The Bizarre Murders, page 9
The fat man hesitated. “Smith.”
“His name, he says,” remarked the Inspector to the world at large, “is Smith. Well, well. What Smith? Just Smith? Or hasn’t your imagination got to the point of picking a first name yet?”
“Frank—Frank Smith. Frank J. Smith.”
“Where you hail from?”
“Why—ah, New York.”
“Funny,” muttered the Inspector. “I thought I knew every evil pan in the City. Well, what were you doing up here yesterday evening?”
Mr. Smith licked his purple lips again. “Why—I guess I lost my way.”
“You guess?”
“I mean I lost my way, you see. When I—yes, when I got to the top here and saw I couldn’t go any farther, I turned round and drove down again. That’s when you met me, you see.”
“You sang a different tune then,” said the old gentleman disagreeably. “And you sure were in one hell of a hurry. So you don’t know anybody in this house, hey? When you were lost last night, you didn’t think of stopping in here and asking your way, either, did you?”
“N-no.” Mr. Smith’s eyes fidgeted from the Queens to the silent company behind them. “But who, may I ask, was the unfort—”
“Unfortunate who was passed violently from the here to the hereafter?” Ellery squinted at him thoughtfully. “A gentleman named John Xavier, Dr. John S. Xavier. Name mean anything to you?”
The emaciated man-of-all-work began to make threatening sounds deep in his scrawny throat again.
“No,” said Mr. Smith hastily. “Never heard of him.”
“And you’ve never toiled up this Arrow Mountain road before, Mr.—ah—Smith? Last night was the first time—your debut, as it were?”
“I assure you …”
Ellery bent and lifted one of the fat man’s puffy paws. Mr. Smith growled in a startled way and snatched his hand back. “Oh, I’m not going to bite. Just looking for rings, you know.”
“R-rings?”
“But you haven’t any.” Ellery sighed. “I think, dad, we’re—uh—blessed with another guest for some time. Mrs. Xavier—no, Mrs. Wheary might make the necessary arrangements.”
“I guess so,” said the Inspector glumly, putting his revolver away. “Got any duds in your car, Smith, or whatever your name is?”
“Yes, of course. But can’t I—? Isn’t the fire—?”
“You can’t, and the fire isn’t. Get your things out of the car; can’t trust you to Bones—he’s liable to chew your ear off. Good man, Bones. That’s the spirit. Keep your eyes open.” The Inspector tapped the silent old man on his bony shoulder. “Mrs. Wheary, show Mr. Smith to a room on the first floor. There’s an empty, isn’t there?”
“Y-yes, sir,” said Mrs. Wheary nervously. “Several.”
“Then feed him. You stay put, Smith. No funny business.” He turned to Mrs. Xavier, who had shrunken incredibly within herself; her flesh looked withered. “Beg pardon, Madam,” he said stiffly, “for taking charge of your household this way, but in murder cases we haven’t got time to stand on ceremony.”
“That’s quite all right,” she whispered. Ellery examined her with fresh interest. The vitriol seemed to have drained out of her since the discovery of her husband’s corpse. The smoke and fire of her black eyes had been quenched; they were lifeless. And behind them, in the glaze, he thought, lurked fear. She had altered completely—all but the dreadful half-smile. That clung to her lips with the stubborn vitality of physical habit.
“All right, folks,” said the Inspector abruptly. “Now let’s pay a little visit to the society lady upstairs. We’ll all see Mrs. Carreau together and then I’ll get the whole story straight without anyone trying to put one over or keep something back. Maybe well see daylight in this rotten business.”
A low, musical, controlled voice startled them into whirling toward the corridor. “There’s no need of that, Inspector. I’ve come down, you see.”
And in the same flashing instant Ellery, spinning about, caught sight of Mrs. Xavier’s eyes. They were hot, rich black again.
Chapter Seven
THE WEEPING LADY
SHE WAS LEANING ON tall Ann Forrest’s arm—a dainty, fragile beauty with the bloom of a delicate fruit. She looked no older than thirty—scarcely that. Her little figure was trim, graceful, slender, sheathed in some gray, soft, clinging material. Her hair was smoky black and she had two straight, determined brows over brown eyes. There was sensitiveness in the thin flare of her nostrils and her little mouth. The lightest of touches had etched tiny wrinkles about her eyes. In her carriage, her poise, the way she stood and the way she held her head Ellery read breeding. A remarkable woman, he thought—quite as remarkable in her way as Mrs. Xavier. The thought swung him about. Mrs. Xavier had miraculously regained her youth. The fires had never been brighter in her extraordinary eyes, and all the drooping muscles had been revitalized. She was glaring with feline intensity at Mrs. Carreau. Fear had been displaced by the frankest, most naked hatred.
“You’re Mrs. Marie Carreau?” demanded the Inspector. If he still felt for her any of the admiration he had voiced to Ellery the night before, he did not show it.
“Yes,” replied the small woman. “That’s quite correct. … I beg your pardon.” She turned to Mrs. Xavier, the queerest pain and compassion in the depths of her eyes. “I’m so sorry, my dear. Ann has told me. If there is anything I can do …”
The black pupils dilated; the olive nostrils flared. “Yes!” cried Mrs. Xavier, taking a step forward. “Yes! Get out of my house, that’s what you can do! You’ve made me suffer more … Get out of my house, you and your damned—”
“Sarah!” rasped Mark Xavier, grasping her arm and shaking her roughly. “Don’t forget yourself. Do you realize what you’re saying?”
The tall woman’s voice rose to a scream. “She—she—” A trickle of saliva appeared at one corner of her mouth. Her black eyes were blazing pits.
“Here, here,” said the Inspector softly. “What’s all this, Mrs. Xavier?”
Mrs. Carreau had not stirred; bloodless cheeks were her only sign of emotion. Ann Forrest gripped her round arm more tightly. Mrs. Xavier shuddered and shook her head from side to side. She relaxed limply against her brother-in-law.
“That’s all right, then,” continued the Inspector in the same soft voice. He flashed a glance at Ellery. But Ellery was studying the face of Mr. Smith. The fat man had retreated to the farther side of the kitchen and was striving to hold his breath. He looked as if he were squeezing himself in some fantastic effort to achieve two dimensions. The wattled face was deathly purple. “Let’s go into the living room and talk.”
“Now, Mrs. Carreau,” said the old gentleman when they were all seated stiffly in the big room, the hot sunlight pouring in through the French windows, “please explain yourself. I want the truth, now; if I don’t get it from you I’ll get it from the others, so you may as well make a clean breast of it.”
“What would you like to know?” murmured Mrs. Carreau.
“A lot of things. Let’s get the practical answers first. How long have you been in this house?”
“Two weeks.” Her musical voice was barely audible; she kept her eyes on the floor. Mrs. Xavier was lying in an armchair with closed eyes, deathly still.
“Guest here?”
“You might—call it that.” She paused, lifted her eyes, dropped them again.
“With whom did you come, Mrs. Carreau? Or were you alone?”
She hesitated again. Ann Forrest said swiftly: “No. I came with Mrs. Carreau. I’m her confidential secretary.”
“So I’ve noted,” said the Inspector coldly. “You’ll please keep out of this, young woman. I’ve a score to settle with you for disobeying orders. I don’t like my witnesses running off and passing the word along to—others.” Miss Forrest flushed and bit her lip. “Mrs. Carreau, how long have you known Dr. Xavier?”
“Two weeks, Inspector.”
“Oh, I see. Didn’t you know any of the others before, either?”
“No.”
“Is that right, Xavier?”
The big man muttered: “That’s right.”
“Then sickness brought you up here, eh, Mrs. Carreau?”
She shivered. “In—in a way.”
“You’re supposed to be traveling in Europe now, aren’t you?”
“Yes.” Her eyes were raised now, pleading. “I—I didn’t want my—it known.”
“Is that why you hid last night when my son and I drove up, why these people were so nervous, covered you up?”
She whispered: “Yes.”
The Inspector straightened and thoughtfully took snuff. Not particularly auspicious, he thought. He glanced about, searching for Ellery. But Ellery had unaccountably disappeared.
“Then you never saw anyone here before; just came for medical treatment? For observation maybe?”
“Yes, Inspector, oh, yes!”
“Hmm.” The old gentleman took a turn about the room. No one spoke. “Tell me, Mrs. Carreau—did you leave your room last night for any reason?” He could scarcely hear her reply. “Eh?”
“No.”
“That’s not true!” cried Mrs. Xavier suddenly, opening her eyes. She sprang to her feet, tall and magnificently furious. “She did! I saw her!”
Mrs. Carreau paled. Miss Forrest half rose, eyes snapping. Mark Xavier looked startled and extended his arm in a curious gesture.
“Hold everything,” murmured the Inspector. “And that means, everybody. You say you saw Mrs. Carreau leave her room, Mrs. Xavier?”
“Yes! She slipped out of her room a little after midnight and hurried downstairs. I saw her enter my—my husband’s study. They were there—”
“Yes, Mrs. Xavier? For how long?”
Her eyes wavered. “I don’t know. I—didn’t—wait.”
“Is that true, Mrs. Carreau?” asked the Inspector in the same soft tone.
Tears had sprung into the small woman’s eyes. Her mouth quivered, and then she began to weep. “Yes, oh, yes,” she sobbed, hiding her face on Miss Forrest’s bosom.
“But I didn’t—”
“Just a moment.” The Inspector regarded Mrs. Xavier with a faintly mocking smile. “I thought you told us, Mrs. Xavier, that you retired at once last night and slept through the night?”
The tall woman bit her lip and sat down suddenly. “I know. I lied. I thought you would suspect—But I saw her! It was she! She—” She stopped in confusion.
“And you didn’t wait,” said the Inspector mildly, “to see when she came out. My, my, what are our women coming to! All right, Mrs. Carreau, why did you wait until you thought everyone was asleep to slip down for a chat with Dr. Xavier—after midnight?”
Mrs. Carreau fumbled for a gray-silk handkerchief. She dabbed at her eyes and set her little chin firmly. “It was stupid of me to lie, Inspector. Mrs. Wheary had come to my room before she retired to tell me that strangers—you gentlemen—were staying the night because of a fire below. She told me Dr. Xavier was downstairs. I was—worried,” her brown eyes flickered, “and went down to talk to him.”
“About my son and me, hey?”
“Yes. …”
“And your—er—condition also, hey?”
She reddened, but she repeated: “Yes.”
“How’d you find him? All right? Spry? Natural? As usual? Nothing on his mind?”
“He was quite the same, Inspector,” she whispered. “Kind, thoughtful—as ever. We talked a while, then I went back upstairs—”
“Damn you!” shrieked Mrs. Xavier, on her feet again. “I can’t, I won’t stand it! She’s been off in corners with him every night—since she came—whispering, whispering with that cunning pretty false smile of hers—stealing him away from me—weeping crocodile tears—playing on his sympathies. … He never could resist a pretty woman! Shall I tell you why, Inspector, why she’s here?” She pounced forward, leveling a shaking finger at the shrinking figure of Mrs. Carreau. “Shall I? Shall I?”
Dr. Holmes spoke for the first time in an hour. “Oh, I say, Mrs. Xavier,” he mumbled, “I shouldn’t—”
“No, oh, no,” moaned Mrs. Carreau, hiding her face in her hands. “Please, please …”
“You contemptible she-devil!” raged Ann Forrest, jumping to her feet. “You would, you—you wolverine! I’ll—”
“Ann,” said Dr. Holmes in a low voice, stepping before her.
The Inspector watched them with bright, almost smiling eyes. He was very still; barely moved his head from one face to another as they spoke. The big room was noisy with furious voices, heavy breathing. … “Shall I?” screamed Mrs. Xavier, madness in her eyes. “Shall I?”
The noise stopped as abruptly as if someone had sheared it off with a bolo. There was a sound from the corridor door.
“There’s really no need, Mrs. Xavier,” said Ellery cheerfully. “We know all about it, you see. Dry your eyes, Mrs. Carreau. This is far from a major tragedy. My father and I shall keep your secret—longer, I fear,” he said with a sad wag of his head, “than some of the others. … Dad, I take particular pleasure in introducing to you the—ah—the—what you saw last night, or thought you saw.” The Inspector was gaping. “And, I might add, two of the brightest, nicest, best-mannered and friendliest lads who ever became irked at the necessity of skulking in a bedroom and decided to crawl out into a corridor for a little romantic peep at the terrible men who had blundered into their host’s house. Meet—reading from left to right—Messrs. Julian and Francis Carreau, Mrs. Carreau’s sons. I’ve just made their acquaintance and I think they’re delightful!”
Ellery was standing in the doorway, an arm about the shoulder of each of two tall, good-looking boys whose bright eyes investigated every detail of the tableau before them inquisitively. Ellery, who stood behind then smiling, nevertheless contrived to fix his father with an angry eye. The old gentleman stopped gaping, gulped, and came forward rather shakily.
The boys were perhaps sixteen—strong, wide-shouldered, with sun-browned faces and pleasant regular features quite like their mother’s but in a masculine way. One might have been a brown-plaster model of the other. In every detail of physique and facial feature they were identical. Even their clothes—gray-flannel suits meticulously pressed, sunny-blue neckties, white shirts, black-grained shoes—were identical.
But it was not the fact that they were twins which had brought the Inspector’s jaw to the half-mast. It was the fact that they slightly faced each other, that the right arm of the boy on the right was twined about his brother’s waist, that the left arm of the boy on the left was out of sight behind his brother’s back, that their smart gray jackets met and, incredibly, joined at the level of their breast bones.
They were Siamese twins.
Chapter Eight
XIPHOPAGUS
THEY MET THE INSPECTOR with rather shy, if boyish, curiosity, each offering his free hand in turn for a hearty grip. Mrs. Carreau had magically revived; she was erect in her chair now and smiling at the boys. What effort it was costing her, Ellery thought with admiration, no one except perhaps Ann Forrest could possibly know.
“Gosh, sir!” exclaimed the twin on the right in a pleasant tenor voice. “Are you a real live Inspector of police, as Mr. Queen says?”
“I’m afraid so, son,” said the Inspector with a feeble grin. “And what’s your name?”
“I’m Francis, sir.”
“And you, my boy?”
“Julian, sir,” replied the twin on the left. Their voices were one. Julian, the Inspector thought was the graver of the two. He looked earnestly at the Inspector. “May we—may we see the gold badge, sir?”
“Julian,” murmured Mrs. Carreau.
“Yes, mother.”
The boys looked at the beautiful woman. They both smiled at once; it was uncanny and delightful. Then, with perfect grace and ease, they walked across the room in step and the Inspector saw their broad, young backs swaying in practised rhythm. He also saw that Julian’s left arm, resting against the small of his brother’s back, was in a cast and strapped to his brother’s body. The boys bent over their mother’s chair and she kissed each one’s cheek in turn. Whereupon they sat down on a divan with gravity and fastened their eyes upon the Inspector, to his immediate embarrassment.
“Well,” he said, somewhat at a loss. “This puts a different complexion on things. I think I see now what this is all about. … By the way, youngster—you, Julian—what’s the matter with your flipper?”
“Oh, I broke it, sir,” replied the lad on the left instantly. “Last week. We had a little fall on the rocks outside.”
“Dr. Xavier,” said Francis, “set it for Julian. It didn’t hurt much, did it, Jule?”
“Not much,” said Julian manfully. And they both smiled again at the Inspector.
“Hrrmph!” said the Inspector. “I suppose you know that something’s happened to Dr. Xavier?”
“Yes, sir,” they said together, soberly, and their smiles faded. But they could not conceal the excited glint in their eyes.
“I think,” said Ellery, stepping into the room and closing the corridor door, “that we may as well have a complete understanding. Whatever is told in this room, of course, Mrs. Carreau, goes no further.”
“Yes,” she sighed. “It’s all a little unfortunate, Mr. Queen. I was hoping … I’m not very brave, you see.” She brooded over her sons, eying their straight, big bodies with the queerest mixture of pride and pain. “Francis and Julian were born a little over sixteen years ago in Washington. My husband was still alive at that time. My sons were born perfectly healthy, normal children except,” she paused and closed her eyes, “for one thing, as you see. They were joined at birth. Needless to say, my family was—horrified.” She stopped, breathing a little fast.
“The usual myopia of great families,” said Ellery with an encouraging smile. “As you say, it wasn’t very heroic. I assure you I should feel proud—”
“Oh, I am,” she cried. “They’re the best children—so strong and straight and—and patient …”
“There’s mother for you,” said Francis, grinning. Julian contented himself by staring gravely at his mother.
