Death of an Old Sinner (13 page)

“Many times over,” Miss Barker said, and there was something in her way of saying it that touched Jimmie as nothing she had ever said in his presence had.

“The trouble was she did not use the word ‘wife’ in my instant, when she told the story to His Honor. I was all blame—and I had no papers, no wedding words to prove my honor. In other words, Jimmie, I took the rap for corrupting the Judge’s daughter. In time he got a copy of a French wedding certificate to look at, the bona fide Mrs. Gregory Joyce. But she would not come home to her parents’ house. And Madeline would not leave it. She had bought herself a home at the expense of my reputation.”

“Now things have greatly changed,” Miss Barker said. “Your reputation could buy you almost anything.”

Jimmie swore a violent oath beneath his breath.

But Helene shrugged. “That does not even anger me any more, but now you know why Judge Turner sent you home to bed, Jimmie. I am not good company. In fact, I am still unclean in spite of the fact that he took me home with him that night and tried to fumigate me. How does the song go—‘wash me in the water that you washed your dirty daughter?’…”

“I don’t get it,” Jimmie said.

“ ‘…And I will be as pure as the whitewash on the wall.’ Now do you get it?”

“No!”

“He asked me if I would like a fellowship to work in England. He has much admired my work, you see,” she said with mock naiveté, “after all these years, and out of the work of all the sculptors in America, mine deserved a fellowship…created overnight.”

“It was a legitimate offer, Helene, and not created overnight,” Madeline said quietly. “The endowment relates to a small estate outside London. I once administered it.”

Jimmie got a start then that made him glad the women were attending only each other at the moment. His first personal encounter with Madeline Barker had related to England after the Albany meeting. Jimmie looked at the woman who was calmly watching Helene move about like a restless panther. Very sure of herself, Madeline Barker, much in control. He got to his feet and caught Helene’s hand in his, drawing her to some ease at his side. The hand was cold and damp, and he was reminded of the feeling when someone has long dangled her fingers in the water from a boat. He lifted it to his lips, the public display of affection costing him considerable discomfiture.

Madeline looking from him to Helene smiled a little and dropped her eyes as though deeply hurt. That really embarrassed him. She looked up again immediately and fiercely. The softness had been but a moment’s lapse. “Mrs.
Joyce
,” she said, and her voice sounded choked up, “what touching loyalty to a lost cause, your having kept that name for all these years.” She got to her feet. “That makes you almost as pitiable as me. I’ll be forty-five soon, Helene, an acknowledged spinster.” She looked a moment at the doorknob before putting her hand to it. “In that regard, I do believe the only difference between us is the light in which we have conducted our affairs. Goodnight, all.”

“Now there,” said Jimmie as the door closed on her, “is a witch if ever I saw a broom.”

“No,” Helene said, slowly, “I do believe the years have touched her with humanity. I think she is in love with you.”

As long as he lived, Jimmie thought, he would never understand the perceptivity of women.

“No more scenes like that, Jimmie,” Helene said smiling up at him, “you might learn to reciprocate.”

“Just what do you mean by that?”

“Public confession.”

“Heaven forbid!” said Jimmie.

M
RS. NORRIS HUNG UP
the phone and sat down heavily. The Robinsons were not coming. Mag was not feeling very well. “I’ve put her to bed, Annie. No more than her stomach, I think. She’ll be fine in the morning.”

Oh, a very cheerful man was Mr. Robinson. But the fact remained, she had not seen her sister, nor heard her voice, since the morning at three when Mr. Robinson came home and ordered Mag to bed when she questioned where he had been all night.

But why had he said they were coming if he had no such intention? And the answer to that was plain enough: when she expected to see Mag that night in Nyack, she was sure not to try to see her in Brooklyn before it. And once in Nyack, what with the house in mourning, callers streaming in from over the country, politicians poking under the carpets, and the funeral still ahead of them, Mrs. Norris was not likely to interfere with Mr. Robinson’s ministrations to his wife.

And then of course it could all be her imagination, considering the things going on in this house.

Mrs. Norris jumped when Tully spoke to her. “I thought you were out of the way for the night,” she said.

“I wondered if you could use any iodine,” the investigator drawled.

“If I could use any or if I have any?”

“If you could use some. The old gentleman had three bottles of it, and by the looks of it, all bought at Shea’s Drug Store recently. You don’t think he had in mind trying suicide?”

“No more than I would,” she said, and thought about it further.

Tully shook his head. “What on earth would a man buy three bottles for?”

Mrs. Norris shrugged. It was too much for her mind in its present condition.

“There’s something else I’ve been wanting to go over with you,” Tully said, “if you’re not too tired.”

She made up her mind then to concentrate on what he was saying. “Go ahead, Mr. Tully.”

“When the General arrived at his hotel last night with his fair lady and the other one, do you remember what he said to the clerk?”

“Something profane, wasn’t it?”

“But besides that. I got the exact transcript from the precinct man. ‘Give the lady the key to my suite, you so-and-so, etcetera.’ Now the General didn’t have a suite. He had a room. And if I’m not mistaken, he was the kind of man to call a room a room, eh?”

Mrs. Norris nodded.

“But his fair lady, now, that’s something else. Her notion of where the likes of the General ought to be staying, and her notion of the Mulvany, would put the word ‘suite’ in her mouth.”

Mrs. Norris leaned forward. It was easy enough now to concentrate. “You have the ingredients of something there, Mr. Tully.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Norris. The trouble is, I don’t know what it’s going to cook up into.”

She put one finger on Mr. Tully’s hand where it was resting on the telephone. “Was he hypnotized, do you think?”

“That’s the line of inquiry I’m about to pursue. The troublesome thing about it—he was a man of such strong will.”

“He was strong enough willed, as you say, Mr. Tully, but there were times he didn’t have much won’t.”

Mr. Tully put in a call to New York to a psychiatrist of his acquaintance. It was possible for the General to have been hypnotized and set in a drunken pattern—except that, having never been slobbering drunk himself, he would probably over-act.

“He’d probably over-act,” Tully repeated for Mrs. Norris’ benefit. And that was certainly what he had done. The detective then asked his friend about the probabilities in the arrangement of the medals. When he hung up he repeated the gist of the opinion to Mrs. Norris. “If he put them on himself in the state of hypnosis, thinking himself drunk, he might’ve deliberately mixed ʼem up.”

“That doesn’t help much as I see it,” Mrs. Norris said.

“Nope, we’re never going to get three multiplying one by two,” Tully said, and started upstairs again. “Think about that iodine,” he added, pausing, “was he accident-prone, as they say?”

“He was very steady, Mr. Tully, the nerves of an aristocrat.” When he was gone, Mrs. Norris picked up the phone herself and called Shea’s Drug Store, inquiring when the General had bought the iodine. No one knew, and checking the Jarvis account the clerk discovered that the purchase had not been charged, although the old gentleman was in the habit of charging everything.

“Indeed he was,” Mrs. Norris said to herself, taking the information up to the detective. “He never paid for a thing he could get on tick.”

“More of his aristocratic ways,” Tully said. “But it’s on the label: Shea’s Drug Store. You’re a perceptive woman, Mrs. Norris. Thank you for the information.” He entered a note in his book. He then pointed to the portrait without raising his head. “Who’s that?”

“That, Mr. Tully, was once the President of the United States.”

“I thought he was familiar,” Tully said. “You must excuse my ignorance, Mrs. Norris, but I’m a long time out of school, and I’ll tell you the truth, I don’t think I’ve heard of him since.”

“He was a distant relative.”

“He looks it,” Tully said, “I’ve been going over the old gentleman’s memoirs. I have to do that, you know, looking for clues.”

“They’re not in my keeping.”

“I’m sure they’re not, from what I’ve read,” Tully said. “He has snatches of all sorts of tales written out on separate pages—as though he thought to patch them together like a puzzle. It would make quite a book, you know, though by his notations there were things about people he didn’t dare publish.”

“Were there?” she said. “I wonder, Mr. Tully, I often ask myself, did some of the things he talked about really happen, or did he make them up? He had a lively imagination.”

“He did that,” said Tully, “whether or not he made them up.”

“He used to come down to the kitchen and purposely rile me, to see how much I would take of his mischief. Do you know, Mr. Tully, I got so that I wouldn’t even blush? And that made him furious. He’d ask me if I had no modesty—me, mind you, and stomp up the stairs like a bull…” That turned her mind to something else. “Did you ask Master Jamie about the family papers?”

Tully nodded. “All he knows is that the General was thinking of bringing out an edition of the President’s letters. I’ve put out an inquiry of all the major publishers—including the one which contracted for his memoirs. None of them gave him a thousand dollars.”

“That’s what I was wondering,” Mrs. Norris said.

“But I’m still waiting for his agent to call me back. Seems like he got a sudden urge to go fishing. I wouldn’t think so much of that except he had to buy a rod, a reel, boots…the works. His wife says it’s the first time he ever went in his life. Now that isn’t a disease that comes on a man sudden, Mrs. Norris. Well, we’ll see in a day or two. Maybe he’ll come back for the funeral. Keep your eyes open there, Mrs. Norris. Look out through your tears and see who else is watering the old fellow’s grave.”

“I will. I hope you’ll be comfortable for the night.”

“I will if the ghosts’ll let me,” he said with a wink.

B
Y EVENING OF THE
next day, Sunday, Tully had learned very little more of General Jarvis’ intimate life than he knew when he came, of his recent intimate life, that was. The study was strewn with accounts of “the old days,” but the detective could find no reference to anyone who answered the description of the woman who had brought him home to the Mulvany. No surprises at all, Tully thought unhappily, unless it was in the General’s handwriting: the detective had been wrong about that thinking it probably childish. The old man had written an elegant hand, neat and controlled. Tully had consulted an expert on hypnotism. For the present he could see no purpose to consulting the hand-writing experts. They were not a lot to inspire confidence anyway. A carnival sort mostly.

The detective was sitting in the study chair opposite the President’s portrait at that moment. A queer feeling came over him. He had been joking about the ghosts the night before. He was by no means a superstitious man, but at the instant it was like fifty years being snatched from his own life: he could have sworn he heard someone saying, “You’re getting warm.”

Why the devil should he think of a childhood game…here? Probably in this room as a child the General himself had visited his own father, and got advice he didn’t take. Except for the General, there were two hundred years’ of lawyers in the family, including this old geezer on the wall. “Excuse me, Mr. President,” Tully muttered, half-jest, half-earnest.

A person got a funny feeling sitting under his stare, the heavy-lidded eyes. He was a character, too, no doubt. Tully tried to put himself back in the mental state where he had felt “warm.” How was it the hotel clerk had described the General’s male companion? Salesman, maybe of gadgets for a penny arcade. And the elevator boy: circus maybe, fight promotor…that carnival spirit…carnival…

There was a knock at the door and Tully’s reverie was over. Jimmie came in and introduced the man with him, August Fowler, the General’s literary agent.

Fowler shook hands perfunctorily and then made quite a business of staring up at the picture. “So that’s him. I remember seeing the picture in my seventh grade history. American History, seventh grade. Or was it eighth? Interesting looking face, don’t you think?”

Since the question was asked of no one in particular, no one answered him. Jimmie told the investigator: “It seems father came on a diary of the President—not as dull as we had thought his life might have been. Fowler, here, agreed to submit it for publication.”

“You know, Jarvis, it would be a fine idea for you to go ahead with what your father planned—write an introduction. Good for you too.”

“In what way?” said Jimmie.

“Is it a secret you plan to run for governor? It was no secret to your father certainly. He told me about it.”

Tully had been watching him while he talked. A sharp forty-five, he decided, a press agent who had taken a postgraduate course and got himself a literary license. “When did all this happen, Mr. Fowler?”

Fowler jerked his head around, as though the cat had spoken to the king. “Oh, yes. I’d forgotten. You are the police.”

“
A
police,” Tully amended. “When was it you last saw the General?”

“May I take it from the beginning of the diary episode?”

“Why not?” Tully drawled. “Take it from a chair, too, if you like.” He gestured the man into one of the General’s easy chairs. Jimmie half sat on the desk.

“On Thursday night he called me at home,” Fowler started.

“What time?”

“After nine. We had dinner guests and were just leaving the table. I suppose you’d like to know where he called from?”