Murder at the Speakeasy

Grayson Wallace had been in New York for only a day before he was invited to a speakeasy by a large and garrulous waitress in a cafe, who flirted with him in the moments between steam bellowing from a giant percolator. It was 1922 and Wallace was four years from the torments of the last, Great War, a lot of which he'd spent going mad in a makeshift French hospital from the effects of mustard gas. He hadn't been able to eat horseradish since, and this minor loss to his dietary enjoyments struck him as somehow one of the more significant details of the trauma that entailed from service.  
 
He looked down at the remains of his sauce-less steak. Trips to New York were what sustained him, he felt, and the spectre of Prohibition only made the unsleeping city that bit more alluring. 'So how about it, Englishman?'  
 
'Lead on, temptress' he replied, downing a lukewarm coffee in the hope of a stronger libation soon.  
 
They ended up at a large and rather derelict-looking lodging house, with the slight romantic aspect of a Parisian garrett. The moon shone down upon it, full and waxing as if its own reveller, soon to toast the Prohibition-breakers. The sealed-off basement of the house, accessible only via a doorway behind a bookcase in the front parlour, was bedecked with silken hangings, a bar made with barrels and rude shelving, and even a couple of black jazz musicians in a corner.  
 
Tobacco smoke choked the atmosphere. Jollity was high but subdued. People were enjoying themselves, just at a pitch unlikely to attract any bat-eared policeman. The cafe woman introduced Wallace to a table of young people, a couple of whom appeared to be socialites. One girl whom Wallace took a special liking to was in a spangled black dress that would have earned her a broadsheet to cover her legs on a London tram. American girls, he thought, God love 'em. She even, bless her, seemed interested in his library in Sussex. 'Well, yes' he heard himself pontificating, 'I have a whole shelf of leatherbound Di-' It was then that a bloodcurdling scream crashed down through the ceiling from somewhere on the building's top storey.  
 
Pursued by a few brave girls of the modern school, which dictated that the fair sex were just as entitled to adventure, Wallace and several of the menfolk dashed to the scene of the mischief. They clattered up the stairs at such a clip that the structure seemed liable any moment to deposit them at the feet of their lord. At last, the mob came to a room on the top storey, completely unfurnished but for a man's corpse riddled with bullets. A woman screamed decorously and fainted against the door frame while two men in bow ties and spats declared their intention to find a policeman. Grayson stayed them with an arm and inquired as to whether that was wise, given the speakeasy in the basement. One of them grinned. 'You think the boys downtown care about a little old gin joint like this? Half of them are members!'  
 
Indeed, when the boys in blue arrived they took little interest in the sordid cafe in the basement, though the makers had decorously "hidden" the illegal product behind crates, furniture, and even in potted plants. Instead, they got right to business mithering over the puzzle of how someone was riddled with bullets from what seemed to have been a Tommy gun on the top floor of a tenement without anyone below hearing. 'Everyone heard the scream' said Wallace to a shabby-looking detective called in from New Jersey, whose name was Pickett. 'But not the gunshots, huh?' he replied, through half a cigar stuck in the side of his mouth.  
 
'That don't make no sense' he continued, wandering about the room and looking repeatedly at where the expected bloodstains weren't. Grayson was the only member of the civilian party left in the room, his American friends having scarpered as soon as the police assured them that they were too interested in the crime of murder to worry about the one of alcohol imbibing. A quick search of the room revealed a rope tied to the window frame which went down a little way to the fire escape on the floor below, indicating the killer's exit.  
 
'Mind if I check the body' said Wallace all of a sudden, like an awkward guest at a party asking if he might light a cigar. Pickett looked at him as if he might have a pervert on his hands. 'I was a policeman in the war' Wallace explained. 'Well, sort of. I dug out spies in France.'  
 
Pickett tilted his head in acquiescence and Grayson proceeded to frisk the body whose coat was riddled with black spots like a Dalmatian's. The man himself perfectly fit the caricature of "unsatisfactory fellow" that you'd see in a newspaper, bothering someone's daughter with crude badinage or leering above a warning to delinquents. Finding nothing of interest in the pockets of the man's powder blue overcoat beyond a matchbox with a gaudy illustration of a cocktail waitress, on a whim Grayson checked his palms, which were slightly darker than the rest of him. 'Is there a garage near here?'  
 
Twenty minutes later, Pickett and Wallace were stationed in the former's car near the maw of an underground parking garage-cum-fuelling station, which sat in the street like the wide-open mouth of a cat. 'Are you sure about this, Lord Toffington?' Wallace laughed. 'That's exactly why it's a good idea' he said, climbing out of the car. 'Who'd suspect a toff?'  
 
He crept into the garage, a mouse on the alert for the cat's snapping jaws. He realised what an absurd figure he cut in his long white scarf about his black dinner jacket, perfectly shined shoes, and brilliantined hair, sneaking like a common thief down the entrance ramp of this parking hole. Ahead was an office with a light shining above a vacant desk all but drowned in paperwork. To each side was a row of cars. Stepping down from the ramp, Wallace chose the left-hand side of the garage as this was the one most shrouded in darkness, and followed the wall until he came to a bucket and mop whose cleaning fluid appeared to be a little thicker than water...  
 
Ahead of him, a door opened.  
 
Three men chewing toothpicks walked through. Their casual conversation came to an end when the man in the middle saw Lord Toffington swaying from side to side in a drunken manner and declared in an angry but cautiously modulated voice, 'Who the hell are you?'  
 
'Why... me?' Wallace slurred, doing his best Old Etonian voice, 'I'm the customer, old boy, so do be a bean and fetch me a champers...'  
 
The third man uttered a blasphemy and Wallace recognised the tone. 'I thought I told you not to give 'em this address' the middle man said, gesturing to the second and moving with him to support Wallace into the office. Suddenly the garage mouth above was filled with light, blaring down the ramp amidst the rows of cars and lighting all four men like actors on a stage. Before they could even respond, the trio were in chains.  
 
'So the murder was committed here' said Pickett once they were alone again, or at least with a few policemen. 'It certainly looks that way' said Wallace. 'And the killer was the one who screamed. Looks like a simple gangland case. He disposed of the body in the local speakeasy because that's one of their regular delivery points, and by making it seem like the murder happened there, they detract attention from their... ahem... business quarters.'  
 
Pickett smiled. 'I did figure out some of that, m'lord.' Wallace held up his hands in surrender. 'Apologies, my good man.'  
 
'Accepted. I'd keep your nose clean and stay out of speakeasies going forward, though. I don't know what your "coppers" are like, over there in jolly old England, but I'd hate to see what the boys in the vice bureau would do to you...'