by Anne Austin
“Did you—want to kill her, Ralph?” Penny whispered, touching one of his knotted fists with a trembling hand.
“Kill her? … Good Lord, no!” the boy flung at her violently. “I’m not such an ass as that! You girls are all alike! Polly had so little sense as to think I’d want to kill Nita and Sprague both! She couldn’t see, and neither could Clive, that all I wanted was to get away from everybody and get so drunk I could forget what a fool I’d been—”
“What did you do, Ralph?” Penny asked urgently.
“Why, I got drunk, of course,” the boy answered, as if surprised at her persistence. “Darling, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you how much rot-gut Scotch it took to put me under, but that filthy bootlegging hotel clerk would have charged me twice what he did for the stuff if he had known how much good it would do me.”
“Hotel?” Penny snatched at the vital word. “Where did you go to get drunk, Ralph?”
“I never realized before you had so much curiosity, honey,” the boy grinned at her. “After I shook Clive—Polly went on to Nita’s bridge party, because she couldn’t throw her down at the last minute—I wandered around till I came to the Railroad Men’s Hotel, down on State Street, you know, the other side of the tracks. It’s a miserable dump, but I sort of hankered for a place to hide in that was as miserable and cheap as I felt—”
“Did you register under your own name?”
“Ashamed of me, Penny? … No, I registered under my first two names—Ralph Edwards. And the rat-faced, filthy little hotel clerk turned out to be a bootlegger…. Well, when I woke up about eleven this morning I give you my word I wasn’t sick and headachy, though God knows I’d drunk enough to put me out for a week…. Penny, I woke up feeling—well, I can’t explain it but to say I felt light and new and—and clean…. All washed-up! At first I thought my heart was empty—it felt so free of pain. But as I lay there thanking God that that was that, I found my heart wasn’t empty at all. It was brimming full of love—Gosh, honey! I sound like a Laura Jean Libbey hero, don’t I? … But before I rang you from the lunch room where I ate breakfast I wrote Nita a special delivery note, telling her it was all off. I had to be free actually, before I could ask you…. You will marry me, won’t you, Penny honey? … I knew this morning I had never really loved anyone else—”
Penelope Crain remained rigid for a moment, then very slowly she laid both her hands on his head, for he had knelt and buried his face against her skirt. But as she spoke, her brown eyes, enormous in her white face, were upon Dundee, who had stepped silently from behind the portieres.
“Yes. I’ll marry you, Ralph! … You may come in now, Mr. Dundee!”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
It was nearly nine o’clock Monday morning, and Special Investigator Dundee sat alone in the district attorney’s office, impatiently awaiting Sanderson’s arrival. Coroner Price, with the approval of Captain Strawn of the Homicide Squad, had set the inquest into the murder of Juanita Leigh Selim for ten o’clock, and there was much that Dundee wished to say to the district attorney before that hour arrived.
When the thoroughly tired and dispirited young detective had returned to his apartment late Sunday afternoon, after having seen Ralph Hammond completely exonerated of any possible complicity in the murder of Nita Selim, he had found a telegram from the district attorney, filed in Chicago: “CALLED CHICAGO SERIOUS ILLNESS OF MOTHER STOP RETURNING HAMILTON EIGHT TEN MONDAY MORNING STOP SEE BY PAPERS YOU ARE ON SELIM JOB STOP GOOD BUT WATCH YOUR STEP—SANDERSON”
Well—and Dundee grinned ruefully—he had been on the job all right, but would Sanderson consider that he had “watched his step”? At any rate, he had been thorough, he congratulated himself, as he weighed the big manilla envelope containing his own transcription of the copious shorthand notes he had taken during the first hours of the investigation. A smaller envelope held Nita’s tell-tale checkbook, her amazing last will and testament, and the still more startling note she had written to Lydia Carr. The last two Dundee had retrieved from Carraway only this morning, after having submitted them to the fingerprint expert on Sunday.
Carraway’s report had rather dashed him at first, for it proved that no other hands than Nita’s—and his own, of course—had touched either envelope or contents. But he was content now to believe that Nita herself had unsealed the envelope she had inscribed, “To Be Opened in Case of My Death”…. Why? … Had she been moved by an impulse to give a clue to the identity of the person of whom she stood in fear, but had stifled the impulse?
Strawn had said, too, that the little rosewood desk had been in a fairly orderly condition, before his big, official hands had clawed through it in search of a clue or the gun itself…. Well, Strawn had been properly chagrined when Dundee had produced the will and note….
“Why did she stick it away in a pack of new envelopes, if she wanted it to be found?” Strawn had demanded irritably, and had not been appeased by Dundee’s suggestion: “Because she did not want Lydia, in dusting the desk, to see it and be alarmed.”
Yes, he had been busy enough, but what, actually, had he to show for his industry? He had worked up three good cases—the first against Lydia Carr, the second against Dexter Sprague, and the third against Ralph Hammond—only to have them knocked to pieces almost as fast as he had conceived them…. Of course Lydia Carr might be lying to give Sprague an alibi, but Dundee was convinced that she was telling the truth and that she hated Sprague too much to fake an alibi for him…. Of course there was always Judge Marshall, but—
Through the closed door came sounds which Dundee presently identified as connected with Penny Crain’s arrival—the emphatic click of her heels; the quick opening and shutting of desk drawers….
The down-hearted young detective debated the question of taking his perplexities out to her, but decided against it. She probably wanted to hear no more of his theories, was undoubtedly burning with righteous indignation against him because of Ralph Hammond…. Did she still consider herself engaged to Ralph, in spite of the fact that young Hammond had gallantly insisted upon releasing her from her promise as soon as he suspected that it had been given merely to prove her faith in his innocence?
It was a decidedly unhappy young detective whom Sanderson greeted upon his arrival at nine o’clock.
The new district attorney, who had held office since November, was a big, good-natured, tolerant man, who looked younger than his 35 years because of his freckles and his always rumpled mop of sandy hair. But those who sought to take advantage of his good nature in the courtroom found themselves up against as keen a lawyer and prosecutor as could be found in the whole state, or even in the Middle West.
“Well, boy!” he greeted Dundee genially but with an undertone of solemnity in his rich, jury-swaying baritone. “Looks like we’ve got a sensational murder on our hands. It’s not every day Hamilton can rate a headline like ‘BROADWAY BELLE MURDERED AT BRIDGE’—to quote a Chicago paper…. But I’m afraid there’s not enough mystery in it to suit your tastes.”
Dundee grinned wryly. “I’ve been pretty down in the mouth all morning because there’s a little too much mystery, chief.”
“Fairly open-and-shut, isn’t it?” Sanderson asked, obviously surprised. “New York gets too hot for this Selim baby—probably mixed up with some racketeer, racketeers being the favorite boy-friends of ‘Broadway belles’, if one can believe the tabloids. Lois Dunlap offers her a job to organize a Little Theater in Hamilton—which the fair Nita would certainly have described as a hick town and which she wouldn’t have been found dead in if she could have helped it—” and the district attorney grinned at his own witticism, “—but Broadway Nita jumps at it. Her racketeer sweetie has a long arm, however, and Nita gets hers. Justly enough, probably, but I wish to the Lord she had chosen some other town to hide in. Lois Dunlap is the finest woman in Hamilton, but she’s too damned promiscuous in her friendships. As it is now, some of the best friends I have in the world are mixed up in this mess, even if it
is only as innocent victims of circumstance—”
Until then Dundee had let his chief express his pent-up convictions without interruption, and indeed Sanderson’s courtroom training had fitted him admirably for long speeches. But he could keep silent no longer.
“That is what has been worrying me, chief,” he interrupted. “Captain Strawn has given the papers very little real information, but the truth is I am afraid one of your friends was not an innocent victim of circumstance.”
District Attorney Sanderson sat down abruptly in the swivel chair at his desk. “Just what do you mean, Dundee?”
“I mean I am convinced that one of Mrs. Selim’s guests was her murderer, but I’d like to tell you the whole story, and let you judge for yourself.”
“My God!” Sanderson ejaculated. Slowly he drew out a handkerchief and mopped his freckled brow. “If I hadn’t had a good many years of experience with criminals, Dundee, I’d say it is obvious on the face of it that none of those four men—Judge Marshall, Tracey Miles, Johnny Drake, Clive Hammond—could have committed such a cheap, sensational crime as murdering a hostess during a bridge game…. Not that I haven’t wanted to commit murder myself over many a game of bridge,” he added, with the irrepressible humor for which he was famous. Then he groaned, the rueful twinkle still in his eye: “I’m afraid we’re in for a lot of gruesome kidding. Why, last night, in the club car of my train, three tables of bridge players could scarcely play a hand for wisecracking about the dangers of being dummy! … Well, boy, now that I’ve talked myself past the worst shock, suppose you give me the low-down. But I warn you I’m going to take a powerful lot of convincing.”
Painstakingly, and in the greatest detail, Dundee told the whole story, beginning with his arrival Saturday evening at the Selim house, including the ghastly replaying of the “death hand at bridge”—a phrase, by the way, which the prosecutor instantly adopted—and ending with Ralph Hammond’s establishing of an alibi, to the entire satisfaction of Captain Strawn, as well as of Dundee himself. He was interrupted frequently of course, scoffingly at first, then with deepening solemnity and respect on the part of the district attorney.
“Let me see the plan of the house again,” he said, when Dundee had finished. “Also that table you’ve worked up showing the approximate time and order of arrival of the four men…. Thanks! … Hmm! … Hmm!”
“You see, sir,” Dundee repeated at last, “the list of possible suspects includes Lydia Carr, Dexter Sprague, John C. Drake, Judge Marshall, Polly Beale, Flora Miles, Janet Raymond, Clive Hammond—”
“But Polly and Clive were in the solarium together all the time!” Sanderson objected.
“So they said,” Dundee agreed. “But it is a very short trip from the solarium by way of the side porch into Nita’s bedroom. And either Polly Beale or Clive Hammond could have made that trip, on the pretext of speaking to Nita about Ralph! … Motive: murder to end blackmail. Naturally such a theory would not include both of them, but if one of them was being blackmailed and made use of the pretext of warning Nita of Ralph’s overwrought condition—”
“Sprague’s your man!” Sanderson interrupted with relief. “Motive: jealousy because Nita was ditching him to marry Ralph…. As for the gun and silencer, it seems pretty clear to me that Nita herself stole it from Judge Marshall, and that Sprague got it away from her. You say the maid, Lydia, went upstairs to tell Sprague he had to pack his things and take them away—for good! … Very well! Sprague goes down the backstairs with the gun in his pocket, through the back hall into Nita’s bedroom, shoots her, bumps into the lamp, goes out by the back door, and comes around front to join the party…. You say yourself he has admitted to everything but the trip to Nita’s room and the shooting—even to sneaking back to get his bag, which I believe also contained the gun until he had a chance to dispose of it on his way to his hotel in Hamilton.”
Dundee shook his head. “I’d like to agree, chief, but I believe Lydia is telling the truth. She says she was in the upstairs bedroom with Sprague and remained behind only two or three minutes at most, to put his shaving kit into the packed bag, and to clean up the bathroom basin. On her way down the backstairs she says she heard Lois Dunlap’s second ring and went to answer it. Sprague and Janet Raymond, with whom Janet says he stopped to talk a minute on the front porch, were in the dining room before Lydia entered it…. I’m convinced Lydia hates Sprague and would be glad to believe him guilty…. No, Mr. Sanderson, I don’t believe Sprague did it, but I do believe it was Sprague’s revenge that Nita was afraid of when she made her will Friday night. Naturally she figured she’d have time to tell the person she was blackmailing that she was through with him—or her, but I believe Sprague and Nita were lovers, even partners in blackmail, and that she feared he would kill her when he knew she was going to marry Ralph Hammond and give up their source of income.”
Sanderson considered for a long minute, pulling at his full lower lip. “Well, thank God for those precious footprints Strawn is building on! Don’t think I fail to follow your reasoning that the crime must have been committed in the bedroom, and not from the window sill, but those footprints may save us yet, and will certainly get us through the inquest. You agree, of course, that none of all this you’ve told me must even be hinted at during the inquest? … Good! Let’s be going. It’s nearly ten.”
Dundee’s whole soul revolted at the very thought of the barbaric farce of an inquest—the small morgue chapel crowded to the doors with goggle-eyed, blood-loving humanity; the stretcher with its sheeted corpse; reporters avid of sensation and primed with questions which, if answered by indiscreet witnesses, would defeat the efforts of police and district attorney; news photographers with their insatiable cameras aimed at every person connected with the case in any way.
Mercifully, this particular inquest upon the body of Juanita Leigh Selim promised to be quickly over. For Coroner Price, in conference with Sanderson, Dundee and Captain Strawn, had gladly agreed to call only those witnesses and extract from them only such information as the authorities deemed advisable.
Lydia Carr, whose black veil had defeated the news camera levelled at her poor scarred face, was the first witness called by Coroner Price, and she was required for the single purpose of identifying the body as that of her mistress. To two perfunctory questions—“Have you any information to give this jury regarding the cause and manner of the deceased’s death?” and “Have you any personal knowledge of the identity of any person, man or woman, of whom the deceased stood in fear of her life?”—Lydia answered a flat “No!” and was then dismissed.
Karen Marshall, looking far too young to be the wife of the elderly ex-judge, Hugo Marshall, was the second witness called. Dr. Price guided her gently to a brief recital of her discovery of the dead body of her hostess, emphasizing only the fact that, so far as she could see, the bedroom was unoccupied except by the corpse at the time of the discovery.
He then handed her the photostatic copy of a blueprint of the ground floor of the Selim house, with a pencilled ring drawn around the bedroom. Karen falteringly identified it, as well as the pencil-drawn furniture, and was immediately dismissed—to the packed rows of spectators and reporters.
Dr. Price himself took the stand next and described, in technical terms, the wound which had caused death and the caliber of the bullet he had extracted from the dead woman’s heart.
“I find, also, from the autopsy,” he concluded, “that the bullet traveled a downward-slanting path. I should add, moreover, that I have made exact mathematical calculations, using the position of the body and of the wound as a basis, and found that a line drawn from the wound, and extended, at the correct slant, ends at a point 51.8 inches high, upon the right-hand side of the frame of the window nearest the porch door.” And he obligingly passed the marked blueprint among the jury. When it was in his own hands again, he added: “It is impossible to state the exact distance the bullet traveled, more nearly than to say the shot was fired along the line I have indicate
d, at a distance of not more than fifteen feet and not less than ten.”
Captain Strawn rose and was permitted to question the witness:
“Dr. Price, that blueprint shows that the bedroom is fifteen feet in width, don’t it?”
“That is correct.”
“Have you also measured the height of that window sill from the floor?”
“I have,” the coroner answered. “The height from floor to sill is 26 inches.”
“Now, doctor, from your calculations, would it be possible for a man crouching in the open window to fire a shot along the path you have calculated?”
“It would,” Dr. Price answered. “But as I have pointed out, it is impossible for me to say at exactly what distance from the body the shot was fired.”
But Strawn, of course, was amply satisfied. And so were Dundee and the district attorney, for it suited their purposes admirably for the public to be convinced at this time that an intruding gunman had murdered Nita Selim.
Captain Strawn, sworn in, told briefly of his being called to the scene of the crime, of the activities of Carraway, the fingerprint expert, and of the exhaustive search of his squad of detectives.
“Did you find any person concealed upon the premises, that is, within the house itself, or in the garage or on the grounds?” Dr. Price asked.
“No, sir.”
“Did you or your men discover the weapon with which the deceased was killed?”
“No, sir.”
“Did you question all persons in the house at the time of the crime, as to whether or not a shot had been heard?”
“I did. The answer in every case was that they heard no shot.”
“And you also questioned every person present in an effort to place responsibility for the death of Mrs. Selim?”
