Green Ace by Stuart Palmer Page B

moments. We know the killer was somebody Marika knew, or she’d never let him in. Probably a client—or maybe a boy friend because she wouldn’t have been dancing with a client. Anyway, he knew that she had a cache of dough around, and probably tried to borrow some. When she wouldn’t come across he grabbed up the crystal ball off the table and let her have it over the noggin. But she fell with such a loud crash she woke the tenant downstairs—”
    “She fell right on top of the murderer’s head, which got knocked off in the struggle? Then he must have been wearing it at the time, even while they were dancing. Isn’t that a little unusual?”
    “All right, so he was a roughneck. Murderers often are. When he heard the landlady at the door he shot the bolt and went right on, jimmied the cash-box or else found Marika’s keys, took one last look for the missing hat and then gave it up and raced down the back stairs.”
    Miss Withers cocked her head. “And then he went out through the basement and past the landlady’s apartment? Funny he didn’t run into them.”
    “No, the rear basement door is locked on the inside. And there isn’t any side deliveryway, these buildings are built flush. The only way he could go was over the back fences and out through one of the big apartment houses down the street. The fences are six feet high, which proves he was the athletic type. I was down in the court, and I’d hate to have to get over those in a hurry in the dark.”
    Miss Withers nodded, with a pleasant smile. “It all sounds very plausible, Oscar. All you have to look for is a man about five feet eight, stocky, wearing thick glasses and with an extremely prominent nose. He’s an old friend of Marika’s, now desperately in need of money, who wears a hat probably bought out west somewhere, it has a touch of the ten-gallon style about it. He’s an athlete, perhaps even a strong-man or acrobat—”
    “Why that? It wouldn’t take so much strength to swing that heavy crystal. Oh—you mean the fence.”
    “Just a guess, Oscar. In the lower shelf of that bookcase are a lot of back copies of Billboard , the monthly magazine of the carnival and outdoor amusement world. That would imply that at one time Marika was in the business, perhaps working her act in a travelling show. Presumably she had friends in the profession, with whom she kept in touch.
    “Attagirl!” cried the Inspector. “Now for once you’re being some help. I probably would have got around to looking at the stuff in those bookcases later, though.”
    Miss Withers looked at him sadly, and shook her head. “It’s a nice hypothesis, Oscar. I’d like to accept your idea, principally because it relieves my conscience of any guilt for Marika’s death. But I can’t buy it.”
    “What? Why not?”
    “Because for one thing the description of the murderer couldn’t fit Riff Sprott, or Nils Bruner, or George Zotos, my three principal suspects in the Harrington murder.”
    “I’ve got one headache already,” snapped Oscar Piper. “Two is too many.” He headed for the door, but the schoolteacher trotted after him.
    “Seriously, Oscar—”
    “Relax,” he told her. “We know all about those three boy friends of Midge Harrington’s. They all had alibis for the night she was killed.”
    “They would—the murderer particularly.” They were going down the stairs. “Oscar?” cried the schoolteacher plaintively.
    “Well, what? Oh, I suppose you want a ride home?”
    “Nothing of the sort,” she snapped. “I just want you to have somebody ask Mrs. Fink, and her husband, and Mr. Bagmann, which one of them unbolted the front door of Marika’s apartment after they came in the back way and discovered the body.”
    “Okay, okay, we’ll ask.”
    “Because you see, I think your reconstruction of the crime gets A for effort but D-minus for accuracy. You forgot to look at the records piled beside Marika’s little phonograph, too.”
    “Records, yet?