The Bizarre Murders, page 62
The nerve, he noted without seeming to do so, redoubled its squirmings. Her shoulders quivered a little. “That—that was horrible,” she said in a smothered voice.
“No, merely interesting. We can’t permit emotions to interfere with our work, you see. Perfectly disastrous.” He fell silent, absorbed in what he was doing. She saw him take a curious little kit out of his pocket, open it, select what appeared to be a tiny brush and a vial of grayish powder, and, sprinkling the scraps of paper—which he had arranged into a whole—with the powder, lightly and expertly dust the surface with the brush. He whistled a doleful tune, painstakingly turned each scrap over, and repeated the mysterious process. Something seemed to catch his eye, for he took a small magnifying-glass from the kit and peered intently through it at one of the scraps in the light of a powerful lamp on the desk. This time she saw him shake his head.
“What are you doing?” she burst out.
“Nothing startling. I’m looking for fingerprints.” He continued to whistle as he stowed the vial and brush away in the kit, pocketed it, and reached for a jar of library paste on the desk. “Your father won’t mind a liberty or two, I’m sure.” He rummaged in a drawer until he found a sheet of blank yellow paper. Then he calmly proceeded to paste the scraps he had been examining onto the sheet.
“Is that—”
“Suppose,” he said with sudden gravity, “we wait for Inspector Moley, eh?” He left the paper on the desk and rose. “Now, Miss Godfrey, indulge a little whim of mine and allow me to hold your hand.”
“Hold my hand!” She sat up at that, her eyes wide.
“True,” murmured Ellery, seating himself on the divan beside her and taking one of her rigid hands in both of his, “this is a pleasure that doesn’t ordinarily accrue to a detective in the course of his—ah—labors. It’s a very soft and brown and inviting little hand, I note—that’s the Watson in me. Now for the Holmes. Relax, please.” She was too surprised to withdraw her hand. He bent over it, holding it palm up, and scrutinized the soft paps of the fingertips with keen eyes. Then he turned her hand over and examined the fingernails, brushing the paps lightly with his own fingertips as he did so. “Hmm. Not necessarily conclusive, but at least it doesn’t give you the lie.”
She withdrew a little, snatching her hand away; there was a scared look in her eyes. “What on earth are you babbling about, Mr. Queen?”
Ellery sighed and lit a cigaret. “So soon. Just proves once more that the authentic pleasures of life are of tantalizingly short duration…Now, now, don’t mind my little insanities, Miss Godfrey. I was merely trying to satisfy myself as to your veracity.”
“Are you calling me a liar?” gasped Rosa
“Perish the thought. You see, physical habits leave—very often—visible marks on the impressionable human carcass. Dr. Bell taught that to Doyle, and Doyle passed it obligingly on to Holmes; it was the secret of most of Sherlock’s prestidigitating deductions, as it were. Typing hardens the fingertips; and feminine typists usually trim their nails short. Your fingertips are as soft as the breast of a bird, to quote the convenient poet; and your nails are even longer than your curious feminine toiletterie demands. In fine, it proves nothing, since you wouldn’t be a habitual typist anyway. But it gave me the opportunity to hold your hand.”
“Needn’t bother,” said Inspector Moley, striding into the library. He nodded at Rosa with a very friendly air. “That was an old gag when I was a cub in trainin’, Mr. Queen. The young lady’s okay.”
“‘Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,’” said Ellery, sheepishly feeling a guilty warmth in his cheeks. “But I never doubted it, Inspector.”
Rosa stood up, her little chin hardening. “Was I under suspicion—after all I went through?”
“My dear young woman,” grinned Moley, “everything and everybody are under suspicion till they’re cleared. Now you, you’re cleared. You never wrote that note.”
Rosa laughed rather desperately. “What are you men talking about? What note?”
Ellery and the Inspector exchanged glances, and then Ellery rose and picked up from the desk the sheet of paper on which he had pasted the scraps of charred note found in Marco’s bathroom. He passed it to the girl without comment and she read it with a puzzled frown. But she gasped over the signature.
“Why, I never wrote this! Who—”
“I just checked up on your statement,” said Moley, losing his grin, “that you can’t type. It’s true, Mr. Queen—she can’t. That doesn’t mean she couldn’t have pecked out a message on a machine with one finger, but the typing on this note is too even for that. It was done by somebody who’s used to typing. So, combined with that kidnaping yarn and the fact that you were in Waring’s shack all last night tied up, I guess you’re cleared. This thing’s a plant.”
Rosa sank onto the divan. “No prints,” said Ellery to Moley, “worth a tinker’s dam. Just smudges.”
“I—this is all beyond me. When—where—I don’t even know what it means.”
“This was a note,” explained Ellery patiently, “sent circuitously to John Marco late last night. It purports to come from you, as you see, and—rather freely interpreted—makes an appointment with him for one o’clock in the morning on the terrace.” He went around the desk, uncovered the typewriter, slipped a sheet of the heavy cream-colored Godfrey stationery into the carriage, and began quickly to manipulate the keys.
The girl was deathly pale in the dim light of the library. “Then that note,” she whispered, “sent him to his death? I—I can’t believe it!”
“Well, that’s what happened,” said Moley. “How’s it stack up, Mr. Queen?”
Ellery ripped the sheet out of the machine and laid it on the desk side by side with the sheet on which the original scraps had been pasted. Moley trod heavily to a position behind him and the two men studied the adjacent sheets. Ellery had written precisely what appeared on the paste-up.
“Same type,” murmured Ellery, taking out his glass and examining individual characters. “Hmm. Clear case, Inspector. Have a look at the capital I’s. Notice the slight fading of the right-hand side of the lower serif; worn metal. And the upper right serif of the capital T is gone altogether in both. As a matter of fact, even the consistency of the ribbon seems to be the same; there’s the identical muck in the lower case e’s and o’s.” He passed the lens to Moley, who squinted through it for a moment and then nodded. “Yes, this is the machine, all right. Whoever typed the original of this message sat in this very chair.”
There was silence as Ellery covered the machine and stowed his kit away. Moley paced up and down, a feral glitter in his eyes. Suddenly a thought struck him and he dashed away without explanation. Rosa sat limply on the divan with a stricken expression. When Moley returned he was hoarse with triumph. “Just thought I’d make sure this machine has never left the house.’ By God, it hasn’t! We’ve got somethin’ at last.”
“What you have,” said Ellery, “is concrete evidence that the murderer is associated with this house, Inspector. Before it might have been any one. Yes, yes, that’s a cosmic discovery. I think it clarifies certain issues, although…Miss Godfrey, perhaps you wouldn’t care to listen to a bit of professional theorizing?”
“Perhaps I would!” Rosa’s blue eyes were blazing. “I want to hear all about it. If it concerns any one in this house—Murder’s despicable under any circumstances. Please talk. I want to help if I can.”
“You may get your fingers burned, you know,” said Ellery gently. But her mouth only hardened. “Very well, then. What have we? An emissary of a potential murderer whom we shall call X is hired to kidnap John Marco, take him out to sea, kill him, and dump his body overside. This emissary, the formidable Captain Kidd, stupidly mistakes David Kummer, your uncle, for Marco. Your part in the plot is purely incidental Miss Godfrey; X informed Kidd that Marco would be with you, and you were tied up in Waring’s cottage merely to keep you from sounding a premature alarm. Before Kidd took your uncle off in Waring’s cruiser he telephoned X…from all indications, in this very house. He told X that he had ‘Marco.’ So far, X’s plan was successful.”
“Go on!”
“But Kidd’s stupid blunder,” drawled Ellery, “upset X’s plans. Very soon after Kidd’s telephone-call to him X got the shock of his life. In this house he came face to face with the man who, he thought, was dead and fathoms under out at sea. In a flash he saw what must have happened. The merest inquiry or personal observation would have convinced him that it was Kummer whom Captain Kidd had abducted. Marco was still alive. Kummer was almost certainly dead—I’m sorry, Miss Godfrey—and there was nothing X could do about it; there was no way of reaching Kidd. And yet X’s original motive against Marco still remained; obviously he couldn’t have been less desirous of killing Marco then than he had been when he originally laid his plans.”
“Poor, poor David,” whispered Rosa.
The Inspector grunted. “So?”
“X is an unscrupulous and clever criminal,” continued Ellery gravely. “All his actions show that, if I’m putting the correct interpretation on them. He recovered quickly from the shock of seeing Marco alive. He laid a new scheme. He knew that you, Miss Godfrey, were trussed up in Waring’s shack, helpless until some one should come to release you. He also knew that—forgive me again—a message from you would probably sway Marco more than any other summons. And so he stole in here and typed a note, signing it with your name, making an appointment with Marco in an isolated place on the estate for an early hour of the morning. Then he pinned the note to Tiller’s coat in Tiller’s room, with specific instructions as to the time of delivery.”
“Why Tiller?” muttered Moley.
“Tiller’s room is on the ground floor; more accessible, then. Also he would prefer not to risk being seen entering Marco’s room. It was a sound plan, and it worked. Marco kept the appointment at one, the killer came down and found him there, stunned him from behind, strangled him…” He stopped, the most curious expression of annoyance flitting over his face.
“And undressed him,” said the Inspector sarcastically. “That’s the screwy part. That’s the part that’s got me up a tree. Cripes, why?”
Ellery rose and began a stiff-legged strut up and down before the desk. His forehead was furrowed painfully. “Yes, yes, you’re right, Inspector. No matter where we start we always come back to that. Nothing fits until we learn why he undressed Marco. It’s the only piece that refuses to fall snugly into place.”
But Rosa inexplicably was crying, her sturdy shoulders shaking. “What’s the matter?” asked Ellery with concern.
“I—I never thought,” she choked between sobs, “that any one could be so vindictive as to implicate me…”
Ellery chuckled, and she was so surprised that she stopped crying. “Now, now, Miss Godfrey, that’s where you’re wrong. That isn’t true at all. On the surface, I’ll admit, it looks as if you were being framed for the murder—with the note that led Marco to his death having been signed by you, presumably. But examine it, and it becomes a totally different story.”
She looked up at him anxiously, still sniffling a little. “You see, X couldn’t possibly have meant to frame you for the killing. He knew you would have a powerful alibi—being found tied up in Waring’s cottage that way, especially after a mysterious outsider apparently had telephoned young Cort of your whereabouts. As for the note, the murderer probably expected Marco to destroy it. If Marco destroyed it, the existence of the note with your name on it would never even be suspected, and you wouldn’t be implicated at all. But even if Marco didn’t destroy the note and it was found, X knew that your alibi, plus the fact that you can’t type and the signature was suspiciously a typewritten one, would point to a frame-up. As a matter of fact, I suspect X didn’t care a whoop if the police did discover that it was a frame-up. Such a discovery wouldn’t imperil his own safety, and Marco would be dead by the time it was made. No, no, Miss Godfrey, I think X has been quite considerate of you. Much more considerate than he has been of Kummer and Marco.”
She digested this in silence, nibbling at the corner of her handkerchief. “I suppose that’s so,” she said at last in a low voice. Then she looked up at him queerly. “But why do you say ‘he,’ Mr. Queen?”
“Why do I say ‘he’?” repeated Ellery blankly. “Convenience, I suppose.”
“You don’t know anything, do you, Miss Godfrey?” snapped Moley.
“No,” she said, still looking at Ellery; then she lowered her eyes. “No, I don’t know anything.”
Ellery rose and took off his glasses to rub his eyes. “Well,” he said wearily, “at least we’ve learned something. The murderer of Marco typed this note. Since the typewriter hasn’t left the house, the murderer typed it in the house. You’re nursing a viper to your collective bosoms, Miss Godfrey. And that’s not as funny as it sounds.”
A bored detective said from the door: “The old guy wants to talk to you, Inspector. And Godfrey’s been hammerin’ our ears off out here.”
Moley spun about. “Who? What old guy?”
“The gardener. This Jorum. He says he’s got somethin’ import—”
“Jorum!” repeated Moley in a startled way, as if he were conscious of the name for the first time. “Bring him in, Joe.”
But it was Walter Godfrey who entered first, in his dirty slacks, his tattered sombrero on the back of his head. There were earth-stains on his knees and his fingernails were black with soil. He glanced piercingly at Ellery and the Inspector with his ophidian eyes, permitted himself to look surprised at the presence of his daughter, and then turned back to the door.
“Come on in, Jorum. Nobody’s going to bite you,” he said in a gentle voice—a gentler voice than Ellery had ever heard him use with Rosa or his wife. The old man shambled in, the soles of his broad shapeless shoes leaving a trail of earth on the floor. At close range his skin was even more amazing than it had been from afar. It was lined with hundreds of wrinkles, the color of soiled rock. His hands, which were twisting his hat, were huge and starkly veined. He looked like an animated mummy.
“Jorum’s got something on his mind, Inspector,” said the millionaire abruptly. “He’s told me about it and, while I’ve no interest in your success or failure, you understand, I thought you should know about it, too.”
“That’s white of you,” said Moley, tight-lipped. “And why the hell didn’t you come to me direct, Jorum, if you had something of interest to say?”
The gardener shrugged his gaunt shoulders. “I ain’t buttin’ in anywhere. I’m a man minds my own business, I am.”
“Well, well? Speak up.”
Jorum caressed his gray-stubbled jaw. “Wouldn’t have said nothin’, only Mr. Godfrey said I should. Nob’dy asked me; so I says to m’self: ‘Why should I talk?’ It’s your job to ask questions, ain’t it?” He looked hostilely at Moley’s stormy face. “I saw ’em on the terrace.”
“Saw whom?” asked Ellery, coming forward. “And when?”
“Answer the gentleman, Jorum,” said Godfrey in the same gentle tone.
“Yes, sir,” replied the old man respectfully. “I saw Mr. Marco on th’ terrace last night with this here, now, Pitts woman. They—”
“Pitts!” exclaimed the Inspector. “That’s Mrs. Godfrey’s maid, isn’t it?”
“Yep, that’s the one.” Jorum took out a blue handkerchief and blew his nose on a note of contempt. “Pitts, the snippy one. Old hen, b’gee! Ain’t no better’n she ought to be, I’ll tell ye that. Not that I wa’n’t su’prised, y’understand, when she said—”
“Look here,” said Ellery patiently. “Let’s get this straight, Jorum. You saw Mr. Marco and the lady’s-maid Pitts on the terrace last night. Very well. What time was this?”
Jorum scratched a mossy ear. “Can’t tell ye to the minute,” he said plausibly. “Don’t carry no watch. But it must ’a’ been roun’ one o’clock in the mornin’, mebbe a mite after. I was comin’ down th’ path too-wards the terrace, see, takin’ a look aroun’ ’fore turnin’ in—”
“Jorum’s something of a watchman,” explained Godfrey curtly. “Not a regular part of his duties, but he keeps his eyes open.”
“Terrace was bright enough under th’ moon,” continued the old man, “and Mr. Marco, he was settin’ by a table with his back to me, all dressed up like a playin’ actor—”
“He had a cloak on, Jorum?” asked Ellery swiftly.
“Yes, sir. I seen him wear that there thing ’fore. Made’m look like that there, now, Me-fist-o-feels I once see in an op’ry up Maartens way.” Jorum chuckled lasciviously. “Pitts, she was standin’ up next to him all togged out in ’er maid’s uniform; I could see her face plain. She was sore. ’Fore I hove into sight I heard like a slap, y’understand, an’ when I sees her standin’ there, sore-like, I says to m’self, I says: ‘Oho, Jorum, there’s monkey-business!’ ’N I hears ’er say, angry-like: ‘Ye can’t talk to me like that, Mr. Marco; I’m a respectable woman!’ an’ then she comes on up the steps too-wards me, in a huff, an’ I dodged into a shadder. Mr. Marco, he just sets there like nothin’ happened. He was a cool hand, Mr. Marco, when it come to th’ wimmen. I once see him pesterin’ Tessie, who helps out in th’ kitchen. But this Pitts gal, she put’m in his place. Queer…”
Rosa clenched her hands and ran from the library.
