Green Ace (9 page)

“Just what did Bagmann say he heard?”

“Says he heard loud music and people stamping around and dancing. That woke him and he looked at his watch. It was eight minutes after ten. Then he turned over and tried to go back to sleep and there was a tremendous crash.”

“That’s right!” chimed in Mrs. Fink. “So to shut him up I climbed upstairs and listened at the door, but I couldn’t hear anything. I knocked, and for a minute I thought I heard soft footsteps. Then I knocked again and sang out, ‘It’s only me, dearie!’ though, of course, Marika would have known who it was—she had nothing to do with the other tenants and I was the only person who would be likely to knock without ringing from the lobby.”

“You thought she was in, but wouldn’t come to the door?”

The woman nodded. “I was hoping that since I’d had the climb up three flights for nothing, maybe I’d drop in for a cup of tea and let Marika cast the cards for me like she did sometimes.”

“You fell for that stuff too?” Piper looked disgusted.

“And why not? She never charged me nothing, and she had the Gift, all right. Once she gave me a message about beware of a dark lady, and sure enough three weeks later a Spanish girl who’d just moved into 2B got arrested for peddling marijuana. And once Marika gave me a long shot at Pimlico, at least she told me it was a lucky day for number two and number five …”

“Okay.” The Inspector looked at his watch. “Go on, Mrs. Fink.”

“Well, when she didn’t answer the second knock, I said to myself—”

“Just tell us what you did.”

“I listened. And then I heard somebody on the other side of the door. They must have slid the bolt, because when I outs with my passkey and unlocks the door, I find it won’t open. Then a cold shiver runs up my back spine. So it’s happened, I says to myself. Somebody’s heard about her money, and got to her. Because it was no secret around the neighborhood that Marika paid everything in cash and had no truck whatever with banks.”

“She didn’t trust banks, not even with federal insurance of savings?”

“If you don’t put your money in a bank you don’t have to pay no income tax,” Mrs. Fink pointed out with deep worldly wisdom. “Once when I came to collect the rent, Marika went into her bedroom and I heard the rattle of a tin box and then she came out with the cash. So while I had my ear to the door I heard that same noise in the bedroom, like somebody in a desperate hurry fiddling with the lock. So I knew it really was a burglar.

“I screamed bloody murder and went down the stairs two, three steps at a time. Mr. Bagmann was just coming out of his door in a bathrobe to see what was the matter, and we both went down and woke up Roy, that’s my husband. We all went back through the basement and up the rear outside stair fast as ever we could. Marika’s kitchen door was wide-open and swinging in the wind, and all the lights were blazing. When I rushed in here and seen her flat on her back on the floor, weltering in a pool of blood and breathing her last, I said to myself—”

“Skip what you said!”

Mrs. Fink bridled. “Well, I bent over her and I heard her say ‘Mother’ with her last gasp. Then she gave up the ghost.”

The Inspector glared over his shoulder at Miss Withers, who had come out of her corner and was making frantic gestures. Then he turned to the sergeant, indicating Mrs. Fink. “Okay, take her downtown and after the statement’s typed up have her sign it. Then tomorrow let her look through the picture files, especially burglary and crimes of violence against women. Maybe she can pick out that nose for us.”

“Oscar,” whispered Miss Withers softly in his ear, “the woman is lying. Marika couldn’t have been conscious or lived more than a few seconds with her head bashed in.”

From the doorway came Mrs. Fink’s jibing “Wass you dere, Sharlie?”

Then at last Miss Withers and the weary Inspector were alone except for a uniformed cop who would be on guard here until relieved in the morning, and who already had his eye on an easy chair and was wishing they would be off.

“Nothing wrong with the Fink woman’s hearing,” remarked the schoolteacher thoughtfully. “Perhaps she really did hear the money-box being ransacked on the other side of a thick oak door and away off in the bedroom. But as for her recognizing the murderer in a rogue’s gallery photograph, I have my doubts. Try her on a picture of Jimmy Durante, or Cyrano de Bergerac or even Pinocchio.”

“There you go again, trying to make simple things complicated!” Piper exploded as he struggled into his topcoat. “This is an open-and-shut case if there ever was one, and well have the murderer in our hands inside of forty-eight hours. Mrs. Fink gave a good description of him, even if she did romanticize a little about Marika’s last moments. We know the killer was somebody Marika knew, or she’d never let him in. Probably a client—or maybe a boy friend because she wouldn’t have been dancing with a client. Anyway, he knew that she had a cache of dough around, and probably tried to borrow some. When she wouldn’t come across he grabbed up the crystal ball off the table and let her have it over the noggin. But she fell with such a loud crash she woke the tenant downstairs—”

“She fell right on top of the murderer’s head, which got knocked off in the struggle? Then he must have been wearing it at the time, even while they were dancing. Isn’t that a little unusual?”

“All right, so he was a roughneck. Murderers often are. When he heard the landlady at the door he shot the bolt and went right on, jimmied the cash-box or else found Marika’s keys, took one last look for the missing hat and then gave it up and raced down the back stairs.”

Miss Withers cocked her head. “And then he went out through the basement and past the landlady’s apartment? Funny he didn’t run into them.”

“No, the rear basement door is locked on the inside. And there isn’t any side deliveryway, these buildings are built flush. The only way he could go was over the back fences and out through one of the big apartment houses down the street. The fences are six feet high, which proves he was the athletic type. I was down in the court, and I’d hate to have to get over those in a hurry in the dark.”

Miss Withers nodded, with a pleasant smile. “It all sounds very plausible, Oscar. All you have to look for is a man about five feet eight, stocky, wearing thick glasses and with an extremely prominent nose. He’s an old friend of Marika’s, now desperately in need of money, who wears a hat probably bought out west somewhere, it has a touch of the ten-gallon style about it. He’s an athlete, perhaps even a strong-man or acrobat—”

“Why that? It wouldn’t take so much strength to swing that heavy crystal. Oh—you mean the fence.”

“Just a guess, Oscar. In the lower shelf of that bookcase are a lot of back copies of
Billboard
, the monthly magazine of the carnival and outdoor amusement world. That would imply that at one time Marika was in the business, perhaps working her act in a travelling show. Presumably she had friends in the profession, with whom she kept in touch.

“Attagirl!” cried the Inspector. “Now for once you’re being some help. I probably would have got around to looking at the stuff in those bookcases later, though.”

Miss Withers looked at him sadly, and shook her head. “It’s a nice hypothesis, Oscar. I’d like to accept your idea, principally because it relieves my conscience of any guilt for Marika’s death. But I can’t buy it.”

“What? Why not?”

“Because for one thing the description of the murderer couldn’t fit Riff Sprott, or Nils Bruner, or George Zotos, my three principal suspects in the Harrington murder.”

“I’ve got one headache already,” snapped Oscar Piper. “Two is too many.” He headed for the door, but the schoolteacher trotted after him.

“Seriously, Oscar—”

“Relax,” he told her. “We know all about those three boy friends of Midge Harrington’s. They all had alibis for the night she was killed.”

“They would—the murderer particularly.” They were going down the stairs. “Oscar?” cried the schoolteacher plaintively.

“Well, what? Oh, I suppose you want a ride home?”

“Nothing of the sort,” she snapped. “I just want you to have somebody ask Mrs. Fink, and her husband, and Mr. Bagmann, which one of them unbolted the front door of Marika’s apartment after they came in the back way and discovered the body.”

“Okay, okay, we’ll ask.”

“Because you see, I think your reconstruction of the crime gets A for effort but D-minus for accuracy. You forgot to look at the records piled beside Marika’s little phonograph, too.”

“Records, yet? Why should I care if she liked swing or bebop or waltzes?”

They came out the front door, into the comparatively fresh air of Manhattan. “Well, Oscar. I did look! The victrola was merely a tool of her trade, to supply what mediums use for mood music. There was only one type of record in the apartment, so if Marika had a last dance with the man who killed her, then they danced to some nice old-fashioned hymn tune such as
Abide with Me
or
Shall We Gather at the River
!”

“I will not die, I must not; I am contracted

To a young gentleman.”

—
John Webster

T
HE TELEPHONE, OR MORE
accurately Talleyrand’s hysterical yapping at the sound of its bell, awakened Miss Hildegarde Withers almost immediately after she had given her hair its requisite hundred strokes and laid her weary head on the pillow. But somehow it had changed from night to broad daylight.

The retired schoolma’am sat up straight in bed, her first emotion one of deep disappointment. There had been times in the past when she had gone to sleep involved in a Gordian knot of puzzlement and wakened in the morning with everything unsnarled and clear. But the watched subconscious never boils. This just hadn’t been one of her nights. Even her dreams—and by her generally ragged feeling she deduced that she had had some dandy nightmares—had not left so much as a hoofprint behind.

Poodle and telephone bell were rendering a discordant duet now, with Talley carrying the tenor. “Quiet, you noisy things!” Miss Withers commanded in her best classroom voice. There was a moment of silence, and then as she leaned back toward the pillow the whole thing resumed. She creaked to her feet, found her robe and slippers and went out into the living room, picking up the instrument as gingerly as if it had really been the rattlesnake it sounded like.

The call, of course, would be from the Inspector, suing for peace. It had been very foolish of her to flare up last night and march off alone down Ninety-sixth Street in search of a taxi, but sometimes the man was unnecessarily exasperating. Still, he had his points.

“Good morning, Oscar!” she answered the phone, with forced brightness.

But it wasn’t the Inspector. It was Natalie Rowan in something of a dither. “Oh, Miss Withers—I called you last night, only you weren’t home. But something’s happened since then. You’ve seen the papers?”

“Already?” sighed Miss Withers to herself. “No,” she admitted. “I haven’t had a chance to look at
The Times
yet.”

“But I mean the afternoon papers!” So was the schoolteacher again reminded that she lived in an impatient era when the afternoon dailies were almost out in time for breakfast. “I see you haven’t,” Natalie continued breathlessly. “But do you remember my telling you about Marika, the medium?”

“The wonderful little woman up on Ninety-sixth Street?” Miss Withers remembered. She would until her dying day recall her one glimpse of Marika with her head bashed in.

“Yes, she’s
dead
!” announced Natalie Rowan. “Murdered in cold blood.” She hesitated. “I guess that makes it all pretty hopeless, doesn’t it? The police will think I just made it up, about what she told me. And there goes the last chance of having another séance, getting contact with Emil and having him tell us who really
did
kill that girl!”

The schoolteacher did not entirely agree. “I’m afraid you overestimate the importance of spirit messages, at least in the eyes of the police. If anything is to be done in this terribly difficult situation, it will have to be done by the living. Your husband still has four days, and while there’s life there’s hope.”

“Yes, but—” Natalie sounded uncomforted. “It’s
so
disappointing! I’d been thinking that maybe we could have another séance or something and get all the suspects there on some pretext or other. Then we could have staged some sort of act that might make the murderer break down and confess, and it would all be over.”

“And it’s an idea,” admitted Miss Withers. “Though not a very original one. The person for whom we’re looking would certainly sense the trap. And I don’t think he’s the type to burst into tears and confess just because some ghostly voice said ‘Boo!’ at him.”

“But we have to do something!” cried Natalie desperately. “We can’t just wait—”

“Who,” inquired Miss Withers stiffly, “is waiting?”

“Oh, I don’t
know
! Maybe I should have hired private detectives, after all.”

“Perhaps you should,” admitted the schoolteacher with a slight chill in her voice. “I certainly have no objection. But having gone this far, I can’t let go. And I do think that I have one or two shots left in my locker. Besides, may I point out to you that something
has
been accomplished? A murderer who has been lying doggo for over a year has been forced to come out into the open and make another move, and I think that happened as a result of my needling one of our three suspects. I’m not prepared to say which one of them, at the moment!”

“What? You mean the same person killed Midge Harrington and Marika too?” Natalie’s voice was suddenly jubilant. “Then that
proves
Andy is innocent; they’ll have to set him free!”

“It’s not quite that simple,” admitted Miss Withers deflatingly. “The Inspector doesn’t seem as yet ready to accept my theory.”

“You—you
know
about the murder and everything?”

“A little, thanks to a lucky accident. But I learned that the police lean toward the conclusion that Marika was done away with by some thug after her money.”

“But Miss Withers, you’re close to the Inspector. Can’t you convince him—?”