The Dishonest Murderer Read online

  “She admits that?” Jerry asked.

  “Oh yes,” Bill said. “She’s very annoyed at Phipps for drugging her. She’s—well, she’s a chastened young woman. The police are her pals. Also, she’s not in any trouble herself, which makes her very happy, very cooperative.”

  “Listen,” Pam said. “I thought the senator wasn’t bribed.”

  “Right,” Bill said. “That’s why he got killed.” He took the time to finish his lobster. The others looked at him with indignation. He said the lobster was very good, and that he needed coffee.

  “With or without chloral hydrate?” Pam enquired, sweetly. Bill grinned at her.

  “Right,” he said. “These people—the Grainger people—had approached Phipps with a suggestion that the senator could be bribed. Phipps knew he couldn’t, but Phipps needed money. He said he would take it up with Kirkhill. He came back and said it was O.K., but that the senator couldn’t appear personally, of course. He said he would be intermediary. He convinced them. They began to pay off. Phipps just put it in his pocket.”

  “But he must have known—” Dorian said.

  Bill nodded. He said one would think so. But he said that it was undoubtedly one of those things people drifted into, without any idea how serious it would become, without any real idea that, in the end, there would have to be a payoff. Probably Phipps told himself, when he thought about it, that something would turn up—perhaps that the senator would, as senators sometimes do, find another cause to espouse, would lose interest in the Authority project. Or, perhaps, Phipps figured that, if worse came to the worst, he could merely tell the Grainger people to whistle for their money, realizing that they couldn’t do anything about it, having themselves singularly unclean hands.

  “Look,” Jerry North said, “are you going to be able to prove all this? Or any of it?”

  Bill shrugged. He said he hoped so. He admitted it might be difficult. He admitted a confession would help. He said they still might get one. “Because,” he said, “of the thirty-eight he had killed Smiley with. And his fingerprints are on the chloral bottle. And—we don’t really have to prove motive, you know. We don’t have to prove what it was about at bottom. Naturally, it helps if we can. And—we’ll get what we want from the Grainger people. We’ll have to make a trade. So for, they deny everything. But they’ve agreed to have the head of their legal bureau talk with the district attorney. They’ve even—well, they seem almost anxious. They’ll come through—to a degree. They won’t involve anybody important on their side, naturally. They’ll—they’ll throw somebody to the wolves. With the understanding that the wolves sniff him, don’t cat him. ‘Trusted executive—shocked he would enter into any such negotiations—naturally Mr. Grainger knew nothing of all this—would not have countenanced any—’ Well, you can figure it. The boy they throw to the wolves gets paid for it. We get what we want.”

  “You know this is going to happen?”

  “I’m morally certain,” Bill said. “All of this is a moral certainty. Except the rifling of the thirty-eight, the fingerprints, Miss Burnley’s willingness to testify that she had a drink with Phipps, found herself in his automobile three-fourths asleep, remembers being helped back to her apartment; except the chloral in the coffee; except what he said while Blake was listening.” Bill nodded as he catalogued. “Oh, we’ve got him,” he said. “A confession would merely be a helpful thing.”

  “The Grainger people to whistle—” Pam North prompted.

  “Right,” Bill said. “Well—I imagine he found out that they weren’t inclined to whistle. I imagine he found out there were some fairly tough people among them. Not Mr. Grainger, of course. Certainly not his son. But—somebody. I imagine he was told to produce, or else. And, at about the same time, Kirkhill told him to get together the data for another speech on the whole issue—a speech that went even further than those he had made previously. So Phipps had to start getting the data—really, writing—this speech which would prove that he’d been engaged in a double-cross—or that the senator had. But he didn’t figure he’d be able to convince anybody the senator had. So he had this ‘or else’ from the bribers on one side and whatever the senator would do to him on the other. Then it occurred to him that, with Kirkhill dead, it would all come out nicely. He could write another speech, in which Kirkhill did change his stand on the Authority, he could show it to the Grainger people, point out it wasn’t his fault if the senator got himself killed before he had the chance to change his coat—presto, everything fine. So he got the senator down on the East Side, filled him with chloral, got him out in the open, probably took him to the doorway—or, at least, followed him, waited around until he was sure the chief, as he called him, was finished. Went to the party. Probably he knew the senator had a bad heart, although it wasn’t very bad. Perhaps he didn’t, and counted on exposure. Either way, the plan worked.”

  “How did he get him down there? And—but of course, the why was merely to confuse everybody, to make you look in the wrong place.”

  “Right,” Bill said. “As to how—I think he told us. He used George—George’s existence, that is. Probably he went to Kirkhill with some story about George’s being in a bad jam, which might involve damaging publicity; went counting on Kirkhill’s tendency to go into situations with a kind of violent energy, and to do it personally. Kirkhill may have worked out the rest himself—the old clothes, so he wouldn’t be recognized by whoever he was going to meet—thought he was going to meet. I’d assume some plan to pay off whoever had George in this jam. I’d assume that this first meeting was supposed to be merely preliminary, perhaps with the senator posing as a kind of body-guard for Phipps. Maybe Phipps will give us the details, eventually. But it was something like that. The whole thing, as you say, Pam, being to make us look in the wrong place. When we don’t—when we don’t just write it off as the work of a thug—Phipps throws us a little of the truth. He throws us George. How was he to know that George had reformed? That George had a perfectly sound alibi?”

  There was a pause. Bill’s coffee arrived.

  “And Smiley was following the senator? Saw it?” Pam asked.

  Bill shook his head.

  “Smiley was following Phipps,” he said. “He’d got that far. Now that he’s decided it’s wise to know more, Smiley’s partner, Briggs, finds he can remember more. He remembers that Smiley was following Phipps. No doubt expecting Phipps to meet a payoff man from the Grainger outfit downtown. Briggs remembers that Smiley said something about Phipps’s having rented himself a hideout—actually it was a place where he and the senator could go, and the senator could change. Presumably, Smiley saw what happened, decided to shake down Phipps as well as the admiral—and got himself killed.”

  “And Phipps called you up?” Jerry said. “To tell you Smiley was murdered? Why?”

  Bill shrugged. He said Phipps would have to tell them that. At a guess, he had seen Mrs. Haven go into the building, hoped the police would catch her there.

  “She was there,” Bill said. “She admits that, now. And the elevator man recognized her. She found Smiley, as I thought all along. She—well, she ran. Still afraid it was her father. She called after him, found he wasn’t at home. Put two and two together and—well, came up with the wrong sum.”

  Bill drank his coffee. There was a period of silence.

  “Such a dishonest murderer,” Pam said. “Dishonest in so many ways.” She seemed a little annoyed. “I was tricked,” she said. She looked at Bill. “Of course,” she said, “I didn’t have Blake to tell me he was shaved when he shouldn’t have been.” She paused momentarily. “Blake’s nice,” she said. “Where is he?”

  At home, Bill told her. Presumably in bed. Bill sighed. Dorian looked at him, and he shook his head. “Have to go back,” he said. “Help the boys ask questions.” He sighed again. He started to get up.

  They all got up. They went out of the café at Charles, said good night to Hugo. Bill and Jerry turned to the checkstand for their hats and c
oats. Pam went up to the bar to tell Gus good night, and stopped.

  Sergeant William Blake was neither at home nor in bed. He was sitting at the end of the bar and he was talking very earnestly to his companion, who had hair of an unusual deep red, who seemed to be listening earnestly.

  Pam turned quickly back to the others. She began to talk rapidly about nothing in particular. He’s explaining how he happened to put his arms around her, Pam thought. She thought he ought to have the chance.

  Although actually, Pam thought, as she led the others out of the restaurant, I doubt whether it will be as hard to explain as I think he thinks it will. Pam, as the person in the lead, nodded to the doorman, who began to whistle.

  Because usually it isn’t, Pam North told herself, rounding off her thought, as she always liked to do.

  Turn the page to continue reading from the Mr. and Mrs. North Mysteries

  1

  Monday, May 23, 10:15 P.M. to 11:50 P.M.

  It is an inconsiderable street neither long nor wide, and it is appropriately modest. As if even further to shorten its length, it bends in the middle, abandoning a course which is roughly west by south to pursue one which is by a degree or two north of west. This sort of behavior on the part of streets is familiar enough to those who live in downtown New York, but many feel that West Kepp Street somewhat overdoes it. Those who live in West Kepp Street—there is no East Kepp Street, and so far as anyone knows there never was—speak of it with an odd mixture of fondness and apology; it is, they say, the funniest little street, and the hardest to find.

  It is, certainly, hard enough to find. Taxicab drivers who can go unerringly, and by one of the shorter routes, to the always somewhat preposterous intersection of West Fourth and West Twelfth Streets, are baffled when Kepp is mentioned. Taking strangers there, they pause to enquire the way of other hackers and even, as a last resort, of traffic patrolmen. Such enquiries are seldom satisfactorily answered, nor are residents of the neighborhood often much more helpful. They have heard of it; it is surely around here somewhere. It is over that way, probably; but perhaps, on the other hand, it is over this way. But then more often than not, they decide they probably are thinking of Gay Street, which also has a crook in it and runs from nowhere in particular to nowhere of importance.

  Homing Kepp Streeters do not, therefore, precisely reveal their destination to cab drivers or to friends who have agreed to drop them off. They assign a more comprehensible objective, a nearby landmark, and promise to guide from there; expecting valued guests, they commonly arrange to meet them at the nearest subway station and lead on by hand, as one living in the trackless suburbs will meet visitors at the white barn which cannot be missed (but often is) and is on your right just before you come to that series of forks which can in no manner be described.

  And having finally been led to West Kepp Street, visitors are unimpressed and, not wishing too much to offend local pride—there is nothing, not even West Kepp Street, of which someone cannot be proud—are apt to say hesitantly that it is a very quaint little street. But even this term, unaffirmative as it is, is not particularly applicable. West Kepp Street is not lined by crooked little houses, with window boxes and red doors. Patchin Place is much more quaint; Macdougal Alley has it all over West Kepp Street for oddity. The buildings on either side of West Kepp Street are four and five story tenements, most of them still with the indigenous stoops. They have, to be sure, been reconstructed internally, so that now instead of large inconvenient flats they contain, in most cases, small inconvenient apartments which are entered through a kitchenette.

  The street itself is absurdly narrow; two cars could hardly pass, even were two-way traffic allowed. Car owners living in West Kepp Street park, habitually, half on the sidewalks, which is manifestly illegal. But the police seldom visit West Kepp Street, which is otherwise generally law abiding. Firemen assigned to the nearest company sometimes shudder when they think of West Kepp Street, knowing that no hook-and-ladder could be got around the corner and that the buildings, in spite of their new fire resistant staircases, are merely waiting to go up in flames. But, so far, none of them ever has.

  All things considered, it would be difficult to find anywhere in New York a location less attractive to commercial enterprise than West Kepp Street. At both ends of it there are, to be sure, shops, but they front on streets which, by comparison, are thoroughfares and present their flanks only to West Kepp. Those one might expect. But halfway along West Kepp itself, and just where it bends (as an over-tall man stoops a little, to make himself less conspicuous) there is nevertheless a shop. It occupies the ground floor of one of the four story buildings, it is reached by going down three steps and in recent months it has been vacant. One may still see the sign it last bore: “J. K. Halder, Pets.” Curious people wandering through (and generally lost in) West Kepp Street stop to peer through the shop’s dusty front window, but they see nothing for their pains. There are no longer any pets in Mr. Halder’s pet shop, nor is there any longer Mr. Halder. The pets are elsewhere and so, of course, may Mr. Halder be. But he is no longer alive.

  He was alive at ten-fifteen on the night of May twenty-third. He left a cab at the eastern end of West Kepp Street and walked down the street to his shop. He was an erect, slim man and, although it was a warm evening, he wore a light topcoat over his dinner clothes and a suitable dark hat on his gray hair. He was seventy-two years old and recently had been feeling older than his years justified. He was not thinking about this at the moment; he was very annoyed about something else. He shook his head as he walked toward the shop and, once, said a few angry words. But there was nobody near enough to notice his shaking head, or to overhear his words, and this, as things turned out, was rather a pity.

  Mr. Halder went down the three steps and two cocker puppies in a pen in the window hurled themselves delightedly at the windowpane, pawing at it with earnest, ridiculous feet, opening pink mouths widely, emitting high-pitched, happy barks. In the pen next them a long-haired black kitten, awakened by this nonsense, stood up, arched her back, relaxed it and, with forepaws extended and clutching the floor, stretched it the other way. Having thus established that she was in working order, she moved over to the window, looked up at Mr. Halder, and opened her mouth. If she said anything, it was not audible through the glass.

  Mr. Halder unlocked the door and went into the shop, which at once became noisy. The black kitten pushed a paw between the wooden bars of her pen and attempted to reach Mr. Halder’s coat, meanwhile calling attention to herself as loudly as a small cat could. The cockers tried to jump out of their pen, bouncing hopefully against the bars, now and then falling down and not minding. From the shadows of the shop, which was deep, a variety of other sounds emerged.

  “Good evening,” Mr. Halder said, gravely, and turned on a center light. The variegated clamor increased. “Now now,” said Mr. Halder. “Now now.” The sounds did not abate.

  Without removing either hat or coat, Mr. Halder then began his rounds. He went first to the black kitten, in the pen nearest the door. He put down a hand and the kitten, hardly bothering to smell it, rubbed against the offered fingers and began to purr. “You’re a very pretty girl,” Mr. Halder assured her and went to the cockers in the next pen. The kitten walked along beside him until the mesh between the pens stopped her. She put her nose to the mesh and, thoughtfully, smelled dogs. Mr. Halder tumbled the puppies briefly and continued, followed by their barks, by their adoring brown eyes.

  Other pens, half a dozen of them, ran down one wall. Three dachshunds, almost full grown, were in the pen nearest the front of the shop and they stood up against the bars, shaking their rear ends furiously, holding their heads to be stroked. Mr. Halder obliged and spoke friendly words; he continued to the next pen, which held a single Siamese cat. The cat was waiting, sitting straight, black tail curled to the circle of the haunches. He was a young male; he spoke to Mr. Halder peremptorily, in a harsh voice. But then he rose and rubbed against the bars, pressing clo
sely against them. Mr. Halder scratched behind the pointed brown-black ears. The cat purred, much more resonantly than had the black long-hair.

  The third cage was empty; the fourth held a baby boxer and she, curled in the back of the cage, only raised her head when Mr. Halder stopped in front of her. “Poor girl,” he said, and she whimpered a little at his voice. “Nice girl, poor girl,” Mr. Halder said, but he did not touch her. Whatever ailed her, and the veterinarian was not yet certain, Mr. Halder wanted to do nothing to spread it. By tomorrow they would be able to tell whether the penicillin was working. Mr. Halder shook his head again, but this time in commiseration, not in anger. The next pen also was empty; the baby boxer was in isolation.

  Five kittens were piled in the last pen and these Mr. Halder very gently lifted, one by one, from the pen. He examined each in turn, stroking gently with a forefinger. They were too young for all this; they should still be with their mother. But their mother, after several years of wariness in traffic, had the week before proved herself not quite wary enough. If he could bring the kittens to healthy semi-maturity, Mr. Halder thought, he might be able to find foster homes for them. So far they seemed to be doing as well as could be expected. He put the last one back in the pile; it crawled over the others and dug itself in, sleepily.

  Mr. Halder then visited two small monkeys in a single cage in the rear of the shop and looked thoughtfully at a shrouded cage containing a parrot, but decided to let well enough alone. Now and then he almost wished somebody would buy the parrot. Mr. Halder took off his hat and coat and went out through the rear of the shop, entering the single room in which he lived. He tossed his hat and coat on the bed, went to a refrigerator for food and began to measure it out for the animals. Being young, they required bed-time snacks.