CHAPTER 15
Parking in the drive, Rand entered the Fleming house by the front door.The butler must have been busy with his pre-dinner tasks in the rear; itwas Gladys herself who admitted him.
"Stay out of there," she warned him, taking his arm and guiding him awayfrom the parlor doorway. "Nelda and Geraldine are in there, ignoring eachother. If you go in, they'll start talking to you, and then they'll starttalking at each other through you, and the air will be full of tomahawksin a jiffy. Let's go up in the gunroom; that's out of the battle zone."
"What started the hostilities this time?" Rand asked, going up thestairway with her.
"Oh, Geraldine lost Nelda's place-marker out of the Kinsey Report, orsomething." She shrugged. "Mainly reaction to Rivers's death. That was agreat blow to all of us; twenty-five thousand dollars' worth of blow. Itwas a blow to me, too, but I'm not letting it throw me.... What were youdoing all afternoon?"
"Trying to keep the rest of our prospects out of jail. Thissixteenth-witted District Attorney you have in this county had the ideahe could charge Stephen Gresham with the killing. I had a time talkinghim out of it, and I'm still not sure how far I succeeded. And I wastrying to get a line on where those pistols got to."
"Ssssh!" They reached the top of the stairs, and Rand saw Waltersapproaching down the hall. "It was Colonel Rand, Walters; I let him inmyself. Are Mr. Varcek and Mr. Dunmore here, yet?"
"Mr. Dunmore is in the library, ma'am, and Mr. Varcek is upstairs, in hislaboratory. Dinner will be ready in three-quarters of an hour."
"Have you mixed the cocktails? You'd better do that. Serve them in abouttwenty minutes. And you'd better go up and warn Mr. Varcek not to becomeinvolved in anything messy before dinner."
Walters yes-ma'am'd her and started toward the attic stairway. Rand andGladys went into the gunroom; Rand turned to the left, picked a pistolfrom the wall, and carried it with him as he guided Gladys toward thedesk in the corner.
"You think Walters stole them?" she asked.
"So far, I'm inclined to. Have you told any of the others, yet?"
"Oh, Lord, no! They'd all be sure that I stole them myself. I'm countingon you to get them back with as little fuss as possible. Do you thinkthat was why Rivers was killed? After all, when a lot of valuable pistolsdisappear, and a crooked dealer is murdered, I'd expect there to be aconnection."
"There could be. Did you ever hear any stories about Mrs. Rivers and thisyoung fellow Gillis who works in Rivers's shop?"
Gladys laughed. "Is that rearing its ugly head in public, now?" sheasked. "Well, there's nothing like a good murder to shake the skeletonsout of the closets. Not that this particular skeleton was ever exactlyhidden. The stories are numerous, and somewhat repetitious; Cecil andMrs. Rivers would be seen together, at roadhouses and so on, at what theyimagined was a safe distance from Rosemont, and it was said that whenRivers was away over night, Cecil was never seen to leave the Riversplace in the evenings. Might this be relevant to Rivers's sudden demise?"
"It could be." Rand was keeping one eye on the hall door and the other onthe head of the spiral stairway. "Don't mention outside what I told youabout Farnsworth having this brainstorm about Stephen Gresham. If it gotout, it might hurt Gresham professionally. The fact is, Gresham has justretained me to investigate the Rivers murder for him. That won'tinterfere to any great extent with the work I'm doing here; if necessary,I'll bring a couple of my men in from New Belfast to help me on theRivers operation." He broke off abruptly, catching a movement at the headof the spiral, and lifted the pistol in his hand, as though showing it toGladys. "See," he went on, "it has two hammers and two nipples, but onlyone barrel. It was loaded with two charges, one on top of the other; thebullet of the rear charge acted as the breech-plug for the frontcharge.... Oh, Walters!" He affected to catch sight of the butler for thefirst time. "Bring me that .36 Walch revolver, will you?"
"Yes, sir." Walters, crossing the room, veered to the right and wentto the middle wall, bringing a revolver over to the desk. It was apercussion weapon with an abnormally long cylinder. "The cocktails areserved," he announced.
"We'll be down in a moment; you can put these back where they belong whenyou find time," Rand told him. "Now, here," he said to Gladys. "This isthe same idea, in a revolver. Six chambers, two charges in each. Intheory, it was a good idea, but in actual practice ..."
Walters went out the hall door, presumably to call Varcek. Rand continuedtalking about the superposed-load principle, as used in the Lindsaypistol and the Walch revolver, until he was sure the butler was outof hearing. Gladys was looking at him in appreciative if slightlypunch-drunk delight.
"I wondered why you brought that thing over here with you," she said."Brother, was that a quick shift!... You're really sure he's the one?"
"I'm not really sure of anything, except of my own existence and eventualextinction," Rand told her. "It pretty nearly has to be somebody insidethis house. I don't think anybody else here, yourself included, wouldknow enough about arms to rob this collection as selectively as it hasbeen robbed. Did you see what just happened, here? I asked him for one ofthe most uncommon arms here, and he went straight and got it. He knowsthis collection as well as your husband did, and I assume he knows valuesalmost as well.... And, of course, there was a musket, too; Mr. Flemingdidn't collect long-arms, or he'd have had one. It embodied the sameprinciple as the pistol. The legend is that this man Lindsay's brotherwas a soldier; he was supposed to have been killed by Indians who drewthe fire of the detail he was with and then charged them when theirmuskets were empty." Rand shrugged. "Actually, the superposed-loadprinciple is ancient; there's a sixteenth-century wheel lock pistol inthe Metropolitan Museum, in New York, firing two shots from the samebarrel."
Varcek and the butler, who had entered by the hall door, went across thegunroom and down the spiral. Rand laid down the pistol and escortedGladys after them.
Dunmore and Geraldine were in the library when they went down. Geraldine,mildly potted, was reclining in a chair, sipping her drink. Dunmore wasstill radiating his synthetic cheerfulness.
"Get many of the pistols listed, Colonel?" he hailed Rand, with jovialcondescension.
"No." Rand poured two cocktails, handing one to Gladys. "I went to ArnoldRivers's place this morning, on a little unfinished business, and damnnear tripped over Rivers's corpse. I spent the rest of the day gettingmyself disinvolved from the ensuing uproar," he told Dunmore. "You heardabout it, of course."
"Yes, of course. Horrible business. I hope you didn't get mixed up in itany more than you had to. After all, you're working for us, and if thepolice knew that, we'd be bothered, too.... Look here, you don't thinksome of these other people who were after the collection might havekilled Rivers, to keep him from outbidding them?"
Nelda, entering from the hallway, caught the last part of that.
"Good God, Fred!" she shrieked at him. "Don't say things like that! Maybethey did, but wait till they've bought the collection and paid for it,before you start accusing them!"
"I'm not accusing anybody," Dunmore growled back at her. "I don't knowenough about it to make any accusations. All I'm saying is--"
"Well, don't say it, then, if you don't know what you're talking about,"his wife retorted.
In spite of this start, dinner passed in relative quiet. For the mostpart, they talked about the remaining chances of selling the collection,about which nobody was optimistic. Rand tried to build up morale withpictures of large museums and important dealers, all fairly slavering toget their fangs into the Fleming collection, but to little avail. A pallof gloom had settled, and he was forced to concede that he had at lastfound somebody who had a valid reason to mourn the sudden and violent endof Arnold Rivers.
Dinner finished, he went up to the gunroom and began compiling his list.He found a yardstick, and thumbtacked it to the edge of the desk to getover-all and barrel lengths, and used a pair of inside calipers and adecimal-inch rule from the workbench to get calibers. Sticking a sheet ofpaper
into the portable, he began on the wheel locks, leaving spaces toinsert the description of the stolen pistols, when recovered. When he hadfinished the wheel locks, he began on the snaphaunces, then did themiguelet-locks. He had begun on the true flintlocks when Walters, who hadfinished his own dinner, came up to help him. Rand put the butler to workfetching pistols from the racks, and replacing those he had alreadylisted. After a while, Dunmore strolled in.
"You say you found Rivers's body yourself, Colonel Rand?" he asked.
Rand nodded, finished what he was typing, and looked up.
"Why, yes. There were a few details I wanted to clear up with him, and Icalled at his shop this morning. I found him lying dead inside." He wenton to describe the manner in which Rivers had met his death. "The radioand newspaper accounts were accurate enough, in the main; there were afew details omitted, at the request of the police, of course."
"Well, you didn't get involved in it, though?" Dunmore inquiredanxiously. "I mean, you're not taking any part in the investigation?After all, we don't want to be mixed up in anything like this."
"In that case, Mr. Dunmore, let me advise you not to discuss the matterof Rivers's offer to buy this collection with anybody outside," Rand toldhim. "So far, the police and the District Attorney's office both seem tothink that Rivers was killed by somebody whom he'd swindled in a businessdeal. Of course, they know about the collection being for sale, andRivers's offering to buy it."
"They do?" Dunmore asked sharply. "Did you tell them that?"
"Naturally. I had to account for my presence at Rivers's shop, thismorning," Rand replied. "I don't know if the idea has occurred to themthat somebody might have killed Rivers to eliminate a rival bidder forthe collection or not; I wouldn't say anything, if I were you, that mightgive them the idea."
The extension phone rang shrilly. Walters picked it up, spoke into it,and listened for a moment.
"Yes, Miss Lawrence; he's right here. You wish to speak to him?" Hehanded the phone across the desk to Rand. "Miss Karen Lawrence, for you,Colonel Rand."
Rand took the phone. Before he had time to say "hello," the antique-shopgirl demanded of him:
"Colonel Rand, you must tell me the truth. Did you have anything to dowith Pierre Jarrett's being arrested?"
"_What?_" Rand barked. Then he softened his voice. "No; on my honor, MissLawrence. I knew nothing about it until this moment. Who did it? Olsen?"
"I don't know what his name was. He was a State Police sergeant," shereplied. "He and another State Policeman came to the Jarrett house abouthalf an hour ago, charged Pierre with the murder of Arnold Rivers, andtook him away. His mother phoned me about it a few minutes ago."
"That God-damned two-faced Jesuitical bastard!" Rand exploded. "Where areyou now?"
"Here at my shop. Mrs. Jarrett is coming here. She's afraid the reporterswill be coming out to the house as soon as they hear about it, and shedoesn't want to talk to them."
"All right. I'll be there as soon as I can. If there's anything I can doto help you, you can count on me for it."
He hung up, and turned to Walters. "Is my car still out front?" he asked."It is? Good. I'll be gone for a while; tell the others I have somethingto attend to."
"What's happened now?" Dunmore asked sourly.
"Just what I was speaking about. The Gestapo gathered up Pierre Jarrett;they seem to have gotten the idea, now, that the motive may have beencompetition for the collection. Next thing, Farnsworth will think he hasa case against Carl Gwinnett, and he'll land in the jug, too. I hope yourealize that every time something like this happens, it peels a thousandor so off the price I'll be able to get for you people for thesepistols."
Dunmore didn't try to ask how that would happen, for which Rand was dulythankful; he accepted the statement uncritically. Walters was staring atRand in horror, saying nothing. Rand picked up the outside phone anddialed the same number he had called from the Rivers place that morning.
"Is Sergeant McKenna about?... He is? Fine; I'd like to speak tohim.... Oh, hello, Mick; Jeff Rand."
McKenna chuckled out of the receiver. "Sort of slipped one over on you,didn't I?" he gloated. "Why, I was checking up on those people who wereat Gresham's, last evening, and they all agreed that young Jarrett andthe Lawrence girl had left the party about ten. So I had a talk with MissLawrence, and she tried to tell me that Jarrett was with her at herapartment, over the antique shop, from about ten fifteen until abouttwelve, when another girl she rooms with got home from a date. I'd oftook that, too, only right across the street from the antique shop thereis one of these old hens like you find in every neighborhood, the kindthat keeps their nose flattened on the window between the curtains,checking up on the neighbors. I spotted her when I came out of theantique shop, so I slipped around to see her, and she told me that youngJarrett went into the apartment with the girl at about quarter past ten,stayed inside for about twenty minutes, then came out and drove away. Shesays Jarrett came back in about half an hour, and stayed till this girlwho shares the Lawrence girl's apartment--a Miss Dupont, who teachessixth grade at Thaddeus Stevens School--got home, about twelve. So thereyou are."
"Uh-huh. Dave Ritter said this was going to turn into another Hall-Millscase; well, now you have your Pig Woman," Rand said. "Miss Lawrenceshouldn't have lied to you, Mick. I suppose she got worried when youstarted asking questions, and there's nothing like a good murder in theneighborhood to make liars out of people."
"And damn well I know that!" McKenna agreed. "But that isn't all. Itseems our cruise-car crew spotted Jarrett's car standing in Rivers'sdrive, about eleven. Just when he was away from the antique-shop, andabout when the M.E. figures Rivers was getting the business."
"Did they get the number?" Rand asked. "Or how did they identify thecar?"
"Oh, they knew it; see, our boys shoot a lot with the Scott County Rifle& Pistol Club, and they've all seen Jarrett's car at the range, differenttimes," McKenna said. "A gray 1947 Plymouth coupe. Like I say, they knewthe car, and they knew Jarrett collects guns, and the lights were oninside the shop and the shades were drawn, so they didn't think anythingof it, at the time. See, they went to bed about ten this morning, anddidn't get up till after five, so I didn't find out about it till aftersupper."
Rand shrugged, and managed to get some of the shrug into his voice. "Canbe, at that," he said. "I hope you're not making a mistake, Mick; if youare, his lawyer's going to crucify you. What are you using for a motive?"
"Rivers was outbidding this crowd Jarrett and the girl were in with. Theyall told me about that," McKenna said. "And he and the girl were planningto use their end of the collection to go into the arms business, afterthey got married. Rivers got in the way." McKenna, at the other end ofthe line, must have shrugged, too. "After all, for about four years,they'd been training Jarrett to overcome resistance with the bayonet, sohe did just that."
"Maybe so. You find out anything about that other matter I was interestedin?"
"You mean the pistols? Huh-unh; we went over Rivers's place with afine-tooth comb, and questioned young Gillis about it, and we didn't geta thing. You sure those pistols went to Rivers?"
"I'm not sure of anything at all," Rand replied, looking at his watch."You going to be in, say in a couple of hours? I want to have a talk withyou."
"Sure. I'll be around all evening," McKenna assured him. "If we don'thave another murder."
Rand hung up. He pulled the sheet out of the typewriter, laid itface down on the other sheets he had finished, and laid a longseventeenth-century Flemish flintlock on top for a paperweight,memorizing the position of the pistol relative to the paper under it.
"Put those pistols back on the wall," he told Walters, indicating severalhe had laid aside after listing. "Leave the others there; I'm notfinished with them yet. I'll be back before too long. If I don't find anymore bodies."