Murder a la Richelieu (American Queens of Crime Book 2) (7 page)

I shook my head. “All the other lights on the floor were on, it seems, except this one in the hall and the ones in my suite.” I shuddered.

“I can understand why my chandelier might not work, but I can’t figure what ailed the corridor light. It’s all right now.”

“The bulb was loose,” volunteered Pinkney Dodge. “I got up on a chair and tightened it.”

Stephen Lansing frowned. “You shouldn’t have done that. There may have been fingerprints.”

Pinky went white. “You mean the-the murderer deliberately unscrewed it? I-I never thought I might be-be destroying evidence. I was only trying to help.”

Sophie gave him a scathing look. “You’d be more help on the job, it seems to me. Who’s looking after the switchboard while you stand around, gaping at things that don’t concern you?” Turning red, Pinky beat an ignominious retreat. “And tell Clarence to stick with that elevator and stop acting like a chicken with its head cut off!” Sophie bawled after him.

She turned to her husband, who was still white about the gills. “The rest of you go on down to the parlour. You guard this room, Cyril. Let no one in till the police come.”

“I?” gasped Cyril Fancher. “But, love, I...”

He was saved from what he plainly considered an intolerable task by the arrival of the police. They came, two strong, in blue uniforms and brass buttons, with revolvers on their hips, their faces stern and inimical. And between them, firmly held by either arm, her cheeks as red as fire, marched Polly Lawson.

“Polly!” cried Mary weakly. “What on earth?”

Polly made a little grimace, although her lips were trembling. “I’m under arrest, Auntie, all but the handcuffs. Isn’t that funny?” She tried to laugh, but she could not quite make it, and behind me Howard groaned and then stepped quickly forward.

“What kind of farce are you staging?” he demanded. “You can’t think that Miss Lawson had anything to do with this hideous affair.”

The first policeman shrugged his shoulders. “We’re just cops, mister. We ain’t hired to think. The chief of the homicide squad will be along in a few minutes. He’s the guy who does the brainwork. All that’s expected of us is to line up the suspects. The inspector will take you apart himself and see what makes you tick.”

“Suspects!” snorted Ella. “Of all the tommyrot!”

“Yes ’m,” murmured the second policeman in a bored voice.

“You watch the stiff, Sweeney,” said his companion wearily.

“Don’t let nobody touch nothing in that suite. I’ll round up the rest of the crowd in the parlour. Tell the inspector I and they will be there when he wants them.”

“You can’t do that,” protested Dan Mosby. “My wife and I don’t even know the dead man’s name.”

“On your way, buddy,” said the officer. “You too, lady,” he added to Ella, who snorted again.

He had not relinquished his hold on Polly’s arm. Howard deliberately planted himself in the way, his face dark with anger.

“I insist you turn that young lady loose,” he said fiercely. “She cannot possibly, even in your dumb minds, be associated with this.”

“Oh yeah?” murmured the cop. “I may be dumb, mister, but not dumb enough maybe.” He grinned sardonically. “Your girlfriend may not have no connection with this murder, but just the same the inspector will want to ask her lots a questions.”

“Questions?” repeated Howard with a scowl.

The officer grinned again. “About how come we caught her, when we drove up, trying to get away down the alley with a bloody knife.”

There was a terrible silence in which none of us seemed able to move or speak.

The officer produced something from his pocket, wrapped in a stained handkerchief. “Ever see this before?” he asked.

Howard’s face set like marble, I smothered a groan, and behind me Mary Lawson gasped as if the breath had been knocked out of her. Polly flashed her a tremulous smile.

“Naturally they’ve all seen it,” she said, trying again to laugh and failing miserably. “It’s the ivory-handled paper knife from Aunt Mary’s desk set. Tell them, darling, how it was stolen from our sitting room sometime this afternoon.”

With a face so ghastly I shuddered, Mary Lawson tried to speak, only no sound came from her colourless lips, no sound at all.

“Oh yeah?” murmured the policeman again.

I have said the parlour at the Richelieu was a dismal place. It was, even before that April night when the police herded us in like bewildered cattle among the heavy black-walnut sofas and chairs with their dingy green velour covers to match the dark-green carpet.

The policeman who had brought us downstairs was soon joined by the one called Sweeney. It appeared that the inspector had arrived and taken charge of my suite and its gruesome occupant.

Sweeney and his companion, Hankins, contented themselves with seeing that we all stayed put with no opportunity for private conversation.

Not that any of us felt up to talking very much, although we did tend to drift into groups with some attempt at speech in careful undertones.

“Just take it easy, folks, and no whispering,” advised one or the other policeman occasionally. “The inspector will want to be in on conferences, if any.”

“How long does he expect us to stay cooped up here like-like geese in a pen?” demanded Dan Mosby furiously.

The officer shrugged his shoulders. “The inspector’s busy. Fingerprints, flashlight pictures, all that.”

“I suppose this is the police’s idea of being clever,” said Howard hotly. “Part of the third degree, leaving us to stew in our own juice till he gets good and ready to put on his act.”

Stephen Lansing smiled. “We might as well make the best of it since here we are,” he said and strolled over to where Kathleen Adair was hovering solicitously above her mother’s chair.

The girl turned her back on him. “My mother isn’t well,” she told the first policeman. “She should be in bed.”

“I’m all right, darling,” murmured Mrs Adair, though she looked terrible.

Mary Lawson put her hand on her niece’s shoulder. “Someone must have stolen the knife,” she faltered.

“Oh sure,” said Polly with a bright unsteady smile.

Howard cleared his throat nervously. “Of course, someone stole the knife,” he said.

Hilda Anthony smiled unpleasantly. “Naturally! Even an amateur murderess is too smart these days to be caught red handed with the deadly weapon.”

Polly glanced down at her small chubby hands and shivered convulsively. Wincing, Howard moved closer to her and glared at the Anthony woman. Ella Trotter clutched at my sleeve.

“There-there are stains on Polly’s palm,” she whispered in a faint voice.

I gulped and nodded. Neither of us could bear to look at Mary, who stood over by the window, staring blindly at the dark office building next door, her fingers twisting and turning over each other as if it were her hands that bore that terrible stain.

“It seems to me we should be on the scene, Sophie, looking after things,” murmured Cyril Fancher, plucking at his underlip.

“No telling what’s happening to the hotel.”

Sophie sighed. “The police have their own ideas, love,” she said soothingly. “We ought to thank goodness they were willing to let Pinky and Clarence carry on as usual.”

Stephen Lansing stooped and picked up something off the floor. “You dropped your bracelet, Mrs Adair,” he murmured.

The Adair girl pushed his hand away with a swift angry gesture. “That isn’t Mother’s,” she said.

“It’s mine!” cried Ella Trotter in a startled voice.

Stephen Lansing came across the room, dangling the glittering bauble on his middle finger. “It’s a good thing I heard it click when it hit the floor,” he said. “Someone might have stepped on it.”

“But I haven’t had the bracelet on in weeks,” protested Ella.

“It’s in my jewellery box – or I’d have sworn it was.”

“Nonsense!” I said irritably. “Your memory is never reliable, Ella, except at the bridge table.”

“Says you,” snapped Ella, who has a regrettable weakness for what she calls smart cracks.

“My head aches,” wailed Lottie Mosby suddenly. “I think I’m going to be ill. Oh, Dan!” She caught at his hand, and he put his arm about her.

His eyes were still bloodshot, but he looked sober, soberer than I had seen him in months. “Steady, honey,” he said quite tenderly. “It’s a rotten shame, but I’ll take care of you. Don’t you worry.”

“Oh, Dan!” she wailed again, staring up at him as if she had had a glimpse of Paradise Lost.

Stephen Lansing offered the Anthony woman a cigarette which she accepted with a wry grin. “Too bad,” murmured she, “that our late date was interrupted.”

I saw both Polly and Kathleen Adair stiffen, but it was toward Kathleen the Lansing man looked, and at the expression on her face he winced.

“Isn’t it?” he drawled, smiling at Hilda Anthony. “But there’s always another night.”

She shivered and looked over her shoulder. “I wonder,” she said thoughtfully.

We waited almost two hours before the inspector deigned to transfer his attention to the parlour. I do not know exactly what I expected the chief of the Homicide Bureau to look like, but I was not prepared for the dapper young man in the smart checked suit.

He wore a blue foulard tie to match his eyes and he had round cheeks as smooth as a girl’s and a cleft chin. He reminded me of a juvenile male lead in a stock company.

“Inspector Bunyan,” he announced himself, surveying us all pleasantly. “Sorry to have kept you waiting.”

“I’ll bet,” muttered Howard.

Inspector Homer Bunyan, having taken his time about arriving, also took it about proceeding to action. He pre-empted the large library table in a corner which commanded the room, sat himself down on a straight chair, produced a fountain pen and a neat leather notebook, leafed through some pages which he had already filled, and finally allowed his ingenuous blue eyes to travel slowly over every face in the room.

“Get on with it, can’t you?” growled Dan Mosby.

“Hang onto yourself,” Howard advised him. “That’s what he’s trying to do, wear us down.”

Inspector Bunyan regarded him leisurely. “Am I to assume that you have something to conceal, Mr-er-”

“Warren,” snapped Howard. “And if I have anything to conceal, it’s up to you to find it out.”

Inspector Bunyan smiled. “Exactly.”

Quite suddenly his blue eyes were less ingenuous, his round face shrewd, if not menacing. I never afterward doubted that Inspector Bunyan was a force, however belied by his appearance.

When he turned his gaze on me it was precisely as though it were a gimlet boring into my conscience. To my shame, I admit that my hands tightened on the edge of my chair and for a moment my mouth went terribly dry.

“Can you advance any theory – Miss Adams, isn’t it? – Why this man should have come to his death in your apartment?” he asked.

I swallowed hard. “None whatever.”

“You were not acquainted with him?” He continued to look at me. I had a feeling he was turning my thoughts inside out. It infuriated me to have my face colour painfully.

Pursing his lips, Inspector Bunyan hunted for a certain page in his notebook and added something to it with what struck me as offensive gusto.

He then transferred his attention to Sophie. It was some satisfaction to my self-respect to see that Sophie’s plump face also turned a mottled red under his scrutiny and she appeared suddenly far from happy on the love seat which she was occupying with her husband.

Inspector Bunyan referred to another page in his notebook. “You are the proprietor of the Richelieu?”

Sophie inclined her head, and Cyril, catching the inspector’s eye, wriggled uncomfortably and then looked quickly away, his pale eyebrows twitching like the feelers of a caterpillar.

“What do you know about the late James Reid, of New Orleans?” demanded the inspector.

“Nothing,” said Sophie.

“Except he registered here a week ago tomorrow,” supplemented Cyril, as if he were trying to curry favour with the authorities by being helpful.

The inspector once more consulted his notes. I realized then that he had by no means been idle while we were waiting for him.

Each of us had our special dossier in that neat black notebook which we were all to come to dread before we finished with Inspector Bunyan.

“You never saw him before he registered here at the hotel?” asked the inspector.

“Never!” said Cyril with undisguised fervour.

The inspector frowned. “But you did tell one of your employees, Mr Fancher, that the man never set foot in New Orleans.”

Cyril gave a sickly smile. “He thought Canal Street has boats on it, like Venice.”

“I see,” murmured the inspector, making a series of minute hieroglyphics on Cyril’s page.

Sophie swiftly came to his defence. “If we were accused of murdering someone every time we remarked upon a guest’s conduct, we’d keep you busy, Inspector,” she said dryly.

“I don’t doubt it,” murmured Ella Trotter with a sour smile.

Sophie bridled. “We don’t gossip about our guests without cause, Mrs Trotter.”

“I hope we can depend on that,” said Ella, determined on the last word.

The inspector again allowed his gaze to rest pleasantly on one of us, then the other. “Some of you knew the dead man,” he said in a voice that permitted no contradiction. When no one spoke, he went on softly, “Some of you knew all about him, why he was here, where he came from, and what brought him.”

Still nobody spoke.

“It would save a great deal of unnecessary inconvenience if those who have any information about James Reid would voluntarily give it to the police. Rest assured” – his voice grew silkier – “before we’re done we’ll get it.”

“The velvet hand in the iron glove,” misquoted Howard in his most sarcastic manner.

The inspector smiled. “Did you know James Reid, Mr Warren?”

“No.”

“Yet you were on the fourth floor between seven-thirty and eight tonight.”

Howard grinned defiantly. “Was I?”

The inspector glanced at Lottie Mosby, who instinctively drew closer within the circle of her husband’s arm. “Mrs-ah-Mosby,” pursued the inspector, “were you acquainted with the late Mr Reid?”