The Case of the Crimson Kiss

Chapter five

Louise Marlow answered the buzzer.

She glanced at Tragg, then at Mrs. Clements.

Mason, raising his hat, said with grave politeness and the manner of a total stranger, “We’re sorry to bother you at this hour, but...”

“I’ll do the talking,” Tragg said.

The formality of Mason’s manner was not lost on Aunt Louise. She said, as though she had never seen him before, “Well, this is a great time...”

Tragg pushed his way forward. “Does Fay Allison live here?”

“That’s right,” Louise Marlow beamed at him. “She and another girl, Anita Bonsal, share the apartment. They aren’t here now, though.”

“Where are they?” Tragg asked.

She shook her head. “I’m sure I couldn’t tell you.”

“And who are you?”

“I’m Louise Marlow, Fay Allison’s aunt.”

“You’re living with them?”

“Heavens, no. I just came up to be here for... for a visit with Fay.”

“How did you get in, if they weren’t here?”

“I had a key, but I didn’t say they weren’t here then.”

“You said, I believe, that they are not here now?”

“That’s right.”

“What time did you arrive?”

“Around one o’clock this morning.”

Tragg said, “Let’s cut out the shadowboxing and get down to brass tacks, Mrs. Marlow. I want to see both of those girls.”

“I’m sorry, but the girls are both sick. They’re in the hospital.”

“Who took them there?”

“A doctor.”

“What’s his name?”

Louise Marlow hesitated a moment, then said, “It’s just a simple case of food poisoning. Only...”

“What’s the doctor’s name?”

“Now you listen to me,” Louise Marlow said. “I tell you, these girls are too sick to be bothered, and—”

Lieutenant Tragg said, “Carver L. Clements, who has an apartment on the floor above here, is dead. It looks like murder. Fay Allison had evidently been living up there in the apartment with him and...”

“What are you talking about?” Louise Marlow exclaimed indignantly. “Why, I... I...”

“Take it easy,” Tragg said. “Her clothes were up there. There’s a laundry mark that has been traced to her.”

“Clothes!” Louise Marlow snorted. “Why, it’s probably some junk she gave away somewhere, or...”

“I’m coming to that,” Lieutenant Tragg said patiently. “I don’t want to do anyone an injustice. I want to play it on the up-and-up. Now then, there are fingerprints in that apartment, the fingerprints of a woman on a drinking glass, on the handle of a toothbrush, on a tube of toothpaste. I’m not going to get tough unless I have to, but I want to get hold of Fay Allison long enough to take a set of rolled fingerprints from her hands. You try holding out on me, and see what the newspapers have to say tomorrow.”

Louise Marlow reached an instant decision. “You’ll find her at the Crestview Sanitarium,” she said, “and if you want to make a little money, I’ll give you odds of a hundred to one, in any amount you want to take, that—”

“I’m not a betting man,” Tragg said dryly. “I’ve been in this game too long.”

He turned to one of the detectives and said, “Keep Perry Mason and his charming secretary under surveillance and away from a telephone until I get a chance at those fingerprints. Okay, boys, let’s go.”