by Kip Chase
The chief glanced helplessly at Carmichael.
‘Did anyone see Mr. Kuru come back?’ he went on. This time there was no answer.
‘This is just dandy’, he muttered, then pointed a stubby finger at the Count. ‘How about you, sir?’
The Count drew himself up to what he supposed was a military attitude.
‘I did not leave the house’, he said. ‘Nor did my wife. On Monday evening we retired early and read. I think we both turned our lights out at about the same time. Somewhere about ten.’
‘What about your car?’ the chief said patiently.
‘Yes. We have a car, a 1935 Packard limousine. I find these new cars distasteful, how people can …’
‘Yes, Count. The colour, please? And where do you keep it?’ The chief felt he was having to lead a small boy by the hand.
‘It is yellow. It is kept in the garage. Right next to Miss Wycliff’s. It did not leave the grounds on Monday night.’
The chief turned to the secretary.
‘Was the car there when you left, and when you came back, Miss Wycliff?’
The Count turned a mottled red. ‘I have just told you, sir …’
The chief’s patience snapped. He turned angrily to Ivanov.
‘And I tell you, sir, I am conducting this investigation. Now no interruptions, if you please.’
He turned back to Miss Wycliff while the Count subsided into angry mutterings.
‘The car was there when I left, and when I returned’, the girl said.
‘Do you have anything to add, Countess?’ the chief asked.
‘No. It is as my husband said.’ The woman paused, her dark eyes thoughtful. ‘I did see someone else leave, though—sometime after supper.’
‘Who?’
‘I don’t know. It was after dark. I was looking out of my window and saw a figure move down the path towards the gate at the back. Then I heard the gate open and shut. My window was open and the gate creaks loudly’, she added in explanation.
‘You say a figure. Man or woman?’
‘I don’t know. I just caught a glimpse.’
‘Who left by the back gate that night?—Kuru?’
‘No’, said the Indian. ‘I walked down the front drive.’
‘Well, who was it?’ The chief looked about expectantly. No one answered.
The chief frowned. ‘Well’, he said. There was a short silence while he made more notations in the notebook. When he looked up it was at the butler.
‘Awlsen? How about you?’
‘Went out right after I finished up, about eight’, the butler said quickly. ‘Went to a bar on Florence Street, stayed until past midnight. The bartender will tell you. I don’t have a car. I walked.’
‘Which bar on Florence?’
‘DiVedi’s. Bartender’s name is Don. He’ll tell you.’
‘You say you don’t have a car’, Carmichael broke in. ‘You were Mrs. DeVoors’s chauffeur, weren’t you?’
‘I drove for her. My duties included those of a chauffeur—though I did no other work on her cars.’
‘All right. I suppose you ran the household errands. What car did you use?’
‘Usually the station wagon. Mrs. DeVoors has a Caddy, too. Just used that to drive her round in. Only took it out a couple of times a week.’
‘And both those cars are in the back, now.’
‘Sure are. Saw them both there this morning.’
Notebook still poised, Chief Delmar turned to Mrs. George. ‘And you, ma’am?’
‘I played cards here with Lily until about eleven, then went to bed. I have a car. A ‘48 Dodge. I keep it at a petrol station down the street. McGoverns, it’s called. I didn’t use it at all on Monday night. Oh, yes, you wanted the colour. It’s sort of a light grey.’
Lily Rogers confirmed Mrs. George’s story. She said she had a car, described it, and said she also kept it at McGoverns.
Chief Delmar asked a few more questions, trying to pin down more exactly just where people were at various times during the night. He bore down particularly hard on Kuru, but got no new information. Finally he turned to Carmichael.
‘Any questions, Carmichael?’
‘A couple.’ The old man wheeled himself in front of the group.
‘Awlsen,’ he said, ‘did you go out by the back gate when you left for the bar?’
‘Yes. I always go out that way. Except when Mrs. DeVoors was alive and happened to be watching.’
‘You heard Mrs. Ivanov say she saw someone leave after supper. Couldn’t that have been you?’
The butler looked startled. ‘Why, yes. I guess it could.’
‘Well then, why didn’t you speak up when the chief asked if anybody had gone out of that gate?’
‘I … I guess I just didn’t think of it.’
Carmichael pursed his lips. He wheeled back a few feet and looked over the group. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘this question has nothing to do with Monday night. This has to do with Mrs. DeVoors’s murder. I want you all to think this over very carefully. Dr. Newton has said, I’m sure you all know, that the tie Mrs. DeVoors was killed with was his. He says he left it here after a swimming party a month or so ago. Do any of you recall seeing the tie around the house since the party?’
No one spoke. Then Mrs. George said hesitatingly, ‘I remember the swimming party, sir. Dr. Newton was here all right. But I don’t remember seeing no tie.’
‘Thank you’, Carmichael said. ‘You may all go … except,’ his eye caught the maid’s, ‘… Miss Rogers.’
Guests and servants filed out of the room. Awlsen gave Lily Rogers a baleful look before he left through a side door.
‘Sit down, Miss Rogers’, Carmichael said soothingly. ‘The girl at the police station said you wanted to talk to me.’
The maid cast frightened eyes at Delmar and Pinkie.
‘I just wanted to see you alone’, she murmured.
‘That can be arranged, if you like. But if it’s about the case, Chief Delmar and my grandson will know about it anyway. They can be trusted.’
The girl gulped and began talking in a quavery voice. With gentle prompting from Carmichael she told of her relationship with Awlsen and how she heard him leave the bed on the night of Mrs. DeVoors’s murder. It took the girl ten minutes to get out the few simple sentences necessary to relate the story. When she was finished she looked appealingly at Carmichael.
‘I knew what I was doing was wrong, sir’, she said, her voice breaking a little. ‘And then, after what happened that night …’ she shuddered, ‘I knew I should have told you about George. But I couldn’t, I just couldn’t.’ She faltered and broke into sobs.
‘It’s all right, it’s all right’, said Carmichael, laying a gentle hand on the girl’s shoulder. ‘Nobody’s going to do anything to you. Now what made you change your mind about telling us?’
The maid dabbed at her eyes. ‘Mrs. George knew about us. She told me I should tell you. She said it might be important.’
‘Mrs. George was quite right. And you were wise to tell us. Now go fetch Awlsen, please. I would like to speak to him.’
‘Oh, don’t make me get him’, the girl pleaded. ‘I’m afraid of him.’
Carmichael smiled at her. ‘There’s no reason to be. We’ll make sure he doesn’t take it out on you. You’re going to have to face him sooner or later. It might as well be now.’
The girl nodded slowly, and left the room, snuffling. She reappeared shortly with the butler in tow.
‘Sit down, Awlsen’, Carmichael said sharply. The butler sat.
‘Miss Rogers told me the truth about where you were the night Mrs. DeVoors was killed. She said you left your room. Where did you go?’
The butler glared at the maid.
‘Never mind her’, Carmichael snapped. ‘Where did you go?’
‘Nowhere. I went in the lounge and read. That’s all. I just read for a little while and went back to bed. And I didn’t hear nothing or see nothing, if that’s what
you’re going to ask me.’
‘Why didn’t you tell us this in the beginning?’ Carmichael asked.
‘I didn’t want to get Lily in trouble.’
‘Seems to me you were getting her in trouble already’, Carmichael answered sharply. ‘All right, you can both go. And Awlsen, if you lay a finger on Miss Rogers or attempt to intimidate her in any way for what she said, you’ll have to answer to us for it. Do you understand?’
The butler nodded sullenly. He left without another glance at the maid. She tripped quickly out by another door.
‘Well, I’ll be damned’, said Pinkie softly.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THE pre-war Chevrolet struggled fitfully up the hill leading to the DeVoors lodge. Several times it seemed on the point of expiring. Lydia Drew cursed gently, pumped the accelerator and fiddled with the choke. Despite a horrible gurgling noise that broke out in the vicinity of the radiator, the vehicle finally reached the levelled-off driveway. A squad car containing a long-legged young man in a sheriff’s uniform blocked the entrance.
‘I’m supposed to meet Mr. Carmichael here’, Lydia explained.
‘Okay.’ The young man swung the car out of the way to let her by. ‘But don’t go into the house. Nobody but police officers allowed in.’ He re-parked the car and returned to the twenty-five-cent cowboy story he had been reading.
Lydia parked as far as possible from the pool. She opened a bulging briefcase on the seat beside her and began sorting papers. Carmichael and Pinkie arrived fifteen minutes later. Pinkie parked and got out.
‘That young man back there wouldn’t let me go in the house’, Lydia said. ‘But I’ve got a lot of stuff here I’d like to spread out. Okay if we go in the den?’
‘Sure. I’ll roll grandpa in.’
Sitting behind the enormous desk in the den Lydia had the appearance of a small girl caught playing in her executive father’s office. She had a dozen neat piles of papers before her.
‘Okay, Carmichael’, she said. ‘I don’t know exactly what it is you expect to get out of this, but here goes. To begin with, I’ll assume you know nothing about psychological testing. Is that a good beginning?’
‘A fine beginning’, Carmichael assured her.
‘Good. Now. Testing is only one of several methods of determining personality patterns of individuals. There are also interviews, behaviour sampling and so on but no need to go into that. All I have is test results. I have already told you what tests I used. Here’s an example of one of them. The Thematic Apperception Test, popularly known as the T.A.T.’ She passed ten pictures, each mounted on a cardboard backing, to Carmichael. ‘As you can see, there are ten scenes there. A little boy running down a road, a lonely old house with an old man looking over the fence, and so on. The subject is handed these cards, one at a time, and asked to tell a story about it—who the people are in the picture, how they got there, what they are thinking, what’s going to happen.’ She paused.
‘And that’s all there is to it?’ Pinkie asked.
‘Yep.’
‘Well, what are you supposed to be able to tell from that?’
‘As a matter of fact,’ Lydia said, ’I can’t tell much of anything. But an expert can. The idea is this. Suppose some subject goes into long narratives about all the pictures except one. Just gives a very short story on that one. The clinical interpreter tries to find out why the switch. Maybe in the picture there’s a woman who reminds the subject of his mother. And maybe he doesn’t want to be reminded of his mother. That’s just an example. Actually, this particular test wasn’t a very good one to start you on. It takes a lot of experience and skill to do much with it. I got something out of it, but most of my results I got from other tests. The Rorschach, for example. The interpretation is a little more clear there, but it still takes an expert. Now we get down to my speed with the Minnesota. That’s a test the subject takes by himself, answers more than three hundred questions. Individually the questions seem sort of silly: ‘Do you believe Jews are the Chosen People?” stuff like that. But when applied to answer patterns they give a pretty good indication of certain personality phases. Using the Minnesota by itself, or correlating it, you can make a psychograph of a subject. I made one for each of the people I tested. It’s sort of a personality graph set against a centile. I brought them along of the people you’re interested in. Have a look.’
Carmichael wheeled himself round to Lydia’s side of the desk. Pinkie peered over his grandfather’s shoulder.
‘Here’s Jacks.’ Lydia giggled. ‘As you can see, he’s rather low on the masculinity scale.’
Pinkie said, ‘Does that mean …?’
‘Not what you’re thinking’, Lydia said quickly. ‘I can attest to that. There again, by itself it’s pretty meaningless. There’ll be a bunch of questions like, which would you rather do, play a game of chess or watch a football game?—or, which would you rather be, a professional racing driver or a furniture designer? If a man has an intellectual bent, he’ll score low on the masculinity scale—he can still be masculine as all hell. Jack has a not very normal pattern—a too low on “restraint” and low on “emotional stability”. That usually goes together; but otherwise fairly all right. At least on this chart. Now these others …’ Lydia rattled on and on. Her terminology became more difficult for Pinkie to understand … inverse peak … intra-individual consistency … halo effect … standard deviation. Holy cats, he thought, and I passed a course in this stuff last semester. Occasional sentences did strike him with forceful clarity … ‘It would appear obvious the Count is a sex deviate of some sort … Kuru could easily be a pathological liar, despite his high I.Q., or maybe because of it … Veblen did extremely well verbalizing …’
Carmichael seemed to be following the tortuous thread of the discourse. He would ask a question, follow it up with another, nod knowingly, listen for a while, then ask more questions. After what seemed like hours to Pinkie, Lydia said, ‘I guess that does it. And you told me you didn’t know anything about psychology! Shame on you, Carmichael. I feel like I’ve just had my oral finals.’
‘On the contrary,’ Carmichael said, ‘it’s been very enlightening for me. By the way,’ he went on casually, ‘how did you happen to get interested in this field?’
Lydia Drew looked for a long moment at Carmichael. The old man smiled. ‘I’m sure you realize, Lydia, we have checked into your record.’
Lydia returned the smile. ‘I thought you must have, but I figured I’d be called on the carpet by this time. Why haven’t I?’
Carmichael shrugged. ‘Why should you be? That’s over and done with. Your probation officer said you had an exceptionally fine record. We have no reason to disbelieve him.’
‘Well,’ said Lydia, ‘that’s a relief. I must admit I have been living with the sword of Damocles over my head since the murder. I figured any minute I’d get hauled in and put through the wringer. Now, you asked how I got interested in psychology. I suppose you have already guessed. You know, when I was put on probation my parents agreed to get psychiatric treatment for me. It was the best thing that ever happened to me. I went regularly to a psychiatrist for three years. After a while I regarded him as something like God, only maybe a little kinder. I still do, in a way. By that time I was in college and had decided to take a pre-med course, get my M.D., and specialize in psychiatry. I loaded up on psychology courses, naturally, and I found out I was more interested in experimental psychology than in psychiatry. So when I got my bachelor’s I applied as a graduate student in psychology instead of med school.’
‘One more question, Lydia’, Carmichael’s voice, which had dropped to a soothing baritone, now rose sharply. ‘Who do you think is responsible for the killings?’
Lydia answered promptly, ‘I haven’t the slightest idea.’
‘Let me put it this way. On the basis of your tests, who do you think is the most psychologically capable of murder?’
‘That’s something entirely different. Who do I think d
id it and who do I think is psychologically capable of doing it? Here again, I know nothing about criminal psychology, but I would think emotional stability would be the single most important factor. And in that characteristic, Jack—Dr. Newton—is the lowest scorer.’ The girl paused. ‘You realize, of course, if I thought there was a chance in the world Jack did it I’d never say that. In this case I know the subject personally. And I can assure you, Jack is no killer.’
‘I don’t think so either’, said Carmichael. ‘Discounting Dr. Newton, who is your next candidate?’
Lydia thought a minute. ‘The Countess’, she said firmly.
‘Why?’
‘She has a high degree of inner tension. The deviation on her personality traits were fantastic. I am a little surprised she isn’t in an institution.’
‘Nervous? She seems calm enough.’
‘Oh, consciously, she’s very calm’, Lydia agreed. ‘But unconsciously she’s about to fly apart, it looks like. Extreme tension was indicated.’
‘Tension about what?’
‘Heavens, I don’t know. That would take an analyst to find out. But something’s upsetting her. I don’t mean this would be manifested in violence. Actually, she is a very non-violent type. But just on the basis of abnormality, she seems the most atypical.’
‘Well,’ said Carmichael, stretching his shoulders, ‘one more favour and we can all go home. About this recording thingamabob.’
‘Oh yes’, said Lydia. ‘What did you want to know about it?’
‘Let’s have a look, to begin with.’
Lydia opened the drawer containing the recorder. ‘Well, the tapes run for quite a while, several hours, I think. But it’s running only when someone is talking on the phone, of course. So on one tape you might have a period covering a month, or just a couple of days, depending on how much the phone is used. There’s a nifty little gadget in there that stamps the date and time of each recorded conversation—stamps it right on the tape.’ She reached over and deftly removed the tape, on two spindles, from the machine. On the middle section there was a red-ink notation, 1504–929. ‘See? That means this phone call was made at four minutes past three on the twenty-ninth of September.’
