Dead, She Was Beautiful Read online

  “Well, you’ve seen him at his worst. He’s a capable fellow.”

  “That’s what I mean. How come I beat him up last night? I’m not so tough and I was tired. That’s been bothering me. Sure, maybe he’s muscle-bound and not a born fighter but if he did take a dive—why? And you say Hilda knew him before you did. Well, where’d she meet him? I’d like to know some of these things. Ready to help me find out?”

  “Sure, but Larry—well, goodness, I’ll admit he’s not all brains but after all—”

  “Get organized,” Hagen said a trifle bitterly. “If we’re going to shoot our whole wad on intuition, I might as well turn in my bankroll right now. I’m in bad need of facts. So far, by your method, I’m the only one you think capable of killing Hilda. My nose must twitch like a rat or something.”

  “Oh no, that was before I knew you better,” she said gently. “Now about all I can remember is your mouth.” Hagen’s self-respect bounced back. “Of course, I want to help you. Just tell me how.”

  “Pick his pockets.” He chuckled at her gasp. “It’s not as hard as it sounds. Beldorian must have a locker at the salon, some place he changes clothes—or does he ride the bus in that loin-cloth? Well, while he’s conducting one of his classes, you go through his wallet. See if he does the same as most ex-service men and carried a miniature photostat of his discharge papers. If so, just copy off the information and put it back. He’ll never know.”

  “What if I’m caught?” she complained. “See what I mean about you bringing misery into my life, Hagen? Now you want to turn me into a thief.”

  “Stick with me long enough and I’ll make an honest woman of you. Are you going to do it?”

  “Which? Pick Larry’s pockets or stick with you?” Dagne laughed. “I’ll give you a qualified yes on both counts, Hagen. If I get scared and change my mind, I’ll let you know.”

  “Let me know at dinner,” he advised. “About seven all right?”

  “Oh, won’t I see you any sooner than that? Darling, I’m ready to start tonight anytime. I mean we can set our watches and wear dark glasses and—”

  “You’ll just have to suffer until the real seven o’clock. I’m going to be locked up with the authorities most of the day, I figure. Or maybe I’m just going to be locked up. The D.A. will have to decide.”

  “I’ll follow your progress in the papers, then, and take frequent cold showers,” she agreed. After a pause, she suggested less gaily, “Do take care of yourself, Hagen.” He heard her kiss the telephone receiver. Hagen quitted the phone booth with a pleased smile.

  He was still smiling—even broader, since he had an audience—when he reached the door of the district attorney’s offices a few minutes later. The corridor was fairly well jammed with representatives of the Press, reporters and photographers and a newsreel camera-man for one of the local television stations, plus various hangers-on who lingered out of curiosity. They were all waiting for Hagen. They converged on him like women around a bargain counter.

  Their questions showered him from all angles, pleas for a statement, demands from the photographers that he look in a dozen directions at once. Hagen did his best to oblige as he made his way slowly toward the door, like a ship pushing through an ice pack. There he paused to hold the diary aloft and register his smile for posterity while flashbulbs silvered the air. He was playing it big.

  The district attorney’s outer office was a spacious room, divided by a long counter with benches on one side and desks for the lesser functionaries of the department on the other. There was little work going on due to the commotion outside. All eyes were upon Hagen as he entered, and most of them were hostile, which gave him a good idea of the reception he could expect. He wasn’t surprised.

  The only smile that responded to his own came from Captain Troge. The homicide chief leaned against the counter, sucking at his cigarette, and viewed Hagen’s entrance equably. “No brass band?” he inquired.

  “Union rules,” said Hagen. “What got you up so early, Troge?”

  “You,” Troge admitted. “Busy little bee, aren’t you?”

  “I get around.” Hagen was propelled from behind by the newspapermen crowding into the reception space behind him. They immediately began to fight for his attention. The clamour brought the district attorney bounding out of his private office, bristling with indignation. He was a plump well-manicured man named Austin McCracken, full of the dignity of his office and known familiarly as “Grandma” to his co-workers. Hagen, who had watched him operate in court, considered him a windbag, though shrewd enough where his own interests were at stake.

  McCracken’s opinion of Hagen apparently wasn’t any higher. He gave Hagen a glance that would have curdled milk and barked, “This office will be cleared immediately!”

  No one paid any attention; it was unlikely that anyone heard. Hagen quitted the uproar finally by announcing that the district attorney would have a statement to give them immediately after their private conference. The inference was that Hagen was going to brief McCracken and then generously allow the district attorney to take the credit. This didn’t go unnoticed by McCracken who, tight-lipped, ordered Hagen inside. Or by Troge who followed, his eyes merry.

  “Headline hog,” he murmured to Hagen as he shut the door.

  “You should talk. You grabbed the credit pretty fast yesterday about finding Doc. I’m just trying to protect my reputation.”

  “Sure,” agreed Troge genially, “but the police department needs credit all the time. My reputation is up for sale every time a bicycle is stolen.”

  The district attorney saw no need for either geniality or humour. He sat down stiffly behind his big desk and said, “I hope for your own sake, Hagen, that you have a good excuse for all these shenanigans.”

  “I didn’t come here to make excuses. I came to bring you this.” He placed Hilda’s diary on the desk with a flourish. He felt beneficent, grandly so. “The word you’re groping for is thanks.”

  “I’m not groping for anything,” McCracken told him, “except possibly a reason why both Captain Troge and myself had to learn of the existence of this remarkable document from the Press.”

  “Was it in the papers?” asked Hagen, feigning surprise.

  McCracken flushed. He levelled his forefinger at Hagen. “You know damn well it was in the papers. All of the papers, even the Los Angeles papers. You gave them the story yourself. Why? I have more than half a notion to rack you back for attempting to obstruct justice, Hagen.”

  “Who’s obstructing? There’s the diary.” Hagen spoke confidently, sure that the district attorney’s bark was worse than his bite, at least for the moment. “I only found the thing last night and here I am bringing it to you bright and early this morning. Who could ask for anything more?”

  “You know very well that we should have been notified first.”

  “In the middle of the night? I thought I was doing you a favour.”

  McCracken surveyed him grimly. “On the ridiculous assumption that you might be sincere, I want you to know that I was routed out of bed at one o’clock this morning by your reporter friends and I haven’t slept a wink since. There’s your favour, Hagen.”

  Hagen shook his head sorrowfully. “That’s the curse of public office, isn’t it? You can’t call your soul your own.”

  McCracken frowned, trying to recapture the lost thread of his denunciation. Before he could do so, Troge interrupted. The big policeman had pounced upon the diary immediately and had scanned it assiduously through the verbal sparring of the other men. He put it down in front of the district attorney now, open to the June 8 entry. He said, “let’s get down to cases and save the arguing for later. Read that, Mac.”

  McCracken did, several times. A bit grudgingly, he finally admitted, “Well, this looks genuine, all right. Exactly where and how did you come across this, Hagen?” Hagen told his story, a carefully doctored version of the truth. The way he related it. he had been hired by Wayne Wishart yesterday to investig
ate Hilda’s murder and had stumbled across the diary while searching the dead woman’s effects. It wasn’t completely false and Hagen consoled himself that this particular story concealed nothing vital from the authorities and at the same time protected his client.

  When he had finished, Troge said, “How did you talk Wishart into hiring you? Yesterday he hated your guts.”

  “He decided he needed some guts.”

  McCracken said reluctantly, “Well, since Mr. Wishart hired you, you have some flimsy excuse for meddling in official business, I suppose. But I strongly advise you to cease as of this moment and leave the investigation of Mrs. Wishart’s murder to the proper authorities. All right, Hagen—you can go.”

  Hagen didn’t get up. He said, “Don’t rush me. So far, I’ve done all the talking. Now it’s your turn. Don’t tell me that you haven’t done anything about this business “—he nodded at the diary—”since one o’clock last night except buy the newspapers.”

  Troge and McCracken exchanged a long glance and Troge shrugged. “Might as well tell him. Otherwise he’ll probably be guessing out loud where somebody might hear him.”

  McCracken automatically looked in the direction where the newspapermen waited and cleared his throat. Hagen lounged patiently. The district attorney finally said, “Yes, I suppose you’re right. Well, Hagen, acting on the information you so kindly conferred upon the newspapers, I telephoned Honolulu early this morning. I spoke to the chief of police. From what he told me, it appears that this diary isn’t a complete hoax—which was my first impression of it.”

  “Bully for me,” Hagen murmured. “So it was Hawaii, after all. Who was Bruce?”

  “Bruce Shanner,” said Troge, “was a young man about town who died quite suddenly about three years ago. Murdered by person or persons unknown. There were no arrests made. It’s an open case on the Honolulu police books. Or was until today.”

  “Any other details?”

  “A few. A complete report is coming by cable. It was quite the ‘cause célèbre,’ according to the Honolulu boys. Shanner was wealthy, heir to a sugar brokerage. Seems he was found out in the wilds after telling friends that he was going boar hunting. Apparently he went alone, though that didn’t sound like him since he had enough girl friends to form a hula line. Anyway, he was alone when he was found.”

  “Cause of death?”

  “Heart failure,” said Troge blandly, “helped along a bit by being stabbed in the back. The weapon wasn’t found but the coroner’s report puts it down to a round pointed instrument, like a metal punch or a thick ice-pick.”

  Hagen shook his head slowly. “You know better than that, Troge. Bruce wasn’t stabbed. He was shot—with an arrow. In this case the arrow was removed. The archer had more time.”

  Troge didn’t answer but the district attorney snapped, “We know nothing of the kind. The official verdict was stabbed.”

  Hagen asked, “Any mention of Hilda? Was she questioned?”

  “The Honolulu cops never even heard of her, or anyone matching her description. They questioned a lot of women, naturally, but Shanner’s taste apparently ran to redheads and brunettes as a rule.” Troge was relighting his dead cigarette. “Of course, a man can vary his diet, I suppose.”

  “Hilda’s diary proves that.”

  “I wouldn’t be too sure. Shanner had just announced his engagement, three days before he died. And it wasn’t to Hilda.”

  Hagen found it impossible to remain seated. He got up and paced to the window and stood looking out at the street without really seeing the traffic passing by. “It makes sense to me, knowing Hilda. Here’s how I reconstruct it. After we were divorced, Hilda took a trip to the Islands. She met Shanner, fell in love with him. He sounds like the kind of guy she went for, certainly. She was serious, he wasn’t. When he told her he was going to marry somebody else, she killed him.”

  Troge didn’t get excited. Puffing smoke he said, “Got it all taped, haven’t you?”

  “It’ll do until I’m proved wrong.”

  “Answer me a question or two, Hagen. If Hilda killed Shanner with a bow-and-arrow, who killed Hilda—also with a bow-and-arrow?”

  “I don’t know,” Hagen admitted. “The way it shapes up is for revenge. You know, the eye for an eye stuff. That’s the only way to explain the use of the same weapon, particularly that weapon. I’m betting that someone from Hawaii tracked her down.”

  “I’ll come back to the same question,” said Troge. “Who?”

  “How about Shanner’s fiancée? Or his brother—if he has one?”

  “Shanner’s fiancée married another guy six months later. His brother is now sole heir to about three million bucks. I can’t see either one them burning with vengeance, can you?”

  Hagen studied the police captain exasperatedly. “You’re a lot of help, Troge. I’m trying to do your work for you and all you can do is shake your head. Sure, I don’t have the answers. But they’re in there somewhere. Hilda’s diary proves that much.”

  “I don’t know what Hilda’s diary proves,” Troge said. “If it wasn’t for the confirmation we got from Honolulu, I’d suspect you wrote the thing yourself.”

  “You hated your ex-wife, didn’t you?” the district attorney interjected. “Is that why you’re so anxious to link her with this Shanner murder?”

  Hagen shrugged. “All right, have it your way. I killed Bruce Shanner too. His sugar was too refined.”

  “This is no time for witticism,” McCracken said stiffly.

  Hagen made a disgusted noise in his throat. Troge said with some degree of kindness, “Let’s look at this thing objectively, Hagen, with no preconceived notions. Three years ago a man named Bruce Shanner was murdered in Hawaii. The record says he was stabbed. You say a bow-and-arrow did the job but that’s just your long distance guess. Two days ago a woman named Hilda Wishart was shot with an arrow here. Today we have her diary that says she killed somebody named Bruce. Okay, so far so good. But the diary is undated, as you know. Again it’s just your guess that the times jibe.”

  “ Some things you don’t have to prove,” Hagen muttered.

  “In my job, you do. Now, what about this diary? Hilda was a strange type, from what I can gather. You’ve told me she was an inveterate liar. Isn’t it possible—even likely—that she lied to her diary in the same way she lied to people? What would have prevented her from reading about Shanner’s murder and then inventing her whole connection with it?”

  Hagen stared at Troge’s serious face, struggling against the smooth flow of the policeman’s logic. For the first time, he began to wonder. What actually did he know? Or, more precisely, could he prove? He said slowly, “I can’t buy that, Troge. What earthly reason would she have for making up a day dream for what amounts to a whole year?”

  Troge smiled slightly. “Has it ever occurred to you, Hagen, that perhaps we know more about your ex-wife than you do?”

  It hadn’t. Blankly, Hagen asked, “What are you talking about?”

  McCracken stood up. “Captain, I think that this has gone quite far enough. Perhaps too far. I’m going to put my foot down and declare that this interview is terminated. We have to draw the line somewhere.”

  “What?” Hagen insisted of Troge.

  “You heard the man,” Troge told him and rose also.

  “Look, if this is something I should know—”

  “It isn’t,” said McCracken, “for the simple reason that this whole affair is none of your business, no matter how you may have tried to cut yourself into it. I consider I’ve been lenient toward you, Hagen. I certainly don’t intend to trot out information I consider vital and secret just for your own personal edification—and that of your newspaper friends.” That reminded him; he began bustling without leaving the spot where he stood. “Captain, excuse me long enough to give the Press a statement. I’ll be right back and we’ll go over this thing together.” He looked hard at Hagen. “Alone.”

  Troge nodded and waited until the distri
ct attorney was gone before he spoke. His tone was almost fatherly. “Where’s the big smile now?”

  “You let me make a sucker of myself, didn’t you? And all the time you’re sitting there with an ace up your sleeve.”

  “I don’t try to improve on God’s handiwork. But since you bring it up, you are a sucker, Hagen, thinking you can beat us to the punch. You’ve gotten a lot of mileage by yourself, but you came in here this morning riding for a fall. Thank your lucky stars we didn’t make it any worse.”

  “I’m not asking for any breaks.”

  “Well, you’ve gotten some—anyway—both from me and from Grandma. He could have made you sizzle.” Troge winked. “Luckily it’s an election year.”

  Hagen stared at him. “All right, Troge. We understand each other. I came in here this morning with all my cards on the table, thinking I was being a help. My mistake.”

  “Read that again,” Troge advised mildly. “You came in here to grab yourself a little glory. And when did you ever put all your cards on the table, Hagen?” He rapped Hagen’s shoulder lightly. “I could really make it tough for you boy, sew you up like a shroud. I’m not going to. do it because I think maybe you’re going to give up this lone wolf act.”

  “What if it turns out that I’m right—and Hilda did kill Bruce Shanner with an arrow, and there’s a connection between the two murders? What if—”

  When he stopped abruptly, Troge eyed him shrewdly. “Another angle, Hagen?”

  He had been about to mention his suspicions of Larry Beldorian but, considering the reception his other theories had got, Hagen shut his mouth.

  “You learn hard,” sighed Troge and stood aside to let him leave. “But if you don’t mind some advice, don’t spill your guts to the papers any more.”

  “What could I tell them?” Hagen asked bitterly.

  On his way out of the building, he passed the panelled room where the district attorney was holding his press conference. The tag-end of a phrase drifted out to Hagen as he went by. “… due to the unrelenting efforts of my office …”