Puzzle of the Pepper Tree (27 page)

Miss Withers thought it over for a moment. Then she spoke: “You really haven’t lost much, have you? If Kelsey was in jail last night, he couldn’t have killed Mack. Besides, there is no way for him to leave the island before the
Avalon
sails late this afternoon. A lot can happen in an afternoon.”

A lot did happen in an afternoon—that same afternoon. The beginning of it all was when Miss Withers and the inspector, leaving Chief Britt’s office, ran into a strange trio at the entrance to the local drugstore.

Phyllis La Fond, with a new self-confidence in her eyes, walked on the inside. Next to her, pale but smiling, was the young-old man with the gray streaks in his hair, breathing deeply of the air and sunshine. On the outside, carrying a briefcase, was a dapper gentleman whom Miss Withers rightly judged to be the lawyer.

“I’ll introduce you,” she said to Piper, forgetting that he had already met Phyllis via the acid test to her hands in search of powder burns. But that social event was to be postponed.

The trio swung abruptly and entered the drugstore. Miss Withers was nettled. “Whatever! Why should Phyllis act like that? Do you suppose that she blames me for your suspecting her last night, along with all the rest?”

The inspector wasn’t paying any attention. He stood stock-still in the middle of the sidewalk, and the ash from his cigar fell unheeded down his vest.

“What’s come over you?” Miss Withers demanded. “Are you having fits?”

“Yes,” said Oscar Piper. “Fits or worse. Do you happen to know who that man is—the one in the middle who looks as if he’d been through seven hells?”

“I do,” said Miss Withers casually. “I’ve known for some time that he’s Roswell Forrest. But I hoped you wouldn’t.”

“N
O MORE SECRETS,” PLEADED
the inspector. “Come clean with me, woman. If you knew Forrest wasn’t dead, why didn’t you say so? And for the love of heaven, who is the corpse you’ve been chasing all over this island?”

“Come out on the pier and I’ll tell you all,” said Miss Withers amiably. “Or nearly all,” she added under her breath.

They swung their legs from the very end of the smaller of the two piers and watched a fat, half-tame sea lion begging for fish scraps in the water beneath them. Plump, whiskered Charlie had rarely seen two humans more adamant in all his fifteen years as the harbor pet. They sat on the stringpiece for an hour and never once tossed him a morsel.

“Before I tell you anything, I’d like to know why you dropped everything in New York and came out here because you thought that Roswell T. Forrest was dead,” Miss Withers demanded.

“Simple,” said the inspector. “He was—or rather, is—an innocent pawn in a dirty game of chess. He never got a dime of the money that Welch and some of the others took out of the city treasury. But he knew about how it was done. Maybe he should have squealed on his boss. But again, maybe he shouldn’t. Anyway, while Welch, the commissioner, is standing his ground and willing to take whatever is coming to him, some of the others aren’t. Mack was the worse of the lot, a petty racketeer about halfway between a politician and a thug.”

“Which is a bad place to be,” put in Miss Withers.

“Anyway,” went on Piper, “I was sent out here to find out what was what. If Forrest was bumped off to keep him from coming back and testifying—he had a good enough incentive to do it, with his property in jeopardy—then I intended to run down his killers. If he was bumped off for some personal reasons, I had instructions to hush the thing up as far as the Hall was concerned. But now—”

“But now that, by mistake, his bodyguard was killed instead of himself, you’ve lost interest?”

Piper slapped his thigh. “So that’s it!
Kelsey
is the stiff!”

Miss Withers nodded. “Probably he was playing Forrest, to protect his boss, and the employer was pretending to be the bodyguard. It was a smart idea and kept the process servers from getting anywhere. At any rate, I first suspected it when I learned how the man who was killed in the plane hurried in an attempt to catch the boat. He hated planes worse than you do. Yet he took the
Dragonfly
—why? Because he was being paid to be with Forrest. If it had been the other way round, do you suppose Forrest would have tried so hard to be with his bodyguard? They thought they were safe—which is why Kelsey had a night off.”

Piper nodded in agreement. “I should have known by your wire,” she admitted. “You said in your description that Forrest had brown hair and dressed very well. It never occurred to me that trouble and worry could change the hair from brown to gray. So I let that fool me. I should have known that you would know better than to describe an overdressed sport like the dead man as well dressed. Anyway, even after I decided, I said nothing. Because at the time I was sure that Forrest did not kill his own bodyguard. …”

“It wouldn’t be so foolish,” Piper pointed out. “After all, he hired a man who resembled himself slightly. Perhaps he planned to kill him in order to establish his own death and escape the hunt?”

“You’re getting smart,” said Miss Withers. “Anyway, after Forrest had gone to so much trouble to take advantage of the lucky break he had, and to switch identities, it occurred to me as a good idea to let him have all the rope he wanted. So I kept a deep silence.”

“It must have been a great strain on you,” said the inspector unsympathetically.

“It was. He walked into the infirmary that Friday morning and learned that because of those letters in Kelsey’s pocket—letters that the dead man must have picked up at the hotel desk and forgotten to give his employer—he stood a chance of stepping out of his identity. He never hesitated, Oscar. I was there, and it was smooth as silk.”

“That’s clear enough,” the inspector admitted. “But what’s this about Mack’s part in the case—the blue envelope, and all the rest of it? I told you that Mack, who had a reputation of being on the level in his own crooked way, let it be known around town that he’d put up fifteen grand to have Forrest out of the way. Did he come here to pay off without knowing that the murderer he thought doing his own errand was really working for another reason?”

“I have an idea,” said Miss Withers suddenly. “Your questions will be answered in a better way than this. Come back to the chief’s office with me.”

To Chief Britt she outlined her plan, a suggestion of extreme simplicity and charm. “I don’t see what harm it could do,” that worthy admitted. “If you say so. …”

He was completely at the mercy of this busy schoolteacher and had ceased to care. Events were moving too thick and fast for Amos Britt.

“Suppose you set the party for four o’clock,” suggested Piper thoughtfully. “That will prevent any of them from leaving for the mainland until tomorrow.” The chief nodded his agreement.

“I have a few errands to transact,” Miss Withers explained. “I can do them better alone. If you want to be useful, try and find Forrest and the girl, and keep an eye on them.”

The inspector somewhat reluctantly agreed and watched Miss Withers sail off in the direction of the post office. She passed straight through that valuable building, pausing only to notice that the box which she had burgled no longer contained the substitute blue envelope which she had so carefully prepared and stuffed with folded newspaper.

She had the last link but one in her chain. With a feeling of exultation unhindered by the realization that she had committed, or caused to be committed, at least two major crimes in the past few days, and had been an accessory after the fact in another, she set off toward the hotel.

Here she waylaid Roscoe. The ancient bellhop was without power to resist this importuning lady with the authoritative voice and the crisp five-dollar bills. She told him what she wanted him to find, and where he was to find it. Then she made him swear that he would appear faithfully at the appointed time.

With a sense of duty well done, Miss Withers lay down upon her bed and slept for an hour. She was still weakish from Patrick Mack’s none too tender ministrations, and unless she was sadly mistaken she would need all her strength before the day was over.

She awakened at three-thirty, bathed her face, and figuratively girded her loins for conflict, which consisted of putting on her best dress, a navy crepe-de-chine with an ecru lace collar. This gave her a real but unreasonable sense of confidence and power.

She descended the stairs and found the Devings, Kay and Marvin, exulting in the lobby.

“Isn’t it gorgeous?” the young bride demanded. “Haven’t you heard? The police say that they
did
discover powder burns on Mr. Mack’s right hand, and that he killed himself as a confession of the murder of Forrest. And after we all give depositions at Chief Britt’s office we can go!”

“‘Gorgeous’ would be putting it mildly,” agreed Miss Withers. They passed joyously on out into the sunshine, while the aging schoolteacher watched them with a feeling of sadness tugging at her heart.

Roscoe winked at her from the stair landing, and she nodded and strolled slowly out and along the shore. Before she had gone a dozen steps she was hailed by loud hoots upon a motor horn.

She looked up in surprise to see Ralph O. Tate, the moving-picture director, waving at her from the front seat of one of the studio trucks. Beside him were George and Tony, also waving.

“Ride?” they chorused.

She was more than willing to ride, but she refused to answer their excited questions as to the tragedy of last night. “Well, thank God they’re going to close the case and stop hindering me,” said Tate. “That’s why I didn’t mind stopping work this afternoon and coming over when I got the call.”

“I imagine that everyone will be glad when it’s over,” Miss Withers admitted.

They whizzed along the highway, passing the newlyweds in a cloud of dust and drawing up before the curio store with a shock that almost dislodged George and Tony from their perches on the running boards.

They went in together, to find that Ruggles stood sentinel at the door to keep out the idle public and possible inopportune customers for curios. He waved them toward the rear of the store, where counters had been moved aside to make a little clearing among the thousand and one curiosities of the stock.

The three movie men sat down obediently at one end of a row of vacant chairs, but Miss Withers passed triumphantly on into the chief’s office. He looked up with an equal glint of triumph in his eye.

“Will they all be here?” she asked.

“Every mother’s son of ’em.” He laughed. “I had old Ruggles going near crazy for a while, but he ran ’em down,” Britt admitted. “He says he found Tompkins down to the pottery, trying to talk them into giving him an advance on his commissions. Ruggles says the fellow put it over, too, which shows he’s smoother than I figured he was. Ruggles also got hold of the movie fellers and the newlyweds by phone, and Cap Narveson was down on the pier. The others were around, handy.”

“Good,” said Miss Withers. She found herself possessed of a pair of very cold feet. “I wonder if I’m wrong, after all?” she asked herself silently. Then she shook her head. She couldn’t be wrong. This was the only way to trap the killer. She peeked through the door.

The guests were arriving thick and fast. It was five minutes to four, and already most of the chairs were filled. Narveson, freckled and complacent, puffed on his villainous corncob at one end of the row. Next to him sat Dr. O’Rourke and Nurse Smith, evidently reconciled for the moment. Beyond her were the two pilots, Lew French and Chick Madden, quite evidently far from reconciled.

The second row was filling up. Miss Withers saw the newlyweds enter, hand in hand. T. Girard Tompkins propelled his paunch carefully through the aisles and sank gently onto a chair. Last of all was Hinch, manager of the airport, and the man who Miss Withers knew to be Roswell Forrest, still in company with Phyllis.

The inspector showed his face in the doorway and came directly to the back room.

“I think our friend Forrest planned to make a getaway,” he whispered. “He and the girl went down to the dock to see the lawyer off on the
Avalon,
and they looked mighty wistful. But they saw me and changed their minds.”

“That’s odd,” came back Miss Withers. “Because not so long ago Forrest tried to make his getaway in a motorboat simply because he overheard me say that you were coming!”

“Let’s go,” said Britt, getting up from his desk. Miss Withers noticed that his clothes hung loosely upon him, and she realized with something of a shock that the affair had taken toll of others besides herself.

“All right, folks,” Britt was saying. “This is just a little formality. We’re doing it wholesale to save time, so you can all be sure of getting away first thing tomorrow. I’m going to ask questions, and this lady here”—he indicated Miss Withers with a nod—“is going to take down the answers. Then after they’re typed out, you can sign ’em and go.”

There was a rustling in the group, and the chief continued: “I’ll take you in alphabetical order. A—there aren’t any A’s. First on the list is Deving. Mr. Deving, we’ll take you.”

Marvin Deving smoothed back his hair and prepared himself.

“Were you acquainted with Roswell T. Forrest?”

“No.” Miss Withers drew a little circle on a pad of paper.

“Were you acquainted with Patrick Mack?”

Again the answer was in the negative.

Chief Britt glanced at the little list of questions which Miss Withers had given him. He asked half a dozen of them, rapid-fire. They were routine, simply establishing the first notice Deving had taken of the dying man in the plane.

“That will do,” said the chief. Then: “Wait a moment. I want some personal data. What’s your address?”

“Long Beach Y.M.C.A. will reach me,” admitted the bridegroom. “We haven’t picked a house yet.”

Then the chief asked a question which Miss Withers was interested in hearing answered. “When were you two married?”

“At Justice Toole’s office in Long Beach, early Friday morning,” said Marvin Deving.

The chief peered at the young man. “That the first time?”

“Yes, sir, for both of us.”