Gavigan said, “Do that, Brady. Try that Do Not Disturb sign on the door too, and—” He halted, his eyes fixed on the corner of the room where the inverted drinking glass hung, so curiously supported in mid-air.
“What the devil’s that?” He strode over to it suddenly and touched it with a forefinger that sent it swinging.
Merlini glanced at me with a now-we’re-in-for-it expression. “It’s a tumbler,” he said. “Upside down and suspended from the ceiling by a black thread.”
Gavigan flashed a quick look at him.
“I can see that.”
“I’m just trying to break it gently, Inspector. It’s — it’s a home-made crystal-gazing outfit.”
Gavigan hesitated perceptibly. “Oh, so?” he said, his calm elaborately studied. And then, as if it were nothing of the sort, he added, “Interesting.” He returned to the body, avoiding Merlini’s gaze. “Why’d you put her in that chair?”
Merlini smiled wryly. “Because she fitted it,” he answered. “I suspect that her body lay in that chair for several hours after death, and that rigor mortis had become complete before she was moved. She didn’t fit the chair at the other house nearly as well. Back was at an uncomfortable angle and one arm that seemed to lie along the chair arm was actually a good half inch above it, resting on nothing.”
Thoughtfully Gavigan said, “You realize that if she died here, the agoraphobia means nothing? It could be suicide?”
“Suicide?” Merlini said quickly. “Then why was the body moved?”
“So we’d think it was murder.”
“And why the nail-polish bottle and the appearance of suicide after the body was moved?”
“Alibi,” Gavigan said dryly. “The murderer knew all about Linda’s phobia, knew that an appearance of suicide in that spot wasn’t worth a damn, and figured a fake suicide would point to murder — by someone who didn’t know any better than to fake it where he did. Smart, but not smart enough.”
Merlini grinned. “We’ve heard that one before. Gail suggested it last night. But why would anyone want to make a suicide look like murder? Give two reasons.”
“Two? I’ll give you one. Insurance — beneficiary wants to collect—” Gavigan stopped short, remembering. “Oh. So that’s it?”
“Yes,” Merlini said, a faintly impudent smile on his face. “I’m afraid that’s it. Linda had no insurance. And unless you can suggest a second reason — which I can’t — there was no motive for anyone to try and palm off suicide as murder. Leaving two possibilities. Murder by someone who faked the suicide because he wasn’t aware of Linda’s phobia. Or murder by someone who did know about the phobia and hoped the faked suicide would indicate someone who didn’t know. In any case, murder—not suicide.”
“And,” Gavigan said, a trifle glumly but apparently agreeing, “we don’t know how much our vanishing man knew.” Then he added with some vehemence, “But, if it’s that last, then someone has been too smart for his pants.”
Brady, who was kneeling near the chair in which the body lay, got to his feet and said, “Wish you’d take a look at this, Inspector.” He pointed at the top of the small end table. “There are some fairly good prints on the sign,” he went on as Gavigan crossed the room. “I won’t take the prints off the body until Hesse is through, but I think they’re all hers; I looked at her hands. The shears are clean. Wiped, I think. But this—”
He frowned thoughtfully.
The Inspector looked down at the pad of note paper on the table. The top sheet, near its upper edge, bore some aimless pencil scrawls, meaningless spirals and zigzags like the primary penmanship exercises children are given when being taught to write. Gavigan’s attention jumped from that to the broken pencil on the floor. He picked up the two halves and fitted them together as Merlini had done before.
Brady said, “No. I don’t mean that. Look at the table top. Here, take the glass.”
Gavigan followed instructions.
“Well, you’ve been dusting for prints, but I don’t see any. What—”
“I haven’t dusted there yet. And besides, that’s graphite. I’ve been using the regular black powder and the aluminum and antimony.”
Gavigan looked quickly at the pencil in his hands and then at the scrawls on the pad. The inconsistency was obvious. The penciled marks on the paper had been made with a sharp point. And the pencil had no point at all. The Inspector wheeled to face Merlini. “This point’s been sanded completely off, clear down to the wood, and the graphite used to dust that table top for prints. Damn it! Don’t you know any better — Was the pencil broken when you found it, or did you do that too?”
Merlini took the glass from Gavigan’s hand and looked for himself. “Not guilty on either count,” he said. “Looks as if there were another amateur detective in the woodpile.”
“I don’t think he was dusting the table top,” Brady said. “You spray or sift the dust on and then brush it off. If there’s a print, the grease holds some of the dust and shows up the whorls. The graphite is sprinkled about unevenly and hasn’t been brushed. I’d say someone dusted something else, and the table, underneath, caught the brushed-off dust.”
There was a knock at the door while Brady was speaking. Gavigan waited until he finished, frowned a moment over his deduction, and then, turning, called, “Come!”
Malloy entered with Colonel Watrous and Detective Quinn. The Colonel’s precise pouter-pigeon dignity was fastidiously clothed, as always. The pin-stripe trousers were sharply pressed, the pearl stickpin exactly centered in the neat four-in-hand, and the handkerchief tucked carefully in his cuff. But the prim out-of-the-bandbox appearance was somewhat marred this morning by the adhesive and gauze bandage on his head and by the slightly rocky morning-after look on his face. Nor had he quite regained his customary, talkative, impresario manner. In what was for him a subdued, colorless tone, he said, “Good morning, Inspector.”
Gavigan nodded without enthusiasm.
“You again, eh?”
“Afraid so.” Watrous was apologetic. “Sorry there are always bodies around when we meet. I’d like to meet you sometime when you’re off duty!”
Inspector Gavigan nodded somewhat ungraciously in reply, skipped further preliminaries, and got straight down to business.
“What are you doing out here?”
Quinn opened his notebook.
Watrous sat on the edge of the bed. “I wrote Miss Skelton some weeks ago asking permission to investigate the haunted house. She replied, asking me to come and see her and requesting that I bring Madame Rappourt, whom she wanted very much to meet. When we came she invited — insisted, almost — that we stay on for a while as her guests. We found that she was greatly interested in psychic matters. She had read several of my books and was particularly interested in Madame Rappourt’s mediumship and in the Psychical Research Laboratories for which I am making plans.”
“You accepted, then?”
“Madame Rappourt did — for both of us. I wasn’t too keen on it at first because she put me off on the matter of the haunted house. She hadn’t promised to let me see it in her reply, but I had assumed that the invitation indicated assent. However, since Eva wanted to accept, I stayed on hoping that Miss Skelton would finally give me her permission.”
“When was this?”
“Two weeks ago.”
“You had not met Miss Skelton previously?”
“Neither of us had, though Rappourt discovered that she had met Floyd. She invested some insurance money, against my advice, in the Carribean Salvage Corp. Floyd was one of the other investors.”