The Dead Can Tell

by Helen Reilly

  “Incidentally we got hold of Mrs. Thompson yesterday. As we had previously ascertained, she isn’t really Mrs. Thompson. It doesn’t matter now. Margot St. Vrain paid the woman a sum of money to disappear so that no embarrassing questions would be asked. Mrs. Thompson took a plane to Miami and cabled Thompson from there to keep his mouth shut and join her.”

  “What,” Pat demanded, “has become of that ass Firth?”

  Cristie helped herself to salad. “Euen isn’t actually such an ass,” she said. “He’s not a bad fellow underneath that manner. He’s not too bright but he does love Margot. He was worried about her all the time, that’s why he kept trailing people around, why he went over to the point Halloween. He was trying to find out what was wrong. The funny part of it was Margot needn’t have worried. It’s going to work out all right. She’s going to get a divorce, she’s talked it out with Euen’s father and mother and they’ve been lambs.”

  Steven took a sip of champagne and shook his head. His face clouded over. He said, “I don’t like to talk about it at a time like this, but I can’t help thinking of it, Inspector, and it bothers me. Why did Mary Dodd take such an awful chance at the end, why did she risk a telephone call to me when I was actually down there in the Commissioner’s office at Headquarters?”

  McKee said, “I can answer that because I put the question to her myself. Up to the very last she wanted to maintain the fiction that your wife was still alive. According to her reckoning, all we had were two unidentifiable bodies. She didn’t know,” he hesitated, “about the Hoffman test, about what Fernandez had managed to do. She wanted to fasten her existence firmly on you until her end was accomplished. She intended to leave something of Sara’s in the St. Vrain apartment just as she had left the compact on the point. She also intended, as you know, to kill Miss Lansing.”

  There was a small cold pause. “It was a desperate thing to do,” the Scotsman continued, “but Miss Dodd knew she had to try to drive her point home.

  Her state of mind at that point was pretty edgy. If Miss Lansing’s death looked like accident, well and good. If not, she hoped your former wife would be marked as the criminal. From that day on she would have disappeared out of existence. Miss Dodd broke the record; we found the remains of it in the fireplace in the penthouse.

  “You never suspected Sara’s voice was a record, Steve?” Pat asked.

  Steven said no. It had sounded so like her, not merely her voice, which she kept low and covered after the first few words, but the things she said. She had warned him to keep away from Cristie, not to communicate with her in any way. His fear had paralyzed his wits, obscured his judgment. He simply didn’t dare to take the slightest chance. That was what had made him attempt that frightful experiment off Kokino—to get, out of the whole terrible puzzle, some certain knowledge. He had no idea of who or what had gone into the water. Sara might have had an accomplice. He had to try and find out...

  Cristie’s fingers touched his sleeve. His hand covered hers.

  An airline attendant opened the door, thrust in his head. He said, “Ship will be ready in a few minutes,” and withdrew.

  Cristie rose, gathered her purse and gloves. Steven rose with her and they walked off in opposite directions to dressing rooms. Pat looked at the Scotsman. He said, “Well, you certainly got the angles on this case, McKee, but there are still a couple of them I haven’t caught up with. I know that Cliff and Kit crossed each other up about being in the living room up there in the Hazard farmhouse when they were really roaming around outside watching each other. But here’s what I don’t get. What about that fellow Loomis, Eva Prentice’s boy friend? What made Cristie think that Steven took the gun out of the pocket of Sara’s fur cape on the night of Margot’s party—and what was it that Cristie was about to spill in my office just before she was attacked?”

  McKee balanced a salted almond on his thumb nail. “Loomis is out of the picture. He was never in it. We finally located him. The last time he saw Eva Prentice was late on the night that Sara Hazard was killed. The maid met him in that room in Twenty-first Street. They had a few hours together and then Loomis lit out.

  “As far as the gun and Sara Hazard are concerned, Sara took it from the Dodd house originally because she was playing a dangerous game and wanted to be armed and ready. She was shifting the gun about a lot on the evening of Margot’s party. I’ve talked to a number of people. She had it in her purse when she arrived. She didn’t want to lug it around. She put it into her fur cape pocket later, after her visit to Cliff. When the party began to thin, she put it back in her purse. I suppose she didn’t want whoever helped her on with her cape to know she was toting a weapon.

  “As for Cristie Lansing’s memory. As a matter of fact she didn’t remember anything at all. What actually happened was that seated in your office and while she was thinking of something else she caught a glimpse of Mary Dodd in an attitude she didn’t recognize and couldn’t connect up. Nevertheless that subconscious fragment made her quite sure that Steven was not the person who had jumped off the running board of the car as Sara went down the hill to her death in the East River. Anything else you’d like to know?”

  Pat nodded. He said: “Yes, I want to know whether you knew when you left Headquarters that day who the killer was?”

  The Scotsman said, “I’m not proud of my knowledge. It gave that girl in there,” he waved toward the dressing room, “a pretty risky time. Yes, I knew. Once Mary Dodd got Headquarters and Steven Hazard, she thought she was safe. She didn’t expect anyone to cut in. I did. I took the receiver from Hazard. Just before she hung up I heard a sound.”

  He paused. Steven and Cristie were coming toward him.

  “Remember your little horses,” he said to the girl, “your little horses and not twinkle, twinkle, but tinkle, tinkle. Mary Dodd has an antique silver bracelet with little primitives, real primitives, hanging from it. She wears the bracelet almost constantly. She wore it on the night she entered Margot St. Vrain’s apartment and removed the record. Had a pony, did you, when you were a kid?”

  Cristie gave him a surprised “Yes.” The Scotsman went on, “The tinkle reminded you of harness. It was really a three-cornered sound. I heard it first as a soft chime the day she told me about the gun. You heard it next as your little horses. I heard it over the telephone in Headquarters as a combination of the two. The result added up to murder. As soon as the tail on her reported that she was at the penthouse, I knew, and I realized where we were.”

  Pat Somers said, “And a damn good thing too,” and emptied the remainder of the bottle into the glasses for a final toast. All four drank it standing.

  Outside on the edge of the field Pat and McKee kissed the bride. Steven and Cristie went one way, Pat and the Scotsman waited. The two men stood side by side on the esplanade looking down. Mr. and Mrs. Steven Hazard mounted the incline. They paused at the top, waved and then disappeared.

  The door of the ship closed. The idling motors rose to a higher note. The plane moved. It taxied to the head of the runway, stood poised for a few moments, roared down the runway and bounced once or twice. Then it pulled itself into the air, began to mount and swung west into the setting sun.

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