Face to Face (5 page)

9

In the taxicab on the way to the Morgue, Ellery said, “Now that we're out from under the frosty eye of my father, Harry, how about telling me what you and he were putting your heads together about?”

“Oh, that.” Burke seemed abstracted. “I didn't want to mention it before I checked it out with your old man—” he smiled briefly “—I'm in a strange country, remember, and one should learn the protocol of the natives. But he says it's all right.”

The Scotsman squirmed back in the cab. “It has to do with the case that brought me here in the first place. Miss—Mrs. Armando's original request to the Yard was to ask if they would find a certain girl, a niece of hers, Lorette Spanier. Since it wasn't either a criminal or a missing-persons case, simply a question of locating a relative whose whereabouts she didn't know, the Yard had no jurisdiction and Commissioner Vail recommended me for the job, as I told you. I made the financial arrangements with Miss Guild—damn it all, I cannot think of her as Mrs. Armando!—with a transatlantic phone call, and went to work.”

The background for his search, Burke explained, had been ordinary enough. Glory's family back in Minnesota were dead; her sole surviving relative, a younger sister, had married a British dairy farmer and gone to live in England. Both the sister and her husband had been killed in a plane crash many years before, during a summer holiday; they had left an only child, a daughter, who would now be in her early twenties.

“It seems that Glory was never very close to her sister,” Burke said, between spurts of pipe smoke, “according to what she told me—disapproved of the sister's marriage, that sort of thing—and she simply lost track of the sister's daughter. Now she wanted to find the girl.”

“Just like that,” Ellery murmured. “Sounds as if she were looking for an heir.”

Burke took the pipe out of his mouth. “You know, that never occurred to me. It might have been her reason at that.”

“How did Glory communicate with the Yard?”

Burke stared. “By letter. Vail turned it over to me. For heaven's sake, what difference does it make?”

“Airmail?” asked Ellery.

“Of course.”

“When did the letter come in, do you recall?”

“It arrived on the fourth of December.”

“Even more interesting. Possibly significant. The page with the hidden word ‘face' in the last diary is dated December first, and Glory's letter about finding her niece got to the Yard on the fourth. Which means she must have written that word invisibly about the same time she wrote to England.”

“You mean there's a connection between ‘face' and the niece?”

“I don't mean anything, unfortunately,” Ellery said sadly. “I'm just scrounging around among the possibilities. Did you find the girl? I take it you did.”

“Oh, yes.”

“Where?”

Burke grinned. “In New York. Ironic, what? I traced Lorette Spanier from an orphanage in Leicestershire—in the Midlands—where she'd been brought up after her parents' death, to a flat on your West Side, just a couple of miles from her aunt! And I had to come all the way from England to find her.

“The only difficulty I had was on the home grounds—it took me several weeks to trace her to the orphanage. There they told me where she had gone, although they didn't know her specific address or what she was doing—having reached her majority she was a free agent, and the orphanage people had no further control over her movements.

“When I got to New York I promptly enlisted the aid of Centre Street, which shunted me off to your Missing Persons Bureau, who could do nothing for me because the girl wasn't listed as missing anywhere in the States. And then, somehow, I got to your father. Does Inspector Queen have a finger in
every
New York police pie? He seems more like an omnibus than a man.”

“He's a sort of all-purpose vacuum cleaner,” Ellery said absently. “Lorette Spanier. Is that spelled with one
n
or two? And is she married?”

“One. And no, she's quite young. I think twenty-one. Or—no. By now she's twenty-two. Old enough to be married, I grant you, but there's something awfully virginal about her. And anti male, if you know what I mean.”

“I don't.”

“I mean she has no time for men.”

“I see,” said Ellery, although he didn't, quite. “What does she do for a living?”

“When she first got to the States she took a secretarial position—there was a vogue in your metropolis about that time, I understand, for pretty young English secretaries. But that was merely to keep body and soul together. What Lorette really wanted was to get into show business, she told me. She has a good voice, by pop standards, with a rather distinctive style.”

“Anything like Glory's?” Ellery asked suddenly.

“A good deal like it, I'm told, although I don't qualify as a pop music buff. I'm more of a Handel-Mendelssohn-choral-society-oratorio bloke myself.”

“Heredity,” Ellery mumbled.

“What?”

“It apparently runs in the blood. That must have pleased Glory no end. Has the girl broken in anywhere?”

“Yes. She managed to get a few wireless commercial jobs. It encouraged her to quit her situation and try to earn her living singing full time. She's had a few third-class nightclub dates—barely scrapes along, from what I gather. She's an independent sort—no complaints, stiff upper lip, smiling through, that sort of bilge. I couldn't help but admire her grit, though.”

“Why did she come to the United States?”

“Really, Ellery. Isn't this where the pounds and pence are? Look at the Beatles.” (“You look at them,” said Ellery. “No, thanks,” said Burke.) “She's a most practical young woman.”

“Then it wasn't to look up her famous aunt?”

“Heavens, no! She means to do it on her own.”

“Didn't she make any attempt at all to find her mother's only sister?”

“She told me she had no idea where Glory Guild was living. It might have been in Pago-Pago, for all she knew. No, this was all apparently coincidence.”

“Not so coincidental. Where else would a Glory Guild live? And where else would a stagestruck girl come? Were you present when they were reunited?”

“Oh, yes. But getting them together took a bit of doing. I told Lorette why I'd been hunting for her, and I found myself with another job on my hands—I mean persuading her to visit Mrs. Armando.”

“When did all this take place?”

“I didn't actually locate Lorette until late afternoon of the thirtieth—Wednesday. Took her to dinner and spent most of the evening talking her into coming with me. She has no particular feeling for her aunt—the woman was just a name to her as a child, and when her father and mother died—what with Glory's silence—even the name faded out after a bit. She was very young, you know, when she had to go into the orphanage.”

“Bitter?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Did Lorette seem bitter at her aunt's neglect?”

“Not at all. She's a quite remarkable young person, this Spanier girl. She said she couldn't imagine why her aunt wanted to find her after all these years. All she wanted was to be let alone to make her own way. As I say, it took me the entire evening to talk her into accompanying me. The fact was, I didn't know why Mrs. Armando wanted to see her so suddenly, either, so I had to muster some remarkable arguments.”

Ellery laughed. “So that's what you and dad were being cozy about.” Then he stopped laughing. “Just when did you and the girl get to Glory's apartment Wednesday night, Harry?”

“About a quarter to eleven.” Burke's pipe had gone out, and he looked around the cab for a place to deposit the dottle. But the ashtray was missing, and he stuffed the whole thing in his pocket. “It was awkward. Lorette was no help at all; after all, the woman was a total stranger to her. And Mrs. Armando made a bad job of explaining to the girl why she had never looked for her before, such a bad job that I decided I was in the way, and left. My assignment was finished, anyway. Mrs. Armando saw me to the door—gave me my check, by the way; I'd of course phoned her we were coming, and she had the check ready for me—and I was out of there, as I've told you, at 11:05 or so. Went to the airport, took off at 1:00
A.M
.—and turned around and flew back, as you know, when Inspector Queen cabled me to return.”

“Then you left the Spanier girl alone with Glory,” Ellery said abruptly. “And Glory was shot at 11:50.”

“I understand Lorette says she left, too, long before that,” Burke replied. “She's been questioned, your father told me, and her story seems to put her in the clear. But she's going to be questioned again later today, I gather, so you can sit in and judge for yourself.”

10

“Which one do you want to see today, Mr. Queen?” asked the attendant.

“Glory Guild Armando, Louie.”

“That one.” The man went straight to one of the drawers and pulled it open. “There's been quite a run on her.”

She was unlovely even for a corpse. The body was almost shapeless with fat; the death-darkened, sagging cheeks under the disordered bottle-blond hair were puffy and swollen by overindulgence.

“Sic transit Glory,” murmured Ellery. “This was once a sexpot, inspiring dreams. Would you believe it?”

“With difficulty,” said Harry Burke. “I don't see anything remarkable about her face, Ellery, except grossness. No mark or bruise, certainly.”

“Then it wasn't her own face she meant.”

“Who said it was?”

“You never know. What was it the poet said? ‘A face that had a story to tell. How different faces are in this particular!' But he also said, ‘Some faces are books in which not a line is written, save perhaps a date.' ”

“Which poet?”

“Longfellow.”

“Oh.”

“Hyperion. Not
from the fragment by Keats.”

“I'm relieved,” said Burke gratefully. “Well, nothing is written in this face but obesity.”

“I don't know,” Ellery said suddenly. “Thanks, Louie. Harry, come along.”

As he hurried Burke out, the Scot said, “Where to now?”

“The Medical Examiner's office. I just had another thought.”

“Minus poetic quotation, I hope,” Burke said.

“I'll try to remember to spare you our native bards.”

They found Doc Prouty eating his lunch at his desk. The old-timer had his disreputable cloth hat far back on his bald head, and he was making faces at a sandwich.

“Oh, Ellery. Tomato and lettuce again. By God, I've told that woman of mine a thousand times a man in my line of work doesn't necessarily have to be a vegetarian! What's on your mind?”

“The Armando case. By the way. Harry Burke, Dr. Prouty.” The Medical Examiner grunted, continuing to masticate. “You've done the p.m. on her, I take it?”

“Yes. Didn't you see the report?”

“No. Anything?”

“Death by gunshot, as advertised. What did you expect?”

“Hope.”

“ ‘That very popular trust in flat things coming round!' ” murmured Burke.

“What?” said Ellery.

“Dickens,” said Burke. “Charles.”

Doc Prouty was gaping at them.

“Did you look into her mouth, Doc?”

“Did I what?”

“Look into her mouth.”

Now Burke stared.

“Of course I looked into her mouth. It's primary standard procedure when you're looking for poison. Not that poison was indicated,” said Doc Prouty. “But then I'm the very model of a proper thorough M.E. Gilbert, W.S.” He grinned like an elf.

“What did you find?”

“What I expected. Nothing.”

“No wad of paper?”

“Wad of paper?”

“Wad of paper.”

“Of course not!”

“And that's that,” Ellery said to Burke as they left.

“I don't understand, Ellery,” Burke complained.

“It's simple enough. Face—mouth? I thought perhaps she wrote the word face as a clue to look in her mouth—where, hopefully, she'd secreted a more direct message, like the name of her killer. Only she hadn't.”

All the Scotsman could do was shake his head.

11

They stopped in at a chophouse haunt of Ellery's, consumed vast T-bone steaks—Burke ordered his well done, to Ellery's horror—and then went back to the Queen apartment for a few hours' nap. Before they flopped Ellery sought the phone and located his father at police headquarters where, the old man said, he had conveyed the diaries and other papers.

“When are you intending to question Lorette Spanier, dad?”

“Five o'clock.”

“Where?”

“Why?”

“I want to be present.”

“I asked her to come down here to headquarters.”

“Have Armando there, too, will you?”

The old man was silent. Then he said, “Any particular reason?”

“Nothing spectacular. I want to watch them together. The presumption is that they've never met.”

“The Spanier girl and Armando?” The Inspector seemed startled. “She's hardly dry behind the ears. Fresh out of an English orphanage.”

“Armando goes for anything that fills out a sweater, according to Roberta West. Does Lorette fill out a sweater?”

‘Oh, yes.”

“Then have Armando there.”

“All
right
.”

“Incidentally, has anything been done yet on the women in Armando's tasty life?”

“I started a check on that,” said his father grimly, “first thing.”

“The reason I ask is that the woman he got to do the job for him might be someone he knew and then—presumably—dropped. He's had platoons of them. Or she might even be one of his ex-wives.”

“I'm way ahead of you, son.”

But if there was anything between Carlos Armando and Lorette Spanier they concealed it like paid-up members of Equity. Armando seemed puzzled, in an amused way, by his summons to Inspector Queen's office; and Lorette, after one swift look, lifted her unplucked eyebrows and ignored him. Ellery did think that, for a girl as naive as her background made her appear, it was a singularly sophisticated appraisal; but then he half dismissed it as an instinct for character analysis often displayed by the very young female of the species. As for Armando, his glance kept going over her like a dentist's probe. She filled out her sweater—it was actually a sweater—with the greatest of ease.

Lorette had nothing of the pinchy English look that might have been expected from her Midlander father. She was all Norse, busty and blond; she might have come to the Inspector's office directly from a Swedish cruise boat. (And, like the struggle her deceased aunt had so fulsomely lost, in her middle years she would have to fight the good fight against overweight.) The girl had the face of an angelic child, with a little straight nose, blue blue eyes, red red lips, and a skin as fair as an infant's backside. The pouting set to her lips had been fashionable for a long time; it was the requisite touch of sex in the child-face, and it would remind men of the woman her body said she was. Armando's eyes kept probing her, smiling with pleasure.

Armando was not at all what Ellery had expected. He did not have the lean lizard grace and greasy hair-oil look of the patented gigolo. His body was muscular and even squatty, and it moved with clumsiness. His hair, crisp, curly, and dry, was very nearly Negroid; his skin, pitted and burned black by sunlamps, enhanced the Negro impression. He possessed a pair of extraordinary black eyes, swimming with intelligence, and shaded by feminine lashes. Only his mouth was weak, being pretty and full-lipped and entirely without character. What women saw in him Ellery could not imagine. He loathed the fellow on sight. (And at once realized the source of his loathing: Armando exuded sexual self-confidence from every pore—which was perhaps what women saw in him after all.)

Inspector Queen made the introductions (Armando barely acknowledged the two men with a lazy
“Buon giorn”'
in a deep coo, like a pouter pigeon; Lorette shook Ellery's hand, serious and stiff-armed, a once-up-and-down pump, and then dimpled at Harry Burke, immediately illuminating the dingy headquarters office as if a shade had been raised to the sun), and sat them all down—Ellery took a chair in a corner, from which he could watch them unobserved—and said smoothly, “I've asked you here, Mr. Armando, because this is a matter that evidently concerned your wife, and I think you're entitled to know what's going on. Did you know, by the way, that Mrs. Armando was having her niece searched for?”

“Between GeeGee and me,” said Carlos Armando, “there were no secrets. She told me.” Secretly, Ellery doubted it. The man was improvising.

“How did you feel about it?”

“I?” Armando pulled down his pretty mouth. “I was sad. I have no family, except two uncles behind the Iron Curtain, and they are probably dead.” His liquid eyes washed over Lorette gently. “Miss Spanier is much to be condoled. To find such as GeeGee, and to lose her, both in the same night, is an irony so deplorable it is better not discussed.”

Lorette glanced at him curiously. His blunt, brilliant teeth shimmered in a smile that dropped at the corners—punctuation marks to the extravagant foreign turn of his phrasing—while his eyes went over her in the universal language; could she be unaware of what he was? Ellery could not decide.

As for Inspector Queen, he dismissed Armando with a grunt and turned to the girl. “Mr. Burke brought you to Mrs. Armando's apartment at a quarter of eleven Wednesday night. She was home alone. Mr. Burke was with the two of you until a few minutes past eleven. Tell me as exactly as you can remember what happened after Burke left.”

“Nothing
happened
while I was there, Inspector Queen,” Lorette said in a reproving tone.

The old man showed his dentures in a reproved way. “I mean, what did you and your aunt talk about?”

“Oh. Well, she wanted me to come live with her, give up my flat and move in with her and Mr. Armando. I thanked her and said no, thank you, that I valued my independence, although she was very kind to ask me. You see,” the English girl said, looking down at the hands in her lap, “I spent the better part of my life living with other people; you don't get much privacy in an orphanage. I tried to explain to Mrs. Armando—to Aunt Glory—that for the first time in my life I was enjoying going it
alone.
And that, besides, I didn't know her. Really at all. It would have been like moving in with a stranger. I think she was hurt, but what else could I say? It was true.”

“Of course,” the Inspector murmured. “And what else did you two talk about, Miss Spanier?”

“She wouldn't let it go at that. She seemed to have some sort of compulsion. It was quite awkward for me.” Lorette raised her amazing blue eyes. “She even … well, it seemed to me she went rather too far. She kept
pressing
me. She had a great many connections in show business, she said; she could help my theatrical career no end, and so on. I frankly didn't see what that had to do with my living with her—if she wanted to help me, why didn't she just do so? She was offering me a carrot, as if I were some sort of donkey. I didn't like it at all.”

“And you told her so?”

“Oh, no, that would have been rude. I don't believe in that sort of tit for tat, do you? People are too self-centeredly unkind to one another as it is. I simply said that I preferred to make my own way, just as I understood she had done in her own career, and anyway I don't believe that people can boost other people in the arts—you either have talent, in which case sooner or later you'll get there, or you simply don't, and that's that. It's truly the way I feel.”

“I'm sure it is. And I'm sure you're right,” said the Inspector. You're a treacherous old hypocrite, Ellery thought admiringly. He caught Burke's eye; the Englishman was trying not to grin. “And that was the sum and substance of your talk with Mrs. Armando?”

“Yes.”

“What time did you leave your aunt's apartment?”

“About 11:30, I should think.”

“She saw you out?”

“Yes, to the lift. I mean, elevator.”

“Did she say anything about seeing you again?”

“Oh, yes. She asked me to telephone her next week, something about having a spot of lunch together at Sardi's. I didn't promise. I said I would if I could, and I left.”

“Left her alone—and alive.”

“Certainly!”

“Was there anyone in the lobby when you went down?”

“No.”

“Where did you go after you got downstairs?”

“I went home.” The implications of Inspector Queen's questioning had begun to make her angry; the pink flushing her cheeks was the color of anger, and the breasts under the sweater had risen noticeably. (Most noticeably by Carlos Armando, whose eyes quivered like mercury seeking a balance, never leaving her chest.) “Where else would I go at that hour, Inspector?”

“Just asking,” the Inspector said. “I suppose you took a taxi?”

“I did
not.
I walked. Is there anything wrong with that?”

“Walked?”

“Across Central Park. I live on the West Side—”

“There's something definitely wrong with that,” the old man said. “Hasn't anyone told you that it's dangerous for an unaccompanied girl to walk through Central Park at night? Especially near midnight? Don't you read the newspapers?”

“I suppose that was idiotic of me,” Lorette admitted. She has spirit, Ellery thought, and the quick temper that goes with it. Also, surprising in a girl of her age and background, considerable self-control; she was now speaking with great care. “But I was not so much upset as—well—stirred up. I'm afraid I wasn't thinking clearly. I just suddenly felt like walking, across the Park was the direct route, and so I walked across. Inspector, I don't see what any of this has to do with my aunt's death—I mean, how I got home Wednesday night!”

“Did you meet anyone you know on your walk?”

“No—”

“Or in your building?”

“
No
.”

“And, as I understand it, you live alone?”

“That is correct, Inspector Queen.” The blue eyes flashed. “As for what I did when I arrived at my flat—I'm sure that's your next question!—I undressed, tubbed, brushed my teeth, said my prayers, and went to bed. Is there anything else I can tell you?”

Ellery grinned at the expression on his father's face. The Inspector liked to keep on top of his opponent during these wrestling matches, and this one wasn't playing the game. The old man's dentures showed in something like respect.

“Did your aunt mention anything to you about her will?”

“Her will? Why should she have?”

“Did she?”

“Certainly not.”

“Mr. Burke tells us that, as she was showing him out that night, Mrs. Armando said something about expecting her husband back a little past midnight.” Mrs. Armando's husband shifted his attention for an instant from Lorette's sweater to the old man's mustache; then it went back again. “Did you hear her say that, Miss Spanier?”

“No, but she made the same remark to me after Mr. Burke left.”

“But you never did see Mr. Armando Wednesday night?”

“I've not laid eyes on Mr. Armando until today.” Or vice versa? Ellery wondered. If it was true, Armando was certainly making up for it now. The laying on of eyes was becoming positively obscene. Lorette did not seem to notice. She was concentrating on her inquisitor.

She waited now for Inspector Queen to resume, but she had to swivel her head.

“Question,” Ellery said suddenly. “After Harry Burke left the Armando apartment, Miss Spanier—while you were alone with your aunt—did she receive a telephone call, or a message of any kind? Or did anyone ring the apartment bell?”

“We were not interrupted in any way, Mr. Queen. Of course, I can't say what may have happened after I left.”

“Can you recall Mrs. Armando's remarking anything—at all—to you, no matter how trivial-sounding, that had to do with somebody's face?”

“Face?”

“Yes, f-a-c-e.”

The girl shook her blond head. She seemed genuinely mystified. “I don't remember any such reference.”

“Then I think that's all, Miss Spanier,” said the Inspector, rising. “By the way, I take it you've heard from your aunt's attorney, William Maloney Wasser, about the reading of her will?”

“Yes. I'm supposed to be at his office directly after the funeral Monday.”

He nodded. “Sorry to have broken into your New Year's Day.”

Lorette rose and rather haughtily made for the door. Somehow Carlos Armando was there before her, hand on the knob.

“Allow me, Lorette—you will not mind if I call you Lorette? After all, I am your uncle.”

The fine brows over the blue eyes drew together a little. “Thank you, Mr. Armando.”

“Oh, but not Mr. Armando! Carlos.”

She smiled faintly.

“May I drive you home? Or wherever you are going?”

“That's not at all necessary—”

“But we must know each other. Perhaps you will let me give you dinner? There are so many things about GeeGee you must be wishing to learn. Now that she is dead, so soon after finding you, I feel a responsibility …”

That was all the three men heard before the door closed.

“Skirt-chasing blighter,” Harry Burke said, making a face. “Doesn't waste time, does he?”

“It could be,” muttered Ellery, “that's someone's being awfully clever.”