“He... he did it? He really did it, honest to God?”
Stevie nodded. “The girl was knifed and Tony was running. Use your head.”
“I can’t believe it!”
“Yes,” Stevie said sadly, “how hard it is to believe! Our Tony doing a thing like that, staining his honor, falling from the paths of virtue.”
“Shut up!”
She was staring at him, her eyes bright with hate. She had her teeth clenched and her breath hissed in and out like a snake’s.
Stevie took out a package of cigarettes. By the time he had one lit Mamie was gone, and he wasn’t sorry.
I must have been crazy, he thought, wiping the sweat off his forehead.
The noises outside the door were becoming softer, less confused. You could distinguish individual footsteps and voices, hear the cars driving away from the front of the Club; the rattle of coathangers and small change had stopped, the orchestra was gone. A few minutes later all the noises ceased and the Club sank into its grave for the night.
Stevie lit another cigarette and looked around the desk drawers in the faint hope of finding a drink. He didn’t find one but the act of looking reminded him again of Sands.
Sands was a little crazy, he thought. You couldn’t be so sure of yourself if you weren’t. Planning that whole thing tonight, taking the matches and killing the engine in the car and waiting at the other end of the alley.
So that makes me a grasshopper. And I jumped, but not all the way. He’s a cop, I can’t trust him. If I’d told him the works he’d have thought it was too pat and I was making it up to get even.
Let him look at the pictures of the accident first, let him see I’m not lying about that and then I’ll tell him the rest.
He closed his eyes and leaned back in Joey’s chair, smiling.
I’m going to blow Johnny Heath sky-high.
Sands sat on the edge of his bed and smoked a final cigarette. He was shivering. The apartment house had had its first spurt of heat for the season but that had already disappeared and the radiators had stopped clanging and hissing and were cold and quiet in a little death. Though there were no windows open, small winds formed near the ceiling and swooped down at him, slithering through his pajamas and whirling the smoke away from his head.
He did not get up to put on his bathrobe. The coldness had become important to him, it was a premonition, coming at him like the winds from the ceiling, effectual yet without source.
Something’s going to happen tonight, he thought. Perhaps it was Murillo, perhaps Murillo was going to come out from his hiding place and blubber his confession. That’s what Murillo’s kind did when they got in over their heads and tried something too much for them. Murillo belonged to the substratum of criminals, the petty thieves and pickpockets, the pimps and hopheads and peddlers of dirty pictures. Nothing big-time about Murillo.
Yet he had committed a murder, a completely unnecessary and stupidly bungled murder. He had left behind the print of his glove and the shreds from his cigarette, and the jewels he had come to take. He had run madly out of the house — these were the footsteps that Mr. Heath had heard — and he had been seen plainly by Stevie Jordan.
Strange that Murillo, apparently content until now to live on this woman, should have returned to the field of crime by planning two robberies in one night, both of them failures. Not so strange that the first had failed. Murillo, unarmed, had demanded the night’s receipts from the proprietor of the tavern and when he didn’t get them simply ran away.
But the second robbery — easy enough to pick up a jewel box and escape. There was no need to pick the lock there on the spot, to wake the girl up, to kill her.
How had he known about the Heaths in the first place? Through one of the servants, or through Johnny Heath. Johnny’s current girl friend worked at Joey’s with Murillo’s girl friend. Probably they exchanged confidences: “Johnny says...” “Tony says...” “So I said...” Mamie fitted that picture, but Marcella Moore did not.
One of the servants. He thought of Ida and smiled. The golden girl, Ida. Unassailable virtue so frequently went hand in hand with acne and petty malice. It would be simple for a man like Murillo, well used to the ways of women, to persuade Ida to leave the front door open.
And it was Ida who had brought Kelsey Heath the morphine. No charge could ever be proved there, of course. Ida could have been told to fetch a box or phial of tablets and not have known what the tablets were. Whether she had known or not could never be proved. The whole business of the poisoning had better be laid aside. Loring had violated his professional code but his motive was understandable. No good would come of reporting him.
Yes, that part of the poisoning could be forgotten, but what of the girl’s motive for killing herself?
Kelsey Heath was the common factor in both murders and the poisoning. She had been driving the car when Geraldine Smith was murdered. She had taken the morphine. She was murdered.
A lapse of two years between the first murder and the poisoning, a lapse of only a few hours between the poisoning and Kelsey Heath’s murder.
Would she have lived, blind, for two years and then decided to kill herself because of her blindness, only a few hours before someone else killed her for another reason? Or did the attempted suicide suggest the murder?
In that case how did Murillo come into it? Had the robbery been planned before Kelsey Heath poisoned herself and was it then too late to change the plan, too late for Murillo’s inside help to let him know?
Sands stubbed out his cigarette in an ashtray. He was no longer cold.
Murillo would turn up sooner or later. He’d confess, he’d tell who had helped him or who had hired him. There was no use worrying over confusing side issues now. Murillo had killed the girl, that fact was clear.
Sands looked at his watch. Three o’clock. He felt a vague excitement, a desire to talk to somebody.
He went into the sitting room and poured himself a drink. He was very warm now, and cheerful. Might be a good idea to telephone and let Alice Heath know that Murillo had killed her sister. She probably wouldn’t be sleeping anyway and she’d want to know that an outsider had done it.
He picked up the phone and dialed, and while he waited he kept smiling to himself: imagine ever suspecting Alice Heath of committing a murder — poor bloodless frigid constipated Alice.
So the first of the three telephone calls which were to solve the case took place at three o’clock.
A sleepy voice said, “The Heath residence.”
“Is that Maurice?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Inspector Sands speaking.”
“Yes, sir.” Maurice was politely irritable. “The family is in bed, sir. May I take a message?”
“It’s not urgent. I thought Miss Heath, if she was still awake, would like to know that we have identified the murderer. We have a witness who saw him running away from the house.”
“Oh.” Maurice paused. “That’s very good news, sir.”
Sands thought he sounded surprised and rather disappointed.
“Yes, sir, very good news,” Maurice repeated. “I shall see if anyone is awake.”
“Tell them to relax,” Sands said, thinking, he’ll spread it around all right and maybe someone will relax too far.
“Thank you, sir.”
“Good night.”
“Good night, sir.”
The second call was twenty minutes later. Stevie was still waiting in Joey’s office for Joey to appear and count up the night’s receipts. Joey never left this job until morning. He had a supernatural respect for money, and nickels might grow legs and walk off.
The phone rang. Stevie took his feet off the desk and picked up the receiver.