The Second Richard Deming Mystery MEGAPACK™: 23 Classic Mystery Stories
- Автор: Деминг Ричард
- Год: 2016
- Язык: английский
- Год: Wildside Press
- ISBN: 9781479423507
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «The Second Richard Deming Mystery MEGAPACK™: 23 Classic Mystery Stories». Краткое содержание книги:
“Mr. Clancy Ross?”
“Right.”
The woman hung up.
At first the incident puzzled him, but then light dawned. Big John Quinnel, having heard nothing from his gunman Bugsy, had taken this method to learn if Ross were still among the living.
Ross grinned to himself.
At nine, just as he was getting ready to leave the apartment, the phone rang again. This time it was Helene Stoneman.
“Did I get you up?” she asked.
“No. I’ve been up an hour.”
“Would you like to come over here for a home-cooked dinner?”
“Tonight?” Ross said. “I really ought to stay at the club, Helene. I missed most of last night, and this place doesn’t exactly run itself.”
“Oh.” She was silent for a few moments. “You mean you won’t be able to get away any evenings any more?”
“I take nights off,” Ross said patiently. “Just not two in a row.”
She said, “Oh,” again, then, “The funeral’s tomorrow, you know. Logan’s Funeral Home. Are you going?”
“I planned to. What time?”
“Two p.m. There won’t be any relatives, so you can sit with me. You being Benny’s employer, it will be quite proper, won’t it?”
“I suppose so.”
“Then I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon,” she said in a soft voice.
She made it sound like a rendezvous. Ross thought as he hung up, torn between irritation and amusement at the idea of a lovers’ tryst taking place at the funeral of the husband of one of the lovers—
Nineteen twenty-two Park Street was the right half of a two-story duplex house in a neighborhood of about the same economic level as Helene Stoneman’s, but much older. There was no name plate on the letterbox.
A plump, plain-faced woman of about thirty answered Ross’s ring. She was an ash blonde with a round Dutch-girl face which looked as though it would normally be cheerful. At the moment it was woebegone and the eyes were reddened from weeping.
Ross said, “Hi. I don’t know your name, but does your initial happen to be ‘M’?”
The woman looked at him blankly. “I don’t think I understand.”
“I’m Clancy Ross. Benny Stoneman worked for me. That mean anything to you?”
Now the woman looked startled. She examined the slim gambler from his prematurely gray hair to his brightly polished shoes.
Finally she asked, “How’d you find out about me?”
“A letter Benny left lying around. You are M, aren’t you?”
She shrugged hopelessly. “Come in, Mr. Ross.”
He followed her into a large living room comfortably but old-fashionedly furnished with mohair furniture, marble-topped end tables and beaded lamps of the same vintage as the house. Ross chose an over-stuffed chair and the woman wearily seated herself in the center of a huge sofa, her hands folded in her lap.
“Mind telling me your name?” Ross asked.
“Marion Vandeveldt,” she said. “It’s Dutch. What is it you want with me, Mr. Ross?”
“I’m trying to find out why Benny was killed. I’m working on my own, not with the police. You don’t have to talk with me.”
She reflected. “I don’t mind talking to you. I suppose the police know about Benny and me anyway, since you do.”
“Not yet,” Ross said. “But they will in a couple of hours. You’ll probably get a visit from a Lieutenant Redfern this afternoon.”
He studied the woman, wondering why a man with a wife as attractive as Helene Stoneman would pick such a plain mistress. While Marion Vandeveldt was pleasant-looking enough in a well-scrubbed spinstery sort of way, Ross could hardly visualize her making a man’s blood hammer in his veins.
He asked, “You live here alone, Miss Vandeveldt?”
“Yes. My folks have been dead for some years. It’s just as well. If they were still alive, this scandal would kill them.”
“Not necessarily,” Ross said. “How long have you known Benny?”
“About six weeks. He moved here from Chicago a full month before he went to work for you, you know. We met at an open-air concert at Fallon Park. Benny loved music as much as I do, but his wife wouldn’t go to concerts with him.”
Mutual interest in music, Ross thought, mentally recording one clue at least to the mystery of the bookkeeper straying.
He said, “Excuse me if this sounds unnecessarily personal, but Benny didn’t strike me as a Lothario. Yet he had a beautiful wife and an attractive mistress, both at least fifteen years younger than he. Just what was his attraction?”
Her expression became one of inward contemplation, as though searching for an answer herself. Presently she said, “Ever see him smile?”
Ross reflected. “I suppose. I don’t really recall.”
“He didn’t often,” the woman said. “There wasn’t much in his life to smile about. But when he did, he was a different person. His face grew young and sort of wistful, like a small boy looking at a red bicycle in a store window. It turned your heart over when he smiled. I doubt that any woman could have resisted Benny’s smile. Except his wife.”
“He wasn’t happy with her?”
“Would he have turned to a mistress if he had been?” she asked. “I’m no competition physically to a woman as beautiful as Helene Stoneman. I’ve seen her picture and I look in mirrors. He came to me for the things he couldn’t get at home. Companionship, and interest in the things he was interested in. Benny would never have looked at me if he’d had anything at home. Or even with nothing at home if his wife had at least been true physically. He felt justified in taking a mistress on the basis of what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.”
“His wife had a lover too?”
The woman gave a brittle laugh. “She chases everything in pants. Benny moved here from Chicago to break up the affair between Helene and his former boss.”
“Big John Quinnel?” Ross asked in surprise.
“I don’t know the Chicago employer’s name. But Benny said he thought the man was relieved when Benny decided to quit his job and move here. According to Benny, Helene always throws herself so hard at the men she picks, once the novelty wears off, she becomes a nuisance. She tries to envelope her lovers, wanting to monopolize their full attention twenty-four hours a clay, seven days a week. Benny said the affairs never last long, because the men begin to struggle away as soon as they learn what they’ve gotten into.”
“Why the devil did Benny put up with her?” Ross asked.
“He defended her by saying she was sick,” the woman said wearily. “He’d had her to a couple of psychiatrists who gave him a lot of high-sounding words about her man chasing being a compulsion she couldn’t resist, stemming from too early physical development and too much popularity with boys when she was very young. The psychiatrists’ explanation was that she was frantically grasping for a return of her teen-age popularity, so when men stopped chasing her after she married, she had to chase them.”
Ross said dubiously, “I still don’t understand why he put up with it.”
“Well, their entire married life wasn’t as bad as I’ve painted it. Benny told me that under psychiatric treatment she’d get better for a while and start acting like a normal wife. Then along would come a new man and the merry-go-round would start all over again. I’m surprised you escaped her. Mr. Ross, being Benny’s employer.”
“I never met her until yesterday,” Ross said.
A little ruefully he considered Helene’s three phone calls since they had met in the light of what he had just learned, and he looked into the future without much enthusiasm.
Ross had very little additional conversation with the woman, but he did manage to learn that she also owned a blue sedan, in this case a Chevrolet. As he drove back to the club, he wondered if it had even occurred to Marion Vandeveldt that she was a suspect in the case.