Murder At Large - free ebook by Lesley Frost

MURDER AT LARGE

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I

Ordway Belknap, ex-Judge of the Magistrate’s Courts, and for the present a detective of amateur standing, and a semi-professional criminologist, on call at the Homicide Department, leaned comfortably back in an arm-chair in the den of his spacious penthouse apartment on the East River—in Gracie Square to be exact. James, the perfect ‘man’ that confirmed bachelors dream of one day possessing, entered soundlessly on the deep-napped carpet, and, in a cotton-wool voice, announced Judge Whittaker on

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II

Belknap made the distance to Whittaker’s Long Island mansion at Blue Acres in something under an hour. His Dusenberg, long and low-slung, colored to please his own eye, and fitted with special gadgets for defence and utility, was also a demon for speed, and even in traffic had broken many records, largely its own to be sure. He had always driven himself, and he had often reflected that if he had not been a lawyer or a sleuth he would have been ticking off mileage at Daytona. Such was his love of

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III

Standing at the windows, Belknap looking over Whittaker’s shoulder, they saw Blake spring lightly from the seat of his Ford convertible, throw out his bags from the rumble, spring back, and “zoom” around the corner to the garage. Putting a hand on Whittaker’s arm, Belknap brought him roughly about. “Why ring Blake in on this?” he asked, and his voice took a deadly level. His lips also leveled to a straight line, and his teeth showed white in the slit between. “After all he’s too good a friend, i

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IV

The luxurious ease, and quiet, well-oiled machinery of service at Thorngate gave no slightest indication of the worm at its heart. Up the long, winding, carpeted stairs the servants glided on their errands, and, in turn, the guests themselves came softly down by ones and twos, with a gleam of jewels, of colored silk, of white shirt-fronts in the halls dimly lit with candles. Belknap had hastened his dressing in order to be first in the drawing-room. He felt that at any moment he might be needed

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V

was the way they sat at dinner. Belknap regretted Miss Video on his left. He was one of the few who had never been properly infatuated with the Romany patteran, as he privately named her for her continuous flow of inconsequential chatter, and had therefore never liked her. It was one thing or the other with Romany. She was a sylph-like creature with enormous eyes, an auburn Viennese bob, and a disingenuous manner. She ‘needed’ them, was the way men put it, first their friendship, then their prot

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VI

Half an hour later found the atmosphere of the library anything but comfortable—indeed strained almost to the breaking point. Whittaker’s slow poison was beginning to take effect. Ignoring the ominous rolling up of clouds, he had quietly but firmly gone ahead with the plan to read aloud a few pages of the Diary. With malicious casualness he had suggested the withdrawal of anyone who felt more in the mood for billiards or bridge: “You know the billiard room, Blake. Do get up a game if it suits yo

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VII

As a ditch drains at the opening of a sluice, leaves and twigs sucked one by one, slow at first then rapidly, down the outward current, the library drained of guests, silently, furtively, slow almost to the door, swift as the need to escape the room, the others, and their own astounding collapse under sudden stress, dragged them away. When the last of them had disappeared, Belknap, with John’s aid, helped Bertrand Whittaker to his room. They paused at his threshold. For the moment there seemed n

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VIII

Julian, in dressing gown and slippers, sank back in the deep arm-chair before the fire burning in his room, and gave himself up to being downright worried. The situation at Thorngate seemed to him bewildering, terrifying, and positively insane, by turns. Obviously there was far more real trouble in the wind than the immediate problem of his own predicament, though heaven knew that was bad enough, largely because of Joel. However he was in a sense relieved and glad that Joel was to know. He had n

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IX

And down the corridor Neil Crawford closed another door behind himself and Sydney. Their eyes met with a bleak and hopeless questioning. “Oh, Neil,” she breathed. “What are we going to do?” “What am I going to, you must say, Sydney. Remember, my dear, you are not in this. And remember that whatever I do or don’t do will be entirely governed by my love for you and my desire to keep you and the children out of it.” “You can’t keep me out of it, Neil, even if you wanted to. That is the way, with th

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X

Belknap entered his room just before dawn and turned up the light. Nadia stood against the wall inside the door, both hands at her throat, her breath coming in gasps. Her face in the sudden light was as pale as the under side of willow leaves before a storm, or after. Here it seemed that the storm must have passed a moment since. Belknap sprang to her and seized both her wrists in one vice-like grip. “Nadia! you haven’t done it?” “No, no, I haven’t done it , as you call it,” she whispered. “What

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XI

“Sergeant,” said Belknap quickly, “will you and Berry go up to Miss Video’s room? John, show them up. You may begin to notice there’s something damn wrong with things around here. There is . And I must have a word with the Judge alone. He’s the one to bring it to a standstill—if there is still time.” He seized Whittaker by the arm and half led, half pushed him into the dining-room. Berry and Stebbins made the stairs three at a bound. Julian dragged Joel onto the terrace outside the windows. “Jul

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XII

“Keep your opinions until they are called for, man,” Belknap said curtly. “Or until you know something of the lay of the land.” Swinging on his heel he made an imperious, inclusive gesture that swept the room clean of momentarily irrelevant persons. “Clear out of here,” he ordered. As the door closed on the retreating group, that tried to make its exit with dignity, but somehow failed to convey better than the appearance of a disorganized partridge brood scuttling into a thicket, Belknap returne

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XIII

The words were scarcely spoken when the air was again split by gunfire. A very sharp report came from somewhere: the yard, the basement, or the servant’s wing. It acted as a signal for a pell-mell return of the others from library to dining-room. “If that was in the kitchen,” Julian, who led the re-entry by a yard, said with solemn severity, “it looks to me as if they’d invaded neutral territory and something should be done about it.” Sergeant Stebbins, who seemed to have a keener ear for direct

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XIV

Late in the afternoon a ‘London’ fog had crept up from the Sound, and smothered in its furry, suffocating waves, Thorngate was sinking into depth below depth of depression. Julian asked weren’t there seven levels of Purgatory because if so they must be about six down at five o’clock and rapidly approaching the bottom. It was the total lack of headway made by the investigators, and the apparent helplessness of the law, that tripled and quadrupled the early gloom of the second night. Hours upon ho

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XV

“Nadia!” “Mr. Belknap! God rest you merry gentleman!” Belknap had approached Nadia where she stood alone, in an alcove of the great East Room. She had been trying to concentrate on a specimen of modern French art. The fog pressed a whited face against the windows near her. “Your mood is a difficult one, Nadia. I want to talk to you.” “Let nothing you dismay.” Belknap threw out his hands in a helpless gesture. “You’re not kind,” he said. “Shall we go outside?” “No, thank you. Remember your Mr. Do

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XVI

Stebbins had departed. Headquarters needed him. And he had gone, warding off with both arms a hornet’s nest of reporters all down the drive to his parked car. He said he’d be back if he was wanted, or something turned up in the way of evidence. For all the help he was he might as well stay away, Julian said, but perhaps he was good camouflage. The house did somehow feel a little more exposed without him; although he left a substantial guard. There was a tense, uncomfortable, haphazard meal in th

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XVII

Then, very suddenly, Joel woke up. She came wide, staring wide, awake. The library was dark. It hadn’t been dark when she fell asleep. Something had waked her. Was it the snapping of the electric switch? Was it the closing of a door—the door must be shut for there wasn’t a glimmer of light? Was it the Presence by its mere presence? For there was a Presence. As sure as death there was Someone in the room with her. She could almost, her nerves were so tense, so painfully sensitive, tell exactly at

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XVIII

Detective Lieutenant Silas Berry of the New York Homicide Squad was fine-tooth-combing Romany’s room for possible clues. “Mr.—Inspector—Lieutenant Berry.” Julian was inclined to embarrassment. “Can you spare me a few minutes? I want to talk.” Berry laid his magnifying glass on the dresser. “Nothing would please me more, boy,” he said cheerfully, folding his arms and leaning against the bed post. “As you have undoubtedly observed, we detectives just sit around waiting for someone to be kind enoug

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XIX

Yes, Belknap and Berry at last had their heads together in peace and quiet—if being cheek by jowl with a tongue in each could be said to be having their heads together. Greek was meeting Greek, and, with reservations (decidedly with reservations!), they put their cards on the table. It was a kind of peace and quiet in which the two men conversed. Nothing, thought Berry, had ever seemed to him more hollow-still than Thorngate that Saturday evening: fog outside, and illness, depression, and possib

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XX

Sydney had been wandering the house like one possessed. From her room where she stood inanimate motionless beside Neil’s bed, to the East Room where she mechanically extended her hands to the fire Nadia had herself built on the enormous hearth, to the kitchens where she blindly prepared things for Neil’s comfort, she made the rounds with frozen face and rigid body. The spirit was stricken—only the form of Sydney went on living and doing. Meeting far too many emotional crises within far too short

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XXI

“What have we here—a séance?” Belknap asked from the door. Nadia quivered and shrank back against the wall as she turned to face Belknap. Her hands, with spread fingers, formed a spidery white pattern against the room’s daring modernistic wall-paper of black shot with gold. Her eyes wavered, and Belknap saw them consider the open window leading to the roof of the porte-cochère. “Mr. Belknap!” she breathed. “Your humble servant.” Belknap closed the door, turned its key and pocketed the key, and c

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XXII

From this moment Thorngate, house and grounds, was pandemonium let loose. It was clear that the first thing to be done, when it became certain that Joel Lacey was really among the missing, and had last been seen sleeping on the library couch, was to institute a searching party. Because of the numberless recruits, three groups were formed—two taking the great outdoors and one the sliding panels and the secret attics. The way the police, Belknap groaned, came scurrying out of corners, like the Ham

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XXIII

It was a defeated Nadia Mdevani who emerged from what proved to be a prolonged interview with Lieutenant Berry. If, before it, she looked worn and troubled, her will had at least remained indomitable. If her voice had flagged, her eyes lost their challenge, yet she had always managed to convey an impression of impregnable right shall be might. Now she had yielded everything, to all appearances, and came carrying her weapon by the blade and laid across her forearm for the victor to accept the hil

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XXIV

He knocked the pistol out of his hand, small room was there to strive ‘ ’Twas only by favor of mine,’ quoth he, ‘ye rode so long alive. ’ The game was up. Almost on the instant that the shot was fired Berry struck down Belknap’s hand and twisted the gun from him. There was no flicker of resistance on Belknap’s part. Nor would there have been the chance of any if Stebbins had had his way. For the Sergeant was a prey to impulsive rages and quick on the trigger. If Berry, in tackling Belknap, had n

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