Time Off for Murder (2 page)

  "Never," Mary agreed. "But that's Phyllis. Stubborn as a mule. And utterly without fear."

  Laverne Sullivan said: "That's wrong, too. It's not normal to be without fear. Nor sensible. Mary, what was the illness she had in September, did you know?"

  "Influenza. A bad case. She went to the hospital. And then to Ashville for convalescence."

  Miss Sullivan seemed relieved. "I was afraid it was a nervous breakdown."

  "No. Just old-fashioned flu. She was run down. She works too hard. She's been back from Ashville a week and working like a dog again. I talked with her on the phone Monday. Tried to make a date. But she was busy. Work had piled up while she was ill. She said she wanted to see me. Had something important to tell me. She sounded well and happy, particularly when she said she'd something important."

  "A man, do you think?"

  "Might be. She's always had that nice collar man from Troy. P'raps she's decided to marry him."

  "I wish she would. And get out of that gloomy house. Settle down with a man who'd take care of her."

  Mary Carner shook her head gently. "She couldn't do that. Any more than you or I could. Ordinary domesticity with ordinary males isn't for us."

  "Sh." Laverne Sullivan touched her finger tip to her lips. "We are about to be addressed."

  "Ladies." Miss Wickliffe tapped the edge of her demi-tasse with a spoon. "Your attention, please. The time has come to share with you the charming young man whose wit it has been - thanks to our president's inexplicable absence - my pleasure to enjoy alone."

  The visiting Englishman bowed to Henrietta, inclined his blonde head toward Contempora, jerked his necktie. "Young ladies." His smile was uncertain. "Mesdames. I scarcely know how to address you. You have the freshness, the verve of youth, the maturity of achievement . . ."

  "Just call us pal and let it go," Terry Cayle wise-cracked.

  The speaker pretended not to hear. He ploughed ahead.

  "I have, to be sure, met many of your sort individually, but never, I confess, have I at one time faced such an alarming assemblage of pulchritude and intellectual acumen. I must admit a bit of diffidence at offering you any advice whatever. You ladies know your own minds, possibly a bit too well for your good. But, undoubtedly, you did not invite me here merely for the privilege of gazing at me, or feeding me - as if I were some strange creature out of the Zoo. And I confess I have felt very much that way this afternoon." (Laughter and applause. The speaker pulled his tie again.) "Come, come, young ladies. This is no laughing matter. I am not here to amuse you. I am here to give you sound advice. And may heaven protect me! Here it is: are you ready? Ladies, stop this nonsense at once. Go back to the agreeable pursuits of domesticity which nature has ordained for you." (Pencilled eyebrows rose in interrogatory arcs.)

  "Oh, no indeed, I do not intend to speak sanctimoniously about the nobility of wifehood or motherhood. Nor the sacred duty to be handmaidens to the warrior. I refer to another aspect. You girls are simply idiotic. Now, don't fly off. Hear me out. As females, you would have, save for your wretched contrariness, been relieved by nature and custom from the cruel necessity of contending in the marts of commerce. You would have been spared the sordidness of money grubbing. You would have been sheltered from life's ugliness. You would need to know nothing of man's inhumanity to man. Yet, deliberately, you have tossed away your natural good fortune. Ladies, you have gone far out of your way to look for trouble . . ."

  "He means you, Mary."

  "And you, Laverne."

  "All of us. Do you think he's a fool?"

When Mary Carner got back after three o'clock to Blankfort's Fifth Avenue department store, where she was employed, Christopher Whittaker, the parrotbeaked, saturnine chief detective at the store, looked up from his desk and said: "About time."

  Miss Carner flashed a conciliatory smile. "Didn't miss me?"

  He scowled. "Never do. Men never miss girls like you. Don't even know they're around. Don't know when they're not around."

  "I'm just a quiet little mouse?"

  "Mouse that imagines itself a ferret. Don't throw that ink-stand, Mary. Put that down, woman. You could hurt someone with a thing like that. All right. All right. I'll admit you're a fair to middling ferret - sometimes - when you take the trouble to come to work."

  "That's not fair, Chris. Just because we waited for Phyllis Knight and luncheon was late starting. What's doing?"

  "Not much. One of your old friends - green-eyed Gussie, remember her? dropped in. Fresh out of Westfield Prison. Came right on over to get a new fur coat. Had a Persian Lamb under her sport coat when we caught her. The cool weather'll be reminding the girls they'd like a new fox or a hunk of mink."

  Miss Carner nodded, her hand on the door-knob. "Remind me," she said, "to call Phyllis Knight's office later. She didn't show up at the luncheon."

  "She's getting smart. I never thought much of those hen parties of yours. Women! Just women!"

  "Oh, we had a man. He made a speech. You'd have loved it. Said we go around looking for trouble. Told the girls to stay home and tend to their knitting."

  "There's a special on wool and needles in art embroidery today, sweetheart. You do the knitting. I provide the home."

  "I'll think it over." Miss Carner waved her hand airily. "Some evening when I've nothing better to do, I'll think about it."

  "Do, sweet. Dinner with me, tonight?"

  Miss Carner's nod said "Yes."

  At half past five, when the bell had rung to warn the customers of closing time, and the clerks were covering the tables with night shrouds of blue denim, Miss Carner stepped into a phone booth and dialed a number in the John exchange.

  A man's voice answered.

  "Is this Miss Knight's office?" Mary asked.

  "Yes." The voice at the other end seemed disappointed.

  "Is Miss Knight in?"

  "No."

  "Has she been back this afternoon?"

  "No."

  "Is she at her home?"

  There was a ten second pause before the voice answered: "I do not believe so."

  "This is her friend. Mary Carner of Blankfort's. We expected her at the Contempora luncheon. She didn't show up. I thought I'd call to see whether she was ill."

  "I do not believe Miss Knight is ill."

  "Who is this? To whom am I speaking?"

  The voice seemed to hesitate again. "Miss Knight's secretary. Ben Struthers," it said finally.

  "Oh, Mister Struthers, but you'd surely know if Miss Knight were ill, wouldn't you?"

  "If she informed me."

  The secretary's taciturnity was trying. "Miss Knight was planning to attend the luncheon, wasn't she?" Mary persisted.

  "One moment…. Hold the wire, please. I'll consult her calendar…. Yes, Miss, she planned to attend the luncheon. It is written in her engagement book."

  "Did she notify you of any change in her plans?"

  The pause before Struthers answered was longer this time. At last he said: "I have not heard from Miss Knight at all today. I have been waiting at the office to hear from her."

  "Have you called her house?"

  "I have not called her residence. Miss Knight does not care to be called at home…." Another pause. "She has a rule about that."

  "And you follow instructions, always?"

  "Miss Knight is the best judge of what she wishes." Mr. Struthers was beginning to show irritation. "I am sorry. I can give no further information." Mr. Struthers' receiver clicked an abrupt ending.

  Miss Carner fished another nickel from her bag, dialed a number in the Gramercy exchange. The dial tone hummed half a dozen times before a woman's voice growled: "Yes?"

  "Is this Miss Knight's residence?"

  "Yes."

  "May I speak to Miss Knight?"

  "Not in. Good-bye."

  "Where is she? Where can I reach her?" Miss Carner's questions rolled futilely along a deaf wire.

  At dinner with Christopher Whittaker that evening, Mary said: "Chris, I'm worried about Phyllis. She isn't home. She hasn't been at her office all day."

  "Can't the woman have a private life?"

  "Of course she can. But it's not like her."

  "What isn't - a private life?"

  "No. Not that. Failing to keep an appointment. She's one of the most meticulous people I know. The sort of person who works out schedules and keeps them to the dot. She planned to come to the luncheon."

  "Maybe she met Robert Taylor and ran off with him."

  "Oh silly. If you knew Phyllis. She'd not look twice at any man. Not even Taylor."

  "It might be mutual."

  "Oh, she's not bad looking. The petite, blonde type you boys like."

  "Don't say 'you boys' to me. Got my own ideas. Willowy brunettes in tailored, gray suits."

  "I'm not joking, Chris. I didn't like the way her secretary answered. Couldn't get much more than yes or no out of him. And a female who answered the phone at her house was even more secretive."

  "Mary." Chris Whittaker's voice was sharp as his chin and nose. "Don't let your imagination run away with you. A friend of yours fails to keep an unimportant date and you build a case. Phyllis Knight is a grown woman, isn't she? She knows her way around, doesn't she? She's free and over twenty-one, isn't she? She doesn't have to give an accounting to anyone, does she, of where she comes and goes? Not to you, at any rate. She can take care of herself. Stick to your knitting …Now, what'll you eat? A steak? O.K. Two T-bone. Medium for the lady, rare for me. Get them right on the fire, will you, waiter? What'll you have first - oysters, tomato juice? How about some nice hot soup? Cool night like this? O.K., two puree Mongole. Baked Idahoes with the steak…. That's settled"

  A tattered urchin, eluding the cashier at the desk near the door, was making his way between the restaurant tables with a sheaf of evening papers under his arm. Chris Whittaker beckoned: "Here boy!", took a paper, gave the boy a nickel, waved the change away. "All yours, sonny." He flipped the paper open, glanced over page one.

  Miss Carner said: "Where were you brought up? Didn't anyone ever teach you it's bad manners to read at table?"

  "'Scuse please, ma'am." He slipped the paper behind him. "Your friend was beginning to pall. Thought I'd dig up something else to talk about. Takes twenty minutes to do a steak medium. . . Lots of good conversation in that front page. Europe, f'r instance. And Rockey Nardello. Trial started today. Bad break for Europe. Rockey'll steal the front page."

  Miss Carner made a little moue of distaste. "International gangsterism in Europe…. Small time gangsterism in New York."

  "Small time, my eye, lady. Rockey'd bust a blood vessel if he heard that. He's the big shot. Policy. Bookmaking. Alcohol. Vice on the side. Others I never even heard about. I'm a nice boy. If the D.A. doesn't fall down on the Nardello prosecution - and I think he means business - he can take the town apart. A man like Rockey can't operate without protection: police, judges, politicians, big shots way up on the top crust who won't soil their lily hands with blood and dirt - only with gravy."

  "Amazing, isn't it." Mary spooned her soup thoughtfully. "How little we know about what goes on under our noses in New York. The sores of evil run deep, but if the surface is smooth . . ."

  "Sure, sure," Chris Whittaker assented. "New York's the place where you can have a private life. You can do anything, be anything you please. New Yorkers mind their own business. Police cars, ambulances, fire engines - nobody even turns around for them. We go to the movies for excitement. You can get away with murder in this town."

  "You don't believe that, Chris. It isn't true."

  "Isn't, eh? Shows how little you know. What's the name of the people next door to you? Don't you say you know. Nobody knows. Why should you be different?

Know what they look like? Well, maybe you've seen her taking in the milk, him reaching for the Sunday paper. Maybe you've passed them in the hall, gone down the elevator with them once or twice. Could you give the police an accurate description of them? No, you couldn't. Admit it. Even you, whose business it is to have eyes and ears Well, suppose she slipped him a dose of poison some night - or vice versa - or slit his throat while he was sleeping, left a note for the milkman not to deliver any till further notice (that's a nice touch - my own idea - never forget to stop the milk after a homicide) and skipped town. How long would it be before the crime was discovered? Couple of days, when the corpse smelled to heaven. By that time the murderer'd be - who knows? Boats leave New York harbor every day of the week. And trains and busses. And air-lines."

  Miss Carner broke a roll and buttered it. "That's your story and you'll stick to it," she said. "Even if it couldn't happen. There's always something to betray a murder - an outcry, a careless misstep, the workings of conscience."

  "You're a big girl, now," Chris answered. "Ain't it time to stop believing in Santa Claus? Here's dinner. Say, this steak's not bad." He chewed in contented silence for a few moments. Then he lifted his head, grinned at Miss Carner. "As I was saying - or wasn't I? - your lady friend might be dead this very minute and nobody be the wiser. That's a pretty thought for the evening. What do you say we go to the movies?"

  In spite of Chris Whittaker's admonition to mind her business - or possibly because of it - Mary Carner called the telephone number in the John exchange and the one in the Gramercy exchange at ten on Friday morning and again at five in the afternoon. She called both numbers Saturday morning. She dialed the Gramercy number Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning and on Monday morning she phoned to the John number again. And then she said: "Chris, she isn't at her office. She isn't at her house. At least they say she isn't. And they tell it to me in a way that makes me uneasy."