The Bizarre Murders, page 61
“This is Mrs. Burleigh, my housekeeper,” said Stella Godfrey quietly, stepping aside.
A timid voice said: “Yes, Madam,” and a starched and ancient little female edged into sight from behind her mistress. “If you’ll follow me to the small dining-room, sir, and the other gentlemen—”
“With a will, Mrs. Burleigh, with a will! By the way, you know what’s happened?”
“Oh, yes, sir. It’s dreadful.”
“Indeed it is. I suppose you can’t assist us in any way?”
“I, sir?” Mrs. Burleigh’s eyes became enormous discs. “Oh no, sir. I knew the gentleman only by sight, sir. How could I—”
“Don’t go, Mrs. Godfrey,” said Moley suddenly, as the tall dark woman stirred.
“I wasn’t going,” she said, raising her eyebrows. “I was about to say—”
“I want to talk to you.—No, Mr. Queen, I’m going to have my way about this. Mrs. Godfrey—”
“I think,” said Ellery with a grimace, “we’ll have to defer our luncheon a bit, Mrs. Burleigh; I detect the inflexible note of authority. You might advise Cookie to keep those comestibles warm.” Mrs. Burleigh smiled uncertainly and retreated. “And thank you, Tiller. No telling what we’d have done without you.”
The valet bowed. “That will be all, sir?”
“Not unless you’ve something left up your sleeve.”
“I’m afraid not, sir,” said Tiller, almost ruefully; and he bowed himself past Mrs. Godfrey and vanished.
The dark woman had frozen suddenly; all but her eyes. They roved the room, shrank from the tumbled male clothing on the bed, the drawers, the closet…Inspector Moley looked fiercely at her and she took a slow step backward. He shut the door with a meaning glance at Roush, kicked forward a chair, and motioned her into it.
“What is it now?” she murmured, sitting down. Her lips seemed dry, for she moistened them with the tip of her tongue.
“Mrs. Godfrey,” said the Inspector bitterly, “why don’t you come clean? Why don’t you tell us the truth?”
“Oh.” She paused. “I don’t know what you mean, Inspector.”
“You know well enough what I mean!” Moley paced up and down before her, gesticulating. “Don’t you folks realize what you’re up against? What the devil does a little personal trouble mean when it’s a case of life and death? This is murder, Mrs. Godfrey—murder!” He stopped and grasped the arms of her chair, glaring down at her. “They electrocute people in this State for murder, Mrs. Godfrey. Murder; m-u-r-d-e-r. Do you understand now?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” repeated Mrs. Godfrey stonily. “Are you trying to frighten me?”
“You don’t want to know! Do you people think you can make up a mess of conflicting testimony and get away with it?”
“I’ve told you the truth,” she said in a low tone.
“You’ve told me a pack of lies!” raged Moley. “You’re afraid of the scandal. You’re afraid of what your husband will say when—”
“Scandal?” she faltered; and they saw that her defenses were slowly coming down. Already the torment in her mind was becoming visible on her features.
Inspector Moley jerked at his collar. “What were you doing in this room—Marco’s room—last night at midnight, Mrs. Godfrey?”
Another rampart crumbled. She stared up at him, mouth open, skin the color of wet ashes. “I—” Her face fell into her palms suddenly and she began to sob.
Ellery, perched on John Marco’s bed, sighed noiselessly; he was very hungry and sleepy. Judge Macklin placed his old hands together behind his back and walked to one of the windows. The sea was blue and beautiful, he thought. Some people could be very happy looking at such a sea day after day. It must be striking in winter. The waves crashing against the cliffs below, the song of hissing spray, the whip of wind-driven spume against one’s cheeks…His eyes narrowed. Below a bent male figure appeared, small from the Judge’s eyrie, small and gnarled and busy. It was Jorum, poking about in his eternal gardens. Then Walter Godfrey’s tubby figure, a ragged straw hat on his head, materialized from the side. How like a fat, filthy little peon the man looked! thought the Judge…Godfrey placed his hand on Jorum’s shoulder and his rubbery lips moved; Jorum looked up, smiled briefly, and continued weeding. Judge Macklin felt the kinship between them, a tacit camaraderie that puzzled him a little…The millionaire dropped to his knees to study a flaming flower. There was something ironic in the spectacle. It appeared, thought the Judge, that Walter Godfrey had consistently paid more attention to the blooms in his gardens than to those in his house. Some one had stolen his rarest flower from under his nose.
The Judge sighed and turned away from the window.
There was a remarkable change in Inspector Moley. He was the picture of fatherly sympathy. “There, there,” he was saying in a syrupy bass, patting Stella Godfrey’s slim shoulder. “I know it’s tough. It’s a hard thing to admit, especially to strange men. But Mr. Queen and Judge Macklin and I aren’t just people, Mrs. Godfrey; in a way we’re not people at all, just the way priests aren’t. And we know how to keep our mouths shut after confessional, too. Why don’t you—? You’ll feel better if you tell some one.” He continued to pat her shoulder.
Ellery choked over his cigaret. Hypocrite! he thought with a silent chuckle.
She flung her head up. There were tears in the powder on her cheeks and lines of age had miraculously appeared about her eyes and mouth. But the mouth was firm, and her expression was not that of a woman who finds silence utterly intolerable. “Very well,” she said in a steady voice, “since you seem to know, I shan’t deny it. Yes, I was here—alone with him—last night.”
Moley’s shoulders twitched eloquently, as if to say: “How’s that for tactics?” Ellery glanced at his broad back with sad amusement. Moley had not seen the expression in the woman’s eyes nor noticed the set of her lips. Stella Godfrey had found a fresh defense somewhere in the dark storeroom of her soul. “That’s right,” murmured the Inspector. “That’s sensible, Mrs. Godfrey. You can’t hope to keep things like that a secret—”
“No,” she said coldly. “I suppose not. Tiller, of course? He must have been in his serving pantry. I’d forgotten.”
Something in her tone chilled Moley. He took out his handkerchief and rather doubtfully wiped the back of his neck, glancing out of the corner of his eye at Ellery. Ellery shrugged. “Well, what were you doin’ there, then?” asked Moley slowly.
“That,” she replied in the same cold tons, “is my affair, Inspector.”
He said with savagery: “You didn’t even knock at the door!” He seemed to realize that he had lost.
“Didn’t I? How careless of me.”
Moley swallowed hard, trying to curb his rage. “You refuse to tell me why you sneaked into a man’s room at midnight?”
“Sneaked, Inspector?”
“You lied, then, when you told me earlier today that you went to bed early! That the last time you saw Marco was when he left the bridge-table downstairs!”
“Of course. One doesn’t admit such things, Inspector.” Her knuckles were dead with the tightness of her fists.
Moley gulped, jammed a cheroot into his mouth, and struck a match. He was striving to steady himself. “All right. You won’t talk about that. But you had a fight with him, didn’t you?” She was silent. “He called you a dirty name, didn’t he?” A sickness came into her eyes, but she merely compressed her lips. “Well, how long did this go on, Mrs. Godfrey? How long were you with him?”
“I left him at ten minutes to one.”
“More than three-quarters of an hour, eh?” snarled Moley. He puffed bitter smoke, baffled. She sat quietly on the edge of the chair.
Ellery sighed again. “Er—was Marco fully dressed when you entered this room last night, Mrs. Godfrey?”
This time she had a little difficulty with her tongue. “No. I mean—not fully.”
“What was he wearing? You may be reluctant to discuss your personal affairs, Mrs. Godfrey, but this matter of his attire last night is of the most vital importance, and surely you can’t have any reason for withholding information about it. His whites—the things he’d been wearing during the evening—they were on the bed, as they are now?”
“Yes.” She was staring at her knuckles now. “He had changed into his—his trousers just before I came in, apparently. Dark gray. As we…talked, he continued dressing. It was a double-breasted oxford-gray suit, I believe, with gray accessories to match. A white shirt—Oh, I can’t remember!”
“Did you notice his hat, stick, and cloak?”
“I—yes. They were on the bed.”
“Was he completely dressed when you left him?”
“Well…yes. He had just adjusted his necktie and put on his coat.”
“Did you leave together?”
“No. I—I went out of the room first and to my own.”
“Did you see him leave, by any chance?”
“No.” Her features contracted in an involuntary spasm of pain. “After I’d gone to my own rooms—just after—I heard the sound of a door closing. I took it for granted he—he had left his room.”
Ellery nodded. “And you didn’t open your door and look out to see?”
“No!”
“Hmm. Did he tell you why he had changed into fresh clothes, Mrs. Godfrey? Or where he was going?”
“No!” Her voice had a curious ring. “He did not. But he seemed very impatient. As if he had an appointment…with some one.”
Inspector Moley snorted. “And you didn’t even have the desire to follow him, hey? Oh, no.”
“I did not, I say!” She rose suddenly. “I—I shan’t be persecuted any longer, gentlemen. As far as I’ve gone I’ve told you the truth. I was too—too heart-sick to follow him, even look for him. Why, I simply can’t tell you—anybody. I—I went straight to bed, and I never saw him alive again.”
The three men weighed the timbre of her voice, calculating its sincerity, what it concealed, the depth of its emotion.
Then the Inspector said: “All right. That’s all for now.”
She went out with a stiff back, but eagerly. Her whole body expressed relief.
“And that,” remarked Ellery, “is that. She’s not ready for cracking yet, Inspector. You chose an unpropitious time. That woman hasn’t too much intellectual equipment, but there’s nothing wrong with her backbone. I tried to warn you.”
“This thing’ll have me crocked yet,” groaned Moley. “The—” For some seconds he expressed himself with violence and fluency, describing the nature, habits, temperament, and antecedents (probable) of John Marco with a comprehensiveness, lucidity, and imagery that shocked Judge Macklin and caused Ellery’s eyes to widen with admiration.
“Oh, lovely,” said Ellery warmly when Moley perforce paused for breath. “An exquisite object-lesson in invective. And now that you feel better spiritually, Inspector, how about taking advantage of Mrs. Burleigh’s invitation and ameliorating the more animal wants?”
During luncheon—a princely repast served by an under butler, supervised by frail Mrs. Burleigh very capably, and set in the Saracenic magnificence of the “small” dining-room—Inspector Moley was the personification of gloom. His low spirits did not prevent him from making vast inroads upon the viands, although they influenced the tone of the gathering. He alternated between frowns and swallows, and with each draught of coffee sighed tumultuously. Several minor satellites, evidently recognizing the signs, preserved a tactful silence toward the foot of the board. Only Ellery and the Judge ate with complete absorption in the food, as food. They were hungry men; and before the gnawings of appetite even death must wait.
“’S all very well for you two,” grumbled Moley over an Austrian tart. “You’re just havin’ a good time helping out. If I go floppo on this case it’s no cut out of your cake. Why the hell do people have to go get themselves bumped off?”
Ellery engulfed the last mouthful, put aside his serviette, and sighed with Bacchic repletion. “The Chinese have the right social idea, Judge; only a royal belch would do justice to this feast of Mrs. Burleigh’s…No, no, Inspector, you wrong us. If you go floppo on this case it will be despite our best combined efforts. As a matter of fact, it’s not the least interesting problem in the world. That note of nudism…”
“You got an angle?”
“All God’s chillun got an angle, Inspector. This chile has a half-dozen angles. That’s what piques me. And I have the feeling that not one of ’em is the correct one.”
Moley grunted. “Well, now you take that note—”
“I’d much rather,” remarked the Judge, putting down his coffee-cup, “take a nap.”
“Then why,” asked a cool voice from the Moorish archway, “don’t you, Judge?”
They rose hastily as Rosa Godfrey came in. She had changed to shorts, and her firm golden skin was visible to the middle of her thighs. Only the bruise on her temple remained to remind them of her experience in Waring’s bungalow the night before.
“Splendid idea, my child,” said the Judge sheepishly. “If you could have me taken back to the bungalow in one of the cars…I’m sure you won’t mind, my boy. I’m feeling a little—”
“I’ve already had one of the cars,” retorted Rosa with a little toss of her head, “go to your bungalow—under trooper escort—and bring your bags and things back here. You’re both putting up with us, you know.”
“Now, really—” began the old gentleman.
“Kindness incarnate,” said Ellery cheerfully. “Miss Godfrey, that was noble of you. I hadn’t looked forward to scrambling eggs with too much enthusiasm. Not after this repast. My dear Solon, you look properly peaked; shoo! Mr. Moley and I will carry on.”
“Might be better at that,” mused the detective, “having some one on the premises. Good idea. Go on, Judge—git.”
Judge Macklin rubbed his chin and blinked his bleared eyes. “And all those victuals in the car…Well, I can’t conscientiously refuse.”
“Indeed you can’t,” said Rosa firmly. “Tiller!” The little valet popped in from somewhere. “Show Judge Macklin to the blue room in the east wing. Mr. Queen will occupy the adjoining bedroom. I’ve already spoken to Mrs. Burleigh about it.”
When the Judge had disappeared after Tiller Inspector Moley said: “Now that you’ve been nice to the old gent, Miss Godfrey, suppose you be nice to me.”
“What do you mean?”
“Show us where that library of your father’s is.”
She preceded them through a confusion of overwhelming rooms to a jewel of a library. It had the odor as well as the appearance of bookishness, and Ellery sucked in his breath with admiration. Here, as elsewhere, the Spanish motif had been carried out; and Morocco bindings prevailed. It was a tall room filled with shadows, as is proper in any self-respecting library, and was possessed of unexpected nooks and alcoves in which one might bury himself waist-deep in cushions and find peace between pasteboards and leathers.
But Inspector Moley’s outraged soul held no room for aesthetics. His hard little eyes probed the corners, and he said gruffly: “Now where’s the typewriter?”
Rosa was surprised. “The typewriter? I don’t—Over there.” She led them to an alcove in which stood a desk, a typewriter, a few filing-cabinets, and the like. “This is father’s ‘office’—if you could dignify it by such a name. At least, this is where he potters about with his business affairs while on the Cape.”
“He does his own typing?” demanded Moley, skeptical.
“Rarely has to. He detests correspondence. He transacts most of his business over that telephone there. It’s a direct wire to his New York office.”
“But he can type?”
“After a fashion.” Rosa accepted one of Ellery’s cigarets and flung herself on a leather divan. “Why all this interest in father, Inspector?”
“Does he use this place much? This alcove?” asked Moley coldly.
“For an hour or so a day.” She was regarding him with an intent curiosity.
“Ever do any typing for your father yourself?”
“I?” She laughed. “Indeed not, Inspector. I’m the drone of this family. I can’t do anything.”
Moley caught himself up. He placed his cheroot on an ashtray and said casually: “Oh, so you can’t type?”
“Sorry I can’t oblige. Mr. Queen, what in heaven’s name is all this about? Have you found a new clue? Something—” She sat up suddenly, uncrossing her legs. There was the strangest glitter in her blue eyes.
Ellery spread his hands. “This is Inspector Moley’s nut, Miss Godfrey. First rights at cracking it belong to him.”
“’Scuse me a second,” said Moley, and he stalked out of the library.
Rosa leaned back, smoking. Her brown throat was naked to Ellery’s gaze as she dreamily regarded the ceiling. He studied it with half a smile. The girl was a good actress. To outward appearance she was cool, self-possessed, a normal young woman. But there was a little nerve at the base of her throat which jumped and cavorted like an imprisoned thing.
He went rather wearily to the desk and sat down in the swivel-chair behind it, feeling his bones. It had been a long grind and he was horribly tired. But he sighed and removed his pince-nez and scrubbed their lenses with diligence, preparatory to the work at hand. Rosa regarded him slantwise, without lowering her head.
“Do you know, Mr. Queen,” she murmured, “you’re almost handsome when you take your glasses off.”
“Eh? Oh, certainly; that’s why I wear ’em. Keeps off designing females. Pity John Marco didn’t employ some such protective device.” He continued to scrub.
Rosa was silent for a moment. When she spoke again it was in the same light tone. “I’ve heard about you, you know. I suppose most of us have. Somehow you aren’t at all as formidable-looking as I pictured you. You’ve caught a good many murderers, haven’t you?”
“I can’t complain. In my blood, no doubt. There’s a chemical something inside me that shoots to the boiling-point at the least approach of criminality. Nothing Freudian about it; it’s merely the mathematician in me. And I failed in geometry in high school! Can’t understand it, because I love discordant and isolated twos and twos, especially when they’re expressed in terms of violence. Marco represents one of the factors in the equation. That man positively fascinates me.” He was busy with something on the desk. She peeped secretly; it was to all appearances a translucent envelope filled with little scraps of paper. “For example, his obscene habit of getting himself killed and undressed. That’s a new wrinkle. It calls for some higher mathematics, I’m sure.”
