Murder in the Madhouse

by Jonathan Latimer

  “You’re such a funny man,” she said, peering over the top of her napkin with roguish eyes. “And you have such a kind face.”

  Williams sucked in his lips. His predatory eyes were bright. “Funny kind,” he said. He exploded with laughter.

  Under cover of the general conversation, Mr. Penny slipped a piece of paper in William Crane’s hand. He opened it on his lap. It read: “Congratulations. I may have something for you later.”

  Crane looked up. The little man winked mysteriously. Crane winked mysteriously, too.

  Comfortable, with blue smoke curling from his cigar, Sheriff Walters lounged back in his chair. He signaled Ulah. “Who’s gonna’ feed the prisoner?”

  Ulah replied, “Miss Evans has got a tray made up for him. She jest went out with it.”

  “I suppose even murderers have to eat,” said the sheriff complacently. “I might even be one if the food was always this good.” He slapped the table.

  “Look here.” Dr. Livermore spoke to Crane. “How’d you ever get in here? Your papers were in order from Bellevue.”

  Tearing the note from Mr. Penny into shreds, William Crane dropped it into a pewter ash tray and said: “It wasn’t hard. I just tried to direct traffic on Fifth Avenue. They took me to Bellevue and Miss Van Kamp’s brother had me sent here. He had a business associate, Mr. Sloan, make the arrangements. I believe I was sort of a nephew of his.” He drained his demi-tasse. “I might as well tell you that the only reason that I came here was to serve Miss Van Kamp and her brother. She wanted her securities back, and I got them for her. The murders were only incidental.”

  “I’d hardly call three murders incidental,” said Blackwood. He was his old blatant self.

  “Maybe not,” Crane agreed. He watched Mr. Penny leave the room. “I think I’ll go upstairs for a while. I’d like to pack.”

  On the way out, with Burns and Mr. Williams, he passed in front of Mrs. Heyworth. Her soft brown eyes looked at him, but there was no recognition in them. She had never seen him before.

  With an elaborate gesture Mr. Williams poured himself a stiff drink of moonshine. The bottle was nearly empty now. He winked at Tom Burns.

  “We sure put this job over,” he said reflectively. “We’re the goods.” He got off Crane’s bed and looked out the west window at the detention building. “We always get our man.” The window was open a crack, and he closed it. “I see that Charles still’s got a light in his room.”

  “Don’t worry about that guy,” said Burns. “We gotta save our strength for our next case.”

  “Sure,” Crane said. He held a partially filled glass in his hand. “It must have been tough camping on that hill while I was down here enjoying myself.”

  Burns looked interestedly at William Crane’s face. “It was probably that Evans babe who socked you.” He preferred his drinks neat, so he didn’t bother with a glass. “She looks hotter than the kitchen stove.” He reached for the bottle. Crane jerked it out of his reach.

  “When do we leave?” he asked.

  “As soon as it stops raining,” Williams said. He drank, made a contortion of his lips. “Listen, what did that old dame give you for gettin’ her dough back?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Didn’t she even thank you?”

  “No. Not even that.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned.” Williams sipped a little of the yellow liquor. “She’s positively ungrateful.” He sat down on a chair and tilted it against the wall. “Did you ever find out who beat you up?”

  “Dr. Eastman and that Evans woman.”

  “See!” Burns put his thumbs in his vest. “I thought there was a woman behind those beatings.”

  “Sure,” said Crane. “Cherchez la femme.”

  “Huh?”

  Crane explained, “That’s French for ‘Look for the woman.’”

  “I don’t have to look for my woman,” said Burns. “She’s always lookin’ for me.”

  The door of the room opened, and Sheriff Walters and his son and Deputy Powers walked through. “William Crane,” said the sheriff, “I arrest you for murder.”

  William Crane slid off the bed, drew back a step. “Why, what’s the matter?” he asked.

  “Look out your window,” said Sheriff Walters.

  Crane looked out his window, the one facing the detention building. In the shaft of light from the window the rain was fine and silvery, and it fell gently on a figure in the path below. The figure was on its back, and its face was wet and peaceful and quite dead. It was the face of Mr. Penny.

  Chapter XX

  UNDER THE ANGULAR FALL of water from the blackness above, Mr. Penny’s clothes were already sodden. Around his head a pool was forming, and small ripples caused by raindrops moved his black hair. Another pool, tinted a brownish pink, began under his neck. He had been stabbed exactly as had the other two.

  “You thought you could put it on that Charles because the stab marks were the same,” said Sheriff Walters. He wiped off his sandy mustache with the back of his hand. “Well, here’s another, and it’s just the same. But he couldn’t have done it.”

  One of Mr. Penny’s legs, twisted unnaturally under his back, must have been broken. His coat collar in the back was jerked up toward his head as though somebody had tried to pull it off. One of the coat’s front buttons had been torn off.

  “I don’t know why I’m lettin’ you look around,” said Sheriff Walters. He was keeping close beside Crane. “I know you done it. You killed him and dropped him out of your window.” He had said this several times before.

  Williams had his coat collar turned up against his neck. He peered up at the lighted windows in the guest house. Then he looked at the crumpled body with the bone-handled knife protruding from the neck. “Looks as though somebody threw him down here,” he admitted.

  “Sure he was thrown down,” said Sheriff Walters. “He didn’t walk here with that knife in his neck.”

  “Maybe he was dragged here,” said Williams. He turned a small flashlight around the path and the soaking grass.

  “He couldn’t have been,” asserted the sheriff, flashing his large electric lamp around the body. “There’d be a trail of blood from that knife wound.”

  “Look here,” said Crane. “You don’t know I killed him, you just think I did.” He spoke soothingly. “Let me take a look at the detention building.”

  “I don’t know you killed him?” Sheriff Walters spoke passionately. “I don’t, don’t I? What were you doing outside when Miss Clayton was killed? Miss Evans just told me how she met you.”

  “Maybe she lied,” suggested Tom Burns. He stood miserably in the rain. “Where is she now?”

  “I got Cliff guarding her in the living room. I figure Crane might try to bump her off, too.”

  “Give the guy a look at the detention building,” said Sergeant Wilson impatiently. “It won’t cost you anything.”

  The sheriff shrugged his shoulders.

  Underfoot, the grass was a screen for water an inch deep. Disheveled flowers whipped madly in wind that was more moisture than air. Rain made dark gray stains on the stucco front of the detention building. There was a light in Charles’s window and another in Mr. L’Adam’s room, toward the end of the building.

  Deputy Graham was seated in a chair at the foot of the stairs at the back of the detention building’s hall. He awoke with a start. His broad face was surprised. “Where’s my dinner?” he asked.

  “You’ll get it later,” said the sheriff. “Is that fellow still upstairs?”

  “Certainly. I been watchin’ him, ain’t I?”

  Crane asked, “Has anyone been up to see him?”

  “Nobody but Miss Evans and that little dumb guy. He came right after she brought up that tray full of dinner.”

  “You let Mr. Penny go up to see Charles?” asked Crane.

  “Sure. Why wouldn’t I?”

  “Was Miss Evans up there when he went up?”

  “Yeah, they come down together.
”

  “You’re sure Mr. Penny came down?”

  “You bet.”

  “How are you sure? Did you see him?”

  “Not exactly. But I heard Miss Evans say good-night to him just outside the door. I was sorta keepin’ my eyes closed to rest, and I didn’t see ’em come down the stairs together.”

  “You’re sure you didn’t dream this?”

  “Oh, I heard her all right. She said, ‘Good-night, Mr. Penny; hurry so you don’t get soaked.’”

  Sheriff Walters seized his new prisoner’s arm impatiently and said, “This stalling don’t get you nowhere.”

  Crane shook off his hand. He walked to the front door, opened it, and looked out. The wind-blown rain fell like the spray from a shower bath. Trees were bent in the gale, and under Charles’s window the bushes were wet and flat.

  After a time he said, “Let’s go up and see Charles.”

  They tramped up the stairs, and the sheriff unlocked the door with a key handed him by Deputy Graham. Charles was surprised to see them, and for a moment he looked furtively violent. “What do you want?” he asked. His arms moved in short muscular jerks. He was seated on the bed. He had on black trousers and a white shirt, and his feet were bare.

  “Did you have any visitors this evening?” Crane asked him.

  “Miss Evans brought my dinner.” Charles’s manner was defiant.

  “Didn’t anybody else come up?”

  “Mr. Penny looked in for a minute just as Miss Evans was leaving. He just winked at me, and then he went away with her.”

  “He didn’t show you the knives he found in your room?”

  Charles appeared hurt and surprised. “You know you had my room searched, and there weren’t any knives there.”

  “That’s right,” said Sheriff Walters.

  Crane turned to Williams. “Frisk the guy,” he ordered.

  Williams ran his hands over Charles. Crane looked up at the storm through the room’s one small, high window. The rain beat against the pane at intervals, as though someone were throwing cupped handfuls of water. The roar of the wind was sullen and angry. There were two small smudges of moisture on the floor below the window. He could just reach his fingers over the window sill. He looked at his fingers. They were dry and clean. He reached up again and tried the window. It was locked. He ran his fingers along the point where the glass entered the bottom of the frame and then wiped the dry dust on the seat of his trousers.

  “Nothin’ on this guy,” announced Williams.

  Crane tried the desk and the chair, but they were firmly bolted to the floor. He felt Charles’s black socks. They were faintly damp. “Can you move the bed?” he asked.

  Williams couldn’t.

  “All right,” said Crane. He felt the covers on Charles’s bed and then looked under the mattress. There was nothing there. “Let’s go see Miss Evans,” he said.

  Miss Evans had on a black silk dress with an artificial crimson flower pinned over her breast. The dress clung to her hips, and her ankles were slim in sheer brown silk. She wore a bright red coral bracelet over the black sleeve of her left arm. She was standing with Cliff by the fireplace, and her blond hair was translucent and nebulous. She faced William Crane and his captors with feline grace. “I see they caught up with you,” she said in her husky harsh voice.

  “Miss Evans,” said Crane. He freed himself from the sheriff’s grasp and walked toward her. “The sheriff has said I could ask you a few questions.”

  Miss Evans waited. Her eyes were mocking.

  “Did Mr. Penny come up to Charles’ room while you were there?”

  She nodded.

  “What did he want?”

  She shrugged her rounded shoulders. “He just looked in and smiled. Then I walked downstairs with him.”

  “Didn’t he show Charles anything?”

  Miss Evans made an almost imperceptible negative movement of her head. The glow of the fire accentuated the soft curve of her jaw.

  “How long were you up there with Charles?”

  “About fifteen minutes.”

  “Did he have the window open while you were there?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Was there a napkin over the tray when you carried it down?”

  Miss Evans arched her eyebrows. “I don’t think so. No, there wasn’t. You can ask Maria.”

  “There was nothing on the tray?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.” Her blue eyes darkened. “There was nothing on it but dishes.”

  “Where did you go from the detention building?”

  “I came over here and met the sheriff as I was going into the kitchen. I talked with him in the living room, and then he left me here with his son when they found Mr. Penny’s body.”

  “You didn’t go to your room and change your clothes?”

  “No, I didn’t!” Miss Evans appealed to the sheriff. “Do I have to stand for all this …?”

  “I’m so sorry,” said Crane. He stepped close to Miss Evans and put his right arm about her waist. “Get away,” she screamed in sudden rage. She slapped his hand down and drove her knee into his groin. He grunted in exquisite pain. He took hold of Miss Evans’s dress just above the artificial flower and ripped the garment off to her hips.

  Her firm breasts were encased in a flesh-colored silk brassière and below them was a line of white skin. Around her waist was a thin belt from which hung six sheaths. Three of these were empty, and from the other three jutted bone-handled knives.

  “You see?” remarked William Crane. “That’s how Mr. Penny was killed.”

  Miss Twilliger returned alone from the detention house. A drop of water rolled down one cheek, and her eyes were large. She had searched Miss Evans before Cliff and the deputies had locked their prisoner in a room next to Charles’s. She said, “I don’t see how she kept her figure, carrying all those knives around.”

  “Maybe she swallows them and they come out in different places like needles,” Williams suggested.

  Miss Twilliger held out the belt and the three knives. “What will I do with these?”

  “I’ll take ’em,” said the sheriff. “You better help Cliff guard her in case there’s something she wants.”

  “I’ll help watch that babe, too,” volunteered Williams.

  Crane crooked a finger at him. “You stay here.”

  Sergeant Wilson stood squarely in front of the living-room fire. He rubbed his chin with the back of his hand. “I don’t see yet how they killed Mr. Penny,” he said.

  “It wasn’t so tough to figure out,” said Crane. “Let me tell you about it.” He slid onto his favorite place on the long table. “In the first place, we know that Mr. Penny went into Charles’ room. The deputy saw him.”

  “Yeah, and the deputy saw him come out,” said the sergeant.

  “That’s where you’re wrong. The deputy said he heard Miss Evans say good-night to Mr. Penny. That’s a lot different than seeing him come down the stairs. She warned Penny about not getting wet, but Penny didn’t hear her. He was already dead.”

  “You mean she carried his body down the stairs?” asked Mr. Williams.

  “No, she’d be foolish to do that. The deputy might have seen her. What she did was to go outside to the body, which had been thrown out of Charles’ window.”

  Sheriff Walters scratched his head. “But that window was locked,” he objected. “And besides, it is too high for Charles to reach.”

  “I thought so too. That’s why I didn’t object when we first put him in there. I figured nobody could get up there, and we decided, you remember, that even if somebody did come through the window, they’d have to come through head first, and the fall would kill them.” Crane shook his head. “I never thought about Miss Evans. It was easy enough for Charles to lift her up so she could open the window. Then, when they wanted it closed, he just lifted her up again. I noticed two damp spots on the floor beneath the window, so I decided it must have been open. Those spots were there
when we went up to see Charles. I felt along the sill, but it was dry and clean. Then I felt the bottom frame, and it was dusty. What does that suggest?”

  Nobody answered.

  “It suggests that somebody wiped the sill dry. If they hadn’t, there would have been dust on it, too. It occurred to me that Charles might have stood on something to open the window, but I found all the furniture was bolted down. That meant he must have had help. Incidentally, I’m sure he used his socks to wipe the sill, as they were damp.”

  Sergeant Wilson moved a little away from the fire. “The idea is that they killed the little guy in the room and threw his body out the window?”

  “That’s right. He came up there with the knives, which he had found in Miss Evans’ room. He probably didn’t believe Miss Evans was implicated, and he knew she’d be arrested if he turned them over to the sheriff. He thought, at least I think he did, that he could scare a confession out of Charles with the knives and thus exonerate Miss Evans. But when Charles saw the knives, he knew the jig was up. He knew they could be traced to him. So he killed Mr. Penny.”

  “That’s all right,” said the sheriff, “and it accounts for the fall Penny must have had, but I’m damned if I see how he got under your window. Did Miss Evans wipe up the blood under Charles’ window and on the path?”

  “She didn’t have to wipe up any blood. There wasn’t any.” Crane grinned at his impressed audience. “Mr. Penny was strangled to death in Charles’ room. Miss Evans dragged him across the flooded grass—you know how easily anything slips across wet grass and how it doesn’t leave any marks—to my window. Miss Evans probably walked in her stocking feet so as not to leave prints, and she didn’t have much trouble pulling Mr. Penny because he weighs only a hundred pounds or so. Then, after she dropped him, Miss Evans stuck the knife in his neck so as to throw suspicion on me. It was a pretty neat idea.”

  “I thought Miss Evans was chummy with Doc Eastman,” said Mr. Williams. “How’d she get mixed up with Charles?”

  “Charles is a pretty good-looking fellow.” Crane settled farther back on the table. “He’s known as a heart-breaker in vaudeville circles. It’s no wonder Miss Evans fell for him. I wouldn’t be surprised if they are married … at least they ought to be. He’s spent a lot of nights in her room.”