The Cases of Lieutenant Timothy Trant (Lost Classics)

by Q. Patrick

  “You should learn to love WNYC, too, dear.” Molly Evarts patted his rugged blond face with ironic affection. “Splendid for the savage breast.” She blew a rather toothy

  kiss at Redfield. “Good night all.”

  After about ten minutes during which Arlene chattered and Evarts and Redfield stonily ignored each other, Jim Evarts went to the kitchen for a tray of drinks and they assembled at the Canasta table.

  “Arlene brings us down to her financial level, Trant,” said Evarts. ‘’Insists on a penny a hundred. Okay?”

  “Fine.”

  Trant cut Arlene for his partner. The blonde’s Canasta was much less dizzy than her chatter. J im Evarts played well, if recklessly, but Boyd Redfield’s c onception o f the game seemed largely to consist of admiring his own decorative reflection in the mirror which the lamp by his partner illuminated. They were still on the first game w hen a grandfather clock chimed eleven and, almost simultaneously, the lights went out.

  “Ah!” screamed Arlene in mock alarm. “Eleven, the witching hour.”

  “A witching fuse, I’m afraid.” Jim Evarts dropped his lighter, cursed, retrieved it, lit it, and groped his way out to the fuse-box in the kitchen. Soon the lights were on again and, in a lucky hand, Trant and Arlene made three natural canastas and drew the four red treys which put them out. They cut the same partners for the second and final game which Arlene and Trant won, too, for a grand total of 51 cents each.

  Boyd Redfield paid Arlene, and Jim Evarts tossed Trant two quarters and a battered penny. Arlene, who was a little high, had started to kiss everyone good night. Suddenly she cried: "Oh, drat and fiddle-dee-dee, you put

  my coat in Molly’s bedroom, Jim. I’ll have to disturb her.” She grinned at Boyd. “Unless the Maestro’d like to do it for me.”

  Redfield flushed self-consciously. Arlene kissed him again. “Joke, darling. I’ll get it.”

  She hurried out of the room. In a few seconds they heard a shrill scream. They all ran to find Arlene, white and shivering, at a bathroom door. Her bare, sun-tanned arms were dripping wet.

  “She’s there,” she whimpered. “In the tub. I knocked to say goodbye. She didn’t answer. I went in. I touched her. She’s—dead.”

  The three men rushed through to the bathroom. Molly Evarts lay in the black-tiled tub. She was clearly dead. At her side, half-submerged in the water, was a table radio which had apparently fallen from a shelf by the tub’s rim. Jim Evarts and Redfield lifted the body out and carried it into the bedroom. Trant, very alert, retrieved the radio from the tepid water. Its automatic station-button for WNYC was pressed down. He followed with it into the bedroom. Arlene was calling a doctor while the two men hovered.

  “The radio!” Jim Evarts’s face registered dazed understanding. “Molly was listening to that symphony. She must have bumped against the shelf and knocked the radio into the water, and …”

  “Damn fool thing,” cut in Redfield, “to let her have a radio in the bathroom. Everyone knows it’s dangerous. The shock—it electrocuted her.”

  “I guess you’re right,” agreed Trant.

  For several seconds now he had realized exactly how Molly Evarts had met her death. This was the most disappointingly rapid murder investigation of his career. He turned to Evarts. “Let’s look at the fuse-box.”

  As the three men assembled in the kitchen, Redfield exclaimed: “Of course it happened when the lights fused. At eleven.”

  “No.” Trant’s voice was quiet. “She didn’t die at eleven.”

  “But …”

  “See?” Trant indicated the pressed station-button on the radio he was still holding. “She’d been listening to WNYC. WNYC goes off the air at ten o’clock. You can hardly imagine a music lover lying for a full hour in a tub listening to the dreary hum of a dead station.”

  “But it must have been eleven,” insisted Redfield. “When the radio hit the water, it must have blown the main fuse.”

  “Normally, of course, it would. But there are ways of preventing that.” Trant surveyed the fuse-box. “You can, if you want, put any small metal object behind a fuse. It

  absorbs the shock and keeps the fuse from blowing.”

  He shifted his steady gray gaze to Jim Evarts. “I presume you knew your wife was planning to switch to Redfield here, so you thought you’d kill her while the money was still in the family.”

  There was a moment of incredulous silence.

  “Quite ingenious. When you left to get us drinks in the kitchen, you slipped an obstruction behind the fuse for the bathroom circuit, went into the bathroom where your wife was listening to the symphony in her bath, and tilted the radio into the tub. You must have made sure that the radio actually touched her. Because of the obstruction behind the fuse, of course, the lights didn’t go out. We couldn’t suspect anything. But that’s when you killed her—before we started to play Canasta.”

  He guided them into the living-room, pausing at the lamp behind the card table. “All you needed then was an alibi. It was a cinch. You had the chair next to this lamp. At eleven precisely, so we’d remember the time, you fused the lights in here. You undoubtedly had prepared the wall socket before with an insulated double-prong object which you must have kicked in with your heel. Whatever it was, you removed it from the socket when you pretended to drop your lighter in the darkness. And, of course, when you went to the kitchen to fix this fuse, you removed the obstruction from behind the bathroom fuse.”

  He threw out his hands. “Perfect. You’d planted Arlene’s coat in your wife’s bedroom so she’d be almost sure to discover the body. An obvious accident took place at eleven, and there were three witnesses to prove you’d been in the living-room at the time.” He smiled sadly. “But you should have taken your wife’s advice and learned to love WNYC. Then you’d have known it would double-cross you by knocking off at ten.”

  “But this is crazy. Who are you anyway?” Jim Evarts’s weathered face was ominous. “And all this about an obstruction behind the bathroom fuse…. What sort of obstruction? How can you prove … ?”

  ‘”Proof?” Trant took the change from his pocket and held up the battered penny which Evarts had given him as part of his Canasta winnings. “See how beat-up and pitted it is from the shock it absorbed? You bright murderers always get too bright. Probably, before I came into the picture, you’d planned to cache the penny somewhere. But I was an irresistible temptation. What a smooth way to dispose of a vital piece of evidence—to slip it to a poor unsuspecting jerk who’d come into your life by chance and who’d walk out of your life again carrying the penny neatly away from any police investigation. How were you to know that this particular jerk happened to be the police?”

  He studied Jim Evarts, reflecting that it would be a long time before he played with racing autos again. Or was it speedboats?

  “And you’d picked your witnesses with great finesse, too. Neither Arlene nor Redfield is exactly the Sherlock Holmes type. If I hadn’t wandered in and inspired that final artistic flourish, you’d probably have got away with it.”

  He sighed.

  “Too bad for you, Mr. Evarts, that Arlene loathes three-handed Canasta.”

  Death on Saturday Night

  After a pleasant day of vacation skiing, Lieutenant Trant of the New York Homicide Bureau strolled through the charming little New Hampshire village. The snow was falling gently and the festive Saturday night atmosphere was pretty as a Christmas carol. Trant had no difficulty in finding Dr. Benton’s office, conspicuously labeled in the biggest building on the main street opposite the crowded car park of the movie house where the words Tyrone Power, glaring from the marquee, hinted at the romantic delights of the evening show within.

  Young Dr. Benton’s evening office hours, catering to overenthusiastic skiers, continued until ten. That was why Trant, casually met and invited by the Bentons on the ski slopes for a late supper party, had been asked to join the doctor downtown rather than to go directly to their luxuriously simple log
-cabin on the mountainside. The plan was that they would then drive out together.

  He arrived at the entrance to the office simultaneously with a spectacular blonde in a chic bright red ski-suit which branded her as an out-of-towner from one of the smart ski lodges. While he followed her up the stairs, Trant hoped mildly that she was another guest of the Bentons.

  Trant and the blonde reached the second-floor office together, and Dr. Benton, dark and ski-tanned, greeted them with a grin.

  “Miss Rogers, this is Mr. Trant, a fellow New Yorker.” On vacation Trant never told his profession. He found it put people off. As the blonde offered him a smooth gloved hand to press, Benton added: “Miss Rogers is my last patient, Trant. If you’ll excuse me a moment, I’ll be right with you.”

  He disappeared with the blonde into the inner office, leaving Trant to browse through magazines until five or so minutes later when the blonde re-emerged, drawing on gloves over ringed fingers.

  “If you have any more trouble with that back in New York tomorrow, Miss Rogers, go to your own doctor.”

  Dr. Benton ushered the blonde off the premises and sighed. “Thank heavens, that’s over for tonight, Trant. Dolly drove in with me. She’s at the movies. Some picture she wanted to see. She should be out any minute. I’ll just straighten up here, and we’re all set.”

  It touched Trant that Mrs. Dolly Benton, who was reputedly the richest of the many rich residents, should be folksy enough to want to catch a movie. It altered his impression of her as a snobbish, haughty female.

  As Dr. Benton was taking instruments from the sterilizer, the phone rang. “Get it, will you, Trant?”

  Trant picked up the receiver. A woman’s voice asked: “Ned?”

  “I’ll get him.”

  “Oh, it’s Mr. Trant, isn’t it? This is Dolly Benton. Be an angel and tell Neddy it’s all over but the final clinch and I’m leaving. I won’t bother to come up. I’ll go straight to the car in the parking lot.”

  “All right, Mrs. Benton. How was the movie?”

  “Oh, I adored it. I’m a drooling Tyrone Power fan.”

  As Trant imparted this information to the doctor, he could see, through the broad windows, the first patrons beginning to appear at the lighted mouth of the movie house. Then the phone rang again. Cursing softly, Dr. Benton answered it. His face went solemn. Dropping the receiver, he said:

  “Some hysterical woman claims there’s a dead body in the car park. Why didn’t she call the police? Why pick on me?” He grabbed his medical bag, “Come on, Trant.”

  In a few seconds they were out in the parking lot. People were beginning to trail toward their cars, but there was no sign of a disturbance.

  “Probably just a hoax, but we’d better investigate. You take these rows.”

  As Dr. Benton went off toward the farther lines of parked cars, Trant wandered, uneventfully, through the adjoining automobiles. He passed the movie house where the words Tyrone Power, like a magic incantation, still loomed on the darkened marquee.

  As he glanced at a vivid poster on which Mr. Power courageously outdueled four opponents he became conscious of the beelike hum of a collecting crowd. He ran toward the sound and reached a little awed circle clustered around the rear of a station wagon. Pushing through, he found Dr. Benton on his knees beside a prostrate woman. There was fresh blood on the snow and a chipped bloodstained brick. Instantly alert, Trant dropped at Benton’s side.

  The young doctor turned gauntly. “It’s Dolly. She’s— she’s dead.”

  * * *

  Mrs. Benton was obviously just dead. Above the disheveled, snow-flecked mink, Trant could see the ugly wound where the brick must have crushed down into her skull only a few moments before.

  Somebody screamed. A policeman jostled through. Dazedly, Dr. Benton was holding his wife’s limp, gloveless hand. “Her jewels,” he muttered. “Someone must have been hiding behind the wagon. Some hoodlum …”

  Soon a second policeman joined the first. They conferred with Benton, and then one of them approached Trant.

  “Dr. Benton says you were with him when his wife called from the movie. He says that you—”

  “Let’s talk about that later.” Trant showed his credentials to the abruptly impressed officer. “What seems to have been stolen?”

  “A pearl necklace and two diamond rings, sir.”

  An ambulance had arrived. White-coated interns were carrying the body away.

  “What time,” asked Trant, “does the ski-train leave for New York?”

  “Ten twenty-seven.”

  “Then one of you’d better drop by the station and pick up a tall blonde in a bright red ski-suit. The name is Rogers.”

  “Pick up!” gasped the policeman.

  “Miss Rogers?” Dr. Benton swung around.

  Trant smiled apologetically. “On second thought, it would be better if we all went to the station together.”

  An indignant Miss Rogers was conducted from the train just before it was due to start. While the policemen and Dr. Benton watched blankly, Trant drew the glove from her right hand, revealing two sparkling rings.

  “These, I imagine, are what you want. Probably the necklace is in her pocketbook. Arrest her, officer.”

  “But—” broke in Dr. Benton.

  “And while you’re about it,” murmured Trant almost absently, “you might arrest Dr. Benton, too.”

  * * *

  “Yes,” Lieutenant Trant was explaining in the cozy, country police station, “Dr. Benton had an admirable idea. His wife was to be murdered for her jewels while he had a deliberately invited stranger as witness right with him to prove he was in his office at the time. Neat!”

  Dr. Benton seemed to be showing some of the pallor of fear through his tan. The blonde still retained her composure admirably.

  “But it’s obvious what he did,” Trant went on easily. “Either before or during the drive from his home to the theater, he hit her on the head hard enough to keep her unconscious for a couple of hours. A doctor could easily gauge the strength of the blow. He stripped off her jewels and left her unconscious in the station wagon in the deserted car park while everyone was at the movies. Then he got rid of the jewels to Miss Rogers when she came to the office.”

  “But how did you dope that out?” asked the police captain.

  “When I was introduced to Miss Rogers, I shook hands with her. If she’d been wearing rings, I’d have felt them under the glove, but her hand was quite smooth. Later, however, when she reappeared from Benton’s office, I saw rings while she was putting her gloves back on. Too bad! She should have arranged her gloves before she came out.”

  He paused. “All the rest, of course—the wife’s call, the second call—was a cinch. Benton had left the brick in the wagon with his unconscious wife. He ran to the wagon and pulled her out. One heavy blow while he was pretending to examine her finished her off. And there he was, the stricken doctor discovering his only-just-dead wife. Neat. Very neat.”

  He looked at the glowering Benton and the disintegrating Miss Rogers. “The same tired old story, I suppose. The rich undesirable wife and the extremely desirable blonde.”

  The captain spluttered: “But the wife couldn’t have been unconscious. She called from the movie.”

  “Oh, no, she didn’t.”

  “Then …”

  “That was Miss Rogers’s other false step. I’m afraid she’s less talented than Dr. Benton as a criminal. Because I’m a nosy character, I asked the person on the phone how she’d enjoyed the movie. She said she adored it. She was a drooling Tyrone Power fan, she said. Well, unhappily, Tyrone Power wasn’t playing tonight.”

  The blonde stammered: “But …”

  “Oh, I know he’s on the marquee. No wonder you thought that remark was safe, Miss Rogers. But if you were a country girl, you’d know that small-town movies change Saturday nights and, during the evening show, they set up the marquee for Sunday’s picture. Tyrone Power starts tomorrow.”

  He
shrugged. “It wasn’t hard for me to realize that the person on the phone couldn’t have been to the movies. In fact, it wasn’t hard to realize that both Mrs. Benton and the second caller were—you.”

  Lieutenant Trant turned to Dr. Benton.

  “I’m sorry.” The chagrin in his voice was almost genuine. “This is a hell of a thing to do to a host. I suppose I should have told you, before you invited me to the supper, that I was a policeman. But, somehow, it always sounds like such a peculiar profession.”

  Death on the Riviera

  “Say a number—please. You look lucky, whoever you are.”

  The girl was suddenly there by Trant’s side at the casino roulette table, holding up a single thousand-franc chip. She was English. He could tell that from her voice and from the clear, creamy skin which suggested spring woods and a nightingale singing somewhere. The trained policeman in him could also tell that, although she was being very cool about it, she was under an intense nervous strain.

  Lieutenant Trant of the New York Homicide Bureau had come to France as one of a delegation of detectives to study police methods at the Paris Sûreté. Having stolen a week end in Cannes, he was in a mood for something pleasantly unorthodox.

  He grinned at the girl. “Twenty-six,” he said, guessing

  her age.

  The croupier was croaking “Rien ne va plus.” The girl tossed the chip neatly onto 26. As the croupier flicked the little ball into the spinning wheel, her hand clutched Trant’s sleeve. The ball rattled into the slot of Number 13.

  “I’m sorry I jinxed you. I hope it wasn’t a matter of life or death?”

  The girl laughed. “Not of life, certainly.”

  “Of death then?”

  She looked at him. “Possibly.”

  “Tell me.”

  Her dark eyes seemed to gauge his sincerity. “For all you know I’m just a wicked siren who hangs around casinos and lures men to their doom.”