“The murder of Margaret Odell.”
The man sprang to his feet. The color had gone from his face, and the muscles of his jowls worked spasmodically. “Wait! You’re giving me a raw deal. And you’ll lose out, too. You couldn’t make that charge stick in a thousand years.”
“Maybe not. But if you don’t want to talk here, I’ll make you talk in court.”
“I’ll talk here,” Cleaver sat down again. “What do you want to know?”
Markham took out a cigar and lit it with deliberation. “First: why did you tell me you were in Boonton Monday night?”
Cleaver apparently had expected the question. “When I read of the Canary’s death, I wanted an alibi; and my brother had just given me the summons he’d been handed in Boonton. It was a ready-made alibi right in my hand. So I used it.”
“Why did you need an alibi?”
“I didn’t need it; but I thought it might save me trouble. People knew I’d been running round with the Odell girl; and some of them knew she’d been blackmailing me—I’d told ’em, like a damn fool. I told Mannix, for instance. We’d both been stung.”
“Is that your only reason for concocting this alibi?” Markham was watching him sharply.
“Wasn’t it reason enough? Blackmail would have constituted a motive, wouldn’t it?”
“It takes more than a motive to arouse unpleasant suspicion.”
“Maybe so. Only I didn’t want to be drawn into it. You can’t blame me for trying to keep clear of it.”
Markham leaned over with a threatening smile. “The fact that Miss Odell had blackmailed you wasn’t your only reason for lying about the summons. It wasn’t even your main reason.”
Cleaver’s eyes narrowed, but otherwise he was like a graven image. “You evidently know more about it than I do.” He managed to make his words sound casual.
“Not more, Mr. Cleaver,” Markham corrected him, “but nearly as much. Where were you between eleven o’clock and midnight Monday?”
“Perhaps that’s one of the things you know.”
“You’re right. You were in Miss Odell’s apartment.”
Cleaver sneered, but he did not succeed in disguising the shock that Markham’s accusation caused him.
“If that’s what you think, then it happens you don’t know, after all. I haven’t put foot in her apartment for two weeks.”
“I have the testimony of reliable witnesses to the contrary.”
“Witnesses!” The word seemed to force itself from Cleaver’s compressed lips.
Markham nodded. “You were seen coming out of Miss Odell’s apartment and leaving the house by the side door at five minutes to twelve on Monday night.”
Cleaver’s jaw sagged slightly, and his labored breathing was quite audible.
“And between half past eleven and twelve o’clock,” pursued Markham’s relentless voice, “Miss Odell was strangled and robbed. What do you say to that?”
For a long time there was tense silence. Then Cleaver spoke.
“I’ve got to think this thing out.”
Markham waited patiently. After several minutes Cleaver drew himself together and squared his shoulders.
“I’m going to tell you what I did that night, and you can take it or leave it.” Again he was the cold, self-contained gambler. “I don’t care how many witnesses you’ve got; it’s the only story you’ll ever get out of me. I should have told you in the first place, but I didn’t see any sense of stepping into hot water if I wasn’t pushed in. You might have believed me last Tuesday, but now you’ve got something in your head, and you want to make an arrest to shut up the newspapers—”
“Tell your story,” ordered Markham. “If it’s straight, you needn’t worry about the newspapers.”
Cleaver knew in his heart that this was true. No one, not even his bitterest political enemies, had ever accused Markham of buying kudos with any act of injustice, however small.
“There’s not much to tell, as a matter of fact,” the man began. “I went to Miss Odell’s house a little before midnight, but I didn’t enter her apartment; I didn’t even ring her bell.”
“Is that your customary way of paying visits?”
“Sounds fishy, doesn’t it? But it’s the truth, nevertheless. I intended to see her—that is, I wanted to—but when I reached her door, something made me change my mind—”
“Just a moment. How did you enter the house?”
“By the side door, the one off the alleyway. I always used it when it was open. Miss Odell requested me to, so that the telephone operator wouldn’t see me coming in so often.”
“And the door was unlocked at that time Monday night?”
“How else could I have got in by it? A key wouldn’t have done me any good, even if I’d had one, for the door locks by a bolt on the inside. I’ll say this, though: that’s the first time I ever remember finding the door unlocked at night.”
“All right. You went in the side entrance. Then what?”
“I walked down the rear hall and listened at the door of Miss Odell’s apartment for a minute. I thought there might be someone else with her, and I didn’t want to ring unless she was alone.…”
“Pardon my interrupting, Mr. Cleaver,” interposed Vance. “But what made you think someone else was there?”
The man hesitated.
“Was it,” prompted Vance, “because you had telephoned to Miss Odell a little while before, and had been answered by a man’s voice?”
Cleaver nodded slowly. “I can’t see any particular point in denying it.… Yes, that’s the reason.”
“What did this man say to you?”
“Damn little. He said ‘Hello,’ and when I asked to speak to Miss Odell, he informed me she wasn’t in, and hung up.”
Vance addressed himself to Markham. “That, I think, explains Jessup’s report of the brief phone call to the Odell apartment at twenty minutes to twelve.”
“Probably.” Markham spoke without interest. He was intent on Cleaver’s account of what happened later and he took up the interrogation at the point where Vance had interrupted.
“You say you listened at the apartment door. What caused you to refrain from ringing?”
“I heard a man’s voice inside.”
Markham straightened up.
“A man’s voice? You’re sure?”
“That’s what I said.” Cleaver was matter of fact about it. “A man’s voice. Otherwise I’d have rung the bell.”
“Could you identify the voice?”
“Hardly. It was very indistinct; and it sounded a little hoarse. It wasn’t anyone’s voice I was familiar with; but I’d be inclined to say it was the same one that answered me over the phone.”
“Could you make out anything that was said?”
Cleaver frowned and looked past Markham through the open window. “I know what the words sounded like,” he said slowly. “I didn’t think anything of them at the time. But after reading the papers the next day, those words came back to me—”
“What were the words?” Markham cut in impatiently.
“Well, as near as I could make out, they were: ‘Oh, my God! Oh, my God!’—repeated two or three times.”
This statement seemed to bring a sense of horror into the dreary old office—a horror all the more potent because of the casual, phlegmatic way in which Cleaver repeated that cry of anguish. After a brief pause Markham asked, “When you heard this man’s voice, what did you do?”
“I walked softly back down the rear hall and went out again through the side door. Then I went home.”
A short silence ensued. Cleaver’s testimony had been in the nature of a surprise; but it fitted perfectly with Mannix’s statement.
Presently Vance lifted himself out of the depths of his chair. “I say, Mr. Cleaver, what were you doing between twenty minutes to twelve, when you phoned Miss Odell, and five minutes to twelve, when you entered the side door of her apartment house?”
“I was riding uptown i
n the subway from 23d Street,” came the answer after a short pause.
“Strange—very strange.” Vance inspected the tip of his cigarette. “Then you couldn’t possibly have phoned to anyone during that fifteen minutes—eh, what?”
I suddenly remembered Alys La Fosse’s statement that Cleaver had telephoned to her on Monday night at ten minutes to twelve. Vance, by his question, had, without revealing his own knowledge, created a state of uncertainty in the other’s mind. Afraid to commit himself too emphatically, Cleaver resorted to an evasion.
“It’s possible, is it not, that I could have phoned someone after leaving the subway at 72d Street and before I walked the block to Miss Odell’s house?”
“Oh, quite,” murmured Vance. “Still, looking at it mathematically, if you phoned Miss Odell at twenty minutes to twelve, and then entered the subway, rode to 72d Street, walked a block to 71st, went into the building, listened at her door, and departed at five minutes to twelve—making the total time consumed only fifteen minutes—you’d scarcely have sufficient leeway to stop en route and phone to anyone. However, I sha’n’t press the point. But I’d really like to know what you did between eleven o’clock and twenty minutes to twelve, when you phoned to Miss Odell.”
Cleaver studied Vance intently for a moment. “To tell you the truth, I was upset that night. I knew Miss Odell was out with another man—she’d broken an appointment with me—and I walked the streets for an hour or more, fuming and fretting.”
“Walked the streets?” Vance frowned.
“That’s what I said.” Cleaver spoke with animus. Then, turning, he gave Markham a long, calculating look. “You remember I once suggested to you that you might learn something from a Doctor Lindquist.… Did you ever get after him?”
Before Markham could answer, Vance broke in. “Ah! That’s it!—Doctor Lindquist! Well, well—of course!… So, Mr. Cleaver, you were walking the streets? The streets, mind you! Precisely! You state the fact, and I echo the word streets. And you—apparently out of a clear sky—ask about Doctor Lindquist. Why Doctor Lindquist? No one has mentioned him. But that word streets—that’s the connection. The streets and Doctor Lindquist are one—same as Paris and springtime are one. Neat, very neat.… And now I’ve got another piece to the puzzle.”
Markham and Heath looked at him as if he had suddenly gone mad. He calmly selected a Régie from his case and proceeded to light it. Then he smiled beguilingly at Cleaver.
“The time has come, my dear sir, for you to tell us when and where you met Doctor Lindquist while roaming the streets Monday night. If you don’t, ’pon my word, I’ll come pretty close to doing it for you.”
A full minute passed before Cleaver spoke; and during that time his cold, staring eyes never moved from the district attorney’s face.
“I’ve already told most of the story; so here’s the rest.” He gave a soft mirthless laugh. “I went to Miss Odell’s house a little before half past eleven—thought she might be home by that time. There I ran into Doctor Lindquist standing in the entrance to the alleyway. He spoke to me and told me someone was with Miss Odell in her apartment. Then I walked round the corner to the Ansonia Hotel. After ten minutes or so I telephoned Miss Odell, and, as I said, a man answered. I waited another ten minutes and phoned a friend of Miss Odell’s, hoping to arrange a party; but, failing, I walked back to the house. The doctor had disappeared, and I went down the alleyway and in the side door. After listening a minute, as I told you, and hearing a man’s voice, I came away and went home.… That’s everything.”
At that moment Swacker came in and whispered something to Heath. The sergeant rose with alacrity and followed the secretary out of the room. Almost at once he returned, bearing a bulging manila folder. Handing it to Markham, he said something in a low voice inaudible to the rest of us. Markham appeared both astonished and displeased. Waving the sergeant back to his seat, he turned to Cleaver.
“I’ll have to ask you to wait in the reception room for a few minutes. Another urgent matter has just arisen.”
Cleaver went out without a word, and Markham opened the folder. “I don’t like this sort of thing, Sergeant. I told you so yesterday when you suggested it.”
“I understand, sir.” Heath, I felt, was not as contrite as his tone indicated. “But if those letters and things are all right, and Cleaver hasn’t been lying to us about ’em, I’ll have my man put ’em back so’s no one’ll ever know they were taken. And if they do make Cleaver out a liar, then we’ve got a good excuse for grabbing ’em.”
Markham did not argue the point. With a gesture of distaste he began running through the letters, looking particularly at the dates. Two photographs he put back after a cursory glance; and one piece of paper, which appeared to contain a pen-and-ink sketch of some kind, he tore up with disgust and threw into the wastebasket. Three letters, I noticed, he placed to one side. After five minutes’ inspection of the others, he returned them to the folder. Then he nodded to Heath.
“Bring Cleaver back.” He rose and, turning, gazed out of the window.
As soon as Cleaver was again seated before the desk, Markham said, without looking round, “You told me it was last June that you bought your letters back from Miss Odell. Do you recall the date?”
“Not exactly,” said Cleaver easily. “It was early in the month, though—during the first week, I think.”
Markham now spun about and pointed to the three letters he had segregated.
“How, then, do you happen to have in your possession compromising letters which you wrote to Miss Odell from the Adirondacks late in July?”
Cleaver’s self-control was perfect. After a moment’s stoical silence, he merely said in a mild, quiet voice, “You of course came by those letters legally.”
Markham was stung, but he was also exasperated by the other’s persistent deceptions.
“I regret to confess,” he said, “that they were taken from your apartment—though, I assure you, it was against my instructions. But since they have come unexpectedly into my possession, the wisest thing you can do is to explain them. There was an empty document box in Miss Odell’s apartment the morning her body was found, and, from all appearances, it had been opened Monday night.”
“I see.” Cleaver laughed harshly. “Very well. The fact is—though I frankly don’t expect you to believe me—I didn’t pay my blackmail to Miss Odell until the middle of August, about three weeks ago. That’s when all my letters were returned. I told you it was June in order to set back the date as far as possible. The older the affair was, I figured, the less likelihood there’d be of your suspecting me.”
Markham stood fingering the letters undecidedly. It was Vance who put an end to his irresolution.
“I rather think, don’t y’ know,” he said, “that you’d be safe in accepting Mr. Cleaver’s explanation and returning his billets-doux.”
Markham, after a momentary hesitation, picked up the manila folder and, replacing the three letters, handed it to Cleaver.
“I wish you to understand that I did not sanction the appropriating of this correspondence. You’d better take it home and destroy it—I won’t detain you any longer now. But please arrange to remain where I can reach you if necessary.”
“I’m not going to run away,” said Cleaver; and Heath directed him to the elevator.
CHAPTER 22
A TELEPHONE CALL
(Saturday, September 15; 10 A.M.)
Heath returned to the office, shaking his head hopelessly. “There musta been a regular wake at Odell’s Monday night.”
“Quite,” agreed Vance. “A midnight conclave of the lady’s admirers. Mannix was there, unquestionably; and he saw Cleaver; and Cleaver saw Lindquist; and Lindquist saw Spotswoode—”
“Humph! But nobody saw Skeel.”
“The trouble is,” said Markham, “we don’t know how much of Cleaver’s story is true. And, by the way, Vance, do you believe he really bought his letters back in August?”
“If onl
y we knew! Dashed confusin’, ain’t it?”
“Anyway,” argued Heath, “Cleaver’s statement about phoning Odell at twenty minutes to twelve, and a man answering, is verified by Jessup’s testimony. And I guess Cleaver saw Lindquist all right that night, for it was him who first tipped us off about the doc. He took a chance doing it, because the doc was liable to tell us he saw Cleaver.”
“But if Cleaver had an allurin’ alibi,” said Vance, “he could simply have said the doctor was lying. However, whether you accept Cleaver’s absorbin’ legend or not, you can take my word for it there was a visitor, other than Skeel, in the Odell apartment that night.”
“That’s all right, too,” conceded Heath reluctantly. “But, even so, this other fellow is only valuable to us as a possible source of evidence against Skeel.”
“That may be true, Sergeant.” Markham frowned perplexedly. “Only, I’d like to know how that side door was unbolted and then rebolted on the inside. We know now that it was open around midnight, and that Mannix and Cleaver both used it.”
“You worry so over trifles,” said Vance negligently. “The door problem will solve itself once we discover who was keeping company with Skeel in the Canary’s gilded cage.”
“I should say it boils down to Mannix, Cleaver, and Lindquist. They were the only three at all likely to be present; and if we accept Cleaver’s story in its essentials, each of them had an opportunity of getting into the apartment between half past eleven and midnight.”
“True. But you have only Cleaver’s word that Lindquist was in the neighborhood. And that evidence, uncorroborated, can’t be accepted as the lily-white truth.”
Heath stirred suddenly and looked at the clock. “Say, what about that nurse you wanted at eleven o’clock?”
“I’ve been worrying horribly about her for an hour.” Vance appeared actually troubled. “Really, y’ know, I haven’t the slightest desire to meet the lady. I’m hoping for a revelation, don’t y’ know. Let’s wait for the doctor until half past ten, Sergeant.”
He had scarcely finished speaking when Swacker informed Markham that Doctor Lindquist had arrived on a mission of great urgency. It was an amusing situation. Markham laughed outright, while Heath stared at Vance with uncomprehending astonishment.
The Philo Vance Megapack Page 45