“First of all,” Brennan pursued, without looking at her or seeming to notice her presence, “we’ll take you, Mr. Despard. Yes, yes; I know nobody would be likely to mistake you for a small woman in a low-cut dress. But, to prove the absence of any funny business, we’ll just take it in order. You’ve got a cast-iron alibi for the whole evening, especially as you didn’t wear a mask. Two dozen people are willing to swear where you were at any given time. I needn’t give you all the dope because it’s not important. But it’s established that you couldn’t have left the house and come here. So that’s that.”
“Go on,” said Mark.
“Next there’s Miss Edith Despard.” Brennan ran his eye down the sheet. “She got there with your party at about 9:50. She was wearing a white hoopskirt outfit with black trimmings, a white bonnet, and a black domino mask. She was seen dancing between 10 and 10:30. At about 10:30 the hostess met her. Your sister had managed to tear some lace bloomer, or pants, or some damn thing, that she was wearing under the hoopskirts——”
“Yes, that’s right,” assented Mark. “She was still grousing about it when we came home.”
“—and she didn’t like it. So the hostess told her there were bridge tables in another room, and asked her if she would like to play bridge. She said she would. She went to this room, and naturally she took off her mask. From about 10:30 until 2 A.M., when all of you went home, she was playing bridge. There’s a whole crowd of witnesses of this. Result: complete alibi.”
Brennan cleared his throat.
“Now we come to your wife, Mr. Despard. She was wearing a silk dress colored blue and red, with wide skirts and things like diamonds in it. She didn’t have a hat, but had a gauze scarf over the back of her head. She also wore a blue domino mask with lace on the edges of it. She started dancing right away. At about 10:35 or 10:40 there was a telephone call for her——”
“A telephone call!” said Mark, sharply, and sat up. “A telephone call at somebody else’s house? Who was it from?”
“That’s the part we can’t get,” snorted Brennan. “We don’t know who answered the phone. The only reason it was noticed at all was because some man dressed like a town-crier (nobody seems to know who he was, including the host and hostess) started going among the dancers imitating a town-crier and saying Mrs. Mark Despard was wanted on the phone. She went out. Next, the butler saw her come into the front hall about 10:45. The butler is sure of this. There was nobody else in the hall. She was going towards the front door, and she didn’t have her mask on. The butler noticed her especially because he saw she was going out, and he went to open the door for her; but she hurried out before he could get there. As it happens, the butler stayed in the hall. Well, about five minutes later Mrs. Despard came back again—still not wearing her mask. She went across towards the room where they were dancing, and was asked to dance by a man dressed as Tarzan. She had two successive partners after this: we’ve got the names of both. At 11:15 she was dancing with some one everybody noticed—a big figure about seven feet tall, thin as a rake, and with a skull for a head——”
“By God, yes!” Mark cried, softly, and struck the arm of the chair. “I remember now. It was old Kenyon—Judge Kenyon, of the Superior Court. I had a drink with him afterwards.”
“Yes. We found that out. Anyhow, it was noticed; because the host said to somebody, ‘Look, there’s Lucy Despard dancing with Death.’ They both noticed this because Mrs. Despard leaned back and lifted up her mask to get a better look at Death. The time, as I say, was exactly 11:15. Result——”
Brennan put down the paper.
“Complete alibi,” he said.
XIII
A great weight had gone from Mark Despard. He straightened up in the chair; he seemed gradually to commence to see things; and in this shaken condition he acted with what was—for Mark—something like a flourish. He jumped up from his chair and turned towards Lucy.
“Let me,” he said, in a rolling voice like an actor’s, “present you to the lady who danced with Death. Captain Brennan, this is my wife.”
He somewhat marred the effect of this by adding in a peevish tone, “Why the devil couldn’t you have told us all this as soon as you got here, instead of fooling around for so long and making us feel like murderers?” But Stevens’s attention was concentrated on Lucy and Brennan.
Lucy had come forward immediately, with her free and easy stride, and that manner of hers which put everyone at ease. Though her light-brown eyes had a twinkle of amusement, she was still pale and she did not seem so relieved as a spectator would have expected. Stevens noticed that she glanced quickly at Mark.
“I think you know, Captain,” she said, “that I overheard everything you were saying. I’m rather sure you intended me to. But there are a whole lot of things that—that should have been discussed before, and are only just coming out now. I—I—” Her face tightened, and momentarily she was on the edge of tears. “I never knew there was so much behind this. It would have been better if I had. Anyhow, I’m terribly grateful to you.”
“Oh, that’s all right, Mrs. Despard,” said Brennan, surprised. He stood in front of her, shifting from one foot to the other and avoiding her eye. “Just the other way round, I’d say. But I’m telling you it’s a good thing you decided to come back after you went out, that night of the party, and the butler saw you come back. You can see for yourself you’d have been in a jam if you hadn’t.”
“By the way, Lucy,” Mark put in, casually, “who was that telephone call from? Where were you going?”
She made a gesture of her wrist towards him without looking at him. “That doesn’t matter. I’ll tell you about it later. —Mr. Brennan, Mark asked you a minute ago why you didn’t tell him all these things flat out as soon as you came in here. I think I know the reason. I’ve heard of you. In fact, I’ve been warned against you, in a way.” She grinned. “No offence, but tell me, is it true that at City Hall you’re known as Foxy Frank?”
Brennan was unabashed. He returned the grin and made a deprecating gesture. “Oh, I wouldn’t believe everything I heard, Mrs. Brennan. The boys——”
“They say, to put it vulgarly,” Lucy told him, severely, “that you could talk a crook out of his back collar-button, and arrest him afterwards. Is that true? And if it is, have you got anything else up your sleeve?”
“If I have, I’m going to tell you what it is,” he replied, and stopped suddenly. “Where did you hear about me?”
“Hear? I don’t know. It stuck in my mind, somehow. From the Commissioner, maybe. But why? When we all got those telegrams from you, telling us to come home——”
“Yes, that’s what I mean. I didn’t send you any telegrams or messages. But somebody sent me one; I mean that letter signed Amor Whateveritis. Whoever wrote that had all the dope, and had it straight. Who did write it?”
“I think I can tell you that,” snapped Mark.
He strode across the room to where, in the clutter along the walls, stood a square desk-like box in walnut, covered with a cloth. Pulling the lid up with a bang, he revealed a folding typewriter-desk with a rather dusty Smith Premier machine. After searching in vain for some paper, Mark compromised by whipping an old letter out of his hip pocket and rolling the back of it into the machine.
“Try this,” he suggested, “and compare the typing with the typing on that letter.”
Brennan gravely fitted on a pair of owlish shell-rimmed glasses, sat down like a maestro at a piano, peered at it for a few moments, and then struck gingerly. Now is the time, he wrote, for all good men— The typewriter pecked sharply, like a hen after corn; Brennan studied it and sat back.
“I’m not an expert,” he admitted, “but it strikes me you don’t need to be. There’s no fingerprint plainer than this. They’re the same. Somebody in the house wrote it, all right. Got any idea who it was?”
“OGDEN wrote it,” said Mark, patiently. “Ogden wrote it, of course. I knew that the minute I looked at the letter. Ogden wrote
it because he’s the only person in the house who could have written it. Look.” He turned to Stevens and Partington, fiery with the certainty of a new idea. “That part about me burying the cat was a dead give-away. Do you remember last night, when I was telling you about it? I told you that, while I was just finishing the burying, the lights of Ogden’s car came up over the hill and I was afraid he had seen me? Well, he did see me. Only he didn’t say anything. He watched.”
Lucy’s eyes were moving from corner to corner of the room. “And you think he sent the telegrams to us, too? But, Mark, that’s horrible! Why should he do a thing like that?”
“I don’t know,” Mark replied, rather wearily. He sat down in the chair and ruffled the hair at his temples. “There’s no real harm in Ogden. I mean that. He wouldn’t—that is, intentionally—I’m not making myself quite clear, but the point is he probably didn’t think there was anything really wrong. He simply did it to make a little trouble and watch people jump. Ogden is the sort of person who, if he were giving a jolly little dinner party, would invite two notorious enemies and seat them together at the table. He can’t help it; he’s like that. That quality sometimes makes great scientists, sometimes great sneaks, and sometimes both. But as for thinking there was anything actually——”
“Oh, rubbish, Mark,” said Lucy, with asperity. She was in a flouncing, bouncing mood, possibly because she appeared worried. “You simply cannot seem to believe there’s ever anything wrong with anyone. There’s something wrong with Ogden. He’s—changed, somehow. He was never so bad as this before. And he seems positively to hate Marie Stevens. (Sorry, Ted.) Do you mean to say he could write a letter like that, practically accusing a member of his own family of murder, and not think there was anything wrong?”
“How should I know? He’s certainly been one first-class spy, the damned young whelp! I wonder he didn’t guess we were going to open the cryp——”
Mark stopped dead. There was a palpable silence in the room, broken by a slow, measured tapping. Brennan, at ease in the straight chair by the typewriter, had removed his glasses and was tapping them on the top of the desk. Brennan regarded the company with grim affability.
“Go on,” he said. “Go on. Don’t stop there, Mr. Despard. You were going to say, ‘open the crypt.’ I’ve played square with you, and I’ve been waiting for you to play square with me.”
“Foxy Frank—” said Mark. He opened his mouth and shut it again. “Do you mean to tell me you know about that, too?”
“Yes. That’s what’s been worrying me. That’s what’s been on my mind. That’s why I don’t know what in—” Brennan’s almost elephantine delicacy in front of a woman made him break off and roar thunderation with some effect of anticlimax—“to make of this nightmare, this foolishness, this jungle of unadulterated bunk! And I’ve been waiting for you to tell me what you found in the crypt.”
“If I told you what we found there, you wouldn’t believe me.”
“I’d believe you all right. You bet I would. Mr. Despard, I know every move you and your friends made yesterday, from the time you met Doctor Partington at pier 57 in New York. There was a ‘tail’ on you.”
“You know about last night?”
“Listen!” urged Brennan, holding up one finger with an arresting motion and taking another paper out of his briefcase. “You came back from New York with Doctor Partington at 6:25 p.m. You came up to this house. At 8:05 you left it again, and both of you drove down to the little white house on the left-hand side of King’s Avenue as you come up it. The house belongs to a Mr. Stevens. … I guess that’s you,” he added, turning to Stevens with matter-of-fact pleasantness. “You stayed there until 8:45. Then you and Doctor Partington returned to this house. You two, with a servant named Henderson, went back and forth from the house to Henderson’s house, gathering up tools. At 9:30 Mr. Stevens joined you. At 9:40 you four started to open the crypt, and you got it open at just a quarter to twelve.”
“Henderson said there was some one watching us,” Mark growled, uneasily. He glanced at Brennan. “But——”
“Three of you went down into it. Doctor Partington went back to the house, but joined you in two minutes. At 12:28 Doctor Partington, Mr. Stevens, and Henderson came pelting out of the crypt so hard that the ‘tail’ thought something was wrong, and followed. But it was evidently the odor of the place: the first two came up to this house with Doctor Partington, got two step-ladders, and returned at 12:32. Doctor Partington returned at 12:35. At 12:45 there was a devil of a noise of you upsetting some marble urns. At 12:55 you gave it up and went to Henderson’s place——”
“You can spare us the details,” growled Mark. His voice took on a note of urgency. “There’s just one thing, though. Never mind what we did; we know that well enough. But could this ‘tail’ of yours hear us? Could he overhear what we were saying?”
“He could while you were in the crypt or in Henderson’s house. In case you don’t remember it, the windows of Henderson’s living-room were open. So he heard most of your talk.”
“Sunk,” said Mark, after a pause.
“No, don’t let it get you down,” advised Brennan, picking up his glasses again. “I’m telling you all this in detail—well, to explain why I showed up on your doorstep so early this morning. The ‘tail’ stuck to your party until three o’clock this morning. He didn’t interfere with you; he had orders not to. But as soon as he left he came chasing out to Chestnut Hill, where I live, and proceeded to wake me up. He said he couldn’t have slept last night if his life depended on it: it’s the first time I ever saw Burke rattled. He said: ‘Captain, they’re a bunch of loonies. They’re stark, raving nuts. They talk about dead people coming to life. They say maybe the old man got up out of his coffin and walked out of that vault, and that’s why it’s empty now.’ So I thought I’d better get out here as soon as I could.”
Mark, who had taken to striding round the room again, stopped and stared at him with dry glee.
“Ah, now we come to it. Now we approach the fount and origin. Do you believe we’re a bunch of loonies, Captain?”
“Not necessarily,” said Brennan, considering the question down the side of his nose. “Not necessarily.”
“But you agree that the body disappeared out of the crypt?”
“I’ve got to. Burke was pretty emphatic about that. He said you thought of everything the police department could think of. My own guess is that he was too plain scared to go down into the crypt himself after you had all left and it began to look a little spooky. Especially as—” He glanced towards his briefcase and checked himself abruptly.
Mark was alert. “Here! Just a moment. ‘Especially as—’ what? This whole interview has consisted in taking unexpected rabbits out of the hat. I’ll ask the same question Lucy did a while ago: have you got any more rabbits in your hat?”
“Yes,” said Brennan, calmly. “For instance, I’ve got a complete check-up on the movements of the other members of this household for that night, April 12th.”
After a pause he went on:
“The trouble with you, Mr. Despard, is that you’ve been hypnotized by Mrs. Despard. I mean,” he rumbled, hastily, shutting his eyes as though in apology, “by the possibility of her being guilty. And your sister, too. But there were others in the house. I’ll take them in turn, beginning with your brother, Mr. Ogden Despard—the same as I did with your group. All right. Now, I’d understand from what Mrs. Henderson said that he was out of town yesterday; so I couldn’t question him, or thought I couldn’t. But I put a man to look him up, and, by a piece of good luck, we found out what he was doing on the night of the murder.”
Mark reflected. “As far as I remember, he had intended to go to an alumni dinner of his preparatory-school year at the Bellevue-Stratford in town. But we held him up so long here, waiting for Mrs. Henderson to get back from Cleveland, that he must have missed it. I remember he was still here when we left for the masquerade at half-past nine.”
“
I wonder—” said Lucy, suddenly, and stopped.
“You wonder what, Mrs. Despard?”
“Nothing. Go on.”
“Well, that’s right, anyhow,” said Brennan. “Mrs. Henderson remembered where he was going. He left here about 9:40, driving a blue Buick. He drove to town, and got to the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel at about 10:35, when the dinner was over but the speech-making was going on. He was seen to come in. Afterwards, it seems, some of the alumni had rooms at the hotel, and were doing some celebrating. He joined the party, and his movements can be proved from 10:35 until 2 a.m. Result—another complete alibi. Again I’ll admit that nobody would be likely to mistake him for the visitor, any more than they would you. But I’m being thorough.
“Next on our list there’s Miss Myra Corbett, trained nurse.” Brennan looked up from his notes, grinned, and made a gesture. “Well, now, I didn’t think it was very likely that trained nurses run around murdering their patients. But it was another thing that had to be checked. I put a good man on to it, and,” said Brennan, significantly, “we got an interview with her as well as checking her movements.”
“You mean,” Lucy put in, quickly, after a pause, “you got her to talk about—things that happened while she was here?”
“Yes.”
Lucy regarded him as though she were searching for a trap.
“You’ve still got something up your sleeve,” she accused him.
“Did she—did she say anything about a little bottle of something being stolen from her room?”
“Yes.”
“Well?” demanded Mark, exasperated. “Does she know who stole it, whatever it was?”
“She believes it must have been one of two persons,” replied Foxy Frank, looking at them with great deliberation. “But we’ll go into that in a moment. First, her movements. The night of the 12th was her night off. We traced her back to her—um—sinister lair in the Spring Garden Street Y.W.C.A. She got there about seven o’clock. She had dinner at the Y.W.C.A., went to a picture-show with a girl-friend about 7:30, came back about 10, and went to bed. This is confirmed by another nurse, who shares a room with her. One more complete alibi.
The Burning Court Page 14
