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The Listening House Page 13
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“And all this happened on the evening just before you came home and rescued me.”
“That was it.”
“How early you left your lady friend!”
“The hell with her. I wasn’t interested in her anymore.”
“And the next day you ate my breakfast and played put-and-take . . . and danced . . .”
I didn’t have the slightest intention of sniffling, but that was what I did. Like many women, I cry when I’m mad.
“Aw, baby, don’t go all misty-eyed!”
For the second time that evening, a voice spoke from the door. It was the policeman.
“I thought I heard talkin’ up here,” he said.
10
MR. KISTLER SETTLED BACK on his heels so fast you could hear them click down.
“Why, hello, Officer,” he said agreeably. “Didn’t hear you come in. Have a cigarette?”
He offered the packet, but the policeman just grunted and pushed it aside.
“What’s going on here?” That seemed to be a set opening line for policemen.
Mr. Kistler waved an explanatory hand at me.
“Oh, you know, Officer. Just a little lovers’ quarrel.”
If I could have bitten the hand, I would.
“Yeah?”
“You know how women are, Officer. I got home a little late.”
I was too mad to speak for myself, and besides, what could I say? The policeman looked at me. “I thought you was comin’ up to visit the Wallers. I didn’t hear you come in here.”
“I—I happened to notice Mr. Kistler’s door open, when I left the Wallers.”
“Awful quiet, you walk around.”
He quit looking at me; his glance began sliding around the room. My eyes slid after his, and then I froze stiff.
The cover on the chest of drawers had fallen in a fold when Hodge Kistler dropped it. A corner of the ticket showed.
We didn’t have time to do anything about it. The policeman pounced first.
“Well, I’ll be everlastingly hornswoggled,” he swore, whipped about, dropped his right hand to his holster. “Don’t move, you!”.
We didn’t.
“Which one of you—?”
“I’m responsible for that ticket getting there, Officer, if that’s what you mean.” Mr. Kistler spoke calmly.
“Golly! Of all the goldarn good luck!” Enthusiasm irradiated the police officer’s lean face. “I’m not handling this myself. I’m sending you in. Come along. You, too, lady. Go on ahead there.”
He shooed us on ahead of him, made us sit on the black leather davenport in the hall while he called headquarters.
The siren answered quickly. Two strange policemen came to hustle us off; I argued that I had to have a hat, gloves, and handbag; they gave in to that, but it was the only thing I had my way in for some time.
We were bundled unceremoniously into a police car, one officer explaining, obviously for technical reasons only, that we weren’t being arrested; we were merely going to Lieutenant Strom’s office of our own volition to bring in new evidence we had brought to light. One of those little crowds of human buzzards had collected in front of the house. Knots of people stood along the sidewalk, gaping, and I had a confused impression of more people across the street, and even clustered along the wall of Elliott House, across the corner. It was the first time I had been outside the house since the discovery of Mrs. Garr’s death.
I felt silly. When I looked at Mr. Kistler, I saw his face had the same sort of half grin on it that I felt on mine, so I judged he felt the same way I did. I’ve never been driven so fast; we streaked through the night, with the siren a whistling scream in our ears, and swung to a stop before a building that looked, from the outside, like a fire station.
Rapidly the hand under my elbow propelled me through a crowded big room, down a corridor into a bare waiting room with scarred golden oak armchairs. I sat in one, Hodge Kistler in another; our guides lounged near the door. I’d gotten over feeling silly; my heart was thudding, and I was wondering what was going to happen next.
We waited quite a while. Now and then I’d hear a door closing somewhere else in the building, heavy feet would tramp by, or someone would come into the room, and my heart would thud louder.
Finally the door ahead of us, the door with the ground-glass top, leading to the inner office outside of which we waited, opened. Two people came out, a man and a woman, ushered by a police officer.
The woman was Mrs. Halloran. The man was . . .
There was a similarity in the expressions on the faces of the man and woman. They both looked bedraggled, worn, inexpressibly tired. Underneath was a curious elation.
It wasn’t Mrs. Halloran’s face my eyes settled on; it was the man’s. As if he felt my gaze, his eyes traveled over Mr. Kistler, over the other men, fastened on me. The elation fled his face as if it had been wiped off; it was replaced by a furtive fright; he dodged behind Mrs. Halloran and began edging toward the exit.
“Why, stop!” I cried. “That’s the man who ran out of the cellar!”
Stupidly, the man began running. The officer who had ushered him through the door made an easy reach to catch him by the arm; he struggled and pulled like a fish on a line, but the officer had him firmly.
“What’s this?” the captor barked at me.
“Why, I saw a man run out of the cellar one day at Mrs. Garr’s house. He acted like a prowler. And this is the man. It’s the same haircut. I had a good look at it from the back. He even has the same cap on!”
“She’s a liar! She’s a-lyin’! It’s a low-down lie!” the prowler howled, still struggling to get away, his eyes darting from me to Mrs. Halloran.
Mrs. Halloran favored me with a venomous look, too.
“That’s what she’s a-doin’! She’s a-lyin’!”
“I’m certainly not!”
“Oh, for Chrissakes! Here, you, come along back in here!” The police officer jerked the prowler back toward the room from which he had just come, motioned with his head at me.
“You come along, too.”
No one had to invite Mrs. Halloran. The three of us stood very quickly in the inner room. It, too, was bare, except for a desk and more of the armchairs; behind the desk sat Lieutenant Strom.
“What’s the idea of bringing them back in?” The lieutenant scowled at the man holding the prowler.
“This lady has a little story, sir. Says Mr. Halloran here is the guy she saw hotfooting it out of Mrs. Garr’s cellar one day.”
So the man was Mr. Halloran; I should have guessed. Half cringing, half defiant, he was a fit mate for his wife.
Lieutenant Strom swung toward me.
“You say Mr. Halloran is the prowler you saw?”
“Yes, I’m sure of it.”
“Wait a minute.” He thumbed rapidly through a pile of typed papers. “Here’s the description you gave me this morning. Um. Fits, all right.” His eyes went to Mr. Halloran.
“What’ve you got to say, Halloran?”
“She’s a-lyin’!”
“Sure, she’s a-lyin’. I bet she was stealin’ herself!” bleated Mrs. Halloran.
“Stealing, eh? So that’s what you were doing, Halloran?”
“She’s a-lyin’!”
Lieutenant Strom lifted himself from his chair, leaning forward over his desk to tower above the cringing little man.
“Shut up! No one needs to tell me you’re a thief. I know you’re a thief. How many times were you up for theft when you were bellhoppin’? Now, come across! What were you lookin’ for in that cellar?”
Mr. Halloran cowered back. “What if I was?” he whined. “What if I was? I got a wife, ain’t I? I got to feed a pack o’ children, don’t I? I’m a poor, disabled veter’n, lost my health fightin’ for democ’ercy. While you guys at hom
e was cleanin’ up big, livin’ on the fat o’ the land—”
“Aw, tripe.”
Mr. Halloran began sniveling. “That’s what they say to the soldier boys now. They didn’t say that when we was—”
“You get around to Mrs. Garr’s cellar!”
“I couldn’t see my wife and chillern starvin’ to death before my eyes, could I?”
“Hell, your wife was at a movie.”
“Our last cent, that took. So I knew the old lady had a lot of dough and she wouldn’t give us a cent, wouldn’t give a cent to the poor out of her riches. All I wanted was one dollar. Fifty cents even, so my wife and chillern—”
“Oh, for God’s sake, shut up.” The lieutenant fell back into his chair, weariness and disgust on his face. He turned to me.
“How long ago since you saw this man come out of the cellar?”
“Quite a while. Several weeks.”
“Um. Then the question is, did he try it again when he thought the coast was clear Friday night?”
He picked up a phone on his desk, called an extension, barked, “Check those Halloran alibis again with a fine-tooth comb. Especially his. But get a man on checking if she really went to Chicago.”
He brooded over the Hallorans a moment after that, made up his mind.
“Lock him up for the night. Send her home to those blasted kids. They may be president someday.”
The Hallorans were cleared out quickly. Lieutenant Strom, one other policeman, and I were alone in the room.
“Bring Kistler in,” the lieutenant ordered.
Mr. Kistler came in stepping as blithely as if he were here on a social call. Lieutenant Strom swung back in his swivel chair, his eyes lurking behind the heavy lids.
“So you two have an excursion ticket to Chicago for Memorial Day. Well, well, isn’t life interesting? I suppose the old lady gave it to you for a valentine?”
“That’s almost the story,” I said coldly.
“Your story?”
“No.”
“Then I’ll get it from the source, thanks. Okay, Kistler.”
“Well, sir, when I told you where I was Friday night I left out a few bits. You know, unimportant.”
“Yeah, unimportant.” The lieutenant lifted his receiver again to call another extension.
“Any more reports on the Kistler alibi?” He listened impassively, said, “Okay,” hung up, swung back to Mr. Kistler.
“Unimportant. Yeah. So we found out.”
They were checking alibis, then. I had a vision of the flurry there’d been at the advertising department at Benson’s, with a plainclothes man questioning Hilda Crosley and schoolmarmish Miss Caddy, the advertising manager. I’d bet I was washed up in that office.
Hodge Kistler was looking at the lieutenant with his face very red.
“How about some privacy?”
Lieutenant Strom looked at me, and for an instant, I saw a grin: on the inside of his face.
“Nope. Talk.”
“Well, in general, Lieutenant Strom, it was like I told you this morning. Les Trowbridge and Brown and I got through at the Guide around five o’clock, which is late as our Fridays go. We circulate on Thursdays, you know. We all dropped in for a couple quick ones in the West Street bar, because Brown is married; he had to go on home.
“A couple of girls were putting ’em down in the next booth. They looked approachable so we joined ’em. They said they were going on this excursion so they needed some fortifying. They took it. After a while Brown went home—that was about six o’clock. About seven the girls began talking about going to the station, but Trowbridge and I had a couple other ideas.” He slid a glance at me.
“Yeah,” said Lieutenant Strom dryly. “Unimportant ideas.”
“God, yes. Well, the girls didn’t go to Chicago. They were only going there to meet a couple men anyway. We left the bar. And sometime or another during the evening this one gal dragged this ticket out and said, ‘See what I’ve given up for your sake.’ So she wanted me to keep it to remember her by.”
Lieutenant Strom turned sober eyes on me.
“You believe this story, Mrs. Dacres?”
“Oh yes, I believe it.” I made it bitter.
“Why?”
“Because it makes me so mad.”
The lieutenant leaned far back in his chair, the better to roar. The other policeman helped him out. I didn’t think it was so frightfully humorous.
“Oh, God, why is sudden death so funny?” The lieutenant wiped his face. “You’re a God damn good storyteller, Kistler, but you’ve got to admit it looks suspicious. What was this girl’s name?”
“Uh—Toots.”
The lieutenant chortled again.
“Toots what?”
“Hell, I don’t know and I don’t want to know.”
“It’s bad for your story you don’t. Where did you go after you left the bar?”
“Here.” Mr. Kistler reached forward, picked up the pen on the desk, wrote briefly on a slip of paper, pushed it at the lieutenant.
“We’ve had a hint or two about that joint,” the lieutenant said. “Bill, take this down to Thwaite and give him the background. I’m going to hold you, Kistler.”
“Aw, Lieutenant, have a heart! I’ve got a date to see an important chain-store guy about a contract tomorrow. Do you know what that means? Money! And gosh, how we need it!”
“Got a partner, haven’t you?”
“Yes, but—”
“Let him go. That was a tall tale, Kistler. We’ll start checking on it right away, and if we can get any circumstantiating evidence, why, good for you. But it’s a lot more likely you were in a fracas with the old lady and grabbed that ticket off her. And you don’t need telling what happened to old lady Garr. If we can’t get any proof on your story you may be sitting on an awful hot seat one of these days. Think that over tonight, and see if you can’t think up a little more embroidery for your story.”
Bill came back; Mr. Kistler gave me a last brown glance and went with him.
“Now you can see what you got me into,” the glance said. “You got me into this.”
Lieutenant Strom favored me with a brooding look.
“Now I get around to you, young lady. Why’d you go into Kistler’s rooms?”
I gave him the explanation I had given Mr. Kistler.
“When curiosity was being passed around you took over a God damn big piece, Mrs. Dacres, or else.”
“I admit the first. It isn’t the ‘or else.’”
“I’m not sure about you. I suspect you of being smart.”
“I don’t. Very stupid is what I feel.” I meant it, too.
“Yes? Well, don’t forget this. We’ll find out. And remember this, too. If there’s one thing that gets a murderer caught surer and sooner than anything else, that’s what it is. Smartness. You can go on home now.”
* * *
—
AN OFFICER DID ME the honor of escorting me home in a police car. After this, I was going to find an ordinary car tame. I told my escort with elaborate politeness that it was gallant of him to take me home, but he didn’t rise. He left me with, “That’s okay, lady,” and swung away into the cool June night.
When I unlocked the front door of Mrs. Garr’s house, there were two men in the front hall, but one ducked fast into the room under the stairs. I’d quit wondering why policemen did things. The other was the same policeman from earlier that day, the voice that spoke from Mr. Kistler’s door. He had the evening Comet in his hands.
“You back?” he asked.
“No,” I said.
“Where’s Kistler?”
“I’m him.”
“Okay, lady, I’ll find out in good time.”
He buried his face in the paper again. I looked at the headline of th
e front page; it was about a strike. The light in the hall isn’t much for reading a paper, even your own; I had to get close to read the smaller headlines. There wasn’t one about Mrs. Garr.
“So we didn’t even make the front page.”
The policeman came promptly out of the paper’s interior. “I’ll trade fair. You get the paper, I get the news.”
After that I had to loosen up enough to tell him what had happened to Mr. Kistler. He was disappointed but still hopeful.
“If it turns out he croaked her, I oughta get a promotion,” he urged anxiously. “I bet he did. You take a yarn like that, now—he can’t prove it.”
“I should think he’d rather die than tell it,” I said.
Sitting on the black leather davenport, I looked through the paper for some account of the happenings at Mrs. Garr’s house.
“There ain’t nothing except in the obituaries,” the policeman offered helpfully from his chair.
There wasn’t, either. The article was a miracle of inadequacy, on page fourteen. But the second paragraph opened a completely new train of inquiry for me.
MRS. GARR DIES
Harriet Luella Garr, 67, resident of Gilling City since 1884, was found dead at her residence, 593 Trent Street, on Thursday evening. Alarmed by her nonappearance, lodgers called police to search the deceased woman’s rooms. She was found there.
Due to a connection with the famous Liberry case of two decades ago, Mrs. Garr was at one time a well-known figure in the city’s news. It was at her residence, then on St. Simon Street, that the unfortunate Rose Liberry was found, a suicide. After some years in retirement Mrs. Garr moved to 593 Trent Street, where she has lived quietly. The funeral will be private.
I sat there with my eyes fastened on the paper, but I was thinking, not looking. I should have known. I should have guessed. I should have known there was a story behind the evil in Mrs. Garr’s eyes. Keeping a lodging house, suffering all the mean dodges of a penurious life—that alone could not build a face and eyes such as hers. There had been something evil in her life to leave that evil behind. But what, exactly? At what did that last paragraph hint?