Unfinished Crime

by Helen McCloy

Genres: Mystery; Traditional Mysteries; Thrillers

Synopsis

When Sara Dacre comes across a large red pendant at a twenty cent jewellery stall she is tempted to buy it - especially when she bumps into her friend Gerry Hone, who persuades her that it will brighten up her old grey taffeta.

But soon she finds herself at the centre of some strange events. On leaving the shop she and Gerry witness the scene of an accident - but nobody can agree what happened. And when Gerry takes her to an automat for coffee he goes to the counter to order - and never comes back ...

'Explosive' Birmingham Post

Release date: March 14, 2014

Publisher: Orion Publishing Group

Print pages: 256

Sample

MOXON knew that someone was following him.

His wary ear caught the rhythm of that step at 52nd and Fifth. Its tap-and-drag were unmistakable, the shadow of a limp. It was right behind him at 42nd, when he hesitated for a moment, but it
had seemed to fade as he moved on. Now, at 41st, he heard it again.

Covertly, he glanced at the plate-glass window he was passing. No one reflected there was limping visibly. Yet still he heard the uneven cadence, steady as a metronome, cutting through the
diffuse shuffle of smoother gaits – tap and drag, tap and drag. Too rapid for a pace that faltered visibly, he decided. Just a neurotic quickstep that favoured one leg a shade more than the
other. A tic rather than a limp.

The palms of Moxon’s hands were wet, as if he had cupped them to scoop water from a basin. Below consciousness, where mind and body are one, things were happening that he could no more
control than his reaction to a virus. It had been the same way on bomber runs. His mind would be clear as glass, a bright lens, colourless and transparent, that by-passed his senses and brought the
real world right into his brain. With the clarity came a lightness of head and heart that was almost gay, until he felt the wetness in his palms and realized that somewhere, behind the
façade called Moxon, crouched a more primitive man who was horribly afraid.

But fear did not reach his forebrain then, or now. His fluid glimpse of the people close behind him congealed in memory as vivid and exact as a still from a moving picture. The sailor, sinewy in
close-fitting blues too hot for late spring, eyeing the consciously decorative woman, whose poodle wore a bow that matched her suit. The stoop-shouldered woman, with a camel’s meekly stubborn
face, who carried a heavy library book under one arm. The little boy, with convict-cropped head, trotting beside the bulbous woman sheathed in printed silk stretched taut as sausage skin. The tall
man, face shadowed by a hat-brim a shade wider and paler than those New Yorkers wear. Just behind him, the slender youth with pale brown skin and dark, morbid eyes, who would have looked well in
turban or tarboosh. A typical New York crowd, stencils every one. Lonely Sailor Ashore, Sophisticated Lady, Sexless Culture Hound, Harassed Housewife With Brat, Tourist From Far West, Tourist From
Far East. All apparently normal, but ... he could still hear the cadence of that quickstep ticking like a time-bomb, tap and drag, tap and drag, the A of the Morse code.

Was it someone farther back? Someone he couldn’t see? Or was the limp so slight it couldn’t be seen, only heard?

Police?

Or one of the others?

Police would mean arrest at any moment – as soon as they decided they had nothing further to gain by watching him. Suddenly and finally, here in the murky twilight, he would be plucked
from the crowd of normal people, set apart. For a moment people would stare after him, curious, a little shaken as they imagined themselves in his place. Then they would go on about their own silly
business, glad they could forget him so easily.

But if it were one of the others?

There could easily be an Asiatic among them. Or a certain type of woman. His side glance sought another plate-glass window, passed over the housewife and the sailor, settled on the man in the
Western hat. Moxon had seen one of the others, close to, once, two days ago, in a fly-specked, dingy night-club in the Village. Spotlight on the floor show, deep shadow in the corner booth where
the man sat over his beer. Sat the whole time so Moxon had no way of estimating his height. Dressed like an Easterner – white shirt, dark tie and suit. A banker’s face, cool, shrewd,
flinty, but it was hard to summon those features one by one and reassemble them. All Moxon could recall was a pale, cold eye that had looked on evil unmoved. Moxon couldn’t see the eyes under
the wide-brimmed hat now or even the face. Only a tall, striding figure that wavered in the glitter of plate glass, like something under water. Most cops were built like that.

Suppose he were a cop: did he know that he had only to put out his hand now and Moxon would be caught with the goods? What a pleasure it would be to arrange a little surprise for the cop, so he
would find nothing in Moxon’s pockets by the time Moxon was searched. Was it too late? Couldn’t he find some place to stash the thing in the next few minutes, some place where they
couldn’t find it, and he could, later?

They would try to persuade him, but he didn’t persuade easily. Not when there was twentygrand at stake, he didn’t. If there was nothing on him, he could laugh at them, claim he
didn’t know what they were talking about. After a few hours they would have to let him go. They might not believe him, but they couldn’t hold him without evidence. They would let him go
and follow him again, hoping he would lead them to the place where he had hidden the thing.

He wouldn’t. He would hide it so cunningly, in such an unforeseeable place that he could pick it up in a minute as soon as he had shaken off the man tailing him.

But where? There was no such hiding-place. At least, none that could be improvised in a few seconds. He had only seconds left now. He felt that.

His one hope was to lose the man behind him in a crowd, quickly and cleanly.

He plunged into the ten-cent store at 39th, like a fox running to earth. It was crowded at this hour when offices were closing, and he knew the corner lay-out. There were side doors to the cross
street ideal for his purpose.

He turned into a cross aisle. Through the shifting mass of faces he saw one face he knew just coming through the side door from the cross street.

It stopped him like a blow.

With the clatter and chatter of shoppers all around him, he could no longer hear the cadence of any one step behind him. Yet he knew the step was still there, closing in on him. He
couldn’t go back. He couldn’t go forward.

He darted left, around the toy counter. One glance at the counter beyond brought inspiration. In a few heartbeats he saw the situation whole. He could even relish its humour. This counter was
festooned with necklaces of fat, improbable pearls, and its central bin was piled haphazardly with pendants and bracelets of coloured glass. A placard clamoured for attention: ANYTHING ON THIS COUNTER FOR TWENTY CENTS.

Housewives and stenographers pawed over the pearls, jostling each other. Cultivated pearls had made any kind of fake pearl respectable. But the central bin was deserted except for a girl in
brown tweed looking at a bracelet of green glass squares. She would move on in a moment. She wasn’t the sort of girl who would buy trash.

Moxon’s hand slipped into his coat pocket. His fingertips met something hard. Half the beauty of the stone was its antiquity. That meant it was badly cut. That and the size would deceive
any passer-by who didn’t know rubies. It was five-twenty-five now. The store closed at five-thirty. Police couldn’t hold him, if he didn’t have the jewel. They hadn’t enough
evidence without it – only suspicion. As for the others, they would be nasty; but what could they do, if he didn’t have it on him? He might hold them off tonight with some plausible
story of stashing it elsewhere, then give them the slip on his way to the fake hiding-place tomorrow morning and come back here alone at nine-thirty, just as the store opened. He’d be the
first one in. He’d make sure he wasn’t followed that time. And then – he could buy back the Flame of India for twenty cents. Anything on this counter ...

He was taking a chance, but it was the only chance he had, and the odds were in his favour. One against a thousand that anyone else would buy the jewel in the next five minutes, before the store
closed.

He was walking past the central bin now, slowly, calmly, apparently unconcerned. A quick glance around. In that instant, he saw no face he knew. His hand came out of his pocket in a closed fist,
rested for a moment on a corner of the bin, came away limp and empty. He had hardly paused. Now he moved on without a backward glance, past the coils of waxy pearls, past the toy-counter bright
with plastics, back to the Fifth Avenue entrance he had used when he came into the store only a few moments ago. He almost hoped he was still being followed. He would enjoy watching the face of
anyone who searched him now – police or the others. Quick thinking. And nerve. That was all a man needed in this world. And probably in the next.

At the corner of 38th he was stopped by a red light. A little crowd was waiting. He saw the sailor again and the woman with the poodle. There was the shaven head of the little boy with the plump
mother. Beyond them, old camel-face and a man in a wide hat. The same man? Maybe they were all just what they seemed. If not, he was ready for them now.

He stood poised on the balls of his feet, like a boxer, alert for the slightest touch. Then it came. But not the furtive butterfly touch he expected of finger-tips exploring the contour of his
pockets, delicately, almost imperceptibly.

This was a short, savage blow, just above the kidneys, that hurled him off balance. His hat flew out. His hands clawed at air. He had one reeling view of tall buildings that seemed to spin
against a sky of infinitely tender grey. Above him rose a ring of faces, curious, a little shaken, imagining themselves in his place.

Then the steel bumper of a heavy car broke his spine and the primitive man, who had always crouched behind the façade called Moxon, screamed as he died.

IT was after five when she came out of the library – a small, neat girl with brown hair as light as her tweed suit and brown eyes as dark as the
fur at her throat. She carried a portable typewriter. A luggage tag, dangling from its handle, proclaimed it the property of Miss Sara Dacre with an address on 52nd Street. She had the pallor of
the indoor worker and the eyeglasses of the researcher, but these were harlequin glasses with tortoiseshell rims, tilted to a piquant angle, like the eyes of a kitten.

She paused on the flight of steps between the stone lions to look at one of Manhattan’s few vistas – three tall smokestacks at the end of 41st Street. The sky beyond was thick with a
dull, diffuse cloudiness, almost white. Silhouetted against it, a long, level cloud of deeper grey was like a dark shore. The sky itself seemed a pale, still lake in a windless dusk, holding the
last, faint radiance of day.

She took a deep breath of the cool air and went down the steps to Fifth Avenue, where she turned south. At 39th Street she crossed the Avenue and went into the ten-cent store. She spent a few
minutes choosing a lipstick. It had to be light, but red – no coral, no orchid. She was moving toward the side entrance when a glitter of pendants and bracelets caught her eye. She put down
her typewriter to pick up one of the bracelets.

Squares of green glass caught light from a bulb overhead and flashed almost as bravely as emeralds, but the coarse cut and brassy setting repelled her. She studied the pearls – especially
a single strand with a faint cast of pink and a double strand of smoky grey. If only they were not quite so obviously glass beads coated with extract of fish scales.

She was aware of a scream somewhere outside in the street. People were always screaming at each other in New York to make themselves heard above the din of traffic. A pendant caught her eye
– a single lump of red glass that lay in one corner of the bin, half hidden. The glass was round and large as a robin’s egg. In shadow, it was the deep, dark red of a crimson rose, but
when she picked it up it caught the overhead light and seemed to burst into flame. She hesitated, and looked around for a saleswoman.

A tall man was coming down the aisle, struggling through the crowd toward the Fifth Avenue door.

‘Why, Gerry!’ She smiled and her face lost a little of that indoor pallor. ‘What are you doing here?’

He stopped with a look of amazement. Suddenly his smile came warm and quizzical. It made a mature, almost grim face look boyish and impudent. ‘I buy my socks here. And you?’

‘Lipstick. They carry all the brands in sample sizes. I wanted something vivid to brighten my old grey taffeta.’

‘Lipstick alone will never do it,’ he retorted. ‘That would be more to the point.’

He was looking at the pendant. ‘A lot of colour and sparkle for twenty cents.’

‘Too much?’ Sara laughed. ‘I’m often tempted to buy junk jewellery, but I suppose it’s like dyeing your hair: you deceive yourself, when you think you’re
deceiving others.’

‘Be your age, Dacre! You’re not trying to deceive people when you wear a hunk of glass as big as this. One look and everyone knows it must be fake or it would be in a museum. But who
cares? It’s still a thing that brings sparks to your eyes and colour to your cheeks, even if it is synthetic. This isn’t 1890, when rice powder and Roman pearls were the first steps on
the road to ruin.’

‘When you say synthetic, you mean imitation,’ protested Sara. ‘That’s so cheap.’

‘Cheap! Now I’ve got you taped, Dacre! You have to see the price-tag before you can decide whether a thing is beautiful or not. Take a look at this and forget the price. Don’t
you really like it?’

‘There’s no flaw or stick in it,’ admitted Sara. ‘Naturally – because it’s not a stone at all, just glass. And the colour isn’t too bad. But it’s
funny they haven’t bothered to imitate the proper cutting of a good ruby. There’s no table and no faceting. It’s just cut cabochon, like a carbuncle.’

‘What do you expect for twenty cents?’ he returned. ‘I don’t even know what a table is!’

‘I learned about such things from my Aunt Caroline. She has beautiful sapphires.’

‘My aunts don’t have sapphires.’ The pendant, dangling from her fingers, caught the light again and seemed to explode in a shower of fiery sparks. ‘Look at that
setting,’ he went on. ‘Quite different from the others on the counter.’

Sara looked at it more closely. A tiny dragon held the red glass in four delicate claws. It had two minute chips of red for its eyes. The whole thing swung from a thread of chain, fine, almost
invisible.

‘Quaint. But the metal is too bright a yellow to pass for gold. Why, it’s soft!’

She had taken the dragon between thumb and forefinger. It bent like wet clay under the light pressure. ‘It would brighten my grey taffeta,’ she admitted. ‘It’s just the
same clear flame-red as the lipstick.’

‘And yet you’re afraid to wear it.’ The glint of mischief in his eyes matched the red glitter of the glass. ‘You’re still afraid of Aunt Caroline and her ninety-six
rules for what the well-bred young girl should wear.’

‘Why, Gerry Hone, I am not!’ Sara raised her voice. ‘Isn’t there any sales-girl at this counter?’

A girl with tired-looking blonde hair answered her from the toy-counter across the aisle: ‘We’re short-handed just now, and I’m supposed to handle both counters. I’ll be
right over.’

She was wrapping up a miniature jet bomber in green and purple plastic. ‘No, it doesn’t drop little bombs, madam; but the jet part makes a lot of noise, and kids love it.’ She
came across the aisle to Sara. ‘That will be twenty cents and tax.’

‘Why is this pendant set differently from the others on the counter?’ asked Sara.

‘There’s a mixed lot of odds and ends on this counter,’ the girl explained. ‘Stuff from various jobbers who’ve gone broke and want to dump whatever they have, as
quickly as they can. That’s how we’re able to retail it for twenty cents. The one you picked out is probably worth more. Maybe as much as three dollars or even four. Jewellery is on
special sale today, so there’s a box to go with it.’

The long, flat cardboard box was too big for Sara’s handbag.

‘I’ll carry it for you. After all, I made you buy it. Alone you would probably have chosen something much less gaudy.’ He took the cardboard box, so different from a
jeweller’s case of velvet or leather, and thrust it into the side pocket of his jacket, where it sagged noticeably.

‘Your tailor wouldn’t approve,’ murmured Sara.

‘My suits are ready-made, Dacre. No tailor can push me around.’ He picked up her typewriter and they moved down the aisle togethe. . .