Lullaby of Murder Read online

  PRAISE FOR THE WRITING OF DOROTHY SALISBURY DAVIS

  “Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and Josephine Tey … Dorothy Salisbury Davis belongs in the same company. She writes with great insight into the psychological motivations of all her characters.” —The Denver Post

  “Dorothy Salisbury Davis may very well be the best mystery novelist around.” —The Miami Herald

  “Davis has few equals in setting up a puzzle, complete with misdirection and surprises.” —The New York Times Book Review

  “Davis is one of the truly distinguished writers in the medium; what may be more important, she is one of the few who can build suspense to a sonic peak.” —Dorothy B. Hughes, Los Angeles Times

  “A joyous and unqualified success.” —The New York Times on Death of an Old Sinner

  “An intelligent, well-written thriller.” —Daily Mirror (London) on Death of an Old Sinner

  “At once gentle and suspenseful, warmly humorous and tensely perplexing.” —The New York Times on A Gentleman Called

  “Superbly developed, gruesomely upsetting.” —Chicago Tribune on A Gentleman Called

  “An excellent, well-controlled piece of work.” —The New Yorker on The Judas Cat

  “A book to be long remembered.” —St. Louis Post-Dispatch on A Town of Masks

  “Mrs. Davis has belied the old publishing saying that an author’s second novel is usually less good than the first. Since her first ranked among last year’s best, what more need be said?” —The New York Times on The Clay Hand

  “Ingeniously plotted … A story of a young woman discovering what is real in life and in herself.” —The New York Times on A Death in the Life

  “Davis brings together all the elements needed for a good suspense story to make this, her fourth Julie Hayes, her best.” —Library Journal on The Habit of Fear

  “Mrs. Davis is one of the admired writers of American mystery fiction, and Shock Wave is up to her best. She has a cultured style, handles dialogue with a sure ear, and understands people better than most of her colleagues.” —The New York Times Book Review on Shock Wave

  Lullaby of Murder

  A Julie Hayes Mystery

  Dorothy Salisbury Davis

  For

  David Lieberman

  Contents

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THIRTY-SIX

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  THIRTY-NINE

  FORTY

  FORTY-ONE

  FORTY-TWO

  FORTY-THREE

  FORTY-FOUR

  Preview: The Habit of Fear

  About the Author

  ONE

  JEFF SAMPLED HIS MARTINI—straight up, no rocks—and approved, which seemed to surprise him. He was even more meticulous about martinis than about most things. Outside the states he travelled with a little vial of vermouth in his inside pocket and always ordered straight gin. The drink judged worthy of the toast, he met Julie’s eyes and proposed: “To your own by-line by this time next year.”

  Julie wrinkled her nose and murmured thanks. She turned her glass round and round, an orange blossom that, sooner or later, she would be expected to drink. Finally she lifted it: “To Paris and to you.”

  “In that order?”

  She grinned. “I’m very fond of both of you.”

  The restaurant noises picked up as a party shuffled its seating arrangement. Someone was explaining that the guest of honor must face the door through which, at Sardi’s, the rich and famous were presumably in constant transit.

  Jeff scowled and sipped his drink. Sardi’s was not his favorite restaurant, but it was Julie’s the last time he’d asked and he insisted on it. The occasion was more noteworthy for her solid year of employment on the gossip column, Tony Alexander Says…, than for Jeff’s departure later that night for Paris. Geoffrey Hayes’ Times assignments took him to distant and troubled places, Julie’s to where her legs could carry her, so to speak. She suspected he was already half way to Paris and envied him the depth of his work, its significance. “Where do you start when you get there?” she asked.

  “I’ll skirmish around a bit and try to improve my contacts. France is a conspirators’ marketplace. I’ll be shopping for discarded loyalties. How’s that?”

  “Very fancy,” Julie said.

  Jeff laughed aloud.

  She conjured a picture of him sitting in a smoky bistro, drinking beer and waiting for someone who would walk past the place twice to get a look at him before going in. She had not questioned whether he would be in danger. Risk was to be taken for granted. So was caution. He was going to do a series on the neo-Fascist movement. “I’d like to be going with you,” she said. “I’d like to work on something that important.”

  Jeff made a sound in his throat that suggested satisfaction with things as they were. He neither under- nor over-valued the job of legman for Tony Alexander. It was where he too had started his newspaper career.

  She laid her hand on his across the table. The grey in his hair was becoming dominant and made him even more distinguished-looking. The probing dark eyes suggested a worldly wisdom, the firm mouth, self-assurance almost to a degree of self-satisfaction.

  “You should work on your French,” Jeff said. “We could speak it at home, couldn’t we? Good for both of us.”

  She felt slightly irritated, no doubt because she was self-conscious about her French. His was always going to be so much better. She was on the point of suggesting that it might improve their communication and then held back. They did not communicate well when they were together too much. Their marriage thrived on honeymoons and separations.

  He squeezed her hand and released it. “Why do you always look your most enchanting when I’m on my way to the airport?”

  She bit back the answer to that one too. “Rhetorical question, right?” But she knew that she took more patience with her makeup and dressed better when he was home. With the job she would keep it up to some extent, but part of her longed to revert to jeans and sneakers and something with pockets. Then almost at once she preferred her present chicness. Maybe the gamin in her was forever banished, and no one would miss it more than Jeff…his little girl, his elf. Let her go. God bless her, but let her go.

  “I’m not your only admirer,” Jeff added. “There’s an old boy at a wall table who can’t take his eyes off you.”

  “Always the old boys,” Julie said and shifted her position so that she could discreetly glance in the direction Jeff had indicated. “That’s Jay Phillips, the press agent. He was one of the first people Tony sent me to and he’s been great to me ever since.”

  “In my day we steered clear of publicity handouts,” Jeff said and took up the wine list. “Tonight you’ll have wine.” He always said it and she always did have wine nowadays. She even enjoyed it, but Jeff had missed the transition. “A roughish Burgundy,” he mumbled to himse
lf. He settled for a Pommard, trusting the importer, a name he knew better than he knew the cellar of Sardi’s. “Pommard is a chancy wine, but very good with duck if you get the right one.”

  “And the right duck,” Julie said.

  Jeff’s second martini came with their shrimp. He looked at his watch: he was not in that much of a hurry.

  “Eight o’clock curtain,” Julie said in defense of the express service.

  He ignored the shrimp for the time being and sipped his drink. “Do you like working for Tony, or are you proving something?”

  “Both. I’m hanging in there and I like that. And I do like the job and I don’t settle for handouts.”

  “Of course you don’t,” he soothed. “Don’t misunderstand. I’m very proud of you.”

  “Thank you,” she said, bristling underneath at the fatherliness. There were times she resented Tony for the same reason. The person whose parent-like advice she accepted was Fran, Tony’s wife, who was about Jeff’s age and a lot younger than Tony. She had not seen her for months. “Jeff, why don’t we see the Alexanders socially anymore? Is it because I work for Tony?” She knew Jeff and Tony often met at the Press Club.

  “Julie, it’s not your fault.”

  “I didn’t say it was.” But she had a habit of taking blame whenever it was available. “I miss Fran. That’s all.”

  “Then why don’t you stop at the shop and see her?” Fran owned a flower shop on Lexington Avenue. “Or call her up and take her to lunch. She’d like that. She’s always been very fond of you.”

  “Jeff, you’re being—I don’t know what exactly…”

  “Pompous?”

  “Patronizing.”

  “Am I?” he said distantly and pulled the shrimp to where he could spear one of them. “Your friend the press agent is headed this way. He’s sloshed if I’m not mistaken.”

  “You’re not,” Julie said, not having to look and not unhappy at the diversion. She wondered if what she and Jeff were doing was not a kind of ritual that prepared them for separation. She’d been through it before: distancing was the word that came to mind.

  Phillips came up to the table, a big man, his face chunky and flushed. He was well known as a Broadway publicist and as a heavy drinker. He stood a moment, almost steady, and finally arrived at what he wanted to say. “I just wanted to tell you, Mr. Hayes, how much I admire your wife.” He enunciated each word carefully. “Can’t read you, I admit, but I do admire your wife.”

  “That’s good enough,” Jeff said gallantly.

  Julie thought of introducing them. It seemed superfluous.

  “A real lady. They don’t make many of them anymore.” He put a hand on the table as though to steady it.

  Julie could feel the color rise to her face. The diners nearby were looking at them. “Could I stop around later at the theater and see you?”

  “No, my dear, you could not because I won’t be there. My services to Dorfman Productions have been terminated.”

  “I’m sorry.” He had lost, it would seem, three of the biggest shows in town.

  The man looked blubbery as he stared down at her. He lifted heavy eyes and settled them on Jeff. “How does someone as nice as her work for an s.o.b. like Alexander? Do you understand it?”

  Jeff touched his napkin to his lips. “I try.”

  Phillips shook hands with each of them and drew himself up very straight. He walked from the restaurant like a man on a tightrope.

  “As I was going to tell you in any case,” Jeff said, “Tony and I exchanged compliments today. I’m an elitist snob and I called him an illiterate parasite.”

  “I thought Tony was your best friend. I thought that’s why I got a job with him.”

  “You got a job with him because you could do the work.”

  “Okay, but I don’t think he knew that when he hired me. I didn’t know it myself.”

  “I did,” Jeff said.

  Which brought them back to square one. Julie was on the edge of becoming irritable again and there wasn’t time to work it out. “Jeff, is Tony really an s.o.b.?”

  “It’s you that’s worked for him this past year,” Jeff said, a little mockingly.

  “But he’s your friend, damn it. And you worked for him once yourself.”

  “I don’t test my friends by their virtue. No more do you. Stop and think: Sweets Romano?” He referred to the gentlemanly, art-collecting gangster with whom Julie had twice shared a most unlikely partnership in ferreting out criminal mischief. Her acquaintanceship with Romano had gone a long way toward recommending her for Tony Alexander Says…. Tony had expected a direct line to the underworld.

  “Shall we call it a draw?” Julie said with a puckered smile that got to Jeff every time.

  He nodded but both of them knew that the eleven o’clock flight was taking off for Paris just in time.

  TWO

  ON HER WAY TO WORK in the morning Julie figured out that Jeff would already have had his lunch. In the lobby of the New York Daily building the huge globe turned, the world on a sunken axis; a Japanese couple, the man with a camera and numerous attachments slung from straps around his neck, stood at the railing and beamed as Japan went by. On the back wall one of the clocks that told the times around the world showed it to be five minutes to three in Paris, September 15. In New York it was five minutes to ten of the same day. As usual, Jeff was way ahead of her.

  Tony sat at his desk looking about as fresh as a ripe avocado. On early morning appearances he often looked as though he had not been to bed, and sometimes he hadn’t. When Julie walked in he checked his watch and said to Tim Noble, the other of his apprentices, “I owe you a buck. She’s early.”

  Alice Arthur, everybody’s secretary, was clacking away, transcribing tapes. With Julie’s arrival she took off the earphones and picked up her shorthand book.

  Tony lumbered to his place at the head of the conference table. He had to be well into his sixties. His hair was white, his eyebrows black and ferocious, overhanging dark, bloodshot eyes. The white mustache was exotic though slightly tarnished at the tips from twistings. Jeff was right: it was ridiculous that she had worked with him for a year and couldn’t say whether or not he was a bastard. She did have trouble with her father images.

  Tony gazed at her morosely. “You’re looking peaked this morning. Too much bon voyaging?”

  “No.”

  “The eminent journalist did depart, didn’t he?”

  Julie nodded.

  “In nebulae of self-importance?”

  “Come off it, Tony.”

  “Tut, tut, tut. Only the truth will set you free.”

  He was a bastard.

  Tony sat back and chortled as though he had read her mind. “Now. What have you got for me to sign off with for the week-end, either of you? I want something both frolicsome and wicked.”

  Tim brushed back a wisp of hair from his forehead and told of a presidential widow who was going to play the role of herself in a Broadway musical.

  “Danse macabre,” Tony said: “Write it up. And you, my peaked one, have something too?”

  “I understand Jay Phillips has been fired from the Michael Dorfman shows.”

  “And do you know the reason?”

  “I didn’t ask, but I assume it’s booze.”

  “Assume. What a fancy word for a leglady, and one too much of a lady to ask.”

  “I’m not all that much of a lady.” Not what she meant to say at all, but her reputation for femininity was getting out of hand. “I’ll find out from another source.”

  “I wouldn’t bother,” Tony said wearily.

  Across the table Tim Noble asked earnestly: “Do press agents ever make news, boss?”

  “Only when it’s in very short supply.” Tony swung round on Julie again. “All right, sweetheart: I’ve got a story for you. Let’s see what you can do with it. There’s a place called Garden of Roses on Amsterdam Avenue up near Harlem. In the days of the big bands it was a ballroom. It’s being re
furbished by a character who proposes to revive the dance marathon—a fad or a phenomenon, whatever you want to call it—of the nineteen-thirties.”

  “I wasn’t even born then,” Julie said.

  “I was already a handsome beggar, if I say it myself. I won two hundred dollars in a dance marathon—and these damned varicose veins.” He pushed away from the table and planted a foot on its edge. He pulled up the leg of his slacks.

  Tim Noble half-rose and peered down at the hairy leg through which the swollen veins were just visible. He looked at Tony over his glasses. Tim had a pixie-like quality and could get away with almost anything with Tony. “Never saw anything like it, Sir. Can you make them ripple?”

  Tony withdrew the leg. He glowered at Tim, then at Julie and smiled ominously. “Why don’t the two of you go up there and sign on as contestants?”

  “Please, Tony, I don’t want varicose veins,” Julie said.

  “Okay, sweetheart. But do me something with feeling.”

  He got up and crossed the room to the video data terminal, settled himself comfortably before the screen, took a handful of notes from his pocket and began to tap out the next day’s column.

  Julie searched the movie listings in The New Yorker hoping that They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? was playing somewhere. Tim had suggested it for background information on the dance marathon. No luck. She was about to phone the Reference Room of the Public Library when she thought of Mary Ryan, an older friend, who was great on the New York retrospective, the theater, and such events as the blackout, two World Fairs, Mayor LaGuardia reading the funny papers….

  “Oh, I remember them well,” Mrs. Ryan said of the dance marathons when Julie reached her, “I wasn’t long in this country. And let me tell you, it wasn’t milk and honey we came over to in those days. Respectable men were on the streets selling pencils and shoe-laces. I must have been in my second or third year of highschool and I remember, this chum and I thought it would be a great lark to stay out all night. Come over and have a cup of tea with me and I’ll tell you about it. We wound up at a dance marathon, you see.”

  The trouble with going to Mrs. Ryan’s was that you’d be asked on arrival to take Fritzie for a walk, and Fritzie was an elderly dachshund who took his time about everything. “Mrs. Ryan, let’s meet at the shop, okay?”