Which Way to Die? (19 page)
Authors: Ellery Queen
“I tried to phone you earlier,” Baer complained. “They said you'd driven to Ossining. What's up?”
“Plenty. You busy?”
“Nothing I can't table.”
“Then I'll pick you up in twenty minutes.”
“Where we going?”
“The penthouse. Be waiting out front, will you?”
“What's this all about?”
But Corrigan hung up. He made one more call, to the Alstrom & Grant brokerage firm. When he got John M. Alstrom on the phone, he said, “There have been some developments in your son's case, Mr. Alstrom. Could you make it to the penthouse in about half an hour?”
“Of course. I wasn't planning to do much work today, anyhow. Gerry's funeral this morning ⦔ He sounded very old.
“I know, sir. I'd have been there, but this thing came up.”
“Can you tell me what it's about, Captain?”
“Let's wait till we're gathered in the penthouse.”
The elder Alstrom sighed. “All right. Half an hour.”
Corrigan had just hung up when someone knocked on his office door. He yelled, “Come in,” and Max Besser opened the door. “What do
you
want, Counselor?”
The lawyer laid a pair of legal documents on the desk. They were writs of habeas corpus.
“Changed your mind, I see, Counselor.”
“Yes,” Besser said, smiling. “We decided you can't break my clients' alibis after all.”
He had found out that the two floozy witnesses had disappeared, Corrigan thought. Yesterday the development would have irritated him. Now he was only amused.
“You wasted your time, Counselor,” he said, smiling back. “I was just about to order Benny's and Al's release.”
The lawyer looked surprised. “Oh? May I ask why?”
“You have some objection?”
“No, no,” Besser said. “I just wondered why the change of heart. If you have a heart, Captain.”
“I decided they weren't guilty,” Corrigan said. “Of course, I could be wrong.”
“My clients are never guilty.”
“We'll see,” Corrigan said.
24.
At Detention, Corrigan arranged for the release from custody of Benny Grubb and Al Jennings. He also checked out Betz in his own custody.
En route to Chuck Baer's office, Betz asked, “Where we going, Captain?”
“You'll know when we get there,” Corrigan snapped.
John Alstrom had already arrived when Corrigan, Baer, and the ex-chauffeur got to the penthouse. Alstrom was with Norma, Frank, and Elizabeth Grant in the living room. One of the uniformed men was standing by; the other was on the roof.
Baer looked mad. Corrigan rarely kept anything from him in a case in which he was involved, but this time the MOS man was as close-mouthed as a hood just advised of his constitutional rights. The big man plumped himself down beside Norma, glowering. Andy Betz took a chair off to one side, rather delicately, as befitted even an ex-chauffeur.
“I'll get straight to the point,” Corrigan said, his back to the fireplace, from where they were all within eyeshot. “I'm here this afternoon to make an arrest. The arrest of the murderer of Gerard Alstrom.”
Tension settled down. The only ones not affected were Baer, who was still sore, and the officer, who looked bored.
“But first,” Corrigan said, “the innocent parties deserve an explanation.”
“One moment, Captain,” Mrs. Grant shrilled. “You can't possibly mean that someone in this room killed Gerard. Yet that's what you're implying.”
“It's exactly what I mean, Mrs. Grant. Now, please, no interruptions. I'll cover the evidence point by point. Let's start,” Corrigan said, “with Andy over there.”
Betz started, as all eyes swiveled his way.
“Andy didn't know he was involving himself in a murder,” Corrigan said. “It wasn't until after Gerard was found dead that he realized how he had been used. The realization kicked him in the gut. He quit his job and went on a drunk. He could no longer face the family he had worked for for so many years.”
Betz's eyes began to look glazed; he seemed to shrink in his chair. Elizabeth Grant regarded him with total incomprehension.
“At first I thought the reason Andy was so upset was because his act had endangered Frank's lifeâhe has a complex about Frank, idolizes him. But it all suddenly fell into place last night while I was describing to Norma a rocket-belt demonstration Mr. Baer and I witnessed. I realized that what had really upset Andy was the shattering of his idol.”
“I don't think I follow this,” Alstrom said slowly.
“Let me go at this my way, Mr. Alstrom. Probably only two people in the world have believed all along that Frank and your son were innocent of Audrey Martello's murder four years ago. Mrs. Grant was one, and Andy was the other. Now, all of a sudden, Andy realized that the boys had killed Miss Martello after all.”
Mrs. Grant swelled with indignation. “The highest court in New York State said they weren't guilty, Captain Corrigan!” She turned her glare on Betz. “How did you come to that outrageous conclusion, Andy? I don't believe it!”
Betz said nothing.
“Simple deduction,” Corrigan said. “He concluded that Frank was a killer because he now knew that Frank had killed Gerard.”
They seemed to be hit by a Shockwave. Mrs. Grant gaped at Corrigan as if he had just mouthed an obscenity. Norma shrank from Frank as if he had turned into a snake. John Alstrom looked from Corrigan to Frank Grant and back again in absolute bewilderment.
Betz continued to stare miserably down at his hands.
It was Frank Grant who broke the silence. Impossibly, he laughed. “You're accusing me of breaking the laws of physics, Captain. You heard the killer run out on the roof while I was locked in the bathroom. Are you suggesting that I jumped from this roof to the one across the street with the rocket belt, ran down nine flights, ran across the street, took the elevator back to here, and somehow got myself back into the bathroomâall in the few seconds it took your buddy Baer to break through the bedroom door?”
“I'm suggesting no one ever used the rocket belt,” Corrigan said. “Some time between about eleven-thirty that night, when I happened to glance at the roof across the way, and one
A
.
M
., when the murder took place, Andy planted the belt on the roof for you. When he delivered the size twelve-and-a-half-D shoes I don't know. He could have sneaked them in to you at any time over a ten-day period. The shoes were a smart dodge, by the way. Harry Barber's shoe size is a matter of public record, and you knew he would be automatically suspected.” He glanced at Andy. “Where'd you get them, Andy? At some Goodwill store?”
Betz sat like stone.
Corrigan shrugged. “We'll find out. What tipped me was remembering the noise the rocket belt made in use. If a killer had actually jumped in it from across the street and back again, at that hour, we'd all of us have heard the jets.”
“From indoors, with the windows closed?” Frank Grant jeered. But the tip of his sharp nose was white.
“We still would have heard it. You didn't do your research thoroughly enough, Frank. The belt makes one hell of a racket.”
Baer said in a puzzled tone, “But how did he have time to do what he must have had to do, Tim, after killing Gerard? We were in that room in under a minute.”
“That was all an illusion, Chuck. Gerard had been dead for some time before we heard that first scream. The way I see it, Frank stabbed him while he was asleep; then he jimmied the lock of the French doors, put on the shoes Andy had smuggled to him, and planted the footprints. He dipped his hand in Gerard's blood to leave that bloody palm print on the wall, carefully smearing it so that there wouldn't be any identifying lines, then washed his hands in the bathroom. When everything was set, he let out that yell we thought came from Gerard, followed it with a yell in his own voice, and slammed the bathroom door from the bedroom side. When he heard us running up, he threw his shoulder against the bathroom door, dropped the knife, muttered a curse in an assumed voice, and stamped loudly toward the French door. Then he tiptoed back, went into the bathroom, locked it, took off his shoes, and hid themâI'd guess in the clothes hamper. Later, probably the first chance he safely got, he dropped the shoes down the incinerator, where they were found this morning. Tough break, FrankâI mean, no burning of trash but once a week. You didn't do your homework, pal. And you an A student.”
The silence was charged like a scuffed rug. Elizabeth Grant's expression would have defied Da Vinci. And John Alstrom was surveying his son's co-murderer and murderer with a great sickness; it was too, too much. Norma closed her eyes, as if to shut out the sight of an obscenity. And Andy Betz, for the first and only time, made a sound, a muffled sound, but a sound. It was a curse.
“Tim,” Norma murmured. “Tell me. For the love of God.
Why?
”
“Because he still wanted to commit the perfect crime,” Corrigan said. “Right, Frank?”
Frank's face was the color of plaster. But he had his voice under rigid control. “You can't prove any of this, fuzz. It's all speculation. Where's your evidence?”
“It's not all spec,” Corrigan said. “We've got the shoes, Frank. We've traced the murder weaponâSing Sing uses stainless steel tableware manufactured by the Black Cutlery Company of Buffalo in the mess hall, and the homemade dagger was ground down from a knife made by Black. I drove up to Sing Sing today, and the Warden had your prison pals questioned. One admitted seeing you make the knife in the machine shop. I don't know your original reason for making the knifeâa jail break?âbut when the Court of Appeals released you, you saved it for your perfect crime.”
Frank Grant disintegrated before their eyes. His face turned from white to red; his eyes bugged at Andy Betz.
“You talked!” he shrieked. “This dumb cop could never have doped it if you hadn't talked! It
was
the perfect crime, and now you've spoiled it, you've spoiled it ⦔
Elizabeth Grant fainted. As Norma and her father jumped for her, Corrigan nodded to the police officer, there were two clicks, and Frank Grant stared down at his wrists. Then he collapsed in the chair with a look of stricken disbelief, as if this were all a bad dream he was having that had suddenly taken on bones and flesh.
“Andy didn't talk, Frank,” Corrigan said softly. “He stayed loyal to you down to the wire. He even made a pretty intelligent try at turning suspicion away from you by falsely identifying one of Martello's mob as the man who paid him to get hold of the rocket belt. That's got to cost you, Andy.”
Andy Betz nodded, as if he had expected nothing less. But young Grant was beyond listening. He seemed far, far away.
Elizabeth Grant was sitting up now, eyes fluttering, making little groaning sounds. Norma was rubbing her wrists. The woman pushed her away, and Norma straightened up. She looked at Corrigan, and Corrigan looked at her.
“After all this, Tim,” Baer's voice said in his ear, “I owe you a night on the town. How about tonight?”
“Not tonight, Chuck,” Corrigan said.
Tonight was for Norma. And, God and Norma willing, his apartment.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1967 by Ellery Queen
Copyright renewed by Ellery Queen
Cover design by Kat Lee
ISBN: 978-1-5040-1994-1
This 2015 edition published by
MysteriousPress.com
/Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
345 Hudson Street
New York, NY 10014
EBOOKS BY ELLERY QUEEN
FROM
MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM
AND OPEN ROAD MEDIA
