“Remember you well!” he boomed, pumping my hand. “A much less unhappy occasion I am glad to say.” He beamed vaguely and accepted a drink from the butler. I took tea, as did our hostess and the two other guests; one a political commentator of great seriousness, the other Elmer Bush who had arrived while I was greeting the Senator. Elmer was every bit as cordial as the old political ham, both slices off the same haunch, as it were.
“Well, it looks like you’re all innocent,” said Elmer toothily as we stepped back out of the main line of chatter which circulated around the new Senator and Mrs. Goldmountain.
“It certainly does, Elmer.”
“I suppose you’ll be going back to New York?”
“Very soon.”
“Winters, I gather, is very pleased about the way the case shaped up, very pleased.”
“I should think so.”
“Quite a trick of his, pretending to arrest Pomeroy while really making a trap for Hollister.”
“Trap?”
“Isn’t that what happened? Wasn’t Hollister driven to commit suicide by the police? Naturally, they wouldn’t admit anything like that but it seems clear: they pretended to have evidence which they didn’t have, forced him to confess and then to kill himself, an ingenious, a masterful display of policemanship.”
Elmer Bush never joked so I assumed that he was serious and left him rigorously alone.
“I’ve already discussed it on my show. You probably saw it night before last, got a good response too. The public seems unusually interested in this affair, something out of the ordinary, Senator being murdered and all that, very different. I thought I might drop by and take a few shots of the house on film to be used in my next program …” And he tantalized me with promises of glory if I would help him get in to see the house and Mrs. Rhodes. I told him I would do what I could.
Across the room the Senator-designate was booming.
“Dear lady, I will be saddened indeed if you don’t attend the swearing in tomorrow at the Capitol. The Vice-President is going to do it, in his office, just a few friends will be there, very cozy, and the press. Say the word, and I shall have my secretary send you a ticket.”
“It will be a moment to be cherished,” said our hostess, looking up into his full-blown face, like a gardener examining a favorite rose for beetles.
“I am only saddened that my appearance in the halls of Congress should have been like this … in the place of an old and treasured friend. How tragical!”
A murmur of sympathy eddied about him. “Lee was a man to be remembered,” said the statesman.
His oration was shorter than I had suspected; when it was over he and Elmer Bush fell into conversation about the coming convention while I chatted with Mrs. Goldmountain.
“You’re going to be in Washington a little while longer?”
“Two days at least … so the police say.”
“Why on earth do they want you now that it’s all over?”
“Red tape. You know how they are.”
“Well, give my love to darling Ellen and tell her to come see me before she goes back.”
“I certainly will.”
“And also to Mrs. Rhodes.” She paused and sipped some tea, her black eyes dreamy. “She must be relieved.”
“That the case is finally over?”
“In every sense,” said Mrs. Goldmountain significantly.
“What do you mean?”
“Only what everyone in Washington knows and has always known, that she hated Lee Rhodes, that she tried, on at least two occasions, to divorce him and that he somehow managed to talk her out of it. I’m quite sure it was a relief to her when he was killed, by someone else. That awful Hollister really did do it, didn’t he?”
4
I returned to the house shortly after five, and went straight to my room. As I bathed and dressed for dinner, I had a vague feeling that a pattern was beginning to evolve but precisely what I could not tell. It was definite that there were a number of charades being performed by a number of people for a number of reasons … figure out the meanings of the charades and the identity of the murderer would become clear.
I combed my hair and began to construct a plan of attack. First, the Pomeroys. It was necessary that I discover what her game was, why she had come to me with that story about her husband. I should also find out why he had been, all in all, so calm about his arrest: had he been so sure of vindication? And, if he had, why?
Second, I should like to investigate Mrs. Rhodes’ whole mysterious performance, her reference to the paper chase, her possible authorship of the anonymous letters, the fact of her revolver’s use as a murder weapon. What had her relationship been, truly, to Senator Rhodes? I found Mrs. Goldmountain’s assertion difficult to believe. Yet she had, Heaven knew, no reason to be dishonest and if Mrs. Rhodes had detested her husband.… I thought of that firm old mouth, the controlled voice and gestures: I could imagine her quite easily killing her husband. But how could I find out? Ellen was much too casual about her family to know. Verbena Pruitt seemed the likeliest source, the old family friend … except it would not be easy to get anything out of her; she was too used to the world of politics, of secrecy and deals to be caught in an indiscretion. Still I decided to give her a try that evening.
The third charade concerned my erstwhile ally Lieutenant Winters; as a matter of curiosity I wanted to know just what game he was playing, what was the reason for his apparent desertion of the case.
And, finally, there was always Langdon; the idea that he might have committed a political murder appealed to me enormously: it was all very romantic and Graustarkian … unfortunately he hardly seemed the type to do in poor Hollister, but then murder knoweth no type as the detectives’ Hand Manual would say, if there was such a thing.
Verbena Pruitt could undoubtedly have done the murders, but there was no motive as far as I could tell. Ellen was quite capable of murdering her father, me, Langdon and the President of the United States, but she had been at the Chevy Chase Club when Hollister was murdered, as had Langdon, ruling them both out.
This left Verbena Pruitt and Mrs. Rhodes as the only two who were in the house at the time of Hollister’s death (the Pomeroys had been at the police station). The murderer then, barring the intervention of an outsider, was either Verbena or Mrs. Rhodes and, of the two, only Mrs. Rhodes had had the motive.
The result of all this deductive reasoning left me a little cold. I sat down heavily on the bed, hairbrush in hand and wondered why I hadn’t worked all this out before. My next thought concerned Winters. He had obviously worked it out for himself. He must’ve known for some hours what the situation was; he had studied all the statements, had known where each of us was. He must know then that Mrs. Rhodes was, very likely, the murderer and yet he had seemed ready to give up the case. Why? Had he been bought off? This was altogether too possible, knowing the ways of the police, in my own city of New York anyway. Or had he, out of a sense of chivalry, not chosen to arrest her, preferring to rest on the laurels provided him by Hollister’s apparent suicide?
I began to think that it might be a good idea if I forgot about the whole thing. I had no desire to see justice done, either in the abstract or in this particular case. Let the tyrants go to their graves unavenged, such was my poetical thought.
The telephone by my bed rang. I answered it. Ellen was on the line. “Come to my room like a good boy,” she commanded. “We can have a drink before dinner.”
She was already dressed for dinner when I opened the door; she was buffing her nails at her dressing table. “There’s a drink over there on the table, by the bed.” And sure enough there was a Martini waiting for me. I saluted her and drank; then I sat in a chintzy chair, looking at her. I have always enjoyed watching women make themselves up, the one occupation to which they bring utter sincerity and complete dedication. Ellen was no exception.