Mink Is for a Minx [1st Annual Edition: The best from Mike Shayne's Mystery Magazine]

Corpus Delicti by Talmage Powell

Realizing the uselessness of further effort, Ralph Bradley, lately M. D., drew away from the girl. Full-length on the rickety table in the shabby room, she had hemorrhaged prodigiously. Now she was quite dead.

Bradley stood looking at her with eyes that burned in the swarthy strip of flesh between white surgical cap and mask. He felt no guilt or remorse. She had come to him of her own free will. He’d required not even her name, only the two hundred dollars she’d extracted from her purse and passed to him with a trembling hand. She’d known what she was doing, the chance she was taking.

Who else had known?

The question lay scalpel-sharp in Bradley’s mind. Timid and guilt-ridden, she most probably had kept her condition secret from her family, if she had any. The man responsible, Bradley assumed, was either married and in circumstances legally beyond her reach, or a punk kid who’d run out on her.

The man had rejected her, or she wouldn’t have reached the desperation that drove her to an abortion.

There was a good chance she had come here without telling anyone. However—

Oh yes, Bradley thought angrily, there is always a however — or a but — or an if—

Someone was going to miss the thin, over-anxious girl with the mouse-tan hair. Someone would start looking. And it was possible her movements could be traced.

Bradley despised the sight of her, of what she now represented. He turned away from her and went behind the dusty Japanese screen in the corner. His mind was busy while he stripped off his rubber gloves and smock.

Consider the worst, he told himself. Project into a future in which a big, cynical detective knocks on the door. You open the door. “Yes?”

He shows his credentials. “I want to talk to you. May I come in?”

You shrug and stand aside for him to enter. “What can I do for you?”

“I’m looking for a girl.” He calls her by name, a name you have honestly never heard before.

“I don’t know her,” you say. “I’ve never heard the name before.”

He describes her. Then: “She came here. We know she was coming here. We have traced her to your office.”

“Your information is incomplete,” you say. “Such a girl never came here. Why should she?”

“She was pregnant.”

“Oh?”

“She wanted an abortion.”

You look at him coolly. “I resent the implication.”

“I don’t care what you resent. I want to know where the girl is.”

“And I have no idea. Look around. Satisfy yourself.”

You are neither a help nor a hindrance as he goes through the apartment. Finally, he has completed the circuit, returned to the front door. There is frustration in his eyes.

“You’re the same Ralph Bradley,” he says, “who was involved in the recent dope traffic scandal.”

“Yes,” you say, “and my defense bankrupted me, ruined my reputation, and ended my career.”

“I suspect you have a new career, doctor. Illegal medicine.”

“Perhaps you suspect,” you say, “because I am convenient, easy to suspect. Because you haven’t the imagination or mental acuity to find out what happened to the girl. Maybe she decided to simply run away.”

Then you close the door in his face. His suspicions constitute no threat — so long as he doesn’t have proof.

And therein, Bradley thought as he scrubbed his hands at the screened basin, lies the biggest if that has arisen in my entire life. The proof lies dead on the table. The final scene will not go at all as I have imagined it — unless I get rid of the proof.

A husky, almost handsome man, Bradley emerged from behind the screen, his eyes sweeping the crumpled sheet he had tossed over the girl.

You are no small item to be rid of, he thought. Not a fingerprint that may be wiped away, or an incriminating note that can be burned. A thin sheen of sweat broke suddenly on his squarish, heavy face.

Don’t consider failure and its consequences, he told himself. He struggled for an iron control over his emotions. He succeeded partially. But he remained too acutely aware of the danger he was in for comfort. His apartment occupied a second floor. The building teemed with people, and outside lay the immensity of the city — thousands of more people.

In his present circumstances, he hadn’t even a car left. If he managed to sneak the body out of the building, he would be no better off. One doesn’t travel far with the body of a dead girl over one’s shoulder.

He crossed to the wooden chair where the girl had draped her things. Her purse lay on top of the folded skirt.

Opening the purse, he began rummaging in it. It yielded a few loose bobby pins, a crumpled package of cigarettes, a compact, a slip of paper with his name on it.

He paused long enough to stare at the paper. Then he crushed it in a small, tight wad and dropped it in his pocket, hating the girl intensely.

In the bottom of the purse lay a single key and another slip of paper. His spirits lifted. The paper was a scrawled receipt for a month’s rent on apartment 214, 37 Dixon Street.

He stuffed the key and receipt in his pocket and turned again toward the girl. He reflected for a moment. Then he crossed the room, opened the closet door, returned to the girl, and carried her to the cubicle.

Back at the table, he stripped off the rubber under sheet, gathered up the blood-stained sponges, pads, and over-sheeting. He added her purse to the wad, rolling the whole tightly in the rubber sheeting. He tucked the bundle into the closet beside the girl, and then he locked the closet door.

It was a wholly unsatisfactory hiding place, but it would have to do for the moment.

Bradley lingered outside the Dixon street address as a couple emerged and strolled down the sidewalk. When the man and woman turned the corner, he gave the house a second look. It was an old brownstone, barely respectable, but not a slum.

When he decided to move, he did so quickly, entering the vestibule and going rapidly up the stairs, the worn carpeting and heavy padding muffling his footsteps.

The second floor hall was quiet. He stopped at the door of 214, placed his ear against the panel. He heard no sound in the apartment.

He had the key in his hand. He inserted it in the lock. A bit of the metallic taste left the edges of his teeth. The key fitted.

With the door closed behind him, the apartment was close, hot, and dark. The early evening glare of the city outlined the windows. He picked his way to them and pulled the blinds. Then he struck a match.

On a nearby table was an old-fashioned lamp with a fringed shade. He risked clicking it on.

The wan glow of the lamp revealed the shabbily furnished bed-sitting room of a cramped apartment. A worn plush sofa, club chair, and a TV set on a circular table occupied most of the room. Double doors in the inner walls marked a pair of pushed-up Murphy beds.

The place was barren, almost as if no one lived here.

Bradley looked about quickly. A narrow hallway opened off the sitting room. At the farther end of the hallway was a small kitchen. A cursory examination was all he needed to determine that he’d find nothing useful here. The ancient gas stove, refrigerator, and dinette set had been wiped clean. Dishes and pots were washed and stacked in the over-the-sink cabinet. Nothing more personal here than in the living room.

He returned to the hallway, opening doors as he went He discovered a linen closet, an outsized old bathroom, and then a dressing room.

That uncomfortable cold-hot sweat had returned. He did his best to ignore it as he turned on the overhead light and gave his attention to the dressing room.

Covering the far end of the small room was a faded chintz curtain. He jerked it aside and saw that it comprised a wardrobe of sorts for dresses, coats, shoes.

He let the curtain drop and turning, moved to the chest of drawers. It held blouses, folded underthings, and a dozen cellophane-wrapped inexpensive nylon stockings.

Only the dressing table remained to be examined, and Bradley moved to it without real hope. The table was covered with jars, bottles, and boxes of cosmetics — a wide assortment, it seemed, for one girl. Perhaps her loneliness had given rise to a hunger for cosmetics, a way to change herself, as if she could hide momentarily from what she knew herself to be.

The second small drawer he opened in the table contained writing materials, and a couple of cheap ballpoint pens that had been tossed in carelessly. He reached out and tumbled the stuff in the drawer. There were a few bills but no letters.

Then as he was about to close the drawer, he noticed a folded sheet of paper with the imprint of writing showing through. When he opened the paper, an alertness began to rise in him. The note was terse and to the point:

Bradley recognized the heartbreak and tragedy that lay unspoken in the letter, behind the letter. He experienced no feeling of sympathy or compassion. Such feelings had never found much of a welcome in him, and at this moment his own danger overshadowed everything else.

As he left the apartment, he wondered fleetingly how she had happened to meet Darrell Caraway. Well, it really didn’t matter. Perhaps she had worked someplace where he had dropped in. Or maybe he’d deliberately gone slumming one evening and picked her up.

To Bradley, the important thing was that he had identified the principals in his problem. Fortunately — and this greatly simplified the problem — one of them carried an old and highly respectable name in the local social and financial registers.

Back in his apartment, telephone in hand, Bradley realized the tremendous chance he was taking. He hesitated before dialing. Then he reminded himself of the character of the man with whom he would deal, a man capable of very little decency, honesty, or integrity. Darrell Caraway’s character was revealed in his relationship and treatment of the deceased girl.

Decisively, Bradley dialed. A servant answered the phone at the Caraway residence. He could hear someone singing and there were other background sounds that made him almost sure that a party was in progress.

“Mr. Caraway, please,” Bradley said. “Mr. Darrell Caraway.”

“Who is calling?”

“Just tell him it’s — Julia’s uncle.”

Caraway’s guarded tones sounded on the phone a few moments later. “Listen, I don’t understand this. I believe you’ve got the wrong—”

“Relax, Mr. Caraway. I’m no out-of-town relative riding a white charger.”

“Then what—”

“My name is Bradley. I have a business matter to discuss with you. If you’re wise, you’ll take what I’m saying seriously.

“Why should I? I don’t know you.”

“We can remedy that quickly enough. I’m trying to help you, really. So drop over to my place and be helped, Mr. Caraway.” Bradley added his address and waited while the line hummed.

“I have nothing to say to you,” Caraway said finally.

“Oh, stop trying to be circumspect,” Bradley said with irritation. “I’ll give you thirty minutes to come to my apartment — unless you want everything exposed. I don’t think I can be any clearer, can I?”

He hung up.

Darrell Caraway beat the thirty minute deadline by a full eight minutes. This, Bradley reflected, was a heartening confirmation of his assessment of the man. Caraway had the courage of a rabbit, when not dealing with a pregnant girl who was a nobody.

His inspection of Caraway was closer than it seemed when he opened the door at Caraway’s knock. The Caraway heir was young, in his early twenties, and almost good-looking, with chiseled features and dark, crinkly hair.

But there were lines of dissipation etched into his face and his cheeks had the unhealthy pallor of a man who has kept late hours for many nights in succession. His dark eyes were petulant and frightened. At thirty-five or forty he would be a physical wreck, an old man. Bradley’s practiced medical eye saw the incipient signs.

Caraway entered the living room of the shabby apartment with a certain disdain, his eyes noting the furnishings.

“Don’t think I came here out of fright, Bradley.”

“Oh, of course not,” Bradley said.

“I came simply because this girl you mentioned — Julia — tried to blackmail me.”

“Really?”

“Really. Just who are you, anyway?”

“A doctor.”

Caraway’s lip twitched. “Whatever she has told you is a lie. I had it out with her. She can prove nothing. I’ll fight it through every court in the land, rather than be saddled with a tramp who—”

“Calm down, Caraway. I don’t bluff so easily as Julia. And I’m not so stupid. You are in a real jam, a real scandal, and I know you’d go to any lengths to get out of it.”

“If this is an attempt at extortion—”

“Oh, shut up,” Bradley said with contempt. “I’ve entered no conspiracy with Julia. As a matter of fact, I’m only intent on helping you.”

“Helping me? Why?”

“In order to help myself.”

“I don’t think I understand, Bradley.”

“You will,” Bradley said. “You know, you’re never going to feel comfortable as long as Julia is around. You’ll not know from one day to the next what is going through her mind, when she may decide the child needs a father. Not a very pleasant future outlook, is it?”

“What are you suggesting?” Caraway said thinly.

“That it would be worth a small effort on your part to insure your future. You see, Julia staggered in here tonight. She was in great pain. She’d sought out a one-time nurse to perform an abortion. The job was done in a back room near here where the nurse left Julia. It wasn’t a very good job, Caraway.”

Staring at him, Caraway looked hypnotized.

“Of course,” Bradley said, “I did the best I could for the girl. It was too late. She began to hemorrhage.”

Caraway swallowed with a gulping effort. “She is— You mean she—”

“I’m afraid so. I really hadn’t time to save her.”

“Where is she?”

“She’s here now. I have several rooms in back.”

“And you haven’t notified—”

“No one but you,” Bradley assured him. “Recently, I had an unfortunate brush with the authorities. It’s very likely they’d say that no ex-nurse existed, that I’d done the abortion myself. This would be poor and undeserved payment for my efforts to save the girl, don’t you think?”

Caraway appeared to suffer momentary vertigo. “What... what are you suggesting?”

“I want the girl got out of here,” Bradley said. “For that, I need your assistance. You have cars, boats, city houses, and country houses. With your help, I’ll see that Julia is laid to rest, permanently.”

Caraway stumbled to a chair and sat down. “It’s out of the question!”

“Anything else is out of the question,” Bradley amended. “After all, you’re responsible for her being here. It’s only fair to consider the great service I’m offering you.”

Caraway shook his head back and forth. “No! No—”

Bradley crossed the room, grabbed Caraway by the hair, and jerked his head back.

“I don’t intend to discuss this at any length with you, Caraway. I’ll simply point out that if anything happens to me, it will also happen to you. Everything you’ve feared will be made public. And more, my friend. Very much more. If I’m charged with abortion, I’ll swear you arranged it, and that your money paid for it. You brought Julia here. Is that clear?”

Bradley thought for a moment Caraway was going to faint. Then Caraway said, “You can’t prove a word of what you’re saying—”

“You want to run the risk?” Bradley shoved him roughly back in the chair. “You’ll surely take the risk, if anything happens to me. If you try to shirk a share of your responsibility—”

Caraway closed his eyes for an instant, too shaken to keep up even a pretense of angry defiance. “How will we manage it?” he whispered. All the blood had drained from his face.

“I was hoping you’d have a suggestion.” Bradley said. “Efficiency is often coupled with simplicity. And the simplest thing, I think, would be for you to bring a car around. We’ll slip her out of here, take her to your country place, and bury her deep in a little glen where she will never be discovered.”

“How do I know I will have seen the last of you?” Caraway asked.

“You’ve no worries on that score,” Bradley said. “Neither of us has. The silence of each will be his own insurance, and in that fact lies insurance for the other.”

“I... I don’t like to think about it,” Caraway said faintly.

Bradley took him by the arm and helped him to his feet. “Come on. I have some pills in back. I’ll give you a couple.”

He guided Caraway through the gloomy hallway, to the room where the girl had died.

From a cabinet, Bradley took a small bottle. He spilled a couple of pills in Caraway’s sweaty palm, and Caraway quickly swallowed them.

“You’ll feel better almost instantly,” Bradley said. “And by tomorrow you’ll have the comfort of knowing everything is behind you for good. She’ll never bother you again.”

Bradley slapped him on the shoulder. His spirits were rising. “Next time, Caraway, use a little more discretion. An easy conquest, I suppose.”

“Uh... oh, yes — easy enough. I picked her up the first time in a cocktail lounge where she was a barmaid.”

“She hardly seemed your type,” Bradley said, “with the skinny frame and mouse-tan hair.”

Something happened suddenly to Caraway’s face. He sprang toward Bradley. “What did you say?”

“Well, with your money—” Bradley shrugged. “But I suppose a plain jane was diverting for a change.” He was bewildered and a little frightened by the sudden change in Caraway’s attitude.

“Skinny — mouse-tan hair,” Caraway said. A laugh came from his throat like a hacking cough. “Bradley, you’re not describing Julia. Julia has jet black hair, a small mole near the corner of her mouth like a beauty mark, a face like a movie starlet. Bradley I’m afraid you’ve described Julia’s room-mate, a girl named Madeen.”

Bradley stood as dumb as a sloth for a moment, his thoughts going back to the girl’s apartment, the two Murphy beds, the quantity of clothing behind the chintz curtain, the amount of cosmetics on the dressing table.

He heard Caraway saying: “So it isn’t my responsibility, after all, is it?”

“Two of them—” Bradley said emptily.

“Of course,” Caraway said. “It isn’t as coincidental as it seems on the surface. Birds of a feather, you know. Madeen and Julia had known each other for some time. When they found they shared the same condition, they took the apartment together. They provided a certain comfort for each other, I’m sure. And more practically it cut their living costs considerably.”

Bradley sat down in a chipped metal examination chair and put his face in his hands. He’d always prided himself on the steel quality of his nerves, but even steel has a breaking point.

Caraway eased toward the door.

Bradley looked up. “Where are you going?”

“Home. I’ll forget that you exist, Bradley. Without Julia, you have no real hold on me. But because of Julia, I have none on you. I can’t very well report you to the police, can I? Not without revealing why I came here, the whole story.”

Bradley made no move to stop him as Caraway left the apartment. Caraway had pegged the situation accurately.

Bradley sat in glum silence for several minutes, his gaze on the closet door behind which the girl Madeen lay.

Finally, Bradley pushed himself out of the chair.

The apartment on Dixon Street showed lights when Bradley arrived. Taking a deep breath, he mounted the front steps, crossed the vestibule, and went upstairs.

He knocked lightly on the door of 214. It opened quickly framing an attractive girl with jet black hair. Bradley noticed the small mole near the corner of her mouth.

Bradley’s face wreathed in a friendly, benign smile. “You must be Julia.”

The girl nodded, and Bradley said, “Madeen asked me to drop over.”

“Where is she?”

“At my place.”

Bradley entered, and she closed the door and leaned against it.

“Are you—” she said. “I mean—”

“I’m a doctor,” Bradley said.

“Is Madeen—”

“Completely comfortable.”

Julia moved from the door with hesitance and sadness coming to her face. “Then she really meant it. She said she was going to—”

“You mustn’t judge her, my dear.”

“Judge her?” Julia said with a harsh little laugh. “I might have done the same thing myself. I don’t know. I’ll never know I guess. I thought I—”

“Was in the same condition?”

“Well, yes. But it proved finally to be a false alarm.”

“Unfortunately, Madeen experienced no false alarms. She did what she thought was best — and she assures me of your discretion, as she has mine.”

“In any event it’s over now, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is,” Bradley said, “and now I have taken the risk of coming here to tell you Madeen needs you.”

“You said she was comfortable.”

“I was speaking of the purely physical, my dear. In the psychological realm we have another situation. Tomorrow she’ll feel better. But right now, she is experiencing a rather terrible kind of aloneness.”

Compassion flooded Julia’s eyes. “I’ll get my coat,” she said.

“My place isn’t far,” Bradley told her, “We’ll walk over — and you’ll have the opportunity to get your thoughts in order.”

When they entered his dark apartment, Bradley was fleetingly grateful to Julia for not having told Caraway the truth she had discovered so recently about her condition. The truth that had caused her to refrain from mailing that final letter to him.

I’m glad he ceased to exist so far as you were concerned, my dear, Bradley thought. I wonder how quickly he’ll tire in the digging of a double grave.

Before he turned on the light, he let the scalpel slip from his coatsleeve into his steel-steady hand.