The Corpse Steps Out Page 4

  For a very long time now, he had tried not to think of Helene Brand. All during the Inglehart case he had tried to find time to carry out some very important and quite dishonorable intentions he had regarding her. Then when the case was closed, he had suddenly realized he wanted to marry her.

  Insane and impossible idea! Helene Brand of Maple Park, famous beauty, socialite, heiress. Jake Justus of downtown Chicago, ex-reporter, manager, promoter, press agent, who would never amount to a damn. Yet, realizing her importance to him, he knew that he could not make casual love to her. That had been what she seemed to expect and—thoroughly disgusted with him, no doubt—she had vanished. Oh, it was probably just as well. He could see now that he hadn’t meant anything to her. Just an escapade, a mad moment in the life of an heiress. Nuts!

  It had been nearly a year and a half ago. He remembered telling Nelle, in the worst stages of her heartbreak over Paul March, that time took care of everything in its own way. Well, time hadn’t seemed to make much impression on his memories of Helene Brand.

  Why the devil couldn’t he forget her, anyway? He would never see her again.

  But he knew it was the image of Helene Brand that kept him from making love to Nelle Brown, as Lou Silver, and Schultz, and Oscar, and nearly everyone connected with the program had done or tried to do. The delicately sculptured face of Helene Brand would always superimpose itself on any face he tried to kiss. The silvery, mocking laughter of Helene Brand would always drown out any lovely voice that called to him.

  He reminded himself that he was not going to think of Helene Brand, and with a wrenching effort brought his mind back to today, to now, to Nelle Brown, the Nelle Brown Revue, and the murder of Paul March.

  John Joseph Malone would handle it. Malone would find a way.

  Jake passed Chicago Avenue, passed a group of chattering bathers bound for Oak Street beach, noticed Chicago’s Best-Dressed Woman crossing Michigan Avenue, and paused for a moment by the old water tower, gazing at the Palmolive Building as it stood, sharp and clear, against a blazing blue sky. He had seen it a thousand times before—veiled by snow, brilliant in the sunlight, or blurred by summer rain—but this time he paused to gaze and admire, letting the combination of gray stone and intense blue sky drive the worries of the moment from his tired mind.

  In that moment a wonderfully familiar voice spoke just behind him.

  “It looks just the way it does on the post cards!”

  He wheeled around, knowing he couldn’t mistake that mocking drawl, not daring to believe it. It was true. Helene Brand!

  There she stood, as patrician, as beautiful, as perfect as ever, in the midst of the noontime crowds on Michigan Avenue. Her pale blond hair was exquisitely in place, and she was dressed simply in a very low-cut pale-violet chiffon evening gown. She was carrying a Parma violet evening wrap. And she was not sober.

  “Well!” said Jake Justus inadequately. “Well! Imagine meeting you here!”

  *Eight Faces at Three.

  Chapter 7

  “Hello, baby,” Jake Justus said tenderly.

  The exquisite blond girl on the bed moaned, stirred, sat up. For a moment she sat there blinking, looking around the disordered room: a half-empty bottle on the dresser, an overtuned ash tray on the floor, her evening wrap fastened gracefully around the bridge lamp in the corner, and Jake Justus in the easy chair by the window, surrounded by a squirrel’s nest of newspapers.

  “Hello, baby,” he said again.

  “Well, well, well. Here we are again.” She yawned and stretched. “What was the crack Malone made once about life being a bum phonograph record that kept slipping back and playing the same groove? My life, anyway.” She yawned again.

  Jake said, “There’s something about history repeating itself. Seems like I read it somewhere, in a book. So first I get mixed up in a murder, and then I run into you.”

  “Murder,” she said, laughing politely. “That’s very funny.”

  “It is very funny,” Jake told her, “because that’s what happened. And Malone is on his way here right now.”

  She stared at him. “You couldn’t be telling me the truth, by any chance?”

  “I could be,” Jake said, “and I am. How do you feel?”

  She shuddered.

  “I imagined so,” he said reflectively. “Where were you, or do you know, or does it matter?”

  “A party,” she told him. “It’s probably still going on if you’d like to go. I didn’t like any of the people, so I went for a walk and I met you.”

  “Nice dress,” he said. “Pretty color.”

  She nodded. “Yes, it is. Tell me about this murder.”

  “Later,” he said.

  “How did I get here?”

  “You went to sleep,” Jake said. “On the corner of Michigan and Chicago Avenues. I brought you up the freight elevator. Helene, have you missed me?”

  “Terribly,” she said. “Tell me, Jake, whom did you murder, and why?”

  “I didn’t murder him,” Jake said, “and I hope my client didn’t. Where have you been since “I saw you last?”

  “Florida,” she said, “and Paris and Lake Geneva and Wyoming. Who is your client, and who was murdered?”

  “Nelle Brown,” Jake told her. “You’ve heard her. Nelle Brown’s Revue. Why did you disappear the way you did?”

  “I’ll tell you why sometime. Nelle Brown’s good. I like to listen to her. Whom did she murder?”

  “Maybe she didn’t murder anybody,” Jake said, “but somebody did, only the body’s missing. Have you been having a good time?”

  “Wonderful,” she said, “and stick to one subject, damn you. Who was murdered, and if Nelle Brown didn’t do it, who did, and how do you know anyone was murdered if you can’t find the body?”

  Before Jake had a chance to wrestle with that one, John Joseph Malone arrived.

  The famous criminal lawyer was a short, plumpish, untidy little man, with disturbed black hair, and a round red face that always grew rounder and redder with agitation. At the moment he had been celebrating the acquittal of a charming young woman who had shot her husband, and as the case had been a difficult one, complicated by the fact that her husband had been a police officer, he was red-eyed and tired. He was not surprised to see Helene Brand. Nothing ever surprised John J. Malone.

  “Give me a drink,” he said, sitting down in the most comfortable chair and dropping an inch of cigar ash on his vest. “I got her off. Uncovered enough monkey-doodling going on in the police department so that I could talk all the brother officers of the deceased—persuade them, so to speak—to get up and testify that he was an unmitigated sonofabitch who deserved shooting. He was, too. It was no perjury.” He looked at Helene. “Where did you find her?”

  Jake told him, and poured three drinks.

  “Now,” Helene said, “now that Malone is here, maybe you’ll give out about this murder of yours.”

  Jake scowled into his rye. “I can’t prove that there was a murder,” he said slowly, “because the body’s lost. But Nelle saw it, and I saw it, and I’d be convinced that she did it, except that she told me she didn’t, and she wouldn’t have any reason for lying to me about it.”

  Malone sighed heavily and gloomily. “It would make life a lot simpler if you’d stay sober when you have something to tell me.”

  “I am sober,” Jake said indignantly, emptying the glass of rye down his throat. “And there was a body, and it is lost.”

  “All right, all right,” Malone said, “I believe you. But begin at the beginning.”

  Jake began at the beginning and told them the whole story: Nelle’s affair with Paul March and its unhappy ending, the attempt at blackmail, the discovery of the body and its subsequent disappearance. He told it glowingly and with feeling, and ended his narrative by refilling the glasses all around.

  “A very pretty little tale,” Malone said, “and credible, too. Now let’s all go out and buy a drink somewhere.”

  “Damn
you, Malone,” Jake said indignantly, “this is serious.”

  “Murder is always serious,” Malone said, spilling a little rye on his necktie. “That’s why they execute people for it. But what do you want me to do about this one? If it’s your conscience that bothers you, tell it to a policeman, not to me.” He reached for the bottle. “If this Paul March was the kind of a dope you just described, shooting him must have been the best idea someone ever had. We might even hunt up the guy and buy him a drink.”

  Jake lost his temper, drained his glass, and shouted, “I’m thinking about Nelle. Nelle, Nelle, Nelle, Nelle, NELLE.”

  “You sound like something by the late Edgar A. Poe,” Helene observed.

  “What about Nelle,” Malone said disgustedly. “The body’s disappeared and it may never be found.”

  “You know that isn’t true,” Jake said. “It’s bound to turn up sooner or later. You can’t just go out and lose a corpse.”

  “People do,” Malone said philosophically. “But suppose it does turn up? As long as it doesn’t turn up in that particular apartment, there’s nothing to link Nelle Brown with the murder. Even if it is discovered that the murder occurred when and where it did, between the two of you, you and Nelle can fix up an alibi for the whole evening. By your own story, rehearsals and broadcasts took up most of the evening. Fix up something for the time between broadcasts, and she’s completely in the clear.”

  Jake considered this a minute. “Where should I say we were in the time between broadcasts?”

  Malone made a suggestion which Jake received with cold disfavor.

  “Well anyway,” Malone said confidently, “if some miracle should come along, and she were involved, I could get her out of it. You should let me tell you about my last case.”

  “Another time,” Jake said, waving him silent. “It isn’t just a question of keeping her out of the jug. Have you any vague idea of how moral radio is? Goldman would cancel her contract in a minute if this thing broke the wrong way. She’d be all washed up. Radio goes into the home; you’ve got to keep it clean.” He poured another drink all around. “I know a guy, good announcer, got picked up in a raid on some South Side dive, and he hasn’t been able to get a job since. Nice fella, too.” He looked sadly into his glass.

  “Look here, Jake,” Helene asked, “suppose Nelle Brown really did shoot this guy.”

  “She’d still sound good on the air,” Jake said.

  Malone said, “Maybe she did shoot him. She had plenty of time and opportunity. She must have gone there right after the broadcast.”

  Jake nodded. “I phoned everywhere else. Even phoned her apartment, but no one answered.”

  The little lawyer mopped his red face. “She’s got nothing to worry about even if she did the murder. If the police find the body, there’s nothing to link the murder up with Nelle Brown. Nobody’s going to run to the cops with the dope that she used to spend her spare time with the stiff, months back. If worst came to the worst, you could keep it out of the papers. What the hell has she got a press agent for?”

  “You forget the letters,” Jake said.

  “Letters? Letters-letters-letters?”

  “Hers to Paul March,” Jake said. He added slowly, “I don’t know who has them. But I’d guess the same person who murdered March.”

  Helene nodded sagely. “That makes sense. Someone knew he had the letters and murdered him for them.”

  “You catch on.”

  “You’re both full of hop,” Malone growled. “There might have been fifty other people who had fifty other reasons for murdering Paul March, and none of them anything to do with the letters.”

  “If it was one of them,” Jake asked mildly, “where are the letters now and why are they missing?”

  “Nelle did find them on her visit there, and destroyed them,” the lawyer hazarded.

  “Then why lie to me about it?” Jake demanded. “If she’d found the letters and destroyed them, I’m the first person she’d tell.”

  “Perhaps March had the letters hidden somewhere.”

  “We searched the apartment. Both of us. Everything but taking up the floor.”

  “He had them hidden somewhere away from the apartment, possibly in a safety-deposit box somewhere.”

  “But if he planned to sell the letters to Nelle, he’d have them at the apartment,” Jake objected.

  Malone groaned. “All right, damn it, I won’t argue with you. He was murdered for Nelle Brown’s letters.” He paused for thought. “Someone else wants to blackmail Nelle and knows the value of those letters. Or someone who is a pal of Nelle’s knew about the letters and knew that March was blackmailing her, and killed him and took the letters. Who would think enough of Nelle to do that for her?”

  “Tootz,” Jake said, “only he never knew anything about March, and he’s nuts anyway. Baby, but he never knew anything about March either. Lou Silver the band leader, Bob Bruce the announcer, McIvers who handles her program, Oscar Jepps the producer, Schultz the engineer, and myself.”

  “Did you murder him?” Malone asked.

  “I considered it, but I was a little late.”

  “Still,” Malone said, “if someone did it to protect Nelle, she’d get the letters back somehow. They’d be sent to her. Or she’d hear something.”

  “Maybe she has,” Jake said. “I haven’t seen her since morning.”

  “Morning?” Helene said inquiringly.

  “I didn’t want her to go home in the state of mind she was in, so I filled her up with Scotch at Max’s, and the bellhop and I carried her up by the freight elevator.”

  “Two in a day,” Helene commented. “I’d like to get the bellhop’s opinion of you. What are we going to do, Malone?”

  “There’s two things we can do,” John Joseph Malone said thoughtfully. “Both are risky. If we do nothing at all, someone may turn up with the letters and get Nelle into a new mess. If we find out who murdered March, we may involve her anyway. Providing,” he added, “that we can find out who murdered him. And assuming,” he finished, “that all this really happened and you weren’t having delusions.”

  “I don’t have delusions,” Jake said indignantly. “It’s Tootz that has delusions.”

  There was a long and meditative silence.

  “But look,” Helene said suddenly. “Why shoot a man, leave the body kicking around for some indeterminate length of time, and then come back, move the body, and wash the floor?”

  “Maybe the murderer has naturally tidy instincts,” Malone said.

  Helene ignored him. “I’m curious.”

  “Find out who killed him,” Jake said. “Maybe you’ll get a client, Malone.”

  The lawyer snorted. “Find who murdered Paul March. No body. No proof there has been a murder. Nobody who even knows there’s been a murder except you and Nelle Brown.”

  “One other,” Jake reminded him. “The murderer.”

  “Unless it was you or Nelle,” Malone said. “Find out where the body went, and why it went there, and who murdered him and how and why, and what was done with the letters and how to get them back safely, and then probably break our necks hushing up all we’ve dug up. Happy days!” He drank deeply. “We’ll have to scare the birds out of the bushes and shoot them as they run.”

  “Fly,” Helene corrected him.

  After a long look out the window, the little lawyer said, “Let’s go talk to Nelle Brown. That’s the first move.”

  Helene remembered she had left her car in a Loop parking lot, they retrieved it and started north. On the way, Jake told Helene a little about Paul March, while Malone stared moodily over the lake. Paul March, Jake said, was a handsome lad and a brilliant one, but an unquestioned so-and-so. He had had some little success in radio, had managed a radio station in Iowa, been an announcer in Cincinnati, become an actor in Chicago, written thirteen weeks of a serial story, and finally advertised himself as a producer.

  “The funny thing was,” Jake said, “he was good. That was
the hell of it. He used ways of getting jobs that I wouldn’t mention in front of an innocent guy like Malone. Nelle was one of them. But he was good.”

  “I get an impression the man was attractive,” Helene murmured.

  “He could have charmed Diamond Lil out of a jewelry store,” Jake assured her.

  Helene sighed. “Too bad somebody shot him.”

  “You have me,” he said consolingly. She patted his cheek and the big car missed a fire hydrant by inches.

  “Don’t forget not to be surprised at anything Tootz might say,” Jake reminded them as Helene parked the car before a tall, expensive apartment building on the Drive. “Tootz, otherwise Henry Gibson Gifford.”

  “I remember him,” Helene said. “He had a house in Maple Park, and stables. Didn’t he lose everything but his shirt in the market?”

  “Everything but his horses,” Jake said. “The shirt went too, but he still has the horses.”

  Helene scowled, puzzled. “I thought the stables burned, horses and all, just about the time of the crash.”

  “Right,” Jake said, “but he still has the horses.” And as she stared blankly at him, he grinned. “Be patient, pet. You’re going to meet Tootz’ horses. You’re going to meet them any minute now!”

  Chapter 8

  The immense room, overlooking the lake, had satiny paneled walls, a massive fireplace, polished and graceful furniture. At a small table between two long windows, a couple sat playing chess.

  The man was slender, dignified, scholarly. His carefully brushed hair and trim mustache were snowy white, his handsome profile was pale and patrician. The hand that paused over the chessboard was long and graceful and pallid. The cut of his dinner coat was irreproachable.

  The girl might have been either his daughter or his granddaughter. She wore a simple white frock, almost childlike in its cut and design, with a little string of coral beads at her throat. Her heavy, dull-gold hair curled about her shoulders; her cheeks were pink, dewy, exquisite.

  There was nothing in either her appearance or manner to indicate that she had discovered the murdered body of her ex-lover the night before.