Free Pale Betrayer by Dorothy Salisbury Davis Page A

Russo lived. At some point between the church and the University he had either turned back or was intercepted and driven back to the building on East Tenth Street.
    The detective dug out Anne Russo’s statement. She had left her apartment at nine thirty, admitting the unidentified gum-chewer to the building. Marks returned to the map. If Bradley had been tailed from his own house—either on foot or by two or more men in a car—the man Anne had seen would have left the others at the corner of Tenth Street and Third Avenue. The time was right, and to Marks’s satisfaction, Anne’s story was corroborated by Dr. Webb’s account of the doorbell ringing. Bradley at that moment had been at the gate of St. John’s, his “tail” not far behind him.
    Marks was about to put these dovetailing circumstances before Fitzgerald when he realized that the old man could say: If the little lady is telling the truth. If there was a man in the vestibule. Find me the man or another witness who saw him. Anybody can ring a doorbell, including our missy.
    Marks made a note of his deductions and for the moment kept them to himself.
    Fitzgerald was studying the preliminary report of the medical examiner. When he finished he handed it to Marks. The blow on the back of the head was likely to have done no more than stun the victim; no serious brain injury. The mortal wound came from the knife, a neat thrust with a small, very sharp blade at the most vulnerable point, suggesting that it was inflicted while the victim was unconscious. Bradley’s clothing had been impressed in the immediate area of the wound. The absence of blood stains near the victim, the condition of clothing at the surface of the wound, suggested that a cloth or handkerchief had been put round the knife before it was withdrawn.
    “I wonder what our chances are of finding that bit of dirty linen,” Marks said.
    “If it was yours, what would you do with it?”
    “Get rid of it quick—unless it had my monogram on it.”
    Fitzgerald agreed. “If it’s a street job, we’ll find it.”
    Marks then picked up a call from the police laboratory: he could collect a size eleven pair of shoes any time, findings negative. He hadn’t expected them to be otherwise. He doubted Mather could use a weapon sharper than his tongue. It was too early in the day to check out the taverns and coffeehouses. Marks looked up the precinct duty chart. Pererro would come on in time to pick up part of that detail.
    Marks was on his way out of the building when Walter Herring caught up with him. He was in civilian clothes.
    “Promoted?” Marks said.
    “No, sir, but they don’t mind much what I wear on my day off. You know, Lieutenant, I got thinking this morning—you ought to get another man to check out that Mrs. Finney again, the woman with the dog. I hate to say this, boss, but a cop of a different complexion might get more out of her than I did.”
    Marks tried to remember her testimony. Herring explained that she had thought the victim drunk at first.
    Marks, intending to prowl the scene himself, said: “Let’s go.”
    “Yes, sir!” No nonsense about Herring. He was ambitious, and he liked the company of men in authority.
    Mrs. Finney greeted them with less enthusiasm than did her spaniel who waddled from one to the other of them, the tail wagging a lot of dog. Marks remembered having heard once that dogs were color-blind.
    “What’s so important you’d come around before a woman’s put her house in place?”
    “Officer Herring and I were trying to narrow down the time of the attack on the victim. We knew you’d want to help us if you could.” Marks said it with a straight face.
    Mrs. Finney wiped her hands in her apron and led the way into a parlor that had never been out of order, the sterile look of which was strangely heightened by the vividly colored religious pictures. The spaniel hurtled himself into the best chair.
    “A professor, by the morning paper,” Mrs. Finney said.