Murder at Bridge | Page 7

already been over the room.... The Selim woman's bedroom," he
explained. "The room she was killed in."

"You have been on the job," Dundee complimented his former chief.
"Sure!" Strawn acknowledged proudly. "Can't be too quick on our
stumps when it's one of these 'high sassiety' murders. Dr. Price will be
here any minute now, and my men have been all over the premises,
basement to attic. Of course it was an outside job--plain as the nose on
your face--and we haven't found a trace of the murderer."
Although Mrs. Selim had taken the house furnished, it was obvious that
this big bedroom of hers was not exactly as the Crain family had left it.
A little too pretty, a little too aggressively feminine, with its chaise
longue heaped with silk and lace pillows, its superfluity of big and little
lamps, its bed draped with golden-yellow taffeta, its dressing table--
But he could not let critical eyes linger on the triple-mirrored vanity
dresser. For on the bench before it sat a tiny figure, the head bowed so
low that some of the black curls had fallen into a large open bowl of
powder. She was no longer wearing the brown silk summer coat whose
open front had given him a glimpse of pale yellow chiffon.
He saw the dress now, a low-cut, sleeveless, fluffy affair, but he really
had eyes only for the brownish-red hole on the left side of the back of
the bodice, about halfway between shoulder and waist--a waist so small
he could have spanned it with his two hands, including its band of
fuchsia velvet ribbon. There also had been a bow of fuchsia velvet
ribbon on the lace and straw hat she had swung so charmingly less than
five hours ago.
"Shot through the heart, I guess," Strawn commented. "Took a good
marksman to find her heart, shooting her through the back.... Funny
thing, too. Nobody heard the shot--leastways none of that crowd
penned up in the living room will admit they did. They'll all hang
together, and lie like sixty to keep us from finding out anything that
might point to one of their precious bunch! But if a gun with a Maxim
silencer was used, as it must have been if that whole crew ain't lying,
the gunman musta been good, because you can't sight with a Maxim
screwed onto a rod, you know."

"Have your men found the gun?" Dundee asked.
"Of course not, or I'd know whether it had a Maxim on it or not,"
Strawn retorted. "My theory is," he added impressively, "that
somebody with a grudge against this dame hired a gunman to hang
around till he got her dead to rights, then--plop!" and he imitated the
soft, thudding sound made by the discharge of a bullet from a gun
equipped with a silencer.
"Doesn't it seem rather strange that a professional gunman should have
chosen such a time--with men arriving in cars, and the house full of
women who might wander into this room at any minute--to bump off
his victim?" Dundee asked.
"Well, there ain't no other explanation," Captain Strawn contended.
"Outside of the fact that my men have gone over the whole house and
grounds without finding the gun, I've got other evidence it was an
outside job.... Look!"
Dundee followed the Chief of the Homicide Squad to one of the two
windows that looked out upon the driveway. Both were open, since the
May day was exceptionally warm, even for the Middle West. The
unscreened window from which he obediently leaned was almost
directly in line with the vanity dressing-table across the room.
"Look! See how them vines have been torn," Strawn directed, pointing
to a rambler rose which hugged the outside frame of the window. "And
look hard enough at the flower bed down below and you'll see his
footprints.... Of course we've measured them and Cain, as you see, is
guarding them till my man comes to make plaster casts of them.... Yes,
sir, he hoisted himself up to the window ledge, aimed as best he could,
then slipped down and beat it across the meadow."
"Then," Dundee began slowly, "I wonder why Mrs. Selim didn't see
that figure crouched in the window, since she must have been
powdering her face and looking into the middle of the three
mirrors--the one which reflects this very window?"

"How do you know she was powdering her face, not looking for
something in a drawer?" Strawn demanded truculently.
"For three reasons," Dundee answered almost apologetically. "First: her
powder puff, as I'm sure you noticed, is still clutched in her right hand;
second: there is no drawer open, and no drawer was open, unless
someone has closed it since the murder, whereas on the other hand her
powder box is