The Listening House Page 14

  I spoke abruptly to the policeman.

  “What business was Mrs. Garr in before she retired?”

  He coughed and looked embarrassed.

  “I ain’t supposed to do much talkin’.”

  “But it’s right here in the paper. It’s written as if people would know to what it referred, but didn’t want to come out in plain words.”

  “It’s a long time ago now. The old folks would remember; the young ones wouldn’t. Let bygones be bygones, I say.”

  “You mean I shouldn’t be allowed to know something I’d know anyway if I were ten years older?”

  He laughed a little. “Well, no. Put it that way, I guess there ain’t no harm tellin’. Lots of people does know. We had her on the records for years. She kept a house.”

  “You mean she kept a—a house?” I gasped.

  “Yep, that’s what she had, all right. Down on St. Simon Street. Had it from about 1900 to 1919, we figured. Quite a joint, too, I heard—all red plush. Them was the red-plush days. I was just a kid most of that time, but I can remember the stories the boys used to tell. Why, I wouldn’t be surprised this black leather chair I’m sittin’ in didn’t come out of that house.”

  I got off the black leather davenport as if it burned me.

  “Well, I certainly didn’t know what I was getting when I took an apartment in this house!”

  “Oh, you don’t have to worry about that, lady. S’far’s we’ve found out, she never did a thing in her old line of business in this house. Thirteen years, too.”

  Fascinated, I hovered in the hall, not able to tear myself away.

  “The Liberry case, what was that?”

  He stalled. “Well, I don’t know much about that.”

  “But this makes everything different! Someone from back there—someone who had reason to hate Mrs. Garr for something she’d done—would have been a reason for murdering her. Think how many there must be! Have you thought of that?”

  “I’ve heard it mentioned,” he admitted cautiously.

  But I couldn’t get another bit of information out of him.

  I went into my own part of the house and barricaded my doors.

  There went my previous ideas—such as they were—all upset! This put a new slant on everything. Maybe the motive wasn’t hidden money. The Hallorans were undoubtedly mistaken as to the amount of money Mrs. Garr had hidden. Maybe the motive was hate—revenge! Girls have relatives. If Mrs. Garr had run a big establishment, there might be scores who hated her, fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters and sweethearts of the girls she’d kept. Wives of men who’d gone there. The girls themselves. The men themselves. You couldn’t tell. It might be anyone.

  Of course it was a long time ago. The person would have to be past thirty-five, at least. Nineteen nineteen was eighteen years ago. Hodge Kistler was a little young for that, not much over thirty. But the Hallorans, in their forties. Could Mrs. Garr have debauched her own niece? It seemed impossible—but maybe they weren’t related. Perhaps the hold the Hallorans had on Mrs. Garr was other than blood. Perhaps that was why they came to her for money. But the lectures had been very “auntly”; she hadn’t sounded as if she were being blackmailed.

  The others. Mr. Grant. Mr. Grant was almost as old as Mrs. Garr. Mr. Buffingham. The Wallers. Mrs. Tewman. They were all in their forties or early fifties. They were all the right age.

  It took me back to the beginning again. They could all be suspected. And again, Mr. Kistler seemed the least likely. Judging by the results I’d had when I’d thought that before, I was probably due to find out he had been born in Mrs. Garr’s house of vice. Or that Mrs. Garr had ruined his father.

  The problem of who had killed Mrs. Garr had once seemed fairly simple: a prowler caught in his prowling had been such an obvious explanation. But how complicated this business of Mrs. Garr’s past made it! Now the possibilities were almost endless.

  I’d read enough detective stories to know it was always the least likely person who went in for murder.

  That made Mr. Kistler it.

  Well, I didn’t care if he was it. A man who amused himself as Mr. Kistler did—a chaser, a sleeper-around! And I’d once actually thought I liked him! He was frightfully amusing. That time he . . .

  I quit smiling, to bite into my thoughts again. If Mr. Kistler’s story about Friday night was true, then he had an alibi for the time when Mrs. Garr probably came back to the house. But it meant he was an extremely worthless character.

  If his story wasn’t true, then he must have had something to do with Mrs. Garr’s death. Hiding that ticket couldn’t mean much else. It would also mean that, for certain, Mrs. Garr had been murdered. I couldn’t think of any way her railroad ticket could have come into Mr. Kistler’s possession if she had died a natural death.

  If he had murdered her, then his story about the girl wasn’t true—just a faked-up alibi, made awful to sound more convincing—and then I wouldn’t have so much reason to think his character worthless. He might have had a lovely motive, such as revenging a sister.

  I caught myself hoping he had murdered Mrs. Garr.

  It made me so disgusted with logic I almost decided I’d give it up forever.

  * * *

  —

  I GAVE UP PUZZLING over Mrs. Garr for the time being anyway; I went to bed.

  I was glad there was a policeman in the house. Just before I dropped asleep I opened one eye. I’d suddenly thought who the other officer must be and why he’d ducked. He didn’t want me to see him. I was being shadowed. He was watching me.

  11

  I WOKE TO THE telephone’s ringing, and Mrs. Tewman in the hall, yelling:

  “Mr. Kistler, Mr. Kistler!”

  “He don’t answer,” she shouted into the phone. She added crossly, after an interval, “All ri’, I’ll knock.”

  Probably, I thought sleepily, I was the only person in the house who knew where Mr. Kistler was—unless the lean-faced policeman was still on duty. No, Mr. Kistler would not answer the knock on his door. What did it matter who called him? Yes, it might matter. It might be that girl. Toots.

  I realized it was up to me to be noble. I wrapped my negligee around me in the yellow sunshine and went out into the hall.

  Sure enough, the policeman who knew Mr. Kistler’s whereabouts was gone. We had a new guard. This one sat on the davenport because he probably couldn’t get into the chair. He was a fat lump; he didn’t say a word, he was just there, staring with his round blue eyes. We were having a wonderful opportunity to look over the Gilling City police force.

  Mrs. Tewman, upstairs, was pounding on a door. I picked up the dangling receiver.

  “Hello, this is Mrs. Dacres. I—”

  “Oh, hello,” a young man’s voice replied cordially. “I’ve heard about you. Where’s Hodge?”

  “Who’re you?”

  “I’m Les Trowbridge. You know. His partner. The Guide. What’s he doing—celebrating the murder?”

  “Wildly. In jail.”

  “Oh, my God! Oh, my—God. What’s he want to get himself in there for on a day like this?”

  “He doesn’t. It wasn’t voluntary.”

  “You mean he had the nerve to go out and get drunk and bust up the town last night?”

  “Oh no. It was the murder.”

  “Now listen, Mrs. Dacres. You can’t tell me they’ve pinched Hodge for murder!”

  “Oh no. They’re just holding him. For investigation or something. Because he had a ticket. A Memorial Day excursion ticket to Chicago. That’s the ticket Mrs. Garr was going to use to go to Chicago on, but couldn’t find. It was a little hard for Mr. Kistler to explain.”

  “Oh, for cripes sake! Where does he say he got it?”

  “Mr. Kistler’s darling little story is that a girl gave it to him. One of the girls you and he were out with a w
eek ago last night.”

  “Well, say—say! Maybe she did! Say, the girl I was with had one, too. They were passing ’em around the table. They said—Say, I’ll bet that’s where he did get it!”

  “I’m hearing you,” I said.

  “But for gosh sake, he can’t stay in jail loafing today! Doesn’t he know we’ve got that advertising manager from the P-X stores coming in today? He’s got him half sold on a big advertising contract. And we need that dough. Sister, how we need it!”

  “He never goes down till noon anyway,” I pointed out.

  “Say, woman, do you ever check on when he comes down Wednesday and Thursday mornings? Say, sometimes he doesn’t have to come down—he is here!”

  I didn’t realize Mr. Kistler went in so heavily for labor; he’d always spoken of his work as a joke. But he would.

  “Then it looks to me as if you’ll have to sell your advertising manager yourself,” I said.

  A loud groan. “But I can’t! I don’t know the facts. I don’t know the figures. I’m no salesman. Hodge handles all that. Do you realize what’ll happen if we don’t get that dough? Do you realize we got a press right now that breaks—Hey, wait a minute!”

  A loud rumbling at the other end of the wire.

  “I’ve got to go,” he yelled. “Do something! Get Hodge here!”

  “Do something yourself,” I retorted, but it didn’t do any good. He’d hung up.

  Mrs. Tewman, when I replaced the receiver, was behind me, taking the conversation glumly in.

  “So they got him locked up now.”

  “Why, hello, Mrs. Tewman! Where’ve you been?”

  “I was over to my husband’s brother’s house.”

  “I suppose you’ve heard?”

  “Oh yeah, I heard.” Fury was burning in her. “They kep’ me and my husband over at his brother’s house all day yesterday, askin’ and askin’ and askin’. I never heard so much askin’. And Jim, he had to work again last night. Hardly one hour sleep he had. He’s downstairs sleepin’ now, so dead he might just as well of been murdered hisself. They make me sick.”

  It appeared, however, that after being questioned through most of the day before, the Tewmans’ alibi of the beer party during the evening and night of the Friday in question had been substantiated; people had noticed them because they were so seldom able to get away. Jim had hired a man to replace him at frying hamburgers that night.

  “So then they wanted to know why I moved out of here this week, so I told ’em. It was the smell. They said why didn’t I tell somebody there was a smell.”

  “You mean you did notice—Well, for heaven’s sake, why didn’t you tell someone?”

  She shrugged. “It wasn’t none of my business. Who should I go tellin’ to? Mrs. Garr wasn’t here, was she? I went over to my husband’s brother’s house. I stayed there. Now they told me I gotta come back and stay here. But I ain’t goin’ to stay in that cellar. I ain’t goin’ to do no cleanin’, neither,” she ended doggedly and went to sit in Mrs. Garr’s front room. Just sit, doing nothing.

  As Mrs. Garr had so often sat. It was shuddery to see her there.

  I went about my own concerns, but my thoughts kept veering back to Mr. Trowbridge. I didn’t, however, get far with either my concerns or my thoughts. I’d no sooner begun breakfast than quick knocks sounded on my door. I opened to Mrs. Halloran.

  “My, you must be feelin’ good this morning,” she cried spitefully.

  “Not especially. I’m sorry it turned out to be your husband, but of course I had to tell.”

  “Well, I come to tell you somethin’! And you can just put this in your pipe and eat it! Mr. Halloran’s out, see. He wasn’t nowheres around this house Friday, see? He’s got an alibi, see? And they can’t prove he don’t!” Her voice rose on every word until she had a fine scream at the end.

  “I’m glad to hear it. Was that all?”

  “No, that ain’t all! This house is mine now, see? I heired this prop’ty. The police read it to me in the will. I’m a heiress. And I’ll thank you to get out of my house!”

  She drew herself up grandly, her little eyes black over cheeks for once naturally red. For the first time I saw the resemblance in her to Mrs. Garr. I understood then, too, the reason for the elation I’d glimpsed on her face and on her husband’s face the evening before when they’d been emerging from Lieutenant Strom’s office. They’d come into property. I thought fast.

  “Why, of course I’ll move. Anytime you say. If the police will let me.”

  “Let you! Huh! Nobody’s going to tell me who I can keep in my house. You come here!”

  She marched out to the policeman in the hall with me close at her heels.

  “I demand this woman get out of my house!” She pointed a theatric finger at me.

  The fat lump placidly shook his head.

  “You mean I can’t tell her to get out of my house?” she shrieked.

  Another shake.

  “I heired this prop’ty! I’m goin’ to live in it! I won’t have this woman in it!”

  Another shake.

  She collapsed, a grounded parachute. “If that don’t beat all,” she whined, turning to me. “Right in my own house!”

  I suppressed my grin.

  “That’s the way it is—these policemen,” I sympathized.

  “You’ll get out as soon as they says you can, though,” she warned, trying to work herself up again.

  Now was the time to strike.

  “Of course I will, Mrs. Halloran. Do you think your aunt was murdered?”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if you did it.” She kept viciously to her own track.

  “Oh, don’t be cross with me,” I wheedled. “I’m just interested. Did you know the police are holding Mr. Kistler?”

  “I’m glad t’ hear it. I don’t like him, neither.”

  “But it wasn’t Mr. Kistler who murdered Mrs. Garr, if she was murdered. I’m quite sure of that. It wasn’t me. And I don’t like being suspected. So I’m trying to find out who did it. If you’re going to live here—How many children did I hear you have?”

  “Seven. Seven dear little chillern. I always say being a mother is the nobles’ work of Gawd, and I don’t care who knows it.”

  “Just think, Mrs. Halloran, if you brought those dear little children here, and there was an unsolved mystery in the house. A murderer walking around!”

  “Oh my, and I living right here! Oh my, he won’t, either. I’ll tell ’em all to move out, right now.”

  “Oh, but you can’t do that. The police, you know . . .” I waved a hand at the fat lump, who had been an interested listener to the conversation, but who hadn’t moved to enter it. It was like having a Dictaphone in the hall. But I didn’t care. The police already knew the information I wanted to worm out of Mrs. Halloran, and I didn’t mind their knowing that I knew it, too.

  “What I say is that you and I should get our heads together,” I proposed to Mrs. Halloran, “and see what we can think up.”

  She followed like a lamb into my sitting room, the fat lump blinking after us and moving where he could hear, too. Mrs. Halloran sat stiffly upright on the studio couch, her fingers tangling in the inevitable pearl beads around her neck.

  “The reason Mr. Kistler was held was because he had a Memorial Day excursion ticket to Chicago,” I began.

  “Oh my, you mean he killed my aunt Hattie for that?”

  “He says he got it from someone else. Now, if we can prove he did or did not get it from Mrs. Garr, we’ll be one step along. Where did you buy your tickets? Railroad tickets, you know, have the time and place they were bought, stamped on the back.”

  “I dunno. I didn’t buy ’em. Aunt Hattie bought ’em.”

  “You don’t know where?”

  “No, ma’am. I mean, no, I didn’t. I said so on
ce.”

  “Do you know what day she bought them?”

  “No, I dunno.”

  “What day did she give you yours?”

  “It was a while before. Because I know I took it home and showed it to the children. It was on Thursday, that’s when it was. I come over here that afternoon.”

  “Why, that’s a wonderful help, Mrs. Halloran! If we can find out the ticket Mr. Kistler has was bought after Thursday. Mrs. Garr must have bought both her tickets at the same time.”

  “I dunno. I never seen hers.”

  “Oh,” I said, thinking. I was thinking that to get anywhere with Lieutenant Strom, I’d need to have something definite to go on. I wondered what chance there was of finding the person who had sold Mrs. Garr her tickets. If I was going into that, I was going to have a busy day. But I still wanted more from Mrs. Halloran.

  “I think it’s wonderful you’re going to have the house.”

  “My, yes, I’m going to do a lot of things to this house. You won’t know it when I get done. All over, I’m going to do it. Spanish, I think. I think pink stucco on the outside. Like that fourplex across the street. My, I always admired that house.”

  “Won’t that be lovely. Are you going to have money, too?”

  “Five hun’erd a year! It’s a lot o’ money, ain’t it? Five hun’erd dollars. A trust fund, she left it in, for me and the children. Halloran says you got to put a lot o’ money in a trust fund to make five hun’erd a year. He says maybe we can get it all out. My, that would be a lot o’ money.”

  She was almost crowing.

  “Yes, it must be a lot. It must be ten or twelve thousand dollars, at least.” My new knowledge of Mrs. Garr’s past kept me from being surprised at the amount. “It must be all the money she had.”

  “No, it—” A halted look came on her mouth.

  “Then she left something to someone else, too?” This was what I was getting at—who benefited by the death?

  “She left it to—” Mrs. Halloran leaned forward as if she were telling an obscene story. “She left it to a home for animals.” She swallowed, with difficulty. “She left it to the dog and them there cats. Them pets o’ hers. There was a whole piece in the will, a long piece. About how they was the best friends she ever had, the only true friends, and she wanted they should have a happy home so long as they lived even if she was gone because there ain’t no friends like your dog and your cat.”