by Craig Rice
“Oh, you have, have you?” said the red-faced man mincingly. “And why do you think you can see her, pretty boy?”
Dick’s face was gray. “Because,” he said, “because she’s my wife.”
Chapter 3
“I’m not sure,” said Jake Justus thoughtfully, “if you ought to have told him that.”
They were waiting uncomfortably in the library of the ugly old house. The man named Fleck—Maple Park’s chief of police, Jake had told Dick—had asked them a few sharp questions, learned that the marriage had taken place at Crown Point the day before and was to have been announced to the world today. He had learned also, with what had seemed like acute disappointment, that the young orchestra leader had spent most of the night before leading his band, and was consequently alibied by everyone who had danced that night at the Blue Casino. Then he had shaken his head dolefully and left them, after promising Dick that he would have a chance to see his bride before, he said dismally, they took her away.
Now they waited in the cold and dreary library. It was an impressive room, lined with unread books, paneled expensively in brownish-colored wood, filled with massive, dark, and uncomfortable furniture. Jake shut his eyes and wished he had a drink.
“No,” he said again, “maybe you oughtn’t to have told him that.”
“Why not?” Dick asked. “We are married. And he was bound to find out sooner or later. Maybe she’s told him already.”
Jake nodded slowly. “You may be right at that. Still, it makes it look worse for her. What’d she want to bump off the old lady for, anyway?”
“She didn’t do it,” Dick said firmly.
Jake swore under his breath. He wondered what the girl was like. Dick’s damn luck to get mixed up in something like this. The elopement had been the makings of a beautiful piece of publicity. But not now. “Band leader involved in murder of—” It wasn’t a beautiful publicity story now.
He sighed deeply and wished for two drinks.
“Why can’t they tell us something,” Dick burst out suddenly.
“You’ll read all about it in the newspapers,” Jake said consolingly.
“Holly didn’t do it,” Dick said again.
Jake shook his head. “Maybe not. I don’t know. I don’t know anything about it.”
The door opened and Mr. Fleck returned, mopping his face.
“She still sticks to the same story,” he said wearily. “I tell you, she’s ratty. Maybe she’s working up an insanity defense. If she is, she’s smart. So we’ll take her down to the jail and—” he spoke like a man talking to himself.
Jake waved Dick away and prayed that he would keep his mouth shut.
“How did she do it, Mr. Fleck?” He could feel Dick glaring at him.
“Knife.” Mr. Fleck mopped his brow again. “Funniest damn thing. Look. Last night—about eleven o’clock—Glen Inglehart—he’s her brother—gets this telephone call from her—”
“Where was he?” Jake asked.
“Here.”
“And wasn’t she here?” Dick asked.
“How the hell,” growled Mr. Fleck, “could she of phoned him if she had of been here? He gets this phone call from her, see, saying as how she’s been hurt in an accident and she’s at a hospital and she’s been hurt but she ain’t been hurt so bad but what she can be brought home, and for him and Parkins to come right after her.”
“Who is Parkins?”
“There’s a Mr. and Mrs.,” the chief of police told him, “the servants here. Been here for years. So he gets Parkins and tells him about the accident, see. Now look. Mrs. Parkins, she’s away, visiting her daughter. Daughter’s name is Maybelle. Glen, see, he feels anxious about leaving the old lady alone, but he feels like they had both ought to go. Parkins, he thinks the old lady will be all right, on account of she’s been left alone in the house before. Glen, he goes up and asks her what they had better do. Well, the old lady says sure, go ahead. So Glen, he tells Parkins to get the car out, and he gets his overcoat and they go to this hospital.”
“What hospital?”
“The one where she told them she was at,” said Mr. Fleck patiently. “St. Luke’s. Clear down past the Loop. Only they stop on the way and get Mrs. Parkins, see, on account of maybe the girl isn’t feeling so good, and it would be a help to have Mrs. Parkins along. So when they get to this hospital, what do they find?”
“Don’t tell me,” Jake said imploringly, “let me guess.”
“They find she ain’t there and she ain’t never been there.” He glared at them as though they might offer some explanation.
“Why didn’t she call me?” Dick said suddenly. “If she’d been in an accident, why didn’t she call me?”
“She hadn’t been in no accident,” Mr. Fleck told him, “she hadn’t been in no accident of any kind, without you could call murdering your poor old aunt an accident, which of course it might of been if she was genuinely nuts when she done it.”
Jake blinked a little. “What did her brother—and the Parkinses—do then?”
“Well, they wasted some time phoning the other hospitals in case there had been a mistake, which there hadn’t. So then they came back here. Took some time, of course, with the roads being like they are. Bad roads. Like glass. And of course, being anxious about the old lady, on account of never leaving her alone under any circumstances unless it was absolutely necessary, which this was, as soon as they did get home, which was about four o’clock on account of the roads, Mrs. Parkins and Glen, they went right up to the old lady’s room,” he paused for breath, leaving them to cope with his sentence as best they could.
“Well?”
“She was dead,” said Mr. Fleck triumphantly, as though he had produced a corpse out of his hat. “Dead and froze stiffer’n a board. Window was wide open and she was sitting right in front of it. Still is, if you want to look at her. She ain’t been took away yet. And she was stabbed three times. Three, mind you. Once would have been enough, a weak old lady like her. What’d she want to go and stab the old dame three times for?”
“And Holly?” Dick asked desperately. “Where was she? What had happened to her?”
“She was right there in the old lady’s room. That’s where she was.” He looked as though he expected them to contradict the statement. “Fainted dead away on the floor she was. Right where she’d fell after she stabbed the old lady.”
“Couldn’t someone,” asked Jake, “have come in while everybody was away and done the murder? And when the girl discovered it, she fainted—”
Mr. Fleck shook his head vigorously. “No. Because there wasn’t no reason for nobody else to have done it except the girl.”
Jake’s frown stopped Dick’s interruption.
“And now,” said Mr. Fleck aggrievedly, “now she tells some Goddamn crazy story about the clocks.”
They looked at him, startled.
“Did you say clocks?” Jake asked blankly. He wondered if possibly Mr. Fleck, and not the girl, was crazy. Or else he himself.
“The clocks,” Mr. Fleck repeated. “And the funny damn thing is that they all were stopped at three o’clock. All of them, mind you.”
Mr. Fleck pointed. A little electric clock stood on the table. There was a mahogany clock on the greenish marble mantelpiece. Their motionless hands pointed to three o’clock. Jake repressed a sudden violent desire to look at his own watch.
“The whole thing is nuts,” said Mr. Fleck unhappily. “She says—” he paused, gulped, and then told them Holly’s story of wakening to find Glen and the Parkinses gone, their beds not slept in, and Alexandria Inglehart murdered at her open window.
When Fleck had finished, Jake looked sympathetically at the pale young man. “Tell me,” he began, “did the girl ever act funny when she was with you? As if this was coming on? Just a bit on the screwball side?”
Dick shook his head. “Never. I can’t believe it. There must be some explanation for this. Something.”
“Sure,” said Mr. Fle
ck reassuringly, “the girl’s gone nuts.”
A door opened suddenly; at once the room seemed to be filled with people. Jake recognized Hyme Mendel from the district attorney’s office, a little man with a gold pince-nez—that would be Hedberg the coroner, Andy Ahearn from the sheriff’s office, and a half dozen others who were strangers to him. One, he decided, must be Glen Inglehart, twin brother of the girl held for murder—a handsome boy, olive-skinned, dark-eyed, with rumpled black hair and a white, anxious face.
But none of them made any impression on him. He was looking at a girl in the middle of the group, a tall girl with glorious red hair and great, brown eyes, who stood staring at Dick as though she could not take her eyes from him.
Holly Inglehart!
Chapter 4
She was tall and thinnish and extremely pale. Her hair was almost copper color, falling in thick, glistening waves to her shoulders. There was a wistfulness, a soft gentleness, about her face, and at the same time, a kind of stern determination. Her eyes, Jake noted with approval, were wide and deep and brown.
Dick had picked well. Too bad this murder had to happen. She would make a good picture, too, in that plain gray suit with the white blouse.
She was trying to smile at Dick.
“I didn’t do it.”
“Now!” said Mr. Fleck with gentle reproval.
“But I didn’t do it. I woke up and—” she frowned and passed her hand over her eyes.
“Don’t try to talk now,” Dick advised her.
No, don’t try to talk, Jake thought, because every time you open your mouth, Hyme Mendel’s going to put your foot in it.
“You don’t believe me,” she said dully, “nobody believes me.”
Jake caught himself starting to say, “I believe you.” Funny thing, he did, too. And he hadn’t heard her story yet, not from her own lips.
It was something intuitive, something that bothered him and that he couldn’t explain. You met so damn many girls in this orchestra racket that you got so you could spot the nice ones first try. This was, obviously, a nice one. And nice girls didn’t go around murdering people.
But that wasn’t the reason. It was something stronger, something that couldn’t be explained away, or reasoned with. He knew that the thin, red-haired girl had told the truth in her fantastic story. Everything had happened just as she said it had. Jasper Fleck and Hyme Mendel and Andy Ahearn were being logical and wrong.
“Nobody believes me,” she said again. Her voice was flat and tired.
Dick was trying, clumsily, to comfort her. It seemed to Jake that comfort wasn’t in order. That girl wasn’t asking for comfort. You wouldn’t see tears on that face. She had learned years ago to keep them back. Learned it the hard way, too. Now she was really on a spot, and she was the calmest person in the room. They were going to drag her off to jail and she’d be tried for murder and possibly convicted. Probably would be, with the evidence they had against her. And she hadn’t murdered Alexandria Inglehart and she knew she hadn’t.
She was standing there right now, Jake knew, with a big lump of ice where her stomach ought to be, with her mind repeating over and over, “Why won’t anybody believe me? Why won’t anybody believe me?” And she was as unruffled as though she were about to take off for a day’s shopping tour.
Dick believed her guilty, Jake could see that he did. He didn’t want to believe it, he was fighting against it, but everything pointed to it, and he couldn’t help himself. Hyme Mendel believed it, and Jasper Fleck, and Andy Ahearn from the sheriff’s office, and Al Hedberg. They all believed she was guilty, yes, and so did her own brother, Glen Inglehart. Only he, Jake Justus, knew that she was not, knew that it simply wasn’t, couldn’t be possible.
He cleared his throat demandingly. “Anyone mind if I look around a bit?”
“Go ahead,” Hyme Mendel said absentmindedly.
Andy Ahearn grinned at him. “I’ll take you on a personally conducted tour myself.”
They went into the dark and ugly hall, up the massive staircase.
“Who are these Ingleharts?” Jake asked.
Andy seemed surprised. “Old family of Maple Park. Very high-hat. George Inglehart, he built the house. Sixty, seventy years ago, I guess. The old lady lived here all her life. She was a tough old biddy if God ever made one.” He paused at a closed door where a bored policeman stood on guard. “This is the room where it happened. Want to go in?”
“Sure,” Jake said calmly.
Another bored policeman was in the room where Alexandria Inglehart’s body still sat in the chair before the window. It was an immense room, yet singularly crowded. Oversized yellowish flowers chased each other around a papered frieze; the walls below it were covered with pictures: paintings, prints, lithographs. No photographs, though. Jake wondered why. Despite the room’s size, the furniture all seemed too large—a great bed of bright tan wood, huge chairs, heavy tables. Certainly it must have all been too large for the late Alexandria Inglehart.
“Got to get more pictures of her before we move her,” Andy explained, adding, “she ain’t all thawed out yet. When we got here early this morning, she sure was froze.”
Jake looked at the withered body that still sat propped up, shrunken and colorless, dressed in a stiff, pale lilac silk, in her invalid’s chair. There were many glittering rings on the thin old fingers.
There were three marks on the pale lilac silk.
“She didn’t bleed much,” Andy remarked laconically.
Jake admired the delicate Florentine handle of the knife, left there for the photographer.
“Where’d the knife come from?”
“Old dame’s paper cutter,” Andy told him. He pointed at one of the wounds. “Hedberg says that’s the poke that done it. The other two were made afterward. Died quick and easy. No struggle. Maybe she was asleep. Or else she knew who it was and didn’t suspect what was coming. Naturally she wouldn’t expect her own niece to come in and murder her.”
He sighed deeply. “You still with the Examiner?”
Jake shook his head. “Working for the guy downstairs. Dick Dayton. Press agent and manager.”
“So!” Andy made a sympathetic whistling sound. “Tough on him all right. Nice-looking babe, too.” He coughed. “Still, I guess you have friends on the papers—”
“I’ll tell them you’re running for sheriff next term and to give you a break,” Jake promised.
“How’d you know?” asked Ahearn in genuine surprise.
Jake disdained to answer.
No, he could learn nothing from the withered and colorless body of Alexandria Inglehart. Nor could he learn anything from the gloomy, overdecorated room. The old woman had been sitting by her window and someone she recognized, had come into the room and stabbed her three times with her own Florentine paper cutter, and then had opened the window and gone away. That had happened at three o’clock, and later a red-haired girl had come into the room and found the old woman dead, and fainted away at her feet.
That was what had happened.
But how could he prove it had happened that way?
He walked to the window, closed now, and looked out. In the distance he could see the lake, gray and sullen, filled with bobbing cakes of dirty ice. There was a wide expanse of snow, great clumps of dark trees. All it needed to be complete, he thought, would be a few ravens flying overhead.
Today Dick and Holly were to have started on their honeymoon. An elopement. Orchestra leader and heiress. Angry aunt in background. A beautiful story Pictures all over the front page of the second section.
Well, there were going to be front-page pictures, all right. Plenty of them. But they’d be illustrating the wrong story.
Jake turned back to the room and saw the clock—Alexandria Inglehart’s little French clock, in the shining bell glass, with its hands stopped at three o’clock. It reminded him of something.
“What about the alarm clocks she heard?”
“Hell,” said Andy Ahearn in disg
ust, “there never were no alarm clocks. We did everything but take up the floor this morning. Naw, either the girl is lying, or she’s ratty.”
Wonder where they’re hidden, Jake thought, and suddenly realized how completely he believed Holly’s story.
“Look here,” he said to Andy Ahearn suddenly. “Maybe I’m not the one to ask. But don’t people leave fingerprints on things in Blake County?”
‘‘Her fingerprints on the knife,” Andy said crossly. “None anywhere else. What’dya think we’ve been doing here all morning, anyway?”
“How many questions do I get?” Jake asked interestedly.
“She says she started to pull out the knife before she fainted,” Ahearn added scornfolly. “But that’s all the fingerprints there were.”
“None on the clocks?”
“None on the clocks or the window frame or anywhere else, and if you can think of a place that we haven’t tried I’ll buy you a drink and charge it to Blake County. She must have wiped them off everything but the knife.”
“She was calm enough to wipe fingerprints off everything but the knife, but still so upset that she fainted,” Jake said in disgust. “And why didn’t she wipe off the knife while she was about it?”
“How should I know what a girl will do?” Andy asked protestingly.
“Why don’t you write to Dorothy Dix?” Jake asked. He sighed deeply. “That window could have been opened by someone who wanted to get in or out.”
Andy Ahearn nodded. “We thought of that too. But we haven’t thought of anyone who wanted to get in or get out.”
“Footprints under the window?”
Andy grinned. “Look for yourself.”
Jake looked. The ground underneath the window was covered with a smooth, unbroken expanse of snow.
“Footprints!” said Andy Ahearn nastily, “footprints, when it started snowing about midnight and kept up till six or seven this morning!”
Jake thought of an impolite name for Andy Ahearn, remembered that it would be disrespectful in the presence of the late Alexandria Inglehart, and stored it away for future reference. He cast one final despairing look around the room. It had nothing to tell him, nothing at all.
