Murder a la Richelieu (American Queens of Crime Book 2) (27 page)

I remember I instinctively clenched my teeth as he began those last damning lines. “ ‘I put a crimp in the Adair girl all right,’ ” Reid wrote, “ ‘when I informed her that it would do her no good to rub me out, because I’ve got it all down in black and white. She looked like she could kill me when I warned her that, if anything happened to me, my notes would land her on the gallows. Come to think of it, I’d better find somewhere else to hide them. Beneath the carpet ain’t so hot when you’re dealing with big-time crooks, and that dotty mother of hers is entirely too smooth about lifting things out of people’s rooms. If I stick them under the lining in my spectacle case I can always, if necessary, palm it off on the Adams snoop-cat. She’d never know the difference unless she saw the two together. And, anyway, I’ll be in her rooms for quite a spell tonight. I can pick it up then unless I still have this damned weird feeling that eyes are following me about, boring into my back; only when I turn around, there’s nothing there.’ ”

“Then B. M. had seen through him!” I cried. “Cyril Fancher knew what Reid was up to and had him marked for death even then.”

“It doesn’t sound like it,” said the inspector dryly and read on:
“ ‘Of all people in the house I’d never have picked the guy who is actually doing the rough stuff. It’s hard to believe even after the Anthony dame spilled the dope.’ ”

I gasped and so did Stephen, but the inspector went impassively on with James Reid’s confession of his own abominable treachery.
“ ‘Her room is next door to the Adairs. She heard me talking to them and laid for me when I came out. “Didn’t know you went in for a little fancy blackmailing,” says she, “but maybe we could use a wise guy like you.” Then she took me into her own room and opened up. Good Lord, what a brain that woman’s got! Even with the lame duck she’s been working with, she’s a wow! What could she and a bird like me do together! It’s a rank trick to pull on Mrs L, but every dog has to scratch his own fleas.

“ ‘Guess I’ll have to go through the trick tonight though. Can’t back out without arousing her suspicions. Won’t be any trouble to tell her I kept a faithful watch for B.M. but he failed to show. Lucky I haven’t told her her man was on the square. That’s why I always demand a week on the job before I hand in a report. You never know what’ll turn up. But, for that matter, as long as we’ve got the film she don’t dare squeal, whatever she suspects. And that five hundred dollar retainer she paid me looks sick now when I’m due to get half of everything she coughs up. Did I say I’d laid a juicy melon for myself? And how!’ ”

“Oh!” I cried. “Of all the unprincipled scoundrels!”

Stephen stared defiantly at the inspector. “The Anthony woman was going to team up with Reid, so B.M. killed him,” he muttered.

“Doesn’t sound like it,” repeated the inspector as he continued.

“ ‘I had my doubts about how B.M. would take my homing in,’ ” was almost the last thing Reid wrote. “ ‘But the Anthony skirt said he’d never had the guts for the raw stuff, and when she arranged for me to talk to him he all but fell on my neck, the poor fish! Now all I got to do is clip the Adair girl’s claws, and I’m set.’ ”

I was shuddering again, and Stephen’s face was ghastly.

“These are the last lines the dead man wrote,” said the inspector impressively. “ ‘Slipped the spectacle case to the Adams hen, feel safer, though I think the Mosby woman saw me, but she’s as harmless as new milk. If only I could shake off the feeling that crazy eyes are following me everywhere I go!’ ”

The inspector slowly refolded the thin sheets of paper amid a deathly silence, and then Stephen cried, “They fooled him, B.M. and Hilda Anthony! They just pretended to let him in on their rotten business. Soon as they got him on the spot in Miss Adams’ room, one or the other of them polished him off.”

“You think so?” drawled the inspector.

“Probably he opened the door to them himself,” I cried excitedly, “or let them in at the window. He wouldn’t look for danger from them till it was too late.”

“They didn’t know about the spectacle case,” the inspector pointed out.

“Lottie Mosby knew!” I cried. “I saw her peeping out of a room down the hall just after Reid handed it to me. She could have told them.”

“She knew all right,” said the inspector. “That’s what she was after in your suite when she was killed.”

“How did she get in?” demanded Stephen sharply.

“We didn’t mention it, but we found a skeleton key on her dead body. I suppose B.M. gave it to her. It suited his purposes to make it convenient for her to slip in and out of various men’s rooms.”

“Oh!” I cried with a foul taste in my mouth.

The inspector looked from one to the other of us. “There’s no use evading the issue. Painful as it is, it must be faced,” he said at last.

“What-what do you mean?” I gasped.

“I have said before that criminals do not change their habits any more than the rest of us do. It’s still true. Hilda Anthony was a bad egg but not a killer. Neither was Cyril Fancher, as both of you felt instinctively. He played the B.M. role because the Anthony woman forced him to, but he didn’t kill Reid; just as Fancher could never bring himself to kill Madigan, his tormentor back East.”

My lips were terribly stiff. “But he attacked Glory and me in the basement this afternoon. He would have strangled me to death – except for Stephen.”

“In my opinion,” said the inspector, “Fancher with the Wilson girl was gone before you ever entered the basement, Miss Adams, or very soon afterward, fleeing for his life in the truck. I agree, however, that it was he who knocked the Quackenberry girl out, though by her own statement she never saw the face of her assailant. Right, Mr Lansing?”

With a face like death Stephen nodded.

“Fancher probably intended to go back for Miss Quackenberry after he put the other one in the truck, but your scream frightened him off, Miss Adams. Running away from danger is his style of self-defence, not murder, and it was not he who killed James Reid or Lottie Mosby or Hilda Anthony, nor was it he who attempted to strangle you today.”

I could not speak and apparently neither could Stephen, and finally the inspector went softly on, “You did a very foolish thing yesterday afternoon, Miss Adams, when you changed your will.”

I was trembling. “With so many tragic occurrences, I-I thought it a good idea.”

“Nevertheless,” said the inspector sternly, “you very nearly signed your own death warrant when you had your lawyer come here after Lottie Mosby’s death and draw you up a new will, leaving everything of which you die possessed to Kathleen Adair.”

Stephen was on his feet, his face convulsed with rage. “If you think you can pin these murders on-on...” He choked and could not go on.

The inspector tapped the green spectacle case in his hand.

“James Reid warned Kathleen Adair that his notes would land her on the gallows,” he said.

“Oh,” I cried wildly, “it isn’t true!”

“She killed Mosby to keep the notes out of her hands, then failed to find them herself, as she had previously failed to locate them when she searched the room which James Reid occupied and the ones where he died.”

“It isn’t true!” I wailed again.

“Kathleen Adair’s mother is off mentally, but in her case, also, murder is not her forte. However, she bequeathed the girl a tainted brain which, under the threat of exposure, took a homicidal turn.”

“No, no!” I cried. “They aren’t even kin. I swear it! Mrs Adair is only Kathleen’s foster mother.”

“Nonetheless, the girl is thrice a murderess,” said the inspector grimly. “She and the woman came here to worm their way into your good graces and so into your fortune, Miss Adams. When James Reid endangered the success of their plans, Kathleen Adair killed him.”

“I don’t believe it!” I wailed.

“Just as she killed the Anthony woman when, in fear of her own life, she was about to tell me that she overheard the Adair girl threatening Reid.”

“It isn’t true!”

“Kathleen Adair was seen on the stairs with your afghan, Miss Adams, not ten minutes before you discovered it wrapped about Hilda Anthony’s dead body.”

“Oh! Oh! Oh!” I cried, beginning to sob wildly.

Stephen put his hand on my shoulder. “This is all a tissue of circumstantial evidence, Adelaide. It doesn’t mean a thing.” He glared at the inspector. “And, by God, I’ll prove it!”

The inspector smiled pleasantly. He was again smug and wonderfully hepped up over having stolen a march upon the federal man and covered himself with glory by breaking the case against all odds.

“There’s one test we can make,” he said softly, “the infallibility of which neither of you can deny, if you’ll come with me.”

Silently we followed him down to the fourth floor. Kathleen herself opened the door when the inspector knocked. She stared at us as if she did not see us. Her eyes, though perfectly dry, were heart breaking.

“She’s dead,” she said dully. “Died a minute ago, just as the doctor said she would, as though she were falling asleep. I was holding her hand. She smiled at me so tenderly, and then her fingers loosened and-and she was gone.”

“My poor child!” I cried.

I would have drawn her into my arms, but the inspector stepped between us.

“Roll up your sleeves, Miss Adair,” he said brusquely.

She stared at him blankly. “My-my sleeves?”

He caught her wrist and swiftly pushed up the sleeves of her frilly white blouse. Behind me Stephen Lansing gasped – it was almost a sob – but I could only go on staring at that half-moon of tiny red wounds on Kathleen’s exquisite arm just above her slender wrist.

“Your teeth branded the murderess, Miss Adams,” said the inspector, “and James Reid’s notes will hang her.”

“Oh!” gasped the girl. “I – I –”

“You are under arrest for murder,” snapped the inspector.

In spite of Stephen’s furious protests and my impassioned pleas on her behalf, the inspector took Kathleen Adair away from the hotel in a police car within fifteen minutes of her sensational arrest.

“But he can’t keep you in jail!” Stephen told her as they were leaving. “I’ll hire the best lawyers in the world. I’ll-I’ll...”

The inspector shrugged his shoulders. “Come on, miss,” he interrupted and took her arm.

The girl, with one piteous glance at Stephen, went. She had not spoken a word. She acted dazed, as if the series of tragic blows which she had suffered had numbed her senses – as I have no doubt they had.

“I can’t bear it!” I sobbed.

Stephen had his arm about me. “At any rate,” he said huskily, staring at the silent figure on the bed, “that poor soul is out of it all.”

I gulped and nodded. “I’ll have her put away beautifully for Kathleen’s sake.”

He tried to smile at me. “You’re such an old trump, Adelaide. God knows what I’d do without you.”

“You mean,” I said tremulously, “what would I do without you?”

I was leaning on his arm as we walked to the elevator, and morally I was relying on him in every way. Stephen was going to police headquarters. He was going to see Kathleen. He was going to set every possible wheel in motion to secure her release.

“Because she isn’t guilty, she couldn’t be, Adelaide.”

“Of course not,” I said, though neither of us could meet the other’s eyes, and I knew he was seeing, as I was, that terrible ring of angry red dents on my darling’s arm with which, God help me, I had placed the brand of Cain upon her.

It was after seven, and Clarence had already taken over the elevator for the night. He was, plainly to be seen, bursting with the astounding news which, with Kathleen’s departure under heavy police guard, had swept through the hotel like a prairie fire.

“Law,” he said, “I never would have thought that nice young lady was a murderer.”

“She isn’t,” snapped Stephen, “and keep your big mouth shut about her.”

“Yas suh,” quavered Clarence. “I never meant no harm.”

“You are an inveterate gossip, Clarence,” I said severely, scowling at a dark rusty spot which I had acquired by brushing up against the wall of the elevator with my shoulder. “It’s a pity,” I went on tartly, “that you wouldn’t put in a little time keeping this old rattletrap clean, instead of busying yourself with matters which do not concern you.”

“Yas ’m, Miss Adelaide,” stammered Clarence.

As a rule I am indulgent of Clarence’s well-known tendency to shift a good many of his tasks off upon someone else, but on this occasion I felt if I did not snap at somebody I should explode of sheer internal combustion.

“It is nothing less than a disgrace when the guests in this hotel cannot ride in the elevator without ruining their clothes,” I continued, rubbing at that dingy spot on my shoulder which appeared to be composed of equal parts of rust and oil and grime.

I glanced at Stephen and made a grimace. “Looks almost like, like-”

“Blood?” he finished for me. “So it does.”

I shuddered. “I suppose, one will never get over feeling that the past three days have left their gory stain on all of us, beyond recall.”

“I suppose not,” he murmured, his thoughts obviously elsewhere.

He left me in the lobby. “I’ll call you, Adelaide, as soon as I’ve talked to the police,” he promised. “In the meanwhile, don’t worry. Everything will come out all right.”

He smiled reassuringly and squeezed my hand, but I did not think he believed what he said, any more than I did. People stared at me with morbid curiosity that night. From every indication my poor thwarted romance had been dragged from its grave and thoroughly worked over. However, my expression must have been sufficiently intimidating, for not even Ella Trotter dared broach me upon the subject.

I had no appetite, but neither was I in the humour to face down the battery of curious eyes trained upon me in the lobby, so I went on into the Coffee Shop, which at that late hour I had to myself until Sophie Scott crept in through the kitchen, looking like the wraith of herself, her plump cheeks haggard and flabby, shadows like bruises under her reddened eyes.

She paused for a minute at my table, although there was no one I was less anxious to talk to. “I know you never liked Cyril, Adelaide,” she said heavily, “and I admit the way it’s all turned out, you were right about everything except that he loves me. Old and fat as I am, he loves me. He has had such a hard time, and I’ve been kind to him, Adelaide. Perhaps he looks upon me more as he might a mother, but he-he isn’t bad. If he did wicked things, that woman is to blame. He hated her. He tried to keep away from her. He used to shiver and moan in his sleep at night. Nothing would quiet him but for me to hold him in my arms as if he were a child.”