Al didn’t bother to count it. He zipped it shut, then returned to the foyer, put the gun back into the case, and pressed the button for the elevator. It had not moved, so he stepped aboard and pressed the button for the lobby. The elevator fell as if the cable had broken, then, seconds later, opened into the lobby. Al strode across the space, looking neither to his left nor to his right, and left the building, carrying the briefcase and towing the suitcase. The car was still where he had left it no more than ten minutes before, and he got into the rear seat and set his luggage beside him. “Back to the airport. Departure terminal,” he said to the driver while checking his watch. Two hours before his return flight.
Al opened the briefcase and wiped down every part of the pistol and the case, then he partly unzipped the suitcase and removed two small stacks of the hundred-dollar bills inside. As they rolled to a stop at the airport Al handed the driver a stack of bills. “For your trouble,” he said, then he got out, leaving the briefcase on the backseat, and, declining a porter’s help, he strode into the airport. As he waited in line at security he checked out the help there and picked his man. Late fifties, portly, tired-looking.
When his turn came he approached the man and showed him the stack of bills in his palm. “No X-ray, okay?” He slipped the stack into the man’s hands.
“Arms out,” the man said. He thumbed off the switch on the wand he held and made a show of moving around Al’s body with the disabled wand. “Go ahead,” the man said, winking.
Al didn’t think the money would violate any laws, but he was glad he hadn’t taken the chance. He pocketed the mustache, cleared immigration, walked to the first-class lounge, took a seat, and ordered a big breakfast. When his flight was called he was among the first aboard and quickly stowed his carry-on in the compartment across the aisle, where he could see it. He accepted a mimosa and settled in for the flight.
As Al’s airplane took off a maid entered the Calhoun penthouse with her passkey, saw the two corpses on the floor in a large pool of mingled blood, and fainted. Her colleague found her a moment later and called the front desk, her hand trembling as she dialed the number.
Stone got to bed late, a little drunk, and felt the spot next to him for Susan. She wasn’t there.
58
Stone was awakened by the telephone at midmorning. He fumbled for it. “Yes?”
“Stone, it’s Lady Bourne. I thought you should know that Sir Charles appears to be slipping away. His doctor doesn’t believe he’ll last out the day.”
“Thank you for telling me,” Stone said. “I know this has been a difficult period for you, and I hope the future will be better. Would it be all right if I visited him?”
“I’m afraid he is unconscious — has been since the day before yesterday, so it wouldn’t do either of you any good.”
“I wish there were something I could do. Will you let me know if you think of anything?”
“I will, thank you.” She hung up.
Stone went into his bathroom, shaved, showered, and began to dress. He took a shirt from the cabinet where they were stacked, shook it out, and got into it. Something was wrong. It was a familiar shirt; he had had several of the same pattern made at Turnbull & Asser over the years, but this one didn’t fit. The sleeves were too long, and it was tight around the middle. He took it off and inspected it. At the bottom of the shirt he found a label with a name on it, but it wasn’t his. Sir Charles Bourne. The laundress must have mixed it in with his shirts, which wasn’t surprising, since they both had the same maker’s label.
He was about to refold it and return it to the laundress when he saw something that stopped him. The three buttonholes on the cuff were encrusted with what appeared to be dried blood, and there was a noticeable stain on the cuff itself. It was the sort of thing that would have stopped him in his tracks when he had been a homicide detective. He immediately began to imagine how the stain had got there.
Putting a bloody shirt into a washing machine with hot water would set, not remove, the stain. Blood had to be rinsed away with cold water before washing it in hot. If a man, say a former Royal Marine commando, wanted to kill a man with a knife, he would do it the way he had been trained. Approaching from behind, a right-handed man would clap his left hand over the victim’s mouth, then, with his right hand, reach around and bring the knife blade across the throat, releasing a spurt of arterial blood that might well stain his left cuff. Stone was looking at the left cuff.
He went and sat on the bed and thought about this. What he had imagined was how the brigadier, a former Royal Marine commando, would have killed Sir Richard Curtis. But this shirt had not belonged to the brigadier, who was a smallish man; it had belonged to Charles Bourne, who was tall, and he had no doubt that DNA analysis would reveal the blood to be Sir Richard’s. He believed he had just solved a murder.
He found another shirt and got dressed, then he telephoned Deputy Chief Inspector Holmes and invited him to the house for morning coffee. “I have something to show you,” he said. Holmes accepted his invitation.
Stone had finished breakfast when Holmes arrived. The two men greeted each other cordially and sat down while coffee was brought.
“Thank you for coming, Inspector,” Stone said. “There’s something I have to show you.” He handed the inspector the shirt. “Please examine the left cuff and tell me what you see.”
Holmes looked at it. “I see a bloodstain that laundering did not wash away,” he said. “I suppose it was washed in hot water.”
“That is what I see, too, and I believe that analysis will prove it to be the blood of Sir Richard Curtis. Look at the small label at the bottom front of the shirt.”
Holmes did so. “You are telling me that Sir Richard Curtis was murdered by Sir Charles Bourne and not the brigadier?”
“That is correct.”
“The problem is, I have a written confession from the brigadier, expressing sorrow for what he had done.”
“I think his sorrow arose from guilt,” Stone said, “but not guilt over having murdered Sir Richard.”
“Then what?”
“I believed, and I think you did, too, that Sir Charles had thought for many years that Sir Richard had had a continuing affair with Lady Bourne, and had fathered both her children.”
“I think that is certainly a credible theory, based on the blood groups of the father and the two children.”
“But the brigadier also had the same blood type.”
“Yes, that is so. Are you saying that it was the brigadier who fathered the two children?”
“I believe that to be the case.”
“But Sir Charles believed Sir Richard to be the father.”
“Yes, and that belief finally got the better of Sir Charles, and after an argument of some sort, he killed Sir Richard.”
“And the brigadier’s confession?”
“He was expressing guilt over having been the cause of Sir Richard’s death. By not revealing to Sir Charles that he knew himself to be the father, he had allowed the killing to happen.” Stone was beginning to feel that he was living in an Agatha Christie novel.