The Oxford Book of American Det (44 page)

“But the astral body,” said Caroline suddenly into the silence, “couldn’t have talked.

And I heard Marie speak. She was in Jessica’s room, and the door was closed, and I heard her talking to Jessica. And then—that’s what’s queer—I went straight on past the door and into Marie’s room, and there was Marie sitting there. Isn’t it queer?”

“Why were you frightened?”

“Because—because—“ Caroline’s hands twisted together. “I don’t know why. Except that I had a—a feeling.”

“Nonsense,” Jessica laughed. There was again the luminous flash in her shadowed eyes, and she spoke more rapidly than usual. “You see, Susan Dare, how nonsensical all this is. How utterly fantastic!”

“There was Marie,” said Caroline. “She was talking to you.” Jessica’s silks rustled, and she walked rigidly and quickly to Caroline and leaned over so that she could grip Caroline’s shoulder and force Caroline to meet her eyes. David tried to intervene, and she brushed him away and said hoarsely:

“Caroline, you poor little fool. You thought you’d get this young woman here and try to establish your innocence of the crime. All this talk is sheer nonsense. You are cunning after the way of fools such as you. Tell me this, Caroline—“ She paused long enough to take a great gasp of breath. She was more powerful, more invincible than Susan had seen her. “Tell me. Where was David when the revolver was fired?” Caroline was shrinking backward. David said quickly: “She’ll say anything to protect me. She’ll say anything, and you—“

“Be quiet, David. Caroline, answer me.”

“He was at the door of his room,” said Caroline.

For a long moment Jessica waited. Then with terrible deliberation she relaxed her grip and straightened and looked slowly from one to the other.

“You’ve as good as confessed, Carrie,” she said. “There was no one else. You admit that it was not David. Why did you kill her, Carrie?”

“She didn’t kill her!” David was between the two women, his face white and his eyes blazing. “It was you, Jessica. You—“

“David! Stop!” The two sharp exclamations were like lashes. “I was here in this room when the shot was fired. I didn’t kill Marie. I couldn’t have killed her. You know that.

Come, Caroline.”

She put her gray hand upon Caroline’s shoulder. Caroline, as if mesmerized by that touch, arose, and Jessica turned to the doorway. No one moved as the two women crossed the room. Jim Byrne glanced at Susan unrevealingly and then, at Jessica’s imperious gesture, opened the door. Susan was vaguely aware that there were men in the hall outside, but she was held as if enchanted by the extraordinary scene she was witnessing.

No one moved, and there was no sound save the rustle of Jessica’s silks while she led Caroline to the stairway. At the bottom step Jessica turned, and there was suddenly something less harsh in her face; it was for an instant almost kind, and there was a queer sort of tenderness in the pressure of her hand upon Caroline’s shrinking shoulder.

But that hand was nevertheless compelling.

“Go upstairs,” she said to Caroline, in a voice loud enough so that they all heard. “Go upstairs and do what is necessary. There’s enough veronal on my dresser. We’ll give you time.”

She turned as if to barricade the stairway with her own rigid body and looked slowly and defiantly around her. “I’ll
make
them give you time, Carrie
. Go on.”
There was the complete and utter silence of sheer horror. And in that silence something small and gray and quick flashed down from the curtain and up the stairs.

“Holy Mother,” cried someone. “What was that?”

And David sprang forward.

“You can’t do that—you can’t do that! Caroline, don’t move—“ Susan knew that he was thrusting himself between Jessica and Caroline, that there was sudden confusion.

But she was mainly aware of something that had clicked in her own mind.

Somehow she got through the confusion in the hall to Lieutenant Mohrn, and Jim Byrne was at her side. Both of them listened to the brief words she said; Lieutenant Mohrn ran rapidly upstairs, and Jim disappeared toward the dining room.

Jim was back first. He pulled Susan to one side.

“You are right,” he said. “The cook and the houseman both say that Marie was very strict about the monkey and that the monkey always obeyed her. But what do you mean?”

“I’m not sure, Jim. But I’ve just told Lieutenant Mohrn that I think there should be a bullet hole somewhere upstairs. It was made by the second bullet. It is in the ceiling, perhaps—or wall. I think it’s in Jessica s room.

Lieutenant Mohrn was coming down the stairway. He reached the bottom of the stairs and looked wearily and a bit sadly at the group there. At Caroline crumpled against the wall. At David white and taut. At Jessica, a rigid figure of hatred. Then he sighed and looked at the policeman nearest him and nodded.

“Will you go into the drawing room, please?” he asked Susan. “And you, Jim.” The doors slid together and, still wearily, Lieutenant Mohrn pulled out from his pocket a revolver, a long cord, a piece of cotton, and a small alarm clock.

“They were all there hidden in the newel post at the top of the stairway. The carved top was loose as you remembered it, Miss Dare. And there’s two shots gone from the revolver, and there’s a bullet hole in the wall of Jessica’s bedroom. How did you know it was Jessica, Miss Dare?”

“It was the monkey,” said Susan. Her voice sounded unnatural in her own ears, terribly tired, terribly sad. “It was the monkey all the time. You see, he was sitting there, stealing candy right beside Marie’s chair. He would have been afraid to do that if he had not known she was dead. And when Jessica entered the room he fled. When I thought of that, the whole thing fell together: the hot house, obviously to keep Marie’s body warm and confuse the time of death; everyone out of the house to permit Jessica to do murder; then this thing you’ve found—“

“It’s simple, of course,” said Lieutenant Mohrn. “The cord fastened tight between the alarm lever and the trigger—the bit of cotton to pad the alarm. The clock is set for ten minutes after five. When did she hide it in the newel post?”

“When I went down to telephone the police, I suppose, and David and Caroline were in Marie’s room—I want to go home,” said Susan wearily.

“Look here,” said Jim Byrne. “This sounds all right, Susan, but remember, Marie couldn’t have been dead then. You heard her talk.”

“I had never heard her speak before. And I heard the flat, dead tone of a person who has been deaf a long time. It was Caroline who actually solved the thing. And Jessica knew it. She knew it and at once tried to fasten the blame upon Caroline—to compel her to commit suicide.”

“What did Caroline say?” Lieutenant Mohrn was very patient.

“She said that she’d heard Marie speaking with Jessica in Jessica’s room behind a closed door. And that she’d gone straight on past that door to Marie’s room and found Marie sitting there. Caroline was confused, frightened, talked of astral bodies.

Naturally, we knew that Jessica was—rehearsing her imitation of Marie’s way of speaking.”

“Premeditated,” said Jim. “Planned to the last detail. And your coming merely gave her the opportunity. You were to provide the alibi, Susan.” Susan shivered.

“That was the trouble. She was sitting directly opposite me when the shot was fired upstairs. Yet she was the only person who hated Marie sufficiently to—murder her. It wasn’t money. It was hatred. Growing for years in this horrible house, nourished by jealousy over David, brought to a climax that was inevitable.” Susan smoothed her hair. “Please may I go?”

“Then Marie was dead when you entered the house?”

“Yes. Propped up by pillows. I—I saw the whole thing, you know. Saw Jessica approach her and talk, heard the reply—and how was I to know it was Jessica speaking and not Marie? Then Jessica bent and did something to her cushions, pulled them away, I suppose, so the body was no longer erect. And she turned at once and was between me and Marie all the way to the door so I could not see Marie, then, at all. (I couldn’t see Marie very well at any time, because she was in the shadow.) And when David and Caroline came upstairs, Jessica warned both of them that Marie was reading. I suppose she knew that they were only too glad to be relieved of the necessity to speak to Marie.” Susan shivered again and smoothed back her hair and felt dreadfully that she might cry. “It’s a t - terrible house,” she said indecisively, and Jim Byrne said hurriedly:

“She can go now, can’t she? I’ve got a car out here. She doesn’t have to see them again.”

The air was cold and fresh and the sky very black before dawn, and the pavements glistened.

They swerved onto the Drive and stopped for a red light, and Jim turned to her as they waited. Through the dusk in the car she could feel his scrutiny.

“I didn’t expect anything like this,” he said gravely. “Will you forgive me?”

“Next time,” said Susan in a small clear voice, “I’ll not get scared.”

“Next time!” said Jim derisively. “There won’t be a next time! I was the one that was scared. I had my finger on the trigger of a revolver all the time you were talking to them. No, indeedy, there won’t be a next time—not if I can help it!” ERLE STANLEY GARDNER (1889-1970)

Although Erie Stanley Gardner didn’t turn to writing until he reached the relatively ripe age of thirty-four, when he died at age eighty-one on his California ranch, 141 of his books were in print and 5 more were awaiting publication. By 1986, a staggering 319 million copies of his books had been sold in thirty-seven languages, making him one of the most popular writers of fiction ever. The Mystery Writers of America made it official by declaring him a Grand Master in 1962.

Gardner was born in Maiden, Massachusetts, the son of an engineer whose work moved him to Oregon and then California—a state that the boy loved and the man used as the base of his fiction. As a youth, he boxed professionally and promoted boxing bouts and, reputedly, was expelled from college for slugging a professor. He educated himself by reading law books and helping an attorney, passed the bar exam at twenty-one, and established a reputation as a canny defence attorney. He learned the writing trade in the same way—reading and studying the work of others in the field.

Gardner had been writing prolifically for ten years before he published the first of the Perry Mason series. His huge output for the pulps introduced numerous characters, including Speed Dash, a detective who can scale the sides of buildings in the event that a door is locked, and the armchair detective Lester Leith, whose specialty is solving jewel thefts by means of reading newspaper accounts.

Mason is introduced in
The Case of the Velvet Claws.
In this novel, Mason deduces that dampness around an umbrella stand means that a witness was at the murder scene when he said he was. He thereby saves an obnoxious character and makes the point that justice and law are more important than personal considerations. Gardner’s knowledge of and respect for criminal law form a thread that runs through all the Mason books.

Gardner created other series characters with legal connections. Middle-aged sleuth Bertha Cool teams up with Donald Lam, a disbarred attorney whose legal advice helps to solve cases. Gardner used district attorney Doug Selby to illustrate his appreciation of the prosecution’s outlook on crime.

Leg Man
also features a character from the world of law. The story is unusual in that it puts the legal assistant at centre stage as protagonist. It is typical of Gardner’s work in its use of canny tricks and an eye for detail to solve the mystery.

Leg Man

Mae Devers came into my office with the mail. She stood by my chair for a moment putting envelopes on the desk, pausing to make little adjustments of the inkwell and paper weights, tidying things up a bit.

There was a patent-leather belt around her waist, and below that belt I could see the play of muscles as her supple figure moved from side to side. I slid my arm around the belt and started to draw her close to me.

“Don’t get fresh!” she said, trying to pull my hand away, but not trying too hard.

“Listen, I have work to do,” she said. “Let me loose, Pete.”

“Holding you for ransom, smile-eyes,” I told her.

She suddenly bent down. Her lips formed a hot circle against mine—and Cedric L.

Boniface had to choose that moment to come busting into my office without knocking.

Mae heard the preliminary rattle of the door-knob, and scooped up a bunch of papers from the desk. I ran fingers through my hair, and Boniface cleared his throat in his best professional manner.

I couldn’t be certain whether I had any lipstick on my mouth, so I put my elbow on my desk, covered my mouth with the fingers of my hand and stared intently at an open law book.

Mae Devers said, “Very well, Mr. Wennick, I’ll see that it gets in the mail,” and started for the door. As she passed Boniface, she turned and gave me a roguish glance, as much as to say, “Now, smartie, see what you’ve got yourself into.” Boniface stared at me, hard. His yellowish eyes, with the bluish-white eyeballs, reminded me of hard-boiled eggs which had been peeled and cut in two lengthwise. He was in a vile humour.

“What was all the commotion about?” he asked.

“Commotion?” I inquired raising my eyes, but keeping my hand to my mouth.

“Where?”

“In here,” he said.

Mae Devers was just closing the door. “Did you hear anything, Miss Devers?” I asked in my most dignified manner.

“No, sir,” she said demurely, and slipped out into the corridor.

I frowned down at the open law book on the desk. “I can’t seem to make any sense out of the distinction between a bailment of the first class and a bailment of the second class.”

That mollified Boniface somewhat. He loved to discourse on the academic legal points which no one else ever gave a damn about.

“The distinction,” he said, “is relatively simple, if you can keep from becoming confused by the terminology. Primarily, the matter of consideration is the determining factor in the classification of all bailments.”

“Yes, sir,” I said, my voice muffled behind my hand.