A Most Immoral Murder

by Harriette Ashbrook

  “She tried every way she could within her pitifully limited means to find out where the child was. She even went to fortune tellers. One of ’em went off into one of these fake trances and said she would find happiness in a place called Saugus. Linda looked up the town, found it was on Long Island and had the picture of David Ealing inserted in the paper. She remembered that the child had resembled his father even as a tiny baby. Maysie did the actual inserting, of course. Linda never could get away from home and the old man long enough to do it. Maysie thought it was silly but she did it to humor her. In all these years the only real friend she had in the world was Maysie. All their meetings, of course, had to be on the sly.

  “Finally, about six months ago, Linda went to Maysie and said that she couldn’t go on any longer, that she had to find her child, that it was the only thing she had in her life and she didn’t have that. She was going to kill herself. Maysie could see the condition she was in. She knew that Linda had at last come to the breaking point and that something had to be done, so she told her that she, Maysie, would make one last desperate attempt to locate the child.

  “Just then chance played into her hand. Fairleigh needed a new secretary, advertised for one, and Maysie got the job. She started staying late and systematically going through all of Fairleigh’s stuff— his files, his records, trying to get into his personal safe, hoping she’d come across a memorandum of some sort that would tell her where the child was. But it was no go. Finally she had to admit as much to Linda.

  “They met again in the Park—the night the old man was killed.”

  Spike paused.

  “What time?” Herschman put in quickly.

  “Early. Around nine: thirty.”

  “How long were they there—in the Park?”

  “About an hour. Maysie admitted that she was stumped, that she’d run into a blind alley, that she couldn’t find out a thing. From what I can make out from Linda’s account of the meeting, she, Linda, went half crazy. She started back to the house on Fifth Avenue. Maysie wanted to go with her, but Linda wouldn’t let her. She returned to the house alone, went in—”

  Spike broke off abruptly. His brows drew into a creased frown as if he were thinking hard. But the inspector paid no attention. Instead he jumped into the breach.

  “She went in and found the old man there,” Herschman continued the story with sudden determination. “She found him asleep. She was mad crazy. She knew that when he died Fairleigh would have to reveal the whereabouts of her child. She went upstairs and got this bayonet this guy had sent her and killed him.” Herschman finished off with a flourish, his eyes gleaming with triumph.

  “And then I suppose,” Spike put in quietly, “six days later she came back and murdered old lady Ealing, just for the fun of it.”

  “Sure. She’s crazy. Stark, raving crazy. The strain of these fifteen years has been too much for her. It has unbalanced her mind. Crazy people are like that. They sometimes harm the ones that mean the most to them. Once she started killing, everything got mixed up in her mind.”

  Spike lit another cigarette, blew a long cloud of smoke into the air.

  “I imagine,” he said quietly, “that that is just what Fairleigh and Maysie Ealing thought.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Just what I said. Knowing the circumstances, knowing Linda’s obsession, knowing that she was on the point of madness almost in her desire to find her child, Fairleigh and Maysie concluded that she had really tipped over the edge. That, I fancy, is why they’ve told so many godawful, clumsy lies on the one hand, or, on the other hand, shut up like clams and refused to talk at all. They believed that her brain had snapped, that in the first fit of madness she killed her uncle, and then killed old Mrs. Ealing and took a pot shot at Koenig. They were doing their best—although each one was working absolutely independent of the other—to protect her, to befog the issue.

  “That accounts for Maysie Ealing’s surprising statement that she was the mother of the child in question. She knew that if we found out the circumstances, if we knew that the child was Linda Crossley’s, and that for years she had been kept in ignorance of its whereabouts, we might jump to the same erroneous conclusion that she had.”

  “Erroneous conclusion? What do you mean erroneous conclusion?” Herschman was slightly indignant.

  Spike smiled. “I mean erroneous conclusion, Inspector. That’s what it is, you know.”

  “I don’t know anything of the kind.”

  “Aren’t you forgetting about—about the stamps?”

  “No, of course not. She knew the combination to her grandfather’s safe. Easiest thing in the world for her to lift ’em. And then leave ’em around after she’d done in the old lady and Koenig. A nutty thing to do, but that just proves the theory. Only a person that was insane would do such a thing.”

  “But, Inspector,” Spike put in mildly, “I’m afraid that in the heat of your theorizing you’ve forgotten yesterday afternoon.”

  Herschman’s enthusiasm was suddenly arrested. “Of course,” Spike went on, “we have no way of knowing at just what minute the stamp found in here was placed here.” He indicated the district attorney’s desk with its leather cornered blotter. “But we do know that a second stamp was placed in your office, and that I was beaned on the head and a third stamp placed inside my cigarette case, and that—”

  He broke off. “By the way, Inspector, I take it you had my cigarette case tested for fingerprints?” Herschman nodded.

  “And found, of course, that like Koenig’s watch, it was clear of any prints but those of the chap who picked it up after the bodies were found?” Herschman nodded again.

  “And there were, I take it, no incriminating print s on the inner surfaces of Crossley’s safe? I thought so. The modern detective story has practically outlawed fingerprints. The veriest boob knows enough to take along white kids when he’s murder bound. Sartorially the perfect murderer should wear—”

  “Philip!” the district attorney interrupted. “Aren’t you getting a bit off the track? You were saying…”

  Spike reluctantly tore himself away from the fascinating subject of homicidal haberdashery. “I was saying,” he went on, “that a stamp was placed in the inspector’s office and I was beaned on the head after we had handed Linda Crossley over to Mellett. The second stamp and the third stamp were placed in the spots where we eventually found them, while Linda Crossley was in an automobile, under police guard, on her way to West Albion, New Jersey.”

  For a moment Herschman just looked at him. The light went out of his eyes and his whole face sagged.

  “Yeah,” he admitted slowly, “that’s true but

  —” He rose and paced the floor, his hand s jammed into his pockets.

  “But where,” he said finally and his voice was full of angry frustration, “but where the hell does that leave us?”

  “Still holding the bag,” said Spike complacently. He drew in a long, deep breath of smoke, let it out slowly.

  “You know,” he said half to himself, half aloud, “I’ve a feeling that this case is what they call the ‘perfect crime’—that thing you hear about so much. And being a ‘perfect’ crime, it is, of course, unsolvable.”

  And on this happy note he rose and gathered up his gloves, stick and hat. At the door he paused, turned.

  “I’ll be seeing you,” he said.

  It was not until some minutes later that Inspector Herschman realized that he had received a very sketchy, second-hand account of the movements of Miss Linda Crossley on the night of the murder of her grandfather, Prentice Crossley.

  CHAPTER XXXII - The Long Dead Past

  ON THE WAY to the hospital Spike stopped at a newsstand.

  “First edition of the World-Telegram out yet?” he asked.

  “Be here any minute,” the news vendor assured him.

  “All right, I’ll stick around. I’ll take one of these while I wait.”

  He flipped a coin across the counter an
d picked up one of the morning papers.

  The reporters had worked fast, tracking down Linda Crossley, invading the quiet village of West Albion, putting an end to that brief, blissful period of reunion. There was a picture of the Polk house, a photograph of Mr. and Mrs. Polk. There was even a photograph of the faithful Mellett. But there was no picture of Linda Crossley nor of her son.

  “Miss Crossley refused to receive reporters or to make any statement. She retired to an inner room of the Polk house and sent out word through Special Detective Andrew W. Mellett, detailed by Inspector Herschman of the Homicide Squad to guard her, that she had nothing to say, would not be interviewed and would not permit either herself or her son to be photographed. The boy she kept with her in the house. The foster parents of the child, Mr. and Mrs. Henry Polk, stated that…”

  A truck drew up at the curb in front of the newsstand and a bundle of papers came hurtling through the air onto the sidewalk.

  “Here you are, Mister.”

  Spike grabbed a paper from the top of the bundle. He took one glance at the headlines and smiled with grim satisfaction.

  At the hospital he found Koenig sitting up in bed, his arm in a sling, reading the morning papers. Physically, he seemed greatly improved, but his eyes held a look of infinite anxiety, and in his voice there was reproach as he greeted his visitor.

  “It is so long, my friend, since I have seen you, and there are so many things—I’ve had to get them all from the papers.” He pointed to the morning’s headlines. “Linda—tell me about her. You have seen her? She is safe? She is happy?”

  Spike drew up a chair and seated himself. He smiled gently at the little, round, anxious man in the bed.

  “Very happy,” he said quietly. “I saw her last night.” Briefly he related the story of his trip to West Albion. “She was almost beside herself with happiness. She had her child—at last.”

  “And what kind of a child is he? Does he love her as he should? And who are these Polk people?”

  “He’s a nice lad, but just at present he’s naturally a good bit bewildered. He hasn’t had time to love Linda as he should. She has only just been thrust upon him in the midst of a puzzling turmoil. The Polks are the kind of people who are the salt of the earth. Mrs. Polk confided to me last night that Linda was going to stay with them for a while, or perhaps take a little cottage next door so that both may share the boy.”

  Koenig lay back against the pillows with a contented sigh. “Linda, dear Linda,” he murmured. “At last—”

  Slowly the smile faded from Spike’s face. He grew troubled.

  “I’m afraid, though,” he said, “that it is not going to be all smooth sailing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I’m afraid it’s going to take some hard stretching to make the police believe Linda’s version of the night of June 4, the night her grandfather was murdered.”

  Koenig sat up in bed. Like Spike, he was suddenly sober and thoughtful.

  “What does she say of her whereabouts the day Mrs. Ealing was killed?” he demanded.

  “She doesn’t say. I didn’t ask her. I couldn’t spoil those first ecstatic hours with her child. I couldn’t smear them over with questions and probings and murder and suspicion.”

  Again Koenig was thoughtful. Then suddenly he turned to Spike.

  “Look here,” he said, “it is self-evident, is it not, that these murders were done by the same person?”

  “Yes,” Spike admitted, “I think we may safely infer that. The person who murdered Crossley is identical with the person who murdered Mrs. Ealing, and tried to get you but missed. In each of the three instances the murderer has left a trade mark—one of the valuable Crossley stamps.”

  “Very well, then,” Koenig went on, “what if the police don’t believe Linda’s story of her movements on the night her grandfather was murdered? What if she has no logical, credible alibi for the day on which Mrs. Ealing was murdered? What about the third murder—or rather I should say the third attempted murder—me?”

  “Yes, what about it?”

  “Why, is it not plain enough? That night, the night on which the attempt was made on my life, Linda was safe in the apartment of Maysie Ealing. She couldn’t possibly have made the attempt on my life, so it must follow that she is equally innocent of the other two crimes.”

  Koenig finished off with a little flourish of triumph and again lay back against his pillows in great contentment. Spike rose from his chair, took a turn up and down the room. At last he paused beside the bed, looked down at Koenig.

  “As a matter of fact,” he said quietly, “Linda wasn’t at Maysie Ealing’s apartment that night.”

  Koenig stared at him. “What—what are you saying?”

  “I’m saying that she wasn’t at Maysie Ealing’s that night.”

  Koenig’s mouth dropped open. He stared at Spike.

  “But that telephone call?”

  “That was a fake.”

  “A fake?”

  “Yes, it was my man, Pug. He was lying.”

  Koenig’s hands worked convulsively with the covers.

  “But why—why?”

  “Because—” Spike broke off. His eyes swept the white hospital room, disconcerted, uneasy.

  “Look here, Koenig, we can’t talk here, and we’ve got to talk. Do you feel well enough—do you think you could go home, now, today?”

  For answer Koenig reached for the electric bell on the bedside table, and at the same time threw off the covers.

  There was red tape and irritating details—a formal discharge to be signed by the doctor; a stiff, starchy superintendent of nurses fussing about and adding to the complications. Koenig was still a bit wobbly and Spike insisted that he go home in the ambulance. It was fully two hours before they were finally back in Koenig’s little rear-of-the-shop-apartment on East Thirty-sixth Street. The ambulance attendants took their leave, and Spike stowed away in a dressing alcove the bag containing Koenig’s clothes brought from the hospital. Koenig himself was propped up against the high pillows of his own bed. He had dismissed his clerk for the afternoon and closed the stamp shop. They were quite alone.

  “Now, my friend,” Koenig said at last, “now, g o on. You were telling me—” He waited for Spike to take up the thread of the conversation they had begun in the hospital.

  Spike drew up a chair and sat down beside the bed.

  “I was telling you that Linda Crossley was not at Maysie Ealing’s house the night you were shot, and that that telephone call was a fake. It was Pug, my man, and he was lying.”

  “But why should he lie?”

  “Because—” Spike broke off in uncertainty.

  “Look here, Koenig, I know everything, the whole story, the how’s and the who’s and the when’s. There’s just one thing I don’t know and that is the—” Again he broke off. He rose from his chair, kicked it away from him almost savagely and strode over to the opposite side of the room where he had laid his hat and the afternoon paper he had bought on the way up to the hospital. He snatched it up, thrust it at Koenig.

  The little round man propped the page up in front of him and his eyes slowly covered the headlines.

  STAMP MURDERER VISITS POLICE HEADQUARTERS

  —————

  Crossley-Ealing Killer Escapes City Hall Trap— But Marks Trail With Stolen Stamps

  Koenig reached for his reading glasses on the table beside his bed. Then slowly he read the story of those three tense hours that District Attorney Tracy, Inspector Herschman and Spike had spent the previous afternoon with the wily Crossley-Ealing murderer just beyond their grasp.

  When he had finished he laid the paper down slowly, folded it neatly, placed it on the reading table. He took off his glasses and placed them on top of it.

  “I think,” he said quietly, “I will get up and put on my clothes.”

  “Do you think you’re able?” Spike asked, but the question seemed purely rhetorical. He made no move to help th
e sick man.

  Koenig retired to the dressing alcove where Spike had put the bag containing his clothes. It was a long time before he emerged, but when he did he was fully dressed. He had managed even to achieve something of his old air of the dandy, despite the handicap of his crippled arm, and his steps were fairly steady as he crossed the room.

  He picked up the newspaper Spike had given him, and seated himself on one of the chairs in front of the empty fireplace. He motioned Spike to the one opposite. Presently he spoke.

  “Since, my friend,” he began and his voice was low and slightly hoarse, “since you say you know— everything, how—how did this happen?” He indicated the paper in his lap.

  Spike smiled at bit ruefully. “That? Oh, I staged all that myself.”

  “All of it? The attack—on yourself.”

  “In the dramatic club at college I was never good at long speeches but once I played the unconscious body in a murder play. I was a big hit.”

  “And the stamps?”

  “I put them there myself—in my brother’s office, in the inspector’s and in my own cigarette case.”

  “I see.”

  There was a long silence. Then Koenig spoke again.

  “You were saying that you know everything. The how’s and the who’s and the when’s?”

  “Yes, everything. Everything but the why. That’s all that troubles me. I even know all about David Ealing.”

  “All about David Ealing?” There was a slight emphasis on the first word.

  Spike hesitated before answering. “No, not all. I thought perhaps you might be able to tell me— what I don’t know—about David Ealing.”

  Another long silence. Spike waited. Presently Koenig rose and started pacing the floor, the strange, funny clumsy peasant shoes he still wore clumping with a flat dull sound as he walked up and down.