Murder in Peking, page 5
For some time she lay in darkness, listening to the sounds of the night—straining her ears for some indication she might identify. Then she dozed and would have slept again had not a new sound brought her up swiftly on her elbow. This time the disturbance was in the courtyard. It was something she could understand.
She got up quietly and threw a wrap around her shoulders. Her heelless slippers made no sound as she sped across the living-room and out onto the wide top step. From the covert of a stone lion she peered across the court.
A man was strolling quietly around the quadrangle, in the deeper shadows of the halls and galleries. He appeared and vanished like a ghost; but the padding of his feet on the stones came to her clearly in the silence. In spite of the candor of his movements, his mission obviously was secret. He moved with caution, turning frequently to look around him. To Lora it appeared that he was coming from the little corner building, near the stairs, in which lay Allie Colchis—dead. There was something in his hand. If she remained exactly where she was, it was possible that in a few minutes he would pass her hiding-place.
Then, for an instant, he moved into the starlight and glanced in her direction—almost, it seemed, into the shadows that concealed her. Her hand went quickly to her throat. She turned and crept back into the doorway, poised for an instant on the sill, and slipped into the livingroom—then fled back into the library like a frightened kitten.
Apprehension and curiosity beat beneath her ribs, and over all persisted an initial sense of shock—the impact of unwilling and unwelcome recognition. For of one thing she was entirely certain—she knew the man who was prowling, catlike, in the courtyard. She had known him from the instant she first peered around the door. The knowledge troubled her.
Thereafter, for a time, she lay awake, with eyes that stared into the darkness, conscious of that strange sensation of existing on the rim of some dark drama being enacted close at hand. It seemed to her that something terrible was about to happen—or perhaps was in the very act of happening all around her.
But what more terrible could happen than that which already had occurred?
Chapter 3
Morning brought brilliant sunshine and Captain An. The Chinese police officer had motored out from Peking, arriving shortly after breakfast. With his high-bridged nose—unusual in a Chinese—his alert glance and his natty uniform, he was as unlike the policemen of the night before as anybody could wish.
“A little Jewish blood might do it,” said Selden Osgood.
The captain’s smile was courteous and insincere, his English copious and adequate. He managed to convey the impression that the death of Allie Colchis, in his opinion, was some sort of absurd mistake, which could easily be explained.
“I see,” he said, as Hope Johnson summarized the happenings of early morning. “Oh, yes, to be sure! Thank you—thank you very much! I will look first at the young woman, with your permission, then I will talk to the servants.”
Neither occupation took him very long. He was in and out of the death-chamber in waltztime; but nothing seemed to escape him. Like an agile terrier, he dashed from spot to spot, emitting little ‘Ohs’ and ‘Ahs’ of satisfaction, while Johnson watched him with a grin. In the end, he returned to the body and subjected the bruised throat to closer examination.
“Ah, yes,” said the captain, in pleased tones, “the young woman has been violently strangled.”
He gently rolled the body over onto its face and gave another of his little cries of ecstasy. On the back of the neck, near the hairline, was a series of scratches set close together; with a sigh of satisfaction he traced them up into the scalp. They were on one side of the neck only—the right side, as he viewed it from behind. Back of the right ear was a similar abrasion, somewhat deeper, from which blood had flowed; a miniature gash.
“This man,” said Captain An, “was very foolish—or he was very clever.”
“What are they?” Johnson asked, annoyed. “I didn’t notice them, last night, because I didn’t turn the body over.”
“Once it was the custom of Chinese gentlemen to wear long fingernails, which they protected with little caps. Possibly you have seen them in the curio stores? Sometimes they were made of silver and sometimes of horn, and sometimes they were only bamboo. It is possible, I think, that these scratches were made by such a weapon.”
Hope Johnson was politely curious. “Then you think the murder was committed by a Chinese?”
“Did you think a foreigner had done it?” asked the captain. “But yes, it is quite possible that a Chinese was the murderer. It makes an interesting question. It is an old-fashioned custom; not many Chinese gentlemen are troubled now about their nails. Possibly one nail—if circumstances permit—and on the left hand only.”
“But surely these are the marks of only one? They are quite close together.”
“Yes, I agree with you. It was the little finger of the left hand. His thumbs would be on her throat and his fingers around her neck. The scratches are quite close together, as you observe; except the long one—behind the ear—where his finger slipped perhaps?”
The captain was thoughtful for a moment, almost pensive.
“But it is a custom that we seldom follow now,” he added pleasantly; “and so I ask myself: Is this a Chinese gentleman or some clever foreign fellow who hopes to make the fool of me?”
Which was the identical question in Hope Johnson’s mind.
With the servants the Captain’s tone was imperious and threatening. Floods and whirlwinds of passionate Chinese rolled through the outbuildings with the sound of small explosives. The captain roared and the servants proclaimed their innocence. They had been in their own quarters; they had heard nothing; they had no suspicions of anybody. Possibly a burglar—?
“Tcha!” said the captain, in disgust. He dismissed them to their tasks.
Thereafter, he vanished for two hours, leaving the thirteen foreign suspects to twiddle their thumbs and snatch a hasty luncheon. It was assumed, more or less correctly, that he was canvassing the neighborhood.
On his return, which was as mysterious as his departure, he established headquarters in the living-room and proceeded to take depositions. The interrogation was conducted openly, with everybody present.
Thurston’s testimony brought out the surprising tidings of his proposal of marriage. He made no secret of it now.
“It is true I had met Miss Colchis for the first time only a few hours before,” he said; “but I admired her deeply. I made no pretense of what is ordinarily called love—there was no misunderstanding on her part. I have been a lonely man since the death of my wife, in America, and while I had not contemplated another marriage, quite suddenly it seemed a very sensible thing to do. Miss Colchis was well-fitted to be my wife; her assistance would have been invaluable, to say nothing of her companionship. As it happened, it was impossible.”
The captain nodded his sympathy; he understood perfectly.
“It is possible that her refusal was not final?” he suggested. “Perhaps later she might have changed her mind?”
But Thurston shook his head. “She was very kind,” he murmured, in some confusion; “but I’m afraid there was no chance for me, at any time.”
“The young woman said nothing to you that might now explain her death?”
“Nothing. We talked principally of porcelain. Then I embarrassed her with my offer, and there was little left for either of us to say. Mr. Lilleso came up toward the last and joined us.”
“Ah, yes—Mr. Lilleso!”
The director smiled. “I didn’t realize it was a proposal of marriage,” he said, “or I wouldn’t have butted in. I’m afraid I tried to be funny. Sorry, Thurston!” He addressed the captain. “Dr. Thurston and Miss Colchis were certainly on the best of terms, before and afterward, as far as I can say. We played bridge together until bedtime.”
He described his own movements after dinner until he had visited the pavilion, and was at all points supported by Street. Their explorations in the idol-rooms appeared to solve a mystery.
“Hang it!” cried Johnson. “Were those your footprints that we found?”
“Ah, yes, the footprints,” murmured Captain An. “Mr. Johnson was good enough to mention them.”
“I suppose we did leave quite a trail,” admitted Lilleso. “The dust was thick enough to eat. But, naturally, we weren’t thinking about footprints.”
In response to Johnson’s cross-examination he described the pilgrimage, and managed to recall a locked door which they had failed to pass. Hope Johnson was disappointed; the captain shrugged and smiled.
“Well, well,” he said, “we can not wish for everything.”
The artist, after his ramble with the director, had gone to sleep in the living-room, he testified, and slept until he was awakened and forced to play at bridge with the trio from the pavilion. After that he had gone to bed and slept until he was awakened by Miss Li’s screaming. Yes, he admitted, the sight of the body had made him very ill. He was sensitively constituted and easily upset. Oh, yes, he was feeling much better this morning.
The seven who had visited Kate Webber’s friend, the countess, at another temple, agreed that they had found a lively game in progress on their return; and thereafter everybody had gone to bed—everybody but the three night-roving wanderers who had returned at two-thirty.
With sound dramatic instinct, the captain had left the three wanderers until the last. He turned a guileless eye on each of them in turn and rustled his sheets of paper. His report was in Chinese, on paper ruled for perpendicular writing, and the effect was very pleasing to an unaccustomed eye.
Tattershall had been impatiently waiting his opportunity. He had no notion of allowing Blanche Windom to make a fool of him, if that was her intention. He cleared his throat and fixed the police officer with his glittering glass. But again Blanche Windom was ahead of him.
“I’m sorry,” she said, regretfully, “if my story appears to throw suspicion on anybody; but, after all, this is practically the same as a legal inquiry, isn’t it, Captain An?” Her little-girl lips were breathlessly parted, her blue eyes wide and appealing.
“Precisely the same, Madam,” replied the captain promptly and untruthfully.
“And I should have no hesitation in telling exactly everything that happened?”
“It is your duty, Madam,” said the captain.
“That relieves me,” said Blanche Windom. “I should be sorry if anybody were to think me vindictive. You see, I was out walking with Mr. Tattershall, and we—we quarreled. It doesn’t matter what the quarrel was about, and anyway I shouldn’t like to mention it. But Mr. Tattershall was not—not quite—a gentleman. I sent him away.”
Tattershall bounded from his chair as if propelled by a catapult.
“Good Lord!” he shouted. “Is the woman mad? That is the most outrageous falsehood I have ever listened to. If you want to know the truth about our quarrel—it wasn’t a quarrel—it wasn’t anything like a quarrel—but if you want to know the truth about it, by heaven, I’ll tell you!” He was almost incoherent with astonishment and rage.
The Chinese captain smiled politely. “All in good time, Mr. Tattershall,” he soothed. “Certainly the truth is all we want. But let us hear the lady first.”
“But I tell you she’s—”
“Oh, chuck it, Tattershall,” expostulated Osgood, grinning. “If this is scandal, I want to hear the whole of it.”
Kate Webber and her other guests were bursting with excitement and curiosity. The angry explorer subsided with a growl.
“That was about midnight,” continued Blanche Windom sweetly. “Mr. Tattershall left me and walked away, possibly hoping I would call him back. He was in a temper. I don’t know where he went—he was walking in the direction of the priests’ temple. Later I saw him again; he had been away, I think, for nearly two hours. He seemed to be quite normal, so I spoke to him and he apologized for his rudeness. After that we walked on together, and in a little while we met Miss Li. She too appeared to be coming from the priests’ temple. It occurred to me that she and Mr. Tattershall had been together—”
It was the Chinese girl’s turn to stiffen in amazement. For an instant her dark eyes flashed reigns of terror; but her interruption, while swift and pointed, was curiously calm.
“You extraordinary creature!” she murmured.
The captain, too, was faintly puzzled. “You will pardon me, Madam,” he said, “if I ask you what is it precisely that you suggest? Has this the—the bearing, as you say—upon this case?”
Blanche Windom’s eyes pushed open. “As to that,” she answered, “of course I couldn’t say. I am simply telling you that there are about two hours of Mr. Tattershall’s time, last night, for which I, at any rate, can not account.” She subsided virtuously in her chair.
Tattershall’s strident laugh rang through the room.
“If Mrs. Windom is quite through,” he said, with sarcastic emphasis, “I shall be very happy to make a statement about last night. Since, in her opinion, I was not quite a gentleman, last night, there is no reason why I should pretend to be one this morning. Mrs. Windom and I were walking, as she has told you. I left her about twelve o’clock on the little bridge below the gatehouse—Ch’ien Lung’s, they call it. I understood, then, that she was returning here at once.”
He paused, as if to summon all his forces of destruction.
“The reason I left her was her apparent determination that I should make love to her. We didn’t quarrel. I simply laughed and told her to save her—Oh, damn it!” cried the explorer, almost humorously. “I can’t go on like this! It’s too humiliating for us both. If she hadn’t been angry and said what she did, I’d never have mentioned it.” He smiled feebly. “A gentleman, I suppose, would have ‘taken’ it and kept his mouth shut.”
“A gentleman,” said Osgood mischievously, “would never have turned a lady down. Really, Tattershall—”
“Shut up, Seldom,” said Howard Pilgrim. It was an old nick-name based on the circumstance that Osgood was seldom silent.
Blanche Windom said nothing at all. A little smile hung at the corners of her mouth that was half malice and half amusement. She had said precisely all she had to say, and she had made a gaudy spectacle of Orrin Tattershall.
The captain shook his head, then cocked it, birdlike, at the unhappy explorer. “It is possible,” he observed, “that we have wandered from our subject.” After a moment he added: “Let us now resume.”
“You had better ask me questions,” Tattershall said coldly.
“Good! I will ask you questions. You left this lady, then, at twelve o’clock. That much is sure?”
“I looked at my watch just before we separated.”
“Ah, yes—your watch! And then what did you do?”
“Then, until one-thirty or thereabouts I was alone. It sounds a little mad, I suppose; but the fact is I went off to the priests’ temple, behind this one. There was a stele there I wanted to see again, and a perfectly good moon to see it by. I started to copy the inscriptions.”
“By moonlight?”
“It sounds wild, I daresay. But that’s what I did. I wasn’t sleepy; I didn’t want to go to bed—and I thought I might as well be doing that as anything else. I fancied there’d be a bridge game going on down here, and I wasn’t keen about it. I must have been there more than an hour—in the courtyard of the temple—perhaps an hour and a half—and part of the time, of course, I was just idling and smoking. I don’t know whether anybody saw me or not; but if any of the priests happened to be abroad at that hour I may have been spotted.”
“You returned to the temple, however—to this temple—with Mrs. Windom, arriving about half-past two. That is true?”
“It’s true. After leaving the priests’ temple—it’s really part of this one, I suppose you know—another courtyard, set back a bit and higher up—I started back here. On the way I ran into Mrs. Windom. I don’t know where she had been in the meantime; but we joined forces and continued down the hill. Then, rather close to our own place, we ran across Miss Li. She was alone and we all continued together.”
“You separated in this courtyard?”
“Right smack in the middle of it, because as it happened we all went in different directions to our beds.”
“But you had not yet gone to bed when you heard Miss Li call out?”
“No, I was sitting up, smoking a cigarette, and hadn’t taken off my clothes.” Hope Johnson hadn’t missed much, the explorer reflected grimly. “Incidentally, Miss Li didn’t precisely call out—she screamed like a banshee.”
The last word seemed to puzzle the captain; but he smiled engagingly and let it pass.
“Thank you so much,” he said. “I think there is only one matter that we have not yet covered. We have not asked Mrs. Windom what she was herself doing, during the time you were not together.”
He looked inquiringly at that scornful woman, who replied without embarrassment. “I was strolling,” she informed him—“just strolling round, you know. I thought I told you that.”
“Ah, yes,” said Captain An, “just strolling round! And Miss Li, if I may ask—she, too, perhaps, was just strolling round, last night?” He smiled cherubically at his countrywoman.
Yi Li was silent. Then, with a lazy shrug, she gave him smile for smile.
“I, too, was at the priests’ temple,” she answered. “I was talking with some of the priests. If you ask them, they will tell you so. They will also tell you that Mr. Tattershall was in the courtyard—doing exactly what he says he did. They saw him there and mentioned it to me. I did not see Mr. Tattershall, myself, until we met outside the walls.”
“This is excellent,” cried the captain rapturously; “it is what you call the alibi. And your own visit to the temple at that time, Miss Li—was it also to copy an inscription?”
