by Q. Patrick
Timothy snapped: “Martin Prentiss?”
“Yes.”
Sue was at Timothy’s side. “The corpse in the closet,” she gasped. “So the threat was real. And you were right.”
Timothy, at Barker’s side, began to examine the body. Celia, her police call completed, hovered, moaning: “John, is he dead?”
“Yes, Mrs. Prentiss, he’s dead,” said Timothy.
“I might have known.” Celia gave an unstable laugh. “It’s just the sort of thing Martin’d do—killing himself in my closet.”
“He didn’t kill himself—he was murdered. Hit on the head with the statue.”
“Murdered!”
“He’s right.” Dr. Barker’s voice was grim.
“It only happened a short time ago, too. Look at the blood, Trant—not congealed. The body’s still warm, not rigid. At the most he’s been dead half an hour.”
Timothy knew the doctor was telling the obvious truth. He told Sue to lead the half-hysterical Celia into the living room. After a routine examination he and Dr. Barker joined the girls. In a deceptively soft voice, he said: “Perhaps you’ll tell me what happened before Miss Spender and I …”
“I found him,” broke in Celia. “We came in. I opened the closet to put my coat away. He—he was there. I didn’t know he was dead. I called to John. I went to the phone …”
“… And then you arrived,” added Barker. “We must have been here less than thirty seconds before you came.” That was also true. One thing seemed clear: Celia and
Dr. Barker couldn’t possibly have killed the man in thirty seconds, and their movements for the past half-hour had been virtually as much under his observation as those of Sue. All three were patently innocent. Timothy thought of the cryptic note. If Sue was telling the truth, Lieutenant Oliver Brown was the only other person who could have written it—and he’d left the party half an hour before the others.
Timothy felt depressed. Apparently the solution to this crime was going to be boringly obvious.
The buzzer sounded. Timothy said: “I’ll go.” He opened the door. The uniformed figure of Lieutenant Brown stared at him belligerently. “Who are you?” he said. He had a nice face, thought Timothy, straight and uncomplicated.
“I’m afraid I’m a policeman.”
“A policeman?” The young man paled “Nothing’s happened to Celia?”
“Something has happened to her husband.” Brown grinned happily.
“Something unpleasant, I hope.”
“Very unpleasant. He’s been murdered.”
“Murdered!”
“Within the last half-hour.” Timothy’s gray eyes were fixed on the young man’s uncertain face. “Prentiss had a key. He must have let himself in while his wife was still at the party. Someone arrived. Prentiss opened the door. The person who arrived murdered him—within the last half-hour.”
Lieutenant Brown shifted his feet. Timothy continued: “I understand Mr. Prentiss was making a great deal of trouble for his wife. Also that, once she was free, both you and Dr. Barker were interested in marrying her.”
The young man’s mouth went defiant. “What if it’s true?” he said.
“If it’s true,” said Timothy sadly, “you’re going to need a very good alibi for the last half-hour—or a very good lawyer.”
In answer to Celia’s call, Captain Dalton soon arrived, with the medical examiner and a squad of men. Dalton was Timothy’s superior and had never liked him. He was sarcastic about Timothy’s presence at the scene. Timothy became tactfully unobtrusive, told Dalton everything, and left him in charge.
Once the medical examiner had established that the murder had taken place within the last half-hour, Dalton examined the alibis of Dr. Barker, Celia, and Sue and, on Timothy’s testimony, found them flawless.
Then he turned to Brown. The lieutenant’s account of his movements between seven-thirty and eight was extremely tenuous. He said he’d left the party at seven-thirty, gone to his room, taken his time about changing and arrived at Celia’s to have Timothy open the door to him. He claimed no knowledge of the murder or the note in Sue’s bag.
“I suggest, young man,” said Dalton, “that you’d made a date to meet Prentiss here while his wife was at the party. You knew he had a key. You left the party at seven, went home, changed quickly and came here. Prentiss let you in; you killed him, went away, and pretended to arrive for the first time when Trant opened the door to you.”
Lieutenant Brown preserved a dignified silence. “The note?” asked Timothy.
Dalton blustered: “Obvious. He knew Prentiss would be dead at seven-thirty. He planned his innocent arrival at eight. He wanted to be sure there’d be at least one unbiased witness to his arrival after the crime.”
“Oh,” said Timothy meekly.
Dalton glared: “Got a better idea?”
“Oh, no,” which was true.
Dalton was booking Brown as a murder suspect, while Celia, pale and distraught, hovered around the young lieutenant. Timothy picked up the note from Sue’s bag, turned it over, and stared at the printed letters OPM at the jagged top corner. As he examined them, an extremely unorthodox idea came to him.
The men from the morgue were about to remove the body. Timothy gestured them aside and knelt by Prentiss’ head. He ran his fingers over the matted red hair and felt the wound, where the blood was now congealing. Close to it, his sensitive touch traced a small but distinct swelling. He felt sudden exhilaration and whispered to the medical examiner.
Dalton and Brown had risen. Celia was sobbing, while Dr. Barker and Sue were trying to comfort her. Timothy strolled to Dalton’s side: “Taking Lieutenant Brown away?” he asked.
“What you think I’m going to do? Invite him home to supper?”
Timothy looked thoughtful. “It might be less embarrassing than arresting him.”
Dalton’s eyes popped. Celia turned her stricken face to Timothy. “You mean he didn’t do it, don’t you?”
“I mean there are a couple of questions we should ask before we do anything drastic.”
Celia said eagerly: “We’ll tell you anything—anything.” Dr. Barker said: “What do you want to know?”
“For example—” Timothy was looking at his shoes. They were a little too expensive for the police force. Dalton disliked them intensely. “Mrs. Prentiss, did Lieutenant Brown go with you to the party from here?”
“No. He met us there. He phoned here about a quarter of five. He’s just back unexpectedly from Japan. He wanted to see me. I had to go to the party. I asked him to meet me there—and have dinner afterwards.”
“And the rest of you? How did you prepare for the party?”
Sue’s gold-flecked eyes watched him. “That’s simple. Around five, Celia and I started to dress. Dr. Barker arrived around five-fifteen. I let him in and went back upstairs to finish dressing. I guess we all started for the party around five-thirty.”
“Then you met Lieutenant Brown for the first time at the party?”
“Yes. I was introduced to him just before you arrived.”
“I see.” Timothy turned to Dalton. “I suggest you release Lieutenant Brown.”
Dalton spluttered: “Trant, you’re being fancy—as usual.”
“Oh, it’s not fancy— because Lieutenant Brown didn’t kill Prentiss. In fact, he’s the only one who couldn’t under any circumstances have killed him.” They all stared at Timothy.
“In the first place,” he said, “it’s obvious he didn’t write the note. Since he’d only met Miss Spender a few moments before the note was written, he wasn’t likely to know she’d written a book called The Corpse in the Closet under an assumed name. That, however, is only incidental. Prentiss was not killed between seven-thirty and eight. He was killed much earlier — before anyone went to the cocktail party.”
Dalton’s face was plum red. “But the medical evidence! Are you crazy?”
“Maybe I was a little too definite. Prentiss wasn’t exactly killed bef
ore the party.”
“Not exactly killed!”
Timothy smiled at him sweetly. “I noticed a swelling on Prentiss’ head, the sort of swelling that could be caused by a violent blow from some hard instrument. Now, the medical examiner and Dr. Barker agree that the blow which killed him must have killed him instantly.
Everyone knows there is no swelling from a blow after death.” He shrugged. “In other words, we’re left stranded with a completely unexplained—bump.
“Our murderer was very ingenious. All the evidence points to the fact that Prentiss was killed while Mrs. Prentiss, Dr. Barker, and Miss Spender were at the party. In a way, the evidence is true. But there’s something else that makes a very big difference.”
He smiled amiably at Sue. “Does the detective story writer get the point of the bump? A bump comes from a blow. So Prentiss got a blow on the head some time before he was dead—a long enough time for the bump to form. In other words, Prentiss came here earlier—before you left for the party. One of you let him in and, either in a heated quarrel or with premeditation, hit him on the head with the statue. The blow was strong enough to knock him unconscious and keep him unconscious for a considerable time, but not strong enough to kill him. Okay; one of you picked up Prentiss’ unconscious body and hid it in the closet for future reference.”
He paused. “Thanks to Lieutenant Brown, the future reference fitted perfectly. Brown had called Mrs. Prentiss at quarter of five. He was to meet her at the party, leave early, and then pick her up here at eight. The Lieutenant was an exemplary scapegoat.
“Now you see how necessary and how clever the note was. Prentiss was not dead then, but he had to be dead, and in such a way that only Brown could have done it. Okay. One of you slipped the note in Miss Spender’s bag. And the point of the note? To be sure that an impartial witness would be present at the right moment. That Miss Spender chose a professional detective for her serviceable male was just a bad break for the murderer.”
Timothy was watching Dalton now. “Get it? The murderer left the party just before Miss Spender and her witness. He arrived here, where he knew Prentiss was lying unconscious where he’d left him—in the closet.”
The quiet gaze moved to Dr. Barker. “At first I thought Mrs. Prentiss might have been your accomplice. But I see she wasn’t. After Sue let you in, you were alone downstairs while the girls were upstairs dressing for the party, where they could hear nothing.
“That’s when Prentiss let himself in and you knocked him out. I guess you had no distinct plan then but, being a doctor, you could gauge pretty certainly that the blow had been hard enough to keep him unconscious for at least two hours, which was all you needed. After the party you drove Mrs. Prentiss home. You let her discover the so-called corpse. Naturally she called you, a doctor, to examine Prentiss while she phoned the police. The statue was nearby. While she was on the phone, it was the easiest thing in the world to give Prentiss one quick, lethal blow while you were supposedly examining him in the closet.
“It was split-second timing, but you had every chance of success,” said Timothy. “There was no danger of Miss Spender and me getting here ahead of you; you were at the cocktail party too, and could always leave with Celia in a hurry if you saw us going. As it was, we arrived here thirty seconds after you, exactly the time you intended. We saw Prentiss was dead and must have died within the last half-hour; yet we knew you couldn’t possibly have had time to kill him. We were wrong; you did have time.
“Too bad about the bump,” said Timothy. “If you’d aimed your second blow accurately, you might have obliterated all traces.” He paused. “Too bad about the note too. That was frankly careless. You should have done a better job of tearing the paper. That OPM was what gave me the clue. I realized it was part of the letterhead of a prescription pad. It was the end of 4:30 PM or whenever you finished your office hours.”
He turned to Dalton. “The motive won’t be difficult. He wanted to marry Mrs. Prentiss—probably, if I may be indelicate, for her money. He was making progress—and then Lieutenant Brown showed up. This was a wonderful opportunity to get rid of the husband and the rival suitor in one fell swoop.”
Dr. Barker had been jolted off his guard. His collapse was not long in coming. After Dalton had taken him away,
Timothy studied Celia and Lieut. Brown almost paternally. “You had to lose one of your suitors, Mrs. Prentiss. I hope you prefer the one left.”
Celia smiled faintly and slipped her hand into the Lieutenant’s.
“My sister Freda,” murmured Timothy pensively, “was hoping you’d marry me’.” He grinned. “I’ll try to be brave. Maybe in time my broken heart may heal.”
He smiled at Sue. “Maybe you’ll help me heal it,” he said! “Dinner tomorrow? Or—if it’s not too precipitous—tonight?”
Farewell Performance
She stood in the hall of her Park Avenue apartment, watching Lieutenant Trant. On the stage he’d always considered Gay Killian America’s best and loveliest actress. Face to face, she looked older, but even lovelier. Maybe the shock of what had happened had something to do with it; her skin was almost translucent, and her green eyes, under the black hair, dark as laurel leaves.
Her hand was resting on the arm of Robert Prentice, her new leading man. The tall young actor with taffy blond hair showed the shock too, but he was playing it tough.
Trant, of the New York Homicide Bureau, nodded toward an inner room, where the bustle of a police investigation was under way.
“This man has been murdered,” he said. “You realize that, Miss Killian?”
“Of course I realize it.”
“And you and Mr. Prentice were the only people known to be in the apartment—except your maid and secretary. Isn’t it rather unorthodox to let you leave without any kind of an examination—a sort of preview?”
“But it’s so desperately important to me. It’s after seven now. The curtain’s at eight-thirty. You can send a policeman with us to the theatre. Afterwards, we’ll do anything, tell you anything.”
“It’s Gay’s farewell performance,” cut in Prentice, glaring at a cut on the knuckles of his right hand. “Everyone will be there. Gay as Medea. Gay for the last.”
“And you, Mr. Prentice,” asked Trant dryly, “are you playing for the last time too?”
“No understudy. I’ve got to be there.”
“My secretary and maid can tell you everything.” Gay Killian laid a persuasive hand on Trant’s sleeve. “I’ve heard about you. Who hasn’t? You’re not a hardboiled policeman. You’re understanding…. Please.”
Trant looked thoughtful. “I was hoping to catch that show, myself. I’d hate to disappoint the rest of the audience … Bill!”
A plainclothesman appeared at the inner door. “Go with Miss Killian and Mr. Prentice to the theater.” said Trant. “Hang around. I’ll be down after the show to talk to them. Don’t let them leave.” He grinned at Gay Killian. “Excuse this Relentless-Arm-of-the-Law routine,” he added.
“Of course.’’
A brief smile flickered. “Robert, get Liz.” The young actor went away and came back with Miss Killian’s secretary.
Gay Killian said: “Lieutenant, this is Miss Elise Dunlop. She and Lucy will tell you anything you want to know.” She paused. “I can’t say how grateful I am. Isn’t there something we can do? … Fingerprints? Don’t you always want fingerprints?”
“Not a bad idea.” Trant turned to the plainclothes man. “Print them first.… I hope you’re not too broken up to play, Miss Killian.”
“Oh, no, no. Actresses are trained to meet anything.” Trant considered her solemnly. “I’m kind of rusty on my Greek Classics. Who was this Medea? Did a lot of murdering, didn’t she?”
“She killed her children.”
“Unorthodox…. By the way, who’s the dead gentleman in the living room?”
A shadow darkened Gay’s eyes. She glanced quickly to Prentice and then on to her secretary. “Tell him, Liz.”
“Tell him—everything, Miss Killian?”
“Everything.” Gay was tall, but suddenly she looked small and defeated, stretching her hand out in a gesture instinctively theatrical. “Ready now for the fingerprints?”
Trant moved through the inner door into Miss Killian’s small, charming library. It was empty, but from the over-turned chairs and disarranged tables it was obvious that it had recently been occupied with some violence. Trant had already examined it. He went into the large living room beyond, anticipating Captain Dalton’s explosive disapproval when he learned that the two chief suspects had been allowed to leave.
The living room was crowded with officials. Little Doc Sanders was stooped over the body, which lay on the rug under the mantel. One of the detectives brought Trant a fancy ostrich skin wallet, holding it by one corner. “Only thing on him, Loot, except a couple of handkerchiefs, small change.”
In the dead man’s wallet Trant found identification papers showing him to be Henry Walgrove, a commission agent from Boston. Also two round-trip tickets to Boston dated that day, a driver’s license, $38 in cash, two tickets for Gay Killian’s Medea performance that night, and a snapshot of a middle-aged, toothy woman in a swimming suit, inscribed Lila at Narraganset. Most interesting of all was a typewritten note which read:
Darling, Darling: It looks as though we’ll get it at last—and plenty of it. Gay sees this young Prentice every night. Night and day he is the one! And she doesn’t hide her infatuation, from her friends, her dresser, her maid, her secretary—anyone. So hope on, hope ever and I’ll soon be your own.—L.
Trant blinked. Why should a lady known as “L,” enthusiastically report to the Boston commission agent an affair between Gay and young Prentice? Particularly since Gay Killian’s reputation for almost ascetic celibacy was nationally known.
One of the men was examining the murder gun. He called: “Hey, Loot, perfect set of prints here. Looks like this little killing’s going to be a cinch to crack.”