The French Powder Mystery - (7)

"That somebody was talking to her, Miss Underhill?" asked Ellery.
    "Exactly, Mr. Queen."
    The Inspector turned a startled face toward his son. Velie moved his huge bulk lightly forward and whispered in the Inspector's ear. The old man grinned.
    "Keen, keen, Thomas," he chuckled. "That's just what I was thinking, too...."
    Ellery flicked his finger warningly.
    "Miss Underhill, I can't expect you to exhibit miracles of acuteness," he said in a serious, admiring tone. "But I should like to ask--if you're entirely certain that it was Miss Carmody talking to you over the wire?"
    "That's it!" cried the Inspector. Velie smiled grimly.
    The housekeeper regarded the three men with strangely limpid eyes. Something electric shot through all four.
    "I don't--believe--it--was," she whispered....
    After a while they left the missing girl's bedroom and entered an adjoining room. It was severer in tone and immaculately clean.
    "This is Mrs. French's room," said the housekeeper in a low voice. Her acid nature seemed sweetened by a sudden realization of complex tragedy. Her eyes followed Ellery with grave respect.
    "Is everything in perfect order, Miss Underhill?" asked the Inspector.
    "Yes, sir."
    Ellery walked over to a wardrobe and scanned its neat racks thoughtfully.
    "Miss Underhill, will you please look through this rack and tell us if any of Miss Marion French's clothes are here?"
    The housekeeper went through the racks while the three men looked on. She proceeded carefully, then shook her head in an unhesitating negative.
    "Then Mrs. French was not in the habit of wearing Miss French's things?"
    "Oh, no, sir!"
    Ellery smiled with satisfaction and at once wrote a line of hieroglyphics in his makeshift notebook.
    22
    BOOKS AGAIN
    The three men stood uncomfortably in old Cyrus French's bedroom. The nurse fluttered about in the hall, a solid door separating her from her charge. Marion and Weaver had been ordered downstairs to the drawing-room. French's physician, Dr. Stuart, a large impressive man, with a professional irascibility glared at the Queens from his post at French's bedside.
    "Five minutes--no longer," he snapped. "Mr. French is hardly in a conversational condition!"
    The Inspector clucked placatingly, and stared at the sick man. French lay lumpily in his great bed, nervous eyes darting from one to another of his inquisitors. One flabby white hand plucked at the silk coverlet. His face was entirely drained of color, pasty, shockingly unwholesome in appearance. His grey hair straggled over a furrowed forehead.
    The Inspector stepped nearer to the bed. He bent forward and said in a low voice, "This is Inspector Queen of the police, Mr. French. Can you hear me? Do you think you are strong enough to answer a few perfunctory questions about Mrs. French's--accident?"
    The quicksilver eyes ceased rolling and concentrated on the gentle grey face of the Inspector. They blinked suddenly with intelligence.
    "Yes ... yes ..." French whispered, moistening his thin pale lips with a bright tongue. "Anything ... to clear up this ... ghastly business...."
    "Thank you, Mr. French." The Inspector leaned closer. "Is there any explanation in your mind that might account for the death of Mrs. French?"
    The liquid eyes blinked, closed. When they opened, there was an expression of utter bewilderment within their reddish depths.
    "No ... none," French breathed painfully. "None ... whatsoever.... She--she had ... so many friends ... no enemies.... I--it is ... unbelievable that any one ... should be so ... fiendish as to ... murder her."
    "I see." The Inspector tugged at his mustache with nimble fingers. "Then you know of no one who might have had a motive for killing her, Mr. French?"
    "No...." The hoarse feeble voice gathered strength suddenly. "The shame--the notoriety.... It will be the death of me.... With all my ... unsparing efforts to put an end to vice ... that this should happen to me!... Hideous, hideous!"
    His voice grew more and more violent. The Inspector motioned in alarm to Dr. Stuart, who leaned quickly over the sick man and felt his pulse. Then, in an extraordinarily gentle voice, the physician soothed his patient until the throaty rumblings faded off and the hand on the coverlet unflexed and lay still.
    "Have you much more?" asked the doctor in a gruff undertone. "You must be quick, Inspector!"
    "Mr. French," said Queen quietly, "is your personal key to the store apartment always in your possession?"
    The eyes rolled sleepily. "Eh? Key? Yes ... yes, always."
    "It has certainly not left your person in the past fortnight or so?"
    "No ... positively not...."
    "Where is it, Mr. French?" continued the Inspector in an urgent soft voice. "Surely you will not mind letting us have it for a few days, will you, sir? In the interests of justice, of course.... Where? Oh, yes! Dr. Stuart, Mr. French asks that you get the key from the key-ring in his trousers' hip-pocket. In the wardrobe, sir, the wardrobe!"
    In silence the burly physician went to a wardrobe, rummaged about in the first pair of trousers that met his eye, and returned in a moment with a leather key-case. The Inspector examined the gold-disked key marked C.F., unhooked it, and returned the case to the doctor, who promptly replaced it in the trousers. French lay quietly, eyes veiled by puffy lids.
    The Inspector handed Cyrus French's key to Ellery, who deposited it with the other keys in his pocket. Then Ellery stepped forward and leaned over the sick man.
    "Easy, Mr. French," he murmured in a soothing tone. "We have just two or three more questions, and then you will be left to your much-needed privacy.... Mr. French, do you recall what books are on your desk in the library of your apartment?"
    The old man's eyes flew open. Dr. Stuart growled angrily beneath his breath something about "arrant nonsense ... silly sleuthing." Ellery's body remained in its deferential attitude, his head close to French's slack mouth.
    "Books?"
    "Yes, Mr. French. The books on your apartment desk. Do you recall their titles?" he urged gently.
    "Books." French screwed his mouth up in a desperate effort to concentrate. "Yes, yes.... Of course. My favorites ... Jack London's Adventure ... The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Doyle ... McCutcheon's Graustark ... Cardigan, by Robert W. Chambers, and ... let me think ... there was one other ... yes! Soldiers of Fortune, by Richard Harding Davis.... That's it--Davis.... Knew Davis.... Wild, but a ... a great fellow...."
    Ellery and the Inspector exchanged glances. The Inspector's face grew crimson with suppressed emotion. He muttered, "What the deuce!"
    "You're certain, Mr. French?" persisted Ellery, leaning over the bed once more.
    "Yes ... yes. My books ... I should know ..." whispered the old man, annoyance sounding weakly in his voice.
    "Of course! We were merely making sure.... Now, sir, have you ever been interested in such subjects as, let us say, paleontology--philately--medieval commerce--folk lore--elementary music?"
    The tired eyes widened with puzzled amazement. The head wagged twice from side to side.
    "No ... I can't say that I am.... My serious reading is restricted to works on sociology ... my work for the Anti-Vice Society ... you know my position...."
    "You are positive that your five books by Davis, Chambers, Doyle and the others are on your apartment desk now, Mr. French?"
    "I--suppose so," mumbled French. "Been there ... for ages.... Ought to be.... Never noticed anything wrong...."
    "Very well. That is quite excellent, sir. Thank you." Ellery glanced swiftly at Dr. Stuart, who was exhibiting marked signs of impatience. "One question, Mr. French, and we shall leave you. Has Mr. Lavery been in your apartment recently?"
    "Lavery? Yes, of course. Every day. My guest."
    "Then that will be all." Ellery stepped back and made a hasty note on the fly-leaf of his now overscribbled little volume. French's eyes closed, and he shifted his body slightly, with an unmistakable relaxation that signified complete fatigue.
    "Please leave quietly," grunted Dr. Stuart. "You've retarded his recovery sufficiently for one day."
    He turned his back truculently upon them.
    The three men tiptoed from the room.
    But on the staircase leading to the main foyer, the Inspector muttered, "Where in time do those books come in?"
    "Ask me not in mournful numbers," said Ellery ruefully. "I wish I knew."
    Thenceforth they descended in silence.
    23
    CONFIRMATION
    They found Marion and Weaver sitting glumly in the drawing-room, hands clasped, and suspiciously silent. The Inspector coughed, Ellery thoughtfully scrubbed away at his pince-nez, Velie screwed up his eyes and blinked at a Renoir on the wall.
    The boy and the girl sprang to their feet.
    "How--how is daddy?" asked Marion hurriedly, one slim hand to a crimson-dappled cheek.
    "Resting quietly now, Miss French," replied the Inspector in some embarrassment. "Ah--a question or two, young lady, and then we will be on our way.... Ellery!"
    Ellery came directly to the point.
    "Your key to your father's apartment, Miss French--" he demanded--"is it always in your possession?"
    "Why, certainly, Mr. Queen. You don't think--"
    "A categorical question, Miss French," said Ellery blandly. "Your key has not left your possession in, let us say, four weeks?"
    "Certainly not, Mr. Queen. It's my own, and every one else who might have occasion to go into the apartment has a key of his or her own, as well."
    "Lucidly said. May I borrow yours temporarily?"
    Marion half-turned toward Weaver with hesitation written in her eyes. Weaver pressed her arm reassuringly.
    "Do whatever Ellery asks, Marion," he said.
    Without a word Marion rang for a maid, and in a few moments turned over to Ellery another key whose only distinguishing characteristic from the keys already on his person was the neatly engraved M.F. on the bright disc. Ellery stowed it away with the others and murmured his thanks, retreating a step.
    The Inspector promptly stepped forward.
    "I must ask you what may prove an awkward question, Miss French," he said.
    "I--we seem to be completely in your hands, Inspector Queen," said the girl, smiling faintly.
    The Inspector stroked his mustache. "Just what has been the relationship between yourself, let us say, and your stepmother and stepsister? Amicable? Strained? Openly antagonistic?"
    Marion did not answer at once. Weaver shuffled his feet and turned away. Then the girl's magnificent eyes met the old man's honestly.
    "I think 'strained' expresses it exactly," she said in her clear sweet voice. "There has never been much love lost on any side of the triangle. Winifred has always preferred Bernice above me--which is of course natural--and as for Bernice, we didn't agree from the beginning. And as time went on, and--and things began to happen, the rift simply widened...."
    "'Things'?" prompted the Inspector suggestively.
    Marion bit her lip, flushed. "Well--just little things, you know," she said evasively. She hurried on. "All of us tried very hard to conceal our dislike for each other--for dad's sake. I'm afraid we weren't always successful. Dad is keener than people think."
    "I see." The Inspector tchk-ed with concern. He straightened with a peculiarly swift movement of his body. "Miss French, do you know anything that might give us a hint to the murderer of your stepmother?"
    Weaver gasped, whitened. He seemed about to voice a bitter protest. But Ellery laid a restraining hand on his arm. The girl grew still, but she did not flinch. She passed her fingers wearily across her forehead.
    "I--no." It was a bare whisper.
    The Inspector made a deprecating little gesture.
    "Oh, please don't ask me anything more about--about her," she cried suddenly in an agonized voice. "I can't go on this way, talking about her, trying to tell the truth, because ..." she spoke more quietly, "... because it would be in the poorest taste to calumniate that poor--dead--thing." She shuddered. Weaver boldly put his arm about her shoulders. She turned to him with a little sigh of relief and buried her face against his breast.
    "Miss French." Ellery's tone was gentleness itself. "You can help us on one point.... Your stepsister--what brand of cigaret does she smoke?"
    Marion's astonishment at the seemingly irrelevant question brought her head up with a start.
    "Why--La Duchesse."
    "Exactly. And she smoked La Duchesse exclusively?"
    "Yes. At least, for as long as I know her."
    "Has she"--Ellery was casual--"has she any peculiarity in her method of smoking, Miss French? Any perhaps slightly unusual habit?"
    The pretty brows drew closer together in a little frown. "If you mean by habit"--she hesitated--"a distinct nervousness--yes."
    "Does this nervousness manifest itself in a noticeable way?"
    "She smokes incessantly, Mr. Queen. And she never takes more than five or six puffs at a cigaret. She doesn't seem by nature able to smoke calmly. A few puffs, and she grinds out the long stump of tobacco still remaining almost with--viciousness. The cigarets she leaves are always bent and twisted out of shape."
    "Thank you so much." Ellery's firm lips lifted in a smile of satisfaction.
    "Miss French--" the Inspector took up the attack--"you left this house last night after dinner. You did not return until midnight. Where were you during those four hours?"
    Silence. A frightened silence so suddenly fraught with hidden complications of emotion that it seemed almost of physical substance. It was a tableau created for a single moment's duration: the slight Inspector, alert, controlled, leaning forward; the straight body of Ellery, muscles completely inanimate; the vague bulk of Velie, drawn and powerful; a petrified agony on Weaver's mobile features--and the utter misery of Marion French's slender, stricken figure.
    It passed in the drawing of a breath. Marion sighed, and the four men relaxed stealthily.
    "I was ... walking in ... the Park," she said.
    "Oh!" The Inspector smiled, bowed, smoothed his mustache. "Then there is nothing more to be said, Miss French. Good afternoon."
    It was simply said, and the Inspector, Ellery and Velie passed from the room, into the reception hall, out of the house without another word spoken.
    But it left Marion and Weaver in a dejection and apprehension so profound that they stood in their places, exactly as they had been, eyes turned away from each other, long after the outer door had snicked cleanly shut.
    24
    THE QUEENS TAKE STOCK
    Dusk was descending on the city when Velie took leave of the Queens outside the French mansion to manipulate the official machinery already operating on the shadowy trail of the vanished Bernice Carmody.
    After Velie had gone, the Inspector looked at the quiet River, looked at the darkening sky, looked at his son, who was energetically polishing his pince-nez and staring down at the pavement.
    The Inspector sighed. "The air will do both of us a lot of good," he said tiredly. "I need something to clear my addled brain, anyway.... Ellery, let's walk home."
    Ellery nodded, and side by side they sauntered down the Drive toward the corner. At the corner they turned east and settled down to a slow, thoughtful pace. They walked another block before the silence was broken.
    "This is really the first chance," remarked Ellery at last, grasping his father's arm encouragingly at the elbow, "that I've had to mull over the multitude of factors that have arisen so far. Significant factors. Telling factors, dad! There are so many they give me mal à la tête."
    "Really?" The Inspector was depressed, morose. His shoulders sagged.
    Ellery regarded him keenly. He tightened his grip on the old man's arm. "Come, dad! Buck up. I know you're at sea, but it's because of the trouble and worry you've had on your mind recently. My brain has been more than usually free from occupation lately. It's been clear enough to grasp the amazing fundamentals this case has spewed up to-day. Let me think aloud."
    "Go ahead, son."
    "One of the two most valuable clues this affair has given us is the fact that the corpse was found in the Fifth Avenue exhibition-window."
    The Inspector snorted. "I suppose you'll tell me now that you already know who did the job."
    "Yes."
    The Inspector was so taken aback that he stopped in his tracks and stared at Ellery with an expression of complete dismay and unbelief.
    "Ellery! You're joking. How could you?" he finally managed to splutter.
    Ellery smiled gravely. "Don't misunderstand me. I say I know who murdered Mrs. French. I should qualify that by saying that certain indications point with incredible consistency at one individual. I have no proof. I don't grasp one-tenth of the implications. I am entirely ignorant of the motive, the undoubtedly sordid story behind the crime.... Consequently, I shall not tell you whom I have in mind."
    "You wouldn't," growled the Inspector, as they walked on.
    "Now, dad!" Ellery laughed a little. He tightened his hold on the small package of books from French's library table, which he had carried stubbornly from the moment they had left the department store. "I have a good reason. In the first place, it's quite conceivable that I'm being misled by a series of coincidences. In that case, I should merely be making an ass of myself if I accused some one and then had to eat crow.... When I have proof--you'll know, dad, the very first one.... There are so many unexplained, seemingly inexplicable things. These books, for example.... Well!"
    He said no more for a few moments as they strode through the streets.
    "I began," he said at last, "with the suspicious fact that Mrs. French's body was found in the exhibition-window. And it was suspicious, to say the least. For all the reasons that we went over before--the lack of blood, the missing key, the lipstick and the half-painted lips, the lack of illumination, the general preposterousness of the window as the scene of the crime.
    "It was quite plain that Mrs. French had not been murdered in that window. Where had she been murdered, then? The watchman's report that she had signified the apartment as her destination; the missing apartment key which she had when O'Flaherty saw her go toward the elevator--these suggested that the apartment should be examined at once. Which I immediately proceeded to do."
    "Go on--I know all that," said Queen grumpily.
    "Patience, Diogenes!" chuckled Ellery. "The apartment told the story quite graphically. Mrs. French's presence seemed indubitable. The cards, the book-ends and the story they told...."
    "I don't know what story they told," grunted the Inspector. "You mean that powder?"
    "Not in this instance. Very well, let's forget the book-ends for the moment and go to--the lipstick which I found on the bedroom dressing-table. That belonged to Mrs. French. Its color matched the color on her half-painted lips. Women don't stop fixing their lips unless something of a tremendously serious nature intervenes. The murder? Possibly. Certainly the events leading to the murder.... So, for this reason and that, all of which you will know in greater detail to-morrow, I hope, I came to the conclusion that Mrs. French had been murdered in that apartment."
    "I shan't argue with you, because it's probably true, although your reasons are ludicrous right now. But go ahead--get down to more concrete things," said the Inspector.
    "You must grant me some premises," laughed Ellery. "I'll prove that apartment business, never fear. At this time, grant me that the apartment is the scene of the crime."
    "It's granted--for the time."
    "Very well. If the apartment was the scene of the crime, and the window was not, then very simply the body was removed from the apartment to the window and crammed into that wall-bed."
    "In that case, yes."
    "But why? I asked myself. Why was the body removed to the window? Why wasn't it left in the apartment?"
    "To make it appear that the apartment wasn't the scene of the murder? But that doesn't make sense, because--"
    "Yes, because no pains were taken to remove traces of Mrs. French's presence, like the game of banque, the lipstick--although I'm inclined to think that leaving the lipstick was an oversight. It is evident, then, that the reason the body was removed was not to make it appear that the apartment was not the scene of the crime, but to delay the discovery of the body."
    "I see what you mean," muttered the Inspector.
    "The time-element, of course," said Ellery. "The murderer must have known that at 12 o'clock sharp, every day, that window was exhibited, and that the window was locked and unused before 12 o'clock. I was looking for a reason to explain the removal of the body. The fact that it would not be discovered until after the noon hour gave the answer in a flash. For some reason the murderer wanted to delay the discovery of the crime."
    "I can't see why...."
    "Not definitely, of course, but we can make a generalization that will serve the immediate purpose. If the murderer arranged it so that the body would not be found before noon, it meant that he had something to do during the morning which the discovery of the body would have prevented him from doing. Is that clear?"
    "It follows," conceded the Inspector.
    "Allons--continuer!" said Ellery. "At first glance, that business about having to do something which the discovery of the crime would make impossible of accomplishment, is something of a poser. However, we know certain facts. For example, no matter how the murderer entered the store, he must have stayed all night. There were two ways of getting in unnoticed but no way of getting out unnoticed after the murder. He could have remained hidden somewhere in the store until after closing-hours, and then stolen up to the apartment; or he could have slipped through that open freight-door on 39th Street. He certainly couldn't get out through the Employees' Entrance, because O'Flaherty was there all night, in a perfect position to see somebody leave that way. And O'Flaherty saw no one. He couldn't have got out through the freight-door, because that door was locked for the night at eleven-thirty, and Mrs. French didn't arrive until eleven-forty-five. If he had slipped out via the freight-door, he couldn't have committed the murder. Obviously! The freight-door was closed to him at least a half-hour before the woman was killed at all. So--he must have had to remain in the store all night.
    "Now, that being the case, he could not escape until at least nine o'clock the next morning, when the doors were opened to the public and any one could walk out as if he were an early customer."
    "Well then, why all that rigmarole about stowing the body in the window in order to prevent its discovery before noon? What for?" demanded the Inspector. "If he could get out at nine o'clock and he had something to do, why couldn't he have done it then? In that case he wouldn't care when the body was found, because he could do what was necessary immediately after nine."
    "Precisely." Ellery's voice sharpened with a certain zest. "If he were free to walk out at nine and stay out, he would have no reason for delaying the discovery of the body."
    "But, Ellery," objected the Inspector, "he did delay the discovery of the body! Unless--" A light dawned on his face.