"Charlie Chan - 7402 - The SIlent Corpse" - читать интересную книгу автора (Chan Charlie)

Chan nodded, said, "I take it Lionel Burdon was against going public?"
"Dead against it," Harriet winced at her own unfortunate choice of words.
"And you?"
Again hesitation, then, "I can see both sides and I flatter my self I'm not too old to fear change that may be inevitable. But after what has happened, I'm not going to cast my vote in favor of anyone who is willing to kill to put it through."
"How can you cast your vote if you're not at the meeting?" the detective asked.
"Don't worry about that, Charlie," said Harriet. "The meeting is hopelessly deadlocked. I'll sit tight until I can make my vote count the most."
"But how can you know?"
Harriet's smile was almost smug. She said, "I ought to keep you on the hook for the sheer satisfaction of baffling the great Charlie Chan. But it's simple enough if you think about it. Who has been managing the household and staff all these years?"
Chan understood, said, "The servants."
"Of course. The footman assigned to the boardroom reports to Willis. And Willis reports to me."
As she spoke, the house phone buzzed. Three rings, then two. Harriet rose briskly to answer it, listened, nodded, then hung up. "Still deadlocked," she said, "and about to adjourn until evening. You notice we're using your code."
"Glad to have modest role in espionage project," said Chan. Then, letting the pidgin lapse, "Now, Harriet, can you tell me who are the leaders of the go-public faction?"
"I can try," she said, resuming her seat in the rocker with a wince, adding, "My body feels as if a troop of cavalry had just ridden over it. I guess I'm not as rugged as I used to be."
"Who is?" said the detective.


VII

"ZACHARIAH is probably the leader of the go-public faction," said Harriet Burdon MacLean. "And Lenore's for it, which means Davis Wilmot, too, in all probability. Lowell's against it and so far I've held out."
"Since Zachariah has no vote, with Lowell and Ellen and you on the stay-private side, I should think you'd be able to swing it either way with your vote alone," said Chan.
"It's not that simple, Charlie." Harriet shifted the pillow behind her to ease her discomfort. "I didn't say Ellen was against the go-public move."
Chan's eyebrows rose. "You mean, she's going against her husband?"
"It's not uncommon in this situation," said Harriet. "Actually, I don't know. Ellen was strong for staying private until about six weeks ago. Since then, she has simply clammed up."
"How is she voting in today's meeting?"
"Thus far, she has not cast a vote," Harriet told him. "If she goes for the change when she does vote, then I'll have to go in and vote against her."
"What about Wilmot?"
"Poor Davis! He won't be given his seat until the issue is decided without him. That's in the new member bylaws." She shook her kerchiefed head, added, "It looks now as if he'll have to wait another day or two - perhaps till another meeting."
"Has there ever been violence in the family before?" Chan inquired.
"Not in my lifetime," said Harriet. "If there was any earlier, it was carefully concealed."
Chan said, "What made you suspect foul play in your brother's death? Surely, it was not merely a hunch based on knowledge of his character that caused you to have me sent here."
"Hunch and knowing Lionel were strong factors," said Harriet. "But there was something else. A purely negative factor, Charlie, one that took a day or two to seep out of my subconscious. You'll probably laugh at me..."
She paused. Charlie Chan waited patiently.
Finally, she said, "Well, I told you I was in the living room watching the old movie on TV. Lionel was with me when I turned it on. He said he'd seen it before and that it bored him. Then he went to his study to work. When I went in to wake him up after the picture was over, he was beyond waking."
"So...?" said Chan.
"So, I may have been interested in the film, but, Charlie, I would have heard the sound of a shot. Think it over."
The house phone gave its coded rings. Painfully, Harriet got up to answer it, brushing off the detective's offer of help. When she hung up, she said, "Meeting adjourned until after dinner." Then she hobbled back to her chair.
Chan said, "I thought the room was soundproofed."
"Not the study. The boardroom beyond it is. It's directly over the shooting gallery and the control room in the basement. They're contained in a soundproofed shaft two stories high."
"Inner citadel," said the detective.
"Exactly," said Harriet. She reached for the purely medicinal highball at her elbow and the detective knew that it was time to depart. What Harriet had told him was vital and there was much he had to know before he took any final action.
The first person he wanted to see was Willis. He found the big butler quietly polishing a magnificent sterling silver punchbowl in a special room off the pantry. In his shirtsleeves, Willis was even more imposing than in full livery, since the impressive width and depth of his shoulders was revealed without benefit of padding.
Gravely, Willis laid down his chamois cloth, donned his blue and gold coat and took the detective on another tour of the basement - a briefer one than Zachariah had conducted the previous evening.
Chan wanted to check out the environment of the "suicide" and did so. He was particularly interested in a circular, in-a-closet staircase that connected a corner of the shooting gallery with the boardroom overhead. It offered access by which anyone could have entered the boardroom from the basement, gone into the study next door, shot Lionel Burdon and returned as he - or she - had come.
But this failed to solve the problem of the shot unheard by Harriet Burdon MacLean... unless the victim had been killed, not in his study but either in the soundproofed boardroom next door or the gallery below. Chan was certain by now that it was murder, but he was a long way from being able to prove it, even to his own personal satisfaction, much less that of a court of law.
He decided it was time to beard Dr. Smith again to mine out of him whatever factor of doubt he was witholding.
Instead, Chan was collared by Zachariah Burdon just as he reached the living room door.
"Charlie," said the former Marine Corps Colonel, "I want to talk to you. Let's go to my room."
It was more command than request, but the detective decided to play along. He was still notably unclear about several aspects of Zachariah's role in the recent tragic events that had plagued and were continuing to plague the mighty Burdon family.
Zachariah's suite was on the lee or landward side of the big house, opposite that where Chan and the other visitors and lesser family members were billeted for the duration of the still howling hurricane. It consisted of a sizable living room, separated from a bedroom beyond by a dressing room and bathroom that faced one another on opposites sides of a brief corridor.
A quarter-circular bar had been built into a corner of the living room and Zachariah led the way there, put the detective on a red leather stool and said, "Name your poison."