Crime Stories Page 28

  Just as she reached him and put her arms around him, he fell across the desk—dead.”

  “Anybody else—any of the servants, for instance—able to say that Mrs. Estep didn’t go to the office until after the shot?” I asked.

  The attorney shook his head sharply.

  “No, damn it! That’s where the rub comes in!”

  His voice, after this one flare of feeling, resumed its level, incisive tone, and he went on with his tale.

  “The next day’s papers had accounts of Dr. Estep’s death, and late that morning the woman who had called upon him the day before his death came to the house. She is Dr. Estep’s first wife—which is to say, his legal wife! There seems to be no reason—not the slightest—for doubting it, as much as I’d like to. They were married in Philadelphia in 1896. She has a certified copy of the marriage record. I had the matter investigated in Philadelphia, and it’s a certain fact that Dr. Estep and this woman—Edna Fife was her maiden name—were really married.

  “She says that Estep, after living with her in Philadelphia for two years, deserted her. That would have been in 1898, or just before he came to San Francisco. She has sufficient proof of her identity—that she really is the Edna Fife who married him; and my agents in the East found positive proof that Estep had practiced for two years in Philadelphia.

  “And here is another point. I told you that Estep had said he was born and raised in Parkersburg. I had inquiries made there, but found nothing to show that he had ever lived there, and found ample evidence to show that he had never lived at the address he had given his wife. There is, then, nothing for us to believe except that his talk of an unhappy early life was a ruse to ward off embarrassing questions.”

  “Did you do anything toward finding out whether the doctor and his first wife had ever been divorced?” I asked.

  “I’m having that taken care of now, but I hardly expect to learn that they had. That would be too crude. To get on with my story: This woman—the first Mrs. Estep—said that she had just recently learned her husband’s whereabouts, and had come to see him in an attempt to effect a reconciliation. When she called upon him the afternoon before his death, he asked for a little time to make up his mind what he should do. He promised to give her his decision in two days. My personal opinion, after talking to the woman several times, is that she had learned that he had accumulated some money, and that her interest was more in getting the money than in getting him. But that, of course, is neither here nor there.

  “At first the authorities accepted the natural explanation of the doctor’s death—suicide. But after the first wife’s appearance, the second wife—my client—was arrested and charged with murder.

  “The police theory is that after his first wife’s visit, Dr. Estep told his second wife the whole story; and that she, brooding over the knowledge that he had deceived her, that she was not his wife at all, finally worked herself up into a rage, went to the office after his nurse had left for the day, and shot him with the revolver that she knew he always kept in his desk.

  “I don’t know, of course, just what evidence the prosecution has, but from the newspapers I gather that the case against her will be built upon her fingerprints on the revolver with which he was killed; an upset inkwell on his desk; splashes of ink on the dress she wore; and an inky print of her hand on a torn newspaper on his desk.

  “Unfortunately, but perfectly naturally, one of the first things she did was to take the revolver out of her husband’s hand. That accounts for her prints on it. He fell—as I told you—just as she put her arms around him, and, though her memory isn’t very clear on this point, the probabilities are that he dragged her with him when he fell across the desk. That accounts for the upset inkwell, the torn paper, and the splashes of ink. But the prosecution will try to persuade the jury that those things all happened before the shooting—that they are proofs of a struggle.”

  “Not so bad,” I gave my opinion.

  “Or pretty damned bad—depending on how you look at it. And this is the worst time imaginable for a thing like this to come up! Within the past few months there have been no less than five widely advertised murders of men by women who were supposed to have been betrayed, or deceived, or one thing or another.

  “Not one of those five women was convicted. As a result, we have the press, the public, and even the pulpit, howling for a stricter enforcement of justice. The newspapers are lined up against Mrs. Estep as strongly as their fear of libel suits will permit. The women’s clubs are lined up against her. Everybody is clamouring for an example to be made of her.

  “Then, as if all that isn’t enough, the prosecuting attorney has lost his last two big cases, and he’ll be out for blood this time—election day isn’t far off.”

  The calm, even, precise voice was gone now. In its place was a passionate eloquence.

  “I don’t know what you think,” Richmond cried. “You’re a detective. This is an old story to you. You’re more or less callous, I suppose, and skeptical of innocence in general. But I know that Mrs. Estep didn’t kill her husband. I don’t say it because she’s my client! I was Dr. Estep’s attorney, and his friend, and if I thought Mrs.

  Estep guilty, I’d do everything in my power to help convict her. But I know as well as I know anything that she didn’t kill him—couldn’t have killed him.

  “She’s innocent. But I know too that if I go into court with no defense beyond what I now have, she’ll be convicted! There has been too much leniency shown feminine criminals, public sentiment says. The pendulum will swing the other way—Mrs. Estep, if convicted, will get the limit. I’m putting it up to you! Can you save her?”

  “Our best mark is the letter he mailed just before he died,” I said, ignoring everything he said that didn’t have to do with the facts of the case. “It’s good betting that when a man writes and mails a letter and then shoots himself, that the letter isn’t altogether unconnected with the suicide. Did you ask the wife about the letter?”

  “I did, and she denies having received one.”

  “That wasn’t right. If the doctor had been driven to suicide by her appearance, then according to all the rules there are, the letter should have been addressed to her. He might have written one to his second wife, but he would hardly have mailed it. Would she have any reason for lying about it?”

  “Yes,” the lawyer said slowly, “I think she would. His will leaves everything to the second wife. The first wife, being the only legal wife, will have no difficulty in breaking that will, of course; but if it is shown that the second wife had no knowledge of the first one’s existence—that she really believed herself to be Dr. Estep’s legal wife—then I think that she will receive at least a portion of the estate. I don’t think any court would, under the circumstances, take everything away from her. But if she should be found guilty of murdering Dr. Estep, then no consideration will be shown her, and the first wife will get every penny.”

  “Did he leave enough to make half of it, say, worth sending an innocent person to the gallows for?”

  “He left about half a million, roughly; two hundred and fifty thousand dollars isn’t a mean inducement.”

  “Do you think it would be enough for the first wife—from what you have seen of her?”

  “Candidly, I do. She didn’t impress me as being a person of many very active scruples.”

  “Where does this first wife live?” I asked.

  “She’s staying at the Montgomery Hotel now. Her home is in Louisville, I believe. I don’t think you will gain anything by talking to her, however. She has retained Somerset, Somerset and Quill to represent her—a very reputable firm, by the way—and she’ll refer you to them. They will tell you nothing. But if there’s anything dishonest about her affairs—such as the concealing of Dr. Estep’s letter—I’m confident that Somerset, Somerset and Quill know nothing of it.”

  “Can I talk to the second Mrs. Estep—your client?”

  “Not at present, I’m afraid; though
perhaps in a day or two. She is on the verge of collapse just now. She has always been delicate; and the shock of her husband’s death, followed by her own arrest and imprisonment, has been too much for her. She’s in the city jail, you know, held without bail. I’ve tried to have her transferred to the prisoner’s ward of the City Hospital, even; but the authorities seem to think that her illness is simply a ruse. I’m worried about her. She’s really in a critical condition.”

  His voice was losing its calmness again, so I picked up my hat, said something about starting to work at once, and went out. I don’t like eloquence: if it isn’t effective enough to pierce your hide, it’s tiresome; and if it is effective enough, then it muddles your thoughts.

  Two

  I spent the next couple of hours questioning the Estep servants, to no great advantage. None of them had been near the front of the house at the time of the shooting, and none had seen Mrs. Estep immediately prior to her husband’s death.

  After a lot of hunting, I located Lucy Coe, the nurse, in an apartment on Vallejo Street. She was a small, brisk, businesslike woman of thirty or so. She repeated what Vance Richmond had told me, and could add nothing to it.

  That cleaned up the Estep end of the job; and I set out for the Montgomery Hotel, satisfied that my only hope for success—barring miracles, which usually don’t happen—lay in finding the letter that I believed Dr.

  Estep had written to his first wife.

  My drag with the Montgomery Hotel management was pretty strong—strong enough to get me anything I wanted that wasn’t too far outside the law. So as soon as I got there, I hunted up Stacey, one of the assistant managers.

  “This Mrs. Estep who’s registered here,” I asked, “what do you know about her?”

  “Nothing, myself, but if you’ll wait a few minutes I’ll see what I can learn.”

  The assistant manager was gone about ten minutes.

  “No one seems to know much about her,” he told me when he came back. “I’ve questioned the telephone girls, bellboys, maids, clerks, and the house detective; but none of them could tell me much.

  “She registered from Louisville, on the second of the month. She has never stopped here before, and she seems unfamiliar with the city—asks quite a few questions about how to get around. The mail clerks don’t remember handling any mail for her, nor do the girls on the switchboard have any record of phone calls for her.

  “She keeps regular hours—usually goes out at ten or later in the morning, and gets in before midnight. She doesn’t seem to have any callers or friends.”

  “Will you have her mail watched—let me know what postmarks and return addresses are on any letters she gets?”

  “Certainly.”

  “And have the girls on the switchboard put their ears up against any talking she does over the wire?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is she in her room now?”

  “No, she went out a little while ago.”

  “Fine! I’d like to go up and take a look at her stuff.”

  Stacey looked sharply at me, and cleared his throat.

  “Is it as—ah—important as all that? I want to give you all the assistance I can, but—”

  “It’s this important,” I assured him, “that another woman’s life depends on what I can learn about this one.”

  “All right!” he said. “I’ll tell the clerk to let us know if she comes in before we are through; and we’ll go right up.”

  The woman’s room held two valises and a trunk, all unlocked, and containing not the least thing of importance—no letters—nothing. So little, in fact, that I was more than half convinced that she had expected her things to be searched.

  Downstairs again, I planted myself in a comfortable chair within sight of the key−rack, and waited for a view of this first Mrs. Estep.

  She came in at 11:15 that night. A large woman of forty−five or fifty, well−dressed, and carrying herself with an air of assurance. Her face was a little too hard as to mouth and chin, but not enough to be ugly. A capable−looking woman—a woman who would get what she went after.

  Three

  Eight o’clock was striking as I went into the Montgomery lobby the next morning and picked out a chair, this time within eye−range of the elevators.

  At 10:30 Mrs. Estep left the hotel, with me in her wake. Her denial that a letter from her husband, written immediately before his death, had come to her didn’t fit in with the possibilities as I saw them. And a good motto for the detective business is, “When in doubt—shadow ‘em.”

  After eating breakfast at a restaurant on O’Farrell Street, she turned toward the shopping district; and for a long, long time—though I suppose it was a lot shorter than it seemed to me—she led me through the most densely packed portions of the most crowded department stores she could find.

  She didn’t buy anything, but she did a lot of thorough looking, with me muddling along behind her, trying to act like a little fat guy on an errand for his wife, while stout women bumped me and thin ones prodded me and all sorts got in my way and walked on my feet.

  Finally, after I had sweated off a couple of pounds, she left the shopping district, and cut up through Union Square, walking along casually, as if out for a stroll.

  Three−quarters way through, she turned abruptly, and retraced her steps, looking sharply at everyone she passed. I was on a bench, reading a stray page from a day−old newspaper, when she went by. She walked on down Post Street to Kearney, stopping every now and then to look—or to pretend to look—in store windows, while I ambled along sometimes behind her, sometimes almost by her side, and sometimes in front.

  She was trying to check up the people around her, trying to determine whether she was being followed or not.

  But here, in the busy part of town, that gave me no cause for worry. On a less crowded street it might have been different, though not necessarily so.

  There are four rules for shadowing: Keep behind your subject as much as possible; never try to hide from him; act in a natural manner no matter what happens; and never meet his eye. Obey them, and, except in unusual circumstances, shadowing is the easiest thing that a sleuth has to do.

  Assured, after a while, that no one was following her, Mrs. Estep turned back toward Powell Street, and got into a taxicab at the St. Francis stand. I picked out a modest touring car from the rank of hire−cars along the Geary Street side of Union Square, and set out after her.

  Our route was out Post Street to Laguna, where the taxi presently swung into the curb and stopped. The woman got out, paid the driver, and went up the steps of an apartment building. With idling engine my own car had come to rest against the opposite curb in the block above.

  As the taxicab disappeared around a corner, Mrs. Estep came out of the apartment−building doorway, went back to the sidewalk, and started down Laguna Street.

  “Pass her,” I told my chauffeur, and we drew down upon her.

  As we came abreast, she went up the front steps of another building, and this time she rang a bell. These steps belonged to a building apparently occupied by four flats, each with its separate door, and the button she had pressed belonged to the right−hand second−story flat.

  Under cover of my car’s rear curtains, I kept my eye on the doorway while my driver found a convenient place to park in the next block.

  I kept my eye on the vestibule until 5:35 p.m., when she came out, walked to the Sutter Street car line, returned to the Montgomery, and went to her room.

  I called up the Old Man—the Continental Detective Agency’s San Francisco manager—and asked him to detail an operative to learn who and what were the occupants of the Laguna Street flat.

  That night Mrs. Estep ate dinner at her hotel, and went to a show afterward, and she displayed no interest in possible shadowers. She went to her room at a little after eleven, and I knocked off for the day.

  Four

  The following morning I turned the woman over to Dick Foley, and went back to the Age
ncy to wait for Bob Teal, the operative who had investigated the Laguna Street flat. He came in at a little after ten.

  “A guy named Jacob Ledwich lives there,” Bob said. “He’s a crook of some sort, but I don’t know just what.

  He and ‘Wop’ Healey are friendly, so he must be a crook! ‘Porky’ Grout says he’s an ex−bunko man who is in with a gambling ring now; but Porky would tell you a bishop was a safe−ripper if he thought it would mean five bucks for himself.

  “This Ledwich goes out mostly at night, and he seems to be pretty prosperous. Probably a high−class worker of some sort. He’s got a Buick—license number 645−221—that he keeps in a garage around the corner from his flat. But he doesn’t seem to use the car much.”

  “What sort of looking fellow is he?”

  “A big guy—six feet or better—and he’ll weigh a couple hundred easy. He’s got a funny mug on him. It’s broad and heavy around the cheeks and jaw, but his mouth is a little one that looks like it was made for a smaller man. He’s no youngster—middle−aged.”

  “Suppose you tail him around for a day or two, Bob, and see what he’s up to. Try to get a room or apartment in the neighborhood—a place that you can cover his front door from.”

  Five

  Vance Richmond’s lean face lighted up as soon as I mentioned Ledwich’s name to him.

  “Yes!” he exclaimed. “He was a friend, or at least an acquaintance, of Dr. Estep’s. I met him once—a large man with a peculiarly inadequate mouth. I dropped in to see the doctor one day, and Ledwich was in the office. Dr. Estep introduced us.”

  “What do you know about him?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Don’t you know whether he was intimate with the doctor, or just a casual acquaintance?”

  “No. For all I know, he might have been a friend, a patient, or almost anything. The doctor never spoke of him to me, and nothing passed between them while I was there that afternoon. I simply gave the doctor some information he had asked for and left. Why?”