The kitchen was in the same state. Mrs. Garr’s closet was worst.
I got it then.
And stood there thinking what a fool I was.
I hadn’t told the police about the closet Mrs. Garr retained in my kitchen. I hadn’t even thought of it.
Coming and going in that kitchen, I hadn’t even thought of it as a place to search. It seemed incredible, now, that I hadn’t. When I’d first moved into the place I’d been annoyed at Mrs. Garr’s holding this corner of my domain. But, except for one time, she hadn’t bothered me to get into it. I’d forgotten it was there. I no more thought of it as existing than I did the unused basement stairs beside it. I bent (careful, my head) to pick up an old-fashioned, mothbally mink jacket from the floor; it was torn, slashed. I picked up other garments. A musty hat, torn savagely. A faded, padded sachet, ripped. Boxes and small keepsakes lay together in the heap.
I had it, all right, then. Someone had been ransacking my apartment. On purpose.
I had proof now. There was a prowler. He hadn’t found what he wanted in Mrs. Garr’s part of the house. So now he had searched mine.
That was why I’d been attacked. He had to get me out of the way.
What was he hunting? What, in heaven’s name, could arouse this frenzied seeking? Had he found what he wanted? Found it, here in this closet?
I got dizzy, standing there, and staggered back to bed.
I drank more of the orange juice Hodge had left on the table there. It didn’t help much. Orange juice may be full of vitamins, but bacon and eggs keep a body upright. My body rested on the couch but my mind kept working.
What was this insatiable marauder hunting? Money? More money? He must already have found some, between that Friday and the Thursday when the death was discovered; the police, Mrs. Halloran, and I had found the well-hidden caches; these were probably only part of the whole. Suddenly I knew why the macaroni had been spilled on the table below; there had been money hidden there, deep within. I had proof that some of Mrs. Garr’s money had been found, perhaps—that torn five-dollar bill. Someone must want money desperately.
Mr. Buffingham with his son in jail, needing lawyers, needing bought witnesses. Mr. Grant, living there, old, not working, liking luxury. What did he live on? Miss Sands. Aging. Hating her job and afraid of losing it. The Wallers, living there on odd jobs, rent-free. The greedy Hallorans. The poor Tewmans.
And, to be consistent, Mr. Kistler, struggling to keep his Guide alive. And for the matter of that, Mrs. Dacres. Jobless.
Who didn’t want money?
No, I thought. If it’s money, it must be a lot of money.
Someone knows there’s one big pile somewhere. A big pile, that Mrs. Garr would hide best of all, of course. She was shrewd. The ransacker had taken what money he found. There never had been any left among the things ransacked.
Did that prove it was money he was after? No, that just showed he took what he found. What else could there be? Some record out of Mrs. Garr’s lurid past? Some incriminating record? Who could be seeking such a thing?
Ever since I’d seen that rent-receipt book on Saturday afternoon, I’d suspected Mrs. Garr was probably blackmailing two boarders. Miss Sands. Why would an aging saleswoman pay blackmail? Yet how else explain five dollars a week for that room? And Mr. Buffingham. Well, some escapade of his son’s was the best guess there.
I might know, too, of two who were potentially blackmailing Mrs. Garr. The Wallers. Even if they did produce a note, for what did she owe them that two thousand dollars? No, the rent they didn’t pay made them suspect.
The Hallorans. It wasn’t unlikely Mrs. Garr held notes of theirs for money she’d given them. Was there a record of some debt that was being sought? And whatever it was, had the end come now? Was the attack on me, the pillage of my rooms, the last link in the chain? Had the prowler found there, at last, what he hunted?
The answer was right there in my living room.
No, it hadn’t been found.
No one would have been too stupid not to search Mrs. Garr’s closet first. If what was hunted had been found there, the search would have ended.
But it hadn’t.
It had gone on through my entire apartment. The disorder here was no red herring. I could have done a neater job, but not a more thorough one.
I knew well enough that there was nothing hidden among my things.
There was only one conclusion to draw. The hunter was still unsatisfied.
I closed my eyes and wondered if I’d be able to live through what was bound to come.
Right there, I quit the Garr case as fun. I went into it as battle: I get the murderer before he gets me.
Skirmishes began with the doorbell’s ring, the door’s opening, heavy feet in the hall. Lieutenant Strom, flanked by two men, stood beside my bed.
“Well, coming around?”
“I’m practically bursting with health.”
“That’s one gray hair less on my head. I regret very much that this has happened, Mrs. Dacres. If you want to light into me, go right ahead.”
“You still think Mrs. Garr’s death wasn’t murder?”
He sat down in the armchair and sighed.
“Mrs. Dacres, did you ever spend any thought at all on why society makes such a hue and cry about murder? After all, by and large, I’ve found out that a good many people who get murdered leave the world better off for their absence. Now, this is the way I look at it. One person kills another, willfully or accidentally. Society feels, naturally, that such a crime should be punished.
“But look at that punishment. It usually consists, or is
