Murder a la Richelieu (American Queens of Crime Book 2) (20 page)

“Back?”

“She was released on parole. We were not supposed to leave New York state, only she... It was merely a question of time till she took something again. Then she’d have to go back, and I couldn’t stand it.”

She put her hand up to her trembling lips. “I thought if I came here and you liked me, it might-might – I was aware that you are a wealthy woman, Miss Adelaide, and I imagined that if you – if you fell for me, you’d probably give me lots of beautiful things. It isn’t pretty put in words, is it?”

“Oh, my dear,” I cried, “you are welcome to everything I have in the world!”

“You don’t have to believe me, but I’m not as despicable as I sound,” she said unsteadily. “Mother never takes things for herself. It’s only that she wants the people she loves to be happy. That’s how they caught her back home. As long as she stole only little things, she got by, but I was in my last year at school. She wanted dreadfully for me to have as pretty clothes as my classmates. So she-she took an expensive painting from the city museum and sold it. It was insured, and the detectives traced it to her. They-they sent her up for five years, but she was paroled two months ago on good behaviour.”

“My poor child!” I cried.

“I never knew about her until they arrested her. It nearly killed me.” She eyed me defiantly. “Perhaps you think I shouldn’t have had anything else to do with her. Perhaps you think I’m tarred with the same brush or I wouldn’t have anything to do with her now. But she did it for me. For my happiness, as she thought. She’d do anything for me. Everything she’s taken in this house has been something colourful or beautiful which she believed I’d love to have. She-she’s like a child about colours.”

Polly’s pink jabot, the Anthony woman’s red box, Ella Trotter’s gaudy bracelet, and my bright green spectacle case! I checked them over in my mind and groaned to myself.

“It’s kept me busy,” said Kathleen Adair with a ghastly smile, “trying to slip things back without being seen.”

In my heart there was cold panic. “I can understand how, if her fingers are as dexterous as you say, she might be able to-er-abstract things from one’s person when one was unaware,” I stammered.

“But I do not for the life of me see how she got Polly’s pink jabot, for instance, out of a locked room.”

Kathleen smiled tremulously. “You could hardly imagine it. She can flit up and down stairs and fire escapes like-like a hummingbird. And she uses an umbrella to reach things through windows and transoms, one of those umbrellas with a crook for a handle.”

“God save us!” I cried, thinking of the aluminium pitchers.

Kathleen, her lips twisted, had risen to her feet. “Now you know why I couldn’t ever let you have anything to do with us.”

“My dear child...” I began.

But she interrupted me. “Any day, any minute, we are liable to be arrested for our past and future crimes,” she said bitterly and walked out of the room.

When I came downstairs little Mrs Adair was sitting on the rear divan, staring vaguely out the lobby windows, her pale irresolute hands wavering about like small restless dragonflies. Kathleen was nowhere in sight. I had an idea she was in her room, weeping her eyes out. It was one of the few times I had known her to relax the vigilance which she constantly maintained over her foster mother.

“Poor child,” I thought, “I don’t know why she isn’t a nervous wreck.”

It was my not unnatural instinct to avoid the Adair woman. Pathetic she might be and was, but, to put it as kindly as possible, she was not normal. I had from the first thought her singularly foggy as to her mental processes. Now, to look at her, knowing what I knew, filled me with an almost overpowering aversion for the poor feckless creature that she was.

“Which is no more or less than Kathleen has been facing for months and even years,” I reminded myself sternly.

For in spite of her tender and passionate defence of the unfortunate woman whom she called Mother, I had read in Kathleen’s tragic eyes the same nausea which, after her confession, the sight of Louise Adair inspired in me. The habit of years is not easily broken, however, and I had been well grooved in the uncomfortable path of duty. So I did not, as I felt inclined, avoid the part of the lobby where Mrs Adair was sitting.

Instead I forced myself to drop down on the divan beside her. I had some quixotic notion of serving Kathleen. I recall thinking with decided grimness that I should prove a more than adequate watchdog in her absence. Thus doth conceit invariably precede a crimp in itself?

“What a beautiful design, Miss Adams,” breathed little Mrs Adair. “Such lovely colours!” She put out her hands like an eager child and patted the rose and gold and amethyst yarns which I was knitting in a crisscross pattern against a cobalt background.

“It’s an afghan which I’m making for the orphans’ home of my church,” I said stiffly, biting my lips to keep from snatching it out of reach of those small fluttering caressive hands.

Howard Warren was lounging over the desk, scowling at the morning paper. “You’re lucky to have something to do to keep you from going gaga, Miss Adelaide,” he said bitterly. “I suppose you know that the inspector has sent around another note. None of us is to leave the house until he arrives.”

“And when would that be?” I inquired with a sinking heart, recalling miserably that I had sworn, no matter whom it involved, to make a clean breast to the police.

“Only God and the inspector know,” said Howard, shrugging his shoulders. “Though I believe that dumb cop Sweeney did say directly – whatever he meant by that.”

Stephen, who was punching the nickel slot machine with unnecessary violence – or so it seemed to me – laughed shortly. “Time is the least of the inspector’s worries,” he remarked dryly. “Or I should say our time. You’d think it would occur to him we have jobs.”

Howard flashed him a hostile glance. “But then your job has never bothered you a lot, has it?” he asked.

“You think not?” drawled Stephen.

“At least you’ve always taken the time to splurge around,” said Howard unpleasantly.

“Miaow!” cried Polly Lawson, who had just stepped out of the elevator.

Ignoring Howard’s pleading eyes, she walked over to Stephen and put her hand on his arm. “How’s for letting me into your game?” she asked.

“Swell!” exclaimed Stephen gallantly, making room for her, while Howard, turning perfectly white, again buried himself behind his paper.

To my surprise Hilda Anthony had also gone literary on us that morning. She was sitting on the other divan, facing me, apparently absorbed in one of the flyspecked dime novels that may be purchased at the magazine stand in the hotel drugstore for a quarter.

It was the first time I had ever seen her read anything. Not till later did I recall that, although she must have sat there for nearly an hour, I never saw her look up or turn a page.

Little Mrs Adair quietly closed her eyes, leaned her head back with a wisp of a sigh and – or so I thought – drifted off to sleep, in spite of the noisy laughter and blatant repartee which Polly and Stephen Lansing were bandying back and forth. I was not surprised that it got on Howard’s nerves. It got on mine, and I was not in love with the girl and had grave misgivings about the man. I remember thinking that I should enjoy shaking both of them, and I do not doubt that Howard felt even more violent about the matter.

“Punch, punch, punch mit care,” chanted Polly. “Punch in the presence of the passenjaire!”

“Yowsah!” exclaimed Stephen, snapping his fingers.

“If that’s wit, they can bottle my portion,” growled Howard, ostensibly addressing Pinky Dodge but making sure his voice carried to the offenders.

Pinkney, slumped down before the switchboard, lifted a harassed face. He had relieved Letty Jones at the desk for a few minutes while she traipsed into the drugstore for her mid-morning coke, a disgusting habit, as I have frequently remarked in Letty’s hearing.

“Were you speaking to me, Mr Warren?” asked Pinky in his vague way.

Turning scarlet, Howard snapped, “Who else would I have been speaking to?”

Pinky flushed. “I’m sorry,” he faltered. “I’m afraid my hearing is failing a little.”

“That’s the whole trouble,” I observed. “Just when one begins to have sense enough to live, one starts coming unstuck.”

“Yes,” said Pinky dully.

Howard, more, I thought, to cover his confusion than anything else, pointed derisively to a prominent caption in the paper which he had been reading. “Some people never learn,” he said. “Listen to this: ‘Man Feeds Tame Tiger Raw Meat and Pet Finally Turns and Chews Master’s Arm Off.’ You’d think,” muttered Howard, “any imbecile would know better.”

“The ingenuity with which the human race can mess itself up really should be utilized,” I commented, acidly regarding the alluring smile which Polly Lawson was bestowing on Stephen, as if she did not know that she might as well be sticking red-hot barbs in Howard Warren.

“The little minx!” I fumed to myself, wondering how she could be so ungrateful after the way Howard in every emergency had snatched up his trusty sword and tripped himself upon it in her defence.

I have tried many times since, without success, to recollect just how long afterward it was that, still without raising her sleek blondined head, Hilda Anthony addressed me. I can only say that the circumstances were so startling, they drove everything else out of my mind. As I later explained over and over to the inspector, I simply could not swear who was near me in the lobby at the time, because the group was constantly shifting, or whether anyone was in earshot, providing, as I supposed then, that little Mrs Adair was actually asleep.

I had all I could do as it happened to retain possession of my own faculties. For not only did the Anthony woman when she opened her lips not lift her head, she kept her face hidden behind her book and her voice was so low I failed to locate it at first.

“For the love of God, Adams,” she said, “keep on with your knitting and don’t look at me.”

I started when she spoke, but I did not glance in her direction, thank heaven, because it seemed to me her voice came from behind me, the book acting as a sort of backboard to deflect the sound, I suppose.

“What’s the matter, Miss Adelaide?” queried Pinky Dodge, staring at me curiously. “Did you hear something?”

“No, I-I stabbed myself with my-my knitting needle,” I stammered feebly.

“I see,” he said with a faint smile and added humbly, “I used to often, stick myself I mean, when I tried to darn and sew on buttons. But I’m better at it now.”

Poor Pinky, I thought. It seemed to me if frustration could have a body it would look precisely like Pinkney Dodge, another burnt offering on the exacting knees of that barren goddess, Self-Sacrifice.

The buzzer sounded, and Pinky bent over and placed the headpiece of the switchboard over his ears. That was why all I could tell the inspector later was that, of the various people in the house, Pinky Dodge was the only person who could not possibly have heard the rest of what Hilda Anthony said to me.

“I’ve got to see the inspector, Adams. I’ve got to! And if anybody catches on, it will be just too bad for me, and I mean permanently.”

She paused again, and the cold sweat popped out on my hands, in which the afghan was tightly clenched.

“I know you hate me, Adams,” she went on bitterly, “but you’re a woman, and you’d throw a drowning cur a rope, wouldn’t you?”

I managed slowly and painfully to pull my knitting needle in and out, purling one, dropping two stitches in my agitation, but, thank God, continuing to knit.

“I’m being watched, Adams. I have been since last night – every step I take, every move I make. I’ve got to act – and act fast – if I save myself. What a fool I was to think I could feed a-a – Get word to Inspector Bunyan, Adams, secretly, if you have a heart. Ask him to meet me in the parlour at eleven-fifteen, not before or after. Get it? Tell him to bring his gun along and for God’s sake not to be late.”

I purled two more, my hands clammy.

“You will, Adams?” asked Hilda Anthony’s tortured voice.

My lips were stiff. “Yes! Yes, certainly!” I cried. With a shock I realized that I had spoken aloud and that Cyril Fancher was standing right behind me, though how long he had been there or where he came from I had no idea.

I swallowed hard and repeated wildly, “Yes, certainly, I sent for you, Cyril!”

He stared at me as if, not for the first time, he questioned my sanity. So far as that goes, I doubt if there was one of us who during the previous twenty hours had not entertained grave suspicion about the mental health of every other one of us. I know I had thought more than once that there was something degenerate about Cyril, with his womanish hands and long-lashed, evasive eyes.

“You sent for me, Miss Adams?” he repeated in a baffled voice. “But this is the first I’ve heard of...”

Remembering what Stephen Lansing had said about the best defence being a stout offensive, I attacked swiftly. “Yes, I sent for you, and I must say you took your time about it,” I interrupted in my most withering accents.

He gulped and tried again. “But this is the first I knew of -”

“Never mind,” I protested haughtily, rising to my feet and praying that my legs would sustain me. “It’s my own fault if I haven’t learned by now that the only way to get things done in this house is to take them up with Sophie.”

“But –”

“Where is she?” I demanded coldly.

“In-in her room, I think, but...” However, I was already headed under full sail for the elevator.

Behind me Hilda Anthony, as I could see in the mirror beside the desk, continued to stare fixedly at her novel, and over by the front door Stephen chuckled.

“For ways that are eccentric, recommend me the dear Adelaide,” he murmured mockingly.

It occurred to me that, having broadcast my destination, it would be well to carry out my announced intention. Just in case, I thought with a shiver, someone had read more than I believed possible into that strange and sinister little one-sided drama which Hilda Anthony and I had enacted in the lobby.

Sophie was indeed in her room. I heard her voice before I had time to knock on the door. She was sobbing over and over, “Oh, Cyril! Cyril! If you would only confide in me! I’d forgive you. I’d forgive anything you’ve done, my poor boy, if only you’d tell me what the trouble is.”