Murder a la Richelieu (American Queens of Crime Book 2) (11 page)

“The inspector is more of a fool than I took him for,” I insisted in conclusion, “if he seriously hopes to involve you and Mary in this sordid business.”

To my surprise Polly’s bravado abruptly deserted her. “I-I take b-back everything I ever said about you, Miss Adelaide,” she faltered. “You may be an old fuss-budget in prosperity, but in adversity you’re an angel.”

It was a dubious compliment; nevertheless, it touched me. “Thank you, my dear, and I quite understand why you tried to run off with that dratted knife.”

“Do you?” she whispered.

“Naturally your first thought was that, innocent as she is, being its owner, the police would be certain to think the knife implicated Mary.”

“Yes,” said Polly with a little sob.

“I should have done exactly the same thing in your place,” I said firmly.

“I bet you would at that,” she said and, after hesitating a minute, asked, “Have you seen Howard, Miss Adelaide?”

“The inspector sent for him again a few minutes ago,” I said.

“Oh!” she gasped and then added huskily, “Did you say again?”

“Isn’t it asinine?” I demanded. “I haven’t the slightest doubt that while the police are wasting precious hours, interviewing perfectly innocent people, the murderer is busy successfully covering up his tracks. No wonder the city can’t balance its budget.”

“I guess so,” said Polly in a forlorn voice.

“At least,” I went on, “the way Howard championed your cause last night did my heart good. I should be very happy, my dear, to see you two bury the hatchet or whatever it is that has spoiled love’s young dream lately.”

Polly’s voice trembled. “If I only dared!”

She hung up, to conceal her tears I was convinced, not far from tears myself. It has always seemed to me pathetic how often people hurt the ones they love. I did not know why Polly had deliberately wrecked her romance with Howard Warren, but at that moment nothing could have persuaded me that they were not in love with each other.

“Perhaps some good will come of all this yet,” I muttered to myself. It seemed to me it would almost be worth it to bridge the breach between Howard and little Polly Lawson.

Needless to say, I was exasperated when about eleven Polly came down to the lobby, painted up like a red Indian, and, ignoring Howard, who eagerly started toward her, made straight for Stephen Lansing, who had for some time ostensibly been absorbed in a punchboard at the desk while guardedly watching Kathleen Adair in the mirror behind the cigar counter.

“Oh, h’lo,” Polly sang out, giving him an impudent smile and pretending not to see the look on Howard’s face as he turned away.

“Hello yourself,” said Stephen Lansing, his wide grin displaying his very white teeth. “It must be telepathy. I’ve been wishing you or somebody just like you would come along.”

“Really?” He caught her arm and turned her toward the entrance to the drugstore. “If one can’t leave the premises, one might, don’t you think, make merry on a stool built for two.”

“And why not?” asked Polly, permitting him to install her in front of the soda fountain where they sat for some time, inhaling Coca-Colas through straws. Each of them, I felt sure, fully aware that they were plainly visible through the glass door into the lobby where Howard Warren sat, scowling ferociously at the cash register, while Kathleen Adair, with a stony look in her brown eyes, hovered about the chair in which she had installed her mother.

Little Mrs Adair looked downright ill that morning. Until then I had thought she was one of those invalids who “enjoy” poor health for the sake of being fussed over and waited upon, but I was compelled to revise my impression of the woman. It seemed to me she had aged overnight, as if all the planes of her small ineffectual face were threatening to cave in. There was fever in the way her irresolute, frail hands kept moving restlessly about, like a crumpled butterfly futilely beating its broken wings.

“Wouldn’t you be more comfortable upstairs in bed?” I asked, strolling over to her corner.

She looked up at me, and her eyes were startling. “One feels safer in a crowd,” she said in a thin lifeless voice.

I frowned. “Are you afraid?”

“Yes.”

“But the man had nothing to do with us. His death is to be regretted, of course. However, if you want my opinion, I think it’s all much ado about nothing,” I said in a brusque attempt to reassure her, though by no means convinced myself.

She shook her head. “I am psychic. I sense things in advance. And I feel disaster, black disaster, hanging over us all.”

“Rubbish!” I cried.

“It won’t stop with one death,” she whispered, that strange fateful look in her eyes deepening.

The girl glanced at me defiantly and, rising abruptly, went over to the cooler back of the elevator. She returned with a paper cup of water into which she had dropped a small white pellet taken from a glass tube in her purse.

“Drink this, Mother,” she said, “and see if you can rest a little before lunch.”

“Yes, dear,” murmured the older woman like a docile child.

Apparently the pellet was a sedative, for after a time little Mrs Adair leaned back against the pillow which her daughter had placed behind the neat grey head and went quietly to sleep. The corner in which we were sitting was as secluded as it is possible to be in the lobby of the Richelieu Hotel, and I carefully lowered my voice when I leaned forward and turned back the frill on my linen blouse.

“This belongs to you, doesn’t it?” I asked Kathleen Adair gently.

Her eyes did not lose their stony expression as she stared at the black-and-gold brooch pinned under my collar, but the cords in her throat jerked once, although she said nothing.

“It was found last night on the fire escape,” I went on quietly.

Her face was as white as paper. “I – how could it have been found – there?” she gasped.

In my heart an old wound throbbed unbearably. “You have Room 411, don’t you? Directly under the one I am now occupying, the one formerly occupied by-by-”

“Yes,” she interrupted, wincing from head to foot.

She drew a long breath. “I remember now,” she stammered. “I dropped the pin upon the fire escape yesterday afternoon when I leaned out the window to-to look at the at the sunset.”

She must have known from my expression that she had trapped herself. The sunset is hidden from the view of anyone on the fire escape at the Richelieu Hotel by an apartment house across the street. For one long terrible moment we stared into each other’s eyes and thought God only knows what thoughts. Then silently she reached out her hand for the brooch.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ll have to keep it, for a while anyway. You see, I told the inspector the pin is mine.”

Her lips quivered. “You did that for-for me?”

“And for the man whose name is engraved on the back.”

She made an effort to pull herself together. “I-I don’t understand.”

“Laurie was your father, and your name isn’t Adair.”

She gasped. “You are mistaken.”

“I gave that pin back to him years ago before he – before we... I suppose later he gave it to your mother.”

She shook her head. “I bought it in a pawnshop,” she said, openly defying me.

“Oh, my dear, you couldn’t have bought Laurie’s eyes in a pawnshop, nor his smile,” I whispered.

“You are mistaken,” she said again.

I put my hand on her arm. “Don’t you realize I want to be your friend? I am your friend.”

Her eyes were tragic. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s impossible.”

I stared at her. “There isn’t anything on earth I wouldn’t do for Laurie’s daughter!” My voice broke. “But for a combination of circumstances, which I shall regret to my dying day, you might have been my daughter.”

“Don’t!” she cried painfully.

“That’s why you came here, isn’t it?” I asked. “Because once your father and I loved each other. I loved him better than anything in the world except my sterile sense of duty, God help me! I’d like to think that Laurie told you to come to me if you needed a friend.”

“Please, Miss Adams!”

“You did come here because of me?”

“No, I-I ...” She paused and drew an anguished breath. “Be merciful and drop the subject,” she whispered.

“My dear, my dear!” I protested. “Won’t you let me help you?”

“Maybe I – maybe I did plan to-to...” She was trembling. “It doesn’t matter why we came to this awful place,” she interrupted herself harshly, “because-because- No, Miss Adams,” she said, rising to her feet, “you can’t help me. No one can help me.”

“My dear, my dear!” I protested again.

“Perhaps I thought you could when I came,” she said bitterly.

“Perhaps I dreamed all sorts of silly dreams, but dreams don’t come true. At least, mine never do and they never will.”

“Child, if you are in trouble there is nothing I wouldn’t do!”

“Trouble!” repeated Kathleen Adair with a dreadful smile. “Oh God, why was I ever born?”

I tried to catch her arm, but she twisted away from me and, her eyes blinded by tears, ran up the stairs.

We were all at lunch, including Mary Lawson, her face shockingly worn and haggard, when the inspector sent around another note.

We whose names figured on the list were to report to the parlour promptly at two o’clock ‘for a conference.’

“Not content with mentally undressing us in private, he’s now going to repeat the process with full benefit of audience,” remarked Howard Warren bitterly.

The rest of us said nothing, but I caught myself glancing uneasily from one set face to another, hastily averting my gaze if I encountered anyone’s eyes, conscious that the others were behaving in much the same fashion. I have said the worst feature of the affair was the way it set everybody against everyone else. By noon that day the pressure had become nerve racking.

“If certain people were forced to tell what they know, the rest of us could go on about our business in peace,” growled Dan Mosby, again pacing the lobby floor while we were waiting for the hands of the clock to reach two.

I did not like the way he looked at Cyril Fancher, and apparently neither did Cyril.

“Are you throwing that insinuation at me, Mr Mosby?” he asked, his upper lip quivering.

“A hurt pig squeals,” said Dan Mosby.

Cyril flushed. “I assure you –”

“Does the inspector know you were on the fourth floor last night, Fancher, very close to the time a certain party got his throat cut?” interrupted Dan Mosby.

“How do you know who was on the fourth floor at that certain time, Mosby?” countered Cyril.

Dan Mosby coloured darkly, and his wife put her hand on his arm. “Don’t let’s start quarrelling among ourselves,” she pleaded.

“The inspector will get the truth out of us soon enough.”

“You sound as if you had cause to fear the truth, Lottie,” said Sophie with something that was almost a sneer.

The Anthony woman laughed unpleasantly. “Never have secrets, Mrs Mosby. They always come out on you in the worst spots.”

Dan Mosby glared at both women as if he hated them. “My wife has no secrets,” he said shortly.

“Is that so?” drawled Hilda Anthony.

“Neither has my husband, Mr Mosby,” retorted Sophie.

Hilda Anthony looked Cyril Fancher over as if he amused her.

“Why must people be mean to each other?” whispered little Mrs Adair. “There’s enough beauty to go around if only people would share it.”

I had never heard Stephen Lansing’s voice so soft. “Yes,” he said, “beauty was intended to belong to everyone.”

Little Mrs Adair smiled at him. “Of course,” she said simply.

I noticed that Kathleen was staring at Stephen Lansing with wide eyes and when he smiled at her, rather shyly, I thought, she moved between him and her mother and continued to stand there, face averted, like a slim carved maiden on a golden shield.

It was precisely two when the policeman came down from the second floor. “The inspector will receive you now,” he informed us stiffly.

While Howard and Polly had not exchanged a word since she entered the lobby that morning, he instinctively moved closer to her as we mounted the stair, and when the policeman had ushered us into the parlour Howard, doggedly refraining from looking at either of them, nevertheless took up his position directly behind Mary Lawson and her niece, who had sat down on one of the hard green sofas.

“This is an outrage!” protested Ella Trotter, breathing very hard. “I warn you, I shall write the mayor.”

Inspector Bunyan, again encamped at the library table with the inevitable black notebook, smiled affably. “Please be seated,” he said, as if we were about to have afternoon tea.

“Okay, Mr Bones,” sang out Stephen Lansing flippantly, straddling a straight chair back of the other hard green sofa to which Kathleen Adair had assisted her mother.

“Some of you I have already talked to today,” murmured the inspector. “Others,” he continued, eyeing me with marked fixity, “I have delayed seeing until” – he referred to the notebook – “until I had more data to proceed upon.”

Up to that moment I had felt relieved because the summons to the parlour, which I had expected all morning, had failed to materialize. Under the inspector’s prolonged scrutiny, however, I was no longer so smug about my escape as I had been. It seemed to me the way in which he studied the page devoted to my activities was nothing if not portentous.

The inspector addressed me so suddenly, I started violently. “I am no longer inclined to doubt the presence of an intruder in your room last night, Miss Adams,” he assured me. “Investigation substantiates your story.”

“You might have saved yourself that trouble by believing what you hear,” I said dryly.

He smiled. “I never believe anything I hear unless the facts corroborate it.”

“He does it with mirrors,” contributed Stephen Lansing with a derisive grin.

The inspector regarded him reflectively. “You’ll probably be interested to know, Mr Lansing, that your impetuous dash to Miss Adams’ rescue last night did not - ah - fortunately destroy all evidence of the fact that someone preceded you up the fire escape.”

Stephen Lansing caught his breath. “How nice!” he drawled at last, looking slightly greenish.