by Helen Reilly
“Go ahead, Car CMK, here’s your number.” That was the Fire Department radio operator. Lieutenant Sheerer came on. As the car crossed Lexington and headed for Third, the Scotsman said, “Sheerer? McKee. Send two men to relieve Todhunter as soon as he calls in, and tell him to get me through the car at once. I may be going to need men tonight. If there aren’t enough on tap, get some. I’m going to 66 Franklin Place now. I’ll get in touch with you later.”
“O.K., Inspector.” Sheerer’s voice faded slightly as they passed under the elevated structure and sped toward Second. “Car CMK standing by,” the Scotsman said. “WNYF standing by,” the Fire Department radio operator said. McKee put the telephone back in its cradle.
He gave Miller directions. His first port of call was not the apartment hotel in which the Hazards had lived. It was the steep street around the corner that ran down sharply to the Drive and the river. Seated motionless in the back seat of the Cadillac on the spot in which Sara Hazard had been seated before that fatal plunge, McKee leaned back and lit a cigarette.
It was already dark. Conditions were much the same as they must have been on that August night except that there were more traffic and more people and it was colder. He absorbed the atmosphere, storing details for reference. Yes, it could be a bad spot for a woman with too much liquor aboard. The car could have gotten away from her.
Granting for the moment that it was accident, there were two rather startling discrepancies to be explained. One was the lie direct from Steven Hazard as to his presence on the scene when the wrecked car without anyone in it was raised. The second was the presence of the girl in whom Hazard seemed to be something more than interested.
McKee sat up. “All right, Miller,” he said, “to 66 Franklin Place.”
The vacated Hazard apartment had very little to offer. He interviewed the manager, the housekeeper, a couple of elevator boys, some cleaning women and a bath maid, Laura Schmidt.
One of the elevator boys, Jerry Dorfman, and one of the cleaning women, Alice Fairfield, paired up in a tandem that gave the Scotsman pause. According to both of them, Sara Hazard gave not the slightest indication of being under the influence of alcohol when she left the apartment on the morning of her death.
The elevator boy had brought her downstairs shortly before 3 a.m. The cleaning woman had seen her go through the lobby. Of course you never could tell about some dames, Jerry Dorfman said, but she didn’t look tight to him. And she didn’t look tight to Alice Fairfield either and Alice Fairfield had seen her return home late and go out again plenty of times.
Both of them seemed to know what they were talking about. Its import was grave. Mrs. Hazard drunk was one thing, Mrs. Hazard sober was another, where an accident was in question. The Scotsman’s mouth took a grim twist. If it was true, the precinct detectives had slipped up. They hadn’t dug deep enough. The Scotsman proceeded to go on digging.
He found the bath maid, Laura Schmidt, at the dark end of a tunnel, literally and figuratively. She was down in the basement putting away her mops and cleaning powder and cloths and getting ready to go home for the day. Mrs. Schmidt added half a dozen new strokes to the picture that was beginning to take shape.
“Oh, she was a terror, that one,” Laura said, referring to Sara Hazard, and smacked her lips over the telling of it. “I knew her maid Eva Prentice well and Eva said many a time what a shifty dame Mrs. H. was and what tricks she was up to. Eva was a smart one herself. She knew. There wasn’t much that went on in that apartment she didn’t know. You ought to of seen the stuff that Mrs. Hazard had. Eva said it would of taken the crown jewels to keep her in clothes. Her bills! My! She bought tons of things and yet she was in debt over her ears. And then Eva said...”
Laura Schmidt paused in the middle of the flood of words, looked at the Scotsman. He smiled. “Yes, go on. Tell me what Eva Prentice said.” Laura Schmidt was pleased. She resumed her narrative.
“Mrs. Hazard wanted to soak Eva a month’s wages for an evening dress with coffee spilled on it that she’d never put on her back again. I said to Eva, I said, I wouldn’t stay in a place where things weren’t going right and I asked her why she didn’t get another job. But she laughed and said Mr. Hazard always saw she got her money, and besides there were pickings. She wore Mrs. Hazard’s size and Mrs. H. had such swell things. I often said to Eva I wonder why Mr. Hazard puts up with her and Eva said maybe he won’t forever.”
Laura Schmidt shook her head. “Why, the very night before she died, Mr. Hazard asked her for a divorce. You couldn’t hardly blame him. Eva said to me they had a terrible fight. There was a big row about someone named Cristie, the girl that Eva heard Mr. Hazard telephoning to a few days before. Eva said to me she was surprised Mrs. Hazard didn’t pull her gun on him.”
The Scotsman put out a hand, halted the cleaning woman gently. “A gun, Mrs. Schmidt? Did you say a gun?”
Laura Schmidt nodded emphatically.
“Yes. A gun. Mrs. Hazard had a gun. Eva said to me, ‘I saw it the other day when she was changing it from one bag to the other. You know,’ Eva said, ‘I’d never be surprised to pick up the paper and see she’d put a bullet through someone. Only the worst of it was,’ she said, ‘I believe she’d get away with it, unless there were twelve women on the jury. She ought to be hung,’ Eva said. But I said, Eva take it easy, as the Irishman said hangin’s too good for her, they ought to kick her tail. And besides...”
McKee let the woman roll on. Laura Schmidt had plenty of information.
“This Eva Prentice,” he asked presently, in one of her infrequent pauses. “What did she look like?”
“Oh, Eva was a good-looking girl,” Mrs. Schmidt said. “She was young, around thirty, I guess, and she was blonde and had a good figure. Took care of it too, wouldn’t eat much for fear of getting fat. She worried about her hips. Some people are like that. Now you take me. .
McKee didn’t want to take the bath maid anywhere, but she was taking him plenty of places.
Mr. and Mrs. Steven Hazard didn’t get along; he was in love with another woman; he had asked his wife for a divorce; she had refused to give him one and some nine hours later she had gone down the hill into the river in an accident.
Airs. Schmidt’s information was second-hand. Get hold of the maid. She had hated her employer. Hatred was a good tongue loosener. The bath maid didn’t know where Eva Prentice was. She herself had been off on the Sunday Mrs. Hazard died. There was a lot of excitement after that, police and detectives and reporters. She hadn’t seen Eva again. And the apartment was closed.
The gun occupied the Scotsman. Sara Hazard’s bag had been found in the wreck of the gray convertible. There was no gun in it. Nor had Sara Hazard been shot. Had she tried to turn that gun on someone else, and had that someone else retaliated? Those contusions, for instance, one or more of them might have been inflicted before the car plunged down the hill into the East River with Sara Hazard slumped unconscious at the wheel. Yes, that was the way it could have been. Nothing corroborative yet. But it began to add up.
Back in the lobby the Inspector asked for a telephone book, skimmed pages and found the name he wanted. In the Cadillac he gave Miller an address on East Seventy-third Street.
The loud-speaker erupted. “WNYF, calling Car CMK,” McKee lifted the instrument from the cradle. It was Todhunter, relayed through the Fire Department. He had been relieved by two men from the squad. The girl and Steven Hazard were still at George and Jean’s. McKee told Todhunter where to meet him, waited outside the well-kept old house on Seventy-third Street until the little detective arrived.
Mary Dodd received them in the long softly-lighted living room on the second floor. It was an attractive room, informal, gracious, the product of years and taste and culture. There was a portrait of the late Dr. Dodd over the fireplace. Miss Dodd put down her book and rose from her chair as an elderly maid ushered them in. She wore a crisp blue dress that matched the blue of her fine eyes.
“From the Police Departmen
t?” she said, looking from one man to the other. A frown puckered her forehead. She studied the Scotsman’s lean tanned face.
McKee bowed. He introduced himself and Todhunter.
A shutter opened and closed at the back of Mary Dodd’s eyes when he said “Homicide Squad.” Her lips tightened. She said in a level tone, her brows raised, “Sit down, gentlemen, will you please? What is it you want?” She was pleasant and direct and at the same time she was worried. There wasn’t quite as much surprise in her as there had been in Steven Hazard. Someone with incriminating knowledge in his or her possession had sent that letter to headquarters. Steven Hazard had spoken of this woman as an intimate friend of both his own and his wife’s. The voice of conscience was not good enough. There was more to the anonymous communication than that.
Mary Dodd seemed to be very fond of Steven Hazard, but reticence entered into her when she spoke of the dead woman whom she said she had known from a child. For all her reticence McKee gathered that she hadn’t cared much for the late Sara.
She was a clever woman, wasn’t deceived by his offer of red tape as an excuse for reopening a case with finis written after it. McKee felt around for something tangible beneath the almost too pellucid surface of her unhesitating replies. Her championship of Steven Hazard was indirect but forceful. Sara Hazard had been headstrong, rather difficult at times.
Steven had borne her whims, her extravagance, with admirable patience. They should have had a child. It would have made Sara less self-centered, more considerate.
The body recovered from the waters of the East River had had very little to offer in the shape of information. Nevertheless the late Sara Hazard was beginning to take on life and substance. Corpus delicti; the chosen body. Choose, select, single out, isolate from, for what? For murder—as the anonymous letter charged? The groundwork appeared to have been there. None of the people he had so far interviewed had given her a very good character.
He looked absently at the long-fingered white hands tapping a cigarette on a blue silk knee, touching the chair arm, smoothing the pages of an opened book, as he wandered at random over a variety of angles. Hands and voices were the most difficult to control. Miss Dodd was nervous. Her hands stood still when he mentioned the Hazards’ maid, Eva Prentice. As early as that McKee got an inkling of Eva Prentice’s importance.
Mary Dodd said, “I don’t know what became of her or where she went. I never saw her again after Sara’s death.”
McKee pressed his advantage. “I’m going to be frank with you, Miss Dodd. We’ve been hearing things about that maid. She hated Mrs. Hazard. I’m very much interested in Eva Prentice.”
Relief and a little thrill of fear went through the woman with the streak of white through her thick dark hair. Both of them were covered by an assumed indifference. “I’m afraid I can’t help you much, Inspector.”
McKee made a cast at random. “Come, Miss Dodd, you closed Steven Hazard’s apartment for him after his wife was buried. You packed the dead woman’s belongings.”
Mary Dodd bit. She said swiftly, “Granting that the woman was a thief what was I to do? Steven was in no condition to be worried about a few trinkets and a fur coat. I did ask him to look over things, but, in the first place, he didn’t know what Sara had and in the second, he didn’t want to be bothered. You could scarcely blame him.”
McKee went on asking questions. “That night at the party at Miss St. Vrain’s, did you notice anything unusual that might have...”
Mary Dodd shook her head slowly. “No. I can’t say I did. It was a big party, of course. But I couldn’t say that there was anything out of the way.”
She could give him nothing like a complete list of the guests. Cristie Lansing’s was among the names she mentioned. The Scotsman concealed his interest. Check on Miss Lansing elsewhere.
“Was Mrs. Hazard there when you left, Miss Dodd?”
“Yes, she was still there in all her glory and still going strong.” There was unmistakable acridity in her reference to her dead friend.
“What time did you leave, Miss Dodd?”
“Not terribly late, a little after one. Kit...” “Kit?”
“Yes, my niece, Kit Blaketon, who lives with me, had left earlier and there was nothing to keep me.” Her inflection was too casual. “Was your niece at home here when you arrived?”
Mary Dodd said, “Oh, yes. Kit was in bed.”
The Scotsman looked absently at a painting of the late Dr. Dodd in academic robes over the mantel. The anonymous letter calling Sara Hazard’s death murder was a constant you couldn’t get away from. You could do a number of simple examples with it. There was Eva Prentice, for instance. A thieving maid, a condoning employer; Hazard didn’t look like an easy mark. He had ignored the theft of an expensive fur coat and half a dozen other articles including a wrist watch, a valuable compact and an emerald bracelet. Because the maid had something on him? Eva knew a good deal about her former mistress. Had she offered Hazard her information at a price? If so, and he had turned the offer down, the letter crying murder might be Eva Prentice’s come-back.
Excellent as theory, worthless as proof, get after the woman, pick her up. She wasn’t the only disturbing element at the root of Mary Dodd’s very real perturbation. The attractive, cultured, sophisticated daughter of the late Dr. Dodd, eminent psychologist, was running around in mental circles beneath that calm exterior.
McKee got a line on her inner distress some five minutes later when they were leaving the house.
They had said goodbye to Mary Dodd and were in the lower hall when the door opened and a girl came in. She was tall and reed-slender with flaming red hair and bright green eyes under a green beret. There was a sullen tautness to her young face. She glanced at McKee and Todhunter without interest as though they were gas or electric light men, said to the elderly maid waiting to show them out, “I’m starving, Eliza. I hope dinner’s ready,” and ran lightly up the stairs.
It was the glance the maid sent after her before turning to the police that was the tip-off. McKee’s unreadable gesture to Todhunter said, “This woman knows something about that girl that she doesn’t want us to know. Go to work on her.” As the little detective laid a detaining hand on the maid’s arm, McKee said aloud, “Must have dropped my fountain pen,” remounted the stairs and proceeded noiselessly to the closed door of the living room.
Pay dirt. The real McCoy with feathers on it. He couldn’t see Mary Dodd, but he could hear her voice and its urgency; its pleading force told him plenty. Mary Dodd was saying, “—no matter how you feel about Sara and Clifford, Kit, don’t mention it to anyone, ever. Particularly to the police. You didn’t see Sara go there the night of Margot St. Vrain’s party. You didn’t go there yourself. When you left the penthouse you came straight home. You know of no connection whatever between Sara and Cliff. The idea is absurd, impossible. Do you understand, Kit?”
There was a pause. Then the older woman said in a frightened tone, “Kit, Kit, what is it? Here, sit down. Lean back. I’ll get a pillow for your head. Don’t move, stay where you are...”
McKee was gone as sleekly and silently as a big gray tat when Mary Dodd pulled open the door and ran out into the upper hall. At the foot of the stairs he looked around. Todhunter was nowhere in sight. A bell pealed distantly. McKee let himself out. Presently the mousy little detective joined him on the pavement.
He hadn’t gotten much. The maid, Eliza Welkie, had been with the Dodds for some nine years. She didn’t want to give. Kit Blaketon had been living with her aunt since Dr. Dodd’s death. Miss Dodd was very fond of her niece. The girl was engaged to a man named Clifford Somers.
It was at that point that McKee interrupted him. He said swiftly, “Clifford Somers, Assemblyman Clifford Somers. Pat Somers’ brother.”
Todhunter’s mild eyes opened. He gave a small cough, dusted his sleeve.
The Scotsman’s nod was brief. He repeated Mary Dodd’s caution to her niece. “Cliff Somers and Sara Hazard...” he sa
id thoughtfully. “Yes. The going may get tough. I don’t know. We’ll have to see.” Todhunter looked sideways at him. The match McKee held to the tip of his cigarette was repeated in his eyes, eyes that were bright and hard and fixed and unfathomable, in the shadow of the soft gray Homburg as he got into the Cadillac.
VIII
McKee stopped at a drugstore three blocks to the west. Not the radio phone this time, too many people listened in on the short wave radio bands. He called the office, ordered tails on Mary Dodd, Kit Blaketon and Assemblyman Somers. When he told Sheerer he wanted to know where Pat Somers was and what he was doing, the lieutenant was startled.
“Yes, Pat Somers,” McKee said drily. “The reopening of the case may put these people in motion. I want reports fast. Get me through the car as soon as anything comes in.”
There was a restaurant in the middle of the block. The Scotsman hadn’t eaten since morning. He sent sandwiches and coffee out to Miller, watching the radio, ordered a brace of chops and a tall glass of ale for himself.
His gaze roamed absently over the long crowded room. A sense of haste and of the necessity for action possessed him. The anonymous letter and his subsequent procedure had stirred up the depths that lay beneath the surface of Sara Hazard’s death by misadventure. His appearance on the scene had already produced some queer reactions. If there was anything really wrong he would have to move swiftly to prevent the destruction of such clues as might still remain.
To his alert faculties, the pod of Sara Hazard’s death was overripe. At the first touch, it had sent out a cloud of feathery seeds, seeds that had in them dark implications and the threat of a new and evil flowering.
Devious paths were opening up, decidedly. He put down the glass of ale. Miller was at his elbow, saying, “The telegraph bureau wants you to call on the outside wire, Inspector.”
