by Anne Austin
“Oh, yes! But she’d have been in love with anyone who wanted to marry her, and the funny thing is that, with the exception of Peter and Lois, they are the happiest married couple I have ever known…. You see, Tracey has never got over being flattered that so pretty and passionate a girl as Flora Hackett wanted him! … And that’s why I laughed! … Tracey, with that deep-rooted sexual inferiority complex of his, would have been so flattered if Flora had told him she killed Nita out of jealousy that he would have forgiven her on the spot. On the other hand,” she went on, “if Flora had told him that Nita had documentary proofs of some frightful scandal against her, can’t you see how violently Tracey would have reacted against her? … Oh, no! Tracey would not have taken the trouble to murder Sprague, when Sprague popped up for more blackmail!”
“Perhaps he might have, if the scandal dated back to before the marriage,” Dundee argued. “Let’s suppose Sprague did pop up, and Flora turned him over to Tracey. When Sprague appeared apparently uninvited last night, Flora must have been on pins and needles, trying to make Tracey treat him decently and hoping against hope that Tracey would simply pay the scoundrel all the blackmail he was demanding—”
“Which is exactly what Tracey would have done, instead of taking the awful risk of murdering him in his own home,” Penny cut in spiritedly. “Besides, Tracey wasn’t gone from the porch long enough to go outside, signal to Sprague in the trophy room, shoot him when Sprague raised the screen, and then hide the gun. I told you Tracey was gone only about a minute when he went to see if Sprague’s hat and stick were gone from the closet.”
“Did Tracey and Flora both step outside to see their guests into their cars?” Dundee asked suddenly.
“Tracey did,” Penny answered. “Flora told us all good night in the living room, then ran upstairs to see if Betty was still asleep…. But remember we didn’t leave until midnight, and Dr. Price says Sprague was killed between nine and eleven last night.”
“Dr. Price would be the first to grant a leeway of an hour, one way or another,” Dundee told her. “Of course, if Tracey did kill him, he let Flora believe that he had given Sprague the blackmail money he was demanding. For it is inconceivable that a woman of Flora Miles’ hysterical temperament could have slept—even with two sleeping tablets—knowing that a corpse was in the house.”
“Oh, I’m sick of your silly theorizing!” Penny told him with vehement scorn. “Listen here, Bonnie Dundee! You probably laugh at ‘woman’s intuition’, but take it from me—you’re on the wrong track!”
“Oh, I’m not so wedded to that particular theory!” Dundee laughed. “I can spin you exactly six more just as convincing—”
“And I shan’t listen! You’d better dash home and pack your bag if you want to catch the five o’clock train for New York.”
“It’s already packed and in my office,” Dundee assured her lazily. “Got lots of time…. Hullo! Here’s the home edition of The Evening Sun,” he interrupted himself, as a small boy, making his rounds of the courthouse, flung the paper into the office. He reached for it, and read the streamer headline aloud: “ITALIAN GANGSTER SOUGHT IN BRIDGE MURDERS … I wager a good many heads will lie easier on their pillows tonight.”
“Let me see!” Penny commanded, and snatched the paper unceremoniously. “Oh! Did you see this?” and she pointed to a boxed story in the middle of the front page. “‘Bridge Parties Cancelled’,” she read aloud. “‘The society editor of The Evening Sun was kept busy at her telephone today, receiving notices of cancellations of bridge parties scheduled for the remainder of the week. Eight frantic hostesses, terrified by Hamilton’s second murder at bridge—’ Oh, that’s simply a crime! The newspapers deliberately work up mob hysteria and then—”
“I’d rather not play bridge for a while myself!” Dundee laughed, as he rose and started for his own office. “And don’t you dare leave the room when you become dummy, if you have the nerve to play again! Remember, that gun and silencer are still missing!”
“What do you mean? …. You don’t think there’ll be more—?”
Dundee became instantly contrite before her terror. “I didn’t mean it, honey,” he said gently. “I think it is more than likely that the gun is at the bottom of Mirror Lake. But do take care of yourself, and by that I mean don’t work yourself to death…. Any messages for anyone in New York?”
Penny’s pale face quivered. “If you—happen to run across my father, which of course you won’t, tell him that—Mother would like him to come home.”
At intervals during the sixteen-hour run to New York, Penny’s faltering words returned to haunt the district attorney’s special investigator, although he would have preferred to devote his entire attention to mapping out the program he intended to follow when he reached the city which, he fully believed, had been the scene of the first act of the tragic drama he was bent upon bringing to an equally tragic conclusion.
As soon as he had registered at a hotel near the Pennsylvania Station, and had shaved and breakfasted, he took from his bag a large envelope containing the photographs Carraway had made of Penny alive and of Nita dead, both clad in the royal blue velvet dress. In the envelope also was the white satin, gold-lettered label which the dress had so proudly borne: “Pierre Model. Copied by Simonson’s. New York City.”
Half an hour later he was showing the photographs and the label to a woman buyer, in the French Salon of Simonson’s, one of New York’s most “exclusive” department stores.
“Can you tell me when the original Pierre model was bought, and when this copy was made and sold?” he asked.
The white-haired, smartly dressed buyer accepted the sheaf of photographs Bonnie Dundee was offering. “I’ll do my best, of course,” she began briskly, then paled and uttered a sharp exclamation as her eyes took in the topmost picture. “This is Juanita Leigh, isn’t it? … But—” she shuddered, “how odd she looks—as if—”
“Yes,” Dundee agreed gravely. “She was dead when that picture was taken. Did you know Mrs. Selim?”
“No,” the woman breathed, her eyes still bulging with horror. “But I’ve seen so many pictures of her in the papers…. To think that it was one of our dresses she chose for her shroud! But you want to know when the dress was sold to her, don’t you?” she asked, brisk again. “I can find out. We keep a record of all our French originals and of the number of copies made of each…. Let me think! I’ve been going to Paris myself for the firm for the last fifteen years, but I can’t remember buying this Pierre model…. Oh, of course! I didn’t go over during 1917 and 1918, on account of the war, you know, but the big Paris designers managed to send us a limited number of very good models, and this must have been one of them. Otherwise, I’d remember buying it…. If you’ll excuse me a moment—”
When she returned about ten minutes later, Miss Thomas brought him a pencilled memorandum. “This Pierre model was imported in the summer of 1917, several months in advance of the winter season, of course. Only five copies were made—in different colors and materials, naturally, since we make a point of exclusiveness. The royal blue velvet copy was sold to Juanita Leigh in January, 1918. I am sorry I cannot give you the exact day of the month, but our records show the month only. I took the liberty of showing a picture of the dress to the only saleswoman in the department who has been with us that long, but she cannot remember the sale. Twelve years is a long time, you know.”
“Indeed it is,” Dundee agreed regretfully. “You have been immensely helpful, however, Miss Thomas, and I thank you with all my heart.”
“If you could just tell me—confidentially, of course,” Miss Thomas whispered, “what sort of clue this dress is—”
“I don’t know, myself!” the detective admitted. “But,” he added to himself, after he had escaped the buyer’s natural curiosity, “I intend to find out!”
Before he could take any further steps along that particular path, however, Dundee had an appointment to keep. Upon arriving at his hotel that morning he
had made two telephone calls. He smiled now as he recalled the surprise and glee of one of his former Yale classmates, now a discouraged young bond salesman, with whom he had kept in touch.
“You want to borrow my name and my kid sister?” Jimmy Randolph had chortled. “Hop to it, old sport! But you might tell me what you want with such intimate belongings of mine.”
“You may not know it,” Dundee had retorted, “but young Mr. James Wadley Randolph, Jr., scion of the famous old Boston family, is going to visit that equally famous school, Forsyte-on-the-Hudson, to see whether it is the ideal finishing school for his beloved young sister, Barbara…. She’s about fifteen now, isn’t she, Jimmy?”
“Going on sixteen, and one of Satan’s prize hellions,” Jimmy Randolph had answered. “The family would be eternally grateful if you could get Forsyte to take her, but make them promise not to have any more chorus girls who plan to get murdered, as directors of their amateur theatricals. Bab would be sure to be mixed up in the mess…. I suppose that’s the job you’re on, you flat-footed dick, you!”
The second telephone call had secured an appointment at the Forsyte School for “Mr. James Wadley Randolph, Jr., of Boston,” and Dundee, rather relishing his first need for such professional tactics, relaxed to enjoy the ten-mile drive along the Hudson.
It was a quarter to twelve when his taxi swept up the drive toward the big grey-stone, turreted building, sedately lonely in the midst of its valuable acres.
“Miss Earle says to come to the office,” a colored maid told him, when he had given his borrowed name, and led him from the vast hall to a fairly large room, whose windows looked upon a tennis court, and whose walls were almost covered with group pictures of graduating classes, photographs of amateur theatrical performances, and portrait studies of alumnae.
A very thin, sharp-faced woman of about forty, with red-rimmed eyes which peered nearsightedly, rose from an old-fashioned roll-top desk and came forward to greet him.
“I am Miss Earle, Miss Pendleton’s private secretary,” she told him, as he shook her bony, clammy hand. “I should have told you when you telephoned this morning that both Miss Pendleton and Miss Macon sailed for Europe yesterday. We always have our commencement the last Tuesday in May, you know…. But if there is anything I can do for you—”
“I should like to know something at first hand of the history of the school, its—well, prestige, special advantages, curriculum, and so on,” Dundee began deprecatingly.
“I should certainly be able to answer any question you may wish to ask, Mr. Randolph, since I have been with the school for fifteen years,” Miss Earle interrupted tartly.
“Then Forsyte must take younger pupils than I had been led to believe, Miss Earle,” Dundee said, with his most winning smile.
“I was never a pupil here,” the secretary corrected him, but she thawed visibly. “Of course, I was a mere child when I finished business school, but I have been here fifteen years—fifteen years of watching rich society girls dawdle away four or five years, just because they’ve got to be somewhere before they make their debut…. But I mustn’t talk like that, or I’ll give you a wrong impression, Mr. Randolph. Of its kind, it is really a very fine school—very exclusive; riding masters, dancing masters, a golf ‘pro’ and our own golf course, native teachers for French, Italian, German and Spanish…. Oh, the school is all right, and will probably not suffer any loss of prestige on account of that dreadful murder out in the Middle West—”
“Murder?” Dundee echoed, as if he had no idea what she was talking about.
“Haven’t you been reading the papers?” Miss Earle rallied him, with a coquettish smile. “But I don’t suppose Boston bothers with such sordid things,” she added, her thin-lipped mouth tightening. “Miss Pendleton was all cut up about it, because Mrs. Selim, or Juanita Leigh, as she was known on Broadway, had directed our Easter play the last two years, and the reporters simply hounded us the first two days after she was murdered out in Hamilton, where a number of our richest girls have come from—”
“By Jove!” Dundee exclaimed. “Was the Selim woman connected with this school, really? … I only read the headlines—never pay much attention to murders in the papers—”
“I wish,” Miss Earle interrupted tartly, fresh tears reddening her eyes, “that people wouldn’t persist in referring to her as ‘that Selim woman’…. When I think how sweet and friendly she was, how—how kind!” and to Dundee’s surprise she choked on tears before she could go on: “Of course I know it’s dreadful for the school, and I ought not to talk about it, when you’ve come to see about putting your sister into the school, but Nita was my friend, and it simply makes me wild—”
“You admired and liked her very much?” Dundee asked, forgetting his role for the moment.
“Yes, I did! And Miss Pendleton liked her, too. And you can imagine how clever and popular she was, when a wonderful woman like Mrs. Peter Dunlap, who was Lois Morrow when she was in school here, admired her so much she took her to Hamilton with her to direct plays for a Little Theater…. Why, I never met anyone I was so congenial with!” the secretary went on passionately. “The girls here snub me and make silly jokes about me behind my back and call me nicknames, but Nita was just as sweet to me as she was to anyone—even Miss Pendleton herself!”
“Were you with her much?” Dundee dared ask.
“With her much? … I should say I was!” she asserted proudly. “I have a room here, live here the year ’round, and both years Nita shared my room, so she would not have to make the long trip back to New York every night during the last week of rehearsals. We used to talk until two or three o’clock in the morning—Say!” she broke off, in sudden terror. “You aren’t a reporter, are you?”
“A reporter? Good Lord, no!” Dundee denied, in all sincerity. Then he made up his mind swiftly. This woman hated the school and all connected with it, had grown more and more sour and envy-bitten every year of the fifteen she had served here—and she liked Nita Leigh Selim better than anyone she had ever met. The opportunity for direct questioning was too miraculous to be ignored. So he changed his tone suddenly and said very earnestly: “No, I am not a reporter, Miss Earle. But I am not James Wadley Randolph, Jr. I am James F. Dundee, special investigator attached to the office of the district attorney of Hamilton, and I want you to help me solve the mystery of Mrs. Selim’s murder.”
It took nearly ten precious minutes for Dundee to nurse the terrified but obviously thrilled woman over the shock, and to get her into the mood to answer him freely.
“But I shan’t and can’t tell you anything bad about Nita!” she protested vehemently, wiping her red-rimmed eyes. “The papers are all saying now that she got $10,000 for double-crossing some awful racketeer named ‘Swallow-tail Sammy’, but I know she didn’t get the money that way! She was too good—”
“From Nita’s confidences to you, do you have any idea how she did get the money?” Dundee asked.
Miss Earle shook her head. “I don’t know, but she got it honorably. I know that! … Maybe she found her husband and made him pay alimony—”
Dundee controlled his excitement with difficulty. “Did she tell you all about her marriage and divorce?”
Again Miss Earle shook her head. “The only time she ever spoke of it was last year—the first year she directed our play, you know. I asked her why she didn’t get married again, and she said she couldn’t—she wasn’t divorced, because she didn’t know where her husband was, and it was too expensive to go to Reno…. Of course she may have found him or something—and got a divorce some time this last year, and this money she got was a settlement—”
“She must have got a divorce, since she was planning to be married again to a young man in Hamilton,” Dundee assured her soothingly.
“The way everybody puts the very worst interpretation on everything, when a person gets murdered!” Miss Earle stormed. “If poor Nita had belonged to a rich family, like the girls here, they would have spent a million
if necessary to hush up any scandal on her! … I’ve seen it done!” she added, darkly and venomously.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Bonnie Dundee’s heart leaped, but he forced himself to go softly. “I suppose,” he said casually, “a fashionable school like this has plenty of carefully hushed-up scandals—”
“I’ll say it has!” Miss Earle retorted inelegantly, and with ghoulish satisfaction. “Money can do anything! It makes my blood simply boil when I think of how those Forsyte girls in Hamilton—so smug and snobbish in their hick town ‘society’—must be running poor Nita down, now that she’s dead and can’t defend herself! … If the truth were only known about some of them—”
Dundee could almost have embraced the homely, life-soured spinster—she was making his task so easy for him.
“I’ve met them all, of course, since Mrs. Selim was murdered,” he said deprecatingly, “and I must say they seem to be remarkably fine women and girls—”
“Oh are they?” Miss Earle snorted. “Flora Hackett—Mrs. Tracey Miles she is now—didn’t happen to tell you the nice little fuss she kicked up when she was here, did she? Oh, no! I guess not!”
“She looks,” Dundee agreed, “like a girl who would have made things lively.”
“I’ll say so! Miss Pendleton nearly had nervous prostration!” Miss Earle plunged on, then fear blanched her face for a moment. “You know you’ve promised you’ll never tell Miss Pendleton or Miss Macon that you talked to me!”
“You can depend on it that I will protect you,” Dundee assured her. “When did Flora Hackett kick up her little fuss?”
“Let’s see…. Flora graduated in June, 1920,” Miss Earle obliged willingly. “So it must have been in 1919—yes, because she had one more year here. Of course they let her come back! … Money! … She took the lead in our annual Easter play in 1919, and just because Serena Hart complimented her and told her she was almost as good as a professional—”
