by Anne Austin
Dundee made a mental note to find out exactly how far from this lonely house in Primrose Meadows the Country Club actually was, but his next question was along another line:
“You walked, Mr. Drake?—after eighteen holes of golf on a warm day?”
Drake flushed. “My wife had the car. I had driven out with Mr. Sanderson, but he was called away by a long distance message. I lingered at the club for a while, chatting and—er—having a cool drink or two, then I set out afoot.”
“No one offered you a lift?” Dundee inquired suavely.
“No. I presume my fellow-members thought I had my car with me, and I asked no one for a lift, for I rather fancied the idea of a walk across the meadows.”
“I see,” said Dundee thoughtfully. “Now as to your arrival here—”
“I walked in. The door had been left on the latch, as it usually is, when a party is on,” Drake explained coldly. “And I was just entering the room when I heard my wife make the remark about covering an honor with an honor, and then her question of Penny as to whether she should have played second hand low.”
“So you entered this time at the correct moment,” said Dundee. “Now, Mr. Drake, I am going to ask you to re-enter the room and do exactly as you did upon your arrival at approximately 5.33. I am sure you would not willingly hamper me—or my superior—in this investigation.”
Drake wheeled, ungraciously, and returned to the doorway, while Dundee again consulted his watch, mentally subtracting the minutes which had been wasted upon this interruption, from the time he had marked upon his memory as the moment at which Drake had interfered. But an undercurrent of skepticism nagged at his mind. Why had Drake chosen to walk? And why had it taken him from 5.10 to approximately 5.33 to walk a mile or less? The average walker, and especially one accustomed to playing golf, could easily have covered a mile in fifteen minutes, instead of the twenty-three minutes Drake had admitted to…. If it was a mile! … Was it possible that the banker loved wildflowers?
With head up aggressively, Drake was undoubtedly making an effort to throw himself into the role—or perhaps into a role chosen on the spot!
“Where’s everybody?” he called from the doorway. “Am I early?”
“Don’t interrupt, please, dear,” Carolyn Drake answered, her voice trembling now, where before it must have been sharp and querulous.
Silently Drake took his place behind his wife’s chair, laying a hand affectionately upon her shoulder. Dundee, watching closely, saw Penny’s eyes widen with something like shocked surprise. So Drake was trying to deceive him, counting on the oneness of this group, his closest friends!
Karen, obviously flustered, too, reached to the dummy for the Ace of Diamonds, to which Penny played the three, Karen herself discarding the ten of Clubs, and Mrs. Drake the five of Diamonds.
“You asked no questions, Mr. Drake?” Dundee interpolated.
The banker flushed again. “I—yes, I believe I did. Carolyn—Mrs. Drake—explained that Karen was playing for a little slam in Spades, and that she had doubled—‘on principle’,” he added acidly—a voice which Mrs. Drake must be very well accustomed to, Dundee surmised.
“And when I told you that Nita had redoubled and it looked as if she was going to make it,” Carolyn Drake whimpered and shifted her short, stout body in the little bridge chair, “you said—why not tell the truth?—you said it was just like me and I might as well take to tatting at bridge parties.”
“That was said jokingly, my dear,” Drake retorted, with a coldness that tried to be affectionate warmth.
“Play bridge!” Dundee commanded, sure that the approximate length of the previous dispute had now been taken up, whatever retort Carolyn Drake had made. Then he checked himself, again looking at his watch: “And just what did you answer to your husband’s little joke, Mrs. Drake?”
“I—I—” The woman looked helplessly around the table, her slate-colored eyes reddened with tears, then she plunged recklessly, after a fearful glance at Dundee’s implacable face. “I said that if it was Nita he was talking to, he wouldn’t speak in that tone; that she could make all the foolish mistakes of over-bidding or revoking or doubling that she wanted to, and he wouldn’t say a word except to praise her—”
“Then I may as well confess,” Drake said acidly, “that I answered substantially as follows: ‘Nita is an intelligent bridge player as well as a charming woman, my dear! …’ Now make the most of that little family tiff, sir—and be damned to you!”
“Did that end the scene, Mrs. Drake?” Dundee asked gently.
“I—I said something about all the men thinking Nita was perfect,” Mrs. Drake confessed, “and I cried a little, but we went on with the hand. And Johnny—Mr. Drake went away, walking up and down the room, waiting for Nita to come back, I suppose!”
“Then go on with the game,” Dundee ordered.
Silently now, as silently as the real game must have been played, because of the embarrassing scene between husband and wife, the sinister game was carried to its conclusion. Karen led the Jack of Hearts from the dummy, Penny played her seven, Karen contributed her own deuce, and Mrs. Drake followed suit with the five.
Again Karen led from the dummy, with the four of Hearts, followed by Penny’s nine, taking it with her own Ace, Mrs. Drake throwing off the five of Clubs. Karen then led the six of Hearts, Carolyn Drake discarded the six of Clubs, dummy took the trick with the eight of Hearts, and Penny sloughed the three of Clubs.
With a faint imitation of the triumph with which she had played the hand the first time, Karen threw down her remaining three trumps.
“I’ve made it—a little slam!” she tried to sound very triumphant. “Doubled and redoubled! … How much did I—did Nita and I make, Penny?”
“Plenty!” But before putting pencil to score pad, Penny cupped her chin in her hands and stared at Carolyn Drake. “I’d like to know, Carolyn, if it isn’t one of your most cherished secrets, what possessed you to double in the first place?”
Carolyn Drake flushed scarlet as she protested feebly: “I thought of course I could take two Club tricks with my Ace and King…. That’s why I doubled the little slam, of course. And my first double simply meant that I had one good suit…. I thought if you could bid at all that my two doubletons—”
“Oh, what’s the use?” Penny groaned. “But may I remind you that it is not bridge to lead from a Queen? … You led the deuce of Diamonds, when of course the play, since you had seen the Ace in the dummy, was to lead your Queen, forcing the Ace and leaving my King guarded to take a trick later.”
“But Karen didn’t have any Diamonds at all,” Carolyn defended herself.
“A secret you weren’t in on when you led from your Queen,” Penny reminded her. “Oh, well! We’ll pay up and shut up!” and she made a pretense of totting up the score, while Karen, who had risen, stood over her like a bird poised for flight.
At that instant Dexter Sprague began to advance into the room, Janet Raymond at his side, her face flaming.
“Behave exactly as you did before!” Dundee commanded in a harsh whisper. No time for coddling these people now!
Dexter Sprague’s face took on a yellower tinge, but he obeyed.
“Greetings!” he called in the jaunty, over-cordial tones of a man who knows himself not too welcome. “Where’s Nita—and everybody? Isn’t that the cocktail shaker I hear?”
Having received no answer from anyone present, Sprague strolled through the living room and on into the dining room, Janet following. Judge Marshall had nodded stiffly, and John C. Drake had muttered the semblance of a greeting…. Were they all overdoing it a bit—this reacting of their hostility to the sole remaining outsider of their compact little group? … Dundee stroked his chin thoughtfully.
But Penny was saying in her abrupt, husky voice: “Above the line, 1250; below the line 720, making a total of 1970 on this hand, Karen.”
“Won’t Nita be glad?” Karen gasped, then began to run totteringly, calling: �
��Nita! Nita!” But in the hall she collapsed, shuddering, crying in a child’s whimper: “No, no! I—can’t—go in there—again!”
It was Dundee who reached her first—Dundee and not her outraged and excited old husband.
“Mrs. Marshall—listen, please,” he begged in a low voice, as he lifted her so that her head rested against his arm. “You have been splendid—wonderful! Please believe that I am truly sorry to distress you so, and that very soon, I hope, you may go home and rest.”
“I—can’t bear any—more,” Karen whimpered.
Ignoring Judge Marshall’s blustering, Dundee continued softly: “You don’t want the wrong person to be accused of this terrible crime, do you, Mrs. Marshall? … Of course not! And you do want to help us all you can to discover who really killed Mrs. Selim?”
“I—I suppose so,” Karen conceded, on a sob.
“Then I’ll help you. I’ll go to the bedroom with you,” Dundee promised her with a sigh of relief. To the others he spoke sharply:
“Go back to the exact positions in living room and dining room and solarium, that you occupied when Mrs. Marshall ran from the room.”
“I think you’re overdoing it, Bonnie,” Captain Strawn protested. “But—sure I’ll see that they mind you.”
With Karen Marshall clinging to his arm, Dundee walked down the hall, beyond the staircase to an open door on his left—a door guarded by a lounging plainclothesman. Seated at the dressing-table of the guests’ lavatory was Flora Miles, her sallow dark face so ravaged that she looked ten years older than when he had first seen her an hour before.
“So you were in here when you heard Mrs. Marshall scream, Mrs. Miles?” Dundee paused to ask.
“Yes—yes!” she gasped, rising. “And that horrible man has made me stay in here—. Of course, the door was closed—before. I telephoned home to ask about my children, and then I came in here to—to do my face over—”
“You didn’t hear your husband arrive?”
“No,—I didn’t hear him arrive,” Flora Miles faltered, her handkerchief dabbing at her trembling, over-rouged lips.
“I—see,” Dundee said slowly.
He stepped into the little room, leaving Karen to stand weakly against the door frame. Without a word to Mrs. Miles he looked closely at the top of the dressing-table and into the small wastebasket that stood beside it.
“You—you can see that I cold-creamed my face before I put on fresh powder and—and rouged,” Flora Miles pointed out, with an obvious effort at offended dignity. “After I came back, while you were making those poor girls play the hand over again, I went through the same motions—because you told all of us to behave exactly as we had done before—”
“I—see,” Dundee agreed.
Pretty clever, in spite of being almost frightened to death, Dundee said to himself. But he had been just a shade cleverer than she, for he had been in this room ahead of her, and there had been no balls of greasy face tissue in the wastebasket then!
He was passing out of the room, offering his arm to Karen, when one of his underlined notes thrust itself upon his memory:
“May I see your bridge tally, please, Mrs. Miles?”
“My—bridge tally!” she echoed blankly. “Why—it must be on the table where I was playing—”
“It is not,” Dundee assured her quietly. “Perhaps it is in your handbag?” and he glanced at the rather large raffia bag that lay on the table.
She snatched it up, slightly averting her body as she looked hastily through its contents.
“It—isn’t here…. Oh, I don’t know where it is! What does it matter?”
Without replying, Dundee escorted the trembling little discoverer of Nita Selim’s body into the large ornate bedroom, murmuring as he did so:
“Don’t be frightened, Mrs. Marshall. The bod—I mean Mrs. Selim isn’t here now…. And you shan’t have to scream. I’ll give the signal myself. I just want you to go through the same motions you did before.” On jerky feet the girl advanced to Nita’s now deserted vanity dresser.
“I—I was calling to her all the time,” she whispered. “I didn’t even wait to knock, and I—I began to tell her how much we’d made off that hand, when I—when she didn’t answer…. I didn’t touch her, but I saw—I saw—” Again she gripped her face with her hands and was about to scream.
“I know,” Dundee assured her gently. Then he shouted: “Ready!”
Herded by Strawn, the small crowd of men and women came running into the room, Judge Marshall leading the way, Penny being second in line. Penny second! Why not Flora Miles, who had been nearer to that room than any of the others, if her story was true—Dundee asked himself. But all had crowded into the room, including Polly Beale and Clive Hammond, before Mrs. Miles crept in.
“Is this the order of your arrival?” Dundee asked them all.
Penny, who was standing against the wall, just inside the doorway, spoke up, staring at Flora with frowning intentness.
“You’re sort of mixed up, aren’t you, Flora? I was standing right here until the worst of it was over—I didn’t even go near Nita, and I know you didn’t pass me. I remember that Tracey stepped away from the—body, and called you, and you weren’t here. And then almost the next minute I saw you coming toward him from—from—over there!”
And Penny pointed toward that corner of the room which held, on one angle, the door leading to the porch, and on its other angle the window from which, or from near which Nita Selim had been shot.
“You’re lying, Penny Crain! I did no such thing!” Flora Miles cried hysterically. “I came running in—with—with the rest of you, and I rushed over there just to see if I could see anybody running away across the meadow—”
“My wife is right, sir,” Tracey Miles added his word aggressively. “I saw what she was doing—the most sensible of all of us—and I ran to join her. We looked out of the windows, both the side windows and the rear ones, and out onto the porch. But we didn’t see anything.”
Surprisingly, Dundee abandoned the point.
“And you were the only one to touch her, Sprague?”
“I—believe so,” Dexter Sprague answered in a strained voice. “I—laid my hand on her—her hair, for an instant, then I picked up her hand to see if—if there was any pulse left.”
“Yes?”
“She—she was dead.”
“And her hand—did it feel cold?”
“Neither cold nor warm—just cool,” Sprague answered in a voice that was nearly strangled with emotion. “She—she always had cool hands—”
“What did you do, Judge Marshall?” Dundee asked abruptly.
“I took my poor little wife away from this room, laid her on a couch in the living room, and then telephoned the police. Miss Crain stood at my elbow, urging me to hurry, so that she might ring you—as she did. Your line was busy, and she lost about five minutes before getting you.”
“And the rest of you?” Dundee asked.
“Nothing spectacular, I’m afraid, Mr. Dundee,” Polly Beale answered in her brusque, deep voice, now edged with scorn.
Further questioning elicited little more, beyond the fact that Clive Hammond had dashed out to circle the house and look over the grounds, and that John Drake had been fully occupied with an hysterical wife.
“Better let this bunch go for the present, hadn’t we, boy?” Captain Strawn whispered uneasily. “Not a thing on any of them—”
“Not quite yet, sir, if you don’t mind,” Dundee answered in a low voice. “Will you take them back into the living room and put them under Sergeant Turner’s charge for a while? Then there are one or two things I’d like to talk over with you.”
Mollified by the younger man’s deference and persuasiveness, Strawn obeyed the suggestion, to return within five minutes, his grey brows drawn into a frown.
“I hope you’ll be willing to take full credit for that fool bridge game, Bonnie,” he worried. “I don’t want to look a chump in the newspapers!”
“I’ll take the blame,” Dundee assured him, with a grin. “But that ‘fool bridge game’—and I admit it was a horrible thing to have to do—told me a whole bunch of facts that ought to be very, very useful.”
“For instance?” Strawn growled.
“For instance,” Dundee answered, “it told me that it took approximately eight minutes to play out a little slam bid, when ordinarily it would have taken not more than two or three minutes. Not only that, but it told me the names of everyone in this party who could have killed Nita Selim, and—. Good Lord! Of course!”
And to Captain Strawn’s amazement Dundee threw open the door of Nita’s big clothes closet, jerked on the light, and stooped to the floor.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Almost immediately Special Investigator Dundee rose from his crouching position on the floor of Nita Selim’s closet, and faced the chief of the Homicide Squad of Hamilton’s police force.
“I think,” he said quietly, for all the excitement that burned in his blue eyes, “that we’d better have Mrs. Miles in for a few questions.”
“What have you got there—a dance program?” Strawn asked curiously, but as Dundee continued to stare silently at the thing he held, the older man strode to the door and relayed the order to a plainclothes detective.
“I sent for Mrs. Miles,” Dundee said coldly, when husband and wife appeared together, Flora’s thin, tense shoulders encircled by Tracey’s plump arm.
“If you’re going to badger my wife further, I intend to be present, sir!” Miles retorted, thrusting out his chest.
“Very well!” Dundee conceded curtly. “Mrs. Miles, why didn’t you tell me in the first place that you were in this room when Nita Selim was shot?”
“Because I wasn’t—in—in the room,” Flora protested, clinging with both thin, big-veined hands to her husband’s arm.
“Sir, you have no proof of this absurd accusation, and I shall personally take this matter up—”
“I have the best of proof,” Dundee said quietly, and took his hand from his pocket. “You recognize this, Mrs. Miles? … You admit that it is the tally card you used while playing bridge this afternoon?”
