George Harmon Coxe

by The Ring of Truth

  “Did you go over Flemming’s apartment?”

  “All the way.”

  “Did you find any gun?”

  “No.”

  “What about the chloral hydrate.”

  “You keep saying that,” Ballard said, his exasperation showing, “and all I can say is, what about it?”

  “Suppose Dr. Tracey comes up with a finding that Flemming did ingest chloral hydrate shortly before his death. Can you figure a good reason why Estey would have wanted to use it? It would have to be given in food or drink, probably a drink.”

  “It could be figured.”

  “Okay. Go ahead. Give it a try. Let’s take a hypothetical situation. Estey calls on Flemming with a gun in one pocket and the chloral hydrate in the other. I’ll be Flemming and you be Estey. Give me some dialogue.”

  “Okay,” Ballard said. “But you be Flemming and I’ll be Estey. You’re sitting around your apartment and you hear a knock on the door. You open it up and you see me—Estey —standing there. Go ahead, talk.”

  “What do you want you dirty little sneak?”

  “I just want to talk to you, Jess. That business Friday night was pretty silly. You and I are intelligent men, and we ought to be able to work something out. Okay to come in?”

  “So I let you in,” Standish said. “Then what?”

  “Then I say ‘How about a drink? Let’s relax and sit down and talk this over in a friendly way. I’ll help you; where’s the whiskey, in the kitchen?’”

  Standish grunted; then grinned at the lieutenant’s persistence. “So we go out into the kitchen and you dump the chloral hydrate into my glass when I’m not looking. This presupposes that Estey, intent on murder, is afraid to walk in on Flemming and do the job.”

  “It could have happened that way,” Ballard said stubbornly. “Estey was a little guy and he was afraid of Flemming. For all he knew Flemming might be carrying a gun too. If he took a quick shot and missed a vital part Flemming would take care of him. If he can put Flemming to sleep he’s got no problem. One shot, dead center, and the job is done.”

  Ballard gave emphasis to his words but they lacked conviction and he seemed to realize it. He leaned back, his grin crooked.

  “It could happen that way,” he repeated.

  “But you don’t really believe it.”

  “If anybody fed Flemming chloral hydrate in a drink it was probably that dame outside.”

  Standish matched Ballard’s grin with one of his own. “She cons Flemming into taking the drink and then Estey walks in later, fires the shot, and walks out again. That’s real good too.”

  “It’s better than the other.” Ballard sat up again. “But right now I say to hell with it. Just give me Estey and write out your report, with or without chloral hydrate. Let the State’s Attorney and the County Detective take it from there.”

  “I have one other thought,” Standish said, “and I might as well get it off my chest. You can say it’s farfetched, tenuous, and wild, but bear with me a couple of minutes longer. You’ve heard me sound off about the necessity for a universal medical-examiner law with a qualified doctor on call whenever an autopsy is suggested or needed.”

  “I have,” Ballard said dryly. “According to you—and I’m not saying you’re wrong, understand—thousands of people are buried each year with a death certificate saying they died of heart failure or a stroke or some other thing when in reality they’ve been poisoned.”

  “Exactly. Not by cyanide or anything that could be easily detected, but over a period of time and systematically. Such cases crop up in the newspapers from time to time but there are hundreds of others that never make it. There’s also one other simple method of murder that the public knows less about.”

  “If you mean hit-and-run cases, you’re right. The racketeers have used that method for years.”

  “Because the state laws are set up for it,” Standish said. “It doesn’t have to be hit-and-run either. Let’s just call it vehicular homicide. Say you’re married. You hate your wife and you’re in love with another woman, with no chance of a divorce. You might even inherit some money. But if you hit her with a car and kill her the motive is easily established, and you’re up on murder one or two and you get put away for twenty years to life. For that reason, in the cases I’m talking about, a third party is generally involved.”

  “Sure,” Ballard said. “You hire someone. That’s the way the mobsters did it.”

  “Someone who never saw your wife until you point her out. And there’s basically two ways of handling it. You pick an average sort of a guy to do the job but you make sure that if he has a record it’s a petty one. He runs down your wife on a busy street. He stops the car and gives what aid he can. He’s arrested on one charge or another, but when the case comes up, since there’s no connection whatsoever between this man and your wife, it has to go down as an accident. The worst the guy will get will be reckless driving or some such citation, which means all they’ll hand him is a fine and possibly loss of his license.

  “The other way,” he added, “the one you’re talking about, is where a hoodlum steals a car, does a hit-and-run job, and keeps going for half a mile or so until he can abandon the car. There isn’t one chance in ten that the police will ever nail him, and even if his luck is bad, even if he crashes the car and gets caught, what does he say in court? I’ll tell you.

  “He says that maybe he was drunk or that he panicked after the accident. But even if they could prove driving while drunk they couldn’t put him away for more than a year or two. . . . Because that’s the law,” Standish said, persisting. “Because every guy on the jury understands that the same thing might happen to him someday. Even with proven negligence—”

  “Sure. Sure.” Ballard’s impatience was beginning to show and he pushed his chair back and stood up. “So what’s bugging you, Doc? What’s the point? I’ve heard this before, not the same line but the same general theme.”

  “I told you the idea was farfetched,” Standish said. “But I was at Hennessey’s Friday night, as you know. After the fight I was sitting at the bar and I remembered the Saturday night four months ago when Jess Flemming ran over a man out front named Robert Tremaine. For just a second I wondered if it was a matter of simple coincidence.”

  “What do you mean, coincidence?”

  “Flemming was at Hennessey’s. So were the three people closest to Tremaine.”

  “What three people?”

  “Tremaine’s widow—I think her name is Evelyn—and his former partner, Warren Choate, had been there for dinner. Tremaine’s brother, Donald, apparently joined them for a drink but he came down the street outside just in time to see that fight.”

  “So it was a coincidence,” Ballard said. “What about it? Just what the hell are you driving at?”

  Standish stood up and allowed himself a small grin.

  “I’m not sure. Maybe it’s just the suspicious mind I have. Or maybe too much imagination. I’ve been thinking that it might be possible that someone could have hired Flemming to stage that accident. Do you want the facts as I remember them?”

  Ballard had been looking out the lone window with his back to the room and now he turned and shook his head.

  “No,” he said succinctly but with no irritation. “All I want right now is Ralph Estev. Let me have my little session with him first. If I can’t hang this on him, if there’s any doubt in my mind, that will be time enough to listen to the rest of your—did you say farfetched?—theory and your facts. Okay?”

  Standish said: “All right.” He moved over to the door, then turned, his hand still on the knob.

  “What about the Keith girl?”

  “What about her?”

  “I told you I thought she had about as much as she could take.”

  “What have you got in mind?”

  “Well—if you don’t have to hold her I thought I might take her home and give her a couple of pills. She’ll make more sense if she has a chance to relax.�
�

  Ballard listened with respect. “Sure,” he said. “I don't want any trouble with her. She ought to be finished by now. Let’s see.”

  Sheila Keith was still in the chair at the end of the desk. She seemed not to have moved a muscle since Standish had last seen her. Her face was pale and drawn, but when he stopped beside her and she glanced up, the green eyes opened and a tired smile began to work on them and the lines of her mouth.

  Ballard asked the detective if she had finished and the man said: “Just about, Lieutenant. I was sort of waiting for you.”

  “That will be all for now, Miss Keith,” Ballard said. “And thanks for your cooperation. Dr. Standish has offered to drive you home if that’s all right with you.”

  The girl made no immediate answer but got to her feet and Standish held her coat for her.

  “Keep thinking about Ralph Estey, Miss Keith,” Ballard said in parting. “If he should happen to get in touch with you you’ll be doing him a favor if you let us know. . . . See you, Doc. Keep after Tracey. If he comes up with anything give me the word, okay?”

  6

  SHEILA KEITH walked from the room with Standish at her side, and he kept his hand lightly on her arm as they went down the steps and out back of the headquarters building where his car was parked. When she settled herself in her seat her firm, determined chin was up and she seemed to be making a deliberate effort to keep her emotions under control. She made no comment and gave no outward sign that she was aware of him until he maneuvered the car out on the street.

  “It’s my fault,” she said finally.

  Standish, his attention on the traffic pattern, made no reply. He knew there was more to come and waited until she continued.

  “I don’t mean about Flemming. What happened to him doesn’t surprise me much. If anyone ever had it coming to him, he did.”

  “According to Ballard he had a record of violence going back quite a while.”

  “I don’t know much about what he did here but I know what he was like in Florida. I’ve been around enough to know how to handle bullies like him. At least that’s what I thought. Maybe I should have gone to the police when he started to bother me. If I hadn’t been so stupid, if I hadn’t mentioned it to Ralph, he wouldn’t have got involved; there wouldn’t have been any fight; the police wouldn’t be looking for him. And they’re wrong. I told them so. Ralph didn’t kill Jess Flemming. He wouldn’t kill anybody.”

  “Then where is he?”

  “How do I know?” she said, her voice a little shrill. “He’s a musician. Who knows what they do when they’re not working?”

  “You heard him make that threat Friday night. So did the doorman. He happened to tell a detective named Flint about it and—”

  “It didn’t mean a thing.” She drew her coat more tightly across her breasts. “Everybody makes threats if they get mad enough. I’ve made them myself. Haven’t you?” Standish was not sure how to answer this and as he hesitated she went on in the same flat, matter-of-fact tone. “Ralph was hurt and humiliated.”

  “He’d had a good crack on the back of the head too.”

  “He was still a little stunned; he must’ve been. He probably didn’t know what he was saying.”

  “I talked with him later,” Standish said. “He said he had a gun. Did you know that?”

  “I heard what he said on the sidewalk about carrying one. I thought it probably was just talk.”

  Standish pulled up at a traffic light and glanced at the girl, seeing her face in profile and noting again the tension that shaped it.

  “We talked some about you,” he said. “Did you know Ralph was in love with you?”

  “That depends upon what you mean by know.”

  “Didn’t he ever say so?”

  “Not in so many words, but with musicians that doesn’t mean much. About all they talk about is their work, and the dates they’ve got lined up, the money they’re going to make, and what they’re going to do next year.”

  “You told me you thought he was wonderful.”

  “And I meant it. Ralph did a lot for me. He went to bat with Mr. Hennessey for me. He made a couple of good arrangements—for free—when I thought I was going to continue singing. He put in a word for me on the checkroom job. He was kind and considerate and polite. He never pushed or tried to wrestle me into the bed after he’d had a couple of drinks. But we never really talked seriously. About us, I mean. He never asked me to marry him—”

  “And if he had?”

  “Well—” She let the word dangle and leaned back in her comer of the seat, her chin tucked in the collar of her coat now and some new distance in the green eyes. “I guess I would have told him no,” she said quietly. “Not because I didn’t like him, you understand. It’s just that—well—marrying a musician, any musician, wasn’t part of my plans. I don’t mean that some of them are not real nice guys or that they don’t do pretty good. But I was married to one once, so maybe I’m prejudiced.”

  “Oh?” Standish waited for perhaps three seconds and then prompted her. “How long ago was that?”

  “Four years ago. I was nearly twenty-one and old enough to know better. Because I’d been on my own since I was eighteen and I’d been exposed to entertainers of all kinds enough to understand something about the breed.

  “I was never real poor,” she added, some far-off quality in her voice now. “Sort of middle-class, I’d guess you’d call it; maybe a little on the lower-middle-class side. My father ducked out when I was quite young but my mother was a hard worker—she worked up to be the dietitian of a small hospital in Ohio and she was ambitious for me. I took dancing lessons, including ballet, ever since I can remember. There were even a few on baton twirling so I could be a drum majorette. There were also piano lessons for a little while but they didn’t take. She forced me—in the beginning, I mean—to try out for every high-school play that came along. Pretty soon I didn’t need any urging. I did a little singing with a local band when I was a senior. When she died suddenly not long after graduation there wasn’t much money and I had to make up my mind. I couldn’t type, and I didn’t know shorthand, and I didn’t want to stand on my feet all day clerking behind some counter. So”—she gave a small shrug to her shoulders—“I decided I might as well keep on going the way my mother had headed me.”

  She took a deep breath and let it out. When she continued there was a sardonic inflection to her words.

  “New York, naturally. The big town. I wasn’t sure just what line my career was going to take but I was on my way. I made the rounds just like ten thousand other girls with not much more than average ability. When the money ran out I went to work because when I want something I don’t give up easily. I’m not built that way. I was an usherette, and a waitress, and, during the summer, a carhop out on Long Island. I took on all the free meals I could and what I saved I spent on more dancing lessons. For a while, that is. I even went to drama school for six months, thinking I might make it as an actress. The best I could do was some walk-ons and a lot of stagehand work for a summer-stock company.

  “But when you move around the way I did you meet a lot of people. They’re all types and I’ve seen most of them. Dancers—boys and girls—singers, agents, bookers, musicians —especially musicians. Too many of them no-talent characters but they all have one thing in common: they’re going to make it big someday in some form of the entertainment business. Now and then I picked up a few dollars singing with small-time bands, mostly club dates out in the sticks. When one of these groups got a booking in Florida I went along.”

  She sighed again and pulled herself erect on the seat. For the first time she looked at Standish, and when he glanced at her and saw the small, wry smile he knew that her confession had been a therapeutic which had erased some of the tension from her mind and from her face.

  “So I married a piano player,” she said in the same sardonic tone. “This was in Florida. He was a tall good-looking guy, very smooth, a born liar, and he gave me a
first-class snow job. I can’t remember how I felt at the time; it was too long ago. I can’t believe that I could fall for the line he put out, but maybe I was just too tired of knocking myself out all alone. He had a five-piece combo and Friday and Saturday nights I did some singing. I moved my things into his apartment. A real big deal. The trouble was he wasn’t home very often and when he was he’d get crocked and start slapping me around. But why bore you with the sorry details? I’d rather forget it.”

  Standish, turning into the street where his office was located, and wanting to hear the rest of it, said: “What happened?”

  Her smile was a little more in evidence now but it was still crooked around the mouth.

  “You mean to make a long story short? Actually, it’s very simple. I finally wised up. I wanted a divorce and he said okay but he wouldn’t give me a dime. So one weekend when he went off on a boat with a party of friends—a mixed group, I might add—I cleaned out the apartment. I invited a secondhand dealer in and I sold everything he’d take. My husband’s clothes—what he hadn’t taken with him—the television, his high-fi set, his recorder. I left him his precious records and took off. I hocked my engagement ring for a hundred bucks—a diamond with about ninety-six flaws in it. I holed up in a town in Alabama long enough to get my divorce and I haven’t seen my ex-husband since.” She laughed abruptly as she finished. “Maybe I’m not doing so great as a single,” she said. “But at least this way I’m my own woman.”

  The frank and uninhibited disclosure of her past told Standish a lot about this girl and what made her tick, but he was still not satisfied.

  “How much of this does Ralph know?”

  “Quite a bit. I never made a production number out of it like I just did with you, but I guess it came out here and there in bits and pieces. Just like he’d tell me about himself from time to time, and how it was with him and his wife. . . . I had nothing to do with that divorce, you know,” she added quickly. “That was all in the books before I came here. From what Ralph said they’d been separated quite a while.”