Читать книгу Murder in Stained Glass - Armstrong Margaret - Страница 6

Follow faster! All together!

Search, inquire of every one.

Speak, inform us, have you seen him?

Whither is the rascal gone?

ARISTOPHANES.

BREAKFAST was pretty sketchy next morning. Phyllis and I were too excited for second cups. But Minnie hovered around, asking questions—luckily, we didn’t have to contend with Charlotte, who was still in seclusion—and it seemed as if we’d never get away.

But at last we did, and although it wasn’t yet eight o’clock we found quite a lot of people in the road outside the glass shop where Clarence and another boy stood on guard, watching Sam Beers and Leo prying off the boards that had protected the door during the night. Sam had made a thorough job of it, and the nails drew out with horrible protesting squeaks. But at last the door was free. Sam flung it open. The crowd moved forward and would have come surging up the path if Clarence had not held them back. He let Phyllis and me through, and Mr. Merritt and Mrs. Flack, the postmistress—it seemed she was Mr. Ullathorne’s landlady—and the Ullathorne workmen. We all went in and Sam shut the door.

The place looked surprisingly different by day, not in the least theatrical. That horrible kiln was still there, of course, and ashes were still scattered about; but the sun shining in through the windows seemed to suck out all the mystery. The room looked what it was, a furnace cellar, as dirty and commonplace as any other furnace cellar. Except for one thing. The door at the top of the stairs leading to the workroom was open and a blaze of color from the rose window came pouring down into our faces, as brilliant and dazzling as the light of an autumn sunset.

I stood looking up—and wondering. Had the door been open when that awful thing happened down here, right here where I stood now? If it had been open, those red and blue and gold stained glass angels and saints would have been spectators of the tragedy!

They had looked on while some poor creature was murdered, a fire was kindled, evil smelling smoke went up the chimney. They wouldn’t have cared, of course. Just kept on smiling. Life and death don’t exist in the stained glass world.

But would the murderer, I asked myself, have been equally indifferent? Suppose, as the first ray of dawn shone down upon him through that window, he happened to look up and saw those watching faces? Suppose—

Phyllis touched my arm.

“Did you hear?” she whispered. “Mr. Merritt says the bones really are human bones! Isn’t that dreadful!”

Mr. Merritt was reading aloud from a paper, Dr. Greely’s report. Mr. Merritt’s expression was decorous, but you felt an underlying satisfaction as he finished:

“No doubt about it, I’m afraid. We got a murder on our hands. Doctor says the bones is human. Microscope told him that. But he can’t tell whether they’s a man’s bones or a woman’s, with so little to go on, no flesh or skin or hair, you know.”

Phyllis shuddered, walked over to a window and stood looking out.

“That fire must of been awful hot,” Mr. Merritt went on. “Burn a person, clothes and all, and not leave so much’s a scrap of shoe leather!”

“And it must have burned for some time,” I said. “You’d think the neighbors would have noticed the smoke and—and the smell.”

“Too far off from any other house, I guess. And it was night. No one would have seen anything.”

“Unless someone happened to be up. Who lives nearest? Have they got a baby?”

“Mrs. Podsnap is nearest,” Mrs. Flack put in, “and she’s got a six-weeks-old baby cries most all night. You want I should call her up? Telephone’s upstairs, ain’t it, Mr. Leo?”

He nodded. Mrs. Flack went up and returned in a moment, triumphant.

“Now what do you think of that!” she panted. “Mrs. Podsnap she says she looked out her window Saturday night just before sun-up—she was heating the young one’s bottle and he was yelling fit to beat the band—and she saw smoke coming up behind the trees, and she thought the glass shop might be afire and she was just going to call her husband—he sleeps pretty sound—but the milk boiled over, and she never gave the smoke another thought till the baby had his breakfast, and then she looked again and the smoke was most gone and anyway she saw now it was coming from the chimly, and she forgot all about it till I asked her had she noticed anything.”

“That’s fine, Mrs. Flack. That’s very helpful,” Mr. Merritt beamed. “We’re getting on, getting on fine. Any more suggestions, Miss Trumbull?”

“Suppose we try to reconstruct the crime,” I said. “How do you think the man was killed, Mr. Merritt?”

“Why—why, he was shoved in and burned up, I guess. No; that couldn’t be. The furnace door ain’t wide enough.”

We all stared at the furnace.

“It is not,” I agreed. “So the man must have been killed, shot, in all probability, and then—cut up.”

“Cut up?” Mr. Merritt gulped. “You mean cut up with a knife, like a butcher would?”

“Or with an axe,” Mrs. Flack put in gloatingly.

“Look!” Clarence pointed with a trembling hand. “My axe—laying there just as handy!”

“My Lord!” Mr. Merritt groaned. “Then maybe the poor fellow got chopped to bits right here in this cellar! But that would have made an awful mess.”

“Blood is easily washed away if there is plenty of water,” I said. “There’s a stand-pipe over there in the corner—used for washing cars, I suppose, when this place was a garage—and the floor slopes down to that drain near the door. The murderer could have flushed the floor clean in five minutes.”

“Wouldn’t everything have got pretty wet?”

“It did get wet,” I said. “Last evening when I was sitting on that pile of boards and excelsior I noticed it was damp.”

I crossed the floor, and pulled out a tuft of excelsior. “It still is,” I said.

“Well, well!” Mr. Merritt said admiringly. “You certainly got a good headpiece, Miss Trumbull. But you said just now you thought the victim was shot. What makes you think so?”

“Because of the hole in that windowpane.” I pointed. “To me it looks as if it had been made by a bullet. What about it, Clarence? Was that window all right on Saturday?”

“It sure was,” Clarence said. “Not a crack in it, or I’d of noticed it. But a gun would make a noise, Miss Trumbull. Someone would of heard the shot.”

“Not if he fired when a train was going by.”

“That’s so!” Mr. Merritt rubbed his hands together, smiling broadly. “We’re getting on. Getting on so fast there’ll be nothing left for those Banbury fellows to do when they get here.”

“When do you expect them?” I asked.

“Any minute now. I called ’em up this morning soon’s I got Doctor’s report. They acted quite excited. Said they’d be right over. They know Ullathorne is a pretty big bug. District attorney, he’s sending a man and the sheriff is coming, says his appendix will have to wait; and a detective, feller named Skinner. Fine sleuth, I’m told. And a photographer and a fingerprint expert, and a reporter from the Banbury Star, and I don’t know who all. Oh, and the coroner is sending a representative, and the coroner he told me be sure not to move the body, to leave it lay just exactly and precisely as we found it. I had to laugh.” He looked at his watch. “Eight-thirty. They’d ought to be here.”

“Here they come now!” Phyllis cried. “Three cars full!” And she opened the door.

At once the place was full of men. Experts. Some of them were sophisticated persons, well dressed, with hard-boiled professional faces, and carrying tripods, brief cases and various strange-looking instruments; others, obviously “country,” of the farmer and small-shopkeeper class. But they were all condescending in manner; civil enough, but like most experts, too intent on proving other people in the wrong to be really efficient.

It struck me that the teamwork was not very good. The sheriff and the lawyer from the district attorney’s office were evidently not in sympathy, except in one particular: they both distrusted the detective, Mr. Skinner, and when the question of leadership came up the argument was as bitter and prolonged as if they had been dowager duchesses discussing who should go in first to dinner.

In the end the sheriff gave way. Gleason, the lawyer, took the lead, and kept it.

He put on a good show. The air fairly reeked with efficiency. Poor Mr. Merritt’s claim to the center of the stage didn’t last a minute. Still giving information, he was waved aside and told to sit down on the pile of boards at the back of the room. One by one our little group joined him there. We sat waiting in a meek row, uneasy as a class that doesn’t know its lesson.

The investigators strolled about the room. Sam Beers pointed out the chief objects of interest: the kiln, the ashes, the bullet hole in the window. Some chairs and a table were brought down from the workroom. Sam Beers placed the box containing the “remains”—such a suitable term under the circumstances—upon the table. The reporters perched themselves on the stairs. The stenographers opened their notebooks. Gleason seated himself, beckoned to Sam. They conferred. The sheriff joined in. There was a good deal of talk about the doctor. His absence was explained: he was busy elsewhere bringing somebody’s baby into the world. The box was opened. The box was shut. Finally Clarence Burbank was told to come forward and make a statement.

Clarence told his story clearly and well. Gleason tried to trip him up with technical questions as to the exact temperature of the oven when glass was “fired” and the length of time required to heat it. But the boy kept his head and stuck to what he knew. He was finally allowed to sign his deposition and return to our corner.

Leo came next. His manner wasn’t as good as Clarence’s. Yet Gleason’s questions were politely worded and obviously routine. How long had the garage been used as a glass shop? Who was the owner? What was the rent? How many workmen were employed? Perfunctory questions. Why, I wondered, did Leo mind answering them? For he did mind; he hesitated and mumbled and contradicted himself. When his deposition was read over to him, he listened anxiously and his signature was so shaky that I saw Gleason give him a puzzled frown as he moved away from the table. I was puzzled too—for a different reason: Leo had not mentioned that small object I had seen him pick up from among the ashes!

However, that was Leo’s business, not mine. When my turn came to “depose,” I would, I determined, say as little as possible. I could not sign my name to anything I wasn’t absolutely sure of. I needn’t have worried. I wasn’t asked to sign anything. Neither was Phyllis. Gleason disposed of us both in short order. Phyllis got a curt word of thanks, but he waved me away with such a bored stare, as if he were wondering what the hell I was doing here, that I was rather sorry when Mr. Merritt spoke up:

“Say, Mr. Gleason!” he protested. “You’d oughtn’t to let Miss Trumbull go like that. She’s awful good at deductions. You just ask her . . . .”

“Deductions?” Skinner put in. “We make our own deductions. Facts are what we want. Have you any facts to offer, Miss Trumbull? Important facts?”

“Facts?” I said. “Yes; I have one fact to offer. I’m not sure whether or not it’s important.”

“Let’s have it, anyway.”

“If you will examine the stand-pipe over there you will find a small sticky spot where the hose is attached. It may, of course, be molasses. On the other hand—”

But Skinner was already bending over the stand-pipe. He beckoned to another man, evidently a fingerprint expert. Together they examined the spot, peering at it through a magnifying glass, smelling it. The fingerprint man shook his head.

“No prints,” Skinner announced with disgust. “But it’s blood, all right. We’ll have it analyzed.”

“Miss Trumbull, you have shortened Mr. Skinner’s examination of this cellar,” Gleason remarked, “by at least three minutes. Much obliged. Anything more?”

“That’s all—at present.”

“Then you and the young lady may go.”

Phyllis and I moved to the door. A reporter started to follow us. Gleason called him back.

“No interviews yet,” he said. “There’s plenty for you boys to see right here in this cellar. Get to work, Skinner!”

Instantly, Skinner took the lead. Fairly swelling with importance he strutted to the center of the room and stood there, pointing out this and that, giving orders with an arrogant confidence that evidently inspired respect. Tripods were unfolded, typewriters clicked, tape measures began to measure, insuflators to insuflate. I thought of the scene in that enchanting opera, Gianni Schicchi, when the heirs turn everything topsy-turvy looking for the will. Bombarded by efficiency, Phyllis and I hurried to the door. Leo opened it for us. We went out.