“There,” I informed myself exultantly, “I defy anyone to see through that stratagem.”
I believe I have said that there is the germ of an amateur detective in all of us. Certainly I have never felt prouder of anything in my life than of the subtle manner in which I had contrived to convey Hilda Anthony’s message to Inspector Bunyan without, as I had every reason to believe, having given either her or myself away.
Needless to say, the words which I penned under Policeman Sweeney’s starting eyes in no particular corresponded with those I dictated aloud. They said in essence that the Anthony woman was scared for her life and ready to break the case and requested Inspector Bunyan to meet her in the parlour at eleven-fifteen, and for everybody’s sake to come armed and on the dot.
It was, I remember, a quarter of eleven when I returned to the lobby, my heart hammering against my ribs. Hilda Anthony was standing near the front door, staring out at the bright April sunshine and the freshly washed spring world. Smothering a yawn, she tucked her book under her arm without once glancing in my direction.
“Of all the dopey places to be stuck in!” she remarked in her usual blasé and disdainful manner. “Darned if I don’t get a tube of amytal tablets and sleep the blasted clock around.”
She strolled on into the drugstore, and Stephen Lansing smiled cynically. “Queer how people always get sore at the clock for their own sins,” he said and tossed his black slouch hat at the face of the large Western Union timepiece which hangs directly over the desk.
“Look out, you clown!” cried Howard. “Now see what you’ve done.”
Stephen laughed. His hat had lodged on the top of the clock where it stayed until, assisted by Polly, he climbed upon a chair and after varied exaggerated manoeuvres finally succeeded in dislodging it. Hilda Anthony, a small package in her hands, sauntered back through the lobby. “Good night, all,” she cried flippantly, “and pleasant dreams.”
I did not like her, but I was compelled to admire the poise with which, stifling another yawn, she walked languidly into the elevator, her exotic face expressing nothing except listless ennui. The elevator creaked upward, and I sank back upon the divan, suddenly aware that I had been painfully and in a state of complete funk holding my breath. It was then I discovered that both little Mrs Adair and my afghan had disappeared.
“So much for the wonderful watchdog you turned out to be,” I told myself crossly, trying to remember if I had seen either the lady or the shawl since my return to the lobby.
Polly Lawson decided to go to her room and ‘powder the old nose,’ as she explained brightly. Stephen Lansing walked over to the elevator with her and then carelessly, as if by an oversight, got in beside her and was slowly borne upward. Howard, scowling ferociously, did not linger long about stamping off up the stairs.
It seemed to me, watching the creeping progress of the minute hands of the clock, that I had never seen the lobby so deserted.
There was, at eleven-fifteen, exactly nobody there except myself and Letty Jones, who was scratching her chin with the end of the stubby cedar pencil tied to the old-fashioned register while she stared pensively straight at me.
“Why doesn’t the inspector come?” I asked myself feverishly.
And then the hands of the clock were pointing to twenty minutes after eleven and from the second floor over my head came a woman’s scream, a scream of such piercing agony that I cowered like a whipped animal. That it was Hilda Anthony I seem to have recognized instantly. I was halfway up the stairs when she screamed again, one long-drawn-out shriek of such intolerable anguish, I stumbled and nearly fell.
She was lying on the floor by the grate, her once-exquisite face horribly repeated and magnified in the convex mirror over the mantel.
Her face was exquisite no longer. Acid was eating the chiselled features and running down onto the throat where there were cruel marks, already turning livid.
The head was oddly twisted over on one shoulder, the arms bound to the side, the eyes sightless, burned like the once-lovely face to a raw red mass of exposed tissue. But she was not quite dead when I knelt beside her, for her body quivered horribly for an instant and then went limp, while through her terribly disfigured ups bubbled a bloody froth.
“So he is up to his old tricks,” murmured the inspector behind me. “Not content with breaking her neck, he had to destroy her fatal beauty.”
I was sobbing uncontrollably. “Why, why, in God’s name were you late?” I wailed.
“I am not late, Miss Adams. It is now exactly sixteen minutes after eleven.”
“But the clock in the lobby!” I protested.
“The clock in the lobby has been turned up at least ten minutes.”
“Oh!” I gasped.
“It is obvious what happened,” said the inspector grimly. “The murderer, having advanced the hands of the clock, lay in wait for his victim here. Behind those window drapes, I should say. The moment she came within reach he flung that rug about her, winding her up in it till she was as helpless as a mummy. Then, having broken her neck, he poured the contents of a bottle of acid down her face.”
“Oh! Oh heavens!” I whispered.
For not till then had I realized that the thing wrapped about Hilda Anthony’s lifeless body like a winding sheet, the thing which the inspector called a rug, was my rose and gold and amethyst afghan.
16
I do not know about the others, but I did not appear in the Coffee Shop that day for lunch. I was till nearly two being grilled, like a sardine between two thin slices of toast, by Inspector Bunyan and the local chief of police, who, in the emergency, came to the aid of the party. I have never admired short, fat, pompous men, and so far as I could judge, the chief’s only contribution to that prolonged and hectic conference in the parlour was a highly annoying trick of pulling his underlip out at frequent intervals and letting it fly back with a disconcerting “Pish!”
Others were summoned into the presence, questioned and dismissed, sometimes to be resummoned and questioned again; but Inspector Bunyan’s interest in me went on and on. If he was temporarily engaged with someone else, I was politely though firmly requested to remain at the inspector’s disposal. Steadily refusing to turn my head toward the spot where Hilda Anthony lay so horribly dead, I sat rigidly upright in one straight cane-bottomed chair until I felt positive I should wear the imprint so long as I lived.
When I was finally informed with ominous curtness that I might go ‘for the present,’ it was all I could do to totter into the elevator and point for down.
Although officially the Coffee Shop at the Richelieu is supposed to stay open until two, Cyril Fancher was just locking the doors when I stepped into the lobby. He knew of course, because everybody knew, that I had been to all intents and purposes in the custody of the police all during the luncheon hour; nevertheless, giving me a dour look, he strolled past me without a word. Had I been myself, I should have told him in no uncertain language what I thought of his cavalier treatment of one of the hotel’s best-paying guests. However, I was too exhausted and depressed even to take a crack at Cyril, which speaks volumes, and I had no desire for food. The very thought made me a little ill.
“Tough going, eh, Adelaide?” murmured Stephen, strolling over to the divan on which I had slumped down.
I nodded feebly. I have had to be a self-reliant person, but just then I felt old and forlorn and helpless. I dare say my eyes looked it, for Stephen put his hand on my arm.
“Brace up,” he said gently. “Keep the old lip upper stiff or words to that effect.”
There had been a time when I should have resented both his affectionate tone and the small caressing gesture, but not in my then low state of resistance. I am forced to admit that, while I’ve never had any patience with clinging vines, I even reached up and clutched his hand.
Continuing to pat me in a very soothing manner, Stephen went on cheerfully, “What you need, Adelaide, is something to back up your ribs.”
‘’
I’m not hungry,” I said wearily. “Privately, I doubt if I ever shall be again.”
“That clinches it,” he said. “When a stout guy like you starts weakening in the pinches, he requires fodder in a hurry and plenty of it. Come on, Adelaide, here’s where for once in your life you perch on a stool in the old drugstore like the rest of the little floozies and consume large quantities of soup and coffee, to say nothing of a litter of hot dogs.”
I grasped at my old manner. “Young man,” I said sternly, “I never ate at a counter in my life. In my opinion, no well-brought up lady does. And I consider hot dogs an abomination to the eye and an insult to the stomach.”
My bluster had lost its bite. At least, it completely failed with Stephen. Still smiling cheerfully, he proceeded to escort me into the drugstore, where to my amazement the soup tasted remarkably good, as did the hot dogs with a liberal application of mustard.
Stephen’s grey eyes twinkled when I disposed of the second one, but he did not avail himself of his opportunity to rub my nose in it.
He merely grinned and asked softly, “Feeling better, Addie, old thing?”
I had never expected to permit Mr Stephen Lansing to employ the diminutive of my name, but I may as well confess that, after having been treated like a human pariah for several hours, it was comforting to be chummy with a fellow creature.
“Yes,” I said with a sigh, “I’m feeling better, though I’ll probably eat my next meal in the county jail.”
“As bad as that?” he inquired with a frown.
“According to the inspector,” I said, sighing again.
“Just what does he think he’s got against you, Adelaide?”
Drearily I outlined the inspector’s case. “From every possible source of evidence I was the only person, outside the police themselves, who knew about Hilda Anthony’s date in the parlour or that she intended to welsh. It appears that I was slightly too ingenious about that note to the inspector. I seem, in fact, to have very cleverly knotted the noose about my own neck. At any rate, I’m left holding the bag, all by myself, as it were. Moreover, I was practically discovered in the act by the inspector himself; at least, according to him, I was hovering over my victim when he arrived. And-and it was my afghan.”
“So you go and drape it all over the spot marked X for fear the police will fail to regard you with suspicion,” said Stephen dryly. “Bosh! Phooey! Or what have you?”
“The inspector believes we are dealing with a very subtle criminal, as you ought to know,” I reminded him in a resigned voice.
“He thinks it an extremely cunning finesse on my part to plant so obvious a clue against myself. He points out that every schoolboy nowadays has read enough detective stories to conclude that anybody in the cast is more likely to have committed the murder than the one who left his cuff link so conveniently on the scene.”
“But if you were in the lobby when the Anthony woman screamed, you have a cast-iron alibi, Adelaide. As that wall-eyed Letty Jones can testify if she will.”
“Letty Jones is not only wall-eyed,” I replied bitterly, “she goes into a coma every time she gets the chance on duty. And Letty’s sworn statement deposes that she had not been paying the least attention to me or anything else in the lobby for some moments before Hilda Anthony screamed, at which time Letty went all over faint – or so she says – and closed her eyes tightly, a habit she has, or claims to have, in thunderstorms and other crises. When she opened them, says she, she was alone. For that reason she cannot swear that I was not in the lobby when she heard the scream, but she is able to be very definite about the fact that I was not there a few seconds later.”
“Hell!” remarked Stephen feelingly.
“Quite so,” I agreed with emphasis, although I do not in general practice approve of profanity.
Stephen grinned and began to chant in an atrocious British accent that allegedly comic song which was so popular in cheap English music halls some seasons ago.
“Miss Otis regrets that she cannot dine with you tonight,
because, cheerio, she has a date to be lynched this afternoon.”
However, when I winced in spite of myself his smile faded and he said earnestly, “Don’t let it get you down, Adelaide. The inspector only looks like a fool. He knows as well as I do that, regardless of your pose, you’re too tender hearted to kill the proverbial gnat.”
I shrugged my shoulders. “I doubt if a one of us, including the inspector himself, knows how much we know or has the faintest idea what it means.”
He coloured. “Did you tell him about-about...” He paused and looked unhappy.
“About the rose on the fire escape and what window you bounced out of last night?” I asked and shook my head.
“No,” I said, “there are a number of things I haven’t told the inspector yet. Including the remarkable way in which you rang the lobby clock with your hat this morning. I haven’t told him for the adequate reason that, quite early in the session upstairs, he informed me that, things having reached the pass they have, he’d ask the questions and I could speak when and as spoken to.”
He drew a breath of relief, and I went on unsteadily, “But I shall have to tell him everything, Stephen. Right away! As soon as I can bring myself to demand his attention.”
“Yes?” he drawled, knitting his heavy brows.
My voice was pleading, almost tearful. “One can’t go on indefinitely, letting people be killed off as though – as though they were flies being swatted; not if one can do anything to prevent it.”
“Are you developing scruples at this late date, Adelaide?” asked Stephen in a hard voice and then added with a curl of his wide sardonic mouth, “Well, you know the risks as well as I do. So if you think its healthy let your conscience be your guide.”
Our eyes met, and for the second time in less than twelve hours I could not for the life of me decide if his mocking grin conveyed a warning or a threat.
At that moment Letty Jones, regarding me with resentment, put her head around the door which led into the lobby. “There’s a man to see you, Miss Adams,” she announced with a sniff.
It always provokes Letty to have to put herself to any trouble for the women guests at the Richelieu. Men are different. Letty belongs to that class of females which titters and gushes over everything masculine and thinks nothing too inconvenient to do for the lords of creation – which is what she would call them.
“A man to see me?” I repeated with a frown.
Letty sniffed again, nodded and withdrew, while Stephen with a chuckle assisted me off the stool on which, considering my bulk, I had been somewhat precariously mounted.
“I didn’t realize you had another gentleman friend, Addie,” he murmured with his old impudence.
As I came into the lobby Letty looked up from her rapt contemplation of the inkwell on the desk and shrugged one shoulder toward a young man, standing barely inside the front door and looking embarrassed in clean, though faded, overalls. I stared at him blankly. I had never to my knowledge seen him before, nor did I place him even when, advancing to meet me, he betrayed a slight limp.
“Miss Adams?” he inquired. I nodded, and he went on in an apologetic voice, “I know I haven’t any right to bother a lady like you and I realize I’m not dressed fit for a place like this. But” – he swallowed painfully – “Annie told me how kind you was to her.”
“Annie?”
“My wife, the-the girl who waits table here.”
“Your wife did you say?” I demanded in a puzzled voice.
He flushed. “She never told nobody she was married when she took the job. You see, I-I’m a lineman for the telegraph company, but I happened to have a little accident the other day. Twisted my ankle, mowing our front lawn, and I’ve got to lay off for a while. And-and Annie and me have had a lot of expense lately, her father’s death and all, and we’re trying to pay for our little house out on Biddle Street. Annie thought it would help a lot if she could get something to do till I go back
to work, so she-she-”
“Palmed herself off as a single girl,” I said, frowning.
“It’s not easy for a married woman to get a job since the depression,” he explained ruefully.
I was weakening, but I still retained my suspicions.
“And what might all this have to do with me?” I asked.
Little haggard lines leaped out on his sober homely face. “Annie said you was kind, kinder than anybody here,” he stammered. “And I-I thought... Something’s happened to Annie.”
“Something’s happened to her?”
“She didn’t come home yesterday afternoon. She didn’t come home last night. She-she hasn’t been home since-since yesterday morning.”
He was staring at the cap which he kept turning over and over in his hands, but I had seen the terror in his eyes. Poor young fellow, I thought to myself and was amazed that I could have been so deceived in a girl. Until that moment I would have sworn that the timid little waitress I had known was the last woman on earth to desert her shabby, though obviously decent, young husband.
“I’m sorry,” I said as gently as I could. “I know nothing about your wife except that she told Mr Fancher, the manager of the Coffee Shop, she was leaving yesterday for a better position.”
His voice was thin with distress. “But she didn’t leave.”
“What?”
“I’ve always walked to and from work with Annie.” His lips trembled. “I walked to work with Annie yesterday morning and yesterday afternoon I waited for her down on the corner, but-but she never came.”
My sympathies went out to the poor young husband. “I’m afraid your wife has-has...” My throat felt thick. “Annie undoubtedly had her reasons for not telling you that she was giving up her place here,” I said uncomfortably.
His eyes opened wide. “But Annie and I told each other everything. She never had a secret from me in her life, ma’am. Why why” – he was clutching my arm in his eagerness to convince me – “she even got me to teach her the Morse code, and often when we are around other people we telegraph little messages to each other. You know, tap them out with our knuckles on a chair or a table. We think it’s cute, ’cause nobody else is any the wiser.” His fingers tightened on my elbow. “I can’t believe it. My Annie wouldn’t leave me for another job or-or another man or anything.”
Murder a la Richelieu (American Queens of Crime Book 2) Page 17
