The End of Mr. Garment

by Vincent Starrett

  Kimbark’s supply of excellent Bourbon, it appeared, had not been utterly depleted, although Miss Bland appeared to have finished the bottle which earlier had engaged her attention. It was no longer in evidence.

  “And now, gentlemen,” said Cicotte—Detective-Sergeant Bernard Cicotte of the Bureau—settling himself in his chair, “shall we get down to business?”

  His glass bobbed gently in his hand, in time with the swinging of his foot. “I should particularly like to hear what Mr. Anger has to tell us.”

  “Little enough,” said Harold Anger promptly. “We dined with Charlesworth and Mr. Van Peter, at the hotel, about seven; then started for this house. We were late in leaving; that was why I called Mr. Kimbark a little before ten o’clock. On the way we passed Mr. Van Peter’s place and stopped off.”

  “Why?” asked Kimbark gently, and Van Peter smiled at the question.

  “Frankly, it was just a whim,” replied Anger. “Mr. Van Peter had been telling us about a rather jolly wine he had, and Mr. Garment thought he would like to sample it.”

  “There was a party going on?” Kimbark was determined to find out.

  “There were a few people there, yes,” agreed Anger. He seemed puzzled by the interrogation, as did Cicotte. Van Peter, appreciating that Kimbark was investigating the actual murder less than he was investigating the Van Peters—who had delayed a Kimbark triumph—continued to smile quietly to himself. He didn’t entirely like Howland Kimbark, but he bore him no especial ill will. And he knew that Kimbark was merely asking the questions that Nidia Kimbark would later ask her husband.

  “Who is Charlesworth?” asked Cicotte abruptly.

  “Mr. Garment’s manager, or perhaps agent. He is the senior partner of Charlesworth & Charles-worth—the New York literary bureau.”

  “I see. He accompanied you as far as Mr. Van Peters’ place?”

  “No, he didn’t. We left him at the hotel. He had some business of his own to attend to.”

  “Business?”

  “Or pleasure,” said Harold Anger, with a faint smile. “I really don’t know which. At any rate he had an engagement of his own.”

  “I see.”

  “Well, we stopped off at Mr. Van Peter’s place, and I regret to say got stranded there. We all owe Mr. Kimbark an apology. It was Mr. Garment’s fault. Not to mince matters, he liked Mr. Van Peter’s wine rather too well. So well, in fact, that he took too much of it and went to sleep. That’s the story of the delay. He’s hard to handle when he’s that way. We hated to call up and tell the truth, you see—er—”

  The handsome young man was extremely apologetic.

  “I understand,” said Kimbark. His eyes rested calmly enough on Van Peter for an instant, but there was venom in his heart. But even as Van Peter had understood and sneakingly sympathized with Kimbark, Howland Kimbark understood that it was Lillian Van Peter who was essentially to blame. There is a fundamental fellow feeling between husbands.

  Belatedly Cicotte tumbled to the fact that some jealousy existed in the situation. “All right,” he said, good-naturedly enough. “And now let’s, get along. How about the murder, Mr. Anger?”

  “Good Lord!” cried Anger. “I know nothing about the murder. When Mr. Garment came around, he insisted on continuing to Mr. Kimbark’s party, that’s all. He was determined, in spite of the hour—in spite of everything—-not to disappoint. We tried to stop him—offered to call Mr. Kimbark and explain—but it was like talking into a dead telephone. In the end we called a cab for him and sent him along.”

  “You and Mr. Van Peters?”

  “Yes—we put him into the cab.”

  “Why didn’t you come along with him, Mr. Anger?”

  Anger shrugged and grimaced. “It’s a fair question,” he admitted. “The fact is, I just didn’t like to. I was a bit ashamed of the whole performance —I am yet. I was annoyed with Mr. Garment about the entire episode. I preferred to let him go on alone, so that his condition might tell its own story. It was silly, of course; but the whole business was botched, and, after all, it was his own fault.”

  “And you have no theory as to how he met his death?”

  “None! It’s a complete mystery—as surprising as it is appalling.”

  “Nor you, Mr. Van Peters?”

  Van Peter shook his head. “It’s beyond me,” he said. “It must have been robbery. Not that he was carrying anything, I understand; but what else could have happened? Somebody saw us putting him into the cab, I suppose, and followed. Possibly even jumped on behind, somehow, and went along. I don’t know!”

  “You didn’t see anybody around?”

  “No, I didn’t—but there might have been a dozen people. I wasn’t thinking of anybody else.”

  “No cars standing near?”

  “Not that I remember. Of course, there must have been. Some of my guests were still with us. Their cars were waiting, no. doubt.”

  “They drive their own?”

  “Most of them—yes. If you are thinking of waiting chauffeurs, I can find out; but I think you’re wrong, Cicotte. The younger set doesn’t bother with chauffeurs. I think you’re on the wrong track.”

  “Maybe I am,” admitted Cicotte imperturbably. “But there were other cars around this place, when he arrived. Eh, Mr. Kimbark?”

  “There may have been,” answered Kimbark. He thought rapidly for some moments. “I’m inclined to doubt it—that is, that there were any drivers waiting. Van Peter is right about that. Everybody I can think of, just now, drives his own or uses a cab.”

  “But those who drive their own would leave their cars outside, wouldn’t they?”

  “Oh, yes. They’d be empty, though.”

  “They might be,” agreed Cicotte. “Or somebody might come along and get into one of them.”

  “Waiting for Mr. Garment to arrive?” put in Mollock, speaking for the first time. “In that case he would be somebody to whom Mr. Garment was known.”

  Cicotte nodded. “Something like that, maybe.” His yellow-brown eyes suddenly glinted. His grin was at once whimsical and satanic. “I understand you had a sort of hunch about this case, Mr. Mollock—before it happened!”

  Van Peter and Harold Anger looked swiftly at Dunstan Mollock. The secretary uttered an exclamation of surprise.

  The story writer was sublimely undisturbed. “I fancied you might get around to that,” he returned, with a little smile. The smile became a laugh. “Kimbark’s been telling tales. I hope he doesn’t think I killed Garment—because I didn’t. I don’t quite see how I could have. Well, it’s true. But it wasn’t exactly a hunch. I invented the story to account for Mr. Garment’s absence. I suppose you’ve heard the details?”

  Cicotte tossed off the remainder of his glass. “Ingenious,” he commented.

  “And might be damned awkward, I imagine,” said Mollock. “I’m glad I was in plain sight of somebody all the time we were waiting. At one time and another I must have been under the careful eye of everybody in the house—and making myself a bit of an idiot, as usual, so that I am unlikely to be forgotten. What motive, I wonder, might be ascribed to me in the event that I am accused of the murder! Professional jealousy? I’ve certainly said some mean things about Garment.”

  He chuckled, then suddenly was sober.

  “Look here, Mr. Detective Cicotte! You’re a shrewd man—one can see that with half an eye. Mr. Anger could see it with his monocle, if he had one. But there’s another possibility that you’ve overlooked.”

  Cicotte was mildly interested. “What is that?”

  “In my little anticipatory romance about the situation, I suggested that somebody in this house might have committed the murder. It’s true— somebody might; but I doubt it. It’s good enough melodrama, but not so good as life. You’ve suggested that somebody may have followed Garment to this house—or have preceded him, to await his coming; and that’s conceivable, also. But, leaving the driver out of the picture for the moment, there’s a third and very pretty possib
ility.”

  He was being unnecessarily dramatic.

  “Assuming that Garment was murdered by somebody who knew whom he was murdering, it’s quite possible that the murderer was already in the cab when it called for Garment.”

  “Great Scott!” said Van Peter, startled. “When we tumbled him in?”

  “Why not?”

  “There’s a light in the cab,” said the detective. “It operates when the door is opened.”

  Mollock was only slightly dismayed. “It may have been out of order,” he suggested.

  “Was it out of order when you took the body out of the cab?”

  “N-no, it wasn’t, as I come to think of it. I don’t believe it was. But it might have been switched off, and then switched on.”

  Cicotte slowly nodded. “Maybe it can be done,” he admitted. “Did you call for that cab, Mr. Van Peters? I think Mr. Anger said you did.”

  It was Anger who answered now. “No, we didn’t,” he confessed. “I said that without choosing my words. Actually, I ran out and picked one up.” He hesitated. “It came along when I had been waiting only a few minutes. There are always plenty of them in the street.” He hesitated again. “Hang it, I can’t remember whether the thing lighted up or not, when we pulled the door open!”

  He looked at Van Peter, who was similarly troubled.

  “It’s funny,” said Van Peter, “but I can’t remember, either. Oh, it must have! I’d stake my life there was no one in the car.”

  Anger continued to be worried. “It puts me in a queer light, now,” he complained. “My picking up the cab.”

  “Not necessarily,” soothed Mollock. “It might give the taxi driver a question or two to answer, though. About that light, perhaps?”

  Cicotte bounded to his feet. His face was suddenly transformed with rage.

  “If that bird knows anything he hasn’t told me,” he said, in a burst of savagery, “I’ll—I’ll—” Then he laughed, silently and softly, as a happy woman might laugh, thinking of her lover.

  “I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if I got it out of him,” he concluded gently.

  Chapter Three

  The horses were ordered for nine o’clock. The murder of an English novelist is a sensational event, even in Chicago, but nothing short of a natural cataclysm will persuade a horseman to forgo his morning canter.

  Breakfast had been a dismal affair, with Allison, the butler, and the other servants seeming to hang over every dish. The Lord only knew what gossip was going forward in the kitchen. The Kimbarks glanced at one another furtively from time to time, but few words passed between them. The words that did pass were of trifling importance. Between her worried eyes and the sugar bowl Nidia Kimbark saw again, as she had seen it for an instant the night before—with a sharp intaking of the breath —the face of Stephen Garment. She had peeped into the billiard room only once.

  Between her husband’s eyes and the sugar bowl a folded newspaper reared itself like a sinister obstruction. He scanned it swiftly, eagerly, with eyes that were at once fierce and fearful. There was plenty to engage his attention. The second page “spread” included reproductions in smudgy halftone of himself, his wife, his dwelling, and his grounds. With a snort of anger he flung the thing aside at last and stood up.

  “Thank God,” he said, “for horses!” There was more instinctive piety in the words than he dreamed.

  In the park there was more room for talk and words came more easily to both of them. Yet it was with a tentativeness unusual to her that Mrs. Kimbark opened the conversation.

  “It was pretty terrible while it lasted, wasn’t it? But from now on it will be easier.”

  They were riding close together. Occasionally one of the horses swung its body inward so that their knees brushed, and neither flinched from the contact.

  He laughed harshly, after a moment. “Easier?” he echoed. “What do you mean?”

  “But won’t it? The nerve strain, the—ugliness —of it all. At least we shan’t be bothered with detectives snooping through the house again, setting our teeth on edge. As if they were looking for more bodies! That man Cicotte is a monster—I am sure of it. There is a sleek fatness about him that is horrible. And that trick he has of bouncing his hands together and apart. He gives me the jitters!”

  Kimbark contrived to shrug—a bit of an accomplishment on horseback. “He’s merely doing his duty, I suppose. It hadn’t occurred to me that he was snooping. What is there for him to find?”

  She looked away to the right, over the shrubbery and through the trees, to the distant boulevard, already thronged with scurrying machines.

  “Heaven knows what he thinks,” she answered. “What do detectives think? Anyway, there’s bound to be some shocking publicity. Can’t we get away from it, Howland? Take a voyage, perhaps? Curly Pope has been after us for ages. I thought I hated the Caribbean, but I’d welcome it now—in almost any company.”

  “Curly’s good enough company,” said Kimbark, determined to be contrary. “Oh, I know! You’re thinking of the Van Peters. Of course, it was a scurvy trick—but, at that, it may not have been deliberate. This Garment has always been a bit of a cad, I understand. I didn’t think he was such a souse, though. Did you?”

  The final question was abrupt—almost significant.

  She met his eyes. “I’ve heard reports of it,” she replied vaguely. “I’ve never seen anything myself to verify them—unless it was last night’s affair.”

  “When you met him in New York—” began Kimbark; but his horse stumbled at the moment and she replied before he could continue.

  “He was always the perfect, polished gentleman of the world. Because he chose sometimes to write of—perhaps ‘cads’ is the word—those who never really knew him—”

  “Confused him with the people in his books? I understand it’s a dangerous practice—but I wonder! Who was the beggar who said that all fiction was really autobiography?”

  His tone, while light, was still faintly sardonic. His attitude, she realized, was on the whole unfriendly. But the ride always made him feel better, whatever was the matter. She rather feared that there was plenty the matter.

  “Probably that fool Mollock said it last night,” she retorted, in the same tone. “It sounds like one of his remarks.” She returned to the attack. “Why can’t we get away, Howland, until all this blows over? Surely there’s no reason why either of us should be expected to remain. There’ll be an inquest, I suppose—if that’s the word—and what is it they always decide at inquests? ‘Persons unknown’! Something of that sort. The papers are always full of it.”

  “And after the inquest?” inquired Kimbark.

  “Why—I suppose they’ll take him back to England—won’t they? Perhaps they’ll bury him in the Abbey. Do you remember the flowers we saw on Dickens’s grave, Howland? Mr. Anger, I suppose, will have to see to all that—or the other man— what’s his name? Charlesworth!”

  Kimbark’s ironic amusement startled a bushful of sparrows into flight. Or perhaps it was the approach of the horses.

  “You’re optimistic this morning,” he commented. “We certainly can’t leave until after the inquest, if we leave at all. It would look like flight —wouldn’t it? And what have we to conceal?” He laughed again. “Is it on my behalf or your own that you are so anxious to get away?”

  Her heart stopped beating for an instant; then it raced.

  “I don’t understand you,” she said boldly, and stiffened in her saddle.

  “You think I murdered Garment, don’t you?”

  Then both horses stopped dead in their tracks at the sudden tautness of the reins.

  “Don’t you?” he repeated fiercely.

  Twice she tried to answer him and twice she failed. Then her voice reached him faintly, as from a great distance.

  “I wondered.…I wondered, Howland!”

  “And why did you wonder? Because you believed I had the right to kill him?”

  With a tremendous effort she cont
rolled herself. Her voice was firmer. “I think we are being un-necessarily dramatic,” she said, almost coolly. “I knew you thought you had the right to kill him, and I was afraid you had been idiot enough to do it. I know what Lillian Van Peter hinted to you about me and Mr. Garment, in New York. Well, it isn’t true, Howland! It isn’t true.”

  He considered this in silence for a moment. Both sets of reins relaxed, and the horses started forward again of their own volition. They walked almost softly in the loose dirt, as if to listen to all that might be revealed.

  Kimbark spoke again. “So that, if I did kill him, it was for nothing, eh? For nothing at all!” He laughed a little. “That would be an interesting situation, now, wouldn’t it? Seems to me I’ve read it somewhere. Something of Garment’s, no doubt.”

  “Did you?” she asked him directly. “Did you kill him?”

  “How could I? He drove up to the house in a public car—dead in the back seat. You must have seen me, off and on, all evening, while we waited for him.”

  “I thought of that.” She was very calm now, very sure of herself. “But you could have done it, Howland. You could have been waiting outside at the moment he arrived. You could have done it between the moment I notified you that the cab was coming up the drive and the moment the front bell began to ring. I didn’t see you every minute of that time.”

  Quite suddenly Kimbark was in the best of tempers. His laughter rang out almost gaily. “I’ve got witnesses,” he chanted. “There was someone near me all the time. Dromgoole, Curly, this Mollock person, Ronald Key—probably others. Oh, I’ve got witnesses!”

  “I’m delighted to know it,” she said, a trifle dryly. “But, of course, you know and I know that you could have done it. There are always ways.” One of them occurred to her. “You might even have hired someone else to do it. Got someone to wait for Garment to arrive.”

  “So you think I’m that sort of a person, also, do you?”

  “Of course, I’m glad to hear you say you didn’t—”

  “Your hearing is extraordinary,” said Kimbark. “I can’t recall saying anything of the sort.”