The 2nd Golden Age of Mystery and Crime MEGAPACK ™: Ruth Chessman

by Ruth Chessman

  “Logically it shoulda been the widow we suspect,” said Marble. But Faith Gentry had been in a minor car accident at just the right time. A last minute errand had taken her to the village, and she had skidded as the snow started to fall. She hadn’t been hurt, but she’d had to have the car towed to a garage. The Keystone Kop himself had driven her home. That was how all the times had been checked so close. At about ten Albert Simmons and wife had left the lab seeing the partners together. The sudden snow was already a thin white blanket when they left. At a quarter of eleven, when Faith Gentry got home, Curry was in his apartment, which was actually the converted attic of the farmhouse.

  When she called the lab, her husband didn’t answer. Chief Carstairs kindly drove her over. No blood, no body, no footprints, no nothing. And that was eight months ago.

  Faith had come to Cumberton Headquarters late in July. She explained that the Bradford police—poor old Carstairs!—had failed. Private detectives had failed. She’d heard of Chief Inspector Windsor. Honesty, good looks and intelligence was a killing combination so that every time he got a conviction it reached as far as the Boston papers. And he was young, too only thirty-five, Marble thought. The right age for her.

  Larsen and Marble had been out the day Mrs. Gentry bad come in. (A simple matter of checking one of Larsen’s details: did a gas cock really turn to the right for “on,” or was it to the left, in the shabby little apartment where a suicide had occurred? No kidding, that was the kind of stuff they did all day long!) But even without being there, Marble could imagine what had happened.

  Would Inspector Windsor, as a particular courtesy—? Her request was seconded by Carstairs, who at least deserved credit for admitting honestly he’d been out of his depth from the beginning. Windsor, starry-eyed from the first look, had been at it hammer and tongs ever since. And now we’re in on it too, concluded Marble. Oh, well.

  Their road took them past the neat stone laboratory that looked like the mill it had once been. The pretty mill pond, the one that had been stocked with carp, lay quiet in the heat. They passed a little woods, then a barn so huge that it almost hid the little farmhouse beside it and at last reached the brick house that was Peter Gentry’s.

  Windsor came to the door before they had time to ring. He was tall, a darkly handsome man. Behind him stood Faith Gentry. Marble had to reach way back to his boyhood for the right word to describe her but when he found it, it fitted perfectly. Lady, the word was. He stepped onto the lush grey rug and then he could see more of her than her pale fair face. She was neatly put together, which Marble could see wouldn’t hurt her none with a young bachelor. Nor an old one, come to that.

  He looked around, mentally testing the chairs, and selected a sturdy-looking bench for himself.

  “Where’s Curry?” he asked.

  “He’s at work. At the lab,” said Windsor. He sounded harried. “Listen, I know I’m tossing you a cold lemon, but if you fail too—the point is we know Gentry didn’t leave by the path to the house or to the farmhouse we’re sure of that. Unless he was carried to Curry’s car and driven in that. But the car was searched, and the house was searched, the farmhouse, Curry’s apartment—so where did he hide the body? The only alternative is that somehow Gentry went away of his own volition—but there was no motive for that at all.”

  Marble’s slightly popping eyes swiveled around to look at Faith Gentry—widow? deserted wife? or what?—and agreed that Gentry had every reason not to leave Greenlands.

  “A search of the woods would be pointless,” Windsor said. “The state troopers beat through every part of it on Christmas Day beginning less than twelve hours after he was missed. The fact is there’s a possibility he’s still alive, although where he’s hiding out, only God knows. But if he’s alive we’ve got to find him.”

  “He’s dead.” said Marble.

  “What makes you so sure?” Windsor asked eagerly.

  Never seen him so glad to hear my opinion, Marble thought Just because I said what he wants to hear, all of a sudden I’m an authority. “I got me a feeling,” said Marble. He wasn’t fool enough to tell them that his feeling was simply that no man in his right mind would leave a wife like Faith Gentry. “And Curry done it.” Marble turned to Faith, who had been sitting quietly in a club chair too large for her. Windsor sat on the arm of the chair. “How did Curry act that night when Gentry couldn’t be found?”

  Faith glanced up at Windsor.

  “Amused,” she said, and her voice was just right for her, deep and sweet. “He seemed to think it was very funny. Every time he’d suggest a new place to look it was as if he wanted to prove that Peter—that Peter wasn’t there, either.” She looked down at her hands and said no more. She was affected by this kind of talk, Marble could tell, but just the same she hadn’t cared for her husband, at least not the way she cared for Windsor. Maybe there had been a glow, but this one was a raging fire. You could feel it, feel them keeping it in check. And all the time they had to look for the husband who, if he was alive, was going to spoil everything for them. Although it was against his code to be sorry for Windsor, Marble could sympathize with Faith if he wanted to, and he did.

  “Curry gets back here for lunch soon,” Windsor said. “He has his meals here. That’ll give you a chance to see him.”

  In a few minutes a tidy maid came in to say lunch was ready. Almost at the same time the front door bell rang, and the same maid admitted Martin Curry.

  The murderer, Marble thought. Curry was about forty, shorter than any of the policemen in the room, but not a short man by any other standards. He had his dark eyes on Faith the instant he stepped into the room, but after a moment he looked around him and said, “More cops?”

  He looked like a poet, all dark eyes and high forehead and brooding lips, and he may have been, but he was a murderer too. Marble used no intuition here. He wasn’t all mixed up by loving Faith Gentry, as Windsor was, or by worshipping Windsor, as Larsen was, so he could still take the basic one, two, three and total them to make murder. Motive, means and opportunity. If this pretty little woman wasn’t all he needed for a motive—and how could Curry have suspected competition in the form of a cop!—then take the partnership that he stood to inherit when Gentry was proved dead. The whole goldmine of a lab would be his!

  There was turkey salad for lunch. “This is home raised turkey,” Faith said, adding with an apologetic little laugh, “It’s strange how you get used to having lots of provisions on hand. I know Peter was—was—he was too cautious, but now I’ve got used to it, and I love knowing there’s more when you finish what you have.”

  “And is there more?” Larsen asked. Marble noticed him for the first time since their arrival he had thought Larsen might be jealous of Faith for taking so much of Windsor for herself, but instead it now looked as if Larsen had merely expanded his field to include Faith too.

  “There’s a whole locker full,” she answered. “Nancy—that’s Nancy Simmons, the farmer’s wife—told me yesterday that there’s still a locker full of the lot they froze last year on the day before Christmas—” Her voice dwindled, and Marble noticed that after that she didn’t touch another bite. But she added a moment later, “By the time this lot is gone we’ll have more to dress.”

  Curry looked about the table, his dark eyes twinkling suddenly. Unconsciously Marble braced himself. Here it comes, he thought But Curry’s next words were certainly innocuous. “This turkey salad reminds me of those picnics we used to have last summer,” was all he said.

  Faith’s face brightened.

  “They were fun,” she agreed.

  Windsor seized on it. “A picnic would be just the thing for you,” he said, “The change would be good for you. Where did you have these picnics? In that pine grove over the hill?”

  “Yes, the grove.” Faith hesitated. You could see she was dying to go, and Marble for one cheered her on. “If you’re all going to be here tomorrow,” she said slowly, “why, perhaps—”

  Curry kept o
n talking about delightful days, happy picnics. Before lunch was over, all arrangements had been made. What cinched it was the radio forecast for tomorrow’s weather. Another scorcher, in the nineties. If you had to work in weather like this, Marble thought, pushing himself clear of the table with an effort, Greenlands, with its home-raised turkeys and its picnic groves and its Faith Gentry, was as perfect a place as you could find.

  Greenlands covered about three hundred choice acres. The Gentry house was a well-built six room affair, and Marble and Larsen went through it with a fine-toothed comb. Nothing. The house of Gentry’s young farmer, Albert Simmons, offered nothing more. They’d expected nothing, but routine is routine.

  “Curry doesn’t seem to care that he’s the only suspect,” Larsen remarked, when he and Marble were en route to the laboratory. Curry had gone on ahead some time ago, and Windsor (not unnaturally) elected to remain behind with Faith.

  “He done it, and he don’t mind if we know he done it, because we can’t prove it, and he knows that too,” said Marble. “Where are all your crummy little details now, Larsen?”

  “Give me time,” said Larsen blandly. “I only just got here.”

  * * * *

  The Gentry-Curry Metallurgical Laboratory had the pond on one side with a regular forest of shade trees all around the pond and the lab. On a rise in the distance was a stand of pine—undoubtedly the picnic grove. You could reach it by a footpath from the laboratory, as well as by a macadam cutoff from the main road, and by a narrow path from the house itself.’

  Inside, the laboratory was air conditioned. Marble put his damp handkerchief back into his pocket as the welcome coolness smote him. Curry was working in a tan lab coat. The work didn’t seem to Marble to be anything that would exhaust a man. When they came in, he was lifting a white-hot miniature crucible out of one of the small ovens, holding it easily in one hand with a pair of short tongs. “Just a minute,” he called, and plunged tongs and crucible into a tub of water. After the steam cleared away, he said, “I’d have spoiled the melt if I didn’t finish. Sorry to hold you up.”

  Marble looked around the room for a furnace big enough to consume a man whole, but all he saw was six little furnaces the size of a gallon jug each, far too small to burn a body, even piecemeal, in one hour—or even in ten hours. There were shelf upon shelf of bottles, jars, tubs for quenching the melts. But Chief Carstairs had looked into all the tubs and found them empty on that night eight months ago.

  “What was Mr. Gentry working on at the time he—?” Larsen asked suddenly.

  Ah thought Marble. Here comes one of them details.

  Curry looked amused. “Steel,” he said.

  He went to a glassed-in cupboard. “Here,” he said. “Here’s the last experiment he ever did.” He took a small, thimble shaped piece of metal from the shelf. “There were two of these castings, both numbered B-113. See?” He showed them the number painted on the flat top of the casting. “One’s missing. Chief Carstairs knew that. Gentry took it away himself, if he ran off. Or maybe his murderer took it. But whatever happened to it, it had no special value. I went over his notes for Captain Carstairs.” Marble remembered Carstairs’ scrupulous notations as Curry went on, “He had cast the metal that same night, and it was still hot when he turned up missing. The two castings were exactly alike—we generally do that if we want to give the alloy different treatment. I mean heat treatment, like cooling it slow or fast, that sort of thing. This steel contains chromium molybdenum, vanadium—”

  “Any precious metal in it?” Marble asked.

  “No,” said Curry, laughing. “You figuring on treasure trove, or something?”

  A slight hum accompanied by a tremor which made the building vibrate very faintly, brought Marble out of his lethargy. “That there’s a furnace,” he said accusingly.

  “Naturally,” said Curry. “How did you think our heat in the winter—and hot water all year round. It must be running for hot water right now.”

  Marble, with the first real interest he’d felt, lumbered down the steps. The furnace was a large one, big enough to take a man at one bite. But it was a new oil burner, with no way to feed a man into it.

  By the time the police were ready to call it a day, there had been only one new development. Curry had decided to go off for a weekend vacation.

  “If you have no objections.” he told Windsor lightly.

  “Where are you going?” Windsor asked.

  “There’s a place in Maine—” He turned to Faith, and as always when he addressed her his voice softened. “Turner Falls, remember?”

  Faith nodded. “We spent some happy holidays there, the three of us.” she said sadly.

  “Funny,” Marble observed, when Curry left to pack. Windsor and Larsen looked at him quizzically. “I mean, I sorta had the idea that he wanted to be in on that picnic, all the yakking he did about how much fun it would be.”

  “He did,” said Larsen, his voice soft with surprise. The men looked at one another.

  “He’s rigged it.” Windsor said slowly. “He tossed us the bait, and we bit.”

  Marble ruminated heavily. “Of course, this being Friday, it’s the right time to start off for the weekend. So that part of it’s legitimate. Maybe,” the thought struck him. “maybe he wants us all away from the house.”

  “It’s a thought,” said Windsor. He pursed his lips, then said, “Bring Baker back with you tomorrow. Well leave him in the house when we go off to eat our lunch.”

  Curry took an early evening train out of Bradford, and a Cumberton man named Hinds was at his heels. Hinds was the headquarters bulldog: when he got his teeth into a suspect, he hung on.

  With the laboratory to themselves next morning, Eric and Marble moved through it like a pair of locusts. Nothing escaped. There was nothing to escape. By noon, when they started hack for the picnic, they had learned nothing new. Larsen, however, was making like Philo Vance. He whipped out his notebook and began to write.

  “What did you find to write about?” Marble demanded.

  Larsen showed him: “Missing metal casting. B-113.”

  “Pardon me all to hell,” said Marble politely, returning the notebook.

  “It’s a mysterious detail,” said Larsen imperturbably. “I know what you think about me and my details, but like it or not that’s what’s going to solve this case.”

  Marble clambered into the ear.

  “Hold it a minute,” he said weightily as Larsen reached for the ignition. Marble turned and looked at the quiet water of the pond.

  “Could be?” he asked finally.

  “Could be,” said Larsen, starting the car.

  “I’m strictly a city boy myself,” said Marble. “Whaddaya do, drag for the body in a carp pond?”

  Larsen shook his head. “I read up on it in the library.” He would! “There won’t be any body left. Not after the carp got through with it, that is. Carp bed down during the winter, but in the spring they’d have finished it off—when the ice released the body, if it was there, they’d have been mighty hungry. No, you’d have to drain the pond and hunt for human bones, and if you found them you’d have to prove they were Gentry’s.” He pushed his hat back on his head. “And besides, we come back to it again. There were no prints leading to the pond. The snow was virgin clear all around it.”

  “Dead end no matter which way we turn,” pronounced Marble.

  When Faith learned why Baker was to remain in the house, she said dubiously, “Maybe we’d better not go at all?”

  “Curry’s got a plan,” Windsor explained, “and we can’t defeat him until we know what it is.”

  And meanwhile he’s moving us around like a set of chessmen, Marble thought.

  They went into the shady pine grove. You felt its coolness like a breeze. The sunlight crept through only occasionally. They walked on a spring bed of needles, until like a burst of Strauss music came the opening, fitted out with a single picnic table and two benches. Larsen swung the hamper onto the ta
ble, then stood motionless, his hand still on the handle. After a moment everybody began to stare the same way, up, at the branches of the nearest tree. It was so dim, so shady, you couldn’t be sure of what you saw. Then Faith gave a low cry, “Peter!” and Marble knew it wasn’t light and shade, but the real thing.

  At any rate, he thought, we’ve got us a body.

  “Just where he wanted us to find it,” Windsor said angrily.

  The body of Peter Gentry lay stretched on two sturdy low branches, knees bent, the feet set firmly against the tree trunk. When you looked up most of his face was clearly visible. He had been strangled. Marble decided expertly, and didn’t blame Faith for hiding her face against Windsor’s willing breast. After all that waiting to find him, nobody could enjoy looking at him.

  Marble, after all his years of it, took over as a matter of course. (But they can’t spare the ink to print “assistant” on the door!) Larsen and Windsor carried the picnic table over to stand it directly beneath the body, and with much puffing Marble mounted it. Without disturbing the corpse at all he moved an eyelid, sought a pulse, and unhesitatingly confirmed their reaction. Gentry was dead. “Since early this morning is my guess,” said Marble.

  Then the enormity of it struck him. It was incongruous. Here was a man just dead, murdered in brutal fashion, and their prize, their only suspect, was spectacularly, elaborately absent. Besides, Gentry should have been dead for well over eight months now. Not just since this morning, but since Christmas Eve. Their suspect was innocent! “He couldn’t ’a’ done it,” Marble said in outraged accents. He considered briefly, and added, “But he done it, all right.”

  The widow—Faith Gentry was definitely a widow now—said jerkily, “He’s—he’s been alive all this time!”

  Windsor tightened his arm about her. Marble and Larsen carefully did not look in their direction. Marble stalked the body, looking for something, anything. He liked a clue to be tangible, something you could hold in your hand and give an exhibit letter to. But there was nothing. Even the suit the dead man had on presented no problem. It was the same brown shaggy wool he’d left home in, that cold morning, although it was anyone’s guess why he was still wearing it.