Murder within Murder (10 page)

It was a local and she changed at Ninety-sixth, almost unconsciously following the familiar pattern. But as the express racketed downtown, she began to think what she would do; where she would go. At first she thought of going to some other city where nobody knew her. She could not achieve the realization that, even in New York, where she had been born, she was known to almost no one. It did not surprise her that she knew no one well enough to go to them and explain—or perhaps partly explain—what had happened and ask them for help. Her parents were both dead; there was an aunt in Brooklyn, she almost never saw her and did not like her and was not liked by her. She had never had any permanent association with a man in her life; she had gone to movies with boys, and to dinner a few times, but none of the boys, except Fred, had reappeared after one, or at the most two, dates. And Fred was still in the Navy, and she did not think that Fred would remember her, although he had more cause to remember her than had any other man she had ever known. But she did not remember him very clearly either, in spite of what had happened, and did not feel any particular resentment. The two other women who worked as maids at the Holborn Annex were much older and they were foreigners and spoke funny English, so that she had never thought much about them. So there was no one. And yet she had to go somewhere.

She still did not regret leaving her room; that, clearly, had been the only thing to do. That would be the first place they would go and she had to avoid them at any cost. Just now, at any rate. And for the same reason she had to stay away from the Holborn Annex, which was the second place they would go. The thing she had to do was to find some place to spend the rest of the night. She thought, for a moment, that she might spend it in the subway, riding back and forth. But someone might notice; and, almost certainly, there would be drunks. It would be cheaper, but she had a lot of money. More than a hundred dollars, because she had not touched the hundred and she must have four or five. She counted in her mind. She had four dollars and twenty cents—no, fifteen cents, because the subway had taken a nickel—in addition to the hundred. Enough for anything she could think of. She could live a long time on that—anyway, until she found another job. She could even go to a hotel.

This idea came to her slowly, because it was not an idea she had ever had before, or thought of having. You found a room somewhere in a rooming house; even if you wanted the room for only a short time, you found it in a rooming house. But it was late to go looking for a room as you always did. Hotels, she supposed, were not surprised if people came in the middle of the night and asked for a room. Probably people did that every night, and hotels expected it.

Forty-second Street and Broadway was the most likely place to find a room, she thought; it was the center of the city. She got off at Forty-second Street and came up into the lights. Everything was bright again now, with the war over. Probably Fred would be coming back soon. She thought of this, fleetingly and without reference to herself. He would not be coming back to her. It did not matter particularly; she had not greatly enjoyed her experiences with Fred. In a way it had been exciting, but he was drunk most of the time and everything had been abrupt and, somehow, had seemed unfinished. Perhaps that was the way it always was.

She walked west on Forty-second Street, looking for a hotel, because she supposed there must be hotels on Forty-second Street. She went across Eighth Avenue, knowing that the kind of hotel she wanted would probably be west of Eighth Avenue and, very quickly, found a hotel. There was a door with a marquee marked “Hotel” and there was no sign which limited the accommodations to men. Beyond the door was a flight of stairs, with brass edges on the treads, and at the top of the stairs were two glass doors, swinging together and both marked “Hotel.” Inside there was a desk; and the old man at it, who smelled a little, told her without interest that she could have a room for two dollars, and took the two dollars. He told her where to find the room, and she went along a dirty hall—the whole place smelled a little, like the clerk—until she found a room with the right number on the door. She went in and turned on the light. The room looked very much like the room she had lived in uptown, and she thought nobody would find her there until she was ready to be found.

She undressed, after locking the door, and thought about what she would do. She would not do anything until morning, she decided, but then she would do something. She'd sure do something. Nobody was going to put her on a spot this way and get away with it.

Her anger, which had been smouldering as a kind of bitterness, flared up as she thought about the person who had put her on the spot. The story might have taken anybody in—the story that Miss Gipson had stolen some papers and was hiding them in her room. She had read about that happening in one of the books she read and was not surprised. (Florence, if she had thought about it, probably would have realized that the stories she read in her books were things people had made up. But she always read them with the belief that they were things which had actually happened.)

Since papers might be of any conceivable value, it was not surprising that the offer for her key—for the few hours' possession of her key—had amounted to a hundred dollars. Sums like that were commonplace in cases where people wanted to get at papers, and Miss Gipson was precisely the sort of person who would steal papers from their rightful owners and refuse to return them. Miss Gipson was a bitch. Florence remembered that Miss Gipson was dead and changed the word in her mind. Miss Gipson had been—been hard to get along with. She had been snoopy about her room, always running the tips of her fingers along the least likely places in search of dust. She had several times behaved as if she thought Florence might steal something. She was dead, but she had not been a very nice lady, all the same.

But she was dead, and Florence had been put on a spot because she had been lied to, and nobody was going to get away with that. If she had to, she would go to the police and tell them about it, and explain that she had been taken in by a story that anybody would have believed, because if she was going to be on a spot, somebody else was going to be there too. They'd see.

Florence Adams had felt safe with the door locked, and having made up her mind what she was going to do. She had gone to sleep after a much shorter time than anybody would have expected, and she had slept until after ten o'clock. Then she had gone out to breakfast and come back in an hour and read the newspapers. It was after eleven when she went down and made her telephone call.

At first, she had a little trouble making the person who had put her on the spot realize who she was.

“Florence Adams,” she said, and said it several times. “The maid at the Holborn Annex. Where Miss Gipson lived.”

It had been clear, then, and Florence had gone at once to the point.

“You put me on the spot,” she said. “You can't get away with it. I'm going to the police.”

She listened for a time.

“I'd like to see you prove it,” she said then, skeptically. “You could get into her place. And somebody planted this poison—sodium something—there. It was worth a hundred bucks to you to get into the place. That's a lot of money.”

She listened again.

“Listen,” she said, “there isn't that much money. You think I want to be locked up? Or worse? I—”

The voice at the other end of the wire broke in, and this time Florence listened for a longer period, although once or twice she started to break in. When the voice finally finished, Florence hesitated a moment.

“You make it sound all right,” she said, and there was uncertainty in her voice. “You made it sound all right the other time. What do you want me to do?”

“Let me talk to you,” the voice said. “You're making a mistake. You'll get yourself into trouble—needlessly.” The voice was slow, demanding attention and belief. “When you hear the full story you'll realize that there is no connection between the two things. I did not kill Miss Gipson. I'm sure I can make you understand that. Only you must let me talk to you before you go to the police.”

“Well—” Florence said.

“It will be worth your while,” the voice said. “In more ways than one. You will see that you have nothing to reproach yourself with. And I won't forget what you do. It is quite true that it is worth a good deal to me not to be involved in any way.”

Florence Adams had thought for a moment, and what the voice said seemed reasonable. After all, the other was—was something that happened only in stories, like love different from that she had known with Fred; like inheriting a million dollars from an unknown uncle in Australia. It was to be expected that there would be an ordinary explanation.

“All right,” she said. “I'll come and see you.”

She listened again.

“Well,” she said, “it's not much of a place. It's called Freeman's Hotel and it's in Forty-second Street between Eighth and Ninth. But it doesn't matter to me. I'll go back and wait for you.”

She had listened to the voice again.

“All right,” she said. “But you don't need to go to the bank. If it's like you say, I won't tell the police. You don't have to give me any more money.”

Again she listened.

“If you feel that way,” she said. “I could use it. I'll probably have to get a new job because I missed today anyway. Only you don't have to.”

She had listened once more, this time briefly, and hung up the receiver. She had felt much better; that strange feeling of having done something wrong had left her. She had frightened herself for no reason. Suddenly she was lighthearted. Everything was fine. She had a hundred dollars and was going to have more and she would get a new job—perhaps a better job. And maybe she would meet Fred again, or someone better than Fred—someone with whom she would have more fun, someone who would be nicer to her, act more as if she were somebody to be thought of. And today she had nothing to do.

She had looked at the clock in the drugstore from which she had telephoned and it had been only about 11:30. She had walked over to Broadway and up to Forty-seventh and then down on the other side, merely looking at things. It was a bright, warm day and people were out on the streets and the movies were open. She thought of going to a movie, but decided she would not have time. She felt very well and happy, as if the night had merely been a dream she had forgotten.

She had gone to a chop suey restaurant at about 12:30, and the chop suey had been very good. It was a little after 1:00 when she went back to her room at the hotel, because she did not want to be late.

The room was not on the side of the hotel which got the sun, if any side did. After the bright world outdoors, the room seemed dark and somehow grimy. The window, Florence Adams saw, opened on an air shaft, so the room could not have been sunny whatever side of the building it was on. But she would not have to stay there much longer. As soon as the talk was over she would go out where it was bright again, and then she would look for another room. A better room than she had had uptown, or than this; a room with sun in it.

The person with whom she had made her appointment was prompt. Florence had been back in the room only a few minutes when there was a knock on the door. She got up from the bed on which she had been sitting and went across and opened the door, smiling.

“Come in,” she said. “I told you it wasn't—”

And then, seeing what was in the visitor's hand and seeing also what was in the visitor's eyes, she began to walk backward into the room and she tried to speak. She tried to scream, but something was catching at her throat.

She did not make any sound until the door had closed behind the visitor, and then she would not have known her own voice.

“
No!
” she said, her voice was shrill and seemed to crack, but the volume of sound was very small. “
No! You can't!
You can't! You—”

But Florence Adams was wrong about that. The noise was loud in the little room, but she did not hear it. The hotel was almost empty, because most of the people who lived in it were at work. And the room was, by a chance lucky for no one except the murderer, a long way from the little lobby. The clerk was old and tired, and did not hear very well, and to him the sound was dismissed as the backfire from a truck. It was dismissed so completely that he could not afterward remember it at all.

But it would not have made any real difference to Florence Adams if he had heard it clearly for what it was; if he had been young and dangerous and had come running. It would not have made any difference to her who had come, or how quickly.

7

W
EDNESDAY
, 1:45
P
.
M
.
TO
3:35
P
.
M
.

They had split up after lunch at Charles. Jerry had gone back to his office, looking doubtfully at Pam as he left; looking as though he expected little good to come of this. Mullins had gone to the law offices of Williams, Franke and Backley, to find out what he could from Mr. Backley, presuming he could find Mr. Backley. Pamela North and Weigand had gone to Weigand's office, on their way to visit with Mrs. Willard Burt, who had been in cryptic correspondence with Amelia Gipson. Bill Weigand wanted to see what had come in on Mrs. Burt before they discovered what could be got out of Mrs. Burt.

There was more to do than that; more grist to consider. There was an answer to his telegraphed request for further information on Philip Spencer; there was the report of a precinct man that Mr. Spencer was apparently remaining obediently at home. There were reports on some of the men and women, boys and girls, who had happened to be reading in the New York Public Library when Miss Gipson drank poison there—if she did drink poison there.

Pam, waiting, asked for and got Miss Gipson's notebook on the Purdy case. It did not tell much more than she already knew; it did not tell as much as she already knew. The police had kept a secret or two for future use. She read that Mrs. Purdy had been taken suddenly ill after drinking a glass of water which should have had bicarbonate of soda in solution, Mrs. Purdy being momentarily troubled by gas. The water had, in fact, sodium fluoride in solution, which Mrs. Purdy might have noticed in time if she had not drunk the water off very rapidly because she disliked the flavor of bicarbonate of soda. She had lived longer than Miss Gipson had, Pam noticed; it had been almost eight hours before Mrs. Purdy had died. Pam supposed the dose had been smaller.