Miss Pinkerton

by Rinehart, Mary Roberts;

  Doctor Stewart came in before we had finished, looking grave and self-important; and he waited until Hugo had left the room before he said what he had evidently come to say.

  “Well, I’ve had the report.”

  “What about it?”

  “It looks like poison, all right. Maybe you’ll listen to me the next time, Glenn.”

  “What makes you think there will be a next time?”

  I suspected some friction between them, but the doctor was off on the risus sardonicus and the other symptoms, while Hugo once more answered the doorbell. Mr. Glenn’s face showed distaste, and at last he got up and flung down his napkin.

  “For heaven’s sake, Stewart!” he said. “I’ve had enough this week. I’m no medical man. Keep your knowledge for the police. They eat up that sort of thing.”

  Then he stalked out. He met Hugo in the hall and spoke to him briefly. Then, still irritated, he banged out of the front door. The doctor looked after him and smiled.

  “Nerves!” he said. “Well, I don’t know that I blame him. I’m a bit jumpy myself. And he’s got a hard job ahead of him.”

  “What sort of job?” I asked.

  “I happen to know that Paula Brent saw him, late this afternoon, and asked him to defend young Elliott. He has his own attorneys, but she wants him to help. He’s not a criminal lawyer, but she’s no fool. Glenn and his father before him have been close to the Mitchells for fifty years. It might be a shrewd move.”

  He left soon, and Hugo followed him out onto the porch. There they talked for a short time, and then the doctor drove away. That must have been at seven thirty.

  I wondered then if that quiet talk on the veranda was the attempt to get word to somebody that the Inspector had anticipated. But the doctor’s final words, which I had overheard, sounded open and reassuring enough. He had spoken from some little distance, raising his voice to do so.

  “Think about it, anyhow,” he said. “We don’t want any more trouble, Hugo.”

  “You may be right, doctor.”

  I wandered out onto the porch myself after he had gone, and stood there for a while. The September night air was cool and bracing, and I remember taking long breaths to fill my lungs with it, and to help to clarify my mind. Think as I might, I could not put together the pieces of that puzzle. I tried to fit in Florence Lenz, but I could not. I believed that she was as capable of putting poison into the tube as any Borgia, but I could see no reason why she should. She was capable, too, of shooting Herbert Wynne; but again, why?

  She was cool enough, for all her pretended fainting when Charlie Elliott had bumped into her that night. She knew Herbert. She might even have learned from him that trick of shooting through a newspaper. But again, why?

  I was still standing there, in the light from the front hall, when Hugo appeared from around the corner of the house and stopped near me.

  “I am going out, miss,” he said. “I’d be glad if you would keep an eye on my wife. She is very nervous tonight.”

  “I’ll do that, of course.”

  “And—if she should decide to give you something, miss, I’ll ask you to put it away carefully.”

  “Give me something, Hugo? What?”

  “She will tell you herself. But I don’t advise mentioning it to her. She might resent that. Let her bring it. If she doesn’t …”

  He made a small gesture, put on his hat and went down the drive.

  I was never to see him again. It seems strange to think of that; to see again in my mind the hall light falling on his white hair and his old face, to remember him going down that drive, on his way, like Herbert, like Miss Juliet, to his death.

  Was he murdered? I don’t suppose we will ever know. But from the direction he took, he was on his way to Headquarters, and it is easy now to see why it was determined that he should never get there.

  Sometimes I think that I had a sort of premonition that night, for I found myself shivering, and I had turned to go in when I heard Paula Brent’s voice. She was standing in the shrubbery at the end of the porch, and she spoke in a low voice.

  “Don’t go in. I want to talk to you. Close that door.”

  “Hugo has gone out.”

  “I saw him. But that wife of his is still there, isn’t she?”

  I closed the door and moved over to her. Even in the dark I could tell that she was excited.

  “Listen,” she said. “There’s a story going around that Miss Mitchell was poisoned. Is that true? Do you think it’s true?”

  “They suspect it,” I said cautiously.

  “Well, that lets Charlie out, doesn’t it?”

  “Not necessarily, Paula. But things would look better, of course.”

  “Tell me how it happened, and then I’ll tell you something. Did that Lenz girl have anything to do with it? She was in your room, remember. And there was stuff on your tray, right under her nose.”

  “I haven’t an idea. Yes, she could have. The question is, did she?”

  And then she brought out her own news. “I’ve just remembered something,” she said. “Although why I come to you with it I don’t know! I suppose it’s because I have nobody else. I can’t go to my people. They think Charlie did it, and they won’t talk to me. You saw the Lenz girl this morning, and the way she looked at me?”

  “I did, indeed,” I said briefly.

  “I’d never met her before, but I knew who she was. You see, she used to be a friend of Herbert’s. They were pretty close friends until he met me. Then that was over, and I guess she didn’t like it much.”

  Well, I could imagine that Florence had not liked it much; and I began to wonder if Paula had come that night to admit her marriage, and to say that Florence had learned about it. It turned out, however, to be something entirely different, and possibly more important.

  On Monday night, as she had said before, she had met Herbert at the movies, and they went in and sat together. The theater was dark, and she had paid no attention to who sat near her. When she left, she discovered outside that she had dropped her bag, and went back for it.

  It lay under her seat, and she got it and went out again. Herbert was looking at a paper, and while he did so, she examined her bag to see if her money was there. It was, but the two keys to the Mitchell house, which she always carried, had disappeared. She looked at me defiantly as she mentioned the keys, but I pretended not to notice it.

  “They were gone,” she said. “I had had them that evening, but they were gone.”

  But the point was that, while they were still standing there, the Lenz girl had come out of the theater. Herbert had not seen her. He had been rather annoyed about the keys, and he had reached into his pocket and got his own, on a key ring marked with his initials. He took one key from the ring for himself and gave her the other two. It was those keys of Herbert’s which Charlie Elliott, trapped upstairs on Thursday night, had thrown out of the window.

  “You are certain it was Florence?”

  “Certain. I knew the other day upstairs that I had seen her somewhere, and not long ago. It just came to me tonight.”

  “And you’re sure those keys were in your bag?”

  “I had to be sure. I couldn’t leave them at home!”

  “Nobody at your house could have found them and taken them? Before you left?”

  She considered that, and I thought that she was uneasy. But the next moment she dismissed the idea. Nobody there knew she had them. No, they had been stolen in the theater, and whoever took them had suspected they were there, and had slipped her bag from her knee.

  “You didn’t notice the people around you?”

  “It was dark, of course. I didn’t recognize anyone. No. But she was there. Near, too. Maybe beside me. How do I know?”

  “Why don’t you go to Headquarters with that?” I asked. “After all, if somebody else had keys to this house that night, and Charlie Elliott didn’t, whoever it was could get in, couldn’t he? Or she?”

  She shook her head. “But
he did,” she said miserably. “He did, and they’d get that out of me. We had a quarrel that night, and he took them from me. He took my bag, with the keys in it. He knew they were there. That’s why I followed him, and why I had to get the ladder. I knew he could get into the house. But if somebody else had keys, too—don’t you see? They got there earlier, and that’s what he says they did. He says Herbert was dead when he got into the room; that he was just dead, at that.”

  “Then why did he move the body?”

  “He never moved the body. Where did you hear that? He heard somebody below, and he swung out the window onto the roof.”

  “Miss Juliet made a statement before she died, Paula. She said she had seen him move the body.”

  “Then she lied!” she cried angrily. “She never saw that. When Charlie found him, he was in front of the bureau, with the revolver on the floor beside him, and some oil and rags on a newspaper on the dresser, as if he’d been cleaning his gun. Charlie thought it was an accident, but he didn’t want to be caught there. He knew how it would look. He hid behind the chimney on the roof until the police left.”

  And at that minute a police car turned into the drive.

  CHAPTER XXV

  Among the other unrealities of that sickening night—Hugo’s face with the light shining out on it, Paula and her shadowy figure and her eager voice on the end of the porch—is my recollection of that police car; of Evans getting out first, followed by Charlie Elliott, and then by the Inspector.

  I can still hear Paula’s gasp, and see that boy, handcuffed to Evans, standing gazing at the house; and his expression change from a sort of dogged patience to sheer joy when she rushed to him.

  “Charlie! Charlie darling!”

  “Sorry, honey. Only have one arm. Other’s in use.”

  And then I can see her with her head on his shoulder, and the two police officers looking fierce and uncomfortable at the same time. They gave them their minute together, however, and let her cry her heart out, as she proceeded to do almost immediately. And Charlie Elliott tried to cheer her after his fashion.

  “My turn now,” he said. “Suppose you stand up and let me cry. Listen, dampness! How would you like to get into the car and bring me some doughnuts and a cup of decent coffee?”

  But his voice was husky, and he tightened his hold on her when his humor had no effect on her.

  “Now stop it,” he said. “These fellows aren’t as sure as they were, or why would they drag me from my warm cot and bring me to this cold, cold spot? Do you get that, sweetheart? These minions of the law are trembling in their boots right now, because they know they’re off on the wrong foot. You are trembling, Inspector, aren’t you?”

  “Shaking as with a chill,” said the Inspector gallantly.

  Somehow this nonsense steadied her. She looked up at Charlie Elliott and smiled.

  Nobody had paid the least attention to me, and now I spoke.

  “You’re not the only person with a chill,” I said.

  The Inspector saw me then, and came to me on the porch. “What about Hugo?”

  “He’s gone out.”

  He nodded. “I thought he would. I’m having him tailed. The chances are that he made for Headquarters. If he didn’t, we’ll soon know where he did go.” But when I told him of the talk about Mary before Hugo left, he whistled softly.

  “And what might that be?” he said. “A gun? A bottle of strychnia?”

  “It just might be what Miss Juliet gave her. The newspaper is my guess.”

  “So things are getting pretty hot, and it’s time to produce the alibi!”

  “That’s my idea. I may be wrong.”

  “You’re not often wrong, Miss Pinkerton!” he said, and went back to his prisoner.

  Then followed one of those quietly dramatic experiments which now and then a police officer with imagination will stage. Charlie Elliott was there to reproduce as faithfully as possible every move he had made in the house and on the grounds on the Monday night before. Evidently he had “come clean” to the extent of admitting that he had been there, and had agreed to duplicate his actions.

  From the moment that small drama began, both the Inspector and Evans were absorbed in it. I doubt if they even know that Paula and I were following. Now and then the Inspector asked a question, but much of it took place in silence, save for the boy’s own explanations as they went along.

  He led first to the street, and turned from there into the next property. “I got out of the taxi at the corner,” he said, “and turned in here.”

  He went back perhaps a hundred yards and stopped there. The house was not much more than a shadow from there, and he stopped and surveyed it.

  “I’d been here before,” he said. “I’d followed Paula one night. The side door is over there.”

  After that he moved through the shrubbery, still leading Evans by that handcuff, and partway across the lawn he stopped again.

  “This is where I was when I saw somebody coming out of the side door. I’ve told you that. You can see how dark it is, and why I couldn’t tell whether it was a man or a woman.”

  “And they went toward the rear of the house?”

  “Yes.”

  The Inspector was still standing, gazing toward the side door. “Listen, Elliott,” he said. “You must have thought something about that figure. After all, why should anybody slip out of that door at that hour of the night? You must have thought a lot about it, if your story’s the right one.”

  I thought young Elliott hesitated. “I tell you,” he replied, “I have thought about it. I haven’t thought of much else. Remember, I didn’t see who it was. But at the time I sort of took it for granted that it was either Hugo or Doctor Stewart. I knew the old lady had a bad heart; everybody knew it.”

  “But you couldn’t see the doctor going toward the kitchen. Is that it?”

  “Well, hardly that. His car wasn’t in sight, and he might have cut across lots from another case nearby. There are no fences. No, it isn’t that. Why would he shoot Wynne? What would be the idea? That’s where I bring up every time.”

  “All right. Let that ride. What then?”

  “Just what I’ve told you.”

  We moved toward the house, and at the side entrance he stopped.

  “This part was easy. I’d got Paula’s keys, as I’ve explained, and I had no trouble with this door; but I was pretty well lost when I got to the top of the back stairs. I could hear Hugo snoring, however, in the back room, so I tried the other key on the door there. I had lighted a match to do that, and I found myself on the landing of the second floor.”

  We went on up, and he repeated what he had done. Apparently Mary was still in the kitchen, and unsuspicious. In the hall on the second floor Charlie Elliott stopped and smiled faintly.

  “I stopped here,” he said. “I’d been blind crazy up to that minute, but the job began to look too much like housebreaking about that time. I don’t mind saying that up to this point, I might have killed him if I’d had a gun. After that I began to feel pretty much like a damned fool.”

  But the light had been burning overhead, and so he had kept on.

  Halfway up to the third floor, or a little more, he stopped again.

  “If somebody will go ahead, and turn on that light, it will help,” he said. “I was here when I saw him first.”

  The Inspector went on up, and we stood there waiting. In the semidarkness I saw Charlie reach down his free hand and grope for Paula’s; and so they waited, those two children, until the light went on.

  “I was here,” he said. “I stopped and looked across into the room; and at first I thought he was looking for something under the bureau. But his position was queer, and when he didn’t move, I saw that something was wrong. I nearly turned and ran then! But of course I couldn’t. Whether he was sick or hurt or just blind drunk, I had to go on. And I did.”

  Up in the room itself he repeated what he had done. He had stooped over the body, but had not moved it. He sa
w the wound, and knew at once that Herbert was dead.

  “How long dead?” said the Inspector. “Was he still warm? Was he limber?”

  “I don’t know. Or was that a trap? I didn’t touch him, I tell you. I thought at first of lifting him onto the bed. Then I remembered not to touch anything. First order of all good policemen.”

  “But you went over and looked at the bed?”

  “I don’t think so. I was still stooping when I heard somebody on the stairs, and I had to get out. I knew of the roof, and I can show you how I did it, if you like.”

  “And have to get off with a ladder again? Not on your life! And how do I know you haven’t got a ladder there now, my lad?”

  Well, that was meant as a joke, and so we received it. Any relief in that grisly business was welcome. But the Inspector was sober and businesslike enough immediately.

  “How long had you stood in that shrubbery?”

  “Only long enough to get my bearings.”

  “And you heard no shot?”

  “I may have. I wouldn’t have paid any attention. Too many backfires these days.”

  “You didn’t connect what you found with the figure you’d seen?”

  He hesitated. “I’d rather not answer that.”

  “Go on, Charlie. Tell them,” said Paula unexpectedly.

  “How did I know that it wasn’t Paula?” he said slowly. “I know now that it couldn’t have been, but you see what I mean. I didn’t know then that they were married, but I did know she couldn’t see him at her home, and that she came here.”

  “You’d just left her, hadn’t you?”

  “He had to look for a taxi,” Paula said bravely. “I could have got here before he did, and he knew that. I didn’t, but that’s what he thought.”

  “You had her keys, didn’t you?”

  “She could have whistled, or something. I’d better explain what I mean. I didn’t think she’d killed him. You understand that. I didn’t think anyone had killed him. But if she had told him something …”