The Riddles of Hildegarde Withers by Stuart Palmer

Author:Stuart Palmer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MysteriousPress.com/Open Road
Published: 2021-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

The Riddle of the Black Museum

Mr. Hubert Holcomb lay on his back in a cleared space at the far end of the long narrow cellar room, beyond the lines of shelves with their dusty, grim exhibits. The flashbulbs exploded almost in his face, but Holcomb did not mind. He did not even blink, for he had been dead since early that afternoon. Between two and three, the assistant medical examiner thought.

There were a number of plainclothesmen around the body. Inspector Oscar Piper, looking more than ever like a graying, housebroken leprechaun, surveyed the remains without visible enthusiasm. Then he looked carefully all around on the stone floor, not that he expected to find anything. But it was up to the skipper of the Homicide squad to act as if he knew what he was doing. Besides, it gave him time to think.

But there didn’t seem to be any clues. Nothing, that is, except the long rope of cunningly-woven fine black silk which was still looped once around the dead man’s neck, the ends extending for more than four feet in either direction, like an over-length skating scarf.

The Inspector relighted his dead cigar and said, “Identification done?”

Blunt-faced Sergeant Hardesty nodded. “Preliminary. From papers in his pocket. Social Security stuff, letters, all like that. He’s Hubert Holcomb, age 58, lives 422 East 73rd Street, Manhattan.”

“He used to be headwaiter or something like that at the old Hotel Grande,” put in another detective. “What’d the Doc have to say?”

“He was strangled, Doc Fink says. A slow, nasty job. No fracture of the vertebrae or the hyoid bone.”

The Inspector nodded sagely and looked at his watch. Then he turned toward the door, which stood at the other end of the narrow central corridor, and his normally crisp and rasping voice swelled to a roar. “Breck!”

The door opened and a sweating young patrolman, new to the Bureau, poked in his blank, reddish face.

“Yes, Inspector?”

“Any messages?”

“No, sir. Only word to call the Commissioner when it’s convenient.”

Piper winced. He had already talked to the Commissioner, or at least listened to him. “Was there nobody else? I was expecting another message.”

“No, sir. There were some newspaper guys outside, but I gave’em the bum’s rush. Then there were the usual nuts who always try to get to the scene of a crime. Rubberneck stuff. One in particular—I thought I’d never brush her off, but I managed it.”

“Good,’good,” commended the Inspector absently. Then he turned. “By any chance was this nut you brushed off a sort of angular, middle-aged dame?”

Breck smiled. “I guess you musta had trouble with her before, huh? Yeah, she was about that. Weight around 135, height five nine.…”

“Never mind that. Was she wearing a hat that looked like it had been made by somebody who had heard of hats but never actually seen one? Did she have a face like Whirlaway’s mother?”

“Why—yeah, I mean yes, sir. But don’t worry. I told her you were busy with a homicide, and couldn’t be disturbed. So she’s gave up by now.

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