Murder a la Richelieu (American Queens of Crime Book 2) (6 page)

Ten minutes later he and Polly Lawson left the hotel together.

I was still stationed at the front door when they went out.

“Do you stand an hour after dinner, Miss Adams, to preserve the figure?” he asked with a return to his usual impudence.

“Young man,” I said severely, “it’s been all of twenty years since I’ve had a figure worth preserving.”

Not until he laughed did I realize that he had provoked me into speaking to him before a lobby full of people. “The graceless young scamp!” I muttered as he and Polly went on out.

Lottie Mosby must have been hanging around on his account, for as soon as he left she went over to the elevator and pushed the bell impatiently. She acted as if she wanted to ring it off the wall. Her husband was sitting back by the telephone booth apparently reading the evening paper, though I saw him watching her from behind it.

As I noted by the indicator, the elevator was stopped on my floor. It came down at last in its jerky manner, making no pauses on the way, and Howard Warren stepped out. His room is on the third. I wondered what he had been doing on the fourth floor. I thought he seemed out of breath as he hurried up to me.

“How’s for taking in a movie, Miss Adelaide?” he asked.

I glanced at him in surprise. Howard is not a movie fan, neither am I, and as long as he had lived in the hotel Howard had never invited me to go places with him before. Not that I had expected him to. I liked the boy all right. I suppose he felt much the same toward me, but Howard and I had never been, in any sense of the word, boon companions. My sceptical glance appeared to disconcert him.

“I picked up some easy money on the seventh at Latonia this afternoon,” he explained, “and I feel a celebration coming on.”

Now it was utterly unlike Howard to play the races or do anything else foolish, and I had been fond of his mother. My face must have expressed my disapproval, for he tried to laugh the matter off.

“Plugging along, everlastingly on the job, never gets you anywhere,” he said bitterly.

So that was it, I thought. Polly’s scandalous behaviour had backfired on Howard. He looked very young and very unhappy and disillusioned.

In such a frame of mind people have been guilty of reckless acts which they regret the rest of their lives. I am not one to shirk my duty and I myself in a similar mood had once done something I have never ceased to regret.

“All right, Howard,” I said. “The Palace it is, as soon as I get my wrap.”

He clutched my arm. “It isn’t cold out, and I have my car.”

Behind the desk Pinkney Dodge had reached up and produced the key to my suite. Howard glanced at him angrily.

“This place is full of eavesdroppers,” he said.

Pinkney looked squelched. “I didn’t mean to offend,” he faltered.

“I just thought if Miss Adelaide was going upstairs for a wrap, she’d want her key.”

“I do,” I snapped, taking it from him. “Thanks, Pinky. Howard is not quite himself tonight, I fear.”

Howard shrugged his shoulders and rang for the elevator. Like Lottie Mosby, he acted as if he wanted to tear the bell off the wall.

I glanced toward the telephone booth. Young Mosby had disappeared.

It was exactly five minutes of eight, and the lobby was empty except for ourselves.

“I still think you won’t need a coat,” persisted Howard.

I was prepared to sit through a tiresome evening for the good of his soul, if necessary, but not to risk a needless attack of arthritis.

“Please let me be the judge of that,” I snapped.

Sophie Scott went up in the elevator with me. “Have you seen Mr Fancher, Clarence?” she asked.

Clarence was extremely diplomatic. “Yes 'm,” he admitted, looking unhappy. “I seen him a while ago on fourth, dodging around.”

Sophie’s face was all at once as yellow as her dress. “On fourth!” she exclaimed. The proprietor’s suite is on the fifth floor. “What was he doing on fourth, and what do you mean dodging around?”

Clarence squirmed. “He was just sort of acting like he didn’t want to be seen,” he said.

“Ridiculous!” expostulated Sophie, but her nostrils quivered.

I am positive she had the same thought I did, the Anthony woman in Room 409! However, she would have died rather than admit it to me, poor old Sophie. I left her in the car when I got off on four. I had no doubt but that she would cross-examine Clarence the moment my back was turned.

To my annoyance the light was not on in the back corridor. Once around the corner from the shaded globe opposite the elevator, the hall was very dark. I am not as a rule nervous. Nevertheless, I felt uneasy that night. I remember shivering and telling myself that someone had walked over my grave.

I made up my mind to call the desk as soon as I reached my room and give Pinky Dodge a piece of my tongue for the management’s carelessness in failing to put on the dome light in the rear corridor. I had, I recollect, considerable difficulty in locating the keyhole to my door and again I was conscious of an eerie sensation, as if a dank wind had blown down my neck. It did not help my temper on entering my bedroom to discover that the switch at the side of the door merely clicked when I pressed it.

“A fuse has blown,” I muttered irritably. “Of all the nuisances!” Not for the first time I thanked my stars that the floor sockets in my sitting room were on a different circuit from that which controls the switches. Having occupied the suite for years, I could find my way in the dark, although it was pitch-black, the window shades still being lowered.

I progressed somewhat gropingly through the door into the other room, making for the lamp on the end table by the couch. I remember moving cautiously because I did not want to come up against the sharp edge of anything. I had a feeling that the table was farther away than it should be. Then my hands encountered something and I stopped dead still, my body turning to ice.

I had touched a man’s arm. I could feel the rough material of his coat sleeve. For a second I was paralised and as I stood there, my throat closed with panic, an object swung gently against my face. It was a man’s shoulder! At the same moment I became aware of a sound, of a slow steady dropping as of water. But it was not water, for my hands were sticky with it, horribly sticky.

To this day I do not know how I located the chain on the table lamp or how I found the strength to pull it. It seemed to me I lived years with the dreadful lashing of my heart before the light came on and I looked up from my blood stained hands into the pallid grinning face of Mr James Reid, of New Orleans, hanging above me from the cross arm of the chandelier with his throat cut from ear to ear.

I have always prided myself on being equal to the emergency. Nevertheless, after I made the horrible discovery in my sitting room, my senses ceased to function for several minutes. I must have put out the table lamp to hide the sight of that hideous grinning face, although I have never remembered doing so. Nor do I know yet how I got the door open and myself out into the corridor again. Not for some time did I realize that it was I who was screaming dreadfully.

“Stop it! Pull yourself together!” I was commanded by a brusque voice.

I came to enough to know that Mr Stephen Lansing was shaking me with a great deal of violence, but I could only stare vacantly up into his face, which was faintly illuminated by the glow from an open door down the hall.

“For heaven’s sake, Miss Adams,” he asked more gently, “what has happened?”

All over the floor other doors were flying open and people were crying out excitedly. It was then I became aware that the bloodcurdling shrieks which were alarming the house had their origin in my mouth. I promptly shut it, though I had to clench my teeth.

“That’s better,” murmured Stephen Lansing soothingly, as if I were a feeble-minded child.

It is queer what irrelevant things will pop into one’s mind at such times. “I thought you’d gone out with Polly Lawson,” I remarked in an accusing voice.

It seemed to me he changed colour. “I came back,” he snapped.

“If you must know everything, even at a time like this, I forgot something.”

He glanced beyond me to where Kathleen Adair was staring at him from the doorway of her room and, flushing again, he went on crossly, “Would you mind telling me what the fuss is all about, Miss Adams? Did you think you saw a mouse?”

He grinned provokingly, and I took a deep breath. My wits were recovering from their paralysis. I drew myself up to my full height, which is considerable.

“I am not a woman to have hysterics over a trifle,” I announced not only to him but also to the crowd which was rapidly collecting about us. “There is a man in my room.”

“Incredible!” cried Stephen Lansing. “Surely you didn’t let him get away from you?”

“Your levity is misdirected,” I said frigidly. “The man is dead.”

“Dead!” gasped someone behind me.

I nodded, and my voice rose a little. “He is hanging to my chandelier with his throat cut from ear to ear. Murdered!”

“Murdered!” wailed little Mrs Adair. “Oh dear!”

“Who?” asked Stephen Lansing quickly.

“He’s on the register as Mr James Reid from New Orleans,” I said, compressing my lips.

“Oh dear!” wailed Mrs Adair again.

Her daughter caught her as she crumpled to the floor.

“She’s fainted!” cried the girl. “Oh, Mother!”

“Let me,” said Stephen Lansing. “She’s too heavy for you.”

Her eyes defied him. “I can manage alone.”

He paid no attention. Although she continued to glare at him rebelliously, he carried the frail, limp body of her mother into their room and laid her on the bed.

Cyril Fancher came running down the hall. “What in heaven’s name is the matter?” he demanded, looking at me as though he felt sure, whatever it was, I was to blame.

“One of your guests has got himself murdered in my sitting room,” I said bitterly.

For a moment I thought he, too, would faint. Behind him Clarence, the elevator boy, gave a squeak like a rat in a trap, and at the bend in the corridor I heard Lottie Mosby’s shrill voice.

“Dan, Dan, where are you?” she was calling frantically.

“Get Sophie,” Cyril Fancher told Clarence weakly. “And hurry.”

I shrugged my shoulders. Sophie’s new husband might be a romantic lover but he was no rock on which to lean in adversity. I have never seen anyone deflate so rapidly.

“Sophie will know what to do,” he said, mopping his brow and giving me a very unhappy look.

“Let’s hope so,” I remarked dryly.

The Anthony woman, who was standing on the threshold of her room, looked me over venomously.

“There are easier ways of getting rid of the boyfriend than murder,” she observed. “You should exercise more self-control, Miss Adams.”

Ella Trotter, panting a little, was just coming down the hall. “If you are insinuating that Adelaide had anything to do with killing that – whoever’s been killed – you belong in a straitjacket!” she cried.

Hilda Anthony laughed cynically. “Is that so?”

I am not a clinging woman, but I felt grateful for the arm Ella put about me. The corridor light came on suddenly, making us all blink. I had left my door ajar behind me, and we could see that ghastly figure swaying gently in the draft from the window.

“Good God!” cried Cyril Fancher, stepping across the threshold and then stopping abruptly, his hand flung up in front of his eyes.

“No one ought to go in there till the police come,” said Stephen Lansing, returning from the Adair room where Kathleen had slammed the door behind him. “Don’t they always tell you not to touch anything?”

Cyril Fancher backed out into the hall, beads of sweat on his upper lip. “Yes, that’s right,” he said feebly, glad of an excuse to escape, I thought.

Sophie, looking like a squat homely tower of strength, came puffing around the bend in the hall. “The police will be here in five minutes,” she said crisply, as though murder were part of her daily regime. “Everybody go down to the parlour and wait for them.”

“I knew you’d know what to do, love,” murmured Cyril Fancher gratefully.

“What do you mean, wait for the police in the parlour?” demanded Dan Mosby truculently.

I could not remember when he had joined our group. He had evidently had another drink. His eyes were bloodshot.

Sophie, absently patting Cyril’s hand, nodded. “The police want all of you to wait in the parlour,” she repeated. “At least, till further orders.”

“Why should the police be ordering us around?” protested Dan Mosby. “My wife and I are going to a movie.”

“I think not,” said Sophie.

Down the street we heard the thin eerie scream of a police siren coming nearer and nearer. Lottie Mosby clutched at her husband’s arm and began to tremble from head to foot, and again I was reminded of a poor bedraggled little moth with singed wings.

“It isn’t as if either my wife or I knew this bird or ever spoke to him,” exclaimed Dan Mosby angrily.

“Is that so?” drawled Hilda Anthony again.

Her yellow eyes mocked him, and the little shivering figure, clinging to his arm, sobbed once – quite loudly – before she pressed the knuckles of her clenched hand against her lips.

“So far as that goes, none of us knew him,” muttered Howard Warren.

I wondered how long he had been standing there in the shadow at the turn of the corridor. He met my eyes and glanced quickly away, flushing darkly.

“Somebody knew him well enough to slit his throat,” Stephen Lansing reminded us brutally.

“Couldn’t it have been suicide?” stammered Mary Lawson.

It occurred to me that, being on the same floor, Mary must have been one of the first on the scene, although until she spoke I had not noticed her.

Stephen Lansing shrugged his shoulders and said, “If he killed himself, he must have eaten the weapon.”

“Why was the corridor light off?” I demanded of Sophie Scott.

“No wonder, with such carelessness, crime is rampant in the house.”

“I wouldn’t call one murder in twenty years a crime wave,” she answered tartly.

“Give it time,” I replied with more truth than I knew.

“I suppose the fuse is out,” said Sophie.