Читать книгу Easy to Kill - Footner Hulbert - Страница 11

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It was given out that Howard Van Tassel had been seized with a heart attack while locked in his bathroom. This was true, of course, but it was not the whole truth. The family was desperately anxious to avoid the least whisper of scandal, and this accorded very well with Mme. Storey's plans.

“They ought to have consulted the police in the beginning,” she said to me. “Publicity might have saved them. But it will not bring the old man back to life now. And the only chance we have of catching a murderer of this sort is to let him think he has beaten us to a standstill.”

The frightened guests lost no time in getting out of the house. It fell to Nick Van Tassel's part, as the nearest male relative of the deceased among those present, to circulate among them, telling them what had happened and receiving their condolences. I watched him with a kind of horrible fascination, he did it so well. I noticed, however, that he never tried to approach his aunt. Very likely he feared she might forget all discretion in the first frenzy of her grief.

Most of the guests had to walk home, since the cars had been ordered for one o'clock. It must have been years since Newport had seen such a sight as that concourse of portly matrons in their gorgeous evening wraps tottering through the quiet streets in their tight slippers.

In order to avoid exciting comment, Mme. Storey and I had immediately returned downstairs to mix with the other guests. Nick Van Tassel had a car outside, and with perfect effrontery he offered to give Mme. Storey, Mrs. Lysaght, and me a lift home. My employer accepted with a bland smile.

In the car Nick was quiet and grave. He was too good an artist to throw about any hypocritical expressions of grief. He said: “Poor Uncle Howard! Of course it was terrible to have it happen at such a moment, but, after all, he's better off. He had become a burden both to himself and to his family.”

We gave him five minutes to get out of the way, and then Mme. Storey and I returned to the scene of the murder in her car. No doubt all our movements were observed, but it scarcely mattered now.

The big house was already dark and quiet. The valet, Dickerman, was waiting for us in the hall.

Mrs. Van Tassel and Cornelia were in seclusion, and everything depended on the valet. He led us into the library to wait until the medical examiner should have completed his task and left the house.

That took only a few minutes. The cause of death was obvious, and there was no question of an autopsy.

“I won't telephone for the undertaker until you have finished your examination,” murmured Dickerman.

When we got upstairs the body had been laid on the bed. I was thankful to see that the awful expression of terror had faded from the dead man's face. The body yielded no evidence—nor did we expect it to; neither was there anything to be found in the bathroom where he had died. In this case Mme. Storey was faced by the unique task of solving a murder in which there was no evidence that murder had been committed.

Crider, naturally, was terribly distressed by what had happened. He said: “When we came upstairs I locked the door of the study behind us by Mr. Van Tassel's orders. The door from his bedroom into the hall was always locked. After Dickerman had got the old gentleman ready for bed he went into the bathroom, closing the door behind him.”

“You were told not to let him out of your sight,” Mme. Storey reminded him.

“I couldn't follow him into the bathroom,” protested Crider.

“I suppose not. Go on.”

“He had not been in there more than a second or two when I heard a low cry and a fall. I sprang for the door, but before I could open it I heard the key turn in the lock. I snatched up a chair to break in the door, and called to Dickerman to throw up one of the screens and look out to see if anybody was escaping from the bathroom window.”

Mme. Storey turned to the valet. “Did you do that?”

“I tried to, madam, but the screens stuck. Both of them. I had nothing to cut the wire with.”

Mme. Storey went to the window and showed us how each of the screens had been fastened at the top with tiny wooden wedges. I was struck with amazement.

“He thinks of everything!” I murmured.

“Why shouldn't he,” she said, coolly, “if he had the run of the house and all the time he needed.”

“Except for the cry and the fall there wasn't a sound from the bathroom,” said Crider. “There couldn't have been any struggle.”

“It wasn't necessary,” said Mme. Storey. “The murderer had only to show himself. His victim was already at the point of collapse from fear.”

A shiver went through me at the picture called up by her words. That infernal smile!

We next interviewed the various guards stationed about the grounds. These were our own trusted men. All insisted there could have been no prowlers outside. George Stephens, who had been specially detailed to patrol a stretch of walk under the windows of Mr. Van Tassel's suite, had seen nothing moving.

“Did you ever look up?” asked Mme. Storey.

“Yes, madam, but I couldn't see much because of the branches of an elm tree on that side.”

Immediately under the bathroom window there was a bank of evergreen shrubbery. A close examination of it revealed no broken branches, and certainly no ladder had rested in the soft earth between the plants. I glanced at Stephens, at a loss. If the man had not come from inside the house, and had not come from outside the house, what was left?

Mme. Storey said, “Let us go up to the third floor.”

There was another bathroom immediately above the one used by Mr. Van Tassel, with a similar window. It opened off a bedroom that had been allotted to one of the string quartette for the night.

This room would have been empty, of course, at the moment of the old man's death. Mme. Storey pointed to two marks on the bathroom window sill that seemed to have been made by hooks caught there.

“Rope ladder,” she said. “It can't be far away.”

Our man must have worn gloves, for he had left no fingerprints in either of the bathrooms.

We found the rope ladder concealed behind a pile of towels in a linen closet on the third floor. It was a thin, light, well made affair about twelve feet long.

“Knotted by sailors,” remarked Mme. Storey, adding that the cordage was of a superior sort used in rigging racing yachts. It had a red thread woven in it, evidently to designate the brand.

We next took Benny Abell out on the rear terrace or porch to try to piece out with his help what had happened there.

“Nick came out on the porch with his cousin, Miss Cornelia,” said Benny. “I lost a couple of minutes before I could pick up a girl and follow him out. When I came out he was sitting on a little sofa at the extreme left of the terrace as you faced the sea.”

“Still with Cornelia?” asked Mme. Storey.

“No, madam; he was then sitting with Miss Evelyn Suydam. Miss Cornelia was with another man, across the porch.”

“But you are sure it was Nick Van Tassel?”

“Yes, madam. I went up close to him, making out I was looking for a vacant seat. There were none near, and I had to take my girl to two chairs about twenty feet away. But I could still make out a vague outline of Nick.”

“Can you swear that he remained sitting there up to the time that all the excitement arose in the house?”

Benny looked at her, startled. “I never doubted it until you put it to me that way,” he said. “No, I couldn't swear to it. Because he called some of his friends over—Miss Ann Livingston, Bill Kip, and a girl I don't know. They made a sort of group together and I couldn't distinguish which was which. Afterward they went back, and I thought that Nick and Evelyn Suydam were still sitting there.”

“But it is possible that Nick had slipped away and Bill was substituting for him?” suggested Mme. Storey.

“Yes, madam,” said Benny, unhappily. “But if he had left the porch wouldn't the men in the grounds have spotted him?”

“He didn't enter the grounds. He could have gone through a door under the porch that leads to a service room in the basement. That way he would have run the risk of meeting servants. Or he could have stood on the rail of the porch and hauled himself up to the roof. From the roof he could enter a window leading to the second floor corridor. There would be nobody upstairs in the house. It is pretty safe to assume he went that way. We'll examine the window....What happened when the uproar arose in the house?”

“Everybody jumped up,” said Benny. “It was useless to try to get to Nick, because I couldn't tell who was who then. So I made for the electric light switch just inside the hall—I had marked it on the way out. But I couldn't reach that, either.”

“Why not?”

“A girl fainted right at my feet. I think it was Evelyn Suydam.”

“Evelyn again,” murmured Mme. Storey.

“Ann Livingston was trying to help her, and Bill Kip. Others ran up and I was completely blocked from the door. In the end it was Nick Van Tassel himself who switched on the lights. I was relieved when I saw him standing there. It never occurred to me that he....All I thought of was, he had the only cool head in the crowd.”

“He had need of it,” said Mme. Storey, very dryly.

Before we left the house we were summoned to Mrs. Van Tassel's boudoir. We found the old lady, clad in an exquisite lavender negligee of chiffon and swansdown, reclining in a chaise longue with a bottle of smelling salts in her hand. She was prostrated, as was quite natural; however, by this time her mind was working clearly and her face had been freshly made up. When we entered she dismissed her maid from the room.

“What must I do?” she asked, faintly.

Mme. Storey was, as always, plain and outspoken with her. “Well, Mrs. Van Tassel,” she said, “I feel as if you ought to tell me that. After what has happened, I don't know if you wish me to go on....”

“Yes! Yes! Yes!” she wailed. “You must protect me!”

“It doesn't appear that you are in any special danger,” Mme. Storey said, honestly. “You appear to be in good health and you certainly are not a woman who could be shocked to death. That seems to be the murderer's line.”

“He will find some other way of torturing me,” she said, hysterically. “We are his special marks because we inherited the money he thinks ought to have been his. He is an unnatural fiend! He will never leave us alone!...Get evidence against him,” she went on, more quietly. “Spare no expense! Conclusive evidence that we can hold to protect ourselves. But no publicity! I must think of my children!”

“Very well” said Mme. Storey, gravely. “I will do my best to get the evidence you desire. I ought to tell you, though, that I have reason to believe you are not this man's only victims. It may become necessary for me to go to the police in order to protect others.”

“Oh, I don't care about other people so long as you keep our name out of it,” said Mrs. Van Tassel.

This arrangement lasted only until the day of the funeral.

Mme. Storey and I did not go to the house, of course, but we were in Old Trinity with the rest of the world. Many consider it the most beautiful church in America. Like everything connected with the Van Tassels, the funeral was a big show; banks and banks of flowers; the whole social register turned out en masse, some of the richest men in America for honorary pall bearers. The widow was a pathetic figure, drooping on the arm of her eldest son, swathed in crepe from head to foot. Little Cornelia walked with the second son.

I was in an aisle seat near the back of the church, and I had the weird emotional experience of seeing Nick Van Tassel serving as actual pall bearer. I suppose it was not the first time that a murderer has helped to carry his victim's body to the grave, but it brought goose flesh out all over me. He paced down the aisle alongside the casket, a tall, lithe figure, with his confident head lowered and his bold eyes demurely cast on the ground. He passed within a foot of me, and I had to turn away my head, but even so his nearness made the back of my neck prickle.

Mrs. Van Tassel drove home from the church, and it had been arranged that we should follow her for a further consultation while everybody else was at the grave. She was still in the hall when we entered the house. She asked us to excuse her while she removed her veil, and we were shown into the library. She went up in the elevator.

We had scarcely taken our seats when a piercing scream rang through the house. After what had already taken place there, it was too much. I lost control of my muscles and shook as if palsied. Mme. Storey ran out of the room, and I followed her blindly up the stairs. She could not wait for the elevator.

Mrs. Van Tassel's boudoir corresponded to her husband's study across the corridor. When we ran in we saw her huddled face down on the chaise longue, all tangled in her long crepe veil, beating her head on the cushions and kicking her feet like any woman rich or poor in the grip of hysteria. Two distracted maids were bending over her.

My employer and I, looking around the room to discover the cause of her collapse, simultaneously perceived a torn envelope on her desk between the windows, and a letter spread open beside it. Even from across the room we recognized the plain typewritten sheet and the signature of two words—“The Leveler.” Mme. Storey, naturally, started to get it.

Mrs. Van Tassel, all distraught as she was, divined her intention and sprang to her feet. Forgetting her age, she thrust the maids aside and, running to the desk, snatched up the letter under my employer's astonished nose and crumpled it into a ball.

“You shan't read it! You shan't read it!” she cried, wildly.

Mme. Storey stared at her dumfounded.

“Go! Go!” cried Mrs. Van Tassel, shrilly. With her veil all askew and her dyed hair flying, she looked like a witch. “I don't want to have anything more to do with you!” she screamed. “Leave the house! You have only brought more trouble on me.'”

She turned away, sobbing and rocking her arms. “O God! whatever I do, I can't escape him!...Go! Go!”

“Why, certainly,” said Mme. Storey, coldly. “You engaged me and you can dismiss me. There's no occasion for all this fuss about it.”

“You shall be paid for what you have done,” cried Mrs. Van Tassel; “but I never want to see you again! Leave me!”

We turned around without another word, walked downstairs and out of the house. The car was waiting and we drove away.

Mme. Storey's face was white with anger, but I could see she was struggling with herself. Presently she shrugged it away, saying, “Poor soul! one must make allowances for her!”

“If we could only have seen that letter!” I murmured.

“Not difficult to guess what was in it,” she said, with a hard smile. “Mrs. Van Tassel was ordered to get rid of me.”

“What do you suppose he threatened her with?” I murmured, turning cold.

“What does it matter? She has obeyed his orders.”

She was silent during the rest of the drive, thinking hard, with compressed lips and drawn brows. When we had almost reached Mrs. Lysaght's I felt obliged to break in on her thoughts.

“Hadn't you better tell me what line we are going to take before we meet Mrs. Lysaght? So I'll know how to act?”

“What line we're going to take?” she repeated, with the same smile.

“How much shall we tell her?”

“Tell her nothing. She prefers it.”

“Are we going back to New York?”

Mme. Storey began to look more like herself.

“Did you ever know me to take a dare?” she asked.

My heart sank. I should gladly have given up the case then.

“On the whole, it's just as well that Mrs. Van Tassel bounced me,” she added, serenely. “It frees my hands. I can go after my man now without consulting anybody.”

“Think of the horrible danger,” I faltered.

“That lends spice to it.”

“Where is the money coming from?”

“Money? When did we ever think of money when our blood was up? If necessary I am prepared to spend the last dollar I own to bring this man to book!”