“Hello, when did you get here?” Then he started laughing again.
The bulk of a broad-shouldered man emerged from the luxuriant thorniness of a golden climber and Dan Pavey’s rumble announced aggressively, “Something is funny.”
“Yes,” Fox agreed.
“You saw me as you went by.”
“Yes. I wondered what you were watching from ambush. I went on and saw them. It struck me as funny. It also struck me as funny when I saw you were blushing. I never saw you blush before. So that’s why you volunteered that advice to Miss Grant last night; you were covering up. I didn’t get it at the time.”
Dan, scowling, uttered a sound that was half growl and half grunt. “What do you mean, covering up?” he demanded. “Covering what up?”
“Nothing.” Fox waved a hand. “I apologize. None of my business. How long have you been here?”
“I got here at 10:47,” said Dan stiffly. “Jordan wasn’t around his boat. Nobody was. I phoned Thorpe’s office and got your message to come here, and I came. They told me you were in with Thorpe. The first thing I see is Jordan sitting on a terrace. I didn’t know whether you knew he was here, so I—”
“You’re going to tell me it was him you were watching?”
“I am.”
“Don’t do it. I’d have to laugh again. The first time I ever saw you blush. I have to stick around here for a talk with Thorpe. You might as well go on home.”
“You mean now?”
“Yes. There are enough complications as it is. Go home and look at yourself in a mirror. If I need you I’ll let you know.”
Dan, with his jaw set square, with no protest or comment, without even any attempt to propose a superior alternative, tramped off down the trellis path. Fox, watching the broad back receding through the bower of roses, waited till it had disappeared at the far end before muttering to himself, “I shouldn’t have laughed, I handled that wrong.”
Leaving the trellis by a transverse path, he wandered across the lawn, back past the scale-infested dogwood in the direction of the east side terrace. Jordan was still there, with his chin gloomily on his chest, and Fox veered to the left. Continuing, he heard voices and, proceeding around a corner of the house, he came to a much larger and more elaborate terrace and saw two people standing at the edge of it, talking. He approached.
“Good morning, Mrs. Pemberton. Hello, Andy.”
They returned his greeting. Miranda looked slim, cool and informally impeccable in a white blouse and yellow slacks. Grant asked Fox, “Have you seen my niece around anywhere?”
Fox waved a hand. “Off in that direction being stalked by young Mr. Thorpe. Mrs. Pemberton, I may have to ask you to change that dinner invitation to a lunch. I’m waiting around for a talk with your father and it may be a long wait.”
“I’ll be glad to feed you,” she declared, “but it won’t cancel the dinner. I’m trying to persuade Mr. Grant to stay.”
“And I interrupted. I apologize. May I wander around a little and look at things?”
She said yes but didn’t offer to accompany him, so he strolled off. Around on the third side of the home he chatted a little with a man who was removing the unsightly tops of oriental poppies and learned, among other things, that they did not use miscible oil as a dormant spray on dogwoods. Stopping to inspect various objects on the way, such as a mole trap of a construction he had not seen and a new kind of border sprinkler, he came to a drive which headed in the direction of a group of outbuildings and followed it. In front of a stone garage which would have held at least six cars, with living quarters above, a man was jacking up a wheel of a limousine. Fox passed the time of day and wandered on. On the other side of an extensive plot of grass was a large greenhouse and he gave that thirty minutes or more. He always found a greenhouse fascinating, but of course there were very few things that he did not find fascinating. There seemed to be no one around, but as he emerged at the far end he heard a voice and, circling a bed of asparagus, he saw whose it was. A little girl sat on the steps of the porch of a little stone cottage, talking to Mrs. Simmons. He saw her affected gestures with her hands and heard her affected mincing tones:
“You know, Mrs. Simmons, it’s really frightful! Would you believe it, they go to the movies every day! Oh, Mrs. Simmons, I don’t know what to do! My children say to me and my husband, they say if they can go to the movies every day, why can’t they go too and my nerves just get all out of my control—Ooh! Who are you?”
“Excuse me,” said Fox, smiling down at her. “I apologize.” He bowed politely to empty space at the left. “How do you do, Mrs. Simmons? I guess I frightened you too. I apologize.” He turned to the other lady. “I’m just a man who came to see Mr. Thorpe and he told me I could walk around. My name is Fox. Do you live here?”
“Yes. You scared me.”
“I’m sorry. I said excuse me. I suppose you know who Mr. Thorpe is?”
“Of course I do.” She was scornful. “He owns my daddy. Anyway my mommie says he does. I heard her. Does he own you too?”
“No, he doesn’t own me, he just rents me.”
She shrieked in derision. “Aw, go on! You can’t rent a man!”
“Well you can’t own one either, or at least you shouldn’t. Is your daddy the gardener?”
“No, he isn’t. He’s the head gardener. My name is Helen Gustava Flanders.”
“Thank you very much. I’ll call you Helen. You can call me Mr. Fox. Those are very beautiful gloves you have on, but they look as if they’re too big for you.”
She looked complacently at the yellow cotton gloves baggy on her little hands, with the fingers flopping. “They’re streemly nice,” she declared.
“Sure,” Fox admitted, “they’re nice enough, but they’re a little too big. Besides, they’re not mates. They’re both for the left hand. See how that thumb’s in the wrong place? Would you mind telling me where you got them?”
“Why, of course, Mr. Fox.” She giggled. “I went shopping in the stores and I bought them. I paid sixty dollars.”
“No, Helen, I mean really. No faking.”
“Oh.” Her eyes looked at his. “If you mean no faking, Miss Knudsen gave them to me.”
“When did she give them to you?”
“Oh, about a year ago.”
He abandoned that detail. “Do you mean Miss Knudsen the cook?”
“She’s not a cook.” She was scornfully derisive again. “She’s Mrs. Pemberton’s maid. Mrs. Pemberton is Miss Miranda. She swims naked. I saw her.”
“Did Miss Knudsen give you the gloves yesterday? Or Monday?”
“Yes,” said Helen firmly.
“Well,” said Fox, “I think she was nice to give them to you, but I tell you what. Those are both for the left hand. You give them to me and I’ll bring you another pair that will—”
“No,” said Helen firmly.
“I’ll bring you two pairs, one yellow and one red—”
“No.”
It took time, tact, patience and guile; so much time, in fact, that Fox’s wristwatch told him it was 12:35 when, having circled back around the greenhouse, he stepped behind a shrub for a strictly private inspection of his loot and satisfied himself on these details; the gloves were yellow cotton of good quality, soiled now but little worn, were exactly alike, both for the left hand, and bore the Hartlespoon label. He put them in his pocket, left the shelter of the shrub and cut across towards the garage, thinking to follow the drive back to the house as he had come. The limousine was still there in front of the garage, but not the man. He went back up the drive frowning, paying no attention to objects that had been worthy of keen interest an hour before. Suddenly he stopped dead still, jerked his chin up and stood motionless. From somewhere ahead of him a car had backfired. Or someone had shot a gun.
A car had backfired.
No, it sounded more like a shot.
He moved again, walked faster and went into a jog, leaving the drive to make a bee-line for the house,
still at a distance beyond intervening trees. He heard excited voices, shouts, and broke into a run. To his right, he saw a man running, headed also for the house, one of the guards loping like a camel with a revolver in his hand. The guard was aiming for the front entrance, but Fox, judging by the direction of the voices, swerved to the left, crossed an expanse of open lawn, crashed through some shrubbery, saw French windows standing open and kept going right on through them.
He was in the library. So were a dozen other people, including Ridley Thorpe, who was sprawled on his face on the floor, and also including Colonel Brissenden, on his knee besides Thorpe, barking as Fox entered, “He’s dead!”
Helen Gustava Flanders’ gloves had been the sixth surprise of the day. This was the seventh.
Chapter 14
Two seconds of the silence of stupefaction followed the colonel’s announcement. Then there were sounds, the little noises that men and women make when sudden shock has stretched their nerves too tight, primitive throat noises older by geological epochs than the articulation of words. Under cover of that, Tecumseh Fox’s gliding movement as he made the door to the hall went unnoticed. Two women in maid’s uniforms were in the hall clutching each other; he ignored them and proceeded swiftly to the music room. He had his hand on the lid of the grand piano when he heard steps from the other direction and Nancy Grant entered, panting. She saw him and demanded, “What is it? Where’s Uncle Andy? He was yelling my name….” Fox pointed and said, “On through there,” and as her back passed from view he lifted the lid of the piano with one hand and took the gloves from his pocket with the other, thrust the gloves in beside the last bass string and let the lid down. Then he returned to the library and with a glance took it in.
Jeffrey Thorpe was standing with his toes almost touching the body on the floor, looking down at it, his face white and his mouth working. His sister was at his side, a little behind him, grasping his sleeve and looking not at the body but at him. Andrew Grant had his hands on his niece’s shoulders and was pushing her into a chair. Luke Wheer had his back flattened against a wall of books, his head bent and his eyes closed like a preacher leading a congregation in prayer. Bellows, the butler, had his hands clasped over his bosom, surely in unconscious imitation of a gesture seen in the movies. Henry Jordan sat on the edge of a chair, staring at what he could see of the form on the floor, rubbing his chin as though to get the lather in for a shave. Vaughn Kester’s rear, his back erect and rigid, was pressed against an edge of the desk; Fox couldn’t see his face. The two men whose talk Fox had interrupted in the music room, and three others whom he had not seen before, were grouped the other side of the stock ticker, which was still clicking away. A state trooper, bending over, was straightening up with something blue fluttering from his fingers. Brissenden barked at him:
“Put that down! Don’t touch anything!”
“It got kicked,” the trooper protested. “That man kicked it as he went across—”
“Put it on the desk! Don’t touch anything! Get everybody out of—”
“That’s mine!” It was a cry from Nancy. Brissenden whirled to her:
“What is?”
“That blue thing! That’s my scarf! How—” She started up from the chair, but her uncle’s hand on her shoulder kept her there.
“Well, don’t touch it! Nothing in this room is to be touched! Hardy, take them all—what are you doing?”
A man from the group behind the stock ticker had slid around to the desk and was extending an arm across it. Without arresting his movement he said in a thick determined voice, “I’m using this telephone.”
“No! Get away from there!”
The man said, “I’m phoning my office,” took the phone from the cradle and started to dial. Brissenden, beside him in two bounds, snatched the phone from him with one hand and with the other shoved him back so violently that he staggered and nearly fell.
“Break your neck,” said the colonel quietly. It was too serious for barking. “Kester, will you turn off that ticker? Thank you.” He surveyed the throng. “Thorpe’s dead. He was murdered. He was shot in the back and the gun that shot him is there on the floor. Everybody here heard the shot and one of you fired it. I know some of you are important people; one of you is so important that it’s more important for him to phone his office than for me to do my duty. You, come over here.”
The uniformed guard, with his revolver still in his hand, had finally found the spot and was standing by the windows. He tramped across.
“What are you, a Corliss man?”
“No, sir, the Bascom Agency.”
“Have you got any sense?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Use it. Hardy, take them all into the next room, the one with the piano. There’s to be no talking, no telephoning, and no leaving the room. If anyone gets tough, you will too. If anyone tries to leave, I instruct you to shoot their ankles off if you have to. This man will help you. If anyone goes to a bathroom, he will go along and no one will wash their hands. They will be examined to find out who has shot a gun. I’ll stay here and use this phone myself.”
Tecumseh Fox stated a fact, not aggressively, “You’re violating five or six statutes, Colonel.”
“Am I? Did you write them?”
“No, but I like them. You ought to be able to handle this job without declaring martial law. It gets me a little sore, that’s all. If I happen to feel like talking or washing my hands and I get shot in the ankle, you’re going to have some trouble with your own neck.”
“Are you refusing—”
“I’m not refusing anything, yet. I’m just saying I like the law. I’ll string along, within reason. You certainly have a right to clear this room, but it’s hot as the devil in the music room.” Fox encompassed the faces with a glance. “I suggest, ladies and gentlemen, that we go to the side terrace.”
A general movement started. Brissenden snapped:
“You! Butler! What’s your name?”
“B-b-bellows, sir.”
“Can you disconnect the phones so that this is the only one working?”
“Why, yes, sir.”
“Do so. Immediately.”
Bellows looked at Jeffrey and Miranda. Jeffrey took no notice; Miranda looked at Fox.
Fox shrugged. “Suit yourself, Mrs. Pemberton. The police have no legal control of any part of this house except this room in which a murder was committed. You may—”
“Damn you, Fox—”
“Take it easy, Colonel. I merely stated a fact. I was adding that Mrs. Pemberton may cooperate with you if she wants to.”
Miranda said, “Do as Colonel Brissenden asks, Bellows.”
“Yes, madame.”
The general movement was resumed and the colonel was left alone in the room with his job. Hardy and the Bascom man went along, looking grim but not too assured, for the migration, without halting in the music room, continued to the side terrace and that left them in embarrassing uncertainty regarding the proper procedure as to ankles in case of mutiny.
No mutiny arose. There was murmured and muttered talk, first among the business associates, but no washing of hands. The angular hollow-cheeked man went over to Fox and asked who he was, and Fox told him. The questioner gave his name in return, Harlan McElroy, and didn’t need to add that he was a director of the Thorpe Control Corporation as well as thirty others. Jeffrey sat scowling, lighting cigarettes and forgetting to smoke them; once his eye caught Nancy glancing at him and he started to get up, but dropped back again. Miranda and Vaughn Kester spoke together in undertones for a while, then Miranda disappeared into the house and soon after she returned maids came with luncheon trays. Fox ate his and the others did, more or less; but Luke Wheer and Henry Jordan ate nothing.
Meanwhile the law had been arriving. From the side terrace a curve of the main driveway was in plain view. Two of the cars were the familiar brown of the state police and Fox recognized most of the others. One was the old Curtis of the county medical examiner
; in another District Attorney Derwin sat beside the driver. They were entering the house, apparently, from the other side; sounds of activity came from within. Soon after the luncheon trays had been served, three men, one a state trooper and the others in plain clothes, emerged on to the terrace, said nothing whatever, scattered and sat. Miranda, after pecking at her tray a while and having obvious difficulty swallowing, left it and made a tour of her guests, speaking to them. When she got to where Grant sat beside his niece, she put her hand on Nancy’s and Nancy drew hers away.
“Sorry,” said Miranda.
Nancy colored. “Oh! I didn’t mean—it’s just that I—please—I’m sorry—”
“So am I,” said Miranda and passed on. She stopped in front of Tecumseh Fox:
“We can’t count this in place of that dinner, Mr. Fox.” A shiver went over her. “This is horrible.”
He nodded. “Pretty bad.”
“Have you enough to eat? There’s plenty of the chicken salad.”
“I have enough, thanks.”
She frowned down at him and made her tone still lower. “Tell me. Should Jeffrey and I be in there with them? Should we let them do whatever they want, however they want? Like going through things, for instance?”
“That depends.” Fox passed his napkin across his lips. “Legally you can do a lot of restricting and obstructing. You can’t keep them from going over the library, but if there is anything anywhere else in the house that you don’t want them to find, whether it would help them in their job or not, you can certainly make it difficult for them. It’s your house.”
She bit her lip. “The way you put it, it sounds—offensive. I don’t want to obstruct them—in their job. I don’t regard this as my house and I’m sure Jeffrey doesn’t regard it as his—but to be put out here on the terrace with a lot of men in there—”
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