Patrick stopped by our hired car. Jane Mallory and I walked under the arching lilacs to the dining room entrance. She went on into the living room and I waited in the dining room for Pat. He was carrying the cyanide jar Amelia had removed from Uncle Victor’s cabin.
I said, “If Jane Mallory is guilty, weren’t you letting me take a chance alone with her outside?”
“I was never far away,” Patrick said.
“Somebody came out of the house. Somebody went to a car parked in the front drive.”
“I know,” Patrick said. “Did Jane say anything that throws any light on the murders?”
“No. I asked her if she was ever in love with Seth. She says no. She says he’s good and kind, like Bart Wayne. She says she’s going to see that the provisions of the will are carried out and then deed back everything left over to Mrs. Mallory. She says that it’s Mrs. Mallory’s money, really. She concedes that Dick must have been murdered, now that the nurse is dead. She doesn’t seem worried for herself.”
“She’d better be,” Patrick said.
He went along to the kitchen and I went into the living room. Uncle Victor was prancing up and down fingering a book here, a knickknack there. He was too excited to settle himself with his usual elegant dignity. Bart Wayne sat listening to him with a quizzical look of pleasure on his good-looking face. I perched for a moment on a sofa arm.
“There is nothing more beautiful in the whole world than the gossamer-jeweled spider webs of early morning,” Uncle Victor announced, after nodding to me with pompous courtliness. “I would take nothing for my recent years of interesting adventure and experiment with the genus Arachnidae. But I am too old to settle down to writing a book on spiders. The opportunity came too late. I find myself dreaming once again of the casinos. Monte Carlo. Deauville. Marrakech.”
“Roger,” Bart said, smiling. “I’m for that, aren’t you, Jane?”
“I am indeed,” Jane said. “Uncle Victor must spend the money as he likes. As Dick said.”
“What will you do with all those spiders?” I asked practically.
“They will go free, my dear.”
“The black widows, too?”
Uncle Victor waved his little hands.
“But of course. What are my few when there are everywhere so many? There is no need to be afraid of a poisonous spider. The important thing is to keep out of her way.”
That was, of course, always the point. If you kept out of danger your chances were better than if you ran head on into it.
“I must phone again for that ambulance. I don’t know what the delay is about,” Bart said, and got up to go to the telephone. I excused myself, leaving Uncle Victor and Jane Mallory, and went to join Patrick in the kitchen.
The nurse lay in the same position on the floor. Her skin was now splotched with bright pink. Her eyes were wide open and staring. King leaned against the sink with his arms folded. The skin of his knuckles was raw and red from the fight with Seth Godwin. King had a number of bruises on his face.
Seth Godwin occupied a high kitchen stool. His black eye and ruffled red hair accentuated the sullenness of his usually pleasant face. On seeing me he barked at King, “Cover the face, for God’s sake.”
King jerked around, saw me, and hastily spread a clean linen dishtowel over the dead face.
Patrick was standing by a table on which sat the jar of cyanide from Uncle Victor’s cabin. Jane Mallory’s handbag was there, along with a white capsule, and a small traveling case initialed J.M., which stood open disclosing a scattering of white crystals from another broken capsule of the same kind. Near these exhibits was an icebox dish with the remains of the burnt almond sponge, now a messy, sorry-looking sight.
King spoke to me first.
“Have you been with Jane Mallory, Mrs. Abbott?”
“Yes. I left her in the living room with Uncle Victor.”
“What went on before that?”
“Nothing. We walked along the drive and back. My husband was either with us or near by.”
“You didn’t notice her destroying more evidence?”
I glanced at Patrick. His eyes gleamed as he shook his head.
“No. We just walked. She seemed happy to get outdoors a few minutes.”
“I don’t wonder,” King said, dryly. “I wish the ambulance would come and take that away. You still working for Jane Mallory, Abbott?”
“No. She doesn’t want help.”
“She’s nuts. Bring her here, will you, please? I’ve been waiting till they took that away, but maybe it’s just as well for Jane Mallory to see a sample of her work. Eh, Doc?”
Seth looked as if he were going to paste King another one. I felt frightened, because the police special .38 lay near King’s right hand. I walked over to Seth and pulled up another kitchen stool beside the table of exhibits. His profile was toward me. He looked ill. And King was angry and upset because of the beating Seth had given him.
Bart Wayne knocked and came in.
“Ambulance is on the way, Lieutenant.”
“About time. I wish you’d stick around a few minutes, Wayne.”
“Here?”
“Yes. We’ll have this thing wrapped up in a jiff now. Stand over there by Doc Godwin. Don’t touch the stuff on the table, please.”
Bart was standing close enough to Seth Godwin to grab him if he started anything more. I saw Seth’s eyes tighten and his jaw harden. He looked ferocious with that black eye when he sensed that Bart was there to guard him.
Bart looked formidable, too. It seemed a shame to set two old friends against each other, but King was alone here, his deputy being stationed outside the house.
As Jane entered with Patrick, King stooped and snatched the towel from the spotted dead face.
Jane gasped and recoiled.
“Not so nice to look at, is she, Mrs. Mallory?”
Jane asked in a small voice, “But why should I have to, please?”
“Cover that face, King!” Seth gave it as an order.
“I’ll handle this,” King replied.
Seth had got off the stool. “You and I are used to the dead, Lieutenant.”
“Sure thing. Sit down. Not you, Mrs. Mallory. You stand until I give you permission to sit.” He covered the dead face. “It is my duty to remind you again, Mrs. Mallory, that anything you say will be taken down as evidence. The rest of you must consider that it is your duty to assist me in every possible way. To fail to answer frankly and honestly a law enforcement officer’s questions is obstructing him in the performance of his duty. All evening the members of this family and their neighbors and friends have continually disobeyed orders. There’ll be no more of it. Is there anyone here who can take shorthand?”
“I can,” Jane Mallory said, calmly.
King frowned. He eyed me.
“Mrs. Abbott? Your husband tells me that you often act as his secretary.”
Patrick gave me a go ahead sign. With a heavy heart, I chose a chair and took the notebook I carry in my big handbag.
“The nurse died because cyanide crystals were sprinkled on that dish of food. Go to the table and look at the stuff, Mrs. Mallory.”
Jane walked to the table. Patrick moved, so that she was still at his arm’s length. She’s guilty, I thought. They’ve got her. Pat thinks so, too.
“Did you get that, Mrs. Abbott?”
“What you said, Lieutenant? Yes.”
King went toward the table. He stepped back and put the pistol in his belt.
He pointed at the white capsule.
“Ever see anything like this before, Mrs. Mallory?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“It looks like the sedative capsules Dr. Godwin always prescribed for Dick Mallory.”
“Know where we found it, Mrs. Mallory?”
“No.”
“It was in your handbag.”
“In my bag? Why?”
“Suppose you tell us how it got there.”
“I can’t tell you,” Jane said, with perfect composure, though her skin had turned a faint pink.
King kept her standing. He now had perched himself on another kitchen stool, careful to keep his face toward Seth. The other men stood. Seth looked stiff with anger and Bart Wayne was even angrier if anything. Patrick regarded the scene with a diffidence which made me boil. I supposed that I had to write it down exactly as King said or I would be said to be obstructing justice, but I certainly didn’t like my assigned task.
King pulled up one leg and slapped his arms around the knee.
“All right, Mrs. Mallory. Let’s take it from the start. Tell me exactly what happened in that room upstairs.”
Jane said, quietly, “I’ll do my best, Lieutenant. I entered the room with Mr. Wayne. My husband was sitting against a number of pillows. He seemed asleep. The nurse was standing beside a chest of drawers writing in her chart. I hardly noticed her. I was watching my husband. He looked very bad. He had obviously been very ill. I went to his bedside, took off my hat, and put it with my bag on one chair and pulled up a second and sat down.”
She was getting it wrong as before. The sequence was wrong. And she had omitted anything more about Bart Wayne, who quickly reminded King that he had gone into the room and crossed to the bedside ahead of her. Jane went on then with the talk, total recall again, and this time I wondered if she had memorized it. It was too perfect. King listened intently until she finished.
“You took off your hat before he grabbed your hands?”
“Oh, yes.”
“You’re sure?”
“How could I have taken off my hat with both wrists held as if by steel bands?”
“Then how did you give him the capsule?”
“He had released my hands by that time. A weak spell had come on him. He asked for the medicine. I asked if I should get the nurse back. She had gone out. I was only half-aware that she had left the room at all.”
“Why?”
“Why?” Jane snapped it out. “The emotional strain of seeing my husband in that condition was pretty bad, Lieutenant. I certainly wasn’t thinking about the nurse.”
“Which is probably why she saw you switch the capsules.”
Jane said, more pink in her face now, “I didn’t switch the capsules. I gave him the one on the table. I put it in a spoon and after he swallowed it I held water to his lips. He drank it.”
“And died instantly?”
“No. He talked to me for a minute or two.”
“What did he say?”
“That’s extremely personal, Lieutenant, but I daresay it is my duty to tell you. He spoke more quietly than before. He asked me to come back to him. He said he had got control of his own money again by promising his mother to marry Denise Clarke, but he implied that he didn’t want her. He said he would never drink again. I said we could talk later and started to leave the room. He said I couldn’t like working in an office again. I said I did like it.”
Jane paused. She rested one hand against the table.
“As I walked away he spoke strangely, I mean in a strange voice. I thought the sedative was working. I went out.”
“What were his last words?”
Jane thought, “Who’s keeping you, kid?” She said, “I won’t tell you that, Lieutenant. It’s better that no one knows.”
King’s grim eyes met hers. She didn’t waver and he sensed she wouldn’t. I looked at my notes. I won’t tell you that, I thought.
King regarded her as if inspecting her. He said, “You dropped the good capsule, which is the medicine, into your handbag …”
Seth Godwin said, “Anybody could have put the capsule in her bag, Lieutenant.”
“That’s true,” Bart Wayne said. “It stood in the living room all evening whether she was there or not.”
King passed them both by.
“How did the cyanide capsule, which has broken open, get into your traveling case?”
Jane frowned. She glanced at Bart, who said, “The ease was in my car, Lieutenant. My car was not locked.”
“Was the case locked, Mrs. Mallory?”
“No. I expected to go away very soon, you see. Mr. Wayne was to drive me to a hotel.”
“Where you planned to get rid of both the spare cyanide and the good capsule.”
Jane stood very straight.
“Lieutenant King, if I had done that awful thing, these awful things, if I were that kind, all I would have had to do was flush away the cyanide and the good capsule, too, in the bathroom toilet. I went to the bath to wash up after leaving my husband. I did not know he was dead until the nurse, who passed me on the stairs, screamed down. I couldn’t believe it even then.”
“And the one in your traveling bag? What about that one?”
Jane was silent.
King said, “Your story is full of holes. For one, nobody could talk as much as you say your husband did after taking the cyanide.”
“That would depend,” Seth Godwin said.
Jane threw Seth a grateful glance, caught Bart’s eyes, and smiled faintly at his signal to sit tight. You’ll win, he seemed to say.
King spoke to Seth Godwin, “The nurse said something about the capsule being the last in the bottle.”
Seth nodded.
“Yes. She had telephoned me to bring more. They’re by prescription and I have a new bottle in my medicine case.”
King pricked up his ears.
“A new one? How many capsules are in the new bottle, Doc?”
“Twelve.”
“Where is your case?”
“It’s in the living room, behind the sofa.”
“Bring it, will you please, Mr. Abbott. That will do, Mrs. Mallory. But don’t leave the house again even to go into the yard.”
There was a car coming along the drive. The ambulance. When it had taken away the nurse’s body, Seth Godwin searched out the bottle of sedative capsules. One was missing.