The Death at Yew Corner Page 13

  Bea shot Lyon a quick glance as he followed Ramsey into the hall and toward the main stairwell.

  “What seems to be the difficulty?” Lyon asked as they followed Horace to the second floor.

  “I’m not sure. Horace has been on guard outside Serena’s room. Something has happened that makes him concerned.”

  They were led down the hallway and stopped before a door where a straight-backed chair was placed against a nearby wall. Lyon conjectured that this was where the bodyguard sat while Serena was in her room.

  A small trickle of water flowed through the slight crack between the door and the floorboards. Ramsey glanced at Horace. “Well?”

  “A few minutes ago I heard her run water in the bathtub. Then … look.” He pointed toward the trickle of water seeping over the hall carpeting.

  “Serena!” Ramsey pounded on the door. “Serena! Are you all right!” He pressed his ear against the door. “I can hear water running.”

  “I think you had better go in,” Lyon said.

  “Do you have a key, Horace?”

  “No, sir. She locks it from the inside.”

  “Serena!” Ramsey pounded on the heavy wooden door again. “Answer me!”

  “Break it in,” Lyon said to Horace.

  The large bodyguard nodded, looked at Ramsey for permission, and then threw his shoulder against the door. He bounced painfully back into the center of the hall. “Solid as hell.”

  “Get a crowbar or something from wherever the tools are kept.”

  “Yes, sir.” Horace moved quickly down the hall toward the stairwell.

  Lyon knelt and felt the seeping water with his finger. “Where’s the bath?”

  “It’s located right against the hall wall.”

  “This water is warm.”

  “What in hell’s going on?”

  Horace ran back down the hall followed by another man carrying a shotgun at port arms. The bodyguard held a hammer and chisel and stooped before the locked door and jammed the chisel between the frame and the panel. Hammer blow after hammer blow struck against the chisel as he separated a hinge from the door. When he was satisfied, he threw his bulk against the panel. The frame splintered as the door flew backward to slam against the wall.

  A thin film of water covered much of the entranceway flooring and was seeping out the door into the hall.

  Ramsey went into the bathroom and immediately stepped back into the hall. “Oh, my God!”

  Lyon went into the steam-filled room. The sunken tub’s rushing hot water faucet filled the room with clouds of moisture-laden warm air.

  The nude woman in the tub with the plastic bag tied over her head stared through the steam with unseeing eyes.

  11

  Lyon had seen it too often before. The caretakers of death were uniformed and efficient. They overflowed the room: police, ambulance attendants, the assistant medical examiner in a rumpled sport coat with leather patches on the elbows, and a tired Rocco Herbert.

  Lyon stood in the hallway leaning against the wall. He had spoken briefly to Bea, and she had remained downstairs with the others. Ramsey McLean was giving a statement to Jamie Martin further down the hall, while in the murder room Rocco gave directions to a police photographer.

  Nothing changed.

  The water overflowing the tub had been turned off, but the body wouldn’t be disturbed until pictures were taken and the doctor had made his initial inspection.

  It was apparent without a medical examination that she had died from suffocation—the death she feared most. Her distorted, fearful features imprisoned inside the transparent bag were more than Lyon cared to remember.

  The photographer finished taking his last shot and stepped away from the tub. His place was taken by the medical examiner who bent toward the body. Rocco motioned to Lyon with a cocked finger.

  “I’d like you to look.”

  “I already have.”

  “We’re about ready to move the body.”

  Lyon didn’t want to see it again. Probably the last thing in the world he cared to view again was the terror on Serena Truman’s face. Rocco motioned again and Lyon stepped into the bedroom and looked into the bath.

  The steam had cleared. Mud from police shoes streaked the tile floor. Serena was the same. The same as she would always be.

  “Her hands are tied with a short belt,” Rocco said. “It looks like it matches a dress in her closet.”

  “Time of death?”

  “Impossible to tell exactly,” the medical examiner snapped. “The hot water has kept the body temperature from falling. I may be able to tell something when I get her on the table and examine the contents of the stomach, but it won’t be accurate.”

  “A ball-park guess?” Rocco asked.

  “When was she discovered?”

  “A little after eight.”

  “When was she last seen?”

  “We’re not sure until we talk to everyone else, but Lyon saw her at five.”

  “The guard at the door tells me he heard her in here a little after eight.”

  “Then you got it,” the medical examiner said. “Eight or a few minutes after.”

  Rocco signaled to the medics standing in the hall. “You can have it.”

  Lyon turned away from the bathroom and walked slowly through the bedroom. It was a spacious room with a large king-sized, canopied bed along one wall. The far side of the room had been converted into a sitting area and contained a chaise longue, two easy chairs, and a desk. A dressing table, two bureaus, and a large walk-in closet with mirrored doors completed the furnishings.

  An officer was dusting furniture for prints. The bagged body was trundled from the bathroom and down the hall.

  Bedding had been turned down on one side of the bed and a pillow was indented. An open book lay facedown on the far side of the bed. Lyon bent to read the title, Creative Management. Silk pajamas lay in a heap by the side of the bed. They looked as if they had been carelessly dropped rather than stripped from the woman who had once worn them. There was a lamp and telephone on a night table.

  The room seemed undisturbed. A hostess gown with underthings and accessories was laid out neatly on the chaise longue. One of the large closet doors was partially ajar, but otherwise the clothing hung in neat lines. There was an open jewelry box on the dressing table with a diamond necklace on the tabletop. He bent over the necklace and saw that the setting contained more than a dozen diamonds of obvious quality.

  “That thing’s worth a bundle,” Rocco said from behind him. “It would be easy as hell for any burglar to rip the diamonds from the setting and fence them.”

  “Anything missing?”

  “Not that we can tell. We’ll do an inventory and talk to the hired help to make sure. My guess is that nothing’s gone.”

  “Then it’s not robbery?”

  “If it was, it would be the first burglar in my experience who tied a bag over the victim’s head and left a necklace like that.”

  “Perhaps whoever put the bag on her didn’t intend to kill her, but only meant to keep her quiet.”

  “You saw the look on her face. Do you believe that?”

  “No.” Lyon walked over to large French doors. He used his elbow to unlock the latch and push them open. They led to a narrow balcony that was obviously more ornamental than functional. He looked over the side of the building. It was a sheer drop of thirty feet. “Earlier there was a guard in the yard on this side of the building.”

  “Dumb bastard was still marching back and forth like a tin soldier when we arrived. A big guy carrying a loaded twelve gauge shotgun. We called him inside for a statement.”

  “Why don’t we talk to the guard who was outside the bedroom door?”

  “My idea exactly.” Rocco turned to Jamie Martin standing in the hall. “Get Horace in here.”

  Horace looked devastated when he entered the bedroom. Lyon recalled a tight television shot of a defensive football lineman after the loss of a close game. Horace
looked like he had lost a dozen close games.

  Rocco flipped a pad from his breast pocket. “Name?”

  “Horace Mandel.”

  “You worked for Serena Truman?”

  “I was her aide.”

  “Aide?” Rocco looked up from his notes. “Aide? Now, Horace.”

  “Guard. I used to work for one of the nursing homes, but she called me in to watch over her. She was worried someone was going to waste her. I guess she was right, wasn’t she?”

  “You were on guard at the door?”

  “From the time she came in here until just now when she left in the bag.”

  “Anyone come in or out?”

  “No one. I swear to God. No one. And I didn’t leave the door for one minute.”

  “To have a smoke? To go to the john? Not a minute?”

  “Not a second, except for when I went to get Mr. McLean at dinner.”

  “And the door was locked?”

  “From the inside.”

  “I’ll vouch for that,” Lyon said. “We had to break it in.”

  Rocco looked unhappy. He often did when faced with seemingly insurmountable problems. “All right, Horace. You’re telling me that you were on guard in the hallway at the only entrance to this room, and that there was also a guard in the side yard under the window?”

  “That’s the way we set it up for security reasons.”

  “Tell me what happened.”

  “That’s it, goddamnit! Nothing happened.”

  “You knew something was wrong. You were worried enough to go downstairs and get Mr. McLean.”

  “She came in here for a nap like she always did before dinner. Miz Truman didn’t drink. If they were having people in for cocktails, she would wait up here until dinner was served. I saw her getting ready for bed when I closed the door. She locked it from the inside. That was just after five.”

  “Then what?”

  “I keep telling you. Nothing.”

  “At eight?”

  “I heard her start the water in the tub. The pipes are in the wall near the hall and they’re old. They gurgle and make noise, you know.”

  “What time?”

  “Just after eight. The water kept running and running until in a while I saw some dribbling under the door. The tub ran over, you know.”

  “That’s when you went to get Mr. McLean?”

  “Right. We had to break the door down. You know the rest.”

  “I’ll talk to you later for a formal statement. Go downstairs and stay with the others. Send up the guard who was outside the house.”

  Horace left without a word. They heard him lumbering down the hall muttering under his breath. Rocco’s face was creased with questions. “How in hell did the son of a bitch who did this get in here?”

  “This is a strange house.”

  “I hope you’re not suggesting we sound all the walls and move the furniture to find some goddamn hidden entrance?”

  “I don’t think you’ll find one, but you had better try.”

  “I have the guard who was outside the window,” Jamie Martin said from the doorway.

  “You heard what happened,” Rocco said to the guard.

  “You know it.”

  “Did you see anything?”

  “Not a damn thing.”

  “When did you take your post outside the window?”

  “A few minutes before eight. That’s when we usually change shifts. All of us, that is, except Horace.”

  “You didn’t hear or see anything?”

  “Nothing. I noticed her light go on, that’s all.”

  “When was that?”

  “A couple a minutes after I came on duty. I took my post before eight, and when I was standing under the window, I saw the light flick on.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Naw. Except that Kurt is missing.”

  “Who the hell is Kurt?”

  “A guard dog. He was supposed to be turned over to me by the guy I took over from. He wasn’t there. They said he ran off and that was the last they saw of him.”

  “Okay, we’ll get your formal statement later. Stick around.” The fingerprint man finished and left with the outside guard. “Well?”

  “You’ve got a problem on your hands.”

  “Which means that the first order of business is to find out who of that bunch downstairs was missing at eight.”

  “No one was,” Lyon answered. “We were all in the living room having drinks. We all saw Ramsey answer the phone when Serena called.”

  “You’re sure of that?”

  “Verify it independently with Bea and the others.”

  “I’ll get statements from everyone. Right now my large Italian-Irish nose points toward Horace. He was the one sitting outside the door when the homicide occurred.” Rocco left.

  Lyon sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the wall. If he were a superstitious man, he might believe in emanations from the dead. Something intangible filled the room with the stench of death. He knew, rationally, that it was his own psychological creation, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that gripped him.

  She hadn’t been a very nice person. She had pursued power and wealth without compassion, but she had died a horrible death. They all had. From Bunting to Serena, the chain of bizarre murders had been brutal.

  He lay back on the bed and closed his eyes. There must be a pattern. There had to be direction behind what appeared to be random events.

  The Wobblies perched on the balcony parapet and looked at him with red eyes.

  “Easy enough for you guys to get up there, but how about a man?”

  They often didn’t answer if they didn’t have much to say.

  “What do you guys think about all this?”

  “Get off the evidence.”

  It wasn’t like the Wobblies to talk like that.

  “Damn it all, Lyon! We’ve got to seal off this room, and I don’t want to seal you in it.”

  Lyon’s eyes blinked open to see Rocco hovering over the bed. “Oh, sorry.” He swung his feet to the floor and noticed that the Wobblies had fled. “Find out anything?”

  “Sure. I found out that you guys were all belting down drinks when the lady was murdered.”

  “Then you’re positive of the time sequence?”

  Rocco looked tired. “Several people verify the time Ramsey McLean received a phone call from Serena as eight or near eight. The guard outside had just come on duty when the light came on, and that was eight. Horace, outside the door, if you can believe him, and we seem to have corroboration, heard the water.”

  “At eight.”

  “You’ve got it.”

  “Which seems to rule out everyone who was downstairs having drinks.”

  “But not ol’ Horace.”

  Lyon walked to the shattered bedroom door and bent to examine the lock. “The key’s still in the lock. From the inside.”

  “He might still have opened it from the outside.”

  “Not this door. Come take a look.”

  Rocco bent over the lock. It was an old, square affair with a large key inserted from the inside. A key inserted from the outside could not possibly move the tumblers without dislodging the inside key. “Great.”

  “Which would seem to mean that from eight until a very few minutes after eight, someone had to gain entrance into this room.”

  “Without passing a guard in the hall or being seen by the guard outside.”

  “And in that short time span he or she had to kill Serena and manage to escape undetected.”

  “The only person in this whole affair who has managed to pull off disappearing tricks like that is Marty Rustman.”

  “He’s not superhuman, Rocco.”

  “You’ll want to hear the statements and tour the grounds.”

  “I want to go home and go to bed. You can fill me in tomorrow.”

  “I’ll probably be here until then.”

  Lyon awoke to see streaks of pink across the sky o
utside the window. Some unusual noise had penetrated his subconscious and awakened him. The house was now silent with the quiet of early dawn.

  When it started again, he immediately recognized the sound.

  Bea sat bolt upright in bed. “Someone’s in the house.”

  “It’s my typewriter in the study.”

  “Does she have to start so early?”

  “Since we’ve been gone so much lately, I gave her a key.” He slipped on his robe and slippers and walked downstairs. Mandy Summers was bent over his manuscript trying to decipher a marginal note. “Good morning.”

  She whirled the desk chair to face him. Her body arched in fright as her hands reached up to ward off a blow. “Mr. Wentworth. I didn’t hear you come downstairs.”

  “I’m sorry I startled you.” He wondered how deep the fear ran in this woman. “Would you like coffee?”

  “That would be nice. I couldn’t sleep so I thought I’d get an early start. I hope that’s all right?”

  “As I said when you started, do it at your own pace.” He turned to leave.

  “I don’t sleep well. I always see him when I’m alone at night. It’s as if he were still here coming after me.”

  “He’s not here, Mandy. I’ll put coffee on.”

  He found Bea in the kitchen with the coffee pot already perking. She poured two glasses of juice and they sat in the breakfast nook.

  “I assume that’s Mandy in the study?”

  “She doesn’t sleep well.”

  “That woman is held together by very thin wires.”

  “I know, but I don’t see what more we can do for her.”

  A car pulled into the driveway. Bea leaned toward the window and pushed aside the curtain. “It’s Rocco. He looks terrible.”

  Lyon opened the back door and the police chief pushed grumpily past him. “I see some of us got some sleep last night,” he said as he glared at Lyon’s robe.

  “You’ve been out there all night?”

  “Every blessed minute of it. I had the state lab boys to keep me company. Got any coffee?”

  “Good morning, Chief Herbert,” Bea said with a warm smile.