Death Demands an Audience

by Helen Reilly

  Behind them Muriel Cambridge said, “I’ve got to stop in town, too, Ellen darling. Do you want me to get the aspirin for you and drop it as we go by the house?”

  The girl was tired. There were blue stains under her wide eyes and her childish mouth was drawn in at the corners. She hadn’t her stepmother’s suavity.

  She snapped at her sister-in-law: “I’ll take care of my own business, Muriel.”

  “But, Ellen darling,” Muriel Cambridge expostulated, her expression pained, “I was only-- ”

  The girl didn’t wait for her to finish. She jumped into the back seat and pulled the door to with a slam. Irene got into the front seat with Gregory and the sedan drove away. Toby Newell’s car followed, trailed closely by Muriel and Leslie in the smaller car. Lutz brought up the rear in the black runabout.

  When they reached the town square Lutz pulled up at the curb near the dog wagon. The Cambridge cars and Toby Newell’s had turned right, down the short narrow street lined with small shops that led into the big parking space beyond and at the rear. There was no other exit.

  Beard was standing on the corner in front of the dog wagon leaning against a telephone pole in the obscurity. Lutz waved a greeting to him.

  Jones came out of the hotel. He was carrying a small parcel under his arm. He looked up at the town clock. His bus was due in three or four minutes. He sauntered down the street toward the drugstore, gazed into the front windows, idled around the corner, looked into the windows at the side. A display of photographs in a shop farther along the narrow street held his attention briefly. He strolled on, looking casually at the sky, into other shops and into the taxi office.

  Suddenly he was out of sight. He had vanished into the darkness that enveloped the beginning of the parking lot at the rear. Beard started to move forward uneasily. As he did so the shots rang out. There were two of them. Brief, deafening and conclusive, they shattered the stillness and comparative quiet of the little town with sinister abruptness. Beard dashed down the narrow street. Lutz was at his heels.

  It was Jones who lurched toward them out of the blackness of the parking lot, a strangely changed Jones. The man was doubled up grotesquely. Both hands clutched at his chest. He spun around, yawed wildly, turned his face skyward and dropped. By the time they reached him he was beyond speech. He died less than half a minute later.

  People came running out of the dog wagon, out of shops, from the town square, from the parking lot. Excited cries filled the air. The bus for Peekskill pulled up in front of the library. Some of the passengers jumped out and added themselves to the crowd that surged thickly at the far end of the narrow street, ringing the small isolated space in the middle of which Jones lay on his back with Lutz and Beard standing over him.

  Someone telephoned for an ambulance. Someone else called a doctor. People kept shouting, “Keep back. Give us a chance. Who is it? Was somebody shot? Watch out there, will you?” The welter of intermingling noises grew.

  The two detectives looked around at the maze of faces. The Cambridges were all there. Beard saw Newell. Glancing up, Lutz’s eyes fell on Judith Borrow gazing down from a window on the second floor of the hotel. Savage stood at a window a little father along. Other heads crowded other windows. The ordinarily quiet little street teemed with life and motion.

  Jones was lying in the mouth of the parking lot itself, six or seven feet away from the trunk of a huge elm that divided the ingoing from the outgoing lane. There was a small sentry box beyond the elm. Someone cried loudly,

  “Here it is. Here’s the gun!”

  Beard whirled. “Where?” he called. “Keep your hands off it. Don’t touch it.”

  A short stocky man crowded against the corner of the sentry box and craning down, said abashedly, “O.K., Officer,” and pointed at a short black automatic that was nested between the sentry box and the elm. Using his handkerchief, Lutz picked it up tenderly.

  A half-hour later, after the ambulance and the doctor had arrived and the doctor had pronounced Jones officially dead, the weapon was identified. The serial numbers checked. The gun that had killed Jones was the gun that had killed Franklin Borrow.

  CHAPTER 20

  JUDITH BORROW sat stiffly erect in the cheap maple rocker near the foot of the bed in the shabby room in the Edgewood Hotel. Light slanting through a crack in the shade touched her small head with its springing halo of short black curls, outlined the delicate, nervous cheek, the slight, resolute chin.

  McKee propped an elbow on the scarred chiffonier. It was half-past three on the afternoon of the day following Jones’s death. The Scotsman, who hadn’t arrived in the town until at least an hour after Jones had been shot and killed because of Dwyer’s insistence on going over and over the same ground again, had put in eighteen hours, end to end, on the new and surprising turn without having been able to reach any conclusion. His face was drawn, lined, as he said, “Miss Borrow, did you receive a telephone call a little after the noon hour yesterday?”

  The girl smoothed the silken calf of a long slim leg. She straightened. She looked directly at McKee. “Listen, Inspector,” she said, “I’ve been over and over and over this same ground at least half-a-dozen times since nine o’clock this morning. I wish you and Captain Rasmussen and Mr Dolan, the prosecutor, would get together on things. I’ve stated categorically, and I now state categorically again, I did receive a telephone call shortly after noon yesterday.”

  There was fire in the long eyes with their upcurled rims of black lash.

  “Who called you?” The Scotsman sat down on the blanket chest beside the chiffonier.

  The girl flashed back, “Alice Enderby, a friend of mine whom I’d asked to send me some clothes. Alice called to find out whether the things she’d sent me had arrived. I said they had. Does that answer you completely?”

  The Scotsman’s smile at her was lean, hungry. He felt like asking her whether the gun with which Jones and Franklin Borrow had been killed had been in the package of clothes she had received. He realized that he must be tired and pushed the question aside. Putting it would be like putting the old query, “Is this fish fresh? Are your berries ripe?” Instead he said, “You took a book out of the circulating library in the drugstore yesterday, didn’t you? Was there anything peculiar about that book, in that book?”

  The girl’s liquid smile was humorous. She eyed him steadily. “What do you mean, Inspector?”

  “I think you get the general drift of what I’m asking, what I’m trying to find out, Miss Borrow.”

  “Do I?” The quizzical glint in her smile intensified itself.

  “Yes,” the Scotsman said, “Jones was shot and killed here in Edgewood last night. Earlier in the day he got in touch with someone. That someone was the person who pulled the trigger of the gun that polished him off.”

  The girl reached over to a table and picked up a copy of Dagmar Norgord’s The Red Barn. She held it out to him. “Here you are, Inspector. Take a look for yourself.”

  McKee waved the volume aside. Anything that might possibly have been in it would of course have been removed. He rather admired her audacity. He said, “That’s all right, Miss Borrow. There’s one thing I want you to tell me though. Jones was a handy man for your father in the display department at Garth and Campbell’s. You had a reason for coming to Edgewood. You say you came in response to a telephone call from Luke Cambridge.”

  The girl’s quick-shifting gesture in the maple rocker was defiantly derisive. “Yes, I did. And that was just too bad for me.”

  “But,” the Scotsman continued, “there was no ostensible reason for Jones’ being here. What did you think, yourself, when you saw him?”

  The girl reflected for a moment. “I thought what I imagine you thought, Inspector. What is this man doing in Edge-wood? In fact I asked him that question directly.”

  “And he replied, Miss Borrow?”

  “He began to give me some sort of long rambling story in which there obviously wasn’t word of truth. I didn’t be
lieve him and I told him so. It looked very strange to me.”

  “Very strange, Miss Borrow.” McKee’s eyes met the girl’s steadily. She didn’t give an inch. He said, “You were standing at the window at the end of the hall outside this room immediately after Jones was killed. How long were you there at that window?”

  She said, “I was in bed when I heard the shots. Then there was a lot of shouting and noise. I jumped up and ran down the corridor. All I saw was that mass of people near the end of the parking lot and a man lying on the ground. I didn’t know until later that the man was Jones.”

  “You know that the gun that killed Jones was also the gun that killed your father”—he stared at her more intently —“and that it was found close to Jones’ body, where it could have been tossed from half-a-dozen places, including a window of this hotel. You didn’t see anybody throw the gun from any place when you were standing at the window looking down, did you?”

  Pallor wiped warmth from the girl’s honey-colored skin. The red lips compressed themselves. The live body stiffened. The little dark head reared itself.

  “I did not,” she said. Her contralto, the low, rounded cadence that was the product of training, had dropped a full note in spite of her effort at control.

  McKee could come to no conclusion. After a few more questions he left Judith Borrow and sought Savage out in a room farther along the hall. Savage had just as little to offer as the girl had given him.

  Savage could have received the telephone call from Jones, the call that led directly to his death. McKee had no doubt, roughly, of its content. Jones knew who had killed Franklin Borrow. He himself realized now, when now was too late, that Jones had either put the tap directly on the killer or else he had been trying to sell his knowledge to a member of the Cambridge family.

  Savage was direct in his denial. He said forcibly that he had received no telephone call from Jones, that the only thing that had passed between them when they encountered each other was his demand as to what the little man was doing in Edgewood, a stumbling reply from Jones and his own warning to the fellow to get back to his job at Garth and Campbell’s and keep his nose out of things that didn’t concern him.

  Savage laughed to scorn the suggestion that he had brought the gun into the hotel in the bag he had packed in his shack and he disclaimed all knowledge of the actual shooting. Like Judith Borrow, he had been attracted to the window at which Lutz had seen him by the sound of the shots and the noise in the street below. The long, lean young man, reclining in another maple rocker, also said that he hadn’t seen any gun thrown from a hotel window or from anyplace else.

  One, two, three, the Scotsman’s next port of call was Toby Newell’s office in the toy factory on a side street of the village. There were several additional features he wanted to discuss with Ellen Cambridge’s fiance.

  He found Newell working. The young manager of the factory looked up from a sheaf of papers he was initialing in the small square office on the second floor. He said with interest and without surprise,

  “Hello, Inspector. Come in. Sit down. What can I do for you?”

  McKee gave it to him bluntly. Like Judith Borrow and Savage, Newell denied having had any telephone call from Jones at any time. He said he didn’t know the man at all, had never set eyes on him until he saw him lying on the ground in the little narrow street the night before.

  He declared that he had just parked his car against the far wall of the town lot when he heard the shots. He ran across. By that time there were a lot of people there. That was all he knew about it. He said he had nothing to offer about the gun.

  “Do you know that was the same gun that killed Franklin Borrow?” McKee asked.

  Newell stared. “Borrow—you mean the man who was bumped off in the department store in New York? That’s a hot one.”

  “Yes, isn’t it?” McKee said and leaned toward Newell. “Sure you don’t know anything about that gun?” he demanded.

  The young man sat erect. He scowled. He said angrily, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Inspector. I most certainly do not. I had nothing whatever to do with Borrow. I never heard of him before he died. I was here in Edgewood when he was killed. What’s more, I don’t know anything about Jones.”

  The Scotsman advanced to the desk. He put both hands on it and said, “What about the keys, Mr Newell?”

  “What keys?” Newell asked.

  The Scotsman said slowly, “The keys belonging to Franklin Borrow.”

  Newell looked at him. “What have I got to do with keys belonging to Franklin Borrow?” he demanded.

  McKee said, “Nothing, except that Borrow’s keys, the keys that were removed from Garth and Campbell’s on the afternoon that Borrow was shot, were found in your car.”

  The young man got up from behind the desk. His voice was level. It was also firm. He said, “Stop kidding, Inspector. Jokes don’t take well on the day of a funeral.”

  The Scotsman kept on eying him. Either the young man was experiencing genuine shock and surprise or he was putting on a very good act.

  “The mechanic in the garage discovered Borrow’s keys under the seat of your car,” he said.

  “Well, I didn’t put them there,” the young man answered violently. “I never saw them. If they were in my car somebody planted them there. Why, the Listen, Inspector, that car was parked at the Cambridge’s all day on the day I drove to New York with Ellen and Irene before I crashed into the tree that night. You remember that, don’t you?” Newell rubbed his shoulder and arm reflectively.

  McKee nodded. He said, “Yes, I remember,” and paused. “And you’re sure you know nothing about these keys?”

  “Not a thing!”

  There was nothing more to be said or done there in that place. McKee took his leave. On his way through town he stopped and received reports from Pierson. There were no fingerprints on the gun and there were no fingerprints on the keys. It was difficult to tell from which direction Jones had been shot since he had staggered quite a few feet after the bullets hit him. He might have been shot from the parking lot, from the hotel or from an entirely different direction.

  Pierson had talked to the Cambridges about the murder of Jones. Leslie and Muriel said they were still parking their car when the shots were fired. Irene had placed herself in the front seat of her husband’s sedan, its nose against the circle in the middle of the lot. She said that Gregory and Ellen had just left her. They were on their way, Gregory to get a cigar and a pack of razor blades, Ellen to get aspirin in the drugstore. Gregory was in the lead. None of the Cambridges admitted having seen or heard anything illuminating.

  McKee and Pierson strolled to the front door of the local police station where Rasmussen had been kind enough to set aside a room for their use. It was after five o’clock. Pierson said, “Do you want the car? It’s around in back.”

  McKee didn’t answer. He was gazing across the street at the lengthening shadows in front of the bank.

  “No,” he said after a moment or so, “I’m going to walk. My head feels as though it were stuffed with cotton and a little exercise will do me good.” Pierson hated exercise in any form. He shook his head and returned to the warmth inside the police station.

  McKee struck up past the Y.M.C.A. and the firehouse in the direction of the Cambridge estate. There was very little wind. Trees and bushes were outlined in sharp detail against the snow-covered fields that rolled away on either side to black summits of woodland. The day was almost over, but the light hadn’t yet begun to dwindle and every object took on an almost supernatural clarity, as though the earth were expressing itself boldly in a final gesture to the departing sun.

  McKee walked swiftly. Jones’s death was the direct result of his activities in Garth and Campbell’s from the time he first checked out at four-three on the evening Franklin Borrow was killed until the time he actually left, which was at least half an hour later. He had seen or heard something within the confines of the store during that period tha
t had brought him to Edgewood and to the two slugs that had pierced his body in the dark little street that led to the parking lot. The Scotsman turned into the driveway of the Gregory Cambridge house.

  In the long living room to the left of the hall into which he was ushered McKee found Gregory, Irene and Ellen Cambridge. Gregory and his wife were at either ends of a sofa, reading. Ellen was seated on a puff in front of the fireplace, chin in palms, staring at the flames. There was the strained listlessness about all three, the listlessness that usually accompanies the aftermath of a death in a family. The two women were in dull soft gowns of black. Gregory wore a black suit.

  They received the inspector with an air of tired indifference. If the lawyer had already informed them of the absence of a will it didn’t seem to have produced any particular effect.

  McKee drove straight into it. “I realize,” he said, “that this must be a trying time for all of you. But there are certain questions that require fuller answers than the ones I have already received. They deal with the afternoon Franklin Borrow died.”

  Irene made a gesture of weariness and fatigue. “Must you, Inspector?” she said.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs Cambridge,” McKee answered. He turned to the solid figure in the double-breasted dark suit beyond her. “Mr Cambridge”—he took the worn red leather notebook out of his pocket, glanced through the pages—“you told me originally that on the afternoon of January eleventh you didn’t leave your office until it was time for you to proceed to Garth and Campbell’s to pick up Mr Borrow and that you arrived at the department store when the doors were already closed. Do you want to stick to that?”

  Gregory drew on his cigar. He looked at the Scotsman over it. His gaze was cool, calculating.

  “Let me see. January the eleventh,” he paused. “So much has happened since that ”