Death Demands an Audience

by Helen Reilly

McKee was getting tired of the stalling. “As a matter of fact, that isn’t so, is it, Mr Cambridge?” he said.

  For all his stolidity the man was clever. He recognized the trap. He said, “Now that you mention it, I believe I did leave my office earlier that afternoon.” Before McKee could put the obvious query he continued smoothly:

  “I remember now. I went up to the newspaper room in the public library to look up a story that dealt with the Kenilworth development on the Hudson. I had missed it and a friend of mine had told me about it. I wanted to get the facts, thought it might lead to some business for me.”

  The newspaper room of the public library was a pretty crowded place. Gregory’s statement would be difficult to prove or disprove. McKee said, “Thanks, Mr Cambridge,” and turned his attention to Irene. “Now you, Mrs Cambridge.”

  “Yes, Inspector?” She fitted a cigarette into an amber holder and reached for a match.

  “In your previous statement,” McKee said, “you mentioned being outside Garth and Campbell’s at around five o’clock. You didn’t say anything about having been in the store earlier in the afternoon.”

  “That’s right, Inspector.”

  “Then how do you account for the fact that you bought a pair of gloves there shortly after four o’clock?”

  A frown puckered the smooth white forehead below the copper-colored hair. “But you didn’t ask me, Inspector,” Irene said in a surprised tone.

  “Did you buy the gloves?”

  “Yes, of course I did. And then I left Garth and Campbell’s. I went to Cobb’s and to several other shops before I went back to Garth and Campbell’s again.”

  McKee took a quick look at his notes. She was right. Her earlier omission to mention her purchase in the store might have been straightforward. Then again it might not.

  There was tension in the girl who sat on the puff in front of the fire, face averted, looking into the flames.

  When McKee spoke her name she swung toward him reluctantly. Her round cheeks were white, her eyes big and dark, and the small, childish mouth was trembling. Her hands were clasped hard together in her lap.

  McKee said, “Miss Cambridge, you were looking at blouses near the door leading to the display department in Garth and Campbell’s on the afternoon Mr Borrow was killed. You broke your purchase off short, without warning and for no apparent reason. The salesgirl thought you had been taken ill. You walked away abruptly. What happened? Did you see someone, someone you knew, at or near that door?”

  Ellen Cambridge stared at him speechlessly. Her head went back and up. She glanced first at her father and then at Irene. She caught her breath. And then her composure broke. She jumped to her feet. “Don’t!” she cried in a tight little voice. “Don’t! I can’t—I can’t remember. I’m so—oh, I’m so tired ” She burst into tears.

  Irene went to her, put an arm around her shoulders. She pulled the girl’s soft fair head close to her’s and said, “Don’t, Ellen dear, don’t give way.” When the girl kept on sobbing uncontrolledly Irene turned to the Scotsman. She said with indignation and firmness. “Ellen’s had a long, trying day. She’s at the point of exhaustion. This browbeating her about what she did or didn’t notice in Garth and Campbell’s when she was making a perfectly ordinary purchase five or six days ago is a little too much, Inspector.”

  Gregory also spoke up. He interjected angrily, “I should say it is.” McKee agreed. Ellen Cambridge had been under stress in Garth and Campbell’s on the afternoon when Franklin Borrow was killed. She didn’t want to be questioned about whom she had seen, where she had gone or what she had done. His leave-taking was curt. On the way out of the house he met Muriel and Leslie Cambridge coming in.

  That night someone tried to get into the old house on the hill in which Luke Cambridge had been poisoned. Pacing the driveway, McQuillan, the man on guard, saw a dark figure slip up the path to the study door. His pounding feet on the hard snow frightened the stealthy visitor off. But not before McQuillan had recognized her as she fled. The intruder was Muriel Cambridge.

  CHAPTER 21

  THE SCOTSMAN was annoyed. He pushed the tray containing an empty coffee cup and a half-consumed sandwich from him in the little room in the town police station in Edgewood. He was annoyed with himself and his own ineptness. It was the sixth day since Franklin Borrow had been killed and the only real developments so far were the addition of two more deaths, both of them growing out of Borrow’s.

  He lit a cigarette. It tasted bitter. He crushed it out. He was annoyed that in spite of the fact that detectives were tailing all suspects nothing really tangible was being produced. He was particularly annoyed at McQuillan. If McQuillan had held his fire the previous night, if he had remained in the background and watched, they might now know what Muriel Cambridge had wanted in her surreptitious journey to the old house on the hill which had belonged to her husband’s uncle.

  It wasn’t the will, because the lawyer, he himself and his own men, in addition to Rasmussen’s, had made a thorough search for it. Unless—and it was a cogent and detaining unless—Muriel Cambridge had some secret knowledge of its possible whereabouts. He thought of her repeatedly furtive actions, the way she had trailed her husband, of Leslie’s less than openness with her, although their interests appeared to be identical. But if she wasn’t after the will what was she after?

  He shook himself angrily. The telephone rang. Kent was transcribing voluminous notes on the other side of the room. The Scotsman took the call. It was the Telegraph Bureau in New York. Acting Captain Conley said, “Hello, Inspector. I’ve got a wire for you from Lieutenant Shearer in Rockwell Falls, Colorado.”

  McKee said, “Go ahead. But not too fast.”

  The body of the message read:

  Reached Hotel Eldorado, seventy-two miles from Denver. Former proprietor dead. Son now running it. Son never heard of Borrow. Records in good shape and got following: Franklin Borrow worked here at Hotel Eldorado in summers of 1911 and 1912. Hotel register shows Luke Cambridge guest here in summer of 1912. Arrived July 7, 1912. Checked out Aug. 21, 1912. Borrow quit job Aug. 22, 1912. Proprietor’s son informs me assistant-manager George Gain ford there at that time retired but still living. Gainford reported residing now in small town outside Pueblo. Heading there. Wire instructions police chief Pueblo. Shearer.

  Kent stared. McKee was actually smiling as he said, “Thanks, Captain,” and hung up. He said to the stenographer,

  “Well, that’s the first break we’ve had.”

  “What do you mean, Inspector?” Kent asked.

  McKee waved the message at him. He said, “A hotel that didn’t burn down, Kent, that wasn’t swept away by flood and not only that, but one where the records were actually kept. I told Shearer he’d need lots of luck and for once he ran into it.”

  Kent took the message scrawled in McKee’s hasty writing. McKee watched his face light up. McKee said,

  “Exactly. Luke Cambridge was lying and lying plenty when he told us that he only dimly remembered a man at Yale named Borrow who had roomed with a friend. Waiters aren’t invisible. In fact they are very much to the fore with service and Luke Cambridge was a guest at that hotel out there in the summer of 1912 for about six weeks. Moreover, those dates are significant, the dates of their respective departures.

  “It was all right for a guest to check out on August twenty-first, but young men who work their way through college stick to their summer jobs until after Labor Day. Why did Borrow quit his job that day after Luke Cambridge left? Something happened between those two men out there in Colorado in the summer of 1912, something that all these years later sent that bullet through Borrow down in Garth and Campbell’s and killed Luke Cambridge with a dose of hydrocyanic a couple of days later.”

  Kent said, “That’s all right, but where does it actually get you?”

  McKee said with one of his quick twists, “Possibly to a lot of false premises. There’s no telling yet, but Borrow may have followed Luke Cambridge in that summer
of long ago, may have gotten something on him.”

  “You mean,” Kent interrupted, “that Franklin Borrow might have been blackmailing Luke?”

  “It’s possible,” the Scotsman said. “It’s also possible that someone else got wise to the incriminating material in Borrow’s possession and in turn put the heat on Luke, someone whom a meeting between the two men would have exposed.”

  McKee’s expression tightened. “The trouble is that it may take Shearer quite a while to get any further and every minute counts now.”

  Bright sunlight outside the windows glittered on the snow. The sky was fresh and blue. People were moving along the streets, intent on their regular concerns. The town seemed calm and peaceful. But the look on the Scotsman’s face as he spoke made Kent realize sharply that somewhere within or near it a killer was going on his or her way, a killer who was undetected and ready to move again if pressure came.

  Detective Fishbaum entered the room with Luke Cambridge’s telephone records. McKee tore the envelope open and glanced rapidly over the assembled slips. Nothing new here, no indication of any connection with Borrow. Luke’s call to the lawyer but nothing else of significance.

  Fishbaum went out. The day went on. Three or four men investigating various odds and ends came with reports and left, delivering the same result, zero, as far as anything vital was concerned. The town was agog over the disposition of Luke’s fortune. He was expected to leave sums to various charities. The word had not yet spread that no will had been found.

  At four o’clock Muriel Cambridge parked her car near the Y.M.C.A. and went round the curve into a fish store. She paused three times during the brief journey to shake hands and engage in lengthy and animated conversations with various women.

  A little later Gregory Cambridge’s sedan came through the square and turned down the little narrow street into the town parking lot. McKee left the police station and started past the hotel where Judith Borrow had spent most of the day in her room.

  Rounding the corner of the drugstore, he saw Irene Cambridge in the lead, followed by Toby Newell and Ellen Cambridge, enter the florist’s in the middle of the short block. He glanced toward its end at the spot where Jones ^ had lain and where, in spite of the host of witnesses who sprang up like dragon’s teeth and the presence of his own men close by, so little had been produced. There was cunning behind that paucity. The murder of the man from Garth and Campbell’s had been very, very cleverly planned.

  He pushed the door of the florist’s shop away from in front of him and stepped inside. A soft green gloom, the front of a frosted case with dimly patterned color behind, Irene, her back turned, was talking to the florist at the counter at the rear. Ellen Cambridge and Toby Newell were half visible beyond fronded palms. McKee advanced toward Irene. At his approach she swung, her face illuminated. It lowered to the serenity of control, control with guarded animosity behind it, as her eyes met McKee’s. He wondered fleetingly, as he removed his hat, who it was she had expected to greet.

  “Saw you as I went past, Mrs Cambridge,” he said pleasantly. “My stenographer is typing out his notes. I wonder if you’d mind—there’s a point I want to get clarified-- ”

  Irene Cambridge drew herself up. Her lovely mouth was a little bitter as she said, “I believe that was your opener yesterday when you threw my daughter into hysterics. Don’t you ever change your tactics, Inspector?” There was a hard edge to her cool raillery. Beyond the bank of palms McKee was aware that Ellen’s girlish figure in its somber black had stiffened.

  The Scotsman smiled. He said, “Let me hasten to reassure you. This is just to keep the record straight.”

  He took the red leather notebook from his pocket, glanced through it. “I believe you told me on the night I first asked you, the night of Franklin Borrow’s death. You said ”

  Irene interrupted him haughtily. She said: “I believe I told you all I had to tell.”

  McKee interrupted her in his turn. He said, “This will take only a moment. I’m sure I don’t want to intrude, but even trivial details have to be verified before they go down in black and white.”

  She said resignedly, “All right, Inspector. Go ahead. Ask your question.”

  The Scotsman made her a slight bow. “Thank you very much, Mrs Cambridge. It’s simply this. On that night, after you extricated yourself from the jam in front of Garth and Campbell’s and finally succeeded in reaching Grand Central, what exactly was the train you did take up here to Edgewood?”

  “I can only repeat the answer I gave you before. It was the six-eighteen.”

  McKee consulted his notes. “You were on the same train with the others, with your stepdaughter, your stepson Leslie and Leslie’s wife?”

  “Yes, I was,” Irene said. “Yes, I think that’s right, weren’t we, Ellen?” She turned to the girl with the forlorn droop to her shoulders, a hand tucked under the arm of the stalwart young man beside her beyond the palms. Toby

  Newell gave her hand a little squeeze and surveyed McKee.

  Ellen said, “The train? The night that man was killed? Yes, yes. I think so, Irene. Yes, don’t you remember? You were in the other car and we met on the platform and we all came home in the same cab.”

  McKee thanked them both. He said, “I’m sorry to keep annoying you at a time like this. I realize that it must be a nuisance. I know the death of Luke Cambridge must have upset everything.”

  Irene met him more than halfway. She raised a slender gloved hand. “As long as you put it that way,” she said, “we understand, too, Inspector.”

  “Very kind of you,” McKee murmured.

  Irene continued, “It has been a trying time, particularly in view of Ellen’s wedding. All our plans have had to be changed.”

  “You mean,” said the inspector, “that the wedding has been postponed?”

  “Of course,” Irene said. “Under the circumstances there was nothing else to be done. That’s why we’re here, to countermand the floral arrangements.”

  Toby Newell cut in gruffly. Gone were the confidence, the friendly smiles he and Irene had interchanged on the white leather sofa in the French salon at Garth and Campbell’s when Ellen’s wedding gown was being fitted, They were almost openly hostile. He said, “I see no necessity for it. Our marriage could have taken place anyway. All we needed to do was keep it calm and quiet and cut out a lot of that show. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell Ellen.” He turned to the girl. “Say you agree, dear.”

  Ellen Cambridge seemed to be mesmerized, tom between Irene’s common-sense arguments and Newell’s pleading. Staring straight ahead of her, she said in a small voice, “I don’t know. Oh, I don’t know. It’s all so—so tangled up.” “Ellen”—Irene spoke in the tone of one used to instructing and governing—“you know we talked this over at breakfast and you know you agreed I was right. Next month will do just as well as this week. You can have a quiet wedding then. You don’t need to have a crowd of people. But that short delay will really look a great deal better and you’ll show respect for Luke, to his memory.”

  The girl was a miserable, hesitating figure at Newell’s side. He swung around savagely, turned his back and snapped the head from a red geranium. He tossed it aside and said scathingly over his shoulder,

  “Your visit to the post office with that bundle of regrets, et cetera, seems to me an entirely unnecessary gesture. Why didn’t you just tell Muriel? She’s better than a broadcasting station.”

  The entrance of Gregory Cambridge jolted the rising tension between Ellen’s fiance and Irene to a halt. Gregory still wore the black suit under the black topcoat. Black looked out of place on the man. It gave him a distinction he would not otherwise have had, but a solid homespun gray, not too well tailored, would have seemed more natural. His face was heavy and his florid complexion had given way to a pasty whiteness.

  Irene said, “We’ve just been-- ”

  Gregory looked at her sourly. The glance took in the Scotsman. He turned toward the counter and si
gnaled to the florist. “I don’t care what you’ve just been doing, Irene,” he said. “I’m here to make provision for flowers for Luke’s grave and I haven’t any time to waste.”

  There was no mistaking the hostility in his tone. McKee couldn’t decide whether it was directed at himself, at his wife, at his daughter or at his prospective son-in-law.

  The Scotsman took his leave. Outside on the pavement he ran into Muriel Cambridge making full tilt for the florist’s shop. She pulled up short in front of him. Here was no fugitive of the night trying to turn the knob of a door stealthily. Leslie’s wife was open and aboveboard, prettily so. She smiled. She fluttered. She said, “How nice, Inspector, how are you? You didn’t by any chance see Gregory anywhere, or Irene or Ellen, did you? I’ve simply got to see Irene. Someone phoned the caterer ”

  There was a latent uneasiness in the way her bright, sharp eyes searched his face behind the flow of careless chatter. McKee departed in the middle of a sentence some two minutes later.

  As he pursued his way up the street, re-entered the police station and went through report after accumulating report— all of them offering so little—he kept on turning over in his mind the subtle undercurrents of the scene he had witnessed in the florist’s shop. He went on with it during dinner at the tavern across the street, through Kent’s efforts at conversation, through the consumption of a steak, continued to examine certain curious features.

  Irene Cambridge for instance. He held her up in front of him, made her spin around. Forty-four and looking thirty, volatile, fond of life and admiration; witness her appearance and the care she took of it. Her attitude toward her somewhat dour husband, a man fond of money, devoted to it in fact, had altered during the last days in spite of the really underlying differences in character and training between them. Was it perhaps that with Luke dying intestate Gregory would have control of a large fortune, or was it something else?

  And what about her changed demeanor toward her prospective son-in-law and Newell’s toward her? Newell’s carefree courtesy and cheerful optimism had abruptly departed. He was on edge. Why? What about those keys? The Scotsman couldn’t make up his mind, maybe yes, maybe no.