Bring the Bride a Shroud

by Dolores Hitchens

  Mr. Pennyfeather opened the closet in the opposite wall and studied Mr. Johns’s collection of mops, rags, brooms, and cleaning miscellany. When he was satisfied that something pertaining to the case was missing, he looked about for further hiding places. He fixed his attention finally upon the overhead scuttle opening to the attic.

  By means of a foot placed on a lower shelf he mounted to a point where he could press with his finger tips upon the scuttle covering, several short boards nailed together upon a crosspiece, and move it aside. He saw the ghostly half-light of the attic. A second shelf allowed him to poke his head above the bathroom ceiling, to take in the rough flooring about the scuttle, the cobwebby panes shutting out the sky at either end of the space, the timbering above not quite high enough for him to stand, and the pricklings of light here and there testifying to Mr. Johns’s need for roof repair.

  He twisted until he saw what he hunted: the white enameled basin which Miss Comfort had been filling when the lights went out on the night of Mrs. Andler’s murder. He drew it toward him with a cautious finger until he could arch an eye above its rim.

  Here was treasure of a sort to be appreciated only by a dabbler like Mr. Pennyfeather. The centipede, torpid with heat, lay curved like a lash against the white surface. A wadding of bandages and surgical tape, still showing roughly the shape of a helmet, made an island in the middle of the pan. It was soaked with dried blood and dusty. There was a little pillbox, open, in which a pale powder glittered. And a single button off Mr. Jessop’s remarkable green sweater.

  He was still staring at this collected paraphernalia when someone came into the bathroom behind him and shut the door.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Stacey made a lean and disapproving shadow on the checkered linoleum; and he looked at Mr. Pennyfeather with a sour face. “Now you’ll be telling me you’ve found a clue.”

  “I might,” Mr. Pennyfeather answered, beginning to get over the near heart failure which Stacey’s entrance had caused. “I might very well tell you just that. But first I’m wondering if you located Miss Comfort.”

  “She made a bolt.” Stacey looked up unwinkingly. “She took the bus for Salt Lake, and I won’t have any trouble running her down. The thing that worries me is that she took the Whittemore girl with her, sick as she was.”

  A good deal of alarm came into Mr. Pennyfeather’s expression. “Yes. That would follow the pattern. And what are you doing meanwhile?”

  “Sending a plane to get them at Bitter Creek.” He cocked an eye at the scuttle opening. “What did you find up there?”

  “Tools of a trade. Murdering trade, I’m afraid.” He drew the basin down carefully through the opening and gave it to Stacey. “Take care of these. They’re all you’re apt to get.”

  Stacey grabbed the basin and all but had his nose in it before he saw the centipede.

  “Careful,” warned Mr. Pennyfeather. “You can’t jump like that and keep him in there.”

  Stacey, sputtering a lot of words, tried to give the basin back to him.

  “It wasn’t the bug I wanted you to see,” Mr. Pennyfeather pointed out, “but the collection of objects in there with him.”

  Stacey took in with slow study the wadding of bandage, the pillbox, and the green button.

  “You see,” Mr. Pennyfeather went on, “this was a sort of cache in which were kept articles which had been, or might be, handy in the progress of crime.”

  “Stuff to be planted on the scene of the murders?” Some relief shaded Stacey’s voice. “Then it means, doesn’t it, that the people who were to have suspicion cast on them are innocent.”

  Mr. Pennyfeather watched while Stacey put a cautious finger in to touch the green button. “Do you think it could be that simple? There must have been some thought in the murderer’s mind that the basin would be discovered. What, then, would be more natural than to put in some little thing incriminating himself?”

  Stacey took his finger off the button.

  “But in the case of the article you’ve just been looking at—don’t you see the blunder behind that?”

  Stacey acted as though he were mentally giving birth to bolts of lightning. But after horrid squintings, strange contortions of his turtle’s mouth, he admitted: “Damned if I do.”

  “Then you’d better be recalling the history of Mr. Jessop’s green sweater in detail,” Mr. Pennyfeather advised, “while you send out a couple of men to find Mrs. Jessop and Miss Hazzard.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Mrs. Jessop is somewhere with Miss Hazzard. I can’t tell you where. No, don’t smell that pillbox closely.”

  Stacey put the pillbox down in a hurry. “We won’t be able to hold the meeting at eleven, since that Comfort woman is gone.”

  “Miss Comfort’s absence may not prove a drawback. There are a few things you might do to while away the time. Such as these.” And while Stacey listened, though a little unwillingly, Mr. Pennyfeather outlined his perfectly beautiful new idea.

  The lobby sweltered. There was a smell as of varnish ready to melt off the furniture; and the sleepy drone of flies.

  Joe Jessop came in wearing a clean blue shirt and the familiar gray trousers and gave Mr. Pennyfeather a stare of surprise. “Where is everybody? It’s eleven. Where’s Stacey?”

  Mr. Pennyfeather seemed to prepare his answer carefully. “I believe he’s looking for your wife and Miss Hazzard.”

  Jessop walked to the little table by the counter which had held a potted ice plant and which now contained the white basin. “I guess Lou’s trying to find out just where Carrie stands. If Mr. Burrell and Miss Hazzard are still in love with each other, she wants to know it. I feel the same way.” He pointed into the basin. “What’s all this, excepting the centipede? I’ve seen him before.”

  “Clues,” said Mr. Pennyfeather, almost grudgingly. “Things Stacey collected at the scenes of the crimes. He wants to show them around to everybody today.”

  A cloud gathered in Jessop’s eyes. “That looks like a button off my sweater.”

  “Does it?” said Mr. Pennyfeather.

  “But I haven’t been wearing that sweater. I haven’t worn it since—well, let’s see.” He scratched his temple.

  “The night of Mrs. Andler’s murder?”

  “Yeah. That’s right. There’s nothing the matter with my sweater, though.” He had apparently jumped to the conclusion that Mr. Pennyfeather was hinting it bore bloodstains. “I can bring it here and show it to Stacey if he wants. It hasn’t even been washed.”

  “I wasn’t doubting that,” said Mr. Pennyfeather, “and Stacey does want it. Could you bring it here as soon as possible?”

  Jessop went out with an indignant step, and the lobby returned to silence. A few flies changed places on the pane, buzzing drowsily, and the centipede moved once with a brief thrashing of legs.

  Three people came up on the porch outside, and on seeing them Mr. Pennyfeather moved over to the basin and shifted the wadded bandage so that it covered Mr. Jessop’s green button. Stacey opened the screen, and Mrs. Jessop and Glee preceded him into the room. Mrs. Jessop was grim and perspiring, and Glee had the look of wanting to pour beer over someone.

  “Found them in the park,” said Stacey happily.

  “Park?” gasped Mr. Pennyfeather.

  “Well, what’s going to be the park when the new water wells come in,” Stacey explained. “There’s nothing there now but a tea pavilion.”

  Glee said: “And what tea! They must make it out of old shoe leather and nails.” She lit a cigarette with quick, nervous movements.

  Mrs. Jessop had an eye on Mr. Pennyfeather, who seemed to be trying to stand between her and the basin. “Why did you bring me here?” she demanded of Stacey. “To meet Mr. Pennyfeather, perhaps, whom I’ve already had the pleasure of entertaining?”

  “No’m,” said Stacey meekly, meeting Mr. Pennyfeather’s glance. “For an inquire-y.”

  As though rebuffed by Mrs. Jessop’s lack of love for him
, Mr. Pennyfeather cringed away. The basin was revealed, and Mrs. Jessop and Glee moved at once to look into it. Glee said something swift and angry under her breath on seeing the wadded bandage. Mrs. Jessop simply stared.

  “Those are some clues, sort of,” said Stacey evasively. “I guess it don’t hurt if you see them first. I want to show them when we have the inquire-y and hear what the folks have to say.”

  Mr. Pennyfeather, moving embarrassedly out of Mrs. Jessop’s way, shook the basin, moving the wadded cloth aside. The green button shone bright as an eye.

  “Is it against the law,” said Mrs. Jessop, “to lose a button in this hole?”

  “Not ordinarily,” said Stacey, “but that happens to be a button off Joe’s sweater.”

  “I know it,” she snapped.

  Mr. Pennyfeather, with a don’t-bite-me expression, asked: “Do you remember when you last saw this sweater—buttons intact, of course—on Mr. Jessop?”

  She frowned at him. “Several days past. Didn’t he have it here?”

  Stacey and Mr. Pennyfeather exchanged a glance of deep meaning, not lost on Mrs. Jessop.

  Stacey changed the subject abruptly. He pointed to the tiny pillbox. “Do you recognize that?”

  She was firm now. “I’ve never seen it before.”

  “I have,” said Glee suddenly. “Wait a minute while I try to remember just where.” She put the cigarette into an ash tray and walked slowly to Mr. Johns’s counter and back again. “I’m sure that there was a pillbox in Miss Comfort’s purse and that she kept some headache tablets in it.”

  Mr. Pennyfeather regarded the white powder worriedly.

  “I’m afraid for the Whittemore girl,” Stacey whispered.

  Mrs. Jessop hadn’t heard. She was looking confusedly into her own handbag. “I’ve left something at home. Some—some cash. I wonder—couldn’t I dash home and come right back?”

  “I guess so. Sure, why shouldn’t you? We’re going to be a little late getting started, anyway.” Stacey nodded toward the door. “Help yourself.”

  She went out with a rapid tapping of heels.

  Glee regarded her stout figure and the haste she made on the sidewalk. “You know what she’s going to do, don’t you? She’s getting hold of Mr. Jessop as quick as she can to spoil your little game.”

  “Hush,” said Mr. Pennyfeather. “We have a lot of games you’ve never heard of. While we’re waiting you’d better try on your helmet for size.”

  “I was wondering when you’d get around to that,” said Glee. “I admit it’s the kind of bandage I wore wrapped on my head when I came here, with the silly idea that Tick still cared for me and that if he thought I had been hurt and needed help, he’d spring to the rescue.” She laughed with a sound like a lot of piano keys being struck too hard and angrily. “Only this isn’t the real bandage. It’s an imitation. I cut the other bandage into a million pieces because I was so mad for being a fool and I had to take it out on something.”

  Stacey seemed puzzled and somewhat slow to gather what Glee had said. “Well, now, this here bandage is all over blood and dust.”

  “To imply that I’d wipe up after murdering Mrs. Andler with a bandage off my own head. It’s rot.”

  “There is something we’d like to do,” said Mr. Pennyfeather apologetically.

  “Go ahead,” said Glee.

  He picked the bandage out of the pan, taking care that the creature with legs was thoroughly detached from it, and with Stacey watching he pulled and stretched the wadded stuff until it began to assume its original shape. “Do you mind?” he asked Glee.

  She bent her shining dark head toward him, and her hair was silky under his touch. He slid the wrinkled dust-and blood-covered thing over her. She had grown pale now, and the look she gave them was full of question.

  “Guess that one was fixed up in a hurry,” grunted Stacey.

  “Your real cap of bandages was so much more flattering,” said Mr. Pennyfeather. “It had what Professor Lettish calls line and I think other people call oomph.”

  “Gertrude makes hats when she isn’t practicing first aid,” said Glee. “So I guess my headdress just naturally had a flair.”

  A shadow darkened the door just as Glee removed the covering, and Tick Burrell walked in. “I hope you know,” he told Stacey, “that you’ve gotten me in bad with a lot of people, including the toughest sergeant this side of the Pacific.”

  “I can’t help that,” said Stacey. “I need everybody here for a final check-up and talk.”

  “Final?” Tick’s worried glance flashed to Glee and then slid off as though he hadn’t wanted her to know. “You mean you’ve cleared everything up?”

  “Well, maybe not quite,” Stacey hedged, “but there’s a point or two which will help show the way. This stuff gathered here, now”—he had crushed the bandage back into its wadded shape—“this is a bunch of things I sort of picked up here and there.”

  Tick seemed mesmerized by the sight of the bandage. “Do they have to be valid clues? Couldn’t they have been plants?”

  “We’re sort of hoping to find that out, sort of separate the sheep from the goats.”

  “There’s a pillbox with some powdery stuff in it.”

  “Leave that alone,” advised Mr. Pennyfeather.

  “Do I have to wait here until the rest of them arrive?”

  “That’s right,” said Stacey.

  Tick went across the lobby and sat down in one of the dusty leather chairs. Glee had chosen to ignore him. She perched now on the lowest step and took out a cigarette, and when she saw Tick reaching for matches she turned her back to him. A lost look came over Tick, and then a sudden tightening and reserve.

  Mr. Pennyfeather walked over to Tick. “You had something you wanted to explain,” he reminded.

  “Not now,” said Tick stiffly. “I’m sorry.”

  “You seemed to think you’d made a great mistake.”

  “Perhaps I’ve made more than one.” He looked at Glee and then forced his eyes to the pane, to the sleepy flies and the street.

  “And you won’t tell me what it was?”

  “I don’t think you or Stacey would be interested at the present time.”

  “If it has something to do with Miss Comfort, we’d be very interested,” said Mr. Pennyfeather, “and you’d have saved us much time by recognizing her before now.” He walked away and left Tick in a state of confusion.

  Stacey was nodding with approval at the street, where a coupé had just jerked to a stop. “Thank God for airplanes. We wouldn’t have caught her for a week otherwise. Look at her. She knows she’s in for it.”

  Miss Comfort had come forth sagging, and the eyes she raised toward Mr. Johns’s hotel were neither thankful nor happy. They were full of terror and remorse. The deputy following and the shrinking figure of Taffy Whittemore in a powder-blue suit and a yellow hat made up a picture of suspense.

  It was at that moment that there entered through the rear Mr. and Mrs. Jessop and Caroline.

  Stacey said grimly: “Do you think we can do it?”

  “… And bring the bride a shroud,” said Mr. Pennyfeather. He looked worriedly at Stacey’s bitter eyes. “I can’t imagine where I got such an idea. It just popped into my head.”

  “Well, pop it out,” said Stacey. “We’ve got work to do.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Mrs. Jessop was watchful and Mr. Jessop was worried; Caroline wore a beautifully disinterested smile which must mean either that she didn’t have any idea of what was going on or else was a superb actress. Glee took a good long look at her and then went back to studying the end of her cigarette. Tick rose to his feet and bowed solemnly, and for some reason then Caroline giggled.

  Mr. Pennyfeather recognized that kind of giggle. It was half pitying and half amused, a sort of old-beaus-are-rather-pathetic-aren’t-they? giggle. Mr. Pennyfeather had heard such a giggle in his youth, from a beautiful blond nitwit who had decided later that her son should be a bishop.

&
nbsp; Stacey had them seated by the time Miss Comfort made her entrance. She turned a sudden ashy color at the door, seeing everyone already assembled there, and Taffy behind her raised wondering eyes toward Tick. Tick bowed again, perhaps a shade more gallantly this time, and Taffy went across the room to sit beside him.

  Miss Comfort, still beside the door, stammered: “I wasn’t running away. ľd have been back by tomorrow. Miss Whittemore was ill, you know. She thought that a certain doctor in Salt Lake …” Her voice whispered itself out and she stood there, gray and haggard.

  “Why didn’t you decide to treat Miss Whittemore the way you did the others?” Stacey asked solidly.

  “Others?” she gurgled.

  “Mrs. Andler and Mrs. Blight. Of course, it would have showed your motive as plain as daylight.”

  She shook her head as though confused. “I can’t understand what you’re talking about.”

  “Do you deny being a relative of Miss Whittemore’s? Do you deny that you came here pretending to be a stranger to her?”

  “I—We’d had a quarrel. The Blight woman was keeping us apart, thinking that when Taffy married Mr. Burrell—Oh, I see. You think I meant to kill Taffy to get some money. But I wouldn’t have gotten anything. Would I, Taffy?”

  Taffy looked at her with puzzled affection. “Of course you would, dear. You’d get the marriage settlement Mr. Burrell’s making on me. You’d get two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”

  The gray color extended into Miss Comfort’s lips, and her breath became almost a whistle.

  “I’d like to see the inside of your purse, please,” said Stacey, taking it from Miss Comfort’s limp hand. Inside the big leather handbag were cosmetics, handkerchiefs, personal cards, and ration books. There was also a little blue pillbox like the one in the washbowl.

  Stacey opened it, and Mr. Pennyfeather saw the little nest of tablets, white and smooth. Stacey’s eyes slid over to Taffy. “Did she offer you one of these?”