The «Canary» Murder Case / Смерть Канарейки. Книга для чтения на английском языке - стр. 20

When this had been done, Dubois, Bellamy, and the photographer left us.

A few moments later, after an interchange of pleasantries, Inspector Moran also departed. At the door he passed two men in the white uniform of internes, who had come to take away the girl’s body.

Markham and Heath and Vance and I were now alone in the apartment. Dark, low-hanging clouds had drifted across the sun, and the gray spectral light intensified the tragic atmosphere of the rooms. Markham had lighted a cigar, and stood leaning against the piano, looking about him with a disconsolate but determined air. Vance had moved over to one of the pictures on the side wall of the living-room—Boucher’s “La Bergère Endormie,” I think it was—and stood looking at it with cynical contempt.

“Dimpled nudities, gambolling Cupids and woolly clouds for royal cocottes,” he commented. His distaste for all the painting of the French decadence under Louis XV was profound. “One wonders what pictures courtesans hung in their boudoirs before the invention of these amorous eclogues, with their blue verdure and beribboned sheep.”

“I’m more interested at present in what took place in this particular boudoir last night,” retorted Markham impatiently.

“There’s not much doubt about that, sir,” said Heath encouragingly. “And I’ve an idea that when Dubois checks up those finger-prints with our files, we’ll about know who did it.”

Vance turned toward him with a rueful smile.

“You’re so trusting, Sergeant. I, in turn, have an idea that, long before this touchin’ case is clarified, you’ll wish the irascible Captain with the insect-powder had never found those finger-prints.” He made a playful gesture of emphasis. “Permit me to whisper into your ear that the person who left his sign-manuals on yonder rosewood table and cut-glass door-knob had nothing whatever to do with the precipitate demise of the fair Mademoiselle[26] Odell.”

“What is it you suspect?” demanded Markham sharply.

“Not a thing, old dear,” blandly declared Vance. “I’m wandering about in a mental murk as empty of sign-posts as interplanetary space. The jaws of darkness do devour me up; I’m in the dead vast and middle of the night. My mental darkness is Egyptian, Stygian, Cimmerian—I’m in a perfect Erebus of tenebrosity.”

Markham’s jaw tightened in exasperation; he was familiar with this evasive loquacity of Vance’s. Dismissing the subject, he addressed himself to Heath.

“Have you done any questioning of the people in the house here?”

“I talked to Odell’s maid and to the janitor and the switchboard operators, but I didn’t go much into details—I was waiting for you. I’ll say this, though: what they did tell me made my head swim. If they don’t back down on some of their statements, we’re up against it.”

“Let’s have them in now, then,” suggested Markham; “the maid first.” He sat down on the piano-bench with his back to the keyboard.

Heath rose, but instead of going to the door, walked to the oriel window.

“There’s one thing I want to call your attention to, sir, before you interview these people, and that’s the matter of entrances and exits in this apartment.” He drew aside the gold-gauze curtain. “Look at that iron grating. All the windows in this place, including the ones in the bathroom, are equipped with iron bars just like these. It’s only eight or ten feet to the ground here, and whoever built this house wasn’t taking any chances of burglars getting in through the windows.”