The Right Murder

by Craig Rice

  A change of clothes might help. Sleeping in the easy chair hadn’t improved these any. He took one last glance at Ross and tiptoed out of the room.

  Back in his own room, he was just buttoning a clean shirt, when the telephone rang. It was Jake.

  “Malone, I can’t thank you enough for giving me that tip to go out to Blake County.”

  The little lawyer blinked at the telephone.

  “How’s that again?”

  “Wait till I tell you what I ran into out there. I’m phoning from the drugstore downstairs, and I’ll be up to see you inside of five minutes.”

  Before Malone could say a word, he heard the receiver click at the other end of the line.

  His mind, still dazed from sleep, could only cope with one thing at a time. Jake was coming up here. That wouldn’t do. Helene might be along at any minute, to find out if Ross McLaurin was in talking condition. Somehow he must get Jake away from here, and in a hurry.

  As if to confirm his worst fears, just as he was adjusting his suspenders, the phone rang again. It was Helene.

  “Malone? I’m down in the lobby. I’ll be right up.”

  “Wait a minute—”

  But she had hung up.

  When Jake and Helene opened the door to the little lawyer’s room, they found him sitting on the edge of his bed, his eyes shut tight, and his fingers in his ears.

  Malone opened one eye timidly, said, “I see you’ve met before,” and closed it again.

  “We met out in Maple Park, you damned old fraud,” Helene said indignantly. “You can’t blame me for wanting to give you a bad moment for deceiving us like this.”

  He opened both eyes, glanced at their faces, and was reassured by what he saw there.

  “What’s more,” Jake added, “we’re still going to win that bet with Mona McClane. We have a side bet, too, on who will win it first, but I’m damned if I’ll tell you what it is.”

  Malone decided not to press his luck. He changed the subject.

  “What did you run into, out in Maple Park?”

  “Besides Helene,” Jake said, “plenty.” A bright, glittering light came into his eyes. “That bastard, shooting at me. Bet or no bet, I wouldn’t give up now.”

  Malone located a bottle of gin under his bed. He was feeling very guilty over having sent Jake out to Blake County and decided to drown remorse as quickly as possible.

  “He meant to shoot at me, too,” the red-haired man said.

  Malone sighed. “Maybe you’d better tell me about it from the beginning. First, though, I want to apologize to you.”

  “Why? Were you shooting at me?”

  “For letting you go out there on a wild-goose chase.”

  Jake stared at him for a minute and then began to laugh. “It was no wild-goose chase. I found everything I needed for a good murder, except for one item that’s been consistently missing. The corpse.”

  He began at the beginning and told the lawyer the whole story. When he finished, Malone was silent for a while, half hidden in a cloud of blue cigar smoke, and deep in thought.

  “You’re sure she said—her husband’s grave?”

  “Positive. She spoke of it several times. At first I thought she’d gone off the rails. But the grave really was there.”

  “She’s sane all right,” Malone said gloomily, “but I’m beginning to wonder if I am.” He sighed again. “Let’s go talk to Ross McLaurin. He ought to be fit to wake up by now.”

  He led the way down the hall to the other room.

  “He had a bad night,” Malone said, “but I think he ought to be ready for the operating table.” He looked at Helene and added bitterly, “The next time you find me a client, I wish you’d find a sober one.”

  He slipped a key into the door of room 1106 and opened it softly. Ross McLaurin still lay in bed, his eyes closed, his young face pale.

  “Handsome guy,” Jake commented.

  The young man in the bed stirred faintly, moaned a little, and opened his eyes. He opened and closed them several times, at last focusing his gaze on the tall, slender blonde girl beside his bed.

  “How do you do?” he said pleasantly. His voice had a vaguely foreign sound. “Did you bring me here? Ever so good of you. But where am I, and how did I get here?”

  Helene sat down on the edge of the bed and took one of his hands in both of hers.

  “Don’t you remember?” she said softly. “We started out to get a drink together. I brought you here because I was afraid the police would pick you up. Mr. Malone here is a lawyer, the best defense lawyer in the city.”

  Ross McLaurin frowned. “Police? Lawyer? What do I need a lawyer for? Have I done anything wrong?”

  Malone leaned over the bed. “Don’t you remember telling this young lady about the two murders you committed?” he asked gently.

  The young man sat up in bed, his eyes wide. “Murders? What are you talking about?” He stared at them for a moment, and then laughed. “This is some stupid kind of joke. I never murdered anybody in my life.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  “Please try to remember,” Helene begged. “It’s to help you, you know.”

  “I am trying,” Ross McLaurin said wearily. “But it isn’t any use. I simply can’t remember anything.”

  Malone sighed. “Let him rest, Helene.”

  Jake poured another cup of coffee. “Take your time, kid. Maybe it’ll come to you.”

  It was nearly five in the afternoon. In the intervening time the pale young man had been acquainted with the events of the night before, with his statements to Helene, and with the circumstances of the murder of Gerald Tuesday and the man who had died in Joe the Angel’s bar on New Year’s Eve.

  Ross McLaurin set the empty coffee cup down on the bed table. “It’s all news to me,” he said at last.

  Helene sat down beside him. “Listen, Ross. What did you do on New Year’s Eve?”

  He wrinkled his brow. “There was a party of us. I’d just arrived in town the day before. Let me think. There was Mona, and the Vennings, and Lotus, and some movie-actor chap who was very devoted to Mona—he left early though, had to catch a plane at ten.” He rubbed his brow. “His name—let’s see. I’m not very familiar with American actors, you know.” He thought for a minute and then mentioned a name that made them all blink. “And Miss White, and Pendley Tidewell, and a young chap from the East who made me angry hanging around Lotus.”

  “Where did you go?” Malone asked.

  “We had dinner at some club, and then stopped at the Casino for a few drinks, and then we went to the Panther Room at the Sherman. I guess that’s the name, isn’t it?” He wrinkled his brow again. “I was a little dizzy by that time. It’s funny, but I can’t remember the exact time when I stopped remembering, if you know what I mean. There was dinner, and the Panther Room, and then things get vague. I remember kissing Lotus in a cab, but I guess that was on the way down from the club. Something about being in some strange bar all by myself. That’s all.” He was silent for a moment. “No, there is something else, but I can’t just put my finger on it. I don’t know what it was. But it was something horrible, ghastly.”

  “That was the murder,” Helene told him.

  He smiled wanly at her. “But, my dear young lady, I never knew anyone who answered the description Mr. Malone gave me. Never in my life.”

  “All right,” Malone said gently, “let it go. What about yesterday?”

  “I woke up not feeling very well. I was terribly”—he seemed to be looking for a word—“terribly hung over.”

  “How’s that again?” Jake asked.

  “Never mind,” Helene said. “It’s exactly the right word. Go on.”

  “Very depressed. Damned if I know why, but I was. So I took a few drinks when I got up. Look here, I’m not making excuses for getting drunk, but I was depressed.”

  “That’s all right,” Jake said. “There’s five million reasons, and that’s as good a one as any.”

  “But by
lunchtime I felt pretty good,” the young man went on, “a little buzzy, but pretty good. After lunch I felt depressed again and very solitary. You know. Like the old bird who stayed up on the pillar all that time. Simon Something-or-other.”

  “The original flagpole sitter,” Malone said. “What did you do, go climb up a telephone pole?”

  Ross McLaurin grinned, “I went up to my room and had a few drinks.” The grin faded. “I don’t—things get vague again. For some reason lately I seem to forget what happened when I was drinking. Yesterday—” He frowned. “I had a word with Lotus. Don’t recall what about. There’s something else, too. About a man—he was black-haired, I think, curly hair, and he wore eyeglasses.”

  “That was Tuesday,” Malone said.

  The young man made a despairing gesture. “I tell you I never knew a Tuesday in my life. Do you think I’d forget knowing a man named Gerald Tuesday?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Helene said soothingly. “Go on about yesterday.”

  “That’s all,” Ross McLaurin said wearily. “There just isn’t anything else. It’s as though I’d been sleeping all that time. No, wait. There is something. Wait—”

  They waited, and breathlessly.

  “I remember,” he said triumphantly. “I remember reciting Kipling’s Boots.”

  After sixty seconds Helene said. “Wonderful! Now can you tell me how the second verse goes? I’ve always wanted to know.”

  “I’ll be glad to. It’s—” The young man lay back on his pillow, muttering to himself. “I’m afraid I’ve forgotten it.”

  “Maybe if you started with the first verse and led into it,” Helene suggested hopefully.

  Ross McLaurin opened his mouth once or twice, finally said, “I’m sorry, I can’t recall any of it. Something about boots, though.”

  Malone swore indignantly and said, “Maybe we ought to adjourn to the Public Library. Can’t you remember anything more about yesterday?”

  Ross McLaurin looked at the ceiling for a long time. “Not a thing,” he said at last.

  Helene turned to the little lawyer. “Maybe if—”

  Malone gestured her to silence. “Listen, McLaurin.” he said very positively. “What does the number one-fourteen mean?”

  The young man stared at him. “One-fourteen. One-fourteen. I don’t know. Is it supposed to mean anything?”

  “Never mind,” Malone said. “What do you think of when you think of a key?”

  “A keyhole,” Ross McLaurin said promptly.

  Malone sighed. “No, no, no. Some specific key.”

  McLaurin thought for a moment. “Key West?” he suggested helpfully.

  “Drop it, Malone,” Jake said. “He hasn’t got your key.”

  Helene lit a cigarette and sat staring through its smoke. “Maybe we’re beginning at the wrong end. Maybe we’re going backward.”

  “You mean like putting the horse before the barn door after the cart has been stolen?” Jake asked.

  She frowned at the cigarette. “Perhaps if we reviewed this guy’s life, we might hit on some pertinent fact. How about a thumbnail sketch of yourself, Ross?”

  He smiled at her, wan against the pillows. “My name is Ross McLaurin. My people come from Boston. My great-grandfather was the Ross McLaurin who—”

  “Never mind all that,” Helene said hastily, “start with the present generation.”

  “I was born in Boston. My mother was a Wescott. She had an artistic nature, and studied painting in Paris when she was a girl.” Suddenly his young eyes grew dark and glistening. “You know, if she’d had any real encouragement, she’d have been a great artist. I know she would.”

  “I’m sure of it,” Helene said gently. “Go on.”

  “My father died when I was just a baby. Then we lived in Paris until I was nearly five, and then we moved to Majorca. I really grew up there. I went to school in England a few years, but most of the time I had a tutor. Francesca wanted me with her.”

  “Francesca is a city,” Jake said. “San Francesca.”

  Ross McLaurin shook his head. “That’s what I always called my mother. Her name was really Frances, but she called herself Francesca. Her soul was entirely one with the spirit of the old Italy.”

  Malone hastily smothered a whistle, and said, “This is extremely interesting.”

  “Francesca painted a great deal, but she never finished anything. She was like a willful child. She used to say to me, ‘Ross, I’m still like a willful child. You seem more to me like a father than a son.’ Of course it didn’t matter that she never finished anything, because we had a lot of money and she didn’t need to sell any pictures anyway. Francesca was a very fascinating woman. I wish you might have known her.”

  “I wish so, too,” Jake said warmly.

  “We never knew very many people, because she was very solitary. But we did know Mona McClane. She visited us a number of times.”

  Helene said, “Did you know any of Mona McClane’s present house guests then?”

  “No, none of them. I’d met Lotus before I came here, but that was after Francesca—” He paused, and said, “She hanged herself. It was the day that war broke out, September third, 1939. In her studio, before the statue of the Venus de’ Medici. It was a plaster cast of the statue, of course, but it was a very good one.”

  “Tell me,” Malone asked casually, “did you do much drinking when you lived on Majorca?”

  “No. None at all. Francesca didn’t drink, and she was a vegetarian. She lived mostly on nuts. And, of course, I did what she wanted me to do. I was all she had left in the world.” He drew a quick breath and said, “I wish she were here now. She’d know what to do.”

  “She might at that,” Helene said reverently. “Did you leave Majorca then?”

  “Yes, I did. But I didn’t know where to go. There was plenty of money, of course. Finally I went to Paris, and there was the war, and I met a lot of people. One of them was Lotus. Then Paris was taken, and I left, and there was a lot of trouble getting away. I remember walking for miles and miles carrying some woman’s dog that had its leg broken by a machine-gun bullet, and finally I got over here.” He paused a moment and then said, “I guess it was somewhere along in there that I started drinking. I don’t just remember when.” He scowled and said, “Francesca would have remembered all this better. She had a wonderful memory. Anyway I got over to this country on the Clipper, and I remembered Mona McClane, so I wired her from New York, and she invited me to come and visit her and here I am. I guess that’s everything.”

  “One question more,” Malone said very gently. “How old are you?”

  “I’m twenty-two. But I’ll be twenty-three in a few months. Why?”

  “I just wanted to know,” Malone said, in a curiously soft voice.

  “That brings us up to the present,” Helene said. “You came to Chicago to stay at Mona McClane’s. You’d never met nor heard of Gerald Tuesday. You don’t know anything about the man who was killed on New Year’s Eve. Yet in a cockeyed moment last night you confided to me that you’d slaughtered both of them.”

  “But I couldn’t have,” Ross McLaurin declared. “Don’t you see? People don’t go around murdering perfect strangers. Not well-bred people.”

  She lit another cigarette. “There’s something in your mind that we can’t seem to pry loose. Maybe we’re using the wrong approach.” She turned to Jake. “How can you expect a man when he’s sober to remember what happened when he was drunk?”

  Jake shook his head. “He couldn’t.”

  “Then the only thing to do is to get him just as drunk as he was when these murders happened. Maybe we’ll get somewhere that way.”

  Malone wheeled around from the window. “You may be right. There should be a certain stage where he’ll remember everything that took place when he was at the same stage before.” He bounded from his place by the window, patted McLaurin’s shoulder as he passed the bed, shook Jake’s hand, kissed Helene noisily on the forehead, and vanis
hed through the door.

  Ross McLaurin stared after him. “Tell me something. What do they do to murderers in this country?”

  “Not a damned thing,” Helene said soothingly, “when they have Malone for a lawyer.”

  He smiled at her gratefully. “I seem to have so few friends. Except you two, and Malone, and Lotus, and Mona McClane.”

  “That’s a lot of friends for one person,” Jake said.

  Five minutes later Malone returned, a paper-wrapped bottle under each arm. “Now maybe we’ll get somewhere,” he announced triumphantly, as he set down the packages and began unwrapping one of them. “The trick is to feed him drinks until he hits exactly the stage he was in when the murders took place. Then he’ll be able to answer any questions we can think of.”

  “If,” Jake said gloomily, “you can think of any questions to ask by that time.”

  He took the unwrapped bottle from Malone, uncapped it, and poured two fingers of rye into a water glass. “Drink this, McLaurin. Then relax and leave the rest to time.”

  The young man on the bed curled his fingers around the glass. Twice he lifted it to his lips, holding his breath the second time.

  “Maybe you’d rather have bourbon,” Helene said anxiously. She unwrapped the bottle, found another glass, half filled it and handed it over.

  Ross McLaurin sniffed at it with the expression of a man who has just seen a mouse come out of the wall.

  Malone muttered something profane about educated tastes, darted out the door and down the hall to his own room, returning with a half bottle of gin and a full bottle of Scotch.

  The young man tried the Scotch, turned a shade more pale and shoved it aside, took the glass of gin, managed one tentative sip, and set the glass down on the bed table.

  “I’m sorry, I’m afraid I just can’t get it down.” He looked deeply sorry and apologetic. “I’d be glad to help you, but I just can’t do it. I can’t drink. I’ll never touch the stuff again as long as I live.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Helene poured a little grenadine into the glass she was holding, giving its warm amber a faintly rosy glow. She stirred the mixture gently and tasted it.