Rex Stout (20 page)

She made three more telephone calls in succession. The first was to the office of a theatrical agent on Broadway, and since it was a Saturday afternoon in August, the fact that repeated attempts got no answer was not surprising and therefore no great disappointment. The second was to the editorial office of
Variety,
where she talked for three minutes with a hoarse and hearty man whose name she didn’t learn, and who gave her so obvious a suggestion that she was ashamed not to have thought of it herself. The third was the headquarters of the Federal Broadcasting Company, and there, after some difficulty, she got through to the man she wanted.

“Mr. Marley? … Of course you didn’t recognise the name Jean Farris…. Oh. Thank you for being delicate about it; I forgot the morning papers had made me famous. I met you a couple of months ago at Allen Lockhart’s penthouse, but of course you’ve forgotten. I had on a yellow dress and I stepped on you when we danced, and you invited me to come to the FBC studios and be personally escorted by you, but of course that doesn’t distinguish me. Anyway, you did invite me, and now I’m in trouble and need some help…. No, nothing like that, what I want is a man who can imitate birds…. No, birds, birds that sing. I know you have people who imitate all sorts of sounds, and I want a man who can imitate a whip-poor-will, and I must have him by seven o’clock…. Of course not, I didn’t suppose you would have him right there, but surely you know where you can get hold of one. No, I must have him by seven o’clock to-day or it won’t do any good. You are wonderful and I promise never to step on you again. You can call me here, my number is—no. If you don’t mind, I’d rather come to your place and wait, that would save a little time. I’ll have to listen to him and see if he’s good enough. I’ll be there inside of half an hour….

A
t one o’clock Inspector Cramer had offered Portia Tritt to District Attorney Anderson of Westchester County, but Anderson had begged him to keep her and carry on; and had accompanied the request with such glowing praise of the energy and brilliance which Cramer had already displayed that it would have been churlish not to acquiesce. So orders had been issued to serve a tray lunch to Miss Tritt in the private room she was being permitted to monopolise, while Cramer had eaten with the commissioner. Afterwards over an hour was consumed by the urgencies of a misunderstanding among racketeers in the Fillmore Market district and a suspicious suicide on West End Avenue; and it was after three o’clock when the inspector was again alone in his office and was able to tell Sergeant Burke to bring Miss Tritt.

Burke said, “She’s got holes gnawed in the door.”

Cramer nodded wearily. “Sure. Pull her out through one of them.”

He arose when Burke escorted her in, waited till she was seated, and then resumed his chair and screwed up his lips at her. She certainly knew how to dress, he thought, and she also knew how to carry it, he would
hand that to her. And though her grey eyes looked indignant and scrappy, there was also a wary caution in them. Quite a woman. And a godawful liar.

She was saying, “I’ve been kept here over four hours. I know it’s useless to start screaming, but I came without protest when you sent for me, and it’s outrageous and unreasonable to isolate me like a criminal and keep me waiting four hours.”

Cramer said, “Uh-huh. I know it is. I’m sorry. I apologise. So now let’s make it as brief as we can. A few little things have come up since I saw you yesterday afternoon. For instance, you were telling me that at 11.25, that night at Lucky Hills, you went outdoors to see what the weather looked like, and because it was cool you went first to the side hall to get a jacket.”

He opened a drawer of his desk, took out a folded paper, opened it up, and walked over to her. “Here. This is a diagram of the ground floor of the house. Would you show me which hall and which closet it was that you got the jacket?”

She took the paper and studied it a moment, then pointed with a finger. “That one.” He stooped to look, then retrieved the paper, folded it, and returned to his chair.

“Much obliged. I believe that’s the closet where the tennis balls and rackets are kept?”

“Yes.”

“Was it your own jacket you got?”

“No, nothing of mine was there. I didn’t want to go upstairs. A lot of miscellaneous stuff was in that closet.”

“What kind of jacket was it you took?”

“I don’t know.” She hesitated. “I really don’t remember.”

“When you came back in, at one o’clock, did you return it to that closet?”

“No. It was out of my way, going to my room, so I wore it … no, I didn’t either. I remember that. I was in the upper hall before I remembered I had it on and it wasn’t mine, so I took it off and left it there in the hall, on the arm of a seat under a mirror.”

“That was in the north wing?”

“Yes, my room was in the north wing.”

“Was the jacket still there in the morning?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t notice, and it was so dark—” She caught herself abruptly and her eyes flickered, then she went on with admirable calm, “I mean, in all the excitement, when I left Guy Carew’s room—”

“That’s all right,” Cramer put in. “Don’t mind a little slip like that. We’ll discuss that in a minute, but right now let’s finish with the jacket. Maybe you remember that Guy had a jacket with him at the tennis court that afternoon, and when you finished he put it on and wore it back to the house.”

She nodded. “Yes.”

“Did you notice that jacket particularly?”

“Not—I wouldn’t say particularly. I saw it was an old Indian weave—an antique—it had holes in it.”

“Did you know the red yarn in it was called bayeta? Did he tell you about it?”

“Not that I remember.”

Cramer grunted. “Okay. That jacket—the one that Guy wore—was left by him in that side hall closet—the one you showed me on the diagram—when he put the balls and rackets away. Was it that one that you took at 11.25 that night to wear outdoors?”

“I’ve told you, I don’t remember what kind of jacket I took.”

“Do you remember that it was not that jacket?”

“No.”

“So it might have been that jacket?”

“It—” She stopped, then at once went on, “It could have been, yes.”

“And whatever jacket you took, you left it in the upper hall of the north wing and you don’t know whether it was there in the morning or not?”

“That’s what I told you, Inspector.”

“And that’s the truth?”

“Really—” Her eyes flickered. Then she lifted a hand and dropped it, and shrugged her shapely shoulders. “Yes, that’s the truth.”

Cramer leaned back and regarded her in silence. At length he sighed and started again, “You know, Miss Tritt, there are two or three ways of doing what I’m going to do now. I could easily ask you some trick questions that would put sweat on your brow, excuse the expression. That might be fun and it would serve you right, but it would be a waste of time. The quickest and best way is just to tell you that we know you’ve lied from the beginning about what you did that night between 2 a.m. and 7.25. The last time you did it was yesterday afternoon, to me. Well, that’s out. That lie’s no good any more. So suppose you go ahead and tell me what you really did do.”

Portia Tritt was smiling at him, but the smile was confined to her lips, for her eyes were too intent on their specific job to join in. She said with a little laugh, “Really, Inspector! Of all the tricks, why do you pick that one? It’s the most obvious of all.”

“It’s not a trick this time.” Cramer sounded patient. “I’m telling you straight. Of course you’re stubborn and you’re intelligent, and you’ll take some persuading. I expected that. I suppose if I told you that Guy Carew has been arrested under a charge of murder, and gave you my word of honour on it, you wouldn’t believe that either.”

She smiled again. “Certainly not. Would you expect me to believe that sort of nonsense?”

With a grunt Cramer pushed a button on his desk. He observed grimly, “If it wasn’t for the waste of time, I swear to God I’d lock you up till this time to-morrow and see what you think of it then. Did you ever hear of something called obstructing justice? And something nicer still, conspiring to obstruct justice?—Oh, Burke, are the rags out with it yet?”

“Yes, sir. All of ’em.”

“Got one?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Bring it here.”

He sat and looked at her. The smile had left her lips, and the banners of indignation and defiance no longer flew in her eyes, but they were quite steady. When Sergeant Burke re-entered she didn’t turn around, and she gave him only a casual glance as he passed on his way to the desk to hand his superior a newspaper. Cramer waved it away: “Give it to Miss Tritt.”

She took it and it screamed at her:

GUY CAREW ARRESTED FOR MURDER!

Then Cramer lost her face, for it was bent over the paper, bent low. It took her minutes to read what there was of it on the front page, and Cramer let her alone; but when her eyes moved up to the top again and she started over he interrupted brusquely:

“Once is enough, huh? I don’t suppose you suspect me of forging a newspaper. That would be a trick. Have they got your name in it?”

She lifted her head, and the paper fell from her knees to the floor. Apparently she had forgotten to breathe
while reading, for her whole body shook with the urgency of a shivering inhalation.

“My God,” she muttered. “It’s ghastly.”

“Yeah, it usually is. I warn you, Miss Tritt, there’ll be no tendency around here, or at White Plains either, to let you down easy. You did obstruct justice. You told the police a lie that gummed the works from the beginning, and you stuck to it. There’s only one thing to do now, come absolutely clean, and be darned careful while you’re at it. Tell me now exactly what you did do that night from two o’clock on.”

Her shoulders sagged. “But it says there—” Her hand fluttered to indicate the paper on the floor. “And in the headlines…. Good God.” She stared at the paper.

Suddenly she straightened up and looked at Cramer. “At any rate,” she declared, “you can’t expect me to tell you anything now. I must have a lawyer. You can’t expect—”

Cramer blurted, “It’s not what I expect. I’ll just tell you what I’m going to do. If you come clean with me here and now so I can start a check up, I won’t keep you and I won’t put a charge on you. Not for the present at least, if the check up is good. If you hold me up by calling a lawyer in and trying to cover with legalities, I’ll keep you on two counts, as a material witness and also under a charge of obstructing justice. You’ll get out on bail, of course, but you’ll have a charge to beat, and there’ll be no consideration shown around here, or in the district attorney’s office either. Take your pick. You can phone your lawyer right now if you want to—here’s a phone.”

“But if I really have obstructed justice—I ought to know—”

“That’s your funeral. Take your pick.”

She sat and stared at the newspaper, her lips pressed tight, her brows drawn together, stiff and motionless.
After a while she muttered, “It’s hard to think straight, with—under the circumstances.” She sat and stared some more.

Suddenly she pulled herself up, looked Cramer in the eye, and told him, “All right. You say if I tell you what I did I can go. Everything happened as I said it did up to two o’clock. I returned to the house at one and went to my room and sat there. Around two I went to bed, and I slept some, but not much and not very soundly. At half-past five I was out of bed again, and a little later I got dressed. At six-thirty exactly, which was the time the rays of the sun were supposed to come through the walls of the tomb, I left the house at the end of the north wing corridor and cut right across the lawn and through the grove of evergreens. I must have—”

“See any one?”

“No. Not a sign of any one. I must have got to the tomb enclosure about twenty minutes to seven, or a little before. What I intended to do was to be at the gap when Val Carew came out. I stepped into the gap and saw the Indian on the ground. His hands and feet were tied with strips of his shirt, and he was gagged. Then I saw the door of the tomb was partly open, and I ran to it and tried to see through the opening, but it was only a crack, so I pushed it wider, and saw something on the floor. I went in, and it was Val Carew, and he was dead. I kneeled down by him to make sure, and then I stood up, and I don’t know how long I stood there. When I left I could see the Indian lying over by the gap, but I didn’t go out of the enclosure that way. I went around and left by the gap at the other end, and kept beyond the shrubbery to circle back to the house, because I didn’t want any one to see me. Perhaps that was foolish, but I only half knew what I was doing. I got back in by the door I had left unlocked and went to my room and undressed
and got into bed. I had decided to let no one know I had been out. But lying there in bed—”

She shivered. “It was horrible. Val Carew lying dead out there, and no one knowing, and time going on all over that house…. I got up and dressed again and went to Guy’s room and knocked on the door and went in. He was up and dressed. I told him. He was so stunned he couldn’t believe me, and I was still telling him when there was another knock on the door. It was the Indian. He had come to and worked himself loose and gone to the tomb—”

“Yeah, I know. While you were in the tomb why did you take that lance from the wall and why did you go up the stone steps to the platform?”

“I didn’t.” She stared. “Oh, you mean my fingerprints. But I’ve told you how they got there. Val Carew took me—”

“Was that the truth maybe?”

“It was.” She looked in his eyes. “I realise I’m handicapped now. I told a lie, and everything I say is suspected. But I told that one lie, and that’s all.”

“Maybe. You’ve just described how you lay in bed after you got back from the tomb, feeling horrible. Guy Carew says that you told him that you decided he had killed his father and you went to his room to see how he would act. How about it?”

“I … I didn’t. That isn’t true.”

“You mean you didn’t tell him that?”

“Possibly I told him something like that. Much later. But I didn’t really—I was much too shocked—”