Episode of the Wandering Knife

by Rinehart, Mary Roberts;

  XVI

  There was a rather prolonged silence after that. The King man lit a cigarette and smiled at me. His broken tooth had not been repaired.

  The Inspector picked up the knife from his desk.

  “There has been a determined effort all along to pin his wife’s death on Mr. Shepard,” he said. “This knife was left where we would be sure to find it, under the stair carpet. When Jim Barnes was killed, it was with Mr. Shepard’s automatic, and in his automobile. Even the opera hat which Armstrong got rid of after he had used it to deceive Barnes belonged to Mr. Shepard.

  “But to get back to the knife, which has wandered all through these tragedies. Yesterday here in this office Miss Judith Shepard told how her mother had taken it and where it had been hidden. She told us something else, however. She said that the tank in Mrs. Shepard’s bathroom had gone out of order while they were at the inquest, and that a policeman, pretending to be a plumber, had taken the knife away.

  “Now we use indirect methods of that sort now and then, but we had sent no plumber to Strathmore House. It looked like another effort to produce the knife and thus close our case against Lawrence Shepard. Here’s what Armstrong says.” He read:

  Question: Did you get the knife from Mrs. Shepard’s bathroom?

  Answer: Yes.

  Q. How did you know it was there?

  No answer.

  Q. Why did your wife take it back?

  A. She wasn’t standing for putting the blame on Mr. Shepard. She talked and talked, so I gave it to her. She left it at Strathmore House.

  Q. How did she get it back after that? She had it in her bag when she fell. You know that, don’t you?

  A. (After a pause) I don’t know how she got it again. I took the boy for a walk that night. When I came back, she was gone. I never saw her again until I found her in the hospital.

  He took off his glasses and looked at me.

  “Where had you put it, Miss Shepard?” he said. “Have you any idea how it got back to Mrs. Armstrong’s bag?”

  I shook my head.

  “I don’t see how she found it,” I said. “She came back to see me that night, but I was out. She may have seen it, of course. She was in the hall alone for some time.”

  “You had hidden it in the hall?”

  “It was in the fish pool,” I said, and felt myself flushing.

  He nodded without speaking, and picked up his papers again.

  “However Mrs. Armstrong got it,” he said, “she had it in her bag Saturday night when she was killed. The bag was found in the barge when she fell. It went to the hospital with her, and the knife was still in the bag when Armstrong, after waiting for her all night, read what had happened in the morning paper.

  “I don’t think he knew she had the knife. He probably opened the bag and found it there. He was in bad shape, anyhow. He either grew faint or pretended to. Certainly he got it while the nurse was out of the room getting some aromatic ammonia for him. Now let’s get back to our own side of the case.

  “By that time, as late as yesterday morning, we knew only certain things. We knew through Mr. Leland that Mrs. Shepard had borne a legitimate child, which had been adopted in Los Angeles by a family named Armstrong. We knew Donald Scott was the father of the child. And we knew that a woman who had refused to give her name in the hospital had died, apparently a suicide. There was nothing to connect her with the case, or to indicate that she had not tried to kill herself.

  “At the same time, Mr. Leland was convinced that Lawrence Shepard had killed his wife in a fit of jealousy after he had discovered her past. The murder of Barnes was still unsolved, and the identity of the woman who had jumped off the bridge was still unknown to us.

  “Then we got a break at last. A clerk at the hospital reported finding a slip with the words ‘Strathmore House, Linden Avenue bus’ in the woman’s bag, and also discovered that the knife, which was on the list of its contents, had disappeared.

  “We set out to locate Armstrong. He was using another name, but it was fairly easy, with the woman missing and a six-year-old boy around. We finally located them at a boarding-house in a respectable part of town, but Armstrong himself was missing. He never went back to the hospital.”

  He stopped and drew a long breath.

  “Last night Alma Spencer was stabbed,” he said. “That made four murders. It looked pretty bad. We didn’t locate Armstrong immediately, but we decided this morning to bring Mr. Scott here for questioning.” He looked at Don. “I’m sorry, Mr. Scott. I’ll have to go into this.”

  Don said nothing, and he went on.

  “We kept him here for some time. He admitted his marriage. He admitted that Isabel Shepard had appealed to him for money to help get their child back. But he denied everything else. And by that time we had picked up Armstrong himself. He was attempting to leave town.”

  He looked at Mother.

  “He had been identified as the plumber who repaired your bathroom. He knew the knife was there. Now that was a curious thing. Who knew it was in the tank in Mrs. Shepard’s bathroom? For someone did know, either an occupant of the house or someone who had free access to it. We had interrogated the servants at various times, without result.

  “However, to go back to Armstrong. This is what developed at his second interrogation. I need not say, of course, that the felt hat left at Strathmore House was his.” He read again.

  Question: What do you know about Alma Spencer’s death?

  Answer: Nothing.

  Q. Where were you last night?

  A. Just walking around the streets. My wife had been murdered. What do you think I’d do? Go to a movie?

  Q. You say your wife was murdered. What do you mean by that?

  A. She was. She’d never kill herself. She was crazy about the boy.

  Q. Who would kill her?

  No answer.

  Q. Why do you think she was killed?

  No answer.

  Q. All right. How do you think it happened?

  A. She wasn’t very big. Anybody could have lifted her over that railing and thrown me bag after her. The knife was in it. Or maybe she climbed up to throw the bag into the river, and somebody gave her a shove.

  Q. Who would do a thing like that?

  No answer.

  Q. How did she get the knife again?

  A. I’m not talking.

  Q. Why did you kill Barnes?

  A. I never killed him. I didn’t know he was going to be killed.

  Q. But you helped to dispose of the body?

  No answer.

  Q. Who did kill him, Armstrong? You’d better begin to talk.

  A. I’ve nothing to say. I didn’t shoot him. I don’t own a gun.

  Q. You were fond of your wife, weren’t you?

  A. She was the best ever.

  Q. Did she stab Isabel Shepard?

  A. Who? My wife? Good God, no.

  The Inspector looked up. “He broke down at that point,” he said. “It was some time before he was ready to talk again. And as I say we already had an idea of the truth through Captain King. I’ll ask the captain to tell you about that.”

  Tony looked surprised. He threw away his cigarette and walked over to the desk.

  “Well,” he said rather shyly for him. “I suppose you might say that my interest in this case started when I heard how Mr. Lawrence Shepard and his wife were married. There was no big wedding. There was no veil, no orchids, no white satin bride’s dress. I simply tucked it away in my mind and forgot it. Later on I remembered it and what it might mean: a second marriage, not a first.

  “I felt all along that a woman was the murderer, the way Mrs. Shepard was dressed when she was found—or wasn’t dressed. Only two or three women were apparently involved, except for the servants, so I had to consider Mrs. Shepard and her daughter. But the Mayor was certain Mrs. Shepard had been with him until he left. That left the daughter, Judith.”

  He glanced at me and looked away. I suppose my face must have bee
n something.

  “Somebody had done away with the knife, and it looked as though Mrs. Shepard had taken it from under the stair carpet. She sat there almost all night, and I had a bit of the carpet examined. I needn’t go into that. The knife had been left there.

  “Then, Friday night, I found Judith Shepard trying to bury the knife. I got a flashlight picture of her. But she’s a good runner. She escaped with the knife.”

  Larry half rose from his chair.

  “Are you trying to say that my sister had anything to do with my wife’s death?” he demanded.

  Tony shook his head.

  “She and your mother were trying to protect you, Mr. Shepard,” he said. “They had a fool idea that it would send you to the chair. It might have, at that.”

  He paused and looked in Mother’s direction. Mother was practically purple.

  “However, I had to let Judith Shepard out. There was no motive, and I checked with the men she ate and danced with that night. She apparently hadn’t left the house.

  “There was still no motive up to Saturday afternoon, when I saw Mr. Leland. The autopsy had revealed Isabel Shepard had borne a child, and Mr. Leland said the child was legitimate. That might have been a motive. She had inherited a trust fund and the boy was her legal heir, adopted or not. At least we began to work from there.

  “The Los Angeles police reported that the family who had adopted the child had left the city a month ago. We began looking for them. But one thing puzzled us. According to Mr. Leland they had not known the identity of the mother.

  “I got the name of the hospital where the child had been born. It was an institution for women only. It was possible that someone, either a patient or an attendant, had seen Mrs. Shepard—Mrs. Scott—there. I learned the date of the birth, and had the lists checked.

  “I got it a few minutes ago.” He looked at me Inspector. “Take it away, sir,” he said. “Your turn.”

  He sat down, looking rather smug, and lit a cigarette. Nobody had moved. The Inspector cleared his throat and picked up his papers again. Then he glanced at Mother.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Shepard,” he said. “This may be a shock to you. As Captain King has said, the list of the people in the hospital came through only a short time ago. We knew the facts before, but we recognized one of the names.” He put on his glasses. “I shall skip part of the second interrogation of John Armstrong. He was in bad shape, and much was purely evasion.” He began to read.

  Question: Why did you kill Alma Spencer?

  Answer: Who says I killed her?

  Q. I do. You took the knife from your wife’s bag at the hospital and stabbed her with it. Don’t deny it. We know it.

  “There was a long silence here,” said the Inspector, looking up. “He seemed to be thinking things over.”

  Question: Why did you kill her?

  Answer: All right, I did. I did it because she killed my wife.

  Q. What do you mean by that?

  A. She threw or pushed her off the bridge. She knew too much.

  Q. What did your wife know?

  A. She knew that Alma stabbed Mrs. Shepard and shot the policeman. She was afraid he would remember me. But I swear to God I didn’t know she was going to kill anybody that night.

  Q. How did the Spencer woman become involved in all this?

  A. She knew about the boy. She’d been in the hospital as a patient when he was born. She fixed it for us to adopt him.

  Q. You knew her at that time?

  A. Knew her? I’ll say I did. She was my stepsister.

  XVII

  Tony King drove me home after it was over. He stopped the car once and took me into a bar for some brandy. I guess I needed it. But he didn’t talk and I couldn’t. You can’t live for years with a woman and then learn without shock that she has killed three people. I was still confused, too. I had seen the Armstrong man only once. That was when he dropped the tray of cocktails the night of the party: a thin mild-looking man giving a good imitation of having had too much to drink, but not vicious. Never vicious.

  “What will they do to him?” I asked in a small voice.

  “Probably only manslaughter. She killed his wife, remember. He’ll get a parole eventually.”

  “I don’t seem to understand it all yet, Tony,” I said. “What about the knife? It kept moving all over the place.”

  “Listen, dimwit,” he said. “What about Alma Spencer? You can bet she was moving all over the place, too. She’d left it for the police to find. Mother spoiled that, so Alma looks about and finds it in the tank. She’s too smart to take it. She sends for her stepbrother to come as a plumber, and he nabs it. All clear.”

  I nodded.

  “But things don’t work out so well. Stepsister-in-law isn’t having any. She brings it back, all nicely tied up in paper. And what do you do? You have the bright idea of burying it again. Only somebody catches you out. You drop it in the pool, and Alma sees you from that Romeo and Juliet balcony of yours and fishes it out.

  “She’s getting pretty nervous, however. She doesn’t want the damned thing. That night she plays Juliet again and sees stepsister-in-law has come back. That looks like trouble, but you’re not there. Stepsister-in-law leaves and Alma meets her outside the house. She says: ‘Come along. You did a silly thing to bring it back, but let’s take a bus to the river and drop it in.’ Only she dumped stepsister-in-law in with it.”

  “You think it’s funny, don’t you?” I said resentfully. “It isn’t, you know. I saw them that night. I thought it was two of the maids.”

  He dropped his light touch immediately.

  “No,” he said soberly. “No, it isn’t funny, Judy. Only this is no place for you to have the screaming meemies, and that’s what you were headed for.”

  He told me a little more on the way home: that Alma had called her stepbrother toward morning after Isabel’s death and asked him to meet her near the Barnes house. She said they would have to talk to Barnes. The stepbrother didn’t want to go. He said Barnes had the fifty dollars, and he wasn’t likely to talk. Especially he wasn’t going to admit he’d been knocked out on duty by a man half his size. But she insisted, and he met her.

  She had Larry’s car. She told Barnes he was wanted back at the scene of the murder, and that she had been sent to get him. He said Barnes was scared. He didn’t recognize Armstrong, in the back of the car. But the last thing Armstrong expected was to have her shoot him in the head before they reached our gates. Armstrong was frantic, but he says she was still cool. They drove on out a few miles, and he helped her to carry Barnes to where he was found. They tried to clean the car, too. There was a creek nearby. But they didn’t make much of a job of it.

  “And you suspected me,” I said when he had finished.

  “Well, think about it,” he said. “What did I know about you? What do I know about any of you economic royalists? I’m only a soldier. When I found you were only a pampered child of the rich, who could run like blazes, I changed my mind.”

  “That was another dirty trick,” I said violently. “You hadn’t any business in civilian clothes, posing as a photographer. I don’t think it’s even allowed And if you think I’m impressed by all this playacting …”

  He grinned at me, broken tooth and all.

  “What was I to do? Go around in a uniform chasing down clues? I’d have been a pretty sight, wouldn’t I? Not that I’m not a pretty sight in it. You ought to see me. I’m something.”

  “It might help,” I admitted.

  He laughed out loud.

  “I’ll show you someday,” he boasted. “Incidentally, I didn’t try to fool you. Welles is my uncle. I’m staying with him until I go back.”

  “Back? To the war?”

  “What do you think?”

  And with that and the shock of the last few days and what not, I simply burst into tears and put my head on his shoulder. As I had on Don’s once, and on old Patrick’s. Only this didn’t go down as well. He gave a yelp and jerked aw
ay.

  “Hey!” he said. “Keep off, will you? I’ve had a dirty Nazi’s bullet in there. It’s no pillow.”

  Which of course didn’t help any. I sat there with the tears rolling down my face, thinking about Alma and his going back to war and what on earth had happened to Sarah and how soon I could get a war job until he finally stopped the car.

  “Look here, haven’t you got a handkerchief?” he said. “And stop wailing. You’d make a hell of a soldier’s wife.”

  “Who said anything about my being a soldier’s wife?” I said indignantly.

  “It was just an idea. Forget it,” he said, and let it go at that. I could have slapped him.

  He wouldn’t come in when we got home. He looked at the house and said it gave him the pip, as usual. And I was angry enough at last to tell him the truth.

  “Why don’t you read the papers now and then?” I inquired stiffly. “Mother offered this place to the Government as a convalescent home for soldiers six months ago. They’re taking it over next month.”

  He actually looked embarrassed, but he was still flippant.

  “My apologies,” he said. “Give her a great big kiss from me, won’t you?”

  “And I’m getting a war job,” I went on. “And Larry’s going into the Navy. We’re not such a bad lot after all, are we?”

  “You break my heart,” he said, and showed that broken tooth of his again. “First you get it and then you break it. Well, that’s life.”

  He drove off, leaving me standing there.

  I stopped inside the front door. Mother was there, and Sarah; and chasing the fish around in the pool was a six-year-old boy. He was wet, the floor was sopping, and in the background Patrick was beaming and holding a mop.

  Mother hardly noticed me. “The police sent for Sarah to look after him,” she said. “Isn’t he a pet?”

  Well, he was, but as he chose that moment to fall in the pool, to be hauled out dripping, I hadn’t much chance at him. I knew he was a godsend to Mother, however. Already Alma was water over the dam, so to speak.

  They bathed him and put him to bed, finally, quarreling bitterly over how many covers he needed and how high to raise the window. And that night after dinner Captain King arrived.