The Man Who Died Twice

by The Man Who Died Twice (retail) (epub)

  He reached out to take the girl’s hand and found it cool and inert. He pressed it briefly and placed it gently back on the arm of her chair. Still not trusting himself to speak, he stood up and walked away, continuing along the front of the house to avoid the Dunhams, and down the side to the rear.

  Here he stopped to light a cigarette, and as he put his lighter away a car wheeled into the drive, whipped into the court in a tight half-circle and came to a stop at one side. Melvin Tenney stepped out, pulled the pipe from his mouth, and waved a greeting.

  “Mission accomplished,” he said cheerfully. “Frightfully decent of you to explain things. Hope no one objected.”

  He paused, sucking on his pipe until something in Ward’s face or manner stopped him. The smile went out of his pale, bespectacled eyes and he glanced at the doctor’s car.

  “Something wrong?” he asked finally.

  Ward told him and was mildly puzzled at the way the news was received. After one quick, open-eyed stare, Tenney looked down and kicked at the paving. He put his pipe away and wet his lips. Still not looking at Ward, he said:

  “I’m sorry, old man. I know it must be a great shock to all of you.” He hesitated and passed a palm over his blond hair. “Is Alma—I mean—”

  “She’s out front.”

  Ward was still standing alone with his cigarette when the second car turned off the highway and rolled slowly up the drive to park behind the doctor’s sedan. This time three men got out. From the front seat stepped two Negroes, one in a tan duck suit and one in the uniform of the local police; from the back came a white man in a snappy khaki uniform—shorts, belted jacket, and cap. With no more than a glance at Ward all three walked through the door into MacQuade’s study.

  Alma and Melvin Tenney were still on the front veranda when Ward sauntered on around the house, so he kept moving across the grassy slope until he gained the path leading to the beach. He found a rock here and sat down in the shade to let the faint breeze cool him off.

  A few feet to one side a land crab popped a head from his hole to examine him with bulging egg-shaped eyes. He sallied forth presently and a second crab just beyond came out to look the situation over, When Ward kicked sand at them they scurried back out of sight only to return a few seconds later, and, when he was still, tiptoe warily towards the water in their search for food. He watched the performance until his thoughts bogged down with the realization that his stay at Highpoint was practically over.

  Until now there had been the thought that he would stay until the real Jim MacQuade appeared and they could confess their plot to Johnny. This had been agreeable to Kate but it was no good any longer. With Johnny gone all need for pretense was past. He would call Jim—he stood up; he’d call him right now—but when this had been done there would be no excuse for staying. That he would be invited to do so seemed highly unlikely under the circumstances and in any case his continued presence would be in questionable taste.

  He walked quickly up the slope now that his mind was made up, circling the house again and heading directly for the car Tenney had just returned. He opened the door before he noticed the uniformed constable who had been standing near the entrance. Now the man came over.

  “Pardon me, sir,” he said in his broad accent. “The Major requests that no one leave just yet. You’ll find him in the drawing-room.”

  Ward examined the black shiny face and the neat uniform. He let the door close and nodded. As he started for the main door he forgot about the telephone call and was conscious only of some new uncertainty that was at once oddly disturbing.

  They were all in the drawing-room, seated except for Osborne and the officer, who was introduced as Major Gilette, and who, in addition to that title, was Deputy Commissioner of Police. An immaculate, stocky man, he had tightly curled red hair and a round ruddy face that was shiny with perspiration but not fat. Ward saw this much in his first glance; then he became aware of steady blue eyes that seemed shrewd, intent, and unsmiling as the officer acknowledged the introduction.

  “I was just telling the others”—he indicated the room—“that we think it highly probable that your uncle died between midnight and two this morning. The autopsy may put it closer than that but I think it unlikely.”

  He put his hands behind his back and rocked on his heels. “I understand you looked in on him last night. What time would that have been?” he said when Ward nodded. “As close as you can put it.”

  Ward glanced over at Alma, who sat next to Tenney. “What time was it when Melvin left the first time?”

  “The first time?” Gilette said.

  “Yes,” Tenner said. “You see, I ran out of petrol. You may have noticed my car down the road.” He leaned back and fumbled for his pipe. “Let’s see now. I’d say I must have said good night about twelve thirty. Wouldn’t you, dear?” He turned to the girl. “Or perhaps a few minutes later. As I say, the car went dead and I walked back.”

  He went on to explain how he had seen Ward and what had been said. “When I left the second time I should say it might have been close to one.”

  “And I looked in on Johnny just after that,” Ward said.

  “You didn’t touch him?” Gilette asked quietly.

  “No.”

  “Then you can’t say whether he was alive at that time or not?” He watched Ward agree. “You turned out the light and left. Then what?”

  Ward took a breath and now the perspiration had begun to trickle down his sides and his wrists were moist. He looked in what he hoped was a casual manner at Osborne, who was leaning against the wall near the door. Osborne, without moving, seemed to shrug and was therefore no help at all. He looked at Alma and then at the Dunhams. Then, not with any idea of withholding information, but unable at the moment to see how the episode that followed had any bearing on what Gilette was after, he said:

  “I sat on the front porch awhile and then went to bed.”

  Kate Royce cleared her throat and punched her cigarette out. “Just what is the purpose of all this questioning, Freddie?” she asked bluntly.

  The familiarity of the term surprised Ward. He knew at once that Freddie must be Major Gilette but it had not occurred to him that the Major might be a friend of the family.

  “It’s rather difficult—” he began.

  “Difficult? Of course it’s difficult. That’s what I mean. We’re having a bad enough time here as it is without having to answer a lot of pointless questions.”

  She would have said more but this time Gilette interrupted her. “I know,” he said. “I’m sorry. I assure you that this business is as distasteful to me at this time as I know it must be to you. But the fact is”—and he paused a second—“we are not quite satisfied, Miss Royce.”

  “Satisfied?”

  “As to the cause of death.”

  “Nonsense,” she said, as if the word were an epithet. “What else could it be but another stroke or cerebral hemorrhage, or whatever you want to call it. Johnny knew it was coming some day soon, we all did.”

  Gilette examined the nails of one hand. He sighed, his expression obviously distressed. “Sergeant!” He spoke reluctantly and turned to the Negro in the tan suit who had been in the background. “May I have the pillow, please?”

  Ward recognized the pillow the instant he saw it. Red and squarish, crimson really, with four buttons to give it a tufted appearance, it was one of three that matched the studio couch. He heard Gilette asking them if they knew where it came from.

  “Is it important?” Dunham asked.

  “It may be—as evidence.”

  “Evidence of what?” Kate demanded.

  Gilette moved up so all could see. “You’ll notice,” he said, “that one of the buttons is missing. I have it here.” He produced it, paused, then seemed to stand a little straighter as he returned it to his pocket.

  “The doctor,” he said with quiet deliberation, “found it in Mr. MacQuade’s mouth.”

  He took time out to look at each of them in t
urn and everyone looked back at him, with what expression or reactions Ward never knew, because he stared silently with the rest of them while a drop of perspiration ran down his spine and turned suddenly cold.

  “Why?” Gilette asked. When no one answered he continued. “We’re not positive of course. Won’t be for a couple of hours. But the circumstances suggest possible asphyxia. This pillow over the face, the mouth open, then closed in the struggle. If not asphyxia then cerebral hemorrhage brought about by that struggle, which would presumably have been short, Mr. MacQuade’s condition being what it was.”

  He handed the pillow back to the sergeant. “I can’t tell you how much I regret having to be here at all but”—he sighed again and dropped his hands—“I’m unable at the moment to find any other explanation for that button. So long as there is a possibility that a murder has been done it’s my duty to carry on an investigation. I’m afraid I’ll have to ask some more questions while we’re waiting for the doctor’s report.”

  10

  IT WAS perhaps five seconds before anyone spoke. During that time there was no sound in the room, no movement. It was as if the very suggestion of murder had brought about an individual paralysis that affected everyone alike.

  Ward broke his own private spell with an effort. He swallowed and turned his head and his neck felt stiff with the turning. He saw Osborne push away from the wall, heard him say:

  “I don’t believe it.”

  With that the room was alive with sounds. Someone exhaled noisily and over on the divan the sound of sobbing began. Dunham jumped to his feet, his pink face flushed.

  “Believe it?” he said. “Why it’s fantastic.”

  Judith Dunham sat very still, her face pale and her eyes on her husband. Tenner had his hand on Alma’s arm and her head was bent down and she could not stop the sobbing. Kate Royce went over to her and said: “Now, now,” and even as she spoke her eyes met Ward’s. She shook her head as if in warning and he stepped to her side.

  She wore a gray skirt and a white blouse that made a startling contrast to her tanned arms. Her white hair looked untidy and there were lines in the drawn pallor of her face he had not seen before. But it was the gray eyes that held him. There was anguish here, and misery, and something else which burned more intensely than her grief.

  “Wait,” she said in a voice he could hardly hear. “We must talk first.”

  Alma looked up at him through her tears. She shook her head as if to clear her eyes and her chin tightened as she began to work with a wadded handkerchief.

  “I’m all right,” she said to no one in particular. “It won’t happen again.”

  Gilette, meanwhile, had been busy. He had seated his sergeant at a round table with a notebook and pencil, and when he was ready he addressed them as a whole.

  “I would like to establish some sort of a timetable,” he said in his clipped and quiet way. “Where you were and when, that sort of thing. You understand of course that you are under no compulsion to answer.”

  “But you’re still going on the assumption that you’re dealing with murder,” Osborne said.

  “I am. Until I get an explanation better than anything I’ve discovered yet I have no choice in the matter.”

  With that he began to ask his questions from first one and then another, always politely and with an almost conversational casualness. He drew out the details of the dinner party at Morgan’s and rechecked the times that Osborne had left Barbara Connant, when he arrived here, when Alma went to bed, when Tenner got home.

  “Now Mrs. Dunham,” he said. “What about you?”

  Judith Dunham gave him her attention, shifting in her chair so that she could face him, then speaking in her customary unemotional tones.

  “We dined at home,” she said. “Later Gordon went out.”

  “Where?”

  “He didn’t say. He came back somewhere around eleven and went to bed. So did I but I had trouble sleeping and I got up after a while and went into the living-room to read. I was there when Jim came to ask about the prowler.”

  “Prowler?” Gilette bent forward from the waist to peer at her. He straightened to glance about the room. Finally he concentrated on Ward, and for the first time there was annoyance in his manner. “It’s the first I’d heard about a prowler. Suppose you tell me about that.”

  It took fifteen minutes to get a story that was acceptable to Gilette. He was clearly not satisfied but when he had talked to those involved he had no choice but to accept their statements. During this time he lost some of his poise. A faint flush spread upward from his neck; he walked back and forth, pausing once at the table where the sergeant sat to pick up his cap. When he had examined it he put it back, weighed the swagger stick he had brought, and rapped it smartly against his stockinged calf.

  Finally, when he had covered the details a second time, he looked up to find his uniformed assistant and the gray-haired Oliver waiting in the doorway. He went over to speak to them and presently the trio proceeded along the sidewalk to the right and out of sight.

  When Gilette came back five minutes later he apologized for leaving them and for using the study telephone without their permission. He turned to Dunham.

  “When you left your place some time after dinner you came up here, didn’t you, Gordon?”

  “I did.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he called up and asked me to.”

  “How long were you here?”

  Dunham thought it over, replied stiffly. “I arrived about ten or a little after. I was here perhaps fifteen or twenty minutes.”

  “What did you talk about?”

  “Business.” Dunham jammed his hands in his jacket pockets and eyed Gilette with open resentment. “The bottling works, if you must know. He wanted to know if things were in order because he wanted Jim”—he glanced at Ward, his resentment constant—“to go over the accounts today.”

  Gilette digested the information in silence and it seemed to satisfy him. At least he nodded. He said: “Mike Fabyan was also here last night. Did you happen to see him?”

  “He drove up in a taxi,” Dunham said, “just as I was leaving.”

  “Sometime after that,” Gilette said, speaking to no one in particular, “Mr. MacQuade telephoned Talbot, his lawyer—I’ve just checked and I know this to be true—and part of that conversation was overheard. The doors and windows were open and Mr. MacQuade’s voice was loud and angry. He said, in substance, that he had made some notes for Miss Simmons. He said he wanted Talbot up here this morning because he wished to make some changes in his will. He summoned Oliver and asked him to take a notebook to Miss Simmons’s room.” He turned to the girl. “Do you know about this?”

  Alma was all right now. Her eyes were dry and her chin was up. Her voice was not strong but it was clearly audible. “Yes,” she said. “I found it when I went to bed.”

  “Would you get it, please?”

  The girl rose at once and Gilette said: “Mr. MacQuade!”

  Ward was watching Alma cross the room and admiring the graceful way she carried herself. Also he was daydreaming a little. He heard Gilette’s voice but his reaction was delayed until, suddenly, he realized what it meant. He turned at once, shocked and disconcerted, feeling his face flush, feeling as if everyone in the room must know the truth about him.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  Gilette’s narrowed gaze was steady, speculative. “Why,” he asked, “if you wanted to turn off the study light, did you find it necessary to climb through the window?”

  For a moment Ward could only stare at him. He felt as though he had been stripped naked before everyone. As his mind struggled with the accusation it was hard for him to realize that he had done just what Gilette had said. Last night his action had been a simple one, brought about by his consideration for a sleeping man; now the whole thing seemed sneaky, furtive, damning.

  “I thought he was asleep,” he said finally. “I looked in the window and he was asleep
and the door was closed and I was afraid it might make a noise and wake him. It—it seemed simpler just to slip in through the window.”

  “You did more than just turn off the light.”

  “Did I?”

  There was no defiance in the words, for in his confusion Ward had trouble recalling just what he had done. Before he could think back, Gilette continued.

  “Oliver woke up when Tenner came back. He heard you get the car out and came round to see what was going on. He saw you standing by the study window and when you climbed in he stepped over to have a look.”

  Gilette paused and a muscle bunched along the side of his jaw. “When he saw you again you were standing over the couch with this”—he indicated the pillow on the table—“in your hand. You put it in the chair with the others. You then went over and closed the door which hid the safe. You did all these things before you turned off the light.”

  Ward felt the perspiration trickle along his brow and was aware that his whole body was hot and moist. He felt he should deny everything Gilette had said and could not because it was the truth. He saw something move out of the corner of his eye and saw that Alma had come back. He wondered how much of this she had heard and finally the sound of his voice came to him.

  “That’s right,” he said. “That’s exactly what I did. The pillow was on the floor beside the couch and I picked it up.” Then, a sudden anger rising in him: “Next time I’ll try not to be so neat and thoughtful.”

  Gilette ignored the sarcasm. He seemed in fact to forget the whole thing as he held out his hand and spoke to Alma.

  “May I see it?”

  She gave him what looked like a stenographer’s notebook that opened on the short side, and he flipped the pages, frowned, finally glanced up.

  “Is this—ah—shorthand?”

  “Our kind of shorthand,” Alma said. “Johnny’s and mine. I studied it some before I came here but I had forgotten a lot of it and we made this up between us. We”—her voice faltered—“we called it the MacQuade system because no one but he and I could make anything out of it.”