Ellery Queen's Magicians of Mystery, page 9
“Good heavens! And such a nice girl, too!”
“Any idea who might have done it? Enemies or anything of that sort?”
“No. While she was here she was just as quiet and well-behaved as anyone could ask.”
“Know anything about her friends or relatives?”
“No, I don’t. I took over the place just before she moved out and—”
“We got some more recent stuff lined up, Bill,” Gilmer interposed. “Just wanted to make sure she was the party before I started following the other trails.”
“Her mother had died just before she moved out,” the apartment manager volunteered, “somewhere in—now, let me see. I think it was somewhere in Colorado. I remember she got a wire saying her mother was very low and she flew out, and then wrote me that her mother had passed away and that she’d stay for the funeral and move to another apartment when she got back, and she sent me two weeks’ rent and asked if that would be all right.”
“Know where that letter is?”
“I burned it.”
“About when was this?”
“Five or six months ago. I can look up the date when she left if you want.”
“I already have that,” Gilmer said to the sheriff. “It was in August.”
“That’s right,” the woman said. “I think it was August.”
Bill Eldon nodded to Gilmer. “Let’s go, Everett.”
They went to the telegraph office and wired the Denver police to consult statistical records and rush any information concerning a woman by the name of Dow who had died in Colorado within the last few months.
Then Chief Gilmer and Bill Eldon spent a couple of hours plodding along in the dull monotony of routine legwork, tracing Elizabeth Dow from one lodging house to another, finding where she had been employed and locating friends who had known her.
From this scattered pattern of information the sheriff and Gilmer pieced together a mosaic showing a clear picture of a young woman, vivacious, intelligent, alert, a steady, dependable worker, a loyal friend filled with the joy of life, yet respecting herself and commanding the respect of her friends. There had been one or two boy friends, but for the most part she had preferred a group of intimates to the more intimate companionship of boy friends. She had been employed as a cashier in a cafeteria. Her nimble fingers, quick eyes, and winning personality had made for adept efficiency as well as for popularity with customers.
The day before had been her day off, and about ten o’clock she had been seen with a young man who was strange to the girl’s set, although he had been seen with her off and on during the past week. The couple had sat for half an hour talking earnestly at a table in the cafeteria. And then Elizabeth Dow had got a cardboard container and put up a lunch—roast beef sandwiches, deviled eggs, crisp lettuce, and pie. Then she and the young man, a tall dark chap in Army uniform, had left the cafeteria. That had been around eleven. Neither one had been seen since.
At this point in the investigation a wire came in from the Denver police:
ELVIRA DOW AGED FIFTY-SIX DIED CORONARY THROMBOSIS AUGUST 23rd, BURIED HERE. FUNERAL ARRANGEMENTS MADE BY DAUGHTER ELIZABETH WHO REGISTERED HOTEL GIVING ADDRESS YOUR CITY.
“Well, Gilmer said, “that’s all there is to it. Find the man who was with her and you’ve got the murderer. You say there was waxed paper on the table in that old house?”
“That’s right.”
“Find this chap in uniform. That’ll be all there is to it.”
The sheriff reached for his battered sombrero and put it on. He started for the door, and then paused to regard the chief of police with thought-puckered eyes. “You know, Everett,” he said, “it may not be that simple. When you’ve been in office as long as I have you get so you pay more attention to people and less to clues.”
Rush Medford, the district attorney, stepped out from his private office to receive George Quinlan.
“Hello, George. I asked you to come up here because I wanted to talk with you—confidentially.”
Quinlan glanced significantly at the unlocked door of the reception office, then at the closed door of Medford’s private office. Medford, lowering his voice, went on hastily, “I have a man waiting in there, George. I want you to meet him. I want you to give him every bit of help you can. His name’s Walworth—Martin Walworth. Ever hear of him?”
Quinlan shook his head.
“Famous all over the state as a criminologist. He—”
“Oh, yes! I’ve heard of him. I place him now.”
The district attorney said confidentially, “I’m calling him in, George, at the suggestion of some very, very influential citizens. They feel that there’s a soft spot in the County administration. You know, old Bill prides himself on paying more attention to people’s reactions than to material evidence. Some whimsical eccentricity on his part that’s going to get us all into trouble one of these days. You know how it is when word gets around that the crowd in the courthouse has been in office too long. There’s always a tendency to make a clean sweep. And that takes in all of us.”
“What do you expect Walworth to do?” Quinlan asked.
The district attorney smiled. “I expect him to solve this mystery very quickly and very competently, demonstrating to the voters of this County the fact that the old hit-or-miss methods of investigating a crime are as obsolete as the horse and buggy. The modern criminologist uses scientific equipment and streamlined efficiency.”
“You mean you’re going to use him to show up the sheriff?”
“I mean I’m going to use him to solve the mystery.”
“The sheriff won’t like that,” Quinlan said.
“Of course he won’t like it. But there’s a murder to be solved, and the County has some rights. I certainly trust that you have no objections.”
“No,” Quinlan said, “I haven’t any objections.”
“Come on in,” Medford invited and opened the door of his private office.
Martin Walworth was a short-bodied, heavy-featured man with bushy eyebrows and huge spectacles. His round black pupils were pinpoints of perpetual scrutiny in the center of pale, steady eyes. He didn’t get up or shake hands when the district attorney performed the introduction.
“No weapon was found?” Walworth asked after a few preliminaries.
“No weapon,” Quinlan admitted.
“The autopsy seems to have been handled in rather a careless manner,” Walworth said. “However, I’m hopeful of getting a fairly good description of the murder weapon by an investigation which I shall make personally. There were no fingerprints whatever on the cigarette case?”
“None whatever.”
The criminologist’s eyes were stern with accusation. “Do I understand that the sheriff picked it up?”
“He said he picked it up.”
“But there were no fingerprints?”
“None.”
“Not latents that were smudged?”
“No. There were none.”
Walworth grunted. “Then someone wiped it,” he said, “wiped it clean—after the sheriff picked it up.”
“Looked as though it might have been wiped with something like a chamois skin, polished as smooth and slick as a whistle,” Quinlan admitted.
“After the sheriff picked it up.”
Quinlan nodded. “I guess it has to be that way.”
“But you didn’t say so,” the district attorney accused, “not until after Walworth pointed it out.”
“I didn’t volunteer any suggestions. The fact speaks for itself,” Quinlan said.
Walworth grunted, “And there were no tracks in the soft soil?”
“No tracks.”
“That, manifestly, is impossible.”
“You can see the photographs—”
“Photographs, bah! They are taken with a synchronized flash. That makes the picture flat as a pancake. The lighting should have been scientifically controlled.”
Quinlan said nothing.
“Obviously,” Walworth went on, “the fact in itself is impossible. Therefore someone is lying. It may be this Beckett.”
“It may be,” Quinlan admitted.
The district attorney interposed hastily, “Here in the country where a good many people know each other and—well, you have to be a little careful, you know, Mr. Walworth. Political consideration as well as a person’s integrity—”
“I understand,” Walworth said. “Is there any other evidence?”
Quinlan told him about the car which had driven into the field after the tractor had made its last trip out.
Walworth digested that information with the profound expression of a deep thinker. “This piece that was gouged out of the right front tire,” he said, “you say you used a piece of paper to get the outline of that?”
“Yes.”
“Where is that paper?”
Almost involuntarily, Quinlan’s hand dropped to his pocket.
Then he remembered. The triangular piece of paper had been in the pocket of the wet suit he had taken off to have sent to the cleaner. Because the paper had no weight, no bulk, he had overlooked it. To confess his negligence in this was unthinkable. He tried to keep his voice casual.
“I have it at home.”
Walworth’s comment was short and to the point.
“Get it,” he said, and then added disgustedly, “What a slipshod way of identifying a tire!”
Quinlan parked his car in front of his house and because he intended to start back for the courthouse almost at once, left the door open.
He walked across the sidewalk, turned to the right on the smaller walk which skirted the house, and went around to the back.
He entered quietly and climbed the stairs to his room. He wondered if his wife had made a careful search of his pockets in preparing the wet suit for the cleaners. If she hadn’t, could he get hold of the suit before the bit of paper was ruined?
Quinlan’s pulse gave an involuntary reaction to the relief he felt as he looked at the place on the top of his dresser which was reserved for his personal belongings. Every minute since his talk with the criminologist had been a thought-tortured nightmare of apprehension that the piece of paper might have been irrevocably lost. But there it was, lying on the dresser, a mud-soiled triangular slip of paper, silent tribute to the thorough-going loyalty of a steadfast helpmeet.
Quinlan picked up the paper, turned, and walked quietly back down the stairs.
From the living room he heard Beryl’s clear voice, remarkable for its low-pitched carrying power, saying into the telephone, “Will you please give me the long-distance rate to San Rodolpho—after seven o’clock at night, please. . .Twenty-five cents for three minutes?. . .Thank you, Operator, very much.”
Quinlan left the house by the back door. He noticed that his daughter’s car was parked in front of the garage—a jalopy she had picked up herself a couple of years ago.
She should sell that car, the deputy thought, looking at it without quite seeing it. Then a sudden discovery jarred George Quinlan’s mind into a new line of activity. He stood regarding a triangular nick in the right front tire, his eyes locked in a stare of incredulous dismay.
Almost mechanically Quinlan moved the few steps necessary to hold the triangular torn bit of paper over the gouged-out place in the tire.
The mud-stained triangle of paper his wife had carefully saved for him was a perfect pattern, just fitting the hole in the tire.
Quinlan straightened, holding the triangle of paper between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. The hand seemed strange to him.
Once, when he had been arresting a man charged with some minor crime, the prisoner had unexpectedly whirled and delivered a smashing punch to the side of Quinlan’s head. The blow had lashed out so fast and hard that not only had Quinlan failed to see it coming, but the smashing impact had, for the moment, robbed him of all memory. And as his senses had begun to struggle for orientation, he had fancied himself in the midst of a strange world wherein surroundings that should have been familiar failed to have any significance whatever.
Now, in the same way, Quinlan’s mind was reeling from the impact of his discovery. It seemed only last week that Beryl had been a baby, getting her first tooth—the worry over whooping cough—the starting of school—blossoming into a young woman—and now this.
Gradually Quinlan’s mind reasserted itself. There was Martin Walworth waiting at the courthouse with the district attorney for this triangular piece of paper. Walworth would make a life-size photograph. The Rockville Gazette would publish it. Everyone in the community from service-station attendants on down would be looking for an automobile with this triangular gouge in the tread of the right front tire.
His first instinctive desire being to protect Beryl, Quinlan thought of changing the tire and putting on the spare. Then he took a deep breath and let his faith in his daughter assert itself. Surely Beryl could have had no part in a murder! It was simply that there were things that needed explaining, and George Quinlan, man of action, had never been one to postpone that which needed doing. Slowly he turned and walked back to the house.
Beryl was crossing the kitchen as the deputy opened the back door. She glanced up and smiled casually. Then she caught his eyes and stopped in her tracks.
“Where’s your mother?”
“Upstairs. She’s coming down now. Why, Dad?”
“Come to the front room. I want to talk with you. I don’t want her to hear.”
Silently Beryl followed her father into the living room. George Quinlan indicated a chair, but Beryl didn’t sit down. Instead she remained standing, very trim, very erect, and very white.
“Your car,” Quinlan said with a gesture of weariness. “Last night, after the murder, did you go to the Higbee place?”
For a long moment she hesitated, and in that moment Quinlan knew the most awful suspense he had ever experienced. If she should lie to him now, it would rip his soul to shreds.
“Yes,” she said finally.
“Why?”
“I was. . .The sheriff telephoned. He asked me to look for you.”
George Quinlan ceased to be a father. He was now only a representative of the law, his eyes keeping a steady, insistent pressure on his daughter’s mind, his questions probing her thoughts. “What did the sheriff tell you?”
“Told me he’d found a cigarette case. He wanted you to take fingerprints.”
“Did he ask you to look for me?”
“He asked me where you were—asked me to try and find you.”
“And you went to the Higbee place?”
“Yes.”
“Looking for me?”
There was a pause, a pause long enough for George Quinlan to be conscious of his perspiring hands, of the hammering of his heart, but his eyes didn’t waver.
“No.”
“Why did you go there?”
“I went. . .Oh, Dad!” Her lips quivered at the edges, and tears swam into her eyes. Then the mouth became firm. She brushed aside the tears and met her father eye to eye. “I went there because I thought it was Roy’s cigarette case.”
“Was it?”
“I—I thought so.”
“Was it?”
“Apparently not.”
“What did you do?”
“I took a chamois skin from the car and wiped every single fingerprint off of it.”
“Why?”
“Because. . .because he had called me—and, well, he said it was from Fort Bixling, but I think now it was from San Rodolpho, and I. . .Dad, I don’t know why I did it. Don’t ask me why. I can’t tell you. All I know is that I thought I had a chance to protect Roy, and all of a sudden it seemed more important to me to do that than anything else on earth. I didn’t care if they killed me, I was going to protect him.”
A vast weariness settled on George Quinlan. This was the end of the trail so far as he was concerned. He was discredited, finished. “You say it wasn’t Roy’s cigarette case after all?”
“Dad, I don’t know. I can’t understand it. Roy was here this morning. I asked him for a cigarette and he acted just as naturally as could be. He reached into his pocket, took out the silver cigarette case and—and afterwards, when he’d gone, I suddenly realized that I hadn’t seen the engraving on it. He’d acted so completely offhand about the whole thing that it had put me off my guard. I—”
“Where’s Roy now?”
“At the hotel, I guess. He wanted to clean up and get a short sleep. He wants to come out here a little later.”
“Say nothing about this to him,” Quinlan said. “Say nothing about it to anyone.”
“Dad—I’m sorry.”
Quinlan looked at her as though she were some stranger in the house.
“Will it make much difference?” she asked.
For twenty years George Quinlan had been trying to stand between Beryl and life, trying to protect her, to ward off the blows that Fate might deal, telling little white lies when he thought those might be necessary to reassure her. Now, looking at her, he suddenly realized that the time for this had passed. She was a woman, not a child, and she had become a woman by reason of her own act.
“Will it, Dad? Will it make much difference?”
“Yes, it will,” Quinlan said and walked out, letting it go at that.
As he walked past Beryl’s automobile the thought occurred to Quinlan once more to change the tire on her car. He shook it off and walked out to where he had left the car. The door swinging open was a grim reminder of the extent of the gap which existed between his life of only a few minutes ago and the maelstrom of events into which he had been swept.
“George, oh, George!”
His wife was calling from the upstairs window.
Quinlan turned. “Yes, dear?”
“You’ll be home for dinner tonight?”
It needed only that homely touch to bring him back to realities. His answer was mechanical. “I don’t know, dear—yet. I’ll telephone.”
“Okay, let me know,” she called cheerily.
Quinlan got in the car. A new worry had entered his mind, the thought of what this would mean to Martha. A man might have enough resilience and dogged determination to slug his way through to a comeback, but Martha couldn’t take it. As the wife of the deputy she enjoyed a certain position in the social life of the community. People liked her for herself, but in addition there was the recognition of the importance of her husband’s position.
