Death Wears a White Gardenia Read online

  "My God," he whispered. "Oh my God. Jeez! I got to get out of here fast."

  He turned to run. But even a moment's hesitation had been too long. A brisk young man carrying a bundle stopped beside him, stared for a second, dropped his burden and began to yell. "Hey, come here, quick. Something's wrong!"

  "You bet," breathed Mr. Swayzey between chattering teeth. He tried to push the young man aside. "I got to get out damn fast," he told himself. The brisk young man put a detaining hand on his arm. "Oh, no you don't," he said. "You were here first. Here you stay till I get someone."

  "Lemme go," Mr. Swayzey muttered. He writhed and wriggled. The young man clutched his overcoat. Mr. Swayzey tore himself loose and plunged headlong down the passage toward the lavatory. The breaks were against him. He ran smack into the arms of a tall, cadaverous, hawk-nosed man in a gray fedora hat. The tall man held him in a tight embrace, looked at him with brows wrinkled, and smiled grimly. "English Joe," he said. "Welcome. What in hell are you pulling off?"

  Joe Swayzey gasped. Nervous sweat stood out in big beads on his forehead, trickled down his neck and thighs. It was Whittaker. Christopher Frederick Whittaker, chief detective of the Blankfort store. He was the very last guy in all the world that Joe Swayzey wanted to see. Three years had gone by since Joe had seen Chris Whittaker, and Chris Whittaker worked for Jumel's then and not for Blankfort's, but Swayzey's recollection of the last meeting was most distinct. You do not, after all, easily forget the face of the fellow who sent you to Sing Sing. Joe's expression grew sullen and his lips taut. "Lemme go," he growled, "I ain't got a thing."

  The detective held Joe's wrist in a grip as tight and as and secure as a handcuff. "You have a nice new mustache, Joe," he said coldly, "and no business here in any case. Stick around till I find out what's happening."

  A scream is a trumpet call. The yell of the brisk young salesman had brought stock clerks in shirt sleeves, porters, the watchman. The trumpeter was gesticulating and talking loudly to them:

  "I got a date for half past nine with Miss Cassaway, the infants' wear buyer, and I come along here to leave my bundles and take out the line I want to show her, and whadda I see? That fella standing here and shivering like he was dying from cold, and this—"

  "Cripes," said the watchman. "Y'a know who that is? That's McAndrew. That's Andrew McAndrew. Who coulda done him in like that?"

  "He's dead, ain't he?" a stock boy piped.

  "Cantcha see? Cold. Cold's a stone. Who ever done it shoved him in plenty tight. I betcha they have to take down the wall to get him out."

  "Jeez, who coulda done that?"

  The huddled group parted before the tall figure of the detective. Whittaker looked upon the dead man's protuberant eyes, on his dark, blotched, distorted face, his froth-flecked lips, from which a swollen tongue protruded. The man's necktie was gone, his collar was open, and on his throat were large round purple bruises. The plump body had been wedged into the cubicle so that it remained erect, like a mummy in a museum case. Joe Swayzey, forced by the compelling grip of the detective to look once more upon the dead, shivered so that his teeth clicked like castanets and his knees almost gave way.

  "Nobody touch anything 'til the police get here," the detective said briefly. He turned to the watchman behind him. "Snap out of it, Tom. Get Williams and Mazur for me. Tell Mazur to bring a cop with him. He'll find somebody outside. Reilly's probably on the corner. None of you touch anything. Here you," he pointed to one of the stock clerks, "get a screen." He turned to his prisoner. "O.K., Joe. What's your angle?"

  Joe Swayzey, growing momentarily more shaken, had dropped his accent summarily. He responded stubborn whimper. "I don't know nothing. I don't know who he is. I never seen him before. I don't know nothing."

  "Yeah? That's your story. What were you doing back in here, anyway?"

  "Wasn't doin' nothin'. Just walkin' through."

  A coatless young man, with shirt sleeves rolled up, pushed through the crowd to the detective's side. "I bet he does know somethin' too," the young man shouted. "I saw him back in here last night, just around closing time. He said he was lookin' for a men's room."

  Whittaker's quick glance darted back to Swayzey. "The old stuff, eh Joe? Just a little nice respectable prowlin'. Or were you stopping for a sniff? Just happened you were here last night. Just happened you were here this morning. And McAndrew got bumped off. Gonna come across now—or do we have to go to work?"

  English Joe's mouth shut like a trap. "I ain't sayin' nothin'," he repeated. "I wanta see a lawyer."

  The crowd grew with each swift second, boys and girls from the stock room, packers, markers, salespeople, messengers. They looked, lingered, horror-fascinated, a moment, and then fled to spread the news. The shocking announcement traveled through the store with the speed of light. "McAndrew's been murdered....They found his body out back .... McAndrew... The credit manager....Somebody killed McAndrew....Choked him to death." Customers stood impatient and unnoticed while salesgirls whispered the message from mouth to ear. The Governor's lady was forgotten as page relayed it to elevator operator, elevator operator to section manager and sent it racing around the eight block-square floors of Blankfort's. "They caught a crook. He was the one did it." Each person telling the tale added the same exclamation...."What a thing to happen on a day like this!"

  CHAPTER III

  When Williams and Mazur, a pair of heavy-set commonplace looking gentlemen, who belonged to the detective force of the store, strode, with a uniformed policeman at their heels, at a gait that was almost a run, through the silk lingerie department, shoppers and salesgirls stared after them. Here and there a clerk, unable to restrain her curiosity, left her counter and followed. A section manager shooed her back. The detectives darted through the glass door at he end of the dressing rooms and shut it quickly.

  "Hello, Reilly," Chris Whittaker addressed the police officer. "I haven't tried to move the body. I know what the Inspector wants. The man's McAndrew. Our credit manager. This lad at my right hand—you know him, don't you, Mazur?—our old pal, English Joe. Hang on to him for me, Mazur. He's oily. Don't let him slip away. He's got a bed-time story for us."

  The police man took out his notebook.

  "Andrew J. McAndrew," Whittaker dictated and the policeman wrote it down. "Age 40 (or thereabouts—forty's close enough). Home address, New Rochelle. You'll get the street and number upstairs. Credit manager, Jeremiah Blankfort and Company. Worked here about seven years, I think. Well liked, respected. No trouble with the staff as far as I know. Body found at 9:32 by Joe Swayzey, alias English Joe. He's an old acquaintance of ours. Known him for years. Last time I saw him, it was in General Sessions. He had just picked up a one-way ticket to Ossining. Have an idea he's on parole right now. This man —what's your name, son?"

  "Walter Ginsburg, Cohen and Weinawitz, Infant's Wear..."

  "Came on the scene, saw Swayzey in front of the body. Others may have come through this passage before, but as you see, this corner's dark and the door swings in on it, and unless you were looking in this particular place you might easily miss it. Ginsburg saw Swayzey looking agitated about something. He yelled. I heard. Got here in time to keep the fellows from messing things up, and to get my hands on Joe. That's as far as I've gone. Now, suppose you call the Medical Examiner right away so we can get the body moved. And Reilly: this is important. We've got to handle this thing quietly. This is a big day in the store. It's the fiftieth anniversary. Big sale. The Governor's wife and a lot of big shots are upstairs. We got to keep it as quiet as we can. It would be a fine howdya-do to have the wagon drive up right now. Tell headquarters not to send the wagon 'til we know what's what, and not to say a word to the papers. I mean that, Reilly. Not a word to the papers until we know where we're at. Blankfort will be sore as hell if you galoots mess up his sale. We're trying to do business in this store today. Tell the boys to use the entrance back here"—he pointed to the door beyond the passage—"the Forty-seventh Street side, Sixth Avenue
door. We got to be careful." He took off his fedora, mopped his brow and looked around at the gaping crowd. "All you guys get back to work, will you? Don't hang around here. And keep your mouths shut. Williams will stay here with the body while you phone, Reilly. Get it done as fast as you can. Mazur and I are going to take Joe downstairs. Tom," he turned to the watchman, "Get Mary Carner and tell her I want her in my office away. You'll find me there, Reilly. You know where it is, don't you? In the basement. Down this passage to the left you'll find the steps. That's right, next to the little stock room." He turned again to the reluctant crowd. "Go on, all of you, get back to your work. Ginsburg, you come downstairs with us too."

  The door marked "C. F. Whittaker, Private," opening upon a small, dismal, gray walled room in the basement of the store, had scarcely closed behind the chief detective and his companions when Mary Carner opened it again.

  Mary Carner was a pretty girl, trim, slender, poised and well mannered. Whittaker had hired her chiefly because she looked like a lady, rather than like a detective. All the Fifth Avenue stores had gone in for ladies—ladies with Ph.D.'s and M.A.'s and sorority pins and the Park Avenue manner, who snapped up the jobs behind shop counters, under the delusion that these might eventually lead to careers. The sorority girls impressed the bargain hunters, and actually sold merchandise.

  Mary Carner had no college degree, but decidedly she had the manner. Chris Whittaker had found her a first-rate detective as well as a gracious lady. Five years of sleuthing in hotels, department stores and for private agencies had left no coarsening mark upon her. A bright, sophisticated looking person, she dressed impeccably, resembling the better class of the store's clientele. Her dark suit was of good quality and line, perfectly fitted, her fur neckpiece was in the best of taste, her hat smart and inconspicuous. All this made her invaluable to Blankfort's. Even the experienced shoplifters never spotted her, never dreamed that the bland, attractive young woman, looking carefully and with absorption at jewelry or silk lingerie, or standing beside them, in apparent abstraction, as though she couldn't quite decide whether to go upstairs next for Eloise's spring ensemble, or take a turn in the blouse department, was in fact watching their fingers, recording in her alert mind every visible detail of their physical personality, and checking it with the two hundred or more photographs of well known store thieves which hung on an open rack in Whittaker's office.

  Mary's eyes and her mind were clear and quick. She looked Joe Swayzey and Walter Ginsburg over with a single flicker of her eyelashes before she addressed her chief.

  "Tom told me," she said quietly to Whittaker.

  "Come here." She came around to the back of his desk. "We're in a hell of a jam," he whispered to her. "There's no doubt that McAndrew was murdered. And you know what that's going to mean. The place will be overrun with cops. There'll be all kinds of excitement. We've got to do our damnedest to get this thing handled quietly. If they let us handle this our way, the store'll be O.K. But they won't. We'll start anyway, and we'll get as much together as we can. Here's what you're to do. Go upstairs first, Mary. Get word quietly to J. B. I don't want any story on this to leak out before he has control of the situation. If we can keep the story from breaking until tomorrow or have the murder angle played down—apoplexy—heart attack—you know—that's something. It's worth trying for, anyway. After you've seen Blankfort go up to McAndrew's office, pick up anything that's loose and have a new lock put on McAndrew's door. Bring the key to me and nobody else. See that nobody touches McAndrew's desk or his files. Or his waste-paper basket. 'Fact, you'd better take care of McAndrew's office before you even see Blankfort. Make it snappy. After that I want you, as you go through the store, to keep your ears open. Don't miss any gossip, no matter how trivial it seems. Offhand, now, I can't think of one person who might have wanted to choke our friend, but I see I've got a lot to learn. Of course, there's English Joe. I picked him up alongside the body. He'd been snooping around that passage-way last night. Maybe he did it and maybe he didn't. Now, scram."

  The main floor was jammed when Mary Carner hurried through it to the elevators. A mob of women fought for sheer silk stockings at fifty-two cents a pair; they pounded one another's ribs, lacerated each other's skin, knocked off hats to get to house dresses at sixty-seven cents, to gloves at two pairs for a dollar. Mary Carner strode by them with a twinge of conscience. Plenty of merchandise would march out of the store, unpaid for, today. Of all days! There certainly was enough routine crime in the store without adding a murder.

  "Take me right up," she ordered the operator of the employees' elevator. "Eighth floor. Don't stop for signals."

  "Gee, you're in a hurry, Miss Carner." The young man was silent a second. Then he whispered, "Is it true about McAndrew?"

  "Yes," she answered briefly. "Were you on last night?"

  "Nope."

  "Who was on?"

  "None of the regular men. Who do you think coulda done it, Miss Carner?"

  "Haven't any idea."

  "Think it was somebody in the store?" he persisted.

  "The store has a thousand employees, Dan."

  "And God knows how many customers," he amplified. "And I wouldn't be surprised if a couple of them had a reason for being sore at McAndrew."

  "Why, Dan?"

  "He was credit manager, wasn't he? Charge accounts and things like that. Supposing they wasn't paying. Trying to get away with something. Rubber checks and such. That's something, ain't it?"

  "That's a good angle, Dan. You ought to be a detective."

  "Say, I'd like to. I wish I was a detective." He beamed. "If I get any clues, I'll tell you. How's that?"

  "Thanks. And Dan, if you want to do this right, keep your mouth shut and your ears and eyes open. That's lesson number one."

  He winked. "O.K. Here's your floor, Miss Carner. I'll be seeing ya."

  CHAPTER IV

  The executive offices of Jeremiah Blankfort and Company were on the eighth floor of the building. Glass and mahogany cages around a carpeted central reception room held the president's offices, the board of directors' room, the general manager's, the credit manager's, the cashier's, the headquarters of all the buyers, of the traffic and charge account departments, the personnel office, the advertising department, the bookkeepers and file clerks and typists. The click of typewriter keys and adding machines pounded out the overtones of big business. The steady click was a comforting sound, in which there was no hint of tragedy or horror.

  The young woman at the reception desk greeted Mary somberly and the question which was to become a form of greeting in the store that day, sprang immediately to her lips.

  "Yes, it's true, Miss Rogers," Mary answered.

  Margaret Rogers shuddered. "That's horrible," she breathed. "Miss Carner, do you think it was someone in the store?"

  "I've no idea. Have you?"

  "No," the girl lowered her head. "But there might be a few that had it in their minds," she added softly.

  "Meaning what?" asked Mary Carner.

  "Nothing, Miss Carner. Not a thing. I was just talking."

  "Out of turn, don't you think?"

  "Maybe. Skip it, please. I really haven't any idea."

  "But seriously, Margaret, if you know of anyone around the store who had a grievance against Andrew McAndrew, or quarreled with him or hated him for any reason whatsoever, you'll have to tell it."

  "But I don't," the girl's voice was panicky. "I don't know anyone who had murder in his or her heart for Andrew McAndrew. That's a fact."

  "Her? Her heart? Miss Rogers?"

  "Oh, skip it, Mary Carner. Skip it! You don't have to pick me up on every word like that. I didn't say anything. I didn't mean anything."

  "How about yourself? How did you feel about McAndrew?"

  "I? I didn't even know him." Mary looked at her sharply. "All right," she said, some other time then." She turned away to the door, black lettered, "Credit Manager."

  Andrew McAndrew's private office was in the East win
g, at the end of a spacious railed-off square, which was filled with mahogany desks and stiff, black leather armchairs. His was a small room whose partitions reached to the ceiling. A single narrow window looked down on Fifth Avenue. The room held a large, flat desk, a swivel desk chair, a steel filing cabinet, and twos armchairs. Next to it was a small cubicle which contained merely a typewriter desk and chair. Mary looked into the smaller office first.

  "Where's Miss Lennon?" she asked a young man who sat at one of the desks in the nearby railed enclosure.

  "In the rest room, I think. She said she felt sick and was going to lie down. Somebody told her about McAndrew. I guess it hit her hard. It's true, isn't it?"

  Mary Carner nodded. "Anybody been in Mr. McAndrew's office this morning?"

  "Nobody but Evelyn Lennon. She put his mail on his desk right after she came in."

  "Thanks," Mary said softly. She went into McAndrew's office and closed the door carefully behind her.

  The late Andrew McAndrew had been a neat and tidy man. A fountain pen in a black onyx holder, a small bronze clock and a hand telephone rested on top of the sheet of glass which covered the mahogany desk top. A clean green desk blotter tipped with dark bronze lay in the center, and on it, the morning's mail, and a golden rosebud, stabbed through with a purple headed pin, awaiting the credit manager's lapel. The detective ran through the mail with a quick and critical eye. It seemed merely routine detail—complaints, three checks returned by banks, with the "No Funds," notice clipped on, a request for references. But she scooped it all up carefully and put it into her handbag. On the carpeted floor beside the desk lay a woman's handkerchief with a border of gray-blue embroidery of the type known as appenzell. Mary Carner picked it up. It was dry, but its wrinkled stiffness told of tears.

  She turned her attention next to the waste-paper basket of cold, dark green metal. Careful not to touch the metal, she dipped down into the basket and drew from it two scraps of paper. They were small, crumpled bits of paper that had been torn from the pads on which the store's executives wrote memoranda. On one was written in lead pencil, over and over, a single name—"H. G. Chase." It signified nothing to her; she had never seen or heard the name before. The other was much more wordy. It was a long list of merchandise and prices. She glanced at the total and pursed her lips. "$3,645.50." It was a woman's shopping list for dresses, wraps, negligees, underwear, stockings, shoes and handbags—an extravagant, luxury-loving woman's shopping list. The figures that were written in pencil and the handwriting seemed the same as that which had written "H. G. Chase." Touching them gingerly, she dropped them into her handbag. Reaching under the desk to avoid the handle, she tried to open the center drawer. It held fast and the side drawers would, therefore, not open. She tried the files. The cabinet, too, was locked.