I'll Sing at Your Funeral

by Hugh Pentecost

  “It may,” said Cain, “if she’s lied all the way through. But she told me that Summers never made any bones about his infidelities. That she accepted them because she was satisfied with what she got out of the, relationship. She actually admired him for being on the level with her.”

  “But if she thought she had discovered who one of the women was it might unhorse her,” Edgar said.

  “It could be,” said Cain. He reached for the bottle a second time. He could count on the behavior of bourbon. “But here’s another point. If one husband could be double-crossed, so could another. If one woman who had had an affair with Summers could kill him in a jealous rage, so could another. I’m thinking of the Rosokovs. I went there to talk to them this afternoon and managed to get plastered before I could ask any questions. Julie Rosokov had an appointment with Lummers at three Thursday afternoon. We don’t know that she didn’t keep it. Personally… ” He stopped, interrupted by a light knock at the door.

  Edgar crossed the room and opened it.

  “Good afternoon, gentlemen,” said Inspector Bradley’s pleasant voice. “Mind if I corne in?”

  “Join the party,” Cain said.

  Bradley came in, looking curiously around the place. “I heard about this … er … playroom,” he said. “It’s unique, Mr. Stoddard.”

  “I’d hate to think the city was full of old has-beens polishing harness,” Edgar said. “Is this visit official or social, Inspector?”

  “Official,” said Bradley with a sigh. “That’s the trouble with my job. When you’d like to be social, you can’t, and when a case is finished nobody wants to see your face again.”

  “I suppose you’ve come about Miss Reed’s charges … and the letters,” Edgar said.

  “Right,” said Bradley.

  “You’ve talked to my wife?”

  “No.”

  “You decided I was a more likely prospect?”

  “Something like that,” Bradley admitted.

  “You and Pat seem to think along the same lines.”

  Bradley turned his mild eyes on Cain. “Still playing with matches?”

  “It’s irresistible,” Cain grinned.

  “I hope you duck at the right time,” Bradley said. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to talk to Mr. Stoddard alone. Incidentally, I brought your girl home. She was hanging around outside headquarters, waiting for Miss Reed.”

  “Nice going,” Cain said.

  “I just thought I’d warn you,” Bradley said. “She isn’t pleased.”

  3

  Cain walked back to the house, whistling. He let himself in with his key. The thud of the front door closing brought Carol out of the library. Bradley, Cain saw, was guilty of understatement. She was bristling.

  “I have you to thank for this!” she said.

  Cain eyed her, grinning. “I like it,” he said. “The dress is a dream. The hat has just the right amount of impertinence. The face—”

  “Don’t you ever do anything but clown around and, get plastered?” she demanded.

  “I’m sorry about that,” said Cain. “Rosokov beat me to the draw.”

  “And what do you mean by telephoning the police and telling them to bring me home? What do you mean by it!”

  “Take it easy or you’ll blow a gasket,” Cain said.

  “I suppose you told Bradley that there were other letters besides the three Margo gave him!”

  “As a matter of fact, no.”

  “Don’t tell me that somewhere or other, you have a spark of discretion.”

  “Why don’t you give up being a flatfoot and just take an academic interest in this case?” Cain said.

  “Are you leaving the force, too? You’re a fine one to talk!”

  He ignored this. “Because if you insist on running around looking for things you’ll only draw attention to them. The other letters haven’t turned up so why point? The three Bradley got are bad enough, aren’t they?”

  “It’s going to kill father!” Carol said.

  “I doubt it,” Cain said. “By the way, didn’t Emily tell her story?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t you believe it?”

  “Do you?”

  “Word for word,” said Cain. “Nobody would invent a story like that.”

  Carol seemed to crack. She reached out impulsively to Cain. “Oh, Pat, do you really think that?”

  “I do. And I wouldn’t worry about your father. He seems to have understood about it all along.”

  “He told you that?”

  “With gestures,” Cain said.

  “Then don’t you see, Pat, we must get the rest of those letters? If it’s all in the papers … ”

  “It will be damned unpleasant. But not half so unpleasant as if somebody slugs you one while you’re hunting for them. Stay clear of it, baby. After all, you have to think of me.”

  “Of you?”

  “You haven’t forgotten about the stars, have you?” Cain grinned. “You’re to be a June bride, you know.”

  “For heaven’s sake, Pat!” She was exasperated.

  “I want you all in one piece,” he went on imperturbably. “And I want to stay in one piece myself. It’s going to take a lot of conditioning for me to learn to live on your money, sweet.”

  “Pat!”

  “I’ve seen this kind of thing work out before. You’d never learn to live in a shack down at the shipyards. So I’ll simply have to accustom myself to living in luxury.”

  “Aren’t you ever serious about anything, Pat?”

  “May I be about this?” he asked quickly.

  “Certainly not! Do you realize while you stand here babbling that Margo has accused mother of murdering Bill and Arthur? She thinks Arthur was Lydia’s man, and that Bill found out about it and about Arthur and mother, and that mother killed Bill to keep him quiet and then did for Arthur because she was jealous.”

  “And next Saturday afternoon,” said Cain, “you can see the second installment of the Sinister Mrs. Bluebeard at this very same theater!”

  “Damn you, Pat!” Carol said angrily.

  “If you must mess around in this case, mess around in it with me,” Cain said. “Then I’ll be able to keep you out of trouble. Are you ready to go places now?”

  “Where?”

  “To call on a gent who’s been pretty thoroughly overlooked. A gent who made a mistake but who may know things: Master Joseph Egan.”

  “Why do you want me?” Carol asked,

  “Because in those veins courses the blood of a thoroughbred. Because under that veneer of social snobbery lies a heart of gold. Because, although I’m allergic to stars, I’ve come to the conclusion that you are my dish.”

  “Will you stop playing the fool!”

  “And besides,” said Cain, “Joseph may be more willing to open his little heart to a sympathetic female.”

  In the taxi headed for Joe Egan’s rooming house Cain told Carol what was in his mind.

  “It’s so damned easy to overlook the first facts,” he said. “As soon as there’s a juicy morsel, like this … this … er … relationship of your mother’s with Summers, to give someone new a possible motive, we jump at it without stopping to think about the things that contradict it.”

  “I don’t understand, Pat.”

  “Well, when this thing broke we believed that Bill was murdered because he knew who Lydia’s lover was. Remember, Bill actually said he knew. Then we went on to figure that Summers was killed because he, too, had guessed.

  “On that basis I can’t see what either Edgar or Emily had to fear from Bill’s telling on Lydia. Edgar couldn’t have been her man. She wrote Joe there were reasons for secrecy, but the implication was that presently everything would be on the up and up and she would be married. Your father never could have sold her on that. And why should Emily care who the guy was?

  “I think the murderer is either the man who ditched Lydia Egan or some woman who wants to protect him.”

  �
�It sounds reasonable,” said Carol. “Why are we going to see Joe?”

  “Joe has devoted himself for a couple of weeks to tracing the man who gave his sister the works. He jumped to the wrong conclusion about Bill. Now he must have started reassembling his facts. They may fit someone else. I’d like to know who … and incidentally, I’d like to keep Joe out of trouble. He’s had enough already.”

  The taxi pulled up in front of a shabby brownstone house. They got out, climbed the steps, and rang the doorbell. After some delay a woman opened the door.

  “We’d like to see Mr. Joseph Egan if he’s in,” Cain said.

  “Second floor rear,” she said without interest.

  “Is he in?”

  “I don’t keep a watch on my boarders as some people seem to think I should. You’ll have to find out for yourself.”

  “Can it be,” said Cain, as they went up the stairs, “that the lady has been put through the mill by the inspector?”

  They walked along the corridor. Cain knocked on the door. There was no response.

  “Looks like he’s out,” Cain said. He started to turn away and then stopped. “Smell anything?”

  “Gas,” said Carol.

  Even as she spoke Cain was pressing his face against the crack in Egan’s door. “Carol! Call the emergency squad. And Bradley’s at your father’s place.”

  He leveled his good shoulder at the door and charged it.

  Chapter Eighteen

  1

  Cain stumbled into the room. The shades were drawn. The smell of gas was almost overpowering. Cain held a handkerchief over his mouth and nose and made for the windows. He got both open. Feeling as though his head would burst from holding his breath, he turned toward the bed.

  Egan lay there, a cone made of newspaper hiding his face. Into the small end of the cone ran the rubber tubing from a portable gas ring on the bedside table. Cain turned it off and dove for the safety of the corridor.

  He leaned against the wall, strangling and choking.

  From downstairs came the sound of a woman screaming in short, methodical blasts. In between, Cain could hear Carol’s voice calmly instructing Richards to find Bradley.

  Cain went back into the gas-filled room. He slipped his good arm around Egan’s waist, dragged him off the bed with a thud, linked his fingers in the back of Egan’s collar and pulled him across the floor and out into the hall.

  Carol came up the stairs, frightened but in control of herself.

  “Is he dead?”

  “God knows,” Cain said. He cursed his crippled arm. Trying to stimulate artificial respiration was next to impossible one-handed.

  “Tell me how to do it,” said Carol.

  “Good girl. Put your hands here … and give it the business.”

  “They said five minutes,” Carol panted. She was straddling Egan, trying to push air in and out of his lungs. “The emergency squad, I mean.”

  It seemed like hours. Egan’s face was black and swollen and he showed no signs of life.

  “Oh, Pat, my arms are breaking!”

  “Keep going!” Cain said. He knelt beside her, giving what help he could.

  The landlady had come to the top of the stairs and stood there, screaming steadily. One or two roomers appeared, but didn’t offer to help or to come near. At last Cain heard a siren in the distance.

  “Get your fat fanny downstairs,” he ordered the landlady, “and have the door open.”

  A moment later the emergency squad took over. They carried Egan into an adjoining room and got a pulmotor to work on him.

  “What are his chances?” Cain demanded of the sergeant in charge.

  “Can’t tell yet. He’s pretty far gone.”

  Cain went back into the hall. Carol was still kneeling there, crying into her hands. Cain lifted her to her feet and she buried her face against his shoulder.

  “Snap out of it,” he said. “Come on.”

  “I ache!” Carol said.

  “You were swell,” Cain said. “Teach you to keep your head in the Junior League?”

  “Why are you always h-harping on that?” Carol said. “Oh, Pat, he looked so dreadful.”

  “They’ll do whatever can be done,” Cain said. “Baby, you scram out of here and go home. You’ve had enough for one day.”

  “No, Carol said. “Lend me your hankie.” She dried her tears, then opened a small compact and squinted at herself in its mirror. “Look at me!” she cried.

  “The evidences of honest toil, darling,” Cain said. “I like it.”

  Then there were heavy footsteps on the stair again and Bradley appeared with Rube Snyder lumbering at his heels. The inspector shook his head at Cain.

  “The modern Typhoid Mary,” he said. That was all. He went into the room where they were working on Egan.

  He returned almost at once. “You two all right?” he asked.

  “The pace was rapid,” Cain said. “But we’re okay. What about him?”

  “He’ll do,” said Bradley. “You must have arrived in the nick of time. Mercy, I’m beginning to talk like a writer! Like to tell me about it?”

  “It was just luck,” said Cain. “Carol and I decided we’d like to have a talk with Joe. When we got here we smelled gas. I didn’t wait for a pass-key.” He nodded toward the smashed door.

  “What did you want to talk about?” Bradley asked.

  “Life,” Cain said, grinning.

  “I suppose you’ve done a fine job of trampling out any evidence there might have been.”

  “I didn’t stop to pick daisies,” Cain said. “I dragged Egan out. Haven’t been back since.”

  “Let’s have a look,” said Bradley.

  Cain and Carol followed the inspector who paused just inside the doorway to look around with that lazy casual stare that deceived no one. In the sickish sweet air Bradley coughed.

  “There seems to be a note,” he said.

  He walked over to the bedside table and picked up an envelope which was propped against the gas burner. It was a plain white envelope. Scrawled in ink on the outside was the usual ‘To Whom It May Concern.’

  Bradley handled it gingerly by the point of the flap while he pulled out the sheet of notepaper it contained. This he held by one corner. It was a matching piece of paper with a couple of sentences written in the same scrawling hand.

  “I thought it was Brackett. I made a mistake. It was Summers. I have squared accounts for Lydia. I have no reason to go on living. Egan”

  Cain, reading over Bradley’s shoulder, said: “Hooey.”

  “How so?” said Bradley.

  “It doesn’t fit. Doesn’t make sense.”

  Bradley put the note down on the table. “We won’t touch this till the fingerprint boys have had a chance at it.” He looked at Cain “I don’t know whether you’re psychic or just lucky,” he said, “but it doesn’t fit. You see, they’re not worried about asphyxiation. It’s a smash on the back of Egan’s head which may be a fracture or bad concussion. He didn’t get that putting his head down on the pillow.”

  Cain whistled.

  “He was slugged,” said Bradley. He began moving around the room, opening drawers, searching the tops of tables and the closet shelf, “Another interesting point. There’s no letter paper and no pen in this room. But there is a used blotter on the table there. What do you make of that, Cain?”

  “The note wasn’t written here.”

  “Mercy,” said Bradley, “did you think it was? This guy isn’t as smart as he was.”

  “What guy?”

  “Why, the murderer,” said Bradley. “He prepared the note, brought it with him, slugged Egan and then fixed up the suicide picture. But he slugged him a little too hard. Mistake number one. When he found Egan had some distinctive stationery and a pen with a different kind of point from the one he’d used to write the suicide note, he had to take the note paper and the pen away with him.”

  “How about the handwriting?” Cain said.

  “Oh, we�
��ll check on that. But I think we’ll find this bears some resemblance to Egan’s. Enough so we might have believed he’d written it while he was off his top. No. Our friend is getting careless … maybe a bit hystetical.”

  “So by the time he’s bumped off three or four more of us,” said Cain, “it ought to be a cinch to catch him.”

  “Something like that,” said Bradley unruffled.

  The emergency squad sergeant joined them. “This guy’s a hospital case, Inspector,” he said. “We’ve sent for a buggy. But he’s conscious and I think you can talk to him if you want to.”

  “If I want to!”

  Joe Egan lay exhausted on the bed in the next room, his face still a little green. Bradley sat down on the edge of the bed.

  “Feeling better, Joe?” he asked gently.

  “I ... I guess so,” Egan whispered.

  “What happened, Joe? You were out somewhere, and when you came back to your room someone hit you over the head. Is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you see who it was, Joe?”

  “No.”

  “Any ideas?”

  “Yes.”

  “It would help if you told me about it, Joe.”

  “Robert Royce,” said Egan. “It had to be him.”

  “Why Royce?”

  Egan turned his head on the pillow and his face twisted in pain. “I went to see him this afternoon. I asked him if he’d been tied up with Lydia.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He denied it. He acted hurt. But he kept asking me what gave me the idea.”

  “And what did?”

  “If it wasn’t Brackett and it wasn’t Summers … ”

  “I see, Joe. And you left Royce after you’d accused him?”

  “Yes. I told him if you didn’t catch up with him, I would.”

  “Then what did you do?”

  “I walked, I guess for maybe an hour. Then I came home. When I opened the door to my room he hit me.”

  “All right, Joe,” said Bradley. “Don’t worry. They’re taking you to the hospital to have a look at that bump. You’ll be safe. And we’ll look out for Royce. One more question. Have you any writing paper in your room?”