Time Off for Murder (12 page)

  Inspector Heinsheimer's voice rolled up the stair-well. "Hey, Clancey. Bring your camera down here. Stenographer, too."

  The dictating detective and the stenographer hurried down the steps. The cameraman admonished: "Keep your hands to yourself," and ducked down the cellar entrance. Mary. looked quickly around. The blue-coat was still out in the yard. The other policemen had scattered. She saw her chance. She took it.

  Her heart was pounding. But as she tip-toed down the narrow steps, her alert mind made notes. "This is a narrow staircase," it registered. "A big man or woman would have trouble getting through. He'd get dirt on his clothes. Leave a mark on the wall."

  Three steps above the cellar floor, she said: "Good morning, gentlemen."

  Doctor Martin grunted. "I thought I told you to stay upstairs." And Johnny Reese said: "Who let you in?"

  But Inspector Heinsheimer nodded with curt cordiality. "Hello. It's O.K. She's no sissy…. Stay where you are and you can stay."

  "All right," the Medical Examiner agreed. "I don't want any seasick females."

  At first, Mary Carner saw only the circle of light where the heavy figures of the police officers moved in the penumbra of their flash lamps before an iron furnace door and the sharp bite of the photographer's bulb above the group. Then she saw a white tarpaulin stretched on the cellar floor.

  As her eyes adjusted themselves to the dim chamber, she saw the shadowy brick arches, spanning the cellar's length, and behind them the furnace, of brick too, square and huge, and like a tomb. It was a mausoleum. Incredibly perfect.

  The cameraman stepped back. Johnny Reese moved forward, bent over the furnace opening. He reached down.

  Sickening suddenly, Mary Carner closed her eyes, leaned against the wall. She clenched her fists, bit her lips. "I mustn't faint. I mustn't."

  When she looked again, there was a heap of blue cloth in the center of the tarpaulin, two doll-like feet in pale stockings, the bony spread of tiny fingers, a luminous spot, big as a five-cent piece, glimmering weirdly at a wrist. Then she saw the masses of blonde hair which had once been Phyllis Knight's radiant glory. A gurgle of distress escaped her lips.

  Inspector Heinsheimer looked up. "Don't be a fool," he said sharply. "Get upstairs."

  She stumbled up the steps. A policeman moved toward her. "I'm all right," she assured him. "I'm not going to faint." And then she fainted.

  When she opened her eyes, she was on a chair outdoors, under the bare ailanthus tree, and Johnny Reese stood over her, holding her head down to her knees.

  She pushed him feebly. "Get away," she moaned. "Death. . . There's death on your hands."

  "Me?" His voice was incredulous, but he thrust his hands behind his back. "I thought you could take it. Iron woman."

  "Go on, I deserve it. Had delusions of grandeur."

  "Don't care what you had. A murder's no place for a lady."

  She tried to stand. Her knees were watery.

  "Sit down," Johnny commanded. "You've been enough of a nuisance already. Stay put."

  But she struggled to her feet, and contrived to stay there. She brushed her coat, tried to smile. "O.K. It's all over. I apologize. Let's get to work."

  "What's the matter with you?" he growled. "Don't you think the department can solve a homicide without you?"

  "I didn't come to see the view, Johnny. How did Phyllis die?"

  "Bullet. Through the ticker."

  "Why the furnace?"

  "Why not? Good place to hide a small cadaver. Flues carried the smell right on up the chimney."

  She clenched her hands.

  "Burned?"

  "Nope. Tried to. Clothes scorched. Hey, don't flop again."

  "I won't…. Have they taken her away yet?"

  "Not yet. She likes the place. We're getting her a lease off the landlord."

  The fog lifted. "The landlord," Mary repeated. "Who was the landlord of this place?"

  "That ain't important." Johnny Reese shook his head emphatically. "That back door was open. Anybody at all could've gotten in. Whoever it was, he left his calling card. Here." He opened his fist. In his outstretched palm lay a snubnosed three-quarter inch piece of lead. "A thirty-eight," he said. "Cut it out of the wall. Just back of the place where the stains in the floor commence. One bullet. Through the body. Into the wall. That's how it was. We don't need no landlord. This'll do." He turned the bullet over, delicately touching the dark brown pin points that looked like specks of rust, the minute grooves and scratches.

  "There's the murderer's name and number," Johnny Reese said somberly. "No gettin' away from that."

Inspector Heinsheimer stood in the kitchen doorway and snickered at the detectives under the nude ailanthus tree.

  "Lovebirds!" His accent was sardonic. "Mighty pretty picture. Would it aggravate you too much, Reese, if I was to say this ain't no time or place for romance?"

  The scar on Johnny's cheek reddened, but he answered lightly: "Romance! Your mistake, Inspector. I was only inquirin' of the lady what the hell she thought she was doin' here."

  "I'll bite. What is she doing here?"

  Mary said: "Phyllis Knight was my friend. I staked my claim in this case last fall. That's when I got to know your Mister Reese. Maybe you can get along without me, but I'm not going to give you the chance to find out."

  "Excuse me, Inspector." A blue-coat touched Heinsheimer's sleeve. "There's a man here. He wants to know is there a reward. He's the one found the body. He's got some things."

  Mr. Lobel, his moon face bloated with importance, took off his hat, said: "How, do, Inspector. I'm the wrecker. George. I'm the one found it. I'm the one put in the call."

  "Y'are, hey? O.K. You're the man we want to talk to. Come in here." Inspector Heinsheimer led the way back into the kitchen. He hoisted his haunches up on the sink drainboard. "What you got for us?"

  Mr. Lobel looked crestfallen. "I give the cops the pocketbook awready," he complained. "I give them the shoes and . . ." He thrust his hands deep into his coat pockets, throttling the last vestiges of his acquisitive expectations.

  The Inspector saved him from immediate sacrifice by demanding: '"Where'd you find the shoes?"

  Mr. Lobel put off the debate with his instincts: "Them shoes? Oh, they was on the cellar stairs. One near the top, one near the bottom. Now the pocketbook. Some guys findin' a thing like that, corpse or no corpse, they'd help themselves to what was in it and they wouldn't be asking no questions. But not me. A responsible businessman. I'm a responsible businessman. A citizen, see. I see it laying there on the floor, and I say to myself, that's a funny thing, a swell pocketbook like that, in a cellar. But I didn't touch the dough. Not one penny. Just the way I found it, I give it to the cop. I'm not askin', but if there's a reward comin', who has a better right? I jus' been talkin' to a feller down the street, and he says: 'Lobel, you were honest to give that to the cops, they had ought to appreciate it -'"

  "Oh sure, sure," the Inspector interrupted. "Who has the bag now?"

  A detective came forward with Phyllis Knight's handbag.

  "Contents listed?" the Inspector barked. "O.K. Give it here."

  Mr. Lobel's gaze pivoted to the dusty bottle of Scotch, still erect on the table. He read the label, thought how excellent was that brand. He hunched his back in resignation. None of this was any longer his. Everything belonged to the cops. Everything that wasn't nailed to the walls and floor. A cadaver in a furnace had changed everything. He drew out, reluctantly, the metal flashlight, the broken spectacles and the little revolver.

  "I guess you got to get all these things, too," he said sadly. "I found 'em on the floor when I come in."

  The Inspector glared. He balanced the trinkets lightly in his palm. "You handled 'em, I s'pose. Smeared 'em all up."

  Mr. Lobel was hurt. "I handled 'em. Sure. Why not?"

  The Inspector snapped the gun open. "Been fired," he said briefly. "Somebody playin' cops and robbers!" He made a wry face. "That kind of thing. A guy don't even get a license for a thing like that. Buys it at the candy store to liven up a picnic. You could hurt somebody with one of those but them dopes don't know it. Where'd you find the junk?" He hopped down from the drainboard.

  Mr. Lobel motioned him across the room, to the passageway between kitchen and front door.

  "Over there, hey? Where we found the thirty-eight? Put 'em back where you found 'em."

  Mr. Lobel put the little pistol on the right side of the hall, just beyond the threshold, the flashlight on the left, the spectacles between the two, a foot further back. He stepped off, admired his work, said: "Nobody'd know I even touched 'em."

  The Inspector sank down clumsily on his padded knees. His flash beam swept the floor. The detectives, standing in a semi-circle around him, watched him scrape a few slivers of glass up with a card, drop them into an envelope, saw him nod with satisfaction as he picked a dark crumb out of a corner and ran his beam up and down the woodwork.

  "That's all."

  Johnny Reese helped him to his feet.

  "Here it is." The Inspector opened his palm to show a tiny lead pellet. "Nicked the woodwork in the right hand corner. Let's have the other, Reese."

  The two bullets, lying side by side in the Inspector's cushioned hand, made a dramatic contrast - the one three-quarters of an inch of lethal lead, the other a futile grain of metal.

  "Gun battle," the Inspector grinned. But his face sobered. "That glass. If I ain't wrong, it's a broken eye-glass lens. A guy wore glasses and dropped them, before or after he fired his gun, and a bum shot at that." He arched his spine, rubbed his back. "Must be coming down with lumbago. Can't crawl around on the floor like I used to. O.K., let's go. Now, let's pull this thing together. Here, right on the other side of the sill, here's where the stains begin. There's a regular mess of 'em. Listen, Carner, if you can't take it -"

  "I'm all right, Inspector," Mary pleaded. "Won't I ever live it down?" she thought.

  The Inspector looked at her sharply, went on: "The way I put it together, the Knight woman and whoever was with her - maybe it was the guy that owned the little gun and specs - came in through the front door, using the flashlight although what they came for nobody knows - yet. They must have had a key. That lock wasn't broken till this fellow," he pointed at the housewrecker, "sawed it apart this morning. Whoever came in knew his way around. Knew how to open up that front entrance. They must of come along this hallway here, past the dining room, where they don't see nobody, and here, in the doorway, they stop and see this party, sitting at the table. Now the party, whoever it is, is pretty surprised to see them, too. Those four guys sitting down to a nice little supper in a house that don't belong to them, they're not expecting company. Maybe they think it's burglars. Maybe they think it's the police. Whoever it is, they're surprised. Look at the way they pushed back their chairs. I never saw chairs look so surprised in all my life. And they let go with the gun."

  "Whoever he was," Johnny Reese said, "he was a wonderful shot. Right through the heart."

  Mary's throat tightened, but she managed to add: "Then it was here she fell…across the threshold, face forward, into the kitchen…. That stain, that brown stain in the floor …."

  It was a wide stain, deep brown in the center, lighter at the edges, as though life had gushed from the little body in one explosive spurt. Twelve inches along the kitchen floor it became a trickle, single drops, one following after the other.

  The Inspector followed the trail to the cellar door. "The way I dope it," he declared, "they carried her from here straight down to the furnace. She couldn't have been a load." He flashed his light along the wall. "They left a mark. Could've figured how tall they were if we hadn't smeared it all up going down. But we'll take scrapings anyway." He peered down the staircase. "How's it coming, Doc?"

  "All set…. Bringing her up in a minute."

  The detectives marched somberly back into the kitchen.

  Mary said: "Will you come over here to the table, Inspector, please? What do you make of that red smudge at the end of that cigar, there?"

  Inspector Heinsheimer bent over the table to study the butt. "If it was on a cigarette, I'd say lipstick."

  Mary nodded. "And on a cigar, I'd still say lipstick."

  "You mean one of them?" He put his wrist on his hip, cocked his head in a mincing imitation of the effeminate male.

  Mary answered, "I figured the other way around. A woman who smoked like a man."

  The Inspector looked approving. "Could happen. Could happen. It's been heard of. Take 'em down-town, Clancey…. Reese, get under the table, will you? You can take the bending exercises better'n I…. Bands…Cellophane wrappers…. Give them here." He examined the dirty blue and white bands critically. "Ramon
Allones!
That'll help, too. Class, my lads. Wait a minute…. Here comes the girl friend."

  Two policemen, carrying a mortuary box, shuffled up out of the cellar stairwell. A policewoman, in uniform - the New York Police Department's concession to the niceties that must be preserved, even after death - walked decorously behind the casket.

  "Put it down, boys," the Inspector commanded. He raised the lid, turned back the tarpaulin.

  Mary Carner dug her nails into the palms of her hands, her teeth into her lower lip. She squared her shoulders, stepped to the casket. At first, it seemed to her as though there was nothing but cloth and hair in the box. The golden braids lay dark and lustreless, in a tumbled mop, almost as though they were no longer part of the ensemble of woman and costume which had been Phyllis Knight. The Medical Examiner had spread a cloth over the desiccated face.