We moved on up the leafy wet path in a mystery of quieting darkness.
XIV.
The Dictator
For the sake of possible great-grandchildren who may reasonably not believe a word I say, I saved the following guarantee from Moment — that garrulous little magazine which gossips its way through the news of the world for the quick digestion of the breakfast reader. If the cited excerpt missed the story of the year for the thinnest skim over the facts, it is more due to the close-mouthed conservatism of a considerate American consular agent than lack of reportorial acumen on the part of Moment’s sharpshooting staff …
“Haiti — Buried Corpse Leaves Grave —Later Found in Buried House —
“Perhaps the strangest story of the season comes from the Island of Haiti, where belief in zombies (corpses brought to life by black magic) was stirred to fever pitch during queer seismic antic last week. Inland from Cap Haitien, scene of Christophe’s Citadel, among a range of forbidding mountains and mornes in district known as Morne Noir, is located a château privately owned by Planter Eli Proudloot, American, one-time millionaire, whose recent suicide provoked police investigation and reminded local authorities of unsolved murder of Coast Guard Captain Browninshields killed in Haiti last year (see Moment, Sept. 5, 1934).
“Death of landowner Proudfoot inspires ghost story while brief Caco (bandit) uprising terrorizes countryside. Police detachment (Garde d’Haiti) and army rushing from Port au Prince found revolt, which had threatened revolutionary proportions, extinguished by night of storm after avalasse (tropical rainstorm, landslide) buried Morne Noire château under avalanche.
“Digging through château ruins, Haitian soldiers found entire household including local physician, identified only by clothing, crushed in wreckage. Landslide leveling old structure played gruesome tricks on victims. Two found wrapped in bed sheets. Another body discovered drowned in swimming pool. Youth had billiard cue jammed through ribs, ivory ball crushed into mouth.
“Grimmest trick of tropical violence was throwing of landowner Proudfoot’s grave over roof of house. Monument of angel crashes through dining room. Coffin buried the night before on hilltop discovered upended in terrace garden. Strangest of all was body of Proudfoot, twenty-four hours dead, found in main hall of château, clearly identified.
“Chest of corpse crushed by fallen chandelier, but further autopsy reveals cerebral hemorrhage while army surgeon claims death caused by shock, heart trouble. Medical officers puzzled. Body held for reexamination. Gendarmes trailing party said to have attended funeral.”
But Moment never told the half of it till later, and not quite all of it, then. The quoted item did not appear for public consumption until the day after our arrival in New York, hours after the last chapter had been told somewhere in Haiti —
***
I think it was called the Hotel Merveilleux, and I want to report that that chalk-walled little hostel, sketched in pastels, with is blue sun-washed patios, its pink pottery roof, its lime tree brilliant with birds, was a marvel so far as I was concerned. There was wash water and cool soap. Hot soup and rum. There was a sandy-haired American consular agent with a cynical grin named Drupievsky, and a meal of something swell called escargot which I thoroughly enjoyed until I found it meant snails.
Lieutenant Nemo Narcisse, of the Garde d’Haiti was on hand with his former pride and punctilio only a little tarnished; and Maître Pierre Valentin Bonjean Tousellines, LL.B., Comte de Limonade, arrived from somewhere with his cheeks returned to their normal licorice, his Mother Goose umbrella on his arm, plus a portmanteau bristling with red tape.
There was the white-haired Haitian commandant with more medals than a Bowery pawnshop window and more manners than a lot of Aryans I can think of. And Pete, in a white linen traveling ensemble wearing a jaunty hat with a little red feather.
She shook the hat from her brown-gold head, balanced it on one knee and soberly tidied up the feather. She could knock me over with it any minute now.
She was saying: “Whether he shot Browninshields, himself, or hired it done, we don’t know; but I do know he was directly responsible for the deaths of those others. His marksmanship gave me my first inkling — but, good heavens! I just couldn’t believe — ”
“He must have been a honey,” the consular agent chuckled. “Say, how about letting me in on the beginning?” He thrust out long, flanneled legs and wriggled the toes out of his open-air sandals. His face was pleased with Pete. “Start with Act One. How’d the show open?”
“Exactly,” urged the white-headed commandant. “I would, myself, like to hear it in — what shall we say — chronological order, if you will forgive my deplorable English.” He smiled and fingered a notebook from a tunic pocket under a Croix de Guerre. He jotted with a pencil. “Alors, Ma’mselle? M’sieu?”
“This is Miss Dale’s story,” I said. “I’m still a little lost.”
Pete gave me a strained smile. “So was I, Cart, up to the moment you told about seeing that half loaf of raisin bread. But, from the first that will sounded fishy. I mean all those codicils or stipulations or whatever you call them.” She turned to Tousellines. “That part about the heirs remaining in the château twenty-four hours, forced to attend the funeral and all. Just the sort of thing to have the household in conniptions, yet keep them on hand. And the way it was devised — down the list. Like a chain letter. Calculated to start any sort of a free-for-all. And that eccentric business of the grave-plot marked out, the monument prepared, the exacting instructions to dig the grave just ten feet deep, and that ghastly stake to be driven into the coffin. Every detail had something to do with the murderer’s trap for us. I — I might have guessed — ”
“Guessed?” I snapped. “Why? Lots of old people are fussy about their funerals, their coffins.”
“I thought, myself, it was just an old man’s morbid streak.” Pete lifted her shoulders. “And when Maître Tousellines told us about zombies it — well, it seemed logical a lonely old man might do something of the sort.”
The commandant nodded. “The post in the grave, it is old Haitian superstition.”
“And the whole plan hinged on that stake in the coffin,” Pete breathed. “Right away it was an alibi and an ace in the game. A stake in the grave, a monument planted on top, a body buried ten feet underground and a mile from the house — and yet when we walked back downhill after the funeral and retired to our rooms and Dr. Sevestre stayed outside for a stroll on the lawn, the murderer was there in the château to meet him!”
I had a mental picture of that black-shrouded body in the coffin; I could feel again that dent in the casket floor under my left shoulder-blade; once more I saw that chicken-breasted thing in the black hall with that stab-red smear under its wishbone. It put dampness on my forehead, and I was glad to hear the consul give a whistle of consternation.
“Whew, Miss Dale! I can’t figure the answer to this.” Tousellines agitated his features into raisin-wrinkles; Narcisse made an audible swallow; the commandant scratched in his notebook; 1 waited for Pete.
“He must’ve been on the front verandah concealed in the vines. Anyway, he hit the doctor with two quick shots.”
“Why knock off Sevestre?” Mr. Drupievsky asked.
“As Lieutenant Narcisse suggested, he knew too much,” Pete declared. “A great deal was known by Dr. Sevestre. That was why the others in that household were killed, too.”
I was impatient. “Keep going, Pete. What did they know?”
She went on. “You told me the answer to that. Don’t you remember telling me about Browninshields and rum runners and how you thought Uncle Eli had been murdered because he knew who’d killed the Coast Guard captain? Well, that’s the reason those seven others were killed. They were the ones who knew. About Browninshields. They were murdered because the killer was afraid they might expose him.”
“We were spending every effort to run down the Browninshields assassin,” the Haitian commandant advised. “Morne Noi
r Château had long been under suspicion and was also under surveillance for smuggling.
“Old Proudfoot had been bootlegging rum to the States, our agent suspected. He used up an awful lot of cane and’ his boats were always off somewhere. He seemed to have more money than your ordinary planter.”
“Of this smuggling business,” Tousellines put in mournfully, “I was never aware. I knew my client had agents in New York with whom he was communicating, but I thought always it was sugar.”
“The household was on the death list because they knew who killed, or was behind the killing of Browninshields,” Pete reiterated. “The will called them together to their — to put them on the spot. Dr. Sevestre was slain because he knew about the plan. He was doublecrossed.”
“But why were you summoned to Morne Noir?” I asked Pete. “You weren’t any murder witness to be put on the spot.”
“I wasn’t supposed to be put on the spot,” Pete exclaimed with a little shudder. “That was a slip in the plan for I — I was intended for something else. Another slip was when you, Cart, arrived on the scene. And the killer never expected the police so soon on the job. I think it spoiled his scheme when he knew the Haitian gendarmes and Lieutenant Narcisse were on hand at the doctor’s shooting.”
Narcisse’s forehead was doleful. “I? Name of a thousand names, but as a police detective I am one the most blind. I still do not see.”
“But you forced the hand.” Pete awarded him a smile. “If you hadn’t been there I don’t think the Caco uprising would have come so soon. That was the deepest-laid part of the plot. If it had come later — but the killer had to play it fast and he wasn’t ready. He had to do something to get the police out of the château. What time was the doctor shot?”
Narcisse consulted a pad from his tunic. “Two o’clock.”
“And Sir Duffin, the Englishman?”
“A moment or so before six.”
“Then while the lieutenant was interrogating the household right after the doctor’s murder,” Pete explained to the commandant, “the killer was off in the night — he must have had a horse hidden down the compound — riding like mad to start the Cacos attacking Cap Haitien, and spread the story that a zombie was on the loose. Sometime between two and six he returned, entered the château and hid somewhere — probably in the office, maybe in the tunnel behind the desk. Meanwhile, with all of us in the library, he had a chance to scramble the telephone. And then he heard the Englishman go sneaking up the passage to the wardrobe in the upstairs room.”
“That cochon!” Narcisse spat. “He was playing the ghost, mon général, to frighten those others away, to have the will for himself.”
“The killer trailed him upstairs to the wardrobe and shot him in the back,” Pete recounted.
The consular agent said, as if it didn’t matter: “I knew that British beggar. He was a louse.”
“I think,” Pete surmised, “the murderer had expected his companions to do away with Sir Duffin. First on the will, you see. But the police had disarmed the household and that left the whole massacre up to the murderer. He wasn’t disarmed, by any means. He could open the safe at first chance and take all the guns he wanted.”
“Bon sang de Dieu! What a terror!” Tousellines shook out.
“Madman’s cunning,” the girl whispered huskily. “If he hadn’t dropped one accidental clue he — he might have carried out his entire plan. But he killed Sir Duffin and darted back to the office. Perhaps that’s when he took that old dueling pistol from the safe. Everybody was up in Uncle Eli’s room; the terror had started. Now the killer can sneak into any room he pleases and wait for his next victim. While we’re in the dining room, then he’s in the billiard room.”
“Waiting for Ambrose,” Narcisse gulped.
“He knows, too, that Ti Pedro is locked in the storeroom next door, and he wants to terrify the household. That’s why he cut himself a lance from a billiard cue and staged that horrible scene with the albino. Meanwhile, suspicion would fall on everybody but him.”
Narcisse mourned, “The will made it seem so, and with those vipers all telling lies, each on the other, what would you have?”
The general raised genial cotton eyebrows. “En fin, ma’mselle?”
Her face darkened with memory. “After breakfast Ambrose, going to the billiard room, did not see the murderer. Perhaps he was out on the verandah, lurking behind the window shutters. Then the boy was called to the office under the stairs for questioning. When he was returned to the billiard room the lights blew out. The storm played hand and glove with murder all the way. The killer stepped through the shutters; Ambrose saw him, perhaps in a flash of lightning, and screamed. He was stabbed in a second. And then there was a single shot.”
“Eh bien, mais oui, alors!” Lieutenant Narcisse clapped a dramatic hand to his damaged brow. “But this pistol afterward found on the staircase across that hall?”
“Planted,” Pete determined. “Everybody was milling and shouting in the dark of the hall; then crowding the door of the storeroom where Ti Pedro lay dead. Meanwhile the killer, leaving the billiard room by a window, could circle the house on the verandah, open the front door unnoticed, and throw the pistol on that staircase without being heard. We were all petrified, Looking at Ti Pedro — ”
“With a bullet most exactly in the top of his black skull,” the police officer blattered. “And the storeroom was locked. The door to the billiard room had not been opened. The bullet shot into the head. And who set on fire the grass carpet? Does an assassin in the next room, with solid wall and locked door between, do that? There was a window, too, that had not been opened. C’est incroyable!”
“There’s only one way I can explain that,” Pete said. She leaned forward on the white bench and searched our variety-show expressions as if for confirmation. The white-haired general showed his amazement and the consul looked amused. She frowned. “This is what happened, I think. In fact, it’s the only way it could have happened. Ambrose screamed in the billiard room and was stabbed. Ti Pedro heard that scream, as we all did. Locked in a dark room next door, he did the thing any person would do under like circumstances. He made a light.”
“A light?” Narcisse let his mouth come open.
“Only a little one,” was the answer. “You couldn’t see it in the hall, even if the transom in that door was open. Can’t you picture it? Why, Ti Pedro lit a match and tried to peek into the billiard room to see what in heaven’s name had happened to Ambrose!”
“Peek into the billiard room?” It was my turn to miss.
She made a little gesture of exasperation. “The precise thing anybody would have done. The door between the two rooms. Those old doors all had big keyholes. Ti Pedro struck a match, stooped to put an eye to the keyhole. There must have been a flash of lightning outside and the poor Dominican saw Ambrose on the floor with that cue in his chest. Horrified, Ti Pedro let the burning match drop from his fingers. Then he reached down to pick it up — ”
“By the goat-horned soul of Faustin the First!” the white-haired officer swore gallantly. “I believe ma’mselle is one superior detective.”
“And the murderer on the other side of the door saw the match-light at the keyhole,” Pete hurried on, “and jumped at the door with the gun, put the muzzle at the keyhole and fired! Ti Pedro’s head was down — bending to pick up the match like that — right in line to catch the bullet where — where he did. The blow threw him over backwards and the grass rug was — on fire.”
“By George,” the consular agent grinned. “I guess that taught him a lesson.”
Narcisse stammered, “Why did you not accuse me of stupidity, ma’mselle?”
“I wasn’t sure,” Pete said. “I’m only guessing now. I did try to say something, but we’d discovered Ambrose by that time. The killer had stuffed that pool ball in Ambrose’s teeth to make it look as if the albino was third, and anyway I didn’t know who had done it. That was what had me — had me frightened.”
&n
bsp; “Good riddance, so far,” Drupievsky chuckled, taking an apple from his pocket to gnaw an unbashful bite. “Ti Pedro and Ambrose were no loss to anybody except the hangman. Who’s next?”
“Well, next Lieutenant Narcisse ordered Mr. Cartershall and me upstairs, and — then Cart had to paint on a picture — and suddenly word came about the Caco attack at Cap Haitien, and the police took their leave.”
Tousellines swallowed a quaver and followed up the story. “I was left in charge, and it was like hearing my own death sentence. That house of scorpions! When Widow Gladys came out of her room with a pistol, bleu!’
I cried: “That’s how she got that pistol! The murderer, out on the verandah, he tossed it into her window.”
“And this Jamaican woman, she was killed?” the general asked.
I described the gun battle on the staircase, the precipitous death of the Toadstool and his mamma.
It was not too credible, out there in that sun-filled courtyard with birds in a lime tree and the consular agent crunching a red apple. He finished with a magnificent bite, shied the core at a guinea hen fussing along the blue wall, grinned at me with one fruit-mumped cheek and said, wiping his hands on his pockets: “Fella, you had a nerve playing around with that gang. As for your lady friend, Miss Dale here, I take my hat off. How’d you ever keep from running out over the horizon?”
“With a bandit uprising? And that afternoon storm and not knowing the country or anything?” I shook my head.
Pete said gravely, “And the rest of them were as scared of us by that time as we were of them. I mean Manfred and the En-sign.”
“So the widow and her kid blasted each other off the waiting list,” said Drupievsky. “How about the next two?”
I described Pete’s disappearance, my chase around the house, the En-sign and Manfred stalking each other in the rain, the sailor’s timely end. “And Manfred was scared out of his wits; fled down smack into that swimming pool, stumbled in and drowned like a stone.”
Murder On the Way! Page 21