The Big Book of Reel Murders

by Stories That Inspired Great Crime Films (epub)

  “He’s dead, isn’t he?” she asked him suddenly. “Peter is dead?”

  Lavender bent his head. “I’m afraid there isn’t any doubt of that. For your own sake, Mrs. Vallance, don’t let it worry you too much. I’ll see you again tomorrow morning.”

  He motioned to Barbara Allardyce to join us in the hall, and whispered in her ear. “Stay with her,” he commanded. “All night, of course, and all day if necessary. Stay with her every minute until I come back. Get hold of that other gun and hide it where she’ll never find it.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Where does your sister sleep?”

  “Upstairs—her room is at the front.”

  “I’ll just glance at it,” said Jimmie Lavender; and all together we hurried up the stairs. Sue Vallance, I noted with a backward glance, had sunk into a chair.

  “There’s a balcony,” said Lavender. “Keep her away from it. Nothing must happen to her tonight.” He crossed the room and lifted a little bottle from the dresser. “Whose is this?” he asked.

  “My sister’s. It was prescribed for her by Dr. Thomas.”

  “It’s fairly dangerous,” he told her. “In the old days they used to call it ‘knockout drops.’ An overdose could easily be fatal. Don’t let her have it.”

  She nodded. “I’ll do everything in my power, Mr. Lavender. You may depend on me. I know a little about drugs. I’ve always given her the dose.” Her eyes were frightened and curious. “What are you going to do?” she asked him.

  “I’m going back to the night club,” said Jimmie Lavender. “Probably I shall have a row with the chief of the Detective Bureau. I’m going to try to keep him from coming here tonight.”

  He was right enough about the row. Dallas, the city’s biggest detective—physically, as well as by repute—had the case well in hand, when we arrived, and was disinclined to listen to any theories but his own. Fortunately, he and Lavender had always been friendly.

  “Hello, Jimmie,” roared the big detective. “What the devil brings you here? Somebody said he thought he’d seen you; but I didn’t believe it.”

  The room had been emptied of its patrons, save for a group whose members claimed to have seen or heard some part of what had happened; these were herded together in a corner, guarded by detectives. In another part of the place, shepherded by more detectives, squirmed the members of the club’s staff of waiters. Nor had Dallas allowed the entertainers to escape: in varying stages of deshabillé, these sat about and looked disconsolate, among them the incredible Shalimar, now sulky and suspicious. The lights were on, and every crack and corner of the place was now revealed.

  Jimmie Lavender smiled. “Who was the fellow who thought he saw me?”

  “One of the management, I think. Said he saw you leaving—fast—right after the shooting. That didn’t seem exactly like you.”

  “It’s true,” admired Lavender. “I had a—well, a sort of hunch about the shooting, Dallas. I’ll tell you about it sometime. Anyway, I’m here again.”

  “You’re just in time,” said the police detective. “These people were at the table with the dead man. His name is Vallance, in case you haven’t heard.”

  “Peter Vallance,” Lavender agreed. “It just happened that he was pointed out to me—a little while before he was murdered.”

  “Then you know as much as we do,” Dallas finished. “Let’s get along with the investigation.”

  In the foreground sat the Russians and their escorts. Mlle Olga Marinoff, under the hard light of the electric bulbs, looked almost as beautiful as I had earlier thought her. It was obvious that she had received a nasty jolt, however. Her fellow nationals were rigid in their chairs.

  Only Howard Andrews seemed particularly agitated. He puffed nervously on a cigarette and continually crossed and recrossed his knees. It seemed to me there was something on his mind, and I thought I knew what it was. He, too, had seen the woman who fired the shot—and he was afraid he was going to be asked about it.

  The corpse of Peter Vallance lay exactly as it had fallen, half across a corner of the table. Except for a stain of blood beside the left ear—and a sticky matting of his blond curls—he appeared to be just a drinker sleeping off his indiscretions.

  “You were the last person to see Mr. Vallance alive, Miss Marinoff,” said Dallas abruptly. “I suppose there is no doubt of that? Tell me what happened.”

  The ballerina shuddered; she seemed to come up gradually from some tragic depth of private thought.

  “I do not know what happened,” she answered slowly. “Peter—Mr. Vallance—was leaning towards me. I think he was about to kiss my shoulder; it was a pretty trick he had. Suddenly—there was the shot! He fell forward! He was dead! My God, I cannot yet believe it!” Her voice had gathered speed and volume as she progressed; the reply was a crescendo. She finished with a little shriek.

  Dallas nodded. He had expected no more from her.

  “Mr. Vallance sat where he is now sitting,” he continued. “You were at his left, around the corner of the table. It’s clear from the position of the wound that the shot came from somewhere behind him—behind and perhaps a little to the side.” He glared around him at the other members of the group. “Now which of you sat where he could see what happened?”

  The single Russian male spoke stiffly. “Possibly I,” he answered. He nodded his head gravely. “I was opposite Mr. Vallance, at the other table-end. But, as it happens, I saw nothing. Like Mademoiselle Marinoff, I heard only the shot.”

  “Mr. Andrews?”

  Howard Andrews jumped. He looked appealingly at the circle of faces around him.

  “Well?” snapped Dallas.

  “I sat at Peter’s right hand,” answered Andrews, in a low voice. “That is, facing Miss Marinoff. I could not see anybody who might be behind Peter, without turning my head.”

  “And you didn’t turn your head?”

  “I did not—not at that time, at any rate.”

  “The shot came from close at hand, however?”

  “Fairly close,” admitted Andrews. “Yes, it sounded close at hand.”

  “Good God!” exploded Dallas. “What’s ailing you, man? I’m not accusing anybody at this table. I know none of you could have done it, sitting the way you were. Come on—what’s on your mind?”

  Andrews pulled himself together. “I was just thinking that the shot did not necessarily come from behind Mr. Vallance,” he answered reluctantly. “It might possibly have come from behind Miss Marinoff.”

  Dallas glared at him for a moment with malevolent eyes.

  “I said it might have come from the side,” he growled. “Who was behind Miss Marinoff?”

  “I—I’m sure I don’t know,” said Howard Andrews.

  Jimmie Lavender’s voice cut in and saved him from a withering blast of fury. “To save Mr. Andrews from perjury, and from possible violence, Dallas,” he smiled, “I may as well say that Mrs. Peter Vallance was behind Miss Marinoff, at one point in the proceedings. I fancy it is she Mr. Andrews believes himself to be protecting. Is that the case?” He looked at Andrews unwillingly.

  Howard Andrews’s eyes were bulging. “Yes,” he answered, with relief. “I must admit—”

  “You saw her in the shadows there, beside that farther post, a little distance behind Miss Marinoff. You saw her put her weapon up, and—”

  “What’s that?” roared Dallas, beside himself with rage and excitement. “You mean to say you saw this murder committed?”

  “I’m sorry,” muttered Andrews. “Peter was my friend. After all—”

  “After all, you couldn’t squeal on his wife!” The captain was loudly sarcastic. “Well, my fine fellow—” He broke off as a new thought struck him, and wheeled on Jimmie Lavender. “What the devil do you know about this murder, Jimmie?” he snarled.

&nb
sp; “I admitted I was here,” said Lavender soothingly. “I sat at that table, over yonder. Not far removed, you see, from the scene of the tragedy. I was in a good position, myself, to see what happened.”

  For a moment Dallas was stunned.

  “And you saw Mrs. Peter Vallance murder her husband!” he said hoarsely, after a moment.

  “Unfortunately, in spite of my position, I didn’t see exactly what happened,” answered Jimmie Lavender. “Perhaps I’m not a very good detective, after all! However, Mrs. Vallance’s sister was with me at the table. She saw Mrs. Peter Vallance when she came in. She had been expecting trouble of some sort—Miss Barbara Allardyce, I mean—and the appearance of her sister paralysed her. The shot followed almost immediately, and before anybody could do anything, Vallance was dead.”

  “Mmm,” said the detective chieftain. “So that’s where you went, after the shooting, is it? After Mrs. Vallance!” Having recovered his composure the captain was now inclined to be ironic. “Did she confess her naughty deed?”

  “She did,” said Jimmie Lavender. “In fact, she gave me the weapon, which is now in my pocket. I have pleasure in handing it to you.”

  He produced the little revolver, still wrapped in his handkerchief and passed it to the astonished officer.

  Dallas unwrapped the weapon and glanced it over, at first casually then more carefully. He broke it, twirled the chamber cylinder, and ultimately placed the end of the barrel against his nose. His eyes opened widely and he looked at Lavender, who was smiling wickedly.

  “What the dickens are you handing me, Jimmie?” He demanded. “I don’t believe this thing’s been fired in months—years, maybe! Every chamber is empty. Nobody fired this revolver tonight!”

  Jimmie Lavender nodded. “That is my opinion, also,” he confessed. “Nevertheless, this is the revolver Mrs. Vallance brought with her tonight—and I have just listened to her confession of murder!”

  III

  The situation developed very much as Lavender had feared it would. Dallas accepted the confession without hesitation, in spite of the revolver. The arrest of Mrs. Peter Vallance, he said, was the next step on the program.

  “It’s clear enough what happened, Jimmie,” he explained. “She shot her husband, and Miss Barbara Allardyce and Andrews saw her do it. Then she lit out for home and hid the weapon. When you arrived, she gave you this thing, and you accepted it. She’s a clever woman, take my word for it.”

  “Why the confession?” asked Lavender.

  “To make you think she thought she’d killed her husband. To make you think exactly what you’re thinking—that since obviously she didn’t kill him with the gun she handed you, somebody else must have fired the shot—at the precise moment she was pulling the trigger of her empty gun! But that’s a little hard to swallow.”

  “I see no difficulty in it,” said Lavender. “I’m quite willing to swallow it, Dallas. As a matter of fact, somebody else did fire a shot at that precise moment.”

  “Oh Lord!” cried Dallas.

  They were standing apart from any of the groups, conversing in an undertone.

  “Bear in mind that I was rather close to Vallance’s table, myself,” continued Lavender. “I didn’t see what happened—but I heard the shot. It didn’t come from behind Miss Marinoff. It came from somewhere behind Peter Vallance—as you ably deduced, in the beginning. I’m not likely to be wrong about a thing like that, you’ll admit.”

  The big detective slapped him on the shoulder. “We all make mistakes, Jimmie. Lord, I make ’em myself! In a place like this—and with a lot of noise going on—it ain’t easy to place a shot exactly.”

  Lavender shrugged.

  “Have it your own way,” he said. “Lay off Mrs. Vallance, though, for a little while. I promise you she won’t escape.” After a moment he briskly asked a question. “May I examine the body?”

  Dallas was suspicious. “All right,” he growled, after a moment’s thought. “But don’t do anything the coroner wouldn’t like. He’ll be along here, now, with his doctors, before we know it.”

  Lavender crossed the room and bent above the body of Peter Vallance. In a moment Dallas joined him.

  “You see,” said the younger man, “I’m right, Dallas. This poor fellow is a trifle messy, but the position of the wound is clear enough. You saw it all yourself, a little while ago, until you knew that Mrs. Vallance had confessed. The shot was fired from somewhere directly behind him. I don’t mean close at hand, necessarily—perhaps from a little distance.”

  “A damned good shot,” said Dallas scornfully. “Too good! Remember there were other tables behind Vallance, with a lot of people sitting at ’em. Somebody’d have seen it done. Mrs. Vallance, standing up beside a post over there, had a better shot. She was shooting downward. You can’t always tell about a wound. The coroner’s physician’ll straighten it out for us.”

  “He’ll straighten it out for me,” asserted Lavender stubbornly. “Bear in mind, again, that I heard the shot; and I say that Mrs. Vallance, standing where she did, could not have fired it. I asked her about her shooting. She remembered that when she pulled the trigger, the first time, the gun didn’t explode. She pulled it a second time; and that time she thought it did explode. Actually, it merely clicked again—there was nothing in it to explode. But a shot was fired at that instant; and in her high state of excitement, she thought that she had fired it. She saw Vallance collapse, immediately afterward, which clinched her belief that she had killed him.”

  Dallas shrugged his heavy shoulders. “I’m going to get the woman that did it, Jimmie,” he retorted, “and her name is Vallance. You know damn well I can’t run the risk of letting her escape. I want her—and I want her now!”

  It was Lavender’s turn to shrug. “Go and get her,” he said. “If you want to make a fool of yourself, I suppose I can’t stop you.” He plunged a hand into the side pocket of Vallance’s dinner jacket. “But before you go, Dallas, take a look at this.”

  He offered the perfumed sheet of paper that Barbara Allardyce had returned to Peter Vallance.

  Dallas snatched it from his hand. “What’s this?” he snapped; and his raging eyes galloped through the brief communication. “Good Lord, Jimmie! What is this?”

  “I understand,” said Lavender, “that it is a note written by the young woman called Shalimar, to Peter Vallance.” He spoke in a low tone, with a glance in the direction of the dancer. “It’s said to be in her handwriting. I knew it was there—in Vallance’s pocket.”

  “You knew it was—!” But Dallas let it pass. What Jimmie Lavender knew could wait. His black brows met in a frown and he darted a savage glance at the Negro dancer, still waiting to be examined. His mind functioned with sudden clarity. “Look here, Jimmie, you mean—she shot at the Russian girl and hit young Vallance by mistake?”

  “It’s possible, isn’t it?” asked Lavender.

  The eyes of both men swung to the narrow aisle by which the entertainers left the floor for their dressing rooms behind the scenes. It was only two tables removed from Vallance’s, and at one point a person traversing it would pass, at a little distance, immediately behind the back of Peter Vallance. Two tables only lay between, and it was clear that the position of such a person would be almost identical with that of Mrs. Vallance, although in another direction. The distances were about the same, and the direction of the shot would certainly be downward. It would clear the heads of diners at the intervening tables, and—accurately fired—would find its mark either in Olga Marinoff or Peter Vallance.

  But could an entertainer, leaving the floor amid applause—presumably with the eyes of an audience upon her—fire a shot unknown to the many persons who watched her?

  Dallas asked himself the question, studying the layout with an expert eye. “Begad, it’s possible, Jimmie,” he muttered. “She’d be in shadow,
wouldn’t she? How far would that searchlight follow her?”

  “Only to the edge of the floor,” said Lavender; “that is, until she reached the tables. It wouldn’t follow her up the aisle. Bear in mind that when the floor is highly lighted, the rest of the house is in comparative darkness; in a state of twilight. Add to that the general excitement, and a fair amount of drunkenness, and you have the situation to a T. It was daring, of course; but a cool head and a quick hand could have done it. I could have done it myself—and so could you.”

  “For that matter,” rumbled Dallas, “if the people who sat at those intervening tables happened to be friends of hers—eh? H’m!” He pulled fiercely at his jaw.

  “I don’t think anybody saw her do it,” said Lavender. “Nobody was expecting a shot. Corks had been popping all evening, and the general pulse was fairly feverish. Gilly and I knew it was a shot; we’ve heard too many to be mistaken—but who else could be certain? Nobody, unless he actually saw the weapon. She passed the post, in shadow, flashed up her arm, with gleaming bracelets dangling from it—and popped her message from the palm of her hand. It wasn’t such a miraculous shot as we have been thinking, since—after all—she missed Miss Marinoff, at whom she aimed, and hit the man beside her.”

  Dallas’s jaw shot forward. He clutched the sheet of perfumed paper and strode across the floor towards the Negro dancer.

  Jimmie Lavender returned to the body of Peter Vallance. Very gently he pushed aside the matted curls of the victim and touched the wound with his sensitive fingers. An expression of surprise crossed his face, followed in a moment by one of the profoundest curiosity. He slowly straightened, and glanced about him in perplexity. Then his eye returned to the wound in Vallance’s head. He appeared to be working out a problem in mathematics.

  A flashlight blossomed in his hand; in a moment he was searching the carpeted floor beneath the table. An instant later he had enlarged his circle of inquiry to take in the neighbouring tables, searching earnestly for something that eluded him.