The Lady in the Morgue

by Jonathan Latimer

  Halfway back to his own table an abrupt silence in the sky caused him to pause on tiptoe, his breath imprisoned behind clenched teeth. A reassuring rattle of thunder, like a truck on a wooden bridge, set him moving again. He found his shoes and, after he had folded the sheet on the table, he returned to it with the corpse. He felt under the sheet at one end, and his palm encountered long hair. A woman! He moved to the other end of the table and pulled the sheet off her naked feet. He wondered if she had been young. One of his brown-and-white sport shoes he fitted on her left foot, the other on her right. He adjusted the sheet so that it exposed both shoes, but not the woman’s bare ankles, and then he got down on his knees, crawled under her table and stretched out on the floor, his face directed at the point he imagined Miss Ross’s table was, some thirty feet away.

  Three quarters of an hour later his muscles ached from contact with the cold floor. He changed position several times, but each change brought only new aches. His eyes ached, too, from straining to pierce the chamber’s blackness. But particularly his hips and elbows ached, where solid bone had come into contact with solid cement.

  Moreover, he was scared.

  Several times, now that the storm had moved on southward and the thunder was no louder than the roar of the elevated trains a block and a half away, he thought he had heard a rustle, a movement in the room. Hands clenched until the nails tore the palms, breath held until his lungs throbbed with pain, he had listened. He wondered if it could have been imagination. Neither the driveway door, not more than twenty-five feet away, nor the inside door, close to where Courtland was lying on the table next to Miss Ross, had been opened. He wondered if there could be any other entrance to the room. He wished he had asked the attendant.

  There was a long roll of thunder, low at first, but increasing in volume until it ended with the detonation of a powder charge. The flash of lightning which followed was faint. The flash of lightning! Crane caught his breath. A door, some opening to the outside, must be open! He jerked his head around toward the driveway door. Was that a diminishing rectangle of grayer darkness? Had someone entered?

  Anyway, the rectangle was gone. He wondered if he had really seen the flash of lightning. He rolled over until his chest pressed the floor. The cement was cold on his palms, on his knees, on his stocking-covered toes. He strained every nerve to keep muscles, breath, heart quiet while he listened. Thunder, like an eruption of giant firecrackers, filled the room with sound, abruptly ceased. There was a brief rustling, the sound of a blow, in the center of the chamber, near the body of Miss Ross, near the table on which Courtland was lying! He felt the hair rise on the back of his neck. His heart pounded. Somebody was moving about. The lightning flash had been real; the driveway door had been opened.

  Suddenly a pale curtain-rod of light pierced the velvet blackness of the room, swept across the table above his head, paused for a cracked second at the point where his sport shoes stuck out below the sheet, and disappeared. The chamber was as black as licorice again. If he hadn’t been completely alert he wouldn’t have seen the light at all.

  He lay so quiet he could hear the beating of his heart, the ticking of his wrist watch. Each mutter of thunder, he knew, cloaked a movement of the person in the room. He wished he were closer to the light switch, close enough to jump for it, turn on the lights and cover the intruder with Frankie French’s pistol. He debated whether he ought to risk crawling around the room to the switch. He knew that if he made a noise the flashlight would catch him, make him a target for the intruder’s gun.

  Not more than eighteen inches from his ear, from the floor, came a sound of leather being placed on cement. It was the faintest of sounds. A second later it was repeated, twelve inches away this time. The person was standing beside his table!

  Like a troop of horsemen passing a house, thunder came, faint at first; reached a noisy climax, faded away.

  Crane’s eyes caught the reflected glimmer of the flashlight. The beam was on his shoes again. It was extinguished after the smallest fraction of a second. There was a hasty sound of cloth being moved; the person grunted; the table shook under a violent blow. Crane reached out from under the table, seized the person’s legs with both arms, gave them a jerk. The movement brought him most of the way out from the table, and the person fell heavily on top of him. The flashlight shattered on the floor. He swung his body so that he rolled on top of the person. His groping hands encountered long hair; thick, sticky fluid ran over his cheek, his neck. There was a strong odor of perfume in the hair. He fastened his knees around the squirming body below him, gave the hair a jerk. It moved in the direction of the jerk, something heavy bumping behind it. Simultaneously, a pair of hands found his throat.

  What was happening was as unreasonable, as terrifying as a nightmare. He screamed: “HELP! HELP! HELP!” He tried to fight off the clutching fingers, but the long hair was tangled in his hands, and the object attached to the hair bumped hollowly against his chest. He tried to scream again, but the hands had tightened on his throat. The odor of perfume was strong in his nostrils. Specks of light, red and gold and yellow, danced before his eyes; a vein pounded in his head; his breath came in agonized gasps. He tossed his body from side to side in an effort to break the hold.

  Suddenly light flooded the room. Someone shouted, “Hold on, Bill!” A second later there was the thud of a blow, and the hands slid from his throat. His lungs were grateful for air. Vision began to return to his eyes.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  CRANE’S HAND was still fastened to the hair. He looked down at it and almost screamed again. The hair was soft and blond, and from the other end dangled the head of Miss Ross, neatly severed at the neck. From it dripped a sticky, brownish, bloodlike liquid, staining his trousers, the front of his coat. Embalming fluid!

  Their eyes like overcoat buttons, Williams and Johnson watched him struggle to release his hand. Johnson’s eyes, from the head, wandered up to the table under which Crane had hidden. “For the love of God!” he exclaimed.

  Crane peered up at the table and saw his brown-and-white shoes on the feet of the dead woman. “I stuck those there,” he explained.

  “No. Not the shoes.” Johnson held out his hand, pointed. “The neck.”

  Under Crane, between his knees, lay young Courtland, face to the light, eyes blank, unconscious. Crane got to his feet, using Courtland’s chest as a support for one knee, and stared at the woman’s corpse on the table. She wasn’t young, after all. Her face was wrinkled, and there was a mole on her chin. A knife was stuck in her throat, its tan bone handle quivering. The blade had entered the neck just above the V formed by the breastbone, had been driven in to the hilt.

  “Who’s she?” demanded Williams. “What’s the idea of the knife?” His mustache trembled.

  Crane said, “The knife was meant for me.”

  “Courtland?” asked Johnson.

  “Yeah.” Crane looked down at Courtland’s unconscious face. “My old pal, Chauncey.” Courtland’s face was pale, but it was composed. His hair was tousled. “He saw my shoes at one end of the table and figured my neck must be at the other.”

  Johnson’s black eyes were as bright as a fox terrier’s. “Then he’s the guy?” he asked.

  “Well, he tried hard enough to kill me,” said Crane, lifting his foot from Courtland’s chest.

  “The son of a bitch,” said Williams. “I wish I’d socked him harder.”

  Johnson said, “You slugged him hard enough. He’s still out.”

  Crane removed his left shoe from the woman’s foot, put it on. “He seems to be pretty handy with a knife,” he said, eyeing the head on the cement floor.

  “Why did he cut the head off?” asked Johnson. “I don’t understand that.”

  “He wanted to prevent her being identified.” Crane reached for his right shoe. “He couldn’t carry the body out by himself, but he could get away with the head.”

  “Why did he try to kill you?” asked Williams. “I thought you a
nd him was pals.”

  “So did I.” Crane fastened the shoelace, straightened his back. “But I guess he figured that he couldn’t get away with the head without disposing of me.”

  Courtland’s eyes moved; he moaned softly.

  “But why did he murder his sister in the first place?” asked Johnson. “If this is his sister?”

  “Listen.” Crane shook Courtland’s shoulder. “This guy is coming to life. We’ll have to do something with him, quick. I think I got this business straightened out, but I need some people to substantiate some of the things I’m going to say. Nobody has identified this body yet, for one thing. I want to get hold of the state’s attorney and Captain Grady and spill the business to them.” He shook Courtland again. “I’ll see that you get the exclusive story then.”

  Reluctantly, Johnson said, “Okay, if you say so.”

  “I say so,” said Crane. “Doc, you call the state’s attorney and Captain Grady and have them come right over here. Also have Grady get you the watchman in the cemetery where we found Miss Ross. Then get Uncle Stuyvesant (if you can find out from the Blackstone where he is) or Mrs. Courtland, and that night club babe, Sue Leonard. Also the stewardess on the eight o’clock plane from New York to Chicago, Thursday night, the night Miss Ross’ body was taken from this joint. Have ’em all come over here.”

  Before Williams left, he pulled off Courtland’s belt, fastened his hands behind his back with it. “I’m not going to take any chances with that guy,” he announced.

  Crane looked solemnly at Courtland. “My pal …”

  It was exactly 7:45 A.M. and the sunshine, seen through the narrow windows of the room where the inquest into the death of August Liebman had been held, was as bright as egg yolk. State’s Attorney Thomas Darrow was there, as was his assistant, Burman. They and Captain Grady, and fat Coroner Hartman, stared at O’Malley as he entered the double door with Udoni and Mrs. Udoni. A breeze off the lake made it cooler.

  Mrs. Udoni’s face was pale. Her lips were red and her eyes had indigo shadows under them, but Crane couldn’t tell whether they were made by mascara or not. He smiled at her. She looked at him in cold anger. She had on a tan camel’s-hair sport coat, a brown felt hat with a turkey feather angling from the left side.

  On the first of the pewlike benches sat Courtland, his right wrist linked by a steel cuff to a burly plainclothes man. His eyes were closed, his face pained, dazed.

  Mrs. Udoni’s blue-green eyes lingered over Courtland, then questioned Crane. “Who’s this?”

  As she spoke Courtland’s eyes opened, stared at her blankly, closed again.

  “Just a guy,” said Crane.

  “What’d he do?”

  “Among other things, tried to kill me.”

  Mrs. Udoni’s eyes were hard. “Too bad he didn’t.” She and her husband moved toward one of the windows.

  Williams stuck his head in at the door. “Uncle Stuyvesant will be right over.”

  “Where’d you find him?” asked Crane.

  “At the Blackstone. He said he’d been there all night.”

  Crane said, “The hell!” He moved over to O’Malley, said, “Tom, will you get something for me?” O’Malley nodded, and Crane’s voice sank to a whisper. “Get me a big basin from the hospital and have it filled with hydrogen tetra-oxide. Just tell the chemist H2O4—he’ll know what you want. Bring it right over here.”

  The breeze fluttered the soot-darkened curtains, set a shade to banging.

  Crane leaned against the desk the deputy coroner had used at the Liebman inquest. “While we’re waiting for Mr. Stuyvesant Courtland to come over and look at the woman’s body,” he said, “I might as well tell you some of the things I found out.”

  Captain Grady was scowling at Crane. “Suppose you tell me what you got on this fellow here.” He turned a thumb at Courtland.

  “I got plenty,” said Crane. “Johnson and Williams have already told you how he cut off the woman’s head and tried to kill me.”

  “Yeah,” said the captain, “but I don’t know if trying to kill you is a crime or not.”

  “Let him talk,” said State’s Attorney Darrow. “Let him talk.”

  Crane leaned back on the desk, crossed his legs. “To start this we should go back about six months—to the time Miss Kathryn Courtland saw Udoni in an orchestra at the Savoy-Plaza. She fell in love with him and—” he glanced through the corners of his eyes at Mrs. Udoni “—he, let us say, was temporarily infatuated with her.

  “So much so, indeed, that she was able to persuade him to leave his job, start an orchestra of his own and sign a contract with the Kat Klub in Chicago. She came to Chicago with him.”

  Crane took the first letter from Kathryn Courtland from his pocket, handed it to the state’s attorney.

  “Now to switch to the Courtlands,” he said after the officials had read the letter. “Naturally, Mrs. Courtland and Stuyvesant Courtland were worried when they received this letter, especially since Kathryn had been estranged from her family for two years. And when they read of the mysterious suicide in Chicago they called in Colonel Black, my boss. That was Thursday afternoon.”

  Crane accepted the letter from Captain Grady.

  “Now back to the woman downstairs again.” Crane grinned at Captain Grady. “It may surprise you to learn that she was murdered.”

  He explained the impossibility of using a foot-high bathroom scale for a suicide and at the same time leaving heel marks two feet high. He explained why there weren’t any shoes in the room, why all the clothes were new, adding: “Udoni will tell you that the clothes he saw in the room weren’t those of Miss Ross.”

  “Yes,” Udoni said, “I see they are different. That’s how I know it is murder, and that’s why I am so scared.”

  “What’s the motive for this murder?” asked Captain Grady.

  “The Courtland estate,” said Williams.

  “I’ll come to that in a minute,” said Crane. “Now let’s go back to Courtland. He attended a conference with Colonel Black, his mother and his uncle in New York Thursday afternoon. They decided he should go to Chicago to look at the body. He pretended to take the sleeper plane at midnight, but actually he caught the last regular plane at eight o’clock.” Crane pointed a finger at Williams. “Is that stewardess here?”

  Her name was Miss Gardner and she had an uptilted nose and bright brown eyes and a dimple. She weighed ninety-two pounds and she identified Courtland at once.

  “He was on the eight o’clock plane Thursday, all right,” she said. “I remember him particularly well.”

  “Why?” asked Crane.

  She blushed, said, “Well, I thought he was so clean-looking.”

  After she had given her name and address to Burman, the assistant state’s attorney, and had departed, Crane said:

  “That puts Courtland in Chicago at midnight Thursday, not four o’clock Friday morning. And in that four hours he and a friend stole Miss Ross’ body from the storage room downstairs. He probably hired somebody to ride on the sleeper plane so as to have an alibi. Now, I’ll show you how he happened to know a left-handed, red-haired undertaker.” He jerked a thumb at Williams. “Varlet, page Miss Sue Leonard.”

  In daylight Miss Leonard’s blond beauty appeared a trifle faded. She was wearing a Nile-green evening gown with a silver lamé wrap and square-toed silver slippers. She explained, “I was just coming home when Mr. Williams telephoned, and I didn’t have time to change.” She glanced around the room, exclaimed, “Why, Tom Darrow! What are you doing here?”

  A shade of color appeared on Mr. Darrow’s cheeks. “I’m sort of a state’s attorney,” he said.

  “Well, imagine that,” said Miss Leonard.

  Coroner Hartman’s fat cheeks quivered. “It’s a small world,” he said. When the state’s attorney glared at him he coughed into a handkerchief.

  Crane said, “Some time ago you knew a man named Jackson at the Venice Club in New York, didn’t you?”

  “Ye
s. He was one of the assistant managers.” She was looking wide-eyed at Courtland, who sat beside the detective, face to the floor.

  “Was Jackson particularly friendly with any of the club’s patrons?”

  “Yes. With Mr. Courtland. They used to go on parties together.” She looked inquiringly at Crane. “I remember they …

  “I think that’s enough right now, Miss Leonard,” Crane interrupted. “Thank you very much.”

  In leaving, Miss Leonard waved a gloved hand, said, “See you later, Tommy.”

  The coroner giggled, repeated, “It’s a small world.”

  “Too damn small,” said State’s Attorney Darrow.

  “To continue the story,” said Crane, “Jackson and Courtland stole the body from the morgue. It would have been an easy job—Jackson, having turned undertaker, knew his way around—if they hadn’t run into August Liebman. Liebman tried to stop them, and in the struggle Courtland attempted to stun him. The blow was too hard, though, and Liebman died. I think it was accidental, however. Then they took the body back to the undertaking establishment on Lake Street, and while Jackson was preparing it for burial Courtland returned to the morgue.

  “He had to put in an appearance there because both his uncle and Colonel Black would wonder why he hadn’t after coming all the way from New York. He didn’t want to arouse their suspicion, and he wanted to keep clear of the police, so he took the name of A. N. Brown of San Diego, which he had seen on the passenger list of the sleeper plane. By using a false name he would be able to keep clear of the police, and at the same time satisfy his uncle and Colonel Black that he had done so only to protect the family name.”

  One of the shades was making a fluttering noise, like the jib on a sailboat, and Crane closed the window behind it.

  “The only trouble with this plan was that I happened to be at the morgue when he arrived, and so I recognized him the next day.

  “In the meantime, I had figured out that an undertaker must have aided in the removal of the body, that he must be red-haired and left-handed. So we started to look for him. Unfortunately, I wrote Colonel Black that I was searching for such a man, and Courtland saw the letter while I was examining a portrait of his sister in my room at the Hotel Sherman.”