Murder a la Richelieu (American Queens of Crime Book 2) (21 page)

She went off into a smothered fit of weeping, so desolate it chilled my heart. Despite the cleavage between us, my old affection for Sophie and Tom Scott was not entirely dead, and I lacked the courage to intrude upon her grief. My face very sober, I stalked down the hall to where the policeman Sweeney was standing on one foot and his dignity outside the door to Room 511.

“It’s absolutely the limit of something or other for the inspector to keep us penned up like this, as if we were all a bunch of low criminals!” I cried indignantly and borrowed a leaf from Ella Trotter.

“I shall write the mayor a note, and I shall expect you, my good man, to deliver it.”

“Say, lady!” he expostulated. “You can’t ...”

I was shooing him ahead of me into my room, taking care to leave the door wide open behind us. “I want you to watch every word I write,” I announced firmly. “A witness is important, or so I’ve been led to believe, when dealing with politicians, no matter how prominent.”

“Listen, lady...” I snatched up a piece of paper and a pen from the desk, giving him no chance to finish. “Your honour,” I declaimed in my most ringing tones while writing vigorously, “As one of the major taxpayers of this community, I demand, not request, that you pay a visit at once to the Richelieu Hotel and remove forthright and without a quibble the objectionable individual who is at present in charge of police proceedings here. Signed, Adelaide Mills Adams.”

As my pen moved with hectic speed over the page Patrolman Sweeney’s gaze followed it, his agate eyes growing wider and wider; but, to allow the devil his due, the man was more of an actor than I should ever have given him credit for.

“Of all the tomfool notions,” he said with every evidence of soul searing disgust. “Listen, lady, if the mayor paid attention to all the crackpot letters he received, he’d be fit for the booby hatch.”

“Nevertheless,” I informed him loftily, “you are going to deliver this note into his honour’s own hand, my good man, or-or I’ll make it my business to –”

“All right, all right,” he muttered in a bored voice. “Just keep your shirt on, lady, and I’ll do anything.”

Scowling wrathfully, he pocketed the folded paper which I handed him and, still scowling, marched out the door and down the corridor toward the elevator.

“There,” I informed myself exultantly, “I defy anyone to see through that stratagem.”

I believe I have said that there is the germ of an amateur detective in all of us. Certainly I have never felt prouder of anything in my life than of the subtle manner in which I had contrived to convey Hilda Anthony’s message to Inspector Bunyan without, as I had every reason to believe, having given either her or myself away.

Needless to say, the words which I penned under Policeman Sweeney’s starting eyes in no particular corresponded with those I dictated aloud. They said in essence that the Anthony woman was scared for her life and ready to break the case and requested Inspector Bunyan to meet her in the parlour at eleven-fifteen, and for everybody’s sake to come armed and on the dot.

It was, I remember, a quarter of eleven when I returned to the lobby, my heart hammering against my ribs. Hilda Anthony was standing near the front door, staring out at the bright April sunshine and the freshly washed spring world. Smothering a yawn, she tucked her book under her arm without once glancing in my direction.

“Of all the dopey places to be stuck in!” she remarked in her usual blasé and disdainful manner. “Darned if I don’t get a tube of amytal tablets and sleep the blasted clock around.”

She strolled on into the drugstore, and Stephen Lansing smiled cynically. “Queer how people always get sore at the clock for their own sins,” he said and tossed his black slouch hat at the face of the large Western Union timepiece which hangs directly over the desk.

“Look out, you clown!” cried Howard. “Now see what you’ve done.”

Stephen laughed. His hat had lodged on the top of the clock where it stayed until, assisted by Polly, he climbed upon a chair and after varied exaggerated manoeuvres finally succeeded in dislodging it. Hilda Anthony, a small package in her hands, sauntered back through the lobby. “Good night, all,” she cried flippantly, “and pleasant dreams.”

I did not like her, but I was compelled to admire the poise with which, stifling another yawn, she walked languidly into the elevator, her exotic face expressing nothing except listless ennui. The elevator creaked upward, and I sank back upon the divan, suddenly aware that I had been painfully and in a state of complete funk holding my breath. It was then I discovered that both little Mrs Adair and my afghan had disappeared.

“So much for the wonderful watchdog you turned out to be,” I told myself crossly, trying to remember if I had seen either the lady or the shawl since my return to the lobby.

Polly Lawson decided to go to her room and ‘powder the old nose,’ as she explained brightly. Stephen Lansing walked over to the elevator with her and then carelessly, as if by an oversight, got in beside her and was slowly borne upward. Howard, scowling ferociously, did not linger long about stamping off up the stairs.

It seemed to me, watching the creeping progress of the minute hands of the clock, that I had never seen the lobby so deserted.

There was, at eleven-fifteen, exactly nobody there except myself and Letty Jones, who was scratching her chin with the end of the stubby cedar pencil tied to the old-fashioned register while she stared pensively straight at me.

“Why doesn’t the inspector come?” I asked myself feverishly.

And then the hands of the clock were pointing to twenty minutes after eleven and from the second floor over my head came a woman’s scream, a scream of such piercing agony that I cowered like a whipped animal. That it was Hilda Anthony I seem to have recognized instantly. I was halfway up the stairs when she screamed again, one long-drawn-out shriek of such intolerable anguish, I stumbled and nearly fell.

She was lying on the floor by the grate, her once-exquisite face horribly repeated and magnified in the convex mirror over the mantel.

Her face was exquisite no longer. Acid was eating the chiselled features and running down onto the throat where there were cruel marks, already turning livid.

The head was oddly twisted over on one shoulder, the arms bound to the side, the eyes sightless, burned like the once-lovely face to a raw red mass of exposed tissue. But she was not quite dead when I knelt beside her, for her body quivered horribly for an instant and then went limp, while through her terribly disfigured ups bubbled a bloody froth.

“So he is up to his old tricks,” murmured the inspector behind me. “Not content with breaking her neck, he had to destroy her fatal beauty.”

I was sobbing uncontrollably. “Why, why, in God’s name were you late?” I wailed.

“I am not late, Miss Adams. It is now exactly sixteen minutes after eleven.”

“But the clock in the lobby!” I protested.

“The clock in the lobby has been turned up at least ten minutes.”

“Oh!” I gasped.

“It is obvious what happened,” said the inspector grimly. “The murderer, having advanced the hands of the clock, lay in wait for his victim here. Behind those window drapes, I should say. The moment she came within reach he flung that rug about her, winding her up in it till she was as helpless as a mummy. Then, having broken her neck, he poured the contents of a bottle of acid down her face.”

“Oh! Oh heavens!” I whispered.

For not till then had I realized that the thing wrapped about Hilda Anthony’s lifeless body like a winding sheet, the thing which the inspector called a rug, was my rose and gold and amethyst afghan.

I do not know about the others, but I did not appear in the Coffee Shop that day for lunch. I was till nearly two being grilled, like a sardine between two thin slices of toast, by Inspector Bunyan and the local chief of police, who, in the emergency, came to the aid of the party. I have never admired short, fat, pompous men, and so far as I could judge, the chief’s only contribution to that prolonged and hectic conference in the parlour was a highly annoying trick of pulling his underlip out at frequent intervals and letting it fly back with a disconcerting “Pish!”

Others were summoned into the presence, questioned and dismissed, sometimes to be resummoned and questioned again; but Inspector Bunyan’s interest in me went on and on. If he was temporarily engaged with someone else, I was politely though firmly requested to remain at the inspector’s disposal. Steadily refusing to turn my head toward the spot where Hilda Anthony lay so horribly dead, I sat rigidly upright in one straight cane-bottomed chair until I felt positive I should wear the imprint so long as I lived.

When I was finally informed with ominous curtness that I might go ‘for the present,’ it was all I could do to totter into the elevator and point for down.

Although officially the Coffee Shop at the Richelieu is supposed to stay open until two, Cyril Fancher was just locking the doors when I stepped into the lobby. He knew of course, because everybody knew, that I had been to all intents and purposes in the custody of the police all during the luncheon hour; nevertheless, giving me a dour look, he strolled past me without a word. Had I been myself, I should have told him in no uncertain language what I thought of his cavalier treatment of one of the hotel’s best-paying guests. However, I was too exhausted and depressed even to take a crack at Cyril, which speaks volumes, and I had no desire for food. The very thought made me a little ill.

“Tough going, eh, Adelaide?” murmured Stephen, strolling over to the divan on which I had slumped down.

I nodded feebly. I have had to be a self-reliant person, but just then I felt old and forlorn and helpless. I dare say my eyes looked it, for Stephen put his hand on my arm.

“Brace up,” he said gently. “Keep the old lip upper stiff or words to that effect.”

There had been a time when I should have resented both his affectionate tone and the small caressing gesture, but not in my then low state of resistance. I am forced to admit that, while I’ve never had any patience with clinging vines, I even reached up and clutched his hand.

Continuing to pat me in a very soothing manner, Stephen went on cheerfully, “What you need, Adelaide, is something to back up your ribs.”

‘’I’m not hungry,” I said wearily. “Privately, I doubt if I ever shall be again.”

“That clinches it,” he said. “When a stout guy like you starts weakening in the pinches, he requires fodder in a hurry and plenty of it. Come on, Adelaide, here’s where for once in your life you perch on a stool in the old drugstore like the rest of the little floozies and consume large quantities of soup and coffee, to say nothing of a litter of hot dogs.”

I grasped at my old manner. “Young man,” I said sternly, “I never ate at a counter in my life. In my opinion, no well-brought up lady does. And I consider hot dogs an abomination to the eye and an insult to the stomach.”

My bluster had lost its bite. At least, it completely failed with Stephen. Still smiling cheerfully, he proceeded to escort me into the drugstore, where to my amazement the soup tasted remarkably good, as did the hot dogs with a liberal application of mustard.

Stephen’s grey eyes twinkled when I disposed of the second one, but he did not avail himself of his opportunity to rub my nose in it.

He merely grinned and asked softly, “Feeling better, Addie, old thing?”

I had never expected to permit Mr Stephen Lansing to employ the diminutive of my name, but I may as well confess that, after having been treated like a human pariah for several hours, it was comforting to be chummy with a fellow creature.

“Yes,” I said with a sigh, “I’m feeling better, though I’ll probably eat my next meal in the county jail.”

“As bad as that?” he inquired with a frown.

“According to the inspector,” I said, sighing again.

“Just what does he think he’s got against you, Adelaide?”

Drearily I outlined the inspector’s case. “From every possible source of evidence I was the only person, outside the police themselves, who knew about Hilda Anthony’s date in the parlour or that she intended to welsh. It appears that I was slightly too ingenious about that note to the inspector. I seem, in fact, to have very cleverly knotted the noose about my own neck. At any rate, I’m left holding the bag, all by myself, as it were. Moreover, I was practically discovered in the act by the inspector himself; at least, according to him, I was hovering over my victim when he arrived. And-and it was my afghan.”

“So you go and drape it all over the spot marked X for fear the police will fail to regard you with suspicion,” said Stephen dryly. “Bosh! Phooey! Or what have you?”

“The inspector believes we are dealing with a very subtle criminal, as you ought to know,” I reminded him in a resigned voice.

“He thinks it an extremely cunning finesse on my part to plant so obvious a clue against myself. He points out that every schoolboy nowadays has read enough detective stories to conclude that anybody in the cast is more likely to have committed the murder than the one who left his cuff link so conveniently on the scene.”

“But if you were in the lobby when the Anthony woman screamed, you have a cast-iron alibi, Adelaide. As that wall-eyed Letty Jones can testify if she will.”

“Letty Jones is not only wall-eyed,” I replied bitterly, “she goes into a coma every time she gets the chance on duty. And Letty’s sworn statement deposes that she had not been paying the least attention to me or anything else in the lobby for some moments before Hilda Anthony screamed, at which time Letty went all over faint – or so she says – and closed her eyes tightly, a habit she has, or claims to have, in thunderstorms and other crises. When she opened them, says she, she was alone. For that reason she cannot swear that I was not in the lobby when she heard the scream, but she is able to be very definite about the fact that I was not there a few seconds later.”

“Hell!” remarked Stephen feelingly.

“Quite so,” I agreed with emphasis, although I do not in general practice approve of profanity.

Stephen grinned and began to chant in an atrocious British accent that allegedly comic song which was so popular in cheap English music halls some seasons ago.