The Lady in the Morgue

by Jonathan Latimer

  Three of the newspaper men were matching pennies. A small girl reporter from the Tribune was reading a Modern Library edition of The Magic Mountain. The City Press man, who was supposed to supply news to all the papers, was asleep.

  Slightly depressed, the coroner continued, “Now, Mrs. Liebman, will you give me your full name?”

  “Gertrude Finnegan Liebman.” She cast a sly look at Captain Grady. “Me father was for many years a desk sergeant at the Warren Avenue Station.” She rolled the r’s in Warren.

  “Your home address, Mrs. Liebman?”

  “1311 North St. Louis Avenue.”

  “How long had you been married to Mr. Liebman?”

  “Twenty-seven years this September.”

  “Have you any children?”

  “No, sir. He … Augie … was all … I had.”

  “Now, Mrs. Liebman, try to be brave.”

  Mrs. Liebman tried. She mopped at her eyes with a piece of linen the size of a postcard, blew her nose vigorously. She smiled through her tears at Captain Grady. She smoothed her skirt.

  The coroner looked at a piece of paper, asked, “Was your husband right- or left-handed, Mrs. Liebman?”

  “Why, right-handed.”

  The coroner glanced at Crane, who nodded his thanks for the inquiry.

  Further questioning brought out that Mr. Liebman had worked for the coroner’s office as night morgue keeper for six years, that he was in no financial difficulties, that he had no enemies, that he was, in fact, the best-hearted man in the world, without exception.

  The coroner asked, “Your husband was in no trouble of any sort?”

  “No, sir!” Mrs. Liebman glared at the reporters matching coins. “Anybody that says that is a dirty liar.”

  “Then you have no ideas who was responsible for his death?”

  “Yes, sir; I have.”

  The Tribune girl looked up from her book.

  “You have! Who, Mrs. Liebman?” asked the coroner.

  “The young fellow sittin’ over there … that calls himself William Crane.”

  Conversation, like a breaking Atlantic roller, deluged the room. A woman in the audience said, “He doesn’t look like a killer to me.” One of the jurors awoke with a start, looked bewilderedly at his five companions, asked, “Is it time for lunch?” The reporters swung around from their table, stared at Crane. Captain Grady looked pleased. The coroner shouted:

  “Order! Order! Please. Order! If we can’t have order, I shall have to clear this room.”

  The blue-bottle fly was trying to force his way through one of the panes. His buzzing was loud in the sudden silence.

  “Mrs. Liebman, you are making a very serious statement,” the coroner stated. “Are you basing it on personal knowledge?”

  Mrs. Liebman tossed her red head about like a high-spirited horse. “Well, the captain said he was the only one who could have done it.”

  “The captain?”

  “Captain Grady, here, to be sure.”

  “And the captain’s idea is the only basis for your statement?”

  “Well, the captain said …”

  “I am afraid, Mrs. Liebman, I shall have to ask the jury to disregard your statement.”

  Guided tenderly by Captain Grady, the widow passed William Crane on her way to a seat at the back of the room. “Murderer,” she hissed, like the outraged mother in a pity-the-poor-working-girl melodrama. Crane, his nerves jangling from lack of sleep, wished for a minute he had killed her husband.

  The coroner’s physician, Dr. Bloomington, testified expertly, rapidly. Death was caused by concussion, the result of a blow on the skull. In his opinion the blow was of an unusually violent nature. No, he could not say positively what instrument was used. A guess, a pure and simple guess, would be the butt of a heavy automatic pistol.

  Fingers rustling his papers, the coroner then asked Captain Grady, “Where is Mr. A. N. Brown, of San Diego?”

  The pleased smile fled from Captain Grady’s face. He compressed his lips, spoke. “The man has disappeared.”

  “This is highly irregular.” The coroner’s fingers beat a rapid tattoo on the desk. “Can’t you keep track of your witnesses, captain?”

  On his feet now, one hand resting on the back of his chair, Captain Grady said, “The man was not a material witness, anyhow, Mr. Coroner.” He was addressing the reporters, his back to the jury, his side to the coroner. “We took the man to Miss Ross’ hotel early this morning and showed him her clothes, which he could not identify.”

  The reporters were sliding back of the coroner, around the jury, through the audience, bound for telephones. In thirty minutes husky men in trucks would be throwing bundles of papers to news-stand operators in the Loop; banner lines reading “Heat Wave Kills Seven” would be replaced by “Witness Vanishes in Morgue Mystery.”

  Once more tumbling his papers with nervous hands, the coroner said, “Since this case is obviously connected with that of the young lady whose body was removed from the morgue, Captain Grady, I am going to ask you to tell the jurors the circumstances of her suicide.” He turned to the jury. “As you know, gentlemen, another jury, sitting in the case of Miss Ross, has already found that she committed suicide while temporarily insane.” He pointed a finger at the empty witness chair. “Tell them in your own words, captain.”

  Stiffening their backs, the jurors displayed interest. The six looked oddly alike—threadbare clothes, wispy hair, wavery eyes, smudgy skins with the water line just at the Adam’s apple. They also shared a common inability to keep awake.

  The captain was saying, “The woman’s body was discovered by Miss Annie Jackson, the black chambermaid on that floor of the hotel. She was entirely naked (the woman, I mean)—” the captain smiled indulgently while the jurors guffawed “—and she was hanging from a rope thrown over the bathroom door. Under her feet was a bathroom scale which she had obviously used to stand on while she was adjustin’ the rope. Before killin’ herself she had taken a bath, and you could make out th’ places where her wet heels had beat the door.”

  Hot rays from the sun burned William Crane’s back through his shirt. He slid his chair into shadow.

  “The body was discovered about one o’clock in the afternoon, and the coroner’s physician reported she had been dead approximately twelve hours, so she must have killed herself about midnight.” Captain Grady produced a silk handkerchief, rubbed his face, the back of his neck. “We have not been able to find anyone who knew her as yet, but we should have someone soon. It is known she received a visit from a, har-rump, gentleman caller.”

  There was a whispering, a nodding of heads, among the ladies in the audience. Gentleman caller, indeed!

  “We should be tracing him soon, unless, which is likely, he read of her death in the papers and made himself scarce.” The captain nodded his head as though that were probably the case. The jurors, hanging upon his words, nodded, too. “’Tis almost certain the poor lady was worried over financial affairs,” Captain Grady went on. “She had only four dollars in her purse.”

  The coroner bent over his desk. “Captain Grady, have you any opinion as to why her body was taken from the morgue?”

  Aluminum-colored eyebrows drawn into a V over his nose, the captain said, “I have a very good idea.” He was looking at Crane. “I believe the girl came of a prominent family somewhere and that her people heard she was dead and did not wish her to be identified.” He loosened his collar, running his forefinger between it and his neck. “I think the snatchers did not intend to kill poor Augie—Mr. Liebman—but hit him too severely tryin’ to knock him out, as Mr. Crane suggested.”

  Everyone looked at William Crane, while the captain, with the gratified air of a man who has been able to set a motorist on the right road, climbed down from the stand.

  The coroner said, “Well, Mr. Crane, you’re the last witness.”

  Deep and fairly comfortable, the witness chair had arms on which to rest his elbows. He gave his name as William Cr
ane, his residence as New York, his occupation as private detective, and then settled back while the coroner rustled his papers, tried to think of his first question.

  At last the coroner asked, “You were the last person to see the deceased alive, Mr. Crane?”

  “No, sir.”

  “No, sir?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Well, then, who did see him last?”

  Crane’s shoulder itched. He scratched it. “The man, or men,” he said, “who killed him.”

  The coroner grunted. Crane said, “I beg your pardon?” The coroner said, “I didn’t say anything.” Crane said, “Oh.”

  It was breathlessly hot in the room. Hats, handkerchiefs, handbags were being used as fans by the women in the audience. The air smelled of human perspiration, heavy and salty sour.

  In reply to another question, Crane said, “I have no idea who the lady was, other than that she was called Alice Ross by the newspapers.” He related how he had received orders to try to determine her identity.

  The coroner returned to his probing of the last few minutes of Mr. Liebman. “How long were you down there alone with him?” he asked.

  Crane was conscious of Mrs. Liebman’s eyes upon him. He said to the coroner, “Not more than two or three minutes.” Mrs. Liebman was registering hate.

  “You say you had been looking at Miss Ross’ body with the two reporters when Mr. Liebman came down?” asked the coroner.

  “That’s right.”

  “What did Mr. Liebman do after he told the reporters someone wanted to see them?”

  “He looked at Miss Ross’ body, too.”

  One of the cameramen was making a shot of Mrs. Liebman. She was still registering hate. She was registering more than that. She was clenching, unclenching, her hands. She was registering: I would handle that murderer if I were a man instead of a defenseless widow.

  “Mr. Liebman looked at Miss Ross’ body,” the coroner repeated. “Did he say anything?”

  “Yes, he did.” William Crane paused. He lowered his eyelids, pretended to yawn. “He said: ‘I wish I could trade my wife in for a model like that.’” He watched the widow from the corners of his eyes.

  Mrs. Liebman took it as well as could be expected. She leaped to her feet, screamed, “Why, the lousy bum!” Nobody could be sure whether she was referring to William Crane or her husband because she immediately fainted at the feet of Captain Grady. She was removed by two female cousins to the ladies’ room.

  This, the coroner appeared to think, concluded the testimony. He said, “Thank you,” to Crane, let the jury through a door at the back of the room. Crane followed the scuffling, perspiring crowd through a corridor into the big waiting room. He had a drink of warm water from the fountain. The clock with the cracked glass read 12:20; the red mercury column in the thermometer on the morgue keeper’s desk was a fraction below the line marked 98. His head ached, his eyes smarted, his face was hot; he went into the room marked MEN to wash.

  He was pulling a paper towel from a container marked: “Why Use Two When One Will Do Just As Well?” when someone came into the room. He looked in the fly-spotted mirror and saw it was the Italian of the night before. He said, “You’ve got your nerve, coming here.”

  The Italian was standing in the center of the floor. He wasn’t very tall and he was more than forty, but he was thick and he looked as though he would be durable. He said, “The big shot wants to know something.” He didn’t seem friendly.

  “What does he want to know?”

  “He wants t’ know what you done with the girl?”

  The paper towel broke in Crane’s hands. He dropped it in the waste basket, pulled another from the container. “What makes him think I took the girl?” he asked.

  “Him and I was at the inquest.” The Italian’s legs were apart, his body bent forward at the waist. “We heard what they said. We got ears.”

  “Yeah, you got ears, all right.” Crane looked at the Italian’s with disfavor. “If you didn’t have so much hair on them maybe you could have heard me say I didn’t know who took the body.”

  “We heard what you said.” Black hair grew in a reverse widow’s peak on the Italian’s chest just below his neck. “But you don’t need to hand us the old crappo. We wanta know what you did with the girl.”

  “I didn’t take her.”

  “O.K., smart boy.” The Italian moved toward Crane. “The big fellow wants t’ see you, then.” He took hold of Crane’s arm, started to push him toward the door, halted suddenly.

  A man dressed in a green ensemble was watching them. His face was swarthy and, except for a jagged scar over the right cheekbone, handsome. He wore an olive-green suit cut square at the shoulders, snug at the waist. He had on a black hat, a dark-green necktie with small red dots in it, a tan shirt, and brown suède shoes.

  “Hello, Pete,” he said.

  The Italian released Crane’s arm, stepped backward. “Frankie!” he exclaimed. He held his arms stiffly, away from his body, away from his hips.

  Water, freed by the automatic release, gurgled through the urinals.

  “You’d better leave—” the man in green was talking to the Italian “—while you can.” He smiled with his mouth. “I want to talk to Mr. Crane.” His lips were full, cruel.

  Sullenly the Italian made a side-stepping progress toward the door, moving in an arc always the same distance from the man in green, as though a pistol was pointed at the pit of his stomach. He went out the door backward.

  With his expressionless face inclined toward Crane the man in green had followed the Italian’s departure with his eyes until the sockets were filled almost entirely with white. Now the golden irises slid back into position. “I’m Frankie French,” he said. He shook hands with Crane, added, “Maybe we can be of assistance to each other in this matter.”

  Crane was surprised to find he was still holding the paper towel. He dropped it, took another, rubbed his face with it, said, “Why use one when two will do just as well?” He rolled the paper into a ball, flipped it into the basket with his thumb. “What help can I be to you?”

  Frankie French talked without moving his lips. “You can give me a little information.”

  “Yeah, I know. I can tell what I did with the girl’s body.”

  “I see we understand each other.” The man’s carefully plucked eyebrows and the long lashes of his narrowed eyes made exactly parallel lines. “How much will it cost me to find out?”

  “It won’t do any good for me to say that I haven’t the least idea where the lady’s body is?”

  “No, Mr. Crane, it won’t.”

  Leaning against one of the washbowls, Crane said, “Supposing for a minute that I do know where the girl’s body is, how much would it be worth to you to know?”

  Frankie French’s tapering hands were beautifully manicured. Light reflected from the glossy fingernails. He lifted five thousand-dollar bills from a calfskin wallet, held them out to Crane.

  Moving his head negatively, Crane said, “It’s too bad I don’t know where the body is.”

  “I’m not going to haggle with you,” said Frankie French, still holding out the bills. “My top price is five grand.” His voice was low, ominous. “You will be wise to accept it.” He spoke precisely, almost the way a foreigner, who had learned English in a good school, would.

  Crane shoved himself away from the washbowl, balanced himself on the balls of his feet, repeated: “I don’t know where the body is.”

  There were golden flecks in Frankie French’s eyes. He moved back from Crane—lithely, dangerously, like a cobra about to strike. “You goddam cheap dick,” he said, almost in a whisper; “I’m giving you five seconds to start talking.” The fingers on his right hand fluttered.

  Some men came into the washroom. One of them was saying; “—an’ on the buck dinner they throw in a glass of red wine.” He was a heavy man with a pock-marked face and curly black hair.

  Crane went over to him. “Well, for God’s sa
ke, what are you doing here?” he asked the man. “How’s the wife?” He seized the man’s hand, shook it heartily.

  For a moment Frankie French hesitated, then said to Crane: “Think it over.” His tone was impersonal, courteous. “I’ll be seeing you again.” He left the washroom.

  The man with the pock marks said, “You got the better of me, Mister.” His face was puzzled. “I can’t recall ever having seen you before.”

  Crane released his hand. “You never did,” he said. “But anyway, thank you very, very much.” He left the men staring at him in astonishment, went back into the room where the inquest had been held.

  It was only a few minutes before the jury returned. The foreman handed the coroner a sheet of paper before taking his seat with the other five men. The room was filled again and the audience, even the reporters, waited attentively. Crane looked around for both Frankie French and the Italian, but he was unable to find them. His eye caught that of Mrs. Liebman; she scowled, looked away. Between the two homicide men Captain Grady sat unconcernedly, as if he had no interest in the verdict. His eyes, in contrast to his brick-red face, were a startling blue.

  The coroner cleared his throat. “The jury finds,” he said, “that the deceased, August Liebman, was willfully murdered by person, or persons unknown while trying in the line of duty to prevent the felonious removal of the body of Miss Alice Ross from the Cook County Morgue in the City of Chicago.” He cleared his throat again. “The jury further recommends that the police proceed at once in the steps necessary to apprehend the murderer, or murderers.”

  The coroner stood up, swept the papers off the desk into a black brief case, quickly stepped from the room. The jury followed hurriedly, eager for their free lunch. Crane walked over to Captain Grady and said: “Missed me that time, didn’t you?”

  Captain Grady snorted, made no reply. The burlier of the two homicide men, however, said, “Listen, smart guy, we’re going to keep close to you.”

  Crane glanced around again for Frankie French, but he couldn’t see him. He spoke fervently to the homicide man. “I hope you do.”