Collins, Max Allan - Nathan Heller 07

by Carnal Hours (v5. 0)

  Keeler, shaking his head no, said, “His whole damn skull would have shattered!”

  Coconut in hand, he took a seat next to Erle Stanley Gardner at one of the wrought-iron tables with a view of the elephant fountain and the brilliantly colorful tropical garden that surrounded it. Tropical birds were calling; a humid breeze was whispering.

  I had run into Gardner at Blackbeard’s pub, where I’d spent the morning chatting with several prosecution witnesses—Mrs. Clark and Mrs. Ainslie, as well as the American Freddie, Freddie Ceretta—who were sympathetic to the defense. All of them confirmed that they had been taken to Westbourne for questioning on the 9th of July, and all of them confirmed de Marigny’s assertion that he’d been taken upstairs by Melchen at eleven-thirty a.m., contradicting police testimony placing that time at three-thirty p.m.

  This was good, to say the least: all I had to do now was talk to Colonel Lindop, which I intended to do later this afternoon. If Lindop confirmed Freddie’s time, we would not only cast doubt on that Chinese-screen fingerprint, but on Barker and Melchen themselves.

  Wearing a Western shirt with a string tie, Gardner had sauntered up to me like a pudgy pint-sized gunfighter, surrounded by his three wholesomely pretty secretaries, the fresh-scrubbed trio of sisters to whom he dictated his daily columns as well as radio scripts and chapters in his current novel, in a suite over at the Royal Victoria. They were taking a lunch break, and I was alone in the booth, now.

  “Girls, this is the dimestore detective I’ve been telling you about,” he growled good-naturedly. “Still ducking me, eh, Heller? Don’t you know every good Sherlock needs a Watson?”

  “Which role do you see as yours?”

  He had laughed in his gargling-razor-blades way, and I asked them to join me for lunch—I was already having the pub’s specialty, the Welsh rarebit.

  “Thank you, son,” Gardner said, sliding into the booth next to me; the trio of smiling curly-haired girls squeezed in across from us, without a word. They were like mute Andrews Sisters.

  After some food and chitchat, Gardner finally said, “Come on, Heller—give an old man a break.”

  He probably had all of seven years on me.

  But he pressed on: “Like the used-car salesman says, you can trust me…. Anything you say or do that you don’t want me to put in my articles, all you got to do is say so. Just don’t exclude me from the fun.”

  “All right,” I said, pushing my plate of mostly eaten food aside. “How would you like to meet the inventor of the lie detector?”

  His pop-eyed grin reminded me of a kid being offered his first peek behind the hootchy-kootchy show curtain.

  And now Gardner—minus his “girls”—was spending the afternoon with me at Shangri La, as I got my first in-depth appraisal from Len Keeler on the evidence he’d been going over and the tests he’d been making.

  Despite his relative youth, Keeler had indeed invented the polygraph, an improvement on a German device that measured changes in a suspect’s blood pressure; Len’s device also monitored respiration rate, pulse and the skin’s electrical conductivity during questioning.

  “Do you know what mastoiditis is?” Keeler asked us.

  Gardner and I were seated at the wrought-iron table, on which were a pitcher of limeade with glasses, the splintered picket, the coconut, and various death-scene photos, fanned out like a hand of cards. In Sir Harry’s case, a losing hand.

  An old friend of mine via Eliot, Keeler—Director of the Chicago Crime Detection Lab at Northwestern University Law School—was more than just the top polygraph man in the country; he was also an authority on scientific crime detection in general. Including fingerprints….

  But the subject now was the cluster of four wounds, which the prosecution claimed had been produced by a “blunt instrument.”

  “To treat mastoiditis, a surgeon has to take a hammer and chisel to break through the thickness of bone,” Len told us, “and even then, the thinner bones around the mastoid would tend to shatter with the impact.”

  “Then what could have produced those holes?”

  He pushed his glasses up again. “A small-caliber gun…at the very largest, a .38, but not a .38 Special; more likely a .32.”

  “Were there powder burns?” Gardner asked.

  “Somebody played tic-tac-toe on the corpse with a blowtorch,” I said, “and you’re wondering if anybody noticed powder burns?”

  “You can’t tell from these photos,” Keeler said, fanning them out some more. “Even so, smokeless powder doesn’t leave burns. As for these triangular entry wounds, bullets fired at close range tend to make larger, irregular holes because of escaping gases.”

  I tapped a photo of Sir Harry and the four holes in his head. “Then these are gunshot wounds—no question?”

  “No question,” Keeler said flatly.

  Eyes narrowing with thought and Bahamian sunshine, Gardner said, “Might this old shyster offer the defense a piece of free legal advice?”

  “Sure,” I said. “I’ll pass it along to Godfrey Higgs.”

  “Don’t introduce this evidence,” Gardner said somberly. “If you do, the prosecution will shrug it off somehow, explain it away.”

  “What do you suggest?” Keeler asked.

  Gardner shrugged. “Let them try to convict your client for bludgeoning the deceased. If they get their guilty verdict, you’ll have this new evidence in your pocket, to help get you a new trial.”

  Keeler was smiling, nodding. “That’s a Perry Mason stunt, all right—but I agree with you. I see no advantage in contradicting their ridiculous assertion that four holes in the toughest part of the skull, an inch apart, are stab wounds.”

  “You’ve had a chance to go over the fingerprint evidence,” I said. “What do you think?”

  Keeler smirked. “I think as a fingerprint expert, Captain Barker would make a swell traffic cop. Whole sections of the room were never checked for prints—that infamous Chinese screen was carried out into the hall by three cops before it was even dusted! God knows how many grimy paws clutched that thing before Barker got around to it a day later.”

  “Not to mention those bloody handprints being washed off the wall,” I said, “because they seemed too small to be de Marigny’s—mustn’t have facts muddying up the case, after all.”

  Keeler was shaking his head. “Unbelievable. Barker did dust some of the bloody fingerprints, you know—before they were dry, ruining ’em forever.” He looked toward Gardner. “And do you gentlemen of the press realize that these Miami geniuses didn’t even have any of the blood in the room analyzed, to see if it was Oakes’ type?”

  Shaking his head in amazement, Gardner muttered, “It’s a goddamn botch.”

  “No,” I said. “It’s a goddamn frame.”

  Gardner gave me a doubtful look.

  “Consider this,” Keeler said, eyes bright. “Barker was called in as a fingerprint expert, but all he brought with him was a small portable kit—and no fingerprint camera.”

  A special camera was required for fingerprint shots, with a lens you held flush with the surface of the dusted print, almost touching.

  “No fingerprint camera?” Gardner said. “Didn’t the local boys have one he could borrow?”

  “No,” I said. “Of course, he could have got one from the RAF….”

  “But he didn’t,” Keeler said ominously. “He just dusted the prints, lifted ’em and filed ’em away.”

  “Destroying the sons of bitches,” Gardner said, wide-eyed.

  Keeler shrugged. “In some cases, lifting ’em with Scotch tape might leave enough of the print behind to dust again and take a photograph…but Barker was out of Scotch tape, too.”

  “What?” Gardner said.

  “He used rubber,” I said. “And that does remove the print from its original surface—destroying it in the act of its supposed preservation.”

  “Anyway, it doesn’t matter where Barker says it came from,” Keeler said, picking up the photo blowup
of the fingerprint. “There’s not one chance in ten million this came from that screen—I’d swear to that on a stack of Bibles.”

  “Just one Bible will do,” I said.

  “How can you be so certain?” Gardner asked him.

  Keeler stood. “See for yourself.”

  He led us into the ballroom, where on the same parquet floor on which the Duke and Duchess had waltzed last weekend, a cream-color six-panel Chinese screen stood.

  “But isn’t that…” Gardner began. “No, it can’t be—it isn’t scorched….”

  “I found the shop where Lady Oakes purchased the screen,” I said, “and bought another. The painted design is different, but otherwise it’s identical.”

  Len had a hand on it even now, studying the enigma of its wood-grain surface; the photo of the print was in his other hand. “I’ve taken samples from every nook and cranny of this damn thing…and every time, I come up with a print with a wood-whorled background.”

  I nodded. “Not that pattern of circles in the background of their blowup of the print supposedly from the screen.”

  “That pattern’s either flattened beads of moisture,” Keeler said, patting the Chinese screen as gently as an infant, “or a very different surface than this.”

  “Their print is a forgery?” Gardner asked.

  “No,” I said. “It’s a substitution.”

  The writer stood with hands on hips like a rancher surveying his spread. “How so?”

  I took the photo of the print from Len. “That’s Freddie’s right pinkie, all right,” I said. “A perfect specimen they lifted elsewhere. I spoke to Freddie yesterday about this….”

  In his cell, Freddie had shrugged when I asked him if he’d handled anything during the interrogation.

  “Well, I did pour Melchen a glass of water,” de Marigny had said. “From a glass pitcher….”

  “Did he specifically ask you to pour it for him?”

  “Yes,” de Marigny said, nodding forcefully, then he winced with thought. “Funny…. Right after I poured the water, the tall one…Barker…he was standing watching from a distance. He called over and asked, ‘Is everything all right?’ And Melchen called back, ‘Just dandy.’”

  Now, a day later, Keeler was suggesting the circles in the print’s background might be flattened moisture drops….

  “Do you realize what you’re saying?” Gardner asked us, dumbfounded. “That your client’s in the middle of a police frame-up, engineered by the Duke of Windsor’s handpicked sleuths?”

  I shrugged. “It’s not news to me. I caught ’em coercing a witness a week or so ago.”

  Disturbed, Gardner turned to Keeler. “Professor—have you given de Marigny a polygraph test yet?”

  Keeler looked at me and smiled humorlessly, shook his head.

  “The court has forbidden it,” I said. “Even for our purposes, let alone admitting it as evidence. They won’t permit us to use it on any other witnesses, either.”

  Keeler grinned. “How I’d love to get ahold of Christie….”

  “What a waste of your talents,” Gardner said almost sorrowfully.

  I put a hand on the writer’s shoulder. “Len’s got plenty of other talents, as you’ve already seen. He did more burn tests on those remaining bedclothes scraps, and confirmed our conclusion that the killer stayed on the scene for around an hour.”

  “And, I’m afraid, destroyed a valuable piece of furniture in the process,” Len said, chagrined. “I don’t know why Lady Diane hasn’t kicked me out already, let alone give me a room to stay in. Ah! Let me show you my latest discovery….”

  He walked over to the table where not long ago cracked crab and caviar had been arrayed. Now—on its white cloth, which was dotted with strangely familiar scorched circles—there was an insecticide spray gun, and a glass jar of the sort you might put up preserves in, filled with clear liquid, its screw top off. There was also a box of kitchen matches, with a few burnt ones scattered.

  “I’ve found something you’ve been looking for,” Len said smugly.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “This spray gun is similar to the one found in Sir Harry’s room.”

  “I’d say identical,” I said.

  “But the flit gun couldn’t have figured in the killing,” Gardner insisted. “After the prosecution suggested it might’ve been used to set Sir Harry on fire, Higgs himself established the spray gun was found half full of ‘Fly-Ded,’ exactly as the maid had left it.”

  Keeler merely smiled as he lifted the spray gun and screwed loose the can of insecticide below, removing it, setting it on the table; then he hefted the glass jar, as if making a toast.

  “Your hunch, Nate,” he said, “was that the flammable material spilled on the floor, not to mention Sir Harry, wasn’t a petroleum product, as has been assumed…but alcohol.”

  “Right,” I said. “A gas fire would’ve scorched the ceiling to shit.”

  “And left a stronger odor behind,” Gardner added.

  “There are a lot of uses for alcohol in the tropics,” Keeler said casually, screwing the glass jar onto the bug sprayer, “besides drinking it, or rubbing it on yourself or a friend. It’s used for lamp fuel, for instance, cooking on boats, and for cleaning paint brushes…you’ll probably find a jar or bottle or can of the stuff in any toolshed, like the one by where that construction’s going on next door to Westbourne. Take those matches, Nate, and light one, and hold the flame to the end of this spritzer….”

  He was pushing the plunger in and I held a burning match to the mist of alcohol and it caught, burning a dull blue.

  “Watch this,” he said, grinning like a kid.

  The harder he pumped the thing, the bigger, the longer, the blue flame; it was like a homemade acetylene torch!

  “You can direct this anywhere you like,” he said, “as long as you keeping pumping.”

  When he finally stopped pumping, tiny puddles of the still-burning alcohol fell from the nose of the thing and landed on the table and made circular scorches, the flames burning briefly, then winking out.

  “I’ll be damned,” I said.

  “There’s your blowtorch,” Keeler said, placing the spray gun on the table.

  I took a look at it. The tip was a little blackened; I took out a handkerchief and wiped it off, clean. You’d never know it had been spitting fire moments before.

  “Just screw the alcohol jar off,” Keeler said, “and screw the bug spray can back on, and you have a seemingly unused flit gun.”

  I hefted the spray gun. “Weren’t you lucky that the threads of both were the same?”

  “Maybe. But if they don’t fit, you can just hold on to the glass jar with one hand and work the plunger with the other. It’s a little awkward, but a child could do it.”

  Gardner was watching with amazement.

  “Erle,” I said, “not a word of this in your column, now….”

  He nodded. Then he lifted a cautionary finger and said, “Keep this one in your pocket, too.”

  Keeler looked at me and nodded. We’d tell Higgs, but Gardner was right: the more the prosecution got wrong about the details of the murder, the easier Higgs could land an appeal, if he ended up needing one. On the other hand, straightening out those details in this trial wouldn’t help de Marigny at all….

  “I have to go, gentlemen,” I said. “Len, when Di and Nancy get back from Paradise Beach, tell them I should be back around seven-thirty. Erle, you want to take the launch over with me?”

  “I wouldn’t mind staying and chatting with Professor Keeler awhile, Heller. You mind?”

  “Not at all.”

  Gardner turned to Keeler. “Is that okay with you, Professor?”

  “As long as I get to ask some of the questions,” he said. “You see, I’m a big Perry Mason fan. Nate, where are you off to, anyway?”

  I was already leaving. Over my shoulder, I said, “I need to drop by Colonel Lindop’s office before his shift ends at six. Even with the
doubt you can cast on their fingerprint evidence, Len, I think we need Lindop’s statement about seeing Freddie questioned in the morning, not the afternoon….”

  Within the hour I was on the second floor of the police station, where at the door of Lindop’s office, I found a native painter in cap and coveralls applying the finishing touches to the name major herbert pemberton on the pebbled glass.

  “Excuse me,” I said, “isn’t this Colonel Lindop’s office?”

  “Not anymore, mon,” he said. “He been transfer.”

  “What?”

  The guy shrugged, and went back to finishing the final N.

  I stopped by Captain Sears’ office, but he wasn’t in, either. I asked the captain’s male secretary about Lindop, and his answer was chilling.

  “Colonel Lindop has been transferred to Trinidad,” the man said, a skinny white guy with a skinny black mustache and insolent eyes.

  “Trinidad? When?”

  “As of the first of this week.”

  “Well…what in hell for?”

  “For now and forever,” he said with quiet sarcasm, “as far as I know.”

  Minutes later I was at the top of George Street, bolting up the long stone stairs, above which Government House sat like a big stale pink-and-white wedding cake; halfway up the stairs was a landing where the statue of Christopher Columbus, one hand on his sword, one hand on his hip, kept swishy watch. At the top of the stairs, across a cement drive, a black sentinel in white standing before the front door’s archway asked me my business. I said I had an appointment with the Colonial Secretary, and was allowed to pass.

  When I opened the door with its elaborate E and royal crest inset in the heavy glass, I practically fell over a pile of suitcases, bags and trunks.

  I heard footsteps echoing in the high-ceilinged foyer with its marbled wallpaper and pastel drapes (the Duchess’ touch, no doubt), and the man I’d lied about having an appointment with—Colonial Secretary Leslie Heape—was striding over to me, dragging one leg as he did. A First World War injury, I’d been told.

  “How did you get past the sentry, Heller?” Heape demanded loudly, frowning.