The Bizarre Murders, page 59
“Then you saw it, too,” whispered the old gentleman quickly. “She was lying—they all lied—”
“Of course,” shrugged Ellery, pausing to light a cigaret. “A good deal will be explained,” he resumed, blowing smoke, “when we find out why Mrs. Godfrey invited three perfect strangers to her summer home.” They had reached the head of the staircase and now found themselves in a wide, hushed corridor. “And why,” continued Ellery in an odd tone, eying Tiller’s perfect little back a few feet ahead as he trotted along on the deep carpet, “three perfect strangers accepted her invitation without, apparently, the slightest question!”
Chapter Six
NO MAN IS A HERO
“YOU MIGHT PUT IT down to social ambition—at least the latter part of it,” suggested the Judge.
“You might, and then again you mightn’t.” Ellery stopped short. “What’s the matter, Tiller?”
The little man had halted in his tracks before Inspector Moley and clapped a well-manicured hand to his bland brow.
“Well, what’s eatin’ you, for cripe’s sake?” growled Moley.
Tiller seemed distressed. “I’m so sorry, sir. I’d quite forgotten.”
“Forgotten? Forgotten what?” asked Ellery swiftly, joining them in one stride, the Judge a step behind.
“The note, sir.” Tiller lowered his secretive little eyes. “It quite slipped my mind. I’m fearfully sorry, sir.”
“Note!” exclaimed Moley. He shook Tiller’s trim shoulder with violence. “What note? What the devil are you talking about?”
“If you don’t mind, sir,” said Tiller between a wince and a smile, and somehow he contrived to wriggle from under the Inspector’s heavy hand. “That hurts, sir…Why, the note I found in my own room last night, sir, when I returned from my stroll about the grounds.”
He backed against the corridor wall, a pigmy looking up apologetically at the three big men standing still before him.
“Now that,” said Ellery warmly, “is news. Tiller, you’re manna from an otherwise sterile heaven. What note precisely? Certainly a man of your—er—attainments wouldn’t have neglected to observe certain minutiæ in which we might conceivably be interested.”
“Yes, sir,” murmured Tiller. “I did observe certain—er—minutiae, as you say, sir; and they struck me, if I may presume to say so, sir, as rather odd.” He paused to lick his thin lips and peer slyly up at them.
“Come, come, Tiller,” said the Judge impatiently, “this note was addressed to you? I assume it had something of importance to say, or something relevant to this nasty business, if you bring the matter up at all.”
“Whether it concerned something of importance or relevance, sir,” murmured the valet, “I’m sorry I cannot say. For you see, sir, the note was not addressed to me. I mention it only because it was addressed to—Mr. John Marco.”
“Marco!” burst out the Inspector. “Then how the deuce did it come to be left in your room?”
“I’m sure I don’t know, sir. But I’ll tell you about it and then you may judge for yourself. It was nine-thirty or so when I returned to the house—I have my quarters on the ground floor, sir, in the servants’ wing—and I went directly to my room. I found the note pinned with a common pin to the exterior of the inside breast pocket of my mess jacket, where I could not avoid seeing it. Because you see, sir, at nine-thirty or so every evening I change into my mess jacket and wait about until the gentlemen who are visiting at the house come upstairs for one thing or another, to serve them drinks if they should so desire. The butler, of course, attends to such matters on the ground floor. So, you see—”
“That’s a custom here, Tiller?” asked Ellery slowly.
“Yes, sir. I’ve done it ever since I came here, on Mrs. Godfrey’s instructions.”
“Everybody in the house knows of this custom?”
“Oh, yes, sir. It is my duty to inform all the gentlemen-guests as soon as they arrive.”
“And you don’t wear your mess jacket before nine-thirty in the evening?”
“No, sir. Until then I am attired as you see me, in dark clothing.”
“Hmm. That’s interesting…Well, go on, Tiller.”
Tiller bowed. “Yes, sir. To proceed. I naturally unpinned the note—it was in a sealed envelope—and looked at the legend on the envelope—”
“Legend? Tiller, you’re priceless. How did you know there was a note inside? You didn’t tear open the envelope, I trust?”
“I felt it,” replied Tiller gravely. “It was house stationery, sir—at least, the envelope was. On it was typewritten the words: For Mr. John Marco. Personal. Important. Deliver Privately TONIGHT. Those are the exact words, sir; I remember perfectly. The word ‘tonight’ was underscored and in capital letters.”
“You’ve no idea, I suppose,” frowned the Judge, “at what time approximately that note was pinned to your mess jacket, Tiller?”
“I believe I have, sir,” said the astonishing little man promptly. “Yes, indeed, sir. Some time after Mrs. Godfrey and her guests had had their dinner—a matter of minutes—I had occasion to go to my room and to my wardrobe closet. I happened to brush against my mess jacket in the closet and it flipped open, as you might say, sir, by accident. I’m sure that had the note been there then I should have noticed it.”
“What time was dinner over?” growled Moley.
“A bit after seven-thirty, sir; perhaps twenty-five to eight.”
“You left your room right after that?”
“Yes, sir, and I wasn’t back until nine-thirty, when I found the note.”
“The note was placed there, then,” muttered Ellery, “roughly between a quarter of eight and nine-thirty. It’s too bad we can’t determine exactly who wandered away from that bridge-table and when…What then, Tiller? What did you do?”
“I took the note, sir, and went looking for Mr. Marco. But when I saw him at play in the living-room—he had just returned, you will remember, sir, from the terrace—I decided to respect the admonition on the envelope and wait until I could see him privately. I hung about in the patio, waiting; and finally, during a game, I fancy, in which he was dummy, Mr. Marco strolled out for a breath of air. I handed him the note at once and he read it. I saw his face change and a very wicked smile come into his eyes. Then he re-read it, and I thought he looked a bit—” Tiller cast about delicately for the word—“a bit puzzled. But he shrugged, flung me a bill, and—er—growled that I was not to mention the note to any one. Then he went back to the game. I returned upstairs to wait on the gentlemen with my portable bar.”
“What did he do with the note?” demanded the Inspector.
“He crumpled it and jammed it into one of his coat-pockets, sir.”
“That explains his impatience to quit the game, perhaps,” murmured Ellery. “Remarkable, Tiller! Don’t know what we’d do without you.”
“Thank you, sir. Very kind of you, I’m sure. Will that be all?”
“Not by a long shot,” said Moley grimly. “Trail along with us to Marco’s room, Tiller. Something tells me there’s more where that came from!”
A plainclothesman had his legs hooked about the feet of a chair tilted against a door at the extreme east end of the corridor.
“Anything doing, Roush?” demanded the Inspector.
The man spat lazily out an open window at the end of the corridor and shook his head. “Dead as hell, Chief. They’re keepin’ away from here.”
“That’s sensible,” said Moley dryly. “Stand aside, Roush. I want a look at Mr. Marco’s boodwawr.” He turned the knob and pushed open the door.
The elaborate living-room downstairs should have prepared them. As it was, they stared at what passed for a guest-room at Spanish Cape. It might have been a king’s bedchamber. It was done in the best Spanish style, and it possessed an undeniable flavor—the flavor of old things in dark wood and wrought iron and raw color. The bed was a gigantic four-poster surmounted by a royal tester, from which fell drapes of heavy tapestried cloth. The posts, the bed, the secretary, the chairs, the bureau, the tables were hardily carved; a huge affair of chain and wrought iron and glass cunningly shaped like candles furnished the chief overhead illumination. There were two genuine candles, monsters in wax, on the bureau ensconced in beautiful iron holders. A stone fireplace which, from its fire-licked appearance, had seen good round service supported a mantelpiece of gargantuan proportions, hewn out of a single log.
“Old Godfrey does himself proud, doesn’t he?” murmured Ellery, stepping into the room. “And all for what? For a plainly undesirable guest who gets himself separated from his worthless life, with all the attendant annoyances to his host. Inconsiderate of Marco, to say the least. At that, he must have shown to advantage in this magnificent setting. There is something vaguely Spanish about him even in death. Put him in long hose and doublet…”
“Put him six feet under would be more like it,” grunted Inspector Moley. “Let’s not dawdle, Mr. Queen. From what Roush tells me, he’s spoken to the maids and they say none of them disturbed this room today. We got here so quickly they didn’t have a chance, and Roush has been roostin’ by this door since a quarter to seven. So it ought to be about like what it was last night, when Marco came back up here after the bridge-game.”
“Unless some one got in here during the night,” pointed out Judge Macklin with a worried air. “I wonder now—” He stepped forward and thrust his long neck toward the bed. Its spread had been removed, for it was not in evidence, and the corner of the sheet and the gay monogrammed quilt had been turned down—apparently by a maid the night before, in anticipation of the guest’s retirement. But the pillow was large and square and fat and un-crushed, and there was no impression of a human body under the tester. Flung carelessly on the quilt there was a white, slightly rumpled linen suit, a white shirt, an oyster-colored four-in-hand, a suit of two-piece underwear, a crumpled handkerchief, and a pair of white silk socks. All had obviously been worn. On the floor near the bed stood a pair of men’s white calfskin shoes. “Is this the costume Marco was wearing all last evening, Tiller?” demanded the old gentleman.
The little valet, who had been standing quietly in the open doorway, now closed the door in Detective Roush’s slightly astonished face and advanced to Judge Macklin’s side, where he proceeded to peer down at the discarded garments and then at the shoes. He raised his inscrutable eyes and said respectfully: “Yes, sir.”
“Anything missing?” demanded Moley.
“No, sir. Except perhaps,” continued Tiller soberly, after a moment’s silence, “for the contents of the pockets. There was a watch—Elgin, radial dial, sir, white gold, seventeen-jewel—which isn’t here. And Mr. Marco’s wallet and cigaret-case are missing, too.”
Moley eyed him with grudging respect. “Good boy. Any time you want a job doin’ detective work, Tiller, you come to me. Well, Mr. Queen, what d’ye think of that?”
Ellery picked up the white trousers between two negligent fingers, shrugged and dropped them carelessly on the bed. “What should I think?”
“Well,” said the Judge in an exasperated tone, “we find the man stark naked and now we find the clothes he wore last night; what should any one think? I’ll confess it’s a weird, an obscene conclusion, but I’ll be jaspered if it doesn’t look as if he went down to the terrace last night with only that blessed-cloak over his naked body!”
“Nuts,” said Inspector Moley distinctly. “Beg pardon, Judge. But why the devil d’ye think I told the boys to look for his duds on the grounds? Hell, if I thought that I’d have searched this room the very first thing!”
“Gentlemen, gentlemen,” chuckled Ellery, without removing his gaze from the strewn garments. “Apparently, dear Solon, you haven’t thought of the alternative possibility, which is just as grotesque, that Marco’s murderer killed him here, undressed him, and then toted his dead body down through a populated house to the terrace! No, no, Judge, it’s as the Inspector says. The explanation’s much simpler than that, and I fancy Tiller can, as usual, provide it. Eh, Tiller?”
“I believe I can, sir,” murmured Tiller modestly, looking at Ellery with bright eyes.
“There you are,” drawled Ellery. “Tiller Tells All. I suppose Marco undressed when he returned to this room last night and promptly proceeded to change into a completely new costume?”
Judge Macklin’s thin old face fell. “I’m turning obscurantist in my old age. My own fault. That nudity business led me into a trap. Of course that’s it.”
“Yes, sir,” said Tiller, nodding gravely. “You see, sir, I have a cubbyhole of sorts—like a pantry—at the west end of the hall where I stay in the late evening until all the gentlemen retire. It was a quarter to twelve, I should say, when a buzzer—you’ll find the button beside the bed, Inspector Moley, sir—summoned me to Mr. Marco’s room.”
“Just about when he got upstairs after the game,” muttered Moley. He was standing by the bed going through the pockets of the discarded white garments; but he found nothing at all.
“Undoubtedly, sir. Mr. Marco was stripping off that white coat when I entered the room. His face was flushed and he seemed impatient. He—er—cursed me roundly for what he called my ‘damned shilly-shallying’ and directed me to fetch him a whisky-and-soda, double strength, and to lay out certain garments.”
“Swore at you, eh?” said the Inspector quietly. “Go on.”
“I fetched the whiskey-and-soda, sir, and then while he was—er—tossing it down proceeded to lay out the clothes he had designated.”
“And they were?” snapped Ellery. “Please, Tiller, fewer genteelisms. We haven’t all week, you know.”
“Yes, sir. They were,” Tiller pursed his lips and screwed up his eyebrows, “his oxford-gray suit, double-breasted, including waistcoat; black pointed oxfords; white shirt, collar attached; dark gray four-in-hand; a suit of fresh two-piece underclothing; black silk socks; black garters; black braces; a gray silk display kerchief for his breast-pocket; black felt fedora; his heavy ebony stick; and the long black opera-cloak from his full-dress outfit.”
“Just a moment, Tiller. I’d meant to ask about that cloak before. Have you any idea why he should have worn it last night? It’s rather a quaint costume.”
“Indeed it is, sir. But Mr. Marco was a trifle eccentric. His tastes in clothing, sir…” Tiller shook his sleek dark little head sadly. “I believe he did mutter something about the evening’s being chilly, which was true, sir, when he asked me to lay the cloak out with the other things. And so—”
“He intended going out?”
“Of course I can’t say exactly, sir; although I did gather that impression.”
“Did he usually redress so late at night?”
“Oh, no, sir; it was quite unusual. At any rate, sir, while I laid out his things he went into the bathroom there and took a shower. When he came out in his slippers’ and robe, freshly shaved and combed—”
“Cripe, where did he think he was going at midnight?” exploded Inspector Moley. “That’s a hell of a time to be primping!”
“Yes, sir,” murmured Tiller. “I wondered myself. But I felt fairly certain that he was preparing to meet a lady, sir. You see—”
“Lady!” exclaimed the Judge. “How do you know that?”
“It was the expression on his face, sir, and a certain anxiety he showed in a very minute wrinkle—oh, most minute, sir—on the collar of the shirt. He always acted that way when he was dressing for—er—some special lady. In fact, he abused me quite—oh, quite—” For once Tiller seemed at a loss for the proper word. A peculiar expression crept into his eyes which vanished almost at once.
Ellery was staring at him. “You didn’t care for Mr. Marco, did you, Tiller?”
Tiller smiled deprecatingly, self-possessed once more. “I shouldn’t go so far as to say that, sir, but—he was a difficult gentleman. Most difficult. And, if anything, overcareful of his appearance, as you might say. He would spend fifteen minutes to a half-hour examining his face in the bathroom mirror, turning it this way and that, sir, as if to see that every pore was clean, and whether the right profile, sir, was really more fetching than the left. And—er—he scented himself.”
“Scented himself!” cried the Judge, shocked.
“Devastating, Tiller, simply devastating,” remarked Ellery with a smile. “I shouldn’t care to have you discourse upon my idiosyncrasies. Valet’s-eye view—oh, excellent! You were saying that when he came out of the bathroom…”
“Woman, hey?” muttered Moley, whose mind seemed on other matters.
“Yes, sir. When he came out of the bathroom after his shower I was removing the contents of his pockets—some change, the watch and wallet and cigaret-case I mentioned, and a few other trifles. Of course, I meant to transfer them to the dark suit. But he pounced upon me immediately after the—er—unpleasant incident of the wrinkled collar, so to speak, and snatched the white coat out of my hands. Called me a ‘damned meddler,’ if I remember correctly, sir. And he ordered me out of the room, saying angrily that he would dress himself.”
“So that’s that,” began Moley, when Ellery stopped him.
“Perhaps not quite.” He regarded the little man thoughtfully. “Did you gather that there was any special reason, Tiller, for his irritation? Did you find something—ah—personal in one of the pockets of the suit?”
Tiller nodded brightly. “Yes, sir. The note.”
“Ah! That was his reason for driving you from the room?”
“I fancy so, sir.” Tiller sighed. “In fact, I’m almost sure of it. For as I went to the door I saw him tear the note, envelope and all, and hurl it into that fireplace there, where I had kindled a small fire earlier in the evening!”
With one accord the three -big men bounded to the fireplace, their eyes alight with anticipation. Tiller stood still where he was, respectfully watching. Then, as they flung themselves to their knees and began to scrabble about in the little heap of cold ashes in the grate, he cleared his throat, blinked several times, and moved quietly over to the large wardrobe closet on the farther side of the room. He opened the door and began to poke about inside.
