He slammed his door; the buzzing stopped.
That hadn’t been very fruitful. I’d had my nose so close to my idea that I’d forgotten that he, as well as everyone else in the house, had been asked just those questions by the police, not only after the discovery of Mrs. Garr’s body, but on the very night, after the attack on me.
And on that throttling business—it must surely have been the murderer. It would be stretching coincidence too far to have two criminals attacking in the same house on the same night. No, the murderer must have hung around. In that case, he must have waited somewhere. Outside or inside?
As long as I was upstairs I might as well ask the other lodgers my questions, useless or not. It would serve to find out how they felt about the crime, too. I might be able to tell something from attitudes.
No answer to my knock on Mr. Kistler’s door.
Mr. Grant answered so quickly, I suspected him of listening.
“No, no one,” he answered me. “Nothing unusual.”
Miss Sands, in curlers and kimono over a cheap rayon slip, was pressing a black dress; her room was full of the ethery scent of dry-cleaning fluid.
“No, I’d of remembered it after you got choked, wouldn’t I, dearie?” she contributed wearily, turning the iron back on its rest and rubbing at the neck of the dress with a reeking rag. “Did you get a notice to go to that inquest? So did I, and I’ll have to go, too, I suppose, though what Mr. Tully’s going to say when I ask to get off at two o’clock, right in the busiest time, I hate to think.”
“Poor Mrs. Garr,” I said. “She didn’t make it pleasant for anyone, dying. Except maybe the Hallorans.”
“That old leech! I’m glad she’s dead!” There was hate in the words. “Now maybe I’ll—” She stopped there, stamped sullenly down with the iron. She wouldn’t say more; I got no bites on my casts.
The Wallers, too, were uncommunicative. I got the effect, when they opened their door, that they had retired to their apartment as to a fort, to hide there until forays were past. Mrs. Waller opened the door only a crack, didn’t ask me in.
“No, we didn’t see anyone. No, we didn’t hear anything,” she answered, and shut her door. I heard it lock.
What did they do? What did they talk about, all day behind that locked door? Going downstairs, I thought about them; they seemed normal people in so many respects, yet what a life they lived. Mr. Waller did odd jobs; I’d pieced that out. Yet he was a retired policeman. Appearance and apparent character would place him above an odd-job man. Was it all to be blamed on the depression, that sausage machine for turning out economic alibis?
What possible reason could Mrs. Garr have had for borrowing two thousand dollars from them? Especially when she had ten thousand to invest in a trust fund for the Hallorans? Or why was she paying them two thousand dollars, if that was the way of it? For the first time, it struck me that this might be a link to her past, the first one I’d found. Two thousand dollars. The interest on two thousand dollars, even at six percent, would be only a hundred and twenty dollars a year. That would mean she let the Wallers have one of the best apartments in the house—their rooms were small, but there were three of them—for only ten dollars a month, less than two-fifty a week!
It didn’t seem like Mrs. Garr at all.
The policeman with the Wilsonian jaw said he was surprised to see me come down with empty hands, but I ignored that. I retired to a pencil and paper in my rooms. I think better with a pencil in my hands, and I needed support.
I’d just picked up the pencil when loud, peremptory knocks sounded on my door.
It was Hodge Kistler.
He closed my doors behind him and stood with his arms wide, the corners of his funny mouth almost hitting his eyes.
“Aw, funny face,” he said. “So you do love me.”
I wished I were the freezing unit of an electric refrigerator.
“Only you could have an idea as ridiculous as that!” I put venom into it.
“Well, baby, you got me out of jail, didn’t you? That’s a sign of true love, isn’t it? Look in any movie from here to Dallas, Texas.”
“That was just a by-product. I was really out hunting for facts, and I happened to turn up one that cleared you.”
“Madam, for that by-product I thank you.” He bowed like a courtier, but the impudence was still on his face. “Jail is a nasty place. My first time in, too. Who knows what vicious habits I might have picked up if I’d been in longer?”
“A rather suitable place, I thought.”
“Oh, now, sister! Look, baby, you sit there on the couch, so. I’ll sit way over here, so. And I’ll tell you about the facts of life. It was facts you were out hunting, wasn’t it? We’ll consider men first. Particularly unmarried men. I’m not married, am I?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised.”
“A nasty, suspicious nature. No, I am not married. I am a bachelor. I am thirty-four years old. Now let us consider bachelors. At twenty, say, one may be a bachelor because Mama has not yet untied the apron strings, or because one has a consuming passion for basketball, ice-cream sodas, communism, or the higher life. At thirty-four, not so. At thirty-four, there are only three types of bachelors. In group one, we have the bachelors who, in their carefree way, prefer a chorus to a solo. In group two, we have those who cannot make the economic grade—you will find those down by the railroad tracks if you would like a sample of the genus at its best. And then, we have group three, whose members were not very well equipped by God. Now, you
