“I-er-it occurred to me,” I stammered hoarsely, “that since your men looked all over the house for Lottie Mosby, presumably in every conceivable place, it was unlikely you could have missed her unless-unless... I believe the suite I used to occupy is supposed to be-er-locked and sealed. It-it occurred to me it was probably the last place the police thought of searching.”
Even to my ears my explanation sounded extremely thin and halting, and I am positive my face looked the picture of hang-dog guilt. I was not surprised to have the inspector survey me with a skeptical lift of the eyebrows.
“Quite a neat piece of deduction, Miss Adams,” he commented in his silkiest voice. “If it was deduction,” he added cynically.
“Surely you wouldn’t doubt Miss Adams’ veracity, Inspector,” drawled Stephen with one of his saturnine grins.
“When it is possible for people to walk through both the police and locked doors at will, Mr Lansing,” said the inspector grimly, “one begins to doubt the veracity of one’s own senses.” He turned on me so sharply, my spectacles tumbled off my nose. “What took Mrs Mosby to your suite, Miss Adams?”
“I haven’t the remotest idea,” I assured him earnestly.
“She was after something,” continued the inspector, scowling at his notebook. “It was, I have no doubt, evidence of her innocence, perhaps evidence of the murderer’s guilt. And she paid for it with her life.” He again transfixed me with a glance. “This is the third time that we know of in which an attempt has been made to recover something or other from a room you are occupying or have occupied, Miss Adams.”
I bridled in self-defence. “Don’t forget the room I am now in originally belonged to James Reid and he-he met his death in my former suite.”
“Quite so, but that merely brings us back to the starting point, doesn’t it? Why was he there to be killed?” I shook my head, and Stephen Lansing laughed mirthlessly.
“What is this strange and perilous attraction you have, Adelaide?”
I could only fall lamely back on my former retort. “I haven’t the remotest idea.”
The inspector regarded every person in the room in turn from over his locked hands on the table before him. “I am still to be met with stubborn silence, is that it?” he inquired softly. “No one feels the urge to be helpful?”
Once more his only answer was the melancholy sigh of the wind and the rain.
“I have one more warning to issue,” continued Inspector Bunyan in a voice which made my blood run cold. “James Reid was strangled first, then he was hung up by his suspenders to the chandelier, and his throat cut from ear to ear. Lottie Mosby was also strangled before she was hurled out a window on the fourth floor. Murderers, as any criminologist will tell you, have a habit of adhering to a fixed pattern. The only way any of you, except the assassin himself, can be positive that you will not feel those cruel, clutching fingers squeezing into your own windpipe is to aid the police in every possible way to round up this madman before he snuffs out another life.”
I think everybody present swallowed. I know I did, as if already I felt those ghastly hands about my throat. Stephen was the first to recover from the paralysis of horror into which we had all been plunged.
“Did you say madman, Inspector?” he asked.
“Hasn’t it struck you, Mr Lansing,” murmured the inspector, “that there is a touch of the macabre about this whole affair? Why, when he was already dead, should James Reid have been strung up like a fowl and his throat drawn from ear to ear? Why, when the breath had been choked out of her, should Lottie Mosby’s lifeless body have been dashed to the ground and broken to pieces?”
“Couldn’t the latter have been an attempt to palm her death off as suicide?” ventured Stephen.
“No, Mr Lansing, our murderer has proved himself too clever to underestimate the intelligence of the police in such a fashion.
He knew he had left the mark of Cain on his victim, a mark which was certain to come out at the inquest, if not before.”
“You mean the fingerprints on the throat?”
The inspector nodded. “There is only one way to explain the savagery with which these two dead bodies were needlessly and cruelly mutilated.”
Across the room the Anthony woman smothered an oath. “Bologney!” she cried scornfully. “As if we wouldn’t know if there was a stray lunatic floating around among us!”
The inspector shook his head. “Unfortunately, Mrs – ah – Anthony, in the case of certain mental disorders, dementia praecox for instance, the degeneration of the brain is up to a certain stage extremely slow and not easily detected even by experts. According to psychiatrists, a person with such a disease may continue for an indefinite period to conceal his affliction, granting he is not subjected to a severe nervous strain. In that event, of course, he goes to pieces very rapidly. The interval between his being an apparently normal individual and the period when he becomes as rabid as a mad dog may be a matter of only a few weeks or even days.”
The Anthony woman laughed harshly. “What are you trying to do, Inspector? Scare us into breaking down and telling our right names?” she demanded mockingly.
“I’m merely warning you that it might be wise for all of you who value your lives to tell not only your right names but everything else which you are, from motives best known to yourselves, concealing from the police,” said the inspector soberly.
It seemed to me as his eyes circled the room that they lingered longest on Cyril Fancher, who shrank back into Sophie’s bulky shadow.
“I am going to find out eventually,” the inspector went on, his jaw tightening. “Make no mistake about that. But in the meanwhile, without your co-operation, I cannot guarantee that I will uncover the truth in time to save one of you, possibly more.”
“Of all the tommyrot!” exploded Howard angrily. “Aren’t you overworking your sense of the dramatic, Inspector? This isn’t a lurid stage play where every time the curtain falls another victim has bit the dust. Why should your murderer kill again? After all, he isn’t just doing it for fun, I don’t suppose.”
“No,” said the inspector softly, “the murderer isn’t killing for fun. In each instance he has, unless I misread the signs, struck to save himself. And that’s why I know he’ll strike again. I am not going to give up till I wrest his secret from him, and each of you possesses some part of that secret, God help you! Before you are allowed to betray it, the murderer will, if possible, put you out of his way as ruthlessly as he has already stamped out the two other people who threatened his safety.”
“In that case, Inspector, aren’t you being a bit obtuse?” demanded Howard with tight-lipped insolence. “I mean, after your warning, how can you expect any of us to tell you what we know? Providing, of course,” he added unpleasantly, “that we know anything, which I fancy none of us intends to admit.”
“There are two armed policemen at the door, Mr Warren,” said the inspector with cool composure. “I myself carry a revolver. This is the only place in this house at present, I should say, where it is possible to speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, without fear of consequences.”
“Is that so?” muttered the Anthony woman, glancing uneasily over her shoulder.
“You were saying, Mrs – ah – Anthony?” purred the inspector.
She gave him a derisive grin. “Nothing, Inspector. Not one blamed thing – to you.”
The inspector sighed. “I hope you never have cause to regret that.”
She tossed her head. “Don’t worry. If yapping to the police is the only way to get your throat wrung, believe me, I’ll die in my little old bed.”
I shivered. “You might do that and still be strangled to death,” I said, thinking of that evil presence which had stood within reach of me the night before.
“Exactly,” said the inspector.
Hilda Anthony’s lips parted in a sneer. “Sorry, Inspector. I just don’t scare easily.”
Howard grinned. “I’m afraid your b
ig drama of the clee-utching hand has backfired on you, Inspector.”
“Yes?” murmured the inspector, his eyes narrowing to needle points.
“Watch out for the fireworks!” Stephen Lansing muttered at my ear. “This is what he’s been leading up to.”
“If all you say is true,” said Howard, looking offensively cocky, “only a fool would risk his neck by shooting off his mouth to you or anyone else at this stage of the game.”
“You think so, Mr Warren?”
“Let the police do it,” murmured Howard with the bitter flippancy which was quite new to him. “I mean, I can’t see why we should be expected to do the police’s dirty work for them. After all, you’re the one, not I, Inspector, who’s paid to take desperate chances, and the like of that, for the common weal or what have you.”
“Nevertheless,” said Inspector Bunyan very quietly, “I’ll lay you a little bet, Mr Warren, that before we leave this room I’ll get the truth out of you, at least.”
Howard turned a sickly white; the edge had gone out of his bravado.
It flapped about him in shreds when the inspector went on, “You were up on the fourth floor just before James Reid’s body was discovered.”
“Oh yes?” murmured Howard again, very shakily.
“You came straight downstairs and made a feverish and unprecedented attempt to get Miss Adelaide Adams out of the hotel.”
“It’s no crime to ask a lady to the movies.”
The inspector went mercilessly on. “You did everything in your power not only to remove Miss Adams temporarily from the scene but, furthermore, to prevent her going to her room in the meanwhile.”
“It was a warm night, and – and I have a closed car.” Howard defended himself in a thick voice.
“Why was it so important to you, Mr Warren, to get Miss Adams out of her suite and keep her out at that particular time?” demanded the inspector in short angry tones like the strokes of a riveter.
“You’re making a mare’s-nest out of nothing, Inspector,” stammered Howard. “I had no ulterior motive in inviting Miss Adams to a movie.” He tried to grin. “At least, that’s my story, and you’re stuck with it.”
“I don’t think so, Mr Warren,” murmured the inspector. “There are ways, you know, of enforcing authority, and it’s never safe to spit in a bulldog’s face.”
He rapped sharply on the table in front of him, and a policeman stuck his head in at the door. “Arrest this man, Sweeney, and take him down to headquarters,” said the inspector.
Polly uttered a little wail, and Howard, his assurance suddenly restored, grinned at the inspector. “Arrest me for what, Inspector?” he inquired nonchalantly. “One does have to have a charge to make an arrest, doesn’t one?”
“The charge,” said the inspector curtly, “is murder.”
“Oh no!” Mary Lawson was on her feet, her hands held out in a pleading gesture, her face distorted.
“You can’t arrest Howard,” she cried wildly, “because-because-”
“For God’s sake, Polly,” cried Howard, “make her keep still.”
“No,” said Mary Lawson, “I’ve already kept still too long.”
“Arresting me is just a bluff to force you to talk!” pleaded Howard.
She did not seem to hear. Her gaze was fastened on the inspector. She looked broken and old.
“You can’t arrest Howard,” she said, “because-because it was I who-who asked him to keep Adelaide away from her room last night.”
“Oh, Aunt Mary, Aunt Mary!” wailed Polly, while Howard, his shoulders sagging, reached over the back of the divan and gripped her hands tightly and I stared at Mary Lawson, unable to believe my ears.
“Yes, Mrs Lawson?” prompted the inspector gently.
“Howard came up to the fourth floor to see me. I had sent him a note by-by Clarence on the elevator. You could have found that out if you had asked him.”
The inspector smiled wearily. “I did find it out, Mrs Lawson.”
“I told you it was a trap,” groaned Howard, while Polly began to weep like a forlorn and bewildered child.
Mary’s lips trembled. “I asked Howard to-to see to it that Miss Adams did not go to her room between eight and nine that night.”
The blood was roaring in my ears. “Mary, my dear!” I protested in a choked voice. “If only you had taken me into your confidence!”
“And have your blood as well on my hands,” said Mary, staring at her fingers.
“Did you take Mr Warren into your confidence, Mrs Lawson?” asked the inspector quietly.
“I took no one! No one, do you hear?”
“Yet the moment your niece saw that bloody knife from your desk set, she tried to run away with it.”
“I tell you, neither Howard nor Polly has any idea what this is all about!” cried Mary, beginning to shake from head to foot with hysteria.
“I wouldn’t be too sure about that,” murmured the inspector.
“The knife was stolen hours before the murder, Inspector!” cried Polly. “I told you that yesterday.”
The inspector shrugged his shoulders. “When did you last see the paper knife, Mrs Lawson? That is, before the police produced it, along with your niece, sometime after the crime.”
There was a dreadful silence and then a sigh as, with a face like death, Mary Lawson gasped, “I don’t remember.”
“I remember!” cried Polly Lawson passionately. “Because about five o’clock that afternoon I looked for the knife to-to open a bottle of gin, if you must know, and-and it was gone.”
The inspector eyed her thoughtfully. “You’ve gone to rather a lot of trouble during the past several months to put on a show of being a very wild young woman, haven’t you, Miss Lawson?”
Polly coloured painfully. “I-I don’t know what you mean.”
The inspector smiled. “Just why have you so ardently desired to leave the impression on numerous occasions that you were drunk, when you weren’t?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” she faltered again.
He shrugged his shoulders. “You seem to have consistently placed the cart before the horse. I mean, few young women deliberately strive to appear worse than they are.”
“Polly!” cried Howard Warren.
She refused to look at him. “I don’t know what you are getting at, Inspector,” she said sulkily. “If I’ve gone out of my way to shock the prudes in this house it’s because they make me sick!” She whirled on Howard. “That goes for you too, you old-old holier-than-thou!”
“Polly!” gasped Howard, looking as if she had struck him in the face.
The inspector appeared to have lost interest in both of them. His brows were gathered into a frown when he turned to Mary Lawson again. His voice gave me a shock. It was utterly ruthless.
“And so as early as five o’clock yesterday afternoon, Mrs Lawson, you suspected you might have to kill James Reid and had provided yourself with the paper knife off your desk,” he said.
Mary’s eyes widened and widened in her drawn ghastly face.
“I-I...” she began.
“You don’t have to answer questions which might incriminate you, Aunt Mary,” interrupted Polly, scowling ferociously at Inspector Bunyan.
The inspector ignored her remark. “That’s why you wanted to keep Adelaide Adams off the fourth floor last night, Mrs Lawson. You had a date on the fire escape with a man and you had cause to believe that James Reid was spying on you. Right?”
Her bloodless lips, after a struggle, parted. “I had an appointment on the – on the fire-escape landing, yes. That’s why I wanted Adelaide out of the way. But, as God is my keeper, I did not kill James Reid.”
“With whom did you have a clandestine appointment on the fire escape, Mrs Lawson?” pursued the inspector, while I stared at her aghast.
Of all the women in that house none I had thought was cleaner of the taint of scandal than Mary Lawson, whose heart I would have sworn still ached unbearably for her dead
husband.
“I can’t tell you,” she said.
“You mean, you refuse to tell?” he demanded.
“I can’t! I can’t!” she cried wildly. “If it were only myself...” She broke off, bit her lip, and put out her hands in a little pleading gesture which wrung my heart. “If I could, God knows I’d help you, Inspector.”
“You are compelling me to take a step I regret,” said the inspector sternly. He turned to the policeman Sweeney. “Take this woman down to headquarters. Hold her there till I arrive.”
“You are going to arrest Aunt Mary?” cried Polly desperately. “You can’t, you mustn’t, Inspector! The-the disgrace will kill her!”
Mary Lawson shook her head. “It’s not so easy to die as all that,” she said bitterly. “One’s body lives on and on; only one’s heart dies.”
“Ready, Mrs Lawson?” murmured the inspector gently.
Mary’s face was like those you have seen of the martyred saints. “Yes, Inspector, I am quite ready,” she said.
She was still smiling when she walked out of the room beside Sweeney, the brawny policeman.
13
“It’s an outrage” protested Howard Warren. “What if Mary Lawson was-was meeting some man on the fire escape?” He swallowed painfully. “What if it was her paper knife which killed Reid? That’s a long way from being proof of murder. No jury in the world would convict on such evidence.”
With Mary’s departure in the custody of the police the conference in the parlour had more or less automatically dissolved. Those of us who had been Mary Lawson’s friends were at first too stunned by her arrest and then too distracted by it to remain static, even if Inspector Bunyan had not summarily dismissed us with the observation that he desired to follow his prisoner as quickly as possible to police headquarters.
“Of course, you realize that I’ll get in touch with Mary’s lawyer at once,” Howard told him savagely. “We’ll probably be on the scene by the time you are, Inspector. Just in case you’re planning to try something like the third degree, since you haven’t any other leg to get off on.”
Murder a la Richelieu (American Queens of Crime Book 2) Page 13