“Just a day or two now,” he said, “and we’ll be on our way. On our way and sitting pretty!”
He was whistling as he went down the street. And that was the last she ever saw of him.
Up to that final farewell of Herbert’s I felt sure that she had been telling the truth, although possibly not all of it. It was when it came to the later incident in the drive, when she had accosted me, that I was less certain.
She had not gone home at all, she said. She often drove about at night by herself, and this night she had had a good bit to think about. Her people did not like Herbert, and she was as good as committed to going away with him in a day or so. She drove out into the country, and somewhere on a remote road she found she had a flat tire. It took a good while to change it, and she was on her way home when she passed the Mitchell house and saw the lights there.
Well, it might have been true. Girls do queer things these days, although a car has to travel a good many miles, even with a flat tire to change, to use up two hours or more. True or not, however, there was no doubt that she believed with every ounce of her that Hugo had killed Herbert Wynne, and that with the tacit agreement of the old woman in the bed upstairs.
But she stubbornly refused to give her name, or to go to the police, although I warned her that they would find her, sooner or later. She only shrugged her shoulders at that.
“Why?” she said. “The verdict will be accidental death, and that closes it, doesn’t it?”
“Not necessarily.”
“Well, I’ve told you what I came to tell you. You can pass it on to the police if you like. But tell them to leave me out of it. I’m telling you; they did it.” She indicated the house. “And they’d kill me, just as if stepping on a bug, if I got in their way.”
All this time, of course, I had been watching for some indication that my message to Headquarters had reached Inspector Patton. Now, as she rose to go, I saw that it had. Across the street and down a half block or so was a dark inconspicuous car, with the engine running. But I felt cheap and unhappy when she turned to me and held out her hand.
“It’s done me good just to talk to you,” she said. “You see, I have nobody else.”
I watched her go out the drive and climb into her gay little coupé, and then and there I swore to sever my connection with the police after this case was over. It was dirty work. I did their dirty work for them. What was I but a stool pigeon, after all?
The police car moved forward as she got under way.
CHAPTER VIII
She had been gone less than an hour, and Hugo and Mary had not yet returned, when I heard a newsboy calling an extra. I went out to the street and bought one, and I saw that the verdict had been brought in: accidental death, and seemingly fair enough of course, with that gun laid out for cleaning and no powder marks found on the body.
Doctor Stewart came in soon afterward, brisk and cheerful, and he was the one who told Miss Juliet. She took it quietly, although I was watching for some sign. She merely sighed, and asked if Hugo and Mary had returned. It was Mr. Glenn, coming in at lunchtime, who explained the full significance of the verdict to her: that there would be considerable insurance. If he had expected her to show surprise, he was disappointed, although I thought she moved uneasily.
“Nothing can bring him back,” he said, “so I can see no reason for not considering the change this makes in your circumstances.” He had to repeat that, raising his voice, and she said nothing for an appreciable time. Then she raised herself on her elbow.
“So I keep my house after all!” she said. “On blood money!”
“I wouldn’t look at it that way, Miss Juliet.”
“What else is it?”
“It’s a good many things; it is security and comfort in your old age. It means that you keep your home, the house which has stood for a great deal which is fine in this town for a good many years. That’s something, isn’t it? And these are hard times. Most of us are having our own troubles.”
He drew a long breath, and she saw it rather than heard it.
“If I can help you, Arthur—”
“No, no,” he said hastily. “I’m all right. I spend a lot, but then I make a lot!”
“Not from me,” she said dryly.
He only smiled at that, and got up. As he looked down at her, his smile faded.
“One thing this ought to do, Miss Juliet,” he said gravely. “It ought to reassure you about Herbert. It was an accident. Just remember that, and stop worrying.”
I found myself wishing that the girl could have heard that conversation, and could have seen Miss Juliet’s face. It was inconceivable that she could be acting for my benefit, or Mr. Glenn’s. Yet even as I thought that, I was remembering that curious stealthy opening of the hall door the morning before. The door opening, and Miss Juliet slipping something under her pillow, hiding it from me.
I took my regular off-duty that afternoon, leaving Mary in the sickroom, and met the Inspector at his office at half past two.
“Well,” he said, when I entered. “I suppose you saw the verdict? And thanks for the message. We’ve got the girl. That is, we know who she is, and we can lay our hands on her if we need her.”
“Who is she?”
“Paula Brent.”
“Paula Brent!”
He smiled at my astonishment. If the Mitchells had once been the leading family in the city, the Brents were now just that. With the usual difference, of course, that whereas no Mitchell ever allowed a picture in the paper or a reporter within a mile, the Brents were constantly featured. I thought fast. No wonder her family had objected to Herbert Wynne. The only wonder was that I had not recognized the girl. She had been a debutante the year before; I must have seen dozens of her photographs.
“It doesn’t seem possible.”
“That’s what makes this business interesting. Nothing’s impossible in it.”
I was to remember that later.
He listened to her story attentively, as I told it. Here and there, he asked a question, and he made a note about the shattering of the windshield on her car.
“Easy to check that,” he said.
But on the whole he was less impressed than I had thought he would be.
“We’ll get her in and talk to her. But all she has, so far as I can see, is a dislike of the old lady that she has translated into suspicion. It’s not as easy as all that. It does account for that suitcase, though. It’s been bothering me.”
He was more interested, apparently, in my account of what had happened the night before, and particularly in my discovery of Hugo in the parlor.
“It’s possible he saw someone, as he claims,” he said thoughtfully. “On the other hand, it’s always possible that he knows more than he’s acknowledging. Remember, we’re dealing with somebody who is no fool; that is, if this is a murder. And if it is supposed to be a murder by someone outside, what better proof that the house has been broken into once than to pretend that it’s been done again? Still, if you saw the thing yourself, and are sure it wasn’t simply nerves—”
“If I had any nerves of that sort,” I said rather sharply, “I would certainly not take this work for you!”
“It was there, eh?”
“Something was. It was there, and then it wasn’t.”
“And it moved toward you?”
“It seemed to. I can tell you here and now, if I’d had a gun in my hand, I’d have shot it.”
“And quite right, too,” he said soothingly. “That’s one reason I told you to leave your gun at home.”
He leaned back in his chair, drew out his pipe and filled it thoughtfully.
“I gather that you found no ladder marks.”
“None whatever.”
“Well, think this over and see what you make of it. Between three and four on Tuesday morning, that would be three hours after the crime—if it was a crime—a man named Baird, who lives half a block from the Mitchell place, telephoned in to the precinct station nearby. He said that he w
as tending a sick dog in his garage, and that he had just seen a man enter the next property, which is the Manchester place, carrying a ladder. He had notified the people in the house, and they were investigating.
“A couple of men went around there, and they found the ladder all right. It was not where it had been left the night before, but it belonged to the Manchester place, right enough. In other words, somebody had carried that ladder away, used it for some purpose, and then brought it back.”
“How long a ladder?”
“Long enough to reach to the roof of that ell on the Mitchell house.”
“And then, I suppose, whoever it was flapped his wings and flew into the window above.”
He laughed a little. “That’s it,” he said. “If that window was only above the roof we’d have something to go on. But it isn’t. It’s a good four feet to one side. But the time is interesting, isn’t it? We got the body out at two, and I came back to talk to you at three, or something after three.”
“Then that noise you heard—?”
“Possibly; although I’d hate to admit that while I sat on that front porch, somebody had put a ladder to that roof so that somebody else could get off it! If that ever got out, I’d be through, finis!”
“The sound I heard from the kitchen was earlier than that, of course,” I said. “Did you get any description of this man?”
“Not much. Tall, and apparently strong, Baird says; he carried the ladder easily. He’d come across lots, avoiding the street. But here’s an odd thing, although Baird is probably mistaken. He says that this fellow with the ladder wore a dinner jacket! Baird couldn’t see his face. The man had a soft hat, well pulled down, but he’ll swear to the shirt front and so on. But why a ladder? I’ve looked at it, and if anybody could get into that third-floor window with it, he’s a human fly; that’s all.”
“There were no ladder marks, anyhow.”
“They could have been erased, of course.”
I must have started, but he had walked to the window and was standing there with his back to me and did not notice.
“You see where we are,” he said, still at the window. “This girl of yours has it all doped out. Those three elderly people did it, so Miss Juliet wouldn’t have to go to the poorhouse! And old Hugo rented a car and followed him, so the boy began to carry a gun for self-defense! What sort of story did that lad invent to tell her, and why did he invent it?”
“It may just possibly be true.”
“Possibly. But why should Hugo, having, we’ll say, followed him for some time, and at least once fired at him outside, have chosen to shoot him in his own room, where, under the circumstances, he was bound to be suspected? Tell me that, Miss Pinkerton in the red hat. By the way, it’s a nice hat.”
“Thanks. I need a few kind words.”
He laughed at that, and, coming back to his desk again, sat leaning back in his chair.
“Well, as I may have said before, it’s the very devil of a case. We have only two alternatives: either the boy was putting up a front that night in order not to distress this girl, and then went home and killed himself. Which doesn’t seem likely, if she’s telling the truth. Or this fear of his had a sound basis, and he was killed. If he did it himself, how did he do it? If he didn’t do it, then who did, and why, and how? That’s the way it has to be, and here I am, with the whole Homicide Squad ready to go and no place to go. What’s the use of tailing Hugo? To the grocery store and back again? And time is passing, and in crime it’s the first hundred minutes that are the hardest—for the criminal. After that every hour helps him.”
I asked him about the fingerprints on the gun, and I learned that the verdict at the inquest had largely been based on them.
“They’re Herbert’s, all right,” he told me. “Smeared, but faintly readable. Of course the coroner knows, and I know, that that gun may have been held in a handkerchief, or fired through a pocket; or that the killer, if there was one, could have worn gloves. But a suicide usually freezes to the weapon until it’s all over, and leaves a pretty clean print. Still, I don’t mind telling you that if I could think of some method by which that lad could have shot himself in the forehead without leaving any contact marks, I’d go home and call it a day.”
I did not remind him of the position of the body, or of that bullet mark on the fireplace. He knew all that better than I did, and he had no intention of calling it a day. That was shown by his next move, which was to open a drawer of his desk and fling out three photographs.
“Study these,” he said. “Maybe you will see something I don’t. I’ve looked at them until I can’t see them any more.”
I did not like them much, but a nurse has to see a good bit of death, one way and another, and so I took them to the window and inspected them carefully. One was a close-up of the body; another showed the body and the bureau; and a third, taken from the doorway, showed almost the entire room, including the fireplace. But the second one showed a small spot of white on the floor, between the body and the bureau, and I found myself staring at it. It was a roughly triangular bit of white, perhaps two inches across.
“See anything?” the Inspector inquired.
“No … but what’s this bit of white on the floor? Is it a defect in the film?”
“A defect? Don’t use that word where Johnny Nicholson can hear you. You’ll break his heart!” He sauntered over and glanced at the picture in my hand.
“Where?”
“There, a little underneath the bureau.”
“It looks like a bit of paper,” he said. “Why?”
“I don’t know, I just wondered. I suppose—isn’t that the News on the bureau?”
“It is. Our famous tabloid.”
“But it was the Eagle he bought, according to Paula Brent. He bought the Eagle and looked at the financial page.”
“That doesn’t mean that he took it home with him. Still, I wouldn’t mind seeing that paper. It’s just possible—” He took the magnifying glass and inspected the picture again, with what I thought was a certain excitement. Evidently under the glass he saw something he had not seen before, for he turned to me abruptly.
“What became of that newspaper? Have you any idea?” he demanded.
“Not the slightest. The last time I saw it, the officer you had left with the body was reading it.”
And then he blew up. “The infernal fool!” he shouted. “The double-distilled idiot! I’ll break him for that. And somebody ought to break me! I don’t belong on this job; I ought to be in a stable somewhere, being fed with a pitchfork. I suppose the room was cleared that night, after we took the body away?”
“Not until the next day; then you told them they could clean it. And they did.”
“They would,” he said grimly. “They knew, or guessed. Or maybe that was what Miss Juliet went after. She’d heard of it somehow. Damn Kelly. If that paper had been where I left it—”
Well, I knew the routine pretty well by that time, and that nothing should have been moved or touched. At the same time, the Squad had finished its work when Kelly took that paper; even the photographers had gone. And it is dreary work sitting up with a body, as well I know. But I said nothing, while the Inspector sat biting on an empty pipe and muttering to himself.
“What becomes of the papers from the Mitchell house?” he asked at last. “Are they saved?”
“Hugo burns them.”
“He would!” he said viciously. “He’d burn that one, sure. And to think I never guessed it! I look all around for some sort of contrivance so he could kill himself and leave no powder marks; and there it lay, the simplest contrivance in the world. Look at that scrap on the floor. Does it suggest anything to you?”
“Not a thing.”
“Well, you’re not alone in that.” His tone was still vicious. “It didn’t suggest anything that night to a half-dozen bright young men whose job it was to find just such things.”
“Are you trying to tell me that Herbert Wynne killed himself?
”
“I think it’s damned possible. And I think that that scrap on the floor should have told it to a lot of braying jackasses who were going around acting like detectives, including myself, if they’d had one good brain among the lot. There was a case like this in New England last spring. Probably Herbert saw it in the papers, and maybe the old lady saw it, too.”
He picked up a newspaper, laid it flat on the top of the desk, but with a few inches hanging over the side, and then knelt in front of it.
“Now watch. I’m going to kill myself, but I carry a lot of insurance, so I want it to look like murder or an accident. Here’s how it’s done.”
CHAPTER IX
He got out his fountain pen, and showed it to me.
“Now see,” he said. “This pen is my gun. I’m going to shoot myself with it, but I don’t want any powder marks. So I lift two or three of the top pages of the paper out of the way; not too far. I want them to fall back later and cover the others. And I leave some of the bottom ones, too. Then I hold up these half dozen in the center. Do you get the idea?”
“I think so.”
“Good. I’m going to shoot myself, but through these center pages. Then the powder marks will be on the paper, not on me. And as I let go and drop, the top pages will fall over and cover the others. Picked up and glanced at, that newspaper is all right. The front and back pages show nothing. I looked at that newspaper, and you say Kelly picked it up and read some of it. But the inside pages had a bullet hole through them just the same; and powder on them. And there was powder on that scrap, too, unless I’m crazy. It wasn’t torn off; it was shot off. He was a smart boy, Miss Adams, and if I can prove how smart he was, I’d save the insurance companies a lot of money.”
“I don’t believe it,” I said stubbornly.
“Believe it or not, that’s the way it looks. The chances are that that scrap wasn’t on the floor at all when our fellows went over the place. It was loose, though, and the first flash dislodged it.”
“And the cleaning rags and the oil, set out on the bureau?”
“Camouflage, Miss Pinkerton! Darned good camouflage, if I do say it.”
Miss Pinkerton Page 6