This Game of Murder

Chapter XV

Marshall arrived in Philadelphia on Friday morning. He had no trouble finding the law firm of Wesson, Wesson and Masters, which was situated in an old but ultra-respectable office building downtown. He had a little difficulty getting in to see a member of the firm, though.

There was a surprisingly youthful and pretty receptionist. She greeted him quite cordially, but when she discovered he was a reporter instead of a potential client, her cordiality evaporated. She was firmly certain that no member of the firm would care to be interviewed by a reporter.

Marshall explained that he had just flown five hundred miles to see some member of the firm and that, furthermore, he was not just a reporter, but a personal acquaintance of a former employee of Wesson, Wesson and Masters. His business concerned that former employee, he said, and he suggested she relay his message on to higher authority.

A trifle reluctantly she explained to someone over an intercom system that an out-of-town reporter named Mr. Kirk Marshall was there concerning some former employee of the law firm. She seemed a little surprised when a voice from the speaker said, “Send him in.”

“Mr. Wesson will see you,” she said, and rose to escort Marshall to one of two closed doors to private offices.

“Is that the first Wesson or the last?” he couldn’t resist asking.

“The senior Mr. Wesson has been dead for twenty-five years,” the receptionist, who was about that age herself, said with dignity. “I never knew him.”

Opening the door, she said, “Mr. Kirk Marshall, Mr. Wesson,” let Marshall pass into the room and pulled the door closed behind him.

The man who arose from behind the desk was about seventy, with an abundance of snow-white hair and a lined, intelligent face. He thrust a lean hand across the desk and gave Marshall a firm handclasp.

“Sit down, Mr. Marshall,” he said in a mellow voice. “Sorry you were kept waiting. Our receptionist is relatively new here and takes her duties a trifle too seriously. Unfortunately most young women newly in a job of that sort have trouble getting it through their heads that a receptionist’s function is to get people in to see her employer, not block them out. Of course we expect her to weed out necktie salesmen and obvious crackpots, but it has been my experience that other people seldom call to see me unless they have some reasonable business. We’ll get her trained, though.”

Marshall liked the man instantly, and his mild resentment at being treated like a peasant requesting an audience with the king as instantly evaporated.

Seating himself in a chair before the desk, he said, “I’m sure she had the best interests of the firm at heart, Mr. Wesson.”

Leaning back in his chair, the elderly lawyer placed the tips of his fingers together. “What can I do for you, Mr. Marshall?”

“I’m here concerning a man you employed as a law clerk some eleven years ago,” Marshall said. “Bruce Case.”

Wesson elevated snow-white eyebrows. “We’ve been reading about poor Bruce. Are you from Runyon City?”

“Yes, sir. I’m with the Runyon City News. I also knew Bruce and am a particular friend of his widow. I’m here in a sort of dual capacity: to get material for a story and also, if possible, to help Mrs. Case. Some of us who know her don’t believe she’s guilty.”

The lawyer showed no indication of surprise. “The newspapers leave little doubt of her guilt, but over the years I’ve seen many innocent people convicted in the press for no other reason than that they made good copy. I’ve learned to believe almost nothing I read and very little of what I see and hear.”

“What I’m after is some background information about Bruce Case,” Marshall said. “No one, including his widow, seems to know much about him before he moved to Runyon City.”

“Well, he was a graduate of Cornell. He came to us right after graduation and was here about a year. He wasn’t brilliant, but he was a conscientious worker, particularly good on briefs, and probably would eventually have been taken into the firm if he had stayed.”

So Bruce Case had been able to devote himself to his work when he had to depend on himself for financial support, Marshall thought. It was too bad he hadn’t married a poor girl. He might have developed into a high-bracket lawyer.

“I already know that much,” the reporter said. “What I was after was a little more personal detail. Who his parents were, what kind of childhood he had, previous women in his life. Things such as that.”

Wesson gave him a strange look. “You don’t know about his parents?”

“Only that his father’s name was Harlan and his mother’s Martha.”

“Amazing that he could have kept a thing like that secret from his adopted town for all these years,” Wesson said. “Of course it wasn’t nearly as sensational a case as the one you currently have in Runyon City. Maybe it didn’t even make the wire services. As a matter of fact, I’m quite sure it wouldn’t have.”

“What was all this?”

“His father murdered his mother and then committed suicide. It happened just a week after young Case came to work for us.”

“Good God!” Marshall said. “No wonder he was so reticent about his family background.”

“It might have been a sensational murder case if the whole thing hadn’t been over so quickly. But there was no trial because the murderer was dead by the time the public knew of the murder. The whole incident transpired in about four hours and only made the inner pages of the newspapers for one day.” The elderly lawyer smiled. “In a city of this size, murder is more commonplace than in your home town, Mr. Marshall. It takes a pretty bizarre killing to make the front page.”

“What were the circumstances?” Marshall asked.

“Harlan Case was a building contractor, as I remember it. He wasn’t wealthy, but he had a fairly good income — enough to send his son through law school, though there wasn’t much in his estate when it was settled. I remember young Bruce making a rather bitter comment that his father had spent his money as fast as he earned it.”

“Bruce didn’t need any inheritance,” Marshall said dryly. “He married more money than he could spend in a lifetime.”

“Yes, I see by the papers that she’s quite wealthy. That’s one of the reasons she’s already been convicted in the public mind, of course. People sometimes excuse murder, but they never excuse wealth.”

Marshall grinned at him, beginning to enjoy the old man’s amiable but somewhat cynical philosophy.

“Anyway,” Wesson went on, “Harlan Case became involved with a young woman and fell violently in love at the age of fifty. Apparently he asked his wife for a divorce, she agreed, but her demands for alimony plus a lump-sum settlement was so high it would practically have pauperized him. I suppose he was realist enough to know the young woman wouldn’t be so interested in him as a pauper, so he decided to kill his wife. He botched the job horribly.”

“Amateurs usually do,” Marshall commented.

“Yes. Which is one of the reasons criminal law is so lucrative. We don’t handle criminal cases ourselves, though I’ve often regretted it. There’s a certain excitement in criminal law which is missing in corporation law. Anyway, Harlan Case planned what was supposed to be a perfect crime. He built himself an alibi by pretending to go to New York over one weekend. He even bought a round-trip train ticket, which was later found, unused, in his pocket. Then he broke into his own house, strangled his wife and ransacked the place. He filled a sack with various items of value, probably with the intention of dumping them into the Delaware River. The crime was committed about eleven o’clock at night, when ordinarily everyone in his quiet neighborhood was indoors with the shades drawn. Unfortunately, he had neglected to take television into consideration.”

“Television?” Marshall repeated.

“It was still a relative novelty then. Remember this was twelve years ago and people still watched it. Martha Case, thinking her husband was out of town, had invited a number of woman friends over to watch the late show. When Case opened the front door to leave, the sack slung over his shoulder, he was confronted by four women, all of whom knew him well. He dropped the sack in panic and ran.”

“Good grief! How unlucky can you get?”

“Apparently he drove around the streets for some hours, probably attempting to figure a way out. Meantime the police had been called, of course, and a wanted bulletin had gone out on him along with the license number and description of his car. A cruising squad car spotted him and sounded its siren in command to pull over. Instead, he made a wild run for it. He was in the middle of the Delaware River Bridge, heading for Camden, when the police car finally pulled alongside and forced him over. As he brought his car to a halt, he slipped out the right-hand door and leaped over the railing. It isn’t certain that he meant to commit suicide. There was some speculation that he may have thought he could somehow survive the fall and escape by swimming to shore, for he was known to be an excellent swimmer. But a boat was passing under the bridge and he landed smack on its deck. He was killed instantly.”

“It makes a fascinating story,” Marshall said. “I’m surprised it didn’t make the wire services.”

“Probably it’s my talent as a storyteller,” Wesson said with a smile. “Actually it was a pretty drab affair which was covered locally by about a quarter column on the inside pages. As I said, it might have developed into a sensational case if there had been a long-drawn-out trial, but it was over too fast. It was just another of the hundred or so homicides a year we have in this city.”

“This probably seems like an anticlimatic question,” Marshall said. “But can you tell me any more about Bruce Case’s background?”

The white-haired man laughed. “I don’t know of any women in his life before he married, though I suppose he he must have had girls in high school and college. And I can’t describe his childhood because I never met him until he came to work here. I never met his parents, incidentally. I only read about them in the paper.”

“How did he take his parents’ deaths?” Marshall asked.

“Surprisingly well. I don’t think he was very close to them and he wasn’t living at home at the time. He had a small bachelor apartment. It struck me that he was more concerned about the effect of the incident on his job here than he was grief-stricken. I think he expected to be fired. It was hardly any fault of his though, so he had no cause to worry. We’re not such an old-fashioned firm that we insist on even our employees’ ancestors being untouched by scandal.”

They chatted a few moments more, than Marshall rose to leave. He thanked the elderly lawyer for his time and sincerely meant it, for he had found him extremely charming.

On the way out he even bade the overzealous receptionist a pleasant good-by.