Eye Witness

by George Harmon Coxe

  ‘Now wait a minute.’

  Rigby sounded more injured than annoyed. He rumpled his mouse-coloured hair and hooked his thumbs in the pockets of his spotted vest. Murdock grinned at him, but there was no humour in his steady gaze and his voice, as he continued, was not over-emphasized; rather, it was casual, but with a touch of scorn.

  ‘Even if we skip Apollo that still leaves Claire. Are you sure you didn’t see Mr. Thorpe?’

  ‘I told you what I did.’

  ‘I know what you said but right now it isn’t good enough.’ Murdock sat up, his tone gathering directness. ‘You picked up the house telephone, called 617 and a voice said Murdock wasn’t there so you hung up and left.’ He hesitated, his glance accusing. ‘Not after going out of your way to come down there, not without going to the desk and checking with the clerk to be sure you had the right room number and—when you were sure—calling once more in case the operator made a mistake.’

  Rigby sighed. ‘Is it important?’ he said, pouting a little. ‘If it is I’ll go along with you and admit I did call twice and I got the same answer both times.’

  ‘Yes’, Murdock said, feeling no elation at the admission, ‘but what is important is that you were in that lobby for a few minutes, with plenty of chance to look around.’

  ‘I told you I—’

  ‘I know’, Murdock said. ‘You didn’t see Apollo, you didn’t see Claire Emerson, you didn’t see Mr. Thorpe.’

  ‘I didn’t see Murray Leonard either.’ Rigby focused his glance on the desktop and left it there for five seconds of stone-faced silence. Finally he looked up, the narrowness coming once more to his eyes. ‘Leonard could really be figured if he was there’, he said. ‘If he ever went up to that room——’

  He did not finish the thought. He did not have to, for the inference was unmistakable and, when Murdock thought of Helen Farnsley, discouraging. Leonard knew Farnsley was in Room 617; Farnsley telephoned him, possibly making threats. Leonard was, apparently, outside the Greene Hotel that night. Whether he actually went inside was something Murdock did not know, but he could not help wondering if perhaps Simon Rigby had the answer to this too.

  ‘Okay’, he said and hoisted himself from the chair. He refused the drink that Rigby offered and for a moment, as he recalled Lee Farnsley’s missing wallet, he wondered if the detective could have had anything to do with the man’s death. When he could find no reasonable grounds for such an assumption, he turned and left the office.

  Chapter Fourteen

  THE city room of the Evening Ledger was a busy place when Kent Murdock came along shortly before noon in search of Murray Leonard. Typewriters clattered, a telephone rang briefly, and someone was yelling for the copy boy, who came presently and departed carrying proofs. No one paid any attention to Murdock as he made his way to the cubby which was assigned to Leonard, and when he found it empty he waited near the slot until he caught Eddie Sampson’s eye on the rim.

  Eddie pushed back his eye-shade and took a breather while he lit a cigarette. ‘I don’t know where he is’, he said in answer to Murdock’s question. ‘Lieutenant O’Brien and a couple of guys were huddling with him earlier, but I don’t know whether he went out with them or not.’ He grinned. ‘You kinda walked into something in our fair city, didn’t you? I can get a rewrite man for you if you want to confess now. We could just about make the bulldog edition.’

  Murdock grinned and told Eddie not to feel sorry for him. He said he was on an unlimited expense account and he intended to enjoy it while he could.

  ‘Hah’, said Eddie, not without a twinge of envy. ‘You always did get the breaks. Why don’t you stop in around five and we’ll have a ‘ball?’

  Murdock said he might do that and went back to the street where he walked along, intent upon his thoughts rather than his surroundings, until the red-brick building which housed police headquarters loomed up in front of him. He turned in here and continued past the desk sergeant without giving him a chance to inquire as to his business, mounted the stairs, and came presently to the detective’s room, seeing as he entered that O’Brien’s door was open and the office empty. The three plainclothes men gathered around one of the desks—the same desk which had been the rallying point the day before—noticed him as he entered and suspended their discussion as he came towards them. They seemed to know who he was and listened to his inquiry about O’Brien, answering readily enough but without helping any because all they could tell him was that the lieutenant was out.

  ‘Anything special?’ one of them asked.

  Murdock said no.

  ‘Any message?’

  ‘You might tell him I was in’. Murdock said. ‘I’ll call in after lunch.’

  Out on the street once more, he stood at the kerb while he got a cigarette going, feeling now the restlessness that had been growing in him, but not knowing what caused it or what he could do about it. For a while he watched the ever-changing pattern of traffic in front of him and then drifted down the street in search of a place to eat lunch.

  He was back at police headquarters at a quarter to two and this time he found O’Brien at his desk beyond the open door. Murdock waited there while the lieutenant busied himself with some papers and presently O’Brien glanced up and saw him.

  ‘Come in’, he said. ‘Come in. Heard you called in.’ He leaned back in his chair, his grey eyes amused behind the spectacles. ‘This is a nice switch’, he added, ‘suspects coming in to see me.’

  Murdock took the offered chair and put his hat on the desk. ‘How many suspects have you got?’

  ‘A few.’

  ‘How do I stand?’

  ‘You’re out walking around, aren’t you?’ O’Brien opened a drawer and took out a pile of typewritten sheets which when separated, proved to be a transcription of the notes taken by the police stenographer the previous morning, an original and three copies. ‘You want to sign these?’

  Murdock picked up the original. He asked if it was all right to read it and O’Brien said yes. ‘We’ll both read it’, he said and began to study one of the carbons. They went through the pages in silence, O’Brien finishing first and then reaching for his pipe and tobacco pouch while Murdock satisfied himself that there was nothing incriminating in the answers he had made. He asked for a pen, signed all four copies.

  ‘How’re you doing with Joe Apollo?’ he asked finally.

  ‘We’re not doing’, O’Brien said. ‘Joe denies having been in the Greene lobby when you say he was. That Emerson girl denies having seen him and——’

  ‘She works for Apollo.’

  ‘Sure. And maybe she’s scared.’

  ‘You checked the telephone calls Farnsley made from my room. You know he called her number that night.’

  ‘Sure.’ O’Brien held up his pipe as Murdock started to interrupt again. ‘Let me finish. She admits the call because she can’t deny it. But that’s all. She says she refused Farnsley’s request to come over; she did not go to the Greene, did not go upstairs, and most emphatically did not see Joe Apollo.’

  ‘Oh, fine.’ Murdock spoke disgustedly and his angular face was glum as he considered the things that had happened to him. ‘Meanwhile Apollo goes around doing a bit of kidnapping. He comes up with a couple of gunmen and scares the hell out of me for telling you the truth.’

  O’Brien eyed Murdock aslant and forgot his pipe. ‘Let’s have that again.’

  He listened intently to Murdock’s story and when it was over he took his time replying. He relit his pipe which had gone out: he looked out the window for awhile; he tapped the pipe stem on his teeth. Finally he gave his attention to Murdock, his shrewd grey eyes brightly speculative.

  ‘That sounds as if Joe really was at the Greene’, he said quietly. ‘Do you want to sign a complaint?’

  ‘Would it do any good?’

  ‘With that we could bring him in.’

  ‘Could you hold him?’

  ‘Probably not. If he told you he’d have an alibi he’ll have on
e. Phoney, sure, but one we’ll have trouble cracking. Those two hoods may not even be in town by now. Still, if you want to try it’s okay with me. It’s up to you.’

  Murdock’s reply was a monosyllabic grunt. ‘Forget it’, he said. ‘I didn’t come here to sign a complaint.’

  O’Briend nodded. His lips twisted in a lopsided grin. ‘Joe figured that. I guess he figured you, too.’ He hesitated and said: ‘He’s a smart operator and he doesn’t give us much trouble, everything considered. He has a good thing in that nightclub and we never found anything about it that wasn’t legitimate; if we had we’d have lifted his licence long ago.’

  ‘He’s a gambler’, Murdock said.

  ‘At heart. There’s a floating dice game we hear about, but it only operates once a week and we’ve never been able to nail him. The same way with a highstake stud game.’ He seemed about to continue, then stopped. He had been looking idly out of the door as he spoke and now he brought his glance back to Murdock and left it there. ‘But you’re not interested in Joe, are you? What did you come here for?’

  Murdock was not quite sure about this but he did not say so; for there was one point on which he had never been satisfied and it had bothered him.

  ‘Who found Farnsley yesterday morning?’ he asked.

  O’Brien’s face was impassive but his eyes were busy. He gave the question a two-second consideration and then ducked it. ‘Why?’ he said.

  Murdock shrugged. He pretended it was not important. ‘I just wondered. In a hotel murder like that it’s generally the maid that finds the body, isn’t it? Around nine o’clock, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Just about.’

  ‘A little early for a maid to be checking rooms.’ He cocked a brow at O’Brien and his tone was sardonic. ‘Why don’t you break down? Is it a secret? Who called you?’

  O’Brien sighed softly and raked his sandy hair with his fingers, the lopsided grin working again. ‘Yesterday afternoon I got a call from Boston. A Lieutenant Bacon on homicide. He said he understood you were in a jam but it probably didn’t mean anything because you’d been in jams before, even with him. He just wanted to say you were all right and that you might even be able to help a little if you were given the chance.’ He sighed again and said: ‘I’m beginning to see what he meant.… We got a tip’, he said, ‘some guy called in and reported it.’

  Murdock felt a small warm glow spread through him like a secret inner smile. It came, he knew, not from anything Lieutenant Bacon had said, though he was grateful for the testimony, but from the fact that his hunch had been right, that he was still capable of mentally handling simple sums of addition.

  ‘Where did he call from?’

  ‘The hotel?’

  ‘Not an employee.’

  ‘You’re awfully damn sure of it’, O’Brien’s voice carried overtones of testiness.

  ‘I’m not sure of anything. I’m asking.’

  ‘The call came through the hotel switchboard. There’s a record of it. It could have been made by an employee but that’s unlikely, everything considered.’ He hesitated and said: ‘The call came from Room 617, a man’s voice asking for police headquarters, and when we went there the door was locked.’

  ‘Do you know a man named Harry Usher?’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘He may have had a key to 617’, Murdock said and then he was telling what happened after he had checked into the room the afternoon he arrived. Because he had no reason to protect Harry Usher he told about finding the envelope with the diamond bracelet, and how Usher had entered the room with a key he had neglected to turn in when he paid his bill.

  Lieutenant O’Brien showed irritation for the first time. He tossed his pipe carelessly on the desk and stood up, a flush creeping into his face and showing in his forehead beneath the sandy hair. He stepped to the window, glared out, turned back to confront the photographer.

  ‘A diamond bracelet, hunh?’ he growled. ‘And a hell of a fine time to tell me about it. You knew that the morning we brought you down. You knew it when you made that statement.’

  ‘All right’, Murdock said. ‘Let’s just say I was worrying so much about my own neck I forgot it.’ He went on quickly to get away from the matter of the bracelet. ‘You know that Usher changed from the Greene to the State, though I don’t know why. I also know that Usher left the State that first night about the time Farnsley must have called the State—because I saw him leave.’

  O’Brien turned away before the sentence was finished. He stepped through the door and called to two of the detectives who were waiting outside. He was too far away for Murdock to hear what was being said, but after a few seconds of earnest conversation the two men left the room and O’Brien came back to the office. He sat down, his temper in hand now but no humour in his steady gaze.

  ‘Okay’, he said. ‘Figure it for me.’

  ‘Farnsley stole a diamond brooch from his wife, probably because he was afraid of Joe Apollo and wanted to raise enough money to square things temporarily. I happen to know that Harry Usher deals a bit in jewellery when he has a chance. Farnsley could know this, most likely did. He called the State Hotel and if he wanted Usher it could have been to ask Usher over to 617 to see what he, Farnsley, could raise on the brooch. Usher left the State at about the right time and——’

  ‘That’s all right’, O’Brien cut in, ‘but most of it is guesswork.’

  ‘It’s all guesswork’, Murdock said without rancour. ‘You asked me to figure it and that’s the best I can do.’

  O’Brien grunted and leaned back in the chair, his eyes morose. ‘It ain’t bad figuring either’, he said grudgingly. ‘I’d buy it in a minute if we could put Usher in the Greene Hotel at ten-thirty that night.… Anyway’, he said, ‘we’ll have a talk with him. They probably know him at the Greene and we’ll see if we can find anyone who saw him there at the right time.’

  ‘It can be one or the other’, Murdock said with some ambiguity, ‘but I doubt if it is both.’

  O’Brien peered at him. ‘Could I have that again?’

  Murdock grinned. He said he’d been thinking aloud. ‘What I meant was, if Usher really did go and see Farnsley, ran into an argument and killed him, I don’t think he’d be back in the morning to snoop around. If that’s what happened you’ll have to look elsewhere to find out who tipped you off. But if Usher did not go there he might have still had the key and discovered the body when he came by the next morning to dicker for the brooch Farnsley stole.’ He hesitated, thinking ahead now and paying no attention to O’Brien. ‘There’s another angle’, he said. ‘Do you know a man named Thorpe?’

  ‘I know of him’, O’Brien said. ‘If it’s the same one you’re thinking of. This one is Jesse Thorpe. Sort of society. Has money. A man of fifty-five or so.’

  ‘That’s the one.’

  ‘Wait a minute’, said O’Brien with some exasperation. ‘I’ve got troubles enough. I’ve got all the suspects I want, so don’t tell me he figures in this.’

  ‘I don’t know’, Murdock said, and went on to explain what he knew about Leone Thorpe—though he had never met her—and her rumoured relationship with Harry Usher.

  O’Brien asked some questions as to why Murdock thought Thorpe might be looking for Harry Usher and how he might have gone to Room 617 by mistake. But it was evident that the lieutenant was not too impressed by such reasoning, so Murdock reached for his hat and came now to the final problem he had on his mind.

  ‘I understand you had a huddle with Murray Leonard this morning’, he said. ‘Do you mind telling me why?’

  ‘For a stranger to this fair city’, O’Brien said dryly, ‘you have a way of getting around. Yes, we had a huddle with Leonard, and no, I don’t mind telling you why.’

  He took off his glasses, held them up to the light, and reached for his handkerchief. He said: ‘We’d have a hard time doing business here if we didn’t get tips now and then. We need plenty of luck, and the breaks, and sometimes we get one. We got one on
this Leonard business. We have a witness that will swear he saw Murray Leonard at the front of the Greene Hotel at a quarter to eleven on the night Farnsley was murdered.’

  Murdock sat quite still. He recalled the man who had come to Leonard’s table the night before with a similar disclosure and he saw now that unless O’Brien’s informant was the same man—a highly unlikely assumption—Leonard had been seen by at least one other person. He watched the lieutenant slip on his glasses and clasp his hands behind his nape.

  ‘I learned quite a lot about Mr. and Mrs. Farnsley and Mr. Murray Leonard since you’ve been in town’, O’Brien said. ‘You’ve been a lot of trouble, but you’ve been a help in other ways. The way it shapes up to me is like this: Mrs. Farnsley is a fairly well-off woman—or will be next year when she gets her father’s estate—and after a year’s separation from Farnsley she made up her mind—all this since she talked to you—to divorce Farnsley and maybe marry Murray Leonard.’

  ‘She’d about made up her mind before I talked to her.’

  ‘It amounts to the same thing. What’s important is that she told her husband of her intentions and he decided to fight, maybe with counter-charges or some such thing, his idea being to stay married so he could collect some of that estate, or failing that to get a fat payment for his co-operation on the divorce. The old triangle, which has stood up in many a murder case, plus money.’ He paused, frowning at some change in Murdock’s expression. ‘What’s the matter?’ he said. ‘You don’t like that for a motive?’

  ‘I didn’t know there had to be a motive’, Murdock said. ‘According to you the killing was not premeditated. It could have been done by anyone who walked in on Farnsley and ended up by slugging him.’

  O’Brien waved aside the objection. ‘Stop quibbling’, he said. ‘It could have been that way but it doesn’t have to be. A motive always helps, and we’ve got one now that anyone can understand.’ He sat up and said ‘You had your trouble with Farnsley and left the room. You telephoned Mrs. Farnsley and she called the boyfriend.’