Murder a la Richelieu (American Queens of Crime Book 2) (12 page)

The inspector next smiled at me. “Your present room was not the only one which had a surreptitious visitor last night, Miss Adams.”

“No?” I asked weakly.

“Somebody,” said the inspector, “in spite of sealed doors and windows and the presence of a guard in the corridor outside, succeeded in effecting an entrance to your former suite.”

Stephen Lansing smothered an oath. “What the...” He subsided abruptly, knitting his heavy black brows.

The inspector looked him over deliberately. “You were about to say, Mr Lansing?”

“Nothing.”

However, when the inspector once more bent his sleek head over his notebook, Stephen Lansing leaned closer to me and out the corner of his closed mouth made what to me was a completely mystifying statement.

“So it was you who brought that guy down here,” he said.

When I stared at him incredulously, he shook his head and added with quiet bitterness, “Live and learn. I knew you were onto them, but no matter what they’ve done to you, I thought you were too good a sport, Adelaide, to set that kind of skunk onto two helpless women.”

“Young man,” I said tartly, “I haven’t the faintest idea what you are talking about.”

“Naturally you’d deny it,” he remarked with appreciable disdain, then turned abruptly to the inspector. “You haven’t told us, Inspector Bunyan, if the marauder – or was it the murderer? – helped himself to anything in Miss Adams’ former suite.”

“No,” said Inspector Bunyan with a frown, “nothing was disturbed, absolutely nothing.”

“Not even the floor?” demanded Stephen Lansing quickly.

The inspector frowned. “The floor? No, Mr Lansing, nothing about the floor was disturbed.”

“I don’t get it,” muttered Stephen Lansing, scowling at me.

“Neither do I” said the inspector, also scowling.

“What is this?” demanded Dan Mosby truculently. “A guessing contest? If nothing in the suite was disturbed, how do you figure someone got in?”

“The seal on the window –” explained the inspector wearily, “I might add that it was the window within reach of the fire escape was broken open.”

“Those dumb cops of yours probably forgot to close the darned thing,” said Dan Mosby with conspicuous rudeness. “Or maybe they thought it was a love letter and sealed it with a kiss.”

“Please, Dan,” whispered his wife, her eyes fastened on the inspector with such raw terror I felt a little sick.

Her warning, poor bedraggled little moth, came too late. Apparently Dan Mosby had succeeded in getting under the inspector’s skin. The glance he bent on the other man made my flesh creep.

“He asked for it and he’s going to get it,” muttered Stephen Lansing, glancing at Lottie Mosby’s small twitching face and then away as though he could not bear the sight.

“Last night, Mr Mosby,” said the inspector in velvety tones, “you saw fit to deny that you went upstairs between seven-thirty and eight. Are you prepared to retract that statement?”

“Why should I?” retorted Dan Mosby, while the small quivering figure beside him began to rock with silent sobs.

“You did go upstairs, Mr Mosby. You were seen crouching on the landing between the third and fourth floors by two different people within five minutes of the discovery of James Reid’s murdered body.”

“So what?” asked Dan Mosby, turning white.

The inspector’s lips curled. “How long have you been spying upon your wife?” he asked.

“I don’t know what you mean,” stammered young Mosby, then went on quickly, “Why should I spy on her?”

“There is an old saw, Mr Mosby, to the effect that a betrayed husband is the last person to know it.”

Lottie Mosby moaned softly.

Clenching his fists, Dan Mosby sprang to his feet. “Damn you!” he cried. “You can’t say things like that about my wife! Not if you have all the police on earth behind you.”

“Oh, Dan,” whispered Lottie Mosby.

“You have been suspicious of your wife for months, Mosby,” said the inspector. “That’s why you haven’t dared stay sober. You weren’t man enough to face the truth.”

Dan Mosby was trembling.

“I don’t know what you are talking about,” he stammered.

“Was it you who hired James Reid to come to the Richelieu?” demanded the inspector sternly.

“If you mean, did I hire a dirty gumshoe to snoop on my wife, no! No!”

“But you snooped upon her yourself last night.”

Dan Mosby swallowed painfully, and his bloodshot eyes turned desperately to that small shrinking figure beside him. “Honey,” he said, as if he had forgotten everyone else, “I know you’ve been indiscreet, but, as God is my helper, I never suspected you of worse.”

She could not speak. She could only go on staring at him, her eyes looking back at him from beyond the fires of her private hell.

“You do not know then, or do you, Mr Mosby,” asked the inspector, “that your wife has been gambling steadily on the races for the last six months?”

“That’s my business,” growled Dan Mosby, but he had started violently at the inspector’s question. “If I can afford it, what’s it to you?” he demanded.

“But can you afford it?” pursued the inspector. “It is true you earn, or so I have discovered, around two hundred dollars a month. However, it costs you something to live, particularly in a hotel. And as I have taken the trouble to find out, your bank account has been non-existent since the first of the year.”

“That’s also my business.”

“Naturally,” the inspector admitted. “Nevertheless, the police are curious to know where, if not from you, your wife procured the two hundred dollars she has spent with the bookmakers this spring?”

Dan Mosby’s face seemed to have shrivelled. “I don’t believe it,” he said at last, his eyes dull and old.

The inspector sighed. There was a laboured silence and then, hitching slowly to her feet, Lottie Mosby held out her small shaking hands to her husband in a gesture which broke my heart.

“It’s true, Dan,” she said faintly. “I have lost two hundred dollars to the bookies, and I – and I got the money from-from-”

“From the men who bought your favours behind your husband’s back,” said the inspector.

“Yes.”

The word fell upon the silence of that room like a groan. It seemed to me its echo would never die. Slumping back into his chair, Dan Mosby covered his face with his hands, leaving her standing there, swaying a little, her eyes staring at him pleadingly though quite without hope.

“I kept thinking each day I’d win and – and be free,” she faltered. “Free of the whole horrible business! I didn’t want to be bad, Dan. I just got in and couldn’t get out.”

He did not lift his head or speak, and after a while she said sadly, “I didn’t think you’d ever forgive me if you knew.”

He looked up then, his face contorted with loathing. “Forgive you? I’d see you in hell first.”

“Yes,” she whispered. “I thought you’d feel like that.”

“I can’t stand much more of this,” muttered Stephen Lansing. “For God’s sake,” he cried to the inspector, “haven’t you any mercy?”

But the inspector was a man hunter close to the kill. “You murdered James Reid, Lottie Mosby!” he said harshly.

“No, no!”

“It wasn’t small fry like you he was after, but when he stumbled onto your wretched secret he tried to blackmail you, and so you killed him.”

“Good Lord, Inspector,” protested Howard Warren, “she’s only a little scrap. She couldn’t hang a man up by his suspenders to a chandelier, much less cut his throat.”

“James Reid was a very slight man,” said the inspector, “and the strength of a desperate woman would surprise you, Mr Warren.”

“I didn’t kill him,” whispered Lottie Mosby.

The inspector produced a sheet of paper on which other small pieces of paper had been pasted. “This,” he said, “is the note which Lottie Mosby left in James Reid’s box at the desk a little before six yesterday afternoon.” He held it out. “It will do you no good to deny it, Mrs Mosby. The experts at headquarters have identified your handwriting.”

Her lips quivered. “I don’t deny I wrote it,” she faltered.

“It reads like this,” murmured the inspector. “ ‘I have paid all I can. There isn’t any more. But if you tell my husband about me, I’ll get you and I don’t mean maybe.’ It is too bad from your viewpoint, Mrs Mosby, that when James Reid tore up your note he left the pieces in the wastebasket in his room.”

Her eyes were unnaturally distorted, her voice frantic.

“I’m not going to hang for something I didn’t do!” she screamed. “I don’t want to die! Not until I’ve washed away my sins! I didn’t kill James Reid, and I-I won’t be the goat!”

She was out of the room before anyone guessed her purpose. The rest of us, shocked by her sensational outburst, began to mill about like stampeded cattle. The inspector, biting his lip, hurried out into the hall and barked rapid questions at two startled policemen.

“She darted up the stairs there,” stammered one.

“After her!” cried the inspector furiously. “She’s gone to her room on the fourth floor!”

Dan Mosby continued to sit with his head in his hands. It seemed inhuman to stay there, gaping at his misery. By twos and threes we drifted away. A police car roared up outside, and four more policemen swarmed into the hotel.

“Find her if you have to take the place apart!” I heard the inspector shouting.

However, at the end of fifteen minutes Lottie Mosby still had not been found. What with the police running hither and yon, peering in at doors, even opening cabinets not large enough to conceal a kitten, and with the guests in the house being pushed about everywhere while protesting bitterly against the violation of their privacy, it would be difficult to imagine a more confused quarter of an hour. No wonder that later nobody could give a coherent account of his movements during the fatal moments.

I recall, though I could not have proved it, that I was standing in the lobby, rehearsing in my mind the scathing terms in which I intended to inform Sophie Scott that I was moving out the minute the police lifted their ban, when I heard the thud, that single dreadful sound which still at times rings in my ears.

Nobody would believe, unless he felt it, that one slight body striking the roof over the employees’ entry could shake an entire building from top to bottom. Of course, she was dead when they found her. I pray she never knew what hit her, poor little thing, lying face upward on the paved alleyway at the back of the hotel, her eyes staring up with a terrible bewilderment at the indifferent blue sky above her.

“Dead!” gasped Dan Mosby, kneeling beside her and gathering the small broken body into his trembling arms. “Oh, Lottie, Lottie! Why did you do it? If only you could come back, I’d forgive you. I’d forgive you anything, Lottie, if you’d come back.”

Howard Warren, to whose hand I was clinging, was not ashamed to let me see the tears on his cheek. “She couldn’t face it,” he said thickly. “And who can blame her? Suicide is kinder than the hangman.”

The inspector put a shaking hand up to his lips. “At least she’s saved the state the expense of a trial,” he sighed.

I glared about me. “If you ask me, she was practically hounded into a life of infamy,” I said bitterly. “A little tolerance and understanding might have saved her. In my opinion her blood is on all our hands.”

“Yes,” said Ella Trotter, blowing her nose.

Hilda Anthony smiled unpleasantly. “If a few more of your old hens had a change of heart, the Richelieu might not be such a dismal hole to live in.”

“Is that so?” I demanded, giving her a dose of her own bitters.

“You’re accepting this as suicide and a confession of murder, Inspector?” asked Stephen Lansing, his face drawn and tired.

The inspector nodded. “That’s how it’ll go down in the record,” he said and drew a long breath. “I don’t mind confessing I’m glad to close the case. It had me going around in circles for a while.”

“We can all rest easier to know that none of the rest of us is a murderer in disguise,” murmured Ella Trotter, sounding very shaky for her.

Polly Lawson smiled weakly. “It was pretty terrible for us suspects,” she said.

“Yes!” cried Kathleen Adair in a choked voice. “Thank God, it’s all over,” sighed Sophie, leaning heavily on Cyril’s arm.

“Except,” said Stephen Lansing quietly, “it isn’t over.”

We all gasped and stared at him.

“One of us is a double murderer,” he said.

The inspector turned violently red.

“What are you driving at?” he demanded furiously.

“You are still going around in circles so far as this case is concerned, Inspector,” drawled Stephen Lansing with a twisted smile.

“Explain yourself,” snapped Inspector Bunyan.

“This poor girl did not kill herself. She is another victim. Somebody in this hotel is a double murderer.”

“Impossible!” cried the inspector.

Stephen Lansing knelt by that small shattered body which Dan Mosby was still cradling in his arms and turned back the frivolous little lace collar about Lottie Mosby’s childish white neck.

“Mrs Mosby,” said Stephen gravely, “did not throw herself out of a window. She was hurled to the ground after she had been strangled to death.”

He pointed to cruel livid marks, already turning dark, on the girl’s thin young throat. Then his gaze travelled slowly around the group gathered about Lottie Mosby’s crumpled body.

“She told us she did not kill Reid, but I think she knew who did,” he said.

“Good God!” gasped Howard Warren. “Then she, too, was-was killed to-to...”

“Like James Reid, she was killed to preserve somebody’s guilty soul,” said Stephen Lansing and added gently, “God rest her poor stained soul.”

It is the human instinct in time of stress to seek lights and a crowd, and so the dining room in the Richelieu was filled that night with haggard and sober faces, albeit nobody had an appetite. I suppose everyone felt as I did. The sight of food was a little sickening, yet anything was better than being cooped up alone in my room.

Lottie Mosby’s pathetic body had been taken away by the police, its immediate destination the morgue, to lie, until the coroner’s inquest, alongside that of James Reid, to me a horrible thought. Dan Mosby was in the hospital under a physician’s care.