Charlie Chan The Silent Corpse

by Earl Derr Biggers

  VIII

  CHAN STILL had considerable checking out to do before he decided upon a course of action. First, he locked the door of his room, stripped to his shorts and, looking regretfully at the just dried section of rug beneath the window, went to it and opened it.

  Just beyond, the heavy wooden shutter trembled under the impact of the still howling gale outside. It took him every bit of strength he possessed to get the shutter open. The wind and rain poured into the room with such vehemence that he was pushed back a foot, almost off the window seat on which he was kneeling.

  It was enough to tell him what he had to know. Again with great effort, he got the shutter back in place and the window closed. He was sopping wet from head to thighs and cushion and carpet were wet again. He shook his head as he looked at the damp shambles, then reached for the towel he had laid on the long cushion within arm’s length to dry himself off.

  Dressed once more, Chan went downstairs, arriving barely in time for dinner. The meal was superb, having been constructed around a huge baron of beef that stood proudly upright in an immense silver platter swimming in its own juices enriched with lavish lacings of soy sauce and claret, charcoal crisp and scarlet of tender center next to the bone.

  Chan ate sparingly, however, having too much on his mind to enjoy overloading his stomach. Nor did anyone else at table, save Armand and Carol, whose enjoyably athletic afternoon had rendered their appetites impervious to the tensions affecting the others at table.

  These tensions seemed, to the detective, to swirl and eddy about the diners like an invisible indoor hurricane whose forces were hardly diminished by the titanic forces of nature unleashed beyond the stout walls of the house.

  Evidently, the deadlock in the afternoon’s meeting had divided the usually united Clan Burdon deeply. They were abetted by gnawing concern about Harriet’s prolonged absence and uncertainty of her fate - uncertainty Chan felt it unwise to relieve at this time. More than one piece of flatware was dropped, and conversation was reduced to fits and starts.

  At the meal’s conclusion, the detective spoke privately with Lowell Burdon in the study between the living room and the boardroom. The new clan chief looked a full five years older than he had the day before. His eyes were sunk deep in his head and the lines about his mouth had become visibly deeper.

  “We’re hopelessly deadlocked,” he revealed, “even with my vote. Without Harriet’s…” He shrugged his weariness.

  “Might I ask which side you incline toward?”

  “I probably oughtn’t to tell you, but why not?” said Burdon. “I was against going public from the first. I’m still against it; and Zach has come over to my side. But Ellen…” He shook his white head, added, “She’s completely under her son’s spell. So it’s still even Stephen without Harriet.”

  He regarded the detective somberly, said, “Chan, is my sister still alive?”

  Chan nodded. “She’s alive and well. She’s hiding because she believes Lionel was murdered and the killer is trying to get her.”

  “My God!” Burdon was appalled. “Has she gone mad, Charlie?”

  “Not completely,” said Chan. “I, too, believe your brother was murdered.”

  Lowell Burdon said nothing for a long moment. Then, “But the evidence. It all points to suicide.”

  “Not all,” said the detective. “Did your brother discuss any change in his attitude toward the new corporate plans?”

  Burdon nodded slowly. “Of course. To my surprise, he seemed to have changed his mind and fumed in favor of it. I was doing my best to persuade him to use caution, to delay doing anything drastic at this time.”

  “What was his response?” Chan asked.

  Burdon opened his hands, replied, “He said - I remember his exact words - ‘Lowell, the time is now.’”

  “How shortly was this before his death?”

  “The evening before. We were sitting in this room, in these very chairs.” The thought seemed to make Lowell uncomfortable and he shifted position restlessly. “He wanted me to change my position on it; but I refused. I had to. With Ellen already under the boy’s spell, somebody had to stand up for the old values. Charlie, have you any idea what it’s like for a man like me to have a genius like Armand for a stepson? He thinks rings around me - he could do that when he was twelve.”

  “You think maybe he’s right?” Chan said.

  “Oh, very probably - but with Armand, there’s a stability factor involved. He has a surfeit of adrenalin in his system. I’ve been told this is not uncommon among persons of above-normal capacities. He’s on a prolonged manic surge now, but even with all the miracles of modern medicine it can’t be maintained forever. And when it fades, which it could overnight, there is danger not merely of deep depression but a tendency toward psychosis.”

  “You seem to have looked into it thoroughly,” said the detective.

  “Lord knows I have that!” said Burdon. “I’ve consulted the best of them about him. And why not? I love the boy even if he’s way out of reach most of the time.”

  Chan had two more loose ends to tie up before he moved in on the killer of Lionel Burdon. He cornered Dr. Smith once more and said, “Li, did you ever prescribe Valium for a member of this household?”

  The physician nodded. When Chan asked him who it was, he said, “Lenore.”

  Chan caught up with her just before she entered the boardroom for the meeting, “I hate to bother you now,” he said, “but I have one question - did you do any shooting the day before your uncle was found dead.”

  “Why, yes, Charlie,” Lenore said. “I had a match with Harriet - and beat her rather easily, which is unusual. Do you think she’ll be back soon?”

  “My guess is very soon,” Chan said. “I suggest you be on your guard.”

  “Why, Charlie? She’s been more like my mother than an aunt ever since I was a little girl.”

  Chan let her go and she filed into the boardroom after the others. It was time he closed in on the killer. As he crossed the living room, however, he caught sight of Carol trotting up the stairs. When he called her name, she stopped and turned and waited for him on the landing.

  “I hope you can spare me a moment,” Chan said as he caught up with her.

  Her large eyes danced as she replied, “Not much more, I’m afraid, Inspector. Armand is so much in demand I have to take advantage of every opportunity to be alone with him.”

  This, thought Chan, was beautiful. Intentionally or otherwise, the girl had thrown him a lead. Looking as naive as he could, he said, “You mean other women?”

  She laughed at him, not mocking but amused, said, “Inspector, they say some men are like catnip to women. If so, Armand is catnip in spades. And don’t go cute on me and try to tell me you don’t know about Lenore, for one.”

  “For one?” Chan asked.

  “Nobody else has succeeded - as far as I know, which may not be as much as I hope in Armand’s case. I’m not even counting the servants. You see, we’re friends as well as lovers. He tells me everything - almost.”

  “From your account, it surprises me you don’t spend all your time together in conversation.”

  “Ah, but then we’d have nothing to talk about,” she capped him neatly, laughed, and was gone.

  Chan went the rest of the way to the second floor and down the rear staircase Harriet had shown him earlier. The girl had told him all he needed to know and what he wanted most now was another talk with Harriet.

  Willis was tending to the boardroom and Chan went directly to his small apartment on the second story of the servants’ wing. Although no one answered his gentle knock, the door was unlocked and, after a few moments, he went on inside. There was nobody in the apartment…

  Hoping against hope that he was still in time to wrap up the case with a minimum of further damage, Chan moved quickly down the backstairs two flights to the basement.

  For a moment, Chan paused to get his bearings, feeling as before in that underground labyrinth
of steel and cement a sense of oppression and ill-ease. Then, properly oriented, he trotted toward the entrance to the underground passage to Harriet’s retreat

  Just before he started he heard the click of a door closing to his left, however, and halted, seeking to locate the source of the sound. To the best of his calculations, it came from the area of the shooting gallery, and Chan turned apprehensively in that direction.

  The door at the gallery’s rear, opposite that through which Zachariah Burdon had led him into a burst of semiautomatic rifle fire from the custom built Mannlicher in Armand’s hands, responded to his turn of the knob.

  Entering, Chan was in time to see Harriet about to open the door at the firing end that led to the circular stairway which would bring her into the boardroom. It was evident that she had received a call via Willis that had determined her to reappear to the family and cast her decisive vote in the meeting.

  “Just one moment, Harriet,” Chan said.

  She either didn’t hear him or chose to pretend she hadn’t. He repeated the call, louder. This time she stopped, turned slowly and descended the single step she had climbed.

  “What is it, Charlie?” she said. “Can’t you see I’m busy?”

  “Harriet,” he said, “you shouldn’t have done it - any of it.”

  She made no pretense of not understanding him, but slowly walked the length of the gallery until she was facing him against the target wall of the gallery. Her expression was quizzical rather than disturbed.

  She said, “You’re smarter than I gave you credit for, Charlie. Where did I go wrong?”

  Chan sighed and shook his head. He said, “Your first mistake was suggesting your brother was murdered because you did not hear the shot that killed him, the shot that you alone must have heard if he killed himself.”

  “So what?”

  “You meant to suggest that he was killed somewhere in this soundproofed citadel and his body moved to the library and there arranged to look like suicide - which, in part, at least, was done.”

  “That’s exactly what happened,” she said.

  “Lionel was murdered,” Chan said slowly, “and the body was arranged to look like suicide. But he was shot right there in his study.”

  “Poppycock!” said Harriet with scorn.

  Chan smiled, then continued:

  “He was shot by the only person who could have killed him where he was killed without being seen or heard by you. In short, he was killed by you yourself.”

  “Now why in hell would I shoot my own brother?” Harriet demanded.

  Chan told her. He cited Lionel’s change of front of the going-public issue and again she snorted and said, “So I killed him to avoid being richer? Try and prove that in court.”

  “No,” Chan said, “you killed him because the change would have put you out in the cold. You’ve really run this family for two decades or so, Harriet. You were the one who decided the major issues even though Lionel was nominal head of the Clan Burdon. If Armand’s plan went through, he would be in actual control - he and his mother and Lenore. And you couldn’t bear that. Not since she made out with Armand after he put you down for trying.”

  The color had drained from Harriet’s sunbrowned face, but her eyes were ice cool and her voice perfectly controlled as she said, “I suppose I pushed myself through the window.” She watched Chan closely.

  “Nobody pushed you through the window, Harriet. Nobody could survive all night outside my room in this storm. I tested it myself a little while ago. You made it look good, from the bit of tom cloth in the frame to your acrobatic reappearance the next morning. My guess is you slept in Willis’s apartment under some pretext or other that convinced him your life was in danger. I feel certain he is not so much your accomplice that he won’t bear me out.”

  “Nobody’s going to believe you, Charlie,” she said, her voice still firm, her cool regard still steady.

  “I think they will,” Chan replied. “But one thing still puzzles me, if you don’t mind.”

  “By all means…”

  “Was the bit of torn fabric in the window an afterthought?”

  “Unfortunately, yes. I put it there to give you the idea I’d been waiting for you in your room when I was pushed. That was essential to my plan, and I didn’t have it sewed up tight. So I sneaked back while everyone was bathing for dinner - that’s one time there’s nobody in the halls - and put it there. You almost caught me then, Charlie.”

  “Did you put Valium in my toothpaste?” he asked.

  “Not guilty,” Harriet said and Chan believed her.

  “Then, did you visit my room a third time that night and remove the fabric?”

  She nodded, said, “I wanted to make it look as if one of the others had really tried to kill me.”

  “Preferably Lenore?” he asked.

  She shrugged, said, “It didn’t really matter.”

  “I think it did,” Chan replied. “You gave Lionel some of Lenore’s Valium before he went into the library, to make sure he’d fall asleep at his desk and make killing him easy. And you set up a lovely frame for Lenore in case murder was discovered. Incidentally, I know now it wasn’t you who wanted me here, but Lowell.”

  Harriet ignored the last. “Why shouldn’t I make Lenore pay?” she said. “She’s the prodigal, the one who got the fatted calf. And for what? Betraying the family with a hoodlum kidnapper. Now she’s betraying Dave Wilmot with Armand - and thinks she’s going to share control of the estate. Well, I’m not going to let her.”

  Harriet was wearing a full skirted dress and, from its folds, she produced a small flat automatic, pointing it directly at the detective’s stomach. They were standing inside the waist-high wall at the target end, and she had Charlie Chan as dead to rights as if he were trapped inside a large pipe.

  “How do you plan to explain my murder away, Harriet?” Charlie Chan said.

  “I don’t plan to explain anything. Let them find you lying here. Nobody knows I have this gun, I took it out of the racks yesterday. I shall simply return to my retreat and wait until somebody finds me. Nobody will be able to prove I ever left it.”

  Chan regarded Harriet MacLean with grudging admiration. But he had to do something and do it fast, before the muzzle of her nasty little pistol started spouting steel jacketed slugs at him. He said, “Better shut the staircase door fist, Harriet, or your alibi will be blown sky-high.”

  It was hardly watertight logic. For one thing, Chan had not the slightest idea whether, with the bottom door open and the top one closed, those in the boardroom would hear the shots or not. Nor, if they did, if anyone could get down the stairs in time to catch her red-handed. But it did the job Chan intended.

  For an instant Harriet’s attention wandered. Chan seized the moment to vault over the bar and put it between them. From there on in, he intended to play it by ear, trusting to his quickness and long experience in dealing with armed killers and would-be killers.

  As it was, he did not quite make it. Harriet’s gun cracked loud and hard and a bullet tugged at his right sleeve. Chan landed hard, on his hands and knees, behind the brief shelter the gallery bar offered. If he could manage to make the other end of the room in one piece and arm himself, he might be able to turn the tables - though exactly how he were, to do that and remain alive he had yet to work out.

  A clear voice called, “Stay down, Inspector!”

  Chan heard the click of a rifle magazine being slapped into place, looked up to see Armand Kent holding the Mannlicher semiautomatic at the ready, aimed above him and to his right. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw Harriet standing perfectly still, apparently taking in the sudden dramatic turnover the situation had taken.

  She said, “Excuse me, gentlemen,” lifted the pistol to her right temple and blew out her brains before either Chan or Armand Kent could make a move to stop her.

  Until her face became a mask of blood and disappeared from the detective’s perspective, her expression was as cool and collected a
s if her decision to take her own life had been one that involved a change in tomorrow’s menu.

  Later, when he had a moment alone with the younger man, Chan said, “Two questions, Armand. When you almost nailed me at the tunnel door this morning, were you trying for me or for Harriet.”

  “Harriet,” said Armand. “It was an irrational act, of course. But I knew she’d killed Lionel - it simply couldn’t have been anyone else. You may not believe me capable of love, but I owed everything to him and I didn’t think you’d get onto her, what with helping her hide and everything.”

  Armand Kent paused. A look of bright curiosity appeared, and he said, “How did you know it was me?”

  “For a moment this evening, when I was talking with Carol, I thought it was her.”

  Comprehension showed and Armand smiled sheepishly and said, “Oh, Carol’s perfume.”

  “Exactly. I noticed it in the retreat just before I came back via the tunnel. But I have one more question, please.”

  “Go ahead, Inspector.”

  “What brought you down here in time to save my life?”

  “It was a long shot but I felt it was worth taking,” said Armand. “Carol told me about her little talk with you. She was quite proud of herself for hinting at Harriet’s pitiful ploy for sex with me without revealing a thing. It all came together in my head, and I felt sure you’d be hunting her and might need help. As it turned out, I was on the nose.”

  The boy was a wonder, beyond question. Charlie Chan considered what it would be like to have Armand for an enemy. Recalling the lack of emotion with which he had watched Harriet’s act of self destruction, he wondered what it would be like to have this loaded human computer for a friend.

  Charlie Chan shuddered slightly as he moved toward the door…

  THE END

  Read: in the next issue:

  CITY OF BROTHERLY DEATH

  A Thrilling New CHARLIE CHAN Short Novel By ROBERT HART DAVIS:

  Amiable, genial, and dynamic ran the description of Mark Bruce, talk show host, in the official press releases. Chan would have added yet another term after he saw the host in action explosive. Tension ran high beyond the camera’s range, and there was a definite aura of crime in the air. Not the simple kind of clean crime, but the dirty kind that preyed on people’s lives - and surely led inevitably to murder…