The girl on the floor was very blonde and very young. She was fully clothed, but her white dress was torn at the neck and waist, and her hair was disheveled. A cocktail table had been overturned and a small hooked rug lay half on the table and half on the floor, as if kicked or thrown there.
I closed the door behind us and knelt down beside the girl. She had been shot in the neck, about three inches beneath the right ear. There was just the one bullet hole, and that, coupled with the angle of entrance, meant the slug was still inside her skull. There was almost no blood.
“Looks like she put up a pretty good fight,” Fred said. He lifted one of the girl’s hands and glanced at the fingernails. “She didn’t get a chance to do any clawing, though.”
I straightened up. “Better call the lieutenant and tell him we’ve got a homicide,” I said. “I’ll check the other rooms.”
There was no one in the bedroom or bath or kitchen, and no evidence of any struggle. I got back to the living room just as Fred was hanging up the phone.
“The boys are on their way,” he said. “You find anything?”
“Nope. Looks like all the action took place out here.” And now I noticed something I hadn’t seen when we first came in. On the floor, hidden from the hall door by a large leather hassock, was a woman’s purse. It was upside down, and open, and when I lifted it a lipstick rolled away across the carpet.
There were the usual feminine items, but no money and no wallet. There was only one piece of identification, an Actor’s Equity Association card made out to Elizabeth Hanson. The apartment number and address indicated it had belonged to the dead girl.
“Any dough?” Fred asked.
I shook my head. “No wallet, no loose bills, no change, no anything.”
“Kind of looks like somebody killed her, scooped whatever dough she had out of her purse, and took off,” Fred said.
“It looks that way, all right,” I said.
“Maybe this was one of our loid-workers,” Fred said. “They’ve made a lot of hits in this neighborhood lately.”
I closed the purse, put it on top of the hassock, and stared down at the girl again. Fred was probably right, I knew. “Loid-workers” are burglars who get inside an apartment with the aid of a strip of celluloid, exactly the way Fred had done. Most of them use pretty much the same M.O. Usually they’ll step into an apartment house foyer, make a fast note of several names and apartment numbers, and then go down the street to a phone booth. They look up the telephone numbers for each name, and then call each one in turn until they find a phone that doesn’t answer. They let it ring long enough to be certain no one is home; then they return to the apartment house, go to the apartment, and get to work with their celluloid. That’s their only tool, the celluloid — if you don’t count the gun they’re sure to have. And use, if you’re unlucky enough to walk in on them.
It’s not at all uncommon for a long-time loid-worker to hit several apartments in the same building, one right after the other, spending no more than two or three minutes in each. They’re after jewels and money, mostly, but if they come across something larger that they think is worth while, they’ll look in the closet for a traveling bag and carry it out in that.
“Better look around a little, Fred,” I said. “I’m going back and talk to Mrs. Hallaby.”
“What was that bit she got off about somebody named Edward Creighton Hallaby?” Fred asked. “I never heard of the guy.”
“That makes two of us,” I said.
3
Mrs. Hallaby had been peering out her hall door, but when I stepped into the hall she jerked her head back inside, and when I reached her apartment the door was shut. I knocked, and after about half a minute the door opened.
“Well?” Mrs. Hallaby said.
She didn’t ask me inside, so I stepped in anyway. “You were right about the shot, Mrs. Hallaby,” I said.
“Of course I was right!”
“Did you know the girl in the next apartment?”
“Know her? Well, I felt as if I knew her. I’d never actually met her, of course.” She paused, and her eyes grew very bright. “Is she dead?”
“Yes.”
She tried to look shocked and saddened at the same time, but she didn’t do a very good job of it. I sensed that, mentally, she was licking her lips.
“It’s the Lord’s way,” she said, shaking her head slowly. “I could have predicted it.”
“That so?” I asked. “How?”
“Why, from the way she was carrying on. There wasn’t a night she didn’t have some man in there. Not a single night. Drinking, and playing that hideous jazz music, and Heaven knows what all. And the language she used! It was enough to singe your ears.”
“Did I understand you to say you’d never met her, Mrs. Hallaby?”
“Well, not personally. I don’t think I’d care to actually know such a person. As my dear husband always used to say...” She paused, smiling pityingly at me. “Were you sincere when you claimed you had never heard the name of Edward Creighton Hallaby?”
I took a deep breath. “I’m sorry,” I said.
“Well, then, let me enlighten you. Edward Creighton Hallaby — God rest his soul — was for more than twenty years the commandant of the Danielson Military Academy.” She squared her thin shoulders. “Danielson — as even you must know — is one of the three most select military academies in this country, and—”
“Mrs. Hallaby,” I said, “there’s a girl dead in the next apartment. Murdered. It’s my job to find her killer. What can you tell me to help me do that?”
“Well, of all the—”
“You said you could have predicted her murder, and indicated you’d overheard things. Can you remember any specific thing — any of the men’s names, for instance?”
“Well...”
“First, though, did you hear anything unusual over there this morning? Anything that sounded like an argument or a struggle?”
“Just before the shot, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“Yes, I did. I heard her cry out — not actually scream, you understand — but just cry out, as if she had been surprised by something.”
“How long was this before the shot?”
“Oh, just a few seconds.”
“And then what happened?”
“Well, then I heard sounds... well, as if she were putting someone off.”
“Putting them off?”
“Yes. As if some man wanted to kiss her, and she was trying to goad him on by pretending to—”
“You hear the man’s voice?”
For once she looked truly sad. “No, I didn’t.”
“Can you tell me anything more?”
“I... I’m afraid not... Oh, yes! Just before the shot there was a sort of thumping sound.”
“As if a piece of furniture had been overturned?”
“Precisely. As if they’d knocked something over.”
From the hall I heard the elevator doors slam open, and then the sound of heavy steps in the hall, and I knew that the tech crew and the assistant M.E. had arrived. A moment later, the sounds faded to nothing. I listened closely. I knew there would be a lot of talking and moving around in the next apartment, but I could hear nothing. Not a sound.
I took out a cigarette and started to light it.
“I’d rather you didn’t smoke, if you please,” Mrs. Hallaby said.
I rubbed out the cigarette in a tray. Mrs. Hallaby glared at the butt with pretty much the same expression she might have used if I’d dumped a pail of garbage in the middle of her floor.
“Mrs. Hallaby,” I said, “there are several men in the next apartment now. They’re making considerable noise, and yet I can’t hear a thing. I’m wondering how you were able to hear so much.”