The D.A. Breaks a Seal

7

On the way uptown from Harry Perkins’ office, Shelby stopped in at the hotel, where he found Frank Norwalk behind the desk, going about his duties in dour silence.

“You don’t seem very cheerful,” Selby said.

“You wouldn’t either, if every time a man dropped dead of heart failure someone tried to make it appear you had a hotel full of murderers.”

“It wasn’t heart failure.”

“Well, suicide, then.”

Selby smiled and shook his head.

“That’s the worst of running a hotel,” Norwalk said. “Some man comes in and pays you five bucks for a room with bath and does you five thousand dollars worth of damage by getting bumped off. What have you found out, anything?”

Selby cheerfully washed his hands of all responsibility. “I understand Carl Gifford is getting a statement from the room steward who took the breakfast up.”

Norwalk thought that over for a moment, started to say something, then checked himself.

“What is it?” Selby asked.

Norwalk said, “I hate to tell you fellows anything because you always go out and magnify it and distort it and make a mystery out of it and then the newspapers play it up big, but — say, how soon do you think that man died after he drank the coffee?”

“Almost instantly,” Selby said. “I think when the sheriff fingerprints the metal dish covers that were over the food he’ll find they hadn’t even been lifted. The man probably poured himself a cup of coffee first thing, took a good big drink of it and was dead within a matter of seconds. That poison can act very rapidly.”

“He checked in at eight-thirty. The room service records show that the order for breakfast came in a little after nine, about nine-ten or nine-fifteen.”

Selby nodded.

Norwalk said, “One of the tenants here in the building happened to notice a woman coming out of that room about quarter of ten.”

“Out of that room?”

“That’s right.”

“He’s certain?”

“Claims he is.”

“Who is he?”

“Coleman Dexter. Has a room on the sixth floor, been here for a month or six weeks. Has some money to invest in an orange grove, but wants to get just the right property before he buys. Been looking around a bit. Pretty smart individual. Not the type you’d think would make a mistake.”

“How did he happen to notice this woman?” Selby asked.

“He just happened to be in the hallway. She had an armful of laundry.”

“Where is he?”

“In 642. You want him?”

Without pausing to remember that he no longer had any official status in Madison County, Selby nodded. “That woman may be very, very important, Frank.”

“Well... Oh, I suppose so. I guess we’re in a mess and we’ve got to see it through. Want to go up, or want to have him come down?”

“He’s in his room now?”

“He was a few minutes ago. I think he still is.”

Norwalk nodded to the girl at the switchboard and said, “Give Coleman Dexter a ring in 642.”

“We may as well go up,” Selby said.

The girl at the switchboard caught Selby’s words, plugged in a line, pushed a button, said, “Good afternoon, Mr. Dexter. Mr. Norwalk wishes to know if it would be all right if he came up... yes... right away... yes, thank you.” She nodded and said, “He’s expecting you.”

Norwalk walked around from behind the counter, went to the elevator and rode to the sixth floor in silence. They walked down the long corridor, turned to the right and paused before a door at the far end of the corridor. Norwalk knocked.

Dexter, a jovial, heavy-set man, jerked the door open, said, “Come on in, Frank. I don’t know as...”

He broke off as he saw Selby.

“Major Selby,” Norwalk introduced. Then, looking over at the table asked, “What are you doing, still studying maps?”

Dexter gripped Selby’s hand. “Pleased to meet you, Major,” and then, turning to Norwalk, said, “still studying maps. Don’t mind telling you, though, that I’ve just about made up my mind to close a deal. However, I’m going at it pretty cautiously, looking at the temperature records for the past twenty-five years, studying rainfall and soil maps. When I buy anything, I like to take lots of time doing it.”

Norwalk said, “Selby was formerly district attorney here.”

“I see,” Dexter said vaguely.

“We were interested in the woman you saw coming out of 619.”

Dexter nodded.

“Can you,” Selby asked, “fix the time?”

“I can fix the time right down to a split second, Major,” Dexter said, but added somewhat ruefully, “I’m not so certain of my description of the woman.”

“Suppose you run over it again for us,” Norwalk said.

“Well, I slept rather late this morning. I got up around quarter to nine, had a shower, a shave, and went out to get some breakfast. I came back at exactly nine-fifty and the elevator boy took me up to the sixth floor. I was smoking and the cigarette had just about got down to the point of diminishing returns. I took a last drag at it, and ground it out in that cylinder of sand that is just to the right of the elevators. And while I was doing that, the door of the room just behind me opened, and I vaguely realized someone was coming out. The door closed and this woman was walking toward me just as I straightened up. I don’t think she’d seen me there by the elevator. She was looking down the corridor and she seemed to be just a little bit startled when I straightened up. I’d been rather motionless grinding out the cigarette stub. Well, she had some clothes over her arm, apparently a bundle of laundry. I wouldn’t even have noticed her if it hadn’t been for the way she jumped when she saw me.”

“Where did she go?” Selby asked.

“I haven’t the faintest idea,” Dexter said.

“She didn’t go down in the elevator?”

“No she didn’t. She must have gone into one of the other rooms. But I didn’t hear the door unlock. I have my own problems. I’ve been trying to find some suitable investment and it’s been quite a job getting just what I wanted. I still don’t know whether I have it, but I think I have. I’m going to take another look this afternoon and then make up my mind.”

“Can you describe her?”

“She was rather tall — not too tall, but rather tall. She wasn’t fat and she wasn’t old, perhaps around thirty, and good-looking. There was something incongruous about this laundry and the way she was dressed.

“Blonde or brunette?”

“Brunette. I remember that. That is, I don’t remember her hair but her eyes were large and quite dark. She was dressed in some sort of a dark dress, but whether it was — I just can’t tell you, Major. Sometimes I think I can see her very plainly and then when I try to concentrate on something or other about her appearance, she begins to get vague to me and I know I’m just kidding myself. I’m terribly sorry I didn’t pay more attention to her. The only thing I can tell you is that this bundle of laundry was done up in a man’s shirt.”

“You’re certain of the time?”

Dexter grinned. “That’s one thing I can give you — the time. It was exactly nine forty-nine. There’s a clock in the lobby that’s regulated by Western Union time and I checked my watch with it. I was three minutes fast and decided that that was just a little too fast so I set my watch back three minutes in the elevator.”

“How about the elevator operator?” Selby asked Norwalk.

Norwalk shook his head. “He remembers the time, all right. He took Dexter down to breakfast and then brought him back and it was right around nine-fifty, and he remembers Dexter setting his watch back in the elevator, but he didn’t see the woman.”

Dexter said by way of explanation, “The boy had closed the door and the elevator had gone down. I’d put my watch back in my pocket and was grinding out the cigarette stub. It must have been eight or ten seconds after the elevator went down. And now I’m thinking of it, I can remember something else. I can remember the door opened for a few seconds before she came out. I remember now that I heard the click of the door and then she came out and I straightened up and saw her sort of jump. She may have been looking around to see if the corridor was clear. Any chance she might have... well, you know, had anything to do with it?”

Selby said, “He must have been dead at least twenty minutes before she came out of the room. But I am interested in the fact that she was carrying some clothes with her. You didn’t see where she went?”

“She was walking toward me when I saw her and I turned around and walked on down the corridor. She must have followed me for a while, but I don’t know how far. And there’s one more thing that... well, I’m not at all certain of it, but now that I keep thinking back on it, she may have dropped a paper. It seems to me I remember seeing something white fluttering toward the floor. It was while I was bent over.”

“It could have been a piece of cloth, perhaps a handkerchief,” Selby said.

“No, more like a paper, a newspaper clipping or something — something that fluttered. Shucks, Major, you know how those things are. You’ve got your mind full of something and you have some casual experience, then you try to remember back and it’s... something like trying to recall a dream. You think you remember things but you can’t be certain. Somehow I get the feeling there may have been a paper that dropped. I can’t be certain of it. If I’d been certain of it, or if I’d even seen it clearly, I’d have begged her pardon and told her she’d dropped something. But I had my mind on this deal and I was absorbed thinking about...”

The telephone rang.

Dexter said, “Pardon me, I’m waiting for a call on this property. I’ve submitted a counteroffer.”

He crossed over to the telephone, said, “Hello,” then after a moment asked, “Who... who is it you want?... Oh... just a moment.” He swung around from the telephone, said to Selby, “I beg your pardon, Major, but I guess you’re Doug Selby, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“The sheriff wants to speak with you.”

Selby walked over and picked up the telephone. “Hello, Rex, what is it?”

Brandon said, “Two things, Doug, and they bother me. I’d like to talk with you.”

“Can you tell me what they are over the telephone?”

“Sure.”

“Go ahead.”

“For one thing, this Henry Farley we’ve been questioning has a criminal record.”

“Oh, oh,” Selby said.

“And,” Brandon went on dryly, “he was arrested again in Los Angeles about eight months ago on suspicion of larceny. Evidently he had quite a roll with him. Of course, he says he was innocent and all that, but you know how those things go.”

“Go ahead,” Selby said.

“The man who got him out — or as he expresses it, the man who ‘sprung’ him was A. B. Carr.”

“Getting close to home,” Selby said dryly.

“And the other thing that bothers me, and it really bothers me,” the sheriff went on, “is that Doctor Thurman just telephoned; said he heard that the man was poisoned because he drank some coffee that had come up with a breakfast order...”

“Well,” Selby prompted as Brandon stopped talking.

“Well,” the sheriff blurted, “Doc Thurman opened him up and took a look at his stomach first rattle out of the box. The man had had breakfast within an hour of the time he was killed, and it was a good substantial breakfast. As nearly as the Doc can tell, it was ham and eggs, toast, coffee, oatmeal and stewed prunes.”

“Within an hour?” Selby asked.

“That’s right.”

“I can’t understand it,” Selby said. “Why would he want two breakfasts?”

“I don’t know.”

“How about Gifford, does he understand it?”

“Gifford isn’t even trying to. That criminal record on the waiter is enough for him. He thinks he’s got the murderer. I’d like to talk with you, Doug.”

“I’ll be right over,” Selby said.