Die, Little Goose: A Bret Hardin Mystery. David Alexander
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an entertainer,” Hardin said. “A dancer. He was on television quite often up to a couple of years ago. Maybe that’s why you recognize him.”
Romano stared at Adrian. “No,” he said. “I don’t watch much of anything but ball games on TV. Ball games and the Disney show. I’m a sucker for Disney.” He spoke directly to Adrian. “A dancer. I make you now,” he said. “You were in here about six months ago, around the first of the year. You had a big load on. You wanted to tell me you’d killed your wife. We checked up. Your wife was an invalid in a wheelchair, but she wasn’t dead. She was sitting in her wheelchair reading a book when the cops got there. We sent you to the city hospital for observation. They kept you there four or five days and let you loose. They said you were just drunk.”
Romano turned to Grierson, said, “You make him now?”
Grierson nodded. “I remember. You think—”
Romano raised his hand to silence Grierson. He said to Adrian, “You want to confess another murder?”
Adrian’s eyes were glazed. He seemed hardly conscious of what the lieutenant had said. He spoke in a monotone. “I want to confess the murder of my wife,” he said.
Grierson said, “I’m damned.”
“When did you kill your wife?” Romano asked quickly.
“Last night. About this time. A little earlier, I think. Somewhere between ten and eleven o’clock. We had a suicide pact, but I couldn’t go through with my part of it after I’d killed her. I’m afraid of pain and the only weapon I had was a knife.”
“You killed her with a knife?”
“I stabbed her through the heart.”
“Where is the knife?”
“I—I don’t know. I must have thrown it away. I got drunk and wandered around the streets all last night and today and then I found Hardin and asked him to bring me here to you so I could confess. For God’s sake promise me you won’t let them give me a third degree. I’m willing to tell you everything. I’m willing to die for what I did. But don’t hurt me!”
Romano spoke almost pleasantly. “Relax,” he said. “We don’t use the third degree any more, except on known hoods and cop-killers, maybe. Tell me, where did you kill your wife?”
“In our room. We live on West Fifty-third Street. Mrs. Cora Mattingly is the landlady.”
“Same as last time,” Romano commented. He said to Grierson, “That checks?”
“It checks,” Grierson answered.
“Get Farber from the squad room,” Romano said.
Grierson did not bother to don his shirt. He walked out to the squad room and returned presently with the detective named Farber. Farber had a weatherbeaten face and large, sad eyes. He was mopping perspiration from his face with a blue bandanna handkerchief.
Romano said, “Farber, take this man outside and keep him there until I call you. He’s not to be questioned or touched. Just watch him, that’s all. He may be an important witness.”
Farber nodded. He said to Adrian, “This way,” and led him out of the office.
Romano regarded Bart quizzically. “How long has this man been with you?” he asked.
Bart looked at the stainless-steel watch on his wrist. “The better part of an hour. About forty-five minutes, anyway. He picked me up a little after ten-thirty.”
Romano tapped his fingers on his desk. He and Grierson exchanged glances. The lieutenant said to Bart, “Two minutes before you walked into this office a routine precinct squeal came in. There was suspicion of murder at a rooming house on West Fifty-third Street. The house was operated by a woman named Cora Mattingly. She put in the call. The precinct men were on their way there. The way these things work, the precinct gets the squeal and buzzes us immediately. It’s kind of an alert to Homicide, but we don’t go out on it. We wait until the precinct men check. Half the time it’s only a jumper or an accidental death or somebody’s idea of a joke. If it looks like murder we get another call. When that comes through, Homicide sends a man and so does the D.A.’s office. Verification should be coming through in a minute or two now.”
The verification came almost immediately. The phone on Romano’s desk began to ring as he finished speaking.
Romano said to Grierson, “Take it.”
Grierson picked up the phone. He answered, nodded affirmatively at Romano. He listened intently, scribbled on a pad, muttered meaningless monosyllables. Presently he said, “Okay, will do.” He hung up the phone.
“A woman named Daphne Temple was murdered in Mrs. Cora Mattingly’s rooming house on West Fifty-third Street,” Grierson said in a flat voice.
“Then Adrian was telling the truth this time,” Bart said. “I thought he was just drunk.”
“No,” said Grierson, “he wasn’t telling the truth. The woman wasn’t stabbed. She was shot through the heart. She wasn’t killed last night. She was killed about twenty-five minutes ago, at five minutes to eleven. The landlady and a woman named Elsa Travers can establish the time exactly. They’d been to the show at the Music Hall. There’s a grandfather clock in the hall of the house and when they came in they looked at it. A minute later they heard a shot and rushed upstairs. They found Daphne Temple dead with a hole in her heart and blood all over her.”
Romano said, “Put your shirt on, Grierson. We’ll go up there. I’ll have Farber keep this Adrian Temple on ice. I want to question him some more before we let the bug doctors look him over again.”
Grierson said, “There’s something else.”
“What?” Romano asked.
Grierson turned to Hardin. “You aren’t going to like this, I’m afraid,” he said. “What’s the name of that old actor you keep on the payroll? The one you call your secretary? I met him a while back when the lieutenant and I dropped around to see you at the Broadway Times.”
Hardin’s eyes grew hard. “Lennox,” he said. “James Lennox. He’s a fine old man.”
Grierson said, “James Lennox has the room next to the one where they found the body. He was standing on the fire escape outside Daphne Temple’s room when Mrs. Mattingly and this Elsa Travers got there. The cops found a gun on the fire escape, about where he was standing. It was still warm, and the smell of the barrel confirmed the fact it had been fired at about the time the two women heard the shot. Ballistics will check it, but there’s not much doubt it was the gun that killed Daphne Temple. The precinct boys are holding Lennox on suspicion of murder.”
two
“How stupid can cops get?” Hardin asked bitterly.
Romano’s dark Italian eyes regarded the editor sadly. He knew Hardin well and he knew that he was dangerously angry now. “Pretty stupid, I guess,” he answered mildly, hoping a soft answer would turn away wrath.
Hardin was not to be placated. The bronze skin beneath his close-cropped blond hair was darkly flushed. “Charging old Jim Lennox with murder is as silly as accusing Grandma Moses of juvenile delinquency,” he said. “I’ve known him ever since I was born. He’s the last of a disappearing breed on Broadway—a gentleman. He was in the theatre at the turn of the century and he stayed in it until a guy named Stanislavsky came along and started something called the naturalistic school of acting which meant actors were supposed to stumble around the stage with their heads averted from the audience and mumble their lines. Jim thought the playwright had a right to have the lines he’d written heard and he thought the customers in the back row of the balcony had a right to hear them. His type of acting wasn’t fashionable any more. But his knowledge of Broadway and the theatre has been worth a lot to me on the paper. Old Jim has lived for three-quarters of a century and he’s been about as decent a human being as God