Death Paints the Picture Read online

  The Shtunk guessed wrong. The phone rang. Homer’s expression didn’t change. The Shtunk leaped for the phone. “You want I should tell that gink off again?”

  “Hold on,” said Homer. “I’ll speak to the gentleman.”

  He lifted the telephone and said: “Yes, this is Mr. Homer Bull … What … ? Oh, that’s silly; I like Woodstock … You’re wrong, sonny. I’d recommend you getting a morning paper.” He dropped the phone and beamed. “I am afraid most gangsters read nothing but the sports section, Hank. It is no wonder that they’re maladjusted.”

  He opened the cupboard and poured a tall one for the Shtunk. Then he poured a short one for himself. I reached for the bottle, but he whisked it away. “No more for you, sonny. You’ve got a responsible job to do. You’ll be driving us to Woodstock in a few minutes.”

  He spread the Times on the table.

  “That will be your last drink this week, Shtunk,” he said, fixing the little man with a baleful eye. “I have a little job of work for you.”

  He cut the Shipley item out of the paper and handed it to the Shtunk.

  “I want some information, you understand? I want all you can get on these four characters: Stanley Nevin, Bruce Cunningham, Douglas Trum and Mike Gavano.”

  The Shtunk whistled, “Mike Gavano!”

  “Familiar with the name?”

  The Shtunk whistled again. A higher note. “Some of my best friends have been bumped off by that guy!”

  “You know him?”

  “I am lucky. I do not know him. I do not want to know him.” He scratched his head. “It will not be very easy to get a line on that gent. People who gab about Mike are not what you would call a common occurrence, on account of all of them that has opened their yaps about him already are pushing up the daisies.”

  Homer said: “Do your best. Cunningham and Trum will be easy, I’m sure. You can pay a visit to my friend Gurney, the editor of the Star. Gurney will give you the key to their morgue.”

  The Shtunk squirmed. “This I am not used to doing. It is not very cosy mixing with the stiffs.”

  “Don’t be a sap,” I said. “A newspaper morgue is where they keep clippings and pictures of celebrities. The only stiffs you’ll see will be the zombie reporters. They are the living dead.”

  Homer toyed with Shipley’s note, then handed it to me. It was typewritten haphazardly, in the manner of a hunt and peck stenographer.

  The invitation read:

  Be quick, Homer!

  I almost forgot that you specialize in comic strip characters.

  You’ll find plenty up here this weekend. Please come up Friday.

  Shipley

  “Droll,” I said. “But does it mean anything?”

  Homer shrugged, and stuffed the note away. “We’ll see.”

  He turned to the Shtunk and the news clipping. “I’ve never heard of Stanley Nevin—an ordinary mortal, no doubt, probably just a friend of Shipley’s. Get me as much on Nevin as you can—where he lives, what he does, who he sleeps with. Phone me at Woodstock as soon as you’ve got anything worth mentioning. I’ll expect your call sometime tonight.”

  The Shtunk gulped his Scotch and went.

  Homer sent me packing. “Put enough of our needs in one suitcase, Hank. I don’t think we’ll be up there very long.”

  “I don’t get it,” I groused. “What’s so urgent? After all, Shipley’s a suicide—he won’t make a very entertaining host.”

  “I’ll bet on Shipley,” mused Homer. “Dead or alive. After all, he was the world’s best party boy, Hank. I like his guest list. It seems to me that we may find something up there—something worth putting into a story. We’ll be doing a job of work, you see.”

  “Wishful thinking,” said I.

  “And besides,” Homer rumbled on, “I am like the kid and the jar of jelly. Tell me I can’t reach it and I’ll break my back getting it. Somebody doesn’t want me up there, Hank. Why? I feel the need for a post-mortem holiday. Somebody doesn’t want me to holiday at Woodstock. It has all the elements of something or other.”

  “Malarkey!”

  I went into the bedroom and packed. After all, how could I expect Homer to admit that he was visiting Woodstock for a gander at Grace?

  Love is like that.

  CHAPTER 3

  Think, Swink, Think

  I drove. Homer maintained a moody silence until we crossed the Washington Bridge.

  “It becomes increasingly difficult to believe that Hugo Shipley committed suicide,” he muttered, as though he were debating with the Palisades. “I knew him casually. In our few chance meetings, he impressed me as being a man who might have been a cad, an egomaniac, a poseur, a Casanova of the Hollywood School of Seduction. But a suicide? I wonder.”

  “Not dramatic enough for Hugo,” I snorted. “He’d rather be found dead than a suicide.”

  Kingston lay behind us, and we entered the tortuous two-lane road that dipped and wound around the snowy hills. Ah there, Woodstock! Sudden memories clouded my brain. This, in a way, was my native land. Not too long ago, when art meant more to me than comic strips, I had tested my brush in these ruddy valleys, fiddling with light and shade and a business called chiaroscuro.

  Woodstock? Woodstock is Woodstock. A cluster of small stores on the main street, a small gallery, and wooden restaurants warmed with candlelight and the never ending buzz of chatter. An inn, two inns, three inns. You could eat in several languages in Woodstock and then belch in the colloquial without any regrets. This was a town of free souls, of artists and writers, models and morons—a town to quiet the soul, or make it live again.

  Homer nudged me into the present.

  “Pick up this chap,” he said. “He looks cold.”

  I stopped the car alongside the lone figure plodding up the road. Homer swung open the door.

  “Want a lift?”

  The man in the black overcoat turned his head and showed us a row of gold teeth, set in an ugly mouth. His rat eyes darted from Homer to me. He was making up his mind.

  “Yeah. Sure,” he said, and got in. “Damn cold up here. How far you going?”

  “As far as you go,” Homer said, turning in his seat to face the man. “You’re bound for Shipley’s place, aren’t you, Mr. Gavano?”

  The man was surprised. He raised his beetle brows and said: “I’ll be damned! You ain’t—”

  “Oh, but I am,” said Homer, grinning impishly. “You didn’t expect me, did you? My name is Homer Bull.”

  Gavano reset his face. “Expect you? Nuts. I ain’t expecting nobody. Why should I be expecting anybody?”

  “I thought Shipley might have told you I’d be up. You see, I’m late. Business prevented me from coming up on Friday night. But had I known—” here he paused to beam at Gavano—“had I but known that you’d be here, Mike—wild horses couldn’t have kept me away.”

  “A funny man, eh?”

  Homer went on. “It must be getting rather stuffy up at Shipley’s place since he—ah, committed suicide.”

  Gavano was silent.

  I swung the car into a sharp right turn, and we began to skid and climb up into the hills.

  Homer nudged me again.

  “Another wanderer,” he said, and pointed ahead. “Shall we stop for the lady, Hank?”

  I stopped. It was Eileen Tucker.

  “Why, it’s Hank,” she smiled. “Whatever in the world are you doing up here?”

  I introduced Homer, and held open the rear door.

  Eileen’s smile faded suddenly. I thought I saw fear in her eyes. She closed the door.

  “Oh, no, thanks,” she said. “I’d rather walk—really. I’ll see you later. Wait for me at the house.”

  I didn’t insist.

  Homer said: “Do you always frighten little girls, Gavano?”

 
“Nuts!” said Gavano.

  Homer shrugged. “A brilliant conversationalist.”

  We passed through the gate on the border of Shipley’s huge slice of acreage. Once, on a hike with Shirley, I had seen the squat, sprawling estate that was the home of Hugo Shipley. Shirley and I had played guessing games for hours. What could a lone man want with so much house? Even a seasoned rake didn’t need eight bedrooms. (We counted the windows on the second floor.)

  Shipley was known internationally, of course, for his parties—his dizzy society column brawls that started every Thursday night and ended in confusion. But after the parties—what? We pictured the great illustrator, clad in his overpublicized pajamas, stalking the great halls, or eating his curds and whey in the monstrous, raftered room that was his dining nook.

  Shipley made his million in the days when illustrating for the big weeklies paid better dividends than Bethlehem Steel. His style never changed, nor did his vogue pass. He had a happy facility for pleasing editors, if not by his gloomy black and whites, then by his full color illustrated orgies in the hills.

  Tall, dark and handsome as a Mephisto, he had lived a life brimming over with fair weather friends and bitter enemies. He was a boon to gossip columnists, caterers and tabloid readers. He had lived hard. I laughed at the idea of Hugo Shipley committing suicide.

  I swung the car through the second gate and down the road to Nat Tucker’s nest, where Nat waved me to a stop. I introduced Homer. Gavano walked away up the driveway without a word.

  “Peculiar cuss,” whispered Nat, jerking his thumb Gavano’s way. “Just like one of them gangster fellers you see in the movies.”

  “Another reason for avoiding the movies,” I said.

  Nat led us inside. There was a fire in the hearth and a drink in the cupboard for each of us. Homer spread himself in a rocker and his eyes wandered around the room.

  “A cosy little place you have here, Tucker,” he said. “Been living here long?”

  “Five years this Christmas. Been here ever since Mr. Shipley bought the estate. He’s made it awful pleasant for us here.”

  “It agrees with Eileen,” I said. “We just met her down the road, and she’s prettier than ever.”

  Tucker glowed. “Eileen’s just finished her schooling down in Kingston. She’s learned typing, you know. Mr. Shipley used her now and then as a typist. Paid her good, too.”

  “Typing?” asked Homer. “Shipley was turning to fiction, then?”

  “I guess you’d call it that. Some business about a book of memoirs, it was.” Nat shook his head gloomily. “It’s a sad business up there. Never thought Mr. Shipley would take his own life.”

  “How many others did Shipley employ around the place?”

  “Two.”

  That was a surprise, even to Homer.

  “Two others in help? How in the world could two people manage that big house?”

  Nat scratched his head. “I couldn’t rightly say, ’cause I never did inquire. But I do know that Mr. Shipley didn’t like many servants around him. Said they got in his hair.”

  “But how in hell could he run those—?”

  “The parties?” Nat smiled. “O’ course, he’d have many more in help for one of his shindigs, but they were mostly waiters and such from town.”

  “Odd,” said Homer. “The two, I suppose, are a housekeeper and a valet?”

  Tucker laughed. “Mr. Shipley didn’t fancy a valet. He had a cook—that’s Minnie Minton. And Minnie’s husband, Lester—well, I guess you might call him a butler, at that.”

  “Butler and housemaid?” I suggested.

  “Well, he must be a housemaid, Hank. Minnie Minton, now, she just cooks. I don’t imagine Minnie does anything else but cook. Mebbe after you meet Lester, you’ll understand who makes the beds and keeps the place clean. Lester’s a queer one.” And he rolled his eyes toward the ceiling.

  We left the car at Nat’s, at his suggestion. The main garage, he told us, was full up.

  The wizened Yankee who admitted us was surly.

  “Now we don’t want any more reporters,” he snapped. “There ain’t a thing to get up here. The guests won’t talk and there’s nothing to snap with your cameras.”

  Homer introduced himself, and the man’s tone changed.

  “Homer Bull, did you say? Well, now, that’s different.” He pumped Homer’s hand. “I’m Jesse Swink—sheriff. Follow your funny page stuff every day. Damned good—and clever, too. But what’s up here to interest you, eh, Bull?”

  Homer mentioned Shipley’s invitation. “I’ve wanted, too, to study your country routine, Mr. Swink. I’m planning a farm story, you see. Might even use you as the sheriff in the case. That is, if you don’t mind.”

  Swink softened even more and led us into the library. Homer wooed him further with a cigar.

  “Are you planning an inquest?” asked Homer.

  Swink pulled at his mustache nervously. “Matter of fact, no. Lem Bruck—he’s the coroner—called it open and shut suicide. But I don’t know what it is.”

  I caught a broad wink from Homer. “You have your doubts?”

  “Noooo.” Swink half shut his eyes. “I’d call it a hunch, Bull. Just a hunch.”

  “What sort of a hunch?”

  Swink paused, making faces at the ceiling. “I can’t say.” He turned to Homer suddenly. “Ever get a strong feeling about somethin’ without knowing why?”

  “Often. That sort of hunch might be worth working on.”

  “Can’t understand it,” Swink’s arms went out stiffly; his eyebrows shot up. “It ain’t the way the man died. Shipley died like a suicide, all right.”

  “But?”

  Swink set his hat back on his bald head. “Can’t find me a reason in the world, Bull. Except—” he suddenly sat down—“that these people—these guests of his make me leery. They just make me leery, is all!”

  “You don’t like them?”

  “Hell,” said Swink. “That ain’t it. Ain’t it at all. It’s just that they’re—well, they’re queer, is all. Never saw such an odd bunch in all my days. Good friend o’ theirs dies—good friend, mind you. And—and nobody seems sorry. Nobody’s mourning! See what I mean?”

  “I think so,” said Homer, puffing slowly.

  Swink wrestled with his jacket pocket and brought out a sheet of note paper. “They’re all on this sheet. Mebbe you know some of ’em, Bull?”

  I squinted at the list over Homer’s shoulder.

  Minnie Minton—Shipley’s cook

  Lester Minton—butler

  Grace Lawrence—model

  Bruce Cunningham—advertising man

  Nick English—newspaper man

  Olympe Deming—secretary

  Stanley Nevin—friend

  Douglas Trum—cigarette man

  Mike Gavano—friend

  Homer said: “I know only Miss Lawrence. She used to be my wife.”

  Swink’s jaw dropped. “Well, now, that’s interesting, ain’t it now?”

  Homer didn’t say. “I’ve heard of Nicky English, of course. Most New Yorkers would know his name—he’s quite a famous columnist. They’re all still here, Swink?

  “Yep, I told ’em to stay. Felt I ought to talk this thing over with Bruck this afternoon. Couldn’t get myself to let ’em go, somehow. Funny, ain’t it? Me holdin’ ’em here and not knowin’ why, I mean. Heaven knows what I thought I’d find, diggin’ around this house today.”

  “I’m glad you held them here,” said Homer, rising. “Mind if I take a look around? I’d like to see his studio first.”

  Swink led us through the awesome beamed dining room and from there through a small hallway to the studio.

  Shipley had built his workroom on the North side of the house. It was a huge affair, forming a wing with three exposures and only
one door. The door itself leaned crazily against the wall, more or less held upright by the lower hinge which had not broken away after a terrific impact.

  Three walls of the room were really walls of windows, skillfully designed to give modern light and yet not disturb the rococo theme of the studio itself. For rococo the studio certainly was. Shipley must have understood his audience. He had created this room, obviously, to satisfy his guests, his editors and all their press agents.

  I examined the handsomely carved oak easel and remembered my first sight of Hugo Shipley leering prettily into the camera, in a publicity picture for a women’s magazine. He had surrounded himself with the sort of garbage even a French court painter wouldn’t have chosen. It was that bad. Pure corn, from the heavy English rafters to the theatre lobby drapes that completely covered the only un-windowed wall.

  Pure corn, sure—but the effect of the room as a unit made me step lightly on the deep rugs, and even look for an ashtray for my dwindling butt. I was impressed, in spite of my distaste. Or maybe it was the crimson stain on the white rug Homer was examining that made my heart pound offbeat.

  “There’s where he lay,” Swink said, and dropped to his knees to demonstrate. “Like this. His head facing them windows. The gun right here—not over a foot from his right hand.”

  Homer joined Swink on the floor. He crawled around the huge bloodstain slowly, his fat tail jellying gently. He paused finally, to sit cross-legged on the rug and open his little book. He turned to Swink.

  “Powder burns?”

  Swink nodded briskly. “Plenty. Couldn’t have held that gun more than six inches away from his heart. He was a mess, Bull.”

  Homer rose to examine the door.

  Swink said: “The door wasn’t in that position, o’ course, when I got here. I pushed it back against the wall so’s it’d be out o’ the way. It was hangin’ by that bottom hinge.”