Manhunt. Volume 3, Number 7, July, 1955

The Baby Sitter by Jonathan Craig

When the Boardmans came home, their children were fine. But the baby sitter who’d watched them had been killed.

The policewoman had finished her search of the girl’s body, and now the assistant M.E. had begun his preliminary examination and the techs and photographers were busy with their powders and chemicals and cameras. The girl lay sprawled on the living room floor, midway between the sectional sofa and the plate-glass coffee table. She had been very young, though well-developed, with long, tapering legs and unusually small feet in velvet ballet slippers. Her facial features were small and even, and her short, black hair glistened like washed coal. She’d probably been extremely pretty, but after a girl has been strangled to death it’s difficult to be sure.

“About how old is she, Doctor?” I asked.

The assistant M.E. pushed the girl’s skirt back down to her knees and shifted his position to peer again at the dark marks on her neck. “Fifteen,” he said over his shoulder. “Certainly no more than that.”

“She looks at least seventeen or eighteen.”

“They’ll fool you. This girl’s taller than most fifteen-year-olds, and much more filled-out. But that’s all she is, Steve. Fifteen.”

“Any doubt about the cause of death?”

“Very little. I wouldn’t swear to anything, until after the autopsy, but there’s every indication she died of manual strangulation. Note the gouged places left by someone’s fingernails. I’d say somebody — almost certainly a man — simply got her throat in his hands and held it there till she was dead. There isn’t another mark on her body.”

“Any flesh under her nails?”

“I can’t be sure. It doesn’t look that way, but we won’t know definitely until we put the scrapings under a microscope.”

“How about assault?”

“There again, I can’t be positive until I get her to Bellevue. Offhand, I’d say no.”

I nodded. “There’s no sign of a struggle, and none of her clothing was torn or deranged. I guess we can forget about that part of it, unless you or the techs come up with something else.” I got out my notebook and pencil. “How close can you come to the time of death, Doctor?”

He straightened, pursed his lips thoughtfully, and glanced at his wrist watch. “It’s a couple of minutes past midnight,” he said. “Taking one factor with another, Steve, my best guess is that she was killed about ten-thirty. I can’t narrow it down to the minute, of course, but I’d say that if you worked on the assumption that she was killed no earlier than ten, and no later than eleven, you’d be within very safe limits.”

I wrote it down in my notebook. “Anything else you can tell me?” I asked.

He shook his head. “No, I’m afraid not. Not now. I may have more for you after the autopsy.”

I thanked him, slipped the notebook back in my pocket, and walked over to where my detective partner, Walt Logan, stood talking to the policewoman.

“How’d it go with your search, Rosie?” I asked. “You find anything Walt and I should know about?”

Rosie is rather plain and short and tends toward roundness. She shrugged. “Where would I find it? All that girl’s wearing is a dress and rolled stockings and shoes. Not another stitch.”

“What about her handbag?”

“I don’t think she had one. I found a handkerchief with a dollar bill and a lipstick tied in the corner. She wouldn’t have bothered doing that, if she’d had a handbag.”

“Uh huh. Well, thanks anyhow, Rosie. Sorry we got you over here for nothing.”

Rosie shrugged again, smoothed down the skirt of her uniform, and started toward the door. “Think nothing of it,” she said. “It’s all in the night’s work.”

I turned to Walt Logan. “The M.E. says the girl’s only fifteen, Walt.”

Walt is tall and thin and studious-looking. You’d think he was a little frail. Actually he’s as hard as a nightstick. “I’ll be damned,” he said, glancing over toward the girl. “I had her pegged for more than that.”

“So did I. She was strangled by hand, the M.E. thinks, and there’s no evidence of assault. She was killed somewhere between ten and eleven.”

Walt nodded. “Mrs. Boardman’s lying down, Steve. She’s still pretty shaky.”

“Her husband with her?”

“Yes.”

“Well, we might as well get started. You keep a watch on things here, and I’ll go back and talk to him.”

Walt walked over to where the girl lay and I left the room and walked along the corridor to the bedroom. I reached it just as Mr. Boardman stepped into the corridor. He was still in evening clothes, a graying, florid-faced man with heavy eyebrows and a build like a professional wrestler.

“She feels a little better now,” he said. “I gave her a sedative.”

“The doctor out there would have been glad to prescribe for her,” I said.

“Perhaps. Personally, I didn’t see the necessity.” He closed the door behind him and gestured toward another door at the far end of the corridor. “I assume you want to talk to me again,” he said brusquely. “We can do it down there.”

I followed him along the corridor to a nursery where two small children lay sleeping, and through that to a room outfitted with a white, kidney-shaped desk, white book shelves, and two white leather chairs. Boardman sat down in one of the chairs and motioned me to the other.

“Now,” he said. “What can I tell you that I haven’t already told you?”

I got out my notebook again and studied it for a moment. “Let’s see if I have everything straight,” I said. “You and Mrs. Boardman got home from your party at a few minutes past eleven. You left the party early because Mrs. Boardman wasn’t feeling well, and you happened to look at your watch when you came out on the street. It was exactly eleven, and it couldn’t have taken you more than four or five minutes to reach here because the party’s just down the street, at Four-twenty-seven. You and Mrs. Boardman entered the house together, walked through the entrance hall together, and came into the living room together. You saw the body, realized from the appearance of the girl’s face that she was dead, and called the police.” I looked at him questioningly.

“That’s right,” he said.

“The girl’s name is Doris Linder,” I went on. “You’ve engaged her several times as a baby sitter during the last four months. You met her through a business acquaintance of yours who recommended her to you when your previous sitter left the city. Your friend vouched for her, and you didn’t bother to check into her background. You were usually able to reach her on the phone when you needed her, and both your wife and you liked her and found her dependable and cooperative. She seldom talked about herself, but you gathered that her parents were dead and she lived with an aunt.”

Boardman gestured impatiently. “Yes, yes. Must we go over all this again?”

I closed the notebook on my finger and leaned back in the chair. “Did Doris ever mention being in trouble of any kind, Mr. Boardman?”

“No.”

“She ever mention any enemies?”

He shook his head. “As I told you, she said very little about herself. She never even mentioned any friends or acquaintances, let alone enemies. Why should she? After all, she was merely our baby sitter.”

“Baby sitters often have their friends visit them while they’re on a job,” I said. “She never asked your permission to have a boy friend over while you and Mrs. Boardman were out?”

“No. I’m well-acquainted with that practice, sir. I made it quite clear to Miss Linder at the outset that under no circumstances was she ever to have company while she sat for us.”

“Baby sitters sometimes don’t concern themselves too much with permission,” I said. “They have a habit of entertaining friends, whether their employer likes it or not. My partner and I think there’s a good chance that Doris knew her killer, because she probably opened the door to him. There’s no sign of forcible entry, and that lock on your front door is almost impossible to pick. It would take a professional locksmith.”

Boardman seemed to have directed his thoughts elsewhere. “The children,” he said, more to himself than to me. “Thank God they weren’t harmed.” He shook his head musingly. “The little devils, they slept right through everything.”

And perhaps they didn’t, I thought. But in any case, the children were too small to talk.

“Did you check your valuables, Mr. Boardman?” I asked.

“Yes, of course. There’s nothing missing.”

“Did either you or Mrs. Boardman call here at any time during the evening?”

“It wasn’t necessary. We had full confidence in Doris. She knew where we were and had the telephone number there. If she’d felt there was something to tell us about the children, she would have called.”

“And neither of you came home for a moment, to make sure everything was all right?”

Boardman smiled at me coldly. “I just told you we didn’t even feel it was necessary to phone. Doesn’t it follow that we wouldn’t have thought it necessary to make a personal visit?”

“Just a routine question, Mr. Boardman.”

His eyes narrowed slightly, the brows pulling together into an unbroken gray line. “Was it?”

“I thought you might have seen someone hanging around the building. The girl was killed within an hour of the time you got home, Mr. Boardman. Maybe only minutes before.”

He nodded slowly, and some of the hostility went out of his eyes. “I see... No, there was no one loitering around. At least I saw no one.”

I got to my feet and turned toward the door. “I guess that’ll be all for now,” I said. “We’ll want to talk to your friend. The one who recommended Miss Linder to you. Where can we reach him?”

“Doris sat for him and his wife just this afternoon, as a matter of fact,” Boardman said, rising. “His name’s Charles Steward. He and his wife live at Five-seventy West Seventy-fourth.”

Boardman walked back with me as far as the bedroom where his wife was resting. He went inside and I continued on down the corridor to the living room.

Walt Logan was just hanging up the phone. “That was Barney,” he said as I came up to him. “He couldn’t find a detective in a hurry, so he went over there himself.”

Barney was Barney West, the squad commander. I’d called him and asked that he have someone locate Doris Linder’s address, through the phone number Boardman had given us, and send a detective there to tell Miss Linder’s aunt what had happened. I’d also asked that a preliminary interrogation be conducted to determine whether the aunt had any information that might give us a lead.

“Did Barney come up with anything?” I asked.

“Nothing that’ll help much. The aunt says the girl didn’t have any boy friends at all, that she knew about. Never even paid any attention to boys, to hear the aunt talk. Barney says he figures Doris just never bothered to tell her. She and the aunt weren’t very close, Barney thinks, because right now the aunt’s worried more about having to talk to cops and reporters than she is about what happened to her niece. He says she’s one hell of a cold fish, and he’s a guy who’s seen some cold ones in his time.”

“Boardman says he thinks the parents are dead. Did Barney find out for sure?”

“It seems the father died when Doris was ten, and the mother died last winter. This was in Los Angeles. Doris came here right after her mother’s death.”

“Any other relatives?”

“No. Just the aunt. She told Barney that Doris had been baby sitting all summer, so she’d have money for new clothes when school started this fall.”

“And that’s it?”

“That’s it. Barney says he’s sorry but he can’t do us much good. He’s going to take the aunt over to Bellevue for the identification. That way, we’ll be able to get an ID before they start the autopsy.”

I nodded. “Well, if an old-timer like Barney can’t dredge up anything from the aunt, there’s no point in you or me trying it.”

“That’s for sure... What now, Steve?”

I led Walt over to a far corner of the room and lowered my voice. “I think we’d better check a little more on Boardman, Walt,” I said. “I get a very low reading on that guy.”

“Yeah? Why?”

“I can’t quite put my finger on it. He’s got a hard-guy front, but that may be just his way. But I smell something phony. I wasn’t too sure of it till I asked him if either he or his wife had dropped over here, to see about the children. He’s sharp, and he knew right away what I was getting at. He got his feathers up a little, and so I told him I’d asked about it only because I thought he or his wife might have seen someone hanging around here.”

“And?”

“And that’s what got me to thinking pretty hard about him. He knew damn well I was just covering up, Walt, and yet he pretended to go along with it.”

Walt nodded thoughtfully. “I see what you mean.”

“That party’s probably still going on,” I said. “Suppose you drop over there and talk to people. See if either Boardman or his wife was absent at any time.”

“You really think a woman could have done that much damage? It takes a hell of a lot of strength to choke someone to death, Steve. Almost all choke jobs are done by men.”

“I know. But that’s no reason to chalk Mrs. Boardman off completely She’s a big, sturdy woman and she outweighs Doris by a good fifty pounds. If she had enough motive she’d probably find enough strength.”

“You see a motive?”

“I saw Doris Linder. That’s a very desirable girl, Walt. She’d be enough to start trouble anywhere.”

“You think Boardman might have got too interested in her?”

“He’s human, isn’t he? You put a man near a pretty girl often enough — especially a very young one with a habit of wearing nothing beneath her dress — and almost anything can happen. If it did happen, and Mrs. Boardman found out about it — then you’ve got the makings for just what happened tonight.”

“I’ll get over there right away,” Walt said. “What’s that address again?”

“It’s right down the street. Four-twenty-seven.”

“Pretty handy, isn’t it?”

“Either of them could have left the party, killed Doris, and been back inside of fifteen minutes.”

“What’s Boardman’s full name, Steve? I missed it.”

“William C. And listen, Walt. Be diplomatic over there. Make sure those people at the party understand this is just a routine check.”

“Sure. You want me to come back here when I finish?”

“You might look in for a minute, to see if the techs have come up with anything, and then I think you’d better start talking to the people around the neighborhood. Hit the bars and drug stores and so on. Maybe someone saw something. It happens. Me, I’m going over to see a man named Charles Steward. He’s the one who introduced Doris to the Boardmans. Doris used to sit for the Stewards, too, and maybe she opened up more around them than she did the Boardmans. They might be able to give us a lead.”

After Walt left I called BCI and asked for run-throughs on William Boardman and Doris Linder. I held the wire while the search was made, and by the time I’d lit a cigarette and smoked it halfway down, the clerk at BCI came back on to say that there was no record on either Boardman or Doris. I thanked him, had him switch me to Communications, and asked them to contact the Los Angeles police for the purpose of determining whether or not Doris had ever been in trouble there and, if so, whether it was anything that might have followed her to New York. Next I called a teen-age stool with a wide acquaintanceship among the younger neighborhood gangs and their feminine counterparts, and asked him if he’d known Doris or heard anything about her. He told me he had not and offered to start tapping his sources immediately. I agreed, told him to leave a message for me at the squad room if he learned anything, and hung up.

Then I went out to the Plymouth Walt and I had come in, and headed uptown to see Mr. Charles Steward.

The man who opened the door to my ring was somewhere in his early fifties, very tall, with thinning brown hair, eyes that seemed fixed in a permanent squint, and shoulders far too stooped for a man his age. The skin beneath his chin hung in loose folds, as if he had recently been sick and lost weight, and the skin itself was sallow and unhealthy looking. But his voice, when he asked me what I wanted, was unusually deep and strong.

“Are you Mr. Charles Steward?”

“Yes.”

I showed him my badge. “I’m Detective Manning, Mr. Steward. I’d like to talk to you.”

His eyes widened a little. “What’s happened? Is it Eileen?”

“Eileen?”

“My wife. Has something happened to her?”

“No, Mr. Steward. This is something else. May I come in?”

He opened the door wide and stood back to let me step inside.

We took chairs in the living room and I said, “This is about Doris Linder, Mr. Steward.”

He nodded. “She’s in trouble?”

“Let’s just say the police have an interest in her.”

“I’m supposed to let you ask the questions, is that it?”

“It usually goes much better that way, Mr. Steward. Have you known Doris long?”

He eyed me narrowly, as if he didn’t much care for my manner. “About six months,” he said at last. “She started sitting for us in February, I think... Yes, February.”

“What’s your impression of her?”

He shrugged. “She’s a very nice person, so far as I know. She’s always gone out of her way to help Eileen and me, and she seems to think as much of the baby as we do. She’s the best sitter we ever had. I’ve recommended her to my friends, and they all say the same.”

“Such as Mr. Boardman?”

“Yes. And Willie — that is, Mr. Boardman — will speak just as highly of her, I’m sure. He’s a lifelong friend of mine, and I wouldn’t have recommended her to him if I hadn’t been entirely sure of her.” He paused. “If she’s in trouble, and there’s anything I can do to help her, I wish you’d let me know.”

“I will,” I said. “Right now, we’ll have to go along pretty much the way we have been. Does Mrs. Steward share your opinion of Doris?”

“Of course. Otherwise she’d never permit her in the house. Neither of us would trust our youngster to just anyone, Mr. Manning.”

“Is your wife here now?”

“No. Her mother took ill this afternoon and Eileen went over to take care of her. She’ll probably spend the night. That’s why we had to call on Doris this afternoon. It was an emergency, and I couldn’t get away from the office to take care of the baby myself. When Eileen found I couldn’t leave, she called Doris. Luckily Doris was able to come right over. She couldn’t stay later than eight-thirty, though, because the Boardmans were going to a party and Doris had promised she’d sit for them.”

“I see. Has she ever told you much about herself, Mr. Steward? She ever mention being in trouble of any kind, or having any enemies?”

“No, she never has. She’s really not very talkative. We’re on friendly terms with her, of course, but I doubt whether she would have confided anything like that.”

“She ever mention her boy friends?”

“I think she must stick pretty much to one guy. At least I’ve never heard her speak of any others. A boy named Les... Les Ogden, I believe.”

“You know where I can reach him?”

He frowned. “I’m not positive, but I think he works for a florist. Down in the Village. I’m not sure where I got the idea it’s a florist, but the name of the place is Marland’s.”

“She and this Les getting along all right?”

Steward smiled a little. “Well, you know how it is with kids that age. Everything’s a crisis and the end of the world’s always just around the corner. He called her this afternoon, just after I got home. From her end of the conversation, I’d say the road for Les was beginning to get a little rocky.”

“Why so?”

“Well, you know how girls that age tend to dramatize things. Boys too, of course. He was apparently trying to make a date with her, but she kept on making one excuse after another for not seeing him. She was very feline, very waspish, but in no hurry to hang up. It was amusing, in a way, though I felt a little sorry for poor Les, and when she finally did hang up I guess I must have been grinning. Anyhow she apologized for holding up the phone so long. I asked her if she’d ever heard the saying about the way women ran away from men — that they ran away from them in circles — but she didn’t think that was very funny. And that’s what I meant when I said kids always dramatize things. She’d been so haughty and disdainful when she talked to him on the phone, and then she turned right around and told me he was so jealous of her that she was afraid for her fife. I could hardly keep a straight face. She made poor Les out to be a real terror.”

“Have you ever met this boy?”

He shook his head. “I’d like to, though. I’d give him some good advice. This puppy-love business is a lot more painful than most grownups remember. And with Doris so pretty, and dressing so provocatively and all, I imagine Les is in a terrible sweat about things.”

“You said she got the phone call right after you got home this afternoon. What time was it exactly, do you know?”

“It was about a quarter to eight, I think. I remember she said something to him at the very beginning of the conversation about having to be at the Boardmans by eight-thirty. I gathered he wanted to see her after she got off here, and she was insisting there wouldn’t be time.”

“Did she say where this boy was calling from?”

“Yes. She said he was calling from the place where he works. It seems he had to work late tonight, but his boss had said he could take a couple of hours off, and Less wanted to use them to see Doris.”

I got up and moved to the phone on the table at one end of the sofa. “Do you mind if I use this, Mr. Steward?”

“Not at all.”

I glanced through the directory, found the number for Marland’s Floral Shop, and dialed the number. I had little hope that it would be open at this hour — though several florists in New York do stay open most of the night — but the phone might have been switched over to an answering service, and in that case I would have no trouble locating the proprietor. After the phone had rung long enough to tell me my guess about an answering service had been a wrong one, I hung up and looked through the directory again. There were only four private phones listed under Marland, and I started calling them in order.

I reached the proprietor on the third try. He told me Les Ogden’s first name was Leslie and that he lived in a rooming house on West Fifty-first. I warned him against trying to contact Les, and then called the Boardmans’ number to tell Walt Logan our case had suddenly turned very hot and that I was on my way to pick up Ogden for questioning. One of the techs told me Walt had not returned. I decided against trying to reach him at the party where I had sent him to check on the Boardmans.

I hung up and walked back to Mr. Steward. “Thanks for your help,” I said. “I’ll be leaving now.”

He’d been listening to every word, of course, and now he searched my face intently, as if he could read some answers there. “This trouble Doris is in — it’s pretty serious, isn’t it?”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Steward,” I said. “I can’t discuss it with you.”

He nodded slowly, still studying my face, then got up and crossed to the door and opened it for me. “Well, as I said, if there’s anything my wife and I can do to help her...”

“We’ll let you know, Mr. Steward,” I said. “And thanks again.”

Leslie Ogden lived in a hall bedroom on the third floor of a rundown brownstone just off Tenth Avenue. He was a well-built young man, about nineteen, with crew-cut blond hair and features that were small without being effeminate. He had opened his door almost the instant I knocked on it, and now he stared at me with the kind of anxious wariness that comes when you expect trouble and realize there’s nothing you can do about it.

I showed him my badge, closed the door behind me, and leaned back against it. The room was small and hot and held the dank, aged smell that long-time rooming houses all seem to have. There was a narrow bed with an Indian blanket thrown across it in lieu of a spread, an ancient dresser, a straight chair with a stack of paperback novels on it, a few pin-ups stuck to the walls with Scotch tape, and that was all.

Ogden reached for the pack of cigarettes in his shirt pocket, then changed his mind and sank down slowly on the bed, all without saying a word or taking his eyes from my face.

“Most people are a little surprised when a cop comes around to see them at this hour, Ogden,” I said. “But you’re not. Why is that?”

“Never mind the cat-and-mouse routine,” he said tightly. “I haven’t done a goddamn thing, and you know it.”

“That so? Well, let’s talk a little, anyhow.”

“Talk all you want. See what it gets you.”

“When’s the last time you saw Doris Linder?”

Ogden’s eyes widened with what seemed to be genuine surprise. “Doris?”

“Yes, Doris. When’s the last time you saw her?”

“Jesus,” he said softly. “So she’s the one.”

“Answer the question, Ogden.”

He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, and stared hard at the floor. “I saw her a couple of days ago,” he said finally.

“You didn’t see her tonight?”

“No.” He spoke absently, his thoughts apparently far away.

“Talk to her by phone today?”

“No.”

“You didn’t call her at Charles Steward’s house and have a fight with her?”

“I don’t even know any Charles Steward, for God’s sake.”

“What kind of work do you do at that florist’s shop?”

He shrugged. “All right. So you’ve got a big gold badge and that means I have to go along with the gag. I help out around the place, that’s all. I wait on customers and make up floral pieces and work on the books some, and anything else the boss wants me to do. Next question.”

“How many phone calls did you make today?”

“I didn’t make any. The boss doesn’t like it.”

“I understand you’re Doris Linder’s steady boy friend.”

He laughed shortly and bitterly. “Man, you’ve got one hell of a sense of humor. You fracture me, you really do.”

“What’s your relationship with her?”

“I’ve had a few dates with her, that’s all.”

“You worked late tonight, did you?”

“That’s right. Keep the gag going. Sure I worked late tonight. This is our big day. I went in at noon and didn’t get off till midnight.”

“How many times did you leave the shop during that time?”

“Well! So you’re finally going to get around to it. I didn’t leave at all, except that once.”

“When was this?”

“Boy, you like to stretch things out, don’t you? You know when I left. It was right after I got that phone call.”

“When, Ogden?”

“It was about nine-thirty when I got the call, and I started up there right away.”

I studied him for a moment. “To Mr. Steward’s house, you mean?”

“I told you I don’t know any Mr. Steward. What’re you trying to build, anyhow? What’s all this production for?”

“Listen, Ogden...”

He got to his feet suddenly and took two short steps toward me. “No. You listen to me, copper. I’ve had just about all of this I mean to take. You hear? You think you’re going to shake me down, you’re wrong as hell. This is one slimy deal you and your buddy aren’t going to get away with.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just what I said. When you first got here I figured you were the same guy that called me. But you haven’t got the same kind of voice.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Ogden.”

“If you think I’m going to stand still for this, you’re crazy.”

“Stand still for what?”

“For a dirty shakedown. Your buddy called me up and said some jailbait kid was going to charge me with statutory rape, but that he was a lawyer and all it took was a couple of hundred bucks and he could get it fixed for me. He said he knew the right people and that... Hell! Don’t make out you aren’t in on it, copper. I know how you crooked cops work with these shysters. You figure that badge’ll throw a scare into me and I’ll come up with the dough just that much faster. All right, go ahead. Haul me in and see if you can make it stick.”

I didn’t say anything.

“The only thing that surprises me is that the girl turns out to be Doris,” Ogden went on. “I never figured her for a deal like this.”

“Slow up a bit, Ogden.”

“So where was your buddy? He was so damned anxious to talk it over with me. What happened to him? I went there, and stayed there. I must have waited almost half an hour.”

“Where?”

“You know where. In front of that house at Four-nineteen West Sixty-first.”

I felt my jaw slacken. The street number he’d just given me was the address of the house where Doris Linder had been murdered. And not only that. Ogden had said he’d left for there about nine-thirty, which would have put him there around ten. And he’d waited almost half an hour after he got there, which meant he’d not only been in the right place but that he’d also been there at exactly the right time.

I must have stared at him for fully half a minute without saying anything at all. Ogden’s story had stopped me cold. There had to be an angle, of course. Nobody as intelligent as Ogden would make such an admission without a damn good reason behind it. But what could it be? The only thing I could think of offhand was that Ogden had been seen there, knew it, and had worked up his fantastic story of a shakedown to explain his presence there... But I discarded that possibility almost as soon as it occurred to me. For Ogden to tell such a story, and then top it by admitting that he had a solid motive for the murder — because Doris Linder had been a party to the shakedown — would be doing everything but pulling the switch in that little room up at Sing Sing.

“Let’s go, Ogden,” I said.

“You’re taking me in?”

“Yes.”

He surprised me. He went along with no protest at all.

Walt Logan was waiting for me in the squad room. I took Ogden back to one of the interrogation rooms, locked him inside, and went back to talk to Walt. I briefed him on my movements since I’d seen him last and asked him what he’d found out at the party where he’d gone to check on Mr. and Mrs. Boardman, the couple in whose living room Doris Linder had been killed.

“Neither of them left the party, Steve,” he said. “They were with two other couples the entire time they were there. They and these other people were playing cards, and neither Boardman nor his wife even left the table for more than a couple minutes at a time.”

“Uh huh. Well, I think our boy Ogden is going to do wonders for us on this case, Walt. The sooner we start working on that story of his the better.”

“There’s one thing, though,” Walt said. “Boardman got a phone call while he was at the party. The guy who was throwing the party took it. Somebody wanted to know if Willie Boardman and his wife were there, and when the host said yes and that he’d call him, this other guy hung up. The host said he figured it must be one of Boardman’s real close friends, because nobody else ever calls him Willie. Seems he can’t stand the name, and he won’t let anybody but a few old cronies of his call him by it. Anyhow, the host assumed that whoever had called must have wanted to be sure Boardman and his wife were there before he came over. He started to tell Boardman about it, and then he got busy with something else and forgot it.” He paused. “Hey! What’s wrong? You look like I’d just called you a dirty name.”

“Did you check the bars and the drug stores in the neighborhood,” I asked.

“Sure. Nobody saw anything. A guy made a couple of phone calls from the booth in the candy store across the street, but that’s all. There was nothing suspicious about him. The guy that runs the place said he’d never seen him before, and that the only reason he noticed him particularly was that he came in two different times.”

“Does he think he could identify him?”

“Sure.”

“Walt,” I said, “we’ve got work ahead of us tonight.”

“That’s what we get paid for, isn’t it? Putting guys in the tank?”

“Not always,” I said. “Sometimes we can keep them out.”

“That’s a nice switch. Where do we start?”

“With Mr. William Boardman.”

We did start with Mr. Boardman, and we worked hard and steadily throughout the remainder of the night. And it paid off. At eight-forty the next morning we were sitting in a department car parked outside Charles Steward’s house on Seventy-fourth Street.

When Steward came out Walt touched the horn ring and I beckoned him over to the car. I got out, held the rear door open for him, and followed him inside.

“You boys are still on the job, I see,” Steward said pleasantly. “I assume this means you’ve reconsidered my offer to help Doris. I spoke to my wife on the phone, just before I left the house. She’s quite concerned about her. She made me promise that—”

“You received a call, too, didn’t you, Mr. Steward?” I asked. “About an hour ago?”

His smile faded. “Why, yes. Yes, I did. Very strange, too.”

“Was it?”

He frowned at me. “I don’t follow you at all. Was it you that called me?”

“No. As a matter of fact, Mr. Steward, you received two calls.”

“Yes, I did. Do you mind telling me what this is all about?”

“Not at all. Both calls were from people you called last night. We had them call you to see if they could identify your voice. They could, and did. You have a very distinctive voice, Mr. Steward. Both of these people are absolutely certain you’re the one who called them.”

He stared at me speechlessly, his lips moving, as if he wanted to say something but couldn’t summon the words.

“In a few minutes we’re going to take you over to a candy store,” I said. “The one you went to make your calls last night.”

He suddenly found his voice. “Are you crazy? Why, I never—”

“Oh, but you did, Mr. Steward. You made two calls, both from that candy store. The proprietor remembers you and he’ll be able to swear you were there.”

Walt Logan had turned around in the front seat and was watching Steward carefully. “You called the Billings’ residence, because you wanted to make certain Mr. and Mrs. Boardman were there,” he said. “You knew they had gone to the Billings’ party, but you had to be sure they hadn’t left for a few minutes to check on the children. You didn’t want to get there while they were there, and you didn’t want them to walk in on you. Your other call was to Leslie Ogden with a cock-and-bull story about a shakedown. You wanted to set him up, Steward. You knew you’d have to scare him bad enough to make him take off from work and make the trip uptown, and you figured the shakedown story would do the trick. What you hoped for, naturally, was that somebody would see him at the place you said you’d meet him. But even if they didn’t, you’d still leave him with no alibi.”

“What are you trying to do to me?” Steward asked incredulously. “My God, I... What are you trying to do?”

“We talked to your friend Boardman last night,” I said. “You told me you were lifelong friends, and you referred to him once as Willie. That might not sound like much to you, Steward, but little things like that go a long way in this business. Especially when we found out that only a very few people are permitted to call Mr. Boardman by that name. You’re one of them. In fact, you’re the only one in New York just now who has that privilege.”

“This is ridiculous,” Steward said. “Why, my lawyers will—”

“Let’s hope you have good ones,” I said. “You’ll need them. I was about to say that the man who asked for Mr. Boardman and his wife at the party last night — he used the name Willie, too. It made me think of you, Mr. Steward. And once I started thinking about you I began to see how Leslie Ogden’s story might not be so fantastic after all.”

Steward started to get to his feet, but I put out an arm and pushed him gently back into his seat. “You told me that Doris and Leslie had words on the phone yesterday evening, just before she left to baby-sit for the Boardman’s. But that never happened. We’ve talked with Les’s boss, and he tells us that Les used the phone only once during the entire day, and that was when he talked to you, late that evening. The boss is certain of it because he and Les weren’t out of each other’s sight at any time from noon till Les got your call and left. They were so busy they even had food sent in. Les made no phone calls at all, and his boss will swear to it.”

Steward sat perfectly still, his thin body rigid, staring straight ahead of him with eyes that had suddenly grown moist.

“We know what you did,” I said, “but we don’t know why. We know you’d heard Doris talk about Les enough times to know where he worked and when he worked late, and we know you were aware the Boardmans were going to that party. With your wife away for the night, you had a good setup. After you got over there you simply made your telephone calls and went to work.”

Steward turned sick eyes toward me. “You rotten louse,” he whispered.

“Why? Because my partner and I didn’t let you get away with choking a girl to death and trying to frame her boy friend for it?”

“But you don’t understand! She had it coming! Oh, God, you don’t know how much she had it coming. She was going to ruin me. She would have killed my wife. She deserved to die, I tell you!”

“Why?”

“Because she was going to swear she was pregnant and that I got her that way. Did you hear that? She was going to my wife and to my boss.” He paused for breath. “God, I had to kill her. I had to.”

I glanced at Walt and nodded, and he started the car and pulled it out into the morning traffic.

“It was her fault,” Steward said. “The way she acted when my wife wasn’t around... God, you just don’t know what it was like. She’d come over in a real thin dress with nothing under it and show herself off to me. She drove me crazy. I... I couldn’t help myself. Nobody could.”

“It wasn’t necessary to kill her, Steward.”

“But it was, I tell you! She wouldn’t go to a doctor. Not until she got the money. That’s what she wanted. She’d found my bank book and she knew I had four thousand dollars saved up and she wanted every penny of it. And she meant business, too. She wouldn’t have hesitated a second to do exactly what she said she’d do, and she wouldn’t take anything less than the whole four thousand. She hated it here and she wanted to go back to California. She...” He broke off.

Steward said nothing more until Walt started to park the car in front of the station house. Then he looked at me with eyes that were too full of fear to focus properly, and touched my arm.

“What’ll happen to me now?” he asked.

But I knew he didn’t really expect an answer. He already knew the answer. Nothing else could have filled his eyes so full of fear.