“Your account has been extremely lucid,” he said magnanimously. “Extremely lucid.” He peered thoughtfully at the tip of his brown slipper. “Has the butler—I recall his name as Bronson—said anything more to you?”
“No. He has agreed to speak to you, but he has refused to add a word to what he has disclosed.”
The colonel nodded his head in appreciation of Bronson’s wisdom. He looked rather like a benign hawk. “That’s the sort of a thing a detective likes—monopoly on all the information. Then when he puts his thumb on the criminal everyone says, ‘A prodigy! Indeed, a prodigy!’”
“If you like,” I said, “I’ll send Bronson up to you now.”
“Won’t he be busy with dinner?”
“Yes, but I’m sure he will be glad——”
“Oh no.” The colonel’s blue eyes were alarmed. “I wouldn’t want anything to interfere with dinner. And besides, I desire a long chat with him.” He turned fiercely upon me. “You haven’t told anyone else about Bronson’s information, have you?”
I blushed, thinking of Miss Leslie, and lied. “No, I haven’t.”
“Good. Do we dress for dinner?”
“There was some mention of it, but if you haven’t …”
“Oh, I have, I have,” he said airily. “Even a detective would not appear in a pair of gabardine shorts, you know.”
“That’s fine then,” I said, preparing to leave. At the door I halted. “Colonel, have you any idea at all about this?” I asked.
“Of course not. Do you think I’m a magician?” His bright blue eyes twinkled. “And that’s just what makes it such a deuced interesting case. Everything’s so gloriously mixed up.”
“But have you any theory as to the identity of the prowler? Whom do you suspect of stealing the new will?”
“You, among others.”
“Me? Why, what possible motive would I have in stealing it? I would only be depriving myself of a share of my great-uncle’s estate and of this house.”
“Yes, but you’d gain a hundred thousand dollars.”
I stared at him blankly.
“You are to receive a hundred thousand dollars, provided we pay the double indemnity, when the insurance is paid,” he said slowly. “If the will’d not been destroyed you’d have simply been the administrator of that money as part of a fund, as would Miss Leslie. But now the will is gone the money will be yours.” He leaned forward and squinted at me. “Many an otherwise honest man would destroy a will for one hundred thousand dollars.”
My face must have been the setting for such emotions as surprise, horror and indignation, for he chuckled.
“Don’t be downcast, Peter,” he said. “I’m just proceeding along the best Scotland Yard principles. The first emotion of the orthodox detective is suspicion, and who am I to be unorthodox?” He stretched, his upheld arms causing the white silk dragon over his chest to creep toward his neck. “Therefore I suspect everyone. I suspect the third footman (if you have one) and the cook and the house’s faithful spaniel …”
“Collie,” I said.
“… And the groceryman (Oh, most of all the groceryman!) and that pretty young lady …”
“Miss Leslie.”
He smiled. “I was thinking of Miss Harvey.”
“A definite touch, Colonel,” I said.
“I watch all of you through narrowed eyes,” he continued, “and weigh everything you say. I try to catch you in a lie, because one of the primary principles of detection is that no one ever lies but the criminal.” He looked down his long nose at me. “I suspect every action; I am uneasy when any of you are out of my sight; I endeavor to convey the idea that it is only a few hours, yea, a few minutes, before I slip the handcuffs on the guilty party whose identity has been perfectly apparent from the first.”
He swung his long legs over the side of the bed.
“You say of certain men that they are filled with the milk of human kindness,” he concluded dramatically, “but I am overflowing with the sour white wine of human suspicion.”
He blinked at me like a very wise parrot.
I laughed and closed his door and went to my room. I glanced at my watch and saw that it was nearly half past six. I had only fifteen minutes until dinner. While I was disrobing I noticed that the vase which I had taken as a weapon from the mantel in Uncle Tobias’ upstairs library was back on the bureau. I felt a blush of mortification at the thought of the ineptitude and near cowardice the vase called up in my mind, and I wondered if Burton Coffin had seen it. I knew it would bring a jibe from him. But I calmed myself by the thought that no one could have seen it except Bronson, who had evidently found it behind the curtain while closing my windows at the inception of the storm. I made up my mind to return it to its proper place as soon as the opportunity offered.
A gale of wind made the house shudder, and I glanced out one of my windows. Between the branches of the frantic trees I could see the lake, its surface covered by gray and white waves. I thought it would be fun to swim in that tumbling, angry water, but I suppressed my impulse. I had only time enough to dress, as it was.
Feeling very clean after a bath and a shave and rather proud of my English dinner clothes, I stopped at Colonel Black’s room on my way downstairs. There was no response to my knock, and I was about to go on when I noticed that a light was burning in the study.
To my surprise, when I peered through the door I discovered the colonel seated on the floor, his legs crossed under him, his expression one of peaceful contemplation. He was facing my great-uncle’s table, and as I entered he bent forward until his chin was only a few inches from the carpet. He did not appear embarrassed when he caught sight of me. He was also dressed in evening clothes.
“Good for the stomach muscles,” he stated, calmly continuing to examine the desk from his odd position.
“What in the world are you doing?” I demanded with astonishment.
“I am obtaining what might be termed a worm’s-eye view of the room.” His face, as he straightened up, was cherry red. “I like to examine rooms from original vantage points. You’ve no idea what a difference it makes.” He rose to his feet. “Now I’ve an entirely different conception of this room than, for instance, you. You’ve seen it only from a standing and, possibly, sitting position. I’ve seen it from these levels, and I’ve also seen it from the floor and from a somewhat precarious position on that chair.” He was frowning at the desk as he spoke. “If the weather was not so inclement I should like to be suspended outside by a rope from the roof so that I could peer in through the windows, and it would also gratify me to bore a hole through the ceiling and examine the room from above.” He glanced quickly at me. “Don’t be alarmed. I shan’t do either of those things unless it seems absolutely necessary.”
“But what do you expect to find?” I gasped.
He shrugged his shoulders. “Who knows? Perhaps nothing; perhaps a great deal.” His long fingers were feeling the underside of the desk. “Already I have discovered a wad of gum, but its rocklike rigidity convinces me that it has been there for a period of years. I think we may dismiss it from our compilation of relevant data.”
He moved around to the back of the table and dropped face down on the floor, almost completely out of my sight. After a second I heard him exclaim, “Ah!” His face was beaming when he appeared above the desk.
“A triumph for the humble worm,” he announced.
I suppose my expression showed a grave suspicion of his sanity, because he chuckled and pointed to where I had first seen him bending down over the carpet.
“Get down there, Peter, and examine this very fine Chinese rug in the direction of the desk,” he commanded.
I put my eye close to the floor and looked along the carpet. I noticed that the carpet was, from this angle, a soft gray-green in every place except for a small patch about the size of a book in back of the desk. This patch was blue-green.
“Now go over and smell the spot,” he said after I had told him o
f my discovery.
I did, and immediately my nostrils were filled with a sweet, cloying, medicinal odor. “Chloroform!” I exclaimed.
“Exactly.”
“But what does that mean?”
He waved a hand airily, as though the meaning of chloroform on the floor was of negligible interest. “I’m sure I don’t know. All I can tell you is that it hasn’t been there for more than three or four days. The odor is quite strong.”
He turned to the desk again. In reply to his questions I showed him how the body had been stretched over the desk, one arm hanging toward the floor and the other, bent, on the surface of the desk. I told him about the papers, some of them stained with blood, on the desk, and how we had searched for the new will.
“What made everyone so sure the will was among those papers?” the colonel asked.
“I suppose they assumed it was, since everyone but me knew the purpose of our meeting was to hear about it.”
“But you’ve no way of being sure it ever was there, have you?”
“Yes. Bronson saw it earlier in the evening.”
“Good.” The colonel was apparently struck by another thought. “Has a thorough search been made for the will?”
I told him I thought the sheriff’s men had been through all my great-uncle’s effects.
His eyes were roaming about the room. “Was the door to the hall wide open when you came upon the old lady screaming?”
“Yes. I could see in here perfectly.”
“Do you think she opened it?”
“You’d better ask her. I haven’t any idea.”
He walked over to the door to my great-uncle’s bedroom. “You can get out into the hall through this door, can’t you?”
“Yes, and that reminds me of something,” I said. “The bedroom door to the hall was unlocked.”
He walked through the bedroom and examined the door in question. “Ah! A special lock.” He turned a penetrating blue eye upon me. “Didn’t Mr Coffin ordinarily keep this door locked?”
“I think he did,” I said. “I remember he always used to go to his bedroom through his library.”
At this moment Bronson appeared. He stood in the door connecting the library with the bedroom and, after coughing to attract our attention, said, “Dinner is ready, Mister Peter. The others are waiting.”
“All right, Bronson,” I said, starting for the door.
Colonel Black touched my arm. “Just a second.” He looked at Bronson with a friendly expression on his usually arrogant face. “Bronson, this door between your late master’s bedroom and the hall was usually locked, wasn’t it?”
“Yes sir. He always kept it locked.”
“And the will, Bronson. You’re sure you saw it among the papers on Mr Coffin’s desk the night of the tragedy?”
“I’m quite positive, sir. He showed it to me and then read me extracts from it. He wanted my opinion as to whether it was satisfactory. He was somewhat dubious as to the wisdom of leaving the money to the younger members of the family, although he said he preferred to do that than to let the older members make fools of themselves with it.”
“And what was your opinion?”
“That it was best to give the younger people a chance.”
We were now back in the library, and the colonel could not resist another question. “Bronson, who cleaned off Mr Coffin’s desk?”
“Mrs Spotswood, the housekeeper, sir.”
“Wasn’t she aware she was destroying all possibility of our securing any fingerprints?”
“I don’t believe Mrs Spotswood knows what a fingerprint is, sir.”
“Well, it’s time she did,” said the colonel severely.
We went out into the hall, and I said, “Bronson, after dinner I will bring the colonel over to the servants’ house. You can tell him your story then.”
“Very good, sir.”
Everyone was grouped in front of the great fire in the living room as we came down the stairs, and there seemed to be a great deal of conversation. I noticed that the faces of my relatives were more animated than usual, and I speculated whether or not this was the result of the change in weather or of the dry sherry Dr Harvey was pouring from a crystal decanter.
“Will you have a small glass, Colonel Black?” he asked pleasantly, holding out a tray with two drinks on it. “I know Peter will have one.”
“I will indeed,” said the colonel. “Sherry is an excellent apéritif, though I have an appetite for two now.”
I was surprised to see Mrs Harvey talking to Mrs Coffin, and I took the colonel over to be introduced to her. She had not been out of bed all day, and I commented on the fact.
She replied in a low voice, the monotone of which never varied, “I am feeling better tonight, thank you, Peter.” She turned her faded blue eyes upon the colonel. “You know, Colonel Black, my nerves have been terribly upset by the events of the last few nights.” Her plump body trembled. “But I feel confident you will see that things become normal again.”
“I?” For an instant the colonel’s alert eyes rested on me. “I fear you are expecting too much of a humble scholar.”
Mrs Harvey decided to take this as a joke. She made a coquettish motion of her arm, as though she were tapping the colonel on the shoulder with a fan, and said, “I don’t believe, you’re really that modest.”
Bronson announced dinner at this moment, and the colonel gallantly gave Mrs Harvey his arm. I followed them into the dining room, puzzled as to her meaning. Was she merely, in a flirting manner, trying to convey her impression that the colonel was the sort of a man who could cope with a situation involving violence? Or was she aware that the colonel was a detective?
At the candle-lit table I held Miss Leslie’s chair for her, beating Burton Coffin to this pleasant task by a fraction of a second. He scowled at me and retired somewhat sulkily to his place. Miss Leslie looked over her shoulder at me and said, “Thank you.” She was wearing a black evening gown, cut low over her tan back, with a striped yellow taffeta sash, the color of a canary bird, about her slender waist. It was a charming costume, but its sophistication lowered my spirits. It was evidence of the gulf between Miss Leslie and me, a symbol of the space between the gay haut monde of New York and the dull respectability of a college town.
I wasn’t able to brood about this for long though. By the time the consommé was served and Bronson was passing bits of toasted bread Dan Harvey asked a question which caused me to spill half a glass of water on the linen.
“Colonel Black,” he demanded, “what steps do you plan to take to recover the will?”
His sister, her pretty pink-and-white face indicating lively interest, added, “Please tell us how a detective goes about finding out thieves.”
The colonel’s face was momentarily distressed. “What gave you two the idea I was a detective?”
I glanced at Miss Leslie, half in reproach, half in hopeful interrogation. Her widened gray eyes said quite plainly that she hadn’t revealed the secret.
“Why, I think we heard it from George Coffin,” said Miss Harvey. “But everybody’s been discussing what you’re going to do.”
“Well, it’s very humiliating to be discovered so early in the game,” said the colonel good-naturedly. “I suppose now none of you will even talk to me.”
“Oh, I will,” said Miss Harvey. “I think detectives are cute.”
When the laughter had died down I leaned toward George Coffin. “How in the world did you hear about the colonel?” I asked. “I thought I was keeping it a secret.”
This was the first time I had looked at him closely during the evening, and I was appalled by his appearance. His face was deathly pale, and his eyes had a haunting expression of fright. I remembered how gay he had been at teatime, and I was even more disturbed. He looked terribly ill.
His voice, answering my question, was steady enough, however. “Bronson mentioned it to me,” he said. “I had a little talk with him just after tea.”
&nbs
p; “Did he tell you what it is he’s going to tell the colonel after dinner?” I asked.
“He told me that what he was going to tell Colonel Black would be enough to hang someone in this house,” replied George Coffin.
For fully thirty seconds an electric silence hung over the table. Even I, who had known of Bronson’s supposed secret, was shocked. And the words had a particularly dreadful effect due to the way in which George Coffin said them. He sounded as though he believed them.
Mrs Coffin was the first to speak. “Why, George, how strange!” she said. “What did he mean?”
Her husband, his face even more haggard, shook his head. “He wouldn’t tell me, but I gathered that it was in connection with Tobias’ death.” His hand, holding the silver soup spoon, trembled.
“My goodness, this is terrible,” exclaimed Mrs Harvey. The pitch of her voice indicated jangled nerves. “I won’t stay in this house another moment.” She glanced around the table to see the effect of her threat.
“Nonsense, my dear.” Dr Harvey laid a hand on her arm. “You’re perfectly safe here, especially with Colonel Black on the scene.”
While Mrs Harvey was allowing herself to be comforted I noticed that the colonel’s sharp eyes were examining George Coffin, who was trying to finish his soup. I felt sure the haggard appearance of my cousin had not escaped the colonel.
Miss Harvey was evidently still pondering Bronson’s statement, because she asked, “Uncle George, has Bronson told anybody who the person is?”
“No,” replied George Coffin. “At least he said he hadn’t.” He lifted his spoon to his mouth and seemed surprised when he discovered there was no soup in it. “He said he was saving the information for the colonel.”
“Well, I think that’s ridiculous,” exclaimed Mrs Coffin. “If he knows something about someone in this house I think he should be made to come in here and tell us what it is.”
“I think he will insist on telling it to the colonel,” I said. “I think he hopes that what he has seen is susceptible to some other explanation than the one which will hang someone. That’s why he doesn’t want to tell it to the police.”
The Search for My Great-Uncle’s Head Page 14
