The Mammoth Book Of Roaring Twenties Whodunnits Part 58

"I thought you two weren't social."

"We are not. But we do converse."

"Thank you for your time," I said, exiting.

I caught a cab on the fly and found myself at the Boston Public Library. A City Directory gave me the name Dolly Diamond as the owner of Number Sixty Woodlawn Street. No occupation was listed.

Because I needed to think, I walked to the Daily Record Building. I knew a reporter there. I know reporters on all the city papers, but if you want to hit paydirt, look to the tabloids first.

Lowery was what pa.s.sed for the Record's theatre critic. He was wearing a champagne grin when I found him wandering the halls.

"What's new?" I asked.

"Everything," Lowery grinned. "Raymond Huntley as Dracula is scaring them so hard over at the Hollis, they have nurses in attendence to catch 'em as they faint. Over at Loew's State, they've packin' 'em in with their first talkie, Our Daring Daughters. Joan Crawford, you know. This old town is starting to hop. And we owe it all to to the new generation of Flaming Youth. May they dance the Charleston till their arches drop."

"Dolly Diamond. Know the name?"

"What's she done now?"

"I gather she has a reputation," I said dryly.

Lowery took me down to the Record's morgue, and handed me a sheaf of clippings.

The most recent was dated less than a year ago. Torn from the front page, it showed a wraparound-skirted flapper in one of those cloche helmets that pa.s.s for a ladies hat these days. Under the picture was a legend: DOLLY DIAMOND IN HER HEYDAY.

I read the clipping with interest Dolly Diamond, Ex-Hub girl, given name, Mary McNulty, "a Roxbury girl who made good in the city", is divorced. To the world, she is Mrs Carmine Novelli. In the cafes and night clubs and the late-lighted places of New York, Paris and London, however, she will never be known by any other name than Dolly Diamond. Announcement that she has obtained a Mexican divorce from Carmine Novelli, restaurateur, was made in New York by Eduardo Roldan, Mexican attorney.

He said the woman who left her home beneath the Elevated station near Egleston Square a dozen years ago to marry wealth and fame, charged the Greenwich Village restaurateur with mental cruelty.

It is only a bit more than seven years since Dolly Diamond, then Mary McNulty, daughter of a mail carrier living in Dimock Street, Roxbury, came to fame by eloping to Providence, Rhode Island, with Jack Diamond, Junior, Brown student and son of a wealthy Houston cattleman. Papa Diamond waxed exceedingly wroth over his son's plunge into matrimony and cut his allowance from $500 a month to $5 a week. The romance ended 3 years later with a divorce. She married Carmine Novelli in 1925.

"Where is she now?" I asked Lowery.

"Search me and keep the change. Last known address was Jane Street, Greenwich Village."

I studied the photo. It resembled Spooky Spookins in a general way. I realized I had yet to glean the hue of her hair. "She have a sister or a daughter that you know about?"

"Never heard that she did. But you know that set. Woman has a brat and it's either with the nanny or foisted off on a boarding school."

I nodded. "Thanks, Lowery. Watch that giggle water."

"I count every bubble as they go in," Lowery quipped, patting the flask in his hip pocket.

I was on the next train back to Providence. The Dean of Students was surprised to see me back, but he took it with aplomb.

"Jack Diamond is an alumnus," he reported. "Or I regret to say, was."

"Was?" I asked.

The Dean consulted what appeared to be an obituary.

"Deceased, according to our records. Mr Diamond died in Paris, the apparent victim of an Apache attack. The year was 1924."

This was getting interesting. I jotted down the essential particulars, thanked him and left.

At the Agency office, I burned up the trans-Atlantic cable wires. The Parisian gendarmes were kind enough to supply further details.

While strolling along a disreputable part of the city, Mr Diamond was accosted by person or persons unknown. Cause of death was given as multiple stab wounds in the vicinity of the heart. The autopsy indicated that the weapon used was one favored by the notorious Apaches of Paris, an abbreviated folding knife called a lingue. Motive was believed to be robbery. His wallet was found beside the body, empty of everything except his ident.i.ty papers. The murder took place some three years after Mary McNulty, the former Dolly Diamond, had divorced Mr Diamond, but before her second marriage to the restraurateur, Carmine Novelli.

I spent a few minutes with the chief. He was kind enough to sketch from his vast experience a lingue. It resembled a pocket knife, but with a peculiar cat's claw blade that folded into a matching handle. Exactly the kind of thing you'd use to slip between a man's ribs if that was your trade.

A little more research brought out the fact that Mr Diamond had initiated the divorce, stating as his grounds the old dodge of mental cruelty. Evidently Dolly Diamond profitted from the experience in more ways than one, inasmuch as she used that excuse on her second husband.

I would have liked to have known what Mr Diamond felt const.i.tuted mental cruelty from a wife. That charge was normally a woman's prerogative.

I had developed an interesting picture of the woman again calling herself Dolly Diamond, but it was only a house of cards if it didn't lead me back to the missing Reynolds girl.

I decided to revisit Patrolman Maclntyre's attic. Spooky Spookins had deliberately sent me on a wild goose chase. It was high time I unearthed why.

From my coign of vantage, one of Mrs Maclntyre's warm egg salad sandwiches filling my mouth, I trained my field gla.s.ses on the yellow frame house.

Lights were on all over the place. It was dusk. I wondered if Spooky Spookins was singing tonight. I wondered also who she really was. Most of all, I wondered where the Reynolds girl was keeping herself these days.

Around seven, the front door opened. I trained my gla.s.ses on the wedge of yellowish light. I caught a fleeting glimpse of a parting kiss. Who kissed whom was beyond my present powers of observation. Then someone came skipping down the piazza steps.

I didn't recognize the figure strolling down the street. I recognized his coat. Vicuna. The pince-nez perched on the bridge of his nose was more comical than even a pince-nez had a right to be. A pork pie hat covered his sleek black hair.

I intercepted the college boy, and without any unnecessary preliminary remarks, hauled him into a narrow walkway between two asphault-s.h.i.+ngled triple-deckers.

"h.e.l.lo, Kit. How's tricks?"

I squeezed his arm so hard he squeaked like a caught mouse.

"Just had your palm read? Or was this visit personal?"

"I Um " Kit was trying hard not to look me in the eye. If he tried any harder, he'd have to hide his head in his pocket. From what I make out of his face, a razor had never touched those rosy cheeks.

I took a fistful of dimpled chin and pointed his upturned nose at mine. The sissified pince-nez dropped free. That's when I got a good look at him.

Surprise made me let go. "I'll be d.a.m.ned! A doll!"

"Let me go, Mister! I done nothing to you!"

"What's your name, tin Lizzy?"

"K-KitKitty. What's it to you?"

I was starting to wonder. I searched her soft features for any resemblance to the missing Helen Reynolds. The commotion caused windows to go rattling up on their sash cords.

Kitty saw her chance and bolted. I pounded after her like Red Grange after the old pigskin. Would have had her too, but when I was on the brink of nabbing her, she shed the vicuna coat. My big Brogans got tangled up in it. I took a header.

Crossing the avenue, Kitty sprinted into the concrete tomb that was Forest Hills Station. But I was hot on her heels. The case was starting to unravel, and I wanted my hands on every strand.

I was taking the escalator steps two at a time when I heard the train doors snap closed. Just as I gained the empty platform, the train was pulling out. I muttered some choice words about the excessive efficiency of the Ma.s.sachusetts Transportation Authority. That got me nowhere.

There was nothing to do but return to my post and ponder recent developments. In the high dim s.p.a.ce, I re-examined the snap of Helen Reynolds until I decided any resemblance to the mannish Kitty was general, not specific.

The hours crawled toward midnight.

Lights began winking out all over the house. They followed an orderly pattern. First the downstairs, except for the parlor. Then the upstairs. Before the top floor lights when out, a solitary window up under the eaves came on for a long minute.

I spotted what I took to be the shadow of a person, but while I fiddled with the focusing screw of my field gla.s.ses, the pane went black. When I thought about it, I decided I'd been looking at the shadow of an old dressmaker's dummy.

The parlor light extinguished, a female form retrieved the Hupmobile from the garage. I watched it slither down the narrow street between the kerb-parked machines of the garage-less.

I waited a good long while before I slipped down to the street and picked the rear door of the Number Sixty.

I was greeted by a very black cat who went "meow" when I asked if its name were Spooky. I took that to be a "yes".

The house was in good order. Furnis.h.i.+ngs were modern but not quite up to Boston Brahmin tastes. The curtains were Chintz. There was a new At.w.a.ter Kent cabinet radio in the living room. Gas fixtures had all been converted to electricity. Over all, the house was the kind you'd expect of a two-bathroom Irish household, so I gathered that the erstwhile Mrs. Jack Diamond had either come down a bit in the world, or was laying low for reasons of her own. There must be a reason she preferred the Hupmobile to the Landau.

I noted a card table in a corner of the kitchen, covered with a lavender velvet cloth. Beside an unopened pack of London Life cigarettes, a deck of well-worn playing cards stood neatly in an open cedar box. The table was tucked into a corner, with only two straight-backed chairs in place. Bridge and Whist were not played here. This smacked of a fortune teller's layout.

I moved on upstairs. I expected two bedrooms, but found only one. It was the smaller of the two. The larger room was furnished in fancy damask cus.h.i.+ons strewn about the floor haphazardly. No furniture. Portraits of Hollywood actresses ripped from movie magazines were tacked to the walls. I didn't know what to make of it. With the pink-bordered floral purple wallpaper, it made me think of a Caliph's seraglio minus the harem girls.

An abbreviated flight of steps led up to a dark attic door. Padlocked. I wondered why people in this neighborhood did that.

I debated over picking the lock. Curiosity got the better of me. I tinkered with it until it surrendered.

The light switch was the turn-of-the-century kind that rotated like a rheostat. I twisted it the wrong way and the switch unscrewed and rolled off somewhere. I gave up looking for it, and let my eyes adjust to the lack of light.

The dressfitter's dummy began to resolve itself amid the shadows. I felt a chill. It was partly the cold, and partly the size of the dummy. It must have belonged to Paul Bunyan's wife, it was so tall.

Using it as a marker, I stepped in, wincing when every floorboard creaked. It was colder than Maclntyre's attic, a regular ice box.

A fast-s.h.i.+fting pattern of light followed by the even-uneven crunch of tires on gravel made me freeze. My blood froze, too. I got a good look at the dummy. Not good enough to scare the daylights clear out of me, but enough to send them temporarily scattering.

I stood in the darkness and waited, my breathing even and measured, cold breath steam drippling out between my lax lips.

The laughter of women came floating up into the chill beneath the rafters. I counted three distinct voices. But there might be more.

"Spooky, where do you keep the wine?" a raucous voice cried.

"There's a choice bottle of Malagua in the pantry."

I waited for them to get settled. The night was still young. And they'd feel the attic draft soon enough. I couldn't take my eyes off the outline towering not four feet in front of me.

The wine flowed freely. Jazzy strains squawked from the cabinet radio. I heard dancing. I didn't detect a single male voice, so I wasn't worried about the awkwardness of my position. Or my future.

"Spooky, why are you acting so strangely?" a young voice wondered.

"Are you talking to me?" asked the smoky voice I knew as Spooky Spookins.

"No, sugar, the tabby. She's jumpy and nervous. Look at her."

"What's the matter, baby?" Spooky Spookins asked her namesake. "Cat got your tongue?"

Another voice wondered, "I feel a draft. Is there a window open upstairs?"

"No. All the windows are closed." Worry troubled Spooky Spookins' voice. "Keep drinking. The night is yet young."

She was coming up the stairs. That was it. I knew what to expect next. The curtain was about to fall on the whole matter.

She had steely nerves. She stopped suddenly. I caught a sharp intake of breath. No cry, no strangled choke or sob. I knew she knew the attic door was open. I let the knowledge sink in to the pit of her stomach.

Then I took a careful step backward. A floor board creaked, as I knew it would.

"Who's up there?" Spooky Spookins hissed.

"Maybe it's the ghost of Jack Diamond," I said evenly.

She didn't favor me with a reply. But I tracked the creak of floor boards coming toward the short flight of steps, up the stairs and into the cold confines of the attic. She fumbled for the light switch, found the bare mounting screw, and muttered something under her breath.

She waited and I waited.

We perceived one another's outline at about the same time.

"Do I know you?" she asked, cool as steel and soothing as a rasp. She had nerve. Ice water was in her veins.

"No. But I know you, Mary McNulty. Alias Spooky Spookins."

"You're that agency d.i.c.k. I saw you coming back." Her voice was thin.

I said nothing.

"In the cards, I mean," she added.

"How did it happen?" I asked nonchalantly. "To Helen, I mean."

Her voice was just as blase in return. "It was just one of those things."

"What things?" I pressed.

"One of those sad broken-heart blues numbers. Young girl falls in love for the first time and falls too hard for her own d.a.m.n good. You might say Helen went beyond the call of beauty."

I said, "I might believe that. So might a jury. Maybe. If it weren't for Jack Diamond."

"You act like you know things."