Brooke was interrogated at police headquarters that afternoon. Inspector Fuller found him in his back office, dressing a small boy’s hand.
“All right, Jimmy,” he said. “And don’t fool with knives after this.”
The boy left, and Fuller went in. Young Brooke was putting away his dressings, his face sober.
“What’s this about Mr. Garrison being held, inspector?” he said. “I was just going over to see Jan. She’s taking it badly.”
The inspector did not relax.
“You’ve been holding out on us, doctor,” he said stiffly. “That’s a dangerous thing to do in a murder case.”
Brooke flushed. He still held a roll of bandage in his hand. He put it down on the table before he answered.
“All right. What’s it all about?”
“You were in Mrs. Fairbanks’s room at or about the time she was killed.”
“Why not?” He looked defiant. “She was my patient. I had a right to look at her. She’d had a good bit of excitement that night, and I didn’t go all the way in. I opened the door and listened. She was alive then. I’ll swear to that. I could hear her breathing.”
“Why didn’t you tell about it?” said the inspector inexorably.
Brooke looked unhappy.
“Sheer funk, I suppose. I told Jan, after it all came out, and she didn’t want me to. Not that I’m putting the blame on her,” he added quickly. “I was in a cold sweat myself. In fact, I still am!”
He grinned and pulling out a handkerchief mopped his face.
“I thought I had as many guts as the other fellow,” he said. “But this thing’s got me.”
He looked incredulous, however, when the inspector asked him to go with him to headquarters.
“What for? Are you trying to arrest me?” he asked suspiciously.
“Not necessarily. We’ll want a statement from you.”
“I’ve told you everything I know.”
He went finally, calling to the slovenly girl that he would be back for dinner, and slamming the door furiously behind him as he left the house. He was still indignant when he reached the inspector’s office. A look at the room, however, with the stenographer at his desk and Captain Henderson and the detectives filing in, rather subdued him.
“Third-degree stuff, I suppose,” he said, and lit a cigarette. “All right. I’m a fool and a coward, but I’m no killer. You can put that down.”
“No third degree, doctor. Just some facts. Sit down, please. We may be some time.”
They were some time. Before they were through he was white and exhausted.
“Did Janice Garrison know of the document in the safe?”
“Yes. Why drag her in? She hasn’t done anything.”
“She was fond of her father?”
“Crazy about him.”
“You knew that she was to inherit a considerable sum of money?”
“I did.”
“What were your exact movements, the night Mrs. Fairbanks was killed? While the nurse was downstairs boiling water?”
“I cleaned the hypo with alcohol. After that I looked in at Mrs. Fairbanks. She was breathing all right, so I went back to see Jan. I was there about five minutes. I went back and poured some coffee. I was drinking it when the nurse came up with the water.”
“At what time did you see Mrs. Garrison?”
He was startled.
“Mrs. Garrison! She wasn’t there. She didn’t come until the next day. Sunday.”
“She was there, doctor. She saw you coming out of her mother’s room.”
“Oh, God,” he said wretchedly. “So she was there, too. Poor Jan!”
But his story was straightforward. He had not seen Marian when he came out of Mrs. Fairbanks’s room. Later, however, as he poured the coffee, he had felt that someone was overhead, on the third floor. The glass chandelier was shaking. He had looked up the staircase, but no one was in sight.
They showed him the knife, and he smiled thinly.
“Never saw it before,” he said. He examined it. “Somebody did a rotten job of sharpening it,” he said.
“It seems to have answered,” the inspector observed dryly. “Have you ever done any surgery, doctor?”
“Plenty.”
“You could find a heart without trouble? Even in the dark?”
“Anybody can find a heart. It’s bigger than most people think. But if you mean did I stab Mrs. Fairbanks, certainly not.”
He explained readily enough his search and Jan’s for the combination of the safe.
“She knew the agreement was there. The old lady had told her. She was afraid it would incriminate her father. When nobody could open the safe I happened to think of the cards. Mrs. Fairbanks played solitaire at night. But maybe she didn’t. Jan believed she locked herself in and then opened the safe, and we thought the cards might have the combination. I’d seen them with pictures painted on the edges. You arranged them a certain way and there was the picture.”
“The idea being to get this document?”
“Well, yes. She was worrying herself sick. But the nurse was too smart for us. She locked the door.”
It was five o’clock before he was released, with a warning not to leave town. He managed to grin at that. He got out his wallet and some silver from his pocket.
“I could travel—let’s see—exactly five dollars and eighty cents’ worth,” he said. “I’ve just paid the rent.”
The inspector looked at Henderson after he had gone.
“Well?” he said.
“Could have,” said Henderson. “But my money’s on the other fellow. Garrison was broke, too, but he wouldn’t be without the alimony.”
“Why didn’t he have it reduced? It would have been easier than murder.”
“Still in love with the first wife,” said Henderson promptly. “Sticks out all over him.”
“Oh,” said the inspector. “So you got that, too!”
Alone in his office he got out the document he had shown to Garrison the night before, and studied it. Briefly it was an agreement written in the old lady’s hand, signed by Marian and witnessed by Amos and Ida, by which Marian’s alimony from her ex-husband was to cease on her mother’s death. “Otherwise, as provided for in my will, she ceases to inherit any portion of my estate save the sum of one dollar, to be paid by my executors.”
He had a picture of Mrs. Fairbanks writing that, all the resentment at Marian and the divorce and its terms in her small resolute body and trembling old hand. He put it back in his safe, along with the knife and Hilda’s contributions—a can of white paint, a pair of worn chauffeur’s driving gloves, a bit of charred rope, a largish square of unbleached muslin, and now a pack of playing cards. To that odd assortment he added the paper on which he had recorded the numbers of the new bills in Ida’s purse, and surveyed the lot glumly.
“Looks like Bundles for Britain,” he grunted.
He saw Eileen late that afternoon. She was in bed, untidy and tearful, and she turned on him like a wildcat.
“I always knew the police were fools,” she shrieked. “What have you got on Frank Garrison? Nothing, and you know it. I didn’t let him in through my window. I didn’t let anybody in. I was sick. Why don’t you ask the doctor? He knows.”
He could get nothing from her. She turned sulky and then cried hysterically. She didn’t know about Mrs. Fairbanks’s will. She had never heard of any agreement. What sort of an agreement? And they’d better release Frank if they knew what was good for them. She’d get a lawyer. She’d get a dozen lawyers. She would take it to the President. She would take it to the Supreme Court. She would—
This new conception of the Supreme Court at least got him away. He left her still talking, and when the maid let him out he suggested a doctor.
“She’s pretty nervous,” he said. Which was by way of being a masterpiece of understatement.
On the way downtown he thought he saw Hilda in one of the shopping streets, but when he stopped his car and looked back she had disappeared.
He might have been surprised, had he followed her.