Red Gardenias (21 page)

Dr Rutledge and the guards had come upstairs and goggled at the body and Delia Young. Williams was describing the shooting when Carmel and Alice March arrived in two of the cars.

"We just had to know what happened," Alice said.

Carmel's dark eyes were on Ann, beside Peter. "How in the world did you get here?" she asked.

Ann said, "I thought Slats Donovan was the murderer. So I found out where Delia Young was through a girl at the Crimson Cat, but Donovan surprised me trying to get into the house."

Carmel said, "Slats Donovan killed John and Richard?"

"And Talmadge." Peter March looked at Ann. "It was clever of you to figure that out."

"Just a lousy gangster job," Williams said.

Ann said, "It wasn't so clever to get caught."

"But what happened here?" Alice March persisted.

Peter repeated the story of the shooting to Carmel and Alice.

"I'm glad you're safe," Crane said to Ann.

"You didn't show it." Her voice was cool. "Letting somebody else untie me."

Crane shrugged his shoulders. He sat on the table and crooked a finger at Williams.

"Get Doctor Woodrin's medicine bag for me," he said in a low voice. "One of the gals brought his car down."

"Hell!" Williams said. "Donovan's dead."

"I want it."

Williams' black eyes were suddenly alarmed. "He didn't wing you, did he, Bill?"

Crane smiled at him. "Get the bag."

Peter March was still talking. "You really ought to thank me for saving you," Crane said to Ann. "Me and Doc Williams. I couldn't untie you because I was too busy with Donovan."

"That was close," she admitted. "I don't see how his shot missed you."

Crane saw Williams in the hall. He went out and took the bag from him, opened it, fumbled among its contents.

"What're you looking for?" Williams asked. "A drink?"

Someone in the room called, "Crane!"

There were a number of medical articles in his hand: a silver thermometer case, a steel probe, some cotton, an atomizer, a glass bottle of capsules. He carried these back into the room.

Peter March asked, "Any reason we can't cart away the body?"

"I don't know of any."

"What'll we do with the woman?"

"Let her go," Ann said. "She was practically a prisoner."

Alice March was standing with Dr Rutledge. "I don't understand why Donovan killed Richard... and and everybody." Her plump face was bewildered.

Williams jerked a thumb toward the bed. "Why don't you ask him?"

Peter March said, "He hated the whole March family because March & Company fired him."

Crane put the medical objects on the table beside the bottle of rye. He didn't feel so good. He took a drink, sat on the table, put the bottle down. He sat with his back arched, his stomach pulled in.

Ann was watching him. "Are you all right, Bill?"

He smiled at her. "Sure." He wished he didn't like her so much. He picked up the atomizer, pointed it at his nose, gave the rubber bulb a tentative squeeze. He sneezed.

Dr Rutledge said to Peter March, "There must have been more of a motive than revenge."

Crane put the atomizer on the table, began to clean his nails with the steel probe. "There was," he said.

"What was it?" Peter March asked.

Crane ignored him. He put the probe down, took his revolver from his pocket. He gave it to Williams.

"Don't let Doctor Woodrin leave the room," he said.

There was silence as Williams aimed the revolver at the physician.

Then Dr Woodrin said, "What's the big idea?" His pink-and-white face was angry. "If you're playing a joke, I don't..."

"Save it," Williams said.

"Drop him if he moves," Crane said.

Carmel March exclaimed, "You must be mad."

"Am I?" Crane took the atomizer, squirted it at her. "With this I purify you." He gave the rubber bulb a couple of squeezes. He felt a little light headed.

They certainly thought he had gone crazy. Even Williams was a little dubious. He thought, maybe he's just drunk. He wondered if the rye was doped.

The fine spray from the atomizer fogged Carmel's head, beaded on her mink coat, floated past Peter March.

"Perfume!" he said.

Carmel cried, "My gardenia!"

Crane gave the atomizer a final squeeze. "Would a corpse by any other name smell so sweet?" he inquired, and turned to Peter March. "Can you search the doctor's car?"

Peter March nodded to a guard by the door.

Crane spoke to Dr Woodrin. "Clever idea, wasn't it, to try to implicate Carmel?"

"You're insane," Dr Woodrin said.

Dr Rutledge said, "I know I am. For God's sake, Crane, tell us what it's all about."

Crane felt very tired. The rye didn't seem to do much good, but he took another drink.

"It's about perfume, oily water, a plagiarist and duck shooting," he said.

Carmel March gasped. "Duck shooting?"

"Well, the Duck Club then. They've found oil in Michigan, near Lansing, and in Illinois." Crane spoke to Peter March. "But there's probably a hell of a lot more right under your great-grandfather's land."

Even the guards gaped at him. He went on: "Woodrin knows this. Having been an oil-company doctor, he'd be bound to know a lot about oil. Oil seepage; the geologic formation of the duck grounds tipped him off, but he couldn't buy the property."

The guard who was searching Dr Woodrin's car appeared with a Scotch-plaid blanket and a tennis net. "They were in the rumble," he said, going away again.

Crane continued, "There was little danger of the oil being discovered since the Marchs aren't oil people, even though oil seepage killed fish in the pools, and there are no wells within five hundred miles to make them think of oil. But as a trustee of the great-grandfather's estate, Woodrin could sell the land to himself... once the last March had died."

His face incredulous, Peter March stared at the doctor. "All those murders to get possession of an oil field?"

"Oh, he hated all of you, too."

Carmel gasped, "Hated us?"

"Sure. You were rich; he wasn't. When he had a chance to make money, with Donovan and Talmadge, in the night-club business, John spoiled it. So he went after the oil. How much is an oil field worth? A million dollars? Fifty million?"

Williams said, "Some guys'll murder for fifty bucks."

Dr Woodrin's round face was the color of caramel ice cream. "Do you believe all this nonsense?" he demanded of Peter.

Crane put an elbow on his thigh, leaned his chin on his palm. He was more comfortable doubled over, but he felt lousy. He said, "Now for the murders, in the order..."

The guard interrupted him by tossing coils of white rubber hose on the floor. "That's all," he said.

"Swell!" said Crane, looking at the hose. "There's the real proof."

Williams' revolver went off with a tremendous boom. It seemed as though the noise had caused Dr Woodrin to make a startled leap for the door, but it must have followed the leap because the bullet caught him just as he entered the hall. He took two heavy steps forward, crashed headlong down the stairs.

Alice March screamed, but Carmel silenced her, saying, "Shut up, you fat fool!"

Crane said, "Nice shot, Williams."

Led by Dr Rutledge, everyone but Ann and Delia Young went out into the hall. Delia Young sat motionless in her chair. Crane remained on the table and had another drink. He drank bent over. He wondered if Ann was angry because he was drinking.

"Aren't you going to thank me for saving you?" he asked her.

Ann said, "And it wasn't Donovan after all?" Her green eyes were round.

"I really think you ought to thank me," Crane said.

The bullet had penetrated the hip of Dr Woodrin. It was a flesh wound and there was a lot of blood. Carmel helped Dr Rutledge with bandages, and then two guards were told to take Woodrin to City Hospital. "Notify the police," Peter March said. "We'll be right in."

Crane said to those at the top of the stairs, "You better let me finish before I fall over." They came back into the room.

"The idea was to make all the murders look like accidents and a suicide," he went on. "When Richard passed out in his car at the Country Club the doctor simply attached the hose to the exhaust pipe, ran it through a window, waited until he was dead, then took away the hose. Richard was drunk and couldn't smell the gas."

Dr Rutledge said, "It's practically odorless anyway."

"John's death was a little more difficult. Woodrin met him in his garage, threw the Scotch blanket over his head, muffling his shouts, and then wound him up in the tennis net. (You remember he always carried a tennis net with him?) That was to hold him without bruising his body. Then the carbon monoxide was hosed under the blanket."

"That's ghastly!" Carmel exclaimed.

With a splutter, Dr Woodrin's car started, went off in low gear. A small wind had come up with the dawn, was making the shades rustle. Away from the house, the car went into second.

"Talmadge died like Richard, in his own car."

Williams asked, "But why wasn't he in the driver's seat?"

"That showed he'd been tricked. Woodrin, on some pretext, arranged to meet Talmadge outside during the dance. The doctor went out early, rigged up the hose in Talmadge's car, then started the motor, ostensibly to allow the heater to warm the inside of the sedan. When Talmadge arrived, Woodrin was in the driver's seat, carefully breathing through a crack in the door, and the car was full of monoxide."

Carmel cried, "But why didn't Talmadge smell the gas?"

"It's nearly odorless, as Dr Rutledge just said... and he had a bad cold."

"Woodrin couldn't breathe through the crack after Talmadge was there," Peter objected. "That would be too obvious. Why wasn't he overcome, too?"

"He stayed only a moment or two," said Crane. "Then he framed an excuse to leave him, for a letter, or to get someone. For anything. He closed the door behind him. It was a cold night; the heat felt good, even though Talmadge was probably nervous about carbon monoxide, but there was also a psychological reason why the motor wasn't turned off."

There was a moment of silence.

"The reason was politeness. Woodrin had started the engine and the heater because he was cold; it would be impolite of Talmadge to turn it off, even though it was his car. So he died while Woodrin watched from a safe distance, was dead when Woodrin came back to remove the hose."

Peter March asked, "But why the note in John's case, when the deaths passed as accidents?"

"Woodrin didn't want an investigation. He forged the note so your family, if suspicion arose, would stop their investigation when they discovered John killed Richard, then himself. And to block a police investigation, he helped Carmel set the stage with tools on the garage floor and the hood of the sedan raised... so the coroner's jury would call the death accidental."

"Wasn't the forged note a big risk?" Dr Rutledge asked.

"No." Crane had difficulty keeping his eyes open. "In the excitement of the discovery, Carmel wouldn't study it. And it was promptly destroyed."

Behind the house a rooster crowed. The two oil lamps threw hardly any light. Ann was watching Crane.

Crane sighed and took another drink. He hoped that solved everything. He felt awful; even the drink didn't help.

Peter said, "But what about Dad? Woodrin was with us when the attempt was made on him."

"That was Donovan, accomplishing a little plagiarism on what he'd learned of the murders from me and from Delia Young. He'd always hated Simeon March, and when he learned how people could be killed with carbon monoxide, he thought he'd muscle in on the murders." Crane crossed his arms over his stomach. "Only he bungled the job. He forgot the gardenia. That's how I knew it wasn't the real murderer."

Peter asked, "Do you suppose he knew Woodrin was doing the murders?"

"I think so. I wouldn't be surprised if he saw Woodrin fix Talmadge's car; he was at the Country Club that night."

Dr Rutledge said, "And when Mr March didn't die, Donovan was afraid he'd been identified, so he had to try again."

Crane nodded.

"How did you happen to suspect Woodrin?" Alice March asked.

"His surprise when Simeon March was gassed. He'd taken the other deaths so calmly. He just couldn't believe it. Then the atomizer when he came into the hospital room to treat Mr March. You don't use an atomizer to treat carbon monoxide poisoning."

Dr Rutledge asked, "You think he was going to smother Mr March, then spray the gardenia around?"

"I'm sure of it." Crane closed his eyes for a second. "And the clinching clue was the oily water at the Duck Club."

"Who fired the shots at the Duck Club?" Peter asked.

"Donovan. He attacked Simeon March, then came out there. He wanted to frighten me; he was afraid I knew too much."

Peter asked, "How did you figure out the use of the net and the hose?"

"I guessed at the net, and smelled rubber on the exhaust pipe."

Delia Young, still sitting in the chair, said huskily, "I thought you was a dick, Arthur."

Peter was nodding his head. "And Woodrin was eager to be in the death here, to make sure Donovan was killed before he could produce alibis for John's and Richard's deaths."

Crane said, "It took guts to take the chance of dodging Slats' bullets until we killed him, but he was desperate. And he didn't dare shoot Slats himself; he knew that would throw suspicion on him."

Williams said, "Slats damn near got him, too."

Crane said, "And that brings down the curtain."

He poured himself another drink, was surprised to see the bottle was nearly empty. Dr Rutledge and the remaining guard led the way down the stairs. Ann watched Peter and Carmel leave the room. Williams went by with Delia Young. He winked at Crane. Alice March called to Carmel and Peter, "Wait for me." She was the last to leave, brushing past Ann at the door. Crane closed his eyes, opened them and saw Ann still there, closed them again.

After a long time she asked, "Are you sick, Bill?"

"No."

"You look awfully pale."

He let his head drop against one shoulder. "I'm all right."