Chapter 10
When Daisy reached the point in her story where Lambert irrupted onto the scene of the crime brandishing a pistol, Miss Genevieve glanced at the young man with a new interest. Possibly, her look said, he might be worthy of further acquaintance.
His subsequent downing at the hands of Mr. Thorwald brought a snort of disbelief.
“Sigurd Thorwald tackled him? I remember him as a copy-boy, and he was pedantic old fusspot even then. He brought down that great lummox? There’s more to the old geezer than I thought, and even less to the young one.”
“I didn’t expect him to jump me,” Lambert said sulkily. “Besides, I lost my glasses.”
“And your gun,” said Daisy, “which I caught, by a miracle.” She was about to continue when someone knocked at the door.
“Oh dear,” said Miss Cabot, dropping her knitting, “who can that be? Were we expecting visitors this morning, sister?”
“Whatever our expectations, sister, we seem to have collected quite a crowd,” observed Miss Genevieve, as Detective
O’Rourke, who had remained standing in the archway to the foyer, turned to open the door. “The more, the merrier. Who is it?” she called. “Come in, come in!”
“Sorry to disturb you, ma’am. The elevator boy told me Detective Sergeant Gilligan is here.”
“Who … ? Oh, young Rosenblatt! You followed in your father’s footsteps, didn’t you? I’ll never forget the time he brought you into court—eleven or twelve, you were—”
“Please, ma’am!”
Miss Genevieve grinned maliciously. “Oho, we mustn’t upset your dignity. You’re on the Carmody case, I take it, looking out for Tammany’s interests.”
“Looking out for a murderer,” Rosenblatt corrected her. “We have to clear this up before the election. It would be almost as bad to have the Press saying we’re incompetent as to have Tammany involved. Which they aren’t,” he hastened to add.
“Well, then, you’d better get on with it. Don’t mind me.”
Rosenblatt nervously smoothed his sleek, fair hair, thinning a little on top. “Good morning, Miss Cabot, Mrs. Fletcher,” he said, with a curt nod for Lambert. “Sergeant? What’s going on?”
“I was gonna take another look at Carmody’s room, sir, and then escort Mrs. Fletcher downtown personal, her being a foreigner. But Miss Genevieve said …”
“O.K, O.K.!”
“Detective Larssen went to get the mug book, and I was just going over Mrs. Fletcher’s story with her, see if she come up with sumpin new.”
“Go ahead.”
Daisy went ahead. The only detail she was able to add
to her previous description of the fugitive was that she rather thought he had been wearing an overcoat.
“Colour?” asked Gilligan.
“Not black,” said Daisy, “and not that new shade of blue that’s so fashionable at the moment. I suppose it must have been brown or grey. Or navy, possibly. No, not navy.”
“Not navy! That’s a great help,” Rosenblatt said sarcastically.
“So we gotta look out for a man in a derby and a brown or grey overcoat. How many d’ya figure there are in Noo York, Mr. Rosenblatt?”
“It might have been a disguise,” proposed Lambert.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern looked at him in silent disgust.
“Yeah, sure. You come up with any new ideas about where the shot came from, Mrs. Fletcher? It coulda come from behind you?”
“Yes, but not from Mr. Thorwald. He was quite close to me. I’m sure I’d have known if he had fired.”
“Even if his gun had a silencer?”
“Yes,” said Daisy, with somewhat less certainty.
“Thorwald!” Miss Genevieve exclaimed scornfully. “Talk about clutching at straws. That man wouldn’t have the guts to … though he did tackle Lambert,” she reminded herself. “Still, what possible motive could Thorwald have?”
“He was with me for at least an hour beforehand,” Daisy pointed out. “He had no reason to know Carmody would be there. Carmody worked for Pascoli, not Mr. Thorwald.”
“No interest in politics,” Miss Genevieve confirmed. “Words were always his passion, ‘Words, words, words,’ no matter what the matter.”
Gilligan gazed at her blankly. “A word’s a word. You mean Thorwald had words with Carmody?”
“No, Sergeant, I mean nothing of the sort.”
“Sergeant Gilligan,” Rosenblatt broke in, “you better check with Pascoli whether Thorwald had anything to do with Carmody or expressed any interest, but I’d say you’re barking up the wrong tree. Mr. Lambert’s another matter.” He turned to Lambert, who shrank.
“It wasn’t me!”
“Maybe it wasn’t, but there’s this Washington connection we have to follow up. I’ve put in a telephone call to Washington to check your credentials.”
Lambert looked relieved. “Oh, that’s O.K. then.”
“I’m afraid not, not the way things have been in D.C. One of the Harding crowd Carmody blew the whistle on could have hired you to put him away and used his own or his pals’ influence to get you taken on as an agent, for cover.”
“I can’t help feeling,” Daisy murmured, “that they would have chosen someone with decent eyesight and a better aim.”
“It wasn’t like that at all,” Lambert protested. “My dad’s in insurance, see, and I didn’t want to go into insurance. I always wanted to be a federal agent, ever since I was a kid. My dad knows Mr. Hoover, so he …”
“Pulled strings. Yeah, maybe, but it’ll all have to be checked out, which could take a while. I’ll have to ask you not to leave New York, Mr. Lambert, and to notify me or Sergeant Gilligan if you move from this hotel.”
“Oh, I don’t mind doing that. I can’t leave before Mr. Fletcher gets here, anyway.”
“What?” demanded Miss Genevieve. “Why not?”
Daisy hastened to explain before anyone else could get their version in.
“I’ve been involved in one or two—well, maybe three or four—of my husband’s cases.
Apparently his superiors at the Yard saw fit to advise Mr. Hoover to set a watchdog onto me to make sure I didn’t get mixed up in anything over here. ”
“In vain!” Miss Genevieve clapped her hands. “My dear Mrs. Fletcher, I just knew we were kindred souls. One of these days, you must tell me all about everything. But right now, I have to say the role of watchdog seems to me far more appropriate for Mr. Lambert than that of hired assassin.”
Everyone stared at Lambert. His ears turned red and he looked like an overgrown schoolboy.
“Yeah, sure,” said Gilligan in disgust. “O.K., let’s have what you saw and heard over again. Maybe if you think real hard, you’ll remember noticing sumpin Mrs. Fletcher didn’t. Or even think of some other guy that coulda a croaked Carmody.”
“Orlando,” interrupted Miss Cabot. “Orlando, sister?”
“Who’s this bird Orlando?” asked the sergeant suspiciously. “Sounds like an Eyetie, like that Pascoli. I figured he was in it someplace. You know sumpin we don’t, ma’am?”
“Orlando,” Miss Genevieve announced, “is a city in Florida. Which is south of New York, not in the West.”
Gilligan was indignant. “I know where Florida is!”
“I dare say.” Miss Genevieve sounded not altogether convinced. “However, the latter part of my remark was addressed to my sister. She has been trying to recall where Mr. Pitt told us he comes from.”
“The guy that had an argument with Carmody in the
lobby? What he put in the register’s Eugene City, Oregon. That’s a hick town out west someplace, I guess.”
“Oregon is just south of Washington,” said Rosenblatt.
“That right, sir? Coulda swore it was out west someplace.”
“The state of Washington, not D.C.,” the Deputy D.A. explained impatiently. “Miss Genevieve, may I ask why Wilbur Pitt should have told you where he came from?”
“The subject arose naturally in relation to his literary opus, which I understood to be a more or less fictionalized version of his life in the wilds of the West.”
“He was a cowboy?” asked Gilligan with sudden interest. “That’d explain why he was packing heat.”
Daisy must have looked completely blank, because Lambert leaned over to whisper, “Carrying a gun.”
“Was he?” Miss Genevieve wanted to know.
“Geez, ma’am, how could he of shot Carmody if he wasn’t?”
“You have no reason to suppose he did shoot Carmody. As it happens he had been a farmer, logger, and miner, leading, as far as I could gather, a life of considerable hardship and singular dullness.”
“Rats! What did he have to write a book about, then?”
“Not much. He described it as Proustian.”
“Huh?”
“Since he can hardly have meant that it concerns the doings of Parisian high society, I imagine he referred to Proust’s custom of describing objects and sensations in obsessively minute detail.”
Daisy was impressed. She had once tackled Proust but given up after a very few pages.
“Geez, an intellectooal!” said Gilligan dismissively.
“So you don’t believe Carmody’s cousin was involved, Sergeant? I’m inclined to …”
“Wait a minute,” Rosenblatt interrupted. “He told you he was Carmody’s cousin?”
“Not exactly,” Miss Genevieve said cautiously, “but I certainly have the impression they were related.”
“You didn’t tell me that, Sergeant! What did Pitt have to say for himself?”
“I ain’t grilled him yet, sir.” He cast an accusing glare at Miss Genevieve’s bland face. “I didn’t know they was cousins, so we ain’t been looking for him pertickler. He’s not the only guy had a beef with Carmody, not by a long shot.”
Daisy couldn’t help thinking that if she could work out, from Bridget’s report of the quarrel, that the men were related, the detective should have done likewise.
It was his job, after all. Maybe he’d been sidetracked by assuming that Willie was William, not Wilbur, she thought charitably, but he ought at least to have been looking for a relative.
“How right you are, Sergeant,” said Miss Genevieve affably. “Wilbur Pitt was by no means the only person to dislike Carmody, and many had far better reason to hate his guts.”
“Oh sister!”
“Don’t be so mealy-mouthed, sister, or cover your ears again.”
“Oh dear!”