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

by Anne Austin

  “Well, Bonnie, here’s the devil to pay,” Strawn gloomed, but Dundee made for the telephone without answering.

  He called a number, then curtly demanded: “Dr. Price, please! … Yes, I know he’s busy on an autopsy. Just tell him that Dundee, of the district attorney’s office, wants to speak to him.”

  There was a long pause, then: “Hello, Dr. Price! … Dundee…. What are the caliber and type of bullet that killed Nita Selim? … Thanks much, doctor…. Anything new? … Fine! Thanks again!”

  He hung up the receiver and faced Strawn. “Bullet from a Colt’s .32,” he said grimly. “I suggest you send one of your men around to the Marshall home to pick up a bullet that was shot in their damned target practice. If you send the two bullets tonight, registered mail, to Wright, the ballistics expert in Chicago, he can probably wire you tomorrow morning as to whether the same gun was used to fire both.”

  “Sure, Bonnie,” Strawn agreed lugubriously. “I was going to do just that…. Say, this town is getting to be worse than Chicago!”

  When he re-entered the living room Dundee began upon the judge again, regardless of the fact that the elderly husband was murmuring consolatory endearments to his young wife.

  “Judge Marshall, how many keys are there to the cupboard drawer in which your gun and silencer were kept?”

  “Just one. I have it with me,” the old man answered wearily.

  “Then when Hinson, your butler, looked for them, he found the drawer unlocked?”

  “He did. I confess to almost criminal negligence—”

  “Then so far as you know, the gun and silencer could have been removed at any time by any guest of yours between noon last Sunday and—today?” Dundee went on relentlessly.

  “I—suppose so. But these people have been my close friends for years,” the judge answered. “Not one of them, sir—”

  “After Mrs. Selim’s departure last Sunday, did your other guests remain for any length of time?”

  “For an hour or more, I think. Lois and Peter Dunlap remained for our two o’clock Sunday dinner, but the others drifted away to various engagements.”

  “Did any of you return to the room where the gun was kept?”

  “I can speak only for myself and Peter—Mr. Dunlap,” Judge Marshall answered, flushing with indignation. “The two of us went down just before dinner was served. I wanted to show him some new flies for trout casting.”

  “Your home is a popular rendezvous for your intimates, is it not?”

  “I pride myself that it is, sir!”

  “And guests run in and out, having the freedom of the place?”

  “Certainly, sir! … And since I am not so stupid as you imagine, I can tell you now that I understand the drift of your questions, and can forestall them: Yes, all of these people—my friends!—have had opportunity to take the gun and the silencer from the cupboard since it was placed there last Sunday, if it was placed there by Mrs. Selim. But may I remind you, sir, that opportunity alone is not sufficient; that motive—”

  “Since Mrs. Selim is dead, murdered by the weapon which was stolen, we can assume, Judge Marshall, that someone had motive,” Dundee reminded him implacably, for in his mind there was no doubt that the ballistics expert would bear him out.

  There was a heavy, throbbing silence. The group that, with the exception of Dexter Sprague, had been so united, so cemented with long-sustained friendship, again dissolved visibly before Dundee’s eyes into eleven individuals, each shrinking into himself, mentally drawing away from any possible contamination with a murderer….

  “You have said, Judge Marshall,” Dundee went on at last, “that Miss Crain and Mr. Sprague were not at your home for target practice Sunday. Has either of them been in your home during this past week?”

  “Penny—Miss Crain—spent an evening with my wife when I was—er—away from home on business. That was last Tuesday, I believe—”

  “Yes, it was Tuesday, Hugo,” Penny Crain interrupted firmly. “And Karen can vouch for the fact that I did not go into the gun room.”

  “Don’t be silly, Penny!” Carolyn Drake scolded, as if she had long been bursting to speak. “Giving an alibi! As if any of us who were playing bridge while that woman was being shot needs any alibi! … But I’ll tell you what I think, Mr. Detective! I think Nita herself stole the gun and the silencer, to kill Dexter Sprague with, and that he stole it from her and murdered her! Nobody else has the slightest scrap of a motive, and that note he wrote her ought to be enough to hang him on!”

  Dexter Sprague had struggled to his feet during the woman’s hysterical attack, his face like chalk, his eyes blazing. But Dundee waved him aside peremptorily.

  “One more question, Judge Marshall,” he said suavely, as if he had not heard a word that Carolyn Drake had said. “You knew Mrs. Selim before her arrival in Hamilton with Mrs. Dunlap, I believe…. Just when and where did you meet her?”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “You are damned impertinent, sir!” Judge Marshall shouted, the ends of his waxed grey mustache trembling with anger.

  “Then I take it that you do not wish to divulge the circumstances of your friendship with Mrs. Selim?” Dundee asked.

  “Friendship!” the old man snorted. “Your implications, sir, are dastardly! I met Mrs. Selim, or rather, Nita Leigh, as she was introduced to me, only once, several years ago when I was in New York. Naturally—”

  “Just a moment, Judge. You say she was introduced to you as Nita Leigh. Then you knew her as an actress, I presume?”

  “I refuse to submit to such a cowardly attack, sir!”

  “Attack, Judge?” Dundee repeated with assumed astonishment. “I merely thought you might be able to shed a little light on the past of the woman who has been murdered here today, with a weapon you admit to having owned…. However—”

  The elderly ex-judge stared at his tormentor for a moment as if murder was in his heart. He gasped twice, then suddenly his whole manner changed.

  “I apologize, Dundee. You must realize how—But that is beside the point. I met Nita Leigh at—er—at a social gathering, arranged by some New York friends of mine. She was young, attractive, more refined than—er—than the average young woman in musical comedy. Naturally I told her if she was ever in Hamilton to look me up. And she did.”

  “And because she was ‘more refined than the average young woman in musical comedy’—than the average chorus girl, to put it simply,” Dundee took him up, “you co-operated with Mrs. Dunlap to introduce her to your most intimate friends—including your wife?”

  “Oh, Hugo! Why didn’t you tell me?” Karen Marshall wailed.

  “You see, sir, what you are doing!” Judge Marshall stormed.

  “I am truly sorry if I have distressed you, Mrs. Marshall,” Dundee protested sincerely. “But—” He shrugged and turned again to the husband. “I understand you were Mrs. Selim’s landlord…. May I ask how much rent she paid?”

  “The house rents for one hundred dollars a month—furnished.”

  “And did Mrs. Selim pay her rent promptly?” Dundee persisted.

  “Since this is the 24th of May, sir, Mrs. Selim’s rent for June was not yet due.”

  Not before poor little Karen could Dundee force himself to ask what, inevitably, would have been his next question—one which could not have been evaded, as the ex-judge had evaded the other two questions: “Is it not true, Judge Marshal, that Nita Leigh Selim paid you no rent at all?” But there were other ways to find out….

  “Look here, Dundee!” a brusque voice challenged, and the detective whirled to face Polly Beale. It was like her, he thought with a slight grin, to address him as one man to another….

  “Yes, Miss Beale?”

  “I’m no fool, and I don’t think any of my friends here are either—though two or three of them have acted like it today,” the masculine-looking girl stated flatly. “You’ve made it very plain that any one of us here, except the Sprague man, could have stolen Hugo’s gun and silen
cer…. Has the gun been found?”

  “It has not, Miss Beale.”

  “O. K.!” The queer girl snapped her fingers. “I move that you or Captain Strawn search the men for the weapon, and that I search the Women…. Wait!” she harshly stopped a flurry of feminine protests. “I’ll ask you, Dundee, to search me first yourself. I believe the technical term is ‘frisking,’ isn’t it? … Then ‘frisk’ me…. Here is my handbag. I wore no coat, except this—” and she pointed to the jacket of her tweed suit.

  As she strode toward the detective Clive Hammond sprang after her with an oath and a sharp command.

  “Shut up, Clive! I’m not married to you yet!” she retorted, but her eyes were gentler than her voice.

  His face burning with embarrassment, Dundee went through the traditional gestures of police “frisking”—running his hands rapidly down the girl’s tall, sturdy body, slapping her pockets. And his fingers fumbled sadly as he opened her tooled leather handbag.

  “Satisfied?” Polly Beale demanded, and at Dundee’s miserable nod, the girl faced her friends: “Well, come along, girls!”

  “Lord! What a girl!” Dundee muttered to Strawn, as the young Amazon herded Flora Miles, Penny Crain, Karen Marshall, Carolyn Drake, Lois Dunlap and Janet Raymond into the dining room.

  Silently, and almost meekly, as if shamed into submission by Polly Beale’s example, John Drake, Tracey Miles, Clive Hammond, Judge Marshall, and Dexter Sprague permitted Captain Strawn and Sergeant Turner to search them.

  “How about the guest closet and the cars?” Dundee asked of Strawn in a low voice, when the fruitless, unpleasant task was finished.

  “Gone over with a fine tooth comb long ago,” Strawn assured him gloomily. “And not a hiding place in or outside the house that the boys haven’t poked into—including the meadow as far as anyone could throw from the bedroom window.”

  The women were filing back into the room, some pale, some flushed, but all able to look each other in the eye again.

  With surprising jauntiness Polly Beale saluted Dundee. “Nothing more deadly on any of us than Flora’s triple-deck compact.”

  “I thank you with all my heart, Miss Beale,” Dundee said sincerely. “And now I think you may all go to your homes…. Of course you understand,” he interrupted a chorus of relieved ejaculations, “that all of you will be wanted for the inquest, which will probably be held Monday.”

  “And what’s more,” Captain Strawn cut in, to show his authority, “I want all of you to hold yourselves ready for further questioning at any time.”

  There was a stampede for coats and hats, a rush for cars as if the house were on fire, or—Dundee reflected wryly—as if those he had tortured were afraid he would change his mind. Rushing away with hatred of him in their hearts….

  Only Penny Crain held back, maneuvering for a chance to speak with him.

  “I don’t have to go with the rest, do I?” she begged in a husky whisper.

  “And why not?” Dundee grinned at her, but he was glad there was no hatred in her eyes.

  “I’m ‘attached’ to the district attorney’s office, too, aren’t I?”

  “Right! And you’ve been a brick this evening. I don’t know what I should have done without you—”

  “Well, I can’t see that you’ve done much with me,” she gibed. “But I’d like to stick around, if you’re going to do some real Sherlocking—”

  “Can’t be done, Penny. I want to stay here alone for a while and mull things over. But I’d like to have a long talk with you tomorrow.”

  “Come to Sunday dinner. Mother loves murder mysteries,” she suggested. Then realization swept over her. Her brown eyes widened, filled with terror. “Stop thinking one of us did it! Stop, I tell you!”

  “Can you stop, Penny?” he asked gently.

  But she fled from him, sobbing wildly for the first time that long, horrible evening. Dundee, watching from the doorway of the lighted hall, saw the chauffeur open the rear door of the Dunlap limousine, saw Penny catapult herself into Lois Dunlap’s outstretched arms….

  “When did the Dunlap chauffeur call for his mistress?” he asked Strawn, who stood beside him.

  “About ten minutes after you arrived,” Strawn answered wearily. “Said he’d dropped Mrs. Dunlap and the Selim woman at about 2:30 and had been ordered to return around 6.30…. Knows nothing, of course.” The chief of the Homicide Squad drew a deep breath. “Well, Bonnie, he has nothing on me. In spite of all the palaver I don’t know nothing either.”

  “You need some dinner, chief,” Dundee suggested. “And the boys must be getting hungry, too.”

  “Somebody’s got to guard the house, I suppose,” Strawn gloomed. “Not that it will do any good…. And what about that maid—that Carr woman? Shall I lock her up on general principles?”

  “No. I want to have another talk with her, and if she bucks at spending the night here, I’ll take her to the Rhodes House, and turn her over to my old friend, Mother Rhodes. We haven’t anything on her, you know.”

  “No, nor on anybody else, except that old fool, Marshall, and we can’t clap him into jail—yet,” Strawn agreed, his grey eyes twinkling.

  “Take your crew on in, chief,” Dundee urged. “I’ll stick till midnight or longer, if you don’t mind. You can arrange to have a couple of the boys to relieve me about twelve…. And by the way, will you telephone me the minute you get hold of Ralph Hammond?”

  “Well, maybe not so quick as all that,” Strawn drawled. “I’ll take the first crack at that baby, my lad! … Not so dumb, am I, Bonnie-boy? Not so dumb! I can put two and two together as well as the next one—pretty near as well as the district attorney’s new ‘special investigator!’”

  *****

  Although Bonnie Dundee had taken Captain Strawn’s none-too-gentle parting gibe with good grace, it was a very thoughtful young detective who set about locking himself into the house in which Nita Selim had been murdered.

  Captain Strawn had beaten him to the job that evening by at least twenty minutes. Had the old detective stumbled upon something which Dundee, for all his spectacular thoroughness, had overlooked or had been unable to turn up because Strawn had suppressed it?

  What if Strawn’s parting boast was not an idle one, and he really had “the goods” on Ralph Hammond? Had the old chief been laughing up his sleeve during the farce of playing out the “death hand at bridge,” and during the merciless quizzing of old Judge Marshall?

  But Dundee’s native common sense quickly routed his gloom. Captain Strawn was too direct in his methods, too afraid of antagonizing the rich and influential, to have permitted even a “special investigator” from the district attorney’s office to torment those twelve people needlessly. Probably Strawn, feeling a little hurt at having played second fiddle all evening, had simply wanted to get him fussed, was even now chuckling over the effect of his parting boast….

  Much cheered, Dundee lingered in the dining room whose windows he had made fast against any intrusion, so that his task of guarding the house alone might be minimized. As he glanced at the table, with its silver plates heaped with tiny sandwiches of caviar and anchovy paste, its little silver boats of olives and sweet pickles, he discovered that he was very hungry indeed….

  As he munched the drying sandwiches and sipped charged water—the various liquors for cocktails on the sideboard offered a temptation which he sternly resisted—Dundee’s thought boiled and churned, throwing up picture after picture of Nita Selim, alive and then dead; of Penny Crain—bless her!—helping him at the expense of her loyalty to life-long friends; of Flora Miles, lying desperately and then confessing to a shameful theft; of Karen Marshall gallantly playing out the “death hand”; of Karen’s stricken, childish face when she learned that her elderly husband had met and at least flirted with Nita Selim at a chorus girls’ party….

  At that last picture Dundee flushed so that his skin prickled. Had he made a fool of himself, or was he right in his suspicion that Hugo Marshall
had given Nita Selim this cottage rent free? That point should be easily settled, at any rate….

  Ruefully reflecting that appetizers do not make a satisfactory meal he betook himself to the dead woman’s bedroom…. Yes, his memory had served him well. Here was her desk—a small feminine affair of rosewood, set in the corner of the room nearest the porch door.

  The desk was not locked. As Dundee let down the slanting lid, whose polish was marred with many fingerprints, he saw that its contents were in a hopeless jumble. So Strawn had beaten him to this, too! Had he found an all-important clue in one of the many little pigeon-holes and drawers, stuffing it into his pocket just before a bumptious young “special investigator” had arrived?

  But Dundee’s returning gloom was instantly dispelled. Here was Nita’s checkbook, a flutter of filled-in stubs attached to only one remaining blank check. So Nita had banked with the Hamilton National Bank, of which John C. Drake—who apparently hated his fattish, fussy wife—was a vice president! Another tiny fact to be tucked away…. She had opened her account, apparently, on April 21, the day of her arrival in Hamilton—the guest and employe of Mrs. Peter Dunlap. Probably Lois Dunlap had advanced her the two hundred dollars as first payment for her prospective work in organizing a Little Theater movement in Hamilton.

  Turning rapidly through stubs, Dundee stopped twice, whistling softly with amazement each time. For on April 28th, and again on May 5th, Nita Selim had deposited $5,000! Where had she got the money? Were the sums transfers from accounts in New York banks? But it was hardly likely that a little Broadway hanger-on had had so much hard cash on deposit. Then where had she got it—$5,000 at a time, here in Hamilton?

  Blackmail!

  Hastily but thoroughly Dundee ran through the remaining check stubs…. No record at all of a check for rent made out to Judge Hugo Marshall!

  But there was a stub that interested him. Check No. 17—Nita had spent her money lavishly—was filled in as follows, in Nita’s pretty backhand: