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

by John Russell Fearn

  “Dinner is served,” Walters announced gravely, appearing in the doorway.

  “And have rarely been so ready for it,” Maria commented getting up. She caught Alice’s arm tightly as their walked across the lounge. “Don’t take this questioning of mine too much to heart, Alice,” she smiled. “Maybe my investigative qualities are not very polished. I am simply testing a little plan of my own, and I am bound to tread on people’s toes in the doing.”

  “Well...all right.” Alice looked a little mollified. “All the same, Maria dear, it is a bit embarrassing....”

  Conscious that her methods were perhaps too aggressive, Maria soft-pedaled her remarks during dinner. Only she and Alice were present in any case, so on the whole it was a quiet meal—but the moment it was over Maria began to open fire again as they went back into the lounge.

  “Alice, I want you to realize that my suspicions do not rest directly on you. I have perhaps framed my questions badly. What I am trying to do is to eliminate wheat from chaff. That makes it that I have to include you whether you like it or not.”

  “Now, Maria, you listen to me!” For once Alice’s voice was firm and decisive. “I told you once before—and I’m telling you again—that I consider your interferences pretty close to insulting! We know Ralph was murdered. Very well. You have dared to assume it might be somebody in the family who did it.... We will presume for a moment that you are correct. But do you not think that if it was, say Janet, or Dick, or Patricia, I would not work heart and soul to cover their guilt? Of course I would! They are my children, Maria: something you seem unable to grasp. I know how Ralph balked each one of them, yes; I could even forgive them for wanting to be rid of him for some of the things he did....”

  “I thought,” Maria remarked, sitting down, “you were fond of Ralph, Alice?”

  “I was. I am not referring to myself, but to my children. I am telling you that I intend to protect them with all my power against your interfering probes. I would rather Ralph’s death remained forever as an apparent suicide than that any one of my children should take the blame for a fate he probably deserved.”

  Maria pulled on her watch-chain gently. Then she asked slowly, “Why should you fear so much for your children if they are innocent?”

  “I am simply telling you my line of action!” Alice retorted.

  “You have a rare gift of eloquence, Alice,” Maria smiled. “You should have been an actress.”

  Alice sat down rather heavily and compressed her lips.

  “Maria, do you not realize what I’m saying? I’m telling you that I shall—”

  “That you will protect your children,” Maria nodded. “Yes, yes, I gathered that. A noble sentiment, Alice. But whatever you say, and whomever it may be who is guilty, I shall still bring him or her to justice.”

  “Wash your neck! Ho-ho, you’re a bonny ’un!”

  “Quiet, Cresty!” Alice snapped, swinging to him as he twirled about his cage.

  “Aw, go cook a hamburger!”

  “That reminds me...,” Maria said, watching the parrot’s antics.

  “What?”

  “Yesterday morning the bird imitated the aria which Janet sang during her last tour. You remember Patricia remarking on it?”

  Alice shrugged. “What of it? Janet sings that aria at most of her concerts, usually as an encore. You mean Mozart’s ‘Alleluia in F Major,’ don’t you?”

  “Yes....” Maria lay back in her chair, pondering. “Do you happen to have a record of that aria? I mean, has Janet ever made one of it?”

  “As it happens, yes—and of lots of her other songs, too. But if you want to hear it,” Alice went on, “you’d do much better to listen to the original. It is being broadcast tonight, don’t forget. That is what I am waiting to hear. Be on any minute now. Janet told me she would include ‘Alleluia’ as an encore tonight. If she does you can hear it. If not, I will get the record.”

  Maria nodded, then asked another question.

  “Tell me, Alice, were you listening to her in your room on the night Ralph died?”

  “No. I had heard her recital on the earlier broadcast, so I didn’t bother on the second occasion....”

  Alice got up and switched on the radio. At the moment it was only a swing band, but presently the announcer stated that they were going over to the Criterion Theater for a musical recital, with Janet Black, soprano, and Dennis Raythorn, tenor....

  Maria rose suddenly and went over to the sideboard. Alice watched her absently for a moment or two, then she gazed m surprise as Maria drew up a little table, stopped, and then studied the position of the radio. She edged the table round, nodded, and on top of the table placed an empty wine glass.

  “What on earth—?” Alice asked, staring.

  “A little experiment in ultrasonics, my dear,” Maria smiled. “And if you do not know the meaning of ‘ultrasonics’ I would re­commend you to read Dunsant’s Electrical Reactions in Ralph’s library. Ultrasonics deals with the science of unheard sound. Sound either so high or low it escapes audibility and manifests itself instead as a vibration.... It seems that my many questions have annoyed you, so now let us see if actions can prove a little more positive.”

  With that Maria sat down again, folded her arms, and waited. Alice relaxed again too, but with a rather worried frown.... The concert began. Janet’s pure notes, first in solo then in duet with Dennis Raythorn, floated into the lounge, winding up in a storm of applause. By this time Alice had abandoned herself under the warmth of golden notes. She was wagging her graying head from side to side in ecstasy.

  “Beautiful! Beautiful! Has she not a wonderful voice, Maria, dear?”

  “Certainly a remarkable one,” Maria said ambiguously, her eyes half-closed; then she abruptly became all attention as the orchestra struck up for an encore.

  “This is it!” Alice exclaimed, waving her fingers in the air. “Mozart’s Alleluia....”

  “You know at which point the high C comes?” Maria asked.

  “But of course! I know every note.”

  “Good! When it comes watch this wine glass....”

  Maria got up, turned up the volume of the set a little, then stood watching the little table. Still puzzled, Alice sat listening as the girl’s voice swept higher and higher up the scale towards the con­clusion of the aria; then at last she reached high C and held it steadily. Alice opened her lips to make an enraptured utterance, only to close them again with a start as the wine glass in line with the radio suddenly parted with a piece of its bowl which fell in slivers of needle-thin glass.

  “What—what did that?” she gasped, noting Maria was nowhere near it.

  “Ultrasonic wave from Janet’s voice,” Maria said laconically. Then, as the aria came to an end, “Do you mind if I switch off?”

  “No, no, of course not. She has finished anyway....” Alice got up and stared at the shards scattered on the table. “But how could Janet’s voice do this? It’s—ridiculous!”

  “On the contrary, it is amazingly logical. Listen while I ex­plain....”

  Alice obeyed as, almost word for word, Maria repeated what Jean Conway had told her.

  “So you see,” she finished, “a portion of the glass was in exact sympathy with the vibration from Janet’s voice, and therefore it broke. Caruso used to do it, if your memory serves you well.”

  “Yes, yes,” Alice nodded quickly. Then she frowned. “But what does it mean? If anything?”

  “It may mean the answer to Ralph’s death, Alice.... Now wait a minute. I am not accusing Janet: but I am rapidly becoming convinced that somebody knew her voice has just the right timbre for smashing glass when it reaches high C or above...and not only glass, but any brittle object. This line of reasoning started yesterday morning when Cresty imitated Janet’s voice and smashed a wine glass on the sideboard. It could not have been Janet yesterday, because she was singing just an ordinary ballad—and she was in another room too. The maid said she had seen a wine glass smashed like that
before. Probably Cresty did it on that other occasion too.... It is possible, I daresay, that Janet is quite unaware that her voice is capable of doing such a thing.”

  Alice still looked mystified. “Even now I don’t see what this has to do with Ralph’s death, Maria. How can a wine glass break­ing—?”

  “Or any brittle object!” Maria repeated. “It was not a wine glass which caused Ralph’s death—but a revolver, a spring, and a piece of brittle wire.... For that matter, this evening is as good a time as any to explain just what I mean. We are alone for a change. Where is that record of Janet’s Alleluia?”

  “It will be in the radiogram in the library. I’m not much inter­ested in records myself, but Ralph was. He has a huge library of them—whole operas that play in sequence. It is an automatic radiogram, you know....”

  Maria gave a slight start. “You mean the kind that puts on and takes off records for itself?”

  “That’s right....”

  “Hmm. Most interesting.”

  Thoughtful again, Maria led the way to the library, again asked the astonished Walters for stepladders. Alice began to watch in mystified silence as Maria once more took the .38 from the desk drawer and fixed it over the top of the antique revolver so that the barrel was pointing directly downward.

  “You observe, Alice, that this gun almost covers the antique underneath it, thereby rendering it practically unnoticeable?”

  “Ye—yes” Alice said, slowly and uneasily. “What now?”

  “This....” Maria put the smaller loop of the spring over the nail supporting the gun butt and fastened the larger spring loop round the trigger of the .38. She held it tightly, prevented the trigger from drawing back. With her free hand she looped the wire—joined end to end now in “O” shape—also round the trigger and then to the nail holding the revolver barrel. A few adjustments followed, until at last the trigger was within an ace of being pulled back sharply by the spring, prevented only from so doing by the wire holding it in the opposite direction.

  “There!” Maria got down from the ladder and flashed a glance at Alice. “Now, if the wire were to snap what do you think would happen?”

  “Obviously the spring would snap back and pull the trigger, and the bullet would fire...at the armchair!” Alice’s voice trailed off. “Oh, Maria, it’s horrible!”

  “Horrible—but brilliant,” Maria said grimly. “I haven’t finished yet, however. Where is that record of Alleluia?”

  “In the radiogram there....”

  Maria turned to it and raised the lid, looked at the score or so of records turned edgewise to her, put there with mechanical neatness. She went through them swiftly, then turned.

  “No record of Alleluia here, Alice.”

  “But there must be...!” Alice turned from her contemplation of the revolver and looked through the cabinet hastily. Then she smiled and lifted a record off the take-up arm.

  “Here it is! I see now what happened. Ralph must have decided at some time to play through all Janet’s records— Yes, look! Here on the feed-arm are six of her records. One had played—this one of Alleluia—and the second one had gone halfway. The rest were not played at all....” Alice frowned. “Queer! The record still has the needle resting in the middle of it. Unlike Ralph to do that....”

  “I noticed that some time ago,” Maria commented, her eyes narrowed in thought. “But in any case it does not signify at the moment. Put on the Alleluia....”

  Alice nodded, put aside the record that was on the turntable—and Maria noted exactly where it went in the rack—and replaced it with Alleluia. She switched on, put the needle down gently.

  “What happens now?” she asked, closing the lid.

  “Everything...I hope,” Maria murmured, and stood in tense expectancy as Janet’s voice flowed forth steadily. Gradually she climbed again to that high C, and as that pure note vibrated from the radiogram a variety of things happened.

  The wire holding the revolver trigger snapped suddenly. The spring instantly pulled back the trigger and for a second or two—long enough at least for a bullet to be discharged in a straight line—the revolver was motionless. The spring, released, flew backwards off its nail and vanished. The loop of wire fell too. The .38 itself, no longer supported and jerked with the recoil, dropped off the central nail and thudded to the carpet perhaps eighteen inches from the heavy armchair.

  “Heavens!” Alice whispered, wide-eyed. “Maria, had there been a bullet in that gun; had somebody been sitting in that chair—”

  “There would have been another ‘suicide’,” Maria said grimly, switching the radiogram off. “I have proved that my reasoning has been entirely justified. This alcove here collects the sound waves from the radiogram and directs them in just the right intensity to that out-jutting piece of wall. The brittle wire snapped instantly in sympathy with the right note. Automatic suicide, Alice! A devilish scheme! Somebody must have experimented quite a lot to perfect the idea. Somebody knew that Ralph invariably sat in that chair when listening to the radio: somebody knew the chair is too much of a fixture to be moved about very much. And somebody knew that Janet’s voice would do the trick! Yes, on the night of the murder this device went off when Janet sang high C from the concert platform. I worked it all out from only one clue—a spring. Possibly the mur­derer tried to find that spring, and failed—whereas I was successful. It was lodging in a crevice.”

  She turned and searched about until she had recovered it again. She also picked up the thin piece of snapped wire.

  “Exhibits,” she announced. “The police are going to be very interested in these before I’m finished.”

  “I—I just don’t know what to say,” Alice breathed, her face rather colorless. “But Maria, why didn’t Ralph see the second gun? The automatic, I mean....”

  “Very unlikely. He would be looking at the radiogram, for one thing: it is surprising how one looks at a radio when very interested, as though expecting to see something. Again, the automatic exactly covered the antique. Had he looked carefully, he would have seen two barrels pointing at him—but obviously he did not. Again, the murderer reckoned that Ralph would have no need to use the auto­matic from the desk: the belief was right. Therefore, you know now why I am sure the device was fixed between the time Lucy cleaned up and the time Ralph came home.”

  “Yes...I see.” Alice looked up anxiously. “But surely, Maria, you do not think that I could have done this thing? You do not think I could have planned such a brilliantly executed, not to say technical, suicide?”

  Maria shook her head slowly. “I know you didn’t fix the device, Alice—and for a very good reason. You are only about five feet tall.”

  “What has that to do with it?”

  “Plenty. I am assured by Walters that on the fateful day nobody borrowed stepladders—and yet to fix this device would demand them. The murderer would therefore have to rely on the furniture in the room itself. By using all the cushions and the chair—the only possible articles, you observe—I can then only just reach the crossed guns up there, and I am five feet four. So we are forced to the admission that the murderer is tallish—not under five foot seven, anyway.”

  “That takes in many people,” Alice sighed. “If we dare to think of the family, though I know that to be wrong, we can have Janet, who is five feet eight; Dick, who is six feet; Patricia, who just touches five feet seven.... Walters is tall, too, and so is Janet’s maid, Mary. Lucy is my height, so she’s out of it.”

  “Excluding any other people we have not mentioned whom I might yet encounter,” Maria mused, thinking of Jean Conway, whom she guessed at five foot seven. “Patricia, I think, we can leave out. We know where she was.”

  “Yes...we do.” Alice pulled her underlip slowly, then she seemed to come to a decision. “Well, Maria, all I have to say is that I shall stand by my children if it is proved finally that one of them did it. If that is the final solution at which you arrive, promise me that you will tell me first.”

 
“Murder is murder, Alice,” Maria answered inflexibly. “No matter whom it hurts, no matter who is guilty, he or she shall pay to the full. Advance warning might give the opportunity to escape and I do not intend to allow that to happen.”

  “And who are you to pass judgment in this fashion?” Alice demanded bitterly.

  “For one thing I am Ralph’s sister, entrusted with the mission of seeing that justice is done. I am bound to honor that. In the second place I am the only one above all suspicion because I was in England when the thing happened....”

  “But look, surely you must have some idea by now who did it? You must suspect one more than another? Can’t you give me a clue?”

  Maria reflected for a long time, but at last shook her head.

  “I can’t, Alice—and I don’t mean that I won’t. So far everybody who has come under suspicion seems to have had a perfectly logical reason for wanting to be rid of Ralph: I have to determine which one finally took the plunge....”

  She broke off and glanced at her watch. “I have some work to finish off tonight, Alice. Think over all that I have told you, and if you recall anything likely to be helpful, let me know.”

  “Yes, of course,” Alice agreed quietly, and pondered as Maria headed for the door.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Maria’s “work to finish off” took her to the Criterion Theater just as the concert was drawing to its close. She made her way through the little group round the stage door, and the doorman, recognizing her from her first visit, nodded his permission for her to go through. Mary opened the door of Janet’s dressing room in response to the knock.

  “Good evening, Mary. Miss Black still out at the front?”

  “She’ll be in any minute, madam.”

  The girl cleared a chair of odds and ends and Maria settled herself to wait. It was not long before Janet appeared, disentangling her­self from earnest reporters and critics crowded round the doorway.

  “Later—later!” she promised, closing the door on them. Then as she turned she gave a faint start of surprise. “Why, Aunt, this is unexpected! Come on, Mary—hurry, please!”