A Variety of Weapons

by Rufus King

  Was it thought transference? Because Estelle went on: “How did Sergeant Hurlstone strike you?”

  “As a devastatingly intelligent and immovable force.”

  “He alarmed me, too, until he admitted he had taken his B.A. at Harvard. An intellectual fullback of the most admirable sort, with sidelines of dishes and ushering at concerts and things like that to help pay his expenses. He instructed me that lukewarm water is much better than cold for removing hardened eggs from china, and I sent a note down to the kitchen telling them so.” Estelle leaned forward and said impulsively, “Do you know what really did frighten me about him?”

  “What, Estelle?”

  “He asked me nothing about Alice. It was all Justin, this immediate tragedy of ours.”

  “But why should that frighten you?”

  Estelle said impatiently, “Surely you realize the two events are linked? I’m sensitive about eyes. I felt that all the while he was questioning me about Justin his eyes were questioning me about Alice. Or is that too Picabia?”

  “Well, it’s quite a stunt.”

  “The result was that I positively reeked with guilt. I could have walked on in any Grand Guignol production and been spotted for the villainess in a minute. He left me limp.” Estelle stood up. “I’m dead. Good night, dear.”

  “Good night, Estelle.”

  Estelle looked at Ann critically before she left the room.

  She said, “You look dead too.”

  Ann stood in the doorway until Estelle had gone through the bedroom and into the living room. She heard, because she was listening for it, the sound of the living-room door as it closed. Then she went in and turned the small knob which bolted it.

  She was, she admitted, in a state. She wondered just how lightly that “You look dead too” of Estelle’s was to be brushed away.

  What was the click against metal she had heard? What was it that Estelle had done? The living room was calm and serene: a haven of beautiful peace. The bedroom, too, offered no metal-clicked note. Silver was a soft sheen on the bed table: the silver tray, the carafe of iced water, the glass.

  Ann lifted the stopper from the carafe and cautiously sniffed. There was no odor to the water. No scent of almonds. She replaced the stopper.

  There was something about the glass.

  It was wet on the inside. Estelle had used it and taken a drink. It had clicked against the carafe or the tray when Estelle had put it down. That would be all right.

  It could also not be all right. The carafe would have been full to the brim, and Estelle might have needed to get rid of some of the water in order to make room for a good-sized dose of narcotic or poison. The simplest way of obtaining this required room would be to pour out some of the water and drink it.

  Ann went to the house phone and got Washburn.

  “Do you know where Sergeant Hurlstone is?” she asked.

  “I believe he is in the lounge, Miss Marlow.”

  “Thank you. I’ll ring it and see.”

  She pressed the button marked Lounge. She recognized Sergeant Hurlstone’s sturdy voice.

  “Would you mind coming up?” she asked.

  “Certainly, Miss Marlow.”

  Ann said when he came into the living room: “This is either very stupid of me or it’s not. Estelle Marlow has just been in here to say good night. I was in the dressing room and did not hear her come in. I did hear a sound like something clicking against metal. I called out, and she came in and joined me. The drinking glass beside the carafe in the bedroom is wet on the inside. I think she took a drink of water.”

  Sergeant Hurlstone continued to listen in stony silence. “My nerves are none too good right now,” Ann said. “It occurred to me that the best way for anyone to get rid of some of the water would be to drink it. If you wanted to put something else into the carafe in its place. Either poison or a narcotic. This is a damnable attitude to take, but you and Mr. Marlow and Mr. Harlan have all got me to a point where I don’t know where I stand. I’m sick and I’m frightened about everything.”

  “You are not being stupid. Neither, if the water has been poisoned, was Miss Estelle Marlow. Unless you had happened to notice that the glass had just been used you could have taken a drink from the carafe, and no one would have known she had been in here.”

  “That’s somewhat confusing.”

  “Not at all. It is perfectly plain. If that water is poisoned and you had drunk some you would be unable to state that Miss Marlow had just been in to see you because you would be dead.”

  Sergeant Hurlstone went into the bedroom. He came back carrying the silver tray with the carafe and drinking glass.

  “Dr. Johnson and Dr. Bedmann are in the laboratory doing the autopsy,” he said.

  He went to the door.

  He said, “I’ll let you know.”

  CHAPTER XX

  The moments dragged. Ten went by. They seemed ten hours. Whenever Ann had taken photographs of animals in cages her heart had always been filled with pity at their plight. But it had been an academic pity: How terrible to cage an animal. A free, wild thing born for the open spaces.

  It was no longer academic. Not that she felt immoderately wild or was filled with any yearning to be set down in the heart of Texas, but she did feel caged. She wanted to get out of that house and get out soon.

  She pondered escape. Prisoners were always accomplishing it and under the most adverse of circumstances. Usually through the aid of a pie in which Mother had absent-mindedly baked a steel file and some yards of rope. So far as that goes, take Houdini. Ann took him for twenty minutes. He got her no place.

  I will sit down calmly, she decided, and will read a good thick book. She went to a bookcase and looked titles over. They hadn’t, it was obvious, been changed since the days of Alice. Edith Wharton was gone in for heavily. Ann shuddered. That certainly would do the trick: a delicious, carefree hour spent with Ethan Frome. Boy!

  She took off her wrapper and put on her dress. She put back her face. She walked out into the hall and took the lift down to the ground floor. She went into the lounge.

  Sergeant Hurlstone was sitting near the fire in a straight-backed chair. On his lap was a large black cat.

  “I couldn’t stay up there alone,” Ann said. “In about ten more minutes I’d have been letting my hair hang out the window and sliding down it to the ground.”

  She sat on the sofa and watched him stroke the cat.

  “I was about to phone you, Miss Marlow. Dr. Bedmann has just completed the test. He found the water in the carafe had been poisoned. About one swallow would have been enough, he said.”

  Ann felt as though she had actually taken it. The jolt made her ill. It wasn’t only that death had been there in the carafe but that Estelle had put it there. And then had come into the dressing room and chatted serenely away, leaving, as she said good night, that pregnant, fruitful bon mot: “You look dead too.”

  Ann said after a while, “Will you arrest her?”

  “Miss Estelle Marlow? No. Nothing is certain. I think tomorrow we can tell. We will know better how we stand.”

  His fingers found the cat’s neck. The cat purred contentedly with tight-shut eyes.

  “This cat belongs to the cook,” Sergeant Hurlstone said.

  The cat stretched dark velvet legs while claws slid out from pale pads. He yawned prodigiously, then the claws went back and he pressed close to Hurlstone’s flat stomach and considered sleep.

  Through the shakingly shocking knowledge that one swallow of the poisoned water would have been (as Hurlstone put it) enough, Ann considered the oddity that a monolith like Hurlstone should have a tenderness for cats. A tolerant courtesy toward them would have seemed more in keeping. There was a prick of anger, too, in that he accepted her brush against a poisoned demise with such placidity. His life, she supposed somewhat bitterly, had accustomed him to taking such mordant happenstances in his stride.“Aren’t you going to do anything about it at all, Sergeant Hurlstone?”
>
  He smiled and was suddenly human and warm.

  “You are annoyed. I’m not indifferent. I’ve sent for Danning.”

  “Isn’t that a little farfetched? I thought that the old family retainer had been outlawed with dull thuds.”

  “You are still upset by my attitude. Don’t be. Danning filled the carafe and left it on your bed table. That was her job. So we start with her.”

  Danning and the strokes of midnight coincided. At Sergeant Hurlstone’s request she sat down. Ann considered that Danning’s seventh-daughter proclivities were on the job again, for the woman had a look which, if not specifically astral, was at least remote.

  Sergeant Hurlstone told her why he had asked her to come.

  “I filled the carafe in the service pantry on the third floor,” Danning said.

  “Were you alone?”

  “Yes. I took the carafe directly to Miss Marlow’s room and put it on the bed table. That was the last I had to do with it.”

  “Did anyone come in while you were there?”

  “No. I turned down the bed and fixed things for the night. Then I left. Mr. Thurlow was in the hallway by the lift. I said good night to him and went back to our quarters. Mr. Thurlow is the estate manager.” Danning said directly to Ann: “Something was wrong with the water, wasn’t it?”

  “It was poisoned.”

  “I thought so. Sergeant Hurlstone would not have sent for me otherwise.” Her voice acquired a definite quiver. “Death favors some houses, I think. Deaths by violence.” The quiver accelerated to a chilling degree. “Leave here, Miss Marlow. Don’t come back again until the place is cleansed. I feel it’s evil here. Evil for you.” Danning made a helpless gesture of apology for having said this.

  Her face was completely pale, and light beads of sweat damped its skin. “Please don’t mind my talking to yon like this.”

  Ann did mind, in a fashion. The quiver had injected an almost conjuring quality into Danning’s voice. It brought the dead Marlow back into the shadowed room, the strong essence of him distilled from the sadness of his lifetime and the cruelty of his leaving.

  Alice and Fred and the others came too. And one more. The one who had killed them all. The agile one who skipped from knives to guns to poisons in their lethally infinite variety. Whose busy brain would now be busier still.

  A rush of hatred came to Ann for this evil one. She thought of him as a monster, comfortable in human shape, eating and drinking and viewing the good things in life. An egocentric slug, perhaps with charm, whose vicious brain selected deaths with delicacy and meted them out.

  The hatred was so sudden and so vast that it swept out personal fear, and Ann Ledrick died. She became Ann Marlow. Those people who had been killed were her people. Justin Marlow, whose life had been turned into a living hell through the machinations of this wicked person, became her grandfather and no longer just a rich man’s name. If she were to betray him he would have died in vain. Ann thought of it as exactly that and found no grandiloquence in the phrasing.

  “I had thought of leaving for New York tomorrow,” she said. “But I am not. I am staying here.”

  The firm edge to Ann’s voice brought Danning reluctantly back from her protoplasmic fields.

  “Yes, yes, of course, Miss Marlow. Can I be of any further help, Sergeant Hurlstone?”

  “You can. I shall make a statement. Tell me the first thing that comes into your mind. Don’t stop to consider. Just come right out with it.”

  “Very well, Sergeant.”

  “Alice Marlow’s murder.”

  “Chin.”

  “Good. Now what’s the connection?”

  “Chin was her chow puppy. Chin had cut her foot in the morning, and Dr. Johnson had treated it and bandaged it up. Mrs. Marlow carried Chin to the music room with her after lunch and put her on a cushioned stool near the spinet. That was the day she was killed.”

  “How do you know she did?”

  “Mr. Washburn told me so afterward. When Mr. Fleury yelled murder the way he did and the word got around to the servants’ quarters I ran to the music room, and Chin was still on the stool. She was trembling and made awful sounds. Little ones. That’s why, when I think back, I always think first of Chin.”

  “What other things come to you?”

  “Blood, and Mr. Fred sick and white as a sheet, and Mr. Frank Lawrence seeming stunned, and the bitter look on Mr. Jerry Abbott’s face, like somebody had reached a hand inside and twisted him. Mr. Appleby held his arms. Mr. Appleby was much stronger than Mr. Abbott and easily kept him from killing Mr. Fred.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because Mr. Abbott said he was going to beat the life out of him.”

  “I understood that Mr. Appleby was down in the entrance hall. That he had just come indoors from the storm.”

  “He had, but he ran upstairs with Mr. Washburn, and they were both in the music room when I got there. Then Mr. Marlow came in, and it was all the child, of course. You, Miss Marlow. Sending for Dr. Johnson and everything done that you might be delivered, and you were, and it was a miracle.”

  “Those are the general things,” Sergeant Hurlstone said. “Give me some others, such as Chin.”

  Danning grew remote again. Her eyes lost focus.

  “The desk, maybe.”

  “Yes?”

  “The desk where she wrote her poetry. She was so neat about things. If she opened a drawer she closed it. The drawer where she kept her private letters was not quite closed. I had gone to her rooms to see that they were in order and to cry.”

  “Did you tell anyone about the drawer?”

  “I told the troopers and Mr. Harlan and Mr. Marlow. The troopers went through the letters, and one of them was used at the trial, one that Mr. Abbott had written, saying he would never stop loving her.”

  “I know about that letter. I did not know about the half-opened drawer. Anything else?”

  “No, just Chin and the desk drawer.”

  “You have helped me. Thank you. Good night, Danning.”

  Sergeant Hurlstone stood up. He did so carefully and without disturbing the calm repose of the dark cat. He settled the cat on the seat of the chair. He went to the house telephone. He was connected through the estate’s private exchange with the house of the manager, Martin Thurlow.

  “Will there be anything further I can do for you tonight, Miss Marlow?” Danning asked.

  “No, thank you. Good night, Danning.”

  “Good night, Miss Marlow. Let us hope.”

  With this cryptic utterance Danning walked away, and Ann studied her retreating back. A maid’s white uniform. What was it Harlan had said? The back which Ludwig Appleby had seen—it wasn’t a shirt, or a coat, or a dress. There was something unique about it.

  A white uniform?

  Danning?

  Why Danning?

  CHAPTER XXI

  Sergeant Hurlstone returned to his chair and settled the cat on his lap. The cat stayed pleased.

  “What got into you, Miss Marlow, when Danning turned the heat on about wanting you to leave here?”

  “I got mad.”

  “I thought you were.”

  “I’m going to fight this the way Mr. Marlow fought it.”

  “Glad you feel that way.”

  “Why did the dog interest you, and the desk drawer?”

  “The dog saw the crime committed. Chows are jealous of their masters. Did she leap upon the attacker? Tear at him with her teeth? There are no records of torn clothes or of flesh lacerations. No. The dog trembled on her cushion and made little noises. That’s odd business for a chow. As for the desk drawer, they took it for granted.”

  “How for granted?”

  “That the drawer had been opened and gone through before the crime. It was brought out by the prosecution that Abbott’s letter was still in the drawer when the troopers searched it. It was claimed that Abbott would have destroyed the letter if it were he who had looked through the drawer. They
said Fred Marlow opened the drawer and found the letter, that he read it, went mad, and rushed down to the music room and killed her.”

  “Well?”

  “I don’t take any of that for granted. In the first place, a guy in that frame of mind would have taken the letter down with him and brandished it at her. And in the second place, the drawer could have been searched after Alice Marlow was killed, not before. It could have been searched between the times when the murderer stabbed her and when Danning found the drawer half closed. Abbott’s letter might well have had nothing to do with it. I have asked Mr. Thurlow to come here. He is our next link in the carafe.”

  Sergeant Hurlstone stoically began to brood, and Ann was getting fed up—in fact, stuffed—with it. An absolute hush settled down on the large room. There was warmth from the fire, but it did not warm her. Her pique reached anger. Ice. She was conscious that Sergeant Hurlstone’s Olympian indifference was not, basically, indifference at all, that it was the confidence of a trained and intelligent man whose feet were planted on the right track.

  But after all…

  After all, nothing but the sharpest sort of wit had saved her from a toxic demise. Her wit. Surely it deserved some pinch of official commendation: How clever you were, Miss Marlow, not to die. Some flick of oral joy that that eventuality had not occurred, some trust, some assurance that she would be guarded against such hidden and venomous fangs in the future. But no.

  “You know where you’re going,” she said shortly. “One trusts.”

  “I think I do.”

  “There is nothing so exasperating as the white-rabbit trick, Sergeant Hurlstone.”

  “There is nothing so embarrassing or so stupid as pulling one out of a hat and finding it’s the wrong one. I will tell you this. I want motive. I want the precise motive as to why Alice Marlow was killed. Passion, jealousy, fear, hate, money, revenge. That’s about the general list. Which? We can settle on none of them and rule none of them out.” He looked toward the distant doorway. He said, “Come in, Mr. Thurlow.”

  Martin Thurlow joined them with precise and measured steps. Firelight caromed from the lenses of his rimless glasses and laced small lusters through his thinning hair. He bowed and smiled with reserved precision to Ann. He sat down.