12:30 a. m.—Madame Velasquez Stirs up Muck
The taxi ran north along Fifth Avenue for a few blocks and then bore
left into the leafless, frosty stretches of Central Park. It was
deserted of pedestrians. Occasional yellow lights showed the vacant
surface of benches and empty walks.
The average worthlessness of any person’s reactions when suddenly
confronted by the police, Lieutenant Valcour reflected, was a curious
phenomenon. It was his belief that only rarely were such reactions the
result of the moment at hand. They were instead a subconscious
scurrying backward to some earlier time when something had been done
by that person, or known by that person, which might then have brought
him into the grip of the law. No one—he included himself in the
arraignment—led a blameless life. No, not even the saints, for they
had their periods of expiation, which in themselves presupposed
blemishes that required the act of expiation for their erasure. And so
it was with people when, even in the rôle of the most innocent of
bystanders, they were confronted by the police. Inevitably there
lurked a certain fear, an instinctive thrusting out of defenses as a
guard against the chance discovery of that early blemish. . . .
Take Hollander, for instance. Every word of his telephone conversation
had been a negative defense, and yet one could not link it necessarily
with the attack on Endicott. No, not necessarily. It was perfectly
obvious that Hollander had _expected_ something to happen to Endicott,
and equally obvious that he was worried about the fact that Mrs.
Endicott might be involved in it, but one couldn’t say that he had
been involved in it himself. . . .
The taxi stopped. Lieutenant Valcour got out, paid the driver, and
dismissed him.
Riverside Drive seemed about ten degrees colder than the midtown
section of the city had been. Or was it fifteen or twenty degrees? A
northerly wind blew iced blasts from the Hudson River and at him
across the treetops of the terraced park. Marge Myles, Lieutenant
Valcour decided as he took in the façade of the building that housed
her apartment, did herself rather well.
A sleepy and irritable Negro casually asked him “Wha’ floor—’n’ who,
suh?” as he entered the overheated lobby. The boy was smartly snapped
into full consciousness by the view offered him of Lieutenant
Valcour’s gold badge.
The proper floor proved to be the fourteenth.
As the hour was hovering about one in the morning, Lieutenant Valcour
was considerably surprised at the promptness with which the door swung
open in response to his ring, and considerably more surprised by the
querulous voice that emerged from beneath a wig, dimly seen in the
poor light of a foyer, and said, “Well, I must say you took your own
time in coming. Put your coat and hat on that table there, and then
come into the parlour.”
Lieutenant Valcour complied. He followed a dimmish mass of jet bugles
into the more accurate light of a room heavily cluttered with
gold-leafed furniture and brocades.
“I’m Madame Velasquez—Marge’s ma. I ain’t Spanish myself, but if there
ever was a Spaniard, my late husband Alvarez was.”
The wig on Madame Velasquez’s head offered no anachronism to the
bugles of her low-cut dress. Its reddish russet strands were
pompadoured and puffed and showed at unexpected places little sprays
of determined curls. The face beneath it bore an odd resemblance to an
enamelled nut to which nature, in a moment of freakish humour, had
added features.
“Now I want you to tell me at once, Mr. Endicott, what you have done
with my little Marge.”
Lieutenant Valcour with curious eyes tried to probe a closed door at
the other end of the room.
“I expected to find her here, Madame Velasquez,” he said quietly.
“Isn’t she?”
“She ain’t. And what is furthermore, Mr. Herbert Endicott, you know
she ain’t.” Her voice had grown shrill, but without much volume. It
was rather the ineffective piping of some winded bird.
“What makes you say that, Madame Velasquez?”
The bunched strands of artificial jewellery that were recklessly
clasped about Madame Velasquez’s thin neck quivered defiantly.
“And you never met her here at seven,” she said. “I suppose you’ll say
you _wasn’t_ to meet her here at seven. Well, I got this note to prove
it. There, now.”
She handed Lieutenant Valcour a sheet of notepaper that reeked of some
high-powered scent.
Make yourself at home, Ma [read the note]. Herb Endicott was to meet
me here at seven. He didn’t come although he was to take me to the
Colonial for dinner. I am going to the Colonial now and see if he is
there. Maybe I did not understand him right, Ma. I will be home soon
anyways.
Marge
“And it is now,” said Madame Velasquez, “after 1 a. m.”
“She knew you were going to pay her this visit, Madame Velasquez?”
“I telegraphed her this afternoon. I’m here for a week. Where is she?”
“I don’t know where she is, Madame Velasquez.”
“Mr. Endicott, one more lie like that and I’ll call the police.”
“That’s all right, Madame Velasquez. You see, I am the police.”
The bugles, the jewels, the curls became still with shocking
abruptness, as a brake that without warning binds tightly.
“You belong to the police?”
“Yes, Madame Velasquez—Lieutenant Valcour.”
He showed his badge.
“Then you ain’t Mr. Endicott?”
“No, Madame Velasquez.”
“Then he—she—they’ve gone and done it, Lieutenant—they have run away.”
Madame Velasquez began to simper.
“I’m sorry, Madame Velasquez, but they haven’t run away. Mr. Endicott,
you see, was attacked this evening. If he doesn’t live, whoever did it
will be charged with murder.”
There was a complete absence of expression in Madame Velasquez’s tone.
“And you think Marge done it,” she said.
“Not necessarily so at all. Your daughter may very well have met
somebody else at the Colonial—some other party of friends—and have
joined it when Mr. Endicott failed to show up. The Colonial is closed
by now, but perhaps she went on to some night club. I shouldn’t
worry.”
“Why should she go on to some night club when she knew her ma was
waiting for her here?”
Madame Velasquez’s thin hands, the fingers of which were loaded with
cheap rings, played nervously with any substance they chanced to
touch.
“Something’s happened to her, Lieutenant,” she went on. “I always told
her as how it would. Marge—I told her a hundred times if I ever told
her once—there’s a limit to the number of suckers you can play at one
and the same time.”
“You think that some man who was jealous perhaps attacked Endicott
first and then got after her?”
“Man? Men, Lieutenant, men. That brat kept the opposite of a harem, if
you know what I mean.”
“She isn’t your daughter, really, is she, Madame Velasquez?”
“She was Alvarez’s only child by his first wife—some Spanish female
hussy from Seville. What made you guess?”
“The way you talked about her. But do keep right on, Madame Velasquez.
What a remarkable pendant—it’s a rarity to see so perfect a ruby—may
I?”
Madame Velasquez simpered audibly while Lieutenant Valcour leaned
forward and stared earnestly at the bit of paste.
“My late husband, Lieutenant, used to say that nothing was too good
for pretty Miramar. That’s my name, Lieutenant—Miramar.”
“Few people are so happily named, Madame Velasquez. Tell me—let me
rely upon your woman’s intuition—just what did Marge expect from
Endicott?”
Madame Velasquez leaned forward confidentially. An atmosphere as of
frenzied heliotropes clung thickly about her.
“Every last damn nickel she could get,” she said.
Lieutenant Valcour assumed his most winning smile. “Scarcely an
_affaire du cœur_, Madame Velasquez.” If he had had a moustache, he
would have twirled it. “I suppose her early marriage embittered her,
rather hardened her against men?”
“Well, if it did I ain’t noticed it none.”
“Perhaps Endicott came under the heading of business rather than
pleasure?”
“Well, yes, and then no.”
“A happy combination?”
“Just a combination. Not so damn happy.”
“A little bickering now and then?”
“A lot.”
“Indeed? Marge was on the stage, wasn’t she?”
“If you can call it the stage nowadays, Lieutenant.”
“In the chorus, wasn’t she?”
“Yes.”
“And Harry Myles saw her and carried her off.”
Madame Velasquez’s laugh was an art; unfortunately not a lost one.
“The millionaire marriage,” she gasped. “My dear”—her hand found a
resting place on one of Lieutenant Valcour’s knees—“he didn’t have a
cent.”
“She felt disappointed, I suppose?”
“Disappointed!” Madame Velasquez fairly screamed the word at him, like
an angry parrot. Her manner changed and became darkly mysterious. “I
know my little know,” she said. “You can believe me, Lieutenant,
little Miramar’s not the boob some parties I could mention, but won’t,
think she is.” Her voice grew harsh with the gritty quality of a file.
“I’ll learn her to leave me in the ditch like this.”
“Then you think Marge purposely isn’t here to greet you?”
It was a sweet little bunch of filth, taken all in all, thought
Lieutenant Valcour. It was perfectly plain: Madame Velasquez either
held definite knowledge that Marge had killed Harry Myles, or else had
convinced Marge that she knew. And then Madame Velasquez had simply
bled Marge of all the money she could get.
“Is Marge frightened easily, Madame Velasquez?”
“About some things.”
The reddish, dusty-looking curls nodded vigorously. Lieutenant Valcour
looked at his watch. It was one-thirty. He stood up.
“Thank you for receiving me, Madame Velasquez. If I leave you a
telephone number would you care to call me up when Marge comes in? Or
will you be in bed?”
“Leave your number, Lieutenant.” The seamy enamelled face became more
nutlike than ever. “I got a thing or two to talk over with that female
Brigham Young.” She raised a be-ringed hand and held it unescapably
close to Lieutenant Valcour’s lips.
He brushed them gently against a hardened coat of whiting, smiled his
pleasantest, and left, assisted doorward by what might at one time
have been called a sigh.
He paused for a moment in the small foyer, after putting on his hat
and coat, and pencilled the Endicotts’ telephone number on one of his
cards. He started back to give it to Madame Velasquez.
She wasn’t in the room where he had left her, and the room’s other
door stood ajar. He crossed to it softly and looked in. Madame
Velasquez—yes, he convinced himself, it _was_ Madame Velasquez—was
sitting before a dresser. Her wig was off, and her heavily enamelled
face peered into a mirror beneath thin knots of corn-gray hair. As the
lonely, weak old voice rose and fell, Lieutenant Valcour caught a word
or two of what Madame Velasquez was saying:
“He didn’t know—if I went and told her once, I told her a thousand
times—he didn’t _know_.” There followed a short, dreadful noise that
passed as laughter. “But _I_ know—Miramar knows, darling—you little
lousy . . .”
Lieutenant Valcour retreated softly. He left the card lying on a
table. He went outside and closed the door. He rang for the elevator
and shut his eyes while waiting for it to come up. There were times
when they grew a little weary from looking too intimately upon life.
Down in the lobby he used the house telephone and called up the
Endicotts’.
“Lieutenant Valcour talking,” he said.
“O’Brian, sir.”
“Everything quiet?”
“Indeed and it is, sir.”
“Mr. Hollander get there yet?”
“He’s just this minute after arriving, sir. He’s upstairs with Dr.
Worth now.”
“Did he identify himself all right?”
“He did that, Lieutenant, with cards and a driver’s licence.”
“Good. I’ll be along in about an hour now. Good-bye.”
He was helped by the bitter wind as he walked east to Broadway. He
found a taxi and gave the driver Hollander’s address on East
Fifty-second Street. He settled back and closed his eyes. He went to
sleep.