Lay On, Mac Duff!

by Charlotte Armstrong

  He had been stabbed.

  Chapter Twelve

  I asked Ellen where to find a telephone and gulped my coffee while she told me. A minute later I was in Lina’s room calling Plaza 7-9203. Lina, according to Ellen, was downstairs “going over things” with Mrs. Atwater, as she did every Friday. I didn’t want to see Lina. Lina who’d said, “Don’t think we have murders among our friends every day, either.” I didn’t want to see Lina or my uncle or anybody but J.J. Jones.

  A girl’s voice said, “Yes?”

  “Mr. Jones? Mr. J.J. Jones?”

  “Mr. Jones is not in. Who is calling, please?” she said, sending my heart down sweetly and impersonally.

  “Bessie Gibbon.”

  “Oh, yes, Miss Gibbon. I have a message for you. Please call Wisconsin 9-7656 for Mr. Jones.”

  I hung up without thanking her, the quicker to call Wisconsin 9-7656.

  “Yeah?” a man said.

  “Mr. J.J. Jones?”

  “Not here. Wait a minute. This a party name of Gibbon?”

  “Yes. Oh, yes.”

  “O. K., Miss Gibbon. J.J. said you should call Wickersham 5-8894.

  I banged the receiver and tried again.

  “Hello?”

  “Jones,” I said. “Please … oh, J.J., is it you?”

  “It is I, none other,” said his strong and cheerful voice. “Are you all right?”

  “I just got up. I—”

  “I know, lazybones. I called you earlier, and they said—”

  “Oh, J.J., where are you?”

  “Anywhere you’d like me to be. Take it easy, honey.”

  “I wish you were here,” I wailed.

  The wire sang a moment. “Meet me somewhere,” he said. “Look, do you think you can do this? Go out and find a taxi. Tell the man Max’s restaurant on West 48th Street. He’ll know. When you get there, go in, and I’ll be waiting.”

  “48th. Oh, J.J., will you be there?”

  “I’ll be there and Duff, too. Have you got any money?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you get there alone?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Wait. Duff says, bring your boy friend.”

  “He’s not—” I began indignantly.

  “Bring him anyhow.” I could hear him grin.

  “Oh, J.J., what do you think?”

  “Tell you later. You don’t mind coming?”

  “Mind!”

  “Don’t cross any streets without looking both ways, and if you get lost ask a cop. Don’t speak to any strange men.”

  “My goodness!” I said.

  “And hang on to your pocketbook. Tip the man a dime, that’s enough.”

  “I’ll be there,” I said tartly, “soon as I can get into my store-bought clothes. You be a-setting on the cracker barrel, will you?”

  I hung up while he was still chuckling. But I felt so much better that I even dressed rather slowly to be sure that I looked nice. Hugh wasn’t in his room. There was nobody on the third floor, nobody to be seen on the second, nobody in the hall downstairs. I marched into the drawing room and rang for Effans.

  When he appeared I said, “I’m going out. I shall be out for lunch. Where is Mr. Miller, do you know?”

  Effans blinked rapidly. “I believe he left the house much earlier, Miss Elizabeth, on his way to Mr. Gaskell’s residence. The … er … trouble there has probably—”

  “Yes,” I said. “Well, when he comes in please ask him to meet me at Max’s restaurant on West 48th Street.” I flipped my gloves at him in farewell, and he had to trot to open the door for me. I turned my back on his face, where surprise and decorum were having a battle, and ran down my uncle’s steps into bright cold weather.

  Max’s restaurant was the kind of place that had to say “Tables for Ladies” on the window, but J.J.’s red head bobbed up and started toward me before I was well in the door. He squeezed my arm, said he liked my sunbonnet, and led me to where Mac Duff was sitting against the wall with his long legs draped to one side, making a hurdle for the waiters, and his long hand coiled limply around a glass of water. He looked up at me, put a foot flat as if he would unwind and rise if I insisted, and smiled that peculiarly sweet smile.

  I said, gasping, “Is it very bad? Tell me.”

  “We don’t know.” J.J. tucked me in behind the table next to Mac Duff and established himself on my other side. “I was Johnny-on-the-spot this morning and got everything they gave out, but I don’t think they gave out everything.”

  “Is Miller coming?” Duff asked.

  “I left word for him. He wasn’t there.”

  “Still talking to the cops, I guess,” J.J. said. “You know he found the body?”

  “I didn’t know. I don’t know anything about that.”

  Then I asked the question I was afraid to ask. “What time did it happen?”

  “Between 2 and 3 A.M.”

  “Oh, dear,” I said.

  Characteristically, Duff didn’t ask me any questions, but J.J. said, “Tell us all, huh? What do you know that’s bad?”

  “I just know my uncle wasn’t in the house last night, between two and two-thirty.” J.J. whistled softly. But Mac Duff sat and said nothing so that I got the strongest feeling that he didn’t believe me and I must convince him. “You see …” And I was telling them all about it, everything just the way it had happened, just as I’ve told it here.

  “That was a fancy idea,” J.J. said with disgust when I’d finished. He didn’t like it when I told about Hugh’s holding me in the dark. I knew he didn’t. But even that I had to tell Mac Duff so he’d believe me. “A plenty fancy idea, that door business.”

  “Very fancy indeed,” Mac Duff agreed. He was interested, I knew. Something about him had its ears pricked up. “What made Miller think your uncle was going to leave the house last night?”

  “I don’t know. But he was right.”

  “Maybe the thread blew away,” J.J. said, still disgusted. “A flimsy thread! Scaring the p … scaring you to death!”

  “But the coat!” I said.

  Duff made a low thoughtful sound. “Tell me all about it again, exactly what happened, how you felt after you found the thread was gone. Draw me a picture of those basement stairs and the passageway. Show me how your uncle could have come in, got upstairs, and not known you were there.”

  So I showed him. His sad face didn’t alter.

  “Now this fall. Was the sound of Hugh’s fall loud enough to wake a man sleeping beyond closed doors?”

  “But he wasn’t asleep,” I objected. “I never thought. I don’t know.”

  “No one else was wakened?”

  “No. But it was at the second floor. My uncle is … there.”

  J.J. said darkly, “I won’t have you in that house. Listen, Mac—”

  “Wait,” Mac Duff said, “here comes Miller.”

  Hugh looked dreadful, white and drawn with fatigue and strain. He gave me a kind of despairing look and sat down, taking off his glasses to polish them. His eyes looked sunken and tired with that flat dull look people who wear glasses are seen to have with their glasses off.

  “What’ll we eat?” Duff pushed menus before both of us. “Miller, you need a drink.”

  “I don’t drink,” Hugh said, “but lunch wouldn’t be bad. I’ll take that first special. Something soft.”

  “With sauce au diable?”

  “There’s no sauce, is there? Not on the whitefish.”

  J.J. said, “Ham and eggs for the lady, orange juice, coffee, toast, apple pie—do you like ice cream? Bring me a chicken salad sandwich.”

  Duff ordered soup.

  Hugh said, “Bring me soup, too. Something else I don’t have to chew.” Then he leaned back, put on his glasses, and said, “Sauce au diable.”

  I knew he was thinking of my uncle, and so did Mac Duff. “We are waiting to hear,” he said.

  Hugh sipped his water and winced.

  “Oh, Hugh, I forgot,” I sa
id. “How is your tooth?”

  “Better, thanks,” he said, “if I don’t stir it up. Effans’s drops were pretty effective.”

  “Oh, you did ask him?”

  “I woke him up at 3 A.M. and begged for them. He’s a sympathetic old soul.”

  “He’s nice. Effans is my uncle’s butler,” I explained to Duff.

  “He dispenses toothache drops?” Duff said with that maddening air of making a statement he privately thought was preposterous.

  “Oh, he had a toothache himself at dinner time.” He looked very blank so I went on to tell him what I had said to Effans, what Effans had said to me.

  “So you woke him at 3 A.M.?” Duff said to Hugh. “And left him when?”

  “Alibis?” Hugh said. “I left him no earlier than four. Probably later.” Duff’s eyebrow went up an eighth of an inch. I could see Hugh being forced to convince him. “He was company, and my tooth was raising hell. Matter of fact, I fell asleep in his chair, once the drops began to work. He got me down to my room, ever so gently, about four thirty, I think. Although I don’t believe I was actually all the way awake during that trip. You ask him.”

  Duff said, “Three o’clock is good enough, and Bessie gives you that. What makes them limit the time to three, J.J.?”

  “Medical evidence,” J.J. said, frowning. “That’s probability, of course.”

  “Has Bessie told you?” Hugh asked. They nodded. “That and everything else …” His voice trailed off, and he made a funny helpless gesture with one hand.

  “What do you mean, everything else?”

  “Don’t you know?”

  “Start at the beginning, go on until you come to the end, and then stop,” Duff said and smiled his appealing smile at me. I relaxed a little.

  Hugh fussed with a spoon. “All right. I went over to Gaskell’s place this morning on business as I had contracted to do. It was about Winberry’s affairs. Gaskell was anxious to get hold of some clients of his, or”—Hugh sounded tired and bitter—“shall I say some of the suckers Winberry had on his list. You know where he lived?”

  “I was there,” J.J. said. “Another brownstone. Lived alone, didn’t he?”

  “Not always,” Hugh said. “Sometimes he had house guests. But there was no one there last night. Seems the latest one is in Florida.”

  “Guests,” J.J. said. “Female, of course.”

  Hugh nodded and went on quickly as if he didn’t want to shock me. “I rang, and his housekeeper let me in. She’s not there except in the daytime. She’d let herself in with her own key at seven-thirty. Hadn’t gone near the living room, or so she said.”

  “She hadn’t,” J.J. said. “The old dame was still throwing a fit when I got there.”

  “Well, he had the first two floors for himself, you know. Like Winberry, he rented part of his house, the upper floor. But the tenants are away. His living room is at the back. He had a little garden out there. Mrs. Brinkley had got breakfast ready by the time I rang at nine or thereabouts, but she was in no hurry to get to her cleaning I guess. Anyhow, she said he hadn’t come down yet but she’d go up and call him if I had an appointment. I said I’d wait. She went upstairs and I wandered back to the living room and … there he was.”

  “Where?” Duff said.

  “In an easy chair, a chair tipped over on its back. He’d fought. He was huddled in it with his feet high. Knife in his … his heart, I guess. Very bloody. All that.” Hugh sunk his head in his hands, and his hands were trembling. “The knife belonged to Winberry. It was his pet carving knife. I recognized it. I told the police so.”

  “Keep it chronological,” Duff said. “Then?”

  “Then I yelled for Mrs. Brinkley. I kept her out of there. I called the police. That’s the second time I’ve called the police.”

  “Time?” Duff said.

  “9:14. I got there at 9 … oh, say 11 … something like that.”

  “Go on.”

  “There was another red parcheesi man, you know,” Hugh said wearily. “Did I tell you that?”

  J.J. grabbed my hand. “Now wait a minute,” he said. “No, we didn’t know that. But let’s take it easy. Drink that water, Bessie. Lap it up now, or Papa spank. Now, let me tell you. A man was seen arriving with Gaskell last night about 1:30. Same party thinks she saw him leave at 1:45. But—now wait—he went back in again scarcely a minute later. And she never saw him come out after that.”

  “Who was it?” Hugh said.

  “The witness? A dopy young woman across the street mooning out the window. You meet the funniest folks. Her evidence doesn’t convince Garnett or me either. But it could be so. And, if so, it’s an out for Uncle. Trouble is, according to her and I believe this, she was thinking deep thoughts about Life and Art. Means her time sense probably isn’t reliable. Besides, she had to go to the bathroom, during which interval he may have come out again, right away, with no time to do any murdering. Alas, nature will take hold. And I believe that because I had the devil of a time tactfully getting her to admit that she had a mad desire to wash her hands at 1:52 A.M. Folks! Excuse me, Bessie.”

  “What makes it an out for Uncle?” Hugh demanded. “Who was the man?”

  “She doesn’t know. Tall, she says. Lots of people are tall. But who …?”

  “It was Guy Maxon, I bet,” I said. “He and Gaskell left Uncle’s house together. Remember?”

  “You’re right, sis,” J.J. said. “It was Guy who came and Guy who left, but of course Guy says no, no, he never came back. But if the man who came home with Gaskell is his murderer, Uncle is out.”

  “Has Maxon an alibi?”

  “Of a sort. He got to his hotel at 2:08. Says he walked.”

  “Does somebody there corroborate?”

  “Yes, the clerk says he talked to him.”

  “2:08,” Hugh said. “Then it holds.”

  “Why?” Duff said.

  “Because Gaskell wasn’t killed until after 2 A.M.”

  “How do they make that out?”

  Hugh sighed. The waiter brought our food. After he had spread my order over most of the table and put the rest along the edges, he went away.

  “Does that witness maintain that the man who came back was the same man who left?” Hugh asked.

  “Aye, that’s the rub, of course. I’m afraid,” J.J. said, “she’s not going to be any help. She don’t know beans. She thinks so, but nobody’s going to be able to prove she can think. What about the two-o’clock business? Know about that?”

  Hugh said, as if he were making a careful beginning, to be clear, “It seems Gaskell’s house is heated by an oil burner which has a thermostat which has a clock. You follow me?”

  “Right behind you,” J.J. said with his mouth full of sandwich.

  “To turn the heat down at night, one sets the clock which thereupon automatically turns the heat down at any hour designated, and also turns it up again in the morning, of course.”

  “Yes, yes, we know.”

  “Well, Gaskell’s thermostat clock was set for 2 A.M.”

  “Late sitter, what?”

  “I suppose so. But when I got there this morning the clock was on the floor, smashed.”

  “How could that have happened?” Duff said in his quiet voice very politely.

  “It got knocked off when the struggle took place.”

  “Where was it in the room?”

  “Behind Gaskell’s chair on the wall next to some bookcases. If the murderer lunged forward with the knife and Gaskell’s chair tipped backward, he would have been carried over to fall against the wall, you see. He must have knocked the clock off. It’s perfectly possible.”

  “He let it lay, and it gives the time,” J.J. said.

  “No, the glass was broken, the hands bent.”

  “I see,” Mac Duff said. “Yes, I see. But it gives time, nevertheless, because I presume the heat had gone off or gone low.”

  “Yes, it had. The house was cool. The thermometer said sixty. The thermostat was
set for sixty. The clock set it so before it fell away.”

  “Therefore the struggle took place after 2 A.M.,” J.J. said thoughtfully. “Or the house would have been warm, at day temperature all night. But you can work those thermostats by hand, can’t you?”

  “I guess you can when the clock’s gone.”

  “Couldn’t our murderer have noticed the setting of the clock, the alarm part of the clock, after he’d smashed it? And couldn’t he then have set the thing down to sixty by hand to confuse the time?”

  “He could,” Hugh said slowly, “if he knew how. If he thought of it.”

  “What do you mean?” I demanded. “Go slower, please.”

  Mac Duff explained it to me. “There are two separate functions of that clock,” he said. “One to tell time as a clock does, one to set something off as an alarm clock does. In this case not a bell but a push on the thermostat. Now the clock fell off the wall and was smashed, and we don’t know what time that happened. But we can tell it happened after 2 A.M. if the alarm part of the clock’s mechanism hasn’t been tampered with and if no other agency pushed the thermostat down. J.J. is wondering now if the murderer pushed the thermostat down by hand to fool us.”

  “I see.”

  “Wait,” J.J. said. “Or did he tamper with the alarm part? Could he have monkeyed with that 2 A.M. setting?”

  “No,” Hugh said, “no, he couldn’t. The police said he couldn’t have. From the way it was smashed.”

  “Well, then, he’d have bustled about and got himself an alibi for two o’clock.”

  “Why?” I said. “I don’t understand. Do you?”

  Mac Duff’s eyes nearly twinkled again. “J.J. is being very clever,” he said. “And he is quite right, too. Suppose the clock fell off and smashed at midnight. The murderer notices that the clock was set to shut the heat down at two. He can’t change that. Well, he pushes the heat down by hand. It’s going to look as if the clock did that and then fell. So if he can be alibied for two o’clock and after he’s well off. Yes, if he’d noticed the setting at such a time and proceeded to shut the heat down by hand to confuse us, then he would have known he needed an alibi for two.”

  “So he would,” Hugh said. “Yes, I see that now.”