"Who cut the rope?" Carella asked.
"I did," Alan said.
"How'd you know the rope was there?"
"When we got the door open a crack, we could see the ... the old man hanging. I stuck my arm into the opening and used a jackknife on the rope."
"I see," Carella had said.
Now, standing in the room where the hanging had taken place, he really tried to see. The old man, of course, had been carted away by the meat wagon yesterday-but everything else in the room was exactly as it had been then.
The room was windowless.
Nor were there any secret panels or passageways leading to it. He had made a thorough check yesterday. The walls floor, and ceiling were as solid as Boulder Dam, ~.~onstructed in a time when houses were built to last forever.
All right, the only way into this room is through that door, Carella told himself.
And the door was locked.
From the inside.
So it's suicide.
The old man had, indeed, tied one end of the rope to the doorknob, thrown the length of rope over the ceiling beam, and then climbed onto a stool fastened the rope to his neck, and jumped. His neck had not been broken. He had died of slow strangulation.
And surely his weight had helped to hold that door closed against the efforts of his three sons to open it. But his weight alone would not have resisted the combined pull of three brawny men. Carella had checked that with the laboratory yesterday. Sam Grossman, in charge of the lab, had worked it out mathematically, fulcrum and lever, weights and balances. Had the door not been locked, the brothers could have successfully pulled it open even with the old man's weight banging at the end of the rope attached to the doorknob.
No, the door had to be locked.
There was physical evidence that it had been locked, too. For, had the slip bolt not been fastened against the retaining loop of metal, the lock would not have been ripped from the doorframe when the crowbar was used on it.
"We had to use the crowbar," Alan had said.
"We tried to pull it open by force, and then Mark realized the door was locked from the inside, and he went out to the garage to get the crowbar. We wedged it into the door and snapped the lock."
"Then what?"
"Then Mark stepped up to the door and tried to open it again. He couldn't understand why it wouldn't open. We'd snapped the lock, hadn't we? We used the crowbar a second time, wedging the door open. That was ... was when we saw Father.
You know the rest."
So the door had been locked.
So it's suicide.
Or maybe it isn't.
What do we do now? Send a wire off to John Dickson Carr?
Wearily, Carella trudged downstairs, walking past the clutter of wood splinters still in the hallway outside the door.
He found Christine Scott in the small sitting room overlooking the River Harb. I don't believe any of these people's names, Carella thought. They've all popped out of some damn British comedy of manners, and they're all make-believe, and that old man up there did commit suicide and why the devil am I wasting my time questioning people and snooping around a musty garret room without any windows?
"Detective Carella?" Christine said.
She looked colorless against the flaming reds and oranges of the trees which lined the river bank. Her hair was an ash blond, almost silvery, but it gave an impression of lack of pigmentation. Her eyes, too, were a lavender-blue but so pastel as to be almost without real color. She wore no lipstick. Her frock was white.
A simple jade necklace hung at her throat.
"Mrs. Scott," he said, "how are you feeling now?"
"Much better, thank you." She looked out at the flaming trees.
"This is my favorite spot, right here. This is where I first met the old man.
When David first brought me to this house." She paused. The lavender-blue eyes turned toward Carella.
"Why do you suppose he killed himself, Detective Carella?"
"I don't know, Mrs. Scott," Carella said.
"Where's your husband?"
"David? In his room. He's taking this rather hard."
"And his brothers?"
"Around the house somewhere. This is a very big house, you know. The old man built it for his bride. It cost seventy five thousand dollars to build, and that was back in 1896 when money was worth a great deal more than it is now.
Have you seen the bridal suite upstairs?"
"It's magnificent. Huge oak panels, and marble counter tops, and gold bathroom fixtures. And these wonderful windows that open onto a balcony overlooking the river. There aren't many houses like this one left in the city."
"I guess not," Carella said.
Christine Scott crossed her legs, and Carella noticed them and thought, She has good legs. The stamp of America. Legs without rickets. Firm fleshy calves and slender ankles and shoes that cost her fifty seven-fifty a pair. Did her husband kill the old man?
"Can I offer you a drink, Detective Carella? Is that allowed?"
Carella smiled.
"It's frowned upon."
"But permitted?"
"Occasionally."
"I'll ring for Roger."
"Don't bother, please, Mrs. Scott. I wanted to ask you some questions."
"Oh?" She seemed surprised. Her eyebrows moved up onto her forehead, and he noticed for the first time that her eyebrows were black, and he wondered whether or not the ash blond hair was a bleach job, and he realized it probably was, no damn woman alive owned the impossible combination of ash blond hair and black eyebrows. Phony, he thought. Mrs.
Christine Scott, who just stepped out of a British comedy of manners.
"What kind of questions?"
"About what happened here yesterday."
"Yes?"
"Tell me."
"I was out back walking," Christine said.
"I like to walk along the river. And the weather's been so magnificent, so much color, and such warm air... "Yes? Then what?"
"I saw Mark rush out of the house, running for the garage. I could tell by the look on his face that something was wrong.
I ran over to the garage just as Mark came out with the crowbar.
"What's the matter?" I said."
"And what did he answer?"
"He said, "Father's locked himself in the den and he won't answer us. We're going to force the door." That was all."