The Opening Door

by Helen Reilly

  Gorham ordered another scotch and communed with the pale amber liquid in his glass through half closed eyes.

  “Well, Charlotte’s reference to Natalie was pretty disturbing.” He quoted her. “‘I’m—frightened.’ What was she afraid of? Whatever it was, it wasn’t for herself. It had something to do with Natalie, with a threat to Natalie. Charlotte was crazy about the child, you know, her whole life was wrapped up in her. That’s why I came down. Hugh

  Flavell may be Natalie’s father, but I’m in charge of her affairs and I’ve known her since she was born.”

  He explained the girl’s circumstances. Natalie had been independently wealthy before the war, with the estate left to her by her mother. With the war, her holdings, a good many of them in munitions and airplane parts, had quadrupled. From a comparatively modest eight or nine hundred thousand, she now had properties worth four or five millions. In spite of taxes and the law of diminishing returns, she was an exceedingly rich young woman. The entire estate had become her own on the tenth of the previous April, when she reached the age of twenty-one, but she had retained Gorham to take entire charge of her affairs.

  “What was the financial arrangement before last April, during her minority?” McKee wanted to know.

  Gorham said that, as Natalie’s duly appointed guardian, Hugh Flavell had been allowed an annual income of fifteen thousand a year for her care and upbringing. He said shrewdly, “There could have been nothing wrong there, Inspector. Accountants went over the records regularly. I’ll be fair. The Coreys, Jane and Alex, have always considered that Hugh Flavell feathered his own nest very well indeed. Of course he benefited by Natalie’s income—but you could scarcely expect him to separate himself from a daughter of whom he’s very fond and set up an establishment of his own. No, no, whatever Charlotte was going to tell me, I don’t believe it had anything to do with a misappropriation of funds. As I said, Natalie’s her own mistress and can do as she pleases. And even if such a state of affairs did exist, she would never prosecute.”

  The sherry was bitter on McKee’s tongue. “In case of Natalie’s death, to whom would her money go, Mr. Gorham?”

  Gorham coughed. He lit a cigar. “Entirely unethical, Inspector, entirely—but in view of—yes. In strict confidence, of course? Well, at my insistence, Natalie made a will on her twenty-first birthday. In the event of her death, half her estate would go to Bruce Cunningham, the fellow she’s engaged to, and the other half would go to Hugh Flavell for life with a handsome allowance for Charlotte. On Hugh’s and Charlotte’s death, their half would be divided equally between Gerald and Eve Flavell. But—good God, Inspector, you don’t think...”

  “Certainly not,” McKee assured him. “It’s just to get the picture clear. And now Charlotte Foy’s will, the will she spoke of changing when she reached Boston?”

  “One-third of her property goes to her niece, Eve Flavell, two-thirds to her nephew, Gerald. How much would it have come to? Not more, I should say than, oh, perhaps forty thousand all told. Originally Charlotte had nothing of her own, but she came into a nice little property through a distant cousin in, let me see, back in ‘35, I believe. The farm in Vermont where she spent the summer was part of it.”

  McKee looked fixedly at a row of bottles; Eve Flavell again. Charlotte had been going to change a will under which Eve stood to benefit to the tune of thirteen or fourteen thousand dollars. He threw the implication away. Whatever else might or might not induce Eve to commit murder, money would have nothing to do with it. He was sure of that. Her brother, Gerald Flavell, however, was another kettle of fish.

  He went on shuttling back and forth between the present and the past. What had Virginia, Natalie’s mother and Hugh Flavell’s second wife, died of?

  “Pneumonia following on influenza, following on childbirth,” Gorham said. “She had never been very strong. Like Natalie, she had been very slender and with a tendency toward anemia. She never really got on her feet after Natalie’s birth.”

  Could Gorham remember a Susan De Sange, a young widow? Gorham could and did. “Tall, handsome creature with fine eyes. Lived next door to the Flavell’s in Eastport, in the little cottage at the foot of the lawn. Yes, yes.”

  “Hadn’t there been some sort of”—the lawyer swirled ice and drained his glass—“unpleasantness between Charlotte Foy and Susan De Sange in those days?” There had been, he was positive of it. On a visit to the house in Eastport following Virginia’s death, he had been struck with Susan, Later he asked Charlotte about her and Charlotte had been grim. She had said that Susan De Sange was not the sort of woman she cared to have around the house, that she wasn’t a good influence for the children.

  “To tell you the truth,” Gorham said, his eyes twinkling, “I thought at the time that Mrs. De Sange was too attractive. Naturally, Charlotte wouldn’t have been pleased to have Hugh Flavell marry again. She was fond of the children and to have them, and perhaps Hugh, taken away from her by a younger, and a very handsome woman, wouldn’t have been pleasant.”

  The lawyer also knew Jim Holland, the man Eve was going to marry. Holland’s mother had come from Boston and was a friend of Virginia’s. Hugh Flavell had tutored the lad for his entrance exams to college. “I remember young Holland as a great gangling lump who was always getting under foot and turning a fiery scarlet. Good Lord, he’s not mixed up in this?”

  McKee shrugged. He pointed out that the only glimmer of a motive for Charlotte’s murder that they had so far been unable to unearth was inherent in what she had been going to disclose when she reached Boston. She had been shot down less than two hours after she announced her impending journey. The people who were in the house when she made the announcement were all automatically under suspicion. They would remain so until the rifle that had killed her was found and its ownership and possession, from 6:50 until 8 p.m. on the night before, were firmly established.

  At the thought that his call might have been instrumental in bringing about Charlotte’s death, Gorham was appalled. He offered to do anything he could to help. McKee accepted his offer. The Boston lawyer was familiar with Charlotte’s financial affairs. There was a chance that if he looked over the contents of her desk he might be able to tell them what the secret visitor to her room was after, and whether anything had been removed. Spencer Gorham agreed to the suggestion as soon as it was made. Kent closed his note book and the three men left the Commodore and drove downtown.

  McKee was glad to get back to the office. A feeling of pressure, of the need for haste, dogged him naggingly. Yet everything possible was being done. He was wrong. He had no sooner entered the long narrow inner office, when the joint and agreeing reports arrived, from the Medical Examiner’s office and from Dr. Steven Harris, in Bennington, Vermont.

  There was morphine in Charlotte Foy’s body. It had been prescribed by Dr. Harris. Each pill in the missing box contained 0.15 grams. The dosage was heavy. Anything less would have done Charlotte Foy no good, Harris said; the poor lady had acquired a high tolerance.

  Fernandez, the Chief Medical Examiner and McKee’s friend, said, “A couple of those pills would put a normal man or woman out of the running—for good, Christopher. The lethal dose is from 0.2 to 0.5 grams. The effect? Diminishing body temperature, coma, and death due to respiratory paralysis. If you know anyone who’s liable to get any of them, you’d better go to work fast.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  McKee did go to work, he used the telephone, talked to a half dozen different men and raced through reports. Detectives searching the Flavell house on the west side of Henderson Square, Alicia and Gerald’s apartment on the east, Jim Holland’s rooms and Bruce Cunningham’s temporary domicile for the rifle that had killed Charlotte Foy, had been ordered to look for the blue pasteboard box that had contained the morphine. In each instance the results were negative. The same thing went for Eve Flavell’s shop, which had been gone over earlier in the day.

  What now had to be done, the Scotsman decided grimly, was to search t
hese people individually. It wasn’t a pleasant job, the effects of not doing so might be still more unpleasant—the morphine had not been removed for fun.

  According to the latest bulletin, the Flavell family, accompanied by Bruce Cunningham, Susan De Sange and Jim Holland, were dining at the Cedars, a small and very ultra restaurant on East 52nd Street. Eve Flavell wasn’t with them. At least she hadn’t gone with them when they left at a little after six-thirty.

  McKee rang Eve’s number. There was no response. He called the local precinct and told them to send a man around to see whether the girl was there and deliberately not answering the phone for any reason, or whether she was out. If she was out the detective was to wait until she got home and call back immediately.

  He blamed himself furiously afterwards for not going to the shop then and there, at once, in person—but, as Commissioner Carey pointed out, he had no reason to suspect what had happened. Philip Graham had successfully thrown the homicide detectives off the track in the search of Number 2 Eldon Place, during the late afternoon. His hocus-pocus about the latch had sounded convincing. He had explained that it was a trick arrangement that had been installed by a former woman tenant following a murder in an adjoining street, and that it was continually giving trouble. He had finally gone up the fire escape from the apartment below and had opened the door from the inside, all of which had given Eve Flavell plenty of time in which to get away.

  As far as the men watching the house from the interior of the plumbing van parked at the curb went, they didn’t know Eve Flavell by sight, and although her entrance had been noted, they had supposed her to be visiting one of the tenants. If she had come out with her burden she would have been spotted and stopped. She didn’t come out.

  Nevertheless, in spite of his lack of information, when McKee left the office on the third floor of the 10th Precinct at a few minutes before eight that night, he was uneasy and on edge. He didn’t at all care for the way the case was going. More than ten hours had elapsed since Charlotte Foy had been found shot to death inside the high railings of a small private park in the middle of the city, and they had made remarkably little progress. It was true that they had uncovered a number of leads, but these would take time to follow, and with the box of morphine tablets abroad, and the lethal gun, time was the one commodity they couldn’t afford—not if a second tragedy, following hard on the heels of the first, was to be prevented. Murder bred murder as naturally as a guppy spawned eggs. No one knew that better than the Scotsman. He drove straight to the Cedars, accompanied by detectives Wise, Visniski, Peterson and Gish, and by two policewomen. They waited within call, in the shadow of the two tall trees that gave the place its name. McKee went inside.

  The Cedars was one of those elegantly quiet places that made its innings on the staggering check. McKee had been there before, in dinner clothes and with an innocuous front, on several unostentatious missions. The head waiter hurried into the small square hall shedding greetings and smiles. The Flavells? But oui, Monsieur, certainment...McKee said, “Where,” and was told. He waved aside an escort and paused in the doorway of the long stately inner room dim in candlelight and looked over men and women’s heads and the sparkle of jewels, at the people he had come in search of. The Flavells were at a table to the left of the fireplace at the far end.

  It was not a festive occasion for them. Of the lot Hugh Flavell was the only one who seemed moderately cheerful. Natalie, her pale head hatless above a black gown, sustained herself with obvious effort. She was between Bruce Cunningham and her brother Gerald. Jim Holland was next to Alicia, who shared Hugh Flavell with Susan De Sange, on his other side. Flowers, candles in antique silver holders, the soft clash of knives and forks, the discreet hum of voices; it was the first time McKee had seen Gerald Flavell and he studied Charlotte’s nephew curiously.

  Gerald Flavell had his father’s features; he had Eve’s eyes with the extravagant dark lashes. He was strikingly handsome and—a little soft? A man who paid his way with charm, “that’s the only thing I’ve plenty of, baby”? It was a quality that could be a curse to its possessor, as well as to the recipients. Gerald was younger than Alicia by perhaps four or five years. She adored him. Bruce Cunningham was moody and abstracted. Jim Holland was bored.

  McKee’s gaze moved, and his brows rose. A man at a neighboring table was watching the Flavells. The man was alone. He was short, middle-aged and thickset, with powerful shoulders and a clever dissipated face. The Scotsman detached himself from the doorway and started forward.

  The members of the Flavell party were not, with the possible exception of Jim Holland and Natalie, glad to see him. He was direct. The corner of the long narrow room was secluded—except for the man at the next table. McKee kept him within his field of vision while he told them, in a modulated voice, of the disappearance of Charlotte Foy’s pills, pills that had contained morphine.

  “For your own sakes,” he concluded quietly, “I’m sure you’ll agree to the personal search that has been suggested...”

  The police were invariably handicapped in making such a proposal. The disentanglement of an endless amount of red tape would have been necessary before it could have been legally enforced. On the other hand, a point-blank refusal would in itself be suspicious. They all agreed, with various expressions of alarm, surprise, wonder and indignation. When would the search take place? At their convenience, as soon as they had finished dinner. McKee said he had matrons and detectives waiting.

  Dessert had been served but appetites were destroyed. Natalie stared at McKee, flushing and paling. She knew something, he decided, not necessarily about the morphine but something she hadn’t told. Susan De Sange was openly shaken. Chairs were pushed back, cordials lowered, napkins flung down. The check was paid by Hugh Flavell, out of Natalie’s black suede bag, at her insistence. “There are two fifties there, Papa.”

  Hugh Flavell looked at the Scotsman icily, a spot of color high on each cheek. He was a man in a fever, holding himself in check in the face of an illegal, impertinent and altogether outrageous intrusion on their private lives. “I suggest, Inspector, that we return to the Square...”

  McKee shook his head. “It will be simpler and easier if the search is made here, Mr. Flavell. I can assure you that you will be treated with courtesy—and I’d like you to realize that this is as much for your own protection as for anything else.” He didn’t add that there were too many ways of getting rid of a small blue pasteboard box in a drive of more than two miles through blacked-out, wartime streets.

  They rose in a body. McKee moved aside to let them pass, and stared. Mrs. De Sange knew the man at the next table who had been watching the one in the corner. She was startled, and for the fraction of a second, angry and frightened at seeing him there; her back had been toward him while she was seated. She nodded stiffly in his general direction and moved on with Hugh Flavell, the red wing in her hat making a bright flash in the gloom. The others, Cunningham with Natalie, Jim Holland with Alicia, and Gerald Flavell lighting a cigarette and bringing up the rear, obscured McKee’s view of the stocky man with the heavy shoulders and the keen, knowing eyes. It was a pity, in the light of ensuing developments. The other diners couldn’t give him any information later. They hadn’t even noticed what was taking place; the whole scene had been so quietly concluded.

  There were detectives waiting to receive the party in the hall. As Gerald Flavell passed him McKee turned and surveyed the luxurious disorder of the abandoned table. A cherry tart, ice cream in silver goblets, a glass of chartreuse, another of brandy, coffee cups; there was nothing informative. He let a glove fall to the floor, stooped to retrieve it, glanced at the taupe carpet under the folds of damask and remained in a motionless crouch.

  There was no longer any need to search the Flavells or Mrs. De Sange or Bruce Cunningham or Jim Holland, the man Eve Flavell was going to marry. The blue pasteboard box was lying under the table, almost in the exact center of the loose grouping of pushed back chairs.

&
nbsp; McKee reached. He picked up the box with his glove. He opened it. It was half full of the deadly little pills. It had been dropped or thrown to the floor by some member of the Flavell party, because the thief who had removed it from Charlotte Foy’s bath cabinet knew it would be found in his or her possession in the course of a search and because...the purpose for which it had been taken had already been...

  The shadowy candlelit room faded out. McKee was through it and in the hall. There was no sign of the Flavells or their guests. Peterson and Wise were standing at the foot of the stairs. The Scotsman threw them orders in passing, including a summons for Medical Examiner Fernandez. The air beyond the door was cold. A few snow flakes twisted down. He crossed the pavement, jumped into the waiting Cadillac, gave the address of Eve Flavells shop and said carefully, his voice flat, expressionless, “I’ve got to get there in a hurry. Step on it, will you, Edwards?”

  Edwards stepped. The journey that would ordinarily have taken a full quarter of an hour consumed only a few minutes. The street outside the little building between the electrical supply house on one side and the garage on the other was dark and silent when the Cadillac slowed around the corner and slammed to a stop. McKee was out of it while it was still in motion. The precinct man detached himself from shadows. “Miss Flavell ain’t here, Inspector. I knocked and...”

  The Scotsman brushed him aside. He rapped and waited, rapped again and didn’t wait. He took out his pistol and smashed a hole in the plate-glass window. Edwards helped make the hole larger. McKee went through it, paused only to unlock the door and raced toward the back of the shop.

  The lights were all on. Eve Flavell was lying in front of the burnt-out fire, half on and half off the armchair beside the desk. She had fallen sideways. Her head hung down. Her face was blue, engorged. Her breathing was heavy, monotonous, mechanical. It filled the little room, bounced back from the walls. The long shining barrel, the chestnut stock of a rifle, lay stretched out on the rug at her feet.