The XYZ Murders, page 37
“I’d like to have that translated into United States,” growled the Inspector. “I want to know the question, too.”
“Mr. Lane means to ask,” said Barbara with a dab of color in her cheeks, “whether father took as much interest in my work as I did in his. The answer, Mr. Lane, is yes. Father always had the most passionate admiration—not, I’m afraid, so much for my poetry as for my material success. He often puzzled over my verse.…”
“As I have, Miss Hatter,” said Lane with a little bow. “Did Mr. Hatter ever try to write?”
She made a moue of dismissal. “Hardly. He did try his hand at fiction once, but I don’t believe anything came of it. He could never apply himself to anything for very long—except, of course, his eternal experiments with retorts and burners and chemicals.”
“Well,” said the Inspector belligerently, “if that’s over, I’d like to get back to business. We haven’t all day, Mr. Lane.… Were you the last one in last night, Miss Hatter?”
“I really can’t say. I’d forgotten my house key—we all have a personal key—and so I rang the night bell in the vestibule. The night bell communicates directly with the Arbuckles’ rooms on the attic floor, and George Arbuckle pottered downstairs after five minutes or so to let me in. I went upstairs at once. Arbuckle remained behind.… So I can’t say whether I was the last one in or not. Perhaps Arbuckle knows.”
“How’d it happen that you didn’t have your key? Mislaid? Lost?”
“You’re so transparent, Inspector,” said Barbara, sighing. “No, it was not mislaid, not lost, not stolen. I’d merely forgotten it, as I said. It was in another purse in my room; I looked before retiring.”
“Can you think of anything else?” the Inspector demanded of Bruno after a little silence.
The District Attorney shook his head.
“You, Mr. Lane?”
“After the way you squelched me, Inspector,” replied Lane with a rueful grin, “no.”
Thumm clucked what might have been apology, and said: “Then that’s all, Miss Hatter. Please don’t leave the house.”
“No,” said Barbara Hatter wearily. “Of course not.”
She rose and left the room.
Thumm held the door open and watched her retreat. “There,” he muttered, “no matter how I may’ve talked to her, goes a damned fine woman. Well,” he said, squaring his shoulders, “we may as well tackle the lunatics. Mosher, get those Arbuckles down here for a gabfest.”
The detective tramped off. Thumm closed the door, hooked his thumb in a belt loop, and sat down.
“Lunatics?” repeated Bruno. “The Arbuckles struck me as normal.”
“Hell, no,” snarled the Inspector. “That’s just the way they look. Inside they’re crazy. They must be crazy.” He ground his molars. “Anybody who lives in this house must be crazy. I’m beginning to feel crazy myself.”
The Arbuckles were tall, strong people of middle age; they looked more like brother and sister than husband and wife. Both had coarse features and pebble-grained skins in which the pores were large and oily: peasants, both of them, with generations of thick blood and stolid brains behind them—and both of them dour and unsmiling, as if the pervading spirit of this house had crushed them.
Mrs. Arbuckle was nervous. “I went to bed last night at eleven o’clock,” she said. “With George here—my husband. We’re peaceable people; we don’t know anything about this.”
The Inspector grunted. “Slept till morning, both of you?”
“No,” said the woman. “About two o’clock in the morning the night bell rang. George got up, put on his pants and shirt, and went downstairs.” The Inspector nodded gloomily; he had, perhaps, expected a lie. “He came back upstairs in about ten minutes, and he said: ‘Barbara—she forgot her key.’” Mrs. Arbuckle sniffed. “And then we went back to bed and didn’t know a thing else till morning.”
George Arbuckle’s shaggy head bobbed slowly. “That’s right,” he said. “God’s truth. We don’t know a thing about this.”
“You speak when you’re spoken to,” said Thumm. “Now——”
“Mrs. Arbuckle,” said Lane unexpectedly. She surveyed him with feminine curiosity—this female with a mustache. “Can you tell us if fruit was left on the night-table in Mrs. Hatter’s room every day?”
“I can. Louisa Campion loves it. Yes,” said Mrs. Arbuckle.
“There is a bowl of fruit upstairs now. When was it purchased?”
“Yesterday. I always keep the bowl full of fresh fruit. Mrs. Hatter wanted it that way.”
“Miss Campion is fond of all varieties of fruit?”
“Yes. She——”
“Sir,” said Inspector Thumm grimly.
“Yes, sir.”
“Mrs. Hatter also?”
“Well … so-so. She did hate pears. Never ate ’em. Folks in the house used to make fun of her about it.”
Mr. Drury Lane glanced significantly at Inspector Thumm and the District Attorney. “Now, Mrs. Arbuckle,” he continued in a genial tone, “where do you buy your fruit?”
“At Sutton’s on University Place. Delivered fresh every day.”
“And does anyone except Miss Campion eat this fruit?”
Mrs. Arbuckle reared her square head and stared. “What kind of a question is that? Sure the others eat fruit. I always take some off the order for the family.”
“Hmm. Did anyone eat a pear from the batch delivered yesterday?”
The housekeeper’s face became dark with suspicion; this harping on fruit, it appeared, was getting on her nerves. “Yes!” she flared. “Yes! Yes …”
“Sir,” said the Inspector.
“Yes … sir. I ate one myself, I did, and what of it?——”
“Nothing, Mrs. Arbuckle, I assure you,” said Lane in a soothing voice. “You ate one of the pears. No one else did?”
“The br—the children, Jackie and Billy, had a pear apiece,” she muttered, mollified. “And a banana, too—they eat like fury.”
“And no ill effects,” remarked the District Attorney. “That’s something, anyway.”
“When was yesterday’s fruit brought to Miss Campion’s room?” asked Lane in the same soothing tone.
“In the afternoon. After lunch—sir.”
“All the fruit was fresh and new?”
“Yes. Yes, sir. A couple of pieces were in the bowl from day before yesterday, but I took those out,” said Mrs. Arbuckle, “and put in fresh ones. Louisa is very fussy about her food and drink, she is. Fruit especially. She won’t eat fruit at all that’s overripe or, you know, touched.”
Mr. Drury Lane started; he began to say something, gulped it down, and became very still. The woman stared dully at him; her husband, shuffling his feet by her side, scratched his jaw and looked uncomfortable. The Inspector and Bruno seemed puzzled by Lane’s reaction; they watched him closely.
“You’re certain of that?”
“Sure as I’m alive, I am.”
Lane sighed. “How many pears did you put into the fruit-bowl yesterday afternoon, Mrs. Arbuckle?”
“Two.”
“What!” exclaimed the Inspector. “Why, we found—!” He looked at Bruno, and Bruno looked at Lane.
“You know,” muttered the District Attorney, “that’s downright queer, Mr. Lane.”
Lane’s voice rolled on imperturbably. “You would swear to that, Mrs. Arbuckle?”
“Swear? What for? There were two, I say. I ought to know.”
“Certainly you should. Did you take the bowl upstairs yourself?”
“I always do.”
Lane smiled, looked thoughtful, and sat down with a little wave of the hand.
“Here, you, Arbuckle,” growled the Inspector. “Was Barbara Hatter the last one in last night?”
The chauffeur-houseman quivered perceptibly at being directly addressed. He wet his lips. “Uh—uh—I don’t know, sir. After I let Miss Hatter in, I just stayed downstairs long enough to sort of make my rounds—see that all the doors and windows were locked. I locked the front door myself, and then went back upstairs to bed. So I can’t say who came in and who didn’t.”
“How about the basement?”
“That ain’t used,” replied Arbuckle with more assurance. “It’s been shut down and boarded up back and front for years.”
“So,” said the Inspector. He went to the door, stuck his head out, and yelled: “Pinkussohn!”
A detective said hoarsely: “Yes, Chief?”
“Downstairs to the basement. Have a look around.”
The Inspector closed the door and came back. District Attorney Bruno was asking Arbuckle: “Why were you so careful to check up on the doors and windows at two o’clock in the morning?”
Arbuckle grinned apologetically. “Habit of mine, sir. Mrs. Hatter was always tellin’ me to be careful about that, because Miss Campion—she’s afraid of burglars. I’d done it before goin’ to bed, but I thought I’d do it again to make sure.”
“Were they all closed and locked at two a.m.?” demanded Thumm.
“Yes, sir. Tighter’n a drum.”
“How long have you people been working here?”
“Eight years,” said Mrs. Arbuckle, “come this past Lent.”
“Well,” grunted Thumm, “I guess that’s all. Anything else, Mr. Lane?”
The actor was sprawled in the armchair, eyes fixed on the housekeeper and her husband. “Mr. Arbuckle, Mrs. Arbuckle,” he said. “Have you found the Hatters a difficult family to work for?”
George Arbuckle became almost animated. “Difficult, you say?” He snorted. “I’ll tell the world, sir. Batty, they are, all of ’em.”
“It’s hard pleasing ’em,” said Mrs. Arbuckle darkly.
“Then why,” asked Lane in a pleasant voice, “have you people persisted in working for them for eight years?”
“Oh, that!” replied Mrs. Arbuckle, in the tone of one who considers the question irrelevant. “Nothing mysterious about that. The pay is good—very good, and that’s why we’ve stuck. Who wouldn’t?”
Lane seemed disappointed. “Do either of you recall yesterday seeing the mandolin in the glass case yonder?”
Mr. and Mrs. Arbuckle looked at each other, and both shook their heads. “Can’t remember,” said Arbuckle.
“Thank you,” said Mr. Drury Lane, and the Arbuckles were sent packing by the Inspector.
The housemaid, Virginia—no one thought of asking her last name—was a tall bony spinster with a horsy face. She was wringing her hands and on the verge of tears. She had worked for the Hatters for five years. She liked her job. She loved her job. The pay … Oh, sir, I went to bed so early last night.… She had heard nothing, she had seen nothing, and she knew nothing. So she was peremptorily excused.
Pinkussohn, the detective, lounged in with disgust written all over his big face. “Nothing doin’ in the basement, Chief. Looks as if it hasn’t been entered for years—dust an inch thick all——”
“An inch?” echoed the Inspector disagreeably.
“Well, maybe less. Doors and windows not touched. No footprints anywhere in the muck.”
“Get out of the habit of exaggerating,” growled the Inspector. “Some day you’re going to make a damned big mountain out of a damned small molehill, and it’s going to be serious. Okay, Pink.” As the detective disappeared through the doorway a policeman came in and saluted. “Well,” snapped Thumm, “what do you want?”
“Two men outside,” said the officer. “Want to come in. Say they’re the family lawyer and one of ’em the partner or something of this here Conrad Hatter. Let ’em in, Inspector?”
“You dope,” snarled the Inspector. “I’ve been looking for those birds all morning. Sure!”
Drama, and something of comedy, entered the library with the two newcomers. Alone together, although richly contrasting types, they might have been friends; with the presence of Jill Hatter, however, all possibility of amicability fled. Jill, beautiful, keen, her face already touched beneath the eyes and in the lines around her nose and mouth with the brush of high living, had evidently encountered the men in the hall; she came in with them, between them, clinging to a masculine arm to right and left, gazing sadly at them, turning from one to the other, accepting their hasty fragments of condolence with a lifting breast and drooping lips.…
Lane, Thumm, Bruno watched the tableau silently. This young woman was the essence of coquetry, that much was apparent at a glance. There was in every subtle movement of her body the suggestion of sex, and a half-promise of delight. She was using the two men like foils, one against the other, playing them off, making them clash unconsciously, utilizing the tragedy of her mother’s death with a cold fixity of purpose to draw them closer to her and in opposition to each other. Altogether, Mr. Drury Lane decided grimly, a female to be wary of.
At the same time Jill Hatter was frightened. Her masterful handling of the two men was accomplished more by habit than momentary design. Tall, full-figured, almost Junoesque—and frightened. Her eyes were red with sleeplessness and fear.… Suddenly, as if for the first time conscious of her audience, she released her men’s arms with a pout and began to powder her nose. The first time.… Her eyes had seen everything from the instant she stepped over the threshold. Frightened …
The men came to themselves, too, and their faces stiffened into formal lines. Two men could scarcely have been more different. Chester Bigelow, the family attorney, was a man of good height, but by the side of John Gormly, Conrad Hatter’s business partner, he seemed puny. Bigelow was dark, with a small black mustache and blue-black jaws; Gormly was fair, with straw-colored hair and reddish bristles beneath the hastily shaven skin of his face. Bigelow was brisk, gleaming, rapid in his movements; Gormly was slow and deliberate. There was something shrewd, almost sly, in the lawyer’s intelligent features; whereas Gormly was earnest and sober-faced. And the tall blond man was young—ten years younger than his rival at the very least.
“You wanted to talk to me, Inspector Thumm?” asked Jill in a small helpless voice.
“Not right now I didn’t,” said Thumm, “but as long as you’re here … Sit down, you men.” He introduced Jill, Bigelow, and Gormly to the District Attorney and Drury Lane. Jill collapsed in a chair and contrived to look as small and helpless as her voice sounded. Lawyer and broker preferred to stand, rather nervously. “Now, Miss Hatter, where were you last night?”
She turned to look up at John Gormly, slowly. “I was out with John—Mr. Gormly.”
“Details.”
“We went to theater, and then to a midnight party somewhere.”
“What time did you get home?”
“Very early, Inspector … five this morning.”
John Gormly flushed, and Chester Bigelow made an impatient, instantly checked movement with his right foot. His precise little teeth showed in a smile.
“Did Gormly take you home? Eh, Gormly?”
The broker began to speak, but Jill interrupted plaintively: “Oh, no, Inspector. It was—well, rather embarrassing.” She looked demurely down at the rug. “You see, I’d got pie-eyed about one o’clock in the morning. I’d quarreled with Mr. Gormly then—he thought he ought to constitute himself a Committeee of One on Moral Turpitude, you see …”
“Jill—” said Gormly. He was as red as his cravat.
“So Mr. Gormly left me flat. Actually! I mean to say, he was in the most beastly rage,” continued Jill in a sweet voice, “and then—well, I don’t remember anything after that except drinking some rotten gin and having a high old time with somebody fat and sweaty. I do remember walking the streets in my evening things, singing at the top of my voice.”
“Go on,” said the Inspector grimly.
“A policeman stopped me and put me in a cab. The nicest young man! Big and strong and with crinkly brown hair.…”
“I know the force,” said the Inspector. “Go on!”
“I was sober when I got home; it was dawning. So nice and fresh in the Square, Inspector—I love the dawn.…”
“I don’t doubt you’ve seen many of ’em. Go on, Miss Hatter. We can’t waste all day.”
John Gormly’s face threatened to burst. He stormed in his throat, clenched his fists, and began to traverse the rug. Bigelow’s expression was enigmatic.
“And that’s all, Inspector,” said Jill, dropping her eyes.
“Is it?” Thumm’s muscles swelled his coat sleeves; he was mighty in his contempt. “All right, Miss Hatter. Answer some questions. Was the front door locked when you got home?”
“Let me see.… I believe it was. Yes! It took me a few minutes to manipulate the damned key.”
“Did you hear or see anything off-color when you got to your bedroom upstairs?”
“Off-color? Inspector, I’m shocked.”
“You know what I mean,” snarled the Inspector. “Funny. Peculiar. Something that attracted your attention.”
“Oh! No, Inspector.”
“Did you notice whether the door to your mother’s bedroom was open or closed?”
“It was closed. I went into my room, tore my things off, and dropped off to sleep. I didn’t awaken until the fuss this morning.”
“That’s enough. All right, Gormly. Where’d you go when you left Miss Hatter flat at one in the morning?”
Avoiding Jill’s innocently inquiring gaze, Gormly muttered: “I walked downtown. The party was on Seventy-sixth Street. Walked for hours. I live at Seventh Avenue and Fifteenth Street, and I got home—I don’t know. It was growing light.”
“Hmm. How long have you and Hatter been partners?”
“Three years.”
“How long have you known the Hatters?”
“Ever since my college days. Conrad and I were roommates, and I got to know his family then.”
“I remember the first time I saw you, John,” volunteered Jill softly. “I was the littlest girl. Were you nice, or were you nice?”
“None of that blarney,” growled the Inspector. “Step aside, Gormly. Bigelow, I understand your firm has been handling all of Mrs. Hatter’s legal business. Did the old lady have any business enemies?”
