Murder on Their Minds

by George Harmon Coxe

  “That’s a he,” he said in outraged tones.

  “Who hit her?” Murdock demanded, still on the offensive. “You?”

  “God, no!” Alderson’s face twisted, an almost horrified expression. “Me? I couldn’t. I’m in love with her.”

  “Denham?”

  “Denham?… Denham,” he said with sudden savagery. “I’ll kill him.”

  “Cut it out!” Murdock said brusquely. “Take it easy. I didn’t say Denham hit her.”

  “But you said—what did she—”

  “I’ll tell you if you’ll sit down and start using your head. Cool off! I want to talk to you.… How about a cup of coffee?”

  Alderson sat down, his body limp and his belligerence vitiated by the things he had heard. His good-looking face was shiny with perspiration now and he took the handkerchief from his breast pocket to wipe it off.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I could use a cup if it isn’t too much trouble.… Black.”

  When Murdock brought the coffee Alderson had slumped in the chair and his eyes held a distant look. He thanked Murdock as he accepted the cup.

  “Why should she come to you?” he asked quietly.

  Murdock said he did not know. Without going into details he explained how Rita had fallen asleep and spoke of her determination not to go home. He said it seemed best to let her sleep there on the divan.

  “She was gone when I woke up,” he said.

  “You don’t know where.”

  “No. But when she gets over her hangover she’ll probably go home.… How much would you stand to lose,” he said in swift digression, “if your mother decided to cut you out of her will?”

  Alderson, in the act of taking a sip of coffee, stopped, the cup in mid-air.

  “What?”

  “How big is your mother’s estate?”

  “I don’t know,” Alderson said. “A lot of it’s tied up in the company. She’s not rich by today’s standards. Maybe she has an income of forty or fifty thousand a year.”

  “If you capitalized that conservatively that would be maybe a million and a half, not counting the house or any insurance she might have.”

  “Wait a minute.” Alderson put aside the cup. “What the hell is this?”

  “I’m looking for motives for murder,” Murdock said flatly. “You’ve got one.”

  “Me? You think I—”

  Murdock cut him off. “Your father left most of his estate in trust for you and your brothers, didn’t he? With George gone you and Donald will split it.”

  “What about it?”

  “There was a funny clause in the will, giving your mother power to cut either of you off if you married without her consent. What I’m wondering is—does she know you married somebody named Elsie Graham in San Francisco in 1951 and that a divorce was granted in Reno about eight weeks later.”

  Alderson’s face was suddenly white and stiff at the mouth and his brown gaze was contemptuous.

  “You’re a proper bastard, aren’t you?”

  “Your mother hired Tom Brady,” Murdock said, ignoring the comment. “She wanted to know a lot of things about a lot of people. What Brady turned up about you was probably nothing but routine to him, but that’s the way he worked. I don’t think he went to California to check on you but while he was out there he did a job.”

  “That was a long time ago.”

  “Granted. My point is simply that Brady didn’t live to turn in his reports. If he was killed because of them it could follow that he was killed by someone who was afraid to let your mother read those reports; someone who had plenty to lose. It could be you.”

  Alderson had his temper in hand now. He stood up and scoffed at the assumption. “You’re nuts,” he said. “Maybe I was scared at the time, but not any more. She wouldn’t crack down on me for that now. If I explained it to her she’d understand.”

  He lit a cigarette and began to pace back and forth, the cadence of his voice remote, as though he were talking to himself.

  “I had a thirty-day leave before I shoved off for Korea,” he said. “Like a lot of guys at the time I wasn’t sure I’d be back so another fellow from my company and I decided to live it up. We had a glow on most of the time and this fellow had a girl. She had a friend for me and we did the town for a few days until this guy got the idea he wanted to get married. The four of us went to get the marriage license and I was just tanked enough to apply for one too. Anyway, we flew to Las Vegas because we couldn’t wait. We got married, all of us.”

  He stopped pacing long enough to stab out his cigarette and said: “We stayed there four or five days and by the time I got back to San Francisco and sobered up I knew what I had—a part-time hooker and a full-time lush.… A tramp,” he said, “and nobody to blame but myself. That’s when I got scared that mother might hear about it. I was scared silly. It was like a nightmare and when I realized I never could be sure what Elsie might do after I’d gone, I went to a lawyer.

  “I had about eight thousand bucks left from what I got when Dad died and I put it on the line. I’d pay for six weeks in Reno. When Elsie delivered the divorce to the lawyer she was to get what was left. That looked like a lot of money to her and she took it. The divorce came through and I’ve never seen her since.”

  The intensity of the explanation was convincing and the facts as Alderson told them were understandable. Murdock believed him but in his own mind nothing changed. Because Alderson now asserted that the truth could do him no harm did not make it so. He started to say so but the other had not finished.

  “How come you know so damn much about those reports?” he said coldly. “I thought they were stolen.”

  “They were,” Murdock said. “But I took some pictures of certain things that Brady picked up. He had a copy of your marriage application and an affidavit on the divorce.”

  “Okay,” Alderson said, disgustedly. “You can’t sell them to me so go ahead and try my mother if you like.”

  Murdock took it. So long as he continued to pry into the affairs of others he had to expect a certain amount of abuse and contempt. He colored slightly as he rose but his voice was level and controlled.

  “All I’m interested in is Tom Brady,” he said.

  “Then I’ll tell you something else.” Alderson hesitated, as though he wanted to accent his words. “I didn’t kill him and neither did Barry Denham.”

  “Oh?”

  “I was hanging around the Clay looking for Denham.”

  “This was after you had dinner with your client?”

  “Yes, and if Brady was murdered around nine or a little after, Denham didn’t do it. I saw him come out of the hotel a couple of minutes after nine. I followed him to the Club Saville and he was still there when I left.”

  “That alibi for Denham works two ways.”

  “What?”

  “It’s an alibi for you.”

  Alderson thought it over; finally he shrugged. “All I’m saying—”

  Whatever he had in mind was left unsaid because the shrill ring of the telephone cut him off. When Murdock answered it the familiar voice of Lieutenant Bacon came to him, blunt and businesslike.

  “I’m giving you a break, son,” he said. “This one didn’t go out over the air so if you get on your horse you might beat the rest of the press boys.” He mentioned an address and said: “Denham.”

  “What?”

  After that Murdock listened as Bacon rattled off the essential facts and hung up.

  He replaced the telephone and looked at Alderson.

  “There goes your alibi,” he said.

  Alderson frowned uncertainly. “How do you mean?”

  “They just found Denham in his car with a slug in his head. They think it happened sometime before midnight.”

  He went over to pick up his camera and equipment case. “I’m going down there now. Want to come?”

  Alderson seemed to have difficulty grasping the significance of what he had heard. The frown dug deeper across his brow
and he swallowed visibly. Murdock was almost to the door before he seemed to shake himself and find his voice.

  “Me?” he said with a rising inflection. “Good God, no!”

  He hurried forward and waited for Murdock to open the door. As he went out he mumbled something about being late for an appointment at his office.

  18

  THE STREET was a narrow, one-way affair which branched off Kneeland and was lined on both sides with small loft buildings and wholesale houses. A policeman had been stationed at the intersection to divert traffic and as Murdock made the turn he was flagged down until he identified himself and said Bacon had asked him to come.

  “Okay,” the man said, “but you’d better park here and walk down. It’s going to be jammed up a bit.”

  Murdock edged into the curb and took out his camera and case. He could see the ambulance in the middle of the street as he approached and then, beyond the two police cars at the curb, he saw the huddle about a sedan parked just ahead. When he reached the edge of the gathering he saw the three men struggling to remove a body from the front seat of the sedan, and now he put the case down and checked his camera.

  He got a passable shot as a stretcher was loaded into the rear of the ambulance, and when the flashbulb went off in the shadowy canyon it attracted attention. Bacon stepped forth from the huddle about the sedan, his expression suggesting he was about to give forth with certain reprimands until he saw who had taken the picture.

  “All right,” he said. “You got one. That’s enough. The other boys’ll be accusing me of favoritism as it is.”

  The doors of the sedan stood open and as Murdock moved closer he saw that the glass had been broken in one of the windows. When he remembered that Bacon had said death had occurred sometime before midnight he wondered why the body had gone so long undiscovered. The answer that came to him was based on the broken glass and on the character of the street itself, which, although devoted to commerce by day, would be normally darkened and deserted at night. Bacon verified the hunch.

  “The beatman finally got curious,” he said. “Noticed the car earlier but didn’t bother to take a close look.… He was on the floor,” he said.

  “Who?”

  “Denham, who do you think? Sort of wedged between the front seat and the dash. Just walking by you couldn’t see him. The car looked empty and the doors were locked from the inside, keys in the switch. That’s why we had to break the glass.”

  “Could it be suicide?”

  “It’s possible. He was shot behind the right ear but I guess he could do it without breaking his arm. One shot. The gun on the seat beside him.… But I doubt if the body got down there on the floor like that by itself. Looks more like somebody pushed it there because he didn’t want anybody nosing around. The longer it went undiscovered the harder to establish the time of death.”

  “Before midnight?” Murdock said.

  “The M.E. thinks between eleven and twelve, but he’s not going out on any limb.” His glance slid past Murdock and he scowled. “Nuts,” he said, speaking to no one. “Here they come.”

  Murdock looked round and identified the advancing phalanx as assorted members of the Press. Bacon tugged on his arm.

  “You got a car?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right. I’m about finished here and I’ve got to shake your pals. Meet me in front of the Clay in fifteen minutes. I want to talk to you.”

  By then the circle of reporters and photographers had started to form and Bacon was going into his speech. Murdock spotted the two Courier representatives and motioned them aside. He slipped the photographer his film holder and asked him to take it in. He spoke quietly to the reporter even as Bacon addressed the others.

  “I’ll give you what I’ve got,” he said. “Anything else you’ll have to get later.… A guy named Barry Denham. Had a room at the Clay Hotel. Shot once in the head. The gun on the seat beside him and the body on the floor.…”

  Murdock moved off, hearing Bacon conclude his statement and refuse to answer additional questions. The cop at the corner let him back his car so he would not have to go down the street and then he headed for the Clay.

  Lieutenant Bacon and his crew took over most of Denham’s hotel room so that in the beginning Murdock made himself small and sat over in one corner to watch and listen and think. By that time he knew that a box of shells had been found here in a suitcase and that the calibre matched the gun which had been found on the seat of the sedan.

  The assumption made was that Denham had been shot with his own gun, just as Tom Brady had been killed with his gun, and what Murdock could not forget was the automatic he had found in Rita Alderson’s bag. That gun had apparently not been fired recently but in the proper hands it would have served to disarm a man, even a man like Denham. The actual mechanics of the murder did not seem important at the moment and Murdock did not waste time thinking about it, and presently the men Bacon had assigned to investigate Denham’s movements the night before began to report.

  The first detective came in and read from some notes he had made. “Denham had a caller around six thirty,” he said, and then his glance picked out Murdock and fixed there. “One of the bellboys recognized him.”

  “Who was it?” Bacon said.

  “Murdock.”

  Bacon eyed Murdock aslant. “That’s what you get for being so well known,” he said dryly. “How long were you here?”

  Murdock told him and then, seeing the glass on the bureau which Denham had used for his drink, he said: “You might get some prints from that glass.”

  “We already got prints,” Bacon said. “From the corpse.… You can tell me what you talked about in a few minutes,” he said, and gave his attention to the detective. “What else?”

  “Denham came back here about ten fifteen.”

  “Okay.”

  “There were two phone calls after that. Denham made the first one,” the detective said and gave the number.

  “Did you check it?”

  “Edward Alderson’s residence, on Beacon.”

  “Ahh,” said Bacon and when he looked at Murdock again his gray gaze had narrowed. “What time was that?”

  “According to the operator’s record, at ten twenty-one.… The second call came at eleven fifteen, from outside. That’s all I’ve been able to get on that one.”

  “Any other callers?”

  “One. A woman.”

  “Anybody know her?”

  “No, but she’s been to see Denham before.”

  “What’d she look like?”

  “Fairly tall, blonde, wore a camel’s-hair coat.”

  Bacon looked at Murdock again but he did not make a production out of it. He rocked on heel and toe and nodded, his thin face somber.

  “Put a scarf and dark glasses on her and she could pass for the one who came to see Brady the other night.… What time did she come?”

  “Before eleven.”

  “How long before eleven? Ten minutes? A half hour?”

  “A few minutes. That’s as close as I could get it.”

  “When did she leave?”

  “Probably before eleven thirty.”

  “What do you mean, probably?”

  “Nobody saw her leave,” the detective said, “but I found a guy who saw Denham go out at twenty after eleven.”

  “Alone?”

  “Yeah. Took the side door and was seen heading for the parking lot across the street.”

  While Bacon was digesting the information, Sergeant Keogh, who had been searching the closet, demanded his attention.

  “Here’s something,” he said. “The suitcase had a slit in the lining. These were tucked inside.”

  From where he sat, Murdock could not be sure what Keogh had found but to him they looked like cards, or small pieces of paper. He watched Bacon examine them, heard him say: “Good enough.” Then, still holding the new evidence in his hand, Bacon walked toward him.

  “What did you talk about last night
?” he asked. “How come you stopped in to see Denham?”

  Murdock thought a moment and found the question difficult to answer. Beyond the hope that he could pick up some usable information he had no clear-cut reason why he had wanted to see Denham.

  “I was trying to find out what I could about his background,” he said finally. “About the California part. I asked if he knew anyone named Benjamin Danton out there.”

  “Why?”

  “What?”

  “Where’d you get that name from?”

  Murdock hesitated again, thinking first of the prints he had hidden under the mattress, knowing that he would tell Bacon about them but not wanting to do it here.

  “I remembered seeing it when I photographed those papers for Brady.”

  “In what connection?”

  Murdock scowled, his eyes puzzled because he was unable to sense the direction of Bacon’s thoughts. He said so.

  “You saw the name,” Bacon said with admirable patience. “So what was it on? A license, an affidavit—”

  “Oh,” Murdock said. “It was on three things. That’s how I remembered it. A birth certificate,” he said, “a marriage license, a transcript of a police record.”

  “Your hunch wasn’t too bad,” Bacon said, and held out the three cards in his hand. “Denham knew Benjamin Danton, all right.”

  When Murdock leaned forward, the name seemed to jump at him and he saw all three—a California driver’s license, a social security card, and an A.F.L. union card—had been made out to Benjamin Danton.

  “Two sets of cards,” Bacon said. “For a guy like him it wouldn’t be too hard to get the ones he showed us the other night.… Barry Denham,” he said, as though the words made an unpleasant taste in his mouth. “I’ll bet he was no more an actor than you are. The hell of it is I was just beginning to line him up for the Brady thing.”

  Murdock stood up. He said if Bacon no longer needed him he’d be on his way.

  “Go ahead,” Bacon said. “Me, I’m going to pay a short call on the Aldersons. The D.A.’ll be in this for sure now and they might as well know it.”

  Murdock had the same thing in mind but now he knew he would have to wait, and so he went downstairs, turning toward the side entrance. He had parked his car in the lot that Denham had used, but as he stood there another thought came to him. After a glance down the street, he walked to the corner and looked both ways. When, halfway down the block, he saw a sign that said: Freddie’s Bar, he started toward it.