Mignon Eberhart - Wolf in Man’s Clothing

Which was what developed the trouble. For no one had telephoned, or at least no one would admit it. Chivery looked uneasy but blank, Maud angry but equally blank-Nicky, Alexia, Peter and even Anna, when questioned directly denied it with various degrees of indignation, but with a kind of concerted and astonished ignorance of such a telephone call which sounded sincere. Beevens from the door was fervent in his denial. Perhaps I was, too. I remember saying I hadn’t thought of the police, in a voice that rang out positively in clarion tones against the book-lined walls.

Alexia drew herself up to her full height and assumed a wonderful lady-of-the-manor command. “You see, Lieutenant,” she said, “you must be mistaken. My husband died of a heart attack. The nurse”-the Lieutenant’s eyes flicked toward me and back to Alexia-“the nurse found him like this. She called us, and we telephoned for his doctor. My husband was not murdered.”

Nicky said eagerly, “You’ve got the name wrong. You’d better hurry along, too, hadn’t you, Lieutenant? I mean if someone in the neighborhood has been murdered or-or anything like that-and they want you…” The officer looked at Nicky, and Nicky stopped rather suddenly. The Lieutenant had narrow, gray-green eyes, narrow high cheekbones and an expression of complete taciturnity. He said, “I took the message myself. It was a woman’s voice. There’s no mistake.”

“A woman!” cried Nicky. “But…” He stopped and flapped his small hands helplessly. “ But he wasn’t murdered !”

Claud Chivery stepped forward. “I agree to that, Lieutenant. I’m going to give the death certificate, and I have no question at all in my mind. Remember, he was my patient.” There was a sharp silence except, from the hall, Beevens could be heard evicting the servants clustered there from their observation post. “You’ll be called if necessary,” he said. “Now get along…” Beevens himself remained, however, hovering in the hall and in all probability straining his ears out of all nature.

The Lieutenant said quietly, “If you’ll permit…” stepped to the sofa, and looked down at Conrad Brent.

I don’t mind saying I was nervous. In the course of a not uncheckered career (far, now, in the past) I have chanced to see a little of the scope and persistence of a police investigation.

They had been summoned by telephone, so whoever had summoned them must have had reason to believe it was murder.

Everybody was watching the Lieutenant when he turned at last to Alexia and said, “I’m sorry, Madam. We shall spare your feelings in every possible way; we’ll do our best to protect you from public comment or annoyance. If Mr. Brent wasn’t murdered, we can soon satisfy ourselves and you in that respect. If he was…”

“But he couldn’t have been!” cried Alexia angrily. Then all at once her rigid, masklike face softened. She went quickly and gracefully to the Lieutenant and put her white hands on his arm; leaning very close to him and lifting her beautiful face beseechingly, she said softly and musically, “Lieutenant, no one would have murdered my husband. It is impossible…”

The officer detached himself without effort and without compunction. “Will you please leave the room to us now?” he said politely. “It will be better that way. All of you, please, except Dr. Chivery.”

“But I…” Alexia’s voice was no longer musical. Her small face was set and the gleam in her eyes was not a pleasant one. Maud was watching every move and every look and had said nothing. The Lieutenant interrupted Alexia coolly. “We’ll have to have an autopsy, Dr. Chivery,” he said. “I’ll send to Nettleton for the appointed medical examiner; he should be here in an hour. He’ll assist you in making the autopsy.”

Dr. Chivery looked at the buttons on the police officer’s coat. “Conrad had a bad heart. He’d had it for years. He had digitalis which he took for these attacks, and we’ll probably find some. But not a fatal amount and…”

Maud interrupted, “But that was the point! What about the medicine? Where is it? If it was removed-if he removed it himself, that is-he died from the lack of it. It’s as I-as I was saying when the police arrived.”

Well, it wasn’t quite what she was saying. She was saying that if it had been intentionally removed, that was tantamount to murder.

“What’s this about digitalis?” demanded the Lieutenant, falling upon it like a dog upon a bone and Claud Chivery, helplessly, explained. The medicine had been kept in the top drawer of the desk; it wasn’t about the body of Conrad Brent, and he might have died for lack of it.

But that didn’t prove that anyone had removed it with that result in mind. The Lieutenant didn’t say that, he only asked if anyone had removed it or knew of Conrad Brent himself removing it.

“It was in the drawer just after dinner tonight,” said Alexia suddenly. “I saw it.”

“Did you give it to Mr. Brent?” asked the Lieutenant.

“No. He was not ill then; he didn’t want it. We were having coffee here. He wanted a clipping, something about the war that he’d cut from the papers. It was in that drawer and I got it for him; and I saw the medicine, then.”

“I remember,” said Peter Huber. “He read it to us.”

Maud’s black eyebrows were pinched together. “I remember, too,” she said. “It was about the arrest of some enemy aliens, some former Bund members.”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Alexia. “But I saw the medicine then. It was in that drawer.”

No one had seen it since, however, or if so did not admit it. I got to thinking of the autopsy and wondering if whatever Drue had given him (some kind of stimulant certainly) by way of the hypodermic would show up in the blood stream.

While I knew something of autopsies, I didn’t know enough, and I stopped thinking along that line when the Lieutenant abruptly and very definitely told us we could go. “Get some rest if you can,” he said. “The things we have to do will take time. I’ll have to question you later.”

I started quickly toward the door. I had to see Drue as soon as I possibly could. But Nicky got there first and then turned back toward Alexia. “Come, darling,” he said in a voice of sudden sympathy, which reminded everyone that Alexia was a recently-indeed, a very recently-bereaved widow. Even Alexia looked a little startled and then instantly drooped against the arm he put around her. “If they insist upon this investigation, we’ll have to make the best of it.”

Alexia looked at the still figure on the couch. I thought she was going to approach it, to say a kind of farewell perhaps, but she didn’t. Her shadowing lashes fell softly over her eyes and she turned toward the door, leaning on Nicky’s arm. She said softly, musically, “I am stunned, I think-the shock. Yes, I’ll go now. Nicky…” She leaned on his arm as far as the stairway, for I watched them go. I would have followed instantly, quickly, eager to get to Drue, but the Lieutenant stopped me.

“You were here when he died, Nurse?”

“He was dead when I reached him.” Maud was leaving too, and Peter Huber, looking uncertain of his status in that house of death and tragedy-a stranger plunged into a dreadful intimacy-followed her. Anna had disappeared, I didn’t know when. There were left only the police, the Lieutenant, Dr. Chivery and me in that room. And Conrad Brent.

“Wait a minute, please, Nurse,” said the Lieutenant sharply as I made another move toward the door. “I want to talk to you. Did you telephone for the police?”

He had asked that before; presumably he was asking it again because, the family being now out of earshot, I might be willing to admit suspicion and the reason for it.