George Harmon Coxe

by The Ring of Truth

  If he had not seen Evelyn Tremaine on two or three occasions previously, not counting her Friday-night appearance at Hennessey’s, he probably would have let his glance linger on her face a little longer because she was, in every respect, worth a second look. He remembered her as being uncommonly attractive, and the word that came to him was “striking.” For she was a statuesque, high-breasted woman, beautifully turned out now in her tailored black suit and white blouse.

  Her skin was creamy and artfully made up. Her eyes looked black under the carefully arched brows and her hair had the shiny, almost iridescent blackness of a crow’s back in sunshine. To make it more noticeable, she wore it simply, in a smooth, drawn-back fashion, with a small bun at the neck, giving her somehow a classic look that complemented the almost symmetrical planes and angles of her face; a coldly beautiful face somehow, yet one which to Standish seemed to promise a reserve of warmth and mobility if one could find the proper stimuli.

  “I appreciate your coming, Mrs. Tremaine,” he said, looking right at her this time. “I’m sorry I have to bring up what must be a tragic memory for you.”

  He shuffled the papers in the manila folder, still not sure how to proceed. Warren Choate’s question did not help any. “Is this some sort of post-mortem inquiry?”

  “Well, in a sense, yes.”

  “And you’re acting in your official capacity as medical examiner?”

  “I guess you could say that.”

  Standish was still trying to play an unfamiliar melody by ear. He fooled with his typewritten sheets and when he thought he was overdoing the bit he leaned back and fixed his eyes on the molding of the ceiling.

  “But as you can see, there’s no stenographer present and I’m not asking for any formal statements. Your coming here is—I hope my secretary’s remarks over the telephone when she called you were not construed as a summons—a favor and I hope you will indulge me in my curiosity.”

  This was quite a mouthful for a normally reticent man, but, having delivered it, he immediately felt better and was somehow more sure of himself. He considered Warren Choate briefly, a prosperous, sturdily built man in his early or middle forties, with thick graying hair and a forceful manner. His blocky face was ruggedly attractive and had a definite tan that came either from some recent southern trip or from the more constant application of a sun lamp. “My secretary was not able to locate your wife.”

  “Neither was I,” Choate said. “Your girl asked for her telephone number. She could be out of town for the day. As a matter of fact, I haven’t seen her myself lately. We’ve been separated for two months. There’s a divorce in the works if we can agree on a financial settlement. But what could she have to do with this discussion?”

  “Probably nothing. It’s just that she was with you the night of the accident. There were four of you at Hennessey’s, as I remember. You and Mrs. Choate, and you”—he glanced again at Evelyn Tremaine—“and your husband. It was sort of a regular thing, wasn’t it? I mean, the four of you going out for dinner Saturday nights.”

  “Most Saturdays, yes,” Choate said. “Bob and I were partners and pretty good friends and we usually got together once a week or so.”

  Standish considered his report and then glanced at Donald Tremaine, who had slouched well down in his chair and had been listening politely but with no particular interest. About Choate’s height but more delicately built, he wore metal-rimmed spectacles that magnified slightly his pale-blue eyes. His light-brown hair was worn a bit long and he had, somehow, a lean, ascetic look.

  “According to your testimony, you weren’t at Hennessey’s at all that night,” Standish said.

  “That’s right. There was a movie I wanted to see.” Outside, a tractor-trailer labored through its lower gears and a horn sounded a warning as tires squealed briefly with a sudden application of brakes. Here there was only the sound of the typewritten sheets as Standish stacked them together and evened the edges.

  “My examination, if you may remember, showed that Mr. Tremaine was quite drunk.”

  “He was looped,” Evelyn Tremaine said flatly.

  “More so than usual, for a Saturday night?”

  “I wouldn’t say so.” She crossed her knees and smoothed her skirt. “My husband was just one of those men who drank pretty consistently, but only on his Saturday nights out did he carry the habit to excess. He had business luncheons several days a week. Warren can tell you about that.”

  “He was a three-Martini man,” Choate said, ‘Tut it never seemed to show much.”

  “Three more before dinner—when he was home,” the woman added. “Maybe a brandy or two afterward. Sometimes a highball. I guess he was adjusted to that amount of alcohol because he always seemed alert and in good spirits the next morning. Saturdays he had this habit.” She tipped one long-fingered hand. “He went out to enjoy himself and to Robert that meant all the whiskey after dinner he could handle and for as long as the law allowed.”

  Standish nodded and spoke to Choate. “You and your wife left early that night, I believe.”

  “That’s right. Marion, my wife, was getting a little fed up with these Saturday-night excursions anyway. We’d been doing this sort of thing for years and in the beginning I guess it was all right with her. I was like Robert in a way. I liked to unwind on Saturday nights and if there was a dinner dance at the Country Club we’d go there or, during the summer, maybe to the Yacht Club. Other times we’d go to Hennessey’s. Marion didn’t drink much anyway and the idea of sitting up half the night with people who did no longer amused her. She went because I wanted to go and that particular night Robert started kidding her about something and she didn’t like it.”

  “He was like a lot of people when they’re drunk,” Evelyn Tremaine said. “He’d get on some subject and then he wouldn’t let go. He’d keep repeating himself, not knowing that he was doing so, and when he got that way you couldn’t sidetrack him.”

  “Marion finally had enough,” Choate added. “She said she wanted to go, so we did. I think it was around midnight.”

  “And the accident,” Standish said, glancing once more at his report, “happened at one-ten. The insurance people came to me afterward,” he said, digressing easily. “Something to do with some policy having double indemnity. As I remember, one contract was a personal policy and the other had to do with your business.” He glanced at Choate. “Quite a sizable amount, wasn’t it?”

  “Two hundred thousand,” Choate said. “On Robert’s life and on mine. We don’t have a large operation and neither of us is what you’d call wealthy. There was no double indemnity on that policy; just a straight business deal. After the accident the money went to the Tremaine estate and I took the business.”

  “The two hundred thousand came to you, Mrs. Tremaine?”

  “Half of it,” she said. “The other half went to Donald.”

  “And the personal insurance?” Standish asked, polite but still prodding.

  “There were two policies totaling eighty thousand dollars and each had a double-indemnity clause. Robert’s estate, if it ever gets out of probate, comes to me, but the insurance was just like the other policy—Donald and I shared it as joint beneficiaries.”

  “Why?”

  The question came from Choate. It was direct and a little peremptory. In the back of his mind Standish had been expecting it and because he was still not quite sure how to make a simple answer he stalled.

  “Why what, Mr. Choate?”

  “Why are we here? What’s this all about? Why are you rehashing something we would all like to forget?”

  The entrance of Standish’s secretary from the outer office saved him from an immediate answer and he eyed her with relief as she said:

  “Dr. Tracey is on the line. I said you had some people with you but he thought you’d want to speak to him.”

  Standish thanked her, and excused himself as he picked up the telephone. When he said hello, Dr. Tracey wasted few words.

  “You were
right about the chloral hydrate. I doubt like hell if I would have known about it if I hadn’t been looking for it. There are definite traces but not in any sizable amount. The drug, in itself, had nothing whatever to do with the man’s death. I’ll mail you a copy of my report. Okay?”

  Standish racked the instrument slowly to give himself another second or two. There was no feeling of triumph or elation in learning that his hunch had been right, but as he prepared himself to answer Warren Choate the conviction remained that Ralph Estey had not killed Flemming.

  “I’m not sure I can answer you,” he said, “but I wonder if any of you happened to notice a piece in the morning paper about a man named Flemming who was shot to death in his apartment last night.”

  “I saw it,” Choate said.

  “So did I,” Tremaine added.

  “Did it occur to you that this might be the same man who killed Robert Tremaine?”

  “It occurred to me,” Choate said. “I figured it was the same guy. I decided that maybe there was some justice in the world after all.”

  “There was another piece in the afternoon paper,” Donald Tremaine said. “According to this, the police are looking for Ralph Estey, the trumpet player who leads the band down at Hennessey’s. They say he’s wanted for questioning.”

  “And does this have something to do with us, Doctor?” Evelyn Tremaine asked.

  “Probably not,” Standish said. “Rut my autopsy report is not complete. That telephone call was from the pathologist at City Hospital. It looks very much as if Flemming was drugged before he was shot. I can’t help wondering why.”

  He paused and thought: Now take it easy, boy. Tread softly and don’t say anything that could be considered actionable.

  “You see, the accident that happened to Robert Tremaine came up last night when I was discussing Flemming’s death with Lieutenant Ballard. He thinks—and he’s probably right —that any connection there would be coincidental. But he knows, and so does any experienced police officer, that hit-and-run fatalities are not always accidents. It’s a method of murder that’s been used before and will be used again because it’s so hard to prove, particularly if a third party is involved.”

  He put up his hand to forestall some objection that Warren Choate seemed about to make and spoke quickly. “Same thing applies to some suicides. Medical examiners are aware of this; so are the police. What goes on the books as a fatal accident is sometimes a planned and deliberate suicide.”

  “But why—?”

  Evelyn Tremaine had leaned forward, the dark eyes wide open and intent. Standish interrupted before she could finish.

  “There could be several reasons. A person intent on killing himself will usually find a way. In the case of a man he may be thinking of an insurance policy with a suicide clause that would nullify the company’s obligation. He may be thinking of his wife and children, of the publicity and possible disgrace. Checking into a man’s emotional background and medical history sometimes provides a clue. But when that man runs into a utility pole, or a tree, or a stone wall at high speed it goes on the books as a traffic fatality. You’d be surprised at the number of accidents that happen while a man is all alone in a car.”

  He pushed back his chair and stood up, not wanting to say more, not wanting them to think too hard. Now that he realized that there was nothing more to learn here he wanted to get them out of the office before they started speculating or realized that his little dissertation was nothing more than an oblique cover-up for a more serious alternative. By the time they were on their feet, surprise and traces of bewilderment showing in their faces as they exchanged glances, he had already opened the door. He bowed slightly, smiled, and spoke politely as he said he hoped he had not inconvenienced them too much. He got rid of Donald Tremaine and his sister-in-law without difficulty but Choate stopped in the doorway, a scowl on his tan face and his muscular jaw set.

  “I still don’t know just what you’re driving at, Doctor,” he said. “You didn’t actually say anything I could call you on but you made an inference or two—”

  “I did?” Standish said as innocently as he could. “In what way?”

  “You sounded as if you thought there might have been some collusion in Robert Tremaine’s death.”

  “Was that your impression?” Standish sounded regretful and gave a small helpless shrug of his shoulders. “Then I’m afraid the conclusion is yours, not mine.”

  Choate seemed about to continue the discussion but something—it may have been Standish’s polite and unperturbed expression, or the realization that further argument in his present frame of mind would be pointless—stopped him. He clamped his mouth shut and wheeled abruptly, the back of his neck pink.

  As soon as Choate left the outer office, Standish knew what he wanted to do, and with his mind made up he had no intention of spoiling his decision with any rationalization of the impulse. His secretary already had her coat on and when she asked if there was anything more she could do he said no.

  The telephone call he made when he was alone was to a private detective. His name was Lou Cheney and Standish had used him occasionally in the past when he needed outside help with an investigation. There was, in fact, an item in the city budget for just such expenses and heretofore the results that Cheney produced more than justified his fee. The detective’s answering service said Cheney was out but that he was expected to call in shortly. Standish left his name and number but it was nearly seven o’clock before the call came and he heard the detective’s voice.

  “Lou,” he said, “I’ve got a little job I’d like you to handle.”

  “Okay,” Cheney said noncommittally. “Why don’t you spell it out.”

  “It’s got two parts,” Standish said, and reminded the detective of the fatal accident.

  “Yeah. I remember. Jess Flemming ran over a guy named Tremaine. . . . And, according to the papers, somebody walked in on Flemming last night and put a slug in his chest, right?”

  “Right.”

  “They’re looking for that trumpet player down at Hennessey’s. Do you know if they found him yet?”

  “Not that I know of. Have you got a pencil and a piece of paper? Write these names down.”

  “Warren Choate?” Cheney said when Standish gave him the name. “He’s the one in the brokerage business that used to be a partner of the guy that got killed.”

  “He’s separated from his wife,” Standish said. “Her name is Marion. I understand there’s a divorce in the works. Evelyn Tremaine is the widow and Donald Tremaine is the dead man’s brother.”

  “So what about them?”

  Standish said he’d like to find out what the four had been doing during the past several weeks, particularly in a social way.

  “Who, of the opposite sex—if anyone—has Warren Choate, Evelyn, and Donald Tremaine been seeing lately? I’d like to know what they do with their spare time, especially in the evenings.”

  Even as he spoke Standish realized that he was asking quite a lot, and when there was no sound from the other end of the connection he wondered if Cheney was still there.

  “Still on?”

  “Sure. I was just thinking that this is kind of a funny business sometimes. I mean, sometimes one job will brush up against another. I should be able to help you a little because I’ve been doing some work along the same lines. I can’t tell you who for or why. I’ll have to think it over but I may be able to help. Is that all?”

  Standish said no. “There was quite a bit of insurance involved in that accident.” He mentioned the amounts and said: “The estate got two hundred thousand to be split between the brother and the wife, and Choate got the business. The other personal policies for eighty thousand carried double indemnity. They were divided like the other. I don’t know about Robert Tremaine’s personal estate but there must have been a will, because I understand it’s still in probate. If it’s a matter of record you should be able to find out how much it amounted to and who got it.

 
; “I’m interested in bank accounts too,” he said, and mentioned the date of Robert Tremaine’s death. “Particularly during the period, say, a week before and a week after the accident.”

  Cheney, who had answered in grunts, found his voice. “What am I?” he asked plaintively. “Houdini? You can’t get bank records without a subpoena.”

  “I know that, but you’ve got a lot of friends around town. You should be able to get some sort of information confidentially if you give it the old Cheney try. Later, if anything comes up to make it official, we can get subpoenas. I don’t expect miracles. Just do the best you can. One thing more. See what you can find out about Jess Flemming’s financial status the last four months.”

  Cheney’s reply was unenthusiastic. “I’ll need some help,” he said.

  “Okay. Put another man on it with you.”

  Cheney grunted again. “It’ll cost you a hundred bucks a day plus expenses.”

  “So?”

  “So I was just wondering who was going to get it up— the city or you.”

  “Are you worried about it?”

  “I don’t know,” Cheney said. “The only thing that bothers me is that you’ll probably want all of it by nine o’clock tomorrow morning.”

  “Not by nine, Lou,” Standish said, chuckling at the detective’s reaction. “But sometime tomorrow and the sooner the better.”

  As soon as Standish broke the connection, he dialed his office number. Because of the time he expected to get the operator from his answering service and he was pleasantly surprised to hear Mary Hayward’s voice.

  “Hello, Mary. What are you doing there at this hour?”

  “Trying to get some statements out.” The voice was cool, businesslike, distant. “It’s much easier when it’s quiet around here.”

  “Well, good,” Standish said. “Then why don’t we have dinner?”

  “I don’t think so, thank you, Doctor. I have lamb chops in the icebox. I was just about to leave.”

  Standish recognized the impersonal tone. It was the sort of voice Mary employed when she did not entirely approve of him. She used it when Lieutenant Ballard made what she thought were unwarranted demands on the doctor’s time; she used it when she thought he was neglecting his private practice or slighting wealthy patients who had wealthy friends. Because he understood her, the implied censure amused rather than annoyed Standish. For he was well aware that she also had in full measure the normal curiosity of any healthy young female and now he pursued his objective obliquely.