Wives to Burn, page 5
“Then have a chair, if you don’t mind.”
Fred apparently did mind. He remained standing, lit a cigarette with a gesture of elegant insouciance.
Gabriel backed away from him until he was on the opposite side of the bed. The automatic and the tail of his glance were still very much occupied with Fred Oaks while his left hand carefully lifted the hem of the mosquito netting and hung it on the overhead frame. He looked down at Lucy Steel, and, suddenly, he felt very much in need of a drink.
Death was no novelty to Bill Gabriel. Death was an abstract thing, the breaking of a thread, regrettable sometimes, more often not, when encountered professionally. A corpse was not an object of terror but a challenge to his skill, a goad to his curiosity. Yet as he gazed, fascinated, at the motionless finality with which Lucy Steel’s bleached hair lay upon the pillow, he felt distinctly shaken. It was not, he knew, that she meant much to him personally. There may have been a faint twinge of pity, the residue of a brief and casual intimacy during their descent into the tropics, but there was more than that, too. There was something profound and inexplicable that shook him, something like the strange sense of foreboding that had chilled him earlier in the evening, when the fragrance of incense had come to him with the smoke of the burning ghats. In spite of himself, he said, “Poor Lucy!”
“Lucy?” The echo came from Fred Oaks with the spontaneity of an involuntary exclamation.
Gabriel looked up in time to catch a blur of vague, wordless questioning in Fred’s eyes. A cloud of cigarette smoke immediately veiled the expression.
“Lucy Steel,” said Gabriel. “Name mean anything to you?”
“Nothing.”
“What was her name when you knew her?”
“I never saw her before, I told you.”
“I know that’s what you told me—only I don’t have to believe it.”
The brief exchange was enough to restore Gabriel’s composure. He was all detective again, and the woman in bed was an impersonal object of investigation. He lifted the sheet, drew it back slightly. Then he had another shock.
Lucy Steel’s body was nude.
He drew the sheet completely back, seeking a wound, some sign of what had killed Lucy. There was no mark on the body. The head and torso, as white and impersonal as alabaster, were without a blemish. There was only one thing that made Gabriel frown: Lucy still wore one stocking—a single stocking of sheer beige silk that was rolled down just below her left knee.
Gabriel pulled up the sheet again, studied the question-mark pattern in red he had noticed earlier. It appeared to be blood, yet there was no blood on the body. Again he frowned.
“Aren’t you going to call the police?” Fred Oaks asked casually. “It’s usual, isn’t it—even for a private dick?”
“Is it?”
“I don’t think it will add anything to your reputation to turn over a ready-made solution to the constituted authorities. Not in Shakkarpur. There’s not an Associated Press or a Reuter’s correspondent within two hundred miles.”
“So what?”
“So you’re wasting your time, straight-arming innocent bystanders. Why don’t you call the District Officer, instead of stalking clues like a Junior G-man?”
Bill Gabriel tried to scowl, but his mouth imitated a shark’s about to gulp a small herring. It startled him to realize that Fred Oaks was right. What the hell was he doing, acting like a one-man homicide squad, when all he was now was a private detective out of a job? The momentum of professional habit had carried him knee-deep into the investigation of murder, but actually his mission had ended with the death of Lucy Steel. Or had it ended? After all, he still had $3000 and his ticket home coming to him from Lucy, dead or alive. Until he collected, he supposed he was technically still in the employ of the dead woman. He’d stay on the job anyhow, until he heard from Inspector Dumbarton, or from San Francisco.
“Look here, Oaks,” Gabriel said. “Do you know why I came to Shakkarpur?”
“Sure,” said Oaks. “Teak.”
“I came here because Lucy Steel hired me to find you.”
“I’m deeply flattered.”
“Do you know what she wanted with you?”
“You took the question out of my mouth. I’ve been wondering vaguely how she happened to pick my bed to die in. Suppose you tell me why.”
“You know as much about this as I do. More, I suspect. What did you do with her clothes?”
“I haven’t seen any clothes.”
“You expect me to believe that she came down the hall to your room without even a stitch of underthings on?”
“What sort of underthings?” Fred asked.
“Black lace step-ins,” said Gabriel. “And—”
“You’re quite an investigator, aren’t you, Gabriel?”
“None better—as you’ll find out presently.”
“If you’re not going for the D.O., I think I’d better go for him myself,” Fred Oaks said. “He might be interested to learn just how familiar you are with the color of the dead lady’s lingerie, how you came into the room waving a gun, how reluctant you seem to be about calling in the constituted authorities, how—”
Someone knocked at the door.
Fred and Gabriel looked at each other. The detective slipped his automatic into his coat pocket but kept his fingers tightly clasped around the butt. There was a moment of silence. The knock was repeated. Fred called, “Come in.”
The door swung open. An old man stood on the threshold, a scuffed leather bag in one hand. The black alpaca coat which hung slightly askew from his frail, stooped shoulders was several sizes too large, and his duck trousers were too tight. He was bareheaded, and his thin, silvery hair seemed blown about his bald spot in an untidy whirl. His scraggly gray beard and bushy, jet-black eyebrows gave him a savage expression that was instantly contradicted by his mild blue eyes.
“Good evening, Dr. Forsythe,” Fred Oaks said.
The old man took a hesitant step into the room. “Where’s the patient?” he asked in a querulous voice. “Miss Small said there was someone—”
“Did Miss Small send for you?” Gabriel snapped.
“I presume it was Miss Small,” said Dr. Forsythe. “One of the chokras from the hotel came for me, and—”
“Did you just see Miss Small? Did she send you to this’room?”
“No, I haven’t seen Miss Small, I came directly here. The boy said there was someone in Room 9 who—”
“I’m afraid you’re too late, doctor,” Gabriel said. “Come in.”
Dr. Forsythe closed the door softly behind him. He came over to the bed. His thin shoulder blades made sharp wings on the back of his alpaca coat as he bent over Lucy Steel’s body.
“Much too late,” said the doctor, looking into the eyes of the dead woman. “Who is she?”
“Her name is Lucy Steel,” Gabriel said. “She came in on the Madras Mail tonight.”
Dr. Forsythe made faint clucking sounds with his tongue. “She had a very short stay in Shakkarpur,” he said.
“What killed her?” Gabriel asked.
“Mr. Gabriel is a detective so he always suspects foul play,” Fred Oaks said. “Let’s put it this way, doctor: what did she die of?”
Dr. Forsythe continued to make clucking sounds as he pursued his examination. The tip of his beard brushed the waxen flesh as he scrutinized every inch of the body. He slipped his hands under Lucy’s shoulders, raised her gently, turned her on one side. At last he straightened up.
“The lady was shot.” he announced.
“Shot? There’s no blood….”
“You’re a detective, Mr. Gabriel?”
“That’s what he thinks,” Fred volunteered.
“You should own a copy of Gray’s Anatomy, Mr. Gabriel,” said the doctor. “Every young man in your profession should be familiar with Gray. Then you could determine for yourself that the bullet entered the left side between the ilium and the floating ribs—here….” He pointed to a small dark spot, no larger than a shoe button. “And since there is no other wound, you could also judge that the bullet remained in the body. The bleeding you mention is all internal. A small caliber bullet—not over a .32, I should say—making a clean wound on entering the body, could destroy half a dozen vital organs in the abdominal cavity and leave scarcely a drop of blood on the skin—just enough to make that trickle on the sheet, perhaps. I once saw a man shot in the abdomen. In the excitement of the gun fight, he didn’t even know he was hit, although his intestines were perforated in nineteen places. He walked two hundred yards before he dropped dead.”
“You think, then, doctor,” Gabriel said, “that Miss Steel may have walked into this room after having been shot somewhere else—and not knowing that she was mortally hurt?”
“I don’t know, young man,” Dr. Forsythe replied. “I’m not a detective. I’m just an old missionary doctor, a relic of the previtamin era.”
“I think I’ll go for the District Officer,” said Gabriel suddenly. He started for the door immediately.
“I’ve already sent word to Mr. Hatton,” Dr. Forsythe called after him.
But Gabriel was already in the corridor, closing the door after him.
Chapter Seven
The Smashed Lamp
Bill Gabriel had no intention of going for the District Officer. In fact, there were several things he was anxious to accomplish before the murder of Lucy Steel became a matter of official interest. He walked down the hall to Lucy’s room, went in, left the door slightly ajar so that he would be aware of any troop movements in the corridor.
Once inside he realized for the first time that he had not seen Lucy’s bearer since his return to the hotel. Ordinarily the bearded hunchback would be squatting idly on his haunches outside the door—unless he was busy inside. He was not inside, but there was evidence that he had been. The ancient zinc tub on the bathroom floor was half filled—enough water to represent a dozen trips from the hotel kitchen with buckets. Between the tub and the corner of the bathroom in which a rusty grating screened the drain hole, the cement floor was wet, as though the bearer’s aim with a bucket had been bad. Gabriel tried the bath with one finger; it was lukewarm. Clean towels, still folded, and an untouched cake of soap stood on the wooden washstand.
Gabriel returned to the bedroom. He made a hurried search for the white silk dress that Lucy had worn on her arrival. The red hat was on the dresser, and the red patent-leather belt hung from the back of a chair, but the dress was not to be found. The sight of the red belt recalled something Lucy had said early in the evening: “I’ve got your ticket home and the rest of your money right here in my bag….” But where was Lucy’s red patent-leather bag? It might be a good idea to find it and get what money was coming to him, before the dead woman’s effects were sequestered by the District Officer.
Gabriel made another hasty but systematic search of the room. He explored drawers, the bed, the bedding roll, Lucy’s valises. The red bag, too, was missing.
In one of the valises he came across a small letter-case of embossed morocco. On the entire journey from San Francisco, Lucy had taken particular care of that case. She had avoided questions about it, and all of Gabriel’s efforts to have a private look at its contents had been unsuccessful.
Gabriel heard voices in the hall. He quickly thrust the leather case under his belt, buttoned his coat, waited. The voices passed, one of them—that of Reginald Hatton—rasping with annoyance. Gabriel heard them go into Fred Oaks’s room. Then he slipped out, walked in the opposite direction. He wanted to talk to the proprietress of Seaside House before the District Officer did.
There was no one in the office of the hotel; there never was. But a door at the back led directly to Gwendolyn Small’s apartments. Gabriel hesitated with his hand on the knob. He knew the legend of Gwendolyn Small, of course. A rising young star of the London stage just after the turn of the century, she had abandoned the theater to follow the man she loved, traveled in India with him. At this point her lover was removed from the scene and the legend reached a cross-road. One fork said he had been removed by death; the other, by a case of acute fickleness. Whichever it was, his disappearance left Gwendolyn Small with a fashionable seashore hotel and intermittent attacks of mild dementia. As the vogue of the hotel decreased, the dementia increased, although it was always harmless. Gabriel, in his brief acquaintanceship with Miss Small, was not even convinced it was always genuine. He had to admit, of course, that anyone who constantly wore black in Southern India, or who dressed in Edwardian style in the Age of Munich, was, to say the least, eccentric. There were times, however, when he had the impression that he was watching a performance of Ophelia by a chronic actress on a still-hunt for an audience. He opened the door.
Gwendolyn Small was sitting at a tall teakwood secretary, laying out dog-eared playing cards. She was a perfect match for the Victorian furnishings of the room, and for the faded photographs which covered the walls—photographs of Gwendolyn Small in her theatrical heyday, Gwendolyn in leg-of-mutton sleeves and high-bosomed décolleté, Gwendolyn in wasp-waisted, heart-shaped bodices, in sporty straw sailors, in big-bottomed, trailing evening gowns. Gwendolyn in person, her white hair brushed up imposingly into a flaring pompadour, was still beautiful. There was a loveliness, almost a youthful loveliness, in the fullness of her features, even though Gabriel knew there were wrinkles beneath the careful bloom of rice powder and the four-strand choker of pearls. There was witchery in the faint, fixed smile which showed the ruins of her dimples, and charm in the imperious gestures with which she dealt the cards.
“Sit down, Gabriel,” she said, without looking up, “I’m just telling your fortune. You’ll want to know how it comes out.”
Bill Gabriel gaped in silent astonishment. He was always a little astonished by the clear, ringing tones of Gwendolyn Small’s voice, and at this moment he was doubly amazed by her grotesque calmness in the face of what she apparently knew had just happened. For several seconds he was speechless. He found himself staring at the cards, vaguely noting that they were foreign to any cards he had ever seen, with strangely-shaped pips, and unfamiliar figures as kings and queens. At last he managed to say:
“Listen, Miss Small. There’s no time to talk nonsense about fortunes. I want you to—”
“Is she dead?” There was a fine carelessness in her rising inflection. She continued to lay out the cards.
“She’s dead,” Gabriel blurted, before he fully realized the import of the question.
“Good,” said Gwendolyn Small.
Gabriel finally got a grip on himself. He put his hands into his coat pockets.
“I guess you saw it happen, then,” he said.
“No, of course not.”
“But you sent for Dr. Forsythe?”
“Naturally. I sent for the doctor as soon as I heard the shot.”
“You must have taken a peek later then, Miss Small.”
“I haven’t budged, Gabriel. I’ve been very busy, very busy.”
“Then how did you know where to send the doctor?”
“The cards,” said Miss Small. “The nine came out right after the shot. I knew it was Room 9.”
“That’s Fred Oaks’s room,” Gabriel protested, “and you said—”
“I knew it couldn’t be Mr. Oaks because the red queen came up right after the nine. There’s only one blond woman in my hotel, Gabriel.”
At last Gwendolyn Small looked up, a mad gleam in her eyes. Or was it mad? Again Gabriel had the feeling that he was watching a performance, that the crazy widening of the pupils was an expression of triumph, the true expression of feelings which all this talk of cards and fortunes was meant to conceal.
“Why are you glad she’s dead, Miss Small?”
“I didn’t like her looks. I disliked her the moment she came in here. She stood between me and the light. She didn’t have any petticoats on.”
“They don’t shoot women any more for not wearing petticoats, Miss Small,” Gabriel said. “Hadn’t you heard? There was a general amnesty declared, when George VI came to the throne.”
“And I don’t like red hats,” said Gwendolyn Small, her voice taking on a colorless, irrational tone. “Not that color red anyway. And she smoked cigarettes like a man—not like a lady. She inhaled. Besides, she called me ‘Miss Little.’ ”
“Now that’s different,” said Gabriel, in his best humor-the-child manner. “That’s serious, Miss Small. ‘Miss Little.’ I don’t blame you for shooting her.”
“I didn’t shoot her,” Miss Small protested. “But I might have. She came here to make trouble for Mr. Oaks.”
“Fancy that,” said Gabriel, his small eyes widening. “How do you know that, Miss Small?”
“I like Fred Oaks,” said Miss Small in a childish voice. She was laying out the cards again.
“Well, well!” said Gabriel. Well, well, my eye, he said to himself. Lucy Steel is in Shakkarpur a little over two hours, and people know as much about her as I do. More, probably, since somebody knew enough about her to want to kill her. “And who told you Miss Steel came here to make trouble for Fred Oaks? The cards?”
“No, not the cards,” Gwendolyn Small said’.
“Fred Oaks himself, maybe?”
“No, not Mr. Oaks. It was Mr. Curring. Or Mrs. Curring. I don’t recall which.”
“You must remember whether it was Mr. or Mrs. Curring,” Gabriel insisted. “Which one was here tonight, Miss Small?”
“I can’t recall,” said the ex-actress. “They both come here frequently to have their fortunes told.”
“And you can’t remember which it was tonight? You can’t remember whether it was a man or a woman?”
“I was very busy at the time,” said Gwendolyn Small. Her voice trailed away, as though pursuing her mind into happier and more ethereal worlds.
“What kind of trouble did they say Miss Steel came to cause Mr. Oaks?” Gabriel prompted.
Miss Small’s eyes seemed to focus again. “What kind of trouble can a woman cause a man?” Her voice came back in all its clarion overtones. She was declaiming. Probably a speech from an old play, Gabriel thought. “What kind of troubles can there be between man and woman? Woman—some women—are millstones around the neck—around the neck of the gods….” The voice was fading again. The faraway look came back into her eyes. “Grindstones—they grind exceeding fine—small—but slowly—so slowly….”
