Murder a la Richelieu (American Queens of Crime Book 2)

by Anita Blackmon

  I could not speak and apparently neither could Stephen, and finally the inspector went softly on, “You did a very foolish thing yesterday afternoon, Miss Adams, when you changed your will.”

  I was trembling. “With so many tragic occurrences, I-I thought it a good idea.”

  “Nevertheless,” said the inspector sternly, “you very nearly signed your own death warrant when you had your lawyer come here after Lottie Mosby’s death and draw you up a new will, leaving everything of which you die possessed to Kathleen Adair.”

  Stephen was on his feet, his face convulsed with rage. “If you think you can pin these murders on-on...” He choked and could not go on.

  The inspector tapped the green spectacle case in his hand.

  “James Reid warned Kathleen Adair that his notes would land her on the gallows,” he said.

  “Oh,” I cried wildly, “it isn’t true!”

  “She killed Mosby to keep the notes out of her hands, then failed to find them herself, as she had previously failed to locate them when she searched the room which James Reid occupied and the ones where he died.”

  “It isn’t true!” I wailed again.

  “Kathleen Adair’s mother is off mentally, but in her case, also, murder is not her forte. However, she bequeathed the girl a tainted brain which, under the threat of exposure, took a homicidal turn.”

  “No, no!” I cried. “They aren’t even kin. I swear it! Mrs Adair is only Kathleen’s foster mother.”

  “Nonetheless, the girl is thrice a murderess,” said the inspector grimly. “She and the woman came here to worm their way into your good graces and so into your fortune, Miss Adams. When James Reid endangered the success of their plans, Kathleen Adair killed him.”

  “I don’t believe it!” I wailed.

  “Just as she killed the Anthony woman when, in fear of her own life, she was about to tell me that she overheard the Adair girl threatening Reid.”

  “It isn’t true!”

  “Kathleen Adair was seen on the stairs with your afghan, Miss Adams, not ten minutes before you discovered it wrapped about Hilda Anthony’s dead body.”

  “Oh! Oh! Oh!” I cried, beginning to sob wildly.

  Stephen put his hand on my shoulder. “This is all a tissue of circumstantial evidence, Adelaide. It doesn’t mean a thing.” He glared at the inspector. “And, by God, I’ll prove it!”

  The inspector smiled pleasantly. He was again smug and wonderfully hepped up over having stolen a march upon the federal man and covered himself with glory by breaking the case against all odds.

  “There’s one test we can make,” he said softly, “the infallibility of which neither of you can deny, if you’ll come with me.”

  Silently we followed him down to the fourth floor. Kathleen herself opened the door when the inspector knocked. She stared at us as if she did not see us. Her eyes, though perfectly dry, were heart breaking.

  “She’s dead,” she said dully. “Died a minute ago, just as the doctor said she would, as though she were falling asleep. I was holding her hand. She smiled at me so tenderly, and then her fingers loosened and-and she was gone.”

  “My poor child!” I cried.

  I would have drawn her into my arms, but the inspector stepped between us.

  “Roll up your sleeves, Miss Adair,” he said brusquely.

  She stared at him blankly. “My-my sleeves?”

  He caught her wrist and swiftly pushed up the sleeves of her frilly white blouse. Behind me Stephen Lansing gasped – it was almost a sob – but I could only go on staring at that half-moon of tiny red wounds on Kathleen’s exquisite arm just above her slender wrist.

  “Your teeth branded the murderess, Miss Adams,” said the inspector, “and James Reid’s notes will hang her.”

  “Oh!” gasped the girl. “I – I –”

  “You are under arrest for murder,” snapped the inspector.

  20

  In spite of Stephen’s furious protests and my impassioned pleas on her behalf, the inspector took Kathleen Adair away from the hotel in a police car within fifteen minutes of her sensational arrest.

  “But he can’t keep you in jail!” Stephen told her as they were leaving. “I’ll hire the best lawyers in the world. I’ll-I’ll...”

  The inspector shrugged his shoulders. “Come on, miss,” he interrupted and took her arm.

  The girl, with one piteous glance at Stephen, went. She had not spoken a word. She acted dazed, as if the series of tragic blows which she had suffered had numbed her senses – as I have no doubt they had.

  “I can’t bear it!” I sobbed.

  Stephen had his arm about me. “At any rate,” he said huskily, staring at the silent figure on the bed, “that poor soul is out of it all.”

  I gulped and nodded. “I’ll have her put away beautifully for Kathleen’s sake.”

  He tried to smile at me. “You’re such an old trump, Adelaide. God knows what I’d do without you.”

  “You mean,” I said tremulously, “what would I do without you?”

  I was leaning on his arm as we walked to the elevator, and morally I was relying on him in every way. Stephen was going to police headquarters. He was going to see Kathleen. He was going to set every possible wheel in motion to secure her release.

  “Because she isn’t guilty, she couldn’t be, Adelaide.”

  “Of course not,” I said, though neither of us could meet the other’s eyes, and I knew he was seeing, as I was, that terrible ring of angry red dents on my darling’s arm with which, God help me, I had placed the brand of Cain upon her.

  It was after seven, and Clarence had already taken over the elevator for the night. He was, plainly to be seen, bursting with the astounding news which, with Kathleen’s departure under heavy police guard, had swept through the hotel like a prairie fire.

  “Law,” he said, “I never would have thought that nice young lady was a murderer.”

  “She isn’t,” snapped Stephen, “and keep your big mouth shut about her.”

  “Yas suh,” quavered Clarence. “I never meant no harm.”

  “You are an inveterate gossip, Clarence,” I said severely, scowling at a dark rusty spot which I had acquired by brushing up against the wall of the elevator with my shoulder. “It’s a pity,” I went on tartly, “that you wouldn’t put in a little time keeping this old rattletrap clean, instead of busying yourself with matters which do not concern you.”

  “Yas ’m, Miss Adelaide,” stammered Clarence.

  As a rule I am indulgent of Clarence’s well-known tendency to shift a good many of his tasks off upon someone else, but on this occasion I felt if I did not snap at somebody I should explode of sheer internal combustion.

  “It is nothing less than a disgrace when the guests in this hotel cannot ride in the elevator without ruining their clothes,” I continued, rubbing at that dingy spot on my shoulder which appeared to be composed of equal parts of rust and oil and grime.

  I glanced at Stephen and made a grimace. “Looks almost like, like-”

  “Blood?” he finished for me. “So it does.”

  I shuddered. “I suppose, one will never get over feeling that the past three days have left their gory stain on all of us, beyond recall.”

  “I suppose not,” he murmured, his thoughts obviously elsewhere.

  He left me in the lobby. “I’ll call you, Adelaide, as soon as I’ve talked to the police,” he promised. “In the meanwhile, don’t worry. Everything will come out all right.”

  He smiled reassuringly and squeezed my hand, but I did not think he believed what he said, any more than I did. People stared at me with morbid curiosity that night. From every indication my poor thwarted romance had been dragged from its grave and thoroughly worked over. However, my expression must have been sufficiently intimidating, for not even Ella Trotter dared broach me upon the subject.

  I had no appetite, but neither was I in the humour to face down the battery of curious eyes trained upon me in the lobb
y, so I went on into the Coffee Shop, which at that late hour I had to myself until Sophie Scott crept in through the kitchen, looking like the wraith of herself, her plump cheeks haggard and flabby, shadows like bruises under her reddened eyes.

  She paused for a minute at my table, although there was no one I was less anxious to talk to. “I know you never liked Cyril, Adelaide,” she said heavily, “and I admit the way it’s all turned out, you were right about everything except that he loves me. Old and fat as I am, he loves me. He has had such a hard time, and I’ve been kind to him, Adelaide. Perhaps he looks upon me more as he might a mother, but he-he isn’t bad. If he did wicked things, that woman is to blame. He hated her. He tried to keep away from her. He used to shiver and moan in his sleep at night. Nothing would quiet him but for me to hold him in my arms as if he were a child.”

  I remembered then that Sophie had always wanted a baby. It had been the regret of her life that she and Tom Scott had been unable to have children.

  I put out my hand and awkwardly patted her arm. “I didn’t understand, Sophie; I’m sorry,” I faltered.

  She began to weep again, softly and wearily, as though she had no strength left for violent tears, and finally she moved slowly away, back through the kitchen, while I drearily cut up the food on my plate, without being able to eat a mouthful.

  Stephen had promised to telephone, but I had no desire to receive his message in the presence of an audience, even if I had had the effrontery to sit there, self-conscious and distressed, the cynosure of every speculative glance in the lobby. So right after eight, holding my head very high, I went up to my room. Once there it was a relief to let down and give way to my intense dejection. It was nine when Stephen called, and he still had been unable to get in touch with Kathleen at police headquarters.

  “They’re keeping both her and the inspector incommunicado,” he said savagely, “God knows why. But I’ll crash through their smoke screen if I have to get the authority from Washington.”

  He promised to call me again as soon as there was news, but time dragged on, and it was eleven and then half past and no word from Stephen. I was horribly tired, both physically and emotionally.

  Wearily I got into my bedroom slippers, removed my false curls, and scrubbed my face. I slipped off my dress. I thought it possible that if Stephen had nothing good to report he might come by my room instead of telephoning. It was my intention to replace my bridge if he knocked at my door. I took it out only because in that fracas in the basement it had been pressed into my upper jaw so hard by my assailant as to cut a small place in the gum.

  “The idea of their accusing that child of attacking me!” I fumed, beginning to pace the floor because I was too nervous to keep still.

  I thought nothing at first of that faint knocking sound above my head. Being an old building, the Richelieu Hotel is alive with queer snappings late at night. I do not know just how long I had subconsciously been aware of this particular noise or when I first noticed that it was different from any other I had heard the old floors and walls give out.

  “It reminds me of when we used to have a branch telegraph office in the lobby,” I remember thinking with a small part of my wits, the rest of my brain frantically engaged, as it had been all evening, with the plight of the girl who was the daughter of my heart if not of my body.

  “It sounds just like the click of a telegraph key,” I muttered absently and then stopped dead-still in my tracks, my face stinging as if I had broken out with prickly heat.

  After a while I tottered over to the telephone and called the desk. My voice was hoarse with excitement, and I had totally forgotten my bridge, the absence of which causes me to lisp unintelligibly. However, I finally made Pinky Dodge understand.

  “No,” he said, “Mr Lansing hasn’t come in, Miss Adelaide. I’m certain, because I’ve been watching for him myself, to-to offer my sympathy.”

  He hesitated. “Miss Adair seemed such a sweet young lady.”

  “Pinkthy,” I stuttered, “get Mr Lansing on the phoneth for me at onceth. You’ll find him at policeth headquarters. It’s terribly importanth.”

  “Yes, Miss Adelaide.”

  However, he called me back in a few minutes to say he had been unable to locate Stephen Lansing anywhere. My hand trembled on the receiver.

  “I musth see him as soon as he cometh, Pinkthy. You won’t forgeth?”

  “No, Miss Adelaide.”

  “No matterth how late?”

  “Yes, Miss Adelaide.”

  “And-and, Pinkthy,” I went on, my voice quivering uncontrollably, “could you possibly get me a copy of the Morse codeth?”

  “The Morse code, Miss Adelaide?” repeated Pinky as if not sure he had heard aright.

  “Yes, Pinkthy, and I musth have it at onceth. It’s a question of life and death.”

  “Yes, Miss Adelaide, I’ll bring it right up,” said Pinky wearily.

  I suppose there are few objects, however improbable, which in his twenty years as night clerk Pinkney Dodge had not been required to produce at a moment’s notice for some impatient guest.

  Nevertheless, he seldom failed to supply a demand, and I had no uneasiness on the delivery of the Morse code.

  “Pinkthy will locate one somewhere,” I told myself comfortably.

  It was the last comfortable moment I was to know for some time. I heard the elevator stop on my floor, and then somebody kicked at the door.

  “Who is it?” I called out, popping my bridge into my mouth.

  “It’s Pinky, Miss Adelaide.”

  I was fastening my dressing gown and having trouble with the snaps. “Just a minute, Pinky,” I spluttered, “till I hook this dratted thing. Women’s clothes always fasten in the most ungodly places.” Later I was to thank God the snaps were particularly stubborn that night!

  “Yes, Miss Adelaide.”

  Still muttering under my breath as I struggled with the last recalcitrant snap, I moved toward the door. At that moment the window on the fire escape slid noiselessly up before my very eyes.

  I had until then imagined that the expression ‘frozen in one’s tracks’ was a literary figure of speech. I was mistaken. As that window eased silently upward I literally turned to ice. I could not have taken a step or uttered a sound to save my life. I had room for only one thought. What in God’s name was lurking on the fire escape and how soon would it pounce?

  “Pull yourself together, Adelaide,” whispered Stephen Lansing. “Act, if you’ve never acted before. I’m not here, understand?”

  I stared at him, unable to believe my eyes. He was crouched down upon the landing of the fire escape, and in his hand he clutched a stubby blue-black revolver.

  “Don’t you dare faint, Addie,” he added.

  “Young man,” I snapped, “I never faint.”

  “Oh yeah?” murmured a hoarse voice.

  For the first time I realized that the bulky shadow below Stephen was Officer Sweeney. I had involuntarily kept my voice down to match theirs, but I had forgotten Pinkney Dodge until Stephen motioned toward the door.

  “Let him in,” he said and added in a grim voice, “Everything now depends on you.”

  “I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about,” I muttered crossly.

  “You will have,” said Stephen and again motioned to the door.

  “Remember, I’m not here.”

  My knees were trembling when I opened the door. I was still fumbling with the snap on my dressing gown. Thank heaven, the light was behind me. Pinky was standing there, gazing at me in his vague way, and he had a paper in his hand.

  “Is that the code, Pinky?” I asked and reached for it.

  Pinkney continued to gaze at me without speaking. It was then I became aware that there was something wrong with his eyes. It occurred to me that I had never met Pinky’s direct glance before. Usually his eyelids drooped, but they were wide open now and his pupils were unnaturally dilated.

  “You’ve brought it on yourself,�
�� he said as he stepped forward. “I’d rather not have hurt you.”

  I was having trouble getting my breath because of the knife which he was holding against my ribs, a common butcher knife from the Richelieu kitchen.

  “You’re the only person in this house who ever treated me as if I might be human,” Pinkney went on, his voice dull and lifeless yet somehow dreadful.

  I made a slight movement, and the knife pricked me even through my heavy robe. “Keep still,” said Pinkney Dodge. “I’m desperate, you know. I have been for a week.”

  The inspector and even Stephen Lansing had believed that back of the Richelieu murders there was a diseased brain which had gone off the track. They were wrong. There was only poor frustrated Pinkney Dodge, terrified for his life, killing as a cornered rat might kill in a frantic effort to save itself.

  He gazed at me with dumb entreaty. “Life has cheated me for years,” he said. “I never had anything other men have – friends or fun or sweethearts.” A spasm twisted his face. “Not until I met Hilda Anthony.”

  So it was Pinky whom the Anthony creature had used to pull her chestnuts out of the fire, I thought with a shudder. It seemed incredible until I recalled that it had taken all Pinkney made to keep his mother. No other woman had ever looked at him, and Hilda Anthony was beautiful. She had also been clever, clever enough to realize that a clerk in a residential hotel, especially a night clerk, has every opportunity for blackmail and other sordid rackets.

  “She cared nothing for me,” whispered Pinkney as if he had read my thoughts, “nothing except what she could get out of me. But I wanted her, wanted her as I’d never wanted anything on earth.”

  My voice trembled. “It was you who-who ...”

  He nodded. “To all of you I was that poor worm, Pinky Dodge, whom nobody ever noticed. Just a robot with a voice who waited on you at the desk and took your orders over the telephone. I could pass right through the lobby in front of everybody without any of you seeing me.”