Episode of the Wandering Knife

by Rinehart, Mary Roberts;

  He was terrific. There were all sorts of insignia on his uniform, including a decoration the President had pinned on him, and Patrick looked stunned as he admitted him. The last time he had seen him he had been playing with the fish in the pool, in a suit that looked as though it had been slept in.

  I blinked.

  “Couldn’t you have done it a little at a time?” I said. “Say the trousers first, and so on? It’s rather overwhelming.”

  “That’s the idea,” he observed complacently. “Overwhelm them. That’s my motto.”

  But he was sober enough when he sat down. He looked around the library, and not through the open door to the hall, with its tapestries, its marble and fountain, and the gallery above.

  “I hope the poor devils who come here to get well can take it,” he said. “It’s a grand idea and I’m for it. But has it ever occurred to you what the effect is on the people employed in a place like yours? It does something to people. It does something to me. And it did something to Alma Spencer. You’ve got to remember that, Judy.”

  “Are you asking me to feel sorry for her?”

  “Not exactly. But consider this: It was all right at first She saw a chance to get some support for her stepbrother and his wife, and when she learned the baby was open for adoption she had the Armstrongs apply. But I’m guessing that she wasn’t thinking of murder then. It took her a long time to come to that. Fifty thousand, divided between herself and the Armstrongs, looked like a fortune to her.

  “Then—probably from Isabel herself—she learned that her fortune was in trust. Two million dollars, to go to the boy if she had no other children. And a long time before he would come of age to claim it. If Isabel died, of course.

  “So she brought the Armstrongs East, and Isabel saw the boy and wanted him desperately. Alma hadn’t counted on that.

  “She had to work fast. Suppose Isabel told her husband and he agreed to put up the money? What was fifty thousand compared to the control of two million until the child came of age? Remember, Alma liked money. She craved it. She’d seen it spent like water here for years. Maybe she wasn’t quite sane.

  “She chose the night of the party, but the party almost defeated her. She had to get out of the house, and the doors were guarded At the last minute she got her stepbrother here as a waiter.

  “She told him what to do: to play drunk and knock out Barnes. He says he didn’t want to do it. He was afraid. But even then he still believed she was only to collect the fifty thousand.

  “Anyhow, with Barnes unconscious and out of sight, the rest was easy. Nobody could say she had left the party at all. She took down the chain and tassel which Isabel had insisted on as the final identification of her son, and she picked up your brother’s knife. She gave the chain to Isabel, and then—well, you know the rest. I imagine something scared her just then—perhaps Anna Griffin coming back—for she forgot the chain. If she hadn’t …”

  I felt sick again. And he seemed to be blaming us as if we had driven her to it.

  “We were good to her, Tony,” I protested.

  “I’m sure you were, after your fashion. Like your brother Larry, who didn’t know she was around.”

  I was on the sofa, and I remember leaning back and closing my eyes.

  “You still don’t think much of us, do you?” I said.

  He got up and came over to sit beside me, but I wasn’t leaning my head on his shoulder. I knew better.

  “Let’s forget it,” he said. “What about this war job you’re taking?”

  “It’s just an idea,” I said meekly.

  “Any other better ideas?”

  “I wouldn’t mind a good strong man helping to support me. I could work while he was away, couldn’t I?”

  “What about after the war? If he’s just a common ordinary sort of guy—maybe he couldn’t even get a job.”

  “I could support him, couldn’t I?”

  “The hell you could,” he said, and took me in his arms. Almost immediately he let go of me, groaned, and rubbed his shoulder. “Goddamn Hitler,” he said and kissed me.

  He insisted on seeing Mother before he left. We went upstairs, to find her in her nightgown and bare feet, padding out of Isabel’s boy’s room. She didn’t mind her condition—as I have said, she sees nothing shameful in good honest flesh—but she gave Tony a good long look.

  “Good heavens,” she said. “Don’t tell me it’s you!”

  “Just my working clothes,” he explained. “I thought I’d better tell you, Mrs. Shepard. Judy here has just made me an offer of marriage. At first I was inclined to refuse, but on thinking it over—”

  You have to hand it to Mother. There she stood, looking like nothing on earth, her hair in curlers and her chin strap hanging around her neck. And did she care? She did not. She looked at Tony and gave him a heavenly smile.

  “I hope you accept her,” she said. “I never could handle her myself. You look as though you might.”

  “I’ll handle her all right,” he said grimly, and kissed her.

  That’s the romantic way in which I was given away in marriage….

  The Man Who Hid His Breakfast

  The Inspector stood at the door of the bedroom. The woman’s body had gone, but the bed remained as she had left it. It was almost smooth, as though she had made little or no struggle. And there was no disorder in the room, save where the fingerprint men had left their smudge of powder. On the floor lay a discarded flashlamp, and Brent stooped and picking it up put it in his pocket. He was a tidy man.

  His sergeant was standing in the hall when he went out. He closed the door behind him.

  “Better stick around, Joe,” he told him. “I’ll be coming back. Nobody to go in, of course.”

  He went slowly down the stairs, aware that Joe’s eyes were following him with something like pity. For this was his last case before he was retired, and it looked like a stinker. A man ought to be able to get out quietly, to end his long service with dignity. But this murder was front-page stuff. The big substantial house, the social standing of the family, ensured that it would be plastered all over the front pages of the newspapers. Already reporters were crowding the pavement outside. Soon he would have to call them in and tell them something. He didn’t know what.

  The house was quiet. The precinct men had gone. So had the Homicide Squad, except for Joe. In the lower hall he called his wife over the phone. Her familiar voice soothed him, as usual. But her tone was sharp.

  “Now see here, Tom Brent,” she said, “have you had any breakfast?”

  “Just about to get it, Emma,” he told her pacifically.

  “Well, see that you do. How are your feet?”

  “Fine,” he said. “Just fine. Don’t worry about me.”

  It was a lie, of course. He had a bunion on each big toe, and they burned furiously. What he wanted was to sit down somewhere and take his weight off them. But Emma kept on.

  “I think I’ll go out and look over that place today, Tom,” she said. “The paper said four acres. It sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?”

  He supposed that Joe, in the hall above, was listening. He’d know what it was about, too. Emma had set her heart on a chicken farm when he retired, but he hated chickens.

  “Don’t be in too much of a hurry,” he said. “We’ll talk it over tonight. Just now I’m busy. I’ll call you later.”

  He hung up and stood listening. Queer, how still a house was after tragedy. Even the street was quiet except for the voice of the patrolman trying to keep the crowd moving.

  “Move on,” he was saying over and over. “There’s nothing to see. Move on, please.”

  Brent knew that the girl and the young man were waiting for him in the library, but he did not go in immediately. Instead he wandered back to the dining room, with its mammoth Georgian silver tea service on the sideboard and a wide window overlooking a scrap of city yard. Standing there he saw a dog, a Scottie, apparently burying a bone. And he watched him for a minute or two.
He liked dogs. One of his dreams when he retired was to have a kennel and raise them. But for some reason Emma was hell-bent for a chicken farm.

  When at last he went into the library the girl had stopped crying. She sat, red-eyed and practically collapsed, in the corner of a sofa, and a man in his late twenties beside her had his arm around her. He got up as Brent entered.

  “Can’t you put this off for a while, Inspector?” he asked. “She’s quieter now, but she needs rest. I’ve sent for some coffee for her.”

  Brent eyed the young man. His name was Townsend, and the girl called him Ken. He was a likable-looking fellow, but Brent knew that looks meant nothing in a case like this. Angel faces sometimes committed murder. But his voice was friendly.

  “I’ll be as easy as I can, son. Better sit down. You a friend of Miss Ingalls?”

  “We’re engaged to be married.”

  “I see. Mother approved of it, did she?”

  The girl gave him a quick, almost desperate look. She was still in a negligee over a nightgown as she had been earlier. She must have been rather lovely, he thought, before long weeping had swollen her face and reddened her eyes. His own girl would have been about her age, had she lived. It was young Townsend who spoke, however.

  “No use lying, Joy,” he said. “He’ll find it out sooner or later. No, she didn’t approve of it, sir. She didn’t approve of anything that would take Joy away from her. There are women like that. They hold on like grim death—”

  He stopped abruptly, as though the word had been a mistake. The girl however did not seem to notice.

  “She was sick,” she protested. “You know that, Ken. She had a bad heart. She needed me.”

  Ken had recovered his poise.

  “I’d like a postmortem to prove that,” he said grimly. “It’s a queer heart that only acts up when you take an evening out with me.” He glanced at Brent defiantly. “I suppose you’ll suspect me after that.”

  “Not necessarily.” Brent lit a cigarette and eased his feet in his shoes. “But I’d like to know more about last night. You were here, you said, until one o’clock.”

  “I was. We came in about twelve, and I stayed awhile. What’s more, I let myself out. Joy’s room is back of her mother’s, and I waited to see if the old—if her mother called her. When she didn’t I left. There’s a Yale lock on the front door. I tried it from the outside to see if it was all right.”

  “And it was?”

  “It was. Locked tight.”

  “And after that?”

  “I went home, believe it or not. I live in a walk-up apartment. Nobody saw me. I slept until seven o’clock, and I slept alone.”

  “Sure making things hard for yourself, aren’t you?” Brent smiled faintly.

  For the first time the girl showed some spirit.

  “What are you trying to do, Ken?” she said. “What’s all that got to do with it? You went out. I heard you close the door.”

  Brent looked at her. Was she afraid that young Townsend had done it? Certainly she had risen quickly to his defense. But the boy—he was that to the older man—gave her a quick look and went on.

  “You’ll learn it all anyway, Inspector,” he said. “What’s more, I had the hell of a row with Mrs. Ingalls yesterday afternoon, because I wanted to take Joy out last night. I don’t remember what I said, but it was plenty. That Filipino in the kitchen heard it. Just ask him.”

  The girl sagged again. Evidently this was what she had been afraid of. She sat back, looking at her fingertips from which Brent saw with annoyance that the ink had been poorly removed by the men who took her prints. But it was his method to put his suspects at ease when he queried them. He lit a cigarette and smiled at her.

  “You remind me of a hen pheasant,” he said easily. “Ever see her try to lead somebody off from her chicks? She don’t fool anybody, but she sure gets ‘E’ for effort.”

  Townsend grinned. He reached over and patted her.

  “Thanks, darling,” he said. “Only don’t try to fool the Inspector. He knows his onions. You didn’t hear me close the door. Yours was shut before I left.”

  Brent put down his cigarette. He was all policeman now. He fixed steady eyes on the girl and reached into his pocket and pulled out a long sheer silk stocking. “This belong to you?” he inquired.

  She stared at it, looking sick.

  “Was that—was that what did it?”

  “Yes. Is it yours?”

  “I don’t know,” she said feverishly. “They’re all alike. Don’t make me look at it,” she added, her voice faint. “I don’t want to see it. Put it away.”

  Brent rolled up the stocking, but he still held it in his hand. He kept his eyes on the girl.

  “It’s still kind of damp,” he said. “That mean anything to you?”

  It did. He saw that. There was incredulity in her face—and terror.

  “No, of course not,” she said. “Why should it? And don’t stare at me like that. I didn’t do it. I didn’t. My own mother!”

  Brent put the stocking back in his pocket and got up. He was not satisfied, but it was hard to connect those two good-looking youngsters with murder. Nevertheless he tried.

  “I think it belongs to you,” he said. “I think that last night before you went to bed you washed your stockings. My wife does the same thing, so I know about it. And you hung them in your bathroom to dry. There’s only one there now. The other is here in my pocket.”

  The girl looked stricken. Young Townsend reached over and put an arm around her. “Easy does it, darling,” he said. But Brent’s face had hardened.

  “I’ve been in your bathroom, Miss Ingalls,” he said. “To get to it somebody would have to go through your bedroom. How soundly do you sleep? You had to listen for your mother, didn’t you? If she called you?”

  “No. She had a bell. She didn’t ring for me at all last night. And I was tired.”

  “What about the dog? Didn’t he bark?”

  “I didn’t hear him. I put him out when I was ready for bed. He sleeps at the head of the back stairs, and the door was closed.”

  “But someone knew those stockings were there. Someone who knew his way about the house.”

  “Meaning me, I suppose,” young Townsend said. “Well, that lets me out. I’ve never been upstairs in my life. By Mrs. Ingalls’s orders the newel post in the hall was my limit. And if you think Joy did it you’re crazy.”

  “Who knew those stockings were there? The Filipino?”

  “He never comes upstairs to our part of the house,” Joy said. “And he’s been with us for years. Anyone could have seen those stockings. It was hot last night. My door was open, and I keep a light in the bathroom all night in case Mother rings for me. Rang for me,” she added, and went if possible paler than before.

  Brent felt vaguely dissatisfied. The girl had the best motive so far, but she had all the answers too. According to her anyone who could get into the house could have done it. The dog was shut off, the stockings in full view from the upper hall. But an outsider would have to get into the house, and apparently all doors and windows had been found locked that morning. He got up. The smell of coffee from below reminded him he had had no breakfast.

  “I guess that’ll do for now,” he said. “There’s a police sergeant upstairs, but he won’t bother you. Just keep out of your mother’s room. That’s all.”

  He went out to the front door. A dozen reporters and cameramen were there, and beyond them the usual curious onlookers. To escape the crowd he let the newsmen into the hall. He knew most of them and liked them. Also they knew it was probably his last case. They did not push him. They stood and waited.

  “It’s like this, boys,” he said. “Mrs. Ingalls was strangled somewhere about three this morning. That’s what the medical examiner thinks, anyhow. If it was attempted burglary something scared the killer off. Nothing was taken. She was an invalid. Apparently she didn’t put up much of a fight. Nothing more so far.”

  They grumbled
a bit. They knew most of that already, so they fired innumerable questions at him. How had the intruder got in? Who was in the house at the time? Were there any prints? How was she strangled? At the last one he put a hand uneasily in his pocket, but no part of the stocking showed. And he had removed the one left in the bathroom. He knew their sharp eyes would discover it. In the end he let them go upstairs, on condition nothing was touched or moved.

  “Keep an eye on them, Joe,” he called up the stairs. “Only the one room. No place else up there, and give them half an hour. That’s enough.”

  One of the men did not go up at once, however. He was an older man, and he watched the others out of sight. Then he turned to Brent.

  “Bad luck, Inspector,” he said. “The Commissioner has been on your neck for a long time. Unless you get a break on this it means trouble.”

  Brent nodded.

  “I’ve got to get one,” he said. “Just now I’ve given you about all I have. It isn’t much.”

  The reporter hesitated. Then:

  “I’d hate like hell to see you reduced before you retire,” he said. “He’d like nothing better. You’ve been too good. That’s his trouble. And the press likes you. It hates his guts. And he knows it. Would mean a cut in your pension, too. If I can do anything …”

  “Thanks. I’ll call on you if I need to, Clarke. I—I appreciate your interest. You know that.”

  He felt depressed as he watched Clarke go up the stairs. It was true and he knew it. Ever since the new commissioner took office he had resented him. It was notorious at Headquarters. Probably it was because there had been talk that Brent would get the job. After all he had been almost forty years in the service, and the newspapers had been for him. But it was a political plum, and so he lost out.

  He grunted and turning to the back of the house went down to the basement kitchen. He did not expect to get any information there, however. He had already interrogated the Filipino cook, now busy over the range, and he was the only servant who slept in. The other, a woman, came by in the day, and had not yet appeared. And the Filipino, after the impassive quality of his race, had been of no use whatever. His room was on the third floor back. He had heard no noise, except once about three o’clock when he had heard the dog scratching at the door on the landing. And he had been the one to notify the police after he heard the girl screaming at seven that morning and had investigated.