Episode of the Wandering Knife

by Rinehart, Mary Roberts;

  I stood staring at him. He wasn’t really angry. He was frightened, as he had been at the inquest I took a step or two toward him.

  “You didn’t happen to have done it yourself, Don, did you? What are you doing here? What are you looking for?”

  “Don’t talk like a fool,” he said. “Of course I didn’t kill her. But somebody did. That policeman too. Good God, do you think I ran amok that night?

  “What about the man she was meeting in the park?” he went on more quietly. “Who was he? What sort of trouble was she in? Tell me that and I’ll know why she is dead. I’ve got to know, Judy. If Larry did it he can go to the chair, and I’ll be glad of it. It just happens that I don’t think he did.”

  “You were still in love with her, weren’t you, Don? What a frightful nuisance I must have been, running after you the way I did.”

  “Certainly not,” he said manfully. “I’m fond of you, Judy. I always have been.”

  A few days before it would have been the death knell, of course. Now I managed to laugh. All at once I saw myself running in circles after the little tin god who was not a god at all, but only tin. I laughed, and he looked embarrassed.

  “Don’t give it another thought,” I said. “And now let’s find what you were looking for.”

  It appeared that it was his old letters to Isabel. He said she might have kept them. She had kept the chain. I didn’t believe him for a minute, but I stood by while he made a further perfunctory search. The room had been cleaned by that time. The bed had been made up, and when I remembered the magazine I could not see it. I found it, finally, with some others in Isabel’s boudoir, but the snapshot was gone.

  I called Anna. She remembered the picture. It had fallen out when she was helping to clean the room. She said she had put it on the mantel, but it was not there.

  She stood eyeing us both curiously.

  “It was just a snapshot,” she said. “Maybe Mr. Shepard took it, or it blew out the window while the window washer was here.”

  So it was a window washer this time. Not a plumber. But then it never had been a plumber. I was fairly dizzy.

  “What about it?” Don asked impatiently. “Why is it important?”

  “Because I think I saw the woman in it today.”

  But I couldn’t explain. I couldn’t say that the woman had brought back the knife which had killed Isabel. Also I wasn’t too sure of Don by that time. How did I know he didn’t have it himself, in a pocket or in his wallet? When Anna had gone he confronted me.

  “What about this woman?” he asked. “See here, Judy, if you’re holding out anything, you’d better tell me. Where did you see her, and why do you want her picture?”

  I told him half the truth, that she had called at the house, that we hadn’t talked to her, but her face had been familiar, and that she resembled the woman in Isabel’s picture. He made me describe her, which I did, palm tree and all. So far as I could see, however, it made no impression on him.

  He left before I did. The last I saw of him he was carrying Larry’s bag down the stairs, and soon after I heard his car starting up. He had left it out on Linden Avenue, which made me wonder rather.

  I took another look for the snapshot after he had gone, with Anna helping me. I couldn’t find it, and my heart was really not in the search. I dreaded going back and facing Mother. I dreaded the night, and still more the next day. The Sunday papers out, announcing that Larry was being held as a material witness, and Isabel to be buried somehow; the gaping crowds, a police line, masses of flowers, and nothing meaning anything to her anymore.

  When I went down the stairs I saw a small neat piece of carpet had been cut out from where Mother had sat. And one of Larry’s automatics was missing from the gun room. The police were certainly building their case.

  XI

  When I left Larry’s house, I stepped into complete blackness. Remembering Tony King’s story of the man who had been in the grounds the night before I felt uneasy. But all I saw was an old-fashioned car driving out, which looked like the Lelands’, and after it two of the maids, feeling their way down the drive, probably to a late movie. I had cut across the lawn so they did not see me. They were to be important later on, those two women, to figure largely in our solution. But I did not know it then.

  When I got back to the house, I found Patrick looking unhappy, and Tony King sitting beside the fountain, playing with the fish! My heart almost stopped Apparently, however, he had not discovered the knife. He looked quite cheerful, with his hat on the floor beside him and a new haircut. He pulled his sleeve up further and made another swipe at the fish and brought up a wriggling fantail.

  “Why don’t you ever feed the creatures?” he said. “Throw them a little caviar now and then?” He grinned at Patrick and got up. “Any place with doors in this hovel of yours?”

  “We can go back to the morning room.”

  “Even a special place to mourn.”

  But Patrick had stood all he could. He picked the hat from the floor and informed me that I had had several visitors. Also that if I would please inform him when I was going out …

  “Who were here?” I said impatiently.

  “The person who left the parcel this afternoon was back,” he said. “She waited for some time. After she had gone there was a man who I believe was an officer in plain clothes. When he found you were out he asked for your mother, but she had gone to bed. And Mr. Leland has only just driven away. He waited for some time.”

  “Mr. Leland? For me?”

  “He asked for Mrs. Shepard first. I told him she was resting and seeing nobody.”

  “What’s all the excitement?” Tony King inquired as I closed the morning room door. “Sounds like the Pennsylvania Station. Has something new turned up here?”

  “Nothing that I know of.”

  He gave me a cigarette and took one himself. I wanted to ask if he knew what they had found in Larry’s car, but couldn’t quite do it. And he was busy getting something out of his pocket.

  “I’m not very keen about this,” he said. “You look as though you’ve had about all you can take. But it’s got to be done. It’s the report of the autopsy on your sister-in-law. I’m afraid you’ll have to look at it.”

  I drew back.

  “Please,” I said. “I don’t want to. It’s dreadful.”

  “I’m afraid you’ll have to. There’s a line or two in it you ought to see.”

  He had pulled out a handful of envelopes. Now he extracted a paper from among them, and handed it to me. I didn’t want to take it, but there was something compelling about the way he held it out. It was a typed copy, on flimsy yellow paper, as if he had done it himself.

  I turned on a lamp and read it.

  I suppose it was the usual routine report. It gave Isabel’s age as twenty-seven, and her weight. Then there was a report of findings: two incised wounds and the severance of some artery or other. But it was the final paragraphs which held me. They came under what was termed inspection, and it was coldblooded enough to give me a chill.

  The body, it said, was one of a white female, in apparently good health. All organs were normal. Examination revealed—and here I dropped the paper—that she had borne a child.

  He was watching me.

  “Didn’t know about it, did you?”

  “No, I don’t believe it.”

  “I’m afraid it’s true. I had to find out. She and your brother have no children, have they?”

  “No.”

  “None born dead? Nothing of that sort?”

  I shook my head. I was beyond speech. It looked to me as though Larry was finished. If they could prove he hadn’t known she had ever borne a child and then had learned it …

  He threw away his cigarette and pulled a chair close to me.

  “Don’t take it too hard,” he said. “These things happen. In one way it might be dangerous. In another—well, put it this way. Suppose somebody knew this story, and was blackmailing her?”

 
“Why kill her?” I said bleakly. “She could have paid.”

  “Any idea who could have been the child’s father?”

  I shook my head.

  “She wasn’t that sort. She was engaged years ago to Donald Scott, but the Lelands wouldn’t have it. He was nobody then. They made her break it off.”

  He whistled.

  “Scott!” he said. “He’d go a long way to kill a scandal like that.”

  “He wouldn’t kill her. Never. He was still in love with her.”

  He gave me his broken-toothed smile.

  “Nice little motive for you, isn’t it? The beautiful sister-in-law, the man who couldn’t forget her, and the girl who couldn’t forget him. Many a crime has been committed for less.”

  He got up, putting the report back in his pocket. He had succeeded in annoying me, which he probably thought was better than seeing me cry.

  “What we have to do,” he said cheerfully, “is to get the story behind this story. When we do, I’m taking all bets that Larry comes marching home.”

  I was surprised. “I thought you were working with the police,” I said.

  He looked shocked.

  “My dear child, I’m on the side of law and order. Justice will prevail, and so on.” He grinned. “Actually I’m working to get a poor little rich girl and her redheaded mother out of a jam.”

  “You aren’t a police photographer?”

  For some reason that seemed to amuse him. He chuckled.

  “Poor little Judy!” he said. “What a sheltered life she leads! But I like sheltered women. They feed my superiority complex.”

  He left after that. Patrick gave him his hat, and he set it jauntily on his head.

  “Take a little advice,” he told me. “Go to bed and stay there. No use looking for trouble.”

  I felt rather lost when he had gone. As for going to bed and staying there, I couldn’t of course. There was that miserable knife to be disposed of again, and I had no idea how to do it With Larry under arrest I was certain the police would search both houses, and I was afraid to go outside again.

  Nevertheless it had to be taken out of the pool, and at one o’clock in the morning I went downstairs in a bathrobe and slippers. I carried a flashlight and I went directly to the pool. The kitchen cat was on the brim, trying as usual to claw out a fish.

  But the knife was gone.

  I couldn’t believe it at first. The pool is fairly large and I crawled around it on my hands and knees, with the fish rushing wildly about and the cat making sharp little dabs at them with her claws. What with the splash from the fountain and reaching under the water lilies, I was pretty wet when I finally gave up.

  To my horror Sarah was on the gallery when I started up the stairs.

  “What on earth were you doing, Miss Judy?” she said. “What were you looking for?”

  “I thought I’d dropped my blue clip in the pool.”

  She didn’t believe me. I could feel her stiffen in the dark. She did not persist, however. She said Mother had rung for her sleeping medicine, and she followed me into my room and made me change my pajamas before she left. Of course the blue clip was in plain sight on my dressing table. She pounced on it.

  “Why, here it is, Miss Judy,” she yelped. “I don’t see how you missed it.”

  But I had had enough.

  “Oh, get the hell out of here, Sarah,” I said, and crawled into bed.

  Some time toward daylight I dozed off. I had had the bright idea that Mother had taken it herself. She was quite capable of slipping down while the servants were having supper and the hall was empty. But I didn’t sleep long. I heard Sarah tap with Mother’s morning tea, and after she had gone I went over to her bedroom.

  Mother had taken off her chin strap and was looking fairly cheerful. She said she had decided to see our senator instead of the governor, and of course they couldn’t hold Larry under any circumstances. After all we had always contributed to the Republican Party, and had I any black stockings for the funeral that day.

  I broke in on her resentfully.

  “If you took that thing it was a dirty trick, Mother,” I said. “You could at least have told me.”

  She put down her cup and stared at me.

  “Told you what?” she asked.

  “About the knife.”

  She looked blank and my heart sank.

  “What about it? What are you talking about, Judy?”

  “Didn’t you take it? Out of the pool?”

  She looked as though I had struck her.

  “Don’t tell me it’s gone again!” she gasped, and I caught her tray before it slipped off the bed. Her face was dead white. “I don’t believe it. You didn’t look properly.”

  “I looked all right,” I said grimly. “I fished every inch of that damned pool. Me and the cat,” I added. “Somebody’s taken it.”

  She looked at me pitifully.

  “Don’t tell me it was somebody in the house. I couldn’t bear it, Judy.”

  I was thinking hard.

  “It doesn’t have to be somebody in the house. There were four people down there last night, with Patrick rushing all over the house to locate me. Maybe it was in plain view of anybody who looked at the pool. The fish may have shoved it around, or moved the lily pads. I don’t know, Mother. Somebody must have seen it. I—”

  I stopped abruptly. I was remembering Tony King, his sleeve pushed up while he dipped a long arm into the pool, grinning and picking up a fish, and asking why we didn’t throw them a little caviar now and then. He had it. He had had it all the time. Lighting my cigarette, giving me that horrible report to read, and all the time the knife which would send Larry to the chair in his pocket. Picking my brains, getting the name of the man Larry might have been jealous of, pretending to be sorry for me, and fitting together the little pieces of his puzzle until he had it all.

  The dirty crook, I thought furiously. Smiling at me, showing his broken tooth, and all the time the knife in his pocket. I could have killed him out of sheer fury.

  XII

  We went to Isabel’s funeral that morning. Mother was determined to do it, whether Andrew Leland suspected Larry or not.

  “Why should we stay away?” she inquired tartly. “I was fond of her. If we don’t go it will look queer, too, as though we suspected Larry ourselves.”

  It was pretty bad: the crowds on the street, the police and the awful funereal odor of flowers everywhere. But at least it was civilized. Nobody saw Isabel. She was somewhere upstairs. The family was there, too. Mother, shrouded in black, wept quietly all through the service. I tried not to bawl. And Larry, who came in rather late with a man who was obviously a guard, went back to some place in the rear. He looked like a man carved out of stone. Mother didn’t see him, or I knew she would have followed him.

  She didn’t even notice what followed, when the service was over and people were filing quietly out. There was a space around us big enough to park a car. Nobody spoke to us except the undertaker, who asked if we were expected at the cemetery. I think Mother would have seen the whole thing through, but I had had enough.

  “We are Mr. Shepard’s mother and sister,” I said. “I don’t think we are expected anywhere.”

  He gave me a strange look and turned away.

  I suppose that shows the state of my nerves. Mother hadn’t even heard me.

  The afternoon was dreadful. Mother had gone back to bed, with Sarah in attendance, Alma had not returned, and the house was deadly quiet. When I turned on the three o’clock local news the radio said that the police had located what they called the murder car in which Barnes had been taken to his death. They had found bloodstains in it, but were giving out no further information.

  Soon after that I got my car and drove to the Barnes house. I couldn’t bear to have her there alone, thinking Larry had killed her husband and that we didn’t care what happened to her. It was a pretty little place, as neat as a pin, but I got no further than the front door. A strange woman o
pened it and looked at me.

  “I’d like to see Mrs. Barnes,” I said, rather breathlessly. “I’m so dreadfully sorry. If I can do anything …”

  “What name, miss?”

  “I’m Judy Shepard.”

  I never saw a face change so quickly. She gave me a hard look, from head to foot, before she spoke at all. Then she said:

  “You’d better go back where you come from, Miss Shepard. We don’t want you here.”

  She slammed the door in my face, and I felt as though she had hit me with it.

  Alma was back when I went home. She was in the hall pulling off her black gloves, and she looked tired and strained.

  “Thank God that’s over,” she said. “Although the Lelands were wonderful. They always are.”

  “I wonder what he wanted here last night?”

  “I didn’t know he was here,” she said slowly. “Did he ask for me?”

  “No. He wanted Mother or me.

  It seemed to upset her. She stood there, straightening her gloves and thinking.

  “He’s been rather strange the last few days,” she said. “Judy, what happened to the chain and the thing on it that they found? I suppose the police have it?”

  “Yes. You knew Isabel better than I did, Alma. What in the world was that tassel arrangement on it?”

  “I don’t know. I never saw it.”

  She went up to her room, and I wandered into the library. The telephone was ringing, and I heard Tony King’s voice.

  “Hello,” he said. “I hope you had a good sleep last night. You certainly needed it.”

  I almost choked with fury.

  “Listen to me,” I said. “I don’t want to talk to you. I don’t want ever to see you again. Go ahead with your dirty work. See if I care.”

  I slammed down the receiver. He was shouting into the telephone as I did so, but I didn’t listen. When it rang again I simply took the receiver off the hook and left it off. After that I tried to think. It was no use, of course. When Patrick brought in the Sunday papers he replaced the telephone, but it did not ring again.