“You see,” I began, “the first two fans have six darts, while the third—”
I stopped, feeling very silly, because the third fan, which had had only five darts that night before, now had six. There was no getting around it. I tried the lid. Yesterday it had been unlocked. Now it was locked.
Iris, looking down, said doubtfully, “Peter, are you sure?”
“Of course. Someone must have put the sixth dart back today.”
I was staring at the fan of six darts. Each dart had its point smeared with the reddish substance.
“It was stolen all right,” I said gloomily. “But every darn dart’s got its poison still on it. It couldn’t have been used.” I peered more closely and gave a little grunt. “Wait a minute. Look at the seond dart from the left. The stuff on its tip—it’s a slightly different colour, isn’t it? It’s redder and it looks newer.”
“Yes, it is. Peter, then we’re sure now. We’re sure that Dorothy was killed with curare.” Iris spun round to me. “If only we knew more about curare, the way it works and—darling, let’s try the library. Lorraine must have an encyclopedia or something. Quick.”
We hurried into the library. Lorraine had the oddest selection of books. But there was an encyclopedia of sorts. Eagerly we read the paragraph on curare. It was neither full or very scientific. It told that the poison was derived from the same plant as strychnine, something called Strychnos ognatii. It said how deadly a poison it was. There was one sentence, however, which brought me up with a jerk. After curare has been injected under the skin, I read, actual death may not occur for ten to fifteen minutes. But complete muscular paralysis sets in much more quickly. To all intents and purposes, the victim would be a living corpse in three minutes.
“Three minutes!” I exclaimed. “Then someone must have pricked Dorothy either with the dart or with some kind of curare-tipped needle three mintues before she collapsed in my arms on the dance floor. She probably wasn’t dead then. She probably died while we were carrying her into the office.”
Iris stared at me. “You were dancing for almost three minutes. It must have happened on the dance floor. Who came near you?”
I thought back. “Lorraine and her South American friend came quite close a couple of times. But I’m pretty sure neither of them touched Dorothy. Neither did anyone else. I mean, no one else from our party.”
“Then it must have happened just before you went dancing. Who was sitting next to her?”
I grinned weakly. “I was on one side of her. You were on the other. Later, when you went dancing with Laguno, Lover was next to her. But there was a big gap. And I know he didn’t even look our way. He was talking to Janet.” I shrugged. “We’re brilliant. We’ve solved the case. Either you or I poisoned Dorothy. Wait!” An idea suddenly came. “Of course, I see it now. Just before we started to dance, Dorothy took off her gloves and stuffed them in her pocketbook.”
I told her what had happened. “That must be it, baby. No one had to be near her to kill her. It was the smartest trick in the world. Someone fixed her pocketbook so that she’d stick herself when she opened it. My God, where is that pocketbook! I wonder if Bill Flanders has it.”
“No. I thought about it this afternoon. I asked him. They never gave it to him.”
“Then it was probably left right there on the seat under the table in the confusion. We’re going to Reno tomorrow for the funeral. Maybe we’ll be able to get it.”
Iris’ eyes were shining. “At last,” she said, “at long, long last we’re getting somewhere.”
We felt almost elated as we went up to bed. We were still speculating some half an hour later when there was a tap on the door. I called, “Come in.” The door half opened to reveal the small figure of Fleur Wyckoff. When she saw we were in bed, she looked confused and started backing out, but Iris said, “No, please come in. Don’t mind us. Come sit on my bed and have a cigarette. We’re not sleepy.”
After a moment’s hesitation Fleur stepped in, closed the door, and padded across the carpet. She was dressed in a smoky-blue housecoat, tiny red leather slippers peeping out below its full skirt. With a flimsy smile, she sat down on the extreme edge of Iris’ bed.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she said. “I hate being alone anyway. I felt I had to have company—just for a little while.”
Iris and I, both agog to know why she had really come, tried to hide our curiosity. Iris handed her a cigarette.
“I know,” she said. “When Peter’s away at sea, I get frightfully sorry for myself.”
Fleur lit her cigarette with a great deal of puffing. Her childish hands were quite uneasy, too. We waited, saying nothing, not helping her.
“It’s terrible about Janet,” she said suddenly. “The shock was so bad that when that policeman talked to me, I couldn’t remember anything. I found myself saying Janet couldn’t swim.” She gave a small, inappropriate laugh which was sheer nerves. “Of course I knew Janet could swim. I realized it just a few moments later and—and it was too late. I was so rattled I suppose I fainted.”
Was this why she had come? To give us this official and obviously inaccurate reason for her fainting spell?
Iris made sympathetic cooing sounds. Fleur seemed to be gaining confidence.
“That’s really what I’m worried about. If I had told that policeman Janet could swim, you don’t think it would have made any difference, do you? I mean you don’t think anything—”
“I think it would have made a great deal of difference,” I said quietly but firmly. “After all, does it seem reasonable to you that a champion swimmer would drown in ten feet of water just because the lights went out?”
Fleur’s lashes fluttered. “You mean you do think somebody killed her? You think that frightful Count killed her?”
I let her have it then. “I think she was murdered by the same person who murdered Dorothy Flanders last night.”
The cigarette was quite out of control then. “But Dorothy wasn’t murdered. That’s just some beastly lie the Count made up to try to shield himself. You can’t believe that. Dorothy died because of her weak heart.”
“You knew she had a weak heart?”
“Of course I did. David—my husband had been treating her for it.”
“Your husband had been treating Janet, too, hadn’t he?”
“Treating Janet? Why, no. Certainly not. There was nothing wrong with her. Oh, in the past, yes, she’s been to him. Janet was our friend. She always went to David if she was sick.”
“What sort of a doctor is your husband?” I said that quickly, trying to keep her rattled.
“David? Why, he’s a heart specialist.” She was defiant then. “One of the best heart specialists in San Francisco. You can look him up in the Medical Directory.”
“He examined Dorothy last night. He would have been in a position to know for certain if she had died of a heart attack?”
“Naturally.”
“He could have told right away if she had been poisoned?”
“Of course he could.”
“With a rare drug like curare, for example?”
“Why, yes, yes.”
“He would know all the symptoms and everything of curare poisoning?”
“Of course he would.”
“Then he might easily have poisoned her with curare and given out that she had died from a heart attack.”
It was as if I had tossed a monkey wrench at her. She doubled forward on the bed, throwing up her arm to cover her face. Then, in a swirl of housecoat, she jumped up, her eyes blazing.
“So you’re accusing my husband of murdering Dorothy and Janet and using his position as their physician to protect himself? That’s a filthy, beastly—”
I saw I had gone too far. So did Iris. My wife got out of bed and went to her.
“Fleur dear, Peter didn’t mean that. But you’ve got to understand. We believe that Dorothy and Janet were murdered. We honestly believe that. You can’t expect us to do nothing about it, can yo
u? We’ve got to try to find out the truth. We’ve got to suspect everybody, got to try every possible line.”
Fleur tried to drag her arm away from Iris’ hand. “What’s it to you? What business is it of yours anyway?” Iris said, “Fleur, would you be willing to let someone kill two women and get away with it?”
Mrs. Wyckoff gave a helpless shrug. “I’m sorry. If you think that, then, of course—I’m sorry.” She slipped onto the edge of the bed again. “All those things you’ve been saying, are you going to tell them to the police?”
“We’re not telling anything to the police until we’re sure,” I said. “If we’re wrong, if there haven’t been any murders, we don’t want to raise a stink just for the fun of it.”
Fleur sat quite still. Suddenly she said, “You don’t suppose I’d try to protect my husband if I thought he was guilty, do you? After all, I’m divorcing him. He means nothing to me.”
Iris said, “Fleur, I don’t want to pry, but just in case it helps, why are you divorcing your husband?”
“Oh, just because. He’s so busy. Working night and day at the hospital, at his office. I never saw him.” She looked up, her lips quivering. “What’s the point of being married to a man you never see?”
I was watching her guardedly. “Your husband knew Dorothy, didn’t he? I mean knew her socially—not just as a patient”
“No.” The word came quick as a pistol shot. “No. He didn’t know her at all. Even I hadn’t seen her—not since we left shcool.”
I took a shot in the dark. “So I’m wrong. I thought you were divorcing your husband because he’d been having an affair with Dorothy.”
Fleur sprang up again. “That isn’t true. That’s absolutely not true.”
“You’re sure?”
“Of course, I’m sure.” Her flower-like face was flushed and furious. “And I’ll tell you something else. I don’t know who killed Dorothy or who killed Janet. I don’t even believe they were killed. I think you’re both of you just cruel, cynical, sensation seekers trying to make everyone suffer so’s you can have a cheap thrill. Well, you’re not going to be able to have a thrill at my husband’s expense.”
She paused, glaring at both of us. “This evening in the pool, David couldn’t have killed Janet. All through the time when the lights were out, my husband was—with me.”
She swung round towards the door. I sprang out of bed.
“Fleur—”
She reached the door, threw it open, and slipped out into the dark corridor. I hurried after her. I opened my mouth to call her back, then I shut it again because I could hear her footsteps pattering back to her own room.
A shuffle and, above it, like an overtone, a very slight squeak—the squeak of her red leather slippers.
Shuffle, squeak…. It was not the first time I had heard that sound.
I went back into the room. Iris was watching me.
“Well, Peter. Just what do you make of that?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But I do know something. I just heard Fleur scurrying away down the passage. Her footsteps are the footsteps of the person who passed me last night in the corridor.”
I went to my wife. “Fleur’s the one who pushed the Count’s letter to Dorothy under Janet’s door. Fleur’s the one who ransacked Dorothy’s room.”
X
Lorraine was exuberant at breakfast, as though nothing had happened. She was being particularly sparkling because she had received a communication that Mr. Throckmorton was on the Clipper and would arrive that night. Mr. Throckmorton would make everything all right, my dears, I mean everything. She herself would go to the airport to pick him up and dinner might be a little late but we’d simply adore Mr. Throckmorton who was a lamb and so clever even though he came from Boston. Mr. Throckmorton, it seemed, was sufficiently godlike to be able to raise both Dorothy and Janet from the dead.
We were fed Mr. Throckmorton all through breakfast.
The rest of us unhappily had no Mr. Throckmorton to buoy us up. After breakfast Chuck, Wyckoff, and Laguno went off to attend the inquest on Janet. Those of us who remained had nothing to look forward to but their return with the verdict and the dubious pleasures of attending Dorothy’s funeral that afternoon in Reno. Bill Flanders had received a telegram from Dorothy’s only living relatives in the East, expressing condolence and regretting inability to attend the funeral. I gathered from its tone that, so far as Dorothy’s near and dear ones were concerned, her death was no occasion for an overwhelming display of grief.
After Fleur had left us the night before, Iris and I had decided to search her room in an attempt to find out what it was she had stolen or tried to steal from Dorothy’s belongings. We had worked out an elementary if unscrupulous plan. Under the guise of apologizing for our impertinent questions of the night before, Iris was to engage Fleur in conversation downstairs, while I slipped up to the room. The plan worked smoothly but produced no results. A thorough and discreet search of Mrs. Wyckoff’s possessions revealed nothing that seemed in any way suspicious. Fleur remained as enigmatic as ever. All our deductive hopes rested now on retrieving Dorothy’s pocketbook when we went to Reno.
Chuck, Wyckoff, and Laguno came back from the inquest about eleven-thirty. Lorraine, Mimi, Fleur, Iris, and I were waiting for them on the terrace. We were a rather disagreeable group because of the thinly disguised tension which existed between Mimi and Lorraine. The hostility came to a head when Chuck strode out from the french windows with the expected news that the inquest jury had returned a verdict of accidental death. Both Lorraine and Mimi rose to greet him.
Mimi, all girlish smiles, went to him, laying her hand on his sleeve. “Poor boy,” she cooed, “after that dreadful morning you need a drink. Come and I’ll get you one.” Lorraine’s face darkened. “He’s perfectly capable of getting a drink for himself if he wants one.”
Chuck’s handsome face registered discomfort, but Mimi, clinging to his arm, drew him into the house. He raised no objection, and, as they went, I heard Mimi murmuring sweetly, “Dear boy, you deserve to be pampered once in a while.”
For the second time in two days Mimi had won a complete victory over Lorraine.
Iris’ and my chance to retrieve Dorothy’s pocketbook came with surprising ease. The two Pleygel carloads of us, all dressed in sober hue, were half an hour too early when we arrived at the obscure little church where the funeral was to be held. My wife muttered something about the Post Office and airmail envelopes and we ducked off, hurrying along the vulgar hustle of the Reno streets toward the Del Monte. We passed the Bank Club, the Palace Club, and Chuck’s own club. Business was going full tilt. Although it was only two-thirty, people were winning and losing at the tables, drinking coke highs and having themselves one hell of a time. The festive rowdiness of the place was a welcome change from the jittery tension of the Pleygel mansion.
The manager of the Del Monte remembered me and was impressed by a visit from Iris Duluth. Yes, indeed, he said, one of his waiters had found Dorothy’s pocketbook on the red leather seat where we had been sitting. He had been planning to send it up to Lorraine’s that very afternoon. He assured me that no one had opened it since the waiter had seen Dorothy carrying it earlier in the evening and had known it to be hers. The manager’s willingness to hand it over to us showed that the sooner he relieved himself of anything connected with Dorothy and her embarrassing death the better pleased he would be.
With the large silver pocketbook tucked under my arm, I hurried out into the street with Iris at my heels. We saw a small deserted alley and slipped into it like conspirators.
Iris hovered tensely. “Darling, for heaven’s sake be careful. If we’re right, it’s a trap. There’ll be a needle with curare or—”
I didn’t need to be warned. Very gingerly I squeezed the clasp, and the bag split open. Staring up at us were the long white gloves I had seen Dorothy put away that night. I eased them out and handed them to Iris. I peered at the remaining contents of the pocketb
ook. I saw the henna chips which Dorothy had lifted from the roulette table, a jewelled compact, a comb, a lipstick, a mirror, some loose dollars, and a handkerchief. Everything looked innocent enough.
Suddenly Iris gave a squeak of excitement. “Peter, look!”
She was holding out the right-hand glove. Smeared across the tip of the middle finger was a faint reddish stain.
“It must be curare, Peter. She touched it—touched something with her finger when she had her gloves on.”
“But she had her gloves off when she opened the bag,” I said. “She opened the bag to put the gloves away.”
“Then maybe the gloves just smeared against the needle or whatever it was when she stuffed them in. We must be on the right track, Peter. Look, but be careful.”
Very cautiously I began to pick objects out of the bag one by one, examine them, and hand them to Iris. I can’t imagine what the people passing the mouth of the alley thought of us. At last we had examined everything with the utmost care, each chip, the inside of the lipstick, everything. We almost pulled the lining out of the bag. But we had to face the fact that if at one time the pocketbook had been a death trap, it was a death trap no longer.
Iris looked at me disconsolately. “At least we’ve got the glove. That’s something. That—oh, lord, it’s late. Come on or we’ll miss the funeral.”
The service had already begun when we tiptoed into the bare little church. Lorraine and her seven other guests were grouped together in two central pews. With them was a bored looking man who was presumably Dorothy’s divorce lawyer come to mourn a vanished fee. The minister, indifferent to the presence under his roof of one of the richest girls in the world, was droning on in a musty voice. Fleur Wyckoff, small and intent, was at the end of the second pew. I slid in next to her and Iris came after me.
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