Clues for Dr. Coffee, page 10
Ritter tried to avoid Ellen Dark’s eyes. He asked, “Were you wearing a red dress, Mrs. Dark?”
“Early this evening, yes. But not at midnight. I was in bed and asleep before eleven.”
Dr. Coffee looked closely at Mrs. Dark. Was it his imagination, or was it now the pupil of her left eye which was larger than the right? He asked, “Did you hear the shot, Mrs. Dark?”
“No, I didn’t. I must have been sleeping very soundly. I didn’t hear a thing. I didn’t hear the superintendent come in, either. And it took Lieutenant Ritter several minutes to wake me up.”
“Correct, Max?”
“She was dead to the world, all right,” Ritter said. And he thought: Or she’s a damned good actress.
Dr. Coffee stared straight into Ellen Dark’s eyes. The pupils were of the same size, now. No doubt about it. He asked, “Did you take a sedative before retiring tonight, Mrs. Dark?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“I noticed that there were some sleeping pills in your medicine chest.”
“Oh, those were Joe’s. My husband used to take one occasionally. I never took a sleeping pill in my life.”
“Let me handle this, Doc,” Ritter said. “I want you to get the whole picture first. Mrs. Dark, did you have a fight with your husband earlier in the evening?”
“No.” It was a flat statement of fact. No indignation, no emphasis.
“Didn’t you find out that your husband was running away with another woman? Didn’t you find him packing his suitcase and threaten to kill him?”
Ellen Dark shook her blonde head with what appeared to be genuine bewilderment.
“He wasn’t packing a suitcase when I went to bed,” she said. “He must have started after I fell asleep. But I have no idea where he was going or why.”
Ritter lit a cigarette and pointed the smoking match at the superintendent of the building.
“Pete,” he said, “tell me again what you heard.”
“Well,” said Pete, shifting his dead cigar from port to starboard, “I was in Three-A fixin’ a fuse—they got an air conditioner in their bedroom and it blows fuses like they was bubble gum—when I hear this Donnybrook goin’ on right upstairs. I ain’t no eavesdropper, but it’s a hot night and the windows is open, and I can’t help recognize voices. It’s Mr. and Mrs. Dark, goin’ at it hot and heavy. Yellin’ and shoutin’. I been super here nineteen years, lootenant, and I’m a discreet man, but I did hear a few words now and then. I remember Mrs. Dark’s voice yellin’, ‘All right, go ahead then—if you want to get killed.’”
“How about it, Mrs. Dark?” Ritter asked.
“I already explained it to you, lieutenant.”
“I want the doc to hear you tell it. Did you threaten your husband? Did you say, ‘Go ahead then, if you want to get killed.’?”
“I guess I said something like that,” said the blueeyed blonde ingenuously. “But it wasn’t a threat.”
“What was it, then?”
Ellen Dark smiled patiently. “I’ve always taken care of the finances in this house,” she said. “Joe is—was such an irresponsible person. Like a great big kid, really. We have joint bank accounts, but I keep the check stubs and passbooks balanced. Well, last evening I discovered that Joe had drawn out five thousand dollars from our savings account. He lied about it at first, but he finally admitted that he’s made a down payment on a private airplane—a two-seater Erie Eaglet. That started the argument that Pete overheard.”
“How did you know your husband was going to get killed?”
“Oh, I didn’tl Well, you see—” Mrs. Dark’s hands made a fluttery gesture—“Joe was a dreamer. He used to dream of doing things he knew he could never do. He was an accountant, you know—an auditor. He hated the boredom of it, the routine. He always said he wanted to be a pearl trader or a secret agent or an aviator. In the last war he enlisted in the Air Force, but he never got his wings. He cracked up a few times and they grounded him. They said he had no feel for flying. So naturally I got panicky when I found out he was buying his own plane. I told him he was a fool. I guess I shouted it. He shouted back that I cramped his style, that I treated him like a three-year-old, that I was destroying his freedom. That’s when I said, ‘Go ahead, then, if you want to get killed.’”
And that was all there was to the fight, Ellen Dark concluded. After that her husband had calmed down and admitted she was right. He had said he would try to get his money back in the morning. So they kissed and made up and he told her to go to bed, that it was probably just the heat. She was thirsty, so he made her a glass of lemonade and brought it to her in bed—
The gun? A war souvenir. Joe kept it in the drawer of the night table that stood between their twin beds. Yes, it was always loaded. No, he had no enemies that she knew of; it was just that he liked to imagine himself surrounded by constant danger. No, she didn’t know how it got out of the drawer. Someone took it while she was asleep, she supposed.
“The super says your front door was unlocked when he came up,” Ritter said. “Why? Don’t you usually keep your door locked?”
“Yes, but when I went downstairs for the afternoon mail, I left the door on the latch. I must have forgotten about it when I came back.”
Curious, Dan Coffee thought, that a simple straight-forward answer should immediately suggest suspicious alternatives. If Ellen Dark had denied that the door was unlocked, nobody would have wondered if she hadn’t deliberately unlatched it to create the impression that her husband had been killed by someone from outside the apartment; or that she had left it open for the murderer.…
But if Ellen Dark’s features seemed the very picture of forthrightness, those of Veronica Mollison, who had been sitting silently on the other bed with her silken legs crossed, wore an impassive mask. Dr. Coffee turned to her with a sudden question: “Do you own a red dress, Mrs. Mollison?”
“No. Oh, no. I look frightful in red.” It was first time the pathologist had heard Veronica’s voice and he found it pleasantly exciting. It was a warm, vibrant contralto. Now that he looked at her more closely, he found that it fitted her exactly: she was a warm, vibrant person, despite her apparent stolidity which melted as soon as she opened her lips. She must be still in her twenties, Dr. Coffee judged; her husband had left forty well behind him.
“Did you hear the shot, Mrs. Mollison?” the pathologist asked.
Veronica gave him a faint, quick smile that flickered out instantly. Her green eyes, however, continued to smile at him—knowingly, perhaps tauntingly. She said:
“No, I didn’t. I was in the bedroom, which is at the back of the apartment. The door was closed and the TV was on in the living room.”
“You were in the bedroom … preparing for bed?” asked Dr. Coffee, thoughtfully studying her trim Shantung tailleur.
“No, I’d just got home from the movies. My husband was at the fights, but he got home before I did. He was already in his pajamas watching TV. I’d scarcely taken off my hat when he came into the bedroom—that’s where the telephone is—to call the police. The squad cars started arriving before Frank had a chance to get dressed.”
Veronica lowered her long eyelashes until Dan Coffee could see just enough of her green eyes to know that they were looking at him—and still smiling secretly. He knew suddenly that he did not like her. There was no denying that she was an extremely attractive female and that she gave off an electronic aura capable of setting up endocrine disturbances at twenty paces. But he wouldn’t trust her as far as he could throw a centrifuge.
He made head signals to Max Ritter and led the way to the bathroom for a private conference.
“I think I know the answer, Max,” the pathologist said, “but I can’t give you a case that will stand up in court unless the coroner will let me do an autopsy. Where is Dr. Vane, by the way?”
“The coroner is attending a stag smoker of the Young Republicans Club,” the detective replied. “When I talk to him on the phone, he says he’ll be right over. That’s two hours ago.”
“The coroner will say no autopsy is necessary because the deceased obviously came to his death by gunshot wound. But I’ve got to know exactly what killed the man; where the bullet finally lodged. Your whole case may hinge on it.”
The pathologist opened the medicine cabinet and took down a bottle and two pillboxes. “May I put these in my pocket, Max? Legally?”
“Help yourself. Look, Doc, when the D.A. sees my report he’s going to insist on an indictment for Ellen Dark. What do I do?”
“Stall, Max, until I can finish the autopsy. Besides, I want Mrs. Dark to spend the rest of the night at Pasteur Hospital. Put a guard on her, if you want. But I’d like to investigate her hippus.”
“So would I, Doc.” Ritter grinned. “She’s sure got pretty ones.”
The pathologist gave his friend a withering look. “Hippus,” he explained, “is a clonic spasm of the pupils. I don’t know whether you noticed Mrs. Dark’s eyes while we were talking to her, but the pupils changed size several times. That could be the symptom of a nervous disorder, among other things. Anyhow, I want to make some tests.”
“Okay, Doc. She’s yours. Anything else?”
“I’ll do the autopsy first thing in the morning if you get permission. Meanwhile, find out what you can about the Mollisons.”
They stepped back into the bedroom, and Ritter said, “Get some clothes on, Mrs. Dark. We’re going places.”
“You—you’re arresting me?”
“Not exactly,” the detective said. “But you ain’t sleeping here tonight.”
The incredulous look of utter dismay in Ellen Dark’s face went straight to Dan Coffee’s heart. He knew precisely how Max Ritter felt about the case. He tried not to glance in Veronica Mollison’s direction as he left the room, but he sensed her green eyes following him.
At nine o’clock the next morning when Dr. Coffee returned from the autopsy room to his laboratory carrying several Mason jars and a white enameled pail, Max Ritter was waiting for him. The detective bore some resemblance to an object fished from the river on the third day. His jowls were dark with stubble and bags hung like orioles’ nests below his melancholy eyes.
“’Morning, Max,” said the pathologist. “No sleep at all?”
“No, but I got news.”
“Good or bad, Max?”
“Both,” said Ritter. “I find Ellen’s telling the truth about Dark buying a plane. That much is good. But the plane is bad because it means Ellen had one helluva motive for knocking off her lawful wedded husband. They tell me at the airport that Joe Dark learns to solo about a month ago, and since he got his ticket he’s been taking a cute little tomato up for a spin now and then. Yesterday Dark gives orders to gas up his crate because he’s hopping off into the wild blue yonder for a vacation. You know who the tomato is? I showed the boys at the airport a photo and—”
“I can guess,” Dr. Coffee broke in. “What did you learn about the Mollisons? What does he do for a living?”
“Clips coupons,” the detective said. “He’s got lots of stuff stashed away. Where it came from I ain’t sure, but it probably ain’t kosher. He used to live in Louisiana, so I get the New Orleans cops on the phone and they tell me he makes a pretty pile some years ago running guns in the Caribbean. Only he never gets caught and the statute of limitations runs out. So Mollison gets awful respectable and cautious and a tight man with a penny. He don’t run guns because he likes excitement but because he likes dough. And once he gets it, he’s going to be a solid citizen if it kills him.”
“What about Mrs. Mollison?”
“Veronica marries Mollison two-three years ago. Before that she does a lot of things, all different. Bathing beauty. Cowgirl in a rodeo. Stunt gal in Hollywood. Knife-thrower’s stooge in a carnival. Wac corporal—”
“The kind of girl,” mused Dr. Coffee, “who might be attracted to a gunrunner and repelled by a pipe-and-slippers homebody. Where are the Mollisons now?”
“Home,” Ritter said, “making depositions for a deputy D.A. I got Brody camped on their door mat. Do you think Joe Dark was running away with Veronica Mollison?”
“Definitely.”
“I was afraid of that.” Ritter shook his head. “The D.A. says, and I quote: ‘It must be obvious even to a cop that Ellen Dark shot her husband in a jealous rage when she found he was leaving her for another woman.’ The D.A. calls me every ten minutes to ask when he can get his hands on Ellen. I tell him she’s under hospital care and he can’t talk to her till you give the word. Too bad. She’s a nice little trick, but I guess I ought to know better than trust a demure little smile. I always was a sucker for baby-blue eyes, though. When do we toss her to the lions, Doc?”
“We don’t,” said Dr. Coffee.
“You mean she’s got an alibi in her hippus?”
“Chemical tests show that her hippus was caused by barbiturates,” the pathologist said, “probably administered by her husband in the lemonade. He wanted her to sleep soundly while he was packing to escape from her apron strings. It’s quite plausible that she should have slept through the shot and the subsequent hubbub. I’m even surprised she snapped out of it as quickly as she did.”
“Then who was the lady in red?”
“There wasn’t any, Max. Mollison was lying.”
“Can you prove that, Doc?”
“The autopsy proves it. The bullet entered the small of Dark’s back, smashed two lumbar vertebrae, followed an upward course to the left, perforated the pericardium and lodged in the heart. That means Dark could have lived a minute or so, as Mollison suggests. But it also means that the shot must have been fired from below the waist, or, as is more likely, by someone who found Dark bending over a suitcase—a person, let’s say, who came into the room through an unlatched door, saw a Walther pistol on the floor waiting to be packed with the shirts, shorts and handkerchiefs, and picked it up to fire into the back of the man who was going to run away with his wife. I assume that Mollison came home from the fights earlier than his wife expected and surprised the sultry Veronica all dressed up in her goingaway clothes and packing her own suitcase. I also suspect that he locked his wife in the bedroom while he stepped over to settle accounts with his romantic neighbor. Why else would the bedroom door be closed, as Mrs. Mollison says, on a stinking-hot night like last night?”
“You assume.” Ritter frowned dubiously. “But maybe the jury will assume that Mollison is telling the truth, that he really does see Dark at the window when the shot is fired; that there really is a woman in red, and that she can hold the gun low and fire upward, like you say; and that Dark walks back into the room and collapses like Mollison says.”
“Impossible, Max,” Dr. Coffee declared, “because the bullet that smashed the lumbar vertebrae severed the spinal cord. Dark was paralyzed instantly from the waist down. He couldn’t possibly have walked across the room from the window to the spot where the body was found.”
Max Ritter’s sigh of relief could have inflated a small weather balloon.
“I keep forgetting my high-school geometry.” He chuckled. “But ain’t there something about a triangle that I ought to remember in a case like this? The square on the hypotenuse…?”
“The square on the hypotenuse,” said Dr. Coffee, “is equal to the squares on the other two sides—except when the square is on the wrong side, Max. Or when one of the other squares owns a microscope and a few test tubes.”
Lieutenant Ritter reached for the telephone, then changed his mind. “Before I go out to pick up Mollison,” he said, “don’t you think we might go in and give the good word to the blue-eyed blonde?”
“The Square on the Hypotenuse” appeared in Ellery Queens Mystery Magazine under the title “So You Want to Get Killed.”
Calendar Girl
If kenneth wyman had been gathered to his fathers twentyfour hours sooner, he would have been quietly buried with few flowers, fewer tears, and no suspicion that he had been murdered. The coroner had signed him out as a case of heart failure. Even the insurance company which had written a $50,000 policy on his life was not fussy about how Wyman had died; it was when that mattered.
Kenneth Wyman had neglected to pay his last insurance premium. His policy had expired at midnight Wednesday, four hours after his wife Helen had last seen him alive. His body was not found until the early hours of Thursday morning. If Wyman had died after midnight, the company would refuse to pay the claim, even if the Widow Wyman cried her pretty little eyes out.
However, the claims adjuster for the Northbank agency of the insurance company was a fair-minded man, and he consulted Dr. Daniel Webster Coffee, chief pathologist for Pasteur Hospital, who occasionally did an autopsy for the company. Was it possible, the claims adjuster wanted to know, to determine scientifically whether death had occurred before midnight?
The tall, big-boned pathologist ran his fingers through his sandy hair. “I can try,” he said. “It would have been easier to establish the post-mortem interval if I’d seen the body when it was found this morning. But there’s a pretty fair chance that an autopsy will fix the time of death.”
“That’s just the trouble,” the adjuster said. “The widow refuses permission for an autopsy.”
Dr. Coffee set his jaw. “Then I’ll take the job,” he said, “including the job of getting permission.”
As a rule, Dr. Coffee had an intense dislike of insurance jobs with a widow’s mite at stake—if $50,000 could truthfully be called a mite. But he took the Wyman case without hesitation. Mrs. Wyman’s attitude whetted his curiosity and aroused his suspicions. Why did she object to an autopsy which might be her only chance to establish her claim to the insurance? Did she have positive knowledge that Wyman’s death had occurred after midnight? Or was she afraid an autopsy might reveal facts quite foreign to insurance?
Before he called on Helen Wyman, the pathologist made a few discreet inquiries about the dead man. He found that Kenneth Wyman was a journeyman photoengraver who had risen to be a master printer. He was half owner of Wyman & Prentiss, a small Northbank printing and lithographing firm which did a big business in girlie-girlie calendars. There had been some trouble with the postal authorities the year before, resulting in wholesale confiscations and the loss of some of their biggest customers—a disastrous year altogether. The current year’s calendars, however, by a decorous use of shadow and an extra layer of gauze in the right places, had re-established the right of Wyman & Prentiss to use the mails, and by the next year the firm expected to have recovered its lost business.
