Murder in the Gunroom - H. Beam Piper (digital ebook reader .TXT) 📗

accusing anybody,” Dunmore growled back at her. “I don’t know enough about it to make any accusations. All I’m saying is⁠—”

“Well, don’t say it, then, if you don’t know what you’re talking about,” his wife retorted.

In spite of this start, dinner passed in relative quiet. For the most part, they talked about the remaining chances of selling the collection, about which nobody was optimistic. Rand tried to build up morale with pictures of large museums and important dealers, all fairly slavering to get their fangs into the Fleming collection, but to little avail. A pall of gloom had settled, and he was forced to concede that he had at last found somebody who had a valid reason to mourn the sudden and violent end of Arnold Rivers.

Dinner finished, he went up to the gunroom and began compiling his list. He found a yardstick, and thumbtacked it to the edge of the desk to get overall and barrel lengths, and used a pair of inside calipers and a decimal-inch rule from the workbench to get calibers. Sticking a sheet of paper into the portable, he began on the wheel locks, leaving spaces to insert the description of the stolen pistols, when recovered. When he had finished the wheel locks, he began on the snaphaunces, then did the miguelet-locks. He had begun on the true flintlocks when Walters, who had finished his own dinner, came up to help him. Rand put the butler to work fetching pistols from the racks, and replacing those he had already listed. After a while, Dunmore strolled in.

“You say you found Rivers’s body yourself, Colonel Rand?” he asked.

Rand nodded, finished what he was typing, and looked up.

“Why, yes. There were a few details I wanted to clear up with him, and I called at his shop this morning. I found him lying dead inside.” He went on to describe the manner in which Rivers had met his death. “The radio and newspaper accounts were accurate enough, in the main; there were a few details omitted, at the request of the police, of course.”

“Well, you didn’t get involved in it, though?” Dunmore inquired anxiously. “I mean, you’re not taking any part in the investigation? After all, we don’t want to be mixed up in anything like this.”

“In that case, Mr. Dunmore, let me advise you not to discuss the matter of Rivers’s offer to buy this collection with anybody outside,” Rand told him. “So far, the police and the District Attorney’s office both seem to think that Rivers was killed by somebody whom he’d swindled in a business deal. Of course, they know about the collection being for sale, and Rivers’s offering to buy it.”

“They do?” Dunmore asked sharply. “Did you tell them that?”

“Naturally. I had to account for my presence at Rivers’s shop, this morning,” Rand replied. “I don’t know if the idea has occurred to them that somebody might have killed Rivers to eliminate a rival bidder for the collection or not; I wouldn’t say anything, if I were you, that might give them the idea.”

The extension phone rang shrilly. Walters picked it up, spoke into it, and listened for a moment.

“Yes, Miss Lawrence; he’s right here. You wish to speak to him?” He handed the phone across the desk to Rand. “Miss Karen Lawrence, for you, Colonel Rand.”

Rand took the phone. Before he had time to say “hello,” the antique-shop girl demanded of him:

“Colonel Rand, you must tell me the truth. Did you have anything to do with Pierre Jarrett’s being arrested?”

“What?” Rand barked. Then he softened his voice. “No; on my honor, Miss Lawrence. I knew nothing about it until this moment. Who did it? Olsen?”

“I don’t know what his name was. He was a State Police sergeant,” she replied. “He and another State Policeman came to the Jarrett house about half an hour ago, charged Pierre with the murder of Arnold Rivers, and took him away. His mother phoned me about it a few minutes ago.”

“That Goddamned two-faced Jesuitical bastard!” Rand exploded. “Where are you now?”

“Here at my shop. Mrs. Jarrett is coming here. She’s afraid the reporters will be coming out to the house as soon as they hear about it, and she doesn’t want to talk to them.”

“All right. I’ll be there as soon as I can. If there’s anything I can do to help you, you can count on me for it.”

He hung up, and turned to Walters. “Is my car still out front?” he asked. “It is? Good. I’ll be gone for a while; tell the others I have something to attend to.”

“What’s happened now?” Dunmore asked sourly.

“Just what I was speaking about. The Gestapo gathered up Pierre Jarrett; they seem to have gotten the idea, now, that the motive may have been competition for the collection. Next thing, Farnsworth will think he has a case against Carl Gwinnett, and he’ll land in the jug, too. I hope you realize that every time something like this happens, it peels a thousand or so off the price I’ll be able to get for you people for these pistols.”

Dunmore didn’t try to ask how that would happen, for which Rand was duly thankful; he accepted the statement uncritically. Walters was staring at Rand in horror, saying nothing. Rand picked up the outside phone and dialed the same number he had called from the Rivers place that morning.

“Is Sergeant McKenna about?⁠ ⁠… He is? Fine; I’d like to speak to him.⁠ ⁠… Oh, hello, Mick; Jeff Rand.”

McKenna chuckled out of the receiver. “Sort of slipped one over on you, didn’t I?” he gloated. “Why, I was checking up on those people who were at Gresham’s, last evening, and they all agreed that young Jarrett and the Lawrence girl had left the party about ten. So I had a talk with Miss Lawrence, and she tried to tell me that Jarrett was with her at her apartment, over the antique shop, from about ten fifteen until about twelve, when another girl she rooms with got home from