by Helen Reilly
At the end of another half-hour McKee left the Rothingham and returned to his office to begin a check on all concerned, or all who could have been concerned, in Mark Middleton’s death. He was not optimistic. They were dealing with a nimble and adroit mentality. An alibi has been arranged and will take place…
The check-up took time. The net result, when it came, wasn’t negative; it was positive. It knocked the Scotsman back on his heels. If it had been possible to doubt, he would have doubted then.
Dwyer had no doubt. He said exultingly, “Who was right all along, eh? Who was right, Inspector? Well, well, now we can really go to town.”
Chapter Eighteen: Pieces of a puzzle
“I COULDN’T TELL YOU, Gabrielle. I didn’t dare tell you. I was afraid of what you might do, that you might try to find the woman yourself. You must see that.”
John Muir stopped pacing the floor, paused in front of the chair in which Gabrielle sat lifelessly, held upright only by her will. In a blank white face her eyes were large and dark with terror, and remorse.
They were in the living-room of the apartment on Hammond Place left to John by his uncle, a heavy handsome room with thick maroon curtains at the tall windows and great pieces of furniture built apparently for mastodons. The heavily shaded lamps fought with encroaching shadow, and lost. It was almost seven o’clock. Gabrielle had read the account of Miss Nelson’s death in the evening paper an hour before. The false name that Miss Nelson had registered under had hit her between the eyes. It was Mrs. Harper—and John Muir had been calling a Mrs. Harper over Glass’s telephone when she reached the door of the private detective’s office on the night Glass died.
John said urgently, “You do believe me, don’t you, Gabrielle?” He was unhappy, distressed.
She responded with the slightest inclination of her head. Yes, she believed him. It was impossible not to. Her first fear had been allayed, but what did it matter? Their personal concerns seemed small, unimportant. Miss Nelson was dead—and it was her fault. It was as though, in her pursuit of the round man, she had unloosed a deadly plague that struck at the innocent instead of the guilty. Whatever he was, Glass hadn’t killed Mark; neither had Miss Nelson.
As though he guessed what she was thinking, feeling, and wanted to divert her thoughts, John went on talking, calmly and evenly. He said that outside Glass’s office the other night he had heard someone talking softly over the phone. The voice was low. He had heard the words “Mrs. Harper” and “Hotel Ellmore,” and that was all. “Whoever was in the office must have turned then and seen my shadow on the ground glass. I didn’t know who Mrs. Harper was from Adam, but I thought I might get something revealing out of her. After I was socked, as soon as I got back the use of my wits I called the Hotel Ellmore—but there was no Mrs. Harper registered there.”
Gabrielle raised weighted eyelids. “It wasn’t at the Ellmore that Miss Nelson was killed.”
John shrugged. “Hotel rooms aren’t always easy to come by. I suppose Miss Nelson was given a choice. ‘Try the Ellmore, the Rothingham. Don’t attempt to contact me. I’ll get in touch with you when it’s safe.’ ”
“Yes, it could have been that way, I suppose,” Gabrielle agreed dully.
Watching John, listening to him, she thought suddenly, her stretched nerves rebelling and her mind turning into another channel, I can’t stand this. I mustn’t do it any more, and wondered, a little hopelessly, whether she would ever stop being obsessed by him. She had to stop, had to go on living. Why, out of a dozen men all equally personable, did one particular man put you in thrall, bind you with chains, fill your heart and your brain to the exclusion of everything and everyone else? It was like being under a spell: your judgment, your will, wilted and died, the real you ceased to exist, and you became a mere appendage, and adjunct, of someone else.
John stopped his restless pacing. He pulled a hassock the size of a bathtub close to her chair, dropped down on it. The breadth of his shoulders, his hard, lean body, the angle of his jaw, obtruded on her. His nearness was intolerable. She tried to move a little farther away, but he leaned forward so that their knees were almost touching. “Gabrielle,” he said, looking directly into her eyes, “I’m going to ask you a question. You’re a truthful person—and I want you to answer it truthfully. Will you?”
Gabrielle nodded without speaking. She was incapable of speech. John went on slowly: “I’ve been away from New York a long while—months. There was no understanding between us before I left, but—well, I suppose I took it for granted—too much so… Have you seen anything, heard anything—?” He put his question directly. “Do you think that Brenda is interested in some other man?”
Pain, a blinding blazing flash of it, then rage. Brenda Holmes! Why should John Muir come to her for information about Brenda Holmes, why seek her aid, assistance, in satisfying the doubt the very depth of his feeling for Brenda aroused? It was intolerable.
John was waiting for her answer. His regard was intent, demanding. She resisted the longing to strike at him, push him away from in front of her, pound at him with her fist. Instead, she reached sideways, took a cigarette from a box on a table, lit it, and said, smiling gently, “What an idiot you are, John! Brenda Holmes loves you, and no one else. Look what she did for you the other night.”
John dismissed the alibi Brenda had given them with a wave of his hand. “Oh, that—yes. But she’d do that for any close friend. That’s not what I mean. You’re sure there’s no one else?”
“I’m very sure.”
The tightness went out of him. He drew a long breath and sat back, passing a hand over his eyes. When he looked at her again his eyes were clear. “I suppose I am a fool. But I was out of touch, and—” He turned his head. “Yes, James?” His man was standing in the doorway.
“Telephone, Mr. Muir.”
John left the room. The very air of it was hateful to her; Gabrielle was instantly on her feet. She had to get away before she betrayed herself. That would be the bitterest thing of all. Thirty seconds later she was out in the coldness of the wind-swept night street hailing a cab. She was only just home when the Inspector telephoned. He and District Attorney Dwyer were coming to see her. The timbre of the Inspector’s voice was warning enough. Miss Nelson was dead. Gabrielle knew what she had to do. She said into the mouthpiece, “When will you be here, Inspector?” McKee said in half an hour. It was enough, but barely. Gabrielle dropped the instrument into its cradle and went quickly down the hall and into her bedroom.
The Inspector and the District Attorney were punctual. Hurry, and the wind, had whipped color into Gabrielle’s cheeks and her eyes were brilliant when she admitted them, led the way into the living-room, indicated chairs, and sat down composedly in the corner of the couch to face them. A third man, the District Attorney’s stenographer, perched himself awkwardly on the little colonial rocker next to the bookcase, notebook and pencil ready.
Scarcely a word had so far been spoken except: “Good evening, Miss Conant,”
“Good evening, Inspector.” Returning her nod, District Attorney Dwyer had studied her curiously out of round blue eyes, as though he had never seen her before. She was struck by the change in him. His truculence was gone. He was polite, observant, content to remain in the background, as though the position satisfied him.
There was no change in the Inspector. Tall and relaxed and calm, leaning forward a little in his chair, his narrow brown gaze intent on her, he said, “You know that Miss Nelson is dead, Miss Conant?”
“Yes.” Gabrielle waved toward the evening paper on the coffee table, lying where she had thrown it down before going over to John’s apartment.
McKee was speaking again, slowly. “If you’d care to have your lawyer with you while you’re being questioned…?”
“Lawyer?” Gabrielle’s brows rose. “I don’t believe I need one. Go right ahead, Inspector, ask me anything you want to.”
“Did you kill Florence Nelson, Miss Conant?”
It was, Gab
rielle thought, only what she should have expected from the police. She had been mistaken in the Inspector. He was a policeman first, last, and all the time—nothing else. “I did not.”
“Then what were you doing in the Hotel Rothingham yesterday afternoon at or about the time Miss Nelson died?”
Gabrielle’s eyes opened wide. She sat up sharply, staring straight ahead of her, sank back. “The Rothingham,” she murmured. “The Rothingham.” It wasn’t a question, it was an affirmation.
Anxiety edged McKee’s voice with impatience. “Yes, the Rothingham, Miss Conant. Florence Nelson was killed in her room in the Rothingham at between five and six o’clock yesterday afternoon. You were in the Rothingham tearoom at a quarter past five.”
Very shortly after the investigation into Mark Middleton’s death was reopened McKee had provided himself with excellent pictures of the people under scrutiny. A waitress in the Rothingham tearoom had identified Gabrielle from her photograph as a girl who had entered the tearoom at shortly after five o’clock. She remembered the incident clearly because Gabrielle had ordered and paid for tea and muffins, and had departed abruptly without touching her order. For the record, there would have to be a personal identification, but the Scotsman had no doubt of the result.
“Yes,” Gabrielle said slowly, “I was in the Rothingham tearoom yesterday afternoon. I suppose it was about that time—although I didn’t particularly notice what time it was.”
She paused. Both men waited. There was a struggle going on in her. So much was evident. To herself Gabrielle was saying, I don’t want to do this. I went to see Miss Nelson, and Glass died, and then Miss Nelson herself was killed. If I speak now, will there be more death? She felt almost physically ill. But she and John Muir were both under suspicion and, besides, she didn’t really believe—She gathered herself together.
“In the first place, Inspector, I didn’t know it was the Rothingham I went into.”
Dwyer would have spoken then, but McKee restrained him with the slightest of gestures, and Gabrielle continued, “I had been to see ‘Houseboat’ at the Strand. Leaving the theater and crossing the street I caught sight of Joanna Middleton on the pavement in front of me. I was surprised to see her. Alice Amory had already told me that Joanna and Claire had gone back to Stamford. I was—curious, I wondered what she was doing in that part of the city. Joanna turned into the entrance of a hotel you say was the Rothingham. I simply knew that it was a hotel, didn’t know the name of it. I followed her in. But the lobby was crowded and I lost sight of her. The tearoom opens off the lobby. I thought she might be there. I went in. And then”—Gabrielle shrugged—“when there was no further sign of her, I came home.”
So far Dwyer had restrained himself admirably. The girl’s presence at the scene, or so near as didn’t matter, of this third crime had hammered home his conviction of her guilt with such certainty that he felt he no longer needed to argue. Now she was eeling out from under their hands again with that air of grave simplicity, of childlike directness, that had McKee bemused. He had established, to his own satisfaction, that Miss Holmes and John Muir could be covering for her. Brenda Holmes had had cocktails with John Muir in Muir’s apartment and she had arrived home at around seven o’clock—a departing maid and the cousin’s testimony on that point was not to be shaken—but there was nothing, no corroboration but Brenda Holmes’s word, that Gabrielle Conant had been in her apartment that night, instead of across the city on East Twelfth Street at the time Glass was killed.
McKee’s reaction to Gabrielle’s statement was entirely different. After the first shock of finding that she had been in the Rothingham the afternoon before, he had put her presence there down to chance—but with considerable uneasiness. It wasn’t chance. Joanna Middleton—
Dwyer was already on his feet. Face faintly empurpled, he inquired with heavy and scathing courtesy, “Your phone, Miss Conant? If you don’t mind?”
“Not at all. In the dining-room.”
Dwyer called the Waldorf. The Middletons had checked out at noon the preceding day. He called long distance and got Joanna Middleton at her house north of Stamford. The result was astonishing. Mrs. Middleton said, “I was about to call your office, Mr. Dwyer. I read only a few moments ago of the Nelson woman’s death. Gabrielle Conant was in the Hotel Rothingham yesterday afternoon at around five o’clock. I saw her on the street near the hotel, thought her manner queer, furtive. I followed her into the hotel, lost her in the lobby. But she was there, I can assure you of it.”
Impasse. Two trains heading in opposite directions on the same track. Who had followed whom? McKee believed Gabrielle; Dwyer, Joanna Middleton—but even as far as Dwyer was concerned, in spite of his own personal conviction—there was a grand jury to be considered, and the situation had changed. As long as the girl was the only contestant, the only person with opportunity as well as motive, i.e., actually present in the hotel at the time Miss Nelson was killed, it had been all right to go full steam ahead. Now, with one woman’s word against another’s, it would be necessary to place Gabrielle Conant on the same floor, at the door, or in the vicinity of the dead woman’s room, before proceeding further. Unless—
McKee had already told him about the black coat Miss Nelson was wearing when she entered the hotel, and of the disappearance of the brown coat with the hood she had worn all winter and that she had had on when she parked her car less than an hour before she fled her apartment.
The black coat had probably been supplied to Miss Nelson in transit, to alter her appearance. It was of good quality, almost but not quite new, and there was no label in it. The brown coat was not in the dead woman’s apartment or at any cleaning establishment near by. The killer had probably disposed of it—but there was always a chance. Dwyer put his request silkily. “There’s a coat of Miss Nelson’s missing, Miss Conant. Would you mind our looking through your apartment-just to make sure?”
Gabrielle’s heart skipped a beat. They weren’t going to find the coat, but suppose they looked in her purse? Suppose they did? They didn’t. Five minutes later she was alone in the apartment.
Back in the long narrow inner office of the Twenty-Seventh Precinct the Scotsman rolled up his sleeves and went to work. Not literally. Hands clasped behind his head, feet on the radiator, his cavernous brown gaze somnolent on a patch of night sky, he gave himself over to motionless brooding. The why and how of Glass’s and Miss Nelson’s deaths were all clear.
He threw both murders away, returned to the one that had activated them, made them as inevitable as ripples on the calm surface of water into which a heavy stone had been flung. Mark Middleton had died because he had given someone eighty thousand dollars—in cash. Middleton and Middleton alone knew who that someone was. McKee paraded those people one by one before his inner gaze. John Muir, the Amorys, the Middletons, Mr. and Mrs. Van Ness, the Bonds, Blake Evans.
Alice Amory was a wealthy woman. Tyrell managed some of her business. Women, gambling—and a deficit to cover? Had Middleton’s eighty thousand gone to Tyrell? No sign of it. Alice Amory herself, vivacious, lively, restless, flitting hither and yon as the fancy took her—another man, and a demand for money?—no scrap of evidence there, either.
He thought about John Muir, in trouble at the time, with a five-million-dollar suit on his hands, brought jointly against him and Tritex, the company he headed. Tritex stock had fallen twenty points while the suit was pending; it had risen to a new high after the verdict, in Muir’s favor and in the favor of the company, was rendered. If Muir had been temporarily short he might very easily have gone to Middleton for help. But surely a transaction of that sort would have been conducted by check, and not in currency.
Joanna Middleton, Claire, Julie Bond, Susan Van Ness? Same as Alice Amory, an indiscretion, folly, that had to be covered up with payment on the nail?—again no slightest evidence. There was no one else showing. If he was right, if the eighty thousand, in cash, was at the bottom of Mark Middleton’s murder, Blake Evans could be dismis
sed. Evans and Mark Middleton had scarcely known each other, certainly not well enough for the older man to bestow eighty thousand dollars on the younger for friendship’s sake.
Some indication of where the money had gone existed in physical form. McKee was sure of it, sure that it was for this bit of proof that someone had been searching Middleton’s apartment on Central Park West when Gabrielle unexpectedly let herself in. She had been thrust into the closet and the door locked on her because, if she had turned, she would have recognized the searcher, which again brought culpability back and tied it firmly to one of a small group of people.
McKee had gone over the apartment from end to end himself. Result—nothing. There was another way to tackle it and that was to uncover what Mark Middleton had done on the afternoon of the day he died. He had parted from Gabrielle Conant under the canopy of the Devon at around three o’clock. He had entered his own apartment at around half-past six. How had he filled the intervening hours? He had told Gabrielle he had “things to do,” that he might be late for the dinner Joanna Middleton was giving, might not be able to make it at all. Things to do—what things?
The answer to that lay in those missing three hours. Detectives had been working on it, all good operators. A man of Middleton’s type, big, distinguished, using canes and walking with difficulty on lower Fifth Avenue in the middle of an August afternoon, should have been easy to trace, particularly in the vicinity of the Devon. Two things mitigated against success—the time element, and the number of disabled veterans on the streets. McKee moved restlessly in his chair. The stab of discomfort was like the dull pound of an ulcerated tooth. If the attempt to fill those three hours failed, the case might never be solved.