Double for Death

Chapter 14

Two seconds of the silence of stupefaction followed the colonel’s announcement. Then there were sounds, the little noises that men and women make when sudden shock has stretched their nerves too tight, primitive throat noises older by geological epochs than the articulation of words. Under cover of that, Tecumseh Fox’s gliding movement as he made the door to the hall went unnoticed. Two women in maid’s uniforms were in the hall clutching each other; he ignored them and proceeded swiftly to the music room. He had his hand on the lid of the grand piano when he heard steps from the other direction and Nancy Grant entered, panting. She saw him and demanded, “What is it? Where’s Uncle Andy? He was yelling my name...” Fox pointed and said, “On through there,” and as her back passed from view he lifted the lid of the piano with one hand and took the gloves from his pocket with the other, thrust the gloves in beside the last bass string and let the lid down. Then he returned to the library and with a glance took it in.

Jeffrey Thorpe was standing with his toes almost touching the body on the floor, looking down at it, his face white and his mouth working. His sister was at his side, a little behind him, grasping his sleeve and looking not at the body but at him. Andrew Grant had his hands on his niece’s shoulders and was pushing her into a chair. Luke Wheer had his back flattened against a wall of books, his head bent and his eyes closed like a preacher leading a congregation in prayer. Bellows, the butler, had his hands clasped over his bosom, surely in unconscious imitation of a gesture seen in the movies. Henry Jordan sat on the edge of a chair, staring at what he could see of the form on the floor, rubbing his chin as though to get the lather in for a shave. Vaughn Kester’s rear, his back erect and rigid, was pressed against an edge of the desk; Fox couldn’t see his face. The two men whose talk Fox had interrupted in the music room, and three others whom he had not seen before, were grouped the other side of the stock ticker, which was still clicking away. A state trooper, bending over, was straightening up with something blue fluttering from his fingers. Brissenden barked at him:

“Put that down! Don’t touch anything!”

“It got kicked,” the trooper protested. “That man kicked it as he went across—”

“Put it on the desk! Don’t touch anything! Get everybody out of—”

“That’s mine!” It was a cry from Nancy. Brissenden whirled to her:

“What is?”

“That blue thing! That’s my scarf! How—” She started up from the chair, but her uncle’s hand on her shoulder kept her there.

“Well, don’t touch it! Nothing in this room is to be touched! Hardy, take them all — what are you doing?”

A man from the group behind the stock ticker had slid around to the desk and was extending an arm across it. Without arresting his movement he said in a thick determined voice, “I’m using this telephone.”

“No! Get away from there!”

The man said, “I’m phoning my office,” took the phone from the cradle and started to dial. Brissenden, beside him in two bounds, snatched the phone from him with one hand and with the other shoved him back so violently that he staggered and nearly fell.

“Break your neck,” said the colonel quietly. It was too serious for barking. “Kester, will you turn off that ticker? Thank you.” He surveyed the throng. “Thorpe’s dead. He was murdered. He was shot in the back and the gun that shot him is there on the floor. Everybody here heard the shot and one of you fired it. I know some of you are important people; one of you is so important that it’s more important for him to phone his office than for me to do my duty. You, come over here.”

The uniformed guard, with his revolver still in his hand, had finally found the spot and was standing by the windows. He tramped across.

“What are you, a Corliss man?”

“No, sir, the Bascom Agency.”

“Have you got any sense?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Use it. Hardy, take them all into the next room, the one with the piano. There’s to be no talking, no telephoning, and no leaving the room. If anyone gets tough, you will too. If anyone tries to leave, I instruct you to shoot their ankles off if you have to. This man will help you. If anyone goes to a bathroom, he will go along and no one will wash their hands. They will be examined to find out who has shot a gun. I’ll stay here and use this phone myself.”

Tecumseh Fox stated a fact, not aggressively, “You’re violating five or six statutes, Colonel.”

“Am I? Did you write them?”

“No, but I like them. You ought to be able to handle this job without declaring martial law. It gets me a little sore, that’s all. If I happen to feel like talking or washing my hands and I get shot in the ankle, you’re going to have some trouble with your own neck.”

“Are you refusing—”

“I’m not refusing anything, yet. I’m just saying I like the law. I’ll string along, within reason. You certainly have a right to clear this room, but it’s hot as the devil in the music room.” Fox encompassed the faces with a glance. “I suggest, ladies and gentlemen, that we go to the side terrace.”

A general movement started. Brissenden snapped:

“You! Butler! What’s your name?”

“B-b-bellows, sir.”

“Can you disconnect the phones so that this is the only one working?”

“Why, yes, sir.”

“Do so. Immediately.”

Bellows looked at Jeffrey and Miranda. Jeffrey took no notice; Miranda looked at Fox.

Fox shrugged. “Suit yourself, Mrs. Pemberton. The police have no legal control of any part of this house except this room in which a murder was committed. You may—”

“Damn you, Fox—”

“Take it easy, Colonel. I merely stated a fact. I was adding that Mrs. Pemberton may cooperate with you if she wants to.”

Miranda said, “Do as Colonel Brissenden asks, Bellows.”

“Yes, madame.”

The general movement was resumed and the colonel was left alone in the room with his job. Hardy and the Bascom man went along, looking grim but not too assured, for the migration, without halting in the music room, continued to the side terrace and that left them in embarrassing uncertainty regarding the proper procedure as to ankles in case of mutiny.

No mutiny arose. There was murmured and muttered talk, first among the business associates, but no washing of hands. The angular hollow-cheeked man went over to Fox and asked who he was, and Fox told him. The questioner gave his name in return, Harlan McElroy, and didn’t need to add that he was a director of the Thorpe Control Corporation as well as thirty others. Jeffrey sat scowling, lighting cigarettes and forgetting to smoke them; once his eye caught Nancy glancing at him and he started to get up, but dropped back again. Miranda and Vaughn Kester spoke together in undertones for a while, then Miranda disappeared into the house and soon after she returned maids came with luncheon trays. Fox ate his and the others did, more or less; but Luke Wheer and Henry Jordan ate nothing.

Meanwhile the law had been arriving. From the side terrace a curve of the main driveway was in plain view. Two of the cars were the familiar brown of the state police and Fox recognized most of the others. One was the old Curtis of the county medical examiner; in another District Attorney Derwin sat beside the driver. They were entering the house, apparently, from the other side; sounds of activity came from within. Soon after the luncheon trays had been served, three men, one a state trooper and the others in plain clothes, emerged on to the terrace, said nothing whatever, scattered and sat. Miranda, after pecking at her tray a while and having obvious difficulty swallowing, left it and made a tour of her guests, speaking to them. When she got to where Grant sat beside his niece, she put her hand on Nancy’s and Nancy drew hers away.

“Sorry,” said Miranda.

Nancy colored. “Oh! I didn’t mean — it’s just that I... please... I’m sorry—”

“So am I,” said Miranda and passed on. She stopped in front of Tecumseh Fox:

“We can’t count this in place of that dinner, Mr. Fox.” A shiver went over her. “This is horrible.”

He nodded. “Pretty bad.”

“Have you enough to eat? There’s plenty of the chicken salad.”

“I have enough, thanks.”

She frowned down at him and made her tone still lower. “Tell me. Should Jeffrey and I be in there with them? Should we let them do whatever they want, however they want? Like going through things, for instance?”

“That depends.” Fox passed his napkin across his lips. “Legally you can do a lot of restricting and obstructing. You can’t keep them from going over the library, but if there is anything anywhere else in the house that you don’t want them to find, whether it would help them in their job or not, you can certainly make it difficult for them. It’s your house.”

She bit her lip. “The way you put it, it sounds — offensive. I don’t want to obstruct them — in their job. I don’t regard this as my house and I’m sure Jeffrey doesn’t regard it as his — but to be put out here on the terrace with a lot of men in there—”

“Mr. Kester!” A voice was raised from the doorway. “Come in, please.”

Kester got up and went. Harlan McElroy and another man started for the voice with voluble protests that they must leave for New York... that they should be permitted...

“I understand, Mrs. Pemberton,” said Fox. “I will say this, that if anything like this happened in my house, I would regard it as proper to prevent them from making it an occasion for a general inventory of my personal possessions or an inquiry into my purely private affairs. I also think you should telephone, at once, to your father’s attorneys, Buchanan, Fuller, McPartland and Jones.”

“Thank you. I will,” said Miranda, and turned and swiftly entered the house.

Fox took the last bite of the chicken salad, saw two feet stopping in front of him, looked up and was facing the scowl of Jeffrey Thorpe.

“I heard my sister saying my name,” Jeffrey growled.

Fox nodded. He was chewing.

“This is one hell of a thing. It... it’s got me. This second time.”

Fox swallowed enough to talk. “Your sister was asking me what you and she should do.”

“What did you tell her?”

“I told her I wouldn’t trust any investigator to set his own limits and to telephone your father’s attorneys.”

“That sounds — sensible.” Jeffrey set his jaw and in a moment released it for speech. “Sunday night was different somehow — off up there in that bungalow — but this is right here in our own house. I was born in this house. I was... it was nice here when I was a kid and Mother was here—”

“Hold it, son,” Fox said sharply, in an undertone. “You’ve taken some punches. Sunday night your father killed. Yesterday he came back to life. Today killed again. Three knockouts in a row are tough going.”

“I’m all right,” the boy declared. “I think I am. You say my sister is phoning my father’s lawyers? You mean that Buchanan-Fuller outfit?”

“Yes.”

“They’re a bunch of damned stuffed shirts. I want to ask you something. Would you mind telling me why my father asked you to come here today?”

“No, I wouldn’t mind. He said he mistrusted the ability of the police to discover who killed Corey Arnold and he wanted to hire me to work on it.”

“Did you agree to do it?”

“We were going to discuss it later. I told him I was working for Grant.”

“I want to hire you to work on this.”

“You do? Why, do you mistrust the police too?”

“Well, I... yes. That’s it. I mistrust them. I don’t like the way — look at that rooster Brissenden—”

Fox pivoted out from his hips to shove away the table with his tray on it, and to reach for a chair and pull it closer. “Sit down here,” he muttered, “and I won’t have to talk so loud. That man has an ear cocked to listen.”

Jeffrey yanked the chair another foot forward and sat. Fox went on, “I could just say no and let it go at that, but I feel kind of sorry for you, so I want to explain that you’d be wasting your money. If I discovered that a member of your family had fired that shot, the fact that I was in your employ wouldn’t prevent—”

“Don’t be a goddam mucker, Fox.”

“All right. Weren’t you worried by the fear that your sister killed Arnold? Sure you were. And now you’re afraid — don’t glare like that. Learn to control your face. Do you play poker? Pretend you didn’t fill and you’re going to ride it. You’re afraid she did this too, and you think the police may miss it but I may not and you want to sew me up. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I admit I would like to work on this and it would be a big advantage—”

“Mr. Thorpe! Come in, please?”

Jeffrey shot up out of his chair and strode to the door that was being held open for him, fifteen pairs of eyes following him across the terrace.

Fox arose to retrieve a bunch of grapes that was left on his tray and, pulling one off and popping it into his mouth, wandered to the far edge of the terrace where Henry Jordan sat gazing gloomily at a twig of clematis hanging listless in the still heavy air.

“You ought to eat something,” Fox declared.

Jordan shook his head. “I was hungry and I didn’t want to eat here and then this — my appetite went.”

“Eat anyway. Keep your voice down. Where were you when you heard the shot?”

“Sitting under a tree around the corner there. Some men came out here and I left.”

“Was anyone with you? Anybody in sight?”

“I didn’t see anyone.”

“That’s too bad.” Fox spat a seed on to the lawn and took another grape. “You’re stuck for a good one. What I want to say, I regard our obligation to guard Thorpe’s little secret as still binding. Do you?”

“Yes.”

“I thought you would, for your daughter’s sake if nothing else. But they’ll make it hard for you. They’ll want the details of your friendship with Thorpe. Keep it simple. Don’t put in any complications you don’t have to.”

“I’ll try to.” Jordan gulped. “I’m glad you came and spoke to me. I’m afraid of it. My mind doesn’t work fast.”

“It’ll work better if you eat something. I mean it. I’ll send for a tray for you. Keep it simple and don’t get rattled.”

For errand boy he selected the trooper named Hardy, figuring that he had established a little prestige there. Hardy having acquiesced and departed for a tray for Mr. Jordan, Fox ate another grape and continued his wandering to the two chairs behind a table near the wall of the house, where Andrew Grant and his niece were sitting and saying nothing. They looked up at him. He pushed a tray away and sat on the edge of the table. There was no warden within ten yards.

“I certainly pick good places to go calling,” said Grant grimly.

“You sure do,” Fox agreed. “Did you shoot Thorpe?”

“No.”

Nancy began, “It’s the most incredible—”

“Please, Miss Grant. I’d like to ask a couple of questions and get brief answers. One of us may be called in there at any moment.” He returned to Andy. “Where were you when you heard the shot?”

“I had just left the front terrace, heading this way, starting to look for Nancy. Mrs. Pemberton had gone into the house a little before, asking me to wait there for her, but I wanted to find Nancy to tell her I had agreed to stay for lunch.”

“Was there anyone in sight at the moment you heard the shot?”

“I don’t think so. I didn’t see anyone.”

“Let’s hope someone saw you.” Fox shifted to Nancy. “Where were you?”

“Right here. On this terrace.”

“Who else was there?”

“No one.”

“What about Jeffrey Thorpe?”

Nancy’s chin went up. “I don’t know where he was. He had followed me down to the swimming pool and I was trying my best to tolerate him on account of what you said last night, but he... he annoyed me and I told him a few things and left him there and came back here.”

“Weren’t there some men here?”

“Not when I heard the shot. They were there when I came, four of them, I think, but pretty soon they went in the house.”

“How long before the shot was fired?”

“Ten minutes. Maybe fifteen. What I don’t—”

“One second. Were you here when Andy came by after he heard the shot?”

“I didn’t come this way,” Grant said. “The shot didn’t startle me much because I thought it was a car, but then somebody in the house let out a yell and I ran across the front terrace and in that way.”

Fox grunted. “Better and better.” To Nancy: “That blue thing that was on the floor in the library. You say it’s your scarf?”

“Yes, it is. That’s what I was saying is incredible—”

“Why is it incredible?”

“Because I don’t know how it got there. I know I didn’t take it there.”

“You didn’t have it on when you went through the music room.”

“I know very well I didn’t. I hadn’t had it on at all. When we got here and got out of the car I left it on the seat.”

Fox frowned. “You must be mistaken.”

“I am not mistaken! I left it there on the seat of the car and I haven’t been back there!”

“Don’t talk so loud. This begins to have points. If you were right here on this terrace, why did it take you so long to get into the house, and where were you when you heard Andy calling your name, and why were you panting when you went through the music room?”

Nancy flushed. “If that’s the tone—”

“Nonsense. Never mind my tone, you’ll hear worse ones when they get you in there. I’m in a hurry.”

“Answer him,” Grant said.

“Well, I...” Her color stayed. “I was panting because I had been running. The shot didn’t sound like a backfire to me, it sounded like a shot. I couldn’t tell what direction it came from, but I thought it came from the swimming pool. I suppose the reason I thought that was because that idiot had been talking, trying to be funny, talking about committing suicide if I didn’t—”

“What idiot? Jeffrey Thorpe?”

“Yes. Like a perfect fool, threatening to kill himself unless I — but the shot wouldn’t have made me think of that if it hadn’t been that he had had a revolver in his pocket and naturally—”

“Did he show you the revolver?”

“No, he didn’t show it to me, but I saw it. So did Uncle Andy.”

“Did you?”

“Yes,” said Grant. “When we drove up here he came out to welcome us, and a corner of his jacket caught on something and there was a gun in his hip pocket. A big one. Nancy and I both saw it.”

To Nancy again: “Was it still in his pocket at the swimming pool?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t see it, but I had seen it, and then his talking like an idiot about killing himself — when I heard the shot I thought it came from the direction of the pool and I jumped and ran. I ran all the way to the pool and it’s quite a distance. There was no one there. The water is clear and he wasn’t — there was nothing in it. Then I heard Uncle Andy calling, yelling my name, and I ran back to the house.”

Fox looked at Andy. “You were in the library with the rest of them when I got there.”

He nodded. “I entered by the front terrace and the voices guided me to the library. There was already a lot of commotion in there, half a dozen people. Pretty soon everyone else was there, but not Nancy, and I guess I got panicky. I ran through the house out to this terrace and yelled for her. I couldn’t hear any answer and I ran around the house to where the cars were parked, and then on around to the other side, but there wasn’t any sign of her. From there I could hear the voices in the library and I thought I recognized hers, so I went through some shrubbery and entered by the French windows, but she wasn’t there. Then you came in and then you went out. I was just going after you to ask if you had seen Nancy when she came.”

“How did you know you could get into the library — hold it.”

Fox slipped off the table and stood. The door from the house had opened for the exit of District Attorney Derwin. He was in his shirt sleeves and his face was covered with perspiration. He took four paces on the flags, stopped, looked the party over and spoke:

“If you please, everybody! I won’t insult you by apologizing for the inconvenience you are enduring. To talk of such inconvenience in the presence of such a tragedy, such a crime, would be — uh — insulting. We are doing all we can. Two of my assistants are talking with Mrs. Pemberton. Colonel Brissenden is talking with Mr. Jeffrey Thorpe. I am talking with Mr. Kester.”

A man blurted, “Is there any reason—”

“Please! We are doing all we can to expedite matters. We would like first to have from each of you a brief statement as to where you were and what you were doing when the shot was fired. You will be asked to sign it. Sergeant Saunders of the state police is in the breakfast room and you will be taken there one at a time to give him the statement, which he will take down. Also in that room is the equipment for examining a person’s hands to ascertain if that person has recently fired a revolver. You will be asked to permit the examination. You have the right to refuse to permit it, but we hope that none of you will. Mrs. Pemberton, Mr. Thorpe and Mr. Kester have already permitted it. When that is concluded we shall proceed to further steps with all possible expedition.”

He turned. A man darted forward expostulating. Derwin snapped at him:

“We’re doing the best we can!”

He disappeared inside. A man who had come out with him looked around and said, “Miss Grant? Come with me, please.”