“Donnatal Extentabs,” Shapiro said. “I’ll remember that. Ask my own doctor about it. You said something about your maid’s letting Mr. Price in, Mrs. Abel. You mean tonight?”
“Any time now, Lieutenant. For a small celebration. Just the two of us.” She smiled. “Yes,” she said, “as I’m sure you’ve guessed, there’s more than agent-and-client relationship between Ken and me. We’re friends. Quite good friends, you could say. So we’ll celebrate his success tonight. He’ll have champagne. And I—well, probably I’ll have another glass of milk. Lucky, lucky me.”
“This afternoon, Mrs. Abel? Mr. Price was here this afternoon?”
She thought she had told him. Yes, from about four until a little after six.
“I went by the Algonquin and picked him up at about four. Brought him here for—well, for what you could call a pep talk. To cheer him up and soothe him down. To try to convince him that he’d be wonderful in the part. And that he’d been in the business long enough not to have stage fright. Not that they ever get over it—not the good ones, anyway. Every time they go on it’s a challenge, an excitement. I can remember when I—” She stopped abruptly. “No,” she said, “I guess I can’t. I gave Ken a few sips of champagne and then a couple of poached eggs on toast. And a lot of sisterly advice. Well, advice anyway. A pep talk, as I said.”
Shapiro said that from what he had seen on the stage of the Rolf Simon Theater, the talk had worked. “Did Mr. Price happen to make a telephone call while he was here? About five o’clock, say?”
“He couldn’t have if he’d wanted to, Lieutenant. The phone was out of order. Anyway, Clarice and I thought it was. Actually, we found out that she’d failed to set it right on its base—the kitchen extension phone, I mean. But we found that out after Ken had left. So, no. He certainly didn’t call anyone from here this afternoon.”
16
They were halfway down the corridor leading to the elevator when Kenneth Price appeared at the end of it, moving toward them. His expression was festive, as became a man on his way to a celebration for two. He walked with a springy step. The festive air vanished when he saw Shapiro and Cook. His walk slowed, and a few feet from them, he stopped.
“You two do get around, don’t you?” Price said. “Been badgering Martha, I suppose. Checking up on me?”
“You could call it that,” Shapiro said. “Checking up. I wouldn’t call it badgering. I don’t think Mrs. Abel will. Seems you were here this afternoon from about four o’clock on, and that you didn’t make a telephone call at about five.”
“I told you that.”
“Yes.”
“Most of the time I was listening to a pep talk,” Price said. “All I got all day, seems like. Come on, boy. Pull up your socks. You can do it. Hell, you’d think I’d never played a part before, or that I was some kid going to his first prom or something. Damn it all, I’m a pro. I don’t need all this bucking up. I’ve played tougher parts. And I was all right tonight You two see the play? God knows you were at the theater afterward—quizzing me, for one thing.”
Cook answered for both of them. He said, “We saw Act One and part of Act Two. And I thought you were good, Mr. Price. Damn good.”
“I was all right. The CBS reviewer came through. ‘A skilled and subtle performance.’ Said it gave a new dimension to the play. Whatever the hell he meant by that.”
“Sounds good to me,” Shapiro said. “You say you were getting pep talks all day? From more than Mrs. Abel?”
“It was all right from her,” Price said. “Fine from her. After all, she’s my—agent.” Shapiro thought he had been about to use another word and had caught himself. “Girl,” perhaps? Or “lover.” It didn’t matter.
“Encouragement from everybody, damn near,” Price was saying. “Simon himself. Kirby. Hell, even our playwright. ‘Come on, boy. You’re not as lousy as you think you are.’ Only, I didn’t think I was—lousy, or going to be. Oh, I was keyed up. Maybe it showed. But all this goddamn back-patting. Jeez!”
“All this afternoon?”
“Martha this afternoon. The rest just before curtain, just before I was due to go on for that opening scene with Arlene. Everybody coming around to the dressing room at the last minute. To see if I was still alive, you’d have thought. See that I hadn’t fainted or something.”
“Mr. Simon? The director—Kirby? And Mr. Askew? All to buck you up?”
“All of them. And even the kid, Pete Withers. Even the kid, for God’s sake.”
“All wishing you well,” Cook said, “even the playwright.”
“Yes, even Askew. He was probably really the one who had the jitters. Jittery sort of guy, Askew is. Hell, if I had his money … but writers are funny birds, I guess.”
“I’m not so sure Askew is really such a funny bird,” Shapiro told Cook as they walked toward the Algonquin.
The buffet tables were set up in the hotel’s lounge. The lobby was almost filled with men and women having their after-theater supper. And, of course, drinks to go with it. One of the men was Bret Askew. Celebrating? Tony and Nathan said, thank you, no, to a waiter captain who offered to seat them. They went to telephone booths. Both called Bellevue Hospital.
Edgar Lord had not made it, Tony was told. He had not regained consciousness or said anything before he died that a listening detective from the precinct squad could hear.
Shapiro talked to a doctor in the emergency ward, who said, sure, he knew of Donnatal Extentabs. A combination of belladonna-related alkaloids used by some internists in the treatment of peptic ulcer and for irritable bowel syndrome. Yes, substituted for the usual dosage of four tenths of a milligram of atropine sulfate. Advantage, one Extentab every twelve hours instead of one four-tenths-of-a-milligram atropine tablet four times a day. Well, yes, he supposed a couple of Extentabs could produce symptoms of atropine poisoning. Not severe poisoning—the belladonna alkaloids weren’t all that drastic. Blurred vision, dilation of the pupils, yes. “Listen, Lieutenant, we’re busy as hell here. And I’m a general surgeon. You want an internist. And maybe an eye man. O.K.?”
Shapiro said it was O.K., and thanks. He called precinct and arranged for a man from the precinct Homicide Squad to go to the Algonquin lounge for a drink, and to keep an eye on one Bret Askew, playwright. Not that Askew would be likely to go anyplace except up to his suite and to bed. Askew had no reason to believe that he needed to go anyplace.
Bret Askew wouldn’t know until the next day how little cause he had to celebrate.
17
“It’s not that I don’t like it there, Tony,” Rachel Farmer said. “You know I like it there. Only it’s a little bit breaking my neck. Just a little, really.”
It was almost twenty-four hours since Cook and Shapiro had visited Martha Abel in her penthouse, and since they had listened to Kenneth Price’s complaints about unneeded encouragement. Rachel and Tony had both got to their Gay Street apartments at a little after ten, and both had already had dinner, if you could call it that. And both had read the brief, front-page story in the last edition of the New York Sentinel. It was below the fold. (The National League East and the American League West races were heating up as they neared the finish, and they took the space above the fold.)
The headline on the short story read:
PLAYWRIGHT HELD
IN SLAYING
Rachel and Tony had had brief nightcaps and gone to bed. They chose her bed, which is wider. Her apartment is also one flight lower.
Now Tony said, “Sorry, baby.” He removed his right arm from under her neck and his left hand from a breast. “It’s too nice a neck to break.”
She said, “Thank you, Tony. And I quite like the arm. And it’s such a nice little play. So gay. I’m sorry. They’ve killed that word, haven’t they? ‘Gay,’ I mean.”
Tony agreed that “they” had pretty much done in the word “gay” and that it was a pity. And that he too had liked Summer Solstice. What he had seen of it.
“Was the old man—th
e dresser, I mean—trying to blackmail Mr. Askew, Tony?”
That was the way it looked; obviously the way it looked—looked after hours of questioning by Shapiro and a man from the D.A.’s office. “With me just sitting in. Saying, ‘Yes, that’s what he told us,’ when that was needed, Rachel. Nate’s echo, you could call it.”
The man from the D.A.’s office had been Bernard Simmons, chief of the D.A.’s Homicide Bureau. And Askew’s lawyer had been present.
“Very expensive lawyer. Pretty famous one. Wouldn’t let Askew answer most of our questions. What he was there for, of course. Very high-powered man, Simmons says. Going to be very tough all the way through. Simmons isn’t too happy about any of it. But he did O.K. the charge. And he will take it to the grand jury. And he does expect an indictment. After that, he says, God knows. After all, Askew is an Askew. Oodles of money. And what have we got? Motive. Opportunity. Neither of them exclusive, far’s we can prove.”
She raised her head from the pillow, and Tony put his arm under it. For a moment they lay quietly together. Then Rachel said, “Go on, dear. An indictment for Branson’s murder?”
“No. They’ll hold that in reserve, for use if needed. For Lord’s. The fingerprint is tangible. Jurors like fingerprints, Simmons says.”
“What fingerprint, Tony? You hadn’t said anything about a fingerprint.”
“On the tennis racket that was used to bash Lord’s head in. Not on the grip. That’s some sort of make-believe leather. On up the handle, near the head. Where it’s nice smooth steel that takes prints. It’s taken a lot, the lab boys say. Mostly Price’s, as you’d expect. But a couple of nice clear ones of Askew’s. ‘And how did they get there, Mr. Askew?’”
Askew’s lawyer, J. Burton Livingston, had let his client answer that. The answer was that Askew hadn’t any idea. Yes, he remembered seeing the racket in Price’s dressing room, near the door. It was a necessary prop for a second-act scene. And possibly, just possibly, he might have picked it up at some time. He didn’t remember doing so, but apparently he had. If it really had his prints on it.
“I play a good deal of tennis,” Askew had said. “Not much good at it, but it is my game. Say I’m an addicted tennis player. When I see a racket—well, chances are I pick it up. Just to get the feel of it, the heft, the balance. Could be I picked this one up, without really being aware I was doing it.”
“And Nate thinks that’s possible,” Tony went on. “Nate’s sort of a tennis nut himself. He says yes, he often picks up a racket he doesn’t have any idea of playing with just to get the heft of it, the balance. More or less a reflex, he agrees. One a good many players probably have.”
“It’s a good explanation,” Rachel said. She paused a moment, and added, “I think. It convinces me. Won’t it convince the jury?”
“The jury’s not likely to hear it,” Tony said. “Livingston and his helpers aren’t fools. They’ll investigate it—and find out we already have. Been at it for hours, half a dozen of us. Talking to Askew’s relatives and friends. There are quite a lot of Askews around. Most of them have places in Westchester and on Long Island. Places with tennis courts. Bret Askew has visited all of them. And he never plays tennis. Never has, far’s his relatives know. I dug up a cousin who has a place in Westchester. Name of Clifford Askew. Two courts on his place, and Bret was there for a good many weekends. And never played tennis. Thinks it’s a childish game. Doesn’t play golf, either. Not the athletic type. His game is chess. So—neck all right now, baby?”
Rachel’s neck was fine. Not breaking anymore. “And was the racket really the weapon somebody—Askew, as you and the lieutenant think—used to kill Lord?”
They were sure enough. It had been pounded down on something, the lab said. Pounded hard on something hard, like a skull not quite protected by a derby hat. (Which Lord probably had thought of as a bowler.) There were traces of the hat fabric where the strings looped through one side of the steel frame, and, although that was not yet certain, probable traces of blood. There hadn’t been time, apparently, to wipe the racket clean. Or it hadn’t seemed worth the trouble, since the use of the steel-framed racket pointed at Price, which was where Askew wanted things to point.
“Probably the reason he used it in the first place. To tie it to Price. When—well, when he got scared. Probably because of what Lord had seen at the party, or told Askew he’d seen. Also, the racket was handy. Just waiting to be used after he’d enticed Lord to the theater to pick up Branson’s makeup. He pretended to be Price on the phone. And he got behind the door of the dressing room when Price was out of it—he probably told Lord to come at a time when he knew the room would be empty. He knew the sequences. After all, he’d written the play. So Lord went on into the dressing room, probably, to look for his ‘package,’ and Askew slugged him from behind. Slugged him hard enough to spring the racket frame and put enough tension on the strings to break one of them. According to the lab boys, that is.”
They would never, now, know what Lord had seen at Branson’s last party—his surprise party. Or what he had told Askew he’d seen. Whatever had made him dangerous enough to the playwright to need killing. Askew wasn’t telling, and Lord couldn’t tell. A hand holding a twist of paper over a glass, presumably. Askew’s hand and Branson’s glass. And, they could assume, Lord had agreed to Askew’s insistence that he tell the police he’d gone up to bed at eleven. So that he couldn’t have seen barbiturate dropped into a glass at around a quarter of twelve, when they assumed it was.
“You and Nathan have to assume quite a lot of things, don’t you?” Rachel said. “I can understand why this Mr. Simmons is dubious.”
“Nate does the assuming,” Tony told her. “And he’s very good at it. We’ll dig around some more. Probably come up with more. Maybe from the caterer’s men. Almost certainly somewhere, now we know where to look and what to look for.”
“You say Askew had a motive,” Rachel said, and turned a little toward Tony. “For the dresser, I can see. And to throw suspicion on Mr. Price. Yes, I can see that. Took this stuff that made his eyes bulge—sort of bulge, anyway—after he’d had drinks with Price, so that it would look as if Price were trying to poison him because he had something on Price. Yes, I can see why he’d do that. I guess I can, anyway.”
“Sometimes,” Tony said, “they can’t leave well enough alone. And sometimes that helps us catch them. Murderers, I mean.”
She said she knew what he meant, for heaven’s sake, and if he would only listen. Why had Askew wanted Branson dead? “The leading actor in Askew’s own play. The man who was the play’s biggest draw and—”
She stopped and left the sentence hanging.
“Yes,” Tony said, “because he was so important to the play’s success. But after the reviews, and probably in Askew’s own opinion too, his importance had turned around. Maybe he was important to the failure of the play, not its success. Because he was fatally miscast.”
“But just for a play, Tony? It wasn’t as if Askew had to have a success because he needed the money. To kill a man, apparently a nice enough man, just to keep a little comedy running. It’s not as if Summer Solstice were—well, Hamlet.”
“No. But in a way—well, I suppose in a way Askew thought of it as if it were. A shining thing, almost a sacred thing. A thing more important than anything else. Seems absurd to us. But then we aren’t writers and, as somebody said a while back, writers are funny people. Don’t always get things in perspective, I guess.”
She did not reply to that, but turned to him for a goodnight kiss. It did not stop with that, as neither had supposed it would.
About the Author
Richard Lockridge (1898–1982) was one of the most popular names in mystery fiction from the 1940s through the ’70s. He is best known for the prolific detective series he wrote with his wife, Frances, including the Mr. and Mrs. North Mysteries, Nathan Shapiro Mysteries, and Captain Heimrich Mysteries. Upon Frances’s death in 1963, Richard continued writing, delivering new
and much darker Nathan Shapiro and Captain Heimrich books. His works have been adapted for Broadway, film, television, and radio.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1980 by Richard Lockridge
Cover design by Andy Ross
ISBN: 978-1-5040-5070-8
This 2018 edition published by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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THE NATHAN SHAPIRO MYSTERIES
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Otto Penzler, owner of the Mysterious Bookshop in Manhattan, founded the Mysterious Press in 1975. Penzler quickly became known for his outstanding selection of mystery, crime, and suspense books, both from his imprint and in his store. The imprint was devoted to printing the best books in these genres, using fine paper and top dust-jacket artists, as well as offering many limited, signed editions.
Now the Mysterious Press has gone digital, publishing ebooks through MysteriousPress.com.
The Old Die Young Page 16