“I don’t know whether it’s valuable or not,” she said. “But as a friend of Florence’s you ought to know.
She was seen getting into a car, the night she was killed.
Two people saw her.”
“What kind of a car?”
“A large one; a limousine.”
“Did they notice the color?”
“They don’t agree about that.
They’re the Italians who keep the fruit stand at the corner.
I don’t know their names.
We call him Tony.
They knew Florence well; she often bought apples there.
Tony says it was black, but Mrs. Tony says it was blue.”
The story was as follows: on the night of Florence Gunther’s murder both the Italians at the fruit stand saw her coming along the street.
She shook her head, to say she wanted nothing, and then waited for a street car.
Both of them saw her distinctly.
She seemed restless, walking a few steps each way, then back again.
Before a car arrived, however, an automobile drew up before her; a closed car with a man at the wheel.
Owing to the fact that the street light was directly overhead, neither of the Italians saw him clearly, except that he wore a soft hat.
There was some conversation.
The man and woman at the fruit stand were interested.
They had known her for a long time, and she was always alone.
She seemed to demur at something, the man appeared to insist.
Finally he opened the door and she got in beside him.
But—and here was the curious part—the woman at the fruit stand maintained that this same car had been standing halfway down the block in the shadow for some time.
That she had seen it there, and that the man driving it had been working at something about it; front and rear.
“She thought he was rubbing dirt over the license plates,” Miss Sanderson said.
“And they had been held up a month or so before, so she watched him.
She says now that he got into the car the moment he saw Florence.
Then he drove up rather fast, and threw on the brakes in front of her, as though he had just seen her.
But Mrs. Tony was interested in the license plates, and she went out and looked at the rear one. He had blacked it. She couldn’t read it, at all.”
But that visit of Lily Sanderson’s was disappointing in one way at least.
I asked her point blank if she knew a young woman named Mary Martin, and it produced no effect whatever.
“Mary Martin?” she said thoughtfully.
“No, I can’t say that I do.”
“I think she knew Florence Gunther.
If not, she certainly knew some one at the house.”
“I can ask, if you like,” she said.
“I’ve only been there since last fall, and most of the rest are new too.
You know how it is, everything’s fine at first.
Then you’re caught doing a bit of washing or having a gentleman friend more than one night a week, and there’s trouble.
And that reminds me.
I’ve got something to tell you about the man who called on Florence Gunther.
Clarissa saw him.”
“Clarissa?”
“The colored woman at the house.
And a surly creature she is, at that.
I gave her a dress the other day, and she talked.
He was a thin man, rather tall; she thinks about fifty.
Well dressed, she says.
He had a cane with him, and he wore a sport suit.