“Thank you.”
Habling studied her thoughtfully.
“So closely on what, Miss Nest?”
“Mabel’s mother passed away, too, this evening. Just as the stars came out.”
“Did you say—mother?”
“Yes, Mr. Habling. It’s not strange that you never heard about her. Nobody had, really, ever since she was placed in the sanitarium, oh so many sad years ago, so shortly after her husband’s terrible, pitiable death. Mr. Appleson burned up. It was all so terrible.”
Just what is this, Habling wondered while a chill, premonitory hand clutched the political section of his heart. A sanitariumed mother—insanity? alcoholism?—a burnt up father—the sainted fields of the State Department seemed brushed with an ugly wind. Not, thank heaven, that anything was as yet official or in the hands of the press.
“Mrs. Appleson was under treatment for her—nerves, Miss Nest?”
“Well no, not honestly, although in a way yes, because basically it was her nerves that caused her to overdrink. To help her forget. You see, it was right here out on the lake in the naphtha launch they had those days that it happened, when Mabel was just a little girl. Such a terrible thing.”
“No, I’m afraid I don’t quite see.”
“It was all so pitifully useless, just because of a doll, one that Mr. Appleson had brought Mabel from Paris and she was so awfully, so possessively fond of it. I myself was standing on the dock when the launch burst into flames, and I could hear Mabel from across the waters screaming that Lucy must be saved. Lucy was the name she had given the doll.”
“Those old naphtha launches were positive fire traps.”
“I know. Well, Mr. Appleson shoved Mrs. Appleson and Mabel overboard and then—there was nothing, nothing he had ever denied Mabel, principally, I think, because he was always trying to make it up to her for not being pretty—at any rate, he dashed back into the cabin to get the doll for her and that was when the tank of naphtha exploded.”
Miss Nest (she had never been so choked up with grief in her life, or so tired) simply could not suppress her tongue. A confused urging seemed impelling her to explain clearly to these gentlemen that Mrs. Appleson had been placed in the sanitarium through no fault of her own, that no taint should rest on the name of this woman whom she so earnestly had loved.
“Surely you must understand, Mr. Habling, how such a moment never really could be effaced—the terrible picture, after I had helped Mrs. Appleson and Mabel onto the dock, of the wind blowing the launch over toward us, very charred and sort of skeletonized by the fierce heat, and the glimpse of something that we felt was Mr. Appleson through one of the cabin windows. They were large and square, you know, with silk curtains—oh Jenny, my dear, I never realized you had come.”
Jenny kissed Miss Nest and said, “I’ve been here for several minutes. You’ve had a trying time.”
“In a way it was very peaceful. She just closed her eyes. There was no pain about it. It was a lovely way to die, and she had the little things she loved where she could touch them. These, dear.”
Miss Nest opened a capacious lizard handbag and placed on a coffee table beside her chair the souvenirs of sentiment that Mabel had gone to fetch for mama when mama had entered the sanitarium and when Mabel thus had met Lewis.
“This locket,” Miss Nest babbled helplessly, tenderly on, “contains a baby clipping of Mr. Appleson’s hair, and this is the prayer book that Mrs. Appleson carried to her first Anglican Communion. And this poison ring is one of the cotillion favors for the ladies when Mabel made her debut. I never did understand why Mrs. Appleson would wish to keep it near her, and I remember how horrified I was when Mabel not only insisted on their being the favors but also insisted on their being perfect, working replicas of the medieval anello della morte—those deadly rings that the Borgias went in for—poison wells and everything. Actually, the whole concept of the debut was outrageous but Mabel was a terribly headstrong girl. Perhaps it was a deliberate gesture to capitalize on her lack of good looks, but the theme for the cotillion was a bal masque based on the Chamber of Horrors in Madame Tussaud’s Waxworks, and Mabel went as the Man in the Iron Mask.”
In the manner that ice will form thinly, fearfully cold, paralyzing into a set shape the facial muscles and the entire body, such was the effect that Miss Nest’s soft narration was having first on Dr. Busby, then on Habling, and also on Jenny. Whereas until this instant there had been no tiniest thought of such a thing, the word was now loosed to spread its filaments of suspicion and black doubts. Poison. And the ring.
Habling had idly noticed its replica on Mabel’s finger during dinner, both because of its oddity of design and its foreignness to the blaze of her usual jewels. He was beginning to feel as though a battering ram had just pumped him one in the stomach. There was that woodchuck cub that Etienne had been burying, with its inexplicable death—no—no—with all his trained nerves Habling wanted to shove the baleful thoughts away. Not for Mabel’s sake, but for his own.
With the chameleon ease of a first-fiddle diplomat his acute sense of self-preservation transformed his interest in Mabel and his liking for her into a bland limbo where, while still straddling the fence, he didn’t give a continental hoot about her fortunes one way or the other. He wanted no chance association (however innocent) of any notorious murder scandal to fringe upon the silken luster of his career.
Even his love seemed remarkably to shrivel under the scorch of this problematical, lurid publicity. Jenny herself was starting to loom in his eyes no longer as a desirable, dewy flower but more unhappily as the protégé, the unofficially adopted daughter of, when you came right down to it, a conjectural murderess. Never of such picky stuff had Caesar’s wife been made.
Yes, shortly it might be wise to have a kindly talk with her, perhaps utilizing the disparity in their ages and making its tenor a paternal one, first about withholding their engagement from the press because of the tragic surrounding circumstances and then—his well-bred heart did bleed a little—he would see about sliding completely out from under.
Jenny also had noted the ring’s replica during dinner when Mabel had announced the engagement and proposed the toast, and again just recently when they had been sympathizing Mabel into bed. It was a sickly thing, Jenny thought as she touched her own cheek, how clammy and cold your face could get so suddenly. Just from a thought.
It was while giving Mabel the injection that the ring had come to Dr. Busby’s attention, on the middle finger of the right hand that lay so grossly on the counterpane. He had thought it an interesting ring. Damned odd, he now said to himself. He stood up, saying nothing to the others, and went upstairs. Habling’s eyes followed him unhappily. There was little use, he guessed, in even hoping for the best.
“So I felt it wiser,” Miss Nest was saying, still clenched in her unstrung tiredness, “not to leave them lying around. It isn’t that one doesn’t trust the nurses or attendants in an institution but there is always the souvenir idea, like taking spoons from hotel tables. And these little mementos so preciously now belong to Mabel.”
What a wretchedly ironical way of putting it, Habling thought. That precious ring could be capable of heading Mabel toward the chair, or at least she would be corked up for the rest of her life in jail. He considered the picture with an absent detachment. It would kill her in time just as definitely as she had killed Lewis, if she had killed Lewis.
“And then when Mr. Athcote arrived to take charge, Mr. Deston Athcote—he served as attorney for both Mrs. Appleson’s and Mabel’s affairs—I engaged an automobile and was driven directly here. I must be with Mabel when she goes to the sanitarium chapel where her mother will rest until the funeral arrangements, and also take care of the secretarial work that is required during these moments of sorrow.” She noticed Dr. Busby returning down the stairs and said as he joined them, “How is Mrs. Gervais, Doctor?”
“Sleeping.”
“When she wakes in the morning will she be abl
e to travel?”
He looked at her strangely and with, for herself, great kindliness.
“Yes, I think it almost a certainty, Miss Nest, that she will.”
* * * *
This, Mabel thought, must be the way the Count of Monte Cristo had felt. The world was hers. She stretched and yawned luxuriously, padding the elbows of her heavy arms and exposing widely the strong, uncavitied teeth that were all her own. She admired the morning’s clarion splendor as sunshine streamed toward her bed from the windows.
Her eyes were beguiled by four folded notes that her maid had placed on the breakfast tray. She drank some coffee before unfolding the topmost one. It covered with an unfamiliar, difficult script the best part of a sheet of engraved chalet stationery.
“I am absenting myself, my dear Madame Gervais, from your service for the morning hours. Sergeant Catt who on this instant has arrived instructs me that the body of our kindredly beloved Hyacinth has been found and is en route to the Clatus Duffy funeral establishment in Saranac Lake. I am on fire to be by his side and in respectfid haste I sign my name, Etienne”
Mabel crumpled the paper and dropped it on the carpet. What niggling fools. What silly and inconsequential fools were the little people. She packed in more coffee before picking up the next note and recognizing Wilma Downsberry s sprawling hand. How very odd that Wilma should write—
“Mabel darling—the stupidest thing, but God knows you know how Washington works and Jimsey’s head always has been the perfect sieve”—Jimsey was Wilma’s detestable pet name for the senator “—a closed committee meeting for tonight and my dear he had forgotten all about it! Alden has chartered a plane and is giving us all a lift and everybody s been awfully nice about our leaving but of course, as Alden pointed out, they would always know where to find us, and isn’t it simply marvelous the power there is in official pull? Good-by now, darling—they’re simply screaming for me to rush—”
A vein started throbbing in Mabel’s temple. She set the note aside and picked up the next, which was from Veronica Olcott and curtly, typically frank.
“Mabel, my own rat’s tail is joining the rest of them in the stampede down the hawsers. V.”
The throbbing in her temple was really growing quite painful, and Mabel shut her eyes for a second before going on to the last note, which was signed by Alden Habling.
“I know how well you will understand. With the foreign situation in its delicate balance over the wretched Suez Canal contretemps and the Russian tantrums—when no remotest approach of unfortunate publicity must be opened toward the Department—but you are far too clever to require me to specify. As Jenny herself will tell you, even my deep fondness for her has had to be sacrificed for the Department’s good. Frankly, she seemed almost too agreeable to my suggestion that we mutually release one another, and I suspect a likelier, shall we say a less ripened suitor in the offing. From one remark made by her I received the impression that his name might be Aaron Stone. I know, we all know that you will want to retire from the social and political scene until this unhappy hour shall have blown over. We shall respect, Mabel, your privacy.”
Possibly an aspirin would relieve this damning ache that not only was pounding her head but submerging her into a sulphurous ocean of bewilderment. She went into the bathroom and swallowed two tablets, and the cold water seemed to refresh her.
Fact, in its naked enormity, still evaded her and her mind delicately touched on only such outlying tendrils as it could rationalize. Habling’s note when translated from its diplomatic gobbledygook apparently was to let her know that her Washington ambitions were squashed. But why? What difference now from the sympathetic cordiality of last night? And the bust-up with Jenny? The others? The Olcotts, the Downsberrys, the rude, callous flight, the stampede (as Veronica had put it) of rats from a sinking ship. Sinking—she? Mabel?
Ah—a thought—could Miss Nest have telephoned earlier in the morning and one of them—Habling? Downsberry? Olcott?—have taken the call because of Etienne’s absence and so have discovered about the sanitarium and mama?
They would naturally suspect the worst—lunacy—alcoholism—whatever—taints to be shuddered at like the plague by those in the electorate or appointive limelight. A shuddering, yes, but surely not a fire-alarm exit. Surely no sufficient cause for that guillotine brutality which was (as Mabel knew from frequently having used it) Washington’s most favored technique.
She let the water run in the tub to that modest level which was sufficient to accommodate without overflow her big body displacement. She lowered herself into its warmth.
The relaxation did wonders for her, and while she dressed Mabel again began to feel more her natural self. Revenge. A devouring hate flared through her. If the guillotine were to be used she too would use it. Lavishly. Her crackling eyes envisioned a Washington strewn with heads. Ah the power and the strength that lay in great wealth! Nobody, nothing could take that weapon from her. Never.
She went downstairs in a state of militant arrogance. Her eye first noted Sergeant Catt and Dr. Busby over by the fireplace. How solemnly they watched her. Then she found herself stopped dead by the sight of Miss Nest.
Miss Nest came toward her. Miss Nest said, “Mabel, your mother is dead.”
“Why are you here?”
Oddly, Sergeant Catt was at her side and holding some objects in his hand.
“She came, Mrs. Gervais,” Catt said, handing them without any apparent reason to her, “to give you these.”
All right. Through her confusion Mabel recognized them for what they were. And so mama was dead.
“When?” asked Mabel.
“Last evening, Mabel.”
“You left her?”
“Mr. Athcote came.”
“I see.”
Mabel walked toward a chair by the hearth and sat down, moving not with her customary coordinated lightness, but heavily, as though these things of mama’s were weighting her down. They were on her lap. The ivory-bound prayer book, the locket, the—
Confusion deepened. The poison ring had not been among the mementos she had fetched for mama from the chalet. It must be the one that mama had received as a cotillion favor and mama had kept it, heaven knew why, among the other little things she cherished.
Mabel’s cold, bewildered eyes moved to the third finger of her right hand and studied its bareness. Had she removed the ring last night? She didn’t remember doing so. So busily had she been wrapped in playing her nerve-shaken role for Dr. Busby’s benefit that she recalled but little of anything up to the point where he had put her to sleep, and of course from then on she recalled nothing at all.
Was this the ring—
“How did this get here?”
“Miss Nest brought it,” Dr. Busby said. “I removed its replica from your finger last night. This one of your mother’s had made me curious. After Miss Nest had described it.”
She looked at him frostily (it was a clammish frost, one that had its origin in the bitter marrow of her rigid, icing bones), looked searchingly into the pitiless fixity of his eyes.
“Why?”
“I wanted to have it examined by a laboratory chemist. I wanted to smell it.”
“Smell?”
“We found a noticeable odor of nicotine. Some of the alkaloid had remained in the poison well. They are retaining that ring as evidence, Mrs. Gervais. Also the body of the woodchuck. Etienne was puzzled by its death and had asked me whether I had an opinion that could explain.”
“No trace—”
“On the contrary. The tests will be even more conclusive than will Mr. Gervais’s autopsy because of the animal’s small body. Far less diffusion, greater concentration, as I feel sure you will understand. And as Sergeant Catt has pointed out, the woodchuck will add decisively to the proof both of intent and premeditation.”
Mabel did understand. In fact hardly ever before had her brilliant and learned mind been working as clearly. So these keepsakes of mama’s—she gathered the
prayer book and the locket of papa’s hair and the ring in the grip of one powerful hand.
A thunderbolt of fury screamed its blasting torture through her body as she hurled the trifles blindly into the hearth’s leaping flames while the fury went right on riding its scream astride the clangor of her voice—
“Mama—damn you, oh damn you! You’ve killed me.”
Mabel was, as usual, quite right.
MURDER HUNCH, by John Benton
Originally published in Thrilling Detective, August 1951.
The two men crouched in the shadows at the rear of the small private garage, waiting in the stillness of the autumn night. Ed Corey held an automatic ready, while Dan Stoll clutched a .38 revolver. Their gaze centered on the brush and trees off to their right.
“If he comes this way at all it’s likely to be from that direction,” Corey said softly. “And the moment he spots us he’ll start shooting.”
“Not if we shoot first,” Stoll said. “But that’s against police regulations. We’re supposed to give a man a chance to surrender peacefully to the Law.”
“Oh, sure,” said Corey. “Even a killer like Ben Regan. Fat chance he’d give us.” There was something about this job that Ed Corey didn’t like at all. In the ten years he had been a detective on the Center City police force he had always believed in playing hunches, and he had a feeling that there would be serious trouble before this night was over.
Ben Regan was a local gunman who was wanted as a murder suspect, but he had been keeping out of sight for the past few days and nights. He had been seen coming out of Paul Cooper’s jewelry store at seven o’clock Monday night, and shortly after Walter Henderson, who had left a watch to be repaired, had walked into the shop and found the jeweler lying dead behind the counter. He had been shot in the heart, and the store’s safe had been ransacked.
Corey and Stoll had been given the job of trying to find Ben Regan and bring him in for questioning. They had searched the town without much success. If anyone knew where Regan was they weren’t talking.
The Murder Megapack Page 10
