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Murder With a Past
By Ellery Queen MysteriousPress.com
Copyright © 1963 Ellery Queen
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-5040-1916-3
CHAPTER 1
Dave Tully reached the outskirts of the business district at five o'clock in the afternoon. Trying to make time, he chose River Street and swung into the car-stream rushing across the bridge. A cloverleaf intersection a mile beyond split the river of traffic into rivulets. The big beige Imperial took the one going east.
Oleander Drive brought Tully in a gentle climb to the short green hills and, a few minutes later, to the fieldstone pillar whose bronze plaque announced Tully Heights.
The stiffness in his legs—it was a long drive up from the state capital—began to leave him. He felt himself smiling.
Tully Heights never failed to relax him. The Heights had been Dave Tully's baby, from the first inking of the plat to the last brad in the graceful ranchers and split-levels slipping past the Imperial.
He had done a very good job here, Tully thought. The street layouts held the secret—broad and meandering, following the natural contours of the hills. At the sacrifice of a few lots he had achieved a beautiful individuality. You came upon each house unexpectedly, as if it were alone in the hills—a miniature estate rather than what it was, a unit in a development.
At number 100 Oleander, Tully braked the big car and eagerly turned into the driveway curving to the double garage doors of a redwood and antique brick split-level.
The absence of the other car, the general air of emptiness, let him down. Still, she hadn't known he would be getting back at this hour.
Tully got out of the car—a big man, big in the shoulders and small in the waist. His face was square-cut, hearty, with a crinkle-eyed glow under the rather surprising metallic gray of his hair. People invariably glanced at the back of his hand for a tattoo, as in the TV cigarette commercials.
Inside the house he called, "Ruth?"
He expected no answer, and he got none.
As Dave Tully's front door swung closed, a sedate black Plymouth sedan rounded the final bend in Oleander Drive. Behind the wheel sat a rangy, thirtyish man who drove with precision. His features were tidy, almost characterless. The late sun glinted on his dark blond, almost tan, hair, which was smoothly trimmed. He wore a dark suit, a white shirt with a short-tab collar and a conservative necktie. The hands on the steering wheel were squarish, with manicured fingernails.
He stopped the Plymouth behind the beige Imperial and got out—nothing hasty in his manner, but not casually, either.
As he passed the Imperial in the driveway he laid his hand, palm flat, on its hood.
The door chimes halted Tully's progress toward the stainless steel kitchen. He wondered if Ruth had forgotten her key. He hadn't thrown the thumb latch on coming in, and the door was locked.
Passing the front windows, Tully glimpsed the black Plymouth and frowned.
He opened the door and said, "Hello, Julian."
The tidy man stepped inside. "Just getting back, Dave?"
"Five minutes ago."
"How'd you make out in the capital?"
"The bond issue looks good. Let's hope the voters pass it when it comes up. And dredging the river seems feasible. Barge shipping would make a city of us in no time at all. How about a sandwich? I drove straight through, and I'm ready to eat raw dog."
"Thanks, I've got beef waiting at home. But don't mind me."
Tully grinned. "Come on into the kitchen. You can mix a drink while I roust a Nature Boy Special out of the refrigerator."
Tully let Julian precede him to the kitchen. He clicked coffee on to heat and went about loading two slices of bread with cold cuts and cheese.
Julian Smith's look bothered him. "You want to explain, Julian?" "Eat your sandwich," the detective said.
"I get the impression it can't wait." Tully stared at him.
Smith watched a sparrow delouse itself on a twig outside the kitchen window. When the bird fluttered and disappeared, blending into the shadows stealing in from the east side of the house, he said, "As a matter of fact, Dave, it can't."
"Business?"
Smith nodded.
Dave Tully set the sandwich down on the work area beside the sink. "Your department is Homicide, Julian. Somebody get himself killed?"
"Yes."
"Well, who?"
"A man named Cranny Cox. The Cranny is short for Crandall."
Tully's broad shoulders loosened, and he laughed. "You had me going there for a second."
"Did I?" the detective said.
"Well, after all. Man hasn't seen his wife in three days and when he gets home there's this character from the mayhem bureau with an official look on his puss." Tully picked up the sandwich and took a man-sized bite.
"The name mean anything to you, Dave?"
"Cranny Cox? Never heard of him. So why the detour on your way home? Of course, we're always glad to have you."
He spoke as if Ruth were standing there in the kitchen with him. Always we, Julian Smith thought. The house had been built for Ruth. Tully was the kind of man who built for the joy of building, and perhaps for that reason he had made a great deal of money out of the Heights. But this house had been a special labor of love.
"Ruth's a little late, isn't she, Dave?"
Tully glanced at the kitchen clock. "She didn't expect me. Probably getting in a positively-the-last rubber of bridge with three other business widows."
"She usually goes on these trips with you, Dave. Why didn't she go this time?"
Dave Tully studied the Homicide man's face with care, and then he set the remains of his sandwich down.
"You'd better stop making like a detective, Julian, and tell me what this is all about. In words of one syllable."
Smith reached into a pocket and brought out something wrapped in white cloth. He unwrapped it cautiously. It was a small revolver.
"This is your gun, Dave."
Tully stared and stared at it. "It is?" he said stupidly.
"You bought and registered it when you moved up here."
"Well, sure. You know perfectly well why. This was the first house I finished in the development, and we were pretty much alone up here for a while. I couldn't have Ruth ..." He stopped and swallowed. He was angry at the policeman, angry at his own dry mouth and panicky thoughts. "For God's sake, Julian! How'd you get hold of my gun? And what's it got to do with this man Cox, whoever he is? What are you trying to tell me?"
"That it killed him," Smith said. "We fished it out of a sewer near the motel where his body was found."
For some reason Tully found himself groping for the half-eaten sandwich. When he realized what he was doing, he pulled his hand back and gripped the smooth cold edge of the kitchen sink. "What the bloody hell, Julian, are you talking about?"
"I'm sorry, Dave. We've got a pickup on her."
"Pickup on whom?"
"Your wife."
"Ruth?" Tully's mouth remained open. "On Ruth?"
"I'm sorry," the detective said again. He pushed away from the window at which he had been standing.
"This is some kind of rib."
"I wish it were, Dave." Smith moved toward the kitchen doorway. "Mind if I look through the house?" He kept moving in the same quiet way without waiting for a reply.
"Look all you want!" Tully shouted after him. "We never even heard of anybody named Crandall Cox! You've just plain flipped, Julian!"
When the detective got to the living room a few minutes later he found Dave Tully standing at the picture window. He had drawn the drapes back as far as they would go, and he was watching the street. His face was a muddier version of his hair.
He turned at Smith's step and asked in a reasonable voice, "Who's this Crandall Cox, Julian?"
"We're not sure yet."
"The gun doesn't mean a damn thing."
"I'm afraid it does, Dave."
"It was just stolen from the house here."
"Did you have a break-in?"
"We must have had."
"'Must have' isn't admissible evidence. Did you?"
"Not that I know of. But—"
"When is the last time you actually saw this gun?"
"How the devil do I know? A long time ago. Look, Julian." Tully was still sounding reasonable. "I don't get this at all. All right, so somehow somebody got hold of my gun and shot this Cox with it. But why Ruth? You ought to know Ruth couldn't kill anybody."
"How would I know that, Dave?" the detective said. "In fact, how would you know it?"
"Damn you, Julian—!" Tully yelled.
"Keep your shirt on. All I meant was that there's a murder potential in everybody."
"Well, even if she could, why would she? An absolute stranger!"
"Maybe not so absolute." Julian Smith reached into his inside pocket and his manicured fingers reappeared with a police department envelope. From it he very carefully extracted a sheet of notepaper. He unfolded it and laid it on the coffee table. "I'm breaking all the rules, Dave. Read this. Just don't touch it."
Tully came away from the picture window reluctantly. He bent over the table. It was ordinary white typewriter stationery, its creases slightly worn, its message typed. The date in the upper right hand corner suddenly leaped up at him. If it was to be believed, the letter had been written in the short interval between his meeting with Ruth and their marriage:
Cranny—
You keep away from me, and I mean it. What happened between us is ancient history and you'd better get used to the idea. I've found myself a leading citizen here who's very much interested in me and I think he's going to ask me to marry him. You do anything to spoil my chances and it will be the last thing you ever spoil.
I'm serious, Cranny. Just forget I exist and go back to your bedroom-window romances and figuring out ways to dodge an outraged bullet. You stand a better chance of surviving at the hands of some dumb cuckold than you do at mine. I mean this.
And five weeks from the date on this thing we were married. ... The notepaper moved a little under Tully's gust of breath. The detective quickly picked it up by two corners, folded it, and tucked it away.
"Typewritten and unsigned," Tully said unsteadily. "What are you trying to pull, Julian? This can't have anything to do with Ruth."
"Maybe," Smith nodded. "But there are other things, Dave. Cox arrived in town four days ago and registered at the Hobby Motel."
Tully knew the place. The hobby for which it was notorious was as old as Adam. The motel skulked on the edge of town, a combination of tavern, restaurant and hot-pillow joint.
"The day after he checked in, Cox went down to City Hall and asked to see a marriage license issued to one Ruth Ainsworth and a man whose name he didn't seem to know. When the news of Cox's murder got out, the license clerk called me from City Hall and told me about Cox's marriage-license hunt.
"Then today ..."
Tully said thickly, "Well, go on, Julian! What about today?"
"Today a woman who had the room next to Cox's came in to tell us that Cox had himself a party last night. She heard a female voice. And at one point, she says, Cox called the woman he had in his room by name. I'm sorry, Dave, but you'll have to know sooner or later. The name Cox was overheard calling his woman-visitor was Ruth."
Tully walked over to a chair. He sat down, his fingertips clawing at the nubby upholstery. His lips were moving, but nothing came out.
"I want you to take a look at this man, Dave. I hate to ask you to do it ..."
"It's all right," Tully said. He got up and stood there uncertainly.
Julian Smith took the big man's arm gently. "I wish I could spare you this, Dave. But it's possible Cox isn't his real name. You might recognize him."
CHAPTER 2
Smith was deft and quick with the whole thing. A local undertaker handled the town's morgue cases. The man known as Crandall Cox lay under a rubber sheet on a table in the workroom of the Henshaw Funeral Home.
Smith's touch on his arm guided Tully through the heavy sweetness of funeral flowers to the room at the rear. The mortician removed the sheet. Before Tully, in all his naked mortality, lay a stranger.
He was a medium-sized man with little fat bloats around the armpits. The flesh sagged all along the line of his jaw. His face was heavy-featured, almost coarse, with a thin, sporty mustache. The hair was black and wavy and came to a widow's peak on the low forehead. There was one blue-black hole in the gray flab of his neck, just below the thyroid cartilage, like a misplaced third eye.
To Tully the late Crandall Cox looked like nothing human. He tried to visualize Cox with unrelaxed flesh and blood in the tissues of his face, but it was impossible. Even in life he must have looked three-quarters dead—a slug out of some back-alley wall. To think of Ruth—cool, slim, dainty, delectable Ruth—in the arms of this cheap, gray-faced, slop-bodied, slobber-mouthed caricature of a man—made him want to laugh.
Tully looked down at him and thought, You ugly son-of-a-bitch, without any feeling whatever.
"Well?"
Tully turned. "What?" He had forgotten Lieutenant Smith.
"Well, do you recognize him?"
"No."
"You're sure, Dave?"
"Yes."
Somebody opened the door and the flower-smell wriggled in.
"What's the matter?" Julian Smith asked him, eyes on Tully's face.
"It's those damn flowers," he muttered. "Let's get out of here before I throw up."
When they were seated in the unmarked police car, Tully stuck his nose out the window and inhaled.
"Ruth ever mention a man of Cox's description?" the detective asked, starting the car.
"I can answer that one positively absolutely," Tully said without changing expression. "No. How about taking me home, Julian?"
But as they drove off through the gathering darkness, Tully found himself thinking that Ruth had never mentioned much of anything about herself and her life before they had met.
He sat back and shut his eyes. He suddenly felt sleepy.
"Here we are," Smith's voice said.
Tully opened his eyes with a start. They were pulled up behind his Imperial in the driveway of the split-level that had seemed so safe and desirable only an hour ago. The sun had gone down, but the house was dark.
Tully reached for the door-handle.
Smith said, "If you hear from her, Dave, contact me immediately."
Tully looked at him blankly.
"Any other course would be stupid," the Homicide man said. "You realize that, don't you?"
"Yes," Tully said.
"I'll keep Ruth out of the papers as long as possible," the detective said.
"Sure, Julian. Thanks." Tully got out of the car. He was vaguely aware of Smith's hesitation. He shut the door and the detective drove away.
Tully stood still in the middle of the dark yard. He felt very queer—uniquely alone, in a timeless time and a space without margins. Had there ever been a woman named Ruth? Or even a hill, and a house?
Tully shivered and went inside. ...
He sat in the darkness of his living room going over what Julian Smith had told him on the way to the funeral parlor. The man Cox's body had been found this morning by a Hobby Motel cleaning woman. One of the bathroom towels showed powder burns and multiple bullet holes. The revolver had been wrapped in several folds of the towel to cut down the noise of the shot. He had been shot the night before. Ruth's face above the towel ... the tip of her exquisite little nose dead-white, the way it got when she was furious ...
Tully clutched his temples, but he could not shut out the picture of that imagined motel room, or the voices from his ears.
"Cranny, I told you I never wanted to see you again."
"You won't use that thing, baby. Remember it's li'l ol' Cranny? How's about a drink? Come on, lover,
what do you say?"
"You promised me, Cranny. You promised."
"So I promised. So what? Here, have a slug of this ..."
"Stay back! I warned you, Cranny. You shouldn't have followed me. You shouldn't have called."
"You came running, didn't you? You don't fool me, Ruth. You and me always had a thing going for us ..."
"I came for only one reason—to make you get out of here and leave me and my husband alone!"
"When you've got it made with this sucker and I can cut myself in?"
"No! I won't let you do it. Not to him, Cranny. I love him ... Stay back, I tell you!"
"Give me that gun—"
It ended there. It always ended there.
Tully leaned back and sighed, feeling a little better.
Ruth indulging in a cheap motel affair for its own sake was simply unthinkable. Especially with a slug like Cox. Yes, even if she had known Cox from somewhere, in the past. Maybe at one time he had been quite different; time and a dissolute life often worked like mold in a damp cellar.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Murder With a Past by Ellery Queen. Copyright © 1963 Ellery Queen. Excerpted by permission of MysteriousPress.com.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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