The French Powder Mystery - (13)

"You live alone, Mr. Gray?"
    Gray grimaced. "Unfortunately, being a misogynist, I have no family, Inspector. An old servant keeps house for me--I live in an apartment hotel, you know."
    "Then your housekeeper was up when you returned from the Club, Mr. Gray?"
    Gray spread his hands briefly. "No. Hilda had left on Saturday evening to visit a sick brother in Jersey City, and did not get back until Tuesday afternoon."
    "I see." The Inspector took snuff. "But surely some one saw you get home, Mr. Gray?"
    Gray looked startled, then he smiled again one of his twinkling smiles. "Oh, you want me to establish my--alibi, is it, Inspector?"
    "That's what it's called, sir."
    "Then there's nothing more to be said," replied Gray happily. "Because Jackson, the night-clerk, saw me when I entered the building. I asked for mail and stood chatting with him for several minutes. Then I took the elevator to my suite."
    The Inspector's face brightened. "Then really," he said, "there is nothing more to be said. Except--" his face lengthened momentarily--"what time was it when you stopped talking with this night-clerk and went upstairs?"
    "Just eleven-forty. I remember glancing at the clock above Jackson's desk to compare it with my own watch."
    "And where is your hotel, Mr. Gray?"
    "Madison and 37th, Inspector. The Burton."
    "Then I think--Unless, Ellery, you would like to ask Mr. Gray a question or two?"
    The aged little director turned quickly, in open surprise. He had forgotten the presence of Ellery, who was sitting quietly in his corner listening to the conversation. Gray looked expectant as Ellery smiled.
    "Thank you, dad--I have something to ask Mr. Gray, if we're not keeping him too long?" He looked questioningly at their visitor.
    Gray expostulated. "Not at all, Mr. Queen. Anything I can do to help you--"
    "Very well, then." Ellery hoisted his lean length from the chair and stretched his muscles. "Mr. Gray, I'm going to ask you a peculiar question. I rely upon your discretion to preserve silence, for one thing, and upon your undoubted loyalty to Mr. French and your concern in his bereavement to answer frankly."
    "I'm entirely at your service."
    "Let me present a hypothetical case," continued Ellery rapidly. "Let us suppose that Bernice Carmody was a drug addict...."
    Gray frowned. "A drug addict?"
    "Exactly. And let us suppose further that neither her mother nor her stepfather suspected her malady and condition. Then let us suppose that Mrs. French suddenly discovered the truth...."
    "I see, I see," murmured Gray.
    "The hypothetical question arising from this hypothetical case is: What do you think Mrs. French would do?" Ellery lit a cigaret.
    Gray grew thoughtful. Then he looked into Ellery's eyes. "The first thing that occurs to me, Mr. Queen," he said simply, "is that Mrs. French would not confide in Cyrus."
    "That's interesting. You know them both so well...."
    "Yes." Gray set his small wrinkled jaw. "Cyrus has been a lifelong friend. I know--or knew--Mrs. French perhaps as well as any one acquainted with the French family. And I am certain, familiar as I am with Cyrus's character and Mrs. French's knowledge of his character, that she would not dare to tell him such a thing. She would keep it strictly to herself. She might possibly inform Carmody, her first husband...."
    "We needn't go into that, Mr. Gray," said Ellery. "But why would she keep it a secret from French?"
    "Because," said Gray frankly, "Cyrus is hypersensitive on the subject of vice, particularly drug addiction. You must remember that most of his latter years have been devoted to wiping out as much of this sort of vice in the City as possible. To find it in his own family would, I firmly believe, unbalance him.... But, of course," he added quickly, "he doesn't know; I'm positive Mrs. French would keep a thing like that to herself. She might try to cure the girl secretly, perhaps...."
    Ellery said clearly: "One of the major reasons for Mrs. French's silence in a case like this would be, I suppose, that she was aiming to secure for her daughter a generous slice of her husband's fortune?"
    Gray started uncomfortably. "Well.... I don't.... Yes, if you must have the truth, I think that is so. Mrs. French was a calculating--not necessarily unscrupulous, mind you--but a calculating and very practical woman. I believe that, motherlike, she was determined that Bernice come in for a good share of Cyrus's estate when Cyrus should pass on.... Is there anything else, Mr. Queen?"
    "That is," said Ellery, smiling, "quite sufficient. Thank you immeasurably, Mr. Gray."
    "Then," said the Inspector, "that will be all."
    Gray looked relieved, accepted his coat, hat and gloves from Djuna, murmured polite adieux, and left.
    The Inspector and Ellery heard his light quick step on the staircase as he descended to the street.
    36
    "THE TIME HAS COME ..."
    The Queens had dinner in silence. Djuna served in silence, and in silence cleared the table afterward. The Inspector dipped into the browned interior of his snuff-box and Ellery held communion with first a cigaret, then a pipe, then a cigaret again. In all this time no word was spoken. It was a silence of sympathy, not infrequent in the Queen household.
    Finally Ellery sighed and stared into the fireplace. But it was the Inspector who spoke first.
    "As far as I am concerned," he said with a grim disappointment, "this day has been entirely wasted."
    Ellery raised his eyebrows. "Dad, dad, you grow more irascible with every passing day.... If I didn't know how upset and overworked you've been of late, I'd be annoyed with you."
    "At my obtuseness?" demanded the Inspector, twinkling.
    "No, at the lapse of your usual mental vigor." Ellery twisted his head and grinned at his father. "Do you mean to say that to-day's incidents have meant nothing to you?"
    "The raid flat, Springer skipped, nothing tangible from the alibis of these people--I can't see any cause for celebration," retorted the Inspector.
    "Well, well!" Ellery frowned. "Perhaps I'm over-sanguine.... But the whole thing is so clear!"
    He sprang to his feet and began to rummage in his desk. He produced his voluminous sheets of notes and thumbed rapidly through them under the Inspector's wearied and bewildered eyes. Then he slapped them back into their receptacle.
    "It's all over," he announced, "all over but the shouting and--the proof. I have all the threads--or rather, all the threads which lead inexorably to the murderer of Mrs. French. They don't make solid proof, such as is demanded by our venerable courts of law and our prosecuting system. What would you do in a case like that, dad?"
    The Inspector wrinkled his nose in self-disgust. "I take it that what's been a hopeless maze to me has been a clear thoroughfare to you. That rankles, son! I have raised up a Frankenstein to haunt my old age ..." Then he chuckled and laid a slightly infirm hand on Ellery's knee.
    "Good lad," he said. "I don't know what I'd do without you."
    "Shucks." Ellery blushed. "You've gone sentimental, too, dad ..." Their fingers met covertly. "Now, look here, Inspector! You've got to help me to a decision!"
    "Yes, yes ..." Queen dropped back, embarrassed. "You've got a case, an explanation and no proof. What to do.... Bluff, my son. Bluff as if you'd raised the pot before the draw on a pair of fours and then found real opposition staring at you. Raise again!"
    Ellery looked thoughtful. "I've been tottering on the edge.... Christmas!" His eyes brightened with a sudden thought. "How stupid I've been!" he cried at once. "I've a beautiful card up my sleeve and I've forgotten all about it! Bluff? We'll just about sweep our slippery friend off our slippery friend's feet!"
    He yanked the telephone toward him, hesitated, then turned it over to the Inspector, who was regarding him with gloomy fondness.
    "Here's a list," he said, scribbling on a piece of paper, "of some people of importance. Will you blow the conch, dad, while I begin a memorization of these pesky notes?"
    "The time is--" asked the Inspector submissively.
    "To-morrow morning at nine-thirty," replied Ellery. "And you might call the D.A. and tell him to close in on our friend Springer."
    "Springer!" cried the Inspector.
    "Springer," replied Ellery. And thereafter there was silence, broken periodically by the voice of the Inspector on the telephone.
    PARENTHESIS AND CHALLENGE
    I have often found it a stimulating exercise in my own reading of murder fiction to pause at that point in the story immediately preceding the solution, and to try by a logical analysis to determine for myself the identity of the criminal.... Because I believe that numerous gourmets of this species of fictional delicacy are as interested in the reasoning as in the reading, I submit in the proper spirit of sportsmanship an amiable challenge to the reader.... Without reading the concluding pages, Reader--Who killed Mrs. French?... There is a great tendency among detective-story lovers to endeavor to "guess" the criminal by submitting to the play of a blind instinct. A certain amount of this is inevitable, I will admit, but the application of logic and common sense is the important thing, the source of the greater enjoyment.... Whereupon I state without reservation that the reader is at this stage in the recounting of The French Powder Mystery fully cognizant of all the facts pertinent to the discovery of the criminal; and that a sufficiently diligent study of what has gone before should educe a clear understanding of what is to come. A rivederci!
    E. Q.
    THE LAST EPISODE
    "Forty years in the service of the SÛRETÉ, one might hazard, would dull the edge of one's zest for the hunt. Thank the good Lord, this is not so! at least in my own case, which has been as full of interest, I dare say, as the next.... There was the admirable Henri Tencqueville, who cut his throat before my very eyes when we cornered him in his Montmartre hideaway ... and Petit Charlot, who shot two of my faithful lads to death and bit off a piece of the good Sergeant Mousson's nose in the mêlée before he was subdued.... Ah, well! I grow tender in reminiscence, but ... I would make the point that even to-day, old and enfeebled as I am, I would not give up the thrill of that final coup de main, that last stage of the chase when the quarry, panting and desperate, has his back to the wall--no, not for all the everlasting delights of the Turkish heaven!..."
    --From THE MEMOIRS OF A PREFECT, By Auguste Brillon.
    37
    MAKE READY!
    They came in one by one--furtive, curious, impassive, bored, reluctant, openly nervous. Quietly they came in, conscious of the tight police cordon, of a quivering strain in the atmosphere, of shrewd eyes that noted and calculated their least movement--conscious most of all of grim over-hanging disaster, to whom and with what dire effects they did not know and could only guess.
    It was nine-thirty of the fateful Thursday morning. The door through which they shuffled in silence was the door marked PRIVATE: CYRUS FRENCH.... They passed inside through the bare lofty anteroom, into the heavy quiet of the library, sat down in incredible camp-chairs set up martially facing the dormer-windows.
    They crowded the room. In the front row sat old Cyrus French himself, a white and trembling figure. His fingers were desperately entwined in the fingers of Marion French by his side. Westley Weaver, harried face gaunted by sleeplessness, occupied the seat next to Marion's. To French's left was Dr. Stuart, the old man's physician, watching his patient with a professional pantherishness. By Stuart's side sat John Gray, dapper and bird-like, occasionally leaning over the doctor's bulky abdomen to talk into the sick man's ear.
    In the row behind were Hortense Underhill, the housekeeper, and Doris Keaton, the maid. Both sat rigidly, whispering to each other out of the corners of their mouths, peering about with frightened eyes.
    In serried ranks.... Wheezing Marchbanks; the portly Zorn fingering his watch-chain; a befurred and aromatic Mrs. Zorn dispensing smiles to the grave Frenchman, Paul Lavery, who stroked his short beard; Trask, a flower in his lapel, but utterly pale, with enormous leaden rings under his eyes; the antique-dealer Vincent Carmody, a saturnine figure, uncompromising, somber, even in his chair towering above the heads of the company; mild-mannered Arnold MacKenzie, the general manager of the store; Diana Johnson, the Negress who had discovered Mrs. French's dead body; the four watchmen--O'Flaherty, Bloom, Ralska, Powers....
    There was little conversation. Each time the anteroom door opened people twisted about in their seats, craned, jerked their eyes back to the window again with guilty side-glances toward each other.
    The conference table had been pushed against the wall. In a row of chairs before the table sat Sergeant Thomas Velie and William Crouther, chief of the store's detective force, talking in undertones; scowling Salvatore Fiorelli, of the Narcotic Squad, bright black eyes snapping at some inexpressible thought, his scar pulsing slowly beneath the swarthy skin; "Jimmy," the little bald-headed operative of the Headquarters fingerprint department. At the anteroom door stood Patrolman Bush, relegated to the important post of guardian of the door. A cloud of detectives, among them Inspector Queen's favorite operatives--Hagstrom, Flint, Ritter, Johnson, and Piggott--massed along the wall directly opposite the conference table. At each corner of the room stood a silent officer in blue, cap in hand.
    Neither Inspector Queen nor Ellery Queen had yet put in his appearance. People whispered this information to each other. They looked sidelong at the anteroom door, against which Bush's broad back was set.
    Gradually, tangibly, another silence came over the scene. Whispers trembled, wavered, ceased. Glances became more furtive, chair-twistings more frequent. Cyrus French coughed violently; he doubled up in agony. Dr. Stuart's eyes flickered with a vague anxiety. Weaver bent far to the side when the old man's paroxysm had passed; Marion looked startled; soon their heads were close together, touching....
    Crouther scraped his hand over his face. "What the hell is holdin' up the works, Sergeant?" Velie shook his head gloomily. "What's it all about?"
    "Got me."
    Crouther shrugged.
    The silence thickened. Every one grew still as stone.... The silence grew more embarrassing with each passing moment--a silence that swelled, breathed, became alive....
    Then Sergeant Velie did a strange thing. His spatulate forefinger, resting on his knee, tapped three distinct times, in rhythm. Not even Crouther caught the signal, and Crouther was at Velie's side. But the officer on guard, who had been watching the Sergeant's hand for minutes, immediately sprang into motion. All eyes flashed instantly upon him, grasping at this sign of life, of happening with a pitiful eagerness.... The policeman went to the desk, which was shrouded by a light tarpaulin, and bending far over carefully removed the covering. He stepped back, folded the tarpaulin neatly, retreated to his corner....
    But he was already forgotten. As if the sheer rays of a searchlight had been trained upon the desk, every one in the room eyed the objects revealed with a fascination drawn from the deepest crevices of his being.
    They were many, and heterogeneous. Ranged in orderly rows along the glass top, each with a small labeled card before it, were the gold lipstick marked W.M.F., which Ellery had found on the bedroom dressing-table; the silver-chased lipstick with the C monogram from the dead woman's bag in the exhibition-window; six keys with gold discs--the keys to the apartment, five of which bore the initials of Cyrus French, Winifred Marchbanks French, Marion French, Bernice Carmody, Westley Weaver, and the sixth the word Master; the two carved onyx book-ends, lying with a small jar of white powder and a camel's-hair brush between them; the five strange volumes which Ellery had found on French's desk; the shaving-set from the lavatory cabinet; two ashtrays filled with cigaret-stubs--one set much shorter in length than the other; the gauzy scarf initialed M.F., taken from the neck of the victim; a board on which were tacked the cards from the cardroom table, laid out exactly as they had first appeared to the police; the slip of blue memorandum paper which was checked off at Cyrus French's typewritten name; the blue hat and the walking shoes from the bedroom closet which Hortense Underhill and Doris Keaton had identified as having been worn by Bernice Carmody the day she disappeared; and a black .38 Colt revolver, with the two now rusty-looking splatters of metal which had been the lethal bullets lying near the muzzle.
    Quite by itself, prominently in view of the audience, lay a pair of dull, steely manacles--a symbol and a portent of what was to come....
    And there they reposed, the silent clues garnered during the investigation frankly open to the gaze of the uneasy guests of Ellery Queen. Again they stared, whispered.
    But this time they had not long to wait. A slight commotion in the corridor outside became plainly audible in the library. Sergeant Velie lumbered to his feet and went quickly to the anteroom door, motioning Patrolman Bush aside. He disappeared, the door swinging shut behind him.
    Now the door became the focal point of those half-angry, bewildered eyes--that door behind which the deep murmur of several voices kept up a short mysterious litany.... And as if it had been cut cleanly by a knife, the voices broke off and an instant of silence fell before the knob of the door was rattled, the door was pushed inward, and eight men stepped into the room.
    38
    THE END OF ALL THINGS
    It had been Ellery Queen's hand on the knob--a subtly changed young man with drawn features and a sharpened glance that swept the room once and then returned to the anteroom.
    "Before me, Commissioner," he murmured, holding the door wide. Commissioner Scott Welles grunted, pushed his heavy body into view. Three tight-lipped men in plain clothes--his bodyguard--flanked him as he crossed the room toward the desk.
    Next to appear in full sight of the assembled company was a strangely altered Inspector Richard Queen, holding himself rigidly erect. He was pale. He followed the police commissioner in silence.
    After Queen came District Attorney Henry Sampson and his assistant, the red-haired Timothy Cronin. They were whispering to each other, paying no attention to the occupants of the room.
    Velie, making up the rear, carefully closed the anteroom door, flipped Bush back to his post with a curt finger, and dropped into his chair beside Crouther. The store detective looked up at him inquiringly; Velie said nothing and settled his big body. Both men turned to watch the newcomers.
    There was a little flurry of conversation as Ellery Queen and his companions stood near the desk at the head of the room. Inspector Queen indicated one of the leather-padded conference chairs immediately to the right and a little behind the desk, as the seat to be occupied by the Commissioner. Welles seemed a sadder and wiser man--he sat down without a word, his eyes on Ellery's quiet figure before the desk.
    The three guards disposed themselves with the other detectives at the side of the room.
    Inspector Queen himself sat down in a big chair to the left of the desk, with Cronin at his side. The District Attorney dropped into a chair next to the Commissioner. Desk in the center, its varied articles beckoning attention. On either side two chairs with official occupants. And dominating the scene....
    The stage was set.
    Ellery Queen, cynically examining the room and its occupants once more, expressed himself as satisfied at the Commissioner's brusque question. Ellery stepped behind the desk and stood with his back to the dormer-windows. His head was lowered, his eyes on the desk-top. His hand strayed to the glass, hovered over the book-ends, played with the jar of white powder.... He smiled, straightened, raised his head, removed his pince-nez glasses, looked calmly at his hushed audience, waited.... Not until there was absolute silence did he speak.
    "Ladies and gentleman." Prosy beginning! Yet something vaguely eerie shivered through the air; it was a simultaneous sigh from many breasts.
    "Ladies and gentlemen. Sixty hours ago Mrs. Winifred French was shot to death in this building. Forty-eight hours ago her body was found. This morning we have assembled at a private Waterloo to name her murderer." Ellery had spoken quietly; now he paused for the slightest instant....
    But after that sigh en masse even breaths seemed to be drawn with care. No one spoke; no one whispered. They merely sat and waited.
    A cutting edge slipped into the tone of Ellery's voice. "Very well! A few preliminary explanations are required. Commissioner Welles--" he turned slightly toward Welles, "it is with your permission that I conduct this unofficial inquest?"
    Welles nodded, once.
    "Then let me explain," continued Ellery, turning back to his auditors, "that I am merely taking the place of Inspector Queen, who is unable to take charge because of a minor throat ailment which makes long speaking difficult and painful. Correct, sir?" He bowed very solemnly in the direction of his father. The Inspector grew even paler than before, nodded wordlessly. "Further," Ellery went on, "if I shall at any time use the personal 'I' in my discourse this morning, you are to understand that it is merely for convenience--that in reality I shall be describing the investigatory processes of Inspector Queen himself."
    He halted abruptly, threw a challenging glance about the room, met nothing but wide eyes and ears, and plunged at once into an analysis of the French murder case.
    "I shall take you through our investigation of this crime, ladies and gentlemen," he began in a sharp decisive tone, "step by step, deduction by deduction, observation by observation, until I arrive at what is an inevitable conclusion. Hagstrom, you are taking this down?"
    Eyes followed the direction of Ellery's glance. At the side of the room where the detectives were congregated, Detective Hagstrom was seated, pencil poised above a stenographic notebook. Hagstrom bobbed his head.
    "What transpires here this morning," explained Ellery pleasantly, "will become part of the official dossier of the case. Enough of asides!" He cleared his throat.
    "Mrs. Winifred Marchbanks French was discovered dead--killed by two bullets, one in the heart and one in the precordial region below the heart--on Tuesday at fifteen minutes or so past noon. When Inspector Queen arrived upon the scene he noted several facts which led him to believe that"--he paused--"the exhibition-window on the main floor was not in effect the place where the crime was committed."
    The room was deathly still. Fascination, fear, aversion, grief--the gamut of emotions played upon those intent white faces. Ellery Queen went on, rapidly.
    "There were five component elements in this initial investigation," he said, "that pointed to the conclusion that the murder was not committed in the window.
    "The first was the fact that, while on Monday night Mrs. French had in her possession her personal key to this apartment, the key was missing from her person and effects Tuesday morning, on the discovery of her dead body. O'Flaherty, the head night-watchman, testified that she had the key at eleven-fifty Monday night when she left his cubbyhole to take the elevator upstairs. Yet it was gone. Search of the store and premises left the key still unfound. What was the inference? That the key and the crime were in some way connected. How? Well, the key appertained to the apartment. If it was missing, wasn't there an indication that the apartment also entered into the crime somewhere? At least there was enough suspicion to be gleaned from the missing key to warrant a belief that the apartment might have been the scene of the crime."