Murder a la Richelieu (American Queens of Crime Book 2) (9 page)

In the end it was decided to leave the bulk of my things where they were until the decorators had finished with my new quarters. Fortunately my wearing apparel and toilet articles were in the bedroom. Accompanied by Sweeney, whom the inspector had left in charge, and by Clarence, who kept rolling his eyes toward the closed door into the sitting room, I collected enough of my belongings to tide me over the ensuing week, hurriedly packed them in a couple of travelling bags, and, again accompanied by Clarence, went upstairs to the small bedroom on the top floor which had been assigned to my use.

The fifth floor, being next to the roof, is the least desirable in the hotel in the summer. It is commonly reserved for tourists or such of the employees as live in the house. However, the weather does not as a rule turn uncomfortably hot in our section of the country before May, and so I had made no objection to being temporarily installed on the attic floor. Nevertheless, it did give me something of a turn to discover that my room was 511, until recently occupied by Mr James Reid, not of New Orleans.

“Ain’t nuff money in the mint to git me to sleep in here,” said Clarence, shaking his smooth oiled head and edging hastily toward the door.

“How silly!” I said curtly. “The man’s dead. He’s done all the harm he can do in this world.”

“Yes ’m, I hope so,” said Clarence dubiously.

The police had already removed the shabby black Gladstone, the sole piece of baggage which the murdered man brought to the hotel. They had packed into it everything he left scattered about the room and taken it down to headquarters, and Sophie had sent a maid up to put the place in order. It looked as bare and impersonal as hotel rooms usually look when prepared for transient guests.

There was not even a scrap of paper in the wastebasket to remind one who had slept there last. However, I carefully examined the closet and the small shower bath and, for the first time in my life, got down, regardless of my stiff knee, and looked under the bed, finding exactly nothing for my pains. Apparently the police had gone over the ground with a broom and a magnifying glass and swept it clean of every trace of its late occupant.

“Don’t be an idiot!” I scolded myself. “There isn’t anything to feel creepy about.”

Just the same I had an unpleasant clammy sensation up and down my spine as I unpacked and prepared for bed. I caught myself doing a number of unnecessary things to prolong the moment when I should have to turn out the light, such as washing out my princess slip and a pair of hose. There was nowhere in the tiny bathroom to hang so large a garment as my slip, but my old standby, the fire escape, was near at hand, though now I was on the opposite side of it. When I leaned out to drape the slip on the iron railing I was gratified to find that there was a full moon.

“At least it won’t be pitch dark,” I told myself and flipped off the bed light beside me.

The moon made quite a brave showing, shining in my window, and when I stretched out on the somewhat humpy bed I discovered that I was aching from fatigue. Every nerve in my body appeared to have been screwed up like a wire. However, I was never wider awake. I did not want to lie there, seeing pictures in the pale ghostly light of the moon. Only I was not able to close my eyes.

“Must be going into your dotage,” I scolded myself.

I heard the town clock, three blocks away on the county courthouse, toll solemnly for midnight, then one and two. I knew I should be good for nothing the next day. Loss of sleep always makes me cross. I think sometimes that is where I acquired my crusty disposition, during those long lonely years when Father was ill and I sat up beside him night after night. It was difficult the next day not to snap at people from sheer fatigue, and those things get to be a habit, one you cannot break through later – or so I have found.

It must have been close to three when I finally dozed off. The last thing I remember thinking was that the moon was slowly passing over to the other side of the heavens, leaving me in a darkness which was growing blacker and blacker. The next thing I knew I was sitting straight up in bed, staring at the pale oblong which was the open window in the inky darkness.

There was not a sound. It was as if the whole world, like myself, was holding its breath in an agony of apprehension. Yet I knew someone was there, near me, only a few feet away, some unknown presence, waiting for my next move.

“Who is it?” I cannot describe the horror with which I produced that choked, almost unintelligible sound nor the panic which electrified me when I heard it. Whoever was in the room could no longer doubt that I was aroused. To this day I do not understand why I did not scream. Perhaps instinctively I knew it would be my last act.

“What do you want?” I quavered. “For God’s sake, get it and go.”

How I knew that it was the murderer, his hands already irrevocably stained with human blood, I cannot tell. Certainly I never doubted that I was at that moment nearer death than I had ever been in my life.

“Please, go,” I gasped again.

There was a rustle, so close I could have reached out and touched it, then a whisper of movement, and a faint creak as the door into the corridor swung softly open. A shadow passed between me and the dim glow from the ceiling globe in the hall, the door swung noiselessly to, and I was out of bed, banging on the wall with the telephone receiver and screaming into the transmitter.

I admit I was excited but I did not, as I have repeatedly informed the people who waxed facetious about it, bite myself in the foot. I simply, in my vault from the bed, dropped the two prominent false teeth which I wear in the front of my mouth on a pivot and stepped on them, the result being a small but painful stone bruise just below my big toe. Naturally I limped for several days.

I think I must have been shrieking into the telephone for several minutes before Pinky Dodge managed to break in on me. “What is it, Miss Adams?” he cried tremulously. “For God’s sake, what’s happened?”

“Murduth! Fieves! Helpth! Helpth!” I continued to shriek.

I have neglected to state that the absence of my pivot bridge leaves a wide gap in the exact centre of my upper teeth through which my breath whistles in a highly irritating manner, distorting my speech so it is not surprising that Pinky had some difficulty understanding me. As a matter of fact, he was still pleading with me to make myself clearer when Mr Stephen Lansing, in a fascinating black brocaded dressing gown, bounded lightly through my window from the fire escape, resembling nothing so much, it seemed to me, as a sleek and handsome tomcat on the prowl.

“Seen another mouse, Miss Adams?” he demanded with that sardonic smile I was learning to associate with him.

His suave insolence had one recommendation. It never failed to restore my sanity. I became aware of my bare feet, especially my bunions, and of the row of false curls which it is my habit to pin across my forehead when I am dressed to receive people. I was by then sufficiently collected to shove them off the top of the dresser into a drawer and button my purple corduroy bathrobe about me before I answered.

“Thome one wath in my room,” I said coldly.

“Again?” he murmured and gave me an exasperating grin. “It’s getting to be a habit.”

“He wenth out the door when I waked upth and spokth to him.”

He eyed me thoughtfully. “Why the baby lisp? Or is that one of the wiles with which you lure your unsuspecting victims to your room, I mean den?”

“Young manth,” I said, limping over to the bed and inspecting the floor beside it, “even in my youth I wath not possessed of lure.”

“You wrong yourself,” said Mr Stephen Lansing gallantly and then added in a sharper tone, “What on earth are you looking for?”

“My falseth teeth, if you musth know,” I said bitterly.

He laughed but proceeded to get down on all fours and join in the search. “Is this ith?” he asked. “Great guns, you’ve got me doing it!”

He handed me the bridge which I popped into my mouth, but he did not at once get up. He was fingering what appeared to be a narrow slit in the carpet. We were, as it happened, in the anomalous position of Mr Stephen Lansing kneeling at my bare feet when, summoned by Pinkney Dodge, the policeman Sweeney burst into the room followed at a wary distance by an ashen-faced and trembling Clarence.

“As I live and breathe!” exclaimed Patrolman Sweeney disgustedly.

“A scene from Romeo and Juliet! And I thought someone was being murdered.”

“It’s no fault of the police I wasn’t,” I snapped, while Stephen Lansing, dusting his hands delicately, rose to his feet, his smile as imperturbable as ever.

“Attagirl!” he murmured to me sotto voce. “The best defence is a stout offensive.”

I transfixed Sweeney with my most eaglish look. “Were you or were you not left here on guard?” I demanded.

He spread his hands helplessly. “I’m just one lone man, lady. I can be spread over so much territory and no more.”

“And that’s the sort of service we taxpayers receive for our money,” I said bitterly.

“Spill it to the inspector when he comes,” muttered Sweeney.

“He’ll probably put my feet to the fire for hauling him out of his bed in the middle of the night. As if,” he said, giving me a very unfriendly look, “as if I can help it if a maiden lady has a nightmare and thinks she’s being killed or something.”

“I assure you I am not subject to nightmares,” I said haughtily.

I also assured the inspector of that fact when he arrived fifteen minutes later, only to have him shake his head.

“You can’t be blamed for being over-imaginative, Miss Adams, after your shocking experience earlier in the evening,” he said politely.

I was piqued. “There was someone in the room,” I insisted. “I can’t be too emphatic about it.”

“You admit yourself that nothing’s been disturbed,” murmured the inspector.

I nodded and admitted it.

“If anyone was here, what was he after?” asked Inspector Bunyan.

“Have you been informed, Inspector, that this room was formerly occupied by the late James Reid?” inquired Stephen Lansing, who had lingered with Sweeney and Pinky Dodge, the latter having put Clarence in charge of both the elevator and the switchboard, there being little, if any, demand for either at three-thirty in the morning.

The inspector frowned. “If you mean the murderer was looking for something his victim secreted here, he was wasting his time. My men went through this room with a fine-tooth comb.”

“Looking for incriminating documents?” drawled Stephen Lansing sarcastically.

“Looking for anything incriminating,” said the inspector and sighed.

“Without success?” The inspector shook his head wearily. “If James Reid got the evidence he was after, he wrote it in his head.”

“Maybe the-er-murderer didn’t know the police had been through this room,” contributed Pinky.

I glanced at him in some surprise. It was unusual for the downtrodden little night clerk to vouchsafe an opinion of his own, but I suppose there is an amateur detective dormant in all of us. I confess I felt the faint stirring of such an instinct myself.

“He was undoubtedly after the papers!” I cried excitedly.

Stephen Lansing smiled. “Them good old melodramatic papers, so dear to fiction!”

The inspector did not look amused. “It is possible,” he said slowly, “we are approaching this whole affair from the wrong angle.

If somebody really broke into this room tonight, there is a chance that James Reid merely stumbled into a trap set for another person.

“What do you mean?” asked Stephen Lansing, knitting his brows.

It made me nervous the way the inspector looked at me. “It’s a striking coincidence that this alleged second act of violence should also have centred in Miss Adams’ locality,” he said.

The hair on the back of my neck crawled. “You can’t believe that I – that James Reid was killed – that he was mistaken for me?” I asked faintly. “Or-or are you suggesting that I am his murderer?”

“Steady,” whispered Stephen Lansing at my ear. “Don’t let him get your goat.”

“After all,” murmured the inspector, “it’s never been explained how the man got into your suite, Miss Adams. I believe you told Sweeney that both outside doors to the suite were locked when you entered it.”

“So was that one when I went to bed,” I remarked tartly, pointing to the door into the corridor.

“Being a private detective, Inspector,” murmured Stephen Lansing, “mightn’t Mr James Reid have been expected to provide himself with a skeleton key? They are supposed, or aren’t they, to go hand in hand with pussyfooting investigators.”

Inspector Bunyan languidly smothered a yawn. “My men searched the corpse for such a key, Mr Lansing.”

“Again without success?”

The inspector for the first time showed traces of irritation. “The unanimity with which all our clews have come to nothing in this case, Mr Lansing, is a strain on the official mind.”

“Skeleton keys, fiddlesticks!” I exclaimed disdainfully. “Nobody needs such a thing to enter either this room or my suite downstairs. Any fairly active person could climb in by way of the fire escape, as Mr Lansing did just now when I yelled for help.”

Stephen Lansing groaned.

“I wondered,” murmured the inspector softly, “how you happened to be on the scene so soon, Mr Lansing. Before my man Sweeney or anybody else arrived, I believe.”

“Yep,” said Stephen cheerfully, “as soon as I heard Miss Adams’ siren call I clambered right up the old fire escape to the rescue, pronto – or even quicker than that.”

“How fortunate,” said the inspector, eyeing him curiously, “that you were already wearing your street shoes.”

Stephen coloured. “I’m a bit of a night owl, Inspector. I hadn’t, as you have also noticed no doubt, removed anything except my coat.”

“Yes,” said the inspector, “I had noticed.”

“It was a mere trifle to slide into my dressing robe.”

“I dare say,” murmured the inspector. “Naturally, from our viewpoint, it’s regrettable that in your precipitate ascent you have probably destroyed all traces of whoever preceded you up the fire escape.”

“Isn’t it?” drawled Stephen with a broad grin.