The French Powder Mystery
- Автор: Куин (Квин) Эллери
- Серия: Ellery Queen #2
- Год: 1930
- Язык: английский
- Год: Frederick A. Stokes
- Жанр: Классические детективы
Электронная книга - «The French Powder Mystery». Краткое содержание книги:
“It was most puzzling,” continued the housekeeper. “Bernice had spoken to me casually about losing the key just before lunch. Yet when she called in the afternoon, the first thing she said was that she wanted her key to the apartment, and would send around for it by messenger at once!”
“Is it possible,” muttered the Inspector, “that she thought you had already had a duplicate key made for her?”
“No, Inspector,” said the housekeeper incisively. “It didn’t sound as if she thought that at all. In fact, it seemed as if she’d utterly forgotten about having lost the key. So much so that I immediately reminded her that she’d told me about losing the key, in the morning, and having another made for her. She seemed quite distressed and said, ‘Oh, yes, Hortense! Isn’t it stupid of me to forget that way,’ and began to say something else, when she stopped suddenly and then said, ‘Don’t bother, Hortense, after all, it isn’t particularly important. I thought I might want to drop in at the apartment this evening.’ I reminded her that she could get the use of the master-key at the nightwatchman’s desk if she wanted to go to the apartment so badly. But she didn’t seem interested and hung up immediately.”
There was a little silence. Then Ellery looked up with a great light of interest in his eyes.
“Can you remember, Miss Underhill,” he asked, “just what it was that Miss Carmody began to say in the middle of the conversation, and then appeared to reconsider?”
“It’s hard to be exact about it, Mr. Queen,” replied the housekeeper. “But somehow I got the impression that Bernice was going to ask me to get one of the other keys to the apartment for her. Perhaps I’m wrong.”
“Perhaps you are,” said Ellery whimsically, “but I’d not give even the most preposterous of odds that you aren’t...”
“You know,” added Hortense Underhill, as an afterthought, “I also got the impression, when she began to say that and stopped, that—”
“That somebody was talking to her, Miss Underhill?” asked Ellery.
“Exactly, Mr. Queen.”
The Inspector turned a startled face toward his son. Velie moved his huge bulk lightly forward and whispered in the Inspector’s ear. The old man grinned.
“Keen, keen, Thomas,” he chuckled. “That’s just what I was thinking, too...”
Ellery flicked his finger warningly.
“Miss Underhill, I can’t expect you to exhibit miracles of acuteness,” he said in a serious, admiring tone. “But I should like to ask — if you’re entirely certain that it was Miss Carmody talking to you over the wire?”
“That’s it!” cried the Inspector. Velie smiled grimly.
The housekeeper regarded the three men with strangely limpid eyes. Something electric shot through all four.
“I don’t — believe — it — was,” she whispered...
After a while they left the missing girl’s bedroom and entered an adjoining room. It was severer in tone and immaculately clean.
“This is Mrs. French’s room,” said the housekeeper in a low voice. Her acid nature seemed sweetened by a sudden realization of complex tragedy. Her eyes followed Ellery with a grave respect.
“Is everything in perfect order, Miss Underhill?” asked the Inspector.
“Yes, sir.”
Ellery walked over to a wardrobe and scanned its neat racks thoughtfully.
“Miss Underhill, will you please look through this rack and tell us if any of Miss Marion French’s clothes are here?”
The housekeeper went through the racks while the three men looked on. She proceeded carefully, then shook her head in an unhesitating negative.
“Then Mrs. French was not in the habit of wearing Miss French’s things?”
“Oh, no, sir!”
Ellery smiled with satisfaction and at once wrote a line of hieroglyphics in his makeshift notebook.
22
Books Again
The three men stood uncomfortably in old Cyrus French’s bedroom. The nurse fluttered about in the hall, a solid door separating her from her charge. Marion and Weaver had been ordered downstairs to the drawing-room. French’s physician, Dr. Stuart, a large impressive man, with a professional irascibility glared at the Queens from his post at French’s bedside.
“Five minutes — no longer,” he snapped. “Mr. French is hardly in a conversational condition!”
The Inspector clucked placatingly, and stared at the sick man. French lay lumpily in his great bed, nervous eyes darting from one to another of his inquisitors. One flabby white hand plucked at the silk coverlet. His face was entirely drained of color, pasty, shockingly unwholesome in appearance. His grey hair straggled over a furrowed forehead.
The Inspector stepped nearer to the bed. He bent forward and said in a low voice, “This is Inspector Queen of the police, Mr. French. Can you hear me? Do you think you are strong enough to answer a few perfunctory questions about Mrs. French’s — accident?”
The quicksilver eyes ceased rolling and concentrated on the gentle grey face of the Inspector. They blinked suddenly with intelligence.
“Yes... yes...” French whispered, moistening his thin pale lips with a bright tongue. “Anything... to clear up this... ghastly business...”
“Thank you, Mr. French.” The Inspector leaned closer. “Is there any explanation in your mind that might account for the death of Mrs. French?”
The liquid eyes blinked, closed. When they opened, there was an expression of utter bewilderment within their reddish depths.
“No... none,” French breathed painfully. “None... whatsoever... She... she had... so many friends... no enemies... I... it is... unbelievable that any one... should be so... fiendish as to... murder her.”
“I see.” The Inspector tugged at his mustache with nimble fingers. “Then you know of no one who might have had a motive for killing her, Mr. French?”
“No...” The hoarse feeble voice gathered strength suddenly. “The shame — the notoriety... It will be the death of me... With all my... unsparing efforts to put an end to vice... that this should happen to me!.. Hideous, hideous!”
His voice grew more and more violent. The Inspector motioned in alarm to Dr. Stuart, who leaned quickly over the sick man and felt his pulse. Then, in an extraordinarily gentle voice, the physician soothed his patient until the throaty rumblings faded off and the hand on the coverlet unflexed and lay still.
“Have you much more?” asked the doctor in a gruff undertone. “You must be quick, Inspector!”
“Mr. French,” said Queen quietly, “is your personal key to the store apartment always in your possession?”
The eyes rolled sleepily. “Eh? Key? Yes... yes, always.”
“It has certainly not left your person in the past fortnight or so?”
“No... positively not...”
“Where is it, Mr. French?” continued the Inspector in an urgent soft voice. “Surely you will not mind letting us have it for a few days, will you, sir? In the interests of justice, of course... Where? Oh, yes! Dr. Stuart, Mr. French asks that you get the key from the key-ring in his trousers hip-pocket. In the wardrobe, sir, the wardrobe!”
In silence the burly physician went to a wardrobe, rummaged about in the first pair of trousers that met his eye, and returned in a moment with a leather key-case. The Inspector examined the gold-disked key marked C. F., unhooked it, and returned the case to the doctor, who promptly replaced it in the trousers. French lay quietly, eyes veiled by puffy lids.
The Inspector handed Cyrus French’s key to Ellery, who deposited it with the other keys in his pocket. Then Ellery stepped forward and leaned over the sick man.