Dead of Night

Chapter thirty-one: Corpses can’t testify

Misplaced humor’s a common reaction to sudden danger. Stick-up victims often get plugged for wisecracking at gunmen. Something like that must have hit me. I had to snigger at the tousle-haired kid with the tomahawk and the terrified, determined eyes.

“All you need’s a fire helmet, Chief. You got your ax with you, I see. How ’bout puttin’ out that blaze? Huh?”

“You get off Nikky.” He lifted the hatchet threateningly.

“Might have a point there, son.” I did shift my position; with bright lights on it was downright embarrassing, the way Nikky’s nightgown’d been torn. Especially since another woman, a few years older than Nikky, clomped hurriedly downstairs in dressing-gown and mules to seize the boy, gasp at the burning chair, and cry out to Nikky;

“Hold him, while I phone the police!”

Nikky said calmly, “Please don’t, Miss Ellen. Just open the door.”

Miss Ellen ran.

I let go of the tornado beneath me, made a grab for the gun. It was a pump gun. I broke it, fast, to make sure there were more shells in it.

The dogs raced into the hall.

“Call ’em off,” I stepped behind a wingback chair, “or I’ll kill ’em off.”

They bounded into the room.

“Don’t you shoot my dogs,” the boy shouted in a frenzy. “Down, Castor! Down! Pollux!”

Miss Ellen hollered, too, when she saw I was ready to use the gun. “Stop it, Pollux! Pollux!”

It was Nikky who sprang up, flung an arm around the neck of the biggest animal, flailed at the other one with her fist.

It took a couple of minutes to get them quieted enough to lie down in front of the Dutch-tiled mantel. Another five to slap out the sparks in the smoldering slipcover, exchange guarded apologies all around.

Nikky wouldn’t have shot at me except she thought I was someone else. They’d been afraid of a visit from Al Gowriss ever since Nikky’d arrived at noon.

“They” were Miss Ellen — Mrs. Ellen Marino, actually, she was Tildy’s widowed sister, Tony’s mother — Tousle Hair was Tony, of course. He was sorry he’d offered to chop my head off, but he’d thought I was hurting Nikky. Since he was the only man in the family he’d tried to protect her.

There were only the three of them in the big house. And the pinschers, of course. Tildy wasn’t home yet, though she was expected any time. The gardener and groom were down at the lodge. The cook lived at the other end of the farm.

I said I wouldn’t have entered the house if the pinschers hadn’t driven me to it. I hoped I hadn’t injured Miss Narian. No? Good. Fortunate none of her shots drilled me, though the powder grains in my face did sting.

My errand? The same as that which had taken me to Little Syria; to help a tired old waiter who’d been arrested for something he hadn’t done.

Nikky slipped out, whistled to the pinschers. They eyed me balefully as they slunk to the kitchen. There was a sound of spoon scraping a pan. She placated them for not having had a morsel of house officer.

I admired the cherry drop-leafs, the antique break-front, the white woodwork, the old-fashioned wallpaper, while Mrs. Marino chivvied Tony upstairs.

“But I don’t want to go to bed, Mamma.” The dimple in his chin deepened as he pouted. “If Aunt Tildy’s coming, I want to stay up.”

I told him, “She won’t be here until morning, son, I promise you.” Might be quite a bit later than that, I told myself.

He stamped upstairs finally, hollering questions at me every third step. “When’d Aunt Tildy leave New York?”

“Was that bad man still bothering her?”

“Had I seen the Stack O’ Jack show last night?”

Last night? It seemed more than thirty hours since that pair of hands had played We Won’t Go Home Until Morning.

Mrs. Marino brought a decanter and glasses by way of rapprochement.

“Perhaps you’d prefer a highball, Mister Vine?”

“Thanks. No. Straight across the board.” I was ready for a stimulant. “Your sister’s in a pretty desperate fix, Mrs. Marino.”

“I know. I wanted to go to New York to be with her, but she didn’t think the authorities would permit it. And now this awful news on the radio about Dow Lanerd; Tildy must be absolutely stricken.”

“Broke her up, all right.”

“Such a sweet man. So considerate. Not at all the sort you’d expect to do a frightful—”

Nikky reappeared, skirted and sweatered. She seemed annoyed with her mistress’s sister but waited respectfully while Mrs. Marino urged me to stay in one of the spare bedrooms, no trouble at all, really; they’d feel badly if I didn’t — after the peculiar reception I’d been given.

When Mrs. Marino had gone, I put it up to Nikky in words of one syllable.

“You were in the room when the guard was knifed. You saw it all.”

“No. I was in the bathroom. Washing a pair of gloves.”

“What’s the diff? Why all the guff about what the man wore?”

She rubbed her cheek, where I’d butted her. “It’s so absurd. We were doing all we could to hide it; then he had to end it himself. What’s the use?”

“Lanerd?”

“Of course.” She switched on a big console radio, tuned it in to some platter parade, low enough so we could talk but loud enough to keep anyone upstairs from hearing what we said. “After dinner, we both went into her bedroom. Mister Lanerd had a key to her room; he let himself in. They began to argue — she’d written him a note calling off plans to go to South America with him, and he began to maul her. I can’t stand anyone being mean to my baby, so we had a tussle. He swore at me, slapped me. Tildy ran into the other room to ask the guard to help with him.”

“Neither Lanerd nor Roffis will dispute any of it.”

“Tildy will tell you it’s true. Roffis came in; he tried to put Mr. Lanerd out, even had the hall door open. He struck Mister Lanerd in the face; it made him furious. He seized a knife from the serving-table the waiter’d just put out in the hall, stabbed the guard in the back. We couldn’t believe he was dead for a little, then we dragged him to the closet, dumped him in there, and held a council to decide what to do.”

I really was impressed. What she’d said checked perfectly with Auguste’s story, so far.

“We decided Mr. Lanerd would have to get cleaned up; there was blood on his coat and shirt. Right after the stabbing, we thought the waiter would be able to see us dragging the body to the closet, so I ran over and pushed the bedroom door to. There was blood on my gloves, I still had them on, some of it got on the door. That’s what made us think of the stain on Mr. Lanerd’s coat. So he went across the hall to change.”

“Auguste said someone came out of the bedroom. But he didn’t recognize the man. He recognized Lanerd quickly enough a little later when I was in the room.”

“That old goof. He’s half blind. He couldn’t recognize his own mother unless he heard her talking. Mr. Lanerd bumped right into him, but didn’t say a word. Auguste grunted but never knew who it was. Tildy telephoned the other man, Hacklin, told him that Roffis had run some intruder out of the room and hadn’t come back, would he come over and take us to the studio. So he did. Of course I had to go down in the service elevator.”

“Ridiculous rule.” I quoted, “‘Only nurses with infants allowed in guest elevators.’ Yair. Go on.”

“That’s all. Except at the studio, Tildy kept reassuring herself that she’d had to do it, she couldn’t let him go to jail.”

I remembered what MacGregory had said. It checked.

“Why’d you skip out on Hacklin?”

The music faded. There was a station break. A signature. Five minutes of the latest news from the wire room of WLEX.

She said, “Tildy was afraid we’d say the wrong thing, or do something to give Mr. Lanerd away. So I took her to my uncle’s until we found out how the wind was blowing.”

It checked with Auguste, with the producer. But not with Dow Lanerd’s waiting in 21MM with his automatic ready for business. Why was that?

“Oh, we’d all been under such a strain, expecting that cochon Gowriss to sneak in and murder us both in our beds. We pulled the bureau up against the bedroom door every time we snatched a ten-minute nap. Mr. Lanerd was as scared of Gowriss as we were. He thought, several times, he’d been followed by a man in a taxi—” she paused to listen.

The zombi voice from the console said:

“One thing about you, Miss Narian. There are fewer and fewer people who can contradict your story.”