The Easter Parade Murder

Chapter 6

Monday morning I wasn’t at home when the invitation came, by phone, for me to call the DA’s office. At eight-fifteen, after breakfasting in the kitchen as usual, and dialing Iris Innes’ number and getting no answer, and going up to Wolfe’s room, accompanied by Fritz with Wolfe’s breakfast tray, to get instructions, and mounting another flight to tell Tabby good morning and finding him still in bed, I went down to the office, got the roll of film from the drawer, and left the house for a morning walk. Finding it cloudy and windy and raw, I buttoned my topcoat.

Surequick Pix, on Fortieth Street near Lexington, was supposed to be open at nine o’clock, but the door was locked and I had to wait. When the guy came he apparently resented me for finding him late, so I apologized and he promised to have the transparencies ready by five o’clock. That was the best I could get. I left the film, went and found a phone booth, rang Iris Innes, again got no answer, and dialed the number I knew best.

In a moment Wolfe’s voice, grumpy as always when he is disturbed in the plant rooms, was in my ear. “Yes?”

“I can get the pictures at five o’clock. No answer at Iris Innes’s number. I told Fritz to keep an eye and an ear on Tabby. Do I proceed?”

“No. You are wanted at the District Attorney’s office and I suppose you’ll have to go.”

“I could have forgotten to phone in.”

“No. Go. You might learn something.” He hung up.

From there on that day was one long dismal fizzle. No working detective ever detected less in nine straight hours than I did that Monday. The first two were spent in going down to Leonard Street for an extended talk with a dick and an assistant DA, which satisfied nobody. When I refused to furnish any biographical details except those connected with the proceedings in front of Saint Thomas’s they thought they would charge me as a material witness, but since that would accomplish nothing beyond putting me to the trouble and expense of getting bail, and might possibly mean future trouble for them, they skipped it. The main ruckus was about the film. I admitted that I had removed it from the camera before surrendering the camera to Cramer. They claimed that the film was evidence and I was withholding it. I claimed that while the camera might conceivably be evidence, since they were assuming that the murder weapon had been shot from a camera, the film was absolutely out of it, and it was my property, and if they tried taking it with a writ I knew a lawyer. I conceded that if, when the film was developed, anything showed that might be evidence, as for instance a needle in flight, it would be my duty to produce it. Finally the assistant DA, fed up, told me to beat it but keep myself available, and when I said I would be moving around on errands he instructed me to ring him at least once an hour.

Those errands. Still no answer from Iris Innes’s phone, and when I went to Arbor Street no answer to her doorbell either. At the Gazette Lon Cohen told me that Joe Herrick was at the DA’s office and might be there all day. So was Iris Innes, but he wasn’t sure about Alan Geiss and Augustus Pizzi. After thirty minutes out for lunch at an oyster bar I called on All-over Pictures, Inc., but no one there was answering questions about Augustus Pizzi. Having got the address of Alan Geiss, the free-lance, from Lon Cohen, I took the subway to Washington Heights to pass the time, and time was what I passed. His landlady, getting a kick out of it, one of her lodgers having his picture in the paper, would have loved to talk, but she was cross-eyed and I was cross, so I left her, went and found a phone booth and made my three hourly calls: to Iris Innes, no answer; to Wolfe, no news; and to the assistant DA, whose name was Doyle. When Doyle said he wanted to see me I was just as well pleased. Debating with him about the nature of evidence would be fully as helpful as what I was doing and would be more fun. I sought the subway.

But Doyle didn’t resume the discussion of evidence. As soon as I was seated at the end of his desk he took an object from a drawer and handed it to me and asked, “Do you know that man?”

It was an unusually good police picture, an excellent likeness, both the front view and the profile, but I thought it proper to study it a little. Having done so, I nodded and dropped it on the desk.

“I wouldn’t swear to it, but it looks like a specimen I met once in connection with a case — wait and I’ll tell you his name. Yeah. Tabby. A couple of years ago. I could have handed him in for a little mistake he made but didn’t. Why, has he made another mistake?”

“He has been identified as the man who grabbed the orchids off of Mrs. Bynoe as she lay on the sidewalk. By three people.”

“I’ll be darned. He has, or the picture has?”

“The picture — when did you see him last?”

I grinned at him. “Now look. I told you this morning what Mr. Wolfe told Inspector Cramer. Cramer himself said that he couldn’t have stuck the needle in her when he took the orchids because she was already dying, so what has it got to do with the murder? It’s like the film, exactly. I realize we’re not in a courtroom, so you’re not bound by the rules of evidence, but I am. I don’t intend—”

“When did you see him last?”

“Nope. Connect him up. Make it material and I’ll tell you every word I ever exchanged with him. I have a wonderful memory.”

He was unquestionably displeased. It looked for a while as if the next time I touched a sidewalk I would be under bond, and when he left the room, telling me to wait, with a dick there for company, I was sure of it, but when he came back after a long quarter of an hour he had something else on his mind and merely told me that was all. He didn’t even warn me to keep myself available.

So I got back uptown and to the office of Surequick Pix shortly after five o’clock, only to find I was in for another wait. My job wasn’t finished and wouldn’t be for an hour. He explained that the day after Easter was one of the busiest days of the year, and I went out to a booth and phoned Wolfe and tried Iris Innes again, and bought evening papers to get the latest on the Bynoe murder. There were pictures of all the church-front photographers. The one of me was a shot taken that day at the Gazette office, and I was squinting, which makes me look older.

A little after six the transparencies were ready, and, while I didn’t expect to find that I had caught anything as interesting as a needle in the air, there was a viewer right there on the counter and I thought I might as well take a look. There were eleven of them altogether. Five were close-ups I had taken previously up in the plant rooms, two were of the exodus from the church before Mrs. Bynoe appeared, and four showed her and her escorts as they approached. The one I looked at longest was the fourth and last, and it confirmed my memory of what I had seen in the finder: all it had of Tabby was his arm and shoulder and the back of his head, and he was a good three feet away from Mrs. Bynoe.

No needle, no murder evidence, but a little caution wouldn’t hurt, so I asked the man for another envelope, which he kindly provided with no extra charge, put the Bynoe pictures in it, and put one envelope in my right-hand pocket and the other in my left. If the Mayor or the Governor or J. Edgar Hoover stopped me on the sidewalk and asked to see the pictures I took of the Easter parade it wasn’t necessary for him to know that I had concentrated on Mrs. Millard Bynoe. No one stopped me. It was half past six, still daylight, as I mounted the stoop of the brownstone, used my key, and found, to my surprise, that the chain-bolt wasn’t on.

But that surprise was nothing to what followed. The big old oak rack was so covered with hats and coats that I had to put mine on a chair, and Wolfe’s voice, raised a little for an audience, was coming through the open door to the office. I walked the length of the hall, looked in, saw District Attorney Skinner seated at my desk in my chair, and the room full of people. It was a shock. I don’t like other people sitting in my chair, not even a District Attorney.