Crimson Clue

by George Harmon Coxe

  Bacon stood up, nodding first to Luther Canning and introducing himself, Murdock, and the girl; then repeating the performance with Todd Canning. He said to sit down anywhere.

  Luther Canning put his Homburg on the table and took the nearest chair, wheezing a bit as he lowered his bulky torso and then sighing audibly. His brother walked in his limping way to the other side of the table, his red, weathered face tight and unsmiling. He had a little speech to make, and he made it before sitting down.

  ‘You understand of course,’ he said coldly, ‘that we are here as a matter of accommodation, not because we feel any compulsion or obligation.’

  Bacon said he understood that but the other was not finished. ‘We heard Mr. Murdock’s fantastic accusations last night and if this is to be a continuation of such nonsense——’

  He had no chance to finish because the door opened again to interrupt him. Bacon nodded at the plain-clothes man before he could speak and then one of the Elliott twins came in; Murdock could not tell which one because there was no identifying carnation. From the conservative cut of his dark-brown sack suit he guessed it was Howard and then, remembering something else, he glanced at Audrey.

  She had come to her feet, her face brightening in a smile as she saw Elliott. He looked at her as he might look at any pretty young woman, politely but otherwise uninterested, and reached for a chair. When his brother came in behind him, looking very sharp and prosperous in his fawn-coloured gaberdine, the reaction was quite different.

  The moment he saw the girl he stopped. He stared hard, his jaw dropping, and then he grinned and started toward her, both hands outstretched.

  ‘Audrey!’

  ‘Hello, Jeff.’

  She gave him her hands, her smile suddenly shy as he drew her close and kissed her on the cheek.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he said. ‘When did you get in town, baby? Why didn’t you call me?’

  Bacon cleared his throat loudly to get attention. He said if Elliott would sit down they could get started. Jeff studied him a moment, shrugged, and sat down next to the girl.

  ‘At eleven-twenty last night,’ Bacon said, opening the folder in front of him, ‘an unidentified man was picked up in an alley in Allston. He was dead when the ambulance arrived, and had been for some time. He was taken to the morgue where it was discovered he had no identification on him and that the labels had been cut from his clothing—all but the necktie, which had been sold by a shop in Los Angeles. We have since learned that his name is Neil Garvin, that he was an itinerant piano player, and that he arrived in town Monday afternoon, having come from the coast by air coach and bus.’

  He reached into the folder and produced an eight-by-ten glossy print; when he held it up Murdock saw that it had been taken in the morgue.

  ‘I’m going to pass this around. I want to know if any of you gentlemen recognize this man … Mr. Canning?’

  He handed the photograph to Luther Canning, who looked at him with some surprise and then, reluctantly it seemed, glanced at the picture.

  ‘No’, he said.

  ‘No, what?’

  ‘I don’t know him.’

  ‘Never saw him before?’

  ‘I may have.’ He passed the picture to his brother. ‘I don’t remember.’

  Todd Canning was lighting his pipe and there was a strange awkwardness in the manœuvre that made Murdock wonder about it all until he realized that Canning was holding the match in his left hand. Now he shook out the flame and took the picture.

  ‘I once met a man named Neil Garvin’, he said in his slow, tight-lipped way. ‘This could be the same one but I wouldn’t swear to it.’

  ‘Where did you meet him?’

  ‘In San Francisco. About six years ago.’

  ‘You haven’t seen him since?’ Bacon asked. ‘He didn’t come out to the Canning place any time yesterday?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  Howard Elliott took the print and shook his head. He said he had never seen the man before and passed it to his brother.

  ‘Sure it’s Garvin’, Jeff said. ‘He’s skinnier here but he’s the same guy.’

  ‘How did you happen to know him?’

  ‘He ran away with my cousin. Todd’—he glanced at his uncle—‘found out about it first and called me in Hollywood. We wired Luther but we caught up with Garvin in San Francisco before Luther arrived.’

  He added a few other things which corroborated information Murdock already knew; then denied that he had seen Garvin since or that he had been at the reception.

  ‘He couldn’t have got in without an invitation’, he said. ‘We’d have known about it if he tried.’

  ‘He could have come earlier.’

  ‘He could have but he didn’t.’

  ‘Murdock says he was there’, Bacon said flatly. ‘He found him in a third-floor closet, dead.’

  He went on quickly, relating the facts as Murdock knew them, and the others listened until he had finished. Then Todd Canning pushed back in his chair and took the pipe from his mouth.

  ‘It’s up to you’, he said. ‘Murdock says Garvin was in the house. We say he wasn’t. Who are you going to believe?’

  Bacon eyed him steadily. He glanced at the others, one after the other. He considered Murdock a moment and then came back to Todd.

  ‘I’ve known Murdock quite a while’, he said. ‘He’s been known to forget things but he never was a liar. When he says Garvin was in the house I believe him … I want to read you something.’

  What he read then was the statement Keogh had taken from Audrey Wayne, which told of her meeting with Garvin and the incidents which had happened subsequently. No one interrupted; no one spoke when he had finished, so Bacon told them the results of his long distance calls while Murdock, long aware of the officer’s competence and ability, listened with growing respect.

  ‘Neil Garvin was released from prison last week,’ the lieutenant began, ‘after serving three years for running dope in from Mexico. He got out in time to see a newspaper clipping which told of the Canning-Armington wedding and he still had some letters which Patricia Canning had once written him. He took a plane and bus so he could get here on time; he spoke of collecting from two men. The letter Murdock read was passionate and indiscreet; we can assume the others were in the same vein, the sort of letters most families would pay for rather than have the prospective bridegroom—particularly a wealthy one—see them before the wedding.’

  He paused and picked up some papers. ‘I have here the autopsy report. It says Garvin died from asphyxia brought about by manual strangulation, probably by a left-handed man but in any case one who used his left hand. Also there were traces of alcohol and an unidentified barbiturate, with the time of death estimated to be between two and five yesterday afternoon. Later someone, using the hotel key in Garvin’s pocket, went to his room to get the balance of the letters, and did in fact get them after knocking Murdock unconscious.’

  He glanced round, measuring his words. ‘This much is fact. These things we can prove. What I think happened is that Garvin went out to your house—and before we’re through we’ll know exactly when—with some of the letters and made his pitch. Somehow he was given liquor and a drug and either strangled and taken upstairs or taken upstairs in an unconscious condition and later strangled. In any case he was dead when Murdock found him and took his picture, not knowing that someone was watching.

  ‘Apparently he was followed downstairs after he had changed film packs. He was seen to put the exposed pack in his equipment case and some time within the next hour or so this equipment was stolen and the body taken from the house by the back way. Miss Wayne,’ he said, glancing at the girl, ‘saw this take place even though she can’t positively identify those who did the job.’

  Todd Canning knocked his pipe into his right hand and spilled the contents into an ash tray. He pushed back his chair a little farther.

  ‘That,’ he said calmly, ‘is an interesting theory. Will that be all for
this morning, Lieutenant?’

  Bacon watched him stand up, the flush growing in his long face when Luther Canning, somewhat bewilderedly, and acting as if he was not sure what to do, joined his brother. Just then the door opened and the plain-clothes man said Saul Damin and Lew Klime were outside.

  ‘Tell ’em to wait.’ Bacon’s voice was tight as he watched the Elliott twins stand up, the girl rising with Jeff who took her arm and drew her to one side.

  Here they talked in low tones which Murdock could not follow, and finally Jeff turned to ask Bacon if it was all right for Audrey to leave. Bacon said he’d rather she waited a few minutes. Then, to the room at large, he announced that a search warrant had been issued and that his men were at the moment questioning the Canning help and going over the house.

  ‘I’ll be seeing you’, he said, but they had already started to file from the room and he found himself talking to their backs.

  Damin and Klime came in a moment later, and if they were at all worried they gave no sign. Damin’s sharkskin suit with its exaggerated shoulders looked as if it had just come from the cleaners, his olive skin was smooth and shiny with shaving lotion, his black hair was also smooth and shiny, every strand in place. Klime’s brown suit was baggy and unpressed. He dumped a wrinkled topcoat on the table and put a sweat-stained felt hat on top of it. He took a quick glance at Murdock and the girl, but when he sat down his lopsided face looked unconcerned.

  Bacon showed them the picture of Neil Garvin first. They shook their heads.

  ‘No,’ they said, ‘never saw him before.’

  ‘He wasn’t at the Canning house yesterday?’

  ‘If he was——’ said Damin.

  ‘—we didn’t see him’, said Klime.

  The rest of the inquiry was no more productive than the preliminaries and after a moment Murdock made no attempt to follow the conversation but considered what he knew of the two ex-policemen.

  Saul Damin’s record on the force had, for the most part, been good. On the small side for a patrolman he had overcome this deficiency by toughness, tenacity, and a fearlessness that had soon brought him a detective’s rating. He had been commended twice, once for shooting down two hoodlums he had surprised in holding up a jewellery store, and once, while off duty, for collaring a gunman in a tavern. Later he had been brought before the grand jury in connection with a gambling investigation, and while there was no indictment the publicity was not good and he had eventually resigned to start a private agency of his own, there being at the time some question as to where he got his financial backing.

  Lew Klime’s record was less savoury. He was one of those men who can be found on any big-city police force, a roughneck with few scruples and even less conscience. Usually such men do not last long and Klime was no exception. In minor trouble every so often, he had twice been given a thirty-day suspension for conduct unbecoming an officer and then one night he had shot and killed a boy he found in a stolen car, narrowly missing an indictment for manslaughter.

  All these things Murdock knew. There were other rumours of a more recent nature. Some said that the partners were not getting along. There was talk that Damin wanted to buy out Klime, and in this connection Klime’s wife was mentioned. Damin, a bachelor, was seldom without a feminine companion and there was some speculation as to just what part he had played in the Klime separation. How much of this was true, Murdock was not sure, but he continued to wonder about it until he became aware of Bacon’s voice.

  ‘We’re checking the Forbes Hotel,’ the lieutenant was saying, ‘to see if we can find which one of you went up to Garvin’s room for those letters and then went up to her room’—he indicated Audrey Wayne—‘to make a grab for that envelope Garvin left for her.’

  He gave them a long, resentful stare and then concentrated on Klime. ‘What did you want with that envelope? Who hired you to get it, or was it your own idea?’

  It was a routine question. Bacon hardly expected any confirmation and he got none.

  ‘I can’t even tune you in, Lieutenant’, Klime said.

  ‘You followed Murdock and the girl home, you and another guy. You stuck a gun in his back and——’

  ‘Who says so?’

  Bacon looked at Murdock. ‘Do you want to swear out a warrant now?’

  This, too, was bluff and everyone knew it, since, without corroboration, Klime would have to be acquitted if he went to trial.

  Murdock shook his head. ‘Not now’, he said.

  Bacon dismissed the partners contemptuously. He said that was all for now. ‘But don’t get the idea I’ve finished’, he said. ‘And don’t kid yourselves. The Canning crowd couldn’t have handled all this by themselves. They needed the kind of help you could give them and you gave it because the Canning Mills is a big account for you; maybe you figured it’ll be bigger from now on. Okay.’ He waved them toward the door. ‘Maybe I can tie you in with murder and maybe not, but give me a little break here and there and I’ll sure as hell get that licence of yours revoked.’

  When they had gone Bacon told Audrey Wayne he wouldn’t need her any more for now. He appreciated her co-operation and would be in touch with her. If she moved she was to let him know. Murdock said he would call her and she said she wished he would, in a way that sounded as if she meant it.

  Murdock stayed behind because he had one more thing to say to Bacon. ‘Todd Canning lit his pipe with his left hand.’

  ‘I saw him’, Bacon said. ‘We’ll check him up and down and sideways.’

  Then the plain-clothes man who had been announcing people came up and told Murdock he was wanted in the pressroom, so he went downstairs to the two-room-and-lavatory suite which served the city’s dailies. Lafferty, the Courier’s day man, said he was to call Sydney French, and gave him the number.

  The voice that came to Murdock after he had dialled sounded worried and jerky. ‘I’m in a jam, Kent’, French said. ‘I need some good advice—bad. Could I see you a few minutes? Could you come over to my place?’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘As a personal favour?’

  Murdock said sure. He said he’d be over in five minutes.

  Chapter 10

  SYDNEY FRENCH lived in a modern, beige-brick apartment just off Beacon Street where the management provided a doorman, maid service if desired, and, for some apartments, a small view of the river. The uniformed operator in the lobby took Murdock’s name and said he was to go right up.

  ‘Fifth floor’, he said. ‘Five-B on your right.’

  French was wearing doeskin slacks, a cashmere sweater, and a tweed jacket that made him look a little bulkier than he was. For a man who was normally both affable and expansive in his dealings with people he looked uncommonly concerned. His brown eyes were serious and troubled as he shook hands with Murdock and led him across the foyer and down two steps to a dropped living-room which was furnished in a manner that proclaimed both his current affluence and his profession.

  The rug, pale green and thick piled, was room size; the overstuffed furniture was part conventional, part modern, with the divan extending a good six feet along each side of one corner, its fabric matching the two chairs which stood on either side of the fireplace. There was a grand piano near the windows, a guitar on the window seat, a Capehart, a built-in television set with an oversized screen, and a home recorder. To round out the musical picture were the scripts, arrangements, and sheets of music paper which lay about in stacks, bunches, bundles, and scattered profusion.

  Murdock sat down on one end of the divan and put his hat on his knee. He took a cigarette that French passed but refused the drink.

  ‘What’s the jam?’ he asked.

  French looked too upset to sit down. He took a pipe from a rack and began to fill it; he ran his fingers through his thinning brown hair; he rubbed his knuckle across his small moustache. Finally, when he had looked everywhere else, he focused his glance on Murdock.

  ‘I read about Neil Garvin in the paper’, he said.

&nbs
p; ‘Oh?’ Murdock came to attention. ‘What about him?’

  ‘I know him. I played with him on the coast. We were married to the same girl.’

  ‘Wait a minute.’ Murdock sat up, his dark gaze intent. ‘You don’t mean Pat Canning?’

  ‘Hell no. It was after that.’

  ‘So what?’

  French did not answer directly. He puffed hard to get his pipe lighted and then forgot to puff and it went out.

  ‘I don’t know what to do’, he said. ‘That’s why I called you. I guess we don’t know each other well enough to say we’re friends but I’ve known you quite a while, enough to have a lot of respect for your judgment and opinion. You’ve had a lot of experience in things I know from nothing about. You’ve worked with the police on several things so maybe you can tell me what I should do. I’d like this to be confidential but I can’t ask for any such promise. I’ve got to talk to somebody and you’re elected.’

  ‘Okay’, Murdock said, still wondering. ‘So much for the prologue.’

  ‘I knew Neil Garvin was in town. I had a drink with him the night he got in.’

  Murdock sat very still, the sudden tingling in his chest developing swiftly into a stir of genuine excitement. Almost at once a dozen questions flashed through his mind and he had to concentrate to keep his thoughts in hand. He took his time, kept his voice matter-of-fact.

  ‘You know he’d just got out of prison?’

  ‘He told me but I already knew he’d been sent up.’

  ‘Do you know why he came to Boston?’

  ‘He had some letters.’

  Murdock checked his next question. He sat back and put his hat aside. He said why didn’t French tell it in his own way. After a moment French did.

  ‘He phoned me Monday night after dinner. I met him at ten o’clock in the grill room of the Forbes Hotel. He was a little drunk. For a while we talked about this and that and I kept waiting for him to hit me for a job—or some dough.’

  ‘Did he mention a girl named Audrey Wayne?’

  French looked surprised and he took time to swallow before he said: ‘Yes, he did. Said she’d come on from the coast with him. Had experience in movies and TV as well as radio, according to Neil. He said he’d like to help her and would I talk to her. I said I would.’