Puzzle of the Blue Banderilla (25 page)

“Now, Hildegarde, do you expect me to believe that?”

“She did, anyway. Under cover of the umbrella, which would effectively hide the actual deed from those behind them.”

“You mean to say that shrimp of a woman stuck a dart five inches into a man’s back through his clothing when I couldn’t stick it half that far into a dead pig?”

“Yes, Oscar. I’ll come to that in a moment. She left the dart sticking into the back of her victim, who slumped forward against the rail. But she didn’t want him discovered until she was well away, so she calmly placed her rented umbrella over the shoulders of Fitz, just as if he were holding it, and hurried away!”

“She had that much nerve?”

“Yes, Oscar, and more. Women are superior to men in many things, and certainly at murder. How about Mrs. Wharton, and Cordelia Botkin, and Mrs. Vermilya and her pepper pot—and dozens more? Adele Mabie hoped that she had convinced everyone of her being the intended victim of these crimes, and that we would jump to the conclusion that Fitz was just one more innocent bystander who had caught something aimed at her!”

“I still want to know,” Piper said doggedly, “how she managed to kill a man with a dart!”

“She didn’t, Oscar!”

“But you just said—”

“Not with the dart. The word
banderilla
means ‘little flag’ in Spanish. It isn’t to kill with. It is only a frilly decoration. Just some way of insulting the bull, really, in the lovely Latin manner. In the ring, the bull is killed with a long thin blade, and Adele used the same method.”

Suddenly Piper pointed to the back of a chair across the room. “The blade that made that hole?”

“Yes, Oscar.”

“But was the woman a magician? Where could she hide a weapon like that?”

“A question I’ve been asking myself for some time. You’ll remember, Oscar, that when Adele came to the bullfight she carried with her a shopping bag filled with the day’s purchases?”

“Remember? Say, I lugged it home for her. But there wasn’t any sword in that.”

“Wait. As we left the bull ring she purchased a pair of
banderillas.
A clever dodge, to make us sure never to suspect that she had also purchased a pair on her way in!”

“But you just said Fitz wasn’t killed with a dart!”

“Listen. She carried another weapon with her that day, a weapon that fooled me and would fool anybody. The clue came to me when I was watching a cobbler make sandals. He used one tool to make the hole, another to take the waxed thread through.”

“You mean the dart went in so easily because it followed the track of a previous wound?”

“Right, Oscar. A blade, swiftly withdrawn and leaving only a few drops of blood—and then came the
banderilla
to fool everybody, obliterating the previous track.”

“That is one on me,” Piper said. “I suspected Julio.”

“And I, Oscar! Especially after I got the idea of the blade that might have been concealed in an umbrella or walking stick. I might never have thought of the answer had not Adele made one of her few mistakes. She hid the weapon—then the moment I noticed it was missing from this room, she returned it—for she dared not draw attention to it.”

“Well, what was it?” Piper demanded. “Do you intend to keep me dangling?”

“Dangle no longer,” said Hildegarde Withers. “This was the weapon that Adele carried in her shopping bag on Sunday. It was here on the table in plain view when we searched the place this evening. See?” And she handed him the heavy riding whip of alligator leather.

He took hold of the shaft, and Miss Withers suddenly pulled in the other direction with a sidewise twist. And then the inspector found himself holding only a limp leather sheath ending in the wristloop of the crop. The schoolteacher gripped a long triangular sliver of steel which had run the full length of the whip from handle to tip, a good fourteen inches!

“Why,” he cried, “that would go in like a hot knife into butter!” He tried the blade gingerly against his thumb, felt the needle point.

“Yes, Oscar. It was meant to go into me tonight in the dark, because Adele was afraid that I would again ask Dulcie a certain question—the answer to which, she knew, would damn her. It would make Dulcie a certain witness against her in court, hang her actually.”

“Yeah? What question?”

“Simply this. Where had Dulcie thrown the perfume bottle she admitted discarding? The answer, of course, was that she had simply left it behind when Mrs. Mabie fired her at Laredo.”

“And that’s why Adele Mabie wanted to keep Dulcie so close to her, why she didn’t want her to go out with Julio or to be here at the meeting tonight!”

“Right, Oscar. You see, that girl was a potential key witness. And I have an idea that had they both started home on the steamer, some night Dulcie Prothero would have ‘committed suicide’ by jumping overboard.”

“So far so good, Hildegarde. But not good enough. You’ve covered everything except the reason why Adele Mabie is dead in there instead of being behind the bars.”

Miss Withers stood up, walked across the room and back. “You wouldn’t understand, Oscar. But I couldn’t bear to think of a countrywoman of mine standing before a firing squad in a foreign land or spending her days on Mexico’s Devil’s Islands in the Pacific.”

“You mean, after all this, that you sympathized—”

“We had it out, Adele and I. While you were upstairs just now, arranging that little demonstration for me. When the inkwell came tumbling in the window, she knew that I knew. She realized that I had solved her trick of tossing the thing—and the
banderilla
too—down from the balcony above into the open window of my room.”

“But I thought: you said you made an excuse to see if the inkwell was gone from the desk here? And it wasn’t!”

She smiled faintly. “I never thought of looking in the bedroom to see if there was a second desk, which there is. And a second inkwell, which there isn’t. But anyway, when she saw that I knew, the fight went completely out of Adele Mabie. She was just a terrified woman, caught on a trail that led downward so steeply that there was no turning. What I did was the decent thing to do, Oscar. You’ll have to help me cover it up somehow.”

“You don’t mean—”

“I locked her in the bedroom, Oscar. And just before I closed the door I tossed your revolver—with only one cartridge in the chamber—onto the bed.” The schoolteacher was defiant. “She knew what to do with that one cartridge, and you heard her do it!”

The inspector rose slowly to his feet. “You’re a funny woman, Hildegarde. I suppose—oh, we’ll cover you somehow, though de Silva and his chiefs will raise bloody hell.” He held out his hand. “Give me that key.”

He unlocked the bedroom door, opened it, and then closed it firmly behind him. There was a moment of silence, and then the schoolteacher heard his agonized, incredulous yell.

“Hildegarde!”

She was through the door and beside him in a moment, steeling herself for the sight that she must see.

But Adele Mabie did not lie on the floor, a confessed murderer and suicide. Adele Mabie was gone.

Together they stared down at the broken lock of the hall door, a lock smashed under the impact of a heavy 38-caliber slug of lead.

“And as you say, I
heard
her do it!” the inspector muttered.

“O
H, OSCAR!” WAILED MISS
Hildegarde Withers from the utter depths of despair. “How was I to know?”

But he wasn’t listening. He dashed down the stairs, with the schoolteacher close at his heels. At the desk he pounded with his fist, awakened the drowsy night man.

“Did you see a lady go out of here? Which way did she go?”

The man shook his head. “No lady,
señor.
Nobody go out for a long time, not since midnight.” That was more than two hours before.

“Asleep, eh? And of course she sneaked right by you!”

But the Mexican grinned, a very wise grin. “Nobody comes or goes after midnight without I know,
señor.”
He reached behind his chair, took up a great brass key fastened to a stick. “For the door,” he explained happily. “Somebody goes out, they wake me. Somebody comes in, they have to ring and wait.”

The inspector and Miss Withers stared blankly at each other. “Then she’s hiding somewhere in the building, Oscar! Quick, get the police!”

But he shook his head. “No time, Hildegarde.” He was running up the stairs, as he had not run in twenty years. “Dulcie—one witness against the woman …” They rounded a corner. “Adele is probably half crazy now—maybe she’ll try …”

Second, third, fourth floor.

Down the hall, around a corner, then to a half-open door. “I think it’s there,” Piper said.

They both had stopped, waiting, listening. For some reason neither was anxious to explore what lay beyond that narrow oblong of light. Then they heard the voice of Dulcie Prothero.

They stood in the doorway, before them a picture that neither was ever to forget.

There was Dulcie, alive and unhurt, speaking into the telephone. “But isn’t there anybody at the
jefatura
who speaks English?” she was pleading.

There was Adele Mabie, wild with fury, her hair Medusa-like over her eyes and her red lips gray now, drawn back to show the canine teeth. Her dress was torn from her shoulder, her cheek was bruised, and in bitter, furious silence she knelt on the floor, fighting against the grip of a handcuff.

The other link of the cuff was held by Julio Mendez, who leaned weakly against the side of the bed and with his free hand mopped at the blood pouring from a short gash in his forehead.

“Hello!” he greeted them happily, a world of relief in that one word.

Piper went into action, pinioned the woman’s arms neatly and cuffed them behind her. Miss Withers was beside Julio.

“How bad?” Piper demanded.

“It’s nothing,” Julio said. “When she knocked on the door I didn’t see that she had a sliver of glass in her hand—piece of a broken tumbler, I guess. I found out soon enough, though.”

“Look out, Oscar!” gasped Miss Withers.

Adele had lifted her pinioned arms, trying to strike at the inspector’s head with the heavy manacles. He dodged, gave her the elbow in the pit of the stomach so that she rolled back on the bed, gasping and writhing. Dulcie went calmly on telephoning.

“My prisoner, Inspector,” said Julio in a weak voice. “I have had my eye on her all along—and downstairs, I noticed that she was the only one to point to Miss Withers on the floor and cry bloody murder. She expected to find a corpse there!”

“Good work, boy,” Piper said. Then he stopped, frowned. “You talk differently,” he accused. “And where did you get the handcuffs?”

“Yes, Oscar,” Miss Withers put in. “It’s time you knew. Meet Lieutenant Colonel Mendez of the
Securidad Publica.
He’s been playing the part of the Gay Caballero while he investigated this case, but after I accused him of it we had a good laugh and he obligingly helped in some of the arrangements for the evening.”

The inspector’s jaw dropped. “Well—well—so that was why—”

“It was,” Julio said cheerfully. “I started talking that way and then I had to keep in character.” He looked older now, far more serious. “She’s the murderer, of course?” he said, pointing to the captive.

Miss Withers told him everything. “And if it had not been for your somewhat informal call, I’m afraid Dulcie might have been the third victim.”

“What?” Dulcie Prothero gasped, putting down the telephone in the middle of a sentence. She was blushing. “Oh, please! Do you think—why, I dragged the poor boy in here! Look at his head!”

Julio turned, to display a lump like a half orange. “From landing on the tile floor outside when I got knocked down. I can’t stand very well yet, which was why the lady nicked me with the sliver of glass. Dulcie had just brought me to when the knock came.”

Finally the girl at the telephone got through to the proper parties, and the wheels of justice began to move.

“You see,” Julio Mendez explained, “I understand your compunctions, Miss Withers. But I do not share them. I really did go to school with Manuel Robles, which was why I flew up to Villadama to take on the case personally. I was godfather to Manuel Robles’ son,” he added grimly. “So I am happy to see this woman captured; I will be happy to see her stand trial. I don’t care what happens to Mrs. Mabie!”

“I care what happens to
this
one, though,” Miss Withers said, looking down at the tumbled red hair of Dulcie Prothero. “Have you any plans, child?”

Dulcie shook her head.

“One small minutes, please!” Then Julio stopped, shook his head. “There it goes, that damn dialect. But what I mean to say is—she
has
a plan.”

“Oh yes,” she agreed. Dulcie smiled, all over her face. It was the best, the very best and happiest, smile that Miss Withers had ever seen her give. “Of course I have one plan. I’m going to Xochimilco to see the Floating Gardens by moonlight!”

“With
me
!” added Julio. “Don’t forget that.”

Inspector Oscar Piper turned to the schoolteacher. “You know, there must be something in that place. We’ll have to take a trip there before we go back. How far is it?”

Miss Withers was watching the young couple. “What?”

“I said—How far is it to the Floating Gardens?”

“About twenty years, Oscar,” the schoolteacher told him sadly.

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