The Cases of Lieutenant Timothy Trant (Lost Classics)

by Q. Patrick

  The voices inside her were goading. Francis had no reason for lying. This was the truth at last. She had hopelessly wronged Angelica. Generous, loyal Angelica had been ready to slander herself in a desperate attempt to save Kate from her folly.

  And Martin? She shivered. Perhaps, however bitter, this was a relief. To know.

  She faltered: “Angelica was sure?”

  “Not at first. She knew something was wrong, a hint there, a hint here. She gradually pieced it together. But apparently this afternoon she was sure. She called me from the office. She said she’d found some old notes of Mr. Downs that clinched the whole thing. But it was too late to do anything about the matter. It had been sent.”

  He dropped awkwardly to the floor at her side. He, who had lost everything himself, was trying to comfort her!

  “This evening when you came to the apartment I should have told you the letter was just a wild hoax of Angelica’s, but I thought it was better to leave it for her to explain. That was my mistake.”

  That was why Angelica had seemed keyed-up, insincere. She had been gathering her courage to tell Kate the truth about Martin.

  “I can see how you felt, Kate.” Francis’ quiet voice was going on. “Guess in a way we’re alike. We’re both pretty easy to hurt, but we can both go kind of haywire when we feel we’ve been double-crossed. You read the letter. You thought Angelica had been accepting everything from you all these years and was carrying on with your fiancé behind your back. If I’d been you I’d have gone there this afternoon hating her too. And I might have hated her so much that—”

  * * *

  So he too thought she had killed Angelica. Trant … Toby … Martin … Francis. She cried: “But I didn’t kill her!”

  His worn face, close to hers, was gentle, not hostile. “Don’t worry. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. I don’t blame you, Kate. It was a terrible misunderstanding, but I don’t blame you. The damage is done. Hating you isn’t going to bring Angelica back.”

  It was horrible to be forgiven for something she hadn’t done.

  “But, Francis—”

  “I’m not going to tell the police any of this, Kate. They’ve got you and me to pick from. They know I’m cracked-up. Not responsible. They’ll probably settle for me.”

  “No, no.”

  “It’s okay.” A self-mocking smile played around his mouth. “If they arrest me, that suits me fine.”

  She said desperately: “Francis, you can’t do this. I didn’t kill her. You didn’t. There must be someone else.”

  “You don’t have to worry.” His face was blanched and grimly set now. “Think I have any interest in living without Angelica and—” he indicated his paralyzed arm—”with this?”

  He got up. He stood a moment, slight, almost emaciated, watching her with a curious tenderness.

  “We neither of us got the breaks, did we? Try to forget Martin. And don’t worry about me. I’m no hero. I’m just lazy. Let the police take care of it. Save myself the trouble of turning on the gas in the oven.”

  He moved to the door. “Try to get some sleep.” He was gone.

  She got up, looking confusedly at the closed door. He thought she had killed his wife, and yet he was ready to forgive her and take the blame. She ought to run after him and make him believe her, make him see it was mad to behave that way. But she shrank from the emotional effort. A great, listlessness came over her. She moved to the bed and dropped down on it.

  Her body and her bruised spirit both longed for the anodyne of sleep. But her mind was cruelly awake. Poor neurotic Francis, with his muddled heroics, thought she was guilty. That meant he wasn’t guilty himself. Someone else must have killed Angelica.

  How someone else could have done so was a complete mystery. It seemed impossible. But that didn’t matter at the moment. Because she knew one thing for certain now.

  The person who killed Angelica was Martin.

  There was only this bleak clarity of mind. She could trace every step Angelica had taken. That afternoon, after weeks of searching, she had found definite proof of old Mr. Downs’ dishonesty. It had been too late to recall the letter. So she had telephoned Kate. If Kate had been there, she would have asked her to come over to the apartment.

  She had arranged for Martin to be there, too, and had tried to get Francis out of the way by sending him on the errand for the shoes. Angelica, who had always been scrupulously fair, had planned to explain everything to Kate in front of Martin so that he would have a chance to defend himself.

  But before she could expose Martin, she had drunk a poisoned cocktail and died.

  The light from the crystal chandelier, suspended above Kate, seemed unendurably bright. She turned on her side to evade its glare. Her mind probed on. Francis said that Angelica had found the truth in some old notes of Mr. Downs. Mr. Downs had always scribbled his notes in shorthand. There had been a shorthand pad in Angela’s brief case. It had tumbled out into the mess of spilled drinks and broken glass when she fell.

  Kates’ pulse throbbed. Surely, that pad must have been Angelica’s evidence against Martin and his father.

  But Lieutenant Trant had said the notes on the pad had been nothing more than routine business letters dated a month ago. Mr. Downs had been dead nearly three months. The trail seemed to have come to an end.

  But suddenly two half-forgotten memories came back. When Angelica had toppled off the couch, Kate’s eye had been caught by the shorthand pad lying in the spilled drinks. She had numbly watched the frontpage curl and stain as the Manhattans seeped into it.

  But later, after the police had arrived, she had steadied herself when she felt dizzy by concentrating her gaze once again on the shorthand pad. That time its front page had gleamed white, unstained.

  A stained front page—an unstained front page. Paper cannot become unstained.

  The shorthand pad by the body must have been changed before the arrival of the police!

  * * *

  Shaky from concentration, Kate sat up. A stack of old shorthand pads had been sticking untidily up from the open drawer of Angelica’s desk. Martin must have removed the stained pad and substituted one from the drawer. Her thoughts sped on. Trant had searched all three of them. Martin, then, had had no chance to smuggle the pad out of the apartment. He must have hidden it there. And the obvious place to have hidden it was in the drawer with the other pads.

  If Lieutenant Trant had found it, he would surely have confronted them with it by now. That meant the pad would still be there—now, at this moment. Even if they didn’t know how Martin had managed to poison the drink, the pad itself might be enough evidence against him.

  It should have been so easy to hate Martin now. She should be exulting at the thought that she could lift the telephone at her side and, by calling Lieutenant Trant, destroy him. But she was not exultant. Hatred was there, yes, a bitter, corroding anger, hurt pride and horror, but against all reason her love would not be completely exorcised. She felt ashamed and yet strangely exhilarated, too, as if there was some perverse pleasure in loving her enemy.

  A nagging restlessness took possession of her. She started to pace up and down the room.

  What should she do? She knew she wasn’t going to call Lieutenant Trant. Not yet. Then what? Call Toby? That would be the same as calling Trant, for Toby’s one idea was to protect her. He would jump at the chance of shifting suspicion from her to Martin.

  The thought of the shorthand pad lying in the desk drawer began to obsess her. In a way that pad was Martin’s destiny. If only she had it!

  She thought suddenly: “I can get it.”

  Francis had keys. They would be in his trousers pocket. All she had to do was to get them when he was asleep and go to the apartment. Once there, the stained first page would make it easy to pick the right pad. She would have it then. Martin’s future would be in her hands, not in Trant’s. But wouldn’t one of Trant’s men be on guard at the apartment. For a moment that seemed an insuperable obs
tacle. Then she went quickly to the phone and dialed Angelica’s number. The ring droned uninterruptedly at the other end.

  She slid the receiver back on its stand. A policeman, either inside the apartment or outside the door, would surely have answered the phone.

  The way was clear then. There was nothing to do but wait for Francis to go to sleep. She lit a cigarette and sat down on the bed.

  The violent clash of emotions in her was like a fever. She found a book and made a pretense of reading. Exactly one hour after she had made her decision, she took off her shoes and crept out into the corridor.

  The door to Francis’ room was ajar. She could hear deep, steady breathing. She pushed at the door. It yielded without noise. Dim city light, seeping through the window, showed her Francis’ clothes tossed on a chair. She moved toward them. The breathing from the bed did not change its rhythm.

  She felt in the trousers’ pockets. The keys were there on a little metal ring. She pulled them out and stole from the room. It had been as easy as that.

  Back in her own room, she put her shoes on again and slipped into a coat.

  She turned back for a pair of gloves. Gloved hands leave no fingerprints.

  Kate walked the few blocks to the Mills’ apartment through the warm September night. None of Lieutenant Trant’s men had been visible outside her own apartment house and, as she reached the street where the Mills’ walkup was situated, there were no suspicious loiterers.

  She slipped into the outer hall. There was no doorman. She knew that. With her gloved hand, she fitted the key in the lock. Dance music throbbed from a night club down the street. It went with her up the stairs, festive and familiar, linking this visit with a hundred casual visits of the past. She reached the Mills’ floor. An empty milk bottle stood outside the other apartment. No one was there.

  She thought suddenly: “What if someone’s waiting inside in the darkness?”

  But the unanswered telephone calmed her. She opened the door with the second key and moved inside.

  In the hall, memories of Angelica gave the deep darkness an edge of horror. She groped her way into the living room, found a lamp and turned it on.

  The police had done little to change the room. The coffee table was still askew where Angelica, falling, had pushed it. A neat square had been cut out of the carpet where the drinks had been spilled. But the chrysanthemum petals were still scattered under the vase, the open phonograph record albums were still sprawled around. The desk drawer was still open, revealing the edges of the stuffed-in papers and shorthand pads.

  She hurried to the desk. She ran through the pads. Almost immediately she caught a glimpse of brown stain. She pulled the pad out, looking at the crinkled first page with its tell-tale smear of Manhattan cocktail.

  She had been right.

  She gazed at the scrawled pencil marks. She knew no shorthand. The pad was as indecipherable to her as hieroglyphics chipped on wax, but it was the key to Mr. Downs’ dishonesty and, almost certainly, to Angelica’s murder also. She felt suddenly weak. She moved to a chair and sat down with the pad clasped on her lap. The need for action had kept her feelings in check, but now anger broke out in her.

  She didn’t care about the money that had been stolen from her. There would always be plenty of that. She was thinking of old Mr. Downs, cold, sanctimonious, deceiving her. She was thinking of Martin with his solid man’s body, his blond hair, knowing the persuasive power of his masculinity, employing every trick of it to make her love him. Ruthless, ready to kill Angelica once she menaced his plans. And not only that. Standing by calmly, with specious protestations of sympathy, while Lieutenant Trant pinned the murder on Kate.

  Her hatred burned and with it a curious sense of exhilaration. Wherever he was now, Martin would be sweating in fear of this little block of paper which he had not been able to retrieve. And she had it. It was here in her hands waiting for her to do what she decided to do with it.

  Another thought came. The shorthand pad was infinitely more important to Martin than to her. He had been with her when Lieutenant Trant had called, and he would know the police hadn’t found it yet. But he would realize the terrific danger of letting it stay here where it might be discovered any minute.

  He had no key. It would be harder for him to get in than it had been for her.

  But surely, to save his own skin, he would have to make some attempt to get it back tonight.

  The silence seemed ominous now, as if the room were waiting. She thought with a queer thrill of power, “If I stayed, I might catch him searching the drawer.”

  However, he had killed Angelica, that would prove his guilt.

  Anger kept her from being afraid of what he might do when they met face to face. But the thought of Lieutenant Trant cooled her. She was his chief suspect. Would he accept her unsupported word? Then get a witness. Get Toby.

  She almost ran to the phone. Toby was spending the night at his club, which was just around the corner. She dialed.

  In a moment she heard his voice, sleepy, confused. “Hello.”

  “Toby. This is me, Kate. I’m at Angelica’s.” A shocked: “Where?”

  “Angelica’s. I can’t explain. But come at once. It’s terribly important. Come.”

  “But, Kate—”

  “Come, Toby. Ring the buzzer downstairs four times.

  It’s all right. There’s no policeman.”

  She received an anxious, clucked promise and put down the phone. She moved to the lamp and turned it out. Darkness dropped on her. She waited in mounting tension.

  She tried not to think of Martin, as if thinking might draw him closer, make him arrive before Toby did. Time seemed like the darkness, without form or meaning. She could feel Martin down in the street, feel him bending over the lock of the downstairs door, coming up the stairs.

  Why had she done this? What could she do alone in the dark with a murderer?

  Why didn’t Toby come?

  * * *

  The buzzer gave four soft rings. Relief slid through her. She stumbled out into the hall and felt for the familiar button that released the downstairs door. Soon she heard footsteps, padding up the stairs. She opened the door. Toby was hurrying toward her, his plump cheeks red from exertion and anxiety. She drew him into the apartment and closed the door. She put her arms around him, reveling in his presence and the safety he brought with him.

  “Oh, Toby, darling, you’ve come!”

  “Kate, are you out of your mind? Being here? When the police—”

  He was scolding her. That was soothing, too. She slipped her hand through his arm and began to draw him across the dark living room toward the bedroom where they would be better hidden if Martin came.

  Outside the open bedroom window, the iron skeleton of the fire-escape gleamed dimly in the light from the street. She made Toby, still fussing, sit down on the bed with her.

  She could distinguish his profile with the pince-nez on their invisible black ribbon gleaming palely.

  Words came tumbling out of her. While he listened to the whole story of the evening, his testy interruptions grew less frequent, then stopped altogether.

  She could feel the gradual change in him. He was alert now, as keyed-up as she.

  “So he’ll come,” she concluded. “He’ll have to come here tonight.”

  Toby said quietly:

  “You seem very sure that Martin is a murderer.”

  “He has to be.”

  ‘’If you believe Francis Mills, yes. But I knew nothing of his father stealing from the estate or of Martin’s—”

  “But it’s got to be true. It explains Angelica’s letter. And—and Martin did change the shorthand pads, didn’t he?”

  “It would seem so.”

  “Then?”

  “Kate, you haven’t read what’s on that pad? How do you know it implicates Martin?”

  “But Francis said—”

  “Why are you so ready to believe Francis against Martin?”

  His
hands were on her arms. His voice was still chiding but gentle. “My poor Kate. One moment swooning for love of Martin. The next moment swallowing any slanderous gossip about him, accusing him of murder, setting theatrical plots to catch him red-handed in dark apartments, getting me out of bed to act as a witness. Kate, sweetheart, wouldn’t it be wiser to think a little first? Whoever killed Angelica had to have had the opportunity to poison that drink. How could Martin have done that? Tell me.”

  She had taken it for granted that Toby would accept what she had accepted.

  Now that he was being lawyerlike, sifting, analyzing, she felt herself struggling beyond her depth. She said almost fiercely: “I don’t know, Toby. Of course I don’t.”

  “How could Martin possibly have done it? Think, Kate. If you can think, maybe I’ll believe you.”

  Doubt wrapped itself around her like a fog. Why did Toby have to raise hopes that Martin might still be innocent and that somehow Francis was guilty?

  She leaned toward him and pressed her face against his shoulder.

  “Oh, Toby, Toby!”

  He was all tenderness now, murmuring endearments, patting her hair. “Kate, my poor Kate. Listen to her sniveling. Here. Here’s Toby’s handkerchief.”

  He was pushing his handkerchief to her face. Like a little girl, she put her hand up to take it and blew her nose.

  As she did, a parallel memory came of Angelica blowing her nose on the cleaning tissue. And with it rushed a second memory. After Angelica had blown her nose, she had taken out an inhaler, had unscrewed its cap, sniffed it. Kate had completely forgotten that until this moment.

  The realization of what it implied struck her as violently as a physical blow.

  She cried: “Toby, I know!”

  “Know what?”

  “How Martin did it. Angelica wasn’t poisoned by the cocktail. It was the inhaler.” ‘

  “Inhaler?”

  “Before she picked up the drink, she sniffed an inhaler. There’s cotton inside an inhaler. He could have soaked the cotton in prussic acid. Martin was at the office this afternoon. He could have exchanged a poisoned inhaler for the one in her brief case. With her hay-fever and the smell of the menthol, she wouldn’t—”