Читать книгу The Doorstep Murders - Carolyn Wells - Страница 6

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HIRAM GORTON both was and was not a typical sheriff. He was a countryman but he was not addicted to faulty English. His clothing was not of fashionable cut, but he did not wear bluejeans tucked in his boot tops.

His gray mustache was of the style called walrus, but his clear, steady eyes and firm, even aggressive chin denoted a stability of purpose, while his crisp, terse sentences were usually indicative of sound judgment and common sense.

He strode into the Carman house. He always walked with a stride; it was unconscious on his part, but it was the only way he could walk. He had come through the side door, and he found the family in the library. Dr. Sherrill had remained, saying he might be of use.

Gorton had hurried over from his home some ten or twelve miles away, and he had sent word to the coroner to follow him as soon as possible. The sheriff had not stopped on the way and had spoken to nobody on the subject of John Carman’s death. And the coroner, arriving not quite ten minutes later, had also come straight and direct from his home. Coroner Flint, a nervous, fidgety little man, entered, full of abuse of the village fathers of Gilead for not having a better police force.

“Nothing here but a constable!” he complained. “All these rich men, big houses, grand motor cars and everything, and a measly constable to look after everything. No wonder folks get killed. Ought to be a lot of constables and a couple of detectives and—Well, where’s the dead man? Where’s the scene of the crime?”

Murray, shocked beyond expression at this outburst, led the way to the front porch, where Gorton stood looking down on the body of John Carman. Young Carman and Dr. Sherrill were there, too, the women having stayed in the house.

“Stabbed,” said Gorton, curtly.

“Yep,” agreed the coroner. After a few moments of silence, while he examined the body, he stood upright again and said, in a pompous, even sepulchral voice, “I pronounce this man dead.”

Had there been anyone present with less deep interest in the matter than the little group of onlookers, it must have seemed laughable to hear this pronunciamento, but nobody so much as smiled.

Red-headed Dr. Sherrill nodded his full agreement to the statement, and Peter Carman paled a little and clenched his fists at the solemn words.

“He was stabbed by a dagger, which remains in the wound,” Flint went on. “I can’t say yet with certainty, but I think he has been dead for several hours. He may be carried into the house now and placed upon a bed or couch. Call the family together that I may question them. Who are you, sir?”

He turned abruptly to Dr. Sherrill as if seeing him for the first time; though this was scarcely possible, for no one with normal eyesight could fail to notice the red-faced and red-haired man.

“I am Dr. Sherrill,” he said, “local practitioner. They sent for me when the body was found. I’ve touched nothing save to ascertain that the man was dead.”

“How long you been here?” asked the coroner.

Sherrill looked at his watch. “Half an hour or so. Know anything about the matter?”

“Nothing more than I see before me.”

Flint eyed him sharply but said only, “Come along in, then, Roper, you get somebody to help you move him. Don’t disturb anything. Where’ll we go?”

Peter led the way to the library. Somehow it seemed to him the most appropriate room.

Coroner Flint glanced about him and then took the easiest chair and asked that all the family be called.

“This is only a preliminary questioning,” he said. “Needn’t drag the servants into it yet.”

He rose as Kate Carman and Peggy came in and Dr. Sherrill introduced them.

“All right,” Flint said. “Stand by, Sheriff. I’ll ask questions and you check up on me.”

“Not much in my line,” Gorton said, wiping his forehead with a big handkerchief. “I’ve been sheriff a number o’ years, but I’ve never had a murder case before.”

“Well, you’ve got one now,” Flint told him, but his practical matter-of-fact tone seemed to quell alarm rather than arouse it.

“What can you tell me, ma’am?” and Flint looked musingly at Kate Carman.

“I? Why, nothing at all. I know nothing of the circumstances or—or how my brother came by his death.”

“No—you don’t? Then why’re you so nervous, ma’am? So jumpy, you know.”

“I’m not,” was the angry reply, with a sudden flash of dark eyes that seemed to belie the words. “If I am, it’s only what anyone would feel at having a brother—killed.”

“Yes’m, I know, but you’d feel better if you’d come clean.”

“Come clean?” Miss Kate was puzzled at the locution.

“He means tell the truth, Aunt Kate,” Peter said, gently. “But I assure, you, Mr. Coroner, my aunt is speaking the truth. She has never spoken anything else.”

“Of course not!” Peggy broke in, incensed at the implication. “If you’re here to insult us, sir—”

“There, there, Peg,” Peter interrupted her, “you don’t understand. Coroner Flint has no wish to insult anybody.”

“Of course not,” said Flint, greatly relieved at this help. “And I suppose the ladies would be nervous and hystericky, why not? Well, we must get on. Who found the body?”

“The milkman did, as he came on his rounds,” Peter answered. “He told some of our servants and they called me. Then we sent for the constable and for Dr. Sherrill, and then for you and Sheriff Gorton. That’s the history of the case up to date.”

“And very well put,” Flint nodded his approbation. “Now, who saw this man last alive?”

His hearers looked at one another.

“Why, I suppose we all did,” Peter said, at last. “We all had dinner here at home, and afterward, I should say at about eight-thirty or so, Father went out.”

“Do you know where he went?”

“I do. He went up to the inn to play poker, as he has done every Saturday night all summer.”

“Who’d he play with?”

Pete Carman looked across the room at Dr. Sherrill, and by a nod seemed to indicate that it was the doctor’s turn to take up the tale.

Not quite understanding, Coroner Flint gave a grunt of impatience, and Dr. Sherrill spoke.

“With me,” he said, “and with four other men. We’re a sort of club, you see, and we play once a week.”

“I see.” The coroner transferred his intent gaze from Peter to the doctor. “Play late?”

“Stopped about one o’clock. Always do stop about that time. Just a little friendly game, you know. Nothing frisky.”

“No, I s’pose not. Who else sat in?”

“Two men named Nichols and Dane, and two much younger men, nephews of Mr. Dane’s.”

“Big stakes?”

“On the contrary, very small. Less’n a hundred dollars changed hands.”

“Who left the party first?”

“They all went away at the same time. They all live around the green, and they walked home. One of ’em took a taxi and went off by himself. The others, including Mr. Carman, went away together. Well, that is, young Phillips, he went straight across the green, as he was in a hurry to get home, having a toothache.”

“Oh, well, all those details can be checked up,” the coroner said, frowning a little, obviously because he seemed to be getting nowhere. “Then, if those men walked along together, who would be the first to drop off at his own home?”

“Why, Mr. Carman,” Sherrill replied. “This house here is less than two blocks from the inn. Doubtless the three came along here, Carman dropped out, and the other two went on round the green to their homes.”

“Looks that way. We must see those other two, but it looks like Carman dropped off here and came up on his own porch, took out his keys, was about to unlock his door, when someone stepped up behind him and stabbed him in the back.”

“That’s the way it looked to me, too, Dr. Flint,” Sherrill said.

“Killed with one swift, well-directed blow,” the coroner went on. “Sharp dagger, keen, narrow blade, perhaps, say, seven inches long. Went in just below the fifth rib, pierced the heart. Of course, he’d fall at once, forward, and died instantly. Or practically so. Hemorrhage, of course, but no bleeding of the stab wound. Never knew what hit him. Scoundrel! To strike a man in the back!”

“Can you find him, Dr. Flint? Can you get him?” asked Peggy, her eyes dark and somber with anger as well as grief.

“I hope so, Miss. But you must all help. You see, I know nobody in Gilead—don’t know anything about the folks here. Mr. Carman have any enemies?”

“Not here,” Kate Carman answered.

“Where, then?” urged Flint.

“Well, he was a Wyoming man, you see, and out there he was sheriff. You know yourself that means he made enemies. All sheriffs do, that is, Western sheriffs. Now, I can’t tell you of any individuals, but I do know that there are men out there who would be very glad to know that John Carman is dead and who would be quite capable of having been the ones to bring it about.”

“It doesn’t seem altogether likely,” Flint said, slowly, “that one of those men, angry at Mr. Carman for some deed he had done as sheriff, would come all the way to New England to kill him. Wasn’t he going West again.”

“Yes, and very soon.”

“Then, as I say, it isn’t likely they came here. Unless they were Eastern men to start with.”

“I don’t know about that. I don’t know about it all definitely, anyhow. Only I do know my brother was worried of late and had fears for his life. Not that John Carman was a coward or a weakling. He was afraid of no man in fair fight. But of late he has been restless, and when I asked him why, he said once that somebody had it in for him and would very likely succeed.”

“But you gathered he meant some Westerner?”

“I assumed that; I didn’t gather it. But it certainly could not have been any of his friends or fellow townsmen who killed him. He was respected and beloved by all the community.”

Dr. Sherrill’s red eyebrows drew together a bit at this speech. He was not quite ready to agree that John Carman was beloved by all and sundry, and if he was respected it was not entirely a kindly respect, but rather a tribute to his power and influence in village politics.

“Well, we can’t say for sure that the murderer was not a townsman. That we must find out. Now, did anyone hear Mr. Carman come up on the porch last night? Which of you have front rooms?”

“There are two front rooms that look down on the porch,” Miss Kate said, in her dignified way, “Peggy, my niece, has one of them, the other was her father’s room.”

“Yes, and did you, Miss Peggy, hear your father’s step on the porch last night or were you asleep?”

“I was asleep,” Peggy stated, but there was something about the positive assurance that made it seem a bit overdone. The girl held her head too high, stressed her speech too strongly, looked the coroner too straight in the eye.

It required no clairvoyant, no psycho-analyst to know for a certainty that she was not speaking the truth. Moreover, her hands grasped tightly the arms of her chair and her foot tapped nervously on the carpet.

Flint looked at her for a moment, and then said, easily, “No, take that back. You weren’t asleep.”

To his surprise, for he fully expected her to flare up, she gave a little laugh and said, “Well, no, I wasn’t exactly. But I had gone to bed and I was just dropping off when I heard someone come up on the porch. I don’t know whether it was Dad or Peter.”

The coroner was chagrined, for he knew he had lost his chance. He had fairly caught her, but she had slipped through his fingers, and had done so because she had an instant to think. A smart young person, Miss Peggy Carman, and one who would bear watching.

She continued to think, as she sat looking at him with inscrutable eyes.

She wore her hair in the bobbed fashion of a Maxfield Parrish page boy, the thick, soft locks curling a bit round her ears, but a straight bang across her low, wide brow. She wore a white sports suit, having no black frock and no mind to wear one if she had. Independent and perverse she looked, yet of undaunted courage. Was she hiding anything, the coroner wondered, and if so, what and why?

“Try to think,” Flint went on, persuasively. “See if you can’t recollect some little thing that would tell you which one it was.”

“No, I can’t,” said Peggy, positively, and he turned to her brother.

“You are the adopted son of Mr. Carman?” he asked of Pete, “the legally adopted son?”

“Yes. Papers signed, sealed, and delivered many years ago,” the young man replied.

Flint sighed and looked at Peter Carman more closely. He had learned to distrust this flippant, innocent-looking type of modern youth, and though this chap was surely thirty years old, and past the age known as the “younger generation,” he had all the impertinence of that objectionable age and Flint prepared to combat it.

“You were in business with your father?” he went on, and Pete stared at him.

“No,” he said. “I’m on my own.”

“Oh, I see. What is your calling?”

“I’m a bond salesman. Why?”

“It is necessary, Mr. Carman, to get the family straightened out. I trust you will put no obstacles in my way.”

“Of course not. Go ahead. I suppose anything I may say will be used against me?”

“It pleases you to be flippant, but I can assure you it is not to your advantage, sir. Where were you last evening?”

“I was at home here to dinner. Then I went to the Country Club and had a game of bowls. After that, I went to a night club.”

“What one?”

“The Small Hours Club; that’s the only decent one around here.”

“And what time did you come home from there?”

“About two or three o’clock.”

“A little closer, please. Nearer two or three?”

“Lord, I don’t know. When a fellow comes home from a night club he doesn’t bother about the time. I always go there Saturday night. All us fellows do.”

“Very well. Now, when you did come home, did you see your father, alive or dead, on the front porch?”

“No, of course I didn’t.”

“At what door did you come in?”

“The side door; I always use it.”

“But you passed the front porch on your way in.”

“I didn’t look toward it. Also, it was dark, and the shrubbery is very thick. He may have been there, or he may not. I do not know.”

Peter spoke frankly and with a straightforward gaze at the coroner.

But Flint was wary, and he knew that both these modern young people could pull the wool over his eyes if they wanted to. But he had no real reason to think they wanted to. He had no reason at all to suspect the honesty of Peter or of his sister, but he had to make these definite inquiries and he was of no mind to be sidetracked from his duty.

“Now, Miss Carman,” he turned back to Peggy, “when you heard a step on the porch was it the front porch or the side porch?”

“I didn’t hear a step,” she declared, quite herself again. “I never said I heard a step.”

“You said you heard someone come up on the porch.”

“Well, it wasn’t a step, it was more like somebody talking.”

“Ah, voices. Then there must have been two people at least.”

“I don’t know, I tell you. I was half asleep. I just sort of imagined it.”

“Oh, no, you didn’t imagine it. Now, which porch was it?”

“It might have been either. My room is in the corner between the two porches.”

“And about what time was it?”

“I can’t say. I had just heard the hall clock strike one—”

“Ah, one?”

“But I don’t know that it was one o’clock. That clock strikes the half hours, so it could have been any half-past stroke.”

“I see. Where were you last evening?”

“Here at home, alone with Aunt Kate.”

“Not out at any dance?”

“No. I had been playing in the tennis tournament, and I was too tired to go to a dance.”

“Then it is not surprising you were wearied and cannot say just when you heard those voices beneath your window. But if you could remember, it might be helpful in finding out the truth about your father’s death.”

“No,” Peggy reiterated, shaking her head, “no, I don’t know.”

The coroner questioned them a little more, but seemingly got no new information, and then he requested that the servants be brought in.

They came, it seemed in endless procession, but soon they were weeded out and dismissed until there remained only Martha, the ladies’ maid, Murray, the butler, and a footman whose duty it was to wait until the last of the family came in at night and then lock up the house.

Flint questioned this man closely but learned little.

“Tell me, Taylor,” he said, “why do you sit up to lock the house when I’ve been told Mr. Carman locks the door when he comes in?”

“Yes, sir, but there’s Mr. Pete to come in, and maybe Miss Peggy. And sometimes, Miss Kate, she’s out. I have to make sure they’re all in, then I puts on all the bolts and burglar chains and goes to bed.”

“And last night what happened?”

The man looked scared. “Well, I just sat and sat. And Mr. Carman he never came.”

“Mr. Pete came?”

“Yessir, he came, long ’bout—oh, I dunno what time, four o’clock, I guess.”

“Four o’clock nothing,” said Pete. “More like three or two-thirty. He was asleep, Taylor was. But I didn’t wake him, for I wanted to slip upstairs quietly myself. And I did. And I didn’t know whether Dad was in or not, and that’s the truth, the honest truth.”

Again Coroner Flint felt impressed by the chap’s veracity, but again he refrained from saying so. He made no response of any sort, but turned to the maid, Martha, a neat trim person with intelligent eyes.

She said she had no information to give, for the servants’ quarters were all at the back of the house. But at the end of the futile session of inquiry she vouchsafed one bit of evidence, if such it could be called.

“I was dusting the porch, sir,” she said, in a matter-of-fact way, “and I found this.”

From her apron pocket she produced a withered rosebud, pink and still giving off a pleasant fragrance.

“H’m,” said Flint, quite unimpressed, and making no move to take the flower from her. Nor would he have paid any further attention to it had it not been that Peggy gave a little irrepressible gasp, just enough to make him turn toward her.

The girl was staring, wide-eyed, at the withered blossom, and seemingly without volition held out her hand for it.

Martha gave it to her, and Flint, waiting till she had it in her hand, said, coolly, “Let me have it, Miss Peggy.”

A look of baffled rage came into her lovely eyes, and then, as suddenly, she smiled, and with a superbly careless gesture, she flung it at him, saying, “Catch!”

“Thank you,” he said, and put it in his pocket.

“That all, Martha?” he went on, to the maid.

“Well, no, sir, it ain’t,” she said, in that promising way of hers.

“You have more to tell?”

“Yes, sir—that is, sir, if you want me to tell anything I saw—just happened to see, like, this morning.”

“Yes,” the coroner was very grave, “tell of anything you saw.”

“Well, then, sir, I saw him—that doctor,” she looked toward Sherrill, “take something out of Mr. Carman’s pocket while he was—was seeing what ailed the master.”

“You saw this?”

“Yes, sir. He took out a paper.”

Sherrill’s face was blazing; flesh as well as hair and mustache were all a fiery red now.

“She’s a—a liar!” he spluttered. “Nothing of the sort! How dare you say such a thing?”

“I saw you,” Martha repeated, placidly, and quite unafraid.

“What was it, Dr. Sherrill?” Flint asked, and everybody looked at him questioningly.

But before he could make any reply, a man shot into the room, a state trooper, who looked as if he were bursting with some fearful news.

“Coroner Flint here?” he said; “and Sheriff Gorton? And you, Roper? Well, you’re wanted, all of you. I’ll stay here, and you all go over to the Nichols house, across the green. Montcalm Nichols, you know. He’s been killed. Murdered on his own doorstep. They just found him. Hurry along, they haven’t touched the body yet. I told ’em not to. We had an awful time to find you, Sheriff. We telephoned and your folks said you had come to Gilead, but nobody knew where. Well, it’s a terrible state of affairs. Anyway, you two—no, all three of you—get along over there. I’ll hold everything here. And send to Hartford for more help. Lord, what a horrible situation!”

The three men hastily departed. Dr. Sherrill followed them and vanished.

The young sergeant who had brought the news was asked for further details but had none to give.

“Come along and get some hot coffee,” invited Pete, and Sergeant Malloy gladly went.

Miss Kate glanced at her niece to find her scrutinizing a very withered rosebud. “Where’d you get it?” she asked.

“I picked the old dear’s pocket,” Peggy replied.