Fashioned for Murder

by George Harmon Coxe

  FASHIONED FOR MURDER

  George Harmon Coxe

  Chapter One

  IT IS UNLIKELY that any of the 1,139,940 readers of that smart biweekly magazine, Fashion Parade—a figure arrived at by multiplying the average quarterly net sale of 247,813 copies by the advertising department’s figure of 4.6 readers per copy—realized that the fashion portrait of Linda Courtney that appeared on page one would lead to murder. It is almost certain that the killer had no such idea in mind on the Monday that particular issue hit the newsstands, though admittedly he was one of those most vitally concerned.

  A full-page advertisement opposite the inside front cover, and impossible to overlook if one opened the magazine, it was a fine example of modern photography, strikingly but simply done and showing Linda in a black dinner dress—the strapless kind—with a tight bodice and a flaring skirt, suggesting that the designer had been influenced by some Spanish motif.

  The product advertised was Benson’s Satins, and contrasting with the sheer simplicity of the gown were three pieces of ornate costume jewelry, also Spanish in character, that Linda had brought to the studio weeks before when the picture was taken. The fashion expert who was supervising the appointment had found them appropriate when Linda produced them from her hatbox and decided to use all three pieces—a bracelet, a necklace of the choker type, and a heavy brooch with which to anchor the gown’s plunging neckline.

  The resulting photograph and advertisement pleased Benson’s Satins; it pleased the editors of Fashion Parade because it was so eminently suited to their select pages; it enabled the photographer who made the picture to boost his price. And while there is no available record of what the women readers had to say, it was studied with varying emotions in Chillicothe, Cincinnati, and Kansas City.

  Men noticed the portrait, too, possibly for other than artistic reasons, and though, like the women, their reaction was generally favorable, there were at least three startling exceptions.

  In a Miami Beach hotel suite, for instance, one individual was sufficiently interested to examine the photograph with a magnifying glass, which he had requested from the room clerk, and then ask about plane reservations to New York. Farther north a second man was moved to more violent action when, after his second glance, he tore the page savagely from the magazine. Still farther north—in Boston, to be exact—in a small studio not far from Atlantic Avenue, a young photographer studied the portrait morosely between shots while a customer consoled him. And, of all the reactions, his alone was witnessed and recorded; his alone was bitterly concerned not with the photograph, but with the girl.

  His name was Jerry Nason. He was twenty-nine, not tall, though taller than most, but well-boned and compactly built. His hair was dark brown, his eyes a smoky blue under straight, thick brows, and at the moment he was not aware of the studio or the two models who sat with cigarettes while waiting for the final pose of the afternoon; he was not aware of Brad Lathrop, the advertising manager of an underwear company with a factory in Everett, until Lathrop said, “So that’s the doll that stood you up the last time you went to New York?”

  Jerry Nason’s grunt was absent but affirmative.

  Lathrop took another glance at the photograph over Nason’s shoulder and perched on the edge of the desk.

  “Well, I’ll say this,” he remarked. “You can pick ’em. If you have to go out with models you could do a lot worse. There’s just one thing you forgot,” he added. “You forgot she was a model. You figured she was just like any other nice kid you meet and take to dinner and find out you hit it off together.”

  Lathrop had more to say, but Nason did not hear him.

  He studied the photograph, not with any appreciation for the pose, background, or lighting values, not even seeing the dress or the costume pieces, the rounded slenderness of Linda’s young figure, or the blond hair piled high. The half-smile in the photograph was not the one he remembered because it was fixed—a model’s smile—and not the quick, friendly smile his mind’s eye saw.

  It seemed to come right out of the page at him, and he could see the warmth and sparkle of the wide-spaced gray eyes and hear, in fancy, her pleasant, unaffected voice.

  “The trouble,” Brad Lathrop was saying, “is that you worked four years on the Bulletin and nearly three as a combat photographer and you never got to know much about models.”

  “I’ve been doing this nearly a year.”

  Lathrop chuckled, and the statements he made maligned to some extent the profession of modeling, which, though capitalizing on the photogenic, is made up of a group whose mental, moral, and emotional characteristics are no better nor worse than the same number of department-store clerks or telephone operators. It is possible, of course, that Lathrop, having in mind some unhappy experience of his own which had prejudiced him, took advantage of the opportunity to express his views.

  In any case he said, “Any time a New York model goes out with you she expects something more than a free meal. She knows she gets her rates up. by getting around and being talked about. She’s out to get all the publicity she can. She wants her name in the gossip columns, complete with photos, if possible. I don’t say they all make it, but they all try, brother, they all try.”

  Lathrop grunted and took a breath. “She’ll go out with you, sure—if you take her to dinner at Twenty-One or the Barberry Room. She’ll go dancing with you at the Stork or El Morocco—if you get her a good table where she can be noticed. Of course, you have to keep in the background and you can’t expect her to pay much attention to you and you’ll have people stopping at your table for a drink—which you’ll pay for but—”

  “It wasn’t that way at all,” Nason said.

  “Ahh—” Lathrop grinned and stood up. “The trouble with you is you’ve still got the outlook of a newspaperman. You haven’t learned yet that models are a dime a dozen.”

  “I resent that.”

  It was a girl’s voice, coming from across the studio, and Nason glanced round and saw the two models on the settee. Lathrop waved to the brunette in the nightgown and robe.

  “Not you, honey,” he said. “Relax,” he said, and turned back to Nason. “Her name is Linda Courtney, and you met her when you went down to New York a week or so ago to do the job for the Jewelers’ Guild that Kate Harper lined up for you. You went for Linda and she went for you—you thought. You stayed over an extra day. What’s the rest of it?”

  “She stood me up, that’s all.” Nason pushed the magazine aside, and his tone remained sardonic. “She said she’d be busy during the day but we could have dinner. She said she’d phone me at six at the hotel.”

  “And she didn’t.”

  “No. I waited around and had a couple of drinks. I waited until nine and went over to Twenty-One to eat, and she was there with a plump, well-fed guy with expensive clothes and not much hair. They had a corner table, and Linda was faced the other way. She didn’t see me, and I walked out and got a plane back.”

  “Sure,” Lathrop said. “Models. They’ll do it every time. Okay, kids,” he called. “Let’s get this last shot over with.”

  The two girls stood up. The brunette with the robe and nightgown put out her cigarette and stepped to the model stand. The other one had a coat on. When she took it off she was wearing a nightgown that matched in design the other model’s robe.

  Nason snapped switches on the spider box controlling his lights and began to adjust them. Lathrop got the girls to smooth out the gowns and robe as much as possible while Nason shifted lights to kill shadows that, scarcely visible to the untutored eye, would be distinct and unwelcome in the negative. Under the lights the gown was more transparent and revealing than the model knew, so much so as to make the resulting photogr
aph unfit for reproduction.

  “We’ll airbrush it down,” Lathrop said when Nason mentioned the subject.

  “Sure,” Nason said. “You always do.” He took a look at his light meter, shifted his boom spot three inches, lowered a five-hundred-watt keg-light a foot. “You’ll airbrush all the character out of the stuff before you get through. You won’t leave a wrinkle. It’ll look like the garments were poured on—”

  “We know,” Lathrop said and grinned. “We’re not artistic but we sell our line. Go ahead, get your picture.”

  Five minutes later Nason had it, and ten minutes after that the girls came out of the dressing-room and left with Brad Lathrop. Nason sat down at his desk. He did not open Fashion Parade again, but for a moment or two the photograph remained clear and distinct in his inner eye, and it was only by some magic of concentration and mental erasure that he was able to blot it from his thoughts.

  He had, apparently, been a sucker to fall for Linda Courtney but he would brood no more about it since it was unlikely that their paths would cross again.

  That was what Jerry Nason told himself that Friday afternoon and that was what he believed—until the following Monday at one-twenty in the afternoon.

  What happened in between was that on Saturday morning, while he was developing the plates he had exposed for Brad Lathrop, he got a telephone call from New York. A man identifying himself as Nate Fallon wanted to know if this was the Jerry Nason who had taken some pictures for the Jewelers’ Guild.

  “Yes,” Nason said.

  “I’ve got a little agency here in New York,” Fallon said. “And I’ve got an account up your way that makes costume jewelry.” He mentioned a company familiar to Nason and added, “Would you be able to take some pictures for me Monday afternoon?”

  Nason pretended to look over his appointment pad, though he knew he had no date on Monday. After a proper interval he said Monday afternoon would be fine for him. Fallon wanted to know about prices and promptly agreed to those Nason asked.

  “Swell,” said Fallon. “I’ll be up on the train that gets into South Station at one o’clock, with a model and samples.”

  And so, on Monday afternoon as the hands on the desk clock pointed to one and continued to tick off the minutes that would enable his clients to reach the studio from the station, Jerry Nason smoked a cigarette and glanced about with a certain satisfaction and some excitement.

  Aside from the darkroom and dressing-room, there was only this one large, high-ceilinged room. There was no private office, no swank reception room. What was here was for utilitarian purposes only—an eight-by-ten camera, camera stand, lights, a corner full of props, part of a two-sided living-room set that he had arranged for a furniture account of his; there was a couch, a couple of chairs, two stools, ladders, an extra boom, a model stand, and assorted flats to be used for backgrounds. But it was all his, and that was the important thing.

  For in those years in the Pacific he had dreamed of this and known that should he get back safely he was finished with news pictures and press photography. He had some money saved and an ambition long denied to get into commercial work, not just any commercial work but the sort of thing one found in Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. And he was started. He was learning; he was on his way.

  It had not been easy, nor very profitable so far. But he had been lucky in getting some secondhand equipment and he had earned enough to keep going. The job for the Jewelers’ Guild that Kate Harper, who had once worked on the Bulletin with him, had lined up was his first assignment in New York, and today would be the first time that anyone from New York had come here, which made his excitement and nervous impatience understandable.

  And so, at twenty minutes after one when the knock came at the door, he went over and opened it to find three people in the hall instead of the expected two. He saw the man but vaguely, a small, bespectacled figure in a blue coat and gray hat. He knew that the woman next to him was taller and heavier than the man and superficially pretty. But the only thing he was really sure of was that the third person was Linda Courtney.

  Linda, hatbox in hand, smart and lovely in her green suit and green felt beanie. Linda, with her smile and laughing gray eyes, and the familiar voice that said, “Hi, Jerry.”

  Nason got out of the way, and in that first instant, obeying his heart and not his mind, aware only of something warm and spontaneous and exultant that could not then be denied, he said, “Hi, Linda,” and smiled back at her.

  Somehow he got the door closed. He shook hands with Nate Fallon and was introduced to the woman. “Miss Heath,” Fallon said. “My partner.”

  Miss Heath, whose first name was Irma, smiled and took off her coat. Her auburn hair was sleekly coifed, her dark eyes artfully shadowed. Nason decided she was in her early thirties, with a suggestion of slackness beginning to show in the skin of her face and a figure that was on the heavy side but shapely.

  Linda Courtney was glancing about. “So this is where you work,” she said pleasantly.

  Nason did not reply. He was watching her, and the warm, exultant glow had gone from him and he was thinking again as his well-nurtured resentment began to assert itself. That Linda was here at all he put down to coincidence—an opinion he was to change before the afternoon was over—and from the girl’s smile, her breezy greeting, and tone of voice, he took his cue.

  It was, apparently, her intention to pretend that nothing had happened in New York, that her breaking of the date was a routine occurrence and of no importance—which left him with two alternatives.

  He could show the honest resentment he felt and act accordingly as the injured party, or he could pretend, as she did, that what had happened was unimportant, calling for neither an explanation nor apology. And because he had been hurt, he chose the latter course, deciding that anything was better than to give her the satisfaction of knowing how much it mattered to him.

  “You get around,” he said, keeping his voice light but having trouble with his smile.

  “Don’t I?” Linda said.

  “Miss Courtney worked for us before,” Nate Fallon said. He picked up the copy of Fashion Parade from Nason’s desk. “You perhaps saw the picture of her? So did one of our clients. We learned she was one of the Carson Agency models and were able to arrange an appointment the next day. Will you show Mr. Nason the costume pieces, please?” he said to Linda.

  The girl opened her hatbox and took out a necklace, bracelet, and brooch. When she put them on the desk Nason saw that they were cumbersome and flashy, with large green stones and ornate metalwork, thin but heavy-looking.

  “Aren’t those the ones she wore in the picture?”

  “Exactly,” Fallon said. “That is why we are here today.” Then he was explaining how he had sent some pictures of the costume pieces to the Ames Company in Attleboro. The Ames Company made inexpensive costume jewelry and it was Fallon’s thought that perhaps Linda’s pieces were something Ames might want to copy and produce in quantities.

  He had more to say about the job, and Nason, watching him, found himself wondering how a man like Fallon ever got in the advertising business. Without his hat and coat he was a skinny nondescript who affected his certain dapperness uneasily and without conviction. His hair was mouse-brown, his glasses thick-lensed, and his accent defied analysis. He had neither the conviction nor personality usually associated with those in the advertising profession, and Nason continued to wonder about these things until the other took out his wallet and laid two fifty-dollar bills on the desk. When he heard the man say he would want about a half-dozen poses and would pay the balance due when the prints were delivered, Nason shook off his feeling of uncertainty. After all, this was a job and there was money to prove it.

  “If it’s for the Ames Company,” he said, “I won’t need any retainer.”

  “We would rather do it this way,” Fallon said. “It is for Ames, but you will bill us, please, and we will bill them. This way you can pay Miss Courtney—we have taken care of her exp
enses—for her time.” He nodded to Miss Heath. “Shall we get started?”

  Chapter Two

  FOR THE NEXT THREE HOURS Jerry Nason worked steadily with Linda Courtney and Irma Heath, and it was not an easy job because he had to do it all himself. He was working with his boom spot, a keg-light, and two vent-lights, with another keg and a floodlight on his background. He had to move them and move them again, now opening up one, now easing off another; he had to lug flats for new pictures, check his meter to keep his light balanced, pose the girl.

  And it was soon apparent that Nate Fallon’s share of the partnership consisted of talking business and very little else. For it was the woman who discussed poses and lighting and background, who selected the pieces to be used, and decided whether the pictures would be close-ups or not. Once the work was started, Fallon retired to the dressing-room. He had, he said, been out late the night before, and, since Miss Heath was the stylist and knew more about pictures than he did, he’d try to get a nap on the dressing-room couch.

  Jerry Nason continued to wonder about the little man as he worked; he wondered some about Irma Heath, though it was apparent from her conversation that she had worked with photographers before. She did not interfere, and her suggestions were infrequent but usually pertinent. Sometimes when he had a pose set to his liking she would step up and take a look through the ground glass before he took the shot, but more often she would simply nod and sit there watching him, a cigarette in her hand, a certain feline indolence in her manner. She was, he realized, a good-looking woman, amply curved but well-boned and with something provocative in the line and movement of her body and the way she crossed her legs. He had an idea that she was wise in many ways, that the heaviness of figure and slackness of her facial muscles came more from self-indulgence in some form or other than from advancing years. Her eyes bothered him some, for they seemed veiled and half-smiling as they surveyed him, but he had little time to speculate on this and thought mostly of his work and Linda Courtney.