Talmadge Powell

Death in Dirty Dishes

It began very simply with an unmade bed and a few dirty dishes.

At six minutes after five o’clock Bill Aiken returned from Washington to his apartment house. He knew it was six minutes after five because he consulted his watch, thinking that it would be forty-five minutes before Mary got home from work and he could see her again. They had been married only two months, and she insisted on keeping her job with Jacob Shuler, a lawyer with offices in the exclusive Standard Building. This was Bill’s first trip away, a three-day trip that had seemed like a lifetime.

In an expansive mood he handed the cab driver a couple of bucks, said airily, “Keep the change, old man.”

Humming softly, he went up the front steps, into the apartment house, and rode the self-service elevator to the third floor. He hummed Smoke Gets In Your Eyes, Mary’s favorite tune, as he turned the key in his apartment door.

He went inside, crossing the cozy living room, toward the bedroom, where he’d deposit his bag. After that, he was thinking, he’d pour himself a short one, sprawl in a living room chair, and when Mary came in, he’d give her the small, gold locket that nestled in his coat pocket. She had wanted a locket like that for a long time. A locket with a photograph of Bill’s grinning mug on the inside of it.

Then he opened the bedroom door, and the hum died softly in his throat. Everything suddenly changed. Not actually; for it was still the same familiar scene, maple suite, soft carpet, the dressing table a little cluttered with Mary’s knick-knacks. But something, some tiny detail, was different. A little warning buzzer came to life in Bill’s brain.

Lips pursed, he stood looking at the bedroom; then he laughed self-consciously, feeling foolish. He saw the detail consciously — the bed wasn’t made, the covers rumpled toward the foot. Mary was a stickler about making the bed first thing every morning. Its unmade condition at five in the afternoon only meant she had almost been late to work this morning without Bill to shake her awake. For a moment he’d reacted like an old maid.

He set his tan bag on the carpet beside the bed, regarded the rumpled covers with a cocked eyebrow, and started toward the kitchen.

At the kitchen door, he paused again, the alarm buzzer sounding off full blast.

The first thing he noticed was the odor, the smell of old food. Then he saw gnats hovering over the dinette table.

A frown creasing his forehead, he walked slowly into the kitchen. The table was littered with dirty dishes, a half-empty cup of coffee, the cream gathered to the top like scum, the remnants of an old breakfast — forlorn and uninviting on the plates. And there were too many dishes for Mary to have used alone...

A half-eaten piece of toast had absorbed butter and orange marmalade. Something hard began hammering inside Bill as he stretched out his hand, picked up the limp toast, touched it with the tip of his tongue. He went suddenly shaky, weak inside. It was orange marmalade, and Mary hated the stuff, crinkling her nose when Bill ate it

He knew then it was himself Mary had had breakfast with. That was why there were so many dishes; he had been her breakfast companion — but he hadn’t been in the apartment for almost four days. He knew, too, that she hadn’t been here, either. Mary wouldn’t have left those dirty dishes.

But if she hadn’t been here, where was she?

He was lighting down panic as he went back to the living room. He sat down, picked up the phone, and dialed Jacob Shuler’s number. There was no answer, and Bill replaced the phone slowly, trying to smother his rising panic.

Again he picked up the phone, and holding the phone book opened at the classified section, he went down the list of hospitals. He called them all with no results. The needles of fear began to bite deeper into his spine.

He called police headquarters, and after a long moments was connected with a deep-voiced Lieutenant of Detectives named Tim Hagan, who listened, with occasional short grunts.

“An unmade bed and dirty dishes, huh?” Hagan said, finally, wheezing a little. “Well, I wouldn’t worry too much about it. She...”

“The heck you wouldn’t! Look, I know my wife, and I know there must be a strong reason for her being gone. If she’d been called away, she would have wired me.”

“Well, you bring a photograph down. We’ll look into it.”

Look into it, Bill thought, slamming the phone down. Hagan would do more than look into it. He rose, shaken now with the added fear that he’d have a tough time prodding officialdom to action. He’d be cursed if he would let them make a missing persons report on Mary and file it back...

He had cooled off a little, knowing his anger had been inspired by the fear within him, when he was ushered into Hagan’s office.

Hagan, behind his desk, was a short, fat man with a round face, triple chins, and a polished briar pipe between his thick lips. But his eyes, like mirrors of his inner self, revealed dormant power and shrewdness.

He fished into his pocket, drew out a photograph of a slim woman with a soft, oval face and a cloud of chestnut hair. She was smiling, looking very gay and lovely. It caused Bill to flinch.

He handed the photograph to Hagan. “This is my wife.”

Hagan studied the photograph for a moment, not speaking; then he rose and said. “Excuse me. Be back in a moment.”

Bill sat down as the door closed behind the cop. He noticed he was crushing his hat brim and he stopped himself abruptly. He kept seeing the way Mary’s body flowed along as she walked, the way she smiled like a kid having a pleasant dream in her sleep.

Then Hagan was standing in the doorway, a plump, elfin figure, and the hot, pitying light in his eyes scared Bill.

“What... what is it, Hagan?”

Hagan came into the office, put his hand on Bill’s shoulder. “Easy, now, Aiken. I just called the morgue.”

The room whirled about Bill. He found himself thinking, “You’re dreaming, you fool! These things happen to other people, not to ordinary guys like you! Wake up!”

He said, “I want to see her, Hagan.” As he got up, he felt the weight of the locket case in his pocket...

It was a huge room, and Bill shuddered with the chill in it; the lighting was harsh, as if trying to dispell a special darkness. The smells, the formaldahyde, made him feel sick.

Then he looked at the body on the marble slab, his hands clenching until the knuckles cracked. He hadn’t dreamed it would be so horrible. He couldn’t even recognize her; it looked as if some sort of acid had been splashed in her face...

His breath knotted in his throat, he looked at the tweed, tailored suit that clung wetly to her. They’d found her on the river bank where the water had washed her up, the morgue attendant said, and had just brought her in. Her cloudy, chestnut hair was in wet, limp strands; she was wearing one of the spike-heel pumps that made her ankles look especially nice. The other shoe was still in the river...

Hagan said softly, “You want her rings and watch?”

Bill nodded dumbly. Her engagement and wedding rings, the watch he’d given her... yes, he wanted them.

Objects swimming in his vision, he looked down at the hand that had worn those rings and something hot washed over him. As if afraid of what he would see, he picked up her limp, left hand. He spread the first and second fingers. He said hoarsely, “This... this isn’t Mary!”

“What...!”

“The night before I left, Hagan, Mary cut herself between her fingers, but there’s no wound...”

Hagan grabbed the cold hand, looked between the fingers, and jerked his face toward Bill. “Then who is this? Why is she dressed in your wife’s clothes? And where is your wife, if this isn’t she?”

Hagan had become a living dynamo, shouting orders into a phone, as Bill left the morgue building. He stood on the sidewalk, darkness closing in on him, people swirling about him, wondering frantically what to do, how to start. Then he thought of Jacob Shuler again, Mary’s employer. He had already told Hagan where Mary worked. The cop would no doubt see Shuler as soon as he got his forces marshalled; but Bill suddenly wanted to talk to Shuler himself. The lawyer, he thought, was the logical starting point.

He hurried to the drug store down on the corner, elbowed his way through the people at the fountain. From the booth in hack he called Shuler’s home and a servant answered.

“Is Mr. Shuler there?” Bill asked.

“I’m sorry, he isn’t. He’s at the Dresser residence, I think.”

“Dresser?”

“Mr. Jonathan Dresser’s home. Shall I tell Mr. Shuler you called?”

“Never mind. Thanks.” He hung up, grabbed the phone book, and looked up Dresser’s number; then he decided not to phone but to go in person. He made a mental note of Dresser’s address and left the drug store.

On the way down in a cab that seemed to be creeping, Bill found himself thinking of Jonathan Dresser and Dresser’s family.

“Tragic,” Mary had described the family. Dresser was one of Shuler’s wealthiest clients, and Bill remembered Mary shivering the time she told him how two years ago Dresser’s wife died in a blazing automobile, screaming, after the car had gone over an embankment. Dresser’s daughter. Helen, was a bedridden invalid with a heart so erratic a walk downstairs might stop it. Dresser had spent his life zealously guarding her from strangers or excitement. From excitement because of her heart, from strangers because her face was twisted and ugly. He had once struck a new maid who started into Helen’s room.

And of them all. Dresser himself was probably the most tragic He had made millions in the manufacture of patent medicine. Then, six months ago, he had had a nervous breakdown; two months later he was hopelessly insane, committed to a private institution.

Getting out of the cab, Bill looked at the big brick house. It was surrounded by a broad expanse of lawn, enclosed by a massive, well-trimmed hedge. Yet in the darkness lowering dismally over the pointed roof Bill could sense the grim tragedy that had struck the Dresser family.

A withered little butler with downy white hair answered Bill’s ring. The butler’s head was hunched deeply into his shoulders.

Looking down at him, Bill said, “I’m looking for Mr. Shuler. I understand he is here.”

“Just a moment, sir.” The butler closed the door softly, and Bill could hear him moving in the hall. Then the door opened again and the butler said, “Mr. Shuler will see you. This way, sir.”

Bill entered into a vaulted hall, followed the butler, who pulled apart double doors of rich, dark wood.

The room was a library, with leather-bound volumes hiding the walls, a scroll-legged walnut desk, deep, leather-upholstered chairs. In the center of this magnificence stood a man no larger than the butler. But this man had a long, narrow face, a thin nose, eyes grown calculating from years of legal procedure.

He dismissed the butler with a brisk, bird-like movement of his hand. After regarding Bill a moment, his eyes lighted with recognition. “You’re Mr. Aiken. I remember now; you’ve come by the office to pick up your wife after work.”

Bill nodded. “I wanted to ask you about my wife.”

Shuler looked faintly startled. “I was just going to ask you the same thing.”

“You mean...” Bill began hoarsely. “You mean my wife wasn’t at your office today?”

“As a matter of fact, Mr. Aiken, she hasn’t been there for three days. I was going to ask you when she’s coming back. She should have phoned... left me with lots of work. She...” His voice died sharply. He said, “Where is your wife?”

Licking his lips did Bill no good; they kept feeling parched and thick. “I... I don’t know. She’s gone — just gone.”

Shuler pursed his lips, his eyes clouded.

Bill said, “What was she doing? In her work, I mean. Anything unusual? Anything that would cause someone to...”

Shuler shook his head. “She was merely doing her usual routine. Making briefs, taking dictation, drawing up legal forms. But... but you, Aiken!”

“I?”

“You’re a chemist, aren’t you? Your wife mentioned your doing war work. Perhaps someone wants formulas, production figures.”

Maybe he’s got something there, Bill thought frantically. His work was important; it had taken him to Washington, warranted a permit to carry a small automatic.

“But why haven’t I been contacted? Why...”

“Maybe you will be later.” Shuler started to say more but the phone on the desk buzzed. He picked it up. “...Yes... yes. I’m coming right up, Ordway.” He replaced the phone. “I’ve got to go upstairs. Here on business. But if I can help, don’t fail to phone me, Aiken.”

Bill thanked him and turned to go. He came through the library doorway and saw her, a woman standing in the hall. She was wearing a tiny, frilly apron, flat-heeled shoes. Her garb didn’t conceal ravishing, blonde loveliness.

She looked at Bill. Beneath the creamy glow of her skin she was very pale, her blue eyes wide. It upset Bill strangely — the image of her stunned expression stayed in his mind as he went toward the darkness of the street.

He was halfway down the walk when he heard his name spoken. “Mr. Aiken!” It was a hoarse, fierce whisper, demanding that he wait.

Quick footsteps were sounding on the walk as he turned. The blonde girl’s hand was on his arm.

“I... I overheard what you said in there to Mr. Shuler,” she was breathing hard. “I haven’t time to talk now, but I’ll be off work for the night soon. Come to seven fourteen Maxton Street in... in two hours, nine o’clock, and ask for Blanche Pelman.”

She started to go, but Bill asked quickly, “Why? Why should I come there?”

“Because,” her voice vibrated almost fiercely in the growing darkness, “I can tell you where to find your wife!” Then she was gone.

A misting rain had begun to fall when Bill, his shoulders hunched in the trench coat he had taken from his apartment, approached seven fourteen Maxton. The street lights were pale blurs in the mist; damp, rancid odors rose from the trash-littered gutters. Somewhere in the crumbling brick houses across the street a tipsy man was singing off key; down the street a few doors reflected light and a sudden, loud burst of laughter came from a pool room.

Bill mounted the steps and knocked.

A thin, hawk-faced landlady with a broom in her hand answered the door. “Yes?” she demanded in a piping voice.

“I want to see Miss Pelman.”

The landlady pulled the door back, examining Bill in the wan light that came from the single, naked bulb in the hall. Then she said, “Right up there at the top of the first flight of stairs. Room on the left.”

“Thanks.” He had to keep himself from running up the stairs. He was conscious of the thud of his heart. Blanche Pelman’s promise about Mary echoing in his mind as he neared the room.

He tapped on her door, and the blonde gill opened it a crack, saw him, and pulled it wide.

She closed the door, standing with her back to it. Breathlessly, she said, “Your wife’s first name is Mary?”

“Yes,” Rill said tightly.

“Then I was right. It is your wife.”

He stood in the middle of the room; his voice sounded far away. “Tell me from the beginning.”

“Several days ago a man named Jordan moved into this house. I’ve talked with him some, and yesterday he had too much to drink. He spoke of a woman named Mary Aiken.” She moved away from the door, sat down on the edge of the bed.

“Today when I heard you talking to Mr. Shuler,” she went on, looking up at him, “I remembered this Jordan, the name he had mentioned. As soon as I got home from work tonight I talked with him again. They say he’s crazy, but I’m sure he knows where to find your wife.”

“Good! I’ll hold Jordan. You phone the cops...”

“No,” she said quickly. She got to her feet, her hands clasped before her. “You’ve got to be careful. I... I think we’re playing with dynamite.”

The hairs across the hack of his neck were like sharp pins. “You mean Jordan is that dangerous?”

“He might be. He dresses like a tramp, but he wears shoes that cost every dime of twenty-five dollars — and he doesn’t work for the money. It’s my guess he gets it from a man he calls every now and then — a man named Jim Carson.”

“Carson...?” he breathed. He blared so hard his eyes burned. Carson... that made bitter, frightening sense. Two years ago, Hill had been an innocent bystander when Jim Carson had shot to death a restaurant owner who’d refused to pay protection money. He had testified against Carson, only to make a slinking enemy of the cheap racketeer. Car-son was acquitted, and Hill had heard nothing of him for a year now. Had he waited, bided his time to strike? If so, he couldn’t have chosen a more effective way.

He forced words out: “Which room is Jordan’s?”

“Upstairs. The one right over this one.” She followed him to the door. “You won’t tell anyone what I have told you? You won’t tell Carson who gave you your information?” Her voice sounded small.

He looked at her. “I won’t tell anyone. Thanks.”

The hall at the next level had only a dim bulb at the far end. The floor creaked under Bill’s weight. He paused before Jordan’s door, the pulse in his temples pounding like dull thunder.

There was a crack of light under the door, but no sound in the room. Jordan was either drunk or asleep. Trembling with agonizing anticipation. Bill pulled his twenty-five automatic from the hip pocket of his trousers. Jordan would have an unpleasant awakening...

He grasped the knob, took a deep breath, flung the door wide — and the breath went out of him explosively. Jordan wasn’t asleep; he was dead.

Hypnotically, Bill took a couple of steps into the room, faintly aware that the sight of the lean elderly man on the narrow iron bed, the knife in the man’s throat, was making him sick. The awareness grew as his stomach boiled up in him, and he shut his eyes to keep from looking at the horror of dying caught and frozen in the harsh lines of Jordan’s face. Then he set his teeth, closed the door softly behind him, and moved toward the bed.

He kept his teeth clamped very tightly as he began searching Jordan. He had to raise the inert bulk a little to reach the man’s wallet. Like his shoes, it was expensive.

The wallet contained about a hundred dollars in small bills — and identification. Bill was suddenly caught in a mesh of details too bizarre and frightening to think about.

This man was no tramp; his name wasn’t Jordan; there was no earthly reason for his plunging into Bill Aiken’s life. The corpse on the sagging bed was Jonathan Dresser, the patent medicine king who’d gone insane four months ago!

Bill was too stunned with shock to realize the swift movement behind him. It flashed through his mind that he had forgotten the closet. He whirled, dropping away from the figure hurtling itself upon him. He got a swift, paralyzing glimpse of the hulking body and set, pitted face of Jim Carson. Then Carson’s swinging arm struck, and the flat side of the gun in his hand splashed lightning sickeningly over Bill’s skull.

When blackness faded to wispy gray, Bill heard a cold voice: “Aiken... Snap out of it, Aiken!” A hand was slapping his check.

He squirmed to get away from the stinging hand and opened his eyes. The gray blur hovering before his face focused itself into the chubby features of Tim Hagan.

Hagan hauled him to his feet. “Too bad you went off the deep end, Aiken.”

“Deep end?” he echoed dazedly.

“You needn’t hand me the act. I found the note. Part of it had been torn away, but the part remaining in his hand,” he nodded toward the body on the iron bed, “had ‘Mary Aiken is,’ written on it. It’s plain enough.”

“You think that I...”

“What I see, Aiken, is what I think. Dresser escaped from a lunatic asylum owned by a sawbones named Lewis Ordway. You’ve probably read about the doc. Made himself famous first as a heart specialist, branched out and became well known as a psychiatrist. Ordway was a very close friend of Dresser’s, the family medico, and I guess he wanted to keep down publicity and kept the escape of Dresser quiet. But he shouldn’t have been so loyal. Dresser, before Ordway could find him, did something to your wife. You found out, knifed him, started to leave in a hurry, tripped and knocked yourself out.”

“Good Lord!” Bill choked. “You can’t believe that, Hagan!”

“I’d like not to. But I think a jury will.”

A jury... a trial. Prison — or the electric chair. And just four and a half short hours ago he had been an ordinary guy anxious to get home and kiss his wife hello...

His voice throbbed. “Lieutenant, you’ve got to believe me! I didn’t trip. There’s a girl downstairs who can tell you that Dresser has been phoning a man named Jim Carson. Carson was hiding in the closet when I came in. He...”

“What’s the girl’s name?”

“Pelman. Blanche Pelman. At least listen to her, Hagan.”

“All right,” Hagan said slowly. “I’ll listen to her.”

He held Bill’s arm tightly as they went into the hall, down the stairs. “This is it,” Bill said, pausing before Blanche Pelman’s door. Silently, Hagan raised his pudgy hand and knocked.

There was a rustle of movement inside, and Blanche pulled the door open. Her eyes were liquid with fright, the base of her nostrils twitched. Bill stared at her, fear creeping down his spine.

“This is official, lady,” Hagan said. “Can we come in?”

Her throat quivered as she swallowed. She clung to the door as if needing support as Hagan dragged Bill past her.

“Close the door,” Hagan said. “No sense of this being heard all over the house.”

She obeyed slowly, turned to face him, averting her gaze from Bill’s.

“I won’t take long, lady,” Hagan said. “I just want to ask you one thing — do you know this guy?”

“I... I...” Her mouth worked. “I never saw him before in my life!”

Bill had half-expected it; the conviction that the murderer had been here and threatened her was growing in him. But her words jarred Hagan hard. For an instant he stared at her in bewilderment. That instant was all Bill needed.

He didn’t know he could throw a punch like the one he crashed into Hagan’s jaw. But he was thinking of the electric chair — and of Mary.

Hagan released his arm, stunned, and tried to wobble back and pull his gun. Bill stepped in close, smashed Hagan in the stomach and again on the jaw. The cop sat down very hard, rattling the windows. Then, almost lazily, he tipped over and lay on his side.

Bill hadn’t heard the door open, but there was a sudden scream, and the hawk-faced landlady, her ever-present broom still in her hand, was foamed in the doorway. As he lunged at her she swung the broom. It caught him high on the side of his head, sprinkling broomstraws over his shoulders. He wrung the broom from her fingers and she scurried off down the hall. He knew her screams would bring the cop on the beat at any moment.

He left Blanche standing in the middle of the room, her face frozen in a frightened grimace.

He took the stairs three at a time, ran toward the back of the house, and emerged in a backyard overflowing with garbage cans and clotheslines. He could hear the landlady screaming on the sidewalk now.

He cut through a narrow, dark alley, reached the street, and whistled at a passing cab. He sat back, breathing hard, his head pounding. Then he leaned forward and gave the driver his own address. He’d missed the logical starting point all the time. He knew the risk he was taking in going back to the apartment, knew the place might be swarming with cops. That was a chance he would have to take. If Mary had been involved in anything, if a clue existed, it was bound to be at home — in Mary’s things.

He used the back stairs, easing up them silently. When he came to the third floor, he scanned the corridor, saw that it was empty, and ran on tiptoe to his door. His key already in his hand, he opened the door, stepped quickly inside.

He paused just a moment; then he pulled all the blinds, every nerve on edge for the sound of a furtive movement, and turned on a small table lamp. He stood indecisively, wondering where to start. It was hard to think, for over and over came the realization that somewhere out in the sprawling city was a mother who had lost a daughter, a daughter murdered in his wife’s clothes. And he had lost a wife.

He shook the thought out of his head, went into the bedroom, and began pulling drawers open. Then he stopped, realizing this was all wrong. I need to conduct a planned search, he thought, I... The thought broke off as he saw the newspaper on the side of Mary’s dressing table. He picked it up. It had been opened, folded back, and he was looking at the classified ad section. An ad under Help Wanted was ringed with a pencil mark. It read: “Wanted, a competent nurse, excellent salary. Answer L-38 c/o The Journal.” He looked at the date, saw that the paper was a morning edition of four days ago. He crushed the paper in his hands, let it fall to the carpet. Mary, he knew, had drawn the ring about the ad, and he thought he knew why. He hadn’t missed the logical starting point after all. That ad would have had no point at first, but with what he knew now it made macabre, frightening sense.

The elevator was humming as he came out of the apartment. He barely squeezed into the entrance of the back stairs as the elevator doors opened, disgorging Hagan and a blue-coated cop.

The misting rain had stopped and fog was beginning to swirl us Bill again approached Blanche Pelman’s house. The front door was unlocked. He squeezed through, eased up the stairs to her room.

A startled gasp hissed between her lips when she answered his light knock. “I’m sorry, Mr. Aiken! I didn’t mean to tell the cop that! I...”

“It’s all right,” he said, catching her hand. “But be quiet.”

“I didn’t mean it, honest!” She was sobbing softly.

He crushed her hand to quiet her, glancing down the hall. Then he noticed how soft and white her hand was. He looked at her a long moment. “You don’t seem the housekeeper type,” he said gently.

“I... I’ve got a record, Mr. Aiken. I came out of prison a year ago, and I can’t get a job just anywhere.”

“You can help me,” he said.

“How? Please don’t ask me...”

“I’m not going to ask you who threatened you.” He knew he couldn’t rush her, frighten her more, but he wished he were out of this hall. And if his reasoning were right, he had a frantic need of speed.

“How long have you been at the Dresser place, Blanche?”

“A week.”

“Did Doctor Ordway hire a new nurse three days ago?”

“Why... why yes he did!”

So it had been Ordway who put the ad in the paper!

Blanche was staring at his face. “Mr. Aiken! Are you...”

“I’ll tell you in the cab. Come on, we’re going to the Dresser place!”

They rode five blocks, Bill begging the hackie for more speed, before Blanche said, “Are the new nurse and your wife...”

“Tied right together, both incidents,” he said bitterly. “Three days ago my wife disappeared and Ordway hired a new nurse the same day! Can’t you see it? He hired the new nurse because the old one would recognize Helen Dresser! That was Helen’s body there in the morgue! She had a heart that was in danger of stopping at any moment. It did stop, leaving Ordway and Shuler squarely in the middle. They had to have a substitute for Helen and quickly. They had a double motive, a very powerful motive for choosing Mary. She looked enough like Helen to substitute, and Mary, working right there in Shuler’s office must have suspected what they were doing with Dresser’s money.”

“Dresser’s money!”

“It’s simple. Ordway the family doctor, Shuler the family lawyer, a great team. When Dresser had a nervous breakdown, Ordway, a couple of months later, declared him insane and committed Dresser to an institution owned by Ordway, which, in Dresser’s case, was really a prison. Thus the Dresser money reverted to Helen. She couldn’t be excited, and that left Shuler, as family lawyer, in actual control of the money. He was dishing it out for the two of them.

“But then Helen died and they were in a spot. The money would now pass on and there’d be investigations. They decided to cover her death, snatched Mary, dressed Helen in her clothes, mutilating Helen’s face, and dropped her in the river. Ordway, Shuler, the old butler, whom they probably have intimidated, and the nurse were now the only living people who had seen Helen, because strangers had never been allowed in her room. They hired a new nurse, and that left Shuler and Ordway free — with the money.”

“But one thing,” Blanche’s voice quivered, “the whole world knows that Helen’s face was deformed. As you say, Ordway and Shuler had to have a stand-in for Helen. They couldn’t merely have an empty bed and not announce her death. There was always the chance that an outsider would get into her room. But to make the plan complete, won’t Ordway have to operate, perform some awful plastic surgery — if he hasn’t already?”

His words were thick: “I’ve been thinking about that...”

His automatic clutched in a perspiration-slick hand, Bill stood to one side while Blanche rang the bell. The door cracked open, and Bill stepped forward, pushing the gun into the humped little butler’s face. Suddenly ash gray, the butler staggered a step backward and Bill pushed through the doorway. “Where are Ordway and Shuler?”

“Up... upstairs, sir. In Miss Dresser’s room.”

“Take us up.”

“But, sir, no one is allowed...”

“I said to take us up.” He punctuated the words with the gun rammed in the butler’s ribs. The butler turned cautiously.

He led them down the hall, up a flight of broad stairs. He paused before a door, looking at Bill imploringly. “Really, sir...”

Without a word, Bill slammed the door open, shoved the butler into the room. Shuler, at a window across the room, whirled, and doctor Lewis Ordway looked up from his position beside an enormous canopied bed. He was a beefy man with a shining bald head and tiny, black eyes. He half rose, his face darkening.

Bill let Blanche precede him into the room. He stepped to where he could get a full view, and his blood turned to flakes of ice. There was a figure in the huge bed, the covers tucked up, leaving arms and hands free. In the right hand was a glass of black liquid, and he thought stormily: “So they’ve been drugging her...!”

But the most frightening part was the bandage that encased her head, leaving only her mouth free. “Take the bandage off, Ordway,” Bill said. “If you’ve already operated I don’t think I can help killing you!”

The soft red lips below the bandage breathed, “Bill!”

“It’s okay, kid,” he said around the lump in his throat. He watched as Ordway unwound the bandage; then he sagged with relief. She was the same, except for the glow in her eyes.

Bill looked at Ordway. “You were going to do it tonight, weren’t you?”

“No,” Shuler squealed. “No! We did take your wife; we thought you’d be gone a long time.”

“All right, Aiken,” Ordway said. “You’re a pretty smart guy. But we didn’t murder anybody. Helen died of natural causes, and we didn’t know that Dresser was dead until we heard it on the radio a few minutes ago.”

“That’s partly what confused me,” Bill said, “not knowing for awhile that I was fighting two fires.

“But we know who killed Dresser — don’t we, Blanche? I knew you killed him when I came to your room the second time, but I had to look after Mary first. So I brought you along — knowing you’d stall, hoping for a break — to keep you from getting away. But the break won’t come. This is the end of the line.”

He took a deep, heavy breath. “You killed for money, didn’t you, Blanche? You’ve never worked for a thin dime; your hands tipped me to that. You thought you’d keep me from getting suspicious by saying you had a record, acting contrite, but if that were so, your hands would be rough, hardened.”

Very slowly, Blanche eased down in a chair.

“When Dresser escaped from Ordway’s smooth prison, he knew Ordway had men on his trail, Blanche. He couldn’t get to the police, needed help. He posed as a tramp, thought he had found someone to believe in him and help him when he met you. He gave you enough solid facts to blackmail every cent of the Dresser money out of Ordway and Shuler as fast as they laid hands on it. But to use the facts, you had to keep Dresser from going to the police and blasting Shuler and Ordway out of their present position. So you killed him.

“In me you recognized a danger and a perfect fall guy. You hired Jim Carson, set your frame, planted a motive by putting a scrap of paper in Dresser’s dead hand with ‘Mary Aiken is’ written on it.”

“Bill,” Mary breathed, “you’re wonderful! But how did you know?”

“Well, Shuler and Ordway wouldn’t want Dresser dead. They’d steer clear of every sort of investigation. If they’d got close enough to him to kill him, they’d have simply taken him back to Ordway’s asylum. Too, Blanche said she knew nothing about Dresser, posing as Jordan; yet she also said that people thought he was crazy. That made sense, when I saw her hands.”

“And proof?” Blanche asked hoarsely.

“Three wonderful slate witnesses right here — Shuler, Ordway, and the butler. But most important, Jim Carson’ll sing.”

The butler said, “Bless you, sir! They’ve threatened me...”

“I know,” Bill said. “It’s been a nightmare. Now...” He felt a soft hand on his arm — Mary’s. He choked, tried to swallow, and couldn’t.

He remembered those dirty breakfast dishes at home, the dishes that had given him the tip-off that Mary was missing. He’d have to call Hagan, get him to take this crowd off his hands.

But first, Bill guessed he should make a pretty little speech to his wife. He started to, but what he said was, “Sweetheart, if I ever nag because of dirty dishes, throw a skillet at me, will you...?”

Content

Talmadge Powell
Death in Dirty Dishes