Beagle Scented Murder

6

Wilbur Jolliffe’s house was on Rodeo Drive, between Sunset and Santa Monica. It was a two-story, French Provincial, probably worth $50,000. A Ford coupe was standing at the curb in front of the house when Joe Peel strolled up from Sunset Boulevard. He walked on to Santa Monica, had a malted milk in a drugstore, then went back up Rodeo Drive. The Ford was gone.

Peel walked up to the front door and rang the bell. A colored maid came up to the screen door.

“I’d like to see Mrs. Jolliffe,” Peel said.

“She ain’t in no condition to see anybody,” the maid replied. “We’ve had big trouble here…”

“I know — that’s why I’m here.” Joe hesitated then drew a piece of tin from his trousers pocket. He gave the colored girl a flash of it. Her eyes widened.

“Oh, a detective!”

“Will you tell Mrs. Jolliffe I must see her?”

The maid opened the door and led Peel into a large living room. Then she left the room. Peel heard her feet padding up the carpeted stairs to the upper floor.

He took a quick look about the living room, saw a closed paneled door at the rear and went to it. He turned the knob and pushed the door open a foot. He looked into the room and saw that it was paneled and lined with bookshelves. Jolliffe’s den.

Yes… there was an Underwood typewriter on a desk at the far end.

Peel turned and faced Mrs. Jolliffe just entering the living room.

“My maid tells me you’re a detective,” Mrs. Jolliffe began. “There’ve been a half dozen detectives here already…”

“I’m a special investigator,” Peel said smoothly. He sized up Mrs. Jolliffe and did not blame Wilbur too much… for his quest of younger and more attractive female companionship.

Mrs. Jolliffe was fifty-five and looked every year of it. She was about five feet four inches tall and had, as Joe had put it vulgarly to Beagle the day before, a snowplow in front and a caboose in back. She weighed around one hundred eighty.

As if that wasn’t enough. Mrs. Jolliffe had a superiority complex. She looked at Peel as if he was something the cat had dragged into the house; pedigreed Persian cat, for Mrs. Jolliffe would certainly not have permitted an ordinary cat in her house.

“My husband committed suicide,” she said coldly. “That’s all there is to it. The morticians are taking care of everything and I don’t see what you…”

“Orders, madam,” said Peel. “I’d like to examine your husband’s bedroom.”

“It’s upstairs.”

“Naturally, but I’d like your permission to go up.”

“I don’t see how I can prevent you.” Mrs. Jolliffe replied. There was a petulant, whining note in her voice.

Peel bowed stiffly and leaving the living room climbed the carpeted stairs to the second floor. A quick glance about in the upper hall told him that there were four bedrooms. The doors of two stood open. One was the master bedroom, a large femininely furnished room. Peel passed that up and went to the other room. It was about half the size of the first, furnished with Spartan simplicity. Peel walked through it, looked into a bathroom, then came back into the bedroom. There were no personal articles of any sort in the room. He went to a clothes closet, saw a dozen suits, a half dozen pairs of shoes. Only clothing.

Peel came out of the room and encountered Mrs. Jolliffe puffing up to the head of the stairs.

“You were in your room, Mrs. Jolliffe, when… when it…”

“When he shot himself? Of course. I was sound asleep. As I told the other policemen, I didn’t hear the shot. My husband,” Mrs. Jolliffe’s tone became severe “was not a man of exemplary habits. Very little culture. He was involved with a hussy a few years ago and since that time we had very little to do with each other.”

Peel’s sympathy for the dead Wilbur went up. “I see,” he said aloud. “And would you, ah, say he was involved with another, uh, hussy, now? I mean, do you think that is the reason he…”

“I suspect it,” snapped Mrs. Jolliffe. “I warned him the last time that if it happened again I would cut off his allowance…”

“His allowance, Mrs. Jolliffe? I understand Mr. Jolliffe was a business man…”

“Oh, that!” Mrs. Jolliffe made no attempt to contempt. “He toyed with a business now and then. It was an excuse to get out of the house.”

Peel nodded thoughtfully. “I see. Now, would you mind if I looked over his — his study, downstairs?”

“Go ahead. I must lie down a while.”

Peel went downstairs and into Wilbur Jolliffe’s library. He closed the door.

The room was a small one, not more than twelve by fourteen feet in size. There was a spot on the rug behind the desk that was still wet, but otherwise there was no indicating that a tragedy had taken place here recently.

Peel pulled out the top drawer of the desk, then gave a sudden start as his eyes lit on the book shelves beside the desk. He stepped around and strode to the shelves. The top two contained clothbound volumes, all quite old, but the bottom three shelves held paperbound books, all thin and all very old. Dime novels. Hundreds of them.

Joe Peel pulled one out. It had a lurid cover and was entitled, Deadwood Dick’s Big Deal.

“I’ll be damned!” he said, aloud.

Chimes bonged somewhere in the house. Startled, Peel folded the dime novel and thrust it into his hip pocket. Then he started for the door.

He could see the hall from the door and just as he looked out, he saw the colored maid passing to answer the door bell. Peel hesitated, looked back at the book shelves, then stepped into the living room.

A harsh voice in the hall said, “I want to see Mrs. Jolliffe.”

Joe Peel grimaced. He walked out of the living room, into the reception hall. Sergeant Fedderson gawked at him. “Joe Peel, by all that’s—”

“Hello, Mike,” said Peel. “Sorry, I can’t stay and have a saucer of tea with you.”

Fedderson grabbed Peel’s arm. “What’re you doing here?”

“Let go of my arm.”

“I’ve got a good notion to drag you down to the station house.”

“Lieutenant Becker had a notion like that.”

Fedderson let go of Peel’s arm. “We’re going to have you two birds down there yet.”

“Save a room with a southern exposure,” Peel said, sarcastically and brushed past the sergeant.

He did not breathe easier, however, until he was a block from the Jolliffe house. Then he walked swiftly toward Santa Monica Boulevard where he caught a vacant taxi at a traffic light.

Fifteen minutes later he entered the building which contained the offices of Jolliffe & Company. He half expected the door to be locked, but found it open and inside, the redheaded receptionist opening mail.

“Your boss is dead,” Peel said, “or haven’t you heard?”

“I’ve heard,” retorted the redhead. “But no one’s fired me or told me to stop working.”

“Didn’t Lieutenant Becker tell you?”

“Lieutenant Becker didn’t hire me.”

“Still, you’ll be looking for a new job soon. I might be able to throw something your way.”

“What, outside of some passes?”

“I never make passes at redheads when I’m working.”

“You looked better yesterday with the whiskers.”

Peel grinned. “Oh, you remember me.”

“The manner, not the face… What was the idea?”

“I was just playing a joke on Wilbur.”

“A joke? He was scared stiff after you left.”

“Wilbur scared easily. I guess he had a guilty conscience.”

“You’ll have one, too — after the police get you.”

Peel frowned. “Why should the police want to get me?”

“You figure it out. You came in here wearing a phony beard. Result, Wilbur got so scared that he shot himself last night.”

“Hey,” said Peel. “Don’t go thinking like that. As a matter of fact, I’m a detective. And I was working for Wilbur, believe it or not.”

“Not,” said the girl.

“Now, look, baby,” said Peel, seating himself on the desk. “I’m not a bad guy and I’ve got a weakness for redheads…”

“But I like big men.”

“I’m big enough,” Peel retorted.

“Not for me.”

Peel sighed. “Let’s start all over. My name is Joe Peel.” He looked inquiringly at the girl. “Give.”

“Not that it’ll do you any good, but my name is Mary Lou Tanner.”

“A very pretty name, too. You shouldn’t ought to be so afraid to tell people. Uh, you might as well give me the phone number.”

“Only one man has my phone number,” said Mary Lou Tanner. “He’s a captain in the Marines.”

“Swell, I’ve got a girl who’s a lieutenant in the Waves. So we can both forget the romance stuff and stick to business. Which reminds me, what kind of a business did Wilbur Jolliffe have? It has something to do with duplicators, I gathered from looking at the mail on his desk yesterday. But what’s a duplicator?”

Mary Lou pulled out a desk drawer and brought forth an instrument about four by seven inches in size. The bottom of it was shaped like a rocker and had a mimeographing stencil tightly bound over it.

“This,” she said. “It’s a small mimeographing machine. Mostly for postcards. Mr. Jolliffe sold it — by mail.”

“Oh, a mail-order business.”

“That’s right. He ran ads in a number of newspapers and magazines. Secretaries of lodges and clubs, small businessmen bought these mimeographers.”

“What does it sell for?”

“Nine ninety-five.”

Peel pursed his lips. “The advertising must cost quite a lot. I wouldn’t think there’d be such a great profit in it…”

“There wasn’t. The machine costs S3.95 wholesale and it costs from five to six dollars to sell.”

Peel did some rapid mental arithmetic. “Add to that this office, and, uh, overhead and he didn’t…”

“He didn’t. He lost money every month.”

Peel nodded. “I see what his wife meant.”

“You’ve talked to her?”

“Yes. Do you know her?”

“She came in here only once in the three months I’ve worked here. I never got such a dirty look from anyone in all my life.”

“By the way,” said Peel, “how did you get along with Wilbur?”

“Pretty good — for the last couple of months. The first month my fingernails were worn down to the quick and I lost four pounds, from dodging around desks. Then I reached an understanding with Mr. Jolliffe… and not what you think, either! My boy friend was home on furlough and I had him in here one day. You remember I told you I like big men. Well, Wilbur never bothered me after he saw the captain.”

Peel nodded thoughtfully, then said casually, “By the way, who is Wilma?”

The question put casually, made no unusual impression on Mary Lou. “She’s one of Wilbur’s girl friends; was one, I should say.”

“What does she look like?”

“Never saw her; she was just a voice on the telephone.”

“How were they getting along? I mean, had she started shaking him down?”

Mary Lou regarded Peel coldly. “I must say, you don’t have a very high opinion of women.”

“Not young girls who go out with old married men like Wilbur Jolliffe.”

Mary Lou would undoubtedly have made a retort to that, but just then the door opened and a heavy-set man of fifty entered.

“How do you do,” he said, “I’m George Byram.” Then, as the name did not seem to register on Mary Lou, he added, “Mr. Jolliffe’s brother-in-law.”

Peel looked at the newcomer with interest. There was little family resemblance between Byram and Mrs. Jolliffe.

“Oh, yes,” said Mary Lou.

“I’m taking over this place,” Byram went on. “My sister asked me to.” He looked at Joe Peel. “Anything I can do for you?”

“Not unless you’d be interested in buying a subscription to True Confessions?”

Byram snorted his answer and Peel pulled open the door. He gave Mary Lou a wink and went out.

So Mrs. Jolliffe had a brother, a robust younger brother.