Richard Deming
Too Many Bodies
Chapter One
During my fifty-five years I have lived what the tabloids would describe as a checkered career. I have been, in chronological order, a high school teacher, an associate professor of English literature at a state university, a successful burglar, an unsuccessful burglar, a convict, a women’s club lecturer on the subject, Crime Does Not Pay, a memory-act vaudevillian and a newspaper music critic. But of all the methods by which I have managed to eke out a living, by far the most hazardous has been my ten years’ employment by Miss Sedalia Tweep.
The census bureau lists my work as “secretarial,” which is about as descriptive as listing the work of the President of the United States as “administrative.” About one-tenth of my job as personel flunky for the world’s most exasperating female concerns secretarial duties, and the other nine-tenths involves every hare-brained idea which conceivably could pop into the dynamic mind of a middle-aged virago which too much money and an overpowering curiosity about other people’s business.
That is, it concerns every possible duty but body guarding. In addition to my routine activities as chauffeur, butler, business manager, social secretary and errand boy, Sedalia Tweep might ask me to shadow a suspect, make an illegal entry, steal a swimming pool or perform any other implausible act which occurred to her on the spur of the moment. But I am safe from the doubtful honor of guarding her body for the same reason Joe Louis does not require a bodyguard. Sedalia has enemies, but a bodyguard would only get in the way of her long, looping right, or get tangled up in a judo hold as Sedalia pitched her attacker over a roof top.
My employer is not exactly a defenseless woman.
A duty not included in my agenda, but which I have set for myself, is keeping Sedalia Tweep as far as possible from Inspector Stephen Home. Not that I dislike the inspector personally. It is simply a matter of self-defense. The only three times in my life I have ever been hospitalized resulted indirectly from the inspector interesting Sedalia in murder cases.
Once, as a matter of poetic justice, the inspector ended up in the hospital bed next to mine, which should have taught him caution. But he has an asinine respect for what he terms “Miss Tweep’s cold, logical mind,” and I have never been able to convince him her success in unraveling mysteries is almost entirely due to the same unbelievable luck which made her a fortune on the stock market.
This particular Friday evening we were going to hear Rabenof, a matter which had required rather skillful manipulation on my part, for Sedalia’s culture was deplorably neglected in her youth and she would have preferred to attend the fights. I was having my after-dinner liqueur, and Sedalia her usual beer, when the phone rang.
I have come to be able to distinguish the difference in Inspector Stephen Home’s tone when he has a problem for Sedalia instead of merely a social invitation. He uses exactly the same words in either case, always saying, “Henry? Miss Tweep, please,” but he senses how I feel about him, and a note of belligerence creeps into the words when he plans to involve her in some unsavory matter.
Fortunately, our phone is located so that by keeping my voice low, Sedalia cannot hear me from the front room. Sedalia rents the entire top floor of the Sennett Hotel, which is not as extravagant as it sounds, since the Sennett is a small hotel. It gives her a private elevator which lets you out into a tiny lobby separate from the rest of the apartment, eight rooms and a long, narrow hall running from one side of the building to the other. The hall has the six rooms constituting Sedalia’s apartment on one side of it, my bedroom and the study wherein I perform my secretarial chores on its other side. The phone is in the hall a dozen feet from the door to Sedalia’s apartment, so that it is difficult for her to hear from her front room.
In a low voice I said, “Sorry, Inspector, but Miss Tweep is resting. Could I have her phone you?”
“Don’t talk so low, Hank!” Sedalia roared from the front room. “Speak up so I can hear you!”
“Wasn’t that Miss Tweep?” asked the inspector.
“Just the plumber come to fix a leak in the bathtub,” I said, still in a monotone. “I’ll tell Miss Tweep you phoned—”
From behind me Sedalia gently removed the phone from my ear. With her other hand she lifted me from the floor by the collar of my tuxedo jacket and set me to one side, a habit she knows infuriates me.
I said, “If we miss this concert, I resign!”
She frowned at me, then said into the telephone in a sweet bass, “Sedalia Tweep speaking.”
I strode to my room, put on my white scarf and a dark topcoat, gathered the concert tickets from my dresser and returned to the hall. Sedalia was just hanging up.
“That was Steve Home,” she explained unnecessarily.
I said stiffly, “We’re due at the concert in thirty minutes.”
Her eyes regarded me with an amiable twinkle. She is a big woman, nearly six feet tall, with thick arms and legs and a huge, solid-looking bust. On her doctored bathroom scales, which are set to register twenty pounds less than the correct weight, she weighs one-hundred and eighty-one pounds. None of it is fat.
A news columnist once described Sedalia as “the nation’s ugliest rich woman.” This was not quite fair, for though she has startlingly heavy features, including the largest female nose I have ever seen and huge ears which form right angles with her head, she has two attributes of beauty. Her complexion is such a creamy white, her skin seems almost transparent, and her soft golden hair, which she wears in a mass of coiled braids, is the envy of every woman in town. Personally, I consider Sedalia a not-unhand-some woman in her own striking and peculiar way.
Sedalia said gently, “We’re not going to the concert, Hank.”
“I quit,” I said.
“Oh, stop your dramatics,” she said crossly. “I couldn’t drive you away from here with a machine gun. Now shut up and get my coat.”
I was still seething when I climbed behind the wheel of the Cadillac and Sedalia gave me an address on Taylor Heights Boulevard. Knowing it was useless, I made no further mention of the concert, but I am afraid I exhibited my state of mind by deliberately breaking the speed law. I drove the whole distance at thirty-five, and the limit, of course, is thirty. In my reckless mood I even half-hoped some police officer would give us a ticket.
Our destination turned out to be one of those futuresque one-story bungalows which the moderately rich build along Taylor Heights Boulevard. The district, though new, was growing fast. In spite of having been opened less than two years before, we saw not more than a half-dozen vacant lots in the five-block stretch it included. Two of these happened to be either side of the house which was our goal, and since the house was also set back from the street some thirty yards, this made it relatively isolated.
It was a low, flat-roofed building of brick with a white stone front. In architectural circles I believe they are called ranch-house style, though I cannot imagine a space-loving cowboy residing in such cramped quarters. My own leanings are toward high ceilings and wide verandas with a few tall pillars.
Through a huge picture window giving onto the front porch we could see a number of people seated in the front room. Among them, but standing, I spotted two blue uniforms and the round figure of Inspector Stephen Home. When I pressed the button on the door jamb, musical chimes sounded within the house, causing a general stir among the people gathered in the front room.
The Chief of the Homicide Division himself came to the door. His broad face lighted with pleasure when he saw Sedalia, then became merely polite when he looked at me.