A Key to Death

by Frances

  “While she’s—you don’t know what they’ll do to her. You expect me—”

  “Yes,” Bill said. “What did they want here?”

  “How can anybody tell? It’ll take us—” he looked around—“hell, it’ll take us weeks to find out where we are.”

  They had not, certainly, been after anything of cash value. There was no money there—possibly petty cash. Mary Burton would know about that. Otherwise, the cash register of the corner store would have paid them better. Here there were only papers. But there were hundreds of papers, thousands of papers. Those kept in the safe were, for one reason or another, of an especially confidential nature. “Were,” Webb said, looking at strewn documents. Those in the locked filing cases were a little less restricted; the open cases held chiefly correspondence on current matters. “Jesus,” Webb said. “I’m glad our clients can’t see this.”

  Who would know most about what might have been searched for, might have been taken?

  Mrs. Burton, in general. In matters particularly confidential, Saul Karn.

  Karn had walked into the office at a little before three, precisely dressed and mannered, carrying a brief case, entirely wide awake. When he saw the office he removed his rimless glasses, shook them—rather as a physician shakes a clinical thermometer—and said, “My, my.”

  “Well,” Webb said, “what do you think, Saul?”

  “I imagine,” Karn said, “that they were after this.”

  He opened the brief case. He removed from it a sheaf of legal sized yellow paper, folded twice. He handed the sheaf to Reginald Webb, who unfolded, and looked, and began to read the typescript. But after he had read half a page, he shook his head. He asked what it was all about.

  Karn looked doubtful, looked at Bill Weigand, at Mullins.

  “Mr. Ingraham considered it confidential,” he said.

  “Mr. Ingraham is dead,” Bill told him.

  “That is true. Nevertheless—” Karn looked at Webb. Webb hesitated. Then he told Karn to go ahead.

  “Very well,” Karn said. “It came to Mr. Ingraham’s knowledge that certain conversations of interest—telephone conversations—might be made—available.” He chose words with care. “A record was obtained.”

  Bill held out his hand. Webb gave him the typed sheets.

  The conversations were dated, and timed; the first had been made on January sixteenth. The conversations appeared to be between one man, who in most cases seemed to have originated the calls, and several other men, identified by first names, by nicknames, in some cases not at all. Most of the conversations were cryptic—

  “1-19; 3 P.M.—Nobby? Yeah, this is Joe. You see Mr. Painter?—Yeah. He’s still squealing—So?—It breaks his heart, Joe. It sure breaks his heart.—That’s too bad, Nobby. He came through?—What do you think? Sure he came through—That’s nice, Nobby. That’s real nice.—Ain’t it. See you tonight, boss?—Sure thing.”

  “Joe,” Weigand found, skimming from page to page, had talked with a good many men, with some of them often. “Nobby” was one of his more frequent interlocutors; he had conversed also with “Smiley,” prosaically with “Jim” and “Tony,” several times with someone named, improbably, “Horse.” Most of the conversations dealt, directly or obliquely, with people, seldom clearly identified, who had “come through” or, in one or two cases, apparently had not. And once—on 2-1—“Joe” had said, speaking to someone anonymous, “Yeah, it’s too bad about poor old Matt. Real tough.”

  “Right,” Bill said, and folded the papers and put them in his pocket. “Who did the job, Mr. Karn?”

  “The job?”

  “Put the tap on.”

  “I understand,” Saul Karn said, and spoke carefully, “that wire tapping is illegal, captain. I assume you mean wire tapping?”

  “Yes,” Bill said. “Who?”

  “Of my personal knowledge,” Karn said, “there was no wire tapping. No—”

  “Please, Mr. Karn,” Bill said. “Without prejudice, if you like.”

  “I don’t know,” Karn said. “Without prejudice, as you say—although the term is loosely used, captain—I would assume that someone was employed. If Mr. Ingraham knew, he did not confide in me.”

  “Ingraham hired someone?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Or—was it Halpern? And turned the record over to Mr. Ingraham?”

  “Again, I don’t know.”

  “But you read this?”

  “Yes. Yes, I read it, captain.”

  “What did you think it was?”

  “It appeared to me that it might be a record of certain conversations between men engaged in a shake-down. That pay-offs were being made.”

  He did know the words, it appeared. He did not like them, but he knew them.

  “You don’t know who these men were?”

  “No.”

  “But Mr. Ingraham did?”

  “Presumably. And those who were employed to make the—recordings. And, I should suppose, Mr. Halpern. If he is the ‘Matt’ they mention, of course.”

  “You think whoever broke in was after this?”

  That, Saul Karn said, would be his guess. The material had been in the safe.

  “I took it out,” Saul Karn said. “Took it home. To—lessen the risk, captain. Since the safe is by no means a new one and might easily be broken open.” He looked at the safe. “I appear to have been right,” he added.

  “You know of nothing else they might have been after?”

  “Oh, there may have been a dozen things. But—this seems the most probable. To me, that is. Perhaps Mr. Webb?”

  Webb shook his head.

  Bill Weigand had left the offices half an hour later, told Mullins to get himself some sleep, and gone home to get some sleep himself.

  He had not got enough, he thought again, and said, “Hello, Fred” to Sergeant Thackery of the Rackets Squad, who had come up from Headquarters on summons. “This is it,” Bill said, and handed Thackery the results of illegal wire tapping. Thackery read. He said, “Well, well.” He said, “Looks as if there might be something in Halpern’s story after all.” He read further. He nodded his head as he read.

  “The ‘Joe’ would be Joe Smithson,” he said. “‘Smiley’s’ a man named Bland—Smiley Bland. Not very appropriate names. ‘Horse’ I never heard of. Or ‘Nobby’.”

  “But,” Bill said. “You can find out?”

  Thackery could. “This”—which was the conversation record—“would help.” They could find out who had made the tap; with the guidance provided, they might find out a good deal.

  “But—” Thackery said, “we haven’t got anything they can’t laugh off. You know that, captain. Nothing that’d be any good in court.”

  Bill nodded his head.

  “So,” Thackery said, “they go to the trouble of knocking off this lawyer? Searching the office—sure, maybe they didn’t know what Halpern and his mouthpiece had and didn’t want to take a chance. Maybe they got more. But—this mob’s a little choosey about murder. Has been, anyway.”

  “Ingraham may have had more,” Bill agreed. “They may have got more—something Karn didn’t know about, and so didn’t take home. Ingraham apparently had something he was going to take to the D.A. His interest, and Halpern’s, was the grand larceny rap, of course.”

  “Yeah,” Thackery said, and stood up. “Well, we’ll get on it, captain. See what the D.A. makes of this. Have a few little talks—with Joe and Smiley and this ‘Horse’ they talked to. See what we can stir up.”

  He might, Bill suggested, find out who Joe Smithson had been playing pinochle with the evening before. Thackery agreed that that figured, except that Smithson was more the poker type. “I’ll get together with the Safe and Loft boys,” he promised, and went to do it. Weigand returned to reports. The telephone rang. He said, “Homicide. Weigand.” He listened, and his face set hard, but all he said was, “Right. We’ll come over.” He picked up Mullins in the squad room. Mullins saw his f
ace, and saw trouble.

  “Mary Burton,” Bill told him. “Found shot in her house.”

  The body of Mary Burton lay on the rug of her living room, and lay in blood. But the blood had dried. The photographers had pictured the body, which would go into the records as “white, about sixty, well nourished.” There was blood on the precisely curled white hair; Mary Burton’s jaw had fallen as she died, and her face was longer than it had ever been. She had been shot, twice, once through the heart. She had worn a robe and a nightdress when she died. One in the morning was the assistant medical examiner’s guess as to the time of death—his median guess. Between midnight and two a.m.

  The homicide men of the Ninth Detective District had been working for a little under two hours. Acting Captain Flynn sketched for Weigand what they had, what it looked like.

  The body found at about eight-thirty by Rose Isaacson, next door neighbor. Because of a cat. There had been snow on the ground, then. It had gone as the sun climbed. There had been no footprints in the snow, except those of the cat. Snow had fallen from three in the morning until about five, and not heavily. The murderer had come and gone, at the latest, some time before the snowfall stopped; probably, before it began.

  The shots had not been heard by the Isaacsons, who lived closest, who lived very close. But this was possible, if the murder had taken place around midnight, the medical examiner’s earliest allowable hour. It had been very windy then, and for about an hour before midnight and until just before the snow started.

  “These places rattle and bang,” Flynn said. “Live in pretty much the same sort of place. Rattle and bang. Wonder they don’t blow down. A thirty-two doesn’t make a lot of racket—”

  “It was a thirty-two?”

  “Yes. One slug went through her. Found it in her clothes. The lab boys have it.”

  “Usable?”

  “Yes. Take a nice picture.”

  Also, the revolver could have been wrapped in something, which would diminish the sound of its discharge. Also, the Isaacsons slept soundly and with a window ventilator running. “So she says, anyway.”

  “She’s a good witness?”

  “Kind you dream about. Upset as hell, but mind keeps on working. Very nice little woman, Mrs. Isaacson. Says she was fond of the old girl, and acts like it. Says, It happened right next door and we didn’t do anything.’ I said I didn’t know what she could have done.”

  “No,” Bill said.

  Mrs. Burton, who lived alone with her cat, apparently had got home about ten-fifteen, much later than usual. It was about then, at any rate, that she had turned on a light—or someone had turned on a light—in her living room. The light had shone into the Isaacson living room until Mrs. Isaacson pulled down a forgotten shade. It had interfered with television reception, and television reception helped place the time. The light had come on, Mrs. Isaacson thought, in the middle of a show, and it was a ten to ten-thirty show.

  “Yes,” Bill said. “The cat?”

  “Yelling to get in,” Flynn said. “Spent the nights in. Altered cat. Didn’t roam much. Probably went out when the murderer came in.”

  More probably, Bill Weigand thought, went out with the murderer. The cat would have been frightened, by then; would have hidden in a shadow against the strangeness in the night, would have fled from it as the door opened.

  “Could be,” Flynn agreed. “Don’t know much about cats. Anyway, he got shut out. Snap lock on the door. Locked when the boys got here.”

  There was one other thing. A man of the neighborhood, coming home late from a lodge meeting, had seen a car starting up about a block away. He had seen, first, a man getting into the car; then it had started off. A sedan. He was not sure of the make, had no idea of the color, or of the license number.

  “Didn’t think anything about it,” Flynn said. “Doesn’t now. Much as he thought at all, he thought it was some guy who had been visiting his girl. Only—we haven’t found anybody around there who had a visitor. Or, who went someplace that late in a car.”

  “Visiting a girl?” Bill said. “A young man, then?”

  “That’s what he thinks. He was about half a block away, and there wasn’t much light. A thin man, he thinks—not very tall, either. Could have been some kid in his ’teens, this fella thinks. Fit anybody?”

  It didn’t.

  “Could be,” Flynn said, “that there’s no tie-in.”

  “Trouble is,” Sergeant Mullins said, with gloom, “trouble is nothin’ ties in with nothin’. That’s what makes it screwy. Like it always is.”

  Mullins did not specify the conditions under which it always was. He did not need to.

  “Yes,” Bill said. He spoke abstractedly, looking down at the cadaver which had been Mary Burton. He wondered what she had forgotten, or what she had remembered. Or, what she had had that was wanted, and wanted desperately.

  There was too much in what Mullins said; events seemed, for the moment, as difficult to relate one to another as the events of a dream. There were, also, too many events; it was as if a dozen maniacal children were playing, now here and now there, the grimmest of Hallow’een pranks, months out of season.

  “Mrs. Isaacson’s got the cat,” Flynn says. “Says she going to keep it, if nobody minds.”

  Bill Weigand looked at him.

  “I don’t suppose anybody’ll mind,” he said. “If it’s all right with the cat.”

  Pamela North is an orderly person, among physical objects as among those of the mind. The latter characteristic has been brought in question, but not by Pam, who should know best nor, indeed, by her husband, who should know second best. The order of her mental processes is not, certainly, always of the simplest kind, but complexity is not, in itself, disorder. This day was to be devoted, at least in part, to the attainment of physical order, specifically of the things in her chest drawers, and to a final separation of Florida sheep from Northern goats.

  She told Jerry this as he left for the office, with the urgent request that she not get involved in anything.

  “I’m going to go through my drawers,” Pam told him. “So of course I won’t.”

  Jerry blinked slightly.

  “Oh for heaven’s sake,” Pam said. “Chest drawers. Always the editor.”

  “Of course,” Jerry North said, and kissed her, and said goodbye to each cat in turn, and left.

  Pamela went at once to work, pausing only to skim the New York Herald Tribune, with special emphasis on Clementine Paddleford’s food column, and to work the crossword in the New York Times. After a little thought, she decided to do her main closet as well, and first, so that Martha, when she came, could do a thorough dusting up. Pam opened the closet door wide, and began to carry garments from it. The dresses she stretched out, with care, on a bed, avoiding the creation of wrinkles. “I’d forgotten all about that one,” she said to herself, and, of another, “I wonder what I was thinking of that day?” With the dresses ended, she shook her head dubiously, and thought that she didn’t, really, have very many—not nearly enough. Not even with the things she had bought for the South, and which hadn’t come yet.

  There was almost a shelf of hats, and, of these, Pam tried several on. It always puzzled Pam to discover that she had so many hats, since she had, almost completely, given up the wearing of hats. She put the hats, one by one, with the dresses on the bed. She found numerous shoes, and sorted them into pairs—I really am orderly, Pam thought, in relation to the shoes, except that it doesn’t always show—and pushed a fall coat and a spring coat and an evening wrap—I’ll certainly never wear that again—to one end of the hanger rod. Now there was room for Martha to get in. After Martha had been in, the things which were going south could go here, and the things which were staying home could go there. I need a new wardrobe case, Pam thought; one that will really keep things nice. I knew I’d miss something. (This applied to a summer dress which she had planned to take south, but had forgotten to send to the cleaner, and for which it was now too late.)


  With the closet completed, Pam turned to the chest drawers, and realized at once that it was some time since she had. Slips were folded, for example, but not really neatly folded, as one wishes such things to be. Pam was a little surprised at this, until she remembered that, several days before, she had needed a special slip—a blue one—and that it had been at the bottom of the pile and that, instead of lifting the whole pile up to the level of the blue slip, she had reached under it and—

  Pam made a clucking sound with her tongue, and took all the slips out, and examined each—one for Martha to mend, when Martha had the time—and folded each and made a pile of them on the unoccupied bed. The blouses took longer and the stockings longer still, since stockings, once worn, often turn up unmated, on account of runs, and must be paired, which involves taking to windows for examination in natural light. But, in time, Pam had stockings sorted, and belts rolled, and bras and panties counted, and all things laid neatly on the bed. Pam sat down, lighted a cigarette and looked at them. All other things aside, including the need for at least two new dresses for the south, it did take a good deal to keep one woman covered. Spread out this way, with such careful neatness—

  For an instant, then, Pam North experienced that disturbing feeling which all know—that this had happened before, precisely as now; that, indeed, it was, at one and the same time, happening before and happening now. One part of my mind isn’t keeping up with the other part, Pam thought, and tried to hurry the laggard half. I hate this feeling, she thought, because when you don’t know when you are, when are you? and—

  But then, as instantly as it had come, the feeling of uncertainty in time took itself off. It isn’t that at all, Pam thought. It’s Mrs. Schaeffer’s apartment at the hotel, and that’s what’s been worrying me, although until this minute I didn’t know I’d been worried. That’s what was wrong, out of drawing. It wasn’t gangsters at all, Pam thought. It was another woman!

  She put it in order in her mind, then, and as she did she nodded her head, with each movement impressing, as with a stamp, the validity of her thought.

  If a man is looking for something, he rummages. He reaches under things and between things. His own shirts, for example, or all those things Jerry keeps in the top drawer of his own chest. (Pam had a mental picture of the top drawer, and shuddered, in an aside.) If a man—or men—had gone through Mrs. Schaeffer’s garments, even if they wished to conceal the fact that they had gone through them, they would not have taken them out, and piled them neatly on beds. They would not have laid the dresses out carefully, extended, to avoid creasing, particularly since the plan had presumably been that they would all be hung up again. Men would have tossed the dresses on the bed if, indeed, they had not merely pushed them around on their hangers.