Murder Most Foul Read online

  “Which of the thirteen fighters on the card tonight were bigger and broader than I? Ah, but it’s been a very light card—bantamweights, welterweights, lightweights! Therefore none of the twelve preliminary fighters could have murdered Brown. Therefore only one fighter was left—a man six and a half feet tall, extremely broad-shouldered and broad-backed, a man who had the greatest motive to induce Mike Brown to throw the fight tonight!”

  And this time the silence was ghastly with meaning. It was broken by Jim Coyle’s lazy laugh. “If you mean me, you must be off your nut. Why, I was in the shower room taking a shower at the time Mike was bumped off!”

  “Yes, I mean you, Mr. Jim Coyle,” said Ellery clearly, “and the shower room was the cleverest part of your scheme. You went into the shower room in full view of all of us, with towels, shut the door, turned on the shower, grabbed Big Barney Hawks’s camel’s-hair coat which was hanging on a peg in there, and then ducked out of the shower-room window into the alley. From there it was a matter of seconds to the street and the parking lot across the street. Of course, when you stained Hawks’s coat during the commission of your crime, you couldn’t risk coming back in it. And you had to have a coat to cover your nakedness for the return trip. So you stole mine, for which I’m very grateful, because otherwise—grab him, will you? My right isn’t very good,” said Ellery, employing a dainty and beautiful bit of footwork to escape Coyle’s sudden homicidal lunge in his direction.

  And while Coyle went down under an avalanche of flailing arms and legs, Ellery murmured apologetically to Miss Paris, “After all, darling, he is the heavyweight champion of the world.”

  The Cautious Man

  Lawrence Treat

  When I got back from Atlanta, it took neither a great effort nor a sharp brain to realize that Gwen had told somebody all about my little trip. The sketches, the maps, the plans were there on the corner table in the bedroom, where somebody had seen them—and I knew who.

  Bundy.

  He’s a nice guy. I’m told. He’s about my build, which is big, he looks something like me, and he takes care of Gwen whenever I’m away. Exactly how he takes care of her I never wanted to know. That’s Gwen’s business, not mine. As I said, I’m told he’s a nice guy—or was.

  I was a steelworker when I met Gwen, and I was pulling down a nice salary, but I worried every time I walked out on a beam. I wanted something safe, and Gwen and I talked it over and decided on burglary. The risk is small, the take has no limits, and it’s tax free. Besides, while I go out on two or three jobs a year, the rest of the time I can sit home and practice the fiddle. I love music, but I’m a better burglar than a musician. And after all, you have to make money.

  When I’m on the job I carry a gun, but I never used it. Murder is definitely not my line. Too risky—until now.

  I realized exactly what I was up against if I killed Bundy. The police investigation would turn up Gwen’s name, and the cops would swarm down on us. They’d know, and there was no sense kidding myself about that. They’d know all right, but could they prove it?

  I decided to consult George. He’s the smart, friendly little attorney who’s always hanging around us. We take him out to dinner sometimes, and he sits there and eats and drinks and says so little that Gwen and I forget he’s even there. He advises us on how to place our money at a high yield and in a way that can’t be traced. He gets a big cut, and I’m probably his chief means of support, which is why I trust him. I have the dough, and he needs me.

  I told him exactly what I was going to do. He agreed to alibi me, and we went over every detail of what we’d say. Besides that, I pumped him thoroughly on the laws of search and arrest. I learned exactly when to talk and what to tell, and when to shut up. I was ready. All I had to do was go out and kill Bundy.

  I never met Bundy or even spoke to him after I got that first glimpse of him, but the idea hit me before he could even turn around. He was crossing a parking lot behind the supermarket, and I’d just stepped out of the car. I ducked fast and I said to Gwen, “Look.”

  She looked. As far as I’m concerned, when she turns those deep violet eyes of hers in my direction, even if I’m a block away I tremble and my throat gets dry and I head for her in a short, straight line. That’s Gwen for you; or for me, at any rate.

  Bundy, however, didn’t turn a hair. He kept on walking to wherever he was going. I stayed out of sight and began circling the car on my hands and knees.

  “Who is he?” Gwen asked. “A cop?”

  “No.” I was thinking fast.

  Puzzled, Gwen said, “He looks something like you, what of it?”

  “Talk to him,” I said. “Find out who he is. I have an idea.”

  Gwen stared at me as if I were an imbecile. “Are you out of your mind?” she said. “And the way you’re crouching—some kids will see you and think you’re Tarzan, and then what?”

  “Talk to him,” I said, and tried to make myself smaller.

  Gwen smiled and contrived to look helpless. Bundy was only fifteen feet away, and she said in a pitiful voice, “Oh—I’ve lost my car keys!”

  Bundy stopped and looked at her, and when you look at Gwen, you’re hooked. She was Miss America and Miss Universe for four years running—or would have been if she’d bothered entering. Her hair is gold, her eyes are amethyst, and her voice is pearly. She could have modeled for all the Greek and Roman statues that are dug up in the Mediterranean region and called masterpieces.

  So Bundy stopped. “Can I help?”

  “I’ve lost my keys,” Gwen said again, “and I don’t know how I’ll ever get home.”

  “Can I take you?” he asked.

  Gwen melted him down to soft jelly. “Would you? I live over in Bayside.”

  A smart girl, Gwen. She didn’t know what I had in mind, but she had sense enough not only to give him a wrong address, but to steer him over to the opposite end of town.

  I watched them drive off. She was chattering away gaily and he had control of the car, but not much else. I wondered whether to stay in the parking lot or go home. I went home.

  Gwen arrived about an hour later. “His name is Bundy Emerson,” she said, “and he’s sweet. He lives with his married sister and he works as a salesman for a roofing company and he wants to take me to the movies. Why did you want me to talk to him? He does not look like you.”

  “He does in the dark,” I said. “Suppose the next time got out on a job, some little thing goes wrong and the cops come here and question me. My alibi is that I went to a movie with you, and I’ll be able to prove it. I’ll remember every bit of it—you’ll have told me, of course. And it will so happen that you lost a glove or something and called the usher to help find it, and he’ll remember me. He’ll remember a big guy that he half saw in the dark. And for that matter, what male ever really looks at me whenever you are around?”

  “They look at your size, and they stay away.”

  “Exactly. They remember my size, and so will the usher.”

  Gwen smiled. “ think you’re a genius.”

  “ hope so,” I said. “And now let’s take another look at the paper and list the houses that are going to be open on that next Historic House Tour.”

  That’s how we operate. When the historic mansions are open to the public, Gwen goes. She knows what to look for, and she has a photographic memory. Later on she sketches the layout for me and tells me every detail of what she saw. After we decide which house is worth visiting and what I’m going to take, I prowl around it for a few nights, to make friends with the dog and get some idea of the habits of the household. When I’m sure of myself, I go to work.

  As I remarked before, I don’t like to take risks. Call me Caspar Milquetoast if you want, but I’ve never been caught burglarizing, and I don’t expect to be. With Bundy for an alibi, though, I can prove my whereabouts, which is what I call playing it safe.

  On those tours of the mansions, five dollars a person for the benefit of the local hospital fund, the own
ers of the houses, or rather their wives, act as hostesses. They put on their best frocks and their finest jewelry, and they conduct the visitors in groups of ten or fifteen and say things like, “This is a cute little teapot, isn’t it? Sterling, of course. Paul Revere made it for my great-great-grandfather. I do hope I have the right number of greats. It’s been in my family ever since, and they say it’s quite beyond price. Now this chair…”

  The trouble is, though, that you can’t sell a Paul Revere. At least I can’t. So I take the cute little teapot and wake up my hostess and say, “Lady, I got your Paul Revere. Give me your diamonds and whatever else you got in the safe, and it’s a deal.”

  They’re glad to. And the funny thing is, these great dames always seem to have separate bedrooms, with their husbands out of earshot because the guys snore—or that’s what the wives tell me, anyhow.

  As you see. I’ve got a nice little thing going, but you can’t keep working the same territory, and Gwen couldn’t keep dropping her glove in the movies. So we talked it over and decided to spread ourselves around. Six towns, three years. Here’s how we’d do it. Gwen and I would find out when and where the house tours were scheduled, and we’d go there. I’d stay put in a motel, and Gwen would take the tour and make notes. We’d study them that night, and we’d put down whatever further questions we wanted answered, and we’d research them for the next few days. Then we’d go home.

  A few months later I’d drive out there, and again I’d put up at a motel. When I was set. I’d steal a car for the night, and I’d go to work, masked and with a fake beard. Couldn’t be safer.

  Meanwhile, Gwen would be setting up my alibi, with Bundy for a stand-in. She’d run tapes of my fiddle-playing, so that neighbors and tradesmen would assume was practicing my violin, as I usually did. They’d see, at a distance or in the dark, a big guy who looked like me. Whatever else Gwen did was up to her. I didn’t ask. I wanted an alibi, and she supplied it. Frankly, it never occurred to me to be jealous.

  The Atlanta job went fine, and I cleared twenty grand. Part of it was in cash, and part in jewels that I had no trouble fencing. I had fifteen thousand dollars’ worth of securities, but figured they could be traced to me and it was risky to dispose of them. I burned them up and pulverized the ashes; no unnecessary chances, that’s me. Then I found out that Bundy knew everything about my operations.

  I didn’t discuss the matter with Gwen. It was obvious that he’d been here and that he’d either found some of the sketches, which should have been destroyed, or else that he’d forced her to show them. His next step would be blackmail. He’d ask for a few thousand at a time, and he’d never give up. I had to protect myself from him. Even if he didn’t put on the pressure, Gwen had gone too far with him. This time, I was jealous.

  spent the next couple of days walking up and down corridors in loft buildings, looking around. I found exactly what I wanted on the third floor of the Triangle Building: an empty loft next to a metal-working shop where there was enough clatter to drown out a minor noise like a gunshot.

  called Bundy, told him I was representing a co-op out in the valley and that we needed some roofing work. I said we were temporarily located in Room 305, Triangle Building, and could he come there tomorrow at two. Don’t mind if the place looked empty, I told him; we were still moving in.

  He came. He took a curious look at me, and he was still looking when I shot. Considering the fact that I’d never fired a gun before in my life, I did pretty well. Even at three feet, some people miss. I didn’t.

  I made sure he was dead, and then I walked out, down the stairs and out to the street. Nobody saw me and I dropped my gun in the river. Except for the fact that the police would dig up his association with Gwen, I was free and clear.

  Yet I had a bad night of it, worrying about the police. While it would be pretty hard for them to prove that I was in Room 305 and had fired the shot that killed Bundy, police are not dumb. Despite my alibi, they’d know I was the man, and they’d make it tough for me.

  I got up early the next morning and went down to the corner for the paper. The murder item was on the second page. It stated that the body of one B. W. Emerson had been found in an empty loft in the Triangle Building. Mr. Emerson had been shot twice, through the head. His boss said that Mr. Emerson was a likeable man with no known enemies, and was due for a promotion. He and his wife had just returned a couple of days ago from a two-week honeymoon in the Caribbean. The police admitted that they had no clues.

  I read the article twice, and then the truth dawned on me. Bundy had never been at the house at all, Gwen probably hadn’t seen him in years. I’d never had an alibi for my burglaries, and I certainly had none that I could rely on for yesterday afternoon.

  The only thing that was perfectly clear was, now I had to go out and kill George.

  Nothing But Human Nature

  Hillary Waugh

  Captain of Detectives Mike Gallon, or “the old man” as he was known to his underlings, looked down at the woman’s body. It was dressed in a nightgown and a blue flannel robe and lay on the kitchen floor in a crumpled heap. The woman was a brunette, thirty-three years old, and perhaps twenty pounds overweight. Whether she was pretty or not was hard to tell from the way her head was smashed. The instrument that did the damage, a length of lead pipe, lay beside her. There was a bag of groceries on the kitchen table, and the back door was open.

  “Photo been called?” the old man asked William Dennis, the young detective beside him.

  “Yes, sir, and the M.E.”

  The old man turned and went back to the little front parlor where Joseph Eldridge, the dead woman’s husband, sat twisting his hands between his knees. A policeman stood nearby, trying to look invisible.

  “That piece of pipe,” the old man said to the husband. “Did that come from somewhere in the house?”

  Joseph Eldridge focused on the detective’s face. He was a lean, handsome man in his mid-thirties though now he looked harrowed and white. “No,” he said, shaking his head. “I never saw it before.”

  “You want to tell it again—exactly what happened this a.m.?”

  “I went to do the marketing, same as every Saturday morning—”

  “You do the marketing?”

  “My wife teaches school all week. I want—wanted her to relax on weekends.”

  “You work, Mr. Eldridge?”

  “Me?” He looked startled. “Yeah. I sell insurance.” Then he said, “I didn’t touch her money, if that’s what you mean. We lived on what I make.”

  “But she taught?”

  Joseph Eldridge nodded. “She taught because she loved teaching. She didn’t want to give it up when we married, and I didn’t make her,” he said, sighing deeply.

  Mike Galton nodded. “And you do the marketing Saturday mornings. Tell me about this morning.”

  Eldridge shrugged and looked down at the floor. He spoke in a choked voice. “There’s nothing to tell, really. I went to the supermarket, I bought the week’s groceries, I drove home, came in the back door and—and found her.”

  “Any idea who did it?”

  He shook his head slowly. “I can’t imagine.”

  Detective Dennis said, “Did you go into the bedroom?”

  Eldridge nodded. “When I called you. The phone’s in there.”

  “You touch anything?”

  “No.”

  Dennis said to the old man, “The bedroom’s been ransacked, Captain. The bureau drawers, the closets.”

  Galton said, “You have valuables in the house, Mr. Eldridge?”

  “Not anything much. A few dollars maybe, and May had a couple of rings that might have been worth a little—a hundred bucks or so.”

  The photographer arrived and Galton and Dennis took him out to the kitchen. Then the medical examiner came and was also shown the scene.

  Galton returned to the husband. “What time did you go to the store, Mr. Eldridge, and what time did you get back?”

  “I left th
e house around nine o’clock, give or take ten minutes. I wasn’t noticing the time.”

  “Somewhere between eight-fifty and nine-ten, then?”

  “That sounds about right.”

  “And you got home?”

  “I didn’t notice. I came in. I saw her. I guess after that I just stopped thinking.”

  “Can you give me a rough idea what the time was?”

  Eldridge tried to think. “About half an hour ago, I suppose. I phoned the police, and then—” He looked up. “Wait, I do remember. The clock in the store said twenty of eleven when was checking out. Five minutes to load the car and five minutes to get home here— Call it about ten minutes of eleven when I found her.”

  “How long have you been married, Mr. Eldridge?”

  “Ten years in June.”

  “No children?”

  “No.”

  “Did she have any enemies that you know of?”

  “She couldn’t have. Everybody loved her.”

  “Any relatives?”

  “Her mother, two brothers and a sister. But they live on the west coast.”

  The old man went back to the kitchen. The medical examiner told him the woman had been beaten to death with the pipe. The photographer said he’d got his pictures, and did the captain want him to dust for fingerprints?

  “See if you can get anything off the pipe,” the old man said. “And drawers in the bedroom. I understand the bureaus have been ransacked.”

  Dennis said, “Do you believe the burglar theory?”

  The old man shrugged. “It’s possible there was a burglar. It’s possible that Eldridge killed her and faked the burglary. It’s possible someone else killed her and faked the burglary.” He said to the doctor, “Do you think she was beaten unnecessarily—by someone who hated her rather than someone who wanted to rob her?”

  The doctor said he couldn’t venture an opinion. He sat down at the kitchen table to fill out his papers.