“Penitentiary? Then it’s a threat on Duncan’s part?”
“Or a warning,” Sands suggested. “If he and Revel were partners I fancy it’s a warning. He implies that Revel is getting too careless, that he had better attend to the business himself and not send a subordinate.”
“Fifty brunettes at the Windsor,” Prye said slowly. “The Windsor sounds like a burlesque house.”
“Toronto is relatively free of burlesque houses. There are two running at present but neither is called the Windsor. The only Windsor I could find in the telephone book is an apartment hotel of unimpeachable reputation. You live in Detroit, Dr. Prye. The word Windsor will have a different connection altogether in your mind.”
Prye said, “It has. Windsor suggests passing through the Canadian customs, and the customs suggests smuggling. All right. Duncan says he has managed to smuggle fifty brunettes across the border at Windsor with ‘no trouble at all.’ Well, well. All I can say is he’s a better man than I am. I’d undertake one brunette under six months of age but no more.”
“So,” Sands said, “they weren’t brunettes.”
“No,” Prye said. “And what were they?”
“I’d like to know. Perhaps after a talk with Mr. Revel and Mr. Williams and Mrs. Revel—”
“You don’t think Dinah has anything to do with this business?”
Sands shrugged. “The word ‘pretty’ suits Dinah a little better than it does Mr. Williams. As for camouflage, one would hardly expect a woman to be in partnership with her ex-husband. But whoever Revel’s agent is, it’s clear that Duncan didn’t trust him or her. So he began to write a letter to Revel. He stops in the middle of a word. Why? Because someone comes along the hall, perhaps, and raps on his door. Duncan puts the letter between sheets of unused paper. It’s as good a temporary hiding place as any.”
“But it was a dangerous letter to leave lying around,” Prye objected. “I don’t think he would have left it. He was too cautious.”
Sands smiled cynically. “Cautious, but dead. I can think of two reasons why the letter might have been left in the drawer. First, he had no time to mail it or dispose of it. Second, if the letter had gotten into the wrong hands while Duncan was alive, Duncan could have explained it away, as a joke perhaps. But if the letter was found after he died it would mean danger not for Duncan but for someone else. For all we know, the letter is a deliberate plant, a subtle variation on the kind of thing we’ve had some experience with in the department: ‘To be opened in the event of my death by violence.’ ”
“In that case,” Prye said dryly, “he might have made it a little clearer.”
“Again, perhaps he had no time. The usual procedure in these cases is to leave the letter with a lawyer. But Duncan’s lawyer is in Boston. Duncan may have found out unexpectedly that his life was in danger. Suppose he were murdered. If he wrote a letter denouncing the murderer there is more than a chance that the murderer would find and destroy it. But if the letter were written in sufficiently veiled terms there is a chance it wouldn’t be destroyed. I am taking into account the description of Duncan’s appearance in the vestibule of the church. He looked ‘frightened’ according to the report.”
Prye took a cigarette from his case and lit it. Sands was refolding the letter and putting it back in his pocket.
“Rather a bright boy, Duncan,” Sands said, staring out of the window. “Whatever he was bringing across the border to Revel, he waited until he had a good reason for coming across. As guests going to a wedding he and his sister would be allowed through with a minimum of inspection. He and his sister,” Sands repeated slowly. “What part does she play in this mix-up?”
“Another camouflage,” Prye suggested. “An unconscious one, of course. If I were a fancy crook bluffing my way across the border I’d pick up a nice-looking female moron like Jane as a shield.”
Sands was still looking out of the window. “She was astonished at the contents of that letter. She said Duncan couldn’t have seen fifty brunettes because she hadn’t seen them. There was the faintest trace of resentment in her voice.” He turned to Prye, smiling. “I think she suspected that Duncan skipped out on her to see fifty brunettes and she didn’t like it a bit. But the question is, what are the brunettes? Who has them now? Was Duncan killed because he refused to hand them over? Or did someone apart from Revel’s agent find out about them and kill Duncan to hijack them? And when did Duncan write the letter to Revel?”
“Yesterday morning,” Prye said after a pause.
“That’s what I think. The possibility that Duncan left the letter deliberately is not a strong one. We’ll assume that he intended to finish and post it when he had the chance. Why didn’t he have the chance?”
Prye said, “Because Dinah Revel knocked on his door. Duncan was not sleeping but writing that letter when the knock came. Perhaps he pretended to Dinah that he was asleep or perhaps he talked to her and pretended to be asleep later when his sister came in. He still had no opportunity to finish what he’d been writing because Dinah’s exit and Jane’s entrance coincided. Jane woke him up by pouring water on his face. We have her word that he was terribly angry, which would be natural enough if he were really awake. He pretends to wake up then and sends Jane downstairs to get him more water because she has used up what was in the pitcher. And then we come to an interesting point: how much water was in the pitcher? Jane said it was half full.
“It’s probably Jackson’s duty to fill that pitcher every night. Why was it half full? Because Duncan had been awake before and had drunk half of it. And Duncan wasn’t poisoned. So if the water was perfectly all right when Duncan drank some of it but was poisoned when Jane drank it, we are led to Dinah Revel. It was Dinah who visited Duncan’s room.”
“We’ll have to ask Jackson,” Sands said.
He put his hand on the bell and in a few minutes Jackson appeared, followed by Sergeant Bannister and a middle-aged woman carrying a portable typewriter.
Sands motioned to the stenographer to sit down.
“We may as well take your statement formally, Jackson.”
Jackson looked embarrassed. “I’ve never made a formal statement to the police. I don’t know what to say.”
“I’ll jog you,” Sands replied. “First your full name, employment, and length of employment.”
In half an hour the stenographer was typing on her portable:
“My name is Edward Harold Jackson. I have been employed as houseman by Mrs. Jennifer Shane at 197 River Road for the past two months. I am an American citizen, born and raised in Boston, Massachusetts. During my employment in Toronto I have met the deceased twice. The first time I met him was shortly after my arrival, when the deceased came to visit Mrs. Shane. The second time was last Tuesday, when he arrived by motor from Boston to be a guest at Miss Shane’s wedding. On neither occasion did I have any personal conversation with him. I performed the same duties for him as I did for the other male guests. On September the twenty-ninth, last Friday evening, I filled a pitcher with water and left it beside the deceased’s bed, according to my instructions from the deceased himself. He gave me no reason. The pitcher was at least seven eighths full of water. I did this after I helped the deceased retire for the night, shortly after twelve o’clock. I did not enter his room again until nine-thirty the following morning. Miss Stevens was coming out of the deceased’s room as I was passing through the hall. She had an empty pitcher in her hand. She instructed me to help the deceased get dressed for the wedding. I did so. I went downstairs at approximately ten o’clock. During the time I spent with the deceased no one came into the room except Miss Stevens, who brought back the pitcher full of water. When I went downstairs the deceased came with me and I served breakfast to him and Mr. Williams. The wedding party left the house at approximately half-past ten. I did not see the deceased again until my attention was directed to him by Mr. Harrison, the milkman, at approximately six o’clock on Sunday morning. I swear that these statements are true.”