Fashioned for Murder

by George Harmon Coxe

  “Let’s talk to the janitor.”

  She glanced round, her look of triumph fading. The coolness came back in her eyes and in her voice. “I see,” she said. “You still don’t believe me, do you?”

  “Neither does the janitor,” Nason said. “According to him this room hasn’t been rented in six weeks.”

  She did not reply to this. She marched from the room, and he followed her, waiting for the elevator and then riding to the basement. The janitor saw them when they left the car. He had been fooling with a valve of some kind on a work bench, and now he put it down and came to meet them, a black-browed, truculent man in coveralls.

  “Look, Mac,” he said morosely before Nason could speak. “It ain’t gonna do you any good to ask more questions. I told you before, and—”

  “I remember,” Nason interrupted. “But the lady disagrees with you.”

  The janitor regarded Linda stonily. “I never saw her before.”

  “No,” said Linda. “You never did. But I worked with a photographer last Wednesday in six-o-eight. It was rented by a Mr. Fallon or a Miss Heath.”

  “Six-O-Eight ain’t been rented in six weeks.”

  “Couldn’t it have been rented without your knowing it?”

  “No.”

  “But I tell you I was there,” Linda protested. “All afternoon.”

  “And I say you wasn’t. Nobody was.”

  The girl glanced helplessly at Nason. He spread his hands, studying her, aware of her sincerity now as she stuck her chin out and prepared to argue anew with the janitor.

  Nason took up the cause. “Six-O-Eight is unlocked,” he said. “Couldn’t someone have come in Wednesday afternoon and used the place without your knowing it?”

  “No.” The janitor shook his head, his scowl spreading. “I make my rounds a couple of times a day. At night there’s a watchman.”

  “Okay,” Nason said, convinced that he would get nowhere and deciding to bluff. “If you don’t want to tell us, maybe you’ll tell the police.”

  “Get ’em.” The janitor turned away and went back to his bench. “Go ahead. I’ll tell them the same thing I told you.”

  Nason touched the girl’s arm, motioning her to the elevator. “He’s lying,” Linda said as they waited for the car.

  “Yeah.”

  “But—why, Jerry?”

  The way she said his name gave him a pleasant lift. He had forgotten how nice it sounded when she pronounced it. “Maybe,” he said, “because somebody paid him to lie. Let’s go try your other place.”

  The other place proved to be a brownstone fronton Lexington, a few blocks south of Grand Central. The first-floor door was unlocked, and Linda did not bother with the name cards on the mailboxes but marched into the lower hall and started up the worn stairs. The second-floor hall was short and narrow, and halfway along its length was a door.

  Linda started to press the doorbell, then stopped to lean close and look at the card tacked on the panel. “ ‘H. J. Hudson’,” she read and then turned to Nason, her lips parted. “That wasn’t here before.”

  “You can tell Hudson that. He’s not a bad guy.”

  She pressed the button. She seemed somehow to straighten her shoulders, as though gathering her forces for the coming ordeal, and presently the door was opened by a lanky, blond man wearing paint-stained slacks and an old sweater. When he saw Nason he smiled.

  “Back again?”

  “I told you I might be,” Nason said. “This is Miss Courtney.”

  Linda acknowledged the introduction and launched into her story. Hudson heard her out politely, glancing from time to time at Nason and nodding to the girl to indicate that he was following her.

  “I’m sorry,” he said when she finished. “But you must be mistaken. You see, I live here. Have for two years. I haven’t rented it and—”

  “Is there a studio at the back?” Linda said. weakly. “Why—yes.”

  “Could I see it?”

  “Certainly.”

  Hudson stepped back, and Linda, moving into the entryway, turned right and went unerringly down a corridor to the last room, a corner studio with high windows on two sides. Along one wall were two racks, one filled with stretched canvases, another with frames and rolled pictures; there were a large easel near the center and a bench filled with brushes and paints.

  “That was covered when I was here,” Linda said, pointing at the nude that stood on the easel. “It was moved to one side, about here, and had a cloth over it.”

  Nason gave the nude his attention. It showed a woman sitting in front of a mirror, a shawl across her thighs. Painted in a smooth and realistic technique, the body was full-blown and inclined to plumpness and seemed to Nason to be completed; the neck and head, however, had been merely blocked out, and there was no recognizable face.

  Hudson was shaking his head and smiling as Linda told him how she had used a bedroom to dress in. “You certainly make it sound as if you’d been here,” he said. “But I give you my word—”

  He let the sentence dangle, held by some swift change in Linda’s manner. Nason, following his gaze, saw that she was standing very still, her head tilted as though listening intently for some familial sound that only she could hear. The effect was to make Nason listen, too. There was no sound but the distant music of a piano.

  Somewhere in the neighborhood a hopeful pianist was practicing one of Chopin’s simple melodies, and Nason, recognizing it, sought another answer, for he had heard the piano vaguely ever since he had entered the room. He glanced at Hudson and was given a blank stare in return. Finally he said, “What is it?”

  “That piano,” Linda said. “That piano,” she said again, a little breathlessly now, as though it was of the utmost importance. “Do you hear it often?”

  “Constantly,” said Hudson and grinned.

  Linda’s expression remained rapt and remote. “And that piece?” she said. “Do you know it?”

  “I should,” Hudson said. “I hear it often enough.” He hesitated. “Is it Chopin’s Nocturne in E flat?”

  “You do hear it every day?”

  Hudson said he thought so; he was quite sure, as a matter of fact, and then Linda turned excitedly.

  “Yes,” she said, “because I heard that same piece over and over the day I posed here.”

  Nason was convinced. He had never really doubted her since they had started out, for he could find no good reason why she should lie to him. He had thought she might possibly have been mistaken in her addresses, but now he felt some of her same excitement and knew that there was an explanation somewhere if only he could find it.

  Over on Eighth Avenue it could be assumed that the janitor had been paid to lie. With Hudson it was different. Everything he had done suggested his sincerity and good humor. There was nothing of the conspirator about him, and he was, it seemed, as perplexed as Linda. Yet—

  “There has to be some answer,” Nason said, trying again.

  “It would seem so,” said the artist.

  “You never rented this studio, even for a day? You didn’t give anyone permission to use it last week? Are you sure you haven’t been away on a trip? Couldn’t someone have known about the place and used it anyway? One day would be enough.”

  “Friday,” Linda said. “Last Friday.”

  Hudson started to speak and a flush began slowly to suffuse his face. He wiped his hand over his mouth, his eyes sheepish. “You’re right, of course,” he said simply. “I was away Friday. I went to Connecticut to see a man around nine-thirty. I got back just after five. I’m terribly sorry, really. I guess I didn’t think of that as being away.”

  Linda laughed in her relief. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you very much. For preserving my sanity.”

  Hudson walked to the door with them, and now his gaze was troubled. “But that still doesn’t explain the rest of it, does it? I mean about what these people wanted here, and how they knew I wouldn’t be around.”

  Jerry Nason had be
en thinking the same thing but he did not say so. He did not want to go further into the matter with the artist now. He was reasonably sure that Hudson had been innocently involved, and, since it seemed wiser to put his efforts where they might possibly do some good, he thanked the man again and accompanied Linda down the stairs and out on the street.

  Chapter Seven

  IT WAS SHORTLY AFTER NINE when Jerry and Linda came back to her apartment, and the fact that they had had a cocktail and a rather good dinner was not apparent from the way they sat down and stared wearily about them.

  For, until they decided a cocktail was called for, they had been busy in their search for information regarding the Heath-Fallon combine, and the result of this was exactly nothing that they had not known when they left H. J. Hudson.

  Once outside his apartment they had made inquiries and found out that there was no janitor for the building but rather a community janitor who serviced several houses in the block. This man, a loquacious extrovert of uncertain age, answered all their questions freely and would have just as freely discussed the personal lives of his charges if they had given him the opportunity. But as for any specific information about the use of Hudson’s apartment, he had none. He certainly had not rented it and knew of no one who had used it but Mr. Hudson.

  Discussing this after they had left, Nason saw that there were two answers to the janitor’s story. Either he was like the man on Eighth Avenue, in that he had accepted money for the use of Hudson’s apartment and had lied to them, or he had not.

  When he told Linda about it she said, “I don’t think he did—lie, I mean.”

  “Neither do I,” said Nason. “But if he’s telling the truth where do we go from here? Just how would Heath or Fallon or anyone working for them know that Hudson was to be out of town on that particular day?”

  Linda did not know and said so. She said why didn’t they go see Mr. Carson and see what address Heath and Fallon had given him that first day when they had called to talk about an appointment? And so, in Mr. Carson’s presence, Nason offered a spur-of-the-moment story as to why he was interested in the couple, saying that he had been trying to get in touch with them about the pictures he had taken yesterday.

  Mr. Carson accepted the story and offered an address and a telephone number given him by Nate Fallon, which later proved to be a candy store on Lexington Avenue. The address, they discovered shortly afterward, was a garage on Forty-Eighth Street. And neither here nor anywhere in the block could they find anyone who had ever heard of Nate Fallon or Irma Heath.

  But, if there had been no progress made in this direction there had been another sort of progress that was very comforting to Jerry Nason. Forgotten, it seemed, was the quarrel of the previous day. Because they were together in some bit of intrigue that neither understood, personal differences were put aside while they discussed the mystery, and by cocktail time it was Linda and Jerry, a couple of young people troubled by a common cause and determined to solve it.

  Now Mason leaned back in his chair, his topcoat still on, and said, “Let’s try it once more and then I’ll go.”

  Linda sighed. She kicked off her pumps and pulled her feet up under her. She cupped her hand around her chin and smiled, and the lamplight burnished her hair and put her eyes in shadow—friendly eyes now that made Nason want to forget everything else. He wanted to get up and sit down on the floor beside her. He wanted to touch her, to feel her hand, and perhaps a little of what he felt showed in his face, because she wrinkled her nose at him and said, “Well, let’s start. Of course, whatever we say has already been said at dinner, but go ahead. Heath and Fallon are phonies. You take it from there.”

  “They had money to spend,” Nason said and regretfully brought his mind to the proper focus. “They were careful to plan things so their business seemed legitimate. Obviously one of them—and I think it was the woman—knew enough about models and photography and posing to fool Mr. Carson and everyone else. They paid you cash for your services and they had a proper story as to why they wanted you and those pieces. Of course if Carson had had enough sense to check back on them he would have found out that—”

  “You said that before,” Linda cut in wearily. “And I told you how easygoing he is. He takes lots of things for granted. He’s simply too nice a person to be suspicious of anyone, and if their story was plausible enough he wouldn’t dream of checking back. You didn’t check back when they telephoned you, did you?”

  Nason grinned at her because she was so right. He wanted to say, “But I’m getting started and I need business and I don’t like to appear fussy.” Instead he said, “I know it. I guess I’m not very bright. They sounded okay, they knew the Ames Company made cheap jewelry, and the woman knew enough of the vernacular to make me go along. When Fallon came out with that hundred-dollar retainer I figured they must be all right.”

  “What about the other photographer? The one they used here?”

  “He must have been hired for just those two jobs. There are thousands of them in New York, a lot of them not doing too well, and it wouldn’t be hard to hire a man to do whatever you wanted and keep his mouth shut about it. I think that’s what they did, and they probably paid the guy well, but I don’t know of any way we can trace him.”

  He paused, and when Linda did not prompt him, he said, “It’s obvious now that they went to a lot of trouble to cover up. They wanted to be sure no one could locate them. They bought the janitor on Eighth Avenue, making sure that if you ever tried to check on them he’d deny you had ever been there. The Hudson thing is too tough for me to figure right now, but for some reason they knew about that apartment and chose it instead of going back to Eighth Avenue and risking the chance of somebody noticing them in a room that was supposed to be empty. Don’t ask me why they went to Boston.”

  “They wanted a one-man studio,” Linda said.

  “I wonder why? Unless it was because they only had one man and a model to watch—in this case, you and me. Maybe they wanted to get you out of town. They wanted jewelry photographs and a lot of it is made in that part of the country.” He looked at her steadily a moment. “It’s got to be that,” he said.

  “Got to be what, Jerry?”

  “Got to be those costume pieces. Why else should they—”

  “But I’ve told you they weren’t valuable.”

  “Tell me again what your mother said.”

  Linda repeated what she had told him in Boston about her mother’s refusal to let the pieces be worn. “Except in the house. She said they looked cheap, and I guess they did.”

  Nason thought it over, brow furrowed and eyes darkly blue. “How far back do you remember them?”

  “Why”—the girl considered a moment—“I suppose I was about thirteen or so.”

  “You lived here in New York?”

  “Yes. That was after my father died. I used to like to play with them sometimes and I remember I called them rhinestones. I’d heard the word and somehow I associated it with everything that was bright and shiny and pretty. Mother gave me a jewel box of my own—a little girl’s jewel box—and sometimes when I teased she would let me keep the pieces there.” She laughed absently. “I always called them my rhinestones, even after I grew up and wanted to wear them. But you’re wrong about them being valuable, Jerry,” she said. “You must be. Because if they were, wouldn’t Mother have written me about them or left some word in her will?”

  Nason was forced to admit the logic of such reasoning. “Yes,” he said, “unless she didn’t know they were valuable.”

  “Oh, but—” Linda stopped short. Whatever it was she had in mind remained unsaid.

  “Did she die suddenly?”

  “If you mean before she had time to write anything, no. She had a bad heart attack while I was in the Philippines. The doctor told her the truth. He said it would only be a matter of time before she had another, and five weeks later that attack came. She didn’t write me about it because she knew I couldn’t get back, and she cou
ldn’t tell when the attack would come but—she did know. There was plenty of time for her to have left some word about the pieces.”

  “And you found them here, with her things?”

  Linda shook her head. “They were in my old jewel box. You see, she must have remembered how I used to like to play with them and keep them in my jewel box, and sometime after that first attack she must have put them away for me in my trunk.”

  “Here? In this apartment?”

  “No. The one we had before I went away. When I knew I was going in the Red Cross we decided to move to a smaller apartment—this one. And because there wasn’t too much room I asked the janitor if I could leave one of my trunks in the basement there, and that’s where it is now—with some odds and ends and summer clothing I haven’t needed—”

  She flinched as the buzzer sounded, and Nason was startled, too, by the very unexpectedness of it. He sat up, and the buzzer was still going, and now Linda was getting her legs out from under her and trying to move from the chair.

  They stood up together and the sound of the buzzer filled the room, a persistent, angry summons, as though someone had jammed his thumb on the button and was leaning on it. “All right, all right,” Nason called, and might just as well have saved his breath for all the good it did.

  Linda went by him in her stockinged feet. She grabbed the doorknob and turned it. The buzzer stopped, and as she pulled at the door something forced it violently inward so that she had to jump out of the way.

  The man came in fast, nearly knocking them down. He wore a blue coat and a gray felt hat. His head was down, and his body had the forward incline of one who has lost his balance and is trying desperately to regain it before falling on his face.

  Nason stepped forward, bracing himself so he could catch the man and steady him. He was vaguely aware of Linda’s startled gasp. He wondered, as he reached out, if this was the man who had been following her. Then, by some miracle of muscular contortion, the man staggered and pulled himself erect before Nason could touch him, his head rocking back.