“Come in, Sedalia. Delighted you could come.” He sounded as though he were welcoming her to a tea. “Ah there, Henry. Good to see you.”
I sniffed and followed Sedalia indoors.
Inspector Stephen Home is a round, placid-faced man of almost studied neatness except for one item. His clothes are always pressed, his shoes carefully shined, and he always looks as though he just left a barber shop, where he had a haircut, shave and manicure. But he has a ragged, sandy-colored mustache whose individual hairs have no sense of direction.
After helping us remove our wraps and secreting them in a closet near the entrance, the inspector delayed us in the hall instead of taking us into the room where the others were.
“Reason I called you,” he told Sedalia, “I’m a little over my head. People in there too social register for an old rubber-hose cop like me. Thought maybe you’d help me out, since you know how to talk their language.”
This, of course, was intended for my consumption and was the purest balderdash. I had seen Stephen Home at Sedalia’s parties too often, amiably conversing with internationally known artists and playwrights and statesmen, to believe for a minute he would be impressed by the social position of anyone he might encounter in a murder investigation. He simply knew Sedalia would rather attend a murder than a concert, and was repaying her hospitality in his own peculiar way.
“Where’s the body?” Sedalia asked.
He led us to a small combination study and sitting room at the rear of the house. Outside the door two young men with a wicker basket between them patiently waited to cart off the body. Inside the room, we found no one but the corpse and a medical examiner.
The corpse was that of a woman about seventy, thin and unyielding and grim-faced even in death. She was lying face up near a small fireplace, her expression one of sour triumph, as though her last thought had been vindictive.
Such an air of malevolence seemed to hover over her, that in spite of myself I could summon no spark of pity for the poor woman. My only emotion was one of instinctive dislike for the harridan she most certainly must have been before dying.
In a tone somewhat like that of a tourist guide, Inspector Home said, “Her head’s bashed in. Can’t see it the way she’s lying. Name is Mrs. Agatha Chambers.” He paused to stare at the corpse placidly. “Widow, and lived here alone with a combination companion-maid. Maid’s been gone a week visiting relatives.” He pointed toward a small metal rack one side of the fireplace. “Weapon seemed to be some fire tongs in that. At least had blood on them. Gone now. Lab boys took them along to test for blood and fingerprints.” Then he looked at the medical examiner. “How you coming, Doc?”
The medical examiner rose and examined a thermometer. “All finished for now,” he said absently. “I’d guess six to ten hours ago. Tell you more accurately after an autopsy, if you tell me first when she last ate.” He paused. “If you want to believe her watch, she was killed seven and a half hours ago. At one p.m.”
Inspector Home raised one eyebrow, went over and lifted one of the woman’s wrists. “Hmm... Crystal broke. Watch stopped at one-oh-three. Could be, but could also mean the murderer deliberately set the hands. Nowadays they’ve all read mystery stories, and they try all the angles.”
He rose and brushed off his knees. The medical examiner closed his case, told the inspector he would send him a report in the morning and departed. As we followed him out of the room, the two young men entered with their basket.
“Haven’t really questioned anyone yet,” the inspector told Sedalia. “Except in a general way. Body was discovered by a whole bunch of people. Seems the old lady had scheduled a family meeting of some kind for seven-thirty, and all the relatives arrived more or less together. When nobody answered the bell, they figured something was wrong because there wasn’t a light in the place. Front door was on night lock, but somebody finally went around back, found the back door unlocked and let them all in. Sort of in a bunch they searched the house and found her. Just happened the assistant D.A. was with them, so we got the call quicker than we would have otherwise. It’s only about eight-thirty now.”
Sedalia looked interested. “The assistant D.A. was with them?”
“Yes. Not quite sure why. One of the things we’ll find out now.”
He opened the double glass doors into the front room and held them for Sedalia and me to enter.
Seven people were in the front room. Two were uniformed policemen who simply stood with their hands behind their backs waiting. Of the others two were women and three were men. All were in street clothes, and immediately I became conscious of my dinner jacket and Sedalia’s golden evening gown. We had dressed for the concert, of course, but it seemed rather incongruous costume for a murder investigation.
One of the men, a bouncing, dynamic young fellow with a cheerfully open face and ears nearly as large and perpendicular to his head as Sedalia’s, was standing in the center of the room asking questions when we entered. When the door opened he broke off, and Inspector Home introduced him as Alvin Christopher, the assistant district attorney. I noticed he and Sedalia examined each other’s ears with the interest of people who have something in common.
Both the women proved to be nieces of the dead woman. The youngest, a fresh-looking blonde girl with clear gray eyes and the trimly muscled figure of an enthusiastic sportswoman, was Miss Irene Chambers. I guessed her to be about twenty-five.
Mrs. Monica Madigan, whose stressing of her first name led me to believe she was a divorcee, was a dark-skinned, sleepy-eyed woman of thirty, slim but lushly developed. She barely glanced at Sedalia when she was introduced, but her slumberous eyes moved over my one-hundred and twenty pounds in an almost embarrassing examination. I felt myself flush, for I am not used to being examined by women in such a calculating manner.
The second man, a nephew of the dead woman, was named Gerald Rawlins. He was a blond, red-faced man of about twenty-eight with an athletic build, just beginning to go to fat, a round, not particularly intelligent face and a sulky cast to his mouth. He looked, I thought, like a spoiled brat.
The third man was named Jerome Straight, and turned out to be the attorney for the deceased Agatha Chambers. Perhaps sixty-five, he was a gaunt, humorless man with a gray face, sunken cheeks and wide brows jutting like a balcony over a thin sliver of a nose.
“Miss Tweep’s not here in any official capacity,” Inspector Home explained to the group. “Been of some service to the police in the past, as you may know if you read murder news, and just here as an observer.” He glanced at the young assistant district attorney. “Didn’t mean to interrupt you, Al.”
The young man waved it aside. “Just killing time till you got back. I’ll sit by and listen for awhile.”
Home nodded, ran his eyes over the two nieces and the nephew. “One of you tell me what this family meeting was all about, eh?”
There was silence for a moment as each of the three waited for one of the others to speak. Finally red-faced young Gerald Rawlins drawled, “It was just another of Aunt Aggie’s will-changing clambakes. She had ’em about twice a year.”
The inspector looked a polite inquiry, and the lush of Mrs. Monica Madigan elaborated. “Aunt Agatha had all the money in the family, you know. We three are her sole heirs, and she liked to punish us by alternately cutting us off. This time it was my turn. She was mad because I divorced my stinker of a no-good husband.”
“I see,” Inspector Home said. “She changed her will often?”
Blonde Irene Chambers laughed, a bitter mocking laugh. “You put it mildly, Inspector. She was as loopy as a roller coaster. Aunt Aggie had the bulk of her fortune divided into three amounts: a half million, a hundred thousand, and a mere one thousand. Sometimes I was scheduled to inherit the largest amount, sometimes Monica and sometimes Gerry, depending on which was the favorite at the moment. Or rather, depending on which was least out of favor. Aunt Aggie didn’t have any favorites outside of herself.”