The Opening Door by Helen Reilly

Author:Helen Reilly
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Phocion Publishing
Published: 2019-10-30T16:00:00+00:00

“I congratulate you, Inspector, I do indeed. It was nice work—and for once, quick. I couldn’t ask for a prettier case, I really couldn’t. It’s just about perfect.”

John Francis Dwyer, New York’s short chunky dynamic District Attorney, blue-eyed and with hair the color of May butter, rubbed his hands together happily in the big room at the end of the corridor in the long gray building on Centre Street. It was ten o’clock on the morning following the attack on Eve Flavell. Commissioner Carey sat behind his desk and nodded his agreement. McKee stood at one of the windows looking out.

The facts were simple, and damning. The rifle with which Charlotte Foy had been killed not only belonged to Lieutenant Bruce Cunningham, but Cunningham, and Cunningham alone, had had access to it at the time the crime was committed.

The flier had been taken into custody at 2:15 that morning. After a quiet denial of having given morphine to Eve Flavell and a reiteration of his innocence about Charlotte Foy, he had made no further statement.

The Scotsman’s continued silence began to get on Commissioner Carey’s nerves. “Well, McKee?” he rapped out at last.

The Inspector turned from the window. “It’s all been said, hasn’t it?”

“You’re convinced Cunningham is our man?”

“My conviction is neither here nor there, Commissioner,” McKee answered. “It’s a question, now, of proof. The ownership of the rifle isn’t the important thing—or not the most important. Guns have been stolen before and used and thrown away or replaced. As far as this case goes, there’s just one loophole. Graham, one of the two men with Thom Cunningham has been staying, says that the .351 was in the apartment on the day Charlotte Foy was killed. That’s a lot of hours to cover. The defense will undoubtedly be that the gun was removed by another person prior to the shooting and returned after it had taken place.”

Dwyer snorted genially. “Nothing doing. No sir...Wait a minute, Graham’s outside. Would you like to talk to him, Commissioner? Good.” He pressed a buzzer and Philip Graham, Bruce Cunningham’s unlucky friend, was brought in, tired and unshaven and in a fog. A writer by profession, he had handled crime for years, in fiction; he had found fact something else again. He retold his story for the hundredth time. Boiled to its bones it was simple and damning for the Lieutenant.

The .351 had been in the apartment for months. Graham had noticed it particularly on Wednesday morning because the dog knocked it to the floor. As McKee pointed out, there was a possibility that it might have been removed later on that day. Graham and Joe Buchanan, the man who shared the apartment with him were in and out; how it could have been returned was another matter.

Bruce Cunningham had said in a previous statement that he left home at a few minutes after 7 p.m. on Wednesday evening in order to keep his appointment with Charlotte Foy at the north gate of Henderson Square. Apparently he had lied.

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