“Of course not!”
The Inspector rubbed his jaw. “Alessandro’s real handle is Joe DiSangri, and he’s been mixed up in a lot of monkey-business in New York. He used to be one of Al’s hoods, too, way back.” Then he shook his head. “But it doesn’t smell like a gang kill. Poisoned drinks! If Joe DiSangri wanted to rub out a welcher, he’d use lead. It’s in his blood.”
“Times have changed,” snarled Ty. “That’s a hell of a reason to lay off the skunk! Do I have to look him up myself?”
“Oh, we’ll check him.”
“At any rate,” said Ellery, “did Joe DiSangri, alias Alessandro, also kill Bonnie’s mother because your father welched on a gambling debt?”
Bonnie said passionately: “I knew it would only lead to trouble. I knew it. Why did she have to do it?”
Ty colored and turned aside. Glücke gnawed a fingernail. And kept looking at Bonnie and Ty.
The pilot opened his door and said: “We’re here.”
They looked down. The field was blackly alive, heaving with people.
Bonnie blanched and groped for Butch’s hand. “It... it looks like a — like something big and dead and a lot of little black ants running all over it.”
“Bonnie, you’ve been a trump so far. This won’t last long. Don’t spoil it. Keep your chin up.”
“But I can’t! All those millions of staring eyes—” She held on to his hand tightly.
“Now, Miss Stuart, take it easy,” said the Inspector, getting to his feet. “You’ve got to face it. We’re here—”
“Are we?” said Ty bitterly. “I’d say we were nowhere. And that we’d got there damned fast.”
“That’s why I pointed out,” murmured Ellery, “that when we found out why Jack and Blythe were poisoned — when we got a clear line on the motive — we’d crack this case wide open.”
Chapter 9
The Club Nine
On Wednesday the twentieth the only completely peaceful persons in the City of Los Angeles and environs were John Royle and Blythe Stuart: they were dead.
It had been a mad three days. Reporters; cameramen, of the journalistic, artistic, and candid varieties, aging ladies of the motion picture press; State police and men of Inspector Glücke’s Homicide Detail; stars; producers; directors looking for inspiration; embalmers; preachers; debtors; mortuary salesmen; lawyers; radio announcers; real estate men; thousands of glamour-struck worshipers at the shrine of the dead pair — all milled and shouted and shoved and popped in and out and made the waking hours — there were few sleeping ones — of Bonnie and Ty an animated nightmare.
“Might as well have planned services for the Bowl,” cried Ty, disheveled, unshaven, purple-eyed from lack of rest. “For God’s sake, somebody, can’t I even send the old man out decently?”
“He was a public figure in life, Ty,” said Ellery soothingly. “You couldn’t expect the public to ignore him in death.”
“That kind of death?”
“Any kind of death.”
“They’re vultures!”
“Murder brings out the worst in people. Think of what poor Bonnie’s going through in Glendale.”
“Yes,” scowled Ty. “I guess... it’s pretty tough on a woman.” Then he said: “Queen, I’ve got to talk to her.”
“Yes, Ty?” Ellery tried not to show surprise.
“It’s terribly important.”
“It’s going to be hard, arranging a quiet meeting now.”
“I’ve got to.”
They met at three o’clock in the morning at an undistinguished little café tucked away in a blind alley off Melrose Street, miraculously unpursued — Ty wearing dark blue glasses and Bonnie a heavy nose-veil that revealed little more than her pale lips and chin.
Ellery and the Boy Wonder stood guard outside the booth in which they sat.
“Sorry, Bonnie,” said Ty abruptly, “to bring you out at a time like this. But there’s something we’ve got to discuss.”
“Yes?” Bonnie’s voice startled him; it was flat, brassy, devoid of life or feeling.
“Bonnie, you’re ill.”
“I’m all right.”
“Queen — Butch — somebody should have told me.”
“I’m all right. It’s just the thought of... Wednesday.” He saw her lips quiver beneath the veil.
Ty played with a glass of Scotch. “Bonnie... I’ve never asked a favor of you, have I?”
“You?”
“I’m... I suppose you’ll think I’m a fool, getting sentimental this way.”
“You sentimental?” Bonnie’s lips curved this time.
“What I want you to do...” Ty put the glass down. “It’s not for me. It isn’t even for my dad exclusively. It’s as much for your mother as for dad.”
Her hands crept off the table and disappeared. “Come to the point, please.”
He blurted: “I think they ought to have a double funeral.”
She was silent.
“I tell you it’s not for dad. It’s for both of them. I’ve been thinking things over since Sunday. Bonnie, they were in love. Before... I didn’t think so. I thought there was something else behind it — I don’t know what. But now... They died together. Don’t you see?”
She was silent.
“They were kept apart so many years,” said Ty. “And then to be knocked off just before... I know I’m an idiot to be talking this way. But I can’t get over the feeling that dad — yes, and your mother — would have wanted to be buried together, too.”
She was silent for so long that Ty thought something had happened to her. But just as he was about to touch her in alarm, she moved. Her hands appeared and pushed the veil back from her face. And she looked and looked and looked at him out of her dark-shadowed eyes, not speaking, not changing her expression; just looking.
Then she said simply: “All right, Ty,” and rose.
“Thanks!”
“It’s mother I’m thinking of.”
Neither said another word. They went home by different routes — Ty in Ellery’s coupe to Beverly Hills, Bonnie in the Boy Wonder’s limousine to Glendale.
Then the coroner released the bodies, and John Royle and Blythe Stuart were embalmed, and for several hours on Wednesday morning their magnificent mahogany caskets, sheathed in purest Anaconda copper, with eighteen-carat gold handles and $50-a-yard hand-loomed Japanese silk linings stuffed with the down of black swans, were on public display in the magnificent mortuary on Sunset Boulevard which Sam Vix, who was surreptitiously superintending the production on a 2 %-commission basis, persuaded Jacques Butcher to persuade Ty Royle to beg the favor of Bonnie Stuart to select, which they did, and she did; and four women were trampled, one seriously, and sixteen women fainted, and the police had to ride into the crowd on their magnificent horses, which were all curried and glossed for the occasion; and one poorly dressed man who was obviously a Communist tried to bite the stirrup of the mounted policeman who had just run over him and was properly whacked over the head with a billy and dragged off to jail; and inside the mortuary all the glittering elect, tricked out in their most gorgeous mourning clothes — Mme. Flo’s and Magnin’s and L’Heureuse’s had had to hire mobs of seamstresses to get the special orders out in time for the funeral — remarked how beautiful Blythe looked: “Just as if she were asleep, the darling; if she weren’t under glass you’d swear she was going to move!” “And yet she’s embalmed; it’s wonderful what they can do.” “Yes, and to think she’s got practically nothing left inside. I read that they performed an autopsy, and you know what they do in autopsies.” “Don’t be gruesome! How should I know?” “Well, but wasn’t your first husband—” — and didn’t Bonnie show a too, too precious taste in dressing Blythe up in that gorgeous white satin evening gown with that perfectly clever tight bodice — “She had a beautiful bust, my dear. Do you know she once told me she never wore a girdle? And I know for a fact that she didn’t have to wear a cup-form brassiere!” — with the shirring at the waist and those thousands of accordion pleats — “If she could only stand up, darling, you’d see what a cunning fan effect those pleats give!” — and that one dainty orchid corsage and those exquisite diamond clips at the shoulder-straps — “I mean they look exquisite. Are they real, do you think, dear?” And how handsome poor old Jack looked, in his starched bosom and tails, with that cynical half-smile on his face: “Wouldn’t you swear he was going to get right out of that casket and put his arm around you?” “Who put that gold statuette that Jack won in thirty-three in there with him?” “I’m sure I don’t know; it does seem a little like bragging, doesn’t it?” “Well, there’s the Academy committee and they looked simply devastatingly pleased!” “He was a handsome devil, though, wasn’t he? My second husband knocked him down once.” “Don’t you think that’s a little indiscreet, darling? — I mean with all these detectives around? After all, Jack was murdered.” “Don’t be funny, Nanette! You know Llewelyn ran off to Africa or some place with that snippy extra-girl with the g-string and hips two years ago.” “Well, my dear, the things I could tell you about Jack Royle — not that I’m speaking ill of the dead, but in a way Blythe’s better off. She’d never have been happy with him, the way he chased every chippy in town.” “Oh, my darling! I’d forgotten that you knew him well, didn’t you?”