Murder at Bridge Part 10

"Not quite yet, sir, if you don't mind," Dundee answered in a low voice.

"Will you take them back into the living room and put them under Sergeant Turner's charge for a while? Then there are one or two things I'd like to talk over with you."

Mollified by the younger man's deference and persuasiveness, Strawn obeyed the suggestion, to return within five minutes, his grey brows drawn into a frown.

"I hope you'll be willing to take full credit for that fool bridge game, Bonnie," he worried. "_I_ don't want to look a chump in the newspapers!"

"I'll take the blame," Dundee a.s.sured him, with a grin. "But that 'fool bridge game'--and I admit it was a horrible thing to have to do--told me a whole bunch of facts that ought to be very, very useful."

"For instance?" Strawn growled.

"For instance," Dundee answered, "it told me that it took approximately eight minutes to play out a little slam bid, when ordinarily it would have taken not more than two or three minutes. Not only that, but it told me the names of everyone in _this_ party who could have killed Nita Selim, and--. Good Lord! Of course!"

And to Captain Strawn's amazement Dundee threw open the door of Nita's big clothes closet, jerked on the light, and stooped to the floor.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Almost immediately Special Investigator Dundee rose from his crouching position on the floor of Nita Selim's closet, and faced the chief of the Homicide Squad of Hamilton's police force.

"I think," he said quietly, for all the excitement that burned in his blue eyes, "that we'd better have Mrs. Miles in for a few questions."

"What have you got there--a dance program?" Strawn asked curiously, but as Dundee continued to stare silently at the thing he held, the older man strode to the door and relayed the order to a plainclothes detective.

"I sent for _Mrs._ Miles," Dundee said coldly, when husband and wife appeared together, Flora's thin, tense shoulders encircled by Tracey's plump arm.

"If you're going to badger my wife further, I intend to be present, sir!" Miles retorted, thrusting out his chest.

"Very well!" Dundee conceded curtly. "Mrs. Miles, why didn't you tell me in the first place that you were _in this room_ when Nita Selim was shot?"

"Because I wasn't--in--in the room," Flora protested, clinging with both thin, big-veined hands to her husband's arm.

"Sir, you have no proof of this absurd accusation, and I shall personally take this matter up--"

"I have the best of proof," Dundee said quietly, and took his hand from his pocket. "You recognize this, Mrs. Miles?... You admit that it is the tally card you used while playing bridge this afternoon?"

"No, no! It isn't mine!" Flora cried hysterically, cringing against her husband, who began to protest in a voice falsetto with rage.

Dundee ignored his splutterings. "May I point out that it is identical with the other tally cards used at Mrs. Selim's party today, and that on its face it bears your name, 'Flora'?" and he politely extended the card for her inspection.

"I--yes, it _must_ be mine, but I was _not_ in this room when Nita was--was shot!"

"But you will admit that you _were_ in her clothes closet at some time during the twenty or more minutes that elapsed between your leaving the bridge game, when you became dummy, and the moment when Karen Marshall screamed?"

As Flora Miles said nothing, staring at him with great, terrified black eyes, Dundee went on relentlessly: "Mrs. Miles, when you left the bridge game, you did not intend to telephone your house. You came _here_--into this room!--and you lay in wait, hiding in her closet until Nita Selim appeared, as you knew she would, sooner or later--"

"No, no! That's a lie--a lie, I tell you!" the woman shrilled at him. "I _did_ telephone my house, and I talked to Junior, when the maid put him up to the phone.... You can ask her yourself, if you don't believe me!"

"But _after_ you telephoned, you stole into this room--"

"No, no! I--I made up my face all fresh, just as I told you--"

Dundee did not bother to tell her how well he knew she was lying, for suddenly something knocked on the door of his mind. He strode to the closet, searched for a moment among the mult.i.tude of garments hanging there, then emerged with the brown silk summer coat which Nita Selim had worn to Breakaway Inn that noon. Before the terrified woman's eyes he thrust a hand first into one deep pocket and then another, finding nothing except a handkerchief of fine embroidered linen and a pair of brown suede gauntlet gloves.

"Will you let me have the note, please, Mrs. Miles? The note Nita received during her luncheon party, and which she thrust, before your eyes, into a pocket of this coat?... It is in your handbag, I am sure, since you have had no opportunity, un.o.bserved, to destroy it."

"What ghastly nonsense is this, Dundee?" Tracey Miles demanded furiously.

But Dundee again ignored him. His implacable eyes held Flora Miles'

until the woman broke suddenly, piteously. She fumbled in the raffia bag which had been hanging from her arm.

"Good G.o.d, Flora! What does it all mean?" Tracey Miles collapsed like a p.r.i.c.ked pink balloon. "That's _my_ stationery--one of my business envelopes--"

Flora Miles dropped the bag which she need no longer watch and clutch with terror, as she dug her thin fingers into her husband's shoulders and looked down at his puzzled face, for she was a little taller than he.

"Forgive me, darling! Oh, I knew G.o.d would punish me for being jealous!

I thought _you_ were writing love letters to--to that woman--"

Dundee did not miss the slightest significance of that scene as he retrieved the blue-grey envelope she had dropped. It was inscribed, in a curious handwriting: "Mrs. Selim, Private Dining Room, Breakaway Inn."

"Let's see, boy," Strawn said, with respect in his harsh voice.

Dundee withdrew the single sheet of business stationery, and obligingly held it so that the chief of detectives could read it also.

"Nita, my sweet," the note began, without date-line, "Forgive your bad boy for last night's row, but I _must_ warn you again to watch your step. You've already gone too far. Of course I love you and understand, _but_--Be good, Baby, and you won't be sorry."

The note was signed "Dexy."

Dundee tapped the note for a long minute, while Tracey Miles continued to console his wife. A new avenue, he thought--perhaps a long, long avenue....

"Mrs. Miles," he began abruptly, and the tear-streaked face turned toward him. "You say you thought this letter to Mrs. Selim had been written by your husband?"

"Yes!" She gasped. "I'm jealous-natured. I admit it, and when I saw one of our own--I mean, one of Tracey's business envelopes--"

"You made up your mind to steal it and read it?"

"Yes, I did! A wife has a right to know what her husband's doing, if it's anything--like that--" Her haggard black eyes again implored her husband for forgiveness, before she went on: "I _did_ slip into Nita's room and go into her closet to see if she had left the letter in her coat pocket. I closed the door on myself, thinking I could find the light cord, but it was caught in one of the dresses or something, and it took me a long time to find it in the dark of the closet, but I did find it at last, and was just reading the note--"

"You _read_ it, even after you saw that the handwriting on the envelope wasn't your husband's?" Dundee queried in a.s.sumed amazement.

Flora's thin body sagged. "I--I thought maybe Tracey had disguised his Handwriting.... So I read it, and saw it was from Dexter--"

"Mr. Miles, do you know how some of your business stationery got into Sprague's hands?"

"He's had plenty of opportunity to filch stationery or almost anything he wants, hanging around my offices, as he does--an idler--"

But Dundee was in a hurry. He wheeled from the garrulity of the husband to the tense terror of the wife.