A Lady’s Hand-bag
(Friday, June 14; 9.30 a.m.)
The District Attorney and Heath walked up to the body, and stood
regarding it.
“You see,” Heath explained; “he was shot directly from the front. A
pretty powerful shot, too; for the bullet passed through the head and
struck the woodwork over there by the window.” He pointed to a place
on the wainscot a short distance from the floor near the drapery of
the window nearest the hallway. “We found the expelled shell, and
Captain Hagedorn’s got the bullet.”
He turned to the fire-arms expert.
“How about it, Captain? Anything special?”
Hagedorn raised his head slowly, and gave Heath a myopic frown. Then
after a few awkward movements, he answered with unhurried precision:
“A forty-five army bullet—Colt automatic.”
“Any idea how close to Benson the gun was held?” asked Markham.
“Yes, sir, I have,” Hagedorn replied, in his ponderous monotone.
“Between five and six feet—probably.”
Heath snorted.
“‘Probably’,” he repeated to Markham with good-natured contempt. “You
can bank on it if the Captain says so. . . . You see, sir, nothing
smaller than a forty-four or forty-five will stop a man, and these
steel-capped army bullets go through a human skull like it was cheese.
But in order to carry straight to the woodwork the gun had to be held
pretty close; and as there aren’t any powder marks on the face, it’s a
safe bet to take the Captain’s figures as to distance.”
At this point we heard the front door open and close, and Dr. Doremus,
the Chief Medical Examiner, accompanied by his assistant, bustled in.
He shook hands with Markham and Inspector O’Brien, and gave Heath a
friendly salutation.
“Sorry I couldn’t get here sooner,” he apologized.
He was a nervous man with a heavily seamed face and the manner of a
real-estate salesman.
“What have we got here?” he asked, in the same breath, making a wry
face at the body in the chair.
“You tell us, Doc,” retorted Heath.
Dr. Doremus approached the murdered man with a callous indifference
indicative of a long process of hardening. He first inspected the face
closely,—he was, I imagine, looking for powder marks. Then he glanced
at the bullet hole in the forehead and at the ragged wound in the back
of the head. Next he moved the dead man’s arm, bent the fingers, and
pushed the head a little to the side. Having satisfied himself as to
the state of _rigor mortis_, he turned to Heath.
“Can we get him on the settee there?”
Heath looked at Markham inquiringly.
“All through, sir?”
Markham nodded, and Heath beckoned to the two men at the front windows
and ordered the body placed on the davenport. It retained its sitting
posture, due to the hardening of the muscles after death, until the
doctor and his assistant straightened out the limbs. The body was then
undressed, and Dr. Doremus examined it carefully for other wounds. He
paid particular attention to the arms; and he opened both hands wide
and scrutinized the palms. At length he straightened up and wiped his
hands on a large colored silk handkerchief.
“Shot through the left frontal,” he announced. “Direct angle of fire.
Bullet passed completely through the skull. Exit wound in the left
occipital region—base of skull,—you found the bullet, didn’t you? He
was awake when shot, and death was immediate—probably never knew what
hit him. . . . He’s been dead about—well, I should judge, eight hours;
maybe longer.”
“How about twelve-thirty for the exact time?” asked Heath.
The doctor looked at his watch.
“Fits O. K. . . . Anything else?”
No one answered, and after a slight pause the Chief Inspector spoke.
“We’d like a post-mortem report to-day, doctor.”
“That’ll be all right,” Dr. Doremus answered, snapping shut his
medical case and handing it to his assistant. “But get the body to the
Mortuary as soon as you can.”
After a brief hand-shaking ceremony, he went out hurriedly.
Heath turned to the detective who had been standing by the table when
we entered.
“Burke, you ’phone Headquarters to call for the body—and tell ’em to
get a move on. Then go back to the office and wait for me.”
Burke saluted and disappeared.
Heath then addressed one of the two men who had been inspecting the
_grilles_ of the front windows.
“How about that ironwork, Snitkin?”
“No chance, Sergeant,” was the answer. “Strong as a jail—both of ’em.
Nobody never got in through those windows.”
“Very good,” Heath told him. “Now you two fellows chase along with
Burke.”
When they had gone the dapper man in the blue serge suit and derby,
whose sphere of activity had seemed to be the fireplace, laid two
cigarette butts on the table.
“I found these under the gas-logs, Sergeant,” he explained
unenthusiastically. “Not much; but there’s nothing else laying
around.”
“All right, Emery.” Heath gave the butts a disgruntled look. “You
needn’t wait, either. I’ll see you at the office later.”
Hagedorn came ponderously forward.
“I guess I’ll be getting along, too,” he rumbled. “But I’m going to
keep this bullet a while. It’s got some peculiar rifling marks on it.
You don’t want it specially, do you, Sergeant?”
Heath smiled tolerantly.
“What’ll I do with it, Captain? You keep it. But don’t you dare lose
it.”
“I won’t lose it,” Hagedorn assured him, with stodgy seriousness; and,
without so much as a glance at either the District Attorney or the
Chief Inspector, he waddled from the room with a slightly rolling
movement which suggested that of some huge amphibious mammal.
Vance, who was standing beside me near the door, turned and followed
Hagedorn into the hall. The two stood talking in low tones for several
minutes. Vance appeared to be asking questions, and although I was not
close enough to hear their conversation, I caught several words and
phrases—“trajectory,” “muzzle velocity,” “angle of fire,” “impetus,”
“impact,” “deflection,” and the like—and wondered what on earth had
prompted this strange interrogation.
As Vance was thanking Hagedorn for his information Inspector O’Brien
entered the hall.
“Learning fast?” he asked, smiling patronizingly at Vance. Then,
without waiting for a reply: “Come along, Captain; I’ll drive you down
town.”
Markham heard him.
“Have you got room for Dinwiddie, too, Inspector?”
“Plenty, Mr. Markham.”
The three of them went out.
Vance and I were now left alone in the room with Heath and the
District Attorney, and, as if by common impulse, we all settled
ourselves in chairs, Vance taking one near the dining-room door
directly facing the chair in which Benson had been murdered.
I had been keenly interested in Vance’s manner and actions from the
moment of his arrival at the house. When he had first entered the room
he had adjusted his monocle carefully—an act which, despite his air of
passivity, I recognized as an indication of interest. When his mind
was alert and he wished to take on external impressions quickly, he
invariably brought out his monocle. He could see adequately enough
without it, and his use of it, I had observed, was largely the result
of an intellectual dictate. The added clarity of vision it gave him
seemed subtly to affect his clarity of mind.*
* Vance’s eyes were slightly bifocal. His right eye was
1.2 astigmatic, whereas his left eye was practically
normal.
At first he had looked over the room incuriously and watched the
proceedings with bored apathy; but during Heath’s brief questioning of
his subordinates, an expression of cynical amusement had appeared on
his face. Following a few general queries to Assistant District
Attorney Dinwiddie, he had sauntered, with apparent aimlessness, about
the room, looking at the various articles and occasionally shifting
his gaze back and forth between different pieces of furniture. At
length he had stooped down and inspected the mark made by the bullet
on the wainscot; and once he had gone to the door and looked up and
down the hall.
The only thing that had seemed to hold his attention to any extent was
the body itself. He had stood before it for several minutes, studying
its position, and had even bent over the outstretched arm on the table
as if to see just how the dead man’s hand was holding the book. The
crossed position of the legs, however, had attracted him most, and he
had stood studying them for a considerable time. Finally, he had
returned his monocle to his waistcoat pocket, and joined Dinwiddie and
me near the door, where he had stood, watching Heath and the other
detectives with lazy indifference, until the departure of Captain
Hagedorn.
The four of us had no more than taken seats when the patrolman
stationed in the vestibule appeared at the door.
“There’s a man from the local precinct station here, sir,” he
announced, “who wants to see the officer in charge. Shall I send him
in?”
Heath nodded curtly, and a moment later a large red-faced Irishman, in
civilian clothes, stood before us. He saluted Heath, but on
recognizing the District Attorney, made Markham the recipient of his
report.
“I’m Officer McLaughlin, sir—West Forty-seventh Street station,” he
informed us; “and I was on duty on this beat last night. Around
midnight, I guess it was, there was a big grey Cadillac standing in
front of this house—I noticed it particular, because it had a lot of
fishing-tackle sticking out the back, and all of its lights were on.
When I heard of the crime this morning I reported the car to the
station sergeant, and he sent me around to tell you about it.”
“Excellent,” Markham commented; and then, with a nod, referred the
matter to Heath.
“May be something in it,” the latter admitted dubiously. “How long
would you say the car was here, officer?”
“A good half hour anyway. It was here before twelve, and when I come
back at twelve-thirty or thereabouts it was still here. But the next
time I come by, it was gone.”
“You saw nothing else? Nobody in the car, or anyone hanging around who
might have been the owner?”
“No, sir, I did not.”
Several other questions of a similar nature were asked him; but
nothing more could be learned, and he was dismissed.
“Anyway,” remarked Heath, “the car story will be good stuff to hand
the reporters.”
Vance had sat through the questioning of McLaughlin with drowsy
inattention,—I doubt if he even heard more than the first few words of
the officer’s report,—and now, with a stifled yawn, he rose and,
sauntering to the center-table, picked up one of the cigarette butts
that had been found in the fireplace. After rolling it between his
thumb and forefinger and scrutinizing the tip, he ripped the paper
open with his thumb-nail, and held the exposed tobacco to his nose.
Heath, who had been watching him gloweringly, leaned suddenly forward
in his chair.
“What are you doing there?” he demanded, in a tone of surly
truculence.
Vance lifted his eyes in decorous astonishment.
“Merely smelling of the tobacco,” he replied, with condescending
unconcern. “It’s rather mild, y’ know, but delicately blended.”
The muscles in Heath’s cheeks worked angrily. “Well, you’d better put
it down, sir,” he advised. Then he looked Vance up and down. “Tobacco
expert?” he asked, with ill disguised sarcasm.
“Oh, dear no.” Vance’s voice was dulcet. “My specialty is
scarab-cartouches of the Ptolemaic dynasties.”
Markham interposed diplomatically.
“You really shouldn’t touch anything around here, Vance, at this stage
of the game. You never know what’ll turn out to be important. Those
cigarette stubs may quite possibly be significant evidence.”
“Evidence?” repeated Vance sweetly. “My word! You don’t say, really!
Most amusin’!”
Markham was plainly annoyed; and Heath was boiling inwardly, but made
no further comment: he even forced a mirthless smile. He evidently
felt that he had been a little too abrupt with this friend of the
District Attorney’s, however much the friend might have deserved being
reprimanded.
Heath, however, was no sycophant in the presence of his superiors. He
knew his worth and lived up to it with his whole energy, discharging
the tasks to which he was assigned with a dogged indifference to his
own political well-being. This stubbornness of spirit, and the
solidity of character it implied, were respected and valued by the men
over him.
He was a large, powerful man, but agile and graceful in his movements,
like a highly trained boxer. He had hard, blue eyes, remarkably bright
and penetrating, a small nose, a broad oval chin, and a stern straight
mouth with lips that appeared always compressed. His hair, which,
though he was well along in his forties, was without a trace of
greyness, was cropped about the edges, and stood upright in a short
bristly pompadour. His voice had an aggressive resonance, but he
rarely blustered. In many ways he accorded with the conventional
notion of what a detective is like. But there was something more to
the man’s personality, an added capability and strength, as it were;
and as I sat watching him that morning, I felt myself unconsciously
admiring him, despite his very obvious limitations.
“What’s the exact situation, Sergeant?” Markham asked. “Dinwiddie gave
me only the barest facts.”
Heath cleared his throat.
“We got the word a little before seven. Benson’s housekeeper, a Mrs.
Platz, called up the local station and reported that she’d found him
dead, and asked that somebody be sent over at once. The message, of
course, was relayed to Headquarters. I wasn’t there at the time, but
Burke and Emery were on duty, and after notifying Inspector Moran,
they came on up here. Several of the men from the local station were
already on the job doing the usual nosing about. When the Inspector
had got here and looked the situation over, he telephoned me to hurry
along. When I arrived the local men had gone, and three more men from
the Homicide Bureau had joined Burke and Emery. The Inspector also
’phoned Captain Hagedorn—he thought the case big enough to call him in
on it at once—and the Captain had just got here when you arrived. Mr.
Dinwiddie had come in right after the Inspector, and ’phoned you at
once. Chief Inspector O’Brien came along a little ahead of me. I
questioned the Platz woman right off; and my men were looking the
place over when you showed up.”
“Where’s this Mrs. Platz now?” asked Markham.
“Upstairs being watched by one of the local men. She lives in the
house.”
“Why did you mention the specific hour of twelve-thirty to the
doctor?”
“Platz told me she heard a report at that time, which I thought might
have been the shot. I guess now it _was_ the shot—it checks up with a
number of things.”
“I think we’d better have another talk with Mrs. Platz,” Markham
suggested. “But first: did you find anything suggestive in the room
here—anything to go on?”
Heath hesitated almost imperceptibly; then he drew from his coat
pocket a woman’s hand-bag and a pair of long white kid gloves, and
tossed them on the table in front of the District Attorney.
“Only these,” he said. “One of the local men found them on the end of
the mantel over there.”
After a casual inspection of the gloves, Markham opened the hand-bag
and turned its contents out onto the table. I came forward and looked
on, but Vance remained in his chair, placidly smoking a cigarette.
The hand-bag was of fine gold mesh with a catch set with small
sapphires. It was unusually small, and obviously designed only for
evening wear. The objects which it had held, and which Markham was now
inspecting, consisted of a flat watered-silk cigarette-case, a small
gold phial of Roger and Gallet’s _Fleurs d’Amour_ perfume, a
_cloisonné_ vanity-compact, a short delicate cigarette-holder of
inlaid amber, a gold-cased lip-stick, a small embroidered French-linen
handkerchief with “M. St.C.” monogrammed in the corner, and a Yale
latch-key.
“This ought to give us a good lead,” said Markham, indicating the
handkerchief. “I suppose you went over the articles carefully,
Sergeant.”
Heath nodded.
“Yes; and I imagine the bag belongs to the woman Benson was out with
last night. The housekeeper told me he had an appointment and went out
to dinner in his dress clothes. She didn’t hear Benson when he came
back, though. Anyway, we ought to be able to run down Miss ‘M. St.C.’
without much trouble.”
Markham had taken up the cigarette-case again, and as he held it
upside down a little shower of loose dried tobacco fell onto the
table.
Heath stood up suddenly.
“Maybe those cigarettes came out of that case,” he suggested. He
picked up the intact butt and looked at it. “It’s a lady’s cigarette,
all right. It looks as though it might have been smoked in a holder,
too.”
“I beg to differ with you, Sergeant,” drawled Vance. “You’ll forgive
me, I’m sure. But there’s a bit of lip rouge on the end of the
cigarette. It’s hard to see, on account of the gold tip.”
Heath looked at Vance sharply; he was too much surprised to be
resentful. After a closer inspection of the cigarette, he turned again
to Vance.
“Perhaps you could also tell us from these tobacco grains, if the
cigarettes came from this case,” he suggested, with gruff irony.
“One never knows, does one?” Vance replied, indolently rising.
Picking up the case, he pressed it wide open, and tapped it on the
table. Then he looked into it closely, and a humorous smile twitched
the corners of his mouth. Putting his forefinger deep into the case,
he drew out a small cigarette which had evidently been wedged flat
along the bottom of the pocket.
“My olfact’ry gifts won’t be necess’ry now,” he said. “It is apparent
even to the naked eye that the cigarettes are, to speak loosely,
identical—eh what, Sergeant?”
Heath grinned good-naturedly.
“That’s one on us, Mr. Markham.” And he carefully put the cigarette
and the stub in an envelope, which he marked and pocketed.
“You now see, Vance,” observed Markham, “the importance of those
cigarette butts.”
“Can’t say that I do,” responded the other. “Of what possible value is
a cigarette butt? You can’t smoke it, y’ know.”
“It’s evidence, my dear fellow,” explained Markham patiently. “One
knows that the owner of this bag returned with Benson last night, and
remained long enough to smoke two cigarettes.”
Vance lifted his eyebrows in mock amazement.
“One does, does one? Fancy that, now.”
“It only remains to locate her,” interjected Heath.
“She’s a rather decided brunette, at any rate—if that fact will
facilitate your quest any,” said Vance easily; “though why you should
desire to annoy the lady, I can’t for the life of me imagine—really I
can’t, don’t y’ know.”
“Why do you say she’s a brunette?” asked Markham.
“Well, if she isn’t,” Vance told him, sinking listlessly back in his
chair, “then she should consult a cosmetician as to the proper way to
make up. I see she uses ‘Rachel’ powder and Guerlain’s dark lip-stick.
And it simply isn’t done among blondes, old dear.”
“I defer, of course, to your expert opinion,” smiled Markham. Then, to
Heath: “I guess we’ll have to look for a brunette, Sergeant.”
“It’s all right with me,” agreed Heath jocularly. By this time, I
think, he had entirely forgiven Vance for destroying the cigarette
butt.