Death by the Book (9 page)

“Yes, how nice to meet
you
, Mr. Bell. Madeline, you go on ahead and show this gentleman around the place.”

“Well—”

“Now, don’t keep the young man waiting, dear.” Aunt Ruth smiled at Drew with only a touch of combative smugness. “We’ll be just fine here.”

Drew returned the smile, determined to display nothing but gracious good humor, and stood aside. “By all means.”

The big American took Madeline’s arm and hurried her away.

“They make a nice couple, don’t they?”

Obviously subtlety wasn’t one of Aunt Ruth’s strong suits, and Drew had to keep himself from chuckling.

“Madeline’s company improves any man, I’d say, ma’am.”

“Drew, how are you, my boy?”

An older gentleman and his wife came into the entryway, and again Drew shook hands.

“So glad you could come, sir. And who’s this young girl you’ve brought along?”

The woman, comfortably sixty or so, simpered and shook her index finger at him.

“Naughty. Your father was just the same. Always threatening to steal me away from my husband if he didn’t take care. Oh, it was sweet of him.”

Aunt Ruth cleared her throat, and Drew turned to her.

“May I introduce Mr. and Mrs. Paignton? This is Madeline’s aunt, Miss Jansen.”

Then more guests began to arrive, and Aunt Ruth stood at Drew’s side as he and Mrs. Allison welcomed them, commenting on how her niece was about somewhere “with a really fine boy from home.”

It was nearly time for dinner when Madeline finally reappeared. She was alone.

“What’s happened to your friend Bell?” Drew asked.

“I’m afraid someone stole him from me.” She took his arm, her periwinkle eyes twinkling. “That Daphne Pomphrey-Hughes said she was ‘just perishing’ to talk to an American boy.”

“Good. He deserves her.”

Madeline gave his arm a sympathetic squeeze. “Has she been after you for a long time?”

Drew made a face. “Since her mother decided I was perfect for her, I believe.”

“Three years now, isn’t it?” Nick laughed. “But you’re losing her, old man. I warned you this would happen if you continued to neglect the poor girl.”

“Bell can have her, I say.” The words came out with rather more bite to them than he had intended, and he smiled faintly. “Always nice when the guests hit it off, eh?”

Madeline glanced up at him, reading him as always, no doubt. “Are you feeling all right? You’re not mad at me for going off with Freddie, are you?”

“No, of course not.”

Nick grinned in the most annoying way. “‘The count is neither sad, nor sick, nor merry, nor well; but civil count.’” He winked at Madeline. “‘Civil as an orange.’”

“. . . and something of
that jealous complexion.”

That was the rest of the quote. Drew knew it well and knew Nick very likely might be devil enough to say it aloud.

“Then it’s all much ado about nothing.” Madeline gave Nick a very superior smile. “We studied Shakespeare in the backwoods where I come from, too.”

Nick clasped both hands over his heart, a lovesick expression on his face. “Miss Parker, will you marry me?”

Drew shoved him. “Go away, cretin.”

“Hmmm, yes, I can see it already. He’s getting rather apricot-colored just there in the jowls. Or perhaps cantaloupe better describes it.”

Madeline laughed and squeezed Drew’s arm. “You really are a terrible tease, Nick. As if he would be jealous of me.”

Drew patted her hand. “Of course not, darling. What’s this Bell doing in Britain anyway? Run out of his own country by the Ladies’ Decency Committee?”

“He’s traveling all over Europe, a graduation gift from his parents before he opens his law practice in San Jose.”

“So he’s from California. I suppose he’s got whole vats of Hollywood stars for friends.”

She glanced over Drew’s shoulder. “You can ask him yourself.”

“Ah, there you are, Bell. Having fun? We were just discussing your Hollywood connections.”

Bell’s laughter was hearty and good-natured. Some people might have found it a likable attribute. Drew merely smiled coolly.

“To be honest, Farthering, San Jose’s a little far north for much in the way of Hollywood connections, but it was awful good of you to invite me to your party when I really don’t know anyone here in England.”

“For that, you must thank Miss Parker,” Drew said.

Madeline’s delicate eyebrows went up slightly. “Me?”

“For the invitation, darling.”

“But I thought you . . .” She faltered, glancing from Drew to Bell and back to Drew.

The American looked grave. “You didn’t invite me? Neither of you?”

Drew gave Nick an accusatory glance, but Nick only grinned and said, “It wasn’t me, old man. If I was going to invite someone from the States, it would be that Hoover fellow. These days, he looks as though a nice holiday would do him a world of good.”

Madeline smirked. “He just might get one, too.”

Bell put his hands in his pockets. “Well, now I feel the fool. Believe me, Farthering, I wouldn’t have horned in here without an invitation.”

“Do you have it with you?”

“Never had one. I just got a message at my hotel that I was invited here tonight at eight if I wanted to come. I assumed it
was from you or one of your people. Maybe I’d better make myself scarce.”

The poor fellow looked truly chagrined, and Drew couldn’t help feeling a bit sorry for him. Only a bit. “No harm done. Can’t have a chap feel he’s not wanted, can we, darling?”

“Of course not.” Madeline took Bell’s arm, smiling up at him. “You have to take me in to dinner, like it or not, and then you can tell me what they’re saying about the presidential election this fall.”

Drew watched as the two of them wandered out of the entry hall, talking and laughing like old friends. “Cheeky devil.”

Nick’s grin was even more annoying than before. “Hmmm, I’d say you’re growing more and more carrot-colored as the night goes on.”

“Rot.”

“I take it you don’t believe his story—about being invited?”

Drew scowled. “I do. I just can’t imagine who would have invited him.”

“You don’t suppose she did but was afraid to fess up?”

“That hardly seems like her. She’d have asked me first. Or if she hadn’t, she’d have looked pert when I asked her about it and owned doing it.”

“I wonder—”

He broke off when Dennison appeared at Drew’s side.

“Pardon me, sir, but Mr. Morris is on the telephone for you.”

“Ah, thank you, Denny.” Drew glanced over at Madeline and her American, stopped on the other side of the room, admiring a landscape by William Linton. “See to things here for me, will you, Nick?”

He excused himself and went into the study to take the call.

“Roger, old boy, where in the world are you? We’re all pretty
keen to get better acquainted with this Bohemian of yours. If this Clarice is going to make you late to the best parties, she’d dashed better be worth it.” He was answered only by silence. “Roger? You there?”

“Drew.”

Roger’s voice was scarcely a whisper, and so broken that Drew knew he wouldn’t have recognized it if he hadn’t known who it was.

“Drew. Oh . . .”

Drew heard a wrenching sob, then silence once more.

“Roger? I say, Roger!”

“You’ve got to help me. I just . . . I don’t . . . Sweet mercy, she’s dead. She’s dead.”

“What?”

“She’s dead, I tell you. Clarice is dead. You’ve got to come, Drew. To her cottage.”

“Roger—”

“You’ve got to come. She’s dead. You’ve got to come.”

“All right, all right. Get a grip on yourself. Tell me what’s happened.”

Again there was silence.

“Roger?”

“She, uh . . .” Roger sniffled and then caught his breath. “She didn’t come to the front door when I called for her, so I went round to the back. The door wasn’t locked, and I went inside. I found her sitting in that big modern chair she’d just got, the zebra one. I thought she’d fallen asleep, but when I touched her, she was cold. You’ve got to come, Drew. You see, you’ve absolutely got to.”

“All right, old man. I’ll be there directly once I’ve rung the police.”

“No.” Roger made a little whimpering sound. “They’ll think I’ve done it. They’ll think I’ve done them all.”

“All? All what?”

“Drew, she had one of those horrible notes pinned into her. Like the other two. Dear God, help me.”

“Dear God, help
me
,” Drew breathed heavenward. What was this about? What could Clarice Deschner possibly have to do with the other victims?

“Drew,” Roger pleaded, “you
are
coming, aren’t you?”

“Yes, straightaway. Hold on, and whatever else, don’t touch anything.”

“I pulled out that ghastly pin. I couldn’t stand it anymore.”

That was the worst thing he could have done. Now the police were certain to suspect him.

“It’s all right,” Drew soothed. “Just sit down somewhere and don’t disturb anything else. Do you understand?”

All that came from the other end of the line was another low whimper.

“Do you understand?”

“Yes, all right, but you’ve got to hurry. Oh, Clarice . . .”

D
rew rang off and then called for Denny. “Will you ask Nick and Miss Parker if they would join me for a moment, please? Mrs. Allison too, if you will.”

Mrs. Allison agreed to continue as hostess in Drew’s absence and see that everyone was entertained, and Madeline decided she had better stay on as well, to keep an eye on Aunt Ruth. A few minutes later, Drew and Nick were at Long Cottage, not half a mile from Farthering Place.

Drew pulled the Rolls round to the back of the house and turned off the engine. Roger was crouched on the back step, silhouetted in the rectangle of yellow light from the doorway. A trembling pinpoint of glowing red marked the end of his cigarette.

Drew and Nick hurried over to him.

“You didn’t call them.” Roger’s eyes were red-rimmed, fierce, and frightened. “The police, I mean.”

“No, not yet.” Drew pulled him to his feet. “But we’ll have to in time. You know that.”

“Best go in and see what’s what,” Nick suggested, and Drew took Roger by the arm.

“No.” Roger tried to pull away. “I can’t go back in there. She’s . . . I just can’t.”

“Steady on now. We’ve got to know what’s happened. Let’s just go into the kitchen, all right? You don’t have to see her again.”

Roger screwed his eyes shut but didn’t resist when Drew led him past the body in the zebra-striped chair and into the kitchen.

“Just sit here and don’t do anything. Here’s an ashtray.”

Roger nodded and took another drag on his cigarette.

Drew and Nick went into the other room. The girl was in the chair as Roger had said, looking as if she had fallen into a deep sleep. For a dressing gown she had on a man’s silk smoking jacket, gaudily red with black Chinese dragons on it, just long enough to reach her knees, even with her bare legs curled up under her as they were. A hint of a black slip peeped out beneath it. A long stylish cigarette holder, also black, had slipped out of her limp fingers. As Roger had said, she was cold.

“No obvious cause of death,” Drew said. “No noticeable marks on her except the puncture there over her heart.”

He didn’t touch the cup on the table next to the chair. Perhaps something in the little bit of tea left in it contained a clue to what had killed her.

Nick scrutinized the small wound. “You said he pulled out the hatpin. I suppose there was a note, as well?”

“He said there was, but I don’t see anything.”

Nick got down on hands and knees to look under the chair. “Ah, the cretin’s probably burnt the deuced thing.”

“I don’t think the fire’s been lit for some time. Perhaps he has it with him.” Drew fingered the black-and-white evening gown
draped over the back of the sofa. Next to it was a necktie, maroon and navy, not done up. “Looks as if she meant to come to dinner.”

“What do you suppose she wanted with that tie?” Nick asked, standing back up. “You don’t suppose it’s Roger’s?”

“Nobody would wear that to an evening affair. It’s hard to tell with that sort of girl. Roger said she’d wear most anything and somehow make it look chic. Bohemian type, don’t you know.”

Drew glanced at the girl again. She was a pixyish little thing with fiercely red, lacquered nails and bobbed hair dyed an impossible shade of black. Roger would fall for a girl like her.

“Come on, Nick. We’d better see to Rog and then ring up the police.”

When they returned to the kitchen, Roger had his head down, his face buried in his arms. His cigarette had rolled onto the table and was leaving a tiny charred mark in the wood. Drew put it back into the ashtray.

“Better tell us about it, Roger.”

He groaned as he lifted his head. “She
is
dead, isn’t she?”

Drew nodded.

Roger closed his eyes. “What’ll I do now?”

Drew looked at Nick. “Better see if there’s brandy or something in the house.”

“You don’t think he might have had too much as it is?” Nick whispered. “No, I suppose we’d have smelled it on him.”

Nick spotted an unopened bottle of whiskey on a side table. A little more searching brought to light a juice glass that would serve the purpose. He set both in front of Roger.

Drew filled the glass about an inch deep and then pushed it over to Roger. “Drink that down.”

Roger obeyed him mechanically. Then he picked up his smoldering cigarette and began puffing away.

“All right, Rog, now tell us what’s happened. You said there was a message. Where is it? And the pin, as well.”

“Uh, I don’t know. I suppose I left them in there.” Roger jerked his head toward the other room, but he wouldn’t look that way.

“We didn’t find anything,” Nick said. “Anywhere else you might have put them?”

Drew steeled himself. “You didn’t burn the message or anything.”

“Of course not.” Roger hesitated, then a look of befuddlement came into his eyes. “I . . . I don’t think I did. It’s all a bit of a blur.”

Drew tried his best not to scowl. Roger had never had any spine to him. “Think, man. What exactly did you do when you found her?”

Roger tapped the ash from the end of his cigarette and looked up at the ceiling, his eyes filling with tears. “I touched her arm. To see if she was dead. Then I pulled out the pin and read the note.”

“What did it say? Do you remember?”

“Something about being hot-tempered and humbled and a queen or something. Odd stuff. I don’t know what it meant.”

Drew glanced at Nick and then back at Roger. “All right. Then what?”

“I suppose I rang up Farthering Place.” Roger wiped his upper lip with the back of his trembling hand. “I tell you, I don’t remember.”

He’d go off his head in a minute if they weren’t careful. Drew poured him another drink.

“All right. Take that and think again. You must’ve put the note and the pin down somewhere so you could use the telephone. What would you have done?”

Roger held the glass in both hands but didn’t drink. “Put it on the end table, I guess.”

“It’s not there,” Nick said.

For another moment, Roger stared into the whiskey, as if the answer lay somewhere in its amber depths. “Wait.” He patted down his dinner jacket. “Wait.”

He pulled from his pocket a crumpled ball of paper and a hatpin adorned with a jeweled dragonfly. Drew took both from him, touching them as delicately as possible.

“There weren’t any fingerprints on any of the other messages and things. I don’t suppose there are any on these either, besides yours, Rog, but one can’t be too careful.”

Holding only the corners, Drew tugged until the paper was relatively flat and legible.

Mismatched, hot-tempered, simply waiting for greatness to be
humbled, she, but for the scandal, might have been queen
of them all.

The three of them merely stared at it. No wonder Roger had made nothing of the message. Mismatched and hot-tempered. That could certainly describe the girl herself, but what greatness was to be humbled? Whose greatness was to be humbled? And what had that to do with poor Clarice with her Bohemian ways and her zebra-striped armchair?

Drew glanced over at Roger. “Was there a scandal of some kind? Involving Clarice, I mean.”

Roger shrugged and twisted his neck slightly, chafing against his collar. “I never heard of one. I mean, not anything more than the way she did her hair or wore her clothes. Some of the beaux she had. Nothing anyone would murder her for.”

“Tell me what the two of you did today.”

“There’s not all that much to tell. We were to come to Farther
ing Place for dinner, as you know, so we didn’t want to motor up to London or anything like that. Turned out we spent the afternoon in the village.”

Drew nodded. “Doing what?”

“Not much of anything really. She liked to look in the shops, but she never did buy much of anything here. Said it was all too bourgeois for her taste. You’ve seen the kind of thing she liked.”

“And that was all?”

“Till I came back and found her. Like that.” Again he took a puff of his cigarette, and afterward he became oddly calm. “They’re going to think I did it, aren’t they?”

Drew glanced at Nick, then turned back to Roger. “Why do you say that?”

“I found her. No one else was about. I pulled that . . . that pin out of her, so it’s got my fingerprints on it, as you say. And the note.”

“You’ve explained that,” Drew assured him.

Roger ground out the stub that was left of his smoke and then patted his pockets for his cigarette case. He fumbled with the thing before he finally got it open and removed another cigarette. Then he slid it across the table toward the two others.

“Have one if you’d like. Either of you.”

“No, thanks.” Drew reached for the silver case, meaning to return it, but then he got a better look at it. “I say, Rog? Where did you get this?”

“What?” Roger managed to strike a match, but Nick had to steady his hand before he could light his cigarette.

Drew pushed the case closer to him but didn’t relinquish his hold on it. “This.”

Giving it a glance, Nick’s eyebrows shot up, but Roger only looked at Drew as if he’d lost his mind.

“What possible difference could that make? It’s a cigarette case. It’s—”

“Just tell me.”

“My father gave it to me, ages ago. Birthday or Christmas or something.”

“Your father thinks your initials are
JLC
?”

Roger’s heavy brows came together in puzzlement. “That’s not mine.”

“I gathered as much.” Drew took it back, examining it. The engraving
JLC
was unmistakable, but there were no other marks on it. “How do you expect it ended up in your pocket?”

“I don’t know. Picked it up by mistake somewhere, I suppose. It’s about the same as mine.” He took another puff of the cigarette, but this time the movement was jerky. “Put an ad in the
Times
, if you like, saying it’s been found. I’ll return it to any reasonable claimant. What the devil does it matter? Clarice is dead and you have to go on about a cigarette case?”

“This isn’t just any case, Rog. Remember the doctor who was stabbed on the golf course?”

“What about him?”

“The police didn’t find his cigarette case when they searched his body. His name was Corneau, if you recall. Joseph Latimer Corneau.”

“I don’t—” There was terror in Roger’s eyes. “No, no, no . . .”

“I’d better telephone the police now, don’t you think, old man?”

Roger blinked three or four times, then wilted in his chair. “I suppose. I’m for it now, no matter what you do.” His voice was a low monotone, and there wasn’t a flicker of feeling in his expression.

Drew wanted to shake him. “You can’t just chuck it all in
now. It’s likely you’ll be arrested, I won’t deny that much, but they’ll sort everything out.”

“Everyone saw us together in the village. I haven’t any alibi for when I left her here.”

“What did you do during the time you were apart?”

“I changed into my eveningwear.”

“That whole three hours?”

“I don’t know what I did exactly.” Roger tugged at his bow tie, tightening the knot. “Read a bit, I suppose. Walked.”

“You didn’t see anyone? Or telephone anyone?”

“No.”

“But see here,” Nick said. “It might be that the police will charge you about Clarice, but surely they can’t think you’ve done the other murders.”

Roger shook his head. “This one had the note and the pin just the same as the others. They’re sure to think I’m guilty of the whole lot.”

Drew thought for a moment. “But you must have an alibi for at least one of the other murders, don’t you?”

“I don’t know when the others happened. How can I possibly remember what I was doing?”

“Montford was killed on the nineteenth. Where were you that afternoon?”

“What day was it?”

“Wednesday before last.”

“I don’t . . . No, wait. Yes, I do. I remember it because I was going to have to go to Blenheim the next day, Thursday, for Mother’s birthday.”

“But where were you on Wednesday?”

“Drove down to Land’s End. Just for a lark, you know.” A little color came back into his face, along with a weak smile.
“They’ll have to see I couldn’t have killed Montford because I was driving to Land’s End.”

“Alone?”

“No, I was with Clarice.”

“That’ll hardly be verifiable at this point. Did anyone see you there?”

“I don’t think so. No one who’d remember.”

“What about for the doctor’s murder? I suppose that cigarette case will do you in there.”

“I tell you, I don’t know how that came to be in my pocket. I never even heard of the man until he was in all the papers. After he’d been killed.”

“That was the following Monday. Do you have any alibi for then?”

Roger thought for a bit, and then, with a groan, covered his face with both hands. “I was here. With Clarice.”

Inspector Birdsong’s hound-dog eyes remained neutral. “Rather convenient, isn’t it, sir? I mean, having the one person who could vouch for your whereabouts turn up dead?”

Roger gave the chief inspector no answer. He just sat there at the kitchen table, rocking slightly, forward and back. His last cigarette had smoldered into ash long since, and Birdsong had taken away Corneau’s silver case and put it on a side table.