The Richard Deming Mystery Megapack

by Richard Deming

Harry Nicholson seemed to have no intention of asking any questions about the murder, for after making a comment about the pleasant weather Buffalo was having, he lapsed into silence. Five minutes passed before a thin, elderly man carrying a medical bag came in. Nicholson walked over to meet him at the door, and after a moment’s conversation the elderly man proceeded to the elevator.

  Lydia glanced at her watch and was surprised to see it was only eight forty-five, just an hour and a quarter since she had gotten off the train.

  Silence resumed when Nicholson returned to his seat. Apparently any questioning to be done was to be conducted by Sergeant Carter. Twenty more minutes passed before Simms, the sergeant and the doctor all got off the elevator together. The elderly doctor went out the front door. Simms and Carter came over to where Lydia, Weygand, and the other detective were seated.

  “It’s homicide all right,” Carter informed his partner. “Somebody slid a knife between a couple of his ribs into his heart. He died so quick, he didn’t even bleed. Funny thing, though.”

  “What’s that?” Nicholson asked.

  “Simms here says the door was bolted from inside and the transom open only a sin.” He pushed a thumb toward Lydia. “She unscrewed some gadget to get the transom open and climbed through to unbolt the door.”

  Nicholson looked at Lydia. She said, “I was the only one with small enough hands to get a screwdriver through the crack.

  Nicholson looked back at his partner. “The guy left by the fire escape?”

  “There isn’t any,” Carter informed him.

  “Hmm. Then he must have still been there when they found the body. Maybe hiding in the bathroom. He must have sneaked out when they left the room to call us.” Carter shook his head. “Simms says they had the same thought, and checked both the bathroom and closet.” He looked at Weygand. “That right, mister?”

  Weygand nodded. “I even looked under the bed.”

  “You mean we got a locked room mystery?” Nicholson asked in a querulous voice.

  “Nope,” Carter said. “It just narrows down to only one possible means of exit. There’s a foot-wide ledge that runs clear around the building just below the window. A guy who didn’t get dizzy could work his way along it to another room.”

  “Who’s in the rooms either side of Hartman’s?” Nicholson asked.

  Simms said, “They’re both vacant.”

  “I looked at them,” Carter said. “The windows of both are closed, but unlocked. The guy could have pushed either up, then closed it again after he was inside. The doors have spring locks, so once he stepped out in the hall and pulled the door closed behind him, there’d be no sign of anybody ever being in the room.”

  Nicholson asked, “What’s the doc say?”

  “Dead three to five hours, which would make it three-thirty to five-thirty this afternoon. Probably closer to five-thirty.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  “Simms delivered the guy a pint of bourbon at noon, a second one at two-thirty. If it took him two and a half hours to kill the first, it probably took at least as long to kill the second, which would take him to five o’clock. And both are empty.”

  Nicholson nodded. “That’s logical. Where do we go from here?”

  “You can call the ice wagon and the fingerprint boys and stand by here to show them around. Have the fingerprint guys catch the windows in the rooms both sides of 714 too. I’ll take these people down to headquarters to get their stories—” Jules Weygand stood up. “I’d better move my car then, Sergeant. It’s parked in the hotel loading zone.”

  Simms said, “I’ll move it for you, Mr. Weygand, and you can pick up the keys at the desk when you come back. I’ll put it on the hotel lot.”

  Weygand handed over the keys and Simms said, “I’ll put Mrs. Hartman’s bag in her room too. It’s 521, Mrs. Hartman.”

  “Thank you,” Lydia said.

  “Okay, folks,” Sergeant Carter said. “Let’s take a ride over to headquarters.”

  * * * *

  Police headquarters was only two blocks away, also on lower Pearl Street. Sergeant Carter ushered them into an elevator, and when they got off upstairs, led them to a door lettered: HOMICIDE AND ARSON. Beyond the door was a large squad-room with several desks in it. The only person in the room was a man in shirtsleeves talking on a phone at one of the desks. Carter seated himself behind another desk on the opposite side of the room and waved Lydia and Weygand to a pair of nearby chairs.

  “Smoke?” he asked, extending a pack of cigarettes.

  Both Weygand and Lydia shook their heads. Carter lit one for himself, leaned back in his chair and regarded Lydia from beneath his drooping lids.

  “I understand the dead man was your husband, Mrs. Hartman. That right?”

  Lydia nodded.

  “And you’re here from Rochester?”

  “That’s right. Jules here too.”

  “Uh-huh. What was your husband doing here?”

  “Just getting drunk,” she said, flushing slightly. “He’s been doing that recently. But up until this time he’s always holed up in some Rochester hotel.”

  “This is just something recent? His drinking, I mean.”

  “The last few weeks. He’s been depressed over business matters.”

  “Oh? What was his business?”

  “Jim and Jules, here, were partners in the Weygand and Hartman Realty Company. They filed for bankruptcy three weeks ago and the company is in receivership. It was all Jim’s fault, really.”

  “How’s that?” Carter asked.

  “He—he misappropriated some funds. Jules found it out too late to save the business. He’s been wonderful about it. He could have had him prosecuted and imprisoned.”

  “That wouldn’t have saved anything,” Weygand said dryly. “It would just have sent Jim to jail.”

  Carter turned his attention to Weygand. “Weren’t you a little sore at your partner?”

  “That’s an understatement,” Weygand said in the same dry tone. “I would have sent him to jail if it weren’t for Lydia. I didn’t want to hurt her.”

  “Oh? Why so considerate?”

  “She hadn’t done anything,” Weygand said reasonably. “And I happen to like her.”

  After studying him for a moment, Carter turned back to Lydia. “How’d you know your husband was here in Buffalo?”

  “Jules phoned me about five P.M. I had asked him to keep an eye on my husband, because Jim’s been so depressed, I feared he might do something desperate. When Jules said my husband had registered here at the Redmill Hotel, and was having whisky delivered to his room, I took the six P.M. train here. I got in at seven-thirty and Jules met me at the train—”

  “Hmm. If you were in Rochester at five P.M., I guess you’re cleared as a suspect.” He swung his gaze back to Weygand. “You verify her story?”

  “Of course,” Weygand said in surprise. “You didn’t actually suspect her of doing this thing, did you?”

  “The wife is always a routine suspect when a man’s murdered. Now about you. You tailed him here from Rochester, huh?”

  “Not exactly. I watched him buy a bus ticket to Buffalo, drove here and picked him up at the bus depot again. When he checked in at the Redmill, I arranged with the desk clerk to let me know if he had any orders sent to his room. When I learned he was having whisky delivered, I phoned Lydia.”

  “I see. Seems to me you went to an awful lot of trouble for a guy who’d made you bankrupt.”

  Weygand flushed. “I wasn’t doing it for him. It was a favor for Lydia—”

  “Kind of fond of her, huh?”

  Weygand’s flush deepened. “What are you getting at, Sergeant?’

  “I’ll spell it out for you,” Carter said. “Hartman’s wallet was in his hip pocket with sixty-three dollars in it, so the motive wasn’t r
obbery. He was a stranger here, so it isn’t likely he had any local enemies. You admit you had a grudge against him and you’re fond of his wife. You married, Mr. Weygand?”

  After staring at him for a time, Weygand said hotly, “No. But if you’re accusing me—”

  “I’m not accusing anybody, just yet,” the sergeant interrupted. “I’m just pointing out that you seem to have a couple of good motives, and you tailed him here all the way from Rochester.”

  “But that was at my request,” Lydia protested, her face paling. “I was afraid Jim might try to kill himself.”

  “Maybe your boyfriend was afraid he wouldn’t,” Carter said cynically. “Until we turn up a better suspect, guess we’ll have to hold you a while for investigation, Weygand.”

  Jules Weygand puffed up with indignation. But before he could open his mouth, the squad-room door opened and Harry Nicholson walked in. He was carrying a small paper bag in his hand.

  As Nicholson approached the, desk, Sergeant Carter said, “Get anything?”

  “The lab boys are still lifting prints. The guys from the morgue have been and gone.” He set the paper bag on the desk. “You can handle this. It’s already been checked for prints, and there aren’t any.”

  Sergeant Carter peered into the bag, then reached in and drew out an open, thin-bladed clasp knife with a blade about five inches long. The blade was darkly stained.

  Laying it on his desk blotter, Carter asked, “Anyone recognize this?”

  Lydia managed to overcome her revulsion at the dark stain and leaned forward to examine the knife more closely. In its tan-colored bone handle the initials “J.H.” were inset in silver.

  “It’s my husband’s,” she said in a whisper. “He always carried it.”

  Carter looked up at Nicholson. “So he was killed with his own knife, huh? Probably he was passed out on the bed when the killer entered his room.”

  “What I figured,” Nicholson said. “Of course we’ll have to get the lab to run a check of the blood type on the knife against Hartman’s, but I’ll bet a beer they match.”

  “No bet,” Carter said, “Where’d you turn it up?”

  “I was making a routine check of Weygand’s car,” Nicholson said casually. “It was in the glove compartment.”

  * * * *

  It was nearly midnight when Lydia got back to her hotel room. She had stood by to protest Jules’ innocence to the two unbelieving homicide officers, then had phoned a lawyer, waited until he arrived, and had outlined the whole situation to him. None of it had done any good. There was no bail in first-degree homicide cases, so Jules Weygand was in jail.

  Her performance had helped her own ease, she knew, even if it hadn’t helped Jules’. It would have been inconvenient if the police had suspected collusion between her and Jules, even though there had been none. As it was, they had seemed rather admiring that she had stood by her husband in his trouble to the extent that she had sent a friend to watch over him in case Jules attempted suicide.

  Of course nobody, including Jules, suspected the real reason for her worry over Jim was that he might commit suicide before she could arrange a suitable accident.

  Slipping off her dress and slip, she hung them neatly in the closet. As she peeled off her left stocking, she frowned at the small bloodstain on the inside of her thigh. Then she saw that a run had started where the point of the knife had punctured the nylon when she thrust it down inside the stocking.

  Before removing the other stocking, she went into the bathroom and washed away the tiny bloodstain. Reaching down into the other stocking, she drew out a folded slip of paper, opened it and read it for the first time. There hadn’t been time to read it in Jim’s room, of course; only time to get it out of sight.

  The note was almost illegible, obviously written in the last stages of drunkenness. But amid the erratic scrawling she could make out the phrase: “Sorry I have to take this way out, Lydia, but—” Nothing more was decipherable, but that was enough to indicate it was a suicide note.

  Tearing it into small pieces, she flushed it away.

  It was a good thing she worked for the insurance company where Jim was insured, she thought. Otherwise, she might have been unaware that his fifty-thousand-dollar policy contained a suicide clause which voided it in the event he took his own life.

  It was only right that she should salvage something from a marriage to which she had devoted ten years, Lydia thought. And if she hadn’t removed the knife from Jim’s chest and the note from his hand, she would have nothing to show for the ten years.

  ACTING JOB

  Originally published in Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, January 1961.

  The man was tall and pale, with a wooden expression and hooded eyes. He would have been perfect in the movie role of Jack-the-Ripper. Myrna Calvert hesitated before letting him in, then seemed to decide it was silly to let his appearance bother her.

  “Come in, Mr. Moore,” she said coolly, stepping aside to let him go past her into the apartment and closing the door behind him.

  He glanced around the actress’ front room, approving its tasteful furnishings. When she invited him to sit, he gave his head a nearly imperceptible shake.

  “I won’t be here that long,” he said, barely moving his lips. “I’ll just say what I have to say and leave. But first, I didn’t quite tell you the truth over the phone.”

  The woman’s green eyes narrowed. “You don’t really have any life-or-death information for me?”

  “Oh, that part was the truth. Only my name isn’t Moore. I’m not going to tell you my real name.”

  Myrna’s lovely features were marred by a frown. She studied him suspiciously.

  He said, “Before I explain just what this is all about, I want you to know why I’m telling you. I’ve seen every play you’ve ever been in, Miss Calvert. I think you’re the finest actress and the loveliest woman who ever walked on a stage.”

  Myrna’s back stiffened. “If this is just some trick to get an autograph—”

  “It isn’t,” he interrupted. “I just don’t want you to be scared of me. You would be if I told you why I’m here before letting you know how I feel about you. I want you to know I wouldn’t harm you for anything.”

  The actress looked surprised. “Why should you harm me?”

  “It’s my business,” he said dryly. “I belong to an organization which disposes of people for a handsome fee.”

  Myrna’s eyes gradually widened until they were enormous. In an incredulous tone she said, “You mean you’ve been hired to kill me?”

  “My organization has. I’ve been assigned the job. I don’t intend to do it.”

  After a period of shocked silence, she asked faintly, “Who wants me dead?”

  The man raised his eyebrows. “I figured you’d know that. I was just given the job, not the reason.”

  Myrna paced to a sideboard, took a cigarette from a box and lit it. “Why have you risked telling me this, Mr. whatever-your-name-is? Won’t your organization be angry with you?”

  “I don’t plan on them finding it out.”

  “Suppose I called the police and asked for protection? Wouldn’t they know then?”

  He shrugged. “You could probably get me killed, if you’re that ungrateful. Are you?”

  She studied him with an undecided expression on her face. “You’re taking this risk just because you’re a fan of mine?”

  “A little more than that, Miss Calvert.”

  “Oh? What?”

  “I’ve been in love with you for five years,” he said quietly. “Don’t let it upset you. It’s from a distance and I never expected to meet you. I don’t plan to bother you. When I walk out of here you’ll never see me again. I just don’t want you dead.”

  After contemplating him for a time, she said, “I’m flattered. And very lucky too, I suspect. You
look like an efficient killer.”

  “I am,” he said dryly.

  She took a quick, nervous puff on her cigarette and stubbed it out. “You don’t know any details of this plot?”

  “There was a condition attached,” he said. “I’m supposed to tail you. If you caught a plane for Europe tonight, I was supposed to forget it. If you didn’t, I was supposed to move in and do the job.”

  Her nostrils flared. “Max Fenner!” she said.

  “The theatrical producer?” he inquired.

  She gave a jerky nod. “I knew he hated me, but I didn’t think he’d go this far. He must be mad.”

  “What’s his beef?”

  “He’s over a barrel,” she said viciously. “I want the lead in his new play. He’s already signed Lynn Jordan, and he knows she’ll sue his pants off if he reneges on the contract. But I’m in a position to cause him even more trouble if he doesn’t play ball.”

  He said, “I thought I read you were supposed to make some picture in France.”

  Myrna made an impatient gesture. “That’s peanuts compared to the lead in Make Believe. Max knows I have no intention of catching that plane. I told him yesterday if he didn’t bring around a contract by this evening, I’d talk to his wife.”

  He examined her curiously. “You’re blackmailing him into giving you the part?”

  “This is a cutthroat business, mister. You get to the top any way you can. Lynn Jordan signed her contract on Max’s casting couch. I’m in a position to wreck his marriage if he doesn’t break the contract and sign me. There isn’t an actress on Broadway who wouldn’t use that position in the same way I am. It isn’t amoral, because there aren’t any morals in the theatrical business.”

  He shrugged. “It’s nothing to me. You ought to know something, though.”

  “What?”

  “You’re not off the hook just because I’m turning down the job. The organization will assign somebody else. And maybe he won’t be a secret admirer.”

  Myrna paled a little. “They won’t just forget it when you back out?”

  He shook his head. “Not a chance.”

  “And if I ask for police protection, they might kill you?”