The Comfortable Coffin

by Richard S. Prather

  “Your glass,” said Annie tenderly, “is empty.” She stood up, gently disengaged his glass from the lieutenant’s nerveless fingers, and left the room for the kitchen.

  “Colhaus,” said the lieutenant. “If—”

  “No,” said Charley, “Annie. But I think you’ve made a very strong impression.”

  “I would like to make an even stronger one. I would like to show her right now, with a personal demonstration, exactly what murder is like.”

  Annie returned with the lieutenant’s drink, and curled up on the davenport again. “As I understand you. Lieutenant, any clue in a murder case less obvious than a bloodstained monkey wrench with a full set of fingerprints is hardly worth bothering about. Because—”

  The lieutenant spoke, frowning and studying his glass. “This drink tastes funny.”

  “Try some more,” said Annie.

  The lieutenant drank again. “Still tastes funny.”

  “I know,” said Annie sweetly. “I put salt in it.”

  The lieutenant set his glass down, carefully. “Salt?” he asked with deadly politeness. “Why?”

  “To show you that if that salt,” said Annie, “had been tse-tsum, you’d be dead right now! Within two seconds.”

  “Look—”

  “I’ll get you some more,” said Annie hastily.

  “I don’t want any more! Just what is this, anyway?”

  “Well.” Annie looked defensively from the lieutenant to Charley and back again. “You’re both so smart that I just wanted to show you. There you’d be on the floor, dead. With tse-tsum, a rare jungle poison, analysis shows nothing but heart failure, so they couldn’t prove a thing. Anyway, nobody’d suspect me because, as you just explained, murders are never committed this way.”

  “Yes?” said the lieutenant pleasantly. “And just where do you get this see-some? At your neighborhood druggist’s?”

  “You couldn’t get it,” said Annie aloofly.

  The lieutenant took a deep breath. He continued to inhale, through flared nostrils, as though he were planning to inflate a large balloon. His face changed from rosy pink to a very attractive shade of orange, the color of a desert sunset. Then the telephone rang.

  Annie walked, hastily, out to the hall and answered it

  “Annie’s round,” said Charley pleasantly, “on points.”

  “For you, Lieutenant,” Annie called sweetly, and the lieutenant, exhaling as he went, came out and picked up the phone, while Annie tiptoed softly back to the davenport.

  “Yeah,” they heard him say, then silence. “Right away. Send a car. You got the address? Right,” he said, then hung up and returned to the room. “Murder,” he said softly, “red murder. You have never seen a murder, have you? Committed not with see-some, but by blowing a guy’s head off with a gun?”

  “No,” said Annie.

  “Get your hat,” said the lieutenant grimly, “and we’ll drop in on a fresh, warm, and very real killing.” He turned suddenly and looked at Charley, his eyes narrowing. “Say, if I thought you’d planned on something like this—”

  “Absurd,” said Charley. “Such a plan would be far too subtle for a flatfoot like me.”

  The room in which the dead man lay was a hotel room, not cheap or small, but drab and sad under the mean light of the chandelier on its ceiling. It had one window, shiny black against the night, and was furnished with a dark rug, a bed, a desk, a chair, a bureau, a floor lamp.

  But Charley, Annie, and the lieutenant, standing in the doorway, saw none of these things. They saw only the man on his back on the floor, legs out straight, feet apart. One arm lay over his chest, limply, the other was stretched out on the floor, away from the body, palm upward. There was no hair above his eyes; there was no head. The lieutenant gently pushed Annie into the room and closed the door behind them.

  Four men, two kneeling at the dead man’s side, the other rifling the drawers of the bureau, looked up, nodded at Charley and the lieutenant, glanced curiously at Annie, and resumed their work.

  Charley turned to Annie who was still staring, eyes big, at the man on the floor. She is, Charley thought, remarkably pretty for a girl with a green complexion.

  “Look,” he said softly, “maybe it wasn’t too smart bringing you here. I’ll take you downstairs and you can—”

  Annie turned haughtily. “I am quite all right,” she said, apparently using someone else’s voice. She stepped bravely closer to the dead man and, frowning a little, stared at his face with her eyes closed.

  Charley stooped down, hands on knees, beside the medical examiner, who was squatting at the dead man’s side. “Identify him?”

  “Yeah. Lou knows him. Small-time racketeer; black market in the war. Marijuana, loft robberies.”

  Charley stood up and joined Annie who was standing in a far corner of the room. Her face was now a comparatively healthy white. “Look, honey,” he said gently, “the difference between a real murder investigation and the kind you read—”

  Annie interrupted. She seemed excited. “The killer,” she whispered, “is redheaded.”

  Charley looked at her for a moment. “Yeah?”

  Annie opened her bag and brought out a notebook. “Look at his fingernails.”

  Charley looked. In the harsh light from the overhead chandelier he could see, caught in the nails of the dead man’s outflung hand, a little fringe of short, dark-red hairs. Red hair, Annie printed in her notebook.

  Charley walked back to the medical examiner who was talking to the lieutenant. “That hair under his nails,” he said, “from the rug, isn’t it?”

  “Of course.”

  The lieutenant glanced curiously at Charley. “Annie?”

  “Yeah.”

  The lieutenant stood up. “This is almost too easy.”

  “Wait.” Charley remained motionless for a moment thinking. “Maybe this is the way. I was simply going to explain our procedure, but she wants to be smart, let her have her head. Let’s give her all the rope she needs.”

  The door of the room opened and the policeman on guard outside leaned in, a hand on the doorknob. A small worried man stepped past him into the room.

  “Who are you?” said the lieutenant.

  “Mr. Whiteman. Theodore Whiteman, the manager.”

  “Okay; wait.”

  Annie caught Charley’s eye and Charley crossed the room, the lieutenant joining him. She whispered, “See the mud on his shoes?”

  “Yes,” said the lieutenant. “So what?”

  Annie looked at him contemptuously and produced her notebook. “There is only one place in the entire New York area where you will find soil of that peculiar red color. South Street—” she began writing in her notebook, “—around the dock area at South Street.”

  “Very interesting,” said the lieutenant gravely. “You’d say, then, that he’s been in South Street lately? Maybe the murderer hangs out there, too.”

  “Very likely. And the murder was committed at seven-fourteen.”

  The lieutenant’s mouth opened suddenly, then closed again slowly. “You don’t say,” he said. “How—”

  “His watch, of course. It stopped when he was killed.”

  The lieutenant nodded at Annie approvingly. “Good girl,” he said. “Keep it up, keep your eyes open.” He nodded at Charley and they walked toward the desk where one of the detectives was standing.

  “What about that mud?” said Charley.

  “Offhand,” said the lieutenant, “I could name you fifty places around town where you’ll find red soil.”

  The detective at the desk looked up.

  “How come the guy’s watch stopped, Eddie?” said Charley.

  The detective shrugged. “Wasn’t wound. I tried it.”

  The lieutenant smiled happily at Charley. “Hello, Hercule,” he said. He turned to the hotel manager. “Anyone come up here before?”

  The manager shook his head. “Not that I know of. Or any of the help. I checked.”

  �
�Anyone call?”

  “A man, about an hour ago.”

  “What’d he say?”

  “He said, ‘Eight-oh-nine in?’ and I said, ‘Just came in.’ And he hung up. Didn’t even say thanks.”

  The lieutenant nodded as though this were what he expected. “You know the voice?”

  “Never heard it before.”

  The lieutenant indicated the dead man with his foot. “You know this guy?”

  “Yessir.”

  “How come?”

  “He stopped here before.”

  “Know anything about him?”

  “Just that.”

  “You talk to him today?”

  The manager nodded. “On the phone.”

  “When?”

  “Seven-thirty.”

  “What about?”

  “He owed a phone bill from the last time he was here. I asked him to pay.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I said, ‘This is the manager. Glad you’re with us again. There is a small bill—’ Then he interrupted.”

  “What’d he say?”

  “He said, ‘Okay, Theo, later.’”

  “Theo?”

  “It’s what people call me. He knew me.”

  The lieutenant looked at the manager for a moment, then turned away. “Stick around,” he said. He beckoned to one of the detectives who crossed the room.

  “Lou? Charley?” the lieutenant said. “What do you think?”

  Charley shrugged. “Routine,” he said. “A small-time down and out who just got his hands on some cash. All his clothes are new. Right, Lou?”

  The other detective nodded.

  “So he’s in the chips again,” Charley continued, “and moves in out of the rain. But there’s no money here now. Right, Lou?”

  Lou nodded again.

  “So—” Charley shrugged once more, “—somebody dumped him for the money. Maybe it was his money in the first place.”

  The lieutenant glanced at Lou inquiringly.

  “Something like that,” said Lou. “Yeah.”

  ‘Well, we’ll pick him up here or there, sooner or later,” said the lieutenant. “Teletype out?”

  “Half an hour ago.”

  “Okay.” The lieutenant nodded, dismissing Lou, and turned to Charley. “We might as well go.”

  They crossed the room to Annie again. Her eyes were fever-bright. “You noticed, didn’t you?” she whispered.

  “Noticed?” said Charley.

  “Oh, Charley—the hotel man! When he phoned, he wasn’t talking to—the dead man. He couldn’t have been. It was seven -thirty and the man was killed at seven-fourteen! Remember?”

  Charley nodded dumbly.

  “So he must have been talking to the murderer. The phone rang, and—the murderer answered it!”

  “No,” said the lieutenant.

  “No?” said Annie challengingly. “Why?”

  “Well—” The lieutenant hesitated. “He said, ‘Theo.’ He said, ‘Okay, Theo, later.’ Not likely he’d know the manager’s name or use it if he did.”

  Annie thought for several moments, rubbing her front teeth nervously with a forefinger. “What a break!” she exclaimed. “Don’t you see? The murderer lisped!”

  Charley felt suddenly guilty. “Look honey,” he said contritely. He put an arm around her shoulder protectively. “Maybe I should tell you—”

  “Oh, Charley!” she said. “Don’t you see! Look. We know it was the murderer who answered the phone. We know he wouldn’t have said, ‘Theo.’ So what did he say that sounded like it? He must have said, ‘Okay, thee you later’! Which sounds almost exactly like, ‘Okay, Theo, later’! The murderer lisped!”

  Charley looked at Annie hopelessly, his face a mask of guilt and despair. He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again. He had waited, he realized, too long. It was impossible now to explain—if he ever hoped even to speak to Annie again.

  “What’s more,” said Annie, “he was six feet four inches tall and left-handed.”

  “Wonderful,” said the lieutenant. “How—”

  “Look at the phone,” said Annie coldly. She pointed to the desk. The phone lay in its cradle, the mouthpiece at the right. “A right-handed person replaces the phone exactly opposite from that. As for his height—”

  The lieutenant took Charley’s arm and they crossed the room to the desk. “You use this phone?” said the lieutenant quietly to the man at the desk.

  The detective looked up. “Of course.”

  “You left-handed?”

  The man glanced at the lieutenant curiously. “No. Why?”

  “How come you put the phone back like that?”

  The detective looked at the phone, then back again. “I don’t know,” he said. “I always do.”

  They returned to Annie. “Marvelous,” said the lieutenant.

  He put his arm around Annie affectionately. “Amazing,” he said. “Great little helpmate you’ll be for Charley.” He looked at Charley solemnly. “Let’s get out of here,” he said. “Annie’s given us enough to work on. The rest will be strictly routine.”

  And it was. To Annie’s outraged astonishment, during the next week, no manhunt took place; no cordon of police was thrown around the city. Even worse, no circular was issued containing Annie’s beautifully worked-out dossier on the criminal. The police seemed completely uninterested in her deductions.

  Charley tried to explain. They had returned to Annie’s apartment from a movie, Sweet Murder, My Lovely, and were sitting—several feet apart—on the davenport.

  “In this kind of killing,” Charley said patiently, “we know the kind of guy who did it. And that’s all we need. Because we know he’ll be picked up sooner or later, somewhere, for something. In a gambling raid, or for petty larceny, jostling in a subway, whatever his racket is. And every possible suspect is always questioned; about this crime and any others we’ve got.”

  Annie found this explanation less than satisfactory. She sniffed: a sniff that was close to a snort. “It’s like hunting for a needle in a haystack,” she said, “blindfolded! And not even hunting! Just waiting till it jabs you!”

  “So what? As long as you find the needle.”

  “But when you have a description!” Annie wailed, “practically an exact description, and…”

  Relations between Charley and Annie, some six days later when the killer was found, resembled in tenseness the high E string of an electric guitar connected by mistake to a power line. And the fact that he was caught precisely as Charley had predicted didn’t help. The word came one evening at Annie’s; Charley answered the phone. And when he returned smiling for the first time in days, he could be pardoned, perhaps, for gloating a little.

  “Grab your hat,” he said. “We’re going to headquarters! And I’ll show you a killer caught by the cops without any help from Sam Spade, Inspector Chafik, or even Hercule Poirot!”

  They waited at headquarters, seated on yellow wooden folding chairs, in a small, unadorned, white-plastered room. The lieutenant, more worried and sleepless-appearing than ever, sat staring at his feet. Annie looked coldly ahead, while Charley waited happily, both watching the closed door of the room.

  The door opened. A man was urged forward by a policeman at his back. He stepped forward into the room, ducking his head as he passed through the doorway, then stood staring sullenly over their heads at the opposite wall. His clothes were unpressed and he wore a cap. He seemed about forty years old.

  Annie brought out her notebook and ticked off an item with her pencil. “Six feet four,” she said. “Right?”

  The lieutenant did not look at Annie. “Four and a half.”

  Annie leaned forward and whispered to the lieutenant “His cap,” she said. “Do you suppose—”

  The lieutenant spoke wearily. “Take off your cap.”

  The man raised his hand—his left hand—and Annie’s pencil flicked once. He pulled off his cap. His hair was almost beautiful: thick and alive,
deeply waved, and red.

  “Little darker than I thought,” Annie murmured, and her pencil flicked once more. “Where was he found, Lieutenant?”

  The lieutenant looked up again, very, very wearily. “Where did they pick you up?’ he said to the man.

  The man looked at them all for a moment, then returned his gaze to the wall before him. “Thouth Thtreet,” he said, and Annie’s pencil flicked twice…

  During the ten-minute cab ride back to Annie’s apartment, neither she nor Charley spoke; Charley because he was unable to, and Annie out of compassion. But when they stood at the street door of Annie’s building, the cab still waiting at the curb, a voice, not his, came out of Charley’s throat. “Tell me, just tell me it could have been somebody else? Say a baldheaded guy, five feet two, who spoke with maybe a stutter? Did it ever enter your head that your clues could have been wrong? That it could have been somebody else? Did it ever—”

  “No,” Annie said. “Of course not.”

  “But why?” Charley wailed. “Why? Will you please tell me why?”

  Annie looked at him sadly, pityingly, and made the final effort of a person who knows it is doomed to failure. “The clues,” she said gently, “couldn’t be wrong.” She opened the door. “They just couldn’t because—Charley, don’t you see? It wouldn’t be fair!”

  Charley and Annie are married now. They are very happy and contented—because they are not married to each other.

  Charley’s wife thinks he is wonderful, a bulwark of law and order, but then she always did admire policemen—from her earliest memories of riding pickaback on the broad shoulders of her father, Patrolman Colhaus.

  And Annie’s husband—he thinks she is marvelous. He is a writer, a tweed-jacketed, pipe-smoking author of detective stories. And Annie, he says, gives him most of his best ideas.