Black Maria, M. A.: A Classic Crime Novel

by John Russell Fearn

  “First impressions are variable. Richard seems to be a likeable boy with a penchant for young ladies—both in and out of his shows, I should imagine. A rather wicked smile, and much D’Artagnan in the eye. Alice still questions her own rather inane remarks, but she answers my guarded inquiries with an ease that makes her seem innocent of anything ulterior. It is this innocence that I feel compelled to question, in view of De Vanhart’s ‘First Impressions of a Criminal.’ I shall test this thesis for myself.... Walters, the manservant, is a strange, impassive being with unsteady eyes. I begin to wonder if he is looking for some­thing. So far as I can gather all have benefited financially from Ralph’s death. I have yet to meet Patricia and Janet. The time is 5:10 p.m.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  In the lounge prior to dinner Dick Black found himself called upon to answer questions. He would not have minded so much had not the necessity of answering kept the brandy and soda he had prepared from reaching his lips.

  Patricia was his cross-examiner, marching up and down as she interrogated him. She was dressed in a close-fitting gown of green, a color that matched her eyes. A certain lack of development about the shoulders still testified to her twenty years—but certainly nothing else was undeveloped. Her face was cast in a shrewd, coldly beautiful mold. The green eyes offset the straight nose and firm, full lips. The blonde hair swept back in shimmering waves from her high forehead gave her an odd, robot-like appearance. In fact, as Dick had often observed, if he ever needed anybody in his show to portray the spirit of the future he had only to ask Pat to hold a lamp over her head. But this was a piece of cynical humor that had so far found no inroads to Pat’s forthright soul.

  “If you’d put that darned siphon down for a moment and start talking maybe we’d get somewhere!” she exclaimed irritably, flinging herself down at last on the divan. “Come on, give! What is she like? She’s an English headmistress—that’s all I hear. But to me that spells a woman with folded arms and pro bono publico stamped on her petticoats.”

  Dick got his drink down at length. “She’s all right, Pat—take it from me. A bit hardboiled, maybe, but I can’t blame her if the girls she teaches have anything in common with you.... Try to imagine dad as a woman, then you have it.”

  “Still smells bad to me.” Pat got up and moved to the siphon herself. “What is more I still think it is a piece of confounded nerve her coming here— She came to see Johnson: we know that. Why couldn’t she do it by proxy? Why travel three thousand miles just for that?”

  “Search me. Maybe she wanted a holiday.”

  “And took good care to foist herself on to us to get it! A perfectly blatant example of muscling in, if you ask me.”

  “I didn’t ask you,” Dick sighed. “And if it comes to that what are you beefing about anyway? She isn’t going to upset your arrangements, is she?”

  “She’d better not try!” Pat’s lips tightened for a moment as she considered her drink, then she turned as Janet came in.

  It was not Janet’s fault that she entered like a mannequin at a dress salon. Years of concert platforms had instilled it into her—the measured tread and well-poised head. She had a regal calm, an intense and unshatterable assurance. Her dark coloring lent a touch of the Juno to her. Raven-headed, black-eyed, the taller of the two girls. When she spoke it was in a voice that was richly mellow.

  “What’s the matter, Pat? Don’t you like the advent of Aunt Maria?”

  “No, I do not!”

  “All right, all right—don’t bite my head off! Suppose you wait and meet her before opening the sea-cocks? After all—”

  Dick interrupted: “Take no notice of her, Jan. She’s nuts. Been that way for some time now, but I’m dashed if I can figure out why. Maybe the hot weather. It does bring out a rash.”

  “Dick,” Janet said, turning to him, “what is she like?”

  “Holy cats, do I have to start in all over again? What do you think I am—an information bureau? She is all—”

  “Can it be that I am the cause of this little argument?”

  Maria had come quietly into the room. Undoubtedly the girls of Roseway would not have recognized their empress this evening. The bun was still there unfortunately—but the rest of Maria, ex­quisitely gowned and matronly, was divorced completely from the somber college ruler.

  Dick jumped to his feet immediately, caught Janet’s arm.

  “This is Janet, Aunt. Remember her? She was five when—”

  “When we last met,” Maria nodded, and stood gravely as the girl kissed her lightly on the cheek. Then she went on, “So this is the five-year-old who ate all my butter-creams when she came to England? Well! Amazing—! And now you are a public figure—a singer.... You make me feel quite old, my dear.”

  Janet smiled. “I’m afraid the old man with the scythe has no sense of humor, aunt. One just grows up, and there it is. But look, you have never met Pat, in the flesh that is. Her photographs don’t do her justice, you know— Come on, Pat!” she insisted. “Don’t stand sulking over there.”

  Patricia shrugged and came forward rather sullenly. She re­turned Maria’s calm, blue-eyed gaze with one of equal power, and infused into it a definite challenge. Finally she held out a milky hand indifferently.

  Maria ignored it and said calmly, “You may kiss me, Patricia.”

  Pat hesitated, lowered her hand, then administered a peck. She stood back as though uncertain, color mounting slowly in her smooth cheeks.

  “Aunt, why do you stare at me like this?” she asked abruptly. “Am I so—extraordinary?”

  “I was just thinking how very beautiful you are, child. The photographs I have seen of you in crude monochrome haven’t done you justice in the leapt. I am also thinking I can see a lot of your poor father in you.”

  “Isn’t that a trifle pointless?”

  “I don’t think so. It is not uncommon for a daughter to inherit some of her parents’ characteristics— Yes, yes, indeed,” Maria mused. “I see it in all three of you. Like a cross-section of your father with part of your mother. In you, Dick, I behold your father’s reckless ambition without its hard side. In you, Janet, I see the calm repose your father cultivated in his later years. I too have that characteristic— And in you, Patricia, I see something different. Even a part of me, as I might have been had I ever been as beautiful as you.”

  Patricia’s long lashes masked her insolent green eyes for a moment.

  “After all,” she said, “we didn’t expect to be psycho-analyzed, Aunt. All you are seeing are two sisters and one brother. So what?”

  Dick glanced at her irritably. “What in heck are you trying to do, Pat? Start a war? Come down off your pedestal! Now that you have met Aunt you can see she isn’t what you said—about pro bono publico and—and things.”

  Janet said: “I have a day or two free, Aunt, before I resume my work. Perhaps you’d like me to show you around? Plenty to see, you know.”

  “Yeah, Grant’s Tomb,” Patricia agreed bitterly. “Or maybe that would be too thrilling. There’s Empire State, Battery Park—”

  “Ah, so here we all are!” Alice Black came in with her usual Lancers movement, gowned in black as became her widowhood. It was a point that arrested Maria’s attention for a moment. Now she came to notice it only Patricia had disdained mourning by wearing bright emerald green.

  “So sorry I have been rather long, Maria dear,” Alice went on, patting her hair. “I had one or two things to do and the time just rushed away. I think time goes terribly fast when you don’t watch it, don’t you? But—but look, you must meet Janet and—.”

  “We’ve been through all that, mother,” Patricia butted in. “Right now our main concern—mine anyway—is dinner. When do we start? I’m hungry....” Then her lovely young face suddenly lighted as Walters appeared with his grave pronouncement.

  “Dinner is served.”

  Dick asked eagerly, “May I?”—and before Maria could even guess his intention he had drawn her arm through his own. W
ith a grave smile he added, “I hope you don’t mind? Fact of the matter is I’ve long wanted to feel what it is like to meet a Headmistress on equal terms. I sort of get a kick out of taking one in to dinner.”

  Maria’s eyes moved to Pat’s elegant form preceding them. “I’m glad you don’t think I’m an old dragon, Richard.”

  “Pat getting in your hair? Don’t let her. She talks like a chump at times.... Look, after dinner maybe we can get down to cases a little. I still think dad was murdered, you know. You have met the family now, seen the boss of the domestics in the form of Walters; so what next do you want to do?”

  “If possible I would like to see the room where your father died.”

  “Okay. You shall!”

  * * * *

  During dinner Maria skillfully steered the conversation away from the commonplace of her profession to the subject closest her heart. Long the expert technician in rooting out details without giving offence she began to feel almost as though she were back at Roseway with a bunch of guilty pupils on the carpet.

  “I suppose,” she said, during a lull in the conversation, “that it is not very easy for us to sit here in a family group and try to forget what is uppermost in all our minds? I know I cannot.”

  “You mean—poor Ralph?” Alice sighed.

  “Do we have to go through it all again?” Pat groaned. “How is one to ever forget the rotten business if it’s constantly raked up and paraded?”

  Maria’s cold blue eyes wandered to her. There was a venom in this girl she could not quite understand. Nor did it seem to come by her too easily. She was too intelligent, too gifted by nature, to be a natural spitfire.

  “I think,” Maria said, “that you have overlooked my absence, Patricia. I have come three thousand miles for first-hand details, not only to see attorney Johnson. I want to know just why your father did such a dreadful thing. What really did happen?”

  “I’m afraid most of us got the news second-hand,” Janet said quietly. “I was not here on that evening. I was giving a singing recital at the theater and Dad had promised to listen in to my con­cert—as indeed he always did on the first and last days of my recitals. He said he could tell by doing this how my voice had improved, or deteriorated, in the interval....” She gave a little shrug. “When I got home around midnight the thing had happened. Mother gave me the full details.... It was a terrible, dreadful shock!”

  Alice took the story up. “Walters was the first to discover things were wrong. Ralph used to ring for his wine in an evening, you see. Sometimes early, sometimes late. He used to lock his door when listening to Janet.... Well, he rang for his wine all right, but when Walters arrived the library door was still locked. Walters got alarmed at length, asked me what should be done. In the end we broke in by the French window....”

  Alice paused, bit her lip at her recollections.

  “There was Ralph in his armchair, a bullet wound in his temple. It was horrible! Horrible! The radio was going full blast too. I remember Walters switched it off, then he sent for the police. As you are aware, however, the final verdict was suicide. It could hardly have been anything else. It seemed queer he should ring for his wine and then shoot himself; that was why we had a police enquiry just—just in case somebody— But it was suicide. Ghastly, I know—but it had to be faced.”

  Maria glanced at Patricia and then Dick.

  “What of you two? Did you lend any sort of assistance?”

  “I was out with my town show,” Dick shrugged. “I didn’t get home until long after Janet.”

  “I was out too,” Patricia said, with a defiant little smile. “I spent the evening with friends....”

  “So,” Maria murmured, “everybody was out except you, Alice, and the servants?”

  She nodded, then looked rather surprised. “But does it make any point, Maria dear? Or are you— Good Lord, I do believe you are trying to read something else into the horrible business!”

  “No.” Maria shook her dark head briefly. “No—not yet. But when we are finished I would like to see his library. I’m not a morbid woman but I am a stickler for details and I want to know exactly how and where he met his end.”

  “Sounds like going over old ground to me,” Patricia sighed. “Anyway, you won’t need me, will you?”

  “I would rather have liked all of you to co-operate,” Maria said. “I’ve still one or two things to get absolutely clear in my mind.”

  “But why?” Genuine fury blazed in Patricia’s green eyes. “Just why do you have to come here and rake up this tragedy again? Why do we have to suffer it all over again just because you want a—a reconstruction? The police went over all the ground and the thing’s finished with. You know just as much as we do!”

  “Just what’s the matter with you tonight, Pat?” Dick snapped. “What are you going off half-cocked about? After all, Aunt’s entitled to some explanations. As she says, she wasn’t here when the thing happened.”

  Janet said: “I think you can rest assured we’re all willing to do what we can to give you a true picture, Aunt. Of course, I don’t much care myself to have old unhappy memories revived, but I also know what is common sense.... That’s for you, Pat,” she added dryly.

  “All right—all right!” Pat subsided again and threw down her serviette impatiently. “But I still resent the insinuation that we’re all a bunch of criminals or something! Yes, that is what it amounts to!” she cried, glaring at the faces directed towards her. “Here are we, a perfectly respectable family with our private tragedy—then along comes Aunt Maria from England to question us all and rake up old dirt.... Good Heavens, Aunt, one would almost think dad was murdered!”

  “What makes you think he wasn’t?” Dick asked quietly—then seeing Maria’s look of surprise he went on, “You might as well all know now as later on. I asked Aunt not to spring it on you—not to tell you that I sent for her as well as attorney Johnson. I told her that I did not like the circumstances of dad’s death. It looked like suicide: the police were satisfied it was suicide.... But I’m not!”

  “Are you trying to suggest...?” Pat’s eyes went wide. “You mean to say somebody killed father?”

  “Yes!”

  In the long silence that followed Janet was the first to comment. Despite Dick’s announcement her voice was as composed as ever.

  “Don’t you think you’re making rather a dangerous statement, Dick?”

  “Why am I? We’re all innocent—we know that. It was an outside job, if anything. Mind you, it’s only a suspicion—but a suspicion I can’t get rid of just the same. As we all know, dad had lots of enemies. So I told Aunt Maria I suspected murder.”

  “And what for?” Patricia snapped. “Aunt is a headmistress, not a detective.”

  “She happens to be father’s sister and therefore entitled to our views.”

  Alice Black made a rather bewildered movement. “Really, I’m quite confused! This is all so—so extraordinary! I never even thought of such a horrible possibility.... I begin to think you’ve been reading too many of those plays of yours, Dick.”

  He shrugged, but his face was grim. The silence fell back and one looked at the other. Maria finished her meal with calm detach­ment, then as there was a general rising to feet Dick spoke again.

  “Come along to the library, Aunt, and see things for yourself.”

  Maria accompanied him through the lounge and across the hall. The two girls and Alice followed. Finally all of them had collected in the library in the somber twilight.

  The place was well but plainly furnished. There was a massive writing desk, a heavy hide armchair drawn to face the old-style fireplace, a radiogram in the corner alcove near the window, a richly thick carpet, and hundreds of books lining the walls. The lighter furniture was in the ultra-modern steel tubing fashion.... Maria took in most of this at a glance then directed her attention back to the fireplace.

  At either side of it, on the out-jutting wall produced by the chim­ney breast, fixed at right angles
to the fireplace itself, were ancient crossed swords and pistols, shields, armory trifles, and other examples of antique art.

  Patricia glanced round wearily.

  “Well, Aunt, I guess there isn’t much in the place, is there?”

  “It’s not the room, Patricia, it’s the memories,” Maria said quietly, gazing round her. “Yes, standing here I can almost feel Ralph’s presence. I can imagine how he must have loved this room.”

  “I feel that too,” Alice said soberly. “I often come in here and sit—and sit. It refreshes me. I seem to feel again Ralph’s blustering assurances, his overwhelming strength of purpose, his ruthless ambition—for which he paid with his life! Well, Fate always has the sledgehammer....”

  Patricia parted with something close to a sniff.

  “Confoundedly depressing, I call it! I could never understand what dad wanted with a dump like this room. It’s—it’s medieval!”

  Maria’s steady eyes fixed on her.

  “Patricia, I have the oddest feeling about you. You seem to have no happy memories of your father. Why is that?”

  “Would you have any happy memories of a parent who balked your dearest wish? I had no affection for father—none whatever. He insisted on treating me as an irresponsible crackpot, as a money-blown heiress with no sense of duty. I didn’t like it, and I’d be a hypocrite if I said I were sorry he died.”

  “Pat!” Her mother was aghast.

  “It’s true!” Pat insisted defiantly. “And you know it—all of you!” She stopped, gave a slow, bitter smile. “If you don’t mind this is too slow for me. Besides, I’m tired.... I think I’ll go up to my room.”

  She went out and slammed the door. Maria looked at it thought­fully.

  Janet broke in with an apology. “I don’t quite know what to say about Pat, Aunt. She’s been unaccountably nasty ever since dad died, as a matter of fact. Says she sleeps badly. Anyway, she’s always going off to bed early in the evening like this.”