The Philadelphia Murder Story

by Zenith Brown

  “What am I going to tell Captain Malone?” I asked.

  “Just tell what happened,” Travis said with a shrug. “Don’t get yourself out on a limb. Malone’s a right sort of guy.”

  “Shall I tell him about Mr. Toplady’s letter to Myron?”

  We were sitting together in the front seat, Monk on my right. He gave me a sort of dig with his elbow.

  “Of course, if you think it’s got anything to do with it,” Travis said.

  “I might as well, I guess. Colonel Primrose will see him at the bank and tell him himself, probably.”

  “I should think you could skip it,” Monk said shortly.

  “We don’t want to see the judge—I mean, he’s got political enemies who’d give their eyeteeth to get anything they could use. Anyway, if I’m going to be your counsel, I don’t want to see Malone get you tied up in anything.”

  “We don’t know the letter had anything to do with it,” Monk said stubbornly.

  “Well, we’re not defending Toplady. It might be a good idea to put Malone on his trail.”

  “I don’t want to do that,” I said. “I feel very sorry for him, someway.”

  Travis smiled at me. “That’s the woman for you. Have you ever heard of a commodity called Justice?”

  Monk Whitney stared out the window, his jaw tightening. He was thinking, I supposed, of a commodity called Justice that hadn’t been weighed out properly once before.

  “I’d suggest, since this is a beginning anyway,” Travis said, “that you don’t volunteer any information. Just answer his questions and to hell with it. I don’t see what you’re worrying about.”

  He didn’t, of course. Only Monk and I saw.

  “The point is, when you start leaving things out, everybody leaves out something different and puts in what somebody else left out. Malone’s a smart cooky. Don’t let him fool you that he’s just a father confessor and we all hate crime. He loves it.”

  He turned down 12th and over to Pine. It was a one-way street with shiny red patrol cars parked on both sides. The gaunt, shabby old building swarmed with activity.

  We went up steps into a big barn of a room that had a magistrate’s bench along the wall facing the door and a lot of minor offenders waiting trial. There was an interested, curious silence as we came in. Travis said, “Captain Malone,” and we were ushered through a door at the left, up wooden stairs to the second floor, and along the corridor.

  There was considerable activity up here too. They couldn’t find the key to the stand-up room, it appeared. Then an officer bellowed that the key to the stand-up room was in the cigar box in somebody’s desk. We were then conducted into a big room where there was a fenced-off row of chairs in front of the windows overlooking the street.

  In the row of chairs was a row of editors of The Saturday Evening Post—at least there were two of them and the man from the reception desk, the man who had seen Benjamin Franklin. He was the most pleased looking of the three. I supposed, with absolutely everybody doubting his veracity, if not his sanity, he had reason to be. He also had an air of mildly beaming importance. I wondered for an instant if Captain Malone was planning a line-up of people dressed like Benjamin Franklin for him to look over. But that seemed a rather elaborate tour de force, and if Monk and both of the editors there were to be in the line-up, they’d have to have widely assorted sizes of breeches, stockings and coats.

  Actually, Monk and one of the editors there could have worn the same clothes. They were both six feet tall and as brawny as a couple of stevedores. The other editor was Fred Nelson, the man who writes the Post editorials that PM doesn’t like. He looked very nervous indeed. He kept hunting for something in every pocket, pulling out letters and clippings, and mumbling, “I wondered where that was,” and putting them back where he’d forget them again, never seeing the pencil right on the arm of his chair till after he’d borrowed one from Pete Martin. It would have been amusing if a detective hadn’t been watching him out of the corner of his eye; not realizing, I imagined, that Mr. Nelson’s secretary spent her days finding things for him and her nights worrying about whether he’d lose his brief case on the way to the office from St. David’s on the Main Line.

  I thought Mr. Pete Martin looked nervous, too, but with a difference. He had bright blue eyes that could no doubt already see the lead of an article that, not being Pete Martin, I wouldn’t have the temerity to put in words for him. He was hunched down in his chair, his hands stuck in the pockets of his big camel’s-hair overcoat, his face slightly red, his grayish hair parted in the middle and somewhat disheveled.

  No one would ever have taken either of them for a writer or editor, I thought. Mr. Nelson might have been up on a charge of being a bookie who had seen calmer days. Mr. Martin could have been a professional fullback who’d left the training table for cakes and ale. I don’t mean to imply for an instant, of course, that the fact they could easily have been taken for confidence men or horse dopers wasn’t entirely due to their immediate environment. All I mean is that if you get people into a police-station anteroom, they just naturally look as if it was surprising that they hadn’t been picked up a long time before. I’m sure that’s the way I looked, because I felt guiltier by the moment as I sat there waiting, and Monk too. It’s the way decent people look in the hands of the law.

  The sharp contrast to all the rest of us was Travis, a professional, of course, and used to the machinations of the law, and, a moment later, Mr. Samuel Phelps, who came in with an immaculate respectability and a confidence in himself as a taxpayer who hired these people that made the rest of us look guiltier than hell, if I may be allowed language not permitted in police stations when ladies are present.

  The sight of Monk Whitney sitting against the window ledge behind me caused a momentary ripple on the surface of Sam’s self-esteem, but it was only momentary.

  “How do you do, Mrs. Latham,” he said. “Hello, Travis . . . Monk.” He went over to the detective at the railed-in desk. “I am Samuel Phelps,” he said. “I’ve got a busy day. Let Captain Malone know I’m here at once, please.”

  “He’s busy right now,” the detective said. “Will you take your place? We’ll let him know you’re here.”

  Sam came back. “Have you heard anything yet this morning?” he asked Travis.

  “No. I just came for the ride.”

  At that moment one of the detectives signalled the man who’d seen Benjamin Franklin, and he went in through a railed-off passage and into a back room. Sam frowned and looked at his watch.

  “I’ve got to telephone the office,” Travis Elliot said. “If you’ll excuse me a minute. It looks like we’re all going to be here a while.”

  He went out and downstairs. I saw Sergeant Buck move up where he could keep an eye on us.

  “Mrs. Latham!”

  I started as my name was called, and got up, dropped my bag and gloves, and caught my last pair of nylon stockings on a piece of wire my chair had been repaired with. If it had been a tactical delaying action instead of congenital awkwardness, it would have been brilliant, because it took long enough for me to gather up my truck for Travis to reappear in time to go in with me. I could see the detective watching me make a mental note: Latham—nervous when called.

  The only satisfaction I had, going in, was that it annoyed Sam.

  “I have an important engagement at ten-fifteen,” he said.

  Fred Nelson’s lower jaw worked a little sideways. “It’s with Captain Malone, mister,” he said.

  12

  Captain Malone was in a room as big as a hall closet. He got up from his seat behind the desk for an inch or so, and sat down again, looking at Travis with a faint smile.

  “Hullo there, Elliot,” he said affably. “Mrs. Latham doesn’t trust us in Philadelphia, I guess.”

  Travis grinned back at him. “Mrs. Whitney’s idea,” he said. “You outraged her so, carrying your disguise around, she wouldn’t let Mrs. Latham come alone.”

  “Oh, you
mean this.”

  Captain Malone reached down by the side of his chair and took up a satchel. He brought out a suit of brown Colonial clothes—knee breeches and coat, freshly laundered white stock and tan waistcoat. He put it on the desk.

  “What’s the butler’s name?” he inquired grimly.

  Travis thought. “Beppo? That’s not his name. It’s Tchickvinski or something.”

  “Well, if you can make him hear you, tell him I’m laying for him.” Captain Malone gave us a sour smile. “There was blood all over this. My wife wants me to find out how he did it. Not a trace left.”

  “Where did you find this suit, captain?” I asked.

  He thought it over a moment. “I don’t know any reason I shouldn’t tell you,” he said deliberately. “It was stuffed down in a filing cabinet in the office of one of the editors of The Saturday Evening Post. Mr. Frederic Nelson’s office on the fifth floor of the Curtis Building. Behind a lot of old Racing Forms and Congressional Records. The index card on the outside said Grade Labeling. I guess Mr. Nelson’s got some kind of private system. Anyway, that’s where I found it.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “Where’d you think I found it?” he asked pleasantly.

  “I didn’t know at all,” I said. “I just wondered.” But I was aware that my “Oh” had a relief in it that I had to be careful not to repeat.

  “Well, sit down, both of you,” he said. “Clear those papers off the end of the table, Elliot. Can you perch there?” He turned back to me. “Mrs. Whitney tells me Kane came to her on your recommendation, Mrs. Latham.”

  “Not exactly,” I said. “He asked me for an introduction, but he went ahead without it.”

  “Why didn’t you give it to him?”

  I didn’t like to say because I hadn’t seen Abigail Whitney since I’d week-ended in Philadelphia before I was married or that I wouldn’t have given Myron Kane an introduction as a house guest to my worst enemy. Fortunately I could still tell the legal truth.

  “I was away when he wrote and asked me for it, and when I got home and got his note, he was already installed without it.”

  “He was a pretty good friend of yours?”

  “I’ve known him four or five years.”

  “You didn’t come up to Mrs. Whitney’s just to be——”

  I saw what he meant, and I must have flushed the color of a cabbage rose. It was true, in a sense, but not in the sense he meant.

  I looked at Travis. We both of us saw what a beautiful chance it was to keep a rattling skeleton quietly in the closet and not have to drag it out by admitting the real reason. I smiled.

  “Well,” I said, “I wouldn’t have come, probably, if he hadn’t been there.”

  I trust heaven will forgive me. And I didn’t stop to think where it would lead.

  “You’re a widow, aren’t you?” Captain Malone said benevolently. “Were you—I mean, you weren’t——”

  Travis helped him out, “You weren’t planning to marry Myron, were you?”

  “Oh, no, indeed,” I said. “I’m forty-one. I’d hardly marry Myron.”

  “Kane was forty-two. You’d have to have a better reason than that.”

  I would never have thought of Myron, with his perennial glamour, as that old.

  Captain Malone looked at me intently over the top of his glasses. I don’t believe he believed a word I’d said. He opened his desk drawer slowly. The newspaper-wrapped package with Monk’s handkerchief in it was untied already. He took it out carefully and put it on the desk.

  “Where did Miss Frazier get this, Mrs. Latham?”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea. Why don’t you ask her?”

  “I have, and she refuses to say.”

  He smoothed out what was left of the handkerchief. The cloth was scorched yellow, but the corner where the monogram was embroidered was intact. I’ve never been much good at cryptograms, and most fancy monograms defeat me with all their curling decoration, but I could see the W without any trouble, and the M, and a T that looked upside down to me. The bloodstains had turned dark brown.

  It was a little awkward, actually, with Travis sitting perched on the table looking at it too. I wasn’t sure how he’d feel about the gal he was going to marry practically burning herself alive for another man.

  “If you good people would be frank about these things, you’d save me time and yourselves trouble,” Captain Malone said. “Did you ever hear Kane mention any trouble he was having, Mrs. Latham? With any of the editors of the Post, for instance?”

  I shook my head. “No. But of course he was a prima donna.”

  He caught me up quickly on that. “Kane was a prima donna?”

  “Top-flight, I’d say.”

  He looked at me for a moment. Then he said, “Thank you, Mrs. Latham. I’ll have to ask you to stay around town. There’ll probably be a point or two you’ll be able to help me on.”

  Travis got down from his perch. “I’ll be glad to produce her for you any time.”

  Captain Malone gave him a sour smile. “Thanks.”

  “And by the way, Monk Whitney’s a client of mine, too, Malone,” Travis said. “I hope you don’t mind if I stick around.”

  Malone looked at him patiently. “Okay. Stick around.” He turned to me. “You can go out this way, Mrs. Latham.”

  I saw then why they wanted the key to the stand-up room. It was a way into the corridor that kept people from seeing each other again after one and before the others had seen Captain Malone.

  I heard, “Mr. Martin, please,” as I went out, Travis following me. I couldn’t hear what Sam said.

  “Don’t think he’s through with you,” Travis said to me under his breath. “He hasn’t begun.” Then he said in his normal tone, “Can you get home all right? I’ll take you downstairs. Where’s Man Mountain Buck got to?”

  Downstairs the desk sergeant leaned out of his cage at the left of the door and said, “You the lady knows Mr. Buck?”

  I nodded. It’s one of those anomalies I’m always conscious of. I don’t really know Sergeant Buck at all.

  “He said to tell you he was taking a young lady home. Red-haired girl. Pretty.”

  Travis Elliot and I looked at each other. “Miss Frazier?” he asked.

  “Don’t know her name. Captain had her up there.” He went back to his paper work.

  A taxi was just letting out Bob Fuoss and Erd Brandt from The Saturday Evening Post in front of the building. Apparently Captain Malone was dragging in the editors two by two.

  Travis got me their cab. “I wish she’d told me she was coming over. She must have known about it when we saw her about midnight.”

  When I demanded, “Midnight?” I must have said it as if I thought everybody in Philadelphia was in bed by nine-fifteen.

  “Sure. Monk and I went over to the Service Club and got her.”

  “I thought she went home early.”

  I wished I hadn’t said it, because if she’d gone back she obviously didn’t want him to know she’d left. Him or somebody.

  “She always stays till they shut up shop,” he said. “I’d better go call her.”

  He glanced up at the window over the door. Monk’s large marine-clad back was still framed in it. The taxi stopped in front of Judge Whitney’s, behind a black sedan just pulling up in front by the pink house ahead of us.

  The driver leaned forward. “Look, lady. Ain’t that cute?”

  I leaned forward too. “Oh,” I said. “He always does that.”

  It was the squirrel. He was hobbling arthritically down the steps with a walnut in his mouth. He looked up the street for traffic, and scooted as fast as he could across to his tree.

  The driver got out and opened the door. A man was leaving the black sedan ahead of us. He went up Mrs. Whitney’s steps.

  “Maybe he’ll do it again,” I said as I paid my fare. “He comes over every time anybody goes up to the door.”

  “Sure enough?” the driver said.

 
; He gave me my change, and we stood a minute watching the squirrel get up to the top step and sit up with his paws out.

  The driver’s face fell suddenly. “Aw, gee! They didn’t give him one.”

  The door closed and the man was coming back down, sticking his pencil back in his pocket. He had an aluminum-backed board in his hand and he went whistling back to his car. The squirrel came down, twitching his patchy tail with annoyance. I noticed a sign on the windshield of the sedan as I passed it: U. S. MAIL SPECIAL DELIVERY. I quickened my steps, thinking it might possibly be for me. The squirrel dashed back, but he was disappointed again, because it was Elsie Phelps who opened the door. She didn’t have a walnut, and she probably didn’t believe in begging anyway.

  “Oh, hello,” she said.

  She had a brown Manila envelope folded under her arm. She didn’t quite say “Are you still here?” but she might as well have.

  “That wasn’t a special delivery for me, by any chance, was it?”

  She looked me squarely in the eyes, the color rising in her sallow cheeks.

  “I’m sure if it had been, Mrs. Latham, you’d have been told so at once.”

  “Oh, of course,” I said quickly. “I didn’t mean that. It’s just that I have one child at school and one in the Air Force, and you always sort of hope it may be for you.”

  “Well, it’s not,” she said. She picked up her bag she’d put on the needlepoint chair against the rose-beige wall. “Now that you’re here, I won’t bother my aunt.” She seemed in an awful hurry to get away. “Tell her I’ll be back later, will you, please?”

  I started to say, “Don’t let me drive you away,” but I didn’t have a chance. She was out the door and gone. The butler, who’d come out of his pantry to answer the bell, stood smiling at the end of the hall for a moment, turned and went back again.

  The special-delivery letter must have been for Elsie herself, I thought, and she’d taken it away. It wasn’t on the silver tray on the table, and she’d obviously received it herself, as the squirrel had got only one walnut, and that was when the butler had opened the door for her. I don’t think it would have crossed my mind, any of it, if it hadn’t been for the way she’d acted—as if she’d thought I was accusing her of something, and then dashing off. And the incident was anything but closed.