by Helen Reilly
Dalligan advanced to the Scotsman. He said, “Here you are, Inspector. It’s a beaut. The synchronized flash in the taxicab worked like a charm.”
He handed the wet print to the inspector. McKee stared down at it. His face was sad as he turned to the assemblage of men and women and at the same time motioned to the detectives. “All right, Fishbaum, Niles, Todhunter,” he said.
He held up the photograph Dalligan had just brought in. It was the picture of a killer, a killer with a dead-white face, staring eyes and lips drawn back from the teeth, leaning forward, knife in hand, in the act of stabbing the green-clad figure within the depths of the cab, the cab that had been planted at the railroad station deliberately to trap the murderer.
The white face in the photograph was the face of Ellen Cambridge.
CHAPTER 25
IT WAS Ellen Cambridge who had shot Franklin Borrow and poisoned Luke, Ellen who had tried to set fire to the hotel and who had killed Jones.
When that final disclosure was made her scream, shattering in its disordering vibrations, tore the air. The girl was taken into custody safely but with some difficulty. She was astonishingly strong. The rest was tumult and weeping and general collapse. They had all been through a great deal.
Later on that night McKee charted Ellen Cambridge’s course from the beginning for the Putnam County authorities. Ellen’s motive for Borrow’s murder was clear; the other two followed as a matter of course. She learned of the secret liaison between Irene and Toby Newell; violently in love with Newell herself, she refused to accept the situation.
She felt that if she only had money, a lot of money, she could get Toby away from Irene. Spying on them, watching and listening to them in their clandestine meetings, she discovered the truth about Luke’s early marriage which Irene had learned first and communicated to Newell, the truth that Luke had a daughter and that this daughter was living. Ellen was afraid that the sudden entrance of Judith into Luke’s life would alienate the money she herself expected to get, the money with which she intended to reclaim and hold Newell.
On the afternoon of January the eleventh while she was in her father’s office she overheard the telephone call making the appointment for Borrow and Luke to meet that night. She knew Luke had sent for his will and so was evidently contemplating changing it.
Ellen went to Garth and Campbell’s, pretended to buy blouses, saw her stepmother enter the display quarters by the small door, saw her father follow her stepmother down, saw them both leave. It was after that that she went through the door herself into display. Jones was with Borrow. Jones left. No doubt Ellen introduced herself pleasantly. Mr Borrow had an appointment with her father, might she wait?
Irene had confessed that, still playing her own devious game with Newell, she had gone to see Borrow in display hoping desperately for some way to meet her own difficulty. Irene agreed that she must have unwittingly unlocked the drawer in Borrow’s desk, the drawer containing the pistol, in order to get his keys which were in the lock. Irene was in a hurry to get up to that house in Fieldston to make her own search, which she did with Newell after a hasty telephone call to him. She wasn’t sure whether she had closed the drawer when she took the keys.
After Irene and her father had gone and Irene had eluded Gregory in the street Ellen must have seated herself at Borrow’s desk. Desperation had quickened her wits. She saw the gun, took it out, rose noiselessly, approached the lowered window, raised the gun and let Borrow have it between the shoulder blades. The rest they knew. The girl slipped the gun into her handbag, beat a hasty retreat through the dynamo room and up the stairs in advance of Savage and before the hubbub began. On the floor above she joined Leslie and Muriel in the cocktail lounge.
As far as Luke’s killing was concerned the motive was still the same. Once she had put her hand to murder it was too late to turn back. She listened in on Luke’s call to Judith Borrow over the upstairs extension in the old house on the hill while she and Irene and Muriel were on the second floor.
They had been able to establish that Ellen carried the cyanide crystals, left over from Leslie’s butterfly days in which she had shared, around with her, determined to swallow them if she were caught. That Saturday afternoon she slipped into Luke’s pantry and dropped the lethal dose into the stout. Judith Borrow was the real menace but Ellen couldn’t get at Judith in a hurry and she had to poison Luke.
Both the taxicab driver’s statement and Judith Borrow’s were true, although they apparently contradicted each other. The taxi driver said that through the window he saw Luke move as though to rise and greet the girl. In reality he was just then in his death struggle, and by the time the girl entered the study death had become an accomplished fact.
With Judith Borrow now actually on the scene and Jones a new threatening factor, Ellen’s attempt to fire the hotel was a logical development. She slipped out of her house in the night, wound a devious way through the sleeping town, mounted the stairs to the second floor through the temporarily vacant taxi quarters, threw the lighted gob of cotton waste by the curtain and fled.
Jones’s murder was simple. It was Ellen whom Jones had contacted from the drugstore on the corner. That night when all the Cambridge cars were in the parking lot Irene remained in the sedan, where she was joined by Newell. They were up to their old tricks.
Ellen let her father get ahead of her and then proceeded toward the spot where she had directed Jones to be. She shot him from the darkness ten feet away, disposed of the gun and retreated. The town lot was dark and she had no trouble concealing her movements.
By this time the girl was deep in the grip of the intricate web into which the others had been drawn by their own covert activities. Muriel had been searching for the case of butterflies, fearful that Leslie might become entangled, but it was Ellen who burned the case because she felt that the poison might eventually be traced to her. It was the tightening of that same web which caused the others to move with their growing suspicion. Irene and Newell quarreled as disclosure threatened. Gregory had plenty to worry about.
Once in possession of the basic facts, McKee said he realized that Judith Borrow’s continued existence was the source of danger to all these people, that it was Judith who would upset the disposition of Luke’s fortune. That was why he had arranged the masquerade at the station, taking care that the knowledge of Judith Borrow’s supposed departure should be well and truly spread by Muriel.
Gregory took advantage of this story by attempting to follow Judith to New York, where he meant to try to find out what her connection with Luke really was. That was why he had sought to talk to her as she came out of the movie theater the night before. Gregory didn’t know where Judith stood. Leslie Cambridge was going to take the train for much the same reason and also to follow Gregory, whom he suspected of some hocus-pocus with Luke’s will.
McKee explained that he had thought of Ellen for some time but that he had to have proof. If Judith Borrow were going to leave the country and get out of the killer’s reach the attack would have to be made there, in that spot at the railroad station, where for the first time she would be unguarded and accessible. It was Ellen who sprang the trap.
The moment it had sprung she realized, not precisely what had happened, but that there was something wrong. She knew that what the knife had encountered was not flesh and blood. She had to get rid of the weapon. She slipped it into Gregory’s pocket when she raced up to the platform and threw her arms around him to say good-by.
Two o’clock had come and gone before McKee got back to the hotel and to bed. He didn’t sleep. It wasn’t until the next day that he started back to New York. Judith Borrow, Michael Savage, Todhunter, Pierson and Kent were with him in the black Cadillac that sped southward through the snowy hills. The morning was clear and crisp and sunny after the fog of the previous night. A light wind out of the west swayed trees and branches, rippled waves of tawny grass protruding through the snow.
The first part of the journey was accomplis
hed in silence, but as the car put more and more distance between itself and Edgewood tension began to relax. Judith Borrow sat between McKee and Savage on the back seat. Todhunter occupied a stool. Pierson was seated beside Kent who was at the wheel.
“Why,” Judith Borrow asked suddenly, with a little shiver, “why did Ellen Cambridge do it? A girl like that ”
McKee said soberly, “Because she was a thwarted and a more or less twisted person. Her mother died when she was very young. She turned to her father for affection. He married Irene.”
“What about Irene?” Savage asked curiously.
“Irene never really cared for Gregory Cambridge,” McKee said. “I imagine he was never much more than a meal ticket for her. She herself was still young and vital. That’s why she turned to Toby Newell.”
“Before or after Ellen was engaged to Newell?” Judith wanted to know.
McKee said, “I think before. I think those two planned the engagement between them. Irene was the stronger. In effect she said to Newell, ‘Ellen’s young and a plum. She’ll get Luke’s money. Marry her before someone else snaps her up and there’ll be plenty of money for us all—money for trips and cruises, ease and security and our continued relationship.’ ”
“And Gregory Cambridge found out?” Todhunter said in a small voice.
“Yes,” McKee said. “He did and so did Ellen.”
Pierson turned. “So Leslie Cambridge wasn’t blackmailing his uncle after all, was he?” The captain spoke regretfully.
“No,” McKee said, “he had gambled away that two thousand five hundred dollars Luke had given him to buy stock with and he was trying to cover.”
“So you can’t do nothing to him,” Pierson said disgustedly.
“Anything,” McKee murmured. “I’m sorry not to be able to oblige you, Captain. I’m afraid there’s not much we can do to Leslie, but there’s considerable that our Mr Dwyer and the Putnam County prosecutor can do to Irene and Toby Newell for burglary and assault and to Gregory for destroying his brother’s will, if that can be proved. Those things will be taken care of in due course.”
Beside him the girl and Savage were talking together in low voices, or rather, Savage was doing the talking, one of the girl’s slim, gloved hands held in his. His detached aloofness and her antagonism had been swept away in the black and bitter wind that had blown down so darkly on them both. They seemed already to have forgotten the last tragic weeks, were plunged into plans for the future.
The sedan passed the city limits and slid toward the Hudson over the parkway. The broad ribbon of the river began to open up. Traffic was heavier.
It occurred to McKee, smoking idly and listening with one ear open to the young people at his side, that Judith Borrow did not realize that she was going to be a very well-off young woman, nor did Savage either. He made no mention of it then. He was going to see them later.
The Cadillac pulled to a stop in front of the brownstone house on West Eighty-eighth Street. The girl got out. She was thin and white and tired but there was a new light in her long eyes. They filled with tears as she turned to McKee on the pavement and tried to thank him for what he had done. Savage shook hands. McKee stood bareheaded, watching them mount the steps side by side, then got back in the car.
It turned south like a homing pigeon. On the cushions McKee settled down and took something out of his pocket. It was the small slip of paper, the slip of paper Pierson had retrieved from the floor of Luke Cambridge’s bedroom with one hundred thousand dollars scribbled on it in pencil.
He looked at it. He said, “Queer, isn’t it, to think that a little thing like this, if what it really says had been known, would have prevented three murders?”
“Huh,” Pierson stared. The Scotsman nodded, “In spite of the fact that she was his daughter, Luke didn’t intend to leave Judith Borrow all his money. He meant to settle one hundred thousand dollars on her. That’s what this figure indicates—and that would have meant that Ellen would still have inherited a sizable fortune and so would never have needed to embark on her desperate and tragic adventure.”
The slip of paper was of no factual importance, had no evidential value. With a sharp gesture he crumpled it up and thrust it in his pocket and continued to stare straight ahead of him through the windshield.
Todhunter watched him curiously. McKee glanced up, met the little detective’s eyes and smiled.
“Yes, Todhunter,” he said. “I was looking at something, something that isn’t here, Luke Cambridge’s will. The second irony. If Gregory hadn’t destroyed Luke’s will the Cambridge family would have been in something over eight or nine hundred thousand dollars. As it is—and a third irony is that Gregory may now try to prove he did destroy the will—Judith Borrow, as Luke’s daughter, will take the whole estate.”
“My God!” Pierson said. “Think of that. What a damn fool.” He wagged his head and rolled his cigar and settled back. The Cadillac swung down Seventh Avenue. The Captain sat up again. “By the way, Inspector, there’s something I got to ask you before I go home and cork off. It’s this: What did you mean by saying after me, ‘the “Stag at Eve,” ’ up there in the Edgewood police station? What was the matter with that?I thought it was a nice picture. Didn’t you like it?”
“Yes, I liked it.” The Scotsman was smiling genuinely for the first time. “But you see, stags are so much better done nowadays, Captain. Nevertheless, my thanks. It was that engraving that gave me the idea for the flashlight in the cab. With carefully rigged cameras and a prearranged control you get pictures of deer in their natural habitat, going about their own pursuits. They trip the shutter and synchronized flash and photograph themselves. This time”— he lit a cigarette and drew a deep puff—“it wasn’t a stag at eve we caught, it was a doe.”
The car drew up in front of the tenth precinct. McKee got out, mounted the stairs and called the commissioner and District Attorney Dwyer.