When Burke finished with her, he had Marvin Moore and then Desta brought in. The youth’s air of truculent sophistication had deserted him and he was apparently only a frightened young man, completely awed by being a central figure in a murder investigation.
He testified that his guest room was next to Desta’s, down the hall from her father’s, directly across from the room now occupied by Hardiman. He and Desta had both gone to their rooms early, and he had dozed off into a half-drunken stupor from which he had not aroused until hearing the tumult in the hall occasioned by our discovery of Dwight’s body.
Desta Dwight held herself erect with tottering dignity when Burke wearily had her brought in. She looked at us blankly as though she had never seen any of us before. Burke was strangely gentle with her, and only questioned her about the movements of Michaela and Pasqual after they took her back to her room.
There again, he encountered a blank wall. She dazedly told him she didn’t know where they went or what they did after leaving her room.
After Jelcoe had let her out, Jerry looked at both of us and shook his head slowly. “Taking Hardiman’s story for what it’s worth, we have at least four people, exclusive of the servants, who were upstairs at the time of the murder and had access to Dwight’s suite. None of them have the semblance of an alibi unless we count Pasqual and Michaela alibi-ing each other... which doesn’t count.” He sighed and said:
“Let’s have Hardiman again.”
Jelcoe went out looking pleased, as though the investigation was finally getting down to cases and he was ready to take a hand.
The tall diplomat showed signs of strain when he came in. He dropped into a chair without waiting for an invitation, and beads of moisture stood out on his high pale forehead. Burke swung around in his chair to face him, while Jelcoe stood a little back, poised on the balls of his feet as though expecting Hardiman to make a break for it through the nearest window.
“It looks bad for you, Hardiman,” Burke opened up conversationally. “Every other person in the upper part of the house has satisfactorily accounted for his whereabouts at the time of the murder.”
Hardiman leaned forward with a bony hand laxly clasping each knee. “Not every person, I think. If you persist in accusing me of murder, I owe it to myself to disclose certain facts upon which I would have preferred to remain silent.”
“He’s had half an hour to think up a different story,” Jelcoe snarled.
Burke nodded agreement and said to Hardiman: “You weaken your position each time you start hedging. I’ll go a long way for a man that comes clean with me but the law has a way of dealing with those who obstruct justice.”
Hardiman nervously lifted his nose-glasses and then replaced them. “I had no desire to involve another, perhaps innocent party, in a situation for which I am at least morally responsible. But someone slipped in that room and killed Dwight after I had drugged him. You’ve questioned everyone except... Miss Laura Yates.”
I jerked erect and swallowed hard while Jelcoe’s eyelids fluttered up and down. Burke tamped tobacco into his pipe with a thick forefinger and asked with that damned stolidity of his:
“Was Miss Yates around? I understood she had left the grounds.”
“She returned.” Hardiman spoke with stony harshness. “She telephoned me that she had a matter of importance to discuss with me, and I arranged to meet her privately outside the house... at her suggestion — because she intimated she did not want to be seen by you.” He paused, twiddling with the ribbon of his nose-glasses.
“And you met her?” Burke prompted him.
“I did. She wanted a personal signed interview for a news story in the Free Press. I refused... naturally. I... was upset and angry, and she left me with the avowed intention of getting a statement from Mr. Dwight. I watched her slip in the side door where she could have gone upstairs unobserved, but when I went to Dwight’s room soon afterward he denied having seen her. Where she disappeared to... where she may have been in hiding... I do not know. But I do know she is one person whose movements you have not checked.”
“No one else seems to have seen her,” Burke told him with a puzzled shake of his head. “We have only your word for it that she was even here.”
Hardiman inclined his head austerely. “I realize that. However, I feel you would do well to locate the young lady and question her.”
“We’ll find her,” Jerry promised. “In the meantime... I’m afraid we’ll have to hold you.”
“I quite understand.” Hardiman got up and turned to Jelcoe with a certain dignity that somehow touched me. The door came open as Jelcoe reached for the knob. It was a uniformed policeman and he held his hand out with palm upturned, a pearl-handled .25 automatic pistol lying atop his grimy handkerchief so no fingerprints would be spoiled. It had been fired once.
“I just found this, sir,” he reported excitedly to Chief Jelcoe. “In front of the house under a shrub in the grass right where it might’ve landed if it was thrown out of that window where the killing was done. And Doctor Thompson says it was a twenty-two or twenty-five that did the job.”
“Fine work,” Jelcoe exulted, with a triumphant glance at Burke to indicate that he had been getting results while Jerry stalled around. “Check the fingerprints,” he ordered, “and have the doc get that bullet out and see if it came from this gun.”
“Better have ballistics check it against the bullet that killed Leslie Young also,” said Burke quietly.
Jelcoe’s head bobbed up and down irritatedly. “Of course, of course. That’s merely routine.” He went out with Hardiman and his human bloodhound, and Burke and I followed along behind.
We found the cops had all the guests crowded into the library. Jerry stopped in the doorway and was the recipient of an assortment of glares when he coolly announced that a guard would be placed around the house to prevent any of them from leaving the premises until the murder investigation was completed.
Senor Rodriguez bristled up with a vehement protest, but Burke waved him back with the flat statement that Michaela and Pasqual were both suspects, and Rodriguez’s connection with them made it necessary to detain him for the time being.
Myra Young, however, followed us out into the hall and raised so much hell that Burke finally gave in and admitted that he had absolutely no case against her, and detailed a man to drive her home when she refused his offer of a downtown hotel room at the city’s expense.
I heaved a deep sigh of relief when we at last stepped out into the night air. My stomach felt empty and forlorn, and I told Burke I had some dog-meat at home in the refrigerator that would make swell sandwiches.
He didn’t even smile. “What’s good enough for Nip and Tuck is good enough for me,” he agreed. “Let me drive ahead to the police barrier at the mouth of the canyon... and I’ll trail you on to your place after getting you through.”
He got in his car and I got in mine. It had been one of the longest evenings I ever lived through... and it still wasn’t ended.
17
Jerry Burke’s plate was empty. He took a sip of beer, heaved a satisfied sigh and leaned back to fill his pipe. I was still eating. Scrambled eggs and hamburger are pretty fine eating for a bachelor at one o’clock in the morning.