The Fourth Postman Read online

  “Don’t mess in this Fairfaxx case,” Jake whispered. “No, damn you, I’m not out of my head. I mean it. Helene went to the same school with her, and it would break her heart. Besides, old man Fairfaxx isn’t going to the chair for this. The worst that can happen to him is an insane asylum. You saw yourself he was willing to take the rap, and if he is, I think you ought to let him have his own way.”

  Malone said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, and I’m not sure you do.”

  “You might even be able to get him off,” Jake whispered. “Not that it would matter to him. He has nothing to live for, Malone.” His voice dropped a tone lower. “Keep remembering that. Nothing to live for.”

  “Perfect nonsense,” Helene said briskly, walking in the door, “you have everything to live for. The doctor said you’d feel much better tomorrow.” She set a tray with a plate on it on the table by his bed.

  Jake looked at the plate suspiciously. It contained perfectly triangular pieces of toast, covered with a revolting looking yellow mess. “What’s that for?” Jake demanded.

  “For you, dear,” Helene said. “Eat it. It’ll keep you from having scars. The doctor said so.”

  Jake obediently picked up one triangle, bit into it tentatively, dropped it with an anguished howl and said, “What the hell is this stuff?”

  “Cocoa butter,” Helene said in a surprised voice. “I couldn’t think of any other way to feed it to you except on toast.”

  “Helene,” Malone said sternly, “I, too, have had chicken pox, and evidently my memory is better than yours. You don’t feed him the cocoa butter, you rub it on him.”

  Helene turned pale and said, “But I thought the stuff in the other package was what I am supposed to rub on him.”

  “No, no, no,” Malone said. “That’s the flea paste.”

  “But Jake doesn’t have fleas.”

  “I didn’t say he did,” Malone roared, “but the Australian beer hound does. Look, try to get this straight. You rub Jake with the cocoa butter. When I return, I will rub the dog with the flea paste.”

  “In the meantime,” Jake said weakly, “suppose you just get me a drink of gin, and we’ll call it square.”

  Helene fled toward the kitchenette, carrying the tray.

  “Don’t worry,” Malone said, “I’m sure you’ll pull through in spite of her nursing.” He unwrapped a fresh cigar, flicked the wrapper inaccurately toward the waste basket, and said, “About the Fairfaxxes. You said old Rodney didn’t have anything to live for. I suspect—I should say—I know, that you’re wrong. You see, I really did make those transatlantic phone calls.”

  Jake sat up in bed and said, “You mean she’s been alive all this time?”

  “Naturally,” Malone said. He lit the cigar and added, “Unless you believe that she’s been resurrected within the last year.”

  At that moment, Helene came flying in from the kitchenette with a bottle of gin and a glass, and a frantic-voiced announcement that the mutt was avidly eating the toast and cocoa butter.

  10

  Malone reached a finger towards the bell beside the beautiful wrought iron gate in front of the Fairfaxx grounds. His finger was just half an inch from the bell when a cheerful, but official-sounding voice said, “Hello, Mr. Malone, I’ve been waiting for you.”

  Malone wheeled around and looked into a familiar face, shadowed by a snapbrim hat. The man had on a rather well-worn suit and carried a folded newspaper under his arm.

  “Hello, Gadenski,” Malone said, holding out a welcoming hand. “I haven’t seen you for a long time. Not since you discovered that body up in Lincoln Park. Nice to know you’ve been promoted.”

  “Thanks,” Gadenski said. His eyes narrowed. “How did you know I’m still with the police department?”

  “For one reason,” Malone told him, “you’re carrying a Manual of Police Procedure in your overcoat pocket. For another, you have your hat pulled down halfway over your eyes; for a third, you’re wearing conspicuously inconspicuous clothing; and for a fourth, you’re carrying a newspaper, so that if you have to follow me on the streetcar, you’ll be able to conceal yourself by pretending to read.”

  Gadenski said, with a false laugh, “I just happen to have on my old clothes tonight, Malone, and I was carrying the newspaper because I wanted to catch up on my reading.”

  “Well, good luck,” Malone said. “I hope you do catch up with it sometime. I knew a man once who happened to miss the daily newspaper on, I believe, July 27th, 1922, and ever since then, he’s been reading yesterday’s newspapers, because he’s never had time to catch up. It’s been nice seeing you again, Gadenski, and be sure to send me a Christmas card.”

  “Now, Malone,” Gadenski said, in a hurt voice, “I’m only doing my duty. My boss said you’d turn up here and I should come here and wait.”

  “Are you supposed to stick with me,” Malone asked, “or just trail me?”

  “Just trail you,” Gadenski said, “until he has you picked up later.”

  “That’s fine,” Malone said. He bit the end off a cigar and added, “Do you get the job of picking me up?”

  “Oh, no,” Gadenski said. “I don’t know who’s supposed to pick you up.”

  “When you find out,” Malone said, “see if you can get me his autograph.” He added, “It’ll probably be Garrity. It’s always Garrity since Kluchetsky got his promotion. Sorry to leave you out here in the cold, but I don’t think I’m supposed to take you in with me.”

  “I’m not supposed to go in,” Gadenski said stiffly. He whipped a small blue-covered book from his pocket, ran his thumb down the index, turned to a page about two-thirds of the way through the book, glanced at the page for a moment with lips moving quietly, and finally said, “No. I wait out here and trail you, and then tell Garrity where you are.”

  “Fine,” Malone said, “and be sure to tell him I’m wearing a brown suit and a green tie.”

  “Garrity’s color blind,” Gadenski said in a gloomy voice.

  “I’ll buy a carnation,” Malone promised, “and wear it in my buttonhole.” He pushed the button beside the gate. Thirty seconds later, Bridie’s voice answered. Malone identified himself. A minute and a half later, a buzzer sounded and the gate swung open.

  Malone waved cheerfully to detective Gadenski and strode on up the walk towards the Fairfaxx mansion. The iron gates clanged shut behind him. He paused for a moment, halfway up the path, with a trapped, half-nightmarish feeling. Suppose he wanted to get out of this place? It was walled in on all sides. And even if he were to rattle the wrought iron gates and yell for help, Gadenski could not do more than offer him sympathy, since the gates could be opened only by the electric gadget which operated from somewhere inside the house.

  There would be places in which to hide from a possible pursuer, but the pursuer would know the locations of all of them. There would be avenues of escape, but the pursuer would know in which direction they led.

  No, it was definitely not a place in which to be trapped by someone who had murdered three postmen and would obviously, if needs be, be willing to murder a lawyer. Malone decided to keep certain information to himself. He walked up to the door, rang the bell, and said, “Hello!” to the still swollen-eyed Bridie who admitted him.

  The Fairfaxx living room was well-lighted and cheerful. A tiny fire blazed in the grate. Lamps were glowing. A coffee service was set out on the table. But the atmosphere was not reassuring to Malone. This pleasant chintz-hung room smelled of murder and one of the people sitting around the cozy little blaze was a murderer.

  He reminded himself sternly that he had come here not to collect evidence but to collect a retainer.

  It was Kenneth Fairfaxx who greeted him just inside the room and said, “We’ve been hoping you’d drop in. What will you have, rye, Scotch or Bourbon?”

  Malone resisted an impulse to say, “One of everything,” and said, “Whatever you’re drinking will be fine for me.” He wondered if Kenneth would be th
e one to make out his check.

  What had ever happened to separate Glida, pronounced Gilda, and her six twins from Kenneth Fairfaxx? Somebody must have put in some particularly dirty and determined work. Kenneth looked as though he would be a notable success as the father of six twins, or even eight twins, or ten twins. He looked like someone that Glida, pronounced Gilda, might quite reasonably be in love with. And Gilda looked like someone that anyone with just ordinary intelligence would be in love with. Therefore, why was Gilda breaking her heart, and why was Kenneth preparing to marry a girl with a face like an ill-bred horse, and the disposition of an insulted hyena?

  Malone reminded himself just in time that he was a lawyer and not Dorothy Dix, accepted the drink, and advanced across the room.

  Elizabeth Fairfaxx took a few steps toward him and said, “Nice to see you again.”

  “It’s always nice to see you again,” Malone said, and meant it from the bottom of his heart. She had on a long black dinner dress, which made her look even taller than she actually was. Malone wondered if she was in mourning for three murdered postmen, or for her uncle’s being in jail. Or, if she’d picked it because it accentuated her particular tawny, long-legged beauty. He noticed that she used very little makeup, wondered why, and then realized it was because she was smart enough to know she didn’t need it.

  An unpleasant little chill went up his spine, and then down again, and he gulped his drink fast.

  A young man had risen along with Elizabeth Fairfaxx from the big blue brocade sofa. He didn’t look as though he belonged beside Elizabeth Fairfaxx, except that he was as tall as she—well, perhaps half an inch taller. To be perfectly frank about it, Malone reflected, he seemed more like the man who had called to truck away the trash. His head looked like an old skull on which someone had left a shock of straw-colored hair, which apparently hadn’t been combed since Grant took Richmond. His eyes were deep set, dark gray, and seemed to threaten that at any moment he would start quoting some of the lesser known passages from Hamlet. The rest of his face reminded Malone of a doubtlessly underpaid and otherwise worthy high school principal who had once gotten him into a great deal of trouble with the truant officer.

  This tall young man was wearing a pair of faded corduroy slacks, slightly worn at the knee, canvas shoes stained with rain, snow, and mud, a nondescript looking sports jacket, a sport shirt with two buttons missing, open at the neck, and no tie.

  Elizabeth Fairfaxx said, “Mr. Malone, this is Bob Allen.” She didn’t add anything. She didn’t say, for instance, “Bob Allen, my fiancé.” Or, “Bob Allen, the most wonderful man in the world.” Or, “Bob Allen, the man I’m backing to run for Mayor next year.” But her tone of voice and the look in her eyes implied all those things. If Bob Allen really was the man who trucked away the trash, chances were he’d probably find Elizabeth Fairfaxx waiting on a pile of yesterday’s newspapers.

  “He’s an actor,” Elizabeth Fairfaxx added proudly.

  Malone smothered a wistful little sigh. It always worked out that way. Take any girl with beauty, charm, brains, and probably money, and ninety-nine times out of a hundred it turned out she was in love with an unemployed actor, who was trying to get her to back a play for him.

  He shook Bob Allen’s hand enthusiastically and said, “This is a great privilege, Mr. Allen. It isn’t every day of my life I get a chance to meet an actor. Are you appearing in anything in Chicago at present?”

  Bob Allen dropped Malone’s hand and said, “No.”

  Malone said, “Oh,” and looked around for a chair.

  Violet silently motioned him toward one. It didn’t look comfortable. For that matter, neither did she. He wondered why she was invariably present at every family gathering, yet never actually took part in one.

  “Right over here, Mr. Malone,” a pleasant masculine voice said.

  Malone turned in the direction of the voice and saw Uncle Ernie posed gracefully in a wing chair, a glass in his hand.

  “I have something to tell you when you have a moment to spare. In private,” Uncle Ernie added.

  Abby Lacy’s rasping voice interrupted with, “Young man!” and Malone all but jumped out of his skin.

  To his great relief, Elizabeth Fairfaxx tucked her hand under his arm, led him to a rose satin loveseat, sat down beside him and said, “Kenneth will bring you another drink in a minute.”

  Malone looked at her with warm affection and said, “If I were twenty years older, I’d ask you to marry me. As it is, I just ask you. Questions, I mean. Tell me all about you and Kenneth.” He thought this was a tactful way to lead up to the question of who would make out his check.

  “Oh,” Elizabeth Fairfaxx said, “we’re just the poor relations.”

  She said it a little too lightly, Malone thought.

  “My pa fought it out with the stock market and lost, back in ’29. Uncle Rodney was very generous about the school bills, so the least I could do was come and keep house for him when I finally broke out of college. My pa died a few years ago, of discouragement, I guess. My ma was a movie actress. She left pa and me for an Italian count, when I was a baby. We haven’t heard from her since. I think she’s living on a Motion Picture Relief Fund pension, somewhere out on the West Coast.”

  Malone suddenly remembered. Liza Lavender. He’d gone to see her pictures again and over again. Back in his high school days. In an era of tiny, curly-headed stars, she’d been tall, graceful, scornful, and magnificent. He’d hidden pictures of her under his pillow when he was seventeen, and tacked them on his wall when he was eighteen.

  He started to say, “You look like her,” to Elizabeth Fairfaxx, but his voice died in his throat. He could see Liza Lavender in her, the same tawny hair, the lovely, almost square-shaped mouth, the high-arched eyebrows, and the slender, willowy hands. With an effort, he remembered that he was supposed to be listening.

  “The very least I could do,” Elizabeth Fairfaxx repeated, “was to come and keep house for Uncle. After all, he’d done everything for me. Not out of duty, but out of affection. And believe me, Mr. Malone, it’s been pleasant. Pleasant and happy, until—this happened. Of course Uncle didn’t entirely approve of Bob, but I’m sure that’s only because they didn’t have a chance to get acquainted properly.”

  Malone said nothing for a moment. He took a cigar from his pocket and unwrapped it, very slowly and carefully. He crumpled the cellophane into a little ball and played with it between his fingers before he tossed it in the general direction of the nearest ashtray. He lingered over the lighting of his match. But, at last, a puff of smoke had to be exhaled and he laid a burnt match carefully down on a magazine on the end table.

  “Tell me,” he said, very quietly, “when is the last time you remember seeing your mother?”

  “I don’t remember ever seeing her,” Elizabeth Fairfaxx said. Her voice was a little harsh. “I wasn’t very old, you see, when she—well, when she left us.” She laughed. The laugh seemed a bit too shrill to Malone. “After all, it isn’t as though she had been a member of the family.”

  Malone looked at the end of his cigar and said, “She must have been well acquainted with your family.”

  “As a matter of fact, she wasn’t,” Elizabeth Fairfaxx told him. “I don’t think even Uncle Rodney ever met her, and I know none of the others did.”

  “I thought not,” Malone said. He felt her arm stiffen next to his, and saw that the drink in her hand rippled just a bit. “I mean,” he added hastily, “I felt it. You mustn’t mind me, Miss Fairfaxx, I’m psychic. You may not realize it, to look at me, but I had a Welsh grandmother.”

  He was relieved to hear her laugh. He wondered what her reaction would be if she knew that the tall, gaunt-faced, gray-haired housekeeper, who’d been in the Fairfaxx house for “years and years,” was the once famous and fabulous Liza Lavender, her mother.

  11

  “Young man!” Abby Lacy said again.

  Malone was not pleased. If Elizabeth Fairfaxx, or Glida, pronounc
ed Gilda, or any member of a burlesque show chorus had called him “young man” he would have purred. But that wasn’t the way Mrs. Abby Lacy meant it. He pretended he didn’t hear her.

  “You’d better go and talk to her,” Elizabeth Fairfaxx warned. “She can be unpleasant when she doesn’t get her own way.”

  Malone thought that she would probably be just as unpleasant if she got it. He said, “That may be, but I’ll bet I can manage her.” Just the same, he decided it would be wise to obey the summons.

  He didn’t want Mrs. Abby Lacy or anyone else to be unpleasant to Elizabeth Fairfaxx, and besides there was just one chance in a thousand he might learn something of importance. The little lawyer was halfway across the room when Uncle Ernie stopped him. The tall, handsome man was swaying, only slightly.

  “Mr. Malone,” he whispered, “I want to talk to you, in private.”

  Malone instinctively suggested meeting in the nearest bar.

  Uncle Ernie shook his head. “Glad to meet you in a bar any time,” he went on in the same whisper, “for a drink or two and some lively conversation. But this has to be strictly private, understand? Can’t even let a bartender overhear it.” He scowled. “Tell you what, meet you out in the garden before you go.”

  On a sudden inspiration, Malone named the spot where someone had stood to murder three postmen. It would be interesting, he reflected, to find out just how Uncle Ernie would react to the scene.

  Uncle Ernie said, “It’s a deal,” and wandered vaguely away.

  Malone sat down beside Mrs. Lacy, turned on his most ingratiating smile—the one he usually saved for a jury of middle-aged housewives—and said, “My dear Mrs. Lacy, you wanted to talk to me?”

  “I do,” Abby Lacy snapped. “But not here.”

  Malone resisted an impulse to ask her if she would meet him at the nearest bar, and said, “I am completely at your service.”

  She came within an inch of her life of smiling back at him, and said, “Perhaps you’d be kind enough to accompany me to my house.” The words she chose were gracious, but the manner in which she stood up was a command.