“That’s exactly what I’ve been thinking! She might—”
“Sh-sh-sh. Don’t you know lieutenants of police are important people and shouldn’t be interrupted? Now look. We gave Mrs. Garr’s rooms a cursory search Thursday night. The only important things we found were two safety-deposit keys. We had the box opened. In it were her will, the papers for the Halloran trust fund, the deed to her house—a few things like that. No stocks, no bonds, no money. So when we read the will we saw she’d left the residue of her estate . . .” He paused to glance at me uncertainly.
“Mrs. Halloran told me.”
“Didn’t that jolt you?”
“It did, rather.”
“Well, I’ve come across a few things in my time, but that . . . ! What a combination of circumstances! Where was I?”
“She’d left the residue of her estate.”
“Yeah. So that sounded as if there ought to be a residue. And how did we spend Friday, while you were snoozing so peacefully? We went over her rooms with a comb. A damn good job we did, too.”
“Did you . . . ?”
“Yep. Five hundred and eighty-six dollars. In bills. Mostly in little bills. Stuck in the God damnedest places you ever saw. I skinned my fingers picking dollar bills from down under the strings of that doggone grand piano. Look at ’em. We found the biggest wad under the bottom drawer of that chest in the room at the top of the basement stairs.” He stopped.
“It doesn’t sound like a lot. Not compared to the trust fund.”
“No, it doesn’t. But if there’s any more I’ll eat it. And we can’t locate a bank account. On the other hand,” he went on ruminatively, “it might not be money at all some guy was hunting; the old lady was mixed up in some funny things in her day.”
He stopped, became brisk.
“Now, Mrs. Dacres, do you believe the police can handle this?”
“Yes. Oh, of course, but—”
“But what?”
“I would like to know for sure. Was she murdered or did she just die?”
He became heavily jocose. “Mrs. Dacres, you have hit on one of the most embarrassing spots in a long and honorable career. I have to admit it—I don’t know. She wasn’t shot. She wasn’t poisoned.” He laughed uproariously. “Lady, if you want to hear some stirring language, you ought to hear a police surgeon when he has to autopsy a cat—with kittens!”
“Oh, so that’s—”
“Yeah. What did you think? We were going to give ’em away to kids for pets?”
I shuddered. “No, I’m glad they’re gone. Then there wasn’t anything to tell if it was murder or not?”
“You can’t tell much from a mess like that. There wasn’t anything else out of place in the kitchen except a glass jar of dry macaroni spilled on the table. Can I drop you anywhere?”
His dismissal was as abrupt as usual.
“No. I’m going home. I’ll take the streetcar. But—”
“Another but.”
“I’d like to ask something.”
He grinned. “I wouldn’t doubt it. Ask away.”
“Would you mind if I looked around?”
“Hell no. You keep out of that back basement, of course. It’s sealed. But if you can get Mrs. Halloran’s consent, look ahead in the rest of Mrs. Garr’s rooms. Remember, you haven’t any right to look through the other lodgers’ possessions, though. Here.” He wrote a few words on a sheet torn from his notebook. “Hand that to the guy in the hall. Let me know what you turn up. Good-bye.”
From the sidewalk beside the driver, I watched him streak away. Friendly, wasn’t he? The friendship of an armed truce, waiting to jump on me the minute I made a slip. Generous with his information. Certainly. I might contribute something more.
What of it? I caught my streetcar and knew I was having a perfectly glorious time. I hadn’t had so much fun and excitement in years.
—
MRS. HALLORAN, IT SEEMED, had asked Mrs. Tewman to leave her house, too. When I got back the two women were sitting, each at one end of the davenport, and figuratively—and I’m not sure not literally—spitting at each other.
I told Mrs. Halloran of my project for searching Mrs. Garr’s house for anything that might shed light on the death, and saw excitement come into her eyes.
“Oh, my goodness, here I been wasting all this time! I got a right to look into everything there is now, don’t I?”
“Of course. And Lieutenant Strom wants me to work with you.” I carried on cheerfully my bent for lying.
Craftiness crept back of her eyes.
“I don’t need no help.”
“Oh, I’m sure Lieutenant Strom would object to your doing it alone,” I said. I showed her the lieutenant’s note, which read
Jack, let Mrs. Dacres make a further search of Mrs. Garr’s rooms. But keep an eye on her.
Mrs. Halloran struggled; I saw her vast dismay. She might have discovered money! But she had to give up.
“The police have already searched everything thoroughly.”
I was impatient. “All I’m interested in is clues.”
With Mrs. Tewman dismissed to the basement, and the lumpy policeman regarding us solemnly, we started on the parlor, Mrs. Halloran jumping to snatch first anything that I moved to pick up.
“Let’s start on the drawer of this table,” I said. It was the drawer in which I thought Mr. Grant had been hunting, on that afternoon long ago.
The drawer was full of a litter of papers. Trembling with feverish energy and suspicion, Mrs. Halloran pushed me aside to paw through the papers. She found nothing save paper.
“There ain’t nothing here!”
“Mind if I look?”
I sorted the papers carefully. Meager grocery lists: bread, 8¢; 1/2 lb. hamburger, 9¢; 1/2 lb. butter, 20¢; cornflakes, 10¢. Added columns of figures: taxes, $138.72; water, $6.48; fire insurance, $19.64; doorbell batteries, $1.00. Laundry bills. Gas and electric bills, stamped paid. A receipt book.
I picked that up, thumbed through it from the back. Stubs of receipts: to me, for $4.00; to Mr. Kistler, $6.00; to Mr. Grant, $2.00; to Miss Sands, $5.00; to Mr. Buffingham, $9.00.
My eyes were halted, incredulous, by those last two figures.
