Hunt in the Dark Read online

  It was easy to reconstruct the rest. A cord had been attached to the neck. The unconscious form of Mrs. Bellman had been propped in a standing position, the cord slung over the hub of the shaft, and then the body had been lifted a fraction of an inch from the floor. No strength would have been needed. The great fan would have done the rest.

  A vivid mental picture flashed before my eyes—a picture of the murderer gripping that slim waist, lifting, and watching the thin legs dangling just above the flowered carpet. It was fantastically horrible—and yet so simple. A child, even Agnes Salt, could have climbed on a chair and done it.

  I did not want any one else in the boarding house to know of my gruesome discovery. I shot the bolts on the door and sat down to wait for Cobb, not even bothering to remove my drenched clothes. Every now and then my glance returned in fascination to that small, untidy heap on the floor. I hurried into the bedroom for a sheet.

  I was just bending to throw it over the body when there was a knock at the door. It was only then that I realized how deathly silent it had been in the apartment. The sound echoed bleakly along the walls—hollow and unnaturally loud.

  For a moment I stood motionless. Then the knock sounded again—and again.

  “Doctor Westlake!” It was a woman’s voice.

  I dropped the sheet and spun round to face the door. “What is it?”

  “This—this is Delia Davenport. I’m frightfully sorry to bother you, but I’ve got a devilish headache and no aspirin. Can you do anything about it?”

  I glanced at the sheet and then at the door. With sudden decision, I whipped off my coat and rolled up my shirt sleeves.

  “Afraid I can’t let you in,” I called. “I’m changing my clothes. Wait a moment and I’ll hand you out some.”

  I hurried into the bathroom and returned with a bottle of aspirin. Unbolting the door, I opened it the fraction of an inch and thrust my bare arm out with the bottle.

  “Thanks a lot.” Her fingers met mine. “I see you keep your door bolted. I guess you’ve found out it’s the best thing to do around here.”

  She laughed and moved away. I could still feel the warmth of her hand against mine, still hear the youthful laughter ringing in my ears. She was so young, so alive—so different from that cold, dead thing behind me.

  At that moment the piano started to play in Mr. Washer’s room. It was, of course, the inevitable Chopin. There was something bizarre and horrible about its very sweetness. I sat down again, cursing Cobb for being so slow. Once I thought I heard the clank of Miss Sophie’s iron heel on the stairs. Someone else shuffled past and perched outside my door. I had a strong suspicion that it was Jo. It seemed as though all the inmates of No. 12 Potter Street were closing in on me—watching, listening, waiting.

  It was with relief that I heard the round of gruff voices on the stairs. There were heavy footsteps in the passage and then a knock at the door. I hurried to open it to find Cobb, Doctor Foley, and three or four officers. Jo was standing behind them, his mouth wide open, eyes glazed. I caught a glimpse of Miss Clymer fluttering agitatedly by.

  “The police!” she murmured in an awed whisper.

  Cobb dismissed Jo with a curt nod of his grizzled head and led the little procession into the room. His kind, elderly face was serious and rather sad.

  “Have you done anything, Westlake?” he asked quickly. “I just cut the body down and covered it up,” I said, “Otherwise, nothing’s been touched.”

  While Doctor Foley started his examination, I told Cobb all that had happened at No. 12 since my phone call of the night before. I went into the bedroom and produced the cretonne laundry bag. He took it, handed it to one of his men, and gave swift instructions to the others.

  Where before Agnes Salt’s apartment had been so quiet, it was now buzzing with activity. The fingerprint man was examining the cord. The police photographer was setting up his apparatus. Two officers were moving about slowly and deliberately.

  Cobb had crossed to Doctor Foley’s side. As I joined him, the police doctor glanced up.

  “Been dead about an hour, I should say.” He reconstructed the method of death in a way that fell in with my theories, adding: “Judging by the expression on the face, something had scared her just about the time she was knocked on the head.”

  “That’s funny.” Cobb had produced his pipe from the pocket of his tweed coat and was sucking at it reflectively. “You say she was hit unconscious from behind. She wouldn’t have seen the murderer. Looks as though something else must have frightened her.”

  I remembered the red-ribboned cat that had lain on the mantelpiece the night before. “Maybe it did,” I murmured. “Heaven knows, she might have seen anything in this room.”

  Cobb was gazing down at the body. “By the way, could a woman have done this, doctor?”

  “Yes.” Doctor Foley glanced at me for confirmation and I nodded. “All she would have to do was to hit Mrs. Bellman on the head from behind. It would have been easy to fix the cord to the shaft of the fan.”

  The door opened, and two white-coated men hurried in, carrying a stretcher. Behind them I saw Jo. He was just shuffling away when Cobb called out to him.

  “Stay right there, please. I’ll want to talk to you in a moment.

  I understand you’re one of the deceased’s nearest relatives.”

  Jo started, brushed the gray hair from his forehead, and moved back against the banisters.

  Doctor Foley had finished his examination now. A magnesium flare flamed as the photographer took his last exposure. Then the white-coated man lifted the small body onto the stretcher.

  “Well, I’ll let you know the autopsy reports as soon as I get them.” Doctor Foley snapped his bag shut and followed the stretcher out of the room.

  In the passage I could see Jo staring dazedly after them, staring at the little white mound which was all that remained of his aunt.

  Cobb was talking to his men. I heard him ordering one of them to go downstairs and tell the officer at the door to let no one in or out. Another was to check up on all telephone calls sent or received that evening. He instructed a third to stay on guard outside the apartment. Then he beckoned to Jo.

  The janitor shambled into the room and stood in front of us, twisting his gnarled hands uneasily. Cobb gave him a long, curious glance.

  “I understand that you’re Mrs. Bellman’s nephew,” he said. “Before we start the investigation, I’d like you to tell me anything you know about your aunt’s property.”

  Jo’s eyes narrowed furtively. “Say, what you asking me for?

  She ain’t died a natural death, did she? You don’t think—”

  “All I want to know,” broke in Cobb, “is what your aunt intended to do with this house. We can’t open her will without a lawyer, and it’s too late to get one tonight.”

  “Well—” Jo’s tone was obsequious and at the same time filled with a certain pride, “—I think—that is, she told me she was leaving this place and everything to me.”

  Cobb was looking at him fixedly. “She told you that?”

  “Sure. Only the other day it was. Some sort of an offer came through from a dame that wanted to buy the place. Aunt Eva turned it down and told me she wasn’t going to quit —not till she died. After that, she said, she’d rather I had it than any stranger. By strangers I guess she meant her old man. He went off years ago.”

  Cobb was about to speak when I interrupted.

  “Jo,” I exclaimed, “do you remember the name of this woman who wanted to buy the house?”

  Jo scratched his shaggy head and glanced at me sidewise. “I don’t know who it was. Aunt Eva didn’t tell me. Besides, I guess she didn’t know, either. It was done through an agent.”

  “O.K.” Cobb had scribbled a few words in his notebook. “That’s all for the present. We’ll take up the question of your aunt’s husband some other time.”

  Jo seemed very pleased to be gone. He grinned ne
rvously, half bowed and shambled out of the room.

  After he had left, Cobb turned to me with a shrug.

  “Well, we’ve gotten ourselves mixed up in the craziest affair I’ve ever heard of—canaries, goldfish, cats, laundry bags, murdered landladies. They don’t make much sense to me.”

  “They make sense up to a point,” I replied. “At least, one thing looks pretty certain. They’re all connected with one another and they’re all part of some devilish plan. The problem is to find the plan. There’s a mad sameness about all that’s happened, which makes me feel pretty sure one person’s responsible for the lot. I wouldn’t mind betting, either, that the person is one of my charming fellow boarders. An outsider would never have been able to play those little tricks on Mrs. Bellman. They were all too well-timed.”

  Cobb grunted. “But who’d want to scare the old lady? And who’d want to kill her, come to that?”

  “Yes, motives,” I said wearily. “Jo gets the house in the will. He’s got a motive all right, but I can’t believe he’d have anything to do with it. He’s far too dumb to think out anything as picturesque as that red ribbon around the cat’s neck or the beastly business with the electric fan.”

  “Listen, Westlake.” Cobb had leaned forward and was regarding me with earnest eyes. “I’m going to start interviewing these boarders in a minute, but I want to get your slant on them first. After all, you’ve been in this bug house for several days and you must know them pretty well. Is there any one of them that might have a reason for wanting the old girl out of the way?”

  “Not so far as I’ve been able to figure out. They all have their little grouses, but I’ve got wind of nothing serious. All the same, if you have a good reason for wanting someone dead, you don’t generally cry it from the housetops. I suggest we can the motives for the time being and concentrate on opportunity. I think I can help you there—that is, provided we can suppose that one person did everything.”

  Cobb nodded his approval and pushed forward his notebook, in which he had already compiled a list of the boarders at No. 12. I leaned back in my chair, trying to review in detail the curious events of the past few days.

  “In the first place,” I began, “I don’t think it can be Miss Clymer. On the day I arrived, she was talking to me in the hall a few minutes before Mrs. Bellman ran out to tell me about the goldfish. I don’t see how Miss Clymer could have put that bowl on the stove and been in the hall at the same time.”

  “Miss Clymer,” echoed Cobb. “That’s the plump spinster. I’ll cross her off for the time being.”

  “And then,” I continued, “there’s Mr. Washer. I definitely heard him playing the piano before, during and after the incident with the cat. He was playing, too, when I saw the woman on the roof—playing that inevitable Chopin of his.”

  Cobb looked amused. “Chopin!” he said. “Didn’t know you were a musician, Westlake.”

  “I’m not,” I replied humbly. “I wouldn’t have known it was Chopin except that my young daughter has a passion for struggling through the easier masterpieces. Anyhow, you can strike out our friend next door.”

  Cobb put a light cross against Washer’s name.

  At this point, I sneezed. Although the electric fan had not been switched on again, it was chilly in the room and I was still wearing the sodden clothes in which I had come back from my fool’s errand to Doctor Hammond’s mythical patient. I felt all the symptoms of an approaching cold.

  “Listen,” I said, “let’s hold our horses a while until I get that fire lighted. I’m freezing to the marrow.”

  While Cobb looked on, I made a pitiful attempt to get the fire started. With the assistance of the last few editions of the Grovestown Times, I managed at last to get a grudging response from the kindling. Mrs. Bellman’s renovated fireplace seemed to be picturesque rather than efficient. The draft was poor. Smoke bellowed out into the room in large, pungent clouds. What heat there was, however, proved cheering. I hurried into the bedroom, undressed, returned in a bath robe and drew my chair near to the meager flames. I had brought in with me my benzedrine inhaler. It cleared my head wonderfully.

  ”Where did we get to?” I asked.

  Cobb gazed in disgust at the haze of smoke which surrounded me. “We ruled out Clymer and Washer.”

  “Well,” I mused, “there was that figure on the roof. Of course, it may have nothing to do with the murder, but I swear it was a woman. If we accept it as part of the crime, that eliminates the men—Jo, Washer, Jay, and Mr. Brown.”

  Cobb checked off the names.

  “And there’s Miss Sophie,” I said suddenly. “I was up on that roof myself. It’s darn difficult going. It would be impossible for a cripple to dash away like that woman did yesterday.”

  “Yes,” murmured Cobb, “that rules out Miss Sophie if she really is a cripple. I guess we can check that later.”

  I held out my hands to the flames and leaned sidewise to avoid a puff of smoke. “We’ve got to think of the phone call, too—the one that sent me off on that fake case after dinner. Constance Furnivall couldn’t have made it because she was in the room with me at the time. It was a woman’s voice, too, which rules out the men again.”

  Cobb made a few hieroglyphics in his notebook. “How about this sister of Washer’s?” he asked. “She seems to be running in and out of the place a good deal.”

  “I don’t see how it could be her. She was in her brother’s room when that cat was hung above Mrs. Bellman’s door. Besides, a person who didn’t live in the house couldn’t possibly have had the access to Mrs. Bellman’s room. Remember, it’s not just these animals. Mrs. Bellman told me there were a number of other little things. That photograph on her wall changed—and pieces of furniture. An outsider couldn’t have done all that.”

  “No.” Cobb picked up the pipe and as was his habit, started to suck at it unlighted. “Well, that leaves us only with Miss Davenport and Mrs. Brown. Not, of course, that it means much. Any two of the others might easily have been working in cahoots.” He put his elbows on the table and glanced at me. “There’s one little thing I haven’t told you.”

  I set a match to a sheet of the Grovestown Times and threw the flaming paper onto the smoldering wood. It rested there a moment and then curled up the chimney.

  “Yes,” Cobb was saying, “After you called last night. I got to thinking about the affair and figured out that it might prove more important than it seemed. There were a couple of men down at the station with nothing to do this morning so I set them on the job of going around the pet shops. They checked up on all recent sales of canaries and goldfish.”

  I glanced at him in interest.

  “They traced them all back—all, that is, except one.” Cobb paused. “Three or four days ago a clerk at one of the stores recalls selling a bowl of goldfish and a canary to a woman. He doesn’t remember anything about her, but knows she wasn’t one of his regular customers.”

  “Looks as though that’s the woman we want,” I exclaimed eagerly. “You say the man can’t remember anything about her?”

  “No. He was as dumb as they come, but I’ll have him around

  tomorrow and let him give these boarders the once-over.”

  “Miss Davenport and Mrs. Brown,” I murmured. “I don’t

  imagine there’s a clerk in the world who wouldn’t remember Miss Davenport if he saw her. I wonder if this Brown woman—” I broke off as one of the officers hurried into the room. “It’s that call Doctor Westlake received tonight, sir. They’ve traced it back to this house. Mrs. Bellman must have been on the switch-board at the time.”

  Cobb grunted. “I thought so. What is the arrangement of phones here?”

  “There’s an instrument on every floor, but this apartment’s the only one to have an outside phone. The rest are worked through the switchboard. They couldn’t tell which floor the call came from, of course.”

  “O.K. That’s all.”

  Cobb turned t
o me as the man left the room. “Looks as though we’re right about narrowing the suspects down to this house.”

  With the mention of the telephone, another thought suddenly struck me. “That voice over the wire!” I exclaimed. “I thought at the time it was familiar, but I couldn’t place it then. I remember some where I heard it before.”

  Cobb’s rather melancholy blue eyes brightened. “Where?”

  “It was here—the other day. It was the same voice that called

  down the stairs to Mrs. Bellman when she was hurrying me to her room to look at those goldfish. So you see, that voice does belong to the murderess—and the murderess does live in this house.”

  Curiously enough, my own words gave me a strange thrill. There was something exciting in the atmosphere of that quiet, smoke-laden room—something exciting about sitting there with the calm methodical Cobb while gradually the net tightened around the person who had killed Mrs. Bellman.

  “That voice!” said Cobb suddenly. “You’ve heard all the boarders speak, haven’t you? Surely, you recognized it.”

  “That’s the darn part of it. I’ve been listening for it—it was sort of high-pitched and querulous—but voices sound different when you see the person that’s talking. So far, I haven’t heard anything like it.”

  Cobb grunted again. “Anyway, we’d better start on those interviews. How about that Davenport woman? She tried to get into the room, you say, when you were waiting with Mrs. Bellman’s body.”

  “You might as well begin with her,” I agreed absently. “Whatever she says, it’s bound to be original.”

  He called the officer at the door and sent him to search for the chemically bodied and minded blonde. The man returned within a few minutes, looking rather embarrassed. Miss Davenport in a red silk peignoir was clinging affectionately to his arm. The golden hair was slightly ruffled. For the first time, I saw her lips without make-up. The violet eyes glanced shrewdly at Cobb and then flicked to me.

  “We certainly are going in for drammer around here, aren’t we?” she said. “I was wakened up from my doped sleep. I’ll have to take another of Doctor Westlake’s aspirins when you’re through with me.” Without being asked, she perched herself on the arm of a chair. “Mind if I smoke?”