Crimson Clue

by George Harmon Coxe

  He did not wait to see who was with him, but stood back from the window, pulse quickening as he considered his chances. He shut the drawers one after the other and grabbed his keys without bothering to lock the desk. He took a swift look about as he crossed the living-room and then he was at the door, starting to open it and then stopping with his hand on the knob while he put his ear to the panel.

  There was no sound of steps on the carpeted stairs but there was a telltale creaking that convinced him he was too late. Then, because it was the first thing that entered his mind, he wheeled and stepped inside the coat closet, drawing the door after him but not latching it.

  Seconds later he heard the click of a lock, followed by the sound of footsteps in the entryway. He stood quietly, breath held, feeling no great concern as his imagination started to function and anticipation began to work inside him.

  A voice he recognized as Damin’s said: ‘Go right on in, gentlemen’, and now Murdock pushed gently at the door until it widened a two-inch crack. ‘In here, please’, Damin said, his voice receding as he moved farther into the living-room.

  He had two men with him, one of whom was bulky, slow-moving, and wore a Homburg hat; the other was taller, leaner, and moved with a slight limp.

  Murdock said: ‘The Canning brothers’, under his breath.

  He opened the crack a little wider and when he was sure he could not be seen, he slipped from the closet and pushed the door nearly shut. On tiptoes he edged to the living-room doorway and glanced round the corner.

  Damin was at the desk, partly screened by the Cannings, but bending over in a way that suggested he was working the combination of the drawer safe. When he straightened he had what looked like a long, legal-size envelope in his hand.

  ‘Here we are’, he said.

  ‘You have the cheque, Luther?’ Todd Canning said.

  Luther fumbled inside his coat and Murdock went quickly back to the hall door, palming the knob and exerting enough pressure to let the latch click silently. When the door opened he gave it a small, deliberate slam and walked confidently back through the hall and into the living-room.

  ‘Oh’, he said. ‘Sorry, Saul. I didn’t know you had company.’

  For another second the tableau in front of him was unmoving. All had turned at the sound of the door and they stood that way, Luther Canning a cheque in his outstretched hand, Todd Canning in the act of putting the long envelope in his pocket.

  ‘I didn’t hear you buzz’, Damin said coldly.

  ‘The door was ajar.’ Murdock kept advancing, his manner casual and entirely unperturbed. ‘What’s in the envelope?’ He nodded to Todd Canning. ‘Films, or letters, or both?’

  Damin took the cheque, his dark face tight and his hooded little eyes smouldering. Luther Canning straightened his hat. His brother turned back to Damin and tapped his inside pocket.

  ‘I assume everything is here.’

  ‘You have my word for it’, Damin said. ‘Thanks very much for stopping by.’

  Then, so far as the Cannings were concerned, Murdock ceased to exist. They could not have ignored him more. He said they might like to know he had received his camera but they walked right on by him, eyes straight ahead and only the deepening flush in their faces testifying to their annoyance and resentment.

  ‘What the hell kind of a caper is this?’ Damin said when the door slammed. He tossed his hat on the desk and his black gaze was ugly. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I just stopped by to tell you I found the stuff that you or one of your employers swiped at the reception yesterday.’ He explained about the letter and key. ‘I thought you’d like to know’, he said easily. ‘Everything intact except the two shots I took of Neil Garvin in that upstairs closet.’

  Damin rocked up on his toes and for a moment he looked ready to throw a punch. He rocked back and Murdock, relaxing with the gesture, gave him a fixed, unpleasant grin.

  ‘Come clean, Saul’, he said. ‘You got your price. Did that include the films you swiped and the letters you got from Garvin’s hotel room, or just the films?’

  Murdock was talking for a reaction, not really expecting anything definite, but hoping. He thought there might be a flicker of uncertainty in the other’s eyes, a facial twitch that might be revealing. Instead he got nothing but a look of unadulterated fury brought on by almost certain knowledge that Murdock had not found the door ajar, but had been hiding here prior to his simulated entrance.

  ‘Beat it, will you?’ he said. ‘If you’ve got any ideas why don’t you tell them to your pal Bacon?’

  Murdock shrugged and turned away. He said maybe that was a good idea and then walked jauntily across the room without bothering to glance back.

  Chapter 12

  LIEUTENANT BACON was reading a report when Murdock walked into the little office at three o’clock that afternoon. He grunted inhospitably when he recognized his caller, and kept right on reading while Murdock sat down on a straight-backed chair and lit a cigarette, indifferent to his reception but knowing that the lieutenant was not in one of his brighter moods.

  The reading session went on for another three minutes and then Bacon got up and went into the other room and spoke to a detective who was hunched over a typewriter. When he came back he closed the door and leaned back in his chair, half closing his eyes as he gave Murdock his attention.

  ‘Well?’ he said finally.

  ‘I got my stuff back.’

  ‘The camera? When?’

  Murdock told him about the letter and the locker key.

  ‘You got the envelope?’

  Murdock passed it over and Bacon pressed a button, glancing over the envelope and accompanying sheet as he did so. When a plain-clothes man came in he handed them over and said: ‘Tell Jerry to go over these, just for the hell of it.… I guess you’re happy now’, he said to Murdock.

  ‘Not so very.’

  ‘You got your stuff back. That’s what you were crying about, isn’t it?’ He grunted softly. ‘Don’t tell me you’re going to stick right with this case and help me break it.’

  ‘Such sarcasm grieves me’, Murdock said amiably. ‘What’s eating you?’ He watched the lieutenant swivel his chair and stare fixedly out the window. ‘I came here bearing gifts of information and you pout at me.’

  Bacon swung his chair back instantly. ‘Information such as what?’ he demanded.

  Murdock told him and Bacon shook his head in mock despair. ‘One of these fine days,’ he said, ‘you’re going to wind up in felony court smack up against a charge of unlawful entry.’ He leaned back, eyes again half closed. After a moment he said: ‘You think you saw the pay-off, hunh?’

  ‘It figures’, Murdock said. ‘I don’t think the Cannings or Elliotts did that developing, and Damin doesn’t have the equipment. That leaves Klime. But Damin’s the boss in that partnership so he delivers the film that might prove Garvin was in the Canning closet, and gets paid off. The letters could have been in that envelope too. Damin could have been—probably was—the one who tapped me last night in Garvin’s room.’

  Bacon thought it over. ‘It would be nice to have some proof for a change’, he said. ‘How about that other envelope? The one Klime and his pal took away from you. You’re sure you haven’t any idea what was in it?’

  Murdock had done some thinking about this very thing but he had reached no convincing conclusion. ‘Whatever was in it,’ he said, ‘was round and flat. Like a record, only smaller and fatter.’

  Then, as his mind slid off on a tangent, he said: ‘Did you find out anything more about Todd Canning and that accident that killed his daughter?’

  ‘A little’, Bacon said without enthusiasm. ‘It happened about six weeks before Neil Garvin was picked up on that smuggling charge. She had been working in a radio studio as some sort of assistant and she’d been at this dance, and she started across the street with some guy, and a drunk in a jalopy took a wide corner. The guy jumped clear but she didn’t.’ He cleared his throat. ‘But i
f you’re looking for some connection, the drunk’s name wasn’t Neil Garvin.’

  Murdock nodded. He said it would be asking a lot of coincidence. ‘I was reaching’, he said. ‘I thought if Garvin was responsible for the girl’s death and Todd Canning brooded about it enough, he might just possibly——’

  He left the thought unfinished and his grin was apologetic when he found Bacon watching sceptically. ‘Not so good, hunh?’ he said. Then, as another thought came to him, he said: ‘What about the other guy? The one that jumped clear?’

  ‘We don’t know’, Bacon said. ‘He never was identified.’ He took out one of his stogies and began to cut off the end. ‘Sydney French paid me a visit this noon’, he said, as though the incident had no importance.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You know?’ Bacon peered at him. ‘How the hell do you know?’

  ‘I brought him here. I told him he ought to tell you the story.’

  ‘Oh, my God.’ Bacon tossed his hands up and let them fall, almost ruining the stogie. ‘Can’t I get any leads without having them cleared through you?’

  Murdock grinned at the other’s annoyance. He said French wanted advice, that he was afraid of what Bacon might think when he started checking back.

  Bacon forgot his annoyance and leaned close.

  ‘He’s got a right to be scared’, he said with emphasis. ‘Garvin stole his wife.’

  ‘French could have had her back.’

  ‘He served ninety days and Garvin knew it’, Bacon added, ignoring the interruption. ‘Garvin shows up with blackmail in mind and he finds French riding the gravy train. He puts in his pitch—I don’t say he came to see French, you understand; I think his main idea was those letters—and French knows he’s going out to the Canning place the next day. French figures maybe Garvin is still there when he comes to play for the reception. He has a look around during some intermission, finds Garvin in that closet out cold and takes care of him, knowing there isn’t a chance in a thousand that he’ll ever be suspected.’

  Bacon ran out of breath. Until then he had been too interested in what he was saying to note its effect on Murdock. Now, seeing in the photographer’s gaze the same reflected scepticism he had shown a few minutes before, he reared back and rammed the cigar in his mouth.

  ‘What’re you grinning at’, he yelled. ‘It could happen.’

  ‘Because a guy once spends ninety days in the pokey and doesn’t want his fiancée to know, he turns killer?’

  ‘Garvin was in a spot to put the squeeze on. He could ruin French.’

  ‘No. Syd is too well established. In a pinch he probably would have told the Keith woman. He’s in a position to help a guy like Garvin with a job or a loan. That ninety-day jolt for possession of marihuana doesn’t shape up as motive for murder to me but even if you were right on that count you couldn’t sell me.’

  He leaned forward, seeing the resistance crumble in Bacon’s eyes. ‘Syd might have wondered if Garvin was still at Canning’s but, counting closets, I’ll bet there are fifty rooms in the house. Syd gets there just before the bride and groom come back. He starts to play. Every half hour he takes a ten-minute break. The house is loaded with guests, first floor, second floor, all over. So Syd starts looking for Garvin so he can knock him off during some intermission? No.’ He shook his head again. ‘For you maybe; not for me.’

  Bacon leaned back and sighed. ‘I guess I’m getting old’, he said without resentment. ‘I’m getting to be a dreamer.’ He eyed Murdock aslant and though his voice immediately stiffened there remained a gleam of grudging humour in his gaze.

  ‘All this headache,’ he said, ‘because you outsmart yourself and don’t call in last night when you should.’

  ‘Okay’, Murdock said evenly. ‘I’m a jerk. I should have called up and didn’t. If I had you would have rushed out there and found the body.’ He stood up and continued without the slightest animosity. ‘I guess you’d have picked out the killer just like that.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘You might even have got his confession on the spot.’

  Bacon recognized sarcasm when he heard it; he was also a very honest man.

  ‘You’ve got something there’, he said. ‘We’d have had a little more to work with maybe, but with those Cannings and Elliotts hanging together and the servants saying what they’ve been told to say—we questioned them all out at the house and got nowhere; no one ever saw Garvin or even heard of him—I’d probably still be looking for the right kind of evidence.’

  He waved Murdock toward the door and his thin lips flexed in what, for Bacon, was meant to be a smile. ‘Keep me posted, kid. When the killer finally looks you up and confesses, let me be the first to know, will you?’

  It was nearly four o’clock when Murdock got back to the Studio, and for the next hour he was a very busy man. Work that he had neglected had piled up but fortunately most of it was routine and his spot coverage was good, thanks to the teamwork of his staff. He reassured the city editor on certain matters, quieted the advertising department on the matter of some publicity shots, and complimented the art department on its skill and ingenuity at retouching. By five o’clock when he checked with the engravers things were under control, and when Spencer, his assistant, came back from an assignment Murdock told him he was going out for a little while.

  What he had in mind was a drink, but when he reached the tavern around the corner his desire had vanished. He stood on the kerb, wondering what was wrong with him, and the pressmen and stereotypers who had sneaked out for a beer kept asking him to join them for a quick one with such regularity that he decided to get away from there.

  He stopped at the corner and watched the traffic flow by, still undecided as to which way to turn. Suddenly, and without any warning or conscious thought, he knew what he wanted to do. He was not sure just why he thought so but somehow it seemed important that he find out how Audrey Wayne was and what she had been doing all afternoon. And so, the decision having been reached, he hailed the first cab and was presently leaning on the desk at the Forbes Hotel and asking the house operator to connect him with Room 531.

  The familiar, pleasantly husky voice came to him almost at once and there was a lilt to it when he identified himself that was very pleasant to hear. She said she was hoping he would call.

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Downstairs.’

  ‘Well, come on up. I’ve got some good news.’

  She was standing in the open doorway when he came down the hall, her smile radiant, her green eyes shining. She wore a tweed skirt and a soft grey sweater that moulded her slenderness in a manner wonderful to behold, and Murdock eyed her with complete approval as she took his hand and led him inside.

  She took his coat and tossed it on the bed and told him to sit down. She said she wished she had a drink to offer him and would he like her to order something sent up. He said no, hardly paying attention to her words as he watched her move about, straightening the top of the bureau and emptying the two ash trays and finally turning her smile directly on him as she sat down on the edge of the bed. Just watching her like this made Murdock feel good and he realized that this was the first time he had ever seen her in a truly happy mood.

  ‘It must be good news’, he said, his dark eyes warmly intent.

  ‘Oh, it is.’

  ‘You’ve got a job.’

  ‘Well, I had an interview. I’m to have an audition tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Jeff?’ he asked, wondering why it bothered him to speak the name.

  She shook her head, her two-toned hair waving with the movement. ‘Oh, no. Not Jeff. Sydney French.… He was the one Neil Garvin knew’, she went on quickly, her excitement bubbling now. ‘I had no idea. He’s the one who wrote “Eternally” and “The Man for Me”.’ She paused, momentarily sobering as her gaze moved on. ‘I don’t think I ever really believed Neil,’ she said, ‘but he really meant it. Mr. French said he’d known Neil a long time.’

  Her smile came back and she said: ‘T
here was a message waiting for me when I got back to the hotel this afternoon and I called WXCD and talked to Mr. French’s secretary and she gave me an appointment for three … We had a nice talk’, she said. ‘Mr. French and I. He said he couldn’t promise anything definite but if the audition turned out well he was pretty sure there would be something for me. Isn’t it wonderful?’

  Murdock was watching her eyes and once more it came to him that there was some chameleon-like quality here that he could not quite fathom. It bothered him. Last night he had had the impression that she was holding something back; now he wondered if it was the other way round—that she was exaggerating, pretending to some secret knowledge that did not exist. One thing he did know; her enthusiasm was infectious and he listened to her ramble on, feeling relaxed and at ease and sharing somehow the brightness of her mood. Slowly then, an idea began to build in his mind; the more he thought about it the better he liked it. He was about to say something when the telephone rang.

  Audrey excused herself and answered it. ‘Yes’, she said. Then, more brightly: ‘Oh, yes. How are you?’

  Murdock could tell the caller was a man and at first he tried to ignore the one-sided conversation. He lit a cigarette and sat back, and presently he became aware of the change in the girl. Her voice seemed softer, never enthusiastic or expansive but intimate nonetheless, and there were spots of colour in her tawny cheeks.

  Gradually, as the talk continued, traces of irritation appeared amid his thoughts and he found himself trying to follow the line of conversation. When he realized what he was doing his annoyance was directed at himself. He tried to close his mind against the sound of her voice but the words continued to filter through until he found himself jealous, not so much of the man as of the interruption.

  ‘I think that would be nice’, she said finally. ‘All right. Yes … Un-hum … Good-bye.’ She replaced the telephone and turned, the colour still in her cheeks. ‘I’m sorry’, she said.

  Murdock waved his cigarette to indicate it was unimportant. He said it was quite all right. He said he’d been thinking and how would it be to have dinner together.