Afternoon Tea Mysteries, Volume One: A Collection of Cozy Mysteries (Three thrilling novels in one volume!)

by Anne Austin

  “I see,” Dundee agreed. “And you sent your brother, Mr. Hammond?”

  “He was the natural one to send,” Clive Hammond retorted. “Small job. All he had to do was to get together an estimate on additional furnace lines and radiators, electric wiring, plumbing, plastering, etc.”

  “Go on, Miss Beale,” Dundee directed.

  “Thanks!” There was sarcasm in her brusque voice. “But that’s really about all I have to tell. Ralph complained that he was hungry and charged me with giving him too little of my time—the usual thing. I picked up Nita’s phone, called Clive and made the date for the three of us. Then I called Breakaway Inn, cancelled the luncheon part of the bridge party with Nita, and Ralph and I drove back to Hamilton.”

  Dundee studied her strong, clever, almost plain face for a long minute. Certainly Polly Beale did not look like a liar—but he would have taken his oath that she was lying now. Or rather not revealing the whole truth behind the actual facts of her movements that day. For instance, could a simple plea of her future brother-in-law make her do so discourteous a thing as to break a luncheon appointment, especially when such a course would not only disappoint her hostess and her friends but disarrange the seating plan of a rather formal party?

  Of course the explanation was obvious. She had wanted, first, to see Nita and remonstrate privately with her for having so enslaved Ralph Hammond, when he was tacitly known to “belong” to Penny Crain—one of the sacred crowd. Failing that, she had found Ralph himself, and had not expected to find him; had talked with him about Nita, and had quarreled a bit with him, perhaps, over his love-sodden behavior. And the crisis had become so acute that Polly had arbitrarily called upon Clive Hammond and then had forced Ralph to accompany her.

  “Do you know, Miss Beale, why Ralph Hammond did not keep his engagement with Mrs. Selim this afternoon? Or rather, his promise to appear for cocktails and to be Miss Crain’s partner for the rest of the evening—dinner and dancing at the Country Club?”

  “I do not!” Polly said crisply.

  “Hammond?”

  “Neither do I,” Hammond retorted angrily.

  “Then it was not to discuss Ralph Hammond and his—affairs, that you beckoned Miss Beale to meet you in the solarium upon your arrival?”

  “It—was not!”

  A shade too much anger and emphasis, Dundee decided. And he wished heartily that Strawn’s detectives would not delay much longer in bringing the missing young man into this already involved examination.

  “You say that you both were in the solarium from the time of your arrival, Hammond, until Mrs. Marshall screamed,” Dundee continued. “Just what did you see and hear?”

  Dundee watched their faces keenly, but again they were well-bred, expressionless. It was Polly Beale who answered: “Naturally there was not absolute silence, but I am afraid we were not listening. We were rather engrossed in our conversation. We were seated—near no windows—and I for one saw nothing, as well as heard nothing that I can recall.”

  “Hammond?”

  “That goes for me, too—absolutely!”

  Abruptly abandoning the engaged couple, Dundee returned to Miles. “You were the second arrival, then?”

  “Yes. I parked my car along the curb in front of the house,” Tracey answered readily. “And I came right on in, and Nita jumped up—”

  “Yes. We’ve had all that twice before,” Dundee interrupted cruelly. “Now, Judge Marshall—”

  “One of my friends gave me a lift from town,” Judge Marshall volunteered pompously. “Chap named Sampson. You may have heard of him—fine fellow, splendid lawyer. We played billiards together at the Athletic Club, and when I was about to call a taxi—my wife having the car here—he offered to drop me here on his way to the Country Club…. N-no, I don’t remember the exact time, did not consult my watch.”

  “You came directly from the road into the house, Judge Marshall?”

  “Certainly, sir!”

  “Did you—er, see anyone?”

  “You mean, sir, did anyone see me?” Judge Marshall demanded with pompous indignation. “No, no one, sir! If my word is not good enough for you, you can think what you damned please!”

  “I think we are all getting a little too tired, Mr. Dundee,” Penny Crain suggested, almost humble in her weariness.

  “I’m truly sorry,” the young detective apologized. “But I can’t leave things like this … Mr. Drake, you have said you walked over from the Country Club. You must have approached the house from the driveway side, the side of the house which contains Mrs. Selim’s bedroom…. Is that right?”

  “More or less, except that I skirted the house rather widely and arrived from the road, stepping upon the front porch, and walking directly into the hall. I saw no one outside or near the house when I arrived,” Drake answered, with less than his usual nastiness.

  “And saw no one running away across the meadows?” Dundee pressed.

  “No one at all,” Drake retorted. “I wish to God I could truthfully say that I saw a gunman, with a mask and a smoking revolver, skulking through the wildflowers, but the absolute truth is that I saw no one.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Drake…. Now—Mr. Sprague, ‘of New York’!”

  Sprague’s nervously twitching face reddened darkly. “I—I took a bus. I have no car of my own. I got off the bus on Sheridan Road, at the entrance to Primrose Meadows.”

  “I see. And you walked the quarter of a mile to this house?”

  Sprague’s hand fumbled with his cravat. “I—of course I did!”

  “I see…. Now, Miss Raymond,” Dundee pounced unexpectedly, so that the red-haired girl went very white beneath her freckles, “you observed Mr. Sprague toiling down the rutty road, hot and weary, but romantic in the sunset?”

  Mrs. Drake let out a nervous giggle, then clapped her hand over her mouth.

  “I—I wasn’t looking that way,” Janet Raymond stammered. “I—I just went out on the porch for a breath of fresh air—”

  “And you were completely surprised when Mr. Sprague came walking up the flagstone path?” Dundee persisted, for he knew she was lying, knew that she had stationed herself there to watch for Sprague.

  “I—yes, I was! He stopped and talked for a while, before we came in and joined Tracey and Lois in the dining room, where Tracey was mixing cocktails…. But,” she flared suddenly, “I don’t see why you have to badger all of us, when it must have been Lydia, the maid, who killed Nita, because—”

  “Oh, Janet! Shame on you!” Penny cried furiously.

  “Where is the maid now, Captain Strawn?” Dundee asked. “I haven’t seen her yet—”

  “Because she’s in her room in the basement, Bonnie,” Strawn answered. “Sort of forgot about her, didn’t you?” and he chuckled at the younger man’s discomfiture. “But I got her story out of her, you bet! Nothing to it, though. One of my boys—Collins, it was—found her in that short, dark hall that runs between the Selim woman’s bedroom and the kitchen. Sicker’n a pup she was; it was a mess. Said she’d—”

  “I’d better have her up and question her, if she’s well enough,” Dundee interrupted, as tactfully as possible. “It seems that she had an abscessed tooth out today, with gas and a local anesthetic…. Now, Miss Raymond, will you tell me exactly what you meant by saying it must have been Lydia who killed her mistress?”

  “I certainly will!” the red-haired girl cried defiantly. “What I can’t see is why Tracey and Lois and Dex—Mr. Sprague—didn’t think of it, too. It’s as plain as—”

  “Yes, as the nose on my face,” Dundee cut in grimly, but with a glance at Strawn. “Just stick to the facts, however, Miss Raymond, and maybe we can all agree with you.”

  “Well, when Mr. Sprague and I went into the dining room, there were Lois and Tracey cutting up like a couple of children,” Janet began, determined to take her time. “When they saw us, Lois said: ‘Good Lord, Tracey! Get busy! Or your job as bartender will be taken away from you,’ and Tracey bega
n to shake cocktails at the sideboard—”

  “Guess I’d better tell it, Janet, for what it’s worth,” Lois cut in impatiently. “It’s nothing more nor less than that I had to ring twice for poor Lydia before she came,” she explained to Dundee. “Tracey is full of original ideas about cocktails, and wanted some sort of bitters. He was going to shout for Lydia, but I stepped on the button under the dining table, and the poor thing—in the basement nursing her jaw, probably—didn’t hear. Tracey and I got to kidding, as Janet says, and had scarcely noticed how long Lydia was in coming. I rang again, and she came…. That’s all!”

  “That isn’t all!” Janet denied angrily. “I was there when Lydia came in, and she was looking white as a ghost—except for her swollen jaw. What’s more, she acted so dumb Tracey had to tell her twice what he wanted…. And then she said Nita didn’t have any of those bitters anyway.”

  “An open-and-shut case against poor Lydia!” Penny Crain broke in derisively. “Go pluck daisies, Janet! You’d be of a lot more help!”

  “Here’s your maid, Bonnie,” Captain Strawn announced lazily, as one of his plainclothesmen appeared in the arch between dining and living room, dragging by the hand a woman who was resisting strangely, her apron pressed to her face.

  “You are Lydia?” Dundee asked, his voice kinder than it had been for many minutes. “Oh, it’s Lydia Carr, Captain Strawn? Thank you…. Don’t be afraid. And I’m sorry about the tooth…. Come along in. I’ll not keep you long.”

  The woman’s knees seemed about to fail her, but with a sudden effort she released the detective’s grip on her wrist. Very tall she was, very bony in her black cotton dress. Pathetic, too, with her thin, iron-grey hair, and that apron concealing the left half of her face. It was odd, Dundee thought, that it was not the swollen jaw she chose to cover.

  Mrs. Dunlap sprang to her feet and hurried across the room.

  “Don’t mind, Lydia, please. You must not be so sensitive,” she said gently, and even more gently pulled down the concealing apron….

  “Good God!” Dundee breathed, and Strawn nodded his understanding of the younger man’s horror.

  For the left half of Lydia Carr’s face was drawn and puckered and ridged almost out of human semblance. Even the eye was ruined—a milky ball which the puckered, hairless eyelid could never cover again.

  “Poor Lydia is ashamed of her scarred face,” Lois Dunlap explained, her arm still about the maid’s shoulder. “She isn’t quite used to it yet, but none of us mind—”

  “You were burned recently, Lydia?” Dundee asked pityingly.

  “That’s my business!” the woman astounded him by retorting harshly.

  “How did it happen, Lydia?” Dundee persisted, puzzled.

  “I had an accident. It was my own fault.”

  Lois Dunlap’s kind grey eyes caught and held Dundee’s firmly. “I think, if Nita could speak to you now, Mr. Dundee, that she would beg you not to try to force Lydia’s confidence on this subject. Nita was devoted to Lydia—we can all testify to that!—and one of the sweetest things about her was her constant effort to protect Lydia from questions and curious glances. I, for one, know that Nita often begged Lydia to submit to a skin-grafting operation, regardless of expense—”

  When that kind voice choked on tears, Dundee abruptly abandoned his intention to press the matter further.

  “Lydia, your mistress had been married, or was still married, wasn’t she?”

  The woman’s single, slate-grey eye stared into his expressionlessly. “She had ‘Mrs.’ in front of her name, to use when she felt like it. That’s all I know. I never saw her husband—if she had one. I only worked for her about five years.”

  “You say she used her married name ‘when she felt like it….’ What do you mean by that, Lydia?”

  “I mean she was an actress, and used her stage name—Juanita Leigh—pronounced like it was spelled plain ‘Lee’; but she was mostly called ‘Nita Leigh’.”

  “An actress, you say?” Dundee repeated thoughtfully. “I had heard of her only as director of the Forsyte School plays…. What shows was she in?”

  “She was what they call a specialty dancer in musical comedy,” Lydia answered. “Sometimes she had a real part and sometimes she only danced. She was a good hoofer and a good trouper,” she added, the Broadway terms falling strangely from those austere lips. “And when she wasn’t in a show she sometimes got a job in the pictures. She never had a real chance in the movies, though, because they mostly wanted her to double for the star in long shots, where dancing comes into the picture, or in close-ups where they just show the legs, you know.”

  “I see,” Dundee agreed gravely. “Where were you during the fifteen minutes or so before your mistress was shot, Lydia?”

  “I was down in my room in the basement,” the woman answered. “Nita—I mean Miss Nita was going to get Judge Marshall to build me a room on the top floor. She hated for me to have to sleep in the basement, but I didn’t mind.”

  “You were not required to be on duty for the party?”

  “No,” she answered in her harsh, flat voice. “I’d fixed the sandwiches and put out the liquors for the cocktails—set them all out on the dining table and sideboard, and Miss Nita had told me to go and lie down as soon as I was through. So I did. I had an abscessed tooth pulled this morning, and I was feeling sick.”

  “Did you hear the kitchen bell at all?” Dundee went on.

  “I dropped off to sleep—that fool dentist had shot me full of dope—but I did hear the bell and I come up to answer it. Mrs. Dunlap said she’d rung twice, and I said I was sorry—”

  “Lydia, did you go into your mistress’ bedroom before or after you answered that bell?” Dundee asked with sudden sharpness.

  “I did not! I didn’t even know she was in her bedroom, until I saw her sitting at her dressing-table—dead.” The harsh voice hesitated over the last word, but it did not break.

  “And just when did you first see her—after she was dead?”

  “I went into the kitchen, thinking something else might be needed. Then I heard a scream. It sounded like it come from Nita’s—Miss Nita’s bedroom, and I run along the back hall that leads from the kitchen to her bedroom. I heard a lot of people running and yelling. Nobody paid any attention to me.”

  “You came into the room?”

  “No, sir, I did not. I stopped in the doorway. I heard Mr. Sprague say she was dead. I was sick and dizzy anyway, and I couldn’t move for a minute. I sort of slipped down to the floor, and I guess I must have passed out. And then I was sick to my stomach, and—I didn’t seem to care if I never moved again.”

  “Why, Lydia?” Dundee asked gently.

  “Because she was the only friend I had in the world, and I couldn’t have loved her better if she’d been my own child,” Lydia answered. And the stern voice had broken at last. “I was still there in the back hall when a cop come and asked me a lot of questions, and then that man—” she pointed to Captain Strawn, “—said I could go and lay down. He helped me down the basement stairs.”

  Dundee tapped his teeth with the long pencil he had kept so busy that evening—tapped them long and thoughtfully. Then:

  “Lydia, did you see anyone—anyone at all!—from your basement room window before you answered Mrs. Dunlap’s ring?”

  CHAPTER NINE

  For the first time during the difficult interview Dundee was sure that Lydia Carr was lying. For a fraction of a second her single eye wavered, the lid flickered, then came her harsh, flat denial:

  “I didn’t see nobody.”

  “I presume your basement room has a window looking out upon the back garden?” Dundee persisted.

  “Yes, it has, but I didn’t waste no time looking out of it,” Lydia answered grimly. “I was laying down, with an ice cap against my jaw.”

  She had seen someone, Dundee told himself. But the truth would be harder to extract from that stern, scar-twisted mouth, than the abscessed tooth had been.
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br />   Finally, when her lone eye did not again waver under his steady gaze, he dismissed her, or rather, returned her to Captain Strawn’s custody.

  “Well, Janet, I hope you’re satisfied!” Penny Crain said bitingly, as she dashed unashamed tears from her brown eyes. “If ever a maid was absolutely crazy about her mistress—”

  “I’m not satisfied!” Janet Raymond retorted furiously. “She’s just the sort that would harbor a grudge for years, and then, all hopped up with dope—”

  “Stop it, Janet!” Lois Dunlap commanded with a curtness that set oddly upon her kind, pleasant face.

  “Listen here, Dundee,” Tracey Miles broke in, almost humbly. “My wife is getting pretty anxious about the kiddies. The nurse quit on us yesterday, and—”

  “And my little wife is worrying herself sick over our boy—just three months old,” Judge Marshall joined the protest. “I’m all for assisting justice, sir, having served on the bench myself, as you doubtless know, but—”

  “I’m all right, really, Hugo,” Karen Marshall faltered.

  “Please be patient a little longer,” Dundee urged apologetically. After all, only one of these people could be guilty of Nita Selim’s murder, and it was beastly to have to hold them like this…. But one was guilty!

  “You knew Mrs. Selim in New York, Sprague?” he asked, whirling suddenly upon the man with the Broadway stamp.

  “I met Nita Leigh, as I always heard her called, when I was assistant director in the Altamont Studios, out on Long Island,” Sprague answered, his black eyes trying to meet Dundee’s with an air of complete frankness. “Wonderful little girl, and a great dancer … Screened damned well, too. I had hoped to give her a break some day, at something better than doubling for stars who can’t dance. But it happened that Nita, who never forgot even a casual friend, had a chance to give me a leg up herself—a chance to show what I can really do with a camera.”

  “I knew I’d seen your name somewhere!” Dundee exclaimed. “So you’re the man the Chamber of Commerce is dickering with…. Going to make a movie of the founding, growth and beauties of the city of Hamilton, aren’t you?”