The Case of the Murdered Madame (Prologue Books)

by Henry, Kane,

  “Tell you when I see you, kid. You coming, or do I send for you?”

  I sighed softly. “I’m coming,” I said.

  “You know where it is?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. How soon, Pete?”

  “Ten minutes. His place is near enough.”

  “Good boy, fella. Thanks.”

  There was a click and the connection was dead. I replaced the receiver and slid out of bed. I brought my clothes to the living room, flicked a glance at the clock. It was 11:10. Murder, Parker had said. It hadn’t excited me — blood doesn’t excite a surgeon. Violent death is a constant item in my affairs, part of my stock in trade. Max Keith, Parker had said, but he hadn’t gone into it. It had been, perforce, a laconic conversation: pithy. Pithy. What a word. Was Max Keith the murderer? Or the murdered? Or had murder occurred in the presence of Max Keith? I’d find out soon enough.

  I dressed rapidly and quietly, grabbed a quick eye-opener, snatched a cigarette, and went to the bedroom door. “Okay,” I said. “Okay in there.” There was a rustle of movement, then the usual harsh-soft gargling sounds of unpleased awakening. Distinctly I said: “Go home. Do you hear? Go home now, right now. It’s very important. Go home. At once.”

  II

  Max Keith, fair-haired boy of his profession, guiding genius of Keith Associates. Max Keith, press-agent. There are other names: publicists, promotional attorneys, publicity counsellors, exploitation engineers, institutional advocates — the appellations grow more esoteric in direct ratio to the size of the fees and the importance of the clients, but Max Keith did not go in for flights of fancy. Beneath the gold block-letters spelling out Keith Associates on the entrance door of his sumptuous offices at Rockefeller Plaza appeared, in smaller gold block-letters, the simple legend: Public Relations Counsellors. This counselling, mystical as it may be, afforded him a tremendous income, a reputation as a free-spending playboy, an ever-changing retinue of resplendent females, and a penthouse apartment on Park Avenue, 600 Park Avenue, to be exact.

  Max Keith was about forty-five years of age, tall, slim, chipper, charming, well-tailored, well-mannered, and slightly supercilious. He was effusively greeted in the night clubs, he was a member in good standing of the best after-hours bottle clubs, and the perkiest of the really perky damozels of the evening perked at their most incandescent in his presence. It was rumored that he had recently been engaged, or was about to be engaged: I didn’t know, and I didn’t care. I had heard that he’d been married once, a long time ago, and then divorced. His engagement — or his impending engagement — had come as somewhat of a shock to those within his social circle and the shock, watered-down, had filtered through to me: Max Keith was so much the perfect bachelor, bright and charming. Personally, the charm was lost on me. I had done a little job of work for him once, and it had thrown us together for about a week. I had seen him silken and mush-mouthed, and I had seen him foul and brutal — his personality was as elastic as an actor’s age. He was a tough man to figure, but it was neither my job nor inclination to analyze him: so I let it lie. As a matter of fact, I had only this day turned down a short assignment he had proffered — it had conflicted with a date, and the date had been more important.

  600 Park Avenue was a narrow twelve-story white-faced building near Sixty-fourth Street, ten minutes from where I live, which is Central Park South and Sixth Avenue. My cab drew up to the address where I paid, got out, walked to a heavy wrought-iron door, pulled it open, and pushed the button adjacent to Keith in the beautifully clean marble vestibule. “Yeah?” a voice croaked through the interedifice telephonic system. “Who is it?”

  “Chambers. Peter Chambers.”

  “Who?”

  I shoved my lips close to the sieve-like appurtenance set squash in the middle of the pushbutton-and-name apparatus attached to the marble wall. “Chambers,” I yelled. “Peter Chambers.”

  “Okay, okay,” came the metallic retort. “Don’t holler, for Chrissake.” Then there was an irking sound-off click, and then the buzzer on the inner door set up a rasp. I pushed through a second wrought-iron door, this one glass-backed with shirred curtains backing the glass-backing, and I went to one of two automatic elevators, touched a finger to the top button, and floated upward within a soundless cage of well-greased mechanism. Upstairs, the door to Max Keith’s apartment was held open by a uniformed cop. “Chambers?” he said.

  “I’m Chambers.”

  “Come in.”

  “Thank you.”

  I went through and he remained stationed at the door.

  First there was a little foyer, and then there was a large foyer, and then there was an enormous drawing room peopled by six busy males, and one languorous female, and one cadaver, very male and very dead. I recognized three of the busy males, all out of Homicide: Detective-lieutenant Louis Parker, great friend; Detective-sergeant Bob Fleetwood, great fingerprint man; and Detective-sergeant Carl Walsh, great photographer. I also recognized the cadaver: Max Keith, his head pulpy and part of his face covered with a thick crust of drying blood. I assumed the man-near-the-black-bag who was kneeling near him was a doctor from the Medical Examiner’s office. I did not know the languorous female. She was in a far corner of the room, talking to friend Parker. She was a tall blonde with petulant eyes and a rose-bud mouth. She was stacked inside of a gold party-dress, and stacked is the proper word. The dress billowed on bottom and pouted on top. Her arms were bare, her back was bare, and most of her chest was bare, soft-white, milk-white, and uptilted. The petulant eyes were blue, the blonde hair was piled-on-head in a complex shining coiffure, and the small rose-bud mouth was sucked in like a nervous schoolgirl’s, the lower lip being bitten.

  One of the men whom I did not recognize looked up, hat on head, from an inspection of the drawers of a huge glinting polished-wood desk, and said, “Yeah? What’s with you?”

  “With me,” I said, “it’s nothing.”

  Parker detached himself from the languorous blonde. “It’s all right,” he said. “He’s for me.”

  “All yours, Lieutenant.” He went back to his examination of the contents of the drawers.

  Parker came to me, said, “Hi.” Parker was short, thick, brusk, powerful, and earnest. Parker was a black-haired, black-eyed, honest cop, who pitched them straight and never threw a curve. Parker was a friend of long standing and Parker was a broad-backed broad-souled human being who had a deep respect for the meaning of friendship. Parker could lose his temper, and Parker could grow bitterly sarcastic, but Detective-lieutenant Louis Parker, Homicide, New York City, never-ever flipped off-keel. Parker took my arm and led me to the blonde. “You two,” he said, “perchance know each other?”

  The blue eyes were cool, puckering as they appraised me. “Don’t believe I ever had the pleasure,” she said.

  “My loss, entirely,” I said.

  There seemed to be a smile somewhere in back of the cool blue eyes. “Were you … were you a friend of …?” The eyes skimmed to the center of the room where the body lay, then came back to me.

  “An employee,” I said. “On occasion. Piece work.”

  “Oh.” Now there was no smile. The hint of expression behind the eyes retreated to blankness: opaque, remote, disinterested.

  Parker said “Ruth Rollins. Peter Chambers.”

  “How do you do?”

  “How do you do?”

  Parker said, “Will you excuse us for a few minutes, Miss Rollins?” She moved to a chair, sat down, extended a hand to a cigarette box, placed the cigarette between pink lips. Gallantly, Parker lit it for her. “Just a few moments,” he said, touching my arm. He led me through an archway into a smaller room, a study, the walls book-lined, the furniture of deep-red leather. There we were alone. “Glad you could come,” he said.

  “Real polite tonight,” I said. “Real old-world, pleasant, English-inspector-type cop. ‘Glad you could come.’ If I wouldn’t have come, a group of your rough boys would have yanked me out by what I think i
s called the scruff of the neck. What’s the scruff, Lieutenant, and why me?”

  “Scruff I don’t know nothing about. You? Two reasons.”

  “Give me one.”

  “I’ll give you both. This is the first.” He dug a thick hand into his jacket pocket and brought out a torn-out sheet of a desk diary and handed it to me. The date was today. Beneath the date, two items were scrawled in black pencil: Peter Chambers — and further down the sheet — Brad Hartley, 7:30.

  “This is from,” Parker said, “his desk pad. Max Keith’s. Here at home.”

  “What the hell happened here, Lieutenant?” I returned the sheet.

  “We don’t know yet. We practically just got here. Give the place a thorough look-see. That’s about all.”

  “You know something.”

  “We know he’s dead. We know he had his head bashed in. With a candlestick, yet. A gold candlestick.”

  “Gold candlestick,” I said. “Nothing but the best for Max Keith.”

  “Big joke. You’re a real wit.”

  “Let me ask you this, Lieutenant …”

  “Look, kiddie, just who do you think is asking the questions here?”

  “Let me ask for a while. Then we switch. Okay?”

  “Okay. But ask fast, sonny.”

  “Same question, Lieutenant. What happened?”

  “We get a call about eleven o’clock. We come here. And we find him. The boys are giving the joint the business. That’s it.”

  “Where do I come in?”

  “Smack square on his desk was his calendar-diary with that sheet on top. Your name on it and this Brad Hartley. Figured I’d have you in right at the beginning. Like I said, two reasons. One. This sheet. Two. You once handled some business of his.”

  “How do you know?”

  He grinned sadly. “Cops are smart.”

  “How do you know, Louie?”

  “Entry in his books here at home. One week’s work you did. Fifty dollars a day — three hundred and fifty dollars. Nice work if you can get it. Now, two things about that. One. What was the work about? Two. You can sort of give us a rundown on the guy. Who, better than you? You were with him for a week. When?”

  “Six months ago.”

  “Okay. Lemme hear.”

  “Easy does it, Lieutenant. You want three hunks — the desk item of today, the item of six months ago, and a character study as only Chambers can deliver. All I want is one hunk. What happened?”

  He reached and nudged knuckles under my chin. He said, “This Ruth Rollins, she’s engaged to him. She was here, with a little group. She left at ten o’clock. As her previous appointment, she returned a little before eleven. The door was ajar.”

  “How’d she get in … downstairs?”

  His grin grew sadder. “She’s got keys.”

  “Like that, huh?”

  “So it seems. Anyway, according to her, the door was ajar up here. She came in and found him like you saw him, dead on the floor, the candlestick near. She fainted, came to, called us.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then nothing. We arrive, en masse. The dame is slightly hysterical. I put the boys to work, and I work on getting her into shape. I also call you. You arrive. Now I’ve got her simmered down. That’s it, my boy, all of it.”

  “You mean you haven’t questioned her at all?”

  “Only the quickies. We only just got here, remember?”

  “Then maybe you ought to go back to work. Punch while they’re groggy, Lieutenant. That’s advice you once gave me. My stuff’ll keep. I’m here — for as long as you want me.”

  “Good enough, sonny. But just for now — do you know why your name’s on that desk pad for today?”

  “Yes.”

  “Will you kindly spill that? Right now.”

  “Sure. He called my office this afternoon. The thing on the pad was probably a notation to remind him. He wanted my services. Just for this evening.”

  “What kind of services, detective?”

  “Detective services. Bodyguard department.”

  “You think it had anything to do with this shindig he had here tonight?”

  “I wouldn’t know. He said it wasn’t really important, that he’d just like to have me around.”

  “For how long?”

  “Didn’t say. Maybe he planned on going out later. I don’t know. I do know that I turned it down.”

  “Why?”

  “I had a previous engagement.”

  “Business or social?”

  “Social.”

  The man with the little black bag came in. He said, “Excuse me, Lieutenant. I’m through here.”

  “How’s it shape?” Parker said.

  “Dead, Lieutenant, from a crushing blow on the skull. I’d say there’s very little doubt the candlestick was the weapon. Fractured skull, probably. Hardly any doubt, but the autopsy will confirm that. Time of death coincides with the lady’s report — sometime within the last hour or so. Autopsy’ll clear on that too. Want me to send the wagon up for him?”

  “Yes. Please.”

  Parker herded us back into the drawing room. The man with the little black bag bowed to everybody and made his exit. Parker went to the languorous lady. “Miss Rollins.”

  The languorous lady looked up.

  “I think we’d better chat,” Parker said, “in the next room, the study.”

  “Wherever you wish, Lieutenant.” Her hand trembled as she tapped out the cigarette. It was the left hand, and the ring-finger gave off at least five carats of blue-white solitary diamond.

  The man at the desk came to us with a legal-type folded document. He said, “This ought to interest you, Lieutenant.”

  “Thanks, Steve.” Parker took the paper, and the lady and I followed him into the study.

  While Parker prepared the lady with the soft-soap of comforting words, I stood in the doorway and looked back into the drawing room. Fleetwood was dusting for fingerprints. Walsh was using an assortment of cameras and his flash-bulbs kept exploding. The man called Steve was back at the desk. The other plainclothesman was stretched on the floor taking measurements. The head of the corpse was now covered by a thin white towel. On a nearby table, on another thin white towel, was a long smooth heavy-gold candlestick, slightly spotted. There were drinking glasses, some still containing liquor, on various other tables. A liquor cabinet was open and an ice bucket sat on top of it. The conversation in the study had stopped as I turned back. Ruth Rollins was seated in a tall fan chair. Parker was standing, reading the legal-type document. He handed it to me. He said, “All right now, Miss Rollins. Just a little background, please, before we come to the events of the evening.”

  “Yes, sir, Lieutenant.”

  The blue-backed paper I was holding was a will. It was dated this year, two months ago. The attorney was Frank Conaty, 545 Fifth Avenue, New York City. I smiled at that. Frank was the lawyer I had casually recommended to Max Keith six months ago when Max had mentioned that he’d had a falling out with his own big-dome boys. Conaty owed me a commission, except that lawyers, who formulate their own rules of ethics, simply don’t pay commissions. The will was one page, and simple. It mentioned that Keith’s divorced wife had no claims on his estate since she had waived all such rights as part of a financial agreement drawn during the time their divorce was pending. Then, simply and succinctly, it bequeathed the entire estate, share and share alike, to two people: Ruth Rollins; and Keith’s only living relative, a sister, Julia Keith.

  Ruth Rollins was saying: “… and so, after being adjudged Miss Georgia, I competed in the Atlantic City national contest, with absolutely no success at all, but it did land me a small movie-starlet contract with Warner’s. This was some time ago, please remember. My contract lasted the usual six months — I had no talent in that direction whatever.”

  “In what direction did you have a talent, Miss Rollins?”

  I looked at Parker. If he was being sarcastic, it didn’t show.

 
Miss Rollins took it as a straight question and answered it as such. “I had become interested in publicity work. I had met a young man who was with the Publicity Department out at MGM, and, somehow, he got me a job there. I did very well, I believe. I remained on the staff for six years. Then, when an economy wave hit the studio, my department was cut to the bone, and I was one of those released. I came east, with a recommendation.”

  “To whom?”

  “To Keith Associates. Mr. Keith employed four major assistants, all men. There was a spot open for a woman experienced in the field. One of Mr. Keith’s friends on the West Coast talked with him on the phone, talked about me, and when I came to New York, I went to Mr. Keith’s office, and after two interviews, I was hired.”

  “When?” Parker said.

  “About five months ago. We became interested in one another, and three months ago we were engaged.”

  Parker took the paper out of my hands, gave it to her, and waited while she looked it over. Then he said, “Any idea that you were a beneficiary under his will?”

  “Yes,” she said. She returned the will. “He told me about it, showed me this very will, as a matter of fact.”

  “I see. How old are you, Miss Rollins?”

  “Twenty-nine.”

  Maybe. Maybe yes. Maybe no. Twenty-nine is safe. You can be twenty-nine for a long time.

  “All right,” Parker said. “Let’s get to this evening.”

  “There’s … there’s really very little I can tell you. I knew he was going to be home, I knew he had some sort of business engagement right here at home. I didn’t know with whom, and that was none of my business. I knew it was set for seven-thirty, so, about nine, I decided to drop over, and I did. I found one person here, a Mr. Brad Hartley, a client of Keith Associates.“

  “Is that the Mr. Brad Hartley?”

  “If you mean Hartley, of Hartley and Simmons, Investments?”

  “That’s the Hartley I mean.”

  “Yes, sir. Seat on the stock exchange, all of that. One of Mr. Keith’s big clients. The firm has nine real big clients, and all of these Mr. Keith handled personally. We of the staff took care of the rest of the people.”