Charlie Chan The Silent Corpse

by Earl Derr Biggers

  He thought back to the kidnapping-ransom problem he had solved nine years before, to the girl’s return to the collective bosom of her family. In this instance, the welcome had come from Harriet. It was she who had played the parental role rather than the girl’s real mother.

  It failed to make sense - save under one set of conditions. When Lenore came back in triumph, the album pressed to her attractive bosom, the detective said, “Lenore, unless you’ve been putting me on, Ellen is not your mother.”

  “I thought you knew about that,” Lenore sounded astonished. “I simply took it for granted. My real mother was drowned in a sailing accident right off the Point when I was still using a pacifier. Lowell married Ellen years later. I love Ellen even if - well, never mind. Anyway, I was too old to need a mother little girl-wise.”

  A pause - Chan was growing used to them - and then, offering him the album, “Here it is, dear Inspector Chan. It’s the only one left. The others were given as family Christmas presents and things. Oh, dear, you’ll have to excuse me. With Harriet gone and all these people here, there are a million things to do. Willis will get you another drink.”

  “Thanks, but I’ll do without,” said Chan, rising. “I think I’ll go to my room now if nobody minds. It has been a tiring day.”

  “Sleep well,” Lenore replied. “If you get lost, the album will show you the way.”

  A pair of crimson and white striped silk pajamas lay neatly folded on the opened bed, whose snowy white linen sheets and big pillows looked deliciously inviting. There was another robe, this one of brocaded silk with a plaited and tasseled cord beside the pajamas and red morocco slippers on the carpet beside the bed. Save for a dark belt of dampness along the window seat side of the carpet there was little evidence inside the room of the raging storm without.

  Not that it had abated. The wind continued its howling, the surf its pounding rhythmic roar - while the rain struck the storm shutters like some giant devil’s drummer. But within the room’s shelter, all was warm and dry and softly lit and comfortable. Although the clock was still shy of midnight by half an hour, Charlie Chan decided to retire. His eyes felt heavily sanded and his muscles relaxed without trace of any of his earlier tensions.

  When he removed his suit and hung it up neatly in the huge wardrobe closet it so scantily occupied, Chan saw that his own linen had been laundered, dried, pressed and returned on hangers. He paused to admire the perfect domestic organization of Burdon Point, far exceeding that of any of Honolulu’s costly resort hotels.

  This reminded him of the missing Harriet MacLean once more. He wondered where she was, and why. Then he went to the bathroom, eschewed a second tub lest he fall asleep in the warm water and emerge wrinkled like a prune. He reviewed the events of the day as he brushed his teeth, and came to with a jerk so violently that a trickle of toothpaste ran from the corner of his mouth down his chin.

  Wiping himself hastily, he returned to the bedroom closet, re-examined the returned shirt on its hanger. It had been beautifully pressed save for one thing - the pocket over the left breast hung forward a full half inch. Chan considered this minuscular discrepancy in the perfection of Burdon Point domestic service.

  He decided it unlikely that the wielder of the iron had neglected such an obvious portion of the garment. Also unlikely, he thought, was that whoever returned it from the laundry to the closet had allowed it to slide off its hanger.

  Eyes narrowed, he considered the only other implication possible - that someone had searched his room since the laundry was returned…

  On the face of it, this, too, seemed implausible. For one thing, he had brought virtually nothing with him save the clothes he was wearing. Along with keys, wallet, small change, handkerchief and the usual impediments of the male animal on a supposed one-day trip, Furthermore, all these save the handkerchief, which had been laundered, had been on his person all evening.

  He found it difficult to concentrate long on the problem - or on any problem - as the sleepiness returned to embrace him. He felt as if someone had slipped him a barbiturate.

  With heavy lids, Chan examined the hall door. It had a knob button lock, but one which could be opened by a key from the outside. He forced himself to remain awake while he pondered the suddenly titanic problem of whether to lock it or not. Since it appeared ineffective for keeping out any determined night visitors who might pass that way, he decided to leave it unlocked.

  There were reasons, two of them, both valid. One - such a gesture would indicate his confidence that his hosts and fellow guests would leave his room undisturbed white he slept. Two - if any of them violated his privacy, even if their presence failed to rouse him from his slumber, he felt certain they must leave traces he could detect in the morning.

  Chan made a last effort to rally, in order to study the album Lenore had loaned him, but found it impossible. The hitherto alarming sounds of the tropical storm raging just beyond the thin barrier of the shutters was suddenly as soothing as a mother’s lullaby to a small child. Before he could turn off the lamp, he was fast asleep…

  He awakened quickly, evidently spurred by his subconscious. At first, he thought it was morning, complete with unlikely sunlight. But then he discovered that the “sunlight” was the glow of the bedside lamp in its parchment shade. He lifted his wristwatch from the table and saw that it was twelve minutes past twelve. He had been asleep less than twenty-five minutes.

  What had awakened him? For a moment it danced just out of reach, and then he remembered. Evidently his brain had not been switched off with the rest of him, because he knew with almost psychic intensity what his unseen visitor had been seeking.

  He opened the drawer of the night table and drew out his wallet, which had not been tampered with. Then, from one of its lesser folds, behind a small cluster of bank deposit receipts, he found and drew forth the small scrap of cloth he had taken from the window crack the afternoon before. It was no longer wet, of course, but Chan did not think that would matter

  Rising silently, the detective padded across the big bedroom, flinching as his bare feet came in contact with the still wet and clammy edge of the carpet. Being very careful, he unfastened the lock with difficulty, causing a sudden amplification of the hurricane thunder without. After placing the bit of flowered black fabric in the edge on the same side that he had first noticed it, he brought the window down, shutting out the fury beyond the shutters or at least cutting its volume in half.

  If something drastic had happened to Harriet Burdon MacLean, its removal now would indicate the fact to Chan. If not, he had been rearing a house of cards. In any event, if something had happened to Harriet, the cloth would hardly offer evidence that would stand up in any court. What was truly important was that he find out whether anyone were after the seemingly innocent scrap.

  Again he dozed off, this time with a sense of having accompanied something at least potentially worth while.

  When Chan awoke again, the lamp was still on and the hands of his wristwatch pointed to five forty-five. If he had been given a barbiturate, and he was by no means sure of this, its effects had totally worn off. He felt both fully awake and refreshed.

  What had awakened him, he decided, was the silence. It lay all about, like cotton batting that filled the world. The storm sounds had not merely subsided to a whisper, they had subsided altogether.

  Chan knew what this meant via long experience. The tranquil eye of the hurricane was overhead, lulling all unsuspecting souls into belief that the big storm was over. In fact, of course, the worst was yet to come, as the rear edge of such a rotating storm is invariably fiercer than its vanguard assault.

  Chan then got out of bed and went back to the window and opened it.

  The bit of tom fabric with the floral pattern was gone!

  Having already considered the possible significance of such an occurrence, Chan wasted little time over it now. Instead, he opened the storm shutters, which responded easily and silently to his touch in the absence of heav
y wind pressure. The pale ashes of night still lingered in the bowl of the western sky and the dawn was cut off from the east by the massive lump of Mauna Lao.

  Although the moon had long gone about its business, a thin scattering of stars remained faintly visible in the deceptively dark blue heavens. Chan found himself seemingly overlooking a glossy, slowly turbulent sea as if from the top of a cliff. Looking straight down, beyond a narrow ledge that apparently served as a rain gutter, he could see only the lazy lift of the slow seas that broke in frothing foam beneath the range of his vision.

  Ordinarily, he knew, the sky would be dancing with gulls seeking prey on the water beneath and uttering their raucous cries. This morning, not a bird was in sight or sound. Countless generations of precarious existence had rendered them wiser than many humans to the ways of a tropical storm. They would not venture forth until its last angry shreds had passed onward to the northeast.

  A stir of sound close at hand, immediately to his left, caught his attention. A bony hand clutched from beneath at the outer lip of the ledge just under the window, and as he watched another hand appeared.

  For a moment, the detective was almost paralyzed. Then the instincts of long training and experience in rescue work came alive and he went out the window to kneel on the ledge in his pajamas. Holding firmly to the silt with his left hand, he extended his right arm to its fullest and gripped the nearer of the two wrists.

  From below him, a feminine voice said, “Who is it?”

  “It’s all right, Harriet,” he said, “it’s me - Charlie Chan.”

  Thus reassured, Harriet did her part in the life-saving act with surprising efficiency and dispatch, revealing unexpected strength and balance. Within a minute, Chan had her safely in the room, a dripping, sodden ruin with deep-set eyes that blazed fury.

  She said, even before she thanked him, “Some son of a bitch pushed me through the window as I was putting the shutter in place. Somebody tried to kill me!”

  V

  WITH HER pate brown hair darkened by the rain and plastered across her forehead, Harriet MacLean looked like some fury of the storm. To Charlie Chan, she resembled Mad Meg, the horrendous witch in the Pieter Brueghel painting. Her black flowered print still clung to her lean but unexpectedly feminine body. Her shoes were gone and her stockings, like her hair, darkened by water.

  But Harriet was very much alive. The rage that burned in her dark blue eyes seemed to light up the predawn dimness of the room. The detective sat her down in an armchair and moved toward the bathroom in search of some sort of restorative.

  “No time for that now, Charlie,” Harriet stopped him with a gesture. “I want you to find out who pushed me.” Her voice was grim.

  “You don’t know?”

  “I haven’t the slightest idea. Thanks to the carpet and the noise of the storm, I didn’t hear a thing. All I felt were two hands on my back - pushing. Then I was over and out.”

  “How did you manage to survive?”

  “Sheer unadulterated luck,” she replied, “plus the fact I was captain of the gym team at Vassar. Oh - and you can add knowledge of the way this house is built. Lionel may have ordered the reconstruction, but you can lay odds I was the one who supervised the work.”

  She paused, cold fury blazing in her dark blue eyes, added, “You can give the porch roof credit, too. It broke my fall. I was unconscious for awhile, and when I woke, all the windows were locked. I didn’t think I’d ever get back in.”

  “You’ve been there all night?” Chan found it hard to believe.

  “It wasn’t too bad. It was wet and it was cold, but I’ve had worse experiences.”

  “Why didn’t you call out - hammer on the shutters?”

  She regarded Charlie Chan sardonically, said, “Even if anyone heard me - which is unlikely - they’d have thought the storm was making the noise. So I stuck it out. By the time the eye of the hurricane got here, I’d had ample opportunity to think things through. It occurred to me that, since somebody wanted me dead and probably believed I was dead, it might be smarter to remain that way. I had to get off the balcony though, to accomplish anything. Then I saw you open the shutter. You gave me an assist, and here I am.”

  Chan said, “But you need dry things, a hot bath - and you must be hungry.”

  Her look was steel hard as she replied, “I’m too damn mad to catch pneumonia, and I’m in no danger of starving, thank you.” She regarded him evenly, said, her voice under complete restraint so as not to be overhead, “Charlie, what do you think of it?”

  “Something stink like long dead carp in fiftieth state,” said Chan. “But first, you’ve got to get dry clothes and food.”

  Harriet thought that over. Bedraggled and weather-worn she might be, but she looked as indestructible as a sturdy oak tree from the family’s native New England. Then she said, “Charlie, you’re right. We must talk. By the way, I was responsible for getting you here. You were the only person I really wanted to see after Lionel’s - suicide.”

  Chan nodded, no longer surprised at anything involved in the Lionel Burdon afterdeath. Harriet’s story, the attempt on her life, and the subsequent attack on Chan himself, had converted slowly mounting suspicion over the clan chief’s tragic fate into certainty that something was very wrong with it.

  He said, “Where can we go?”

  “Put something on” she said, “And don’t worry. I won’t peek. I’ve seen better male bodies than yours naked in my time. Right now, our problem is just that - time.”

  Chan, essentially a modest man, slipped out of his pajamas and into his clothes in the bathroom. When he emerged, he found Harriet waiting impatiently. She led him to the rear of the big house, down two flights of rear stairs to the basement. Once again, the complexity of the catacomb muddled Chan’s sense of direction. All he could feel reasonably certain of was that their general direction was south. Finally they entered a long passageway that, after some two hundred feet, ended at a steel door.

  “Open barley,” said Harriet, and the door slid silently back in the wall revealed a flight of rising stairs beyond.

  They climbed it after the door closed automatically behind them, to emerge in a trimly but not opulently furnished living room in a small cottage. Off this central chamber lay bedroom and bath, kitchen and pantry.

  “It’s a good thing I closed the storm shutters here before I went to the house,” said Harriet, surveying the “retreat” to make certain nothing had been disturbed. Then, “Why are you smiling?”

  ” ‘Open barley,’ ” said the detective.

  Harriet sighed. “That was one of Lionel’s little jokes. Just when he got so stuffy nobody could stand him, he’d come up with something like that. I can’t say I’m not going to miss him, even…”

  Chan was amused at the audio-key to the cellar door lock. “Open barley” was what Ali Baba’s bad brother cried when he forgot the “Open Sesame” key in the old Arabian Nights fairy tale. If it was a joke, it was an effective one. Very few potential intruders would think to use it.

  He said, “Who knows about the passage, Harriet?”

  “Lionel does - or did. And Willis, the butler. If any of the others ever heard of it, they think it was filled in during the reconstruction. This used to be old Gideon Burdon’s counting house in the early days. He had the tunnel dug to get to and from his office during storms like this.”

  As she spoke, Harriet busied herself with the job of changing her clothes, talking to the detective through the half open bedroom door. While she showered, Chan looked around at the furniture and decor with interest. Save that the wood was of Island origin, it could, once again, have been made long ago in the granite laced hills of northern New England from which the Burdon tribe sprung.

  Chan was studying with interest a mezzotint over the rolltop desk when Harriet reappeared. It was a picture of the brig Gideon, out of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, entering Gloucester harbor. The fine script of the second line proclaimed Capt. Gideon Burdon, Master. The
date was 1817.

  “Our Gideon’s grandfather,” said Harriet matter of factly. “He was tougher than buzzards if family tradition is right. Made the children work out their Christmas presents in chores around the house - when he was home for Christmas, which was seldom.”

  Chan regarded her with amazement. In just under twelve minutes, she had showered and changed. Save that her hair was covered by a paisley kerchief, there was no visible evidence that this quietly smart, still attractive, sun-bronzed lady had spent the night shivering through the front end of a hurricane after surviving an attempt on her life that had missed by a hair’s breadth.

  She read his expression correctly, said with a trace of mockery, “I think you’re wonderful, too, Charlie.” Then, seating herself in a cane backed chair and motioning him to the sofa, she reached for a cigarette and said, “What do you know to date?”

  “I know nothing,” he replied, “but there is much I would like to know. What reason did Lionel Burdon have to commit suicide? That’s the central, basic question that sticks in my Cantonese craw.”

  “People commit suicide for all sorts of reasons - some from sheer boredom. And if ever a man was bored with himself, it was Lionel. He may have been my brother, but he was basically dull as dishwater - duller.”

  Chan considered this unexpected appraisal of a man whose public image was virtually all he had known of him, a modern business and family chief executive whose abilities and kindnesses were both legion and legend. Surely such a man… Then he noted the narrow appraisal in Harriet’s eyes and decided to go along with it. There was something else there - a wary appraisal of himself.

  He said, “But you don’t believe he killed himself.”

  “Not for a moment - once I had recovered from the shock of his death. But it was clever, damned clever. When I had the coroner give him a paraffin test and learned there were powder burns…” She let it hang.