Silent Are the Dead

by George Harmon Coxe

  Casey took a deep breath and grunted softly. “Not until I began to see your motive and suspect you, did I think of things I should have remembered before. First, you had the opportunity. Austin was killed between twelve and twelve-thirty. You left my office that first night in plenty of time. You went directly there, didn’t you?”

  Bishop sipped beer and said nothing.

  “The next morning,” Casey said, “two empty shells were found by Austin’s body. I stepped on one and bent it out of shape. I didn’t tell Logan that when he showed the two of them to me because the other shell was bent practically flat. I weigh two-fifteen, Jim, but I didn’t bend my shell flat. You must weigh two-seventy—”

  “Eighty,” Bishop added.

  “—and when you step on something you really flatten it. There it was if a guy could see it. Nothing conclusive, you understand, but just a suggestion that maybe the reason one shell was flat was because a heavier guy than I had stepped on it. So I muffed it. And I muffed something else. So did Logan, but he didn’t have all the facts and I did.”

  Casey thought a moment and continued. “Bernie Dixon could not possibly have killed Perry Austin. Because from twelve to twelve-thirty that night Dixon was on the air, acting as a master of ceremonies at that model contest he was running. I knew that. So did Logan, I think. With me it meant nothing because when Dixon mentioned that, I didn’t know when Austin had died, I didn’t know until a day or two later. I didn’t even remember it until late this afternoon. With Logan—if he knew about Dixon—there was an excuse because he could think the two hoods Dixon hired to put me away could have done the job. But me—I knew better.”

  His laugh came harsh and abrupt. “This’ll give you an idea of why I’m a camera and not a detective. Those two hoods could not have killed Austin because at the time he died they were up searching my desk and the studio and slugging Finell. Not all that time, maybe, but they must have been there awhile before Finell arrived, and that was at twelve-fifteen. They couldn’t have been two places at once, but Casey couldn’t figure that one out. Casey was too busy worrying about what Austin had been doing, too busy trying to cover up.” He paused, scowling. “And I’m glad I did,” he said. “Not till this afternoon when I began to think about you could I see the facts.”

  Bishop put his beer glass aside. “You haven’t told me yet why you should be figuring it was me.”

  Casey opened his hand, disclosing the chessman he had been holding. “What’s this, Jim?”

  Bishop looked at it quite a while. Finally he sighed ponderously. “A bishop,” he said.

  “What’s the shape of the head?”

  “Miter-shaped, like a bishop is.”

  Casey tossed it in the fat man’s lap. “Now you know,” he said. “When I read the pardon and saw those clippings, I knew. Lucille Miter, the girl’s name was—the one that was sentenced.” He paused. When Bishop remained silent, he continued. “Did you ever notice how people almost always use the same initials or a name that is similar in some way to their own name when they pick an alias? Lucille Miter—Lucille Bishop. She played chess, even as a kid, didn’t she, Jim? She got pinched and wouldn’t give her right name. The Lyda Hoyt came later. She isn’t your niece, Jim, she’s your daughter.”

  Bishop just looked at him, nothing changing in his face, his eyes still in shadow. Casey waited and the silence began to pile up. After what seemed like a long, long time, Bishop stirred. “A hunch, Flash,” he said. “That’s all you’ve got.”

  “No,” Casey said. “I haven’t finished. The guy Lucille Miter ran away with—she did run away, didn’t she?—was named Frank Sanger according to those clippings. The man you killed in the back room of a saloon a few years ago, in what was supposed to be a drunken brawl, was Frank Sanger. The night you came to see me I remembered the case but I couldn’t think of the name. I thought it was Sanford or Sanburn or something like that. It was Sanger, Jim. I remembered when I saw it in black and white.”

  Jim Bishop derricked himself slowly from the chair. He produced a handkerchief and mopped his pale, moist face. He put the chessman on the board and went to the desk and opened a drawer. When he turned he had a piece of paper in his hand—and a gun.

  Casey sat very still, feeling the blood drain from his face and a slackness come over it. There might have been a moment, at the very first, when he could have jumped for that gun, but he had not figured on this and surprise robbed him of that moment, and now it was too late. He knew Bishop was moving back to the chair but he did not see him; all he saw was the gun.

  Chapter Twenty-Four: ONLY THE DEAD ARE SILENT

  JIM BISHOP SAT DOWN HEAVILY, watching Casey with half-hidden, inscrutable eyes. He leaned back and put the paper on the chair arm and the gun on top of it, within easy reach of his hand.

  Casey wet his lips, swallowed, and spoke in measured tones. “I guess I didn’t get my idea across very well.”

  “What idea?”

  “Of why I bothered to come here.”

  “I don’t know.” Bishop rubbed his palms gently up and down the chair arms. “I don’t know, Flash. But you’ve done a lot of talking and I guess it should be my turn. You want to take your coat off?”

  “I’m okay,” Casey said, wondering how the man could be so matter-of-fact.

  Bishop nodded. “You think Logan’s satisfied?”

  “About Dixon? Sure he is. According to the story the D.A. gave out to the papers, that case is closed and everybody’s damned glad it is because it looked tough.”

  “Then nobody knows about it—this other, I mean—but you and me? Well, I’d say you did all right. You talk about overlooking clues here and there but that’s a lot of hooey. You’re pretty close to tops, Flash. You always were. And you’re right about Lyda. She’s my daughter and her name was Lucille Bishop like you figured.”

  He glanced down at the gun and back again. “The story 1 gave you the other night was pretty close, all except the niece part. Lucille’s—Lyda’s—mother died when she was ten and I put her in a convent. I was in New York then and always a bit of a boozer and her mother’s death hit me pretty hard and that didn’t help any, but I wanted to be sure Lyda was brought up right. Well, when she was seventeen she left the school and came to live with me.

  “I got a housekeeper—she wasn’t worth a damn—and working nights like I was, I wanted to be sure Lyda didn’t get chasing around. So I was too strict. I clamped down. I didn’t understand that she was growing up and needed some freedom and boy friends. I guess some parents have always made that mistake, and anyway, I did. The details aren’t important, but what happened was that she met Frank Sanger at some dance hall, and I found out and laid down the law and locked her up and a week later when I thought it had all blown over, she ran away with him.”

  He let his chins rest on his chest and watched Casey through his brows. “The rest of it is like I told you before. I never saw her again until she looked me up a few years ago. That’s what made a tramp of me, realizing it was my fault. That’s why I got canned in New York and why I came up here doing police reporting for a third of my old salary. I didn’t know where Lyda was. I guess I thought she was dead. I’d even seen pictures of Lyda Hoyt, mind you, without recognizing her. Because at eighteen she was plump and rounded and full-faced and—well, you know how Lyda is. I just never saw any resemblance until that night she came to my apartment and told me who she was and how she’d had me traced.”

  “That’s when you found out about the reformatory business,” Casey said.

  “Sure. She told me everything. How they’d driven West—she and Sanger—and how a couple of days later in Ohio this rat had tried to stick up the jewelry store. She didn’t know what it was all about but she made up her mind I wasn’t going to know what had happened. You can guess how a kid like that, running away, would take it. And she thought of the name, Miter, and used it. And then on her way to the reformatory the car crashed. The deputy that had her broke an ankle and she saw he wasn’t
hurt much and ran.”

  He hesitated, grunting softly. “Well, things like that happen, I guess. You wouldn’t think she’d have a chance, but she had voice training and that helped—she was a waitress first until she got a job singing in a speak-easy—and damned if she didn’t go from there to a girl act that was sent over to France. Then England—and you know the rest. All except about Sanger.”

  “He knew who she was,” Casey said.

  “The only one that recognized Lyda Hoyt and knew the truth. He’d been out of prison a few months when he found me. He wanted enough money to take him to England. That’s where Lyda was then. He said either that or he’d blow the lid off proper.”

  All at once Bishop’s fatty face was hard and his stare was flinty. “Can you imagine me letting him bleed her? It was my fault that she ran away. Everything was my fault. In spite of that, look what she’d made of herself—and alone too. Let a rat like Sanger ruin her life? No. Nor would you. I told him I’d get some money. I made a date in that bar and went early to get a little drunk and acted drunker than I was. The rest was easy. A quarrel that nobody could figure out, with me egging him on so it looked as though it was mostly his fault.”

  Casey let his breath out slowly and decided he didn’t want to think about it any more. “I never figured you as that clever, Jim,” he said.

  “A man can be clever when he has to.”

  “You took an awful chance. Suppose Lyda had found out—or did she?”

  “She didn’t,” Bishop said. “Of course I took a chance, but I had the odds with me. She was in England and the show looked good for a long time. I knew Sanger had a record and that it would come out. I pleaded guilty to manslaughter with no argument. Hell, the story never even made page three. Just another sordid barroom brawl, played down by the papers because I was one of the boys. I knew it would be that way. I got a letter to Lyda and said I was serving time and if she tried to get in touch with me I’d commit suicide. By the time she got back from England I was practically ready for parole. She never even asked me how it happened. She’s that kind of a woman. That’s why I had to take my chance with Austin.”

  He went on deliberately. “She was going to marry Forrester but she wouldn’t do it unless she got that pardon—just like the story she told you. I argued for days but it was no good. She was going to do it her way. I sent her to Endicott and gave her the story to tell him—about this Lucille Miter being her friend. I didn’t know he was a crook. I thought he was the best in town. At that he did a good job. And then he gets killed and Austin finds the envelope and, not knowing the truth probably, but figuring it’s worth dough, calls her up.”

  “I thought it must have been something like that,” Casey said. “She called you and told you Austin had the envelope and I had a picture of her. What a spot.”

  ‘“I told her I thought I could get the picture back because you were a regular,” Bishop said.

  “And what did you tell her about Austin? You knew you were going to kill him then, didn’t you?”

  “I think I did. Only the dead are silent, Flash, and I couldn’t take a chance with Austin or any other man with blackmail in his mind, not with Lyda in love, not after I’d killed Sanger. Again it was my fault—I’d sent her to Endicott—but the tough part was how to do the job and not have her catch on— Well, Endicott had given her a flat price for his work. Five thousand if he was successful. So she had the money. I told her to make a date with Austin at his apartment for twelve-thirty and go there and buy back the envelope.”

  “She went there that night?”

  “Sure. I knew she wouldn’t be able to get in, because I got there at twelve. He tried to get a gun out when he saw what I was up to and I got it away from him and used it.”

  “You damn near missed,” Casey said. “I was there at twelve-fifteen.” And although he did not say so he thought, And Nancy Jamison was there five minutes before that.

  The knowledge left him strangely shaken until Bishop said, “I was out of there by five after twelve or so and locked the door. It didn’t take long.” He paused and when he continued his voice was low and savage. “I didn’t know he’d taken pictures of those papers.”

  His eyes focused again on Casey. The silence between them began to pile up and for the first time Casey really heard the muted Capehart. It was playing something from Sibelius, a somber, heavy piece that seemed to furnish just the right background, winding the tension inside him tighter and tighter. He tried not to look at the gun, but he couldn’t help it and then, as he watched, he saw a puffy hand reach over and pick it up.

  Something cold tripped up his spine and the skin at the back of his neck began to prickle. He pried his gaze from the gun. Bishop was still watching him. His lids were, narrow and behind them the eyes seemed fixed and inscrutable. Slowly he shifted the gun and began to lean forward. Casey started to speak and found he had to clear his throat first, it was so dry. He swallowed. He heard his voice as though he was speaking a yard away. “What’re you going to do with that?”

  For a moment Bishop stared at him, finally glancing at the gun, but only for an instant. His face twisted. He squinted so that his eyes were all but los in the folds of surrounding flesh. He sat that way for interminable seconds before he moved and then, gradually, his lids opened and Casey could see his eyes again as he leaned back, lowering the gun.

  “Why, you crazy damn fool!” he said with hoarse incredulity. “Did—did you think I was going to use it on you?”

  The tight bands around Casey’s chest that had been clamped there by his thoughts fell apart and his relief was overwhelming. Only then did he realize what had happened to him; only then did he realize that from the moment he had seen the gun his imagination had been slowly building up a distorted conclusion, an unwarranted vision of fear and dismay made vivid not so much by the situation as by nerves already frayed and ragged. Now the sweat of reaction was on his face and a muscular weakness came over him. “I didn’t know,” he said thickly, “the way you took it out.”

  “For God’s sake, why? Do you think I go around killing guys because I like to? You could have told Forrester about me, you could have gummed things up any time you wanted to.”

  “You and I are still the only ones that know the truth. You said only the dead are silent.”

  “Sure,” Bishop said. “But it doesn’t change anything. No. That’s not why I got the gun. I just wanted to show you what I had in mind. I couldn’t tell you at first because I didn’t know how much you knew.”

  As he spoke he picked up the paper under the gun and gave it to Casey. It was an unfinished letter addressed to MacGrath at the Express and said, This is the best way for me when those heart attacks come, and a bullet is a lot easier. This check will pay for the undertaker and the bills, and as a last request, keep the obit down to a sticky.

  Casey handed back the note and stood up. “There’s a reason for that now, maybe,” he said, “but what was the reason before you knew I had the answer?”

  “I guess I was scared,” Bishop said. “I was afraid that when the police got Dixon and he got talking they’d find out he wasn’t guilty of the Austin job. And then they would have started again and that Logan is the kind of a guy I wouldn’t want on my neck. I didn’t want to take any chances. You know I didn’t kid you about my ticker, I’m likely to go off any day, Flash. So why take chances with Logan?”

  “What about your daughter?”

  “That’s why I waited until tonight. She’s gone to Hollywood. I was going to write her. She’d believe me if I sent a letter out—I’d be buried by the time she got it—saying I had another attack and couldn’t stand the pain. She’d believe that, Flash. And so would the police. I was going to leave a note for them too. They’d check with my doctor and believe it. Simple enough, isn’t it?”

  “I guess so,” Casey said, and suddenly he felt very tired and depressed and old. He felt lousy. There wasn’t much left for him to say.

  “I was writing that
one when you knocked,” Bishop said. “I’ll finish the others after you leave. You don’t mind giving me a little time, do you?”

  Jim Bishop asked that favor simply, earnestly, and somewhere in Casey’s neck a cord tightened. He looked down at the floor, scuffed it with his toe.

  “You don’t have to do this on my account, you know,” he said.

  “But—” Bishop sounded surprised and Casey answered him.

  “I guess you still haven’t got it straight just why I came,” he said. “For the past couple of days I’ve done more covering up for Austin than I’ve ever done before in my life. I couldn’t let that rotten business come out if I could help it. I was ashamed of him, and all the other cameras in town would be ashamed when they knew. I wanted to trap Dixon because I hoped Logan would shoot him down and keep him from talking. When I found out it was you, I had the same idea you just told me. If Dixon was caught, Logan would eventually find you were his man. So I still wanted Dixon shot. I would have done it myself.”

  He grunted bitterly. “Of course, he was going to kill me too, so technically that made a difference and gave me a right to shoot. It didn’t come out that way, but I’m telling you what I had in mind. My hands aren’t exactly clean either, but I don’t think I’ll lose any sleep over it. Dixon’s better off dead. He got what was coming to him. And you—”

  He broke off, tried again. “Well, if I’d wanted to turn you in I could have told Logan the same things I told you. I didn’t. Not because I liked you, or ever figured you were justified. That didn’t enter into it one way or the other. The point was, the law was satisfied and I knew I’d rather let you get away with it—for as long as your heart held out—than let all those things I’d covered up for Austin come to light again. I just stopped by to tell you how it was, to let you know you didn’t quite get away with it.