In reading them, one should keep in mind the fact that according to the reports of the medical examiner Prentice Crossley was killed “some time before midnight” on Sunday, June 4, and that Mrs. Deborah Ealing was killed “sometime after noon” on Tuesday, June 13.
Kathryn Dennis and Annie Farley, maids: Say that on the night of June 4 they were at the movies. No attempt to seek corroboration of this. Say that on the afternoon of June 13 they were with a cousin of Kathryn Dennis’ in Yonkers. Corroborated by neighbors.
Jason Fream, stamp dealer: Says that on night of June 4 was at church and at home with his wife and daughter. This corroborated by wife and daughter. Says that on June 13 was at work all day at Acme Stamp Company. Corroborated by four employees.
Kurt Koenig, stamp dealer: Says that on the night of June 4 he was at his apartment alone. No corroboration. Says that on afternoon of June 14 he left his shop in charge of assistant and spent the afternoon in the Public Library at Forty-second Street examining the Benjamin K. Miller stamp collection in the third floor corridor. Absence from shop corroborated by assistant, and two attendants at the Library recall seeing him in upper corridor during the afternoon but unable to give exact time.
Homer Watson, stamp dealer: Says that on the night of June 4 he was home alone with three servants. Servants corroborate this, but say that none of them saw him after nine: forty-five, when he dismissed them for the night and they went up to the third floor to bed. Says that he spent June 13 on the road between Poughkeepsie and New York. Was up there on business, left in his car at nine in the morning and did not get back to New York until 6 p. m. Driving his car himself and alone. Had car trouble and was delayed for four hours in Yonkers. This corroborated by mechanic in Yonkers who worked on his car from twelve to four.
Maysie Ealing: Says that she spent the evening of June 4 at home with her mother. No corroboration. Neighbors of apartment house at 143 West 110th St., cannot recall whether they saw her in or around the apartment that night or not. Says that on June 13 she left the office of Schwab, Fairleigh and Morrison at twelve o’clock and did not return until four. Spent the time at lunch and shopping. Says Fairleigh said she might have the time off. Time of leaving and return corroborated by telephone operator at office. Fairleigh corroborates statement about “time off.” No corroboration from any of the shops she said she visited in shopping.
John Fairleigh: Says that on June 4 he was at the Alhambra Hotel in Los Angeles at a legal convention. Hotel register at Alhambra shows that he checked into the hotel on Sunday morning, June 4, and checked out Tuesday morning, June 6. Says that on June 13 he left his office at 11:30 in the morning and did not return until the next morning. Said he spent the afternoon in private law library of a friend on Riverside Drive. No corroboration of this, as the library was in a private house from which all servants and even the friend himself were temporarily absent for a month. Fairleigh, however, in possession of key to the house and could let himself in.
Spike read and re-read the notes that he had assembled from Herschman’s wandering conversation. Not a good clean double alibi in the lot… holes, fulla holes… any one of ’em…
He crumpled the paper and flung it with a disgusted gesture into the wastebasket and started pacing the room. But presently he retrieved the crumpled wad and smoothed it out on top of the desk. His forehead knit into a speculative frown as he studied again that last paragraph. He folded it carefully and put it in his pocket and reached for his hat. In the street below he climbed into his car, and turned it westward toward Seventh Avenue and the Holland tunnel.
An hour later he drew up in front of the little bungalow on the outskirts of the Forestry Reservation, the bungalow at which John Fairleigh had paid a brief visit while Spike had lurked in the bushes five days before. The blinds were down against the glare of the afternoon sun and the place looked deserted. He mounted the steps and rapped. A woman opened the door.
“Mrs. Polk?” he inquired with the engaging voice of a salesman using the approach approved in the selling manual.
“Yes, sir. I’m Mrs. Polk, and—” She looked at him with dawning recognition. “And you’re the young man who was here last week, with your car broke down, ain’t you?”
Spike acknowledged the identification, elaborated it. “My name’s-Smith. I’m a friend of Mr.
Fairleigh’s. I’m wondering if you could help me find him. I’ve just been down at his office in New York and they didn’t know where he was but they said that he might be out here. I’m awfully anxious to get in touch with him.”
“Well now, I’m right sorry, Mr. Smith, you had all that trip for nothing, because he ain’t here.”
‘Mr. Smith’ tch, tched with vexation.
“No,” the woman went on, “he ain’t been here since—” She broke off in sudden confusion, the pleasant amiable smile with which she had greeted her visitor replaced by an expression of misgiving.
“Since Tuesday,” ‘Mr. Smith’ finished the sentence for her and looked a little puzzled at her sudden change of countenance.
“Oh, then you know about him bein’ here Tuesday afternoon,” she said and there was relief in her voice.
“Oh yes,” lightly, “he told me he was coming. Well, sorry to have troubled you, Mrs. Polk. I’ll be running along.”
Spike drove slowly back to New York, letting the car poke along in the tide of lumbering truck traffic. He was thinking—and grinning with satisfaction. But presently the grin faded and a puzzled frown took its place.
In Newark he turned out of the tunnel bound traffic and stopped off at a telephone pay station. He called Koenig and invited him to have dinner with him at his apartment. He wanted to talk.
CHAPTER XVIII - Pug Forgets He’s a Wodehouse Butler
“THE THING I can’t understand,” Spike said as he settled himself for an after-dinner smoke, “is why the hell?”
Koenig opposite him refused a cigarette and produced his own cigar, clipped and lit it and gave a few experimental puffs.
“Yes?” he said.
“Well, why the hell did Fairleigh tell that cock-and-bull story to the police about being at a law library on the afternoon of June 13, knowing all the time that no one could possibly substantiate his story for the simple reason that it wasn’t true?”
“Fairleigh, as I told you before, is a man of honor.”
“A damn fool if you ask me.”
“It frequently amounts to the same thing.”
“But why not admit where he was—out in Jersey at this Polk place?”
“Because for some reason he did not want the police to know that he was out in Jersey at this Polk place.”
“But why?”
Koenig merely shrugged his shoulders.
“It’s pretty obvious,” Spike went on, “that he has said something to the Polks about keeping his visit quiet. The woman slipped badly and let herself into a neat trap, which I took advantage of. Fortunately for my purposes she was a dumb, simple soul and didn’t see through me.”
For a while the two men sat smoking in silence. They were on a tiny balcony which gave a view of the city, with dusk settling down, blotting out the ugliness. Street lights from the distance looked like spangling jewels. Koenig broke the silence.
“For your purposes, you say. Just what are your purposes?”
Spike hesitated a moment before he spoke. “Why—I suppose they’re the same as yours. After all, a lady in distress, flung on my doorstep, all that sort of thing.”
“Yes—for Linda. But I do not fear so much for her now.”
“You mean on account of the Ealing murder?”
Koenig nodded. “It is very certain that the same person did both of them.”
“Are you so sure?” Spike challenged.
“I can only draw the obvious conclusion. The manner of the killing, the weapon, the stamp found clutched in the hand. Identical in both cases, for of course the police would have found a stamp in Crossley’s hand if Linda had not removed i
t.” Spike considered this gravely. “So that if Linda Crossley didn’t commit the second murder—”
Koenig winced visibly. “No, please, my friend, don’t even put it in words.”
“I’m sorry. Let’s say that if Linda Crossley was fifty miles from the scene of the second crime at the time it was committed the obvious inference is that she was not present at the scene of the first.”
Again there was a long silence as the two men smoked. This time it was Spike who broke it. “Another thing I can’t understand,” he confessed, “is this Ealing girl. Does she know Linda Crossley?”
“Does that not seem fairly obvious, too?” Koenig pointed out. “You yourself say that the telephone operator told you Linda telephoned Maysie Ealing the afternoon after Crossley was murdered. After all, it is quite likely that she may have known her. Miss Ealing is Fairleigh’s secretary and Fairleigh was her grandfather’s lawyer.”
“But why the dead faint when I pulled that fast one?”
Koenig smiled indulgently. “Probably because she had been reading the newspapers and had jumped to the same conclusion that everyone else had—that Linda was—ah—involved.” The kindly little man obviously shrank from using the harsh terminology of homicide. “Incidentally, why did you ‘pull that fast one?’ What was your idea in asking her if Linda had been there?”
“I don’t know exactly. Just a hunch, I suppose. Just to see what she’d do.”
“And she did it. Oh well, if you really want to know what if any is the relationship between Linda and this Maysie Ealing it will be simple enough to ask Linda herself. If I can trespass on your hospitality for a day, I think I’ll go out tomorrow to see her.”
“By all means. I won’t be there myself, but just make yourself at home and Pug and Mrs. Parsons will—”
The telephone bell interrupted his sentence. He picked up the receiver on the table at his elbow, spoke for a few minutes with the person at the other end. As he replaced the instrument he turned to Koenig.
“That’s Pug himself,” he explained and there was a troubled note to his voice. “He was phoning from Penn station to see if I was in. He’s on his way up here now.”
“Is—is there any trouble? Linda—” There was sudden alarm in Koenig’s eyes.
“He didn’t say, but he sounded funny.”
An uneasy silence settled on the two men while they waited. Spike rose and paced the balcony. Koenig’s foot tapped nervously on the stone coping. In spite of his dinner jacket he was still wearing the incongruous home cobbled shoes, and they made a particularly irritating tattoo. Finally Spike could stand it no longer.
“Come on, Koenig, let’s go into the house and get a drink.”
Twenty minutes later when Pug arrived they were somewhat fortified against the impending news.
Pug’s entrance was slightly dramatic in the manner of one who arrives breathless after a twenty mile dash by horseback, rather than as one who has ridden but three in an upholstered taxicab.
“Jeez,” he accused his lord and master in a most un-British manner, “where the hell have you been the last two days?”
“Oh, in and out, but here in New York all the time.”
“Well, I been callin’ you twice a day ever since yesterday morning, and I never could get you, so tonight I just made up my mind and come in.”
“What’s the matter?”
“It’s that dame.”
Koenig clutched Pug’s arm.
“She beat it. Took the new boat. Tuesday morning—early.”
CHAPTER XIX - Mr. Heffenbaugh’s Buddy
THERE WAS a strange silence in the room.
Spike’s mouth was drawn into tight, grave lines. Koenig’s face was like that other face—Maysie Ealing’s just before she had fainted—contorted with the effort to erase all betraying expression.
“ ‘Tuesday morning, early,’ ” he repeated as if to himself. Slowly his eyes met Spike’s and living fear stared from them. “But—but you do not believe—you do not think—” He left the sentence broken, unfinished, but its question was plain. Spike countered question with question.
“Do you?”
“No, no I” It was a passionate cry of denial but it was shot through with dread. He turned to Pug, clutched his arm once again, demanded details.
“All I know,” Pug went on, “is that Mrs. Parsons says she was a whole lot better on Monday, and Monday night she even put on her clothes and come down and set a while on the porch and seemed pretty good. And then Tuesday morning she wasn’t there. She’d beat it in the night. Me nor Mrs. Parsons, neither one of us, heard her go. She must of beat it some time around six in the morning because I was awake at seven, and I couldn’t go back to sleep, so I got up and went down to the dock and the boat was gone then.”
“But could she still be on the island?” Spike put in. “Did you make any attempt to search for her?”
“Search? Hell! I tramped over every inch of the damn place myself. And I tried to find out over at Saugus if they’d seen anything of her. I had to be damn careful though, but I couldn’t find out anything.”
The three men had been standing. Now Koenig sank to a chair as if his knees could no longer hold him, and his face was ashen. Spike motioned silently to Pug to withdraw. When they were alone, he laid a hand in rough masculine comfort on Koenig’s shoulder.
“Buck up, Koenig,” he said. The words were shop worn and empty in themselves, but Spike’s tone was full of tacit understanding. “I’ve got an idea,” he went on quietly.
“You—you think you know—where she is?”
Spike shook his head. “No, but I think I know where I can find out.”
“Where—when—”
“I’m not sure. I’ve just got an idea. I’ll let you know…”
Mr. Heffenbaugh stirred the dishpan full of potato salad with a large wooden spoon, and told his story for the hundredth time to Mrs. Bowen, who lived around the corner up over the tailor shop on Amsterdam Avenue. Mrs. Bowen had just purchased twenty cents worth of bloodwurst and a box of crackers.
“Oh sure,” Mr. Heffenbaugh assured her, “I knew him well. We were buddies.”
“Well now, just think o’ that. Don’t it sort of give you the creeps though?”
Mr. Heffenbaugh shrugged his shoulders with superior nonchalance. “Well you know, Mrs. Bowen, after you been through a war you don’t get so stirred up over death.”
“I know, but women and children are different. Especially an old lady like that. Why it just don’t seem—” Mrs. Bowen interrupted herself to greet Mrs. Surace, who lived down the street across from the coke factory. “Mr. Heffenbaugh,” she explained to Mrs. Surace, “has just been tellin’ me about him knowin’ the son of that old lady that was murdered, you know, with the dagger stuck in her back over on 110th Street. They was in the army together.”
Mrs. Surace was properly impressed and bought a boat full of pickles and half a pound of cheese.
“Sure,” Mr. Heffenbaugh continued, “we was in the old 116th together. Why I was in the same company with him when he went west. That’s what we used to call it in the army, you know. The Heinies come over with a bayonet attack and we retreated to our second line of trench and first thing you know I says to the guy that was standing next to me, I says, ‘Where’s Ealing?’ and he says, ‘I dunno,’ and sure enough he was missin’. Never saw him again.”
By this time several other customers had joined the audience and Mr. Heffenbaugh had to go over the story once again.
“Oh sure,” he repeated as he sliced off ham baloney and weighed coffee and scooped up pretzels. “Why just last night we had a Legion meetin’—you know we always kept up our Legion unit of the old 116th—and I was sayin’ to Mullaney, he’s our secretary, ‘Remember the time you and me and Ealing…’ ”
Heffenbaugh’s Delicatessen, Fancy Fruits and Groceries, was a popular place, so popular that it was not until three in the afternoon that the tall young man who had been loitering about on the
opposite side of the street finally found the shop empty of all but its proprietor. He crossed the street and entered.
“I’m Smith,” he said, introducing himself briefly. “I’m from the Times. I found out from your Legion secretary this morning that you once knew David Ealing, the son…”
“Oh sure, I knew him well… me and him was buddies… same company… the Heinies started attackin’…” Mr. Heffenbaugh rambled on, happy in the thought that now at last he was to have a wider audience than the one limited by his delicatessen clientele. The Times! His name in the papers!
“And if you’s like my photograph,” he said to ‘Mr. Smith’ when at last he had done justice to his martial reminiscences, “I can let you have the one my wife’s got taken in my uniform.”
“Well, I don’t know. I’ll—I’ll have to see the city desk about that.” ‘Mr. Smith’ showed a disappointing lack of eagerness to avail himself of this opportunity. Instead he returned to a point in the narrative to which he had just listened, and asked Mr. Heffenbaugh to repeat himself.
“It was just like I said before,” Mr. Heffenbaugh replied. “The Heinies come over in a surprise attack when we wasn’t expectin’ ’em. Half of us couldn’t even get out of the dugouts in time. They was about three to one against us, usin’ bayonets, so we had to retreat to our second line of trench. After the retreat I says to another fellow in the company, ‘Where’s Ealing?’ and he says, ‘I dunno,’ and then I remembered that he was in one of the dugouts when the attack come. They must of got him there.”
“You don’t know how—how they ‘got’ him, do you?”
“There wasn’t no way we could tell. Later on we regained our old position, but by that time the trench and dugouts was all blowed up by shells. You couldn’t tell nothing.”
“What sort of a chap was this Ealing?”
“Oh, nice fellow. We all liked him, hut he was quiet like, never talked much about himself or his family.”
“Did he get many letters from home?”
A Most Immoral Murder Page 10