Richard Deming - Gallows in My Garden

He pumped my hand as though he were really glad to meet me, then immediately turned his attention back to Ann.

“Of course, I won’t stay under the circumstances,” he said. “Is there anything I can do for you? Make funeral arrangements, for example?”

Before Ann could reply, I said, “I’m afraid you’ll have to stay until the police arrive, Mr. Cushing.”

The drug chain manager looked at me sharply. “Why? What could they possibly want with me?”

“They’ll want to see everyone who was here when Don disappeared.”

He looked surprised. “How do you know that includes me?”

“Yes,” Jonathan Mannering put in somberly. “Perhaps Gerald should stay, but it seems to me you’re assuming a lot of authority for a guest.”

“Mr. Moon isn’t exactly a guest,” Arnold announced. “He’s Grace’s hired bodyguard. There’s no point in keeping it a secret any longer. Someone has been trying to kill Grace, and apparently they succeeded with Don.”

In the shocked silence which followed, Grace, who sat on the sofa next to Arnold, slipped her hand into his and regarded Ann and Douglas miserably.

“Preposterous!” rumbled Mannering.

“No,” Dr. Lawson said. “Mr. Moon’s profession is a surprise to me, but it’s quite true someone has been trying to kill Grace. I’ve been doing a little quiet investigating myself, without any success.”

Ann said, “Grace! Why didn’t you say something, child?”

“Because— because—” she said incoherently, then lapsed into silence.

“Because apparently the would-be killer is someone in the house,” I explained helpfully. “Either one of you in this room or one of the servants.”

“Preposterous!” Mannering contributed.

I shrugged, fished a cigar from my pocket, and relaxed in an easy chair to await the arrival of the police.

They came without the usual announcement of sirens. I am not a cynic, but I could not help wondering if the Lawson eight or eighteen million dollars, whichever it was, had anything to do with their quiet arrival. I am morally certain if they came to investigate a body at my flat, you could hear the sirens all over town.

Warren Day had with him his usual shadow, Lieutenant Hannegan, who was attired in the inevitable blue serge suit that looked like a police uniform without brass buttons. After he entered, the inspector stood in the doorway scrutinizing the assembly for a moment, his hands thrust into his suit pockets and his thin figure arched forward to allow his eyes to peer over thick-lensed glasses. His pointed, white-tipped nose aimed deliberately at one person after another, his belligerent expression almost dissolving into a popeyed gawk as his gaze touched Ann and Grace, but hardening to normal when it passed from them to Abigail Stoltz.

Then he suddenly swept his hat from his skinny bald head and barked, “I’m Inspector Warren Day of Homicide!”

I brought my palms together silently in pantomime applause, and got a deep scowl for my effort.

“All right, Moon! What’s going on here?”

“I’ll show you the body,” I said. “Bring lights and a rope?”

“We brought everything but the jail. Let’s go.” Leaving Hannegan in charge of the people in the drawing-room, Day followed me around back of the house. In the parking-court was the laboratory truck, the morgue wagon, a pickup with a winch, and a squad car. Enough cops to spread a city-wide dragnet had come with the vehicles.

It had grown dark, so I borrowed a hand flash from one of the cops and led the inspector down to the midway platform. A uniformed policeman, a photographer carrying a flash camera, and a medical examiner followed us down.

“He’s around the other side of that bulge,” I said, flashing my light on the six-inch foothold.

“I’ll examine him when you get him up,” the medic announced, and started climbing the stairs again.

“Get out there and take some pictures,” Day told the police photographer.

“Who, me?” the man asked.

“Yes, you!”

“That ledge is pretty narrow,” the man said doubtfully.

“Get going!” the inspector bawled. “You’re insured, aren’t you?”

The photographer looked at him dumbly, then slowly climbed the rail and approached the point it began to narrow. I could sympathize with his reluctance, for by flashlight the path seemed almost impassable. Holding the camera aloft in his right hand, he cautiously began to sidestep around the bulge.

“If you start to slip, set the camera down,” Inspector Day called.

The photographer did not deign to reply.

Day turned to the cop who had accompanied us. “Go up and start letting that rope down. He might as well attach the body while he’s out there.”

“Yes, sir,” the man said gratefully, and started to run up the steps before the inspector could change his mind.

Twenty minutes later the body was on its way to the morgue, all the vehicles except the squad car had departed, and the inspector and I stood alone at the top of the bluff.

“Now let’s have the dope,” he said. “What makes you think it’s murder?”

“I didn’t say I thought it was murder. I said it might be. It might be suicide, too, or just an accident. But the dead kid and his sister were due to inherit half the mint if they reached twenty-one alive, and somebody’s been trying to kill the sister. Maybe the same someone pushed Don over the bluff.”

“How do you mean, trying to kill the sister?”

I said, “Things keep happening to her. Once the saddle girth on her riding-horse was cut so the saddle came off, once a flowerpot tried to brain her from an upper window, and once a glass of milk was poisoned.”

“How come she didn’t call the police?”

I shrugged. “Afraid of publicity. Her fiancé, Arnold Tate, and her Uncle Doug — that’s Doctor Douglas Lawson — were the only two knew of it, aside from the girl. They figured it had to be someone in the house and decided to keep it quiet. Uncle Doug has been making like a detective, but he hasn’t gotten anywhere.”

“How you know about all this?”

“Grace Lawson hired me to guard her body earlier today.”

“Then why didn’t you inform the police?” the inspector snapped.

“I am, aren’t I?”

“Haw!” he snorted, and turned to walk toward the house.

“That isn’t all,” I said, falling in beside him. “Whoever wants Grace dead has hired a couple of professional killers to tail her.” Briefly I recounted the scene at my apartment with the English lord and his squat companion.

He stopped and absent-mindedly shined his flash in my face as he regarded me thoughtfully. “How do you figure them in the thing?” he asked.

“I can’t so that it makes much sense,” I admitted. “But it’s possible the murderer was having Grace tailed to see if she went to the police and the tails reported in by phone periodically. When they reported her visit to me, he either knew who I was or found out in a hurry, and decided a bodyguard would put a crimp in his plans. So he told the boys either to induce me to leave town, or rub me out.”

“You sure they were connected with this affair? Maybe it was just someone with an old grudge sicked them on you.”

“To offer me ten thousand bucks?” I asked. “Some grudge, that would be. Besides, they recognized the girl, which is the reason they let me go.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” the inspector said. “If they were after the girl, why didn’t they grab her right there?”

“That’s the question that’s been bothering me,” I told him.

Apparently the group in the drawing-room had not found the inscrutable Hannegan’s presence conducive to conversation, for there was dead silence as we re-entered the house.