Чарльз Кенни - This Is Murder

Sam Moraine, advertising executive, who plays a good game of poker

Phil Duncan, the poker-playing District Attorney

Barney Morden, chief investigator, D.A.’s office, who hates to lose at poker

Doris Bender, a gay young woman, addicted to filmy negligees

Thomas W. Wickes, her so-called boyfriend

Natalie Rice, Sam Moraine’s super-efficient secretary

Sid Bromley, captain of the Moraine yacht

Ann Hartwell, Doris Bender’s half-sister, whose disappearance starts it all

Dr. Richard Hartwell, her dentist husband

Carl Thorne, political boss behind the D.A.

Peter R. Dixon, present in name only

Frank Lott, a lugubrious undertaker

Alton Rice, Natalie’s father

Eaton Driver, foreman of the Grand Jury

James Tucker, Dixon’s butler

Sam Moraine drew two cards and peeked at the corners. They were both aces.

Phil Duncan, the district attorney, watching him, said almost casually, “If you’d drawn down to your hand and hadn’t saved a kicker you might have stood a chance... Give me two, Barney, right off the top.”

Barney Morden, chief investigator for the district attorney’s office, flipped two cards off the top of the deck, sighed, and drew three more for himself.

Moraine grinned at the district attorney. “I caught both your kickers, Phil.”

Phil Duncan slid two blue chips into the center of the table. “Two blues say you’re whistling through the graveyard,” he remarked.

The telephone rang, and Duncan nodded to Morden.

Morden, holding his cards in his right hand, picked up the receiver with the thumb and forefinger of his left hand, clamped his last two fingers around the mouthpiece and said, “Morden speaking.”

Phil Duncan, the district attorney, lowered his voice and turned to Sam Moraine:

“Better call me, Sam. You’d think nothing of paying two dollars for a good show. Why not pay two bucks to look at something pretty?”

Moraine nodded toward Morden, who was frowning into the telephone.

“It’s up to Barney next,” he said. “I may want to raise.”

Morden cupped his palm tightly over the transmitter and turned to Phil Duncan.

“It’s the last hand, Chief,” he said. “Bob Trent says there’s a new development in that Hartwell case you’ve got to cover personally. What’ll I tell him?”

Duncan frowned. “You’ve already said it. It’s the last hand.”

Still keeping his hand cupped over the mouthpiece, Morden observed casually, “Okay, I’m in for two bucks, just out of curiosity. You birds go ahead with the play. I’ll get the dope from Bob.”

He slid his cards to the small table which supported the telephone, clamped his left elbow down on them, pulled a pencil and notepaper from his pocket and said into the transmitter, “Go ahead, Bob, shoot the works.”

Sam Moraine fingered his stack of blue chips meditatively. “I wish you guys would solve your cases during office hours,” he observed. “Every time we start a sociable game and I get a good hand, the telephone rings and someone wants you to go out and find a lost cat.”

Duncan remarked sarcastically:

“I suppose you’d solve all mysteries between nine in the morning and five at night. If a jane came to your office at three o’clock in the afternoon and told you her sister had been murdered, you’d have the case solved by five o’clock so you could pull down the roll top on your desk and beat it for home when the whistle blew.”

Barney Morden, making notes, flung a comment over his shoulder, “Go ahead and stick in your chips, Sam, so I can win six bucks while I’m getting an earful of grief.”

Moraine shook his head.

“If it’s going to be the last hand we might as well make it worth while.”

He slid seven blue chips across the table.

Barney Morden groaned, said into the telephone, “All right, Bob, we’ll take care of it,” replaced the receiver, swung around in his chair to face the table at which the players sat.

“I hope you call him, Chief, just to keep him honest. Somehow, I have my suspicions, this being the last hand and all.”

Phil Duncan rattled his stack of chips with meditative fingers.

“Sam, my boy, I’m a public official, called upon to keep the citizens upright and moral. I’d hate to let you steal anything just because you thought I was in a hurry. I’m afraid I’ve got to keep you honest.”

He dropped five chips into the center of the table, one at a time, slowly.

When the last chip had clattered to the pile, Barney Morden raised his cards to his lips, kissed them and threw them into the discard.

“This,” he observed, “is no place for a minister’s son — or for two lousy pair.”

Sam Moraine turned his cards face up. “Three bullets and a pair of nines,” he observed.

Phil Duncan laid down three queens, a ten and a six.

“Okay,” he said, “take the money. Who’s keeping the bank?”

“I am,” Morden announced, counting out cash while Phil Duncan was struggling into a light overcoat.

“There’s a car on the way out for us, Chief,” he said. “The Bender woman rang up the office. She said she had to get in touch with you at once. She didn’t want to talk with anyone else.”

“Who’s the Bender woman and what’s the Hartwell case?” Sam Moraine asked, fighting a cigarette.

“Doris Bender,” the district attorney told him. “About twenty-nine, lots of class. Apparently has quite a bit of the world’s goods. Has a half-sister — Ann Hartwell — who lives in Saxonville. She’s married to a dentist. She’s disappeared. Doris Bender has an idea the husband murdered his wife and managed to conceal the body somewhere. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t bother with it personally, but she’s got political friends.”

“Where does she live?”

“Out on Washington Street. What’s the number, Barney?”

“Forty-three ninety,” Barney Morden said.

“Why not go on out there,” Sam Moraine asked, “hear what she has to say, make it snappy, and then come on out to my place? I’ll have some sandwiches and champagne and give you birds a chance to get even. You could give me a lift and get me home, even including a stop at Washington Street, quicker than I could have my chauffeur bring up a car for me. You fellows don’t have to obey the laws and I do. I always like to ride behind a siren.”

“We’re not using the siren unless we have to,” Morden pointed out gloomily. “People have been complaining about the way we go through traffic. They claim we use the siren to get us home in time for dinner.”

“Do you?” asked Moraine, grinning.

Phil Duncan answered his grin.

“Of course we do. You wouldn’t want a public official to be late for dinner, would you?”

Moraine announced regretfully, “I made a mistake in taking up my career. I should have gone into politics and got elected to something. God knows how many times I’m late for dinner.”

A siren moaned a low signal.

“That’s the car,” Morden announced.

He led the way to the elevator, and, when they had reached the sidewalk, climbed in beside the driver, leaving the back sat of the car for the district attorney and Sam Moraine.

As the car glided into swift motion, Moraine turned to Duncan and asked, “How about letting me go up with you, Phil? I’ve never been in on a murder case. I’d like the thrill of it.”