Murder On the Way!
Page 9
“That’s easy. Because I didn’t shoot him,” 1 said.
He pulled Pete’s nickeled revolver from his tunic.
“Your weapon, ma’mselle. A thousand pardons, but I am something of a student of ballistics. Here is a little gun, a twenty-two. Is it a mere coincidence that the bullets I extracted from the body of Dr. Sevestre before breakfast are of the same caliber?”
She paled a little. “Dr. Sevestre? Shot by a twenty-two?”
“Absolutely.”
“I didn’t shoot him,” Pete said without expression.
“And Sir Duffin Wilburforce?”
“I didn’t shoot him,” Pete said.
“Did you know there were but five shells remaining in your gun?”
“The man who sold me the gun told me to leave one chamber empty when I carried it.”
Lieutenant Narcisse moved his plump shoulders, returning the revolver to his tunic, next yanking my Luger automatic from his hip. “M’sieu, there are three bullets absent from the magazine of this, your gun. Bullets of nine millimeter caliber. That was a tremendous hole blown in the back of Sir Duffin, was it not?” He smiled down at the Luger. “A big hole and a big automatic, oui?”
“Do you still think one of us shot that bird?”
“Who else was in the room at the time?”
I answered angrily: “Do you understand English as well as speak it?”
“I have studied in the States, m’sieu.”
“Then get this. Miss Dale or I didn’t kill the doctor or that Britisher.” Pointing sarcastically at my gun, I continued: “I’m no firearms expert, but all you got to do is look at that muzzle to see the Luger hasn’t been fired since 1918.”
Scowling, the officer returned the weapon to his hip. A damp sweat polished his brown forehead. Rain came in buckets against the stained-glass window, bringing the faint thumping of drums. Narcisse plucked at his lower lip. “Unfortunately I am not carrying equipment with which to examine these firearms. I can only believe the English blanc turned about in the wardrobe, was shot from behind, then spun and fell. The two of you were alone with him, then. What would you?” He made a Latin shrug. “I have questioned everyone else in the place to no avail. Even that Caco scoundrel, the Toadstool, provides himself with an alibi. Ti Pedro, who directly benefits by the Englishman’s murder, could not possibly have done the shooting.”
“That son of a Briton got what was coming to him,” I suggested, “trying to play ghost and scare the life out of Miss Dale.”
“You can tell the others I don’t want any part of the legacy,” Pete put in.
Narcisse squinted at a cocked thumb. “The doctor, before he died, testified that your Uncle Eli had been slain by a bullet also discovered to be of nine millimeter caliber, you comprehend.”
“I suppose Mr. Cartershall fired that shot, too? We were four thousand miles away when Uncle Eli was found dead.”
“This is a hell of a lot of nonsense,” I raged. “All we ask is that you check with the American authorities and get us out of here. Yes, where the devil is that messenger you sent last night? What’s more,” I stormed, “if anything happens to Miss Dale while you’re holding us in this rat’s nest, I’ll have the roof blown right off Haiti; put that in your book!”
Narcisse gave me an oblique stare. “What do you expect will happen to ma’mselle?”
“Nothing,” I countered hastily, “and damn it all, it better not! It’s up to you and those troopers of yours to see that nothing does!”
I shut up to light a cigarette. The Haitian’s cheeks were olive-oiled in the stuffy heat. “I will do all I can to protect ma’mselle. Enfin,” — he switched subjects — ”but I would know what you and the German and the Yankee naval officer were talking about at breakfast a while ago, eh? What was it you whispered when you thought I was not watching, m’sieu?”
I glared behind my cigarette.
“And why did you spill the hot coffee so adroitly on your confrère?” he insisted.
“He made a remark I didn’t like. Said I came here trying to marry an heiress,” I lied, hustling the point. I wanted to tell the police about that little breakfast chat, but I couldn’t have Pete worrying. Then I remembered a word of the En-sign’s that had puzzled me.
“Lieutenant Narcisse, what are Cacos?”
He regarded me sharply. “Why do you inquire, m’sieu?”
“A while back you referred to Toadstool as a Caco.”
“It is a term for bandits, m’sieu. The type of guerilla renegade — you might say the gangster — who sometimes infests our hinterland.”
I traced the rainbow shrine pattern, faint on the floor, with my foot; tried to put the next question offhand. “Do you know a man named Browninshields?”
The Haitian sat up with a jerk. “What do you know of him?”
Pete sat up, too, her worried eyes shading from blue to hazel. “Cart, what are you talking about?”
“I wanted to know if he knew a man named Browninshields.”
“I did,” Narcisse said carefully. “Where did you hear of him?”
“Read about him in the paper,” I hazarded, not liking those black eyes. All at once they were augers boring at my head.
“Then you read,” he was suggesting, “how Captain Browninshields of the American Coast Guard was shot dead on the dock at Cap Haitien last year when his boat put in for supplies?” The officer heaved up from his chair. “A murder that created an international situation the most delicate. All we know of the assassin is that he employed a Luger pistol, and the discharged shell had been purchased from a sporting goods store up in New York. You seem to have an excellent memory for names, m’sieu. Could it be you, yourself, were in Haiti last year?”
It was my face’s turn to be olive-oiled. “I never heard of Browninshields before. I just happened to see the name in an old newspaper — at — at the port where we landed yesterday. I was never in Haiti before in my life and never want to be again. This whole thing’s ridiculous,” I shouted. “Murder all over the place and you pick on the two most innocent for your Third Degree while the rest of this underworld mob with admittedly criminal records — ”
“Admittedly,” he caught at the word. “Ah, oui, alors, admittedly. But how to vouch for your characters, m’sieu? Maître Tousellines, who brought you here, can speak no certain information on your past. For all I can determine, m’sieu the American, may be all manner of a criminal. Now that we speak of it, that is precisely why I have summoned you to this private conference, m’sieu.” He sat down, watching my forehead. “The pink-eye, Ambrose, tells me you were with him in a Florida prison six years ago — ”
My forehead must have been worth watching. “What?”
“Do you admit it, m’sieu?”
The office blurred in front of my face. “Ambrose? Saw me?”
Narcisse shrugged. “He took me aside before breakfast and advised me to arrest you and send you away at once. He said you were a most notorious gangster — ”
“Why that double-damned, white-headed, lying — ”
“He said you had, as he expressed it, done a stretch with him in the can, m’sieu. That you were the sort of expert who could open a safe or a bank vault with your fingers crossed. That you were known as a gunman for one Albert Capone.”
“Oh, Cart — you — you a gunman in a Florida prison — oh — ” It brought a burst of merriment out of Pete (hands pressed to cheeks she began to laugh hysterically) and a roar out of me.
“So, I’m not only suspected of murder, but I’m a safecracker, a public enemy and a gunman. Don’t tell me any more, it’s too beautiful! Get Ambrose in here,” I begged stormily. “Maybe he can remember something else. Maybe I’m Henry Morgan! I’d rather be J. Pierpont, if I’ve a choice. Could I be Paul Cezanne?”
Narcisse called to the gendarme beyond the door. Pete wiped mist from the corner of gray eyes with a finger. Boots hobnailing up and down the hall produced Ambrose. He sidled through the door to stand before
the Haitian officer, twitching and wheezing with asthma, fingers twiddling with a tweed cap, his albino eyelashes fanning so that his pale eyes made me think of mice.
He opened up with a whine. “What you want of me, Chief? You ain’t got nothing on me. I was in the billiard room takin’ masse — ”
Narcisse nodded at me. “Did you ever see this man before?”
The mice eyes raced around the room, sped past mc in a scuttle, darted at Pete, at the officer, then rested on the floor. “Yeh. I seen him.”
“Where?”
“At prison in Miami, Florida. Up in that skyscraper prison. He had the cell next mine. He was doin’ time for opening a safe at West Palm Beach.”
“Ambrose,” I said, thick-tongued, “you’re nine kinds of a liar and you know it. You never saw me before in Florida or anywhere.”
“Yeh?” His wheezing sounded as if his pinched chest were full of gum. His face was distorted on the effort to breathe and lie at the same time, and he spun the cap wildly. “Didn’t, eh? Don’t gimme that stuff. They’re tryin’ to make me take the rap for killin’ the sawbones an’ Sir Duffin, an’ I ain’t going to take it, see? Not with no killer like you in the house. I got your number, see? Six years ago. Miami prison. Cell alongside mine. You use to talk through the bars an’ tell me what a hot shot you was, how many guys you’d took for rides, an’ how you could open safes like they was packs of cigarettes — ”
I rubbed the ache the En-sign had put in the back of my neck and stared at the albino. He panted at Narcisse, “I tell you, this mug is a killer. He told me he was. Get him outa here, that’s what you’ll do if you’re smart. Take him to Cape Haiti an’ slap him in the can! I know him!”
Narcisse spoke through white teeth, “Are you sure?”
“Yeh,” the boy puffed. “You think I cou1d miss on that face?”
“And I can’t miss on yours,” I bawled. Then I missed. My upper cut was out of practice. My fist made a foolish parabola past his pimpled chin, the miss plunging me off balance against the roll-top desk. Ambrose clipped me across the ear and caromed against the wall, wheezing shrill falsetto oaths. I lashed a punch that glanced off his shoulder, twirling him around. His cursing filled the close room with contamination. Pete’s scream, “He’s got a knife!” brought Narcisse tangling against me, and there was a second of free-for-all before I opened Ambrose’s fist with a dropkick and sent a dirty little paring knife flying under the desk. I got his ears and banged his head against wainscoting while Narcisse sat on my back and spanked me with the flat of his sabre.
“See?” the youth shrieked. “He’ll murder me — ”
“Enough!” Narcisse roared. By that time the guard was tough the door and we were all on our feet, Ambrose screaming I would murder him, and not a little truth in his accusation. Narcisse flailed the dusty air with his sabre.
“Enough! Enough! Stand so!” He bawled at the gendarme. “What room houses this pink-eyed spawn of an octopus and a shark?”
“Billiard room, mon lieutenant.”
“Take him there and shut him in and do not so much as move an inch away from the door!”
Ambrose continued to squeal that I’d kill him, while the guard booted him out into the hall. Narcisse slammed the door, swung back across the disheveled office, puffing. White at the temples, Pete sat in her chair. I could only stand and choke. Narcisse adjusted his medals; cleared his throat, his plump face cinnamon.
“By the sacred name of ten thousand and two pipes, but yes! You comprehend, m’sieu! I know nothing about you, save that pink-eyed boy claims to have seen you as a jailbird. I know nothing of ma’mselle. Foreigners, you come to Morne Noir late at night, armed, in the middle of a case the most mysterious. I find you together in the company of the murdered Englishman. There is no proof m’sieu did not assassinate the doctor. Then he speaks of an obscure crime that took place in Haiti last year. M’sieu! What proof have I that you and the girl are not working together in a plot to steal for yourselves the Proudfoot estate — ”
“Good heavens!” Pete gasped.
“And that you are, indeed, a dangerous criminal?” the officer crabbed at me. “There it is! I can only identify you and your character through the American authorities, and my messenger has not yet returned. If the road has been washed out by this cursed rainstorm, it may occupy hours before the rider gets through. Meantime — ”
His voice was disconnected by a snare-drum roll of thunder that broke like surf around the château, dinned across the roofs and filled the house with a sound like breaking chains. The little office shook with noise, and there was a split second when the church window across the room glowed livid with outer lightning. Wham! Thunder followed like a blast. The electric bulb in the ceiling sickened and died. Instantly the office was as dark as a cellar save for the ghost of a blue shine where the window had been. Pete, Narcisse, everything around me vanished. A thousand off-stage wind machines sent a hurricane tearing through the blackness outside. Inside voices were hollering. Doors began to slam open. Somebody shouted, “Lights!” Boots ran.
I felt, rather than saw, Narcisse go by me; heard him kick the office door open and dart out into the hall. Midnight and confusion filled that lower hallway, as if shades were stampeding in a cavern; in the blind black of the office I floundered with out-thrown hands, trying to find Pete. Then I heard her cry my name in the hall; and played blindman’s buff trying to locate the voice. I remember thinking I’d cracked heads with a bald man, and trying to choke the life out of the newel post at the foot of the stairs.
“Pete!” I failed. “Where are — ”
“Staaaaahp!” A long-winded, quivering shriek knocked me stock-still and stymied in a bath of ice. Coming from Nowhere and Anywhere, the terror-driven cry pierced through the dinning dark around me, knocked everything else as silent as pitch. For the sixty ticks of a minute it seemed as if the atmosphere were stone.
Then, bam, a muffled explosion sounded somewhere in the blackness, recessed, dull as the blow of a hammer on lead. Furore broke loose. Shades ran by me in all directions, cursing, scuffling, and lifted above the clamor the sound of somebody rattling a doorknob like mad and Lieutenant Narcisse screeching, “Lights! Lights!”
One lantern — two lanterns came dashing out of darkness beyond the stairs; gleams no bigger than match-flares in that high-ceilinged, windy hall. The two gendarmes with the bull’s-eye lamps raced up, waving them like frantic railway signals. The hall with its upper balcony, its extinguished chandeliers, its museum staircase with me throttling the newel post came into view, all angles and crazy shadows. I don’t know why nobody thought to open the front door. I don’t suppose there was any daylight worth the admittance, anyway.
Pete, thank God! stood not far from me with white hands pasted to her cheeks. Directly across from the office, Lieutenant Narcisse could be seen trying to twist the doorknob from the door of a closed room that was sandwiched in between the library and the billiard room.
A little crowd, intermingled with pop-eyed Haitian police, crept toward the officer; gathered around like an accident crowd on a side street. The transom over the door was slanted open and delicate tendrils of smoke were curling from the narrow aperture.
Gasping oaths, Narcisse released the doorknob and stood back. Beads as big as drops of molasses glistened on his taffy brow.
“Who is locked in this room?”
The harelipped corporal saluted. “I locked him in, m’sieu lieutenant. It is Dominican boy — Ti Pedro — ”
“By the Seven Sacred Goats of Gonaives!” Narcisse squalled. “Give me the key to this door!”
The stricken guard fumbled in his tunic; found a big brass key. Narcisse jammed it into the lock; threw the door open with a crash. The bull’s-eye lanterns jumped in; and the little “accident crowd” surged forward to look. Then it surged back at what it saw. With the hall like midnight behind them, the curious wanted to stay in the area of the light, but nobody wanted to stay in that opened room.
It was even less inviting when Maître Tousellines, shrinking at my elbow, looked up and whimpered, “Tonnerre! It was in this very room where M’sieu Proudfoot stored the rosewood coffin — ”
The coffin was not there now. Nor was there other furniture. There was nothing save a woven grass rug on the floor, and near that side door which had not been opened, the hem of the grass rug was fringed by inch-high blue flames which sent up spirals of hay-smelling smoke. The little flames livened when the crowd fell back in the hallway. The glow of the burning carpet was weird blue and the light of the police lamps no better. Firelight and lanternlight touched a greenish tint to the body face down on the carpet.
It was Ti Pedro, and he was dead. Locked by himself in that plaster cell (no handy secret panels in plaster, I observed), locked alone in that storeroom where the only window hadn’t been budged and a side door was nailed fast, the Dominican mute had been shot and killed. That wasn’t all.
I saw Lieutenant Nemo Narcisse of the Garde d’Haiti drop to his plump knees beside the body, then corkscrew upright and gaze at the blank plaster ceiling in amazement.
Where had that bullet hailed from?
Blood wiggled from a hole drilled exactly in the middle of Ti Pedro’s flocculent scalp. He had been shot through the top of his head!
VII.
The Face on the Billiard Room Floor!
I don’t know how long the scene was posed — it was of those crimes crudely done in wax such as you might see for a morbid dime at Coney Island. The Coney sculpting would be better and the parodied crime more plausible.
Pedro lay like a fallen lion, the little footlights burning along the grass rug reflecting in the magnificent curves of his tawny shoulder muscles. Somewhere in the behind me the old clock on the stairs ticked like a metronome, spacing the passage of years. In that brief eon of time I thought about Uncle Eli’s will and the about the funeral; about doctor’s death and Sir Duffin’s rendezvous with extinction in a wardrobe; about my breakfast nook conversation and my chat with Narcisse in the office.