“Could he have overheard you?”
“Well — his room is next to Miss Gladd’s, but there’s a wall between them and we kept our voices down.”
“Bah,” Vail said contemptuously. “Brager probably has that house wired like a central for experimental purposes, and a sonotel mike the size of a prayer book will pick up a whisper at twenty feet. Unquestionably he heard you, and he telephoned the message.”
“Say he did.” Hicks’s brow was creased. “For the sake of the argument. I still can’t see you. What put that playful idea into his head?”
“I don’t know, but it isn’t hard to guess. A double motive, I should say. Cooper was dead. Brager thought I might possibly get from Miss Gladd the information I had hoped to get from Cooper; and he wanted to be sure Miss Gladd got away, not only from that place but also from Dundee — and from you who were in Dundee’s pay. He knew she was in danger, because she was dangerous. She might at any moment, by any chance, meet Mrs. Dundee and hear her voice, and that could not be permitted to happen.”
“Oho!” Hicks ejaculated. “Now I get you! Brager and I would make a good team. The same thought struck me.”
“Do you mean,” Mrs. Dundee demanded, “that Brager wanted to get her out of reach of my husband? Of Dick?”
“I do,” Vail asserted. “Dick was desperate because he was in deadly peril. If anyone learned of the amazing resemblance between your voice and Martha Cooper’s — if the police ever got that tip and got started on that trail — they were sure to get him for the murder of Mrs. Cooper and her husband. And they still are. That’s what I’m here to tell you. They still are!”
Twenty-three
The reaction to Vail’s startling pronouncement, while not violent, was noticeable. Heather gripped Hicks’s arm and stared at his face inquiringly. Ross stood up and uttered a word not in common use in the presence of women. Judith gazed directly at Vail, if not in complete disbelief, in scornful incertitude.
“Nonsense,” she said sharply. “Dick might have trumped up something against me. I’ve refused to believe it, but I admit it’s possible. But he did not murder—”
“Please!” Hicks said peremptorily. He was cocking an eye at Vail, his head sidewise. “This is really a very fine theory. Beautiful! As I understand it, Dundee prepares to explode a mine under his wife by concocting this phony sonotel record. No sooner does he touch it off than the whole scheme is endangered by the unexpected return of Martha Cooper from abroad. Ross has heard the record. If he meets Martha Cooper and hears her speak, with a voice so amazingly like his mother’s, he is bound to smell a rat; and there is Martha, right there on the place. So Dundee seizes a lucky opportunity and kills her.”
“Bosh!” Judith said incisively.
“No, no,” Hicks protested. “Not bosh at all, as a theory. Dundee having acted impulsively and impetuously, which is in character, finds upon reflection that he is still in a hole and even a deeper one. He not only reflects, he probably hears things. With wires and sonotels and God knows what all over that house, he almost certainly hears things. He may have heard Ross and Miss Gladd discussing that sonograph plate. He may have met Cooper and talked with him when Cooper went there this afternoon. He knows that his wife may show up out there at any moment, especially since she has heard the sonotel record, and he knows I have the record. At any rate, as Vail has said, he knows that if either Cooper or Miss Gladd meets his wife and hears her speak, he is in for it. So he kills Cooper.”
“This is absolute—” Judith began.
“Don’t do that,” Hicks told her. “We’re working on Vail’s theory, and it’s a beaut. It’s the only one that fits the known facts. Vail is intelligent enough to realize that. He also realizes that if we all keep our mouths shut, if we give the police no hint of all this shenanigan about the sonotel record, Dundee is safe. They’ll never even seriously suspect him, let alone hang it on him. Isn’t that it, Vail?”
“Certainly. It’s obvious—”
“It sure is. I never saw anything obviouser.” Hicks glanced around, and back at Vail. “But I don’t know if you can make it unanimous. Ross won’t blab, not caring to see his father convicted of murder. Mrs. Dundee won’t. Of course I won’t, because I’m getting paid. You won’t, for friendship’s sake. Your old pal, Dick Dundee. But I don’t know about Miss Gladd. How are we going to silence her?”
Heather and Judith spoke at once.
“If you mean you believe—”
“That’s utterly ridiculous—”
“Please, ladies! Never get mad at a theory! Have I stated the situation correctly, Vail?”
“You have.”
“And you sort of rely on us to bring Miss Gladd into line?”
“I rely on no one. I merely present the problem. I admit that I wouldn’t like to have all this gone over in a courtroom, but the Dundees stand to lose a good deal more than I do. Maybe you do too, I don’t know.”
“I do indeed,” Hicks agreed heartily. “Therefore I’m going to poke around in the ashes before I commit myself. You can’t object to that.”
“I’m not objecting to anything.”
“Good. Then take that sonotel record. The theory is that Dundee faked it by using Martha Cooper for Mrs. Dundee’s voice, and getting someone to imitate yours. You seem to have read the paper this morning, so you must know that Martha Cooper went to Europe with her husband nearly a year ago and only came back Monday. So please tell me how Dundee used her when he faked that record.”
“I don’t pretend to know exactly when and where it was done.”
“I know you don’t. But theoretically?”
“It could have been done before she left.”
“A year ago?” Hicks’s brows went up. “He kept it around a whole year before he decided to use it? That’s possible, of course, but I don’t like it. It’s not neat. I’d like to suggest an alternative.” He turned to Heather. “Your sister visited you at Katonah a couple of times before she went to Europe, didn’t she?”
“Yes,” Heather said. “I told you.”
“And there was a sonotel installed in that house at the time, for experiments?”
“Yes.”
“Did your sister come by train, or did she drive?”
“She drove. She had a little convertible—”
“And might she not, on one of those visits, have said something like this to you? Quote: ‘Good lord, let me sit down and gasp a while! I know I’m late, but I had an awful time getting here. I never saw such traffic.’ Unquote. Might she not have said that to you?”
“Yes. She might.” Heather was frowning. “I think I remember — I’m not sure. Of course she might.”
“Might is good enough. For that, but not for this. This is more important. Did she, on either occasion, bring you something? Some kind of a gift?”
“A gift?” Heather looked blank. Then suddenly her face lit up. “Oh, of course! A dress! My tan—” Her eyes went down. “I have it on! She brought me this dress!”
“That’s a nice little concidence.” Hicks patted the dress where it curved over her knee. “Nice dress. Then of course it was natural that she should say that she hoped you’d be pleased with what she had brought you. Did she say that?”
“I suppose she did. Of course.”
Hicks nodded, and turned to Vail. “So there you are. That’s on that record, Martha Cooper saying that she hoped the person she was talking to would be pleased with what she had brought. That’s about all she does say of any significance. Most of the material items of the conversation — for instance, a reference to carbotene — are in your voice — I mean the imitation of your voice. So I suggest this. The sonotel records from that machine installed experimentally in the house at Katonah were sent to Dundee. Among them were some of the conversations between Miss Gladd and her sister, and the remarkable resemblance of the sister’s voice to that of his wife was of course noted by Dundee. He got — no matter when, possibly only recently — the notion of faking a record. He found someone to imitate your voice, and for his wife’s part of it he used selected items from the records he had in Martha Cooper’s voice. He knew, undoubtedly, that Martha Cooper was in Europe, or he wouldn’t have risked it. What do you think of it?”