ection>
[no image in epub file]
Helen Reilly
The Dead Can Tell
An Inspector McKee Mystery
“A fast paced story, handled with velvet.”—Kirkus
Dedication: For Harry E. Maule
St.. Swithin Press
First published by Random House, 1940
Copyright by Helen Reilly
Cover art by Gerald Gregg
All rights reserved
ISBN: 978-1-927551-27-1
All of the characters and incidents in this novel are entirely imaginary.
Cast of Characters
Cristie Lansing: beautiful young artist from Texas, whose love of Steven Hazard has stood the test of a three-year separation.
Steven Hazard: a promising young engineer, who still loves Cristie although he is married to the dazzling Sara Hazard.
Christopher McKee: the level-headed Scotsman, head of the Manhattan Homicide Squad, who uncovers the murderer although the trail is very cold.
Todhunter: the mousey, indispensable little detective whom no one would glance at once, let alone twice.
Mary Dodd: intelligent, kindly spinster, a friend of both Sara and Steven Hazard.
Margot St. Vrain: the Queen of Swing and the foremost band agent in the country, who shares a penthouse apartment with her cousin Johnny and her friend Cristie.
Sara Hazard: the gorgeous, golden-haired wife of Steven Hazard, with something ruthless and self-centered beneath her golden loveliness.
Clifford Somers: an assemblyman who has made a name for himself in politics through daring, courage, and a capacity for lying convincingly—plus a little push from his brother.
Pat Somers: Clifford’s brother, a real behind-the-scenes big shot who has helped put Clifford where he is.
Euen Firth: Margot’s fiancé, who, being the son of a wealthy drug manufacturer, can give her the things she wants.
Johnny St. Vrain: prominent radio announcer and cousin of Margot St. Vrain.
Kit Blaketon: Mary Dodd’s red-haired, vivacious niece, engaged to Clifford Somers, who has lived with her aunt since Dr. Dodd died.
Eva Prentice: the Hazards’ maid, who is blond and good-looking, and listens at doors.
Chapter One
The Girl in Gray
All that Christopher McKee, the head of the Manhattan Homicide Squad, had when he started on that investigation were a remembered glimpse of two people in a cafe and an anonymous letter. He wasn’t even in New York when the crime was committed. He was on his way to Rio de Janeiro where he had been sent by the Mayor at the special request of the Brazilian authorities.
Fernandez, New York’s Chief Medical Examiner, slim, dark and elegant in sand color, and the Inspector, lean and towering in loose gray flannel, were having a cocktail in the El Capitan on East Sixty-third Street when Fernandez said with a grin, “Don’t look now, McKee, but there’s one of the prettiest girls I’ve ever seen right behind you. I know how interested you are in pretty girls.”
McKee didn’t turn. He said indifferently, “If Irving Berlin’s right, your life must be one long sweet song. How many prettiest girls do you run into of a day? About that hydrocyanic—if it is there, why the five stab wounds?”
“By Jove,” Fernandez said, “she is lovely. I didn’t think they made them like that any more.”
McKee glanced past three frosted mint juleps and an array of decorative bottles at the subject of Fernandez’s appreciative gaze. He saw a slim girl in a gray linen dress with touches of raspberry and peacock at the throat and an absurd raspberry hat tilted over glinting chestnut hair. Her white throat was arched. There was tension in her white profile, short straight nose, competent chin, sensitive mouth. The tension, the conflict, were repeated in her eyes, wide-set violet-gray eyes with depths to them, set at a tilt under delicate dark brows.
“Ah!” Fernandez murmured, “the incriminating document.”
The girl had taken a note out of her purse and was reading it. Her slight figure was erect. There was a haunted look in the violet-gray eyes.
McKee finished his ale.
“Ready?” Fernandez asked regretfully.
“No,” the Scotsman answered, “I’m going to have another.” He pushed his glass toward the bartender and kept on looking into the mirror.
The girl in gray didn’t notice the two men at the bar. Outside, the blazing August afternoon was breathless, the interior of the cafe was cool, dim. She had slipped into the first unoccupied booth near the door. She was shaking a little. There was haze all about her. She told herself she shouldn’t have come, shouldn’t have given in, no matter what Steve said. To meet like this was stupid, dangerous, would only get them into more trouble. It was lunacy. They were rational human beings. She was twenty-six and Steven was thirty-two. If those weren’t years of discretion, when did you reach them? In your second childhood?
It was wrong, all wrong, not only to themselves but to another human being, no matter what sort of person that other human being was. Cristie Lansing lit a cigarette with quick nervous movements and read Steve’s note again.
Cristie: I’ve got to see you. Something tremendous has come up. Meet me without jail at five this afternoon at El Capitan.
A waiter paused beside the booth. Cristie shook her head slightly, started to return the note to her purse and changed her mind. Better tear it up.
She and Steven had had their chance and they had thrown it away. That was three years ago. They had quarreled and busted it up. The quarrel between them had been childish, silly, meaningless. She couldn’t even remember now what it had been about. Pride, obstinacy, hot temper, wounded vanity had prevented either of them from making the first move. So no move was made and she had gone back to Texas with her defeated hopes and absurd canvases and her heartache and Steven had married another woman.
Steven had a wife. There was no getting away from that.
She went on reducing the sheet of paper to lozenges and squares. Simply because she and Steven had met again here in New York at the beginning of August and she had been weak enough, foolish enough to see Steve three times since that first accidental meeting was no good reason for cracking up Steven’s career, Sara’s life and her own.
She had built up a new existence for herself, slowly and laboriously—had her work. Not the creation of the
