A Streak of Light

by RICHARD LOCKRIDGE

  Tony Cook was told by Dorian that he didn’t need to, that she could get a cab herself. Tony went out to get a cab and didn’t have any trouble—not any real trouble, anyway.

  Nathan Shapiro climbed the long flight of rather narrow stairs to have a look at a dead man who, in some fashion not spelled out, didn’t really look dead to a man who, in his daily work, saw a good many men and women who did.

  3

  The bedroom of the late Clive Branson was at the rear end of a long hallway on the second floor. It was a high-ceilinged room, and the windows were tall, almost from floor to ceiling. They overlooked the garden, in which a few flowers were still blooming.

  Edgar Lord sat in a straight chair facing one of the windows. There were easy chairs facing the same way, but Lord had chosen the straightest. He sat with his back to a wide bed and was looking down at the garden. He had turned slowly when Shapiro and Cook opened the closed door and went into the room. Then he stood up, shoulders stiffened. He said, “Sir?” in a tone of doubt. Then he said, “Is there something you’d like, sir?” to Nathan Shapiro.

  It was clear to Nathan what Lord would like. He would like them to go away, to cease intruding on Mr. Branson’s bedroom. (Bedchamber?)

  “We just have to look around, Mr. Lord,” Shapiro said. “Sudden and unexpected death has to—well, has to be looked into, you know.”

  “I presume so,” Lord said. “Although—” He did not finish. He remained standing. He did not look at the dead man lying face up in the middle of a wide bed.

  Branson had been wearing dark-blue pajamas when he died. In an ashtray by the bed he had stubbed out two cigarettes. One butt was considerably longer than the other and had bent in the fingers which crushed it out, as if it had been extinguished quickly, rather fumblingly.

  Lord saw the ashtray when Shapiro did and said, “I’m sorry, sir,” and reached toward the tray.

  “No, Mr. Lord,” Shapiro said. “You can straighten up later. After we’ve finished. There’ll be a police photographer along. And a physician. And—well, a few others. Tell you what, you might go down and see that they get in. All right?”

  “Very well, sir. Will these other gentlemen be in uniform?”

  “One or two may. The others will have badges. There may be reporters later. But the patrolmen will take care of them.”

  “Very well, Lieutenant.” Lord’s voice grew a little brighter with that. It was for him, Shapiro thought, as if things were reverting to the normal, to the to-be-expected. When Lord went out he closed the door after him, closed it with careful quiet.

  Shapiro leaned down and looked at the body of Clive Branson. It looked peaceful enough. But there was something which did not look as it would be expected to look. The something, Shapiro thought, the ambulance man had meant when he had said that the man did not quite look dead. What the ambulance man had seen was not immediately apparent. Shapiro touched the smooth, almost unlined forehead. It was cold to the touch.

  The answer came slowly. The face he bent over did not have the unmistakable pallor of death. Warm blood did not circulate in the cold skin of the forehead, and yet there, as in the smoothly shaven cheeks, there remained the tint of life. Again Shapiro touched the cold forehead. He rubbed it gently. He examined his own fingertips; walked to the windows, where the light was better.

  It was hard to be certain, but it seemed to him that the tips of his fingers were just perceptibly colored. He rubbed his fingertips together. They were faintly slippery.

  Tony Cook was watching him. He looked at Tony.

  “Yes,” Tony said. “What I thought too. He’s wearing makeup. And look at his hair, Nate. The roots of his hair.”

  Shapiro had noticed the deep-brown, professionally styled hair of the dead man. He looked more closely, being now sure enough what he would find. The roots of the hair were gray.

  “And,” Tony said, “a face lift, wouldn’t you say?”

  The surgeon had been as expert as the hair stylist, as the person who had dyed Clive Branson’s hair. The scars left by the surgeon’s scalpel were almost invisible.

  “We’d better get the dresser back up, Tony,” Shapiro said. “Maybe he can tell us a little more about Branson. How old he really was, for example.”

  Tony went down the long hall and down the narrow, rather steep stairs to get Edgar Lord, dresser, valet, and, apparently, butler also. The uniformed men from the cruise car would see that the assistant medical examiner and the technical men from precinct and the lab got in all right and were told where their jobs were.

  But when Tony Cook came back to the bedroom, it was not with Lord. He guided a small, neat man in a trim blue suit. The man was carrying a black bag.

  He said, “Doctor Nelson, Lieutenant. M.E.’s office. Suspicious death?”

  “To me it is,” Shapiro said. “Could be just heart failure, I suppose.”

  “Cardiac arrest,” Dr. Nelson said. He touched the cold forehead. He pulled back the light coverlet and lifted the right arm. “Rigor setting in,” he said. “Heart stopped several hours ago, I’d say. Have to open him up to be sure. The van will be along. O.K.?”

  “When we finish with it,” Shapiro told him.

  “The gang’s downstairs,” Tony said. “Starting on the living room where this birthday party was. And the photographer’s ready to start shooting up here.”

  “Yes,” Shapiro said. “We’ll get out from underfoot, Tony. Have a little talk with Mr. Lord somewhere else. You might ask him where.”

  Lord didn’t know what he could tell them that he hadn’t already told. But as they wished, of course. Perhaps his room? If they didn’t mind the stairs.

  They didn’t mind the stairs. Lord’s room was on the top floor—the fourth. It was also at the rear of the building and had windows overlooking the garden. These windows were much smaller; the ceiling of this room was much lower. Lord’s bed was narrow; it was neatly made up. There were two chairs in the room, one straight, the other cushioned. Not very deeply cushioned, Shapiro guessed. He motioned Lord to sit in it. Lord said, “Sir?”

  “It’s your room,” Shapiro said and sat on the straight chair, which had a hard wooden seat. Cook closed the door and stood by it and took out his notebook.

  “Now,” Shapiro said, “tell us about last night, Mr. Lord. About this party, to start with. It was a surprise birthday party, I understand.”

  “I wasn’t actually at it, sir. My services were—well, not needed. Mr. Branson told me to come up here. ‘Go up and get some sleep,’ was what he said. He’s—he was a very considerate gentleman, Lieutenant. And they had a man with them to mix drinks and another man, from some catering firm, I gathered, with food. Sandwiches, mostly, I think. There were a few left when I straightened up this morning.”

  He had found a plate with a few sandwiches on it; glasses, washed and neatly stacked on a tray. Little straightening up left for him to do.

  “The glasses had been washed? And what kind of glasses?”

  “Washed and polished, sir. Highball glasses and wine glasses. Champagne, I assume. There were two champagne bottles in the dust bin. Taittinger. I presume they toasted Mr. Branson on his birthday.”

  “Yes,” Shapiro said. “Who would ‘they’ have been, do you know? Did you let them all in, Mr. Lord?”

  “I think so. Others may have come after I retired, I suppose. I let in the other members of the cast—there are only four in the cast of Summer Solstice, sir—and the playwright, Mr. Bret Askew. And the director. Almost everybody connected with the production, Lieutenant. And Miss Abel. She’s Mr. Branson’s agent, you know. What they call an artist’s representative.”

  “Do they, Lord? I’m afraid I’m not very familiar with these matters.”

  There was mournful resignation in Nathan Shapiro’s voice. Tony Cook recognized it. Nate, once more, thought he was out of his depth in a strange swamp.

  “Quite a gathering,” Shapiro said. “And this celebration really came as a surprise to Mr. Branson? N
obody—well, leaked it in advance? People do, sometimes.”

  “I believe it was entirely a surprise to him, sir. If he had had any inkling he would have alerted me, I’m quite certain. As I said, he was a very considerate employer, Lieutenant.”

  “Speaking of that, Mr. Lord, how long had he been your employer?”

  “Ten years, sir. He engaged me in London, when he was playing Hamlet. The critics were most enthusiastic. Better than Olivier, one of them said. Particularly in the scene with his mother.”

  Shapiro nodded, indicating that he at least knew who Olivier was. Hamlet too, for that matter. “Very gratifying to Mr. Branson, that must have been. And you came over here with him, and have been with him ever since?”

  “To the States, yes, Lieutenant. Several years in Hollywood, of course. Very successful in the flicks, he was. In the cinema, that is. We came east last spring. Rehearsed during the summer. It was very warm here during the past summer, we both thought.”

  “I was here during the summer, Mr. Lord. It was hot. Did Mr. Branson much mind the heat, did he say?”

  “He didn’t complain about it. Not to me, anyway. But he wouldn’t have, would he, sir? To his dresser, that is.”

  Shapiro didn’t know. He said, “Probably not,” and then, “How old was Mr. Branson, Mr. Lord?”

  Shapiro saw the thin man in the dark suit swallow. The swallow seemed to prevent an immediate answer. Shapiro waited.

  “Early forties, I believe, sir. He never mentioned his age to me. It would be in Who’s Who, sir. Who’s Who in the Theatre, certainly.”

  “About the age I’d have guessed from looking at him,” Shapiro said. “Or—about the age he was made up to look. Did you help him with the makeup, Lord?”

  Lord said, “Makeup, sir?” as if the word were one he had never heard before.

  Shapiro merely looked at him for a moment, then said, “The makeup he was wearing when he died.”

  Lord did not know what the lieutenant meant. Mr. Branson wore makeup on the stage, of course. All actors do. Lord had never helped him with the stage makeup. He had always applied that himself, except in Hollywood, where they had experts to do that sort of thing—for the stars, at any rate. So far as Lord knew, Mr. Branson never used makeup offstage. Why should he?

  “Possibly to make himself appear younger,” Shapiro said. “To be in the early forties, as you think he was. As probably Who’s Who will confirm he was. I understand it accepts whatever it is told—told by the subjects of the articles.”

  “To make himself look younger, sir?”

  “The age of the character in the play,” Shapiro said. “A youngish man married to a much younger woman. Isn’t that true in Summer Solstice, Mr. Lord?”

  Lord merely nodded.

  “Mr. Branson was in good health as far as you know? Nothing, say, the matter with his heart?”

  “He played tennis a good deal during the summer,” Lord said. “And squash in the winter. If he had a tricky heart, he wouldn’t have done that, would he, sir?”

  “I wouldn’t think so,” Shapiro said. “If he knew about it, of course. Do you know whether he’d been seeing a doctor?” Not that Lord knew of. Yes, he supposed he would have known. Oh, when they had been on the West Coast, Mr. Branson had seen a doctor once or twice. About an allergy, Lord thought.

  Not, apparently, any ailment which would cause a man to die in his sleep. Whatever that might be. There again Shapiro could claim no real knowledge.

  “Do you happen to know whether he took sleeping medicine, Mr. Lord? Barbiturates or anything like that?”

  That Lord did know. Branson had never taken sleeping pills. “He had an overreaction to the barbiturates, he told me once. He said he had found out when he was still very young. That was all he said.”

  “Overreactive,” Shapiro said. “That comes out as death from unknown causes. Which makes it what we call a suspicious death. Which means there will have to be an autopsy. Mr. Branson wasn’t married, I take it?”

  “I believe he had been, sir. When he was young, I believe. Before he employed me, certainly.”

  “Any close relatives? Sisters, brothers?”

  “I believe not, Lieutenant. At least, he never mentioned any relatives to me. Who would have to agree to a postmortem examination, you mean, sir?”

  “Not agree to, Lord. It’s required by law. To be told about. As a matter of courtesy, you might say.”

  “I know of no one, sir. I believe Mr. Branson was quite alone. Except for me, you might say, sir.” And his voice seemed to break a little.

  “Nobody to notify of his death, then?”

  Not as far as he—oh, his agent, Lord supposed. Miss Abel, that would be. Martha Abel. Martha Abel Associates. Oh, and Mr. Simon, of course. Rolf Simon, the producer of Summer Solstice. Should he—?

  “Mrs. Weig—Miss Hunt was going to call Miss Abel,” Shapiro told him, “but we will want to talk to her. Martha Abel Associates, you say? Office in New York, Mr. Lord?”

  There were offices both in New York and in Los Angeles. Martha Abel herself, Lord thought, was usually in New York.

  There was, faintly, the sound of movement below them. Tony Cook opened the door.

  “Taking it away, sounds like,” Tony said. “Guess they’ve finished up in the bedroom.”

  “It” would be the body of Clive Branson, actor. “They” would be the photographer, the fingerprint men, the man who had made a sketch of the bedroom, locating bed and chairs and chest of drawers with mirror over it. The mirror Branson had sat in front of when he applied light makeup to his handsome face, carefully adjusted his abundant, deep-brown hair? Presumably.

  In half an hour, Branson’s body would be on an autopsy table, and gloved men in white would be at it with scalpels and with saws. Specimens of it would be placed in sterile flasks. The body would have been measured and weighed and its age estimated; makeup would be scraped from the face for analysis.

  But there might, of course, be cadavers ahead of it. This was Monday, after all, and cadavers accumulate on weekends. On weekends, people are off jobs and hence free to kill their fellows.

  “Detective Cook will draw up what you’ve told us as a statement,” Shapiro told Edgar Lord. “We’ll ask you to sign it. This evening, perhaps; or perhaps not until tomorrow. You’ll be here, Mr. Lord?”

  “Certainly, sir,” Lord said.

  Detectives and technicians were still at work in the big living-drawing room on the ground—all right, the entrance floor, since it was considerably above ground level, up scrubbed steps from the sidewalk.

  Buy The Old Die Young Now!

  About the Author

  Richard Lockridge (1898–1982) was one of the most popular names in mystery fiction from the 1940s through the ’70s. He is best known for the prolific detective series he wrote with his wife, Frances, including the Mr. and Mrs. North Mysteries, Nathan Shapiro Mysteries, and Captain Heimrich Mysteries. Upon Frances’s death in 1963, Richard continued writing, delivering new and much darker Nathan Shapiro and Captain Heimrich books. His works have been adapted for Broadway, film, television, and radio.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1976 by Richard Lockridge

  Cover design by Andy Ross

  ISBN: 978-1-5040-5073-9

  This 2018 edition published by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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