Death from a Top Hat (25 page)

“If Rappourt left the hotel,” Gavigan asked, not quite convinced, but weakening, “and took a three-block side excursion for the purpose of killing Sabbat, who is responsible for the manifestations that occurred during her absence? Her Indian control. Chief Rain-Water, or whoever she uses?”

“Watrous could have covered for her there, and he could also have thrown the bolt the next evening when he went to Sabbat’s kitchen for a glass of water—for her, too, you notice.”

“But why—oh, hell! I never saw such a mess.” Gavigan’s blue eyes twinkled, but the sparks that flew were fiery and hot. “Every time I draw a breath this case does a lightning change act and turns up wearing a set of false whiskers and a putty nose. Last night we were stymied because, at one time, though we had four possible outs from this room, all the suspects were alibied for one murder or the other. And now, after we’ve eliminated all four methods, you throw cold water on a fifth one and then blow holes in every single alibi! Who told you that was any way to solve a murder case?” Gavigan gave a good imitation of a dark thundercloud about to unleash crashing jolts of atomic force. He growled stubbornly, “I still think Jones did it.”

Grimm echoed somewhat less emphatically, like a second carbon, “And so do I.”

“And
you
can’t prove he didn’t,” Gavigan scowled and then, in his best cross-examining voice, argued, “Another thing, Harte was a bit hasty when he threw out some of those alibis—and you know it.” He poked a thick forefinger at Merlini. “Why are you trying to cover up for Jones?”

“I’m not trying to cover up for anyone. I only know that you don’t have a case against Jones—and—” Merlini spoke seriously and straight at Gavigan, “the person who murdered those two men isn’t the sort who is going to cry ‘Kamerad’ as soon as a police inspector speaks harshly to him. Someone has planned this thing so carefully and so cold-bloodedly that it’s a bit frightening. Particularly since we don’t know the motive nor who else it includes. You aren’t going to make this murderer cry ‘Nuff!’ until you have a nice near airtight case, and don’t forget it.”

Gavigan stuck out his chin. “Are you trying to tell me how to investigate this case?”

“No,” Merlini said, “but if you were to ask me nicely, I might.”

Hoping that it would break the tension, I introduced a question. “What,” I asked, “is all this loose talk about my being hasty?”

Gavigan answered, still scowling at Merlini, “If the murder took place just after Tarot’s arrival, before the snowfall, then both the LaClaires do have an alibi. They were in the squad car en route from Sabbat’s to La Rumba. And Duvallo was explaining his string hocus-pocus to us at Sabbat’s. Judy’s alibi is uncorroborated, and Watrous and Rappourt didn’t have any. Ching Wong Fu and Jones say they were together at his apartment,
but
…if Ching is lying, or perhaps is mistaken about the time Jones left by twenty minutes or more, then we have one possible way of explaining how one of our suspects could have accomplished both murders.”

“Ching didn’t happen to inform you last night, did he, Inspector, that the latter half of his act consists of a very able ventriloquial routine? And did you notice the vent dummy downstairs on the table? Duvallo began as a ventriloquist at Coney Island. And Tarot was tops at it. It’s merely a special type of magic—auditory conjuring, and many magicians fool around with it.”

“So what? Jones was the guy outside the door, wasn’t he? Don’t tell me Ching can throw his voice twenty blocks, or that Duvallo can throw his a mile. And if you so much as hint that it was Tarot’s ghost throwing his voice from the astral sphere…” Gavigan snorted, made up his mind, and went determinedly toward the phone again. “I’m going to put Jones through the mill.”

“And,” Merlini said, talking fast, “just how does that theory explain the baffling presence of the unused ladder? Can you tell us, then, why Jones remained, as he must have, in Sabbat’s apartment with his victim for sixteen hours? Why did he leave Duvallo’s card with Tarot’s writing on it under the body? Why did Rappourt think there was death in that room? Why did Tarot avoid being fingerprinted? Why did he come to Duvallo’s; why was he disguised, and why—oh why, as I’ve insisted before, did he have to vanish from that taxi so spectacularly? And do you think that Jones is so dumb he’d try to create an alibi using ventriloquism, when it’s common knowledge that that is his profession?”

The first few questions slowed Gavigan’s phoneward progress, and the rest brought him to a halt. His eyes, on Merlini, suddenly had in them a new spark of interest.

“You sound as if you had an idea. Suppose you get it off your chest. If Jones didn’t do it, then we have to explain how Watrous, Rappourt, or Duvallo could have worked the voices. Even at that, we’re right back where we started, and there must be a sixth way out of this room.”

Merlini sat very still, and his face had a ventriloquial calm as he said:

“There is!”

¹
Confessions of a Ghost-Hunter,
Putnam, 1936.

T
HE
I
NSPECTOR EXPELLED A
fervent “Oh, my God!” and subsided weakly into an armchair. He sat there quietly, looking as if he had at least decided that it might be a good idea to allow Merlini’s conversational flow an unobstructed channel. Merlini, sensing this attitude, took immediate and full advantage of it. He deliberately recited another limerick. The smoothness of his delivery, however, made me suspect that it was one he had previously composed and carefully hoarded against the proper moment.

There was a sealed room hereabout, Locked ever so tight, without doubt;

But a young man named Beazle

Contracted a measle,

And escaped, by just breaking out.

Gavigan, like a momentarily quiescent volcano, waited. Merlini lay, rather than sat, in his chair, his long legs trailing.

“And that,” he went on, “might be a seventh method, except that none of our suspects exhibit the proper symptoms. But escape method No. 6 is, in several respects, positively alluring. It explains not only the Mystery of the Impossible Voices
and
the Perplexing Puzzle of the Absent Footprints, but also that Irritating Enigma of the Open Window and the Unused Ladder!”

The rest of us sat up and took notice.

“I don’t understand why it hasn’t occurred to Watson—er—I mean Harte, here, before now. The device has been used so often in detective fiction that, fully ten years ago, S. S. Van Dine, in one of his critiques, voted to outlaw it as a cliché. But perhaps Oscar Wilde’s dictum that Life imitates Art has a corollary stating that Crime imitates the Detective Story.

“Suppose that the murder did take place earlier than first appeared. Suppose that it took place, as you suggested a moment ago, sometime between Tarot’s arrival here and the beginning of the snow. And the killer vanished not by the ladder but by simply walking out through that door and away from the house just before Grimm showed up.”

“All right. That’s substantially what I said Jones did. And I might as well admit that Doc Hesse’s report hinted that he wasn’t quite satisfied with 10:35 as the time of death. He said that although the low temperature of the room, the muscularly well-developed physique of Tarot, and the fact that death was due to asphyxia all made an early onset of rigor mortis likely, on the other hand rigor was rather more complete and the body temperature had fallen further than he would have expected. Go on.”

Merlini smiled, his dark eyes sparkling. “We next consider the Useless Ladder. It had a purpose in the murder scheme, a very definite one, but it was accidentally distorted, and that’s where we got into trouble. The ladder was there, not to aid the murderer in his escape, but to aid the police in escaping from the otherwise impossible situation which this room would present. We were supposed to think that the murderer left by the window. However, this carefully laid—”

“But,” Grimm objected, “it
didn’t
look as if the murderer had just gone down that ladder. The snow proved that no one could possibly have—”

“As I started to say,” Merlini cut in, “this carefully laid red herring didn’t hatch out. The Weather Bureau double-crossed the murderer when its Delphic pronouncement for Monday failed to mention snow. The snow cancelled out the ladder; and when we try to fit it, as a factor, into our equation we put ourselves out on a limb. We run smack into the very impossible situation our master mind wanted us to avoid. I rather think that snow has worried him a bit.”

“He’s got a lot more worry ahead of him, if I’ve got anything to say about it,” Gavigan hinted darkly. “But why all the trouble to
avoid
presenting us with an impossibility? It’s hardly consistent with the rest of his actions.”

“And if it hadn’t snowed?” Merlini answered. “Grimm would have heard the voices, broken in, and found what he did find. Everyone would assume that the murderer left by the window, and no one would suspect that the crime might have been committed earlier.”

“And the voices?”

Merlini looked at Grimm. “It has already been suggested,” he said, “that this room is haunted.”

Gavigan’s sigh was resigned, but there was hope in his eyes.

“That theory might bear investigation, because it’s just possible that Grimm, Jones & Company did, in a way, hear ghosts.” Merlini watched the smoke curling up from his cigarette to fuse with the blue haze around his head. He looked quickly at us and went on, the barest hint of a smile showing on his mouth. “Not the voices of ghosts,—but the ghosts of voices, spectral sound waves, conversation from behind the Beyond. There’s a chapter tide in that for you, Harte:
The Garrulous Ghosts,
or perhaps,
The Leprechaun Speaks
.
Poltergeist Patter
is good, too, though perhaps a bit esoteric, and—”

Gavigan, lying back with his eyes closed, stirred uneasily and spoke to Malloy. “Send someone over to the station house for a rubber hose. We’ve got to make him talk so it means something.”

“But, Inspector,” Merlini protested. “Use your imagination. If the murderer wasn’t in the room, and if Tarot was already dead when Grimm heard the voices…and if ventriloquism is left out of it for the moment—Well, what other means of faking voices are there?”

Then at last I tackled an idea as it went past and threw it. “I get it,” I said. “The long-whiskered device of the phonograph recording, set and timed to spout at the proper moment. No detective story is complete without it! But, I’m damned if I can see—”

The Inspector pulled himself to his feet. “Yeah,” he blurted. “There are several things I don’t see, but…but…Malloy! Grimm! That’s your cue. Take this place apart and locate a gadget that could have produced those voices.

Grimm looked around uncertainly and frowned. Malloy took his hands slowly from his pockets and started to shed his coat.

Gavigan regarded Merlini and added, a bit wistfully:

“It seems to explain a helluva lot, but I do wish it didn’t sound so blamed much like a pulp-writer’s pipe dream. Are you
sure
you haven’t read too damned many detective thrillers?”

“What choice have you, Inspector? A murderer that floats in midair? That’s a damned sight more far fetched. Even a detective story fan wouldn’t swallow that one. He’d send the author poisoned chocolates in the next mail. Besides, what if I have read too many detective stories? Perhaps the murderer has too.”

“You’ve got this phonograph business a little too pat. You know where it is. Come on, fess up.”

“I wish to high heaven I did knew. I haven’t the faintest notion. But Grimm and Malloy should be able—is that the right time?”

He pointed at the clock which Grimm was investigating, holding it gingerly as if it might explode at any moment. Grimm mumbled in what would have been his beard if he had had one, “There’s got to be a time arrangement of some sort, but this seems to be on the up and up.”

The hands of the clock pointed to 11:50.

“Come on, Inspector,” Merlini said, getting up and reaching for his coat. “Let’s knock off for lunch. I knew something was wrong. I need food. There’s a place up on 49th Street that has really scrumptious Smorgasbord.”

“Oh, no you don’t, my fine feathered friend,” Gavigan insisted. “We’ve going to find that phonograph.”

“I wish you luck,” Merlini said. He picked up my hat and scaled it at me. “Come on, Harte, and while we’re eating, I’ll explain a few ideas I’ve got about that alibi list of yours.” He started for the door.

“Hey, wait a minute,” Gavigan protested. “If you must act like one of those amateur detectives who are always stopping in the middle of an investigation to take in a symphony or go water their orchids—Malloy!” They held a hasty conference and then Gavigan came after us.

“That last crack, Inspector,” Merlini objected, “was the unkindest cut of all. I’m no amateur criminologist, merely a professional conjurer.”

“I suppose you think that’s preferable,” Gavigan snorted, pulling on his coat.

As he went out into the hall Merlini called back at Malloy, “You might search out here for that phonograph, too, you know.”

The Inspector looked at him as if he were a two-headed calf. He almost spluttered. “Do you—are you—you’re not suggesting a phonograph record with a ventriloquial recording on it!”

“What’s the matter with that? I’ve read about crazier notions.”

“Shows the sort of tripe you read!” The Inspector stomped out the door, and as he went down the steps he muttered, “My idea of a congenial non-official investigator is a deaf-and-dumb mute.”

The Inspector’s car pulled up before Merlini’s restaurant in 49th Street, and we climbed out.

Merlini pointed. “Look, Inspector. Tarot’s hotel is just down there. You know, I could still my hunger pangs for fifteen minutes if you’d take us up for a look at his rooms.”

“Smorgasbord, my eye!” Gavigan said. “I thought that’s why you picked this restaurant. All right. Come on. I’ve been wanting to do that myself.”

The apartment consisted of a living room, bedroom, and bath. It was like many another hotel apartment, Tarot’s individuality having been impressed on it but little, though his profession was more or less in evidence. There were at least a dozen decks of playing cards lying about, and on one table several decks lay scattered in a jumbled heap. A queen of hearts looked down at us with her wide eyed stare from a curious position, resting quietly on the ceiling.