Having Wonderful Crime

by Craig Rice

  “Now, look,” Jake said. “It’s late, and we’re all tired.”

  “It may be late,” she said stubbornly, “but we’re not that tired. For that matter, you have some explanations of your own to make.”

  “I’ll make them,” Jake said, just as stubbornly, “when I’ve been fed, and not before.”

  “And while we’re on the subject,” Malone said, “how about that dinner jacket?”

  Helene turned up her nose, folded her arms, and was resolutely silent until room service knocked at the door. She remained silent until half the gin and beer, all the food and all the coffee were gone. Then she poured out three more drinks and said to Malone, “Well? Why did you tell all that to Arthur Peterson?”

  Malone said crossly, “Dr. Puckett was perfectly justified in what he did. You wouldn’t like to see him stuck in jail, would you? I didn’t think so. Well, he’s safe with this self-defense setup. Only, I couldn’t have fixed him up on a charge of mutilating a body and transporting a corpse without a permit.”

  “How did you know?” Helene asked.

  “Because of the lilies,” Malone said. “And why don’t you go to sleep and leave me alone?”

  “But, Jake,” Helene said. “How did you know?”

  “The little black bag,” Jake mumbled. “And the elevator boy. Go ’way and let me sleep.”

  Helene poured three more drinks and said relentlessly, “You aren’t going to sleep, either of you, until you’ve explained everything. Not if I have to light little bonfires under your pink toes. Maybe you ought to pool your information, and come up with a good story. And it had better be good, too.”

  Jake confessed to his bribery of the chambermaid, and his search of suite 713, and his deduction that Bertha had planned to stay, while Dennis had not. Malone came in with what Wildavine had confided to him, as Bertha’s reason for staying. Jake apologized for his lapse in not recognizing, immediately, the significance of the receipt from the World-Wide Mailing Service, and Malone explained his relationship with Abner Proudfoot, omitting a few details which he considered entirely personal and nobody’s damn business but his. Jake admitted his early suspicions of Wildavine, and Malone revealed that—probably as a matter of wish thinking—he’d pinned the whole affair on Abner Proudfoot. Helene stated that all this autobiographical material was very interesting. She, however, would like to know exactly what had happened.

  “From whose point of view?” Malone asked. “Dennis Morrison’s? Well, the life story he gave us was true enough. Except, he left out a few things. He worked for an escort bureau, all right. But he left it when he marred Gloria Garden, because she had a nice little income he could live on.”

  “He left it before he married her,” Jake said. He brought the Gloria Garden-Dennis Morrison correspondence out of its hiding place to prove it.

  “Well, anyway, he married her,” Malone said. “But she didn’t make enough money. He went back to the escort bureau in hopes of meeting a wealthy and foolish woman. Luck sent him Bertha Lutts. She was shrewd instead of foolish, but the result was the same, as far as Dennis was concerned. A marriage was arranged. He made careful plans. He’d go out and get drunk on their wedding night—a circumstance almost anyone could sympathize with. While he was away, she’d be brutally murdered, for her jewelry. He made plans for the disposal of the jewelry. But then he had to murder Gloria Garden, too, because she was threatening to give the whole show away. His alibi, of course, was to have been his getting drunk, and showing up at various nightclubs and bars, in various states of intoxication, and climaxing it by falling into the hands of some perfect strangers, in the lobby of the St. Jacques.”

  Helene said, “But, Malone—” He shushed her.

  “Tell the story from Bertha Morrison’s viewpoint,” he said. “She had to have a lover or a husband, preferably the latter, to quiet certain unpleasant rumors that were going the rounds. She’d probably heard of the escort bureau through her cousin, she called up for a young man, and got Dennis Morrison. I’ve no doubt he told the truth, that she suggested the marriage. He certainly couldn’t have known that she planned to spend her honeymoon in Manhattan, and not with him, or that she’d sent out those letters to be mailed. Or else, he would have arranged things differently.

  “Now, take Gloria Garden. She’d been in love with Dennis Morrison. He left her, to marry—bigamously—another woman. She wrote to her father about it, heartbroken. Then, the night of the murder, Dennis came back, with Bertha’s jewels. Remember, he wouldn’t have dared to dispose of them himself. He’d already given Gloria a long song and dance about selling the jewels for him, and running away with him, and she fell for it. Because she was in love with him and she didn’t know he had murdered Bertha. Then, when she came back and met him, with the dough, he murdered her.”

  “He’d moved back in with her, too,” Jake said, wide-awake now. “Because there were gaps in the closet where he’d taken his clothes away in a hurry. And there was a smell of shaving cream in the bathroom. But he was in such a hell of a hurry that he forgot to take his pipes along.”

  “A detail,” Malone said. “It would never have been noticed, if he hadn’t made another and more serious error. He had his plans very well made. Bertha would be found, brutally beaten and strangled, her jewels gone, the murder committed during the time when her bridegroom was out painting the town. Gloria Garden would be found, strangled, but there wouldn’t seem to be any connection between the two crimes.” The little lawyer paused long enough to drop his frayed cigar stub in the ash tray and went on. “He would have established one of those imperfect alibis that can’t be proved and must be believed. He had enough confidence in himself to get genuinely drunk and have a genuine hangover, in case the police got curious. It was a beautiful setup. Anguished young bridegroom. Slaughtered bride. Police looking for a robber-murderer. Time passes, the heat is off, Bertha is buried, and the young bridegroom inherits the dough.”

  “But why did he promote Gloria to sell the jewelry for him?” Jake asked. “Why didn’t he just dump it in the river? Its being missing proved his point.”

  “Probably,” Malone said, “he needed ready cash. It takes a little time for an estate to be settled, remember. And he had to murder Gloria, anyway. He wasn’t safe as long as she was alive. With her dead, no one knew of his secret marriage to her. And how was he to know that Jake would go digging in Gloria’s mattress and that Helene here would go out hell-raising?”

  “You can call it hell-raising,” Helene said coldly. She doled out the rest of the gin. “But I didn’t have any fun. Or maybe I’m just the conservative type. What was the serious error Dennis Morrison made?”

  “He underestimated old Dr. Puckett,” Malone said. He lit a fresh cigar, and sipped his gin. Maybe, sometime, he’d get some sleep. “Maybe he didn’t even know about old Dr. Puckett. But it must have been a nasty blow to Dennis when he walked in that room in suite 713 to identify his murdered bride and saw Gloria Garden’s face.”

  “You are the longest-winded and most irritating man I ever knew,” Helene said.

  “And you are an impertinent young woman,” Malone said. He rolled his cigar between his fingers. “Let’s look at the story from Dr. Puckett’s viewpoint. He’s a country practitioner, and a shrewd guy. He knows about murder, and he knows about people. Gloria—or to him, Hazel—wrote all about her big love affair, and her secret marriage. She wrote him when Dennis deserted her, and he sent her a letter of sound advice, urging her to come home. I wish to heaven she had. Anyway, he got to thinking it over. Finally, he just packed up and came to New York. By the way, there aren’t any lectures or any medical conventions going on right now. You’d think the police would have noticed that.”

  “The police didn’t notice a lot of things,” Jake said. “Go on, Malone.”

  “And by the way,” Helene said, “how come you’re so all-fired smart all of a sudden, Malone? How did you learn all this, anyway?”

  “I didn’t,” Malone said pr
omptly. “I’m making it all up as I go along. But from what I do know, and from what Dr. Puckett told me tonight, I’ll bet you anything you’ll care to name that I’m right.” He finished his gin, yawned, and knocked the ashes from his cigar. “Gloria—or Hazel—didn’t tell him Dennis Morrison’s name. Not until he arrived here, the day of the murder. She told him everything she knew, then, about Dennis’ marriage to Bertha, and their honeymoon at the St. Jacques.”

  “You mean he saw her,” Jake said, “before she died?”

  “He did,” Malone said. “Thank God. They had dinner together, and she was happy. Dennis had planned to marry a rich and unattractive woman for her money. At the last minute, he’d decided he couldn’t go through with it. He was going to steal her jewelry, Gloria would dispose of it for him, and they’d go away together, with a little stake, and start a wonderful new life together.”

  “And she actually fell for that?” Helene said incredulously.

  “She was in love with him,” Malone said; “she’d have fallen for anything. So much so, that when old Dr. Puckett realized he couldn’t talk her out of it, she almost convinced him that it would work and she’d be happy.” He closed his eyes for a moment. “They had dinner in a little French restaurant near where she lived. In spite of what she was telling him, he had a good dinner and a good time. She was more beautiful than he’d ever seen her before, and her eyes were shining with happiness. I’m giving you old Doc Puckett’s own words. He never gave up trying to talk her out of it, but at last when he went away, he was ready to believe that it would turn out for the best. He left her, determined not to interfere.”

  “But he came back,” Jake said.

  Malone nodded. “Away from his daughter, away from the spell of her happy excitement, he thought it over. It wasn’t just the little matter of jewel robbery that worried him, but his own private theory that crime brings its own punishment, one way or another. So he went back, to try to convince her that she must give it up, and come home with him. And he found her murdered.” He laid down the cigar. “He knew who’d killed her, and why. But he couldn’t have proved it. He had one letter from her saying that the man she loved was leaving her for another woman, but it didn’t mention that the other woman had money, and it didn’t mention the man’s name. He knew enough about murder and the law to realize that what Gloria had told him at dinner was the only evidence against Dennis Morrison, and that it wasn’t enough to convict him. So, there was only one thing he could do.”

  “Plant some evidence that would convict him,” Jake said. “I guessed that when the elevator boy said a doctor had come to see Bertha that night, carrying his little black bag.”

  Helene shuddered. “You mean he was carrying his daughter’s head in that little black bag?”

  “Can you think of a better way to get through a hotel lobby with a head?” Malone asked. “He knew he couldn’t carry the whole body upstairs to room 713, and he was damn well going to leave some evidence there in Dennis Morrison’s room.”

  “But how in blazes did he expect to get in?” Jake asked.

  “He’d intended to stand around in front of the door for a couple of minutes,” Malone said, “then send down for a passkey on the theory that the patient who had called him must be seriously ill. He thought Dennis and Bertha would be in the bedroom, and he could get in and out without disturbing them. Instead, he found the door unlocked. Bertha must have adjusted the spring lock so that Wildavine Williams could walk right in, and Dennis, after he’d murdered Bertha and gone away, didn’t notice that the door didn’t lock behind him.”

  “The poor old man,” Helene said. “To walk in that way on two murders. But, Malone, why did he switch the heads?”

  “To prevent the murderer from inheriting Bertha’s money,” Malone said. “He knew Dennis had murdered both those women, but he still couldn’t prove it. But if he could keep Bertha from being identified, if he could make it appear that another woman had been murdered in suite 713 and that Bertha was just missing, then he would at least keep Dennis from attaining the object of his crimes for seven years.” He paused, then added reflectively, “To say nothing of driving Dennis nuts in the meantime.”

  Jake said, “If we hadn’t all been such dopes, we’d have realized right away that only a skilled doctor could have performed that decapitation, especially when we knew that the head and the body belonged to two different women, though they seemed to fit together perfectly.”

  “Sure,” Malone said, “he was figuring on the police not being too bright. He even hoped they’d never catch on that the body and head didn’t match. But even if the medical examiner did find out the truth, he knew they still couldn’t identify Bertha’s body without the rest of her, and he was right. It would have worked out that way, if I hadn’t been so damned inquisitive.” He puffed furiously at his cigar. “The old doc’s pretty smart. He left a woman who seemed to be Gloria Garden in suite 713. Then he carried Bertha’s head and his daughter’s body over to Staten Island, in that same little black bag. He must have made a lot of trips.”

  Helene shivered. She walked to the window and looked out. The fog had been blown away, the sun had come out, and Fifth Avenue was bright and washed and new. It was hard to believe that murders happened, in such a world. “The next day he began putting in his sister-in-law’s garden,” Malone said, “to conceal the fact that digging had been going on. And then, just to clinch things, he turned up at police headquarters and identified the murdered woman.”

  “Dennis must have known all along,” Helene said.

  “Of course he did,” Malone told her. “That’s why he was riding back and forth on the ferry boats. He was trying to follow Dr. Puckett, learn where he lived and where he must have buried Bertha Morrison’s head. He must have really gone nearly insane once or twice—as he actually did, I think, at the end—when he realized that his whole elaborate scheme had gone for nothing, unless Bertha’s head could be found and identified. And Dr. Puckett learned that Dennis was following him, knew that sooner or later he’d find what he was looking for. That’s why he tried to murder Dennis at the ferry station. And that’s why he finally shot him, tonight. He was perfectly willing, after that, to tell the whole story and go to jail. Thank goodness I talked him out of it.”

  “We should have pooled our information,” Jake said gloomily, “instead of fumbling around on our own. We’d have gotten this over a long time earlier. I tumbled to it tonight when I realized Dr. Puckett must have performed the two decapitations. I knew then that Dennis must be the murderer, and where he’d gone, and why.”

  “I tumbled to it,” Malone said, “when I discovered how Dennis’ subconscious had tripped him up. He’d intended to be picked up in the lobby, a harmless drunk, trying to steal flowers to take to his bride. Only, he tried to steal lilies, because he knew that she was dead. Once I could accept the premise that Dennis was the murderer, I knew Dr. Puckett had done the monkey business with the heads.”

  “Let this be a lesson to all of us,” Helene said. “Never keep secrets from each other.”

  Malone looked at her sternly. “And that reminds me,” he said. “About that dinner jacket—”

  “Oh, that,” Helene said airily. “It had nothing to do with the case. It was just an accident that happened in the men’s room of one of the night clubs Dennis visited while he was establishing his alibi between murders. The owner of the dinner jacket remembered it very well. It seems he loves champagne, but he’s allergic to it or something. Anyway, he was ill. While he was holding his face under a cold-water faucet, the porter sponged and pressed his dinner jacket and hung it over a chair. There was a young man who seemed to be rather intoxicated at the next washbasin who also had his dinner jacket off. He was holding his handkerchief to his nose. The young man put on a dinner jacket, the porter folded the handkerchief for him and stuffed it in his pocket and the young man went staggering out. Mr. Zabel put on what he thought was his own dinner jacket, and he too staggered out. He hadn�
�t had a handkerchief, he’d lost it somewhere. The next day when he realized there’d been a switch, he didn’t say anything about it because it seems his wife didn’t know he’d been out night-clubbing.”

  “Mr. who?” Jake said suspiciously.

  “Zabel,” Helene said in an innocent voice. “Owner of the Zabel Publishing Company. Only keep it to yourself, because nobody knows he was out that night.”

  Jake said, “I didn’t think anybody would have bought that poem without being blackmailed. How did you find him?”

  “Why,” Helene said, “I told you, when we were at Wildavine’s. I looked him up in the phone book and called for an appointment and went right over.” She added, “I just said, ‘Did you lose a dinner jacket?’ and he said, ‘Come right over.’”

  “But how did you know who to call up?” Jake roared. “How did you know whose jacket it was?”

  “Well,” Helene said indignantly, “his initials were on the wallet. Q. P. Z. I knew there couldn’t be many men whose last name began with Z who had those initials, and I didn’t mind calling them all up until I got the right one. But there was only one. Quarles P. Zabel. And he’s probably going to buy all of Wildavine’s poems.” She folded her hands in her lap and looked pleased. Malone stared at her silently and reflected that every now and then, he underestimated Helene.

  Jake stared at her, thinking the same thing. And adding to himself that, while he certainly didn’t want The Mongoose Murders, by Jake Justus, to be published because of the little incident of the dinner jacket, still—he knew that if he could just talk with Quarles Zabel, he could talk him into reading and probably buying the book. No! He didn’t want it to happen that way. It was an almost unendurable temptation. Just to get an appointment with Quarles Zabel—no! Jake squelched the temptation once and for all. He’d worked long and hard on that book, and he wasn’t going to have it published just because an absent-minded man had mislaid his dinner jacket in the men’s room of a night club. Furthermore, he wasn’t going to capitalize on his part in finding the murderer of Bertha Morrison and Gloria Garden. He’d take the book back to Chicago with him, that’s what he’d do! He’d rewrite it, page by page—already he had a new idea for it—and then send it back to the editor who had just turned it down. And this time—