The Devil Loves Me

6

Prye was waiting in the library. Sands placed Duncan’s letter on the desk with a laconic “Make something of that, will you?” and sat down at the telephone.

“Sutton? Sands speaking. Make it concise and as simple as possible.”

“Right,” Sutton said affably. “Cause of death: fracture and concussion. Bruise on chin occurred some time before death, say about six hours. One bruise on right shoulder, two on right hip. The small number is inconsistent with a fall down stone steps. Besides, they occurred earlier, like the chin bruise. High alcohol content in the brain.”

“And your verdict?”

“Murder. The hat alone makes it murder in my opinion. There was some blood on it. If he’d fallen he wouldn’t have landed at the bottom of the steps with his silk hat on and the hat wouldn’t have blood on it. I think he was hit on the head with a heavy object and laid to rest on the flagstones. It’s been done before.”

“Much bleeding?”

“Very little. If the murderer was quick he could have placed the body on the flagstones while the hair was still absorbing most of the blood. Death, by the way, was not immediate, but he was certainly unconscious from the time he received the blow. Died some time between twelve and two. O.K.?”

“Fine,” Sands said, and hung up. He called police headquarters.

Yes, there had been several cars hauled in that morning. Sure, one of them was a new Cadillac roadster, blue, Massachusetts license plates, doors initialed D.S. It was found on Front Street near the Union Station. There was no gasoline in the tank. The ignition key had been left in the car.

“All right,” Sands said. “Connect me with Darcy if he’s awake.”

Darcy was awake. He said briskly, “Yes, Inspector?”

“You know the young man with the Cadillac roadster you were looking for all day yesterday, Darcy? He’s been found. Dead. And the car’s been found. In front of the Union Station!”

“I must have missed it, sir,” Darcy said efficiently.

“You must have, yes,” Sands said. “Make up for it today. I want to know if he went into the station, what he did, how he got back to this house. Try the cabs. If he took one I want to see the driver in my office.”

He hung up and turned to Prye. “What do you make of the letter?”

“A mystery,” Prye said. “First mystery, who is George?”

“Hadn’t Mrs. Revel a husband called George?”

“So I gather. I’ve never met him.”

“He’s a broker in Montreal,” Sands said. “And what did Duncan Stevens do in Boston?”

Prye looked at him sharply. “I see. Broker Duncan writing to Broker George.”

“Oh, it’s better than that. Didn’t you know that Dennis Williams is employed by George Revel?”

“Again no.” Prye paused. “That suggests that the ‘pretty camouflage’ is Dennis. Dennis is here ostensibly as Dinah’s fiancé and as a guest for the wedding. If actually he’s here to collect something from Duncan then he is a pretty camouflage. Duncan thought he was too pretty. Duncan wanted George to ‘come himself this time.’ ”

Sands smiled. “You’re doing well. Go on to the rest of the letter.”

Prye leaned over the desk again, then straightened up, frowning. “Well, the Royal Y is the Royal York, and I suppose it is better than any hotel they have in Kingston, but it seems silly to mention it.”

“Kingston,” Sands said, “has quite a nice penitentiary hut certainly it can’t be compared to the Royal York Hotel. Go on.”

“Penitentiary? Then it’s a threat on Duncan’s part?”

“Or a warning,” Sands suggested. “If he and Revel were partners I fancy it’s a warning. He implies that Revel is getting too careless, that he had better attend to the business himself and not send a subordinate.”

“Fifty brunettes at the Windsor,” Prye said slowly. “The Windsor sounds like a burlesque house.”

“Toronto is relatively free of burlesque houses. There are two running at present but neither is called the Windsor. The only Windsor I could find in the telephone book is an apartment hotel of unimpeachable reputation. You live in Detroit, Dr. Prye. The word Windsor will have a different connection altogether in your mind.”

Prye said, “It has. Windsor suggests passing through the Canadian customs, and the customs suggests smuggling. All right. Duncan says he has managed to smuggle fifty brunettes across the border at Windsor with ‘no trouble at all.’ Well, well. All I can say is he’s a better man than I am. I’d undertake one brunette under six months of age but no more.”

“So,” Sands said, “they weren’t brunettes.”

“No,” Prye said. “And what were they?”

“I’d like to know. Perhaps after a talk with Mr. Revel and Mr. Williams and Mrs. Revel—”

“You don’t think Dinah has anything to do with this business?”

Sands shrugged. “The word ‘pretty’ suits Dinah a little better than it does Mr. Williams. As for camouflage, one would hardly expect a woman to be in partnership with her ex-husband. But whoever Revel’s agent is, it’s clear that Duncan didn’t trust him or her. So he began to write a letter to Revel. He stops in the middle of a word. Why? Because someone comes along the hall, perhaps, and raps on his door. Duncan puts the letter between sheets of unused paper. It’s as good a temporary hiding place as any.”

“But it was a dangerous letter to leave lying around,” Prye objected. “I don’t think he would have left it. He was too cautious.”

Sands smiled cynically. “Cautious, but dead. I can think of two reasons why the letter might have been left in the drawer. First, he had no time to mail it or dispose of it. Second, if the letter had gotten into the wrong hands while Duncan was alive, Duncan could have explained it away, as a joke perhaps. But if the letter was found after he died it would mean danger not for Duncan but for someone else. For all we know, the letter is a deliberate plant, a subtle variation on the kind of thing we’ve had some experience with in the department: ‘To be opened in the event of my death by violence.’ ”

“In that case,” Prye said dryly, “he might have made it a little clearer.”

“Again, perhaps he had no time. The usual procedure in these cases is to leave the letter with a lawyer. But Duncan’s lawyer is in Boston. Duncan may have found out unexpectedly that his life was in danger. Suppose he were murdered. If he wrote a letter denouncing the murderer there is more than a chance that the murderer would find and destroy it. But if the letter were written in sufficiently veiled terms there is a chance it wouldn’t be destroyed. I am taking into account the description of Duncan’s appearance in the vestibule of the church. He looked ‘frightened’ according to the report.”

Prye took a cigarette from his case and lit it. Sands was refolding the letter and putting it back in his pocket.

“Rather a bright boy, Duncan,” Sands said, staring out of the window. “Whatever he was bringing across the border to Revel, he waited until he had a good reason for coming across. As guests going to a wedding he and his sister would be allowed through with a minimum of inspection. He and his sister,” Sands repeated slowly. “What part does she play in this mix-up?”

“Another camouflage,” Prye suggested. “An unconscious one, of course. If I were a fancy crook bluffing my way across the border I’d pick up a nice-looking female moron like Jane as a shield.”

Sands was still looking out of the window. “She was astonished at the contents of that letter. She said Duncan couldn’t have seen fifty brunettes because she hadn’t seen them. There was the faintest trace of resentment in her voice.” He turned to Prye, smiling. “I think she suspected that Duncan skipped out on her to see fifty brunettes and she didn’t like it a bit. But the question is, what are the brunettes? Who has them now? Was Duncan killed because he refused to hand them over? Or did someone apart from Revel’s agent find out about them and kill Duncan to hijack them? And when did Duncan write the letter to Revel?”

“Yesterday morning,” Prye said after a pause.

“That’s what I think. The possibility that Duncan left the letter deliberately is not a strong one. We’ll assume that he intended to finish and post it when he had the chance. Why didn’t he have the chance?”

Prye said, “Because Dinah Revel knocked on his door. Duncan was not sleeping but writing that letter when the knock came. Perhaps he pretended to Dinah that he was asleep or perhaps he talked to her and pretended to be asleep later when his sister came in. He still had no opportunity to finish what he’d been writing because Dinah’s exit and Jane’s entrance coincided. Jane woke him up by pouring water on his face. We have her word that he was terribly angry, which would be natural enough if he were really awake. He pretends to wake up then and sends Jane downstairs to get him more water because she has used up what was in the pitcher. And then we come to an interesting point: how much water was in the pitcher? Jane said it was half full.

“It’s probably Jackson’s duty to fill that pitcher every night. Why was it half full? Because Duncan had been awake before and had drunk half of it. And Duncan wasn’t poisoned. So if the water was perfectly all right when Duncan drank some of it but was poisoned when Jane drank it, we are led to Dinah Revel. It was Dinah who visited Duncan’s room.”

“We’ll have to ask Jackson,” Sands said.

He put his hand on the bell and in a few minutes Jackson appeared, followed by Sergeant Bannister and a middle-aged woman carrying a portable typewriter.

Sands motioned to the stenographer to sit down.

“We may as well take your statement formally, Jackson.”

Jackson looked embarrassed. “I’ve never made a formal statement to the police. I don’t know what to say.”

“I’ll jog you,” Sands replied. “First your full name, employment, and length of employment.”

In half an hour the stenographer was typing on her portable:

“My name is Edward Harold Jackson. I have been employed as houseman by Mrs. Jennifer Shane at 197 River Road for the past two months. I am an American citizen, born and raised in Boston, Massachusetts. During my employment in Toronto I have met the deceased twice. The first time I met him was shortly after my arrival, when the deceased came to visit Mrs. Shane. The second time was last Tuesday, when he arrived by motor from Boston to be a guest at Miss Shane’s wedding. On neither occasion did I have any personal conversation with him. I performed the same duties for him as I did for the other male guests. On September the twenty-ninth, last Friday evening, I filled a pitcher with water and left it beside the deceased’s bed, according to my instructions from the deceased himself. He gave me no reason. The pitcher was at least seven eighths full of water. I did this after I helped the deceased retire for the night, shortly after twelve o’clock. I did not enter his room again until nine-thirty the following morning. Miss Stevens was coming out of the deceased’s room as I was passing through the hall. She had an empty pitcher in her hand. She instructed me to help the deceased get dressed for the wedding. I did so. I went downstairs at approximately ten o’clock. During the time I spent with the deceased no one came into the room except Miss Stevens, who brought back the pitcher full of water. When I went downstairs the deceased came with me and I served breakfast to him and Mr. Williams. The wedding party left the house at approximately half-past ten. I did not see the deceased again until my attention was directed to him by Mr. Harrison, the milkman, at approximately six o’clock on Sunday morning. I swear that these statements are true.”

The stenographer whisked the sheets of paper out of her typewriter and Jackson signed his name to both copies.

Sands went over to Sergeant Bannister, who was standing disconsolately looking at the ceiling.

“Think you can take some statements by yourself now?”

Bannister blushed with pleasure. “Oh yes, sir! Very kind of you, sir.”

“All right. Get to work in the sitting room down the hall. As each one is finished bring it to me and I’ll look it over. You may go.”

“You might have told me,” the stenographer said acidly, “before I set up housekeeping in here.”

She snapped the lid on her typewriter and went out. Jackson and Bannister followed.

The inspector’s eyes rested on Prye. “Well?”

“Well,” Prye echoed, “I guess I’ll have to believe him. He filled the pitcher, Duncan drank some of it when he awoke, and somebody poisoned the rest. The whole setups rather odd — Duncan lying in bed feigning sleep while somebody drops poison into his water.”

“Miss Shane seems quite positive that Duncan wrote the letter you received at the church. If he did, one can assume that it was he who poisoned the water too, perhaps intending to drink it himself to stop the wedding. Then when he saw Jane drinking it he decided that her collapse would do just as well as his own and let her drink it.”

“Very Duncanesque, yes,” Prye said.

“Still, it’s not as likely as the Mrs. Revel theory, is it? I would like to talk to that young woman. See if she’s up, will you?”

Prye found Dinah in the dining room. She was wearing tailored green silk pajamas with a matching coat. She had a cup of black coffee in front of her. Across the table Aspasia was chewing with ladylike precision on a piece of toast.

The two ladies were ignoring each other.

Prye said, “Good morning,” and gave Dinah the inspector’s message. She got up, nodded coolly at Aspasia, and walked to the door. In the hall she put her hand on Prye’s arm and told him to wait.

Prye stopped.

“What’s he like?” Dinah asked. “Barking or biting?”

“Neither. He’s nice. Hard to fool, I should say.”

Dinah gave a short, bitter laugh. “There isn’t a father’s son of you that’s hard to fool.”

“Well, don’t be too clever. Your position isn’t too good.”

“Why mine?” She paused, her eyes suddenly hard. “Oh, I get it. The hepatica’s jaw dropped and something fell out of it?”

“More or less. Jane told the truth.”

Dinah smiled thinly. “You dear little male children. To you anything that comes out of a rosebud mouth is pure gospel. Well, my mouth is no rosebud but I’ll do the best I can.”

She walked away with a casual wave of her hand. At the library door she turned around and grinned.

“Better stay out, Paul. I haven’t told the honest-to-God somber truth for years and I might be embarrassed in front of a witness.”

“I wouldn’t want to embarrass you,” Prye said virtuously. “I’ll wait in the hall.”

Dinah raised a thin eyebrow. “There are chairs in the drawing room and not in the hall. Besides, I won’t be talking very loudly.”

She opened the library door, walked in, and closed the door firmly behind her. Prye heard her cheerful, “Hello, Inspector. Think you can handle me alone or shall we put Dr. Prye out of his agony and let him come in?”

The inspector’s reply was inaudible so Prye walked across the hall into the drawing room.

Dennis Williams was sitting in front of the fireplace with a book in one hand and a drink in the other. He looked up. “What’s the commotion out in the hall?”

“No commotion,” Prye said. “Dinah.”

Dennis grinned. “Same thing. What does the nasty policeman want with Dinah?”

“I don’t know.”

“I wonder,” Dennis said.

“Go ahead and wonder,” Prye said politely.

Dennis yawned and let his book slide to the floor. Prye noticed that it was a copy of Macbeth.

“Chasing rainbows, I see; improving your mind.”

Dennis yawned again. “This is the damnedest wedding I’ve ever been at. Too bad about Jane and Duncan.”

“Especially about Jane,” Prye said.

“Why especially?”

“I don’t know. Probably because there’ll be no one to look after her.”

“Hell,” Dennis said. “She can always get someone to look after her.”

“Someone such as you.”

Dennis sat up straight. “What does that mean?”

“Nothing much,” Prye said. “I merely thought you’d like the job.”

“I’m not anxious to get married.”

“No, I noticed that.”

“Why should I be?”

“This is a hell of a conversation,” Prye said. “Have a cigarette?”

“You started it. I have my own cigarettes.”

“Gold-tipped and monogrammed?”

Dennis scowled. “You’re trying to start trouble, are you?”

“I suppose I am,” Prye said. “It’s my nature. When trouble doesn’t come to me I go to it. Besides, I don’t like the idea of George sending you here to collect from Duncan, using my wedding as a cover up.”

“George who?” Dennis asked.

“George Revel, as in Dinah Revel.”

“George didn’t send me here. Don’t be absurd. He doesn’t even know I’m here and he’ll raise hell when he finds out. He’s still crazy about Dinah.”

“I think Revel sent you here,” Prye said.

“What you think is my idea of something not to get excited about,” Dennis said. “As long as you don’t think out loud in front of the wrong people.”

“The wrong people as typified by Inspector Sands have already thought. The verdict: Revel sent you here to collect from Duncan. Same as mine, see?”

“I see.” Dennis said carefully. “I am elected number-one goat because you’re going to be related to the rest of the household.”

Prye got up and walked over to the fireplace.

“Look, Williams. Sands has found a letter from Duncan to George Revel which makes it rather clear that Revel was sending an agent to this house to collect something from Duncan and that Duncan himself was not satisfied with the agent. You work for Revel and you are here in the house and I can easily imagine Duncan not being satisfied with you.”

“Can you?” Dennis said. “Tsk.”

“Because you were making passes at his sister.”

“She liked them.”

“I bet all the girls do,” Prye said, “but I wouldn’t call that important. The important thing is, did you collect from Duncan?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I didn’t know he had anything to collect,” Dennis said coolly. “I came here for the wedding. I even bought you a silver sandwich tray for which you haven’t thanked me, incidentally. Also incidentally, I hope you choke on every sandwich you eat off it. I am, in brief, a simple, guileless wedding guest with no ulterior motive up my sleeve and a burning desire to get my twenty bucks back on that sandwich tray.”

“I never use them anyway,” Prye said. “But thanks. I’ll do as much for you some day when you decide on the woman. How much do you know about George Revel’s business?”

“Practically nothing,” Dennis admitted cheerfully. “The business angle is for George. My forte is the drawing room. I sit around making myself pleasant, even as I am doing now, without thought of reward. I’m a kind of contact man. I lead the horses to water and George makes them drink. I get a commission on all water drunk.”

“How long have you been working for Revel?”

“A year and a half.”

“Before the divorce, that is. You wouldn’t have had anything to do with the divorce, I suppose?”

“Not a thing,” Dennis said virtuously. “Besides, in Quebec women don’t get divorces because someone else has captured their fancy. They’ve got to have a long list of complaints and Dinah had. George can be quite a cutup.”

“And after the divorce you and Dinah were strangely drawn toward each other?”

“That’s right. Dinah’s a nice girl.”

“And a clever girl.”

“I’m afraid so,” Dennis said with a sardonic smile.

“Clever enough to know all about Georges business?”

“I think so.”

“Dinah still friendly with George?”

Dennis hesitated. “I don’t know. I haven’t seen them together since the divorce and she doesn’t talk about him.”

“You unlovely liar,” Prye said. “In the short time since I’ve known Dinah she has referred to George variously as a louse, a heel, and a punk.”

“Not to me,” Dennis insisted. “Of course I know she’s a little bitter about the whole thing. But any woman would be.”

“And Dinah more so.”

“Maybe.”

“In fact,” Prye said, “Dinah has a grudge against Revel. She wants to hit back at him. Now suppose you too have a grudge against Revel and you’d like to get back at him too. Such a pleasant partnership. Dinah provides the money—”

There was a rap at the door and Jackson appeared with a message that Dennis was wanted on the telephone. Dennis followed him out of the room.

In five minutes Jackson was back again.

“I thought you’d be wanting to see me, sir,” he said.

Prye looked at him coolly without speaking.

“There is an extension phone in the kitchen,” Jackson said carefully, “which has its uses.”

“Ten dollars,” Prye said.

“I was figuring on twenty, sir. A word-for-word report is worth twenty, I think.”

“O.K. Twenty.”

Jackson cleared his throat. “Well, it was a local call, sir, from a man called George. Mr. Williams gave a gasp when George identified himself, then he said: ‘I can’t talk to any reporters now. The police have forbidden it.’ George then wanted to know if Mr. Williams was crazy. Mr. Williams said: ‘No. I can’t talk to any reporters about the murder.’ Mr. Williams then hung up.”

Prye gave him a twenty.

Jackson pocketed it with a smile. “Easy money. Too bad I didn’t think of this when I was working my way through college.”

“I’m not sure you didn’t,” Prye said.

He followed Jackson into the hall. Mrs. Shane was just coming out of the small sitting room farther down the hall. When she saw Prye she swept toward him with a flutter of silk.

“I have just thought of something, Paul,” she announced. “I didn’t know my eyedrops were poison. How could anyone else have known?”

“There are plenty of books on toxicology,” Prye replied. “Just how much had you used out of that bottle?”

“Very little. It was tiresome.”

“When you used them did you taste anything some time afterward?”

“I didn’t swallow them, Paul,” Mrs. Shane said patiently. “I put them in my eyes.”

“The question still goes.”

Mrs. Shane pursed her lips thoughtfully. “Now that you mention it I recall a distinctly bitter taste. It was more a sensation at the back of my throat than a taste, if you know what I mean. And quite, quite bitter. I wonder if it would do any good for me to ask each person in the house if he or she took the eyedrops from my bathroom.”

“It can’t do any harm,” Prye said dryly.

“Then I shall. There’s Dinah. I shall ask her first.”

Dinah was coming out of the library. She was smiling but there was a thin line of white around her mouth.

“What were you going to ask me, Aunt Jennifer?” she said sharply.

Mrs. Shane looked somewhat uncomfortable. “Well, I’m going to ask everyone, of course.”

“What is it?”

“Did you take the eyedrops from my bathroom?”

Dinah stared at her. “No, I didn’t. And when I go in for poisoning blond bitches I’ll use something stronger than eyedrops.” She went past them up the stairs.

“Such language,” Mrs. Shane said absently.

Inspector Sands appeared in the doorway of the library and beckoned to Prye. Prye excused himself and joined him.

“Shut the door,” Sands said.

Prye shut the door.

“Mrs. Revel is an odd woman.”

“Somewhat neurotic,” Prye agreed. “A lot of intelligent people are. Dinah’s case seems to be a little more pronounced because she has money enough not to care what other people think.”

Sands hesitated a moment. “Well, frankly, I thought she told me a straightforward and convincing story.”

“I thought she would,” Prye commented.

“First she told me she had no motive to do away with Duncan beyond dislike. Second, she admitted going into Duncan’s room before the wedding because she had seen a letter lying on the hall table addressed to Duncan in Revel’s handwriting. She went in to ask Duncan what it was. He was sleeping, she said, and did not wake up. She left immediately. Third, she did not correspond with Duncan.”

“Who said she did?” Prye asked in surprise.

“Jane Stevens. What really happened was this: Revel had been writing to Duncan from Montreal. Duncan simply told his sister the letters were from Mrs. Revel, pretended to quote from them, and trusted to luck that Jane wouldn’t find out. Jane swallowed everything he told her and Duncan apparently did all the social letter-writing for both of them.”

“He would,” Prye said. “There was a pronounced feminine streak in him.”

“More than a streak. Four, Mrs. Revel says she is engaged to marry Dennis Williams. It hasn’t been announced yet, but apparently he is having a ring made for her.”

“His story.”

“Yes. Five, she has no relations with her former husband and has no idea what business he and Duncan had between them. Six, I don’t know what to think about this.”

He paused and added slowly, “She said that when she met Jane going into Duncan’s room Jane was carrying a small green glass bottle, the kind of bottle eyedrops are put in.”

Prye smiled apologetically. “I’m sorry to spoil the fun but Jane has said she was taking some aspirin tablets in to Duncan, and at least one large drug company packs its aspirins in green bottles.”

Sands looked gloomily up at the ceiling and said, “Hell, hell.”