Well, that was that. Miss Withers no longer had any excuse to spy on the corridor, though she would have given a good deal to know just how Andy Todd had spent his lonely evening.
Placing a chair against the door, she prepared to retire, a feeling of anticlimax still possessing her. She had a long search for her nightgown, which ended by her lucky discovery that it had been wrapped around a hot-water bottle and tucked in at the foot of her bed.
She turned out the light and tried to sleep, annoyed somewhat by the bright fire which, after an evening of sulking, had chosen this moment to blaze merrily, sending dancing shadows over walls and ceiling. The shadows took fearful shapes and pursued the nervous lady until she woke suddenly to hear a determined pounding upon her door, and to see feeble daylight trickling in between the heavy curtains.
She rose wearily and slipped on a bathrobe and slippers. Then she glanced at her watch and became very wroth. The knocking resumed.
She opened the door and spoke sternly to the maid. “I asked to be called at ten o’clock—not at seven-thirty!”
The maid’s voice was oddly perturbed. “I know that, mum. But it’s a gentleman from the police, mum.”
Miss Withers looked out upon the bland young face of Sergeant John Secker, who looked unwontedly wide-awake and excited. “I’ll dress in ten minutes,” she promised, and closed the door firmly.
Clothed and in her right mind, she emerged with several minutes to spare. “Well!” she greeted the young detective. “Do you want to borrow my scarf again?”
The sergeant shook his head. “Sorry to trouble you, but there’s a question or two. You see, there was an accident here at the hotel last night…”
Miss Withers had a sudden flash of intuition. “It’s Reverson!” she gasped. “Something has happened to young Reverson!”
The sergeant blinked and then shook his head. “Barking up the wrong tree, I’m afraid. Nothing wrong with Reverson. But you know the lift shaft up the hall—the one marked ‘Out of Order’? Your recent shipmate Mr. Andy Todd was found at the bottom of it a little while ago.”
Secker paused for effect. But even now Miss Withers did not completely understand him. This most emphatically did not fit in with the framework that she was painstakingly building.
“Todd? But what was Andy Todd doing there?”
“Shuffling off this mortal coil,” said the sergeant. “When found an hour ago, he had completely shuffled. Popped off, y’know. Passed on, Gone West, and expired.”
“Andy Todd dead?” said Miss Withers idiotically.
“Quite,” said the sergeant.
Chapter VI
The Death of the Party
MISS WITHERS HAD STARTED swiftly down the hall, but the sergeant touched her arm and shook his head. “Better not,” he advised.
“But I must see for myself…”
“They’ve taken the body away, what they could scrape up of it. The lift car is being held for repair at the top of the shaft, and so he struck on the concrete floor. It wasn’t a pretty sight, my dear lady. When a man falls that far and strikes stone…”
Miss Withers nodded impatiently. “I know, I know. But how did it happen? Accident, suicide or…”
“That I don’t know,” admitted Sergeant Secker. “Area Superintendent Filsom is in charge. But dear old Cannon told me to toddle over and see if it had anything to do with the deaths on board the American Diplomat. Filsom thinks it’s suicide, or death by misadventure. The lift was out of order and plainly marked so. Door was locked and supposedly could be unlocked only from the shaft. Although—”
“Did you make an attempt to unlock it from this side?”
The sergeant grinned. “I did. And—I succeeded. Though it couldn’t have happened accidentally, even if the fellow had mistaken the lift for one of the automatic ones that you work yourself. It was a business of squeezing my hand through a narrow grating and fumbling for the catch.”
“Then why the death by misadventure idea?”
“You see,” explained the sergeant, “this Todd chap seems to have been jolly tight when it happened. The police surgeon is at his autopsy now, but he smelled the schnapps when he took his first look at the corpse. And an American dead drunk is likely to do anything.”
“Um,” said Miss Withers doubtfully. She proceeded slowly along the hall until she came to the first elevator rank. “Is this the one?”
“Right.”
She peered at the latched door, shook it carefully, and looked dubious. Then, as the sergeant pointed out how he had put his hand through the grating, she tried, and found it a narrow squeeze. By dint of much forcing, she got her long thin hand through and opened the door. She looked down the dizzy shaft and saw the bright glare of a light at the bottom. Men were doing something to the place… she swung the door shut and heard the catch click into place.
“He’d been dead about five hours when the surgeon looked at him,” went on Secker. “That sets the dive at approximately two o’clock. Though no one heard anything.”
“I see,” said Miss Hildegarde Withers, who as yet saw nothing at all.
“Filsom thinks that young Todd drank himself into a state of melancholia and then decided to kill himself this way,” went on the sergeant.
“Melancholia fiddlesticks,” Miss Withers retorted. “Why should he be melancholy when he drank? Todd was more the type to get hilariously gay. He was no old souse, you know. From what I understand, he’s been spending his last four years or so in hard work and athletics, a regular grind, and that this was a vacation for him, in a way.”
“Right you are. But I understand that something happened on the boat—”
“Yes—Andy Todd played a mean practical joke and caused infinite unhappiness to several people. He was what we call the Life of the Party, an obnoxious type. But I can’t imagine his developing remorse.”
“That’s what I wanted to ask you about,” the sergeant admitted. “You see, there was a letter—”
Now Miss Withers knew. “A letter with a—” she stopped.
The sergeant produced from his pocket an envelope bordered with black. There was an unpleasant brownish stain on one corner. He drew from it a sheet of notepaper, covered with black ink except in the center, where had been pasted some scraps of cream-colored paper, paper with a blue line running through it. “This was in his pocket when he fell,” said Secker. “Ever see anything like it before?”
The message was short. “And as for you, cruel silly fool whose hurt vanity made you crucify one who hardly knew you existed, I only wish that when death finds you, you will be as glad to die as I shall be…”
“Woman’s writing,” said the sergeant. “Ever see it before?”
“I never saw that letter before,” Miss Withers assured him, not without guile.
She was thoughtful for a moment. “So Mr. Filsom of the Yard thinks that this note shamed Todd into jumping down the elevator shaft?”
Secker nodded. “It’s Rosemary Fraser’s writing. We’ve checked up on that. Or a better imitation never existed. She must have sent this to Todd before her death. Though, of course, that presupposes that she knew Noel was going to kill her, or at least suspected it.”
“Not necessarily,” said Miss Withers tartly. “Let me see. Do you have apples in England?”
“Eh? Why—of course, russets, pippins…”
“Well, we have an American expression which means a lot,” she told him. “It’s ‘apple-sauce.’ And you may quote me.” She led the way toward the near-by stair. “Todd’s room is on the third floor, you said?”
“I didn’t say,” the sergeant admitted. “But it is. Superintendent Filsom is down, there now, watching the fingerprint men trying to get something off the lift door. But there doesn’t seem to be much there.”
“I don’t suppose there’s any use trying any other door?” asked Miss Withers casually. “After all, this hotel has six floors, each with doors opening into that shaft.”
“He’d hardly c
limb up the stairs in order to do a longer dive,” said Secker with a smile. “Besides, that lift door on the third floor was open wide. The maid noticed it this morning, and that’s how the body was discovered.”
They came down to the third floor, where three men with rusty brown cameras were puttering about the elevator door. When the sergeant inquired for Superintendent Filsom, one of the print men gestured down the hall.
They found Filsom and an inspector engaged in rifling the room of the dead Rhodes scholar.
The door was ajar. Sergeant Secker pushed it open and cleared his throat. But Superintendent Filsom was summing things up for the benefit of his aide. “It interlocks perfectly with the information in Cannon’s memo on the Noel suicide,” he declared. “Before she died, and while either in fear of death or considering suicide, the Fraser girl wrote a note to Andrew Todd, scoring off him for having made game of her. He brooded over it, and last night he emptied this bottle of whisky and then jumped down the unused lift shaft.”
Filsom was holding a single empty quart bottle. He added it to the collection on the bureau, which comprised a few books, two cameras, and other odds and ends. Then he looked up and saw he had callers.
“This is the lady who was so helpful to Chief Inspector Cannon on the boat,” said Secker. But the superintendent was unimpressed. He surveyed Miss Withers with a cold and fishy eye.
“Good of you t’trouble,” he said. “Don’t believe I’ve any questions after all. Just another case of a skylarking Yankee lad who went off his head.”
“Of course,” agreed the school teacher. “Excuse me asking, but you’re sure that this was the bottle he drank from?” She pointed to the single “dead soldier.”
“Eh? Of course. No other bottle of liquor in the room. One was enough to put him off his course, I’m afraid.” As a sign that the interview was over, Filsom turned back to his examination of the dead man’s effects. He picked up the smaller camera. “Remember to have these films printed in the lab,” he reminded the inspector.
Miss Withers was turning away when she heard a sharp click. Filsom had touched the spring of the camera, and from where its lens should have been there leaped a rather lifelike imitation of a wriggling snake, which struck the inspector in the pit of the stomach. He did not flinch, but he turned two shades paler.
Sergeant Secker vented a small sound which was very like the choked-off crow of a rooster at daybreak. But Miss Withers only smiled, a little sadly.
“He was the Life of the Party,” she said softly. “Poor Andy Todd—that should be his epitaph.”
The two Yard officials were trying to get the serpent of wire and cloth back into its box. “If I can be of any further help—” Miss Withers suggested hopefully.
Filsom shook his head. “No, no, not at all. Sorry you were troubled. But it was the sergeant’s idea. Secker here is a new man, and he doesn’t believe yet that as far as the police are concerned two and two always make four.”
The superintendent and his attendant inspector shared a booming laugh, and Sergeant Secker, flushing a bit, led Miss Withers out into the hall.
“Thinks I’ll spread the story of his mistaking a jack-in-the-box for a camera,” said the young man. “Well, just to pay him for getting so windy, I shall!”
“Never mind,” Miss Withers comforted him. “I’ve learned that sometimes a detective has to make two and two into six, at the very least.”
The sergeant stared at her. “Pardon? You’ve been mixed up in this sort of thing before, then?”
Miss Withers did not wish to enlighten him. “As an observer, you know. I rather enjoy the excitement.”
“Then you don’t blame me for dragging you out of bed before you’ve had your tea?” The sergeant was apologetic. “You see, perhaps I’m getting overanxious and all that, but Cannon has solved his Noel suicide and Filsom has solved his Todd suicide—and I’m left with the Rosemary Fraser disappearance. And I’m not so sure that it has been explained, in spite of what is happening…”
“I could suggest one alternative,” said Miss Withers wickedly. “Why not decide that Rosemary Fraser committed suicide, too?”
“And make it unanimous? I wish I could,” said Secker sadly. “But somehow I feel that there must be a murder mystery mixed up in all these deaths. There’s got to be!”
“Don’t you worry,” Miss Withers advised him as she prepared to take her departure in search of a belated breakfast, “there’s murder enough hereabouts. I’ve been close to homicide before, and I can smell it.”
The sergeant looked hopeful. “I don’t suppose you can smell a murderer or so in the neighborhood?”
“Too many cold trails,” Miss Withers told him. “But I’ll make you a promise: if I strike a hot scent, I’ll go into full cry.”
“Bargain!” said the worried young sergeant. He was about to say something more when he heard his name bellowed from the doorway where Filsom lurked. He strode away, whistling an old tune that Miss Withers recognized with a smile:
“Our feelings we with difficulty smother, when constabulary duty’s to be done,
Ah, take one consideration with another—a policeman’s lot is not a happy one!”
That afternoon saw the inquest into the death of Peter Noel, soldier of misfortune and bar steward. A police constable called upon Miss Withers shortly before lunch time to remind her that her presence would be necessary. She found that the court at which the inquest sat was far out in Stepney, and although she started out early enough, armed with a folding map of the city, it took her two tube rides, three buses, and finally a taxicab, to get to the ugly little red stone building, arriving just after the ceremony had begun.
She was buttonholed in the hall by Sergeant Secker. “I say,” he greeted her, “you’re late. Coroner Maggers’ll be harsh with you. He’s a great one for keeping up his dignity.”
“Well, then, hadn’t I ought to be getting in?”
Secker shook his head. “I’ve a message,” he told her quickly. “From the D.I. Cannon tried to get this affair postponed, on account of the business that happened this morning. But Maggers wouldn’t allow it. Necessary, he said, to get on with it before the Diplomat sails for the States on Friday. So I was told to ask you if the question should arise, as it probably won’t, not to mention any more than you can help about the disappearance of Rosemary Fraser. And most particularly not to mention any doubts you may have as to Noel’s killing her.”
Miss Withers scrutinized his open countenance. “You mean that the Yard has doubts of its own in that respect?”
The sergeant shook his head noncommittally. “Very well,” said Miss Withers. “I can guess as well as the Yard—perhaps better. But tell me one thing. You know of the pages that were torn from Rosemary Fraser’s diary. You also know that they disappeared, supposedly carried along with her or destroyed by her. But was the terrific combing that the Customs gave my baggage an attempt to find those pages, on behalf of you people at the Yard?”
The sergeant put on a glazed and slightly worried look. But Miss Withers, who was a little nettled at discovering the London police more alive than she had imagined, pressed on.
“Tell me that, or I’ll see that the coroner and the newspapers get all the facts and fancies that I have,” she threatened.
“As a matter of fact,” Sergeant Secker stiffly admitted, “we did request that the baggage of the passengers be scrutinized a bit more than usual. On my word, you got it no worse than the others.”
“And you found—?”
“I say,” protested the sergeant. “I can’t spill things to you, you know.” But, all the same, Miss Withers knew by the look in his face that in spite of the fine-comb treatment of the luggage, the police had drawn a blank.
“And the sheets torn from Rosemary’s diary would have made a bulky packet in anyone’s clothing, too,” she thought aloud. “Yet—I’ll stake my bottom dollar that they came off the ship.”
The sergeant nearly nodded, but caught himse
lf in time and tried to become very official indeed. “You’d better be getting inside,” he advised her.
She found the small courtroom well filled with spectators, a crowded table for the gentlemen of the press, and on the front rows of wooden benches so many of her recent shipmates that a certain air of reunion and intimacy pervaded the grim occasion. The guardian at the door escorted her to a seat between Dr. Waite and the Honorable Emily.
The doctor looked more than a bit seedy, she thought. He was staring at Coroner Maggers, a rotund and Tweedledumish figure with a roaring voice, who just at the moment was engaged in giving Captain Everett a rather bad time of it.
“You haven’t missed much,” the doctor whispered to her as she sat down. “They’re still arguing over the fellow’s identity.”
“Captain Everett,” roared Maggers, “you have identified the body of the deceased as that of one Peter Noel, bar-steward and assistant steward aboard your ship. Will you tell the jury just how long he has been in your employ?”
Captain Everett said testily that he did not “employ” the personnel of his crews. “Noel has been with the ship since early in January,” he explained. “Making eight voyages in all.”
“Was his conduct entirely satisfactory to his superiors and to you?”
The captain paused. “Yes,” he said. “And again, no.”
“What? What do you mean by that?”
“Satisfactory to me,” said the captain. “But there was some trouble on our July voyage. We make the round trip between New York and the Port of London once a month, you know. On that trip, as I learned later, Noel became friendly with a passenger, a wealthy widow from Minneapolis whose name I would rather not make public. They became engaged, I understand, and since she had two grown sons of Noel’s age, the family tried to make trouble. Lawyers got in touch with officials of the Line, and an investigation was made, during which time Noel was laid off from his regular duties.”
Puzzle of the Silver Persian Page 9
