Murder with Pictures

by George Harmon Coxe

  “The police?” Murdock’s brows lifted in mock surprise. “She’s of age, isn’t she?”

  “But you’re married and—”

  “That’s right.” Murdock’s seriousness was sheer mockery. “But under the circumstances—she came here of her own accord—the one thing I can think of is circumstantial evidence of what the papers call a statutory offense. Drag her through that sort of a mess if that’s the sort of a heel you are.”

  Murdock stepped round Archer and opened the door. His face was flushed now, the skin at the cheek-bones white and taut.

  “So far,” he warned, “I’m the only one here who’s kept his temper. Get out before I lose it.”

  He stood staring at the panels for some seconds after Archer had slammed out of the room, and his sigh was like a shrug as he turned and started slowly across the room. He went down the hall, knocking at the bedroom door and calling: “All right, he’s gone,” as he passed.

  At the kitchenette cupboard he took out the Scotch-bottle and a glass. He poured a drink and took it neat in an absent sort of way, not bothering to replace the bottle. When he came back down the hall, the bedroom door was still closed and he knocked again. This time her voice called: “Come in.”

  Murdock hesitated wonderingly, then took the knob. It turned freely and the door opened. He took a step forward, stopped on the threshold as his nerves tightened and something whipped the blood through his veins with an accelerated speed and left his ears pounding.

  Joyce Archer was in bed. She had pulled the covers up under her armpits so that there was exposed only the tanned shoulders, two thin straps of heavy-looking tea-rose silk. Her blond hair, fanned out on the pillow, framed a face that seemed unnaturally pale.

  “You can’t—” Murdock began.

  “I can.” This stubbornly.

  He did not answer then. He looked away, saw the tweed suit draped on the chair-back, some silken things on top of it. He took out a cigarette, but he did not light it. After a while he stepped to the bed, sat down on the near side, away from her.

  “So that was the reason,” he said and made his voice casually humorous. “Spite.”

  “It’s nauseating,” she answered quickly. “The way he’s been chasing her. Oh, I suppose it’s not his fault entirely. I know her. But even now, after what happened last night—You’d think this was the one thing they had been waiting for.”

  “You’re not very complimentary,” Murdock mused. “He wouldn’t listen to you, and you had a fight, and you got a mad on and came rushing over here with your dramatics.”

  “I hate you!” Joyce Archer flushed and flipped over in bed, her head turned away from him.

  “And,” Murdock went on, unperturbed, “I almost thought you came here because you wanted to. Suppose I had believed you? Suppose your brother had not come to explain for you?”

  She turned back. “Well?”

  “Oh!” Murdock smiled a little then. “So you were willing to go that far to spite him.”

  “I’m going to stay right here,” she said obstinately.

  “All right.” Murdock stood up. “You’re going to stay right here until you bring him to his senses. That it?” When she did not answer he went on slowly as though to accent his words: “Well, if that’s the way it is—”

  He came round the foot of the bed to the closet door, opened it. He took off his coat and waistcoat, hung them on a clothes-hanger. He pulled out the knot of his tie, took it off, and began to unbutton his shirt. Then he reached into the closet and brought out a pair of tan pyjamas and the green dressing-gown.

  In all this time he had not looked at her. Then he turned suddenly, in time to catch her expression before it changed. The blue eyes were very round. The bedside lamp made non-existent hollows with the shadows of her cheek-bones; the red, full mouth was slightly open. When it closed under his glance the effect of her face was an unnatural tenseness and he grinned, genuinely then, and sat down on the bed.

  “You’re scared, aren’t you?”

  “W-well,” she stuttered defensively, “wh-who wouldn’t be?”

  “I’m glad you are.” The corners of Murdock’s eyes wrinkled in a grin that was unusual for him—it seemed a bit wistful. “And you’re a good egg, and I hope I’m not that much of a mug. The odds have got to be more even.”

  There may have been a trace of disappointment along with the relieved surprise in Joyce Archer’s glance. Murdock could not be sure. He stood up, reached into the closet again, and hauled out a blanket. At the door he stopped.

  “The davenport is long enough. I measured it before I bought it.”

  He opened the door. “You know, I think I’m beginning to like you.”

  12

  WHEN KENT MURDOCK reached the office the next morning, Phil Doane waylaid him and tagged along to the photographic department.

  “Got anything new?” he asked.

  “On what?”

  “Why, the Redfield thing.”

  “No,” Murdock said, “and I’m not expecting anything.” He stretched out in the chair. That davenport wasn’t as good as he thought. His neck was stiff. Joyce had been fast asleep when he left—and the door was unlocked. He had peeked in at her, then tiptoed in for another suit, but she had not wakened. He realized Doane was talking and the interruption on his more pleasurable thoughts irked him. “You’re getting to be a pest.”

  “Aw, now—” Doane pleaded. “I just want to play along. You’re one of those guys that’s always stumbling onto hot pictures—and there’s always gotta be a story, ain’t there? If I—”

  “All right, all right,” Murdock cut in impatiently, but not unkindly. “If I get anything, I’ll let you know. And if you’ve really got enough drive to help out, go find Spike Tripp for me. I want to talk to him.”

  “He’s as good as found,” Doane said.

  This statement was a gross exaggeration. For the next two days developments in the Redfield murder were of no importance. Newspapers were filled with stories headed with variations of: CUSICK STILL AT LARGE and ARREST EXPECTED IN REDFIELD CASE. Murdock’s assignments were routine: a fire, the results of automobile accidents, the arrival of an Italian cruiser.

  Then on the third morning Doane had barged into the office, his face flushed and eager. “I found Tripp,” he gasped.

  Murdock snapped aside his newspaper. “Where?”

  “Down at Teddy’s place.”

  Murdock stood up, grabbed for his hat and coat. Undecided upon taking his regular camera and bulky plate-case, he compromised by taking his small camera, which was still in his desk.

  Doane said: “Can I go?”

  “I suppose so,” Murdock answered, but paid little attention to him. They went out to the corridor, started down towards the elevators side by side. An office boy rushed out just as they were getting into the car.

  “Hey!” He grabbed Doane. “Van Husan’s looking for you.”

  The young reporter went all to pieces. He sputtered, looked pleadingly at Murdock, who had entered the car.

  The office boy said: “He’s waiting.”

  The elevator boy said: “Make up your mind.”

  Doane turned away, a forlorn figure, his rubicund face melancholy, dejected. “Don’t forget, now,” he begged, “if you run into anything.”

  Teddy’s place, just off Stuart Street, between Broadway and Eliott, is a long, narrow, gloomy room opening on an alley. The bar is old, heavy-looking; the floor is a linoleum imitation of tile, and the half-dozen tables at the rear are of the kitchen variety with no covering. The brightness of daylight was in Murdock’s eyes when he entered the place, and at first the only thing he was conscious of was the smell of stale tobacco smoke and beer.

  When the eyes adjusted themselves, he saw that aside from a solitary beer-drinker who was scowling into his glass at the bar, the only other customer was a man at the rearmost table next to the door. That man was Spike Tripp, and he looked suspiciously at Murdock, seemed uncertain about his nex
t move.

  Murdock’s attitude was confidence itself. He said: “Hello, Spike,” cordially and pulled out a chair.

  “What’re you drinking?”

  The invitation helped. Spike thawed out a bit, grunted a greeting, adding: “The same—rye.”

  Murdock called the order, taking a beer himself. He said: “Where you been hiding?” as he sat down.

  “Me? I’ve been around. Why?”

  Murdock reached for a cigarette. He was not ready to say why until Tripp’s suspicions were allayed. The main reason, he admitted to himself, was little more than a hunch. Just something that Cusick had said that night when Doane had scared him off: “There are two guys who know where I was last night.” If Spike Tripp was one of them—

  A waiter with a dirty white apron and long pointed mustaches brought the drinks, and Murdock paid him. He gestured a silent toast to Tripp, tasted the beer, and studied the fellow over the top of his glass.

  Born Tsiknas, Spike Tripp had been a fair welterweight until the grind of training became too much of an ordeal. Then, because work was anathema to him, he had drifted about, trying whatever easy-money chance presented itself. His activities in past years had been many and varied, all of them questionable. It is doubtful if any one person knew the extent of his endeavors, but his police record—a not particularly vicious one as police records go—gave some indication of his natural talents.

  He had been a bootlegger of the split-case variety. He had been a collector for a nigger pool impresario; he had served an apprenticeship with slot machines until two rival factions went to war with guns. Spike did not like the heat. He got out. More recently he had been a racetrack tout and his current venture was on his own: running a tipster sheet on the Rockingham meeting.

  The police and the underworld have a word for the type: punk. Ordinarily good-natured, reasonably harmless, he was a slow-witted, thickset fellow in his middle thirties, broad-jawed, with no bridge to his nose, and the leathery skin of his face decorated at one cheek-bone with a strip of adhesive tape.

  “Why?” Murdock repeated the word as he put down his glass. “Because I didn’t get a chance to talk to you that night at Redfield’s place. I heard you were out on bail and—”

  “Sure. They got nothing on me. I told ’em that. But those guys ain’t happy unless they’re workin’ over some poor mug like me that ain’t got any influence. Take a gander at this”—he pointed to the strip of tape on his cheek-bone—“always the smarties, markin’ a guy up.”

  “It was a raw deal,” Murdock said, making his voice sympathetic. “But, at that, it must’ve looked fishy, your hiding up in that hall closet.”

  “You’ve got to hide from guys like Keogh. How the hell did I know somebody had bumped Redfield off? Would I been hangin’ around there waitin’ to get picked up if I’d known it? What do they use for brains down there at headquarters, anyway?”

  Murdock took another sip of beer.

  “Did you try to run out on them?”

  “Well—” Spike shrugged. “I see all these dicks swarmin’ over the place—”

  “From that closet you could see Redfield’s door okay, huh?”

  “Sure. I could see the door and the elevator and the back stairs, and when I lamp the coppers, I lay low till things quiet down. As soon as the hall is empty, I take a sneak for the back stairs. Only I’m one of those guys that never gets a break. Keogh sticks his pan into the hall just as I pass Redfield’s door, and there I am.”

  “They’d probably got you anyway,” Murdock said. “They would have searched the halls and closets.” He hesitated, continued casually: “But from where you were, you could see everybody that went in and out of the party, huh?”

  “Sure, I—” Spike broke off as though he had chewed off the next word. He picked up his whisky glass, tossed down the drink, and reached for the chaser of water. When he looked up again, his little eyes were shifty, wary. His voice was suddenly suspicious.

  “You’re tryin’ to prove something, huh? What?”

  Murdock sought another answer, picked up an idea out of thin air, and went ahead with it, his voice confidential.

  “Listen. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a cop. And right now I’m not even a photographer. But I’ve had some trouble with my wife. I was at that party for a while. Girard was there with her. I thought maybe you saw them come out.”

  Tripp seemed to relax, and his voice sounded relieved.

  “Oh, I get it. Well—” He hesitated, fiddled with his glass, and seemed undecided. When he went on, however, there was no trace of uncertainty in his manner. “I didn’t see ’em. It’s like I told the cops. I didn’t come in till quarter of five and I—”

  The suddenness with which Tripp stopped the sentence jerked Murdock’s eyes from the table. The man’s gaze was riveted on some distant object over his shoulder; his feet shifted and both hands were on the table edge, white-knuckled, tense. He sucked in his breath and pushed up before Murdock could turn around, pushed up and spun away from the table into the adjoining doorway with a feline quickness that was born of his ring training.

  The doorway was empty when Murdock said: “Hey!” He grunted disgustedly and turned around. A tall and rather thin silhouette was moving through the street entrance. Murdock recognized the outlines after a moment and went to meet the man who was moving slowly towards him.

  He said: “He saw you coming.”

  “Tripp?” Lieutenant Bacon stopped dead still, fairly shouted the word. Then, cursing under his breath, he ran down the length of the room and out the back door.

  Murdock was waiting at the bar when Bacon returned two or three minutes later, and the Lieutenant took him by the arm. “Why didn’t you stop him?” he charged. “Damn it all! What the hell good are you if you can’t—”

  “Wait a minute,” Murdock said flatly, and pulled his arm free. “He was facing the door; I wasn’t. He saw you first and he was out before I knew what it was all about. If I can help, okay. But I’m a photographer, not a cop.”

  Bacon spun about without a word, glared at the bartender, and started for the door. Murdock followed him out, and when Bacon got in the rear seat of the police phaeton, Murdock crowded in behind him without waiting for an invitation.

  Bacon did not seem to object, did not seem conscious that Murdock was beside him until after he had given the uniformed chauffeur an address on Hemenway Street.

  The car pulled out from the curb sharply, rolled down the one-way street and round the block to Stuart Street. Neither man spoke until they crossed the railroad bridge and angled into Huntington Avenue. Then Bacon, whose annoyance had subsided somewhat, leaving his lean face impassive, turned and spoke suspiciously.

  “What were you talking to him for?”

  “I had a hunch,” Murdock said evenly, “a hunch that maybe he saw more than he told you about. I wanted to see if I could get him to admit he was in that upstairs hall at any time before a quarter of five.”

  “How long you had the hunch?” pressed Bacon sharply.

  “A couple days. But I couldn’t locate him and—”

  “You held out.” Bacon’s tone was irritated, accusing.

  “Held out?” exploded Murdock. “Don’t be silly. It was just a half-baked idea. If I ran to you with every one I got, I’d run myself ragged; you too.”

  “Maybe,” Bacon said morosely, “only this time you were right.”

  “Oh.” Murdock’s brows knotted at the bridge of his nose.

  “Yeah.” Bacon leaned back on the seat, hesitated as they turned right on Massachusetts Avenue. “If I could do all the checking myself I could get some place, maybe. But no, I let some fat-head do routine stuff and where does it get me? In jams.”

  Bacon did not elaborate, and seconds later the driver slanted in towards the curb, stopped in front of a gray brick apartment house of four stories, one of a long row that, no longer trying to be smart, now seemed content to rest upon its uncertain age and a reputation of reasonable re
spectability.

  The girl who opened the door of Apartment 3-B was the entertainer whom Murdock had last seen lying on the bed in the blue room of Redfield’s apartment. She was small, trim-figured, and young-looking. Her black hair was cut short so that it lay upon her round head like enamel. The face, pinched slightly, powdered a bit too heavily, was pretty in a common sort of way.

  She said: “What do you want?” and her dark eyes were wary.

  “We want to come in a minute,” Bacon said. He said it so casually that the girl did not realize that he was putting his words into action until he had eased her aside and was half-way through the door.

  The girl’s eyes glazed angrily then and she tried to resist, but fell back under the steady pressure of Bacon’s shoulder on the panel.

  “You can’t bust in here,” she raged. “I’ve got friends and—”

  Bacon said: “Hello, Spike,” and then Murdock caught a glimpse of the fellow over Bacon’s shoulder.

  The girl quieted down immediately. Murdock shut the door and she followed Bacon, who moved over to the plush-covered, hot-looking sofa and sat down on one arm at the opposite end from Spike Tripp.

  Murdock glanced around a small, over-furnished living-room that tried hard to be smart and failed miserably. He circled around by the windows at the right side, dropped down in an imitation Windsor chair in front of a cheaply veneered Governor Winthrop desk. The girl remained standing, but the rise and fall of her solid-looking bosom was rapid, spasmodic.

  Tripp shook his head wearily. “Christ! You guys are worse’n the itch!”

  Bacon said: “What did you run out on me for down at Teddy’s?”

  “Run out?” Tripp’s brows lifted and made an expression of surprise. “It wasn’t that. Only I had a date with Marie”—he glanced at the girl and grinned—“and I thought you might start askin’ me a lot of questions, and then I’d be late, and Marie always makes trouble when I’m late.”

  Bacon’s face got red. He looked at Murdock and shook his head.

  Tripp continued innocently: “What was it you wanted, Lieutenant?”