French Powder Mystery (5 page)

He trotted across the room and slipped to the far side of the wall-bed. Prouty, his hands busy on the corpse, nodded in greeting.

“Murder,” he said. “No sign of the revolver.”

The Inspector peered intently into the ghastly face of the dead woman, ran his eye over the disarranged clothing.

“Well, well have the boys look a little later. Keep going, Doc.” He sighed and returned to Velie at the other side of the room.

“Now let’s have it, Thomas. From the beginning.” His little eyes roved judiciously about the men in the room as Velie rapidly outlined in an undertone the events of the past half-hour. … Outside a body of plainclothes men and a scattering of uniformed policemen could be seen. The patrolman, Bush, was among them.

Ellery Queen shut the door and leaned against it. He was tall and sparely built, with athletic hands, taper-fingered. He wore immaculate grey tweeds and carried a stick and a light coat. On his thin nose perched a pince-nez. Above it rose a forehead of wide proportions, white and untroubled. His hair was smoothly black. From the pocket of the coat protruded a small volume in faded covers.

He looked curiously at each person in the room—curiously and slowly, as if he enjoyed his scrutiny. The characteristics of each individual as his eyes passed from one to another he seemed to store away in a corner of his brain. His examination was almost visibly digestive. Yet it was not entirely concentrated, for he listened intently to each word of Velie’s recital to the Inspector. Suddenly his eyes, in their panoramic course, met those of Westley Weaver, who stood miserably in a corner leaning against the wall.

Into the eyes of each leaped instant recognition. They started forward simultaneously, hands outstretched.

“Ellery Queen. Thank God!”

“By the Seven Virgins of Theophilus—Westley Weaver!” They wrung each other’s hands with undisguised pleasure. Inspector Queen glanced their way, quizzically; then he turned back to hear the last of Velie’s rumbled comments.

“It’s awfully good seeing your classic features again, Ellery,” murmured Weaver. His face dropped back into strained lines. “Are you—is that the Inspector?”

“In the indefatigable flesh, Westley,” said Ellery. “The pater himself, with his nose to the scent.—But tell me things, boy. It’s—O Tempes!—isn’t it five or six years since we last met?”

“All of that, Ellery. I’m glad you’re here, for more than one reason, El. “It’s a little comforting,” said Weaver in a low voice. “This—this thing. …”

Ellery’s smile faded. “The tragedy, eh, Westley? Tell me—how do you figure in it? You didn’t kill the lady, by any chance?” His tone was jocular, but behind it was a certain anxiety which his father, ears cocked, found a little strange.

“Ellery!” Weaver’s eyes met his straightforwardly. “That isn’t even funny.” Then the look of misery crept in again. “It’s awful, El. Just awful. You haven’t any idea how awful it is. …”

Ellery patted Weaver’s arm lightly, removed his pince-nez with an absent motion. “I’ll get it all in a moment, Westley. I’ll hold
tête-à-tête
conversation with you later. Hang on, won’t you? I see my father signaling me frantically. Chin up, Wes!” He moved away, again smiling. Weaver’s eyes held a glimmer of hope as he dropped back against the wall.

The Inspector murmured to his son for a moment. Ellery made a low-voiced reply. Then Ellery strode over to the farther side of the bed and stood over Prouty, watching the medical examiner as he worked swiftly over the body.

The Inspector turned to the assembled crowd in the room. “A little quiet now, please,” he said. A thick curtain of silence dropped over the room.

T
HE INSPECTOR STEPPED FORWARD
.

“It will be necessary for every one to wait here,” he began sententiously, “while we make some elementary but essential investigations. Let me say at once, to forestall any claims of special privilege that may be made, that this is undoubtedly a case of murder. In cases of murder, the most serious charge that can be brought against an individual, the law is no respecter either of persons or institutions. A woman is dead of violence. Somebody killed her. That somebody may be miles away at this moment, or in this room now. You can understand, gentlemen”—and his tired eyes considered the five directors especially—“that the sooner we get down to business, the better. Too much time has been lost already.”

He went abruptly to the door, opened it, and called in a penetrating voice: “Piggott! Hesse! Hagstrom! Flint! Johnson! Ritter!”

Six detectives strolled into the room. Ritter, a burly man, closed the door behind him.

“Hagstrom, your book.” The detective whipped out a small notebook and a pencil.

“Piggott, Hesse, Flint—the room!” He added something in a low tone. The three detectives grinned and dispersed to different portions of the room; They began a slow, methodical search of furniture, floors, walls.

“Johnson—the bed!” One of the two remaining men went directly to the wall-bed and began to examine its contents.

“Ritter—stand by.” The Inspector slipped his hands into a coat pocket and withdrew his brown old snuff-box. He filled his nostrils with aromatic snuff, inhaled deeply and restored the box to his pocket.

“Now!” he said, and glared about the room at his thoroughly cowed audience. Ellery met his eye for an instant and smiled slightly. “Now! You, there!” He pointed an accusing finger at the model, who was staring at him with wide eyes, her skin pale with fright.

“Yes,” she quavered, tottering to her feet.

“Your name?” snapped Queen.

“Di-Diana Johnson, sir,” she whispered, gazing at him in scared fascination.

“Diana Johnson, eh?” The Inspector took a step forward, leveled his finger at her. “Why did you open this bed at twelve-fifteen today?”

“I, I had to,” she faltered. “That was—”

Lavery waver his arm hesitantly at the Inspector. “I can explain that—”

“Sir!”

Lavery colored, then smiled cynically. “Go on, Miss Johnson.”

“Well, sir, that was the regular time for the exhibition. I always come out into this room a few minutes before twelve and get ready.” The words tumbled out. “And then, when I’d just got through showing this contraption”—she indicated the divan, which seemed a combination of sofa, bed, and bookcase—“I go to the wall, push the button, and then that—that dead woman fell out right at my feet. …” She shuddered and drew a deep breath, glancing at the detective Hagstrom, who was busily taking down her words in shorthand.

“You had no idea the body was inside when you pressed the button, Miss Johnson?” demanded the Inspector.

The model’s eyes flew wide open.

“No sir! I wouldn’t have touched that bed for a thousand dollars if I’d known that.” The uniformed nurse giggled nervously. She sobered instantly as the Inspector stared in her direction.

“Very well. That’s all.” He turned to Hagstrom. “Got every word?” The detective nodded, maintaining a severe silence as the old man winked fleetingly at him. Inspector Queen turned back to the group. “Nurse, take Diana Johnson to your hospital upstairs and keep her there until I give the word!”

The model stumbled in her eagerness to leave the window-room. The nurse followed somewhat sulkily behind.

The Inspector had Patrolman Bush summoned. The policeman saluted, answered a few questions about what had occurred on the sidewalk at the moment the body fell, and subsequently inside the window-room, and was commissioned to go back to his post on Fifth Avenue.

“Crouther!” The store detective was standing by the side of Ellery and Dr. Prouty. He now slouched forward and stared boldly at Queen. “You’re the head store detective?”

“Yes, Inspector.” He shuffled his feet and grinned, displaying tobacco-stained teeth.

“Sergeant Velie tells me that he instructed you to scatter your men through the main floor soon after the body was discovered. Have you attended to that?”

“Yes, sir. Got a squad of half-dozen store detectives workin’ outside, and put every available ‘spotter’ on the job, too,” replied Crouther promptly. “But they haven’t turned up anybody suspicious yet.”

“Could hardly expect it.” The Inspector took another pinch of snuff. “Tell me just what you found when you came in here.”

“Well, Inspector, the first I knew about the murder was when one of my detectives ’phoned me upstairs in my office that something had happened outside on the sidewalk—riot or something. I came down right away and as I passed this window I heard Mr. Lavery yell for me. I ran in, saw the body layin’ here, and the girl fainting on the floor. Bush, the officer on the beat, came in right after me. I told ’em nothing ought to be touched until the Headquarters men got here, and then got right after the mobs outside, and generally kept an eye on everything until Sergeant Velie got here. I followed his orders after that, that’s a fact. I—”

“Here, here, Crouther, that’s plenty,” said the Inspector. “Don’t leave, I may be able to use you later. Short-handed enough as it is, the Lord knows. A department store!” He muttered under his breath and turned to Dr. Prouty.

“Doc! Ready for me yet?”

The kneeling police doctor nodded. “Just about, Inspector. Want me to shoot the works right here?” He seemed tacitly to question the wisdom of imparting his information before a group of laymen.

“Might as well,” grunted Queen. “It can’t be very enlightening.”

“Don’t know about that.” Prouty stood up with a groan, took a firmer grip on the black cigar between his teeth.

“Woman was killed by two bullets,” he said deliberately, “both from a Colt .38 revolver. Probably from the same gun—hard to tell exactly without putting them under the microscope.” He held up two encarmined blobs of metal, blunted completely out of shape. The Inspector took them, turned them over in his fingers, and in silence handed them to Ellery, who immediately bent over them with a curious eagerness.

Prouty stared dreamily down at the body, plunging his hands into his pockets. “One bullet,” he continued, “entered the body directly in the center of the cardiac region. Nice jagged
pericardial
wound, Inspector. Smashed the
sternum
bone, pierced the
pericardial septum,
which is the membrane separating the
pericardium
from the main body cavity, then took the logical course through—first the fibrous layer of the
pericardium,
then the serous inner layer, and finally the anterior tip of the heart, where the great vessels are. Spilled quite a bit of the yellow
pericardial
fluid, too. Bullet entered the body at an angle and it’s left a fearful wound. …”

“Then death was instantaneous?” asked Ellery. “The second bullet was unnecessary?”

“Quite,” said Prouty dryly. “Death would be instantaneous from either wound. As a matter of fact, the second bullet—maybe it’s not the second, though, I can’t tell of course which hit her first—bullet number two made a better job of it than even bullet number one. Because it penetrated the
precordia,
which is the region a little below the heart and above the abdomen. This is also a ragged wound, and since the
precordial
sector takes in muscles and blood-vessels of major importance, it’s as vital a spot as the heart itself. …” Prouty stopped suddenly. His eyes strayed almost with irritation to the dead woman on the floor.

“Was the revolver fired close to the body?” put in the Inspector.

“No powder stains, Inspector,” said Prouty, still regarding the corpse with a frown.

“Were both bullets fired from the same spot?” asked Ellery.

“Hard to say. The lateral angles are similar, indicating that whoever fired both bullets stood to the right of the woman. But the downward course of the bullets disturbs me. They’re too much alike.”

“What do you mean?” demanded Ellery, leaning forward.

“Well,” growled Prouty, biting on his cigar, “if the woman were in exactly the same position when both shots were fired—assuming that both shots were fired almost simultaneously, of course—there should be a greater
downward
angle to the
precordial
wound than to the
pericardial.
Because the
precordia
is located below the heart, and the gun would have to be aimed lower. … Well, perhaps I shouldn’t say these things at all. There are any number of explanations, I suppose, for that difference in angle. Ought to have Ken Knowles look over the bullets and the wounds, though.”

“He’ll get his chance,” said the Inspector with a sigh. “Is that all, Doc?”

Ellery looked up from another scrutiny of the two bullets. “How long has she been dead?”

Prouty replied promptly: “About twelve hours, I should say. I’ll be able to fix the time of death more accurately after the autopsy. But she certainly died no earlier than midnight and probably no later than two in the morning.”

“Through now?” asked Inspector Queen patiently.

“Yes. But there’s one thing that has me a little. …” Prouty set his jaw. “There’s something queer here, Inspector. From what I know of
precordial
wounds I can’t believe that this one should have bled so little. You’ve noticed, I suppose, that the clothing above both wounds is stiff with coagulated blood, but not so much of it as you might expect. At least as a medical man might expect.”

“Why?”

“I’ve seen plenty of
precordial
wounds,” said Prouty calmly, “and they’re messy, Inspector. Bleed like hell. In fact, especially in this case, where the hole is blasted pretty large, due to the angle, there should be pools and pools of it. The
pericardial
would bleed freely, but not profusely. But the other—I say, there’s something queer here, and I thought I’d call it to your attention.”

Ellery shot his father a warning glance as the old man opened his mouth to reply. The Inspector clamped his lips together and dismissed Prouty with a nod. Ellery returned the two bullets to Prouty, who put them carefully into his bag.

The police doctor unhurriedly covered the body with a sheet from the hanging bed and departed, his last words a promise to hurry the morgue wagon.

“Is the store physician here?” Queen asked.