Rose's Last Summer [= The Lively Corpse]

3

There were two pictures of Rose in the paper. One Frank had seen before on the wall of Rose’s room, a glamorous still taken when Rose was about forty. The second was a scene from an early movie showing Rose virtuously resisting the advances of a sleek young man identified as Dwight Hamman, the second of her five husbands. Rose had mentioned only three of her husbands to Frank; the other two came as a surprise.

He experienced an even greater surprise when he read the account of her death. According to police estimates, Rose had died about noon on Monday.

He phoned Greer immediately, and after dinner he drove down to the white stone building that contained the police offices and the city jail. The grounds of the building were kept immaculate by a volunteer jail crew made up mostly of petty thieves, drunks and non-support cases. Frank knew a great many of these men, particularly the repeaters. Some had been referred to his office for help; others he had met at the meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous which were held once a week at the jail and which Frank attended sometimes for information.

Frank had known Greer for two years. There was a considerable difference of viewpoint between the two men and disagreement over techniques, but they were moderately friendly. Frank believed that Greer was a just man if not very bright, and Greer was willing to admit that the clinic occasionally did some good, however slight or impermanent.

Greer’s office was a big square room with dazzling fluorescent lights that gave everyone a prison pallor.

“Sit down,” Greer said.

“Thanks.”

Greer sat down, too, rubbing his eyes. “Those damn lights give me a headache. And don’t kid me it’s psychosomatic, either.”

“I won’t.”

“You psych boys are a funny bunch. A guy falls down an open manhole for instance. Does he fall because he needs new glasses? No. Because he’s thinking of some dame and isn’t watching where he’s going? No. He falls because he was rejected by his old lady or something.”

“We won’t argue,” Frank said. He knew Greer was touchy on the subject because he had a duodenal ulcer.

“Jesus, next thing you know you guys will be trying to cure death by psychoanalyzing everybody.”

“Don’t worry about it, Greer.”

“I never worry,” Greer said, stroking his forehead in an unconscious attempt to erase the worry lines. “This is a funny business about Rose French. This morning I thought I had it all figured out.”

“And now?”

“Now it doesn’t make sense.” Greer took a pipe out of his pocket and put it in the corner of his mouth. He didn’t light it because there was no tobacco in the pipe. He used it as a prop, for chewing on, tapping his desk, scratching the side of his neck, or emphasizing a point he was making. “You knew Miss French fairly well?”

“I knew her as well as she let me know her. I have no information on her that she didn’t volunteer.”

“You mentioned over the phone that you’d seen her recently.”

“On Sunday, late in the morning, I went to her boarding house. The landlady, a Mrs. Cushman, had called me and said Rose was acting up a little, so I went to try and straighten her out.”

“You’re quite a boy scout.”

“Helping other people helps me. It’s the same principle as A.A. They stay sober by helping other people stay sober.”

“Some of them.”

“Some of them.”

“So you straightened Rose out.”

“No, I didn’t get anywhere with her. She wouldn’t communicate.”

“So?”

“So I took Miriam and the kids to the beach.”

“And that’s all you wanted to tell me.”

“Not quite all,” Frank said. “At three o’clock on Monday afternoon Rose called me on the phone and told me she had a job and was leaving town.”

“That’s impossible.”

“It happened.”

“It couldn’t have happened,” Greer said. “By that time she’d been dead for three hours or more.”

“Some mistake’s been made.”

“Perhaps by you.”

“Perhaps, but I don’t think so. Take a look at this.” He brought out the card Rose had sent him and tossed it on the desk. “It’s postmarked 6:30 P.M.”

Greer tapped the card with his pipe. “Why the picture and no message?”

“One of Rose’s little jokes. When she told me she was leaving town to take a job, I asked her to keep in touch with us so we’d know she was all right.”

“What kind of job?”

“As a housekeeper. That was her story anyway.”

“Didn’t you believe it?”

“I did yesterday. Now I don’t know what to believe. Maybe it wasn’t Rose on the phone yesterday afternoon. I’m no specialist on voices, but it certainly sounded like her and things she said were typically Rose. And if it wasn’t Rose, who was it?”

“A close friend, a woman who knew her very well and knew, too, about her connection with you.”

“What would be the point of such a call?”

“I can only guess,” Greer said. “Rose was already dead and the woman didn’t want it known. Perhaps she intended merely to falsify the time of death, or perhaps Rose wasn’t meant to be found at all — it was to be a disappearance.”

“Why did she phone me?”

“Your office has a habit of following cases through. If Rose had suddenly left town without notifying you, you might have started a search for her.”

“But there was no attempt to hide the body. She was found in somebody’s backyard where she couldn’t possibly be missed.”

“I know that,” Greer said heavily. “It’s a damn funny case. If there was money involved, maybe I could find a reason for all the shenanigans. But there’s no money, not that I know of. Rose had one dollar in a savings account, checking account overdrawn as of last Saturday, and the only jewelry she hadn’t pawned or sold was the wedding ring she was wearing when she was found, a plain gold band initialed RF, HD.”

“I know the ring. It was from her first marriage when she was sixteen.”

Greer was silent a moment, tracing letters on the blotter in front of him with the mouthpiece of his pipe. From where Frank sat they looked like initials, RF, HD.

Frank said, “Who did the autopsy?”

“Severn.”

“He’s competent.”

“Of course he’s competent,” Greer said irritably. “The woman died of a heart attack yesterday around noon. The heart was badly damaged and half again normal size.”

“There’s no question of murder then?”

“There wouldn’t be if she’d been found dead in bed. As things are—” he spread his hands — “as things are, I don’t know. It would be easy enough to kill someone with a bad heart condition — a shock, a soft pillow over the face — there are lots of ways it could have been done. But was it, that’s the question.”

“As far as I’m aware, Rose had no intimates during recent years, friends or enemies.”

“And before that?”

“She must have had hundreds of both. She was aggressive; it was easy for Rose to make friends, and just as easy to drop them. Lately she’d made a fetish of independence. I think probably Miriam and I were the closest thing to a friend she had in this town, except perhaps her landlady, Blanche Cushman.”

“Mrs. Cushman identified the body this afternoon. She did quite a bit of weeping and wailing, but I got the impression she wasn’t too sorry.”

“Rose caused her some trouble now and then. When Rose was drinking she could get pretty noisy.”

“Was she a drunk?”

“I don’t think so. I may be a little prejudiced, though. I liked Rose. She didn’t like me in return very much. She frequently accused me of prying and so on.”

“How much did she confide in you?”

“Just what she wanted to. I had no idea, for instance, that she had a heart condition. She never mentioned her health, her age, or her family. She talked freely about three of her five husbands, but I didn’t even know about the other two until I read tonight’s paper.”

“There were five, all right. I had one of the boys check with the publicity department of her old studio. She divorced three of them, one was killed in a sailing accident and one of them committed suicide.”

“Poor Rose.”

“That depends on your viewpoint,” Greer said sharply. The telephone on his desk buzzed and he leaned forward with a grunt of annoyance and picked it up. “Greer speaking.”

“Greer?”

“That’s right.”

“This is Malgradi. I’m down at the F.P.”

“Did you get her fixed up again?”

“Sure. That’s what I called about. There’s a man in my office that wants to see her.”

“Who is he?”

“Claims to be her husband. I got her looking pretty nice, but I thought I better check with you first before letting anybody see her.”

“What’s his name?”

“Dalloway. Haley Dalloway. Think I should let him in?”

“Keep him around until I get there. I’ll be right down.”

“I haven’t had any dinner yet.”

“I’ll bring you a bag of popcorn.” Greer put down the phone and turned to Frank. “Dalloway’s showed up, her first husband. Want to come along and meet him?”

“Not particularly.”

“Come anyway. I’d like you to take a look at Rose.”

Frank shifted his weight and the chair squeaked in protest. The noise sounded almost human. “That’s not my line of work.”

“Once they’re dead you’re finished with them, eh? What’s the matter, Frank, you afraid of nice, harmless, old dead people?”

“I haven’t had any experience.”

“There’s always a first time.”

“Anyway, I promised Miriam I’d take her to a movie.”

“I’ll call her and tell her you’ll be late,” Greer said. “What’s the number?”

“You don’t have to bother.”

“What’s the number?”

“23664.”

Greer called Miriam while Frank went over to the window and looked out through its iron grill work at the city lights. Even from there he could hear Miriam’s clear, firm voice coming all too distinctly over the phone. It was the first she’d heard of any movie date, Miriam said, and besides she was washing her hair.

Greer hung up, looking very pleased with himself. “You could have done better than that, Frank.”

“Miriam’s only fault is a habit of pushing the truth out in front of her like a wheelbarrow.”

“It’s a nice way of taking people for a ride. Are you ready?”

“I guess I am.”

Greer laughed. “You’ll be okay. If you get to feeling queasy, Malgradi will give you a couple of slugs of embalming fluid.”