Rex Stout - Alphabet Hicks 1941 - The Sound of Murder Page 6

  Hicks started for the door to the living room.

  “Hey,” the cop growled, “back up! Who are you?”

  “The name is Hicks.”

  “Oh. Where’ve you been?”

  “Sitting on a rock. I’d like to see Mr. Dundee.”

  “He’s inside with the lieutenant. Don’t go in there. You can wait here.”

  “Then I’d like to see Mr. Brager.”

  “He’s in with the district attorney.”

  “Is anybody interested in me?”

  The cop nodded. “You’ll get attention. Have a seat—Hey, where you going?”

  Hicks, who had started off, turned to say distinctly without elision, “I am going to the kitchen to get a drink of water,” and, without waiting for written permission, retraced his steps around to the rear of the house, opened the door and entered.

  A saucepan dropped from Mrs. Powell’s hands and clattered on the floor.

  Hicks stepped across and retrieved it, but when he straightened up to present it to her, he found that she had backed clear against the wall and was regarding him with an expression of terror that was unmistakable. She was paralyzed with fear.

  “Scream,” Hicks told her encouragingly. “Go ahead and scream.”

  The woman flattened herself against the wall and made no sound whatever.

  Hicks put the saucepan on the table. “It’s like this,” he explained. “Even if you’re correct in concluding that I’m the murderer, your conduct is unreasonable. Even if I killed Mrs. Cooper it doesn’t follow that I want to kill you too. The fact is that what I want is a drink of water.” He crossed to the sink and opened the faucet, got a glass from a shelf, filled it, and drank. “That’s good water. Above all, you should have screamed. If I had intended violence, your failure to scream would practically have made you an accessory.” He refilled the glass and drank again. “In an assault case in Brooklyn in 1934, the judge held that—”

  “You get out of here!” Mrs. Powell squeaked.

  “I would like to ask if you ever—”

  “Get out of here!”

  “But I want to know. Have you ever met Mrs. Dundee Senior?”

  “Get out of here! I will scream! I can scream!”

  “Oh my lord,” Hicks muttered in disgust. He had his pick of two doors, not counting the one he had entered by, and chose the one on the left, which was a two-way door, and found himself in the dining room. It was uninhabited. Here again was a choice of two doors. The one at the right was closed; the one opposite him stood open, and through it could be seen a stair, which was what he was looking for. Making for it, and entering the hall where it was, he was confronted by another policeman in uniform.

  “Where you going?”

  “Bathroom,” Hicks said, and detoured around him and started up the stair.

  With no pause on the landing at the top, he proceeded with a confident step down the hall, though he was not particularly confident about anything. Certainly he was by no means confident that the sonotel plate of the conversation between Mrs. Dundee and Jimmie Vail was concealed in that house, but there was a fair chance that it was, and if it was, he wanted it. From the seven doors which were disclosed to a quick survey, he selected one at random, turned the knob, and opened it. One glance at its interior was enough to identify it; the array of toilet articles on the dresser would alone have sufficed; it belonged to Heather Gladd. And it smelled like her. He backed out and closed the door and tried another down the hall. It too was unlocked. He opened it and passed through, with no special caution.

  Seven

  To a swift glance around no one was visible. Hicks had rather hoped to hit on Ross Dundee’s room for a start, regarding that as the most likely for his purpose, but a dozen details revealed to a hasty inspection made it evident that the hope had not been realized. More than half of the books in shelves that covered an entire wall were in German, and letters under a paperweight on a large flat-topped desk were addressed to Mr. Herman Brager.

  Hicks moved rapidly and silently. None of the drawers of the desk was locked, and none had a sonotel plate among its contents. It was the same with the drawers of a chiffonier, and with the shelves of a large clothes closet. Shelves in the room displayed neat stacks of scientific journals, and he peered at them for a gap anywhere in their edges, but saw none. He looked at the bed, and shook his head; and went to the books and began sliding them out and tipping them for a peep behind. Suddenly he stopped, muttered to himself, and went and sat in the chair at the desk.

  He was, he thought, making an ass of himself. In the first place, there was no reason to suppose that Brager had the plate hidden in his room, and in the second place, a search should be conducted with the head rather than the hands. For instance, if he wanted to conceal a thin flat round object in that room, what would he do? He looked around, and after a little consideration discovered that the answer was right there under his hand, which was resting on the desk pad. There were three thicknesses of blotter on it. Remove the top blotter. Cut a hole in the two bottom thicknesses the size of the plate, and put the plate in it. Replace the top blotter. Tell Mrs. Powell to touch nothing on your desk. Perfect. The plate would be immediately available if wanted, and yet secure against accidental discovery. It was so good that it was a shame that there had been no reason for Brager to swipe the plate and hide it.

  He got hold of the edges of the top blotter and pulled its corners out and lifted it; and stared in utter astonishment.

  “I’ll be doggoned,” he said. “That’s what he did do!”

  Not that the plate was there. The hole that had been cut in the two bottom blotters was not round but rectangular, and the object nesting in it was a photograph mounted on cardboard, and the photograph was of Judith Dundee—a replica of the one Hicks had used that morning for his experiment with the receptionist at the Republic Products office. On the cardboard border at the bottom was written in ink, in a fine precise hand:

  To die for you? I would not aim so high.

  Your smile I had, and oh, my love, for that

  My heart is proud, and would be proud to die

  To feed the warm that you have shuddered at.

  “Holy smoke,” Hicks said in a tone of dazed incredulity.

  He read it again. It was appalling. It made him a little sick, but only for an instant, for there were its practical implications to consider; and he considered them, meanwhile replacing the top blotter, tucking its corners in and smoothing it out neatly. For if, however preposterously, the flustery, popeyed Brager was possessed of such a passion for Judith Dundee, it was quite possible that he had intervened to save her from the consequences of her folly, and there was an excellent reason to suppose that the sonotel plate was hidden in this room. He might, of course, have destroyed it … but he might not …

  Hicks stood up and looked around. Behind the books? The mattress? Then suddenly he sat down again, as quick footsteps outside in the hall stopped at the door; and by the time the door swung in and Herman Brager entered, Hicks was leaning back in the chair with his arms extended and his mouth wide open in a yawn.

  Brager stopped short and goggled at him.

  “I beg your pardon,” Hicks said amicably. “I guess you’re surprised to find me here.”

  “This is my room,” Brager asserted truculently.

  “Yeah, I know it is.”

  “But I am not surprised. I am no longer surprised no matter what happens.” Brager walked to the bed and sat on its edge. Suddenly he exploded bitterly, “I would not work in that factory! Oh, no! I would have a place of peace and quiet where I could work! And now this! In the evening I sit on that terrace where I can hear the brook!”

  Hicks nodded. “And now there’s blood on it. But I doubt if it was bloodied up just to irritate you.”

  “I don’t say it was. What are you doing here in my room?”

  “Waiting for you. There’s a question I want to ask you.”

  “I won’t answer it. Down with t
hat man I have answered a thousand foolish questions.”

  “Mine isn’t foolish, it’s just a plain question. What was in your brief case the night you left it at the Dundee apartment?”

  Brager scowled at him. “My brief case?”

  “Yep. About a month ago. Ross drove to town especially to get it the next morning.”

  “You ask me what was in it?”

  “Yep.”

  “Who told you to ask me that?”

  “Mrs. Dundee.”

  “You are a liar.”

  Hicks’s brows went up. “Maybe I am at that,” he conceded. “She told me about it yesterday, and we discussed the matter, but I guess she didn’t tell me in so many words to ask you what was in it. Despite which, I ask. I’m working for Mrs. Dundee.”

  “No,” Brager said.

  “No what?”

  “You are not working for Mrs. Dundee. You are working for Mr. Dundee.”

  “So are you. It’s all in the family. I’m just trying to straighten out a little misunderstanding. You know about that.”

  “I do not know about it!” Brager jumped up and flapped his arms. “My God,” he blurted, “all I ask is peace to work! All I expect is a little sweetness! A little sweetness from people to people!” His eyes were popping with indignation. “Above all I must work! And what happens in these places where I work? Dark things and perhaps ugly things! Suspicions!” He hissed. “Suspicions! Now that woman dead, dying there where I sit in the evening and can hear the brook! Can I sit there now and hear the brook? And I come to my room and find you here—”

  The door opened and a policeman was on threshold, the one whom Hicks had encountered in the lower hall. He looked at Hicks and said curtly:

  “You’re wanted downstairs.”

  The lights had been turned on in the living room, though it was only the beginning of twilight outdoors. It was a large and pleasant room, with comfortable chairs and sofas still in gay summer covers. Two men in the uniform of the State Police were there, in addition to the one who accompanied Hicks, and seated around a large table with a reading lamp were three in civilian clothes. One of these, with dark skin and hair pasted down, was armed with a stenographer’s notebook; the other two, Hicks was acquainted with. The one with little gray eyes and a jaw displaying more expanse than his forehead was Manny Beck, chief of the Westchester County detectives, and the one with a pudgy round face and scarcely any mouth at all was Ralph Corbett, the district attorney. Corbett half rose to his feet and extended a hand across the table for a shake.

  “Hello there, Hicks! How have you been? This is the first we’ve seen of you around here since you set a fire under us on that Atherton case! How have you been?”

  He was beaming with cordiality. Manny Beck nodded and mumbled a greeting.

  “I’m hearty, thanks,” Hicks said, and sat down.

  “You look it,” Corbett declared enthusiastically. “Driving a taxi seems to agree with you.”

  The glint in Hicks’s eyes could have been dislike, or merely their reaction to the glare of the reading lamp. “You keeping tabs on my career?”

  “No, no,” Corbett laughed. “Ha ha. But here we’ve got a murder on our hands, and here you are on the spot, so naturally we phoned New York to satisfy our curiosity. Driving a taxi! Ha ha. You’re a character. Out here on your day off?”

  “No. I took on a little job.”

  “Well, of course, I know you did.” Corbett beamed at him. “I know better than to try any subtlety with you. I’ll just come right out and ask you, why were you following this Mrs. Cooper?”

  Hicks shook his head. “Now ask me why I was selling turnips without a license.”

  Corbett laughed. “I’ll get around to that later. But I know all about your following her. You came out on the same train that she did.”

  “It was a public train.”

  “And you told the taxi man at the station to follow the car she was in.”

  “Did I? Have you got him here? Get him in here. As I remember it, I happened to overhear her telling her man she was going to Dundee’s on Long Hill Road, and I told mine I was going to the same place.”

  “Now come,” Corbett protested genially. “You know darned well you were following her. Weren’t you? Yes or no.”

  “No.”

  “This is on the record, you know.”

  “I see it is.”

  “Would you like to discuss it with me privately?”

  Hicks shook his head. “Nothing to discuss.”

  Manny Beck growled suddenly and not at all genially, “If you weren’t tailing her, what were you coming here for?”

  “You remember Manny Beck,” Corbett said. “He gets impatient because he knows I’m just a good-natured boob.”

  “He’s wrong on two counts,” Hicks said. “You’re not good-natured and you’re not a boob.”

  “Thank you!” Corbett threw back his head and laughed. He turned it off abruptly. “But at that it’s a fair question.”

  “Yeah,” Beck growled. “What were you coming here for?”

  “On business.”

  “What kind of business?”

  “Mr. Dundee’s business. Confidential. You’ll have to ask him.”

  “We have. Now we’re asking you.”

  “I can’t tell you without Dundee’s permission.”

  “Hicks is a lawyer,” Corbett put in. He asked Hicks playfully, “Or shall I say, was a lawyer?”

  “Suit yourself.”

  “Anyway, you know the law. Manny and I are beneath contempt. Ha ha. You decline to tell us what Dundee sent you out here for?”

  “Yes.”

  “But he did send you?”

  “Yes.”

  “He sent you out here to this house, which he owns, to do something for him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then how does it happen you didn’t even know there was a house here?”

  “Didn’t I?” Hicks’s brows went up. “That’s odd.”

  “Very odd. The taxi man asked you if you wanted to come to the house or the laboratory, and you looked surprised and asked, ‘Why, is there a house?’ ”

  “Did I say that?”

  “You did. Is it plausible that you would come out here on confidential business for Dundee and not even know there was a house here?”

  “No,” Hicks said emphatically. “It’s inconceivable. So either I’m lying about being here on Dundee’s business, which seems pretty farfetched, or else I was kidding the taxi man. That was probably it.” Hicks leaned forward. “Look here, let’s boil it down. I don’t know any of these people, except Dundee. I never saw any of them, including Mrs. Cooper, before today. The only thing I could tell you would be about the job I was on, and I won’t tell you that unless Dundee tells me to. Except, of course, where I was, and what I did and saw and heard, since I got here at ten minutes to three this afternoon. Naturally you can have that if you want.”

  “I’ll take it for a starter. Go ahead.”

  Hicks did so. Luckily, there was no need for him to falsify in any particular regarding his movements or to resort to any elaborate inventions. Of his first visit to the laboratory, he omitted the detail of Heather Gladd’s tears, and Dundee’s reaction on finding him there. His brief conversation with Heather at the bridge had been, he said, about nothing in particular. He made the point that as far as Heather was concerned, her alibi had more than him to rest on, since dictation had come from Brager over the loudspeaker every few minutes, and her typing of it was down in black and white. After being called to the terrace by Cooper’s cries, and making sure that Mrs. Cooper was dead and notifying the police, he had stayed at the house until the police car entered the drive and had then gone to the laboratory to tell Dundee about it. Later, when Miss Gladd came to the laboratory, it had been apparent that she scarcely knew what she was doing, and he had started back to the house with her, and had stopped in the woods to give her a chance to pull herself together. She had said she wanted to
be alone and he had left her there.

  Corbett and Beck had questions. They took him back all over it, tightening it up, while the windows went dead as night took the outdoors. Hicks did not underrate Corbett and Beck. While Beck had nothing special in the way of brains, his capacity for vulgar skepticism was practically unlimited; and for all his infantile pseudo joviality, Corbett was smart, and, in a matter involving peril, might be dangerous. Hicks, committed to lies, and, more privately, to the temporary concealment of a fact which he already suspected might prove to be the central clue in the solution of a brutal murder, left no more holes than he had to. He was caught off balance only once, when Corbett suddenly asked:

  “Do you know Mrs. Dundee?”

  It was totally unexpected, and the answer was not on his tongue where it should have been. To cover the second’s inevitable hesitation, he asked, “Mrs. Dundee? Why?”

  “No particular why. Do you know her?”

  “Slightly. I know her when I see her.”

  “Did you see her here today?”

  “No.”

  “You’re sure you didn’t see her or hear her here today?”

  “If I did it was in my sleep, and I wasn’t asleep.”

  He was alert now, fully alert, because he had no notion what could possibly have interested them in Mrs. Dundee. Had Dundee himself carelessly made a slip? If so, and they came on at him now …

  They didn’t. They dropped her as abruptly and unexpectedly as they had taken her up. Corbett asked a few more questions about Heather Gladd, and was obviously about at the end of the string, when the sound of sudden commotion and raised voices from the other side of a closed door caused all heads to turn in that direction.

  The door burst open. The man in a Palm Beach suit and a battered Panama hat came in, cast a glance around, and called over his shoulder to someone in the other room: