Murder at Bridge Part 11

"Mrs. Miles, I want you to tell me exactly what you know, unless you prefer to consult a lawyer first--"

"Sir, if you are insinuating that _my wife_--"

"Oh, let me tell him, Tracey," Mrs. Miles capitulated suddenly, completely. "I _was_ in the closet when Nita was killed, I suppose, but I didn't _know_ she was being killed! _Because I was lying in there on the closet floor in a dead faint!_"

Dundee stared at the woman incredulously, then suppressed a groan of almost unbearable disappointment. If Flora Miles was telling the truth, here went a-flying his only eye-witness, probably, or rather, his only ear-witness.

"Just when did you faint, Mrs. Miles?" he asked, struggling for patience. "Before or after Nita came into this room?"

"I was just finis.h.i.+ng the note, with the light on in the closet, and the door shut, when I heard Nita come into the room. I knew it was Nita because she was singing one of those Broadway songs she is--was--so crazy about. I jerked off the light, and crouched way back in a corner of the closet. A velvet evening wrap fell down over my head, and I was nearly smothering, but I was afraid to try to dislodge it for fear a hanger would fall to the floor and make an awful clatter. And then--and then--" She shuddered, and clung to her husband.

"What caused you to faint, Mrs. Miles?"

"Sir, my wife has heart trouble--"

"What did you hear, Mrs. Miles?" Dundee persisted.

"I couldn't hear very well, all tangled up in the coat and 'way back in the closet, but I did hear a kind of bang or b.u.mp--no, no, not a pistol shot!--and because it came from so near me I thought it was Nita or Lydia coming to get something out of the closet, and I'd be discovered, so I--I fainted--" She drew a deep breath and went on: "When I came to I heard Karen scream, and then people running in--. But all the time that awful tune was going on and on--"

"Tune?" Dundee gasped. "Do you mean--Nita Selim's--_song_?"

Flora Miles seemed to be dazed by Dundee's vehement question.

"Why, yes--Nita's own tune. That's what she called it--her own tune--"

"But, Mrs. Miles," Dundee protested, ashamed that his scalp was p.r.i.c.kling with horror, "do you mean to tell me that Nita was not dead _then_--when Karen Marshall screamed?"

"Dead?" Flora repeated, more bewildered. "Of course she was, or at least, they all said so--. Oh, I know what you mean! And you don't mean what I mean at all--"

"Steady, honey-girl!" Tracey Miles urged, putting his arm about his wife. "I'd better tell you, Dundee.... When we all came running into the room, there was Nita's powder box playing its tune over and over--"

"Oh!" Dundee wiped his forehead. "You mean it's a musical box?"

"Yes, and plays when the lid is off," Tracey answered, obviously delighted to have the limelight again. "Well, of course, since Nita couldn't put the lid back on, it was still playing.... What was the tune, honey?" he asked his wife tenderly. "I haven't much ear for music at best, but at a time like that--"

"It was playing _Juanita_," Flora answered wearily. "Over and over--_'Nita, Jua-a-n-ita, be my own fair bride_'," she quavered obligingly. "Only not the words, of course, just the tune. That's why Nita bought the box, I suppose, because it played her namesake song--"

"Maybe one of her beaus gave it to her," Tracey suggested lightly, patting his wife's trembling shoulder. "Anyway, Dundee, the thing ran on and on, until it ran down, I suppose. I confess I wanted to put the lid back on, to stop the d.a.m.ned thing, but Hugo said we mustn't touch anything--"

"And quite right!" Dundee cut in. "Now, Mrs. Miles, about that noise you heard.... Did you hear anyone enter the room?... No?... Well, then, did you hear Nita speak to anyone? You said you thought it might be Lydia, coming to get something out of the closet."

"I didn't hear Nita speak a word to anybody, though she might have and I wouldn't have heard, all m.u.f.fled up in that velvet evening wrap and so far back in the closet--"

"Did you hear the door onto the porch--it's _quite_ near the closet--"

"The door was open when we came in, Dundee," Tracey interposed. "It must have been open all the time."

"I didn't hear it open," Mrs. Miles confirmed him wearily. "I tell you I didn't hear _anything_, except Nita's coming in singing, then the powder box playing its tune, and that bang or b.u.mp I told you about."

"And just where was that?" Dundee persisted.

"_I don't know!_" she shrilled, hysteria rising in her voice again. "I told you it sounded fairly near the closet, as if--as if somebody b.u.mped into something. That's what it was like! That's exactly what it was like. And I was so frightened of being found in the closet that I fainted, and didn't come to until Karen screamed--"

She was babbling on, but Dundee was thinking hard. A very convenient faint--that! For the murderer, at least! But--why not for Mrs. Miles herself? Odd that she should _faint_! Why hadn't she trumped up some excuse immediately and left the closet as Nita was entering the room?

Was it, possibly, because she could think of nothing but the great relief of finding that it was Sprague, not her husband, who had been writing love letters to Nita Selim?... A jealous woman--

"Miles," he began abruptly, "I think you'd better tell me how your wife became so jealous of you and Nita Selim that she could get herself into such a false position."

Tracey Miles reddened, but a gesture of one of his sunburned hands restrained his wife's pa.s.sionate defense of him. "It's the truth that Flora is jealous-natured. And I suppose--" he faltered a moment, and his eyes did not meet his wife's, "--that I liked seeing her a little bit jealous of her old man. Sort of makes a man feel--well, big, you know.

And pretty important to somebody!"

"So you were just having a bit of fun with your wife, so far as Mrs.

Selim was concerned?" Dundee asked coldly.

The blood flowed through the thinning blond hair. "We-el, not exactly,"

he admitted frankly. "You see, I _did_ take a s.h.i.+ne to Nita, and if I do say so myself, she liked me a lot.... Oh, nothing serious! Just a little flirtation, like most of our crowd have with each other--"

"Mrs. Miles," Dundee interrupted with sudden harshness, "are you _sure_ you did not know that that letter was from Dexter Sprague before you looked for it?"

"Sir, if you are insinuating that _my wife_ carried on a flirtation or--an--an _affair_ with that Sprague insect--" Tracey began to bl.u.s.ter.

But Dundee's eyes were on Flora Miles, and he saw that her sallow skin had tightened like greyish silk over her thin cheek bones, and that her eyes looked suddenly dead and gla.s.sy.

"You _fainted_, you say, Mrs. Miles," Dundee went on inexorably. "Was it because, by any chance, this note--" and he tapped the sheet which had caused so much trouble--"revealed the fact that Nita Selim and Dexter Sprague were sweethearts or--lovers?"

It was a battle between those two now. Both ignored Tracey's red-faced rage.

Flora licked her dry lips. "No--no," she whispered. "_No!_ It was because I was jealous of Tracey and Nita--"

"Yes, and I'd given her cause to be jealous, too!" Tracey forced himself into the conversation. "One night, at the Country Club, Flora saw me and Nita stroll off the porch and down onto the grounds, and she had a right to be sore at me when I got back, because I'd cut a dance with her--my own wife!... And it was only this very morning that I made a point of driving--out of my way too--by this house to see Nita. Not that I meant any harm, but I was being a little silly about her--and she was about me, too! Not that I'd leave my wife and babies for any Broadway beauty under the sun--"

"Oh, Tracey! And you weren't going to tell me--" Was there _real_ jealousy now, or just pretense on Flora's part?

"You understand, don't you, Dundee?" Tracey demanded, man to man. "I was just having a little fun on the side--nothing serious, mind you! But of course I didn't tell Flora every little thing--. No man does! There've been other girls--other women--"

"Tracey isn't worse than the other men!" Flora flamed up. "He's such a darling that all the girls pet him, and spoil him--"

Dundee could stand no more of Miles' complacent acceptance of his own rakishness. And certainly a girl like Nita Selim would have been able to bear precious little of it.... Conceited a.s.s! But Flora Miles was another matter--and so was Dexter Sprague!

"You can join me in the living room, if you like," Dundee said shortly, as he wheeled and strode toward the door. Was that quick, pa.s.sionate kiss between husband and wife being staged for his benefit?

"Pretty near through, boy?" Strawn, who had been silent and bewildered for a long time, asked anxiously, as the two detectives pa.s.sed into the hall.

"Not quite. I've got to know several things yet," Dundee answered absently.

But in the living room his mind was wholly upon the business in hand.

"I'll keep you all no longer than is absolutely necessary," he began, and again the close-knit group--in which only Dexter Sprague was an alien--grew taut with suspense. "From the playing out of the 'death hand' at bridge," he went on, using the objectionable phrase again very deliberately, "I found that no two of you men arrived together.... Mr.