The End of Mr. Garment

by Vincent Starrett

  Quite suddenly he realized that Dromgoole was not sending a message, after all. The beggar was writing hurriedly on a sheet of paper—copying something from another sheet. His stubby fingers fairly flew. When he had finished he thrust the transcript out of sight and the operator replaced the other paper upon a spike. A piece of currency changed hands. Then Dromgoole bolted from the cabin like a frightened rabbit.

  Anger drew a long breath. It had been like watching a motion picture from the obscure darkness of a theatre. Only one explanation was conceivable. Dromgoole had copied the message sent by Cicotte’s detective, just as undoubtedly—Anger felt curiously sure of it—he had copied all that had gone before.

  But why Dromgoole?

  The secretary was some minutes late when he presented himself before Miss Waterloo on the afterdeck, but she agreed that his tidings justified the delay.

  “I can’t make head or tail of it,” said Anger, “unless Dromgoole is the man that Cicotte’s after.”

  “Surely not,” said Betty Waterloo. “Oh, I’m certain he couldn’t be the murderer. Mr. Dromgoole was with me when Uncle Howland was told that Mr. Garment was arriving. He went on into the living room.”

  “Then he’s another detective,” said Anger wearily. “Is there no end to them?”

  The next development was even then awaiting them around the corner. In actuality, in Havana.

  On the fourth morning they saw the Florida mainland, a blur upon the western horizon, and ran a chromatic scale of islands to the east. The Jezebel was pushing south and west within the channel, loafing easily toward the Gulf of Mexico. On the fifth they looked southward for the mountain peaks of Cuba. The day was cameoclear. In the scarcely risen sun the rocks and islets of the strait stood upon the water like coloured cut-outs from a monstrous supplement; as if a faulty focus had been adjusted to bring all objects into terrifying relief.

  Then the guns of Morro frowned over them and they lay within the harbour of Havana. It was time. Already the cable offices were bursting with their news.

  “Anger, Jezebel, Havana,” ran the secretary’s message, which was signed by Mollock. “Body of New York suicide identified as Mrs. Pope. How does the redhead take to English muffins?”

  The miracle was that it ever was accepted or delivered.

  The other messages were all for Pope and were without exception from the newspapers of New York.

  “My God!” cried Curly Pope, stunned and unbelieving. “It isn’t true. It can’t be true! My wife’s in England!”

  Chapter Eight

  Saving her husband, the two men most immediately excited by the apparent suicide of Mrs. Lexington Pope were Detective-Sergeant Bernard Cicotte and young Mr. Aubrey McDaniel, the one in Chicago, the other in New York. Their minds ran in curiously similar channels. Fully realizing the vagaries of the dim, female nonentity called Fate, and the possibilities of error, they nevertheless snapped their fingers—nine hundred miles apart—and uttered the same oath.

  Coincidence, it was true, was commoner in life than in fiction; but events unrelated in seeming— when a common factor plainly existed—might at bottom have an intimate relationship. At any rate it was a disturbing development.

  To Cicotte the possibilities of the situation were sufficiently alarming to send him scurrying to New York.

  Thus it came about that Dunstan Mollock, who had successfully evaded a number of attempts upon his privacy by young Mr. McDaniel, entertained a sudden visitor from the West whom it was more difficult to refuse. Finally, and for all time, Cicotte had resolved to have it out with the story writer. Mollock, he was certain, either knew all, knew nothing, or had interesting suspicions. It did not at the moment occur to the plump detective that this was a situation shared by some millions of other citizens of the republic who had only followed the case in the newspapers.

  Mollock, it rapidly developed, knew nothing and had no suspicions that were not already vaguely current in all quarters. He was, however, greatly fascinated by the mystery, and readily agreed that the Amersham interpolation was worth a second glance.

  “In fact,” he asserted, a bit importantly, “when it develops—as it will—that Mrs. Pope did not commit suicide, as supposed, but was murdered, the implications of the case may be of even wider significance.”

  Cicotte was not easily surprised, but it was with an effort that he kept from jumping out of his chair. Then he controlled himself.

  “Ah!” he observed, without emotion, and waited for the rest. But he had been as completely floored by the novelist’s remark as any detective in the history of crime. His mind ran like a millrace. Holy jumping Jerusalem! Mrs. Pope murdered? Not a suicide? What was the fellow thinking!

  The detective cleared his throat. He crossed one of his thick legs over the other—a feat achieved by seizing the lifted ankle in both hands and dragging the entire member tightly against the stomach. Then, as no further information seemed forthcoming, he spoke.

  “The possibility has certainly occurred to me,” he observed cautiously. “Do I understand that murder has been proved?”

  He liked Curly Pope, whom he had known for years; and this sudden new development, sensational as it was, was inclined to annoy him. He thought of his steward-detective on the good ship Jezebel, and smiled grimly.

  “I think not,” said Mollock. “In fact, a friend of mine—Walter Ghost—is responsible for the idea, as far as I am concerned. He reached the murder conclusion while sitting in an armchair. But if Ghost says it’s murder—”

  “M-yeh,” agreed Cicotte reflectively. “I remember that fellow. He was mixed up in that Bluefield case wasn’t he? So he thinks it’s murder does he?”

  “He’s sure of it,” said Mollock; and he took the liberty to repeat the theories of Walter Ghost, as he had listened to them a few evenings before. Cicotte was impressed.

  “It’s smart thinking,” he admitted; “but, of course, it doesn’t really prove anything. There’ll have to be an autopsy—if there’s anything left to work on! D’ye suppose this Ghost would take a hand with me?”

  “He says he won’t meddle in the case—so I imagine he will, sooner or later. He won’t thank me for telling you all this.”

  Cicotte shrugged easily. “Oh, well,” he said, “after all, we had the same hunch ourselves. Suicide always has to be proved suicide.” His annoyance escaped him a moment later. “I’d like to know what this damned sister thinks—the woman that identified the body. She must have been Johnny-on-the-spot to be so prompt with her identification. What do you suppose sent her rushing off to Amersham to look at a body that might have belonged to anybody? Was she expecting her sister to turn up, someplace, dead? I’ll bet she knew that suicide had been threatened, Mr. Mollock, and was expecting something like this.”

  “If Ghost says it’s murder, it’s murder,” asserted Mollock again. “Anyway, the papers told what happened—the New York papers did, anyway. Mrs. Duane suspected nothing till the suicide note was reproduced—then she recognized her sister’s handwriting and hurried off to view the body.”

  “She suspected something,” growled Cicotte. “She knew it could be her sister. And why? I’ll tell you! Because she knew her sister was likely to end her life, somewhere and sometime. Old fool who sits around reading the death notices! I know the type.” He shrugged heavily. “Well, I hope Curly has an alibi. If Ghost is right, he may need one.”

  “Will you have a drink?” asked Mollock.

  “I will that,” replied Detective-Sergeant Cicotte.

  The delayed autopsy was a triumph for the theories of Walter Ghost, as it developed, although the authorities did not know it. No trace of poison was found in the vital organs of the dead woman. The findings were admittedly inconclusive, owing to the condition of the body; but there were clear enough evidences of what probably had been a fracture of the skull, brought about by a vigorous blow upon the woman’s head.

  Ghost, at the instigation of Cicotte—they had been brought together by Mollock—
had a look at the sorry ruin that had been a living woman, and had little to add to his earlier conclusions.

  Cicotte, still hoping to give his friend the Chicago yachtsman a break, called upon Mrs. Kingsley Duane and put her through a stiff examination.

  “Now what I want to know is this, Mrs. Duane,” he said. “Is there in your mind the faintest doubt that the body you have identified as your sister’s is your sister’s?”

  “Not the faintest,” said Mrs. Kingsley Duane, with a sorrowful headshake. “It’s kind of you to raise the doubt, but there really isn’t any doubt. I only wish there were.”

  “The note is final and convincing to you!”

  “It wasn’t only the note, Mr. Cicotte. It was the clothes, too. They were Myra’s clothes.”

  “Were you on good terms with your sister?”

  “Of course I was,” said Mrs. Duane indignantly. “We were very close.”

  “And with her husband?”

  “Always. I like Mr. Pope very much.”

  “How long has it been since you last saw her— alive?”

  Mrs. Duane was a trifle dubious. “About a year, perhaps. You see, Myra and Curly travelled a lot. They were always going someplace on the yacht.”

  “Did you correspond?”

  “On and off—yes. I heard from Myra, last, about three or four months ago. She was then in England.”

  “With Mr. Pope?”

  “No, she went with a friend—a Mrs. Campfield. Curly was going to join them, she said, this summer.”

  “Mr. Pope and your sister were not separated, were they?”

  “Good heavens, no!”

  Cicotte was as deliberately brutal as he knew how to be. “But you suspect they may have had trouble, recently, and that that is why your sister committed suicide. Isn’t that a fact?”

  Mrs. Duane burst into angry tears. “No!” she cried. “It isn’t a fact!”

  “I think it is,” retorted the detective. “Why else should she have done it?”

  “I don’t know. I’m as bewildered as you are.”

  “I’m not bewildered,” asserted Cicotte pleasantly. “Now about this letter you had from her —three or four months ago. Could you find it?”

  “I might, if it were necessary. I don’t know.”

  Cicotte glanced her over coolly. “Well,” he observed, “if the letter were dated sometime in, say, February, and it could be shown that this body had been lying around outside of Amersham since last November, it might prove something, mightn’t it?”

  She stared at him, uncomprehending.

  “I mean,” he continued, putting it bluntly, “your sister didn't commit suicide, Mrs. Duane, whatever you may think. It has been established that she was murdered.”

  Mrs. Kingsley Duane’s collapse was prompt and convincing. A bit ashamed of himself—but not much—Cicotte turned her over to her servants and himself departed.

  His sense of guilt, however, sent him pelting off to Walter Ghost to report what he had done and to discover, if possible, what the amateur thought of the rather negative revelations of Mrs. Kingsley Duane.

  Ghost was affable and interested.

  “It’s her sister, all right,” said Cicotte disgustedly. “I never really doubted it, but I had to do what I could for Curly. What about that letter, Mr. Ghost?”

  “I fancy it exists,” replied Ghost.

  “Then she’s wrong about the time she received it. The sister’s been dead since early last winter.”

  “That’s certain, is it?”

  “Wouldn’t you say so?”

  “It’s difficult to be sure—but I’m bound to agree that it looks that way.”

  “I think she knows of some trouble between Mrs. Pope and Curly,” said Cicotte reluctantly. “She was willing enough to call it suicide, but couldn’t give a reason. Her collapse when I told her it was murder looks suspicious to me.” The plump detective was very much annoyed. “I thought Curly Pope had more sense!”

  “You think he murdered his wife?” questioned Ghost.

  “I think he’ll be asked whether he did or didn’t,” growled Cicotte.

  “He didn’t,” said Ghost

  “What!”

  “I think he had nothing to do with it,” continued the amateur. “I don’t know what Mrs. Duane may suspect, but I have no doubt she received the letter from her sister when she says she did. Within a few weeks of that time, at any rate. The probabilities are that Mrs. Pope had threatened suicide, for reasons we know nothing about. Many women threaten it constantly. Most of them don’t mean it. I think Mrs. Pope didn’t mean it.”

  “Then who the devil killed her? There’s that note, Mr. Ghost, too! Who could have killed her —and why?”

  “She’s not dead,” said Ghost. “Sooner or later we’ll hear from her—as soon, perhaps, as she hears the news of what has happened. If she’s in England it may be some time in reaching her.”

  He smiled at the other’s expression. “I may be wrong, Cicotte. Heaven knows, I’m no transcendent detective! You’ll be surprised to hear why I think the Amersham body is not that of Mrs. Pope.”

  “It’s obvious,” said Cicotte. “You believe Mrs. Duane received that letter when she says she did —that it was strictly on the level—that Mrs. Pope was then in England—and that the body of the other woman was then in the ravine. I only wish I could agree with you.”

  “No,” chuckled Ghost. “I think the body is not that of Mrs. Pope because, paradoxically, it was wearing Mrs. Pope’s clothes.”

  “Get out!” Cicotte’s gesture was richly pictorial. “Now you’re kidding me, Mr. Ghost.”

  “Not at all. Mrs. Duane recognized the body by the handwriting and the clothes. In other words, she didn’t recognize the body at all. She couldn’t. Nobody could, with any certainty. But the handwriting and the garments checked; they pointed the way for identification. Perhaps they were intended to; it’s an old trick. In which case, an interesting question is raised. But mark this: Mrs. Duane had not seen her sister for a year—a year, Cicotte! It’s a delicate point, perhaps; but do you mean to tell me that Mrs. Pope would still be wearing that dress? Would she even have it in her wardrobe?”

  “Sa-a-y!” Cicotte was slowly kindling. “When my wife’s had a dress six months she thinks she needs a new one.”

  “So she does,” laughed Ghost. “See that you get her one. But not only is this dress outlawed by its age. Even if Mrs. Pope had retained it, she would not have been wearing it three or four months ago —supposing her to have been murdered shortly after she wrote to her sister. It’s an inexpensive dress of almost summer weight.”

  “’S a fact,” admitted the detective. “Go ahead, Mr. Ghost, you’re doing fine. What’s the answer to it all?”

  “I’m afraid it’s a sort of story-book answer. I mean, the usual thing. To me the dress has all the earmarks of something that was given at some time to a maid.”

  Cicotte thumped his right fist into his left palm. “Wouldn’t it be like some idiot of a maid to go and get herself murdered just to complicate this case!” He was already bitter toward the dead unknown. “But—Boy!—who said you weren’t a story-book detective, Mr. Ghost!”

  The amateur laughed. “Don’t you say it,” he warned. “Besides I may be wrong. Will you have a drink?”

  “I will that,” said Detective-Sergeant Cicotte.

  Greatly cheered, he returned to his own headquarters and turned the situation over afresh. Obviously all that was now required was the advent of Mrs. Lexington Pope, in the flesh, to knock the New York case into a cocked hat. But was Ghost right? Would Mrs. Lexington Pope appear?

  As if to answer the unspoken question, she appeared the next morning. The ship-news reporters met her at the dock and sent frantic telephone messages into every newspaper office in New York. The telegraph spread the tidings.

  “Kind Heaven!” said Myra Pope, appalled. “And poor Curly! What have they been doing to him? For goodness’ sake, cable him that I’m all r
ight, somebody, or he’ll be crazy. He’s probably cabled me in England, and had no answer.”

  She welcomed young Mr. McDaniel with open arms when he clamoured for an audience that afternoon.

  “Look at me, Mr. McDaniel. You’ve seen me in Chicago? Good! I’m really myself. I’m not dead —I’m alive! I got tired of batting around in Europe without Curly, and I came back. Just in time, it seems to me. Put it in the papers, so all our friends can see it. Attaboy! Write it down!”

  Young Mr. McDaniel wrote it down. She was an attractive young matron, and Mr. McDaniel thought well of her. Perhaps a trifle—just a trifle —too plump? But plump in the right places, he decided.

  “You’ve seen the—the—other woman?” he inquired tentatively.

  “My body?” said Myra Pope grimly. Then her face softened. “Poor thing, I don’t know who she is, if that’s what you mean. Yes, I’ve seen her.”

  “And the dress she had on,” persisted the reporter. “Was it really like one of yours?”

  “It was one of mine. Don’t ask me how she got it—I don’t know. I never gave it to a maid, I’m certain—so don’t get that idea. My maid wears better clothes than I do. I simply don’t know what became of it. I haven’t thought of it for a year or more. If it hadn’t been for this, I would never have thought of it again. All I know is that once I had it. I suppose it was stolen, but if it was I never missed it. Perhaps it was thrown out—I don’t know!”

  McDaniel had a final question.

  “I thought you’d ask about that note,” said Mrs. Lexington Pope, with a grimace. “That detective from Chicago asked me about it, too. Well, it’s a mystery.”

  “You didn’t write it?”

  “I did write it. At the time, I thought I meant it. I hate this sort of thing; it always looks so idiotic in print. But it can’t be helped now. I wrote that note more than a year ago—shortly after our child died. That’s the literal truth; and how under the sun it turned up on that poor creature’s body I don’t know. I supposed it to have been destroyed shortly after it was written.”