Date for Murder (6 page)

“You keep it,” he said. “Did you remember about fingerprints?” He smiled as he said it. Speaking of fingerprints always sounded so melodramatic, so like a skulking policeman with a magnifying glass.

“Of course,” she said. Her voice grew lighter and gayer as she seemed to draw relief from his nearness. “I was very careful, Mister Detective. I used the bottom of my shirt and turned the very outer end of the knob on the door.”

He laughed. “All right, Miss Sherlock, what else do you remember? Was there anything in the wastebasket? In the ashtray? Was the room torn up? Signs of a scuffle?”

“One at a time,” she said. “I didn’t look in the wastebasket,” she added ruefully. “But I did in the ashtray. It held some cigaret stubs and date pits. No lipstick on the stubs. The room was quite dark. The shades were down, so I really saw nothing more. I’m sorry—but I did peek in just for a moment.”

Mark nodded. “You said you had an idea about the way he was poisoned.”

“Those date pits,” she said. “Link loved dates. He ate a pound package a day. The Queen put one in his room every evening. There were only a few pits in the ashtray and no dates at all on the nightstand. He always kept them there and nibbled on them when he was in bed.”

“Well, then, he ate the dates.”

“You don’t understand,” she said. Her breath came a little quickly now. “There were only a few pits and no signs of the dates at all. I know he kept them on the nightstand. Where were the other pits? Did he swallow them?”

“In the wastebasket?” Mark suggested. He was beginning to see her point.

“It’s across the room, by the dresser. They all are.” Idell lit a ciga ret with fingers that shook slightly. “I think whoever—well, whoever poisoned him took those dates out of the room when they took his body downstairs. It’s only an idea, of course, but Link loved dates so and everyone knew of it and—”

“You think then someone put cyanide into his dates,” Mark said, “and stole the dates after Link died to hide the evidence?”

Idell nodded. “He ate one too many dates.”

Leona’s voice spoke from behind them. How silently the woman moved! “You might say he was dated to death.”

T
HE
Manders’ ranch was out of the city limits of Indio, so Chief Deputy Sheriff Tom Rourke came plodding out with two assistants shortly after nine o’clock. After a half hour’s careful interrogation of Idell, Leona and Mark, which elicited little in the way of information, he suddenly demanded, “Where in hell is everybody?”

He was rather short and thick-set, and the summer heat made rivulets run down inside his collar and stain his face with sweat. He wore a straw hat pushed back on his head and a white shirt open at the neck and a pair of whipcord breeches and boots. He mopped at his face with a soiled handkerchief while he talked.

Mark grinned at the Chief’s explosive question. “As far as I know, Chief, they’re still sleeping it off.”

“Party, huh?” he said, his moon of a face holding a wise look.

“We went to bed around four this morning,” Idell said. “All but Uncle Frank, that is. He went to bed an hour before.”

“Any drunks?”

Leona’s lips curled slightly. “Miss Manders and myself were sober, I think,” she said.

The Chief looked at Mark. “You covering this story?” He referred to two newspaper features Mark had done on him when he had wanted a little extra money. He had flattered the Chief almost beyond human consumption, and they had been warm friends ever since.

“You aren’t a newspaper man?” Idell sounded frightened.

“Not for two years,” Mark assured her. “I used to be a New York police reporter. But now I’m on space rates like any other country correspondent. I do very little, though, even now.” He knew what she was thinking, and he wanted her to know that he was not there for that, but because he wanted to help her; he hoped she caught the personal note his voice held.

Idell threw back her head and laughed, a genuine warm bit of laughter that helped release the tautness built inside her. It was much more relaxing than the drinks had been, she thought suddenly. The others looked at her suspiciously, as if they thought she would go into hysterics. She didn’t bother to explain; she couldn’t, very well. It would be too much for her to tell Mark she had thought him a local boy!

“She found him,” Mark told the Chief doubtfully. He looked toward the body.

The Chief’s eyes followed his gaze. “Bayless called Doc Nesbit. He’ll be up to take a look pretty soon. And Riverside is sending the boys down.” He sighed ponderously as if the whole affair were already a trial. “I suppose,” he said, “we ought to wake ‘em up and start moving.”

“Breakfast, please,” Sing chanted from the doorway behind them.

The Chief jumped and turned quickly. “For gosh sakes!”

“Our cook,” Idell smiled. “We may as well eat and get it over with.”

“I ate,” the Chief said.

“Coffee then,” she offered. “And it’s much cooler in the house.”

The Chief nodded almost enthusiastically. “Okay. Bayless,” he said to the taller of his two men standing by, “stay here and watch that—the remains. And, Henderson, prowl around and see if you can spot signs of anyone having got in the house last night, huh.”

The breakfast room was large and airy, with a definite movement of cool air coming at them from grilles in the wall. Sing brought in iced melon, coffee and sweet rolls.

“If you want anything more, ask,” Idell said. They all refused.

“I thought Catrina Curtis was the maid up here,” the Chief said.

Idell asked, “You know her?”

The Chief flushed at Mark’s soft laugh. “Well, sort of,” he said.

Idell looked inquisitively at Mark. He told her, “Catrina is very popular with the boys—all the boys.”

Idell’s lips formed a round, silent “oh.” She said, “I don’t know where she could be, Chief, unless she’s sick. I haven’t seen her since I arrived.” She called to Sing, and when he came in said, “Have you seen Catrina, Sing?”

“She woke me up this morning,” he said, either forgetting or refusing to use his sing-song. “It was just past seven, and I saw no reason for her to wait, so I suggested she return to bed. I assumed, Miss Manders, that no one would rise before nine at the earliest.”

The Chief stared at him with his mouth slightly agape. A large piece of the melon he had taken on Idell’s suggestion showed between his teeth. He swallowed it hastily. “You mean she came in at seven and went back to bed, huh?”

“Exactly,” Sing said. He went back to the kitchen.

Sing’s story seemed to remind the Chief of something. He set down his coffee cup and bit into a plug of tobacco. He said, “Miss Manders, what time did you come down for that swim this morning?”

“At eight,” she said. They had gone over it before and she was puzzled. Was he trying to catch her? “I remember hearing the clock chime as I went past the landing.”

“She called me at half past,” Mark said.

The Chief could be penetrating on occasion. His placid, moon-like face and rather awkward grammar hid an efficient and agile brain.

“Why did you call him instead of me, huh?” he demanded.

“I was a bit hysterical,” Idell said. “If you had seen his face all screwed up like that, what would you have done?”

“Thought he drowned,” the Chief said. He did not point out that Idell had worked over Link for some time before she called Mark. He had an idea why she had let the police wait. “But he didn’t.”

“The murderer wanted to make us think he had,” Mark said. “I suppose because to some cyanide and strangulation appear alike.”

“Then why tie him down with a rope, huh?”

“To make sure it was recognized as murder,” Mark hazarded. “Our murderer wants everyone to know that Link was killed—did not die accidentally. As the melodramas would put it, he received his just deserts.”

“Meaning,” the Chief said, “lots of people didn’t like the guy.”

“You are being quite kind to Link when you put it that way,” Leona said. “I would say there were few who didn’t hate him.”

The Chief finished his coffee, waved another cup aside and rose ponderously to his feet. “I’m going to look at his room,” he said. “Hey, Bayless,” he bawled suddenly. The man on duty at the pool came inside through the French doors that opened into the patio. “Go wake everybody up and get ‘em down here. Leave ‘em dressed like they are. Pajamas and such. Let ‘em put on bathrobes, of course. Miss Manders, if you’ll go with him to show him who’s got which room, it would help. Get ‘em in here Bayless.” He finished divesting himself of his orders and started for the front hall. Mark rose and tagged along.

“Mind, Chief?”

“Hell,” the Chief said, “you met lots of these kind of people where you come from. I expect you might get some ideas, huh.”

Mark took the wandering compliment for what it was worth. He turned when Idell came from the breakfast room with Bayless, and looked at her suggestively. She took the key from her shirt pocket and handed it to him.

“Thanks,” he said. “Miss Manders was smart enough to lock Link’s door, Chief, after she realized it was murder.”

“Messed everything up, huh?” The Chief showed his distrust for women.

“I think not,” Mark said. He explained how she had kept from disturbing prints on the doorknob. They started upstairs, Idell and Bayless behind them.

Leona remained in the breakfast room, apparently occupied with her own thoughts.

“Who is that dame?” the Chief asked, glancing back. “And who all was at this party last night? The way these rich people carry on don’t make sense half the time.”

“Leona Taylor,” Mark said in answer to the first question. “New York showgirl, I think. A friend of Link’s and of Grant Manders. I don’t know much about her. The party was made up of the people here—you’ll meet them soon enough—and Myra Cartwright.”

“Myra, huh?” the Chief said, sounding wise. “She go home?”

“I took her home.”

“Yeah? What time?”

Mark grinned at the Chief’s tone. “About four. I got back to the station before four-thirty.”

“I’ll ask Babe,” the chief said, but his tone told Mark he didn’t mean it. “What were you doing up here, huh?”

Mark wondered just how much he should tell the Chief about the shooting. He decided it would all come out sooner or later and it was best to hide nothing.

“Idell Manders pulled into my station about one this morning, for gas,” he said. “She bought two gallons. A car came off the Palm Springs highway as she drove past it and shot at her. They turned and started chasing her, so I got in the jalopy and followed.” He said it slowly, using the slow drawl he had cultivated. “I found her hiking back about a half mile this side of Coachella. She can tell you the rest of it.”

“Shot at her, huh!” The Chief didn’t sound overly surprised. “I tell you these rich folks are nuts,” he added, lowering his voice on the off chance Idell quite a ways below might hear him. “Hit anything?”

“Got the top of the car once,” Mark said. “She set the throttle and jumped out. Skinned herself up, but not badly.”

“You see the guy chasing her?”

“Not very well. It was a black convertible sedan. The plates were dusted over. It was a foreign-sounding exhaust, deep and powerful.”

“What happened to her car?” the Chief wanted to know.

“It wasn’t her car,” Mark said with heavy emphasis. “It was Link’s.”

The Chief stopped in the middle of the hallway and said, “Huh?” He sounded surprised. He took a stubby cigar out of his mouth and bit off the end. He put the cigar back in his pocket and began to chew with a steady, cow-like rhythm. “Mistook her for him, huh?”

“I hope so,” Mark said so fervently that the Chief glanced at him.

The Chief waited until Idell reached the landing.

He pointed to a phone on a stand by the head of the stairs. “This hooked up?”

“Go ahead,” she nodded.

He called his office and gave sharp orders to the man there to go out and haul in the convertible. Idell gave him its description; she didn’t know the license number, only that it was New York registered. When the Chief had finished, he came back to where Mark stood idly puffing his pipe.

“Which room is which here, huh?” the Chief demanded.

Idell pointed west along the broad hall. “On this side,” she said, indicating the side where the stairs opened into the hall, “the far end room is empty; Clinton Jeffers used that bath. It opens into the hallway as well as the room. Next to that is Chunk Farman, and next to him his cousin, Maybelle. That door next to the stairs is a linen closet. Then on this side of the stairway is Link’s room. Next to it is an empty, and then Uncle Frank.”

“All these others private baths?” the Chief asked.

“Yes. The bath between Clint’s room, on the far end across the hall, and Leona’s, next to it, she uses altogether. Next to her is Grant’s room, and then mine right there. That door opens into a storage closet between my room and the Major’s suite. It goes all the way to the far end.”

“All right, Bayless,” said the Chief, “might as well start waking ‘em.” He went to Link’s door and inserted the key.

The lock clicked over, and the Chief took his handkerchief and gripped the outer edge of the knob. Fingerprints on a doorknob were usually inside where a man’s fingers would grasp to turn. The door wouldn’t open.

“Stuck?” Mark asked.

The Chief shook his head. “It wasn’t locked,” he said, turning the key back. The door opened easily. “I thought it turned backward before.”

“Are you sure you locked this door?” Mark called to Idell. She was standing in front of Maybelle’s door, and she turned and walked up to them.

“Quite positive,” she said. “I tried the knob after I turned the key.” She edged into the room behind Mark and the Chief. “Look, Mark!”

Mark looked. She was pointing to the nightstand beside the head of the bed. The bed itself was to the right of the door, the head butting the hall wall, and the nightstand between it and the door.

“That package of dates!” she said excitedly. “It wasn’t there before.”

M
ARK
stroked his chin and idiotically found himself thinking he needed to shave. The Chief looked at Idell and then back to the nightstand. The excitement in her voice was too obvious to ignore.

“What dates?” the Chief demanded. “What you mean they wasn’t there before?”

Idell pointed to the nightstand. A cellophane-wrapped pound package of dates with a little sticker in the center proclaiming them to be Manders’ finest was there with the opened end facing away from the bed. Other than that, the table held only an ashtray containing cigaret butts and a half dozen pits, and an empty whiskey glass. Mark noticed that approximately a half dozen of the dates had been removed from the opened end of the package.

“As I told you,” Idell said, “after I called Mark I came up here. Everything was just as it is now except there were no dates on the table.”

“And that was funny, huh?” the Chief deduced wisely.

“I thought so,” she explained. “Link always ate a package a day at least, and there were only a few pits in the ashtray and no dates at all. It made me feel that—” She stopped and looked at Mark.

He said to the Chief, “Idell thinks someone poisoned Link’s dates.”

The Chief grunted and stared at the nightstand. “Yeah,” he said. “Bayless, take this package and hold it. Fingerprints show good on that cellophane. We’ll analyze them dates and see if they got cyanide.” He bobbed his head as if in agreement with himself.

Mark said, “I don’t think you’ll find any cyanide in those dates, Chief. My guess is that our murderer took the poisoned ones and destroyed them. After Idell went downstairs he came back here and put these here to sidetrack suspicion. Also, they were fixed to make it look like the original package. Notice that six have been taken out and there are six pits in the ashtray.”

The Chief cocked his head at Mark. “You said ‘he,’ speaking of the murderer. You got any ideas, huh?”

Mark grinned. “Simply a habit, Chief. A woman could have put the poison there too.” He hesitated and then added, “But a woman couldn’t very well have dragged him out to the pool. He was a big man.”

“Okay,” the Chief said. “And I suppose you’ll say ‘cause the package is turned away from the bed that’s a clue too, huh?”

“Possibly,” Mark admitted. “But I’ll bet you a double Scotch at Mickey’s there isn’t any poison in these dates.”

“And that the autopsy’ll show poisoned dates undigested in Link’s stomach, huh?”

“I’ll add that too,” Mark said. “He wouldn’t have had time to digest them after that cyanide hit him. My guess is that maybe alternate dates in each row were poisoned, and he ate five before he came to the one that held any. When he got that—it was all over.”

Idell shuddered a little at the picture Mark’s words brought before her. The Chief smiled sympathetically at her. “You can go with Bayless, now, Miss Manders, if you will.”

After she and Bayless left the room, the Chief closed the door carefully and walked to the windows. He raised the shades, letting the morning light flood into the semi-gloom of the room. “Better,” he grunted.

Mark looked around. At first there seemed to have been little disturbance, but a closer inspection showed differently. The bed had been disturbed but little; it was across the room by the dresser and in the closet that signs of a search showed most clearly. Mark went to the dresser and drew open the drawers. Inside, Link’s clothing was balled and bunched as if someone had run through it swiftly. The Chief followed Mark, grunting when he saw the condition of the drawers and the angle at which the dresser scarf lay.

“This guy had something somebody wanted, huh?” he surmised.

“I guess,” Mark said. He opened the closet door. The Chief whistled in surprise. The closet looked as if a whirlwind had struck it, a particularly vicious, compact whirlwind. The clothing lay on the floor—the linings torn out of suits and coats, the inner soles removed from shoes, the heels taken off them, and even the sweatbands ripped from three lightweight Panama hats. The suitcases and the single trunk which the closet held were as badly treated.

“That,” Mark said, “is what is known as chaos.”

The Chief nodded. “There ought to be prints laying around after this. I wonder if whoever it was got what they was after?”

“Evidently,” Mark said. He led the way back to the bed. “The mattress isn’t ripped up. It would have been had the search gone on any more.”

“Or unless they got interrupted,” the Chief suggested.

“There’s that,” Mark admitted.

“The floor ain’t scratched,” the Chief mused. “He was carried out, not dragged.”

“Out into the hall, down the stairs and out the back?” Mark asked. “It was a pretty big risk.”

The Chief looked around for a place to spit, located the wastebasket by the dresser and peered in. It was empty. He made the metal side ring with a mass of brown tobacco juice. “He didn’t fly out and tie himself up,” he said.

There was a rap on the door, and the Chief opened it carefully. Bayless stood in the corridor, sweat streaming from his heavy red face.

“They’re all downstairs,” he reported. “All but young Manders. He’s dead to the world. His sister says he passed out last night.”

“I can believe it,” Mark said. “He was well on his way when I saw him.”

The Chief shifted his tobacco from one cheek to the other. “They all asleep when you got to ‘em?”

Bayless said, “All but the Farman boy,” in a suspicious-sounding voice. “He had his clothes on already.”

“How was his hair?” Mark asked. “I mean was it wet like he had been swimming?”

Bayless looked as if he wanted to remember but wasn’t having much luck. “It’s black and he wears it plastered on his head,” he said. “But I couldn’t say if it was wet or just held down with grease.”

The Chief scratched his round cheek with a stubby finger. “Nobody else was awake, huh? You got ‘em all out of bed.”

“All but Mr. Manders,” Bayless said. “He’s right at the end of the hall. I was trying to wake him when the Queen came up and did it herself.” He grinned half-heartedly at the recollection. “She said I was making too much noise and that he was a sick man. She wouldn’t let me wake up young Manders, neither.”

“She’s a busybody if I ever saw one when it comes to this family,” the Chief grunted. “Okay; fix the library up. I’m going to start asking questions.”

Bayless’ footsteps had hardly began to move down the stairs when a pair of lighter, more swiftly moving ones were heard coming up. Mark and the Chief stepped to the doorway to see a light, thin young man with a wispy blond moustache propel himself toward them in brief jerks. He carried a black bag in one hand.

“It’s about time, Doc,” the Chief said. “Take it easy; there ain’t no hurry on this case.”

Dr. Nesbit stopped and wiped perspiration from his high forehead. In spite of his life in this desert country, he was very pale. To Mark he had always been a local seven day wonder. Where everyone else lolled, Dr. Nesbit bustled; where they grew tanned he seemed to grow more pallid.

“You said to come up here right away,” he said. “I couldn’t—obstetrics case, very important—but I made it as fast as possible.” He spoke in explosive sentences. “What’s the trouble?”

Mark said, “Before we go down, Chief, how about a look at Grant Manders?”

The Chief regarded him owlishly. “Think he might be faking, huh?”

“It’s a chance,” Mark conceded.

“What is this?” the Doctor demanded. “Is there someone ill? Come, Chief, I haven’t all day.”

Mark grinned. “Down the hall, Doc. Take it easy; it’s hot.”

“Bah! Hot! Only two heat prostration cases this week.” He sounded put out.

The Chief wagged his head and led the way down the hall to the door of Grant Manders’ room. He put one hand on the knob and then dropped it. “The Queen ain’t around anywhere, is she?”

Mark glanced toward the stairs. “Not that I can hear,” he grinned.

The Chief turned the knob, and the door opened. The three men went quietly inside; Mark closed the door behind them. The room was quite large, with one side hidden by opened decorative screens. The bed stood against the far wall, between the bath and the French doors opening onto the balcony. Grant Manders lay out at full length, completely relaxed, his lips blowing and falling with his heavy breathing. His body, clothed only in the bottoms of a pair of blue silk pajamas, was damp with sweat in spite of the air-conditioning, and his brown hair was plastered in locks over his forehead. His eyes were closed loosely.

“What is supposed to be the matter with him?” Dr. Nesbit demanded, bustling up to the bed.

“He got drunk and passed out last night,” the Chief said. “We want to know if he’s still so full of liquor he can’t wake up.”

Dr. Nesbit shrugged. “I’ll see what I can do.” He bent over Grant and carefully raised one eyelid with the ball of his thumb. He peered into the exposed eye, moving his body so light from the windows fell across Grant’s face. “He is quite drunk,” he said. He bent and sniffed at Grant’s breath as it blew outward. “But it certainly didn’t occur last night.”

“Four this morning,” Mark said.

“Nonsense,” the Doctor snapped. “This man hasn’t been in this condition over three hours or so. Possibly since seven o’clock. Merely an estimate, of course, but a fairly close one.” He removed his thumb and let the eyelid slide back into place. Grant Manders didn’t even turn over. “This is a much more recent case than the one you mentioned. Sometime between then and now he has had more to drink, a good deal more.”

The Chief sucked in his breath. “You mean he might have woke up and then got himself drunk again?”

“Certainly. I mean he did just that—or someone did it for him.”

Mark said, “I wonder if he could have faked it last night, Chief?”

“He isn’t faking now,” Dr. Nesbit assured them.

The Chief spotted the wastebasket and spit into it from ten feet away. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I’ll damn soon find out if he was. Let’s go downstairs. The body’s out there, Doc.”