Lullaby of Murder (12 page)

The waiter brought the drinks, and setting Julie’s before her, said, “Weren’t you in here last night—with an older woman?” He whirled his hand around over his head, describing Mrs. Ryan’s bird’s nest of a hat.

“Mary Ryan,” Julie said.

“Ah, yes. Isn’t she a character? She came back from next door with a parcel of old time actors. It was here they held the wake—till three in the morning.”

Marks downed half his whisky straight and set the glass aside carefully as though what was left might last longer at a distance.

“I’m not going to bring you a menu,” the waiter went on, “because we have none. Only the board and it’s wiped clean at this hour. Have a nice steak.”

“Rare,” said Marks.

“Medium rare,” Julie said. They had ordered dinner.

“You’d better drink up, sir. God knows when I’ll get back to you.”

“I’ll drink in my own time,” Marks said, “but you can bring me another.”

“Cheerio, lad.” The waiter was off, pulling in his white cuffs.

Julie grinned.

“If there’s anything that puts me off it’s a man who can see through me and doesn’t hesitate to let me know it.”

“You’re becoming Irish,” Julie said.

“I’m very susceptible to environment,” Marks said with a distinct brogue. Without playing the game with himself further, he finished the whisky, and added, as he put the glass down carefully, “The policeman’s friend.” He lit a cigarette.

Julie turned her glass round and round, dreading to take the first sip on an empty stomach.

“What’s on your mind?” Marks asked, assuming she was about to speak.

“What if I’d stayed here with Mrs. Ryan last night? Ordinarily, I might have.”

“But it wasn’t an ordinary night, was it? Do you have the confidence of the Alexander women?”

“I think so,” she said cautiously.

“I’m not going to ask you to do anything except listen to me for now. Take Frances Alexander: was it or wasn’t it strange behavior for her to wait an exact half hour for a husband who didn’t show up? Then, without more than a cracker to eat, to go directly—in her evening clothes—to the dirty back room of a flower shop and start to work mixing her own concoction of potting soil, nitrogenous soil, mind you—you know what that means?”

Julie nodded. An element in gunpowder. “But, Lieutenant, about Fran’s waiting a half hour for Tony: she always did that. And she didn’t know he’d called. He was almost always late and they had an agreement that she’d wait a half hour only and then either eat, or go on to wherever they were going…. And maybe Fran was wearing evening clothes, but something’s changed in the past few months: she doesn’t care about clothes, or what her hands look like or any of those things the way she used to. I’m not surprised at her going directly to the shop.”

“All right,” Marks said, “How about this? She had left the burglar alarm off purposely.”

“How does Fran explain it?”

“Nobody knows it’s off except herself and the daughter. She often wants to return to the shop at night—without triggering the alarm. So she simply leaves it off. As for last night, she has changed the story a couple of times—not by much, but in a way that suggests she’s not telling all of the truth. She arrived at the shop in a distressed state of mind: marital troubles. Do you know about that?”

“A little,” Julie said even more cautiously.

“I hope so, because my purpose is not to tell tales, but to compare information. She started to work, compulsively. Then, for some reason, she thought about the revolver and went up front to see that it was in its place. It wasn’t. And because the daughter knew about the gun and had a key to the shop, Mrs. Alexander panicked. The girl has often threatened suicide. Mrs. A. called home, no answer. She called the doorman of the building. He had not seen Eleanor. So she ran all the way home. How far is it? A few blocks. And discovered a note to say Eleanor had gone to a movie. She also discovered the lids to two cans of cat food. The doorman hadn’t seen the girl leave because she went out the service entrance where the door automatically locked behind her, and fed the stray cats. Not for the first time. Mrs. Alexander is relieved. Or shaken. Who knows? And for a few minutes she completely forgets about the supposedly missing gun. When she remembers it she returns to the shop, finds the revolver, only it’s not in its right place, and she thinks it is she herself who is losing her mind. At which point she cleans and polishes the handgun and puts it away in its usual place, covered by a chamois cloth in a drawer beneath the cash register. Naturally leaving her own prints on it, and only hers.”

“I could buy that,” Julie said.

“That’s approximately the way she tells it. Now for the postscript—concerning Eleanor. During the girl’s interrogation, she was asked about her fingerprints on the revolver…”

“But you just said there weren’t any prints except Fran’s,” Julie protested.

“I know, but she was asked all the same and she started to explain how she was curious when her mother left her in charge of the shop in the afternoon, and since she’d never had a gun in her hands…. At that point she realized that her mother had taken the revolver from the shop with her so that she couldn’t have handled it at that time. She backed off, said it happened the day before, and then said she couldn’t remember when. But she did admit handling a gun—and to making mudpies in the shop yesterday,” he added with exasperation. “Lots of soil under the nails. Potting herbs to take back to college with her.”

“What about Tony’s gun?” Julie asked. “Were Fran’s prints on that?”

“I’m sure. Even if we can’t raise them.”

Julie finally took a sip of her drink.

“You’d be a cheap date,” Marks said.

“I eat a lot. What else about Eleanor?”

“I asked you, remember?”

“She thinks she’s a suspect,” Julie said.

“She is. There’s something she’s not telling us either. But we’ll get to it. That’s where you could help.” He held up his hand as Julie was about to protest. “Not as an informant. As a persuader. If she thinks we don’t believe her, and she keeps saying that, encourage her to lay it all out. It’s our job to understand the incredible.”

“The business of nobody believing her goes back to her childhood,” Julie said. “I’ll see what I can do. I know some pretty decent cops and I’ll tell her that.”

“Thank you!” Marks laughed at the modest compliment.

“I hope it doesn’t close her up even tighter.”

“If it does we’ll shake her loose—the hard way. The inspector is a bulldog.”

As the waiter approached with Marks’ second drink, Julie thought back to Mrs. Ryan and her triumphant cry on providing information Julie hadn’t known: “Then I’ve earned my supper!” She wondered if she had earned hers.

Marks took a long pull at his cigarette and then put it out. “Do you know an actress named Patti Royce?”

Julie’s heart gave a leap. “I’ve heard of her.”

“She’s in a new picture called
Celebration.
It was screened for Alexander before he went on to the mayor’s party.”

“A special screening?”

“So it would seem.”

“I wonder if Jay Phillips was supposed to do the publicity,” Julie said after a moment’s thought.

Marks sighed. “Phillips again.”

“I don’t know that he was. It just went through my mind. Who are the producers?”

“A company called Venture Films.”

“I never heard of them, but that doesn’t mean anything.”

“And Patti Royce: you
have
heard of her.”

“She’s in a new soap opera—a one-time child star making a comeback. I tried to get an interview with her last Thursday, but I couldn’t get past her agent.”

“On assignment from Alexander?”

“On my own initiative.”

“Mere coincidence?” Talk about a bulldog.

“It seemed like a good item for the column.” At least part of the truth.

“Did you discuss it with the boss?”

“No, sir.”

“Any particular reason you didn’t?”

“I didn’t get a chance. Besides, that’s not how we worked. If Tim or I got hold of something useful, we’d research it, write it up, turn it in and pray.”

“I see,” Marks said. “But if you didn’t get a chance to talk with the boss, doesn’t that mean that the idea was a recent one? In other words, Miss Royce had only, within a day or so, shall we say, come to your attention. Or am I wrong?”

Part bulldog, part fox.

“I met an actress who’d played her mother in a Broadway play ten years ago,” Julie said. “Jay Phillips was the press agent. During the run his wife committed suicide. She jumped from the building where Patti Royce lived.”

“I see,” Marks said. “You were working the Phillips connection.”

“That’s right.”

“Not knowing of the possibility of an Alexander connection?”

“With Patti Royce? Is there one?”

Marks looked at her wistfully over the top of his glass and then drank down the whisky. “I was hoping you’d tell me.”

S
LEEP SIMPLY WOULD NOT
come. The day’s discoveries—or deceptions—kept repeating themselves in her tired mind, changing in juxtaposition but refusing to go away. She turned over onto her back and stared at the ceiling: charcoal grey in the middle of the night. On the therapist’s couch she’d had a terrible time getting into associations. Now she couldn’t turn them off.

She lit the lamp beside the phone. When her eyes became accustomed to the light she dialed Mary Ryan, who was always saying to phone her at any hour.

“
I THOUGHT MAYBE
you’d called me today while I was out with the dog. He’s such a burden, poor thing, but he won’t use the papers. He must be the only dog in New York who won’t go on the
Daily
in an emergency. How are you, dear? I’ve been thinking about you all day. What are you doing up at this hour?”

“I can’t sleep. Too much has happened.”

“It’s terrible about your Mr. Alexander. You wouldn’t have wanted that to happen to him, no matter what.”

“I certainly wouldn’t,” Julie said.

“That’s what I told the two detectives who came by to check your alibi.”

“What did you tell them?”

“Nothing they didn’t ask, you may be sure. I said I wasn’t a bit surprised at you walking alone in the rain at night, but you know, Julie, and you coming down with a cold…”

“I’m fine,” Julie said.

“What I wanted to tell you, I went to the Phillips funeral after all, and I met your Mr. Butts. He’s a born-again Christian, so I don’t think he could be Irish though you never know nowadays what they’re into. What a fiery little man!”

“Is he a family friend or what?”

“More a business associate of Mr. Phillips’, I think. He’s too exotic a bird for the sisters. He used to be part owner of a circus and travelled the world with it. We had grand talk, him and me, when we went back to the house after the service—we didn’t go to the cemetery—about the old days when people took responsibility for their own selves. When bootstraps were in fashion. Isn’t that a lovely turn of phrase,
When bootstraps were in fashion
?”

“Very colorful,” Julie said. “What else did you talk about? Did he mention Tony?”

“We talked about you.”

“Oh, great.”

“He felt you thought he was exploiting the contestants. You know, in the marathon dance? As though they’d enter it if they had anything better to do. What worries him is if drugs get into the picture: it’s part of the physical examination now to look for needle marks. Isn’t that horrible?”

Julie agreed. “Nothing about Tony?”

“I didn’t say nothing. He said his death was a terrible personal loss to him. He’d been counting on his support.”

“What kind of support?”

“It was my impression he meant moral support, both of them being do-it-yourself sorts. But I couldn’t very well ask, could I?”

“What came up about Jay?” Who, according to Councilman McCord had co-signed eighty thousand dollars’ worth of notes for Butts. Speaking of moral support.

“It was my impression, Julie, that Mr. Phillips was deeply in his debt. I got that mostly from the attitude of the sisters. They don’t like Mr. Butts, but they were kow-towing to him all the same. They turned very chilly toward me when they came back from the cemetery and saw the two of us together.”

Yet the sisters had arranged with McCord to take Butts to the mayor’s party. He must have told them of their brother’s promise. And did they know of the co-signed notes? Eighty thousand dollars out of Jay’s estate if Butts went bust. As for the promoter’s going back to Tony’s office with him after the party, why hadn’t he told Mrs. Ryan about that? “When did he line up all this moral support from Tony—did he tell you?”

“I don’t think he said. I got the impression they were buddies, but he’s like that, you know. He’s pals with everybody, especially the big shots to hear him tell it. But we know lots like him in show business now, don’t we?”

Julie agreed.

“The nicest thing about the whole day when you put it all together was Father Doyle’s sermon. You felt he was talking about a human being, not just reciting something out of a book. It made me proud to be in his parish.”

“Father Doyle from St. Malachy’s?”

“The same. After all, it’s the Catholic actors’ church and in the theater district.”

“Of course,” Julie said, and her tired mind began turning over approaches to the priest on the life and death of Jay Phillips. She heard a stifled yawn at the other end of the line. “Go back to sleep, Mrs. Ryan. It was great to be able to talk to you.”

“Any time, dear, but I’d better hang up before you-know-who wakes up and wants to go for a you-know-what.”

T
HE PRIEST MADE A
soft clucking sound when the infant screeched at the splash of water on its little bald head. He gave it back to its mother and continued the baptismal prayers while she tried to muffle the protest. The cries subsided, but from where Julie sat at the back of the church she couldn’t hear the prayers anyway.

An altar boy took away the basin and Father Doyle came down the aisle with the family, a freckle-faced Irish lot, and as happy as from a wedding ceremony. The child, now in the state of God’s grace, was safe from the devil until he could do battle for himself. Julie wished she had such faith. And then there were times when she feared she might succumb to it falsely by the mere wish. She went to the steps and watched the priest where he waited with the family until one of the men in the party brought the car—a Chevrolet of age and dignity, as pristine as the flowing white baptismal gown, the train of which Father Doyle tucked in before he closed the car door. He took Julie’s hand when she went to meet him. His face was rounder and puffier than when she had last seen him, his hair thinner, and beneath the vestments his greening black cuffs were shinier. “I certainly do remember you, though I might not get the name right away. You were going to choose something for me to read by William Butler Yeats. You see, I remember his name at least,” he added slyly.