Then there was silence for a time, save for Mrs. Crend’s light sobs, and finally even those ceased. Attorney Garder got up and walked to a window, and stood looking down at the busy street. After a time Detective Sam Frake and the coroner’s assistant came from the boudoir. Attorney Garder turned and looked at them, his brows raised in question.
“Poison — instant death,” the coroner’s assistant said.
Attorney Garder shuddered. “Poor lady!” he said. “Anything else?”
“Detective Frake will handle the rest for the time being,” said the coroner’s assistant.
Garder glanced at him quickly. To the attorney, it seemed that there was something in the doctor’s tone that gave a hint of trouble to come.
Detective Sam Frake had been standing in the doorway listlessly, but now he stepped forward rapidly and sat down in the chair Garder recently had vacated.
“Who are these persons?” Frake asked.
“Mr. and Mrs. Howard Crend,” Garder replied. “Mrs. Crend is Mrs. Lennek’s elder sister.”
“They found the body?”
“They have told me so — yes.”
“Before you came, Mr. Garder?”
“Yes. I walked up the front stairs, and as I started down the hall, Mr. and Mrs. Crend came around the turn and told me of the tragedy.”
“I see. You were making a formal call, Mr. Garder?”
“No,” said the attorney. “I received a peculiar telephone message from Mrs. Lennek. She seemed excited about something and asked me to come to her at once, said it was something that could not wait, a matter of life and death.”
“Um!” Detective Frake grunted. “What time did she telephone you, Mr. Garder?”
“Not more than two minutes after half past three. I remember glancing at my watch as I hurried out to the car.”
“You are sure of that?”
“Absolutely,” said the attorney.
“And you were making an unusual call?” Frake asked, turning toward the Crends.
“We received a telephone message also,” Mrs. Crend said. “It was from Madge — that was my sister’s name. She talked very peculiarly. She — she said that she had just called me up to say good-by, and then she rang off.”
“What did you think?”
“I— I didn’t know. We came right over, because it was so peculiar.”
“Did you think she meant that she was going to kill herself?”
“No. We never thought of such a thing,” Mrs. Crend replied.
“Thought she was going on a journey?”
Mrs. Crend hesitated. “I suppose it would be better to tell you the truth,” the said.
“It’ll save time,” said Frake. “I’d get at it somehow, anyway.”
“Well, my sister has been receiving the attentions of a certain man, of whom my husband and I do not approve,” said Mrs. Crend. “I thought her message meant that she was going to elope with him. So we hurried right over to make an effort to stop her.”
“Um!” Frake grunted. “Who is the man?”
“Madison Purden.”
“I know of him,” said Detective Frake. “So you did not approve of him?”
“No, we did not,” Mrs. Crend replied.
“What time did you receive that telephone message?”
“At three-thirty. I remember that distinctly,” said Crend, speaking for the first time since the detective had started asking his questions.
“Then we are to suppose that Mrs. Lennek telephoned both you and Mr. Garder about three-thirty?”
“I suppose so,” Crend replied. “If she contemplated taking her own life, we are the ones she would telephone, if she telephoned to anybody. We were her only living relatives, and Mr. Garder is attending to her estate.”
“I see,” said Sam Frake. He walked across the room to the window, then turned and looked them over. “For the first five minutes or so,” he added, “it looked to me like an ordinary case of a high-strung woman taking her own life in a moment of despondency. It is often done — money matters, a lovers’ quarrel, something like that. Then the coroner’s assistant made his report to me, and we compared notes and began to look around a bit.”
“What do you mean, Frake?” Attorney Garder asked.
“In the first place, you are sure about those telephone calls being at three-thirty?”
“Yes, within a minute or two,” Garder said.
“Absolutely,” Crend supplemented.
“And it was about forty-five minutes after three when you came in here with your wife, Mr. Crend, and found Mrs. Lennek dead?”
“Yes,” Crend replied.
“Then the natural assumption would be that her death occurred between three-thirty-three and three-forty-five,” Detective Frake said. “There are several puzzling things in connection with this case, which I’ll take up immediately.”
“Oh, I do hope that any scandal can be avoided!” Laura Crend cried. “If the poor girl did kill herself because of an unfortunate love affair, or something like that, it would be far better to hush up the matter as much as possible.”
“Pardon me,” said Detective Sam Frake, “but this affair seems to be rather serious and complicated. And I am afraid that it is going to call for a careful and complete investigation. In the opinion of the doctor and myself, Mrs. Lennek did not take her own life. She was murdered!”
CHAPTER IV
THE MAID’S STORY
Detective Sam Frake worked in unusual ways at times, but he generally managed to get results by the application of common sense to the facts unearthed.
In the present instance he compelled the superintendent of the apartment house to set aside for his use a small, vacant apartment on the same floor, and to this he conducted Attorney Garder and Mr. and Mrs. Crend. Others would join them later, Frake announced, and then the affair would be investigated quickly, and he hoped with success.
He said nothing more after the announcement that it was murder rather than suicide, and he refused to answer questions for the time being. Detective Frake wanted these people to think of the affair until their minds were saturated with it. He wanted to pick up a few odds and ends of information, too.
Frake ordered dinner served in the vacant apartment from the cafe in the basement of the building, but the Crends and Attorney Garder seemed to have little appetite. About seven o’clock Marie Dolge returned from her automobile trip with Benny Ranley, was told of Mrs. Lennek’s death, and escorted to the apartment where the others were waiting. She sat in a corner, snuffling, apparently frightened and out of place.
Benny Ranley had been allowed to go about his business, with orders to return in case Frake wanted to question him. Peter Podd was questioned and sent to the apartment also, where he sat in a corner and tried not to notice the sniffs of Mrs. Howard Crend.
A little after seven o’clock, Mr. Madison Purden was ushered into the apartment. Frake had asked headquarters to pick him up, and headquarters had done so. Purden’s entrance was a signal for the Crends to exhibit their displeasure of him. But Purden, seemingly bewildered, only sat down near one of the windows and pretended not to notice the hostility his presence aroused.
Thus Detective Frake kept them waiting for a time, while he held a whispered conversation in the hall outside with the doctor. Another and a closer investigation had been made in the room of tragedy, and the body was to be removed. A finger-print man from headquarters had taken the prints of those who waited in the vacant apartment. Some of them had been frightened a little; in their minds they coupled finger prints with guilt. The finger-print man now was working in the boudoir, and Detective Sam Frake was waiting for his report.
“You’ve got a tough proposition, Frake,” the coroner’s assistant said.
“I know it,” Sam Frake replied. “But I’m working on their nerves, and that will help bring out the truth. I’m keeping all of them in that room. They are persons in different planes of society, and all of them are uncomfortable. They are in an atmosphere of crime and mystery. We’ve got a highbrow in the department who would talk a lot about psychology — but I call it making ’em nervous and getting their goats. I may be able, when I start, to jar loose some real information.”