Dance of Death Read online

  Dance of Death

  Helen McCloy

  About the Author

  Helen McCloy was born in New York City in 1904 to writer Helen Worrell McCloy and managing editor William McCloy. After discovering a love for Sherlock Holmes as young girl, McCloy began writing her own mystery novels in the 1930s. In 1933, she introduced her psychiatrist-detective Dr Basil Willing in her first novel, Dance of Death. Dr Basil Willing features in 12 of McCloy’s novels as well as several short stories; however, both are best known from McCloy’s 1955 supernatural mystery Through a Glass, Darkly — hailed as her masterpiece and likened to John Dickson Carr.

  McCloy went on in the 1950s and 1960s to co-author a review column a Connecticut newspaper. In 1950, she became the first female president of Mystery Writers of America and in 1953, she was honoured with an Edgar Award from the MWA for her critiques.

  Also by Helen McCloy

  The Dr Basil Willing Mysteries

  Dance of Death

  The Man in the Moonlight

  The Deadly Truth

  Cue for Murder

  Who’s Calling?

  The Goblin Market

  The One That Got Away

  Through a Glass, Darkly

  Alias Basil Willing

  The Long Body

  Two-thirds of a Ghost

  Mister Splitfoot

  Burn This

  The Pleasant Assassin and Other Cases of Dr Basil Willing

  Fiction

  Do Not Disturb

  Panic

  Wish Your Were Dead

  Better Off Dead

  He Never Came Back

  The Slayer and the Slain

  Before I Die

  Surprise, Surprise

  The Further Side of Fear

  Question of Time

  A Change of Heart

  The Sleepwalker

  Minotaur Country

  Cruel as the Grave

  The Imposter

  The Smoking Mirror

  This edition published in 2020 by Agora Books

  First published in 1938 by Heinemann

  Agora Books is a division of Peters Fraser + Dunlop Ltd

  55 New Oxford Street, London WC1A 1BS

  Copyright © Helen McCloy, 1938

  All rights reserved

  You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  To my mother

  KATHERINE JOCELYN

  …slim, dark-eyed debutante, stepdaughter of Mrs Gerald Jocelyn, who has spent her life preparing for her debut — looking out for her complexion and figure, learning just enough French, dancing, and music to make her civilised without the taint of intellect.

  RHODA JOCELYN

  …Katherine’s attractive, young-looking, beautifully dressed stepmother with a low, dulcet voice and crisp brown hair flecked with grey, whose general appearance of kindliness is spoiled when her face is turned and the obstinate line of her morbid mouth and shapeless lips is seen.

  ANN JOCELYN CLAUDE

  …grey-eyed, hollow-cheeked niece of Edgar Jocelyn, now secretary to Rhoda Jocelyn (Ann’s mother had been a Jocelyn but was disowned when she married against the family’s wishes).

  EDGAR JOCELYN

  …Katherine Jocelyn’s tall, grey-haired uncle, her nearest relative, who has the pale Jocelyn eyes under black brows.

  LUIS PASQUALE

  …a South American artist who looks like a middle-aged faun who has forsaken Arcady for an air-conditioned drawing room, and has acquired a gloss and paunch in the process.

  MRS JOWETT

  …the popular social secretary for coming-out parties. She doesn’t look clever but seems capable and reminds one of the motherly type of woman who inhabits sunny farm kitchens and hands out slices of freshly baked bread.

  NICHOLAS DANINE

  …the fantastically rich director of a German explosives company. He is of either Russian or Prussian descent but looks and talks like an Englishman.

  PHILIP LEACH

  …writer of a gossip column under the name of Lowell Cabot. He spent some time in Europe and returned to America on the same boat as the Jocelyns.

  DR BASIL WILLING

  …psychiatrist attached to the district attorney’s office, has a thin-skinned temperament, is unusually sympathetic and living proof that a doctor to the mad must be slightly mad himself to understand his patients.

  INSPECTOR FOYLE

  …a small, compact, resilient man who regards the entire universe with the alert scepticism of a wire-haired terrier.

  * * *

  A black COAT from Paris

  Two engraved MENU cards

  A red chalk DRAWING

  A diamond RING

  A smelling-salts PHIAL

  An old khaki RAINCOAT

  An ADVERTISEMENT for a reducing treatment

  A sapphire-studded CIGARETTE CASE

  A signed CHEQUE

  A Bronx COCKTAIL

  Author Note

  All the human characters in this book are fictitious. But the most important character, thermol, or 2, 4 di-nitro-phenol, is taken from real life. No scientific knowledge is needed for the solution of the crime, beyond that which is given in the course of the narrative before the solution is reached.

  ELSIE: how dark it grows! What are these paintings on the walls around?

  * * *

  PRINCE HENRY: The Dance of Death. All that go to and fro must look upon it.

  —The Golden Legend

  1

  Frontispiece

  The snow began to fall Tuesday, about cocktail time — huge flakes whirling spirally in a north wind. By six o’clock the next morning, in the middle of the street the snow was packed hard and stamped with interlacing tire patterns. On the pavement it was fine and powdery, piled in smooth drifts by the wind. On roofs and cars it had hardened to a crusty, white glaze. And it was still falling.

  It was only natural that Butch and Buddy should be on the list of men “available for snow removal”. They had been working on a street-repair project that was held up by the storm.

  Earlier that morning a plough had pushed most of the snow into gutters. But the wind had blown fresh snow on top of this, until it towered in mounds. Their job was to shovel it into the truck, for there were not enough loading machines. The north wind cut like a knife. Buddy shivered and paused in his shovelling. He began to dig again, and his shovel struck something solid. He frowned and tried another place. Again the shovel stuck. There was no scraping sound. It couldn’t be asphalt. It was something hot as well as solid. He kicked away the snow — and blinked.

  There was no light but the faint radiance of dawn that made everything look unreal. Was he seeing this? He crouched and touched something with his bare fingers — something rigid as a board. Then he screamed.

  Butch came running.

  “There’s a stiff in the snow!” sobbed Buddy.

  “Pipe down! Ain’t it natural to get froze stiff on a night like this?”

  “B-but it ain’t froze!” Buddy choked. “It’s — hot!”

  2

  Grotesque

  Dr Basil Willing, psychiatrist attached to the district attorney’s office, lived in an antiquated house at the unfashionable end of Park Avenue, below Grand Central. After dinner, next evening, he was settled in the living room with General Archer, the Police Commissioner.

  Firelight made the glass doors of
the bookcases glitter and brought a faint blush to the white panelling. Juniper, a soft-spoken Baltimore man, who has been with Basil Willing since Johns Hopkins days, served the Commissioner with coffee and brandy, murmuring hospitably, “Help yourself, sir, help yourself!”

  When he had gone, there was no sound but the whispering of the fire and the distant hooting of motor horns. General Archer twirled his big, bell-shaped glass, frowned, and continued an argument that had flared up at dinner.

  “I don’t know what you mean — there’s no place of psychology in detection. Police work deals with physical facts — nasty facts like dried bloodstains, greasy fingerprints, and microscopic bits of dirt under a dead man’s nails. In half our murder cases we have no way of identifying the body at the beginning. It isn’t like detective stories where a man gets murdered in his own library while there are a dozen convenient suspects in the house.

  “When we start out, we hardly even know who anybody is — murderer, suspects, or victim. We want a biologist or a chemist on the trail — not a psychologist… Why, just this morning — Did the evening papers have anything about a girl’s body found in the snow on 78th Street?”

  Deliberately, Basil rose and scanned the newspaper on the table. Tall and lean, he moved at a measured pace that was the antithesis of “hustle”. His mother had been Russian and that accounted for many things — among them his thin-skinned temperament, more sympathetic, irritable, and intuitive than that of nationalities on whom the shell of civilisation has had time to harden. He was a living proof of the theory that a successful doctor to the mad must be slightly mad himself in order to understand his patients.

  “Let me see…” Like most people who speak several other languages, his English was distinct and unslurred. “Three cases of death from exposure last night. An unemployed man. A street walker. And the unidentified body of a girl. No details.”

  “That’s the one. The girl. Only she didn’t die from exposure. We kept the details from the papers purposely.” Archer finished his brandy. “We have absolutely no clue to her identity and I ask you what good psychology—”

  “How did she die?”

  Archer was lighting one of Basil’s cigarettes. He inhaled deeply before he answered, “Heat stroke.”

  “But — that’s impossible!”

  “That’s the trouble with police work. The impossible is always happening. The body was found about six this morning by men shovelling snow. Remember how cold it was? The body was lying under the snow and there were no footprints, so it must have been there some time. But the men swear it was hot when they found it. Not just warm, but hot as a fever patient. By the time the precinct men got there it was still warm. They call it the ‘Red Hot Momma Case’.”

  “They would!”

  “Inspector Foyle got an assistant medical examiner to do an autopsy at once. Just before I left the office this evening, Foyle brought me a preliminary report. A lot of technical gibberish about being unable to assign the exact cause of death, and then he says: ‘the condition of the internal organs, especially the lungs, heart and liver, strikingly resembles that in cases of death from heat stroke’.” Archer snorted. “Heat stroke! And it was nine above zero last night! The thing’s grotesque!”

  “I’m not so sure.” Basil picked up the poker unhurriedly and frowned at the logs as he pushed them apart. “You say it was lying under the snow? A deep snowdrift conserves heat. Ice forms a thinner layer than usual on a lake protected by snow, because the snow keeps the water warm. Some Inuit build shelters of snow to keep warm. If this dead body were unusually hot to start with the snow might delay its cooling.”

  “But how could it get unusually hot to start with?” demanded Archer. “People can’t get heat stroke on a winter night!”

  “I don’t suppose your doctor meant to say that the girl died of heat stroke. He was just using the term to describe her condition. What about chemical analysis?”

  “No results so far.” Archer sighed. “The laboratory fellows can always tell you what a thing isn’t. But they can’t always tell you what it is.”

  “Then you’ll have to fall back on psychology.”

  “But psychology couldn’t possibly help when we don’t even know who the girl is! That’s the point.”

  “Are there no clues at all?”

  “Precious few. She was about twenty, the doctors say, and a virgin. Rather unusual face — grey eyes, dark hair and lashes. No one fitting her description is listed at the Missing Persons Bureau. Her fingerprints are not on file. Her teeth have never been filled. Her nails are absolutely clean, except for a trace of soap — it might be any soap. Her clothes are poor quality — the sort of thing that’s turned out by the gross. Mass production is the modern detective’s biggest handicap. Her coat is poor stuff, too, but it has a French label — Bazar something or other. No laundry marks. It’s a pity so many police reporters have told the world we keep a file of six thousand laundry marks.”

  “No signs of violence?”

  “None, except two marks made after death — the shovel of the man who found her struck the body in digging.”

  Basil laid down the poker gently. “I’d like to talk with the fellow who did the autopsy.”

  Archer’s eyes twinkled in the firelight. “I thought you told me your official duties consisted in answering just one question: ‘Say, doc, is this guy nuts?’”

  Basil smiled. “Perhaps I might see this man unofficially.”

  “All right. But remember — one good fingerprint is worth all the psychology in the world!”

  “Every criminal leaves psychic fingerprints.” Basil was still smiling. “And he can’t wear gloves to hide them.”

  “You’re incurable!” Archer rose to go. At the door he paused. “One thing I forgot to mention — if you’re really interested. When the medical examiner washed off the girl’s make-up, he found the face underneath stained yellow. Not suntan, but a canary yellow. Odd, isn’t it?”

  3

  Nude

  “Dr Wiling? From the district attorney’s office? The Commissioner phoned you’d be here this morning. My name’s Dalton, assistant medical examiner. I did the autopsy.” The brisk, business-like young doctor was chewing gum. He trotted down a corridor, and Basil ambled after him. The room they entered was bare and chill, smelling of disinfectant. “Number seventeen, Sam!” called Dr Dalton.

  “Okay,” responded the attendant.

  “All there but the viscera and the brain.” Dalton’s jaws moved rhythmically.

  The first thing Basil noticed was the extreme thinness of the nude girl. The dead face was free of make-up, and a vivid yellow stain covered it as far as the throat, ending in an irregular line. The rest of the skin was a warm ivory. The vacant eyes were grey, pale in contrast to feathery black lashes, and black brows plucked to a diagonal line like the brows of a Javanese doll. Muslin bands were about the abdomen where incisions had been made for the autopsy.

  Basil began to analyse the face according to the method originated by Bertillon, through which a French policeman learns to recognise a face he has never seen from a spoken description: “General contour — oval. Profile — rectilinear. Nose — root depth, short; tip, pointed; nostrils, distended; partition, well-defined…”

  Suddenly, he paused. In life, this face had been beautiful. The dull grey eyes had been shining. The dry, parted lips had curved deliciously when they smiled.

  Why was he so sure? Slowly, there rose in his mind a conviction that he had seen this face before. But where? The girl was too young to be anyone he had known long ago. Yet if he had met recently, why couldn’t he recall her?

  He lifted one of the limp hands. Long-fingered, narrow at the knuckles, soft and well-kept. Cuticle, unbroken. Nails, oval. Not the hand of a woman who did her own washing. Yet there were no laundry marks.

  “Say,” broke in Sam, “couldn’t that there yeller stain be a kinda disguise-like?”

  Dalton shook his head. “It’s internal. The c
onjunctivae are yellow and all the internal secretions. At first I thought it might be jaundice. But some of the other symptoms didn’t fit. All the signs of heat stroke were there — congestion and oedema of the lungs, scatter ecchymoses in various organs, separation of liver lobules, renal tubular degeneration, and marked fragmentation of the heart muscle.”

  “Painful,” said Basil. He studied the jaws. “No fillings. No caries. Only the rich care for their teeth like that.”

  “But her clothes were cheap!” protested Dalton.

  “That’s just the point. Are they still here?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Sam. “Shall I get ’em?”

  “Please.”

  Basil studied the shabby, black dress with touches of green at neck and wrists, the high-heeled papery shoes, and the flimsy rayon under things. There were not in bad taste, but they were all machine-made and shoddy.

  “She doesn’t look like a girl who would dress like that.” He turned to the coat — a coarse, black cloth with no fur. In the lining was a label: Bazar de l’Hôtel de Ville. “That’s the most inexpensive department store in Paris,” he remarked. “I wish I could see your full report.”

  Dr Dalton shifted his gum to the other cheek. “I’ll send you a carbon if you like.”

  “Thanks. I suppose you’re testing the viscera for poison?”