Laura. Vera Caspary

at the statement, that he had yielded to the charm of old porcelain. For the second time I discovered him in my drawing room, his hands stretched toward my favorite shelf. I cleared my throat before entering. He turned with a rueful smile.

      “Don’t look so sheepish,” I admonished. “I’ll never tell them at the Police Department that you’re acquiring taste.”

      His eyes shot red sparks, “Do you know what Doctor Sigmund Freud said about collectors?”

      “I know what Doctor Waldo Lydecker thinks of people who quote Freud.” We sat down. “To what kind whim of Fate do I owe this unexpected visit?”

      “I happened to be passing by.”

      My spirits rose. This casual visit was not without a certain warm note of flatter. Yesterday’s disapproval had melted like an ice cube surprised by a shower of hot coffee. But even as I hastened to fetch whiskey for my guest, I cautioned myself against an injudicious display of enthusiasm. Whereas a detective may be a unique and even trustworthy friend, one must always remember that he has made a profession of curiosity.

      “I’ve been with Shelby Carpenter,” he announced as we drank a small toast to the solution of the mystery.

      “Indeed,” said I, assuming the air of a cool but not ungracious citizen who cherishes a modicum of privacy.

      “Does he know anything about music?”

      “He talks a music-lover’s patter, but his information is shallow. You’ll probably find him raising ecstatic eyes to heaven at the name of Beethoven and shuddering piously if someone should be so indiscreet as to mention Ethelbert Nevin.”

      “Would he know the difference—” Mark consulted his notebook “—between ‘Finlandia’ by Si-bee-lee-us and ‘Toccata and Fugue’ by Johann Sebastian Bach?”

      “Anyone who can’t distinguish between Sibelius and Bach, my dear fellow, is fit for treason, stratagem, and spoils.”

      “I’m a cluck when it comes to music. Duke Ellington’s my soup.” He offered a sheet from his notebook. “This is what Carpenter told me they were playing on Friday night. He didn’t bother to check on the program. This is what they played.”

      I drew a sharp breath.

      “It shoots his alibi as full of holes as a mosquito net. But it still doesn’t prove he murdered her,” Mark reminded me with righteous sharpness.

      I poured him another drink. “Come now, you haven’t told me what you think of Shelby Carpenter.”

      “It’s a shame he isn’t a cop.”

      I cast discretion to the wind. Clapping him on the shoulder, I cried zestfully: “My dear lad, you are precious! A cop! The flower of old Kentucky! Mah deah suh, the ghosts of a legion of Confederate Colonels rise up to haunt you. Old Missy is whirling in her grave. Come, another drink on that, my astute young Hawkshaw. Properly we should be drinking mint juleps, but unfortunately Uncle Tom of Manila has lost the secret.” And I went off into roars of unrestrained appreciation.

      He regarded my mirth with some skepticism. “He’s got all the physical requirements. And you wouldn’t have to teach him to be polite.”

      “And fancy him in a uniform,” I added, my imagination rollicking. “I can see him on the corner of Fifth Avenue where Art meets Bergdorf Goodman. What a tangle of traffic at the hour when the cars roll in from Westchester to meet the husbands! There would be no less rioting in Wall Street, I can tell you, than on a certain historic day in ’29.”

      “There are a lot of people who haven’t got the brains for their education.” The comment, while uttered honestly, was tinged faintly with the verdigris of envy. “The trouble is that they’ve been brought up with ideas of class and education so they can’t relax and work in common jobs. There are plenty of fellows in these fancy offices who’d be a lot happier working in filling stations.”

      “I’ve seen many of them break under the strain of intelligence,” I agreed. “Hundreds have been committed for life to the cocktail bars of Madison Avenue. There ought to be a special department in Washington to handle the problem of old Princeton men. I dare say Shelby looks down with no little condescension upon your profession.”

      A curt nod rewarded my astuteness. Mr. McPherson did not fancy Mr. Carpenter, but, as he had sternly reminded me on a former occasion, it was his business to observe rather than to judge the people encountered in professional adventure.

      “The only thing that worries me, Mr. Lydecker, is that I can’t place the guy. I’ve seen that face before. But where and when? Usually I’m a fool for faces. I can give you names and dates and places I’ve seen them.” His jaw shot forward and his lips pressed themselves into the tight mould of determination.

      I laughed with secret tolerance as he gave me what he considered an objective picture of his visit to the offices of Rose, Rowe and Sanders, Advertising Counsellors. In that hot-air-conditioned atmosphere he must have seemed as alien as a sharecropper in a night club. He tried hard not to show disapproval, but opinion was as natural to him as appetite. There was a fine juicy prejudice in his portrait of three advertising executives pretending to be dismayed by the notoriety of a front-page murder. While they mourned her death, Laura’s bosses were not unaware of the publicity value of a crime which cast no shadow upon their own respectability.

      “I bet they had a conference and decided that a high-class murder wouldn’t lose any business.”

      “And considering the titillating confidences they could whisper to prospective clients at lunch,” I added.

      Mark’s malice was impudent. Bosses aroused no respect in his savage breast. His proletarian prejudices were as rigid as any you will find in the upper reaches of so-called Society. It pleased him more to discover sincere praise and mourning among her fellow workers than to hear her employers’ high estimate of Laura’s character and talents. Anyone who was smart, he opined, could please the boss, but it took the real stuff for a girl in a high-class job to be popular with her fellow employees.

      “So you think Laura had the real stuff?”

      He affected deafness. I studied his face, but caught no shadow of conflict. It was not until several hours later that I reviewed the conversation and reflected upon the fact that he was shaping Laura’s character to fit his attitudes as a young man might when enamored of a living woman. My mind was clear and penetrating at the time, for it was midnight, the hour at which I am most brave and most free. Since I learned some years ago that the terrors of insomnia could be overcome by a half-hour’s brisk walk, I have not once allowed lassitude, weather, nor the sorry events of a disappointing day to interfere with this nocturnal practice. By habit I chose a street which had become important to me since Laura moved into the apartment.

      Naturally I was shocked to see a light burning in the house of the dead, but after a moment’s reflection, I knew that a young man who had once scorned overtime had given his heart to a job.

      Chapter 6

      Two rituals on Tuesday marked the passing of Laura Hunt. The first, a command performance in the coroner’s office, gathered together that small and none too congenial group who had been concerned in the activities of her last day of life. Because she had failed me in that final moment, I was honored with an invitation. I shall not attempt to report the unimaginative proceedings which went to hideous lengths to prove a fact that everyone had known from the start—that Laura Hunt was dead; the cause, murder by the hand of an unknown assailant.

      The second ritual, her funeral, took place that afternoon in the chapel of W. W. Heatherstone and Son. Old Heatherstone, long experienced in the internment of movie stars, ward leaders, and successful gangsters, supervised the arrangements so that there might be a semblance of order among the morbid who started their clamor at his doors at eight o’clock in the morning.

      Mark had asked me to meet him on the balcony that overlooked the chapel.

      “But