CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
It was exactly twelve o'clock when Lydia Carr, accompanied by DetectiveCollins of the Homicide Squad carrying a small suitcase, arrived at thedistrict attorney's office.
"I kept my eye on her every minute of the time, to see that there wasn'tno shenanigans," Collins informed Dundee and Sanderson importantly,callous to the fact that the maid could hear him. "But I let her bringalong everything she said she needed to lay the body out in.... Was thatright?"
"Right!" agreed the district attorney, as Dundee opened the suitcaseupon Sanderson's desk.
The royal blue velvet dress lay on top, neatly folded. Dundee shook outits folds. It looked remarkably fresh and new, in spite of the years ithad hung in Nita Selim's various clothes closets, preserved because ofGod alone knew what tender memories. Perhaps the beautiful little dancerhad intended all those years that it should be her shroud....
"Oh, it's lovely!" Penny Crain, who was looking on, cried outinvoluntarily. "It looks like a French model."
"It's a copy of a French model. You can see by the label on the back ofthe neck," Lydia answered, her one good eye softening for Penny.
"So it is!" Dundee agreed, and took out his penknife to snip the threadswhich fastened the white satin, gold-lettered label to the frock."'Pierre Model. Copied by Simonson's--New York City'," he read aloud,and slipped the little square of satin into the envelope containing themurdered woman's will. "Well, Penny, I'm glad you like the dress, forI'm going to ask you to do the mannikin stunt in it as soon as Carrawayarrives with his camera."
Penny turned very pale, but she said nothing in protest, and Dundeecontinued to unpack the suitcase. His masculine hands looked clumsy asthey lifted out the costume slip and miniature "dancing set"--brassiereand step-ins--all matching, of filmiest white chiffon and lace. Hisfingers flinched from contact with the switch of long, silky blackcurls....
"She bought them after we came to Hamilton," Lydia informed him,pointing to the undergarments. "Them black moire pumps and them Frenchstockings are brand new, too--hundred-gauge silk them stockings are, andnever on her feet--"
"Ready for me?" Carraway had appeared in the doorway, with camera andtripod.
"Yes, Carraway.... Just the dress, Penny.... I want full-lengthfront, back and side views of Miss Crain wearing this dress,Carraway.... Flashlights, of course. Better take the pictures in MissCrain's office," Dundee directed. "You stay here, Lydia. I want to talkwith you while that job is being done."
"Yes, sir," Lydia answered, and accepted without thanks the chair heoffered.
"I suppose you have read _The Hamilton Morning News_ today, Lydia?"
"I have!"
"May I have that paper, chief?... Thanks!... Now, Lydia, I want you toread again the paragraphs that are headed 'New York, May 25--' and tellus if the statements are correct."
Lydia accepted the paper and her single eye scanned the following linesobediently:
New York, May 25 (UP)
Mrs. Juanita Leigh Selim, who was murdered Saturday afternoon in Hamilton, ----, was known along Broadway as Nita Leigh, chorus girl and specialty dancer. Her last known address in New York was No. -- West 54th St., where she had a three-room apartment. According to the superintendent, E. J. Black, Miss Leigh, as he knew her, lived there alone except for her maid, Lydia Carr, and entertained few visitors.
Irving Wein, publicity director for Altamont Pictures, when interviewed by a reporter in his rooms at the Cadillac Hotel late today, said that Nita Leigh had been used for "bits" and as a dancing "double" for stars in a number of recent pictures, including "Night Life" and "Boy, Howdy!", both of which have dancing sequences. Musical comedy programs for the last year carry her name only once, in the list of "Ladies of the Ensemble" of the revue, "What of it?"
Miss Eloise Pendleton, head-mistress of Forsyte-on-the-Hudson, mentioned in the dispatches from Hamilton, confirms the report that Mrs. Selim, as she was known there, twice directed the annual Easter musical comedy presented by that fashionable school for young ladies, but could add nothing of interest to the facts given above, beyond asserting that Mrs. Selim had proved to be an unusually competent and popular director of their amateur theatricals.
"Yes, that's correct, as far as it goes," Lydia commented, resentmentstrong in her harsh voice as she returned the paper to Dundee.
"Have you anything to add?" Dundee caught her up quickly.
"No, sir!" Lydia shook her head, her lips in a grim line. Thenresentment burst through: "They don't have to talk like she was a backnumber on Broadway, just because she was tired of the stage and going infor movies!"
District Attorney Sanderson took her in hand then, pelting her withquestions about Nita's New York "gentlemen friends," but he made no moreheadway than Dundee.
"We _know_ that Nita Selim was afraid of _someone_!" Sanderson beganagain, angrily. "Who was it--someone she'd known in New York, orsomebody in Hamilton?"
"I don't know!" Lydia told him flatly.
"But you do know she was living in fear of her life, don't you?" Dundeeinterposed.
"I--well, yes, I suppose she was," Lydia admitted reluctantly. "But Ithought she was just afraid to live out there in that lonesome houseaway off at the end of nowhere."
"Was she afraid of Dexter Sprague?" Sanderson shot at her.
"Would she have asked him to stay all night if she'd been afraid of_him_?" Lydia demanded scornfully. "And would she have asked _him_ torig up a bell from her bedroom to mine, if it was _him_ she was afraidof?"
"A bell?" Dundee echoed.
"Yes, sir. It has a contraption under the rug, right beside her bed,so's she could step on it and it would ring in my room, which wasunderneath hers.... Mr. Sprague bought the wire and stuff, bored a holethrough her bedroom floor, and fixed it all hisself."
"Did anyone know Nita had taken this precaution to protect herself?"Dundee asked.
"Mis' Lois did, because one day not long ago she stepped on itaccidentally, when she was in Nita's room. The bell buzzed in my roomand I come up to answer it, and Nita explained it to Mis' Lois."
So that was why no attempt had been made to murder Nita while sheslept!--Dundee told himself triumphantly. For of course it was more thanprobable that Lois Dunlap had innocently spread the news of Nita'snervousness and her ingenious method of summoning help instantly....
There was a knock at the door.
"Come in!... All finished, Carraway?... Fine! I'd like to see the printsas soon as possible, and now I'd like you to go over to the morgue withLydia, and wait there until she has the body dressed in these clothes,and the hair done according to the instructions Mrs. Selim left.... I'llleave the posing to you, but I want a full-length picture as well as ahead portrait."
As Lydia's work-roughened, knuckly hands were returning the funeralclothes to the suitcase, another question occurred to Dundee:
"Lydia, did you know, before I questioned you at the Miles homeyesterday, that Sprague had returned for that bag he had left in thebedroom upstairs?"
Her scarred cheek flushed livid, but the maid answered with defianthonesty: "Yes, I did! He spoke to me through my basement window justbefore you come running down to talk to me. He'd sneaked back, but hecould tell from seeing your car outside that you was there, and he askedme to go up and get the bag and set it outside the kitchen door for him.I said I wouldn't do it; it was too risky."
"Then you were pretending to be asleep when I entered your room?"
"Yes, I was! But I _had_ been asleep before Mr. Sprague called me. Whileyou was ding-donging at me about Nita burning my face I heard Mr.Sprague open the kitchen door. He had a key Nita had give him, so's hecould slip in unnoticed if he happened to come when Nita had othercompany. He didn't hardly make any noise at all, but I heard it, becauseI was listening for it.... You'd left the door to the basement stairsopen, and my door, too, so I heard him."
"Did you hear him come down?"
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"Yes, I did! There's a board on the backstairs that squeaks, and I heardit plain, while you was still at me, hammer and tongs," Lydia answered."He was in the house not more'n two minutes, all told, and when Ifigured he was safely out, I went upstairs with you to show you thepresents I'd give Nita after she burnt me, to prove I'd forgive her."
"Why didn't you tell me, Lydia? Why did you protect Sprague? I know youdon't like him," Dundee puzzled.
"I wasn't thinking about him," Lydia told him flatly. "I was thinkingabout Nita. I didn't want any scandal on her, and I knew what the policeand the newspapers would say if they found out Mr. Sprague had beenstaying all night sometimes."
"Are you prepared to swear Sprague had time to do nothing but go up tothe bedroom and get his bag?"
"I am!"
When Lydia and Carraway had left together, Dundee rose and addressed thedistrict attorney:
"I'm going out to the Selim house now, to look for that secret hidingplace where Roger Crain kept his securities, and which Judge Marshallevidently displayed to Nita, as one of the charms of the house when she'rented' it."
"Why not simply telephone Judge Marshall and ask him where and what itis?" Sanderson asked reasonably.
"Do you think he'd tell?" Dundee retorted. "The old boy's no fool. Evenif he didn't kill Nita himself and hide the gun there, my question wouldthrow him into a panic of fear lest one of his best friends had donejust that.... No, I'll find it myself, if it's all right with you!"
But after a solid hour of hard and fruitless work, Bonnie Dundee wasforced to admit ruefully to himself that his parting words to thedistrict attorney might have been the youthful and empty boast thatSanderson had evidently considered them.
For nowhere in the house Roger Crain had built and in which Nita Selimhad been murdered could the detective find anything remotely resemblinga concealed safe. The two plainclothesmen whom Strawn had detailed toguard the house and to continue the search for the missing gun andsilencer looked on with unconcealed amusement as Dundee tapped walls,floors and ceilings in a house that seemed to be exceptionally free ofarchitectural eccentricities.
Finally Dundee grew tired of their ribald comments and curtly orderedthem to make a new and exhaustive search of the unused portions of thebasement--those dark earth banks, with their overhead networks of waterand drain pipes, heavily insulated cables of electric wires, cobwebbyrafters and rough shelves holding empty fruit jars and liquorbottles--which contrasted sharply with the neatly ceiled andcement-floored space devoted to furnace, laundry and maid's room. Dundeehimself had given those regions only a cursory inspection with hisflashlight, for it was highly improbable that Nita Selim would have madeuse of a secret hiding place for her jewelry and valuable papers, ifthat hiding place was located in such dark, awesome surroundings.
No. The hiding place, if it really existed--and it must exist--had beenwithin easy reach of Nita dressing and bedecking herself for a party, orLydia Carr could not have been kept in complete ignorance of itslocation.
With that conviction in mind, Dundee returned to Nita's bedroom, towhich he had already devoted at least half an hour. Nothing in the bigclothes closet, where Flora Miles had been hiding while Nita was beingmurdered. No secret drawers in desk or dressing-table or bedside table.No false bottom in boudoir chair or chaise longue.... He had even takenevery book out of the four-shelf bookcase which stood against the westwall near the north corner of the room, and had satisfied himself thatno book was a leafless fake.
His minute inspection of the bathroom and back hall, upon which Nita'sbedroom opened, had proved as fruitless, although he had removed everydrawer from the big linen press which stood in the hall, and measuredspaces to a fraction of an inch. As for the walls, they were, except forthe doors, unbroken expanses of tinted plaster.
And yet--
He stepped into the clothes closet again, hammer in hand for a freshtapping of the cedar-board walls. Nothing here.... And then he tappedagain, his ear against the end wall of the closet--the wall farthestfrom the side porch....
Yes! There was a faintly hollow echo of the hammer strokes!
Excitement blazing high again, he took the tape measure with which hehad provided himself on his way out, and calculated the length of thecloset from end to end. Six feet....
Emerging from the closet he closed his eyes in an effort to recall inexact detail the architect's blueprint of the lower floor, which CoronerPrice had submitted to his jury at the inquest that morning. Yes, thatwas right! The inner end wall of Nita's clothes closet was also the backof the guest closet in the little foyer that lay between Nita's bedroomand the main hall.
Within ten minutes, much laying-on of the tape measure had produced astartling result. Instead of having a wall in common, the guest closetand Nita's clothes closet were separated by exactly eleven inches! Whythe waste space? The blueprint, bearing the imprint of the architects,Hammond & Hammond, showed no such walled-up cubbyhole!
Exultantly, Dundee again entered Nita's closet and went over every inchof the narrow, horizontal cedar boards, which formed the end wall. Buthe met with no reward. Not through this workmanlike, solidly constructedwall had an opening been made....
But in the foyer closet he read a different story. Its back wall had anamateurish look. This closet was not cedar-lined, as was Nita's, but waspainted throughout in soft ivory. But it was the back wall of the closetin which Dundee was interested. Unlike the other walls, which were ofplaster, the back was constructed of six-inch-wide boards--the cheapnessof the lumber not concealed by its coat of ivory paint. Noself-respecting builder had put in that wall of broad, horizontalboards....
And then, directly beneath the shelf which was set regulation height,just above the pole on which swung a dozen coat hangers, Dundee foundwhat he was looking for.
A short length of the cheap board, a queer scrap to have been used evenin so shoddy a job as that wall was.... Eight inches long. And setsquare in the center of the wall, just below the shelf and pole. If hehad not been looking for something odd, however, Dundee acknowledged tohimself, he would not have noticed it. Did anyone ever notice the backwalls of closets?
Sure of the result, he pressed with his finger tips upon the lower endof that short piece of board. And slowly it swung inward, the topslanting outward.
_He had found the secret hiding place._ And Dundee silently agreed withJudge Marshall that it was "the simplest and most ingenious arrangementyou ever saw," for it was nothing more nor less than a shelf set betweenthe two closets, in those eleven inches of unaccounted for space!
"I take off my hat to Roger Crain!" Dundee reflected. "No burglar in theworld would ever have thought of pressing upon a short piece of board ina foyer closet, in search of a safe.... But how did Judge Marshall knowof its existence?"
The only answer Dundee could think of was that Crain, overseeing thebuilding of his house, had suddenly conceived this brilliant and simpleplan, and had tipped one of the carpenters to carry it out for him.Possibly, or probably, he had bragged to Clive or Ralph Hammond, hisarchitects, of his clever invention. And the Hammond boys had passed onthe information to Judge Marshall, when, after Crain's failure andflight, the house had become the property of the ex-judge.
These thoughts rushed through his mind as his flashlight explored theshelf through the tilted opening. The gun and silencer _must_ be here,since they could be no place else!... But the shelf was bare except fora small brass box, fastened only by a clasp. In his acute disappointmentDundee took little interest in the collection of pretty but inexpensivejewelry--Nita's trinkets, undoubtedly--which the brass boxcontained.... No wedding ring among them....
In spite of his chagrin at not finding the gun, Dundee studied thesimple mechanism which Roger Crain's ingenuity had conceived. From theoutside, the eight-inch length of board fitted smoothly, giving noindication whatever that it was otherwise than what it seemed--part of acheaply built wall. But Dundee's flashlight played upon the bevelededges of both the short board and the two neigh
boring planks betweenwhich it was fitted. The pivoting arrangement was of the simplest, thesmall nickel-plated pieces being set into the short board and the othertwo planks with small screws which did not pierce the painted outsidesurface.
His curiosity satisfied, Dundee stepped out of the closet into the tinyfoyer. He was about to leave when a terrific truth crashed through hismind and froze his feet to the floor.
_Of course the gun and silencer were not there!_
This was the _guest closet_! In it had hung the hat of every person whohad been Nita's guest, either for bridge or cocktails, that fatalSaturday afternoon!
_And to this closet, to retrieve hat, stick or--in the case of thewomen, summer coat and hat--had come every person who had beenquestioned and then searched by the police._
Dundee tried to recapture the picture of the stampede which had followedupon his permission for all guests to go to their homes. But it wasuseless. He had stayed in the living room with Strawn, had taken not theslightest interest in the scramble for hats, coats and sticks. ForStrawn had previously assured him that the guest closet had beenthoroughly searched.
So quickly that he felt slightly dizzy, Dundee's thoughts raced aroundthe new discovery. This changed everything, of course. Any one of half adozen persons could have arrived with the gun and silencer--not screwedtogether, of course, because of the ungainly length--and seized theopportunity presented by Nita's being alone in her bedroom to shoot her.What easier, then, than to hide the weapon on this secret shelf, the"door" of which yielded to the slightest pressure? And what easier thanto retrieve the weapon after permission had been granted to all toreturn to their homes? Easy enough to manage to go alone to the closetfor a hat, the extra minute of time unnoticed in the general excitement.It had been vitally necessary, too, to retrieve the weapon, since anyinnocent member of that party might have remembered later to mention thesecret hiding place to the police--secret no longer since Judge Marshallhad gossiped about it....
Then another thought boiled up and demanded attention. In the newtheory, what place did the "bang or bump" have--that noise which FloraMiles, concealed in Nita's closet, had dimly heard? Dundee had beenpositive, when Lydia had discovered the shattered electric bulb in thebig bronze lamp that its position in Nita's room indicated the progressof the flight of the murderer--flight diagonally across the room towardthe back hall. But now--
A little dashed, Dundee returned to the bedroom. The big lamp was wherehe had first seen it--about a foot beyond the window nearest the porch,and at the head of the chaise longue which was set between the two westwindows, where, according to Lydia, the lamp always stood. The too-longcord lay slackly along the floor near the west wall, and extended to thedouble outlet on the baseboard behind the bookcase.... _A slack cord!_
Down on his hands and knees Dundee went, to peer under the low bottomshelf of the bookcase.... Yes! The pronged plug of the lamp cord hadbeen jerked almost out of the baseboard outlet! It was easy to visualizewhat had happened: The murderer, after firing the shot, hadinvoluntarily taken a step or even several steps backward, until hisfoot had caught in the loop of electric cord, causing the big lamp to bethrown violently against the wall near which it stood.... But who?
_Any one of half a dozen people!_ But--_who_?