The Case of the Petticoat Murder

Chapter Twenty

THE PHONE was answered by Barney Fells.

“About time, Pete,” he said. “Where've you been?”

I gave him a quick rundown on my talks with Edna Hardesty and the waitress in the lunchroom.

“I'll be damned,” he said. “Looks like things are popping just about everywhere.”

“Is Stan there, Barney?”

“No. He wasn't here when I got back to the shop, and he hasn't been here since. In other words, just like him — and you, too.”

“You have any idea where he went?”

“No, I don't. But if you think you can bring yourself to spare the time, I'd like to tell you about a faintly interesting development.”

“What is it?”

“I just got back from taking a look at Albert Miller. He was in the morgue. I just got back from taking a look at Maurice Thibault, too. Same place.”

“Both of them?”

“Yes, both of them. Albert Miller and Maurice Thibault were the same man, Pete. So you can write off two suspects for the price of one.”

“But—”

“The guy that went out of his bathroom window under the name of Miller was the same character that planted his wife beneath a flower bed in France under the name of Maurice Thibault.”

“My God,” I said. “That means I was talking to Stan about him on the phone at the same time he was going out the window.”

“Yes, but you'd never seen his picture, Pete. I had. By the time you got back here, I'd already sent it out to have copies made.” He paused. “Of course, you might have come right out and asked him if he was Thibault; but that wouldn't have been polite.”

“How'd he wind up in the morgue?”

“Internal injuries. Walked into the hospital under his own power, and then collapsed. By the time they'd found out what was wrong with him, he was on the way out. He said he wanted to talk, and they got hold of the nearest patrolman. Thibault said he went out the window because he thought you were just stalling around awhile before you really put the squeeze on him and brought him in. Once that happened, he knew his fingerprints would give him away as Thibault; and so he decided it was either the window in the apartment or the guillotine in France — and out he went.”

“What'd he say about Nadine Ellison? Anything?”

“All that's necessary, I think. He said he met her about a year ago — which must have been right after she hit New York — and she started living with him. After they broke up, he found out that she'd stolen that clipping about what he'd done in France, The clipping had his picture, and I guess Nadine saw the word 'guillotine' and maybe some others she could make out, and realized she was on to something. Anyhow, she started bleeding him. It kept up, for a long time — long enough for her to make him give her those sapphire earrings and a couple or three grand in cash.”

“So that's where she got them,” I said. “I wondered.”

“Yeah — and where Thibault got them was off his wife, right after he killed her.”

“Funny he wouldn't simply have gone somewhere else.”

“It's tough for a man in that position to get all the papers and things to start up under a new name, Pete. And besides, he kept telling himself that he was going to kill her and get the earrings back again.” He paused. “He damn near did it, too. He was the one that walked in on Iris Pedrick the night she told you about when she woke up to see some guy standing over her with a knife. And incidentally, that's how he got in the apartment; with the knife. Pushed the bolt back with the point.”

I waited until I was sure he had finished. “He deny killing Nadine, Barney?”

“Yes.”

“But you said we could write him off as a suspect. How do we know that—”

“He didn't do it, Pete. The check on the dental lab where he worked showed that he was up all night doing some kind of table-top photography with some friends of his. The next day was his day off, so he stuck around with these friends until they all went out for breakfast together, about eight o'clock. There are six of the employees have this sort of club, or whatever it is, and Thibault wasn't out of their sight more than four or five minutes at a time all night.” He paused. “That's about the story, Pete. You want to leave a message for Stan?”

“No,” I said. “I'll try him again a little later.”

“Well, stay with it, Pete. Things're really beginning to pop.” He hung up.

I put the receiver back on the hook and glanced at my watch. It was eighteen minutes past nine.

If I hoped to finish all the things I had to do and still stand a chance of catching Susan Campbell before she left the Verlaine Drapery Shop, I would have to hurry.

I did hurry; but even so, I very nearly missed her. I had just started to turn in at the door when I saw her standing at the curb, signaling futilely for a cab.

I walked toward her, and spoke her name; and even before she turned slowly to face me, I could see the sudden tensing of her shoulders beneath the thin summer dress and the trembling of the hand that held her white gloves. The time was eleven forty-two.