Green Ace (24 page)

“Yes, where is our fair hostess? I want to give her back this piece of banknote. Of all the weird ideas—”

“For a desperate disease, Oscar, a desperate cure. If it works that’s all that matters. Don’t worry, Natalie will be back in time. She was jittering so much, and casting such longing eyes at the decanter, that I insisted she go out and get some dinner and not come back until time for the guests to arrive. She’s trying to bear up, but, of course, she can’t forget for a minute that this is the last day. Tomorrow is the twentieth—”

“Don’t I know it?” he said, as he followed Miss Withers into the living room and looked at the portable movie projector ready and waiting. “And you’re going to try to prevent the inevitable with a magic-lantern show?”

“If only the magic works!” she told him. “You didn’t forget to bring what you promised, did you?”

“The film of Rowan? No, here it is.” He took a small flat can out of his coat pocket. “Though I still don’t see any method in your madness.”

She sniffed. “Wait and see. Tonight is the culmination of everything. It’s—”

“It’s the beginning of a career in fancy needlework, if you ask me.”

Miss Withers hesitated. “Oscar, about our bargain—”

“Ah—ah!” the Inspector said sharply. “You made your bed, and now you’re stuck with it. No weaseling out, now.”

“That wasn’t what I meant.”

He patted her shoulder. “Never mind, it had to come sometime. And I could be wrong, who knows? By the way, since I’m here I might as well make like a policeman and case the joint, just to make sure there aren’t any suspicious characters lurking under the beds or anything. Not that I think anything is going to happen, but while I can keep tabs pretty well on the people in one room, I don’t like to be surprised from behind or anything.”

Piper went up the stairs with professional briskness, leaving Miss Withers to draw the blinds in the living room and otherwise put the finishing touches on the lighting system. For good and sufficient reasons she wanted the room as dark as possible during the showing of the films. There were two floor lamps, four table lights, and the chandelier—like a washbasin on three chains—that threw its glow upward to reflect on the ceiling.

She had already decided where everyone was to sit. Natalie Rowan, who claimed to have had considerable experience with home movies, would operate the projector. The Inspector, at least in the beginning, would be in the chair nearest the entrance, where he could reach the switch that turned off the overhead light. She herself would sit near a table by the French doors, with one lamp within easy reach. The others she unplugged, to prevent any premature disclosures.

Oscar Piper finally came down the stairs again, having evidently satisfied himself that there was nothing on the upper floor except the furniture that belonged there. He was on the lower step when he heard Miss Withers calling softly from the living room. “Oscar! Could you come here a minute?”

“Soon as I answer the door,” he called, above the chiming of the bell. It turned out to be Iris, looking lovely and glowing in a silver-fox jacket and long apple-green gown. At the expression on his face she smiled and said, “Hello, Inspector. Am I maybe overdressed for the party? But you see I’ve got somebody waiting outside in the car, and we’re going places later.”

“Go back and bring him in!” spoke up Miss Withers from the doorway. “It’s Mr. Gresham, I presume?”

The girl nodded, then hesitated. “But I don’t really think Bill would want to—”

“Nonsense, he can stand it if the rest of us can,” Miss Withers told her. “I’d have put him on the invitation list if I’d known he was back here in town with you.”

“He wasn’t,” Iris smiled oddly. “Until a couple of hours ago. He came after me.”

“Miss Dunn has been moving heaven and earth to keep us from finding out that she has been running around with the same young man who was once briefly married to her former roommate,” said Miss Withers. “She had even been more or less hiding out with his family in Philadelphia—”

“But it was supposed to be so they’d learn to like me!” Iris put in. “So we could break the news to them that we got married last Friday, only Bill got cold feet and just said we were engaged—he’s scared pink of his mother. Only now he—”

“All right, all right, run along,” said the schoolteacher. The door slammed. “Oscar,” she said, “will you—”

But the Inspector was puzzled. “How’d she ever meet him?”

“I imagine that when Midge’s things were turned over to her she found some keepsake he’d given the girl during their ill-fated marriage, and used that as an excuse to look him up. But never mind that now, I—”

She bit her lip as the door sounded again. This time it was George Zotos, looking formal and uncomfortable in a tight dark suit and Chesterfield, with a derby in his hand. The little man was out of breath, and moistly apologetic. “I hope you don’t think I came because of the money,” he began. “But if there are films of poor dear Midge that I haven’t seen—”

The Inspector waved him on into the living room, and turned to admit Riff Sprott and Chloris, both of whom turned pale at the sight of him. “I—I didn’t know the police were staging this!” gasped the plump red-head, grasping her husband’s arm defensively.

“I’m not on duty,” the Inspector told her. “I just work out as butler on my days off.” He heaved a sigh of relief as Natalie Rowan finally arrived, decked out in black satin for the occasion. She had evidently dined on a double brandy or so, but her chin was up and her eyes were bright. Iris Dunn and her young man, closely followed by a pale, suspicious Nils Bruner, were coming in the door, but Piper washed his hands of it all and hastily back-tracked down the hall, where a moment later Miss Withers finally cornered him.

“Oscar, tell me quick,” she whispered. “After the murder just how thoroughly was this house searched?”

“Fine-tooth comb,” he whispered back. “I was here myself. We didn’t miss a thing. Why?”

“You were looking for the murder weapon, the necklace?” Then as he nodded, quite bewildered, she went on swiftly, “Don’t look now, but
it’s in that chandelier in the living room
—or a necklace just like it.”

“What?” he cried.

“Hush, Oscar! I was just checking the bulb to make sure nothing would go wrong at the crucial moment, and there the thing was—four pearls and then a green stone, and so on all around.”

“But we looked there!” he said indignantly. “Cops go to the movies too—I saw
The Lost Weekend
.”

Catching his arm, Miss Withers said grimly, “Then the murderer brought it here today!”

Piper shook his head. “It seems like a plant to me. You and Natalie didn’t cook this up as a last desperate resort to save Andy Rowan, did you?”

She gave him a scornful look.

“Okay, then. But how could anybody get in? There’s no signs of forcible entry.”

“No?” The schoolteacher smiled oddly. “Did I tell you of the pane of glass Natalie had to have replaced in one of the French doors yesterday? And then, of course, there’s the spare key that Rowan had made for Midge Harrington, that’s never turned up. The murderer conceivably could have kept it.”

The Inspector frowned. “This puts a different complexion on things. If that really is the murder necklace—”

“Please, Oscar! This is my party, don’t interfere now! I left the necklace there for a purpose. You sit nearest the door, and after the lights go out—” She lowered her voice to the faintest shadow of a whisper.

“Oh, there you are!” cried Natalie Rowan, as she came sweeping down along the hall toward them. “Everybody’s here—I mean, won’t you please come in the living room? I don’t know what to say to them, and everybody’s sitting stiff as a board …”

She had been passing out the remaining halves of the hundred-dollar bills, and seemed surprised and a little hurt that neither the Inspector nor Miss Withers would play that little game.

“It worked with the others,” said Miss Withers softly. “Which is all that matters. Let’s get on with the show.”

They took their places in the living room, in an atmosphere stiff as a poker. Miss Withers sank into the chair nearest the lamp, and Natalie fiddled a bit with the projector and then nodded at the Inspector, who turned out the overhead. Suddenly there was only the abrupt white square of the screen against the farther wall, a screen filled suddenly with brief credit lines that danced away—and then there was Midge Harrington moving across a railed porch, staring soulfully into the night. Like almost all screen tests everywhere, Midge had done the balcony scene from Noel Coward’s
Private Lives.

Someone in the room caught his breath sharply. No wonder, Miss Withers thought. The Harrington girl had been far lovelier than any of her still photographs had suggested. Unlike so many girls of her extreme height she moved gracefully, lightly, almost fluidly. Nils Bruner must have been a better dancing teacher than he had appeared that day with the ostrich feather fans.

But the schoolteacher dared not pay much attention to what was happening on the screen. She had her ears cocked for the rustle of someone moving; she peered into the pitchy darkness hoping to see the Inspector carrying out his orders. If only he didn’t get engrossed, and forget that he was supposed to change seats, supposed to slip quietly into the empty chair right behind Iris Dunn, and watch her!

Apparently it didn’t matter whether Natalie Rowan had drunk her dinner or not, she handled the projection machine without a hitch—though perhaps the sound was turned up a bit high. On the screen Midge Harrington as Amanda was tossing the bright lines of dialogue back and forth with the glib young actor who had been chosen to give her her cues. “He had to stand on a box in the close shot,” spoke up Iris’ voice suddenly.

Midge had been good, very good. Except, of course, for the faint but unmistakable Brooklyn accent that clung to her. This must be something of an ordeal for any murderer, thought Miss Withers. To look up at that tall, smiling girl and realize that her life had been snuffed out in a few seconds … in this room …

The screen test ended, and the film changed abruptly to the borrowed newsreel sequence of a beauty parade at Coney. Midge Harrington came smiling toward the camera, wearing a bathing suit into which she appeared to have been poured. Someone in the darkness sniffed and blew his nose—that must be Georgie-Porgie Zotos in a last tribute.

There was something grimly horrible in seeing the magnificent body of the Harrington girl parading up and down in the blinding sunlight, while the flip breathless voice of the announcer rattled off jokes about her curves, then finally announced that she had topped all the others and not alone in height. Then the screen went blank, and suddenly they were looking at a projected still photograph of Midge in the morgue, with her eyes staring and the grim stigmata around her neck.

“Oh,
stop
it!” somebody cried—it was Chloris. “Turn on the lights!” But her husband must have calmed her, for there was the sound of her leaning back in the chair again.

“Quiet, everybody,” spoke up Miss Withers. “Because I want you all to hear what’s coming next.” They were looking now at a scene down at Centre Street, with Andy Rowan sitting on the edge of a chair and telling a group of policemen his lame and halting story of just why he had been driving a dead girl around the city.

His questioners were all being very gentle with him, a gentleness that lessened a little as Rowan stubbornly refused to make the confession they obviously expected. The Inspector, or at least the back of his head, was in one scene.

Miss Withers wished suddenly that the doughty little Irishman were sitting beside her instead of somewhere off across the room when a moment later she heard a faint tinkle somewhere up overhead. Her eyes were still not enough adjusted to the darkness so that she could see the shadow of a movement—but somebody had softly reached up to take down the necklace.

The schoolteacher could see nothing but the glaring screen, the meaningless repetition of questions and answers, but she knew that somewhere in the room, somewhere in this same room where Midge Harrington had died, the murderer was moving softly forward …

It was too much for her. Perhaps it was premature, but she could wait no longer. She reached out for the lamp at her right hand, but somehow it wasn’t there. She reached farther but even the table was gone. This was silly—she must have got turned around somehow. She took a deep breath and started to scream for someone to turn on the lights, but suddenly there was a strangling tightness around her throat, cutting off the cry before it had formed. The pressure inexorably increased, and there was a roaring in her ears. The velvety darkness engulfed her so that she could no longer see even the white screen at the other end of the room, so that she could only claw feebly at nothing …

Now she knew why the necklace had been brought back to the house of murder, placed in readiness for another, a repeat performance. Now that it was too late. She felt a sudden snap—but not—as she had almost expected—the snap of a vertebra. She managed to croak “Help!” in a hoarse strangle, and then the light came on—in the shape of the Inspector’s flash.

Still trying to get her breath, Miss Withers whirled to look behind her, but there was nobody there. She looked at her hands, and was surprised to find that she held an emerald and pearl necklace, torn in two.

Inspector Oscar Piper’s voice cracked as she had never heard it in all their long years of association, quelling the rising commotion before it started. “Keep your seats!” He turned on the overhead lights, then came toward her. “What the—”

“Somebody just tried to kill me,” Miss Withers managed to whisper. “Only the chain broke.”

There was a quick chorus of exclamations, of denials. No one, it seemed, had left his seat.

“All the same,” the schoolteacher insisted, “somebody did try to kill me!”

Natalie Rowan had finally cut off the projection machine, and was staring with wide, frightened eyes. “But who?” she cried.

“Somebody who knew that if there was another murder with the same weapon in the same house, Andrew Rowan would have to be set free!” Miss Withers told her, the snap coming back into her voice. “I mean
you,
Natalie.”