by Frank Kane
“No moth made that hole, Lessy. Help me lift this tapestry away from the wall.”
“I don't know if I should, sir. Mr. Merritt was very particular about anyone touching that tapestry.”
“He won't mind. It won't hurt it a bit. Grab that end and lift.” There was a sharp note in Liddell's voice. “Muggs, you'd better come over here. I think we should have several witnesses.”
The girl walked over, watched while the two men lifted the huge tapestry. Liddell gave a triumphant grunt.
“Take a look at that hole in the wall under the tapestry, Lessy. Your moth bored right through it. Only your moth was steel-jacketed.” There was a neat bullet hole in the wall.
“What could have done that, sir?” Lessy gasped.
“The bullet that killed Mr. Merritt. The bullet the police couldn't find. The bullet that is the best proof in the world that Matt Merritt did not commit suicide, but was murdered!”
Chapter Fourteen
The cab dropped Johnny Liddell and Muggsy Kiely at the entrance to the courthouse. Liddell led the way to the basement office of the medical examiner, walked in.
Doc Travin sat behind his huge desk, looked up as they walked in, grinned them welcome. “I wasn't expecting you two back so soon. What've you dug up now?”
“A murder,” Liddell told him wearily.
Doc Travin chuckled. “Not another one like the last one? Business sure must be bad when you go out trying to make suicides look like murder.”
Liddell scowled irritably at the little man's humor, dropped into a chair. “What would you do if I brought you a murder, a murderer, a motive, and an opportunity, doc?”
Doc Travin brought up a chair for Muggsy, helped her into it. “I'd see to it that the killer got the chair. What else?”
“Suppose you were positive that you had all these things but you couldn't prove it to the satisfaction of a jury?”
The medical examiner perched on the corner of his desk. “Either there's a murder or there isn't a murder.
Either there's a corpus delicti or there isn't a corpus delicti. What's all the double talk for, Johnny?”
Liddell grinned crookedly. “I've got the corpus delicti and I've got the murder. I'm going to hand them over to you and it's up to you to prove them. Only I'm damned if I think you can.”
Doc Travin snorted impatiently. “If there's a murder we'll prove it.” He leaned back, pushed his desk buzzer. “First let's have a cup of coffee and talk it over.”
Muggsy nodded. “We can both use some.”
Smitty, the angular lab assistant, stuck her head into the room. “Three coffees, Smitty. Rush them.”
“One black,” Muggsy put in.
Smitty nodded, withdrew her head.
“Now, suppose you tell me what this is all about, Johnny. Give it in order. First, let's have the murder.” He sniffed. “A murder that's not a murder. A corpus delicti that's not a corpus delicti.” He turned to Muggsy. “You know this story?”
Muggsy shook her head. “Liddell's been doing a solo Sherlock Holmes all day. Only instead of using a needle, he's been using cognac.”
Liddell stuck a cigarette between his lips, lit it. “Your murder is the killing of Matt Merritt,” he said flatly.
“Oh, not again.” Doc Travin groaned. “We've been all through that, Johnny. Matt Merritt committed suicide. You admitted it yourself when I showed you the records.”
“I admitted you made a good case for suicide. But it wasn't good enough. I know he was murdered and I can prove it—but not for a jury.”
The clerk came in, deposited three cardboard containers of coffee on the desk, went out. Nobody made a move.
“How could it be murder, Johnny? He was shot through the mouth and there was no sign of a struggle.”
Liddell nodded. “How about the bullet?”
Doc Travin scowled his impatience. “So it wasn't found. So what?”
“So I found it.”
“Where?”
Liddell took a deep drag on his cigarette, blew it downward. “Right where it had to be if it was murder!”
Doc Travin looked from Liddell to Muggsy, who nodded, and back. “What the hell are you talking about? We gave that place a good going over and there was no bullet. If you're trying to pull anything, Liddell—”
Liddell sighed. “Pull anything, your grandmother. I've got two witnesses who saw me find that bullet and when you dig it out of the wall you're going to find it matches the gun Merritt was killed with.”
“I don't care where you found the bullet. It was suicide and nobody can make me believe anything else,” Travin stormed. Then: “Well, you might as well tell me. Where did you find it?”
“In the tapestry on the far wall.”
The medical examiner stared at him openmouthed. “How the hell did you come to look in the tapestry?”
“It figured. It didn't go in the ceiling. Your story about it falling to the floor spent was too silly to even consider. It had to go some place. Why not into a wall?” Liddell enjoyed the speechlessness of the little man. “One wall was glass, the other two full of books. I settled for the tapestry.”
“Why?”
Liddell shrugged. “The desk lamp. My guess was he would be facing the desk lamp. The bullet had to go into the tapestry that way.”
Travin was making a visible effort to keep up with the developments, having indifferent success. “I don't care. Nobody can convince me that any man will let a killer stick a gun in his mouth without a struggle.”
“Unless it was his doctor.” Liddell tossed the bombshell with startling success. Doc Travin's eyes bulged, his jaw dropped.
“Come again?”
“The thing that threw you off is the fact that there was no struggle. You figure nobody would let a killer stick a gun in his mouth without a struggle. Right?” Travin nodded wordlessly. “But suppose the killer is his doctor and he's been feeding him a lot of malarky about an imaginary throat infection, and the victim doesn't know it's a gun the doc is sticking in his throat?”
“Break it down further, Johnny,” Muggsy urged.
“Okay. You've got a doc who tells you you have a throat infection. You let the doc look into your throat, even stick an instrument into your mouth so he can get a good look. One day, instead of an instrument, he shoves in the nose of a gun and boom!” He took the cigarette from'between his lips, stared at it with distaste, crushed it out. “That way the throat-ailment gag serves two purposes—gives a plausible reason for the suicide, and provides the opportunity for committing the murder.”
Doc Travin was leaning forward, his mouth agape. He made an effort to pull himself together. “You're wrong, Muggs. He has been using a needle.” But there was a look of indecision on his face.
“So, there's your murder and your opportunity.”
“Wait a minute. You didn't explain how you knew where to look for that bullet,” Travin protested.
“I knew if he had shot himself through the mouth, the bullet would be in the ceiling. Now, if the doc was pretending to examine the throat, Merritt would throw his head back. Right?”
The medical examiner nodded gloomily.
“He was standing when he got it. The only direct light in the room was on the desk, so he was facing the desk. With his head thrown back, there was only one place the bullet could go.”
The medical examiner rubbed his hand across his mouth, tried to punch a hole in the theory, failed.
“The killer, Johnny?”
“Doc Seville.”
“What was his motive?” Travin wanted to know.
“Merritt's money, of course.” Liddell reached over, took one of the paper containers, handed one to Muggsy. “He was slated to marry Jean, the old man's only heir.” He gouged the top out of his container. “Seville killed him. But I can't prove it, and I don't think you can, either, doc.”
“Why should he kill him? The old man thought a lot of him. He could still have married the girl and eventually inherited th
e money,” the medical examiner argued.
“Maybe Merritt found out that Tony Seville of Park Avenue and Anthony Annsevillaro of Mulberry Street were one and the same guy. Maybe he also found out that Annsevillaro had been married to a nurse named Mellison. Maybe he was figuring on breaking up the marriage.”
“What's this Annsevillaro business?”
“That's Seville's right name, the one he went through medical school and internship with. The one he was married under.” He took an experimental sip of his coffee. “He was a little East Side kid with no future and plenty of plans. He ended up as a fifteen-dollar-a-month intern in a city hospital without a dream of raising enough money to open his own office.”
Doc Travin pulled a desk pad over, scribbled a few notes on it. “Go ahead.” He nodded.
Liddell settled back in his chair, took another sip of coffee. “One day he gets what looks like a big break. Pete Velie, top racket boy on the East Side, gets himself shot up in the Gouverneur district. Annsevillaro is riding bus that day, does an extra-special job of patching Pete up before he takes him into the hospital.”
Doc Travin looked disappointed. “So what's that got to do with Matt Merritt and his daughter?”
“Let me tell it my way.” Liddell held up his hand. “After he finishes his stretch on the bus, he goes into male surgery, starts to drop by Pete's room more and more often. Maybe Laura Mellison who's in charge of male surgery at that time sets it up for him, I don't know. Anyway, pretty soon he and Pete are telling each other their troubles.”
“Such as?”
Liddell shrugged. “Pete had plenty of troubles in those days. He was just building up his organization and he's got competition. Competition means a little rough stuff and sometimes Pete and his boys need medical care. Discreet medical care, which they can't get. The doctors report it every time he or his boys show up for treatment.”
The medical examiner nodded, doodled on his desk pad.
“Pete's scared to death to ignore a wound because his kid brother Mickey died from an infected wound. So, when Annsevillaro makes his proposition, Pete is plenty ready for it.”
“Stop making like you read crystal balls.” Muggsy grinned. “Pop Michaels told you that.”
Liddell nodded. “I don't know who made whom the proposition, actually, but the upshot of it is that Annsevillaro gets a fancy uptown office and a private hospital in Westchester and Velie and his boys get constant and discreet medical care.”
Doc Travin stirred unhappily in his chair. “These are serious charges you're making, Johnny. Can you make them stick?”
“I can't prove a bit of it, doc. That's your job,” Liddell admitted cheerfully. “All I can prove is that Annsevillaro became Seville in 1940 and that as Annsevillaro he married Laura Mellison who conveniently died in 1945 in time for him to make an all-out pitch for Jean Merritt.”
Doc Travin made a few more notes. “It won't be hard to establish when he opened that Park Avenue office and his Westchester setup.”
“It will be to find out where he got the money to do it.”
“You think Velie underwrote it?”
Liddell shrugged. “It may be coincidence, but from that day to this neither Velie nor any of his men have ever shown up for gunshot-wound treatment.”
“Okay. So Velie sets him up. Then what?”
“Seville's a good-looking boy and with the front Velie's money pays for, pretty soon he's doing all right with the debs. All this time, of course, he's married to Laura. Maybe she objects, maybe she doesn't. Anyway, there's no crisis until Seville meets Jean Merritt and falls hook, line, and sinker for the old man's bank account.” Liddell drained his paper cup, crushed it with his fist, tossed it at the wastebasket. “Laura is now a handicap so she's got to go. In 1945 she conveniently dies, clearing the way for Seville to marry Jean Merritt.”
“If he has Velie's money in back of him, why take the risk of getting rid of Laura just to marry more money?”
“By 1945 Pete Velie is well organized and he's getting less and less action out of the doc for his money. He sees a chance of getting back some of his investment in Seville, so he backs the doc's play for Jean.” He ran a hand across his eyes. “There you are, doc, it's all yours—the murder, the murderer, the means, and the motive. I'm not boring you, am I, doc?”
The medical examiner forced a grin that his eyes didn't join into. “Not a bit, Johnny. It's more soothing than Mother Goose, if a little less probable. Even if we can't move in on a reputable physician on the alcoholic daydreams of a punch-drunk private eye, go ahead anyway. I can't wait to hear how it turns out.”
“I can tell you that, too. Seville gets away with it and manages to muscle the district attorney into lifting my license for persecuting him. When things quiet down a little, he'll marry Jean, inherit the old man's dough, and kick the kid around until she wears out.”
“Where'd you come into this picture?” Travin wanted to know.
“Just in time to get my ears half shot off. The girl must have gotten suspicious of the way her father died, contacted the agency to dig into it. In some way Seville tumbled to what she did, sent a couple of Velie's boys to discourage me.”
Muggsy Kiely was biting on her fingernails with concentrated energy. “There's one thing about the whole picture I think you've got wrong, Johnny. The way you set it up, the doc waited for a night when nobody was home. There was somebody home that night—Mrs. Merritt.”
“That was her tough luck.” Liddell nodded. “She heard the shot, came running, found the doc leaning over her husband's body. She started to yell and he must have slammed her over the head with his rod. His story that she got those injuries falling down the stairs wouldn't hold up. The carpeting on the stairs was too thick.”
“Why didn't he kill her right there?” Travin argued.
“That would ruin the suicide theory. Of course, he might have staged a suicide and murder but that might have stirred up an inquiry. So he did it the easy way, set the old guy up as a suicide, lugged the old lady to the head of the stairs, and pitched her down.”
Doc Travin pinched at his lower lip. “She could have been killed by the fall.”
“That would have been all right. It would have looked as though she had started for help, fainted, and was accidentally killed by a fall down the stairs. If she didn't die, as the family physician, he could lug her off to his private hospital where he could see to it that she didn't do any talking.”
Doc Travin nodded. “It all fits,” he conceded. “But where's the girl now?”
“Seville has her some place. She was afraid to be seen talking to me, wouldn't come to the office, wouldn't let me come to the hotel. When Seville's boys grabbed her, they found out she was supposed to meet me at the drugstore, sent a delegation to scare me off.”
“Maybe they did get her, but she went peacefully enough, it seems to me,” Muggsy put in. “She could have kicked up a fuss at the hotel if they were taking her away against her will.”
“Don't forget they had her mother in their hands. They might have told her the old lady would suffer if she gave them any trouble.”
Doc Travin chewed on his pencil, considered the picture Liddell had drawn. “You figure the reason they tried to get you is because the girl might have told you too much?”
Liddell nodded. “Maybe they were only figuring on throwing a scare into me that first night, but Scoda didn't look as if he was fooling with that thirty-eight in his fist.”
“From what I heard, they weren't fooling that second time, Johnny,” Muggsy put in. “Ricci was a killer.”
“That was Doc Seville's work, for sure, Muggs. After I talked to him the morning after Jean Merritt disappeared, he realized I wasn't going to be scared off. He figured I knew more than I was admitting, so he sent Ricci to blast me right out of my hotel room.”
Doc Travin slammed his pencil down, hopped off the desk. “Let's go get them.”
Liddell didn't move. “Get whom? For what?” he as
ked. “If you went into court with a story like this you'd be laughed right onto the retirement list. Haven't you ever heard what happens to police officials who make false arrests and to private detectives who aid and abet them?”
“You don't think they can get away with this, Johnny?” Muggsy looked worried.
“They're doing it, Muggs. We may know a lot of things, but proving them is another story.”
“How about the old lady, Johnny?” Travin demanded. “She's the weak link in Seville's armor if you're right. She may be able to put the doc in the house the night Merritt died.”
“How are you going to get her testimony?”
“Get a warrant and raid the sanitarium.”
“On what grounds? You can't move her without her physician's okay, and that's Seville. You can't even bring in another doc to examine her because that's unethical or something,” Liddell growled. “Get used to it, doc. Seville's holding all the aces.”
The little man took a deep breath, let it whistle between his teeth. “What do we do? Sit here and let him get away with it?”
“Looks like he's doing it anyway, so we might just as well relax and enjoy it.”
“Wouldn't it be worth while taking a chance on getting a search warrant like doc suggests, Johnny?” Muggsy wanted to know.
“He'd hear about it and the chances are that by the time the writ was issued the old lady would be dead from natural causes. As it is, the chances are that my license is just a memory, but the doc would be back wiping running noses and giving penicillin shots so far in the sticks that even a rumor could only reach him by carrier pigeon.”
Muggsy Kiely dug a cigarette from the voluminous depths of her handbag. “If we could only find Jean. She must know something.”
Doc Travin grinned humorlessly. “If Johnny's right, Velie's boys have her on ice and if we push too hard it may be curtains for her, too. Right, Johnny?”
“I doubt it, doc. They've taken too many risks to get their hands on that money. Their best bet is to rush the schedule and push the marriage through. After all, a wife can't testify against her husband.” Liddell shook his head slowly. “They may knock the old lady off, but not the girl.”