The Comfortable Coffin

by Richard S. Prather

  Squeakie was shocked by the news. “All the same,” she said, “I don’t know how she could have fallen over, David. She wasn’t tall, and those bannisters are high.”

  The phone rang again.

  Harris was in a state. “Listen, Meadow, the police say it wasn’t an accident. The angle is suicide. Did you notice any melancholy when you interviewed the lady?”

  “Oh?” I said. “Okay. Why not?”

  But Squeakie wouldn’t have suicide. “It’s ridiculous, darling. She didn’t kill herself. I know. I talked to her. Do you think I wouldn’t know? David, it was murder!”

  The phone rang. “Here we go again,” I said. I felt as if the top of my head would come off any minute. “Go away,” I said to the mouthpiece, “I don’t like you.”

  “Likewise,” said Harris, “but there are things above our personal feelings. Louis Kingdon, editor of Modern Magazine, called us up just now. He insists that it isn’t suicide. He’s going to raise the roof if the police accept that as the answer. Also, he’s saying some very nasty things about Ruth Bradley’s husband. I think they’re putting your friend Lieutenant Gregory Sawyer on the case. For God’s sake get over there. It’s disgusting the way I keep getting you on the phone. If you were any sort of a newspaper man you’d be there now.”

  “The editor,” I told Squeakie, “also feels it couldn’t have been suicide. All right for the editor. He ought to know. But you...! If this were the seventeenth century they’d burn you in the village square!”

  She had the sense to keep quiet.

  The first thing we saw when we entered the Bradley house was a square of heavy black fabric lying in a bulky heap on the tiled floor of the hall. We couldn’t see the poor twisted body underneath it, but that grotesque impersonal shape of death was a terrible thing. It was a strange way for a woman to lie dead in her own house.

  A few of the lads from downtown were hanging around. Doc Evans had evidently looked at the body and they were waiting to have it taken away. Lieutenant Gregory Sawyer looked pleased to see us, or maybe I should say to see Squeakie.

  Before I could even pass the time of day with anyone, Squeakie went straight to the heart of the problem. “It wasn’t suicide,” she said, by way of answering Gregory’s greeting. “I talked with her two weeks ago.”

  Gregory was a little taken aback, so I explained about the interview.

  “I wondered when it would come to that, David,” he said. “Be careful, or they’ll be calling you Mrs. Meadow’s husband.” He smiled fatuously at Squeakie and took us upstairs to show us the place from which Ruth Denver Bradley had fallen.

  The house was impressively proportioned with very high ceilings. We walked slowly up the long flight of magnificent marble stairs which seemed to coil around the huge bannistered oval of the stair well. Unfortunately, the purity of classic line was marred by the heavy cables which ran from floor to roof. We reached the top landing and I looked down and saw the little lift cage crouching at the bottom. Beside it the black cloth spread like a stain on the tiled floor.

  I asked Gregory where the cage had been when she fell.

  “Just where it is now,” he said, “at the bottom.”

  “But I thought she rode up in it.”

  “She did, but…”

  “But the nurse must have gone down in it again,” Squeakie said. “Of course! The nurse left her patient upstairs and went down in the lift cage. Then the patient fell. Since the cage was still downstairs the nurse must have been downstairs too. There’s an alibi for you, Gregory. But where is the nurse? Have you questioned her? She’s a pretty little thing. I saw her, you know, when I interviewed Mrs. Bradley. Gregory, why did the nurse go downstairs after she had taken Mrs. Bradley up?”

  Gregory looked at me over Squeakie’s head.

  I shrugged. “She does it by remote control,” I said. “But the opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the management.”

  He led us along the top landing. “This is where she fell. The gate in the bannisters was closed—but not bolted. You can see that it couldn’t have been an accident.”

  He was right. It was obvious that Mrs. Bradley must have fallen through the gate which had been cut into the bannisters to allow passage from the lift to the. landing. The bannisters were too high for anyone to have fallen over accidentally, and one couldn’t very well fall through the gate unless one wanted to. It opened inward on the landing. There was a spring-closing so that if anyone stepped through it and forgot to bolt the gate there would be no dangerous gap. You could lean against it all you wanted to, and, bolted or not, it would never swing out. It had to be opened deliberately by the victim herself, or by someone else. Murder or…

  “It might have been suicide,” I said.

  Squeakie turned on me more in sorrow than in anger. “But didn’t I tell you that it wasn’t suicide, David? Where is the nurse, Gregory?”

  He shook his head. “Gone, Squeakie—just like that! According to the maid who was cleaning silver in the pantry the nurse, Katherine Dawson, came down in the lift to get her patient’s shawl. She went out through the rear of the house and vanished. We haven’t found her yet. But Haley is out looking.”

  “Why did she run away?” Squeakie asked, and then went on dreamily, “Ruth Denver Bradley hated her nurse. I saw that when I interviewed her. She kept smiling and saying little things in a nasty way. I think she wanted the girl to lose control of herself.”

  “You ought to tell us things like that,” Gregory said gently. “Any helpful word would be humbly appreciated by the police department.”

  “That’s sweet of you, Gregory. Where was Ruth Denver Bradley’s husband when it happened?”

  Gregory pointed to a door almost opposite the little gate. “Dr. Bradley was right there, in his office. He was waiting for a patient to come for analysis.”

  I measured the distance with my eye. “Two or three steps would have been enough,” I said. “Open the gate, push your wife through it, go back into the office…”

  “And the patient?” Squeakie asked, interrupting me without apology.

  “It’s a confusing case,” Gregory said sadly. “Haley, bless his heart, calls it ‘distinguished.’ He’s very proud of it. You see, the Doctor’s patient is none other than Harvey Thompson. And, of course, he doesn’t want publicity, David. I gather he’s been seeing the Doctor for nerves. Probably brought on by his last campaign.”

  “Harvey Thompson! The name is familiar,” Squeakie said.

  “It ought to be,” I told her. “You’ll be voting him into office next time round if I know anything about women voters. He’ll be the next candidate for Comptroller. He’s the power behind the clean government campaign. What company you keep, Lieutenant!”

  “Yes,” Gregory said. “The guy exposes corruption wherever he finds it. I wonder if Haley’s been stealing any candy bars lately. Anyway, Thompson just got in on this one. He was, if you can believe it, looking at his feet as he climbed the stairs to the Doctor’s office. He didn’t see anything until Ruth Denver Bradley shrieked as she fell past him.”

  “But he must have seen the nurse come down in the lift cage,” Squeakie said.

  “He did. The cage came down with the nurse in it just as he began walking up. He had no idea that there was anyone waiting on the top landing.”

  Squeakie’s brow furrowed. “But if she was going to see her husband in his office, why did Mrs. Bradley wait on the landing? She was a side woman. Why didn’t she go into his office and sit down? The nurse could have brought the shawl to her there. Was she afraid that the nurse wouldn’t come back?”

  Gregory looked at her closely. “I don’t know,” he said. “Dr. Bradley took his wife’s death pretty well, considering the circumstances. But when we told him the nurse was missing, he nearly passed out. Look, I’ve got to go down and talk to all of them now. If you two want to hang around, I guess I won’t have to notice you too much.”

  We had barely reached the hall below when
the front door opened and a gust of cold air carried a booming voice to us. “Got her,” it said. “I’ve got the nurse, Lieutenant. She’s no bigger than a kitten, and is she scared! She says she forgot. Maybe it’s amnesia.”

  “Gosh!” Gregory said, very much pleased. “Haley’s done it again. Now we’ll find out a few things.”

  Sergeant Haley, better known in police circles as “the Comet,” stood there red-faced and proud. If he’d been holding the girl in his teeth he couldn’t have looked more like a well-trained retriever bringing in the kill. Before I could say hello to him, the door of the living room opened and a man came into the hall.

  He was wearing a small brown beard and carried himself with a self-conscious air of assurance that some actors and doctors occasionally affect when dealing with other poor mortals. At the moment, however, his assurance seemed the worse for wear. It was evident that Dr. Bradley had been badly shaken. He didn’t look at us but at his wife’s nurse. We looked at her too. She stood, staring stupidly, pathetic as a frightened schoolgirl. Her navy topcoat hung from slender shoulders and her hair was a mass of wind-ruffled curls.

  “Katherine,” the Doctor said, “why did you go away? I’ve been so worried.”

  The girl’s eyes opened wider and wider until her whole face seemed to be lost and only eyes left. They were so horrified I wanted to put my hands over them. I. realized that it wasn’t the Doctor she was looking at but the form under the black fabric.

  “My God!” she whispered. “Who?”

  “The Doctor’s wife is dead, Miss Dawson.” That was all Squeakie said, but it had a violent effect. The tired white face of the nurse seemed to float over her shoulders, and the enormous eyes lost focus.

  “Oh,” she said softly, “she killed herself. How cruel!” Then she swayed, and Haley caught her as she fell.

  Dr. Bradley knelt anxiously beside the girl he called Katherine. He spoke only once, and then it was to Gregory. “She didn’t know,” he said. “Can’t you see she didn’t even know?”

  “Yes, I see.” Gregory’s voice was as deliberate as an accusation.

  Gregory chose to use the dead woman’s study for his investigation, and Squeakie was there to take notes. Shorthand is the pretext Squeakie uses to intrude on the secret conversations of the police. As is usual with volunteer workers, she didn’t seem to be taking her work too seriously. Her principal interest was the dead woman’s desk and bookcase. She made a thorough search of everything, but it was the bookshelves which seemed to fascinate her.

  We were waiting for Haley to bring Louis Kingdon, the editor, in. Gregory thought we ought to do him first because he was in such a fury.

  Suddenly Squeakie turned from her anxious perusal of book titles. “They’re so noncommittal,” she said sadly.

  “Nonsense,” I said. For here I might be expected to shine. After all, I was a writer too, of sorts. “They’re craft books,” I explained. “Dictionaries, reference books… What would you expect in a writer’s study?”

  “Why—ideas, inspiration, something…” Squeakie stopped and shook her head.

  “You get those from life,” I said patiently. “From going and seeing, hearing and doing.”

  “But,” Squeakie said, “she didn’t go. She stayed right in this house.”

  Louis Kingdon came into the room and Gregory motioned us to keep quiet. He was a heavy man with powerful well-kept hands and a thick mane of brown hair. He had a way with women, courteous and bland, as if they were skittish horses. Squeakie looked as if she liked him. It interests me to see the men that Squeakie admires. They almost never look like me.

  “Ruth Bradley didn’t kill herself.” Kingdon spoke first. “There are things going on in this house, Lieutenant. I think she was pushed over. It’s the only answer. She certainly did not commit suicide.”

  “You seem very sure,” Gregory spoke quietly.

  “Of course, I’m sure. She had three installments of the novel we’re running still unwritten. Do you think any author would kill herself with a third of a book to write?”

  “Isn’t that unusual,” Gregory asked. “I mean, don’t you buy these things complete? Awful risk, isn’t it?”

  “Well, in a way,” Kingdon said. “We don’t do it often, but she worked better that way. We always had a full synopsis of the story. We knew we could have it finished if…she wasn’t a well woman,” he added lamely. “But she’d been an invalid for years, there was no reason to suspect that anything would happen. You see, she was one of those writers who don’t finish things unless the pressure is on. If I’d waited for a completed manuscript, I’d have waited forever.”

  “You have the synopsis in your office?” Squeakie was standing in front of an open file she had been rummaging in. There was a gleam in her eye that I didn’t like.

  “No,” Kingdon said, “I haven’t. She kept it here.”

  “And how were the various installments sent to you? By mail?” I didn’t get the drift of Squeakie’s questions at all. Neither did Gregory, but he sat there trying hard to look as if he did.

  Kingdon smiled graciously. “As a matter of fact, young lady, I usually called for them myself. That’s why I came here today.” He frowned angrily.

  “The nurse and the maid both say there was a manuscript waiting for me on the hall table in a manila envelope. It’s not there now. I wish you’d try to find it for me.”

  Gregory glared at him, then said: “You think Ruth Bradley was murdered. Why?”

  The editor looked satisfied at last. This was the question he had obviously been waiting for. “Less than a week ago,” he said, “Ruth telephoned me and asked me to come to see her. She sounded almost hysterical. I came immediately. She told me that she had discovered that her husband and her nurse, Katherine Dawson, were in love with each other. She hadn’t said anything to either of them. But she said she couldn’t go on pretending any longer. She was going to have her revenge. She was going to discharge the nurse, but she loved her husband and there would be no question of a divorce.”

  Kingdon paused dramatically.

  Gregory rose. “Thanks,” he said drily. “I’ll keep that in mind. You can go. We’ll call you if we need you.”

  Kingdon shook his head. “I’d like to stay and look for that manuscript,” he said.

  The maid, Mary, came in next. She was pretty and malicious, and evidently didn’t like Miss Dawson. She told her story with many suggestive glances.

  “I was polishing the fish slice when Mrs. Bradley and Miss Dawson left the study together. I saw them both get into the lift cage. I looked special because I was surprised. Mrs. Bradley never likes to use the elevator unless she has to. But before Katherine Dawson followed Mrs. Bradley into the elevator I saw her—Katherine Dawson—deliberately lean over and drop the shawl she was carrying on one of the hall chairs.”

  Gregory nodded, looking solemn as an owl. “That’s extremely important, Mary. What else can you tell us?”

  “Well, I heard the noise of the lift going up, and then I heard it coming down again. I thought maybe Mrs. Bradley had missed her shawl and was sending Dawson back for it. But I couldn’t understand Dawson having dropped it like that, on purpose. Sure enough, I saw Dawson get out of the lift and pick up the shawl, but instead of taking it up she walked out through the hall to the rear of the house.”

  “Haven’t you forgotten something, Mary?” Squeakie said. “Didn’t you open the front door for someone?”

  “I did not.” Mary sounded very sure of herself.

  “But what about Mr. Thompson?”

  “Oh, him? When there’s office hours for the Doctor the door is left open. The patients walk in. I did see Mr. Thompson for just a second. It was just before Dawson came down. After she went to the back of the house, I heard the rear door slam. I didn’t see her again till just now when the Sergeant brought her back.”

  “You saw Mr. Thompson start up the stairs, and then Miss Dawson came down in the lift and went toward the rear of the house
? Is that right, Mary?” Gregory spoke carefully.

  “That’s right, sir. A minute or two later I heard the scream and saw Mrs. Bradley’s body hit the… Oh Sergeant, it was terrible! That poor, poor woman!” Mary turned to Haley and began to sniffle in her handkerchief.

  Squeakie stuck her head out of the closet she was poking in to ask if Mary had seen the manuscript on the hall table that morning? Yes, Mary had seen it. Was it there later when Mrs. Bradley fell? Mary looked puzzled and decided she couldn’t remember. Squeakie sighed and stuck her head back in the closet.

  Gregory told Mary how helpful she had been, and she went out still sniffling.

  “Can I escort Mr. Thompson in now, Lieutenant?” Haley asked in tones that would have been suitable for a church.

  “Yes, you can escort him in now, Sergeant,” Gregory answered just as gravely. Haley marched out carrying his head as carefully as if the slightest breeze would blow it off his shoulders.

  “Haley likes a distinguished case to be properly handled,” Gregory said.

  “Heavens! Look what I’ve found! It was in an envelope under some papers.” With all the flourish of a magician bringing a rabbit out of the hat, Squeakie held out her hand to us. On it there was a tiny key.

  “So what?” I said. “Everybody has an old key or two knocking around in desk drawers. It doesn’t mean a thing.”

  Squeakie put her head on one side and fixed one bright eye on the key. She looked like a sparrow about to pounce on a juicy worm. “Well,” she said vaguely, “suppose it’s the ‘key of villainous secrets’!”

  “What’s that?” demanded Gregory.

  “A key of villainous secrets? It’s a line from Othello.”

  “Oh,” said Gregory. “Is that all the reward of so much searching, Squeakie?”