The Shadow 288 by Maxwell Grant

Author:Maxwell Grant
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

XI.

IT wasn’t pleasant sitting in the company of a murderer. What made it worse was not knowing who the murderer was.

Such was the situation when Commissioner Weston finished his grilling of the suspects. Alan Fenway had a good enough explanation for the note and thereby tossed the question of a murder right around the circle.

“I didn’t write that note to Vera,” admitted Alan, after a show of reluctance. “It was my daily note to Joy, and I put it on her dressing table.”

“Then why didn’t I find it?” sputtered Joy, angrily, “or did you forget which room was mine?”

Alan shook his head and relaxed in his chair. Like the rest, he was sitting at a table which the commissioner had brought to the center of the stage.

Commissioner Weston turned to a new arrival, his ace inspector, Joe Cardona. When Cardona was on the job, Weston forgot all about asking opinions from Cranston, except when Joe was stumped. So far, the inspector wasn’t.

Pokerfaced, Cardona turned to Joy and asked bluntly:

“Didn’t you find that note, Miss Trevose?”

“Not until I saw it in Vera’s hand,” returned Joy. “No, not until then.”

“And when was that?”

“Why, after Alan pointed to the knife.”

“You’re sure you didn’t see it before?”

“Before when?”

“Before Miss Scharn was murdered, for instance.”

Joy’s eyes blazed anew with the flare that they had recently acquired. Before she could speak in her own behalf, Harthorne boomed an interruption:

“This is outrageous, accusing Joy of murder!”

“I’m not accusing,” retorted Cardona. “I’m just asking.”

“Then ask something else,” stormed Harthorne. “What motive could Joy have in murdering Vera Scharn?”

“Professional jealousy, maybe.”

“But Vera was only Joy’s understudy.”

During this debate between Harthorne and Cardona, Margo was making frantic faces at Cranston, only to receive a gesture that meant to wait. No matter what Margo might supply in reference to the case, Cranston preferred to hear it later.

“Murderers have sometimes planted evidence on their victims,” observed Cardona, coolly. “The rule might apply in this case. For all we know, Joy might have found Vera cutting the rope, and decided upon revenge on your account, Harthorne.”

It was a neat trick, intended to excite Joy into some unguarded statements, but Harthorne blocked it.

“There was blood on the rope,” he reminded, “so Vera couldn’t have cut it - and Joy wouldn’t.”

“Maybe not,” conceded Cardona, “unless she’d changed her mind and was liking Alan here instead of you.”

It was Harthorne’s turn to purple, but he managed to restrain himself. Harthorne gave a forced laugh.

“You’ll be accusing me next,” he declared, “only it won’t go, Inspector. Most everybody saw Vera after I had taken my place in my usual chair; at least they’d seen her go to her dressing room.”

Commissioner Weston put in a few words.

“We’ve eliminated you, Harthorne,” he declared, “so don’t try to be facetious. You couldn’t have killed Vera any more than Verne could have” - Weston gestured toward the character actor, then waved his hand at an upward angle - “because he was up in his third tier dressing room and couldn’t have come down or gone up.

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