The Dead Can Tell

by Helen Reilly

  It was almost midnight when he left the house. He returned to the office where he made the necessary arrangements for corroboration and checking, with independent evidence if possible, the various tales that had been told.

  At half past eleven the next morning Commissioner Carey called him. The Commissioner wanted to see him. The thin, dark, distinguished head of the New York Police was unsmiling when he greeted McKee in the paneled room on the second floor of the long gray building on Center Street at two o’clock that afternoon. There was no foliage in the vicinity to mark the season, but a brilliant autumn sky arched itself over the Police Academy across the way.

  McKee dropped into a chair in front of the Commissioner’s desk.

  Carey said at once, “This about Pat Somers and his brother is bad business, Inspector.”

  McKee understood what lay behind Carey’s summons, his careful utterance, knew the pressure that must have been brought to bear, indirect, but none the less formidable. The brakes had probably been applied in the usual way. He could almost hear a powerful and nameless emissary saying to Carey, “Look here, Commissioner, you’d better tell that fellow McKee to watch what he’s doing. Pat Somers is no slouch in this town and neither is his brother. It’s ridiculous to think of Pat conniving at murder. The police have nothing on him. Any kid could get into a scrape. That’s all there is to it.”

  The Scotsman lit a cigarette. “I’m glad you did send for me, Commissioner. If you hadn’t, I would have come to you myself.”

  He described Sara Hazard’s death, sketched the outlines of what he felt sure was murder made to look like accident on the previous August 25 th. He described his own movements after receiving the anonymous letter and the incriminating material he had unearthed.

  He enumerated the suspects, gave their possible motives. Sara Hazard was blackmailing Clifford Somers. She had plenty on him and he had more than sufficient reason for putting her out of the way. The same thing went for Pat. Pat was wrapped up in that young brother of his. He knew exactly what Sara Hazard was doing, knew that it would mean the ruin of his brother’s whole political future, or else continued bleeding, perhaps for years.

  “Why on earth,” the Commissioner asked in a troubled voice, “did Pat Somers keep that damned record?”

  The Scotsman stroked a silk-clad ankle. “It’s simple, Commissioner. We rise and shine. Pat wanted Clifford to go up in the world when he married. Cliff was engaged to that red-haired niece of Miss Dodd’s. They’re folks. There’s no doubt that the girl herself was insanely jealous of Sara Hazard, followed Sara Hazard from the St. Vrain party to the Somers house on Eighty-first Street, was outside watching when Sara Hazard left. Pat Somers kept the record because at the proper time he wanted to be able to give Kit Blaketon definite and conclusive assurance, if it became necessary, that there was no emotional entanglement between Sara Hazard and young Somers.” Carey interrupted him.

  “I get it,” he said.

  “Then there’s Mary Dodd,” McKee continued. “She’s very fond of the girl. Her own romance ended in tragedy; she didn’t want her niece’s prospective marriage broken up—and she knew it was seriously threatened. She’d borne with Sara Hazard for a long while, knew in general terms the sort of woman she was. Her sympathies lay with the husband, Steven, who’s a close friend of hers. Mary Dodd is a clever, intelligent, decisive woman. I don’t think she’d hesitate for a moment to commit murder if she decided that it was necessary.”

  Carey glanced at reports on his desk. “Both Miss Dodd and the niece were at home according to these.” McKee said thinly, “Turn about is fair play. They can alibi each other.”

  “Servants?”

  “The two maids slept at the top of the house.” McKee moved on to Steven Hazard and Cristie Lansing, described the scene in El Capitan.

  Carey said frowning, “How did the girl get over to that river bank? What did she say? You talked to her at Pat Somers’ last night, didn’t you?”

  McKee shrugged. “She told me what was obviously a cock and bull story. She took a walk.”

  “You let her get away with it?”

  “I let her think she did. That girl knows a lot. I’m going to let her roam on a loose rein, a very loose rein. Because I have a notion that sooner or later she’ll lead us to where we want to get. She’s in love with Steven Hazard and Hazard’s in love with her. He asked his wife to give him a divorce. She refused, declared she was going to South America with Hazard, who had been offered and had accepted a post there. Pat knew this, Cliff knew it. In fact they all knew it.

  “That’s a point I want to insist on. Once removed from their combined sphere she could have carried on her blackmail without the threat of bodily harm. As for Hazard, he would have been saddled, alone and in another country, with a woman whom he hated and despised. Well. Sara Hazard didn’t go to South America. She went down the hill into the East River. There you have it. There’s only this to add. We have rock-bottom, cast-iron evidence against Cliff Somers and by implication against his brother Pat as far as motive goes. What, under the circumstances,” the Scotsman leaned forward and his brown eves met the Commissioner’s gray ones, “do you expect me to do?” Carey sat silent for a while. Then he nodded reluctantly. “You know I respect your judgment, McKee. I just wanted to be sure. Did young Somers say whether he paid when the woman put the heat on him?”

  The Scotsman’s smile was not humorous. “Clifford Somers said nothing. Pat told him not to talk; told me that if I wanted to question the boy further I’d have to put him under arrest. Of course”—the Scotsman gestured—“clever fellow, he knows that I haven’t got a case for the D.A.’s office yet.”

  The Police Commissioner sighed. “I talked to Pat a little while ago. He had to agree when I insisted that he send Cliff Somers down. Cliff’s outside in the other room now. Let’s have him in and we’ll ask him about the money.”

  He rang the buzzer and Clifford Somers was ushered into the room. The Assemblyman was pale and looked as though he hadn’t slept, but his chin was up and his eyes were steady. Nothing had broken in the press yet and he still had his finger in the dike. He sent a hostile glare at the Scotsman, said civilly to Carey, “Yes, Commissioner? Pat said you wanted to talk to me. Here I am.”

  He sat down in the indicated chair, crossed well-tailored legs and lit a cigarette. He stuck to his story that he hadn’t killed Sara Hazard and that he knew nothing pertinent concerning her death. When she put the heat on him the night she slipped away from the St. Vrain party, he had agreed to pay her a thousand dollars. But he couldn’t raise it until he got hold of Tommy Gordon, one of his clients, who ran the Abelard and who was the only one he could think of who could produce that much money in a hurry. He didn’t want to brace Pat. He went to the Abelard and Tommy did produce.

  Dropping in at the St. Vrain party on the way, he arranged to meet Sara Hazard at the Abelard after three. The Abelard was on Fifty-eighth Street near the river. He waited for her a long while. When she didn’t show up he left the café, started to walk home and ran into the crowd on the river bank above the submerged car.

  The Commissioner said: “I see.” The Scotsman didn’t say anything. Abelard’s was jammed between 1 a.m. and the closing hour on a Sunday morning. A herd of elephants could trumpet through it unnoticed.

  “Were you alone, Mr. Somers, or was there someone with you?” McKee asked.

  “I was alone,” Clifford Somers said.

  McKee smiled cynically. The smile touched off the Assemblyman’s repressed rage. He got to his feet and said in a shaking voice, “I’ve told you the truth. You can make the worst of it if you like. Why don’t you devote your attention to someone else for a change, Inspector? Steven Hazard knew that his wife was a low-down blackmailing bitch. Pat told him to his face that night, the night of the St. Vrain party. Where was Hazard between one o’clock and six the next morning?”

  He shook a finger at McKee. “And what about that gun that Sara Hazard carried around with her.
I know she had a gun.”

  “The gun,” McKee said musingly, “yes. I wonder where that gun is now.”

  It was Clifford Somers’ turn to smile. He looked intently at the Scotsman. He said, very slowly, “Why don’t you ask Steven Hazard?”

  X

  Typewriters were clacking and men were moving to and fro adding to the rapidly accumulating material on case No. 22-683 that had been changed from “closed” to “open” when McKee reached the office.

  Seated behind his desk in the long narrow inner room to which he had come from his interview with Police Commissioner Carey, McKee ran rapidly through reports. He paused at one headed Detective Charles Mathers. Mathers was among the men combing the neighborhood of the Hazard apartment for any stray facts about the night of the murder.

  They already knew that Margot St. Vrain’s fiancé, Euen Firth, had driven Sara Hazard home from the party in his cream-colored roadster. Joe Williams, porter and handyman at the Franklin Place apartment building added to their knowledge. After Sara Hazard left him that night Euen Firth remained on in front of the apartment for some time. According to the porter he seemed to be dozing. When Mrs. Hazard’s maid, Eva Prentice, passed along the pavement on her way home, Mr. Firth had called out to her, mistaking her for her mistress. She just stared at him and continued on her way. Right afterwards he drove off.

  The porter placed the time as around three, say four or five minutes before Mrs. Hazard left the Franklin Place apartment on her last trip anywhere. Euen Firth, Margot St. Vrain’s prospective husband, had been remarkably attentive and kind to leave his fiancé’s party and to see Sara Hazard home. The Scotsman decided to go into that last evening at the St. Vrains more thoroughly.

  He pulled the phone toward him. A manservant at Euen Firth’s apartment on Fifty-ninth Street South said that Mr. Firth was out of town and wasn’t expected back until Tuesday. Same result when he called Margot St. Vrain. They were probably weekending somewhere. He dispatched men to the penthouse to talk to the servants.

  Steven Hazard had gone to the Tarrytown factory and wouldn’t be back in the city until evening. McKee wanted to talk to him about the missing gun and the maid.

  The Royal Employment Agency, through which Sara Hazard had hired Eva, gave her home address as Hempstead, Long Island, care of Mrs. John Hansen, 234 Westerly Avenue. The telephone number was Hempstead 6794-3. A call there got no answer. McKee sent men to Hempstead, sent more men touring the pawn shops in case the maid had tried to cash in on the stolen jewelry. Too early yet to broadcast an alarm.

  That was about all on Eva for the moment, until they knew more. According to the descriptions of her that he had picked up, she was a shrewd hard-headed girl with eyes wide open. Servants were excellent sources of information. Sometimes they knew almost as much about their employers’ private lives as their employers knew themselves. If the maid was innocent of any hand in Sara Hazard’s murder, if her crime was confined to theft and if she could be induced to come forward, she ought to be a gold mine.

  He turned his attention to the missing gun, scribbled “caliber? make? classification?” on a sheet of yellow paper in front of him. It was difficult to start searching for a weapon whose only description consisted of the word “gun.” Nevertheless, he determined to have a try at it.

  If, as he was more and more inclined to think, the weapon had been used as a bludgeon with which to knock Sara Hazard out before she plunged into the river, it might be lying in the mud at the bottom. It might have been discarded, thrown into a sewer opening, the nearest ashcan, or it might still be in possession of the killer.

  McKee sighed. Cover the first two possibilities. Tedious work but it had to be done. The gun was assuming constantly increasing importance as the single material clue.

  The telephone rang. Miss Dodd was at the other end of the wire.

  Mary Dodd said, “I’d like to see you, Inspector. There’s something I want to tell you. Where can I talk to you and when?”

  McKee’s answer was prompt. “Right now. At your house, if that’s convenient.”

  Miss Dodd said that would be splendid and McKee hung up and reached for his hat.

  The October afternoon was chilly. Mary Dodd was standing in front of a log fire under the wide white mantel when he entered the long living room of the house on Seventy-third Street. She looked tired, but a measure of serenity had returned to her. She gave him her hand, a slender white hand, the nails pleasantly unlacquered. Her deep blue eyes were clear, steady. The room, the house, were full of mementoes of the late Dr. Dodd. Her existence with her father must have been quiet, studious. Kit Blaketon had changed all that.

  Mary Dodd went directly to the point. Seated in a chair opposite McKee, she said, “I feel there’s something I ought to tell you, Inspector. I don’t know whether or not it’s relevant, or whether it has anything to do with Sara’s death. But about ten days before, I found that it was gone.”

  The playing of the record the night before had changed her whole attitude. She was no longer quite so guarded. Her tone was freer, less constrained. McKee said pleasantly, “What was gone, Miss Dodd?” “The pistol,” she answered. “It was in the drawer that morning because I saw it. It wasn’t there that evening. Come, I’ll show you.”

  She led McKee into the library beyond the living room. It still held intact Dr. Dodd’s magnificent collection of books on applied psychology. Mary Dodd paused at the massive table in the middle of the shadowy room. She showed him the drawer in which the gun had been kept, a gun bought originally because of burglaries in the neighborhood.

  McKee asked her its make and caliber. It was an automatic Colt .32. Mary Dodd said, “Sara came to tea that afternoon. Before she left, she came in here to write a note. She was alone in here. Cliff and Kit and myself remained in the living room.”

  “What did you think when you missed the weapon?” McKee asked.

  Mary Dodd shrugged. “It didn’t worry me much at the time. I really didn’t give it much thought at all. It might have been mislaid, or someone might have moved it. But since yesterday when you were here...Well...”

  She pushed an antique silver bracelet with tiny primitive figures hanging from it, higher on her rounded white arm. The little figures danced, sending out a tinkle. Her forehead was puckered in a frown.

  “I began to wonder. The maid, Eva Prentice, Inspector, was a thief and was sly; the sort of person who would listen outside doors. Knowing what we know about Sara”—a flush colored Mary Dodd’s cheeks and the nostrils of her long, delicate nose flared a little—“couldn’t it be possible that Sara took that gun and the maid knew she had it? If that’s true, could it be possible that Sara discovered that Eva Prentice was stealing from her, that she threatened the maid with the police, and then that Eva Prentice killed her?”

  Her oblique reference to the purple patch in Clifford Somers’ past filled her with shame, distress. It would. Her life had been more or less sequestered and she was a proud woman. No doubt now that she hated Sara Hazard as much as she liked Steven. She had known that Sara threatened Kit Blaketon’s happiness. One stone would have brought down three fine-feathered friends; Sara’s elimination would have released Steven Hazard, Kit Blaketon and Cliff Somers.

  He considered her suggestion thoughtfully. It had its points. One of them was the rather obvious attempt to remove suspicion from the people Mary Dodd was interested in and throw it toward the missing maid.

  They were back in the living room. The Inspector was out of his range of vision when the door opened and Steven Hazard came in. Hazard greeted Mary Dodd with affection, not looking at her directly, ignoring her warning gesture. “Lord, it’s good to be here.” He tossed his hat and gloves into a chair. “Well, I gave that damn detective who’s on my heels a run for his money. I had to go up to the factory this afternoon. Didn’t know if I could make it for dinner or not. But I got through earlier than I thought. I want to talk to you, Mary. Gosh, it’s good to...” He turned his head, saw the Scotsma
n, and pulled up short. The light went out of his face.

  McKee bowed. “You’re just the man I want to see, Mr. Hazard. I’ve been trying to get hold of you since half past two.”

  Hazard threw himself into a corner of the couch, stretched his long legs in front of him, thrust his hands into his pockets and surveyed the Inspector. His long strong face was grim. Colliding with McKee was quite evidently not a pleasure to him.

  The Inspector put his question about the missing gun, gave its source. Hazard’s answer was forceful, almost explosive.

  “I don’t care what Cliff Somers said. He’s got a hell of a nerve. I don’t know anything about Sara and any gun. I never saw her with one, never knew she had one in her possession. You’re talking Chinese as far as I’m concerned and I’m not good at languages.”

  The Scotsman looked at Hazard thoughtfully. No dice. He hadn’t expected much from Hazard himself. The maid, the missing gun, the ungrieving husband. He would have to try it from another angle. McKee left the house.

  Late the next afternoon Captain Pierson and the Inspector stepped out of the freight elevator on the fifth floor of the Plymouth Warehouse, where the Hazard household goods, such as they were, had been stored. Twenty-four hours had produced no basic changes. The search for the missing Colt .32 was so far a blank. So was the search for the missing maid.

  The two officials had declined the services of the attendant and were alone. The upper reaches of the warehouse were completely devoid of life. A long narrow alley ran away from the freight elevator between stalls of various sizes. They were piled with the furniture of dismantled homes. Chairs and tables and statuary and pianos and sofas and huge crates reared themselves in vague distorted shapes in semi-darkness. The quiet was somnolent, drowsy. The air, at the correct temperature, seemed stale.

  The Hazard cubicle was number thirty-six. McKee and Pierson started along a side aisle. Their feet made a noise and when Pierson spoke, his voice echoed loudly. He said, “It’s a hell of a walk. Twenty-three, twenty-four, must be round the next corner.”