by Henry, Kane,
“How old are you, Mr. Hardwood?”
“Twenty-six.”
“Do you know how old Madame Dino was?”
“She was forty-four.”
“Eighteen years older than you.”
“She was younger than any of us, Lieutenant.”
“Let’s not make with the poetry, young man. Let’s just answer the questions. We have an eighteen-year age difference and we have the fact that she was quite a rich woman. Question, then, Mr. Hardwood. Was it love, or was it money?”
Hardwood was laconic but precise. “Love,” he said.
Parker stared at him in silence, fixedly and lengthily, then he turned to Monte Marvin, so I interposed with, “May I ask a question or two of Mr. Hardwood?”
“Certainly,” Parker said.
“Mr. Hardwood.”
“Yes, sir?”
“The Lieutenant just asked the blunt but necessary question as to whether it was love or money. You said love. Good enough. So how about money?”
“Pardon?”
“How are you fixed for money?”
“Flat broke.”
“Then how do you live?”
“I receive a monthly check from home, from my parents, and I just manage to get by on that. Point of fact, my parents have begun to insist that I come home.”
“Or else — no check?”
“Something like that.” His smile was dim.
“And did you want to go home, Mr. Hardwood?”
“No, sir, I did not.”
I nodded at Parker. “Your witness.”
“Thank you,” Parker said. “Mr. Chambers has quite skillfully clarified my position, Mr. Hardwood. Maybe you were in love with Olga Dino or maybe you weren’t, but you certainly were in need of money. So, it’s possible that you decided to do with the money and without Madame Dino. Will you at least admit that possibility, Mr. Hardwood?”
“If it satisfies you, sir, I’ll admit the possibility — but I’ll add that there’s absolutely no probability whatever.”
“You will admit that you weren’t very anxious for a professional custodian for that little black bag? You’ll admit that, won’t you? Not according to Miss Nelson. You didn’t insist, like she did, did you?”
“No, sir, I didn’t. I’m not one who insists upon anything, sir. I was quite sure that Miss Dino could make up her own mind without my most inadequate advice. I’m not one for advising anyone, sir.”
“All right, Mr. Hardwood. Let’s leave it there for the time being.” Parker moved to Monte Marvin. “Now you, big shot, let’s talk about your doings this evening …”
And so Parker started with Monte Marvin and made the rounds, flinging expert questions and using the answers for more questions until each was tightly bound to a definite story. Monte Marvin had been to the movies. Joan Bradley had been to a rehearsal. Rocky Green had been to a nearby gymnasium. He had all their stories, clear and bright, but he looked as unhappy as a left-bank novelist tightened into a tuxedo. He went away from them, kicked fretful heels along the floor, tapped a right fist into a left palm, returned to them. “All of you,” he said. “Are you wearing the clothes you were wearing when you came back here?”
Each looked at him in small amazement but they all answered that they were wearing the same clothes. Rocky, who had come back first, was still wearing his gym attire. Monte and Joan had only been back perhaps half an hour before the screaming had started. Hardwood had joined Olga and Miss Nelson immediately upon his return.
Parker said, “Were any of you wearing rubbers or overshoes?”
The chorus was, “No.”
“Umbrellas or raincoats?”
Monte, Joan, and Rocky had used both raincoat and umbrella. Hardwood had used only an umbrella.
Parker called: “Cassidy!”
“Yes, sir.”
“I want you to make notes as to every item of clothing every one of these people are wearing, all of them, right here and now.” His smile was a used-up grimace but it was explained by: “Ladies, about your unmentionables, just recite them, I’m not much interested in them anyway. You see, it’s the outer clothing that’s my chief interest. I’ll tell you about that in a few moments. Peterson!”
“Yes, sir.”
“Go upstairs and get the raincoats and umbrellas.”
“Yes, sir.” Peterson went.
Parker shifted a wrinkled glance at Rocky, his gym pants and sneakers and sweater. “And you went out like that?”
“Sure, Lieutenant. With my slicker on top and an umbrella. It’s only a few blocks and I hate changing in a gym.”
Parker shrugged. Peterson came down, the owners identified their property and Peterson made his notes. Then Cassidy was finished, and both Cassidy and Peterson turned their notes over to Parker. “You see, when there’s a shooting,” Parker said, “sometimes — sometimes, mind you — there are blood splatters. I’ve looked you folks over, and there are no blood splatters on any of you, visible blood splatters. Sometimes there are no blood splatters at all, and sometimes they’re not visible because they’re microscopic, and sometimes, when they are visible, people wash them off. But if they’re washed off, they’ll show up in scientific tests, and these clothes of yours will be tested before we’re through.”
I said, “But, Lieutenant — ”
He didn’t let me finish. He said, “The boy is going to tell me that maybe one of you changed an item of apparel. We’ll check that too. We’ll check every item of apparel in the house before we’re through. None of you has had an opportunity to get rid of an item of apparel, unless it’s the one who also got rid of the bag — but maybe he or she didn’t have the time, or didn’t think of it. Now, nobody’s going to have that opportunity any more.”
Ormsby said, “I take it, you’re excluding me from these speculations.”
“I’m excluding nobody.”
“But I have what you people call — an air-tight alibi.”
“Which is …?”
“My lovely saloon.”
“We’ll see, Mr. Ormsby.” Parker clasped his hands above his head like a politician taking leave of a picnic of adoring ladies. “Good bye, now. I’m going down to my lab to see what my bright boys have come up with. I’ll be back. But my cops stay. Also … nobody leaves. And anybody that comes, is not admitted, they’re hustled downtown for a chat with me. That clear, everybody?”
The chorus intoned: “Yes. Yes, Lieutenant.”
I had been sitting near Cedric Ormsby watching him like an old man with a new wife watches a handsome house-guest. Sir Cedric was much more drunk than he appeared. I turned from him to Parker, said, “What about me, Lieutenant?”
“What about you?”
“You said … nobody leaves.”
“That’s what I said.” Parker’s grin was a token of the easing of pressure. “But what I said doesn’t apply to you. The sooner you leave … the less trouble we’re likely to get into.”
“Now now, Lieutenant. Remember me? Your fair-haired boy?” I stood up. “No objection, I trust, to my moseying around a wee bit?”
“No objection, providing you report your findings, if any, to Papa. And I’m Papa, my fair-haired boy.”
“Yes sir, Papa.”
“Let him have his way,” he said to Cassidy. “There have been times, in his own crazy way, he’s been of help. Guy in his racket, he can afford to play his hunches and he can afford to break rules. He’s not restricted by book-law, case-history or Departmental regulations.”
“I understand, Lieutenant.” Cassidy’s grimly grave wink at me was within the bounds of Departmental regulations.
“Bye, now, everybody.” Parker’s bow was as gracefully gallant if slightly more stumpy than Sir Cedric’s. “Be nice, everybody,” he said, “and be gentle. And try to act like good little murderers.”
VIII
He departed and the buzz of small hubbub exploded. It was like audience-noise when a first-act curtain comes down. Then Rocky said, “Look,
Miss Nelson, we’ve all had a hard time. All right if I bring down a bottle? And how about you? Break your heart, and break out a bottle. It’s been a tough night. We can all use a drink.”
Miss Nelson broke out two bottles and Rocky added his and we all sat around Miss Nelson’s large oblong table, four policemen standing by with lips as parched as adolescent striptease viewers. Everybody drank, but Sir Cedric drank like there was no tomorrow. Then he stood up, wavering like a wind-swept tree. His hands clung to the ends of the open muffler around his neck and a smile wandered about his crusted lips. “My dear ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “I believe it is time for me to retire. But I retire with some satisfaction. Much as I regret the death of Madame Dino, I must confess that it holds an element of macabre good fortune for me. I entered here this evening a poor and broken man. I go to my pallet broken, perhaps, but no longer poor. I shall awaken to an embarrassment of riches. A hearty good night to all.”
As he shambled, slanted sidewise like a hernia-impaired giraffe, the faintest dawn of an idea began to glimmer in my brain. I moved away from the table. I said, “Just a minute, Sir Cedric.”
“What is it, my young buckeroo?”
“Hold it a minute.” I waved toward the table. “All of you. Stand up.”
Cassidy hurried forward, the frown on his face the forerunner to the oral indictment: “What the goddamn hell goes on here, Mr. Chambers? What’s with you?”
“Remember regulations, Mr. Cassidy?”
“What? What regulations? What the hell are you up to?”
“Remember Lieutenant Parker, Mr. Cassidy. Let him have his way, he said. Remember? Okay, this is part of my way.” I went away from him. “All right. Stand up. All of you.”
Chairs scraped and they stood up. Ormsby stood by, blinking.
“Take your shoes off,” I said.
“What?” went the chorus. “What? What’s the matter with him? He crazy? What the hell’s with him?”
“Take your shoes off. All of you.”
Monte Marvin said kindly, “Too much of the hard stuff, Pete?”
“Off. With the shoesies.”
“What goes with shoes? You queer for shoes?”
“That’s right. Fetishist, that’s me. Now come on, take them off, everybody. Under the supervision of the disapproving officer here, Mr. Cassidy. Now come on. Off, off, off … and lay them there on the table.”
“You heard him,” Cassidy grunted, his eyes baffled.
Joan said, “Woe. When this boy flips his wig, he flips it but good.”
Ralph Hardwood said the same thing, but he said: “Rather peculiar, what. Rather high-handed, what. A sudden balminess in the night air. First a curtain speech from Sir Cedric that he must have remembered from some horribly-written play …”
“I object to that, young man,” Ormsby intoned. “… and now the detective-fellow succumbs to a weird sexual impulse.”
“Off,” I said.
“My head,” Hardwood said. “It is difficult to bend when one’s head is large.”
“Off, off, off.”
Finally — gruntingly, murmuringly, complainingly — they complied.
“Good,” I said. “Lay them on the table there. Good, Good. Very good.”
Rocky said, “And what now, doll-boy?”
“Now you all go upstairs. Each of you to your respective room.” I clapped my hands, waved, shooing them like sheep. “Up you go. Move it, my shoeless brigade, up you go …”
“Really … a most high-handed procedure …”
But they trooped up, and out of sight, and then under the astonished eyes of Parker’s policemen, I did the cobbler bit — I examined shoes. I touched them, bent them, felt them, fondled them. Then I wriggled into my trench-coat and I waved good bye to the taciturn gentlemen of the law. “Help yourself to a drink, fellas. It’ll be a secret among you. And remember the Lieutenant’s orders. Nobody comes. Nobody goes. Except me.”
IX
And now you’re walking in the rain, trying to think. Slight sun has peeped up around the rim of the dawn of your idea, and you’re waiting for it to catch fire. You walk in one direction, then you walk back. You walk in another direction, and then you walk back. You start in a third direction, squashing through rain, and then a block away you see a subway station, and the fire in your head is started. You jog down the subway stairs, you move fast but you’re not going anywhere, you have no train to make, and downstairs you linger like a hopeful panhandler, and the guy in the change-booth is beginning to give you the ugly eye. But then you see a large object of large interest — a tall section of public lockers. You trot to them and you insert your dime — but you check nothing. Then you prance up the stairs like a goosed fairy and you head back for the boarding house but you stop across the street at Sir Cedric’s tavern. You need a drink to ward off pneumonia, you need a few drinks, and while you’re there, you’re curious about Sir Cedric. “What’ll it be?” the bartender says.
“Double Scotch. Water.”
The bartender serves you. “Mix it?” he inquires.
“Thank you. Short on the water. Twist of peel, if you have it. Fine, that’s it.” You pay and you drink and you say, “Stinks out tonight.”
“Sure does.”
“First time I’ve been in here.”
“That a fact? I only been here two weeks myself.”
“Know a guy, an actor guy, an Englishman, Cedric Ormsby?”
“Sure do. We call him Shakespeare. Real quaint character. He really an actor?”
“The best. Famous old-timer. Sir Cedric Ormsby. I’m an actor myself. Just moved in across the street, couple days ago. The old man recommended this bar to me. I was supposed to meet him here tonight. But I got held up.”
“That a fact?”
“Yeah. Fact. Was he here?”
“Who?”
“The old guy. Shakespeare.”
“Yeah. Sure. Been here most of the evening. Been sitting up there, been sitting up front, looking out on the rain. Or maybe he was looking out for you. Rotten old night, ain’t it?”
“Sure. Rotten old night.”
X
When I got back, Cassidy opened the door for me, his face prim and pinched-pale as that of an expectant but disappointed virgin. There was nobody downstairs at all, nobody, only Cassidy. I said, “What happened? Your guys pass out?”
“They’re upstairs. With the Chief.”
“Parker?”
“Yeah.”
“When did he get back?”
“About five minutes ago. He went up to talk to Ormsby. Then he called down. Trouble.”
“Which room? You know?”
“Third to the left. Off the stairs.”
Third to the left off the stairs produced Parker, two cops, Peterson, and Sir Cedric Ormsby stretched in bed, dead, his face terribly blue, the veins in his neck distended, and his eyes popped almost beyond the lids. Parker, seated on the edge of the bed, looked up as I approached, said softly, “Strangled. They used his black muffler. We practically had to pry it off. He didn’t have a hundred thousand bucks in a little black bag? Why him? What the hell is going on in this miserable old house?”
“Look, Louie …”
He threw up a growl of impatience. “What?”
“Louie, please.”
“What is it?”
“If you get them together, all of them, I think I can give you the picture on it.”
“Him too?” He waved a hand at the supine figure. “The poor old bastard. Him too? A prideful old bastard. I left out the Sir, and he hated me. Called me Mister on every turn. I had respect for the old gee, even though I thought he could have pulled that Dino deal. And he could have pulled it. Him, best of all. Could have come back, sneaked in on Nelson on the phone, conked her, killed the singer, copped the bag, and returned to the saloon. Could’ve used a gun that he’d copped at an earlier time, figuring for this — copped the gun maybe in the afternoon, drinking whiskey in the saloon to give him cou
rage. And who’d have missed him in the saloon? Who misses anybody in a saloon? Guy went to the toilet or something. Nobody misses nobody in a saloon.”
I nodded slowly. “I’d been wondering. So that’s why you omitted his Sir.”
“Didn’t have the heart, that’s all. You don’t Sir a guy whom you figure for number one on your list. If he’d have made clearance, I’d have apologized. I’m not built to give a guy his Sir when I’m thinking of him as a possible murderer.”
I touched his shoulder. I said, “Will you get them together for me, Louie, please?”
He finally stood up, ruddy face sagged with fatigue. “Animals,” he said. “A world full of animals. Supposed to be civilized human beings, all bull. They tell you about kindness, and goodness, and all the fine things supposed to be inside of us. Brother, when you’re in my business, or in yours, you even begin to doubt yourself, what’s really inside of you. Animals. Killing each other, murdering each other. How can they sleep …?”
“Easy, Louie.”
He drew a deep breath. He shuddered, completely. Then he mumbled, “Sorry.” And then he was Louis Parker again, Detective, and he was bawling out Peter Chambers, Eye. “How do you want them downstairs? With, or without shoes? What’s the matter with you? You pop your cork entirely? What is it? The dictator-complex coming out in you? Or were you trying to impress my cops, hoping, maybe, they’d remember a crazy richard and recommend business if it fell their way …?”
And he kept at it, even after he had gathered them together for me downstairs, all of them still dressed as they had been, some of them in other shoes, some in house slippers, all except Joan Bradley who, as though in expression of criticism of me, was in stockinged feet.
Parker said, “My dear and woolly-headed friend, if it’s all the same to you, I like my murder suspects wearing shoes …”
“But it’s not all the same to me.”
“Not, huh? Boy, when a private richard goes bad, he goes all the way.”
“Just doing the old arithmetic, Lieutenant. Sir Cedric made a crazy speech and arithmetic began to bumble.”