Gentleman Called (11 page)

She was still grieving when Tully went to see her. He knew the type all the way from his childhood: the only time they’d make up to a man was when he lay flat with lumbago or stretched in his coffin. The late Michael Regan would have had his sympathy.

“Ach, don’t be raking poor Mike’s bones over, Mr. Tully,” she keened. “He did beat me, ’tis true, but it was his way of loving when the beast was up in him, and I’d never’ve made it a matter of public notice if it wasn’t for the bit of money in it.”

“You were paid then for giving testimony in the Blake case?”

“Only an allowance to make us fit for public appearance, a few dollars, Mr. Tully. Nothing to be disturbing poor Michael now over.”

“Did your benefactor come to you himself?”

“Oh, no. He went to Michael, Mr. Adkins did, or his representative.”

“Did you ever see the Reverend Blake?”

“I’m not sure, except in court that day. But I might have, living down the street from him then.”

“Do you know where he lives now?”

“Why should I, and him a Protestant?”

“You know, Mrs. Regan,” Tully drawled, “that’s the very thought that’s been running through my mind. Now, you can tell me the truth and I don’t think it will upset poor Michael wherever he is, or yourself.” He leaned forward. She was a woman who loved confidences. “Do you honestly believe Michael confessed his sins to a Protestant clergyman?”

“Oh, I do that, Mr. Tully. When Michael ’ud get a crying jag on, he’d confess his sins to the President of the United States on the White House steps.”

Tully swore to himself and returned to his office in as glum a mood as had obsessed him in many a day. He settled into melancholy contemplation of the case. So often it was the little things, the little fragments of physical evidence. For example there was the piece of jewelry still missing, something called a “lover’s knot”: According to the nieces it was missing, and he was willing to take their word on an inventory of their inheritance. He scarcely lifted his chin from his breast when the detective who had worked on the Ellie True case stuck his head in the door.

“Whisst, Jasper.”

Tully glowered at him from under ominous brows. “What do you want?”

“Would you like to talk to the Reverend Alfonzo Blake?”

“Yes, I would.”

“Now?”

Tully unfolded his knotted shape like a ripened nut. “Where did you find him?”

“Well, I’m half-ashamed and half-proud of myself. I searched records and galleries, and put out lines to this bureau and that, and then sat down on my backside like you to think. And while I was sitting, I noticed the telephone book. And that’s where I found him.”

Alfonzo Blake was a man as long and lean as himself, Tully noted, and he came into the room a bit stooped and wary, with the attitude of having bumped his head on too many doorways. His cheeks were sunken, his black eyes bright as a fanatic’s. He had not had an easy time of it his fifty odd years on earth. The detective motioned him into the chair opposite him, across the desk.

“I appreciate your coming in,” Tully started.

“I should have appreciated not coming in here again ever,” Blake said in a voice the vibration of which was strong enough to tremble the pictures on the wall. “I have never offended society, but its representatives have grievously offended me.”

“You should have been District Attorney with that voice,” Tully said, trying to lighten the weight of their visit.

“Have I been summoned here for vocational guidance? It’s too late for that.”

“How long is it since you saw Arabella Sperling?”

Blake repeated the name and closed his eyes in thought. When he opened them it was obvious he had remembered her, and with sudden and great expectation. “She’s dead?”

“She’s dead,” Tully said.

The man strove for piety of mien, but he moistened his lips as though he could taste…what? Money, of course.

“She was murdered,” Tully added, and in that instant watched something die in the man opposite him. He had expected an inheritance! The poor devil was turning green: he was now expecting much worse than nothing.

“Oh, no,” Blake murmured folding his arms across his thin chest in self-fortification.

“Now you understand why I want to talk to you.”

The Reverend Blake nodded.

“You knew she had money,” Tully said.

“At the Mellody Club she made no secret of it,” Blake said.

“That was advertising for trouble, wasn’t it?” Tully said.

“She was advertising for a husband.”

“And wasn’t there anyone willing to take her up on it?”

“I suppose most every man in the place thought about it now and then.”

“Did you?”

“No, sir.”

“Are you unmarried, Reverend?”

“I am a celibate.”

Tully nodded, admitting the distinction. “Was Mrs. Mellody called as a character witness for you in the Ellie True business?”

“She was, and precious little character she left me,” he said bitterly. “If ever a witness was led by an attorney she was by your office. ‘Oh, a very honest man,’ said she, ‘in matters of money, that is. And a very sincere one about his religion.’ ‘Then you would trust him?’ said the District Attorney. ‘With my purse,’ said she. ‘Would you trust him with your daughter, Madam?’ Objection. Objection sustained. But Madam tumbled out a few voluntary words which the judge could strike till doomsday without having stricken: ‘I do not have a daughter, for which in this instant I thank God.’”

“You must have been very glad to see Michael Regan turn up in court,” Tully said matter-of-factly.

“I prayed him into court.”

“It’s too bad you couldn’t have saved his life when you got out of court,” Tully drawled.

“Believe me, I would have tried if I could have found him.”

“Would you have recognized him if you saw him?”

Blake’s eyes met the investigator’s and held. “Yes, sir.”

“Why didn’t you try this millionaire fellow, this Adkins? He’d found him the first time.”

“I never saw Adkins—before, during, or after my trial. He wrote me a congratulatory letter after it was over. He wished me a long and provident ministry.”

“Did he endow it?”

For the first time, Blake smiled. “Only with his blessing. I had thought at the time that if I were a criminal, he might have contributed something toward my rehabilitation. It was an ungrateful thought. But though my life is founded and grounded on the Good Book, I have always felt a certain sympathy for the prodigal’s brother.”

A humanity that, in the man of the cloth, which Tully liked. He got a good feeling about him in spite of himself, and he could understand the philanthropist’s being moved by him to the point of trying to prove his alibi for him. On the whole, he was glad not to have been himself on the case: he would not like to have had a part in bringing Alfonzo Blake to trial, and he was sufficiently humble to know that he might not then have had the perceptivity about the clergyman he now had.

“I’m not much of a Bible man,” Tully said, “but I know what you mean.” He got up and straightened a picture that seemed to have been tilted by the other man’s big voice. “It’s a terrible thing to have to stand up in that dock and face the charge of murder. Especially when you can’t name someone who might prove your innocence.”

“Your office has a graver responsibility in such cases,” Blake said, trying to pull himself out of the limelight.

“We try hard not to make mistakes like that one,” Tully said, looking down at him. “But maybe somebody helped us—without you knowing it or us knowing it. If you didn’t kill the woman, somebody did, and that somebody liked it just fine, you being tried for it. The trouble with such mistakes, Mr. Blake, sometimes they never get righted. The murder of Ellie True hasn’t been solved yet.

“Now nobody must have thought about that more than you, sir. You’re an honest man of God. I want an answer straight from you—who do you think murdered Ellie True?”

“No one of my acquaintance, sir.”

“That’s not a straight answer.”

“I don’t know! That’s straight enough for law. It should be for you.”

“Then let me put a bug in your ear, Reverend, and see if it tickles your memory. You weren’t the only lecher in Mrs. Mellody’s books. She didn’t like that pal of yours, Eddie Murdock, who somehow managed to have left town that night. There doesn’t come any alibi better than that. I want to know something from you, Mr. Blake—didn’t you wonder, too, if Eddie Murdock was really out of town?”

“Maybe I did in my desperation, God help me, but I was ashamed of myself for it.”

“Why?”

“Because of my own guilt! Of course, I ogled girls! I lusted after women, and I flayed myself for it, I persecuted my flesh like a medieval monk. And I often felt Murdock’s company was thrust upon me by the Lord God Almighty to try my soul…” Too much saliva had gathered in the man’s mouth and made an ugly rasping sound when he drew in his breath. The veins were standing out on his forehead. “And Murdock would sit, his lips soft and wet as liver, and he would say under his breath—oh, terrible sensual things about one and another of the women, and especially Ellie True.”

“All right,” Tully said, “Take it easy.”

He went himself to the files. Lips like liver. The picture of it turned his own stomach. He had a rare gift of speech, the Reverend Blake.

Tully searched the records for any mention at all of Murdock. There was none except the notation authorizing the deletion of his name from the list of suspects. He had checked out of the Grover Hotel, having purchased his railway ticket for Sando, Ohio, through the hotel. According to a wire check with the sheriff there, Murdock was in Sando on the date Ellie True was murdered.

What could you do with that, Tully wondered: as neat as a bald head. “Did the police question you about Murdock at all?”

“They did not.”

“And of course, you wouldn’t have volunteered your suspicions to them.”

“Mr. Tully, you must understand: I had no suspicions of him or anyone else at that time. It was only after I was arrested, and while I was casting about desperately trying to discover what had happened to me, how I had come to be in such a predicament.”

“And it occurred to you then that you might have been framed?”

Blake sat forward in the chair, his long legs collapsed like a dog on its haunches. “As God is my witness, that never occurred to me until this very minute.”

“Think about it,” Tully said.

“Oh, I am.” Blake rolled his head about in an agony of recollection. The evangelist’s exhibitionism, Tully thought, watching him. “It was he who told me where she lived…and when she would be there, likely alone.”

“And you couldn’t think of that to tell to the police when you were on trial for your life?”

Blake shook his head. “Unless you knew Murdock, you wouldn’t know how subtle he had been with that insinuation. And don’t you see I was blinded by guilt. If Ellie True would have had me that night, I would have sinned!”

Tully was on the verge of saying he wouldn’t have been the first man, but there was not much point to that. “Did you ever see or hear of Murdock since?”

“Never.”

“What was his business, do you know?”

“I should have supposed a salesman of some sort. I met him at the Friendship Club. He was better spoken than most men I’ve known. And I do remember he had certain little exercises he could do with his hands—‘magician language,’ he called it once. He might very well have been an entertainer, come to think of it. And he was certainly wise to the ways of the world.”

“Let’s have a description of him,” Tully said, remembering the already described lips.

“About fifty, a little plump, but the kind of man one would expect to be a good dancer. He looked to have taken the best of care of himself. Sandy hair, which, to tell the truth, I often wondered about: it might possibly have been a transformation…”

Tully grinned as he wrote the word. He hadn’t heard it since the dear dead days almost beyond recall when he read
Andy Gump.

“…And the most unusual thing about him, I suppose, was his walk, as though all his weight went on his heels. A walk is hard to disguise, isn’t it?”

“It sure is,” Tully said, his old heart pumping. “Some men have walked to the electric chair.”

Tully could not get the Reverend Blake out of his office fast enough after that. As soon as he was gone, the investigator checked with the Grover Hotel. It was small, but clean, and not at all the sort of place to arrange transportation for its residents. It was, in fact, a residential hotel with a long waiting list, and Edward T. Murdock had been expected to live there for at least some months when he got in. Instead he stayed but two weeks although he paid a month’s rent. No one remembered having arranged his transportation, but if it had been an emergency, say a death in the family, likely the desk clerk would have done it as a courtesy.

Most of this came from the manager’s deduction. No one remembered him. The records showed only the dates of his occupancy.

Tully called Mrs. Mellody. “How long did that fellow Murdock belong to your club?”

“Off-hand I should say six or seven months.”

“That long,” Tully murmured. “Did he give you reference?”

“I should certainly think so,” she said. “Do you want me to look it up?”

“Do, please, ma’am,” Tully said, “and call me back at this number.” While he waited, he checked the Guild of Variety Artists for Edward T. Murdock. No record. He called the Society of Magicians. The Society did have a member by that name. He was known as Murdock the Mighty, and his home address was Box 17, Sando, Ohio.

“Where the hell is Sando, Ohio?” Tully cried out as soon as he got off the phone.

By then the office secretary, Miss Ryan, had come in to help him, making notes as he gave them. She volunteered to call the Automobile Club. Sando was twenty miles southeast of Columbus.

“So that’s where he landed,” Tully said, in sudden good humor.

“Where who landed?” Miss Ryan murmured.

“Americus Vespucci.”

“Who?”

“‘Who’s on first,’” Tully said.

Miss Ryan shook her head and took her notes to the typewriter. Tully’s humor wasn’t the variety of Irish to which she had been raised.