The Straw Hat Murders, page 5
But there was one more thing about that seated—though sprawled forward—figure.
A vicious knife had been plunged deep, deep into his back, clear to its hilt, in fact. Plunged just off the line of his spine, so that it had gone all the way in. The handle of the knife was black and all of 6 inches long. Which meant that the blade was 7 to 10 inches long, at least. And meant also that to the one powerful blow that had directed the knife, the wielder of it had given everything he had. The welter of blood that had gushed forth, momentarily, where the knife had pinned the very shirtback to the flesh, was like a great, irregular, crimson blot.
That was all there was to be seen. Unless one, looking streetwise—though of course with no street to be seen, thanks to the bricked-up windows—as did Cambourne now, even with his right foot on top floor, took in a worn black leather couch against that wall, a comfortable black leather lounging chair alongside its head, a tall tapestry-shaded floor lamp off the chair, with a silvered steam radiator lying in back of it, and, at foot end of couch, a simple mission-type clothes rack carrying a purple velour hat, a hanging purple tie, a bright woolen muffler, a mauve jacket, and a short grey reefer. Nothing more than these, no.
Now could be seen faithful Patrolman Aert deGelder. Standing off and out of the way of everything—full over in the furthest corner, indeed—hands behind his person either benignly, else holding the so-highly precious “highspot” object found on first examination of the site, so that it might not get kicked about in a later general examination. He was, himself, a short stocky man. About 35. And, in his very blue uniform, was completely Dutch, in every way. The hair that fell to the sides of his police hat was yellow, the face within squarish, the eyes blue. But the face and eyes were 101-percent honest, and dog-faithful to his profession.
Cambourne was well in now, some distance away from the stairway top. The woman behind him was coming lumberingly up, taking some kind of position against the wall with the ladder rungs—one who, having done her part faithfully, was now effacing herself completely.
DeGelder allowed the superior man to speak first. The superior man did.
“You’ve touched nothing, I suppose, deGeld—ah, I’ll call you Aert, say not so?—” And since Aert was quite evidently holding something behind him, Cambourne qualified his words by “nothing about the body, I mean?”
“No, sir. Oh, the body? Well, I did touch his right temple with my fingertip—for pulse—and the pulse-area under his extended right hand, for same. No pulse, of course. Indeed, from all I’ve studied in my class in criminology and crime detection, I’d judge—from the rigidity of the flesh—plus the coldness thereof—that he was killed at about—oh, about 8 o’clock last night.”
“Hm? Not very long after he came in, and started his night’s practicing. For that greedy landlord across the way, who persists in renting this—this death studio—he told me a short while ago that his new tenant’s usual practice-period was 8 to 12 each night.”
“Then this chap’s killer, sir,” returned Aert deGelder, deferentially, “—if he’d worked out the victim’s practicing schedule, as he undoubtedly did—didn’t have to put in much time here last night, did he?”
“No, indeed! ’Twas come—kill—go—all in one evening after dark, and before even 9 o’clock. If you’re right in your death-hour diagnosis, and I’m sure you are. No,” Cambourne shook his head, “’twas in the daytime killings where he had to hang around. Having to get into this place at least before daybreak at the latest—do his job anytime subsequently—and get out only after dark.”
“Might I ask a question, sir? This case—well, I mean the previous cases so—so identical with it—have been of great interest to me.”
“To you, deGeld—Aert? To you? To everybody who reads about them. Specially to me. If I ever write a book about this police game—”
Cambourne said no more. His words, he realized, implied that some book he had in mind would contain those cases preceding the one now at hand—and—this one, too.
“Well, all I want to ask, sir,” pleaded the Dutch patrolman, earnestly, “is do you know—or haven’t you found out yet?—did he drop the usual $20 goldpiece in the piggy-bank of the blind and deaf beggar?”
“Yes. I checked on that, first of all. I knew that if the victim up here were dead, no delay in my arrival would make him any less dead. And besides, you would be here on watch. As per your telephone message to me. But delay in checking the usual concomitants of the crime might be bad business. So I took the old man around the block to the bank. Had the pig opened. The goldpiece was there. I have it in a cotton-padded pill box in my pocket.”
“But if it’s like the old cases,” protested Aert, showing unmistakable familiarity with the “old cases”, “there’ll be no fingerprint on it. Not so?”
“Quite so. A defiant gesture like dropping a $20 goldpiece into a beggar’s bank isn’t designed to put a noose around the dropper’s neck. It’s only to—to exhibit—defiance.”
“And movement toward the depot, sir? Isn’t it?”
“It’s always been thought so, anyway. I think it’s to show that plus the fact that he’s well-heeled—and will give a hell of a legal fight—if caught.” Cambourne shook his head unbelievingly. “Does he think that we’d be balked by the fact he could hire a half a dozen criminal attorneys?” Now Cambourne shook his head almost amusedly. “Too bad,” he commented, “that the date for your sister to have cleaned up in here wasn’t for, say, about 9 or 10 last night. Then we’d have been in here by then—we’d have had men in plain clothes over at the two depots in one of which, presumably, he was sitting right then, waiting some train out—for either the South or Great Southwest.”
“A lot of territory, South and Southwest, sir.” Aert shook his head stolidly. “Sir, couldn’t it be that he drops that goldpiece, when he’s done his job—or before he shakes the dust of Chicago off his heels—because he has a guilt-feeling? And wants to do something, anything, for a poor devil who—”
Cambourne laughed, mirthlessly. “A guilt feeling? Listen, Aert, a man who does what the one in here did couldn’t have the slightest emotion of guilt. None. No, he leaves the goldpiece, so I believe, to show he’s well-heeled and has gone depotward, period.”
Aert deGelder studied deeply and profoundly on this. With hands still, however, held in back of him, not showing what they might be holding.
“All right!” said Cambourne, extending his hand, even at the distance between them. “Since in this Crime No. V, in a series of almost identical crimes, the usual concomitant will be here. All right then, Aert, old boy. The hat!”
CHAPTER XII
Class in Criminology
“Yes, of course,” said Aert, “the hat. Yes, of—”
“But wait, my fine criminological student,” said Cambourne quizzically. “For you say you are a student of criminology. Now let’s see how observant you were, when you picked the hat up from wherever it was—where was it, anyway? No, never mind that just now. Let’s see how observant you were. What was the make of it? Did you read the manufacturer?”
“Yes, sir. Made by Riffle Hats, Rhode Island, Vermont. Brand: Skytop.”
“Ver–ee good, Aert! Well, do you know where ’twas bought?”
“Sears, sir. According to an adjunctory sticker in the band.”
“Why, Aert—you’re the future Police Commissioner of this town. Sears—right down this very street. Now you say you’ve studied, or at least read of, the other cases where hats were left. Or were found, depending on how I should put that. What places were those bought at—”
“Two at Goldblatts, sir, one at the Fair, and one also from Sears—Sears, Roebuck to be fully exact here.”
“And meaning—”
“That he acquires the hats always after he gets to Chicago. So—so as not to betray what city he does come from.”
“Right! At least according to traditional thought. To which I, anyway, take no exception. Well now—the hat size? I’ll bet you didn’t think to record that mentally—”
“8, sir. Different, incidentally, from all the others. Which were all different from each other, too. They were, as I recall it, 9’s, upper 8’s, and one, I recall, a 7-1/4. Which is why I, at least, aver, proves that the killer never wears them here to this place. Even during those murders that took place in summer. Brings them here to leave them here.”
“Not just good, Aert, but perfect! The fact of all the sizes being different shows that conclusively. And now, Aert—what type of straw hat? All were sailors. Two were of brown straw. One of white. One of yellow. Three had short brims. Two had wide brims. One had an enormously high crown. The rest, not so. One had a bright, screamingly bright, plaid band. Two had modest bands, and one black, one brown. Moreover, the last one found had—a grey band.”
“Seems,” commented Aert, dryly, and exceedingly deferentially, “you are some observer yourself. And have looked over the hats in the police collection of famous unsolved-crime clues. Since you were not in your present position during any of the other four murders. I am, I fear, quite nothing compared to you. I never even thought of the possibility of cat—cat—”
“—categorizing, is what you are trying to say?”
“Right. Categorizing the hats as to brim-widths, bands, or straw colors. As apparently have you. I—I am—am somewhat—a—abashed.”
“Don’t be. You put on a mighty good recording performance yourself here this day. And some good sound deductions, to boot. As to my studies of the hats themselves—well, difference and likeness are what make up the world. And any crime. Specially, a—a continuously repeated crime.”
“But it is likeness here, in these crimes, is it not, sir, that point up the whole hidden picture?”
“We–ell, yes, when you have explored each. Now we have deduced the reason for the goldpiece. Defiance—warning of flight from Chicago here—financial means. But we’ve deduced these factors from no other adjunctory factor. We don’t even know why the killer always strikes here. At this studio. There are hundreds of places that you can kill people—and leave straw hats—but why here? Why here? Nobod—”
“But I have figured out why, sir.”
“You—you have figured out why, Aert? Listen, my interesting blue-eyed Dutchman, who is slated for a big place someday in the police department, I’ll humbly ask you one now. Why—why does the murderer—strike here always—in this studio?”
CHAPTER XIII
“Sherlock” de Gelder
Aert stiffened up with pride. To be told by the head of the Homicide Investigation Division that he, de Gelder, was going places some day—from curb pounding—was something and more than something. But to be asked an answer to a question puzzling the head of the Homicide Investigation Division must have filled him with pride. And proudly, he answered.
“It’s quite simple—to me, sir. The killer was the—the victim of a law suit or something, in the long ago, against or by Max Goldfarb—injured financially, some way—but, still worse, in his ego!—yes, sir, I study psychology, too, and know what flaming hates injured ego can create—well, I figure he strikes up here always knowing that sooner or later Max Goldfarb will be pulled up into court, charged with being accessory before the crime—and jugged for a sound number of years.”
Cambourne thought on this. Quizzically—but reflectively, too.
“Well, so help me,” he said, “that is a new one! Officially, that is. I—I heard something—oh, something like it—not too long ago.” He was thinking of Aert’s sister to whom he said he would keep her remarks confidential. “Your form of it, however, is the brilliant form. But Aert, my fond Aert, Max Goldfarb cannot ever be legally convicted of being accessory before a crime. When he does something that the courts have decreed he must do, i.e. leaves that rooftrap up there unnailed and unlatched.”
“Well, I really had reference, sir, to his renting continually to music students—rather, getting them by ads put in foreign papers, so that they never know anything about what’s taking place here off and on.”
“No, Aert. He has the law so much on his side, in all that, that the best the police could do with him was to negotiate a—a gentleman’s agreement about not renting this place again. An agreement which, however, he violates. No, our killer here would be more au fait as to Goldfarb’s legal position than Goldfarb himself. Our killer wouldn’t strike—in hopes of getting back at Goldfarb.”
“But when a man strikes,” protested Aert, almost wistfully, as he plainly saw his theory melting away, “he strikes to get back at someone. These people that rent this place never heard of each other—he struck them all—”
“Aert, we’re all—you and I included—over our heads on some aspects of this affair. So now let’s have a look at the hat. And tell me, too, just where you found it lying. On its crown?—On its side?—How and where?”
Aert was bringing his two hands about in front of him. Both were empty.
He explained this with something that explained nothing.
“When I said I touched nothing here, sir, I meant nothing. Nothing—with respect to all and everything.”
Cambourne faced him in great puzzlement.
“Well,” he said, “you knew—know—all the details about the hat, and showed mighty good mental recording of them. But—where’s the hat? I mean, if it’s where the killer left it, where—”
He swung his eyes over, all around the place. Back of himself. Back in front again.
“Where is the hat, Aert, that you could discover it—and I couldn’t? Where, Aert? Where?”
CHAPTER XIV
The Hat
Aert deGelder answered him
“Just go over, sir, to either side of him—yes, the dead pianist there—and look.”
Cambourne, still a bit fogged, did go over. Toward the latter’s right side. Though stopping automatically at the sight of that awful knife plunged into the other’s back. Whipping out his handkerchief, he took hold of the handle-end of the knife, through the handkerchief only, of course; tried to rock it. It was implanted as though planted in clay. Almost unrockable. He had to make comment.
“This knife went in so powerfully, that even if it had gone in straight, and struck the vertebra, it would have but slipped off that vertebra—and gone in, just the same. And all the way.
“The killer of these pianists always has been an efficient man. I mean a one-stab, one-shot, one-strangle man!”
Cambourne, putting his handkerchief away, made a moue at this utilization of something he’d told his wife Daphne before he’d married her: that he was a “‘one-girl’ man”. Made no further comment. But continued on with what he had started. Which was to get to the side of the sprawled-forward figure.
And there, facing that sprawled-forward figure sidewise, stooping a little, he gazed at the other’s face, able to note now how the black eyes of the slumped dead pianist popped out of the head in sheer agony—how the teeth were bared in a grin of fearful, unbearable pain. But, looking to, and further past, the belly of the victim, he saw it.
The straw hat!
Jammed in between the fallen-forward torso, and the dead man’s left upper thigh.
From light that fell from above, Cambourne could see it was upside down, as forced in. So that maker, brand, store, size number, all, would have been exposed. To the observant Aert deGelder.
But where he was, he could see fully what he’d previously asked Aert:
“What kind of a hat?”
It was exceedingly garish, this one. Almost contemptuously defiant, one might call it. For it was made of black and white straw, woven in concentric circles of black and white, in from the rim end up to the crown, where the crown, excluding the inside band and the label, showed a spiral weave of black and white. It was the kind of hat a giddy youth might buy to take his 16-year-old girl to raucous, customer-baiting Riverview Park, given the wherewithal to go on. Or, had this been the days when this very building was built—rather, to be exact, some quarter century after—to take his gal, of a Sunday, out on the cable-car to the end of 39th Street. As a hat—well, ’twas the hat all right, all right, to leave at a crime like this where contemptuousness showed always, in every detail.
He didn’t try to pluck the hat out from between torso and thigh. He was content to leave it exactly where it was. Where the examination crew from the Detective Bureau would find it. Extract it carefully. Make fingerprint tests on it. And find, here and there, on ridges and rolling surfaces of straws, bits of broken fingerprints which, like in all the other cases, were similar to such broken parts as were found on all the other hats. No full print anywhere. But parts, fragments, segments—making up one straw-hat buyer and one only!
“Well,” Cambourne said, rising to verticality, “this completes the case, I guess, so far as ‘Discovery of the Crime’ and ‘Registration Thereof by Official Registrar’ goes. For here, Aert, is where we let people take over with special apparatus instead of eyes, brains and wagging tongues like ours. I sonorously pronounce it, therefore, one Crime, Classification C., Number V of Series I, II, III and IV—known as ‘The Straw Hat Murders’. Completely in order, as to its customary common denominators. Victim deado! Place of forcible demise the same. Goldpiece deposited at upper corner. Denomination the same. Straw hat left. All I require to do now is to make a small diagram of the place as is. Heavens, the whole place is so simple as to furnishings and accoutrements it’s almost futile to—”
