(1943)
Death of a Patriarch
Lieutenant Finch set down his corncob and took up the phone.
“Call came through for Homicide,” the impersonal switchboard voice said. “Protection wanted against threatened attack. Wire went dead while he was still talking. Old voice. Heavy accent—barely spoke English. We traced the call.” Switchboard gave an address on Rossmore and an apartment number. “Squad car’s on the way now.”
“Check and double check,” said Lieutenant Finch. “So am I.”
Interrupted calls can be serious. Ninety per cent of the time they mean a wild goose chase, but the other ten … Finch remembered the blonde strangled with the very telephone wire by which she’d tried to save herself. And she might have been revived if the police had responded more promptly.
Finch lost no time on this call; but he knew his haste was hopeless as soon as he saw the white-bearded old man. The knife had gone in on the left chest directly over the red-and-gold order pinned on the formal morning coat.
“He might regain consciousness for a moment,” the surgeon said. “but he’ll never pull through. Internal hemorrhage. Hopeless to try to move him.”
The old man’s breathing rattled around the room.
Finch sorted facts in his mind. One door from this study to the living-room where the boys from the squad car guarded the two visitors, who had disclaimed any knowledge of the attack in the study. Another door to the hall, spring-locked. Telephone jammed hurriedly on its cradle wrong-way-round. Knife handle of gem-studded gold, matching the cigaret box on the desk. Funny cigarets, with paper tubes on the end. Pictures all over the walls, some of them religious (ikons, did you call them?), some photographs (wasn’t that the Russian bass Chaliapin?), some painted portraits of men with beards and ceremonial robes.
A big shot, this old man, or had been. White Russian nobleman, at a guess, one of the few that got away with some money.
The rattle was louder, with a gasping effort added to it. Finch turned and saw that the old man’s eyes were open. The rheumy eyes moved questioningly from the phone to Finch, and the officer nodded.
“We came as soon as we could, but too late. You’ve got your chance, though. Tell us who stabbed you.”
The old man opened his mouth. Opened his beard, rather. You couldn’t see the mouth. Only a gasping rattle came out. His left hand jerked to his chest. His right was thrust out, fingers twitching.
Finch took a pad from the desk and laid it in the dying man’s lap. He put a pencil in the hungry fingers. “Write it down then. Who stabbed you?”
The old eyes knew what was coming in another second. The old fingers hastily traced two letters. Then the pencil slipped from them and rolled on the floor. The breathing rattle stopped, and the clatter of the pencil was loud in the still room. The eyes stayed open, but they knew nothing.
Finch looked at the pad and read aloud the two unmistakably clear capitals:
C.P.
“That’s that,” he said. “Now all we need to know is who has those initials.”
“I can tell you that,” said a full rich voice from the doorway.
Pfc Christopher Potter kissed his girl again. “I’m glad you made me see the old boy,” he said. “It was good knowing I’m back on speaking terms with Mother’s brother. And I can’t help liking him even if he stands for everything old and wrong.”
Judith rubbed her cheek against his. “I’m glad Russians don’t wear beards any more.”
“I’m not a Russian—not more than half, anyways. I’m not even a Communist any more since we got out of step with party line back in 1939. I gather Uncle Pierre began relenting when he heard about that. Though he’s even beginning to think there’s some good in Communists since they’ve put up such a magnificent defense of Holy Russia.”
“I’d like to see what a Count’s like. Take me to meet him now he likes you again, huh?”
“Sure thing. Tomorrow maybe. Meanwhile … sure you don’t want to go watch the parade with me?”
“A soldier on leave watching a parade! And they talk about sailors and rowboats!”
“But this ought to be good. They’re scheduled to march past Razumovsky’s little fascist nest. Might be a good brush-up, and I haven’t seen a firstrate fight since I became a fighting man. Want to come?”
“I told you. Typing. I’ve got to live until I begin getting my fifty a month from you and the government.”
“O.K. See you at lunch. And we can finish plans for wangling you that fifty.”
Her kiss was warm on his lips and her love was warm in his heart as Pfc Chris Potter walked out of the little bungalow. He was the last man on earth who expected to be slugged from behind and dumped unconscious into an automobile. And without even a chance for a fight.
Lieutenant Finch had trouble with the owner of the full rich voice who, as soon as he realized the old man was dead, had insisted on telephoning an Orthodox priest and commissioning the proper prayers, interspersing his request with lavish laments in Russian. Only when this was attended to would he identify the initials as those of the dead man’s nephew, from whom the old man had long been estranged, but who had visited him this morning.
It was slow work persuading him to go on to further identification of the corpse and, for that matter, of himself. Colonel Simon Razumovsky (at least he spelled it Simon, but pronounced it Seemyone) had a trim black beard that matched his voice and a military bearing that matched his title. He seemed also to have a highly skilled control over his emotions, which he turned on full force whenever Finch thought he was getting somewhere.
But gradually the facts began to emerge. The dead man was Count Pierre Ilitch Silianoff, as much a leader of the local White Russian colony as his aristocratic aloofness permitted him to be. Colonel Razumovsky was a leader of a more active sort, head of the Russian Defenders, a semi-military anti-communist organization which, Finch recalled, a friend of his in the F.B.I. had been keeping an eye on lately.
The other man in the living-room was Ben Frawley. Everybody in Los Angeles knew Ben Frawley’s thin dark face, his quiet sardonic manner that could blossom into such magnificent pyrotechnics at a meeting. The Red Squad had been trying to pin a rap on him for years, but now he was a respectable individual. Ever since he had organized the Friends of the Red Army, he had become a lion in the social circles which formerly would have shuddered away from him as a communist organizer.
Frawley told his story succinctly. “I’ve been here since nine. Came to see ‘His Excellency’ (his dry voice carefully implied the quotation marks) about the funds he’s been contributing to our organization. Good to know that there are some Russians who think their country is more important than political differences.”
Colonel Razumovsky obviously felt that the shoe fitted. He began to explode in two or three languages, but Finch shushed him.
“Chris Potter was here when I arrived,” Frawley went on. “Used to know Chris pretty well before he decided he was smarter than the Party. Our fascist friend here—the Colonel—showed up around nine-fifteen.”
This time Finch shushed the Colonel before he could get started.
“‘His Excellency’ came out at nine-thirty and said various things in Russian and hello to me in English. His vocabulary didn’t run much beyond that, but we got on somehow. Chris went back in with him, and the Colonel and I sat here glaring at each other until your radio-car showed up. That’s all I know.”
“You two were together from the time you saw the Count alive until the police came and found him stabbed?”
“We were,” the Colonel boomed.
“Horsefeathers,” Finch muttered under his breath. There couldn’t be collusion between these two sworn enemies. That alibi would stand up.
Colonel Razumovsky roared. He had picked up his brief-case, and Finch could see its lock cut neatly out of the leather.
“Complications,” he observed. “Anything missing?”
“We put each other in the cl
ear,” Frawley said. “So any objection to my going now? I’ve got to see some men about a parade.”
The Colonel looked up puzzled. “No…” he said slowly. “No, I do not think that anything is missing. This must have been accomplished on the street as I came here, and they plan later to …”
“‘They’?” Finch asked.
Razumovsky glared at the communist.
“Sure,” said Ben Frawley. “We’re full of low tricks, we are. Trouble with us is, we don’t like little pals of our friend in Berchtesgaden.”
“So it’s all tied down to this soldier nephew,” Finch said. “Has either of you any idea where I can find him?”
“Probably at Judith King’s.” Frawley gave the address. “Swell girl. Great loss to the movement when she and Chris walked out. But they couldn’t take discipline.”
“Discipline!” the Colonel snorted.
Finch left them to it.
The bed was the only furniture in the room in which Pfc Chris Potter awoke, and he was handcuffed to it. The window was beside him, but locked and giving out on a blank wall across the alley. His uniform was missing. Right at the moment it looked as though he was here for keeps.
His slugged head ached worse than it had when he miscalculated the width of a moat in basic training. He was suffering all the aftermath of a fight without the joy of having been in one. And it didn’t make sense.
G—2 had been what he was trying to get into, though there wasn’t much chance with his record as an ex-communist. If he’d made that, there might be some pattern to this situation. Officers in Intelligence might, he supposed, be kidnaped by Sinister Forces. But a plain ordinary Private First Class from the infantry …
A door opened behind the head of the bed. He couldn’t twist far enough to see the newcomer. A voice he had never heard said, “You understand that it will be best for you to confess the murder of your uncle.”
Chris jumped. The jerking movement hurt his wrists. He said, “Nuts. Uncle Pierre’s as alive as I am, and probably a damned sight more comfortable.”
“Stubborn,” said the voice.
“You’re not far wrong,” Chris admitted.
“We will try first what hunger and thirst will do,” the voice said.
The door shut.
Chris had been feeling neither hungry nor thirsty, but the very words began to call up both sensations. Which was annoying enough, but what really got at your back hackles was: What had that cheerful voice meant by first?
“But can’t you tell me what you want him for?”
Finch had been sizing up the girl while they talked. It seemed to him that she would always do the right thing according to her lights, and they’d be pretty good lights. He told her.
She took it well. There was a moment while her voice lost its easy coolness, but only a moment. “It’s absurd, of course,” she said. “And the best thing Chris can do is go along with you and face it out. I don’t know where he is right now, but he’s meeting me for lunch. You can come.”
“Thanks,” Finch said. “But I don’t know how absurd it is.” And he explained a little more, about initials and alibis.
Judith stared at him. It took her a minute to absorb the full implications. Then she said slowly, “He’s being railroaded. We used to talk about railroading in the Party. Railroading and cossacks—standard clichés. Now it’s real…”
“When you say cossack, smile.”
She did, with some effort. “You aren’t, are you? I guess the police aren’t all like the ones they send to break up picket lines. You … you can prove Chris is innocent, can’t you?”
Finch remembered when his own daughter had been flirting with the Y.C.L. and ashamed to admit her father’s profession. He remembered the socialist meetings of his own youth. Something about the girl and her ex-radical Private First Class …
“Miss King,” he said, “your soldier is guilty of murder on the evidence of two witnesses and a dying man’s statement. No ordinary policeman can possibly fail to believe that.”
“But maybe you’re not an ordinary policeman?”
“Horsefeathers! But,” Lieutenant Finch added, “I know one who isn’t.”
Finch had good reason to know that ex-Lieutenant Nick Noble was not an ordinary policeman. He’d been on the force back when Noble was its shining star, and he’d seen him disgraced and booted out on a political deal. He’d seen Noble sink lower and lower, to the level of any common skid row wino, but he knew how unimpaired the clicking accuracy of the Noble brain had remained.
It was an eccentric accuracy that functioned best on the unusual, the impossible, and its functioning provided Nick Noble with the only interest left in his life, outside of sherry. Time and again Finch had seen that accuracy find the one inevitable pattern in a chaotic problem that had stumped the whole department. The wiser men on the force knew when they needed this unofficial aid. There were certain cases that called for the services of the Screwball Division, L.A.P.D.
Judith frowned a little as she followed Finch into the Chula Negra. Her wrinkled nose seemed to say that the most devout proletarian sympathizer does not expect to find a brilliant detective in a cheap Mexican joint.
Her frown did not unwrinkle as they reached the third booth on the left and saw Nick Noble. Some winos are unmistakably red and bloated. This one was white and shriveled and just as unmistakable. His almost colorless blue eyes smiled a little as he saw Finch, and he lifted his water-glass of sherry in greeting.
“Hi, Nick,” said Finch. “This is Miss King.”
Noble’s voice was not much above a whisper. “Miss King.” He took half the glass at a swallow and shook his head. “No strength to it any more. War.” Then his eyes gleamed faintly as he asked, “Problem?”
“Sometime, Nick, I swear I’ll come here just to talk old times with you. But you’re right. This is a problem, and you like that better anyway. You don’t mind a corncob, Miss King?”
Between puffs on the rankest corncob outside a realistic novel of the Southern mountains, Lieutenant Finch explained the case of Count Pierre Ilitch Silianoff. When he had finished, Nick Noble sipped at his glass and asked, “Lab report?”
“No prints, of course. Time of death checks with phone call.”
“Will?”
“I called the lawyer. Estate formerly went to White Russian charities and Orthodox Church. A year ago the Count revised it to add sizable bequests to his nephew and the Friends of the Red Army. It’s quite an estate, I gather. Seems he saved the family jewels back in 1917, and when the Russians said jewels they meant jewels.”
Noble had heard Judith’s gasp.
“You didn’t know?” he asked.
“Heavens, no! I had no idea, and neither did Chris. I guess when Russian resistance began to stiffen so wonderfully, Uncle Pierre saw how unjust he’d been to his nephew. But I do wish he hadn’t… now.”
She didn’t need to explain that ‘now’ meant ‘now when it gives Chris such a motive.’ No one spoke for a moment. Noble’s pale eyes glazed over. When they came alive again, he beckoned for a waitress.
“Well, Nick? Any ideas?”
Thoughtfully Nick Noble swatted his nose. “Fly,” he explained to Judith. “Stays there.” There was no fly. “C. P.,” he murmured.
“I don’t see how you can get away from that,” Finch said. “Even you.”
“That,” Noble said carelessly. “That’s easy. At least one other … What’s that?”
That was the noise of a band coming down Main Street. It was playing a Red Army marching song. Judith recognized it as the magnificently prophetic Yesli zavtra voyna—If war comes tomorrow.
“That must be the parade Chris wanted to watch,” she said.
“And why,” Finch asked, “was he so anxious to watch a parade?”
“It’s the Friends of the Red Army. Tonight’s their big charity ball at the Shrine Auditorium. And they’re marching past Colonel Razumovsky’s. Chris thought there might be fireworks.”
“Frawley in this?” Noble asked.
“I think so. He would be.”
“Let’s look.” He slipped out of the booth and led the way to the street door.
It was a motley parade. The Junior League and the ILGWU marched together. They carried the flags of the United Nations and Gropper cartoons of Fascist leaders and portraits of Roosevelt and Stalin and banners with the hammer and sickle and USSR, in Roman and Cyrillic letters.
Noble watched the parade a bit, half-humming the stirring march, and then his eyes glazed again. When they came back to life they had a new glint in them. “How far to Razumovsky’s?” he asked.
“Couple of miles.”
“We can beat the parade on side streets. … Come on.”
“But you haven’t even seen Frawley yet.”
“Come on,” Nick Noble repeated.
Finch came. So, a bit more reluctantly, did Judith, with a set expression that said she was willing to try anything that might help Chris.
The voice from behind the bed explained that it and its friends had decided against torture.
“Nice of you,” said Chris. His lips felt unreasonably dry and swollen.
“We regret that the marks would show on your body.”
Chris tried to laugh. It’s hard with a parched throat.
“If you confess,” the voice went on, “you will have your chance to stand trial in open court. If not, you will be found as a suicide. That will be confession enough.”
The door shut again.
Chris had given up trying to figure out who held him here. Somebody had killed his uncle and was framing him. That somebody had an organization at his disposal. But what sort of an organization? Razumovsky’s Defenders? The Communist Party? It didn’t matter. What mattered was getting the hell out of here.
And while the voice talked of his body, he’d had the idea. Body … identification …
He worked his way up the bed-frame to which he was handcuffed until the back of his head felt the little knob at the top. He squirmed and twisted until his identification chain caught on the knob. Then he jerked forward.
Exeunt Murderers Page 6