The French Powder Mystery — 7

The Corpse

    Inspector Queen moved over to the other side of the room, where the body lay between the bed and the window. Waving aside the detective Johnson, who was rummaging among the bedclothes, the old man knelt on the floor beside the dead woman. He removed the white sheet. Ellery bent over his father's shoulder, his gaze detached but characteristically panoramic.
    The body lay in an oddly crumpled position, the left arm outstretched, the right slightly crooked beneath the back. The head was in profile, a brown toque-style hat pushed pathetically over one eye. Mrs. French had been a small slender woman, with delicate hands and feet. The eyes were fixed in a sort of bewildered glare, wide open. The mouth drooled; a thin trickle of blood, now dark and dry, streaked the chin.
    The clothes were simple and severe, but rich in quality, as might be expected from a woman of Mrs. French's age and position. There was a light brown cloth coat, trimmed at the collar and cuffs with brown fox; a dark tan dress of a jersey material, with a breast and waist design of orange and brown; brown silk stockings and a pair of uncompromising brown walking-shoes.
    The Inspector looked up.
    "Notice the mud on her shoes, El?" he asked sotto voce.
    Ellery nodded. "Doesn't take a heap of perspicacity," he remarked. "It rained all day yesterday; remember the downpour last night? No wonder the poor lady wet her patrician feet. As a matter of fact, you can see traces of the wet even on the trimming of the toque.—Yes, dad, Mrs. French was out in the rain yesterday. Not very important."
    "Why not?" the old man asked, his hands softly moving aside the collar of the coat.
    "Because she probably wet her shoes and hat in crossing the sidewalk to the store," retorted Ellery. "What of it?"
    The Inspector did not reply. His seeking hand plunged suddenly beneath the coat-collar and reappeared with a filmy, color-clouded scarf.
    "Here's something," he said, turning the gauze-like material over in his hands. "Must have slipped down inside the coat when she tumbled out of the bed." An exclamation escaped him. On one corner of the scarf was a silk-embroidered monogram. Ellery leaned farther forward over his father's shoulder.
    "M.F.," he said. He straightened up, frowning, saying nothing.
    The Inspector turned his head toward the group of directors at the other side of the room. They were huddled together, watching his every gesture. At his movement they started guiltily and averted their heads.
    "What was Mrs. French's first name?" Queen questioned the group; and as if each one had been addressed individually, there was an instant chorus of "Winifred!"
    "Winifred, eh?" muttered the old man, letting his eyes return fleetingly to the body. Then he fixed Weaver with his grey eyes.
    "Winifred, eh?" he repeated. Weaver bobbed his head mechanically. He seemed horrified at the wisp of silk in the Inspector's hand. "Winifred what? Any middle name or initials?"
    "Winifred—Winifred Marchbanks French," stammered the secretary.
    The Inspector nodded curtly. Rising, he strode over to Cyrus French, who was watching him with dull, uncomprehending eyes.
    "Mr. French—" Queen shook the millionaire's shoulder gently—"Mr. French, is this your wife's scarf?" He held the scarf up before French's eyes. "Do you understand me, sir? Is this scarf Mrs. French's?"
    "Eh? I—Let me see it!" The old man snatched it in a sort of frenzy from the Inspector's hand. He bent over it avidly, pulled it smooth, examined the monogram with feverish fingers—and slumped back in his chair.
    "Is it, Mr. French?" pursued the Inspector, taking the scarf from him.
    "No." It was a flat, colorless, indifferent negative.
    The Inspector turned toward the silent group. "Can any one here identify this scarf?" He held it high. There was no answer. The Inspector repeated his question, glaring at each one individually. Of them all, only Westley Weaver averted his glance.
    "So! Weaver, eh? No nonsense, now, young man!" snapped Queen, grasping the secretary by the arm. "What do the letters M.F. stand for—Marion French?"
    The young man gulped, sent an agonized glance toward Ellery, who returned the glance commiseratingly, looked at old Cyrus French, who was mumbling to himself....
    "You can't believe she had anything to do—to do with it!" cried Weaver, shaking his arm free. "It's absurd—crazy!... You can't believe she had anything to do with this, Inspector. She's too fine, too young, too—"
    "Marion French." The Inspector turned toward John Gray. "Mr. French's daughter, I believe Mr. Weaver said before?"
    Gray nodded sullenly. Cyrus French suddenly attempted to leap from his chair. He uttered a hoarse cry. "My God, no! Not Marion! Not Marion!" His eyes blazed as Gray and Marchbanks, the directors nearest the old man, jumped to support his quivering body. The spasm lasted for a brief moment; he collapsed into his chair.
    Inspector Queen returned without a word to his examination of the dead woman. Ellery had been a silent witness of the little drama, his sharp eyes flitting from face to face as it unfolded. Now he sent a glance of reassurance at Weaver, who was leaning abjectly against a table, and then stooped to pick up an object from the floor which was almost hidden by the dead woman's tumbled skirt.
    It was a small handbag of dark brown suède, monogrammed with the initials W.M.F. Ellery sat down on the edge of the bed and turned the bag over in his hands. Curiously he lifted the flap and began to spread the contents of the bag on the mattress. He removed a small change-purse, a gold vanity-case, a lace handkerchief, a gold card-case, all monogrammed W.M.F., and finally a silver-chased lipstick.
    The Inspector looked up. "What's that you have there?" he asked sharply.
    "Bag of the deceased," murmured Ellery. "Would you care to examine it?"
    "Would I—" The Inspector glared at his son in mock heat. "Ellery, sometimes you try me beyond patience!"
    Ellery handed it over with a smile. The old man examined the bag minutely. He pawed over the articles on the bed and gave up in disgust.
    "Nothing there that I can see," he snorted. "And I'm—"
    "No?" Ellery's tone was provocative.
    "What do you mean?" asked his father with a change of tone, looking back at the contents of the bag. "Purse, vanity, hanky, card-case, lipstick—what's interesting there?"
    Ellery faced about squarely so that his back hid the articles on the bed from the observation of the others. He picked up the lipstick with care and offered it to his father. The old man took it cautiously, suspiciously. Suddenly an exclamation escaped him.
    "Exactly—C," murmured Ellery. "What do you make of it?"
    The lipstick was large and deep. On the cap was a chastely engraved initial, C. The Inspector peered at it in some astonishment and made as if to question the men in the room. But Ellery halted him with a warning gesture and took the lipstick from his father's fingers. He unscrewed the initialed cap and twisted the body of the stick until a half-inch of red paste was visible above the orifice. His eyes shifted toward the dead woman's face. They brightened at what they saw.
    He knelt quickly by his father's side, their bodies still shielding their movements from the eyes of the onlookers.
    "Have a peep at this, dad," he said in an undertone, offering the lipstick. The old man looked at it in a puzzled way.
    "Poisoned?" he asked. "But that's impossible—how could you tell without an analysis?"
    "No, no!" exclaimed Ellery in the same low tone. "The color, dad—the color!"
    The Inspector's face lightened. He looked from the stick in Ellery's hand to the dead woman's lips. The fact was self-evident—the coloring on the lips had not come from the stick in Ellery's possession. The lips were painted a light shade of red, almost pink, whereas the stick itself was a dark carmine in shade.
    "Here, El—let me have that!" said the Inspector. He took the open stick and swiftly made a red mark on the dead woman's face.
    "Different, all right," he muttered. He wiped off the smudge with a corner of the sheet. "But I don't see—"
    "There really should be another lipstick, eh?" remarked Ellery lightly, standing up.
    The old man snatched at the woman's handbag and went through it once more, hurriedly. No, there was no sign of another lipstick. He motioned to the detective Johnson.
    "Find anything in the bed or the closet here, Johnson?"
    "Not a thing, Chief."
    "Sure? No sign of a lipstick?"
    "Nope."
    "Piggott! Hesse! Flint!" The three detectives stopped short in their search of the room and crossed to the Inspector's side. The old man repeated his questions.... Nothing. The detectives had found no alien articles in the room.
    "Is Crouther here? Crouther!" The store detective hurried over.
    "Been out seeing that things were moving in the store," he announced unasked. "Everything's shipshape—boys've been hustling, that's a fact.—What can I do for you, Inspector?"
    "Did you see a lipstick around here when you found the body?"
    "Lipstick? No, sir! Wouldn't have touched it if I'd seen it anyway. Told everybody to leave things alone. I know that much, Inspector!"
    "Mr. Lavery!" The Frenchman sauntered up. No, he had seen no sign of a lipstick. Perhaps the Negress—?
    "Hardly! Piggott, send some one up to the infirmary and find out if this Johnson girl saw it."
    The Inspector turned back to Ellery with a frowning brow. "Now, that's funny, isn't it, Ellery? Could some one here have appropriated the darned thing?"
    Ellery smiled. "'Honest labor,' as old Tom Dekker had it, 'bears a lovely face,' but I'm very much afraid, dad.... No, your efforts in the direction of finding a lipstick thief are wasted. I could almost make a nice conjecture...."
    "What do you mean, Ellery?" groaned the Inspector. "Where is it, then, if no one took it?"
    "We'll come to that in the course of inexorable time," said Ellery imperturbably. "But examine the face of our poor clay again, dad—particularly the labial portion. See anything interesting aside from the color of the lipstick?"
    "Eh?" The Inspector turned startled eyes to the corpse. He felt for his snuff-box and nervously took a generous pinch. "No, I can't say that I—By jiminy!" He muttered beneath his breath. "The lips—unfinished...."
    "Precisely." Ellery twirled his pince-nez about his finger. "Observed the phenomenon the moment I looked at the body. What amazing juxtaposition of circumstances could have caused a handsome woman still in her prime to leave her lips only half painted?" He pursed his mouth, fell into deep thought. His eyes did not leave the dead woman's lips, which showed the pinkish color of the lipstick on both the upper and lower lip, on the upper two dabs of unsmeared color and on the lower one a dab exactly in the center. Where the lipstick had not yet been smeared, the lips were a sickly purple—the color of unadorned death.
    The Inspector passed his hand wearily across his brow just as Piggott returned.
    "Well?"
    "The colored girl fainted," reported the detective, "just as the body fell out of the wall-bed. Never saw anything, much less a lipstick." Inspector Queen draped the sheet over the body in baffled silence.