The Dead Can Tell
Chapter One
THE GIRL IN GRAY
ALL THAT Christopher McKee, the head of the Manhattan Homicide Squad, had when he started on that investigation were a remembered glimpse of two people in a café and an anonymous letter. He wasn’t even in New York when the crime was committed. He was on his way to Rio de Janeiro where he had been sent by the Mayor at the special request of the Brazilian authorities.
Fernandez, New York’s Chief Medical Examiner, slim, dark and elegant in sand color, and the Inspector, lean and towering in loose gray flannel, were having a cocktail in the El Capitan on East Sixty-third Street when Fernandez said with a grin, “Don’t look now, McKee, but there’s one of the prettiest girls I’ve ever seen right behind you. I know how interested you are in pretty girls.”
McKee didn’t turn. He said indifferently, “If Irving Berlin’s right, your life must be one long sweet song. How many prettiest girls do you run into of a day? About that hydrocyanic—if it is there, why the five stab wounds?”
“By Jove,” Fernandez said, “she is lovely. I didn’t think they made them like that any more.”
McKee glanced past three frosted mint juleps and an array of decorative bottles at the subject of Fernandez’s appreciative gaze. He saw a slim girl in a gray linen dress with touches of raspberry and peacock at the throat and an absurd raspberry hat tilted over glinting chestnut hair. Her white throat was arched. There was tension in her white profile, short straight nose, competent chin, sensitive mouth. The tension, the conflict, were repeated in her eyes, wide-set violet-gray eyes with depths to them, set at a tilt under delicate dark brows.
“Ah!” Fernandez murmured, “the incriminating document.”
The girl had taken a note out of her purse and was reading it. Her slight figure was erect. There was a haunted look in the violet-gray eyes.
McKee finished his ale.
“Ready?” Fernandez asked regretfully.
“No,” the Scotsman answered, “I’m going to have another.” He pushed his glass toward the bartender and kept on looking into the mirror.
The girl in gray didn’t notice the two men at the bar. Outside, the blazing August afternoon was breathless, the interior of the café was cool, dim. She had slipped into the first unoccupied booth near the door. She was shaking a little. There was haze all about her. She told herself she shouldn’t have come, shouldn’t have given in, no matter what Steve said. To meet like this was stupid, dangerous, would only get them into more trouble. It was lunacy. They were rational human beings. She was twenty-six and Steven was thirty-two. If those weren’t years of discretion, when did you reach them? In your second childhood?
It was wrong, all wrong, not only to themselves but to another human being, no matter what sort of person that other human being was. Cristie Lansing lit a cigarette with quick nervous movements and read Steve’s note again.
Cristie: I’ve got to see you. Something tremendous has come up. Meet me without fail at five this afternoon at El Capitan.
A waiter paused beside the booth. Cristie shook her head slightly, started to return the note to her purse and changed her mind. Better tear it up.
She and Steven had had their chance and they had thrown it away. That was three years ago. They had quarreled and busted it up. The quarrel between them had been childish, silly, meaningless. She couldn’t even remember now what it had been about. Pride, obstinacy, hot temper, wounded vanity had prevented either of them from making the first move. So no move was made and she had gone back to Texas with her defeated hopes and absurd canvases and her heartache and Steven had married another woman.
Steven had a wife. There was no getting away from that.
She went on reducing the sheet of paper to lozenges and squares. Simply because she and Steven had met again here in New York at the beginning of August and she had been weak enough, foolish enough to see Steve three times since that first accidental meeting was no good reason for cracking up Steven’s career, Sara’s life and her own.
She had built up a new existence for herself, slowly and laboriously—had her work. Not the creation of the gigantic murals that had occupied her during those long-ago days when she and Steven had gone around together, young and happy and in love with each other and with life, but pen-and-ink sketches that had caught on and were bringing her in a good price and were fun to do.
It was during their last meeting that she had discovered that the past wasn’t dead and that the feeling they had for each other, instead of weakening with time, had taken on a new fire and a depth that threatened to sweep them both off their feet.
It was she who had called the turn. The thing between herself and Steven was too fine for muddling, for shabbiness and intrigue and hypocrisy and deceit. Scraps and fragments weren’t of any use. There was no middle ground. It was all or nothing. It couldn’t be all. It had to be nothing. Steven was married and had a wife. You couldn’t do that to another woman. It wasn’t decent or honorable or fair.
As soon as she realized what had happened she had taken steps. She had been quite frank, keeping emotion out of it, on the surface, at any rate. She could go back and pick out the very bush in Central Park beside which she had halted when she said, “Look, Steve, you’d better go. Now. Yes, I admit it, I find myself liking you again too much, thinking about you too much for my own peace of mind. I thought it was gone, that I was—free. But I’m not. So will you . . . ?”
Steven had said good-bye huskily, abruptly, after a short volcanic protest, and they had agreed not to meet again. It was over and the pain was beginning to recede, to dull just a little—and then he had asked her to meet him, and here she was.
Flight was still possible. Cristie glanced at the clock. He had said five and it was only just that. If she went now, quickly—she measured the distance to the street, and her heart took a leap, a leap that was half joy and half foreboding. Steve was coming toward her along the aisle, tall, wide-shouldered, with that familiar swing, cocked dark head at a go-to-hell angle, keen, steel-colored eyes alight in his long clever face.
He reached the table, paused beside it. “Cristie!”
His voice had a triumphant lift to it. It was forceful and eager and decisive. He threw himself down on the white leather cushions opposite, reached out and took her two hands in his. It wasn’t right, couldn’t lead anywhere but to pain and frustration and sorrow and regret. The blood tingled through Cristie’s veins, put a rose flush in her slender cheeks and a glow into the lovely eyes in pools of shadow made by the lashes. An electric fan blew a wisp of soft hair across her white forehead.
“Steve, what is it?” she demanded. “What’s happened?” Thoughts dashed helter-skelter through her mind. Was it something about Sara? What could it be?
Steven said, “I knew it would work out, Cristie. I knew there was a way. I’ve found it.”
Cristie caught her breath. “What way, Steve?”
Steven said, “If I take the Argentine laboratory, and Wilbur put it up to me directly this afternoon, yes or no, then don’t you see, Cristie . . . ?”
Cristie didn’t see. Sara was still there, she was still between them. There was no international date-line on a marriage. You couldn’t get unmarried by crossing a border. “But, Steve, what about Sara?”
Lines etched themselves suddenly around Steven’s mouth. It lost its resilience; it was wry, a little sad. He said soberly, “Don’t worry about Sara, Cristie. You don’t have to. That’s the point.”
Cristie withdrew her hands from his. She said stiffly, “But I do worry, Steven. I have to worry. You can’t get what you want by grabbing, by stealing from someone else, making someone else unhappy. You’re Sara’s husband, and Sara’s your wife. I’m a woman too. I wouldn’t want another woman to do that to me. It’s dishonest and greedy and unfair.”