A Most Immoral Murder Read online

  He came back and sat down again and looked at the face against the pillow. White, oh so white and frail, with great dark circles of tragedy under the eyes. There were tiny crow’s feet at the corner of the eyes and the muscles of cheek and throat had begun to droop. Here was no first flush of youth, but a woman in the indeterminate thirties. Over all the face there lay an expression of pain and weariness and beaten, broken effort. And yet with it all she was strangely, inexplicably beautiful.

  At nine o’clock that Wednesday morning Mrs. Parsons stood on the verandah with Pug and surveyed the ravages of the storm. It was very still now and her ear was cocked for any slightest sound from the room upstairs. At the pier at the foot of the lawn she could see Spike waiting for the ferry that was laboring toward the landing place on its first trip since Monday evening.

  “Quite a lot of passengers, seems like,” she commented as the ferry drew nearer and she could see a small knot of figures on the foredeck. “Maybe the Huddlestons are expecting company.”

  The ferry nudged against the pier, and the ferryman sprang out with his packet of mail. Mrs. Parsons could see him handing some of it to Spike. Then the little knot of figures on the foredeck swarmed over the landing platform. An excited movement in their arms and legs could be discerned even at a distance. Mrs. Parsons shaded her eyes with her hand and squinted the better to see.

  “Looks like maybe they’re friends of Mr. Tracy. He seems to know ’em.”

  She could see them now, standing in a ring around Spike. He was shaking hands with several of them and they seemed to be telling him something. They stood in confab for perhaps ten minutes. Then the group broke up. Three of the men went one way along the north shore and three others along the south shore. The ferryman climbed into his gently rocking boat and started back across the bay.

  Spike came toward the house, walking slowly, his forehead wrinkling as he scanned the newspaper he held in his hands. He mounted the steps of the verandah and for a moment stood looking strangely at Mrs. Parsons and Pug.

  “Why, Mr. Tracy, whatever is the mat—”

  He motioned her to silence. “Come on inside,” he said and led the way into the house. He closed the door carefully behind them, then faced the two puzzled creatures and spoke slowly, thoughtfully.

  “The ferryman says that he brought a passenger over here on his last trip Monday night about seven—a woman.”

  Mrs. Parsons’ anxious face lighted. “It must have been—her. Does he know who she is, where her folks are?”

  Spike shook his head. “He never saw her before. He says she seemed nervous and distraught. ‘All wild-like and terrible upset’ was the way he put it, and she gave him five dollars to bring her over.”

  “Did she say who she was coming to see? The Huddlestons, maybe?”

  “She didn’t say anything. And now—” He paused and again he eyed Mrs. Parsons and Pug as if he were weighing certain possibilities.

  “Those men you saw down there, the ones that came over on the ferry, are detectives from the New York police department. I know some of them. I—I lied like hell to them, and I expect—” He paused again and this time the gaze he held them with was a command. “—and I expect you two to do the same,” he said quietly, and spread the front page of the New York Post before them.

  FAMOUS STAMP COLLECTOR

  VICTIM OF STRANGE MURDER

  —————

  Prentice Crossley, Owner of Fortune in Stamps, Found in Fifth Avenue Home, Stabbed in the Back

  —————

  Linda Crossley, Granddaughter, Missing. Believed in Long Island Hide-out.

  —————

  And beside the screaming, ghastly headlines was a photograph. It was a woman of dark and tragic beauty, the woman who lay in the room upstairs.

  CHAPTER V - Enter—the Super-Sleuth

  THE WRITERS of murder fiction, the metropolitan press and the detective story magazines have been a powerful educational force. Thanks to them there is hardly a member of the general public today who doesn’t know exactly what to do before the police arrive.

  The average citizen confronted with a dead body isn’t even embarrassed. He knows that he must disturb nothing and call the police. He regrets his inability to suspend himself in midair and thus avoid the destruction of footprints and automobile tracks. He observes. The time? Are the windows open or closed? Was the door locked from the inside or the out? He sniffs avidly for the scent of some strange Oriental perfume, searches for a frail wisp of handkerchief, a cigarette stub ringed with rouge. Sex-appeal is as important in death as in life. A woman in the case may mean all the difference between the front page and interment next to the ads.

  He knows that as soon as the police arrive the servants will be questioned, and the body photographed. A horde of men will descend upon the murder chamber and dust its smooth surfaces with white powder and then foolishly blow it away with a tiny bellows. Fingerprints! There will be scientific looking chaps who will scrape up bits of dried blood stain, and confiscate the three strands of red hair found clutched in the dead hand.

  And presently there will appear a figure, rotund and jolly, whistling a sentimental hit from a Broadway show who will gaze down upon the corpse and toss off a bright quip about violent death. The medical examiner.

  And above them all will tower the super-sleuth. Oh so super!

  From the bit of cigar ash on the mantelpiece he will determine the last words of the deceased. A turned down corner of the desk blotter may be just a turned down corner of the desk blotter to the police, but to him it reveals the exact height of the murderer and the number of gold inlays in his teeth. With strange psychological insight he knows that the first parlor maid is lying when she says that the door to the library was open when she passed it at nine: forty-seven the previous night on her way downstairs to fill a hot-water bottle for cook who was having a twinge of her neuralgia, poor soul.

  Afterward, of course, there are the reports that are brought moist from typewriter, laboratory and morgue and laid on the desk of the district attorney.

  It was these reports that were still engaging District Attorney Tracy and Inspector Herschman as they sat in the district attorney’s office four days after the murder of Prentice Crossley.

  Inspector Herschman, head of the homicide squad, was built along the approved lines. The average citizen would spot him in a minute for what he was—a Headquarters dick, earnest but heavy-handed. In a detective story he would have made an ideal foil for the super-sleuth. Having worked himself up from a patrol beat on the sidewalks of New York, he knew intimately Willie the Wop, and Mike the Mick, but his acquaintance with the higher strata of society was limited. Stamp collectors, for instance, were terra incognita to him.

  “They don’t even call ’em that,” he complained to the district attorney as the two of them sat hunched over the reports, studying them for the tenth time. “They call ’em philatelists.”

  “That’s beside the point,” the district attorney said irritably. “What I want to know is what progress have you made?”

  “Well—we got the report from the men I sent out to Sark Island.”

  “Yes?”

  “They combed every inch of it and they didn’t find hide nor hair of the woman. And none of the people on the island did either. We questioned them all—a farmer family named Huddleston, and a Mrs. Parsons and—and your brother.”

  There was a short silence. The eyes of the two men met, then dropped swiftly, as if each was somewhat embarrassed by the mutual divination. The district attorney drummed on the table with nervous fingers and the inspector chewed at his unlit cigar. Presently he broke the silence.

  “Speaking of your brother,” he said with forced casualness, “it strikes me he’s—well, he’s a pretty bright fellow.”

  “At times; not always.”

  “Yeah, but—” The sentence trailed off into nothing. The inspector was thinking back to a certain famous case in which the police department h
ad covered itself with glory for the astuteness of its solution.1 Being at heart an essentially honest fellow his spirit if not his flesh blushed when he thought of the flattering things that had been said about the chief of the homicide squad, and all the time it was that young Spike…

  Again his eyes met those of the district attorney’s. “I was thinking,” he said, “that it might be a good idea if we were to…”

  “I have already,” the district attorney snapped as if unwilling to admit it. “He ought to be here now. I told him two o’clock, but of course, he’s never on time.”

  At three-thirty Spike arrived at the office of the district attorney. He rushed in with breathless cheerfulness, greeted Herschman genially and then turned to his brother.

  “Make it snappy, old dear. I’m on my way to a squash match up at the Racquet Club. What am I on the carpet for now—drinking, women or embezzlement?”

  The district attorney looked uncomfortable, pushed a box of large, fat cigars toward his brother, tried to smile and said, “Sit down, Philip.”

  “Can’t. I’m dashing.” But he took out his case, lit a cigarette and took a temporary seat on the corner of the desk. The district attorney cast a significant glance at the inspector.

  “We were—uh—just wondering, Mr. Tracy—”

  “Inspector! And after all we’ve been through together! Anyway, it’s mixing, with Richard here in the same room.”

  The inspector looked a bit embarrassed, substituted “Spike” for “Mr. Tracy,” and went on. “We were wondering if maybe you couldn’t—uh—well, in this Crossley murder case…”

  “Oh yes, I talked to your men yesterday. In fact I spent half the day helping them. We couldn’t find a trace of her. How come you tracked her to Sark Island?”

  “Her picture was published in the Tuesday morning papers, and the guy that runs the ferry recognized it and tipped us off. Said he took her over Monday night about seven.”

  “Well,” said Spike lightly, “she isn’t there now. She probably got hold of a boat somewhere Monday night and went back to the mainland before the storm broke and is now—” Suddenly he broke off, struck by an idea. “I wonder,” he said, “I just wonder.” For a moment he was thoughtful. Then he turned toward the district attorney.

  “My boat!” he said. “That motor launch I had. You know it, Richard. It was gone yesterday morning and I just assumed that it had broken away in the storm and drifted away. I had to row over to the mainland in the Huddleston’s row boat. That’s why I was so late. I bet she took the launch. Come to think of it, it seems to me I recall hearing a sound like a motor starting about eight o’clock Monday night. I didn’t pay much attention to it at the time, but now I remember.”

  “Listen,” and he turned excitedly to Herschman, “send out a description of her—Elso, twenty-four foot cruiser, engine number 47926, painted white with…”

  Herschman reached for the telephone, put through quick commands to his office, set in motion the vast network of a police broadcast, through radio and mail and telegraph. As he turned from the telephone, Spike gathered up his gloves and stick and tamped out his cigarette.

  “Well, I’ll be getting along. Glad I was able to help you a bit. If you find the boat let me know. I had to buy a new one this afternoon.”

  “But—but Philip!” The district attorney half rose from his chair. “We thought you might— perhaps—ah—”

  Spike looked innocently blank, and R. Montgomery Tracy floundered. It was Inspector Herschman who finally came to the point in the blunt, flatfooted manner in which years before he had pounded the sidewalks of New York.

  “Listen, Mr. Tra—Spike, here’s the idea. You were a big help on that last case we had. You know, Cecily Thane, and I understand you did pretty good with that Long Island case2 and that one up in Vermont.3 So now we want you in on this. See?”

  “Sorry, Inspector, and thanks for the kind words, but I couldn’t possibly. I’m much too busy.”

  The district attorney snorted in disdain. “Doing what, may I ask?”

  “I’m supposed to be at the Racquet Club this minute. I’m going out to dinner and the theater tonight, and afterward I’m going to a party from which I shall not probably recover for several days. It’s that kind.”

  “Now listen here, Spike.” The inspector was roused, and he bore down upon him in his third degree manner. As a matter of fact the ordeal to which Mr. Philip Tracy was subjected in the fifteen minutes that followed was not entirely unlike some of the more violent bludgeonings of the police department. At any rate he emerged at the end of half an hour only because, with a sigh of exhaustion, he gave way—slightly.

  “All right, all right,” he said irritably. “Give me your damn reports and I’ll take ’em home tonight and read ’em over while I’m dressing, and if I’m in any condition tomorrow I’ll drop in. But I won’t guarantee anything. It’s going to be a tough party.” He reached for the typed copies of the reports that lay on the district attorney’s desk, stuffed them into his pocket and escaped from the inquisition.

  He hailed a taxi in front of Police Headquarters, but the address he gave the driver was not that of the Racquet Club. It was his own town apartment on East 102nd Street. He leaned back against the leather cushions, reached a hand into the breast pocket in which he carried the police department reports, and grinned with satisfaction. Then he glanced apprehensively at his watch. Pug was to call him at six.

  But the cab made good time and he had almost ten minutes to spare before the telephone rang. “Long distance, calling Mr. Tracy.” And presently Pug’s voice came over the wire.

  “Everything’s O. K. I mean it’s just the same.”

  “She conscious yet?”

  “No. She don’t toss around and moan so much, but she ain’t conscious.”

  “Where are you calling from?”

  “Hollis. If I’d called from Saugus all them hicks would be listenin’ in.”

  “Good boy, Pug! Now get this. Go out tonight and pick up any wreckage of the launch that you find on the beach and bury it. And then if anybody asks you what happened to the launch, look dumb and say somebody must have stolen it—that it disappeared Monday night, before the storm. See?”

  “I don’t see, but it’s O.K. Anything else?”

  “If I’m not out tomorrow, call me at the same time, same place.”

  “O.K.”

  Spike ate his dinner at a tiny basement restaurant near his apartment. Then he came home and studied the reports, read them, re-read them, paced the floor, smoked countless cigarettes. It was one o’clock before he finally turned out the light, and sank into a restless sleep.

  At his home in the Bronx, Inspector Herschman slept soundly for the first time in three nights.

  At the summer residence of the district attorney in Saugus, the district attorney remarked irritably to his wife, “Philip is not always a fool, but at least he’s always irritating.”

  And in the dim, lamplit upper room on Sark Island, Linda Crossley tossed in troubled stupor.

  CHAPTER VI - Dull But Necessary

  EVERY ROSE has its thorn.

  Into each life some rain must fall.

  Comes a time in the course of even the best of murders when things get awfully slow. Facts… the minutiae of checks and counter-checks… the distance from the door to the window and back to the fireplace… and who heard the clock strike ten?

  The reader must resign himself to a bit of tough going. It’s dull but necessary.

  Although Spike spent three hours of troubled concentration on the reports which he had taken from the district attorney’s office that afternoon, the gist of them can be put down here in a few pages.

  At eight o’clock on Monday morning, June 5, Kathryn Dennis, for four years second maid in the home of Prentice Crossley, entered the library for the daily straightening, and discovered her employer lying hunched over the library table. The dressing gown he wore was maroon, and the dark stain down the back was not immed
iately noticeable. One hand was outstretched, the fingers half tensed. She thought at first he was asleep. Then she realized that he was dead.

  At her summons the police had arrived some twenty minutes later. Kathryn and her fellow servant, Annie Farley, the cook, had been questioned. They stated that the last time they had seen Prentice Crossley alive had been on the previous evening, Sunday, about eight: thirty. They had a sudden impulse to attend a Sunday evening movie, so together they had gone to the library and asked his permission to absent themselves from the house that evening. He had assented, and they had left by the front door. As they went out they had seen Linda Crossley, granddaughter of Prentice Crossley, come down the stairs and enter the library.

  They had returned to the house at eleven: thirty and had entered by the servants’ entrance under the brownstone stoop. They had not noticed whether the light was burning in the library. In going to their own rooms on the top floor of the house they had used the rear stairway so they had not passed the door of the library on the first floor, nor the door to Linda Crossley’s bedroom on the second floor. They had gone directly to bed and had heard no sounds during the night. In the morning, after Kathryn had discovered her employer dead, they had gone to Linda Crossley’s room to inform her of the tragedy. Her room was empty. The bed had not been slept in.

  The two servants had refused to remain in the house, even with the police there, and had gone to stay with a cousin of Kathryn Dennis in Yonkers.

  The photographs of Prentice Crossley’s library showed a large glass-topped desk in the center of the room, and behind it a small safe. It was across the desk that the body was found sprawled. It was in the safe that Prentice Crossley was reputed to have kept his famous and valuable collection of stamps.

  The report of the fingerprint experts showed that there were no fingerprints on the safe. On the glass-topped desk there were many, mostly Crossley’s own. But along the right edge there were the distinct marks of a different set of prints—prints which corresponded exactly with those found in the granddaughter’s bedroom upstairs, on dressing table, toilet articles and desk accessories.