by Craig Rice
The janitor found several on his ring, the second one unlocked the door. Malone opened it and peered inside.
It was a tiny closet, dark and dusty. A few old brooms leaned against the wall, a collection of ancient filing cases were stacked at the far end. An old raincoat hung from one hook, a large white dusting cloth from another.
Malone shook the coat and felt of its pockets, kicked the brooms, examined the filing cases, and judged from the dust on them that they hadn’t been moved in twenty years.
“I don’t know what you expect to find in there,” Sheriff Kling complained.
‘The gun,” Malone said pleasantly. He felt of the dusting cloth, lifted it down from the hook, and carried it into the light. “And there it is.”
He shook the cloth gingerly over a table, a small black revolver unrolled itself and dropped to the table top.
There was a long silence. “Either you’ve got second sight,” Sheriff Kling said at last, in a dangerously quiet voice, “or by God, you know more about this murder than you’ve told anybody.”
Malone dropped an inch of cigar ash in the general direction of a cuspidor. Buttonholes looked at him reproachfully and reached for his broom. “It was perfectly simple,” the little lawyer said. “It didn’t occur to anybody to look in the closet for the gun, because the door was locked. It occurred to me to look there because I had an idea it was the only place the murderer could shoot from without being noticed, and I was right. Obviously the murderer didn’t carry the gun away from the scene of the crime, this was the only place that hadn’t been searched, so it had to be here.”
Jerry Luckstone pointed to the closet “You mean the murderer was in there?”
“Of course he was,” Malone said. He stepped just inside the closet and stood looking out. “Buttonholes says this door isn’t usually locked. All right, the murderer brought along a key, an ordinary passkey, and had it probably on the inside of the door. This is a wild guess, but it’ll do. He stood right here, with the door open just a crack, when he fired. You see the door protects him from the view of the people in the courtroom.”
Sheriff Kling and the young district attorney nodded. The lawyer went on, “He waited until the Senator started alone down the stairs. In passing he had to almost brush against the door of the closet. The murderer fired through the crack. No one would pay any attention to the closet, everybody was interested in the murdered man.”
Jerry Luckstone sighed. “That’s the trouble with witnesses. They always look at the wrong things.” He frowned. “But then what?”
“Then,” Malone said, “he hid the gun in the dustcloth, locked the door behind him, and went downstairs.”
“What the hell did he lock the door for?” Sheriff Kling growled.
“So that your deputies would reason that the door had been locked at the time the Senator was killed and wouldn’t bother looking in the broom closet for the gun,” Malone told him.
“This is all very well,” Jerry Luckstone said, “but it doesn’t tell who it was.” He looked hopefully at Malone.
The little lawyer shook his head. “This is as far as the train of reasoning goes. But you’ve got a likely bunch of suspects in that collection of people who were up here at the time.” He paused suddenly in the act of lighting his cigar, letting the match bum until it all but scorched his fingers. “As a matter of fact—” He stopped himself and paused again. This murder wasn’t his affair and he wasn’t going to mix up in it. Let the forces of law and order of Jackson County make the same discovery, by the same simple reasoning.
“What?” Jerry Luckstone asked anxiously.
“As a matter of fact,” Malone repeated, “you might as well put their names in a hat and draw one out. It would be the easiest way.” He finished relighting his cigar. “Well, glad to have been of help. See you at the inquest, gentlemen.”
He strolled out of the courthouse, feeling extremely pleased with himself.
Well, as far as he was concerned, that settled everything. Jake and Helene could continue on their fishing trip after the inquest. He privately hoped they would catch nothing but minnows and would never desert Chicago again. The young district attorney was out of the toils of the law, and Arlene Goudge, Miss McGowan, and Florence Peveley would be satisfied. Also Cora Belle Fromm, since she too had taken steps to prove the young man’s innocence. There was nothing now for him to do but go back to Chicago and see how big a fee he could squeeze out of Harry for beating that bookie rap.
By nightfall he’d be back in Chicago. The thought revived his spirits. “Oh, God,” he murmured soulfully, “just to hear one taxi horn again!”
Ellen MacGowan was hurrying up the sidewalk as Malone went down the courthouse steps. He paused to greet her.
“Well, Mr. Luckstone is out of jail, without any help from me,” he told her.
She nodded. “I know it.”
He looked at her thoughtfully. She was the neatest person he’d ever seen in his life, her trim gray hair might have been parted along a ruler. Her navy-blue print dress had been freshly ironed. It seemed to him that her face had a worried, almost haggard look. Well, you didn’t witness a murder every day. It might have accounted for a sleepless night.
“It appears the sheriff made a mistake,” Malone said.
She sniffed. “Sheriff Kling is not only dishonest but stupid.” She added coldly, “Crime conditions in this county are deplorable.”
He was conscious of a strange, dissatisfied feeling as he walked back to the General Andrew Jackson House. It wasn’t, he told himself, that he gave a damn who had shot Senator Peveley. Certainly it wasn’t that he was trying to promote himself a client out of the affair. But there was no law against a man being curious.
He entered the lobby of the hotel just in time to hear the U. P. reporter calling his office, and paused momentarily to listen.
“Take this, Joe,” the reporter was saying into the telephone. “The sheriff up here—Marvin Kling—just called me up and told me he’d found the gun. The gun. G-u-n. O. K.? All right. He found also where the murderer was standing when he fired the shot. He was standing in a closet at the top of those stairs. A closet. No, no, not that kind. A broom closet. Got that? Now. Sheriff Kling says he figured out where the gun was and where the murderer stood by just reasoning that—”
Malone walked on across the lobby, grinning happily. Marvin Kling was a small-town sheriff, but he learned fast!
Chapter Twelve
“Your grandmother wasn’t Welsh,” Jake complained, “so don’t go around developing second sight. Buttonholes is enough.”
Malone looked mournfully down Main Street “I didn’t say it was second sight. I said it was a feeling in my bones. I’m uncomfortable.”
“It’s your age,” Jake said unfeelingly.
Malone sighed deeply. “There’s some time to kill before the inquest. I promised that red-haired Peveley girl I’d see her this morning. If I go there I may still be able to send her a bill for advice.”
“You’re a ruthless moneygrubber,” Helene said, “but if you insist, we’ll drive you there. I’ve been dying to show off the convertible to the Jackson sightseers.”
The Peveley house, set on the highest ground in Jackson, was ornate, impressive, and magnificently ugly. It was perfectly square and three long stories high, crowned with a squat, square tower. The yellowish brick was still bright, and the heavy, decorative woodwork had recently been painted a deep, glossy green. As Helene parked her car by the front sidewalk a sudden flash of sunlight caught the immense stained-glass double doors and set them gleaming like ten-cent-store jewelry.
“My,” Jake said admiringly. “I bet that cost a pile of money to build! No wonder he didn’t leave any trees in the yard. They might have hidden some of it from sight.”
Malone climbed out and slammed the door.
“We’re going to drive up and down Main Street,” Helene called. “Pick you up later.” The blue convertible shot down the street and vanished.<
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The lawyer knocked lightly on the door; it was partly ajar and swung open under his hand.
“It’s none of your business what I do,” Florence Peveley was saying at the top of her voice from somewhere inside the house. “I don’t care what you or anyone else thinks and I’m going to do as I damned please.”
Malone looked anxiously around for the bell. He heard an indistinguishable, low murmur of protest in a masculine voice, and the unmistakable sound of a book being thrown.
“You can go to hell,” Florence Peveley yelled.
He found the bell and pushed it hastily. It rang through the house like a fire warning and brought an immediate response from Florence Peveley.
“Well, why don’t you come in?” she bellowed.
Malone went in, hoping for the best. In the middle of the room probably called the library Florence Peveley stood, a heroic figure in brief white shorts and a striped sweater. She had good-looking legs and plenty of them, Malone decided at his first glance. Right at the moment she was standing in the midst of a pile of books and furniture, arms akimbo, her red hair flying in every direction, and a black smudge on her nose.
Jerry Luckstone was standing across the room, leaning against a table, looking pale and disturbed.
“Look at him,” the girl demanded of Malone. “Did you ever see such a cringing bastard?” She scratched her nose, leaving a smudge on the other side. “Do you blame me for losing my temper with him?”
The young man’s face turned faintly pink. “Mr. Malone, she seems to have some respect for you. I wish you’d tell her she can’t do this.”
“You can’t do this,” Malone said sternly and automatically. “What the hell are you doing, anyway?”
“I’m getting everything in this house ready to sell,” she declared. “I know I can’t sell it until the will is read and the property appraised, but at least I can get it ready. And this fool tells me I can’t do it now because it isn’t respectful to Pa.” She made a rude noise.
“Well,” Malone said mildly, “after all, he is dead, and the grass hasn’t even been planted on his grave.”
She plumped herself down on a sofa, her legs sprawled out before her. “All I want is to get out of this place as fast as I can. I want to sell everything and beat it.”
“Where are you going?” Malone asked.
“Anywhere, as long is it isn’t Jackson, Wisconsin.”
Jerry Luckstone frowned. “Now, Florence. I like it here.”
She turned on him furiously. “You would. All you want out of life is to loaf around and play golf all day, and lay all the girls you can get after dark, and have a father-in-law who’d fix you up with a soft political job, while—”
That was as far as she got. The young district attorney turned white, moved across the room in a few quick strides, slapped her smartly and resoundingly across the mouth, and was out the front door before she could catch her breath.
“It looks as though you’d have a very happy married life,” Malone said.
She didn’t hear him. “Son of a bitch!” she breathed, rubbing her lips. It was said admiringly. Then she looked at Malone. “Have a cigarette.”
“No, thanks.” He began unwrapping a cigar.
“Well, Jerry got out of jail by himself,” she said, “but you send me a bill for whatever worrying you did. Do you blame me for not pretending to feel heartbroken that Pa’s dead?”
“Of course not,” Malone told her.
“I will say it was a shock. I knew a lot of people hated him, but I never expected anybody to murder him. It’s a wonder I never thought of it myelf. He was an awful stinker, you know.”
The little lawyer raised his eyebrows questioningly.
“I mean just plain stinker. He wasn’t only an unprincipled businessman and a crooked politician, he was a stinker.” She repeated the word as though she enjoyed it. “He practically murdered my mother. Yes he did. He was so mean to her that she took poison. Everybody thought it was heart trouble. She should have given it to him. I never could get Uncle Phil—that’s Phil Smith—or Doctor Goudge to admit it to me, but I know it.”
“Goudge?” Malone asked. The name was familiar.
“Old Doc Goudge. He’s the county treasurer’s older brother. He’s been in the county insane asylum the last four years.” She threw away her half-smoked cigarette and lit another. “What were we talking about? Oh yes, Pa. He did Ed Skindingsrude out of a lot of money two years ago. In fact, he did everybody out of money. He was such a louse even the party wouldn’t support him for Senator any more. And he has two illegitimate children that I know of in the county. To say nothing of the way he treated me.”
She got up and began pacing the floor. “I’ve been cooped up in this damned house in this damned town for too many damned years, and it’s damned near driven me crazy.”
Malone caught himself on the verge of saying, “You’re damned right.”
“Nothing to do. Not a damned thing to do. That’s what made me sore. I’ve got to get away as fast as I can. I’m neurotic, you know. Very neurotic. I wish I could tell you how much money I’ve spent on doctors, and they all told me the same thing. Very neurotic. Are you surprised, living in a place like this?”
“Frankly, no.” Malone said, thinking of the town clock and the birds.
“Here I was twenty-nine years old, and not getting anywhere. So I decided to marry Jerry Luckstone. I thought he might at least run for the legislature and I’d get as far as Madison. He thought Pa’s political drag might do him some good. He really didn’t give a damn about me. He’d go out and mess around with all sorts of girls, but he wouldn’t lay a finger on me. That’s his small-town morality. He was just respecting me because we were engaged. I’m a virgin, you know. And twenty-nine years old. But I’ve come to the conclusion I ought to do something about it, just to know how it’s done.”
Malone measured the distance between himself and the door, and said, “Have you any idea who murdered your father?”
She shook her head. “Any one of that crew might have done it. They’re all stinkers, except Uncle Phil. You’ll see. when you’ve been here awhile.”
“I’m not going to be here awhile,” Malone said. “I’m going back to Chicago tonight.” A great load seemed to lift from his mind as he said it.
“Lucky you.” She grinned at him. “Well, send me a bill. And I’ll look you up when I get to Chicago.”
“Do that,” Malone said, putting all the conviction he could into his voice. “We’ll go out and have a drink or something.”
He paused on the sidewalk to mop his brow. Florence Peveley was a little strenuous. Still, she did have beautiful legs.
A block down the street he found Jerry Luckstone leaning against a tree, waiting for him. They walked on toward Main Street together.
“I don’t know what you think,” the young man said uncomfortably.
“I think it’s a damned hot day,” Malone said, loosening his tie, “and I think your girl has a violent temper and a beautiful figure, which isn’t a bad combination when you think it over.”
Jerry Luckstone frowned. “That isn’t what I mean. Florence is all right if you understand her. I hope you didn’t believe that crack about my marrying her because of her old man’s political drag.”
“Not at all,” Malone lied.
“I wish you’d stay here,” Luckstone said unexpectedly. “I’m terribly mixed up about the whole thing.”
“I know how you feel,” the lawyer said sympathetically. “I’m mixed up too. But I’m going to do something about it. I’m going back to Chicago.”
The district attorney seemed to be talking to himself. “I can’t understand why she did it.”
“Who?”
“Cora Belle.”
Malone blinked. “I seem to have missed a couple of pages here. What are you talking about?”
“Cora Belle said I was talking to her when the shot was fired. But I wasn’t, you see. I wasn’t talking to anybody.
I’m sure about that. There wasn’t anybody around me. Why did she do it?”
“Maybe she likes you better out of jail than in,” Malone said. “Of course, I don’t know just how you stand with her.”
The young man’s cheeks reddened. “There never was anything serious,” he said. “Maybe she was just being helpful.”
“Or maybe she wanted to establish where she was at the time,” Malone said thoughtfully. “The really funny thing about it is that another person also claims to have been talking to you.” He told about the visit from Ellen McGowan.
Jerry Luckstone stopped walking for a few seconds. “But why would she do that?”
“I don’t know,” the little lawyer said amiably. “Unless you’d been running around with her too.” As the district attorney laughed, he went on, “It’s just that nobody wants to see you in jail.” He considered telling about the weeping Arlene Goudge, and thought better of it.
“I don’t know what to think,” Jerry Luckstone said, “or where to begin. Ordinarily this job of mine is a pretty routine thing. But murder, and especially the murder of an important man like Senator Peveley, and the town full of reporters—”
Helene’s car drove up beside them just in time to save Malone from having to give free advice.
“We’ll drive you downtown,” Helene said. “When’s the inquest?”
Jerry Luckstone consulted his watch. “Half an hour.”
Later Helene remarked that, even for coincidence, the next few minutes had perfect timing. Malone consulted his wallet and announced that he had to cash a check and had better do it now, in case the bank was closed after the inquest was over. Jake decided he ought to cash a check too. Jerry Luckstone offered to accompany them for identification.
Helene parked the convertible before the two-story stucco building marked FARMERS’ BANK OF JACKSON, WIS., announced she didn’t want to be left behind, and went in with the men.
The interior of the Fanners’ Bank of Jackson, Wis., was small. An el-shaped lobby ran across the front and down one side, around the enclosure which occupied about half the space. Two windows in the painted metal grillwork were marked CASHIER and TELLER, at the end of the lobby a ground glass door announced PRESIDENT.