Death Spins the Platter

4

The homicide team consisted of two sergeants who identified themselves as Harry Trimble and Ed Winterman. Trimble was an elongated bone of a man with close-cropped carrot hair and a diagonal scar that ran from his temple to his nose across his left eye, which was of glass. Winterman was broad and squat, with dark coloring and long arms. Trimble seemed to be Winterman’s senior. Both looked very tough.

They had brought with them two police technicians and a photographer, who had gone to work immediately. The two detectives spent some time in dressing room 1 with the lab men. Then they rejoined the group waiting for them in Stander’s office.

Sergeant Trimble’s one working eye fixed on Layton. It seemed quite capable of doing double duty. “Aren’t you Jim Layton of the Bulletin?”

The reporter nodded. “I kept stepping on your heels all through that Bentley homicide last year, Sergeant.”

“A dilly.” Trimble grinned. “And you sure kept me hopping. When you called in, Layton, you said you found King. How come?”

Layton explained the circumstances. Sergeant Trimble listened in silence, fingering his glass eye as if he were worried it might pop out.

“Which one is George Hathaway?” Trimble asked when Layton had finished. He was consulting a piece of paper handed him by a uniformed man.

Hathaway said nervously, “I am.”

“What’s your story, Mr. Hathaway?”

“I have no story. I knew nothing about it until Layton ran into my office saying he’d just found Tutter King dead in dressing room 1. Mr. Stander — this gentleman here, the chairman of our board — was with me at the time, and we went immediately to dressing room 1—”

“Where we were extremely careful, Sergeant, not to touch anything,” Hubert Stander said. “Although, of course, I can’t vouch for Layton’s not having touched anything when he found the body.”

You elegant bastard, Layton thought admiringly.

“I’ll vouch for it,” Layton said.

“You sure?” the one-eyed detective asked him with the merest touch of a grin.

“Positive,” Layton said gravely.

“You anything to add, Mr. Stander?”

“No.”

Trimble turned to the black-haired woman, consulting the paper. She had used the lavatory off the board room to repair the damage to her make-up, and the Charles Addams pallor and expression were back on her face. There was a kind of resignation about her now, however, that had not been there before. As if she’d never had a real hope of release from her prison, anyway, Layton thought, and now she could slip right back into the old familiar nothing.

“You’re Nancy King?” Sergeant Trimble said.

“Mrs. Tutter King.” The voice, the nod, were quite lifeless.

Trimble’s squat, swarthy partner opened his mouth for the first time. “My kid sister’ll flip when she hears Tut King was married. She may not even go into mourning.” Sergeant Winterman stared at King’s widow as if he had a personal grievance.

“Cut it out, Ed,” Trimble said. “What can you tell us about this, Mrs. King?

“Me?” She shrugged. “Not a thing.”

“How about your husband’s enemies? Maybe you can give us a lead.”

“Come on, don’t be bashful, Mrs. King,” Winterman said. “This is an important case to the youth of America. Open up.”

Nancy King shook her head. “If Tutter had any enemies, he never mentioned them to me.”

Trimble glanced glumly at Layton. “This has all the makings of another dilly. Maybe sixty employees in the building, a couple of hundred studio guests—”

“I think you can rule most of them out for lack of opportunity, Trimble,” Layton said. “The way this building’s laid out ought to cut the suspects way down.”

“Yeah?” the scarred detective said. “Tell me more.”

“Wait — just — one — moment!” Stander and Hathaway had been exchanging furtive looks, and now the chairman of the board stepped forward. “Am I to understand, Sergeant Trimble, that you’re going on the assumption this was murder?”

“What assumption would you go on, Mr. Stander?” Trimble asked in an interested voice.

“Why — anything but that! Why would anybody want to murder that unfortunate young fool? But he did have every reason to kill himself!”

“With an ice pick?” Sergeant Trimble asked.

“Oh, I don’t know, Harry,” his partner said. “They’ll do it in some pretty screwy ways.”

“You’re absolutely right, Sergeant Winterman,” George Hathaway said eagerly.

“That is,” Winterman drawled, “if they’re screwballs. But the way I always heard it, there wasn’t a loose screw in King’s noggin.”

“We aren’t ruling out suicide,” Trimble said. “We aren’t ruling out anything right now — including murder.”

“But his career,” Hubert Stander stormed, “finished—!”

“Who knows how finished it was, Mr. Stander? The public has a short memory. And King sure must have had enough dough stashed away to keep him going till he could ease back in.” Trimble turned to Nancy King again. “Your husband admitted to that investigating committee he’d accepted something like half a million dollars in payola over the last four-five years, Mrs. King. And that’s all aside from his legit income from TV and records. Would you say he had any financial worries?”

She looked up. “I can’t tell you, Sergeant.”

“Oh, come on, Mrs. King.”

“I can’t. Tutter never discussed his finances with me.”

Trimble said in a dry voice, “Wives have been known to ask.”

The merest suggestion of life invaded her face. “I wasn’t that kind of wife.”

“Sounds like Tutter wasn’t that kind of husband, either,” Winterman remarked.

“He was a very good husband to me, Sergeant Winterman!” There was actually animation in her voice. “There wasn’t anything I ever wanted that Tutter didn’t give me, cheerfully. I always took it for granted, of course, that he was making a lot of money. But how much of it he saved I can’t tell you.”

“Didn’t you save any of it for him?”

She froze. “I think I’ve answered your question. I don’t see why I should answer it again.”

Trimble glanced at Winterman, and Winterman nodded. The scarred detective was about to say something to Layton when Hubert Stander said in a fretful voice, “I don’t understand you people. You have this ridiculous idea that someone murdered King, yet you haven’t done a thing to look for anybody—”

“There are officers posted at the doors of Studio A, and every exit from the building is under guard,” Trimble said mildly. “Nobody’s going anywhere, unless they went before we got here. Layton.”

“Yes, Sergeant.”

“You said something about the way this building’s laid out. Suppose you show us.”

“I think,” Layton said, “Mr. Hathaway’d better come along.”

The uniformed man remained with Nancy King and Hubert Stander. The two detectives and Layton went out and over to Hathaway’s office, Hathaway trailing unhappily behind. Mrs. Grant stopped typing as if she had been shot.

“Mr. Hathaway—” she began in a trembling voice.

Hathaway glared at her, and she swallowed. “Hazel, these are Detective Sergeants Trimble and Winterman. My secretary, Hazel Grant.”

“But... why come to me?” Mrs. Grant asked. “I don’t know anything. Anything.”

“Maybe Layton can answer your question,” the station manager snapped. “This was his idea!”

Layton ignored him. “Mrs. Grant’s desk faces the door to this branch of the hall,” he pointed out to the detectives. “Mrs. Grant, I didn’t see this door closed once today. Do you usually keep it open?”

“Yes.”

“Then you’d be bound to notice anyone passing in the hall, wouldn’t you?”

“When I’m at my desk, Mr. Layton.”

“Did anyone pass along the hall out there — in either direction — before I showed up during The King’s Session intermission, or after I left?”

“The only person besides yourself that I remember seeing was Mr. Stander. He came into the office here and asked for Mr. Hathaway. I told him Mr. Hathaway was in the Studio B and C control room, and he left.”

“The only one, huh?” Trimble said thoughtfully.

“The only one I saw,” Mrs. Grant insisted. “When I’m not at my desk—”

“Well, how many times weren’t you at your desk?” Winterman demanded.

She flushed. “As a matter of fact, I didn’t leave it.”

“Then why didn’t you say so in the first place?” Winterman turned to Layton. “That pretty well seals off this end of the hall, all right.”

“Let’s try the other end,” Layton suggested.

They left Hathaway’s office and turned into the other arm of the corridor, the one lined with the dressing rooms. The door to dressing room 1 was closed; an officer was lounging outside. Hathaway, Layton noticed, walked past very quickly, as if he were afraid the door might open.

The control room at the foot of the corridor was walled in glass on three sides. Through the nearest of these, as they approached, they could see in and beyond. The other two glass walls, inside the booth, were at right angles to each other — one overlooking a small studio Hathaway identified as Studio B, the other a slightly larger one he said was Studio C. Both studios and the booth were empty.

“As you see, we use the same control room for both B and C,” Hathaway explained.

“Which one of these,” Trimble asked, “was in use for that ten-minute newscast during The King’s Session intermission?”

“Studio C.”

“Who was working in the booth here during the newscast?” Layton asked Hathaway.

“Edwards, our chief control engineer, and his two assistants, Spooner and Kent. Spooner is on sound, Kent is on visual—”

“Where are they now?”

“Back in the Studio A booth.”

Trimble fingered his glass eye. “I see what you’re getting at, Layton. If those three didn’t see anyone go up this arm of the hall, that means the only place a killer could have come from was Studio A — up there where the two branches of the hall meet.”

“I can assure you,” Hathaway said stiffly, “that no one went up this hall during the newscast. I was right here in the control room with Edwards, Spooner, and Kent, and I certainly would have noticed anyone, where they mightn’t have.”

“Where you here from the beginning of the newscast?” Layton asked.

“Not from the very beginning—”

“Then how do you know someone didn’t dodge up the hall before you got here?”

“Are you a reporter or a detective?” Hathaway snapped. “It so happens that just after I stepped out of my office in the other corridor to walk down here for the newscast, I saw Tutter King, very much alive, come out of Studio A, and right after him his assistant, that redheaded girl, Lola Arkwright. King stopped for a second to let the girl catch up, and I overtook them. We all turned down this hall, practically together.”

“Oh?” Sergeant Trimble said. “What did King say?”

“To me? Not a word — he hadn’t spoken to me since we canceled his show. They walked on ahead of me and then separated. I saw Tutter go into his dressing room and Lola Arkwright into hers. Lola shut her door, and so did Tutter. And I walked on to the control room here.” Hathaway tapped the glass wall outside which they were standing. “I couldn’t have missed seeing anyone pass to go up the hall.”

“Then how come you didn’t see anything going on toward the other end there?” Sergeant Winterman growled “Or did you?”

“No!” The station manager was becoming angry. “There’s a lot of difference between noticing if someone passed a few feet on the other side of a sheet of glass and noticing something going on forty feet away, Sergeant. I wasn’t there for the purpose of watching the hall. I had to see Edwards. Then Mr. Stander came into the booth—”

“Just when did you and Mr. Stander leave this booth?” Trimble asked.

“I can’t be exact — maybe two minutes before the end of the newscast. We walked back up this hall and into the other corridor together to my office.”

“Meet anyone on the way?”

“No,” Hathaway said. “I did notice as we passed that Lola’s dressing-room door was now open, whereas Tutter’s was still closed, but I really wasn’t paying attention. I just assumed they’d both gone back to Studio A to resume the Session.”

“Then King could still have been alive when you and Stander passed,” Winterman said. “The killer could have been right behind you.”

“No,” Layton said. “When Lola Arkwright asked me to find King, about thirty seconds before the newscast ended, I ducked out of Studio A and had a clear view of both halls. In the other one I saw Hathaway and Stander just going into Hathaway’s office. This hall was deserted, and I found King’s body in dressing room 1 practically at once. So he must have been killed before Hathaway and Stander left this control room to walk up the hall.”

The detectives were silent. Layton could almost hear their minds clicking away at the testimony so far. If it was to be believed, the limits of the murder period were fixed between the time Hathaway saw King and Lola Arkwright enter their respective dressing rooms a few seconds after the newscast interval began, and the time Hathaway and Stander together left the newscast control room to walk back up the hall — a period of seven or eight minutes.

Layton almost grinned when Sergeant Trimble suddenly said, “Mr. Hathaway, you say that while you were on your way to this control room — when you met King and Miss Arkwright heading for their dressing rooms during the intermission — you saw the girl shut her door but King leave his open?”

“No, no, Sergeant, I said they were both closed. Why do you ask?”

“Just trying to see a pretty complicated picture, Mr. Hathaway.”

Neat, Layton thought. By phrasing his question around Lola Arkwright, Trimble had covered up his real purpose, which concerned Hathaway. Trimble was thinking, Layton knew, that after Lola shut her door Hathaway himself could have stepped into King’s dressing room, stabbed the disc jockey, walked out, shut King’s door, and continued to the Studio B and C control room without the loss of more than a few seconds.

Mentally, Layton apologized to the scarred detective for spoiling his theory. “The only thing is, Sergeant,” he said, “King wasn’t stabbed in his dressing room.”

Trimble whirled on him. Winterman, who had been sucking on a toothpick, lowered it in surprise. “What do you mean, Layton?” Trimble said. “You seem to know a hell of a lot about this! He was stabbed somewhere else and dragged to his dressing room?”

“I don’t mean that at all. I mean that dressing room 1, where I found King dead, isn’t his dressing room. Mr. Hathaway, King’s dressing room is number 2, across the hall from 1 — am I right?”

“Certainly,” Hathaway said. “Didn’t you people know that?”

“I’ll be damned,” Winterman said.

“Now they tell me!” Trimble took off with lunging strides, his good eye glittering balefully.

One of the police laboratory men said, “It’s an ice pick, all right, Harry — the ordinary varnished pine-handle type. The only fingerprints on it are King’s.”

“What did I tell you?” George Hathaway cried from the hall. The body was still on the floor, lying like a dummy in a chalked outline, and the station manager had taken one look, swallowed, and stepped back. “He killed himself! What better evidence could you want, Sergeant?”

“You give up easy, Mr. Hathaway,” Trimble growled. “I can think of lots better evidence. A dying man will do funny things. King’s prints could have got on the handle if he’d tried to pull the ice pick out of his chest — after somebody else put it there.” Hathaway muttered something, and Trimble turned back to the lab man. “How does it stack up for suicide, Lew?”

The technician shrugged. “The angle of thrust is okay for a self-inflicted wound — if it was self-inflicted.”

“Any hesitation marks?”

“No, but you know, Harry, that doesn’t rule suicide out. I’ve seen plenty of suicides determined enough to plunge the blade in nice and clean on the first try. And ice picks go in like into cream cheese.”

Trimble grunted. “I just found out this isn’t King’s regular dressing room, Lew. His is number 2, right across the hall. Better go over that, too.”

“By the way,” Sergeant Winterman asked Hathaway, “just whose dressing room is this?”

“Nobody’s in particular, Sergeant. It’s given to guest stars, usually — they all like that number 1. Today it’s been unoccupied.”

Layton and Hathaway tagged after the two detectives as the Homicide men headed for Hubert Stander’s office.

“Seems to me this is awfully sloppy police work,” the station manager mumbled. “Where’s the police doctor?”

“In the movies,” Layton said. “The body will be examined by a doctor from the coroner’s office at the Hall of Justice.”

“The Hall of Justice?”

“In the basement there. That’s where the morgue is.” They reached the board chairman’s office just in time to hear Sergeant Trimble say to his partner, “Get that Arkwright woman in here, Ed.”

Winterman held his wrist up to his eyes in the gloomy board room; the Venetian blinds were still closed. “The show has eighteen minutes to go yet, Harry.” He grinned. “Want I should bust in?”

“We’re still on the air!” Hathaway yelped. “You can’t do that!”

Trimble glowered, evidently tempted. But then he said, “All right, we’ll wait.”

Nancy King was on the big couch, her hands folded in her lap, staring up at nothing. Hubert Stander was at the window Hathaway had opened earlier, staring down at nothing.

They all waited.