Brett Halliday - She Woke to Darkness

Ed Radin nodded and began at the beginning when he had been wakened from sound sleep by a telephone call from Brett Halliday asking him to check what had happened at Elsie Murray’s apartment.

He continued with a factual account of going there to observe the police investigation into her death, his subsequent brief visit with Halliday in the upstairs hotel suite, and how he had left him there to finish reading Elsie’s manuscript before taking it to be duplicated.

“And I don’t know whether he got the script to them for duplication or not,” he ended uneasily while the waiter placed their breakfast orders before them.

“I went home from the precinct about four-thirty to catch a few winks, and was back before eight when they got a telephone call from a man named Avery Birk who had read the early paper and reported that he had seen the dead girl leave the Henry Hudson Hotel about midnight with a mystery writer named Brett Halliday who was visiting in New York from Miami.

“I had to play that up to the hilt, of course, by telling them at once that I knew Brett quite well, and even knew the hotel he was staying at in the city. They let me come along… and there was no Brett when we got here. Door was locked. Bed was mussed as though he’d lain on it. Not a trace of Elsie’s manuscript in the room. Best information they could get from the clerk and elevator operator is that Brett went out quite openly about five o’clock. None of them noticed, though whether he was carrying a script or not. The operator thinks he came back about an hour later, but can’t swear to it. No one saw him after that. If he did come back, why did he go out again? Where to? I had impressed on him that it was vitally important he make absolutely no move to indicate to the police that he knew anything was wrong. That he wait calmly for them to find him… or for him to read about Elsie himself and volunteer to call them.”

“Isn’t it possible he’s still downtown waiting to get the script duplicated?”

“I hope not,” groaned Radin. “If he is and they find it out, it’ll throw everything haywire. I told him to use my name at the duplicators.”

“Why not telephone them now?” suggested Shayne.

“Sure. I’d better. I was wanting an excuse to get to a phone when you showed up.” Radin got up hastily and crossed the dining room to the telephone booths outside.

He returned in a few minutes and nodded as he reseated himself opposite Shayne. “I don’t know whether it’s good or bad. He did bring the script in a little after five o’clock. He picked it up half an hour later, leaving the duplicate copy for me. It’s there now. Where the devil did he vanish to at six o’clock in the morning? If he did come back to the hotel as the elevator operator thinks…” Radin paused uncertainly, shaking his head.

Shayne finished wolfing down his breakfast and poured himself a second cup of coffee. “Not being a writer myself, I’m afraid I don’t fully understand the significance you and Brett seem to place on the girl’s manuscript. Didn’t you say it was just a story she was writing?”

“This thing of Elsie Murray’s was much more. She told Brett that everything in it was actually true, that it had happened to her, and she had just changed the names and descriptions of the characters involved. And the carbon was missing from her apartment when the police got there, you know. It’s a funny damned thing for a murderer to steal… an unfinished manuscript. And there was the phone call just before Brett left her in which she told someone she planned to show it to him today. None of that is conclusive, but it could be the motive behind her death.”

“Brett probably decided he had spotted the clue in the manuscript,” Shayne said. “And like the damned impulsive fool he is, rushed out to grab the murderer himself before I got here to help him.”

“If he did spot the clue correctly…?” said Ed Radin.

“Then we may well have another murder on our hands already,” said Michael Shayne grimly. “Brett’s a nice guy and a hell of a competent writer, but he isn’t exactly the type I’d choose to confront a killer single-handed. Finish your breakfast and let’s take a look at the manuscript. If we can find what Brett thought he found, we may know where to start looking for him.”

Less than an hour later the two men were settled comfortably in Ed Radin’s cluttered office on Butcher’s Row in New York’s lower west side with the duplicated copy of Elsie Murray’s manuscript between them.

The duplicating office had been able to shed no light on Halliday’s disappearance. He had left with the original manuscript under his arm about six o’clock, and that was all they knew.

Radin began reading the manuscript first, laying the pages on the table between them for Shayne to pick up as he finished each one.

Both read in absorbed silence, Radin stopping occasionally to make a penciled note, Shayne plowing through the script a little more slowly, making no comment until he turned down the final page with a sigh and a shrug of his broad shoulders.

Having finished it ten minutes earlier, Radin was going through the drawers of a green metal filing cabinet beyond the battered desk that held his typewriter. He had taken a bottle of whiskey from the top drawer and set it on the table, and when Shayne sighed and turned down the final sheet, he turned to gesture to the bottle and say, “Help yourself, Shayne. There are paper cups by the water cooler.”

Shayne said, “Thanks,” and got up as Radin turned back to continue busily searching his file.

The redhead fitted two paper cups together and poured the inner one half full of whiskey, filled it to the brim with cold water and returned to his chair, frowning at Radin’s back and sipping the mixture slowly.

A few minutes later, Radin turned with several newspaper clippings in his hand, an expression of excitement on his face.

“This is what I was looking for,” said Radin triumphantly, waving the clips and reseating himself. “I had a nagging feeling of familiarity about it all the time I was reading the script. These clips are from the Times three months ago. I didn’t follow up the story because there was never anything to follow up, but I always file away case clippings on the chance it will be solved later.”

He cleared his throat and read a headline: “UNIDENTIFIED BODY FOUND IN HOTEL. WOMAN SOUGHT.”

“I remember the whole thing, so I won’t waste time reading it all to you,” he interpolated. “It does tie right in to Elsie’s story. The hotel maid in the Beloit on 23rd Street found the body at ten A.M. He was lying fully clothed on the floor with his head beaten in. Blood in the bathroom looked as though he’d been killed there and dragged out. No papers. No identification. He had registered with a woman about one A.M. under the name of… let’s see.” Radin consulted the clipping.

“Mr. and Mrs. Robert Pell of Greenwich, Connecticut. No street address. No luggage. They paid cash for the room. Woman was described by clerk as medium height and sort of dark. Under thirty and nice-looking. She appeared tight but able to navigate. No one saw her leave the hotel, but she had disappeared when the body was found. That’s all in the first clipping.”

Ed Radin laid it aside with satisfaction. “Does it begin to add up?”

“Wait a minute,” objected Shayne. “Your clipping says the Beloit Hotel on 23rd Street. The script calls it the Halcyon on upper Madison. And Elsie Murray had her man’s throat slashed. This one was slugged to death. Yet she told Halliday that her story was factual except for changing names and descriptions of the people involved.”

“I’d say it is still factual,” argued Radin. “Naturally, she’d change the name and location of the hotel. And the actual manner of the man’s death. A knife or a blunt instrument? That isn’t a change of fact. Not really. You’ve got to realize she hoped to have this story published, and she couldn’t afford to describe the scene so definitely that readers would remember the case from their newspapers.”