The Philadelphia Murder Story (16 page)

“You’ll go whether she likes it or not, Dear Boy,” Abigail said. “I’ve had one of my guests murdered. I don’t intend to have the other thrown into prison by that astonishing man who carries Bloody Clothes around in Satchels.”

“Isn’t she wonderful?” Travis said. “Come on. I’ve got my car out here.” We went out the front door and down the steps. “What I’d like to know is what this is she’s saying about Malone’s fancy dress. I’d say Malone hasn’t had a fancy dress since he wore a sheet on Halloween.”

“Didn’t they talk about it last night?”

He shook his head, looking inquiringly at me.

“About Benjamin Franklin’s ghost turning up at the Curtis Building yesterday when Myron was—was murdered?”

He’d put the key in the lock. He turned and looked at me. “You don’t think you ought to go back to bed for an hour or two?” he asked with a grin. “Or am I crazy?”

“It’s someone else, I believe,” I said. “Captain Malone thought it was the watchman at the reception desk—he was the one who saw the ghost. Now that he’s found the raiments and they had blood on them, I gather, I guess he’s decided the ghost was real enough.”

He shook his head.

“Well, I don’t know what it means either,” I said. “But apparently the watchman wasn’t making it up entirely.”

As he opened the car door, the door of the brownstone house opened and Monk came out. He was in uniform, and looked very snappy except for the lined patches under his eyes.

He came over to us. “Where you guys going?”

“I’m taking Mrs. Latham to the police station for Aunt Abby,” Travis said.

Monk looked quickly at me. “Twelfth and Pine?”

I nodded.

“Give me a lift then, will you, Trav? I got a summons this morning too. I was going to ask if you thought you ought to go along, and then I thought I’d let them make the first move.”

“What does the judge think?”

They had both become serious all of a sudden.

“I don’t know,” Monk answered shortly. “I haven’t seen him since last night.”

“Maybe we’d better—”

At that moment a taxi came to a stop at the curb. I thought for a moment, seeing Sergeant Buck in it, that his colonel was there, too, but he wasn’t. Sergeant Buck got out, started toward the pink house, saw the three of us standing there, and came toward us. He advanced to within six paces, came to a formal halt, and gave the impression of not actually but still, in effect, saluting a commissioned officer.

“My orders, sir, were to accompany the lady to the police station at Twelfth and Pine,” he said. “Be there at nine-thirty, sir.”

Monk looked inquiringly at me.

“I’m going with Major Whitney and Mr. Elliot, sergeant,” I said. “You tell Colonel Primrose.”

Sergeant Buck didn’t actually take me by the scruff of the neck and put me into his taxi, but he got in himself, and when we turned out of Rittenhouse Square, he and the taxi were just behind us.

“What am I going to tell Captain Malone?” I asked.

“Just tell what happened,” Travis said with a shrug. “Don’t get yourself out on a limb. Malone’s a right sort of guy.”

“Shall I tell him about Mr. Toplady’s letter to Myron?”

We were sitting together in the front seat, Monk on my right. He gave me a sort of dig with his elbow.

“Of course, if you think it’s got anything to do with it,” Travis said.

“I might as well, I guess. Colonel Primrose will see him at the bank and tell him himself, probably.”

“I should think you could skip it,” Monk said shortly.

“We don’t want to see the judge—I mean, he’s got political enemies who’d give their eyeteeth to get anything they could use. Anyway, if I’m going to be your counsel, I don’t want to see Malone get you tied up in anything.”

“We don’t know the letter had anything to do with it,” Monk said stubbornly.

“Well, we’re not defending Toplady. It might be a good idea to put Malone on his trail.”

“I don’t want to do that,” I said. “I feel very sorry for him, someway.”

Travis smiled at me. “That’s the woman for you. Have you ever heard of a commodity called Justice?”

Monk Whitney stared out the window, his jaw tightening. He was thinking, I supposed, of a commodity called Justice that hadn’t been weighed out properly once before.

“I’d suggest, since this is a beginning anyway,” Travis said, “that you don’t volunteer any information. Just answer his questions and to hell with it. I don’t see what you’re worrying about.”

He didn’t, of course. Only Monk and I saw.

“The point is, when you start leaving things out, everybody leaves out something different and puts in what somebody else left out. Malone’s a smart cooky. Don’t let him fool you that he’s just a father confessor and we all hate crime. He loves it.”

He turned down 12th and over to Pine. It was a one-way street with shiny red patrol cars parked on both sides. The gaunt, shabby old building swarmed with activity.

We went up steps into a big bam of a room that had a magistrate’s bench along the wall facing the door and a lot of minor offenders waiting trial. There was an interested, curious silence as we came in. Travis said, “Captain Malone,” and we were ushered through a door at the left, up wooden stairs to the second floor, and along the corridor.

There was considerable activity up here too. They couldn’t find the key to the stand-up room, it appeared. Then an officer bellowed that the key to the stand-up room was in the cigar box in somebody’s desk. We were then conducted into a big room where there was a fenced-off row of chairs in front of the windows overlooking the street.

In the row of chairs was a row of editors of
The Saturday Evening Post
—at least there were two of them and the man from the reception desk, the man who had seen Benjamin Franklin. He was the most pleased looking of the three. I supposed, with absolutely everybody doubting his veracity, if not his sanity, he had reason to be. He also had an air of mildly beaming importance. I wondered for an instant if Captain Malone was planning a line-up of people dressed like Benjamin Franklin for him to look over. But that seemed a rather elaborate tour de force, and if Monk and both of the editors there were to be in the line-up, they’d have to have widely assorted sizes of breeches, stockings and coats.

Actually, Monk and one of the editors there could have worn the same clothes. They were both six feet tall and as brawny as a couple of stevedores. The other editor was Fred Nelson, the man who writes the
Post
editorials that
PM
doesn’t like. He looked very nervous indeed. He kept hunting for something in every pocket, pulling out letters and clippings, and mumbling, “I wondered where that was,” and putting them back where he’d forget them again, never seeing the pencil right on the arm of his chair till after he’d borrowed one from Pete Martin. It would have been amusing if a detective hadn’t been watching him out of the corner of his eye; not realizing, I imagined, that Mr. Nelson’s secretary spent her days finding filings for him and her nights worrying about whether he’d lose his brief case on the way to the office from St. David’s on the Main Line.

I thought Mr. Pete Martin looked nervous, too, but with a difference. He had bright blue eyes that could no doubt already see the lead of an article that, not being Pete Martin, I wouldn’t have the temerity to put in words for him. He was hunched down in his chair, his hands stuck in the pockets of his big camel’s-hair overcoat, his face slightly red, his grayish hair parted in the middle and somewhat disheveled.

No one would ever have taken either of them for a writer or editor, I thought. Mr. Nelson might have been up on a charge of being a bookie who had seen calmer days. Mr. Martin could have been a professional fullback who’d left the training table for cakes and ale. I don’t mean to imply for an instant, of course, that the fact they could easily have been taken for confidence men or horse dopers wasn’t entirely due to their immediate environment. All I mean is that if you get people into a police-station anteroom, they just naturally look as if it was surprising that they hadn’t been picked up a long time before. I’m sure that’s the way I looked, because I felt guiltier by the moment as I sat there waiting, and Monk too. It’s the way decent people look in the hands of the law.

The sharp contrast to all the rest of us was Travis, a professional, of course, and used to the machinations of the law, and, a moment later, Mr. Samuel Phelps, who came in with an immaculate respectability and a confidence in himself as a taxpayer who hired these people that made the rest of us look guiltier than hell, if I may be allowed language not permitted in police stations when ladies are present.

The sight of Monk Whitney sitting against the window ledge behind me caused a momentary ripple on the surface of Sam’s self-esteem, but it was only momentary.

“How do you do, Mrs. Latham,” he said. “Hello, Travis… Monk.” He went over to the detective at the railed-in desk. “I am Samuel Phelps,” he said. “I’ve got a busy day. Let Captain Malone know I’m here at once, please.”

“He’s busy right now,” the detective said. “Will you take your place? We’ll let him know you’re here.”

Sam came back. “Have you heard anything yet this morning?” he asked Travis.

“No. I just came for the ride.”

At that moment one of the detectives signaled the man who’d seen Benjamin Franklin, and he went in through a railed-off passage and into a back room. Sam frowned and looked at his watch.

“I’ve got to telephone the office,” Travis Elliot said. “If you’ll excuse me a minute. It looks like we’re all going to be here a while.”

He went out and downstairs. I saw Sergeant Buck move up where he could keep an eye on us.

“Mrs. Latham!”

I started as my name was called, and got up, dropped my bag and gloves, and caught my last pair of nylon stockings on a piece of wire my chair had been repaired with. If it had been a tactical delaying action instead of congenital awkwardness, it would have been brilliant, because it took long enough for me to gather up my truck for Travis to reappear in time to go in with me. I could see the detective watching me make a mental note:
Latham—nervous when called.

The only satisfaction I had, going in, was that it annoyed Sam.

“I have an important engagement at ten-fifteen,” he said.

Fred Nelson’s lower jaw worked a little sideways. “It’s with Captain Malone, mister,” he said.

Captain Malone was in a room as big as a hall closet. He got up from his seat behind the desk for an inch or so, and sat down again, looking at Travis with a faint smile.

“Hullo there, Elliot,” he said affably. “Mrs. Latham doesn’t trust us in Philadelphia, I guess.”

Travis grinned back at him. “Mrs. Whitney’s idea,” he said. “You outraged her so, carrying your disguise around, she wouldn’t let Mrs. Latham come alone.”

“Oh, you mean this.”

Captain Malone reached down by the side of his chair and took up a satchel. He brought out a suit of brown Colonial clothes—knee breeches and coat, freshly laundered white stock and tan waistcoat. He put it on the desk.

“What’s the butler’s name?” he inquired grimly.

Travis thought. “Beppo? That’s not his name. It’s Tchickvinski or something.”

“Well, if you can make him hear you, tell him I’m laying for him.” Captain Malone gave us a sour smile. “There was blood all over this. My wife wants me to find out how he did it. Not a trace left.”

“Where did you find this suit, captain?” I asked.

He thought it over a moment. “I don’t know any reason I shouldn’t tell you,” he said deliberately. “It was stuffed down in a filing cabinet in the office of one of the editors of
The Saturday Evening Post.
Mr. Frederic Nelson’s office on the fifth floor of the Curtis Building. Behind a lot of old
Racing Forms
and
Congressional Records.
The index card on the outside said Grade Labeling. I guess Mr. Nelson’s got some kind of private system. Anyway, that’s where I found it.”

“Oh,” I said.

“Where’d you think I found it?” he asked pleasantly.

“I didn’t know at all,” I said. “I just wondered.” But I was aware that my “Oh” had a relief in it that I had to be careful not to repeat.

“Well, sit down, both of you,” he said. “Clear those papers off the end of the table, Elliot. Can you perch there?” He turned back to me. “Mrs. Whitney tells me Kane came to her on your recommendation, Mrs. Latham.”

“Not exactly,” I said. “He asked me for an introduction, but he went ahead without it.”

“Why didn’t you give it to him?”

I didn’t like to say because I hadn’t seen Abigail Whitney since I’d week-ended in Philadelphia before I was married or that I wouldn’t have given Myron Kane an introduction as a house guest to my worst enemy. Fortunately I could still tell the legal truth.

“I was away when he wrote and asked me for it, and when I got home and got his note, he was already installed without it.”

“He was a pretty good friend of yours?”

“I’ve known him four or five years.”

“You didn’t come up to Mrs. Whitney’s just to be—”

I saw what he meant, and I must have flushed the color of a cabbage rose. It was true, in a sense, but not in the sense he meant.

I looked at Travis. We both of us saw what a beautiful chance it was to keep a rattling skeleton quietly in the closet and not have to drag it out by admitting the real reason. I smiled.

“Well,” I said, “I wouldn’t have come, probably, if he hadn’t been there.”

I trust heaven will forgive me. And I didn’t stop to think where it would lead.

“You’re a widow, aren’t you?” Captain Malone said benevolently. “Were you—I mean, you weren’t-—”

Travis helped him out, “You weren’t planning to marry Myron, were you?”

“Oh, no, indeed,” I said. “I’m forty-one. I’d hardly marry Myron.”

“Kane was forty-two. You’d have to have a better reason than that.”

I would never have thought of Myron, with his perennial glamour, as that old.

Captain Malone looked at me intently over the top of his glasses. I don’t believe he believed a word I’d said. He opened his desk drawer slowly. The newspaper-wrapped package with Monk’s handkerchief in it was untied already. He took it out carefully and put it on the desk.