Beginning with a Bash. Phoebe Atwood Taylor

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СКАЧАТЬ Mrs. Jordan’s late husband was a former governor of this state?”

      “I—er—no, sir. She never said nothing—”

      “I should think,” the senator’s tones were severe, “that even the—that anyone might know without being told. The reporters—but, of course, one has to make allowances for police reporters.”

      “Quite,” Mrs. Jordan agreed. “Now, Harry, will you be good enough to fix this all up, and arrange everything for the rest here? If we’re needed later, I suppose we must appear, but I know positively that none of us is even remotely connected with this affair.”

      The lawyer nodded and reached for the phone. It took him eight minutes to unravel red tape.

      “Politics,” Mrs. Jordan murmured to Dot, “but—er—the other side. Now, my dear, call me immediately if you need any sort of help, and let me know if anything happens. Harry, will you drop me at the Mayflower? Good. Personally,” she spoke directly to the captain, “I for one had no fault to find with the old police. One could invariably rely on the old police. They knew one. One could tell them by their helmets.” Scornfully she surveyed the visored caps of Gilroy and the captain. “Milkmen,” she said very distinctly. “Milkmen!”

      The millionaire held the door open for her, and she swept out on the arm of the ex-cabinet member. The only detail lacking in the triumphal exit was a brass band.

      Harbottle scuttled out in their wake, and during the silent interval that followed, two orderlies appeared and bore North’s body away on a stretcher.

      “I guess,” the captain said, mopping his face with a limp handkerchief, “we’ll get out of here. Hanson,” he pointed to one of the plain-clothes men, “you stay outside. You two,” he jerked his head towards Dot and Leonidas, “can do what you want, but we’ll need you Monday. Mrs. Sebastian Jordan,” he muttered to himself. “Hell, I sort of thought she looked kind of familiar!”

      The police and the reporters departed.

      “What a woman, Bill!” Dot said. “What a woman! Why, with a few more calls, she could have got all the social register here! She’s priceless. She’s unique!”

      “She—er—always was. I—er—Dot, let’s go out and get some dinner and consider all this. Martin seems to have been correct about the Give-a-Dog-a-Bad-Name Club.”

      “But Bill,” Dot said plaintively as she took a seat opposite him later in a white enameled restaurant, “Bill, what can we do about Mart? Don’t you think that Lady Jordan—”

      “No, if she’d thought she could help, she’d have included him in her high-handedness. You know,” he twirled his pince-nez, “I’m inclined to believe that the police are almost as dull as Mrs. Jordan is inclined to think. Yet they’re entirely justified in all that they’ve done. That much must be admitted.”

      “I don’t see how,” Dot said. “Why, they—”

      “Martin has publicly threatened North on more than one occasion. He apparently had called the North house, and must have known that North was coming to the store. Mrs. Jordan and Mr. Harbottle both knew North was in the store, therefore, why should Martin not have known? He had ample opportunity to strike North not only before the time of the crash outside, but after it. He knew all about that type of blow. Furthermore, he admits it all. I do not for an instant doubt Martin’s ability to explain everything satisfactorily, but there you are. I don’t believe he killed North, any more than you do. I don’t think Martin is guilty of any of the other crimes for which the police have held him. But in all fairness to the force, I am forced to acknowledge the case which the police have against him. There’s really only one thing we can do, Dot. That’s to find out who really killed North ourselves.”

      Ignoring Dot’s blank stare, Leonidas blandly continued. “I taught Martin for six years. I know he’s honest and decent. It would be psychologically impossible for him to tiptoe up behind someone and bash him over the head. Mind, I don’t say that Martin is incapable of killing anyone, for I suppose that everyone at heart is a potential murderer. But Martin would fight in fair fashion. He wouldn’t sneak up to someone and bash them.”

      “Yes, but—”

      “Tomorrow’s Sunday,” Leonidas went on calmly. “That’s exceedingly fortunate for us, because practically nothing whatever can be done about Martin until Monday morning. Hm.” He looked at his watch. “It’s six-thirty now. We have, Dot, approximately forty hours in which to secure the real murderer of Professor North. Apprehend and secure, perhaps I should say.”

      “We—forty hours—apprehend—” Dot swallowed. “But—Bill Shakespeare, be sensible! We can’t do anything of the sort! How could we? We couldn’t! Secure the real murderer in forty hours indeed! Who, as Gilroy asked the dowager, who do youse think you are?”

      “Why not? I’ve always felt that if I were confronted with a crisis of this sort, I should be able to utilize such powers of reasoning and deduction and concentration as I may have cultivated during forty years of teaching. In fact, I’ve proved that ability to my own satisfaction more than once on my travels. Teaching is not itself particularly active or invigorating, but it does endow one with a certain amount of resourcefulness. And people are always getting into scrapes, it seems to me, which require the hand of a—m’yes, I think, Dot, this can all be attended to in forty hours. I’ve been,” he added irrelevantly, “a bit bored lately.”

      He was so firmly self-possessed that Dot decided he wasn’t joking. He meant it. He was serious, after all. And somehow, when this blue-eyed man announced that something could be done, you felt yourself believing that it really could.

      “The police,” Leonidas said, “feel that Martin came to the bookstore for the sole purpose of killing North. Actually he came to escape the police and to get warm. Why was North there? Martin said he rarely went to bookstores. Why, therefore, should he have taken this afternoon off to make a systematic pilgrimage to a number of bookstores, as that list would indicate? And why should an eminent anthropologist desire The Collected Sermons and Theological Meditations of Phineas Twitchett, D.D.?”

      “Why,” Dot grinned, “when you come right down to it, why should anyone want a book like that? And why just Volume Four? If you were going in for Twitchett, why not embrace him in toto? Why be so choosy? And why should that greasy little Italian have wanted it, too? I think that’s something more than coincidence.”

      “And he had the name neatly typed out on a card, too. And North had the title on the tip of his tongue. M’yes. Our store was fourth on the list. North had no books with him when he came in, which makes me think he’d been seeking just that one book. He’d bought nothing else. Dot, finish your rice pudding and consider the infinite possibilities of Volume Four. Why did North want that book?”

      “Don’t know. But how do you know he didn’t find it?”

      “Possibly he might have, but it was nowhere near him when I went out back with Gilroy and that doctor of his. Nor on him. Nor in his pockets. Hm. As soon as you’re through, we’ll go back to the store and begin investigating on our own hook. I do not feel that any one of Martin’s golf clubs was the weapon used. It’s too foolish. And I want to find out more about the estimable Phineas Twitchett—if he existed and actually wrote this collection of sermons, and what sort of thing they were, and if any record exists of their having been in the store. Sometimes your uncle—er—broke down to the extent of noting a book or two in his ledger.”

      Dot СКАЧАТЬ