The Broken Vase

Chapter 5

You’ve got me wrong.” Ted Gill said earnestly. “Honest you have. I don’t regard myself as a whizz-bang.”

He was seated on an Empire bench with carved legs, with his back to the keyboard of a concert grand piano. It was Saturday afternoon. The piano occupied a good quarter of the space in a walk-up room-and-bath on the third floor of a brick building in the Sixties east of Lexington Avenue, and the rest of the furniture looked equally out of place. But when, upon the sudden death of a girl’s widower father, she finds that all she owns in the world is the contents of her own room in his elaborate apartment on 57th Street which has been her home, what is to be done? As for the piano, that was for Dora Mowbray a necessity, since without it giving lessons to little boys and girls would have been impossible.

Dora, sitting on a chair that Caruso had once sat on, holding her, a three months’ baby, in his arms, had a flush on her cheeks which did no harm to her appearance. Nor, for that matter, did the faint wrinkle on her brow which gave her eyes an intentness to match the earnestness of the young man who faced her.

“You certainly do,” she said with spirit. “Not that I don’t admire a good piece of bravura, but you pile it on so. Why don’t you carry cymbals?” The flush was spreading. “Please don’t stare at me like that!”

“I’m not staring. I’m just looking.” Ted, already on the edge of the bench, came forward another inch. “Look here, I might as well confess something. That was bunk about my wanting to plug you for radio. I wanted to come — I had to see you — and I couldn’t—” He was floundering. “Damn it,” he said resentfully, “when I’m talking to you I can’t even make a sentence with a subject and predicate! You might think if I wanted to see you I could just have told you on the phone that I wanted to see you!”

“Yes, you might,” Dora agreed. “Why didn’t you?”

“Because I was afraid you wouldn’t let me come! Not only do you have a funny effect on my grammar, you’ve turned me into a coward! Oh no, I had to think up something fancy for an excuse! That would have been understandable if I had just wanted to come because I like to look at you and hear you and be near you...”

He was suddenly redder than she was. He slid back on the bench and said in a determined voice, “But I had to see you because I had to tell you something. It was me that mailed that violin to Mrs. Pomfret.”

Dora’s mouth fell open.

“It was me,” Ted repeated firmly. “I wrapped it up and addressed it and mailed it to her.”

“Good lord,” Dora said dully.

“I nearly told them about it yesterday afternoon, there at Mrs. Pomfret’s, but I decided not to. Because I doubt if it would really help them any to know, but that’s what I want to ask you. I’ll do whatever you say. If you think I ought to tell them, I will.”

“But I don’t understand.” The flush had gone from Dora’s cheeks, leaving them pallid. “If that’s Jan’s violin — then it was you who took it...”

“No, it wasn’t. But I see now that I have to tell you that too. I thought maybe—”

“You don’t have to tell me anything.” Dora’s lip started to quiver and she put her teeth on it.

“You think I don’t?” Ted was getting to his feet, then he dropped back onto the bench again, looking helpless. “For the love of Mike, don’t look like that. That’s the way you looked the first time I saw you that Monday night — kind of, I don’t know, brave and beautiful — like that. I thought I was a grown man, I ought to be, I’m thirty years old, but I don’t know, when I look at you... Listen to me now, I came here to tell you a certain sapific thing — I mean a specific thing—”

A bell rang. Ted stopped short.

“That was a bell ringing,” he said.

“Yes,” Dora said. “My doorbell.” She didn’t move. “I don’t know who would be—”

“They’ll go away.” Ted was imploring. “Why not just let ’em go away?”

The bell rang again.

“Oh!” Dora sprang to her feet. “I forgot! Mr. Fox! He phoned not long after you did and said he wanted to see you and couldn’t find you and asked if I knew where you were — and I said you were coming here — and he asked if he could come and I said he could—”

“That bird,” Ted said gloomily. His eyes appealed to her. “He can go away as well as anybody else.”

Dora shook her head. “I couldn’t do that. He was nice to me.” She was moving toward a button on the wall. “Anyway, he knows we’re — I’m here—”

“Wait a minute.” Ted went to her, faced her. “Listen.” He swallowed. “What I told you about the violin — I’m not sure they’ll have to know. It would be, uh, embarrassing. So if you wouldn’t mention it to Fox? Please?”

The bell rang.

Dora’s questioning eyes slanted up under her troubled frown and met his, beseeching.

“Please?” he begged. “I came here to tell you about it, and I’m going to, and I’ll do whatever you think I ought to.”

Dora nodded uncertainly, turned from him to push the button, and opened the door to the hall. In a moment Ted’s voice sounded behind her:

“Yep, that’s him all right. That’s the way he would come up stairs. My God, he’s sprightly.”

Dora did not know that her manner of shaking hands with Tecumseh Fox at their first meeting, the day before at Mrs. Pomfret’s, was chiefly responsible for his being nice to her, so there could have been no artifice in its repetition now — the impulsive friendly offer halted abruptly in midair as if uncertain of its welcome. Fox, ready for it this time, had his hand already there. Ted Gill, having retreated within, was not seen until the other two had entered; he acknowledged Fox’s greeting with an uncivil grunt, watched the disposal of his hat and coat with a sullen eye, and, when Dora sat down, replanted himself firmly on the piano bench. He spoke as one in a hurry to get something disposed of:

“Miss Mowbray says that you phoned that you were looking for me. Can I do something for you?”

“Yes, if you don’t mind,” Fox took some papers from his pocket, thumbed through them and selected one, unfolded it and glanced at it. “I thought it would save time to write this out and have it ready for you to sign.” He extended the paper in his hand and Ted took it.

As Ted read, the others watched his face. At the first glance his brows were raised, then they came down to participate in a frown of astonishment. His lips parted, then his jaws snapped them shut. Finally he looked at Fox, plainly flabbergasted, and then got up and handed the paper to Dora.

“Read that, will you?” he requested plaintively. She glanced up at him, at Fox, and then looked at the paper:

“I see,” Dora said. Her voice sounded strained. “Naturally you would want to protect Miss Heath—”

“Nothing doing,” Ted declared incisively. “Oh, no. This is bad enough as it is, without any misunderstanding on that score. Naturally I would want to strangle Miss Heath. But a publicity agent who obeyed his natural impulses would be in jail in five minutes. One of my colleagues in Hollywood...” He shrugged, and turned to stare at Fox. “You seem to be pretty stupendous. How come?”

Fox smiled at him. “Will you sign it?”

“I will if you’ll tell me how the devil you got onto it.”

“Nothing very adroit. Not at all stupendous. Miss Heath left the scene alone and in a hurry that evening, and was wearing a wrap that might easily have concealed the violin. Item two, I have never seen anything as hammy as her performance yesterday when Mrs. Pomfret announced that she had received the violin by parcel post — the back of her hand to her mouth and her eyes popping out and gasping for breath. The very essence of ham. Item three, the IRENE in the address on the package. Started to make a B and changed it to an N. Might have been thinking of Hebe.”

“I was thinking of her all right,” Ted declared grimly.

“No doubt. Of course it wasn’t conclusive, but it was enough to suggest a call on Miss Heath. I was with her an hour — one of the most singular hours in my experience. You should be able to tell me: Which is she, subtler than a serpent or not quite brainy?”

“I can tell you,” Ted said emphatically.

“Please do.”

“Between you and me and Miss Mowbray.”

“Certainly.”

“Well. It’s hard to find words. She is dumb beyond all previous manifestations of dumbness. Beyond the wildest dream of hebetude. Dumb enough to chew on the stick instead of sucking the lollipop. Dumb enough to grab a violin and scram for absolutely no reason whatever except that the violin’s there and she has fingers to pick it up with and an ermine wrap to hide it under.”

Fox was frowning. “That’s a little hard to take. That last one. I’m a little partial to motives.”

“You were with her an hour,” Ted expostulated. “Where do motives originate? In the heart. Okay, say she has a heart. What is necessary for a motive to result in action? Transference through a nervous center called a brain. Well?”

“Maybe,” Fox conceded doubtfully. “Anyway, we’ll leave it at that for the present. May I have that paper, Miss Mowbray? Thank you.” He took his pen from his pocket and offered it to Ted. Ted spread the paper on the piano arm and wrote his name below the statement, as illegibly as possible, blew on it to dry it, and handed it over.

“Much obliged.” Fox stuck it in his pocket. “Another little point. Would you mind telling me what you and Miss Heath were doing in Tusar’s dressing room Monday evening? I mean before the concert.”

“Why didn’t you ask her?”

“I did. She said something about music being sublime. She pronounced it—”

“I know how she pronounces it. We went there to ask Tusar to have his picture taken with Miss Heath, with her holding the violin, and he refused. Miss Heath began to undergo emotions, and Tusar walked out.”

Fox nodded. “I saw him.” He turned to Dora. “May I ask you, Miss Mowbray, did Tusar practice with you Monday afternoon?”

Dora shook her head. “Not in the afternoon. I went to his studio in the morning and we went through the Saint-Saens piece three times, but not the others. I left a little after twelve and didn’t see him again until evening, at the hall.”

“Why did you go through it three times? Didn’t it sound right?”

“I thought it did, but Jan wasn’t satisfied, especially with the animato after the introduction and the last eight measures before the allegro begins. He said he was racing it—”

“But the violin was all right? The tone? It didn’t sound as it did that evening?”

“Good heavens, no. In the evening it was terrible. From the very beginning it was terrible — but you heard it...”

“Yes, I heard it.” Fox arose and went to get his coat. “I’ll run along. Thank you very much.”

“So it’s all — all over.” Dora moved toward the door. “It was Jan’s violin, and there was nothing — and that’s all.”

“Not all, Miss Mowbray.” Fox got his other arm in. “I’ve answered the questions you folks gave me, but I’ve run up against another one, and I’m afraid it’s a good deal uglier than those.”

“Uglier?...” she faltered.

“Yes. You’ll be hearing from Mrs. Pomfret, asking you to be there tomorrow at two o’clock. You too, Gill. In the meantime, you might be considering whether driving a man to suicide can be called murder. It’s a nice point.”