Afternoon Tea Mysteries, Volume One: A Collection of Cozy Mysteries (Three thrilling novels in one volume!)

by Anne Austin

  “Where shall we begin?” Polly Beale demanded brusquely. “Remember this table had finished playing when Karen began to deal what you call the ‘death hand,’” she reminded him scornfully. “And Flora wasn’t here at all—she had been dummy for our last hand—”

  “And had gone out to telephone,” Dundee interrupted. “Mrs. Miles, will you please leave the room, and return exactly when you did return—or as nearly so as you can remember?”

  Dundee was sure that Mrs. Miles’ sallow face took on a greyish tinge as she staggered to her feet and wound an uncertain way toward the hall. Tracey Miles sprang to his wife’s assistance, but Sergeant Turner took it upon himself to lay a detaining hand on the too-anxious husband’s arm. With no more than the lifting of an eyebrow, Dundee made Captain Strawn understand that Flora Miles’ movements were to be kept under strict observation, and the chief of the Homicide Squad as unobtrusively conveyed the order to a plainclothesman loitering interestedly in the wide doorway.

  “Now,” he was answering Polly Beale’s question, “I should like the remaining three of you to behave exactly as you did when your last hand was finished. Did you keep individual score, as is customary in contract?—or were you playing auction?”

  “Contract,” Polly Beale answered curtly. “And when we’re playing among ourselves like this, one at each table is usually elected to keep score. Janet was score-keeper for us this afternoon, but we all waited, after our last hand was played, for Janet to give us the result for our tally cards.”

  Dundee drew near the table, picked up the three tally cards—ornamental little affairs, and rather expensive—glanced over the points recorded, then asked abruptly:

  “Where is Mrs. Miles’ tally? I don’t see it here.”

  There was no answer to be had, so he let the matter drop, temporarily, though his shorthand notebook received another deeply underlined series of pothooks.

  “Go on, please, at both tables,” Dundee commanded. “Your table—” he nodded toward Penny, who was already over her flare of temper, “will please select the cards each held at the conclusion of Mrs. Marshall’s deal.”

  “Oooh, I’d never remember all my cards in the world,” Carolyn Drake wailed. “I know I had five Clubs—Ace, King, Queen—”

  “You had the Jack, not the Queen, for I held it myself,” Penny contradicted her crisply.

  “Until this matter of who held which cards after Mrs. Marshall’s deal is settled, I shall have to ask you all to remain as you are now,” Dundee said to the players seated at the other table.

  At last it was threshed out, largely between Penny Crain and Karen Marshall, the latter proving to have a better memory than Dundee had expected. At last even Carolyn Drake’s querulous fussiness was satisfied, or trampled down.

  Both Judge Marshall and John Drake started forward to inspect the cards, which none of the players was trying to conceal, but Dundee waved them back.

  “Please—I want you men—all of you, to take your places outside, and return to this room in the order of your arrival this afternoon. Try to imagine that it is now—if I can trust Mr. Miles’ apparently excellent memory—exactly 5.25—”

  “Pretty hard to do, considering it’s now a quarter past seven and there’s still no dinner in sight,” Tracey Miles grumbled, then brightened: “I can come right back in then—at 5.27, can’t I?”

  That point settled, and the men sent away, to be watched by several pairs of apparently indolent police eyes, Dundee turned to the bridge table, Nita’s leaving of which had provided her murderer with his opportunity.

  “The cards are ‘dealt’,” Penny reminded him.

  “Now I want you other three to scatter exactly as you did before,” Dundee commanded, hurry and excitement in his voice.

  Lois Dunlap rose, laid down her tally card, and strolled over to the remaining table. After a moment’s hesitation, Polly Beale strode mannishly out of the room, straight into the hall. Dundee, watching as the bridge players earlier that afternoon certainly had not, was amazed to see Clive Hammond beckoning to her from the open door of the solarium.

  So Clive Hammond had arrived ahead of Tracey Miles! Had somehow entered the solarium unnoticed, and had managed to beckon his fiancйe to join him there! Prearranged? … And why had Clive Hammond failed to enter and greet his hostess first? Moreover, how had he entered the solarium?

  But things were happening in the living room. Janet Raymond, flushing so that her sunburned face outdid her red hair for vividness, was slowly leaving the room also. Through a window opening upon the wide front porch Dundee saw the girl take her position against a pillar, then—a thing she had not done before very probably—press her handkerchief to her trembling lips.

  But the bidding was going on, Karen Marshall piping in her childish treble: “Three spades!”

  Dundee took his place behind her chair, then silently beckoned to Penny to shift from her own chair opposite Carolyn Drake to the chair Nita Selim had left to go to her death. She nodded understandingly.

  “Double!” quavered Carolyn Drake, next on the left to the dealer, and managed to raise her eyebrows meaningly to Penny, her partner, who had not yet changed places.

  Penny, throwing herself into the spirit of the thing, scowled warningly. No exchanging of illicit signals for Penny Crain! But the instant she slipped into Nita Selim’s chair her whole face and body took on a different manner, underwent almost a physical change. She was Nita Selim now! She tucked her head, considered her cards, laughed a little breathless note, then cried triumphantly:

  “And I say—five spades! What do you think of that, partner?”

  Then the girl who was giving an amazing imitation of Nita Selim changed as suddenly into her own character as she changed chairs.

  “Nita, I don’t think it’s quite Hoyle to be so jubilant about the strength of your hand,” she commented tartly. “I pass.”

  Karen Marshall pretended to study her hand for a frowning instant, then, under Penny’s spell, announced with a pretty air of bravado:

  “Six spades! … Your raise to five makes a little slam obligatory, doesn’t it, Nita?”

  Carolyn Drake flushed and looked uneasily toward Penny, a bit of by-play which Dundee could see had not figured in the original game. But she bridled and shifted her plump body in her chair, as she must have done before.

  “I double a little slam!” she declared. Then, still acting the role she had played in earnest that afternoon, she explained importantly: “I always double a little slam on principle!”

  Penny, in the role of Nita, redoubled with an exultant laugh, then, as herself, said, “Pass!” with a murderous glance at Mrs. Drake.

  “Let’s see your hand, partner,” Karen quavered, addressing a woman who had been dead nearly two hours; then she shuddered: “Oh, this is too horrible!” as Penny Crain again slipped into Nita Selim’s chair and prepared to lay down the dummy hand.

  And it was horrible—even if vitally necessary—for these three to have to go through the farce of playing a bridge hand while one of the original players was lying on a marble slab at the morgue, her cold flesh insensible to the coroner’s expert knife.

  But Dundee said nothing, for Tracey Miles was already hovering in the doorway, ready for his cue to enter.

  Penny, or rather “Nita,” was saying:

  “How’s this, Karen darling?” as she laid down the Ace and deuce of Spades, Karen’s trumps.

  “I hope you remember you are vulnerable, as well as we,” Carolyn remarked in a sorry imitation of her original cocksureness, as she opened the play by leading the Ace of Clubs.

  “And how’s this, partner? … A singleton in Clubs!” Nita’s imitator demanded triumphantly, as she continued to lay down her dummy hand, slapping the lone nine of Clubs down beside trumps; “and this little collection of Hearts!” as she displayed and arranged the King, Jack, eight and four of Hearts; “and this!” as a length of Diamonds—Ace, Jack, ten, eight, seven and six slithered down the glossy line
n cover of the bridge table toward Karen Marshall. “Now if you don’t make your little slam, infant, don’t dare say I shouldn’t have jumped you to five! … I figured you for a blank or a singleton in Diamonds, and at least the Ace of Hearts, or you—cautious as you are—wouldn’t have made an original three Spade bid without the Ace…. Hop to it, darling!”

  “This is where I enter,” Tracey Miles whispered to Dundee, and, at a nod from the young detective, the pudgy little blond man strode jauntily into the living room, proud of himself in the role of actor.

  “Hello, everybody! How’s tricks?” he called genially, but there was a quiver of horror in his voice under its blitheness.

  Penny was quite pale when she sprang from her chair, but her voice seemed to be Nita’s very own, as she sang out:

  “It can’t be 5.30 already! … Thank heaven I’m dummy, and can run away and make myself pretty-pretty for you and all the other great big men, Tracey darling!”

  Dundee’s keen memory registered the slight difference in the wording of the greeting as reported by this pseudo-Nita and the man she was running to meet. But Penny, as Nita, was already straightening Tracey Miles’ necktie with possessive, coquettish fingers, was coaxing, with head tucked alluringly:

  “Tracey, my ownest lamb, won’t you shake up the cocktails for Nita? The makings are all on the sideboard, or I don’t know my precious old Lydia—even if her poor jaw does ache most horribly.”

  Then Penny, as Nita, was on her way, pausing in the doorway to blow a kiss from her fingertips to the fatuously grinning but now quite pale Tracey Miles. She was out of sight for only an instant, then reappeared and very quietly retraced her steps to the bridge table.

  Unobtrusively, Dundee drew his watch from his pocket, palmed it as he noted the exact minute, then commanded curtly: “On with the game!”

  As Tracey Miles passed the first bridge table Lois Dunlap linked her arm in his, saying in a voice she tried to make gay and natural:

  “I’m trailing along, Tracey. Simply dying for a nip of Scotch! Nita’s is the real stuff—which is more than my fussy old Pete can get half the time!—and you know I loathe cocktails.”

  The two passed on into the dining room, the players scarcely raising their eyes from their cards, which they held as if the game were real.

  Dundee, his watch still in his hand, advanced to the bridge table. Strolling from player to player he made mental photographs of each hand, then took his stand behind Penny’s chair to observe the horribly farcical playing of it. Poor little Penny! he reflected. She hadn’t had a chance against that dumb-bell across the table from her. Fancy anyone’s doubling a little slam bid on a hand like Carolyn Drake’s—or even calling an informatory double in the first place! Why hadn’t she bid four Clubs after Karen’s original three Spade bid, if she simply wanted to give her partner information? … Not that she really had a bid—

  Karen’s hand trembled as she drew the lone nine of Clubs from the dummy, to place beside Carolyn’s Ace, but Penny’s fingers were quite steady as she followed with the deuce of Clubs, to which Karen added, with a trace of characteristic uncertainty, the eight.

  “There’s our book!” Carolyn Drake exulted obediently, but she cast an apologetic glance toward Penny. “If we take one more trick we set them.”

  “Fat chance!” Penny obligingly responded, and Dundee, relieved, knew that the farcical game would now be played almost exactly, and with the same comments, as it had been played while Nita Selim was being murdered. Thanks to Penny Crain!

  With a shamefaced glance upward at Dundee, Carolyn Drake then led the deuce of Diamonds, committing the gross tactical error of leading from the Queen. Karen added the Jack from the dummy, and Penny shruggingly contributed her King, to find the trick, as she had suspected in the original game, trumped by the five of Spades, since Karen had no Diamonds.

  “So that settles us, Carolyn!” Penny commented acidly.

  Her partner rose to the role she was playing. “Well, as I said, I always double a little slam on principle. Besides, how could I know they would have a chance for cross-ruffing in both Clubs and Diamonds? I thought you would at least hold the Ace of Diamonds and that Karen would certainly have one, as I only had four—”

  Penny shrugged. “Oh, well! Let’s play bridge!” for Karen was staring at her cards helplessly. “Sorry, Karen! I realize a post mortem is usually held after the playing of a hand—not before.”

  “I—I guess I’d better get my trumps out,” Karen—now almost a genuine actress, too—breathed tremulously. “I do wish Nita were playing this hand. I know I’ll muff it somehow—”

  “Good kid!” Dundee commented silently, and allowed himself the liberty of patting Karen on her slim shoulder.

  The girl threw an upward glance of gratitude through misty eyes, then led the six of Spades, Mrs. Drake contributing the four, dummy taking the trick with the Ace, and Penny relinquishing the three.

  “Let’s see—that makes five of ’em in, since I trumped one trick,” Karen said, as she reached across the table to lead from dummy.

  As if the words were a cue—which they probably were—Judge Marshall entered the room at that moment, making a great effort to be as jaunty, debonair, and “young for his age” as he must have thought he looked when he made his entrance when the real game was being played.

  At his step Karen lifted her head and greeted her elderly husband with a curious mixture of childlike joy and womanly tenderness:

  “Hullo, darling! … I’m trying to make a little slam I may have been foolish to bid, but Nita jumped me from three to five Spades—”

  “Let’s have a look, sweetheart,” the retired judge suggested pompously, and Dundee gave way to make room for him behind Karen’s chair.

  But before Judge Marshall looked at his wife’s cards he bent and kissed her on her flushed cheek, and Karen raised a trembling hand to tweak his grey mustache. Dundee, with uplifted eyebrow, queried Penny, who nodded shortly, conveying the information that this was the way the scene had really been played when there was no question of acting.

  “I’m getting out my trumps, darling,” Karen confided sweetly, as she reached for the deuce of Spades—the only remaining trump in the dummy.

  “What’s your hurry, child?” her husband asked indulgently. “Lead this!” and he pointed toward the six of Diamonds.

  “I wish you’d got a puncture, Hugo, so you couldn’t have butted in before this hand was played,” Carolyn Drake spluttered. “Remember this is a little slam bid, doubled and redoubled—”

  “I should think you would like to forget that, Carolyn!” Penny commented bitingly. “But I agree with Carolyn, Hugo, that Karen is quite capable of making her little slam without your assistance.”

  “Please don’t mind,” Karen begged. “Hugo just wanted to help me, because I’m such a dub at bridge—”

  “The finest little player in town!” Judge Marshall encouraged her gallantly, but with a jaunty wink at the belligerent Penny.

  Smiling adoringly at him again, Karen took his suggestion and led the six of Diamonds from the dummy; Penny covered it with the nine; Karen ruffed with the seven of Spades from her own hand, and Mrs. Drake lugubriously contributed the four of Diamonds.

  “I can get my trumps out now, can’t I, Hugo?” Karen asked deprecatingly, and at her husband’s smiling permission, she led the King of Spades, Carolyn had to give up the Jack, which she must have foolishly thought would take a trick; the dummy contributed the deuce, and Penny followed with her own last trump—the eight.

  Karen counted on her fingers, her eyes on the remaining trumps in her hand, then smiled triumphantly up at her husband.

  “Why not simply tell us, Karen, that the rest of the trumps are in your own hand?” Penny suggested caustically.

  “I—I didn’t mean to do anything wrong,” Karen pleaded, as she led now with the ten of Hearts, which drew in Carolyn’s Queen to cover—Carolyn murmuring religiously: “Always cover an honor with an hono
r—or should I have played second hand low, Penny?”—topped by the King in the dummy, the trick being completed by Penny’s three of Hearts.

  At that point John C. Drake marched into the room, strode straight to Dundee, and spoke with cold anger:

  “Enough of this nonsense! I, for one, refuse to act like a puppet for your amusement! If you are so vitally interested in contract bridge, I should advise you to take lessons from an expert, not from three terrified women who are rather poor players at best. I also advise you to get about the business you are supposed to be here for—the finding of a murderer!”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Before Drake had reached his side, his purpose plain upon his stern, rather ascetic features, Dundee had taken a hasty glance at the watch cupped in his palm and noted the exact minute and second of the interruption. Time out!

  “One moment, Mr. Drake,” he said calmly. “I quite agree with you—from your viewpoint. What mine is, you can’t be expected to know. But believe me when I say that I consider it of vital importance to the investigation of the murder of Mrs. Selim that this particular bridge hand, with all its attending remarks, the usual bickering, and its interruptions of arriving guests for cocktails, be played out, exactly as it was this afternoon. I thought I had made myself clear before. If you don’t wish me to believe that you have something to conceal by refusing to take part in a rather grisly game—”

  “Certainly I have nothing to conceal!” John C. Drake snorted angrily.

  “Then please bow as gracefully as possible to necessity,” Dundee urged without rancor. “And may I ask, before we go on, if you made your entrance at this time, and the facts of your arrival?”

  Drake considered a moment, gnawing a thin upper lip. Beads of sweat stood on his high, narrow forehead.

  “I walked over from the Country Club, after eighteen holes of golf with your superior, the district attorney,” Drake answered, with nasty emphasis. “I left the clubhouse at 5.10, calculating that it would take me about twenty minutes for the walk of—of about a mile.”