The Wrong Murder

by Craig Rice

  The Wrong Murder

  A John J. Malone Mystery

  Craig Rice

  Chapter One

  Later, they were able to trace the little man in the rusty black overcoat as far south as Van Buren Street. At an indeterminate point somewhere south of the corner of State and Van Buren, the trail was lost. Not that it mattered greatly, after the man was dead.

  His first appearance on State Street that could be proved beyond the shadow of a doubt was at the northwest corner of Van Buren, just below the steps leading to the elevated. He had paused there briefly to buy a newspaper. The newsstand boy remembered him clearly, especially the manner in which he had fished the depths of a worn leather change purse for the odd penny.

  When they found the little man later in the day, the newspaper was still tucked under his arm unread, just as the boy had folded it.

  No one would have expected him to be noticed anywhere, especially not on State Street in the last week before Christmas. He was a trifle under the average height, stoop-shouldered, and exceedingly thin. His skin, drawn tight over the bones of his sharp-featured face, had an unhealthy pallor; his eyes were so light a blue as to be almost colorless, protuberant and peering as the eyes of a fish. A few wisps of untidy gray hair showed under his dusty black derby.

  On the whole, he was an ordinary, inconspicuous little man. So it was amazing later (though not to Dan Von Flanagan of the Homicide Squad) how many people remembered seeing him on his progress up State Street, after a photograph of his remains had appeared on the front page of the Times. It seemed almost as though everyone who had been on State Street that afternoon in the peak of the Christmas shopping rush had seen and noticed the little man in the rusty black overcoat.

  Nevertheless, it was from just such volunteered information that it was possible, later, to find out where the little man had gone and what he had done between Van Buren Street and the corner where his stroll had ended abruptly. It appeared that he had not been in a hurry. The newsstand boy was positive that it had been exactly five minutes to two when the man stopped to buy a paper. He remembered it because his next customer had been a girl in a red hat who had asked him the time, and his watch (a present from his grandfather) was never wrong.

  There was no possible doubt that it was just fifteen minutes past two by the big clock over State and Madison Streets when the little man reached that corner. A hundred witnesses were ready to swear to it.

  The distance between those two points was only four longish blocks, so his progress had been slow. Just north of Van Buren Street he had paused before the Rialto Burlesque Theater to examine the colored posters that adorned its façade. Still farther in the same block he had paused again before a window filled with inexpensive garments that could be purchased on convenient credit terms. At the corner of Jackson Boulevard he had barely escaped being run down by an automobile driven by a Mr. Louis Whitman of Oak Park.

  The State Street sidewalks were jammed from wall to gutter with holiday shoppers. Lampposts were transformed with Christmas wreaths, Christmas decorations of every kind glittered in the windows, chimes and amplified recordings of a dozen different Christmas carols came from loud-speakers, each trying to outdo the other in volume. Salvation Army lassies and Volunteers-of-America Santa Clauses rang their little bells furiously on every corner.

  It appeared, however, that the man in the rusty black overcoat had no Christmas shopping to do. At least there was no evidence of his having done any.

  He did pause at the drugstore on the corner of State and Adams Streets long enough to ask the soda-fountain clerk for a little baking soda and a glass of carbonated water. The clerk, when questioned later, thought that it had been just about two o’clock, perhaps a few minutes past.

  The little man emerged from the drugstore and stood for a moment in front of the doorway, jostled by the passing crowds, as though deciding which direction he should take. Then at last he appeared to make up his mind and plunged into the sea of holiday shoppers crossing Adams Street.

  Just beyond Adams Street, by the corner window of the Fair store, there was an almost impenetrable pedestrian traffic jam. Evidently the man hesitated an instant at the edge of the corner, watching the shoppers who were trying to fight their way up to the toy display in the window, and then decided to skirt the crowd by going out to the very last inch of sidewalk, instead of trying to push his way through.

  That may have been his second narrow escape of the afternoon.

  He went slowly past the Fair store, past the little shops just south of Monroe Street, and past the big variety store on the corner, paying no attention to the extravagant displays in the windows. At the southwest corner of Monroe Street he paused again, waiting for a traffic light to change.

  Beyond Monroe Street he went more slowly, staying now on the inside edge of the sidewalk, pausing once or twice to stare reflectively at the displays of women’s shoes in the windows. The two Kresge stores he ignored completely, but as he reached the southwest corner of State and Madison Streets he made a prolonged stop before the Liggett’s drugstore, examining a window display of fountain pens. He stood there so long, indeed, it may have been he felt a sense of apprehension, a feeling of foreboding, about crossing the street. It would not have been such a surprising thing, after all. It may even have been that he glanced nervously across the street once or twice as he stood there by the drugstore window, though surely he could not have known of any danger. Perhaps he felt a certain chilling of the blood, an impulse to turn back. That remains forever speculative.

  The corner of State and Madison Streets, long acclaimed as the busiest corner in the world, was more crowded now than at any other time of the year. Directly below the great clock on the Boston Store, the mass of people was almost immovable, as shoppers tried to push up to the window filled with animated toys, as other shoppers attempted to fight their way into the revolving doors of the building, and as still others, trying to go any one of four different directions, shoved and struggled to make their way through the jam.

  It was into this mass of people that the little man plunged when he decided to cross Madison Street. This time he did not go around the edge of the crowd.

  Later, of course, there were those who claimed to have heard the sound of the shot, even over the roar and clamor of the crowded street. At the time, however, no notice was taken of it.

  One large section of the crowd was moving northward, and the little man in the rusty black overcoat was caught in the middle of it, carried on for ten or fifteen feet by the impact of the moving bodies around him. Then, as the crowd began to thin, a little beyond the entrance to the Boston Store, he seemed suddenly to lose his balance.

  No one noticed him when he fell. There was no outcry of any kind until a large woman with her arms full of bundles (a Mrs. J. Martin of Evanston) saw that a man had collapsed at her feet. She screamed, and dropped the bundles. Another woman, seeing only Mrs. Martin, screamed likewise.

  By some thoughtfulness of providence, the body was not trampled beyond all recognition in the melee that followed, before a policeman managed to shove his way through the milling, hysterical mob of people to the center of the disturbance. It was believed at first that the man had merely fainted in the midst of the holiday crowd, not an unusual occurrence. Then the policeman, one Edward Gahagan, discovered that he was dead.

  But it was not until help came, and the crowd was pushed back a few feet more, that it was possible to examine the body of the little man more carefully, and discover the bullethole in his back.

  Chapter Two

  No one knew it at the time, and only a very few ever did know or even suspect it, but if a party had not been given the day before the unfortunate occurrence at State and Madison Streets, the li
ttle man in the rusty black overcoat might never have been murdered at all.

  Certainly the tall, lean, red-haired man sitting on the concrete-and-iron stairway of the famous hotel where the party was being held knew nothing of the sort. He wouldn’t have cared much if he had. At the time he was too busy trying to balance a glass in each hand while he stared at the girl he considered the most beautiful blonde in the world.

  He was Jake Justus, ex-reporter, and, by his own admission, the second greatest press agent alive. (He never told who the first one was.) He wouldn’t have cared about the fate of the little man because, frankly, he was a little bored with murder.

  As manager of Dick Dayton’s dance band, he had become involved in the murder of Miss Alexandria Inglehart of Maple Park, and had done his bit toward exonerating Dick Dayton’s bride, accused of the crime.* As manager of Nelle Brown, the radio star, he had been drawn into an insane tangle of murders and disappearing corpses.† Jake felt, not surprisingly, that he had had more than his share of homicides.

  There was, to be honest about it, a singular lack of appreciation in his attitude. For the first murder had introduced him to Helene Brand, the exquisite blonde debutante of Maple Park. The second murder had brought her back to him at a time when he felt he had lost her forever.

  Today he had married Helene Brand, and he wouldn’t have cared if fifty little men in rusty black overcoats were murdered on every street corner in the Loop.

  There were three of them on the stairway. On one side of Jake sat Helene, her pale-gold hair beautifully in place, dressed in something composed of light-green wool and enormous quantities of brownish fur. On the other side was a tall, stout, and extremely impressive man with a round, pinkish face, heavy gray hair, and a neatly trimmed mustache and imperial. He was George Brand, father of the bride, who had flown from Hawaii to give his daughter in marriage, and was about to take a plane for Florida.

  On the step just below them was a bottle of gin, a shakerful of Martinis, and a few extra glasses, thoughtfully brought along in case of breakage. The Martinis, Helene’s father had explained, were there to be used as a chaser for the gin.

  The solemnity of the occasion was almost overwhelming. For a long time all three of them had been completely speechless. Once, indeed, Helene’s father had exclaimed “My children!” with a sonorous sigh, and laid a hand on Jake’s shoulder. For a moment Jake had felt his new father-in-law was about to break into a song, a speech, or tears.

  He took a tentative sip at his drink, with a vague feeling that if anyone rashly lighted a match in his immediate vicinity, he would probably come down in some obscure place, such as Michigan City, if, indeed, he came down at all. With half a dozen of his father-in-law’s drinks under his belt, anyone attempting to convey him anywhere would probably be arrested for shipping munitions without a permit.

  Soft, discreet steps on the staircase behind them made Jake turn his head. There stood Partridge, a small, thin, grayish man, with perpetually anxious eyes. Jake had long since given up trying to decide if he were George Brand’s valet or his legal guardian. He always seemed to be just on the verge of some disapproving comment which was never actually spoken. He seemed especially on the verge of some such comment now, though all he managed was one little, reproachful, and infinitely sad cough.

  George Brand rose lumberingly to his feet. “Partridge is right. We ought to return to our guests.” He frowned and pulled at his beard. “There must have been something terribly important I wanted to say to you, or I’d never have brought you out here where we could be alone. Oh well, perhaps it will come to me.”

  He stalked majestically up the stairs. Jake and Helene gathered the empty glasses and followed him.

  In the big living room of the apartment the crowd had thinned a little, but the room was still full of people. Most of them were strangers to Jake, but at the far end of the room he saw one familiar face. He headed for it like a shipwrecked sailor setting out for an island.

  The face, red and a little perspiring, belonged to a short, stocky man with rumpled dark hair, a badly wrinkled suit, and a necktie that was slowly crawling under one ear. He was the center, as usual, of an admiring group. John J. Malone, Chicago’s famous criminal lawyer, always drew a crowd, in his private life as well as in the courtroom.

  Jake sat down beside him and managed to take part in the conversation without hearing a word of it. He was not an altogether happy man, indeed for one who had just married Helene Brand, he was singularly unhappy.

  In a few hours he and Helene would leave for Bermuda and a two-weeks honeymoon. Then they would return to Chicago, and he would look for a job.

  Nelle Brown had left for Hollywood a few days before and Jake was without a star to manage. A hell of a time to get married, he told himself, even if he had married an heiress. Rather, because he had married an heiress. Helene’s money was her own business. He was just another guy out of a job.

  The rent on the expensive apartment had been paid for a month in advance. There was enough left over for a honeymoon in Bermuda and a few weeks’ living. Oh well, he consoled himself, he’d find a new client. He always had.

  He looked around the room and wondered how many people in it had ever looked for a job. He took another drink, and began wondering who they all were. He’d met them an hour or two ago, now he began trying to match names and faces.

  The middle-aged, rather haggard man who faintly resembled Helene’s father, save that he lacked a beard, was Willis Sanders, a broker. The small, delicate, almost too perfect woman who sat twirling a cocktail glass in tiny, nervous fingers was Willis Sanders’ wife.

  The girl beside Mrs. Sanders—who was she? Jake tried hard to remember. Whoever she was, she looked unhappy, sullen, almost brooding. She was a big girl, a tall girl, yet perfectly proportioned. Her hair was dark brown and glossy, falling in great waves to her shoulders. Her eyes were large and dark and liquid, with the longest lashes Jake had ever seen. There was a kind of violence about her beauty, Jake thought, almost a tempestuous quality.

  He remembered suddenly that she was Willis Sanders’ daughter by his first wife.

  He went on looking round the room. There were two rather ordinary young women in what were probably Paris frocks, a slightly bald man with a dark mustache, and a small, noisily vivacious woman with bobbed gray hair and an almost smothering Southern accent whom nobody knew and who had been invited because she happened to live across the hall.

  There was one woman in the room he would never have any trouble remembering, however. Mona McClane!

  Sitting there in the overcrowded room, she seemed a little too disappointingly like other people. Her hair was short, jet black, and very sleek, with a heavy bang that fell over her forehead nearly to her eyebrows. Her pale face was thin, pointed, foxlike; her enormous, shadowy eyes were almost green.

  When had Mona McClane’s name first appeared in print? Jake couldn’t remember. At her birth, he guessed. The birth of a child to the McClane clan had undoubtedly been news. At the age of six her picture had appeared when her blue-blooded terriers took first prize at the dog show. It had been printed again, and often, when the ballroom of the enormous and incredibly ugly McClane mansion on Lake Shore Drive had been completely remodeled for her debut. Its next lavish appearance had been when she had made a thoroughly satisfactory and noteworthy marriage.

  At that point Jake’s memory of newspaper pictures and stories began to crystallize. Mona McClane had vanished from all but the society pages for a few years while she lived the life of a model young matron, produced one daughter, and managed, expertly, a number of society bazaars. Then a few years later the socially satisfactory and noteworthy husband of Mona McClane had shot himself accidentally while on a hunting trip (some were so unkind as to hint it had not been entirely accidental), the story had exploded in a front-page splash, and from that day on Mona McClane’s life had been lived in printer’s ink.

  She had been publicly engaged to an Indian rajah and broken
off the match two days before the marriage was to take place. She had married a titled Hungarian and been a Princess with an unpronounceable name for a year and a half. She had married an impoverished Indiana farmer, retired to live the simple life, and divorced him in four months. After that divorce she had resumed the name of McClane.

  She had written a best seller, become a licensed airplane pilot, hunted tigers in India and elephants in Africa, run for Congress unsuccessfully, gone on a polar expedition, made a transatlantic solo flight, been sued twice for alienation of affections, met the Grand Lama of Tibet, had a screen test, and been reported engaged to every eligible man on three continents.

  It was faintly disappointing to Jake, meeting her for the first time, that she looked like other human beings. He’d half expected her to glow like a neon sign.

  He was struggling with mental arithmetic, trying to guess at her age, when a minor explosion seemed to take place at his elbow. He looked up and saw Helene. A wide green hat framed her face, furs were slung over her arm. George Brand and Partridge were with her, both ready for traveling.

  It had just been discovered, Helene explained, that George Brand’s plane left in exactly seventeen minutes, and it was easily a thirty-minute drive to the airport. Obviously, no one but herself could possibly get them there on time.

  Later Jake claimed to have had a premonition about it, but nobody believed him. He did go so far as to point out that while Helene could undoubtedly get to the airport with time to spare, her driving was of a nature fit for neither man nor beast. But there was no time for discussion. Helene gathered up her furs, promised to be back within the hour, and was gone.

  Jake sighed, accepted a drink, and settled back in his chair. He wondered how he was going to live for an hour away from Helene.

  It was then that Mona McClane leaned forward in her chair, her pointed chin poised on her little fist, her green eyes sparkling, and said, “I wonder what it feels like to murder someone. One of these days I’m going to find out!”