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.”