broke the lady camel's back, I guess. I'd better go home and back to being a nurse again.”

“Jessie.”

“Yes, Richard.”

“Do we have to talk over the phone? I mean—unless you'd rather not see me any more——”

“Richard, what a silly thing to say.”

“Then can I drive you up to Rowayton?” he asked eagerly.

“If you'd like to,” Jessie murmured.

He drove so slowly that irate cars honked and swooshed around them all the way up to Connecticut.

For a while he talked about the case.

“I went over some of the boys' reports, from when they were tailing Humffrey. Couldn't sleep last night, anyway. I noticed something that hadn't meant anything at the time.

“That Friday morning when Humffrey'd had his wife removed from the Duane Sanitarium, the report said that his chauffeur left town early, alone, driving the big limousine. Remember Elizabeth Currie saying that Mrs. Humffrey was taken away in a big private limousine? My hunch is that Humffrey sent Cullum up to New Haven while he stayed in town to draw us off. Cullum must have picked up the two nurses on the way, and then gone up to the sanitarium. At least, it's a possibility. I'm going to work on that right away—today.”

“Richard, you should have told me. I'd never have let you waste all this time driving me home.”

“It can wait till I get back to the city,” he said quickly.

“What are you going to do, pump Henry Cullum?”

“Yes. If I can find out through him where Sarah Humffrey is …”

But for the most part they were silent.

In Rowayton he carried her bags into the cottage, fixed the leaky kitchen faucet, admired her zinnias, accepted her offer of coffee; but it was all done on a note of withdrawal, and Jessie's head began to ache again.

I won't help him, she told herself fiercely. I won't!

He refused to let her drive him to the Darien station. He phoned for a cab instead.

Then, at the last moment, with the taxi waiting outside, he said suddenly, “Jessie, I can't go without—without——”

“Yes?”

“Without, well, saying thank you …”

“Thank
me?”
You're overdoing it, old girl, she thought in despair. How do women manage these things? “What on earth for, Richard?”

He toed her living-room rug. “For just about the two most wonderful months of my life.”

“Well,” Jessie said. “I thank
you
, Mr. Queen. It hasn't been exactly dull for me, either.”
And there's a brilliant remark
.

“I don't mean this Humffrey thing.” He cleared his throat twice, the second time irritably. “You've come to mean—well, a lot to me, Jessie.”

“I have, Richard?”
Oh, dear
…

“An awful lot.” He scowled at the rug. “I know I have no right …”

“Oh, Richard.”

“I mean, a man of my age——”

“Are we back to
that
again?” Jessie cried.

“And you so youthful, so pretty …”

My goodness, Jessie thought. Now if my stomach doesn't start making blurpy bilge-pump sounds, the way it always does when I'm fussed …
And there it goes!

“Yes, Richard?” Jessie said loudly.

The taxi man took that moment to start blasting away on his horn. Richard Queen flushed a profound scarlet, grabbed her hand, shook it as if it were a fighting fish, mumbled, “I'll call you some time, Jessie,” and ran.

Jessie sat down on her floor and wept.

He'll never call, Jessie assured herself. Why should he? I got him into it, and now I've run out on him. He won't come back.

She swallowed the two aspirins dry, as a punishment, and resumed putting her clothes away.

Murdered babies.

My righteous indignation.

The truth is, Jessie Sherwood, she told herself pitilessly as she banged hangers about in the closet, you're a hopeless old maid. You're a hopeless old maid filled with hopeless guilt feelings, and don't blame it on menopause, either. You've got plenty to feel guilty about, old girl. Not just running out on him. Not just acting like an irresponsible neurotic, throwing yourself at him, leading the poor man on till he began to feel young again, and then making it as hard for him as you could.

It's that pillowslip.

When Jessie thought about the pillowslip, something inside cringed and curled up. She tried not to think of it, but the more she tried the faster it bounced back. She had been so positive the doctored slip was just like the one she had seen. But it hadn't been. One look, and Humffrey had known it was a forgery. How could he have known? What hadn't she noticed, or forgotten? Maybe if she could remember it now … That would be helping. That would be making it up to Richard!

So Jessie shut her eyes tight and thought and thought, right there in the closet, seeing the nursery again, seeing herself stooping over the crib in the nightlight, the pillow almost completely covering the motionless little body … the pillowcase … the pillowcase …

But she could not add anything to the pillowcase. It remained in her mind's eye as she thought she had seen it that night.

She dropped the dress to the floor and went over to the chintz-backed maple chair near the window, where she could look out at her postage-stamp back garden. The morning-glories were still in bloom, and the petunias; the berries on the dogwood tree were big and shiny and red, and disappearing fast down the gullets of the birds; and Jessie thought, I will do it for him. I
will
.

So she sat there and thought, desperately.

How
had
that monster disposed of the pillowslip? He hadn't burned it, he hadn't cut it to pieces … He had been under pressure, the pressure of his own guilt, the pressure of his wife's hysterics, the pressure of Dr. Wicks's presence, the pressure of the police-on-the-way … Pressure. Pressure makes people do things quickly, without much thought. Richard had remarked himself Wednesday night that Humffrey had had only one thought in mind, “to get rid of the pillowcase in the quickest and easiest way.”

Suppose I'd been the one, Jessie thought with a shudder.

Suppose I've smothered the baby and the baby's body has been found by that nosy nurse and the house is in confusion and Dr. Wicks is there and the police are coming and suddenly, like a dash of seawater, I notice the pillow with my dirty handprint on the slip. It mustn't be found … they'll know it was murder … get rid of the slip quick, quick … is that someone coming? whose voice is that? I mustn't be found in here … I'm in the nursery—I've got to get rid of it—got to hide it—where? where?

The laundry chute!

Now wait, Jessie said to her racing pulse, wait, wait, that came too easy.…

Easy?
But that's just it
. The easiest way! One step to the door of the chute, one flip of the wrist, one shove, another flip of the wrist … and the pillowslip is gone. Gone down into the basement, into the laundry-sized canvas hamper under the chute opening … gone to mingle with the rest of the household's soiled laundry. The easiest, the quickest way to get rid of it.

At least temporarily.

Later—later I'll get hold of it, destroy it. As soon as I can. As soon as I can get down into the basement plausibly, safely …

And suppose just then the police arrived. And you couldn't, you simply couldn't call attention to yourself by disappearing. Not with a hysterical wife needing attention, policemen's questions to be answered, the dead little body in the crib … not with the awful guilt clamoring to be guarded … and the servants downstairs whispering over their coffee, in the path of anyone wanting to get to the basement unseen. And always and constantly the need to hear every whisper, to observe every change of expression, every coming, every going, to make sure you were still unsuspected …

Jessie frowned. It sounded fine—except for one thing. The police had searched the house thoroughly. “The laundry basement, the hampers …” Chief Pearl had ordered. And they hadn't found the pillowslip. So maybe …

So maybe they overlooked it
.

That's what must have happened! Jessie thought exultantly. They didn't find the slip somehow and Alton Humffrey must have died a thousand deaths while they were looking and was reborn a thousand times when they failed to find it, and kept waiting, waiting for them to leave so he could sneak down into the basement and rummage through the canvas hamper and retrieve the fateful piece of batiste. But dawn came, and daylight, and still Abe Pearl's men were on the premises searching, and still he was afraid to risk being seen going to the basement.

And then, of course, Sadie Smith came, Sadie Smith from Norwalk, driving up in her 1938 Olds that made such a clatter early Tuesday and Friday mornings …

Sadie Smith to do the wash
.

Jessie burrowed deeper in the maple chair, surprised to find herself shaking.

For of course after that Alton Humffrey thought he was safe. That day passed, a week, a month, and the pillowslip vanished into the limbo of forgotten things. Sadie Smith had washed the pillowslip along with the other hand laundry, not noticing, or ignoring, the dirty handprint; and that was the end of that.

The end of it.

Jessie sighed.

So much for “helping” Richard.

But wait!

Surely Sadie could not have been deaf and blind to what was going on in the house that Friday. Surely Mrs. Lenihan, or Mrs. Charbedeau, or one of the maids, must have told Sadie about the pillowslip the policemen were turning the house and grounds upside down for. Even if the police had missed it in the hamper,
wouldn't Sadie have been on the lookout for it?

Yes!

Then why hadn't she found it?

It was still light when Jessie parked before the neat two-story brick housing development in Norwalk. She found Sadie Smith changing into a clean housedress. Mrs. Smith was a stout, very dark woman with brawny forearms and good-humored, shrewd black eyes.

“Miss Sherwood,” she exclaimed. “Well, of all people! Come in! I just got home from work——”

“Oh, dear, maybe I ought to come back some other time, Mrs. Smith. It was thoughtless of me to pop in just before dinner, and without even phoning beforehand.”

“We never eat till eight, nine o'clock. My husband don't get home till then. You go on into the parlor and set, Miss Sherwood. I'll fix us some tea.”

“Thank you. But why don't we have it here in your kitchen? It's such a charming kitchen, and I get so little chance to be in my own …”

Mrs. Smith said quietly, as she put the kettle on the range, “It's about the Humffreys, Miss Sherwood, ain't it?”

“Yes,” Jessie admitted.

“I knew it.” The dark woman seated herself at the other end of the table. “You don't have to tell me you're still all bothered about how that little child died. It's a terrible thing, Miss Sherwood, but he's dead, and nothing can bring him back. Why don't you just forget the Humffreys? They ain't your kind of people.”