by Ed Gorman
"Then if you keep up," Anna said, staying calm and patient, "and if you think it through, what you're saying is impossible."
"That a dead woman was in the hotel last night? Well, she was."
Anna sighed. "Exactly what would you like me to do?"
"You're just as snooty as the men officers. You try'n give the coppers a tip and look what you get."
"I'm sorry, Mrs. Olson."
"Miss Olson."
"Miss Olson, then."
"Not that I never had no chances to be a Mrs." She sucked up some of the frothing spittle.
"I'm sure you had plenty of chances."
"I wasn't always fat. It's this condition I have. And my hair used to be black as night, too. But then I got this here condition."
"I'm sorry. Now, if you'll just tell me—"
"She wore this big picture hat. You know what a picture hat is?"
"Yes." They were fashionable these days, hats with huge brims that covered half a lady's face.
"She also had some kind of wig on when she came in the hotel. That's why I didn't recognize her. Her disguise. But I was goin' to my own room—the hotel gives me room and board except the food is pig swill—anyway, later on I'm goin' to my room and I seen her door was partly open and I just happened to glance inside and there she was without her hat and her wig and I seen her. Anthea Murchison. Plain as day."
"Did she see you?"
"I think she must've because she hurried quick-like to the door and practically slammed it." She paused to suck up some more spittle. Anna wondered if the spittle had anything to do with the woman's "condition."
"You'd seen the Murchison woman before?"
Miss Olson smirked. "You mean when she was alive?"
"Yes."
"Oh, I seen her all right. Plenty of times."
"Where?"
"The hotel. That's why I recognized her so fast. Her and her gentleman friend used to come up the back way."
"When was this?"
Virginia Olson thought about it for a time. "Oh, six, seven months before she died."
"How often did they come there?"
"Once a week, say."
"They didn't check in at the front desk?"
"No. They had—or she had, anyway—some kind of deal worked out with Mr. Sullivan. The manager. Poor man."
"Poor man?"
"The cancer. He weighed about eighty pounds when they planted him. Liver. He was all yellow."
"That's too bad."
"No, it isn't."
"It isn't?"
"I mean, I didn't want to see him die that way—I wouldn't want to see anybody die that way—but he was a mean, cheap bastard who never did a lick'a work in his life."
"I'm sorry to hear that. But let's get back to Anthea Murchison."
"They were havin' it on."
"I gathered that. Did you know who he was?"
"I almost got a look at him once. But he always moved real fast. And he wore this big fake black beard and this big hat that covered a lot of his face."
"Like her picture hat?"
"I never thought of that. But you're right. It was sorta like a picture hat except it was for a man. Like somethin' you'd see on the stage. I guess. That a villain would wear or somethin'."
She took a railroad watch from the pocket of her pinafore and said, "I got to get back. I'm just here on my break."
"I still don't know what you want me to do, Miss Olson."
"Come over there and look at her. See if it ain't Mrs. Murchison in the flesh."
The woman wasn't going to be Mrs. Murchison, of course. But it'd be better than just sitting here on this gloomy morning. And on the way back, she could swing past the jail and make one of her morning inspections. Make sure things were being run properly. Chief Ryan prided himself on his jail. He wanted it clean, orderly and without a whisper of scandal. He hoped to run for mayor someday, Chief Ryan did, and he didn't want some civic group pointing out that his jail had been some hell-hole like something you'd see in Mexico. Their jails were much in the news lately. A lot of men died mysteriously in those jails.
"I'll walk back with you," Anna said, standing up.
"I got to hurry," Miss Olson said. "Mr. Sanford's worse than Mr. Sullivan ever was. Now Mr. Sanford, I sure wouldn't mind seein' him get the cancer. I surely wouldn't."
* * *
Hotel rooms always saddened Anna. She'd seen too many suicides, murders and bad illicit love affairs within their walls. One problem with being a copper was that you generally saw the worst side of people, even in a nice little town like Cedar Rapids. The grubby hallway of the Astor's third floor told her that the room she was about to see would be grubby, too. The Olson woman had gone back to work.
The hallway offered eruptions of sounds on both sides—tobacco coughs, singing-while-shaving, snoring and gargling, presumably with "oral disinfectant" as the advertisements called it.
Room 334. Anna put her ear to it. Listened. Silence. Just then a door down the hall opened and a bald man in trousers, the tops of long Johns, and suspenders peeked out and picked up his morning paper. He gave Anna a very close appraisal and said, "Morning."
Anna smiled, wanting to remain silent, and nodded good morning back.
She put her ear to the door again. If the woman inside was moving around, she was doing so very, very quietly. Maybe the woman had gone out the back way. While the desk clerk had assured Anna that the woman had not come down yet this morning, he obviously didn't know for sure that she was in her room.
Anna knocked gently. Counted to ten. No response. Knocked again. And still no response.
Sounds of doors opening and closing on all three floors of the hotel. Morning greetings exchanged. Smells of cigarettes, pipes, cigars. Men with leather sample bags of merchandise carted out here from points as distant as New York and Cincinnati and Chicago suddenly striding past her in the hall. A quarter to eight and the business day just beginning.
Anna knocked again.
One of the officers friendly to her had given her a couple of tools resembling walnut picks. Showed her how to use them on virtually any kind of door. He'd also given her several skeleton keys. She could get into virtually any room or house.
The room was about what she'd expected. Double bed. Bureau. Faded full-length mirror hanging on a narrow closet door. Window overlooking the alley on the east side of the hotel. What wasn't expected was the woman in bed. She lay in a faded yellow robe, with her arms spread wide. She was otherwise naked. Somebody had cut her throat. There was a necklace-like crust of dried blood directly across the center of her neck.
The woman was Anthea Murchison.
Anna's first instinct was to hurry downstairs and send somebody to summon the Chief. But then she forced herself to calm down. She wouldn't get much of a chance to scientifically appraise the room—the way her idol Goron would want her to—with other cops there.
She spent the next twenty minutes going over everything. In the purse, she found various documents bearing the name Thea Manners, obviously the name the Murchison woman used during the past year. But where had she been? What had she been doing? Anna inspected the bed carefully, looking for anything that might later prove useful. She found red fibers, hair strands that looked to belong to Anthea Murchison, a piece of a woman's fingernail. She checked Anthea's fingers. A slice of her right index fingernail had broken off. The piece Anna held fit the maimed nail perfectly. A couple of times, Anna noticed the small, odd indentation in the wooden headboard. She took a piece of paper and held it tight to the headboard. Then she scribbled lead over the indentation. It showed a symbol: H. The style was rococo, and a bit too fancy for Anna's tastes. She put the paper in her pocket. Then she started in on the floor. Down on her hands and knees. Looking for curious footprints, or something tiny that might have been dropped. She found a number of things worth dropping in the white evidence envelope she'd made up for herself. A plain black button interested Anna especially. She checked it against Anthea's clothes in the closet
. There was no match. The button belonged to somebody else. The way fashions were getting so radical these days—an Edwardian craze was sweeping the country—it was impossible to know if the button had come off male or female attire.
Fifteen minutes later, the room was filled with police officers. Anna was pretty much pushed aside. She went downstairs to the porch and stood there looking out at the street. The rain had let up, but the overcast, chill autumn day remained. Wagons and buggies and surreys and a stray stagecoach or two plied the muddy streets. Somewhere nearby, the horse-drawn trolley rang its bell. Then she realized that the trolley could take her very close to where she needed to go.
She hurried to the corner. The trolley stopped for her. On a day like this one, the conveyance was crowded; bowlers on men, bustles on women bobbed as it bounced down the bumpy streets. Horse-drawn taxi cabs were busy, too. The rain had started in again.
* * *
Ten years ago, the large red barn had housed two businesses, a blacksmith and a farm implement dealer. It now housed The Players, a local theatrical group that did everything it could to create controversy, and thus sell tickets. Kevin Murchison was a dentist by day but at night he oversaw production of the plays. His partner was David Bailey, a medical doctor. The men had much in common. They were in their early thirties, literary, handsome and were widely held to have slept with half the women, married or not, who took roles in the various plays. Kevin was tall and pale and blond; David was short and dark and not without an air of not only malice but violence. His bedside manner was rarely praised. In fact, it was well known that most of the other doctors in town regretted ever letting him practice here. One practiced in Cedar Rapids only at the sufferance of the docs already in place. Many were called; few were chosen. David Bailey was generally regarded as a terrible choice.
The playhouse was empty when Anna arrived. She stood at the back of the place, listening to the rain play chill ancient rhythms on the roof of the barn. The stage was set up for a French bedroom farce advertised outside as "DEFINITELY NAUGHTY!"—THE NEW YORK TIMES. Who could resist that? Word was this was the most successful play of the past three years, so successful in fact that both dentist and doctor were thinking of quitting their respective practices and joining The Players full-time.
"It's lovely, isn't it?" The voice definitely male but practiced and just this side of being "cultured."
She turned to find three people standing there: Dr. Murchison, Dr. Bailey and Bailey's gently beautiful wife, Beatrice.
Anna said, "You've done a nice job."
Murchison said, "The finest theater outside Chicago."
Beatrice actually blushed at the hyperbole. "Or so we like to think, anyway."
There was no clue on their faces or in their voices that they'd heard about their friend Anthea. She was probably at the undertaker's by now.
Murchison, whose Edwardian suit complemented his clipped good looks and slightly European curly blond hair, said, "I'm sure you're here about Anthea."
So they did know.
"It's terrible," Beatrice said.
"I hope there'll be an investigation," Bailey said. His stocky form looked comfortable in Levi's and work shirt. The odd thing was, Murchison, who looked almost effete, had been raised on a farm. Bailey, who'd come from Boston money, could have blended in with a crew of railroad workers. "I was the one who pronounced her dead. I've got my reputation to think of." Then he made an awkward attempt to touch his hand to Murchison's shoulder. "I'm sorry, Kevin. You're grieving and all I can talk about is my reputation."
There was something rehearsed about the little scene she'd just witnessed. Or was there? Theater people—or so she'd read in one of Mrs. Goldman's eastern magazines— sometimes carried their acting over into real life. Ham was the word Anna wanted.
"Did any of you see her last night?"
"No," said Murchison. "I wish I had. My God, I have so many questions for her." Tears filled his eyes and Beatrice, tall, regal Beatrice, took him in her arms and held him.
"Why don't we step into the office?" Bailey said. "We can talk there."
Theater posters lined the walls of the small office with the roll-top desk and the long table covered with leaflets for the present production. Uncle Tom's Cabin, The Widow's Revenge, A Cupid for Constance were listed as forthcoming. The Players were an eclectic bunch. They mixed tame fare with the occasional bedroom farce and seemed to be surviving quite nicely these days.
"She was dead when we put her in the ground," Bailey said. "I'd swear to that."
"You'll have to, Doctor. There'll be a lot of questions about the autopsy report you signed."
A tic troubled his right eyelid suddenly. Anna said, "You didn't see her last night?"
"I believe I already answered that question."
"I'd appreciate you answering it again."
"Neither of us saw her last night," Beatrice said as she came into the office. "Poor Kevin's lying down in his private office." She went over and took a straight-back chair next to her husband's. "We worked at the theater until nearly midnight and then went home and went to bed."
"I see."
Beatrice smiled. "I was just wondering if you're even authorized to ask us questions. I remember you had some trouble with the city council and all."
"The Chief will back me up, if that's what you mean." Then, "I'm going to ask for the grave to be disinterred this afternoon."
"And why would you do that?" Bailey said.
"I want to see what's in the coffin."
"Well, obviously Anthea won't be," Bailey said. His eye tic was suddenly worse.
"How did Anthea and Kevin get along?"
"Just wonderfully," Beatrice said.
"There were a lot of rumors."
Beatrice smiled. "Of course, there were rumors, dear. This is a rumor kind of town. Anybody who shows a little flair for anything even the slightest bit different from the herd—well, rumors are the price you pay."
"Then they were happy?"
"Very."
"And there was no talk of divorce?"
"Of course not."
They weren't going to cooperate and Anna knew it. They had pat little answers to turn aside all her questions. And that was all she was going to get.
She stood up. "Where's Dr. Murchison's office?"
"Just down the hall," Beatrice said. "But he really does want to be alone. He's very confused and hurt right now."
"I'll keep that in mind," Anna said. "And thank you for your time."
As she was turning to the door, Bailey said, "You've been incredibly insensitive. I may just talk to the Chief about it."
"That's up to you, Dr. Bailey."
They stared at each other a long moment, and then Anna went down the hall.
Just as she reached Murchison's door, she heard a female voice behind it say, "Oh, Kevin, why lie about it? You sleep with all the ingenues and then get tired of them. That's what's happening to us. You're tired of me but you don't want to hurt my feelings by telling me."
"I just need some time to—think, Karen. That's all. Especially after this morning. My wife and everything."
"You should be grateful to her," Karen said. "She gave you a perfect excuse for not seeing me tonight." By the end, her voice had started to tremble with tears. "Oh, I was stupid to think you were really in love with me."
Anna had always been told that in amateur theater groups, the real drama went on offstage. Apparently so. She hated to embarrass Karen by knocking now but she had work to do. She knocked.
Murchison opened the door quickly, obviously grateful for any interruption. But he frowned when he saw Anna. "Oh, great, just what I need. More questions."
"I just need a few minutes, Dr. Murchison."
The word "ingenue" had misled Anna into picturing a slender, somewhat ethereal young woman. While Karen was still an exquisite-looking woman, her years were starting to do damage—the face a bit fleshy, the neck a bit loose, the high bustline a bit matronly now. Sh
e was a fading beauty, and there was always something sad about that. There was a wedding ring on Karen's left finger. But it was the other thing she kept touching, fingering—a large ornamental ring that was most likely costume jewelry.
"I'll talk to you tonight," Murchison said, "if Miss Tolan here doesn't put me in jail for some reason." He didn't even try to disguise the bitterness in his voice.
Karen whimpered, pushed past Anna, and exited the room.
"I suppose you heard it all while you were standing by the door," Murchison said, "and will run right down to her husband's office and tell him." Anna suspected that this was the real Murchison. The mild man she'd met earlier had been a mask.
"I don't even know who her husband is," Anna said.
"Lawrence Remington," Murchison said. "He has a very successful law practice in the Ely Building. On the second floor, in case you're interested." He smirked. "I only commit adultery with the upper classes. I guess I'm something of a snob." He took out a packet of Egyptian cigarettes.
Nobody was more pretentious than certain amateur theater types. "She's not as beautiful as she used to be. But Remington doesn't seem to notice that. He's insanely jealous."
"Maybe he loves her."
But love didn't interest him much. He merely shrugged.
"I'm told that you and your wife were on the verge of divorce at the time of her supposed death."
He glared at her. "You don't waste any time, do you? Have you ever thought that I might be grieving? Here I thought my wife was dead—and then she suddenly turns up. And now she's dead again." She could see why he produced the shows instead of starred in them. He was a terrible actor.
"Did you see her last night?"
"I've already told you no."
"What if I said somebody saw her slipping into your house?"
He didn't hesitate. "Then I'd say you're lying."
Sometimes the trick Chief Ryan had taught her worked. Sometimes it didn't. She tried a trick of her own. "I found a cuff button in your wife's hotel room."
"Good for you."
"I'm sure you'd be happy to let me look through your shirts."
He met her eye. He seemed to be enjoying this, which did not do much for her police officer ego. "Would you like to go to my place and look through my shirts?"