by Craig Rice
The policeman stared at him for a minute, then turned pale. “Look here, Malone, I never took a dime off anybody in my life. If you don’t believe me, ask Max Hook. He’ll tell you I’m as honest as the day is long.”
“I’m not talking about money,” Malone told him. “If you frisked me you were acting under orders, and you were looking for something else.”
Mulcahey shook his head slowly. “I didn’t. And that’s straight.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” Malone said. “I had a little notion that fight was started as an excuse for calling the cops, so I could be searched on the way to the station.”
“You got it wrong. It was a legitimate pinch. Hell, I didn’t even know who you were till I got you to the desk.”
“O. K.,” Malone said. “I owe von Flanagan an apology he’ll never get.”
“Did you lose something?” Mulcahey asked casually, rising to refill the glasses.
“A key,” Malone told him. “Nothing important.”
“Where was it?”
“In my right-hand coat pocket.”
The policeman shook his head. “Then you lost it before we picked you up. There wasn’t anything in your coat pockets.”
Malone set his glass down slowly and carefully. “How do you know?”
A faint blush appeared on Mulcahey’s broad face. “It’s like this, Malone. When we picked you up, I was out of cigarettes. The Dutchman—Kieck—didn’t have any, he doesn’t smoke. I knew you wouldn’t mind if I borrowed one from you, so I looked in your coat pockets. You didn’t have any. There was just a handkerchief.”
Malone was silent.
“I’m sorry as hell—” the policeman began.
“That’s all right,” Malone said. “I’m glad you looked. It tells me what I came here to find out.” He drained the rest of his Scotch, rose, and put on his hat. “What happened to the guy who started the fight?”
“Him?” Mulcahey said. “He beat it before we got there.”
“Know who he was?”
Mulcahey shook his head. “Never saw him. Joe the Angel might know.” He followed them to the door. “Anytime I can do anything for you—”
“Thanks,” Malone said. “I’ll remember you to the Hook next time I see him.”
He was very silent on their way down the elevator. In the lobby he stopped in the phone booth and called Joe the Angel.
Joe was very sorry, but he didn’t know the stranger who had started the fight. He’d never been in the bar before that night, and hadn’t been in since. Probably from out of town. In case Malone didn’t remember him very well, he’d been a big, beefy guy with gray hair. Wore a brown suit and a loud tie. He’d dropped in at the bar about two that morning and been there the rest of the night.
Malone scowled, said, “Thanks, Joe, be seeing you.”
“Wait a minute,” Joe the Angel began. But Malone had hung up.
Out in the taxi, the little lawyer borrowed a match from Jake and lit a new cigar. “Damn it, I had it all figured out this bird started the fight in order to get hold of the key. Now I guess he didn’t.”
“How do you know?”
“He’d been at Joe the Angel’s since two in the morning. He couldn’t have known I was coming back there. Hell, I didn’t know it myself. If he’d really been after the key, he’d have been trailing me instead of sitting in Joe’s.”
Jake said, “Well, it’s been a very entertaining day, but this isn’t doing me any good. I’m going to spend the rest of it checking up on all the murders in town since Mona made that bet with me.”
“You really think you can win that bet?” the lawyer asked.
“I’ve damn well got to.”
“Well,” the lawyer said, “as long as I get a client out of it, I should worry. Where are you staying?”
“At the apartment we took. As long as I paid the rent for it, I might as well live there till the month is up. It’s a heluva big lonely place, though.”
“What you need is a wife,” Malone told him.
Jake said nothing.
The lawyer looked at his watch. It was quarter of three. “I have an appointment at three o’clock.”
“With a dame, I suppose,” Jake said gloomily. “Well, phone me at the apartment when you’re through.”
“You’re damned right it’s a dame,” Malone said. “You should only see her.” He drew a long breath. “But I’m going to be very careful that you don’t.”
Chapter Eight
Malone found Helene pacing the floor in his office.
“You’re ten minutes late.” She sat down on the desk.
“You ought to be glad I got here at all,” he told her. “Von Flanagan wanted to hold me as a material witness.”
He tossed his hat and overcoat on a chair, sat down at his desk, and looked at her. She had a curiously military air, enormous shiny buttons marched in two rows down her close-fitting, navy-blue coat; her hat, patterned after those worn by Australian soldiers, had a bright red cord around its dark-blue felt crown. Her delicate featured face, always pale, seemed almost colorless; there were faint shadows around her eyes.
“I don’t suppose you’ve heard from Jake, have you?”
Malone looked surprised and answered that with a question. “Why? Did you expect me to?”
“No.” She shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know. I just thought maybe you had.”
“Don’t worry about Jake,” Malone told her. “He’s probably having a wonderful time.”
For just an instant her eyes blazed.
Malone decided not to press his advantage. “Have you found Mona’s murder yet?”
She shook her head. “I’ve got to find her motive before I can find the murder. The police may not know anything about the murder yet.” As Malone raised an inquiring eyebrow, she went on, “For all we know, maybe the body hasn’t been discovered. She might have hidden it somewhere. Or maybe it was made to look like a death from natural causes.” Helene sighed.
“You’re forgetting the terms of the bet,” Malone said. “The terms that she laid down herself. Remember? ‘Someone I have a motive for murdering—shot down in the public streets—with plenty of witnesses.’”*
She was silent for a moment. “That’s right. I had forgotten. Still—I may be going at everything backward, but dammit, the whole thing’s backward. We know Mona McClane murdered somebody, but we don’t know who, or when, or why. Usually it’s just the other way when people get murdered.”
“Backward murders for backward people.”
She paid no attention to him. “That’s why, instead of beginning with the murder, I’m beginning with Mona. I’m not going to find people she might have murdered. I’m going over her life history like a gossip writer and find people she might have had a motive for murdering, and see if any of them are recently dead.”
“It looks to me as if you’d mapped out a life work for yourself,” Malone grunted.
Both were silent, thinking the same thing. Mona McClane had one of the world’s greatest fortunes and an assured social position on all the known continents. Her marriages, divorces, romances, and scandals had made Sunday-supplement history. She had flown the Atlantic solo in an evening dress and wearing the famous McClane emeralds because she expected to land (and did) just in time for a party in Paris. She had climbed farther up Mt. Everest than any other woman, and she had personally captured two tigers for the Brookfield zoo. She had won the Casino, Chicago’s famous dining, dancing, and gambling spot, from the head of the city’s gambling syndicate, Max Hook, in three evenings at roulette. She had a married daughter living in respectable and wealthy suburban obscurity, and she was, incredibly, a grandmother. Now she claimed to have committed a murder, on a bet, and the Casino was the stakes.
Malone stamped out his cigar under the desk. “You’re going to be a very busy girl. Have you accomplished anything yet?”
She shook her head. “Give me time. Say, have you got any money?”
�
��Sure.” He reached for his wallet. “How much do you need?”
“I don’t need any. I thought you might. After all, you were broke yesterday. I played bridge last night.”
“I played poker,” Malone said, putting the wallet back.
“Then that’s all right,” she said in a relieved tone. “How’s your own murder coming along?”
“It’s not my murder,” he told her, “and it’s not coming along.” He told her of the day’s developments, carefully omitting Jake’s part in the affair.
When he had finished, Helene said, “Either the cop or Joe the Angel is lying, and it must be the cop. A bartender wouldn’t tell a lie.”
“Neither would this cop,” Malone said. “He takes too many bribes from Max Hook to be anything but honest.” He lit a fresh cigar. “Oh well, as long as von Flanagan leaves me alone, I don’t care. When are you going to make up with Jake?”
She gave him a look that set his teeth on edge. “I’m going to send him the deed to the Casino, and that’s the finish.” She fastened the top clasp of her coat and picked up an enormous fox fur from the arm of her chair. “Mona told me to bring you back with me for a cocktail. She has a few house guests, and there may be a few others in.”
Malone stared at her and said, “Hell, I can’t go running around to Gold Coast cocktail parties. What are you trying to get me into, anyway?”
“I’m just passing on Mona’s invitation. I think you have a fatal fascination for her.”
“Well,” Malone said, “I’d have to put on another shirt.”
Helene snorted. “Mona knows you have another shirt. Come along.”
“All right,” Malone said crossly, “but I won’t stay long.” He put on his hat and overcoat and made an ineffectual effort to straighten his tie. He paused in the anteroom to say, “Maggie, go home.”
The black-haired girl looked at him silently and disapprovingly.
“And don’t tell me I ought to stay in the office and tend to business. The only business we’ve had in two days has been phone calls from von Flanagan.” He swept Helene out to the elevator.
In the taxi he asked, “What kind of house guests has Mona McClane?”
“Assorted. A little brown-haired wench named Lotus Allen. Really named Lotus. The perfect Eastern debutante. Mr. and Mrs. Michael Venning, just back from the Orient. You know the Venning family, He’s very dull, but she’s rather sweet. She has a lady companion named Louella White who looks like a trainer for wrestlers and knits like a machine, nothing but gray sweaters. Then there’s a young man named Pendley Tidewell. I’ll let you find out about him for yourself. There’s another young man, Ross McLaurin, but I don’t know much about him because he’s been on a drunk since New Year’s. Oh, and a Mr. Tuesday, whom I haven’t met. He just came today. Mona said she especially wanted you to meet him.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. He sounds rather mysterious and interesting to me.”
Malone grunted, and stared out the window at a dreary vista of early January mud. The afternoon didn’t look promising, except for Mona McClane. He wished Jake were along. Jake, and a quart of rye.
The cab left them at the entrance of the McClane mansion on Lake Shore Drive that, to Malone, was always like a combination of a high-class undertaking parlor and an 1880 government building. Helene pushed the bell and said, “When I’m alone I use the key Mona gives her house guests and go in the side door, but you’re company.”
A trim colored maid opened the door and told them that Mona McClane was in the living room.
Helene said, “I’m going up to change my dress. Go on in and talk to Mona. I’ll be right down.”
She disappeared up the ornately carved and decorated stairway. Malone stood for a moment in the hall, looking after her. For some reason he could not explain, he felt uncomfortable and unhappy about being in this house. Perhaps it was that on his first visit he had come with Jake and Helene, a few days after their marriage. Now Helene was here, believing Jake still in Bermuda, and Jake was here, believing Helene to be in Havana, and each of them refusing to talk about the other.
Or perhaps it was because on his last visit to this house he had stood in this very hall and watched a murderer make a last, desperate, and unsuccessful break for escape. He told himself that was the reason, and all the time he knew that wasn’t it. It might have been a feeling in his bones, it might have been some heightened perception developed from years of contact with those who had broken the law, it might have been some inexplicable premonition, but whatever it was, he knew that the old McClane mansion had not yet given up its last tragedy.
He was, he told himself, a damned superstitious Irishman, and he went on into the living room.
* From The Wrong Murder.
Chapter Nine
Mona McClane sat in a high-backed chair near the fireplace, her head thrown back against its cushions, her eyes closed. There was something oddly Chinese about her dress, with its long, straight sleeves, its high-throated, close-fitting collar, and the intense blue of its heavily brocaded silk. She wore an exquisitely carved white jade medallion on a long, delicate silver chain, and a dozen slender, white jade bracelets. Her black hair was cut short, with a heavy bang falling over her pale forehead; below the bang her gamin face was very white, save for the wide, odd-shaped scarlet mouth.
At first Malone believed her to be alone in the room and walked toward her. He was halfway across the rug when a loud voice startled him.
“Hey, you. Keep out of the way.”
He looked up, and saw a young man lying flat on his stomach on top of one of the massive bookcases. The young man glared at him balefully.
“You stay right there, whoever you are.”
“I’m John J. Malone,” the lawyer said, “and I’ll be glad to stay right here, but why?”
“Because I’m taking her picture, that’s why,” the voice from above told him. He aimed the smallest camera Malone had ever seen at Mona McClane.
“Don’t mind Pendley,” Mona McClane said without moving a muscle. “He’ll be through right away.”
“I will not,” the young man said peevishly. A moment later he climbed down from the perch with an agility a trapeze performer would have admired, and stood fiddling with his camera.
“This is Pendley Tidewell, Mr. Malone,” Mona McClane said. “He’s a camera addict.”
“I thought maybe he just liked high altitudes,” Malone said mildly. The young man said nothing at all.
To Malone he seemed at least ten feet tall, now that he was down on the ground level, and exceedingly thin. He was dressed informally in corduroy trousers, a stained tan sweater, and sneakers. A heavy lock of straw-colored hair fell over his bony, freckled face. Malone guessed that he was barely out of his teens, if that.
“Just pretend I’m not here,” Pendley Tidewell said at last. “Just go on acting as if I didn’t exist. I want to try for something very natural.”
Mona McClane waved Malone to a chair. The young man seemed to disappear.
“It’s good to see you again,” Mona McClane said. “What a shame Jake and Helene have split.” There was just the right touch of sympathetic regret in her voice.
Malone murmured something polite and noncommittal.
She reached for a cigarette. “I really thought they were much too well suited to each other to be happily married,” she said. Before Malone had puzzled that out, she went on, “Still, a happy marriage is something very hard to attain. I’ve been extremely fortunate myself. All my marriages have been happy.”
“Jake is—” Malone began.
“Don’t move,” said a loud voice right under his feet.
The lawyer looked down and saw the six feet of Pendley Tidewell twisted around the small table by his chair. The tiny camera was held to his eye, and his head was almost on Malone’s knee.
Malone didn’t move. He resisted an impulse to pat the young man’s head. After a moment Pendley unwound himself from the end table an
d bounded to his feet.
“Thanks awfully, Mr. Malone. I’ve never photographed a lawyer before.” He grinned. “Mona’s told me about you.”
Malone relaxed and mopped his brow. “I didn’t know lawyers were so hard to snap.”
Pendley Tidewell’s grin widened. “Not as hard as Michael Venning is. He’s got a phobia about cameras. Chased me out of his bathroom the other night all ready to break my neck.”
“Maybe he’d rather bathe alone,” Mona suggested.
“He is reactionary,” the young man admitted. “And he does hate cameras. Don’t you remember, Mona, he smashed the camera of a ship news photographer when they docked in San Francisco? That’s why I’m so anxious to get a picture of him, no one ever has.” He looked almost reverent. “Maybe I could even sell it to the newspapers.”
“I’d like to see some of your pictures,” Malone said, trying to sound as if he really meant it.
Pendley Tidewell’s face fell. “I haven’t made any good ones yet. But maybe these will turn out well. I’m going upstairs and develop them right away.” He grinned at Malone again. “Mona’s made me a darkroom upstairs. Come and see it sometime.”
The room seemed much larger and far, far quieter after he had raced up the stairs.
“He’s really a nice boy,” Mona said.
“Probably a heart of gold,” Malone agreed.
“He’s Editha Venning’s nephew,” she told him, “an orphan, and penniless. The Vennings educated him. I imagine he feels greatly relieved that Michael Venning’s going to be fifty day after tomorrow, though he doesn’t seem to care anything about money, only about his camera.”
Before Malone could figure out what she meant, there was a mild commotion in the hall as two people came in the front door. One of them, a man in an ugly, but expensive yellow and green plaid overcoat, came into the room to greet Mona McClane. In his hand he carried a dark-green slouch brim trimmed with a jaunty feather.
“Editha’s ruined her coat in the rain.”
He went back into the hall. Malone caught the sound of wraps and overshoes being shed. The man returned, without the overcoat, a woman with him. Mona McClane introduced them as Mr. and Mrs. Michael Venning, and began mixing Scotch and sodas.