The Winning Clue | Page 3

James Hay
or heard it: a dance at Maplewood Inn where she had been the undisputed belle; a novel she had liked; a big reception at the White House in Washington when, during the year of her d��but, the French ambassador had called her "the most beautiful American," and the newspapers had made much of it; an emerald ring she had worn; the unfailing good humour she had always shown in the tedious routine of nursing her sister--and so on, a mass of facts and impressions which were, simultaneously, a little biography of her and an unaffected appreciation of the way she had touched and coloured their lives.
Captain Greenleaf, with one of the plain-clothes men of his force, came hurrying up the steps. The crowd fell back, gave them passage, and closed in again.
"Nothing's been disturbed, captain," said Bristow.
"Where is she?" asked Greenleaf anxiously. He was not accustomed to murder cases.
He caught sight of the body on the sofa.
"God!" he said in a low tone, and turned toward the plain-clothes man:
"Come on in, Jenkins--you, too, Mr. Bristow."
The three entered the living room, and Greenleaf, with a muttered word of apology to the on-lookers, closed the door in their faces.
He, too, did what Bristow had done--put his fingers on the dead woman's wrist. He was breathing rapidly, and his hand shook. Jenkins stood motionless. He also was overwhelmed by the tragedy. Besides, he was not cut out for work of this kind. In looking for illicit distillers and boot-leggers, or negroes charged with theft, he was in his element, but this sort of thing was new to him. He had no idea of where to turn or what to do.
"She's dead," Bristow said to the captain. "The doctor says she has been dead a long time--hours."
"Where's the doctor?"
"Back there. Miss Fulton, the sister, is hysterical with fright."
"Who sent for the doctor?"
"I did. I asked one of the women here to telephone."
"Then I'll call the coroner."
He stepped through the open folding doors into the dining room and took down the receiver, looking, as he did so, at the body and its surroundings.
Bristow stooped down, picked up something from the floor near the sofa and dropped it into his vest pocket.
The doctor--Dr. Braley--returned as the captain hung up the telephone receiver.
"Miss Fulton is quieter now," he announced.
"Doctor," requested Greenleaf, "look at this body, will you? What caused death?"
Braley, a thin, quick-moving little man of thirty-five, bent over the dead woman, lifted one of her eyelids, and examined her throat as far as was possible without moving the head.
"She was choked to death," he gave his opinion. "Although the eyes are closed, you see the effect they produce of almost starting from their sockets. And the tongue protrudes. Besides, there are the marks on her throat. You can see them there on the left side."
"How long has she been dead?"
"I can't say definitely. I should guess about eight or ten hours anyway."
That staggered Greenleaf, the idea of this woman dead here in the front room of a bungalow on Manniston Road for eight or ten hours--and nobody knew anything about it! His agitation grew. He felt the need of doing something, starting something.
"How about Miss Fulton?" he asked. "Can I get a statement from her?"
"Not just yet. Give her a little more time to get herself together. Besides, she told me something about the--er--affair. Most remarkable statement--most remarkable."
"What was it?"
"She says," related Braley, "that she only discovered the dead body of her sister a few minutes before she was heard crying for help. Her sister, Mrs. Withers, went to a dance, one of the regular Monday night dances at the inn--Maplewood Inn. She went with Mr. Campbell, Douglas Campbell, the real estate man here. You know him. They left the house at nine o'clock last night. That was the last time Miss Fulton saw Mrs. Withers alive.
"In the meantime, Miss Fulton herself, who is under my orders to stay in bed all the time, was up and dressed so that she might spend the evening with a friend of hers from Washington. His name is Henry Morley. He left this house a little after eleven o'clock, and he left Furmville on the midnight train for Washington.
"Miss Fulton, thoroughly tired out, went to bed and was asleep by half-past eleven. As she has something which she uses when she wants a good sleep, she took some of it last night and did not wake up until after ten this morning. She didn't even hear her sister come in last night.
"When she awoke this morning, she called her sister. Amazed by receiving no answer, she got up to investigate. Mrs. Withers' bed had not been occupied. She then came in here and found the body."
"You mean to say," put in Bristow, "that this sick girl was here all
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