“Mrs. Schroeder told me she changed the locks fifteen days ago. You’ve been out of prison only fifteen days?”
“Sixteen. It took me a day to get here from Jefferson City.”
“Can you account for your movements last night?”
He was in the act of raising the coffee mug to his lips, but he paused and lowered it again. “I’m a pragmatist, Sergeant. I wouldn’t risk prison again just for revenge. Anyway, I already had revenge. I took Janet back away from him. Besides that, I wouldn’t kill the goose who was about to lay a golden egg. Walt was talking about making a financial settlement for my cutting torch.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Why?”
“Not out of generosity,” Clayton assured me. “He wanted Janet back. She told him she wouldn’t even discuss it until he made a fair settlement with me, but then she would give it serious consideration.”
I looked at Janet. “Would you have considered going back to him?”
“No. But he was crazy enough about me so that I think he would have settled with Sam if he thought that gave him a chance to get me back.”
“I thought he was such a sharp businessman.”
“Oh, he was,” she agreed. “But he tended to lose his perspective when I was involved. He would assume that because I was always completely honest with him, I wouldn’t cheat him this time.”
“But you would have?”
“Of course. It would have been only cheating him back, for what had rightfully been Sam’s and mine all along.”
I grunted. Looking back at Clayton, I said, “You didn’t answer my question about where you were last night.”
Janet said a trifle quickly, “He was here, Sergeant. He is living here.”
I returned my attention to her. “He didn’t leave the house all night? Perhaps after you were asleep?”
“I slept in his arms,” she said firmly. “He hasn’t been out of my sight for more than a few minutes at a time since yesterday morning.”
I looked back at Clayton. Raising his coffee mug again, he smiled at me over the rim as he sipped at it. When he lowered it, he said, “You heard the lady.”
From years of listening to untruths I had developed a sort of built-in lie detector that tipped me off when witnesses or suspects were deliberately lying. I felt its silent blips now. There was nothing I could do about it at the moment, though.
A trifle sourly I said to the woman, “If you’re all ready, let’s go.”
En route downtown I remembered Janet Schroeder had mentioned having a phone conversation with her husband the previous day. I asked her what it had been about.
“He still had some of his things at the house. I let him pack his clothing and take it along the evening I had the locks changed, but he left behind some other personal things. He wanted permission to come by for them. I told him he could come by today.”
“When was this conversation?” I asked.
“He phoned from his office about noon.”
“He mention anything that might be a clue to his murder?”
She shook her head. “Aside from what I told you, all that transpired was his usual pitch for a reconciliation, and my recapitulation of the terms necessary before I would even discuss it.”
We drove in silence for a few moments. Eventually I said, “Now that your second husband is dead, do you think his partner will make a settlement with your first one?”
“Jake Moore? Of course not. So you see, Sam will get nothing now. Doesn’t that prove Sam had absolutely no motive to kill Walt, even if he didn’t have an alibi?”
I could think of one. If the dead man hadn’t changed his will, which he probably hadn’t, since he was attempting to arrange a reconciliation, probably his widow would inherit half interest in the company. No doubt this would amount to a lot more than any settlement Sam could have gotten for his invention.
The city morgue was on the first floor of the Coroner’s Court Building. We first stopped in the office of the coroner’s physician to find out if the body had been washed and tagged. When we learned it had been, I led Janet to the door of the morgue.
Pausing before I opened it, I said, “I guess I better prepare you for a shock. Whoever killed him took a few kicks at his head after he was dead. His face is kind of a mess.”
She turned a trifle pale, but her voice was steady when she said, “I have a strong stomach, Sergeant. I can face it.”
I opened the door and led her inside. Apparently old Jimmie Creighton, the morgue attendant, had just finished washing and preparing the body for autopsy, because it was lying naked on a wheeled cart in the center of the room. The face was no longer bloody, but it was still battered beyond recognition. There were five purple-ringed holes in the chest and stomach. Next to one of the holes was a butterfly-shaped red birthmark.
Janet’s already pale face drained of all color, but apparently her stomach was as strong as she claimed, because her voice remained steady. Gazing at the birthmark, she said, “It’s Walter.”
I led her from the room and back to the office of the coroner’s physician. Police headquarters is only a half block from the Coroner’s Court Building. I phoned the garage and ordered a car and a driver to take Janet home. I told the dispatcher to have the driver report to the waiting room of the coroner’s physician’s office.
While we were waiting, the door to the private office of the coroner’s physician opened and two reporters I knew stepped out. Plump, white-haired Dr. Lyman Fish paused in the doorway behind them.
Mel Powers of the Post said, “Hi, Sod. Doc Fish says you’re working the one found in Forest Park this morning.”
Harry Fenner of the Globe said, “Kind of weird sense of humor on the killer’s part, laying him out with that flower in his hands.”
I looked at Dr. Fish, who said, “That was all right to tell, wasn’t it, Sod?”
Before I could answer, Mel Powers, noting Janet’s paleness, said, “Are you here to identify the body, ma’am?”
“Yes,” she said. “He was my husband.”
“Mrs. Janet Schroeder, gentlemen,” I said. “She has just officially identified the victim as her husband, Walter Schroeder.”
Both reporters momentarily lost interest in me in order to question her about what her reaction had been to the news and if she had any theories about who had killed her husband. I took advantage of the diversion to ask Dr. Fish if he had looked at the body yet.
“Only briefly,” he said. “I would guess he died sometime during the night. Say between nine p.m. and three a.m. I’ll probably be able to refine that for you after the autopsy. I’ll get a preliminary postmortem report to you tomorrow, and the full report in a couple of days.”
He went back into his office and closed the door. A uniformed policeman came in from the hall and asked generally, “Sergeant Harris?”
“That’s me,” I said. “You from the garage?”
“That’s right.”
“I want you to run Mrs. Schroeder here home. She lives down on Russell Boulevard.”
“Okay,” he said.
I broke in on the reporters’ questioning of the widow to tell her the chauffeur had arrived and to thank her for making the identification. Apparently they had gotten everything they wanted from her, because they made no attempt to hold her up with more questions. After she and the driver had left, they turned back to me.
“I don’t know any more than Doc Fish told you,” I said. “We have no suspects and we don’t know what the motive was — except it wasn’t robbery. He had three hundred dollars in his wallet.”
They hadn’t known that, because Dr. Fish hadn’t. The wallet had gone to the lab, not to the morgue. The two reporters tried to push me into speculating on why the money had not been taken, but I was too old a hand for that game. Usually when some idiot statement is attributed by the press to the cop working on a murder case, you can bet that he was badgered into it by reporters in order to spice up the story.