The Listening House Read online

  Mr. Kistler’s interview lasted a scant half hour. Mr. Grant went next, Miss Sands after him.

  So they were leaving me for the last. What did that mean? That I knew least, of course. I’d been in Mrs. Garr’s house such a short time, compared to the others. I couldn’t be expected to know much of Mrs. Garr’s affairs.

  When I finally was called I stumbled with weariness as I got to my feet. Since Miss Sands had left I had been lying on the couch, and I’d dropped into a stiff, half-awake sleep. Jerry took me in; Red stayed with Mrs. Halloran. In passing, I took a look at the clock: almost eight.

  I squeezed past men and the grand piano to get before Lieutenant Strom. He sat in the middle of the davenport, which stood with its back to the bay of the front windows; there was a card table in front of him, and a chair in front of the table. Seven or eight other men stood about the room, smoking, writing in little books, or just watching. The lieutenant had a fountain pen in his hand and two piles of paper on the table before him, one pile written on, one not. He made notations as I answered.

  I was put in the chair facing him. The light from the windows struck me full in the eyes; I was blinded and numb with tiredness.

  The lieutenant’s heavy eyelids drooped a little lower over his eyes. He spoke quietly, but his first words shook the exhaustion right out of me.

  “No use stalling, Mrs. Dacres. Who helped you out on this job?” My tongue stuck to the top of my mouth, paralyzed.

  Abruptly he lunged forward over the table, yelled: “Come on, talk!”

  “But I don’t know what you’re talking about! You can’t mean you think I—”

  “Yeah, I mean I think you! And you don’t even have to answer. We know who was in with you on it—Kistler!”

  “Mr. Kistler?” I vainly tried to piece sense out of it.

  “Oh, so it wasn’t Kistler! So it was someone else! Talk fast, now.”

  He bellowed at me, and it reminded me so much of Mr. Gangan that what he was doing suddenly made sense—and not in the way he wanted it to. A quick glance at the other men in the room—all poker faces—clinched it.

  Lieutenant Strom was putting on a loud bluff to shake me into admitting something, anything, that would involve me in Mrs. Garr’s death.

  I became angry then, and anger pulled me together. I shifted my chair enough so the sun hit me from the side instead of squarely in the eyes. It was a relief to see without weeping.

  “Nonsense.” I put decision into it. “I didn’t have a thing to do with Mrs. Garr’s death.”

  “You can take care of yourself, can’t you? Good control, too. And you didn’t have a thing to do with it. Perhaps you can tell us who did?”

  “Haven’t you found that out yet?”

  “I’m asking, not answering.”

  “Isn’t it possible that she may have died naturally? She wasn’t young—over sixty-five, I’m sure. Her heart was bad, too. She told me so.”

  “So that’s your story, eh?”

  “I haven’t any story. I’m completely in the dark.”

  His manner became silkily insinuatory.

  “Odd, isn’t it, how many disturbances began after you moved in?”

  “Did they? I don’t know what happened here before I moved in.”

  “Well, it was a decent, quiet house before then.”

  “Perhaps you’d like to suggest I got Mr. Buffingham’s son to rob a bank? Or tried to throttle myself? If that’s what you mean by disturbances.”

  “Was that what you meant when you talked about disturbances in this house to Mr. Kistler?”

  “Oh, you mean about the house listening at night?” It sounded silly when I put it into words in that roomful of stolid men.

  “Yeah, what did you mean by that?”

  I took a moment to think it over. “Just that I often wake in the night and feel a tension, an exaggerated stillness, as if the house or people in it were lying tensely awake, listening.”

  “Uh,” he grunted. “Now listen, lady, does that make sense?”

  “No, it doesn’t,” I admitted. “I can’t get away from it, though. I feel it every time I wake at night.”

  “Well, no one else hears the house listen.” He ended that subject grimly. “No one heard anything and nothing happened in this house before you came. It was a respectable, quiet—”

  “Perhaps it was,” I broke in on him. “Perhaps it still is. But I don’t think so, myself. I think there was something going on here long before I came. I don’t think Mrs. Garr died naturally. I think she was killed. It seems more—reasonable.”

  There, it was out. I hadn’t known I believed those things before I said them, but as the words came out, I knew those were my convictions.

  “Now we’re getting somewhere.” Strom was sitting forward, his eyes following my lips. “Keep on.”

  “Mrs. Garr told me she asked the people who had my rooms before me to leave because she caught them snooping.”

  “Caught them what?”

  “She thought they were searching through her things.”

  “For what?”

  “She didn’t say. I asked that, too. She passed it off as curiosity about her possessions.”

  “Nuts. Those people been back since?”

  “Not that I know of. But someone was.”

  I told him then, two or three times over, to every detail, the story of the prowler I had seen run out on that afternoon, weeks before, when Mrs. Halloran and Mrs. Garr had gone to the movie.

  Lieutenant Strom, finally satisfied, said, “M-m-m-m,” still watching me intently from under his heavy eyelids.

  “What’s your first name, Mrs. Dacres?”

  “Gwynne.”

  “Maiden name?”

  “MacGowan.”

  “Husband?”

  “Divorced.”

  “In jail?”

  “In hospital.”

  “M-m-m-m. You a record?”

  “No.” Indignantly.

  “Why’d you move here?”

  I told about my lost job, my finances, the ad in the paper.

  “Ever know Mrs. Garr before?”

  “Never saw her before.”

  “Know anyone else in the house before?”

  “No.”

  “You’re pretty friendly with Hodge Kistler, I hear.”

  “He’s amusing, I think.”

  He grinned at me suddenly, a kidding grin.

  “Watch your step there, sister. You may wake up surprised someday.”

  “Thanks. He handles nicely.”

  “How he’d love you for that!” He grinned once more before reverting abruptly to his former manner.

  “Okay, now. Notice anything else peculiar after you moved in?”

  “Well, there was that man we found dead at the foot of the drop in back of the house. That made quite a stir. You know, that gangster. But, of course, that didn’t have anything to do with this house.”

  “That what you think?”

  “Of course.”

  “Okay again. What about inside the house?”

  “Mrs. Garr. Mrs. Garr always seemed peculiar.”

  “Any fights with her?”

  “No.”

  “Like her?”

  “I can’t say I did.”

  “Why not?” Like a shot.

  “She was old and seemed—somehow unclean and evil. I sometimes thought she suffered from hallucinations or delusions.”

  “What do you mean on that last?”

  “About that snooping, for instance. She seemed to suspect everyone in the house of it.”

  “Begin when you first moved in, and tell every instance.”

  I did. I told that, and practically every word ever spoken to me by Mrs. Garr, or by me to Mrs. Garr, as far as I could
remember at the time. I told how she had knocked at my door the night I’d turned my light on late. How she’d bawled Mr. Kistler out for lighting the gas heater. How she suspected the Wallers. Lieutenant Strom listened with careful attention to every word.

  “Loony,” one of the men at the side contributed when I stopped.

  “That’s what I thought, until I saw that prowler.”

  “Any actual evidence after that?”

  “Not until last Friday, when Mrs. Garr went to Chicago. I mean when she was supposed to—”

  “Okay, now we’re down to Friday. Where were you Friday?”

  “Working. I had a temporary job that lasted until Saturday night.”

  “Um. Worked until when Friday?”

  “Almost seven.”

  “Then where’d you go?”

  “To dinner with Hilda Crosley; she’s a regular copywriter at Benson’s, where I was working. You can ask her. We saw a movie, too.”

  “When’d you get back here?”

  “About ten, I think.”

  “Tell me every move you made from then on, Friday night.”

  “Why, I just walked in, and—”

  “See anybody?”

  “No. I—Wait a minute!” The scene flashed back into my mind. “Yes, I did see something. When I came into the hall, a cat ran downstairs and under the bookcase. She—that’s funny! The cat. Because she was back in there with the others when the door was opened tonight. Back in that kitchen downstairs. It was the one with the kittens.”

  A stir went over the room. A man spoke up from the sidelines.

  “If that’s the dope, then the old lady must have croaked after ten p.m., Strom. That’s what they all said—all three cats came out of there hell-bent when the door opened.”

  I was shivering with the idea I’d caught.

  “No, that may not be the dope,” I said, my teeth practically chattering. “Because, think. If Mrs. Garr didn’t die of her own accord—if she was . . . helped to die—there wasn’t anything to keep the murderer from catching the cat and putting it back in the kitchen with the others. He’d do that if he . . . wanted it to be the way it was.”

  They didn’t answer right away. Then Lieutenant Strom spoke, softly.

  “You’re a smart girl, sister, or else. If the old lady died naturally, why, the cat makes it pretty sure she went into that kitchen after ten o’clock Friday. But if she didn’t, somebody used his head pretty fast. Maybe this isn’t the first time you had that idea?”

  9

  THERE WE WERE, BACK on the old ground of suspicion.

  I took a look at the men around the room again, and it seemed to me every face swam in suspicion. All the tiredness came back to me; my head felt so heavy I didn’t think I could possibly go on using it for a fighting weapon. But I had to.

  “I haven’t even thought of that cat from that day to this minute,” I said wearily. “I didn’t even think about it when I saw her run out of that kitchen tonight. What do you think I did—go down and strangle the old woman with my bare hands?”

  “You could have had a fight with her and given her a push so she fell over, and her heart did the rest.”

  “Well, I didn’t.”

  “Or you could have let someone else in the house.”

  “For heaven’s sake, can you tell me one single, solitary reason why I should have wanted that poor old woman killed?”

  Lieutenant Strom sighed, and I thought that, after all, he was probably almost as tired as I was. He hadn’t had any sleep, either. And while I’d sat waiting he’d been struggling with seven other people as he had with me, trying to get some clue to possible guilt.

  “You’ve got me there, sister. Why the hell should anyone want the old woman killed? You ever hear of her having any money?”

  “No, I haven’t.”

  “Ever mention money to you?”

  “Well, she said once that she didn’t believe in banks.”

  “Oh, she did, eh? When’d she say that?”

  “When I was looking at the apartment. I said I wasn’t working but had a little money in the bank. She said she would never keep a penny in a bank.”

  “Um. Ever hear any other reference to this?”

  “That day I saw the prowler. When I wondered what frightened Mrs. Garr so, Mrs. Halloran said, rather significantly, that Mrs. Garr didn’t believe in banks.”

  “Who all was in on this conversation?”

  “Only Mr. Kistler, Mrs. Halloran, and I.”

  “Mr. Kistler. Mrs. Halloran. You. Any more relatives around besides Mrs. Halloran?”

  “Not that I’ve seen.”

  “She says she’s the one and only.” He took out his watch, looked at it, turned to one of the other men.

  “Nearly nine, Hitchcock. The bank’ll be openin’ pretty soon. Don’t forget what I said about keepin’ your eye peeled for anything that looks like a will.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Two men left.

  Lieutenant Strom stretched, yawned, and turned back to me.

  “Now let’s get down to this attack on you last Friday night.”

  I told that tale, too. He took down so little of it that I ended lamely; evidently, he’d heard it over and over from the other witnesses. I got down to the part where we’d all gone down into the basement and seen there was no one there.

  “No one there,” I repeated. “No one—” The words themselves caught me up. “Why, if Mrs. Garr had been around the house we’d certainly have seen her then! We went through every room. Unless she was—unless—oh, my goodness, you don’t think she was lying there in that kitchen then, do you?”

  Lieutenant Strom turned on young Jerry one of the nastiest looks I have ever seen on the face of man.

  “That possibility has entered our minds,” he said.

  “She might still have been living.”

  “That also has crossed our minds. Knowing what you know now, can you remember any evidence that she might have been in the basement kitchen when you searched the house Friday night? Any sound? Any clothing seen? Any gesture on the part of anyone in the searching party?”

  I thought desperately.

  But I could not think of one bit of evidence that could have told me, that Friday night, of Mrs. Garr’s presence in the house, alive or dead.

  “Just like the others,” groaned my questioner when I had admitted my defeat. “All as blind as bats. See what you expect to see, and that’s all. Now I want you to turn to something else. I want you to tell me, as well as you can remember, exactly what each person in this house said as to his or her activities that Friday night.”

  Slowly, piece by piece, I did that, too. The activities given by the various people in the house that Friday night had been so simple that they were easily remembered. As I checked over each person in turn, Lieutenant Strom checked his sheets.

  “Well, they all told the same story to me as they told Friday night,” he sighed at the end. “Not a decent alibi in the lot, except maybe Kistler’s. ‘Went to a movie.’ ‘Asleep in bed.’ Hooey! Who can prove it isn’t so? They might all have been slinking around the house, as far as those alibis go.”

  The rest of my questioning went quickly.

  I was asked to tell briefly what I had done since Friday night, how Mr. Grant had come last evening with his questions about Mrs. Garr, how we had approached the Wallers, our wait, the coming of the police, the finding of Mrs. Garr.

  No, no one had looked to me as if they had expected what we’d found. Everyone had been horrified, to all appearances.

  “Do you know where the Tewmans might be?”

  “Mrs. Tewman said Sunday she had visited Friday night at her brother-in-law’s house. Mr. Tewman and his brother have a hamburger house somewhere.”

  “M-m-m-m. That’ll be all now. Keep your ey
es open and your mouth shut.”

  I was dismissed.

  * * *

  —

  GETTING OUT OF THERE, I had just one thought: sleep.

  Opposite the stairs, I looked up at the sound of feet. Miss Sands was coming down, her eyes sunken, her mouth drawn, but as neatly waved, as rouged, as pressed as ever. She had her hat on.

  “You’re going out?” It seemed incredible.

  She gave me a bitter glance.

  “Work.”

  “F’heaven’s sake! Call ’em up. Tell ’em you can’t work. Tell ’em someone died—someone did die! You can’t work today!”

  “There’s plenty waiting to grab a job.” She went on out.

  For the first time I was glad I didn’t have a job. Not today, anyway. I was sorry for Miss Sands, but the pity couldn’t come up far through the tiredness. Mrs. Halloran was still sleeping unbeautifully in my armchair; I thanked goodness she wasn’t on the studio couch, and didn’t even feel ashamed of my selfishness.

  The house should be safe with all those policemen littering the hall. I left the double doors wide open. Every movement like a slow-motion picture’s drag, I got out the softest blanket and a pillow, took off my shoes, and rolled onto the studio couch.

  Sleep is very wonderful.

  * * *

  —

  IT WAS MIDAFTERNOON BEFORE I woke up.

  Whatever went on in the house that day is still unknown to me; I slept through it all.

  When I woke, though, the events of last night were right there in my mind; I didn’t have to have it spring out afresh at me at all. I looked around for Mrs. Halloran. She was gone.

  Still heavy with sleep, I stumbled out into the hall. The house was completely quiet; one policeman sat in the black leather chair in the hall.

  “Hello, miss.” He greeted me with a grin. “Have some sleep? I seen you sleepin’.”

  He was a young policeman, I saw when my eyes got focused so they could see anything as small as features; an Irishman with blue-black eyes, lashes, and hair, and very red cheeks.

  “Looking at defenseless girls sleep is small potatoes around here,” I said. “Are you the only policeman left?”