Charlie Chan The Silent Corpse, Page 2

  Looking like the archetype of all traditional New England spinster schoolmarm types, rugged and rawboned and cutting sharp of eye and jaw, she had taken the girl from the circle of the detective’s supporting arm and said to her, “I suppose I ought to whale the daylights out of you, but I’m too damned glad to see you for that.”

  Just the right mixture of iron reproof and love for her wayward niece. Lenore had dissolved in a flood of tears in Harriet’s arms and Harriet, looking at Chan over her niece’s shoulder, her own eyes suspiciously wet, had said, “I suppose I ought to thank you, Lieutenant, for merely doing your job. Few enough people do that nowadays.”

  Chan had been a detective lieutenant at the time. Although it was a good many years since, he and Harriet still faithfully exchanged Christmas cards with brief handwritten notes. Here and there, in that time, he had picked up bits of lore about Harriet Burdon MacLean, of which there was a good deal.

  Although she was a sister of Lionel, Lowell and Zachariah Burdon, none of their offspring ever called her Aunt Harriet. To do so was to invite crisp and crushing retort. To any who dared call her Aunt Hattie, punishment was more severe, usually involving a deduction from her sizable Christmas checks for those in the family, and permanent coventry for non-relatives with the ill judgment or ill luck to call her by this detested nickname.

  Her brothers might be the active heads of the clan, with Lionel chairman of the holding committee that made the conglomerate’s decisions - but Harriet had both voice and vote when polling time came, and her voice was listened to and her vote counted. She had a knack of smelling out impending economic setbacks in ample time for preventive action and her cynicism protected all around her from falling for promotional figures and figureheads alike.

  It was Harriet who ran the large and complex domestic side of the establishment and who ran it superbly as well. In more ways than one, she was the Burdon family conscience, usually wrapped in a flowered print dress as befitted her age and station in her own estimation. Harriet’s failure to insulate the Burdon Point main house fully against the hurricane was the first failure Chan had ever heard attributed to her.

  Somewhere, deep inside the detective, a little alarm light went on, a silent but insistent buzzer sounded. He looked at the youth called Armand Kent and said, “Were the windows open when you came in?”

  “You’d better believe it!” the youth replied. “It was as if someone had turned a fire hose on it.”

  “It was scary,” said Carol. “It was all the two of us could do to get the storm shutters closed.”

  Chan nodded, then asked, “Who gave the alarm?”

  “Daddy,” said Carol. “He was first one back from the chapel. He came running downstairs when we came in the house, calling for Harriet. When he saw us, he told us to get cracking while he called the servants.”

  Lenore said, “I wonder where Harriet is.” For a moment, worry clouded her grey green eyes. Then, shaking herself out of it, she said to Chan. “I’ll have one of the maids see to you. Come downstairs whenever you wish. Dinner at seven-thirty. Drinks first, should you wish.”

  “Thank you, Lenore,” said Chan.

  As they departed, Armand Kent regarded the detective briefly from the doorway. A half-smile curled his lips as he said, “We leave you all the wet towels you want.”

  Two servants, also well dampened by the invading storm just repulsed from inside the house, soon appeared and put things to rights. Wet towels were removed, dry ones substituted, toothbrush, toothpaste, shaving gear, lotion and a pair of silver-mounted ebony backed military brushes supplied.

  Since he had not had an opportunity to wash since leaving Honolulu, Charlie Chan decided to take a bath. It was too early to go downstairs, and there was much to think over. He shaved, then luxuriated in a scented tub and let the air dry him when the water had run out. When he emerged, wearing a Happi coat provided by his hostess, his eye was caught and held by the clean linen laid out on the bed.

  He paused momentarily.

  This was unfortunate, for the unseen and thus far unheard intruder took the detective’s moment of other-directed attention to slip out from behind the bathroom door and come at him from behind. The detective became aware of the fact that he was not alone a mere instant before two hands struck him just under the shoulder blades and, with a vigorous shove, sent him sprawling face downward across the big double bed, ploughing right through the clothing some invisible Burdon servant had so carefully laid out.

  The door was slammed shut behind his unseen attacker before he had a chance to lift his head and look around, and when he reached the door himself and peered cautiously through it, there was nothing of the intruder to be seen in either direction of the long hallway.

  Although he knew such a feeling was ridiculous, Chan felt a sense of guilt as he donned the rumpled but still relatively neat garments his hostess had provided for him. It was as if he were responsible for the rear attack that had sent him sprawling over them on the bed.

  What, he wondered as he dressed hastily, had the unidentified visitor been after? A good question, a very good question. But a good question was of little use without a good answer.

  In an effort to provide such an answer, the detective searched the room thoroughly before going downstairs. He found nothing untoward until, while searching the still soggy windowseat, he spotted a fragment of cloth sticking out ever so slightly from the casement crack just below the bottom hinge.

  Chan tried to pull it out without opening the window but the bit of fabric remained stubbornly in its crack. When he did open the window, the pounding of the storm against the heavy wooden hurricane shutters was almost frightening even to a lifelong Islands resident like Chan. After removing the small piece of cloth, he was glad to close the casement again.

  It was wet. It looked like a fragment torn from a dress. It was black and had a tiny flowered print pattern in subdued colors. It looked as if it might have been ripped from the sort of dress Harriet would have chosen to wear on her brother’s burial day.

  Had the intruder brought it into the room while Chan bathed? Or had he been looking for it to remove it? Or had his appearance had nothing to do with the scrap of cloth at all?

  Good questions, he thought wryly, in this case brought more good questions - not answers. As he went on downstairs, he decided to keep mum about the incident. But it continued to puzzle him throughout the meal.

  III

  BOTH DRINKS and dinner were of superlative quality, yet the conversation languished. The combination of the tragic death of the clan chief and the oppressive tropical storm from whose fury only the walls and roof insulated them kept the mood of the group restively depressed. A mildly bawdy joke, offered by young Armand Kent, fell flatter than flat even though the Reverend Jack Verdery, who had officiated at the simple service that afternoon, greeted it with a tolerant smile.

  There were seventeen at table, all but Charlie Chan, Dr. Smith and the Unitarian minister members of the Burdon family. Chan spent most of the meal in silence, enjoying the sharkfin soup, the exquisitely truffled half-wild pig, bred on the extensive grounds of Burdon Point, the garden fresh vegetables and salad and the papaya mousse that was served for dessert.

  During the meal, Chan amused himself by seeking to identify the relationships between those members of the Clan Burdon who seemed to him important, not merely rich - for all were wealthy beyond the dreams of less favored mortals. Of these, seven were present.

  Lowell Burdon sat at the head of the table. Beads of perspiration lined his round face and receding hairline, and his green eyes shifted from one face to another as though he expected his new role as clan chief to be challenged. Occasionally, he shifted his heavy bulk. He hardly touched his food.

  The chair at the south end of the table, facing that of Lowell Burdon was gapingly empty.

  It was usually occupied by Harriet MacLean, who had assumed the role of family hostess when Lionel Burdon’s wife left him years before, via the divorc
e route, for remarriage to a French title and residence in Fontainbleau. Even tonight, although Lowell’s plum pudding of a wife, Ellen should by rights have assumed this chair, she preferred to sit more modestly close to her husband.

  As Lenore remarked, sotto wee, when Chan mentioned its emptiness, “After all, Harriet may turn up at any moment, and Ellen could never face that.” He noted that Lenore called her parents by their first names rather than by the more usual parental titles.

  Of the young folk present, Carol was Zachariah Burdon’s vivid daughter, while Armand’s relationship the detective was unable to figure out. Following the death of his joke, the youth ate in sullen silence.

  Zachariah himself said little, for the most part bending his vivid red head to his food. Now and again his bright blue eyes would regard one of the other diners; seeming to skewer the object of his gaze as effectively as stiletto.

  Lowell Burdon looked preoccupied, even a trifle harried, and barely touched his food. Lenore’s husband, Davis Wilmot, ate, but more than once seemed to be suppressing audible symptoms of nervous indigestion.

  Chan sensed the presence of fear at the feast as he had sensed it earlier, both in chapel and in this same room while he conversed with Dr. Smith. He was speculating on its roots over a glass of Bisquit when he became aware that Armand Kent had asked him a direct question.

  It took him a moment to gather the lightly heeded tatters of what had been asked - “Inspector Chan, have you ever encountered a perfect crime?”

  There was a sudden silence in the room.

  Chan smiled and said, “Too, often, I fear - but too seldom with awareness. The perfect crime, by its very nature, is one which seems no crime at all. The moment the existence of crime is detected, it ceases to be perfect, whether the perpetrator pays for it or not.”

  Zachariah Burdon, draped by one elbow from the mantel with a huge inhaler of fine champagne, uttered an unexpected, “Bravo, Inspector! The best definition I have yet heard. But, since perfect crime remains undetected as crime, can we be sure that it exists?”

  “A point of casuistry,” said Chan. “It exists all around us to a frightening degree, if only indicated by the iceberg tip of detected crime.”

  “Satan lurks on every hand,” intoned the Reverend Verdery. Then, with a shudder, “I sound like a hellfire, old fashioned Congregationalist of the Cotton Mather genus rather than a presumably enlightened present-day Unitarian minister. But your reply stirred some atavistic ashes, I fear.”

  “I was speaking,” said Armand, “of the crime of murder.”

  The silence was so deep that Chan felt impelled to break it in a hurry. He said, “Murder, too, of course - no pun intended. How many physicians have signed certificates of death by natural causes in cases where they at least felt the seeds of suspicion?”

  “Hey, Charlie, leave me out of this!” said Dr. Smith, laughing. But his laughter came from the throat, not the diaphragm.

  “Cholly so solly,” Chan said. “Nothing personal, Li. Poisoning - either through the infliction of lethal substances into a victim’s body or the withholding of needed medicine - is such an easy way to dispose of an unwanted person. And, in all probability, the most common.”

  “We can’t cry wolf over every death certificate,” Dr. Smith protested.

  “Exactly,” said Chan.

  Lenore, on whom the duties of hostess seemed to have devolved in the continued absence of Harriet and the apparent inability of her mother to fill the breach, had had enough of the subject.

  She altered it abruptly, regarding her Uncle Zachariah, and said, “Zach, I’m worried about Harriet. If she were in the house, the servants, or one of us, would have found her. If she’s out, in this…” Lenore let it hang.

  As if to punctuate her concern, the hurricane outdid itself with a sudden rush and roar of even greater velocity and power of wind and water than it had yet manifested. The great solid house shuddered as if a gigantic cat had walked up its spine, then groaned rheumatically upon its firm concrete and steel foundations.

  Zachariah Burdon waited, his head cocked slightly to one side, his bright blue eyes hard and sharp in the soft light, until the great gust subsided. Then he said, “If she’s out in this, we shan’t find her tonight. If she is, she may have made it to her retreat.”

  He moved to a wall phone just inside the hall door, punched a series of buttons set in the panel while he held the handset to his ear. After waiting a moment, he hung up, dialed again, listened again in vain. He tried a third time, pushing different buttons, talked briefly with Willie, the butler who had met Chan in the hall on his return with Dr. Smith from the funeral services.

  “To the waiting room?” he said, “If she’s there, we can’t reach her. Service outside the house proper is malfunctioning.”

  Dr. Smith blinked behind his glasses, said, “I’ve been expecting a call from Hilo for over an hour. Do you suppose…?”

  “Not in Burdon Point ground,” said Zachariah, “When we had the phones reinstalled five years ago, they were set just there - in the ground, in cable casings of insulation fibre and zinc. But beyond our fences, I’d say the odds were ninety-nine to one they’re down and out somewhere.”

  Dr. Smith uttered a four-letter word which shocked no one. Under existing conditions, it seemed a quite suitable expression. Then Lenore spoke again.

  “Dave,” she said to her husband, “I think we should search the entire house, including the basements.”

  Davis Wilmot, a quietly handsome rust-colored man who had spoken little during the evening, said mildly, “But why would Harriet go to the basements?”

  “There could be any number of reasons,” Lenore insisted, her handsome gray-green eyes narrow. “Because of the storm, something for the household, anything.”

  Ellen Burdon, another quiet one, said, “Harriet was very fond of Lionel. I think she probably slipped off to be by herself for a while.”

  Lowell Burdon disagreed with his wife. “I think Lenore’s right, dear,” he said. “Of course Harriet is full of grief, but she’s not the type to hole up in a corner in a time of crisis. And this, what with Lionel’s death and the storm, is a time of double crisis.”

  “But searching the basements…” said Ellen Burdon in dismay. “That’s like searching the Catacombs in Rome.”

  “There’s another possibility nobody seems to want to consider,” said young Kent. “Something may have happened to her.”

  The room floated in shock at this expression of the eventuality nobody seemed to wish to consider. Then Zachariah Burdon drained his inhaler of brandy and put it down on the mantelpiece. He said, “Come on, Chan. If we’re going to do it, let’s get at it. You and I are the only trained investigators in the group.”

  “Very well.” Chan got to his feet. Such reluctance as he showed was feigned for reasons of tact rather than genuine. He wanted very much to look for Harriet, had been considering making the suggestion himself when Armand spoke up.

  “There’s no sense any of us going,” said Lenore, as Carol indicated her wish to go with the men by rising.

  “But I want to go,” Carol protested, her face losing much of its prettiness as her expression became a sullen pout. “What’s wrong with going?”

  “Oh, very well,” said Lenore, looking cross in turn.

  “Coming, Dr. Smith?” Zachariah asked.

  Dr. Smith, who had been across the room trying to make a trans-island phone call, put the instrument down. “All right, Burdon” he said. You were right about the lines. They’re down.”

  Zachariah gave an I-told-you-so shrug and led the way toward the rear of the huge house via hall, dining room and butler’s pantry beyond. Chan was next, then Lowell Burdon, then Dr. Smith, followed by the young couple and some of the other males present. Zachariah, pausing at a swinging pantry door, looked back at his troup, seemed to shudder, then looked down at the shorter detective inspector with an expression that said clearly, “We can’t expect much from this bunch.” />
  Yes, Chan thought, Zachariah Burdon was a trained investigator. He was also a trained executive officer both in combat and business, a rakehell adventurer with an instant computer brain, a man who had earned more millions for the Burdon clan than any other member. Yet he had never in his life won a Good Conduct Medal, nor had he been awarded a voting seat on the family board of directors and trustees. Zachariah had enlisted in the army the day after Pearl Harbor - in direct defiance of the clan. They had never forgiven him, or so it seemed.

  Following the rangy redhead as he led them down a narrow staircase, the detective wondered how deeply this last rare lack of recognition rankled - or if it rankled at all…

  The basements and sub-basements of the big house at Burdon Point were indeed an extensive catacomb, extending underground over an area greater than that of the house they served. They comprised a catacomb of steel and concrete, air conditioned and moisture controlled, power-fed by its own huge generators, a subterranean fortress built to resist the most destructive efforts of nature - or of man

  After moving slowly and carefully through what seemed like hundreds of yards of passages and looking into a score of storerooms and fuel storage banks, various engine rooms and living quarters, Chan said to Zachariah, “Very impressive, but who keeps it running?”

  “A very small staff,” said the former Marine colonel. “The machinery that runs Burdon Point is almost entirely automated. Frankly, I was against it when Lionel decided to install it. The plan seemed ruinously and needlessly expensive, even for us. But for once in his life, Lionel had the better vision.”

  Chan pondered the implications of this remark, then said, “I suppose it’s weatherproof.”

  “Charlie,” said Zachariah, “below ground, this house is proof against anything but a ten-point Richter scale earthquake and a direct hit by a megaton H-bomb.”

  They had become separated from the others, some of whom had followed the two young people, others the massive liveried back of Willie, the butler. Zachariah led the way into a silent control room which, to the detective, looked more like the control room of some as-yet undreamt of space ship. Banks of gauges and indicators lined three of the otherwise faceless steel walls. In front of the fourth was a massive control table or desk with banks of buttons and indicators.