Free The Cases of Susan Dare by Mignon G. Eberhart

mind.
    Somehow she got through the confusion in the hall to Lieutenant Mohrn, and Jim Byrne was at her side. Both of them listened to the brief words she said; Lieutenant Mohrn ran rapidly upstairs, and Jim disappeared toward the dining room.
    Jim was back first. He pulled Susan to one side.
    “You are right,” he said. “The cook and the houseman both say that Marie was very strict about the monkey and that the monkey always obeyed her. But what do you mean?”
    “I’m not sure, Jim. But I’ve just told Lieutenant Mohrn that I think there should be a bullet hole somewhere upstairs. It was made by the second bullet. It is in the ceiling, perhaps—or wall. I think it’s in Jessica’s room.”
    Lieutenant Mohrn was coming down the stairway. He reached the bottom of the stairs and looked wearily and a bit sadly at the group there. At Caroline crumpled against the wall. At David white and taut. At Jessica, a rigid figure of hatred. Then he sighed and looked at the policeman nearest him and nodded.
    “Will you go into the drawing-room, please,” he asked Susan. “And you, Jim.”
    The doors slid together and, still wearily, Lieutenant Mohrn pulled out from his pocket a revolver, a long cord, a piece of cotton, and a small alarm clock.
    “They were all there hidden in the newel post at the top of the stairway. The carved top was loose as you remembered it, Miss Dare. And there’s two shots gone from the revolver, and there’s a bullet hole in the wall of Jessica’s bedroom. How did you know it was Jessica, Miss Dare?”
    “It was the monkey,” said Susan. Her voice sounded unnatural in her own ears, terribly tired, terribly sad. “It was the monkey all the time. You see, he was sitting there, stealing candy right beside Marie’s chair. He would have been afraid to do that if he had not known she was dead. And when Jessica entered the room he fled. When I thought of that, the whole thing fell together: the hot house, obviously to keep Marie’s body warm and confuse the time of death; everyone out of the house to permit Jessica to do murder; then this thing you’ve found—”
    “It’s simple, of course,” said Lieutenant Mohrn. “The cord fastened tight between the alarm lever and the trigger—the bit of cotton to pad the alarm. The clock is set for ten minutes after five. When did she hide it in the newel post?”
    “When I went down to telephone the police, I suppose, and David and Caroline were in Marie’s room.—I want to go home,” said Susan wearily.
    “Look here,” said Jim Byrne. “This sounds all right, Susan, but, remember, Marie couldn’t have been dead then. You heard her talk.”
    “I had never heard her speak before. And I heard the flat, dead tone of a person who has been deaf a long time. It was Caroline who actually solved the thing. And Jessica knew it. She knew it and at once tried to fasten the blame upon Caroline—to compel her to commit suicide.”
    “What did Caroline say?” Lieutenant Mohrn was very patient.
    “She said that she’d heard Marie speaking with Jessica in Jessica’s room behind a closed door. And that she’d gone straight on past that door to Marie’s room and found Marie sitting there. Caroline was confused, frightened, talked of astral bodies. Naturally, we knew that Jessica was—rehearsing—her imitation of Marie’s way of speaking.”
    “Premeditated,” said Jim. “Planned to the last detail. And your coming merely gave her the opportunity. You were to provide the alibi, Susan.”
    Susan shivered.
    “That was the trouble. She was sitting directly opposite me when the shot was fired upstairs. Yet she was the only person who hated Marie sufficiently to—murder her. It wasn’t money. It was hatred. Growing for years in this horrible house, nourished by jealousy over David, brought to a climax that was inevitable.” Susan smoothed her hair. “Please may I go?”
    “Then Marie was dead when you entered the house?”
    “Yes. Propped up by