“Didn’t try the door?”
“Well, I did rattle the door,” Norfolk admitted. “I suppose you’ve already found my fingerprints on it. But it was locked. Then we heard the police car drive up. When we turned around, they were looking at the number of my car with flashlights. From there on, you know as much as I do. More, probably.”
“We were pretty tight,” Julia said.
“I’d like to ask one more question if you can hold your head up that long, Mr. Norfolk,” said Kilkenny. “Did you ever call the late Pierre Laurence ‘white-haired boy’?”
“I’ve called him a lot worse than that,” Norfolk said.
“But you did call him Mrs. Dunne’s white-haired boy?”
“Oh, I suppose so.”
“Night before last, did you telephone Mrs. Dunne, warning her that something pretty fatal was about to happen to her white-haired boy?” the detective pursued.
“He did not!” volunteered Julia Prye.
“I was talking to Mr. Norfolk—”
“Tom doesn’t know anything about that phone call. I do. I know who made it.”
“A secret, no doubt, Miss Frye?”
“No, it’s no secret. Pierre Laurence made the call.”
Kilkenny smiled tolerantly. “Can’t you think of a better one that that, Miss Frye?”
Julia bridled. “It’s true!” she insisted. “Pierre made that call Thursday night. I was with him when he made it.”
“Just a bit of whimsy, I suppose—predicting his own death?”
“He wasn’t predicting his own death.” Julia was getting really warmed to her subject. “When he said ‘white-haired boy’ he was talking about Tony Grove.”
“And he had a tip, did he, that something pretty fatal was going to happen to Tony Grove?”
“Of course not. It was a trick to worry Penelope so that she’d go away over the week-end. He wanted to scare her out of town, and Tony, too.”
“Why?”
“Well, Pen had some papers or something at her apartment that Pierre said she’d stolen from him. He was anxious to get them back. He thought if he could get her away for a few days he’d have a chance to go over the apartment thoroughly and find what he wanted. He wouldn’t tell me what it was, but I know he considered it important.
“Pierre knew Pen was at her bridge club Thursday night, and he knew that she used the telephone-answering service, so he decided to call her number and leave a message that would scare her half to death. First he called and left a message in his own name, then he called later and pretended to think the operator was Pen, and—you know the message.”
Kilkenny nodded. “Why did he think Mrs. Dunne would run away in blind panic?”
“Well, he knew that Pen had been worried about Tony again these last weeks. Tony’d been flashing big money, and Pen didn’t know where it came from. He knew she was afraid Tony was in trouble again, and that his phone call would probably drive both of them out of town for a few days at least.”
Barney watched Kilkenny as the detective eyed every play of Julia’s facial muscles, every side glance she gave Norfolk. Barney observed that her intonations and the nervous movements of her hands did not match the calm, almost flippant manner of her speech.
“You knew that Pierre Laurence’s name was Pilozor, didn’t you?” Kilkenny asked the girl.
“That’s the shipping clerk’s name.”
“Pierre’s, too. They were brothers. You knew that.”
“Oh, no.”
“And you knew, too, that the papers Pierre was looking for on Riverside Drive were copies of his French police record that Mrs. Dunne had somehow secured.”
“I did not. I—Father!”
Henry Frye had come in, accompanied by a uniformed policeman. He was a large, paunchy, white-haired gentleman, wearing a bowler hat and a chesterfield with a black velvet collar. He wore a white carnation in his buttonhole, a small white mustache on his upper lip, heavy white eyebrows that beetled over his drooping, St. Bernard eyes. He was a distinguished picture of complete dejection, and seemed to have difficulty getting his breath. It was an effort for him to ask, “What—Why are all these men here, Julia?”
“They’ve come for me, Papa Frye,” Norfolk said. “They’re taking me to the jailhouse. I can see it in their eyes.”
“That can’t be true!” Frye exclaimed. “What for?”
“For murder,” Norfolk said. “You see, I was at the Dunne place yesterday at about the time Laurence was killed, and I had good reason to kill him. My fingerprints are on the door of your office, where your shipping clerk was probably killed last night. I didn’t have any reason to kill him, except that he was Laurence’s brother, and my people came from Kentucky. You know—family feuds; that sort of thing.”
Frye looked questioningly at the police officials. The lieutenant said, “I’m taking him to the district attorney’s office now, Mr. Frye. It will be up to the D.A. to ask for an indictment. Personally I think he will.”
Frye stared at Norfolk, then slowly turned to his daughter. Julia’s white face was set in tight, anguished lines. There was a silent plea in her eyes.
Henry Frye shook his head. His lips trembled for a moment. Then he said, “Tom Norfolk didn’t kill Pierre Laurence.”
XXII
THE ATMOSPHERE OF THE ROOM was suddenly so electric that Barney could almost feel the sparks of suspicion and hostility crackling in his hair. He saw Kilkenny lean forward as though he might be preparing to throttle Henry Frye. When the detective relaxed again and crossed his legs, there were puzzled lines at the corners of his eyes.
“Why are you so positive about that, Mr. Frye?” Kilkenny asked.
“You have no right to accuse Tom Norfolk. You have no right to accuse anyone. You haven’t half the facts in this case,” said Frye.
“Name three,” said Kilkenny.
“You don’t know, do you, that I was at three-sixty-nine Riverside Drive yesterday afternoon?” There was a note of triumph in Henry Frye’s question.
“The elevator boy doesn’t mention taking you to Mrs. Dunne’s apartment,” Kilkenny said.
“The service stairway was not watched. A number of persons must have used it, according to the papers. Have you questioned my chauffeur?”
“We will.”
“Good. He’ll tell you that he drove me to Mrs. Dunne’s at about the time Mr. Laurence was killed. Tom Norfolk saw me there, too, but he’s been a good sport about not mentioning it, apparently.”
“Mr. Frye, are you trying in a roundabout way to confess to the murder of Pierre Laurence?” Kilkenny was sarcastically polite.
“I’m confessing nothing,” Frye said. “I’m merely pointing out that your investigation should go much further before you make any accusations. I’ll say freely, however, that I quite approve of the murder of Laurence.”
“Why, Mr. Frye?”
“Because he tried to blackmail me into consenting to his marriage with my daughter. That’s another fact you’ve missed.”
“We didn’t miss it far. In fact, we were coming to it,” Kilkenny said. “Laurence knew what was wrong with those platina foxes of yours, didn’t he?”
“Was anything wrong?”
“Obviously. When a man loses a valuable lot of furs and hires private dicks to get them back, without going to the police, something’s not kosher. Did you steal the furs in the first place?”
“The platina foxes were smuggled into the country,” Frye said. “I’m telling you now because I’ve already been to the customs to try to make my peace. I bought a shipment of platinas that came out of Norway. One hundred skins.”
“I didn’t know there was any duty on undressed skins,” Kilkenny said.
“Only on silver foxes,” Frye said. “But the U. S. customs have decided that the platina fox is the same as the silver fox—which it probably is, zoologically—and is therefore subject to the same ad valorem tariff. It’s a silly ruling because the tariff was voted to protect our si
lver fox farmers, and we have no platina foxes raised here commercially. It was going to cost me something like twenty thousand dollars duty on the single shipment of furs, so I brought them in as white foxes—which are duty free.
“Somehow or other Pierre Laurence found out about the smuggled pelts. He used them as a club over me when I tried to prevent his seeing my daughter. He told me frankly that if I tried to stop him from marrying Julia, he would have me arrested as a smuggler. Now a federal charge—”
“Just a minute,” Kilkenny interrupted. “If those hundred hot platina foxes were stolen from you, Laurence wouldn’t have anything on you any more, would he?”
“Unless he stole them himself,” Frye explained, “as I suspect he did, to prevent me getting rid of the evidence, or hiding it.”
“How did he steal the furs?”
“Through the help of Pilozor, my shipping clerk. I always thought Pilozor was strictly honest. He’d been with me for so many years that he had earned my implicit trust.”
“As I get it, Mr. Frye,” Kilkenny said, “you’re pointing out that you had a motive for killing Pilozor as well as Laurence—to cover up your deal in hot foxes. Would you like to go to the district attorney’s office and sign a confession?”
“But I am making no confession,” said Henry Frye blandly. “I’m merely demonstrating how incomplete your investigation has been. I’m afraid you haven’t even determined from my butler that Boris Pilozor telephoned the house last night at midnight and demanded urgently to speak to me, even when the butler said I had retired. You might—although I doubt it—be able to establish that I left the house to keep a rendezvous with Pilozor at my office.”
“How did Tony Grove get hold of your smuggled furs, Mr. Frye?”
“That’s one more fact for you to find out.”
“Another question. How did you know that Pierre Laurence was at Mrs. Dunne’s yesterday?”
“Simple. I followed him there,” Frye replied. “I was coming home when I saw Laurence getting into a taxi in front of my house. I was curious to know where he was going and what he was up to.”
“I think we can save a lot of time,” the lieutenant interposed, “if we drive Mr. Frye to Bellevue and have a sample of his blood taken.”
Barney saw a shadow of apprehension flicker briefly in the furrier’s eyes. He tried to analyze the expression. It was not that of a murderer, Barney thought—although he had heard that psychotic killers often had gentle manners. Frye’s expression was not gentle, exactly; it was shrewd, although not cruel; and there was a certain kindliness in the lines about his mouth.
“I believe I have the constitutional right to refuse to submit to any blood tests,” Frye declared.
“You have the right,” the lieutenant said. “But refusing to co-operate with us won’t help you any.”
“Nevertheless, I refuse.”
Barney suddenly remembered something. “We won’t need a sample to determine Mr. Frye’s type,” he volunteered. “I think that when Miss Frye had a rather difficult appendectomy at Doctor’s Hospital last year, Mr. Frye offered his blood for a transfusion. His type must be on record at the hospital.”
Frye and Julia exchanged glances. Norfolk looked worried.
Detective Kilkenny got up. “Come on, Weaver,” he said. “I think we’re through here. The lieutenant can carry on.”
In the automobile, Barney immediately unburdened himself of his perplexity. “That,” he declared, “was the damnedest performance I’ve ever witnessed. What the hell do you make of it, Kilkenny?”
The detective grinned at the windshield. “The same as you do, I guess,” he said.
“But Frye practically invited you to arrest him for murder.”
“Sure. Practically, but not quite. He admitted motive and opportunity, but that’s all.”
“Why would he incriminate himself even that much?”
“To confuse the issue, so we’d hesitate about pinning the charge on Tom Norfolk. Frye thinks Norfolk is guilty.”
“Do you?”
“That’s beside the point. Frye was probably telling the truth when he said he followed Laurence to Mrs. Dunne’s yesterday, and that Norfolk saw him somewhere in the neighborhood. If Norfolk saw him, then he saw Norfolk, and he thinks Norfolk could very well have killed Laurence in a row over Julia Frye.”
“Still—” Barney hesitated. “That’s a pretty magnanimous gesture, risking your neck in a murder case.”
“Frye looks like a good guy at heart,” Kilkenny said. “He’s probably full of remorse because the whole rotten mess seems to start from those hot foxes. Trying to cheat the government out of a lousy twenty grand in customs duties has played hell with his daughter’s happiness, to say nothing of reserving a seat in the death house for her fiancé. Frye thinks it’s all his fault and he’s trying to square himself.”
“Then you don’t think he’s guilty?”
“From what I know so far, I’d say no,” Kilkenny said. “If he killed two men to save himself from blackmail, he wouldn’t have gone to trouble to clear himself with the customs this morning, like he said. Of course, he might have killed for revenge.”
“He did balk at the blood test,” Barney suggested.
“He did. And that may tell the whole story,” said the detective, braking for a red light. “I’m anxious to know what the serology lab finds out about that handkerchief.”
XXIII
NOON WAS NOT FAR OFF when Vivian Sanderson awoke. She reached consciousness through a haze of uncertainty and apprehension, a vague feeling of imminent disaster. When her eyes opened fully upon the unfamiliar surroundings of the hospital room, she sat up quickly, her heart pounding. The entrance of the floor nurse reassured her. Bath and breakfast made her feel much better. Then the sight of the morning newspapers gave her a relapse of quiet jitters.
She read every word of every edition, as though she reveled in torturing herself by rehearsing the nightmare of the past thirty-six hours. She raged at the picture of herself in the late editions. Where had they got that photograph? It was one she had given to Barney. Probably the police had taken it from Barney’s room. They had no right to give it to the newspapers.
The story of her narrow escape in the subway station was in the late editions, too. It was a fantastic version, probably inspired by the police. Pretty Girl Artist Seeks Death, one headline read; the story was a nice piece of imaginative writing, in which the reporter said she was discouraged by her failure to impress New York art editors. There was a reproduction of a small pen-and-ink of hers; the police had been in her room, apparently; she was glad they had chosen a good drawing; it was one that Barney liked. Another story, headlined Phantom Secretary Saved from Suicide, said she was the beauteous red-haired cousin of Penelope Dunne, Riverside Drive divorcée (incorrect, of course) in whose apartment the body was found; she had jumped in front of a Bronx Park subway train in Times Square because she feared involvement in the murder, through the use, by a suspect, of a suitcase which bore her initials, according to one paper; because she brooded over the possibility that an ex-convict cousin, now being sought by the police, might be the murderer, according to another. She was rescued from certain death, the papers said, by an anonymous mechanic in dirty overalls who modestly disappeared into the crowd without giving his name or waiting to be thanked. She was being shielded by the police who admitted that she was injured but refused to divulge the name of the hospital to which she had been taken—
Vivian jumped a foot as a pair of hands groped down to cover her eyes.
“Morning, Phantom Secretary,” Barney said.
“Oh, hello, Modest Knight in Overalls,” said Vivian when she had caught her breath. “I’ve been reading about you.” She turned to face him. “I see they made you go home for some sanitary clothes,” she added.
“I’ve been working like a beaver all morning,” Barney said, “getting you exonerated of killing Pierre Laurence.”
“Any luck?”
“I think so. Blood will tell.”
“You talk like a genealogist.”
“Nope. Serologist,” Barney said. “I’ve been sitting in on agglutination tests over at the medical examiner’s laboratories. They have a nice setup. When I think of it in contrast to our antiquated old coroner system at home—”
“Don’t keep me in suspense. Am I guilty or not guilty?”
“You’re not guilty of wadding up that lady’s handkerchief that was on the floor beside Laurence’s body. And neither am I. We’ve both got A type blood. Whoever wadded that handkerchief has B type blood.”
“Who is it?”
“Don’t know yet. They’ll be making tests all day.”
“But there’s no objection to my leaving this place, is there, now that I’m not guilty?”
“I object,” Barney said.
“But Barney, if I keep seeing nurses and smelling iodoform, I’ll start running a temperature just as a matter of course.”
“Your cousin Tony is still at large,” Barney said.
“Oh.”
“And they’ve taken the police guard off this floor because the newspapers are hounding all the hospitals and nursing-homes in town, looking for new pictures and the exclusive story of the phantom secretary who is tired of life. Kilkenny thought maybe the guard would be too conspicuous—during the day, at least. So you’d better stay right here until further notice.”
“But what am I supposed to do all day?”
“Try to remember some reason why somebody might want to push you in front of a subway train.”
“I’ve tried, Barney, but I can’t think of anything. It’s something about the suitcase, I suppose, but I can’t imagine what it could be.”
“Maybe it’s not the suitcase. Maybe it’s that call about the white-haired boy night before last.”
“I’ve thought of that, too,” the girl said. “But I can’t see why anyone would worry about that at this late date. After all, I’d already talked to the police—and I hadn’t been warned not to. If it was to keep me from identifying the voice, which I couldn’t, anyhow, it would have been too late.”
See You at the Morgue Page 16