Time Off for Murder (9 page)

  "Who's this guy Peterson?" Detective Reese demanded. "He called four times in the afternoon."

  Struthers sighed: "He's a very difficult person."

  Mary consulted the diary. "He saw Miss Knight at half past two. Any idea what about?"

  Struthers shook his head. "The door was closed."

  "Neither he nor Miss Knight told you anything?"

  "No, of course not. Whatever it was he was very much upset about it. As he went out, I heard him say: 'I'm sick of the whole business. I get finished with it. I go back to Sweden.'"

  "A Garbo!"

  Struthers smiled sourly. "Whatever it was, I presume Miss Knight settled it for him. He's not been pestering the office."

Miss Carner took up the sheet again. "Mister Van Arsdale's morning call is here. Didn't Mister Rorke phone on Wednesday?"

  Struthers hesitated. His eyes seemed to narrow behind his
pince-nez.
"He did not call." His old reticence had returned. "Miss Knight does not tell me about her personal affairs. She does not wish me to discuss them."

  "Listen." Detective Reese was studying the man's face with puzzled curiosity. "You got to forget you're the perfect secretary. I told you that before. This is a serious business."

  "I know it." Struthers looked away. "But I can't help feeling Miss Knight will be back soon. I want to keep my job." He was whimpering now. "I want to do whatever she wanted me to do."

  "About Rorke," the detective persisted. "Did he call or didn't he?"

  "He didn't call. I never got a call from him till Thursday morning, when he asked about Miss Knight. . . She never told me her personal affairs. I'm telling you the truth, I really am." The man's distress was plain. "I never knew a thing about him until I read it in the papers today. I was sho - I was surprised…."

  "You were shocked, eh, that's what you started to say?"

  Struthers nodded.

  "Why were you shocked?" Detective Reese was ruthless. "Was it because you had some ideas about the lady yourself?"

  Amazement spread over Struthers' face. His mouth dropped open. "I never thought about a thing like that," he said. "I never thought about Miss Knight that way." He stood up, rigid with offended dignity. "Why, I have a family, sir. A wife and children."

  "O.K…. O.K." The detective turned genial again. "Forget it. It was just an idea. We know she talked to Rorke on Wednesday. He told us so himself. We know she was nuts about him. She put it in writing."

  "She might have called him herself, you know," Struthers suggested. "I wouldn't know about that. She didn't have to tell me what outgoing calls she made. Just kept a little pencil check of them on her desk calendar. There it is." A memorandum slip showed seven vertical lines and one diagonal. "There. Eight calls she made Wednesday. That's the way we check up the phone bill. She was very careful."

  "You're telling me?" Detective Reese agreed. "I did a Houdini on the desk. Her bills, her bank book, her income tax statement, her check book - everything's there. She even kept her balance straight. Plenty of dough. Knew where every penny went."

  "Let's assume that she called Rorke. It's altogether likely she did," Miss Carner interrupted. "I've got to get back to the store. So please let me ask the questions and save time. How about the incoming calls? Those you know about. You can tell us what they were, can't you? Who the people are? What their business was with Miss Knight?"

  Struthers' face was red, his manner flustered. "I'd much rather not," he began…. "Not that there's anything here to hide. But all these matters are confidential business. Very personal. I mean personal for the people involved." He was trying hard to make them understand. "A lawyer's business, I don't know whether you realize it, it's like a doctor's. People tell their troubles to lawyers. Things they don't want anyone else to find out."

  "And Miss Knight was a sort of doctor of other people's troubles?"

  He nodded. "She was rather wonderful that way. She took an interest in people. Take poor Mister Peterson. He didn't represent much business to the office. I believe he had a piece of property. Miss Knight had kept the bank from foreclosing it. Ever since his wife died - that must have been two years ago, at least, he kept coming in to talk over his troubles with Miss Knight. All his troubles, his health, his eyes, his rheumatism. Maybe he hadn't any other place to go to talk. And that Duda girl Miss Knight defended in the Bronx. You'd think Miss Knight was her mother. Wouldn't buy a dress without coming in here to ask her if it was all right."

  "Interesting, but not immediately important." Miss Carner looked at her wrist watch. "What about the report that Miss Knight was helping the District Attorney's office in the Nardello case?" she asked.

  Struthers scowled. "I don't know much about that," he said. "I had hoped she'd stay out of it. I mentioned my feelings about it to her. I know it was presumptuous of me…. But I'm older - that's something, isn't it?…But she went ahead. Said it was her duty….I don't think she was very deep in it. I know that she had a few conferences downtown at the District Attorney's. If you look back in the diary you'll find them noted down. She asked me to get the D.A. on the phone Wednesday afternoon…."

  "Did she reach him?"

  "No. He was out. I asked whether to call again. She said no, she'd contact him some other time."

  "What were her sources of information?"

  "I wouldn't know." Struthers' face puckered. "Unless it was through Sophie Duda."

  Detective Reese wrote in his little notebook "Find Sophie Duda" and said: "Any idea where the girl is now?"

  "I think so, sir. We have her address on file. She's got a job now, in Flatbush - a nursemaid."

  "She killed her own baby," Mary said wonderingly. "Yet people aren't afraid to hire her to mind theirs."

  "That was different." Struthers' voice had become gentle. "She was a victim in the whole thing, half crazy with fear. . . You must have read about it in the papers…. Miss Knight got her this job. The people know all about her. She's making good there. She's really a nice kid. Please don't frighten her, sir. She'd rather not be bothered by the police." His face seemed drawn and distressed. "People who've been in trouble once, don't like to be questioned by the police."

  "You'd know that, wouldn't you?" Johnny Reese said quietly.

  The secretary gripped the edge of the desk. His knuckles were white.

  "They don't like jury fixers in this town, do they, Clarkson?" Johnny Reese said. "When they catch them they send them up the river and they can't practise law any more, can they? The hair is gone. The glasses are new but the face hasn't changed. A funny spot to find you in, Clarkson. A hell of a funny spot."

  The secretary fumbled for a chair. He sagged into it. "I was wondering," he said hopelessly, "how soon somebody would realize it was."

  Mary Carner flashed an admiring nod toward the young detective. Then she turned back to Struthers. "Did Miss Knight know about your past?" she asked.

  The man nodded.

  "Yet she hired you for a reputable law office?

  Struthers' face was scarlet. "A man has a right to make a living, hasn't he?" he stammered. "One mistake - he doesn't have to starve forever for that. I don't think she regretted it. My knowledge of law, my experience, contacts. I was a great help to her." He bent forward. "Oh, I wish Miss Knight'd come back," he wailed. "There are so many things…It's all so difficult for me now."

***

Johnny Reese was exceedingly busy in the twenty-four hours which followed. He made a trip to Flatbush Monday afternoon and he dug a garden in Manhattan Tuesday morning.

  Out in Flatbush, he found an angry woman, in a soiled satin housecoat, shushing a crying baby in the disheveled living room of an over-dressed house.

  "Sophie. Don't talk to me about Sophie," the lady shrilled. "I might of known better. My kind heart. My good heart. That's all it was. My husband told me. 'Don't take a girl like that into the house,' he said, 'they're no good. None of them.' I should of listened to him. What can I do? I felt sorry for the girl. I gave her a chance. Believe me, I learned my lesson. I got four tables of bridge coming tonight. It's my turn for the club and I can't call it off. Look at the house. Look at how it looks. And I got sandwiches to make and an ice box cake to fix. Who's gonna do it?"

  "Don't look at me, lady. I can't bake a cake."

  "You're a friend of Sophie's, ain't you? I wish I could get my hands on her. That's all I want. Just to get my hands on her. Imagine what she did! She gets up in the morning and goes out to buy the rolls and newspaper and when I come down stairs I find the rolls and paper on the kitchen table and the change from a quarter and a letter. I'll show it to you. You can see what kind of a person your friend is…." From a wrinkled bit of wrapping paper, the housewife read aloud: "'I have to go away. I hope the baby is all right. Sophie.' That's all. No thanks. Nothing."

  "Do you owe her any wages?"

  "Say, who are you? What's it your business? Oh, a detective. She's in trouble again, huh? So that's it. I bet it's on account of the Knight case. That's it. She knows something." The woman shuddered. "Ooh my, I had a girl like that in the house. A murderer. A kidnapper. A God knows what."

  On Tuesday Johnny Reese wielded a shovel, with the assistance of two of his colleagues, until his hands were blistered, and every inch of the seven by twentyfive foot plot of earth in the rear of Lyman Knight's house was turned over. He viewed a choice agglomeration of rusted tin cans, old beef and chicken bones, stones and astonished insects, scuttling to shelter, and sweated under the angry reproach of the housekeeper.

  A uniformed policeman stood beside Agnes in the basement doorway. The woman glared at him. He maintained a bland neutrality.

  A second policeman stood at the front door. A cluster of the curious was at the curb, staring at the policeman and the silent house.

  Behind the darkened windows of the second floor, Lyman Knight lay in his bed, a vinegar soaked cloth on his forehead. He snored stertoriously, worn out by the tearful rage that had wracked him when the police diggers had appeared.

  Tip-toeing past his room, the detectives had gone, when their digging was done, up to the third floor, and down to the sub-basement. They had opened every closet. They had ransacked every trunk. They had peered into the furnace, raked over the ashes. They had tapped the walls. They had left the tracks of their number eleven shoes in the dust of the decades. But they had found not one single thing - no bloodstain, or sign of struggle or concealment - that might have given evidence of the fate of Phyllis Knight.

  On Tuesday evening, Johnny Reese called Miss Carner. "Excuse me, sister," he began, "I meant to keep you informed. But honest, I was too busy. I don't know why I do this anyway. Maybe it's because you told me about that Cerberus. Say, that hit the chief right between the eyes. Well, we done a lot of chasing around, but we're just where we started from. Plenty of mail. The whole United States is writing in, but not a thing you could stick your teeth into. I wish I could find that Sophie. I bet she knows something. But gees, it's plenty to be lookin' for one woman, without lookin' for two."

  Mary answered: "That was smart of you, recognizing Struthers."

  "That? That was nothing. Just old Tanglefoot Reese. Stick around, sister, you'll learn something about the detective business. And say, that's on the level about her going to the movies. That's exactly what she told Struthers - Clarkson - she was going to do."

***

On Wednesday evening Detective Reese, in person, not a telephone call, rang Miss Carner's apartment bell, to say: "It's all over. I was wrong and you was wrong," and "So long, hope I'll see you again sometime."

  "Come in and sit down a minute, Johnny. Tell me what's happened."

  Detective Reese put his hat down on the hall table, sat down on the living room couch. He took two glassine envelopes from his inside coat pocket, extracted two sheets of paper. "Read 'em," he said. "They come this morning."

  The writing Was the square back-hand of Phyllis Knight. One letter read:

  "Dear Saxon: I am appalled by this excitement over me. I beg you to do what you can to stop it. I have gone away because of something that had to be cleared up in my own mind. Don't worry about me. It will all be explained in good time. Phyllis."

  And the other:

  "Dear Struthers: Please close the office. I do not know when I shall return. Phyllis Knight."

  Both letters were dated "Tuesday."

  Mary laid the letters down on her table. She studied them thoughtfully. "The writing certainly looks like hers," she said. "The stationery isn't hers. It's the kind you'd buy in any ten-cent store. Where did they come from?"

  Detective Reese produced two envelopes, stamped alike, one addressed to Saxon Rorke, the other to Ben Struthers. "The postmark's Lambertyille, New Jersey. Last night. We sent a man right out there, as soon as the letters were turned in. It's not far, about a two hour run by car. Our man couldn't find a soul that had seen anybody that looked like Phyllis around the town. It's the one and only spot in the whole United States she ain't been reported seen."

  "She might have been passing through, of course."

  "Yep. I thought of that. She's been right near by all the time. Shows you."

"Did you check them for prints?"

  "Yep. Working on it all day. We've got plenty of the girl's prints. On that poem of hers, on her other things. But we didn't find none of them on these letters. That's got us worried a little. But you know how these things are. Sometimes you get prints and sometimes you don't. Struthers - Clarkson, he put a couple of his thumbs on it this morning when he handled it. And the other one. Smeary thumb. Maybe Rorke's. We ain't got none of his prints in the files. But the handwriting checks O.K. with the samples we got. It's her's all right."