The French Powder Mystery — 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.