Death Before Bedtime Read online

  “It would give Pomeroy another reason for wanting to kill your father.”

  “So, after fifteen years, he decides to be a jealous husband because of something which happened before he met Camilla? Not very likely, darling. Besides, he had just about all the motive he needed without dragging that sheep in. You know, Peter, I think you’re probably very romantic at heart: you think love is at the root of everything.”

  “Go shove it,” I said lapsing into military talk; I was very put out with her … also with myself: the Pomeroy business didn’t make sense … it almost did but not quite. There was something a little off. The motive was there but the situation itself was all wrong. You just don’t kill a man in his own house with your own weapon right after having a perfectly open quarrel with him over business matters. I was sure that Mrs. Pomeroy was involved but, for the life of me, I couldn’t fit her in. I began, rather reluctantly, to consider other possibilities, other suspects.

  “But I love it,” said Ellen cozily. “It shows the side of you I like the best.” And we tussled for a few minutes; then, recalling that in the next few hours I would have to have some sort of a story for the Globe, I disentangled myself and left Ellen to her Scotch.

  As I walked down the hall, the door to Langdon’s room opened and he motioned for me to come in. The presence of the plain-clothes man at the other end of the hall, guarding the study, made me nervous: he could see everything that happened on the second floor.

  Langdon’s room was like my own, only larger, American maple and chintz, that sort of thing. On the desk his typewriter was open and crumpled pieces of paper littered the floor about it: he had been composing, not too successfully.

  “Say, I hope I didn’t bother you … my being in Miss Rhodes’ room like that.” He was very nervous.

  “Bother me?” I laughed. “Why should it?”

  “Well, your being engaged to her and all that.”

  “I’m no more engaged to her than you are. She’s engaged to the whole male sex.”

  “Oh.” He looked surprised; I decided he wasn’t a very worldly young man … I knew the type: serious, earnest, idealistic … the sort who have wonderful memories and who pass college examinations with great ease.

  “No, I should probably apologize to you for barging in like that just as you were getting along so nicely.” He blushed. I pointed to the typewriter, to change the subject. “Are you writing your piece?”

  “Well, yes and no,” he sighed. “I called New York this morning and asked them what they wanted me to do now: they sounded awfully indefinite, I mean, we never write about murders … that’s hardly our line. On the other hand, there is probably some political significance in this, maybe a great deal, and it would be quite a break for me if I could do something about it … a Huey Long kind of thing.”

  “I used to work on the Globe,” I said helpfully. “But of course we handled crime differently. You’re right, I suspect, about the political angle but it won’t be easy to track down.”

  “I’m sure of it,” said Langdon with sudden vehemence. “He was a dangerous man.”

  “How long did it take you to figure that out?”

  “One day, exactly. I’ve been here four days now … in that time I’ve found out things which, if you’d told me about them, I would never have believed possible, in this country anyway.”

  “Such as?”

  “Did you see the names of some of those people supporting Rhodes for President? Every fascist in the country was on that list … every witch hunter in public life was backing his candidacy.”

  “You must have suspected all that when you came down here.”

  Langdon sat down on the bed and lit a cigarette; I sat opposite him, at his desk. “Well, naturally, we were on to him in a way. He was a buffoon … you know what I mean: an old-fashioned, narrow-minded demagogue always talking about Americanism.… Now our specialty is doing satirical articles about reactionaries … the sort of piece that isn’t openly hostile, that allows the subject to hang himself in his own words. You have no idea how easy it is. Those people are usually well-protected, by secretaries … even by the press … people who straighten their grammar and their facts, make them seem more rational than they really are. So what I do is take down a verbatim account of some great man’s conversation, selected of course, and publish it with all the bad grammar and so on. I thought that’s what I’d be doing here but I soon found that Rhodes wasn’t really a windbag, after all. He was a clever man and hard to trap.”

  “Then you found out all about his candidacy?”

  “It wasn’t hard.”

  “Where did you see those names? the names of the supporters?” The memory of the indignant Rufus Hollister browbeating Lieutenant Winters was still fresh in my memory.

  Langdon looked embarrassed. “I … happened to find them, see them, I mean … in the Senator’s study.”

  “When he wasn’t there?”

  “You make it sound dishonest. No, he asked me to meet him there day before yesterday; I got there before he did and I, well …”

  “Looked around.”

  “I was pretty shocked.”

  “It’s all over now.”

  He mashed his cigarette out nervously. “Yes, and I might as well admit that I’m glad. He could never have been elected in a straight election but you can never tell what might happen in a crisis.”

  “You think that gang might have invented a crisis and tried to take over the country?”

  He nodded, looking me straight in the eye. “That’s just what I mean. I know it sounds very strange and all that, like a South American republic, but it could happen here …”

  “As Sinclair Lewis once said.” I glanced at the sheet of paper in the typewriter. A single sentence had been written across the top: “And therefore think him as a serpent’s egg Which, hatch’d, would as his kind grow mischievous, And kill him in the shell.” Langdon was suddenly embarrassed, aware that I was reading what he had written. “Don’t look at that!” He came over quickly pulled the sheet of paper out of the typewriter. “I was just fooling around,” he said, crumpling the sheet into a tight ball and tossing it into the wastebasket.

  “A quotation?” I asked.

  He nodded and changed the subject. “Do you think Pomeroy did it?”

  “Killed Rhodes? I suppose so. Yet if he was going to kill the Senator why would he have used his own 5-X, throwing suspicion on himself immediately?”

  “Anybody could have got at the 5-X.”

  “Yes but …” A new idea occurred to me, “Only Pomeroy knew how powerful one of those cartons of dynamite would be. Anybody else would be afraid of using something like that, if only because they might get blown up along with the Senator.”

  Langdon frowned. “It’s a good point but …”

  “But what?”

  “But I’m not so sure that Pomeroy didn’t explain to us that afternoon about the 5-X, about the cartons.”

  I groaned. “Are you sure he did?”

  “No, not entirely … I think he did, though.”

  “Yet isn’t that peculiar?” I was off on another tack. “Just why should he want to talk about his stuff in such detail?”

  We talked for nearly an hour about the murder, about Ellen, about politics.… I found Langdon to be agreeable but elusive; there was something which I didn’t quite understand … he suggested an iceberg: he concealed more than he revealed and he was a very cool number besides. At last, when I had set his mind at ease about Ellen, I left him and went downstairs.

  In the living room I found Ellen and Mrs. Rhodes, pale but calm; they were talking to a mountainous, craggy man who was, it turned out, Johnson Ledbetter, the Governor of Senator Rhodes’ home state.

  “I flew here as quick as possible, Miss Grace,” he said with Midwestern warmth, taking Mrs. Rhodes’ hands in his, a look of dog-like devotion in his eyes.

  “Lee would have appreciated it,” said Mrs. Rhodes, equal to the occasion. “You’ll say
a few words at the funeral tomorrow?”

  “Indeed I will, Miss Grace. This has shocked me more than I can say. The flag on the State Capitol back home is at half-mast,” he added.

  As the others wandered into the room, Ellen got me aside; she was excited and her face glowed. “They’re going to read the will tomorrow, after the funeral.”

  “Looks like you’re going to be a rich girl,” I said, drying my sleeve with a handkerchief … in her excitement she had slopped some of her Scotch Mist on me. “I wonder if the police have taken a look at it yet.”

  She looked puzzled. “Why should they?”

  “Well, darling, there’s a theory going around that people occasionally get removed from this vale of tears by overanxious heirs.”

  “Don’t be silly. Anyway tomorrow is the big day. That’s why the Governor’s here.”

  “To read the will?”

  “Yes, he’s the family lawyer. Father made him Governor a couple of years ago. I forget just why … you know how politicians are.”

  “I’m beginning to find out. By the way, have you gotten into that Langdon boy yet?”

  “What an ugly question!” she beamed; then she shook her head. “I haven’t had time. Last night would have been unseemly … I mean after the murder. This afternoon I was interrupted.”

  “I think he’s much too innocent for the likes of you.”

  “Stop it … you don’t know about these things. He’s rather tense, I’ll admit, but they’re much the best fun … the tense ones.”

  “What a bore I must’ve been.”

  “As a matter of fact, you were; now that you mention it.” She chuckled; then she paused, looking at someone who had just come in. I looked over my shoulder and saw the Pomeroys in the doorway. He looked pale and weary; she, on the other hand, was quite lovely, her attack of grippe under control. The Governor greeted them cordially. Ellen left me for Walter Langdon. I joined the Governor’s group by the fireplace. For a while I just listened.

  “Camilla, you grow younger every year!” intoned the Governor.

  Mrs. Pomeroy gestured coquettishly. “You just want my vote, Johnson.”

  “How long are you going to be with us, Governor?” asked Pomeroy. If he was alarmed by the mess he was in, he didn’t show it; except for his pallor, he seemed much as ever.

  Mrs. Rhodes excused herself and went in to the dining room. The Governor remarked that he would stay in town through the funeral and the reading of the will; that he was flying back to Talisman City immediately afterwards: “Got that damned legislature on my hands,” he boomed. “Don’t know what they’ll do next.” He looked about him to make sure that no members of the deceased’s family were near by; then he asked: “How did your session with the Defense Department go?”

  Pomeroy shrugged. “I was at the Pentagon most of the day … I’m afraid the only thing they wanted to talk about was the … accident.”

  “A tragical happening, tragical,” declared the Governor, shaking his head like some vast moth-eaten buffalo.

  Pomeroy sighed: “It doesn’t do my product much good,” he said. “Not of course that I’m not very sad about this, for Mrs. Rhodes’ sake, but after all, I’ve got a factory back home which has got to get some business or else.”

  “How well I know, Roger,” said the Governor with a bit more emphasis than the situation seemed to call for. I wondered if there was any business connection between the two. “We don’t want to swell the ranks of the unemployed, do we?”

  “Especially not if I happen to be one of the unemployed,” said Roger Pomeroy dryly.

  “I always felt,” said his wife who had been standing close to the Governor, listening, “that Lee’s attitude was terribly unreasonable. He should’ve done everything in his power to help us.”

  “What do you mean?” asked the Governor.

  Pomeroy spoke first, quickly, before his wife could elaborate. “Lee didn’t push the 5-X as vigorously as I thought he should, that’s all … that was one of the reasons I came to Washington on this trip … poor Lee.”

  “Poor Lee,” repeated Mrs. Pomeroy, with real sincerity.

  “A great statesman has fallen,” said the Governor, obviously rehearsing his funeral oration. “Like some great oak he leaves an empty place against the sky in our hearts.”

  Overwhelmed by the majesty of this image, I missed Pomeroy’s eulogy; the next remark I heard woke me up, though. “Have you seen the will yet?” asked Mrs. Pomeroy, blowing her nose emotionally.

  The Governor nodded gravely. “Indeed I have, Camilla. I drew it up for Lee.”

  “I wonder …” she began, but then she was interrupted by the appearance of Lieutenant Winters who joined us at the fireplace, bowed to the Governor and then, politely but firmly, led Mr. Pomeroy into the dining room. Interviews, I gathered, had been going on for some time. The Governor detached himself from Camilla Pomeroy and joined Miss Pruitt on the couch and, considering the “tragical” nature of the occasion, both were quite boisterous, talking politics eagerly.

  My own interview with the Lieutenant took place right after he had finished with Pomeroy. I sat down beside him in the dining room; the table was brilliantly set for dinner, massive Georgian silver gleaming in the dim light. Through the pantry door I could hear the servants bustling about. The usual plain-clothes man was on hand, taking notes. He sat behind Winters.

  It took me several minutes to work my way past the Lieutenant’s official manner; when I finally did, I found him troubled. “It won’t come out right,” he said plaintively. “There just isn’t any evidence of any kind.”

  “Outside of the explosive.”

  “Which doesn’t mean a thing since anybody in this house, except possibly you, could have got to it.”

  “Then you don’t think Pomeroy was responsible?”

  Winters played with a fork thoughtfully. “Yes, I think he probably was but there’s no evidence. He had no motive … or rather he had no more motive than several others.”

  “Like who?”

  A direct question was a mistake I could see; he shook his head, “Can’t tell you.”

  “I’m beginning to find out anyway,” I said. I made a guess: “Rufus Hollister,” and I paused significantly.

  “What do you know about him?” Winters was inscrutable; yet I had a feeling that I was on the right track.

  “It seems awfully suspicious his wanting to get into the Senator’s office. I have a feeling there’s something in there he doesn’t want you to find.”

  Winters stared at me a moment, a little absent-mindedly. “Obviously,” he said at last. “I wish I knew, though, what it was.” This was frank. “We’re still reading documents and letters. It’ll take us a week to get through everything.”

  “I have a hunch you’ll find your evidence among those papers.”

  “I hope so.”

  “None of the press has been let in on this yet, have they?”

  Winters shook his head. “Nothing beyond the original facts. But there’s a lot of pressure being brought to bear on us, from all over.” I was suddenly sorry for him: there were a good many disadvantages to being mixed up in a political murder in a city like Washington. “That Pruitt woman, for instance … she was in touch with the White House today, trying to get out of being investigated.”

  “Did it work?”

  “Hell no! There are times when the law is sacred. This is one of them.”

  “What about the will?” I changed that subject.

  “I haven’t seen a copy of it yet. The Governor won’t let us look at it until tomorrow … says he ‘can’t break faith with the dead.’ ”

  “You may find out something from that, from the will.”

  “I doubt it.” The Lieutenant was gloomy. “Well, that’s all for now,” he said at last. “The minute you turn up anything let me know … try and find out as much as you can about the family from Miss Rhodes: it’d be a great help to us and might speed things up.”

  “I
will,” I said. “I’ve already got a couple of ideas about Hollister … but I’ll tell you about them later.”

  “Good.” We both stood up. “Be careful, by the way.”

  “Careful?”

  He nodded grimly. “If the murderer should discover that you were on his tail we might have a double killing to investigate.”

  “Thanks for the advice.”

  “Think nothing of it.” On a rather airy note, I went back to the company in the drawing room. My mind was crowded with theories and suspicions … at that moment they all looked like potential murderers to me. Suddenly, just before I joined Ellen and Walter Langdon, I thought of that quotation I had found in his room, the one he had snatched away from me. I also remembered where it came from: my unconscious had been worrying it for several hours and now, out of the dim past, out of my prep school days, came the answer: William Shakespeare … the play: Julius Caesar … the speaker: Brutus … the serpent in the egg: Caesar. There was no doubt about it. Brutus murdered the tyrant Caesar. It was like a problem in algebra: Senator Rhodes equals Julius Caesar; X equals Brutus. X is the murderer. Was Walter Langdon X?

  CHAPTER THREE

  1

  I went to bed early that night. At dinner I drank too much wine and, as always, I felt bloated and sleepy. Everyone was in rather a grim mood so I excused myself at ten o’clock and went off to bed. I would have no visitors, I decided: Ellen was at work again on young Langdon and I was quite sure that they would be together, finishing what I had interrupted that afternoon.

  I awakened with a start. For a moment I thought there was someone in the room and by the dim light of a street lamp I was positive that a figure was standing near the window. My heart racing, a chill sweat starting out on my spine, I made a quick lunge for the lamp beside my bed; it fell to the floor. Positive that I was alone in the room with a murderer, I jumped out of bed and ran to the door and flicked on the overhead light.

  The room was empty and the figure by the window turned out to be my clothes arranged over an armchair.

  Feeling rather shaky, even a little bit unwell, I went into the bathroom and took some aspirin. I wondered if I had caught Camilla Pomeroy’s grippe; I decided that the wine had made me sick and I thought longingly of soda water, my usual remedy for a hangover. It was too late to ring for the butler. According to my watch it was a little after one o’clock, getting near the hour of the Senator’s death, I thought as I put on my dressing gown, ready now to go downstairs in search of soda.