I rang the bell at Bertha’s apartment.
Bertha’s shrill whistle came screaming down the speaking-tube. “What is it now?”
“This is Donald.”
Bertha grunted under her breath and pushed the buzzer which unlatched the front door.
I climbed the flight of stairs and turned to the left, tapped on the panels of the door, and Bertha yelled, “Come in, it’s unlocked.”
I opened the door and went in.
Bertha was sprawled out in typical Sunday splendour, wearing loose-fitting pyjamas, a robe, her hair pulled straight back and stringing down behind her ears. The big easy chair in the middle of the floor was the centre of a litter of Sunday papers. On a coffee table by the side of the chair was an electric percolator. Near-by was a cup, saucer, milk and sugar; a big cigarette-tray was all but overflowing with the ends of cigarettes and matches.
On the other side of the big easy chair was a table with an electric toaster, a plate of bread, some butter and a plate containing butter-horns.
It was typical of the way Bertha spent her Sundays. From time to time she’d feed a piece of bread into the electric toaster and butter it when it came out a golden brown. Then she’d pour more coffee from the big electric percolator which held half a gallon, and put in lots of milk and sugar. She’d drink coffee, nibble toast, read and snort comments at the news stories.
Bertha looked up over her shoulder, her little beady eyes glittering angrily. “What the hell,” she said, “Frank Sellers has been camped on my doorstep. He showed up shortly after you telephoned. What the hell’s the idea?”
I said, “I gave the girl my card.”
“So I gathered,” Bertha said. “God, but you’re dumb, for a detective.”
“It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“Lots of things do when you’re dealing with a babe on a Saturday night.”
I said, “I can’t tell whether she deliberately left it as a cross, or whether it was an accident.”
“Does it make any difference?” Bertha asked.
“It might.”
Bertha said, “You should get yourself a good name to go philandering under. Just because you’re not married you think you can pass out cards. My God, I don’t know why it is that a brainy little guy like you can be so damned naïve.”
I waited until she had sputtered herself into silence, then said, “I want to get something on the Cabanita Club.”
“What do you want?”
“Some low-down,” I said. “You know the master of ceremonies there, don’t you?”
I knew that was a safe bet, because Bertha knew them all. There was a streak of the showman about Bertha, and somehow she managed to know half of the night-club entertainers in the country.
“Let me see,” Bertha said, “I think Bob Elgin is down there now.”
“I’d like to talk with him.”
“He wouldn’t like to talk with you.”
“He might.”
Bertha sighed, and said, “Open that drawer over there in the bureau, lover. Get me that red notebook in there on top of the cigarette cartons. Better toss me out a fresh package of cigarettes while you’re about it, too.”
I got her the notebook and the cigarettes.
Bertha said, “What’s Sellers got on his mind? Wasn’t it just another suicide-pact?”
“Looks like it,” I said, “only there are some things that don’t fit in. They’re bothering Sellers. I think now he’s crossed the thing off the books.”
“Well, if he’s crossed it off, that’s all there is to it.”
“Perhaps.”
Bertha said, “What the hell are you getting at?”
I said, “If a man’s made a suicide-pact, why should he miss the first shot?”
Bertha’s glittering little eyes sharpened with avaricious interest. “Anything in it for us, Donald?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Come over and sit down. Pour yourself a drink. What do you want? Coffee? Beer? Or whisky and soda? I have coffee here, but you’ll have to get yourself a cup. There’s soda in the ice-box and…”
“I’ll take a cup of coffee,” I said.
I went for a cup and saucer. Bertha put on a slice of toast for me, ran through the little red-backed notebook and said, “Bob Elgin’s apartment telephone is Cornwall 6-3481. Why do you think he missed the first shot, lover?”
I said, “I don’t know. There were three shots, all right.”
“The third shot went into a suitcase?”
“That’s right. Into the woman’s suitcase, right near the handle. For a while police couldn’t find the bullet. They were wondering about that third shot. Then they opened the suitcase and found where the bullet had gone through, leaving a neat little hole and embedding itself in the clothes.”
“It didn’t go all the way through the suitcase?”
“About half-way.”
“What’s in it for us, lover? What’s the angle?”
I said, “He carried forty thousand dollars’ worth of insurance, double indemnity, at that. He’d had it for less than a year. If he killed the woman and then himself, the insurance is void. If the man was shot first, then he was murdered and the insurance company would be nicked for eighty thousand dollars.”
“But the gun was in his hand,” Bertha said, her eyes greedy.
“It was when they found the bodies. Someone could have tampered with the evidence — not much, just eighty thousand dollars’ worth.”
“But the woman was shot in the back of the head,” Bertha said.
“That’s right.”
“She couldn’t have done that to herself, could she?”
“Probably not.”
Bertha said angrily, “You’re the most exasperating person in the world!”
“A percentage of eighty thousand bucks would be a lot of dollars.”
Bertha beamed. “You get busy on that angle, lover.”
“There are a couple of things for you to do, Bertha. Go see the widow, get her to employ us.”
“Suppose she popped him?”
“There are children. If we did work for their benefit a court would give us a fee, if the guardian employed us. The mother’s the guardian right now.”
“I’ll tie her up,” Bertha said with determination.
“Always remember that she could have done the shooting,” I pointed out. “She’s the logical suspect.”
“Well, damn it all,” Bertha said angrily, “don’t go taking up my time building air castles and then letting me down to the ground. Haven’t you anything that makes you think…”
“The only thing is that I called up the wife to find out where her husband was. I also asked about her sister. I didn’t look at the time, but that was after we’d got back to town and I’d checked on this Durham man in the Westchester Arms Hotel. He’d checked out a short time before. I telephoned the wife to ask if she had a sister and she said no.”
“Well, what about it?”
“She told Sergeant Sellers that call came in just about the time the police fix the hour when the shots were fired. But my call must have been a good hour and a half later.”
“What was her idea in saying that?”
“Perhaps she was trying to get an alibi. Perhaps she was sleepy and didn’t know what time it really was.”
“Any other thoughts?”
“Lots of them. Some of them Sergeant Sellers shares. He doesn’t like the idea of Stanwick Carlton, the husband who was being betrayed, coming here from Colorado just in time to check in at the hotel, look around and then go out somewhere at about the time the shooting took place.”
“I don’t like that, either,” Bertha said. “Wait a minute, I like it a lot. If it was murder we could make something of that.”
I nodded.
“What makes the police think suicide?”
I said, “The door was locked from the inside. The bodies were lying on the floor. There was no sign of a struggle. It was the guy’s own gun. It was held loosely in his hand when the police found the bodies.”
Bertha frowned, and said, “You’d have a hell of a time selling the insurance company eighty thousand dollars’ worth of theory when the facts are like that.”
I nodded.
“Door locked from the inside?” Bertha said.
“That’s right. The woman who owned the place had to punch the key out of the door on the inside before she could open the door with her pass-key. I think there was a window open.”
Bertha frowned. Slowly a look of disappointment came over her face. She said, “You can’t make it stick, Donald, no matter how you try. The door was locked from the inside and it was his gun. That sews the case up.”
“But there were three shots.”
“Well, he missed one.”
“Which one?”
“The first, probably.”
I said, “The woman was shot in the back of the head.”
“Well?”
I said, “All right, he missed the first shot. What happened then?”
“How the hell do I know?” Bertha said. “You’re putting the thing together. You tell me what happened next.”
I said, “If the woman had had her back turned, she’d have swung around at the sound of that shot to see what happened, wouldn’t she?”
Bertha nodded.
I said, “In that event, if he’d shot her again he’d have shot her in the forehead, right while she was looking at him.”
Bertha said, “She looked at him for a second, saw what he had in mind and turned and started to run. Perhaps she was trying to get to the door. He shot her in the back of the head.”
“While she was running?”
“Why not?”
I said, “If he missed the first shot while she was standing still, he must have improved his shooting a lot between the time of the first and second shot while she was running.”
“Perhaps the woman turned her back to him, knowing he was going to shoot her. It was a suicide-pact and she couldn’t face the gun, or perhaps he couldn’t get up his nerve to shoot her in the forehead.”
“That’s logical,” I said, “but then why did he miss the first shot, and why did he miss it that far?”
“What do you mean that far?”
I said, “A woman who’s standing up has her head over five feet above the floor. A suitcase on the floor isn’t more than eighteen inches high. If he was shooting at her head, and missed, and hit the suitcase…”
“I get it!” Bertha said. “I get it!” Her little eyes blinked rapidly. She let her lips soften in a smile. “Donald,” she said, “you’re smart — at times — damn smart. Now, what can Bertha do to help?”
I said, “You can ring up Bob Elgin and tell him your partner wants to talk with him. Tell him that you’d appreciate it if he’d give me an hour.”
“Hand me the phone,” Bertha said.
I handed Bertha the telephone. She dialled the number she wanted, and sat there waiting, her little beady eyes blinking rapidly as she thought things over.
Abruptly Bertha cupped her hand over the mouthpiece of the telephone, looked up and said, “Ten G’s in it for us, lover?”
“That depends,” I told her. “There could be plenty.”
Bertha nodded with smug complacency. “Now you’re talking,” she said. “I knew I could depend on you to…”
She jerked her hand away from the mouthpiece and said in her most seductive tones, “Hello… hello… hello, Bob? Bob, this is Bertha Cool… Now, Bob, I know you work late, but after all it’s time anyone should be up. I sleep late myself… Look, Bob, I have a favour I want you to do for me. Now be a lamb and do what Bertha wants.”
There was an interval of silence during which Bertha frowned at the telephone, then she apparently interrupted, to say, “Now don’t be like that, Bob. Here’s the set-up. I have a partner, Donald Lam, and he’s working on a case, trying to find somebody who evidently has some contact with the Cabanita. Now, Bob, if you could give him just half an hour — just talk with him No, no, you don’t need to dress, just stick around in your pyjamas. Just talk with him, that’s all… No, it isn’t doing anything that will give your place notoriety… I tell you, it’s just giving my partner a little help… All right, he’ll be right over… You still at the same address?”
“Thanks, Bob, darling. Bertha loves you for that.”
Bertha hung up the telephone and said, “The son-of-a-bitch!”
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“Half grouchy,” Bertha said. “After all I’ve done for him, too.”
“But he’s going to see me?”
“He’ll see you,” Bertha said, “but he could have been a lot nicer about it.”
“What’s the address?”
Bertha took a piece of paper, scribbled an address on it, said, “His apartment is 825. It’s one of those places where you have to be announced. Private switchboard and all that kind of stuff. Just wait until the next time Bob Elgin wants something out of me.”
I said, “Perhaps he was just grouchy at being disturbed by the telephone.”
“He tried to stall us,” Bertha said. “Fancy that, lover, the nerve of him trying to stall Bertha Cool!”
“Perhaps he wanted to go back to sleep.”
“Well, it’s time for him to get up. I’ve done too damn much for him.”
“What did you ever do for him, Bertha? It might help if I knew.”
“I squared a rap for him once, and believe me it took some squaring. I damn near lost my licence over that. But that’s something you don’t need to know. It’s better if you don’t. You beat it on up there, lover.”
I said, “Okay, here’s something you can do while I’m gone.”
“What?”
I said, “The police are closing the case. They’re giving everyone a clean bill of health. Now this suitcase with a bullet in it belonged to Minerva Carlton. I want you to get hold of Stanwick Carlton and persuade him that, as the husband of the dead woman, he should demand that suitcase from the authorities. When he gets it, persuade him that you want to take it for a little while for evidence.”
“What for?” Bertha asked.
I said, “I want to follow the course of that bullet.”
Bertha’s eyes glittered. “I get you,” she said.
I said, “Stanwick Carlton is a big, tough guy, but he isn’t half as tough as he thinks he is. He’d love to have someone pull a mother act with him.”
“I’ll clutch him to my bosom and let him sob his heart out,” Bertha said.
“Be a mother to him,” I told her. “You won’t mind putting on a mother act, will you, Bertha?”
“Hell,” Bertha said, “if it’ll bring us in any money, I’ll be his grandmother.”