Stewart Sterling - Dead of Night

The assistant medical examiner placed the time of death at approximately nine p.m., Saturday evening. An informant at the office of the District Attorney suggested that the executive’s death might have been due to a temporarily unbalanced mental condition, following a fatal encounter with a member of the Prosecutor’s staff a short time before the suicide.

There was a guarded reference to a violent dispute in connection with an unnamed woman who was being sought for questioning.

Business and club associates of Lanerd professed the usual profound shock and sorrow, denied all knowledge of financial or domestic difficulties in the life of “the most successful advertising man of the decade.” Mrs. Lanerd, prostrated by the blow, could not be reached for comment.

Reading between the lines, there remained an impression of a drunken brawl in some girl’s room, a fight and a fatality, followed by remorse and suicide. All very commonplace. Very unfortunate. Very silly.

There was nothing concerning the note Tildy’d left for him, so people wouldn’t begin to get ideas about the Plaza Royale being a cozy spot to pitch a love nest. That was the only break the hotel got. Except that Auguste wasn’t mentioned.

Under the lather and the hot towel, I went over it all. Lanerd, Auguste, Roffis, Gowriss, Ruth, Yaker, Edie, Walch, Marge, MacGregory, Nikky, Tildy. Aussi, the man in the taxi!

All the juice I squeezed out of it was that in some strange manner, the blasting of a police informer down on the Bowery six days ago was connected with the death of a millionaire adman on Fifth Avenue. It didn’t add up.

I totaled the columns over again while I watched the gas trucks under the wings of the DC6; later, as I marched up the ramp, grinned at the seductive sally in the stewardess uniform, strapped on my belt. I was still ponderin’ when we zoomed over the honeycomb of lighted windows that was New York, zipped across the strip of burnished metal that was the Hudson, gained altitude for the mountains.

By the time we came down through a threatening thunderstorm, three hours later, to the field beside the Ohio, I’d reached one certain conclusion. Tildy Millett was the core of it; she probably knew the killer; certainly she knew what the cryptic “Never forget four” meant.

At Cincinnati there was half an hour before the DC3 left for Lexington. I pushed through a call to New York, to Fran.

She was contrite about letting Tildy get away from her at the Brulard. The skate star had called a bellman to see if he could buy her a hairbrush on Sunday; while the bellman had the door open, Tildy’d simply slipped out and run down the stairs.

Fran’d had a horrible night with Tildy. It had taken the skater hours to get to sleep. Hours of tears, nerves, incoherencies. Even after the Rip Van Winkles had taken effect, the star of the Icequadrilles had tossed and writhed and moaned and talked in her uneasy slumber.

Fran couldn’t make much out of it, beyond the constant calling for Dow — Dow — Dow. “Oh, one thing, Mister V. About half past three, when I thought she was quieting down, she began to laugh like a maniac.”

“In her sleep?”

“Sound asleep. Then she said, very clearly and bitterly, as if reproaching him, ‘One for sorrow, two for mirth, hahahaha.’ It made my skin crawl to listen to her.”

“That was all? No more? Just one and two. No four? Or seven?”

“That was all. She did fall asleep then.”

“Yair. Well. Go thou and do likewise. Thanks for a tough job.”

“I’m not kidding. It was. I wish you’d stayed there, yourself!”

“So do I. ’Night.”

It was a rough jaunt. Night flights are usually smoother than day flying but that thunderstorm was chasing us all the way to the Bluegrass. The bumpy trip may have contributed to my gloom. When they pulled the ramp over to us at Lexington, the mercury was pole-vaulting up over the ninety mark. And I had cold feet.

If I didn’t hurt anyone but myself it wouldn’t be so bad to canter around investigating a couple of grisly homicides in an entirely different direction from that taken by the duly constituted authorities. But if I was putting another person’s life in danger, and there seemed to be better than an even chance I was doing just that, then I had to consider the consequences. I did so, hence my gloom.

It was all so lucid, way they figured it. Roffis stabbed in a scuffle because he tried to prevent Tildy and Dow from taking her belongings with her, en route to Rio and a divorce cum marriage. Auguste’s being given the compact to say he knew nothing about the guard’s death. Tildy’s subsequent turndown of her Casanova. His resulting suicide.

If I hadn’t known about the wax spots and the finger marks — which weren’t fingerprints — on Tildy’s bedroom door, if it wasn’t for being trailed and shot at by someone who couldn’t have been Dow L., I might have accepted Hacklin’s view. As it was, I couldn’t shake off a conviction that the killer was still up and about, that there’d be another murder if I didn’t find the answer, but sudden.

“One for sorrow, two for mirth.” It clattered around in my cranium like one of those idiotic singing commercials, while I coffeed and crullered. “One for sorrow, two for mirth.” What the hell? The tie-in with “Seven for a secret” and “Never forget four” seemed obvious. But the meaning was as murky as the skies when I went out to hire a hack.

Thunder grumbled. Lightning flashes made the white fences stand out as if floodlighted, against the vivid green of thoroughbred pastures. The heat was oppressive.

The cabdriver knew where Tildy Millett’s place was, sure. A show farm, Lovelawn was. Not many horses out there now, but he’d heard she planned to breed trotters next spring. Maybe she’d be breeding something else, too; there was talking about her latching up with some big advertising man.

I chuckled at his feeble jest. Would he know whether she’d come home by plane, today?

He wouldn’t know. He’d just come on at midnight. But it was only another mile down the pike; there were relatives living with her, if I wanted him to wait while I found out if she was there.

It began to rain. We passed a famous racing stud whose colors I’d bet on often at the tracks. The whitewashed stables and paddocks, the parklike grounds, the long white fences loping over gently rolling hills — very picturesque. The Land of Gracious Living. As advertised. I was in no mood to appreciate it.

Why had Lanerd said Tildy was on her way to Lexington when she hadn’t been? Why had Walch’s club thought he might be in Lexington, when he was on Long Island Sound? Most important, what followed “One for sorrow, two for mirth”?

The cabdriver said, “Here’s Lovelawn. Hey, they got the chain on.” He stopped.

Between fieldstone pillars a massive chain was padlocked.

“I better wait for you, huh? It’s quite a piece up to the house. Maybe there’s nobody home, after all.”

“Stick around ten minutes. If I’m not back by then, I’ll be staying awhile.” I gave him a buck over the fare.

He said okay, I’d get soaked, he’d lend me his slicker only if I didn’t come back he’d have no way to get it.

I thought the rain was letting up, much obliged.

There was a small lodge about a hundred yards inside the gate; no light showing there. If there was any illumination on at the big house I couldn’t distinguish it, though its four tall white columns and its two broad wings showed up clearly enough through the avenue of oaks, every time the lightning flashed.

No one could have heard me coming, with all that grumbling from the thunderheads, the hrrush of the downpour. But it would have been easy enough to see me, if anyone were watching for intruders.