The Wrong Murder Read online

  * Eight Faces at Three.

  † The Corpse Steps Out.

  Chapter Three

  Afterward Jake could remember how, at that casual remark from Mona McClane, his mind had seemed to snap into focus, like a camera that had been improperly adjusted before. The whole day, from its moment of waking, had been hazy and unreal, somehow dreamlike; he had been only half conscious of sights and sounds and words.

  Mona McClane’s voice cut into his thoughts sharply, clearing his mind of its fog. For the first time he became completely aware of the room around him and of the people in it. He noticed, and was to remember forever, how the snow was falling softly, almost lazily, in a thinnish veil past the wide window just behind Mona McClane.

  Jake knew that the woman meant it. Everyone else in the room laughed politely and appreciatively and leaned a little closer to catch what that clever Mona McClane might say next. But Jake knew it hadn’t been one of those soap bubbles of polite conversation tossed in the air to be blown back and forth until it finally collapsed. He knew, and he didn’t care.

  He emptied his cocktail glass and set it down on the table beside him. “Well,” he said, “why don’t you murder somebody? Who’s stopping you?”

  “I intend to,” Mona McClane said. There wasn’t a flicker of expression on her pointed face.

  “Anyone in particular?” Jake asked.

  Mona McClane shrugged her narrow shoulders. “The identity of the victim isn’t important, is it? When you’re hunting elephants, you don’t ask the name of the elephant before you shoot, do you?”

  Everyone laughed except the tall, flamboyant Daphne Sanders.

  “A new kind of big-game hunt?” Willis Sanders suggested.

  Mona McClane lifted her shoulders again, lightly, carelessly. “Not exactly. It’s a little hard to explain.”

  “Then why bother?” said the thin, reedy voice of Fleurette Sanders. “We can all imagine your wanting to murder someone, Mona darling.”

  The woman sitting near Mona McClane giggled. Jake thought she was a little vague about what was going on, but she was certainly enjoying it. She was an ordinary-looking, dowdy little woman in a badly fitting flowered print dress, with graying hair that straggled down the back of her neck. A Mrs. Ogletree, he remembered. Helene had warned him that she was a walking gossip column.

  John J. Malone aimed an installment of cigar ash at the tray and missed by a good three inches. “There’s a difference,” he said, “between just wanting to murder, and wanting to murder someone.”

  Mona McClane smiled at him. Her eyes seemed fixed on a misty point on some far horizon. “I’ve never taken a human life. I can’t possibly imagine what it’s like.” There was a musical little laugh. “I know what almost everything else is like.”

  “Don’t brag,” said Willis Sanders in playful reproof.

  She paid no attention to him. “To know that someone who has been alive is dead—dead by one’s own hand—what is it like? How does it feel?”

  “It must feel uncomfortably like being dragged off to jail for a long stay,” said a tall, angular, pallid man who had just joined the group. Jake recognized him as Wells Ogletree.

  “Not necessarily,” Malone said softly. “That’s what lawyers are for.”

  Mona McClane looked at him and beyond him. “I don’t know that I’d need a lawyer,” she said, musing. “No, I think I could get away with it.”

  “Oh, stop!” a voice burst out unexpectedly. It came from the girl just at Jake’s elbow. “Stop it,” she said again. “It isn’t a thing to joke about.”

  Jake turned to look at her. She was a small girl, almost blonde, not exceptional in any way, with a thin, petulant face and a pinched little mouth. He fished his memory for her name and found it. Ellen Ogletree. He wondered why her face and her name seemed so familiar to him, as though he’d known them a long time.

  “Who’s joking?” Mona McClane asked in what seemed to be surprise. “I’m in earnest. You might say, deadly earnest.”

  A nervous little laugh ran around the group. The man who was holding Ellen Ogletree’s hand possessively giggled foolishly. He was a pale young man, with hair and skin that seemed to be the same indiscriminate color, a rabbity chin, and no eyebrows whatsoever. Jay something-or-other, Jake remembered. Ellen Ogletree’s fiancé, and stinking rich.

  Mona McClane said, half dreamily, “Get away with it? Of course I could get away with it.”

  Jake forgot he was on his best behavior and said “Nuts” in a loud and skeptical voice.

  She turned to him and lifted one eyebrow. “Care to bet on it, Mr. Justus?”

  “Hell yes,” Jake said crossly. “I’d bet on anything. Name your terms and pick your victim.” He shook John J. Malone’s restraining hand off his arm.

  No one said anything. There was just the faintest suggestion of a smile on Daphne Sander’s lovely, sullen mouth.

  Mona McClane’s voice was very clear and very cool. “I’ll commit a murder and you pin it on me. I’ll bet you can’t do it. I’ll bet you—” she paused only an instant, “the Casino.”

  Jake felt something like a minor electric shock. The Casino was the night spot where out-of-town visitors always wanted to go first. It was the place that had stayed open for fifteen years, through good times and bad, rolling up reputation and prosperity. Anyone who owned the Casino would never need to worry about getting a job to support his heiress bride.

  He tried to keep the surprise out of his voice. “The Casino belongs to you?”

  Again Mona McClane lifted one eyebrow, the left one. “The McClane estate includes stranger things than that. Well, is it a bet?”

  “Suppose you win?” Jake asked.

  She laughed. “If I win a bet like that—the satisfaction of winning ought to be enough.”

  Jake lit a cigarette. “Lady,” he said happily, “it’s a bet.”

  Then everyone laughed.

  John J. Malone selected a cigar, looked at it, lit it, and stared at the ceiling. “I’d suggest there ought to be certain stipulations,” he said slowly. “Obscure poisons ought to be ruled out, for instance, and as for completely destroying the remains—”

  “Oh, please!” Ellen Ogletree exclaimed. No one noticed her.

  “I promise,” Mona McClane said, “my murder will be committed in broad daylight on the public streets, with the most ordinary weapon I can find. I’ll even promise you plenty of witnesses.”

  There was only the barest pause before Fleurette Sanders said lightly, with a tinkling little laugh, “You ought also to agree that the victim won’t be missed. It would be rather a shame to pick on the head of a large family, or a young man about to be married. By all means, Mona, pick someone who won’t be mourned.”

  “That’s easy,” Mona McClane said. Her voice was incredibly sweet. “I can think of any number of people who wouldn’t be mourned in the least.”

  Daphne Sanders smiled, ever so slightly. Jake wondered how a woman who looked as smart as Fleurette Sanders would lead with her chin like that.

  “The motive, too,” Malone said suddenly. “That ought to be another stipulation. If you’re going to go out and just indiscriminately murder some perfect stranger, you’re putting Jake under an unreasonable handicap.” He cleared his throat and began, in his best courtroom manner, “Motive and method are the roads to follow in tracking down a murderer. Opportunity, a silly thing that has to do with alibis, can be ruled out by any intelligent person who has read the memoirs of Houdini. But if there is no motive, one of those roads is blocked. Therefore—”

  “Don’t worry,” Mona McClane said evenly. “There will be motive. That I can promise. Also, that my murder will be a matter of personal motive—though there are some people that perfect strangers ought to shoot down in the streets, like rabid dogs.”

  This time no one laughed.

  Fleurette Sanders stirred uneasily. “I think the whole conversation has been a trifle silly,” her voice faded. No one seemed to notice that
she had said a word.

  “Someone no one will mourn for, and someone I have a motive for murdering,” Mona McClane repeated clearly. “Shot down in broad daylight on the public streets. I’ll be looking for you with a pair of handcuffs in your pocket, Mr. Justus, and I hope you make a fortune out of the Casino if you win. A bet’s a bet.”

  “Sure,” Jake said casually, “but for the love of God stay away from people you don’t like for the next two weeks. I’m going on my honeymoon.”

  A little ripple of laughter ran around the room. People began talking here and there of other things, in little groups. Mona McClane pulled her furs about her shoulders with a quick, graceful gesture, picked up her cigarette case, said, “Give my love to the bride,” and was gone.

  The very briefest of awkward pauses passed before Willis Sanders cleared his throat and said, “Of course Mona is a remarkable woman, but I don’t consider her joking in the best of taste.”

  No one else had any comment to make.

  The party began to disintegrate slowly. Darkness had fallen outside and people began drifting away, the Sanders family, Wells Ogletree, Ellen Ogletree and her rabbity fiancé, the bald-headed man and his fattish wife. Jake managed by some miracle to say what was necessary to the departing guests, but he barely noticed them. He was engaged in wishing Helene would come back, that he had either one more drink or one less.

  The room displayed just the faintest inclination to spin.

  It had been a lovely party, he told himself. A very lovely party. He only wished he had known the people who had given it a little better. Still, he had managed to make a date with that beautiful girl in the palegreen suit, the one with the gorgeous long legs. She’d be back any minute now, too. There couldn’t be any other girl, anywhere, with beautiful, long, slim legs like that. She’d gone to take someone to a plane, but she was coming back. Someone. Her father. Father-in-law. Airplane. Honeymoon. Helene.

  He came in out of the fog long enough to realize he had just married the only girl he’d ever loved.

  That was when the telephone call came for him, and Helene’s silvery voice came over the wire.

  “Hello darling,” she said cheerfully. “Get Malone. I’m in jail.”

  He wrestled with that for a moment. “What jail?”

  A muffled voice away from the telephone said, “Where the hell am I?” then there was a pause and then Helene said, “First District station. I hope you have some money. You and Malone come and get me.”

  “What are you in for?”

  “Reckless driving,” she said, “and speeding and driving while intoxicated and leaving my driver’s license in my other purse and going through a stop sign and driving without a taillight. Don’t worry,” she added confidently, “Malone can get me out.”

  He made a futile gesture at the telephone. “Your father’s plane?”

  “He’ll never make it,” Helene said crisply. “He’s in jail, too.”

  It took a little over thirty seconds to cope with that. “But,” Jake said stupidly, “you were driving the car. What’s he in jail for?”

  “Resisting-an-officer-in-the-attempt-to-do-his-duty,” Helene quoted. She added, “For knocking down a cop and kicking another one in the stomach. Tell Malone he’d better bring quite a lot of money with him.”

  “Partridge?” Jake asked feebly. He had a feeling that not only was he at the end of his rope, but that the rope was getting badly frayed.

  “Partridge is in the hospital.”

  Jake’s flesh froze tight to his bones. “There was an accident. Sweetheart, are you all right? Why didn’t you tell me? How badly were you hurt?”

  “Don’t be a dope,” she said. “There wasn’t any accident.”

  “Partridge,” Jake said helplessly. “Hospital.”

  “He fainted,” Helene told him. “Now will you get Malone, and please hurry?”

  She hung up.

  Chapter Four

  Jake Justus and John J. Malone were in a taxi and halfway to the Michigan Avenue bridge before Jake recovered enough breath to speak.

  “Malone, did you think you recognized that Ogletree girl?”

  “Sure,” the lawyer said, “so did you. Don’t you remember?”

  Jake said, “Damn it, today I’m having enough trouble remembering who I am.”

  “The Ogletree kidnaping,” Malone reminded him. “It was about two years ago. Ellen Ogletree was snatched. Her old man kicked in fifty grand to get her back unharmed. No one ever got the kidnapers.”

  “It comes back to me now, but vaguely.”

  “You ought to read the newspapers once in a while,” the lawyer said. He tossed a half-finished cigar out the window. “Damn near every face there was familiar to me, one way or another. Willis Sanders’ first wife was killed in rather mysterious circumstances a few years ago. Some people said it was no accident, especially as he’d been keeping company with Fleurette—her name used to be Flossie—for quite a while. Daphne Sanders ran away from home when her old man married again and was on every front page in the country for three weeks. Of course everybody who can read knows Mona McClane.”

  “Malone, have we enough money with us?”

  “At the First District station,” Malone said confidently, “I don’t need money.”

  He was almost right, but not quite. The problem of rescuing George Brand from the clutches of the law was merely a matter of transporting his huge, and by that time supine, bulk to a taxicab. That was something of a problem in itself, but the cab driver and three husky policemen managed it nicely. Partridge, his nerves, but not his aplomb, badly shaken, was dispatched to look after his employer, and the taxi departed in the direction of George Brand’s club.

  Helene, however, was a different matter.

  “She stays right here,” the desk sergeant announced firmly. “It was purely a matter of luck we laid hands on her in the first place.”

  Malone agreed with that, but protested against the indignity of keeping a friend of his in jail.

  “Especially,” he added, “for a little matter of a traffic violation.”

  The sergeant snorted very impolitely. “Traffic violation!” he said, and added, “She stays right here till we hear from Kansas City. Imagine,” he said incredulously, “a guy like Mr. Brand getting tangled up with a dame like that.”

  Malone was too puzzled to do more than swear questioningly.

  “We’d never have recognized her,” the sergeant volunteered cheerfully, “if Von Flanagan hadn’t happened to drop in. He knew her right away.”

  A chilling suspicion began to grow in Malone’s mind. The lovely blonde heiress and Daniel Von Flanagan of the Homicide Squad had become the best of friends, in spite of a few bad hours Helene had given him in the past. But Von Flanagan was known to have a heavy-handed variety of humor.

  Malone’s worst suspicions were quickly confirmed. Helene, according to Von Flanagan, was wanted by Kansas City on a serious charge. Not under the name of Helene Brand, or Helene Justus, of course. No one, not even Malone, could do a thing about it.

  “Imagine the nerve of her!” said the sergeant, “claiming to be George Brand’s daughter. Daughter—!”

  In vain Malone argued, explained, demanded, found and offered identification. Nothing could be done until Von Flanagan would admit his “mistake,” or word would come from Kansas City.

  And no one seemed to have any idea where Von Flanagan was.

  “She’s my wife,” Jake howled. “You can’t keep her in jail.”

  The sergeant answered him with an icy stare. “I remember you when you was with the Examiner, Jake Justus. I remember when you and your boss sprung a dame from the can, claiming she was your wife, and kept her hid out some place for five days, running her story in the paper all that time, while everybody was giving us the laugh because we wanted her for questioning in the McGurk killing. Once maybe I fall for a gag, but twice I don’t fall for the same gag.”

  Malone’s tactful and hasty removal of the
red-haired press agent from the police station certainly saved the latter from landing in jail along with his bride.

  Jake was still struggling when they reached the sidewalk, and repeating, “She’s my wife. They can’t do this to me.”

  “Shut up,” Malone said tersely, “and get in that cab.”

  He shoved Jake into a waiting taxi and told the driver to go north.

  Three blocks later Jake was able to speak again. “What the hell goes on?”

  “Von Flanagan’s idea of a practical joke,” the lawyer told him.

  Jake talked loudly and in an objectionably personal manner about Von Flanagan for three more blocks. “Malone, get her out of there. She—” he gulped. “I—” he gulped again. “The reservations. Bermuda. Two and a half hours.”

  “Stop gargling and tell me what you mean,” Malone said crossly, lighting a cigarette and handing it to the distraught man.

  Jake took two long drags on the cigarette, tossed it out the window, and said, “Helene and I have reservations on a plane leaving two and a half hours from now. We’re going to Bermuda for our honeymoon. In two and a half hours, mind you.”

  “I doubt it like hell,” the lawyer said. “You’d better get those reservations changed. On second thought,” he added, “give them to me. I’ll get them changed for a later plane, get your bride out of jail, and deliver her to you.”

  Jake handed them over silently.

  “And stop worrying,” Malone added.

  “You go to blazes. Listen, Malone. Helene and I were just married today. Today, understand? When people have just been married—”

  “I know,” Malone said, “my mother told me, too. I said to stop worrying. I’ll get your bride out of jail for you.”

  “Where are you taking me now?”

  “Back to your apartment. Just curl up with a copy of The Police Gazette and keep cool.”

  Jake became almost unnecessarily profane. As he paused for breath Malone said gloomily, “All I wish is that you hadn’t made that damned-fool bet.”