Dead of Night

Chapter twenty-five: Needle of jealousy

When it comes to solving a crime passionnel there’s one thing beats all the scientific equipment criminologists can bring to bear. Give the hommy experts their fluorescent dusting-powder, their spectroscopic examination of a cross-section of a hair, throw in that sodium pentothal truth-serum for good measure. I’ll take the jealous wench and beat ’em to the answer four times out of five.

But the hammer and tongs can’t be used; the proper instrument is the needle.

So after I slid my knees under the nook table with its cheery breakfast cloth and gay china, when I’d duly complimented my hostess on the luscious smells of bacon and coffee, I went to work.

“When was the last time you talked to Lanerd?”

“Yesterday afternoon. About three. At the office.” She filled her coffee cup too full, sopped the saucer dry with a paper napkin. “Is the omelette all right?”

“Wonderful.” It wasn’t quite that good. But I’d have relished pancakes of tar paper at that point.

“We had a spat, at the office. I opened a letter he didn’t think I should have; I open all his mail except the ones specifically marked ‘Personal’; usually he shows me those, except the ones from girls. This letter was from a bank. It mentioned the name of a gentleman at its branch in Rio de Janeiro in case Mister Lanerd wished to take up any matters about the fifty-thousand-dollar letter of credit. We-e-ell! I hadn’t heard anything about any trip to Rio, but I could guess what it meant. The Icequadrilles are due to open in Brazil, fifteenth of next month.”

I tried not to think of the place Lanerd had actually had his ticket punched for — that evil-smelling autopsy room down on Twenty-Sixth, where they take all suspected ’cides. “Mushrooms’re out of this world.”

“He loves them.” She caught herself. “What really made him mad, I called Marge to ask if she’d relay the dope about the man in Rio. Course she didn’t know anything about a projected trip, either, and naturally I knew she didn’t, but I had to put her wise.”

“Why?”

“She’s the only one who can handle him at all. If I want to keep him from doing something that’s bad for his health or his business, I might as well talk to the statue of General Sherman, across from the Plaza Royale.”

I thought as things stood, she might. But I just helped myself to more of the crisp bacon.

“So I did let Marge know what marched. She’d just finished thanking me and saying she’d bustle right in and throw a monkey wrench where it would do the most good, when Dow came in the office and overheard me.” Ruth gazed drearily at me over her cup. “I’d better tell you about Dow and me.”

“Not necessary, is it?” I couldn’t bring myself to casually mention that he was dead.

“I’d feel better if I told somebody. You seem to understand, sort of. I want to tell you.”

She did, while the simple act of buttering toast made me think of that steak knife being brandished by a shrewd Prosecutor before a crowded courtroom.

“Dow’s different from most men. Not because he’s always having affairs; I guess most men do, one time or another. But he’s never serious; he never even pretends to be with anyone except Marge. He always tells a girl he’s devoted to Marge, wouldn’t dream of leaving her for any other woman. I know; he told me — and I was idiot enough to fall in love with him in spite of it. The secretary he had before I got the job, she had a nervous breakdown, went completely to pieces, simply because she thought he’d change his mind, after sleeping with her a few times, and leave his wife. Of course he didn’t.”

I couldn’t think of any comment that wouldn’t sound like Simple Simon.

She spilled marmalade on the tablecloth; all I could see were dime-size spots of wax dropped on a bedspread by someone coating finger tips with wax so they wouldn’t leave any prints.

She scraped up the jelly. “It’s been the same with singers and actresses on his radio and television shows. He’d take one to dinner, and before dessert she’d know he was the most interesting man she’d ever met. Or they’d go dancing, really he’s as good as most professionals. Or sailing or skiing or flying; he’s good at pretty near everything exciting that most people only read about or talk about.”

I couldn’t dispute it.

“He’s so thoughtful and so — I don’t know — he has a flair for doing little things to please a girl.” She sighed at some intimate reminiscence. “There’d be presents, too, flowers, baskets of wine, things like that Stardust compact he gave Tildy. Next thing, the girl would be calling up two or three times a day, asking when he was coming up to her apartment. I had to talk to the poor things; it made me angry at him and sorry for them and bitter at myself.”

“Why didn’t Mrs. Lanerd divorce him?”

“She plain won’t. She knows he’ll always come home to her eventually. He always has, until Tildy put a spell on him. Give her credit; she didn’t hide the fact she was after him. I was in the studio the night Jeff introduced her to Marge. Tildy came right out with it. Laughing, but serious underneath it, you know: ‘Your husband’s absolutely the most attractive man I’ve ever known, Mrs. Lanerd. I believe I’ll try to snare him away from you.’”

“What’d Mrs. Lanerd say to that?”

“Don’t remember exactly. She laughed, too. Then there was some remark about preferring to put a knife in his gallivanting heart before she let him put a wedding ring on another girl’s finger. Kidding like. But she recognized the danger. She went to lunch with Jeff to question him about Tildy. She had Keith Walch, Tildy’s manager, out to dinner at Manhasset to see what he could suggest. She even tried to influence her through that firebrand maid, Nikky Narian. Marge nearly got her eyes scratched out for trying to tell Tildy where to head in.”

I wondered how much of it Ruth would tell Hacklin & Co., when they buzzed her door, as they were certain to do almost any minute. “You think the South American trip was for the purpose of Lanerd’s getting a divorce down there?”

“Yes.” She got up abruptly, went to the stove, began clattering pans. “I don’t know what there is about Tildy. They do have a lot in common; they’re both hipped on sports. And they’re both from Kentucky, least he was born there and she’s moved there—”

“Where’d he come from? Lexington?”

“Near there. Bourbon County. North Middletown.”

“Hm.” I told her about the Seven-for-a-secret note I’d left with Tildy at the Brulard. “Any idea who might have signed that ‘Lx’?”

“Oh, Dow, I suppose. They have a sort of code, all abbreviations. Not secret, just affectionate. She’d call up to leave a message for him and say, ‘Tell him Lx will be late.’ Or he’ll send her a crate of orchids with nothing but ‘Lx’ on the card. Doesn’t have any significance. Only a reference to the Bluegrass they’re both so fond of.”

I said I guessed it was just jive-talk, no meaning. Had she seen any note on the floor when she came in and found me cooled?

No. She’d waited for Lanerd to call. Waited and hoped and waited some more. She hadn’t phoned his suite because she supposed the police would be there, as I’d warped her. She’d come straight to her apartment from the hotel so she hadn’t eaten.

Around three she decided to go down to the delicatessen on the corner of Broadway to get a sandwich and some of the mushrooms Lanerd liked so much. She’d left her door open because she thought, though he had a key to her place, that he might not have it with him.

She’d only been away ten minutes at most. When she came in and saw me on the floor, she thought surely I was dead. She called Lanerd’s doctor, he’d attended her several times, he came right over.

There’d been no envelope on the floor when she found me, she was positive about that.

I asked if I could dry the dishes. She shook her head; it was time for me to lie down.

“Just for the record,” I told her, “let this be the first time a Vine has refused that kind of an offer in a girl’s apartment. But I’ll take a check for a rainy day.”

She untensed enough to laugh. “All right.”

The phone rang. It was Pat Ashmore.

“I’m wearin’ those new brogans already, Gil.”

“Find him?”

“Lemme read ya, right off his trip-record card: ‘Trip number eight. Eleven twenty-five ayem. One passenger. No bags. From Hotel Brulard. To Gotham Athletic.’”

“Yair?”

“Wait. This is what the jockey says. She asks him to wait. She goes inside. Comes right out again. Says to the jock, ‘They don’t know where he is! Dear Lord, isn’t there anybody who can help me?’”

“Give that man five silver dollars. He’s earned it, Pat.”

“There’s more. Lissen. The hackie gets worried about her. Asks what can he do to help her. She answers nobody can help her, really. Finely she decides he should drop her at the Continental Television Building. So that’s what he does. At eleven forty-five. Fare, seventy cents.”

“Neat and complete.” In jest I added, “How big a tip?”

“A cuter,” he said. “That what you wanted?”

“Come around to the P-R on your day off,” I told him. “Bring your girl. Bring your family. You can have anything you want except the dinner check.”