“They’ll still get a jolt when the papers break this,” Mullen said.
Clane grunted. “If Grando were alive that might help. The thing I couldn’t understand was why Thorne killed Grando when Grando was working for him. Only Grando thought it was the other way around. When I realized that I saw the whole thing. It tips the play.”
Mullen looked from Clane to his empty cup. He said, “That’s fine coffee, Mrs. Clane.”
Marilyn beamed on him and poured him another cup.
Clane said, “Look, Bob saw Wickett get killed. He saw his father leave for Watson’s place. He went in and grabbed the Ediphone record that Wickett rigged up to put the bee on Natalie but which nearly did for Morgan instead. My guess is that Wickett turned the machine on when Natalie came in. But Morgan arrived unexpectedly to call Wickett about his relationship with Edith. Natalie ducked out of sight and Morgan’s conversation went on record in error.
“Natalie,” he continued, “was close by all of the time. She put the scandal sheet in Wickett’s desk and she planted the two marked fifty-dollar bills in his wallet.”
“Why?”
“It had to be that way,” Clane argued. “You found one bill on Watson. Thorne deliberately tied Watson and Wickett together to make their murders logical. Only he had to hurry to bump off Watson before Morgan got there. When Wickett gave Watson’s name to Morgan—as that Ediphone record shows—Thorne knew that Morgan would go to Watson’s. Because he was in a rush he had to turn the dirty work over to Natalie. Bob saw her messing around the corpse and naturally, more than ever, believed she had killed Wickett. You got that from him yourself. And that’s what he was facing her with when I walked in on them this noon.”
Mullen said, “And when Natalie faded Edith blundered in. She found the stuff she was supposed to find. Did she plant Natalie’s picture—the one you saw?”
Clane said, “No. By then Natalie had ducked. Grando was swarming in on Thorne’s order. He saw the body; he suspected Thorne but he couldn’t prove it. He kept his mouth shut because it gave him a possible pry to use on Thorne. He put the picture there because Thorne told him to. Thorne’s idea was to tie Natalie in, just in case. He was tying her in and he tied the Morgans in by swiping their gun and using it. Morgan had his cigar case out when Wickett was shot. He dropped without realizing it. Natalie was quick enough to dump it into Wickett’s pocket—and keep me crossed up for some time. Thorne also egged Morgan to accuse Wickett of the supposed love affair with Edith. Morgan was no fool as a business man but in the intrigue racket he was a baby. He fell for everything—up to a point.
“Thorne let Edith find that scandal sheet so she would know there was pressure on her. She wasn’t sure of anything about it except that Watson had a hand in making it. She concocted that story of Wickett using it against her simply because she wanted my help through sympathy and because he was too dead to refute her.”
“Paul Grando could have told her the truth about that,” Mullen said.
“Sure,” Clane admitted. “But he wouldn’t. Grando was playing for the same thing Ed Thorne was—power. He was going to use Edith for what he could but he wasn’t going to tell her anything if he could help it. He made a mistake when he left his cigar on Wickett’s desk. That told me he was there shortly before I came in. I tasted every cigar in town, I think, and it was his brand and his alone. A good cigar, too.”
Clane grinned. “Grando was the one who tailed me the day I saw the governor. He tipped off Thorne, but I’ll bet Thorne didn’t tell him who I was seeing. Thorne was smart enough to figure it out and he tried to pressure me out of town. But Grando wasn’t up in his state politics. He had to know as much as Thorne did or go down and out. That’s why he tried to sweat me.”
“And he went down and out,” Mullen said in his peculiar soft voice. He finished the last of the kraut on his plate, waved aside another helping and yawned widely.
“It’s three o’clock. Don’t you two ever sleep?”
Marilyn smiled impishly at him. “Did you, Lieutenant—at first?”
Mullen’s flush went unnoticed as a violent clamoring came from the other room. Marilyn jumped up and then sat down again, laughing.
“My clock,” she said. “My beautiful cathedral clock just exploded again.”
Mullen said, “That was a clock? What clock?”
“It’s a big clock.” She measured with her hands. “It plugs into the electric socket. And every hour, on the hour, it blows up. Every hour, day and night.”
“It makes enough noise to wake you up,” Mullen said. “A hell of a clock.”
Clane grinned. “It’s made that way—to wake you up. It’s a honeymoon clock, Mullen.”
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Copyright © 1946 by Phoenix Press.
Copyright © renewed 1974 by Louis Trimble.
Published by arrangement with Golden West Literary Agency.
All rights reserved.
Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.
eISBN 10: 1-4405-4195-7
eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-4195-7
Cover art © 123RF/Konrad Bak
You Can't Kill a Corpse Page 19