The Dishonest Murderer by Frances Lockridge

had been a lieutenant colonel in the Army during the war. His name was Bruce Kirkhill. And—he was presently the junior senator from a western State. They woke Deputy Chief Inspector Artemus O’Malley up, then; they notified the commissioner.
    â€œAnd,” Bill said, “they got me. They showed up at the Plaza just after we’d all left; they caught me at home. Got me down to the morgue to talk to Mrs. Haven and her father. They’d already sent Blake up to the Satterbee apartment.”
    The Washington police had cooperated efficiently, which accounted for Blake’s early appearance at the apartment. They had found Kirkhill’s secretary—“his typing secretary,” Weigand said. “A girl. His official secretary, if that’s what you’d call him—is a man named Phipps.” The “typing secretary” had been able to tell the Washington police that the senator had gone to New York, that he was planning to attend a New Year’s Eve party there at the home of his prospective father-in-law, Admiral Satterbee; that his nearest relative, his daughter, would be at the same party. So, in Weigand’s absence, Sergeant Blake had been sent to the Satterbee apartment to get someone to make the identification.
    â€œWhere’s Mullins?” Pam North wanted to know.
    â€œOn his way in,” Bill told her. “He lives out on Long Island. He was—having an evening out.” He dosed tired eyes and reopened them. “As weren’t we all,” he said.
    There was a pause, then.
    â€œAnd there we stand,” Bill Weigand said. His voice was suddenly dull. “A United States senator dresses up like a bum, drinks chloral hydrate in rotten liquor in a cheap bar, dies in the doorway of a fourth rate lunchroom while his fiancée is waiting for him to come to a party on Park Avenue.” He sighed. “The papers will be very, very happy,” he said. “And the inspector will spin.”
    â€œTomorrow,” Pam North said sleepily, “we’ll talk to the ad—” She paused and then went on—“miral’s daughter,” she said. “Won’t we, Jerry?”
    There was a very long pause indeed.
    â€œI guess so,” Jerry North said, finally.

IV
    Saturday, 4:30 A.M. to 2:20 P.M.
    The police sedan moved slowly northward in a world turning white. The air had the misty whiteness of a snow at night; snow was accumulating on the pavement. The car stopped for lights, skidded a little, started again with the lights, the rear wheels spinning before they caught. In the light from street lamps, the snow blew like a curtain; in the headlights of the car it danced and swirled, its pattern as confused, its movement as dizzying, as were the pattern and movement of Freddie Haven’s thoughts.
    The car moved through a city which had grown empty. The most dogged of those who welcome a New Year on a city’s streets, taking confidence from their own multitude, roaring down their own doubts, had sought shelter now, had sought the warm safety of bed or the fantasy life of late-open bars. Up Fifth Avenue, an occasional taxicab, an occasional private car, went shuttered through the storm, boring into it, swept by it. A Department of Sanitation truck, a monster in the luminous darkness, trundled ahead of them for a block, its plow lifted, like some great reptile from pre-history looking for a place to graze. Around a fire on a corner a group of men, bulky in heavy clothing, clustered, their long-handled shovels momentarily idle, waiting for something—some perfect moment, some direction, the arrival of something or somebody.
    The car turned east in Twenty-third Street. It went around a bus which moved slowly, hesitantly, into the northeasterly wind. The bus seemed to be full of people, some of them standing; passing it, looking into the lighted bus, Freddie Haven felt that the people were frozen there, or dead there. She