The result of all this evidence was that Hal Harris, after having been questioned for more than two hours in the presence of his attorney, calmly dictated and signed a full confession. It was probably his best move, for by doing so he was certain to avoid the death penalty.
At six in the evening Sergeant Ray Stone sat in an upholstered chair in front of Captain Jack Parker’s desk. Parker wanted some personal explanations. “I still don’t see how you knew it was Harris.”
“It had to be Harris or Wagner. Those were the only two who knew of Townsend’s impending death. Wagner had no reason to murder Townsend. Harris was the only one with a motive. Townsend was blackmailing him.”
Parker leaned forward eagerly. “How’d you figure that out?”
“Townsend managed to get a whopping big insurance policy when he had only a short time to live. Dr Wagner said he didn’t give Townsend an insurance physical, yet Harris told me Townsend came in with a clean bill of health from Wagner. He was lying. No doctor lets the patient carry the exam report back to the company. He sends it. Harris had to have forged the examination report that was sent in with the policy application. It wasn’t worth the risk to do that unless someone forced him. That someone could only have been Townsend.”
This explanation did not completely satisfy Parker. “What did Townsend know that enabled him to blackmail Harris?”
“It’s not so much what he knew, but what he guessed,” Stone replied. “Those two letters we found in Townsend’s files put me onto it. Harris was filing false claims and pocketing the proceeds. Townsend threatened to tell Harris’s parent companies to examine his claims for fraud unless Harris got the policy approved. Townsend, normally a very nice and honest guy, was not concerned for himself when he learned of his terminal illness. He wanted his family to be without financial worries after he was gone. That’s why he felt forced to blackmail Harris.”
Stone leaned back, lacing his fingers behind his head. “Any more questions, Jack, or have I completely satisfied your curiosity?”
“Not quite,” Parker said. “How did Harris get Townsend to go to the telephone booth? After all, he was the blackmailer. You’d think he’d set up the meeting.”
“We got the answer from Harris himself. Townsend wasn’t able to come up with the third month’s premium, so he asked Harris to give him a receipt stating the premium had been paid. Now Harris began to sweat. If Townsend didn’t die soon – and many who are given months hang on for years – he was afraid he would be paying all the future premiums for Townsend. He had to come up with a way to get rid of Townsend and have the policy canceled without an extensive investigation. ‘Suicide’ was the answer. It would appear as if Townsend were trying to bilk the insurance company by faking his own murder.”
Stone’s pausing briefly caused Parker to blurt out, “So what did Harris do?”
“He telephoned Townsend and suggested that for formality’s sake the premium should be sent to the main office. He persuaded Townsend to go to Lew’s station at nine o’clock that night and make a phone call from the booth there. Harris told Townsend that when he got back to his car he would find the necessary cash in an envelope on the front seat. Then all Townsend would have to do was to deposit the money in his account and send in a check for the premium.”
“You know, Ray, Harris’s plan was ingenious,” Parker remarked. “It would have succeeded, too, if it hadn’t been for your keen observations.”
“Could be,” Stone said. “It was an almost perfect crime.”
The X Street Murders by Joseph Commings
Joseph Commings (1913-92) was one of the masters of the impossible crime story. He started his career in the old pulp magazines in the 1940s. He stockpiled stories written during the Second World War and some of these, possibly rewritten, did not appear in magazines until well into the 1950s. Most feature the larger-than-life and frequently over-bombastic character of Senator Brooks U. Banner. Banner has an uncanny knack of stumbling across baffling crimes of which the following is generally regarded as his masterpiece. Amazingly, although he later sold a number of erotic novels, Commings never published a collection of his stories. Fortunately for impossible-crime enthusiasts, Robert Adey assembled a collection called Banner Deadlines, published in 2004, which contains plenty more like the following.
Carroll Lockyear came out of the attache’s private office at the New Zealand Legation on X Street, Washington, D.C. He was tall and skinny. The sallow skin of his gaunt face was drawn tight over his doorknob cheekbones like that of an Egyptian mummy. The resemblance to a mummy did not end with the tightness of his skin. Sticking out from his sharp chin, like a dejected paintbrush, was a russet-colored King Tut beard. He looked like a well-dressed beatnik. In his left hand he carried a brown cowhide briefcase, his long fingers curled under the bottom of it.
The secretary in the reception room, Miss Gertrude Wagner, looked up at him. He approached her desk and laid his briefcase carefully down on it, then towered over it toward her.
“Yes, Mr Lockyear?” she said.
“I have another appointment with Mr Gosling on next Tuesday, Miss Wagner.”
Gertrude penciled a line in an appointment pad.
“Good day,” said Lockyear. He picked up his briefcase and walked out.
Gertrude smiled thinly at the Army officer waiting on the lounge. He was reading a copy of the Ordnance Sergeant, but it wasn’t holding his attention as much as it should. He wore a green tunic with sharpshooter medals on the breast, and his legs, in pink slacks, were crossed. Gertrude stopped her professional smile and picked up the earpiece of the interphone and pressed a button.
“Mr Gosling,” she said, “Captain Cozzens is waiting to see you.” She held the earpiece to her head for a moment, then lowered it. “Captain,” she said. Cozzens looked up with bright expectancy from his magazine. “Mr Gosling wants to know if you’d mind waiting a minute.”
“Not at all,” said Cozzens, eager to agree with such a good-looking girl. No doubt, visions of dinners for two were dancing in his head.
Gertrude stood up suddenly and tugged her skirt straight. She had black hair cut in a Dutch bob and dark blue eyes. The austere lines of her blotter-green suit could not entirely disguise her big-boned femininity. She gathered up a steno pad and a mechanical pencil and started to walk toward the closed door of Mr Gosling’s private office. Glancing at the slim bagette watch on her wrist, she stopped short. It was as if she had almost forgotten something. She went back to her desk. On it lay a sealed large bulky manila mailing envelope. A slip of paper had been pasted on its side. Typed in red on the paper was the Legation address and:
Deliver to Mr Kermit Gosling at 11:30 a.m. sharp.
Gertrude grasped the envelope by the top and proceeded into Gosling’s office, leaving the door open. This private office, it was carefully noted later, was on the third floor of the building. It had two windows and both these windows were protected by old-fashioned iron bars. It was a room in which an attaché might consider himself safe.
Captain Cozzens had been following Gertrude’s flowing progress with admiring eyes. Those narrow skirts did a lot for a girl if she had the right kind of legs and hips. And Gertrude definitely had the right kind.
Another man sitting near Cozzens was watching her too. He was red-haired and young, with a square face and a pug nose. The jacket of his black suit was tight across his shoulders. He was Alvin Odell and it was his job to watch what went on in the office. He was an agent from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. But he too was watching Gertrude with more interest than his job called for.