Cats Prowl at Night

7 A Body in the Cellar

Bertha Cool made a habit of stretching out in bed when she wakened in the morning, flexing her muscles, stretching her arms, reaching as far as she could with her extended fingers, pushing her feet down against the foot of the bed. Following which, she would reach for the packet of cigarettes which was always on the stand by the side of the bed, light up, and relax in the enjoyment of the first smoke of the morning.

The alarm clock said eight-ten as Bertha awakened and began her muscle-stretching exercises.

She had her first cigarette, then lay back against the doubled pillows, her eyes half closed, relaxing in the warmth of the bed.

Outside, the morning was drab and cold, with a low, thin fog obscuring surroundings. A faint damp wind billowed the curtains back from the open window. The screen was glistening with particles of fog moisture.

Bertha knew it would be clammy cold in the apartment. She was glad she had individual gas heat and didn’t need to rely on a central heating plant... Eight-thirty — the buildings that had steam heat would have turned on the heat just enough to break the chill, and would have been turning the steam off by this time.

Bertha stretched her shoulder muscles, yawned, kicked back the covers, and found it was even colder than she had anticipated. She pulled down the windows, lit the gas, and then popped back into bed, snuggling down into the warmth of the covers.

The clock seemed to tick more loudly in garrulous accusation.

Bertha reached for another cigarette. Her eyes, glittering with malevolence, regarded the fact of the clock. “You’re a damned liar,” she snapped angrily. “It isn’t eight-forty-five. It’s only seven-forty-five. You can’t move the sun ahead an hour just by saying so, so shut up your damned tick-tick-ticking and quit leering at me or I’ll throw you out of the window.”

Bertha scraped a match into flame and lit her second cigarette.

The telephone rang. She started to reach for the instrument, then thought better of it and said, “Go ahead. Ring, and be damned. I’m not going to get up until it’s warm.”

The telephone rang intermittently for almost two minutes, then quit. Bertha finished her cigarette, tried the temperature of the floor once more with her bare toes, wriggled them into bedroom slippers, and went across to the apartment door. She opened it, took in a quart of milk, a half-pint of coffee-cream, and the rolled-up morning newspaper. She slammed the door shut and retired to bed with the morning paper.

She glanced through the paper, keeping up a running fire of devastating comments. “Baloney... Sugar coated... The hell it is! Oh, bunk!.. You’d think we were a—” Her last comment was interrupted by the insistent buzzing of the front-door bell.

“Hell of a time for callers,” she grumbled to herself. “Thought all the salesmen were in the Army by this time.”

The metallic ticking of the alarm clock advised her that it was ten minutes past nine, Pacific War Time.

The apartment was getting warm. Bertha threw back most of the covers.

The buzzing signal from the lower front door continued at intermittent intervals. Bertha calmly ignored it. She put on a robe, went to the bathroom and turned on the shower. She was in the middle of her shower when peremptory knuckles sounded on the door of her apartment.

Bertha grunted annoyance and stepped out of the shower. She dried her legs and feet, wrapped a big bath-towel around her torso, thrust her head out of the bathroom door and yelled, “Who is it?”

A man’s voice said, “Is that Bertha Cool?”

“Who did you think it was?” Bertha demanded truculently.

“This is Sergeant Sellers. Let me in.” Bertha stood for a few seconds blinking angrily at the door, then she said, “I’m taking a shower. I’ll see you at the office at” — she glanced hastily at the clock — “at quarter past ten.”

“I’m sorry,” Sergeant Sellers said, “but you’ll see me now.”

“Stand there until I get some clothes on,” Bertha snapped.

She retired to her dressing-room, rubbing herself into a glow with the coarse towel.

Sergeant Sellers kept up a steady, monotonous pounding on the door.

Bertha stood it as long as she could, then she flung a robe around her, went to the door and jerked it open. “Just because you’re the law,” she stormed, “you think you can bust in on anybody at any time. Go right ahead, wake people up in the middle of the night.”

“It’s quarter-past nine,” Sellers said, grinning at Bertha and walking nonchalantly into the apartment.

Bertha kicked the door shut and regarded him sourly. “You might just as well leave your badge at home,” she said. “Anybody can tell you’re a cop, walking into a woman’s apartment while she’s dressing, keeping your hat on, smoking a soggy cigar, stinking up the apartment before I’ve had my breakfast.”

Sergeant Sellers grinned again. “You’d get my goat, Bertha, if it weren’t for the fact that I know you have a heart of gold under that hard-boiled exterior. When I think of what you did in that blind man’s case, I feel that I should buy you a drink every time I see you.”

“Oh, hell,” Bertha snorted. “What’s the use. I can’t even get under your damned thick hide. Sit down and read the newspaper, but for God’s sake throw that stinking stogie out of the window. I’ll brush my teeth and—”

Sergeant Sellers held a match to the cold, soggy cigar, tilted his hat back, said, “I’ve seen the newspaper, and never mind your teeth. What do you know about Mrs. Everett Belder?”

“What’s it to you?” Bertha demanded, instantly alert with suspicion.

“Seems to be a sloppy housekeeper,” Sellers said.

“Yes?”

“That’s right. Goes away and leaves bodies in her basement and forgets to come back.”

“What are you talking about?”

“A body in Mrs. Everett Belder’s cellar.”

Bertha Cool became as wary as a veteran trout in a deep mountain pool watching a fly being flicked over the surface of the water. “Who did she kill, her husband?”

“I didn’t say she killed anyone. I said she left bodies in her basement.”

“Oh,” Bertha said. “I thought you meant she killed someone.”

“No. I haven’t said that — not yet.”

“Then there’s nothing for me to get concerned about.”

“I take it you want to be of every assistance to the police.”

“Why should I?”

“Because you’d like to stay in business.”

“Sure,” Bertha said, her eyes watching Sellers’ face for any tell-tale flicker of expression. “I’ll help the police clean up a murder case, but I see no reason to get steamed up over the fact that the woman’s a sloppy housekeeper. How many bodies?”

“Only one.”

“Give her a chance. You shouldn’t accuse her of being a sloppy housekeeper on the strength of one body. I’ve read of cases where people have had as many as a dozen; and then again, if it hadn’t been there too long, it might mean she merely—”

Sellers chuckled. “You aren’t kidding anybody, least of all, me.”

“Perhaps I’m kidding me.”

“Go ahead then.”

“Then quit interrupting.”

“When you quit stalling around, we’ll get down to brass tacks.”

“Who’s stalling?”

“You are.”

“Why should I stall?”

“Damned if I know,” Sellers said cheerfully. “It’s just a habit you have. Whenever the going gets tough and someone tries to pin you down, you get as elusive as the cherry in a cocktail.”

“You’re the one that’s stalling. Who’s the corpse?”

“The name’s Sally Brentner, a young woman of twenty-six or so.”

“How did she die?”

“We don’t know yet.”

“Natural death?”

“Well, it might have been an accident.”

“And then again?” Bertha said.

“And then again, it might not.”

“You’re a big help, aren’t you?”

“It’s mutual.”

“Just who is this Sally Brentner?”

“A maid in the place.”

“How long has the body been there?”

“A day or so.”

“In the cellar?”

“That’s right.”

Bertha made her voice sound elaborately casual. “What does Mrs. Belder have to say about all this?”

“Nothing.”

“You mean she won’t answer questions?”

“She doesn’t seem to be available for questioning. She seems to have left. That’s where you come in.”

“What do you mean?”

“I understand that when she was last seen, you were the one that was doing the looking.”

“Who told you that?”

“A little bird.”

The telephone started ringing again. Bertha welcomed the interruption.

“Just a minute,” she said to Sergeant Sellers, and then, picking up the telephone, said, “Hello.”

Everett Belder’s voice showed that he was under great emotional stress. “Thank heavens I’ve located you! I’ve been calling you everywhere. I called your apartment before and you didn’t answer. Your secretary gave me the number—”

“All right,” Bertha interrupted, “get it off your chest.”

“Something terrible has happened.”

“I know.”

“No, no. This is in addition to all my other troubles. They’ve found Sally’s body in the basement. She’s been—”

“I know,” Bertha said. “The police are here.”

There was dismay in Belder’s voice. “I wanted to get you before they got there. What have you told them?”

“Nothing.”

“They’re there with you now?”

“Yes.”

“And you’ve told them nothing?”

“That’s right.”

“Can you get away with that?”

“I don’t think so. Not for long. Is your wife home?”

“No, she didn’t show up all night. My mother-in-law was frantic. That’s how it happened the body was discovered. She swore she was going to search every room in the house. She said she’d start with the cellar. I heard her going down the cellar steps, then she screamed and fainted. I rushed down after her, and Sally was lying all sprawled out—”

Sergeant Sellers interrupted good-naturedly. “I’m giving you a lot of rope, Bertha. Don’t try to tie any fancy knots or you might get tangled up.”

“Was that the law saying something?” Belder asked.

“Yes,” Bertha commented tersely, and stopped there.

Belder said, “I told the officers someone had written a poison-pen letter to my wife. I told them I couldn’t show it to them because you had it. I didn’t tell them specifically why I’d employed you. Just gave them the general picture and skirted around the whole situation very lightly.”

“I see.”

“Now I think we’ve got to show the officers that first letter, Mrs. Cool. It may be connected with Sally’s death. It’s just possible it might have something to do with the case; but that second letter, the one we opened last night, that doesn’t have anything at all to do with the case, and I don’t want the police to know anything about it.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t want Dolly Cornish dragged into this.”

“Why?”

“I tell you I don’t want Dolly dragged into it. I don’t want a lot of notoriety for her. That letter makes things sound pretty bad.”

“Why?”

“Can’t you understand? There are a lot of angles to this thing. The police might make things unpleasant for Mrs. Cornish.”

“Why?”

“My God, can’t you get the picture? My wife probably— We’ll have to protect Dolly?”

“Why?”

“Damn it, can’t you say anything at all except ‘why’?”

“Not now.”

Belder thought that over.

Bertha, expecting Frank Sellers to interrupt the conversation, asked, “What about Sally? How did she die? Was it an accident? Was she killed, or—”

“It may have been an accident.”

“Shoot,” Bertha said, bracing herself for an interruption from Sellers.

“Apparently Sally had been peeling potatoes. She’d gone down to the cellar to get some onions to mix with them. She was carrying a dish pan with some peeled and some unpeeled potatoes in it. She was also carrying a big carving knife in her right hand. She evidently stubbed her toe and tripped on the top of the stairs and fell all the way down, running the knife through her chest.”

Bertha became absorbed in the telephone conversation. “Anything that makes it appear death wasn’t accidental?” she asked.

“Well, yes.”

“What?”

“The colour of the body.”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“The police say it indicates carbon monoxide poisoning.”

“Go on.”

“I gather they think the knife may have been pushed into her body immediately after her death, instead of being the instrument which caused that death.”

“I see.”

“I want you to try and clear things up.”

“In what way?”

“Well, my wife is naturally under a cloud. I want you to explain to the police all about the poison-pen letter, and why you think my wife disappeared; that it was simply because she was leaving me, and not because she was running away from a murder she’d committed.”

“I see.”

“And there’s another reason I’m concerned about that second letter. Dolly is rather a striking-looking young woman. If she were dragged into it, the newspaper men would play her up big. She photographs well... You know the sort of pictures newsmen take.”

“Leg?” Bertha asked.

“Yes. I don’t want that sort of newspaper notoriety for Dolly.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s inadvisable.”

“Why?”

“Damn it, my wife was jealous of Sally. Sally’s dead. Why advertise another potential victim? Leave Dolly out of it, I tell you.”

Alarmed by Sergeant Sellers’ continued silence, Bertha glanced apprehensively over her shoulder to find that the Sergeant, his soggy cigar propped up at an aggressive angle, had appropriated her purse which had been lying on the dresser, zipped it open, and was now completely engrossed in reading the two letters which Belder had given her.

Bertha said angrily, “Why damn you! you — you—”

Belder’s voice said over the wire, “Why, Mrs. Cool! I haven’t done—”

Bertha said hastily into the telephone, “Not you, I’m talking to the dick.”

Sergeant Sellers didn’t even look up. He was completely absorbed in the letters.

“What’s he doing?” Belder asked.

Bertha said wearily, “Oh, hell! What’s the use? While you’ve been keeping me occupied telling me how you wanted me to handle things, Sergeant Sellers has taken the liberty of opening my purse and reading two letters that he’s taken from it.”

“Oh, Lord!” Belder groaned.

“Next time,” Bertha said, “let me run things my own way.”

She didn’t even wait to say good-bye, but slammed the receiver into place with a jar that all but broke the instrument.

Sergeant Sellers folded the two letters, dropped them into his pocket, zipped Bertha Cool’s purse shut. He either hadn’t found, or hadn’t considered important, the memo that Bertha had filched from Belder’s office.

“What the hell gave you the idea you could do that and get away with it?” Bertha demanded, her face dark with anger.

Sellers looked smug. “Because I knew you wouldn’t mind, old pal.”

“Mind!” Bertha screamed. “Goddamn you, I could beat your brains out — if I thought you had any! Of all the nerve! Of all the consummate, high-handed, dastardly—”

“Save it, Bertha,” he said. “It isn’t getting you anywhere.”

Bertha stood glowering in indignant silence.

Sellers said, “What the hell, Bertha. You wouldn’t have held out on me, anyway. I asked Belder where the letter was he told me about, and he said that you’d taken it. The last he saw of it, you had put it in your purse. So I thought I’d take a look at it.”

“Then why didn’t you ask me for it?”

Sellers grinned. “You know, Bertha, I had an idea that Belder might be holding out. He was just a little too anxious to tell me about that one letter, and talked fast every time I asked him about it. You take a man of that type, and when he begins to talk real fast, you know he’s trying to keep you from asking a question about some particular thing. So I began to wonder if there hadn’t been a second letter.”

“And you knew he was going to ring up, to tell me to ditch it,” Bertha said, “and made up your mind you’d go for my purse as soon as the phone rang... I could make a squawk about that and make trouble for you.”

“Sure you could,” Sellers said soothingly. “But after all, Bertha, you aren’t going to do it. Too many times I could make a squawk about you. In this world it’s a question of live and let live. You pull your fast ones, and I pull mine. When you hit me below the belt and hurt, I don’t start yelling for the referee and claiming a foul... Come on now, tell me about the girl who threw her arms around Belder’s neck.”

“What about her?”

“Who is she?”

“I don’t know.”

Sellers, clucking his tongue against the roof of his mouth, made noises of chiding disapproval. “Come, come, Bertha. You should be able to do better than that.”

“What makes you think I know her?”

“You know damn well you wouldn’t let Belder flash a letter like that on you without finding out all about the jane.”

“There wasn’t any,” Bertha said.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s just poison-pen stuff. I tell you there wasn’t anyone.”

“How do you know?”

“Belder told me so.”

Sellers sighed. “Well, I guess I’ll have to let it go at that for the time being.”

“How about Mrs. Belder’s mother?” Bertha asked.

“In a state of collapse. Mother and sister, both had been having fits all night. They’d been calling headquarters at intervals, trying to find out if Mrs. Belder had been in an automobile accident. Finally, I guess the mother-in-law got the idea Belder might have knocked her on the head and hidden the body some place in the house, so she started prowling. Declared she was going to search the house from cellar to attic. She started with the cellar... That was along about eight o’clock this morning. What she found knocked her for a loop. She thought it was Mabel’s body at first, then it turned out to be a total stranger to her. Belder made the identification of the body.”

“Didn’t Mrs. Goldring know the maid?”

“Apparently not. Mrs. Goldring lived in San Francisco. She hadn’t been down since Mabel had employed that particular maid.”

“Well,” Bertha said, “I don’t see how all this concerns me.” Sellers scraped a match on the sole of his shoe, made an attempt to get his cigar burning again.

Bertha said, “I don’t suppose it makes any difference to you, but that damn cigar makes me sick to my stomach.”

“Too bad. You haven’t had breakfast?”

“No.”

“Do you go out for breakfast?”

“Not with restaurants serving only one cup of coffee.”

“That’s swell,” Sergeant Sellers announced. “I’ll have a cup of coffee with you.” Bertha’s eyes snapped cold fire.

“Hoarding, eh?” Sergeant Sellers observed.

“Hoarding nothing,” Bertha said. “I’m using coffee I bought last September. You can’t say that’s hoarding.”

“Why not?”

“Because there wasn’t any shortage in September.”

“How did you happen to buy it, then?”

“Because I knew there would be a shortage.”

“And you don’t think that’s hoarding?”

“No. That’s simply using my brain.”

“I take it you’ve got plenty.” Sergeant Sellers said. Bertha Cool refused to commit herself.

“Okay, make it good and black, and give me a big cup.”

Bertha Cool flounced indignantly into her dressing-room, dressed hurriedly, returned to make up the wall bed and wheel it out of the way. Then she went out into the kitchenette, put on a big pot of coffee, and said to Sergeant Sellers, “I suppose you’ll insist on having an egg, too?”

“That’s right, two.”

“Damn it, I said t-o-o.”

“I know. I said t-w-o.”

“And toast?”

“Oh, certainly. I suppose you have plenty of butter?”

Bertha said nothing, busied herself at the gas stove. Her mouth set in a tight line of indignation.

Sergeant Sellers, his hat pushed back on his head, the cigar now giving forth puffs of light-coloured blue smoke, lounged easily in the doorway. “First rattle out of the box,” he said, “we’ll run over to see Belder, and we’ll all three have a little talk.”

“Why drag me in on it?” Bertha asked.

“I thought I might get further,” Sellers admitted cheerfully. “If Belder starts lying, you’ll tell him he can’t get away with it, so he’d better tell the truth.”

“Oh, I’ll tell him that, will I?” Bertha demanded sarcastically, standing poised with a frying-pan which she had been about to put on the stove held at an angle of forty-five degrees.

“That’s right,” Sellers said. “You have your intellectual blind spots, Bertha, but you aren’t exactly dumb.”

Sellers watched the colour mount in Bertha’s face, grinned at her, said affably, “Well, I guess I’ll go telephone Belder and arrange for a conference.”

He left the kitchenette. Bertha heard him in the other room dialing a number on the telephone, heard low-voiced conversation, then he was back standing in the kitchen door.

“Okay, Bertha. He’ll see us at his office; doesn’t want to meet us at the house; says his sister-in-law will horn in on the conversation if we meet there.”

Bertha said nothing.

Sellers yawned loudly and obviously, left his position in the kitchen doorway to move over to the most comfortable chair in the living-room. He settled down, opened the morning newspaper to the sporting page, and started reading.

Bertha Cool placed plates, cups and saucers, knives, forks and spoons on the little table in the breakfast nook.

“Tell me something about detectives,” she called in to Frank Sellers.

“What is it?”

“Do they take their hats off when they eat breakfast?”

“Hell, no. They’d lose caste if they did. They only take their hats off when they take a bath.”

“How do you like your egg?”

“Three minutes and fifteen seconds — and it isn’t egg, it’s eggzzz — the plural of egg — meaning two or more.”

Bertha Cool banged a plate down on the table so hard she almost broke it. “There’s one thing about giving you breakfast,” she said. “You can’t drink coffee with that stale cigar in your mouth.”

Sergeant Sellers didn’t answer. He was interested in reading an account of a prize fight which he had seen the night before, checking the reported facts against his own impressions.

“All right,” Bertha Cool said. “Come and get it.”

Sergeant Sellers, minus his hat and cigar, with his thick, wavy hair combed back with a pocket comb, entered the breakfast nook, waited for Bertha Cool to seat herself, then sat down opposite her.

“Okay, Bertha, have your coffee and then give me the lowdown. You’ve had time to make up your mind now.”

Bertha Cool poured the coffee, sipped the hot, fragrant beverage, said, “All right, here it is — all of it. I was supposed to tail Mrs. Belder. I lost her. She was going to keep a rendezvous with the person who wrote those letters. I went to Belder’s office, looked through his file of personal correspondence to see if I could find anything that tallied with what I was looking for.”

“What were you looking for?” Sergeant Sellers asked.

“An expert typist who had her own portable typewriter at home,” Bertha said.

“I don’t get you.”

“You can tell a lot about a typewritten letter by studying it. The even touch and uniform spacing show that these letters had been written by a first-rate typist. That sort of typist commands a good salary, which means she has good equipment at her office. It was written on a portable typewriter that was badly out of alignment. That meant it was a private portable machine she had at home... Quite by accident, I stumbled on the answer.”

“What’s the answer?” Sergeant Sellers asked.

“Imogene Dearborne, the slate-eyed little siren who sits up in Everett Belder’s office and looks as though she didn’t have a thought in the world except to get her duties discharged with secretarial efficiency.”

Frank Sellers cracked an egg open and judicially inspected the contents.

“Now then, how does that look to you?” Bertha asked, awaiting praise for her powers of deduction.

“Just a little bit too well done,” Sergeant Sellers said, “but what the hell, I can eat it.”