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

by Anne Austin

  “I did. I couldn’t find that anyone present had anything to do with it.”

  “Who were these persons?” Dr. Price then asked.

  “Judge and Mrs. Hugo Marshall, Mr. and Mrs. Tracey A. Miles, Mr. and Mrs. John C. Drake, Mrs. Peter Dunlap, Miss Janet Raymond, Miss Polly Beale, Miss Penelope Crain, Mr. Clive Hammond, Mr. Dexter Sprague—of New York, and Mrs. Selim’s maid, Lydia Carr,” Captain Strawn answered promptly, rolling out the names of Hamilton’s elect with sonorous satisfaction, which obviously had the desired effect in convincing the jury that not among those proud names, at least, could be found the name of the murderer.

  “Did you find on the premises any clue which you consider of importance to this jury?”

  “I did! A bunch of footprints under the window you’ve been talking about. Here are life-size photographs of ’em, doctor…. And the rambler rose vines that climb up the outside of the window had been torn.”

  After the photographs had been duly inspected by the jury of six Dr. Price said: “That is all, and thank you, Captain Strawn…. Mr. Dundee!”

  As had been agreed between the coroner and the district attorney, Dundee’s testimony, after the preliminary questions, was confined to the offering of Nita Selim’s “last will and testament” and the note to Lydia.

  The reporters, who had obviously feared that nothing new would eventuate, sat up with startled interest, then their pencils flew, as Dundee read the two documents, after he had told when and where he had discovered them. As District Attorney Sanderson had said; “Better give the press something new to chew on, but for God’s sake don’t mention that checkbook of Nita’s. It’s dynamite, boy—dynamite!”

  While the morgue chapel was still in a buzz of excitement, Dundee was dismissed, and District Attorney Sanderson requested an adjournment of the inquest for one week.

  The police were urging the crowd upon its way before it became fully aware that it had been cheated of the pleasure of hearing, at first hand, the stories of that fatal bridge and cocktail party from the guests themselves.

  “Tell the Carr woman I want to speak to her,” Sanderson directed Dundee. “She’ll thank you for rescuing her from the reporters.”

  As Dundee pushed his way through the jam he heard a reporter earnestly pleading with Lois Dunlap: “But I’m sure you can remember the cards each player held in that ‘death hand,’ Mrs. Dunlap—”

  Cheerfully sure that he could trust Lois Dunlap’s discretion and distaste for publicity, Dundee went on, grinning at the reporter’s use of his own lurid phrase.

  Two minutes later Sanderson, Strawn and Dundee were closeted in Dr. Price’s own office with Lydia Carr.

  “First, Lydia,” began Sanderson, “I want to warn you to give the reporters no information at all regarding the nature or extent of your mistress’ bequest.”

  “It was little enough she had, poor girl, beyond her clothes and a few pieces of jewelry,” Lydia answered stubbornly. “Are you going to let me do what she told me to, in that note? … Not that I hold with burning—”

  “I see no reason why you should not take charge of the body, Lydia, and arrange it immediately for cremation…. Do you, Captain Strawn?” Sanderson answered.

  “No, sir. The quicker the better.”

  “Then, Lydia, if Captain Strawn will send you out to the Selim house with one of his boys, you may get the dress described in Mrs. Selim’s note—”

  “And the curls she cut off and had made into switches,” Lydia interrupted. “I can’t dress my poor girl’s hair in a French roll without them!”

  “The curls, too,” Sanderson agreed. “Now as to the cremation—”

  “Mrs. Miles let me come in early to see about that,” Lydia interrupted again. “They can do it this afternoon, and you don’t need to worry about the expense. I’ve got money enough of my own to pay my girl’s funeral expenses.”

  “Good!” Sanderson applauded. “The will shall be probated as soon as possible, of course, but it makes it simpler if you will pay the necessary expenses now.”

  “Just a minute, chief,” Dundee halted the district attorney as he was about to leave. “Under the circumstances, I think it highly advisable that we get pictures of the burial dress. I suggest you have Lydia bring the things to your office before she lays out the body, and that Carraway photograph the dress there, from all angles. I should also like to have a picture of the body after Lydia has finished her services.”

  The maid’s scarred face flushed a deep, angry red, but she offered no protest when the district attorney accepted both of Dundee’s suggestions.

  “Then you’ll have Carraway with his camera at my office in about an hour?” Sanderson turned to Captain Strawn. “Let’s say twelve o’clock. By the way, Lydia, you may bring in with you the few pieces of jewelry you mentioned. I’ll keep them safely in my offices until the will is probated and they are turned over to you.”

  “I don’t know where she kept them,” Lydia answered.

  “What?” exclaimed Bonnie Dundee.

  “I said I don’t know where she kept her jewelry,” Lydia Carr retorted. “It wasn’t worth much—not a hundred dollars altogether, I’ll be bound, because Nita sold her last diamond not a week before we left New York. She owed so many bills then that the money she got for directing that play at the Forsyte School hardly made a dent on them.”

  “Do you know whether the jewelry was kept in the house or in a safe deposit box?” Dundee asked, excitement sharpening his voice.

  “It must have been in the house, because she wore the different pieces any time she pleased,” the maid answered. “I didn’t ask no questions, and I didn’t happen to see her get it out or put it away. I didn’t ever do much lady’s-maid work for her, like dressing her or fixing her hair—just kept her clothes and the house in order, and did what little cooking there was to do—”

  “Her dressing-table?” Dundee prodded. “Her desk?”

  The maid shook her head. “I was always straightening up the drawers in both her dressing-table and her desk, and she didn’t keep the jewelry in either one of them places.”

  “Captain Strawn, when you searched the dressing-table and desk for the gun or anything of importance, did you have any reason to suspect a secret drawer in either of them?”

  “No, Bonnie. They’re just ordinary factory furniture. I tapped around for a secret drawer, of course, but there wasn’t even any place for one,” Strawn assured him with an indulgent grin.

  “I want to see Penny Crain!” Dundee cried, making for the door.

  “Then you’d better come along to the courthouse with me,” Sanderson called after him. “I sent her back to the office as soon as the inquest was adjourned.”

  The two men passed through the now deserted morgue chapel and almost bumped into a middle-aged man, obviously of the laboring class in spite of his slicked-up, Sunday appearance.

  “You’re the district attorney, ain’t you, sir?” he addressed Sanderson in a nervous, halting undertone.

  “Yes. What is it?”

  “I come to the inquest to give some information, sir, but it was adjourned so quick I didn’t have time—”

  “Who are you?” Sanderson interrupted impatiently.

  “I’m Rawlins, sir. I worked for the poor lady, Mrs. Selim—gardening one day a week—”

  “Come to my office!” Sanderson commanded quickly, as a lingering reporter approached on a run…. “No, no! I’m sorry, Harper,” he said hastily, cutting into the reporter’s questions. “Nothing new! You may say that the police have thrown out a dragnet—” and he grinned at the trite phrase “—for the gunman who killed Mrs. Selim, and will offer a reward for the recovery of the weapon—a Colt’s .32 equipped with a Maxim silencer…. Come along, George, and I’ll explain just what Mrs. Sanderson and I have in mind.”

  The district attorney and Dundee strode quickly away, and the man, Rawlins, after a moment of indecision, trotted after them.

  “I don’t understand, sir
, and my name ain’t George. It’s Elmer.”

  “You don’t have to understand anything, except that you’re not to answer any question that any reporter asks you,” Sanderson retorted.

  When the trio entered the reception room of the district attorney’s suite in the courthouse Sanderson paused at Penny Crain’s desk:

  “Bring in your notebook, Penny. This man has some information he considers important.”

  A minute later Sanderson had begun to question his voluntary but highly nervous witness.

  “Your name?”

  “It’s Elmer Rawlins, like I told you, sir,” the man protested, and flinched as Penny recorded his words in swift shorthand. “It was my wife as made me come. She said as long as me and her knowed I didn’t do nothing wrong, I’d oughta come forward and tell what I knowed.”

  “Yes, yes!” Sanderson encouraged him impatiently. “You say you worked for Mrs. Selim as gardener one day a week—”

  “Yes, sir, but I ’tended to her hot water and her garbage, too—twice a day it was I had to go and stoke the little laundry heater that heats the hot water tank in summertime when the steam furnace ain’t being used. I live about a mile beyant the Crain place, that is, the house the poor lady was killed in—”

  “Did you come to stoke the laundry heater Saturday evening?” Dundee interrupted. “Excuse me, sir,” he turned to the district attorney, “but this is the first time I’ve seen this man.”

  “No, sir, I didn’t stoke it Sat’dy night,” Rawlins answered uneasily. “You see, I was comin’ up the road to do my chores at half past six, like I always do, but before I got to the house I seen a lot of policemen’s cars and motorcycles, and I didn’t want to get mixed up in nothing, so I turned around and went home again. I didn’t know what was up, but when me and the wife went into Hamilton Sat’dy night in our flivver we seen one of the extries and read about how the poor lady was murdered. But that ain’t what I was gittin’ at, sir—”

  “Well, what are you getting at?” Sanderson urged.

  “Well, the extry said the police had found some footprints under the frontmost of them two side windows to Mis’ Selim’s bedroom, and went on to talk about the rose vines being tore, and straight off I said to the missus, ‘Them’s my footprints, Minnie’—Minnie’s my wife’s name—”

  “Your footprints!” Sanderson ejaculated, then shook with silent laughter. “There goes Strawn’s case, Bonnie!” But immediately he was serious again, as the import of this new evidence came to him. “Tell us all about it, Rawlins…. When did you make those footprints?”

  “Friday, sir. That’s the day I gardened for Mis’ Selim…. You see, sir, the poor little lady told me she was kept awake nights when they was a high wind, by the rose vines tapping against the windows. Says she, ‘I think they’s somebody tryin’ to git into my room, Elmer,’ and I could see the poor little thing was mighty nervous anyway, so I didn’t waste no time. I cut away a lot of the rose vine and burned it when I was burnin’ the garbage and papers in the ’cinerator out back.”

  “Is that all, Rawlins?” Sanderson asked.

  “’Bout all that ’mounts to anything,” the laborer deprecated. “But they was somethin’ else that struck me as a little funny, when I come to think of it—”

  “Well?” Sanderson prodded, as the man halted uncertainly.

  “Well, it’s like I told you, it was my job to burn the papers. That scar-face maid of Mis’ Selim’s put everything—garbage and trash—in a big garbage can outside the back door, and I burnt ’em up. So I was kinder surprised Sat’dy mornin’, when I went to stoke up the laundry heater, to find somebody’d been meddlin’ with my drafts and had let the fire go clean out. I had to clean out the ashes and build a new fire—”

  “You’re trying to say, I suppose, that you could tell by the ashes that someone had been burning papers in the laundry heater?” Sanderson asked, with a quick glance at Dundee’s tense face.

  “That’s right, sir,” Rawlins agreed eagerly. “You know what kind of ashes a mess o’ paper makes—layers of white ashes, sir, that kinder looks like papers yit.”

  “Yes, I know…. And you found layers of white ashes, which you took particular pains to clean out?” Sanderson asked bitterly.

  “Yes, sir. So’s I could build a new fire—”

  “Did you speak to the maid—ask her if she’d been ‘meddlin’ with your drafts’?”

  “Yes, sir, I did!” the man answered with a trace of the belligerence he had undoubtedly shown to Lydia. “She said she didn’t open no dampers, claimed the heater was the same as usual when she left Friday night to go to a movie. So I reckin it was the poor lady herself, burnin’ up love letters, maybe, or some such truck—”

  “You’re to keep your ‘reckins’ to yourself, Rawlins,” Sanderson cut in emphatically. “Remember, now, you’re not to tell anybody else what you’ve just told me…. If that’s all, you can go now, and I’m much obliged to you. Leave your address with the young lady here. You’ll be needed later, of course.”

  The relieved man hurried out of the room on Penny’s heels. Sanderson shrugged, then, when the door had closed, began heavily:

  “It looks like you’re right, Bonnie, about that blackmail business. As the astute Rawlins says, ‘love letters, maybe, or some such truck….’ Of course it all fits in with your theory that Nita had made up her mind to reform, marry Ralph Hammond, and be a very good girl indeed…. All right! You can have Penny in now. I think I know pretty well what you’re going to ask her. And I may as well tell you that when Roger Crain skipped town with some securities he was known to possess, he hadn’t got them from a safe deposit box, because he didn’t have one,” and Sanderson pressed a button on the edge of his desk….

  “Penny, do you know whether there is a concealed safe in the Selim house?”

  The girl, startled, began to shake her head, then checked herself. “Not that I ever saw, or knew of when Dad and Mother and I lived there, but—” She hesitated, her cheeks turning scarlet.

  “Out with it, Penny!” Sanderson urged, his voice very kind.

  “It’s just that, if you really think there’s a secret hiding place in the house, I believe I understand something that puzzled me when it happened,” Penny confessed, her head high. “I was at the Country Club one night—a Saturday night when the whole crowd is usually there for the dinner and dance. I’d been dancing with—with Ralph, and when the music stopped we went out on the porch, where several of our crowd were sitting. It was—just two or three weeks after—after Dad left town. Lois wouldn’t let me drop out of things…. Anyway, it was dark and I heard Judge Marshall saying something about ‘the simplest and most ingenious arrangement you ever saw. Of course that’s where the rascal kept his securities—…’ I knew they were talking about Dad, from the way Judge Marshall shut up and changed the subject as soon as he saw me.”

  “Who was on the porch, Penny?” Dundee asked tensely.

  “Why, let’s see—Flora, and Johnny Drake, and Clive,” she answered slowly. “I think that was all, besides Judge Marshall. The others hadn’t come out from dancing…. Of course I don’t know whether or not it was some ‘arrangement’ in the house—”

  “Where are you going, boy?” Sanderson checked Dundee, who was already on his way to the door.

  “To find that gun, of course!”

  “Well, if it’s tucked away in the ‘simplest and most ingenious arrangement you ever saw’ it will stay put for a while,” Sanderson said. “Lydia’s due here within half an hour, and you don’t want to miss her, do you?”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  It was exactly twelve o’clock when Lydia Carr, accompanied by Detective Collins of the Homicide Squad carrying a small suitcase, arrived at the district attorney’s office.

  “I kept my eye on her every minute of the time, to see that there wasn’t no shenanigans,” Collins informed Dundee and Sanderson importantly, callous to the fact that the maid could hear him. “But I let her bring
along everything she said she needed to lay the body out in…. Was that right?”

  “Right!” agreed the district attorney, as Dundee opened the suitcase upon Sanderson’s desk.

  The royal blue velvet dress lay on top, neatly folded. Dundee shook out its folds. It looked remarkably fresh and new, in spite of the years it had hung in Nita Selim’s various clothes closets, preserved because of God alone knew what tender memories. Perhaps the beautiful little dancer had intended all those years that it should be her shroud.

  “Oh, it’s lovely!” Penny Crain, who was looking on, cried out involuntarily. “It looks like a French model.”

  “It’s a copy of a French model. You can see by the label on the back of the neck,” Lydia answered, her one good eye softening for Penny.

  “So it is!” Dundee agreed, and took out his penknife to snip the threads which fastened the white satin, gold-lettered label to the frock. “‘Pierre Model. Copied by Simonson’s—New York City’,” he read aloud, and slipped the little square of satin into the envelope containing the murdered woman’s will. “Well, Penny, I’m glad you like the dress, for I’m going to ask you to do the mannikin stunt in it as soon as Carraway arrives with his camera.”

  Penny turned very pale, but she said nothing in protest, and Dundee continued to unpack the suitcase. His masculine hands looked clumsy as they lifted out the costume slip and miniature “dancing set”—brassiere and step-ins—all matching, of filmiest white chiffon and lace. His fingers flinched from contact with the switch of long, silky black curls….

  “She bought them after we came to Hamilton,” Lydia informed him, pointing to the undergarments. “Them black moire pumps and them French stockings are brand new, too—hundred-gauge silk them stockings are, and never on her feet—”

  “Ready for me?” Carraway had appeared in the doorway, with camera and tripod.

  “Yes, Carraway…. Just the dress, Penny…. I want full-length front, back and side views of Miss Crain wearing this dress, Carraway…. Flashlights, of course. Better take the pictures in Miss Crain’s office,” Dundee directed. “You stay here, Lydia. I want to talk with you while that job is being done.”