The Dead Can Tell

by Helen Reilly

When the Chief Medical Examiner answered sleepily, the Scotsman said: “Fernandez? McKee. Rise up, Father William. I’ve got work for you to do. Two dead women. Both bodies were in water for a considerable length of time after death. The features are a washout, no earthly good. If possible, I want the two women recreated. I want you to try a Hoffman.”

  XXII

  McKee’s call to the Chief Medical Examiner was made on Friday morning at 7.47 a.m. It was on the afternoon of the following day, Saturday, at twenty minutes after one that Cristie Lansing received the telephone call from Pat Somers. Pat simply asked her to come to his house on East Eighty-first Street as quickly as possible. He didn’t say why and Cristie didn’t ask. She agreed listlessly. All her reactions were listless during those days.

  When she got to the old-fashioned brownstone house on the East Side, she found Margot, Johnny and Euen seated in Pat’s office together with Mary Dodd and her niece Kit Blaketon and Clifford Somers. Pat’s opening announcement wiped out her surprise at finding them all there together, wiped out everything. Steven had been arrested and taken to Headquarters. She heard Pat saying hazily and from a distance, “We were in the middle of lunch at Steve’s club when a couple of detectives walked in. I wanted to get a lawyer but Steve wouldn’t let me. He said he was going to see it through on his own. I think he’s foolish. He’s down there with McKee now. God knows what’s going to happen.”

  The grayness around Cristie thickened. She could see the others through it, but not very well. They were all sitting stiffly erect and their faces were all white and strained. She wondered a little about that. Why should they care? It didn’t matter to them, they didn’t love Steven; not the way she did. Her heart cried out at the thought of him, in the middle of a circle of ruthless men, surrounded by them, being questioned hour after hour, perhaps even behind bars.

  She stilled the tumult beating back and forth within her breast, forced herself into the present. Pat Somers, she told herself desperately, was a friend of Steven’s. Pat would save him if anyone could. She drew breath in and out of a dry throat, clasped her hands tightly together in her lap and examined Pat with new eyes. Had she been wrong all the time? Should she have spoken? Was her silence a mistake? The possibility of error was there. She had to make a decision. It couldn’t go on like this much longer.

  Pat tapped a pencil on the desk at which he was seated. He said in a somber voice, looking slowly around the room, “Steven Hazard’s father was a good friend to me and Steve’s in a bad jam. I asked you to come here for a definite purpose. I know and you know that we’ve all been more or less forced to keep certain things from the police. That was all right. But the time has arrived for us to come clean, at least among ourselves, to clear the decks and throw in everything we know in the hope that out of our combined knowledge we may be able to find something that will save Steven.”

  Cristie’s eyes clung to Pat. He was forceful, he seemed sincere. The rush of hope his words sent surging through her died. They were all staring at Pat but no one spoke. Euen coughed and shuffled his feet. Neither Margot nor Johnny said anything. Kit Blaketon recrossed her knees, examined a lacquered nail. Cliff Somers smoothed down a crisp wave of hair impatiently. Mary Dodd’s gaze was as eager as Cristie’s. But Miss Dodd was troubled about something. She looked older, thinner and there was a peculiar rigidity to her.

  Silence and more silence. Cristie writhed inwardly. Wasn’t anyone going to do anything, to give him any help? She tried to swallow and couldn’t. She would have to speak. If she did, perhaps someone else would come through with something. She would have to open that door at the back of her mind, make the terrible knowledge behind it public.

  But did she dare? She went over the distant August night again, painfully, laboriously, with anguish. Her body was in the room with those others, who had all played a part in the drama of Sara Hazard’s death, but she was out of the room. Her brain groped blindly in half a dozen different directions, weighing, assembling, discarding. Heat was going through her in waves, but her fingers were ice cold.

  At the other end of a reversed telescope the tiny figure of Kit Blaketon sat with green eyes fastened on the floor. Cristie’s gaze swept past her, went beyond the confines of the house in a desperate racking voyage. She relived those terrible minutes on Franklin Place during the early hours of August 25th, her approach, her flight. The awful knowledge that had come to her then, the knowledge that she had refused fully ever to face, that she had hidden away and battened down because she might be wrong, now had to be produced.

  It was as she sat there, shoulder blades pressed hard against the back of the Windsor chair, that the truth came home to her—not the whole truth, but a flash of it that changed the universe. She had been mistaken all the time. What she thought she had seen, wasn’t really what she had seen at all. She had been stupidly, criminally blind, she had been betrayed by her own cowardice, her own fear.

  She didn’t know where the revelation had come from except that it was from someone or something within the room. It didn’t matter. She didn’t stop to do any analyzing. Exultation flooded through her. She wanted to leap to her feet, to laugh, to cry the truth aloud.

  She blinked vagueness from her lashes, looked around. The little office came back into view, the office and the people in it. She looked at Pat at the desk. She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue, tried to keep her tone level, tried to keep breathlessness out of it, and said, “I know something. I was there, on Franklin Place on the night Sara Hazard was killed. I was on the corner across the street from Steven’s apartment. I saw Sara Hazard come out and go around the corner and get into the car. I saw someone else join her. I...”

  Cristie paused. She stared fixedly at the blue glass ash tray in front of Pat. It was full of cigarette butts and ashes and yellow matches. Water ran somewhere. Margot shifted in her chair and taffeta rustled. A window curtain blew in and out. Cristie almost had it, the detail that had slashed its way through the fumbling darkness of her mind a few minutes earlier. The detail had escaped her, was gone. She continued slowly, aloud, “There was something about the person who got into the car with Sara...”

  It was Johnny who interrupted her. He was composed enough, but there was a hard edge to his voice. He said, “Cristie, my dear, you’re getting rather involved. Who was it you saw, if you saw anyone? Don’t keep us in suspense.”

  “Exciting, what?” Euen Firth’s gloved hands folded themselves over the top of the stick on which he leaned. He guffawed nervously.

  Cristie pushed hair back from her forehead. “I’ll begin from the beginning. On the night of Margot’s party I left the penthouse and went up to Franklin Place. I was worried about Steven. Sara had refused to give him a divorce. I knew how he felt and I was afraid that something was going to happen. I wanted to see him again, talk to him before he and Sara met.

  “I didn’t get as far as the apartment. While I was on the corner across the street I saw Sara come out and go around the corner and get into the car which was parked a little way down the hill. The car was opposite me, on the other side of Franklin Place. Sara was in it when the other person approached and got in beside her. I didn’t see where the other person came from. It was pretty dark. I did see the car start down the hill and then, after it had gathered speed, I saw someone jump off the running board and disappear into the shadows of the side street. The car was running down the hill, out of control. I heard the crash. I ran down and joined the crowd. I couldn’t tell who the person who had been with Sara was. It was very late and there were no stars and the night was very black. But I thought, that’s what made me do so many goofy things since, I thought...”

  It was Margot who said with quiet sympathy, “You poor kid. Of course, you thought it was Steven Hazard.”

  Clifford Somers asked carelessly, “And it wasn’t Steven?”

  Cristie turned to him. “No, it wasn’t Steven,” she said swiftly. “I understand that now. But I thought all along it was. That’s why I d
odged the police at the football game, why I was going to marry Steven, whether he liked it or not, so that the police couldn’t make me talk, couldn’t put me on the witness stand against him. That’s what made me try to get away up at Kokino after the night that woman screamed out on the point. I thought all the time that it was Steven who had killed Sara and now I know it wasn’t Steven!”

  Pat was the one who broke the pause that followed her rush of words, an odd, still small pause. He said thoughtfully, “You’re quite sure that the person who joined Sara after she went round the corner that night wasn’t Steven, Miss Lansing?”

  Cristie said firmly, “I’m quite sure. I’m absolutely positive. There was something”—she studied the pattern of the rug absently, a vertical line between her delicate dark brows, tried to concentrate—“there was something definite after I came in here, something...” She shook her head, threw back her shoulders impatiently. “There, I almost had it. Now it’s gone. But it will come back. It’s only a small detail, yet it’s conclusive. If I could only get hold of it. Wait...” She put a finger to her lips, but the elusive memory refused to return.

  Sitting motionless, absorbed in the effort at recollection, Cristie felt suddenly cold. There was an icy quality, a chill suspended breath in the waiting quietude. It penetrated her self-absorption. She returned sharply to consciousness. From whom or what had that menacing coldness come? The sensation was as strong as though she had been thrust into a bitter draught. There was no indication in any one of the people seated around the office of the source of that bone-piercing chill. It was true that they all looked strained and tired. There was nothing more than that. In spite of her new-found reassurance, her terrific relief, her joy, her uneasiness remained.

  She got up out of her chair. “I’m going down there to Police Headquarters now. I’m going to tell the Inspector the truth.”

  Margot and Johnny smiled at her. Euen’s glance was admiring. Pat Somers said, “Wait a minute, Miss Lansing.” Clifford Somers and Kit Blaketon were looking at each other. Mary Dodd said wearily, “But Pat, she’s right. Something had to be done.”

  Pat said, “I realize that, Mary. But the situation has got to be properly handled. Miss Lansing thinks she knows something that will clear Steven. Splendid.” He turned to Cristie. “Will you leave this to me?”

  Cristie hesitated, but Pat was so big, so solid, so competent and a few hours couldn’t possibly matter. She nodded.

  “Very well,” Pat said. “Go home, my dear, and sit tight and wait there until you hear from me.”

  That was the way it was left. They all separated. Margot had to go down to her office and Johnny was due at the studio. Cristie was glad to be alone. She walked back to the penthouse.

  The afternoon was gray with an overhanging sky and a wind that had a bite to it. Cristie disregarded the grayness. She continued to push aside the faint uneasiness that still lingered within her. Nothing mattered now except that in a few hours Steven would be free. The person she had seen leap from the running board of Sara’s car was the person who had killed Sara, and that person was not Steven.

  There was no answer to her ring at the door of the penthouse. The maid must be out marketing. Cristie used her key. She took off her hat and coat, wandered into the living room and walked up and down after a glance at the clock. It was a quarter of four. Not quite an hour since she had left Pat Somers’; she mustn’t be impatient.

  She went into her bedroom, sat down at her drawing board and tried to do a sketch, but work was impossible. She got a glass of milk and a cracker in the kitchen. The minutes dragged. She took herself firmly in hand. She was only making matters worse, prolonging the interval of waiting by thinking about the passage of time.

  She returned to the living room, took a novel by Trollope from the bookcase and settled herself determinedly in a deep wing chair in a corner. The chair faced the west window. It was growing darker out. The door was dim. She switched on the lamp at her elbow, opened the thick squat red volume.

  Outside the city began to fade. Margot’s chromium clock struck a quarter past four and then half past. Cristie refused to let herself look at the clock, kept her eyes fastened on the type resolutely. It was a few minutes after the second chime when she thought she heard the front door closing, but when she called there was no answer. She went on reading.

  And then without any warning or any noise of any kind, she smelled that sweet nauseating odor, the odor she associated with having her appendix out.

  Before she could move or turn or do anything, a hand reached down over the back of the wing chair and clamped itself tightly over the mouth she opened wildly in an attempt to scream. The effort was a failure. The scream didn’t come out. She struggled desperately to free herself from that enveloping grip. She couldn’t. Her head went back against the cushions of the chair, a cloth was pressed over her nostrils, stopped her breath. Blackness, a great cloud of it, soft, yielding, settled down over her.

  XXIII

  Steven Hazard rearranged himself against the leather cushions of a chair in the outer office of the Police Commissioner’s rooms. He was very tired. The Commissioner himself, District Attorney Dwyer, the Inspector and two stenographers were inside. Hazard had been called and recalled half a dozen times since one o’clock. It was twenty minutes after three in the afternoon. Fatigue dulled his wits, weighted his eyes. If they’d only let him alone, let him sleep. He felt as though he could sleep for a solid month. He blinked at the closed door in front of him.

  Beyond it, the pile of reports on the Commissioner’s desk kept growing. Relays of messages from the Inspector continued to arrive. McKee digested the latest bulletin, looked up from it, his expression smug, satisfied. He started to pace the floor, went on pacing as he talked.

  “There it is, Commissioner. You can take a look at it for yourself. I felt all the time that the St. Vrains had a heavy stake in this somewhere. Now we know.”

  At the window Dwyer said hastily, “What? What?” and stopped rumpling his short butter-colored hair. McKee condensed for him. He sketched briefly the search for the elusive Mrs. Thompson who had faded from the picture immediately following Margot St. Vrain’s visit to the flat on Vyse Avenue in the Bronx. Mrs. Thompson was the woman who had booked passage in New York the next day on the Clipper for Haiti. Mrs. Thompson hadn’t arrived in Haiti. She was still among the missing.

  But the Haitian police had gotten hold of Mr. Thompson, the woman’s husband. Only he wasn’t. Dwyer scowled. “Can’t you make up your mind, McKee?” The Scotsman smiled. Charles Thompson was a sort of master of ceremonies at the Hotel San Sebastian in Port au Prince and under threat of having his head torn from his shoulders and consumed before his eyes, Mr. Thompson had not only talked, he had been verbose.

  Charles Thompson had once been a teacher of French at Miss Brandon’s exclusive school for girls in New York. It was at Miss Brandon’s that he met and married Margot St. Vrain, at that time a pupil instructor in the same school. They had kept the marriage to themselves for fear of losing their respective jobs. Several years later Thompson had taken passage on the ill-fated Kestril which went down in the Caribbean with a terrific loss of life. Thompson’s name was erroneously included in the list of the dead.

  He was merely injured. He admitted that when he left the hospital he failed to correct the error, let Margot St. Vrain continue to think he was no more. Their marriage had not been a happy one and a tropical tramp’s free and easy life appealed to Thompson much more than being the husband of a rather severe taskmistress. So much for the past. Thompson had become strangely silent when questioned as to the woman who had been using the name of Mrs. Charles Thompson in New York. As far as Sara Hazard was concerned, he admitted that he had run into Sara Hazard, formerly a pupil at Miss Dentley’s, when she was in Haiti on a cruise a year earlier.

  Dwyer and the Commissioner stared. McKee nodded. He said, “Undoubtedly Sara Hazard attempted to blackmail Margot St. Vrain with the information about Thompso
n she had picked up on that cruise. It wasn’t any good until she read the announcement of Miss St. Vrain’s engagement to Euen Firth. I imagine that Miss St. Vrain, or Mrs. Thompson if you will, was ignorant of the fact that she had a live husband when she contracted the engagement. Then Sara Hazard came along.”

  “Why,” Dwyer demanded, “didn’t that swing woman just get a divorce and tell Sara Hazard to chase herself?”

  “For two reasons,” McKee answered. “Margot St. Vrain didn’t know Thompson was alive until Sara Hazard put the heat on her and, after that, well, I’ve met Euen’s father and mother. Stiff old couple. They wouldn’t look kindly on a divorce. Margot St. Vrain knew that. So did Euen and so did Johnny St. Vrain, Margot’s cousin.

  “Sara Hazard clipped a notice of Margot St. Vrain’s engagement out of the paper. The name Mrs. Thompson was scribbled in the margin in Sara Hazard’s handwriting. The clipping was in Sara Hazard’s desk when she died. As soon as we appeared on the scene, Johnny St. Vrain, anxious to protect his cousin, who, incidentally, would be the wife of an extremely rich man, went to the Plymouth warehouse, removed the clipping from Sara Hazard’s effects and gave it to Margot. Margot St. Vrain destroyed it while I was in the penthouse. I was no sooner gone than she made a beeline for that Vyse Avenue apartment. Whether she paid over some cash to the mysterious Mrs. Thompson we can’t find out. I think she did.” “Let me understand you, McKee,” the Commissioner interrupted. “Are you accusing these three people, Margot St. Vrain, her cousin and her fiancé, separately or together?”

  The Scotsman said, “I’m not accusing any one of them directly. I am saying that they had a strong motive for murder and also that they had the opportunity to commit it. The woman whom Steven Hazard identified as his wife, the woman who was drowned in the Hazard car on the morning of August the 25th, was killed directly after Margot St. Vrain’s party at the penthouse. Neither Margot, her cousin Johnny nor Euen Firth has an alibi for the period in question. Not only that, but their conduct since has been suspicious. All three of them could have been out on the point up there at Lake Kokino when a woman screamed some five days before Steven Hazard fished that second body out of the water.”