Chapter 11
Sergeant Gilligan backed into the Cabots’ sitting room.
After him swirled a petite woman in a scarlet coat trimmed with white fur, and a scarlet cloche with white feathers—definitely the hat Daisy had seen going down in the lift.
Her scolding voice Daisy identified as belonging to the woman who had shouted at Carmody.
Framed by the luxurious fur, her delicate features were twisted now in anger, but expertly made up and probably very pretty when good tempered, or in repose.
She carried a large lizard-skin handbag, no doubt full of cosmetics.
Half a pace behind her came a man in a calf-length grey overcoat with an astrakhan collar. Of middle height, he had a plump, overfed face presently greasy with sweat. He was worried, even afraid. The hat he carried was a homburg, not a bowler, Daisy noted.
Behind the pair towered Patrolman Hicks, beaming. He was the uniformed policeman Daisy had last seen, looking bored, idly strolling along the passage outside her hotel room.
“This is an outrage!” screeched the woman.
Rosenblatt moved forward. “What’s going on? I’m Rosenblatt, Deputy District Attorney in charge of the Carmody case,” he explained when the couple and the patrolman all looked at him askance. “What’s up, ma’am?”
They all started talking at once.
“I was guarding Carmody’s door, sir,” Hicks reported, saluting, “like I was sent to, and …”
“I am Otis Carmody’s wife,” Mrs. Carmody affirmed icily. “I just wanted to retrieve …”
“Don’t say another word, honey baby,” bleated her gentleman friend, presumably Barton Bender. “I’ll telephone my …”
“Hold it, hold it!” said Rosenblatt. “There’s no need for lawyers, sir. I’m not planning anything but a friendly little chat here. Excuse me, ma’am, I better take the patrolman’s report first so he can go back to his post.”
“I was guarding Carmody’s room, sir,” Hicks repeated stolidly, “like I was sent to, and these guys come along and the dame takes a key outta her purse and sticks it in the keyhole and starts to turn it. So I tells ‘em the room’s closed by police orders for investigation of a homicide and I gotta take ’em down to Centre Street.
I says nice and polite they can come quiet or I can get out the cuffs, and they come all right but quiet ain’t the word!
Geez, that dame that looks like a wind’d blow her away ain’t never stopped cussing me out since …
O.K., sir, I guess you don’ wanna hear all that. ”
“You can write it all down in your report. How did you end up here instead of headquarters?”
“The elevator boy tol’ me Sergeant Gilligan’s here, sir.”
“And what I want to know,” put in the sergeant, “is how come the key was already in the lock when you stopped ’em if you was standing guard?”
“Geez, Sergeant,” said Hicks with an injured look, “if I‘d’ve stood right by the door alla time, there wouldn’t no one have tried to get in.
They’d’ve seen me and turned around right when they stepped out of the elevator and gone back down and we wouldn’t never have knowed who they was.
I went a ways along the corridor and waited where they couldn’t see me but I could keep an eye on things, see. ”
In the linen room—Daisy was prepared to bet—chatting with Bridget.
“O.K.,” Gilligan said grudgingly, “you done good, I guess. You better get back up there pronto before someone else tries it on.”
“Did anyone else have a key to your husband’s room that you know of, ma’am?” Rosenblatt asked.
“Not that I know of.” Mrs. Carmody blinked hard and dabbed at her eyes with a corner of a lacy handkerchief, careful not to blot her eye-black.
“Oh, this is all so turrible! You must think I’m awful, telling off that poor policeman when he was only doing his dooty, but this has all been turribly hard on my nerves. ”
“Won’t you sit down and tell me about it, ma’am?”
Rosenblatt ushered Mrs. Carmody to the far end of the room from the desk where Daisy sat, to her annoyance. The woman didn’t seem to notice the presence of unofficial others, too busy wiping away tears, real or pretended.
Bender, however, glanced around the room and scowled. He opened his mouth as if to protest but thought better of it. Gem-laden gold rings flashed on his plump fingers as
he took a large, purple-monogrammed handkerchief from his pocket and blotted his forehead. He hung his homburg on the hat rack in the foyer, then took off his overcoat, revealing a corpulent figure clad in a suit of grey-and-lavender check, and a purple bow tie with a flashy diamond pin.
Meekly, he followed his honey baby.
Gilligan went after them. As soon as all four had their backs turned, Daisy abandoned the mug book and Lambert, and tiptoed swiftly across to the Misses Cabot, who were much closer to the scene of the action. She sat down in the chair vacated by Rosenblatt.
Miss Cabot leaned towards her, about to speak. Miss Genevieve put her finger to her lips.
Miss Cabot mouthed a silent “oh dear!” Her knitting needles clicked on.
“Such a turrible shock,” Mrs. Carmody was saying, as she sank gracefully into the chair Rosenblatt held for her, “finding out in the papers this morning Otis was dead.”
“We tried to notify you last night at your hotel, ma’am,” said Rosenblatt, “and again this morning. You weren’t there.”
“We went to a party, me and Mr. Bender, that didn’t break up till daylight. He persuaded me to take a drive out in the country and get breakfast.”
“Where was that, sir?”
“What does it matter?” Bender blustered. “The papers said Carmody was shot at midday yesterday.”
“So what’s the big deal?” Gilligan demanded. “Whaddaya got against telling Mr. Rosenblatt where you was this morning?”
“I don’t know exactly. We went with a crowd, in a caravan. I just followed along.”
“Who else was there?” Rosenblatt asked.
“Uh …” A long pause, then Bender said cautiously, “I couldn’t exactly give you their names.”
Gilligan was instantly suspicious. “Why not?”
“Who was there, honey baby?”
“Red and Billie, HJ, Mona, Jerry, I think, and wasn’t that girl they called Midge with him? That’s all the names I can think of.” Mrs. Carmody waved a careless hand. “I didn’t know the others.”
“And you don’t know their last names? Telephone numbers?” Rosenblatt suggested. Bender and Mrs. Carmody both shook their heads. “How do you keep in touch?”
“Oh, they weren’t friends, just casual acquaintances. People we met at the party, weren’t they, Bart?”
“Who gave the party?”
The pair gazed at each other blankly. They had steered themselves onto a reef, though Daisy couldn’t quite see why Rosenblatt had bothered to chase them there.
Mrs. Carmody abandoned the sinking ship. “They were friends of Mr. Bender’s. I never caught their last name.”
Bender gave her a look at once wounded and forgiving. “Uh … Not exactly friends. See, things are pretty casual in our crowd … .”
“So you don’t know their names.” Rosenblatt shook his head. “But of course you know their address, since you took Mrs. Carmody there. No? Look, why don’t you just admit Mrs. Carmody spent the night at your house?”
“The heck she did!” Gilligan exclaimed. “I had a coupla men watching that place, and if they was there, they‘da followed ’em here. What I figure is he’s got an apartment
that he takes his fancy women to, so his servants can’t tell tales. I‘da found it if I’da had another coupla days.”
“Fancy woman! Barton Bender, are you going to sit there and let a cop insult me?”
“No, no, honey baby. Don’t you worry your pretty head. The truth is, Mr. Rosenblatt, I did rent an apartment specially for Mrs. Carmody when she left her husband. She didn’t wanna let him know so she took a hotel room, too. It’s not a crime to take a hotel room and not stay there.”
“Nor to spend the night with a lady friend.”
“I hadda try and pertect her good name, now, didn’t I? You gotta unnerstand, Elva’s real sensitive.”
“And you’re ready to lie to the police to protect her feelings.”
“Sure, sure, no harm done.”
“Izzat so?” Gilligan broke in. “I guess you’d be ready to do anything for the little lady, huh? Even croak her husband!”
“No!” cried Mrs. Carmody. “You didn’t, Bart, did you?”
“No, of course I didn’t, honey baby. Not that I wouldn’t’ve if you’da been in danger from him, but he wasn’t giving you any trouble a good lawyer couldn’t straighten out.”
“He was giving you trouble, then, Mrs. Carmody?” said Rosenblatt.
“Nothing serious,” she said quickly, “like Barton says. We had a bit of a tiff, Otis and me, but we’d have patched things up. A girl can have her fling, same as a man. You know what it’s like being married, all ups and downs but till death you part.”
“And death has you parted!” put in Gilligan. “Mighty convenient, ain’t it?”
Bender, who had gaped flabbergasted at Mrs. Carmody’s last statement, found his voice. “But honey baby, you’re going to marry me!”
“So we understood,” said Rosenblatt. “There was talk of divorce, not reconciliation.”
“Howdya know that?” shrilled Mrs. Carmody. “I wouldn’t never have let Otis divorce me.”
“Maybe not. What were you looking for in your husband’s room?”
“We didn’t even get in,” she objected.
“Some stuff Elva left there,” said Bender at the same moment.
“No, it wasn’t either. It was some of Otis’s papers Bart said I’d need now he was dead. I dunno what, he was gonna look through everything and pick them out for me.”
“Gonna go through Carmody’s papers, was you? Course, you wasn’t looking for the stuff he got on you, no sirree. Where was you lunchtime yesterday?”
“Business meeting,” Bender said promptly. “Started at eleven and we was still at it at twelve so we sent out for lunch. Didn’t knock off till after two.”
“Who was there? Let’s have names and addresses, and let’s not try on any funny business about not knowing.”
Bender didn’t try on any funny business. He gave the names and addresses of three men, one of which made Miss Genevieve raise her eyebrows.
Gilligan was impressed. “Geez, Henry Morgan! The banker’s son, huh?”