Death Demands an Audience

by Helen Reilly

  McKee arose from the chair in which he sat and took a turn up and down the room. He didn’t look at Luke as he said:

  “Murder has been committed. And on top of murder, burglary and assault. Borrow had something important to communicate to you. You say you have no idea of what it could possibly have been. My only conviction is it was something intimately connected with his death. Immediately after his death his house in New York was entered, his desk there rifled and a dispatch box belonging to him was stolen.”

  “A dispatch box?” Luke asked sharply. “What was in it?”

  McKee wheeled and looked down at the man with the parchment skin. Two bright red spots had sprung out on the thin cheekbones. There was animation in Luke Cambridge’s eyes for the first time.

  “You’re sure you couldn’t tell me?” The Scotsman’s glance was affable and penetrating.

  “Tell you? My dear Inspector!” The flare of exasperation in Luke Cambridge’s voice had a rasp to it not warranted by the circumstances.

  McKee made his decision then. Plant a man here. It had to be done. He turned to Luke.

  “Mr Cambridge, you can’t tell me what Borrow was going to talk about but I’m going to tell you something. You are in an extremely dangerous position. You’re the only one who could have supplemented, completed, done anything with the knowledge that Franklin Borrow was going to bring to you. I don’t know what it was. You say you don’t know. There is only one thing I’m quite sure of. You need protection.”

  “Protection? Protection from what?” Luke Cambridge’s voice was a thread. It came from depths which again aroused the Scotsman’s sharp suspicion and which he was again unable to plumb. He said with a smile, setting fire to a fresh cigarette,

  “From cessation by flood, by fire, by a stream of bullets, by poison, by direct assault. Let’s call it extinction, shall we? At any moment, in any shape. The same fate, in fact, that overtook Franklin Borrow for reasons which neither you nor I apparently understand.”

  Luke Cambridge had been hostile at the beginning of the inspector’s speech. Contemplation, weighing of it, had produced a grim recognition of the truth of the Scotsman’s logical presentation.

  On the one hand Luke emphatically did not want anyone in the house; on the other, it was clear that he was impressed by a real sense of the gravity of the situation.

  “You mean,” he said, his frown deepening, “you want to put a policeman here?”

  “A detective,” McKee said. “I can assure you he won’t cause you any trouble.”

  Cambridge smoothed his thick white hair back from his high forehead.

  “You appear to be expecting developments from the fact that Borrow’s house was entered,” he said. “Won’t anyone attempting to approach me see your detective and steer clear? If it’s simply to protect me from bodily harm you needn’t worry. I can look after myself.” There was an ironic gleam in Luke’s cold eyes.

  The Scotsman answered, “We’re dealing with desperate motives, Mr Cambridge. Someone is trying to cover something, and someone who has already gone and will continue to go to any lengths to achieve this purpose. I repeat, you’re in danger. As far as my man is concerned, I’ve already arranged that his being here shall seem natural. Your physician, Doctor Marlake is agreeable. Marlake says you haven’t been well for the last month anyhow. The detective I’ve brought with me is to act as an employee of Marlake’s who will be able to give you treatments the doctor will say he has to prescribe.”

  Luke said nothing. McKee picked up a celluloid doll labeled “Edgewood Toys” that was fresh from the factory and examined it while he went on. “It might be as well, Mr Cambridge, if you kept this strictly to yourself. The fewer people who know the truth the better our chance of success, in case an attempt is made to get in touch with you over whatever it was that Borrow wanted to see you about.”

  Luke was in a cleft stick. He had declared his ignorance of Borrow’s mission. He couldn’t deny that violent death had prevented Borrow from carrying it out. Twenty minutes later the mousy little Todhunter was seated in the room adjoining Luke Cambridge’s study, turning over the pages of a magazine and McKee was off.

  The visibility was good. The stars were out and the night was clear and cold. Rounding the corner of the west side of the Cambridge property and turning down the side road, the long black Cadillac with the inspector in it pulled to a stop behind a dark sedan parked in the lee of a copse of ironwoods some two hundred yards from the entrance to Gregory Cambridge’s driveway. The door of the sedan opened and Detective Caldwell walked back to the Cadillac and got in. McKee said, “Well?” And Caldwell, “The women, Ellen and Irene and Muriel Cambridge, drove up with Toby Newell in the Cambridge car, arriving here at about six-ten. Gregory Cambridge arrived by train, took a cab from the station and got here at about six thirty-seven.

  Leslie Cambridge came over a few minutes later. He was on the same train with Gregory but he went home, got his own car and drove over here and picked up his wife and then went back home. Luke Cambridge came over here at around six-thirty. He stayed about twenty minutes and left. The people in the house now are Irene, Gregory, Ellen Cambridge and Toby Newell. They’ve finished dinner. They’re in the living room.”

  The Scotsman nodded from time to time. At the conclusion of Caldwell’s report he said: “Keep everybody covered and keep in touch with me. I don’t like the way things are shaping, or rather, the way they’re failing to shape. Something may break at any moment.”

  He got out of the Cadillac, went past the sedan and proceeded on to the Cambridge driveway. The packed snow of the steep upward slope encircled the house in a wide loop. Trees reared themselves right and left, tall oaks, their branches lost in blackness against the star-strewn sky. The lights of the big comfortable four-square house at the top of the rise one hundred and fifty yards away were bright behind half-drawn shades.

  A small thicket of flowering bushes, leafless now, offered a patch of shelter near the living-room windows. McKee started up the driveway. His feet slipped from under him on the smooth surface. The packed snow was thinly coated with ice from the afternoon thaw, which had frozen over at nightfall. He recovered himself, reached the clump of bushes, felt for a cigarette and left the pack untouched in his pocket.

  The light above the front door went on. The door opened, and two people came out and stood still under the small portico. McKee moved deeper into the shadow. He was close enough to hear as well as see. The two who had just come out were Ellen Cambridge and Toby Newell. Ellen closed the door. She and Newell stood talking together in low voices for a couple of minutes. Then Newell bent, put his arms around the girl and kissed her.

  “Good night,” he said, ran down the steps, turned to wave and called, “Tomorrow we’ll take care of all those things and then we can have a little time to ourselves.

  Good-by again, darling. Get a good sleep. You look tired.” He disappeared around the corner of the house, moving apparently toward his car. Ellen left the porch and the front door closed.

  As the light in the roof of the portico was extinguished the head lamps of Newell’s car came around the house and the car started down the driveway. It was moving slowly. It hit the crest of the rise, began the descent and gathered speed rapidly. There was something wrong. The car began to wobble from side to side, skidding on the icy surface. As it went past the clump of bushes McKee saw Toby Newell sawing desperately at the wheel. The long black coupe was out of control.

  What happened was swift, sudden and inevitable. Unable to keep its nose on the track, the coupe careened drunkenly sideways, took a half turn, rocked up on two wheels, was brought back again and then, at the bottom of the hill in its uncontrolled flight, it crashed head on into a huge elm. Buckling fenders, the scream of the brakes, the impact of metal on wood tore the stillness of the quiet winter night. There was no movement within the car itself. McKee began to run.

  Toby Newell wasn’t dead. He didn’t even seem to be seriously injured. He was
dazed, however, as, with McKee’s help, he pulled himself out from under the dislocated steering wheel and stood erect in the snow. He said, feeling himself all over, “Holy smokes, that was a close one.”

  “Are you hurt?” McKee asked. “Any bones broken?”

  Newell shook himself and flexed his left arm experimentally. “It’s a bit stiff and it’ll be stiffer tomorrow—but nothing seems to have snapped.” He looked at McKee with a touch of surprise. “Thanks for giving me a hand, but how—er—how Were you on the way to the house yourself?

  “I’m Inspector McKee of the homicide squad,” the Scotsman answered. “Just happened to be passing by. I was seeing Luke Cambridge on a matter pertaining to the murder of Franklin Borrow.”

  Newell nodded and turned his attention to his car. He examined the buckled right fender. It was badly smashed.

  He gave the wheel a kick and said in a puzzled tone, “I can’t understand how I happened to skid in the first place. I was coming slowly, but the wheel wouldn’t seem to respond. Yet I had her overhauled only last week.”

  McKee reached into the front of the car. He gave the steering wheel a twist. It swung freely. The knuckle was disengaged. “You certainly can’t get home in that,” he said. “Don’t you think I’d better walk up with you to the house?”

  Newell drew a deep breath. “No, I don’t think so. I was lucky enough to escape without any serious damage. I don’t want to worry Ellen, my fiancee. I’m all right now. But I’ve got to do something about the car.”

  McKee said, “I’ll give you a ride to town and you can have a tow come out and pick it up.”

  The streets of the little village were deserted, but the big garage on the far side of the business district was open when they reached it, and a mechanic was hammering lustily in its depths.

  He came forward to greet them. “Hello, Frank,” Newell said, and arranged for the car to be towed in. “I’ve got to go on my wedding trip in it next week,” he told the mechanic, “so do a good job for me. And let me know what the trouble was, will you?” They returned to the Cadillac and drove to Newell's apartment, a suite of rooms behind his office in the toy factory.

  Newell got out. He said, “Thanks very much, Inspector, for helping me,” and extended his hand.

  McKee said, “Sure there’s nothing else I can do for you?”

  Newell smiled. He hefted his shoulder and flexed his arm again. “Yes, there is, Inspector. I guess I’m a little shaken up at that and I need a good stiff drink. I don’t like to drink alone. How about coming in and having one with me?”

  McKee welcomed the opportunity. The two men mounted an outside staircase, went through a door into a long narrow corridor and from that into a big, irregular room overlooking the river.

  While Newell went into the next room for whisky, the glasses and soda McKee looked around. Toby Newell had managed to make himself comfortable. It was typically a man’s apartment, with deep chairs, plenty of ash trays, a short, squat, well-filled bookcase and very few ornaments or hangings.

  It felt good to be indoors. The scotch was excellent. McKee had not one, but two drinks. Newell was an entertaining fellow. He had been around. He was evidently very much in love with Ellen Cambridge. A touch of shyness came into his rugged masculinity when he spoke of her and of the wedding which was to take place the following week. He was describing the operation of the factory and the success of a new toy line when the telephone rang. Newell answered it. He said,

  “Hello? Oh, hello, Frank.” He listened for a moment, said, “What?” in an incredulous and startled voice and went on listening. When he put the receiver back on the hook a minute later he turned to McKee with a peculiar expression on his face and said slowly, “It doesn’t seem possible, but Frank’s a good mechanic and he ought to know. Besides, he went over the car only last week. He swears that the bolts on the steering knuckle weren’t sheared off by wear and didn’t work loose themselves. They were deliberately removed.”

  CHAPTER 10

  TODHUNTER didn’t see the inspector again that night. It was a quiet and uneventful evening. Nothing much happened in the old Cambridge house that had been there before the Revolution was fought and in which four generations of Cambridges had lived and died. Habit and custom ruled the establishment with an iron rod.

  Nevertheless, although a rank outsider and quite clearly persona non grata with Luke, the little detective was accepted with cold politeness and a grudging toleration. As Andrews showed him to a small upstairs room that had been prepared for him Luke retired, or at least his lights went out, at eleven-thirty. Todhunter stayed awake another hour and then dropped off into his usual light sleep, a sleep from which he would have instantly awakened if anything out of the way had occurred.

  But nothing out of the way did occur, and in the morning the cook-housekeeper, Mrs Johnson, served him an excellent breakfast of ham and eggs and coffee and hot muffins in the big white-paneled dining room on the far side of the entrance hall. Luke had his breakfast brought to him in his study on a tray. It consisted of a poached egg and a cup of Postum. He was not permitted coffee.

  When Todhunter finished eating he settled himself in a chair at the end of the long living room that commanded a view of the hall into which all the other rooms opened as well as the edge of the door to Luke’s study. There was no other means of exit or entrance from Luke’s suite, unless through one of the windows.

  Half an hour later Luke left the study. Going past the living room, he glanced in, saw Todhunter, gave him a stiff inclination of the head and passed from view. The little detective got out of the chair. A door, not the front door, the slam wasn’t heavy enough, had opened and closed; a closet door probably.

  When Todhunter stuck his head around the heavy draperies masking the archway to the living room Luke was putting on his hat and coat. The little detective said: “Going somewhere, Mr Cambridge?” Luke turned to him with a frosty gleam in his eye. “My usual trip to the post office, and I have an errand or two to do.” His tone was challenging. Todhunter ignored the challenge.

  “Mind if I come along?” he asked cheerfully.

  “I suppose you have to.” Luke Cambridge didn’t sound pleased. Andrews had brought the car around to the front door. The two men got in. The village was only a few minutes away. There was no conversation during the short drive. Luke was not an affable man at best, and he evidently had no intention of making Todhunter’s job easy for him. The day was bright and sunny. On every hand snow lay in dazzling planes of whiteness, broken by hedges and stone walls and thickening clusters of houses as they neared the center of town.

  A big house beyond the Methodist Episcopal Church bore the sign, “Doctor Marlake. Office hours 2-3 and 7-8.” The car pulled up in front of it. Luke said, “I’m going in to see my doctor for a few minutes. Would you care to come along?” There was no mistaking his irritation.

  “I might as well stretch my legs,” Todhunter said meekly and followed him up the steps, across a porch and into the waiting room of the physician’s old-fashioned cupolaed house. Dr Marlake appeared in the office door and nodded to Todhunter, who had been with McKee the previous night when the inspector dropped in to confer with him.

  Luke entered the office with Marlake and the door closed. Todhunter sat down facing it and picked up a magazine.

  He could hear the low murmur of voices from behind the door. Presently the telephone rang. The detective listened to Marlake instructing what was evidently a tedious woman to continue with the same treatments and call him back later in the day. The woman took a good deal of convincing.

  The receiver went down on the hook. A chair was pushed sharply back. Dr Marlake opened the door to the waiting room. He looked at Todhunter and then around. He said, “Where did Mr Cambridge go?”

  Todhunter was at once on his feet. A glance past Marlake into the office beyond revealed a side door that opened on the drive. Luke had evidently slipped out by that route while the doctor was busy on the phone.

&
nbsp; Todhunter didn’t waste any time. He reached the porch to see Luke Cambridge’s dark green felt hat with his white hair under it vanishing behind the bulk of a delivery truck in the direction of the firehouse and the town square.

  He wasn’t difficult to follow. He crossed the square to a drugstore on the far side. Glancing through the door at his retreating back, the little detective saw that he was making for a row of telephone booths at the rear. Entering the store in turn, Todhunter wove his way along the side aisle, past intervening tables loaded with merchandise, to the cigarette counter in close proximity to the phone booths.

  There was a woman in the one nearest the detective. Todhunter cursed her out. She was carrying on a long, loud and apparently interminable conversation with someone named Lucia. He couldn’t hear so much as a murmur from Luke’s booth. What he did hear, through and below the woman’s harangue to Lucia, was the sharp ping of metal. Luke Cambridge had just deposited forty-five cents in the coin box. The coins were a quarter and two dimes. Forty-five cents. That was the toll to New York.

  “What’s yours?” the clerk behind the counter asked Todhunter.

  The detective bought a pack of cigarettes. As the clerk gave him his change Luke Cambridge’s coins were returned to him in the telephone booth. No mistaking that sound either. Whoever he was calling, wasn’t in.

  The old man left the booth. Todhunter let him get out of the store and as far as a bakery in the middle of the block. He was about to overtake him when he held back. Coming out of a grocery shop, Irene Cambridge had seen Luke and was advancing to meet him. Sophisticated mink had given way to tweeds, flat-heeled brogues and a small brown felt hat. Irene looked equally well in country clothes.

  Todhunter sidled a little nearer to them. Irene was saying:

  “It’s rather good. And I know how interested you are in Americana. If you still want it I’ll get it out of Tyball’s for you. If it’s there I’ll pick it up and bring it over to you when I finish shopping.”