A Most Immoral Murder

by Harriette Ashbrook

  They danced. The swell new song from “Varenne” seemed to stretch out interminably. But at last they were in the booth once more and Spike had tactfully jockeyed the conversation back to the crucial point.

  “Oh yeah,” she reminded herself. “I was telling you about that night I had the date and went back to the office. Well, this boy and I had dinner up here and danced a while and then we decided to go on uptown to the movies and while he was paying the check I was fixing up, and I found that I’d forgot to fill my compact before I left the office and I didn’t have any powder. Well, this place is just around the corner from the office and so I said to the fellow I was with we should go up to the office for a minute because I had a box of powder in my desk.

  “When we got up there the place was locked like it always is at night, but I always have a key because I’m the first one that gets in in the morning, or at least I’m supposed to be, so I have one. Anyway, I notice that there was a light in the back where the glass partition cuts off Mr. Fairleigh’s office, and I thought maybe he was there and he probably wouldn’t like me coming back to the office late like that so I was awfully quiet. I made the fellow stay out in the hall and I went in and got the powder out of my desk.

  “But then I got sort of curious and I thought I’d just make sure it was Fairleigh so I tiptoed back there and looked in. You know the place is glassed in with this kind of glass you can’t see through, but on the east side there’s plain clear glass because that’s the side that’s toward Mr. Schwab’s office.

  Well, I was standing in the dark and I looked through and I could see right in to Mr. Fairleigh’s office and it wasn’t him that was there at all.

  “It was Miss Ealing. She was looking in the files. And then pretty soon she closed the files up and went over to the safe. Mr. Fairleigh’s got a private safe in his office of his own where he keeps his own personal papers and a few of the papers of his clients, the very confidential ones that he wouldn’t even want any of the other partners to see.

  “Well, anyway she goes over to this safe and starts turning the knob around and back and putting her ear close up to it like they do in the movies where safe crackers are trying to get the combination. But I guess she wasn’t very good at it, because pretty soon she seemed to get discouraged and she went back to looking through the files.

  “Of course, I went out very quiet so she wouldn’t know I’d been there, and I never said anything to anybody about it, because I always feel that there’s too much butting into other people’s business as it is without me adding to it, but if you ask me, she was trying to get into that safe, but she wasn’t having any luck, and she was trying to find something in the files too and—”

  She broke off abruptly, her fingers snapping. “There’s that swell new song from ‘Delicia.’ Come on…”

  Maysie Ealing was more difficult. Spike considered making the interview official in the office of the district attorney, but on second thought he decided against it. There was that little matter of the visit he had paid her the day after her mother’s death. It wouldn’t do for the district attorney and the inspector to know about that. They might jump to the fantastic conclusion that he, Spike, had not been entirely frank with them. Better go it alone.

  He found the house, Mrs. Parley’s, easy enough. It was two streets away in a quietly decaying section devoted entirely to the dreariness of furnished rooms. But eminently respectable!

  Mrs. Parley, like all landladies of furnished rooming houses, tolerated no mixed company above the first floor. With the obscenity of mind which seems to characterize her kind, it was impossible for her to conceive of a man and a woman confining themselves to mere conversation in the same room with a bed. With an air of militant virtue upheld she provided a depressing little room off the main hall on the first floor for “entertainment.”

  It was into this cubicle that Spike was ushered.

  “She’s just come in,” Mrs. Parley assured him with a slight thawing of the chill which she usually accorded to young men callers. The sight of the Cadillac roadster at the curb had doubtless something to do with this. Virtue is virtue, but at the same time a Cadillac is impressive.

  As Spike waited he gazed around him. Musty, dusty, full of useless ornaments and photographs of unfamiliar, stodgy people. He felt a nervous distaste for what lay before him. Once he was almost tempted to sneak out quietly. He took several turns up and down the tiny room.

  He was standing, his back to the door, surveying a mangy fern placed in front of the window when Maysie Ealing entered. He turned slowly and looked at her. He was surprised.

  Some subtle change had taken place since he had seen her the last time. There was still the faded blond hair, the mouth bracketed with lines. There were still shadows under the eyes, but not such deep shadows. There was still about her the tenseness of one who expects attack. And yet…

  It puzzled him. He tried to explain it. And yet with it all she seemed younger, more alive. Like those, he thought, who have groped through a long, dark tunnel, hopeless and exhausted, who finally see a light. The weariness and exhaustion are still with them, but a new strength floods through them, the strength to go on because there is something ahead.

  She greeted him quietly and they were seated.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, and he really meant it, “to trouble you again, Miss Ealing, but there are—”

  He hesitated and she completed the sentence for him. “…two or three points that are not entirely clear.”

  He nodded and she smiled rather grimly. “Very messy, you policemen,” she said. “You’re always leaving loose ends around.”

  “Yes, I suppose so. Or at least it would seem that way. But, you see, the difficulty is that we keep on uncovering new evidence all the time.”

  “Oh, I see. I hadn’t realized that.” There was subtle sarcasm in her words. “What’s new now?” He hesitated again. He found the job before him less and less to his liking.

  “Tell me, Miss Ealing, the—ah—circumstances under which you got your job with Mr. Fairleigh.”

  “The—ah—circumstances were the usual—ah— circumstances. I was out of a job and I followed want ads in the papers. I answered Mr. Fairleigh’s ad and he employed me.”

  “Had you known Mr. Fairleigh before you entered his employ?”

  “No. The first time I ever saw him was six months ago when he asked me to come to his office for an interview.”

  “And having got the job, did you—ah—I mean why did you take the job?”

  “Why did I take it? Why does anyone take a job? I had myself and my mother to support, you know.”

  “Then you had no—ulterior motive in entering Mr. Fairleigh’s employ?”

  “No, not unless you consider the desire to eat and pay the rent ‘ulterior.’ ”

  “Then why—” He paused. “Why, Miss Ealing, did you spend so many nights trying to figure out the combination of Mr. Fairleigh’s private safe?”

  He leaned forward as he posed the question and eyed the woman steadily. He wondered if she really flinched or whether it was just his imagination.

  “The combination of Mr. Fairleigh’s private safe?” She repeated the words as if to make sure that she had heard them correctly.

  “Yes. Why were you interested in it?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “What was in that safe that you wanted?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Then why did you spend so many hours trying to get it open?”

  “But I didn’t.”

  “And what would you say if I should tell you that I have a witness who has seen you at it?”

  “I should question the reliability of your witness.”

  “Oh, there’s no question of that. My witness is the most reliable witness in the world—a person too dumb to lie.”

  She made no reply.

  “Well,” he said, “what do you say?”

  “Nothing. Is it necessary for me to say anything except that I don�
�t know what you’re talking about. I really can’t be held responsible you know, Mr. Tracy, if you insist on talking like a dime novel.”

  “In other words you deny either knowing John Fairleigh prior to six months ago, or trying to get into his safe after you became his private secretary.”

  “Yes,” she said, “you’ve got those one or two points clear at last.”

  “Good! But there are still one or two more.” He lit a cigarette, offered her one but she declined.

  “Tell me, Miss Ealing, about your brother.”

  A strange look came into her face. She hesitated. Then answered the question. “He was in the war. ‘Missing in action.’ Is there anything more to tell than that?”

  “I—I happened to see his picture the last time I was at your house. He looked very much like you, didn’t he?”

  “There was a strong family resemblance between us.”

  “So it’s quite likely that any child you might have, might look very much like him.”

  She stared at him. “Aren’t you getting a little bit off the point, Mr. Tracy?”

  “Am I?”

  She made no reply and he went on. “Let’s suppose for the sake of argument that you did have a child. And suppose that for some reason, you hadn’t seen it for years, and then suddenly you had a great longing for it, but you didn’t know where it was. And suppose the one person in the world who knew wouldn’t tell you.”

  His voice was disarming in its casualness as he spun the apparently hypothetical tale. He was slouching down in his chair and his eyes were on the far corner of the room. He wasn’t even looking at the woman as he continued.

  “And so you determined to find out for yourself. Knowing that the child resembled you and that you resembled your brother, you assumed that in the years which had passed since the child was a baby, this resemblance to your brother would increase. And so you played a long shot. You took a picture of your brother and had it inserted in a paper— the Saugus paper. Why you picked on Saugus I don’t know. Anyway you put in the ad and asked anyone who knew of a boy who looked like this picture to get in touch with you.”

  Suddenly he shifted his eyes from the far corner of the room and looked straight at her. But she was sitting there quietly, her face expressionless.

  “What would you say to that, Miss Ealing?”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “Well, if I must say something, I’d say that you have a wonderful imagination.”

  There was a pause. His hand slipped into the front of his coat.

  “Perhaps,” he admitted quietly, “but I really didn’t imagine—that.”

  He thrust it at her, the clipping from the Saugus Index “…a boy of fourteen resembling this picture…”

  She took it from him. There was no mistake about it now. Her hand trembled as she held the clipping.

  She looked at it for a long time. Then she handed it back. She raised her eyes and they met his.

  “All right,” she said quietly. “What about it?”

  “You admit that you inserted that advertisement in the paper?”

  “Yes.”

  “You admit that the ‘fourteen year old boy resembling this picture,’ is your son?”

  For the second time during the interview she hesitated. The taut wires within her seemed to tighten.

  “Yes,” she said and her voice was hard, flat, metallic. “I admit—he is my son.”

  “Whom you haven’t seen since he was a baby.” She nodded.

  “Your illegitimate son.”

  “Does that matter?”

  “Very much so. Even illegitimate children have fathers.”

  “Yes, I suppose so.”

  “Why did you go to all this hocus-pocus?” He pointed to the Saugus clipping.

  “I couldn’t think of any other way. Hiring detectives is expensive and I didn’t have the money.”

  “But why not do the simple, obvious thing?”

  “What is that?”

  “Ask the child’s father.”

  “Because—” She stopped in confusion. “Because I don’t know where he is.”

  Spike was brought up short in his rapid fire questions. It was his turn now to stare.

  “Then Fairleigh isn’t…” The sentence was left hanging in midair. It was as if he had been thinking aloud and had suddenly remembered himself. But at the sound of Fairleigh’s name the woman seemed to stiffen.

  “Fairleigh?” she said. “You don’t mean you think Fairleigh—”

  “Well,” said Spike, “isn’t he?”

  Her hands were gripping the arms of her chair until her knuckles were white. Her mouth twisted. Suddenly she laughed—loud—high-pitched—

  “Fairleigh—oh, that’s funny—no, no, not Fairleigh—he’s not the father of my child—take back the papers, give me the—no, no, not Fairleigh— he’s not…”

  Her face was contorted, working convulsively. She rose unsteadily from her chair. Spike realized that she wasn’t laughing any more. She was crying. Hysteria—wild, uncontrolled.

  She rushed from the room. He followed her into the hall, stood at the newel post and watched her stumble up the stairs.

  CHAPTER XXVIII - Found—an Unmarried Mother

  “A BUTLER,” said Spike as he lifted his feet to the district attorney’s desk, “is the only thing lacking. A sinister butler, one who’s been chummy for years with the family skeleton. It’s got everything else— the missing heiress, the death-dealing dagger, the nameless child, shots in the night, and the person who knows something they’re not telling.” The last was in verbal italics.

  Herschman merely grunted and the district attorney looked annoyed. “But to get back to your interview with Miss Ealing,” he prompted, “what did—”

  “But she’s the one I mean,” Spike interrupted. “The one who knows something they’re not telling. The grammar’s cockeyed, but the meaning’s there. Maysie Ealing isn’t going to tell anybody anything she isn’t forced to. And even then I wouldn’t be altogether too sure of her. I’ve never before seen such calm, convincing lying. And when she was trapped she admitted it with equal calmness. Just the same the strain was too much for her. She broke under it in the end. Now Fairleigh—”

  “If you ask me,” the inspector cut in, “they’re two of a kind, her and him. He knows a lot he’s not telling.”

  Spike nodded. “And he has lied with the same calm consistency.”

  “But even if he is or isn’t the father of this child and Maysie Ealing is the mother, what,” Herschman demanded, “has that got to do with two murders and an attempted third?”

  “To say nothing,” the district attorney pointed out, “of the theft of a small fortune in valuable stamps.”

  “And there,” said Spike, “is where you put your finger squarely on the problem—the stamps.”

  “Yeah, what the hell is the idea of stealing them from Crossley if whoever did it is going to scatter ’em all over the place, afterward?”

  “They’re sort of a trade mark,” Spike pointe d out. “When Crossley’s body was found there—”

  He caught himself up sharply, finished off lamely.

  “—there weren’t any stamps about, but they ha d been taken from the safe. When the next victim, Mrs. Ealing, was found, there was one of the stolen stamps in her hand. And the third victim—or at least he would have been a victim if the murderer hadn’t been a rotten shot—when Koenig was found there was a stamp inside the face of his watch. Find the guy who’s got those stamps—” He paused and Inspector Herschman finished the sentence with emphatic conviction.

  “—and you find the guy that murdered Crossley and Mrs. Ealing and tried to do the same by Koenig.”

  Spike nodded in sage agreement.

  “In the meantime,” the district attorney put in, “the circumstances seem to call for another interview with Fairleigh.”

  A half hour later the district attorney and his younger brother in one car, and the inspector accompanied by Mellett, a Headq
uarters detective, following in a second car, drew up in front of the Nassau Street building which housed the office of Schwab, Fairleigh and Morrison.

  Spike had been all for summoning Fairleigh to police headquarters, but the district attorney pointed out the strategic advantage of a surprise visit at Fairleigh’s own office. Spike looked slightly worried as he thought of a certain comely telephone operator. Maysie Ealing, he knew, had not been at the office since the death of her mother, was not expected back at work for another week. But the telephone operator—

  It would be disillusioning, doubtless, to find that one whom you had previously regarded as a person interested only in the finer things of life, was just a police department stool pigeon after all.

  It was chance alone which saved them both embarrassment. The temporary relief operator was on when the three men entered the reception room of the law firm. They were shown almost immediately into the private office of Fairleigh.

  The lawyer looked much the same as he had at the previous meeting two days earlier, worn, deeply troubled—and stubborn.

  “I suppose,” he said and there was a grim smile on his thin, tight lips, “I should ask to what I am indebted for this honor.”

  “Under the circumstances,” said the district attorney with equal grimness but no smile, “I think we can dispense with such a formality.”

  The four men seated themselves, Fairleigh behind his desk, Herschman, the district attorney and Spike facing him on the opposite side.

  “Certain things have happened since we saw you last, Mr. Fairleigh,” Spike began, “which have convinced us of the necessity of another interview with you. I may point out that at that time we were not entirely convinced of your—ah—”

  “Honesty?” Fairleigh suggested.

  “Possibly,” Spike admitted, “but perhaps the better way to put it would be to say that you did not impress us as one exhibiting a helpful spirit of cooperation.”

  “Possibly not,” Fairleigh agreed, “but may I suggest that you come to the point, if—” He cu t the sentence off unfinished.