My crocheted shawl was in the closet. As Stephen Lansing had said, ‘fascinators’ went out of style many years ago, but one of the compensations of being past fifty is the privilege of being comfortable, regardless of style, and I have never found any better protection for a sensitive throat than my lavender throw. Nor is it too unbecoming with iron-grey hair and a florid skin, as I remember thinking after a cursory examination of the mirror.
Unlike many women, I have never spent a lot of time in front of a looking glass. As a rule I am more often disconcerted than pleased with such a survey. This night was no exception. I was in the very act of turning hastily away when I spied the slip of paper tucked in at one side of the mirror frame.
It was on plain brown wrapping paper, such as might have been torn off any bundle. No attempt had been made to even the ragged edges, the piece being roughly the size of an ordinary sheet of notepaper. In the upper left-hand corner there was a crude drawing, done with the stub end of a cheap hard pencil. The figure it represented might have been scrawled on somebody’s outhouse or on the walls of a padded cell. It was so vulgar as to make me feel a little nauseated.
Beneath it, printed by the same stubby pencil, were these words: “Unless you want the police to hear all about the Adair wench and her mama, place one thousand dollars in cash in the water pitcher and leave it on the fire escape landing tonight at one o’clock.”
I don’t know how long I stood there, staring from that abominable thing in my hand to the aluminium ice-water pitcher with which each room in the Richelieu is equipped. Until that moment nothing could have convinced me that I should ever, under any circumstances, pay tribute to that most cowardly form of criminal known as the blackmailer.
Next to a kidnapper, it had seemed to me that human nature could stoop no lower. I had frequently and with great emphasis expressed my opinion not only of such vultures but also of the weakness of any person who permits himself to be victimized by the like. It had been my conviction, spoken in no uncertain terms, that every conscientious citizen owes it to himself and his fellow man to report such an attempt without delay to the police, no matter at what cost to himself. That I should fail to do so had never by any flight of imagination occurred to me, granting anyone had the temerity to blackmail a person of my constitution, which I had firmly doubted.
Now, however, with that ugly scrawl in my hand, I was discovering that one never knows what he will do in a given situation until confronted with it. Had the threat been to myself I should not have hesitated, although the thought of showing that lewd figure at the top of the note to man or woman made my cheeks burn.
But the threat was not to myself and it was fiendishly clever.
To carry it to the police was to call the inspector’s attention to the fact that there was something to know about the Adairs, and, while I myself was sufficiently disturbed about them to dread such a result, the inspector, so far as I knew, had no cause for suspicion in that connection, thanks to the manner in which I had misled him about the black-and-gold brooch.
And so I discovered that I simply could not, in spite of my convictions, go to Inspector Bunyan with anything which would set him upon Kathleen Adair’s trail. It was all very well to tell myself that I was letting Adelaide Adams in for a vicious chain of such levies and that to do evil in order that good may come is merely to pay the devil a toll. I could not take that salacious and horrible scrawl to Inspector Bunyan, any more than I could have picked up Laurie’s little girl bodily and flung her to the wolves.
I did not know what tale the writer of the note knew which he could carry to the police; nevertheless, there was something wrong, terribly wrong, with the Adairs. I had no doubt of that. I told myself, when I went downstairs, that suppressing the note was as far as I meant to go. I was, or so I kept saying under my breath, positively not going to pay a thousand dollars or any part of it to a blackmailer. I merely believed in preparedness, I carefully explained to my conscience.
Pinkney Dodge gave me a startled glance when I told him I wanted to get into my locked box which is kept in the hotel safe, a service not extended to all the guests in the house but one Tom Scott granted me many years ago because I have a well-known penchant for keeping a fairly large sum of ready money on hand.
My arthritis being what it is, I do not always find frequent trips to the bank convenient or even possible.
“But, Miss Adams, this isn’t the first or the fifteenth,” protested Pinkney, and then under the asperity in my eyes he went on feebly, “I mean, it’s unusual for you to want to get into the safe at odd hours.”
“I don’t suppose the world will come to an end,” I remarked coldly, “because I have decided to wear my garnets tonight.”
I might explain that in my safety box I keep numerous pieces of old-fashioned jewellery which belonged to my grandmother and my mother, though I seldom wear them for the very good reason that by the time they were handed down to me my skin had taken on that leathery texture to which the less notice attracted the better.
“I suppose not,” murmured Pinkney, but he still looked upset after he had opened the big safe behind the desk and produced the lengthy and commodious steel box to which I possess the only key.
To my relief the buzzer on the switchboard began to whir and Pinky’s attention was forcibly withdrawn from my manoeuvres. To abstract the slender Manila envelope and thrust it down inside the stiffly boned front of my corset took barely a moment. When Pinkney turned around I was removing the strand of garnets from the velvet case. Having announced my intention of wearing them, there was nothing to do except clasp the string about my neck.
“How beautiful!” exclaimed little Mrs Adair, reaching out her small frail hands as if she longed to caress the lustrous red stones which I felt sure looked sadly out of place against my sere and withered throat.
“The pity is,” I said, gazing wistfully at Kathleen, “that they cannot adorn the lovely skin of some radiant young creature like your daughter.”
“Yes,” sighed little Mrs Adair.
“But I hate jewellery!” cried the girl.
It was true I had never seen her wear any except a massive hand-wrought silver bracelet which she was seldom without, although the top was crudely set with brilliants in a crescent shape and looked like the sort of arrangement which catches on everything.
“Nonsense,” I said. “All women love jewellery, particularly girls your age.”
“So I’m forever telling Kathleen,” murmured her mother, squeezing her arm.
The girl winced as if the prongs of the bracelet had pricked her, as I have no doubt they did.
“I loathe jewels,” she said in a passionate voice.
“Nonsense!” I protested again, quite crossly. “Of course you don’t!”
At that moment Stephen Lansing interrupted us. “It’s eight o’clock, ladies, and there’s no percentage in keeping the inspector waiting,” he said in his brusquest manner.
Kathleen Adair bit her lip. “Why does he persist in dragging Mother and me up there? He-he hasn’t a thing on us.”
She meant her voice to ring with conviction, only it dwindled away and there was a terrible anxiety in her clear brown eyes.
“I’m afraid,” said Stephen Lansing curtly, “the inspector has ideas which he communicates only if and when it suits his purpose.”
“Oh!” gasped the girl, as though she had asked for and received a warning.
The exodus up the stairs had begun. Catching her mother’s arm, Kathleen followed, her gallant young shoulder drooping pathetically.
Stephen and I brought up the rear. “You never struck me as the sadistic type, Miss Adams,” he said in a disillusioned voice. “I mean, I’d have expected you to grab up something and lay your enemy cold, if necessary. I never thought you’d lay with them as a cat does a mouse.”
I was too dispirited to deny the allegation with my usual fire. “Young man,” I said wearily, “I may seem a back issue to your generation, but I know my
Freud. And though a soured and more or less disappointed old maid, I am not a sadist or any of those other abnormal freaks.”
“Just the same,” remarked Stephen soberly, “when we get to the bottom of this, if we do, I think we’ll find someone who is or soon will be a psychopathic case.”
I thought of that nasty piece of brown wrapping paper which I had torn to pieces before I flushed it down the drain in my room and shuddered.
“If you are insinuating that a maniac is loose in this hotel, I am prepared to agree with you,” I said.
12
It had begun to rain in earnest by the time we were once more assembled in the parlour on the second floor to meet Inspector Bunyan. Nothing, absolutely nothing, I thought, was lacking to add to the gloom of that dreary bilious room with the raindrops splattering against the windowpanes and an occasional spiteful flash of lightning illuminating our drawn uneasy faces. Even the inspector, nattily dressed in black serge with a white pin stripe, looked tired and dejected and sterner than I had ever seen him.
“It’s beginning to get on his nerves as well as ours,” I muttered.
Stephen shrugged his shoulders. “He pushed poor Lottie Mosby across the frontier of safety to her death. Policemen are not paid to have tender consciences, but you may rest assured, Adelaide, that it will be many a day before the inspector frees himself of that responsibility. Naturally he doesn’t want to make the same mistake twice.”
I shivered. “You mean he-he-”
“It’s his job to force the truth out of people,” said Stephen tersely, “and you must admit that to tell all you know right now is not the most healthful indoor sport which the Richelieu affords.”
I shook my head. “No, you can’t blame people for keeping under cover if possible.”
I was thinking of the Manila envelope inside my corset. Apparently Stephen Lansing was thinking of something else, for he slapped his knee impatiently with a folded afternoon paper and scowled irritably at the inspector.
“The devil of it is,” said Stephen crossly, “no one can run with both the hounds and the hare, not, at least, forever.”
My conscience pricked me. “Nevertheless,” I said firmly, “it’s the inspector’s business, not ours, to drag the skeletons out of the closets.”
He nodded. “Only if there’s another murder...” His voice trailed off, and I regarded him with what I feel must have been a ghastly face.
“Great heavens, you aren’t expecting this-this murderous spree to go on and on?” I stammered.
He shrugged his shoulders. “There never was a truer platitude than ‘what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.’ A murderer kills for greed or from fright, let us say, in the beginning; then he kills to save his neck. Finally he sees every man’s hand raised against him and goes a little mad, I think. That’s when he begins to kill promiscuously at the slightest threat of exposure.”
The lightning flared, and I shrank back involuntarily from the abyss which Stephen Lansing’s prophetic comment had revealed yawning at our very feet, nor do I mind admitting that my voice sounded very strange and husky.
“It’s-it’s outrageous for the police to keep us trussed up here till one by one we get our throats cut!” I cried.
He nodded grimly. “That’s another responsibility which, unless I’m much mistaken, is adding to the inspector’s grey hairs.’’
I gave him a searching glance. “If I were a young man of admitted bravado, with a twelve-cylinder car and no reputation for discretion to speak of, and danger threatened a young girl in whom I had professed a more or less quixotic interest, I’m afraid I’d show the-er-police a clean pair of heels, if the gods were so kind as to offer me a black and stormy night like this.”
“Why, Adelaide,” Stephen chuckled, “to think of a lady of your unimpeachable integrity trying to corrupt the morals of verdant youth.”
“Unimpeachable be darned!” I exclaimed bitterly. “If you think I wouldn’t sacrifice you or myself or anyone else for that child, you are quite wrong, young man.”
He shook his head. “I don’t get you, Adelaide. One minute I think you are unequivocally on our side; the next minute I decide you’re one of the subtlest people I ever came up against.” He scowled.
“As for what you have so immorally suggested, do you suppose for one minute I’d be hanging around here, waiting for all hell to burst loose, if Kathleen – if I could get her to go?”
I stared at him. “You’ve asked her? Already?”
He spread his hands helplessly. “I think I’m the last person on earth she’d trust herself with anywhere.” He made a grimace.
“ ’S funny, isn’t it? Most women do trust me – too much.”
“I don’t doubt it,” I snapped.
At this moment the inspector, having treated us to another dose of what Howard called ‘stewing in our own juices,’ looked up from his prolonged scrutiny of the black notebook on the table before him and bestowed upon us a pleasant smile which managed to have teeth in it, nonetheless.
“In case any of you have doubts as to whether Lottie Mosby fell or was pushed from a window in this house,” he said in a level, incredibly emotionless voice, “let me state that the police have indisputable evidence that she was brutally murdered.”
His words shocked us all, though they told us nothing new.
“Had we suspected Mrs Mosby’s object in fleeing from this room,” went on the inspector slowly, “we might have saved her; again, we might not have. At any rate,” he said, staring straight before him, “we did not save her. She died, and her death puts a different complexion on the series of tragic events under this roof. As Miss Adams said, her blood is to some extent on all our hands, perhaps particularly on mine. For that reason, if no other,” he added very quietly, “I shall not rest till I hang her murderer.”
There was an oppressive silence broken only by the haunting wail of the wind and the tearful swish of the rain against the windowpanes.
“I am aware that not one of you has been frank or even honest with me,” continued the inspector softly, transfixing each of us with an ominous scrutiny. “Perhaps had you done so, a second body might not be lying tonight on a cold grey slab in the city morgue.”
It was a thought not one of us could face without a shudder.
The inspector allowed us an interval for his pronouncement to strike home and then he went on in that velvety tone which each of us was learning to dread for reasons peculiar to ourselves. “I have warned you before that you will save the police and yourselves considerable inconvenience by being quite frank with me,” said the inspector. “I now warn you that unless you abandon your present dishonest attitude your cowardice may well cost another life or lives.”
He paused; no one spoke. I do not think anyone moved or breathed or dared look at anybody else. My own eyes were fastened on that poisonous green carpet at my feet, but next to my skin the Manila envelope burned like a live coal.
“No one has any information to volunteer?” inquired the inspector gently, a flame at the back of his blue eyes.
The only answer was an angry flare of lightning at which we all started. “Oh, please,” cried Mary Lawson in a strangled voice, “must you drag it out so? Can’t you see we are all at the breaking point?”
“Hush, Aunt Mary!” whispered Polly, holding her aunt’s shaking hands tightly against her breast. “For God’s sake, pull yourself together, darling.”
Slowly, inexorably, the inspector looked from Mary’s ravished face to her niece’s defiant blue-green eyes “Perhaps you will help us not to prolong this session, Mrs Lawson,” he purred. “I do not doubt you can throw a light on at least one of the problems which have hampered and retarded the investigation.”
Mary’s colourless lips twitched, but it was Polly who answered in a passionate, reckless voice, “Don’t be stupid! How could Aunt Mary know anything about-about these m-murders!”
“I wish I knew,” murmured the inspector.
Kathleen put her arm about her mother, and the trembling older woman cowered against the girl’s shoulder. Behind me Stephen sighed heavily. I had a feeling when he got to his feet that he had no idea what he intended to say, that his only object was to create a diversion.
“You have told us, Inspector, that the police are in possession of indisputable proof that Lottie Mosby was murdered,” he said leisurely. “Do the authorities consider that proof their private property or might one inquire its nature?”
“One might, of course, inquire, Mr Lansing,” murmured Inspector Bunyan with obvious sarcasm.
Their glances clashed, and then Stephen Lansing said harshly, “I do inquire.”
Howard laughed disagreeably. “Here’s your opportunity to practice what you preach, Inspector. After your urgent advice to us, you can’t conscientiously refuse to bare your soul for the general good – or would you?”
The inspector’s eyes dwelt upon Howard’s sneering young face and then turned swiftly to Stephen Lansing. “I suspect you could hazard a very good guess, Mr Lansing, as to the room from which Lottie Mosby plunged to her death.”
“You flatter me, Inspector,” murmured Stephen with a sardonic grin.
It was then I had my unfortunate brainstorm. “Great heavens, was it – was it my old suite, Inspector?” I cried incredulously.
“Adelaide, Adelaide!” murmured Stephen sadly. “Of all dames the cleverest or the dumbest! Would I know which?”
The inspector was staring at me with an expression that tingled up and down my spine. “Why, yes, Miss Adams,” he said, “it was from the bedroom in your former suite that that unfortunate body hurtled downward.”
“Oh!” I gasped, feeling suddenly my full age.
“How extraordinary for you to have guessed it, Miss Adams,” the inspector went on with chilling and unmistakable irony. “Would you mind explaining to my – ah – satisfaction how you so nimbly reached a conclusion which the police almost failed to reach at all?”
Murder a la Richelieu (American Queens of Crime Book 2) Page 12