by Helen Reilly
The core of darkness within her refused to dissipate, continued to send out creeping tentacles. “Are you sure, Steven?” she whispered.
Steven held her away. She looked at the dancing specks in his steel-bright eyes. The irises were ringed with black. He said steadily, “Yes, Cristie, I’m sure.
I let you go once. I’m not going to let you go again. Cristi, Cristie.” His grip tightened. “Don’t you understand? I love you. We have a right to each other. And by guess or by God, anyone who tries to stop us now—well, it’s going to be just too bad. Cristie, tell me what I want to hear, tell me, darling, tell me!”
Cristie didn’t answer at once. She was deeply moved. But that inner weight was difficult to throw off. Steven’s hands fell from her shoulders. His eyes searched the small white face she lifted to his. Her lips parted. Her lashes opened wide and glory blossomed in the violet eyes set at a tilt under the delicate brows.
“Steven,” she cried in a low radiant voice. “Oh, Steven, Steven.” Her arms were around his neck. He strained her to him. Their lips met and the room, the penthouse, the whole sorry world were left behind.
They clung passionately to that moment, a moment in which they were in another atmosphere beyond time and beyond space with only themselves and a thin strain of music that was Harry Woods in the distant living room playing, magically, Begin the Beguine.
To live it again is past all endeavor
Except when the tune clutches my heart;
Yet there we are, swearing to love forever,
And promising never, never to part.
Cristie withdrew her lips from Steven’s, burrowed her forehead in the hollow of his shoulder. “Never, Steven,” she murmured. “Never?”
Drawing her closer, Steven said, “Never, darling, never. Sara’s gone. Don’t worry about her any more. You musn’t. It isn’t necessary. I know things about Sara that...Listen, sweet, on the night Sara died...”
Something warned Cristie. She realized afterward that it was the music. It had become imperceptibly louder. She raised her head. Steven had his back to the door. His bulk obscured her view. She twisted sideways, looked past him.
The door leading into the hall was settling noiselessly into its frame.
Someone standing outside in the corridor had opened and closed the door a moment earlier. Steven had been speaking of Sara and the night of Sara’s death...The fear was back in Cristie, a new fear that added itself to the other and thrust her down again into swirling eddies of uncertainty and terror.
That night Christopher McKee returned to New York from Rio de Janeiro. He was back at his desk in the Homicide Squad before morning. It wasn’t until five o’clock on the following afternoon that he got the letter, a letter addressed to the Commissioner and sent up by messenger from Headquarters. The Inspector read it once and then again. He pressed the buzzer on his desk. When the door opened and Lieutenant Sheerer stuck in his head, McKee said without looking up from the sheet of paper he held in his hand, “Get me the file on the drowning of Sara Hazard of 66 Franklin Place on August 25th.”
VI
The lean towering head of the Homicide Squad lounged back in the chair behind the desk near the single big window and studied the letter in front of him. The light gray of a well-cut chalk-striped suit defined his muscular height, accentuated the deep tan of his clear olive skin, a tan produced by weeks of sun and sea. The cavernous brown eyes under thick dark brows, the powerful stern mouth that could unbend to humor were intent, speculative.
The letter read:
PoLIcE tAke NoTIce
SARA HAZARD 66 fRankLiN pLAce
did Not diE By accIDent. She was
MURDERED.
The Inspector turned the missive over, looked at the back, reversed it. The individual letters, in type, were pasted on narrow strips of yellow paper, which strips, in turn, were pasted on a sheet of white paper. The address on the envelope, “Commissioner, Police Department, New York City,” had been produced in the same way.
McKee ran the sensitive tips of his blunt fingers over the entire formation. Even without the accompanying memorandum, he would have been able to tell certain things. The letters themselves had been clipped from the packages of various brands of cigarettes. Paper and envelope were cheap and in widespread use; the paste was the ordinary commercial variety. He picked up the memorandum. No fingerprints. The communication had been posted at Grand Central.
In spite of the paucity of these details, the letter was informative. It was not the work of an entirely illiterate person. It was grammatical and there was a feeling for drama in it. The letters forming the name “Sara Hazard” and the word “murdered” were in large caps. The others were in various sizes of smaller type.
Tons of anonymous letters were received both at Headquarters and his own Squad. They all got some sort of check. Ninety-five per cent of them, perhaps more, was the product of disordered minds or of freewheeling malice. The small remaining percentage really had something to offer. This one might belong to the latter category, it might belong to the former. The Scotsman didn’t know. The only way to find out was to take a swing around the circuit, go over the ground thoroughly.
Lieutenant Sheerer brought the required papers and McKee read through the file, a hand shading his eyes. He assimilated the bare facts of Sara Hazard’s death as a result of that downward crash into the river, checked through the report on the car. The brakes seemed to have been all right but the steering gear, including the wheel, had been knocked to hell and gone. Nothing conclusive there. She might have lost control.
The hour of the fatal dive into the river detained him for a moment until he saw she had been out late at a party. He looked quickly at the Medical Examiner’s report. Bruises, contusions, a broken shoulder, a smashed ankle, lungs filled with water, this last, unmistakable evidence of death by drowning. Body in the water twenty-two days. He frowned, took the receiver off the hook, and called the Medical Examiner’s office.
Fernandez, the Chief Medical Examiner, was still away on vacation. Petersen, the assistant who had done the autopsy, came on. In answer to McKee’s question, Petersen said, after consulting the records, “Yeah, Inspector, we opened the brain. She had a concussion, as well as those smashed limbs, probably got it when the car bashed through the fence. Some traces of alcohol. First degree—but no telling her susceptibility.”
McKee said thanks, hung up and talked to Lieutenant Davidson, in command of detectives at the East Side precinct. Davidson had very little to offer. It had been the usual investigation into death by accident. Nothing out of the way. Same old turaloo. Woman went to a party, got a little dizzy, decided to go in for more, and crashed up her car. Mrs. Hazard lived with her husband. No indications of homicide, nothing even to indicate it. When the body was found and identified, the case was closed.
Closed. McKee looked down at the letter on the desk. Perhaps. Peculiar word perhaps, soft, easy spoken, putting off. It could create havoc. The Scotsman roused himself. Whatever else he was, he was a police officer first, last and all the time, and he used police methods. They were slow, laborious and plodding. They involved endless work, the accumulation of a vast body of fact from which the relevant details had to be selected and assembled. There were no miracles and he was no miracle worker. Successful results were achieved by the relentless pursuit of the last, the final scrap of evidence and the interpretation of its proper value.
Nothing to do now but get the whole picture clear. He rang for Sheerer and asked whether Todhunter was back from his vacation. Todhunter was. The little mousy man entered the inner office with a soft sideling tread. No amount of vacation could change the almost complete visual apersonality of the detective who was one of the Scotsman’s most valuable assistants. Hat, shoes, hair, face, clothing, were all approximately the same general tone, a grayish dun color. Todhunter was a man at whom no one would glance even once, let alone twice. It conferred a sort of cloak of invisibility on him. He could come and go as unnoticea
bly as a postman and without attracting any more attention.
The Inspector’s sardonic, lined face relaxed. A pleasant smile curved his firm mouth, inclined to be uncompromising in repose. “Well, Todhunter,” he said. “Have a good holiday?”
Todhunter beamed. “Swell, Inspector. Jumbo liked it too. We went up to the mountains. We had a great time.” Jumbo was Todhunter’s obese and pampered mongrel with forty-two known strains in his pedigree. He was the detective’s inseparable companion in his hours of ease and shared Todhunter’s heart with the tall Inspector.
The little detective often wondered about his chief. The Scotsman never got tired. He seemed to have the strength of ten men. He could go days without rest or sleep. No problem was too big, or too small, for him to tackle. And he could fit into any niche, was equally at home at dinners and dances, on board yachts and at prize fights as he was in Bowery smoke dives and Harlem gin shops.
McKee handed Todhunter the letter that had been sent up from Headquarters in the transparent holder. As the little detective glanced over its contents, the shadow of a frown creased his forehead. “Got the report on this case?” he asked.
The Inspector shoved the folder toward him. Todhunter looked up from a quick perusal of the first page. “I thought so,” he said. “That’s a funny thing, Inspector, I was on my way home from a plant on Bethune Street early that morning and ran into the crowd when they were hauling that car out of the river.”
The Scotsman was surprised and pleased. His satisfaction dwindled as he listened to the little detective. Todhunter described the crowd, the confusion, and his own subsequent check which he had had made as a matter of course. It simply verified the present findings.
McKee glanced at the clock. It was a few minutes after five. “It’s pretty late,” he said. He gave a quick look at the file. “But we’ll try him anyhow.”
He dialed National Motors, got the engineering department and asked for Steven Hazard. A voice said that Mr. Hazard had gone for the day but he had left word that if anyone called, and he was expecting a call, he would be at George and Jean’s on Forty-eighth Street. McKee got up and reached for his hat. “Come on,” he said.
As they went through the outer office, Lieutenant Sheerer stopped the little detective.
“Hold it, Todhunter. Dwyer wants you pronto to sign the statements in the Gainfort case. They’re going to trial tomorrow.”
Todhunter’s face fell. McKee said, “That’s all right, go on down to the D. A.’s office. You know Dwyer. He’s always talking about action. Better give it to him. It won’t take long. Join me at George and Jean’s.”
The cocktail lounge at George and Jean’s was to the left of a small foyer. It was a smallish room with a dark oak floor, oak beams, scarlet table cloths, hunting prints on the paneled walls. It was fairly well filled. The head waiter bustled up.
McKee said, “I’m looking for a Mr. Hazard,” on an interrogative note.
The head waiter bowed deferentially to the tall distinguished stranger. “Mr. Hazard? Come this way please. He’s over there in the corner.”
A tall man in his early thirties with a clever, sharply-angled face was sitting alone, fingering a scotch and soda at the table the head waiter indicated. The Scotsman stared. He had seen Steven Hazard before. Where was it? Memory returned to him, the memory of that hot August afternoon just before he flew south. It was at El Capitan. There had been a girl with Hazard, the girl that Fernandez had said was one of the prettiest he had ever seen.
The Scotsman recalled her quite clearly. She had worn gray linen, had been first troubled and upset and then very happy.
Hazard was married to another woman at the time, a woman who had since died. By accident...
McKee wound his way through the tables, paused at the one at which Hazard sat. “Mr. Hazard?” he said pleasantly. “I’m Inspector McKee of the Homicide Squad.”
Steven Hazard looked up. “Inspector McKee?”
His tone was surprised. It was also questioning. A shadow passed over his face. He said, “Sit down, Inspector. You wanted something?” There was a guarded air about him in spite of his ease, his casual motions, his smile.
“Thanks,” the Inspector said pulling out a chair. “Yes. I wanted to see you about your wife’s accident, the accident that resulted in her death on August 25th.”
The shadow on Steven Hazard’s face deepened. The line of his jaw sharpened. “But—“ he threw out his hands—“I don’t understand. I was over it all at the time with various members of the Police Department. Surely...”
McKee gestured apologetically. “I know how you feel, Mr. Hazard. But it’s just one of those things. Red tape. It’s got me in its toils too. These new rules and regulations are a nuisance. I’ve been away and under the new setup it’s part of my job to turn in a personal report on all fatal accidents and suicides.”
The Scotsman didn’t know how well it went down. Hazard remained calm. His distaste, his brevity, were natural enough under the circumstances.
He told his story, what there was of it, in a direct, straightforward voice. It followed the main lines of what they already had.
The party from which Sara Hazard had gone to her death had been at Margot St. Vrain’s. Again the scene at El Capitan flashed back to his mind. Was the girl in gray linen also at that party? If so, what had she done afterward? Look into it. He lit a cigarette.
“If I should want you later, out of business hours, to sign anything, you’re still at the apartment in Franklin Place?”
Hazard said no, he’d given up the apartment and had gone to live at his club. Mary Dodd, a friend of his and his wife’s, had closed the place and put the things in storage. “It was too big for me,” Hazard explained, “and besides...”
The Scotsman nodded his comprehension and tucked the name Mary Dodd away. “I can quite appreciate that, Mr. Hazard. And now, I trust you won’t think I’m third-degreeing you when I repeat the routine question, where were you yourself on the night of your wife’s accident?”
Steven Hazard spoke without hesitation. He said he had been at the St. Vrain party, had gotten bored, and had left before his wife. He wandered about a bit, dropped in at a couple of places for a few more drinks, and finally went home. Arriving there at, say, fourish, he had gone to bed. It was daylight before the police came to the apartment with the news of the accident.
Hazard said: “It wasn’t until then that I knew anything about it.”
After a few more questions concerning the car, the brakes, what kind of driver Sara Hazard was, McKee rose. He thanked Hazard and started for the door.
Todhunter was standing in the archway leading to the foyer. The mousy little man was looking at the table the Scotsman had left. His gaze was riveted on the dead woman’s husband. It wasn’t until the Inspector joined him and they were in the lobby that Todhunter said in his soft, accentless voice, “So that was Steven Hazard you were talking to in there, was it, Inspector? Poor guy. It must have been tough. He was standing there right in the crowd beside the river when they hoisted his car out and found it was empty.”
The Scotsman’s glance stood still abruptly on a bright, impossibly blue bird on the hat of an elderly woman talking to a waiter. He said, eyes narrow, ruminative, “Repeat that, will you, Todhunter?” And when the detective did, “You saw Steven Hazard there, when the car was raised? That must have been at around half past five or going on six. And Steven Hazard says he was at home and in bed at four o’clock that morning and that he didn’t know anything about his wife’s accident until the police notified him later on.”
Todhunter said, “I saw him there, Inspector, I don’t care what he says. I—“ The little man stopped talking suddenly. He laid a quick hand on McKee’s arm. His voice was the drift of a whisper. “Take a look at the dame coming through the door.”
McKee made a half turn. A dark-haired girl in a trim tweed suit and a small brown hat was swinging across the foyer. Her face glowed above a plaid scarf wound round h
er white throat. As she passed them and went into the cocktail lounge and started toward Steven Hazard’s table, Todhunter said in his low, mournful fashion, “Well, I’ll be jiggered. The trumps seem to be turning up. That girl was there in the crowd that morning too. I mean the night Mrs. Hazard was killed. She wasn’t with Hazard. She was alone, standing some distance away. I noticed her because she was in a white evening dress with a black velvet coat thrown over it.”
McKee didn’t answer at once. He was still staring after the girl with the remarkable eyes. A discreet inquiry of the head waiter; the girl’s name was Cristie Lansing and Cristie Lansing was the girl who had been with Steven Hazard in El Capitan on the afternoon of the day before Sara Hazard’s death.
“Stay here and keep your eye on those two.”
The Scotsman indicated the slim dark girl and Hazard, heads close together in the cocktail lounge, and started for the door.
VII
The long black Cadillac was waiting in front of the restaurant. McKee got into it. He said to Miller at the wheel, “east,” and reached for the two-way radio telephone in its cradle at the back of the front seat.
“Car CMK calling WNYF,” he said into the receiver. “Car CMK calling WNYF.” Back through the instrument came the voice of the Fire Department radio operator. “Go ahead, Car CMK.” The Scotsman said, “This is Inspector McKee. Give me my office, Chelsea 3-7610.” The voice came back again, “O.K. Stand by, Car CMK.”
The two-way radio telephone was well worth the money McKee had invested in it out of his own personal funds. They couldn’t get an appropriation for it. It was the same as the Mayor’s. They still had to use the Fire Department station for two way as the police weren’t yet equipped. Traveling hurriedly from place to place in the city he had found it invaluable and except for a few dead spots under bridges or the el, it worked like a charm.