“So I went to work in his theater. It kept me near him. It gave me the chance to watch over him, to check his actions. I knew that the man who had forced that whisky on me was a man whose own acts must in time rise up and punish him. I was waiting for some overt crime, some point at which he would overstep legality. And it came.” Hilary paused. “That is the story, Lieutenant. The rest is up to you.”
“Does anyone else at the theater know this?” Fergus asked.
“Of course not. Should I betray myself?”
“Not even Fran Owen?”
“No.” Hilary seemed genuinely surprised. “Why?”
“Nothing.”
Hilary rose. The perfect self-control with which he had recounted his tragedy was weakening. His slender body trembled. “May I go now, Lieutenant?”
“Sure. And thanks for what you’ve told us. I promise you we’ll go to work on it. And remember, Vane, that the police department is just a little like the Lord. We like to think that vengeance is ours; we shall repay.”
“A charming text,” said Hilary, with a little of his old lightness. “See you around, boys.” And he left.
Jackson picked up the phone and dialed a short interoffice number. “Hello. Jackson speaking. Young man just left this office. Blond. Five eleven. Long hair. Hollywood clothes. I want him watched till further notice.”
“Hm,” said Fergus. “The idea being?”
“The idea being that if that lad’s lying, he’s got something up his sleeve and watching him won’t do any harm; and if all this damned gibberish is true, then he’s the next likely victim on the Carruthers list. We’ve got to cover him either way.”
“Need me any more now, Lieutenant?” the stenographer asked.
“No. Get that stuff transcribed, Dakin, and send it back to me. Oh, and see if any reports come in on that key, will you?”
“So,” said Fergus. “No luck yet on that solid die?”
“No. But I’ve been thinking.”
“And are you getting anywhere?”
“I think I am. I want to try it first and make sure it works. The doors aren’t right here, but there’s one at home I can use for the experiment. In the meantime, Fergus, let me call your attention to one fact: there’s only one conceivable advantage that that solid key has over an ordinary key.”
“And that is?”
“That,” said Lieutenant Jackson, “is its disadvantage.”
Chapter 14
“Hey!” Fergus protested. “I’m supposed to be the brilliant if eccentric sleuth that makes cryptic remarks. Remember?”
“Sorry,” Jackson grinned. “I couldn’t resist it. Give you something to worry about. But now let’s go over all this business and see just what has happened and particularly where the police come in. First of all, we have two accidental deaths; and though I grant there are screwy circumstances about each of them, particularly your clotted bottle and my own beloved key, accident is the verdict any coroner’s jury would reach on either one.
“But we’ve got more than that. We’ve got a picture that asks for something a damned sight more satisfying than accident. Two closely related deaths, a racket, and a large insurance policy seem to call out for murder.”
“All right,” said Fergus. “Suppose we call it murder and go on from there.”
“Easy enough to say. But murder of whom? We’ve got two possibilities, first being murder of Carruthers himself. Who’d be your candidates for motive on that?”
“After Hilary’s story,” Fergus mused, “he’d move up damned close to first place himself as far as motive goes. Jordan for the insurance. Mark Andrews conceivably for control of the theater, though that’s wild. And Fran Owen for a motive very similar to Hilary’s—but I’ll let you know more about that after today. Or possibly Fennworth, double-crossing Carruthers at his own plot.”
“To which I suppose, from what you’ve learned of the gentleman, that we might add just about anybody who ever had dealings with Rupert Carruthers. Now look at the second possibility, murder by Carruthers. Here you’ve got a completely different problem: not ‘Who is the murderer?,’ but ‘Who is the corpse?’ What have we got to go on?”
“From what Hilary said, it was supposed to be someone around the theater. But I’ve seen everyone at present connected with the theater since the death, and they’re all still on hand and flourishing.”
“All?”
“Every one.”
“And how about that girl you’ve kept phoning me about?”
Fergus laughed. “Now look. In the first place, Carruthers isn’t going to try to pass off a girl’s body as his own. And in the second, even though she is missing now, both Norm and I have seen her since the ‘accident.’”
“Still,” Jackson insisted doggedly, “she is missing. People don’t vanish after a sudden death unless they’ve got a damned good reason for it.”
Norman wanted to answer vehemently, to throw the lie back into Jackson’s teeth; but the more he thought, the more he felt, that there was no answer. And Fergus, he noted ruefully, did not contradict; he simply shifted ground.
“Let’s recapitulate,” he said. “Under a, we’ve got a known corpse and an unknown murderer, who might be any one of an almost unlimited number of people. Under b, we’ve got a known murderer, but an unknown corpse, who must be any one of a very limited number of people—so limited, in fact, that we can’t suggest a single candidate.”
“It’s always nice to have a known murderer,” said Jackson. “But juries have a nasty way of wanting to know who he murdered.”
“Well, there are two absolutely positive facts about our corpse. One, he must have been male. Two, he must have had false teeth.”
“And who around the theater fits those?”
“I’ve been watching people pretty carefully, and I’ll take an oath the only false teeth there belong to Fennworth and Jordan. Of course, if it weren’t for Hilary’s story we might conclude that the corpse was an outsider—some stumblebum Carruthers picked up, who had false teeth.”
“And he must have those scars by which, according to this hypothesis, Fennworth tricked me into a false identification. I’ll tell you one line we can follow up: check with Missing Persons for men of average height with false teeth and scars. It may not help, but it’s worth the try.”
“True for you, Andy. And now Fennworth.”
“Yes.” Jackson drummed his desk impatiently. “If the exploded corpse was murdered, I’ll accept Fennworth’s death as murder too. An accident at just this point, when according to Vane Fennworth could tell us all about the plot, is too much to swallow. Now if the corpse was Carruthers, it’s hard to see why Fennworth should be killed.”
“Unless,” said Fergus softly, “you take the Mark Andrews motivation. Say he killed Carruthers to get control of the theater. All right. Then Fennworth still stood in his way.”
“I talked to Andrews. He seemed sane enough. And nobody but a madman could want a theater so fanatically as to kill two men for it. Now, if Hilary Vane killed Carruthers out of revenge, why should he kill Fennworth?”
“Maybe” (this was Norman putting in his two cents’ worth) “to lend an air of verisimilitude to the story he just told us. If Fennworth’s dead, he can deny nothing.”
“But there was some huggermugger between Hilary and Fennworth,” Fergus protested. “We heard it at the Y.”
“What we heard was too ambiguous and fragmentary to prove anything. It might have been staged deliberately for us, to build up to this yarn.”
“And Hilary soaped the ladder, and Fennworth stepped on my ankle just by pure accident? Could be, but I don’t like it. Who was it said it’s easy to believe the impossible, but never the implausible?”
“One trouble with you, Fergus,” said Jackson, “is that you keep going esthetic on me. You don’t ask, ‘What’s the truth?’ You ask, ‘Now what’ll make a neat and beautiful plot?’ Stop worrying about form and satisfaction, and let’s figure out what happened. Now
if the burned corpse is not Carruthers—”
“Then Carruthers killed Fennworth to get rid of his accomplice. You can’t say that isn’t satisfactory.”
“I admit it has a certain neatness. What’s more, it might even be true. It would account for most puzzles in this case, and leave us with four questions.”
“Those being?”
Jackson ticked them off on his fingers. “As follows:
“1. Who is the unknown corpse?
“2. How did Carruthers leave him in a locked room? (Which I hope to answer for you by tomorrow.)
“3. Where is Carruthers now?
“4.—”
“Where is Sarah Plunk?” Fergus suggested.
“You said yourself that might be irrelevant. No, I’d say:
“4. How the hell does Carruthers ever expect to lay his hands on that hundred grand?”
Fergus let out a wordless exclamation of annoyance.
“You see?” Jackson continued. “It’s all very well to say that Carruthers is venal and conniving and an A number-one heel and therefore if a murder involves a hundred thousand dollars, he must have committed it. Fine. But how does he get that hundred thousand? If Jordan had appeared to die in an accident, it would be a cinch. Carruthers collects, pays off ten grand to Fennworth, and that’s that. But when the body is made to appear to be Carruthers himself, where are you?”
“The money,” said Fergus slowly, “goes to Lewis Jordan, who doesn’t want it.”
“Does anybody not want a hundred gees?”
“Not for himself he doesn’t. Then if Carruthers is to profit by that policy … But he must have intended to profit by it. The whole insurance scheme was his idea; Jordan was reluctant even to enter into it.”
“I suppose that’s according to his own testimony?”
“Yes. But I believe him. He’s not a man you can suspect of—”
Jackson frowned. “I know how you feel, Fergus. I’ve got mixed emotions myself. I know Jordan’s life. I know the things he’s done, the ends he’s worked for, the thoughts he’s expressed. It isn’t possible to suspect that man of … But can we ever know people? Particularly where money and murder are concerned? After all, he is more directly benefited by the burned corpse than anybody else involved.”
“You can’t suspect him.”
“If we think this is a plot by Carruthers, we have to think that Jordan is to some extent an accomplice. It’s the only way that it makes sense.”
“Is it though?” Fergus’ eyes lit up and he tapped his cane restlessly instead of pacing. “Look, Andy; there’s another answer to your question. There’s one—” He paused, and the green glow of his eyes faded. “Look at it this way,” he resumed more quietly. “Suppose Jordan, in all good faith, goes and collects on the policy. Then one night comes a visitor to his hermitage—Rupert Carruthers, alive and well, and offering Jordan his choice of two alternatives: either fork over the cash to Carruthers or have the frame-up exposed, ruining his reputation forever and destroying whatever influence for good he may possess.”
“Too risky.” Jackson shook his head. “Jordan might turn him straight over to the police for fraud and take a chance on his own reputation.”
“That’s what he would do,” said Norman. “No end can justify means to him. If he could secure justice only by destroying himself, he’d destroy himself and gladly.”
“But would Carruthers appreciate that? Wouldn’t he judge another’s reactions by his own?”
“No,” Jackson insisted. “I don’t see how you can get out of it. If Carruthers is guilty, it’s in a triumvirate of guilt: Carruthers, Fennworth, Jordan. No, make it a quadrumvirate.”
“With who for a fourth?”
“Sarah Plunk.”
“That’s ridiculous!” Norman heard himself saying sharply.
“Is it? If a man was murdered to provide the burned corpse, some means was necessary to bring him to the workshop late at night. A lure. And what better than a girl? Probably she’s Carruthers’ mistress—hiding out with him now and waiting till they collect from Jordan.”
“I won’t believe it. It’s fantastic. If you knew the girl, Lieutenant, you’d see how absurd such an idea is. Sarah as a sinister tool and mistress, as a lure, as you put it—”
“She seems to have lured you effectively enough,” said Jackson dryly.
Norman was silent. The detective did not even know how effectively he had been lured on the night of Fennworth’s death. Nor did he himself know how much of his indignant defense of Sarah had been sincere and how much of it merely what he felt in honor bound to say. Suspicion is a treacherous and hungry worm.
“There, boys,” Fergus murmured. “No hairpulling, as Hilary says. But Sarah Plunk and the true depths of her character isn’t what’s bothering me most right now.”
“No? And what is?”
“Just this: Carruthers’ plot has so far involved the murder of an unknown man to provide a corpse and the murder of an accomplice to preserve secrecy. How many more deaths have to come before he earns his hundred grand? He has the advantage over us. He’s out of sight, supposedly dead. He can strike when and where he wants. How many more accidents must there be?”
“I can’t put a guard on every member of the theater.”
“No. But think how many more deaths could be advantageous. Hilary Vane knows too much. Sarah Plunk may well know too much. Lewis Jordan has the claim on Carruthers’ hundred thousand. Fran Owen …”
Slowly Fergus rose, propping himself on the cane. His face winced a little as his ankle felt his weight. “What I need,” he said, “is a couple of days on a couch with my leg propped up on a niiice soooft cushion. But not while Rupert Carruthers is at large. So long, Andy. See you at the next accident.”
“I’ve got an idea,” said Fergus, as Norman drove out to Beverly. “And such an ideal Such a gloriously fangoddamnedtastic idea that I didn’t dare mention it in front of Andy.”
“Sarah?” asked Norman quickly.
“No. This is another track. This—”
“Look,” said Norman. “I’m worried. Not about what your Lieutenant said; that’s nonsense. But about last night. She didn’t disappear out of pure whimsical malice; not after … But what I mean is this.”
“For a playwright,” said Fergus, “you’re not what I’d call lucid and articulate.”
“No, listen. Somehow, somewhere that poor child is tied up in this damned mess. I might as well face it. And whatever happens I want you to get her out. I’m not trying to impose on you,” he hurried on, “but I’ve got a little money left. Not much, but a little. It isn’t so all-fired important that I should put it in with Andrews to produce my play. And if—well, if you’d let me know what your fee is …?”
Fergus laughed. “Forget it, Norm. A thread’s a thread. I can’t work out this case and leave anything dangling. Finding Sarah is part of it all, part of my job. I don’t need a fee from you.”
Norman hesitated. “I don’t mean just find her,” he said at last. “I mean if she is in any trouble—if any of that bilge that Jackson was talking is—well, if it should turn out to be anywhere near the truth—”
“That was a stop light,” said Fergus. “Just abstractly like.”
“If it should conceivably be true, what I’m asking you to do is—”
“Do I understand, suh,” Fergus smiled, “that you are offering to bribe me to let her get away? Even if she’s a murderer’s mistress, and an accomplice, and a lure?”
“Even if she is,” said Norman firmly. “Because I know she isn’t.”
“Love,” Fergus observed, “is a beautiful thing, but it doesn’t really help the logical faculties.”
“But will you?”
It was Fergus’ turn to hesitate. “I tell you what, Norm,” he said at last. “As soon as I can prove definitely who, what, and where Sarah Plunk is, I’ll give you first crack at the information. No fee involved. Then you can tell me what to do … if you still want to. Fai
r enough?”
“Fair enough,” said Norman, and was silent for a while. “Where are we headed for?” he asked finally.
“Fran Owen’s. Go on out to Western and turn right. I’ll guide you from there.”
“And now—I’m sorry I interrupted, but I had to get this damned business off my chest. But what’s this idea you didn’t dare tell the Lieutenant?”
“On second thought, Watson, I’m not telling even you. It’s dynamite, and if it goes off—well, I might as well be the only one scarred.”
“The scars of loyal service are a Watson’s right. Come on; let’s have it.”
“Uh-uh. I’ll tell you this much though; and if you’re a bright boy, you’ll see the whole thing: there is only one possible answer to Andy’s fourth question. And I know that answer.”
“Is Fran here?” Fergus asked the redheaded girl who answered the door.
“Fran who?” she sounded doubtful.
“Fran Owen—you know, works at the Carruthers Little Theater.”
“Oh. O.K. Come on in, and I’ll call her.”
The girl led them into a parlor of sorts, hung with batiks, death masks, and costume sketches, and furnished with an assortment ranging from ancient overstuffeds to packing cases. She yelled a vigorous “Fran!” toward the staircase and added, turning back to the guests, “Sit down on something. Sorry if I sounded skeptical at the door, but we have to be careful.”
“Why?”
“We’re a sort of a co-operative. Lots of girls working in different fields—me, I’m a librarian, and we’ve got everything else from ballet dancers to shopgirls, all sharing expenses here. And I don’t know—people see this house full of girls, and well—you sort of have to check what they’re after.”
Fergus grinned. “Been raided yet?”
“Not quite. But I’m always suspicious of redheads,” she looked pointedly at Fergus, “even if they’re lame. Redheads are out for no good.”
The Case of the Solid Key Page 17