Murder with Pictures

by George Harmon Coxe

  “Move,” he added dryly. “Get your picture and the first thing we know you’ll be sayin’ we beat you up.”

  “I’ll say it anyway, and don’t you forget it.”

  Murdock took three pictures of the room from various angles, got two more shots of the living-room and dining-balcony from the doorway. As he put away his paraphernalia he said:

  “Well, I’m much obliged and—”

  “That’s only part of it,” Bacon said. “You got your pictures and now I’m going to tell you what I know, and I’ll tell you why.” He hesitated, seemed to weigh his words.

  “In the first place, you’re the only button-pusher—the only newspaper guy I know, who don’t clown around with the idea that he can outsmart the whole detective bureau; you can keep your mouth shut and sometimes you get an idea. In the second place, you were here; you know most of the people who were here, and you’re already in this mess. But the main reason is that I know you’ve got the sort of luck that falls smack into the breaks. And it looks like we’re going to need plenty of it. Come here.”

  He took Murdock by the arm, led him to the living-room. Keogh followed them, called to the plain-clothesman and told him to watch Tripp. They moved across the living-room to a hallway to the left of the dining-balcony, but at the living-room level. Bacon opened the second door on the left.

  It was a beautifully appointed bedroom done in cream and silver but Murdock was only vaguely aware of this. His eyes fastened on Rita Redfield, who lay fully dressed and sprawled across the modern, low-slung bed.

  Murdock said: “What’s the matter with her?” but his gaze did not shift. His lean dark face was somber.

  “Passed out, if you ask me,” Keogh said. “Do we get the breaks?”

  Bacon blew out his breath in an impatient snort. “We couldn’t wake her. The manager here called in for a doctor. He hasn’t shown up yet. Come on.” Again he took Murdock’s arm, pulling him down the hall to an adjoining room.

  The color scheme here was blue: hangings, furniture, walls. On a huge period bed lay another woman—a girl, rather. She lay face-down so that the back of a sleek bobbed head, and legs exposed to the thighs by a hitched-up dress, were the chief features of her appearance. Murdock recognized her at once as one of the entertainers, a singer, and he was immediately aware from the utterly relaxed position that her trouble was the same as Rita Redfield’s.

  “Two, huh?” he said absently, and when Bacon asked who she was, he told what he knew.

  “Boy,” Keogh breathed, “would I like to get in on a party like this some day.”

  “Sure,” growled Bacon. “Who wouldn’t?” He led Murdock back to the library and nodded at the plain-clothesman, who withdrew. “Here’s what we got,” he began. “I’ll play ball with you. You’d better come clean with me.”

  He began to pace back and forth across the library, head down, chin on chest, talking as he walked.

  “We get the call from the operator downstairs. He thinks the party broke up about three-thirty. After that he dozed off. He says he always does early mornings, that he’s trained to wake up if anyone comes in or anything. Anyway, the first thing he noticed was the buzz of the switchboard. The light flashed from this apartment. That was about five after four. Now here’s the funny part.”

  Bacon stopped pacing and faced Murdock, his gray eyes narrowed, thoughtful. “The operator was dozing, see? Leaning back in his chair. It took him maybe fifteen seconds or so to sit up and reach for the plug, but before he could make the connection the light went out.”

  Bacon hesitated. Murdock’s gaze slid to the carved, Jacobean desk placed diagonally across one corner of the room, then to Redfield, who lay with his feet about a foot from the edge of the desk. The telephone was placed at this corner.

  “The kid waited a bit,” Bacon went on, “but the light didn’t flash again. He wanted to show that he was there on the job, in case Redfield made a complaint that he couldn’t get a connection, so he plugged in, gave the phone a quick ring. Nobody answered.” Bacon moved his right hand in a resigned arc. “So the kid figured it was a mistake.”

  “You think,” Murdock said slowly, eyes still on the desk, that the phone was knocked off in the scuffle—or maybe when Redfield was killed? That the killer picked it up as quick as he could?”

  “That’s what I think now.”

  Murdock nodded at the telephone, then stared at Bacon, who guessed immediately what he meant and shook his head. “No prints.”

  “How’d you learn about this? Who found him?”

  “That,” sighed Bacon, “is even funnier.”

  He doubled his right fist, looked at it, then swung his arm down and clasped both hands behind his back. His voice held an undertone of weary exasperation as he continued.

  “About four-thirty, just after the girl came back in, some man called up, asked for Redfield’s apartment. He said it was important, so the operator plugged in. He couldn’t get an answer. The fellow on the wire was insistent. He kept after the kid to ring. And the kid did ring, for about five minutes. He says he could hear Redfield’s phone buzzing. Well, this was only about thirty minutes after the other flash from the apartment. The kid got kind of worried. He finally argued himself into waking the manager. The manager went upstairs and couldn’t get an answer to the door-buzzer; he tried the door. It was open and he took a look.”

  Murdock frowned. “He had a lot of nerve.”

  “Not so much. He knew that Redfield had let the servants go for the night, and the operator told him about this girl that come in. He was sure she had been at the party in the first place, and he thought she went back there. And don’t forget Redfield and his wife were here, he knew that. But still no one answered the phone.”

  Murdock moved to the desk, slid one thigh over the corner, and took out his cigarettes. Keogh had knelt beside Redfield and was looking at the bluish, fractured index finger. Murdock offered him a cigarette, passed the pack to Bacon, who shook his head and kept scowling.

  “Well, what else have you got?” Murdock wanted to know.

  “Besides the girl,” Bacon chafed, “besides the girl and Spike, here”—he nodded at the still glowering Tripp—“one other guy came back here. Your friend Howard Archer.”

  “My friend?” Murdock’s brows came up.

  “He came up here, or anyway he came through the downstairs lobby ahead of the girl—around four-fifteen. The kid downstairs just got one eye open in time to see him. And get this, the Kid didn’t see him go out and—”

  Bacon broke off as Mahady came to the door and ushered in two white-coated internes with a stretcher. The room was silent until the body had been removed. During that time Murdock thought briefly of Archer.

  A typical man-about-town type, a play-boy, Archer was born to a position in society. His parents had been killed in an automobile accident six months previous, so that he had a small fortune and more freedom than ever to follow his own inclinations, which seemed to revolve about a penchant for first nights, floor tables, and night life in general. There had been at least one breach-of-promise suit. It was common knowledge that he had been unduly attentive to Rita Redfield for some time.

  Belonging to the same social set, these two had, in a sense, grown up together. There had been an interim when Archer was in Europe, and during that time Rita had suddenly married Redfield. The fact that this marriage coincided quite closely with the acquittal of her father from a fraud charge in which he was brilliantly defended by Mark Redfield—this fact, plus the fact that Redfield rarely accepted cases of this kind, gave the gossips something to talk about. Now—

  “So there we are,” Bacon broke in on Murdock’s thoughts. “We’re gonna question everybody that was on this party. But Tripp and—”

  “Where does he fit?” Murdock asked.

  “Tell him, Spike,” Bacon said.

  “Nuts,” gasped Tripp.

  “See?” Keogh shook his head sadly. “That’s the kind of co-operation we get.”
>
  Bacon said, “He’s got a girl friend,” and eyed Tripp sardonically. “He says he came to take her home. I don’t know how he happened to come at four-forty-five, but—”

  “Could you check on that?” Murdock cut in.

  “Yeah.”

  “Then how can you hook him up with the job?”

  “Plenty of ways, and it’ll work for some of these others, maybe.” Bacon’s voice got thin, sharp, like his eyes. “There’s a back door to this house, and fire stairs. And Spike’s just dumb enough—if he did have something to do with this—to come back in the front way and try and pull it as an alibi or something.”

  Murdock grinned. “What did you run for?”

  Tripp lifted sullen eyes. “Who wouldn’t?” he snarled. “What’s the take in being a punching-bag for a flock of dumb coppers? I’m waiting out in the hall when a load of ’em spill out of the elevator. What the hell? I’m right by the maid’s closet and I duck. I want to know what it’s about before I get tangled for a fall guy or something.”

  “Who was this girl you came for? What did she do?”

  “She was a singer.”

  “What did she look like?”

  “Look like?” For a moment it appeared that the question was beyond Tripp’s powers of comprehension. “Why—well, she’s kinda short, black hair and, hell, I—”

  “What kind of a dress?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t bring her. I was just gonna take her home.”

  Murdock turned to Bacon. “Has he seen that girl out there?”

  “No. You don’t believe him, do you?”

  “He could be right,” Murdock said dryly. “Why don’t you give him a look.”

  Mahady stuck his head in the door. “The doc’s out here, the one for the dames.”

  “Take him out there. Tell him to see if he can’t snap them out of it so we can talk to them.” He turned to Tripp. “Go on out and take a look.”

  Bacon muttered a throaty curse, took off his hat again, and mopped his forehead.

  “You birds,” he fumed, looking at Murdock, “will eat this up. But for us it’s a mess. Front-page stuff, huh? And”—he hesitated, slapped his hat back on—“say, whose party was this, anyway? I got the idea that Girard was so tickled he missed the chair that he threw it for Redfield. Or was Redfield all het up about the fifty-thousand fee he tucked away?”

  “It was Girard’s party.”

  “Then what’s it doing here?”

  “Have you been through the place?” Murdock asked flatly.

  “Sure,” interrupted Keogh. “And what a lay-out. Eight rooms and three baths.”

  “Well,” Murdock shrugged, “there’s your answer. Room. Girard’s a bachelor and he’s got a small place.”

  “Yeah.” Bacon pulled at his straight nose. “And I wish,” he added thoughtfully, “I could tie Girard in with this. I’ll check him, all right, but it can’t be figured. He never spent fifty thousand any better in his life. He owed Redfield plenty. Without him on the case, the D. A.’d had his name on the chair just as sure as hell.”

  Then, and not until then, did Murdock remember. The thought slashed into his brain and left chagrin in its wake. He should have remembered it before and—

  He took a breath, said: “There’s one thing more.” He grinned a bit sheepishly, continued defensively: “And don’t tell me I’ve been holding out on you, because it isn’t that. I’m just dumb. Sam Cusick was here tonight.”

  “Sam—” Keogh went slack-jawed with amazement. “Well, for—”

  Bacon’s face flushed. “Spill it!”

  Murdock hurriedly told about the trip to his apartment with Hestor, of seeing Cusick in the hall. “I didn’t tie it up, that’s all,” he finished, and meant what he said. “I was thinking about something else then and it didn’t register much. That’s the truth, Bacon.”

  The Lieutenant moved to a chair upholstered in red leather, dropped into it, a weary and exasperated figure. He took off his hat again, turned it around, shaking his head sadly at it for a moment. Then he looked up at Murdock from under his brows.

  “All right,” he growled, and clapped the hat back on his head. “I guess I’ve got to believe you. And it makes a difference.” He straightened in the chair, and his voice got crisp, decisive.

  “It hooks up. Girard murders Joe Cusick—or, anyway, he got tried for it. And both Cusicks have been after him because he’s the guy that put them away for four years on the extortion rap. And the main reason they got the four years is that Redfield would not take their case. So they hate him for that. They get out a couple of months ago. Girard kills Joe … in self-defense, we’ll say. But Redfield is the one who gets Girard clear. Sam is nothing but a hood, never was anything else. So why not? It’s Girard’s first night out of jail. Sam figures to get Redfield for two things: not taking his case, and springing Girard. By gawd, he’s liable to go gunning for Girard, too.”

  Bacon came out of the chair, strode to the telephone, and swept it from the desk. A moment later he was barking commands to someone at headquarters. When he hung up he spun about, his face flushed and holding a satisfied expression.

  “What’d I tell you about that luck of yours?”

  Keogh grunted: “If I had it I’d—” but Bacon ignored him and hurried on.

  “Now we’re getting some place. We’ll pick him up, and when we do—”

  He broke off suddenly as Mahady appeared in the doorway. The detective jerked his head backward to indicate the presence of someone behind him and came into the room, stepping aside. A plump, bald man in a dark suit moved into the opening. Beside him, and leaning on one arm, was Rita Redfield.

  Her face was worn and haggard—so deathly pale that the lips glared scarlet and the rouge stood out on her cheeks like fever spots. Her eyes were wide, but dull—the eyes of a woman struggling against extreme weariness or impending sickness. Yet for all of this her chin was up and, somehow, defiant.

  Bacon moved towards her, took off his hat. “I’m sorry we—”

  “What is it?” Her voice was flat, lifeless. “You’re from the police?”

  Bacon nodded.

  She said: “But what’s happened?” and her voice rose.

  Bacon tightened his lips and took a breath. “It’s your husband. He was shot—about an hour ago.”

  “Shot?” The word was a husky whisper, but the tone was still flat, indicating that she had not grasped the significance of Bacon’s statement. “But—then, where is he?”

  “The body’s been removed.”

  “Body?” she echoed hollowly. And then her eyes went very wide, her voice shrilled hysterically. “He’s dead!”

  Bacon nodded and Rita Redfield stared at him, spoke just one word. She did not exactly speak it, she whispered it, faintly, almost inaudibly. But the room was so still that both syllables were clear-cut, definite: “Howard.” Then her eyelids fluttered. She sighed and Mahady and the doctor caught her as she swayed and slumped forward, unconscious.

  7

  MURDOCK LET HIMSELF into his apartment with his key. The girl he had left in the shower was curled up in the wing chair, and he saw her facial expression relax with recognition. She waited, motionless, while he set down his photographic gear. He walked over to her, said: “Do you want a drink?”

  “If I can have a very short one.”

  He went into the kitchen and mixed two drinks. He came back, handed her the smaller one, offered her the jade cigarette-box. She accepted and he held a light, then moved the club chair by the windows and sat down.

  She followed him with her eyes, finally spoke. “Have they found out?” she said jerkily. “Do they know who did it?”

  Murdock shook his head negatively. He put his half-empty glass on a window-sill. “You’d better tell me about it.”

  The girl hesitated, looked away. “You mean, how—why I came here the way I did?”

  Murdock did not answer. His face was somber, but there was a trace of a smile at the corners
of his eyes as he watched her, sized her up.

  She was more attractive now than she had been upstairs. Her tanned face was clean now, without make-up. The lips were just as red, but now they looked soft and moist; her teeth, surrounded by the darkness of her skin, were so white they glistened. Her hauteur, her coldness, had vanished. She was a little girl now, or maybe it was the green dressing-gown which swallowed her and made her seem so.

  She was not a pretty, fluffy, pastel type; slim, tailored, rather. Young, fresh-looking now, vital, with a vitality that seemed to be smoldering and threatening to break its bonds. For all this, she was utterly feminine; the folds of his dressing-gown could not hide the curves of her body. It was caught tightly at the waist, he saw, and the long V of the neckline was deep. Shadows played there at the base, softened the rising arches of her firm breast, which, barely visible, curved off into the green flannel. He did not think she was aware that the V was so deep, because when he did not answer and she looked at him her pose remained natural, completely unaffected.

  “I came back to the Redfield apartment for my bag,” she said and her voice was low, pleasingly husky. “I suppose it was silly. It was terribly late, I know, but I thought someone would be up. I pressed the buzzer and tried the door. It was open and I stepped inside and—”

  Murdock stood up, crossed to the telephone. As he lifted the instrument, the girl sat up in the chair, alarm flooding her face.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Call the Lieutenant.”

  “No. You—”

  “So far I’ve trusted you, haven’t I?” Murdock asked flatly.

  “Of course and—”

  “But I can’t take any more chances if you’re going to lie about it. I’ve got to know where I stand.”

  The flush in the girl’s face was evident in spite of the tan. “All right,” she said weakly. “I thought—how did you know?”

  Murdock put down the telephone and went back to his chair. He took another sip of his drink, stared out across the river before he spoke.

  “You didn’t have a bag when you came here. And the police didn’t find anything like that lying around upstairs.” He put down his glass, inhaled, and smoke came out with his words. “You went back and you saw Redfield and you got trapped up there. All right. Now I want to know why you came back.”