A Most Immoral Murder

by Harriette Ashbrook

  Herschman nodded. “Three.”

  “Kiddies, I trust, not wives. Well anyway, we ought to find out whether—”

  The inspector interrupted. “I don’t know,” he said, “whether you know something you’re not telling, or whether you’re just gassing away like you do sometimes and hitting the bull’s-eye without realizing it, but—”

  “You refer, I suppose, Inspector, to my feminine intuition.”

  “Well, if you want to put it that way yourself, I suppose it’s O.K. But what I was saying is that we’ve already done what you said. Fairleigh is in bad financially. But as far as we can make out he has played perfectly square with the Crossley property, even though he did have power of attorney. And he’s O.K. with his firm. But his own affairs are all mugged up. He was one of those wise birds who thought they knew how to make money on a falling market. He figured that stocks were so low they couldn’t get any lower, but they did. And now he needs a lot of money to cover or he’s sunk. I understand he’s already borrowed on his Crossley inheritance.”

  Spike looked disappointed. “Embezzlement,” he complained, “is always so much more interesting than bad stock market judgment.”

  “Well, he’s not an embezzler, but he’s all kinds of a damn fool.”

  “ ‘A man of honor,’ ” Spike murmured with a reminiscent flash.

  “What’s that?” Herschman inquired.

  “Oh nothing. I was just thinking…”

  “What with?” Herschman laughed broadly at his own wit. “I caught you up that time.”

  Nassau Street is not far from Police Headquarters. Within fifteen minutes the district attorney’s secretary announced Fairleigh. “If you don’t mind, let me handle him,” Spike suggested as they waited for him to come into the office.

  It was almost two weeks since Spike had seen Fairleigh. There was a change, but not a great one. His hard, grey-blue eyes were shadowed as with sleepless nights, and the lines around his mouth had deepened. But he still had that air of implacability, as if Heaven itself could not budge him from his own preconceived course.

  When he had exchanged greetings with the inspector and the district attorney he seated himself and looked inquiringly at Spike.

  “My brother,” the district attorney explained somewhat apologetically. “He has been—ah—assisting with the case. You perhaps remember that you met him at the Crossley house the first morning you came back from the Coast.”

  Fairleigh accepted the explanation but said nothing. Spike lit a cigarette and slouched down in his chair with a deceiving sense of ease.

  “Speaking of that first morning,” he said, “things were rather disorganized and hurried then. There were some loose ends we didn’t quite dear up. Perhaps you can help us now, Fairleigh.”

  Fairleigh nodded in acquiescence.

  “We don’t feel that you have been entirely—ah—candid with us.”

  “In what way, may I ask?” There was a hard, flat note to Fairleigh’s voice.

  “I refer particularly to certain clauses in Mr. Crossley’s will.” Spike paused. There was an almost imperceptible tightening of the lines about Fairleigh’s mouth.

  “There was one phrase referring to you and the $50,000 bequest which you were to receive that went something like this—‘in recognition of his steadfast refusal to betray the trust which I have had in him.’ Would you mind, just once again explaining the meaning of that?”

  “I thought,” Fairleigh replied, “that I had made that plain. For fifteen years I have managed Mr. Crossley’s affairs, managed them capably, I think you will find, if you look into the matter.”

  “And I suppose you received a certain fee for doing this?”

  “Certainly.”

  “So that the $50,000 bequest is what you might call a work of supererogation?”

  “Possibly.”

  “And then again, possibly one might look at it as a special—ah—inducement in return for which you yourself rendered a work of—ah—supererogation?”

  “I don’t understand you.”

  “Then I shall put it very bluntly.” Spike leaned forward and eyed Fairleigh. “Isn’t it true, Fairleigh, that that $50,000 was left to you by Prentice Crossley because you had rendered him some great service entirely outside your regular duties as manager of his business affairs?”

  “Certainly not!” The answer came quickly, emphatically. Was it too quick? Too emphatic? “You’re quite sure of that?”

  “Quite!” There was a finality in that short, clipped ‘quite’ that indicated plainly that further questioning along this line was futile.

  Spike paused and considered the situation. Then he started in on a new tack.

  “But there’s another clause in that will that seems equally—ah—open to interpretation. I refer to that sentence about Linda Crossley.”

  Again that tightening of the lines around Fairleigh’s mouth at the mention of Linda Crossley.

  “The phrase there,” Spike continued, “if I’m not mistaken is: ‘And on John Fairleigh I lay the burden of the guidance of my granddaughter, Linda Crossley. I leave to him the onerous task of saving her, if possible, from the consequences of her own indiscretions.’ ”

  Spike paused and waited, but the lawyer was silent.

  “Tell me, Fairleigh, has Linda Crossley a—well, what they call in the good old melodramas, a past?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “For a lawyer you are singularly obtuse.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “To put it in words of one syllable, I mean has Linda Crossley in the past committed some crime, has she involved herself in any way in anything nefarious?”

  “I know very little about her, but I should not imagine so. She is hardly the—criminal type.”

  “And yet her grandfather is murdered and she has disappeared.” Spike uttered the damning juxtaposition quietly.

  “I will never believe that there is any relation between those two facts—never.” Again the answer was quick and emphatic.

  “I don’t believe I said there was.”

  “You implied it though.”

  “Well, we shan’t argue about that now. Let’s get back to facts. I’m asking you for an explanation of that clause in Prentice Crossley’s will. Just what did he mean when he said, ‘the onerous task of saving her from the consequences of her own indiscretions?’ ”

  Again the hard blue eyes of Fairleigh met the direct gaze of his interrogator even as they had that first morning in the Crossley library, and with the same implacable quietness he replied.

  “I haven’t the slightest idea.”

  Spike stamped out his cigarette and lit another one. “And that,” he murmured to himself, “is that.” Aloud he addressed Fairleigh directly with a deceiving casualness.

  “All right, let’s forget that. There’s just one other thing I’d like to ask you. Where were you on the afternoon when Mrs. Deborah Ealing was murdered?”

  “I have already explained that to the district attorney and the inspector.”

  “Would you mind explaining it once again—to me.”

  Fairleigh related the story of a visit to the law library on the Drive.

  Spike nodded and smiled. “Interesting,” he said, “if true.”

  Fairleigh smiled too, but it was a tight, hard smile. “If, as you say, Mr. Tracy, it isn’t true, and I was not in my friend’s library, where was I? What would you suggest?”

  “Oh,” said Spike nonchalantly, “I’m not ‘suggesting’ anything. I’m telling you. You were—” He paused and inhaled deeply from his cigarette. “You spent the entire afternoon in New Jersey at the home of Mr. Henry Polk at a little town called West Albion on the edge of the Forestry Reserve.”

  There was a moment of silence. Fairleigh just sat there, unmoving. His eyes as they met Spike’s were still direct, unflinching. But imperceptibly almost, something seemed to go out of him, like air leaking slowly from a balloon. At last his glance fell. It was a gesture of
defeat.

  “Yes,” he said quietly, “you’re right.”

  “Then why the hell did you tell this cock-and-bull story about being in New York?”

  Another moment of silence. Then Fairleigh spoke. “I cannot tell you that.”

  “You mean you don’t know?”

  “No, of course not. I’m not feeble-minded.”

  “You mean you won’t tell?”

  “Yes, if you wish to put it that way.”

  Spike was standing now looking down at Fairleigh. He gazed at him as if he were calculating his possibilities. Then suddenly he shot the question at him.

  “Listen Fairleigh, do you know where Linda Crossley is?”

  The last breath of air went out of the balloon. Fairleigh crumpled. “No,” he said. “No, I don’t, but I wish to God I did.”

  And this time there was no mistaking the ring of truth in his voice. Yet there was still a question. Was it devotion or hatred that prompted those impassioned, unguarded words? It was impossible to tell.

  CHAPTER XXV - The Truth and Nothing But

  “WELL, I DO DECLARE, Henry, I never heard the like.” Mrs. Henry Polk of West Albion, New Jersey, gave an expert tug at the strings of her old-fashioned front laced corset and miraculously compressed her generous figure into a fraction of the space it had previously occupied.

  “What do you suppose it means? The police! I do declare!”

  Mr. Polk at the wash-stand struggling with an unwonted shave in the middle of the day stropped his razor.

  “What did the man say, the one that told you about it?”

  “Just said we was to come in to New York to the police.”

  “But, Henry, we ain’t done anything.”

  “He never said we had.”

  “But the police! What are they going to do to us?” Mrs. Polk, resting secure in a guiltless conscience, was curious rather than apprehensive. Mr. Polk was non-committal to the point of silence, and his wife grew slightly impatient.

  “Henry, I asked you a question,” she complained. “What are they going to do to us?”

  “Oh, just ask us questions, probably.” The hand that held the razor along the side of his face was nervous.

  “But what about, Henry? What do we—”

  She interrupted herself and went to the window that gave onto the back yard.

  “Edward,” she called to the boy in the yard, “be sure you fill up the car with water, because I don’t want your uncle to have to be fussing around it after he gets dressed, and if you go swimming this afternoon and get home before we get back I’ll leave the key over to the Haineses.”

  She withdrew her head from the window. “I do declare, Edward’s getting so big he’s going to have to have a whole new outfit this year before he starts back to school again.” Mrs. Polk slipped her best flowered foulard over her head and spoke from the depths of its voluminous folds. “My goodness, seems like it isn’t any time at all since he was just a wee little shaver crying for his bottle. Remember what a terrible time we had getting milk to agree——” Again Mrs. Polk broke the thread of her rambling conversation to revert to her original theme. “But, Henry,” she protested, “what are the y going to ask us about? I mean the police. What do we know that they’d—”

  Mr. Polk muffled a sharp retort as his hand trembled and blood oozed from a gash in his chin. He put down the razor and turned to his wife.

  “Listen, Ellie,” he said and his face was very grave. There’s something I got to tell you…”

  “I think,” said Spike addressing his brother, “that my presence might prove embarrassing to the Polks—to Mrs. Polk at least. We’ve met before, you know.”

  So it was that when the Polks were ushered into the office of J. Montgomery Tracy, they found themselves confronted by only the district attorney and the inspector. There was no sign of a certain long, lazy young man with a deceptive air of carelessness. But the close observer would have noted that the door into an inner office was ever so slightly ajar.

  The Polks seated themselves nervously on the edge of the chairs which the district attorney indicated. Sunday clothes on a week day, the unfamiliar atmosphere of police headquarters, the imposing display of uniformed officers, all played a part in their apprehension. But it was apprehension compounded of something more than just externals. It was as if both of them were strung tight on wires, tense, taut, treading carefully, fearfully. And the woman’s eyes in spite of inexpert dabs of powder looked red as if she had been crying.

  Nor did the first few questions of the district attorney put them at their ease. The man acted as spokesman for the two of them, the woman merely nodding in agreement with his fiat monosyllables.

  Yes, they were Mr. and Mrs. Henry Polk of West Albion. Yes, they had lived there twenty years on their little truck farm. No, they had no children of their own, just their nephew, Edward.

  “And do you know anyone by the name of Fairleigh?” The district attorney posed the question.

  The man nodded. “Yes, we know a Mr. Fairleigh.”

  “Is he—a frequent visitor at your house?”

  “He comes once in a while.”

  “What do you mean by ‘once in a while’?”

  “Oh—every month or so.”

  “How long have you known Mr. Fairleigh?”

  “About twenty years.”

  “And during those twenty years have you seen him often?”

  “Oh—pretty often.”

  “What do you mean by ‘pretty often’?”

  “Well, every month or so, like I said before.”

  “Are these visits which Mr. Fairleigh makes to your place ‘every month or so’ purely—ah—friendly visits?”

  “Yes,—you might say that Mr. Fairleigh’s always been right friendly.”

  “That isn’t what I mean. I mean are these visits of Fairleigh’s to your house just in the nature of a friendly call, or do you have some definite business relationship with him?”

  The man paused, his rough, work-gnarled hands working in his lap. It was as if they were the outward manifestation of an inward turmoil. His troubled eyes met the district attorney’s. Then his glance shifted to his wife beside him, groping for guidance.

  “Henry,” she said, and her voice was faint with fear and anxiety, “you’d best do like we agreed on the way in.”

  He nodded slowly and turned back to his interrogator. “It’s like she says. I guess I’d best tell you—tell you the truth. We had a hard time making up our mind what to do, but finally we decided lying never did come to no good. Only if anything happens about Edward—”

  He broke off, unwilling to finish the sentence. There was something pathetic in his confused, fearful commitment to truth.

  The district attorney was touched but puzzled. “About Edward?” he said.

  Polk nodded. “Yes, Edward. You see—that was why Mr. Fairleigh has been coming to our house.”

  “I don’t understand. Please explain what you mean.”

  “Well,” the man began slowly as if he had to pull the words forcibly from some deep, unwilling well within himself, “you see, Mr. District Attorney, Edward ain’t really ours. He ain’t no kin to us at all. But we’ve had him ever since he was just a baby and it’s just like he was our own and if anything was to happen that we’d—”

  Again he broke off. His wife beside him was weeping quietly.

  “But what has Mr. Fairleigh to do with you and your wife and this boy whom you call your nephew?” The district attorney prodded him on with the story.

  “Well, you see Mr. Fairleigh used to live out near West Albion before he got married about twelve-fifteen years ago, and we used to sell vegetables to his folks. His mother and father—they’re dead now—were real nice people and they traded with us for years. That’s how young Mr. Fairleigh—we always call him that although he ain’t so young now—that’s how he happened to know us.

  “I guess he knew we’d never had any young ones of our own and would do right by
one, so I guess that’s why he brought us the baby fourteen years ago.

  “You mean Edward?”

  “Yes. Mr. Fairleigh brought him to us when he was just a baby, only just two weeks old and we’ve had him ever since. Mr. Fairleigh’s paid for his keep ever since, although sometimes it seems sort of sinful us taking it, but Mr. Fairleigh always insisted. Edward’s just like our own child, we’re that attached to him.”

  “But to whom does he really belong?”

  “We never did know that.”

  “But what did Fairleigh say when he brought him to you? You don’t pick babies out of thin air, you know.”

  “He said that it belonged to a woman he knew and she died right after the baby was born. Her husband was dead too. He’d got killed in an automobile accident about six months before. And there wasn’t any folks to take care of the baby, so he put it out to board with us.”

  “Did he say who the mother was—or the father?”

  “No, sir. Just friends of his. We never knew their name. We asked if Edward could go by our name, Polk, and he said yes. We gave him the Edward part, too, after a brother of my wife’s that died.”

  “And in all these years he has never mentioned the real parents? All these years that he has been seeing you every month or so?”

  “No, sir.”

  “But what was the purpose then of his visits?”

  “To bring the board money.”

  “I see. He didn’t send you a check.”

  “No, sir, he always brought the money himself in cash.”

  The district attorney paused and for a few moments, sat drumming on the edge of his desk, his brows knit in speculation. Then abruptly he turned back to Polk, and shot a question at him. “Has Mr. Fairleigh been to see you recently?” Polk hesitated. It was as if he had expected the question, but dreaded it nevertheless.

  “Yes,” he said slowly, “he has.”

  “How recently?”

  “Last—last Tuesday.”