Chuck and I hovered. Chuck said, “Lorraine, get everyone away. They can’t do any good. Get them all to the bar and give them a drink. But get away from here.”
There was an obedient patter of wet feet on cement. In a few moments only the three of us were left on the moonlit edge of the pool. Chuck turned to me. “You needn’t stick around, Lieutenant. I’ll relieve Wyckoff when he gets tired.”
“Thanks,” I said. “But I’ll stay.”
Yesterday, when Dorothy had died, Wyckoff and Chuck had taken over. I didn’t trust them any more.
Chuck stared at me, shrugged, and swung back to Wyckoff, who was working in grim silence. After fifteen minutes or so Chuck slipped into his place. I relieved Chuck, and then Wyckoff relieved me. We kept it up for over an hour. Iris came out with robes for us, which was just as well, for after the warmth of the pool we were blue with cold.
At last Wyckoff stood up. “It’s no use,” he said. “We’ll never get her back. She’s dead.”
I’d never really expected anything else.
“Let’s get her into one of the dressing-rooms where we can take a look at her.”
The three of us carried her into the nearest dressing-room and laid her down on a studio couch. After the moon, the electric light was dazzling. It glared down on the bluish-grey, skin the staring eyes, the pitiful tangled hair.
The words Janet Laguno had spoken to me early that evening came back.
Don’t worry. Nothing’s going to happen to me. The Monster never felt healthier in its life.
Don’t worry!
Wyckoff, deep lines around his mouth, was examining the bare arms and legs. He didn’t say anything. But it was obvious that he was looking for scratches, for any signs of a struggle.
There were none that I could see.
He stepped back from the couch, stripped off his bathrobe and laid it over the body.
“I need a drink,” he said grimly. “Let’s get to that bar.”
We got dressed and joined up again. Chuck led us along the moon-splashed edge of the pool towards a lighted bungalow. Chuck and Wyckoff walked very close together as if there were some unadmitted alliance between them. The smooth city heart-specialist and the rough Nevada man of mystery made an incongruous team. I would have liked to know what was in their minds.
We stepped into a luxurious modernistic bar which only the Pleygel madness and millions would have tossed down beside a swimming pool. The rest of the party was all assembled. A bright fire was burning in the fireplace. Lorraine, Iris, Fleur, and Mimi Burnett were crammed together, as if there was comfort in nearness, on a long chartreuse couch. Bill Flanders sat hunched in a grey arm-chair, his crutch propped against the back. Lover, like a gloomy barman, was perched on a stool behind the glass, half-moon bar, while Count Stefano Laguno, apparently unconscious of the others’ hostility, was pacing up and down, his sleek reflection throwing itself back from the black mirrors on the walls.
They all had drinks.
Nobody spoke as the three of us went to the bar and mixed ourselves highballs. Then Iris caught my eye. In the thin voice of someone who hasn’t spoken for a long time, she asked, “Peter, she’s—she’s dead?”
“I’m afraid so,” I said.
The Count Laguno came to Wyckoff, smiling a toothy smile which was half uneasy, half insolent.
“Well, doctor,” he said, “what’s the verdict this time? Did she just drown, or was she murdered?”
His cynical frankness cracked the silence like a whiplash. Fleur Wyckoff, twisting her little hands together fiercely, was staring straight at her husband. So was everyone else. Wyckoff carefully avoided his estranged wife’s eyes.
He said very quietly, “Lieutenant Duluth and Chuck examined your wife’s body with me, Count. I think they’ll both agree that there were no visible signs of a struggle.”
Stefano’s smile was a lot easier then. “What a relief for all of us,” he drawled. “Particularly for me. Thanks to Janet’s lack of reticence in reading that letter out loud at breakfast. I might have been in a most uncomfortable position.” He paused. “However, I had the foresight to slip into her dressingroom just now and extract this from her pocketbook.”
From the breast pocket of his loud sports coat he produced the letter he had written to Dorothy with its implied threat on his wife’s life.
“Since none of you saw it except my wife, no one can testify to its contents.” While we all watched in thunderstruck silence, he strolled to the fire and pushed the letter deep into the flames. “There. Just to be tidy.” He turned back, still smiling. “Now, even if there should be any unpleasantness, there’s nothing conspicuously suspicious about me except that I am the sole beneficiary under poor Janet’s will. A natural enough state of affairs for a married man.”
If people came scummier than the Count, I had yet to meet them. I could see from their faces how the others were feeling about Stefano Laguno. I turned to him, giving him back his own bland smile.
“I hope for your sake you didn’t murder your wife, Count,” I said. “If you did, I’m afraid you wasted your time. You see, this evening Janet made a new will. My wife and I witnessed it. It cuts you off without a nickel.” All the swagger went out of him. His face turned the muddy white of vichysoisse.
“Janet—” he spluttered.
“Yes,” I said. “She made a new will. My wife and I have it safely in our possession. It’ll be quite legal, I’m sure. She left everything to Bill Flanders.”
Dorothy’s widower turned in his chair. Every eye shifted to him. His face was blank.
“To me? But that’s crazy. I hardly knew her. I—”
“I know,” I said. “She just figured that Dorothy and Stefano between them with their shabby little affair had given you as raw a deal as they’d given her. She felt that by leaving you all her money she could put her husband very neatly in his place. And I think she has.” I turned back to the crumpled Count. “Of course, she had no idea that she was going to die so soon.”
Conversation was fizzling now like a damp fuse. Mimi Burnett had completely forgotten her “Nature-I-Love-And-Next-To-Nature-Art” pose. Her shoe-button eyes were darting from face to face as if she were watching a lightning-quick ping-pong match. Lorraine’s voice finally subdued the others.
“But, angels, all this talk, this unpleasantness. Who cares who poor Janet’s money goes to? David says that she—she just drowned. There was nothing terrible.” Her eyes were popping out under the long lashes, desperately trying to help her muddled words make us understand the way she wanted life to be. “The lights fused. That might happen any time. Everything was dark in the pool. Something happened to poor Janet, a cramp or something. The water’s too hot, much too hot. I’ve often felt faint myself. Maybe she fainted. Maybe she tried to call for help. But we wouldn’t have noticed because we were all shouting and laughing. It’s frightful, of course. Dorothy, and now poor Janet And the Count’s a horrible man and I’ll probably throw him out of my house and I’m glad he doesn’t get Janet’s money. It was so lucky she made that will. I think everyone should make a will. I’m going to have Mr. Throckmorton make one for me when he comes. But that isn’t the point I mean, the point is that poor Janet’s dead, that there’s been an accident.”
I said, “It’ll be up to the police to decide that, Lorraine.”
Wyckoff and Chuck Dawson moved a little closer together. Everyone swung round to stare at me, almost as if I were an enemy.
“The police!” Lorraine gulped. “But, Peter, dearest David says—I mean, don’t you trust David?”
“It isn’t a question of trusting or not trusting anyone,” I said. “All accidents that result in death have to be reported to the police. There’ll have to be an inquest. Chuck will tell you that.”
Lorraine’s fiancé was watching me with a strange wariness. His tongue came out between his teeth. “Sure. Of course.” He glanced at Lover behind the bar. “You’ve got the telephone, Lover, over there. Call the
police. Call Genoa City. It’s nearer, and I guess we’re under their jurisdiction here anyhow.”
Lover tried to look hearty, and muttered his inevitable, “Why sure.” He called the police, gave a jumbled version of what had happened, and put down the receiver.
“They’re coming as fast as possible,” he said and poured himself a straight Scotch.
It was a dreary, protracted wait. Practically no one talked. Every now and then somebody went over to the bar and mixed another drink. I tried to think how we would have been acting if we had been ten ordinary people whose friend had just been drowned in a swimming pool. Surely not like this.
But then we were so far from being ten ordinary people. We were ten people bound together with a dozen intricate chains of suspicion and fear; ten people left out of twelve.
Of course, Janet could have drowned accidentally. In this case even more than in the case of Dorothy, there was nothing to arouse legitimate suspicion except the tawdry character of Janet’s husband and the strained coincidence of two “natural” deaths in two days. But I was sure that Janet had been murdered; just as I was sure that Dorothy had been murdered. I was sure that the lights had been fused deliberately so that in the ensuing darkness someone could hold Janet’s head under the water until she was dead. Who had done it, and why, I did not know, any more than I knew who had killed Dorothy, or even how she had been killed. But I liked Janet and I dislike murderers on principle. I was determined to bend this one’s ears back even if it took every moment of my precious leave.
I had enough wit, however, to realize that, at this early stage, I had no shred of evidence to offer. If I raised a stink when the police came, I would only make a fool of myself. The police would investigate. If they were satisfied with the accident theory and an inquest backed it up, it would be my job and Iris’ to plod on as best we might until we were in a position to explain to the authorities why eight reasonably respectable people were all, for a cryptic variety of reasons, banded together to obstruct justice.
Because that’s just about the way things stood, so far as I could see.
At last the police came, three of them, led by a small man with alert eyes whom Chuck introduced as Sergeant Davis. Chuck and Wyckoff took them off to see the body. They were gone quite a long time. When they came back, it was obvious that the Sergeant, after an examination had found nothing to warrant suspicion. He knew about Dorothy’s death the night before and mentioned it, but only as an unfortunate coincidence. After a thorough but routine questioning, during which he copied our answers into a notebook, he announced that he would turn in his report to his superior, who would probably arrange the inquest for the following morning. He said that only Laguno, as husband of the deceased, Chuck, and Wyckoff would have to attend. He understood that Miss Pleygel and Iris Duluth would prefer to have the proceedings carried out with the minimum of publicity and promised to do his best to see that everyone was inconvenienced as little as possible in his period of grief.
“Frankly,” he said in conclusion, “when I heard about the other lady dying last night, I kind of wondered. And if Mrs. Laguno had been a strong swimmer, we’d have to go into this a little deeper. But, what with the confusion, the darkness, it would have been easy enough for her to lose her bearings and once she was in the deep end—” He paused, turning to Wyckoff who stood silent and stooped at his side. “The doc here tells me he was her physician in Frisco and that he and his wife were friendly with her. As he remembers, she couldn’t scarcely swim at all.” He glanced at Laguno. “I guess that’s correct, isn’t it?”
Laguno said quickly, “Yes, yes. My wife was a poor swimmer.”
The Sergeant’s alert eyes shifted to Fleur. “You confirm that, Mrs. Wyckoff”
Fleur had been staring straight at her husband. She seemed unconscious of everything around her. But she said, “Yes, my husband was Janet’s physician. And I’ve known her all my life.”
“And she couldn’t swim?”
Fleur’s lips were very pale. She hesitated and then said, “No, I don’t think Janet swam very well.”
The Sergeant left then, taking Wyckoff and Chuck with him. It had all passed off as uneventfully as I had expected.
“Well, that’s over.” Lorraine got up and went to pour herself a drink. “You see what I mean? I’m sure that man was very sensible and understands about inquests and things. He said it was all all right.” She turned to Fleur, her face as guileless as a child’s. “But, Fleur, angel, there is just one thing that strikes me as queer. Do people forget how to swim? Don’t you remember, pet? When she was a girl, Janet was always winning prizes and cups and things. She was the champion swimmer of the school.”
For a moment Fleur stood very straight, staring in front of her.
Then, like a puppet with its strings snapped, she crumpled into a limp heap on the floor.
IX
Mimi, fluttering around like a wood sprite with a Red Cross diploma, brought Fleur out of her faint. When she came to, Mrs. Wyckoff made feeble remarks about the heat in the room. Overheated rooms often made her faint, she said. It was most unconvincing.
Lorraine started gathering everyone together to drive them up to the house. Iris and I said we would walk. When the others zoomed ahead in the car, we started on foot through the shadowy poplars along the moonlit drive.
My wife slipped her hand in mine. “Well, that’s tom it, Peter.”
“It certainly has,” I said.
“I was dying to scream out to that policeman to use his wits but it would have been hopeless. Janet was murdered, of course she was. And the bad part is that they’re all siding with the murderer. Even Lorraine. I don’t think she realizes it, but she’s so determined to keep life divinely gay that it comes to the same thing. Peter, it doesn’t make sense. She was killed so simply, so cleverly, but so pointlessly. I can’t see who could have wanted to kill her or why.”
“There’s Laguno. He didn’t know Janet had changed her will. You could tell that from his face when I broke the sad news.”
“I know. This afternoon we had the theory that Laguno and Dorothy had been planning to kill Janet and then Dorothy got killed by mistake. But I’ve been thinking. This morning Dorothy’s death was neatly accounted for as a heart attack. Laguno was the only one of the bunch who brought up the question of murder. He’d have been crazy to do that if he’d murdered her himself—completely crazy if he’d also been planning to murder Janet tonight.”
“There’s Bill Flanders,” I said. “He had every reason for wanting to kill Dorothy, and he benefits under Janet’s will. Maybe Janet told him she’d changed her will and—”
“But, darling, Bill Flanders couldn’t have murdered Janet. He was the only one in the pool with us when the lights fused. There can’t be two murderers crawling all over the place. The person who fused the lights must be the person who killed Janet.”
“Unless the lights fused by accident and the whole thing was unpremeditated, just someone taking advantage of the darkness.”
Iris squeezed my hand. “You can’t bring accidents in, darling. That’s cheating.”
“Well, there’s Wyckoff and Chuck. Between them, they managed to make Dorothy’s death look respectable. And they did their best on Janet tonight. Only I can’t see how either of them link up with Dorothy, let alone Janet.”
“Dorothy and Janet were both Wyckoff’s patients in San Francisco. Maybe he’s one of those movie madghoul doctors who go around murdering their own patients.”
“If he does, it’s a lousy way to make a living. In Janet’s death, it’s this swimming business that’s the crux. That policeman would never have been so casual if he’d known Janet was a champion swimmer. Wyckoff was the one who said Janet couldn’t swim. Laguno backed him up. But Laguno would have lied anyway. He’s so scared of his own hide. It’s Fleur—”
“Exactly. Fleur knew Janet could swim and yet she lied in her pretty little teeth. Then, when Lorraine called her on it, she fainted. I’ve w
ondered about her from the start. She goes around so mousy quiet with that look in her eyes as if everything’s a trap. She treats her husband as if he didn’t exist. But then Janet was supposedly her friend. Why should she lie to help her murderer?”
“Why is everyone lying to help the murderer?”
Iris said bleakly, “Oh, Peter, this is hopeless. We’re just talking around in a void.”
For a moment we walked up the winding drive in silence. My wife’s profile gleamed, pale and lovely, in the moonlight. I felt a sudden longing to take her away, to get out from under and have the sort of leave a husband and wife ought to have.
I said, “Honey, shall we quit? After all, there’s your movie career to consider and—”
“Peter, don’t be silly!” Iris turned to me almost fiercely. “We liked Janet. We’re not going to let someone murder her and live happily ever after.” She paused. “Besides, two women have been killed in two days. How do we know what’s going to happen next?”
She looked so young and stubborn. I kissed her. “Okay, baby. We stay.”
Her fingers slipped back into mine. “If only there was something concrete to work on.”
“There’s the burglary in Dorothy’s room. We know it happened. But that’s about all.”
“We don’t even know whether a poison dart was taken from the trophy room or not. If only we could prove that one was stolen—Peter, I’ve never seen that cabinet. Let’s go now and see what we can see.”
When we reached the formal gardens that stretched up to the terrace, the ground floor of Lorraine’s crazy house was in almost complete darkness. Lights in upstairs windows indicated that our fellow guests were going to bed. We slipped into the living-room through the french windows and down the corridor which led to the trophy room. It was in darkness, top. I turned on a light. It was unnerving the way all the animal heads on the walls sprang into view. With elks, zebras, bears, and crocodiles leering out of glass eyes at us, we moved to the cabinet that contained Lorraine’s Amazonian blowpipes and darts. The monstrous portrait doll, on its throne, sat staring at us with its fixed, imbecile smile. I pointed down at the three fanshaped designs of darts whose tips were coated with the sticky, reddish brown poison.
Puzzle for Wantons Page 8
