Murder at Bridge Part 29

Lydia accepted the paper and her single eye scanned the following lines obediently:

New York, May 25 (UP)

Mrs. Juanita Leigh Selim, who was murdered Sat.u.r.day afternoon in Hamilton, ----, was known along Broadway as Nita Leigh, chorus girl and specialty dancer. Her last known address in New York was No. -- West 54th St., where she had a three-room apartment.

According to the superintendent, E. J. Black, Miss Leigh, as he knew her, lived there alone except for her maid, Lydia Carr, and entertained few visitors.

Irving Wein, publicity director for Altamont Pictures, when interviewed by a reporter in his rooms at the Cadillac Hotel late today, said that Nita Leigh had been used for "bits" and as a dancing "double" for stars in a number of recent pictures, including "Night Life" and "Boy, Howdy!", both of which have dancing sequences. Musical comedy programs for the last year carry her name only once, in the list of "Ladies of the Ensemble" of the revue, "What of it?"

Miss Eloise Pendleton, head-mistress of Forsyte-on-the-Hudson, mentioned in the dispatches from Hamilton, confirms the report that Mrs. Selim, as she was known there, twice directed the annual Easter musical comedy presented by that fas.h.i.+onable school for young ladies, but could add nothing of interest to the facts given above, beyond a.s.serting that Mrs. Selim had proved to be an unusually competent and popular director of their amateur theatricals.

"Yes, that's correct, as far as it goes," Lydia commented, resentment strong in her harsh voice as she returned the paper to Dundee.

"Have you anything to add?" Dundee caught her up quickly.

"No, sir!" Lydia shook her head, her lips in a grim line. Then resentment burst through: "They don't have to talk like she was a back number on Broadway, just because she was tired of the stage and going in for movies!"

District Attorney Sanderson took her in hand then, pelting her with questions about Nita's New York "gentlemen friends," but he made no more headway than Dundee.

"We _know_ that Nita Selim was afraid of _someone_!" Sanderson began again, angrily. "Who was it--someone she'd known in New York, or somebody in Hamilton?"

"I don't know!" Lydia told him flatly.

"But you do know she was living in fear of her life, don't you?" Dundee interposed.

"I--well, yes, I suppose she was," Lydia admitted reluctantly. "But I thought she was just afraid to live out there in that lonesome house away off at the end of nowhere."

"Was she afraid of Dexter Sprague?" Sanderson shot at her.

"Would she have asked him to stay all night if she'd been afraid of _him_?" Lydia demanded scornfully. "And would she have asked _him_ to rig up a bell from her bedroom to mine, if it was _him_ she was afraid of?"

"A bell?" Dundee echoed.

"Yes, sir. It has a contraption under the rug, right beside her bed, so's she could step on it and it would ring in my room, which was underneath hers.... Mr. Sprague bought the wire and stuff, bored a hole through her bedroom floor, and fixed it all hisself."

"Did anyone know Nita had taken this precaution to protect herself?"

Dundee asked.

"Mis' Lois did, because one day not long ago she stepped on it accidentally, when she was in Nita's room. The bell buzzed in my room and I come up to answer it, and Nita explained it to Mis' Lois."

So that was why no attempt had been made to murder Nita while she slept!--Dundee told himself triumphantly. For of course it was more than probable that Lois Dunlap had innocently spread the news of Nita's nervousness and her ingenious method of summoning help instantly....

There was a knock at the door.

"Come in!... All finished, Carraway?... Fine! I'd like to see the prints as soon as possible, and now I'd like you to go over to the morgue with Lydia, and wait there until she has the body dressed in these clothes, and the hair done according to the instructions Mrs. Selim left.... I'll leave the posing to you, but I want a full-length picture as well as a head portrait."

As Lydia's work-roughened, knuckly hands were returning the funeral clothes to the suitcase, another question occurred to Dundee:

"Lydia, did you know, before I questioned you at the Miles home yesterday, that Sprague had returned for that bag he had left in the bedroom upstairs?"

Her scarred cheek flushed livid, but the maid answered with defiant honesty: "Yes, I did! He spoke to me through my bas.e.m.e.nt window just before you come running down to talk to me. He'd sneaked back, but he could tell from seeing your car outside that you was there, and he asked me to go up and get the bag and set it outside the kitchen door for him.

I said I wouldn't do it; it was too risky."

"Then you were pretending to be asleep when I entered your room?"

"Yes, I was! But I _had_ been asleep before Mr. Sprague called me. While you was ding-donging at me about Nita burning my face I heard Mr.

Sprague open the kitchen door. He had a key Nita had give him, so's he could slip in unnoticed if he happened to come when Nita had other company. He didn't hardly make any noise at all, but I heard it, because I was listening for it.... You'd left the door to the bas.e.m.e.nt stairs open, and my door, too, so I heard him."

"Did you hear him come down?"

"Yes, I did! There's a board on the backstairs that squeaks, and I heard it plain, while you was still at me, hammer and tongs," Lydia answered.

"He was in the house not more'n two minutes, all told, and when I figured he was safely out, I went upstairs with you to show you the presents I'd give Nita after she burnt me, to prove I'd forgive her."

"Why didn't you tell me, Lydia? Why did you protect Sprague? I know you don't like him," Dundee puzzled.

"I wasn't thinking about him," Lydia told him flatly. "I was thinking about Nita. I didn't want any scandal on her, and I knew what the police and the newspapers would say if they found out Mr. Sprague had been staying all night sometimes."

"Are you prepared to swear Sprague had time to do nothing but go up to the bedroom and get his bag?"

"I am!"

When Lydia and Carraway had left together, Dundee rose and addressed the district attorney:

"I'm going out to the Selim house now, to look for that secret hiding place where Roger Crain kept his securities, and which Judge Marshall evidently displayed to Nita, as one of the charms of the house when she 'rented' it."

"Why not simply telephone Judge Marshall and ask him where and what it is?" Sanderson asked reasonably.

"Do you think he'd tell?" Dundee retorted. "The old boy's no fool. Even if he didn't kill Nita himself and hide the gun there, my question would throw him into a panic of fear lest one of his best friends had done just that.... No, I'll find it myself, if it's all right with you!"

But after a solid hour of hard and fruitless work, Bonnie Dundee was forced to admit ruefully to himself that his parting words to the district attorney might have been the youthful and empty boast that Sanderson had evidently considered them.

For nowhere in the house Roger Crain had built and in which Nita Selim had been murdered could the detective find anything remotely resembling a concealed safe. The two plainclothesmen whom Strawn had detailed to guard the house and to continue the search for the missing gun and silencer looked on with unconcealed amus.e.m.e.nt as Dundee tapped walls, floors and ceilings in a house that seemed to be exceptionally free of architectural eccentricities.

Finally Dundee grew tired of their ribald comments and curtly ordered them to make a new and exhaustive search of the unused portions of the bas.e.m.e.nt--those dark earth banks, with their overhead networks of water and drain pipes, heavily insulated cables of electric wires, cobwebby rafters and rough shelves holding empty fruit jars and liquor bottles--which contrasted sharply with the neatly ceiled and cement-floored s.p.a.ce devoted to furnace, laundry and maid's room. Dundee himself had given those regions only a cursory inspection with his flashlight, for it was highly improbable that Nita Selim would have made use of a secret hiding place for her jewelry and valuable papers, if that hiding place was located in such dark, awesome surroundings.

No. The hiding place, if it really existed--and it must exist--had been within easy reach of Nita dressing and bedecking herself for a party, or Lydia Carr could not have been kept in complete ignorance of its location.

With that conviction in mind, Dundee returned to Nita's bedroom, to which he had already devoted at least half an hour. Nothing in the big clothes closet, where Flora Miles had been hiding while Nita was being murdered. No secret drawers in desk or dressing-table or bedside table.

No false bottom in boudoir chair or chaise longue.... He had even taken every book out of the four-shelf bookcase which stood against the west wall near the north corner of the room, and had satisfied himself that no book was a leafless fake.

His minute inspection of the bathroom and back hall, upon which Nita's bedroom opened, had proved as fruitless, although he had removed every drawer from the big linen press which stood in the hall, and measured s.p.a.ces to a fraction of an inch. As for the walls, they were, except for the doors, unbroken expanses of tinted plaster.

And yet--

He stepped into the clothes closet again, hammer in hand for a fresh tapping of the cedar-board walls. Nothing here.... And then he tapped again, his ear against the end wall of the closet--the wall farthest from the side porch....

Yes! There was a faintly hollow echo of the hammer strokes!

Excitement blazing high again, he took the tape measure with which he had provided himself on his way out, and calculated the length of the closet from end to end. Six feet....