by Helen Reilly
The Scotsman nodded and went around a sycamore. Feet in stout black shoes moved big bodies out of the way at his advent. The initial facts were given to him by Patrolman Crothers and Radio Patrolman Anders. Kent wrote busily and McKee listened and looked down into the recesses of the winter thicket.
Crothers had recognized the victim at once. He was familiar with the Square and its denizens. He had often passed the time of day with Miss Foy, with her niece, Miss Natalie Flavell, and with Miss Flavell’s father.
Charlotte Foy had been shot. There was a wound of entrance just over the heart, a wound of exit between the shoulder blades. The bullet hadn’t yet been found. It might be anywhere within a considerable radius. The death didn’t appear to be suicide. There was no weapon in evidence.
“Have a look, Inspector?” Pierson asked.
“No,” McKee said absently. “We’d better wait until...Where’s Dalligan?”
“Here I am.” The gangling photographer from Headquarters pushed forward, laden down with camera cases. McKee said, “Good. I want plenty of wide angle shots—look out!”
Dalligan brought the soles of number twelve oxfords to an abrupt halt and rocked back on his heels. He had been about to tread on a cigarette sodden with moisture that lay at the edge of the thicket that was the dead woman’s impromptu grave. When its position had been photographed, McKee retrieved it. Its tip was just barely blackened. No more than a puff or two had gone through the tobacco. He found the match that had companioned it.
The cigarette was a Lucky Strike. There was a package of Lucky Strikes in Charlotte Foy’s purse. McKee examined the purse. The only things of interest in it were a large iron key and a piece of paper with the word “Spencer” and what appeared to be a telephone number written on it, in pencil. He studied the position of the body, the surrounding terrain and added up the facts as far as they went.
“Backward, turn backward, oh, time, in thy flight—“ Mute evidence accomplished this to a limited extent. The park, one of New York’s few private parks, was locked at all times. Keys were in possession of property owners fronting on it. In the case of apartment hotels the doorman locked and unlocked the gates for guests desiring park privileges. Charlotte Foy had entered the park at an unknown hour with her key. She was some distance from her home and within twenty feet of the north gate when she was shot.
The Medical Examiner couldn’t give an opinion as to the time of death. McKee could and did. He said that Charlotte Foy had been killed before 11 p.m. the previous night. The blanket of leaves covering her body proved it. The wind had risen at around eleven. The forty-mile gale out of the northwest had stripped the last of its leaves from the beech under which she lay, sending them down in showers.
Assistant District Attorney Smith was puzzled. The night had been foggy and the blackout in this section almost complete, so that the visibility was zero. Yet Charlotte Foy’s assailant had sent a bullet crashing into flesh and bone ii the exact location where it would do the most good.
“I don’t get it, Inspector...”
McKee said grimly, “Miss Foy herself provided the necessary illumination when she lit the cigarette. The bullet was fired then. She never completed her smoke. No, she went crashing down into those bushes.”
Pierson whistled. “Whoever plugged her must have been a hell of a good shot.”
The Scotsman shrugged. He would have nothing to do with guesses about the bullet, its caliber, the weapon from which it was fired, the direction and distance from which it came; that was for the experts after the autopsy had been performed. For the rest, there was only one other important physical clue. Bleeding from the wound in Charlotte Foy’s chest had been extensive. It was confined to the thicket in which she lay. A good three yards from it, near the edge of a cement path, shorn grass was stained with an irregular dark patching that was blood. Vague marks led from the thicket to this spot. There was none away from it. The conclusion was obvious. Someone with blood on his or her shoes had wiped them repeatedly on the grass to get rid of tell-tale stains. Someone who had stood over the dead woman, perhaps to see that life was extinct, perhaps to search her person, her purse. At any rate, it was someone who had had access to the park, who either had a key or had been admitted by Charlotte Foy herself.
McKee stood erect. The Ballistics Squad was arriving. Kent, who had been doing a little research on the Flavells, came back. The scene here was under full control; accompanied by the birdlike stenographer, McKee left the park by the west gate and crossed the street to the red brick house with the blue shutters and the white fan-lit door.
“Mr. Flavell? Yes, sir, if you’ll wait here?”
Sunlight slanted through half-drawn Venetian blinds, between sweeping sea-green draperies and lay down in bars on the polished floor and on the exquisite faded mosaics of a very old Bokhara in the beautiful sunken living room into which the maid ushered the two men. A clump of stock was fragrant under the sharp black and white of a Dürer; all was order, beauty and peace. Almost from the first moment of his contact with it, there was something in the atmosphere of the house that the Scotsman found disturbing. It came, of course, from the people who lived there—and one who had died. Its emanations were so subtle, its deviations from the normal so slight, that its true essence continually eluded his grasp.
It began with Hugh Flavell, twice a widower, a former professor of economics, an authority on bees and the father of a very wealthy daughter. Flavell was fifty-odd and didn’t look it, handsome, collected, polite and crisply interrogative, a man of substance and affairs.
“Inspector McKee? Yes, Inspector. Sit down. What can I do for you?” He smoothed thinning fair hair with a nervous hand.
No word of what had happened had apparently reached the late Charlotte Foy’s brother-in-law, the Scotsman reflected, yet he was braced for bad news of some sort. His lean body was tight under a dark-blue brocaded robe, gray slacks and a white silk shirt.
McKee told him.
Flavell stared, said “Charlotte...No...I...” He opened his mouth wider for air, gave a gasp or two, turned livid and crumpled to the floor. He had fainted. His head struck the edge of a chair as he went down.
They put him on one of the two couches ingle-nooking the fireplace and Kent used a bell pull vigorously. The maid who had admitted them came quickly and then an older woman who was the cook, and then Natalie Flavell. Natalie heard the maid telephoning for the doctor. She called down to know what was wrong. The maid said, “It’s your father, Miss. He’s been taken sick. In the living room...
There was a cry, footsteps ran lightly down the stairs and Natalie came through the archway. McKee turned. A negligee of jade-green velvet draped the girls slender height. Her narrow face, framed in soft hair that swept her shoulders, was frightened. Her features were delicate and firm with an antique cast to them. She had no eyes for McKee and Kent. Her concern was all for her father. She hurried to the couch, dropped on her knees beside it and looked down at him anxiously. “What is it, Joan?” she asked the cook. “What happened? How did it come on? Oh, look—he hurt his forehead. Get water, get some bandaging, get his medicine....”
The cook soothed her. “Now don’t you take on, Miss Nat. It’s just one of his attacks. He’ll be all right...There now, you see?”
Flavell was stirring. His color began to return. Natalie covered him with a blanket the maid brought, put a pillow under his head. His eyes remained closed but his breathing was normal and his pulse stronger. He was coming out of it. It was only when Natalie was sure that he was better that she gave McKee her attention, and a puzzled frown.
“You were with my father? On business?”
The cook was gone, with Kent. McKee said, “Yes, Miss Flavell. You’d better sit down. I’m afraid we have had bad news for you.”
Natalie sat, suddenly. “Is it—Bruce?” She waited for a blow, hands clasped tightly in a green velvet lap. The shadows in her paper-white skin were faintly green. A dust of freckles across the bridge of her lo
ng straight nose stood up in speckles of cinnamon.
“It’s Miss Foy.”
“Charlotte...She’s been taken sick. She wasn’t in her room...” The girls wide darkly brown eyes raked his face. Her quivering lips firmed. “She’s—is she dead?”
The Scotsman nodded. Natalie didn’t seem surprised. There was a quality of numb acceptance in her stricken glance. It blew into a thousand pieces when McKee continued without further preamble, “Miss Foy was shot, some time last night, in the park across the street.”
The girl’s reaction was not unlike her father’s. “No, no, no. Oh, no.” She jumped up and backed away from him, her hands out. For a moment it looked as though they were going to be presented with two patients. But Natalie didn’t faint. In spite of her appearance of fragility she was young and strong. She was disciplined, too. Tears rolling down her face, she fought with shock, grief, incredulity, horror and fear. The fear was very evident. It came last. Watching it was like watching a tide sweep in. It showed itself in a sudden checking of her sobs, a caught breath, a glance at the Scotsman, stabbing, fearful, and sharply withdrawn.
Doctor Hendricks arrived then. He was a stout gray-haired middle-aged man with a pontifical presence. He had heard about Charlotte and was appalled. He had attended the family for years. He ordered Hugh Flavell taken upstairs and put to bed. When this had been done he had a word aside with McKee.
“I’m afraid you won’t be able to talk to him for awhile, Inspector. There’s no immediate danger, but excitement’s bad for him, with that pump of his. He’s liable to go off in one of these attacks.”
Hendricks clarified Charlotte’s position in the household. He said she was the sister of Hugh Flavell’s first wife, Elizabeth, who died when the two children of that marriage, Gerald and Eve, were small. Charlotte had lived with Hugh and taken care of them until Hugh married again, a few years later. His second wife, Virginia, was one of the Boston Coreys. But Hugh was unlucky in his marriages. Virginia died shortly after Natalie was born and Charlotte had returned and had taken up her interrupted task, with three, instead of two children to care for.
She was a woman of exemplary character. The pattern hadn’t followed the familiar shape. Charlotte Foy hadn’t favored her own nephew and niece to the exclusion of Virginia’s child; she had given Natalie the same or even more care and devotion than she had given—the other two.
McKee registered the doctor’s slight pause. Charlotte Foy’s death wasn’t robbery. There were twenty-seven dollars in her purse and a ring on her finger; another motive had to be looked for. “Flavell’s children by his first marriage resented Miss Foy’s attitude, Doctor?”
“No, no,” Hendricks said testily, “nothing of the kind. Charlotte was extremely fond of Gerald...”
It was then, under McKee’s continued questions, that Eve Flavell erupted. Eve hadn’t gotten along with her aunt. As soon as she was out of college she had removed herself bag and baggage from the house on the Square. Hendricks was a reluctant witness. He said that Charlotte was dominating in a quiet way, and Eve was naturally independent. There wasn’t anything more to it than that. He returned with relief to Charlotte Foy herself. In his opinion, Charlotte wasn’t a well woman and hadn’t very long to live.
She had been failing for more than a year. From her color and general symptoms he had suspected something grave, but she hadn’t consulted him professionally, she had gone to a specialist in Boston in the spring and later to a farm she owned in Vermont for change of air and scene, separating herself from Hugh Flavell and Natalie for the first time in more than twenty years. The change hadn’t done her any good. She was perceptibly worse when she returned to the Square shortly before Thanksgiving.
“Until the time she went away,” the physician said, “she was completely wrapped up in Natalie and, to a lesser degree, in Hugh Flavell. After her return, she seemed to have lost interest in everyone and everything. Where she had been cheerful and brisk and competent before, she was morose and brooding. She didn’t approve of Natalie’s engagement to Bruce Cunningham, and showed it plainly, and that in turn made Natalie miserable. She’s a sensitive high-strung girl...”
“With plenty of money who likes her own way,” the Scotsman interjected.
Hendricks smiled. “Don’t we all, Inspector?—And as far as money is concerned, I’ve appealed to her plenty of times for help with some of my poorer patients and never in vain. No, Natalie wasn’t at fault, or Hugh Flavell either, for that matter; it was Charlotte. She was a different woman when she came back from Vermont and not a happy person to be with. Naturally, living close to her had a depressing effect on the entire household. I felt it myself, on several occasions, when I was there....So did others. Her bitterness toward—toward people she had never been fond of was simply the result, in my opinion, of a growing lack of control produced in turn by her physical condition.”
Hendricks frowned and was troubled. He had something on his mind he didn’t produce. All in good time, talk to him later, when they knew more, McKee decided. After the doctor was gone, McKee spoke to the Medical Examiner’s office and asked for a thorough examination of Charlotte Foy’s general physical condition prior to death, and then questioned Natalie and the three servants. They were routine questions designed to establish the immediate past of a woman who had no future, on earth.
Charlotte Foy had been shot and killed before 11 p.m. the previous night—but how long before? An analysis of the contents of the stomach matched with the hour when food was last eaten would give them an approximation, when the autopsy was completed. The Scotsman didn’t want to wait for that. The res gestae of the crime put uneasiness into him; a dark and foggy night, a shot, and the swift and quiet flitting of the perpetrator—more than ten hours had elapsed since Charlotte Foy had been killed and that was plenty, for escape, for concealment of the gun and the smoothing of all incriminating traces.
No one knew at what time Charlotte Foy left the house the night before. Natalie and the upstairs girl, Annette Lebrun, had last seen her when she went to her room at ten minutes of seven. By seven the two maids were on their way to a neighboring movie house. Hugh Flavell was presumably in his study on the third floor, and the cook was in the basement, except for that moment in the hall at seven-thirty when Bruce Cunningham called for Natalie. The girl said she didn’t get home until almost twelve, too late to stop and talk to her aunt.
McKee was keenly interested in Charlotte’s trip to Boston. An incompleted journey was always of interest in a murder case. If the journey was significant, if, for instance Charlotte had been prevented from making it, with a bullet, knowledge of her plans in advance would have been a necessity to the perpetrator.
Natalie said wearily that a Boston call had come through for Charlotte late the previous afternoon, at a little after five. “Aunt told us then that she had to go, today, and wouldn’t be here for Eve’s wedding.”
“Us” comprised herself, her father, her brother Gerald, Gerald’s wife, Alicia, Eve, and Jim Holland, the man to whom Eve had just become engaged. McKee got the story of Eve’s visit the day before and its purpose, savored its rarity. He asked exploringly whether there was anyone with whom Miss Foy had quarreled, anyone with whom she was on bad terms and Natalie said, “No, oh, no,” with too much emphasis. He showed her the slip of paper scribbled with the word “Spencer” and a list of numbers that he had taken from the dead woman’s purse.
Spencer was Spencer Gorham, Natalie’s lawyer and one of the executors of her mother’s estate; he had also done some legal business for Charlotte. Savoy 4-3016 was his telephone number.
McKee asked if she knew the purpose of Charlotte’s trip and Natalie said no, flatly. He didn’t believe her. She kept looking at him haughtily from under drooping eyelids. She evidently wasn’t used to being questioned by anyone and she resented interrogation with the restraint of a young princess, but her angry displeasure was thinly concealed. He had a fantastic notion that she was going to reach for her check bo
ok in a moment and try to buy him off. She didn’t—but she was anxious to get away from him, that was clear; give her her head.
“I won’t keep you any longer just now, Miss Flavell. I’d like to see Miss Foy’s room, if I may?”
The girl jumped up out of the chair in which she had been unable to sit still with an impetuous movement. Her velvet skirts swirled. “Why do you want to see Aunt’s room?” she demanded icily. “She wasn’t killed here.”
A shiver went through her and her brown gaze blurred and she smiled at him contritely with a sudden change of mood, her lashes wet.
“I’m sorry, Inspector. I’m afraid I’m not myself...Come. I’ll show you...
She took him to the door of a bedroom on the floor above, left him and went along to her own room on the same floor at the front of the house. As soon as her door closed, McKee went to it. Inside the room a dial clicked. Natalie was at the telephone. It wasn’t her fiancé, Bruce Cunningham, or her half-brother Gerald she called first; it was her half-sister, Eve. Her voice was low but audible.
“Eve,” she said around a dry sob. “Eve, Charlotte’s dead....I don’t know how to tell you...It’s frightful. She was shot...last night, in the park. The police are here...” At the other end of the wire Eve Flavell asked questions, to which Natalie said yes and no a couple of times, then, “After you left here last night, after you went back to the shop, you were with Jim, weren’t you?”
The answer was evidently in the affirmative because Natalie said, “Oh, thank God...” McKee lost the rest. The thud of the knocker filled the lower hall. The maid opened the door and a woman came in. It was Alicia Flavell, Gerald’s wife. Mrs. Flavell asked where Natalie was; the girl told her, and she started up the stairs. McKee stepped backward into the gloom of a landing that led to the floor above.