“You found her?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said, still a little sick at what I’d discovered.
“Just like that, sir? Burned all over?”
“Just like that, Sergeant.”
“Mmm. Hell of a way to die.” Hilton stroked his lean jaw and shoved his fedora to the back of his head. “And the rest of you were all on the set when Mr....” Hilton paused. “What’s your name again, sir?” he asked me.
“Jonathan Crane.”
“Nice name,” Hilton said conversationally. “Your own?”
“It is now.”
“You an actor?”
“Writer.”
“Do any mystery stuff?”
“Science-fiction,” I said, and Hilton seemed to lose all interest immediately.
“You were all on the set, is that right, when Mr. Crane discovered the body?”
“I wasn’t,” Felix Nechler said.
“Where were you?”
“I was sitting near the monitor.”
“Are you connected with the show, Mr. Nechler?” Hilton asked.
“No,” Felix said, embarrassed.
“What were you doing here then?”
“I thought...” Felix hesitated, then seemed to make up his mind, and blurted, “I thought Cynthia might have a job for me.”
“Did you talk to her before she was killed?”
“No. I was waiting out here for her.”
Hilton turned to Dave. “When did you see her last, Mr. Halliday?”
“Back in Stu’s prop room,” Dave said. He looked at Stu, and his voice carried a muted accusation.
“And what was she doing then?”
“Stu had given her the... the death-ray gun. He was showing her how it operated.”
“The what gun?”
“Look, Sergeant,” Stu broke in, his eyes serious behind their black-rimmed bop glasses. “The gun is just...”
“What kind of gun did you say?”
“The death-ray gun,” Dave said more firmly.
“It’s just a plastic gimmick,” Stu said hurriedly. “A few batteries and some flint. Here, I’ll show you.”
He unhooked the flap on Cadet Holmes’ holster and pulled out the unwieldy weapon. He was ready to squeeze the trigger when Hilton said, “The other way, please.”
Stu shrugged. “It’s a harmless thing,” he said. He pointed the gun at the ceiling and pulled the trigger. There was the harsh scrape of metal against flint, a burst of spark, and then the nozzle of the gun seemed to glow and a cascade of sparks showered from the open end. “Harmless,” Stu said.
“She was holding this gun when Mr. Halliday left you?”
“Yes,” Stu said. He gave the gun back to Cadet Holmes, the fifteen-year-old boy from the High School of Performing Arts. Cadet Holmes’ face was a chalky white, his eyes fear-filled.
“She was burned to death,” Dave said suddenly.
“But not with that toy,” Hilton said. “Looks more like someone used a blowtorch.”
“No blowtorches around here,” Dave said emphatically.
“I’ll have my men look the place over,” Hilton said drily. “Mr. Shaughnessy, where did Miss Finch go when you left her?”
“I don’t know. She said the gun was okay, and told me to bring it out together with the oxygen masks. I left her in the prop room.”
“And what about you, Mr. Halliday? Did you come directly back to the set when you left Miss Finch and Mr. Shaughnessy?”
“No,” Dave said. “Matter of fact, I didn’t. I stopped at the fountain for a drink of water. Then I went around and checked the Earth Control Office set.”
“How long did all that take?”
“About ten minutes.”
“Uh-huh. Were you two on the set all this time?” he asked Marauder and Cadet Holmes.
“No. We went down for a cup of coffee,” Marauder answered.
“Together?”
“No,” Cadet Holmes said, his face still white. “I left Fred just outside the building. When we came back, Dave was ready to roll.”
“You meet anyone at coffee, Mr. Folsom?” Hilton asked.
“No. No one,” Marauder answered.
“Where’d you go, Cadet?”
“His name’s Findlay,” Dave put in.
“Where’d you go?”
“Just took a walk around the block, that’s all.”
“Meet anyone?”
“On the way back, yes.”
“Who?”
“Artie Schaefer, our engineer.”
“Where had he been?”
“I don’t know, sir,” Findlay said, almost trembling now. “You’ll have to ask him, I guess.”
“I will.” Hilton wiped his hand over his face. “All right, Mr. Crane, where were you all this time?”
“Out in the hallway,” I said, “having a cigarette.”
“Anyone see you?”
“Why... no. I don’t think so.” Hilton sighed. “And you, Mr. Nechler?”
“I took a seat near the monitor when I came in, and I stayed there all the while.”
“I don’t suppose anyone saw you.”
“Not unless someone was in the control booth. I didn’t see anyone there.”
Hilton looked disgusted. “Nobody around when she got it,” he said, “and nobody saw anybody where he said he was. This is just great.”
“I was seen by the guy in the coffee shop,” Marauder said defensively.
“Think he could pinpoint the time? It only takes a minute to kill someone.”
“You don’t think...”
“I want to talk to Mr. Schaefer. He was probably out walking his French poodle, only no one saw him except on the way back.”
“He didn’t have a poodle with him,” Findlay said helpfully.
“A Great Dane?” Hilton asked, then waved Findlay’s answer aside before he spoke it. “You go about your business. I know you’ve got a daily show to put on. Don’t mind my boys.”
“Whoever did this will get the chair, won’t he, Sergeant?” Dave Halliday asked.
Detective-Sergeant Hilton assumed his best Dragnet manner. “Sure,” he said. “There’s just one thing.”
Dave, an avid Dragnet viewer himself, supplied the straight man’s like. “What’s that, Sergeant?”
“We got to get him first.”
4.
When I stopped by for Andy that night at eight, she’d already heard the news. She did not pretend great sadness because Andy was an honest kid, and she’d never really liked Cynthia Finch. Andy wrote the commercials for the Rocketeers show, and Cynthia’s conception of a producer’s tasks included the censorship of the nonsensical drivel Andy wrote in praise of Poppsies and its sister breakfast cereal, Cracklies.
One of Andy’s choice commercials had consisted of the repeated line, “Eat Poppsies, they’re tops, see, they POP, see?” This done in a parrot’s falsetto. It was good.
Cynthia had stepped in and changed it to: Buy me Poppsies, Popsy! They’re tops, see, they POP, see, Popsy?
By the time anyone untangled that, he was ready for a straight-jacket. He was not ready to rush out and buy a box, as the copy suggested after the parrot had finished his speech.
She opened the door and led me into her living room, and then she asked, “Have the police been hard on you, Jon?”
“No harder than on anyone else,” I said. I chuckled a little and added, “This Sergeant Hilton has his hands full. Only Artie Schaefer and the Cadet have alibis, and even they aren’t too strong. Hell of a case.”
“Is it true about... about how she died?”
“Yes.”