Rex Stout_Tecumseh Fox 03 Page 7

  “Nothing, Mum.” The young man reached across Wells to pat the back of her hand. “You know me, always up to mischief. I was going to plant a clue for him.”

  Fox shook his head. “You’ll have to do a lot better than that before we’re through.” He stood up. “If the rest of you will please leave me here with Mr. Dunham? Since it’s Sunday afternoon, I don’t suppose any of you have important engagements. If you have, and must leave before I get to you, I would like to see you as soon as possible. When I finish here I may or may not report to the police. That will depend.”

  Hesitantly, with glances and murmurs, they pushed back their chairs. Koch addressed Fox:

  “You said the varnish was put in the violin between noon Monday and eight in the evening. How do you know that?”

  “Because the tone was all right when Tusar finished practicing with Miss Mowbray at noon.”

  “How do you justify your assumption that one of us did it?”

  “Not my assumption. I make a start here, that’s all.”

  Most of them had started for the door, but were lingering. Mrs. Pomfret had moved to confront Fox:

  “I’m going to have a few words with my son. I’ll send him back here as soon as I’m through. This high-handed procedure—I presume you are aware that your threat to go to the police is a gross breach of our confidence in your discretion?”

  “I don’t regard it so.” Fox met her gaze. “And I meant what I said. I wish to question your son immediately.”

  “So do I. And I intend to. I would advise you, Mr. Fox—”

  “Take me first,” Henry Pomfret interceded from behind her elbow. “That is, if I’m included—”

  “Attaboy,” Perry Dunham cackled. “Hurling yourself into the front line—”

  “Come, Perry.” Mrs. Pomfret had her son’s arm.

  “But, Mum, I assure you—”

  “You come with me. Henry, I approve of your suggestion. Stay with Mr. Fox. If he wishes to search the house for cans of varnish, by all means let him.”

  She marched out with her son in tow. The others had gone. Perry, as he pulled the door to behind him, stuck his face beyond its edge to grimace derisively at the two who were left.

  Henry Pomfret seated himself in the chair Diego Zorilla had vacated. Fox scowled down at him through a moment’s silence and then declared: “For a lead nickel I’d use that phone now.”

  Pomfret nodded. “If I were in your place that’s what I would do.” He added hastily, “But I hope you won’t. Naturally you resent my wife’s taking Perry off like that, but that’s how she does things. She called you high-handed, and she doesn’t realize she’s high-handed herself. She can’t help it. She was rich before she married Dunham, and ten times richer when he died, and you know what money does to people, even the best of them, and she’s one of the best.”

  Fox turned a chair around, sat down, and, resting his chin on his thumb, regarded the husband speculatively. The face he saw irritated him. Yet there was nothing especially disagreeable about nature’s silly attempt to compose a human countenance out of a broad mouth and a sharp nose, small gray eyes and a wide sloping brow. Was he then irritated, not by what he saw, but by what he knew, that this man lived on his wife’s money? That suspicion, that he was allowing an appraisal to be adulterated by a prejudice, and a herd prejudice at that, provoked him further. He abandoned the appraisal and inquired abruptly:

  “Why did you and your wife leave before the concert began Monday evening?”

  Pomfret blinked. Then he smiled wryly. “Well,” he said, “I left because she told me to take her home.”

  “Why did she want to go home? Hadn’t she gone there to attend the concert?”

  “Yes. That was the intention.” Pomfret leaned back in his chair and folded his arms. “You know, you’re putting me on a sort of spot. No doubt the proper thing is to tell you that if you want to know why my wife left before the concert you can ask her, but if you did ask her she would as likely as not tell you to go to the devil, and then you might attach undue importance to something wholly trivial. On the other hand, if I tell you and she finds out that I did …” He shrugged. “That seems to be the lesser evil. It was a tactical retreat. The Briscoe-Pomfret War.”

  “War?”

  “My lord, you’ve never even heard of it?” Pomfret was amazed. “But then, you aren’t living in the trenches, as I am. Mrs. Briscoe is short on matériel, meaning money, compared to my wife, so she adopts a guerilla technique. She snipes. Last year, for instance, she practically kidnapped Glissinger, the pianist. Not long ago she coerced a promise from Jan to play at a musical for her. My wife talked him out of it. Monday evening in his dressing room he blurted at her that he had reconsidered and was going to keep his promise. Just before his concert was not time to start a counterattack, so she merely went home. The fact is, she has been damned upset about it, though she would never admit it. She thought her running out on his concert might have been responsible for the way he played, just as Dora thought it might have been her fault. Now you say it was something more deliberate—and a lot more damnable. God knows I agree, if it happened the way you think it did.”

  “How else could it have happened?”

  “I don’t know.” Pomfret, looking uncomfortable, hesitated. “You’re experienced at this kind of thing and I’m not. But you said the varnish was put in the violin between noon and eight o’clock Monday, and frankly, I don’t see how you can be sure of that.”

  “Do you mean it might have been done after the concert? During the two days it was in Miss Heath’s possession?”

  “Well—you can’t rule it out as impossible, can you?”

  “I can rule it out as silly,” Fox declared shortly. “If the varnish wasn’t in it Monday evening, what was wrong with it? Why wasn’t it all right? If you like to suppose Miss Heath put the varnish in, why not suppose she did it before the concert instead of after?”

  Pomfret flushed. “I don’t,” he said stiffly, “particularly like to suppose Miss Heath did it. If what my wife said about my vase made you think I’m ill-disposed toward Miss Heath, you’re wrong. I have never thought it likely that she took the vase.”

  “Your wife said that both of you have suspected her all along.”

  “My wife has. I’m not responsible for her interpretation of my failure to fly to Miss Heath’s defense. Ordinary common sense would keep a man from defending a beautiful young woman against his wife’s suspicion.”

  Fox considered that, and disposed of it by remarking, “I’m not married.” If the fact was regarded by him as a cause for regret, he successfully excluded it from his tone. He went on, “There, in Tusar’s dressing room, you said he blurted something at your wife. Was there a scene?”

  “I wouldn’t say a scene. No. But there was certainly an atmosphere. Jan always had nerves, but I had never seen him so much on edge. My wife knew what that concert meant to him, and she tried to calm him down.”

  “How long were you in there?”

  “Oh, ten minutes, perhaps fifteen.”

  “Was there anyone else there?”

  “Yes. Perry went in with us, but his mother told him to go and look up Dora. Beck went with him. Mrs. Briscoe was there. She’s a damn fool, and it was her mentioning her musical that made Jan say what he did to my wife.”

  “Did she leave the dressing room before you did?”

  “I don’t …” Pomfret thought a moment. “Yes, I do, she went out with Koch and left us in there. Or rather, Koch took her out. Koch was already there when we arrived.”

  “Was there anyone else in there while you were? Perry, Beck, Mrs. Briscoe, Koch. Anyone else?”

  I think not. I’m sure not. Just as we left Miss Heath and that fellow Gill went in.”

  “Where was the violin?”

  “The violin? I don’t remember—” Pomfret checked himself, frowned, and breathed. “Oh,” he said. “I see. You think it may have been done right there in the dressing room. I suppos
e that’s possible. There were a lot of people around, but of course they weren’t especially noticing the violin. It must have been there, but I don’t remember seeing it.”

  “Soon after you left, Tusar appeared at the door of the dressing room and had it in his hand.”

  “Well, it wasn’t in his hand while I was there. I’m sure I would have noticed it if it had been.”

  “When was the last time you had seen Tusar prior to that evening at the hall?”

  “I saw him Monday afternoon.”

  Fox’s brows went up. “You did?”

  “Yes.” Pomfret moved in his chair and an embarrassed little laugh escaped him. “So if you’re going by the law of averages you’ll probably pick me for the varnish suspect, or my wife, because we both had two opportunities. Only it happens that I didn’t see the violin either time. We were at the Garden at a matinee, a skating ballet, and we dropped in at Jan’s studio a little after five to invite him to have tea with us.”

  “Did he accept?”

  “He didn’t get invited. Diego and Koch were there, and my wife isn’t particularly fond of Koch. We stayed perhaps a quarter of an hour and then—What’s that?”

  Pomfret jerked erect in his chair to rigid attention. Fox turned his head, ears alert, listened, and turned back again:

  “It sounded like a female scream. Someone probably spilled a drink on Miss Heath—”

  But Pomfret was on his feet. “Not Miss Heath—I think—”

  A bellow came, from a distance and through the door, an urgent resounding bellow, in the bass of Diego Zorilla:

  “Fox! Fox!”

  Fox bounded across to the door, jerked it open, and was in the hall; and saw Diego headed for him on the run, with an expression on his face that no drink spilled on Hebe could have accounted for. He braked to a stop.

  “Well?” Fox demanded.

  “Old Stony Face,” Diego rumbled. “Overlook my excitement. I beg your pardon. I think he’s dead.” He hooked a thumb back over his shoulder. “In there. Would you care to look?”

  As Fox moved forward, Henry Pomfret, on a gallop, shot past him; and by the time he had traversed the corridor and reception hall and entered the yellow room, Pomfret had already reached his wife and had an arm around her shoulder, as she leaned against a lacquered table telling the transmitter of a yellow enameled telephone, in a tone more hollow and dreadful than anything Hebe Heath could have produced:

  “… Doctor Corbett, at once.…”

  Other voices, commotion, servants running.…

  Fox pushed through the huddled guests and knelt beside a prostrate motionless figure on the floor.

  Chapter 7

  The outraged and inquisitive law closed in.

  The phone call went to the 19th precinct at 3:36 P.M. At 3:40 a radio car arrived, and at 3:42 a second one. One minute later came a precinct lieutenant with two men; all three entered the building, but shortly the two men emerged onto the sidewalk again and joined a colleague in uniform who was engaged in a heated argument with a woman in a fur coat who was in the driver’s seat of a black sedan drawn up at the curb twenty yards from the entrance to 3070. One of the men energetically dispersed a small crowd of kibitzers that had collected and commanded them to move on; the other, after a short contribution to the argument, climbed to the roof of the sedan, perched there on his knees inspecting a spot near its center, bent over to sniff at it, and straightened to call down:

  “Go get a blotter inside there!”

  “Get it yourself!” his comrade retorted from the pavement. “I’m finding pieces of glass!” As in fact he was.

  At 3:49 a carload of reinforcements, not in uniform, arrived. One took over the argument with the woman in the fur coat; a second clambered to the sedan’s roof to consider the problem presented there; the others scattered to look for pieces of glass and shoo onlookers away. A limousine which tried to approach was held off and tenants of 3070, though enveloped in mink, were ruthlessly compelled to walk an extra thirty steps with no canopy to protect them in case it had suddenly started to rain. At four o’clock another police car swerved to the curb and a man with a black bag got out and hurried into the building. At 4:08 still another arrived and disgorged five men with a variety of kits and paraphernalia; and two minutes later, at 4:10, the chief of staff himself appeared. Followed by two subordinates, he descended from his car in the middle of the street, walked over and accosted a man standing by the black sedan:

  “What’s all this?”

  “A bottle of whisky thrown from a window up there, Inspector. Hit the top of this car and broke. We’ve gathered up all we can find, and we got a little of the liquid with a medicine dropper—”

  “All right, hold everything until I get a look upstairs. Apologize to the lady—”

  “Yes, sir, I am. She’s going to report me and see the mayor and sue the city.…”

  But Inspector Damon of the Homicide Squad had moved on. A large loose-jointed man, with the jaw of a prizefighter and the morose eyes of a pessimistic poet, he did not appear, as he strode into the lobby and headed for the elevators, to feel with an intensity the outrage of the law at finding itself flouted, but in fact he was outraged. Familiar as he was with crime, and willing to accept it as a necessary element in the composition of the metropolitan scene, after twenty years on the New York police force, he was always affronted by its insolent and improper intrusion into circles where it did not belong. So when he entered the richly furnished Pomfret reception hall and accepted the offer of a uniformed policeman to take his hat and coat, he was not only an officer of the law performing his duty, but also a man with a personal grievance. He scowled at a bulk approaching from the right and inquired testily, “Where’s Craig?”

  And when he had been conducted into a large chamber with yellow paneled walls and yellow furniture, and across to the far side, he stood and frowned down in silence at a figure stretched out on the floor. A man kneeling there twisted his neck to look up at him, nodded a greeting, returned articles to a black bag that was open beside him, and got to his feet. The inspector turned to another man who had detached himself from a group in the middle of the room, and demanded:

  “Well?”

  Sergeant Craig looked as if he too felt that crime had its place and it was not here. “It’s about as bad as you could ask for, Inspector,” he said gloomily. “Dead on arrival. Perry Dunham, son of Mrs. Pomfret. Drank whisky with eight other people in the room and collapsed and had convulsions and died. No statement, nothing. The doctor says cyanide poisoning.”

  “I said indicated,” the man with the bag interjected. “I’m not going to have—”

  “Thank you,” Damon said with peevish sarcasm; and knelt beside the figure on the floor, supported himself with his hands, lowered his face until his nose was all but touching the lips which had recently belonged to Perry Dunham, and sniffed. After another sniff he straightened, scrambled to his feet, started to brush off his knees from force of habit but desisted when he saw there was no need for it, turned to Sergeant Craig and demanded:

  “Who the hell threw a bottle of whisky out of the window?”

  “I don’t know, sir, we only got here a couple of minutes ago. Lieutenant Wade of the Ninetheenth—”

  “Right here, Inspector,” came a voice from a man entering. He advanced briskly. “Arrived at 3:43. Dead on arrival. Four radio men were already here. I was told a whisky bottle had been thrown from a window—”

  “Who threw it?”

  “I don’t know. There were ten people here to handle, not counting three or four servants, and all I know is Tecumseh Fox told me—”

  “Fox! How the devil did he get here?”

  “He didn’t get here, he was here.”

  “Where is he?”

  “In yonder. A room they call the library. I herded them all out of here and got names and addresses.” The lieutenant offered a sheet of paper. “That’s as far as I’ve got, except that I got the glass Dunham drank out of
just before he went down. I gave it to Sergeant Craig.”

  Damon ran his eye down the list of names and up again, grunted, and turned to the sergeant. “All right, get busy. Give it the works. I want what you find in the pockets. As soon as you have pictures of it send it down for a p.m. Find something that had the poison in it—it could have been either a liquid or a powder. Smell for cyanide and remember the powder doesn’t smell till you wet it. They think they’ve got something down below in a medicine dropper. Get it down to the laboratory, and pieces of the bottle they’ve collected, and that glass he drank out of. Keep two men on the door. Doctor, I’d appreciate a p.m. report as soon as possible.”

  “Sunday afternoon,” the doctor said dismally.

  “Yeah, it’s Sunday where I am too. All right, Lieutenant, where’s the library and for God’s sake quit looking as if someone poisoned this fellow just to give you a break and get your name in the paper.”

  “This way, Inspector,” said the lieutenant in a dignified tone.

  Inside the library door, Inspector Damon stopped, looked around, heaved a sigh, and looked around again. Fifteen faces had turned to him as he entered, and even with the little he already knew it was barely this side of certainty that back of one of those pairs of eyes was a brain desperately rallying all its cunning and courage for defense against a deadly peril. It was the way some murderers comported themselves when menaced by the deadly peril which he represented that gave the inspector a high opinion of the mental and nervous equipment of men and women; he was still capable of amazement that so cureless a guilt could preserve itself silent and unseen in the tiny prison of a human skull.…”

  “Mrs. Pomfret,” Lieutenant Wade said.

  She was approaching, and Damon moved to meet her. “I’m Inspector Damon,” he said gruffly, feeling awkward. He was no stranger to the ordinary extravagances of grief and could deal with them without much discomfort, but this woman’s eyes embarrassed him. They were dry, direct, piercing, without emotion.