The Rotary Club Murder Mystery (19 page)

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Authors: Graham Landrum

BOOK: The Rotary Club Murder Mystery
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Fredrick M. Middleton
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W
ith the return of Harriet Bushrow to Borderville, the interest of the Baker Street Irregulars may be said to have reached a plateau. Since our agent had not yet cracked the case, we were somewhat in the position of football fans whose team has returned home after tying a game. The team is no nearer the conference championship, but the hopes of the fans are by no means dashed.
So there we were, all ten of us, at the close of the last club meeting in June, and Henry Delaporte had a letter from our operative. It began:
Dear Baker Street Irregulars,
A detective—at least a lady detective—operates on intuition, and my intuition tells me that Mr. Henry Delaporte, and undoubtedly some other “Irregulars,” had more than a passive role in securing for me the beautiful Buick car that replaces my old DeSoto. If my intuition is right, I want to express my thanks. It was a lovely thing that you did.
As a matter of fact, each of us chipped in one hundred dollars, and the car cost a good deal more than our friend will ever guess, but we'll let that pass.
The letter continued:
In view of the support you have given me, it is only right that I should give you a resume of what I now know about the death of your district governor, Charles Hollonbrook, on May 27.
First, I cannot stress too strongly that we are dealing with a case of murder, as is proved by the violent reaction to my investigations expressed when my car was blown to bits. With this fact established, we must consider the possible motives for the murder of the late district governor.
Unfortunately, the facts that I have turned up regarding Mr. Hollonbrook do not reflect credit upon him, and the publication of them will very likely cause embarrassment to your club and others in your district. However, I beg you to keep in mind that very few men are murdered without reason.
The facts which I have been able to ascertain have led me to identify at least six possible suspects. For your consideration, I list them below.
1. Victor Douglass—college friend and former business partner, from whom Charles Hollonbrook received many favors and much assistance—was cheated out of a substantial profit and reduced in circumstances by the breakup of the firm of Hollonbrook and Douglass.
2. Mrs. Linda Hollonbrook and her son, James Hollonbrook. Mrs. Hollonbrook never overcame the bitterness of her divorce, insisted that her former husband had been unjust to his children, and expected them to gain affluence from his death. James
Hollonbrook had access to his father's guns and memo pads identical to the one from which the paper for the so-called suicide note was taken. The boy knew of his father's whereabouts on May 26. Furthermore, James Hollonbrook's behavior indicates a tendency to violence. No alibi.
3. Mrs. Alice Hollonbrook—alienated by her husband's frequent infidelities—was conducting an affair with a married man at the time of Hollonbrook's death. The gentleman friend—who seems unwilling to divorce his wife for financial reasons—is Mrs. Hollonbrook's unreliable alibi. Mrs. Hollonbrook had access to the pistol and silencer, the memo pads, and her husband's whereabouts. On the other hand, Mrs. Hollonbrook stood to lose $500,000 of insurance money if her husband died by suicide. She appears to have been aware that her husband's estate was seriously depleted.
4. Ms. Kimberlin Mayburn, twice divorced, somewhat unbalanced mentally, was Mr. Hollonbrook's most recent conquest. It seems likely that the gentleman was contemplating divorce from his wife and marriage to the suspect. There is also the possibility that Hollonbrook, aware of Mayburn's instability, may have withdrawn from the affair recently. Mayburn's brother had access to Hollonbrook's guns and perhaps notepads. Mayburn can be assumed to have known of Hollonbrook's whereabouts on May 26.
5. Ben H. Rawlings of the Estonia Savings and Loan. Hollonbrook for some time had been blackmailing Mrs. Rawlings and receiving unwarranted loans from Estonia Savings to finance his real estate development. With the decline of real estate business in Stedbury, Hollonbrook was unable to pay his debts, and because of blackmail the Estonia Savings
was deterred from foreclosure. Rawlings was in Boone, North Carolina, within easy reach of Borderville on the night of the murder.
6. Paula Stout—“angel of mercy” or “the world's doormat”—as secretary-treasurer of the Hollonbrook firm, she may have expected to gain by Hollonbrook's death. She had access to the gun and silencer, the notepad, and Hollonbrook's complete itinerary. Her alibi can perhaps be rejected, and there seems to be a harsher side to her character than that of the cheerful doer of good deeds.
7. Also ran: Buchannan Patterson. Hollonbrook caused Patterson's divorce from his wife, Desiree, and had him fired from his job as golf pro at the Stedbury Country Club. Patterson's involvement occurred some time ago and his present employment, in Florida, places him at too great a distance from Borderville. He seems not to be a very likely candidate.
There are others who had access to the gun and perhaps to the memo pads. The above list of suspects represents the status of my investigations when my car was destroyed. Obviously, the man who exploded my car is also a suspect, whoever he is.
I trust that you gentlemen will agree that I have been diligent in my investigation. At the moment, I am considering how best to proceed.
Faithfully yours,
Harriet Gardner Bushrow
There was a brief silence before Seth Newgent said, “Who would think that a little old lady could find out all that stuff and put it into a report like that?”
“Anyone who has been playing bridge with her for twenty years, as I have, would think of it,” I said.
“By the way,” Stan Ferguson said, “you can leave the golf pro out of the picture. My brother-in-law in Lauderdale tells me Buck Patterson is back with his wife. However, and this is the joker, he is now the pro at the Poplar Hill Club.”
“He is!” Henry looked at Stan in surprise, as we all did. “I'll pass that on to Mrs. Bushrow.” Poplar Hill is only forty miles from Borderville.
“It's the mistress who did it,” Leon Jones said. “It's always the mistress in a slinky nightgown—or maybe the wife. But it's got to be a slinky nightgown.”
Then Leon was barraged with comments like, “What kind of TV do you watch?”
Finally, Trajan got us back in order by moving that the Baker Street Irregulars express appreciation to Mrs. Bushrow and encourage her to continue the good work.
With a chorus of approval, the Irregulars adjourned and straggled out of the room.
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Harriet Bushrow
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I
have always known I ought to have my head examined. Anybody with any sense at all would quit and go home when her car was dynamited. She ought to know the same thing could happen to her that happened to the car. Well, I did, in fact, go home, but I just couldn't quit. Curiosity killed the cat, but cats have nine lives, and they don't die easily.
After I got caught up on all the things that happened in the neighborhood—I had to do that, you know—and after I got my housekeeping straightened out, I found that I was just sitting around doing nothing but thinking about that case.
All along I had said that once I knew who the murderer was, I would go on to figure out how he—or she—or they—did it. I had been close enough to the murderer, or his or her cooperator, to get my car blown up, and still I could take my list of suspects and say that any of them could have done it. Maybe if I turned my attention to how it was done, that would tell me which one of my suspects was the man—or the woman.
So I dressed up—hat and gloves, best shoes, the works—got into my nice new car, and drove over to the Borderville Inn. I sailed into the lobby and informed the young man at the desk
that my son and his wife with their daughter and her husband along with their three children were coming to visit me and I just didn't feel that I could keep all that managerie in my house and retain my wits. Would he be so kind as to let me inspect the accommodations the Inn had to offer.
“Why, certainly, madam.”
He called for another young man, gave him a key, and instructed him to show me whatever I wanted to see. The second young man led me to the first room on the left as you go toward the swimming pool. That was not the room where the murder took place; it was five doors down from the room where the murder took place; but as all the rooms are exactly alike, it didn't matter which room I examined.
Like the murder room, this room had two double beds—blond oak headboard—two armchairs, one chest of drawers, a surface to put your bags on, a mirror, one straight chair, a round table, a kind of night table with drawers in it and a light attached to the wall beside it, and a TV. The door and a plate-glass window with draw curtains made up one side of the room. The opposite end of the room contained an alcove with basin and mirror. On one side of the alcove, a door opened to the bath. On the other side was a closet with louvered doors that folded back. I suppose someone could have hidden in the closet for a short while or in the bathroom. And even if someone used the toilet, another person could be hidden in the tub, behind the shower curtain. But nobody could hide longer than just a few minutes that way without being discovered.
I went around looking at everything—tested the mattresses with my hand, flushed the commode, looked in the drawers, ran my gloved finger along horizontal surfaces to inspect for dust. I asked if the walls were fireproof. The poor man who was showing me the accommodations must have thought I was very concerned for cleanly and comfortable accommodations for my mythical family.
Finally, I got around to what I really wanted to see—the lock
on the door and the chain arrangement that they had had to break when they burst into Charles Hollonbrook's room a month before.
Actually, the “chain” was a loop of brass—U-shaped—attached by a plate screwed into the door in such a way that the loop swivels back and forth. Then on the doorjamb, there is a projecting hook attached firmly to the jamb with screws. This hook is rigid and ends in a knob a bit larger than the diameter of the hook.
When the door is closed, the brass loop can be placed over the hook. The door can then be opened slightly, but the loop, being caught by the hook, prevents the door from opening further.
The widest opening of the door allowed by the loop is no more than an inch. It would be impossible to put a hand through this crevice, and I could not imagine how the link of the “chain” could be disengaged from the outside.
I worked the mechanism several times and was very pleased with the outcome of my inspection. I walked with the young man back to the lobby, thanking him profusely.
As he gave the key back to the gentleman at the desk, I said, “When I was here some time ago, I met a very beautiful young lady—a Miss Teddy Brazille. How is she?”
“She is not with us any longer,” the young man said.
“Not with you? Why, where did she go?” At that point, I had an intimation that I had stumbled onto something.
“She just suddenly quit. Went to New York.”
“My goodness,” I said. “What will she do for money?”
“I think she came into some,” he said. “From an aunt.”
“Her aunt died and left it to her?”
He frowned. “No, I think she gave it to her.”
“And this rich aunt—who is she?”
“Don't know. Someone down there in North Carolina where Teddy came from.”
“Stedbury?” I held my breath.
“Yeah, I believe that's it.”
Well, that was something to think about, and I thought about it all the way home and all through the evening until I fell asleep in bed, and I was thinking about it again in the morning when I first woke up.
 
Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what's a heaven for?
 
That was one of the things Miss Langrock had us memorize at Catawba Hall. It's funny how those things come back to us across the years.
I had grasped some things, and I was reaching for others. I had grasped how Charles Hollonbrook had been killed with his own gun in a locked room. I did not yet grasp the answer to the question of who did it. But I was reaching, and I would soon have it.
And yet, although I would soon know all the answers to my own satisfaction, proving any of it was another matter.
I am not a feminist, and I have never felt at a disadvantage because I am a woman. I have always thought it was a privilege to be a woman—and for men it is a privilege to be a man. Nevertheless …
Nevertheless, I knew there wasn't a man living who would listen to me unless I could prove to an absolute certainty that what I said was so. Not only am I a woman but I am an
old
woman. Who's going to listen to a dotty old woman the likes of whom
I
wouldn't even listen to?
But I knew how to get just a few more bits of information, and then I would know how to convince the authorities and bring the culprit to justice.
As soon as I had washed my breakfast dishes, I dialed Maud.
“Who,” I said right off the bat, “is Theodora Brazille?”
Maud told me right away.
“Why didn't you tell me that before?” I asked.
“Because you didn't ask,” she said.
I declare, I felt like an absolute dumbbell. All those hours I had spent snooping around about this one and that one—I could have done without all of that if I had just asked the right question at the very first.
I told Maud I would be in Stedbury as fast as I could—just as soon as I had taken care of a few things around the house.
“We'll get this thing settled in a few days,” I promised.
Maud was about as excited as I was. It was a wonderful feeling.

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