The Murder of a Fifth Columnist (9 page)

Then I stopped. After all, Sylvia was a newspaperwoman, and a story was a story. She wasn’t a friend of Ruth Sherwood’s, and the girl in there was a feature scoop of star proportions.

“—She’s Ruth Sherwood’s daughter, isn’t she,” Sylvia said abruptly. “Her name’s Elizabeth Anne. I read that telegram you left on the floor—but it only told me what I’d guessed already.”

I suppose she was only telling me what I’d already guessed too without being aware of it in my conscious mind, because I wasn’t surprised, really. Or maybe it was her honesty that completely disarmed me.

“I know what you’re thinking,” she went on quickly. “You think I’m like Larry Villiers. Well, I’m not. I don’t enjoy hurting people just for the fun of it. Especially not when they’re young and… vulnerable, and haven’t learned how to take it. You don’t have to worry about me. My job hasn’t dulled all my sense of decency—not yet, anyway.”

It was so clearly what I had been thinking that I couldn’t meet the dispassionate irony in her level gaze. I looked down. The next instant I was staring, frozen and rigid, at the bottom of her skirt, a feeling of cold horror paralyzing my brain.

“Sylvia!” I said. “Your dress… your shoe!”

She moved quickly. I heard the dreadful terrified gasp that broke from her lips. The whole right side of the bottom of her smoke-brown net skirt and her rose satin slip was stained and stiff with blood.

Her stocking through her toeless satin slipper was sodden with it too, and the front and side of the slipper itself were a darker brown than they were supposed to be.

She stood there staring down, her lips parted, the color drained from her face.

“What
shall
I do?” she whispered. “Oh, how
awful!”

She covered her face with both hands, shivering with horror.

I looked at the clock on the mantel. It was almost twelve. “I’ve got to go,” I said quickly. “Go up to your room. Don’t use the elevator, and hurry. The police might start looking for everybody right away. But I’ve
got
to go.”

“All right. I’ll go in a minute—as soon as I can.”

I looked at her anxiously. She was as white as snow. She went unsteadily towards the sofa.

“—Blood always makes me sick as a dog.”

“There’s some brandy in the closet. I’ll get it.—But
hurry,
Sylvia—please! You’ve got to get that dress off.”

I ran out into the foyer, got the brandy off the closet shelf and put in on the table by the water jug. I couldn’t stay there any longer, and I knew she’d pull herself together more quickly when she was alone. I opened the hall door and looked out. The hall was empty, the green light above the elevator door flicking on and off and on. That meant the car had stopped at the floor below. I pulled the door shut and ran down the corridor and into Ruth Sherwood’s apartment. I wasn’t trying to think—I was trying with all my might not to think. Some form of mental process was going on, of course, but as long as I didn’t admit it openly, I could escape the accusation I’d sooner or later have to face: that for the moment, and as far as I knew, I was frankly accessory after the fact. Just then I wasn’t bothering about that. All I was concerned with was getting back and being there when Colonel Primrose and the police arrived.

I stepped inside the door and listened. The same brooding silence lay heavily about the hall. I slipped over to the head of the stairs. No one was in sight. As I came down the stairs I saw that Corliss Marshall’s hat and coat and muffler were still lying across the back of the sofa, but that the hat had been moved, and so had the muffler. That occurred to me without any particular meaning as I hurried on down.

“Ruth,” I called.

I heard her coming from the library just as the door bell sounded sharply at the end of the passage beside the staircase. She came out quickly, so much more composed than I was just then that you’d have thought she was the guest, and it was my terrace that was the grim field of slaughter, not hers. She went to the door and opened it.

“Come in, gentlemen,” she said quietly.

I saw Colonel Primrose second. It was Sergeant Phineas T. Buck, three paces behind him but six inches above him, that one always saw first. That brass-bound granite visage, fisheyed and lantern jawed, will be regarding me with the same lack of enthusiasm—if not actual dislike—on my arrival at the Gates of Heaven… that I’m convinced of and look forward to without pleasure. He was certainly so regarding me now. That in Sergeant Buck’s mind the whole thing was a not very clever ruse on my part to keep the Colonel from going home and going to bed like an officer and a gentleman was very plain. He couldn’t, fortunately, turn his head and spit, as he frequently did and as he looked as if he’d like to do now, because the nearest cylinder of white sand was back by the elevator shaft. And while I dare say he could have hit it with deadly accuracy even at that distance if he’d half tried, that would have given the occasion an importance it clearly didn’t warrant. I had the feeling I’ve had a couple of times before in situations like this. Someday they’d come, somewhere, and I wouldn’t be in the front hall to meet them. I’d be out under the evergreen tubs instead… and that would be O.K. with Sergeant Buck.

But not, I hoped, with Colonel Primrose—though I wasn’t so sure at the moment. He looked much grimmer than he ordinarily did. He looked tired, too, as if he hadn’t had much sleep in the three weeks he’d been gone from Washington. His gray suit was wrinkled and his thick grayish hair didn’t look as if he’d spent much time combing it recently. His snapping black eyes had taken in Mrs. Sherwood and me and dismissed us, and were resting on Corliss Marshall’s things lying on the back of the sofa before he’d crossed the threshold into the apartment. He crossed it now, with Sergeant Buck the regulation number of paces behind him, bringing with him, as he always did, a quiet and civilized air of competence and trustworthiness. As Ruth started to close the door the elevator door whirred, and four men stepped out. One of them jerked his hand our way. They came down the corridor.

Sergeant Buck looked back.

“The dicks, sir,” he said, out of the corner of his mouth, so that you felt he must have begun with “Cheese it,” which you just missed hearing.

A bullet in the neck at the Argonne makes Colonel Primrose cock his head down a little and twist it around when he wants to look to one side. He did it now, looking rather like a particularly brilliant black-eyed parrot, as the four men came down the corridor. Ruth Sherwood glanced quickly at me. I knew from the sudden pallor around her lips that she had the same doomed sort of feeling I had—that from this moment everything was changed, and she’d live from now on under a merciless glare of publicity that few people ever completely recover from.

“How did you get here, Colonel?”

The heavy-set man in the gray overcoat and steel-blue hat put out his hand. I’d met him before—Captain Lamb of the District Homicide Squad. “Mighty glad to have you,” he added, as they shook hands. “Howdy, Sergeant.”

“This is Mrs. Sherwood, Captain. And you remember Mrs. Latham?”

He nodded to Ruth and shook hands with me. I couldn’t help remembering him very well from a (literally) poisonous Christmas in Georgetown, and other less official occasions.

He turned to the Colonel. “This is Doctor Fisher—Acting Medical Examiner. Where is he, and who found him?”

The last was to Ruth.

“Out on the terrace—through the dining room,” she said. “I found him, after Mrs. Latham and I had noticed his things over there.”

She nodded towards the sofa.

“We saw a track on the rug in front of the window. I went out, and—found him there.”

Colonel Primrose followed her to the dining-room door. Captain Lamb joined them after giving brisk orders to his men. Ruth pointed down to the white rug.

“That one stain in the middle is what we saw. The others we made ourselves coming back in. You can go out that window if you like.”

She pointed to the other end of the room. Captain Lamb, the doctor and the police photographer went along there. Colonel Primrose stood in the doorway for several moments before he and his Sergeant followed them. I hadn’t realized that the terrace balcony ran that far around. I wondered if it extended on across the other rooms too, and thought for a second of looking out to see. I thought better of that instantly—feeling that at the moment the less amateur detective work I did the better.

Ruth Sherwood came back into the hall and stood there silently. I could see bright flashes lighting the darkness under the awning. She shivered a little.

“Let’s go in the library,” she said. “I’m cold. I’ve never been so cold in my life.”

Her voice had the same kind of doom in it that I’d felt when Captain Lamb came down the hall with his men.

The detective left at the front door glanced around.

“It
is
cold,” I said, speaking loud enough so he wouldn’t think we were being subversive. “—Will you tell Captain Lamb we’ve gone into the library—this room here?”

“O.K., miss,” he said. I mustn’t have looked as old as I felt just then. He followed us to the door. “I’ll just shut this, so you don’t have to see——”

I nodded. Ruth went over and sat in front of the fire, staring fixedly into it. I put on another log, swept up the hearth and sat down beside her.

“Sylvia Peele was in my room,” I said.

She closed her eyes wearily and leaned her head back against the sofa.

“It didn’t really matter,” I said. “She’d already begun to guess. She saw the initials on her belt buckle.” I didn’t quite dare to add, “And seen her look at Bliss Thatcher’s photograph.”

Then it seemed to me I might have, because she’d had so many emotional shocks already that one more couldn’t make a great deal of difference. Or that’s what I thought until I looked at her and saw the tears forcing themselves between her closed eyelids.

“You mustn’t,” I said, taking her hand.

She gripped mine tightly, then released it, sat up quickly and dabbed at her eyes with her handkerchief.

“No, of course I mustn’t,” she said quietly, “—but it’s so unbelievable. I just can’t believe it. I keep thinking it can’t be just to punish me—because why should Corliss Marshall suffer because of my… my sins. And just as I’d begun to think I was free again! And able to…”

She stopped abruptly and stared at me with a stricken look on her face that was even more appalling than what she’d said. I looked away quickly.

“I mean— Oh, I don’t know what I mean!” she said hysterically. “I’m talking nonsense.”

“You’re upset,” I said, as casually as I could. “If I were you I’d just sit quietly until they come. It’s going to be hard at best.”

And it was, in a way—and the way, oddly enough was Colonel Primrose. If it had been just Captain Lamb it would have been as easy as pie. I don’t mean that Captain Lamb wasn’t thoroughly honest—but Bliss Thatcher’s name was one to conjure with in Washington at the moment and Captain Lamb liked Pete Hamilton, and you don’t make trouble for people like Senor Delvalle, because of Pan-American relations, or Lady Alicia Wrenn, because in the first place London is heroic and in the second she’d probably turn up a diplomatic passport of some kind. It was the same with Kurt Hofmann. The things he was well known to be against gave him a special sanction he otherwise wouldn’t have had. Larry Villiers didn’t count. As Captain Lamb said, his wife and daughters read “Shall We Join the Ladies?”—he didn’t have time for that sort of thing himself.

Colonel John Primrose, as I’d known well for a long time, had none of Captain Lamb’s prejudices of that kind. If Captain Lamb’s grandmother had got herself into serious trouble, he’d have got her off by hook or crook. Colonel Primrose would have hanged her, if necessary, without giving it a second thought. So while the Captain assumed that Mrs. Sherwood’s distinguished guests—and her not so distinguished ones by their example—had acted like ladies and gentlemen, and Corliss’s murder had to be made to fit into that pattern somehow, Colonel Primrose assumed differently. He’d seen more distinguished people, for one thing, and for another he didn’t have to—or didn’t choose to—think of diplomatic or political repercussions. He also, as I learned later, knew why Corliss Marshall had wanted to see him. He knew already, when he walked into Ruth Sherwood’s apartment in the Randolph-Lee, why Corliss Marshall had been murdered.

When he came back he stood looking from one of us to the other for a moment.

“Who was here tonight, Mrs. Sherwood?” he asked.

I thought his black eyes moved a little oddly when she told him.

“Has anything been moved or touched here?”

Ruth shook her head.

“What kind of terms would you say your guests were on, this evening, Mrs. Sherwood?”

She hesitated. “If you mean, was there some incident that led up to this, the answer is No. There was some… tension, from time to time, but that was my fault.”

“How so?”

“I didn’t realize that Miss Peele could function with such centripetal force, for one thing.”

She smiled faintly.

“I’d thought of her as a social catalyst, as a matter of fact. And I didn’t know that Lady Alicia and Mr. Hofmann were former sweethearts, which is never particularly cheerful.”

“Do you mean,” Colonel Primrose asked slowly, “that you didn’t know Marshall and Pete Hamilton were bitter enemies? Or that Marshall and the Whartons weren’t on what you’d call cordial terms?”

She shook her head.

“I didn’t know any of that. I’d… never met several of my guests before this evening. Mr. Hofmann wrote me from New York, enclosing a letter of introduction. I asked him if he’d dine with me when he came to Washington, and was there any one he’d particularly like to meet. He said Mr. Marshall, who he understood was coming back about the time he’d be here. I cabled Mr. Marshall, and fixed the date after I got his reply.”

Colonel Primrose nodded. “Did he mention any one else?”

“Senor Delvalle. He’s going to South America later—I imagine he wanted a publicity contact for lectures and articles. I included Mr. Hamilton and the two gossip writers, because it’s been my experience that authors like all the publicity they can get.”