“Excuse me,” said Fox, smiling down at her. “I apologize.” He bowed politely to empty space at the left. “How do you do, Mrs. Simmons? I guess I frightened you too. I apologize.” He turned to the other lady. “I’m just a man who came to see Mr. Thorpe and he told me I could walk around. My name is Fox. Do you live here?”
“Yes. You scared me.”
“I’m sorry. I said excuse me. I suppose you know who Mr. Thorpe is?”
“Of course I do.” She was scornful. “He owns my daddy. Anyway my mommie says he does. I heard her. Does he own you too?”
“No, he doesn’t own me, he just rents me.”
She shrieked in derision. “Aw, go on! You can’t rent a man!”
“Well you can’t own one either, or at least you shouldn’t. Is your daddy the gardener?”
“No, he isn’t. He’s the head gardener. My name is Helen Gustava Flanders.”
“Thank you very much. I’ll call you Helen. You can call me Mr. Fox. Those are very beautiful gloves you have on, but they look as if they’re too big for you.”
She looked complacently at the yellow cotton gloves baggy on her little hands, with the fingers flopping. “They’re streemly nice,” she declared.
“Sure,” Fox admitted, “they’re nice enough, but they’re a little too big. Besides, they’re not mates. They’re both for the left hand. See how that thumb’s in the wrong place? Would you mind telling me where you got them?”
“Why, of course, Mr. Fox.” She giggled. “I went shopping in the stores and I bought them. I paid sixty dollars.”
“No, Helen, I mean really. No faking.”
“Oh.” Her eyes looked at his. “If you mean no faking, Miss Knudsen gave them to me.”
“When did she give them to you?”
“Oh, about a year ago.”
He abandoned that detail. “Do you mean Miss Knudsen the cook?”
“She’s not a cook.” She was scornfully derisive again. “She’s Mrs. Pemberton’s maid. Mrs. Pemberton is Miss Miranda. She swims naked. I saw her.”
“Did Miss Knudsen give you the gloves yesterday? Or Monday?”
“Yes,” said Helen firmly.
“Well,” said Fox, “I think she was nice to give them to you, but I tell you what. Those are both for the left hand. You give them to me and I’ll bring you another pair that will—”
“No,” said Helen firmly.
“I’ll bring you two pairs, one yellow and one red—”
“No.”
It took time, tact, patience and guile; so much time, in fact, that Fox’s wristwatch told him it was 12:35 when, having circled back around the greenhouse, he stepped behind a shrub for a strictly private inspection of his loot and satisfied himself on these details; the gloves were yellow cotton of good quality, soiled now but little worn, were exactly alike, both for the left hand, and bore the Hartlespoon label. He put them in his pocket, left the shelter of the shrub and cut across towards the garage, thinking to follow the drive back to the house as he had come. The limousine was still there in front of the garage, but not the man. He went back up the drive frowning, paying no attention to objects that had been worthy of keen interest an hour before. Suddenly he stopped dead still, jerked his chin up and stood motionless. From somewhere ahead of him a car had backfired. Or someone had shot a gun.
A car had backfired.
No, it sounded more like a shot.
He moved again, walked faster and went into a jog, leaving the drive to make a bee-line for the house, still at a distance beyond intervening trees. He heard excited voices, shouts, and broke into a run. To his right, he saw a man running, headed also for the house, one of the guards loping like a camel with a revolver in his hand. The guard was aiming for the front entrance, but Fox, judging by the direction of the voices, swerved to the left, crossed an expanse of open lawn, crashed through some shrubbery, saw French windows standing open and kept going right on through them.
He was in the library. So were a dozen other people, including Ridley Thorpe, who was sprawled on his face on the floor, and also including Colonel Brissenden, on his knee besides Thorpe, barking as Fox entered, “He’s dead!”
Helen Gustava Flanders’ gloves had been the sixth surprise of the day. This was the seventh.
Chapter 14
Two seconds of the silence of stupefaction followed the colonel’s announcement. Then there were sounds, the little noises that men and women make when sudden shock has stretched their nerves too tight, primitive throat noises older by geological epochs than the articulation of words. Under cover of that, Tecumseh Fox’s gliding movement as he made the door to the hall went unnoticed. Two women in maid’s uniforms were in the hall clutching each other; he ignored them and proceeded swiftly to the music room. He had his hand on the lid of the grand piano when he heard steps from the other direction and Nancy Grant entered, panting. She saw him and demanded, “What is it? Where’s Uncle Andy? He was yelling my name...” Fox pointed and said, “On through there,” and as her back passed from view he lifted the lid of the piano with one hand and took the gloves from his pocket with the other, thrust the gloves in beside the last bass string and let the lid down. Then he returned to the library and with a glance took it in.
Jeffrey Thorpe was standing with his toes almost touching the body on the floor, looking down at it, his face white and his mouth working. His sister was at his side, a little behind him, grasping his sleeve and looking not at the body but at him. Andrew Grant had his hands on his niece’s shoulders and was pushing her into a chair. Luke Wheer had his back flattened against a wall of books, his head bent and his eyes closed like a preacher leading a congregation in prayer. Bellows, the butler, had his hands clasped over his bosom, surely in unconscious imitation of a gesture seen in the movies. Henry Jordan sat on the edge of a chair, staring at what he could see of the form on the floor, rubbing his chin as though to get the lather in for a shave. Vaughn Kester’s rear, his back erect and rigid, was pressed against an edge of the desk; Fox couldn’t see his face. The two men whose talk Fox had interrupted in the music room, and three others whom he had not seen before, were grouped the other side of the stock ticker, which was still clicking away. A state trooper, bending over, was straightening up with something blue fluttering from his fingers. Brissenden barked at him:
“Put that down! Don’t touch anything!”
“It got kicked,” the trooper protested. “That man kicked it as he went across—”
“Put it on the desk! Don’t touch anything! Get everybody out of—”
“That’s mine!” It was a cry from Nancy. Brissenden whirled to her:
“What is?”
“That blue thing! That’s my scarf! How—” She started up from the chair, but her uncle’s hand on her shoulder kept her there.
“Well, don’t touch it! Nothing in this room is to be touched! Hardy, take them all — what are you doing?”
A man from the group behind the stock ticker had slid around to the desk and was extending an arm across it. Without arresting his movement he said in a thick determined voice, “I’m using this telephone.”
“No! Get away from there!”
The man said, “I’m phoning my office,” took the phone from the cradle and started to dial. Brissenden, beside him in two bounds, snatched the phone from him with one hand and with the other shoved him back so violently that he staggered and nearly fell.
“Break your neck,” said the colonel quietly. It was too serious for barking. “Kester, will you turn off that ticker? Thank you.” He surveyed the throng. “Thorpe’s dead. He was murdered. He was shot in the back and the gun that shot him is there on the floor. Everybody here heard the shot and one of you fired it. I know some of you are important people; one of you is so important that it’s more important for him to phone his office than for me to do my duty. You, come over here.”