by Craig Rice
She rose, slipped on her coat with a graceful gesture that all but broke Malone’s heart, and said, “You’re quite right. I shot her through the open window, while Paul was on his way to her apartment. He knew. He pulled down the window shades. He made up a story for me. He—” She sighed, softly. “Shall we go?”
At the door, she paused for one moment. “You will defend me in court, Mr. Malone?”
“You’re damned right I will!” said Malone fervently.
A bad-tempered dawn was crawling up from the other side of Lake Michigan. In the nearby trees, birds were beginning to sing.
HE NEVER WENT HOME
“I’ll keep calm, Malone,” she said. Her voice still seemed to be coming from someone else, someone she didn’t know very well. “I won’t do anything till you get here. No, I won’t touch anything. But hurry, Malone!”
She hung up the phone and walked across the room into the kitchenette, carefully avoiding the body on the davenport. In the kitchenette, she sat down suddenly, with a jolt, and rested her head on the bright little table. She felt faintly sick, and very numb. Perhaps she’d better put the coffeepot on. Probably Malone would want some, too, when he got here.
She glanced up at the clock. Ten after seven. Lucky for her she’d been able to reach Malone at his hotel. She frowned. There was something she’d intended to do. Oh yes, put on the coffeepot.
She was still sitting at the kitchen table, when Malone came in less than half an hour later. He gave a quick look around the disordered room, at the coffee table with its glasses, bottle, bowl of melting ice and overflowing ashtrays, and finally at the body sprawled on the davenport, clad in pants, socks and undershirt, and with the handle of a very ordinary-looking knife protruding from his chest. Malone recognized the man at once. Then he looked at Susie Snyder.
“There isn’t any time,” he said quickly. “Just one question. Did you?”
She shook her head frantically.
“All right then,” Malone said. “We’ll talk later. Right now—” He broke off and scowled at the body.
“While I—slept,” Susie Snyder whispered. “When I came back last night—early this morning, I guess—everything was all right. I got up a little while ago and—”
“I said, all right,” Malone snapped. He took a second look at her. It must have been considerable of a night out last night. All that she’d bothered to remove were her shoes and what make-up had rubbed off on her pillow. She was still wearing a highly engaging black cocktail dress, badly mussed now, and a lavish collection of costume jewelry. But he’d get to that, and a lot of other subjects, later.
“The obvious thing,” Malone said, “is to move the body. Whoever set this up wasn’t planning on your having two things, enough time, and good sense. But instead of flying into fits, screaming and hollering and calling cops, and coming unglued generally, you were bright and called me. But moving him isn’t the thing. No place to move him for one reason, and blood all over the place for another.”
She shuddered. “Malone. I’ve seen him before, but I’m not sure who he is.”
“Dale McDowell,” Malone said. “At least that’s what he calls himself.”
Recognition came into her brown eyes. “A columnist.”
“He calls himself that, too,” Malone said, “but I’ve heard other names for it, and not as polite.” He was still looking thoughtfully at the scene. “The alternative is to move you.” He smiled at her. “The sensible alternative.”
“I’ll change my dress—” she began.
Malone shook his head at her. “Did anybody see you come home last night?”
“No, I don’t think so. It’s a quiet little apartment building.”
“Or was,” Malone said grimly. “Who were you with?”
“Lola Merchant. And Lee. I was with them all evening. They brought me home. I’m a little fuzzy about getting home, but I know they brought me.”
“Good,” Malone said briskly. “That’s where you’re going now. To Lee and Lola’s.” He thought for a moment. “They’ll go along with us. And they won’t mind your arriving at—” he consulted his watch, “—around eight in the morning. Just tell them the story, go to bed and stay put. Later in the day, you’ll get up with a hangover, take a bath, get dressed in something borrowed from Lola, and they’ll bring you home. You’ll discover the body, call the cops. Lola or Lee will suggest your calling me, and the rest will be perfect child’s play. For me, at least,” he added modestly.
“Malone, I love you.”
“Many people do,” he told her with even more modesty. “Now I’ll call a cab driver I can trust completely, and have him meet us in the alley, and we’ll take the back stairs down.”
“The knife,” she said. “Malone, the knife.”
He regarded it. “Yours, I suppose.”
She nodded. “Breadknife.”
“And, of course, with your fingerprints all over it. We could explain that easily enough; it’s your knife and you use it all the time. Legitimately, that is. But just the same, let us not take chances.”
He found an old newspaper in the kitchen, pulled out the knife quickly and carefully and wrapped it securely. “Looks like someone’s lunch,” he commended. Then he took a closer look at the dead Dale McDowell. “Been dead two or three hours,” he said. “What time did you get back?”
She shook her head helplessly. “After midnight sometime.” Then she brightened. “Lola will know.”
Malone nodded reassuringly. “It isn’t going to matter too much anyway. Because Lola and Lee Merchant are going to alibi you for the whole night.”
“Malone, how do you know they are?” She looked at him anxiously. “I know they’re old friends, and I went to their wedding, and Lola and I used to room together, but this—”
“But this is murder,” Malone finished for her. He patted her arm. “Lee Merchant was jailed for murder once. I was his lawyer. So stop worrying.”
He dialed a number, asked for someone named Les Schwegler, gave him explicit directions regarding coming up the alley and keeping quiet about it. Then he turned to Susie Snyder. “Have you got any money?” he asked.
She said, “In the bank. I’ll have to give you a check—”
“I don’t mean that. We’ll talk retainers later. I mean, the taxi—”
She had two twenties, three ones and some change in her purse. “This will do it,” Malone said, taking one of the twenties.
Down in the dreary shadows of the alley, shivering a little in the damp chill of an early November morning, Malone took her arm comfortingly. “There’ll be plenty of time to talk later, after you officially send for me. But in the meantime, if you can think of anything that can help—” He looked at her hopefully. “For instance. Who had a key to your apartment? And you don’t need to bother blushing in front of me.”
He was pleased to see that she didn’t.
“Nick,” she said. “Naturally.”
Malone nodded at that. Nick Cahalan would, of course, have a key. Or. on second thought, would he? The little lawyer looked at her curiously.
She didn’t blush; she just turned a shade more pale. “He never got around to giving it back,” she said.
“Oh,” Malone said, remembering odds and ends of gossip, and leaving it at just that simple expletive. “And who else?”
“Lola Merchant. She used to leave clothes here sometimes, so if they were going out in the evening she wouldn’t need to go way out home to dress. Leo Roback. He owns the building and lives in it.” She wrinkled her forehead. “I sublet the apartment from Jack Trinidad. He might still have a key.”
In other words, the apartment was considerably easier to get into than Fort Knox. “All right,” Malone said. “Now, have you any idea who had it in for you enough to want to frame you? And don’t say Nick Cahalan, because he’s not the type.”
He could see from her face she didn’t like the idea of anybody hating her that much. “Nobody, Malone.” She was silent a moment
and then smiled ruefully. “Well, anyway—I was getting awfully sick of being photographed with kitchen stoves and layer cakes and washing powder. Maybe, I’ll advance to modeling negligee and perfume ads after this.”
“You’ve got what’s necessary,” Malone said admiringly.
She did, too. Tall, and quite entertainingly curved. But her gentle, lovely face and soft, light brown hair would always be associated in his and probably the public’s mind with foolproof cake-mix and home-style canned soup.
“Or I can just be a quote, unemployed model, unquote, like they call it in the newspaper,” she said, her voice getting a little shaky.
“Quit that,” Malone snapped at her. He was glad to see Les’ cab slip into the alley. “Remember, tell Lee and Lola what happened, go to bed, get some rest, get a little reorganized, come back here, call the cops, have Lee call me. I’ll take it from there. Got it all?”
“Got it all,” she said, forcing a wan smile.
He helped her into the cab, shut the door and stepped up to the driver. “Take the young lady where she’s going. It’s in Wilmette.” He handed Les the twenty dollar bill. “And forget everything about everything.”
Les Schwegler looked neither surprised nor curious.
“Just a little difficulty,” Malone explained and let it go at that.
“Happens all the time,” Les Schwegler said sympathetically. “And even if I didn’t have no memory whatsoever where you and yours are concerned, Malone, I’m leaving for a three weeks hunting trip tonight anyway. And that’s the truth, Malone.”
He then gave the little lawyer a wide grin and drove away.
John J. Malone stood scowling after the cab for a moment or two. His impulse was to go back and inspect the premises a little more thoroughly. His better judgment warned him against it. His impulse had gotten to work even earlier and prompted him to slip the back door off the latch. Better judgment got in another word and advised him to go back to his hotel, go back to bed and go back to sleep.
Still, he’d have to return and relock that back door. And while he was there, it wouldn’t do any harm to have a little look around …
He went up the rear stairs slowly, thinking everything over. Susie Snyder didn’t seem like the type to make enemies, who would go to such enthusiastic and extravagant lengths for the sole purpose of framing her for a murder. On the other hand, he could think offhand of no one sufficiently inhuman to so completely involve a harmless young woman for the sole purpose of getting rid of a body.
Obviously, that left someone who had the hatchet out—knife in this case—for both Susie and Dale McDowell. A very fine piece of reasoning and he felt very pleased with himself. Of course, finding that person might take a little time, but he’d worry about that when he came to it.
He was almost humming cheerfully when he let himself in through the back door and, on second thought, not only reset the lock, but slipped on the chain-bolt. Then as an extra precaution, he double-locked the front door. It was still almost indecently early in the morning, but, nevertheless, he didn’t want to take chances on unwelcome visitors.
That done, he turned his attention to the apartment itself. It was what he would have expected of Susie Snyder, a thoroughly nice little apartment for a thoroughly nice little girl. No antiques, no extreme moderns, no extravagances. No family photographs on the walls, but on the other hand, no etchings. He went into the bright little kitchen and found, as he’d suspected, ruffled curtains at the windows.
One note in the pleasant, very feminine bedroom bothered him, a pillow-slip stained with make-up and lipstick. Some astute police officer might notice that. Susie wasn’t the kind of a housekeeper who would leave such a pillow-slip around in use. On the other hand, to exchange it for a fresh one would be an even more jarring note.
The little lawyer worried about it for a moment, then hunted around and located the laundry hamper. He pawed through it until he found a just slightly soiled pillow-slip and exchanged it for the stained one, which he thrust deep down in the hamper. Then he carefully smoothed the rumpled bed, until there wasn’t the faintest sign of Susie’s having been in it the night before.
Those chores done, he went back to the living room and took a long, thoughtful look at the untidy remains of what had been Dale McDowell. He’d been a handsome wretch, Malone reflected, and thoroughly captivating to women in general. Acording to rumor, that was one of his more successful, if also more reprehensible ways of acquiring information. He’d had crisp, slightly wavy dark hair, long eyelashes and a boyish smile. Standard type, Malone said to himself.
He glanced in a wall mirror and considered his own somewhat short, somewhat paunchy build, badly mussed black hair, and at the moment, unshaven face and faintly bloodshot eyes. He told himself that he was a fine figure of a man for all that.
He gave one final look around the apartment to make sure there were no other little odds and ends that needed cleaning up. There were the glasses and the bottle on the table. They would undoubtedly have Susie’s fingerprints all over them and no one else’s except the dead man’s. The fingerprints were explainable too, but—Oh well, he reminded himself, the explanation was going to fit. Susie was thoroughly alibied, or would be any minute now.
Malone was congratulating himself and preparing to leave, when the knock came at the front door.
He stood perfectly still, telling himself that whoever was there at such an hour would give up and go away. And besides the door was double-locked.
The knock was repeated. It became one of a series. Then the series became a pounding. The door was tried. Finally a key went into the lock. Malone started, very quietly, for the back door.
“Double-locked, damn it,” a voice said. “Klutchetsky, go around to the back door.”
Again Malone stood perfectly still. And this time, he couldn’t have moved if he’d tried. The voice belonged to Inspector von Flanagan, head of Homicide.
From the other side of the door, he could hear the unhappy voice of Leo Roback, owner and manager of the little building, protesting against the outrage, and von Flanagan telling him to shut up. And faintly—or perhaps it was only his imagination—he could hear Klutchetsky’s heavy steps on the back stairs.
With a helpless little sigh, he stepped forward, unlocked the door, flung it open wide and said, faintly, “Good morning.” It was not, he realized, the brightest remark of a lifetime, but he felt he was doing well to make a recognizable sound at all.
For a moment, von Flanagan didn’t say anything. Nor did he pay any attention to the murdered man and the disorder in the room. Instead he stood in the doorway, his big fists planted on his hips, and discussed, with adjectives, every time he had wanted to throw Malone in jail for obstructing justice, hiding out witnesses, concealing evidence, interfering with police who were trying to do their duty, deliberately making life not just difficult but well-nigh unbearable for von Flanagan’s whole department, “And—” concluded von Flanagan, red-faced and choking, “and now, this!”
Malone somehow managed to look innocent and even tolerably surprised.
“How did you get here?” von Flanagan demanded.
Malone started to say, “I took a cab,” and decided not to tempt Providence. He quickly dodged the issue, for the moment, by saying admiringly, “You certainly got here quick!”
“Naturally, we got here quick,” von Flanagan roared. “That’s what we get paid for! I got tipped off that this guy had been murdered up in this apartment and here I am. And you—”
“Who tipped you off?” Malone asked hastily, still employing a delaying tactic.
“Voice on the phone,” von Flanagan growled. “Sounded authentic enough to investigate. This guy McDowell has been due for something like this for a long time.”
“Is that so!” Malone said pleasantly, trying to think a step ahead of von Flanagan but right now beginning to lose a little ground.
“You know damned well that’s so,” von Flanagan said.
Klutche
tsky providentially offered a diversion at that moment by rattling loudly at the back door. A uniformed policeman who had come with von Flanagan hastened to let him in.
Von Flanagan looked around the apartment and demanded angrily, “Where is she?” as though Malone had her tucked away in his vest pocket.
Malone shrugged his shoulders. “I have no idea.” He did have a hope, though. Safely tucked in bed in Lee Merchant’s Wilmette home, by this time.
“Got away,” Klutchetsky said, nodding sagaciously.
Von Flanagan ignored him and glared at Malone. “All right. What are you here for?”
“Same as you,” Malone said in his smoothest voice. “A voice on the phone.” And perfectly truthful, too. It wasn’t any of von Flanagan’s business whose voice.
Von Flanagan grunted, but apparently in acceptance. “How did you get in?”
“The door was open,” Malone said. Still truthfully, he reflected. It also was nobody’s business right now who had opened it for him. Von Flanagan thought that over and nodded. Malone had expected that. It did seem logical, a murderer fleeing in haste, leaving an open, or slightly open, door behind.
But von Flanagan had another thought. “Then why,” he said, his voice rising again, “did you lock and double-lock the door?”
Malone was at the end of his patience. “To keep from being annoyed by a lot of nosey cops,” he snapped.
Von Flanagan had come to the end of his patience, too. And by the time he’d also come to the end of his breath, he was threatening Malone with at least twenty years to life. Malone waited a moment and then said, “That’s all very well, and it may be perfectly correct, too, but right now I don’t know any more about this murder than you do.”
Von Flanagan blinked as though he’d suddenly remembered there had been a murder, and turned his attention to the corpse.
“Knifed,” Klutchetsky volunteered. He added, “Knife’s gone.”
“Damn it,” von Flanagan muttered crossly, “I can see that the knife’s gone.”
The little lawyer felt a pang. He could have had the wrong hunch. Perhaps the knife, now neatly tucked in the folded newspaper in his topcoat pocket, should have been left where it was. At the moment, it had seemed like a bright idea, but he didn’t always have his brightest ideas in the early morning.