Dead, She Was Beautiful Read online

  The surgeon rose, drying his hands on his handkerchief. To Troge he said, “Well, she’s extinct all right, if that’s what you’re hanging around to hear.” He studied Hagen. “This the fellow who did the job?”

  “Maybe,” said Troge. “See that I have your report in the morning first thing, will you?” He jerked his head at Hagen and they moved off on to the grass of the archery course. White-garbed bearers were bringing in a stretcher.

  Hagen said, “Well, Troge, where now? Going to book me?”

  “I’ll lay it out for you, just the way it looks from here,” said Troge. He lit one cigarette from the glowing stub of the last. “Then you tell me, Hagen. You admit. there was no love lost between you and your ex-wife. You came sneaking in here over the wall tonight, you admit that too. Next thing we know, she’s dead and your story is that it all happened while you were looking the other way. The bow is part of this set here. So is the arrow. That gives you presence at the scene, access to the weapon and opportunity.”

  “How about motive? I had no reason to kill her.”

  “Maybe yes, maybe no. Jealousy, an old quarrel, maybe even blackmail—those are possibilities. Sure, it’s as circumstantial as all hell. But what do you have to stack up against it?”

  “Just my word—and a piece of paper.” From his wallet Hagen dug out the retainer that Wayne Wishart had signed. Troge studied it intently, holding it up to catch the glow from the floodlights. “Sure, I could have forged it. But let me ask you this, Troge. Did you ever see a killer who hung around waiting for the cops when he could have gotten away without ever being seen?”

  “No,” Troge admitted candidly, “and that’s the only reason that you’re not downtown being questioned this very minute, Hagen.”

  Hagen felt a flare of hope. “I didn’t do it, Troge. I’m not lying.”

  “If you are, we’ll know it soon enough.” Troge put the retainer in his pocket. “I’ll keep this so you won’t lose it. In the meantime, you keep yourself available and out of trouble, Hagen, since you do happen to be the principal “—he hesitated, smiling—” witness.”

  “I’ll keep available all right,” said Hagen. “But the way things are going, I can’t promise to stay out of trouble.”

  “Make a big effort,” advised Troge. “You’re already in enough for one man.”

  The sheet-draped stretcher was being carried out of the house as Hagen left. He followed the ambulance most of the way downtown but not through sentiment; his home was in that direction. He finally turned off on the proper street. Hilda went on to the morgue.

  5

  HE stalked into his office, kicked the door shut and spread the morning papers across the top of his desk. In accumulation, they looked even worse than they had on the news-stand. Hagen read them through, his face bleak.

  As anyone might have predicted, the murder of Hilda Wishart dominated the city’s front pages. WIFE OF LOCAL BUILDER SLAIN, said one, and another: SOCIETY BEAUTY IN ARROW MURDER. But what bothered Hagen were the subheads which all said in effect: Police Question Ex-Husband. The bodies of the stories were more explicit, identifying Hagen in some detail as “the head of a prominent local detective bureau.”

  This made him grunt. He was the head of his agency in the same manner that a man in a rowboat might be said to be a captain. Hagen himself constituted his whole force; he didn’t even employ a secretary. The small office held only the necessary furniture and none of it was new.

  “The way things are going I’ll be lucky to have a place to hang my hat,” he muttered. Captain Troge had dealt honestly with all concerned, Hagen included. Yet the inescapable fact implicit in all the newspaper stories was that he was the only person yet identified as having any strong link with the murder. So far he was referred to as a “witness” but that wasn’t very far from “suspect.” And Hagen knew that this sort of publicity wasn’t going to do his business any good. The public tended to regard a private detective as a rather shady operator anyway; to a large extent, his success hinged on maintaining an impeccable reputation.

  What a dame, he thought. Dead, she’s still lousing me up. Yet he knew that this was not quite fair. For once Hilda had only been the innocent bystander. From the front pages, her photograph gazed up at him, faintly quarrelsome.

  “Okay, baby,” he said aloud. “This time it wasn’t your fault.” He went to the window and opened it and stood staring out across the city. Hagen’s office was six flights above the busy street but the altitude did not serve to cool the hot desert wind, or his own angry thoughts. On top of the building opposite, a billboard for an airline urged him to travel to faraway places, but between himself and the airport lay police headquarters, literally as well as figuratively. The only travelling he was likely to do in the near future was under guard.

  Someone intended him to be the patsy. Hagen considered it from every angle during the night and he could come to no other conclusion. He had been offered to the police on a silver platter as Hilda’s murderer—complete with motive—in hopes that they would look no farther. The police might fall for it but that wasn’t going to end the matter. Hagen intended to see it through himself. And when he did..

  Something round and hard was suddenly jammed into the small of his back. In his ear, Hilda’s voice said, “Would you rather be shot—or would you rather jump?”

  In the moment that Mort Hagen stood frozen with surprise, he couldn’t decide which shock was the greater, the gun pressed against his spine or the dead woman’s voice in his ear. He reacted to the physical stimulus first. With a swift continuous movement, just the way the Service had taught him, he spun. His left elbow knocked the gun arm aside. His right fist thudded against the woman’s jaw.

  Both the woman and the gun landed on the office floor, but in different directions. Hagen’s concern was for the weapon; he pocketed it before turning to its owner. The solid feel of her chin against his knuckles had reassured him that his visitor was no ghost.

  Yet when he looked he was not so sure. She sat huddled against his desk, holding her jaw with both hands and glaring up at him, an implacable vindictive gaze that Hagen knew well from the past. They were Hilda’s eyes, blue and cold, stabbing him from Hilda’s face. Even her legs fetchingly exposed by the crumpled skirt, were Hilda’s, long and shapely. There was only one difference. Instead of blonde, his adversary’s hair was a glossy black. And, unlike Hilda, she was very much alive.

  “For crying out loud,” said Hagen softly, “who are you?”

  “Aren’t you even going to offer to help me up?” she snapped. But without waiting, she scrambled to her feet. “Never mind. I don’t want you to touch me.”

  “Sorry I hit you so hard,” he said. Her jaw was beginning to swell, spoiling the heart-shaped symmetry of her features. “First time I ever really used that trick, except in practice. Glad to see the field manuals were right.”

  She was smoothing her skirt, staring grimly at a huge run in one nylon. “You’re a brave man, you are, beating up a woman. Look at my stockings!”

  “I don’t mind. And I don’t like being stuck with a gun, even by a good-looking woman.”

  “Where is my gun? I want it back.”

  “First, we talk,” said Hagen. With his foot, he shoved a chair in her direction. “And we’ll start with question number one, which is: just who in blazes are you, anyway?”

  She didn’t sit down. Sullenly, she said: “I’m Dagne Christy.”

  “Hilda’s sister?”

  “Naturally.”

  “Hilda didn’t have a sister,” he said automatically. “Much less a twin.” But he was so obviously mistaken that he corrected himself immediately. “At least, she never told me.”

  “And I’m sure that Hilda told you everything,” she said sarcastically.

  “Touché,” Hagen murmured. From the desk, he picked up the newspaper and stared at the picture of the dead woman. The resemblance was even greater in the shadowy halftone reproduction since Hilda’s blondeness wasn
’t so apparent. Even had it been-otherwise, he wouldn’t have doubted the truth of what she said. Dagne was a perfect facsimile of her sister, even to gesture and inflection. “Excuse me. I got quite a jolt seeing you.”

  “Certainly you did. Just when you thought you’d killed her and—”

  “Stop right there,” commanded Hagen. “I don’t know what fool notion brought you here but you’re making a mistake.”

  “I came to kill you,” Dagne said levelly and, while he stared at her, she added, “Do you have a cigarette?”

  “Help yourself,” he said, indicating the box on his desk. He watched her light up. Her hands were steady. “I don’t want to appear dense, but just what would killing me do for you?”

  “It isn’t a question of doing anything for me. It’s for Hilda. You don’t think that I’m going to let you get away with it, do you? Perhaps you can bulldoze the police, but I know the truth.”

  “If you know the truth, then you know I didn’t kill her. Don’t believe what you read in the papers.”

  “It’s not just the papers. Hilda told me herself.”

  Hagen gaped at her foolishly.

  Dagne said, “Yesterday, I mean. She phoned me from somewhere downtown and told me you were following her and she was afraid of what might happen.”

  “Now listen to me. It’s true that I was following her and it’s true that she did make a phone call yesterday afternoon. But the rest of it is all wrong.” He was speaking slowly with an effort, trying to force through her implacable resolve with words. This angry girl meant business, no matter how calmly she spoke. “I did not kill your sister.”

  “Then who did?”

  “I don’t know. Nobody does.”

  “I do.” Again, with the sudden shift of subject that Hagen found discomforting, she went on, “You’re really better looking than your picture. Now I can understand what Hilda saw in you.”

  “Sit down,” he ordered and she did, crossing her legs to hide the ruined stocking. “We’re going to do a little plain talking, Dagne—either here or down at the police station. It’s up to you. You can tell Troge about Hilda’s phone call and I can tell him about your trying to shoot me. Maybe they’ll give us adjoining cells.”

  She studied him. Finally she said, “I’m not scared of you, you know, Hagen.”

  “No reason why you should be.”

  “But I don’t believe a word you say, either.”

  “Maybe it’s mutual. Maybe I think it’s sort of peculiar, your showing up here with blood in your eye over a sister who didn’t even admit you existed.”

  Dagne gazed out of the window. “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Try me. I’m easily convinced.” He waited.

  “I loved Hilda and she loved me,” she said softly. “You just don’t know what it’s like to be a twin. You might think you do, but you don’t, not really. You probably suppose it was a big lark. Nobody ever sees what it’s like being condemned to a pattern. Is there anything more hateful than predestination?”

  “Is that the way Hilda felt about it?”

  “We both did. Mom and Dad were simply mad about us being identical twins. From the day we were born, we had to dress alike and act alike—my God! We were even supposed to think alike. We were never allowed to be separate people. All through school, we had to take the same courses.” She shuddered. “You can’t imagine how sick I got of being just ‘one of the Christy twins ‘.”

  Hagen inquired, “Where were you last night, by the way?”

  For a moment she frowned blankly. Then she gave him a small wintry smile. “No, Hagen—that all ended a long time ago, seven years ago to be exact. That’s when Mom and Dad died—in a plane crash—and there wasn’t anyone else to make us live that kind of life any more. We made a pact never to be known as twins again, and we kept it. We flipped a coin to see who would die her hair—it turned out to be me, as you can see—and then we quit college and went our own ways. I don’t mean we disowned each other or anything drastic. We just kept it a secret, that’s all. Hilda often came around to my apartment when she wanted to talk. I’m still single. I couldn’t visit her because she was married, first to you and then …”

  “Are you sure that Wishart doesn’t know?” Hagen asked, toying with an idea.

  “I don’t think so. I know Hilda never told him and who else would? She didn’t even telephone me from her home. You never knew who might be listening in.” Dagne was silent a moment, then shrugged. “That’s about all there is to it.”

  “You still haven’t told me where you were last night,” Hagen pointed out.

  “Why should I? But, all right—I was working on my books.” From her purse she extracted a card and handed it to him. Her name was in a corner. In the centre it read: Nu-Way Figure Control Salon, Beauty Through Health. The address was an uptown suburb. “I own it.”

  “ I’ll keep this,” said Hagen, pocketing the card. “No telling when I might need a treatment.”

  “I’d love to work you over but we only take women.” Dagne rose and said casually, “Now, may I have the gun back?”

  Hagen shook his head, smiling. “I wouldn’t want to have to sock you again. Might scare off your customers.”

  Her eyes flared at him. “That will never happen again, I promise you. If you think you can push me around, I have a partner who can handle you with one hand tied behind his back. You’d better give me the gun—it belongs to him.”

  “If he’s as tough as all that, he won’t need a gun.” Hagen opened a desk drawer, put the gun in it and locked it away. “I don’t figure on hitting you again, Dagne, because you’re not going to make it necessary. I didn’t kill your sister. Wayne Wishart hired me to follow her and when I found out who she was, I was ready to call it quits. Turns out it isn’t going to be that simple. I’m in this mess up to my eyebrows and I don’t have any choice. I’ve got to protect myself and my good name.”

  She laughed.

  He said, “If you’re as anxious to nail whoever killed Hilda as you claim to be, you’d better calm down and use your head. I’d rather help you than hurt you.”

  “I don’t want your help,” she snapped. “All I want is my property.”

  “Sorry.”

  Their eyes duelled. Finally she murmured, “It’s not the only gun in the world.”

  “ Then we know where we stand.” Hagen said it regretfully. He didn’t want to be an enemy to this bitter girl whose every movement reminded him so disquietingly of another. It didn’t seem right somehow, that he should have to go through this again. “If you should change your mind—”

  The telephone rang, robbing him of her reply which was probably just as well. Hagen answered it and it was Troge.

  The police captain’s voice was serious. “Wayne Wishart just got in from Los Angeles.”

  “That’s his story. He never was in Los Angeles.”

  “He just got in from Los Angeles,” Troge repeated. “You’re in trouble, Hagen. Wishart says he’s never heard of you.”

  “I’ll be right down,” said Hagen thinly.

  “I was going to suggest it.”

  “Ten minutes,” Hagen promised and hung up. Dagne was watching him closely. “That was the police. Looks like we’re going to have a showdown. I’ll see you later.” He had already half-forgotten her, thinking only of his coming vindication now that he could meet Wishart again face to face. He’d get the truth if he had to choke it out of the man. He grabbed his hat and went out.

  Two steps down the hall, he halted, remembering. He went back to his office. Dagne was already working on the desk drawer lock with his letter opener. She threw it at him and missed. Hagen sighed. “Just like your sister.” She glared at him. He took her wrist and led her from the office. This time he locked the door.

  They rode the elevator down together but without speaking. On the sidewalk they parted without a farewell. Hagen didn’t think it mattered. He was sure he would be seeing Dagne again, probably sooner than he cared
to.

  6

  THE desk sergeant directed Hagen to Troge’s office, but the homicide chief wasn’t there. Hagen scouted around and finally located Troge in the squad room, chatting with two younger men, obviously subordinates. Hagen didn’t know them. He wasn’t well acquainted at police headquarters since his practice was usually confined to civil matters.

  They were all expecting him, however, from the way the conversation broke off at his entrance. A young woman stenographer was seated in a corner by the window. When she saw Hagen, she flipped to a fresh page in her notebook and looked expectant.

  Troge was the most casual of all. He didn’t get up from his seat on top of the desk. With his foot, he indicated for Hagen to take a chair. “Just talking about you, Hagen. There was some opinion that you wouldn’t show.”

  “Why not?” Hagen looked around at the others. They were all studying him intently, even the stenographer, although her pencil was moving. “I want to get to the bottom of this as much as you do.”

  One of the men, a thin-faced fellow with an unruly shock of red hair, made a sound of scornful derision. Troge’s expression was merely polite. “We’re getting there. Like I told you on the phone, Wayne Wishart’s back from L.A. He says he didn’t hire you, Hagen.”