Murder a la Richelieu (American Queens of Crime Book 2) (8 page)

“Of course she wasn’t,” growled Dan Mosby.

The inspector made a little gesture toward Lottie. “Please speak for yourself.”

“No! I didn’t know him!” she gasped.

“Are you sure?”

“Listen here,” exploded young Mosby, “you can’t bully my wife. I won’t stand for it.”

Apparently he spoke to thin air. “You say you didn’t know James Reid, Mrs Mosby. Yet you left a note in his box at the desk shortly before six tonight,” said the inspector.

“I didn’t! I didn’t!” Lottie buried her face on her husband’s shoulder, and he glared about him like a baited bull.

“That’s a lie!” he cried. “I don’t care who told you!”

“And where, Mr Mosby,” purred the inspector, “were you between seven-thirty and eight tonight?”

“In the lobby, reading the paper.”

“Except for ten minutes when you sneaked off up the stairs.”

“That’s a lie too.”

The inspector, without debating the point, passed on to Kathleen Adair and her mother. “Perhaps you ladies are willing to admit to an acquaintance with the unfortunate Mr Reid?”

“No, of course not. Why should we?” asked the girl.

“He was seen this morning emerging from your room.”

Kathleen Adair went white. I expected little Mrs Adair to faint again, but she merely stared at the inspector like a small bird charmed by a snake.

“If that man was in our room, we know nothing about it,” cried the girl passionately. “We were downstairs in the lobby all morning. We can prove it by Miss Adams.”

The inspector once more treated me to the gimlet of his eyes.

“You are quite sure you can shed no light on the man who was foully murdered in your suite tonight, Miss Adams? After all, something took him there,” murmured Inspector Bunyan.

“I have already told you I did not know Mr Reid,” I said with all the hauteur I could muster, which is, as a rule, no laughing matter, though in this case it made little, if any, impression.

“So you have,” mused the inspector. “Nevertheless, he was familiar enough with you to return to you on a certain occasion one of your more or less intimate possessions.”

It was my turn to stare helplessly at the inspector. “You mean my-my...”

I found it difficult to continue, and the inspector smiled at me gently. “Do you usually carry your spectacle case with you, Miss Adams?”

“No.”

“In fact, almost never. Right?”

“Right,” I said with a feeble grimace.

“Isn’t it a trifle peculiar that this man, of whom you profess to know nothing, should have recognized a spectacle case which rarely, if ever, leaves your bedroom?”

I gave him a withering glance. “If you are trying to insinuate something scandalous, Inspector Bunyan, please allow me to tell you that my life is an open book.”

“No wonder she’s a disappointed old maid,” said Hilda Anthony.

The inspector frowned and looked for the first time a little nettled, but the Anthony woman merely smiled mockingly when he surveyed her with mingled resentment and admiration.

“If it’s my turn, Inspector,” she said blithely, “I did not know the murdered man. I never spoke to him or he to me, and while the employees in this house are a bunch of snooping busybodies, I defy any of them to tell you the contrary.”

“No,” said the inspector with what I took for regret, “no one has said anything of the kind about you, Mrs-er-Anthony.”

I sniffed. “But James Reid was watching her from the stairs while we were at dinner tonight.”

She grinned at me. “Men always watch a pretty woman, Miss Adams, though of course you wouldn’t know about that.”

The inspector hastily consulted his notebook, a little as though he needed something to distract his attention from the Anthony’s opulent curves. Apparently he came up with Stephen Lansing’s name.

“You are a salesman, I believe, of cosmetics,” he murmured.

Stephen laughed. “Guilty.”

“Did you know the unlamented Mr Reid?”

“Nope.”

“Positive?”

“Positive!”

The inspector made a little drawing on the side of the notebook.

“You were in the Sally Ray Beauty Shop from four to five this afternoon, Mr Lansing, demonstrating a new permanent-wave pad?”

Stephen Lansing’s eyes narrowed. “Yep.”

“At five minutes to five a man in the Sally Ray Shop called this hotel and got in touch with 511, the room occupied by Mr Reid, of New Orleans.”

“And so?” murmured Stephen Lansing with a chuckle that rang anything except true to my ears.

“Did you telephone to Mr Reid this afternoon?”

“Nope.”

The inspector sighed, slowly riffled through the pages of his notebook, and asked, “None of you cares to amend your statement? It will in the long run save you as well as myself a great deal of useless difficulty if you speak the truth, here and now, freely and without reservation.”

No one said anything. The inspector sighed again and glanced lingeringly from Mary Lawson’s drawn white face to her niece’s bright twisted smile.

“It was the knife from your desk set, Mrs Lawson,” he said very quietly.

Mary all but wrung her hands. “I haven’t killed anyone!”

“And I didn’t even know who was killed until I was dragged upstairs,” Polly cried.

The inspector pursed his lips. “Yet you tried to run away with the weapon, Miss Lawson.”

She was trembling. “Someone threw it out the window. I was on the sidewalk, waiting for Mr Lansing to return. All at once something clattered at my feet. It was – it was –”

“The knife from your aunt’s desk set?”

“And there was blood on it. I got some on my hand. Then I heard the police siren and I-I lost my head and ran.”

“Ah!” murmured the inspector. He waited a minute. “Can you prove you did not follow Mr Lansing back into the hotel, Miss Lawson?”

Polly’s teeth were chattering. “Pinky was at the desk. He would have seen me.”

“Mr Dodge says that at about a quarter of eight he was in the telephone booth, taking a long-distance call from Memphis, asking for a room reservation. He cannot swear who passed through the lobby at that time.”

“But there were others in the lobby,” cried Polly. “Miss Adams for one.”

“I should certainly have seen Miss Lawson had she re-entered the hotel,” I said indignantly.

The inspector regarded me thoughtfully. “Did you see Mr Mosby when he cautiously circled around you and made his way upstairs, Miss Adams?”

“No,” I was forced to admit.

“Did you see Mr Stephen Lansing when he re-entered the hotel?”

“N-no.”

The inspector shrugged his shoulders significantly, and Hilda Anthony laughed. “How it must gripe Miss Adams not to have eyes in the back of her head,” she said.

“As a matter of fact,” remarked the inspector wearily, “not one of you has an ironclad alibi from seven-thirty to eight, which is as near as we can fix the hour of the crime.”

“How absurd!” I protested. “I was in the lobby continuously from dinner until I discovered the body.”

“Provided he was dead when you discovered him,” murmured the inspector. “There seems to be quite a hiatus between the time you went up in the elevator and the time your screams aroused the hotel, Miss Adams.”

“I-I was shocked, unable to scream, unable to do anything for some minutes,” I stammered.

“Who wouldn’t have been?” demanded Ella angrily.

The inspector made some little dots on his notebook. “How long would you say it was, Miss Adams, after you found the lifeless body of Mr James Reid swinging from the chandelier in your suite before you remembered to scream?”

“I don’t know,” I said shortly. “I had other things to think of than preparing a timetable for the police.”

Again the inspector submitted us all to a prolonged scrutiny.

“Where were you, Mrs Mosby, during the fatal hour?” he asked softly.

“In my room.”

“Alone?”

“Yes.”

“On the fourth floor?”

“Y-yes.”

“And you, Mrs Lawson?”

“Alone in my room.”

“Also on the fourth floor?”

“Yes.”

The inspector shook his head. “No,” he said, “none of you who were present in the house at the time of the crime has an alibi for the suspect interval. That is why I had you detained, why I am compelled to regard each of you with more or less suspicion.”

“Don’t be a fool!” cried Dan Mosby furiously. “We didn’t even know the man. Permanent guests in a hotel like this never pay any attention to transients. They’re here today, gone tomorrow. Why pick on us because a man happens to get knocked off in a public house in which we happen to live? Ten to one you’ll find he was followed here by somebody who had good cause to kill him. Maybe he’s a gangster or a sneak thief.”

“No,” said Inspector Bunyan, “he wasn’t followed here nor is he a gangster or a sneak thief, and he didn’t just happen to get knocked off. The man was coldly and brutally murdered by” – he paused impressively – “someone who has been living in this hotel for quite a while.”

“Then the police know who he is?” I gasped.

Inspector Bunyan glanced at me curiously. “Don’t you, Miss Adams?”

“What do you mean, by someone who has been living here quite a while?” interrupted Sophie tremulously. She tried to draw herself up. “We do not have murderers as house guests, Inspector.”

He frowned. “The man was a private detective, Mrs Fancher.”

“Detective!” she whispered.

Across the room Kathleen Adair put her hand over her mother’s lips, and Lottie Mosby swayed.

“Yes,” said Inspector Bunyan, “the late James Reid was head of a well-known private detective agency in St. Louis. I identified him at a glance.”

“But what was he doing here?” I asked in a voice I hardly recognized.

The inspector picked up a yellow slip of paper off the table. “As soon as I recognised Reid, I telegraphed his office. This is their reply,” he said.

He cleared his throat and then read in a clear concise voice the following telegram:

“REID ENGAGED BY UNKNOWN CLIENT FOR SECRET INVESTIGATION AT RICHELIEU HOTEL STOP CLIENT INSISTED ON KEEPING IN THE DARK STOP REID USUALLY WAITED WEEK TO HAND IN HIS REPORT STOP WE DON’T KNOW A THING EXCEPT THEY SEEM TO HAVE GOT HIM FIRST STOP.”

“Secret investigation!” gasped Sophie.

The inspector smiled wryly. “Reid’s speciality was shadowing people, uncovering evidence for divorce suits and so forth. It’s been suggested he was not above doing a little left-handed blackmailing on his own account.”

“Blackmail!” I repeated weakly.

None of the others said anything. They were staring at the inspector or at the floor, their faces blanched, their eyes avoiding everyone else’s.

“If you mean there has been anything going on in this hotel to justify blackmail, I don’t believe it!” cried Sophie Scott.

“Don’t you?” murmured Inspector Bunyan.

“You think James Reid stumbled onto somebody’s guilty secret and was killed to shut his mouth,” surmised Stephen Lansing shrewdly.

The inspector shrugged his shoulders.

“A private investigator comes high, Mr Lansing. Reid was not working for nothing. If it was worth important money to his unknown client to find out something, it was probably worth more to another person to prevent the truth from coming out.”

“Oh!” cried Kathleen Adair. “Surely no one would kill a man to-to...” She choked, could not go on.

“Somebody did kill James Reid,” said the inspector grimly.

“But he-he-”

“He was working in the dark, remember,” murmured Inspector Bunyan.

“Who brought him here?” demanded Sophie angrily.

“One of you knows,” said the inspector softly.

“You’re screwy!” growled Dan Mosby. “If you want to find the guilty party, look among the transient guests.”

“No transient guest is responsible for the man’s presence in the hotel,” said the inspector.

“How can you be sure?” I asked with a sniff.

“I wired Reid’s agency a second time,” he said with a shrug.

“I’ll read you their answer:

“REID FIRST APPROACHED A MONTH AGO BY ANONYMOUS CLIENT STOP BUSY ON ANOTHER CASE AT THE TIME STOP ACCEPTED HANDSOME RETAINER AND AGREED TO REPORT ON THE JOB LAST WEEK STOP.”

“Oh dear,” wailed little Mrs Adair, “and we came here in search of peace.”

The inspector smiled pleasantly, but his eyes narrowed. “That’s why I’m advising all of you to tell everything you know,” he said. “Murder, like measles, is highly infectious. Or should I say that when you begin to stir muddy water a number of ugly citizens rise to the surface?”

Stephen Lansing grinned wryly and said, “Taking Mr James Reid for an example, Inspector, it doesn’t look as if it is very healthy to probe for other people’s secrets in the Richelieu Hotel.”

The inspector’s blue eyes regarded him reflectively. “Am I to construe that as a warning, Mr Lansing?”

Stephen Lansing swept us all a mocking smile. “It might be well for all of us to bear it in mind,” he said lightly.

“Murderers and blackmailers!” I groaned. “It sounds like a nice mess.”

“It is,” said Inspector Bunyan gravely.

And so it proved before we were done with it.

At least the police made no arrests that night. “I suppose they imagine if they give us rope enough we’ll accommodate them by hanging ourselves,” commented Howard bitterly.

Those of us who had been in the hotel between seven-thirty and eight were warned not to leave town until after the inquest, the date for which had not been set, and before he left the inspector sealed my suite. For an indefinite period – or so he said. I felt relieved. I was never to be in the place again, especially in the dark, without seeing that grisly, swaying figure, attached by its own suspenders to my chandelier.

“We can move you into the same rooms on the third, Adelaide,” said Sophie ungraciously, “only I suppose you’ll insist on having them redecorated first.”

“Since living in this house, I’ve grown used to dwelling in the midst of my own dirt,” I said coldly, “but I have a decided antipathy against inheriting someone else’s.”

“Then we’ll just have to make what shift we can for a few days,” said Sophie wearily.

“I suppose so,” I murmured, none too graciously myself.