Stab in the Dark (5 page)

W
HEN
P
AUL
K
NOX
was under voting age someone had caustically told him that he had a way with women. He didn’t quite know what the term meant at the time and he was far too interested in school athletics to find out. Later he came to accept the fact that many women looked at him more speculatively than they did other men. He did not try to find out why; he was now too interested in his work. Still later he made use of it as an asset.

At thirty-three, he was still a bachelor. Twice there had been women he could have given up his freedom for. One of them he disliked thinking of; the second he had respected too much to subject to the strain a traveling detective’s wife would have to undergo. She did not think it fair either, and they had parted amicably. When he was in New York, she was always available for a drink, dinner, and conversation. It made a pleasant arrangement.

Yet despite his experience, Knox never failed to be somewhat surprised at the ease with which he was accepted by a woman. He found Cora in the coffee shop looking thoughtfully at the desserts on the menu. The hostess obligingly pointed her out, took Knox’s dollar, and discreetly retired to other customers. He went to the booth.

“Miss Deane?”

Her head came up. He had the impression of nice features. Nothing blatantly beautiful, but nice. Wide gray eyes, as gray as his own, a good nose and jawline and chin. What he could see of her figure indicated that it was on the full blown side.

The flicker of annoyance that rose in her eyes faded out as she surveyed him and became merely questioning. Then her glance became definitely interested. “Yes?”

“I’m Paul Knox. I got tied up and haven’t eaten yet. Do you mind if I join you for a bite now?” His smile was engaging.

“As long as we don’t talk business, I’d be delighted,” she said.

“I didn’t have business in mind,” he said.

The waitress came. She ordered cheese and fruit and coffee. Knox suggested that she have a brandy to accompany the rye that he ordered. She agreed and when it came, he lifted his glass to hers.

“To less crime.”

Her glass stopped at the edge of her lips. “That’s an odd toast.”

“But an appropriate one.”

She sipped her brandy and set it down. “I thought we weren’t going to discuss business.”

“Is crime business?”

She said quickly, almost tartly, “You’re Paul Knox. You spent nine years on the police force here. Since then you’ve worked for World-Circle detective agency. Isn’t crime business?”

He had to laugh. “Did you go out of your way to find that out?”

“I always check a client who wants evening work,” she said sweetly.

“You win that round,” he admitted. “Let’s talk about something else. Saturday’s football game, for instance.”

“I’ve only been here a month,” she said. “I’m not very familiar with this part of the country.”

“Then let’s talk about where you came from.”

“Kansas,” she said. “A long time ago.”

Not too long, he thought. She was still under thirty judging by the tautness of skin under her chin and on her neck. It was that area, he had found, where a woman often revealed encroaching age. He found it hard to tell on Cora Deane, however, as she wore a very high-necked blouse beneath the jacket of her dark gray suit.

“And then?”

She shrugged. “Around. I went to school, traveled, worked here and there. A year in New York. Time in Washington. Two years overseas.”

“Single?”

“At the moment.”

She was casual and quick and revealed nothing. Knox had planned to use similar tactics to those he had used with Jock, but he saw now that they weren’t going to work. He wondered just how he could best approach this self possessed young lady.

He was still wondering when Tom Catlin came into the coffee shop and walked up to their table. He nodded at Knox and then turned his dark eyes on Cora Deane. He was too well manicured a man for Knox’s taste.

“Occupied all evening, Cora?”

She could have answered him tartly. The question was somehow insolent. Knox shifted on his seat, watching her, waiting for the rejoinder he expected from her. Instead she smiled.

“I seem to be.” There was no sting to the words. “Mr. Knox, Mr. Catlin. Mr. Catlin is in the insurance business.”

“We’ve met,” Knox said.

“I check on branches of our company,” Catlin said to Knox. “So don’t worry about me trying to sell you insurance.” He was easy in his manner but Knox disliked his voice and the possessive way he studied the girl.

He said, “Will you be free after ten tomorrow?”

“I believe so, Tom.”

Catlin nodded as if that settled everything and went on. Knox could not help thinking of the first name basis the two were on, the rudeness she had accepted. He said, “More than a business contact, I presume.”

“Not really. But we came at about the same time. I’ve done a good deal of typing for him. He should have brought his own stenographer. It would have been less expensive.”

Knox was irritated. He could not seem to get under Cora Deane’s layer of aplomb. “Maybe he hopes to take one away with him,” he said.

“That’s the impression I get,” she answered. “And it might be easy work and interesting—traveling about the country, staying a month here, a month there. Tom does a lot of his work at informal company get-togethers. They might be interesting too.”

“They might,” Knox agreed. He gave up. “What company does Catlin work for?”

“Grand Union. The headquarters are in the east.”

Knox finished his meal by the time Cora Deane wound up her cheese and fruit. Leaving, they went into the level that was a step above the lobby. Cora Deane stopped at her desk.

“Here or in your room, Mr. Knox?”

“My data is in the room.”

She opened her desk, took out a shorthand notebook and pencil and locked the desk again. He said on the way up, “I understand you had chair trouble today.”

Her glance was amused. “A good deal of it the way things turned out. But the guests aren’t supposed to know these things.”

“I’m a special guest,” he said.

In the room, Knox waited until she had seated herself at the desk, pencil poised, and then he dropped into the easy chair and lit a cigaret. “First, I want you to jot down some notes. I may sound like I’m rambling, but just take verbatim what I say.”

He crossed his legs. “Point one, What is the significance of the coincidence of a broken stenographer’s chair and the discovery of a body in the chair storeroom? Point two, What …”

Knox paused very briefly. Cora Deane was writing pothooks steadily. When he paused, she wrote on a bit and then glanced at him, her pencil held ready.

Knox said, “Correction. Point two, Questions to ask the public stenographer, Miss Deane. Did the screw work loose from the chair suddenly or had it been working loose for some time? What instrument did Miss Deane or someone unknown use to make the screw hole larger? Can Miss Deane account for her presence at her desk throughout the afternoon? Did Miss Deane …”

He stopped because she did. She said quietly, “The police did much better. They didn’t try to be subtle or—cute.”

Knox grinned. “And did they get the answers?”

“There are no answers,” she replied tartly. “I explained that if the chair was working loose before that I wasn’t aware of it. When I noticed it, I made an attempt to tighten the screw with my typewriter screwdriver. I only succeeded in making the hole so big that I needed another chair. It was, as you said, coincidence.”

“And can Miss Deane account for her presence …”

“Miss Deane had a coffee break in the middle of the afternoon. Business was slack. She chose to leave her desk.”

“And went where?” Knox asked.

She looked directly at him. “I’m not under obligation to answer these questions, Mr, Knox. In fact, as I understand the police, the case is supposed to be kept quiet for the time being.”

“Those are Beekers’ orders,” Knox agreed. “I can get the information from him but I prefer it first hand.”

She shrugged. “I have nothing to hide. I took my coffee break by going downstairs and lying on the rest room divan. No one came,” she added, anticipating him. “I have no-alibi. But since I didn’t know the dead man, I don’t see where I need one.”

That didn’t set with Knox. It was hard to be in the same place with Lee Auffer for two weeks and not notice him. He let it pass for the moment.

“Quite right,” he murmured. “So we have you taking a coffee break.”

“I fell asleep,” she said. ‘I woke up to find my skirt badly wrinkled. I have a room here, one of the small ones in the back that are provided for the help that wish them. I went there and changed into this suit. I felt so sticky that I showered first. When I returned to the desk, the chair broke. I called Jock. That’s all I know.”

“What was the color of your dress?” Knox asked.

She looked puzzled. “Navy blue. Does that matter?”

He studied her gray suede shoes. “You wore these shoes with it?”

She still seemed puzzled. “No, blue gabardine.” Her eyes glinted. “Is that a clue, Mr. Detective?”

“It could be.” Knox was acting partly on hunch, partly on the feeling that she was not telling him as much as she could have. “Shall we go to your room?”

Puzzlement gave way to indignation. “We shall not!”

Knox was grinning again. “I want to see your shoes and your dress, Miss Deane. If you prefer, I can get Lieutenant Beeker here to make the request. I just thought you’d prefer it this way. Unless, of course, you have reason to keep them out of sight.”

She rose stiffly. “No reason.” The notebook shut with a snap. “I don’t understand this, Mr. Knox. I don’t know what your interest is. And I dislike being blackmailed by threats of the police.”

“Blackmail only exists where there is fear on the part of the victim,” Knox murmured. “Let’s call it something nicer.”

“And you suggest?” She was walking toward the door, her head high, her back stiffly angry.

“Courtesy on your part,” he suggested.

She did not answer but marched to the elevator. When it stopped at the second floor, she got off. Knox continued on to the lobby and then doubled back up the stairs. She was standing at a bend in the corridor.

“Thank you,” she said. “That was considerate.”

“I always try to be considerate of my victims,” Knox said.

Silent again, she led the way to a door marked 207-E, and let him in. The room was almost a cubbyhole, wide enough for the bed and dresser. It had a tiny bath with a shower instead of a tub. There was also a small closet. It was neat.

“You pay for this, I presume?”

“Naturally.” She opened the closet door and brought out a navy blue dress with a flaring skirt. He took it and asked for her blue gabardine shoes. She produced them.

They were high-heeled. Knox turned them over. His fìnger flicked a tiny piece of stone-like material out of one thin sole. His fingers, brushing the sole, came away covered with faint dust. There was a streak of it along one side of the left shoe. He handed them back.

“You changed your underthings after bathing, of course?”

Her flush almost embarrassed him. But she recovered enough to say sharply, “No, I removed them before I bathed.”

“And put on others afterward?” If she could play, he could too. He chuckled inside, thinking that whatever charm he might have for women, he was losing it rapidly with this one.

“I did.”

“May I see them, please.”

“I’ve known some strange people,” she observed. “I’ve met all types. I’ve read Havelock Ellis and Kinsey too. But this is the strangest case I’ve come across.” She stepped out of the closet.

“Very strange,” he agreed with a straight face. He walked around her, reached into the closet, lifted out a nearly empty laundry bag and upended it. A slip, brassiere, a pair of sheer hose fell out. He shook the bag and a garter belt joined the small pile. He felt in the bag and found nothing more.

“You don’t wear—er, panties?”

“Yes. Shall I prove it?”

Knox sat on the edge of the bed and brushed vaguely at a dusty line on the skirt of the blue dress. “Shall we return and continue our work?”

“Mr. Knox, I’ve been more patient than with anyone else I can think of. I think it’s time to say good night.”

“Why—are you more patient with me, I mean?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know.” They stared at one another. Then, suddenly, she laughed ruefully.

“You have me and I know it. How you did it, I don’t know. I thought I could handle myself but suddenly I’m caught. And there’s not a thing I can do about it.”

You’re a good sport,” he admitted. “Let’s skip the work and have another drink.”

“First,” she said, “I want to know—now that you’ve caught me—just where I stand. What is this all about?”

“Miss Deane,” he said gravely, “all that I know for sure is that you left your panties across the hall from the chair storeroom.”

T
HE BAR
was half empty. It was Thursday, a slack night, and now it was raining hard outside. Few people came off the street to enjoy drinks with the soft background of organ music. Knox chose a table in a dim corner of the terrace.

“Pink Lady or Alexander or some such thing?” he asked.

She laughed softly. “You’ve been taking out the wrong kind of stenographer, Mr. Knox. I’ll have bourbon or rye with water.”

He ordered rye for them both and then looked somberly at her. “Miss Deane, frankly you have some explaining to do.”

She showed irritation again. “I don’t follow you. I haven’t done anything.”

“You lied to the police.”

“Don’t you think it put me in an awkward position,” she said, “to find my—underthings missing.”

The drinks came. Knox paid and waited until the waiter had gone. “Let me reconstruct something,” he said. “Then perhaps you’ll see what I mean.”

“Go ahead.” She was stiff, formal.

“At the hour of your coffee break you went downstairs, but you went to the second level, not the first. You went to the chair storeroom. You opened the door, turned on the light and saw—the dead man. There’s a gap at this point. The next thing I can feel sure of is that you were across the hall, in the room where the tables are stored. You walked out of there a little dazed. You went to your room, bathed and changed, put on a high-necked blouse and returned to work. You fixed the chair so that Jock would have to go get another. That way the body could be discovered without your being implicated.”

She said nothing for a moment. And then, “Why do you make a point of my blouse?”

“Because I think you were choked and that there are bruises on your throat. I think you were carried across the hall.”

“By the murderer?”

“Yes,” Knox said. “And I don’t understand why you were let live.”

“Maybe because I didn’t see the person who choked me.

“It’s your turn now,” he said quietly.

“You were right,” she admitted. “I did go downstairs and I did find a body. But before I could do anything, someone caught me by the throat. I must have fainted. When I came to, I was across the hall. I felt sick. It was dark and I was alone. I got up and opened the door and—and ran.”

“Do you think someone or something scared your attacker off?”

“I don’t know what to think,” she said.

“And while you were unconscious, your panties were removed.”

She said with a kind of grim humor, “They aren’t panties. At the price I paid, they become lingerie.” Then she added more seriously, “That must be the way it was. I didn’t know they were gone until I reached my room.”

“Do you think it was a sex crime?”

“Definitely not,” she said. She was flushing a little. “I’m sure it wasn’t. Yet—why would he take my underthings?”

“He?”

“I don’t think a woman could have choked me so easily nor carried me. I’m no lightweight.”

He agreed, guessing her at five feet six or seven and weighing a hundred and thirty pounds or more. It was well distributed weight but that wouldn’t make her any easier to carry.

He said, “And you have no other ideas?”

“None.”

“Why did you go down there in the first place?”

She made a ring on the tabletop with her glass. “Because I thought I’d find another chair myself. The screw was loose in mine before. And—well, I’d never been down there. I was curious.”

It was a lie. She did it well, but he knew it was a lie. There were a number of things about Cora Deane’s story that didn’t satisfy Knox. He said, “Let’s start over. Why did you go down there?”

She flushed but not from embarrassment this time. “I told you.”

“Why didn’t you tell the police?”

“Would you have—and then try to explain why you didn’t report the murder?”

“If you knew it was a murder, why didn’t you report it?”

“I told you. I was sick, frightened. When I woke up, I became panicky. I’m not proud of it, but that’s what happened. And after I’d changed, I decided I would be better off out of it. I hate publicity.”

He said, “Logical enough,” without too much conviction in his voice. “Did you get a good look at the body?”

“I barely saw it when—he caught me.”

“Then how did you know it was murder?” he demanded. “Jock thought the man was drunk when he first looked.”

“Drunk! With his face smashed in like that?”

Knox took a deep, steadying breath. He looked carefully at her but she was not lying now. That he would swear to. He drained his glass.

“Just one more thing, Miss Deane. How did you—fix the chair?”

“I took my screwdriver—the one for my typewriter—and wriggled it around in the hole a little.” Her glance was questioning.

He said, “And this evening after I called you and made the appointment, what did you do?”

“I rested, as I told you I intended. Then I came down and had dinner.”

She was quite frank now. He had the feeling that she was relieved, as though she had passed a test. He said, “Can you explain why someone would take enough interest in the broken chair to steal it?”

“Steal it?” She shook her head. “I’m sorry, Mr. Knox, that just doesn’t make sense.”

He put a hand to the small lump on his temple. “My getting hit on the head does.” He told her briefly of his encounter in the workshop. She continued to stare at him while he talked, her expression growing more and more puzzled. He had the feeling that she was a good actress, and yet he had no basis for accusing her of engineering the theft of the chair.

He said finally, “Thank you, Miss Deane.” He rose. “If you’ll make out a bill for all the time I’ve taken—tomorrow, of course.” With a quick bow, he walked off.

He walked slowly, his eyes flickering without apparent interest around the room as he went toward the door. He saw Tom Catlin watching him from a position at the bar, saw the man’s eyes go past and up to where Cora Deane was sitting. Then he left his stool and started toward her. Knox kept going.

He was almost at the door when he saw the small, wispy-haired man who had trailed him—or Jock—to and from Hod’s tavern. He was drinking bottled beer, nursing it carefully, his hair slicked, his appearance just slightly out of place as though he were a little uneasy in such plush surroundings. Knox had a second urge to stop and have some fun but again he had too much on his mind and reluctantly he passed up the opportunity and went on out.

In his room, he ordered up a pot of coffee. He sat at the desk, a sheet of hotel stationery before him. With a pencil, he began to write rapidly, making brief notes, drawing diagrams, making a time schedule. The coffee came and he drank a cup absently, smoking and staring at what he had written.

He was full of food and rye whiskey but he drank the coffee doggedly, knowing that it would key him up a little. He had the feeling that this night might not be spent sleeping. Something was moving, something he had to get his finger on before it moved too fast and too far.

He said aloud, “Drunk! With his face smashed in like that?”

But Leo Auffer hadn’t had his face smashed in, merely run through with an ice pick. If it wasn’t Leo Auffer she saw, who was it then?

A good many possibilities occured to Knox. Leo could have been the one to drag Cora Deane away—if he had found it necessary to dispose of someone. But why the fifth of whiskey? Why take off her underpants? That wasn’t like Leo Auffer. For all of his playboy exterior, he had been a serious and conscientious workman, Knox knew. On a job, he never fooled around, seldom did the unexpected.

Knox swore softly. If there were two bodies—and it certainly sounded like it—where was the first one? And how long had Cora Deane lay in the table storeroom? Or had she? An icepick made a good woman’s weapon. His thoughts centered around the idea that she had gone downstairs deliberately to commit murder. It was a possibility, and the weapon certainly argued in favor of premeditation. Ice-picks were not common items to be found at random in hotel basement storerooms. But the question remained. Why?

He swore again. If he could locate D-13, he might get somewhere.

He went back to work, scribbling again. The coffee pot was empty and despite it he was beginning to yawn. His watch said that it was after midnight, closer to one a.m. He had left Cora Deane shortly before ten. He shook his head but the sleepiness persisted. He debated taking a cold shower, wished that he could call Mel Beeker and exchange some of his ideas. Only, he remembered dopily, he had not kept Beeker fully informed of his activities. The Lieutenant wouldn’t appreciate that when he found out.

The telephone jangled, bringing Knox’s head up as it drooped toward the desk. On the third ring, he lifted it. “Knox here.”

It was Mel Beeker’s voice, “Paul? I’m coming up.”

Knox said, “I was just wishing I could call you only I thought I might disturb your beauty sleep.”

Beeker’s laugh was short and unpleasant. “Sleep. Hell! And if you’re thinking of getting any, forget it. I said I was coming up.”

Knox was finally awake enough to realize that Beeker was burned about something. “Is that wise—coming here?”

“Maybe not wise,” Beeker said, “but it’s sure as hell necessary. Or maybe you’d rather come to the station. That’s where you belong.”

Knox pursed his lips in a silent whistle. “Take it easy,” he said. “Don’t blow out the phone line. And how about Connie’s? No one pays any attention to anyone going in there even at this time of night.”

“You sound like you think this is a social call,” Beeker growled at him. “This is murder, friend, and right in your lap.”