The Broken Vase

Chapter 17

At two o’clock Sunday afternoon Irene Dunham Pomfret sat again in her library, at the head of the large table where boards of orchestras and hospitals and societies had so often met. Her appearance made it questionable whether this meeting would be handled with her accustomed authority and dexterity, or indeed whether she would be able to handle it at all. Two weeks ago she had been as handsome and vital, as competently and merrily alive, as any woman with a son in his twenties could possibly ask for; now she was not even a respectable ruin. There was no muscle left in her, and no tone. Her shoulders sagged, all of her sagged, and her half-dead eyes encircled by swollen red rims suggested that no remedy would serve but the final closing.

The others at the table were disposed as they had been on two previous occasions, with one notable difference, that Tecumseh Fox was in the chair formerly occupied by Perry Dunham. At Fox’s left, between him and Mrs. Pomfret, was Wells, the secretary. At his right were Henry Pomfret, Hebe Heath, and Felix Beck. Across the table were Koch, Ted Gill, Dora, Diego, and Garda Tusar.

Mrs. Pomfret looked dully around. “I want,” she said, in a tone that no board or committee had ever heard, “to tell you exactly why you’re here. Mr. Fox told me yesterday that the police had demanded that he turn the violin over to them, as evidence. They seem to be unable to get any other evidence of anything whatever, so they want that. I told him to let them have it. He objected.” She gestured flabbily at a violin case on the table in front of Fox. Her lip trembled, she stiffened it with an obvious effort for a moment, and then gave up. She muttered, barely audibly, “He will tell you why.”

Eyes left her face and went in visible relief to that of Fox, a less distressing sight.

Fox glanced around. “Maybe it was an excess of caution,” he conceded. He opened the case and removed the violin and placed it gently on the table. “But I felt responsible to you folks for this thing and I wanted to clear myself of that responsibility. As I told the police, I held it only as an agent. I am hereby returning it to its collective owners. You may either surrender it to the police voluntarily, or compel them to resort to legal process.”

Felix Beck blurted, “May I look at it?”

“Certainly.” Fox passed the violin along to him, in front of Pomfret and Hebe. Beck took it and inspected it, ran the tips of his fingers over the curve of its belly, and suddenly twanged the E string. The thin plaintive sound vibrated against overwrought nerves on both sides of the table; Dora shivered and shrank; Diego growled; Mrs. Pomfret pressed her handkerchief to her lips; Garda Tusar snapped peevishly, “Don’t do that!”

“Excuse me,” Beck said, and put the violin down.

Adolph Koch, regarding Fox, cleared his throat. “If the police want it as evidence in a murder, they can take it, can’t they?”

“Not necessarily, Mr. Koch, if we want to hang onto it. It’s valuable and it’s fragile, and it’s ours. We could fight a requisition.”

Koch shrugged. “It seems to me you might have done better than collecting us here like this. Especially it’s an imposition on Mrs. Pomfret, under the circumstances. Couldn’t you merely have phoned Miss Heath and Miss Mowbray and me?”

“I could, of course.” Fox returned his gaze unsmilingly. “But there are complications. I’ll have to tell you something else before you can make an intelligent decision about the violin. I’ll have to tell you who killed Jan Tusar and Perry Dunham.”

“Then,” Koch observed sarcastically, “you might have waited until you were prepared to do that.”

“I did. I’m prepared now.”

There were startled movements, gasps, exclamations, and ten pairs of eyes stared at him. Hebe Heath clutched Felix Beck’s sleeve and he jerked away. Mrs. Pomfret came up straight and was rigid.

“It’s like this,” Fox said conversationally. “I had a — well, call it a strong suspicion — of the identity of the murderer five days ago. Tuesday night. I learned something yesterday afternoon that made me certain of it. But I had no proof and I still haven’t. It looks as if there’s none to be had. So, as I say, in order that you folks may decide intelligently about the violin, I’ll just tell you what I know. Of course one of you knows it already.”

“One of us,” Diego muttered in low-voiced ferocity.

Mrs. Pomfret was staring at Fox with her red-rimmed eyes.

“One of us?” Dora gasped.

Koch folded his arms. “This,” he said, “is an amazing performance. The performance of a mountebank—”

“I don’t think so,” Fox protested mildly. “It seems to me the only sensible thing to do. After all, this man whom you all shake hands with is a murderer, he is ruthless and shrewd and dangerous, and even if it can’t be proved to a jury I think you folks should know about it. Particularly I think Miss Tusar should know about it. In a way she has been deceived more completely and heartlessly than anyone else. If anyone had a reason to expect a square deal from him, she had, but one of his victims was her brother, and she loved her brother. Didn’t you, Miss Tusar? Didn’t you love your brother Jan?”

“Yes, I did,” Garda snapped. “And if you can tell me—”

“I’m going to. He tricked your brother into committing suicide. When the trick was disclosed, he was afraid you might suspect him, and he sent you that note signed with a swastika. It wasn’t a Nazi who sent that note.”

“How do you know it wasn’t?”

“Because the swastika was wrong. It was counterclockwise instead of clockwise.”

Garda’s lip curled. “It was a swastika. Did you perhaps get that idea also from my maid?”

“No. All I got from your maid was news of Mr. Fish. Which brings me to the point. Mr. Fish killed your brother.”

“That’s a lie—”

Swift unconsidered impulse carried her that far, then she cut it off. But not in panic; her chin went up and her eyes blazed across at Fox.

“I thought,” Fox said quietly, “that you denied that you knew Mr. Fish.”

“I did deny it! I do deny it! I meant only — all you say is a lie!”

Diego blurted, “Who the devil is Mr. Fish? You said one of us.”

“So I did.” Fox glanced around. “I suppose the story of Mr. Fish is as good a place to start as any. He is a friend of Miss Tusar’s who frequently visits her apartment. Or did. Only when he arrives he is no longer Mr. Fish, but has become Mrs. Harriet Piscus — please, Miss Tusar! That won’t do any good. If you start a row I’ll put you out and go on with it anyway. If I libel you, you can get me for it.”

“We all should get you,” Koch declared with emphasis. “You said one of us. Now this Fish who becomes a Mrs. Piscus — I repeat, this is an amazing performance.”

“Let him go on,” Mrs. Pomfret said with authority in her tone again. “Go on, Mr. Fox.”

“Well,” Fox resumed, “I might as well clear up this apparent contradiction. It is only apparent. Mr. Fish is one of you. He has been excessively careful to cover his tracks in visiting Miss Tusar. He phones her in advance, probably from a public booth, so that she may dismiss her maid and be alone. He goes somewhere, probably to a furnished room, though the police haven’t been able to find it, emerges as a woman with a mourning veil, takes a subway, leaves it and takes a taxi to the Bolton Apartments, where, under the name of Mrs. Harriet Piscus, he rented a suite in January, 1939. He gets off the elevator at the seventh floor, and walks up two flights to Miss Tusar’s apartment. It sounds like a lot of trouble, but it looks as if it’s going to save him from being convicted of murder. Though of course that wasn’t why he planned all that tortuosity, since he had no intention then of murdering anyone; he planned it to keep his visits to Miss Tusar secret.”

A noise came from Diego Zorilla’s throat.

Fox looked at him. “I’m sorry, Diego. You can leave if you want to, but that’s all you can do... To go on with Mr. Fish. He loves beautiful things and is a passionate connoisseur of pottery. He also loves Miss Tusar. He got hold of a Wan Li black rectangular vase, from where it belonged in this house, and took it to Miss Tusar’s apartment and left it there. He wanted those two there together when he was there. He—”

“Liar!” Garda spat at him.

“No,” Fox declared, “I’m not a liar, but I admit the next few details are conjectural. It happened, though perhaps not exactly this way. Miss Tusar kept the vase concealed except when Mr. Fish was there, for fear some chance caller might recognize it as the one that had been stolen from Mr. Pomfret, but through carelessness it was in view one day when Diego called. Diego concluded that Miss Tusar had stolen it. Even before that he had probably concluded that she was supporting herself luxuriously by a series of thefts, for he needed to satisfy his mind somehow regarding the source of her income, and distasteful as that conclusion was, it was less so than the possible alternatives—”

“Damn you!” Diego got up. “Come with me, damn you!”

“I can’t, Diego. Not now. You could have avoided this, old man... So Diego took the vase. Openly, of course, in front of Miss Tusar, since he couldn’t be a sneak. His intention was to return it somehow to Pomfret, but he postponed it until too late. Garda had to tell Mr. Fish what had happened to the vase, and that put him in a panic, for by now he had other and more vital secrets even than his friendship with Miss Tusar. Two of them. Two murders he had committed. He didn’t even trust Miss Tusar any more, not completely; what if she had told Diego how she had got the vase? He broke into Diego’s flat and got the vase, and set a trap there to kill him which failed only because I happened to arrive on the scene before Diego did. Mr. Fish now wished to return the vase to Pomfret, and he did so, deviously, by mailing it to Koch, knowing that Koch would recognize it and take it to Pomfret. That, last Monday, was a busy day for Mr. Fish. That same afternoon he went to Perry Dunham’s flat and went through it like a cyclone. I don’t know what he was looking for, but my guess is that it was the second note that Jan Tusar left on his dressing table before he shot himself. Miss Mowbray thought she saw two notes there, but Perry Dunham claimed there was only one. A natural inference was that Dunham took one of them and concealed it, presumably on his person, and if I could make that inference, as I did, certainly Mr. Fish could. Besides, for him it was probably no longer an inference. Undoubtedly Dunham had told him he had it, and may even have shown it to him. Dunham was a rash and silly young man. He knew he was dealing with a cornered rat, and a cornered rat is a dangerous animal, yet after confronting Mr. Fish with the information in that note — not that he knew him as Mr. Fish—”

“Neither do we,” Henry Pomfret put in. “If we know him at all. Of course you’re welcome to the suspense... if that’s part of the stunt...”

Fox smiled at him, a thin tight smile. “Why?” he inquired smoothly. “Is it getting a little too tough for you?”

Pomfret tried an answering smile, and his was a shade crooked. “Tough?”

Fox nodded. “The suspense, I mean. Naturally you’re curious — for instance, about what gave me my strong suspicion Tuesday night. I’ll relieve you on that. Four things — none very convincing by itself, but in combination quite an argument. First, a pomfret is a fish, a spiny-finned sooty-black fish; and piscus means fish. Second, in choosing an alias many people are irresistibly tempted to pick one with their own initials; and there was Harriet Piscus and Henry Pomfret. Third, the Wan Li black rectangular vase had somehow got to Miss Tusar’s apartment; and what if it hadn’t been stolen at all? Fourth and by far the best, Mr. Fish had taken incredibly elaborate precautions to keep the secret of his friendship with Miss Tusar, so it must have meant crushing disaster to him to have it disclosed. That pointed, I thought, in only one direction. I was correct, wasn’t I, Mrs. Pomfret? Wasn’t it wise of your husband to do his utmost to keep you from learning that Miss Tusar was his mistress?”

No one stirred; no one spoke; and Mrs. Pomfret, erect again with her fixed gaze shooting past Fox at the figure on his right, was a frozen image. Pomfret was sneering at Fox, sneering indignantly and successfully at the preposterous calumny; but, feeling that other gaze, feeling it bore through him and into him, he was inexorably impelled to abandon Fox and his sneer, and meet it. He did it well; he accepted the challenge and struck at it as he could.

“No, Irene,” he said huskily but not weakly. “No. I assure you. No!”

With the last “No” there was movement, but not by him. The mounting fury of Garda Tusar, too high now for words, resorted to sudden and impetuous action, and was like lightning. Her darting hand seized the neck of the violin, on the table between her and Beck, and before either Beck or Diego could move to stop her, the fragile and priceless instrument went hurtling through the air. Presumably she aimed it at Fox, but it flew high over his head, crashed against the sharp corner of a steel cabinet, and fell to the floor. Beck bounded out of his chair after it, but Fox was there first and got it.

“Great God above,” Diego said. He gripped Garda’s arm and pulled her down into her chair.

Fox held the violin in his hands. The beautiful belly was splintered into fragments, so that he could look inside, at the inside of the back; and that, oddly enough at that tense moment, was what he was doing. He did so for some seconds, disregarding Beck clutching at his sleeve, until Adolph Koch exclaimed:

“Damn it, are you waiting for a cue?”

Fox, ignoring him, sat down, placed the violin on the table before him and folded his arms on it, and looked at Henry Pomfret.

“This,” he said, “changes the situation entirely. I admitted that I had no proof. If Miss Tusar had sat tight I doubt if there would ever have been any. My idea was that by convincing her that you had killed her brother I could get the proof from her — enough to serve. But she has given it to me another way.”

He tapped the shattered belly of the violin. “It’s here. Inside here.”