The D.A. Breaks a Seal

5

“Who is she?” Brandon asked the hotel proprietor.

“The woman who just went down the hall?”

“Yes.”

“Lord, I don’t know. She’s evidently in 617. Please, let’s keep our heads.”

“I’ve seen her before,” Sylvia said by way of explanation. “Let’s go take a look at the register.”

“Okay, okay,” Norwalk said wearily, and then added, “if you think a hotel keeper hasn’t got his troubles, what with the linen shortage, the laundry tieups, the poor help and the increase in travel, you have another guess coming.”

Larkin said soothingly, “That’s right. That’s right. Tell you what, folks; anything we can do to make things easier for Norwalk we should do.”

“What would you suggest?” Brandon asked dryly.

Larkin could think of no answer to that question.

They rode down in the elevator, consulted the register, and found that the blonde’s name was Anita Eldon and that her residence was Hollywood; that she had checked into room 617 while the sheriff’s little group had been examining the body and the surroundings in 619.

“So you see,” Norwalk said, “you just can’t go around attributing significance to every little thing that happens in a hotel. A hotel is a peculiar place. All sorts of people come from all over the country on all sorts of business, and you just have to take them the way you find them. About all you can do is make certain rules that keep your place from becoming a dump.”

“Who had the room before this blonde checked in?” Brandon asked.

“The records show that an Irving W. Jerome, of Los Angeles, had occupied the room. And Irving Jerome had also failed to give any street address when he registered.”

Sylvia Martin said to Selby, “Well, I’m going to try and hunt up those others — the flowers, you know.”

Selby said, “Luck. I’ll visit around. See you later, Sylvia.”

Harry Perkins, the coroner, rather slender, spare of frame, with high cheekbones and a perpetually jovial disposition, showed up to take charge of the body.

Sheriff Brandon started a routine investigation. Otto Larkin bubbled verbal cooperation, and Sylvia Martin started off on the trail of the other two white gardenias, leaving Doug Selby free to wander off on his own.

It was exactly twelve-thirty when Doug Selby climbed the one flight of stairs and walked down the corridor to the door which bore the legend Inez Stapleton, Attorney at Law. ENTER.

Selby entered the office, saw that the stenographer was out to lunch, that the door to the private office was open. Without much expectation of finding Inez in, he walked over to look through the door.

Inez was seated at her desk. Law books were piled high around her, and as Selby watched, she pulled a pad of legal foolscap toward her and started scribbling excerpts from the law book she was reading.

For several seconds Selby stood watching her profile, the concentration of her eyes, the intellectual forehead that indicated a capacity for thought, the straight, delicate nose, the feminine mouth, the smooth lines of her chin and throat. The light caught and reflected the highlights of deeply waved hair.

She suddenly paused in the middle of her writing, glanced up over her shoulder, frowned with annoyance, then swung around in her swivel chair for a better look.

Selby saw her eyes widen with surprise. For a moment the color drained from her face. Then it was flushed and dark. But there was dignity in her manner as she came toward him.

“Why, Doug!” she exclaimed, started to say something else, then stopped.

Selby stood with both of her hands in his.

“Hello, Counselor,” he said, grinning.

Her eyes were hungry. She said nothing, but abruptly raised her face, and Selby felt the warm, tremulous caress of her lips, and then she was away from him, laughing nervously.

“Heavens, Doug. I’m getting sentimental — for a veteran counselor.”

Selby looked at the big desk. “Rather work than eat?” he asked.

“I guess so. I’m terribly interested in what I’m doing. I have a will-contest case coming up for trial tomorrow. However, I suppose I should take on a little nourishment.”

She hesitated.

For a moment, it seemed that the silence could become awkward.

Selby said easily, “I have had an early lunch, Inez, but I’d like to run down and sit with you if you want to eat.”

Her chin was up, her manner suddenly crisply professional. “No, never mind, Doug. I should stay here anyway. Do sit down and let’s talk.”

“You’re busy,” he told her.

“Please.”

Selby dropped into the big client’s chair by the side of the desk.

“Tell me about it,” he said.

“Tell me about you, Doug.”

“Nothing to tell. I’m home on a brief furlough. Going to San Francisco, then out from there. Want to talk about the case?”

“Do I!” she exclaimed. “Doug, I feel absolutely lost! I’m starving for someone whom I can trust and with whom I can discuss the thing. Old A. B. Carr is on the other side, and when you’re fighting him, you have the most peculiar feeling of futility. You just don’t feel that you’re getting anywhere near the man. It’s as though you were having one of those nightmares where you run and run, and move your legs but can’t seem to gain an inch.”

Selby said, “I know. He’s baffling.”

“It’s more than that. You feel that you’re up against some sort of a system, something that’s unbeatable. You try to hit, and there’s nothing there to hit. And yet you can feel it all about you, closing in on you, smothering you...”

Selby laughed. “You’ve been studying too hard, Inez.”

Her smile was wan. “I suppose so. And it doesn’t do any good. The more I study, the more forlorn my case seems.”

“You’re representing the contestants?”

“Yes. One of them.”

“Who’s the other?”

“A brother represented by some attorney in the Midwest. He’s supposed to arrive late tonight and we shall have a conference. Somehow, his letters haven’t been too reassuring. I gather that he’s a rule-of-thumb lawyer who won’t be educated on the fine points of the law.”

“What are the fine points?” Selby asked, grinning.

“Lots of them. I suppose our only chance is on the ground of undue influence, and it seems that’s almost impossible to prove. You have to prove that the undue influence existed at the exact moment that the will was signed. And of course there are subscribing witnesses who will testify that everything was quite all right, all shipshape and above board.”

“You think they will?”

“Oh, of course. They’ve already signed a statement which was a part of the will — an attestation clause stating that the will was duly and regularly executed. You can’t expect them to go back on their signed statement, and by the time old A. B. Carr gets done with them they’ll remember all the little details, all the facial expressions, everything that was said. Carr drew the will in his Los Angeles office.”

“Can’t you find some better ground than undue influence?”

“I’m afraid not. I’m contesting on every ground under the sun, but when it comes to a showdown, we’ll have to win or lose on the strength of undue influence.”

“But you can show that by circumstantial evidence.”

“Yes, I know. We can show a lot of things that happened, a lot of things that could have happened. We can show circumstances that are very, very suspicious. But, in the long run, the proof must go to the exact moment that the will was signed. At that moment, there was present the lawyer who drew the will, two subscribing witnesses, and the decedent. And no one else.”

“How about the person who did the influencing?”

“She was in another room. Of course, old Alfonse Baker Carr was smart enough to handle it that way.”

“How much can you tell me about this will-contest without betraying the confidences of your client?” Selby asked.

“Quite a bit, Doug. Eleanor Preston was a very wealthy woman. She lived here and had all her property here. She was never married, and left no relatives when she died, other than Barbara Honcutt, a widowed sister, who lives in Kansas, and Hervey Preston, a brother who also lives in Kansas. All of them are in the sixties. The brother was the oldest, then came Eleanor Preston, then Barbara. Eleanor was rather eccentric and crotchety, but they got along all right until about two years ago when Eleanor employed a Martha Otley as a housekeeper and traveling companion. Almost instantly, the whole picture began to change.

“Ostensibly, Martha Otley was most devoted to her employer, but gradually she insinuated herself into such a position of confidence that she was virtually running everything. And, about that time, Eleanor Preston began to show a desire to get out from under the burden of making decisions. Of course, most of that had been carefully cultivated by Martha Otley, but the probabilities are that Eleanor’s illness had something to do with it.”

“The brother and sister were disinherited?” Selby asked.

“Cut off with one hundred dollars each.”

“What’s the amount of the estate?”

“Somewhere around a million dollars. It will be a juicy plum all around.”

“I’ll say so. So Eleanor Preston died, and now Martha Otley is trying to hold under a will which was...”

“Not so fast, Doug,” Inez Stapleton said. “They both died.”

“How did it happen?”

“An automobile accident. I guess there was quite a bit of feeling in the family, and I know there had been some correspondence between Barbara Honcutt and her brother. Last year Barbara and her brother came out to visit Eleanor. Apparently they were getting some place, but Martha Otley managed to out-general them, and the first thing anyone knew, Eleanor left abruptly on a trip by airplane to Mexico. She left Barbara and Hervey just sitting here.”

“Holding the sack?” Selby asked, smiling.

“Holding the sack,” Inez said. “Eleanor wrote them some apparently affectionate letters telling them that she felt the need of travel because she had suddenly become very nervous and wanted to go to some foreign country where she didn’t know anyone and so could have a complete rest and relaxation. Of course, you can read between the lines and see what happened.”

“Where did she die?” Selby asked.

“She was visiting in McKeesville, Kansas. Martha Otley had a sister there, a Helen Elizabeth Corning, and they had gone to visit Mrs. Corning.”

“Married?” Selby asked.

“A widow.”

“And Eleanor died there?”

“Near there, some town called Olympus. I’d never heard of it. Mrs. Corning was driving the car. There was a blowout and they hit the curb and then a lamppost. Mrs. Corning was hurt, Eleanor Preston killed almost instantly, and Martha Otley died a short time later.”

Selby’s eyes showed his interest. “And I suppose that Helen Elizabeth Corning was then the heir to the entire fortune...”

“No, Martha Otley left a daughter in Nebraska who seems to spend time, too, in Hollywood. She stands to inherit the entire fortune. Helen Elizabeth Corning doesn’t stand to gain a dollar — at least on the face of things.”

“You’ve got a tough case, Inez.”

“I know it.”

“You may get the sympathy of a jury, but when the judge instructs them that undue influence has to be proven to have existed at the very moment the signature was affixed to the will, and that a testator can dispose of his property any way he wants to, utilizing any whim or fancy that he may have, you’ll be licked. Under the law you have the burden of proving not only an undue influence, but that that undue influence affected the hand of the testator at the very moment the pen signed her name to the will, and you’re going to find the jury will reluctantly bring in an adverse decision. Not that I want to discourage you, but you certainly must know what you’re up against.”

“I do, Doug. Of course, I’m relying on the impression the parties will make on the witness stand. I’ve never met Helen Elizabeth Corning, but I gather she’s a shrewd schemer, and Martha Otley most certainly was. Of course, the fact that she died makes it very difficult to bring out our proof. It puts us in the position of smearing a dead woman.”

Selby nodded.

“Anyway,” Inez said, smiling, “it’s going to be a good fight, and it’s going to be a savage fight. We can’t afford to pull any punches. We’ve got to go in there and show Martha Otley for just what she was.”

“Just what was she?”

Inez Stapleton’s mouth became hard. “She was a shrewd, scheming adventuress. She had been a housekeeper, but she hadn’t actually done any work for ten years. Then she found out that Eleanor Preston was alone, and through some sort of a build-up, she insinuated herself into Eleanor Preston’s good graces, and then she went to work. And how she worked! Until she had things the way she wanted them, she kept the house as neat as a pin. She did all the cooking, all the washing.”

“The daughter have anything to do with her getting the job?” Selby asked.

“I don’t know, Doug, apparently mother and daughter weren’t very close.”

“Is she married?”

“She had been married — and divorced.”

“What’s her name?”

“Anita Eldon... Why, Doug Selby! What’s the matter?”

Selby said, “I guess there’s nothing to it — I’ve just come from the Madison Hotel. A man was found dead in room 619 about an hour and a half ago. The woman who now has the adjoining room is Anita Eldon. She didn’t check in until long after the man had died, but there’s one peculiar circumstance that seems to tie the whole group of people together.”

“What is it, Doug?”

Hastily Selby outlined the story of the white gardenias.

Inez Stapleton picked up a pencil from the desk, started twisting it nervously in her fingers. “Oh, Doug,” she said almost in a whisper, “we’ve got to find out about it. We simply must find out about it. It could be a break. I’ve always felt that there was something in this case if I could only put my finger on it. That’s why I told you it was such a bewildering sensation fighting old A. B. Carr. I know just as well as you do that we haven’t got a legal leg to stand on when it comes to that will-contest. We haven’t any real proof. We can only show things by inference, and inference isn’t going to be enough. And all the while you have the feeling that old A.B.C. is sitting back there grinning sardonically and carefully pushing all of the real evidence into the background, leaving us with only the chaff instead of the wheat. Doug, there has to be some connection. There simply has to be. Tell me what I can do.”

Selby shook his head and said, “I don’t know, Inez. Rex Brandon is going to investigate the death. He’s working on it right now.”

“Was it a murder?”

Selby said thoughtfully, “I’m inclined to think that it was, Inez.”

“But why? Why was the man murdered? Why did he want that gardenia?”

Selby said, “There’s only one explanation that I can think of, Inez. The two people who came on the train and who wore white gardenias were people that Carr didn’t know. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have used the white gardenia as a means of identification.”

She nodded.

“Therefore,” Selby went on, “they must have been people who had something in common, who meant something to him. Yet, obviously, they didn’t know each other. Now, it’s not beyond the bounds of possibility, Inez, that they were witnesses to something in connection with that will case.”

Inez frowned.

Selby went on, “The man who was killed in the hotel might have been the one who had originally summoned those witnesses. He may have been intending to put on a white gardenia and go down to the train to meet them. And it’s quite possible those witnesses might have testified to something that would be adverse to the interests of Carr’s client... And some way Carr found out what was to happen and put on a white gardenia, and went down and grabbed off the witnesses...”

“But if they’re witnesses to something,” Inez asked, “why would Anita Eldon have come to town wearing a white gardenia?”

“You’ve got me,” Selby said. “I’ve just been thinking out loud, Inez.”

“What sort of a girl is this Anita Eldon?”

Selby said, “Class a million. The hothouse flower type. Groomed down to the last false eyelash. She registered as being from Hollywood, not from Nebraska — she looks like Hollywood.”

“You haven’t told me the name of the man who was murdered, Doug.”

“Fred Roff,” Selby said. “He registered from Los Angeles.”

Abruptly Inez Stapleton pushed back the law books. “I’m groping around in the dark, Doug. Be a good boy and run along. Let me see if I can think out some answers.”