The Wrong Murder

by Craig Rice

  “Sure,” said little Georgie la Cerra. “The Hook told me to search her, and I searched her.” He seemed to speak with effort. “I didn’t like to do it. I never undressed no lady before—no dead lady.”

  His face, from hair to collar, was a brilliant, gorgeous crimson.

  “Well, it was a nice job for an amateur,” Malone said at last. He signaled to Helene, and to Jake, who was examining the dead woman’s clothing, a curious frown on his face. At the door, the lawyer paused as though he had just remembered something.

  “Hook, what do you know about Mona McClane?”

  A look of sincere admiration came over the gangster’s face. “That dame! You know what she done? She took me at my own game. Many more people like her, and every gambling house in the city would run at a loss.” He sighed and shook his head. “Four times she cleaned out the bank. Then she offers to bet her winnings against the Casino, and I’m God damned if she didn’t win!”

  “Did she ever know Gumbril?” Malone asked unconcernedly.

  Hook shook his head. “What would a swell dame like that be doing, knowing a guy like Gumbril?” He sighed again, the effect was not unlike that of a mountain caught in an earthquake. “A swell dame. But take it from me, she’s a bad one to bet with!”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  There wasn’t a word all the way down the elevator or on the way to the car. Not until Helene had started the motor did Jake speak.

  “We keep finding people who should have murdered Gumbril,” he said gloomily. “But not Mona McClane. Do you think Hook is telling the truth?”

  “No doubt of it,” Malone assured him. “He’s a crook, but he’s perfectly honest.” He scowled. “It’s easy to see why he figured that Fleurette had cleaned out Gumbril’s strongbox. But if she had gone to his room—”

  “She did go to his room,” Jake said excitedly.

  “You haven’t turned clairvoyant, by any chance?” the lawyer asked scornfully.

  “No, but I’ve got a nose,” Jake said. “Perfume. I’d know it anywhere. Remember I told you how that closet smelled. There was the same perfume on her clothes. Heavy, too.”

  “If that’s so,” Malone said slowly, “and it may very easily be—if Fleurette did go to Gumbril’s room—” He paused and finally said grimly, “We’ve got to get that box, that’s all. What’s more, we’ve got to get it right now.”

  Helene stepped on the accelerator and shot past a startled policeman down Michigan Avenue. “We’ll have Mr. Gumbril’s little box in half an hour.”

  “A nice sentiment,” Malone growled. “Don’t forget though that Von Flanagan probably still has Gumbril’s room closed to the public.”

  “You don’t discourage me in the least,” she said placidly. “Jake, what was that box like?”

  “It was a regular metal dispatch box,” he told her, “with a very good lock and a handle on the top. It was enameled or painted dark green.”

  She was silent for a block or so. “Is there a hardware store anywhere near here?”

  “There’s Goldblatt’s,” Jake said; “they have a hardware department, I imagine.”

  “Thanks. That’s all I wanted to know.” She drove to Van Buren Street, over to State, and stopped the car at the corner. “Drive around the block and pick me up here on the corner.” Before he could say a word she had hopped out and was lost in the sidewalk crowds.

  Jake piloted the big car gingerly through the late-afternoon traffic. “Malone, what do you suppose she’s up to now?”

  “I don’t know,” the lawyer growled, “and it’s probably safer not to ask. Don’t worry, we’ll find out.”

  After a few turns around the block they saw Helene on the corner and stopped next to the curb.

  “Get what you wanted?” Jake asked.

  “Yes. Don’t bother me with questions now. Get out, you’re coming too.”

  “You can’t leave the car here,” Jake complained. “We’ve tied up traffic for two blocks now.”

  “I’m not going to leave it here. Malone, you just keep driving around for a while and every five minutes go past this corner. In due course of time you can pick us up here, complete with box.”

  “If this is a new game, I don’t like it,” Malone said morosely, taking the wheel.

  “Well, if we aren’t here in an hour, head for the jail.” She tucked her hand under Jake’s arm. “Where’s a telephone booth?”

  He pointed across State Street to a cigar store. She picked her way delicately through the muddy melted snow to the store, looked quickly in the phone book, and dialed the number of the Fairfax Hotel.

  “I want to talk to Mr. Poppenpuss.”

  A pause.

  “But there is too. I know he lives there. Isn’t this the Fairfax Hotel?” Her voice rose in rage. “Then I want to talk to Mr. Poppenpuss, P-O-P-P-E-N-P-U-S-S, in room six fourteen. I tell you there is a Mr. Poppenpuss in room six fourteen. Let me talk to room six fourteen. But I know there is.” She burst into an angry tirade about the stupidity of hotel clerks, and banged the receiver on its hook.

  “What the hell?” Jake asked.

  “I just wanted to find out if room six fourteen is empty,” she said complacently. “Thank heaven it is.” She waved at a passing taxi, told the driver, “Fairfax Hotel.”

  “Helene,” Jake said desperately, “what are you going to do?”

  “Do you want to come along with me, or shall I do this myself?”

  “Of course I’m coming with you.”

  “Then stop asking questions. To quote Malone, this is a new game and I do like it.”

  At the door to the Fairfax Hotel she told him, “Get a room, pay for it in advance, and try to look as if you’d never seen me until ten minutes ago.”

  “Helene, please—”

  “And stop looking embarrassed.”

  Jake sighed and decided to play along. The lone, shabby bellhop showed them to a dingy room on the fourth floor, pocketed his tip and went away. He closed the door and looked at her thoughtfully.

  “Since we’re here, and since we’ve paid for the room—”

  “I know what you mean,” she said, “and it’s a wonderful idea, but this is a business trip. I hope you still have that skeleton key Malone gave you.”

  “I have, but what of it? If Von Flanagan has a cop stationed in room five fourteen, the key won’t do us any good.”

  “If it will open five fourteen, it’ll open six fourteen.” She opened the door and looked out. The corridor was empty. Helene started for the stairs; Jake hopefully followed.

  The sixth floor corridor was just as empty. She led the way to six fourteen.

  “Try the key and pray that it works.”

  It did. She switched on the light, closed and locked the door. Then she took a small, paper-wrapped package from her purse, woman’s eighth wonder of the world, unwrapped it, and took out a long piece of heavy cord and a large hook.

  “We’re going fishing,” she announced. She tied the cord securely to the hook and handed the apparatus to Jake. “Do I need to suggest what to do next, or do you get the idea?”

  “I do,” he said delightedly. “Helene, you’re wonderful.”

  “Have it your own way,” she said, “but get the box.”

  He opened the window and looked out. On the ledge below he could see the box, one end of it lightly frosted with snow. Luckily the snow did not cover the handle. Slowly and carefully he lowered the hook on its length of cord.

  The first two tries missed the handle completely. Helene appeared beside him and looked anxiously out the window. On his third attempt the hook slipped into the handle, he gave a gentle tug, and the box moved. Helene gasped delightedly. Very carefully he hauled in the string until at last he was able to reach out with his other hand, grasp the box, and pull it over the sill.

  For a moment they sat on the floor beside the open window, breathless and beaming. Then a frown began to gather on Jake’s face.

  “You’ve thought of everythi
ng except how to dispose of the body,” he complained. “We’ve got the box, but how are we going to get it out of here? The clerk saw us come in, he saw we weren’t carrying anything. What’s he going to do if he sees us walking out with this?”

  “You underestimate me,” she said, scrambling to her feet. “I thought of that too. Come on down to the fourth floor.”

  They went down without meeting anybody. At the fourth floor she paused and handed him the box. “Jake, there’s a corner in the corridor right at the stairs. You go on down to the second floor with the box—”

  “And leave you here alone? Don’t be—”

  “I’ll be all right, don’t worry. Park yourself around that little corner out of sight of the stairs, and wait there until the clerk, and everyone else in the lobby, is out of the way.”

  “How are you going to get them out of the lobby?”

  “That’s my business. You tend to your own knitting. Whatever happens, don’t pay any attention to what I may do, no matter what it is. Understand?”

  He nodded, hoping for the best, knowing he wouldn’t get it.

  “As soon as the coast is clear, head for the street and start as fast as you can for that corner where we’re to meet Malone. I’ll join you there in five minutes.”

  “Helene, what are you going to do?”

  “You’ll find out,” she said ominously.

  “I’m afraid I will,” he said. He tucked the box under his arm, went on down the stairs, and stood in the shadows of the corner. He had barely reached its shelter when a sound froze the blood in his veins. A few floors above Helene was screaming at the top of her voice. His impulse was to drop the box and run to her aid. He didn’t obey it. After the first terrible moment, he detected something just a trifle phony in the scream.

  The inhabitants of the lobby, however, heard no phony note. Standing in the shadows, Jake heard the elevator shoot upward. Running footsteps sounded on the stairs. As they died away he looked around the corner, saw no one, went cautiously down the stairs to the lobby. No one was in sight. He walked quickly across the lobby and onto the sidewalk and started toward Van Buren Street.

  He wanted to wait for Helene. Still, it was probably best to carry out her instructions. By the time he had covered one block, he began to worry. What if those screams had been genuine, after all? He told himself firmly they were not, and continued north. By the end of the next block he had begun to worry about how she was going to talk her way out of whatever she had screamed herself into. When he had reached the corner of State and Van Buren, he had decided to go back to the Fairfax Hotel and find out what had happened to her, come what might.

  Just as he reached that decision a taxi stopped in front of him and Helene hopped out, bright-eyed and smiling.

  “Darling!” Jake said, inadequately. He clung to her hand with a kind of desperation.

  “How did you like my scream?”

  He shuddered. “What in God’s name did you do?”

  She smiled happily, like a pleased child. “I ran down the stairs screaming, and when the clerk finally quieted me enough to talk, I told him you’d grabbed a twenty-dollar bill that I was carrying in my stocking and ran off with it.”

  “Well,” Jake said grimly, thirty seconds later, “that makes one more hotel I have to stay out of in the future.” He mopped his brow and added, “Suppose they’d sent for the police?”

  “Idiot. I knew they wouldn’t. In fact”—a look of uncomfortable embarrassment came into her eyes—“the clerk gave me a ten-dollar bill out of the cash register if I’d go quietly away and say nothing. I had to take it, but what on earth shall I do with it? It’s tainted money!”

  At that moment the car appeared around the corner, driven by Malone. A sudden inspiration came to Helene, she ran a few steps down the street and dropped the bill in the hand of a Volunteers-of-America Stanta Claus who probably never recovered from the shock. A moment later they were in the car, driving away from the scene.

  “We got the box,” Helene reported. “The box and ten dollars. I think Jake got a few gray hairs too, but it was worth it.”

  Malone said, “Maybe you’d better not tell me how you did it. It might keep me awake nights, thinking about it. Let’s see the box.”

  Jake held it out. “Now all we have to do is get it open.”

  “That’s easy,” Helene said. “All we need is a locksmith.”

  “Locksmith hell,” Malone said scornfully. “Me and love, we laugh at locksmiths. I used to have a client who was a professional cracksman. Just wait till I get that box in my office!”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Jake and Helene watched anxiously as the little lawyer laid the precious box on his desk, examined the lock closely, and began pawing through a desk drawer. After taking out two soiled handkerchiefs, a small pile of wastepaper, a cardboard file marked LETTERS TO ANSWER, an empty bottle, and a photograph of a plumpish young woman inscribed “Your darling Louise,” he found what he was looking for: a little leather kit, not unlike a manicure kit.

  From it he took a handful of small, shining tools and examined them one by one. A half dozen or so he laid on the desk beside the box, the rest he put carefully back in the leather kit. Then, first with one tool and then another, he began probing the lock of the metal box, delicately and with exquisite care.

  The room was deathly still. Watching Malone, Jake felt his scalp crinkling with excitement. Inside that dark-green metal box had been Mona McClane’s motive for murdering Joshua Gumbril and his sister. Maybe it was still there. The gun had already come to their hands and right at this moment Von Flanagan was having it tested and its ownership traced. Any minute now Von Flanagan could telephone his findings. Any minute now Malone would get that box open. Then the case would be complete. It was almost as though that innocent-looking box held the deed to the Casino.

  He tried to steel himself against disappointment. It would probably turn out that the box held nothing except on old laundry bill and a couple of mousetraps. Or Joshua Gumbril’s other necktie, if he had another necktie. It might even be empty. In fact, it probably was empty. Jake was positive that it was empty. He felt that the sound of his heart beating as Malone struggled with the tools would drown out the combined Army and Navy bands.

  Malone had stopped fiddling with the tools and stared indignantly at the box.

  Jake said, “You thugs ought to keep in practice. Can’t you get it open?”

  Malone answered with a low growl. He took the rest of the tools out of the kit and experimented with them until he had tried them all. Suddenly he swept them into the desk drawer without bothering to put them in their leather kit, slammed the drawer shut, and glared at the obstinate box with a mixture of baffled rage and helplessness.

  Helene cleared her throat delicately. “Try a paper clip.”

  The paper clip didn’t work. Neither did a hairpin.

  Malone said, “By God, if I have to go down and borrow an ax from the janitor and split the infernal thing in two—” his voice broke off in an incoherent and enraged gurgle.

  Helene sighed, picked up the box, and examined it. Accidentally she pressed the tiny knob just above the keyhole. The box immediately sprang open, jolted out of her hands, and fell to the desk top with a horrific clatter. Helene screamed. Jake and Malone both jumped.

  “Where did you learn that trick?” Malone gasped.

  “It was nothing,” Helene said airily. “And it’s particularly easy when the box simply isn’t locked.”

  For a moment no one dared speak. Malone looked intently and suspiciously at the box, as though at any moment it might leap up and bite him.

  At last Jake said in a very weak voice, “I tried all my keys and my penknife on it that first night in Gumbril’s room, because I supposed of course it was locked. I never thought of just trying to open it without unlocking it. Because you’d naturally think a box like that would be locked.”

  “If any of us had had any sense,” Malone said peevishly, �
��we’d have known right away that it wasn’t.”

  “Why?” Helene asked.

  “Where was the key?”

  “What key?”

  “The key to the box,” Malone roared, “Gumbril’s key. Were there any keys found on his person or anywhere else among his possessions?”

  Jake said, “No. I guess there weren’t.”

  “You’re damned right there weren’t,” Malone said. “If he’d kept the box locked he’d have had to have a key somewhere. Evidently he had an intense dislike of carrying anything or having anything. You saw what was in his room, Jake. You heard what was found in his pockets. The man simply didn’t want possessions, except money. Not even a small key to open a metal dispatch box. He probably realized that the average person, looking at the box, would assume it to be locked, just as we did. It’s even possible that the box doesn’t contain anything sufficiently valuable to be locked up.”

  Helene said, “For the love of heaven, don’t sit there talking about it, look inside it.”

  “Stop rushing me,” Malone said crossly. He drew the box over to his side of the desk. Suddenly he dropped it as though it had stung him. He looked somewhere far beyond the walls of his office. “That was all poppycock,” he said slowly.

  Neither Jake nor Helene dared to interrupt him.

  “The box was locked,” he said, seeming to weigh each word against the next. “There was a key. The key was in Gumbril’s room—not on his person, or the police would have found it. It must have been carried away by the person who opened the box.”

  The words, “What person?” rose to Jake’s lips and died there. Malone sat staring into space, his face suddenly gray.

  “If you don’t open that damned box, I will,” Helene said.

  Malone looked at her as though he had never seen her before. “What for?” he said, the words dragging.

  He stared at the box for a long moment, finally threw open the lid and peered inside. With maddening deliberation he drew out a folded piece of paper that appeared to be an official document of some kind.