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

“Maybe you are like Mother. She can lose her glasses without ever leaving her chair.”

“I am not absent-minded,” I said stiffly. “On the contrary, I happen to be a bit proud of never forgetting anything, at least not for long.”

“Really?” murmured Kathleen Adair.

I eyed her sharply. I thought I detected a cynical note in her voice, but I could not see her face. She was fussing about her mother, collecting her shawl, her smelling salts, a magazine, and the other impedimenta with which she seemed always to surround herself.

“If you’re to lie down before lunch, darling, we should be going upstairs, don’t you think?” murmured the girl tenderly.

“Yes, yes, of course, dear.”

Mrs Adair rose to her feet and, clinging to her daughter’s arm, moved toward the elevator. Again I thought it a criminal waste for youth to be bound hand and foot to ailing age. It made no difference that in this instance the girl appeared to be passionately fond of her elderly charge or that the mother plainly adored the daughter.

I have seen too many young lives sacrificed on the altar of devotion not to pity the victims.

I believed this girl in particular deserved better than such a fate. I am subject to strong likes and dislikes, and I do not deny that Kathleen Adair had in some inexplicable manner begun to exercise a tug upon my heartstrings. I remember thinking, though I do not as a rule permit myself to luxuriate in self-pity, that it must be rather wonderful to have a daughter like her.

Unfortunately, at that moment the elevator creaked slowly down from the upper floor in response to Kathleen Adair’s ring, and, as she assisted her mother inside, a small man with mousy brown hair materialized from the telephone booth back of the desk and stepped into the elevator with the Adairs. The door closed, shutting off my view, and the car ascended with whining cables, while I stared after it with a chill playing up and down my spine.

I did not understand, I almost doubted my eyes, yet I knew what I had seen. It was not to be effaced from my mind, then or ever.

That nice child, Kathleen Adair, had stepped between her mother and Mr James Reid as if he were some wild beast who might leap upon his prey and rend it limb from limb, and while he observed the girl in the vaguest way, her eyes blazed back at him as though she would, if she could, have slain him with a glance.

The coffee shop at the Richelieu opens for lunch at twelve o’clock noon. I am generally the first person inside. I do not care for food that has grown soggy on the steam table, and I do not have so many things with which to occupy my time that I need be late for my meals. I was slightly nettled on this occasion to discover a new waitress in charge of my favourite table opposite the lobby door.

If the employees in the hotel proper were not subject to frequent change, the same thing could not be said of the dining room during the past year. It was one of the grudges I had against Sophie Scott’s new husband. He was responsible for doing away with the venerable men-waiters who had served the Coffee Shop for years. Cyril said it was more up to date to have attractive young girls. I thought it a fool idea at the time and I told Sophie so, but, like all women, when she lost her head she lost it completely, and so Cyril Fancher had his way.

I must have been frowning over my thoughts, for the girl who had come over to take my order gave me an apprehensive look.

She was a slight young thing with a soft mouth and timid eyes, pretty in an indecisive way and totally inexperienced as I could see at a glance. That was the trouble with Cyril Fancher’s scheme – his attractive waitresses never lasted. About the time one was well enough broken in to know her job, she left, usually to get married or to have a try at Hollywood – or so I understood.

However, it was not the girl’s fault that Sophie Scott was an idiot, so I smiled at her reassuringly. “And what’s your name, child?” I asked.

She drew a quick breath. I think until then she had been afraid I’d swallow her alive.

“Annie,” she said, “thank you, ma’am.”

“That’s a pleasant change after the Gwendolyns and Franchelles and Imogenes we’ve been having,” I remarked dryly.

She flushed. “It was my mother’s name.” She hesitated and then went on, her chin quivering. “She died last year.”

I reached over and patted her hand, rather awkwardly I’m afraid. “There, there,” I said.

Sympathy was the worst thing I could have offered her. It seemed to break her all up. A tear slid down her cheek, and then another.

“I lost my father, too, the other day,” she whispered.

I know what it is to be left alone in the world and I felt very sorry for the poor young creature, but it is not easy for me to put my gentler emotions into words. I can roar with the best of them but when I want to coo, my throat closes up. I think I was patting the girl’s shoulder and making inarticulate sounds much like an old hen with the croup when Cyril Fancher strutted up to us, his thin fox like face dark with anger.

“What’s going on here?” he demanded. “You were employed, young woman, to wait tables, not to weep on the guests’ shoulders.”

The girl gave him a terrified glance and then scuttled away toward the kitchen. “You needn’t have scared her to death,” I remarked tartly.

He looked me over as if he wished he dared say exactly what he was thinking of me. I shrugged my shoulders. There had never been any love lost between me and Sophie Scott’s new husband, but he knew better than to go too far. I occupy one of the most expensive suites in the house, I pay my bills promptly on the first of every month and, because my family was once prominent, I lend a certain social éclat to the Richelieu which it would regret to lose.

“I was merely trying to prevent your being annoyed, Miss Adams,” he said stiffly. “The first thing a well-trained waitress has to learn is not to use the guests for her ‘True Confessions.’ I assure you, it shan’t happen again.”

He moved rapidly away toward the kitchen, to give that poor child a curtain lecture, I felt sure, staring after his dapper back which was as stiff as a ramrod. He was fifteen years younger than Sophie, but he was not a young man. Somewhere in his middle forties, I should say, and not bad looking in a thin, dark, secretive fashion. That had been my objection to him when he first came.

He talked a great deal about where he had lived and what he had done and this and that. It was only when you were away from him that you realized how few grains of actual information you had gathered from the chaff of Cyril Fancher’s conversation.

He said so little to which he could be pinned down. He was born and reared somewhere in the East. He had been engaged in some kind of business connected with selling stocks and bonds.

He had been married, and his wife had died some years ago. He had come South because of his health. It was not apparent precisely what ailed him, though he spoke of asthma and sinusitis. He set his cap to marry Sophie from the beginning, and there was nothing vague in his courtship. He went about it like a high-powered salesman in a whirlwind campaign.

In my opinion, nothing about the man, including his name, rang true. I warned Sophie that he was an artful dodger if ever I saw one, and of course she told him. I said among other things that he was marrying her for a soft berth in which to lie up the rest of his life. I even came out plainly and told Sophie that, while she was a good businesswoman, she was fat and grey and on to sixty. I believe I went so far as to say that no man would look at her except for her income.

Naturally Mr Cyril Fancher did not feel kindly in my direction, and Sophie herself had been cool to me since her marriage. I suppose every time she looked at me they rankled, the things I had said for her own good. She went to great pains to tell me at every opportunity how happy dear Cyril made her. She said she had never known what happiness was till he came into her life.

My only response was “Humph!” which did not improve matters.

I had known Sophie’s first husband, the man who built the Richelieu, and I wouldn’t have given a hair of Tom Scott’s toupee for a thousand Cyril Fanchers. I felt positive that Tom turned over in his grave every time Sophie looked into Cyril’s romantic dark eyes and murmured, “Dearest Lover.”

The girl Annie came back from the kitchen with my lunch upon a tray. She was inept, and I could see that she was still close to tears, although she said nothing and neither did I. To do so was to bring down upon her head more vials of wrath from Cyril Fancher, and I had no desire to aggravate the child’s troubles. Pretty young girls who earn their living as waitresses have enough problems of their own. It did not surprise me that they were constantly shifting from one place of employment to another, though it was generally out of the frying pan into the fire, so far as I could judge.

People were straggling into the dining room as I sat there. There were always fewer for lunch at the hotel than for dinner. Mary Lawson, looking careworn, nodded as she passed my table, but she did not stop for our usual chat. I pursed my lips. Mary had long been a favourite of mine, a widow, still comely, in her late thirties and, as I had every reason to believe, comfortably well to do.

I thought I knew why Mary was going to obvious trouble to avoid me. She did not want to discuss her young niece with me or with anyone else. She had ordered her lunch before Polly came bounding in, a little breathless and talking very fast to cover up the fact that her tongue was a trifle thick and her eyes slightly bloodshot, pulling out her chair with a hand which I could see was far from steady.

“So sorry,” she cried. “Meant to be here on the dot. Don’t know where time goes.”

Mary sighed, and I saw her glance quickly at Howard Warren and then as quickly away. Howard stared straight before him.

If he was aware of Polly’s entrance, he gave no sign, nor did she acknowledge his presence, although there had been a time after Polly first came to live at the Richelieu when she and Howard had hardly been able to step without each other.

They were, in fact, never apart except during banking and sleeping hours. From his mother Howard had inherited a handsome block of stock in our First National Bank. As soon as he finished Harvard, with honours I should add, he began to work at the First National. He is a clean-cut, well-bred young chap, blond, and highly dependable. At twenty-five he was well on his way to becoming one of the pillars of the community.

I for one did not blame Howard for having, during the past three months, broken off with Polly Lawson, nor, I am sure, did Mary, though naturally she was bitterly disappointed. Without being exactly a prig, Howard was the last man who would allow himself to become seriously involved with a girl who, practically overnight, had begun to drink too much and smoke too much and otherwise behave in the most reckless manner.

“It was such a gorgeous morning for golf,” Polly rattled on to Mary, “and Steve’s so fascinating.”

There was an odd silence as if everyone in the dining room was listening for the next word.

“Steve?” echoed Mary in a tight voice.

“Stephen Lansing,” said Polly loudly, for Howard’s benefit, I dare say.

“But, Polly...” protested Mary, turning quite white.

Polly giggled. “Don’t look so shocked, darling.”

Mary was shocked. So was I for that matter, and I saw Howard’s hand clench on the edge of his table.

“I didn’t know you had met Mr-er-Lansing,” said Mary slowly, almost painfully.

Again Polly laughed, a trill of mocking laughter that for some reason hurt my ears. “We haven’t been properly introduced,” she said flippantly. “I’m afraid Mr-er-Lansing picked me up in the lobby. He’s clever about that sort of thing.”

“So I’ve heard,” said Mary, looking a little ill.

So we had all heard and seen with our own eyes. In spite of her recent outrageous behaviour, I had expected better of Polly. After all, she comes of the best stock. Instead of being ashamed, however, she was boasting about something that I for one felt unable to forgive, and a glance at Howard’s set face informed me that I was not alone in my reaction.

Mr Stephen Lansing had at that time been among us off and on for something over three weeks, and from the day he entered the Richelieu he had stirred up one hornet’s nest after another. He was a traveling salesman for a well-known line of cosmetics in Chicago. He travelled in his own car, a flamboyant scarlet model that glittered with chromium gadgets and burst on the vision like a blast of trumpets.

It had twelve cylinders and all the latest streamlined effects. Mr Stephen Lansing was himself streamlined, being very tall and extremely broad shouldered and almost fantastically narrow as to waist and hips. He had blue-black hair and very white teeth which he showed at every opportunity in an impudent smile. His lazy, insolent grey eyes possessed what in my day was called plenty of come hither, the something people now refer to as sex appeal, I believe.

At any rate, Mr Stephen Lansing was undoubtedly what is known as a ladies’ man. He had only to walk through the lobby to make every woman there stare after him, a fact which was no secret to the gentleman. He knew perfectly well that he unsettled the feminine pulse. It seemed to be his chief stock in trade. What time he was not rushing off to various small towns in the vicinity to demonstrate cosmetics, he made his headquarters at the Richelieu and occupied himself by making a fool of every female who gave him an opening.

His specialty apparently was to pick up a woman on one pretext or another, rush her madly for a day or so, and then drop her slap-bang while he dashed on to his next conquest. We of the old guard had derived considerable diversion from observing the course of Mr Lansing’s hectic flirtations, to call them by no worse name. I need not say that none of us had ever spoken to the man.

At that time I never expected to. If anyone had told me then that I should eventually be discovered in the pitch-blackness of the Richelieu basement, clinging about Mr Stephen Lansing’s neck with both arms... However, that comes later.

So long as the gentleman confined his activities to outsiders none of us was disposed to resent the matter. In a hotel there are always a few women who are no better than they should be. Our group simply looks through them when we meet. We may discuss their affairs among ourselves; we seldom even pass the time of day with the person in question.