Odor of Violets, Baynard Kendrick [best short novels .txt] 📗

At ten-twenty tonight a man who was supposedly Paul Gerente delivered some Braille instructions to me in my office. He lengthened his stride as he crossed from the door to my desk—to make me think he was taller than he was.”

“Then he’d heard of your methods before.”

“Exactly, Inspector. He’d heard of my methods before. I had no reason then to believe that it wasn’t Gerente, taking some extra precautions—or devising a means of testing me. I know now—”

“You’re damn right it wasn’t Gerente!” Archer exclaimed emphatically. “I know Gerente. I’ve seen him twenty times on the stage and I don’t forget faces. At ten-twenty—”

“Quite,” said Maclain. “We come now to the inconsistencies which put you up an imaginative tree.” The Captain took a cigarette from his case, fitted it in a holder, and flashed his lighter. Guiding the flame adroitly to the tip by running his thumb along the cigarette, he inhaled deeply and put the lighter away.

“According to Mr. Cameron,” he continued, “Paul Gerente was killed at seven forty-five. He and Cameron were good friends—so good that Gerente had given Cameron a key.”

“We found it on him,” said Davis. “That’s true.”

“Or partly true, Inspector. Anyhow, he had a key. To go on with the story—both Cameron and Gerente had been going with a girl—Hilda Lestrade. She came to call on Cameron; they had a few drinks in Cameron’s apartment and came upstairs. Here, they had some more. Gerente got a bit drunk and high words followed. Gerente came at Cameron with a poker. Cameron wrested it away and struck him down. He fell right where I’m standing now.”

The Inspector’s heavy brows met in a frown. “What’s the matter with that?”

“Inconsistencies, Davis. Incongruities. Impossibilities. It’s full of them, and I can’t even see. Where was Cameron standing when Gerente rushed him with the poker? If Gerente seized the poker from beside the fireplace, then Cameron must have been somewhere out in the room. Remember that, Inspector, when you question the girl.

“Did Cameron push Gerente back in front of the fire before he struck him down? If he did, it was a neat quiet job—for the struggle hadn’t even rumpled Paul Gerente’s dressing gown. And another point—before Cameron committed this foul deed he must have turned his victim around. It won’t wash, Davis. Paul Gerente was struck down quietly from behind. Probably by someone who slipped out from the bedroom.”

“But Cameron’s confessed, Maclain,” the Inspector reminded him stolidly.

“That makes everything easy, doesn’t it? Will you hand me an ash tray, Sergeant? I don’t want to get these on the floor.” He flicked off his ashes, turned to the mantel, and set the ash tray down. “You can handle this any way you want, Inspector, but I’m going to tell you a little more.”

“I can’t stop you. Shoot. Mentally I’m putting it all down.”

“Is it consistent that after committing a murder the murderer should wash three highball glasses and put them away again? That’s number one. Number two is—somebody with wet feet stood for a long time outside of this apartment door in the hall, or left their rubbers there.”

“Now, how—”

“Dreist sniffed the floor, Inspector, while I was waiting outside the door before Cameron let me in. I felt the floor. I think a pair of rubbers had been there, for I doubt if anyone could have stood so close to the wall.”

“They belonged to the girl,” said Archer with a sigh.

“She came upstairs from Cameron’s apartment.” The Captain put more ashes in the tray. “Did she keep her wet rubbers on until she came up here, and then suddenly decide to remove them and leave them in the hall?”

“There’s something you’re holding back, Captain.” The Inspector’s voice had an edge. “It isn’t like you to take an open-and-shut killing and twist it into a nasty snarl.”

“It’s already a nasty snarl.” The Captain snuffed his cigarette in the tray. “There was something inconsistent about that set of Braille instructions, Inspector Davis. It brought me here tonight, because I’d hardly expect to find it in G-2. There’s something inconsistent here—in this room, and the bedroom; and traces of it in Paul Gerente’s secret drawer.”

“If there’s anything in that drawer,” said Archer, “it certainly doesn’t meet the eye.”

“Nor ever will, Sergeant,” said Duncan Maclain. “I’m talking about an odor of violets!”

CHAPTER VII

1

THE THERMOMETER was dropping steadily throughout New England. A biting wind, rolling in from Maine, had sent the whole of Hartford to bed huddling under blankets, and turned the steep short hill up Asylum Street from the station into a dangerous incline of traffic-packed ice and snow.

Norma felt cramped and miserable when she picked up the brown-paper parcel containing Babs’s galoshes and climbed stiffly down to the platform after three unhappy hours in the smoking car. The wind brought tears to her eyes. Getting what shelter she could from her furs, she lowered her head against the blast and fought her way downstairs. A porter, noting her clothes, started toward her, and seeing she had no baggage turned away disappointedly.

She had hesitated as long as possible before leaving the train, and so far luck had been with her. Neither in Grand Central nor in the Hartford station had she encountered a single person she knew. When she stepped out onto Spruce Street in search of a taxi, it came as a shock to find herself staring straight at a neighbor, Bunny Carter, who was leaning from the back window of his chauffeur-driven Lincoln car.

Bunny was president of the great International Aircraft works at East Hartford, where Gilbert Tredwill worked as a designing engineer. The sumptuous Carter home was built close to The Crags on an adjoining hill. Norma was extremely fond of both Bunny and his wife, Beatrice, but for the moment he was about the last person she wanted to see.

“Norma, my dear!” Bunny’s jovial Billiken face twisted up into a welcome and he flung open the door. “Hop in! Hop in! I’m waiting for somebody else, who