“Not at present,” she said. “There was a Thomas B. Durham staying here for a couple of days, but he checked out about an hour ago.”
“Thank you,” I said. “That’s all I wanted to know,” and hung up.
I started a quiet investigation with the bell-boys and the doorman. Durham had checked out. He had a bag, a briefcase and a suitcase that had two little brass padlocks on it.
The bellboy had taken the baggage to the doorman. The doorman remembered it being there. He’d been busy getting some people loaded into taxicabs, and the three pieces of baggage had vanished by the time he’d turned around to see if their owner wanted a cab.
The doorman was certain Durham hadn’t taken a cab. I asked if a private car could have picked him up. The doorman thought not. I asked where Durham could have gone and the doorman merely grinned and scratched his head.
The entrance to the cocktail lounge was within a few feet of the hotel entrance, but I hardly thought the manager would appreciate being questioned.
Neither did I think he’d have welcomed Durham if he’d entered the place lugging a brief-case, a bag and a suitcase.
In other words, Tom Durham had disappeared without a trace.
He’d either been smarter than I thought he was or I’d been even dumber than Bertha had thought I was. I’d have sworn he hadn’t known I was following him to the hotel.
I looked at my watch. It was late, but there was one other possibility I could explore.
I went into the telephone booth, found a suburban directory, looked under San Robles, and ran down the pages until I found a Dover Fulton residing at 6285 Orange Avenue. Evidently, then, that much of the story had been true.
From a phone booth, I called the Fulton number. A few moments later the operator told me to deposit twenty cents for three minutes. After the dimes had trickled into the coin-box, I heard a sleepy feminine voice at the other end of the line.
“I’m very sorry to disturb you at this late hour,” I said, “but it’s quite important that I get in touch with Mr. Dover Fulton. Is he there, please?”
“Why, no,” the woman said, “he’s not here right now. He’s been detained in the city. I’m expecting him home almost any time.”
“Could you take a message for him?” I asked her.
“Yes.”
“Is this Mrs. Fulton?”
“That’s right.”
“Then you’ll pardon the question, Mrs. Fulton, but do you have a sister?”
“A sister?” she echoed.
“Yes.”
“Why, no.”
“A Miss Lucille Hart?” I insisted. “Isn’t she your sister?”
“I never heard of her. She’s certainly not my sister. I tell you, I have no sister.”
“I’m very sorry, then. There’s been some mistake,” I said, and hung up before she could ask for any explanation.
Four
The morning papers had the story.
They’d had to throw it in at the last minute. It was a routine double-suicide death pact, the way the papers sized it up, but it had ‘angles’. If these developed, it could be a whale of a sex scandal. The papers wanted to be free to play it up or drop it, whichever way the cat jumped.
Headlines said, ‘SAN ROBLES BROKER IN DEATH-PACT KILLS FORMER SECRETARY, THEN TURNS GUN ON SELF... LOVE TRYST IN MOTOR COURT TERMINATES IN TRAGEDY.’
The story followed the usual line, but emphasised that there were certain ‘peculiar circumstances’ which police were investigating.
The dead woman was Mrs. Stanwick Carlton, who had been Dover Fulton’s secretary for a period of years. She had left his employ about three years ago to marry Stanwick Carlton, a mining man, and had been living in Colorado.
Two weeks ago she had told her husband she wanted to “visit relatives in California.” She had driven her own car on the trip, arriving ten days ago. During those ten days she had apparently been in company with Dover Fulton on several occasions. The proprietor of the KOZY DELL SLUMBER COURT remembered that the same couple had rented a cabin there the week before under the name of Mr. and Mrs. Stanwick Carlton.
The thing which puzzled the police, however, was that while the proprietor of the KOZY DELL had insisted the parties to the tragedy had arrived in the Colorado car, Dover Fulton’s own automobile was found parked in the driveway of the auto court. The car was locked both inside and out, but the car keys were not found on Dover’s body. A woman’s coin purse was on the floor of the car. It contained about ten dollars in small change and a ‘business card’.
To further complicate matters, police had received a call just a few minutes before the time of the shooting, advising them that Dover Fulton’s car had been stolen.
The time of the shooting was fixed as being between ten and ten-thirty in the evening. Several occupants of adjoining cabins had heard the sound of the shots but had thought they were caused by a car back-firing. The bodies were discovered when occupants of an adjoining cabin complained of the blaring radio next door.
One point which police were trying to clear up was why three shots had been fired. Apparently Fulton had killed his mistress with one shot through the back of the head. He had then turned the gun on himself, but two witnesses insisted there had been three shots, and after some considerable search, police found where the third bullet had entered a suitcase identified as belonging to Mrs. Carlton.
Stanwick Carlton, husband of the dead woman, had, as it turned out, arrived in the city by plane only an hour or so before the shooting. He had, he explained, “Felt something was wrong.” He was ‘stunned’ when located at a down-town hotel and advised of his wife’s death. Dover Fulton, a prominent broker in San Robles, left a widow, Irene Fulton, and two children, one a girl four years old, one a boy of six. He had apparently been happily married and Mrs. Fulton “was at a loss to account for his actions,” refusing at first to believe that he could possibly have been the person who had committed suicide. Not until she was confronted with the body did she believe what had happened.
Perhaps the strangest thing of all, however, was the fact that while Dover Fulton and Mrs. Carlton had registered as Mr. and Mrs. Stanwick Carlton and had been assigned cabin number three, it appeared a second couple had rented cabin number eleven in the name of Mr. and Mrs. Dover Fulton, and these people had given the licence number of Dover Fulton’s black sedan, which was found parked and locked in front of the cabin which had been assigned to them.
The woman who ran the place described the girl as being a beautiful blonde who appeared somehow to be intensely nervous; the man with her, according to the best recollection of the woman who managed the motor court, was of medium height and weight, with dark, wavy hair, and what the witness described as ‘expressive eyes’. She said she had felt certain “there was something phony” about this second couple.
The newspaper account stated:
While apparently there can be no question but what the tragedy was a routine version of a death-pact by people who found themselves in love, but who were separated by marital entanglements there are certain phases of the case which the police are investigating.
The paper then went on to state that police had given Stanwick Carlton a severe grilling and were not entirely satisfied with his answers. They were investigating his movements after getting off the plane and going to the down-town hotel where he had registered.
The revolver from which the shots were fired was a .32-calibre revolver owned by Dover Fulton. Mrs. Fulton stated that her husband had been working almost every evening for the past ten days and that about ten days ago he had opened the drawer, taken out the small-calibre revolver and had been carrying it with him ever since. She was prostrated by shock.