“Where does this undertaker hang out, Doc?”
“Right by the Hyde Park police station, at 5217 Lake Street. It’s called the Star Mortuary. The guy’s name is Theodore Connell, and he works the night shift from mid-night until eight o’clock.”
Crane looked at his wrist watch. It was 6:11. He said, “We’ll catch him easily.” He spoke to O’Malley. “How’d you ever get out of the jam in that dance hall?”
Suspended over the lake like an Orange Pekoe tea ball on a string, the sun was already uncomfortably warm.
O’Malley replied, “I’m a hero. It seems the dicks wanted that gunsel, Tony, on a murder rap, and they were glad to take what was left after I finished cuffin’ him around.” He smiled reminiscently. “My story was that I bumped into them two accidentally on the floor and naturally got sore when they started to swear at me. When Tony pulled a gun I tried to take it away from him, and it went off and shot the Filipino.”
“Kill him?” asked Crane hopefully.
“Naw. You can’t kill them Hershey bars. Anyway, some of the dancers backed up my story, and the cops thanked me very politely, and took Tony to the hospital, and tossed the other torpedo in the can.”
Crane nodded. “Naturally, Tony and his pal couldn’t tell the police they were sent up there by Mike Paletta to get me.”
“I don’t think they wanted to put you on the spot; just pull you in so’s Mike could talk to you.” O’Malley grinned again. “You’re a popular guy.”
“How’d the police get there so quick?”
“That guy with the bandaged ear—the one you slugged—called them when Paletta’s boys got there. He recognized Tony and knew he was going to make trouble.”
“I suppose Tony was the one who shadowed us.”
“Somebody from Paletta’s gang.”
With the whish of a sudden exhalation a compact seventy-mile-an-hour electric train on the Illinois Central tracks passed them. The broad drive was dotted with automobiles now, carrying people to seven o’clock jobs. The lake was so calm it looked frozen.
O’Malley was chuckling again.
“You seem to have gotten a lot of fun out of that dance hall,” Crane said.
“I was just thinking about those floosies working there. Boy, were they mad! Somebody stole the dresses of about twenty of them, and they had to go home in their B.V.D.’s.”
Crane said, “I stole ’em.” He told them how he and Miss Udoni had escaped down the fire escape and related his conversation with her. They were both amazed when he told them she was the woman he had been in bed with at the Princess Hotel. He concluded: “She’s a nice dame. I may have to go back and see her again.”
“I’ll go with you,” O’Malley said.
“No, you won’t.”
Doc Williams asked, “How are you going to locate her husband? All you know is that his name is Sam and that he plays in a band.”
“I’m thinking about that.” Crane scratched the back of his neck. His hand still hurt, and he examined his knuckles to see if he had broken them in hitting the man with the bandaged ear. “I got an idea the guy’s a swing artist.”
O’Malley said, “I thought you said he was a musician?”
The knuckles seemed sound. Crane turned his hand with a flourish. “You fellows don’t know how us musical artists talk. A swing artist is a hot musician.”
After another mile along the lake they turned right on Fifty-third Street, went under the Illinois Central tracks and turned left on Lake Street. It was just 6:30. They came to a stop in front of a two-story, gray-stone building with a smudgy display window, the upper portion of which was decorated with gold lettering, reading STAR MO TUARY. The first R in mortuary was missing.
Groaning, the glass-paned front door opened under Williams’ hand. The air in the green-carpeted reception room was musty. There was an odor of floor polish and embalming fluid, aromatic, sweet and sickening. Williams said, “Mr. Connell.” Three-quarter-drawn blinds made the light gloomy.
Williams spoke louder. “Mr. Connell!”
“Maybe he’s in the back,” suggested O’Malley.
Under their feet the uneven floor creaked, trembled. At the end of a corridor was a large room with bare walls. A shaft of molasses-colored sunlight angled from an east window, disclosed coffins on the uncarpeted floor. Beside an imitation ebony coffin with ornate silver handles was half sitting, half lying, a man, his head bent so that his chin rested on his chest. Blood from a wound on his neck had pooled on the floor, marooned the seat of his white Palm Beach trousers.
Williams bent over, touched the back of the man’s neck, drew his hand away quickly. “Somebody beat us to him.”
“It’s the red-haired guy!” O’Malley exclaimed.
Crane said, “Sure it is. How long has he been dead, Doc?”
On hands and knees Williams was examining the floor. “Quite a while. He’s cold.” He rolled the body away from the ebony-finished coffin. “I wonder what they cut him with?”
“Looks like a slash from a good-sized knife,” O’Malley observed, examining the red-haired man’s throat. “Damn near took his head off.”
There were freckles on the red-haired man’s face; his eyebrows were the color of straw after it has been on a stable floor for a time; his ears were large and they stuck out from the sides of his head. He was about thirty years old.
Crane examined his wrist watch again. It was 6:47. He said, “We’ve got time to take a look around. Doc, you go through the guy’s pockets. O’Malley and I’ll case the joint.”
They searched through drawers, desk pigeonholes, cabinets, even two cutaways hanging in a closet, but all they found was that a nice funeral with two cars for mourners could be secured from the Star Mortuary for as little as ninety-seven dollars and fifty cents. Crane discovered an imperial quart of Dewar’s White Label (his favorite whiskey) standing in the bottom drawer of a maple filing cabinet, and, judging that it was kept there for the use of too affected relatives, he pulled out the loosened cork and took a long drink.
He dropped the bottle, closed his eyes, clutched at his throat and tried to yell, but he couldn’t. His vocal muscles were constricted. He could feel the inside wall of his stomach being burned away. He tottered blindly about the room.
O’Malley’s eyes goggled in amazed alarm.
Crane staggered to the water cooler, poured glass after glass of tepid water down his throat, spilled some of the liquid on his coat. His breath came in gasps.
“For God’s sake!” exclaimed O’Malley. “What’s the matter?”
Crane dramatically pointed his free hand at the Dewar’s bottle, said between gulps: “Embalming fluid.”
O’Malley’s deep laughter, rumbling like a cannon fire, brought Williams on a dead run from the back of the building. His face was indignant. “For the love of Mike, cut it out. You’ll wake somebody up.”
Between convulsions O’Malley described Crane’s pleased expression at the discovery of the whiskey; the shocked surprise, the pain after the long drink; the blind search for water; but Williams didn’t think the incident funny at all.
“There’s a murdered guy lying back there,” he said, “and you horse around like a couple of comics in a burlesque show. Besides, we’re supposed to be working.”
Crane had a partially filled glass of water in his hand. “I’m dying,” he said. “Do you call that horsing around?”
Williams snorted and disappeared down the corridor.
Crane finished the water. He felt better. He looked at the Dewar’s bottle. “What in hell do you suppose they do, embalm the relatives, too?” he wanted to know.
O’Malley thought maybe it was a sample. He thought maybe they had different flavors in embalming fluid. Like raspberry. Or chocolate.
Crane said, “This must have been lye.” He filled his water glass.
O’Malley had a heavy paper account book on one of the desks; he was thumbing through its pages. “Here’s where they list all the burials,�
�� he said.
Crane said, “Yeah?” Then he said, “Oh! Say, that is an idea.”
He went over and helped O’Malley find the page for Friday, August 5. There were only two entries.
Patrick Morgan, 59, 6123 Woodlawn Avenue.
St. Ann’s. $237
Agnes Castle, 25, 5454 Cornell Avenue.
Edgemoor. $150.
Crane turned over the page to see the entries for Saturday, but there weren’t any. He excitedly copied the Agnes Castle entry. “Unless I’m wrong as hell,” he said, “that’s our girl.”
“How are you going to find out?” O’Malley asked.
“I don’t know, but I’ll figure out something.” Crane filled another glass at the water cooler. “There’s nothing like a little embalming fluid to make the brain function.”
They went back into the large room. Williams was still grubbing around among the empty coffins. “I can’t find that knife,” he said in an aggrieved tone.
“Never mind,” said Crane. “You just putter around. We’ll do the real work.”
He had a piece of paper torn from the burial ledger in his hand, and, placing it on a coffin, he began to write with a pencil stub.
O’Malley asked, “What are you doing?”
Crane showed him the paper. It read:
TO THE POLICE—
YOU WILL FIND IT INTERESTING TO COMPARE THE HAIR OF THE LATE MISTER CONNELL WITH THAT CLUTCHED IN HAND OF THE LATE MISTER AUGUST LIEBMAN, MORGUE KEEPER, AND NOW IN POSSESSION OF THE ESTEEMED CAPTAIN CRADY.
MERRY XMAS!
SHIRLEY TEMPLE
Williams, reading over O’Malley’s shoulder, said, “What the hell?”
Crane accepted the paper from O’Malley, bent over the corpse and tucked the note in the left hand, saying: “I figure this is the easiest way to find out if the hair really does match.”
O’Malley said, “Let’s scram out of here. I’m getting the jumps.”
On their way to the street Crane halted in the office. O’Malley asked, “Going to have another nice sip of that Dewar’s?” Crane ignored him, lifted the French telephone, called Andover 1234, asked for the city editor. The operator put the city room on the phone, and he told the copy boy who answered that he wanted to speak to the man in the slot. When he got him he said:
“You’ll find a man murdered in the Star Mortuary at 5217 Lake Street. I’m tipping you off before the police, because I want the facts to get in the newspapers.”
The slot man kept asking, “Who is this calling? Who is this calling?” but Crane hung up. He said to the others, “We better beat it.”
In the street saffron sunlight hurt their eyes.
Chapter Twelve
EXACTLY AT noon Crane and O’Malley and Williams left the Turkish bath run by Olaf Jensen on West Madison Street to meet the Courtland family at the Blackstone Hotel. On their way they stopped at the Crystal Bar and ordered a quart of Cook’s Imperial Champagne and three bottles of stout. Mixed, this made a drink called Black Velvet, which they drank with considerable gusto, for, as O’Malley said:
“Uncle Sty wouldn’t want his boys to come up smellin’ of something common like gin, for instance.”
There was just enough for two glasses apiece, and when they came out onto the street again they all felt fine, especially Crane, who reflected that in the matter of sleep he was acting like a really first-class detective.
“Do you guys know,” he said, “that I haven’t been to bed for twenty-eight hours? How’s that for devotion to my profession?”
Williams asked, “You’re just overlookin’ that nap yesterday afternoon?”
“Oh, you can hardly count that.” Crane waved a hand, airily dismissed the nap. “Why, it was just a short wink, not more than four or five hours.”
In front of the La Salle Hotel they hailed a Checker cab, started for the Blackstone along nearly deserted streets. It was hot again, and the liquor made them perspire. Their faces were still flushed from the heat of the Turkish bath, the skin fresh and pink; their eyes were dark and sunken, the whites bloodshot; their linen suits had been pressed by the bath attendant. Crane was thinking they must look like a particularly sinister trio of adventurers out of the tropics, when there was a loud report behind them. He threw himself at the cab floor just ahead of O’Malley. Williams was already there, fumbling for his pistol.
The noise was not repeated, and O’Malley cautiously peered out the back window. “Hell!” he said. “Another cab backfiring.”
Crane put his hand over his heart. “Whew! I thought it was my old pal, Frankie French.”
Williams was putting the pistol back in the under-arm holster. “If they do shoot you, Bill, we’ll have to kill a lot of people to avenge you,” he observed. “It might be French; it might be Paletta; it might be the guy who murdered the undertaker; it might even be the coppers.”
Crane was interested. “What makes you think French or Paletta didn’t kill the undertaker?”
“I never heard of a gangster killin’ anybody that way.” Williams buttoned his coat, settled back in the cab. “They either squirt some lead at ’em or take ’em for a ride. Even the wop mobsters don’t fool around with knives no more.”
O’Malley said, “I think he’s right, for once.”
Crane thought about this until they reached the Blackstone. The Courtlands’ suite was on the eleventh floor, and they went up without telephoning. Young Courtland let them in. He seemed surprised to see them. “I’ve been trying to reach you all morning,” he said. He had on another gabardine suit, sky-blue in color, and a pair of black-and-white sport shoes.
Crane explained that they hadn’t gone to their room because of the police.
A blue-gray Chinese rug hid the sitting-room floor. There was a real fireplace with dragon-headed bronze andirons. They sat down gingerly on the fragile Chinese-Chippendale chairs, eyed the soft tints of the Parisian water colors on the walls.
“I’ll call Mother,” Courtland said, going out one of two doors at the back of the room.
Williams examined the furniture, shook his head, said, “Hell, our joint’s got this beat a mile.”
Crane agreed. “It wouldn’t take much of a brawl to break that stuff up into firewood. This may be artistic, but ours is durable.”
O’Malley said, “This ain’t got any cops in it, though.”
Through a door other than the one Courtland had used, walked a woman and a man. She had steel-gray hair, diamond rings, a violet dress about the color of a three-cent stamp, a double string of beautifully matched pearls. She stared at them through a lorgnette, said:
“Why! what odd-looking men!”
The man with her was about the same age, past sixty. He was half a head shorter than the woman; he wore pince-nez glasses with a black ribbon, a cutaway coat and striped trousers, an Ascot tie, and a white carnation boutonnière. His face was round and the skin hung in folds around his mouth, over his jawbone, as on the face of an English bloodhound.
William Crane stood up. “Mrs. Courtland?”
The woman studied him through the lorgnette. “I presume so,” she said.
Young Courtland came into the room. “Oh, there you are. Mother, these are the detectives Uncle Sty hired.” He introduced them to Mrs. Courtland and Uncle Stuyvesant.
“Oh, detectives!” Mrs. Courtland raised her lorgnette again. “Dear me! What an unpleasant occupation!”
There was a harassed expression in Uncle Stuyvesant’s pale-blue eyes. His tone disowned any responsibility for the detectives. He said, “It takes all sorts of people to make up a world, Evalyn.”
“Oh yes!” Mrs. Courtland’s voice was loud, deep, assured. “But does one have to receive them?” As she said the word “them” she tossed her head, held it at such an angle that to see the detectives she had to look down her nose.
What the hell! Crane thought. What the hell!
Young Courtland said, “Now, Mother. These men are trying to help us find Kathryn.”
“Oh yes! My poor daughter!” She leaned forward, peered at Doc Williams. “Have you found her?” She enunciated each word so vigorously that she quivered. “Have you at last … found her?”
Williams gulped, said, “No, ma’m.” He kept turning his Panama in his hands.
“Really!” She spoke from the chest, like one of the Barrymores. “Isn’t it about time?”
Williams said, “Yes, ma’m.” He looked appealingly at Crane.
Young Courtland said, “But, Mother, they’ve only been working three days.”
“I don’t propose to argue.” She glided majestically to one of the doors, paused for a last look through the lorgnette, said, “Have the room properly aired when you complete your business, Chauncey.”
Williams sank into one of the chairs, mopped his forehead with a wrinkled handkerchief.
Young Courtland said, “Mother’s upset by the trip and the heat. She doesn’t like hotels, either. You mustn’t mind her.”
Crane spoke to Uncle Stuyvesant. “I haven’t much to report, sir.” He summarized what he had learned from Miss Udoni. “If I can locate her husband,” he concluded, “I believe we may learn something from him.”
Young Courtland agreed. “He certainly should know who Miss Ross really was.”
Uncle Stuyvesant sat primly in his chair, his hands folded in his lap. “Time alone will tell,” he said.
“There’s one thing I would like to know,” Crane said. “What was the color of Miss Courtland’s eyes?”
“Blue,” said young Courtland.
“No, I mean exactly. What sort of blue?”
Hand over mouth, Courtland pondered.
“Were they a greenish blue?” asked Crane. “Or a deep blue, like the gulf stream? Or gray-blue?”
Uncle Stuyvesant said, “Gray-blue.”
Young Courtland shook his head. “It’s hard to tell. They were sort of greenish some of the time, and gray-blue, too. They changed.”
“That’s right.” Uncle Stuyvesant beamed. “They changed.”
“Okay.” Crane rose from his chair. “The next thing on the program is to locate Sam, the trumpet player. I’ve got a hunch we can find him this evening.”
The Lady in the Morgue Page 12