Where There's Smoke

by Stewart Sterling

  “Who says it’s suicide?”

  The captain put on the patient attitude of one explaining things to a persistent boy. “Look, Marshal. This isn’t a three-alarm matter. It comes under the head of homicide. That’s my business. If you’ll just mind yours and leave the police angles alone—”

  “Keep your pants on, Cap. I’d just like to get a picture of what happened.”

  “That’s what my men are doing. Taking casts of his last steps, when he walked off the road and decided to end it all. There aren’t any other footprints around. He was all by himself.”

  “You’d say he walked into the Park and pulled out the razor and slashed himself?”

  “That’s what the facts say, Marshal.”

  “Yair? Tell me why there isn’t more snow on his shoulders.”

  The other detectives stopped working to glance at the dark blue cloth of Kelsey’s overcoat.

  “It was snowing when he died. He’s covered with it, head to foot. But there’s no more snow on his shoulders, or on his hat, for that matter—” Pedley pointed—“than there is on his pants or socks.”

  None of the detectives made any comment, but the two who had been working on the moulage exchanged glances, pursed their lips, and nodded.

  Pedley went on. “So he hadn’t been walking. Or there’d have been an extra coating on his overcoat. He must have come here in a car. And since there isn’t any car here—somebody must have driven it away.”

  The captain of detectives smiled disagreeably. “He probably caught a cab, drove in here, paid the hackie off, waited until the taxi drove away, and then cut his throat. We thought of that.”

  “Sure you did.” The marshal’s features were expressionless. “All you have to do now is find the cabman who drove him here. If he did come in a cab.”

  “Suppose he didn’t!” The captain became truculent. “Somebody else could have driven him here, let him out.”

  “Kind of funny place to leave a man—when another hundred yards would have put him out on a shoveled sidewalk, instead of in here where he’d have to wade around up to his ankles!”

  “Maybe you’d prefer to take over this investigation all by yourself!”

  “Lord, no. I’m up to my ears in it now,” Pedley said. “I’d like to see anything he might have had on him, if it doesn’t raise your blood pressure too much.”

  The district commander tossed the tarpaulin back in place, strode to the nearest police car, opened the door, switched on the dome light.

  Neatly arranged on a newspaper covering the floor in front of the rear seat was the kind of assortment Pedley had seen so many times at the morgue and in muster rooms after prisoners had been searched.

  Billfold, coins, cigarette case, knife, matches, handkerchiefs, fountain pen. The only item which interested the marshal was a yellow page torn from a classified telephone directory.

  He studied it carefully—and a faraway, reflective look came into his eyes.

  “Want to make a little bet, Cap?”

  “What about?”

  “One’ll get you ten that you don’t find any cab driver who let Kelsey out here. And that before you get through, you do find this was plain, ordinary murder.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  THREE VISITS

  IT WAS SEVEN-THIRTY when Pedley raced across the Queensborough, not yet eight when he pounded on the knocker of the great stone chateau overlooking the Sound.

  A tiny rectangle opened in the upper part of the massive door; eyes he couldn’t see looked him over.

  “Whom do you want?”

  “Paul Amery.”

  “He’s retired, sir.”

  “Wake him up.”

  “Quite impossible, sir. I must ask you to leave—”

  “Wake him up. Tell him Ben Pedley wants to see him. Or I’ll have the Great Neck Fire Department run a couple of ladders up to his window and get in that way!”

  The door opened. An emaciated individual in a black frock coat, a wing collar, and a black cravat, frowned severely. “We can’t have all this rumpus, with Mister Amery in such ill health, sir!”

  “Skip the argument. Take my name to him—”

  A small, dark man with mild brown eyes behind gleaming pince-nez, hurried down the big staircase at the opposite end of the hall.

  “What’s wrong, Nesbitt?”

  “This gentleman insists—”

  Pedley cut him short. “You a physician?”

  “Doctor Rae. I must say you’ve chosen a poor time—”

  “What kind of shape is Amery in, now?”

  “Very bad indeed, sir. He should have stayed in bed today, instead of going in town.”

  “Do him any real harm to come downstairs for ten minutes?”

  “No. Probably not. But—”

  “Tell Nesbitt to go ask him.”

  “Well, really—”

  “I’m investigating the fire that put your patient in his present condition. I’m here to tell you that unless I see him, there may be more serious results.”

  “Nesbitt—would you mind?”

  The butler departed.

  Pedley tossed his hat on a camphorwood chest.

  “How long have you been with Mister Amery, Doc?”

  “Since he came home from the office this morning. Around eleven-thirty.”

  “You’ve been here all the time?”

  “Indeed I have. Why, sir?”

  “Process of elimination, Doc. There’s been another fatality tied up to this Brockhurst Theater fire. Just wanted to make sure our friend Amery couldn’t have been connected with it.”

  “Most certainly he couldn’t! I gave him some bromides and put him to sleep about one o’clock; he’s been in bed ever since.” Rae was indignant. “I resent your questioning me in such a manner, sir. Paul’s a friend of long standing, as well as a patient. He risked his life and definitely endangered his health in the attempt to rescue Miss Lownes. He—”

  “—Just routine, Doc. Later on, some limber-tongued lawyer for the real firebug will ask us these things on the witness stand in an attempt to befoozle the jury. If we’ve checked up beforehand, we’re not so likely to be made to look like saps.” Pedley thought the doctor was on the level. The mark of the respected physician was stamped into Rae.

  Amery came downstairs in a long, gray silk dressing-gown. “Did you get my message about the estate, Mister Pedley?”

  “Thanks, yair. Did you hear the news about Kelsey?”

  “No. What?”

  “His body was found in the Seventy-second Street drive—”

  “Body!” the lawyer exclaimed. “Body!”

  “—near Central Park West.”

  “Great God! Accident—”

  “Suicide, according to the police. His jugular’d been slashed with a barber-style razor.”

  Amery moved slowly to a low coffee table, shaking his bead. He picked up a crystal decanter. “I feel the need of a spot. Anybody join me?”

  “I will,” said Pedley.

  “None for me, thanks, Paul,” the doctor said.

  “Thing that made me hightail out here to see you—” Pedley inhaled the fumes of the well-aged liquor with satisfaction—“was something they found in Kelsey’s pocket.”

  Amery drank without ceremony, slouched down on an antique ottoman. “Not the gun that took a pot shot at me this morning?”

  “No. A list. Of the safe deposit companies in Manhattan. Banks, trust companies—whole slew of ’em.”

  “What’s the significance?” Rae wanted to know.

  “Lot of the phone numbers on the list had been checked off. Kelsey’d presumably called them before he died. I haven’t anything to back it up, but it occurred to me the guy might have been trying to locate a vault where Ned Lownes stashed something valuable.”

  “Ned used the Corn Exchange,” Amery said. “Madison and Forty-fifth. He had a drawer there.”

  “How about taking a peek at its contents?”

  “Any time
you want.” The lawyer set his glass back on the table. “There wasn’t much in there besides the stock certificates I phoned you about, some copies of contracts with the record companies, and a savings book.”

  “Oh. You went over and opened it today?”

  “No. I sent Miss Bernard over with power of attorney to open it. Surely there can’t be any connection between that and Kelsey’s suicide.”

  “When you come right down to it,” Pedley said, “I’m none too convinced he cut his own throat.”

  Amery coughed, raspingly. “If it was murder—” he felt of his bandaged neck—“in Central Park, in broad daylight, somebody must have seen the murderer.”

  “Not many people in the Park today. Too much snow. Roads were bad. Man might have been let out of a car close to the Seventy-second Street entrance and his throat slashed as he was getting out. Don’t say it happened that way. Could have—Well, thanks for the drink. Sorry to have routed you out for nothing.”

  Amery went to the door with him. “Headquarters is going to assign a plain-clothes man to me in the morning.”

  “See what it means to be a member of the bar?” Pedley smiled.

  “They’d have done it, anyway. At least until they capture the man who fired that shot at me.”

  “An old fire-horse’s opinion, for what it’s worth. The man who fired that shot is in the Tombs right now. His name is Astaro Lasti. He tried to murder me in a Turkish bath this noon, but it didn’t jell. He’s being held for tomorrow’s Grand Jury.”

  Amery was agitated. “Why didn’t you let me know? It would have saved Mrs. Amery and me a tremendous amount of worry. Not to mention Nesbitt and the doctor. We’ve all been hearing queer things in the darkness, all evening.”

  “Didn’t know for sure. Don’t know. Guy tried to implicate Kelsey. Outside of that, Staro didn’t really confess anything. I’d still keep a Colt stabled under my pillow.”

  He drove back to town more slowly, weighing the possibilities. That key on Lownes’s Keytainer must be for some other vault than the one Miss Bernard had found access to so simply. Without the key, her power of attorney wouldn’t have done any good; a court order would have been necessary to get the safe deposit company to open it. The key in Pedley’s possession must fit a drawer in some other bank.

  His first call on the Manhattan side of the river was at the Tombs, where he had an acrimonious conversation with the man who’d tried to drown him less than twelve hours ago.

  Pedley made an offer—of a leniency recommendation to the trial judge. A sentence of from ninety-nine years to life held some slight hope; the chair was a bad alternate. The marshal couldn’t promise anything. But his word sometimes carried weight—

  Staro went through successive stages of flat denial, blunt suspicion, wary hedging. In the end, he exercised his memory sufficiently to recall that his ex-employer had occasionally made trips to the Columbus Circle branch of the Merchants & Importers National.

  Pedley’s second visit was to the bank at the Circle. It took a little longer than the first, on account of the difficulty of reaching the bank’s executives by telephone and verifying the fact that the Fire Marshal can issue what amounts to a summary court-order, on the spot, when and where needed.

  Even then, the results weren’t what Pedley had expected. After the night man in the vault had been properly convinced, he checked his visitors’ sheet.

  “You’re the second person who’s had access to this drawer today, Mister Pedley.”

  The marshal cursed.

  “Who was here before me?”

  “Here’s her signature, sir. She had the key and written authority—everything in order.”

  After Pedley read the signature, he didn’t bother to look in the locked drawer.

  Leila Lownes wouldn’t have left anything worth finding.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  CONFESSIONS OF A BRIDE

  SHANER EMERGED FROM behind the tapestry screen shielding the PBX operator in the Riveredge lobby. He made an umpire’s sweeping gesture of the flat palm. “She’s safe at home, coach.”

  “She better be.” Pedley thumbed the UP button. “If you haven’t tended your sheep this time, you’re a dead Bo Peep.”

  “This afternoon was one of those mishaps which’d never occur again in a thousand. No harm done, was there?”

  “Oh, no. The babe merely went to a safe deposit during that half-hour she was out of your sight. I wouldn’t be surprised if she got away with the prize hunk of evidence I’ve been running myself ragged about.”

  “It’s positively the last time I ever trust a mouse! The word of a Shaner.”

  “Ah—you’ll get hoodwinked every hour on the hour the rest of your life. Has she had callers?”

  “Terence the Ross was up for maybe an hour, just after you called. He’s biting his fingernails when he goes up, an’ purring with pleasure when he comes down. Figure that out on your horoscope!”

  “She has a way with males. Feeds ’em catnip. Rubs their ears.”

  “Not bad, either.” Shaner grinned.

  Leila answered the buzzer herself. She had done a complete switch from the oomph getup; this was the sweet, home-girl type.

  The tight-fitting blue-and-white checkered dress was becoming, he admitted; it showed as much of her figure and more of her legs than the boudoir outfit. The only incongruous touch was the emerald-studded wrist watch on her wrist; it didn’t quite give the domestic flavor.

  “We’re all alone,” she began. “I let Netta have the night with her friends in Harlem—But I can mix you a drink, if you’d care for one.”

  No mention of Bill Conover, though she must be aware of the alarm out for him! No inquiry about Kim Wasson, who was supposed to be dying at Saint Vincent’s! No comment about Hal Kelsey; certainly Ross must have told her about the band leader’s death! Only a suggestion about a drink!

  “Not right now.” He saw it lying under the bisque-shaded lamp on the center table, as if that were where it belonged and had merely been returned to its proper place! It was rich mahogany in color; the ornate clasp and lock were dull gold.

  He went to it, picked it up, hefted it. A marvelous example of Florentine craftsmanship; the design on the top was of Leda and the Swan, done in deep tooling. The thing was probably a museum piece, but Pedley didn’t appreciate it. It was empty.

  “So you got this little beauty back!” He undid the clasp; the interior was lined with rose brocade.

  “Terry brought it back. Just a little while ago.”

  “Just like that?”

  “He happened to be looking through Ned’s things at the club—my brother was a member of the Olympiad, too, he used the handball courts once in a blue moon—and there in his locker, under a dirty old sweat shirt, was my case!”

  “That’s luck for you.” Pedley looked at the bottom of the case. There was nothing beyond the maker’s mark: Tomaso Garloli, Firenze. “Where are the contents?”

  “You wouldn’t be interested in them, really.”

  “I certainly would, if they’re photos of the Body Beautiful.” She’d have had time to hide whatever had been in it. But she hadn’t been out of the apartment since she brought the case back here; unless she’d ditched the contents en route from the bank to the Riveredge, they’d still be here somewhere. “Do I have to dig ’em up, myself?”

  “You can’t!”

  “I’ll have a slight go at it.” He started across the sunken living-room, sizing up possible hiding places. She was undisturbed.

  Well, there were the other rooms. He didn’t relish the idea of searching her bedroom, but if there weren’t any alternative—

  He crossed in front of the fireplace, paused with his head cocked on one side, like a terrier listening. Only, Pedley was smelling.

  Queer odor, somewhere. Couldn’t be incense, could it? Maybe she’d been putting some of those metallic salts on the logs to make colored flames. If she’d been doing that, after what happened at Horatio Street la
st night, she must be made of glacier ice.

  No—it was burning paper! The unmistakable acridity of sulphur and sizing! He went back to the fireplace, saw the pages burning.

  “A book, hah?” The leaves had been torn out in bunches, tossed in the fire. Four-fifths of the paper had been consumed; on the remaining fifth he could sec handwriting, broad, back-slanting letters.

  If he should douse the fire with water, trying to save the part that hadn’t yet been consumed, the pages would contract and the charred cellulose would crumble to ashes. “What’s so important about it?”

  “It was my diary. The things I wrote in it weren’t meant for other people to read. You understand.”

  “Hell I do.” He went to the phone. “Charming? This is the marshal. Let me talk to that Shaner… Shaner?”

  “You need protection, coach?”

  “Grab that three-gallon from the wall rack in the stair well, bring it up here. Shake the lead out of your seat.”

  Leila ran toward the fireplace. He caught her on the hearth, held her by the wrists.

  She glanced over her shoulder at greedy tongues of flame eating their way slowly across the pages; the top page of each handful burning faster than those underneath, curling up tighter like crumpled carbon paper until the page beneath it got going.

  “You’re a cad, sir!” She smiled, quite unconcerned.

  “And you’re mistaken—” he pulled her toward the hall door—“if you think I’m not going to read what’s on those pages. Just because they’ve burned won’t mean they’re illegible.”

  “Why must you frighten an innocent maid?” She was still playing at melodrama.

  “Put those charred pages under the ultraviolet—we’ll read ’em easy as you read your fan mail.” He opened the door.

  It took a second for his meaning to sink in. Then her eyes blazed; she struggled frantically toward the fireplace.

  He had to grip her around the waist; hold her tightly against him.