Inspector Queen’s Own Case

Forty-eight hours ago the fat man had been sitting in that same chair, wearing the same suit and a shirt just as gray with damp, and now it was half-dyed with his heart’s blood and he looked like nothing so much as a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day balloon with the paint running and a knife stuck in it. So there would be no more under-the-counter arrangements for babies, and the unmarried mothers would have to seek elsewhere. And how many satisfied customers would read about the fat man and look at their wives or husbands and clutch their purchases tight? And would Mrs. A. Burt Finner erect a headstone saying “HUSBAND AND FATHER” and weep for the vanished provider? And how many nightclub girls would shed a blackened tear over the baby-made five-dollar bills that would invade their nylons no more?

Jessie stifled an impulse to laugh.

The Inspector wrapped a handkerchief around his right hand and went to the swivel chair again and leaned over Finner. When he drew up straight there was a wallet in his swathed hand. He flicked it open.

“Crammed with bills, Jessie.”

He put the wallet back as carefully as he had taken it out.

“Not robbery.” Jessie’s voice was as tight as his had been.

“No.”

He looked over the top of the desk. There was an afternoon newspaper folded back to the sports section, a well-pen, a telephone with a memorandum pad clipped to it, a pack of filter cigarettetes almost empty, a pocket lighter, and a cheap glass ash tray with chipped corners. The ash tray was filled with half-smoked butts and ashes. The old man squatted to desk level and squinted along the surface of the memo pad. Then he turned some of the butts in the tray over with one fingernail.

“Nothing written on a torn-off sheet of pad. No lipstick on any of the butts. And the basket under the desk is empty except for an empty cigarettete pack, same brand as this one. All Finner’s. This was a cool operator, Jessie. Clue-conscious.”

“How about the desk drawers?” Jessie wet her lips.

He grinned. “I’ll leave those to Homicide. Finner wouldn’t have kept anything in this desk. No locks on the drawers.” He glanced at her. “Just at a guess, Jessie — seeing that you’re in the respectable branch of this business — how long would you say he’s been dead?”

“That’s very hard to say.”

“Say it anyway.”

“It’s a hot day. The window is shut... At the least, I’d have to touch him.”

“Without touching him.”

“I’ve handled dead bodies, Richard. I’ll do it.”

“Without touching him.”

“Not long.” Jessie considered. “From the appearance of the blood maybe an hour. I don’t know. I could be way off.”

He placed the back of his left hand lightly against the dead man’s cheek, nodded. Then he went over to the filing cabinet and tugged at the handle of the top drawer. The drawer slid out with a rasp that made Jessie’s teeth ache.

The drawer contained file envelopes with identifying plastic tab holders containing white slips of cardboard on which names had been hand-printed in red ink. The first envelope in the drawer was marked ABRAMSON, the last DUFFY. He shut the top drawer and opened the drawer below it. The file envelopes were separated slightly about two-thirds of the way in. The tab on the exposed envelope said HYAMS. The tab on the envelope immediately preceding it said HUGHES.

There was no envelope in between.

“No Humffrey,” Richard Queen said softly.

“Maybe the names on the tabs are of the mother,” Jessie mumbled. “Not the adopter.”

He looked at her. “You’re a smart woman, Jessie.” He checked a file at random, using his swathed hand. “However, you’re wrong. The names are of the adopters.”

He replaced the file and ran his eye over all the tabs on the envelopes. He shut the drawer and checked the tabs of the third drawer, then of the bottom one.

He shut the bottom drawer and rose.

“No doubt about it, Jessie. Finner’s kill is tied in with the Connecticut case. Finner used our Thursday visit to try to screw some inside information about Michael’s death out of one or both of the real parents. So they’ve shut his mouth about the parentage and walked off with the whole file on the case. Finner probably was the only outsider who knew at least who the mother was, the hospital Michael was born in, and every other fact that might have led to an identification.”

“The same one who murdered the baby,” Jessie said slowly. “That means we’re on the right track.”

“We’re stranded on a siding in Podunk,” Richard Queen said grimly. “With the contents of that envelope destroyed we’re at another dead end. The question is, where do we go from here?”

He gave A. Burt Finner a glum look. But Finner wasn’t talking.

“I think, Jessie—”

The telephone rang.

Jessie’s heart landed in her mouth with a bump.

He moved nearer the desk, eying the telephone thoughtfully.

“You’re not going to answer it?” Jessie said in terror. “Richard, for heaven’s sake!”

“Shh.”

His right hand was still bound round with the handkerchief. He used it to lift the phone from its cradle.

He said hoarsely, “Yes?” in a fair approximation of Finner’s voice.