“Lead on, my sergent,” he commanded. “Take us to the place which this so foolish girl selected for her disappearance. We shall find her or otherwise!”
“Would ye be manin’ ‘or else,’ sor, I dunno?”
“Ah bah, who cares? Let us be about our task!”
“Sure, we got a full description o’ th’ clothes she wore when she skedaddled,” Costello told us as we drove out toward the fashionable suburb where the Shelton School was located. “She wuz wearin’ orange-colored lounging pajamas an’ pegged orange-colored slippers.”
“Pegged?” de Grandin echoed. “Was she then poor—”
“Divil a bit o’ it, sor. Her folks is rich as creases, but she wuz overdrawn on her allowance, and had to cut th’ corners til her next check came.”
“One comprehends. And then—”
“There ain’t no then, sor. We’ve inventoried all her wardrobe, an’ everything is present but th’ duds she wore when she came in from class. Not even a hat’s missin’. O’ course, that don’t mean nothin’ much. If she’d set her heart or lammin’, she coulda had another outfit waitin’ for her somewheres else, but—”
“Quite but, my friend,” de Grandin nodded. “Until the contrary appears, we must assume she went away sans trousseau.”
With characteristic fickleness the shrewish storm had blown itself away while we drove from the city, and a pale half-waning moon tossed like a bit of lucent jetsam in a purling surf of broken clouds as we drew up beneath the porte-cochère of the big red brick dormitory whence Emerline Lefètre had set forth for her unknown goal six hours earlier.
“Yas, suh,” replied the colored elevator operator, visibly enjoying the distinction of being questioned by the police. “Ah remembers puffickly erbout hit all. Miss Lefètre come in from lab. She seemed lak she was in a powerful hurry, an’ didn’t say a thing, ’ceptin’ to thank me for de letters.”
“The letters? Do you by any happy circumstance remember whence they came?”
“Naw, suh. Ah don’ look at de young ladies’ mail, ’ceptin’ to see who hit’s for. I recolleck dese letters mos’ partickler, though, ’cause one of ’em wuz smelled up so grand.”
“Perfumed?”
“An’ how, suh. Jus’ lak de scents de conjur doctors sell, on’y more pretty-smellin’. Dat one wuz in a big vanilla envelope. All sealed up, it wuz, but de odor come right through de paper lak hit wuz nothin’ a-tall.”
“Merci bien. Now, if you will kindly take us up—”
THE LITTLE ROOM WHERE Emerline Lefètre dwelt was neat and colorless as only hospital, barrack or dormitory rooms can be. No trace of dust marred imitation mahogany furniture. Indifferent reproductions of several of the less rowdy Directoire prints were ranged with mathematical precision on the walls. The counterpane was squared with blocks of blue and white so virginally chaste as to seem positively spinsterish. “Mon Dieu, it is a dungeon, nothing less,” de Grandin murmured as he scanned the place. “Can anybody blame a girl for seeking sanctuary from such terrible surround—quel parfum horrible!” His narrow nostrils quivered as he sniffed the air. “She had atrocious taste in scent, this so mysteriously absent one.”
“Perhaps it’s the elegant perfume the elevator operator mentioned,” I ventured. “He’d have admired something redolent of musk—”
“Dis donc! You put your finger on the pulse, my friend! It is the musk. But yes. I did not recognize him instantly, but now I do. The letter she received was steeped in musk. Why, in Satan’s name? one wonders.”
Thoughtfully, he walked slowly to the window, opened it and thrust his head out, looking down upon the cement walk some fifty feet below. Neither ivy, waterspout nor protuberance of the building offered foothold for a mouse upon the flat straight wall.
“I do not think she went that way,” he murmured as he turned to look up at the overhanging roof.
“Nor that way, either, sor,” Costello rejoined, pointing to the overhanging of mansard roof some seven feet above the window-top.
“U’m? One wonders.” Reaching out, de Grandin tapped an iron cleat set in the wall midway of the window’s height. From the spike’s tip branched a flange of a turnbuckle, evidently intended to secure a shutter at some former time. “A very active person might ascend or—parbleu!”
Breaking off his words half uttered, he took a jeweler’s loop out of his raincoat pocket, fixed it in his eye, then played the beam of his electric torch upon the window-sill, subjecting it to a methodical inspection.
“What do you make of this, my friends?” he asked as he passed the glass to us in turn, directing his light ray along the gray stone sill and indicating several tiny scratches on the slate. “They may be recent, they may have been here since the building was erected,” he admitted as we handed back the glass, “but in cases such as this there are no such things as trifles.”
Once more he leant across the window-sill, then mounted it and bent out till his eyes were level with the rusty iron cleat set in the wall.
“Morbleu, it is a repetition!” he exclaimed as he rejoined us. “Up, my sergent, up, Friend Trowbridge, and see what you can see upon that iron.”
Gingerly, I clambered to the sill and viewed the rusty cleat through the enlarging-glass while Costello played the flashlight’s beam upon it. On the iron’s reddish surface, invisible, or nearly so, to naked eyes, but clearly visible through the loop’s lens, there showed a row of sharp, light scratches, exactly duplicating those upon the window-sill.
“Bedad, I don’t know what it’s all about, sor,” Costello rumbled as he concluded his inspection, “but if it’s a wild-goose chase we’re on I’m thinkin’ that we’ve found a feather in th’ wind to guide us.”
“Exactement. One is permitted to indulge that hope. Now let us mount the roof.
“Have the care,” he cautioned as Costello took his ankles in a firm grip and slid him gently down the slanting, still-wet slates. “I have led a somewhat sinful life, and have no wish to be projected into the beyond without sufficient time to make my peace with heaven.”
“No fear, sor,” grinned Costello. “Ye’re a little pip squeak, savin’ yer presence, an’ I can swing ye be th’ heels till mornin’ if this rotten brickwor-rk don’t give way wid me.”
Wriggling eel-like on his stomach, de Grandin searched the roof slates inch by careful inch from the leaded gutter running round the roof bank’s lower edge to the lower brick ridge that marked the incline’s top. His small blue eyes were shining brightly as he rejoined us.
“Mes amis, there is the mystery here,” he announced solemnly. “Across the gutter to the slates, and up the slates until the roof’s flat top is reached, there is a trail of well defined, light scratches. Moreover, they are different.”
“Different, sor? How d’ye mean—”
“Like this: Upon the window-sill they are perceptibly more wide and deep at their beginning than their end—like exclamation marks viewed from above. In the gutter and upon the roof they are reversed, with deeper gashes at the lower ends and lighter scratches at their upper terminals.”
“O.K., sor. Spill it. I’m not much good at riddles.”
A momentary frown inscribed twin upright wrinkles between de Grandin’s brows. “One cannot say with surety, but one may guess,” he answered slowly, speaking more to himself than to us. “If the marks were uniform one might infer someone had crawled out of the window mounted to the gutter by the ringbolt set into the wall, then climbed upon the roof. An active person might accomplish it. But the situation is quite otherwise. The scratches on the slates reverse the scorings on the window-sill.”
“You’ve waded out beyond me depth now, sor,” Costello answered.
“Tiens, mine also,” the Frenchman grinned. “But let us hazard a conjecture: Suppose one wearing hobnailed boots—or shoes which had been pegged, as Miss Lefètre’s were—had crawled out from this window: how would he use his feet?”
“To stand on, I praysume, sor.”
“Ah
bah. You vex me, you annoy me, you get upon my goat! Standing on the sill and reaching up and out to grasp that iron cleat, he would have used his feet to brace himself and pivot on. His tendency would be to turn upon his toes, thereby tracing arcs or semicircles in the stone with the nails set in his shoes. But that is not the case here. The scorings marked into the stone are deeper at beginning, showing that the hobnailed shoes were scratching in resistance, clawing, if you please, against some force which bore the wearer of those shoes across the windowsill. Digging deeply at beginning, the nail marks taper off, as the shoes slipped from the stone and their wearer’s weight was lifted from the sill.
“When we view the iron cleat we are upon less certain ground. One cannot say just how a person stepping to the iron would move his feet in climbing to the roof; but when we come to read the slates we find another chapter in this so puzzling story. Those marks were left by someone who fought not to mount the roof; but who was struggling backward with the strength of desperation, yet who was steadily forced upward. Consider, if you please: The fact that such resistance, if successful, would have resulted in this person’s being catapulted to the cement path and almost surely killed, shows us conclusively the maker of those marks regarded death as preferable to going up that roof. Why? one asks.”
“PARDON ME, SIR, ARE you from headquarters?” Slightly nasal but not at all unmusical, the challenge drawled at us across the corridor. From the doorway of the room set opposite to Emerline’s a girl regarded us with one of the most indolent, provocative “come-hither” looks I’d ever seen a woman wear. She was of medium height, not slender and not stout, but lushly built, with bright hair, blond as a well-beaten egg, worn in a page-boy bob and curled up slightly at the ends. From round throat to high white insteps she was draped in black velvet pajamas which had obviously not been purchased ready-made, but sculptured to her perfect measure, for her high, firm, ample breasts pushed up so strongly underneath the velvet that the dip of the fabric to her flat stomach was entirely without wrinkles. Her trousers were so loose about the legs they simulated a wide skirt, but at the hips they fitted with a skin-tight snugness as revealing as a rubber bathing-suit. From high-arched, carefully penciled brows to blood-red toenails she was the perfect figure of the siren, and I heard Costello gasp with almost awe-struck admiration as his eyes swept over her.
“We are, indeed, ma belle,” de Grandin answered. “You wish to speak with us?”
Her blue eyes widened suddenly, then dropped a veil of carefully mascaraed lashes which like an odalisque’s thin gossamer revealed more than it hid. They were strange eyes to see in such a young face, meaningful and knowing, a little weary, more than a little mocking. “Yes,” she drawled lazily. “You’re on the case of Emerline Lefètre, aren’t you?”
“Yes, Mademoiselle.”
“Well, I’m sure she disappeared at five o’clock.”
“Indeed? How is it that you place the time?”
A shrug which was a slow contortion raised her black-draped shoulders and pressed the pointed breasts more tightly still against her tucked-in jacket. “I was in bed all afternoon with a neuralgic headache. The last lab period today was out at half past four, and I heard the girls come down the hall from class. There’s not much time till dinner when we come in late from lab, and a warning bell rings in the dorm at three minutes before five. When it went off this afternoon it almost split my head apart. The rain had stopped; at least I didn’t hear it beating on my window, but the storm had made it dark as midnight, and at first I thought it was a dream. Then I heard some of the girls go hurrying by, and knew that it was five o’clock, or not more than a minute past. I was lying there, trying to find energy to totter to the bureau for some mentholated cologne, when I heard a funny noise across the hall. I’m sure it came from Emerline’s room.”
“A funny noise, Mademoiselle? How do you mean?”
A little wrinkle furrowed down the smooth white skin between the penciled brows. “As nearly as I can describe it, it was like the opening quaver of a screech owl’s cry, but it was shut off almost as it started. Then I heard a sound of stamping, as though there were a scuffle going on in there. I s’pose I should have risen and investigated, but I was too sick and miserable to do more than lie there wondering about it. Presently I fell asleep and forgot about it till I heard you in her room just now.” She paused and patted back a yawn. “Mind if I go in and have a look around?” she asked, walking toward us with a swinging, aphrodisiacally undulating gait. The aura of a heavy, penetrating perfume—musk-based patchouli essence, I determined at a hasty breath—seemed hovering round her like a cumulus of tangible vapor.
As far as Jules de Grandin was concerned her blandishments might have been directed at a granite statue. “It is utterly forbidden, Mademoiselle. We are most grateful for your help, but until we have the opportunity to sweep the place for clues we request that no one enter it.”
“WHAT D’YE MEAN, SWEEP th’ place for clues, sor?” asked Costello as we drove toward home.
“Precisely what I said, mon vieux. There may be clues among the very dust to make this so mysterious puzzle clear.”
Arrived at the house, he rummaged in the broom cupboard, finally emerging with my newest vacuum sweeper underneath his arm. It was a cleaner I had let myself be argued into buying because, as the young salesman pointed out, instead of a cloth bag it had a sack of oiled paper which when filled could be detached and thrown away. To my mind this had much merit, but Nora McGinnis begged to disagree, and so the old cloth-bellows sweeper was in daily use while the newer, sanitary engine rested in the closet.
“Behold, my friend,” he grinned, “there is a virtue to be found in everything. Madame Nora has refused to use the sweeper, thereby making it impossible for you to get return on your investment, but her stubbornness assists me greatly, for here I have a pack of clean fresh paper bags in which to gather up our evidence. You comprehend?”
“Ye mean ye’re goin’ to vacuum-sweep that room out to th’ Shelton School?” Costello asked incredulously.
“Perfectly, my friend. The floor, the walls, perhaps the ceiling. When Jules de Grandin seeks for clues he does not play. Oh, no.”
The door of Emerline Lefètre’s room was open on a crack as we marched down the corridor equipped with vacuum sweeper and paper refills, and as de Grandin thrust it open with his foot we caught the heavy, almost overpowering odor of patchouli mixed with musk.
“Dame!” de Grandin swore. “She has been here, cette érotofurieuse, against my express orders. And she has raised the window, too. How can we say what valuable bit of evidence has been blown out—morbleu!”
Positively venomous with rage, he had stamped across the room to slam the window down, but before he lowered it had leant across the sill. Now he rested hands upon the slate and gazed down at the cement pavement fifty feet below, a look of mingled pain and wonder on his face.
“Trowbridge Costello, mes amis, come quickly!” he commanded, beckoning us imperiously. “Look down and tell me what it is you see.”
Spotlighted by a patch of moonlight on the dull-gray cement walk a huddled body lay, inert, grotesque, unnatural-looking as a marionette whose wires have been cut. The flash of yellow hair and pale white skin against the somber elegance of sable velvet gave it positive identification.
“How th’ divil did she come to take that tumble?” Costello asked as we dashed down the stairs, disdaining to wait on the slowly moving elevator.
“Le bon Dieu and the devil only know,” de Grandin answered as he knelt beside the crumpled remnant of the girl’s bright personality and laid a hand beneath her generously swelling breast.
The impact of her fall must have been devastating. Beneath her crown of gold-blond hair her skull vault had been mashed as though it were an eggshell; through the skin above her left eye showed a staring splinter of white bone where the shattered temporal had pierced the skin; just above the round neck of her velvet jacket thrust a jagged chisel-edge of white,
remnant of a broken cervical vertebra. Already purple bruises of extravasated blood were forming on her face; her left leg thrust out awkwardly, almost perpendicularly to her body’s axis, and where the loose-legged trouser had turned back we saw the Z-twist of a compound comminutive fracture.
“Is she—” began Costello, and de Grandin nodded as he rose.
“Indubitably,” he returned. “Dead like a herring.”
“But why should she have jumped?” I wondered. “Some evil influence—a wild desire to emulate—”
He made a gesture of negation. “How far is it from here to the house wall?” he asked.
“Why, some eighteen feet, I judge.”
“Précisément. That much, at least. Is it in your mind her fall’s trajectory would have been so wide an arc?”
“What’s that?”
“Simply this, by blue! Had she leaped or fallen from the window she should have struck the earth much nearer to the building’s base. The distance separating ground and window is too small to account for her striking thus far out; besides it is unlikely that she would have dived head first. Men sometimes make such suicidal leaps, women scarcely ever. Yet all the evidence discloses that she struck upon her head; at least she fell face forward. Why?”
“You imply that she was—”
“I am not sure, but from the facts as we observe them I believe that she was thrown, and thrown by one who had uncommon strength. She was a heavy girl; no ordinary person could have lifted her and thrown her through a window, yet someone must have done just that; there is no evidence of struggle in the room.”
“Shall I take charge, sor?” asked Costello.
De Grandin nodded. “It will expedite our work if you will be so kind. When she is taken to the morgue I wish you would prevent the autopsy until I have a chance to make a more minute inspection of the body. Meantime I have important duties elsewhere.”
METHODICALLY, AS THOUGH HE’D been a janitor—but with far more care for detail—he moved the vacuum sweeper back and forth across the floor of the small tragic room, drew out the paper bag and sealed and labeled it. Then with a fresh bag in the bellows he swept the bed, the couch, the draperies. Satisfied that every latent trace of dust had been removed, he shut the current off, and, his precious bags beneath his arm, led the march toward my waiting car.
Black Moon Page 4