Death Likes It Hot (16 page)

“What is a special court?” asked Brexton, not raising his eyes from the sketch pad on his knees.

“It’s a court consisting of the local magistrate and a local jury before whom our district attorney will present an indictment of a party or parties as yet unknown for the crime of murder in the first degree.” He gathered strength from this legal jargon. It was properly chilling.

Then, having made his effect, he announced that if anyone needed him he could be found in the downstairs bedroom; he went off to bed.

I went over and sat down beside Brexton, feeling sorry for him … also curious to find out what it was that made him seem so confident.

He put the book down. “Quiet week end, isn’t it?” This wasn’t in the best of taste but it was exactly what I’d been thinking, too.

“Only four left,” I said, nodding. “In the war we would’ve said it was a jinx company.”

“I’m sure it is too. But actually it’s six surviving, not four, which isn’t bad for a tough engagement.”

“Depends how you reckon casualties. Has Mrs. Veering had heart attacks before? like this?”

“Yes. This is the third one I know of. She just turns blue and they give her some medicine; then she’s perfectly all right in a matter of minutes.”

“Minutes? But she seemed really knocked out. The doctor said she’ll have to stay in bed a day or two.”

Brexton smiled. “Greaves
said
the doctor said she’d have to stay in bed.”

This sank in, bit by bit. “Then she … well, she’s all right now?”

“I shouldn’t be surprised.”

“But why the bluff? Why wouldn’t Greaves let anybody go to her? Why would he say she’d be in bed a few days?”

“Something of a mystery, isn’t it?”

“Doesn’t make any sense.”

Brexton sighed. “Maybe it does. Anyway, for some reason, she wants to play possum … so let her.”

“It’s also possible that she might have had a worse attack than usual, isn’t it?”

“Anything is possible with Rose.” If he was deliberately trying to arouse my curiosity he couldn’t have been more effective.

“Tell me, Mr. Brexton,” I spoke quietly, disarmingly, “who killed your wife?”

“No one.”

“Are you sure of this?”

“Quite sure.”

“Then, by the same reasoning, Claypoole hit himself on the head, dragged his own body through the sand and cut his own head half off with your palette knife.”

Brexton chuckled. “Stranger things have happened.”

“Like what?”

“Like your knocking yourself out the other morning in the kitchen.”

“And what about that? That I know wasn’t self-inflicted.”

Brexton only smiled.

“Your wife killed herself?”

“By accident, yes.”

“Claypoole.…”

“Was murdered.”

“Do you know who did it?”

“I didn’t.”

“But do you know who did?”

Brexton shrugged. “I have some ideas.”

“And you won’t pass them on?”

“Not yet.”

I felt as if we were playing twenty questions. From across the room came the high squeal of Miss Lung appreciatively applauding some remark of our young historian.

I tried a frontal attack. “You realize what the police will think if Allie Claypoole testifies that she was, as you say, with you when her brother died?”

“What will they think?” His face was expressionless.

“That perhaps the two of you together killed him.”

He looked at me coolly. “Why would they think that? She was devoted to him. Look the way this thing hit her. The poor child went out of her head when they told her.”

“They might say her breakdown was due to having killed her own brother.”

“They might, but why?”

“They still think you killed your wife. They think Claypoole had something on you. They think you killed him. If Allie says you were with her then they’ll immediately think she was involved too.”

“Logical but not likely. Even allowing the rest was true, which it isn’t, why would she help me kill her brother?”

I fired in the dark. “Because she was in love with you.”

Brexton’s gaze flickered. He lowered his eyes. His hands closed tight on the book in his lap. “You go too far, Mr. Sargeant.”

“I’m involved in this too,” I said, astonished at my luck: by accident I had hit on something no one apparently knew. “I’d like to know where we stand, that’s all.”

“None of your business,” he snapped, suddenly flushed, his eyes dangerously bright. “Allie isn’t involved in any of this. There’ll be hell to pay if anybody tries to get her mixed up in it … that goes for the police who are just as liable to court action as anyone.”

“For libel?”

“For libel. This even goes for newspapermen, Mr. Sargeant.”

“I had no intention of writing anything about it. But I may have to … I mean, if Greaves should start operating along those lines. He’s worried; the press is getting mean. He’s going to have to find somebody to indict in the next few days.”

“He has somebody.”

“You mean you?”

“Yes. I don’t mind in the least. But there won’t be a conviction. I’ll promise you that.” He was grim.

I couldn’t get him to elaborate; I tried another tack. “If neither you nor Allie killed Claypoole, that leaves only three suspects … Miss Lung, Mrs. Veering and Randan. Why would any of those three have wanted to kill Claypoole?”

Brexton looked at me, amusement in his eyes. “I have no intention of giving the game away, even if I could, which is doubtful. I’m almost as much in the dark as you and the police. I’ll give you one lead though,” he lowered his voice. “Crime of passion.”

“What do you mean?”

With one quick gesture of his powerful right hand he
indicated Miss Lung. “She was in love and she was spurned, as they say.”

“In love with whom?”

“Fletcher Claypoole, and for many years.”

“I thought she was in love with the whole male sex.”

“That too. But years ago when I first met her, about the same time Fletcher did, she was a good-looking woman. This is hard to believe, I know, but she was. All the fat came later when Fletcher wouldn’t have her. I painted her once, when she was thin … it was when I was still doing portraits. She was quite lovely in a pale blond way. I painted her nude.”

I could hardly believe it. “If she was so pretty and so much in love with him why didn’t he fall for her?”

“He … he just didn’t.” The pause was significant. I thought I knew what he didn’t want to say. “But she’s been in love with him ever since. I think they quarreled our first day here.”

“About that?”

“About something.”

“I can’t see her committing murder fifteen years after being turned down.”

“Your imagination is your own problem,” said Brexton. He got to his feet. “I’m going to bed,” and with a nod to the two on the couch, he left the drawing room.

This was the cue for all of us. Randan asked me if I wanted to go to the Club with him. I said no, that I was tired. Miss Lung waited to be invited to the Club herself but, when the invitation did not come, she said she would have to get back to her auctorial labors … the readers of “Book-Chat” demanded her all.

I went upstairs with her. On the second floor landing one of the plain-clothes men was seated, staring absently into space. Miss Lung bade us both good night cheerily and, with a long lingering look at the servant of the public, she
oozed into her room, no doubt disappointed that his services did not include amatory dalliance with Mary Western Lung.

I went to my own room and quickly shoved the bureau against the connecting door. Then I telephoned Liz, only to find she was out.

I went over and looked out the window gloomily and thought of Liz, wondering whether or not I should join Randan, who was just that moment getting into his car, and make the round of the clubs. I decided not to. I had an idea there might be something doing in the next few hours, something I didn’t want to miss out on.

Fully clothed, I lay down on my bed and turned the light out. I thought about what Brexton had told me, about what he
hadn’t
told me. Very neatly, he’d provided Miss Lung with a motive. Not so neatly, he’d allowed me to discover what would, no doubt, be an important piece of evidence for the prosecution: that Allie Claypoole and he were in love, that the two of them, as easily as not, could’ve killed her brother for any number of reasons, all ascertainable.

I wakened with a start.

I had gone to sleep and not moved once which explained why my neck ached and my whole body felt as though I’d just finished a particularly tough set of calisthenics. I don’t know what awakened me. I won’t say premonition … on the other hand a stiff neck sounds prosaic.

The first thing I did was to look at my watch, to see how long I’d slept: it was exactly midnight according to the luminous dial.

I switched on the light beside my bed and sat up, more tired than when I’d dropped off to sleep.

I had half expected a call from Liz. The fact I hadn’t received
one bothered me a little. I found I was thinking altogether too much about her.

Suddenly the thought of a stiff shot of brandy occurred to me, like a mirage to a dying man in the Gobi. I had to have one. It was just the thing to put me back to sleep.

I opened the door and stepped out into the dimly lit hall. At the far end, the plain-clothes man sat, staring dreamily at nothing. He shook his head vigorously when he saw me, just to show he was awake.

“Just going to get something,” I said cheerfully.

He grunted as I passed him. I went downstairs. The lights were still on in the drawing room. I remember this surprised me.

I had just poured myself some brandy when Miss Lung, pale and flurried, arrayed in her pink awning, materialized in the doorway.

“Where is the nurse? Have you seen the nurse?”

“What nurse?” I looked at her stupidly.

“The nurse who.…”

“Someone looking for me?” A brisk female voice sounded from the main hall. Miss Lung turned as the nurse, white-clad and competent, appeared with a covered tray.

“Yes, I was. A few minutes ago I went into Rose’s room to see how she was … I know that nobody’s allowed to do that but I just didn’t care. Anyway, she wasn’t in her bed. I rapped on Allie’s door and there wasn’t any answer there either and I was afraid.…”

“I’m the night nurse,” said the white figure. “We change at midnight. I was in the kitchen getting a few things ready. As for Miss Claypoole she is under morphine and wouldn’t be able to hear you.…”

“But Rose? Where on earth can she be?”

“We’ll find out soon enough.” We made an odd procession going up those stairs. The angular angel of mercy, the billowy plump authoress of “Book-Chat,” and myself with a balloon glass of brandy in one hand.

The guard stirred himself at the sight of this procession. “I told her she wasn’t supposed to go in there but.…”

Miss Lung interrupted him curtly. “This is Mrs. Veering’s house, my good man, not the city jail.”

We went into Mrs. Veering’s room first and found our hostess, handsome in black lace, sitting up in bed reading a detective story. She was dead sober for once and not at all like her usual self. She was precise, even formidable.

“What on earth is everybody doing …” she began but Miss Lung didn’t let her finish.

“Oh, Rose, thank heavens! I was terrified something had happened to you. I was in here a few minutes ago and you were nowhere in sight; then I rapped on Allie’s door.” She indicated the connecting door, “and there wasn’t any answer. I couldn’t’ve been more terrified!”

“I was in the bathroom,” said Mrs. Veering, an unpleasant edge to her voice. “I’m perfectly all right, Mary. Now do go to bed and we’ll have a nice chat tomorrow. I still feel shaky after my attack.”

“Of course I will, Rose, but before I go you must …” while the two women were talking, the nurse had opened the connecting door and gone into Allie’s room. She had left the door half open and I maneuvered myself into a position where I could look in. I was curious to see how Allie looked.

I saw all right.

The nurse was already on the telephone. “Doctor? Come quickly. An injection. I don’t know what. I think she’ll need an ambulance.”

Before the law intervened to keep us all out, I was at Allie’s bedside.

She lay on her back, breathing heavily, her face gray and her hands twitching at the coverlet. The nurse was frantically examining a hypodermic needle.

“What happened?”

“Someone’s given her an injection.” The nurse managed
to pump a last drop of fluid from the hypodermic on a piece of cotton. “It’s … oh God, it’s strychnine!”

This time the questioning was general. There were no private trips to the alcove.

Greaves joined us an hour to the dot after the ambulance took Allie to the hospital.

Mrs. Veering was on hand, pale and hard-eyed, her own attack forgotten in the confusion. Miss Lung was near hysteria, laughing and giggling uncontrollably from time to time. Brexton was jittery. He sat biting his knuckles, his old faded dressing gown pulled up around his ears, as though to hide his face. Randan, who’d arrived during the confusion, sat with a bewildered look on his face while Greaves explained to us what had happened.

“She’ll be all right,” were his first words. He paused to see how the company responded: relief in every face … yet one was acting. Which?

Greaves went on, not looking at anyone in particular. “Somebody, at midnight exactly, got into Miss Claypoole’s room and attempted to give her an injection of strychnine. Luckily whoever did this did a sloppy job. Very little was introduced into the artery, which saved her life.” He pulled out a tablet of legal-size paper.

“Now I’m going to ask each of you, in order, to describe where he or she was at midnight. Before I start, I should say for those who are newcomers to this house that on the second floor there are seven bedrooms, each with its own bath. The hall runs down the center of the floor with a window at either end. On the west side is the staircase and three bedrooms. On the north, farthest from the stairs, is Mr. Sargeant’s room. Next to him is Miss Lung. Next to her is an empty room and south of that of course is the
stairs. Three bedrooms and a stairwell on the west side.” He paused a moment; then: “All contiguous bedrooms open into one another, by connecting doors in the rooms themselves … 
not
through the bathrooms which do not connect.”