It was a curious scene.
A dozen candelabras cast a cool yellow light over the room, making long shadows on the floor. The house party and the servants, in various states of dress and undress, sat in a circle about the police lieutenant, a young man named Winters who stood sternly between two uniformed policemen and surveyed his audience.
“In the first place,” he said, glaring for some inexplicable reason at Verbena Pruitt, “Senator Rhodes is dead.” Mrs. Rhodes, who had already been informed, sat very straight in her chair, her face expressionless. Ellen sat beside her, her eyes shut. The others looked stunned by what had happened. And what had happened?
“Some time between nine o’clock yesterday morning and one-thirty-six this morning, a small container of a special new explosive, Pomeroy 5X, was hidden behind some logs in the fireplace of the Senator’s study.” There was a gasp. Ellen opened her eyes very wide. Mr. Pomeroy stirred uneasily; his wife chewed her lip nervously. Verbena Pruitt was nearly as impassive as Mrs. Rhodes: she had been through too many political battles to be unnerved by such a small thing as murder, and it was murder in the eyes of Lieutenant Winters.
“It is our belief that someone who was closely acquainted with the Senator’s habits knew that he usually went to his study alone after dinner to work, and that he always lit his own fire on cold nights. In fact, according to Mrs. Rhodes and the butler here, he was very particular about this fire, insisting that it be made like an Indian tepee of ash logs and strips of pine kindling. It was never lighted by anyone except himself and, in the morning, the coals were always taken out by one of the maids. Yesterday morning they were removed at nine o’clock by …” Lieutenant Winters squinted in the candlelight at a sheet of paper he was holding in his hand, “by Madge Peabody, a maid. Fifteen minutes later the butler, Herman Howells, laid the fire. From that moment until Senator Rhodes retired to his study the library was visited by no one … except the murderer.” Lieutenant Winters paused damatically and peered through the gloom of candles at his captive audience, unconscious of his errors. I wondered if he’d ever thought of television for a career; with that handsome dull profile, that hypnotic voice he could write his own ticket. I was suddenly very tired; I wanted to go to bed.
Mr. Hollister provided a mild diversion. “And myself,” he said calmly. “I was in the study shortly before dinner, at the Senator’s request.” I held my fire.
“I will get your testimony later,” said the Lieutenant, a little sharply I thought. His great moment robbed of some of its drama. He then told us that we were, none of us, to leave the house without police permission. Then, beginning with the ladies, the interviews began. They were held in the dining room. The rest of us remained in the drawing room, talking in hushed voices of what had happened, and drinking nervously. Mrs. Rhodes was the first to be interviewed; which was fortunate since her presence embarrassed us all. When she was gone, I was surprised at how calmly the guests took this sudden, extraordinary turn in their affairs … especially Ellen who was the coolest of the lot.
“Do fix me a Scotch,” she said, while I was standing by the bar getting more brandy for Miss Pruitt. When I had finished my bar duties, I sat beside Ellen on an uncomfortable love seat. Across the room Miss Pruitt and Mr. Hollister were talking animatedly to Walter Langdon. Close to the fire the Pomeroys, man and wife, conferred in low voices while the servants hovered on the outskirts, silent in the shadows.
“This is awful,” I said inadequately, conventionally.
“I should hope to hell it is,” said Ellen, guzzling Scotch like a baby at its mother’s breast. “It’s going to tie us all in knots for the next few months.”
This was cold-blooded but I saw her point and, after all, it was her honesty which has always appealed to me. She had obviously not liked her father and I was oddly pleased that she had not, despite the crisis, acted out of character. It would have been such a temptation to weep and carry on. “What a funny way to kill someone,” I said, not knowing quite what to say.
“Dynamite in the fireplace!” Ellen shook her head; then she put her drink down and looked at me. “It’s the most impossible thing I’ve ever heard of.”
“How do you feel?” I asked, suddenly solicitous.
“Numb,” she said softly, shaking her head. “Did you ever find yourself not knowing what to think? Well, that’s the way I am now. I keep waiting for an alarm or something to go off inside me and show me how to act, what to feel.”
“Your mother’s taking it pretty well,” I said.
“She’s numb, too.”
“Where were you when it happened?”
Ellen chuckled; for a moment she was like her old self. “That would be telling!”
“With that boy?” I motioned to Langdon who was still talking to the politicos.
Ellen nodded, with a wicked smile. “We were just talking, in his room. He wanted to hear some stories … you know, life with father kind of things.…”
“I can imagine what you told him.”
“Well, we really hardly had time. He had just told me he was being divorced from his wife, a Bennington girl, when the lights went out and …” She stopped abruptly, took a long drink; then: “Did you ever know any girls from Bennington? They’re so terribly earnest. They know everything. I pity a boy like that being married to one of them.”
“I suppose your compassion will very soon take a more positive turn,” I said pompously; it was unseemly, I felt, to be talking about Ellen’s sex life when her father, at this moment, lay dead in his study, guarded by the police, a blanket hung over the doorway to keep the cold air out of the rest of the house: part of one wall had been blown off while the furniture and the door, as well as the Senator, had all been shattered in the explosion.
“Oh, who cares,” she said, without much interest. “How long do you think they’ll take to figure all this out?”
“Who? The police? I haven’t any idea.”
“Well, I hope they’re quick about it. It shouldn’t take long, God knows.”
“You sound as though you know who killed him?”
The blue eyes flickered almost humorously in the wavering candlelight. “Of course I know, darling … but, for one reason and another, I’m not opening my mouth … wouldn’t interfere for the world.”
I felt very cold then … as though a blast of December air from that ruined study had penetrated the drawing room and chilled me to the bone.
CHAPTER TWO
1
I was interviewed at four-twenty-seven in the morning by the Police Lieutenant who seemed nearly as weary as the rest of us.
“Full name,” he mumbled mechanically. A plain-clothes man took down my testimony. The three of us sat at one end of the dining-room table by the light of two candelabras: the candles were half-burned away.
“Peter Cutler Sargeant II.”
“Age?”
“Twenty-nine.”
“Occupation?”
“Public relations.”
“By whom employed.”
“Myself.”
“Residence?”
“120 Christopher Street, New York City.”
“How long have you known Senator Rhodes?”
“About one day.”
“How did you happen to know him?”
“I was hired to handle his publicity. I only got here today … yesterday morning.”
“What time did you come to the house?”
“About four-thirty in the afternoon.”