Postmark Murder (5 page)

Obviously the thing to do was to open the door and walk in. As she was about to do so, however, the door was flung suddenly open.

A woman stood in the doorway. She was outlined dimly against the light from behind. Laura had only a swift and hazy impression of a loose brown coat, a dark beret pulled anyhow over dark hair, and a rather broad and very pale face which looked haggard in that eerie light, and deeply lined. The woman came with a rush out on the step, tugging a battered, canvas carryall after her, and then stopped and stared at Jonny.

Laura cried, “I am Laura March. Did you phone to me? Where is he?”

For a second or two the woman only stared at Jonny, and did not reply. She wore no lipstick; her mouth looked strangely colorless and stiff.

Laura said, “Please answer me. Did you phone to me? I’m Laura March.”

“Go away,” the woman said at last, flatly, scarcely moving her pale lips. “I should not have done it.” Her eyes shifted then from Jonny in a curious, swift, yet controlled glance along the street. She saw the yellow taxicab, and clutching her canvas carryall, ran suddenly down the white steps, across the sidewalk, and scrambled into the taxi.

“Wait,” Laura cried and started after her, but she was already in the taxicab. It started up with a roar and went down the street. Its yellow gleam passed under the street light, turned the corner, and vanished.

Laura stood for a moment transfixed, clasping Jonny’s hand. She was bewildered and indeed rather frightened by the odd encounter. She was sure that it was the woman who had phoned her, for she had the same flat and toneless voice, the same heavy foreign accent. Now, she said, “Go away.”

Laura couldn’t go away. Conrad was somewhere in that house, awaiting the doctor, needing help.

The door was still open, revealing a narrow hall, painted brown, and a narrow flight of stairs going upward. Laura took Jonny’s hand and entered the house.

There was a rank of doors along the hall, all of them closed. The only light came from a small, unshaded bulb above the transom. Again she looked for a bell and found none. But there must be a landlady somewhere. There must be lodgers.

She knocked on one door, and then another. No one answered, no one came to inquire. There was the heavy, rather ominous silence of complete emptiness in the house. The sound of her hand on the door only emphasized it.

But Conrad Stanislowski must be there, somewhere. Laura and Jonny went upstairs—slowly and, on Laura’s part, and perhaps Jonny’s, too, uncertainly and cautiously. The treads creaked under their footsteps, yet no one came to inquire. They emerged in the second-story hall which was almost an exact replica of the narrow brown hall, lined with doors, on the first floor. But here Laura saw, halfway along the hall, one door that was thinly outlined with light.

It must be Conrad Stanislowski’s room. She went to the door and knocked on it. Perhaps she knocked on it quickly and nervously and thus harder than she intended; the door was not latched and it swung slowly open.

Laura’s first act was sheerly instinctive. She thrust the child behind her and away from the door.

Then she looked at Conrad Stanislowski.

H
E WAS LYING ON
the floor near a small writing table. His head was turned at a preposterous angle. A light from a lamp on the writing table fell strongly on his thin face with its high forehead and weak chin and open faded blue eyes which stared at nothing. There were dark red patches on the back of his gray shirt. He was dead. There was an instantaneous and terrible clarity about that. The doctor, nobody could do anything for him now.

She turned around and put her hand on Jonny’s shoulder; the child looked up at her questioningly but with utter confidence.

“Stay here,” Laura said, contriving a smile. “Stay here, Jonny dear. Don’t move.”

Jonny did not answer but she seemed to understand. She nodded and moved to lean against the newel post. Laura left the sturdy, red-clad little figure, Jonny’s blue rather troubled eyes following her, and went into Conrad Stanislowski’s room.

She closed the door behind her so Jonny could not see. She went across the room and looked down at the figure on the floor. He was lying so she could see his back, and the ugly, spreading red patches on his shabby gray shirt. His hand was flung outward on the floor. And with equal clarity another fact instantly established itself. His own hand could not have wielded the force that produced these dreadful red patches. By no manner of means could he have contrived to stab himself like that, in the back.
Murder,
Laura thought with cold incredulity. Murder.

But she must make sure that there was nothing she could do to help him. She took off her glove and forced herself to kneel beside him. She put her hand on his wrist. After a time she was sure that there was no pulse, but she remembered the tiny mirror in the powder compact in her handbag. At last she permitted her shrinking fingers to leave that inert wrist and opened her handbag. She took out the compact, and leaning forward held the mirror at the pale lips. After a time she could again permit herself to move back, for no faint misting had clouded the tiny mirror. So he was dead and there was nothing that she could do about it. Nothing the doctor could do, nothing anybody could do.

If there was murder, there must be a murderer!

The house was still, utterly, completely quiet. There was not a shuffle of foot on the stair, no rustle of garments, no sound of anyone at all. It was as if no one had ever lived in the house.

But there was the woman she had met on the steps! Where there is murder there must be a murderer. Could the woman on the steps, dragging her baggage after her, running for the taxi, disappearing into the fog-laden night—have murdered Conrad Stanislowski?

She had said, “Go away.” She had said, “I should not have done it.” Did she mean, I should not have killed a man?

But she had also telephoned to Laura, asking for help. She had told her to come at once, to bring a doctor. Would she have done that if she had in fact murdered a man?

But she had then escaped.

And she had said, “Go away.” It was as if an imperative voice spoke from somewhere inside Laura, saying, too,
go away. Get Jonny out of here.

She got to her feet but for a moment could not look away from Conrad Stanislowski. Whatever had been the reason for his mysterious appearance, whatever had been the reason for his begging her to keep that appearance a secret, she would now never know it. And he would now never again see the child, with whom she had prevented the reunion that was his right. She would not think of that then. She glanced swiftly, almost in spite of herself, around the room.

It was a bare little room; there was not much to see. There was a bed, a chest of drawers, an armchair covered in faded cretonne, a rug or two, a wash basin. On the bare writing table above him there were two glasses which looked shiny and clean. A suitcase, shabby and closed, stood at the foot of the bed. His overcoat, that bulky, dark overcoat which had looked too big for his thin body, lay on the bed. A shabby gray suit jacket was flung across a chair. Go away, she thought again. Get Jonny out of here.

She turned swiftly and in the moment of turning saw a crumpled-up piece of white, like a handkerchief, stained in red, on the floor. It did not matter. Nothing mattered. She had to get Jonny out of that terrible silent house which had apparently then only murder as its tenant. She opened the door.

Jonny was standing in the hall; her eyes met Laura’s anxiously as if seeking reassurance. Laura said, “We’ll go now. We’ll go,” and took Jonny’s hand. Their footsteps along the hall and down the stairs seemed very loud in that strangely silent house. Surely someone would hear. Surely someone would come to inquire. Surely some lodger returning from work would open the door as they descended. No one did.

There must be a telephone somewhere; the woman who had fled into the night had telephoned to her. But Laura had to get out of the house, she had to get Jonny out of the house; she wouldn’t stop to hunt for the telephone. She opened the door.

The street was still, dark and deserted. There were a few pedestrians at sparse intervals here and there, passing under the street lamps. The doctor had still not arrived; no car stood at the curb or approached the house. A taxi crossed at the intersection, going into a side street. There were a few lights in nearby houses. What should she do?

Suddenly she remembered the business street which they had left in order to turn into Koska Street. There had been the rosy neon radiance of a drug store at the corner. Wherever there was a drug store there would be telephone booths. The thing to do was telephone to Matt. He would know what to do. She led Jonny down the steps and along the street.

She forced herself to walk quietly, not to hurry, but some odd, old instinct nudged at her so she looked back swiftly at the silent brown house. Its white steps loomed up clearly in the dusk. The closeness of the yellow brick, three-flat building beside it cut off the light from the room where a man lay murdered. No one opened the door; no one started after them through the dusk.

No one stealthily followed them.

But no one had been in the house; no one except a dead man. There was no one to watch their leaving.

They passed a pedestrian, a woman with a market basket, who gave them a fleeting glance and went on. As they neared the brighter area of the business avenue, there were other pedestrians—none of whom gave them more than a glance. Nevertheless when they reached the cross street, it was with a sense of escape.

The lights here were bright. They paused to wait for the traffic signal and then crossed to the drug store, whose bright lights and neon signs seemed to beckon. The warm interior was laden with the mingled scents of coffee and hamburgers and powders and perfumes and cigarette smoke. A telephone booth stood against the back wall.

Laura went back to it. “I’m going to phone, Jonny. Phone— Stay here, dear.” Jonny nodded, her eyes serious and blue, understanding as Laura opened the door to the little booth. Sign language, Matt had called it. Laura entered the booth and fumbled for a dime, then closed the door so Jonny could not hear. The light above flashed on. Then, her hand shaking, she dialed Matt’s office number.

The telephone buzzed and buzzed. And all at once Doris Stanley seemed to stand beside her in the small telephone booth. The image of her lovely little face came so clearly to Laura’s mind, that she almost turned to her before she realized that it was not Doris, it was Doris’ perfume; there was a faint odor of carnations in the telephone booth, a delicate trace of the perfume which Doris habitually used. Laura thought in some remote level of her mind, someone wearing Doris’ perfume has been here in the booth. Nobody answered the telephone in Matt’s office.

It was late; she had not thought of that; his secretary had gone. She put down the receiver, and her dime fell with a disconsolate little clink into the receptacle. Matt should be at home by now. She knew his hotel apartment number, and dialed that, but again the phone buzzed and buzzed and did not answer. Probably it was exactly the time when he was fighting homeward-bound crowds and had not yet reached his apartment. Phone to Charlie, she thought, phone to Doris. And then she thought, why, the police of course!

When it was murder it had to be reported to the police.

If she reported it now and here, what would they do? Answers to that flashed sickeningly through her mind. They would tell her to wait, of course. They would arrive, squad cars hurtling through the night. They would take her and Jonny back to the silent, terrible rooming house. They would ask them questions. They would question her—but they would question Jonny, too.

Jonny would understand too much—too much to forget.

Get Jonny out of here, Laura thought, imperatively. There was nothing else to do. Telephone the police later—tell Matt, tell everybody later, but take Jonny to a safe place first. She left the hot telephone booth with its fugitive trace of the fragrance of carnations, and again taking Jonny by the hand, led her out of the lighted, pleasant, welcoming store, and onto the street. They stood at the curb, and after a moment a taxicab came around the corner.

It seemed a long drive back through crowded streets. Eastward and farther eastward, across the river again, with its misty dark expanse below and the great girders of the bridge looming ghostily up into the sky above them. It was dark by now, yet the lights of the Loop reflected themselves in the fog so a kind of golden cloud, tinged with orange, seemed to hover over the city. They turned again on Wacker Drive, slippery now from the fog. This time as they crept along Michigan Boulevard, the bridge was up and they waited five minutes or so along with other cars, their engines throbbing, hooting occasionally with impatience. Eventually the great twin bulks of the bridge lowered and traffic resumed. Lighted store windows shone out on either hand, gay and frivolous, filled with luxury goods, decorated in red and green and tinsel. They went on and into Lake Shore Drive and stopped at last at the lighted entrance of the apartment house where she lived.

It was in a curious way like a nightmare in which one tries and tries to run, and cannot escape; she hurried Jonny through the lighted foyer, back to the bank of elevators. Yet she felt as if she took the image of a bare little room, in a silent, brown, rooming house away out on the west side, and a man staring at the light with eyes that did not see it, along with her at every step.

The elevators were self-operated. One or two other residents entered the same elevator and Laura was queerly grateful for their presence. One got off on the sixth floor; the other, a woman carrying packages wrapped in Christmas paper, nodded at Laura and said she lived on the top floor. Her nod, her voice were pleasant and matter-of-fact. For a strange second it seemed remarkable that she did not also see the image that accompanied Laura so stubbornly. And at that, Laura caught back her own frightened, racing fancy. She must keep her head; she must see to Jonny. Laura stopped the elevator at her own floor, the ninth. She and Jonny walked along the carpeted corridor and she got out her key. Once inside the door, warmth and safety surrounded them.