ALM06 Who Killed the Husband? (3 page)

"What is your idea of what really happened, my dear?" asked Lee quite mildly.

Judy spread out her hands. "Ah, I haven't any," she said. "That's where we must depend on you, Pop. If you delved into the case you would find out the truth about it."

Lee said judicially: "In the apartment at the time of the shooting were Mrs. Gartrey and Al Yohe; Hawkins, the butler; Eliza Young, the lady's maid, and four other maids. There is a second manservant but he was out on an errand. How could it have been any of these excepting Yohe? How could I even start an investigation without having an opportunity to hear Yohe's own story?"

"That's so," said Judy rising. "It hadn't occurred to me." She went out thoughtfully. A moment later he saw her in deep confabulation with Fanny.

A man from the 
World-Telegram
 came in to see him. He was followed by a Daily News reporter and a whole group of others, including redheaded Tom Cot-tar from the 
Herald Tribune
. Tom had been sweet on Fanny Parran for a long time. Lee noted that her greeting today was somewhat cool. Tom was a prime favorite with Lee, and the others, knowing it, let Tom do the talking.

"Mr. Mappin, we want an opinion from you on the Gartrey case."

"Now, Tom," warned Lee, "you know that I have made it a rule not to discuss a crime before it comes to trial."

"You don't need to express an opinion as to Al Yohe's guilt," said Tom. "That's established. Just discuss the case generally. Tell us what it suggests to you from a social point of view, or any such tripe."

"Tripe?" said Lee, running up his eyebrows.

"You know what I mean," said Tom, grinning. "This case has reached such proportions that the public is demanding an expression of views from their favorite criminologist."

"Poppycock!" said Lee. "The truth is, the public is ravenous for news about the case; you haven't any for them today and so you come to me for a filler."

"Well, you have never let us down yet," said Tom cajolingly.

"I'm going to now. I have nothing to say."

"Now, Mr. Mappin..."

"By Gad! if I'm pestered any further about this damned case I'll leave town!" cried Lee.

"Pestered?" asked the 
Daily News
 man, scenting a story. "By whom?"

"By all of you! Not another word!"

When they saw that he meant it, they filed out. Lee detained Tom. "I want to speak to you about a personal matter."

Tom looked at him inquiringly.

"Who tipped you off to come to me today?" asked Lee.

Tom shrugged innocently--too innocently. "The assignment came to me in the usual way."

"Tom, there appears to be a kind of conspiracy afoot with the object of forcing me into this case. You and I must make a stand against it."

Tom, after glancing uneasily over his shoulder, mutely put out a hand.

Lee grasped it. "What's behind it, Tom?"

"I'm with you, Pop," mumbled Tom, "but I can't say anything when she's just outside the door."

Lee glanced at his watch. "I'll be leaving here in half an hour. Meet me in the Vanderbilt bar at five-ten."

"Okay, Pop."

Sitting at a little table in the Vanderbilt bar with Scotch and soda before them, Lee and Tom compared notes. Said Tom:

"This guy is as guilty as hell, Lee. That was nothing in my life until Fanny felt that she had received a call to save him. Since then I have had no peace. She is threatening to ship me because I can't change the policy of the 
Herald Tribune
 toward the case. Damn him anyhow! By God! how I would like to flatten his Grecian nose with my fist! All handsome men are so-and-sos!" Tom had no pretensions to good looks, though there was a pleasing masculinity about his strongly marked features.

"I sympathize with you," said Lee. "What started Fanny off at this tangent?"

"Don't ask me. She is mysterious."

"Is it possible she could have seen Al Yohe since the murder?"

"No."

"Before this happened, had you any reason to suppose that Fanny had fallen in love with him?"

"She's not in love with him," said Tom coolly. "I would know how to deal with that. This is worse, Pop. God help a man when his girl embarks on a moral crusade! He is helpless!"

"Well, we've got to stand out against this foolishness until it blows over," said Lee firmly. "To give in to it would only be to make ourselves ridiculous!" They shook hands on it again.

Chapter 3

Lee was engaged to dine this night with the Curt Wintergrenns. He had been looking forward to the occasion because Carol Wintergrenn had snapped up a French refugee chef who was a master of his profession. This was his first performance and he would certainly be on his mettle. Lee loved masterly cooking. However, when he reflected that the table talk would inevitably concentrate on the Gartrey case, his heart sank. He called up Mrs. Wintergrenn to beg off.

She wouldn't hear of it. "Lee!" she screamed. "At the eleventh hour! The dinner of the season! I am depending on you to hold it together; to give the affair a cachet! How could I replace you now? My party will be ruined. I don't believe you've got a headache. Tell me the real reason you want to stay away."

Answered Lee: "You're entitled to the truth, my darling. I am so fed up with this nasty Gartrey affair that it nauseates me. I know, people being what they are, nothing else will be talked about tonight, and I can't face it."

"Is that all?" she said in a voice of relief. "Well, I haven't been giving dinners for ten years for nothing. You sit beside me and I shall keep the conversation in my own hands. I promise you you shan't be annoyed."

So Lee agreed to be there.

Unfortunately for Carol Wintergrenn's promise, there were two men at her table whose names had been connected with the Gartrey case, George Coler and Rulon Innes, and she found herself helpless. She would no sooner get the talk steered away from the all-absorbing topic than somebody would ask Coler or Innes a question. The whole table would wait in silence for the answer, and off they would go again. However, Lee did not mind it as much as he had expected; the limelight was beating on the two men in the know, and little Lee was allowed to savor the marvelous 
salmi de caneton
 in peace.

Coler, who was Gartrey's principal lieutenant in business, was a handsome bachelor in the middle forties with a reputation for wit and
savoir-faire
 that caused him to be much in demand for dinners. Lee had never cared for him, simply because he had himself under such perfect control. Lee himself was not accustomed to wearing his heart on his sleeve, and he freely granted the necessity of keeping a guard on yourself in the great world, but such people did not interest him; for him in woman or man it was the native wood-note wild that charmed.

A woman asked: "Mr. Coler, honestly, how is dear Agnes bearing up under the strain?" The affected solicitude did not conceal the purr of satisfaction in her voice. Older and plainer women naturally were delighted to see Agnes Gartrey catching it.

"Magnificently!" said Coler smoothly. "Like all your sex, when faced by something really big, she has risen out of herself."

"Is she in love with Al Yohe?"

"Honestly," said Coler, spreading out his hands, "I don't know. I am the watchdog of her business affairs, not her heart."

"Of course she is!" cried another woman. "Look how she stands up for him!"

"That proves nothing. She has to stand up for him in order to clear her own skirts."

"Strange as it may seem, I think she was attached to her hard-boiled old husband," said Coler. "At least, they got along pretty well together, considering."

"Impossible!" exclaimed all the women together.

"A man thirty years older!"

"If she is in love with Yohe," Coler went on, "so much the worse for her. Even in the unlikely event of his clearing himself, they could never come together now."

Young Rulon Innes, feeling that he had been left out of the conversation long enough, now delivered his opinion authoritatively: "None of you are being fair to Agnes. Nobody understands her. She has the heart of a child!"

Hearing this, the women kept their lips decorous, but their eyes were frankly derisive. Lee, glancing around the table, enjoyed the comedy. Innes was a handsome young man in a somewhat luscious style. He was so filled with the consciousness of his beauty that he appeared to be about to choke on it. Lee wondered how a woman could fall for him, yet many had; perhaps it was because he, after Al Yohe, was the fashion.

"
Is
 she in love with Al Yohe?" persisted the first woman.

"Nothing to it," said Innes languidly, regarding his finger nails. "Al's methods with women were those of a truck driver. No finesse." He paused to point the contrast between Al and himself. Some of the women bit their lips. "Agnes would never fall for that sort of thing," he went on. "She is too fastidious...Does it not occur to any of you that she may be telling the simple truth?"

Carol Wintergrenn was provoked. "The truth is never simple," she said, "and nobody nowadays ever tells it...For heaven's sake, let us talk about something else."

They paid no attention to her. Everybody at the table had a contribution to make to the Gartrey case and sat bouncing in impatience to get a word in. There was Miss Delphine Harley, the actress, perennially lovely and smiling. She said:

"I must take exception to truck driver. Poor Al's manners were free but never coarse. He despised the sultry innuendo that passes for love-making in the night clubs. Al never 'made love.' He captivated women by making them laugh. His apparent sexlessness was a challenge to us. His naturalness, his honesty were as refreshing as a breeze off the sea."

This produced a little babel of assent and dissent around the table. Miss Harley popped a forkful of the salmi into her mouth and murmured: "Delicious!" Rulon Innes laughed a thought too loudly and was heard to say:

"Al Yohe sexless! That's good!"

"Women will know what I mean," said Delphine quietly. "Don't think that I am belittling sex," she went on with her delightful, wicked smile. "Sex is grand! But I must say we women get a little tired of seeing it paraded like a drum major."

There were murmurs of assent from other women. "Perhaps," said Delphine, delicately balancing her fork, "perhaps Al Yohe's pretense of sexlessness was the finest kind of finesse."

Lee went through the motions of clapping his hands. He loved wit in a woman. Delphine Harley was doing something that Fanny and Judy had not been able to accomplish, forcing him a little to reconsider his ideas about the legendary Al.

There was a Senator at the table, who protested throatily: "But, my dear Miss Harley, a murderer!"

"Oh, that's something else again," said Delphine with a shrug.

"Surely you can't have any doubt as to his guilt?"

"I have no opinion at all," said Delphine sweetly. "I leave that to my betters."

"Well, I'll tell you what 
I
 think," put in the woman who had started the discussion. "It has not been suggested in the newspapers, but I believe that Agnes Gartrey herself is keeping him under cover."

This was received around the table with the silence of astonishment.

"I don't believe he ever left the apartment!" she added triumphantly.

This opened up fascinating possibilities to her hearers.

"Oh, I assure you you are wrong," said George Coler earnestly. "Mrs. Gartrey has discussed the case with me in all its implications. I can state positively that if she knew where he was, she would be the first to produce him."

After the ladies had left the table and the gentlemen were occupied with their cigars and liqueurs, a footman approached Lee Mappin.

"If you please, Mr. Mappin, you're wanted on the telephone, sir."

Lee left the table in some surprise. He could think of no reason why anyone should call him there. The servant led him to a telephone booth at the back of the hall. It was a woman's voice that came over the wire, a voice unknown to Lee.

"Mr. Mappin, please forgive me for disturbing you."

"Who is it?" asked Lee mildly.

"Agnes Gartrey."

Lee felt like a big round O of astonishment. He had never met Mrs. Gartrey, but the quality of the voice, its agitation, assured him that this was certainly she.

"Yes, Mrs. Gartrey?"

The voice became imploring. "Would you come to see me tonight?"

"But I'm dining out, Mrs. Gartrey."

"I know. It doesn't matter how late you are."

"But what can I do for you?"

"Just give me a little advice. Everything I do or say seems to be the wrong thing!"

Curiosity is a powerful motive force. "Very well, Mrs. Gartrey, I will be there as soon as I can get away."

"Oh, thank you so much! Please don't say anything about your visit to me."