Puzzle of the Silver Persian (27 page)

Miss Winters watched, her face an expressionless mask. But all the blue seemed to have drained from her eyes, leaving them murky gray pools.

The sergeant stopped at last, out of breath. “It’s no go,” he said, apologetically.

Miss Withers stared at him. “You’re sure she’s quite dead?”

“Certain positive. But it hasn’t been for long, I’d say. Of course, the police surgeon will be better able to tell than I. Where’s the telephone? I’ll turn in the alarm—no, you’d better do it. Rules are that the officer stands guard over the body.”

She nodded but she did not move. “You think it’s foul play, then—as they say on the stage?”

Sergeant Secker shrugged. “No odor of bitter almonds on her mouth, if that’s what you mean. And not a mark on the body. But it’s not for us to say.”

Miss Withers stared down at the singularly calm and self-satisfied expression of the dead woman. In the last few weeks she had come to have a great liking and respect for the brisk and good-natured person who now lay so warm and yet so still, victim of life’s last practical joke.

“We shall see,” she promised. “We shall very soon see!”

M
ISS WITHERS MET LESLIE
Reverson on the top landing of the stairs. “I say, what’s the row about? Good old Treves just rushed past me with his face a nasty green color.”

She told him what the row was about. He blanched.

“No,” insisted Leslie Reverson. “That couldn’t happen to Aunt—”

“It happened,” Miss Withers snapped. “I’m sending for the proper authorities. Where’s Candida?”

“Candy? She’s in her room. Said something about packing, and that’s something I wanted to ask you about. Why—” He stammered wildly.

“Not now, at any rate,” Miss Withers told him. “Get Candida and take her down to the drawing room. There will be questions asked.”

“But I don’t understand—”

Miss Withers did not think it necessary that he should. She was going down the stairs two steps at a time.

The telephoning took almost no time at all, but when she came into the high-ceilinged drawing room of Dinsul she found Candida on a davenport and Leslie beside her making vague and nervous gestures toward cheering her up. Almost immediately there came a thundering upon the main door of the castle.

“The police!” gurgled Leslie. “I’ll go—”

Miss Withers waved him autocratically back to his seat. “If it is the police, I want to talk to them,” she said. “But unless the country authorities are practically instantaneous, I don’t see—”

Treves, still an unhealthy green in color, was already at the door. Here was no detachment of police. Into the hall, pushing wrathfully past poor Treves, came Loulu Hammond. She had bought a new and very becoming hat in Paris, but she was wearing a very unbecoming expression. Loulu Hammond was, as she would have put it, boiling mad.

“You!” she cried, as soon as she caught sight of Miss Withers. “Of all the colossal crust!”

She plunged on into the drawing room and stopped short as she saw that Miss Withers was not alone.

“Good-afternoon,” said the school teacher calmly. “I believe we all know each other?”

“Bother that!” Loulu blurted out. She snapped open her pocketbook and produced a cablegram. “I want an explanation of this!”

Miss Withers took the bit of paper, though she knew very well what message it contained. “Signed with my name,” she observed. She read aloud:

“GERALD INJURED SERIOUSLY COME AT ONCE.”

She smiled. “Of course, the injury was only to his sensibilities. But my intentions were of the very best.”

“Intentions?” Loulu gasped. “Do you know that I dropped everything I was doing in Paris and flew across the Channel at the ungodly hour of six this morning—and then found that the only quick way to get down here was to take another plane to St. Ives? It cost me a small fortune, and I found Gerald in a disgustingly healthy condition. The man at the school hinted that I might find you over here. What is this, a practical joke? Didn’t we have enough of that on board ship?”

Loulu stopped for breath, and just then four men, two in blue uniforms, marched into the hall past the butler.

“Where’s the body?” demanded the foremost, a gruff person in a worn raglan overcoat.

Sergeant John Secker came to the head of the stairs and beckoned. “Up here, sir.” The squadron tramped upward noisily.

“Body!” whispered Loulu Hammond. “Did he say
body
?”

Miss Withers gave a brief explanation. “Believe me, I did not plan to bring you here under such circumstances,” she said. “But there was something I had to say to you, and I could not mention it in a cable.”

Loulu’s eyes were very wide. “Never mind that. What happened to the Honorable Emily? Was it another—?”

“That,” said Miss Withers, “is what we are waiting to find out.”

Loulu turned to Leslie Reverson. “This is your place, isn’t it? Well, will you forgive me for bursting in at a time like this?” Leslie murmured something vague about being delighted, he was sure. But Loulu went on. “I’ll be at the Queen’s in Penzance until tomorrow,” she advised Miss Withers. “In case you care to give me an explanation of this—this stupid trick. I suppose Tom got round you somehow. But it’s no use your playing Miss Fixit, and you can tell him so for me!”

“Your husband had nothing to do with it,” Miss Withers began. But Loulu was heading for the door, evidently anxious to get out of the place before something more happened. Instead of Treves, a six-foot young constable with rosy cheeks stood against the door, his arms folded.

“Sorry, miss,” he said, “but you’ll have to wait.”

“But I just came here!” protested Loulu. “I don’t live here!”

“Then you shouldn’t mind waiting,” said the red-cheeked constable without offense. “It’s the show place of all Cornwall, and well worth a bit of study.”

“Ugh!” was the only bit of repartee Loulu could think of at the time. She came back into the drawing room and plumped herself in her chair. There was an interminable silence, for even Candida and Leslie had nothing to say to each other now.

“If somebody doesn’t say something before the clock strikes again, I shall scream and roll on the floor,” Candida promised herself through her teeth.

She was saved by the barest fraction of a minute, as the great-grandfather clock in the corner under the stairs began to whir inwardly in preparation for the striking of half-past two.

There were heavy footsteps descending the stair. It was one of the policemen. He nodded toward Leslie Reverson.

“The chief constable would like a word with you, sir.”

It was apparent from his tone that the policeman realized that he was addressing the new lord of the manor, and that Dinsul with all its parapets, blackened oak, tapestries, portcullis, gulls, and tourists was the property of this frightened young man.

With a last despairing look toward Candida, Leslie Reverson stalked out of the room and up the stairs in the wake of the constable. He was back in ten minutes, looking as if a tremendous weight had been lifted from his sloping shoulders.

Candida was called, and likewise returned looking considerably more care-free.

“You next, ma’am,” said the constable. Miss Withers almost trod on his heels as she went up the stairs.

She prepared herself to face again that poor clay upon the bed, but she was shown into the sitting room of the Honorable Emily’s suite. The man in the raglan coat was seated at the writing desk, with an open notebook before him. Sergeant Secker stood beside him. “This is the lady I told you about,” he said. “Miss Withers—Chief Constable Polfran of the Duchy Police.”

She was bursting with questions, but her attempt at securing information was nipped in the bud. Short, sharp queries came from the lips of the man at the desk, queries that dealt purely with the events in the Dinsul household that morning. As she finished her story of the locked doors and the discovery of the body in the bath, the bedroom door opened, and a man emerged who could be nobody but a provincial doctor. He carried a glistening top-hat, and looked very grave.

“Well, Doctor?”

“I knew this would happen some day,” said the medico. “As you know, besides being police surgeon, I’ve had a private practice here on the Cape for twenty years, and most of that time I’ve been Miss Pendavid’s medical man. She had a leaky valve in her heart, and a few months ago I gave her some smelling salts. She complained of seizures of giddiness and worse—they were nothing in themselves to endanger her, at least, not for some years yet—but I warned her not to attempt driving a car or swimming or anything where an attack might do real harm. She must have had a seizure while soaking in a full bathtub and drowned. All evidences of death by drowning.”

The chief constable leaned forward. “Careful, doctor. This woman may have been subject to seizures, as you call them. But she was also afraid for her life. A short time ago, I am informed, she received a warning letter, and Sergeant Secker of the C.I.D. is here making an investigation. It is of the utmost importance that we make sure that there could be nothing off-color about this death.”

The doctor looked annoyed. “Of course I was careful. I know drowning when I see it. Besides, wasn’t she locked and bolted in the bathroom?”

Polfran nodded. He turned to Sergeant Secker, and Miss Withers, who was trying to make herself inconspicuous in the offing, sensed a barely concealed rivalry between the representatives of the urban and rural forces. “Well, sergeant, are you convinced that this has nothing to do with the case that brought you down into country society?”

The sergeant was not convinced. “I could answer you better if I knew the exact time of death,” he admitted.

“That’s easy enough,” cut in the doctor. “Less than three hours ago, certainly.” Miss Withers breathed again.

“You are sure of that?” demanded Secker.

“Positive. A cadaver cools off at approximately the rate of two degrees an hour, and we can set the time of death by that fact. The body registered just over 93 degrees when I got here, setting the time of death at—” the doctor consulted an ancient golden watch—“between eleven-fifteen and eleven-thirty.”

“Good enough,” said the chief constable. “You heard young Reverson testify that he and the young lady house guest left to play golf at nine and returned a little before one? The girl says the same. And this lady—” he motioned toward Miss Withers—“bears them out in her statement. So does the butler, who was in the hall all morning. Reverson was the only person who could profit by his aunt’s death, and little enough when you consider that he would have inherited everything in a few years anyhow. Of course, we’ll check with the golf course people, but I don’t see how there could be anything to it.”

Nor did the sergeant. “Only it’s damned awkward just at this time,” he admitted.

“Perhaps Miss Pendavid herself would rather have postponed this event,” said the doctor pointedly. Nobody laughed.

“Very well, then,” said the chief constable. “There’ll be an inquest, of course. But I shan’t order an autopsy unless young Reverson, as the next of kin, demands it.”

“He won’t,” prophesied Miss Withers softly.

She went down the stairs with a tremendous feeling of relief coursing through her veins. It was a coincidence—but they happened everywhere in life. For a time she had feared that her juggling with dangerous matters had resulted in a horrible mistake, but it was turning out all right. The end justified the means. There was still Chief Inspector Cannon to contend with, but she could point out certain facts to him of which he seemed to be unaware. She went to her room for her handbag, made sure of its contents, and then hurried down.

If there had been a state of tension in the drawing room when Miss Withers mounted the stairs, it was there a thousandfold when she came down, for two new arrivals had appeared on the scene.

Chief Inspector Cannon of the C.I.D. brushed past her, headed for the stair. She would have stopped him, but he gave her a blunt “good-afternoon” and went up three steps at a time. He was wearing a very streaked motor duster and cap, and his feet left little puddles of water on the stair.

“Good heavens,” said Miss Withers to herself. “Is the Yard equipped with airplanes?” She had not expected him until after the five o’clock train pulled in. “Anyway,” she thought, “it won’t be long now.”

She came into the drawing room and saw Tom Hammond standing stiffly by the portières. He, too, made unpleasant little puddles on the floor.

“That frozen-faced schoolmaster said you’d set out in this direction,” he was saying to his wife. The reunion did not seem to be a warm one. Loulu turned her shoulder to him and gave Miss Withers a baleful glance.

“And you said Tom had nothing to do with arranging this!” she accused.

Miss Withers shrugged her shoulders. “I should think you’d blame Mr. Cannon,” she suggested. “He seems to have escorted your husband to Dinsul.”

“We met on the pier or whatever you call it that leads to this movie set of a place,” retorted Tom Hammond. “Of all the impossible houses to get to—” He snorted. “This morning I came here and they threw me out. This afternoon I can’t get out for love nor money!”

Miss Withers nodded to herself. Then it had been Hammond—the young man who had an argument with Treves that morning. She could think of only one reason why he might have come. But there were worse worries on her mind.

Miss Withers did not have her heart and soul in the somewhat unpleasant gathering in the drawing room. She highly valued her excellent eye teeth, but she would cheerfully have had both of them pulled in order to know what was going on in that room upstairs.

Leslie Reverson pulled himself together and remembered that he was host. “I say,” he said brightly, “it’s getting on. We might have some tea.” He pulled at the bell rope. But there was no answer. The faithful Treves seemed to have made himself invisible.

Nobody wanted tea anyway. There was a long silence in which nothing was heard except the remorseless striking of the grandfather clock in the hall. It struck three mellow notes and was silent again.