by Lionel White
“Listen,” Peter said, “I found these over there this morning. In the yard where the dead body was. Right next to the bush. I was playing and I found them right there beside...”
“Well for Christ sake!”
Ten minutes later, Peter Doyle, twelve-year-old sleuth who baffled the finest brains of Scotland Yard and the French Surete with his amazing criminal deductive powers, was being ushered into the information room at the sub-police station from which Len Neilsen had departed an hour or so previously.
It was the most thrilling moment of his life; it made those silly plays of his seem like nothing, nothing at all. Peter was a central figure in a real, true-to-life murder investigation.
By this time, Peter had completely convinced himself that he really had found the hat and the glasses next to the juniper bush in Martha Kitteridge’s side yard.
A couple of hours later, Lieutenant Giddeon, looking down on the table where that hat lay next to the glasses—the hat containing the initials L.N.— reached two conclusions. The first was that perhaps Sergeant Finnerty was not as big an idiot as he had first thought him to be; the second was that hed never again let his sense of logic be influenced by his liking or disliking of a criminal suspect. He was probably wrong in both conclusions.
If Peter Doyle can be said to have served fate as the carpenter who sawed the pine boards for what was certainly planned to be Len Neilsen’s coffin, Tom Swanson was, in his own way, no mean assistant. Swanson, however, was forced to resort to a lie, not because of an unusually vivid imagination, but as an instinct toward self-protection.
The first of the several times that the Swansons were questioned was around three o'clock on Saturday afternoon. The questioning was done by a young, ambitious traffic patrolman, who during the manpower shortage at the precinct station, was temporarily serving as a substitute detective. His name was Farraday, Fred Farraday, and he was assigned to question the Swansons because, in the first stages of the investigation, they were not considered key witnesses.
The Swansons had finished their delayed breakfast without further conversation. Each was busy with his thoughts and the tragedy which had been enacted across the street meant little to them. After all, it was none of their concern and they had plenty enough to worry about without borrowing trouble. It didn't even occur to Tom or Grace Swanson that they could have the remotest connection with the crime; that is up until the time when Tom turned the radio on late that forenoon and they heard a report of the case over the air. That’s when they learned that the victim was the young girl who had been baby-sitting with the infant daughter of one of their guests of the previous evening.
It just happened that both Grace and Tom heard the news at the same moment and that each of them was, at that very minute, thinking of the McNallys. Grace was remembering how Myrtle McNally had disappeared sometime late during the previous evening. She was remembering that soon after realizing her neighbor from across the street was no longer at the party, she’d started looking for Tom. And Tom was nowhere to be found.
Grace Swanson didn't need a blueprint; there had been other parties and there had been other big blond girls who drank too much. Grace remembered only too well that time a couple of years ago when she’d found Tom and that horrible Schwartz woman sitting out in the front seat of the car in the garage It was funny, but Myrtle McNally even looked like Helen Schwartz. And Helen, like Myrtle, had been married to a little, fat, bald man whom she had loathed in pretty much the same way that Myrtle seemed to loathe her husband.
The Swanson party had gotten a little out of hand as the evening wore on and Grace was having a little trouble remembering the exact sequence of events. Myrtle had disappeared and then shed noticed Tom was nowhere around. Grace had been too proud to go outside and start looking for him. But she had been aware of Myrtle’s return; Myrtle looking disheveled and a little hysterical.
That must have been well past midnight as near as she could time it. By then, Tom was already back in the house, preparing a final batch of drinks for the guests who were getting ready to leave.
Grace had not intended to say anything about it. She probably never would have, either, if it hadn’t been for this new development.
Tom himself was thinking of Myrtle McNally. It wasn’t exactly that she'd flirted with him, but there had been something about her manner. Some little gesture or other which he had detected and which told him that she was the sort—well, that she probably wouldn’t object too much if he were to make a pass at her.
Tom had seen Myrtle leave the house. And he had, as Grace suspected, left himself a minute or two later. Tom had stood in his own front yard as he watched Myrtle McNally cross the street. He had it all figured out. She was going over to check up on the baby and then she’d return. Tom planned to intercept her on her way back. He’d lighted a cigarette and just stood there waiting. Some ten or fifteen minutes passed and he was getting restless. And then he had heard the door slam across the street and a moment later someone had run from the house. It could have been Myrtle; Tom was not sure. What he was sure of, however, was that a moment later, a second figure had left the McNallys’ place.
Tom ducked back out of sight. He'd overheard Myrtle's low tense voice as the two of them passed within a few feet of him.
“You fool! You stupid, fat, gross fool,” Myrtle was saying. “What did you do—scare the girl out of her wits? It would serve you right if... ” The words were lost as the two of them circled to the rear of the house to re-enter the back door.
Tom had shrugged and flipped his cigarette onto the lawn.
Grace herself had been in the kitchen when Myrtle and Howard returned. It was obvious to her that the two had been fighting.
Grace strongly suspected that McNally had found his wife outside with
Tom, but she said nothing. Grace didn’t like scenes.
By the time Farraday questioned them, later that Saturday about the party, Grace and Tom each had his story ready.
When the detective asked if they had noticed anyone leaving the party during the evening, Tom was the first one to answer.
“No,” he said. “Everyone was here until the party broke up.” Tom wasn’t going to admit in front of Grace that he had followed Myrtle out of the house. He wasn’t going to give her a chance to start anything, and anyway, he didn’t really consider it important.
Grace looked at her husband for a moment, barely concealing the surprise on her face. She was on the verge of saying something when Farraday again spoke.
“Thought maybe,” he said, “someone might have left early; maybe seen something which would be helpful.”
Grace suddenly realized that it would be foolish to mention the temporary disappearance of the McNallys. It would only lead to further questions and further involvement. And there was no reason they should be mixed up in the thing. She realized full well that Tom was lying and she believed she understood why. He didn't want to admit in front of her that he had gone out after the McNally woman. It really didn’t mean anything anyway, as far as the crime itself was concerned.
Certainly Tom, if he had seen anything of significance, would speak up. At that moment, Tom did speak up.
“The fact is, officer,” he said, “although I don’t remember anyone leaving the party, I did, myself, happen to step out for a minute or so sometime after midnight. I wanted to get a breath of air.”
Both Grace and Farraday looked at him with surprise.
“Yes,” Tom said, “I went out the front door for a cigarette and I did see something which might be important. There was a man and a woman across the street and they seemed to be having an argument of some sort.”
Tom figured it was a pretty smart touch. Now, if the McNallys did admit leaving the house, and if by any chance they happened to have seen him watching them, he’d be covered.
“An argument, you say? And was it anyone you knew or...”
“Too dark to really see them,” Tom said. “All I can say is that it looke
d like a man and a woman and they were in front of the McNally place. But it wasn’t anyone from this house, I’m sure of that.”
“Why do you think they were having an argument?”
Tomhesitated, andthensaid, ratherweakly, “Well, thatwas sort of the impression I had. Anyway, I didn’t think it was any of my business and while they were still there, I turned and came back into the house.”
“Can you tell me what they looked like, anything about them? Maybe...”
“Nothing. The only thing I could see was that it was a man and either a girl or a woman. And, oh yes, they were both bareheaded. That’s all I can remember.”
Grace waited until the detective was through asking questions and had left before she turned to her husband. “It was the McNallys you saw, wasn’t it?”
Tom stared at her for a moment before answering. When he spoke his voice was cold and sharp.
“Don't be a damned fool,” he said. “I don’t know who it was. All I know is that I saw two people. And for God’s sake, let’s not get ourselves involved in this thing. There’s going to be enough trouble, without our getting mixed up in it. Anyway, you yourself told the detective that none of our guests left the house, as far as we know. Let’s just stick to that.”
Grace looked at her husband for a long moment and then nodded.
"All right, I guess there's no point in getting mixed up in the thing. We'll stick to it.”
Late that Saturday afternoon, when questioned by Lieutenant Giddeon, both Myrtle and Howard McNally denied leaving the Swanson party until the time they had returned home together and dismissed the Julio girl. Howard lied to the detective for a very simple reason; he didn’t want to go to the electric chair and he knew that if the slightest hint of what went on in the kitchen of his home the previous evening should ever come out, they’d probably condemn him without so much as a trial.
Myrtle lied because, no matter how much she might hate her husband, she wasn’t going to have the father of her child tried as a murderer.
Even gentle little Mrs. Kitteridge, in her own quiet way, contributed to the picture which had rapidly crystallized in Lieutenant Giddeon’s mind of Len Neilsen as a killer. She did it in complete innocence and quite by accident. It was while she was talking to the lieutenant of her own activities shortly before the discovery of the body that she made her damaging statement and a statement which made a considerable impression upon the policeman.
At the time she made it, she hadn’t the slightest idea that Neilsen was a suspect in the case. She would, in fact, have been the last person in the world to do or say anything to hurt anyone.
“Oh yes,” Mrs. Kitteridge said, in answer to a question by the lieutenant. “I know the Neilsens, although not well, ofcourse.WhyMr. Neilsen passed my housejust a few minutes before I called you. It was funny, too. He didn t even seem to hear me or see me when I spoke to him. He’s usually such a nice young man, too. I guess he must have had something on his mind.
“I guess he must have,” the lieutenant said dryly. “I think I know what it was, too.”
Dominic Spagan was perhaps the one person who might have come forward and told his story and by so doing have offset, in some small part, the damage being done to Len Neilsen by the testimony of those other witnesses. The fact that Dominic failed to come forward, was, ironically enough, the result of a desire on his part to help Len rather than to hurt him.
Dominic was the cab driver who had taken Len home early that Saturday morning. It had been his last fare of the night and he had returned from Long Island, put his cab up in the lot over on the West Side and at once taken a subway to his own small apartment in the Bronx. It wasn’t until late the next day, just before going back on duty, that he learned of the murder out at Fairlawn Acres. By that time the newspapers were carrying the story of Len’s arrest as a possible suspect. They also had a picture of him, as well as a very glamourized picture of Louisa Julio and several shots of the scene where her body had been discovered. Dominic read the story avidly.
He had recognized Len’s picture at once and he remembered the address from the previous night. His first inclination had been to immediately contact the police with the information which he had. And then he began to think it over.
The young guy, this Len Neilsen, had sure been drunk. So drunk he hadn’t even been able to open his own front door. For a moment, stopping and trying to remember the details of the previous evening, Dominic for the first time wondered if it had been his own front door. He remembered watching as Len staggered around to the side of the house and started to crawl into a window.
That was something the police would probably be pretty interested in. But because a man was so stinking drunk that he couldn’t find a keyhole—well it didn’t necessarily make him a murderer. But Dominic knew how the police worked—or at least he thought he did. Tell them the guy was drunk and probably breaking into a house and that would be just about all they’d need. They’d be sure he could be guilty of anything.
There was the other thing; they’d probably raise hell with him, Dominic, for not putting in a report on it. They might even pick up his medallion.
Yeah, Dominic knew how the cops worked all right. Let ’em get just the lit-tlest thing on a guy, and hell, they were ready to believe almost anything. Hadn’t it been less than two months ago they’d fined him, those cops down at the hack bureau? And for what? A simple little infraction of the traffic rules. It had cost him a week’s pay.
“The hell with the cops,” Dominic said, under his breath. Why should he help them? The poor guy is in enough trouble already. There was no point in stirring up more for him. Telling the cops that the guy had been blind drunk, hadn t hardly known where he lived... well it wouldn't help anything and it might get him into even worse trouble. The best thing to do was to stay away from the cops.
Thus, the one possible person who could have even begun to verify Lens story of the night before, remained silent in the mistaken belief that he was doing the kindest possible thing to a poor drunk who’d got himself jammed up with the law.
Chapter Nine
At five minutes to six on Saturday afternoon, Gerald Tomlinson was approximately seventy miles north of Albany. He was driving the sedan at a conservative fifty miles an hour and expected to reach the border within a couple of hours. Tomlinson was acting on a snap decision and the fact that he had been forced to make that decision on the spur of the moment as it were, had put him in an evil mood. The single consolation which, when he periodically thought about it as he carefully drove north, served to lighten his dark and brooding mind, was the thought of the $48,000 which he had painstakingly sewed into the upholstery of the back seat of the car.
Aside from that, everything had gone wrong. Everything. First that damned woman and her screaming; next Arbuckle. Not that he had any particular regrets as far as Arbuckle was concerned. But the man, in letting himself become wounded, had set up a terrific problem. A problem which had called for a sudden and radical switch in plans; plans which involved the firing of two bullets into a dying man in the middle of the night.
And then lastly there was that business back at the house a dozen hours ago. The business of that goddamned drunk wandering in just as he was beginning to get things straightened out again.
Tomlinson still didn’t know just how much the man may have seen or understood. But he couldn’t take chances. Not now, after what had happened about Arbuckle, he couldn’t.
The fact that he knew who the man was didn’t alter the situation. He’d been forced to act and to act swiftly and surely. Thinking about it, he cursed under his breath. Jesus, the beautiful way he had figured this thing. Right now he should have been safely back at the house out at Fairlawn Acres and that stupid sister-in-law of his should be getting dinner ready. He was tired and worn out and a good hot meal would have been welcome. He should be looking forward to a nice rest during the next few weeks in a comfortable hideout—without danger and without risk. In time he would h
ave been able to have made a foolproof getaway. He would have left the woman and the child enough money to hold them for a while and he could have gone. Gone where he wanted to, without fear of leaving a trail.
As it was, God only knows what might be happening. Hed never seen so perfect a plan, so badly fouled up. And by nothing but the damnedest possible string of bad luck.
He didn’t worry too much about the woman and the child. The child herself knew almost nothing, and, like her mother, was so thoroughly frightened that she’d never dare talk. The danger didn’t lie there. It didn’t lie in the house itself. Thank God, he’d had enough time to clean up in the garage; to see that there were no telltale stains left in the bedroom. Even if the police were to make a search of the place, they’d find nothing.
No, the danger lay elsewhere. The danger lay with that drunken damned idiot who had wandered and fumbled around and ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time. There was no telling just what he had seen; no telling what he’d remember once he sobered up. Well, there was nothing to do now but run for it.
Tomlinson stopped thinking about it for a while and once more began to think about his sister-in-law. In a way, he was actually glad that he wouldn’t have to put up with her and the brat any more. All except for one thing; she was a damned good cook.
Thinking of Marian’s cooking, suddenly reminded Gerald Tomlinson that he was hungry. He’d been all day with nothing to eat and it had been a hard day, both mentally and physically. Digging in that frozen ground hadn’t been easy work.
Up ahead and to the right of the road, he noticed a string of neon lights and he began to slow the car as he approached. A moment later and he saw that the lights circled a long, low diner. There were two trucks and an old sedan parked in front of the place. For a moment he hesitated, his foot light on the throttle. He would have preferred a more deserted spot. But then he took his foot off the throttle and pressed lightly on the brake, at the same time turning the wheel. He parked next to one of the trucks. Carefully he took the key out of the ignition switch and climbed from the car. He locked the doors before entering the diner.
