Time Off for Murder

by Zelda Popkin

  What had Chris said that October evening while the T-bone steaks were on the fire? Murder could happen under your nose in New York and nobody notice. "Phyllis might be dead this very minute." Chris had tried to be clever. Unaccountably, a shiver raced down Miss Carner's spine.

  Johnny Reese was finishing. "That's all now, Inspector. I'm meeting Willie Deegan at the Queensboro Bridge in ten minutes. See you all later."

  "Flo Gordon." The assistant District Attorney repeated the name. He scratched the side of his nose, thoughtfully. "I ought to know that femme. Flo Gordon? Why, sure I do. I remember her now. I remember her well. Big, brassy, hairylipped female, slick as a greased pig. Sure…. Oh sure…. We were interested in that raid. . . I remember now…. We had an idea Flo was working for Rockey Nardello, that the place was one of his. Flo ran it, and from what I could learn, ran it darn well. Swanky clientele. Girls no better than run of the mill - and the same risk but Flo knew how to put on the spiff: good liquor, silk-cushions, soft lights, filthy movies. Some of our best citizens patronized the joint. We had to keep Flo's guest book in the safe, or there'd've been divorces all over town…. I talked to Flo myself…. Tried all the tricks to get her to sing. All we got out of her were some high class sneers. We tried the other palookas in the house, too. But they were dumber than average."

  Mary Carner interrupted: "What was Phyllis Knight's connection with the District Attorney's office?" she asked. "It was mentioned the time she disappeared."

  The assistant District Attorney blew a smoke ring toward the ceiling. "Give me a minute. I'll remember." The ashes of his cigarette dribbled to the floor. "I've got it now. " He hunched forward. "She came down to see us in October. As I recall she hadn't much to tell us we didn't already know. And her information pertained chiefly to the vice racket, in which we were only mildly interested, and not to policy which was the indictment against Nardello. Her source of information, I believe, was a girl she had defended in the Bronx on a homicide charge, a poor Polish kid, who had been victimized by some of Rockey's crowd."

  "Sophie Duda?"

  "That's the name. As I recall it now, the girl had given some hints that she knew who some of the important people were behind the Nardello rackets. Miss Knight asked us not to contact the girl, to let her try to get it out of her alone said the girl was too scared to talk to anyone else." He sighed. "But it turned out to be just one of these things. People running in and out of the D.A.'s office with hot tips all the time and never delivering. Phyllis Knight never phoned us again and nothing ever came of it…. Oh well." He smiled with reminiscent satisfaction. "We got our verdict anyway, as you may recall."

  "But Miss Knight tried to phone your office the day she disappeared," Mary said. "I was told she couldn't, for some reason or other, reach the District Attorney."

  "Wouldn't surprise me. Our phones were awfully busy all that day. Trial opened next morning."

  "If she had reached you, perhaps - "

  "Perhaps she'd not be dead. That what you meant to say?" His brow wrinkled. "I don't know…I don't know what the tie-up is - unless," his tone grew sharper, "unless you believe she was murdered by the Nardello gang?"

  Inspector Heinsheimer stretched his legs. "We don't believe anything at all," he said. "Our minds are so open, there's a draft." He yawned. "'Scuse me. It's stuffy in here. Smoke's so thick you can weigh it on the scales by the pound. How much time d'you think the judge gave the Gordon woman?"

  "Flo?" the D.A. answered. "Not much. Not more than a hundred and twenty days, if that. And if she had a good lawyer, and she would have, believe me, sixty days. She didn't get off without time. I'm sure of that."

  "Would you figure Flo knew what was going on next door to her?"

  "If they were using electricity she paid for, she'd know. You can bet on that."

  The Inspector rose, strolled to the mantelpiece. "One thing's nice about this murder. We got plenty of witnesses. Four guys and maybe a spare saw it done; a house full of women next door and the police department and half the neighborhood on the doorstep before the body was cold."

  "And not one has said a single word in a half year," Mary Carner said. "That's a new high in secret keeping. Unless it didn't happen that way at all and there weren't any witnesses. We're taking a lot for granted. We know Phyllis disappeared on the nineteenth. We know there was a raid next door on the nineteenth. And we're assuming that on the same evening there was a dinner party here and Phyllis broke in on it."

  "Sure," said the Inspector. "Know anybody to call us a liar?"

  "How about the man who lost the eyeglasses?" the District Attorney put it. "When was he here and why did he come? And who was he?"

  "Take it easy. We'll find that out too." The Inspector took the eyeglasses from his pocket. He held them up. "Cheap frame," he said. "This guy didn't like to spend his dough - or didn't have it to spend." He squinted through the unbroken lens. "Strong," he commented. "Makes my eyes hurt." He took the envelope of broken glass from his pocket, put the spectacle frame inside it, went over to the door and beckoned to a plainclothesman. "Here, Menzel. Get Lydon. The two of you take these specs to every optician in New York…every guy that makes eyeglasses. I mean every one. Find out what the prescription is and if anybody remembers making it up and for who."

  The detective called Menzel whistled. "There's hundreds of them guys, Inspector."

  "And what difference does that make?" Inspector Heinsheimer said coldly. He returned to his chair.

  While he was at the door, Mary Carner had been rummaging through the blue leather handbag that had belonged to Phyllis. In her lap were spread the personal belongings of the dead woman, two dainty hand-rolled, monogrammed handkerchiefs, a powder compact, a pair of reading glasses in their case, a silver pencil, a pocket comb, a box of throat lozenges, a little book of addresses and telephone numbers - hairdresser, laundry, doctor, dentist, chiropodist, dry cleaner, broker, friends - a folded checkbook, a bunch of keys, the smallest a toy of gilt, a bill fold, change purse.

  Mary held up a little notebook. She said: "Aren't we all dumb? Guessing. When here, Phyllis wrote down the date she had with death."

  "Where?" Inspector Heinsheimer snatched the book from her hand. It was a tiny leather bound diary, gilt-edged, gilt stamped "Appointments." Mary had it opened at the page for the nineteenth of October. The Inspector's plump forefinger ran down the column. It stopped at "12:30 Lunch. W.V.A." "What's W.V.A.? Geography?"

  Only the police stenographer laughed.

  Mary said: "W.V.A. must be Wilfred Van Arsdale. Phyllis' ex-boy friend. Troy. We knew about that date the time she disappeared. Van Arsdale himself came on to New York and told the police about it. That was the time she told him she was interested in another man, Saxon Rorke."

  Simultaneously the Inspector and the young D.A. raised their eyebrows, in a concerted gesture of amazement, so startling in its spontaneity that Mary Carner laughed. "What's wrong with that?" she said. "You men acted so funny. Like Queen Mary must have when she first heard of Wally Simpson."

  "Your girl friend didn't look like Wally," the Inspector said. "But there's lots of places in this town where they think Saxon Rorke's His Royal Highness."

  "I know," said Mary. "He's very rich. And very society. He's a fascinating gentleman. Have you seen this letter in the bag? Phyllis wrote it." She had abstracted the letter from its envelope. "Johnny Reese and I knew about that letter a half year ago. We read it on a blotter. Wondered what had become of it. Asked Rorke. And he said he never got it. Best reason in the world. She never sent it."

  She passed the letter to the assistant D.A. who read it with sympathetic eyes.

  Mary said: "Yes, it is pathetic. She, a proud, intelligent, worldly woman, was head over heels in love. She wasn't sure of herself. She wrote the letter Tuesday night and carried it around unmailed. Afraid of the answer. Afraid to face the facts."

  "Like so many of us," the District Attorney said quietly. "We can face any grim fact in the outside world, but nev
er anything that touches our pride."

  "That was Phyllis. She wouldn't face personal facts. She wouldn't face the truth about her father. She hesitated to face the truth about her relations with Saxon Rorke. As if she feared that knowing would destroy her."

  "And so she never knew," the D.A. said. "She died not knowing whether he loved her or whether it was just chivalry. Is that it? And just as well - now she's dead."

  "And yet he must have loved her," Mary said. "He was very much disturbed. It was he who forced her father to report her disappearance…Have you notified him?"

  "One thing at a time," the Inspector said. "If he reads the papers, he knows. We'll get around to him. This book. Here. Right here. She wrote down everything. Here's that movie date I heard you speak of. I don't get it exactly. Look what she's got here." His forefinger pointed to the place where, in pencil, in Phyllis' slanting back-hand, was scrawled: "6:? News Reel Theatre."

  "She went there, all right," Mary said. "Here's the stub." She held up a fragment of bright red pasteboard.

  "Yep," the Inspector scowled. "But what's the question mark for? A person or a place or a thing?"

  "It looks," the D.A. ventured, "as though she wasn't sure herself of what it was."

  The Inspector grunted. "She was sure enough of the next one though, all right. The time's eight-thirty. The address is this here house. And the person she had a date with is N.P. Man, woman or child, that's the one that met her here. N.P. Anybody know any N.P.'s?"

  "Now wait. N.P. I've seen those initials somewhere. Now wait…. Let me think. Oh yes, I know where I saw it. On another appointment sheet - in Phyllis' office. What was the name?" Mary's memory struggled across the gap of months. If Johnny Reese were here, she thought. He with his fly-paper memory. Paulson? Pinkerton? No. Peterson. That was it…. The querulous voice of the ecru Struthers - and where was he now? - saying: "Take poor Mister Peterson." Neal? No. Something more Scandinavian. Nils? "Nils Peterson," she said finally. "That was the name. He had been in to see her, had telephoned several times that day. Was agitated about something. The secretary didn't know what. Peterson was a client. A poor client. She had helped him save his property or something. Peterson always came in to talk to her about his troubles. He talked about going back to Sweden…. But what on earth had he to do with this house? And why should he have wanted to get her murdered? She was his friend. His best friend. His only friend. Phyllis was that sort…." Sympathy for the dead girl sobered her.

  The Inspector said: "Snap out of that, Carner. Where is this Peterson guy? Where can we get at him?"

  She raised her shoulders wearily. "Ever try the phone book?…Excuse me. I didn't mean to be rude. We can get to her files. His address must be there. Or maybe the Missing Persons Bureau - or maybe he's gone, too. Now, I remember. Her secretary said Peterson hadn't been around since the day that Phyllis disappeared. Was a regular pest before but never even telephoned after Phyllis vanished."

  "Very interesting," said the young D.A. "Very interesting. I think you've got something there, Miss Carner."

  The Inspector said: "Y'ask me, I think you got a good deal there."

  The D.A. rose. "I'd say you've got plenty." He stood up. He whistled. "I feel as if I'm on a merry-go-round. A date with Nils Peterson and the corpse carrying the name and date around. A ghost banquet. Four witnesses in the house. A raid next door. A wire tying up this place right with that one." He shook his head. "Too many suspects. Too many witnesses. Too many clues. Lot more than the law allows."

  "Sure." The Inspector grinned. "Give me a nice simple mystery any time. One with just a teentsy piece of string to hang a murderer with - or a button to choke him on. But we'll clear it up. We'll get through the underbrush. Don't let it get you down. Say, what's the matter with you, Mary? What's happening to you?"

  Mary Carner wore a look of profound astonishment. She clapped her hand over her open mouth. "I'd clean forgotten, it went out of my mind. This is all cockeyed. We've been figuring this thing all wrong. Phyllis Knight wasn't killed on the nineteenth of October. She wasn't killed when she came here to meet Peterson. She must have left this house alive. The raid next door had nothing to do with her. There weren't all those witnesses to her murder. She was alive that night. Go back to the Missing Persons files, Inspector. In the first week of November, Phyllis Knight wrote two letters, from some place in New Jersey. She was alive then. And she asked us to stop hunting for her."

  The Inspector pursed his lips. "O.K.," he said. "We start from scratch again. Where do we go from here?"

  "I still think," Miss Carner said, "we go right out to look for Peterson."

  But as she spoke, her eyes had an absent look, as if her thoughts were remote from the thing she had mentioned. And they were, for while she said one man's name, her memory was hearing the voice of another.

  Chapter VIII

  A homicide investigation is as painstaking, as intricate, as the spinning of a web.

  It begins with the camera, for the human eye is a cheat and memory irresponsible. Three men see a single scene and there are three impressions. But on the photographic plate facts are indisputable: Thus, the cadaver lay after its last agony. Thus were its hands, feet, head, clothing. This is the room in which it happened. Here was a window; there a door. It was so far from here to there. What is that shadow on the wall? Is it where a shoulder rubbed against the plaster? That streak on the floor? Was something dragged across? Here stood a table. The dishes on it were arranged in a certain way, which - who can foresee relevance? - may have some meaning later on.

  The fingerprints carelessly left behind on glass and crockery and wood and metal must be dusted over with a puff and powder, photographed, enlarged, indexed, compared with each of the millions of prints on file at the headquarters of the New York police and in the Federal Bureau of Investigation at Washington. "These whorls and ridges are unknown to us. This last one belongs to so and so, who one time was entangled with the law."

  From the photographic dark-room, the shuttle moves on to the dissecting table and the laboratory. Are there marks of violence on the skull, the larynx, the limbs? Is there narcotic or poison in the brain, the heart, the viscera, the lungs? What was eaten? What was drunk? What was breathed before life ended? There is no privacy for the violently dead.

  A scrap of paper, a sliver of glass, a burned match, the muddy print of a heel, the scrapings of a fingernail, all receive a label, a number, a turn under magnifying glasses and microscopes. Nothing is unimportant. The omniscient Spectroscope reports: "In this clod of dirt above the print of a heel there is so much of silica, so much of iron filings, a trace of lime. If you find mud of this content on a suspect's shoes, you may be fairly certain that that one left his footprint on the scene." The Colorimeter adds: "The writing on this sheet of paper came out of the same ink bottle as that other bit of chirography, there, and one of those whom you suspect may have filled his fountain pen from that very bottle. If you match your inks you may have drawn your web a good bit tighter."

  Under the converging lenses of the comparison microscope, a bullet reveals prints of firing pin and gun barrel as clear, as definite, as unique as the whorls of a fingerprint. There is nothing more amazing in all the science of crime detection, than that no two revolvers leave identical markings on a bullet, but that each separate gun, invariably, makes the same unique scratches and nicks whenever that gun is fired.

  Then, there are people to see and talk to. These may be a hundred, a thousand, a number to infinity. Each person who may have been nearby, or walked nearby, each person who had association with the deceased, must be tracked down, spoken to. The neighbor, the gossiping friend, the corner shopkeeper, the secretary, the maid of all work, the family doctor, the motion picture cashier, the garage attendant. The chance remark, the turn of a head, a word on the telephone, the trembling of a hand - who knows which one will yield the essential clue?

  Reasoning minds supplement tireless legs and patient hands. What have we seen and heard?
Where does it point? Who had a reason? Who had an opportunity?

  But there is an etiquette of sudden death. No matter how patent the evidence, you may not name the dead until some next of kin has looked upon its face.

  Inspector Heinsheimer sent a man down to Washington Square to bring Lyman Knight to the Morgue at Bellevue. "We won't bother Rorke about it," he said to Miss Carner as he bent down to tie a shoe-lace. "He isn't kin. It's the father's job, if he's up to it. You met the old man, Miss C., what do you think of him?" He finished the bow on his shoe, straightened up, said to the police stenographer, "The bug-house for talking to yourself. When'd that female leave?"