Presently he heard sounds in the room beyond. Light glowed in the crack under the door, and he heard someone coming. “Who is it?” a sleepy voice called, and then the door opened against a chain.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Sheila’s lost her keys.”
Dale Jordan wore a green flannel robe and a ribbon in her chestnut hair. Standing there blinking at him, her cheeks flushed with sleep, she looked even younger than she had that afternoon and a lot prettier.
“Oh, it’s Mr. Murdock. All right,” she said without annoyance. “Just a minute.”
She went away and came back with the key, laughing softly as she handed it to him. “That’s the second time within a week,” she said. “Maybe she should have a chain around her neck.”
On the way back to Sheila’s place Murdock held the key. “I’m taking no chances,” he said. “Dale said that’s the second time in a week.”
“Second time?” Sheila hesitated. “Oh, of course. The other afternoon. I’d had lunch with Owen and when I got home—” She let the word dangle. “But that was a single key,” she said. “It could have dropped out with my gloves or a handkerchief. This one tonight was on a chain, with the key to my office and everything.”
“How’d you get in the other afternoon?”
“Marie was still there. She’s the maid. But they’ll turn up. They generally do. And I’ll know the one I missed the other afternoon because someone who had the place before I moved in filed a V in the top—so he could get the right key in the dark, I guess.”
“You must have a lot of keys.”
“Five. This one—Dale’s—and the one with the V and the one on the chain. Then Marie’s got one and the fifth one—”
She broke off abruptly, and when she did not continue Murdock wondered about it. Thinking back, he wondered if perhaps the fifth key had at one time been used by George Stark, and then promptly forgot about the matter when the taxi stopped.
He did not realize she expected him to come in until he started across the walk with her and she told him to pay the driver. He argued as they came into the entryway and she unlocked the door. He said he thought she was tired.
“You said so yourself,” he added.
She put her hand on his arm and smiled, pouting a little, but knowing how to use her dark eyes. “You’ve been sweet, Kent,” she said. “Let’s not spoil it now. You don’t have to stay.”
Murdock went back and dismissed the driver. He did not know why. He was not usually so passive about accepting things he did not want to do but in agreeing he made the mental reservation that in a half hour he was leaving whether she liked it or not.
Sheila had her coat off and was tucking in some wisps of her upswept hair when he entered the living-room. She nodded toward the tray on the coffee table.
“There should be some ice left,” she said. “Take off your coat.”
Murdock grinned at her as he sat down to pour the drinks. “I’m not going to be here long enough for that, One quick one and Murdock’s gone.”
There was enough ice floating around in the water for two drinks and he poured Scotch from a bottle with a label that said: Chesterfield, except that a three-cornered tear had eliminated the letters e-l-d, added water. Sheila drank deeply, and so did he, inspecting her over his glass.
“You’re awfully afraid I’ll ask you to stay,” she said dryly.
“You won’t.”
Then, before he could add to the statement, a buzzer sounded its long, insistent summons.
Sheila frowned, her brows climbing. She half turned, glanced back at him, put down her glass.
“Sounds like a pinch,” Murdock said.
Sheila did not seem to hear him. She walked quickly to the doorway and into the tiny hall. To do this she had to make a right-angle turn, since the outer door opened off to the right and was not visible from most of the room.
Murdock heard the outer door open, heard Sheila say, “Ohh—you.”
A woman’s voice answered her in clipped, tight accents. “Yes, me.”
Then, as though Sheila had made some sign that demanded silence there was a pause and she reached behind her for the living-room door which lay back against the wall.
For just an instant Murdock got a partial glimpse of the caller. The doorframe cut his vision in half but he could tell that the woman wore a black coat, and that her hair under the black hat was golden blond. A cheekbone and a corner of her mouth and jaw told him the face was rectangular and fine-boned, and he noticed the odd angle of an upward-slanting brow; then the door closed.
The words that followed were muted and indistinct. It was difficult to tell who was speaking, and after thirty seconds the voices stopped and he heard the outer door open and close.
Sheila came back at once, her eyes stormy in that first moment when she glanced at Murdock. There were lines of tension about her mouth and in her neck, and one hand was tightly clenched. Then, as though finally becoming aware of him, she let her lids come down and her mouth curved.
She picked up her drink and swallowed some. Murdock waited a minute. He did not know what the call was about nor did he care to speculate upon its implications. He patted the wide studio couch beside him.
“Quit posing,” he said, “and sit down.”
Sheila was all right now, the tension all gone. Her smile was enigmatic as she sipped her drink and when she remained standing he leaned back and surveyed her indulgently. The black dress with the wide belt and ornamental clasp did very well, he noticed, with her body lines. The neckline was deep—on purpose—and what was hidden there seemed very nice indeed. Her mouth was petulant but seductive; her eyes were languorous now as she watched him, and he knew she was not that way at all inside.
Inside there was a hard core, wrapped with an innate selfishness that was both determined and coolly calculating. That this core was not immediately apparent because of her provocative physical charm was a happy coincidence for Sheila since she was a woman who needed men. She had always used them for her purposes without giving any more than she had to and what she gave called not for any sacrifice but only the sort of co-operation that was natural and pleasing for her. Thinking back, it occurred to him that she had come a long way on that face and body and a somewhat limited ability.
“You’ve done all right, Sheila,” he said. “I guess you got what you wanted.”
“Have I?”
“Six years ago you were doing Sunday features for the Courier at space rates—because you weren’t good enough for a staff job. You were free-lancing radio scripts and selling one once in a while for twenty-five bucks. So was Owen Faulkner, and he was a nice-looking kid and you found out that by collaborating both of you did better. Now you’re getting three-fifty a week, they tell me, not counting some afternoon show you do.”
“Less income tax deductions, social security, et cetera.”
“Yes,” Murdock said, but his mind remained in the past and he remembered when Sheila and Faulkner had been married. There had been a year of this before Faulkner went into the army and when he came back from Italy with an arm that had hospitalized him for eight months Sheila had already found some other collaborator.
“You must have learned a lot,” he said. “You used to need a collaborator. Now you can do it alone, hunh?”
She watched him through narrowed lids, saying nothing, and he let his mind move on to the other things that had happened. He did not know the details of the separation, but he knew that Faulkner had later written some more radio scripts alone, coming finally to New York on the strength of some sales to Universal Broadcasting and getting a job as a staff writer at a time when others were taking his place in the army.
“Now you’re working together again—you and Faulkner,” he said. “You’ve both done all right. I heard you say Sob Sister was a package show. What’s that?”
Sheila sat down beside him. She sounded resentful now but she told him. She said most commercial radio programs originated with the advertiser
or agency, but some shows were conceived and produced by the networks themselves. Frequently one of these sustaining shows put on in vacant time became so popular that a sponsor would buy the show as is—or in a so-called package.
“That,” she said, “means the sponsor buys the time, director, writers, actors—everything for so much a week. Agencies don’t like the idea as a rule and duck it when they can because it’s all there for them, created by someone else. I guess they’re afraid the advertiser will think they haven’t earned their commission if they don’t whip up a show all by themselves so they can say, ‘See what bright boys we are down at Gray & Rankin.’”
“Gray & Rankin bought Sob Sister,” Murdock said.
“Because it was a good show. I had the idea and wrote some scripts and took them to Owen. He liked it and gave it an audition, and Universal liked the recording and decided to put it on sustaining. At the end of four weeks we got an unusually good rating for a new show and George Stark thought it might be good for one of his clients so—”
She gestured with her glass, and Murdock nodded. He felt very tired now, and his eyes were heavy but he heard himself say, “Who were you fighting about out in the kitchen, his wife? Where is she?”
“In Reno—so they tell me.”
“On account of you?”
“I suppose so. Why?”
Murdock did not answer, but his mind went on, slowly now and with some difficulty as he thought of the trouble Sheila had caused others. She was, he remembered, responsible for his being in New York when he hadn’t wanted to come. She had got Wyman on the telephone and put in her pitch—and she was good at that—and had told him she would do the story for free if Wyman would send a photographer down. At least that was what Wyman told Murdock the other afternoon.
Murdock had balked at first. He said he was too busy, and Wyman said that’s what he meant. Murdock had been too busy ever since he came back from Italy and the army let him out. He’d been picture chief for the paper and handling two men’s assignments on the side because they were shorthanded and he was getting cranky.
“Go on. Beat it,” Wyman had said. “Take two or three days and rest up and quit arguing.”
So he had come, and it had been Sheila’s fault. She had got what she wanted this time just as she got what she wanted from Owen Faulkner before she separated from him. She had always used people, and suddenly, through the fog inside his head, it occurred to him that he did not like her, had never really liked her.
He considered this and for a moment was a little surprised that he should think so. He wondered if it was because he had been drinking and sought some further explanation. It was funny, thinking about it now. You worked with people and didn’t see them for a few years and then, when you ran across them, memory or nostalgia played you false and you found yourself greeting them like long lost buddies—and very honestly, too, or so you assumed. You thought of old times and what fun you had until you realized that it was all a lie and that you had never been particularly close nor cared about them one way or another.
It never took long. A day or two of the reunion brought out the qualities that had kept you from being friends in the first place and then you knew you were only kidding yourself, that none of the basic elements upon which friendship is built had ever existed. It was that way with Sheila, now that he thought about it. He had never wasted any time on her in the old days in spite of her smile and provocative physical attributes. He had sized her up correctly then and in the fundamentals he knew she had not changed at all. Actually it was the same way with Owen Faulkner, who in those days had been a bright young reporter but a little on the obnoxious side because of his cockiness.
Murdock sipped some of his drink and put the glass down. He shook his head to clear it but the effort did not help. He still felt funny and his head had begun to ache. He was all mixed up in his mind now, but somehow the subject of Sheila had become an ineradicable burr in the center of his consciousness and it seemed terribly important that he tell her how he felt before he left.
“I guess you needed George Stark to sell your show,” he heard himself say. “I guess you played up to him and let him think you were in love with him. Until the show was sold—or until he couldn’t stop the sale without admitting to his client what he’d done. Like now,” he said. “Did you wait until tonight to have it out with him?”
“What?” Sheila said.
“You let him make love until you had what you wanted,” Murdock said. “Just like you always did when you needed something from a guy.”
Sheila said, “What?” again, and the word sounded funny.
The voice was thick and faraway, and when he looked at her, her eyes seemed glazed and heavy-lidded—or maybe it was his own that made him think so.
Her head drooped and she said, “I don’t like you.”
She tossed her head back and the effort knocked her back on the couch.
“Get out!”
“Okay,” Murdock said. “I just wanted you to know how it was. All right,” he said and sat up, taking a deep breath and nearly toppling over before he could brace himself.
He blinked. He shook his head and sucked more air into his lungs. He blinked again, but the room was still hazy and remote. Then, as panic struck him, he knew what was the matter.
It did not help much but he tried. Somehow he got to his feet; somehow he took a step.
When his knees buckled and he went down, he tried to crawl, telling himself that once he reached fresh air he’d be all right, dragging himself toward the door until his arms gave away.
Then, as his strength left him and the darkness came swiftly all about him, he lay still.
4
DAYLIGHT WAS FILTERING through the Venetian blinds when Kent Murdock opened his eyes, and though it was a moment before he could focus them he was instantly aware of the nausea inside him and the vicious throbbing of his head.
He did not try to move then; he did not dare. He closed his eyes and that made things a little better and he kept them closed for a few seconds until his mind grudgingly began to function. He opened his eyes again, not moving his head. He saw the ceiling now, and the green wall which came down and wedged against his left shoulder. He was quite comfortable except for his stomach and head, and there was a pleasant softness beneath him which felt very good until he probed a little further with his thoughts and decided he was lying on the studio couch. Then, with sickening suddenness, he became aware of other details.
Something was pressing him against the wall, and he moved his right arm tentatively and knew he had not slept alone. That scared him plenty and, not turning his head but lifting it slightly, he glanced down.
He wore no coat or vest now, no shoes. Paralleling his legs was another pair, white and curved and bare to the thighs where a rumpled slip covered them.
He closed his eyes again, groaning aloud, but the picture was in his mind now and growing worse. He began to remember what had happened the night before. He flattened himself against the wall, wondering why the figure pressing against him seemed stiff and unyielding. As he tried to turn, his hand touched a bare arm and then, with horrible clarity, he knew why the arm was no longer soft and warm but icy cold.
Recoiling, every muscle tense, he sprang up, his back against the wall, then sliding along it until he could step off the end of the couch to the floor. Slowly he circled until he was beside the still figure on the couch and then he stopped, his breath held and his mind stunned and incredulous.
Sheila Vincent lay on her back, one arm dangling over the edge of the couch, the fingers curled against the green rug. Even without the narrow sash which had been twisted around her throat Murdock knew how she had died; for he had seen and photographed death too often to mistake the signs of asphyxiation by ligature.
He saw all this in a glance and looked away, finding his coat and vest and topcoat on one chair, the shoes beside the couch. A second chair near the shuttered windows held Sheila’s black dress and shoes
and stockings; across the back was a beige silk robe which matched the sash around her neck. On the kneehole desk along the wall was the pocketbook she had carried.
It took a conscious effort to enable himself to break the stiffness in his body, but having moved he began to breathe again and dressed swiftly, his mind still rebelling against the reality of the scene, his eyes busy cataloguing details.
The coffee table had been moved, apparently to enable the killer to lift Murdock and Sheila to the couch and arrange them in proper position. It still held the tray, the metal ice bucket, the half-empty pitcher of water. The glasses were there, too, the ice melted now, but the bottle of Chesterfield Scotch was gone.
That worried him. It worried him like hell. Yet somehow it did not surprise him much, and as he considered the implications of its disappearance something caught his eye beneath the table, something black and somewhat rounded.
He stepped close as he buttoned his vest and reached under the table, finding the object that interested him a crumpled ball of black paper which, when smoothed out, became rectangular in shape, with an arced tab. Folding it once he pocketed it and reached for his coat, knowing what he had to do, knowing he was extremely lucky to have seen the paper ball at all in the semidarkness of the room.
There was, he saw, no point in trying to remove his fingerprints—because he had to come back. That much was certain. For he had too much experience as a newspaperman to kid himself about the efficiency of a big city police department. Once the murder was discovered and the official wheels had begun to turn, they would soon discover that he, Murdock, had brought Sheila home; to deny that he had come in would be stupid, since he had come by taxi and the law required drivers to keep a record of each fare.
He could visualize the whole thing very clearly now, and it made a grim picture. Marie, the maid, would probably be the one to find the body, and, if she did not run screaming to the street, would telephone for the police. Then would come the usual investigation of Sheila’s friends and what had happened the night before and finally the taxi driver who would point out Murdock as the man who not only brought Sheila home but went inside with her.
Fifth Key Page 3
