“Aunt Dollie ought to keep quiet herself,” Roger said.
“She’s just as well off with something to think about,” Postgate said. “By the way, the curare was hypodermically injected, I think. There’s a mark on Miss Clary’s arm. I wonder—did she happen to own a hypodermic syringe?”
Roger said, “I shouldn’t wonder.”
Patrick said, “Do you think the curare could have been self-injected, Dr. Postgate?”
“Let’s not discuss that now, please,” Roger said.
Dr. Postgate took the cue. “I—oh, I don’t know. I wouldn’t care to offer an opinion, Lieutenant Abbott, even if I had one, which I definitely have not.”
Patrick said, “Will this help you decide?”
He held out a smallish hypo wrapped in a scrap of paper. Both doctors looked, and looked away. “Do either of you recognize this?” he asked.
“It’s probably mine,” Roger said in a dead voice.
“Don’t you know?”
“No, I don’t. I’ll have to see if any is missing from my cases.”
Captain Jonas came out on the gallery. “I want everybody in the parlor,” he said, in a voice everyone in the place could hear. “Callahan, where are you?”
There was a rustle in Carol’s room as the sergeant went to the gallery door to report to his chief. I looked at Patrick. Sergeant Callahan—Roger’s shadow—had heard every word of his talk with Roger!
Only Roger seemed not to notice it. Still listening to Dr. Postgate he went by way of Carol’s room back to Aunt Rita.
I had a minute alone with Patrick. I told him that Ava had decided not to tell about seeing the nurse come back, now that it wouldn’t help Uncle George. I warned him to be careful of Toby Wick.
Patrick had already wrapped up the hypo and put it back in his shirt pocket.
Jonas saw us and came in.
“Well, Lieutenant Abbott, what now!” he exclaimed.
“Miss Clary is better, Captain Jonas.”
“More funny business, huh?” Jonas said. “And more Major Clary in the pie. Well, I’m going to nail him down before I leave tonight, even if I don’t get any dinner.” He considered that grimly. “And believe me, there won’t be anything left to eat by the time we’re finished here. Not on a Sunday night in New Orleans.”
Patrick asked, “Why don’t you come with us to Antoine’s?”
Jonas’s eyes bulged. “No kidding, Lieutenant? Oh, you can’t. You’ve got to have a reservation weeks in advance.”
“I think I can manage it,” Patrick said. “I said there might be three.”
He had said nothing of the sort. But Jonas’s spirits soared high as, once again, we headed toward the drawing room.
XVII
WE DETOURED by way of the outside stairs to our apartment, where Patrick had to phone Antoine’s and try to talk them into letting him bring his already invited guest. It was not quite six o’clock. Our table reservation was for eight.
After some talking and a short wait he said thanks to whomever he was talking to and, coming to the door of the bath where I was patching up my make-up, said, “It’s all right. But they can’t have us till eight-thirty. Just as well, maybe. We may need the extra time.”
“Nice the weather’s changed,” I said. The rain had stopped. The air was fresh and clean and cool. The leaves in the courtyard glistened. The sky where the gray storm clouds had rolled back was the brilliant azure that preceded sunset.
I was still in the playsuit, one of those with a shirt, shorts and a buttoned skirt. “Shall I dress now or later, Pat?”
“Later. We’ve got to get back.”
“All right. It is funny about Roger, don’t you think?”
“What now?”
“Sending for Dr. Postgate, and then Dr. Postgate’s being right here to administer that prostigmine stuff, which is an antidote for curare poisoning? I mean, after all, it was very coincidental. Too darned coincidental. Aunt Rita is poisoned. Presto, in walks the antidote, in the hands of the expert whiskery one who understands all about curare. Gloats on curare, you might say. Meaning Dr. Postgate.”
Patrick said, “Roger sent for Postgate when he couldn’t get the family doctor, Jeanie. Postgate came to check Roger’s diagnosis in Uncle George’s case. He just happened to be here when Aunt Rita became ill.”
“But they knew right away what ailed her?”
“Postgate guessed it, because of the extraordinary relaxation of the neck muscles. Besides, there was the hypo. The stuff has a faint but characteristic odor.”
“Oh, the doctors saw the hypo?”
“Yes.”
“Ava found Aunt Rita, Pat.”
“Yes-s.”
“Ava’s amoral. She doesn’t have any of the normally decent feelings people ought to have. She’s—awful.”
“I’m afraid you’re right, dear.”
“Oh, darling, do you know who did it? Who’s doing it, I mean.”
Patrick said, pretty grim, “Yes, I think so. At last. But how are we going to catch the snake if we go to dinner at half-past eight? Because Jonas has made up his mind. He can’t see the woods for the trees, he’s so dead-set on its being Roger Clary. He’ll make an arrest before dinner if it kills him.”
“Oh, will there be a post mortem on Uncle George?”
“I don’t know. Jonas has agreed to let a mortician call for the body, but he didn’t tell me what he was going to say to the mortician. This is Sunday afternoon. I suspect for some reason that Jonas is merely stalling for time. Ten to one Uncle George is slated for an autopsy later on. Come along, Jean.”
As we went down the steps we detoured again and went up to the drawing room by the outside stairs and the other upper gallery, because the mortician was arriving to take away the body of Uncle George. His men carried just the usual sort of stretcher and I wondered—I was becoming morbid—if it would be adequate for Uncle George.
But it was better to have the body out of the house. I could hear Aunt Dollie crying, in Aunt Rita’s room, and Roger and Dr. Postgate consoling her, with Sergeant Callahan standing decorously outside, as we passed by. I felt glad that Uncle George was being taken away. I hoped, too, that he had really died of a heart attack. We had had enough murder.
Ava, Carol and Toby, and the policeman-secretary, were in the drawing room when we got there.
The afternoon light in the old room made it charming. It brought out the soft warm garnet-red of the draperies and the good, worn carpet.
Ava sat where she had the last time we had got together here. She was smoking, and endeavoring, but without too much success, to look as cool and detached as this morning. Carol openly showed the strain. Under the straight fringe of thick brown hair her eyes were swollen.
Toby seemed openly worried. He sat on the same sofa with Ava, at the other end. Carol was again on the ottoman in front of the fireplace. The little divan for two which had so completely fitted Uncle George was empty.
As people came in they avoided it. The divan occupied a rather prominent spot near the end of one of the sofas.
It was Roger Clary who pushed it back, pulling up in its place an armchair for Dr. Postgate.
The sofa which Aunt Rita usually sat in also stood unoccupied. Patrick and I took chairs a little away from the others, between them and the table the policeman had again fixed up for Captain Jonas.
Sergeant Callahan, tailing Roger Clary, took his post inside the door.
Suddenly there was a stir outside, and Aunt Rita came in followed by Aunt Dollie. Both doctors looked horrified and leaped up and rushed to assist the old ladies to the vacant sofa. Each doctor snatched up an old wrist and started counting heartbeats. Aunt Dollie looked much worse than Aunt Rita. Her make-up was all cockeyed on her ravaged face. She would crack up very likely before this business was finished, because she had been in the habit of leaning on Uncle George and, moreover, she hadn’t the inner force which carried you through. Aunt Rita was very pale but calm.
&nb
sp; Sergeant Callahan stepped aside to let Hugo enter with a big silver tray. He was followed by Paulette with another, and a moment later Aunt Rita was asking Toby to set the coffee table in front of Ava Graham. “You’ll have to pour, dear. I’m not quite up to that,” she said in her precise small-voiced French.
There were coffee, sandwiches and cakes. Hugo went out after handing the cups and came back with another tray containing a dusty bottle of cognac and glasses. Immediately life seemed rosier and full of hope.
Captain Jonas, arriving just in time, had three cups of coffee and any number of sandwiches, but only a small amount of cognac, though regretfully, yet the improvement in his manner was perceptible.
His eyes singled us out, one by one. The secretary took out his notebook.
“I asked you to come here because I want more information about Victorine Delacroix,” Captain Jonas said. The secretary took it down. “I’m sorry we were delayed by—by the unfortunate death of Mr. Sears. He was our best witness, as you all must agree, because he saw the nurse leave this house, alive, a few minutes past two o’clock this morning. His death is very coincidental.” His eyes circled, pale and penetrating above the liverish pouches. They lingered on the three servants, seated again at the other end of the room. The silence was intense. Aunt Dollie’s cup tinkled in its saucer and Dr. Postgate thrust his beard higher and cleared his throat. “We’ll have to begin at the beginning, with Mr. Sears gone. It’s a great pity. If the nurse left the house...” He waved his little hands. “Now, I want to know which of you saw the nurse last night and, as near as you can say, at what time.”
After a momentary hush Aunt Rita said she had seen her when she went up to her own room shortly before eleven. Aunt Dollie had seen her about the same time. Roger Clary had not seen her since four in the afternoon, when he went to his hospital. Wasn’t that a queer hour to go to the hospital? Jonas asked. Roger said he went at any or all hours, being on call. Dr. Postgate had not seen the nurse for three days, when he had paid his last visit to Mrs. Clary. Carol hadn’t seen her all day yesterday, Ava said she had seen her about the place but couldn’t remember just when, Hugo ditto, and Paulette, with a trace of her old indignation, said she had heard her late in the night in the herb garden. “She slipped out there when she thought I was asleep,” said Paulette.
It made sense. It would explain why the basil was fresh, as it must have been, when I smelled it on entering Roger’s bedroom last night. If that was what I smelled. Probably she went and snatched a piece before leaving the house. If she left the house—which she did, because Ava saw her come back.
“Mrs. Abbott,” Captain Jonas asked, “when you ran downstairs after seeing Mrs. Clary on the lawn did you see any sign of the nurse?”
“No-o.”
“Did you see her during the evening?”
“No. We were out all evening. We came in after midnight.”
“You didn’t see or hear her after that?”
“Well—well, I think I heard her. Somebody walked along that gallery about twelve-thirty—no, it was before that, because Mrs. Clary afterwards came upstairs....”
Jonas pounced. “Then the nurse left the house before twelve-thirty?”
“Not necessarily,” Roger said. “Occasionally Helen managed to elude Victorine for a short time. That could have happened last night.”
“Maybe when that nurse was in my herbs,” Paulette reminded us.
Maybe Paulette was right. The basil could have been kept entirely fresh in water from twelve-thirty until two.
“You heard the nurse walking on the lower gallery?” Captain Jonas repeated.
“I don’t know that it was the nurse,” I said. “It was someone who walked lightly. Whoever it was wore shoes, light-soled shoes, I should think, which made very little noise. It might have been anybody.” True. Those who walked lightly in this house included Uncle George, Aunt Rita, Ava, Carol, Roger, Toby Wick, and my own husband.
“Would anyone else be likely to be on that gallery at that hour?” Jonas asked.
Aunt Rita said, impatiently, “Anyone might. The garden belongs to the whole house.”
“But that porch is private to the Clary apartment?”
“The Clarys are part of the family,” Aunt Rita said. “If the footsteps had been heard on the Abbotts’ gallery, that would be quite another thing.”
Jonas moistened his long lips. “Where did the person go to, Mrs. Abbott?”
“I’ve no idea. She—it—just walked.”
Aunt Rita said, “Hugo keeps the hinges oiled. As much on my account as anyone’s, I think. I’m a light sleeper. I often get up in the night and walk about and I’d hate having squeaking hinges waking others. I am saying this because whoever it was might have gone in or out a door without making a sound.”
“Did you walk along that porch shortly after midnight, Miss Clary?”
“I did not!”
The detective kept on quizzing me about the footsteps, what they were like exactly, couldn’t I tell the time more exactly, which I could, it wasn’t long before Helen Clary came upstairs, a very few minutes, maybe three or four. And I knew that Helen came up at twelve-thirty because the Cathedral clock struck the hour just then. We settled on twelve-twenty-seven for the footsteps, if it mattered.
“Unfortunately,” Aunt Rita volunteered, “last night was a night I slept well.”
“Most unfortunately,” Jonas said.
The stenographer took it all down.
“It was also unfortunate,” said the detective, “that we have had some doubt all along that the late witness, Mr. Sears, was telling the truth.”
“He told you the truth!” cried Aunt Dollie.
“You’re sure of that, Mrs. Sears?”
“Of course I’m sure. Why should he lie? Oh, I know people said awful things about my poor husband, but they weren’t true. He was the kindest, dearest man.”
Jonas said, more kindly, “Were you awake when your husband saw the nurse leave the house?”
“No. I sleep well. And if I don’t happen to drop right off I take a pill, but my poor husband couldn’t, on account of his heart. He was so thoughtful. He wouldn’t have a light on, on my account. Quite often he sat outside, but it was dampish last night, at least earlier. If he said he saw the nurse leave the house, she left the house.”
Aunt Dollie was making an appeal for the honor of Uncle George. I stole a look at Ava Graham. This was her chance. She had seen the nurse come back to the house. A word from her, and Aunt Dollie would have peace.
Ava said nothing. She saw me look and her black eyes gave absolutely no response. She’s a prize heel, I thought. Maybe I would tell on her! Maybe Patrick would! Anything was fair when there was murder.
Ava kept silent. She was holding her coffee cup and smoking and dropping the ashes calmly in the saucer. Whatever love she felt for Uncle George and Aunt Dollie was not enough for her to risk a little inconvenience by speaking up. Surely she wasn’t so afraid of Aunt Rita’s anger as all that! Surely, in this day and age, a girl’s reputation couldn’t be hurt by slipping out of the house occasionally and even lingering on a street in the Quarter, specially when that street was the one her house was on. There must be something else, something worse.
Jonas said, “Apparently, then, Mrs. Abbott’s surmise that the nurse walked along the porch a little before twelve-thirty is all we’ve got to go on. It’s not...”
Someone arrived outside the door and Sergeant Callahan approached Captain Jonas, who left the room.
There was a short silence, in which everyone relaxed.
Ava said, then, “Apparently you were the last to hear the nurse, Jean.” Her voice was stiff with malice.
My temper went.
“I don’t know that it was the nurse. It may have been Toby,” I said. I was sorry at once, but I had said it.
Toby sat forward. I remembered suddenly that nasty little gun he had pointed at Patrick. I felt frightened.
There was a lull.
“Why, you nasty little bitch!” Ava said then. Aunt Rita turned to her in horror. “How dare you say such a thing? You know it’s not true.”
“Why isn’t it?” I said.
“Because Toby was at the Good Angel. He can’t get away at that hour.”
“He was here just a little while later. Shortly after two o’clock. He was here when Helen died, Ava.”
“He came to change his suit!”
I said, “And how did he get grass on his shoes, Ava?”
Toby snarled, “For Christ’s sake, shut up, both of you!”
“I will not!” Ava retorted. “Jean and Pat want to get Roger out of this so that Pat can pull down a fat fee. They like money, Jean says so herself.”
I looked at Patrick, who was listening with a cynical expression in his eyes, and following his gaze I took note that the stenographer had taken down every word we had said. Oh, dear. I felt awful. I felt like running away and lying for ages in a deep bath.
Aunt Dollie wasn’t listening. Aunt Rita seemed stunned. Roger looked disgusted, and Dr. Postgate tried to look as though he were far away and in a pleasant place. Toby’s slant-eyed swollen face was a vicious map if ever I saw one. Carol was openly worried.
Patrick said, “Did you offer me any fee, Roger?”
“Not that I know of. But...”
“Thanks. I happen to be in the Service, Ava. I’m in no position just now to accept private fees.”
“Nuts! You know damn well which side your bread’s buttered on. You work together. Why, you got me up there this afternoon to...”
“Ava!” Aunt Rita said.
The Indigo Necklace Page 16