Free Lullaby of Murder by Dorothy Salisbury Davis Page B

asked.
    “Yes,” Alice answered for herself. “But the only other person who knew it was Mrs. Alexander.”
    “To the best of your knowledge,” Marks cautioned. “Then Tim arrived. Then Julie; and before she got to her desk he started criticizing the article.”
    “Alice, do you know what he did with it?” Julie asked. “Did he put it in his pocket, his desk or where?”
    “I didn’t see. I heard the drawer bang and I took for granted he put it away in his desk, but I didn’t look around.”
    “Much safer,” Tim said. “Lot’s wife and that sort of thing.”
    “About eleven,” Marks continued, “Julie left and Tim went downstairs with her. When he returned, Alexander gave him a rewrite job. He was still at it when Alexander went to lunch. Alice went shortly afterwards. She returned in forty minutes, at which time Tim gave her some typing and went off to The New York Aquarium to a…” Marks raised his eyebrows. “…Save the Whales luncheon. Alexander came back at two, still in a bad mood, and called Mrs. Alexander to bring the carrying case and her own revolver and pick him up to go for an hour’s target shooting. There was discussion about ammunition.” Marks, who’d been consulting his notebook throughout, turned to the secretary. “Miss Arthur, give us the phone conversation that followed, as you remember it.”
    “He said he had a lot of aggression he wanted to get rid of. Mrs. Alexander said something. Then he said, Get your daughter over there. She ought to be good for something besides blackballing me.”
    Marks took over. “In a half hour or thereabouts Mrs. A. arrived, and when he’d made sure the office door was locked, Alexander opened the desk box, using the key he carried on him, took out the thirty-eight and put it into the twin case. Alice did not observe whether he locked the box during his absence. Probably not, or she’d have noticed his unlocking it on his return.”
    “I always tried not to look,” Alice said.
    “At anything?” Tim said.
    Marks stepped on his quip. “The Alexanders were gone for two hours. When they got back, the same routine. He locked the door, took the gun from the case and put it into the box. Mrs. Alexander went off with the carrier, her own revolver presumably the one inside. Now suppose Tim or Julie had been in the office, Miss Arthur: what would Alexander have done?”
    “He’d have taken the case into the bathroom, removed the gun and kept it in his pocket until everyone had left.”
    “What was his attitude toward the weapon? Did he like having it? Did it give him pleasure to hold it? Or was he afraid of it?”
    “I don’t think I can answer that.”
    Marks went on. “When he returned from the shoot, he was in a better humor. He washed up in your private bathroom, gave Alice his itinerary…”
    “Excuse me, sir,” Alice said. “You left out that he had me call the Samovar and say that he would cover the nine o’clock show. He wanted the best table in the house.”
    “Thank you,” Marks said and made a note. “The early itinerary checks out as he gave it to Miss Arthur: a brief stop at a theatrical backer’s party at Paul’s, a motion picture screening at the Eleven Hundred, then to the mayor’s birthday party. Shortly after he left the office Miss Arthur locked up and went home early. Well before five.”
    “I had his permission,” Alice said.
    Marks turned to Tim. “Why don’t you fill us in from the whale affair on?”
    “I was in its belly for three days…”
    “Tim,” Julie said.
    He sighed. “I rode back to Manhattan with Judy Starr in her limousine and did an interview with her on the way. She’s decided not to marry that wrestling champ she’s been dating. He doesn’t dig the whales…”
    This time Julie held her tongue. After all, she wasn’t his mother.
    Tim stretched his skinny neck and his adam’s apple gave a bob above the turtleneck sweater. His facetiousness, she realized, owed to the difficulty of