Rather Cool for Mayhem, page 16
“I know why Alma was killed,” he said. “And I know who killed her.”
“So do I,” I said. “I thought I could surprise you, but it looks like I’ve come all the way back here for nothing.”
McKay made no comment. He swung the handcuffs in shorter, quicker arcs. I kept talking. “Did Bob Stewart explain what he was doing on the stairway of the inn just about the time Alma was killed, Captain?” I asked.
“He did not.” McKay looked hard at Stewart. “Why didn’t you, Stewart?”
Bob Stewart ran an uneasy finger around the inside of his collar. Joan put her arm around his shoulders.
“I didn’t think it was necessary, Captain,” Stewart said, “the way things turned out. I was looking for Tommy and I was on my way to Alma’s room. If I’d gone all the way to the top of the stairs, I might have had a story to tell. I might have run into Alma’s murderer. But when I was halfway up, I heard Tommy shouting outside. So I turned around and came downstairs again.”
“You came down very slow and quiet,” I said, “like you didn’t want to be seen.”
“I guess I felt a little sheepish,” Stewart said. “Joan always says I’m like a mother hen with Tommy. I didn’t want her to tell me again I ought to start clucking.”
McKay grunted and put the handcuffs back in his pocket.
Still holding the Grossbeck prescription book in the crook of my elbow, I went over to sit on the arm of Grace’s chair. Then I noticed for the first time that Henry Pennington wasn’t around. This didn’t seem natural.
“Where’s the future senator?” I asked.?
“Henry went to the village for cigarettes,” Grace said. “They haven’t got his brand at the inn.”
McKay glanced at his watch. “We expect Mr. Pennington back very shortly,” he said, “with roses for Miss Boyd.”
“If he brings me any more roses, I’ll scream,” Grace declared.
“If he doesn’t bring roses, I’ll scream,” McKay said.
“Where the hell is he going to buy roses around here on Sunday?” I asked.
“He’ll buy roses,” McKay insisted. “Sunday is a big visiting day at the Blue Falls sanitarium. The florists keep open. By the way, Lawrence, when are you going to start reading to me from that scrapbook you brought along?”
“I thought we might hear from you first, Captain. Haven’t you got a warrant or something to read to me?”
McKay opened his mouth, but closed it again without saying anything. A car was grinding up the hill.
“Here comes Mr. Pennington now,” McKay said.
The car stopped outside the cabin. There was a dead silence, except for footsteps in the dry leaves. Then Pennington came in, with a long green box under his arm. As Pennington removed his derby, McKay took the green box and glanced at the top.
“Blue Falls Flower Shop,” the captain announced. He handed the box to Grace with a flourish. He couldn’t have looked more pleased with himself if he’d drawn a horse in the Irish Sweepstakes.
Pennington nodded his thanks, put down his hat, and began peeling off his gloves.
I could hear another car whining up the hill.
“Don’t take off your top coat, Mr. Pennington,” McKay said. “It’s rather cool tonight, and you’ll have a hard time getting your coat back on over the handcuffs.”
Pennington’s expression did not change. “What handcuffs?” he asked quietly.
“These,” McKay said. “Miss Boyd says I’d be making a big mistake if I arrested you, because you wouldn’t kill for love. But I’m going to risk making a big mistake.” He snapped the cuffs about Pennington’s wrists.
“If this is a joke, Captain,” Pennington declared indignantly, “I must say it’s in extremely bad taste.”
“It’s no joke, Pennington. Look behind you.”
Pennington turned. Two State troopers stood in the doorway. One of them was muddy to the knees. The other held a leather briefcase that dripped muddy water.
“It’s in the bag, Captain,” one of the troopers said. “A nice new S. & W. thirty-eight.” He opened the muddy briefcase and took out a revolver which he handed to McKay.
“Does this look familiar to you, Pennington?” McKay asked.
“You’re being completely ridiculous,” said Pennington, but his indignation was less loud and ringing. He was pale, except for a pink band at the top of his forehead. “You’ve already found the gun that killed Norman. It wasn’t mine, and it did not even have my fingerprints on it.”
“Of course not.” McKay was smiling blandly. “Even an ignorant State trooper would notice that the elegant and immaculate Mr. Pennington wears gloves as part of his faultless attire.”
“But I’ve accounted for my movements—”
“Sure. Roses. You were buying roses for Miss Boyd in Blue Falls, but on the way to Blue Falls you stopped off at the cabin here to kill Dr. Norman. Why did you buy the roses at the Blue Falls Flower Shop, Senator?”
I was childishly pleased that McKay had adopted my sobriquet for Pennington. But I didn’t even chuckle.
“Nobody with any sense would bring roses all the way from New York,” Pennington said. “They would wilt on the way.”
“Sure, I understand that. But why the Blue Falls Flower Shop, which is in the railway station and about six blocks out of your way? Why not the Main Street Florist, which is the biggest and best shop in town, right on the highway, with plenty of parking space next door?”
“I happen to prefer the Blue Falls Flower Shop,” Pennington said quietly.
“I know. I know. I’ve been thinking about your preference. And I’ve also been thinking about Jim Lawrence’s story of the camera and the guy waiting in the shrubbery who stole a gun out of Miss Boyd’s car. There’s a joker in Lawrence’s story, too. If a guy came up here expressly to commit murder, he wouldn’t take a chance of finding a gun in somebody’s car, would he? Of course not. He’d be carrying a little something fatal of his own, something like a knife or a blackjack or maybe even his own gun. Naturally, when he finds a spare gun on the premises, complete with somebody else’s fingerprints, so to speak, he’s going to use it in preference to his own weapon. But he isn’t going to leave his own weapon lying about the immediate vicinity or concealed on his person or in his car, or anywhere in the neighborhood where it might be picked up after the body is found. So what does he do?
“That’s the question I ask myself, and that’s when I began thinking about the roses. The Blue Falls Flower Shop is in the railway station, like I said. And right next to the flower shop is a bank of automatic checking lockers—a very handy place to park a surplus weapon and keep it out of circulation until a convenient time to get rid of it once and for all. And when I got this far, I had the answer to why Alma Frazer had to die.
“Pennington, the dame at the Blue Falls Flower Shop was so sure about the time you were buying roses yesterday because there was a train coming in. The only train due at Blue Falls within half an hour either way is the 4:42 from Kingston. Now it seems that Alma Frazer was up in Kingston for two days taking care of her sick mother and she came back on the 4:42 yesterday. Suppose Alma, when she gets off the train, sees Pennington putting something in the checking locker at the station. Suppose, after she finds that Dr. Norman was killed, she remembers this guy and wonders if maybe it all didn’t have something to do with the murder. Suppose she decides to put the information into the hands of some sympathetic middle-man like Jim Lawrence and sends him a note. Suppose Pennington gets hold of the note, maybe by picking a little boy’s pockets, and remembers having seen Alma Frazer at the railway station, while he was checking his spare lethal weapon. Suppose—But I’m getting ahead of myself, because I put two and two dozen roses together and got the checking lockers as an answer before I knew Alma had been murdered.
“So I set a watch on those automatic checking lockers this afternoon, Pennington. I turned practically everybody loose to give you the idea that you were in the clear. I got the D.A. to hold Miss Boyd so you’d have an excuse to hang around this vicinity. Then tonight—” McKay nodded to one of his troopers. “You carry on from there, Pinky.”
“About forty minutes ago,” the trooper began, “Buck and I saw Mr. Pennington go into the Blue Falls Flower Shop. Buck kept watch on the lockers, while I went and got in the back of Mr. Pennington’s car and lay down on the floor. Pretty soon Mr. Pennington came out and got in the car. He put a box of flowers and a briefcase on the seat next to him and drove off.
“About four miles along, where the road meets the lake, he pulled up and put out his lights. He got out of the car and walked down to the lake. I followed him. He threw the briefcase in the lake. I waited for him to walk back to his car, then I fished out the briefcase. It was easy enough. He can’t throw very far, and there was a little moonlight. Then I walked back to the road and waited for Buck to pick me up. And here we are.”
“I suppose you’ll say you never saw this gun before, Senator,” McKay said.
“Of course I haven’t.” Pennington managed to look the picture of outraged dignity despite his handcuffs. “You’re being a fool, Captain.”
“Maybe,” McKay agreed. “And maybe I was a fool this morning, Pennington, when you got up from the breakfast table at the inn and followed me when I started for the bar with Lawrence. But good hindsight sometimes cancels out bad foresight. And looking back, I remember that I’d just announced we were looking for Miss Boyd’s Leica. You had the camera on you, didn’t you, Pennington? And when you found out it was hot, you had to get rid of it—after fogging the film. So you followed us to the veranda and planted the camera in the Hurleys’ room through the open window after we’d gone down the steps.”
“The senator’s a great little planter,” I volunteered. “He planted Alma’s note near the body to involve me in her murder, and just in case that didn’t take, he left Norman’s toothbrush up there, too. Norman left his toothbrush behind when he checked out of Room 13. Pennington was having breakfast with Grace this morning when Alma told her that Norman had spent the night in Room 13. Pennington seems to have done a little exploring, found the toothbrush, and dropped it in Alma’s room when he paid her his final respects. If Norman-had left his toothbrush in Alma’s room, that might indicate that Karl the barman had been driven by jealousy to double murder…
“This man is talking nonsense, Captain,” Pennington said. “What possible motive could I have for killing Dr. Norman?”
“I think I can throw a little light on that, too,” I said, “with the help of Dr. Hurley.” I opened the Grossbeck prescription book and passed it to Hurley. Eddie Westerford dropped his glass. “Dr. Hurley,” I said, “please look at these prescriptions signed by Dr. Norman. What would they do to a man if he took the dose before he had a physical examination for the Army or the Marines?”
Dr. Hurley put on his glasses. “Thyroid extract,” he read: “This dose would produce violent tachycardia.…”
“Let’s keep it clean, Doctor,” said McKay.
“It would cause an extremely rapid and probably irregular heart beat.”
“Enough to keep a man out of the Army?” I asked.
“Oh, they might bring him back for re-examination,” Hurley said, “in which case the dose could be repeated. But the chances are that the alarming peaks and valleys of an electrocardiogram would favor flat rejection.”
“Dr. Norman wrote two prescriptions for thyroid extract which Henry Pennington had filled at the Grossbeck Pharmacy in New York,” I said. “Mr. Pennington was good enough yesterday to be very specific about the dates he was physically disqualified for the armed services—luckily for me, because Grossbeck’s prescription book is pasted up according to dates only, with no cross indexing. One prescription is dated April 6, 1943, which I assume was shortly before his draft board physical, and the other is stamped September 13, 1943,—two days before the date on which Pennington says he tried to enlist in the Marines.”
Captain McKay slapped his thigh. “That’s it!” he exclaimed. “I can just see the newspaper headlines that Pennington thought he was wiping out when he wiped out Dr. Norman. ‘Senatorial Candidate is Draft Dodger. Wealthy Politician Fakes Bad Heart for Phoney 4-F Status.’ Boy, will the jury love that.”
“Where did you collect this mass of misinformation, Lawrence?” demanded Pennington from the icy heights of his crumbling dignity.
I told the story of the Super Fidelity Sound Studios and the Grossbeck Pharmacy. I skipped the parts about Conchita and Eddie Westerford. They didn’t seem important now, except to Conchita and Eddie. And it didn’t seem my business to call attention to the prescriptions Dr. Norman had written for Eddie.
“Boy, I sure wish the senator hadn’t smashed that recording,” McKay said. “I’ll bet it was a wicked show. I wish I could have heard it. Who told you about it, Pennington?”
Pennington did not reply.
Then Grace spoke for the first time, slowly, deliberately, in very low tones. She did not look at Pennington. “I shouldn’t be surprised if Norman himself told Henry,” she said. “There was something very forthright about Norman’s misanthropy. He would probably put the rest of my good friends in the program to convince me that I had too much faith in mankind generally. But it would have been so like Norman to torture Henry in advance with the knowledge that he was up to something sinister. I—”
There was a flurry on the other side of the room. Pennington’s handcuffs flashed as he snatched up the revolver with his manacled hands, raised it toward his head.
McKay sprang at him.
I blinked at a blinding splash of yellow brilliance. The cabin walls roared with the echoes of the explosion.
Then Pennington was sitting on the floor, unscathed and undignified, staring at the wisp of vapor shimmering from the muzzle of the revolver in McKay’s hands. The acrid fragrance of burned powder mingled with the smell of singed hair.
“That’s fine waterproof ammunition you use, Pennington,” McKay said. “But you shouldn’t try to shoot that thing around here. Miss Boyd is going to get mighty tired of having you always firing off guns in her cabin. Come on, Senator. They’ll be waiting for us at the jail house.”
McKay and the two troopers unceremoniously pulled Pennington to his feet and bustled him out of the cabin.
Betty Hurley’s blue eyes were round with wonder and disbelief as she watched the exit.
“But Jerome,” she said to her husband, “I don’t understand. Did Henry Pennington really kill Dr. Norman?”
“I’m afraid he did, dear,” Dr. Hurley replied.
“I think it’s silly,” Betty said. “Why did he kill him?”
“Because Henry Pennington was a draft dodger,” Dr. Hurley explained patiently. “And Dr. Norman, who showed Henry how to produce symptoms which would get him a false 4-F status, decided to expose him. He made a recording which was meant to show Grace that Henry was not the fine, upstanding, respectable citizen that he pretended to be. Such an exposé would have meant the end of Henry’s political ambitions, because a draft dodger could not possibly hope to be elected to the senate. So Henry killed Norman to destroy the recording and to prevent Norman from making any future disclosures.”
“But why were there two guns?” Betty asked.
“Captain McKay just explained, darling,” Dr. Hurley said, taking his wife’s hand solicitously, “that one gun belonged to Henry. He brought it up here, intending to shoot Norman with it. He parked his car in the woods, walked to Grace’s cabin, and waited behind the shrubbery. While he was waiting, Grace and Mr. Lawrence arrived. Henry saw Mr. Lawrence examining another gun in Grace’s car. The other gun belonged to Bob Stewart. While Grace and Mr. Lawrence were in the cabin, Henry took this other gun from Grace’s car, and when Grace and Mr. Lawrence drove to the village to do their shopping, Dr. Norman arrived with his recording, and Henry Pennington shot him. He shot him with the gun belonging to Bob Stewart and then left it where it would be found. Then Henry smashed the recording and scattered the pieces in the woods. He had his own gun, which he hadn’t used, in a briefcase, which he checked at the railway station. Then he bought roses for Grace and came back to the cabin. You were here when he arrived.”
“I remember that,” Betty said. “But I don’t see why Henry killed Alma Frazer. Why should he care if Alma went to bed with Norman?”
“No, darling, bed had nothing to do with this,” Dr. Hurley said. “Alma was getting off the train just as Henry was checking his briefcase, with the gun in it, at the railway station. She saw him and was going to tell about it. Henry killed her to keep her from talking. Is it all clear now, dear?”
“I suppose so.” Betty sighed. “But I still think it was silly of Henry to kill Norman.”
Joan Stewart stood up. “I think we’d better take Tommy home and tuck him in his own bed,” she said, tugging Bob Stewart’s sleeve and looking at me.
Betty Hurley put her arm around her husband’s neck. “We don’t have to go yet, do we, Jerome?” she said. “It’s still early.”
“I have an operation at the crack of dawn tomorrow,” said Dr. Hurley. “We’d better leave now. Can we give you a lift, Eddie?”
Eddie was delighted. So was I. Eddie came over to shake hands, in relief, if not in gratitude.
Grace did not get up to see people to the door. She waved them a limp goodnight from her chair.
Chapter Nineteen
When everybody had gone, I came over to Grace and sat on the floor at her feet. I patted the Canadian moccasins. She reached out to put her hand against my cheek. There were tears in her eyes.
“Am I going to keep on being an awful fool for the rest of my life, Jim?” she asked.
“You’re not so awful,” I said. “How about another drink?”
“Why not? After all, the weekend’s not over yet, and I invited you for the weekend. We were going to sit in front of the fire, have a few drinks, and talk. Do you want to build up the fire, Jim?”
