Murder for Two (3 page)

“Hello,” Rosalind Taylor said. “Yes.” A long pause; then, in cool, level tones: “I'm afraid I'll be busy this evening.… I have an appointment at nine and another at nine-thirty.… I really can't say. Possibly, though I don't believe I care to discuss my husband with you then or any other time.”

Bang went the receiver and when Rosalind Taylor came out her face was grim and flushed at the cheekbones. She was looking at two slips of paper in her hand, one pink and one white, and for a moment did not seem to be aware of her company, but strode toward the windows, a thin, straight figure, almost mannish-looking in her tailored tweeds and short bob. Suddenly she turned, the tightness still about her mouth though she fashioned it into a smile.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “Will nine-thirty be all right for you? There's no point in your coming by for me; I'll meet you in front of Perry's place.” She glanced at the slips of paper and read an address off for Casey.

“May I come too?”

Karen Harding had moved up. Casey recognized the appeal in her voice but he tried to signal Rosalind to say no. He couldn't catch her eye. She examined the girl, pursed her lips, shrugged.

“All right,” she said. “If you like, though I won't promise you can stay. I don't want to get too involved, but—well, we'll see.”

“And you really think that you—that perhaps you can clear him?”

Rosalind Taylor smiled, her glance still speculating. “I can try.”

Karen Harding's young face lit up. “Oh,” she said, softly, and speaking more to herself than to them, “oh, if you only could.”

Casey just let his breath out slowly and cursed MacGrath. He didn't know why. He liked this girl and yet the feeling persisted that somehow she was going to gum things up for him.

The street was quiet and dark in the dim-out and after Casey had waited ten minutes he began to stamp up and down the walk, muttering under his breath.

“Does she think we're going to wait here all night?”

“She's probably been detained,” Karen Harding said.

“Maybe, maybe not,” Casey grumbled. “If she got a hot lead on something it would be just like her to chase after it without even bothering to phone me and say so. She always was an independent dame and— Hey!” he said suddenly.

He had moved a few feet down the street as he was speaking and when he turned to come back he saw a tiny and instantaneous red glow. Enough light filtered through the curtains of the house to glisten from the reflector of the flashgun in the girl's hand and he knew now what she had done.

“Let's see,” he said. “That was a blackout bulb, huh? It won't come out if you haven't got infra-red film.”

“I have though.” The girl moved to an ashcan in the areaway and deposited the used bulb. She was bareheaded, wearing a lightweight camel's-hair coat and brown and white sport pumps, and at her feet was a patent-leather handbag about the size of an attaché case.

Casey had noticed it at once when he picked her up but had not commented on it; now he realized that she was using it as a plate-case.

“I wanted to practice,” she said. “You told us all about how we could take pictures in the dark without any giveaway flash if we used these new bulbs and infra-red film, and so I thought I'd see.”

“Sure,” Casey said, his photographer's interest erasing his grumbling at Rosalind Taylor's tardiness. “Let's see what you've got there,” he said, and was already inspecting her equipment.

He could not see much but his fingers told him she had a Leica with a modern flashgun and reflector attached, and when he knelt and pried into the bag he found both kinds of flashbulbs and a chain tripod, an extra lens, an angle-view finder, an extra film magazine.

“This is nice stuff,” he said.

“It was my brother's.” The girl put the camera away and tucked the bag under her arm. “You don't think—I mean, perhaps Miss Taylor got here before we did. Do you think we should go up and see?”

Casey looked at his strapwatch, twisting it so he could get enough light to read it. It said 9:43. “Come on,” he said and led the girl up the high stone steps to the darkened entryway.

It was an old stone house, a
Rooms to Let
sign in the door. A light burned dimly at the foot of the stairs and when Casey had glanced at the cards on the doors on either side of the hall they started up, finding John Perry's room at the second floor rear.

Casey knocked and was about to knock again when the door opened. It did not swing wide but moved just enough to frame Perry's thin figure against the light of the room. That way the face was in shadow and behind the glasses Casey could not see the expression of the eyes though he saw them dart to Karen Harding.

“Oh,” John Perry said.

“Hello,” Casey said. “We were supposed to meet Rosalind Taylor out front. We thought maybe she'd come up.”

“No.” John Perry shook his head. “No, she hasn't.”

Five seconds ticked by silently.

“Aren't you going to ask us in, John?” Karen Harding said.

“Why—” Perry began, and right then Casey made up his mind. Somehow he knew that these two had once been in love, and he had an idea that feeling still remained in the girl. Somehow he could not face the awkwardness he knew would follow if they went in and waited. He would be out of place; he would be miserable sitting there watching them. So he said, abruptly:

“Never mind. If she comes, tell her we couldn't wait.” And with that he turned, took the girl's arm firmly, and started down the hall.

She started to say something but she didn't finish it. He saw her glance back over her shoulder, but she didn't protest. He heard the door close as they went down the stairs.

“We'll stop by her apartment,” he said when they started toward the Avenue, looking for a taxi, “and if she isn't there, to hell with it.”

On the ride down, Karen Harding was subdued and silent and Casey did not prompt her. He was uneasy over what had happened, annoyed that Rosalind Taylor had not appeared. It was her fault that Karen Harding had come and he felt as though he were holding the sack.

There was no one behind the desk in the apartment lobby. He glanced at his watch while they waited for the automatic elevator and it was then 9:55.

They got out at the third floor and as they started along the corridor Casey looked ahead. When he saw that the door of Rosalind Taylor's apartment stood part way open, something made him quicken his steps. Forgetting the girl with him, he barged through and into the little foyer, his plate-case banging his hip.

He was just entering the empty living-room when he heard the cry. It wasn't loud. It conveyed nothing except that a woman had made it—and from the office beyond.

He started for it, a prickly sensation crossing his shoulders, hearing a man's voice now but not understanding what it said; then he was in the doorway, seeing the bent figure of the man, the back turned, and beyond this a woman, her skirts hiked above her knees and something knotted about her silken ankles.

The plate-case slid from his shoulder and two silent steps brought Casey close. But he wasn't prepared for what he saw then, he wasn't prepared at all.

Beyond the bent shoulder of the man he found the upper part of the woman's face, the startled eyes, the black hair awry. And that was when surprise struck back at him, when he realized that this was not Rosalind Taylor on the floor but Helen MacKay.

After that he didn't think. He didn't ask questions, he just reached for the man's collar and jerked. The man unfolded and came up straight, struggling, trying to turn. He was young and chubby-faced and Casey spun him and reached out with his other hand.

“No,” Helen MacKay cried. “No, Flash! He's the night operator. He's not the one.”

Casey let go reluctantly and saw the youth pull himself together again. He looked at the girl. That's when he saw the taped wrists, the white patch, sticky at the edges and covering her mouth from cheek to cheek, where other tape had been. Not until then did he notice that the room had been thoroughly ransacked.

Chapter Three

T
HAT
W
OULD
B
E
M
URDER

F
OR PERHAPS FIVE SECONDS
Casey stood there, dark eyes taking in the night operator, the scattered papers, the opened drawers of the desk and filing-cabinet. Behind him he heard Karen Harding's hurried breathing, realized that they were all waiting for him to do something. He put aside the confusion in his mind and dropped to one knee beside Helen MacKay.

“Where's Taylor?” he demanded.

“I don't know. She left here quite a while ago. A half-hour or so.”

“What happened?”

“Two men came in. One came right after she'd gone. He had a gun and dark glasses, and about five minutes later a second one came—”

She went ahead in jerky, breathless sentences as Casey worked on the dampened, knotted towel on her ankles. When he had it free he looked at her wrists. Someone had done a job with inch-and-a-half adhesive. It wasn't very neat but it was smooth and tight. He guessed there were a good two yards of it wrapped about the wrists and he could see the teeth marks where Helen had tried to unwind it.

“I better cut this,” he said and got out his knife. He worked carefully, cutting the bandage in two halves. “You want to do it, or shall I?”

“You.”

“Hang on,” Casey said and got hold of one corner and ripped it free.

Helen caught her breath when the tape stripped the tiny hairs from her wrist but she made no other sound and held the other one for him to repeat the operation. When he had finished she rubbed the whitened skin for a second and felt her mouth and lips where the tape had been pulled away.

She got to her feet with Casey's help and when she had pulled down her skirt, and given a hitch to her girdle, her fingers strayed again to her mouth and now Casey noticed the discolored patch of skin at one side. He thought it looked as if she had been slapped, and hard.

“Damn them!” she said. “Oh, damn them!”

“One of them clip you?”

“With the back of his hand. I didn't have a chance and I guess I lost my head and yelled at him—”

She stopped suddenly, her lashes lifting as she stared at something beyond Casey. “Russ,” she said, and Casey turned and there in the doorway in back of Karen Harding was Russell Gifford, Rosalind Taylor's husband.

“What—” he said and stopped and tried again as he saw the disordered appearance of the room. “Mac! What's happened?”

Helen MacKay told him and this time Casey listened. When the man had come in, Helen had protested. She was, Casey knew, the kind who would, gun or no gun. She was beautiful and alluring and feminine, but there was a lot of determination in the set of her mouth and chin and she wasn't the kind that would take a pushing around without fighting back. This time, however, that was a mistake. The man cuffed her, knocking her down. She didn't know whether she had been knocked out or whether she had fainted but when she came to she was in the hall, her wrists and mouth taped and after that the second man had come.

Russell Gifford listened in open-mouthed amazement, a sandy-haired man of thirty-five or so, with a round, blue-eyed face and a carefully clipped mustache. He wore a dark topcoat now and held his hat in his hand, and as Helen's story unfolded, Casey began to wonder how Gifford happened to be here. He knew Gifford no longer lived with his wife, and he had heard that the fellow had an apartment of his own in the same building, which was logical in a way since the man acted as Rosalind Taylor's business manager. But why he should happen in now—

“I thought of the telephone right away,” Helen was saying, “but it took me a while to roll in here where I could get at it. I pulled it down on the floor by the cord. I couldn't talk, so I kept bumping the receiver arm with my forehead.”

She paused, her anger still riding her and her eyes flashing. “Then I realized that all I had to do was reach up and pull those strips off my mouth. There were three and when I got one off I could talk a little and kept asking Edward”—she indicated the night operator—“to come right up and bring a key. I had the others off before he got here—and right after that you came,” she said to Casey.

“But,” Russell Gifford said in slow bewilderment. “Why? What could they have wanted?”

“I don't know.” Helen MacKay looked about and suddenly began to straighten papers and close drawers, her anger unabated.

Russell Gifford put out an arm and stopped her. “What you need is a drink.”

“Come on, Mac,” Casey said when the girl seemed about to protest, and at that they all filed into the living-room.

Helen MacKay sat down and began to massage her wrists absently.

Edward, the night operator, cleared his throat. “Is it all right if I go now?”

Helen looked up, as though just remembering him. “Yes. Certainly, Edward. And thanks so much.”

“That's all right,” Edward said. He went to the door, hesitated. “Do—do you think I should ring the police?”

“The police?” Helen MacKay frowned. She looked at Casey and then at Edward. “I don't think so. I think we ought to wait until we've told Miss Taylor. She ought to know about it first, I think. By the way, Flash, where is she?”

Casey let his breath out slowly. This thing that had happened here was beyond him, but he hadn't forgotten about Rosalind Taylor. He watched Edward go out. It didn't help his uneasiness any when he tried to figure things out, so he said:

“That's what I asked you before. You said she went out.”

“Why, yes. About twenty-five after nine.” Helen MacKay looked surprised. “Wasn't she to meet you somewhere at nine-thirty?”

“She didn't show up.”

Helen MacKay made her red lips round. “Oh,” she said quietly, and now her anger went away and uncertainty replaced it.