Murdock said he didn’t know and saw that she did not believe him. He put his hand into his pocket, and the handkerchief was there and in that instant before he took it out he wondered why he had not given it to Devlin.
Because he liked her?
He pondered further, aware that people who committed murders were always liked by someone. They had friends like anyone else and it was understandable that such friends gave one the benefit of the doubt and did what they could. But this was no matter of friendship; no obligation was involved. She had just happened to be a woman that attracted him and experience had shown him that it was generally unwise to protect a person just because you happened to like him.
He had also learned that he got better breaks, and more and better pictures by co-operating with the police, that it was usually pretty silly to think you could outsmart such an organization of specialists. In this case he was in a jam and there were many things he had to hide, but this handkerchief was not one of them.
“Is this yours?” he said, spreading it across his palm.
He spoke quietly, intent upon her face. He saw her lips start to form a word, the gleam of recognition in her eyes—or thought he did. Then, an instant later, the eyes were different and so was the shape of her mouth. She looked right at him. She added a faint, indulgent smile.
“Why, no,” she said, “it’s not.”
“Whoever owns it uses Piquante, too. Maybe,” he said, “you’d know why someone would hide Sheila’s body in a closet and then telephone her maid not to come today.”
“Did someone do that?” she asked, nothing changing in her face.
“The police say she was killed on the couch. They found her in the bedroom closet. Why should anyone take all that trouble?”
Lois Edwards folded her hands and when she spoke her voice was low but still vibrant and nice to hear.
“If that’s a hypothetical question,” she said, “I can think of one answer.” She paused, glanced up. “The contracts for the program were to have been signed late this morning. If someone were afraid the murder might spoil things he might not want her body discovered until later.”
Murdock found her reasoning good and told her so. Then he said, “You’re not particularly sorry, are you?”
“About Sheila? No. I can’t think of anyone who will be sorry—unless it’s Arthur Calvert. She gave him his chance when no one else would; I don’t know why. No, I’m sorry. I’ve never known a more selfish woman, nor one more cruel.”
She paused again, not looking at him but beyond him. What she saw seemed a long way off, and Murdock was quiet because he thought there was more to come.
“She stepped on people to get what she wanted,” Lois Edwards said. “She promised to give Owen Faulkner his divorce when the show was sponsored. With the extra hundred and fifty a week she’d get when the show went commercial she said she wouldn’t need his separation payments. That’s why he worked so hard to make it a success. The day before yesterday when she knew the sponsor was signing, she changed her mind. She said she’d decided to wait awhile; she wanted to be sure the show was renewed at the end of thirteen weeks. After that she would no doubt have thought of some other excuse.”
Her eyes came back to him and she stood up, reaching for her jacket. “No, Mr. Murdock,” she said. “I can’t feel too badly for Sheila. In fact, I think she got about what she deserved.”
There was no vindictiveness in her voice; she was stating a fact. And Murdock, speculating on her manner and the things she had said, had an idea it would be a difficult job to prove this woman guilty, even if you thought so. She had the kind of quiet, resolute courage that, once her mind was made up that the struggle was worth it, would enable her to look you right in the eye and calmly and convincingly deny whatever it was you were trying to prove.
She was in love with Owen Faulkner, and now she would have him. It made, Murdock saw, a lovely motive for murder.
Arthur Calvert lived in a rooming-house on the west side of town, and when Murdock arrived about three o’clock he found the actor’s mood as depressing as his surroundings. “Come in,” Calvert said. “I was having a drink. I was having three drinks. I shouldn’t but today I need them. Take off your coat.”
He waved toward a bottle on the table, and Murdock’s heart gave a sudden thump as he recognized the brand. He walked toward it, the excitement growing in him as Calvert produced a glass and then, as he got a better look at the bottle, the bottom dropped out of his ill-found assumption.
It was Chesterfield Scotch, all right, but the label was smooth and intact, and he was angry with himself for jumping to conclusions as he remembered other things. Calvert had obviously been drinking, and if it had been the bottle Murdock sought the big man would now be stretched out unconscious on the floor. He tossed off the drink and sat down, listening to Calvert tell him how the police had come to question him about Sheila and how lousy he felt.
“I guess she did a lot for you,” Murdock said.
“Did she?” Calvert waved a hand to indicate the room. “All you have to do is look at this place to know how it’s been with me. I can get out of here, get a decent place now, thanks to Sheila.”
Murdock examined the room and knew what Calvert meant. It was big and high-ceilinged, overlooking the street, but the furniture was old and worn—a day bed, two easy chairs, a table-desk, another table, and in the corner behind a screen, a washbowl and an electric grill. There was no bath and all that Calvert had was right here.
“Because of her I’ve been getting a hundred a week,” Calvert said. “I’ll get two hundred when we go commercial. It isn’t much compared to five years ago, but right now—” He sighed and put the bottle away, a ruggedly built man in slacks and sport shirt, still handsome at forty, with blond wavy hair and a nice pair of shoulders.
“Not that I’ve got anybody to blame but myself,” he said. “I wasn’t a big shot in Hollywood then but I was getting fifteen hundred dollars each and every Friday and I was on my way up.” He laughed shortly. “The trouble was it went to my head. Then I had that damned accident and after that—”
He left the sentence unfinished, and Murdock recalled the rest of it, remembering the publicity on Arthur Calvert and the automobile accident which killed a girl and nearly crippled him.
“They didn’t take up my option,” Calvert said. “I was quite a while in the hospital and then I got drinking—Hah,” he said. “I was a lush—for years. I went to sanitariums and took cures and when I got straightened out I came to New York to do a play.”
There was bitterness in his laugh, and his tone was reminiscent but resentful. “That’s what I thought,” he said. “It wasn’t too much of a part, only two sides but one of them important. Everyone was telling me we were set for a solid run on Broadway, because how could we miss with our big name director. It was nice to hear and to think about, knowing that once we came to town my troubles would be over.”
He paused and said, “We opened in New Haven for a three-day stand. We didn’t ring down the curtain until twelve o’clock the opening night, and the reviews were lukewarm, not panning us, you understand, but letting everyone know we weren’t in by a long shot. Well, the authors and the directors rewrote and cut and rewrote some more. I wound up with a walk-on and the one good bit, and we got the third-act curtain down to eleven-ten and went to Boston for two weeks.”
He picked up his glass, found it empty, and put it down: He rubbed his palm across his face. He slumped farther down in his chair and said, “Those Boston critics are kind of tough. Maybe you know that. They didn’t give us much but we were improving the production right along and we might have had something if we could have sweated it out. But it was hard on everyone and the producer had to put in a call for more backing and the authors got to fighting with the producer, and the lead—a Hollywood guy I won’t name—got huffy or homesick or something; maybe he was scared of what the New York critics would do to him. Anyway he walked out. We closed in Boston
.”
He sighed. “Nice, huh?” He put his head back and kept talking, and what he said showed in the disillusioned blue eyes and in the lines of his face as Murdock listened to the rest of it. Calvert explained about two more shows, one of which opened on Tuesday and closed on Saturday, the other holding on for seven weeks. He said he’d haunted producers’ offices for months, until his shoes had holes in them and receptionists were sick of the sight of him. Then, in desperation, he had turned to radio as the only thing left.
“I knew a guy at Columbia who used to be on the Coast, and he gave me a couple of spots now and then. I met more people and after a while they let me do a little odd-job announcing at Universal on afternoon shows. And then I got on regular with an afternoon sustainer that Sheila was doing, and she seemed to like me so I made a business of selling myself.” He grinned wryly.
“I thought I knew her type. She was a hard, strong-minded woman. I guess she played all the angles and always for Sheila, but she liked men around. She was a tramp where men were concerned. She didn’t want to play for keeps but she liked to have her fun. She wanted admiration and attention and when I saw how it was I gave it to her. I was polite and deferential and charming—after all I was an actor, wasn’t I?—and I ran errands and flattered her.”
He paused, staring at the wall, his tone still reminiscent.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe I was a heel but I was desperate, and it paid off. She got to like me—or what I had to offer—and when I took her home she’d ask me in for a drink. So when they were casting Sob Sister she gave me a break. I don’t think Faulkner would have taken me but Sheila had a nice setup. She had a lot to say and it was all down in the contract with Universal.”
“Because she was smart?” Murdock asked.
“That, and because she knew they had a good show. She had complete control of scripts and stories and she had a say in who was to act in it. Faulkner wanted Lois Edwards for the lead—you know the stories? She’s the reporter and I’m her photographer pal—and Sheila said okay for Lois but I was going to be the man with the camera. It worked out nice, and the show got a swell press and listener reaction and now—” He sighed loudly and said, “I don’t know. The police wouldn’t tell me much but it must have been some guy she double-crossed; there must have been plenty of them. I don’t know how else to figure it.”
“The show will keep right on, though, won’t it?” Murdock said.
“Why—sure. We won’t have Sheila, but George Stark told us he could get someone to write it if she ever backed out. And I understand the sponsor is nuts about the show.”
He sat up suddenly, his eyes startled and a little afraid. “Good God, I hope it goes on! I hope nothing happens to it now.”
He stopped, the worried look still on his face as his mind explored the unpleasant possibility, and then somewhere in the house a telephone rang, and he turned in his chair, listening. Presently a woman’s voice called his name, and he stood up.
Excusing himself, he went out, and Murdock rose and strolled about the room. Everything he saw bore out his first impressions, and when he came to the table-desk and saw the folded piece of paper he had no compunctions about examining it. It was a bill that said Calvert owed thirty dollars for three weeks’ rent, and at the bottom was a line which read: Pay something this week or move.
Murdock put the note back, noticing now the door on his left that stood ajar. On impulse he opened it and found it a narrow closet in which hung three suits, some extra slacks, a trench coat. A blue robe hung on a hook, and he was about to close the door when he saw something pink beneath the blue. When he pushed the robe aside he found a different sort of robe, soft and fragile and feminine.
Interested now but not knowing why, he fanned the silken robe wide and saw the monogram on the ornamental breast pocket. The light was bad but he thought the letters spelled SV. He was trying to make sure when he heard the sound behind him and glanced over his shoulder to find Calvert watching him from the hall door.
The big man seemed more curious than annoyed. It was obvious that he knew what Murdock had seen but if it bothered him he did not act that way. Instead an odd smile touched his mouth, and he shrugged faintly.
“Pink looks funny in a man’s closet, doesn’t it?” he said.
Murdock apologized. He said he wondered where the door led to and when he opened it he saw the bit of pink and couldn’t resist the temptation to see what it was.
“It’s okay,” Calvert said.
“Sheila’s?”
The actor nodded. “And now you know I wasn’t lying when I said she liked me a little.” He laughed softly, an unhappy sound. “I guess she liked to go slumming once in a while. So she came here. Don’t ask me why.”
Knowing Sheila, Murdock was not surprised, but he wondered how often she had come and how lately. “I thought George Stark was the current boy.”
“He was,” Calvert said. “This thing with me was before Georgie became important to her plans. That was Georgie on the phone,” he added. “They’re having a huddle up in Faulkner’s office. They want me to stop in. Something about the show.”
Murdock reached for his hat and coat. As he put them on it occurred to him that a huddle was often a good place to learn things and suddenly the impatience was growing in him, telling him he had to do something—and quickly, before Devlin moved in on him and it was too late. Hope rose with this feeling of urgency and he wondered if in Faulkner’s office he would find a lead that would give him the start he wanted. He said if it was all right with Calvert he’d go along.
7
THE RECEPTION TENDERED Murdock and Calvert when they arrived at Faulkner’s office ten minutes later was grim and discouraging. There were no amenities. George Stark, the smoothly immaculate account executive of Gray & Rankin, leaned against the wall, his thin face morose and brooding. Faulkner’s sandy hair was tousled. The knot in his cravat was loosened, and he had unbuttoned his collar. His face was harried and flushed and he was twisting his ring back and forth absently, his scowl fixed on Dale Jordan in the straight-backed chair.
He glanced at Murdock, ignored him, then glowered so at Calvert that the big man said, “Is anything wrong?”
“Oh, no.” Faulkner said sourly. “Everything is just peachy. Sit down,” he said, his voice hardening. “Listen to this, Arthur. Go ahead, Miss Jordan, tell him.”
Dale Jordan’s young face was pale but composed. She had her chin up, and her eyes were steady. She looked at Murdock and at Calvert and then, as though picking her words with great care, she said firmly, “I have been telling Mr. Faulkner and Mr. Stark that Sheila did not own Sob Sister. She wrote the scripts but she did not write the stories and it was never her idea.”
For perhaps a half minute then no one moved and the room was quiet. Even Murdock, who had no personal interest in the program, felt the impact of the words and sensed the drama they had created. He took a quick look at Stark and Faulkner, and they did not stir nor change expression, and in those seconds there was no sound at all but someone’s heavy breathing.
It was Calvert who made the sound. He reached for the chair. As though it required a great physical effort he lowered himself to the seat, his eyes uncertain, his mouth a little slack. He glanced at Stark, at Faulkner; he moistened his lips.
“Then who does?” he asked weakly.
“My husband,” Dale said. “Keith Harding.”
Without knowing anything else, Murdock found himself believing her. The way she looked, neither hostile nor defiant but definitely determined, the way she spoke, suggested that what she said was true—or at least what she believed to be true.
“Go ahead.” Stark smoothed his mustache irritably. “Tell him the rest of it. Tell him why you came to New York and got the job with Sheila.”
“I met him in California,” she said. “Keith was a radio writer and I was working for Columbia in Hollywood and Keith came there one day to see a friend of his—I was his secretary. He was sta
tioned near by and he came back after that two or three times and once he asked me if I would copy a couple of pages of script for him.”
She lowered her glance and said, “I guess he felt he ought to repay me so he asked if I would have dinner with him and after that we saw quite a lot of each other. We were married,” she added simply, “before he shipped to the Pacific.”
She paused and Calvert said, “Where is he now?”
“On the West Coast. He was wounded on Okinawa and invalided home. It was his hip,” she said. “He was in the hospital a long time but he could get around pretty well the last couple of months and he had a radio beside his bed. He happened to hear the first broadcast of Sob Sister and when I came to see him he told me the story.”
She glanced at Faulkner as though asking him whether he wanted her to tell the rest of it. Apparently what she saw in his face prompted her to finish the story.
“He worked some with Sheila before he went into the army,” she said, “and he had the idea for the show and wrote a couple of scripts and then outlined eleven more stories so he’d have a full thirteen weeks to present in case anyone was interested. He told Sheila what he was doing but he didn’t tell her what the show was about, and before he could sell it he had to go into the army.”
She rearranged her hands and said, “He was an orphan and he lived in a furnished apartment. There wasn’t any-thing he owned but a typewriter and some clothes and books and the things he had written, so when Sheila offered to store them he said all right. He gave her everything but the typewriter. The scripts and outlines were locked in his trunk, and sometime after that Sheila got it open and saw what he had. She took the Sob Sister stories and—”
She did not get a chance to finish the sentence because just then the door opened and Ira Bronson walked in and greeted the room with a smile. He started to say something but George Stark cut him off.
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