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X is for Xmas: Christmas Mysteries
ACCUSED
Originally published in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Jan. 1943
Michael Carriday pressed the bell marked “Prentiss.”
What shall I do? he wondered as he waited. I can’t ask her outright. I can’t say, “Madam, I’ve come courting—but first tell me if you turned on the gas which killed your husband?”
If Mrs. Prentiss were innocent—and he wouldn’t be here at all if he didn’t half think so—such an attitude would ruin his chances.
Stella, the fat maid who opened the door, looked at him dubiously. “Ain’t you the district attorney?” she asked.
“Not today,” he reassured her. “I’m plain Mr. Carriday today. Will you tell Mrs. Prentiss I’m here?”
Stella stood firm, with the air of a faithful servant who knows what liberties she may take.
“You’ve bothered Mrs. Prentiss enough,” she said. “The verdict said not guilty, and that’s the truth. She ain’t going to be bothered no more.”
Michael said patiently, “I’m just here as a friend.” He paused and lowered his voice. “Mrs. Prentiss is a beautiful woman, you know, and she was very brave through the whole messy business. A man remembers those things.” And that was true—a man did remember a tremolo smile, a pair of pain-filled eyes, a dainty head held proudly. Then, unhappily, he remembered something else. In his mind he saw the kitchen…the fat old man on the floor of the gas-filled room.
“Just tell her I’m here,” he said again.
“Come with me,” Stella said, as if making up her mind and preceded him into the living room.
Michael sat down. The way the chair was placed, he could see the closed door to the kitchen. He got up and changed his seat.
He was not ordinarily finicky about death—a man in his position could not afford to be. He did not turn a hair when he examined, as he frequently had to, a mutilated body. But there was something insidious about gas. It was so harmless, yet so deadly. If he were to commit suicide, he thought, it would be by a bullet, or by drowning—certainly not by gas.
Mrs. Prentiss came into the room. She was wearing a housecoat of pale blue satin and lace. She looked very young; he realized again that she must have been thirty years younger than the paunchy—and dead—Mr. Prentiss.
“Stella tells me you’ve come as a friend,” she said. When she smiled, a little warm wave of pleasure ran through him. She sat down next to him, turning deliberately so that she, too, sat with her back to the kitchen. She was refreshingly lovely, now that the strain was over, and she looked at him with guileless directness.
How had he ever doubted her for a moment? And yet, on the heels of that thought came another: If Mrs. Prentiss were as fat as her husband had been, would Michael still wonder? Or would he be convinced that, with a single quick gesture, she had turned on the gas-cock in the kitchen?
He looked involuntarily at the slender, rounded arms, and so vividly did he picture it that he could almost see the fatal twist of the wrist, could almost hear the hiss of escaping gas, could almost smell it again. If what he feared were true, how could he accept a jury’s verdict of not guilty? Certainly not for the woman he hoped—yes, he almost dared hope—to make his wife.
“You’re going to stay here?” he asked, looking about him, but avoiding the kitchen door.
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I couldn’t. I’m going away for a month or so. Then I’ll see.”
He couldn’t bear the thought of having her gone for so long. He wanted to tell her so, almost did, but his Vermont hard-headedness held him back.
The maid came in with a batch of letters.
“More of them notes, I guess,” she said proudly.
Mrs. Prentiss explained to Michael: “Notes of condolence. Notes of congratulation, too, that the State decided I’m not a murderess.”
Her voice caught, and a quick sympathy welled up in him. “Tell me yourself,” he said hurriedly, carried beyond caution. “Let me hear you say it. I must hear you say you didn’t do it.”
Her nostrils dilated with quick scorn. “What makes you think I care how you feel, Mr. Carriday?” She fussed with the letters in her hand. “You needn’t stop to say goodbye. Stella will show you out.”
“I said it badly,” he cried. “Naturally you don’t care how I feel—yet. I believe all the evidence. I want to believe it. Don’t you see? I just want you to tell me yourself. Just say, ‘Michael, I didn’t do it,’ and I’ll never question it or think of it again. And then I’ll make you care that I care. I swear it. I’ll make you forget every cruel moment you’ve spent in the last month.”
She looked up from the letters which she had been sorting with quick, nervous gestures. Her head lifted proudly.
“I don’t believe you,” she said. She held up the letters. “I’ve been getting letters like this every day. And not one questions my innocence. That was left for the man who says he loves me.” Her contempt stung him.
“There isn’t anyone who cares the way I do!”
“Any one of these people cares more,” she said hotly. “Perfect strangers, too.” She pulled out a letter at random. “Take this one. You’ll find no veiled accusations here.”
She tore the envelope open angrily. Instead of a letter, there fell out a printed slip of paper. Mrs. Prentiss looked up quickly. Her face twitched, and became white, and before Michael could understand, she fainted.
Stella flew to her mistress. Michael tried to slip by her, to obtain the paper which Mrs. Prentiss still held in her lax grasp. But Stella, mingling abuse of him with her endearments for the unconscious woman, made him keep his distance.
Mrs. Prentiss opened her eyes slowly, but recoiled at the sight of him.
“Get out,” she said in a whisper. Her face was set and colorless.
Stella seconded her mistress’s command. “You better go now,” she warned him.
“As you wish,” Michael said. Now was his opportunity! He moved quickly by Stella, and bent over Mrs. Prentiss to say his goodbye. The paper that had caused her to faint lay in plain sight.
Michael looked at it, and knew why Mrs. Prentiss had fainted.
It was the gas bill.
He felt a little faint himself.
THE SEARCH FOR A DEAD MAN'S BODY
Originally published in Highway Patrolman, Mar., Apr., May 1957
Marble did not stir from his place by the window when the phone rang. It was too hot to move, for one thing. Besides, this was Eric Larsen’s office and don’t you forget it. Eric Larsen, Details Inspector, it said on the door. No mention of Marble, poor, fat, old
slob. Couldn’t spare the ink to print it, Jasper Marble, Assistant. It would have looked nice, too. So why answer the phone?
Larsen came back from the records room (where he had, of course, gone to check up on one of his damn fool details) and lifted the receiver. His thin, not bad-looking face changed a little as he listened. It was the Chief, Marble mused. Cracking the whip and his boy was jumping. There must be a serpent somewhere up in the Garden of Greenlands where Chief Inspector Windsor had gone for another day’s detecting and courting.
“That was Windsor,” said Larsen, hanging up.
Marble bobbed his head.
“He wants us to come out to Greenlands.”
“Us?” Marble repeated. “What’s he got, another murder?”
“Another? He hasn’t even proved this one is murder—or what it is,” said Larsen crossly.
“Tsk, tsk,” clucked Marble. Larsen was taking Windsor’s love affair real serious. “Nothing I like better than being called in on an ice-cold case,” he added, detaching himself finally from the window sill. “Now?”
“Now,” said Larsen. They moved with majestic dignity through the corps of lesser men, plain ordinary inspectors who were not in charge of details.
“The thing is,” Larsen went on once they were outside the building, “Windsor says he’s got as far on the case himself as he can. Now he thinks maybe we can turn up some details he’s missed.”
“Details.” grumbled Marble, and sat down in three-quarters of the front seat of the police car. Larsen seemed quite content in the bit behind the wheel that was left for him. “He’s in love with her,” said Marble. “I could tell it when he said he’d go out on the case, Greenlands being out of our jurisdiction and all.”
“It’s none of our business if he is,” said Larsen. “He was invited by the Bradford police, remember.”
Larsen was an odd sort of man, practically never showing an emotion except for rare flashes towards his idol, John Windsor. It was Marble’s opinion, after months of close association, that the man had no other feelings at all unless you counted those details of his. Larsen’s corn-colored hair was already thinning on top, although he wasn’t anything like thirty yet, and Marble figured that the balding was due to worry over details. The man was a mixture of picky little details. It was all burnt matches and pieces of pencils and shreds of cloth with Larsen, a regular movie detective. Not to say he hadn’t come through all right on a case or two. But he was such a nuisance to the other inspectors on an ordinary case that he had been kicked upstairs to head a department created especially for him. Betcha no other police department in the world had a door marked Details Inspector, Marble thought. And with him because Windsor wanted an experienced man there too, had gone Marble, tired old Marble, barely two years before his retirement and having to pull double harness with a nut.
“It’s a lot different weather than it was the day Peter Gentry disappeared,” Marble remarked. Gentry had last been seen Christmas Eve, at just the time a sprinkle of snow had dusted the landscape of Gentry’s fabulous place, Greenlands, and now the hot August air was beating in through the open car windows.
“Is there a chance the farmer’s lying?” Marble ventured.
At ten Gentry had been seen and engaged in casual conversation by the farmer who ran the agricultural end of his enterprise. Less than an hour later Gentry had dropped completely from sight—and all reason said he couldn’t have. The freshly fallen snow and the farmer’s testimony proved he couldn’t have.
“Albert Simmons?” Larsen shook his head. “He’s one of those guys you can see is honest. And his wife, a nice girl, she substantiates everything. And to cap it, Gentry’s partner double checks everything. That partner, Martin Curry—! There’s a character for you, wait ’till you see him—”
“You seen him yet?” Marble demanded jealously. Larsen had no right to see suspects before Marble, not if they were supposed to work together.
Larsen shook his head again. “I’m going by Windsor’s report,” he said. “But anyway, he swears to everything Albert says. And there’s no point in that for Curry, unless it’s the truth, because he knows he’s the prime suspect, and Albert’s evidence just makes the situation more so for him.”
“Martin Curry done it,” said Marble. “He wanted Gentry dead. This way he owns the laboratory under the partnership agreement, and besides, he has a clear road with the little widder.” He chuckled heavily. “Or thought he had, at least. Who’d’a thunk it of Windsor, falling in love like that.”
“You ought to lay off Windsor,” said Larsen mildly. “Cut it any way you like, he’s still Chief Inspector.”
“So?” Marble asked. Larsen didn’t answer that, he was like a ferret to detach from the main line.
“If Curry did it,” Larsen asked, “then where’d he hide the body?”
“That’s the point,” said Marble. “We’ve got to find that out. But he done it.”
Larsen and Marble were familiar with the case, thanks to Windsor’s earnestly complete reports. Peter Gentry had been alive and, for him—a dour man—cheerful at ten on Christmas Eve. Nancy Simmons, waiting in her husband’s car, had clearly seen and heard Gentry when he came to the door of the laboratory to bid Albert goodbye and to call Merry Christmas to her. The snow had just started to drift down, a heavy flaked snow, and it covered quickly. Gentry usually walked to and from the laboratory for the exercise. The farmer couple had worked late, killing and plucking some fabulous number of turkeys, and having seen their day’s work safely tucked into a locker in the huge freezer that backed up against their farmhouse, had driven over to offer their boss a ride home before they went on to the village for a late church service. Their gesture was a kindness, since a cold half-mile lay between the laboratory and the Gentry house. On their heels had come Martin Curry, driving over on the same errand. When Gentry refused both offers, Curry said he’d remain until Gentry had finished whatever he was working on.
Less than three quarters of an hour later, when they searched for Peter Gentry, he couldn’t be found. He had vanished, puff! Like that. Martin Curry claimed he had left him at the lab when Gentry’s experiment dragged on. And the snow proved he told the truth. The snow proved everything. It proved Curry had left when he said he had—the snow had conveniently fallen for half an hour, and recorded Martin Curry’s footprints which led from the lab to the car he had parked nearby. And it proved that Peter Gentry had not left the laboratory, since there were no other footprints. Nevertheless he (or his body) was not in the laboratory, nor was he (nor his body) in Curry’s car, the next obvious place, because the car was searched as soon as Gentry was missed.
“Martin Curry burned the body in one of the furnaces, the lab is so lousy with,” Marble said. “Didn’t Windsor say they had, lemmesee, six furnaces? Electric, real high temperatures.”
“But those are just small furnaces for metallurgical experiments.” As always, Larsen was so reasonable you could kill him. “These furnaces are only big enough to hold little pots, crucibles they call them, like big thimbles. You mean in five minutes he chopped Gentry up fine enough to dispose of him in six oversize thimbles?”
“Never mind how he done it, he done it,” said Marble.
“Oh, no argument there,” said Larsen.
“Well,” said Marble, “no corpus, no delicti. And the Chief can’t marry the widder, because technically she ain’t a widder.” And it couldn’t have happened to a sweeter guy, Marble mused with satisfaction. Not even my name on the door!
“Gentry had this idea of being self-supporting,” said Larsen, as a wide sweep of farmlands opened up before them. “From now on everything belongs to Gentry—belonged to him, I guess I should say. Gentry had a morbid fear of the future, a real phobia, so he tried to raise or make everything a man could possibly need for survival. A sickness, a real disease, it was. Look over there, sheep grazing.” A little further on they passed a healthy-looking herd of cows. “Not only cows, but chickens, ducks, turkeys and so
forth. And the farm itself, of course. All the stuff they can eat. It cost them practically nothing to live. Not counting what they sell in the village. They even have a pond stocked with carp, believe it or not. In case of famine, I guess. Ever taste baked carp?” Marble shuddered. “It costs nothing to feed carp, see. Kitchen scraps, stuff like that. They’ll eat anything.”
“Anything?” A suspicion darted through Marble’s mind. “Are they whatchamacallit, carnivorous? They eat meat?”
Larsen shot him a grave side glance. “You feed it to them, they’ll eat it.” He paused. “But no prints led to the pond. Remember, the snow started while Gentry was actually seen alive. For him to leave, his prints would have to show. For anyone else to carry his body down to the pond, prints would show. Curry suggested dragging, as a matter of fact. But there was no point to it. The body couldn’t have got into the pond. The snow proves it.”
“Curry’s quite a boy,” said Marble, disgruntled.
Larsen gave a short laugh. “At his suggestion they went through the Gentry house, too. Top to bottom. He made poor old Chief Carstairs, creaking in every joint, go through the farmhouse and barn. He really covered territory.”
“What’s the lab for, if they get so much out of the farm?” Marble asked, marveling at the inside information Windsor had siphoned off for his pet.
“That lab is a gold mine,” said Larsen. “They worked with metals. Gentry liked money, all right. The hours he worked, even on Christmas Eve! No wonder his wife didn’t—” That was a slip, Marble gloated. He’d let that bit slip, and now Marble knew too that Gentry’s wife wasn’t exactly in mourning, although he’d figured as much from the way a spark had kindled to a flame between her and Windsor. It was nice to have confirmation, though.
Larsen recovered himself and went on. “They experiment with different combinations of metals and gasses. Several of the alloys they developed are being used commercially. So there was money coming in from that, too.”
The 2nd Golden Age of Mystery and Crime MEGAPACK ™: Ruth Chessman Page 2