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

”

Heath was not entirely free from the same vague misgivings that were disturbing Vance, for he turned to Dubois and said:

“You might go over the knob, Captain. As this gentleman says, there’s something funny about the condition of that closet.”

Dubois, silent and surly, went to the closet door and sprayed his yellow powder over the inside knob. When he had blown the loose particles away, he bent over it with his magnifying-glass. At length he straightened up, and gave Vance a look of ill-natured appraisal.

“There’s fresh prints on it, all right,” he grudgingly admitted; “and unless I’m mistaken they were made by the same hand as those on the table. Both thumb-marks are ulnar loops, and the index-fingers are both whorl patterns. … Here, Pete,” he ordered the photographer, “make some shots of that knob.”

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.

Chapter V. The Bolted Door

(Tuesday, September 11; 10.30 a.m.)

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 Berg?re 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.