Ричард Деминг - Death Spins the Platter

“Yes.”

“Then you’d be bound to notice anyone passing in the hall, wouldn’t you?”

“When I’m at my desk, Mr. Layton.”

“Did anyone pass along the hall out there — in either direction — before I showed up during The King’s Session intermission, or after I left?”

“The only person besides yourself that I remember seeing was Mr. Stander. He came into the office here and asked for Mr. Hathaway. I told him Mr. Hathaway was in the Studio B and C control room, and he left.”

“The only one, huh?” Trimble said thoughtfully.

“The only one I saw,” Mrs. Grant insisted. “When I’m not at my desk—”

“Well, how many times weren’t you at your desk?” Winterman demanded.

She flushed. “As a matter of fact, I didn’t leave it.”

“Then why didn’t you say so in the first place?” Winterman turned to Layton. “That pretty well seals off this end of the hall, all right.”

“Let’s try the other end,” Layton suggested.

They left Hathaway’s office and turned into the other arm of the corridor, the one lined with the dressing rooms. The door to dressing room 1 was closed; an officer was lounging outside. Hathaway, Layton noticed, walked past very quickly, as if he were afraid the door might open.

The control room at the foot of the corridor was walled in glass on three sides. Through the nearest of these, as they approached, they could see in and beyond. The other two glass walls, inside the booth, were at right angles to each other — one overlooking a small studio Hathaway identified as Studio B, the other a slightly larger one he said was Studio C. Both studios and the booth were empty.

“As you see, we use the same control room for both B and C,” Hathaway explained.

“Which one of these,” Trimble asked, “was in use for that ten-minute newscast during The King’s Session intermission?”

“Studio C.”

“Who was working in the booth here during the newscast?” Layton asked Hathaway.

“Edwards, our chief control engineer, and his two assistants, Spooner and Kent. Spooner is on sound, Kent is on visual—”

“Where are they now?”

“Back in the Studio A booth.”

Trimble fingered his glass eye. “I see what you’re getting at, Layton. If those three didn’t see anyone go up this arm of the hall, that means the only place a killer could have come from was Studio A — up there where the two branches of the hall meet.”

“I can assure you,” Hathaway said stiffly, “that no one went up this hall during the newscast. I was right here in the control room with Edwards, Spooner, and Kent, and I certainly would have noticed anyone, where they mightn’t have.”

“Where you here from the beginning of the newscast?” Layton asked.

“Not from the very beginning—”

“Then how do you know someone didn’t dodge up the hall before you got here?”

“Are you a reporter or a detective?” Hathaway snapped. “It so happens that just after I stepped out of my office in the other corridor to walk down here for the newscast, I saw Tutter King, very much alive, come out of Studio A, and right after him his assistant, that redheaded girl, Lola Arkwright. King stopped for a second to let the girl catch up, and I overtook them. We all turned down this hall, practically together.”

“Oh?” Sergeant Trimble said. “What did King say?”

“To me? Not a word — he hadn’t spoken to me since we canceled his show. They walked on ahead of me and then separated. I saw Tutter go into his dressing room and Lola Arkwright into hers. Lola shut her door, and so did Tutter. And I walked on to the control room here.” Hathaway tapped the glass wall outside which they were standing. “I couldn’t have missed seeing anyone pass to go up the hall.”

“Then how come you didn’t see anything going on toward the other end there?” Sergeant Winterman growled “Or did you?”

“No!” The station manager was becoming angry. “There’s a lot of difference between noticing if someone passed a few feet on the other side of a sheet of glass and noticing something going on forty feet away, Sergeant. I wasn’t there for the purpose of watching the hall. I had to see Edwards. Then Mr. Stander came into the booth—”

“Just when did you and Mr. Stander leave this booth?” Trimble asked.

“I can’t be exact — maybe two minutes before the end of the newscast. We walked back up this hall and into the other corridor together to my office.”

“Meet anyone on the way?”

“No,” Hathaway said. “I did notice as we passed that Lola’s dressing-room door was now open, whereas Tutter’s was still closed, but I really wasn’t paying attention. I just assumed they’d both gone back to Studio A to resume the Session.”

“Then King could still have been alive when you and Stander passed,” Winterman said. “The killer could have been right behind you.”

“No,” Layton said. “When Lola Arkwright asked me to find King, about thirty seconds before the newscast ended, I ducked out of Studio A and had a clear view of both halls. In the other one I saw Hathaway and Stander just going into Hathaway’s office. This hall was deserted, and I found King’s body in dressing room 1 practically at once. So he must have been killed before Hathaway and Stander left this control room to walk up the hall.”

The detectives were silent. Layton could almost hear their minds clicking away at the testimony so far. If it was to be believed, the limits of the murder period were fixed between the time Hathaway saw King and Lola Arkwright enter their respective dressing rooms a few seconds after the newscast interval began, and the time Hathaway and Stander together left the newscast control room to walk back up the hall — a period of seven or eight minutes.

Layton almost grinned when Sergeant Trimble suddenly said, “Mr. Hathaway, you say that while you were on your way to this control room — when you met King and Miss Arkwright heading for their dressing rooms during the intermission — you saw the girl shut her door but King leave his open?”

“No, no, Sergeant, I said they were both closed. Why do you ask?”

“Just trying to see a pretty complicated picture, Mr. Hathaway.”

Neat, Layton thought. By phrasing his question around Lola Arkwright, Trimble had covered up his real purpose, which concerned Hathaway. Trimble was thinking, Layton knew, that after Lola shut her door Hathaway himself could have stepped into King’s dressing room, stabbed the disc jockey, walked out, shut King’s door, and continued to the Studio B and C control room without the loss of more than a few seconds.

Mentally, Layton apologized to the scarred detective for spoiling his theory. “The only thing is, Sergeant,” he said, “King wasn’t stabbed in his dressing room.”

Trimble whirled on him. Winterman, who had been sucking on a toothpick, lowered it in surprise. “What do you mean, Layton?” Trimble said. “You seem to know a hell of a lot about this! He was stabbed somewhere else and dragged to his dressing room?”

“I don’t mean that at all. I mean that dressing room 1, where I found King dead, isn’t his dressing room. Mr. Hathaway, King’s dressing room is number 2, across the hall from 1 — am I right?”

“Certainly,” Hathaway said. “Didn’t you people know that?”

“I’ll be damned,” Winterman said.

“Now they tell me!” Trimble took off with lunging strides, his good eye glittering balefully.

One of the police laboratory men said, “It’s an ice pick, all right, Harry — the ordinary varnished pine-handle type. The only fingerprints on it are King’s.”

“What did I tell you?” George Hathaway cried from the hall. The body was still on the floor, lying like a dummy in a chalked outline, and the station manager had taken one look, swallowed, and stepped back. “He killed himself! What better evidence could you want, Sergeant?”