“We’re neighbors, you know,” she informed me. “I live right next door to you in 3B.”
“You must have known Admiral Penny then?” If I was going to do some detecting, now was the time to start.
Her smile did a fast fade, and I could almost see the smoke from the smoldering anger that backlit those bright blue eyes. “Penny,” she seethed. “Dropping dead was the only thing that man ever did that made me happy. He was the nosiest old crock in creation. Always looking through the peephole in his door to see who was coming in and going out of the other apartments on the floor. I could hear his raspy breathing every time I walked by. It was getting so I hated to invite anyone over. No privacy at all in my own damned building.” Her blue eyes narrowed a little more as she studied my face. “I hope you’re not going to be manning the peephole like Penny? I won’t stand for any more of that crap.” Her soft voice was suddenly as cold and merciless as an Arctic winter.
“Not me,” I assured her. “I’m far too busy for that kind of nonsense.”
“Glad to hear it,” she said. “Just keep it that way and we’ll get along fine.” On that cheerful note, she turned away and strode down the path without a word of goodbye.
Well, I’d certainly learned one thing about the late admiral. Tana Devin hated him. Now, no one likes being spied on, but it’s basically a harmless pastime. What I couldn’t figure out was why Tana Devin loathed Penny with such intensity. There had to be more to it than that.
After a couple more turns around the park, the answer came to me. The lovely Miss Devin’s name had been in the papers quite a lot these past few weeks. Not the real papers but those supermarket tabloids they sell at the checkout counters. I vaguely remembered the headlines on one of them, some kind of sex scandal that linked Tana Devin with a prominent but very married politician. I remembered somebody’s mentioning that the liaison had very nearly cost Tana her part in Maneuvers. While the show portrayed this kind of bedhopping all the time, the chairman of the company that sponsored it was an uncle of the politician’s wife. I guess rating points won out over family ties because Tana did manage to keep her job. But the way I heard it, it had been a very close thing.
What I remembered best about the whole business were the pictures that appeared under the headline. Pictures of Miss Devin and the politico that had that slightly off, distorted quality that tends to catch an artist’s eye. Exactly the kind of pictures you’d get shooting through an old fashioned peephole . . . just like the one on the door of my new apartment.
I was positive that that’s what Penny had been doing. A few candid snaps of the two lovers as they passed by the door might have fetched a good price. They would also make an obviously secret affair as public as the corner library. Was that motive enough for murder? As far as Tana Devin was concerned, I believed it was motive enough and then some.
I told Karen all about it over dinner that night. After all, it’s no good being a detective if you don’t have a Watson around to bask in your reflected glory.
“It’s a nice start,” Karen said, patting my arm. Not exactly the complimentary outpouring I’d been expecting. “But what you need is a few more suspects. Not to mention the how part of a locked room murder.”
“Details,” I muttered. “I just need a couple more days to put it all together.” Not necessarily true, but it sounded good.
“Glad to hear it,” Karen smiled. “Remember, I’m counting on you. I imagine Penny’s ghost would like to settle down, too. I doubt haunting is all it’s cracked up to be.”
“I’m working on it,” I said testily. “I do have a few other things to do, too,” I reminded her.
The next morning I did one of them, putting in three hours at the easel. It was a cool, gray day with a steady syncopation of rain that drummed on my windows. Atmospheric mystery story weather, but not much good for strolling in the park. So when I finally took a break from painting, I stayed indoors and inspected the scene of the crime.
Feeling as though I should be brandishing a magnifying glass, I knelt down in front of the little Oriental rug on which Penny had tripped and died. The cleaners had gotten all the blood out. I couldn’t find a trace. I did notice something, though. When they yanked the cleaning tag off, they left a little nylon loop still threaded through the fibers. I teased it free and slipped it in my pocket.
I figured out the how part of the murder when I shifted my attention to the door. The mail slot was the key. Visualize Penny standing at the door, staring out the peephole, while someone, the murderer, crouched out of sight on the other side of the door. All the murderer would have to do was quietly open the outside mail slot and shove a stick or a cane through, knocking Penny’s legs right out from under him. It was as simple as that.
“Brilliant deduction,” I murmured to myself. I thought about phoning the police right away but decided to spring my theory on Karen first. Besides, I still had to figure out the who part. Tana Devin was a good candidate for the killer, but I hadn’t even talked to anyone else yet. Also, I needed that little thing they call proof.
Just past noon I heard the postman at the door. I put down my brush and went to check the mail. It had slid through the slot and was lying on the little rug. Two catalogues and, of course, another postcard. It looked exactly like the other ones except for the message, which read:
Miles,
How did you guess that the prime rate was going to drop two days before it happened? What have you got? A crystal ball? Thanks for the tip. Bishop to C-6.
Fraternally yours,
Charles
Now Penny was giving financial advice from the Great Beyond. The prime rate had dropped earlier in the week, and from the cheerful tone of the note it appeared that Charles had taken advantage of Penny’s powers of prediction. Was it just a lucky guess, or did Penny have special, inside information from Up There? I don’t know what bothered me more, the postcard or the fact that the admiral hadn’t taken the time to write me about the shift in the prime. It was the least he could have done. After all, I was the one trying to solve his murder. If there actually was a murder. In spite of my theory about the mail slot and cane, I still wasn’t one hundred percent convinced.
I figured I ought to talk to the postman, though. He might be able to tell me something more about Penny. I swung open the door and caught him just before he reached the elevator.
“Excuse me,” I said. “I’m Jeff Winsor, the new tenant in apartment 3C.”
“Lew Drayton,” he introduced himself. “I’m sorry, Mr Winsor, but there’s nothing for you today. It usually takes a week or so for the forwarded stuff to start coming through.” He smiled as if to say the delay was a shame but there was nothing he could do about it. He was a short, pudgy, moonfaced man with thick, rain-misted glasses. His postman’s slicker glistened with moisture, and his bulging leather mailbag fitted the contours of his body as though it were a part of it.
“I’m not worried about my mail,” I told him. “But I was wondering about Admiral Penny’s. Are you going to keep on delivering it here? He died, you know.”
“Yes, I heard,” Drayton sighed. “A real loss to the community. As for his mail, there are a couple of ways to go. You could mark it ‘deceased, return to sender.’ Or you could readdress it to his next of kin, but Tom Banks told me the admiral’s only living relative is out of the country at the moment. If you want my opinion, the easiest thing for you to do is just keep it here until the next of kin arrives to claim it. But that’s entirely up to you,” he added quickly. “I’ll be glad to arrange it any way you want, Mr Winsor. Just say the word.”
His eagerness to oblige threw me for a moment. After all, this was New York, a city hardly noted for its zealous public servants. I’d forgotten that Banks had called Drayton “the perfect postman”.
“Let me think about it,” I said finally.
Drayton nodded. “Take all the time you want. Besides, most of Penny’s mail is catalogues, like this one from Pitt’s up in Maine.” H
e reached out and tapped the catalogue I’d carried out into the hall with me, ignoring the postcard that rested on top of it. “Those Pitt brothers make a sweet rod and reel,” he grinned, “but a little too pricey for me. If there’s nothing else, Mr Winsor, I’d better get back to work.”
“Did you know the admiral well?” I pressed him. “Get along with him okay?”
“I just delivered his mail,” Drayton shrugged. “And I get along fine with everyone on my route. Got to get moving,” he tipped his cap. “Don’t like to keep my customers waiting.” He waved and stepped into the waiting elevator where his bulky form was quickly concealed by the closing doors.
Feeling a little deflated, I wandered back into the apartment and spent a couple of minutes contemplating the park through my rain-streaked bay window. I guess after Tana Devin, I’d been anticipating something a little more meaty. But then everyone couldn’t be a suspect. Drayton was just the postman. Like the fraternal Charles, an unknowing helpmate, a bearer of haunted mail.
I decided that if I really wanted to learn more about Penny, I should talk to Tom Banks. New York legend has it that doormen know everything about their tenants, all the little details ranging from shoe size to sexual preference. I hadn’t thought about Banks before, but if there was any truth to the legend, he could be a regular well-spring of information.
On my way down to the lobby I was nearly bowled over by a big, gray-haired man who came catapulting out of the elevator.
“Sorry about that,” he said as I regained my balance. “I guess my mind was somewhere else. I only wish the rest of me was, too,” he added with sudden bitterness. He had the look of a businessman gone to seed. His tailor-made gray suit was wrinkled and stained. There were dark circles under his eyes, and the hand that gripped his ebonwood walking stick was white-knuckled with tension. He blinked at me and frowned. “I don’t remember seeing you before? Are you visiting someone in the building?”
“Just moved in,” I told him. “I’m the new tenant in 3C.”
“Penny’s place,” he said in a harsh whisper, as if the name itself was almost too painful to pronounce. “If I could have spared the time and the shoe-leather, I would have danced on the old bastard’s grave. If anyone ever deserved to die, he was the one.”
“What do you mean?”
“Mind your own damn business,” he muttered, pushing past me. He stomped down the hall, cutting at the air with the gleaming ebon stick as though he were slashing away at some imaginary foe. He paused at the door of apartment 3A, unlocked it, and disappeared inside, slamming the door behind him with a thunderous crash that echoed through the hallway.
“Well now,” I said to myself. “The suspect shortage is certainly over.” Even death hadn’t lessened the man’s obvious hatred of Penny. And that gleaming ebon-wood walking stick? I could practically see it cannonading through the mail slot to shove the old admiral’s legs right out from under him. But who was this guy? I didn’t even know his name yet. And why did he loathe the recently departed Penny?
I found Tom Banks at his post in the lobby, staring moodily out at the rainswept street. “Mr Winsor,” he turned and smiled at me. “Surely you’re not thinking of going out in that downpour without so much as an umbrella?”
I shook my head. “I just came down to pass the time of day. I wanted to ask you about one of my neighbors, a big, gray-haired man in A? What’s he got against Penny?”
“That would be Mr Campbell.” Banks sighed and shook his head. “He’ll be leaving us at the end of the month. Some recent financial setbacks are forcing him to relocate.”
“Why do I have the feeling that Penny is somehow involved in that?” I prodded him.
“Mr Campbell isn’t too good at hiding his feelings,” the doorman nodded. “I guess there isn’t any harm in telling you about it now. Mr Campbell and his partner own a computer company. A few weeks back, the two of them were planning to take over another firm, a small company that unknowingly held a patent that would give Campbell and his partner a virtual lock on a big, upcoming defense contract. Campbell sold off all his assets at a loss to raise the necessary capital, but before he could put in a bid, a rival firm bought the company right out from under them.”
“How does Penny figure into it?”
“Well,” Banks hesitated, “Mr Campbell can’t prove anything, but he and his partner were discussing the takeover when they walked by Penny’s door. They had a longish wait for the elevator, so they pretty well covered it all. No one else knew about the deal, and with Penny’s reputation for spying on his neighbors, he seemed like the only person who could and would have alerted the rival company.”
“I could see why Campbell would hate him,” I sympathized. “What about you, Tom? How did you get along, with the admiral?”
“It’s my job to get along with all the tenants,” Banks replied with quiet dignity. “But now that he’s gone, I have to admit that Penny was a hard man, the only one I’ve ever met who would go out of his way to make someone else’s life miserable.”
“You sound as though you might be speaking from personal experience,” I said. The sad, regretful tone of his voice gave him away more than any words could.
“It happened a few months back,” Banks said softly. “Like the admiral, I’m a retired navy man myself. Now, I’m not one to ask for favors, but I have a grandson, a fine boy with all the makings of a naval officer. Ever since he was a lad he’s wanted to go to the Academy. He has all the grades, the qualifications. All he needed was a recommendation, a little pull at the top to get him in. I asked Penny if he’d be willing to put in a word for the boy. All it would have taken was one phone call, a few minutes of his time. Well, first he said yes, then no, then yes again. By the time I realized he never intended to do it, it was too late to ask anyone else. It seemed as though he took a kind of perverse pleasure in keeping me dangling like that.”
Although I’d never met Penny I was beginning to hate the man myself. “What happened to your grandson?” I asked Banks.
“He went into the navy as an enlisted man,” Banks said bitterly. “There’s no shame in that,” he added, “but he would have done the Academy proud. He never had his chance, thanks to Penny.”
There wasn’t anything I could say to that. I left Banks staring out at the rain and went back to the apartment. I was beginning to wonder how Admiral Penny had lived as long as he had. If he hadn’t been murdered, he certainly should have been. I’d never come across anyone who was a more suitable candidate for homicide. I was also beginning to regret my own attempt at amateur sleuthing. If Penny had been murdered, his killer almost deserved to get away with it. I say almost because I still intended to solve the crime if I could. Penny had done some pretty horrible things in his life, but none of them as terrible as murder itself.
I spent the rest of the day and all that evening at the easel, finishing up my assignment. While my hand wielded the brush, my mind arranged and rearranged all the bits and pieces I had about Penny and his death. I had started out with no suspects, not even a proper murder. None of this would have come about if it hadn’t been for the postcards and Karen’s insistence that I investigate.
Now I had three suspects. Tana Devin and Campbell were the more obvious ones, but Tom Banks was also a possibility. He seemed quiet and friendly enough on the surface, but who could really tell what was going on inside? As for the murder part of it, my cane-through-the-mail-slot theory eliminated the whole locked room element. It should have put Campbell at the head of my suspect list, but it didn’t. Any one of them could have bought a cane and shoved it through the slot. And after Tana Devin’s description of Penny’s “raspy” breathing, any one of them could have easily ascertained if he was at his post on the other side of the door.
I had suspects, motives, and method. I had everything I needed except for the most important thing: a solution to the crime.
It was still raining when I turned in at midnight. The rumble of thunder and the crack of lightn
ing punctuated my futile attempt to sleep. When I finally did doze off, I had the craziest dream. I was being chased through Gramercy Park by a giant postcard. And it would have caught me, too, if it hadn’t been for the lifesized chessman. He was a white knight who poked a hole through the postcard with his uptilted lance. The postcard fell to the ground, but then the knight started bearing down on me, with his lance aimed straight at my heart.
That’s when I woke up. Not only had I escaped the sinister pursuers of my dream but I’d come up with the solution to the mystery. And it was so simple that I should have seen it right away. I still had some checking to do, though, just to make absolutely certain I was right.
The rain tapered off around six, the last of it disappearing with the dawn of a bright, autumn day. After an early breakfast I went downstairs for another talk with our friendly doorman.
“Who plays chess around here?” I asked after we’d exchanged good morning pleasantries.
The question seemed to take him by surprise. “Well now,” he hesitated. “I play a little chess. Strictly amateur stuff. Drayton, the postman, and I often have a game on Sundays. Then there’s Mr Campbell. He’s won a couple of local championships, and I know he spends a lot of his free time over at the Marshal Chess Club.”
“What about Tana Devin?”
Banks frowned thoughtfully and nodded. “Now that you mention it, I believe she’s a player, too. She once starred in an off-Broadway show called The Chess Match. So she must know at least the rudiments of the game, though I don’t think she has much time for it. Are you looking for a game?”
“No,” I said smiling. “I’m looking to end one.”
Leaving Banks more confused than ever, I paid a brief visit to a local shop. After that I returned to the apartment where I spent the rest of the morning experimenting at the scene of the crime.
The Mammoth Book of Perfect Crimes & Impossible Mysteries Page 39
