The Dead Can Tell

by Helen Reilly

  “The St. Vrains and Firth had company. Pat Somers was close to the point that night.”

  Dwyer flinched a little at the mention of Pat. McKee continued, his eyes cold, “Pat Somers had an ample reason for killing. His brother was being blackmailed. Pat’s been doing a lot of queer things; the same goes for Mr. Clifford Somers. Not only his political career but his marriage was at stake.

  “Kit Blaketon had motive for murder, the best there is, jealousy. She didn’t know until that record was played in Pat’s office what was really going on. And either she or Cliff or both lied about where they were during the scene that took place on that point on Halloween night. Mary Dodd had a motive for murder. She’s devoted to her niece and also she’s fond of Steven Hazard. What’s more, Miss Dodd was between the house and the point when she was discovered after that scream and that splash.”

  The Commissioner said, “As I remember, she said that she was at home and in bed the night Sara Hazard’s car crashed.”

  McKee stroked a long upper lip. “Yes, that’s what she said. Kit Blaketon said she was in bed, too. But like all the others”—he shrugged—“no proof.”

  Dwyer’s impatience was growing by leaps and bounds. He swung on the Scotsman. “For God’s sake, McKee, get down to the meat of it. Who in hell is the woman Steven Hazard fished up out of Kokino Lake?”

  McKee was standing at a window. His glance rested on another window in the Police Academy across the street, on a row of windows on one of the upper floors. Fernandez was busy behind those windows. He said, “As soon as the Medical Examiner has completed his work I’ll be able to tell you, but not until then.”

  Dwyer snorted. “There are too damn many intangibles in this whole case. What about the maid, Eva Prentice? What about her boy friend, Loomis?”

  McKee blew smoke thoughtfully. “I have hopes of getting my hands on the boy friend shortly. As for the missing Eva, I haven’t the slightest idea where she is. We do know this much. Like mistress, like maid—Eva followed in her employer’s footsteps. I’m convinced that whatever damaging information Sara Hazard had in her possession the maid also had. She shared a room with the boy friend. Neither of them has been back there. They’ve both dropped out of sight.”

  “All right,” Dwyer said. “A room, that’s where the gun was found, wasn’t it? What about the gun?”

  McKee said, “Suppose we have Hazard in again and get him to tell us.”

  Steven Hazard’s eye-sockets were leaden as he faced the three men in a chair placed to the left of the Commissioner’s desk. Hazard’s fatigue, mental and physical, was obvious. He remained firm under the District Attorney’s onslaught.

  On the night the gray convertible went into the river it was true that he had been wandering around the streets. He admitted having gone to the warehouse in search of the gun.

  McKee said, “But you didn’t find it there, did you? And you trailed Johnny St. Vrain away from the warehouse because you thought he might have it. That didn’t get you any place. But you did find the gun in Eva Prentice’s room on East Twenty-first Street. You not only found it, you wiped fingerprints from it. How did you know that gun was there in the maid’s room?”

  Hazard said tonelessly, “I got a letter telling me exactly where the gun was. A door key was enclosed in the letter.”

  “Pay anything for it, Mr. Hazard?” Dwyer wanted to know.

  “Yes,” Steven Hazard said, “I paid a thousand dollars, a thousand dollars I was instructed to send in a plain envelope to Arthur Brown, general delivery here in New York.”

  The Commissioner pressed a button on his desk.

  McKee said, “Mr. Hazard, that wasn’t the only message you received. There were two or three others. You got a message telling you not to go through with that trip south with Cristie Lansing on the day she evaded our man at the football game. You got a message to be at a certain spot out on that point up at Kokino at a certain time and to bring another thousand with you. Those instructions were given to you in a telegram that was delivered after you arrived at Kokino on the afternoon of the 31st of October. Who sent those messages?”

  Hazard simply looked at him. The force of the Scotsman’s bright brown gaze didn’t make a dent in him. McKee went on quietly, “We know what you’ve been doing, Mr. Hazard. You’ve been trying to shield Cristie Lansing all the time. The person who sent you those messages threatened to name Cristie Lansing as your wife’s murderer, isn’t that so? You have an idea who the sender of those notes was. You thought that person was killed on Halloween night when you heard that scream and that splash. That’s why, when our search for a body failed, you investigated the crevices yourself. You wanted to make sure, wanted to hide for all time the person, or any clue to the person, who was a threat to Cristie Lansing.”

  The early dusk of late autumn had entered the room. The Commissioner made no effort to turn on the lights. He was gazing at Hazard and from Hazard to the Scotsman. McKee had something up his sleeve. He went on talking to the engineer.

  “In any case, Mr. Hazard, you would have failed. You would have failed because only the Hoffman test, a highly specialized operation, could hope to reveal the truth.”

  Steven Hazard didn’t speak. Dwyer did. The exhumation of Sara Hazard and the sudden projection of another body, the body of an unnamed woman who had been drowned, had him badly worried. McKee’s cryptic remarks of tests and processes were all very annoying to him. The District Attorney burst into angry speech. “Hoffman, Hoffman! Who the hell is Hoffman and what’s Hoffman got to do with this investigation?”

  McKee turned to Dwyer. He said softly, smoothly in the twilight sifting through the window, “Professor von Hoffman was an eminent European medico-legal expert. Unfortunately he’s dead now but the experiment to which I have reference is still in use. Would you like a description of it?”

  He didn’t wait for Dwyer’s grunt. “I’ll give it to you in detail, as it happens to be extremely important. When a corpse cannot be identified with certainty by the clothing or other general characteristics, the brain is removed and several deep cuts are made in the back and sides of the head. In twelve hours’ time the green coloring of the skin disappears or blanches and the swelling diminishes. The top of the skull is then replaced and the skin sewn up again. After that the head is plunged into a concentrated solution of alcohol. Twelve hours later, with luck, the face will have assumed its normal condition and will present the appearance of a corpse newly embalmed. That’s what Fernandez has been busy about since yesterday morning.”

  McKee had timed it right, but then he had seen shadows in the lab across the street. He had scarcely finished speaking when the door opened and Fernandez, the dark, elegant Medical Examiner entered the room. Fernandez was followed by two white-coated laboratory attendants. Each of them carried a box. The boxes were approximately a foot and a half square. The experiment was over. At Fernandez’ direction the assistants placed the twin boxes on a long table against the wall beyond the Commissioner’s desk.

  McKee looked at the Medical Examiner.

  Fernandez said, “Sure enough, Inspector.”

  The sudden silence was taut. The Scotsman was moving toward the long table when the telephone rang. The call was for Steven Hazard. Carey looked at McKee. McKee nodded. The Commissioner pushed the instrument toward Steven Hazard. Hazard took it. He said, “Hello,” and then all expression was wiped from his face.

  A woman’s voice repeated itself quite clearly in the stillness of the dusk-filled office, a woman’s silvery laugh rang. The voice said, “Hello, Steven, darling...”

  McKee’s hand shot out. He took the receiver from Hazard, clamped it to his ear. There was a pause at the other end of the wire and what seemed like a faint gasp. Then there was a click. Just before the click came there was another sound. It spun down an alley in the depths of the Scotsman’s mind, rocketed into its appointed slot. He knew then who the murderer was. He turned to Steven Hazard.

  Hazard was ashen. He was shaki
ng like a man in the grip of a malarial chill. He looked at McKee. He said slowly, “Yes, Inspector, you were right. That was my wife.”

  The Commissioner and Dwyer stared at the engineer seated there in the chair in front of them as though he had gone mad. His wife—but his wife was dead. McKee wasn’t looking at Hazard at all. He was at the table on which the two boxes rested. His fingers moved over the catches on the box labeled “Body Exhumed From Hazard Grave, Kokino.” He lifted the lid. The sides automatically released themselves, fell to the table. The Scotsman’s tall figure hid what the box contained from view. He said over his shoulder, “No, Mr. Hazard, that wasn’t your wife on the other end of the telephone just now. This is.” He stepped aside.

  Light from the tall windows fell slantwise on the exhibit on the table. It was small and exquisite and vivid and terrible. Alabaster cheeks and chin and brow. The head was mounted on a pedestal. Golden hair, long narrow white face, the eyes were closed. Sara Hazard gazed sightlessly at nothing in the petrified quiet of the Commissioner’s shadowy office.

  It was Sara Hazard whose body had been plunged down the hill into the river on that August night. It was Sara Hazard whom Steven had identified at the morgue on the 16th of September.

  Sara Hazard had been dead all the time. There was no longer a living Sara. Someone had skillfully made use of the dead woman, reproducing her voice, making her walk and talk when it became necessary to do so.

  Dwyer was knocked ipsy-endways. He wiped sweat from his forehead, croaked hoarsely, “The maid! Eva Prentice. Eva Prentice has been impersonating Sara Hazard. She...”

  McKee was at the second box. He said, “I don’t think so, Mr. District Attorney.” The box opened. The head belonging to the body that Steven Hazard had fished up out of the lake at Kokino was revealed.

  It was the head of Eva Prentice, the Hazard’s missing maid.

  A gasp of revulsion, nausea from Steven Hazard. He covered his face with his hands. Dwyer and the Commissioner continued to stare wryly at the grisly exhibition. They were too startled for speech. The Scotsman didn’t say anything. He was on the phone, the inside phone this time. He called the telegraph bureau.

  The operator at the long green table in the golden bowl at the top of the great gray building consulted a list of names. They were the names of detectives tailing the people under observation in the Hazard murder case. The operator began giving McKee the latest information on the whereabouts of all concerned.

  Before he was half through, the Inspector slammed the instrument into its cradle. One of them was among the missing and had been for some time. Cristie Lansing had returned to the penthouse and was alone there, the St. Vrain maid had gone out. And Cristie knew too much—The Scotsman started for the door. His orders were swift, sharp. Among them was a command to Steven Hazard. Hazard hurled himself into the corridor. He was followed in a hurry by Dwyer, the Commissioner and Fernandez. The two heads on the pedestals continued to stare from under closed lids at the emptiness of the big dusky room.

  XXIV

  Cristie Lansing was tired. She had been running for ages. She went up one long hill and down another. The road went round and round. She was in a cemetery and it was night. But it wasn’t night because there was a gray patch somewhere. Her tooth didn’t hurt. There were little circles dancing all about her. The circles had bright spots in the middle of them. They expanded and contracted. One of them was Sara. Only Sara wasn’t Sara. She was a voice.

  She came out of a circle with violet sparks in the center of it. Sara was calling Steven. Steven—who was Steven? Cristie struggled up a steep bank. She had to reach the top. She was choking. She was going to die. She knew she would die if she didn’t reach the top. Sara’s voice was a rope. The rope was looped around her. It kept dragging her back and down. “Steven, Steven,” Sara was saying, “Steven, darling.”

  Time, time spun an arch. She herself was a tiny figure in the middle of it. The arch receded. She was back in the cemetery again. She was riding at a fast pace. Oh, now she knew. She was asleep and dreaming. In the dream she realized that there was no need to be frightened. She was in a sleigh and the noise that had bothered her, the noise she had heard on the night long ago, the noise the nocturnal visitor had made coming in or going out of Margot St. Vrain’s house was the noise of horses, horses with jingling harness on. She was riding behind the running horses.

  No, that was silly. She wasn’t riding behind them at all, she was on one. It was a big black horse. The jingling was close, loud. She crouched lower, the horse was rearing under her. There was a waterfall somewhere and the dark lip of a cliff. Water, water, there weren’t any trees around. Long heath, brown furze. What did it mean, why did she think of that? The horse was galloping now, faster and faster. Her body hurt, her hands and shoulders ached. The horse was running away with her, running straight out toward the lip of the cliff. Her feet were bumping against a floor.

  How odd. She was annoyed. The toes of her pumps would be scuffed. Funny to find a rug in the forest. No, it wasn’t a rug, it was smooth and cold. One of her pumps fell off. The water was louder now. The horse’s harness jingled fiercely. The edge of the cliff was very near. The water cascaded loudly. It filled her ears, went down inside of her body. She gasped for breath. She was on a stage. The stage was back at school. It was Shakespeare, The Tempest, something about The Tempest. All the lights went out.

  She stumbled and hit her head. It was a quotation she was trying to remember. She got it. “Fain would I die a dry death.” The horse leaped into midair. She was over the edge of the cliff. She was falling and falling and falling. The water was there, below her, a deep black sea. A sob caught in her throat. She was going to die. She was. She was! Thunderous echoes rang as the water closed over her.

  Die a dry death. Fain would I die a dry death. The water was in her now. It was a part of her. She struggled to throw it off. She had to get up out of it, had to get into the air. She threshed her limbs, struck out. Her strength was fading. The blackness came closer.

  She tried to tear her head free. It was no use. A gigantic hoof, the jingle of harness again, it wasn’t a hoof, it was a hand that pressed her down and down into those black smothering depths. Cristie sighed and lay still.

  The high scream of the siren rose and fell as the Cadillac slewed around the corner into Sixty-fourth Street on two wheels. The journey from the gray building on Center Street to the door of the St. Vrain apartment house took seven minutes flat instead of the normal fifteen or twenty.

  McKee didn’t wait for the radio patrol hustling in from neighboring sectors in response to the alarm from Headquarters.

  He was out of the car and across the pavement with Hazard, Dwyer, the Commissioner, Fernandez and the man at the wheel behind him. The superintendent, two or three bellboys and a knot of excited tenants rushed forward as the group of officials entered the lobby.

  McKee left the chauffeur at the main door, shoved the superintendent into the self-service elevator in front of him. The car shot upward with its passengers.

  The superintendent’s fingers were shaking when he opened the door of Margot St. Vrain’s penthouse at the Scotsman’s direction. The foyer was empty. So was the living room. Steven Hazard’s voice calling “Cristie, Cristie,” didn’t get any answer.

  The Inspector stood still in the middle of the living room. The odor of chloroform was heavy on the warm air. Two doors opened out of the living room. They were closed. Seconds were important. A wasted fragment of one might be fatal. He heard it thinly as he listened, the soft splash and gurgle. He found the door to Margot St. Vrain’s bedroom, darted along a short hall and threw open another door on the right.

  The room was a bathroom. The light was on. Cristie Lansing was slumped over the edge of the low tub. She was half in and half out of it. The upper part of her body was hidden. It was bent double. The head and shoulders were inside the tub and the tub was full of water, water that was running faster than the waste pipe could carry it off.
/>   McKee swooped. His arms went round the girl’s motionless figure. He called directions to the group of stunned spectators behind him. He lifted Cristie Lansing in his arms, looked down at her. Her face was faintly blue and her eyes were closed. There was a bruise on one temple. No breath was perceptible between her parted lips. They were blue.

  Dwyer and the Commissioner helped. They had to restrain Steven Hazard by force. He was frantic. Dwyer swore at him. First aid, the girl’s limp body was placed on an ottoman, face down. Flex the arms, send them back and forth, mechanically, steadily, in an attempt to restore respiration. Oxygen had been sent for. Before it came, Cristie Lansing moved. A faint breath stirred her throat and her eyelids fluttered.

  McKee didn’t wait for the outcome. One of the girl’s shoes was off and an attempt had been made to drag the silk blouse over her head. The attempt had been given up. His mind ranged swiftly. The smell of the chloroform in the living room was still strong although the window there was open. Whoever had attacked Cristie Lansing had been in the penthouse very shortly before their arrival.

  Miller downstairs at the main door. The radio cars had arrived. Miller had had his instructions. But they were up against a quick-witted and a completely unscrupulous perpetrator. Before the block could be surrounded there was the off-chance of an escape. The perpetrator hadn’t gone down in the elevator, that means the stairs. McKee took them in long racing leaps. He drew a blank, emerged in the basement. A white-faced laundress could give him no information. She hadn’t seen anyone. McKee dashed on.

  Around a turn, through a door. Parcel and storage rooms, both were empty. He threw open the door of the furnace room—and found her.