Wives to Burn, page 19
The mosque was half a mile away.
Chapter Twenty-six
An Interrupted Letter
The District Officer, having himself put Seaside House under lock and key, was forced, reluctantly, to accommodate Gabriel in his own bungalow. The detective retired to the guest room after a hectic dinner and sat down to write his latest report to Inspector Dumbarton. He had just written Dear Aubrey when the District Officer bustled in, smiling smugly.
“It’s all over, Gabriel,” he said. “We’ve got him.”
“Good,” said Gabriel. “Who have you got?”
“The murderer,” Hatton replied. “I’ve just got a wire from the Collector at Sumunderbad. They caught him trying to board a train for Calcutta.”
“Congratulations,” said Gabriel, “but who did they catch?”
“Why, Jim Curring. Whom did you think?”
“I didn’t think. What was Curring doing in Sumunderbad?”
“He was trying to get away, of course. He knew he wouldn’t have a chance taking a train here, with the station watched. He drove all night in an ekka. Fancy driving fifty miles in an ekka! A man must be damned desperate to ride more than fifty yards in one of those infernal bone-crackers.”
“What did he say when they arrested him?” Gabriel asked.
“Nothing. Said he had no explanations to give anyone, that he had a perfect right to do what he was doing, and that we had no reason to hold him. I fancy we’ll have reasons enough when they bring him here tomorrow, eh, Gabriel?”
“Sure, I fancy,” said Gabriel without enthusiasm.
“By the by, my sister left these. Said I was to give them to you.” Hatton handed Gabriel a deck of cards. “Probably thought you’d have plenty time for a game of patience, now that your job is finished.”
“Probably,” the detective said. He glanced at the cards. It was a new deck and the seal was unbroken. He looked curiously at the District Officer. “How’s your job?” he asked.
“I think I may safely say the situation is well in hand,” Hatton replied. “There will be no real trouble. The people here know me better than that. Firmness and foresight are much more efficacious than repressive punishment and hindsight. And we won’t need troops, as you see. Well, good night.”
“Good night.”
When Hatton had gone, Gabriel opened the cards. They appeared to be replicas of the queer-looking deck Gwendolyn Small had been using. The face cards were completely proletarian: the queens, without crowns, were engaged in such useful pursuits as harvesting wheat and trampling out wine grapes; the kings were all horny-handed workers; so were the jacks. The jacks!
Gabriel quickly shuffled out the two black jacks. The jack of clubs was a miner, with a candle in his cap and a pick in his hand. The jack of spades was a shepherd, knee-deep in sheep, holding a crook. Gabriel studied the two cards for fully five minutes, trying to discover what message, if any, Gwendolyn Small had been trying to convey. Then he slapped the table with the flat of his hand and swore loudly.
The shepherd’s crook! Yes, that was it! The staff with the hooked end—and the bloody question mark smeared on the bed sheet that covered Lucy Steel’s corpse! Gwendolyn Small was not so crazy after all. It was William Shakespeare Gabriel who was crazy—for not taking Gwendolyn’s hint when she first dropped it!
He picked up his pen, pushed the cards aside, and began writing furiously. He had plenty to tell Inspector Dumbarton now.
I mailed you an interim report this morning, he wrote, telling about Doc Forsythe’s changed diagnosis in the death of Lucy Steel, about Brinker coming over all in a dither to show me that there was nothing wrong in his accounts with Miss Small, and about Miss Small’s letters. After I wrote you, I took specimens of the Small signature and checked it with the last will and testament she left with Hatton. I thought maybe the will was forged and that either Hatton or Doc Forsythe had ransacked Gwendolyn’s rooms to destroy all genuine signatures—not knowing that there was a trunk full of letters for comparison. I’m convinced that neither Hatton nor Forsythe knew about those letters, or about Gwen’s signatures at Brinker’s bank. And Brinker, knowing about both, wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of destroying signatures in Gwen’s rooms. So that was a false lead.
Next I cleared up the mystery of the missing stocking. I found a footprint of Rhoda Curring’s rubber-soled sneakers on the window sill in Fred Oaks’s room this morning. It wasn’t a very clear print and probably wouldn’t stand up in court, but it ties in nicely with what Rhoda told me last night. She practically admitted—unwittingly, of course—that she had been in Fred’s room while Lucy’s body was there. Rhoda didn’t commit the murders (she couldn’t have packed a big woman like Gwen Small all the way to the attic), but she did, I’m convinced, take that stocking off the dead body of Lucy Steel.
Rhoda Curring is so infatuated with Fred Oaks that she can’t see straight—or think straight. She never did love her husband, but since Fred came along she hates him. She’d even frame Curring for murder so she could have Fred, apparently. When Brinker warned her that Curring was after Fred, she went out gunning for her husband, as she told me last night. She saw a light in Fred’s room—and went in, thinking Curring was in there. When she saw the corpse, she thought maybe Fred had something to do with it, or that anyhow he would be accused. So she took the stocking—a clue that would point elsewhere.
Curring must have caught her climbing out the window and there was the tussle that she told me about, and the gun went off. Curring probably thought she was trying to shoot him—and maybe she was—because I heard him yelling at Rhoda about it afterward. I overheard only the words “bitch” and “kill me” and “thought I hadn’t the guts, eh?” and for a while I thought he was talking about Lucy. Apparently, though, Curring was merely telling Rhoda that he was fed up with the whole situation and was going to clear out. He did, too—only they pulled the poor guy off the train at Sumunderbad and are bringing him back.
Rhoda must have planted the stocking in one of Curring’s coats and did her best to lure me to her house so I’d find it, and put the bracelets on her husband—she knew he’d been seen talking to Lucy at the station, because she told me so—and leave Fred in the clear. When Curring took a powder, she got me over to tell me a lot of cockeyed stories so I’d still be suspicious of Curring and even brought out the stocking—diverting attention from Fred. And this morning I saw her down by the river, talking to the black skipper of a coasting dhow so I figure she’s ready to run off with her great passion.
Next point I tried to clear up was, who gave Fred Oaks the needle last night and why? I figured out that the little note pinned on Fred was the work of one of these munshis or public letter-writers they have in the bazaar here, so I got Hatton’s flat-foots to help me round up every munshi in town. It was easy to find the guy who wrote it, because he remembered the big words—barbituric, etc.—and also remembered who hired him to write the letter. It was a big Hindu with a walrus mustache and a scar on one cheek.
Now, I know this Hindu walrus has been a servant at Seaside House the last few days, but he disappeared right after breakfast this morning and I haven’t been able to put the finger on him yet. Moreover, I can’t seem to find out anything about the big dinge. The munshi said he had a funny accent and must be from the North. However, regardless of not being able to fit him or the needle into the picture, I have got the murders pretty well figured out, and would make the arrest right now if I only had an answer to the wire I sent you this morning. I wired you, asking for full details on the arrest of Lucy Steel in Bombay in 1928, but you haven’t answered. When I get the details, I think I’ll have the motive for the murders. And even if I don’t get them—I’ll wait until the telegraph office closes—I think I’ll grab my man tonight, anyhow.
I must admit, Aubrey, that I wasted a lot of time trying to tie the two murders together with the same motivating principle: the millions of the late George Francis Oaks. The only people in Shakkarpur, apparently, who might have anything to do with the Oaks money were Fred Oaks, Alvin Brinker, and Dr. Forsythe. I already told you why I ruled out Oaks from the start, and how Brinker convinced me that his connection with the Oaks estate was on the up-and-up. As for Forsythe, I couldn’t quite figure why a doctor would go in for hanging and skullcracking when he has so many more refined ways of killing right at his finger-tips. So I had to fall back on the theory that Gwendolyn Small was killed simply to save the skin of the original murderer. Gwendolyn knew who killed Lucy Steel, and practically committed suicide trying to tell me so. I didn’t understand her round-about method, but the murderer did. If I’d been a little smarter, Aubrey, I might have saved Gwendolyn’s life.
Let me reconstruct the murder of Lucy for you. First, let me say it was not premeditated. It was an impulsive act of surprise and fear. Lucy, having practiced the profession of blackmail on five continents, had the bad luck to run into a former victim almost immediately upon her arrival in Shakkarpur. The victim’s conscience must have prompted him to think that Lucy had come to hunt him down to extract heavier tribute, or to destroy the new life he had built for himself. He caught her at her first unguarded moment, and instead of saying, “It’s a small world, eh, Lucy?” he cracked her skull.
He fled immediately—but must have heard footsteps in the corridor, Gwendolyn Small’s footsteps. He ducked into the first room he found open—No. 9, apparently—although not soon enough, as it turned out. Gwendolyn must have seen him.
Once in Room 9, he set his weapon down on the bed while he examined himself for blood stains. There would be none on his hands or clothing, because the weapon he used was fairly long. But there was a little blood on the end of the weapon and it made a smear on the sheet where he laid it down—like a question mark. He picked it up again and wiped it clean against the mosquito bar above the bed.
It is quite possible that while waiting behind the door of No. 9, scared green that somebody would walk in on him, the murderer overheard Dr. Forsythe fixing things for Gwendolyn Small. That was all very well, but it wouldn’t explain the blood smears on the sheet and mosquito bar of No. 9. Therefore, when Gwendolyn had gone to her room, as per instructions, and Dr. Forsythe had gone off to the hospital with the hunchbacked bearer, the murderer returned to Lucy’s room, picked up Lucy’s body, carried it across the hall, and deposited it neatly in Fred Oaks’s bed. That would divert suspicion; it would confuse the whole case; it would explain—mistakenly—the blood on the sheet and netting if any question was raised. Whereupon the murderer went home for dinner.
Later that night Gwendolyn tried to tell me who the murderer was. Why she didn’t tell me in so many words, I’ll never be sure. Maybe she just wanted to be dramatic and mysterious. I think, though, that she was afraid of retaliation. (And she had reason to be.) She thought if she just gave me a hint, I‘d find out for myself, and she would be safe from possible reprisals, because the murderer would not be able to accuse her of having betrayed him. She was wrong, of course, because the murderer was smarter than I was.
Gwendolyn wanted to lay out the cards to find the guilty party. She said, “The cards will show us the black knave.” Three men were with me when she said that: Dr. Forsythe, Alvin Brinker, and Reginald Hatton, the District Officer. One of the three knew right away what Gwendolyn was driving at. He knew that she was using a deck of continental cards, with funny kings, queens and knaves on them. He knew—or he found out pretty quick—that one of black knaves (the jack of spades) carried a shepherd’s crook in his hand. That told him that Gwen was trying to give him away. He consequently strangled her, strung up her body in the attic, and destroyed the deck of continental cards. Just in case someone else had an idea to investigate the jack of spades, he called attention to another deck of Gwen’s cards by scattering them on the floor. The face cards in this deck were orthodox; the jacks carried broadswords. The rest of the disorder in Gwen’s room was caused by haste—by my going upstairs too soon, while the murderer was still inside. It is quite likely that he was rummaging about to see if Gwendolyn had written her weekly letter for the trunk in the attic. She wasn’t regularly due to write until today, which is mail day, but the murderer wanted to be sure she hadn’t recorded what she knew of the death of Lucy Steel—since she obviously knew plenty and just as obviously was trying to pass out the information discreetly.
Now, at this point Bill Gabriel becomes a card reader. What was the meaning of the shepherd’s crook in the hands of the jack of spades? I pick on the shepherd’s crook because the smear of blood on the bed sheet was shaped like a shepherd’s crook, because Gwendolyn Small had seen the blood and knew I had seen it. This seemed the only possible interpretation. To the best of my knowledge there were no shepherds wandering in and out of the halls of Seaside House. There was, however, a man who carried a walking stick that had a curved handle like a shepherd’s crook. Dr. Forsythe said Lucy’s skull was probably fractured by a wooden club. A walking stick is a wooden club. Held at the end, like a golf club, it could be swung from behind against the base of the skull with terrific force.
The man who carries a crook-handled cane was one of the three who heard Gwendolyn Small mention the black knave. He was by his own admission in the vicinity of Seaside House about the time of the first murder.
He was the only man in Shakkarpur who knew about Gwendolyn’s letter-writing and might want to stop her committing her testimony to paper. He held Gwen’s economic future in his power and if he should go free, after she betrayed him, he could starve her to death, so she might have been afraid to accuse him outright. He played golf. He had the strength to carry the dead Gwendolyn Small to the attic; I tried him out, lifting a heavy trunk. He was at the station when Lucy Steel arrived. He was in Bombay in 1928, when Lucy was arrested there on suspicion of extortion. He is going back to Bombay, as an important officer in the same bank he served in 1928. The sudden appearance of Lucy, a ghost from an unsavory past, might very well shock him into drastic action to preserve his future which now looms so bright.
His coming to me with a false motive for murder which he deliberately set up in order to tear down with his frankness and documentary proofs, was a clever decoy to distract me from the true motive. He was at the same time offering an alibi in advance in case I should find out that he was absent from his home at the time Gwendolyn Small was killed. He told me, with disarming frankness and without even being asked, that he had gone to the bank.
Now, Aubrey, if only you’d have been a good boy and sent me the details on Lucy’s arrest in Bombay in 1928, I’m sure we’d have a perfect case. If—
Gabriel suddenly stopped writing. He was aware that someone was standing behind him, reading over his shoulder.
“You’ve written enough, Gabriel. Drop that pen.”
The detective turned his head slowly—until he was staring into the muzzle of a revolver.
“Why, hello, Brinker,” he said, trying desperately to keep his voice steady. “I was just writing about you.”
Chapter Twenty-seven
The Rifle
Fred Oaks fought his way up the hill toward the mosque, pushing, jostling, squeezing through the frenzied crowds of Moslems milling on the slope to join in the ecstasy of grief for the death of the Prophet’s grandson. The air was vibrant with the shouts of “Ya, Husain! Ya, Hasan! Ya, Ali!” The flickering torchlight illuminated rapt, bearded faces, bobbing turbans, glittering, gold-braided caps, outstretched arms, the grotesque Taziyas dancing on the shoulders of the Faithful, moving in a mad circle that grew larger and smaller, then larger again, but always faster, faster.
The procession of the Taziyas was edging toward the river, and Fred found himself flung back as the crowd gave way. He struggled to the fringes of the mob, found at last that he had open space before him. He ran, keeping his gaze fixed on the stately tower of the north minaret. He could not bring himself to look at his watch. It was enough to know that the minaret still pointed to the sky. At least he was not too late. Even if he reached the minaret at the moment it crumbled in a roaring torrent of dust and mortar, it would not be too late—not if he could join Virginia first. He did not mind dying now that he had found himself, that he was willing to admit to himself that he was not alone, that he did not want to be alone. He knew, too, that Virginia would not mind dying, if they were together. He hurried his steps, until his breath burned in his throat.
There was a light shining through the window near the base of the minaret. He hurdled the sill, landed panting in the little room, looked about him frantically.
“Virginia!” he called. “Virginia!”
There was no answer.
Then he saw something stirring beneath a pile of prayer rugs against the far wall. He hurried across the floor.
A closed ghari rumbled along the side of the mosque, stopped opposite the base of the north minaret. The shutter dropped.
A rifle barrel slid out the window, resting on the top of the lowered shutter.
Ganeshi Lal took careful aim. It was easier than he had expected. There was a light in Hajji Ahmed’s chambers, and he could draw a perfect bead on the pile of prayer rugs.
He squeezed the trigger.
Chapter Twenty-eight
The Showdown
Alvin Brinker backed away a few steps to prevent Gabriel grabbing for his pistol. Perspiration streamed from his big, baldish head as he circled the table to face the detective.
“You’ve written enough,” Brinker repeated. “Tear it up, now.”
“Why, Mr. Brinker!” Gabriel managed a sickly grin. “After all the trouble I’ve taken to—”
“Tear it up—or I’ll shoot.” Brinker made a gesture with the revolver.
“Just my luck,” sighed Gabriel, wondering how long he could stall for time. “I’m going to get shot before I find out why Lucy Steel put the bee on you in Bombay in 1928. I suppose you stole from your bank to play the market and guessed wrong. What was it? Cotton futures? Or jute?”
