James Chase: This Way for a Shroud

A door facing them stood ajar.

They waited another moment or so, then Bardin walked into the lobby and pushed open the inner door.

They looked into a big, airy lounge, ablaze with lights. Wine-coloured curtains covered the windows. The walls were grey. There were armchairs, settees, a table or two and a well-equipped cocktail-bar. A television set and a radiogram stood side by side, and on the mantelpiece were glass ornaments, beautifully fashioned and blatantly obscene. Bardin stood looking round, breathing heavily through his nostrils.

“Isn’t it wonderful how these punks live?” he said savagely. “The guy who said virtue is its own reward should take a look at this joint.”

“Your time will come when you get to heaven,” Conrad said with a grin. “You’ll be given a gold-plated revolver and diamonds on your badge. Doesn’t seem to be anyone around.”

“Hey! Anyone here?” Bardin bawled in a voice that rattled the windows.

The silence that greeted his shout was as solid and as engulfing as a snowdrift, and as cold.

They exchanged glances.

“Now what?” Bardin said. “Think he’s hiding up some place?”

“Maybe he went out again.”

“That queen would have seen him go.”

“Then let’s take a look.”

Conrad crossed the room, rapped on a door to the left, turned the handle and looked into a big airy bedroom. The only furniture except for a white pile carpet was a twelve-foot-wide bed that stood on a two-foot-high dais and looked as lonely as a lighthouse.

“No one here,” Conrad said as he walked into the room.

“Try the bathroom,” Bardin said, his voice sharpening.

They crossed the room to the bathroom door and opened it. They looked into the most elaborately equipped bathroom they had ever seen, but their eyes had no interest for the luxury nor the glittering plumbing. Their attention became riveted on the sunken bath.

Ralph Jordan lay in the waterless bath, his head sunk on his chest. He was wearing a wine-coloured dressing-gown over a pair of pale blue lounging pyjamas. The walls of the bath and the front of his dressing-gown were stained red. He held in his right hand an old-fashioned cut-throat razor. The blood on the thin blade looked like scarlet paint.

Bardin pushed past Conrad and touched Jordan’s hand.

“Deader than a joint of beef: chilled beef at that.”

He took hold of a long lock of Jordan’s hair and lifted his head.

Conrad grimaced as he caught sight of the deep gash across Jordan’s throat: so deep it had severed the wind-pipe.

“Well, that’s that,” Bardin said, stepping back. “Like I said: an open and shut case. He went out there, knocked her off, then came back here and cut his throat. Very considerate of him. It makes a nice tidy job — for me, anyway.” He groped for a cigarette, lit it and blew a cloud of smoke into the dead man’s face. “Looks like Doc Holmes is going to have a busy night.”

Conrad was moving around the bathroom. He discovered an electric razor on the wall.

“Odd he should have a cut-throat razor. You’d have to go to a good many homes these days to find one, and you wouldn’t have thought Jordan would have kept one so handy.”

Bardin groand.

“Now don’t start lousing up the issue. Maybe the guy cut his corns with it: people do.” He pushed open a door by the head of the bath and looked into an elaborately equipped dressing-room. On a chair was a suit, shirt and silk underwear. A pair of brogue shoes and socks lay near by.

Conrad walked into the room, then came to a sudden standstill.

“Now this will make you really happy, Sam,” he said, and waved to a bloodstained object on the floor.

Bardin joined him.

“Well, I’ll be damned! A machete!” He knelt beside the razor-sharp knife. “I bet it’s the murder weapon. It’s just the thing to cut someone’s head off with, and it would lay a belly open like you open a door.”

“It wouldn’t interest you to wonder why a guy like Jordan should have a South American jungle knife in his possession?”

Bardin sat back on his heels. His grin made him look like a wolf.

“Maybe he picked it up as a souvenir. I bet he’s been to South America or the West Indies: probably the West Indies. It’s the murder weapon all right, and I’ll bet the blood on it is June Arnot’s blood.”

Conrad was turning over the clothes on the chair.

“There’s no blood on these. I shouldn’t have thought it possible to cut off someone’s head and not get blood on you.”

“For crying out loud!” Bardin said impatiently. He stood up and stretched his big frame. “Do you have to lean so hard on your job? Maybe he had a coat on or something. Does it matter? I’m satisfied; aren’t you?”

“I don’t know,” Conrad said frowning. “It’s all very pat, isn’t it? The whole setup could be a plant, Sam. The gun with Jordan’s initials on it, the smashed car, Jordan’s suicide and now the murder weapon. Everything cut and dried and laid out ready for inspection. It smells a little to me.”

“It smells because you’re over-anxious to earn a living,” Bardin said, lifting his massive shoulders. “Forget it. It convinces me, and it’ll convince the Captain. It would convince you if you didn’t yearn to get Maurer into the chair. That’s it, isn’t it?”

Conrad pulled at his nose thoughtfully.

“Maybe. Well, okay. I guess there’s nothing here for me. Want me to drop you off at headquarters?”

“I’ll call them from here. I’ll want the boys to look this joint over. As soon as I get them working, I’ll go back to Dead End and give the press the story. You’re going home?”

Conrad nodded.

“May as well.”

“Lucky guy. No late work, a nice little home and lots of glamour to keep you warm. How is Mrs. Conrad?”

“Oh, she’s fine, I guess,” Conrad said, and was annoyed to hear how flat and unenthusiastic his voice sounded.

Driving just below the speed limit, Conrad cut through the back streets to avoid the theatre traffic. He wondered uneasily if Janey had made good her threat and had gone out, and if she had, whether she was back yet. He didn’t want to think about her just now, but inevitably, whenever he headed for home, she forced herself into his thoughts.

He slowed down to light a cigarette. As he flicked the match through the open window his eye caught the name-plate of the street: Glendale Avenue .

It was not until he had nearly reached the end of the street that he remembered the girl, Frances Coleman, who had called on June Arnot at seven o’clock this night, had given her address as 145 Glendale Avenue. His foot trod down hard on the brake and he swung the car to the kerb.

For a moment he sat still, staring through the windshield at the dark empty street. Doc Holmes had said June Arnot had died around seven o’clock. Was it possible this girl had seen something?

He got out of the car and peered at the nearest house. It was numbered 123. He walked for a few yards until he came to 145.

It was a tall, shabby, brown-stone house. Some of the windows showed lights; some didn’t.

He climbed the flight of steep stone steps and looked through the glass panel of the front door. Beyond was a dimly lit hall with stairs going away into the darkness.

He turned the door knob and pushed. The door opened and a violent smell of frying onions, virile tomcats and ripe garbage jostled past him as if anxious to reach some fresh air.

He tipped his hat to the back of his head, wrinkled his nose and moved farther into the hall. A row of mailboxes screwed against the wall told him what kind of house it was. The third mail-box belonged to Miss Coleman: that put her on the third floor.