Death Demands an Audience

by Helen Reilly

  “Borrow’s house.” McKee crushed out his cigarette. “About what I expected.” He told Jason, the man behind the wheel, to remain where he was, left the taxi driver with Jason and, accompanied by Captain Pierson, the stenographer, Kent and Detectives Lutz and Fishbaum, he made his way up through the grounds to the house on the hill above.

  “Door’s locked,” Pierson said, trying the door on the small porch between the tall crowding pines. “If Todhunter was here he ain’t now.”

  “Isn’t,” the Scotsman murmured absently, looking at broken glass on the floor of the porch. “Someone’s been here before us, someone who wanted to get in badly.” The window was still unlocked. McKee was the first over the sill. The others followed. They mounted the stairs, went through the door on the right and found Todhunter—and the girl.

  The little detective lay with his head partially pillowed on the girl’s knees. The flood of light, directed down from a chandelier above a dining-room table beyond, roused the little detective. He looked up to see the Scotsman standing over him, giving directions to Fishbaum and Lutz to search the house. Todhunter scrambled dizzily upright.

  Kent and Pierson were helping the girl to her feet. She was able to move but she wasn’t yet fully conscious. Todhunter said, “Stuck my neck out for fair, Inspector, and someone hit it.” He fingered a bump on the back of his head ruefully. “Ouch, it hurts. Funny thing, I didn’t hear a sound. Must have been a piece of lead pipe.” It wasn’t a piece of lead pipe with which Todhunter had been attacked, it was a small iron lamp that Pierson retrieved from under the buffet.

  Kent had the girl in a chair and was putting whisky from a pocket flask to her lips. She swallowed, her lashes went up and her eyes moved slowly from face to face. “Who are you?” she demanded. “What happened?”

  She didn’t seem to be very badly hurt. McKee smiled down at her quizzically. “That’s what we’d like you to tell us, Miss ”

  “Borrow,” she said sharply. “What are you doing in my father’s house?”

  “Your father?”

  “Certainly, my father,” she answered. “I’m Franklin Borrow’s daughter.” .

  “Do you know that your father is dead, Miss Borrow?” McKee asked.

  The girl inclined her head. Her lips tightened.

  “Yes, I know,” she said.

  “How did you find out?”

  “I saw it. I saw him—in the window.” The girl shuddered. Her pallor deepened. She had to fight for control.

  Todhunter nodded to McKee. “That’s right, Inspector,” he said. “I knew there was some connection between this girl and the man in the show window. That’s why I followed her. You got my message?”

  “Yes,” McKee said. “The newsman who phoned it in pointed out your cab driver. He brought us here.”

  Todhunter described what had happened up until the time he was hit on the head, the entrance of the girl to the house, the flashing on of the lights, their extinction and her cry. He himself had caught no glimpse of his assailant after he entered the room where the girl had already been knocked out. McKee turned to her.

  “Now, Miss Borrow, your father was shot and killed down there in Garth and Campbell’s. There’s no doubt that he was murdered. If you feel able will you tell us your story?”

  The girl pushed short black curls wearily back from a broad, low forehead. She said, speaking slowly in a covered voice, “I knew that something dreadful had happened to my father the instant I saw him in the window. I didn’t know what it was, didn’t know it was—murder—but I was afraid. After my mother’s death a year ago my father told me that if he were to die suddenly the first thing he wanted me to do was to get hold of his green dispatch box. He impressed it on me. No matter what happened, that’s what

  I was to do. So when I saw—when I saw ”

  McKee interrupted her. “What was in this dispatch box, Miss Borrow?”

  The girl said, “I don’t know. Father didn’t tell me and I didn’t ask. But anyhow, that’s why, when I saw him lying there in the window, I came directly to this house. I had my key. I opened the door, came upstairs and started through this room to”—she waved toward a closed door to the left of the buffet in the far wall— “my father’s study in there. I had lighted the lights in the hall. This room was dark. I put out my hand for the switch. Before I could touch it someone or something struck me and I fell. That’s all. I don’t remember any more.”

  “You didn’t hear or see anybody from the time you opened the front door until you were attacked, Miss Borrow?”

  The girl hesitated. Her hesitation was slight. “No,” she said firmly. “No, I saw and heard nothing.”

  Lutz came in and reported that the rest of the house was empty. McKee went over and opened the study door. He turned on the lights. A wide studio window, a long worktable covered with papers, magazines and rough sketches, low bookcases with water colors and etchings above them, a drawing board, a divan covered with an Indian blanket, a tall maple dresser; McKee said, “If you’ll show me where your father kept his dispatch box, Miss Borrow?”

  Judith Borrow joined the inspector in the doorway. “In the top left-hand drawer of that.” She indicated the dresser.

  McKee crossed to it. He opened the drawer, using his handkerchief and the haft of the knob.

  “In the compartment at the back,” the girl told him.

  But the compartment was empty. A search of the entire dresser and the whole room was unavailing. Borrow’s green dispatch case, if it had been there, was gone. The dead man’s keys had not been found on him nor anywhere among his belongings in the display office at Garth and Campbell’s. Someone must have taken them. And his young assistant was not to be located, at least he wasn’t at his apartment in the Village nor had the detectives looking for him as yet picked him up. McKee turned to the girl.

  “You know Michael Savage?”

  “Yes, of course.” The girl took a compact out and began to run a powder puff over her nose.

  “How did your father and Savage get along?”

  Again the hesitation, a flicker of it, before she said, “Why—they got along all right.”

  “You lived here with your father, Miss Borrow?”

  She snapped the enamel case shut. “No, I have a small apartment on West Eighty-eighth Street.”

  “Any reason for not living here at home?”

  “I’m an actress, Inspector, my hours, you know ... Besides, I wanted to be on my own.”

  McKee surveyed her in silence. Franklin Borrow had been killed at approximately four-fifty. To reach the street and escape would have required only a minute or two. The girl had been standing in front of Garth and Campbell’s shortly after Borrow had died. Very shortly after.

  “Where were you before you reached the show window and saw your father dead inside of it, Miss Borrow?” His tone was cold.

  Hers was even colder. “On my way down to the store. I was to have had dinner with Father tonight. He left word at the apartment that he couldn’t make it but that he wanted to talk to me. The message was relayed to the William Jones Agency, where I found it waiting for me when I dropped in there during the middle of the afternoon. From the agency I walked to Garth and Campbell’s. And then, well, then—I saw him.”

  In spite of the freshly plied powder and lipstick she looked shaken, ill, as though she were at the end of her tether. She might be telling the truth. There wasn’t enough of it. McKee said: “You don’t know what this other engagement of your father’s was, Miss Borrow? This engagement for which he broke the one with you?”

  “I haven’t the slightest idea.”

  “And Michael Savage is missing,” McKee spoke musingly, “and so are your father’s keys. Someone came up here to this house tonight and attacked you when you came in.” “Missing? Michael—missing?” It was a blow to her. It was a blow for which she wasn’t entirely unprepared. Her eyes widened, darkened.

  The sharp ringing of the telephone cut across the tension that gripp
ed her and the little group of officials watching her. The instrument stood on a stand just inside the study. The girl put out a swift hand. McKee was before her. He said, “I’ll take it, Miss Borrow,” and scooped up the receiver.

  It was headquarters calling. A voice said, “That you, Inspector? Acting Captain Conley, telegraph bureau. A personal call’s just come in for that dead man in Garth and Campbell’s. I can switch it on to you if you like.”

  McKee said, “O.K., Conley. Go ahead.”

  There was a short delay. Then a man’s thin, rather high voice asked querulously:

  “Is this Franklin Borrow? Hello, Mr Borrow?”

  The lines were open. The call could be traced. McKee said, “No, this isn’t Mr Borrow. Mr Borrow is dead. Who is this?”

  There was no response. The only answer was a click. The man at the other end of the wire had hung up.

  “Well, Conley?”

  The acting captain said: “That call was made from Edgewood in Putnam County. The number is Edgewood 1624. It’s listed under the name of Luke Cambridge.”

  CHAPTER 3

  LESS THAN a quarter of an hour later, accompanied by Kent and Pierson, McKee was on his way northward out of the city. Men from the Bronx Homicide had added themselves to his own in an attempt to try and pick up any unconsidered trifles in the way of clues that the girl’s, and Todhunter’s, assailant had left lying around loose. There hadn’t been time for much of a cover-up job.

  The storm was a handicap. It obliterated whatever traces there might otherwise have been in the grounds surrounding the house. Together with Todhunter, the girl had grudgingly consented to be taken to the Medical Center to be looked over. She had said that from there she was going home.

  The Scotsman had made no demur. A kite with a tail to it was safe and might be useful. She would be adequately guarded. And from the general layout, so far, he felt they were going to need all the help they could get.

  As always, at the beginning of a case, McKee let his mind lie wide open while he ranged through it, sorting impressions, adding them up and arranging data. Kent sensed his mood and sat silent but Pierson rebelled, or tried to, at least half-a-dozen times during the fifty-mile journey through the wild churning of fat white flakes that plastered themselves against the windows of the swiftly moving car.

  An hour and ten minutes after leaving Fieldston McKee, Pierson and Kent walked up the steps to the door of Luke Cambridge’s house. The house, a big white colonial structure on a hill under tall elms, lay on the far side of Edgewood, a small town just over the border in Putnam County.

  They were directed to it by one Joe Baker, a local policeman, who boarded the Cadillac as it went through the snow-swept village and obligingly conducted them to their destination. According to Baker, there had been Cam-bridges in Edgewood since back before the hasty-pudding days. Luke was a wealthy man. He lived alone in the original Cambridge house with two servants but he had relatives close by.

  McKee used the heavy knocker on an ancient six-paneled door on the far side of a pillared porch. A houseman opened the door. He was a short, thickset, middle-aged mulatto.

  “Mr Luke Cambridge in?” McKee asked pleasantly, stepping over the threshold. Kent, Pierson and a huge gust of snowflakes followed him in. The houseman cowered back. He was clearly frightened by the unexpected incursion. Kent closed the door shutting out the night and the storm.

  Light fell softly on an old colonial staircase on the right and on the fine paneling of a spacious hall. “I don’t know if Mr Luke’s at home,” the houseman stammered. “He went out a piece ago. Is he expecting you gentlemen?”

  As he spoke a door at the far end of the hall was jerked open and a man looked out. He was tall and spare and in his early sixties, with a thin high-nosed cold face beneath a thick mop of carefully brushed white hair.

  “Who is it, Andrews?” he called sharply.

  It was McKee who answered, strolling down the hall. “Inspector McKee of the Manhattan Homicide Squad. Mr. Cambridge?”

  Cambridge stared. “Inspector?” He savored that. His manner was collected enough but he seemed to be laboring under a certain nervous tension. There were unnatural spots of color high on his lean sallow cheeks and his eyes, under thick white brows, were too bright.

  “Come in, Inspector.” He pulled the door wide. Kent followed McKee into the room. It was an interesting room, very much older than the portion of the house nearer the street. There were windows on both sides, little crooked windows, and the ceiling was low. Woodwork and plaster were painted white. There was a huge stone fireplace in the wall facing the door. Comfortable chairs, books, lamps, a long table, an antique desk made a pleasant setting.

  A door to the left of the fireplace led into what was evidently Luke Cambridge’s bedroom. The door was partially open. Cambridge walked over and closed it, waved the two men to chairs and sat down himself. “Well, Inspector, what can I do for you?”

  It was an opener McKee was familiar with. Inquiry veiled with suaveness, an inquiry that had more than a trace of watchfulness in it. He said briskly, “I’ll come straight to the point, Mr Cambridge. You called Franklin Borrow in Garth and Campbell’s a short while ago. I answered the phone. When I told you Borrow was dead you hung up without telling me who you were. Why did you do that?”

  Cambridge settled himself in the armchair of faded blue velvet. He passed a fine-boned aquiline hand over the mop of smoothly brushed white hair.

  “Why? Because I was shocked, Inspector. I had expected a visit here from Franklin Borrow this evening. And he was alive and well when I talked to him at around half-past two this afternoon.”

  “Borrow was a friend of yours?”

  Luke Cambridge turned and looked into the fire. He reached for the poker and gave the logs a jolt. They didn’t require any attention. His profile was sharp against the sudden burst of flame. When he veered toward McKee again he was calm, composed.

  “If I may ask, Inspector, what, exactly, happened to Borrow?”

  The Scotsman didn’t put a tooth in it. He said: “Franklin Borrow was shot and killed shortly before five o’clock this afternoon in Garth and Campbell’s in New York.”

  Cambridge’s eyes flickered. The thin lips of a wide mouth folded on themselves. He released their pressure to say, “Shot and killed I Good God I Who did it?”

  McKee let a shrug serve as a reply. “Was Borrow a friend of yours?” he repeated.

  “No,” Cambridge answered. “Late yesterday afternoon I had a letter from the man asking me for an appointment at my earliest convenience. He didn’t say what he wanted to see me about. The stationery was good and the tone of the communication intelligent. I rang his office today and asked him to be more specific. He said he couldn’t talk over the phone but that he was anxious to see and have a talk with me. I thereupon called my brother and asked him to bring Borrow here tonight.”

  “How was that, Mr Cambridge?”

  “My brother Gregory is an architect. He has an office in New York to which he drives back and forth. I knew this place would be difficult for a stranger to find so I asked Gregory to pick Borrow up at the end of the day and drive him here.”

  “Oh,” McKee said, “your brother was to pick Borrow up at Garth and Campbell’s late this afternoon. Tell me about your brother.”

  Luke Cambridge’s smile was faint, a little amused. “He’s some ten years younger than I am, builds houses for a living and is married. He has a daughter about to be married and a married son. He lives a short distance from here on the other side of the estate. That’s about all I can think of.”

  “I see. Now, you yourself, why did you call Borrow in New York if the arrangements for a meeting had been completed?”

  Luke’s brows rose. He said stiffly, “I’m accustomed to having appointments kept on time. When Borrow didn’t arrive by seven I wanted to know the reason why.”

  “Didn’t you call your brother?”

  “I did. But there was nobody home, nobody but
the maids, and they couldn’t tell me anything.”

  “You’re sure that’s all, Mr. Cambridge?”

  “Absolutely all, as far as I’m concerned.”

  The constraint that had been steadily deepening put

  McKee on his feet. “You can’t give me even an inkling of what Borrow wanted to see you about?”

  Luke Cambridge’s “No” was curt. It was also firmly final. The Scotsman said aloud, musingly, “Your brother was to pick Borrow up at Garth and Campbell’s and drive him here for an interview on an unknown subject. Borrow didn’t arrive. He didn’t arrive because he was shot and killed in the basement of the department store shortly before he could start on his journey. Positive you can’t give us any more information?”

  “Quite positive. I’ve already given you all I have.”

  McKee picked up his hat. He smiled. “Where does your brother Gregory live?”

  For answer Luke gave a bell in the wall beside his chair a push and the houseman appeared. Luke said, “Get your coat on, Andrews. I want you to show these gentlemen the way to Mr. Gregory’s house.” He bowed to the two officials. “Good night, Inspector.”

  The Cadillac, with Andrews in the front seat beside the chauffeur and McKee, Kent and Pierson in the back, wound over the snow-coated road, north along the level and then left down a steep grade, to turn again at an angle. McKee pulled a cigarette from a crumpled pack in his pocket, lighted it.

  “There’s nothing like the free, frank openheartedness of people who live in the country, is there, Kent?”

  “You said it,” Kent answered.

  At Andrews’ direction the car edged a bleak copse, crossed a bridge over a small stream and swung into a steep driveway that led to a large modern red brick house on the rise above. It was studded brilliantly with lighted windows. Its contour and bulk were in sharp contrast to the house they had just left. That was old, secretive, had a hidden quality about it and yet was somehow graceful. The house before which they drew to a stop was thoroughly up-to-date, placid, commodious and extensive, Neo-Georgian without the Georgian flavor, but solid and with a lived-in look.