Crimson Clue

by George Harmon Coxe

  He opened the first door he came to, not caring where it led, but gingerly, too, so that he would not walk in on anyone. He did not notice then that the door opened out rather than in. He found only darkness beyond and, as he widened the opening and noticed the string hanging from the naked light bulb, he realized this was a closet. The smell of mothballs was strong, and far back he saw, dimly, the pile of newspaper-wrapped packages which had been stored there. Only when his glance came down did he notice the man huddled on the floor just beyond the threshold.

  The light was bad there but he could tell that the man was thin and black-haired, that he wore a dark suit, and that he was in a slumped but sitting position, his back against one wall and his chin on his chest.

  And with that first look Murdock chuckled aloud. He backed up two steps, carefully focusing the Graphic and checking his shutter and bulb. It was, he saw, a wonderful place to hide a drunk until the festivities were over and it amused him greatly to think how Pat would react when, for a gag, he slipped a print into one of the albums he was to make for her.

  These things were in his mind as the flashbulb went off and the picture was recorded. In the next instant they were erased by a sudden thrust of doubt and uncertainty. For in the bright glare of the bulb he was instantly aware of certain things he had not noticed before.

  The first of these was the man’s sharkskin suit which told Murdock he was not a guest. The second and more startling fact was the strange lividity of the man’s thin face and neck. Then, because he could not quite believe his eyes, he stepped quickly into the closet and pulled on the overhead light.

  He knelt at once, leaning close and shaking a limp shoulder. He touched the face and found it cool and now, the tension building with cold swiftness inside him, he took the pointed chin and lifted it. That told him he had been right about the odd lividity. Finally, seeing at last the faint marks on the throat, he knew why.

  Breath held, he lifted a limp hand and pressed his fingers to the wrist. There was no pulse that he could feel, and even as he pressed his head and ear to the man’s chest he seemed to understand that there would be no heart beat.

  How long he knelt there he was not sure. The thoughts that raced through his mind had no definite pattern and he did not realize what he was doing until, faintly and from somewhere behind him, there came a clicking sound that caught his ear and his attention.

  He turned quickly, glancing over his shoulder. The squarish centre hall at the head of the stairs was empty. He backed out of the door to find the corridors which reached along each side as deserted as the hall. For another moment he stood there wondering what he had heard, his gaze focusing on the nearest closed door. Finally, remembering that he had one more exposed film in the pack, he took out a fresh bulb and snapped a second picture, kneeling to get a different angle and a closer shot.

  Now he closed the closet door, carefully, making no sound. He switched the fresh film pack for the exposed one, finding a clumsiness in his fingers and a dampness at his palms as the shock of his discovery gradually passed. Below him on the second floor he could hear faintly the buzz of conversation and, in the background, the distant beat of Sydney French’s music though the tune itself never quite came through.

  Here there was only the muted sound of his breathing and, deep in his consciousness, that other, clicking sound he had heard a minute before. Without bothering then to wonder who had strangled the man in the closet or why, he somehow found it important to know what that sound was and so he stepped to this doorway he had been watching, reached for the knob, and stepped into a large and cluttered room where a bald-headed man was busy at a desk.

  There was little light except that which came from a gooseneck lamp on the flat-topped desk, but Murdock saw the man was in shirtsleeves and wore a grey vest and Ascot tie. He was writing with that peculiarly cramped manner so often used by left-handed people and when he glanced up, peering beyond the light, Murdock realized it was Pat Canning’s father.

  Murdock started to apologize for the intrusion. He did not expect to be recognized; neither was he prepared for the words that cut him off.

  ‘At the end of the hall, young man’, Luther Canning said. ‘Last room on your right.’

  Murdock started to say he wasn’t looking for the men’s room but thought better of it. ‘Thanks’, he said, and then, before he could withdraw, he heard footsteps behind him. He drew back against the wall just as a tall and bosomy woman in grey lace and a picture hat swept past him, as formidable as a battleship and just as well armed.

  ‘Luther Canning!’ she said accusingly, not bothering to notice Murdock’s presence.

  ‘Hello, Cora.’

  ‘What, in Heaven’s name,’ said Cora, ‘are you doing up here alone?’

  ‘Working.’

  ‘At your only daughter’s wedding reception.’

  Canning frowned at her, spoke petulantly.

  ‘I gave her away’, he said. ‘I stood in the receiving line. I danced with her and the groom’s mother, and I saw them cut the wedding cake and——’

  ‘But your guests are still here. You want to see Pat toss her bouquet, don’t you?’

  Cora was moving all the time she spoke and she did not wait for an answer. She held Canning’s coat for him and he had to slip into it. A moment later she had her victim by the arm and the two of them brushed by Murdock without a glance. Only Canning seemed to remember him. From the hall he glanced backward.

  ‘Last room on the right’, he said.

  Chapter 4

  TO Kent Murdock the scene he had just witnessed was as fantastic as it was ludicrous, until he remembered some things he had heard about Luther Canning. Luther Canning was reputed to be a little peculiar, at least in some circles of thought. It was said that he was absent minded and that he was, by profession, a scholar.

  During his college days, when the family business was rolling up profits nicely, an indulgent father had allowed him to stay on at Harvard to take his M.A. and finally a Ph.D. After a brief and not too successful stint at the factory he had returned to teach and had eventually worked up to a professorship. Later, when the family fortunes were less liquid, he had gone back to the factory, serving in various capacities to no great purpose, until finally he had retired completely in favour of his nephew, Howard Elliott, to spend his time on a book whose tentative title was The Structure and Function of American Society.

  Thinking of these things now Murdock glanced about the room again, noting that the cluttering came mostly from stacks of books and pamphlets and papers. He closed the door and stood a moment in the hall, thinking now with reasonableness and some logic, his tension gone as his newspaper training asserted itself.

  The fact of murder, as such, no longer shocked him as it would a layman. He had seen and photographed it too often to be deeply moved emotionally by violent death. He never got used to it but he was able to consider it objectively, and now he thought beyond the act of homicide to the circumstances surrounding it, his concern at the moment centring about the identity of the victim. And so, with the party noises and the beat of the dance music still rising from the floors below, he again opened the door of the closet.

  The light was still on so he closed himself in and began a quick and superficial examination of the dead man’s outer pockets. Here he found three things that interested him: a ticket stub for an air-coach flight from Los Angeles to Chicago, a similar stub to indicate he had ridden a Trans-Eastern bus from Chicago to Boston, and a hotel key with a metal tag that read, Forbes Hotel—Room 322.

  This was all the identification he could find. If there was a wallet it apparently was in the hip pocket and Murdock saw that he could not get at it without moving the body, a responsibility he did not want to take. Even so, he had enough to break the story, the pictures to back it up. He was also aware that he had the sort of break a photographer would give a week’s pay for and he understood that what he should be doing right now was to look for a telephone and notify police
headquarters.

  That he postponed that call was due to two factors, or perhaps a combination of both. For his thoughts had a proper progression to them now and were motivated by forces that, under the circumstances, were compatible even though one had to do with his duty to the newspaper which paid his salary while the other was strictly personal.

  As a newspaperman he had been trained to think in terms of editions, and the instant he looked at his watch and saw that it was 5.40 he had his excuse for delaying his phone call. He had the story of the month in the palm of his hand, yet if he broke it now the afternoon papers would have the essential facts on the streets in their final editions. If he waited, say an hour, it would be a morning-paper beat, and, with his pictures, practically an exclusive for the Courier.

  To Murdock, this was reason enough for a short delay; that he then considered tacking on a little additional time was due chiefly to emotional factors which he did not analyse too closely, then or later. But they were in the back of his mind, these thoughts of Pat Canning and her groom, and the plane that left for Europe at 7.30. For Murdock understood the mechanics of police work and he was afraid the plane would leave without them if the fact of homicide was established in time for the authorities to reach the airport.

  It could make no difference to the family. The family was going to have to take it anyway, since either some member or a guest at the reception had taken a hand at murder. But to wind up a wedding day that way, to call off a honeymoon only to face a police investigation——

  Murdock dismissed the possibility. He turned off the light and let himself out of the closet. He thought no more about Patricia Canning—Patricia Armington now—but dwelt upon more practical aspects of the case, telling himself a small delay could do no harm and that the important thing was that the Courier break the story.

  Downstairs the party had grown noisier and less restrained but for the moment there was no congestion in front of the closet he had been using. As he started to open the door someone spoke.

  ‘The guy is good, hunh?’

  Murdock turned to find Lew Klime at the head of the stairs leading to the basement room. Klime’s rugged, lopsided face was warped in a grin. His head was cocked as he listened to Sydney French and his boys working over a chorus of ‘Just One of Those Things’, and Murdock, listening for a couple of bars, had to agree that he had never heard it done better by a small group anywhere.

  He nodded as he opened the closet door. ‘Nice band.’

  ‘The best’, Klime said happily. ‘The best.’

  Murdock put the exposed film pack and the two used flashbulbs into one of his cases. He pocketed another six bulbs and backed out of the closet. Klime was still tapping out the beat and he merely shook his head when Murdock asked if the bride had gone upstairs yet.

  There was a burst of applause as the orchestra wrapped up the final chorus, and when Murdock reached the front room the dancers were drifting toward the porch. Sydney French had put aside his guitar and was talking to Vivian Keith, his fiancée. French grinned when he saw Murdock.

  ‘How about us?’ he said, glancing at the camera. ‘A courtesy shot.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Hello, Mr. Murdock’, Vivian said. ‘Isn’t it wonderful? Did you ever see a more lovely bride?’

  ‘Never’, Murdock said. ‘How do you want this?’

  ‘Any way’, French said.

  He turned to the girl and she took his arm, a small vivacious girl in her party clothes. She touched her reddish-blonde hair to make sure it was in order, licked her painted lips to moisten them, opened her blue eyes wide.

  ‘How’s this?’

  ‘Look happy, Syd,’ Murdock said, ‘like you play.’

  French smiled down at the girl and she held the smile and Murdock tripped the shutter. Then, before anything could be said, there was a mass movement from the porch. Like a football powerplay, it swept across the room toward the hall, gaining both momentum and assistants. Pat Armington with her bouquet was the apex. Huddled close were the six bridesmaids, and trailing this central group was a horde of giggling, chattering women.

  Murdock bucked the tide as he switched bulbs. He was buffeted somewhat in the attempt but he caught Pat’s eye and called out to her.

  ‘When you get ready to throw it,’ he said, ‘hold it for a minute.’

  She nodded to show she understood and he held his place as he was swept along so that he was in position when she ran part way up the stairs. She turned, laughing, to look down at her bridesmaids. Her arm came back and she waited, poised and happy, until the flashbulb went off. She gave Murdock time to get set for the next shot, then tossed the bouquet in a gentle arc. As it settled toward the upstretched hands he took his second picture, and he was grinning when he turned away because he knew instinctively he had timed it right, that the picture would be a fine one.

  Waiters were still passing trays of champagne and he grabbed one of the glasses. Withdrawing to an open space along one wall he glanced at his watch and knew that he would have to wait another half hour or more before he could say anything about the man in the closet. Reviewing the pictures he had taken here he felt sure the event had been covered properly. There was only one more important picture to be taken and that would be when the bride and groom ran out to get into their car. That would be excuse enough for waiting awhile longer.

  The crowd thinned out rapidly, even as he watched, and presently, with the front room nearly empty, he saw Jeff Elliott with his yellow carnation coming toward him.

  ‘How’d it go?’ he asked in his breezy way.

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Get what you wanted?… Then Pat ought to be happy’, he said when Murdock nodded. ‘Had anything to eat?’

  Murdock said no. He said he didn’t want anything, thanks.

  Elliott tapped the empty glass. ‘How many of those have you had?’

  ‘Two.’

  ‘You don’t really like that stuff, do you?’

  ‘Not particularly.’

  ‘Then how about a real drink? A Scotch?’

  ‘Fine’, Murdock said.

  Elliott called to a passing waiter, asking him to bring two Scotch and sodas to the library. ‘Mostly Scotch’, he added. ‘And on the double. Come on’, he said, taking Murdock’s arm. ‘There’s only one place on this floor where a guy can sit down.’

  They walked into the hall and past the stairs to a room near the end. Elliott opened the door and waved Murdock into a library that was panelled, book-lined, and furnished with leather-upholstered pieces.

  ‘Sit down’, Elliott said. Relax. You’ve got nothing to do until Pat’s ready to leave and you know how long it takes a dame to change her clothes … I’ll be back’, he said as the waiter came with the drinks.

  Murdock sank gratefully into the biggest chair he could find. He stretched out his legs, took a huge swallow of his highball, and found it good. In a physical way he did relax but his mind was busy speculating on the things to come.

  His watch said it was nearly six-thirty and he tried to work out a hypothetical timetable that would fit the mental stipulations he had set up. Twenty minutes for Pat to get ready—and she’d have to do it in that time if she was to take a seven-thirty plane—would make it ten to seven. If he telephoned the police at seven or a little after it would take a radio car perhaps five minutes to get out here, another fifteen or twenty for Homicide to arrive, an additional fifteen or twenty to get the picture straight.

  ‘Yeah’, he said, half aloud. ‘That should do it.’

  He sat where he was for ten minutes enjoying his drink and the quiet comfort of the room. When he was ready he picked up his Graphic and went along the main hall to the stairway. There were still quite a few guests about, gathered near the front of the hall for the most part and waiting for the final glance at bride and groom. Murdock worked his way into a good spot and he was ready when the couple ran down the stairs a few minutes later, ducking against confetti and streamers, heads down and
hands clasped.

  He got one final shot outside in the darkness as the bridal car got under way but he knew it was nothing he could count on. He took another glance at his watch and reluctantly put his thoughts on the job at hand. It was nearly time and he did not like it, not any part of it. The only thing to do was to find one of the twins or Luther Canning, tell them what he knew, and then call the police. But first, a small drink to fortify himself.

  The main hall was nearly empty when Murdock came back from the porch and he went directly to the closet. He stepped inside, leaving the door open so he could see, and he noticed first that his equipment cases were not where he had left them.

  He turned, inspecting the floor, and then the hooks on each side. There was nothing here but old raincoats and jackets, and he pushed farther back among the golf clubs and tennis rackets, annoyed now but not yet apprehensive. He said: ‘What the hell’, softly and stepped out, his lean face sombre and dark eyes brooding.

  Swiftly then he went along the hall, eyes busy in their inspection of each jog and corner. He came back to the front room where the orchestra was packing up. He asked about his cases and no one had seen anything faintly resembling them. He got the same answer from the barmen and waiters on the porch, so he came back, his anger smouldering but still contained.

  At the closet door again he remembered Lew Klime’s comments on the orchestra, and now he ran down to the basement, interrupting the private detective in the middle of a yawn. Klime listened blankly, his rugged face revealing nothing.

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘I didn’t see ’em.’

  ‘You saw me go in there and get some flashbulbs.’

  ‘I saw you go in but I didn’t see what you had in there. I was listening to the band.’

  Murdock turned away without a reply and when he came upstairs he saw an elderly man in a swallow-tailed coat who looked like a butler. He was a butler. He listened politely while Murdock identified himself.