The New Mammoth Book of Pulp Fiction (90 page)

The chief of detectives paused a moment, considering his reply. He looked sharply at Jeff, then spoke, “The medical examiner doesn’t know yet. He hasn’t found a mark on her body, except the bruised mouth, and that is hours old. It sounds damned silly, but the only explanation he has ventured is the possibility of rare poison.”

“It wasn’t that.’

“He doesn’t think it was, either. I’ll have you make a statement to a stenographer in a few minutes, Jeff. But, first, is there anything you can tell me that will speed things up?”

“No, I’m afraid not. I was looking at Pamela when the flash temporarily blinded me. When my eyes focused again, she was slumping forward. What caused the explosion?”

“Haven’t found out, yet. Whatever it was, it occurred in the top dish of the fountain, according to Smitty.”

“That’s how it was.” Smitty nodded. “It was almost dark. I was watching Pamela through my glasses from the tree, when the flash blinded me. When my eyes cleared, she was falling off the settee. I continued to watch. I saw Jeff’s back as he slipped into the house to phone you. No one concealed anything. I never took my eyes from that terrace until after the first policemen took over. Then I climbed down out of the tree and started toward the house. An officer grabbed me as I came to the end of the wall.”

Jeff nodded and turned to the chief. “How did you get on the job so quickly?”

“I wasn’t taking a chance, Jeff. When Smitty told me about the dinner tonight and that you were coming here, I sent two patrol cars to cruise the neighborhood. They were here in less than a minute after you called.”

An excited young detective burst into the library, glanced around hurriedly, and handed the chief a manila envelope. Chief Gaines lifted the flap. Jeff and the others leaned forward, Smitty bumping awkwardly against Jeff.

Out of the envelope rolled a small, misshapen lead pellet.

The mushroom-shaped bullet had a bit of red coloring on the end of it. Bill Gaines drew a magnifying glass from his pocket and studied it. He passed the glass to the other detectives in turn.

“I’ll be damned. An air pistol pellet. That little thing couldn’t have killed her, but call Doc Marshall and tell him about it. If this hit her, there must be some mark somewhere on her body.”

“Where was the slug found?” Jeff asked in a matter-of-fact tone.

The young detective answered without thinking, “Under the settee at the far end of the terrace where she—”

“Quiet!” Chief Gaines shot an irritated glance at his subordinate, and turned to Jeff. “Keep that to yourself, Hunter. We’ll find the gun this time. Hawkins” – he turned to one of the detectives at the table – “begin with Jeff Hunter. Take him up to one of the bedrooms and search him. Get a stenographer to take down his statement. Keep him there until I send for him.”

“What about this one?” Detective Hawkins jerked his thumb at Smitty.

“Leave him here. His eyewitness account will give us a basis for our questioning.”

“Come along, Mr Hunter,” Hawkins said.

“OK. Just a second.” Jeff addressed the chief. “Bill, will you have your men make a thorough search of the lawn? Using a vacuum cleaner might not be a bad idea for a quick preliminary search. I’ve got a hunch—”

“What foolishness—”

“Bill, you owe me something,” Jeff reminded him. “If I hadn’t tipped you off, they would have had Pamela upstairs and it might have been the same thing over again.”

“OK, Jeff.”

In an upstairs bedroom, Jeff was quickly searched. He dictated his detailed statement and was questioned closely by Detective Hawkins.

As Jeff signed the final copy of the statement, Patrolman Murphy burst into the room.

“Hell has broken loose. The chief wants you in the library, Mr Hunter. Bogart’s on the verge of apoplexy. Come on.”

“What’s happened?” Hawkins demanded.

Murphy paused to explain. “Plenty. Bogart’s taking the line that his niece died of heart trouble. The chief is holding everyone incommunicado. He’s within his rights on the preliminary investigation. Somehow, Bogart’s lawyers have learned something’s wrong here. They’re burning the town getting restraining orders against a p.m., against everything. The investigation’s at a standstill, outside of this house.”

Bogart, seated behind his big desk in the library, reached into his humidor for a cigar as Jeff entered. He paused a second, then jammed one into his mouth, and shoved the opened humidor toward the assembled crowd.

“Mr Hunter” – he looked at Jeff – “I wish you’d try to convince these stupid policemen that Pamela died of a heart attack.”

“The police aren’t stupid, Mr Bogart. Why have you changed your tune? Downstairs, a while ago, you were accusing me of killing her.”

“I thought you had some sense, Hunter. If she didn’t die of a heart attack, you did kill her. There are plenty of witnesses who heard you threaten her. I’ve told the police. Granted that Pamela played a mean trick on you, it was, after all, only a joke. It didn’t justify your striking her, much less killing her.”

“It was more than a joke, Mr Bogart. It was pure malice. There was something wrong with Pamela – she couldn’t bear to see anyone else happy. I tried to explain that to Myrna Dalton, but there wasn’t time.”

“Why not?”

“She shipped out a couple of days after Pamela planted those clothes in my bedroom. I wrote to her once from China, and asked if she was ready to listen to my explanation. She wrote back that she was.”

“Why didn’t you send her the statement you forced from my niece? Oh, she told me about that, too!”

“I did, Mr Bogart. It would have squared things, but Myrna was killed in a bombing raid before the letter reached her.”

Bogart didn’t comment. Absent-mindedly, he picked up the darts that were lying on the desk before him, and threw them into the target as if continuing the around-the-clock game he had begun that morning. The feathered darts smacked into three, double three, triple three, four, double four.

Before throwing the last dart, Bogart looked at it. The needle-like steel point was broken off near the wooden body. With apparent disgust, he dropped the dart into the wastebasket.

“You should be glad Pamela’s dead,” Jeff continued. “She killed her own sister; she killed Stevens, the man who made the bullet with which she shot Corinne. You can’t beat murder. It would have been only a matter of time until the police had sufficient evidence to ask for an indictment.”

Wendell Bogart’s face flamed. He jumped to his feet. “That’s slander! There has never been any sort of scandal in the Bogart family. If you don’t burn for murdering her, Hunter, I’ll run you out of town. I’ll get every penny you have or ever will have!”

Jeff turned and walked to the big table where Chief Gaines was examining the hundreds of bits of trash gathered from the lawn. He looked up wearily as Jeff approached.

“Where’s Smitty?”

“Here he comes, now. I gave him permission to go into the servants’ quarters to make a few phone calls from their phone. We’ve been using this one.”

“Hello, Jeff.” Smitty looked sheepishly at his boss. “You were right as usual.”

“What are the answers?”

“Sodium and under hair.”

“Thanks.” Jeff grinned at the bewildered men around him. “That’s what I thought.”

“Listen,” Chief Gaines protested, “this is no time to—”

“Hold it, Chief. Is there anything in this mass of stuff you gathered from the lawn that could be used for a cork stopper?”

“There’s a cork.” Detective Hawkins pointed to a small ordinary cork. “It was found near the fountain.”

“Good. Get a chemical analysis of scrapings from its top. The analysis should show a trace of sodium. While you’re about it, have the medical examiner give Pamela’s hair a fine-tooth combing, close to the scalp. Where did these come from?” Jeff picked up several dried grayish-brown oak leaves, with bits of fine gray hair clinging to them.

“From the lawn at the end of the terrace. Those green oak leaves were gathered up there, too. They were beyond the trellis where Miss Bogart was sitting.”

“OK. I think I’ve got all the answers. Mike! Mike Collins!”

“Yes, Jeff?” Mike got up from a lounge chair in a far corner of the room.

“This case is solved now, Mike. Tell the truth. Pamela’s dead.”

Mike nodded. “Yes, she’s dead.”

“What was your real reason for marrying her? Tell the truth.”

“I intended to kill her. Legally, of course, by eventually trapping her into admitting she killed Corinne. But I didn’t kill her tonight.”

“What did you see or learn a year ago that convinced you she had killed Corinne?”

“Corinne turned in her chair and looked toward the living room a few seconds before she slumped forward. In confidence, I told the police about it, but apparently they could do nothing, so I decided to drag a confession from Pamela myself. Marrying her would give me the opportunity.”

Jeff nodded. “This is what happened that night last June,” he continued. “After Corinne was shot, Pamela dropped the air pistol somewhere in the living room. The present killer found it. I don’t know where he concealed it for a year, but the police will find out.”

“I hope,” Chief Gaines said fervently. “I also hope you know what your talking about, Hunter.”

Jeff went on, “Tonight, a new killer went into action. He decided to create a diversion to cover the killing. He did that by inserting a dry cork in the tip of the fountain, and placing a small piece of sodium on it. When Fred Marston turned on the water, the pressure blew the cork out of the pipe, and the piece of sodium dropped into the fountain. Sodium is very tricky. There is spontaneous combustion when it gets wet. If Fred Marston hadn’t turned the fountain on, someone else would have. I nearly did it myself.”

“How do you know all that?” Chief Gaines demanded. “Are you just guessing?”

“Tell them, Smitty,” Jeff said.

“Upon getting Jeff’s written instructions – I found them in his coat pocket – I called everyone I could think of, chemists, magicians, professors of chemistry, everyone. It didn’t take long. They immediately and unanimously said ‘sodium’ when I mentioned water and the yellow flash. Spontaneous combustion in water and yellow flames are characteristic properties of sodium.”

Jeff grinned at the chief. “Under cover of the flash, the killer pulled the trigger of the air pistol.”

“Wait a minute,” Chief Gaines protested. “That little pellet couldn’t have more than stunned her. It—”

The shrill ringing of the telephone interrupted him. Hawkins answered it, and handed it to his superior. Chief Gaines’ side of the conversation was “yes” and “no”. He hung up and nodded to Jeff to continue.

“Now, the puzzling part was that there were apparently no marks on the body. I made a note of that and asked Smitty to get me the answer. Tell us, Smitty.”

The little man cleared his throat. “I telephoned several famous pathologists. Their unanimous opinion was that such a thing was impossible. The nearest solution they had for the problem was the possibility that a long, thin sliver had entered a vital organ. They discounted the heart, for they felt that the point of entrance would easily have been noticed.”

“What about the brain?” Chief Gaines asked.

“They said it could have entered through the ears, mouth, nose or eyes, points of entry harder to find. They also suggested making a thorough search of the scalp.”

“That’s where it was,” the chief grinned. “Doc Marshall missed it on his preliminary examination. He found the hole hidden by hair at the base of Pamela’s skull, not much bigger than a pinhole. Lodged in—”

Wendell Bogart jumped to his feet. “Did you have the gall to perform an autopsy on my niece without a reasonable suspicion of foul play?”

“We didn’t,” the chief said. “An X-ray of her head showed a long piece of metal like a thick needle.”

“I think you’ll find, Bill,” Jeff explained, “that it is probably the end from the dart Bogart dropped into the wastebasket. You see, the blunt end could be forced into the head of the lead pellet. When it drove into her skull, the pellet only followed until it struck bone. The point of the dart would continue into the head.”

“This is ridiculous!” Wendell Bogart sat down, puffing furiously on his cigar.

“Give us the answer, Jeff,” the chief said. “Also, tell us where the gun is.”

“Those leaves should tell you, chief.” Jeff pointed to the dried leaves with the bits of the gray hairs clinging to them. “What would dead leaves be doing on a lawn at this time of year?”

“I’ll be damned.” Chief Gaines whistled. “And I was raised in the country, too. Those leaves are from an old squirrel’s nest. Something must have disturbed it. Could it have been a gun?”

“That’s right. You’ll probably find some sort of contraption like those spring clothesline reels, or maybe something bigger, like the spring that pulls back an air hose.”

“But how?”

“I think you’ll find, if you examine the trellis, a spot where the air gun was wedged in the framework, screened by leaves. Under cover of the flash, the killer fired the gun, pushed it through the trellis, and let it go. A spring coil, or counterweight, jerked it up into that big oak tree. On its way up, it knocked off growing leaves and also struck an abandoned squirrel’s nest.”

“What’s the motive, Jeff?”

“The same old one – money. You ready to confess, Bogart? You know, your fingerprints will be on the gun. You were the only person who could have shot her in that spot. That’s why your arm was resting on the top of the settee, behind Pamela.”

“This is ridiculous!” Bogart snorted, his face turning gray. “Whatever gave you the idea that I need money?”

“Just little things, like cutting down on cigars, and not carrying matches. That’s the sort of foolish thing that normally wealthy people usually do when they try to economize. I suspected you weren’t on the level when I came here early this morning. Everyone around town seems to know you’re having financial troubles.”

Hawkins burst into the library. “The gun’s there, chief. There are beautiful prints on it, too. I’m not going to attempt to move it yet. I want to photograph that little blue steel squirrel in its nest. It was jerked up into the old squirrel’s nest by a fine steel wire, and a small coil drum. It looked like a specially made contraption to do that one job. OK for me to get a hook and ladder company out here? We can get photographs from the raised ladders.”