The Night People

by Edward D. Hoch

  The Night People

  and Other Stories

  Edward D. Hoch

  For Joe Donoghue

  Contents

  Introduction

  Inspector Fleming’s Last Case

  The Man Who Was Everywhere

  The Passionate Phantom

  The Night People

  Festival in Black

  I’d Know You Anywhere

  The Way of Justice

  The Empty Zoo

  Ring the Bell Softly

  Stop at Nothing

  Another War

  The Impossible “Impossible Crime”

  The Way Out

  The Man at the Top

  Burial Monuments Three

  The Scorpion Girl

  The Price of Wisdom

  Second Chance

  Three Weeks in a Spanish Town

  The Rattlesnake Man

  Introduction

  THIS COLLECTION OF TWENTY non-series stories, 1957–1979, is intended as something of a companion volume to The Night My Friend, edited by Francis M. Nevins and published by Ohio University Press in 1992. That collection consisted of twenty-two stories from the 1960s. For the present volume I went back to the beginning in 1955 and chose thirty tales that I remembered fondly. I reread each of them and narrowed the list to these twenty. I think the two books, taken together, collect most of my best non-series stories prior to 1980.

  Though there are a few detective stories here (and even an impossible crime), I cannot disagree with critics who find a certain noir quality to my non-series tales in this period. Even some of the titles, like “The Night People” and “Festival in Black” (the latter published here for the first time in America), suggest the influence of Cornell Woolrich. Through these stories I can see my development as a mystery writer, from the early tales in Manhunt and its digest-size clones to regular appearances in The Saint, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine.

  Most of my work today, especially with my series characters, has been influenced more by Chesterton, Queen, and Carr, than by Woolrich. Yet editors still request my darker, more brooding stories from time to time and I’m happy to oblige. Even in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine I try to do at least one or two non-series tales each year.

  So here are twenty of the best from those early years. Perhaps we’ll see a future volume covering the decades of the ’80s and ’90s.

  —Edward D. Hoch

  Inspector Fleming’s Last Case

  THE RAIN WAS STILL falling when James Mitchell came out of the subway. It was a damp, cold rain that penetrated even through his topcoat and sent chills deep into bones. He started coughing again as soon as it hit him, and he paused to blow his nose and curse the weather.

  It had been raining off and on for nearly a week now, soaking the piles of autumn leaves that lined the streets and sending half of his office staff home with colds. If this one of his got any worse, he’d be out tomorrow, too. Then what would they do with the piles of back orders on his desk? Well, it wouldn’t be his worry. He coughed once more and started down the long block to his house.

  Darkness came early these nights. Already the streetlights were being turned on, and one might have thought it was midnight from the look of the sky. He glanced down at the damp newspaper under his arm, with its black headlines about the axe murder over on Smith Street. That was just three blocks away. At least the neighborhood would have some excitement for a change …

  “Pardon me …”

  “What?” he turned to look at the man who had stepped from the shadows next to him. “You startled me.”

  “I’m sorry,” the man said softly.

  James Mitchell peered at the man through the darkness and tried to remember where he had seen him before. Somewhere, during the past few days….

  He tried to turn away, but the man grabbed his arm. “Wait a minute, Mr. Mitchell.”

  “What?” He was startled by the sound of his name. “What do you want?”

  And then James Mitchell saw the axe, and he knew what the man wanted.

  He saw it go up and then start its downward swing. There was just time for him to throw his hands in front of his face.

  The first blow of the axe tore at his fingers. He never really felt the second blow …

  “Really Fleming, you must be reasonable about this,” the Police Commissioner was saying.

  Inspector Arnold Fleming moved in his chair and tried to understand the words he was hearing. It couldn’t be, really. He must have misunderstood the Commissioner.

  “Retire? You want me to retire from the Police Department?” Was that really what the Commissioner had said?

  “Fleming, you’re sixty-seven now. That’s already two years over the retirement age. And the new administration has decided to make retirement of city employees mandatory at the age of sixty-five.”

  “But … but I’ve been on the force all my life. I don’t know what I’d do if….”

  The Commissioner avoided Fleming’s eyes as he thumbed through some papers on his desk. “I’m sorry, Fleming. There’s nothing more to be said. Prepare to turn over all your active investigations to Carter.”

  The haze in front of Fleming’s eyes cleared for a moment. “But what about the two axe murders yesterday? Do you want me to give that up, too? This may be the beginning of another Jack-the-Ripper thing.”

  The Commissioner’s frown deepened. “Let’s hope not. What have you got on it so far?”

  “Nothing. Nothing except an old woman named Sadie Kratch and a middle-aged businessman named James Mitchell. Both murdered in the same way, with an axe, within a few blocks of each other, yesterday. Mitchell got it on the way home from the office yesterday evening, and the old woman on the front porch of her house, early yesterday morning.”

  The man behind the desk grunted. “No connection between them?”

  “None, except they lived near each other. The old woman lived alone and was apparently a drug addict; Mitchell had a wife and child.”

  “Well, I think Carter will be able to handle the investigation all right. Tell him the facts and….”

  The private phone on the Commissioner’s desk purred, and he snatched it up with a heavy fist. “Hello?”

  He listened in silence for a moment and then hung up. Tiny beads of sweat were beginning to appear on his forehead, and Fleming wondered if it was warm in the room despite his occasional chills.

  The Commissioner wiped his forehead with the back of his hand.

  “They’ve found another one,” he said quietly. “It looks like you were right.”

  Inspector Fleming looked at him. “Another one?”

  “Another body. Another body with its head chopped open by an axe. Another body like the other two….”

  “I’ll go right away,” Fleming said.

  “Wait….”

  “Yes, Commissioner?”

  “Fleming, you’re the best man we’ve got, and it looks like I’m going to need you now. Forget about that retirement business until this fellow’s caught.”

  “You mean you want me to stay on the case?”

  “Yes, and by God, get him before he kills another one.”

  “I’ll try,” Inspector Fleming said quietly.

  So this was to be his last case, he thought, as he looked down at the wet grass that formed a cushion for the third of the axe killer’s victims. He remembered the first one quite well, as though it were yesterday. It had been a payroll holdup downtown, and he’d nabbed the two stickup men within an hour. They’d had his picture on the front page of the paper, and he’d gotten a promotion.

  How long ago was that? He was only a beat cop then, nearly forty-five years ago. It had been a long time, a long
life.

  But what was there now? Not the things other men had. Not the wife he’d wanted but never found. Not the children to comfort you when there was nothing else. The Police Department had been his whole life, and now they were taking it away. Just one more case, and it would be all over.

  Maybe it would be better if that were his body in the tall wet grass, mashed and bloody, instead of….

  “Tony DeLuca. He’s a small-time hoodlum. Used to hang around the Fey Club. I don’t get it, Arnold. I just don’t get it at all.”

  Fleming was silent. Carter was the only man in the department who called him by his first name. Carter was a good detective, but not too experienced for a case like this.

  “What don’t you get, boy?” Fleming finally said.

  “What’s there to connect an old woman, a married business man and a cheap hoodlum, even in the mind of a crazy man?”

  “Perhaps nothing. Perhaps they were nearest when he got the urge.”

  “But he went to the old woman’s house. At seven in the morning. He got her out of bed and killed her on the front porch. He wanted her, and no one else.”

  “You’re right there,” Fleming sighed. They were taking the body away now, to the morgue, where they’d cut it open to find the cause of death. Fleming laughed at that. The head had almost been split in two, and they would cut him open to find out how she died….

  “It’s funny, though,” Carter was saying, half to himself, “these nuts usually wait a while between killings. Even the Ripper or the Cleveland Butcher didn’t kill three within twenty-four hours. It’s not even a full moon or anything.”

  Fleming looked toward the noonday sky and felt the light drizzle against his face. No one in this city had seen the moon or the sun for a good many days.

  “Well, Carter, check the usual places. Find out if any of them had any enemies….”

  “I’ll bet this DeLuca had plenty.”

  “Probably. Did he live around here?”

  “No. On the other side of town. But the Fey Club is nearby, and he always hung out in this section of town.”

  “So we have all three victims living in or frequenting an area of about one mile square. That may mean something, Carter.”

  “I’ll see what I can find out. We’ll comb the neighborhood.”

  “Good.” They walked back to the street.

  “You going back to headquarters, Arnold?”

  “Hardly. You probably know this is to be my last case before my retirement. I’m staying on the job.”

  “But this rain…. There’s a lot of germs going around. Half the people in town have got colds or coughs or something. Do you think you should stay out in it, at your age?”

  “At my age?” Fleming flared up. “At my age men run for President, and climb mountains, and lead armies. But I’m being retired, because I’m too old!”

  “I’m sorry, Arnold. I shouldn’t have said that. I didn’t mean it the way it sounded.”

  “I’m staying on this case till the end—till we capture this madman, or till I drop over from trying.”

  “All right, Arnold.”

  “And remember….”

  “Yes?”

  Fleming watched the morgue wagon roll down the street ahead of them. “Remember, we have to get him before there’s another one. Whoever he is, we can’t let him kill again….”

  While Carter began a roundup of known psychopaths, Fleming drove over to the tiny cottage-like house that had been the home of Sadie Kratch, the axe killer’s first victim.

  The house was deserted now, except for the cop Fleming had left on guard. Sadie Kratch had spent her last years alone, and she had died alone there on the front porch, except for a blood-spattered killer who had found his first victim….

  The rooms where the old woman had spent her last days were nothing. Bare, dirty walls, cluttered closets, dirty dishes…. Perhaps Sadie Kratch was better off dead. She’d taken drugs shortly before her death, but he found no trace of them in the tiny house.

  The medicine cabinet, with a mirror cracked down the middle, yielded only a half-empty bottle of cough medicine from a neighborhood drug store. The prescription had been filled three days earlier, according to the date on the label. Fleming dropped the bottle into his raincoat pocket and went back out to the car. He had to start someplace, and this was as good as any.

  Wagner’s Drug was the kind of place he knew it would be. Small, quiet, neighborly, with a window display showing the history of medicine through the ages. Inside, there was Mr. Wagner himself, with white coat and tired smile, waiting expectantly for the next customer.

  “Good afternoon, sir. Anything I can do for you?”

  Fleming showed his badge and the bottle of cough medicine. Mr. Wagner began to turn pale with the citizen’s eternal fear of police.

  “What … what do you want?”

  “Just some information. You filled this prescription for Sadie Kratch three days ago?”

  The druggist took the bottle and studied it for a moment before replying. “That’s correct. I remember now, I was just getting ready to close when she came in. She was coughing something awful.”

  “Who was her doctor?”

  “Oh, Sadie couldn’t afford a regular doctor. Whenever she wasn’t feeling good, she went up to the city hospital, to the outpatient department. They’d give her something to fix her up, or else send her to me.”

  “Did you know she was taking narcotics?”

  “Sadie? No, I can’t believe….”

  “Well, she took some shortly before she was murdered, anyhow. We found some morphine in her.”

  “Poor Sadie,” Mr. Wagner said and shook his head sadly. “Poor old Sadie….”

  No, Sadie Kratch had no enemies. No friends, but no enemies, either. It had taken Fleming all afternoon and ten more interviews with neighbors and shopkeepers to establish that. He was tired by the time he finished, tired and cold and wet.

  All afternoon the rain had kept coming down, not hard, but with that irritating drizzle that seemed like it would never let up. How many days was it now? Seven. Seven days with hardly a break in this miserable rain.

  It was nearly suppertime when he stopped the car in front of the funeral parlor where James Mitchell rested in peace. Last night at just about this time he had been alive and happy. Now, he was dead, and his future fame would be only in the true crime magazines, where he would be known as the killer’s second victim.

  Fleming went in, and looked around until he found Mrs. Mitchell, a young, good-looking woman, who seemed somehow very small and helpless in the black dress she wore.

  “Mrs. Mitchell, I’m very sorry to bother you again….”

  “That’s … that’s all right, Inspector. Anything I can do to help….”

  “Mrs. Mitchell, I want you to keep a special watch for strangers. Oh, I know the newspaper stories will attract a lot of the curious, but there’s a chance the killer might come, too. I’m going to leave a man here with you, just in case….”

  “Anything you say, Inspector. Anything to find the man who did this to Jim….”

  Fleming nodded and went over to say a brief prayer before the sealed coffin. Then he left the funeral home and drove back to Headquarters….

  The Commissioner was there and Carter, and a dozen more. They were listening to Fleming as he stood before a wall map of the city.

  “These three pins show the scenes of the three murders. You’ll note that all the killings took place on the east side of the river, and all within the same general area.”

  “Do you have any leads yet?” the Commissioner asked.

  “Nothing yet, sir. But it won’t be long.”

  “I hope not. The papers are screaming for action.”

  The papers were always screaming for action, Fleming thought. He passed a hand over his forehead. His head was beginning to ache, and he felt very tired. Maybe he was getting old, after all.

  “What I can’t figure out,” Carter said, “is
how the killer could walk through the streets, even at night, covered with bloodstains. And he couldn’t have killed them like that without getting some blood on him.”

  Fleming closed his eyes and thought about it. Finally he said, “All he had to do was wear one of those plastic raincoats that all the stores sell. The rain would have washed the blood right off.”

  “Yeah,” Carter said. “I guess you’re right.”

  The Commissioner smiled. “He’s always right. We’re going to hate to lose him after this case.”

  Fleming went into his office and closed the door behind him. Yes, they’d hate to lose him. Then Carter and the Commissioner could sweat the cases out between them, while he did nothing all day but rest and relax….

  He stretched out on his couch for a few minutes to think about it, to think about a life without the clatter of teletypes and the screech of sirens in the night. But even as he thought, he knew there could never be such a life for him. He had been a man-hunter for forty-five years, and he couldn’t stop now. After the axe murders, there would be other crimes to be solved. They would need him. Didn’t they understand that? They would need him….

  “Fleming, wake up!”

  “I’m not asleep, Carter. Only resting my eyes. What is it?”

  “One of those nuts we pulled in just confessed to the murders.”

  Fleming grunted. “Let’s go see him.”

  His name was Ralph. Even he didn’t know what his last name was. Fleming had seen him around town from time to time, selling newspapers or doing odd jobs. He was big, well over six feet, with strong, powerful hands.

  “Tell us about it again, Ralph. Tell us again.”

  “I killed them, I tell you. I killed them all.” He clutched his big hands together as he talked.

  Fleming left the room and returned in a minute with a long kitchen knife. “Is this the knife you used, Ralph?”

  “Yes, yes, that’s it. I killed them all with that.”

  Carter sighed and followed Fleming from the room….

  “There’s always a dozen nuts ready to confess after every murder, Carter,” Fleming told him. “That doesn’t mean you have to believe them all.”