Читать книгу The Skeleton at the Feast - Carolyn Wells - Страница 7

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THOUGH a first-class patrolman, Officer Garvin was not especially shrewd or observant. Yet he watched with scarcely concealed interest for reactions to his question.

Gregg spoke first, looking very serious.

“That’s what’s puzzling me. But if it’s suicide, where is the gun?”

“Those things are outside my work,” Garvin said abruptly. “I’ll get the Precinct Station.”

“Seems as if we ought to call Dr. Landon,” Randall said; “he’s the family physician, and he may be needed to look after the women.”

“Hysterical lot?” asked Garvin casually.

“Not especially so, but—oh, well, it seems more orthodox.”

“Call him if you like. No harm in that. I’ll get the police here. Don’t touch anything in this room.”

Then Garvin drew from his pocket a big folded handkerchief, shook it out, and in its folds gingerly picked up the French telephone by its receiver end.

He put through several swift messages and replaced the instrument.

“There’s an extension some place, I suppose?” he asked, and Fenn nodded.

“Well, call your doctor, if you wish, but don’t call anybody else just now. You, Fenn, you’re the butler?”

“Yes, I am,” Fenn replied, disinclined to show much deference to this blunt personage.

“Had Mr. Carleton a valet? Where’s he?”

“All the servants are still in their beds.”

“Better root ’em out. Get the maids up, and the housekeeper, or whoever’s in charge. The day has begun.”

Fenn went away, and Garvin’s eyes continued to rove round the room.

“Had to break in,” he murmured. “Couldn’t get in without bustin’ the door.”

“Mr. Carleton often locked himself in here alone,” offered Peter Gregg, with seeming resentment of the comment.

“Sure. But if he locked himself in here last night and shot himself, where did he hide his gun?”

“Oh, I say!” exclaimed Donald Randall, with sudden excitement, “it’s one of those cases of a murder in a sealed room.”

“Who says it’s murder?” Garvin flung at him. “How do you get that way? What do you know about it, anyhow?”

“Nothing, nothing at all,” Don said hastily. “I guess I’ll go and look after the ladies. Will they have to be interviewed?”

Garvin stared at him.

“I’ll say they will,” he declared grimly. “Yes interviewed, and then some. Yes, go and look after them. If they’re in their nighties, tell ’em to get dressed.”

Randall went off, and Peter Gregg was left with the policeman.

“You some sort of secretary?” came the question.

“Yes,” Gregg replied uninterestedly. “Private secretary to Mr. Carleton.”

“Know much about him?”

“Plenty about his business affairs; little about his personal matters.”

“Any money troubles?”

“I should say not! He had money enough for all his needs and heaps more.”

“In business?”

“No. Retired.”

“Heirs?”

“Wife, son, and sister. I suppose they’re the principal heirs.”

“Probably. Now, look here, laddie. The inspector will be here in a jiffy, and I’ll be set aside. Tell me, is there any secret way in and out of this room?”

“No,” Peter Gregg said, but he said it after an instant’s hesitation, said it slowly, uncertainly, as if—or so it seemed to Officer Garvin—he were not telling the truth.

Just then Dr. Landon appeared at the broken and splintered door.

“What—Oh, my God!” he cried out, as he saw his old friend and patient huddled in his desk chair.

He went to the tragic figure and with a light touch that disturbed nothing satisfied himself that life was extinct and immediately deduced the cause.

“Shot through the heart,” he said, “and at very close range. Who did it? Oh, yes, of course!”

“Well, who did it, Doc?” Garvin asked eagerly, but Dr. Landon stared at him.

“All in good time,” he said. “When the inquiry begins.”

There was a pause, and then: “I can do nothing here,” Dr. Landon said, breaking the silence that had fallen on his last words. “Where is Mrs. Carleton? And Miss Carleton? I must see them.”

He went away, but Peter Gregg remained.

Like Garvin, he let his eyes roam round the room.

But as he looked there was a noise in the hall, and round through the smoking room and cloak room, into the library came the men from Headquarters.

The dapper medical examiner, Dr. Doane, and the more stalwart Inspector Gilbert came in together, and Doane went straight to the dead man and began his work without a word.

He carried a little black bag, which he now opened and placed on the desk.

There was plenty of room, for Manning Carleton’s desk was a long and wide mahogany affair with a flat, roomy top.

A plain-clothes detective, accompanying the inspector, also carried a little black bag.

But his was of the sort known as “Murder Bags,” or, more technically, “Practical Criminal Science Outfit.”

The equipment of these bags is interesting, containing, as they do, saws, scissors, rubber gloves, chisels, trouble finders, magnifying glass, tape measure, test tubes, vacuum gun, black and white powders, paper, twine, notebook, crayons, and tweezers.

They are supposed to hold everything immediately essential to the solving of a murder mystery.

But it is in cases like the death of Manning Carleton that the Murder Bag breaks down. No test tubes or tweezers could indicate any way by which a murderer could have left that room locked behind him.

Nor, in the absence of a weapon, could suicide be predicated.

“Well,” Inspector Gilbert said cheerfully, “we’ve been confronted with this problem before.”

“And you always found the explanation?” asked Gregg respectfully.

Gilbert gave him a quick glance.

“Usually,” he said, with a careless intonation that discouraged further remark on the subject.

Dr. Doane, still silent, worked at his own job, probing for the bullet, getting various data and now and then expressing astonishment by a quick intake of his breath or an instantly suppressed whistle.

Inspector Gilbert roamed about the big room.

The desk stood across the front end of the library, perhaps eight or ten feet from the front windows.

The desk chair was between the desk and the windows, so that one sitting in it faced the main part of the room and by turning on the swivel could see out into the hall if the hall door were open.

But that door was closed and locked. The front windows were still closed and locked and the dark shades drawn down.

There were several sets of curtains: net sash curtains next the panes; lace curtains down to the sills, inside the dark shades; long, elaborate lace curtains down to the floor, and over all these, heavy damask curtains, from ceiling to floor, with a massive lambrequin decoration across the tops.

The two windows were about three feet apart, and between them stood a low revolving bookcase.

Directly in front of this bookcase, then, was the desk chair where now was the body of the dead man.

“That’s all I can do here,” Dr. Doane announced at last. “I’ll send some mortuary people for the body when I learn the wishes of the family. Shall I see them now?”

“Yes,” said Gilbert. “What’s your report?”

“Nothing more definite than that he was shot by a gun held very close to his body.”

“What sort of gun?”

“Can’t say exactly. But the bullet is small, about a twenty-eight caliber.”

“How long’s he been dead?”

“Between three and four hours, I should say. But that’s problematical.”

“Killed about three or four o’clock, then.”

“Something like that. We can’t be exact, you know.”

“I know. Well, go on and see the family. I must give this place the once-over. Something tells me this case spells trouble.”

“I’ve heard detectives say that murder in a locked room is the easiest nut to crack of all.”

“Those detectives were the nuts, then. And badly cracked. No, Doane, much water will flow over the Hudson Tunnel before we find out the truth about Manning Carleton’s death. Could he have shot himself?”

“Offhand, I should say no, but until I can get him on an operating table, I can’t answer that positively. But, supposing he could and did shoot himself he couldn’t have hidden or disposed of the gun. Could it have been smuggled out of here before we came?”

“No, I think not. Garvin was here when the door was forced, and he is a watchful, reliable sort. Not brilliant, but alert and sharp eyed. I think he would have seen it if there had been any funny work. Well, I shan’t hunt now for secret doors or concealed panels. I’ll get what I can from the family first. Come on, we’ll go together.”

Leaving two detectives in charge of the library and its still tenant, they went back through the cloakroom to the hall and crossed to the drawing room.

Only the men were there, the women having gathered in Polly’s boudoir.

“Please summon whoever is in authority here,” the inspector told Fenn, who, as always, appeared automatically.

The butler hesitated and then said uncertainly, “I suppose you want Mrs. Carleton and Miss Carleton, sir.”

“You heard what I said,” was the curt reply.

Fenn went off, and beyond impersonal nods none of the men in the drawing room acknowledged the advent of the two police authorities.

Professor Scott favored them with a gaze in which were mingled curiosity and distaste, somewhat as if they were some new species of black beetle.

Donald Randall lighted a fresh cigarette and looked placidly out of the window. Peter Gregg had seemed to acquire a decided nervousness. Twice he essayed to speak and then swallowed his words.

Fenn returned with Pauline, Zélie, and Miss Austen, and stalking after them with majestic dignity marched Violet Carleton.

But, though last, she was by no means least in any way. She selected the most throne-like chair, seated herself, and from this coign of vantage she scrutinized the two strangers.

“Good-morning,” she said, not unaffably. “Can you tell me who is the murderer of my brother?”

“Not as yet, madam,” returned Inspector Gilbert, with his politest air. “But I trust after some investigation we shall be able to do so.”

He was relieved to find that the women of this household were not of a hysterical type.

Miss Carleton looked as if she might be a Tartar, but Tartars were more gladly suffered than sniveling fools.

Mrs. Carleton, the astute inspector noted, was what he sometimes called a handful. Yet handfuls could be handled more easily than Niobes.

The other two he disregarded for the moment, learning that these were his principals.

“I must ask you some questions, Mrs. Carleton,” he said, with a sympathetic glance at Pauline. “It will, doubtless, be hard for you to answer them, but it must be done.”

“Ask me all you can, Inspector,” said Violet briskly. “My sister-in-law is more upset than I am.”

Ignoring her suggestion, Gilbert addressed himself to Pauline.

“Why did you come downstairs and knock on the library door this morning?”

Pauline gave him a slow, comprehensive glance.

He read it aright and flushed deeply. Her expression told him that she thought him too blunt, even boorish; that she was willing to reply politely to courteous queries, and that if he wanted to learn anything from her he would change his attitude and improve upon his manners.

Polly had a way of telling her thoughts without uttering a word, and Inspector Gilbert was nobody’s fool.

He started afresh, in a more gentle tone.

“I am told that you did do that, Mrs. Carleton.”

“Yes, Inspector, I did. My husband frequently sat up late to read or write in his library, but I have never known him to sit up until five o’clock, or nearly five. I woke at that time this morning and found he was not in his room, which adjoins mine. Naturally, I felt alarmed, and slipping on a kimono I ran downstairs to see if anything was the matter.”

“Why should you jump to the conclusion that something was the matter?”

Nearly everyone who knew Pauline Carleton had said at one time or another that her eyes were too big for her face.

This conviction was borne in upon Inspector Gilbert now, and though he made no audible remark he secretly writhed under the direct but enigmatical gaze she turned full upon him.

“You must know,” she murmured in a low tone, “my husband is a victim of heart disease. He is—he was—liable to—to drop dead any moment, either with or without immediate cause. Therefore, when he was not in his bed, I wondered if he had—had an attack.”

“I see.” This pathetic statement did not seem to impress Gilbert too deeply, and Pauline looked at him in slight surprise. She was accustomed to have men follow her lead in moods.

“Did you hear any sound from the library, Mrs. Carleton?”

“No, not a sound. But I could see a streak of light under the door, so I knew he must be there. He always turns off the light when he leaves the room.”

“Also, of course, the locked door proved he was still there.”

As this seemed to be a statement, not a query, Pauline made no reply.

The usual question was now imminent, but the inspector chose to word it in an unusual way.

“Was your husband an enemy of anybody?” he said.

“Aren’t we all?” countered Pauline. “Isn’t everybody an enemy of someone? But I don’t think my husband had an enemy desperate enough to take his life.”

“Are you his sole heir?” asked Gilbert abruptly.

“What!” and the eyes grew too big again. “No certainly not.”

“Who are the others?”

“I am not familiar with the terms of my husband’s will, except that I know he provided bountifully for his sister, his son, and myself.”

“Where is his son?”

“His son, Mr. Claude Carleton, left last night for Hollywood, where he expects to become a screen actor.”

“At what time did Mr. Claude Carleton leave New York?”

“I think he took—what train was it, Don?”

“The two o’clock on the Pennsylvania Railroad,” answered Randall, who was moodily listening to what he considered a baiting.

Yet the inspector was doing no more than his simple duty in making his inquiries.

“Ought he not to be recalled, in the circumstances?” asked Gilbert.

“He has been recalled,” Polly told him tranquilly. “We telegraphed to him on his train.”

“Where did you reach him?

“Tell him, Don,” Polly directed.

“I looked it up in the time-table,” Randall said, “and I found he would reach Harrisburg at seven-seventeen. It was a little after six, then, so I sent a wire to Harrisburg. Of course, we haven’t heard from him yet, but I’ve no doubt we will.”

“Were young Carleton and his father good friends?” Gilbert turned back to Pauline.

“Best in the world. We were a truly happy family. I am Mr. Carleton’s second wife, and we were a devoted couple. His sister Miss Violet Carleton is the dearest and kindest sister-in-law I could wish for. Claude was an ideal son to his father and a good friend to me. I am sure my relatives and friends will corroborate these statements.”

Pauline spoke simply and without undue emphasis.

Inspector Gilbert could find no family jar, no household friction to inquire about.

“Then it would seem,” he resumed, after a moment’s thought, “that some enemy from outside must have done this dastardly crime. We are disregarding for the moment the curious conditions that make the deed such a mystery and conjecture only as to the personality of the murderer.”

“There is no doubt as to the personality of the murderer,” Pauline stated calmly.

If she expected the inspector to fall off his chair at this, she must have been disappointed.

“You have a suspicion, then?” was all he said.

“Not a suspicion: I know who did it, only I don’t know who he is.” The inspector refrained from smiling and said:

“You mean?”

“I mean I don’t know his name. But—oh, let somebody else tell you, please!”

She leaned back in her chair, as if exhausted, and Don Randall went across the room to sit beside her.

“Let me tell it,” broke in Miss Violet, who was really aching to step into the limelight. “You mean about—about the big box, Polly?”

“Yes, Vi. You tell the inspector.”

Receiving a gracious permission, Violet launched into the story of the skeleton that had arrived the night before. She told the tale dramatically, and when she quoted the line, “‘As I am now, you soon shall be,’” she seemed like a veritable Cassandra, pronouncing a doom.

“And you think, all of you,” Gilbert asked slowly, “that the sender of that gruesome gift, the writer of those lines, in some way managed to make good his threat and brought about the death of the man he threatened?”

“Yes,” said Violet and Pauline.

Emily Austen preserved a discreet and modest silence, but Zélie D’Orsay spoke up hotly and cried, “No, nothing of the sort!”

Professor Scott nodded his fine leonine head and said, “I agree to that. Whoever sent that absurd gift did it for a joke, a holiday jest, and it meant nothing tragic or sinister. As proof of that, there was another line on the card, which Miss Carleton has evidently forgotten: I think it runs, ‘Long years ago you murdered me.’ Now we all know Manning Carleton never murdered anybody. The thing was a hoax perpetrated by some college chum or business buddy. You all noticed it brought no embarrassment to Mr. Carleton, though some of the ladies were almost frightened by it.”

“A very strange thing,” said the inspector ruminatively.

“Not strange at all,” growled Don Randall. “A silly thing, and in rotten taste, but easily understandable.”

“I can’t agree with you, sir,” the inspector said, looking as if he were getting into very deep waters. “Now, were all of you people here last evening?”

“Yes,” he was told.

“Anybody else here?”

“Yes,” said Randall, who had drifted into the rôle of spokesman. “Claude was here until shortly after one o’clock, and two people from next door were here, Mr. and Mrs. Mortlake. Oh, yes, and Kenneth Carlisle, a sort of private detective, I believe.”

“And you do well to believe it,” the inspector informed him. “That young man is looked up to by our Detective Bureau, and that is no small praise, I can tell you.”

“Yes, I know it,” said Randall, determined not to let the inspector beat him at nonchalance.

“I think,” the inspector then said in a more kindly tone, “you all would be the better for some breakfast. But first let me put one question, and then you may all go to the dining room. The medical examiner has decided that Mr. Carleton was shot between three and four o’clock this morning. Say, approximately, half-past three. Will you each be good enough to state exactly where he or she was at that time?”

Even the imperturbable inspector was startled at the varying expressions on the faces of his audience.

Violet spoke first.

“I went up to bed rather earlier than the others,” she said. “I was in my room before half-past two. Of course, we were all up late, owing to the New Year festival.”

“I went to bed about three,” Pauline stated clearly. “I did not leave my room again until I went down at five o’clock this morning.”

“I went up when Mrs. Carleton did,” Zélie declared. “It was about three, I should say.”

“And you, Miss Austen?” asked Gilbert.

The girl colored painfully, and her voice trembled as she said, “I, too, went up about that time.”

“Liar!” remarked Gilbert, but not aloud.

The men said they had all gone to bed about three o’clock. Fenn was called in to testify as to this, and he said that he turned out the lights downstairs at quarter-past three, or very near that time.

“Did you then hear any sound from the library?”

“I didn’t listen specially. I saw the light under the door, so I knew the master was in there.”