Date for Murder

by Louis Trimble

  He searched all the wastebaskets thoroughly, but they were all empty. The house had been tidily cleaned and swept since he had last been in it. Myra’s seductive perfume lingered, though, and he remembered the night. It had been worth it, as far as he was concerned. In the bedroom he took a box of her face powder and from the bath a sample of her body powder, wrapped in a sheet of toilet tissue.

  He found what he was searching for in the back yard. In the open-faced incinerator, among a pile of papers waiting to be burned, he found charred ashes. He grunted as he saw them, turned and went back to the car.

  They were in the living room when he arrived. Myra was looking angrily at the Chief. The others seemed more or less relaxed. Myra stared at Mark when he came in.

  “Hi,” he said almost genially. “Relax, Myra. This is necessary.” He wagged a finger at the Chief, and he sidled over. Mark spoke in a low tone. The Chief nodded, and went to the telephone in the hallway.

  He came back after a moment. “Yeah, he’s there. Just got in about ten minutes ago. He’s ready any time you want him.”

  “Who is ready when you want him?” Idell asked.

  Mark looked around the room. “Wop Conteri—in the Riverside jail.”

  Chapter XXII

  MARK said in the puzzled silence, “There is no need for lengthy explanations. Among you are murderers, and they know who they are. Let’s review the case to refresh memories, shall we? “Link died at approximately six o’clock yesterday morning. His death was premeditated. His murderer went into his room before that time—probably around four—and filled some of the dates in his package with cyanide solution, using a hypodermic needle.” He paused and looked around. There was no reaction. Silence greeted his words. Idell looked puzzled. Grant, worried. Chunk Farman seemed nervous and entwined his fingers in his cousin’s, who sat silently, solemnly by. Jeffers sat on the other side of Maybelle and stared openly at Mark. Myra had a hard look to her sharp features.

  “We found the dates and the needle buried in the ground,” Mark said. “Catrina saw the murderer bury them, and before she learned murder had been committed, accepted money to keep quiet. But before everyone was awakened and the murderer slipped out of his room to bury the evidence, that room was invaded by three persons.” He grinned at the Chief, who was watching him with an open mouth.

  Mark looked toward Chunk Farman. “You carried Link to the pool and dropped him in—and roped him to the drain pipe, Farman.” It was a statement, not a question.

  Chunk started to his feet, settled back. He shook his head stubbornly. He looked sullen. “No.”

  Mark said, “You agree, Chief?”

  The Chief grunted. “Hell, no. This guy had his hair wet, he was dressed, he brought dirt from around the sweet peas through the Major’s rooms and onto his own bathmat. Only his rugs got that dirt on ‘em. Get out of that, Farman. The microscope don’t lie.”

  “And you turned the shower on to make an alibi?” Mark asked. “Whom were you protecting, Farman?”

  The boy was breathing heavily now. He got to his feet again. “God damn it, what if I did? He was dead when I went in there. Damned good and dead!”

  Mark said, “No harm done, Farman. It just played into the murderer’s hand, is all. Why did you go in there? To have a showdown? To demand an explanation of the reason Idell was going to marry him?”

  “Partly.”

  “We’ll let the rest go,” Mark said. “And you found him dead. You thought Idell had done it, didn’t you? And you tried to cover it up. The poisoning looks like drowning, and you thought you could pass it off as that—right?”

  Farman looked helplessly at Idell, mutely pleading. She smiled tenderly at him. He said, “That’s right.”

  Mark grunted. “Another party went in there before Farman did, some time before. Leona Taylor. She lies dead up there because of what she found. And a third party,” he added quietly. “A party who found that what he wanted had already been taken, and subsequently took steps. We see their result in this last—and final—killing.”

  He looked around. All seemed interested now. Of them all Idell and Chunk Farman were the most relaxed. Chunk looked almost gratefully at Mark. She had a knot of fear still in her throat, a beating tense knot of fear.

  “Last night,” Mark said, “Catrina’s murderer was sure she would not be able to keep her secret. And he did not want to pay blackmail forever. Catrina suspected what might have happened. She was nervous, frightened. She locked herself in her house—but the lock was picked. You all know the result. And how the murderer got to her was for some time a thing I could not understand.

  “And last night, while everyone—almost everyone—had alibis, Leona Taylor was murdered for the thing she stole.”

  Grant Manders stiffened and his tongue flecked out at his lips. Myra glared at Mark.

  “That is another thing that didn’t occur to me until recently. But to clear this case of all misunderstanding, let’s go back into the past. We know, without mentioning names, that James Link had a hold over you all. He was blackmailing some of you and threatening others for gambling debts illegally accrued. He cheated you, Manders,” he said to Grant. “Those stocks were worthless.”

  “I know it now,” Grant said. His face was white.

  “If you’re accusing him—” Frank Manders said.

  “I’m accusing no one—yet,” Mark told him. “But we have the records of Link’s actions. Consequently we had a very fine bunch of suspects. But to find the real reason, the underlying motive for his death, we must go back two months—to the time Major Manders committed suicide!”

  To those who evidently did not know this, there was consternation. Grant gasped and turned pale. Clint Jeffers started, and the Farman pair looked pityingly at Idell. She touched Chunk’s hand and smiled at him.

  “This is poppycock!” Frank Manders roared. “Major had nothing to do with this.”

  “You yourself said once he did,” Mark said. “You said, ‘Link was killed because of the letter Major sent me.’ And it is partially true—but not quite. He was killed for another reason—because he was blackmailing. Leona was killed because she had your letter—she stole it from Link’s room, Mr. Manders.” Mark paused.

  “I couldn’t quite figure how that letter could have been stolen last night,” Mark said after a moment. “The only person I could see other than the Major himself who wanted it badly was the party it mentioned—not by name but by inference—as the cause of his suicide. And I myself alibied that party all night.” He grimaced, and the Chief swallowed a chuckle. “I thought I alibied that party, but I found differently.” He reached into his pocket and took out the box of sleeping powders he had found.

  “When I went to Myra’s house last night it was an hour after I got there that I fell asleep. And I had just waked up four hours before. And I slept hard. That isn’t like me. I couldn’t figure it out. Now I know why I felt like I had a hangover. Myra doped my first drink very cleverly—and gave the dope an hour to work.” He looked at Clint Jeffers now. “So that when the time came she might need an alibi to prove she was not here last night, she could use me. I was to swear she had not left the bed all night!”

  Jeffers’ face whitened and he started for Mark; then he reddened and whirled on Myra, who was standing and glaring murderously. “You dirty, two-timing little rat,” he screamed at her. “You rotten little cheat!”

  He does love her, Mark marvelled, and felt like ten kinds of a heel.

  She flung her head. Mark said, “Tell your husband to sit down, Mrs. Jeffers, please.”

  There was a gasp as he used her real name, and then the noise became pandemonium. Bayless, at a nod from the Chief, took Jeffers by the arm and led him, seething, to the chair he had occupied.

  Mark said wearily, “Myra, we can prove that you were in his bed the night of the murder. There are samples of your powder taken from the sheets. I don’t know which, face or body powder, but I have samples of both here. They can be analyz
ed!” He gravely handed the samples to the Chief, who goggled at Mark.

  Myra said spittingly, “What if I did? Damn it! He’s my husband, isn’t he?”

  “Yes,” Mark said, “and if his father doesn’t find out you’re married, he’s a good catch, too. But not if he found out about the letter. So you went to Link’s room to get it—after you knew he was dead. But Leona had beat you to it. You suspected it was she. You knew she and Link were tied together, that she did half his blackmailing for him—so you had to get rid of her.”

  Grant gasped. Mark knew what he was thinking. A sucker always feels like hell when he finds out he’s been taken by a good-looking woman.

  “To do that, last night you phoned Clint, found he was playing bridge, and then got set for me. You knew I would be in—you had practically invited me in so many words—” He paused while Jeffers stopped simmering. “You doped my drink, fixed yourself an alibi, went up there, through his empty bedroom, through the bath connecting the rooms and into Leona’s room. You didn’t know it, but she was under the influence of sleeping powders, as I was. To lock the door—which Henderson heard and recorded—was the work of a second. To stab her, another. To make sure no one overheard and got suspicious, you flushed the toilet, making it seem like Leona was up and around. Then you made the place look like there’d been a struggle so there would be a reason for the clock to be disconnected and thus set the time for your alibi—and alibied almost everyone else, incidentally, but Grant Manders here who slept next door. Then you unlocked the door, went out the way you came and home again.

  “You burned the paper in an ashtray and threw the ashes in the wastebasket. I found them with the other trash in the incinerator this morning.”

  “You’ll never prove that,” she said. Her features were sharp points, now, her eyes glaring like bits of diamond bullets, ready to pierce him. He smiled at her.

  “The other murders, of course, were not committed by Myra, but the first, at least, was engineered by her. I couldn’t quite understand how the second had been done until I found three dead flies on a bathroom window that opened below the ground into a stairwell.

  “Mr. Manders, if you know the contents of that letter, could you give them to us now?”

  Frank Manders, to Mark’s surprise, nodded, and rose. “I’m through fighting,” he said. “I see your point. I can only hope this will not get into the papers. I made a copy from memory the night the letter was stolen. It is almost exact, as exact as a man’s faulty memory can render it.” He cleared his throat and read from a sheet of white typing paper:

  “Dear Frank: When you receive this I will have taken my life. Do not, I beg you, make this public. There has been too much of the name Manders in the papers already. At my age, Frank, I have found myself embroiled in as disgusting a mess as I can imagine. Once I thought myself a Lothario and incapable of succumbing too fully to a lady’s charms. But age has crept up on me, I find. For I have found a lady—and one much younger than I—whom I worship with every breath of my body. But I find that she does not love me. I have found that it is not love that makes her come quietly to my house late at night to sit with me, to comfort me as I yearn to be comforted. It is the age-old love she has—money. She takes mine and gives me nothing in exchange. Oh, yes, something. But I wanted more than passion, Frank. That I can buy on any corner….”

  Frank saw Myra wince, and heard Clint strain to keep himself seated.

  Major Manders continued:

  “… I found too late that she was married, Frank. Married secretly to a young friend of Grant’s. The shock was enormous, I can tell you. And the truth came out when she refused to divorce him for me. Perhaps he is a better catch, eh? But that is beside the point. All of this has led to the one thing, the final thing in my life. Somehow a human thing so foul and so low as not to deserve the name man has found her secret—and mine. He has threatened, unless I pay tremendous sums, to expose my affair with her and her marriage to her husband. I cannot, will not permit blackmail to sap the funds which I have gathered for my son and daughter. And neither will I have the name Manders dragged across the nation’s tabloids to make a Roman Holiday for the press. This, then, Frank, is the only way out. I have convinced the doctors that my heart is acting up and is weak. This night I shall take too much sleeping potion and in the morning everything will be beautiful … Perhaps where I am going I can find that comfort which has eluded me since the first Idell died. I know she will meet me very soon … Take care of my children, your brother.”

  Idell was crying softly. Maybelle slipped beside her and patted her softly. Chunk Farman looked straight ahead, his jaw clamped tight. Myra sneered at Mark.

  “Well?” Her voice cut the silence like a rasping file.

  “Just that Link was blackmailing you to keep Clint from knowing ot your affair, Myra. And blackmailing you and Clint to keep his father from knowing of your marriage. What a spot you found yourself in! If Clint found out about the letter, he would throw you out in no time. And Link had it! Link stole it from Mr. Manders.”

  He coughed and settled back. “So there was but one thing for you to do. You had to convince Clint that Link would never give up. That with his money from his mother gone, he would not wait for payment—but would expose you both. That meant poverty. Clint would be totally disinherited. You had to make Clint think that was the only reason Link had to die! And you succeeded, Myra. Very well!”

  Clint Jeffers was on his feet, glaring, his face angry, tense and white. “Are you intimating I killed Link? You utter damned fool!”

  “I am,” Mark said cheerfully. “At your wife’s behest. You could have needled the dates when you carried Grant upstairs after he passed out. Myra came to your room—she was there when Link acted up in the hall. She went out to make sure and really to hunt for the letter—and didn’t find it. At nine o’clock you sneaked out by your balcony stairs and buried the needle and the dates which you had exchanged after Idell first went into the room. Catrina saw you, and you paid her to keep quiet. But you got worried. When Myra came that night you spoke to her of it. She fixed your alibi. Farman went upstairs to see Maybelle. You went into the bathroom, locked the door and went out the window, sneaked to the back, killed Catrina and came in the same way. Myra was there waiting to stall anyone who might come. You heard her talking, so you flushed the toilet and came out—an alibi.

  “Your room, Jeffers, is one of the few that has a balcony and stairs leading outside. Grant’s has, yes, and so does Mr. Manders’. But he was crippled, and you aren’t. Grant was very drunk that first night. He woke up once—and found Leona not in her room. At that time she was stealing the letter. By listening and possibly by peeking, she knew what had happened.

  “Throughout, Jeffers, every bit of evidence turned toward you but that which Farman made when he took the body. To you and to Myra. Your door opens. Leona hears it. But she hears you moving around inside a second later. That seems to prove you didn’t go out—or Myra didn’t. But only you two knew both of you were in that room. And what other man here would knowingly let Idell drive a car marked for a gangster’s bullet? Certainly not her brother or her uncle. Not Tony Farman who loves her. Only you, Jeffers, to whom she was a casual friend. You knew three days ahead of her arrival she was to drive Link’s car, and you didn’t bother to call off your hired killers.”

  He paused. Jeffers was breathing heavily, but not looking very much like a frightened murderer. But Mark looked deeper. He looked at the man’s hands, now restlessly tugging at his knees, and at his eyes, a bleak blue when he turned them on Myra. That was the key, Mark knew. Jeffers was an overgrown college boy with an infatuation for an older woman, an infatuation that had led him, as it had others, to commit homicide.

  He said, “Look at her, Jeffers—the woman you love. Your wife—your secret wife. Do you remember your marriage vows, Jeffers? Does she? Think back—think of the Major. He could have bought that kind of love on any corner.” His voice cracked like a whip. He hated
himself for what he was doing—even Idell’s eyes hurt him—but he wasn’t going to stop. “Do you think she would stay with you if your father disinherited you? Remember how she made an alibi for herself so she could steal that letter last night—she used me for her alibi. You might call it a bedtime alibi, Jeffers.”

  “Shut up, you dirty bastard!” Jeffers leaped forward, but Bayless had his bulk in the way, forcing him back to his seat, forcing him with a half drawn gun.

  Mark said as coldly as possible, “Do you think she is going to stand idly by when she is convicted of murdering Leona Taylor and let you go free? She can only die once—and she won’t do it alone, Jeffers.”

  He seemed suddenly tired. He relaxed a little and said, “Chief, if you’ll get Wop Conteri on the wire and put a handkerchief over the phone, we’ll let Jeffers talk to him and settle this for good.”

  Jeffers looked at him coldly. “That’s a number of times you’ve mentioned that name. Am I supposed to know it?” Mark saw his hands had knotted themselves into the slack of his trousers in spite of his cold voice. He sighed within himself and played his last card.

  “Last night someone wanted Dad Curtis out of the way for a while. That person suggested he go to town and get some beer. You drank a lot of other things, but suddenly after dark you wanted beer—badly enough to send a weary old servant for it. He went, Jeffers, and gave you your chance at Catrina. She had you scared; you didn’t know how far to trust her nor how long she would blackmail you before she was satisfied. And maybe you wanted your money back.