Rex Stout (9 page)

“She’s plenty clever enough.”

“Yes, she is. But though it was eight years ago, in Paris, when I was only twenty-three, it only took me a week to see that she—but I suppose I’m talking like a cad? It’s next to impossible for me to tell. Since you were born to it, I suppose you can’t realise how difficult it is to know what is being a cad and what isn’t. The nuances are very fine. Is it all right for me to go on?”

“I don’t think so.” Jean brushed back her hair again. “Not that you’re a cad, but it isn’t necessary, and even if I were your fiancée I wouldn’t require an explanation of
anything that happened eight years ago. Just to lessen your confusion, I might add that it would be quite different if it were something happening now.”

Guy regarded her. After a moment he said, “I see. You mean you would like me to explain why I was with Portia Tritt yesterday. That’s what—”

“I don’t mean that at all! You certainly could do with a little more understanding of women, Mr. Carew!”

“I know I could. Anyway, that’s what I was going to do next, and I’m sure this isn’t being a cad. I was with her yesterday, and I’ve been a great deal with her the past four weeks, because I want to learn who murdered my father.”

Jean stared. “You don’t think she knows!”

“I think she knows something, I don’t know what. She was there, in the house. She was going to marry my father. And on the morning he was killed, immediately after he was killed, she did something very peculiar, and her explanation for it isn’t satisfactory. And … I did something peculiar that morning myself. I said I’m not a fool, but I begin to believe that what I did that morning was foolish. I … I’d rather not tell you. I’m sure it was foolish. So that’s why I was with Portia Tritt yesterday.”

“She didn’t look—” Jean bit her lip.

“She didn’t look what?”

“Nothing.”

He gazed at her, and shrugged. “All right. Then about asking you to give me the skirt and jacket—”

“You don’t need to explain—”

“Pardon me, I do need to. Something happened yesterday morning and Wednesday afternoon. A newspaper reporter called on every one who was at Lucky Hills that night—Buysse, Wilson, Kranz, Barth and his wife, Portia Tritt. He couldn’t find me Wednesday and so I
was the last. He asked for information regarding a garment that had bayeta yarn in it—a jacket, sweater, anything; and he said that the police had found, clutched in my father’s left hand, a piece of bayeta yarn which he had evidently pulled from the clothing of his murderer. They had kept that clue secret. He wanted to know if any of us owned such a garment or knew of any one who did.”

Jean, her eyes fastened on his face, murmured, “Bayeta?”

“So he said. I phoned my lawyer, Orlik, at once, and he went to see the district attorney. The district attorney was sore, but that wouldn’t faze Orlik, and he got it that the reporter was right. The yarn had been clutched in my father’s left hand, and the police had learned that it was genuine bayeta. In that case, my father’s murderer was wearing my jacket. The one I later gave to you.”

“But—” Jean’s eyes were wide and fixed. She put out a hand and then let it drop to the table. “But you don’t know that. One little piece of yarn—and you haven’t seen it—”

Guy said grimly, “I don’t need to. The police wouldn’t make a mistake on a thing like that, and if it was bayeta it was from my jacket. Bayeta blankets are too rare and costly to make clothes from. I told you about my jacket. It was made for me last spring by a Choctaw woman from a piece of blanket she had, because I got her son out of jail. I brought it east with me. I had it outdoors that afternoon, the afternoon of July 6th, at the tennis court, but I thought I took it back to the house and put it in the closet in the side hall where the balls and rackets are kept. Not that I looked for it, for the next morning my father was found murdered. It may have been there all the time, but I suppose it wasn’t or the police would
have found it; they must have been secretly searching for something with bayeta in it. Anyhow, the next time I saw it was the afternoon two weeks ago that I drove you to Lucky Hills. You remember when I was showing you the house and took you to my room to look at some Indian stuff, the jacket was there on a chair and I was surprised to see it? And we discussed it and I gave it to you, and you took it with you that evening?”

Jean nodded. “I remember.”

“All right, the murderer wore that jacket. I don’t know where it had been those two weeks. I don’t know who put it on the chair in my room.”

“Someone’s trying—someone wants you accused—”

“Maybe. But why was it put in my room, where I would almost certainly be the first to see it? And if it was known to be mine, why wait two weeks to produce it?”

“Who knew it was yours?”

“Buysse and Wilson. I had shown it to them, with other things I had brought. They are my friends, and of course wouldn’t tell the newspaper reporter. I don’t think Barth or his wife could have known, if they saw it on me that afternoon, or they would have told the reporter—unless—” He stopped. In a moment he went on, “But I think not. If that was it Barth would be after me. I don’t know about Kranz and Portia Tritt; they had seen it, and they know textiles. I don’t know. Anyhow, you see why I said I wanted to explain. I had to, and besides, I have to ask a favour of you. Three of them. The first is, have you any of that bayeta left, any at all?”

“A very little. Scraps.”

“Would you give me a piece of it?”

Jean proceeded to prove that Miss Delaney had been right in deciding that the chaos was not disorder. She went straight to a large filing cabinet against the wall,
opened the third section from the top, fingered in it a few seconds, and withdrew a manilla folder. She recrossed and handed the folder to Guy.

“Take it all if you want it.”

“No, thanks, I just want a piece.” He pulled out a thread of yarn some ten inches long, inspected it and tucked it into his pocket, and handed the folder back to Jean. As she was returning it to the cabinet she observed over her shoulder:

“You said three favours.”

“Yes. The second is this.” He hesitated, waited until she had returned to her stool, and then resumed, “I don’t like to ask it. It’s the sort of thing—for instance, if you were my fiancée I wouldn’t mind.”

“Well, it’s too bad, but I’m not. Go ahead.”

“I suppose I’ll have to. I must. It is extremely important—that is, important to me—that no one be told a word of this—the jacket, the yarn—”

“I’m not quite a fool either,” Jean said shortly. “No one will be told by me.”

“I know it’s asking a good deal—”

“Not at all. What’s the third favour?”

“The police may even come and question you—it’s entirely my fault that that may happen and I owe you—”

“Nonsense. Let them question. Though I don’t see why they should come to me if no one is to be told.”

“That’s what I’m coming to. They may come to you and they may not. But there were twenty people at that dinner table last evening. Mrs. Barth told us, after we had signed what we had written and she had collected the papers, that she was going to give the papers to you. Did she? And may I see them?”

For a tenth of a second Jean looked blank. Then she exclaimed, “Oh! Of course! Yes, I have them. But I don’t see—how can they be—”

She stopped, and gaped at him. She jumped from the stool and took two steps towards him.

“Good God! Guy! Whoever knocked me on the head and stole my clothes—that was the murderer!”

Involuntarily she put up her palm and pressed it against her head, above the ear, and stood, still staring.

A
s regards accessibility, the man in that room might have been the Minotaur in its lair. To reach him, it was necessary first to say to the elevator man: “Forty, please,” or, “Barth & Pomeroy”; then to accost the young woman at the reception desk; then to confer with the young man who would appear from within; then, if you got that far, to withstand the searching eyes of the sharp-nosed woman to whose presence you had penetrated; and then to wait. It could be done, with exceptional credentials and sufficient patience and a careful avoidance of sudden or suspicious movements.

The room itself was spacious, luxuriously carpeted, furnished with desk and chairs and accessories of Brazilian Mura, and windowed to the west and south. Friday morning at eleven, the man behind the desk was the one who belonged there, Melville Barth; the bulky one seated across from him, with a cigar in his teeth, was Inspector Cramer of the homicide squad.

Cramer was saying, “I understand that, and I’m much obliged. I got on the case only yesterday, and I wanted it first hand. A rumour’s only a rumour, no matter whether it’s Flatbush backyard or Wall Street. You
say that you and Carew reached an agreement that Tuesday night.”

“I do.” Barth was obviously under restraint. “He wasn’t as hard as I had feared he would be. It was no rumour and no secret that I was caught on Western Chemical, the whole Street knew it. Carew had the only door out for me, and he was as decent as I had any right to expect. Now I’m still in, with Guy Carew and the damned lawyers to deal with. I suppose I can’t blame the boy for hesitating to ignore their advice; he doesn’t know the ropes. But as far as my interests are concerned, I wish to God whoever killed Carew had waited another twenty-four hours.”

“Your agreement with him wasn’t in writing?”

“You don’t write that sort of thing.”

“No memorandum at all?”

“No.”

Cramer removed his cigar. Finally he grumbled, “All right. You’re a man of affairs, you know what inconvenience a murder means to any one with enough bad luck to be within range. It was a little after midnight when you and Carew got through?”

“Around a quarter after.”

“And you went right upstairs and to bed?”

“I did. My wife and I occupied the same room. I slept well; I always do. I wanted to get away fairly early, and at 7.30 I was up and taking a shower. I was dressed and ready to go down to breakfast, waiting for my wife, when Guy Carew came to our door with the news and said the police would soon be there. I heard nothing and saw nothing that could possibly have been connected with the murder.”

“Tell me exactly what young Carew said when he came to your door.”

This instalment of the inconvenience to Mr. Barth
had begun at ten o’clock, and it was not over until noon, for Inspector Cramer was tickling the frog without the faintest notion of which way it would jump. With Barth he was exhibiting patience and consideration, but also persistence and thoroughness. He chewed up three cigars, went over the same ground time and again, and paid no attention when Barth got restive and sharp. But finally he dropped the third cigar in the tray, got up and grunted barely adequate appreciation, and departed.

Barth sat some minutes and then reached to push a button. Almost at once a door opened and the sharp-nosed woman appeared. Her searching eyes still searched, even when directed at her employer.

“Well?” she inquired.

Barth shook his head. “I didn’t tell him. I know, Rachel, I can’t remember once in twenty years that your advice hasn’t been good … but I didn’t tell him. Not that I see how I can possibly use it. I can’t very well go to Guy Carew and say that when my wife and I arrived at Lucky Hills that afternoon we saw him coming from the tennis court wearing a jacket with red yarn in it, and that I may or may not report that fact to the police. Can I? Damn it. Sit down.”

At 2 p.m. Inspector Cramer stood just inside the door of the tomb of Tsianina on the Lucky Hills estate of Valentine Carew—now of his son Guy Carew—and with a slow revolving glance surveyed the imposing ensemble. He had been moving fast. His lunch had been three cheese sandwiches and a bottle of beer, consumed on the back seat of his official limousine as it speeded north with the speedometer steady at 60. He had gone over the Lucky Hills house, with special attention to the location of the rooms which the guests and inmates had occupied
on the night of July 6th, and to exits and entrances, and had briefly questioned a dozen servants.

He turned to the man on his right, a Westchester assistant district attorney who had come from White Plains to bring the key to the tomb. “Everything is back in place?”

The man nodded. “With the greatest care. You know how the law protects the home of the dead. Except the knife and the war club. We have those.”

Cramer nodded, and turned to the man on his left. It was the old Indian, Woodrow Wilson. He was wearing a blue cotton shirt with a red bow tie, blue overalls with a bib, and white canvas shoes, all immaculate. Cramer said, “Show me how the body was when you found it.”

The Indian stepped to a spot some eight paces from the door, and pointed straight down to the floor. “Head.” His finger moved to an angle. “Feet.”

“Did you touch him?”

“I touch him a little. I lift one eye open.”

“Was it closed?”

“Not closed, no.” The Indian shrugged. “Not open either.”

“Did you move him?”

“No.”

“Those masonry steps and the platform—were they where they are now?”

“No. Back maybe ten feet.”

The inspector looked around again. Skinner had been correct; it was impressive. They had left the door standing open; otherwise the light would have been even dimmer than it was. The room was enormous, and nearly as high as it was wide. The holes in the east wall, through which the morning sun could come, or not come, for Tsianina’s dead answer to her husband’s living question, were now, looking up from the floor, shadowy outlines of
circles. Everywhere else the walls were covered with thousands of objects, large and small, imperfectly seen, and at both sides were rows of large glass cabinets.

The Indian said unexpectedly, with a tone of pride, “Everything in here is Cherokee.”

Cramer mounted the stone steps, counting from habit. There were twenty-eight of them—the days of the moon, though he did not know it. From the top of the massive platform, he found that he could look directly through one of the holes to daylight if he stooped; and, by moving his head, another and another; then he stopped as his head touched the edge of the casket which rested on a stone slab. He raised his head a little and peered through the glass lid, and saw Tsianina. From her chin down she was covered with what he knew to be a garment of willow-tanned doeskin, since it was a public fact; he could barely see that it was there; but there was dim light on her face, and he saw with a sort of astonishment that he would have recognised it from her pictures. It was not waxen or deathlike, in that soft gloom; it was not even unnatural; it was merely remote and beautiful.