Jonathan Craig - The Case of the Petticoat Murder

“And that,” Stan said, “means you have no alibi at all. Not a shred.”

“It's a little ironic,” I said, “but if you hadn't tried to fancy things up so much, you might have got away with it. I don't mean the way you hung her up on that pipe to make us think it was suicide. I'm talking about the way you tried to frame Albert Miller.”

“I never even heard of him! Not till you called me up and said—”

“Keep quiet a while, Hutchins,” Stan said. “Don't you know better than to interrupt people before they've finished?”

“You knew Miller,” I said. “You knew Nadine had been blackmailing him, and you knew his real name was Maurice Thibault, and that he was wanted in France for killing his wife.” I paused. “You got together a translation of a French newspaper item with a cut of Miller, and one of Nadine's bank books, and enough other stuff to keep the translation and the bank book from being too obvious, and planted them in Miller's desk drawer. Then you sent an anonymous telegram to the police, telling us exactly where to find it.”

Hutchins shook his head. “Jesus, no,” he said.

“Every hall door in this apartment house is fitted with one of the most expensive small locks on the market,” I said. “It's probably the only pickproof lock of its size in the country. You had a key, Hutchins. Otherwise you'd have had to break the door down.” I thought I saw something in his eyes, but I couldn't be sure. “You knew Nadine used to live with Miller, and you knew she still had her key. Perhaps she kept it in her strongbox, perhaps not; it doesn't matter. The point is, you had access to it, and you used it to let yourself in Miller's apartment and plant everything you figured the police would need to make them suspect him,”

Hutchins shook his head, but he didn't say anything. He stood there without body movement of any kind, blinking at me, frowning a little; the way a near-sighted person will do when he's forgotten his glasses.

I kept thinking of the momentary change in his eyes when I had talked about the key. It was worth a try. “How do you carry your keys, Hutchins?” I said. “Ring or folder?”

I–I don't have any,” he said. The look was there; I was certain of it.

“Everybody has at least one key,” I said. “Let's see them, Hutchins.”

“No,” he said. “I haven't got any.”

“All right,” I said, “then tell us why you didn't ask me where Miller's apartment was.”

“What?”

“I didn't tell you Miller's address when I asked you to come over,” I said. “I didn't tell you, and you didn't ask. You didn't have to ask, Hutchins. You already knew.”

“I looked it up in the phone book.”

“He looked it up in the phone book,” Stan said. “In the phone book, Pete. That's where he looked it up.”

Hutchins didn't even so much as glance at him.

“There are six Albert Millers in the Manhattan directory,” I said. “Not to mention four Al Millers.”

He wet his lips. “After I hung up I remembered Nadine did mention somebody named Miller once. That's what I was trying to think of when you asked me about him. I got to thinking, and I remembered she'd said something about a man that lived up on West Seventy-fourth Street, and I…”

“You're doing real great,” Stan said. “Don't stop now.”

“There's still another point that sort of puzzles me a bit,” I said. “After you agreed to come to Miller's apartment, why didn't you do it?”

His eyes flicked about the room, touched the small desk near the window, and stayed there. “I—” he began.

“You what?” I said. “Looked under the mailboxes downstairs for his apartment number?”

“Yes. Yes, that's what I did.”

“If you'd done that, Hutchins, you'd still be looking. We inked out the apartment number on Miller's card less than an hour ago.”

“And this building's a walkup, don't forget,” Stan said. “No desk clerk or elevator operator to ask for information.”

“This is Miller's apartment!” Hutchins blurted. “It has to be!”

“It was Miller's apartment,” I said. “But he moved down to the second floor, less than a week ago. The second floor, Hutchins. You came straight up to the fifth floor. And you didn't look in the phone book or under any mailboxes. You came straight here today just the same way you came straight here at the time you planted that evidence in what you thought was Miller's desk drawer. You knew you had Miller's key, and Miller's key was stamped with this apartment number, 'and so you knew you were in the right place. Only you weren't.”

Hutchins' eyes were abnormally bright and his lips were slowly turning a pale dead-gray.

“This apartment belongs to a woman named Elizabeth Emmert,” I said. “She has a police record, and when she found your evidence in her desk drawer, she thought one of her old enemies must be trying to frame her. She panicked and tried to get rid of it in a trash basket. She was caught at it; and after we'd added everything up, we knew. that you were the only one with the means and knowledge to—”

“Stop!” Hutchins shouted. “Stop it! You hear? Stop it, damn you!”

“Let's see your keys, Hutchins,” I said

“No!”

I took a step toward him. “Why wait till we take them off you at the station house?” I said. “Let's try them on that lock right now.”

“No,” he said, “Stay away from me!”

There was an almost insane look in his eyes now, and I could understand how he had been able to stare down a much larger man, like the one the bartender at the Hi-Lo had told me about.

I took another step forward.

“Stay away from me!” Hutchins said. “One of you bastards is gonna beat me up while his buddy holds a gun on me so I can't fight back.”

I glanced at Stan. Neither of us said anything.

“If it wasn't for your guns, I'd whip the both of you,” Hutchins said. “I'd kill the both of you, sure'n hell!”

“The point is,” Stan said, “we do have guns.”

“I can't stand pain,” Hutchins said. “I can't stand it!”

“What pain?” I said. “You look in pretty, good shape to me, Hutchins.”

“You'll beat my belly off!”

“Listen, Hutchins,” I said. “We—”

“Lying bastard' You'll lock me in the washroom at the police station and beat me to death!”

I took a deep breath. I had never beaten a prisoner since the day I joined the force. And neither had Stan.

“Hutchins,” I said quietly, “I think the time has come for you to tell us what happened.”

“You won't beat me?”

“We won't beat you.”

“You'll keep all the other cops from beating me?”

“No one will lay a finger on you, Hutchins,” I said. “Now how about it? Didn't things happen pretty much the way we said they did?”

He sank down on the sofa very slowly. “Yes,” he said.

“Why did you kill Nadine Ellison?”

“She got too greedy,” he said. “She tried to horn in.”

“On the blackmail from Susan?”

“Yeah. And she tried to hit up Campbell, too. That's when I killed her When I found out she'd done that, I knew she had gone too damn far. Clipping Susan a little bit here and there was one thing; but trying to hit up a big man like Campbell was another.”

“How'd you go about it?' I said.

“Killing her, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“It just happened, that's all. I'd been shacked up with this girl at the hotel, and when I got over to Nadine's she started to lay down the law. She said she was starting to work on Campbell and that I wasn't going to get a dime out of it. She'd turned on me, see? Just like that. One night she'd have spent any amount of money on me, and the next night she was telling me to go to hell. She was crazy that way, anyhow. One time she'd be doing everything she could for somebody, and the next time she'd be doing everything she could to hurt them. Anyhow, when I heard she'd tackled Campbell already, I could see she'd knocked over the apple cart. I knew Campbell would never stand still for anything like that, and I knew he'd do something about it that would knock me out of even the little bit I was clipping off of Susan.”