by Leslie Ford
“See who’s there, will you, my dear? I really don’t feel like seeing anyone.”
She bent down herself to pick up the letters, but not before I saw that each of them—every one—was addressed to Peyton Candler.
I went to the door. It was the colored maid Rosie with a brown earthenware pot of tea and some toast on a silver tray.
“Tell Miss Isabel Ah done what she tol’ me,” she whispered, handing me the tray, “an’ there weren’t no more.”
I closed the door.
“Rosie says to tell you she did what you told her,” I said, putting the tray down on her table, “and that there weren’t any more.”
The letters were nowhere in sight. Miss Isabel closed her eyes for a moment.
“I’m so glad!” she whispered. Then she opened her eyes and looked at me. “Did my brother happen to show you the old copy of the Gazette he had?” she asked, in a tone of purely polite conversation.
“Yes,” I said.
“You’re very fond of Jeremy, aren’t you, my dear?” she asked then, without the slightest indication that the subject had been abruptly abandoned.
I nodded.
“I think it would be awfully nice if the papers don’t get hold of that,” she remarked. “My brother had an unusual sense of humor. I think it would distress Roger too.”
“Did it . . . amuse you?” I asked, brazenly.
“I’d forgotten about it, my dear. And of course, we had no idea Roger was in love with the child. They’d grown up together. I can see now that the police might say my brother’s feeling about Judge Candler had eaten into Roger’s heart. But that’s nonsense, Mrs. Latham. I think my brother was really fond of the Candler children.”
There was one point that genuinely puzzled me, and I thought I might as well bring it up now as ever. “How does it happen, Miss Doyle, that Judge Candler never seemed to know Mr. Doyle felt the way he did about him?”
“My dear,” she said, “Peyton’s a child in many ways. Look at the way Karen had him fooled. And my brother had a fine sense of people, he really had. The only trouble was, he didn’t realize that there’s an end to all things . . .”
She looked terribly distressed again, so much so that I could have slain myself for bringing the point up.
“My dear,” she went on then, “there’s one thing that must be done, it must really. I don’t want the police to know who came here last night.”
As I simply couldn’t tell her about the cat, I just sat there.
“Do you think you could mail a letter for me—without their finding it out, and without yourself reading the address . . . even by chance?”
For a moment I almost told her that I’d already—quite by chance—seen the address, but I couldn’t bear to do it, some way. I nodded. “I’ll do my best,” I said.
She got up and turned her back to me. When she turned again she had a small brown paper bag in her hand, the kind you get things in in a department store. She gave it to me. “Put it in your pocket. They won’t search you, will they?”
“They’d better not try,” I said. I put it in my pocket. “—Do you think it’s wise?” I asked.
She nodded, in her vague way. Then she went to the door and stood there, listening. She came back and put her hand lightly on my arm.
“I loved my brother very dearly, Mrs. Latham,” she said. “I promised him I’d never communicate with certain people again. I’m only breaking that promise for Roger.”
“All right,” I said. I hadn’t, of course, the faintest notion of what she meant.
She kissed my cheek.
“Will you ask Captain Fox if Rosie can take Roger his lunch?”
I nodded and went out. As I came down the stairs the hall was empty. Roger, I thought, could jolly well eat jail bread and water for lunch. I didn’t want Colonel Primrose’s black snapping parrot eyes X-raying my pocket and stopping me well before I got out. I hurried, as quickly as I could without appearing to, out the front door and down the steps, and crossed the street. I got in my car. As I turned on the motor the Candlers’ door opened and Mr. Pepperday came out, Mrs. Harris after him, rubbing against his legs. He shooed her back and came down the steps.
“May I give you a lift,” I asked.
He stopped, looked at me penetratingly, screwed his spectacles back up on his nose, and said shrilly, “Thank you very kindly, miss.” He got in the car and sat very primly, both little feet on the floor, one brown wool-gloved hand holding his green baize bag on his lap, the other clutching the window ledge. If he’d had another hand to hold his hat on with I’m sure he would have used it. I moved off slowly, got up at last to a dashing twenty, and crept around the corner into Duke Street.
“Have you been with Judge Candler long?” I asked, more by way of getting his mind off the hazards of modern locomotion than anything else.
“Fifty years, man and boy,” he said briefly. “With the Colonel and the Judge.”
“How is he taking Mr. Doyle’s death?” I asked, as we crossed King Street.
Mr. Pepperday, to my shocked surprise, cackled suddenly for all the world like an amused bantam rooster.
“With . . . fortitude,” he said, in his high treble. “Yes, I think I may say with fortitude.”
He cackled again, and as I couldn’t think of anything to say offhand, we went on in silence. I drew up in front of the Judge’s office, and looked back at the police station. Poor Roger, I thought. I hoped he was taking his misfortunes with fortitude. I opened the door for Mr. Pepperday. He clambered out as if he thought I was very likely to start up before he got to the sidewalk.
It seemed to reassure him that I didn’t, for he turned back after he’d sprung clear and said, “You’ll be interested to know, miss, that the key has been returned.”
I was so startled that I moved my foot off the clutch and stalled my engine.
“The importance of the key,” he went on, with a kind of shrill stiffness, “was not to establish any possible connection between . . . this office and Miss Lunt’s house.”
If he thought he had cleared anything up in my mind, he was quite wrong. I stared at him. Was it the Candlers he was trying to protect . . . or was it himself?
“A great many people come in and out of the office.—But I shouldn’t want the police to think we’d been negligent in protecting our tenant.”
He lifted his hat. “Good morning, miss. I’m going to my dinner. I have it at eleven-thirty every day. I find being regular in my habits is a great comfort.”
“Do you always retire at eight o’clock?” I asked.
“Invariably, miss. In my opinion people only get into trouble, staying up after the time nature appointed for them to retire.”
They certainly had the last few days, I thought, getting started again. I drove across King Street to Duke Street, turned right and slowed down in front of the handsome new post office on the corner. I got out, hurried up the broad steps and in the door, and went across to the letter chute. And just as I put my hand in my pocket and pulled out Miss Isabel’s paper bag of letters, I felt a large cold shadow across me.
I turned to find myself staring at the enormous roughhewn façade of Sergeant Phineas T. Buck. My stricken eyes travelled up the frozen vastness and quailed under the viscid fishy glint pinioning me against the chute.
“The Colonel wants them letters, ma’am,” Sergeant Buck said, out of the corner of his mouth.
I was afraid he hadn’t seen the signs that said “No spitting,” but he had because he didn’t.
“He . . . can’t have them,” I said, more than a little appalled at my temerity.
“Sure he can,” Sergeant Buck said.
“It’s tampering with the mails,” I retorted.
“Irregardless of that, ma’am, hand ’em over,” he said. His cold grey eyes glinted again. His patience, I saw, was very rapidly coming to an end.
“No,” I said firmly; and as I did his great ham of a hand shot out and took them quite simply out o
f my astonished grasp. He put them in his inside pocket and looked down at me.
“No hard feeling, ma’am,” he said.
“Oh, perish the thought,” I managed to answer, with what I intended to be fine irony. It was a flower wasted on that barren mountainside.
He looked at me almost kindly, and said, “The Colonel will sure appreciate your corporation, ma’am.” It may, of course, have been an even finer irony on his part, quite wasted on me. He turned smartly and marched out the door, not quite saluting as he left me, and broke into a double-quick as he went down the stairs.
I went to the window and saw him get into Colonel Primrose’s car and drive off. He must have been following me, I reflected, from the moment I’d left the house.
I drove slowly back down Prince Street toward the river, a prey, as novelists used to put it, to mixed emotions. Whether my annoyance at Colonel Primrose’s low cunning was the greater, or at my own abysmal stupidity for not guessing what he’d do sooner than he guessed what I or perhaps Miss Isabel would do, I couldn’t tell. In either case it was considerably greater than my vague fears for the possible consequences.
As I crossed Royal Street and continued on Fairfax, I saw again, just pausing a moment to see if traffic was clear before he put his hand on his hat and scurried across, the grotesque little figure of the methodical Mr. Pepperday. I touched my horn, scaring him half out of his wits, and came to a stop, holding my door open.
“May I give you another lift?” I asked.
He cleared his throat, after he’d got over his initial alarm.
“No, thank you, miss,” he piped. “—Unless you’d be so kind as to drop me at my own door.”
“I’d be happy to do even that,” I said. He clambered nervously in and settled himself, the way people from the country used to do on the roller coaster at Coney Island.
“Just along to Franklin Street, if you please,” he said.
“I just had some letters Miss Doyle gave me to post to Judge Candler stolen from me in the post office,” I remarked. . . . for what possible reason or purpose I have not the foggiest idea.
The effect was startling. Mr. Pepperday turned as if he had been stuck with a sharp pin, and looked at me with the most extraordinary and comical alarm.
“If you can stop, miss, will you let me out at once?” he shrilled hastily. “I forgot something at the office.”
As I was carefully going at a perilous twenty-two, I managed to stop immediately. “Shall I take you back?” I asked. His distress was increasing so rapidly that I was a little uneasy.
“If you please, miss!” he said.
He was so disturbed that he forgot to clutch the window ledge. And not another word did he say until I’d stopped at the cobbled curb across the street from his office.
“I thank you kindly, miss,” he said then, struggling with the window lever. I reached across him and opened the door, and he was out and across the street like a minute elderly cat out of an oven, without a glance to the right or left, in spite of the fact that a big orange oil truck couldn’t have been more than thirty feet from him.
“Extraordinary little person,” I thought to myself. He was fumbling through his greatcoat, if so small an object can be called that, for his key. I saw him find it at last, jab it in the lock, throw the door open and scoot inside, banging the door shut behind him. I waited, but he didn’t come out again, and in a minute or so I saw his hand reach out and remove the sign “Out for Lunch” from the window cut in the old door. I was too near the police station to stay around any longer, so I let out the clutch and moved off.
I couldn’t tell, really, whether my desire not to go sprang from my curiosity about little Mr. Pepperday or from a deep-seated reluctance to return to the Candler house and have the door remain quietly closed in my face. Nevertheless, I couldn’t, it seemed to me, leave Jerry indefinitely to bear the brunt of the Judge’s wrath alone. I went along till I came to Chatham Street, going over in my mind just what I’d do if William couldn’t let me in, and what I’d say to the Judge if he did. The first seemed very much the pleasanter alternative to look forward to.
I stopped in front of the house and glanced across the street. Colonel Primrose was standing in the Doyles’ door. Behind him was his man with the iron mask. On neither of their faces could I detect anything that remotely resembled a sense of shame, though Colonel Primrose did have the grace to turn his back while I got out of the car and went up the steps and pulled the old brass bell set in the brick beside the door frame. I stood there, hours it seemed to me, before I heard old William’s feet padding slowly along the hall. His face as he opened the door had lost all its shine. He looked precisely like a piece of mahogany that had been waxed but not polished. He held the door open, rolling his eyes ominously toward the library.
My heart, already low, sank another notch. I gave him my coat and tried to give him a reassuring smile. It was a definite failure, I’m afraid, because he shook his head mournfully.
“Ah nevah went fo’ t’ do it, Mis’ Grace,” he whispered.
The library door was open, and Judge Candler was standing facing the fire, his hands clasped behind his back. He turned as I came in, inclined his head coldly, and turned back. Jerry, pale but calm, was sitting on the edge of his desk, and Sandy was there, sort of torn between the two of them and his own deep resentment toward the one-time friend his sister loved, and looking more distraught than I’d ever seen him.
Jerry got up quickly as I came in, her eyes brightening.
“Tell him we didn’t go just so I could see Roger, Grace!” she cried passionately. “Tell him I . . . I didn’t talk to him!”
“She didn’t say a word to him, Judge Candler,” I said. “It’s entirely my fault, and my maid’s. I didn’t impress on her as much as I should have that she wasn’t to let Roger in. Neither Jerry nor I had the faintest idea he’d know we’d left this house.”
He turned slowly.
“I don’t doubt your word, Jeremy,” he said quietly.
“Then why . . . why did you——”
“I did doubt it last night—It’s my own wisdom I doubt now, Jeremy.”
Her eyes widened as she stared at him.
“I . . . want you to know, my dear, that your happiness means a great deal to me.”
He spoke very slowly, hesitating between words. He’d never, I imagine, been a demonstrative man, and now the effort to speak, to try to make her understand him, was almost greater than he could manage.
“I . . . don’t want to be unjust, least of all to you,” he went on painfully. “I’ve suffered two great blows. The fact that you and Sandy have seen more clearly than I, for years past, and that you’ve borne, so loyally, all the brunt of my blindness . . . makes it even more difficult for me to face myself.”
There was nothing but pity and devotion in Jerry’s face now as she looked at him across the old rug.
“I can only ask your pardon,” Judge Candler said steadily. “—I can do a little more for you, Jeremy. Sandy has told me the circumstances of Philander Doyle’s death. I can testify that he was alive after his quarrel with Roger, and after Roger left the house.”
“Dad!” Jerry cried.
“I talked to Philander Doyle myself, after Roger had gone,” he said. “He was shot after I left him. I heard the crashing of glass after I’d returned to this house. I have sent for Colonel Primrose to tell him so.”
Jerry’s face had gone as pale as wax again.
“But . . . Dad!” she cried. Her voice was tense with alarm. “You mustn’t tell them you were there! Don’t you see?”
I thought something like a smile lighted Judge Candler’s eyes, as he turned away for an instant.
“If it would save your love for you,” he said quietly, “I’d be happy now to say I shot Philander Doyle myself. I think I could plead self-defence—quite literally.”
Jerry went quickly across the room, and put her hand out timidly to touch his arm. He turned around and looke
d down into her upturned eyes. Then he raised his hands slowly and took her pointed little face and burnished-copper hair in them.
“I love you very deeply, my dear,” he said gently.
The tears rolled down her face as she flung her arms around her father’s neck. I looked at Sandy, he looked at me. We went out together.
For a moment he didn’t speak. Then a grin appeared on his ugly red-headed face.
“Affecting domestic scene in the last act,” he said. “—I hope, I hope, I hope . . .”
24
I picked up my coat that William had laid on the needle-point bench and put it on.
“Where are you going?” Sandy demanded. His big face looked as dismayed and long-eared as a spaniel’s when everyone appears to be departing with no provision made for him.
“I’m going to leave you people to a quiet day at home,” I said, “and see if I can manage the same.”
“Oh gosh, don’t go. That convoy of the Colonel’s gives me the creeps, and they’ll be steaming up any minute.”
“That’s just what I figured, darling,” I said, pleasantly.
“Come on, then,” he said. “Let’s both go and get a sandwich some place, and give Jerry and the old man a chance to smoke the pipe of peace before the massacre starts.”
“All right,” I said. I knew Colonel Primrose would see us go out, and if he wanted Sandy there was nothing to stop Sergeant Buck from coming along and getting him.
We went down the steps and got in the car. I glanced across the street. Neither of them, the Colonel or his Sergeant, was visible, but that, as I knew, meant less than nothing, or perhaps a great deal more. We turned out Washington Street onto the Mount Vernon Highway, Sandy staring glumly ahead of him, and stopped at the last hot-dog stand that decorates the landscape there.
“Grace,” Sandy said suddenly. “Honestly, what do you make of all this?”
“Who, me?” I said. “Darling, I wish I knew. I’m completely bogged. At the moment I’m taking even money on Mrs. Harris.”
He scowled. “Seriously.”
“Well,” I said . . . and just as I opened my mouth I saw a strangely familiar car go past and slow up quickly, and I could see the dead pan of my friend the Sergeant glance casually over at us. Sandy looked over at him too, his face darkening.
