McKee of Centre Street by Helen Reilly

Author:Helen Reilly
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penzler Publishers

“It was as big as the end of my thumb halfway down.” The hat-check girl was very positive, sitting bolt upright on the edge of her chair, a little in awe of her surroundings. McKee glanced at the jewel expert, a slight man with a nondescript face, who knew as much about precious stones as any man in New York. Nixon said:

“Really? Then, my dear young lady, if it was genuine, it was very valuable indeed.” There were four people in the room: Lily Henderson, looking a little gray (a defect she was on the point of remedying with a raspberry lipstick) above a hundred and fifty pounds of flesh shoved into a shiny satin dress; Nixon; the sergeant; and the girl from the Sanctuary.

As Nixon made this announcement, Lily held the tube of red paste motionless, awe in her voice: “You don’t mean to tell me that that bit of brownish rock was worth anything? Sure I knew she had it … but in London it wasn’t on the chain. More than once she said to me, and once it was while she was handling the funny-looking thing: ‘I don’t intend to stay in this business all my life.’ I thought she meant a man, of course, but now—did the dirty louse who did her in shoot her for the stone, Inspector?”

McKee asked: “How much would it be worth, Nixon? She must have had it cut and polished since that time.”

The expert shrugged. “Not having seen the stone myself, of course I wouldn’t be able to give an authoritative opinion. But granting that it was a good color and without any cracks or flaws, even in the present depressed market it ought to fetch—say from ten to eighteen or twenty thousand dollars. You know the market is artificially controlled—that’s what you’ve got to come to in all industry sooner or later. The supply is never permitted to catch up with the demand.”

And that was that. Nixon went away, the room was cleared, and McKee sat staring down at his desk. The emerald was not on the dancer’s person. It was not in her flat. It was not in her safe-deposit box. (This had already been examined.) Where, then, was it? The check girl had contributed, in addition, before she left, that Rita wore it the first three nights she was in the Sanctuary, and after that—never.

Of one thing the inspector was now convinced: the bit of jade, the emerald, were intimately bound up with her murder. The shrill summons of the telephone roused him from intricate conjecture. It wasn’t news of Archer, or of the waiter, either. It was only Telfair, and he sounded furious. What the cartoonist said (in reaction from terror about the damn purse which had disappeared, leaving him free to move) was:

“Look here, McKee. You’ve got a man tailing Judith Pierce. Would you mind telling me the reason?”

The Scotsman gazed steadily at the wall, instrument loose in his hand. Keys. Archer’s key. The girl had turned up with it in the penthouse.

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