Death Demands an Audience

by Helen Reilly

  The taxi driver looked at the girl and nodded. “Yeah, I did, Cap,” he said. “Mr Cambridge called me early this afternoon. He told me to meet the train and that there’d be a girl on it looking for a cab. She was there all right. It was easy to spot her. I picked her up and drove her up here. And I brought her in the back driveway, the way the old man told me to.”

  “Did you see her come in?”

  “I saw her at the door with her hand on the latch.”

  “Did you see anything else?”

  “Anything else? No, nothing special.” The taximan frowned. “When I walked back around the car to get in and drive away I £aw Mr Cambridge through the window.” Rasmussen interrupted him sharply. “You saw Mr Cambridge? What was he doing?”

  “Why, nothing. I saw him start to get up to let the girl in, that’s all,” the taxi driver said wonderingly. “What’s the matter, Cap? Did I say something wrong?”

  “Frankie.” Rasmussen leaned toward Sylvester. He spoke demandingly, his voice ringing through the length and breadth of the room. “You’re sure that Mr Cambridge was alive when this girl entered the house?”

  The taxi driver shrank down into his coat. He shuffled his feet uneasily. “As I say, I saw Mr Cambridge start to get up from his chair by the window when the girl was going up the path to the door.”

  “All right, that’s enough, that’ll do.”

  Rasmussen turned and looked at Judith Borrow.

  “So you were lying to us and you thought you’d get away with it,” he said.

  The girl was staring straight in front of her. The dark head went back and up. Her lips parted. No sound came through.

  CHAPTER 15

  THE TAXIMAN was apparently telling the truth. The Scotsman took the big black Cadillac into the back driveway. He made the turn, pulled the Cadillac to a stop, got out and went around the car. Frankie Sylvester was right.

  From where McKee stood and where the cab driver said he had stood Luke Cambridge was visible through the window, slumped in his chair, shoulders against the cushions, massive white head forward, chin on breast. He could have been seen rising from that point.

  Wind whistled. A sudden gust of it blew a handful of dry powdery snow into the Scotsman’s eyes. Overhead unseen branches crashed in tumult. Bushes masking the outlines of the old house lashed back and forth in the blackness of the bitter night. It was cold, very cold.

  Inside, a dead man, inert, motionless, stopped, beyond the rectangle of mellow light. A dead man seated quietly in his chair in the small book-lined room in which he had lived without misadventure for so many years. The wind shrieked again, fiercely, menacingly. Under its onslaught a branch fell somewhere. The Scotsman turned up the collar of his coat. He could see the windows of the room beyond the study in which Luke Cambridge still sat, the living room in which Captain Rasmussen was pounding away at Judith Borrow, hoping for a break. McKee didn’t think it would come. Innocent or guilty, that girl was not made of the stuff that crashed under a strain.

  He wandered around to the front of the house. The big tree near the porch was swaying perilously and creaking as it swayed. The Scotsman went in. He was proceeding along the hall when the door opened behind him and Pierson entered, stamping snow from his feet. He joined the Scotsman and said in a low voice,

  “Listen, Inspector, I checked with Thompson who’s been covering Savage. When Savage left the dog wagon here in town, which was as soon as it was dark, he made straight for this house tonight. He didn’t come in but Thompson watched him and he hung around here from half-past five until almost seven o’clock and what’s more, he kept under cover. Then he went back to that shack of his in the woods.”

  “He didn’t come in?” McKee said.

  Pierson grunted darkly. “That’s the catch, Inspector. Thompson kept him generally in sight but he couldn’t keep an eye on him the whole time, and when I asked him was it possible for Savage to have sneaked in Thompson says, ‘Yes, it could have been done, if he didn’t stay more than a couple of minutes.’ ”

  “A couple of minutes,” McKee murmured thinly. “Half a minute would have been enough.”

  “Enough for what?” the captain wanted to know.

  “Enough to have given the killer the necessary time in which to lace that stout with a dose of deadly poison, a poison that would kill instantly,” McKee answered, staring at the wide white panels of the huge front door. “Michael Savage knew or could have known that Judith Borrow had an appointment with Luke Cambridge for this evening. According to Thompson, Savage must have been in her apartment when she says she got the call from Luke.”

  A telephone call again. McKee’s eyes were narrow, gleaming. It was after Luke Cambridge’s call to Franklin Borrow that Borrow was killed. It was after Luke’s call to Borrow’s daughter that he had been eliminated himself. Whatever was back of those telephone calls was the heart of the case they were investigating.

  The Scotsman started for the living room. He paused as he heard the front door open. Gregory and Irene Cambridge came in. Gregory’s heavy face was set and his skin was a bad color. He said in a thick voice,

  “Where is he? Where’s Luke?”

  Irene was sliding out of her mink coat. She tossed it over a chest near the door. Her full, rather pointed face, its ivory cheeks stung to faint color by the cold, was grave, pained. She said,

  “Good evening, Inspector. Will you show us?”

  The living-room door was closed now. McKee led the way to the study. Husband and wife stood side by side looking at the still figure seated behind the table. They were strained, expressionless. Suddenly Gregory buried his face in his hands. Irene threw an arm around his shoulders, slim ungloved fingers pressed his sleeve.

  “Gregory, pleaseshe whispered. “After all, it was quick. He couldn’t have suffered much. That’s the thing for you to think of, the thing for you to concentrate on.”

  “I know, I know,” Gregory Cambridge answered and straightened. “Luke was my older brother. I always—I always sort of depended on him.” He turned to McKee. “What happened, Inspector? Has the doctor been called?”

  “Yes, Mr Cambridge,” the Scotsman replied and let them have it straight. “Doctor Marlake has been here and gone. It is his opinion and ours also that your brother didn’t die a natural death. It’s murder. He was poisoned.” The words “murder, poison,” echoed through the small cloistered room. They brought the tumult of the bitter night outside within the four walls, a voiceless tumult that beat back and forth with its focus in the two unmoving, unwinking figures standing rigid and stricken in the soft light.

  McKee left them alone with the dead man. He headed for the dining room, crossed its stately white-paneled emptiness. Pushing open the pantry door, he switched on the light. The pantry was a long narrow slit between kitchen and dining room. It was equipped with the usual sink and cabinets, right and left above. There was a window at the far end. What was more, there was a telephone on the table under the window, an extension from the one in Luke’s study, used probably by the houseman, Andrews, and the cook for orders and for their own personal calls. There was another extension on the floor above.

  The Scotsman recast the situation as it must have been during that call of Luke’s to Judith Borrow, the call that had directly resulted in Luke’s death. Uncertain of much, McKee was convinced that this at least was so. Unfortunately no elimination was possible. Judith Borrow had received the call in her apartment in New York. Michael Savage could have overheard it there but, and it was a big but, from their various positions in this house at the time the call was put through any one of the Cambridges or Newell might have done the same. At that same time there had been the three women on the floor above, Toby Newell in the dining room, Leslie’s whereabouts unknown and Gregory turning up on the landing at the foot of the stairs without warning. Yes, any one of these people could have had a secret ear glued to either of the two extensions, listening to Luke’s summons to Judith Borrow.

  The pantry do
or opened and he turned. Gregory Cambridge stepped in. His face was harrowed, stern, but resolution had entered into him. He said brusquely and without preface,

  “You say my brother Luke was murdered, Inspector. How was it done? There’s no mark on him anywhere, no trace of what you said.” His voice was somehow toneless. There was no doubt that he was suffering.

  McKee said, “Here is where the poison came from, Mr Cambridge.” He pointed to the empty space on the shelf under the cabinet between a canister labeled coffee and the rim of the sink. “The poison was put into the bottle of stout that stood there earlier today.”

  Gregory Cambridge looked at him. “You mean that someone came here into this pantry and deliberately dropped poison into Luke’s bottle?”

  McKee said, “That’s what was done. The time and the place have not yet been fully established. The stout might have been poisoned after it was carried into the study. Any number of people had the opportunity of access to the bottle throughout the afternoon and early evening.”

  “But, good God, Inspector,” Gregory Cambridge said, “you surely don’t think that any one of us would have-- ”

  The Scotsman shrugged. He said evenly, “We’re not prepared, at the moment at any rate, to give anyone a clean bill of health, Mr Cambridge. The poison that destroyed your brother was introduced into the bottle of stout at some time between one o’clock this afternoon and seven o’clock, or shortly thereafter, this evening when Luke lifted the glass to his lips and drank of its lethal contents.”

  To himself he said, as he strolled into the spick-and-span kitchen, back into the pantry and on into the dining room, any one of them could have done it. Any of them could have heard the telephone call. Equally any one of them, Gregory, Irene, Ellen, Leslie, Muriel, Andrews, the cook, Toby Newell and, yes, Savage and even Judith Borrow, after her entrance into the study, could have put the poison into the stout.

  Gregory Cambridge showed no inclination to let the Scotsman alone. He accompanied him out on the veranda and down its length. McKee came to a halt at the far end. Ragged moonlight shining through torn clouds fell in patches on the snow-covered lawn, interspersed with black shrubbery that lay beyond. McKee looked down through wind-wracked shadows at the leaf of one of the outside cellar doors. The leaf had been thrown back. He gazed at it without speaking.

  How long had it been that way? An interesting question. Those sounds Todhunter had heard from the cellar beneath when he was seated in the little old study with Luke earlier that evening? They could have been, he grasped dimly at dynamics, deliberately produced by the draft the opening of the outside door would have caused, in order to lure Todhunter into the spot in which he had finally been trapped.

  The Scotsman wondered. Was it Luke who had devised this simple and yet ingenious maneuver? Luke had evidently wanted very much to be alone during his talk with Judith Borrow. Andrews had been sent out of the house. Did Luke also want Todhunter to be among the missing during his interview with the girl? It could be. Or was it Luke’s killer who contrived this stratagem to put Todhunter out of the way? He felt pretty certain it was Luke who had answered the telephone when he called Edgewood from Judith Borrow’s apartment, but then it was possible to have faked the voice. Try the cellar door for prints. The wood was smooth. There ought to be something.

  “What is it, Inspector?” Gregory Cambridge asked, following the Scotsman’s absorbed stare.

  “Nothing, nothing,” McKee murmured and, turning, reentered the house.

  They went into the long, dim hall side by side. Irene Cambridge was standing near the living-room door. Her face was startled. The door was closed but from behind it, above Rasmussen’s, Judith Borrow’s voice was clearly audible.

  Gregory started. He seemed unusually struck by the fact that there was someone else in the house besides himself, his wife and the police. “Who’s that?” he demanded.

  For answer McKee opened the living-room door. Followed by Irene, Gregory Cambridge strode through it. He pulled up short just inside it. Judith Borrow removed her gaze from Rasmussen. She looked at Gregory Cambridge and Irene. She was very, very tired. A pulse was beating in the slim dark throat, but the face under the cocked green toque tilted sideways over the black curls was still firm, its delicate contours uninvaded by panic.

  Rasmussen veered. Getting to his feet, he advanced deferentially to the Cambridges. He shook hands with Gregory and bowed to Irene. “Very sad about your brother, Mr Cambridge,” he said.

  “Thanks,” Gregory muttered curtly. “Who is this girl? What is she doing here, Captain?” He glowered at the slim, green-clad figure in the depths of the big chair.

  Rasmussen expounded the situation. Judith Borrow’s long eyes were going up and down Irene’s beautifully modeled figure. They lingered on the violet velvet gown Irene wore, met the other woman’s and held. Irene’s faint smile at the girl was tremulous and interrogative. The girl said nothing.

  Gregory asked quick questions, Irene Cambridge listened. McKee lit a cigarette and watched from the background.

  There was no overt act, none whatever. Gregory’s hostility to Judith Borrow was clear. Irene’s attitude was slightly different. There was more curiosity in her than there was in him, a tentative weighing and balancing, as though she were trying to find out, behind that faintly smiling mask, not only what Judith Borrow knew but the full extent of her knowledge.

  Judith’s cool survey of the two Cambridges was animated by much the same exploratory thrust. McKee could sense the innate struggle beneath the surface, a struggle that involved the tensely entangled emotions of three people. They were aliens, enemies. It was in the possible dark flowering of this barely concealed antagonism that the inspector felt something that gave him pause. He didn’t like the way things were shaping, very definitely didn’t like it.

  Gregory Cambridge went on talking to Rasmussen. Irene left the room. McKee kept on watching and waiting. Presently Gregory said to the local captain, “I presume then that the proper steps are being taken.” He glared at the girl who gave him back look for look. “Nothing much more we can do. I guess we better get some sleep.” He turned on his heel. McKee followed him out into the hall. Irene Cambridge was just leaving the study. Her eyes were red-rimmed.

  McKee said good night to them. They departed and the Scotsman strolled to the study door. He gave no outward indication of the sharp impact of what he saw as he looked into the small book-lined room. It wouldn’t have been evident to the casual eye but he had an earlier mental picture with which to compare it.

  Previously, when he himself had left the study immediately after the arrival of the Cambridges, the bottom right-hand drawer of Luke Cambridge’s desk was an inch or two open and all the other drawers were shut. Now the top left-hand drawer was slightly open and the bottom right-hand drawer was closed tight.

  In addition, the papers in the wire basket and the file on top of the ledger had been moved. McKee calculated swiftly. Irene Cambridge had been alone in the study twice during her brief stay in the house. It looked very much as though she had used at least a part of her time by making a thorough search of her dead brother-in-law’s desk.

  Later that night, after Judith Borrow had been lodged in the dingy local hotel with a caution not to leave Edgewood, McKee was walking past the tavern underneath one corner of the flimsy superstructure. He stood still. At the far end of the bar, beyond a couple of dice throwers, a slight, small man with a thin face, in a dark overcoat, was drinking a glass of beer.

  The man in the overcoat, for whom McKee had already searched without avail, was Arnold Jones, the handy man in the display department of Garth and Campbell’s where Franklin Borrow had been murdered.

  CHAPTER 16

  “GOOD MORNING, Mr Stone.”

  It was eleven o’clock on the morning after Luke Cambridge’s death. McKee shook hands with Luke’s lawyer as the latter stepped into the Cadillac and seated himself in the far corner. The chauffeur closed the door and the car started away f
rom the lawyer’s handsome house on the outskirts of Frampton, a town seven miles to the north of Edgewood.

  Reginald Stone was a corpulent man in his early sixties, with a massive, many-chinned face, a short, bristling white mustache and no hair. His benevolence was conditioned by a pair of small bright green eyes in nests of wrinkles.

  “Terrible about Luke having died the way he did,” the lawyer said. “Have you found anything definite to go on yet? Anything on the way he was killed?”

  “Yes,” McKee answered as the car topped a long grade and swooped to the valley beyond and below, bright with the January sunshine that gilded its snow-covered fields, lingered on its dark patches of woodland and ice-ringed ponds. Houses clustered here and there, smoke rising from chimneys into the frosty air.

  “What was it, Inspector?”

  “Hydrocyanic,” McKee said. “And plenty of it. There was enough left in the remaining stout to have killed three or four men in addition to Luke, which indicates haste or lack of knowledge on the part of the killer. Supererogation, so to speak. We had the autopsy findings and the analysis from the state-police chemical people this morning.”

  Stone grimaced wryly and put a hand on his comfortable stomach with its paunch, as though he felt ill. “Queer way for Luke to die,” he remarked thoughtfully. “He lived a quiet life, an extremely regular life. Yet,” the lawyer sighed, “there it is. Who killed him, Inspector?”

  “That’s what we’re working on, Mr Stone. We don’t know yet.”

  “How do you happen to be in on it? You’re a New York man, aren’t you?” The lawyer’s small eyes were speculative, conjecturing.

  “I come in on it via the shooting of Franklin Borrow at Garth and Campbell’s late Thursday afternoon. Luke Cambridge’s death is or seems to be directly connected with Borrow’s murder,” McKee said. “That’s one of the things I wanted to see you about. I take it you were fairly conversant with Luke Cambridge’s affairs, Mr Stone?”