The Penguin Pool Murder (The Hildegarde Withers Mysteries)

by Stuart Palmer

  Piper was eager. “Quick, man. Do you remember the person who bought that wire? Can you describe him … or her?”

  The hardware man hesitated, and chewed a bit of gum reflectively. “I can do that, officer,” he said slowly. “It was a gentleman in gray striped trousers, and he carried a crooked topped stick and wore a posy in his buttonhole.”

  Costello was smiling. But Miss Withers pointed an accusing finger at him. “Was it this man here?”

  The gentleman from the Third Avenue hardware store was not one to rush into anything. “It might have been,” he said. “And then again, it might not. Seems like he was a little taller, kind of. And then this fellow had on a top hat, like they wear in the movies. No, I wouldn’t go to swear as to that, though they’re mighty alike …”

  “Naturally,” said Barry Costello. “Miss Withers, let me congratulate you. But if you’d given me a chance to explain why I wanted this interview with the Inspector, you might have saved yourself some breath. I bought that wire, and I smuggled it into the Tombs.”

  Piper leaped to his feet. “Why didn’t you tell us this yesterday?”

  “Nobody asked me yesterday. And besides, I was hoping to keep out of it if I could. I realize that it’s illegal to smuggle anything into the City Prison. But I took stock of the risks before I did it, and I’m perfectly willing to admit everything I did. The wire was wrapped around my waist, under my vest, and Schmaltz never came near it when he gave me the usual search.”

  “I don’t get this,” boomed Piper. “Why did you do it?”

  “To achieve what I’ve been working for since I interested myself in this case,” explained Costello patiently. “To save Gwen Lester.”

  “But how did you think that giving the pickpocket means of committing suicide was going to help Gwen?”

  “I don’t think the pickpocket committed suicide,” explained Costello gently. “And I didn’t mean to help him. I brought that wire into the Tombs because Philip Seymour begged me to do it. He wanted the means of ending his life. And I figured that a suicide in Seymour’s position was tantamount to a confession of guilt, and that a jury would take it that way. So I broke the rules and helped him.”

  “Good God, man, what are you trying to make us believe? You smuggled in a wire to Philip Seymour, and a man down the corridor in another cell committed suicide with it?”

  Barry Costello smiled. “I just told you that I don’t think the pickpocket did commit suicide. It’s a tangled mess, but I’m forced to believe that I was wrong in thinking the pickpocket committed the murder. He must have been out of his head, I’m thinking, and confessed to it just the way that a lot of queer people do after every crime. Yesterday this case was straightening itself out nicely. The pickpocket was the murderer and he had given me a confession note. But when I heard you say, Miss Withers, that the pickpocket hung at the end of a wire … and I knew that the only wire in the Tombs was the one I’d taken to Philip Seymour at his own request … well, it looks as if Seymour killed the pickpocket.”

  “Seymour! What are you saying, man? Do you think that Seymour could walk through walls and bars? If the pickpocket didn’t commit suicide, how could Seymour have killed him?”

  “I’m no detective, Inspector. All I know is that I slipped the wire into Seymour’s cell when the turnkey was leading me out of the place yesterday morning.”

  “Young man, I don’t believe you! People don’t do such things. You expect us to believe that you actually handed that poor boy a length of wire and told him to hang himself?” Miss Withers was wroth. Somehow the wind had been taken out of her sails.

  Costello nodded. “In a way, I did just that. Because I believe that every man has a right to put an end to his existence if it becomes unbearable. What was there ahead for Philip Seymour? Disgrace, long months of torture in a cell, and then the public murder in the chair up at Sing Sing which the prisoners call the ‘Hot Squat.’ Can you blame a man for wanting to escape all that? Why shouldn’t I help him?”

  “But he didn’t kill himself with the wire,” Miss Withers reminded them. “I suppose he sent the wire by Western Union messenger to the cell around the corner, and with it a message ‘hang yourself, please’?”

  “I’m not explaining what happened,” said Costello patiently. “I’m telling you what I did, and why. I realize that I’m liable for what I did, but it isn’t a very serious offense as long as I took in neither tools of escape nor a lethal weapon, although the wire may have indirectly proved to be both. Arrest me if you care to, although it would certainly be bad psychology to arrest the defense attorney in a murder case of this magnitude, a week before the trial. The public would think you were persecuting Gwen, you see …”

  “But how could a wire get from Seymour’s cell to the pickpocket’s neck?” Piper had chewed up three cigars in this interview.

  “I’m not the detective,” Costello reminded him. “I’m telling you the facts and you can figure it out for yourself. All I’m trying to do is to protect Gwen Lester’s interests, and to make the greatest advantage of every change in the situation for her. My cards are on the table.”

  “Well, there’s something screwy somewhere,” Piper said slowly. “That wire didn’t walk down the corridor. And you and the turnkey were the only two people loose in the cell-block yesterday morning.”

  “Were we?” asked Costello. Just then the phone rang, and Piper snatched it up.

  “Good morning, Warden. Yes, I left word for you to call me. Did you search the cells as I suggested, empty and full ones both. You did?”

  There was a long pause, and then the Inspector put down the telephone without saying good-bye.

  He looked out of the window, and then leaned back wearily in his chair. There was, for the first time since he had entered this case, a slump to his wide shoulders.

  “I just got word,” he remarked to nobody in particular, “that Hyde found a file and the broken pieces of a homemade key in Seymour’s slop-bucket. The key is rough, but at least it was planned to fit the old-fashioned lock to Philip Seymour’s cell!”

  19

  Nor Iron Bars a Cage

  MISS WITHERS LOOKED AT the Inspector, and the Inspector looked at Barry Costello, and the Irishman grinned back at both of them.

  “Now maybe I wasn’t the only person besides the turnkey to be loose in that cell-block yesterday morning!”

  Miss Withers shook her head. “I don’t see how Seymour could have killed the pickpocket, even if he was loose in the corridor. Nor do I see any reason for his killing the little man.”

  “Not even if he knew of the pickpocket’s message to me on the previous evening, promising to spill the beans on the Lester murder?” Piper rose slowly to his feet. “Seymour must have made a key to the pickpocket’s cell, too, and gone there to kill him for fear the pickpocket would implicate him. Either Chicago Lew was a witness to the killing of Gerald Lester or else Seymour thought he was, which is the same thing. He was bumped off in his cell by the murderer of Gerald Lester!”

  Costello nodded in agreement. “It certainly looks that way, Inspector. Though it’s hard to believe that a prisoner in the Tombs could kill another prisoner there. I’m blaming myself, of course, for being an innocent accessory before the fact. But I took the wire to Philip Seymour because he had me fooled with his suicide story, and because I felt that if he did bump himself off he’d be making a confession that would free Gwen. And what he really wanted was the means of killing the man he was afraid would squeal on him.”

  “What did Seymour say when they found the file and the scraps of broken key in his slop-bucket?” Miss Withers was thoughtfully pleating the hem of her skirt.

  “Denied any knowledge of it, of course,” said Piper.

  “They always do. I suppose he figured that they’d be thrown out, and nothing could ever pin the murder of the pickpocket on him. But that foxy lad has been a little too foxy. If we can’t pin the murder of Gerald Lester on him, we’ll get him anyway for the kill
ing of Chicago Lew McGirr. All that’s necessary to do now is for us to reconstruct the crime. I’m going over to the Tombs. You people better come along.”

  Costello hesitated. “I did have an appointment,” he ventured. “But it can wait. I have a feeling that we’re getting closer and closer to the end of this snipe-hunt.”

  “Do you know, I have that same feeling,” said Miss Withers confidentially as they followed Inspector Piper out of the building.

  They found Warden Hyde waiting for them at the Tombs, an exhibit lying before him on his desk. It consisted of a tiny file, not more than two inches long, but of finely hardened steel, and three broken bits of metal which when fitted together made the crude outline of a key.

  “Here’s what we took from the cell of your prisoner, Seymour,” the Warden said. “That key was to fit the old-fashioned lock of Seymour’s cell.”

  Piper stared down. “You’re sure it could have opened the cell door?”

  “Of course I’m not sure. All I know is that it is of the same type of indentation as the genuine key that Schmaltz carries, with the same notches. Broken as it is, of course we can’t test it. But I’ll stake my professional reputation that if this key didn’t unlock Seymour’s cell door yesterday morning, then the man had made another and a better second version that did!”

  “Let me get this straight,” said Piper. “Would this key have unlocked the pickpocket’s cell door also? Are both keys alike?”

  “Not at all,” said the Warden. “There is only one row of cells in the place that opens with these old-fashioned keys at all, and while Seymour’s cell happened to be in that row, the pickpocket’s wasn’t. Chicago Lew McGirr was locked in with a special new device that nobody but the turnkey could have opened. We’re putting them on all the doors in the Tombs as soon as the appropriation permits.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” said Miss Withers. “What good would it have done for Seymour to make a key to his own cell, when he couldn’t make one to fit the pickpocket’s? You didn’t find another key anywhere in the man’s cell, did you?”

  Warden Hyde looked dubiously at Miss Withers, but the Inspector nodded his head. “She’s a sort of unofficial assistant of mine,” he told Hyde. “Answer the question.”

  “We searched this place from ceiling to floor,” said Hyde testily. “Naturally the honor of myself and my men has been implicated when a suicide or a murder takes place within these walls. And we found nothing out of the way but this file and the bits of a key.”

  “Maybe Seymour didn’t kill the pickpocket after all,” said Miss Withers thoughtfully. “Maybe he only took the wire to the man and poked it through the bars, telling him to go ahead and commit suicide with it. Only it doesn’t sound so plausible …”

  “Men don’t make keys and go to all that trouble just to help another prisoner commit hari-kari,” Piper pointed out. “But we’re wasting time here. You had Seymour transferred to another cell-block, Warden?”

  Hyde nodded. “As it happens, there’s no prisoners in Murderer’s Row right now. Want to go back there?”

  “I certainly do.” And again Piper led the way, carrying in one hand the broken key that had been taken from Seymour’s cell.

  As the others watched, he took a fine pair of tweezers from his pocket, and attempted to turn the lock of the cell door with the fragment of the business end of the key. It fitted, but he could not secure purchase enough to turn it.

  “That doesn’t prove anything anyway.” Costello suggested. “If Seymour could make a key as good as that one, he could make a better one in case he needed it.”

  “Right you are,” said Piper. “Now let’s try to reconstruct the crime. You say you tossed the wire into Seymour’s cell as you followed the turnkey out of the place yesterday morning?”

  Costello nodded. “All right, then,” said Piper. “Let’s suppose that Seymour is in this cell, waiting eagerly for the wire. He knows that he has perhaps half an hour during which time the turnkey will be working elsewhere in the prison. And he knows that the pickpocket has promised to make disclosures which he fears will fix the Lester murder on himself. He has made his key, and he unlocks his cell door as soon as the turnkey and Costello here are out of sight. He knows that the other cells in the block are empty, so he goes swiftly to the pickpocket’s cell.”

  “And there he stops,” said Miss Withers, “because he hasn’t got any way of getting into that cell, if what the Warden says about the new patent locks is true. Schmaltz is certain that the pickpocket’s door was locked after he let Mr. Costello out.”

  They were once more before the cell where Chicago Lew had given up the ghost. “With a gun or even a sword, a murderer might do damage from the corridor, through the bars,” Miss Withers pointed out. “But I don’t see how a strangler could get in his work, and then leave the body hanging in the middle of the cell.”

  “Wait a minute,” cried Piper excitedly. “Quick, Hyde, unlock this door for me. I want to get in that cell.”

  The place was dark and gloomy as usual, but Piper cast his pocket flash into every corner, and even toward the ceiling. When the blinding flood of light touched the steam-pipe at the ceiling, the Inspector held it steady.

  “Miss Withers, Costello … notice anything? See there on the pipe where the wire was drawn? Stand on the chair.”

  They both did see. Something had cut into the soft iron pipe, making an indentation a quarter of an inch deep, as if a saw had been drawn across the top.

  “I don’t understand why a wire would cut so deeply into the iron pipe with only a man’s weight dropping at the end of it,” said Piper. “This is a little detail that is going to get us somewhere …”

  “You bet it is,” said Barry Costello slowly. “Now I know how the thing was done, and made to look like suicide. I’ll show you … send for that wire, will you?”

  Piper stared at the man for a moment, and then sent Schmaltz speeding toward his office, with a note to Lieutenant Keller.

  “Seymour never got inside that cell!” insisted Costello. “He managed the business from the corridor, and I’ll show you how. I’m no detective, but I see this thing like a book. Somehow, he persuaded the pickpocket to come over to the door, perhaps by promising him freedom, and then he slipped a noose around the fellow’s neck and throttled him. It was the best way to kill him, he figured, because it was silent and it could be made to look like suicide.”

  “So far it’s possible,” said Piper gravely. “Though there wasn’t much room to spare through those bars. Anyway, suppose that Seymour did all this, and held the noose tight until his victim collapsed on the floor inside the door. How did Seymour manage to suspend his victim in the air?”

  By this time the wire had arrived, less the foot or so of its length that Miss Withers had purloined.

  “Watch me,” said Barry Costello. “Notice that the steam-pipe at the ceiling makes a curve and comes out near the door?”

  Letting one end of the wire remain where the dead man had theoretically lain, Barry Costello worked the other up and over the steam-pipe remaining outside the door all the time. By making a little jump he succeeded in catching the end again and drawing it down.

  “All right,” said Miss Withers. “But this looks fishy to me. Your wire isn’t anywhere near the place on the steam-pipe where the scratch was made, and from which the dead man hung.”

  “Wait patiently,” said Costello. “Couldn’t the man have worked the wire along the pipe, away from him? Wire is stiffer than rope, you know. Maybe he used the turnkey’s broom which you’ll see over there under the window. Anyway … there it is!”

  The loop of wire slipped into the notch. And now Barry Costello held the free end in his hands, outside the cell, from which the wire ran up, over the steam-pipe in the middle of the ceiling and then back down to where the murdered pickpocket had lain.

  “All there was left for Philip Seymour to do,” said Costello, “was to make a loop of the wire around his hands and pull lik
e the very devil. The pickpocket was a little fellow, you know. He couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred pounds. Seymour was a college athlete, you remember, and he’s still in good enough condition to knock out a man with one blow, as he admits doing to Lester. He pulled the dying man up in the air by sheer force, and then when he got him there, he made the end of the wire fast around the bars of the door, with the knot inside so that it would look as if the suicide had simply chosen that very natural place to fasten it before climbing on the chair and jumping off.”

  “Hell’s bells, man,” Piper said wonderingly. “I believe you’re right. It’s not half as impossible as it sounded when you first claimed it. But why are you so interested in pinning this crime on Seymour?”

  “I’m not interested in pinning any crime on anybody,” said Costello. “But I realize that it was my fault that this wire got into the prison in the first place, and for that reason I want to square myself. Besides, if Philip Seymour killed the pickpocket, he killed Gerald Lester too. Which means that he’s a double murderer, an enemy of society, and every man’s hand ought to be turned against him. Again, as I said in your office, Gwen Lester can go free now …”

  “Not necessarily,” Miss Withers reminded him unpleasantly. “She might still have been mixed up in the killing of her husband, as an accessory anyway. Besides, there’s one thing you haven’t made clear. How did the murderer arrange to have the chair so conveniently tipped over in the corner to suggest that it had been jumped from?”

  Barry Costello shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. Maybe it was that way when he came to kill McGirr. It’s a minor detail. The main thing is that Philip Seymour had both the motive, the means, and the opportunity of killing the pickpocket.”

  “Do you know, you’ve been a great help to me,” said Piper. “A very great help. That’s a most ingenious suggestion as to the means of committing the murder, and you’ve convinced me that it was a murder, and done that way, too.”