Episode of the Wandering Knife

by Rinehart, Mary Roberts;

  Brent sat down on a kitchen chair and rested his feet.

  “I’ll have some of that coffee,” he said. “It smells good. I missed my breakfast.”

  “It’s ready, sir.”

  The man brought a cup and filled it. He put sugar and cream beside it, and went back to the stove.

  “Tell me something, Miguel,” Brent said. “You heard Miss Ingalls screaming and found her in her mother’s room. Had she moved the body? Or touched it?”

  “I think no. No time. She say she touch a hand, and it is cold. She scream for me and I go up. She act faint, so I put her in a chair and run to telephone.”

  “Could you see what had killed Mrs. Ingalls?”

  “Not then, sir. All covered up. After the police came I see. It was a stocking of Mrs. Ingalls.”

  Brent finished his coffee and felt somewhat better. The Scottie barked at the door to the yard, and Miguel let him in. He dropped what he was carrying and proceeded to rub his whiskers on the floor. But the linoleum did not help him. He came to Brent trustfully and scraped against his trouser leg. Brent leaned over and scratched his ears.

  “Anything to oblige a friend!” he said. “What’s that he brought in, Miguel?”

  “Just a cork. He bury; then he dig up. Is a nuisance, that dog.”

  He picked up the cork and threw it in the garbage pail. After that he washed his hands and went back to the tray he was preparing. Brent watched him. There seemed no reason to suspect him. He was probably losing a good job at high wages.

  “How come you’re the only help in the house?” he inquired. “It’s a big one.”

  “No other servants to be had. I been here a long time. Now I get extra pay so I stay.”

  “That makes sense,” Brent said casually. “What kind of woman was Mrs. Ingalls? Easy to work for?”

  “Not good, not bad.” The man gave a faint smile. “You think I kill her, maybe? Why I go to the chair for her?”

  It was logical, of course, provided the Oriental had not gone berserk in the night. Those fellows did that sometimes. But it was hard to imagine Miguel, in his clean white coat, going berserk at any time. When the Filipino started upstairs with the tray he followed. As he left, the little dog was digging frantically in the garbage pail.

  The pair in the library were much as he had left them. Apparently Joe had got rid of the press, for the house was quiet again. Brent stood at a window while the girl drank some black coffee. Then he turned.

  “Let’s go back over this, Miss Ingalls,” he said. “How about yesterday? What happened before Townsend had the fuss with your mother? How did she seem?”

  Joy put down her cup. There was a little color in her face now.

  “She seemed better,” she said. “She came down to tea when my cousin Harry Ingalls brought his new wife to see her. They’re on their honeymoon. Ken was here. He saw them.”

  “And after that your mother and Mr. Townsend had some words?”

  “Yes. He didn’t like Maud. She’s the wife, and—”

  “Maud,” said young Townsend succinctly, “is a cheap Chicago tart. He had no business bringing her here.”

  “And that led to the fuss?”

  “Well, not exactly. He wanted to take me out last night, and she objected. That was really it.”

  “And I didn’t like Harry,” said young Townsend. “He’s been hanging on her for years. Even lived here for a while. They came here for money yesterday, and they sure as hell got it. When I came in he was putting a check in his wallet.”

  “It’s no good to them, now that Mrs. Ingalls is dead. They couldn’t cash it last night.”

  “No. It’s the only satisfaction I’ve got out of the whole murderous business.”

  So that canceled Harry and Maud, Brent thought stoically as he got into his car and headed downtown. And it sounded innocuous enough. Two people came in for tea, or highballs, or what have you. They had just been married, and they got a check for a wedding present. Maybe the bride was a wrong one, but how account for a man’s tastes?

  Nevertheless, because it was the only lead he had, he decided to visit the honeymoon couple. Joy had said they were staying at the Davis House, and he headed in that direction. He knew it looked like an inside job, and that everything pointed to the girl. But he felt more than reluctant to turn her over to the wolves at Headquarters. Especially to the Commissioner. Everything else aside, it was a bad time to do it. Everyone in the organization knew he was working on his annual report to the Mayor, which always left him in a villainous humor.

  He did not want to see him himself. He could visualize him behind his big desk, red-faced and scowling, if he appeared there. He would sit glaring at him.

  “Don’t be a fool, Brent. This is your last case and it better be good. The girl did it, and you know it. Or else she let the Townsend fellow into the house and he did it. In either case, she’s guilty as hell.”

  Yes, it would be like that, he thought, steering his way through traffic. And what could he say? That the girl was young and tragic, that she reminded him of the daughter he had lost? That it took a strong hand to strangle so quickly? That the body and bed were barely disturbed? The Commissioner wouldn’t even listen. He could almost hear his raucous voice.

  “Get her down here, Brent. If you don’t, I’ll take the case away from you. I’m no fool about a pretty face. She had all the motives: the money and the fellow she wanted to marry. And don’t think she couldn’t do it. These modern girls are strong. They play tennis and golf. By God, my own daughter can throw a baseball harder than I can.”

  He would know about the stocking, too. Brent put his hand in his pocket. It was still there, and still damp. It had been a smart move, using that stocking, if the girl was innocent. Maybe it had only been added later after the woman was dead. He’d have to ask the medical examiner about that.

  He did not stop for breakfast, although he felt empty and his feet hurt like blazes. He drove directly to the Davis House, which proved to be a third-class commercial hotel, with Harry Ingalls and wife registered as on the third floor. He went up without being announced and looked for their number. The long hall was shabbily carpeted and empty, except that at the end a trained nurse in uniform was smoking a surreptitious cigarette at a window. Outside the Ingalls door he paused. There was acrimonious talking going on inside the room, but he could not hear what it was about.

  The voices ceased when he rapped, and a sharp woman’s voice spoke through the door.

  “We’re not ready yet, porter. I told you half an hour.”

  He rapped again and the door was flung open. A small redheaded girl with hard eyes confronted him and stared at him.

  “Who the hell are you?” she demanded.

  “I’d like to talk to Mr. Ingalls,” he said. “I’m afraid I have bad news for him.”

  “You’re telling me!” she retorted. “With a check in my bag that’s no damned good! Come in if you like. He knows about his aunt. This cheap dump supplies radios.”

  The room was a mess. Half-packed bags lay on the unmade twin beds, and the girl herself looked as though she had merely crawled out of bed, thrown on a negligee and let it go at that. Even so, with the remains of yesterday’s makeup still on her face, she had a pert sort of prettiness. She had a backless evening dress without sleeves over her arm. She flung it on a chair and eyed him.

  “All right,” she said. “We know it. So what?”

  Brent did not reply. He was looking at Harry Ingalls, a tall, scrawny man with a weak chin, just now covered with lather as if the news had come while he was shaving. He was pale, and he looked shocked. He did not get up from his chair. And the girl spoke for him.

  “He’s kinda shot,” said the girl. “His own aunt! And that check was to get us out of this hole and home again. I’ve been to the cashier downstairs, but they know she’s dead. They won’t cash it.”

  “Bad news all around, isn’t it, Mr. Ingalls?” Brent inquired. “I suppose you were fond of your aunt?
”

  “Doted on her,” said the girl. “Like a mother to him, she was.”

  “Why don’t you let him speak for himself,” Brent inquired mildly. “All right, Mr. Ingalls. You saw your aunt yesterday?”

  Ingalls moved. He lit a cigarette, but his hands were shaking.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I’ve had a blow. She was all right yesterday. Never saw her better. Who are you, anyhow? Should I know you?”

  “I’m a police officer,” Brent told him. “I’ll have to ask you both a few questions. As the last people to see her—”

  “Not the last,” interposed the redhead. “That stuck-up daughter of hers. She was there last night too when it happened, wasn’t she?”

  “She was, but as a matter of fact daughters don’t often murder their mothers,” Brent said, still mildly.

  “Oh, don’t they? You’d be surprised!”

  “Shut up, Maud.” Harry Ingalls had pulled himself together. He got up, wiped the lather off his chin, cleared a chair and asked Brent to sit down.

  “I’ll be glad to help you,” he said. “I was fond of her. She’d always been good to me. Don’t mind if I take a drink, do you? I’m not feeling too good. Maybe you’ll have a snort yourself.”

  Brent declined, and Harry Ingalls poured himself a substantial whisky out of a half-empty bottle. With the glass in his hand he gave the Inspector a long look.

  “What are you?” he said. “Captain, Lieutenant? I don’t know much about the police.”

  Brent took out the folder with his badge pinned to it and showed it to him. Ingalls whistled.

  “High brass, eh?” he said. “Well, sorry if I acted upset, Inspector. I just got the news.

  “Very understandable,” Brent told him. “As I said, this is only a matter of routine. But I’d like to know your movements last night. That’s my job, you know.”

  “Last night?” Ingalls stared at the ceiling. “Well, I had that check in my pocket, so we blew ourselves to a large evening; dinner in the Rose Room at the Belmont and a show afterward. I expect I’ve got the ticket stubs somewhere.”

  “And after that?”

  “Home here and to bed. After all, when a man’s on his honeymoon …”

  He grinned, but Brent eyed him steadily.

  “Know what time you got in?” he inquired.

  “About half-past eleven, wasn’t it, Maud?”

  Maud lit a cigarette before she answered, indifferently.

  “I ain’t got a watch, but it was early. I wanted to go somewhere and dance, but Harry said he was tired.”

  It sounded all right, but Brent was taking nothing for granted. He was still watching Harry.

  “I suppose the night clerk saw you come in?”

  “Maybe, maybe not. The way this place is run … Say, what is this, anyhow? Can’t a fellow take his bride out for an evening without being suspected of murder?”

  “I didn’t say you were suspected of murder,” Brent said smoothly. “But just to be sure I’d better have those ticket stubs.”

  Harry looked startled. Then he smiled. “Sure,” he said. “We were there all right. Look in my dinner coat, honey.”

  Maud found the stubs and brought them. After that she poured herself a drink and sat down on one of the beds. Brent put the stubs in his wallet, although he had no reason to question them. In fact, these people puzzled him. And Maud was looking entirely confident.

  “If you’re after an alibi,” she said, “we were here all night. And we can prove it. Just ask the night nurse next door. When I took in our breakfast this morning she was just going off duty.”

  Brent eyed the room again. Both beds had been slept in. There was nothing to disprove their story, and he felt fairly sure the night nurse in question would corroborate it. Rather unwillingly he got up.

  “I guess that’s all then. But I advise you not to go to the house yet. Miss Ingalls is pretty much upset. And I’ll have to ask you to stay in town for a day or two. Sorry to keep you.”

  “Not too long,” Maud said. “Without that money we’re busted.”

  But Brent sensed relief in her voice. He stopped in the doorway, his hand on the knob.

  “How long have you been here?” he asked.

  “Three days, and that’s plenty,” the girl said sourly. “Now we’re stuck in this hole, unless they throw us out.”

  She slammed the door behind him, but he did not leave immediately. The nurse was no longer in the hall, and after a moment he tapped at the door of the next room. When she opened it he beckoned her outside. She looked suspicious, but she came.

  “Look,” she said. “I’m busy. What’s it all about?”

  “Not you, sister,” he told her. “I just want the name and address of the night nurse on your case. The one who was here last night. Do you know it?”

  “Sure I do. But she’ll be asleep. Don’t you go waking her. And while you’re at it I wish you’d shut up those people next door. Report it at the desk, or something. My patient’s going crazy. Fighting like mad, and the radio going at the same time.”

  “Know what they were fighting about?” he inquired.

  “I couldn’t hear much. I think she wanted to leave, and he didn’t. That’s all I got.”

  She gave him the night nurse’s address, on the promise to let her get some sleep first, and he went rather unhappily down to the lobby. Here, however, he had no luck at all. The night clerk was off duty, and he had recently moved. Nobody knew where he lived.

  Back in his car again he pondered his next move. So far the Harry Ingallses had accounted for their time shrewdly unless the night nurse could prove that one or both of them had gone out again after they came home. He could send one of his men to see her, of course, but he preferred to do it himself. She might be important. Or again she might not. It seemed a slim thread to hang a case on.

  But he had the usual policeman’s aversion to a perfect alibi, and already he knew that the Ingallses had not been entirely truthful with him. They were planning to leave when the radio told them of the murder. That did not argue that they had no money. Then why the beef? Unless the check …

  He thought that over. Suppose they expected to get a considerable sum by Mrs. Ingalls’s will? That would take time and the inability to cash the check would be a part of their defense. Why kill a woman when she meant badly needed cash in hand to you?

  There was just a chance the night nurse would break their alibi, and rather reluctantly he turned his car downtown. The girl could have had only an hour or two of sleep. But murder could not wait. Twenty minutes later he drew up in front of a small walk-up apartment. He climbed to the fourth floor, and after repeated knocking was confronted by a sleepy and highly irritated young woman in a negligee over a nightdress. He did not tell her his business. He merely showed her his badge and asked if she had seen anyone from the room next door while she was on duty at the hotel the night before. She was slightly mollified and certainly curious.

  “If you mean the redhead, I saw her this morning. What about her?”

  “That’s all you saw? Nobody left or came into the room during the night?”

  “Not a soul. And believe you me, I was there. You don’t know my patient.”

  Brent was a modest man. He looked uncomfortable.

  “But see here,” he said. “You must have needed to—well, to powder your nose, or something. You were on duty eight hours, weren’t you?”

  “Sure,” she told him. “The day nurse is on from eight in the morning until four P.M. The family takes over until midnight.”

  “The family?” he said. “Know where I could locate them?”

  “All over town. Uncles, aunts, cousins, sons and daughters. It’s not a family. It’s a population.”

  It looked hopeless. If Harry and Maud came back before twelve o’clock …

  “So you never left your post for eight hours?” he said, avoiding her eyes. But she only laughed at his discomfiture.

  “So I did. I’m human. I powd
er my nose every now and then. But before I leave that door for any purpose I have to ring for a bellboy and put him there. My patient’s a nervous case. She won’t let me lock her in before I go, and she won’t be left with the door unfastened. So I get a bellboy and he gets a dollar. If it’s over two dollars a night she raises the roof.”

  Brent retired, somewhat flushed and certainly discomfited. So far as he could see the case was going to pieces under his feet. Undoubtedly the bellboy would be off duty for the day. Only the Belmont was left. He expected nothing from it and he was not disappointed. Evidently Maud had made an impression on the head waiter, who in shirtsleeves was overseeing the preparations for lunch in the main dining room.

  “Redhead in a black dress,” he said, “and a tall lanky fellow with no chin? Sure, I remember them. They had table twenty-nine. Girl was a looker, all right. Man didn’t eat much but drank a lot. First cocktails, then champagne. Carried it pretty well, though.”

  So that part of the alibi was all right, although Maud and Harry Ingalls spending their last cent for champagne was curious. Still some people lived that way, he thought, from hand to mouth although he and Emma, saving every cent for years for the chicken farm, would find it difficult to understand. Chickens! he thought, and tried to put them out of his mind.

  He looked at his watch. He had had no breakfast. And this was as good a place as any to get it. The grill would be open, and it was not expensive. First, however, he called Joe at the Ingallses’ house. The sergeant himself answered the phone.

  “How’s everything?” Brent inquired.

  Joe lowered his voice.

  “Bad for a while. Girl had a hysterical fit. She’s over it now. All right to let her put on some clothes?”

  “So long as she keeps out of that room.”