Murder at Bridge Part 24

And that was the nearest she came to mentioning the murder before Penny summoned them to the little dining room.

Because Penny was watching him and was obviously proud of her skill as a cook--skill recently acquired, he was sure--Dundee ate as heartily as his carefully concealed depression would permit. There was a beautifully browned two-rib roast of beef, pan-browned potatoes, new peas, escalloped tomatoes, and, for dessert, a gelatine pudding which Penny proudly announced was "Spanish cream," the secret of which she had mastered only that morning.

"I was up almost at dawn to make it, so that it would 'set' in time,"

she told him, and by the quiver of her lip Dundee knew that it was not Spanish cream which had got her up....

"I'm going to help wash dishes," he announced firmly, and Penny, with a quick intake of breath, agreed.

"Hadn't you better take a nap, Mother?" she added a minute later, as Mrs. Crain, with a slight flush on her faded cheeks, began to stack the dessert dishes. "You mustn't lay a hand on these dishes, or Bonnie and I will have our dishwas.h.i.+ng picnic spoiled.... Run along now. You need sleep, dear."

"Not any more than you do, poor baby!" Mrs. Crain quavered, and then hurried out of the room, since gentlewomen do not weep before strangers.

"I called you 'Bonnie' so Mother would know we are really friends,"

Penny explained, her cheeks red, as she preceded him through the swinging door into the miniature kitchen.

"You'll stick to that--being friends, I mean, no matter what happens, won't you, Penny?" Dundee said in a low voice, setting the fragile crystal dishes he carried upon the porcelain drainboard of the sink.

"I knew you had something bad to tell me.... It's about--Ralph, I suppose?" Her husky voice was scarcely audible above the rush of hot water into the dishpan. "You'd better tell me straight off, Bonnie. I'm not a very patient person.... Are they going to arrest Ralph when they find him? There wasn't a word in the paper about him this morning--"

"I'm afraid they are, Penny," Dundee told her miserably. "Captain Strawn has a warrant ready, but of course--"

"Oh, you don't have to tell me you hope Ralph isn't guilty!" she cut in with sudden pa.s.sionate vehemence. "Don't _I_ know he couldn't have done it? They always arrest the wrong person first, the blundering idiots--"

It was the th.o.r.n.y Penny again, the Penny with glittering eyes which matched her nickname. But Dundee felt better able to cope with this Penny....

"I'm afraid I'm the chief idiot, but you must believe that I'm sorry it should be a friend of yours," he told her, and reached for the plate she had rinsed of its suds under the hot water tap.

"Shoot the works!" she commanded, with hard flippancy. "Of course I might have known that Captain Strawn's theory about a gunman was just dust in our eyes, and that only a miracle could keep you from fastening on poor Ralph, since he and the gun are both missing.... Naturally it wouldn't occur to you that it might be an outsider, someone who had followed Nita and her lover, Sprague, from New York, to kill her for having left him for Sprague.... Oh, no! Certainly not!" she gibed, to keep from bursting into tears.

"An outsider would hardly have had access to Judge Marshall's pistol and Maxim silencer," he reminded her. "And Captain Strawn received a wire from a ballistics expert in Chicago this morning, confirming our conviction that the same gun which fired the bullets against Judge Marshall's target fired the bullet which killed Nita Selim.... You've washed that plate long enough. Let me dry it now.... And there are other things, Penny--"

"Such as--" she challenged in her angry, husky contralto.

"Sprague admitted to me this morning, after I had confronted him with proofs, that he sometimes slept in the upstairs bedroom--"

"I told you they were lovers!" Penny interrupted.

"--and that he slept there Friday night, after he and Nita had quarreled. He still contends that the row was over that movie-of-Hamilton business," Dundee went on, as if she had not spoken.

"He admitted also that Nita had told him to take his things away when he left Sat.u.r.day morning, but he says it was only because she didn't want Ralph Hammond to find a man's belongings there if he had occasion to go into the upstairs rooms in making his estimates for the finis.h.i.+ng-up of the other side. But he contends, and Lydia Carr, whom I also saw again this morning, supports him in it, that he stayed in the house occasionally when Nita was particularly nervous about being alone, and that they were _not_ lovers."

"Pooh!... Don't wipe the flowers off that plate. Here's another."

"I'm inclined to say 'Pooh!', too, Penny," Dundee a.s.sured her, "but Tracey Miles told me last night when he came to get Lydia that Nita really seemed to be in love with Ralph--part of the time, at least."

"Nita thought enough of Dexter Sprague to send for him to come down here, and to root her head off for him to get the job of making the movie," Penny reminded him fiercely, making a great splas.h.i.+ng in the dishpan.

"Then--_you_ don't think she was in love with Ralph?" Dundee asked.

"Oh, _I don't know_!" the girl cried. "I thought so sometimes--had the grace to hope so, anyway, since Ralph was so crazy about her."

"That's the point, Penny," Dundee told her gently. "Everyone I've talked to this morning, including Sprague, seems sure that Ralph Hammond was mad about Nita Selim."

"So of course he would kill her!" Penny scoffed bitterly.

"Yes, Penny--when he discovered Sprague's easily-recognized cravats draped over the mirror frame in a bedroom in Nita's house.... For they were there to be seen when Ralph went into that bedroom yesterday morning."

"How do you know he saw them?"

"Because he left this behind him," Dundee admitted reluctantly, and wiped his hands before drawing an initialed silver pencil from his breast pocket. "I found it under the edge of the bed. The initials are R. H."

"Yes, I recognize it," Penny admitted, turning sharply away. "I gave it to him myself, for a Christmas present. I thought I could afford to give silver pencils away then. Dad hadn't bolted yet--" She crooked an elbow and leaned her face against it for a moment. Then she flung up her brown bobbed head defiantly. "Well?"

"Ralph must have been--well, in a pretty bad way, since he loved Nita and wanted to--marry her," Dundee persisted painfully. "Remember that Polly Beale found him still there when she stopped to offer Nita a lift to Breakaway Inn. It is not hard to imagine what took place. We _know_ that Polly curtly cancelled her luncheon engagement with Nita and the rest of you, and went into town with Ralph, after making sure that Clive would join them. I saw young Hammond myself for an instant, without knowing who he was, and I remember now thinking that he looked far too ill to eat. I was lunching at the Stuart House myself when they came into the dining room, you know."

"Plenty to hang him on, I see!" Penny cried furiously.

"There's a little more, Penny," Dundee went on. "Polly Beale and Clive Hammond were mortally afraid that Ralph _would_ come to the c.o.c.ktail party! I'm sure Clive made Ralph promise to stay away, and that both Clive and Polly did not trust him to keep his promise. That is why, I am sure, Clive beckoned Polly to join him in the solarium, without entering the living room to speak to Nita. You remember they said they stayed there all during the playing of--"

"If you call it the 'death hand' again, I'll scream!"

"All right.... They stayed there until Karen discovered the murder. I am sure they chose that place because of its many windows--they could watch for Ralph's car, dash out and head him off. Take him away by force, if necessary, to keep him from making a scene. I believe they knew he had murder in his heart, and that he would find a way to get a gun--"

"Have you also found out that he stole Hugo's gun yesterday?"

"I have found that it was possible for him to do so," Dundee said slowly. "The butler was off for the afternoon until six o'clock. There was no one in the house but the nursemaid and the-three-months-old baby."

"Well? And I suppose you think Clive and Polly didn't have a chance to head Ralph off, as you say, but that they did see him running away after he killed her?" Her voice was still brittle with anger, but there were indecision and fear in it, too.

"No," Dundee replied. "I don't think they saw him. I feel pretty sure he came into the house by the back way, and through the back hall into Nita's room. He must have known Clive and Polly would be on the lookout for him.... At any rate, I have proof that whoever shot Nita from in front of that window near the porch door fled toward the back hall."

And he told her of the big bronze lamp, whose bulb had been broken, reminding her of its place at the head of the chaise longue which was set between the two west windows.

"That was the 'bang or b.u.mp' Flora Miles heard while she was hiding in the closet," he explained. "I suppose Flora has told all of you about it?... I thought so. m.u.f.fled as she was in the closet, it is unlikely that she could have heard Nita's frantic whisperings to Ralph.... I doubt if he spoke at all. Nita must have been sure he was about to leave by the porch door--"

Dimly there came the ring of the telephone. With a curt word, Penny excused herself to answer it. Dundee went on polis.h.i.+ng gla.s.ses with a fresh towel....

"Bonnie!" Penny was coming back, walking like a somnambulist, her brown eyes wide and fixed. "That was--Ralph!... _And he doesn't even know Nita is dead!_"

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

"Of course I recognized his voice instantly when he said, 'That you, Penny?' and it's a wonder I didn't scream," said Penny Crain, fighting her way up through dazed bewilderment to explain in detail, in answer to Dundee's pelting questions. "I said, 'Of course, Ralph.... Where _have_ you been?...' And _he_ said, in that coaxing, teasing voice of his that I know so well: 'Peeved, Penny?... I don't blame you, honey. You really ought not to let me come over and explain why I stood you up last night, but you will, won't you?... Ni-i-ze Penny!...' That's exactly how he talked, Bonnie Dundee! Exactly! _Oh, don't you see he couldn't know that Nita is dead?_"

"Did you ask him where he was?" Dundee asked finally.

"No. I just told him to come on over, and he said I could depend on it that he wouldn't waste any time.... Oh, Bonnie! What shall we _do_?"