A Key to Death Read online

  But a woman does not handle the fragility of clothing in this fashion—not even the fragility of another woman’s clothing. Not, at any rate, a woman of—well, call it pride. Even a woman in the intermediate stage, as of the ’teens, handles party clothes with nice precision, whatever she may do about her dungarees. The most deft man—Pam thought with affection of Jerry—would lack some part of deftness. And gangsters were—of this Pam was certain—men with very heavy hands. (In motion pictures, they constantly knocked women around, to say nothing of their clothes.)

  Then the person Nan Schaeffer had surprised in search had been of her own sex; had been, probably a woman who took pride in her own clothes, and her own grooming, and so would not wantonly mar another woman’s. That she might, under the circumstances postulated, knock the other woman over the head with what came handy and then, in some manner not at the moment clear, make off with her, was entirely another matter. Faced with reality—clothes are, by intention, poetry—a woman does what she has to do, as a man does.

  And, the disorder of the desk in the living room fitted too. Among such things, it is a woman’s habit to rummage. Pam thought of her own desk and then, in further divergence, of the time she had left it open and one of the cats had got into it and, apparently, searched for a mouse. Pam had been upset, and almost angry; Jerry, viewing the scene, had remarked that the desk looked, to him, much as usual and, although this did not in any degree abate Pam’s displeasure, she had been forced, in subsequent and calmer moments, to admit that Jerry had had something there.

  It had been a woman, then, not the racketeers about whom Nan Schaeffer, from Ingraham, might have learned—and dangerously learned—more than she had said. Pam paused for an instant to consider, and reject, the theory that the racketeers might have used a woman. If it was as important as it would have had to be, the racketeers would have come themselves, at least two of them. They would have to erase the racketeers, and the realization that they would pleased Pam. She had never wanted it to be gangsters, whom she considered highly uninteresting. Presumably there were gangsters in it—she did not, except very briefly, toy with the idea that a woman had broken into the law offices—but they were not really of it. If they ran at all, they ran parallel, were only fortuitously involved. That had happened before; things are not all of a piece always, although it is convenient when they are.

  Then something else, not evidence against union racketeers, had been sought. Then Nan Schaeffer knew—or had known—something else; something involving a woman. Presumably what she knew had had to do with Ingraham’s murder. There could not be too many fortuitous circumstances. Then, a woman had killed Mr. Ingraham. Pam checked back to see that she had not made a demonstrable mistake. She discovered none. A woman had laid the clothing on the beds. The rest followed.

  A name came up, as if in lights—Phoebe James. In love with Ingraham, and that love almost certainly her last. A love the dearer for its timing, the more jealously to be guarded. And—the less assuredly to be believed in. With Phoebe James, Pam thought, loves must have come and gone and so she must have realized that this would also go. A younger woman would appear, and for Phoebe James so many—so desperately many—women were younger. A time must come, Pam thought, when it is hard to let go, since you must fear you let go of all. And for a little snip of a thing, with blond hair—

  I’d have hated Forbes Ingraham, Pam thought, and discovered that she was now actually hating him a little. To be loved by a woman like Phoebe James—and Pam now found herself acquiring a certain degree of devotion to Mrs. James—and leave her for a little snip of a thing, pretty certainly, but what else? Pam tried to check herself; admitted that she didn’t know Phyllis Moore, and so had no real idea what else. She was unsuccessful; tolerance is all very well in its place. This was not its place.

  Somehow, Nan Schaeffer had found something—a letter? or perhaps a gun?—which tied Phoebe to Ingraham’s murder. Mrs. James had tried to get this thing, and Nan had surprised her and—And afterward, Mrs. James had come back to go on with the search!

  I’ll have to tell Bill, Pam thought, and reached for the telephone by the bed. But then she stopped. She tried to phrase the words of explanation, and her hand dropped from the telephone. Mrs. Phoebe James was proved a murderer because clothing had been piled neatly on two beds, not thrown helter-skelter, or merely rummaged through? Because, late at night, she had wanted to talk with a friend?

  It was all right. It was perfectly all right. It was indestructibly logical. The only trouble was, it didn’t sound so good. Even Jerry—well, even Jerry might think it didn’t sound so good.

  The thing to do was to get more before she said anything. And—to give Mrs. James a chance. Perhaps Mrs. James could explain or—or something.

  VIII

  Wednesday, Noon to 2:50 P.M.

  Policemen walk a good deal. They walk from door to door, and ring doorbells and introduce themselves and ask questions. Patience is required, and comfortable shoes are desirable. It is frequently necessary to quieten those the sight of a policeman, even one not in uniform, excites, and time is so consumed. It takes half a dozen men, and the ringing of a great many doorbells, to establish with reasonable certainty that a young man walking to a car parked on a sidestreet in a Staten Island residential district and driving off in it, is not a resident going about the most lawful of activities—going home from having called on his girl; going off to start his night’s work; driving down to St. George for medicine for a sick child.

  Even after some hours have been spent, probabilities, rather than certainties, have been arrived at. There are always a few doorbells which go unanswered, even when rung repeatedly; there is always a chance that somebody may, for reasons of tangential importance, be avoiding the truth. Perhaps some young wife, her husband absent, has had a visitor she would rather not explain. Perhaps the parents of some girl have not been informed that their daughter is entertaining, in their absence, a boy of whom they disapprove. There are many possibilities to be considered. Not all of them can be eliminated.

  But by noon, it was the best opinion of the detectives assigned that they could not identify the young man who, in the middle of the night, had got into a car a block from the home of Mrs. Mary Burton and driven away, at no great speed, being noticed in these activities by Norman Slagel, insurance man, who was then returning from a lodge meeting. (Insurance men keep up contacts. The work of an insurance man is never done.)

  Norman Slagel was a small, rather dark man, and he occupied a small, rather dark, office in St. George, Staten Island. Bill Weigand talked to him there. Norman Slagel said, “Gee, captain, I just happened to see this guy. I didn’t really look at him.” It had been some time since Bill had encountered a man who said “Gee.” One lived and learned.

  But from Mr. Slagel, although he was very willing to do what he could—after he had pointed out, for the record, that he had already twice done his utmost—Bill did not learn too much.

  “Nobody I ever saw before, far as I know,” Slagel said, and was earnest. “And my memory’s pretty good. Trained, you might say. In my business you got—”

  “Right,” Bill said. “A small man, you say.”

  “Not so small,” Slagel said. “Not smaller than lots of people. My height, maybe. Maybe a few inches under. I wasn’t paying much attention, because why should I? He came down the street—”

  “Toward you? Facing you?”

  “That’s right.”

  “From the direction of Mrs. Burton’s house, then?”

  “Well, I didn’t know the poor old girl. Know where she lived. But, from what these other cops—officers that is—tell me, I guess he was.”

  “The car was headed—?”

  “Same way he was going. That is—”

  “Right,” Bill said. “Away from Mrs. Burton’s house. Generally, toward St. George? Toward the ferry, I mean?”

  Slagel agreed to that. Encouraged, he added details. The man had been slight as well as short
—that was, if you called it short. Five feet three or four, Slagel would guess, estimating by his own five-six. The man had worn a snap brim hat; he had worn a loosely fitting coat, and it had swung a little as he walked. He had walked briskly. He had got in the car, and slammed the door, and the car lights had gone on. Slagel was within perhaps thirty feet of the car when it started, went past him, went on. The car had been a sedan. He thought a small Chrysler.

  “Took it easy enough,” Slagel said. “Not one of these jack-rabbit starters. Know what I mean?”

  Bill Weigand did.

  “Nothing to attract attention,” Slagel said. “Just a young fellow getting in a car and driving off.”

  He was asked why he said “young” and puzzled over it, ended by saying he didn’t know, that it was an impression.

  “Sort of a bouncy walk,” Slagel said. “Maybe that was it. Like he had a lot of energy. Fellow gets to be our ages, captain, he just sort of walks. Know what I mean? Young kid, he—”

  “Right,” Bill said, and was not happy. Well, it happened to everybody, of course. Particularly, Bill reassured himself, with inadequate sleep.

  “You wouldn’t recognize him if you saw him again?”

  Slagel shook his head. He said, “Gee, I’m afraid not, captain.” He paused. “Look, captain,” he said. “I don’t say I hadn’t had a couple of drinks. You know how it is.”

  Slagel was thanked. Weigand and Mullins ate sandwiches at a counter; the launch took them back to Manhattan. A northeast wind was rising and the launch bucked it up the harbor, bounced into it. The sun which had melted the un-tracked snow in Mary Burton’s front yard, on her front walk, was receding dimly into gathering clouds. Mullins, in comment, said, “Brrr.” He asked Bill what he made of it, and Bill, absently, said, “Snow.” Mullins looked at him, and realized he was not himself seen. The Loot was the way he got when he was, or thought he was, on to something.

  “Bouncy,” Bill said, after a long pause. “What do you think of, sergeant?”

  Mullins said, “Huh?”

  “Bouncy,” Bill repeated. “A bouncy walk. What do you think of?”

  “Somebody selling something,” Mullins said. “Or—a guy with his hands on his hips.” Still sitting, Mullins demonstrated the latter. He was not the man for it, but the demonstration sufficed. Bill grinned moderately in comment.

  “The man’s coat was swinging,” Bill said, after another pause. “A loose coat, swinging as he walked. A short man, not heavily built.” He paused, and now looked at Mullins. “I wonder,” Bill said, “what Slagel would have thought if he had seen this man walking away from him?”

  For a moment, Mullins looked puzzled. Then he said he’d be damned.

  “Not much light from the street lamps,” Bill said. “Slagel wasn’t very near. A snap brim hat, he said, which probably means it was snapped down—pulled down—over the forehead. Well?”

  “Getting into the car,” Mullins said. “You’d think that would tip him off. They’re different.”

  The door was hinged on the forward edge. Hence it would open between Slagel and anyone getting into it. Slagel was still some feet from the car when it started up.

  “O.K., Loot,” Mullins said. “Could be.”

  “Right,” Bill said. “And, it helps, doesn’t it? Because none of the men—except Karn—is short. Or boyish, which Karn certainly isn’t.”

  The launch circled in to the police dock. It tossed a line ashore and was made fast. Mullins and Weigand climbed from it, up a short ladder above tossing water, to the planking of the dock. Bill’s Buick took them uptown, without benefit of siren. Bill parked it in a block on Forty-fourth Street, finding space between two other cars, in front of a sign which said “No Parking.” The sign, a little plaintively, wore another: “No Parking Today.”

  “Well,” Mullins said, “it doesn’t say ‘positively.’” They went up in the dignified elevator to the offices of Schaeffer, Ingraham and Webb. It was Phyllis Moore’s pretty blond head, her pale and worried face, at the information window.

  “Oh,” she said. “Mr. Webb is just trying—Mrs. Burton hasn’t come in and we can’t get her on the telephone. Some man says she can’t come to the telephone and—”

  “No,” Bill said. “I’m afraid she can’t, Miss Moore.” He looked at the pale, pretty face; saw strain in the wide blue eyes. “She’s dead.”

  The girl put a hand up to her lips, and drew her breath in sharply, shudderingly. Dorothy Lynch appeared behind her. They were very much of a height, and both were slender—a little over five feet, each was, Bill thought.

  “Dead?” Dorothy Lynch said. “You say Mary’s dead?”

  “She was shot,” Bill said, and watched them. Mrs. Lynch was not as visibly affected as the younger woman had been. But her eyes widened.

  “But—why?” Dorothy said. “Why?”

  “I don’t know, Mrs. Lynch,” Bill said. He was patient. “I’m trying to find out.”

  Phyllis Moore said something Bill could not hear. “What?” he said.

  “She must have seen him,” Phyllis said, and now he could just make out the muffled, uncertain words. “When he—” But then she covered her face with both her hands, and backed away, shaking her head.

  “Saw him?” Bill said. “Who do you mean?”

  She did not answer, except again to shake her head. Her hands still shut out the world.

  Bill looked at Dorothy Lynch.

  “I don’t know,” Dorothy said. “She—she’s afraid.” She paused. “We all are,” she said. “How can we help being?”

  “I hope you needn’t be,” Bill said. “We’d like to see Mr. Webb, if we can.”

  They could; they did. He stood up behind his desk when they came in, and it was clear he sought calm. But his hands, resting on the desk, clenched nervously into fists. “I can’t believe it,” he said. “Now Mary!” and then he said, slowly, “Why?”

  “She knew something,” Bill told him. “Or saw something.”

  “Like—like Forbes? I mean, she was killed the way he was?”

  Near enough, Bill told him. Shot as he had been, with a thirty-two, as he had been. Bill waited; watched the tall man slowly shake his head.

  “You can’t guess,” Weigand said, “what Mrs. Burton could have known? Or what she might have seen?”

  “No,” Webb said. “Unless—unless somebody going into Forbes’s office. Someone she remembered afterward. That—well, that would have been like her. I told you that.”

  He had, Bill agreed.

  “You haven’t got anything? No clue?”

  Bill hesitated, then. He let his hesitation be apparent. He appeared to make up his mind.

  “A man was seen,” he said. “A short man—thin. He was around—in the neighborhood, that is. He hasn’t been explained. He had a car. But there may be no connection.”

  Webb shook his head, slowly. “Except Saul—” he said, and stopped.

  “The man wore a loose coat that swung as he walked,” Bill said. “A soft hat, canted down over his eyes.”

  “Oh,” Webb said. “Not Saul, obviously.”

  “No,” Bill said. “It doesn’t sound like Mr. Karn. The man bounced a little as he walked, our informant says. Perhaps he might have picked a better word. But there was some movement he noticed. Made him think the man was very young.” He paused. “Boyish,” he said.

  “Wait,” Webb said. “What you’re getting at—”

  “Getting at?” Bill said. “That’s the way he was described. As I said, we’ve no real evidence he—”

  He stopped. Webb was not looking at him. Webb was looking over him, through him; looking as if at some distant, frightening thing. His eyes were blank, for the moment. His hands unclenched and clenched again. It was brief, and Webb started, as if wakening.

  “What about Nan?” he demanded, then. “What are you doing about Nan Schaeffer?”

  “What we can,” Bill told him. “We have been all night. Are now. Things take time.”
<
br />   “Time enough for her to be killed,” Webb said. “Like Forbes. Now like Mary. Why? For God’s sake—why?”

  He was told they didn’t have the answers yet. All the answers.

  “Any of them,” Reginald Webb said, and leaned forward across the desk and his voice went up. “You don’t have any of them. Some kid goes home from seeing his girl and you—my God!”

  “Take it easy, Mr. Webb,” Mullins said. “Take it easy.”

  “Take it easy till you find Nan’s body,” Webb said. “Find hers like the others. Then you’ve got another answer.” His tone was violent. “You don’t know where you are. What you’re doing.”

  “It’s been twenty-four hours,” Bill said, and his voice was very quiet. “Thereabouts. We’re doing all we know to do. If somebody wants Mrs. Schaeffer dead—well, yes. She’s dead by now. But, if they wanted her dead, why not kill her when she walked into her apartment? Ingraham wasn’t given any chance. Mrs. Burton wasn’t.” He paused. “Mrs. Schaeffer means a lot to you, doesn’t she?”

  “She’s an old friend. She—” Webb stopped. “All right,” he said. “She means a lot to me.”

  “Since her husband died, I take it?”

  “Yes. But take it any way you like. What are you working on? Helping Dr. Kinsey?”

  “Take it easy,” Mullins said. “Just take it easy.”

  “Right,” Bill Weigand said. “As the sergeant says, Mr. Webb. We’re wasting time. You’re wasting ours. We want to find out where people were last night. You’ve told us where you were. The others haven’t. At the time Mrs. Burton was killed.”