Date for Murder (8 page)

“It was Link’s car you were driving?”

“Yes.”

“You got an idea who might want him killed?” “None.”

“What was his business, huh?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know,” she confessed. “He never discussed business with me.”

The Chief spit contemplatively into the fireplace and held his silence for some time. Idell lit a cigaret. She half rose before the Chief spoke again.

“Miss Manders,” he said abruptly, “who around here uses cyanide, huh?”

I
DELL
shook her head. “No one that I know of,” she said. “Oh, wait! There is a cyanide spray in the gardener’s shed. We use it on the shrubs and plants.”

“Probably that’s it,” the Chief said.

“Who is familiar enough with the place to know where to find cyanide?” Mark demanded.

Idell shrugged. “That’s hard to say. Everyone has been here three days, as I told you; anyone might have found out just wandering around.”

The Chief said, “Okay, lemme talk to Miss Farman, huh?”

Idell went out, and in a few moments Maybelle Farman slipped through the door. She looked fresher than any of them. Her dark eyes were clear, and there was none of the blotch of sleep on her tanned skin. She smiled at Mark, nodded gravely to the Chief and sat down.

“Your room is next to your cousin’s, huh?”

“Yes,” she said.

“What did you hear after you went to bed?” She hesitated, and the Chief said, “We know about the gun and everything.”

She flushed a little. To Mark she seemed intensely quiet and self-contained. But they were separate and distinct things. Her quietness was that either of fear or deliberate evasion, he could not be sure which. Her self-containment was simply natural.

“The shouts from the hall awakened me,” she said. “After I found out the trouble I went back to bed.” Her eyes glowed suddenly, angrily. “I had trouble getting to sleep.”

“Something on your mind, huh?”

She looked levelly at the Chief. “Idell seems like a sister to me, Chief Rourke. How would you feel if someone tried—acted like that toward your sister?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Okay. And then you slept until when?”

“Until about eight o’clock,” she said. “At least I think that was the number of times I heard the clock chime. I was really dazed from sleep, so I can’t be sure.”

“Eight, huh. You hear anything when you woke up?”

“I heard two doors open,” she said. “One, and then quite a pause, and then another. There seemed no attempt at silence.”

“Whose doors?”

“Idell’s for one. And Leona’s. It is right across the hall from me, you know.” Mark sensed that she knew the circumstances from Idell’s angle and therefore spoke without fear of causing trouble.

“You heard nothing else?”

She pressed her fingers to her forehead. “I thought I did after that, but I was so sleepy, I can’t be sure.”

“Heard what?” he pressed.

“A muffled sound. It might have been a door quietly closed, or ‘most anything. I can’t really tell. Possibly it was my imagination.” She seemed quite anxious to help them.

“From what direction?” Mark asked suddenly.

“From—well, from the far end of the hall. The east end.” She paused, and her breath came a little more heavily. “Where Link’s room is.” Mark saw that she was quite sure it had been no figment of her imagination and that she had just realized the implication she had placed on Idell Manders, if Link’s door had opened after eight.

“That doesn’t mean it was Link,” he said. She smiled gratefully at him.

“Anybody else down that way?” the Chief asked.

“Across the hall is—was—the Major’s suite,” she said. And let me see, there is Link’s room, then an empty and then Mr. Manders’—Uncle Frank. That’s all.”

“What about that guy?” the Chief demanded. “If I was a dame’s uncle and some guy tried to—I mean, if he made a pass at her, maybe I’d get sore and think he shouldn’t oughta be her husband, huh?”

“He has a broken leg and a plaster cast all the way to his knee,” Mark said.

“Okay.” The Chief turned again to Maybelle Farman. “And after you heard all them doors slamming, then what?”

“I’m afraid I drifted off to sleep again,” she said. “The next thing I remember is a knock on the door and your policeman asking me to come downstairs.”

“You didn’t hear nothing from the next room, huh?”

“Should I have?”

“I’m only asking,” the Chief parried.

She shook her head in slow negation. “No-o, I heard nothing at all. Not after Chunk went back to bed. And that was very early.”

“He went to bed right after you did, huh?”

“He went into his room before I did,” she said firmly. “I watched him go. Then I heard him tossing around. But he stopped before I dropped off.”

“How well’d you know this Link?”

“Too well,” she said bitingly. “I met him through Grant—he and Chunk were school friends, you know. He was a—” She stopped. “Really, it isn’t my place to speak ill of the dead.”

“He was a what?” the Chief insisted.

She smiled without humor. “A beast,” she said. “I suppose I could get dramatic and call him a cad and a bounder. Those terms really do fit him.”

“Why?”

She raised her eyebrows. “Is it customary for a man engaged to a girl to make passes at one of her friends?”

“Considering the friend—” Mark said with mock gallantry. “Was that the only reason, Miss Farman?”

“I suppose you might say I was on Chunk’s side.”

“He and this guy didn’t go it, huh?”

“It will be obvious to you soon enough,” she said. “Chunk is in love with Idell, and I know she cares something for him. Chunk was jealous.” She said it without any hint that she expected them to take it as a motive against her cousin.

“That guy,” the Chief said disgustedly. “He keeps coming up all the time. Maybe we better see him, huh?”

Mark waited until Maybelle Farman had left the room. Then he said, “I don’t believe she told everything, Chief.” He grinned. “Old nose for news stuff, but I got the idea she was holding out.”

“On Farman?”

Mark said, “Yes.” He wondered if he were doing right. But then this affair, except where it concerned Idell intimately, had no personal flavor for him. It was simply professional curiosity—in a profession long dead.

When Tony Farman came into the room, the Chief snorted. “Him?” he said in a low voice to Mark. “That scrawny guy? Hell, this Link weighed close to two hundred.”

“Yeah,” Mark said. “So that leaves out everyone but Jeffers.”

“If you figure it that way and figure the Manders kid was drunk.”

“That’s the way you’re figuring it, isn’t it?” Mark asked. “And that he ate the poisoned dates in his room.”

“Yeah, we got all them things to consider.”

“Watch,” Mark said, with a grin. He waited until Farman sat down. He was in light tan gabardine trousers and a gabardine polo shirt, long-sleeved and open at the neck. His dark, straight hair was plastered to his head and the ends were curled from dampness. Obviously it had been wet and very lightly dried.

Mark said, “What did you do in athletics at school?”

Farman looked surlily from one to the other. His face was blotched from sleeplessness and anger clouded his dark eyes. “Look,” he said, “I suppose you know all about it by this time. Well, I didn’t kill him. Besides, since when did they make you a cop?”

The Chief said, “We’ll ask the questions; you answer.”

Farman shrugged. “All right. I played tennis. Why?”

“We’ll do the asking,” the Chief said, in a tone that made Mark think he was as baffled by the question as Farman.

Mark said, “Did Grant play tennis too?”

“Yes.”

“Any other sports, either of you?”

“Grant was number one on the golf team.”

The Chief said, “What’d you do after this ruckus?”

“I went to bed and went to sleep.”

“And you woke up when?”

“About a half hour before the policeman knocked on my door.” “Yeah? And stayed upstairs, huh?” “I got up, took a shower, did my exercises and dressed.” “Exercises, huh?”

Farman smiled for the first time. “I’m old-fashioned. I use barbells every morning before I dress. It gives me an appetite, and I have a fond delusion it keeps me in trim. I still play tennis occasionally.”

Mark thought: He’s that Farman. Seeded in tournaments regularly.

“And that’s how you got your hair wet, huh?”

Farman touched his black hair with his hand. “I suppose so.” He grimaced. “Think I got it from a swimming pool?”

“I might,” the Chief said. “And you heard nothing from the time you went back to bed until you got up?”

“Nothing. I went to sleep.”

“Right away?”

“I tossed a bit. I was pretty sore.” He sounded on the defensive.

“You had a right to be,” the Chief conceded. “Okay for now.”

Tony Farman left the room, and the Chief said pointedly, “The more I hear of that guy, the more I think—Say, what in hell’s this tennis got to do with it?”

Mark grinned. “If you don’t think a tennis player has muscle, Chief, stand in front of a smash some day, or even a fast serve. He’s wiry as a harp.”

“Yeah,” the Chief said. “I got him in mind.”

“They’re a well-behaved bunch of suspects,” Mark said. “And the other two coming up won’t be any trouble. Frank Manders seemed like a nice, quiet, sensible guy last night.”

“Yeah? Well, let’s have him in.”

Frank Manders fooled Mark. He came into the room on his crutches, and his normally kindly face was craggy with anger. His hair seemed to stand on end from some sputtering disgust burning within him. He plunked himself heavily into the chair, bit the end off an expensive cigar and glared at the Chief.

“What is the meaning of all this? We’ve been fingerprinted like common criminals. Herded into a room to sit at your beck and call.”

“Mr. Manders,” the Chief said wisely, “your family ain’t exactly out of the public eye. The sooner we wind this up, the less the papers are going to say about it. The guys on the Indio
Banner
’ll hear about this soon and be coming up. Pretty quick, then, the wire services’ll get wind of it and every big-shot police reporter in L. A.’ll be down here. If we can bust it before they come, then you’re a lot better off.”

Frank Manders subsided with a rumble. Mark realized the Chief was a lot smarter than some people gave him credit for.

“All I want is a few answers,” the Chief said. “What time you go to bed last night?”

“About three.”

“Go to sleep right away?”

“I did.”

“Wake up at all? Hear anything?”

“I take sleeping powders because my leg bothers me. I slept until the Queen woke me up this morning.”

“The Queen, huh? When was that?”

Frank Manders smiled. “Your policeman was thrust out of the way. I gathered from the Queen’s explosions when she woke me that he wasn’t doing it properly.”

“Yeah? Okay. Now if you didn’t hear nothing, there ain’t much you can tell about this. But how about asking them all to come down here? What’s that for, huh?”

Frank Manders hesitated. “Purely business administration connected with the estate.”

“So you ask ‘em all, the Farman pair, an’ Link and this Jeffers and this Leona Taylor, too, huh?”

“That’s right. Leona came as a friend of Grant’s. There was property owned jointly by Farman and Major Manders which was to be controlled by the other in the event one died. When both were deceased, then it was to be shared with the children. That is, Maybelle and Idell and Grant were each to get their third of seven-eighths of the estate. Tony was to get the remaining eighth. I can’t see what this has to do with Link’s death.”

“What did Link have in this business, huh?”

Frank Manders made a wry face. “Link was a creditor of Grant’s, payment contingent on his inheritance. We were going to straighten that out. Link seemed to need the money badly and wanted to know how much and when he would be paid.”

Mark thought of hulking Link and his recollection of having seen him, and suddenly something clicked into place. He tucked the idea away to be acted on as soon as he could get free.

“And Jeffers?”

“Grant just brought Jeffers along,” the lawyer said.

“Okay. Anything wrong with the financial set-up? Any chance of the dough being not as much as they figured?”

“Both the Major’s personal estate and his joint property with Farman are solid,” Frank Manders said stiffly. “Everything is in good shape.”

The Chief spit deliberately into the fireplace and then leaned forward. “Yeah?” he said quietly. “Then why’d Major Manders commit suicide, huh?”

Mark was startled. Frank Mander’s face drained of all color and his hands bent over and bit into his knees. He seemed frozen with surprise, and then it faded to consternation, and finally his training came to him and his face lost all expression.

“Who told you that?”

“We’re asking the questions. Sorry.”

“I don’t think that has any bearing on the case,” Frank Manders said. “You have no legal right to coerce me into a statement. Besides, his death is recorded as a heart attack.”

“Yeah, but nobody performed any autopsy,” the Chief said. “You might as well talk. We’re hanging the two together, and we’ll bust ‘em wide open if we have to.”

Frank Manders regarded the tip of his cigar, as yet unlit, for a still, long moment. He raised his head, and Mark saw he was scowling angrily. “I don’t believe in this raising the muck of the past,” he said. “But you insist on it. My brother’s finances had nothing to do with his suicide. It was a woman.”

Mark was stunned at Frank Mander’s answer. He had known the old Major well in a business way; since he had built his station close to their drive he had done all of their car greasing and general work. It seemed impossible to think of the stern-appearing but kindly Major with his thick head of grey hair and military moustache being so deeply entangled with a woman that he had killed himself.

“What woman?” he blurted.

Frank Mander’s voice was low. “I don’t know,” he said. Mark sensed he was lying.

“Then,” the Chief asked, “how do you know it was a dame, huh?”

Frank Manders said, “There was a letter the Major sent me just before he died. I brought it with me.”

“Handy so we can see it?”

Frank Manders raised his eyes to the Chief. “It was stolen the day after I arrived, by Link.” He got to his feet cumbersomely and slipped his crutches beneath his arms. “This is all I can tell you, gentlemen; I hope it helps. That letter is the reason Link is in the morgue now.” And with as much dignity as Mark had ever seen, on crutches or not, he went to the door and through into the hallway.