Free Murder a la Richelieu (American Queens of Crime Book 2) by Anita Blackmon Page B

eyes in the back of her head,” she said.
    “As a matter of fact,” remarked the inspector wearily, “not one of you has an ironclad alibi from seven-thirty to eight, which is as near as we can fix the hour of the crime.”
    “How absurd!” I protested. “I was in the lobby continuously from dinner until I discovered the body.”
    “Provided he was dead when you discovered him,” murmured the inspector. “There seems to be quite a hiatus between the time you went up in the elevator and the time your screams aroused the hotel, Miss Adams.”
    “I-I was shocked, unable to scream, unable to do anything for some minutes,” I stammered.
    “Who wouldn’t have been?” demanded Ella angrily.
    The inspector made some little dots on his notebook. “How long would you say it was, Miss Adams, after you found the lifeless body of Mr James Reid swinging from the chandelier in your suite before you remembered to scream?”
    “I don’t know,” I said shortly. “I had other things to think of than preparing a timetable for the police.”
    Again the inspector submitted us all to a prolonged scrutiny.
    “Where were you, Mrs Mosby, during the fatal hour?” he asked softly.
    “In my room.”
    “Alone?”
    “Yes.”
    “On the fourth floor?”
    “Y-yes.”
    “And you, Mrs Lawson?”
    “Alone in my room.”
    “Also on the fourth floor?”
    “Yes.”
    The inspector shook his head. “No,” he said, “none of you who were present in the house at the time of the crime has an alibi for the suspect interval. That is why I had you detained, why I am compelled to regard each of you with more or less suspicion.”
    “Don’t be a fool!” cried Dan Mosby furiously. “We didn’t even know the man. Permanent guests in a hotel like this never pay any attention to transients. They’re here today, gone tomorrow. Why pick on us because a man happens to get knocked off in a public house in which we happen to live? Ten to one you’ll find he was followed here by somebody who had good cause to kill him. Maybe he’s a gangster or a sneak thief.”
    “No,” said Inspector Bunyan, “he wasn’t followed here nor is he a gangster or a sneak thief, and he didn’t just happen to get knocked off. The man was coldly and brutally murdered by” – he paused impressively – “someone who has been living in this hotel for quite a while.”
    “Then the police know who he is?” I gasped.
    Inspector Bunyan glanced at me curiously. “Don’t you, Miss Adams?”
    “What do you mean, by someone who has been living here quite a while?” interrupted Sophie tremulously. She tried to draw herself up. “We do not have murderers as house guests, Inspector.”
    He frowned. “The man was a private detective, Mrs Fancher.”
    “Detective!” she whispered.
    Across the room Kathleen Adair put her hand over her mother’s lips, and Lottie Mosby swayed.
    “Yes,” said Inspector Bunyan, “the late James Reid was head of a well-known private detective agency in St. Louis. I identified him at a glance.”
    “But what was he doing here?” I asked in a voice I hardly recognized.
    The inspector picked up a yellow slip of paper off the table. “As soon as I recognised Reid, I telegraphed his office. This is their reply,” he said.
    He cleared his throat and then read in a clear concise voice the following telegram:
    “REID ENGAGED BY UNKNOWN CLIENT FOR SECRET INVESTIGATION AT RICHELIEU HOTEL STOP CLIENT INSISTED ON KEEPING IN THE DARK STOP REID USUALLY WAITED WEEK TO HAND IN HIS REPORT STOP WE DON’T KNOW A THING EXCEPT THEY SEEM TO HAVE GOT HIM FIRST STOP.”
    “Secret investigation!” gasped Sophie.
    The inspector smiled wryly. “Reid’s speciality was shadowing people, uncovering evidence for divorce suits and so forth. It’s been suggested he was not above doing a little left-handed blackmailing on his own account.”
    “Blackmail!” I repeated weakly.
    None of the others said anything. They were staring at the inspector or at