Chief of Police Kirby was a medium-sized, medium-aged man. No particular coloring or feature that stood out at all. And very quiet. He listened, while I told him all that Wendel and Joey Free had told me and then said:
“You understand, of course, that Mr. Wendel had no legal right to see his wife if she objected? You’ve got that point straight, haven’t you?”
I said I realized that, but that Wendel seemed sincerely in love with his wife and only wanted to talk with her and find out what he’d done to cause her action. Kirby didn’t answer this but just stood up and said:
“Come on and take a ride with me.”
We climbed in a police car and he drove to where a sign said: HILLARD MORTUARY. Kirby explained:
“We use this; the city hasn’t modern conveniences,” and I had a notion of what he was going to show me.
But not who.
A short, smiling little man met us, acting as though we were doing him a favor by calling, and the three of us went in a side room.
The girl was there. The woman, rather. She had been around thirty apparently — fairlooking, too, except that her nose was too big and beaked. Black hair and rather dark-skinned. There was a blue puckered slit a bit to the side in her neck, and Kirby pointed this out to me and said:
“Knife wound. Hit the big artery.”
I said: “Nasty thing, a shiv is. Who is she?”
He said, as though reading from a police report: “Francine Debreaux. French nationality. In this country four years and her passport and papers in order. Mrs. Todhunter Wendel’s personal maid for the last year. Had fair references. New York is checking these for me now.”
“Where’d you find her? Where’d she get the shiv in her neck?”
The undertaker, who it seemed was also the local Coroner, said: “She was in an alley, back of the MIDNIGHT CLUB. The knife wound didn’t kill her at once; she probably took two or three minutes to bleed out.”
Kirby said: “Whoever did it held something over her mouth. Her lips are slightly bruised, if you’ll notice. There was a cook and dishwasher in the club, within fifteen feet of where this happened, and they never heard a sound.”
“Did you check on them?”
He looked at me as though this was a silly question, which it was. He said he’d checked them, naturally, and that neither had known the woman as far as he could tell. Without anything more he turned away and toward the door and I followed him, with the undertaker bringing up the rear. The undertaker followed us out to the car, shook hands with me and said he hoped to see me again, though under pleasanter circumstances of course, and Kirby drove away, heading back toward the police station.
He didn’t say a word during the trip back, but after he’d led the way into his office he said: “Now what d’ya know that’ll help on this? We’ve got an open town here but murder’s fairly rare. I want to keep it so.”
I said: “I’ve told you everything I know. What did Mrs. Wendel have to say about this? When did it happen?”
“Between eleven and eleven-thirty last night. Mrs. Wendel doesn’t seem to know of a reason for it, nor does Mr. Crandall, her lawyer. What are you holding out on me? What’s all this about, Connell?”
I told him I didn’t have the faintest idea. That all I knew about the thing was what I’d told him. He listened to me, very quietly, but he had a veil over his eyes and I couldn’t tell whether he believed me or not. Apparently he didn’t, because he said:
“Now listen! This is my town and I run it my way. Get it? We’re open here because that’s the way the city dads want it. People come here with money to spend and we let them spend it the way they want. But we keep an eye out for them right along with it. They’re entitled to that for their ante. We can’t keep ’em from making damn fools of themselves but we can keep most of the wolves off their backs. Does this mean anything to you?”
I said it was a very nice speech, only I didn’t phrase it just that way. He got the idea, though. He reddened a bit around the cheek-bones but he didn’t raise his voice. Which showed nice control. “I mean just this, Connell! I’ve got no objection to your coming in here and doing a job of work. I don’t hold any briefs for your kind of work, but you’re entitled to make a living the way you want. But that’s all. No rough stuff; none of the trick stuff you can pull in the city and get away with.”
“I don’t understand, Chief,” I said.
“You understand all right. No cutting corners and no throwing curves. This woman lives here; you don’t. If she wants to talk to you it’s fine with me. If she doesn’t, let her alone. You’re butting in on her business and I want you to remember it. When did you say you got here?”
I knew what he was thinking about and said: “At eleven o’clock last night I was playing piano for a private party and working like hell at it. At Joey Free’s apartment; you can call him and check this.”
And then I threw the harpoon; not hard but enough to get under his hide. I kept my face straight and added:
“You ought to remember Joey Free, Chief. He’s one of the two you bum-rushed out of here. You know the other, Wendel, the guy I’m supposed to be working for.”
His cheeks got a bit redder. “Listen, Connell. I didn’t think you had anything to do with that alley killing last night. Get that out of your head.”
I grinned and said I’d rather got the idea he didn’t like private cops and didn’t put anything past them, up to and including alley murders. I made a joke out of it and meant it; I really liked the man. He took it the way it was meant and smiled back and said:
“I meant that the right way, Connell, and you know it. After all, I just work here. The local boys can put pressure on me, if you know what I mean.”
He meant Crandall, the Wendel woman’s lawyer, but I didn’t say I knew this. I just said that a cop worked for the city, of course, and was responsible to a lot of people. In fact, all the tax-payers.
He said that was the theory... and grinned as though it was funny, which it was. There were probably a dozen men in town who could crack the whip and make him jump and he cracked the whip for the rest of the town. Small towns as open as that one are like that, always.
We shook hands and he asked where I was staying. I told him, then said:
“I’m here, but not for long. Too much money for my kind of job. The people I’ll meet will think I’m going high-hat.”
“That’s where Free and Wendel stayed.” He started to laugh. “That Free’s a kick. In any other town but this one, he’d have been lynched.”
“What did he do?”
“Well, he and Wendel were both drunk, as I get the story. They went up to their room and Wendel passed out. But Free had noticed some blonde gal in a room two doors away and he got hot for her. So he climbed out his window, hung onto the building in some way that I’m damned if I can figure, and did a human fly act around to the blonde’s room.”
“That sounds like Joey. He’s wacky, when he’s stiff.”
“Well, the blonde was going to bed and was dressed for it. Rather, she wasn’t dressed for it. She looked up and saw this Free grinning at her through the window and she went nuts. She thought he was a burglar, I guess. She ran out in the hall and raised hell about it and the house cop went up and found Joey sitting on her bed and waiting for her to come back and play. I didn’t hear about it until the next day. It didn’t make difference; I wouldn’t have done anything about it unless the blonde had signed a complaint, anyway.”