Puzzle of the Silver Persian (11 page)

The school teacher, who had been trying to lead up to an opening during the last half hour, took the plunge.

“There was,” she admitted. Then she felt like hedging. “Oh, I know it isn’t any of my business. Don’t mind me, I’m just a self-appointed busybody. But I’m not as satisfied as the police seem to be with the murder-suicide theory about those deaths on board. And I can’t help wondering…”

“Quite right, too,” said the Honorable Emily. She looked at her wrist watch. “Can you come up to my room for a few minutes? I might have something to show you.”

They crossed the foyer and proceeded silently down the long hall, past the out of order elevators, and finally were lifted to the third floor. The Honorable Emily had a room facing the street, of the same general design as Candida’s. Miss Withers took a chair near the blazing hearth, near where a bright new cage dangled containing the somewhat bedraggled form of the robin. Dicon showed no inclination to sing, and his manner showed very clearly that he still expected to be eaten at any moment.

“Poor Dicon-bird,” said the Honorable Emily comfortingly. Then to her guest: “I had to smuggle him off the boat wrapped in a handkerchief in my pocket. We have a strict quarantine on incoming livestock, you see…”

Miss Withers felt ill at ease. “I came up here to find out why you bribed the stewardess,” she said softly.

Something flickered unpleasantly behind the monocle of the Englishwoman. Then she smiled, very warmly indeed.

“I was about to say—”

At that moment there came a knock on the door. The Honorable Emily answered it and admitted a solid person in a ratty fur coat, who turned out to be Mrs. Snoaks, stewardess of the
American Diplomat.
In one hand she bore a case of imitation leather. Miss Withers stared blankly at both stewardess and case. The woman set it down with a defiant “Here ’e is, the howling brute,” and fled.

The Honorable Emily was on her knees, fumbling with the catch. The case opened, and Tobermory emerged as if shot from a gun. As his mistress tried to clasp him to her bosom he slashed in the general direction of her hand with a vicious uppercut, and leaped to the bed, from which vantage point he proceeded to stare fixedly at the caged bird. Tobermory was not a cat who easily forgot.

“You see?” said the Honorable Emily.

Miss Withers did not see.

“Tobermory is a home-loving cat,” explained the Englishwoman. “He is dying to get back to my place in Cornwall, where he has a whole island to himself. He’d have died of boredom if I’d put him in quarantine for six months, as the law insists. He was too large to go in my coat pocket, so I paid the stewardess four quid to smuggle him off the ship for me. Members of the crew of a ship that docks here regularly every four weeks never have to worry over Customs.”

Miss Withers made a note of that. She felt that she had made a fool of herself. “I see,” she said. “Please understand that I didn’t…”

“Of course not.” The Honorable Emily was fairly purring now. “No offense meant, none taken, I always say. By the way, don’t feel that you must rush off. I’m all alone tonight, since my nephew has taken it into his silly head to turn Lothario. Though I suppose it’s only natural at his age. He’s twenty, and I can’t keep him in an Eton collar forever. But if you’d care to join me in dinner at the Corner House and a movie afterward?”

Miss Withers was still too conscious of the fact that she had made a mountain out of a molehill. She declined, pleading a headache, a previous engagement, letters to write, or some similar excuse, and edged toward the door. She glanced down at the leatherette case as she passed it, noticing the lining of newspapers and silver cat-hairs.

The Honorable Emily shoved the case beneath her bed. “Poor Toby does hate it so!” she said. Some inner amusement showed itself in her face. “Do drop in again if you have any more questions,” she finished quite cordially.

Miss Withers was back in her own room again before it occurred to her that there very well might have been something besides newspaper and silver cat-hairs in the bottom of that imitation leather case. And then, of course, it was too late.

She had dinner brought to her room, and spent most of the evening in making meaningless little marks upon a sheet of notepaper. Once or twice she was very nearly at the point of sending a cablegram to her old friend Oscar Piper, inspector of the New York homicide squad, but she resolutely thought better of it.

At nine o’clock the maid entered, rattled at the fire, and turned back the bed. Miss Withers admitted, upon being pressed, that she would like to be called at ten o’clock in the morning.

The hotel, quiet enough at any hour, gradually took on the stillness of the grave as the few other guests retired. Yet Miss Withers could not bring herself to go to bed.

Somehow she felt in her bones that the events of the day had not been brought to a close. She left her door ajar, and shortly after eleven she heard voices in the hall. Peering out, she saw Candida Noring, chaste and resplendent in a white dinner gown, silhouetted against the dark of Leslie Reverson. Their soft laughter chimed in oddly with the trend of Miss Withers’ thoughts, and she drew quickly back. But they did not notice her. After a moment she heard the door close, and peering forth again saw Reverson, walking very proudly erect, as he departed in the direction of the only working elevator.

Well, that was that. Miss Withers no longer had any excuse to spy on the corridor, though she would have given a good deal to know just how Andy Todd had spent his lonely evening.

Placing a chair against the door, she prepared to retire, a feeling of anticlimax still possessing her. She had a long search for her nightgown, which ended by her lucky discovery that it had been wrapped around a hot-water bottle and tucked in at the foot of her bed.

She turned out the light and tried to sleep, annoyed somewhat by the bright fire which, after an evening of sulking, had chosen this moment to blaze merrily, sending dancing shadows over walls and ceiling. The shadows took fearful shapes and pursued the nervous lady until she woke suddenly to hear a determined pounding upon her door, and to see feeble daylight trickling in between the heavy curtains.

She rose wearily and slipped on a bathrobe and slippers. Then she glanced at her watch and became very wroth. The knocking resumed.

She opened the door and spoke sternly to the maid. “I asked to be called at ten o’clock—not at seven-thirty!”

The maid’s voice was oddly perturbed. “I know that, mum. But it’s a gentleman from the police, mum.”

Miss Withers looked out upon the bland young face of Sergeant John Secker, who looked unwontedly wide-awake and excited. “I’ll dress in ten minutes,” she promised, and closed the door firmly.

Clothed and in her right mind, she emerged with several minutes to spare. “Well!” she greeted the young detective. “Do you want to borrow my scarf again?”

The sergeant shook his head. “Sorry to trouble you, but there’s a question or two. You see, there was an accident here at the hotel last night…”

Miss Withers had a sudden flash of intuition. “It’s Reverson!” she gasped. “Something has happened to young Reverson!”

The sergeant blinked and then shook his head. “Barking up the wrong tree, I’m afraid. Nothing wrong with Reverson. But you know the lift shaft up the hall—the one marked ‘Out of Order’? Your recent shipmate Mr. Andy Todd was found at the bottom of it a little while ago.”

Secker paused for effect. But even now Miss Withers did not completely understand him. This most emphatically did not fit in with the framework that she was painstakingly building.

“Todd? But what was Andy Todd doing there?”

“Shuffling off this mortal coil,” said the sergeant. “When found an hour ago, he had completely shuffled. Popped off, y’know. Passed on, Gone West,
and
expired.”

“Andy Todd
dead?”
said Miss Withers idiotically.

“Quite,” said the sergeant.

M
ISS WITHERS HAD STARTED
swiftly down the hall, but the sergeant touched her arm and shook his head. “Better not,” he advised.

“But I must see for myself…”

“They’ve taken the body away, what they could scrape up of it. The lift car is being held for repair at the top of the shaft, and so he struck on the concrete floor. It wasn’t a pretty sight, my dear lady. When a man falls that far and strikes stone…”

Miss Withers nodded impatiently. “I know, I know. But how did it happen? Accident, suicide or…”

“That I don’t know,” admitted Sergeant Secker. “Area Superintendent Filsom is in charge. But dear old Cannon told me to toddle over and see if it had anything to do with the deaths on board the
American Diplomat.
Filsom thinks it’s suicide, or death by misadventure. The lift was out of order and plainly marked so. Door was locked and supposedly could be unlocked only from the shaft. Although—”

“Did you make an attempt to unlock it from this side?”

The sergeant grinned. “I did. And—I succeeded. Though it couldn’t have happened accidentally, even if the fellow had mistaken the lift for one of the automatic ones that you work yourself. It was a business of squeezing my hand through a narrow grating and fumbling for the catch.”

“Then why the death by misadventure idea?”

“You see,” explained the sergeant, “this Todd chap seems to have been jolly tight when it happened. The police surgeon is at his autopsy now, but he smelled the schnapps when he took his first look at the corpse. And an American dead drunk is likely to do anything.”

“Um,” said Miss Withers doubtfully. She proceeded slowly along the hall until she came to the first elevator rank. “Is this the one?”

“Right.”

She peered at the latched door, shook it carefully, and looked dubious. Then, as the sergeant pointed out how he had put his hand through the grating, she tried, and found it a narrow squeeze. By dint of much forcing, she got her long thin hand through and opened the door. She looked down the dizzy shaft and saw the bright glare of a light at the bottom. Men were doing something to the place… she swung the door shut and heard the catch click into place.

“He’d been dead about five hours when the surgeon looked at him,” went on Secker. “That sets the dive at approximately two o’clock. Though no one heard anything.”

“I see,” said Miss Hildegarde Withers, who as yet saw nothing at all.

“Filsom thinks that young Todd drank himself into a state of melancholia and then decided to kill himself this way,” went on the sergeant.

“Melancholia fiddlesticks,” Miss Withers retorted. “Why should he be melancholy when he drank? Todd was more the type to get hilariously gay. He was no old souse, you know. From what I understand, he’s been spending his last four years or so in hard work and athletics, a regular grind, and that this was a vacation for him, in a way.”

“Right you are. But I understand that something happened on the boat—”

“Yes—Andy Todd played a mean practical joke and caused infinite unhappiness to several people. He was what we call the Life of the Party, an obnoxious type. But I can’t imagine his developing remorse.”

“That’s what I wanted to ask you about,” the sergeant admitted. “You see, there was a letter—”

Now Miss Withers knew. “A letter with a—” she stopped.

The sergeant produced from his pocket an envelope bordered with black. There was an unpleasant brownish stain on one corner. He drew from it a sheet of notepaper, covered with black ink except in the center, where had been pasted some scraps of cream-colored paper, paper with a blue line running through it. “This was in his pocket when he fell,” said Secker. “Ever see anything like it before?”

The message was short.
“And as for you, cruel silly fool whose hurt vanity made you crucify one who hardly knew you existed, I only wish that when death finds you, you will be as glad to die as I shall be…
”

“Woman’s writing,” said the sergeant. “Ever see it before?”

“I never saw that letter before,” Miss Withers assured him, not without guile.

She was thoughtful for a moment. “So Mr. Filsom of the Yard thinks that this note shamed Todd into jumping down the elevator shaft?”

Secker nodded. “It’s Rosemary Fraser’s writing. We’ve checked up on that. Or a better imitation never existed. She must have sent this to Todd before her death. Though, of course, that presupposes that she knew Noel was going to kill her, or at least suspected it.”

“Not necessarily,” said Miss Withers tartly. “Let me see. Do you have apples in England?”

“Eh? Why—of course, russets, pippins…”

“Well, we have an American expression which means a lot,” she told him. “It’s ‘apple-sauce.’ And you may quote me.” She led the way toward the near-by stair. “Todd’s room is on the third floor, you said?”

“I didn’t say,” the sergeant admitted. “But it is. Superintendent Filsom is down, there now, watching the fingerprint men trying to get something off the lift door. But there doesn’t seem to be much there.”

“I don’t suppose there’s any use trying any other door?” asked Miss Withers casually. “After all, this hotel has six floors, each with doors opening into that shaft.”

“He’d hardly climb up the stairs in order to do a longer dive,” said Secker with a smile. “Besides, that lift door on the third floor was open wide. The maid noticed it this morning, and that’s how the body was discovered.”

They came down to the third floor, where three men with rusty brown cameras were puttering about the elevator door. When the sergeant inquired for Superintendent Filsom, one of the print men gestured down the hall.

They found Filsom and an inspector engaged in rifling the room of the dead Rhodes scholar.

The door was ajar. Sergeant Secker pushed it open and cleared his throat. But Superintendent Filsom was summing things up for the benefit of his aide. “It interlocks perfectly with the information in Cannon’s memo on the Noel suicide,” he declared. “Before she died, and while either in fear of death or considering suicide, the Fraser girl wrote a note to Andrew Todd, scoring off him for having made game of her. He brooded over it, and last night he emptied this bottle of whisky and then jumped down the unused lift shaft.”