The Philadelphia Murder Story

by Zenith Brown

  I thought Sam looked a little troubled. “There’s just one thing, Aunt Abby. I wouldn’t want the judge to know I edited the manuscript in any way. I don’t quite know how he’d like it.”

  “I do, Dear Boy,” Mrs. Whitney said promptly. “He’d be livid. I won’t tell a soul. I wouldn’t think of it. Grace here is a Friend.”

  Elsie and Sam Phelps looked at her and then at me, a little dubiously, I thought—as well they might.

  Sam’s laugh was slightly hollow. “You know the saying, Aunt Abby—if you would keep your secret from an enemy, tell it not to a friend. I don’t mean the judge is an enemy, of course,” he added hastily. “It’s just that I prefer none of them to know I’ve seen the manuscript.”

  It was startling to hear Sam quoting from Poor Richard’s Almanack so soon after the author’s ghost had been seen stalking the marble lobby of the magazine he founded. However, as Sergeant Buck had quoted him about lying down with dogs, it might just be something in the home-town atmosphere.

  Sam looked at his watch.

  “How did you ever persuade them to let you see the script?” I asked.

  I’m afraid my voice was a little too brightly casual. His watch stopped in the process of being returned on its gold leash to his vest pocket.

  “You’re not doubting my husband’s word, are you, Mrs. Latham?”

  I’m afraid Elsie was rather brighter than she looked.

  “Not at all,” I said hastily. “I was just curious.”

  “Well, we can’t let the ladies be curious, can we?” Sam said. He spoke with magnanimous humor from a male Olympus. He put his watch the rest of the way into his pocket. “For your satisfaction, then, Mrs. Latham, Mr. Kane showed it to me. He explained he did not want to offend the family in any way.”

  There were several other questions I’d have liked to ask him—such as when and where and why Myron showed it to him, and why him instead of Monk Whitney—but I didn’t dare.

  He turned to Mrs. Whitney. “We’ll stop by and speak to the judge. Thank you for lunch, Aunt Abby.”

  She looked at him blankly. “Of course, Dear Boy,” she said then. “You did lunch with me, didn’t you? I’m so forgetful. It’s Old Age. Good-by.”

  At the door, Elsie Phelps turned. “You’re sure the—the document that Laurel gave him is all right, Aunt Abby? That we are going to get it back, I mean? We must be sure, you know.”

  Abigail Whitney’s blue eyes snapped fire. “Good-by, Elsie,” she said curtly. “You may leave the door open.”

  She leaned back in her yellow cushions until they’d gone. Then she turned to me.

  “You look very peaked, Dear Child,” she said. “No doubt it’s the water. Philadelphia water disagrees with many people.”

  Our eyes met across the table beside the curved mahogany swan’s neck that formed the arm of her day bed. Her eyes were clear and vivid-blue, and alarmingly intelligent just then, looking very calmly into mine.

  “You know Myron Kane is dead, don’t you?” I asked.

  For a moment I thought she was going to deny it, but she didn’t.

  “It was on the radio at four o’clock,” she said quietly. “It said he had been murdered. It’s . . . most unfortunate.”

  “Did it say the manuscript copy of the judge’s profile was missing too?”

  She looked at me a little longer over that. “No. They didn’t say that.”

  “Did Sam know—about Myron, I mean?”

  “Not that I am aware of,” Abigail Whitney said. “They didn’t bring the matter up, and I hardly considered it my business to inquire.”

  It was so calm and so cold-blooded; somehow, the way she said it, that I felt the only tears I shed for Myron Kane—and I think almost the only tears that were shed for him—spring up, burning the edges of my eyelids.

  “Don’t be sentimental, Grace,” she said sharply. “ ‘An eye for an eye’ isn’t from Poor Richard, but it’s an older moral law.”

  “How can you say that?” I cried. “Myron hadn’t killed anybody. He hadn’t even hurt anybody. If there was nothing in the manuscript and you’re getting the judge’s document back——” I stopped, staring at her.

  Her blue eyes were fastened on mine. There was a smile behind them so faint that it was almost imperceptible. I thought I had recognized irony before, but there was no doubting it now. It was double-edged this time, with a little pity and rather more than a little scorn at what I realized was plain, unadulterated stupidity on my part. It had all been a kind of ghastly double-talk, every word she’d said, and even while I’d questioned it I’d let myself be taken in by it.

  The horror I felt must have sounded in my voice. “You don’t—you can’t mean——”

  Her voice couldn’t have been calmer, and she’d gone back to her emphasized speech. “I didn’t mean anything, Dear Child,” she said. “I’m very deeply shocked, and of course I’m more than happy to Co-operate with the Authorities in any way I can, limited as I am by These Four Walls. You may go over to my Brother’s and tell your Policeman that if he wishes to see Myron Kane’s room, you are at complete liberty to show it to him. . . . Will you close the door as you go out?”

  I started out, probably rather unsteadily.

  “Of course you realize,” she said calmly, “that Laurel can now marry Travis without anxiety. You were disturbed about that last night. Surely you don’t expect the World with a barbed-wire fence around it, do you, Dear Child?”

  I didn’t answer her. I just went out and closed the door, a little sick at my stomach. All I wanted to do was get out of the house, out of the orbit of that imperturbable and ruthless old fraud reclining on her yellow cushions, pretending to be bedridden—a puppet mistress, pulling the strings, ordering people’s lives without moving a step. Ordering their lives and even their deaths, for there was no possible doubt in my mind that she was responsible for Myron’s death, morally, if not actually and physically.

  I went downstairs. At least I could go next door and tell Colonel Primrose he had permission to see Myron’s room. He was doing it on his time, and if he wanted to waste it, it was his privilege. Abigail Whitney, I thought, was probably on her way up there at that very moment, taking a last look to see that nothing remained that would do him or the police, when they came, the slightest bit of good.

  I opened the front door. It was not quite dark outside, but the shadows were closing in and the lights were already on in the square. I stepped out and started a little. The old squirrel was there, twitching his moth-eaten tail, looking back down the steps. He flashed around, and then fled when he saw I was not his friend, the butler. It seems silly to get information from a squirrel, but that’s the way it was. As he came from the square only when someone came up on the stoop, it was evident that someone had been there. The way he was sitting, twitching his tail, looking down the steps, showed clearly that there had been an annoying hitch in the usual orderly procedure—visitor, butler, walnut—that he was accustomed to.

  I looked quickly around the square. Retreating diagonally across 19th Street to the square was a small man in a gray overcoat, and I recognized him this time. Mr. Albert Toplady was going rapidly, but not steadily.

  I don’t know whether I had a sudden change of feeling about Mr. Toplady or whether it had been a cumulative process. Up to that point and in spite of everything, I’d held firmly to the idea that he was nothing really but a harmless eccentric. I couldn’t think so any longer. His being there on Abigail Whitney’s doorstep without ringing the bell and his dashing off across the square were out of the bounds of eccentricity. Added to what I could see now was actually a pretty persistent haunting job he’d been doing on Myron Kane, alive at the Broad Street Station and dead at the Curtis Building, they seemed definitely sinister.

  Mr. Toplady, I thought, must be either actively involved in what was going on or he was a rather extraordinary bird of evil omen, slightly molted, but appallingly accurate. And the latter view was certainly devastatingly sup
ported, and in less than fifteen minutes flat. For if Laurel Frazier had set out deliberately and with malice aforethought to tie a noose around Monk Whitney’s neck, she couldn’t have done a more workmanlike job on it.

  I went over to Judge Whitney’s brownstone house next door and pressed the bell. A stiffly starched maid opened the door, well past middle age, gray-haired and bony, but not quite so heavily Irish as her counterpart at Abigail’s. I explained that Colonel Primrose was there and that I had a message to him from next door.

  “If you’ll come in, miss,” she said. “The gentlemen are busy just now, but Miss Frazier’s here, and you can wait till they’re done.”

  Laurel Frazier was in the front room to the left. She could well have been entitled Picture of a Young Lady Quietly Going Out of Her Mind. She still had on her gray fur coat. The wisp of gray felt that she used for a hat had been tossed, with her bag and gloves, onto a long table against the wall, and had fallen with one glove on the floor. The Irishwoman picked them up.

  “These gloves are a sight, miss,” she said. She picked up the other one. “How do you get so dirty? I’ll just wash them out for you.”

  I saw they were black—the fingers of them—the way mine had been when I came off the ninth floor of the Curtis Building.

  She didn’t seem to notice they were being taken away. She was very distrait, her hair pushed back from her forehead, her eyes too bright and her face too pale. She had her hands in her coat pockets and looked as if she had been pacing up and down the rug in front of the coal fire burning in the grate. She stood there now in the middle of the room, waiting for the maid to go. When the door closed, she turned quickly to me.

  “Where’s Monk?” she asked sharply. “Have you seen him? I’ve got to get hold of him! I’ve simply got to!”

  I shook my head. “I haven’t seen him. Not since last night.”

  She made a quick gesture of despair and hopelessness. I don’t know how to describe it, but it was terribly eloquent.

  “I can’t even find Travis,” she said slowly. “His secretary said he’d heard about it—about Myron—and had left the office. I thought he’d come here. He must know we’ll need him. I don’t know what to do!” She started pacing again.

  “Well, if you’ll sit down and be quiet, maybe you can think of something,” I said practically. “And what’s the matter?”

  Her eyes flashed wide open as she turned toward me and came back, “What’s the matter? Don’t you know?”

  “I know Myron’s dead,” I said. “I don’t know Monk needs a lawyer, if that’s what you mean by trying to get hold of Travis. You certainly don’t think Monk killed him.”

  Her face was dead and blank suddenly. She stood there silently a moment. When she spoke, her “No, of course not” lacked—and very noticeably lacked—any tone of ringing conviction.

  “I wish I’d never seen Myron Kane,” she said softly, after a minute. “It’s all my fault. If it hadn’t been for me——”

  “Don’t be silly,” I said sharply. “You’re jumping to a conclusion that may be just frantic. A lot of people didn’t like Myron Kane.”

  She started to speak, and then glanced around sharply. A car had stopped in front of the house. The car door slammed, there was a sound of heavy feet on the concrete. Her face was white as she ran across to the front window and moved the velvet curtain aside just enough to see out. She flashed around.

  “It’s the police. They’re coming in.” She came quickly back, her eyes wide, looking at me with terror. “I’ve got to get rid of it,” she whispered desperately. “They’ll search the house; he told me they’d——”

  I could hear the ring of the doorbell from the back of the house. The Irishwoman came plodding along the hall. Laurel Frazier took one look at the fireplace. The next instant she was over in front of it. She thrust her hand into her coat pocket and pulled something out. It was a tightly wadded ball of white cloth.

  “Oh, don’t!” I gasped.

  It was too late. The white ball was in the fire and the flames spreading up over it. She grabbed the poker from the holder beside the hearth and jabbed it down under the coals. My heart sank.

  The maid stopped by the door, sniffing.

  “I smell something burning,” she said. “Have you dropped a cigarette on the carpet?”

  If Laurel had been white-faced before, she was whiter now. The smell of burning cloth was unmistakable.

  “It’s all right, Annie,” she said breathlessly. “Go on to the door.”

  The instant the maid was out of sight, she did the most incredible thing. I caught my breath as she snatched up the corner of her coat, knelt down and thrust it into the fire. I expected to see the whole thing go up in a sheet of flame.

  A voice as soft as a cat’s tail came from the front door. “Is Judge Whitney in? Captain Malone, tell him. I’d like to——” The voice was still soft, but it spoke a little more quickly. “I smell something burning. What is it?”

  “It must be my iron, sir,” the maid said. “If you’ll come in, please. The judge’s secretary is here.”

  Laurel stood up quickly, the corner of her coat skirt burned black. She’d smothered the fire with her bare hands. She thrust them into her coat pockets and moved across the room to the door, her head erect. I’d never seen greater self-possession.

  “I’m Laurel Frazier, Judge Whitney’s secretary, Captain Malone,” she said. “Will you come in?”

  “Something is burning,” Captain Malone said quietly. “It’s in this room?”

  “Yes, my coat,” Laurel said. “I got too near the fire. It’s my only coat too,” she added ruefully.

  The room smelled like a fire at a rummage sale. Captain Malone stood in the doorway, sniffing the air. Or he was there for an instant. I couldn’t have believed anybody’s mind—and body in this case—could move so fast. Before I was aware at all of what he was thinking, even, he was across the room, the poker in his hand, delving through the flames into the coals in the bottom of the iron basket grate. Out came the blackened, evil-smelling wad. As the air struck it again, it burst into a pale pompon of flame on the green glazed tiles of the hearth. Captain Malone was down on his knees, smothering the flame with his brown pigskin glove, gently, as if the cloth were alive and could be hurt. Laurel Frazier stood motionless, white-faced again, her lips parted, staring at him.

  9

  Captain Malone got to his feet and looked around at her. “You shouldn’t have done a thing like that, Miss Frazier,” he said reproachfully. His voice was gentle as the morning dew, and his face was very grave and paternal as he shook his head at her—and the senior Hamlet’s ghost never looked so much more in sorrow than in anger.

  “Don’t you see what you’ve done? Now I’ve got to begin thinking all over again. I’ve got to ask myself why Judge Whitney’s secretary is so anxious for me not to know she’s burning a piece of cloth that she spoils a coat to do it—because anybody can tell the difference. Cloth and fur don’t smell the same when they burn. It’s easy to tell when they’ve both been burned. You ought to have known that, oughtn’t you?”

  He was speaking as if to a three-year-old child, and she nodded her head not unlike one. He turned back to the hearth and knelt down, scooping up the black blob into an envelope he took out of his pocket. He went over to the table and put it down on a newspaper under the lamp, prying the burned layers off gently with the point of his silver pencil.

  “When you want to burn anything,” he said soberly, “don’t wad it up. Just lay it out on top of the fire, where the air will get at it. You see?”

  He looked over his shoulder at the girl staring stricken-eyed at the unfolding mass. The inside of the wadded cloth was untouched. It was still white—or it was except for the brown stains on it, and some of them not all brown yet, but still faintly red—red enough to show that blood could have made them. Captain Malone pulled very gently with his thumb and forefinger. I saw it was a handkerchief, man’s size, and in the corner h
e was pulling out there was an embroidered monogram. He took out his spectacles and put them on.

  “Let’s see now,” he said. “Here’s an M. And here’s W. And this is a T? Isn’t that a T?”

  Laurel said nothing.

  “That wouldn’t be the judge, for instance,” Captain Malone said. “His name’s Nathaniel.”

  He took two steps toward her. She was standing there with her hands still thrust deep down into her pockets. He put his own hands out, palms up, without saying anything, and waited. After a moment, she took hers out of her pockets and held them out. The palms were blistered, but not so badly as I’d been afraid they were going to be. He shook his head.

  “Don’t you see I’ve got to tell myself a young lady would have to think an awful lot of anybody to burn her coat and burn her hands like this to keep me from finding a handkerchief with somebody’s blood on it?”

  Her face flushed suddenly to the color of her hair. “That isn’t so,” she said quickly. “It’s just something I—I found, and I thought—I thought it could be misinterpreted——”

  She stopped short. I heard a key grating in the lock and the front door opening. Laurel’s face turned white, then flushed deeply. She snatched her hands out of Captain Malone’s and thrust them back into her pockets. Something alive and alert moved in Captain Malone’s eyes as he looked from her face to the door.

  Monk Whitney was in the hall in the process of putting his battered gray felt hat on the table. He looked around, a very sober-faced young man even before he saw any of us. He came across the hall then, looking from one of us to the other.

  “Smells like the city dump in here,” he said. “What goes on?” He looked at Captain Malone. “My name’s Whitney. You’re the chief of homicide, aren’t you?”

  Captain Malone nodded. “Would your middle initial be T, by any chance?” he asked gently.

  “A guessing game?” Monk inquired. His glance from one to the other of us was sardonic. “I’ll bite, anyway. My middle initial is T. For Tyler. Monckton Tyler Whitney. What’s the catch?”