by Alice Duncan
“I know. He came by the office. When I called him this afternoon, he said he hadn’t heard from you, and he wasn’t very happy about it, either.”
Ernie shook his head again, then grasped it between both of his hands and let out a moan of pain. I began to suspect he’d either overindulged in spirituous liquor, been bashed over the head himself, or had been drugged somehow or other. The latter, while bizarre, seemed a trifle more logical than the first two choices, since Ernie hadn’t, to my knowledge, a taste for alcohol. He did take the occasional sip from a flask every now and then, which had shocked me until I found out he carried apple cider in the silly thing. I also hadn’t noticed any kind of wound or bump on his head.
Because I’m a compassionate person when not being hollered at for no good reason, I returned to the bed. “Do you have a headache?”
“Yes. My head hurts like hell, my mouth is as dry as the Sahara Desert, and I feel like I’ve been run over by a trolley car. Damn, I need a powder and some water.”
“You were drugged,” I said.
He squinted at me unpleasantly. “Now who in the name of God would drug me?”
“Probably the same person who killed Mrs. Chalmers,” I said before thinking the matter through.
Ernie stared at me as if it were I and not he who’d been drugged. “What did you say?”
Realizing that what I’d just said had probably shocked Ernie a good deal, I sighed and explained. “I found Mrs. Chalmers dead at the foot of that staircase out there. I think she was hit on the head and then pushed down the stairs. Unless she fell and knocked her head on something along her way downstairs, although it didn’t look like that to me, since the back of her head looked . . . well, as if it had been bashed. Not,” I admitted reluctantly, “that I’m an expert at things like that.”
“She’s dead?” Again Ernie shook his head. Again he clutched it as if it hurt when he did that.
“Yes.”
“You’re sure?”
I pressed my lips together, exasperated. “Yes, I’m sure! Why do you think I roamed through this huge, blasted, empty house looking for you? I found the front door unlocked, nobody else in the entire house, her dead at the foot of the stairs, and you nowhere. So I climbed the stairs—worrying the entire time, mind you, that some revolting criminal would leap out at me—and I found you tied up in here.” I looked around the room and added drily, “Mrs. Chalmers’ bedchamber, I presume.”
He looked around the room, too. “I don’t know what the hell room this is. It looks like something out of the Reign of Terror with all that damned red.”
“Ernest Templeton, if you don’t stop swearing at me—”
“I’m not swearing at you, for God’s sake. I feel like I’ve been kicked in the head by a mule, and you can’t think of anything better to do than criticize my language. Have some mercy, Mercy.”
“Your language is deplorable,” I said because I felt I should.
“I know it. It always has been. You should be used to it by this time.” He groaned and struggled to stand. “Oh, God, my head hurts!”
I pinched my lips together into a tight line, but sympathy got the better of me. “Here. Lean on me if it’ll help.”
“Thanks, Mercy.”
“You’re welcome. I suppose there’s a telephone in this house somewhere. I imagine we should call the—”
A piercing scream interrupted my suggestion, and I feared it was too late for us to be the bearers of the news of Mrs. Chalmers’ death to the Los Angeles Police Department.
Cringing—from pain, I presume—Ernie said, “Shit.”
Ever efficient, I said, “I’d better go see who’s here and explain what happened. Not that I know what happened.” I looked up at my wobbly boss. “Can you walk on your own?”
Through gritted teeth, Ernie said, “Yes.”
“Hold on to the door frame until you get your feet balanced sufficiently under you.”
Ernie grunted.
Leaving him to his own devices, I ran out of the room, down the hall, and stopped at the head of the staircase. There below me huddled the reason the house had been empty when I arrived. Two women, clutching each other and with faces streaming with tears, stared down at the dead body of Mrs. Persephone Chalmers. The housekeeper and maid, I presumed. Unless one of them was the cook. Or the crook.
But that was silly. Neither of those two women looked threatening to me, although I’d been fooled before, much to my chagrin.
Anyhow, the situation, as you can fully imagine, was terribly awkward. The poor things appeared to be already distressed, and I was sure that finding two strangers in the house where their employer lay dead wasn’t going to make them feel much better. However, I’d been bred to handle difficult situations among servants with aplomb, so I cleared my throat.
Both women gasped and looked up the staircase to where I stood. They, not having been bred under the same circumstances as I, screeched again.
Chapter Three
I descended the staircase as quickly and with as much dignity as I could muster, hoping Ernie would take his time joining us downstairs until I’d conveyed my story to the two women and they calmed down some. They backed away from me, still clinging to each other, as if I were a demon incarnate.
“Please,” I said to the older of the two, “my name is Miss Mercedes Allcutt, and I found Mrs. Chalmers this way when I came to visit her. The front door was unlocked, and I was worried, so I entered the house.” I didn’t mention that I’d been looking for my fugitive employer at the time.
They continued to stare at me. I sighed.
“Will you please tell me where the telephone is? We need to telephone the police department. I believe Mrs. Chalmers was done to death by a criminal.”
The older woman bellowed, “What? You think she was murdered?”
The younger woman let out another cry of alarm, although it wasn’t quite so loud as her last couple had been. “She told us this would happen,” she said to the other woman, much to my interest. “Didn’t she tell us, Mrs. Hanratty? She told us, didn’t she?”
“She did, Susan. She did.”
Now I was confused. “You mean Mrs. Chalmers feared for her life?”
“Yes!” wailed Susan.
Oh, dear. This was such a pickle. And here I’d been told Ernie was only interested in finding some stolen jewelry. Why hadn’t he told me this part of the story? Probably because he didn’t want me doing what he calls snooping into the matter. Idiotic man. He’d left me out of things, and just look what had happened to him. Not to mention Mrs. Chalmers. One of these days, I told myself, I’d teach him what an asset I was. Until then . . .
“Please tell me where the telephone is, Mrs. Hanratty, and I’ll ’phone a police detective I know. In the meantime, I believe you should go to the kitchen and prepare a nice pot of tea. That might calm the two of you somewhat.”
Mrs. Hanratty, rather than taking my sensible suggestion and acting upon it, looked around the hallway. “Is the mister here?”
It was my turn to stare. “There’s a mister? A Mr. Chalmers?”
Mrs. Hanratty nodded. Then she seemed to gather control of herself, straightened, set Susan aside, and said, “Susan, I don’t know why this young woman is in the house, but I think you’d best telephone the mister at his place of business.” To me she said, “I think it’s mighty fishy to find a stranger in the house along with the body of the missus, young woman.”
I didn’t blame her for feeling as she did. However, I also wasn’t guilty of doing anything more grievous than entering a house uninvited.
It was then when Susan chose to scream again. I knew what had caused this latest outpouring of terror without even turning around to see Ernie, but I did anyway, mainly because I wasn’t sure he was steady enough on his pins to negotiate the staircase.
“Do you need my help?” I asked politely. I had to ask the question rather loudly because Susan was in full rant by that time. I heard a sharp smack, and she shu
t up, from which I deduced that Mrs. Hanratty had slapped Susan’s cheek to quell her hysterics.
“And just who in blazes are you?” Mrs. Hanratty demanded of Ernie. I got the feeling she’d been shepherding the members of this household for quite a few years, because she had a tone of command that almost rivaled that of my mother.
Ernie, pale, pasty, and looking sick, reached into his jacket pocket and produced a card, which he handed to Mrs. Hanratty, who stared at it as if she expected it to bite her. Then she took the card and read it. “You’re the fellow who’s been looking into the theft?” she asked, as if she didn’t believe it. She stared at Ernie as she said the words, and I have to admit that her doubtful tone was justified. Ernie looked perfectly awful.
“Yes, I am. I’m also the fellow to whom Mrs. Chalmers came when she suspected someone was trying to kill her.” Then he knelt beside the body.
I heard Mrs. Hanratty gulp.
“Has anyone called Phil?”
“Not yet. I was trying to calm down the servants.”
“Well, for God’s sake, go call him! What the devil are you waiting for?”
“I’m waiting for someone to tell me where the telephone is, Ernest Templeton!” By that time in this circus of events, I’d become downright cranky.
Chapter Four
Mrs. Hanratty and I finally got Susan to shut up and sit down—she continued to weep, but less noisily than before—and Mrs. Hanratty led me at last to the telephone room, a small nook under the staircase.
“I really think I should telephone the mister first,” she told me.
“You may call Mr. Chalmers as soon as I telephone the police,” I said sternly, following Ernie’s instructions. He knew what he was doing. Usually.
“Well . . .”
“Mr. Templeton was employed by Mrs. Chalmers because he’s a professional, and he knows in which order these things need to be undertaken.”
I was proud of that sentence, mainly because it seemed to do the trick with Mrs. Hanratty, who heaved a huge sigh and said, “Well, I’ll go make a pot of tea. Susan isn’t going to be worth spit for the rest of the day.”
Interesting description. Wrinkling my nose in some distaste, I dialed the number for the Los Angeles Police Department and asked to speak with Detective Bigelow. To my unutterable relief, Phil was there at his desk. I had feared he might be out chasing criminals. In a very few words, I told him what had happened.
“She’s dead?” he said, a note of incredulity in his voice.
“You did say she was trouble,” I reminded him.
“Yeah. I know I did, but I didn’t think the trouble would happen to her. I thought she was it and it would happen to Ernie.”
“Oh. Well . . . well, so did I, actually. But she’s really and truly dead—murdered, if I’m not mistaken—and I found Ernie bound and gagged in an upstairs room.” I didn’t mention that I suspected the room to be Mrs. Chalmers’ bedchamber.
“You found Ernie? Bound and gagged?” Phil sounded even more incredulous than he had before.
“Yes. And I believe he was drugged into the bargain.”
A significant silence on the other end of the wire let me know Phil was attempting to digest the information I’d just imparted. At last he said, “I’ll be there as soon as I can be. Don’t move anything. I wish you’d left Ernie the way you found him.”
“Phil!” I cried, agog at his callousness. But he’d already replaced his receiver on the cradle, so I couldn’t ask him for an explanation of what I considered to be a particularly cruel wish on his part.
By the time the police arrived at the Chalmers’ residence, Mr. Chalmers had been notified of the trouble at his house, and he’d arrived, too. A tall, stout man with striking silver hair, he wore a handsomely tailored business suit in light gray wool. His collar was clean and starched, and he looked much too respectable to have been married to the wafty Persephone Chalmers. Or to any other woman who’d been murdered, for that matter. He looked kind of like my father, who wouldn’t hear of anyone being murdered in his family. I soon learned, however, after talking to him, that he was a much more gentle gentleman than any of the men in my family.
Considering that, in the case of a murdered spouse, the extant spouse is generally the first person suspected of having done the deed—Ernie had taught me that—Mr. Chalmers appeared truly grieved by his wife’s demise. I got the feeling he’d have felt bad even if she’d died of natural causes, although I also wondered if he were faking his feelings. If so, he was a mighty good actor. He appeared positively sick.
Phil and Ernie were busy discussing things over the body of Mrs. Chalmers, and I’d helped Mr. Chalmers to an easy chair, where he sat with his face in his hands and his elbows propped on his knees, patently miserable—again, unless he was faking. Feeling useless, I said, “Is there anything I can do to help you, Mr. Chalmers? I’m so very sorry about all this.”
He glanced up at me, and I saw that tears stood in his eyes. “Thank you, Miss Allcutt”—I’d introduced myself—“I can’t think of anything. I’m so . . . so . . .” His words trailed off.
“If you do think of some way I can be of help to you, please don’t hesitate to ask me.”
“Thank you. Oh!” He straightened in his chair. “There is something you can do for me. You can telephone my son.”
“Your son?” Another suspect, by gum! Maybe the son of this family had decided to do away with his mother so that he’d inherit more money. Or something like that. I’d have to work out the details later.
“Yes. I . . . I’d call him myself, but . . .” He gulped loudly, and I deduced he was having a bit of trouble keeping his emotions in check. My sympathy was instantly aroused, and I began to believe he wasn’t faking anything.
“I’ll be very glad to telephone him for you, Mr. Chalmers.”
“Wait a minute, you,” a gruff voice said at my back.
I turned, surprised, to find a uniformed member of the Los Angeles Police Department scowling at me. “Yes?” I said in my mother’s most austere voice.
The policeman seemed unaffected by my hauteur. Breeding will tell, as my mother is fond of saying. Curse this man, he had none. Nevertheless, I lifted my eyebrows to let him know what I considered his place in the universe to be, even if he disagreed with my assessment.
To my relief, my Mother imitation seemed to be having an effect at last. The officer swallowed and said, “Er, I just need to know who it is you’re going to telephone. That’s all.”
Mr. Chalmers responded to this almost-civil statement. “I asked Miss Allcutt to put a call through to my son. He needs to know what happened, and I need him here to . . . to . . .” He couldn’t go on. Folding up like a fan, he again buried his face in his hands, and his shoulders started to shake slightly.
With a grimace for the officer, I expressed my opinion of a servant of the public who would make a grown man cry. The policeman only looked slightly abashed. I knelt beside Mr. Chalmers. “What is your son’s number, sir? I’ll call him for you.” I spoke very gently.
So Mr. Chalmers gave me his son’s telephone number, and I headed to the ’phone nook under the staircase and put the call through. After what seemed like a hundred rings, at least, a voice on the other end of the wire answered at last with, “Sierra Vista Golfing Association.”
I was a little startled to learn that the younger Mr. Chalmers worked at a golfing establishment. Or perhaps he only played golf there. My awful brother, George, played golf. I think all bankers are required to learn the game. George looked positively ridiculous in his golfing knickerbockers. But that’s neither here nor there. “I need to speak with Mr. Chalmers, please.”
“One moment, please,” said the polite voice at the other end of the wire.
It wasn’t much more than a moment later when another, lighter, more playful voice said, “Simon here. Who’s calling?”
“Mr. Chalmers, my name is Miss Allcutt, and I fear there’s been an . . . accident at your parents’
house. Your father requested that I telephone you and ask you to come home as soon as you possibly can.”
“An accident?” He sounded alarmed. “Is the old man all right?”
The old man? Exactly how callous was this fellow, anyway? “Your father is well, sir. It’s your mother who has had . . . an accident.”
“My mother? My mother’s dead!”
I reeled at his words. Had he just confessed to murder? Over the telephone? To me? Before I had a chance to react, he spoke again.
“Who did you say you were?”
Good Lord. Complications upon complications.
Thinking fast, I said, “My name is Miss Allcutt. I’m here with representatives of the Los Angeles Police Department.”
“Good God! The police are involved?”
“Yes.”
“Tell the old man I’ll be there in five.”
And he hung up the receiver on his end before I could ask five what or get him to repeat his confession. Perhaps I’d misunderstood him. With a sigh, I replaced the receiver on my end and turned to find Ernie scowling at me.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he demanded. He still looked sick.
However, his looking sick was no excuse for his abominable behavior. “I was telephoning Mr. Chalmers’ son for Mr. Chalmers is what I was doing. What are you doing, standing there and glowering at me?”
Ernie’s scowl faded. “Don’t get mad, Mercy. I still feel like hell. That was nice of you to call the man’s son for him.”
“Thank you.” My voice was stiff and icy.
“It turns out I’m their chief suspect, you know.”
The ice melted at once, and I stared at him in horror mixed with more than a little disbelief. “You? Why on earth do they—?”
“I told you that you should have left him tied up,” said another voice. This one belonged to Phil Bigelow. “You unwrapped him, and now there’s nobody but you to swear that he was bound and gagged.”
