“I almost wish I could have pinned something on you,” Murdock said.
“You can think of something,” Devlin said. “If you want to.”
“But I tell you I didn’t know it was going to be you, Kent,” Faulkner argued. “I thought it would be Calvert or Stark. All I wanted was a picture good enough to get me a divorce. I admit it was a lousy thing to do but Calvert wasn’t married and it couldn’t hurt him much—I doubt if Sheila’d dare show a picture like that, anyway—and I didn’t worry about George Stark because at the time his wife was in Reno getting a divorce, or so I thought.”
“Then why didn’t you call Nagle off?”
“How could I? I didn’t know you were taking her home, did I? We agreed if anyone took her home—and someone almost always did—and went inside and stayed, Nagle was to ring the doorbell after a while and if no one answered he was to go in and try to get a picture.”
Murdock sighed and gave up. “All right,” he said, “forget it.”
“Yeah,” Devlin said. “Let’s get back to you, Murdock. It couldn’t be, could it, that you had a hunch on Calvert all the time and came up here with the idea of cleaning this thing up on your own?”
Murdock protested. “I told you the truth. Before I came up here I had three suspects in mind—Calvert, Faulkner, and Bronson. I liked Bronson after what I learned this afternoon but when I got to thinking about it he didn’t stand up.”
“Why?”
“Because he wanted that report on Myron Wortman. If he killed her—and had stolen her keys—he would have taken that report first, or maybe after he’d killed her, but certainly he would not have put the keys back until he did.”
Devlin said, “Hmm,” and accepted the reasoning. “I’ll go along there. What about Faulkner here?”
“I couldn’t eliminate him completely,” Murdock said, “but the more I thought of it the less I liked him for the job. It didn’t fit, hiring Nagle to do a job like that and then going in later to kill Sheila. I finally got a new motive for him on those patched up scripts but he still didn’t figure. He had a key to the apartment—the one with the V he stole from Sheila—so if he wanted to kill her why not do it instead of fooling around with a chiseler like Nagle?”
“So you liked Calvert better?” Devlin asked.
“I liked him all right but I couldn’t find motive enough. I wondered about that chloral-hydrate business. Calvert was the sort of character that would pick up a free bottle if he could and I was never quite convinced that the business of passing out in his room was like he said. It seemed all right the way he told it.”
“I thought so,” Devlin admitted.
“But it didn’t have to be that way. If Calvert was the killer he had picked up the bottle at Nagle’s, not knowing it was drugged and not thinking about it, and taken it home and knocked himself out. Of course that’s what he did but I didn’t know that until I came up here and found a motive that not only was important but also told me why he needed Sheila’s keys—and I don’t mean to get into her apartment.”
He hesitated. He looked at Dale Jordan and Owen Faulkner and wondered if he looked as tired as they did. He tried to concentrate, knowing he was almost through.
“Get to the motive,” Devlin said.
Murdock made his sigh long and loud, his expression abused. “You’re a hard man, Devlin.”
“I let you run upstairs and borrow a camera and a flash gun and take two pictures, didn’t I?”
“That’s right, you did,” Murdock said. “All right. At first all I had was this. Sheila was making Calvert kick back part of his salary for giving him the male lead in the show.”
“That’s a guess.”
“But it stands up. Calvert owed three weeks rent at ten a week. I saw the landlady’s bill. He lived in a dump. He made a hundred a week less deductions, say eighty bucks, and he wasn’t the kind who would live where he did if he could help it. So what happened to his salary?”
“It’s your story. Tell me.”
Murdock explained about looking through Sheila’s checkbook. “I guess you paid her your two hundred a month separation money in cash,” he said to Faulkner.
“That’s the way she wanted it.”
“Yes,” Murdock said. “It didn’t show in her checkbook. She wrote checks for clothes, rent, light, groceries, insurance. That came out of her salary. She got fifty a week, roughly, from you and out of that she paid twenty-five dollars to Dale.” He glanced at the girl. “How much did she pay the maid?”
“Fifteen a week, I think,” Dale said. “Marie only worked from nine-thirty to four.”
“So that left her ten a week,” Murdock said. “And that wouldn’t even cover incidentals for a woman like Sheila. So I say she was getting a cut from Calvert, probably half his salary.”
Devlin said, “Yeah,” and remained interested. “That’s not bad figuring. Let’s say it’s a motive. Not a strong one, but something.”
“That’s what I thought,” Murdock said. “It wasn’t strong enough even with a man without much emotional stability, a guy who had been in sanitariums and might possibly have developed a persecution complex—But I had another motive to add to that,” he said and told about the pink negligee hanging in Calvert’s closet and what the actor had told him.
“Sheila always took what she wanted from men and then dropped them,” he said. “She did it with Calvert. She played around with him as long as it suited her and then kicked him out and let George Stark carry the ball. Lots of women have been murdered for less.”
“Sure,” Devlin said. “Guys, too, by jealous dames.”
“But it still wasn’t enough for me,” Murdock said. “It did not tell me why he picked that particular time to kill her. I didn’t know until I was here and he was standing around with a gun in his pocket, but when I finally understood I knew why he had to kill her quick and why he wanted the keys so he could steal all the advance scripts.” He leaned forward. “I’ll tell you what I think and what I know,” he said.
“I think Calvert thought the show was a sure sale and having been sold in a package as the male lead he told Sheila he wouldn’t split his salary with her any longer. But he forgot that she had the last say in the stories, and here’s what she did. This much I know. She deliberately got even by writing him out of the script!”
“What the hell’s that mean?” Devlin said and scowled.
Owen Faulkner sat up. “Are you sure, Kent?”
Murdock indicated the piles of typescript. “It’s all right there in the scripts.”
Faulkner swore under his breath and turned to Devlin. “He means she plotted her stories so that Calvert would no longer appear in them, so there would be no part for him. Well, I’ll be damned!”
“She introduced a new and younger photographer,” Murdock said, and explained the story of the first script he had read that night. “In the second story the new lad has equal importance with Calvert’s part and the story ends with Calvert wounded and in the hospital. In the last script—”
He stopped as Dale Jordan caught her breath.
“Of course,” she said. “I—I just didn’t think about that—” She stopped and tried again, speaking to Faulkner. “Yes. And that’s why she didn’t follow Keith’s plots like she usually did. She changed these deliberately. In the last script she wrote she fixed it so Alan Wilson—that’s Calvert’s part—dies in the hospital and the new character takes his place!”
Devlin got it then. He stood up and rubbed his nose. “Well, how do you like that? You mean she made Calvert the lead in her show and then rubbed him out? Made it so he wouldn’t even have a job? Yeah, that’s a motive! That’s a sweetheart!”
“If you knew anything about actors,” Murdock said, “you’d know just how sweet a motive it is. Calvert had been up in the money years ago and then he’d lost everything. He’d been kicked around and even bought that cyanide he brought tonight. Sheila let him think he was the number one boy and then gave him the boot. Maybe
he wanted to kill her then but he didn’t because he needed her and her show.”
Murdock took a breath. “He was even willing to kick back half his salary because she was giving him his big chance, maybe his last one. He was acting again; in a show with a coast-to-coast hookup. He could swallow everything she had done to him because he saw other offers and other shows and more money and maybe even Hollywood. He was in the clouds and things were rosy, so much so that in the end he had the nerve to tell Sheila he wouldn’t give her a cut any more because now he was set again. Then she tells him she’s going to write him out of the script and suddenly there’s no job, no other shows, no Hollywood, no future; just a shabby room and a gas jet to turn on some night—or the cyanide. It was the sort of life he could not face again.”
“Yeah,” Devlin said. “No wonder he killed her. And he knew that he had to get those scripts and destroy them before anyone else knew about it. He stole one copy from this file here before he killed her, got the other copy from her living-room desk. He must have thought about the stenographic notebooks afterward and went to your place”—he nodded at Dale Jordan—“that night to get them, only you came in too soon. All right,” he said, “I guess I’ve heard everything.”
“He came here tonight to kill me,” Dale Jordan said; then glanced from face to face. “And I didn’t even remember that Sheila had written him out of the show.”
“You might have remembered later, though,” Devlin said. “He had nothing to lose by that time. He had to have the scripts and notebooks. And you, because you could talk.”
“Only Murdock was here,” Faulkner said.
“You get around, don’t you, Murdock?” Devlin’s square-cut face was relaxed, his eyes amused. “That’s what your friend in Boston told me.” He rose and stretched. “Well,” he said, “I’ve had enough.”
He went to the door, glanced back. “I guess we’ve got it wrapped up. I guess it’s okay for you to go back to Boston tomorrow,” he said to Murdock. “But if it comes unwrapped you may have to come back. Anyway, don’t crowd your luck. Next time you come to town behave yourself,” he said and grinned, his eyes wide. “One of these days you’re liable to get yourself in trouble.”
Murdock watched Devlin go, unable to think of any answer. He saw Dale Jordan collect the scripts and give them to Faulkner, and presently they went out and walked along the street to the corner. Faulkner whistled at a passing taxi, and as the driver stopped Murdock remarked, half to himself, that he could use a drink. He said he’d buy one if only he knew a place still open.
“I’d ask you up,” Faulkner said, “only Lois is waiting. I told her I’d come as soon as I could.”
“Sure,” Murdock said. “She’ll want to know. Give her my love.”
He watched Faulkner climb into the cab, refused his offer to drop them somewhere. He said they’d find another taxi and started down the deserted avenue with Dale Jordan’s hand tucked inside his elbow.
“I have a bottle,” she said. “I got it for Keith. I’d love to give you a drink.”
“Do you think your husband would approve?”
“I think, when I’ve told him about you and what you did, he’ll scold me if I don’t.”
Murdock was nearly tempted. He liked this girl. He liked her spirit and courage and warm pleasant ways. With her it would always be nice to have a drink and he would have accepted her invitation had he not recalled his first night in town, when, wanting nothing more than a long drink and some sleep, he had let himself be talked into a party.
He thanked her and said she was sweet to ask him. “You keep that bottle for Keith,” he said as a taxi stopped beside them. “When he gets home make him a tall one. He’ll love you for it.”
He put her in the cab, squeezing her arm before he closed the door. He gave the driver the address and watched the cab roll away. Then he started down the street, still straight-backed and erect in spite of his weariness, hurrying a little now when he thought of the drink and the bath and the soft bed that were waiting for him at the hotel. When he remembered the two pictures he had taken that now rested safely in the borrowed film holder, he began to grin, and presently, thinking of T. A. Wyman and the Courier, he began to whistle softly, the beat of the melody keeping time with his steps.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 1945 by George Harmon Coxe
978-1-4532-3333-7
copyright renewed 1973 by George Harmon Coxe
cover design by Mumtaz Mustafa
This edition published in 2011 by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media
180 Varick Street
New York, NY 10014
www.mysteriouspress.com
www.openroadmedia.com
THE KENT MURDOCK MYSTERIES
FROM MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM
AND OPEN ROAD MEDIA
MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM
Otto Penzler, owner of the Mysterious Bookshop in Manhattan, founded the Mysterious Press in 1975. Penzler quickly became known for his outstanding selection of mystery, crime, and suspense books, both from his imprint and in his store. The imprint was devoted to printing the best books in these genres, using fine paper and top dust-jacket artists, as well as offering many limited, signed editions.
Now the Mysterious Press has gone digital, publishing ebooks through MysteriousPress.com.
MysteriousPress.com offers readers essential noir and suspense fiction, hard-boiled crime novels, and the latest thrillers from both debut authors and mystery masters. Discover classics and new voices, all from one legendary source.
FIND OUT MORE AT
WWW.MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM
FOLLOW US:
@emysteries and Facebook.com/MysteriousPressCom
MysteriousPress.com is one of a select group of
publishing partners of Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
The Mysterious Bookshop, founded in 1979, is located in Manhattan’s Tribeca neighborhood. It is the oldest and largest mystery-specialty bookstore in America.
The shop stocks the finest selection of new mystery hardcovers, paperbacks, and periodicals. It also features a superb collection of signed modern first editions, rare and collectable works, and Sherlock Holmes titles. The bookshop issues a free monthly newsletter highlighting its book clubs, new releases, events, and recently acquired books.
58 Warren Street
[email protected]
(212) 587-1011
Monday through Saturday
11:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.
FIND OUT MORE AT:
www.mysteriousbookshop.com
FOLLOW US:
@TheMysterious and Facebook.com/MysteriousBookshop
SUBSCRIBE:
The Mysterious Newsletter
Find a full list of our authors and
titles at www.openroadmedia.com
FOLLOW US
@OpenRoadMedia
-ms-filter: grayscale(100%); filter: grayscale(100%); " class="sharethis-inline-share-buttons">share
Fifth Key Page 21