The Lady in the Morgue (11 page)

Crane spread a thin layer of orange marmalade on the last piece of toast. “Listen. Beside Frankie French our friend Paletta is one of the rosy-faced boys.” He broke off a piece of the toast. “I feel like screaming for help every time I think of Mister French.”

O'Malley asked, “What are you going to do about him?”

Crane shrugged his shoulders. “Wait and see what he does, I guess.” He tossed his napkin on the table. “Anyway, I've got something for you and Doc to do while Courtland and I show his sister's and Verona's pictures to the people at the Princess.” He grinned at them. “It ought to keep you busy, too. I want you to find me an undertaker.”

Williams asked, “Just any undertaker?”

“Well, he may be an undertaker's assistant.” Crane went over to a wall mirror and admired his copper-colored Charvet tie. “Anyway, he works in an undertaking establishment. He has red hair, and he's left-handed.”

His face suddenly sober, Williams said, “The guy who bumped off the morgue keeper, eh?”

“Not exactly. I think the companion of this fellow did the murder. Our undertaker just held Mr.… what was his name? … Augie's wrists while the companion socked him with a pistol.”

O'Malley's big tanned face was puzzled. “I see how you figure the guy is red-headed, because Augie had some red hair between his fingers, but how do you get the other stuff?” There was a glint of gray in O'Malley's hair, a trace of white around his temples!

“I'm just using my imagination a little,” Crane said, turning away from the mirror. “I'm not even sure I'm right. But this is about all we have to go on. Augie must have been attacked by at least two men—one man couldn't have killed him, removed the girl, put him in the box, and made his escape in such a short time.” He sat down on the arm of the bigger of the two overstuffed chairs. “Also, he probably wasn't killed by the man who was holding onto his wrists. This fellow couldn't have held onto Augie's wrists, as shown by the marks, and at the same time held a pistol. Now, we also can be pretty sure Augie struggled with this fellow, got his left hand free and pulled out some of his hair.”

Crane paused, his lower lip caught between his teeth, his fingers drumming on the chair.

“The funny thing about this is that Augie should have got his left hand free, because Augie was right-handed. Ordinarily, when a right-handed man grabs your wrists, and you're right-handed, too, it is your right arm that you free. That's because he's holding your right arm, your strongest arm, with his left hand. His strongest hand, conversely, is holding your weakest arm.

“But Augie got his left arm free. That makes it look like the assailant in this case was holding Augie's right arm with his strongest hand, that the assailant was left-handed.”

Blond pillars of sunlight on the green carpet, below the two east windows, were becoming squat. No wind stirred the curtains; no cloud rode the sky. It was going to be hot again.

Crane continued: “Now, what sort of a man would you get to help you rob a morgue? You'd get somebody who knew his way around a morgue, wouldn't you? Well, that would be either somebody who worked in the morgue or an undertaker. And it would be too dangerous to try to bribe somebody in the morgue.”

Doc Williams objected, “But how do you know the red-headed guy is the undertaker? Why couldn't it have been the man who slugged Augie on the dome?”

“If you grant that an undertaker or his assistant was hired to help take the body,” Crane said, “it makes him an unlikely murderer. He was hired to help remove the body, that's all. He wouldn't coldbloodedly kill someone. He wouldn't even have a pistol. He would grab somebody's wrists if they attacked him, but that's as far as he would go.” He slid off the chair's arm, sauntered over to one of the east windows. “The violence all belongs to the companion, who was desperate enough in the first place to want to steal the body.”

While Crane stared across town at the bulky Palmer House they thought it over. At last Williams said, “I guess the Wonder Boy is right again.” He twisted his black pointed mustache, smiled at Crane's back. “When do we start?”

“Now.” Crane moved away from the window. “I suggest you try to get hold of a salesman of undertaking supplies or somebody who makes the rounds of all the undertakers. Maybe he'll remember a customer with red hair. I'll wait here for Courtland.”

As he went out the door behind O'Malley Doc Williams paused and asked, “Ain't you scared Frankie French'll pay you a call while we're gone?”

Crane said, “I'm going to barricade the door.”

He was just finishing a report to Colonel Black when the Western Union boy arrived with Verona Vincent's picture. Crane gave him a dollar. It was a large picture, and he had trouble tearing off the stout brown paper. When he finally got the picture out he whistled, then swore.

The picture was a side view of a woman, and, as far as Crane could see, she had nothing on except a white muff which she was holding in front of her slightly below her hips. She had a very nice figure, tall and slender, with a lovely line from hip to shoulder and small, firm breasts. Her face was toward the camera. She was a blonde, and her features were good. She looked more like the girl in the morgue than did Courtland's sister, but Crane didn't feel at all certain that she was the girl in the morgue. The faces were about the same shape, but this girl was smiling, and there was none of that tragic look about her eyes. Crane looked at her breasts and tried to remember what the breasts of the girl in the morgue had looked like, but he couldn't.

He had the picture down on the floor and was looking at it from above when Courtland arrived, carrying a package under his arm. Crane tossed the picture to Courtland, who stared at it admiringly, then asked, “Who is she?”

“She doesn't look like your sister, does she?” Crane countered.

Courtland shook his head. “Not very much.” His face looked tired, and, although small wrinkles around his eyes and mouth made him appear older than he had yesterday, he still was boyish. “She's just about the same build as Kit, but the expression on her face is different. Her eyes, too, aren't as large. She's a honey, though. Who is she?”

Crane told him. He told him about the visit they had had with Mike Paletta and also about his experience with Frankie French in the morgue washroom. He concluded, “It seems they both feel sure the body was that of Verona Vincent and that I got it.” He didn't mention the search for the red-haired undertaker, however.

Courtland was impressed. “Gosh!” he exclaimed. “A stolen body, rival claimants, an underworld angle, threats … what next?” He handed the package he had been carrying to Crane. It was also wrapped in brown paper, and it had fifty-six cents' worth of stamps on it. “This is Kit's portrait. She's wearing more clothes than the cabaret girl, but maybe you can recognize her.” He sat down by the writing desk and picked up the telephone. “Do you mind if I order a drink?”

Crane was trying to untie the string on the package with his teeth. “Not at all,” he said. “I might even be induced to have a whiskey and soda myself.”

The portrait of Miss Kathryn Courtland was a disappointment, too. She was thinner than she was in the passport photograph, but her cheeks were plumper than those of the girl in the morgue. The portrait was of her head and neck alone, and her face was turned in half profile to the camera. Her forehead, nose, mouth and chin were all good, almost patrician, but they lacked the severity of the really patrician face.

Crane said, “Her eyebrows are heavier than the girl in the morgue.”

“Kit started plucking them about a year after that portrait was taken,” Courtland said.

Crane took the portrait and that of Verona Vincent over to the south windows of the room and held them to the light. Courtland sat quietly at the writing desk while he looked first at one, then at the other. The two women didn't look anything alike, yet their features were very similar. Those of Verona Vincent were perhaps a shade less marked; her nose was slightly smaller, her chin less determined, her mouth sulkier, but there was little choice between them. The difference lay in the expression. Courtland's sister was serious, thoughtful; there was a feeling of sensitiveness about the face as a whole. The face of Verona Vincent expressed a far more lively temperament; it was naturally gay, but the eyes and the mouth hinted at a furious temper. Her face had a vitality lacked by the other girl. Crane felt that Verona Vincent would be fun to take on a party. He wondered if five years had changed her very much.

He put the pictures down when the liquor arrived. “It's got me,” he said, accepting a glass from Courtland. “I'd probably see a resemblance in a picture of Evangeline Booth.” He added, “Maybe the gal in the morgue was Evangeline Booth.”

Courtland smiled at him, made crow's-feet appear at the corners of his blue eyes. “What's the program?” His jaw was square. He was wearing a white linen suit with a navy shirt and a canary-yellow necktie. He seemed to be enjoying his drink.

“I'll put a last line on this letter to my boss,” Crane said, “and then we'll hike over to the Princess Hotel with the two photographs.”

In moving from the writing desk Courtland took Crane's glass. He added more whiskey and a puff of soda from the siphon, then did the same with his glass.

Crane looked up from his writing in alarm “Hey! I've already had a drink this morning … before you came.”

Courtland said, “So've I.”

It was 2
P.M.
when they finished at the Princess Hotel.

They were both exhausted. It had been hot, unbelievably hot, in the hotel. They had removed their coats and neckties, rolled up their shirt sleeves while they showed the photographs to chambermaids, clerks, bellboys, porters. Outside the sun made the sidewalks griddle hot, set the tar squirming from cracks in the streets. The newspapers carried stories of corn popping in central Illinois fields, of eggs being fried on pavements, of prostrations and deaths. The faces of pedestrians were sullen.

Three of the interviews had been notable enough to make Crane write notes on the back of an envelope. The first had been with his friend Edgar, the bellboy. Crane asked him if he had thought of anything further to describe Miss Ross's visitor.

Edgar admitted he hadn't and added: “There's sure been a lot of hell over your being in the room that night. How'd you get out, anyway, jump?”

“Yeah,” Crane lied. “It's a wonder I didn't get my neck broken.” He asked Edgar if he had ever cleaned any shoes for Miss Ross.

“You bet. She gave me a quarter.”

“Did she have more than one pair?”

“Sure.” Edgar was scornful. “She had a bunch of shoes. A couple of pairs of sport shoes, you know, with white on them, and some regular ones.” He looked at Crane alertly. “You're not so dumb. The cops are trying to figure out why there wasn't any shoes in the room, too.”

The night clerk didn't mind being awakened, especially when Crane handed him a ten-dollar bill. His name was Elmer Glaub and he said, “Next to impossible for a feller t' sleep, anyhow, when it's as hot as this.” He was a lean man with an axe-thin face, mottled teeth and a prominent Adam's apple. He had on a soiled violet bathrobe. He didn't recognize Crane.

In response to a question he tried to remember something about Miss Ross's friend. “He was wearing a black hat,” he recalled.

“I know that,” said Crane, impatiently; “but can't you remember anything else?”

Mr. Glaub remembered the fellow was dark, sort of “slick lookin',” and that he was well dressed. He'd never heard his name, had never seen him except when he passed through the lobby the night before she killed herself. No, sir, he didn't know if he had a scar or not.

Crane asked, “Did he stay all night with Miss Ross?”

The clerk's Adam's apple quivered. He giggled, said, “I don't suppose he sat out in the hall.”

Courtland, who had been listening silently, winced.

Crane asked Mr. Glaub, “Did you ever see Frankie French?”

“The gambler?”

“Yeah.”

“No. At least, not to my knowledge.”

There was a musty odor about the clerk's bedroom. Crane prepared to go, then asked, “Can you remember if you saw Miss Ross' friend on the night she killed herself?”

Mr. Glaub, elbow on knee, chin on palm, thought. Suddenly he jerked erect, exclaimed, “My God!” He leaped off the mussed bed, said excitedly, “You know, I did see that guy come down from her room.” His bathrobe came open, exposing thin, hairy legs. “He come in and then come hurrying out again. I remember thinkin' they musta had a quarrel.” He stopped in front of Crane. “I don't know how I come to forget that.”

“About what time was it you saw him?” Crane demanded.

“About twelve o'clock.” Mr. Glaub was positive. “I know, because I just come back from havin' a glass of … a cup of tea.”

“Did he appear frightened?” Crane asked.

Mr. Glaub couldn't remember. “I just know he was in a hurry—you know, walkin' real fast.”

Finally, there was the maid on Miss Ross's floor. Her name was Annie Jackson and her skin was the color of root beer with a dash of cream in it. There were beads of sweat on her fat cheeks.

“You never saw the man who visited Miss Ross?” Crane asked her.

She leaned heavily on the handle of a mechanical carpet sweeper. “No, suh; he come after I gone home.”

“Did you talk much with Miss Ross? I mean, enough to find out what sort of a woman she was?”

The mulatto's eyes brightened. “She was awful nice to me, Mister. She gave me a dollar.” She added that Miss Ross had been worried about something.

“Seemed like she was afraid of someone finding her,” she said. “She didn't want strangers to see her. She wouldn't even leave me keep the door to the hall open when I was makin' up her room.”