Читать книгу Sinfully Rich - Footner Hulbert - Страница 7

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Lieutenant Radigan was questioning Mrs. Bethesda Prior in the music room of the Ware apartment. Upstairs the various experts connected with the police department were doing their jobs. The body had been removed to the morgue for an autopsy.

Radigan had a police stenographer taking notes, and Mike was sitting in as an observer. Through Mike, the Recorder-Press was still enjoying exclusive privileges. Radigan had been troubled when the main reportorial pack picked up the trail. "I can't let them swarm over the apartment," he said. "It wouldn't be decent."

"Certainly not," said Mike blandly.

"But if I keep them out, I've got to put you out, too."

"You can't do that," said Mike. "In the absence of family, I'm one of Mrs. Ware's most intimate friends. Why, unless the old lady was lying to me, you'll find that I'm a beneficiary under her will."

Radigan gave him a look of suspicion that caused Mike to laugh and clap him on the back. "It's all right, old fellow, I didn't push her over the brink."

Radigan was a good sleuth and a good fellow, but his mental processes were not exactly lightning-like. "If I was to favor one paper, the others would hound me off the force," he grumbled.

"You can't help yourself this time. I'm in what they call a strategic position. But you needn't worry. I'll take care of the boys; and I'll play fair with them, too."

"MacKelcan, the attorney, ought to be the one to say who ..."

"I'll take care of him, too," said Mike. "Seriously, Lieutenant, I can help you in this case. I know all the people who are mixed up in it; I know their characters; I know their histories; I know their motives."

"If it's only a robbery, I'll be taken off it directly," said Radigan. "I'm a homicide man."

"It was murder!"

Radigan glanced at him sharply. "What makes you say that?"

"It smells of murder!... Look, Radigan, an old woman as rich as that, without any natural protectors, and so foolish and confused in mind, she was asking for it!"

"Maybe so, but there's no evidence."

"Well, let's wait for the report of the medical examiner."

Now they had Mrs. Prior before them. Unknown to her, the police had obtained a warrant, and were searching her apartment during her absence. Mrs. Prior was a flabby-looking woman in her forties, not too well preserved. She was very expensively dressed, but without taste; the tall-crowned hat she wore was ridiculous without being chic. She was one of the unlucky women that the smart shops can't do much for. Her mouth drooped at the corners; her voice was flat; only her eyes were sharp and hard. She had enjoyed a kind of success because Mrs. Ware was so fantastically rich; behind her back the smart gang laughed at this would-be social director.

She had not been told that Mrs. Ware was dead until she reached the apartment. Naturally she was upset, but she evinced no real grief; on the contrary, there was almost a note of satisfaction in her flat, inexpressive voice. Radigan watched her keenly; experience had taught him that a devilishly clever woman may take cover behind a stupid, foolish front. Mrs. Prior bore his scrutiny calmly. Mike, she hated, and made no scruple about showing it. The examination had been going on for half an hour, and Radigan had not yet tricked her into making any damaging admissions. She was now telling them how she had first met Mrs. Ware during the previous year.

"I read in the paper that her husband died, and I made up my mind to go and see her...."

"Without any introduction?"

"Oh, there was a connection. My sister-in-law's mother attended the same church as Mrs. Ware in Tarrytown where the Wares lived in summer."

"Was your sister-in-law's mother acquainted with Mrs. Ware?"

"No, but the same pastor called on them both."

"I see."

"So after the funeral I went to see Mrs. Ware. I knew she would be surrounded with expensive flowers so I just took a single white rose and sent it in with my card. It touched her, and she sent for me to come up and we just talked as one woman to another. I told Mrs. Ware all about the death of my dear husband...."

Mike rubbed his upper lip to hide a grin.

"And she told me about hers. 'Now that he is gone, everything is ended for me,' she said; and I said that it was wrong for her to talk that way. She was one of the richest women in the world, I told her, and a full and useful life lay before her. 'Just think of all the good you can do,' I said. She cheered up a little at that, and we talked over different schemes of philanthropy...."

"Which were never carried out," put in Radigan.

"They would have been! They would have been—if she had not been taken!" Mrs. Prior touched a handkerchief to her perfectly dry eyes. "She was always talking about it! But she had been such a quiet home-keeper, she knew nothing about life, and I said before putting her money into anything, she must come out of her shell; she must go about; she must meet important people. At whatever cost to herself. Of course, this didn't all happen during that first talk. But we soon became the warmest friends!"

"You have been receiving large sums of money from Mrs. Ware," suggested Radigan.

"No such thing!" said Mrs. Prior sharply. "I never took a cent from Flora. Our relations were on the basis of pure friendship!"

"Now, Mrs. Prior!" Radigan consulted some notes that Hodges had given him. "Charles W. Ware died in October and that's when you became acquainted with his wife. At that time you occupied a small flat in Jackson Heights costing fifty dollars a month. You kept no servant. In December you moved to 1075 Park Avenue where you are paying two hundred and fifty a month, and employ two maids and a chauffeur. You own a Cadillac car. Where did the money for all this come from?"

"I have private means," said Mrs. Prior haughtily.

"You have helped Mrs. Ware to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars. I assume that you received a commission on her purchases. Be careful how you answer. I can easily check it."

Mrs. Prior was indignant. "I don't know why you should take this tone toward me, Lieutenant Radigan. You will regret it later.... What if there were commissions in some cases? Flora knew all about it. She said to me: 'Take it, Bethesda, you've earned every cent of it, because you don't let them overcharge me.'"

Radigan took a new tack. "Let's come down to last night, Mrs. Prior. You and Mrs. Ware quarreled."

"Unhappily, yes." The handkerchief came into play again. "Oh, it's awful! awful! to find her dead without having had a chance to make it up again!"

"You suggested this hay ride to her?"

The handkerchief came down quickly. "No such thing! I advised against it!"

"Several persons have stated to me that it was your idea."

"Oh, if you wish to believe the tattle of servants! All the servants here hate me because I keep a sharp eye on them. Flora was too easygoing."

"Does everybody in this household hate everybody else?"

Mrs. Prior disdained to answer.

"Well, anyhow, you quarreled."

"It wasn't serious. We should have made it up today."

"If it wasn't serious, why were you so upset? You ran out of the house without speaking to anybody."

"Of course I was upset. I was tenderly attached to Flora. I'm a sensitive woman."

Mike and Radigan exchanged a glance of dry amusement.

Said Radigan: "Mrs. Ware was overheard to say in positive terms that everything was at an end between you."

"It was Cummings told you that. He's a liar! You'd better investigate him!"

"All in good time, Mrs. Prior."

"Cummings is too big for his shoes! I distrusted him from the first. I warned Flora against him, but he managed to talk her 'round."

"Where did she get him?"

"Through an employment agency; Mrs. Sully's. Apparently he had good references."

"How long has he been with Mrs. Ware?"

"Six months. Cummings is a sinister character! Always watching and listening! Always trying to poison Flora's mind against me! A kind of Svengali. Made my flesh creep. Trying to gain the mastery over poor Flora, and make her do everything he said!"

"Why didn't she discharge him?"

"Well, the truth is, though I hate to say it, but he had got the upper hand of her. She was always telling me what a good servant he was, and how grateful she was to get one who didn't drink to excess, and how he kept the other servants in order and all that, but as a matter of fact, she was deathly afraid of him. Why, sometimes he completely forgot his place! I have come upon him sitting down in her presence as if he were her equal!"

"If Mrs. Ware stood for it, what of it?"

"She was afraid of him, I tell you."

Radigan fixed her with a hard-boiled eye. "Mrs. Prior, my belief is that you are only raising a dust to conceal the real issue." His forefinger shot out. "I put it to you that Mrs. Ware was dead before you left here last night!"

She faced him out. "That's nonsense! She was well enough to stamp her foot and screech at me!"

"I thought you said it wasn't a serious quarrel."

Mrs. Prior changed her tone. "Poor Flora! She was so dreadfully upset about the way the people in the streets mocked her, she didn't know what she was saying!"

"I'm not suggesting that you brought about, or even hastened her death," said Radigan in a milder voice, "but that she had some kind of a stroke in your presence."

Mrs. Prior was right back at him. "You are suggesting that I killed her! First you say I was getting money out of her and then that I killed her. Well, if I was making a fortune out of her, I wouldn't kill her, would I? You don't make sense!"

Mike rubbed his lip. She had Radigan there. The entrance of a policeman saved the Lieutenant's face. The officer laid a penciled note before Radigan, and went out again. Mike tried to read the note upside down, but it was too badly written.

Radigan said: "That will be all now, Mrs. Prior.... And thank you for your assistance," he added sarcastically.

"Am I free to go home?" she demanded.

"I ask you to remain here until after a report is received from the medical examiner. If you insist on leaving, I shall have to provide you with an escort."

"And what am I going to do while I'm waiting on your pleasure?"

"There is plenty to read in the apartment. If you would like the society of another woman, Miss Radnor is in the office."

"Thank you for nothing!" she said, marching out.

When the door closed, Mike relieved himself with a chuckle. "She shifted her ground too swiftly for you, Rad."

"Oh, yeah? If it had been you, you would have matched her, I suppose?"

"I wouldn't say that. Only one thing occurred to me while you were questioning her, but I didn't think it was my place to prompt you."

"What was that?"

"Why didn't you ask her about the old woman's will?"

"What about it?"

"Well, if Bethesda's down for a big sum in the will, and they quarreled finally, it would give her a strong motive for liquidating the old woman before she had time to change her will."

"I have that all in mind," said Radigan. "I'm not done with Bethesda Prior yet by a damn sight."

"What's written on that paper?" asked Mike.

Radigan turned it around and Mike read: "None of the missing jewels found in Mrs. Prior's apartment." Radigan said: "Of course that doesn't alter the situation. She wouldn't be fool enough to leave them around her own place. If she did get them, we don't know where she may have gone last night. That woman is a hundred per cent liar!"

"Not a hundred per cent, Rad," said Mike. "Only dopes lie a hundred per cent. The artistic liar dresses up his lies with the truth. He keeps inside a twenty per cent margin."