Having Wonderful Crime

by Craig Rice

  Dennis Morrison and his bride had planned to leave this morning on a honeymoon tour. They’d checked into the St. Jacques yesterday afternoon. Then why were all the bride’s clothes put carefully away, the dresses on hangers, the lacy lingerie folded neatly in the dresser drawers? There should be handsome and expensive luggage somewhere. If it wasn’t here—and it wasn’t—it would be in the hotel storeroom. People didn’t unpack like that to stay overnight in a New York hotel.

  But only she had unpacked. Dennis Morrison’s shaving things were in the bathroom, his brushes were on the dresser, one suit was hanging in the closet—a business suit—and a clean shirt and brand-new tie were on the top of the bureau. There was a locked and obviously unpacked pigskin suitcase in one of the two bedroom closets, and another pigskin suitcase left open—the shaving things, brushes, shirt, and tie had evidently been taken out of it.

  Bertha Morrison had unpacked and settled herself as though she intended to stay a month. Dennis Morrison had been packed and ready to leave in the morning. Jake closed his eyes and stood thinking. They’d been married at four in the afternoon. They’d had dinner. Then they’d arrived at the St. Jacques, and Dennis had started out on his bender. She must have unpacked after he left. The hotel manager had said that the suite had only been reserved for one night. Dennis Morrison had said they planned to leave for Banff, Sun Valley, Victoria, Yosemite, and the Grand Canyon in the morning. Then why the devil had Bertha Morrison done such a complete unpacking job?

  The police, looking for fingerprints, lint, dust, and vest buttons, didn’t notice things like that. Jake prowled around the bedroom, reflecting on how a room could tell what had happened in it. Bertha Morrison had taken a bubble bath. He knew from looking at the marks on the bathtub. She’d smoked two cigarettes while she was in the tub; the stubs were in a tray propped up on the soap dish. And she’d drunk a glass of—he sniffed—champagne. He looked under the bathtub and found an empty bottle. Not just a glass of champagne, a quart. She’d used body oil, bath powder, hand lotion, pancake makeup, and two kinds of perfume. She’d put curlers in her hair—they were still faintly damp when he found them in the drawer of the dressing table—and then sprayed her hair with Lakker-Myst. She’d put on mascara, eyebrow pencil, rouge, and lipstick. A hell of a thing, Jake reflected, going to all that trouble expecting your bridegroom to come in the door—and then having your bridegroom go out and get drunk as a goat, and a murderer coming in the door instead.

  Only, Bertha Morrison hadn’t been murdered. Some unidentified woman had been murdered in Bertha Morrison’s bed, wearing a lace and satin nightgown. And Bertha Morrison, bathed, curled, made-up, and perfumed, and probably a little drunk, was missing.

  All this is very fine, Jake told himself, but it doesn’t tell you where Bertha Morrison is, who was murdered, and who murdered her.

  The police had hardly touched the desk, save for dusting fingerprint powder over its polished top. Jake stood looking at it thoughtfully. Bertha Morrison had not only unpacked her clothes and her cosmetics, but also her portable typewriter and letter case as well. He scowled at the typewriter. It was pale-blue enamel; the keys were pink with dark-blue letters. And it was monogrammed, too. B. L. in gold, for Bertha Lutts. Jake thought the typewriter ought to tell him something about Bertha. As a matter of fact, it did. Jake began to dislike her.

  There was a sheet of letter paper in the typewriter. The design in its left-hand corner was a badly drawn but beautifully printed queen bee. Jake shuddered. There were a few words typed on the paper. The typewriter ribbon was blue.

  April 29th

  DEAR UNCLE GEORGE:

  We are deliriously happy …

  Jake stared at it. There was something wrong about that letter, just as there was something wrong about the whole setup of the room. Not just the words “we are deliriously happy,” written in a room from which the writer of those words had disappeared, and in which an unidentified woman had been brutally slain and mutilated. But something else. It was a moment or so before he realized what it was. The unfinished letter was dated April 29th. But this was April 9th. Oh, well, everybody made mistakes in typing.

  But if Bertha had made such a mistake, she’d have corrected it immediately or put in a fresh sheet of paper. Everything he’d learned so far of Bertha, from looking at her closet, her dressing table, and her bureau drawers, indicated correctness, order, and methodical neatness. Bertha would never have made a mistake like that.

  Had the police already searched the Florentine-leather letter case? Jake stared at it. There was a faint dusting of fingerprint powder over its top. But there was also a little heap of cigar ash. It had fallen, he remembered, from Malone’s cigar, earlier in the day. Malone had been pacing up and down the room and sounding off to the guy from the Homicide Bureau, with that big Irish mouth of his.

  He wished Malone was here with him now.

  The letter case, then, was virgin territory. The cops certainly hadn’t explored it before the time Malone dropped that cigar ash, and, obviously, save for the fingerprinting, they hadn’t explored it since.

  Jake lifted the lid gingerly, as though he expected Bertha Morrison, or the murderer, or perhaps a brace of leopards to jump out, and looked down at a neatly typed page.

  Write to:

  Olive Eades

  Josephine Diehl

  Dorothy Finny

  Eunice Olsen

  Melva Engstrand

  Martha Chalette

  Dagmar Slagg

  (See address book.)

  He fished out the address book, bound in white leather, with B. L. tooled on the front. At the top of page one was Abramson, B., and an address and phone number. Underneath was written bootlegger in faded blue ink, crossed out in brighter ink and supplanted with merchant. Below it was Adams, J., address, phone number, and doctor. Then Allenberg, J., with the notation dentist, very recently crossed out, by the look of the ink, and supplanted with retired. Jake turned quickly to the C’s. Martha Chalette. Lex. 2-5762. 345 W. 34th St. Married to an artist. Bridge Club. He turned another page. Josephine Diehl. Biddeford, Me. Martha Washington Hotel when in town. Bridge Club. The next page indicated that Olive Eades worked for an advertising agency as a typist, and that Melva Engstrand was getting a divorce. Jake decided not to spend time checking up on Dorothy Finny. He stuffed the typed page and the address book in his pocket and went on examining the contents of the letter box.

  There was a little sheaf of bills, neatly clipped together, from Altman’s, The Colony Lingerie Shop, Lord and Taylor, and Chez Rosette, all with paid and the date carefully written in a fine Spencerian script in blue ink. There was a paid-up bill from the World-Wide Mailing Service. There was a bill from Prendergast’s, Inc., with a notation Ask about 74¢ overcharge on brassiére.

  There was a letter from a Bohemian orphanage in Indiana, giving thanks for a generous contribution, and there was a fat package of letters asking for money, all bound together with a rubber band, and with a notation clipped to them reading Investigate.

  There was a letter signed your Uncle George and beginning Dear Bertha: I hope you’ll be very happy, but after all you hardly know the man. Jake stuffed that in his pocket for future reading.

  Nothing, so far, Jake told himself, that was worth slipping Catharine McCloskey ten bucks, save for the knowledge that Bertha Morrison would have made somebody a damned efficient secretary. Every letter had the date of its receipt and the date of its answer carefully marked at the top. Even one that read My dearest, darling, angel Bertha—our evening at the opera was so wonderful. Say that we’ll meet again, and soon. Your helpless slave, Dennis had a notation in the corner in the fine Spencerian handwriting and the light-blue ink, Rec’d February 23rd. Answ’d February 25th. Well, at least, Jake comforted himself, he was getting a good picture of neat, methodical, depressing Bertha Lutts Morrison.

  There was a letter, typed on shadow-thin paper, with italic type and brown ribbon, at the very bottom of the letter box.

/>   Bertha—Cruel are the pitiless hands … and cruel laughter stains the lips … and nearer every day the night … when stars look down and weep—to see how Death with stealthy tread creeps in to keep his rendezvous with love. How bright, how gay will be the April day when you are bruised and dead. UU. UU.

  What the hell! Someone had written to Bertha Morrison, before last night, threatening to kill her. Someone who signed himself, or herself, UU. UU. Damned silly signature, unless it was written by Siamese twins. Damned silly letter, for that matter. Besides, it hadn’t been Bertha who’d been found murdered. Bertha had disappeared.

  Just the same, this was the closest he’d come to a clue. If he could find the writer of that letter—Perhaps, if he went through the desk drawers, he’d find something more. He dropped the letter on the blue enameled typewriter and pulled open the top right-hand drawer. It was empty, save for a sheet of notepaper reading:

  hairdresser, 10 A.M.

  reducing class. 3 P.M.

  buy new girdle (important)

  The top left-hand drawer contained a copy of Dr. Stopes’ Married Love. The rest of the desk was empty. Jake was just closing the bottom left-hand drawer when he heard a key rattling in the front-door lock. He ducked into the bedroom, fast, and stood just inside the door, listening. He heard footsteps, heavy footsteps. There seemed to be three people coming in. One of them was whistling Just a Memory. Another voice said, “Cut that out!” and the whistling stopped. Then an unhappy-sounding voice said, “I don’t know what the inspector wants us to look for.”

  Cops! If they found him here, then his chance of solving the case was lost and gone forever. Where could he hide? No draperies big enough to duck behind. The closets were likely to be searched as a matter of routine. The bed was so close to the floor that only an underfed worm could crawl under it.

  “Well, we gotta look around,” one of the voices said. Jake managed to cover the distance between the bedroom door and the bathroom without making a sound. He stepped inside the shower bath and pulled the curtains around him. This was just another one of those routine searches, he reassured himself. The cops would be through in a few minutes, and then he’d be able to make his escape. Not until he heard one voice say, “Aw, there’s nothing here,” and another one answer, “Just the same, we better search. Peterson might check up,” did he realize he’d left the letter signed UU. UU. in plain sight on the desk. And by then, it was too late.

  6. Enter O’Brien, Birnbaum, and Schultz

  There were two advantages to hiding in the shower bath. Jake could hear everything said in the outer rooms, and by parting the curtains half an inch he could see most of what was going on. There was, however, one disadvantage. The last person using the shower hadn’t turned it off completely, with the result that a thin stream of cold water ran down inside Jake’s shirt no matter how he shifted to avoid it. He didn’t dare monkey with the faucet, because that would undoubtedly make a noise, and this was obviously a time for silence.

  He could hear, and occasionally see, three men in the room beyond the bedroom. Two plain-clothes men and a uniformed cop. The cop was a big, bored-looking guy who moused around the room looking for cigars. One of the dicks was a little shrimp with a shrill, angry voice, and the other was a tall, thin, unhappy-faced dope who looked as if he had stomach trouble. “This is just a routine search,” the little guy said. “Peterson said we have to make a routine search. Personal possessions. That sort of dope. Don’t know why we should be stuck with it but we are.”

  The tall one said, “Wonder if there’s any bicarb in this place.” He came into the bathroom and opened the medicine cabinet, while Jake held his breath. He found a bottle of soda mints, took four, slipped the bottle into his pocket, and went out again.

  Jake encouraged himself with the reminder that the cops, after all, weren’t expecting a man to be in the apartment, and therefore they wouldn’t search for one. In fact, they were in the same position in which he had been; they didn’t know what they were looking for.

  “For Chrissakes, Birnbaum,” the little guy said, “why don’t you take a layoff and get your stummick fixed up.”

  “Because I’d have to stay home with my wife, that’s why,” Birnbaum said gloomily. “I’d get worse than ever. It’s her cooking that’s the trouble, anyway.”

  “Hey, O’Brien.” The uniformed cop called from the bedroom where he’d opened a bureau drawer. “Come lookit all these swell lace underpants. D’ya think one of ’em would be missed? I know a girl in Canarsie about this size.”

  “Lay off that stuff, Schultz,” the little man, O’Brien, said. “We’re here to look for evidence.”

  “Maybe you are,” Schultz said, “but I’m still looking for a cigar.”

  They inspected the closet, the dressing table and the bureau, just as Jake had done, commenting favorably on their contents. “Imagine one babe owning all those nighties,” O’Brien said. Birnbaum took another soda mint, belched, and said, “My wife wears flannel ones.” O’Brien opened the perfume bottle, sniffed, and put a drop on his handkerchief. “Never could resist perfume,” he explained apologetically.

  It was Schultz who found the sheet of thin paper, typed on with brown ink. Jake heard him call out, “Hey, lookit, fellas. A t’reatenin’ letter!”

  The two plain-clothes men beat it into the parlor. O’Brien read it out loud. When he came to the signature he said, “What the hell!” and then, “It was wrote by some nut.”

  “O.K.,” Birnbaum said, “so it was a nut murdered her. It didn’t make sense anyway, strangling a dame and then cutting her head off and then tucking her in bed. So we arrest this You-you You-you, and there’s the case.” He took another soda mint.

  “You take too many of those pills,” O’Brien said. “Maybe that’s what’s the matter with your stummick.”

  Birnbaum said crossly, “I know what’s good for me and what isn’t.”

  “Lookit, fellas,” Schultz said. His voice was puzzled. “This here t’reatenin’ letter says ‘Bertha’ at the top of it. Only it wasn’t this Bertha babe who got murdered. It was some other babe.”

  O’Brien sighed and said, “Listen, Schultz, to a nut it don’t make no difference whether the right person gets murdered or not, so long as somebody gets murdered.”

  “It don’t make no sense to me,” Schultz said stubbornly.

  “So why does it have to make sense to you?” Birnbaum said. “Let Peterson worry about it. That’s what they made him an inspector for.”

  “O.K., O.K.,” Schultz muttered. “Just make out like I didn’t say nothing.” He turned over the wastebasket and began examining its contents.

  The two plain-clothes men rummaged through the desk. They didn’t have any more luck than Jake had had. O’Brien read out loud the letter from Dennis, and Birnbaum said, “Give me that. I bet you’re making it up.” He read aloud “your helpless slave” and O’Brien whistled, “Wew-wew-wew!”

  Schultz said, “Quit clowning, you guys. I can’t concentrate.”

  “Don’t make so much noise, Birnbaum,” O’Brien said mincingly. “Schultzy can’t concentrate.”

  There was silence for a few minutes, broken only by the rattling of papers. Then suddenly Schultz said, “Hey, lookit, fellas, I found the envelope what the t’reatenin’ letter come in. Same fancy paper, same typewriter.”

  O’Brien said, “Give it here.” Then “I’ll be damned, it’s got a name and address on it.” Jake mentally swore at himself for not having gone through the wastebasket. He was praying that he wouldn’t sneeze. The trickle from the shower was slowly soaking his left shoulder, and he didn’t dare shift his position. Oh, well, if he got pneumonia, it was in a good cause.

  “It sure as hell must be from a nut,” Birnbaum said. “Imagine putting your name and address on a threatening letter before you go and murder the person you sent it to.”

  “But the person it was sent to wasn’t murdered,” Schultz said firmly, and Birnbaum said, “Nobody asked you. Sh
ut up.”

  “Wildavine—Williams,” O’Brien read slowly. “That’s double-you double-you, all right. Must be a dame.” Jake made a mental note of the name.

  “Then what was the idea of that you-you-you-you gag?” Schultz wanted to know.

  “Because she’s a nut,” O’Brien said patiently, as though he were speaking to a slightly retarded child. He read, “Twenty-three Morton Street. That’s down in Greenwich Village. There’s a lot of nuts down there.”

  Jake hastily memorized the address. 23, 23, 23. Wildavine Williams, 2 3 Morton Street. Oh, if he could only get out of this damned shower and start for 23 Morton Street!

  “All right,” Birnbaum said. “So phone in and report and let’s get out of here. I want to get to a drugstore and get some Pepto-Bismol.”

  “And let Peterson take all the credit?” O’Brien said. “Listen, my mother didn’t raise any half-wit children. We’ll go down there and pick her up ourselves. These nuts always break down and confess right off the bat. Then we’ll take her in to headquarters with the confession.”

  Birnbaum said, “I don’t feel so good.”

  “You’ll feel swell,” O’Brien said, “if we get a promotion outa this.”

  Schultz said, “Yeah, but lookit, fellas, this Wildavine dame wrote the t’reatenin’ letter to Bertha, and it wasn’t Bertha who got killed.”

  “Schultz, I don’t like you,” O’Brien said. “Come on, Birnbaum, let’s get going.” Jake breathed a sigh of relief. Once those three cops got out of the apartment—The sigh of relief turned into a faint groan when he heard O’Brien say, “And your orders, Schultzy, are to stay here and watch the apartment. Peterson says he don’t want nothing moved out of here.”