Rex Stout (27 page)

He straightened, shrugged, and said as one who had made all possible concessions, “Thank God it’s your back and not mine.”

Portia Tritt wet her lips, and sat motionless, her chin up, regarding him. No one said anything.

Cramer spoke again: “Another thing apparently you don’t understand. Mr. Skinner here is district attorney for New York County. This isn’t a New York County murder, it’s Westchester. If you are held on charges, anything from murder accomplice down, it won’t be Mr. Skinner who will prosecute you, it will be Anderson of Westchester, and I don’t think he—”

“I resent that!” Skinner interrupted hotly. “I resent the implication—”

“You’ve got nothing to resent,” Cramer retorted. “I’m addressing myself to a misconception Miss Tritt may have in her mind. She don’t seem to realise what she’s up against. You know what Anderson himself said here in this room yesterday noon. I’m stating a plain fact when I say that if Miss Tritt adds concealment about this key to that fake alibi, it’s better than an even chance that she’ll be locked up on a charge of complicity in murder. I ask you, is that true?”

Skinner looked sour. Portia Tritt wet her lips again. She turned to the district attorney:

“Is that true?”

Skinner finally nodded. “I’m afraid it is.”

“That I—arrested for
murder
?”

“Complicity—legally it’s the same thing.”

“And if I tell now what I did with the key, I wouldn’t have to tell it again”—she shivered—“on the witness stand?”

“Probably not, if it wasn’t connected with the murder.” Skinner was frowning at her. “If your use of that key had a possible relation to the murder, I would advise you to submit to arrest, get a lawyer, and leave it to him. If it had nothing to do with the murder, tell us about it now. And if you do tell us, it will be best not to overlook
any details. I don’t know what information Inspector Cramer already possesses, but you can be sure that every word you say will be rigorously investigated.”

Her shoulders were drooping and her chin was down. No one had her eyes; her gaze was apparently directed at the toe of her patent leather pump. At length, and slowly, she returned it to meet the unrelenting steady regard of the inspector.

“All right,” she said calmly. “I used the key. I got in the tomb with it.”

“How many times?”

“Once.”

“Only once?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Tuesday afternoon, the day before Val Carew was killed. A little before four o’clock that afternoon. At that time the old Indian was always in the house taking a nap, and I knew I wouldn’t be seen.”

“What did you do in there?”

“I—” She stopped and glanced around, at Humbert, at Skinner, and back at Cramer. “I know what you’ve been thinking, naturally. That my getting that key had some connection with the murder, but it hadn’t, none whatever. I haven’t wanted to tell it, and I still don’t want to, because it will sound ridiculous, and I don’t like to sound ridiculous any more than most people. Even less, I suppose. But in fact it wasn’t ridiculous, it was sensible and practical. I went to the tomb to put paper in the holes in the wall so the sun couldn’t come through.”

Humbert’s chair creaked. Skinner stared at her with his brows up. Cramer asked, “Did you do it?”

“Yes. I took some Pasilex—”

“What’s that?”

“A cleaning tissue made of very soft paper. That’s
the kind I use. I took some, and stuffed it into three of the holes, because I wasn’t sure which one the sun would come through the next morning, though you could tell pretty accurately, standing on the platform. Then I went out again and back to the house. That’s all I did. I wasn’t in there more than five or six minutes.”

Cramer’s eyes were narrow. He said, stating a fact, “You couldn’t reach the holes from that platform.”

“Of course not,” she agreed. “Not with my arm. But—I’ve told you that Val Carew had taken me there the Sunday before, to show me the tomb. The idea of shutting out the sun had occurred to me before, and that was why I had persuaded him to take me inside, so I could look at it in advance. I saw that there were lances on the wall with which I could reach the holes from the platform, and that’s what I used, one of the lances. I put a piece of Pasilex on the tip of the lance and pushed it in. I used nine pieces of Pasilex, three in each hole.” She smiled, with no humour, at the inspector. “Now, of course, you caught me in another lie. I said that the fingerprints that were found were put there on the day that Val Carew showed me the tomb. That was true about those on the top of the relic cabinet. But the ones on the lance handle and the glass lid of Tsianina’s casket and the lever of the door were put there that Tuesday.”

Cramer grunted. “Have you still got the key?”

“No. I put it under a stone in the brook.”

“Could you find it?”

“Easily.”

“This was on Tuesday afternoon, July 6th?”

“Yes.”

“And you left the Pasilex stuffed in the holes? It was still there when you left the tomb?”

“Certainly. That was what I went there for.”

“How far in did you stuff it?”

“Not far. Just in the entrances of the holes.”

“And did you think that would deceive Carew? Didn’t you realise he would know if the sun was shining outdoors, and if it didn’t come through to Tsianina’s face he would look at the hole, and would be unable to see daylight through it, and would see it was stuffed with something?”

“Of course I did. But I knew a good deal about how he felt about it. It was a genuine superstition with him. The whole point, the only point, was whether the sun did actually enter and shine on Tsianina’s face. If you are genuinely superstitious about thirteen at table, it doesn’t remove the curse to know that someone deliberately arranged to make it thirteen. Besides that, he did want to marry me. He wanted to—very much. We had discussed this, and he had as good as told me that interference by a—by any agency, would not invalidate the verdict. The only question was whether or not, for those few moments, the sun entered.”

“You mean he practically invited you to interfere.”

“I didn’t say that. But it almost amounted to that. You can verify it if you want to, because one of those discussions was in the presence of a mutual friend, Leo Kranz.”

She nodded. “He’ll verify it.”

Cramer looked at her in silence, with his lips screwed up. Finally he heaved a deep sigh, and shook his head. “Well,” he declared, “I’d have thought you’d learned better sense. Didn’t Mr. Skinner advise you not to overlook any details, meaning you’d better tell the truth?”

“I understood it that way. I have told the truth.”

“Oh, no, you haven’t.” Cramer’s voice took on an edge. “You have told an absolute barefaced lie! You have said you stuffed the Pasilex in the holes Tuesday afternoon, and left it there, and didn’t go back! Then what
became of it? The police got there at eight o’clock Wednesday morning, and they examined every inch of that tomb, and there was no Pasilex in the holes or anywhere else! Pasilex hell!” He leaned to her, and his eyes were menacing. “I can’t roughhouse you, I know that, so what you’d better do is get a lawyer and dig in. Let him juggle your lies a while. What I’m going to do right now is phone Anderson of White Plains and advise him to give you room and board as an accomplice in first degree murder!”

He was on his feet, and she put out a hand to stop him.

“No! Wait!”

He whirled on one foot and glared. She appealed, “I haven’t lied! I’ve told the truth! The police didn’t find it because it wasn’t there any more! It had been taken away!”

“Who took it?”

“Leo Kranz.”

“When? Did he have a key to the tomb too?”

“No.” She was more composed. “He didn’t need one. That morning—when Val was killed—when Guy went to the tomb he took Leo along. Surely you know that. Guy left Leo there and went to the house to telephone. Leo was there alone, and he looked around, and saw something was stuffed in the holes. He got a harpoon from the wall and pulled the stuff out and saw what it was, and kept it. He—he knew it was mine because it was yellow Pasilex, and he knew I use that, and it isn’t very common.”

Cramer, still standing, demanded savagely, “What did he do with it?”

“He took it. He kept it.”

“Has he still got it?”

“Yes. He did have, two days ago. That was when I
learned he had taken it. He told me. I had been wondering what had happened to it—I had been wondering why the police hadn’t found it, and learned it was mine—and asked me about it. Leo sent me—I went to see him, and he told me about it.”

Cramer sat down, very deliberately. He took a cigar from his pocket, frowned at it as he rolled it between his fingers, and then stuck it in his mouth and clamped his teeth. With slow ferocity he chewed.

Skinner asked irritably, “Time out for a cud?”

Cramer ignored him. After a while he removed the cigar and addressed the commissioner: “I’m on a line, sir. May I follow it?”

Humbert, with sharp eyes on him, merely nodded.

Cramer got up and went to the phone on its bracket and spoke into it. After a little wait he spoke again.

“Burke? Send Leo Kranz to the commissioner’s office right away. You might bring him yourself, you need the exercise.”

L
eo Kranz, with admirable control of his temper, smiled.

Inspector Cramer had made changes in the seating arrangement. He had requested Portia Tritt to move to another chair at the district attorney’s left, keeping the one she had vacated for Kranz. This put Kranz next to him, and also had the advantage that Portia Tritt would be on Kranz’s left and somewhat to his rear as he sat facing the inspector. Sergeant Burke, requested to remain, had a position against the wall.

Kranz said with his smile, “I’ve been kept incommunicado up there for four hours, and I was prepared to make a row. But when I see that you gentlemen are missing your Sunday too, I realise it must be important, and—” He shrugged. “Of course it’s this dreadful business—I’ve never been as horrified in my life as I was when I heard that Guy Carew had been arrested.”

They nodded. Cramer asked, “What’s your opinion of it, Mr. Kranz? Do you think he’s guilty?”

“No, I don’t,” Kranz said firmly. “I simply can’t believe it. Of course if you have proof, real proof—and I suppose you have or he wouldn’t have been arrested….”

“Yeah. I just wondered how you felt about it.” Cramer got rid of the cigar. “There’s one or two little questions I want to ask you. For instance, on various occasions you have been asked if you knew anything that might have a bearing on the murder, and you have always said no. Why didn’t you tell us that Miss Tritt had a duplicate key to the tomb?”

Kranz’s eyes flickered. His head started to turn for a glance at Portia Tritt, but seeing that he would have to go more than ninety degrees to make it, he gave it up. “Why,” he said with composure, “that seems apparent, doesn’t it? There wasn’t the slightest reason to suppose it had anything to do with the murder.”

“Then you admit you knew about it?”

“Certainly.” He smiled. “Since obviously you know all about it.”

“All or part. When did you first learn of it?”

“The day after the murder. On Thursday. Richards, the valet, told me what he had done and asked my advice.”

“And you told him to keep it quiet and didn’t see fit to mention it yourself?”

Kranz upturned a palm. “I’ve explained, haven’t I, Inspector? There was no earthly reason to suppose it was relevant to your investigation. I confess I was reluctant to involve Miss Tritt in unnecessary unpleasantness.”

“Did you know what Miss Tritt had used the key for?”

“No.”

“Do you know now what she used it for?”

“No.”

Cramer grunted sarcastically. “You lie like a gentleman. We know all about it.”

Kranz’s eyes narrowed a little, and for a moment he
was silent. “In that case—” he began, and stopped; and this time his head went round far enough to bring Portia Tritt into his line of vision. She was sitting properly and still, her little pumps decorously side by side, ankles touching, on the Velatan rug which was the commissioner’s personal property, her shoulders up, her hands clasped in her lap; but any familiar acquaintance would have wondered why her lips were so tight. No sudden gleam or shadow in her eyes acknowledged Kranz’s glance.

Kranz returned to the inspector and finished his sentence. “In that case, anything I might tell you would be second-hand.”

Cramer shrugged. “I’m not trying any tricks. I don’t have to. One thing about us cops, Mr. Kranz, we have an idea that anything done around the scene of a murder, especially shortly before or shortly after, may be both relevant and material, and we have a right to be told about it. It’s an idea that has often been tested, and we find it pays to hang on to it. We don’t want to involve Miss Tritt in unnecessary unpleasantness any more than you do, or anybody else, but we don’t like to leave loose ends hanging to make a tangle later on. For instance, what if Guy Carew’s lawyer finds out about this key business? We want to know at least as much about it as he does, and we wouldn’t mind if we knew more. And frankly, since you were an old friend of Carew’s, we figure he’ll probably know about it, and we want to know too. Miss Tritt has kindly given us a lot of information, and with no disrespect to her, we want to check it. That’s natural, isn’t it?”

Kranz smiled a little. “I suppose it is. But I maintain I had no reason to suppose it relevant—”

“Okay.” Cramer waved it away. “Now, Miss Tritt
tells us that she used the key to get into the tomb Tuesday afternoon, the day before the murder. She had with her some pieces of a cleaning tissue called Pasilex, and she took a lance and stuffed them into three of the holes in the wall so the sun couldn’t get through to shine on Tsianina’s face. As she says, it may sound ridiculous, but it was really sensible and practical. After the murder, she naturally began to wonder why the police hadn’t found the Pasilex, and she kept on wondering. She couldn’t imagine what had happened to it. Two days ago she found out, when you told her that you had it. You had removed it from the holes in the wall yourself, with one of the harpoons in the tomb. Is that correct?”