When Captain Walters had departed, after seeing the other Driller letters, Colt once more signaled for Flynn.
“I want to keep busy on this case,” he told the inspector. “Trace that Digberry revolver. And let’s go further with that paper, too — all those Driller notes were on identical sheets... Now, Tony, let’s get at this budget report.”
But the budget was doomed to be neglected. Just before noon, Colt’s phone rang sharply. The commissioner listened a minute, then swore devoutly. He hung up the receiver and reached for his hat. “Woman murdered on Sixty-fourth Street. One of our men who was at the line-up this morning is on the scene. And what did he find on the mantelpiece but a photograph of our Mr. Digberry!”
I reached for my hat as Colt braced Captain Henry.
“When Digberry is brought back here, hold him incommunicado. See particularly that he learns nothing about this Sixty-fourth Street murder!”
Drawn up under the porte-cochère on the Broome Street side of Headquarters was the commissioner’s car. At the wheel sat the moonfaced Neil McMahon, Colt’s chauffeur. With the siren blowing defiance of all the red lights, we raced uptown to the Wedgeworth Arms on Sixty-fourth Street, a few doors from Central Park.
The crime had been committed in a fourth-floor rear apartment, furnished — two rooms, kitchenette and bath. Here we found a full detail from the Homicide Squad and Doctor J. L. Multooler, an assistant medical examiner.
“We didn’t want to move the body until you came, commissioner,” the doctor explained. “You’ll find it a peach of a case!”
“What’s the woman’s name?”
“She was known here as Mrs. Samuel Smith. Probably a fake!”
I am not easily shaken by woeful sights, but the scene that awaited us in that inner room was unnerving.
It was like a living room, but with a bed that collapsed into a wall closet, The door to that closet was now open wide, and the body of the victim was standing bolt upright, facing us — a beautiful blond woman, her face rouged and powdered.
She had been shot through the left temple, and the powder burns showed that the weapon had been held close to her head. It must have been the killer who placed her in this extraordinary position. Her shoeless feet were on the floor; a scarf was tied around her throat and drawn through the bedsprings. Her arms were lifted so that the ripped sleeves of her costly dress were attached to hooks in opposite sides of the closet.
Doctor Multooler’s voice broke the silence. “I wonder who she really is!”
Colt turned to the surgeon with an amazed expression. “You don’t recognize her?” he exclaimed. “This is the body of Margaret Coleman, the coloratura soprano. She was believed to be in Norway.”
The commissioner’s piercing glances searched the room, rested finally upon an overstuffed armchair drawn up to a window, overlooking a courtyard. The chair faced the singer’s body.
Colt studied this chair with patient care.
“Blood on the upholstery,” he announced. “She must have been sitting in this chair. The murderer entered the room unheard. He crept up behind her and shot through her left temple.”
“But only a left-handed person would do that!” I exclaimed.
To this deduction of mine (of which I felt rather proud), Colt made no answer. Instead, he approached the body once more and lifted its left wrist.
“Bracelet watch with crystal broken,” he announced. “That slight bruise over the right eye probably means the body toppled forward, striking the watch on the floor. The hands of the watch stopped at ten minutes past twelve.”
“So the time of the murder is fixed,” said Doctor Multooler.
Again Colt refrained from comment. Instead, he turned to Captain Allerton of the Homicide Squad.
“Observe that she had recently powdered and rouged her face. Get the trademark name of the powder, rouge and lipstick,” directed the commissioner. “There must be samples in this apartment.”
As Allerton moved along, Colt turned to a detective from the D. A.’s office.
“Where’s that picture of Digberry?”
The detective pointed to the mantel behind us. There, indeed, stood a likeness of the wigmaker of New Rochelle. The picture had been torn across as if by angry hands. The top of it was missing. Colt picked it up with a low whistle of amazement.
Just then Captain Allerton brought in the manager of the Wedgeworth Arms, Percy J. Cooper. Colt questioned him in the outer room.
“When did anyone in this apartment house last see this woman alive?”
“Saturday night, about seven-thirty, when she had a meal served in her room.”
“Did she have any visitors that night?”
“Yes, sir. That man there!” The manager pointed to Digberry’s photograph.
“Do you know him?”
“I disrecollect his name, but we noticed him around here all the time.”
“At what hour was he here on Saturday night?”
“The elevator boy says he got here late. He don’t remember just when.”
Mr. Cooper had not known his tenant was a famous singer; Margaret Coleman had not been recognized by the employees or tenants. She had come to the Wedgeworth Arms early in June — three days after her reported sailing, as it later developed — and engaged the apartment, paying two months’ rent in advance.
“Did Madame have many visitors?”
“A few. One I distinctly remember — a gray-haired man about sixty. They had a terrific row about money. The neighbors heard Madame Coleman crying that she had been robbed and made penniless. I had to object to the noise.”
“When was that?”
“About a month ago. I think the gray-haired man — he was short and dapper, I remember, and he carried a stick — came two or three times before, but never after that scene. She stopped at the desk the next morning and apologized. She said the man was her husband and asked me never to let him up in the elevator again.”
“And Mr. Digberry — did he come often?” asked Colt, placing the torn photograph in his pocket.
“Nearly every night.”
“Who discovered the body?”
“The floor maid. She couldn’t get in yesterday, so she decided the tenant did not wish to be disturbed. But this morning, when no one answered her knocking, she went in. Seeing nobody around, she went ahead and cleaned up — until she opened that door!”
Colt dismissed the manager and we returned to the inner room. Inspector Flynn, who had arrived shortly after we did, came forward with something that gleamed dully in his hand. “The bullet that did it,” he announced. “It flattened against the wall beside that armchair. My guess would be a thirty-two.”
“Send it to the ballistics department,” Colt ordered. “Tell them to compare it with the bullets from Digberry’s gun.”
Hedge, one of the assistant D. A.’s, was conferring with Captain Allerton.
“Our men have searched everywhere,” Allerton reported, seeing Colt. “But all Madame Coleman’s personal papers are missing. Whoever did it was thorough. No fingerprints, except the lady’s.”
Colt nodded abstractedly, his eyes once more searching the room for some significant detail. But there seemed to be no visible clues.
“Our men questioned twenty people in flats near this one; nobody heard the shot,” continued Allerton. “But on Saturday night there were radios going in a lot of rooms in the house.”
Colt’s stalking around the room had brought him back to the open closet. The expanse of coiled bedspring filled his gaze. Beginning at the upper left-hand corner, he studied it by inches. Presently he lifted an almost invisible object that had been caught in the bedspring.
It was a gray hair!
On the sleeve of his left arm, Colt placed that threadlike clue. Against the blue serge, he could study it clearly; it was, indeed, a human hair, and yet there was a tiny fragment at one end that was certainly not human; it seemed more like a knotted sliver of white gauze.