Puzzle of the Red Stallion (4 page)

“That’s just dandy,” said Oscar Piper. “Well, where’s the weapon?”

“There ain’t any, Inspector.”

“Well, we can’t have everything. Where’s the wound?”

“There ain’t any, Inspector!” Burke stared dubiously down at the stiffening corpse. “Must of been stabbed in the back, where it doesn’t show. There was blood on the horse and that proved she didn’t die from the fall like they thought at first. It seems to me—”

Piper grunted. “Don’t tell me you figured this all out for yourself, Sergeant!”

The detective shook his head. “The radio boys gets the credit, Inspector. They said they figured it out just as soon as the old maid butted in leading the horse which had run away….”

“Oh,” said Piper. He lit a match and let it go out in his fingers as an expression of incredulous amazed wonder crossed his face. “What’s this about the old maid?
What
old maid? Who are you talking about, and where is she?”

Sergeant Burke licked his lips. “Why—just a nosy old maid who was always butting in. Just another nut gone haywire about murders. So I told her to scram….”

The inspector took his cigar out of his mouth and thoughtfully broke it into little pieces. He nodded in smiling approval. “Go on—so you figured she was a nut and you threw her out?”

“Yeah, Inspector. But we got her name and address!” Thick fingers fumbled in the pages of a tattered notebook. “Here it is—Miss Hildegarde Withers … Number 60 West 74th Street….”

He discovered to his surprise that the inspector was chanting the name and address in unison with him.

Inspector Piper let it be known that he was annoyed. “Great work, Sergeant! She’s just a meddlesome old battle-ax who happens to be the smartest sleuth I ever knew in or out of uniform!” By this time the inspector’s collar was three sizes too tight and his face had turned a deep cherry red. “Burke, you’d have to go to night school for years to learn to be a half-wit!”

Burke gurgled and saluted mechanically. “Well,” roared the inspector. “What are you waiting for? She can’t have gone far—and if we don’t bring her back I’ll give you two weeks’ duty cleaning spittoons down at headquarters!”

With the sergeant trotting at his heels Inspector Oscar Piper forced his way back up the bush-covered slope to the squad car. He motioned Burke behind the wheel and they drove on a little way looking for a place to turn around. But the transverse was well blocked with official cars and they found it no easy matter. “Back up, then,” the inspector ordered.

As the roar of the motor died down they both heard the sound of a dog’s frantic barking. “Wait a minute,” said Piper. He swung open the door of the car and ran over to the stone railing which bordered the elevated transverse. For a moment he stared blankly down, his head cocked on one side like an inquisitive sparrow’s. Then he wildly beckoned Burke to join him.

They looked down upon a little lake, hardly larger than a pool, which nestled here in the corner between the high slope of Eighty-sixth Street Transverse and the outer stone wall of the park. Here a cluster of young willow trees waved fresh foliage above its muddy waters. At the moment the quiet of this sylvan scene was being rudely shattered by a small and excited terrier who was leaping about in the shallow water near shore and barking at the top of his lungs.

Beside him, perched precariously upon a teetering rock which threatened every moment to tip and hurl her headlong into the water, stood Miss Hildegarde Withers. She was engaged in poking at the depths with a thin willow switch.

Her voice added to the hubbub. “Go on, Dempsey, get it! Bring it to me, there’s a good boy!”

Then the inspector leaned over the edge and shouted merrily, “Pearl diving, Hildegarde?”

The angular schoolma’am turned a startled face toward the heights. “Of all things!” she cried. But she was not one to waste time in idle badinage. “Oscar Piper—it’s about time. Come here and come quickly.”

In three seconds he was beside her, the grinning sergeant in the rear. “Hot on the trail, Hildegarde?” asked the inspector. “What do you expect to find in the pool—the mysterious Death-Ray machine? Or is it the feathered bamboo blow-gun filled with tufted poison darts of the Mato Grosso Indians?”

Nettled, Miss Withers pursed her lips. “Perhaps!” she told him. “The dog has found something anyway. If I only had a boat!”

Piper shook his head. “Now, Hildegarde, be reasonable. What could possibly be in that mud hole?”

“A gun, perhaps,” Miss Withers told him. “The murder weapon! There’s a spot of oil, fresh oil, in the roadway just in front of where you parked your car. Somebody let an automobile stand here since the rain—and the park attendant heard a car drive away just before he came on the body. It occurred to me that if the murderer wanted to dispose of anything he might very likely choose this pool—and Dempsey had scented
something
!”

The little terrier had finally cast himself into the water over his depth. He swam in circles around the middle of the pool, still barking. Now and then he thrust his whiskery muzzle under the surface.

“Okay,” conceded the inspector. “Burke, get into your diving suit and see what the pooch is after.”

Sergeant Burke protested that he was wearing a pair of almost new socks. But the inspector pointed a commanding thumb at the murky depths.

“Here goes!” muttered Burke, and threw himself forward. He landed up to his knees in mud and slimy water, and then, as if encouraged by the sight of reinforcements, Dempsey ducked under the surface only to come up choking and spluttering.

Beside him, Sergeant Burke rolled up his sleeve and plunged a massive hairy arm into the water. “I can’t find anything, Inspector!” he bellowed.

But the little dog Dempsey was still confident. “Good boy,” encouraged his mistress from the shore. “Go get it!”

In spite of himself the inspector was caught into the spirit of the affair. Wading a little farther into the mud he caught sight of an abandoned garden hoe among some other relics and took it up by the handle.

“Here!” he shouted to Burke. “Try raking the bottom with this.” He tossed the hoe out to the dripping detective who caught the heavy implement and sloshed obediently at the bottom of the pool, stirring up great roils of mud. Then Dempsey barked, took a deep breath and dived out of sight, with his short legs churning the water like paddle wheels.

He was gone a long time. Miss Withers, who had been unconsciously holding her breath, let it go with a great sigh. She was just about to plunge in to the rescue when the little dog reappeared with a shapeless something gripped firmly in his jaws. Burke lunged for it, but the little terrier deftly avoided him and paddled toward shore.

“Good boy,” called out his mistress. “Bring it to me!”

Dempsey obeyed cheerfully. He emerged from the pond, gave himself a brisk shaking which drenched the inspector’s trouser legs, and then with an air of duty well done the little dog deposited at the feet of his horrified mistress a very sad-looking turtle.

There was a long and painful silence, broken by the splashings of an irate and bedraggled Burke, shoreward bound.

The inspector’s eyes twinkled. “The murder weapon!” he exclaimed unkindly. “Somebody hit the girl over the head with a turtle. Or maybe the turtle chased her off the horse?”

Miss Withers, as was usual when at a loss for words, sniffed. Then she dragged Dempsey away from his prize in disgrace and started toward the roadway with all the dignity she could muster.

But Sergeant Burke was the type of person unable to leave well enough alone. “Look, ma’am,” he shouted after her, “do you want I should bring the
murder weapon
along?”

Miss Withers turned to see him poking at the comatose turtle with his hoe. She stopped and her eyes widened. She took a step closer and then suddenly let Dempsey slide to the ground.

“I don’t suppose it would strike either of you two masterminds,” she pointed out, “that the garden implement in the sergeant’s hand is just a little—unusual?”

“What?” The inspector’s gaze flickered from her to the hoe. His mouth dropped open.

The implement which had at first appeared to be an ancient and discarded garden tool now showed itself to be, as the schoolteacher had pointed out, a very unusual hoe indeed. The rusty blade had been bent sharply back and through holes punched in the iron, four screws held firmly to its lower surface a bright, unrusted horseshoe!

“Put there for luck, I don’t think!” said the inspector.

Miss Withers reminded him that there were different kinds of luck.

“I only wish we knew what it meant!” Piper continued, studying the odd device.

“Come on and we’ll find out,” Miss Withers counseled. They went away from the pond, with Dempsey dragging back on his leash to gaze wistfully upon his turtle. That philosophical creature, sensing that all was quiet again, had miraculously sprouted legs and a beaked head and was ambling back toward the water—and out of Dempsey’s life forever.

They returned to the scene of the crime to discover a new arrival bending over the body of Violet Feverel. This personage was lean and dyspeptic looking, and he affected loose English tweeds and a bowler which happened to be a size too small for him.

“Miss Withers,” introduced the inspector, “meet Dr. Charles Bloom, medical examiner for Manhattan.”

“I think we’ve already met,” said the schoolteacher. “It was some years ago, at the Aquarium
¹
, wasn’t it?”

“Ah, the lady with the hat pin!” But Dr. Bloom had no desire to talk over old times. He tugged nervously at the wisps which remained of a once luxurious beard and frowned down at the body as if, by dying, Violet Feverel had incurred his displeasure.

“You can move her any time you like,” said the doctor. He scribbled upon a pad.

“But—” interrupted Piper. “What do you figure killed her?”

“Well,” began Dr. Bloom cautiously, “as for wounds …”

“They crushed the back of the skull, and were
supposedly
made by a horse’s shod hoof!” Miss Withers eagerly prompted. “Isn’t that right?”

Dr. Bloom smiled wearily. His heavy-lidded eyes took in the hoe which the inspector dangled in one hand.

“You’re suggesting that this was a murder fixed to look as if a horse had done it—and really involving a weapon improvised from a horseshoe?”

Miss Withers nodded eagerly. “There was a story in a magazine—”

“Dear lady,” said Dr. Bloom patiently, “I read my Chesterton too. Though I must say that the device is well known to medical jurisprudence. There was a case in Calcutta—another in Texas. But this time I’m afraid the answer is no. There are no wounds on the body!”

“But—but she’s dead!” protested Miss Withers.

“A superficial examination such as this is only enough to show that this young woman died from internal hemorrhage. As a matter of fact, blood filled her lungs and she strangled to death!”

“But it
was
murder?” the inspector hopefully demanded.

“Officially, I don’t know,” the doctor told him testily. “I can tell you better after the autopsy. My private opinion, however, is that if this is not murder I’ve never seen one!” And the medical examiner beamed like a happy child.

“I knew it was murder,” Miss Withers chimed in. “Just as soon as I saw that splotch of blood on the side of the horse.”

“Remarkable,” Dr. Bloom congratulated her. “Particularly since the spot to which you refer is not human blood, but horse’s. I had one of the officers bring me a sample on a bit of paper and applied a primary test.” His firm white teeth clicked decisively.

“But … where was the horse wounded?” Miss Withers begged.

“That is just what worries me, dear lady,” said Dr. Bloom as he brushed mud from his trousers. The horse shows no wound at all! And now, if you’ll excuse me …” He took up his bag and scurried toward his car.

“Well, here we are!” said Oscar Piper. He hefted the oddly weighted hoe as if about to hurl it back into the shrubbery. “It was a swell idea anyway.”

“Not so fast.” Miss Withers stopped him. “I’ve just had another idea. Do you suppose that we could find one untrampled hoofprint in this vicinity and make a little comparison?”

The body of Violet Feverel was already being lifted into a wicker basket by two white-clad men from the morgue wagon. Perhaps a dozen feet from where she had lain, outside the trampled circle, the inspector caught sight of a comparatively smooth bit of path which showed the delicate circular mark of a horse’s hoof.

He lowered the hoe so that the horseshoe fastened to the bottom touched the soft earth. It fitted the print, fitted with a microscopic exactness. “Well, I’ll be—” He turned suddenly and found that Miss Withers was not beside him.

The squadron of detectives and police had begun to break up, but the angular schoolma’am still lingered over the spot where the dead girl had lain.

“Never mind looking for the missing cuff link,” called he inspector over his shoulder. “It doesn’t happen nowadays. Come over here, this is really important!”

Miss Hildegarde Withers did not answer. She took a quick look around to make sure that she was unobserved, and then bent down and hastily drew from the soft mud which still bore the impress of the dead body a warm and pungent-smelling object which she thrust into her handbag.

One glance had told her that it was a briar tobacco pipe, battered and blackened. As Miss Withers joined her coworker her lips softly formed the words, “People’s Exhibit A” She nodded prophetically.

¹
See The Penguin Pool Murder, 1931.

“W
ITH THIS LITTLE INVENTION
a person could produce very credible hoofprints without requiring a horse,” said Miss Hildegarde Withers. She had taken the weighted hoe from the inspector and was tapping gently at the muddy path.

“All the same time there
was
a horse,” protested Piper. “You found him yourself, so what difference does it make?”

“This gadget was not made for fun,” Miss Withers retorted. “And I’ll bet you a bright new penny that the horse in question is going barefoot upon at least one hoof.” She led the way to the spot where, still fretting and prancing, a big red thoroughbred was a prisoner in the grasp of two patrolmen.