Murder on Wheels (7 page)

“Dearest—(it began)

“I am writing to tell you that you were right and I was very wrong, not only about us but about Lew. The only reason I ever loved him was because he is so much like you. For that reason I can’t hurt him by telling him, there must be a better way.”

“Now we’re gettin’ somewhere,” said McTeague cheerfully, forgetting his bump as he stared over the Inspector’s shoulder.

The Inspector read on. “But I say now, as I refused to say when we parted, I love you more than anybody else in this world, and nobody, not even Lew, is going to stand in our way—always, your Dana.”

Painstakingly the Inspector folded it back into the envelope. His face was grave.

So a girl had loved both the Stait twins—and sworn that nobody was going to stand in the way of her getting Laurie! Well, it looked as if something
had
stood in the way. That something was a length of limber hemp.

“You know, chief, it’s smart to think of planting a letter there,” McTeague pointed out. “There wasn’t a chance in a million that we’d find it, but we got a lucky break.” McTeague grinned and rubbed his forehead.

“Yeah. Well, Mike, don’t ever let anybody tell you that this business isn’t just full of lucky breaks. Now get back on your post, and try to keep your thick skull out of the way of falling kitchenware.”

Piper started back up the hall, wondering just what the letter in his pocket was going to mean. He noticed as he came out of the kitchen that another door opened into the rear of the hall. Probably the rear stair—no, upon investigation it proved to be the passage to the musty-smelling cellar. Evidently this house, like so many of its kind, had no servant’s stair. Well, that simplified a few things.

Sergeant Taylor was just putting down the phone. “Oh, Inspector, Headquarters on the wire. Doc Bloom’s assistant reports that Stait could not have taken his own life, and the case goes down in the Medical Examiner’s records as
Murder.
Death caused by snapping the vertebra, and it was instantaneous. Preliminary autopsy showed no sign of drugs, either a dose or habitual. Brain showed a trace of alky, though. That’s all, I guess—I knew you were busy, so I took the message. Oh, yes, they found in the Morgue that the pelvis was cracked, too. But only minor abrasions of the skin.”

“Okay, Taylor. Where’s everybody?”

The Sergeant nodded toward the living room. “Aunt Abbie whatshername and the cook are in there. Your lady friend spent some time comforting the cook, and then went upstairs.”

“Upstairs! What did Miss Withers do that for? I’m saving the upstairs for later.”

Piper turned and ran up the steps. “I never knew it to fail,” he was muttering. “Women can do more damage in ten minutes …”

There was no sign of Miss Withers when he reached the second floor hallway. The lights of the Drive were shining through the open door of the front bedroom, and the Inspector came down the hall and gave it a once over. Aunt Abbie’s room, beyond a doubt. Ribbons held back the white curtains, doilies lay primly on every table, there was a stupid looking canary in a gilt cage—a frowsy, slightly bald-looking canary—and on the bureau a framed photograph of that remarkable Hollywood Thespian, Mr. Clark Gable, no doubt signed by his secretary.

“Hrrmp,” remarked the Inspector. He retraced his steps. The next door opened into a vast and uncomfortable-looking bath, with much exposed piping and a tremendous tub set in oak. There were four prim guest towels on a rack. “I’d hate to live in this dump,” Piper told himself.

He came out of the bathroom, and ran almost head on into Miss Withers. He seized her arm. “Hildegarde! Where have you been, and what in God’s name started you poking around up here? We haven’t got any search warrant for this house!”

“One question at a time,” the school-teacher said calmly. “First, I’ve been rambling through the halls trying to trace down a phantom voice that I heard, or thought I heard. I went way up to the attic floor, too, but I didn’t hear anything more. There’s a light showing under the door of the top floor, and two bedrooms on the floor above us. I suppose that’s Cousin Hubert in one, and the maid in the other. Nobody heard me and I didn’t disturb anything, so don’t get such an annoyed look on your face.”

The Inspector stuck out his lower lip. “It’s just like a woman to upset the routine procedure,” he informed her. “I don’t suppose you happen to know which would be the bedroom of the dead twin, do you? It’s the only one we have a right to search.”

Miss. Withers shook her head. “We might try that door there in the rear,” she said sagely. “It’s the only unexplored territory.”

They came into a long room with two windows facing on the backyard, a room with twin bookcases, twin bureaus, and of course, twin beds—of ancient walnut. Miss Withers went at once to the bookcase, while Piper surveyed the rest of the place.

The only decorations in the room were a collection of pipes—merschaum, student, clay and briar—between the beds, and on a peg above the bookcase a well-worn saddle of the McClellan type, with an imitation silver-mounted pommel. Attached to it by means of the end of a rawhide quirt were a couple of spurs, likewise silvered.

Two heavy leather chairs completed the furnishings. Miss Withers sank into one of them gratefully, a book in her hand which brought back her own childhood. It was
Toby Tyler—or Ten Weeks With a Circus
and the title page bore a boyish scrawl—“To Laurie from Lew”—X-mas 1921.”

“I think Sherlock Holmes’ brother had the right idea about this detective business,” she remarked. “Remember him? He sat in an armchair all the time.”

“Nonsense,” the Inspector told her, testily. “That theory stuff is silly. You can’t get anywhere in an armchair. You can’t see anything from an armchair. Put away the book, and we’ll get somewhere.” He stuck his head out of the closet where he had been rummaging. “The main thing in this business is to keep rustling around.”

He disappeared again. A few minutes later he reappeared, dusty and disgruntled.

Miss Withers, smarting under his remarks, let her voice have the slightest suggestion of a barb in it “Well, did your rustling around discover any clues in that closet as to why Laurie Stait appeared on Fifth Avenue wearing a rope?”

“No, there’s nothing in there but a lot of clothes, mostly duplicates, some shoes, and some old magazines and junk.”

“By any chance did there happen to be an empty picture frame twelve inches by fifteen or thereabouts?” Miss Withers was casual.

The Inspector almost jumped. “You’ve been snooping in there!”

“I have not,” said Miss Withers triumphantly. “But I knew it was there. From where I sit in this chair I can see a light square on the wall, over there between the bureaus. See it?”

“See what?”

“Well, doesn’t that suggest to you that perhaps someone took down a picture recently? There’s enough dust in this town so that it must have been recently.”

“But why must the frame be empty?” The Inspector was humbler.

“That was a wild guess,” admitted Miss Withers, conscious of her victory. “But it seemed natural that if someone wanted a picture off the wall, he’d keep the frame, at least … and throw away the picture.” Her forehead wrinkled. “Or suppose he didn’t throw away the picture?”

There was a wastebasket by the door, but it was empty. The picture hadn’t gone there, at any rate—not today. And Miss Withers had an idea that very few hours had passed since that strangely clean spot on the wall was covered.

“Oscar—suppose you wanted to hide a picture, in a room like this. Where would you put it?”

The Inspector was thoughtful. “Let me see. Behind the wall-paper ? No, that would be difficult to get loose and more difficult to get stuck on again. Under a carpet—but there’s only scatter-rugs in this room.”

“We’ve got to do better than this,” Miss Withers reminded him. “Could it be in one of those books—no, they’re all too small for a picture that size. Under the lining of one of the bureau drawers?”

“I’ve got an idea!” The Inspector was galvanized into action. Swiftly, while Miss Withers watched, he drew out the drawers of both bureaus. He didn’t look under the linings, but hoisted each drawer up over his head and stared intently at the underside.

He found what he was looking for under the next to the last drawer, pinned with four thumb tacks against the bottom.

“Somebody is smart,” he observed. “Most people think of hiding an article on top of something, not underneath it. We’re all accustomed to laying things down, not sticking them up.” But he didn’t explain how the idea had come to him.

Nor did Miss Withers give him the congratulations he was angling for. She was staring at the photograph in his hand.

It showed the head of a striking looking young woman of twenty or thereabouts, a girl with light tawny hair curled at the ends, above whose wide eyes were stuck two ridiculously diminutive eyebrows. The mouth was firm and resolute, for all the sculptured softness of the lips.

“She looks to me like a girl who’d get anything she wanted, or
else,”
observed Miss Withers.

The Inspector nodded slowly. A single sentence rang through his brain. “I love you more than anybody else in the world and nobody … is going to stand in our way.” Those were the words written on that sheet of crisp notepaper tucked away in his pocket.

There was writing on the bottom of the photograph, writing that was vaguely familiar to the Inspector.

“To Lew, with all my love,” it read. It was signed “Your Dana.”

“W
ELL, THIS IS THE DOOR
,” said Miss Withers in a whisper. She and the Inspector were standing on the attic-floor landing, in semi-darkness. “Though I wish you’d tell me what you expect to find out from the old lady.”

“You’ll see,” Piper told her. He rapped on the door. The only answer was a thick, almost gummy silence.

He knocked again, this time with the heel of his hand. There was a booming echo inside, together with faint thumpings and stirrings and rustlings that betokened someone’s stealthy presence.

“May I trouble you a moment, Mrs. Stait?”

A shrill cackle of inhuman, uncanny laughter answered him. But no one came to the door.

“Hello in there! Mrs. Stait, this is the police. We must ask you a few questions!” Piper knocked again, this time with a clenched fist. He had had no dinner this night, and he had exhausted his stock of patience.

“I say, Inspector!” a voice interrupted from the foot of the stairs. “It’s no use with Gran. She’ll do just as she pleases.”

It was Hubert, outside the door of his room, in dressing gown and slippers. “She’ll send for you when she’s willing to see you.”

“Oh, yes? Well, she’ll see me now. I represent the law here in this house. And besides, something may have happened to the old lady.” The Inspector rapped again. “Mrs. Stait, if you don’t open this door I’m going to kick it in.”

“Why don’t you try the knob first?” Miss Withers suggested.

Automatically the Inspector dropped his hand to the knob, and it turned easily. The door opened inward—and a thick, musty odor struck their faces. The room was black as pitch. “There ought to be a light switch just inside the door here,” said Piper, fumbling through the darkness.

His fingers collided with something which was not a light switch, and there was the smash of breaking glass as something toppled to the floor.

“What in the devil … a lamp in this place?…”

But the Inspector didn’t get a fair start with what he was intending to say. From across the room there burst an avalanche of purple language, double strength and 100-proof, that sizzled around his ears.

“Hellfire! Hellfìre and Brimstone! Batten down your hatches and stand by to repel boarders, you stinking lubbers … where’s the Skipper, the Skipper? … Here Fido, here Fido, sic ’em Fido … Bloody, bloody boogies, all of you!”

“Great Scott, what’s that?”

The harsh old voice went on without pausing to draw breath. “Hell and damnation … stowaways, Skipper, stowaways … feed the sharks, Skipper … Belay me for a bloody lubber … Rats, Fido, rats … Help, murder, bloody murder!”

Miss Withers had firm hold of the Inspector’s arm. She could see nothing, not even the glow of light from a window … nor could she hear anything except that rush of full-flavored language.

At that moment a further door, across the room, opened suddenly, disclosing the tall, gaunt figure of an old woman in a red shawl. Beneath the shawl, Miss Withers could see by the flickering light of a kerosene lamp held in the old lady’s hand, she wore a dress that had once been black silk, but that now was a purplish green with dust and age.

Her face was as seamed and wrinkled as a dried russet apple, and her little beady eyes gleamed out of dark caverns in her skull.

She spoke, in a voice that was strangely younger than herself. “That dratted parrot! Quiet, Skipper!”

Sitting on a perch across the impossibly cluttered room, a fat, featherless monstrosity squawked once and then subsided obediently.

In all her thirty-nine years Miss Withers had never seen a dodo, except in one of Sir John Tenniel’s fantastic drawings. But this unspeakably-evil fat naked slug, with its tremendous hooked beak and its expression of cheerful malevolence, was as close to being that extinct horror of the Indian Ocean as anything she could imagine.

“Policemen are always the same,” said the old lady none too pleasantly. “Always a lot of blackguards, bursting their way into decent people’s homes and shooting innocent bystanders while the footpads flourish and wax fat.”

“Excuse the intrusion, Madam, but it was necessary. It’s about your grandson Laurie.”

“I will
not
bail him out if he’s in trouble again, and that’s final!” The old lady stalked toward the inner door. “Laurie has been a disgrace to this family since his birth.”

“He’ll never be a disgrace to this family again,” cut in the Inspector hastily. “You see, Mrs. Stait, your grandson has been killed!”

She turned around, a look of polite incredulity. “Killed? Don’t be silly. The Staits don’t have such things happen to them. He’s not dead. Pour water on him. Probably he’s been scorching at the cocktail bar down at the Haymarket.”