The Case of the Crimson Kiss

Chapter four

Lieutenant Tragg, head of the Homicide Squad, finished his examination of the apartment and said wearily to Mason, “I presume by this time you’ve thought up a good story to explain how it all happened.”

Mason said, “As a matter of fact, I don’t know this man from Adam. I had never seen him alive.”

“I know,” Tragg said sarcastically, “you wanted him as a witness to an automobile accident or something, and just happened to drop around in the wee small hours of the morning.”

Mason said nothing.

“But,” Tragg went on, “strange as it may seem, Mason, I’m interested to know how you got in. The woman who has the apartment across the corridor says you stood there and rang the buzzer for as much as two minutes. Then she heard the sound of a clicking bolt just as she opened her door to give you a piece of her mind, thinking you were some drunken bum trying to buzz a girl friend who had cooled off on him.”

Mason nodded gravely.

Tragg said, “Either someone opened that door or the door was open. If it was ajar, I don’t think you’d have buzzed for two minutes without pushing it open. If someone was in there, I want to know who it was. Now who let you in?”

“I had a key.”

“A key! The hell you did!”

Mason nodded.

“Let’s take a look at it.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t have it now.”

“Well, now,” Tragg said, “isn’t that interesting! And where did you get the key, Mason?”

“Unfortunately,” Mason said, “that’s something I can’t tell you.”

“Don’t be silly. This is a murder case.”

Mason said, “The key came into my possession in a peculiar manner. I found it.”

“Phooey! A client gave it to you.”

“What makes you think that?”

“It’s a reasonable conjecture.”

Mason smiled. “Come, come, Lieutenant, if you’re going to engage in pure flights of fancy, why not consider the possibility that this client might have taken a sublease on the apartment and wanted me to see that the gentleman lying there on the floor, who was unlawfully withholding possession, was ejected without trouble?”

“So you came to eject him at this time in the morning!”

“Perhaps the sublease didn’t become effective until midnight.”

Tragg’s eyes narrowed. “It’s a nice try, Mason, but you’re not getting anywhere. That key you have is the dead man’s key. When we searched the body we found that stuff on the table there. There’s no key to this apartment on him.”

Mason sparred for time, said, “And did you notice that despite the fact there’s a thermos jar of ice cubes on the table, a bottle of Scotch, and a siphon of soda, the fatal drink didn’t have any ice in it?”

“How do you know?” Tragg asked, interested.

“Because when this glass fell from his hand and the contents spilled over the floor, it left a single small spot of moisture. If there had been ice cubes in the glass, they’d have rolled out for some appreciable distance and then melted, leaving spots of moisture.”

“I see,” Tragg said sarcastically. “And then, having decided to commit suicide, the guy kissed himself on the forehead and...”

He broke off as one of the detectives, walking rapidly down the hallway, said, “We’ve traced that cleaning mark, Lieutenant.”

Tragg glanced significantly toward Mason and said, “I’ll talk with you in a minute when...”

The man handed Tragg a folded slip of paper.

Tragg unfolded the paper. “Well I’ll be damned!” he said.

Mason met Tragg’s searching eyes with calm steadiness.

“And I suppose,” Tragg said, “you’re going to be surprised at this one. Miss Fay Allison, apartment six-oh-four, in this same building, is the person who sent the coat that was in the closet to the dry cleaner. Her mark is on it. I think. Mr. Mason, we’ll have a little talk with Fay Allison, and just to see that you don’t make any false moves until we get there, we’ll take you right along with us. Perhaps you already know the way.”

As Tragg started toward the elevator, a smartly dressed woman in her late thirties or early forties stepped out of the elevator and walked down the corridor, looking at the numbers over the doors.

Tragg stepped forward. “Looking for something?”

She started to sweep past him.

Tragg pulled back his coat, showing her his badge.

“I’m looking for apartment seven-oh-two,” she said.

“Who are you looking for?”

“Mr. Carver Clements, if it’s any of your business.”

“I think it is,” Tragg said. “Who are you and how do you happen to be here?”

“I am Mrs. Carver L. Clements, and I’m here because I was advised over the telephone that my husband was maintaining a surreptitious apartment here.”

“And that was the first you knew of it?”

“Definitely.”

“And what,” Tragg asked, “did you intend to do?”

“I intend to show him that he isn’t getting away with anything,” she said. “If you’re an officer, you may as well accompany me. I feel certain that...”

Tragg said, “Seven-oh-two is down the corridor, at the comer on the right. I just came from there. You’ll find a detective there in charge of things. Your husband was killed sometime between seven and nine o’clock.”

Dark-brown eyes grew wide with surprise. “You... you’re sure?”

Tragg said, “Dead as a mackerel. Someone slipped him a little cyanide, in his Scotch and soda. I don’t suppose you’d know anything about that?”

She said slowly, “If my husband is dead... I can’t believe it. He hated me too much to die. He was trying to force me to make a property settlement, and in order to make me properly submissive, he’d put me through a softening-up process, a period during which I didn’t have money enough even to dress decently. His idea was that that would make the settlement he was prepared to offer look practically irresistible to me.”

“In other words,” Tragg said, “you hated his guts.”

She clamped her lips together. “I didn’t say that!”

Tragg grinned and said, “Come along with us. We’re going down to an apartment on the sixth floor. After that I’m going to take your fingerprints and see if they match up with those on the glass which didn’t contain the poison.”