Death in the Back Seat

by Dorothy Cameron Disney

  The voice said, “You can hear this. I have other business for you and your husband, and I don’t want the law messing in it. Keep your mouths shut, both of you. That goes for the cop you brought out from Crockford this afternoon.”

  Jack and Harkway burst into the cottage. I beckoned them toward me. As I handed the receiver to Harkway, I said into the mouthpiece, “What other business? I don’t understand.”

  My ruse failed. Very stealthily, as the exchange took place the caller hung up. Harkway heard nothing, and the line was dead.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Identity of a Corpse

  For some thirty seconds, in an attitude of tense suspense, Harkway, Jack and I clustered around the telephone. Then Harkway said, “There’s no one on the line, Mrs. Storm. Who was calling? What’s the shooting for?”

  “It was the same voice that phoned yesterday!”

  At once the policeman attempted to reach the operator, but country telephone service is never good and several precious minutes elapsed before he obtained any answer. It was then too late to establish the source of the call.

  The girl at the Crockford exchange was vague and uninformative. “I’m sorry. I’ve been awfully busy. We’re always rushed at supper time.”

  “This is vitally important.”

  “I can’t help it. I may have handled the call, but I don’t remember it. Let me ask Edna.”

  The second operator was similarly unproductive. Warning both girls to pay special attention to our number and to listen in on any future conversations that seemed suspicious, Harkway replaced the instrument and, looking very disappointed, turned to me.

  “Now tell me what your caller said. In detail.”

  “There isn’t much. The voice simply said that Jack and I were to be prepared for further orders.”

  “What orders?”

  “I didn’t hear. The connection was broken then.”

  Harkway made a nettled gesture. “No use crying over spilled milk, I suppose, but it does seem too bad we flubbed the business.” His dark face brightened. “Anyhow, we’ve got another chance. Those girls will watch this line like hawk?. When the third call comes we’ll nail your caller.”

  I personally considered the man behind the mysterious “voice” too clever to be caught in such a simple trap. He would, I felt, anticipate our move and provide against it. Harkway commenced a worried pacing of the floor.

  “How about the voice, Mrs. Storm? Could you identify it this time? Did it seem more familiar?”

  I shook my head reluctantly. I was confirmed in my previous conviction that the voice had been deliberately and skillfully disguised, that I had heard it elsewhere in a different connection, but further my mind refused to go. However, as I concentrated upon the conversation I recalled something that did seem of real importance. I turned in some excitement.

  “There’s one curious thing I haven’t mentioned. Evidently the caller knew you were here with us. At any rate he spoke of the policeman at the cottage.”

  “What’s that!”

  “He warned me not to tell the policeman at the cottage about the call. Now how could he have known you were here?”

  Jack’s eye kindled. “He must have seen the three of us together as we left the village. Or when we met on Main Street. Or as we drove here in the car.”

  Swiftly we attempted to tabulate the persons we had seen that afternoon, but as we did so the realization came upon all of us that the task was hopeless. Harkway spoke first. “It could be almost anyone in town.”

  “But,” said Jack, “in town. I knew all along local people were concerned. That call was made by a local man.”

  Harkway glanced thoughtfully at his neat blue serge. “Also it was made by someone who knows me as a policeman when I’m not in uniform!”

  With that and after requesting us to communicate with him or Standish in the event of another call, he returned to the village.

  Jack and I sat down to a dismal supper. Jack was suffering from an over-active day, his head was aching and he scarcely touched his food. I also ate little. The second phone call following so swiftly on the first, the insolent boldness of the caller and his knowledge of our movements, had shaken me more than I was willing to admit. I cleared away the supper things. I curled up on the couch.

  “Being rung up by a murderer,” I said presently, “isn’t my idea of the peaceful, country life.”

  “If it’s any consolation,” said Jack with a thin smile, “it couldn’t have been the actual murderer who rang us up. It was our old pal—the black-faced man in the closet.”

  “How can you know that?”

  “Figure it out yourself, Lola. It’s really quite simple.”

  After a puzzled moment I saw why Jack was right. Both phone calls had been made by the same voice. Lewis himself had been aware of the first call, had met us in accordance with the telephoned directions, and, except that his violent death intervened, eventually would have wound up at the cottage. Obviously then both phone calls had been made by the mysterious individual who awaited Lewis, crouched among the frocks and coats in my clothes closet.

  “Even so,” said Jack, “the closet man remains a riddle. Either he was astoundingly persuasive, or else he had some strong hold on Lewis. I favor the strong hold myself. It’s quite a trick to persuade someone to fill a bag with money, ride twenty-five miles with two people he’s never seen before, and be prepared to walk into a house where you’re nicely set to ambush him.”

  “You think the closet man meant to rob Lewis?”

  “Rob and—murder him.”

  Jack’s tone, the look in his eyes, made me shiver. He said, “It isn’t pleasant to think about, darling, and I hate to sound hard-boiled but I hardly believe Elmer Lewis—as a human being—was worth what you’re feeling now. He was a bad egg, Lola. If anything’s certain, that is.”

  I said weakly, “We saw him only once.”

  “Once was plenty. Elmer Lewis had an evil face—and you needn’t say that’s just my artist’s eye. No honest man needs travel disguised, under an alias, as Lewis did. We can be sure that when Elmer Lewis climbed into our car he was bound on some illegal mission.” Jack went on soberly, “It looks as though the gentleman met with the double-cross, but my guess is that circumstances had been reversed Elmer Lewis would not have hesitated to plant the knife in someone’s back. Be realistic, Lola. Isn’t that how he struck you?”

  I had to nod. I remembered my own distrust of Elmer Lewis, the antagonism and aversion which had flared when first I saw him walking along the sidewalk through the crowd. It seemed quite logical that such a man should have earned himself two mortal enemies. One enemy who had killed him, and another who had been set to kill. But there my reasoning faltered. I could see no way in which we could connect those shadowy figures, a way in which we could identify them. And I retained the uneasy feeling that the repercussions of Elmer Lewis’s murder which had affected Jack and me would continue to affect us until the mystery was fully solved.

  By bedtime I was so apprehensive that. Jack proposed we ask Silas to stay in the house again. The pasture path which climbed in an almost vertical line from the cottage to the Lodge was shorter, but it was also very steep and I preferred the road. Jack who carried a flash, preceded me. I remember the smell of the spring night as I followed. I remember hearing the rattle of tiny sliding stones, and seeing the stark outlines of the box and elm trees on the Coatesnash lawns as we rounded the hill. Monstrous shadows enveloped the mansion; it looked bleak, forbidding formidable.

  Iron gates barred the driveway which gave on the road, but they were purely ornamental, since a line of leafless bushes grew on either side of the stone supports. Jack held back a bush, and somewhat nervously I crept through the hole. We were trespassing, and I couldn’t forget how much Mrs. Coatesnash would dislike it if she knew. I think Jack felt the same. We hurriedly mounted the bone-white drive—it glittered in the moonlight—and, our steps instinctively hastening, passed Hilltop House and
descended to the Lodge in the rear.

  Silas had retired. Spirited pounding finally roused him. He refused to spend another night on the sofa—flatly and without equivocation.

  “No, siree, Mr. Storm. I’m staying here.”

  “Maybe you’ll let us take Reuben.”

  The hired man glanced doubtfully at the small sand-colored dog which yapped at us from the doorway. Jack produced dollar bill, and cupidity won. We got the dog.

  “The better man of the two at that,” said Jack, as with one accord we turned down the short cut home. A brisk ten minutes’ walk carried us there.

  Reuben wasn’t exactly a comfort. The small dog had an insane aversion to mice—guests common to country cottages—and throughout the night he barked frantically. I was too tired to care. I slept fitfully, but slept.

  The next day—Sunday—I observe is listed in my rather sketchy notes under the heading: “Plague of the Reporters.” It occurs to me that I have not dwelt sufficiently upon the fervid and hysterical attention which metropolitan newspapers were taking in what they termed the “Rumble Seat Murder.” Columns were printed, editorials lamented the mystery of the $108,000 corpse, front-page space was filled with maps of Crockford, dotted diagrams of Main Street, and the like. Special writers descended like locusts on the village, set themselves up at the principal hotel, burned holes in the blankets, ran up enormous telephone tolls, and, I believe, gave Mr. Bemis, the town’s despairing liquor dealer, a new lease on life. Amateur detectives every one, and an undoubted nuisance—Harkway always insisted that he trapped a reporter under his bed—they trotted in and out of the Undertaking parlors, camped on the police station steps, and demanded interviews from everyone who had the remotest connection with the case.

  Sunday was a dead day in the investigation. Standish and Harkway fled from the station and locked themselves in a room at the Tally-ho Inn. Dr. Rand, described in the public prints as “an elderly, short-tempered eccentric,” barricaded himself in his home, detached his doorbell, pulled down his shades and was at peace.

  Jack and I bore the brunt of a mass attack. Since we declined to talk, the reporters—there must have been a score of them—genially set out to wear us down. Our telephone rang until I removed it from the hook, our doorbell rang steadily from ten o’clock until noon—at which point Jack discovered some ingenious soul had wedged it with a match. We had locked the doors but wheedling voices called through keyholes that we were missing visits from old school friends. Sob sisters smoked on the steps and tossed butts and matches to the lawn. A card game was staged in the garage, and I hate to think about the number of empty bottles we found discarded there.

  At four o’clock, uninterviewed but photographed—and the photograph of me adjusting my stocking remains a sore spot to is day—we escaped by the back door to exercise Reuben. Until darkness we stayed away. Returning, we were cheered to discover that hunger had vanquished the press.

  At eight o’clock on Monday morning an especially enterprising New York newspaper telephoned the cottage. The Globe had learned that Jack was an artist; the Globe would like signed sketches of the various personalities who figured in the case—the two investigators, the coroner, ourselves, and, if possible, a drawing from memory of the victim. Sleepy and annoyed. Jack was on the point of curt refusal, when I intervened.

  “Ask them what they’ll pay.”

  Negotiations were resumed. It was suggested quite sensible that the sketch of Elmer Lewis might result in an identification. The possibility appealed to Jack, and I must confess the surprising sum of money offered appealed to me. But when the Globe further stipulated that Jack must deliver the sketches in person both of us were dismayed. It seemed unlikely that we could obtain permission to leave the township.

  Eventually, however, we drove to town to broach the proposition. First we called upon our bondsman. Dr. Rand admitted us cautiously, and only after peeping through the curtains to see who was ringing his bell. He was agreeable and even enthusiastic about the venture. “It will do you a world of good getting to the city, give you a sense of perspective. After yesterday I could use a sense of perspective myself! A murder’s a bad thing, but I’m not sure newspaper men aren’t worse.” The final decision he then said must be left to Standish, and with Standish we anticipated difficulties. To my surprise the police chief readily granted Jack permission to make the trip. “Sure, run along to the city. Take your wife if you like—probably do her good. All I ask is that you be back by noon tomorrow.”

  I was too naive to dream of looking a gift horse in the mouth or to speculate at any ulterior reason for the police chief’s amazing affability. Jack did his sketches, I approved them, and that very day we started gaily, lightly, off to town.

  It was mid-afternoon when we alighted at the Grand Central Station. Until I set foot on Forty-Second Street, breathed in the smoky, familiar air, I hadn’t realized how much I missed New York. The day was gray. Leaden, low-hanging skies could not diminish the splendor and the wonder of my favorite city. Granite towers soared toward the heavens in the same remembered way. The same lovely furred women strolled into hotels to keep appointments. The same well-dressed, ill-shaped business men rushed past. The same newsboys cried their wares. We were home again, lost in the anonymity of preoccupied crowds, rubbing shoulder to shoulder with the most tolerant people one can ever hope to meet. People who didn’t care who we were, or what we had done or were about to do. Jack looked at me.

  “Swell,” he said, “swell.”

  He snared a taxi and departed toward the offices of the Globe. I went to get a decent shampoo and manicure. Afterward we met in an uptown hotel for tea. Jack was stimulated by the enthusiastic reception of his sketches, and by the tonic of the city.

  “I,” he said, “feel great. You look great. Cute haircut you’ve got there—I like it. Now that’s set—how would you like to take an independent step in solving the mystery of Elmer Lewis?”

  “What step?” I asked cheerfully.

  “Do you remember that firm of lawyers Standish mentioned the other day, those lawyers who handle Mrs. Coatesnash’s affairs? Hiram Darnley and Franklyn Elliott? Well, they’ve got a suite of offices downtown—and I thought we might go there and have a talk with them.”

  “A talk about what?”

  “About Elmer Lewis, stupid.” Suddenly Jack was quite serious. “Mrs. Coatesnash is the great white cow of Crockford, but in New York, thank God, she’s only a person like us. Darnley and Elliott is a reputable firm—I asked at the Globe—and I don’t believe they’d shield a client they thought involved in a serious crime. Anyhow it won’t hurt to go and see.”

  “Certainly not,” I said.

  It was all as casual as that.

  Darnley and Elliott occupied a twenty-story office building’s topmost suite, an entire floor. It was a most luxurious place. The etchings on the walls, the thick soft carpets, the expensive sunshine on the floor, the unusual quiet, testified to taste and money.

  In the outer reception rooms a very pretty secretary tapped at a noiseless typewriter. Jack paused before her. He asked for Hiram Darnley.

  “Mr. Darnley is out of town.”

  “Then may I see Mr. Elliott?”

  The stenographer smiled. “Mr. Elliott is also out of town. He is due here at four o’clock.”

  I was already doubtful of our mission, but Jack pulled out a chair for me and calmly settled near the door to wait.

  At four promptly the door opened. A short, stout man, astonishingly light on his feet, came quickly in. The secretary rose at once.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Elliott. These people have been waiting…”

  “I can’t be bothered now. I’m busy. I’ll be busy the rest of the afternoon. Get rid of them.”

  Franklyn Elliott vanished. The girl looked apologetically at us. Jack, who hadn’t moved since the lawyer’s entrance, addressed me in a low, excited voice:

  “Did you recognize Elliott? He was in the New Haven station this morning. I
saw him boarding the Crockford bus.”

  A buzzer sounded on the secretary’s desk. She lifted a telephone, spoke, turned and said to Jack:

  “What is your name, please? What business have you with Mr. Elliott?”

  “My name is Jack Storm—my business is personal.”

  The girl relayed the information. She hung up the telephone. She looked surprised.

  “Mr. Elliott can give you fifteen minutes, if you don’t mind waiting a few minutes more.”

  We waited.

  I experienced a certain qualmish feeling as we entered the private office. New York’s expensive sunshine barred a thick rust-colored carpet. I had a hazy impression of Durer etchings and cheerful draperies. Behind a lovely rosewood desk, either a museum piece or a skillfully faked antique, legs crossed, sat Franklyn Elliott.

  He wasn’t alone. A middle-aged woman—obviously an employee—was seated in a chair beside the desk. She was crying. She balled her handkerchief, got up and stumbled from the room. Elliott didn’t say anything about her.

  He turned to us and I studied his round, rather pleasant face. His head was a trifle large for his short body, was bald and he carried it well. He looked like a man who might collect Napoleonana, and, glancing at his desk, I wasn’t surprised to see a small bronze of the Emperor. Elliott caught my eye and smiled.

  “A great general—Napoleon, and one of my admirations. Now won’t you sit down and tell me what I can do for you?” We sat down. Jack hesitated. Politely interested, the lawyer leaned forward. The silence lengthened. Elliott glanced inquiringly at Jack, then at his watch. Jack flushed but still said nothing. At that moment, as he admitted later, he was strongly tempted to leave the office without a single word. I would have followed gladly. I realized belatedly how absurd was our idea of presenting our suspicions of Luella Coatesnash to this man. If Elliott knew anything to his client’s disadvantage, anything which might assist our case, certainly he was capable of keeping such information to himself. From my first glimpse of him I firmly believed that he would do so.