Читать книгу The Ebony Bed Murder - Rufus Gillmore - Страница 7

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“Look!” Mullens held up the smudged pieces of paper before Hutchinson. “Here’s the meetin’-whorl pattern the men cameraed on that revolver. And here’s Dorothy Vroom’s right thumb-print. You see this island here? Well, there it is there—And this bifurcation or forking line here? There it is socking you right in the eye—Now, sink your eye-tooth into that little ridge-dot—And into that one there. Not another girl’s thumb in the world has them. Signed right on the weapon. We’ve got her. It’s the clincher.”

Scott and I crowded them for a closer view of the startling evidence. I stared dully at the dirty smudges that fixed the murder of Mrs. Kent on that young girl.

There was a tingling silence. Then Scott punched Mullens with a fiery glance.

“Sergeant, you’re crazy as a June-bug. The crafty schemer who plotted this murder drop us a finger-print? He just couldn’t do it. Didn’t she explain this?”

Mullens’ heavy face parked a joyful grin. “Sure, she explained this. Catch that smart young lady without an explanation. But I had to threaten to run her in to get her thumb down here. And by the time I cornered her out in the hall, she dished out a damned raw mess of fish. She tried to make me think that when Captain Brill hoisted up the body to the bed, she picked up the revolver from the floor. She was scared blue, she was, that he might stumble over it with the body. That hard little devil worrying about a little thing like that! It’s so touching, it makes me weep.”

Scott may have started all this trouble rolling down on Dorothy Vroom, but once more I heard him speak up hotly in her defense.

“Weep? You make me weep real tears. What better explanation do you want?”

Mullens crooked up one corner of his mouth. “Hot damn, but she’s got you goin’ strong for her. Listen! Why did she plop it right down on the floor afterwards? Why didn’t she fear her mother or someone else would stumble over it? Why can’t she name just one of the five others there who saw her pick it up afterwards?”

“She could, if she was cunning enough to put this through.”

With a disgusted grunt, Mullens whipped around to Hutchinson.

“What about it? Do I make the pinch now, or you want to grill her first?”

“You go and—”

Scott’s angry movement stopped Hutchinson.

“Man alive! Why don’t you make sure first no one did see her pick it up afterwards?”

Hutchinson thought a moment.

“Right! That’s the thing to do. Before she gets to the others to back up her feeble story.” He turned briskly to Mullens. “You order Haff to send in that Salvation Army officer. And then you two both take to the sidelines and watch me take the ball. I’m taking charge here now.”

A few minutes later, Captain Brill’s wiry little figure sat rigidly erect on the edge of a low-backed, cretonne-covered armchair. His slightly bulging emotional blue eyes were fixed hard as a wrestler’s on Hutchinson. His fingers were laced together over his lap with a tightness that hinted it would be hard to pry anything out of him.

Hutchinson looked at him a moment, and then took a round-about way to the information he was after.

“Captain Brill, did your sister fear anyone—say, unruly servants or divorced husbands?”

The knotted hands unknotted. Captain Brill’s stiffness eased up visibly, though he shook his bristling red hair firmly.

“No. Helen never knew fear. It would have been far better for her, if she had.”

“Now, what do you mean by that?”

Captain Brill’s protruding eyes fired with sudden fervor. “If she had known proper fear, she might have saved her soul. What else is of real consequence, brother?”

The passion of the zealot vibrated his tone. Exhortation loomed in the rapt eager way he bent forward, but Hutchinson spoke quickly.

“Suppose you tell us in your own words exactly what happened here tonight.”

The witness raised quickly a freckled bony hand. “First I want to explain how I came to be here. I didn’t come to join in the celebration of my sister’s birthday, but because I was told that she was suffering from neuritis for her sins. I have no time for parties.” His earnest look demanded the belief of each one of us before he went on. “We gathered in the living room. About nine Helen came in there. But her sins were tormenting her too greatly for her to stay long. At half past nine, she left us and came in here to go to bed. She—”

Hutchinson with an impatient movement turned him elsewhere. “When did you hear the shot?”

“I heard a sound that I know now must have been the shot at exactly twenty minutes past ten.”

“How can you be so positive about that time?”

“I looked at the tall clock in the living room.”

“Who were in the living room with you then?”

“Only Ethel Cushing, my sister’s daughter, but—”

Hutchinson moved swiftly nearer. “You’re sure you and Miss Cushing were the only ones in the living room, when the shot was fired at this end?”

“Yes, but the others were in their own rooms, not in this room.”

Hutchinson turned away, asking carelessly. “Quite sure of that?”

“I am.”

Hutchinson spun around towards him. “How can that be true? Your father and brother have no rooms here.”

A quick flood of red on a thin earnest face, but his eyes refused to drop. “No. I spoke hastily. My father and brother were in the bathroom next door to here.”

“Did you see them there?”

“No, but they told me they were there and I have faith in them.”

Things began to look slightly better to me. No longer was Dorothy Vroom the sole person here to suspect. At the time of the shot, Jesse and Napoleon Brill claimed to be next door. But were they there? I recalled the furtive way they appeared to be questioning this witness after he replaced the body upon the floor and was permitted to join them in the living room. It seemed to me that suspicion might much better be directed at them that Hutchinson now concentrated upon the young girl caught listening in.

“But Dorothy Vroom—she told you she was in her own room then?”

“No. I didn’t ask her. But I’m sure she had nothing to do with this. My wretched sister took her own life.”

“Oh no, she didn’t. We have positive proof she didn’t. And now, suppose I demonstrate to you that Dorothy Vroom—”

“Don’t waste your time. I shall throw the first stone at nobody.”

Captain Brill gathered himself together rigidly and that was that. Hutchinson fenced with him and wrestled with him; bullied him; jabbed him with sarcasm; but this tight lipped martyr could not be made to consider this a case of murder; nor could he be either cajoled or driven into saying one word placing suspicion on others. With an impatient gesture, Hutchinson finally gave up.

“Well, go on with your story.”

Captain Brill’s inflexible attitude relaxed. “Ten minutes after we heard the sound that we thought was just automobile exhaust, Dorothy Vroom and her mother came into the living room. Dorothy had to go out to keep an engagement. Before she got away, my father and my brother Napoleon entered, and Nappy asked Dorothy to wait for him. She wouldn’t. So Nappy playfully snatched away her gloves. And then, before I could bring peace between them, Miss Cushing came running in and whispered something that hushed us all up tight with horror.”

“What did she whisper?”

I strained forward. My mind raced like a disconnected engine. Now, we were to hear how Helen Brill Kent’s body had been discovered.

Captain Brill moistened thin lips. He went on in the resonant tone of the street exhorter, a tone that sounded queerly over-strong pealing out of so small a man.

“She whispered that she had pounded and pounded and pounded on this door, but no answer.”

“And then?”

“And then, I hammered and hammered, and I couldn’t get an answer. I stooped and looked through the keyhole. All I could see was an arm. But it lay along the floor. And it didn’t move. So I called for a key and Mrs. Vroom brought hers. I opened the door. There was the terrifying swish past us out from under the bed of the cat. Then we got our nerves together and all came in. And here Helen lay stretched out on the floor.” He closed his eyes evidently to shut out horror; he opened them too soon. “At first, I hoped she had only fainted. I lifted her up on the bed. But then I saw that terrible wound in her mouth and neck and I knew the worst had happened. Her sins had made her take her own life. Before she could repent.” For an interminable moment, he regarded us—a steady look, not drooping and sad, but stiffened with severity, as if a younger sister, though foolish people might envy her worldly riches, had come to a bad end through not listening to him. Into my mind a thought bounded. How that sister and brother, governed by such contrary purposes and morals, must have clashed! One so beautiful but mercenary; the other so homely but devout. Whenever they met, eyes must have flashed; mouths must have poured out the kindling criticism and the inflaming advice that crackle into the fiercest family fights. What if such a fight had been fought between them here tonight?

Hutchinson, intently groping for further evidence against Dorothy Vroom, disregarded that possibility. But not Scott apparently. I saw him bend on Hutchinson a look of acute surprise at the turn his next question took.

Hutchinson, squaring broad shoulders, planted himself directly in front of Captain Brill. He put him under a hard look.

“Now, after you came in here and found your sister’s body, did you at any time see anybody pick up the revolver from the floor?”

I leaned forward. Would Captain Brill understand? The guilt or innocence of Dorothy Vroom hung on his answer to that shrewdly worded question. He evidently didn’t; he studied Hutchinson doubtfully, but only for a moment; then he replied with decision.

“No, sir. I saw no one pick up the revolver.”

“Or anyone at any time afterwards place the revolver back upon the floor?”

The witness studied his questioner a longer time; he answered with less decision.

“No, sir. Not that I remember.”

Hutchinson flashed a triumphant glance at Scott; he asked his next question persuasively and with his eyes aimed out a window.

“Then if Miss Dorothy Vroom says that she picked up the revolver after the crime just to save you from stumbling over it with the body, she probably isn’t telling us quite the truth, is she?”

I knew that incriminating question was coming. I felt a twinge of sorrow for the young girl about to be incriminated. But Captain Brill’s response made me start and sit up quickly. He shook his head stubbornly. His voice rang out in the still room.

“I won’t say that.”

I felt like breaking into cheers for him; but Hutchinson’s manner prodded him confidently.

“Why won’t you say that? You didn’t see her pick it up or lay it down after the crime, did you?”

“No, I didn’t but—but how could I, when my back was towards her?”

Hutchinson scowled as if he had just lost the king of the stream off his hook. “You couldn’t have kept your back towards her. Not all the time.”

“Most of the time. And—remember this. I was too shocked by my sister’s death to notice a little thing like that.”

Hutchinson raised an angry hand, also his voice. With a heckling frown, he drove him. “This is no little thing, Captain Brill, and don’t you think for one minute that it is.”

“I don’t care. I won’t say that.”

And Hutchinson couldn’t make him.

After trying to in vain, he shifted sharply to another matter. “Now I want you to tell me how you fixed the time you gave us.”

Captain Brill’s eyes widened. “As I told you, I looked at the clock. It said twenty minutes past ten.”

“Yes, yes, I didn’t mean that at all. I remember with what superb forethought you looked at the clock when you heard the shot. People always look at some clock or go out on the street and ask some passerby the minute whenever a car hiccoughs. What I want you to explain now is, how did you know it was just ten minutes after the shot when Dorothy Vroom came flying into the living room?”

His witness shook his head sternly. “I didn’t say that she came flying in there.”

“You said that she was in a great hurry to go, didn’t you?”

“No, I said that she had to go out to keep an engagement.”

“Well, we won’t quibble over words.” Hutchinson hovered over him, his manner growing friendlier, but merely cheese in a trap. “But you don’t expect me to believe that you kept your eyes on the clock all the time, do you? And so, how can you say it was ten minutes after the shot—precisely half-past ten, in fact—when Dorothy Vroom came into the living room?”

Another trap. And one likely to snare them both in an incredible explanation. But Captain Brill’s explanation was so simple and commonplace as to prove to me singularly convincing.

“I didn’t keep my eyes on the clock. And I didn’t look at it again then. I didn’t have to. Dorothy and her mother came into the room. At that moment the clock chimed the half-hour. And what Dorothy said then made me hear it. Because she said, ‘Oh, mother, I’m late. I promised faithfully to meet Bascomb at half-past ten.”

I smiled; so did Hutchinson, but his smile curled into sarcasm.

“Wonderful! Whenever your eyes grew inattentive to the clock, it got all worked up and spoke to you. But let that slide. Now, how did Dorothy act when she came into the living room then—nervous, worried, anxious to get out of the apartment?”

The witness shook his head inexorably. “I said that she had to go out and that she was late but—”

“Then she must have seemed worried and anxious.”

Captain Brill set thin lips firmly. “No. I won’t say that. I said—”

“You’ll have to admit that. If she was late, how could she help acting worried and anxious?”

“I didn’t notice that she did. And I won’t say that.”

As they fought over that point, I looked down at the floor disgusted. If this witness did act strangely as if shielding others, why should Hutchinson strive for evidence against Dorothy Vroom only? And now Scott rebelled; he got up restively and said to Hutchinson.

“Randolph, I’m going out to check the time of that clock in the living room. Mind if I ask Captain Brill a few questions before going?”

Hutchinson spread over him an annoyed look. “Go on, if you’re suffering from blood pressure.” He retired to a chair, but his hands gripped its arms, ready to catapult him back into his argument at the first open moment.

Scott sat down and stretched out his legs before him, as though his questions were of no particular moment; he bent over and with his handkerchief flicked dust off one shoe, before inquiring in a voice peculiarly soothing after Hutchinson’s exasperated tone.

“Captain Brill, rude people, I’ve heard, used to try to break up your street meetings by calling out to you to go home and convert your own sister first. Have they kept that up?”

Captain Brill lost his rigidity instantly; he looked above thankfully. “No, I have had a mercy on that.”

“I’m glad to hear that. When did you last try to convert your sister?”

“Tonight. Before she left the living room. But she wouldn’t listen to me.”

“You didn’t quarrel?”

Captain Brill hesitated a moment; then he shook his head.

“When did you last try to convert her before tonight?”

The witness ran a nervous hand into red hair that stood up stiffly. “Fourteen years ago the twentieth of last month.”

I jumped at that definite remembrance of such a distant date. So did the others. It suggested more unforgettable event on that day, but Scott reproached him lightly.

“Captain! You allowed over fourteen years to pass?”

Captain Brill winced and his face flamed. “Don’t misunderstand that. My commander ordered me to keep away from my sister.” His bony cheek twitched; he passionately defended himself. “That day my father brought me terrible news. My sister Helen planned to divorce Mr. Stuyvesant. She demanded half a million dollars from Mr. Stuyvesant for their only child.” He raised his shuddering body, held it part way up by his hands on the arms of his chair; his eyes blazed. “She meant to sell her child! Her own flesh and blood!” He let himself down weakly. For a moment he huddled there still and white. Then he sprang up and his story came on a strong, fierce current. “I ran all the way to their home on Fifth Avenue. I rushed past the scared servants. I reached her room. It was noon, but she still lazed away the day in bed. I shook her awake. I told her I had come to save her from damnation and hellfire. She made an evil face at me. She swore sinfully. But I fought for her soul. I had a strength and fervor then never given me before. I might have saved her then but—” he looked at us despairingly; his voice shook— “Mr. Stuyvesant, the man she was wronging, the very man I ran all the way up there to help; he crept up behind me; he struck me down with a chair.”

Silence came on us. We watched him drop back into his chair. A light went out in his eyes, as if turned off by a switch; passionately luminous blue eyes faded—eyes strong emotions must have burned out exhorting others to salvation; hands hung futilely over the arms of the chair—hands that had doubtless set cast-offs upon their feet and probably followed the bayonet up close with the doughnut. There he slumped, collapsed. For a moment the fire of great emotional leaders had flamed up in him. Now he was a bony little red-headed man, huddled tired out and hopeless in a cretonne-covered armchair.

I gazed at him with amazement. Could this man commit murder? Incredible. And yet, carried away by such a gust of passion as that—

Scott allowed him time to regain his poise. It was at the end of a long and respectful silence that he finally said:

“Sorry, Captain, but would you mind answering one more question?” At a listless nod, he continued. “Your sister—hadn’t she reached an age when she no longer celebrated birthdays? This party here tonight—wasn’t it one planned by others who—”

Captain Brill’s hands flew together; they knotted as they were knotted when first facing us. A row of knuckles stood out, white as new notches blazed on trees.

“Stop!” High cheek bones became white islands in a face flooding swiftly crimson. “I told you why I came here. That is all I shall tell you. I refuse to open the door to trouble in this house.”

Scott’s keen eyes bored into him, but he kept his voice persuasive. “Perhaps I understand. Others wheedled you here to convert your sister, but they stirred up trouble here tonight that you—”

Captain Brill folded his arms across his narrow chest and stopped him with a resolute look. “I have nothing more to say.”

A little thrill ran through me. Scott had uncovered battles here tonight; a skirmish of this man himself to save his sister’s soul; a fight of others that might have flamed up into murder. But he wasted no time pressing this inexorable zealot for details. He got up to go. As I hurried after him out of the room, Hutchinson began badgering Captain Brill for details.

In the living room, Scott established by his watch that the hall clock in the corner was only forty-eight seconds behind time. Then he turned quickly. From the far end of the living room, Jesse and Napoleon Brill, Mrs. Kent’s wily-looking father and younger brother, watched us as store-detectives watch shoplifters; but the two women at our end of the room seemed utterly uninterested in our actions. Shah, the cat, though one of those oriental potentates delighting to loll, still sat high on his haunches atop the mantel, like a Haroun al Raschid, his orange eyes apparently demanding how much we understood about what had happened here and what we were going to do about it.

Scott stroked his silky black-and-silver head as we passed. “Golden eyes. A true smoke Persian. No crossing with Chinchillas that change royal, pedigreed golden eyes into green.”

We moved on into the dark dining room. Scott whisked around for another glance back into the living room. “The men and the women still keep in the same two hostile groups, but what’s become of Miss Dorothy Vroom?”

I had noticed her absence and wondered. Under pressure of suspicion, could she have made the sad mistake of taking to flight?

We stepped quietly into the rear hall. Detective Haff leaped forward to seize us. He stepped back apologizing, his young blond face looking worried.

“You haven’t seen Miss Vroom?” Our denial caused him to swear viciously under his breath. “Give a broad of today a smile, and she thinks she owns you. I was sparring with another reporter. She sneaked to the phone again. And now, she’s ditched me—unless she’s in one of these rooms.” He loped down the hall.

Could that young girl have fled? Guilty or innocent, if she had, she had taken the worst step possible for her. Chilled with regret, I turned to Scott.

He listened a moment, then tip-toed across the hall. A glance through the glass panel in the pantry door and he pushed the door part way open. I looked over a trimly tweeded shoulder.

In a kitchen chair, with a cigarette idly burning itself out between long fingers, sat Dorothy Vroom. Her small dark face looked pale. Her swanlike neck dropped, as she studied the floor in obvious despair.

With one foot in another chair facing her, stood a tall blond youth of perhaps twenty. Earnestly he seemed to be urging her to do something. If she looked despairing, he appeared desperate. He took in a deep breath and bent impulsively nearer her.

“Come on. Be yourself. I have the car. We’ll drive to Greenwich. They’ll marry us there and you can laugh at them all.”

She answered without raising her brown eyes from the floor. “You don’t seem to get it, Bascomb. When I promised to go last night I felt absolutely sunk. But now that temperamental, superannuated siren is out,—gone forever. Never again can she make my life one long, endless brawl.”

Impetuously and needlessly, I nudged Scott. Then Mrs. Kent had tormented this young girl until she planned to elope?

The youth made an excessively tragic face. “Gee, but that’s a hot one! Taking me just to get off the griddle. If I didn’t know you better than that!” He smiled fondly at her. “Come on, I’ll risk it.”

She shook her drooping head slightly yet determinedly. “But I plain just can’t. Not now. Things are all straightened out here for me now. Why risk your father’s throwing you out on your own?”

He placed a superior, male hand on her shoulder. “Ravings! Come on, woman.”

She shrugged slightly under his hand. She gazed up with a wild look in her eyes and her voice trembled. “Bascomb White! I can’t. How many times must I warn you that I simply can’t—not now. If I went now they’d drag me back before—”

That was as far as their reunion was permitted to continue. Detective Haff brushed past us. With hands reaching out he rushed towards the youth whose back was towards him.

Dorothy Vroom saw Haff coming. She sprang up and threw her arms around him. When White plunged to her aid, she called to him imploringly:

“Oh, please go. Don’t—don’t make things any worse.” As Scott and I moved on, she stood with her back against the door, her brown eyes black and her tall slenderly rounded figure a barrier to pursuit by an angry but more admiring young detective.

My feelings tided high as I hastily revised conclusions forced upon me. She hadn’t telephoned out for assistance, but to call off an elopement. She hadn’t feared to meet suspicion alone; she insisted upon facing it alone. She may have turned pale when caught listening in, but now once again she showed an undaunted spirit. And as for her true feeling for this lucky young Bascomb White—

“She didn’t care for him, she said so,” I suggested to Scott. “She only fought like a tigress to save him from punishment.”

“She’s a brave young thing,” he said with enthusiasm, then shook his head ominously, “but the torment she suffered here will seem a mere fleabite compared with what’s coming to her on this case.”

As we re-entered Mrs. Kent’s room, Hutchinson was angrily waving Captain Brill out of it. Obviously, his time had been squandered pressing that inexorable zealot for details; but for us his handsome dark face took on a confident smile.

“That fake surprise party here tonight,” he said, “when we uncover what the row was about at that, there’ll be absolutely nothing to this.”

Mullens shot out a warning paw. “Yeah, but let’s not go it blind. Never for one minute do we want to forget that a certain young wire-tapper here started to run away right after the shot.”

I felt sick; then quickly better. Scott spoke up in Dorothy Vroom’s defense. He attempted to plant a fresh idea jocularly in Mullens’ hardening mind.

“Now, Sergeant! Don’t—don’t, I beg you, look on this any longer as a common shoot-and-run murder. It’s a coup de maitre, an ace of murders. What murderer sharp enough to scheme a murder without a solitary lead would foolishly plan it so he’d have to take to his heels himself?”

Mullens snorted wildly. “To hell with your psychology. You lemme catch anyone runnin’ from a crime. Five times out of five I have the crook who did the trick.”

“Oh, phooey!” Scott’s sensitive nostrils quivered in his stern face. “If that’s the notion cementing up in your witty but inelastic mind, pick it out. Don’t tell me a good detective only has to be a good sprinter. And now, set this in the cement instead. That young girl wasn’t fleeing from a murder. She was running away to get married. Here, I’ve got some news for you.”

Scott reported every word of the talk we had just overheard between Dorothy Vroom and Bascomb White.

This news was talked over and hotly debated. It sank Mullens, shaking his head, into silent thought; but Hutchinson pounced on it, fed it into an idea that he evidently had been weaving.

With his feet planted wide apart and his face bright with an idea of his own to get over, Hutchinson worked himself up into a gesturing fury.

“Would she have felt compelled to elope unless roused to a pitch fit for murder? Never! Not in a thousand Mondays. Now! What if she got into one of her brawls with Helen Brill Kent tonight? What if the spirited little spitfire took vengeance into her own hands, put Mrs. Kent once and forever out of her way? Nothing in the world more likely; that’s fiery young stuff all right! And get this: A wild row evidently sprang up at the party here tonight. They’re all hushing it up to protect someone. And that little spitfire is the one they’re protecting. If she isn’t, I’m a worn-down heel.”

Scott stood up to him; his eyes spat fire. “Don’t be so damned bigoted. How can you be so positive that young girl committed murder just from these first signs? Why, the one clever enough to scheme this murder would take care that suspicion landed on someone else, if this didn’t go over as suicide. Wait. Listen. Why in the devil do you suppose Nature handed you two ears and but one mouth? Here you are again trying to throw the ball before you catch it. Not if I can prevent you. You’ve got to prove that young girl is lying about how and when her finger-prints got on the weapon before I move out of your way.”

They fought long and hotly.

Finally with a groan Hutchinson said:

“All right. It won’t take me long to prove she had her hand on that revolver before, not after, the crime. This religious crank may have protected her. But the other male skunks in the beauty’s family never will. Wait until I have them in here.”