Untidy Murder

  Untidy Murder

  A Mr. and Mrs. North Mystery

  Frances and Richard Lockridge

  MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM

  1

  FRIDAY, JUNE 15TH

  12:25 P.M. TO 2:15 P.M.

  People always looked at Dorian Hunt when she walked. They did not always know that they looked at her because her grace gave them pleasure and, perhaps, a kind of reassurance. So long as one young woman could move so well, so seemingly without intent and because it was the natural way to move, there was hope that the human animal might yet improve. Dorian, who was otherwise cat-like only in the just perceptible greenness of her eyes, moved almost as fluently as a cat. Other women noticed this as quickly as men did and they were, ordinarily, a little puzzled as well as subconsciously pleased. Afterward, the more optimistic of them occasionally practiced in front of mirrors and the most analytical decided that it was, somehow, a matter of balance.

  The young woman who now watched Dorian Hunt cross the reception office of Esprit looked at Dorian and, without planning it, smiled. Then she smiled because she had planned it, and this altered smile was professional in welcome and enquiry. She was a pretty girl, Dorian noticed; a softly pretty girl. She had the high, rounded forehead of a baby; in her whole face there was that suggestion of immaturity which has to do with bone structure rather than with age. When she was seventy this girl, who was now probably not much over twenty, would look still rather like a pretty baby. Men, who often seemed to be oddly attracted by women who retained the babyish contours of the skull—which was no doubt why so many show-girls looked like very large and sometimes rather frightening babies—would be offering protection to this young woman long after it became absurd to call her young.

  Dorian Hunt noticed the girl, thought these things fleetingly about her, using that kind of mental shorthand which is suitable for unimportant thoughts, and by that time was in front of the girl’s desk.

  “Good morning,” the girl said, in the voice of a receptionist.

  “I’m Dorian Hunt,” Dorian said. “I’ve an appointment with Mr. Wilming. I’m afraid I’m a few minutes late.”

  “Oh, Miss Hunt,” the girl said. “Of course. Mr. Wilming wants you to come right in. You have the sketches?”

  There was no sense in answering that. Obviously, she had the sketches. It could hardly be the first time the receptionist at Esprit had seen an artist’s hard-covered portfolio. Obviously, she would not have wasted Wilming’s time and her own by coming without the sketches. So Dorian merely smiled instead of answering.

  “If you’ll go right on in, then?” the girl said. “Mr. Wilming said whenever you got here.”

  Dorian looked around the room. In one wall there was a sliding glass window placed so the telephone operator behind it could, if necessary, relieve the receptionist. On either side of the sliding window there was a door. At one end of the oblong room there were two doors and at the other, behind the receptionist’s desk, there was still another.

  “I’m so sorry,” the girl at the desk said. “You haven’t been here before, have you?”

  “Once,” Dorian said. “I’m afraid I don’t remember.”

  “Of course not,” the girl said. “It’s terribly confusing. And Mr. Stanton keeps having things changed because he keeps getting tired of them. He—”

  She stopped suddenly. One of the doors at the far end of the room opened inward, violently. A tall man with glasses on his forehead, with bright red hair in wild disorder on his head, emerged into the reception room and the door crashed to behind him. Dorian jumped. The girl at the desk did not seem to jump; the girl at the telephone switchboard behind the partly opened sliding window did not seem to jump. The tall man moved across the room and his progress, while actually silent, seemed somehow like a stampede. He looked at the floor, but he did not seem to see the floor. Instinctively, although he was not actually headed for her, Dorian moved a little, making way for a force clearly irresistible, probably blind.

  But the force was not blind. The big man stopped in front of her and ran his right hand desperately through his red hair. He looked at her out of bright blue and very startled eyes.

  “Who are you?” he said. His tone was somehow not abrupt; the intentness of his regard was not rude. He wanted to know who she was. He asked. It was, in spite of everything, ridiculously reasonable.

  “Dorian Hunt,” she said.

  “All right,” the man said. “Taking care of you?”

  “Yes,” Dorian said.

  The man went on, then. At one moment he was standing still; at the next he was midway in what seemed to be a charge. He advanced to the door beyond the receptionist’s desk and smashed at it with the heel of his hand. The door was almost nervously submissive. The man went through it and it crashed behind him.

  “Mr. Stanton,” the receptionist said.

  “I know,” Dorian said.

  “He didn’t know you,” the girl told her.

  “It would have to be Mr. Stanton, wouldn’t it?” Dorian said. “Besides, somebody once pointed him out to me.”

  “He’s terrific, isn’t he?” the girl said. “Amazing.”

  She sounded amazed; there was amazement in her voice. She had half turned and was looking at the closed door. “Dominant,” she said reflectively, picking the word.

  She was a pretty thing, standing as she was now, looking at the closed door. There was Brooklyn in her speech, but it was a softly pleasant Brooklyn. It occurred to Dorian that the girl found it exciting to be in a place through which Buford Stanton, editor of Esprit, might at any moment pass like a meteor. Probably, Dorian thought, it would be exciting.

  “If he was in Mr. Wilming’s office it’s just as well you were a few minutes late,” the girl said to Dorian.

  “I might have got run over,” Dorian said.

  “Oh no,” the girl said, “he never really runs over anybody. It just seems like he does. I mean—as if he would.” She was formal again, on the instant. “Will you come this way, Miss Hunt?” she asked politely, and started off toward the door through which Buford Stanton had exploded into the room. As they passed the sliding window, the girl made a gesture toward her desk, and the girl at the switchboard nodded.

  The girl with the baby’s face, and the quite uninfantile figure, led Dorian through the door into a narrow hall. There were several doors on the right of the hall and one of them was open. It opened into a small room furnished only with a maroon sofa. A young man was lying on it, his back to the door, his hands pillowing his head on one of the arms. He did not move when the girl and Dorian went past, their heels clicking faintly on the linoleum-covered floor.

  “One of the editors,” the girl said, with no surprise in her voice. “They work very hard.”

  It was not clear whether this was irony. Dorian thought it was not. They went on down the corridor, encountering no further editors, and turned right. The hall ended there, in a door. The girl knocked on it, did not wait for an answer and opened it. It was a corner room, very bright after the comparative dimness of the corridor. A breeze met them when she opened the door. The big window they faced was open, both steel casements pushed back. Light curtains on either side of the window tossed softly in the breeze. There was a desk, with its back to another big window. The desk was empty. The whole room was empty.

  The girl, leading the way, seemed to Dorian to hesitate a moment, but it was only for a moment.

  “He’s in with Mr. Helms,” she said, speaking back over her shoulder. “If you’ll just wait a minute, Miss Hunt.”

  She went to a door in the wall on their left, as they faced the open window. She knocked, again did not wait for an answer, and went through the door, closing it behind her. Dorian did not move for a moment,
expecting her to return at once. But when she did not return at once, Dorian walked across to the open window. It drew her irresistibly, as windows high up in New York office buildings always drew her. The roofs, the shadows on the roofs, the unexpected gaiety of awnings where they were not to be expected—of these things you could never see enough if you were always trying, in line and color, to capture what you saw, even while you made a living sketching improbably long young women in clothes which were all line. It was not, of course, any longer true that she really made her living at it, but it was all right to feel that she did, because for quite a few years she had.

  She looked across the roofs and they were, as she had known they would be, unlike any she had seen before. Every window in New York—almost every window—had its own roof, with unexpected things on it. There was a roof near the Battery which had real grass growing on it; grass which had, at intervals, to be cut by a man with a lawn mower. There was no grass on any of the roofs in sight from the office window of Mr. Paul Wilming, art editor of Esprit, but down and to the east there was an awning with a table and summer chairs under it, and as she watched a man and a woman came out, the man carrying what was presumably a cocktail shaker.

  The street sounds came up faintly and she was at first hardly conscious of them. Then, mingled with them, there was the sharp, cutting sound of a police whistle. The sound touched only the outskirts of her consciousness; but then it was repeated, and the repetition was in a series of staccato shrills which sliced clearly through the heavy rumble which always, even when the city seems to be asleep, rises over New York. Then, because the whistle commanded, she looked down—the long way down. She could see at first only the fringe of the crowd which had overflowed into the street. She had to lean perilously out, with nothing to hold to, before she could see, directly below her, a crowd gathering in a circle around something on the sidewalk. There were several policemen there already, summoned by that demanding whistle. And while she looked she heard the first, not very distant, sound of a siren.

  “I don’t understand,” a soft voice said behind her. “I was sure he’d gone into Mr. Helms’s office but Mr. Helms hasn’t seen him. The only other way he could have gone would be along the hall and we’d have—”

  The girl stopped, because for the moment Dorian Hunt seemed not to be listening. And then, when Dorian did turn to her, the girl did not go on because of something in Dorian’s face.

  “No,” Dorian said, and she spoke slowly, and there was the beginning of horror in her widely opened greenish eyes. “I’m afraid not the only way.”

  A siren, very close now, screamed up at them, and the girl beside Dorian Hunt gasped; said, “Oh, oh, oh!” on a rising note and then put her hand up to her mouth. Dorian saw the girl’s eyes grow large and then saw a kind of blankness start in them, so she was able to catch the girl as she slumped toward the floor. And then the door which was behind her, the door through which they had come, opened violently and Buford Stanton came through it. He did not seem to see the two girls, but avoided them and went to the window, put his hands on the sill and leaned out so he could look down. He looked down only for a moment and then he stood up and turned toward the door. A uniformed patrolman stood in the door and looked at Stanton.

  “I’m afraid so,” Stanton said. “The poor bastard!”

  The patrolman went over and put his hands on the sill as Stanton had and looked down. He, like Stanton, looked down only for a moment. He stood up and took his cap off and ran his hand over his forehead and then put his cap back on again.

  “It’s a hell of a drop,” he said. “It’s sure a hell of a drop.” He looked at Dorian and the girl. “What are you two doing here?” he said. “Who are you, anyway?”

  “My name’s Hunt,” Dorian said. “Dorian Hunt. I came to show Mr. Wilming some drawings. Some drawings he’d ordered. This is—I don’t know her name. The receptionist. She came in with me.”

  “St. John,” Stanton said. “Something St. John. What’s the matter with her?”

  “Can’t you see she’s fainted?” Dorian said, and was surprised that her voice rose. “I’d think you could see!”

  “What good will that do?” Stanton said. He spoke again as if he merely sought information; as if there might be an answer.

  “What was she?” the policeman said. “His girl friend?”

  “How would I know?” Stanton said. “Maybe yes. Maybe no.”

  They stood looking down at the girl, Stanton and the policeman, and at Dorian, who was now on her knees beside the girl. Dorian was suddenly angry, hotly angry.

  “You could do something,” she said. “Why don’t you do something?”

  “She’ll come out of it,” the policeman said. “Give her time, lady. If she was his girl friend, what’s the hurry? He’ll still be dead.”

  The girl’s eyes opened and she began to speak. Her words were hurried, mumbled. It was hard to make sense of them. She seemed, to Dorian, to be going on, as if there had been nothing intervening, with what she had been saying just before the siren in the street below told her its story. “I thought he was in Mr. Helms’s room,” she said, “just gone … Helms’s … I thought … but then Mr. Helms …” It was not articulate and it was not to the point.

  “All right, dear,” Dorian said. “All right. You’ll be all right.”

  The girl sat up very suddenly and looked at them.

  “Something happened,” she said. “Something—oh!” She looked at them and now her eyes focused. “Mr. Wilming!” she said. “He—”

  “I’m afraid so, sister,” the patrolman said. “I’m afraid he did.” He looked at the window and the others looked where he looked. He shook his head.

  “I don’t figure he just fell,” the patrolman said. “The sill isn’t as high as it could be, but it isn’t so low. Is it? Not to stumble over.” He looked at Stanton. “It looks like he jumped, mister,” he said. “You the boss here?”

  “Yes,” Stanton said. He ran his hand through his thick red hair. He needed a haircut.

  “Know any reason he’d jump?” the policeman said. “Going to lose his job, or something?”

  “Yes,” Stanton said. “He was going to lose his job.”

  The patrolman nodded.

  “There you are,” he said. He shook his head. He looked again at the window, and again he shook his head. “Must have been a damned good job,” he said. “Was it, mister—?” This time he left it open, waiting for a name. Stanton gave him the name. The patrolman took out a notebook and wrote the name down. He looked at Dorian and said, “Hunt, wasn’t it?” and her nod gave him another name to write down. Then he looked at the girl. She got up from the floor as he looked at her and faced him. There was an odd kind of formality in the movement, and in her speech.

  “Vilma St. John,” she said. “I’m the receptionist.”

  “Thanks, sister,” he said. “You were fond of—him?”

  This time he nodded toward the empty desk. They all looked at it. In the ash tray a single cigarette was burning, had burned almost to the end. It must, Dorian realized, have been burning when they entered; it must have been longer then. It must have burned slowly, sheltered behind the cabinet of an inter-communicating system, if—She tried to remember, although it did not matter. Smouldering cigarettes have a harsh pungency of their own; if it had been burning when they came in she must have smelled it, and not been conscious that she smelled it. She tried to remember, and a memory came slowly back. The cigarette had been smouldering, she thought, when they had first entered the room. She was conscious then that the patrolman was watching her.

  “It’s funny, lady,” he said. “It’s funny how they’ll do it. Almost every time—light a cigarette, take a drag or two and then do it whatever way they’re going to. It’s sure funny.”

  Stanton crossed to the desk and, without touching it, looked at the cigarette. A cylinder of gray ash lay broken in the tray; the tip of the cigarette, just aglow, had fallen into the tray and rested
against the side. Stanton pointed.

  “Wilming’s, all right,” he said. “He always smoked them. Nobody else around here did.”

  Stanton could, Dorian realized, see the name of the cigarette, printed close to the end. The policeman went over and looked at it.

  “Fatima,” he said. He seemed surprised. “Used to smoke them when I was a kid,” he said. “Funny thing.”

  The door to the hall opened and the policeman straightened himself and said, “This seems to be it, sergeant,” to the middle-aged, uniformed man who stood in the doorway. “Looks to me like he jumped. Seems he was going to lose his job.”

  “Save it, Robby,” the sergeant said. “Tell it to the boys from the precinct.” He looked at the window, seemed to measure the sill. “However,” he said, “you could be right, Robby. I’ll say that.”

  The “boy from the precinct”—there was only one—to whom Patrolman Robby told it a few minutes later, was a middle-aged and comfortable detective sergeant. Wilming’s body had struck the pavement, horribly, at about 12:25; it had narrowly missed several people; Robby had whistled for reinforcement to handle the crowd and had reported in. Bloodstained cards in a wallet had provided tentative identification, linking Wilming with Esprit. The sergeant, riding a radio patrol car, had sent Robby up to check. Robby had found—he waved at the window, identified those in the room. The detective sergeant listened and nodded, and wrote down names.

  “It looks like suicide,” he said. He turned to Buford Stanton. “To you?” he said.

  Stanton hesitated. Then he nodded slowly.

  “He never complained of dizzy spells?” the detective asked, and his tone made it a question of routine, for a routine record. “Heart attacks? You know what I mean?”

  “Not to me,” Stanton said. “I don’t think so.”

  “Suicide,” the detective sergeant repeated, and nodded. “Of course, I’ll have to get certain things for my report. The story of these ladies. Find out if anybody who saw him today thought he was particularly depressed. That sort of thing.” He smiled faintly, politely. “Forms, you know,” he said. “Paper work.”