Miss Withers Regrets

by Stuart Palmer

  “But wait a minute,” Nicolet began to argue. “The man had drowned, and his lungs were full of water—”

  “Not necessarily. In many cases of drowning—of which, according to your account of the doctor’s preliminary investigation, this is one—death comes by asphyxia almost immediately, and little or no water enters the respiratory tract. Look it up for yourself in Webster, or Sydney Smith, or Glaister, or Witthaus and Becker. Smith also points out that in the case of a newborn child, where there is an excess of fat, the body will usually refuse to sink at all!”

  Pat Montague, dazed but dogged, shook his head. “I don’t care what it says in the books, I’ve told you the truth. He was at the bottom of the deep end of the pool. His eyes were wide open and staring, and the water rippled a little, so that he seemed to be making faces and grinning at me.”

  “It all sounds very convincing,” Miss Withers snapped. “But you stick to your story and I’ll stick with Sydney Smith.”

  “If my client wanted to lie,” Nicolet objected, “I’m sure he could make up a better lie than that. After all—”

  “Just how and when did I get to be your client, anyhow?” Pat Montague finally exploded. “I don’t remember asking you to come barging into this mess. I was doing all right by myself. I could have been halfway to the Canadian border by now. But, oh, no, you had to drag me here so I could meet this wonderful mastermind amateur sleuth who right away runs and screams for the police!”

  “Take it easy,” Nicolet snapped. “Wait a minute—”

  “A minute is about all the free time I’ve got. Personally, I think you’ve been bucking for a pop in the face, and—”

  “Gentlemen, please!” cried Miss Hildegarde Withers nervously. Then there came a heavy knock at the door, and both the embattled warriors froze in position, fists cocked, as if they were acting out some old Currier and Ives print.

  The schoolteacher hastily flung the door open, to look into the faces of two young patrolmen from the radio car. “You’re just in time to referee!” she greeted them.

  “Evening, ma’am. Thanks for calling us. All right, Montague, you’re coming with us.”

  “Just one minute,” interposed the schoolteacher.

  The officer stiffened. “Now it won’t do any good to change your mind and ask us to let him go, because the sheriff give us strict orders.”

  “It’s only this,” she explained gently. “You’re arresting the wrong man. That is Mr. Nicolet. This is Mr. Montague here.”

  “My mistake,” the officer cheerily admitted. “Come to think of it, this one does fit the description a little better. Sorry, Mr. Nicolet. Come on, you. Let’s get going.”

  So it was that Pat Montague went out of the cottage handcuffed to the thick wrist of a policeman who was whistling “It Might as Well Be Spring” considerably off key. The other officer followed after thanking Miss Withers again.

  Jed Nicolet lingered for a moment in the doorway. “I’ve only one thing to say, Miss Withers. Maybe I was a little rough on you in court, but, lady, we’re even now!” Then he went out, almost but not quite slamming the door.

  “And that,” said Miss Hildegarde Withers to herself, “is that.” She had nobly resisted temptation and kept her promise to the inspector. “I ought to get a gold star, or at least an E for effort,” she added.

  There was nothing whatever to worry about. And she still had her tropical fish. She turned back gratefully to the aquarium, where everything was serene. She had found it very soothing of late to lose herself in that lambent green fairyland, to sit for hours staring into the water world, until she felt as if she herself belonged there. “I must be a mermaid at heart,” she decided.

  The neon tetras were glowing with their eerie brilliance; the head-and-tail lights had their signals all turned on, fore and aft. The blue moons were shining; the hatchet fish skipped about on the surface, threatening to take off at any moment, and the common ordinary run-of-the-mill guppies and mollies circulated in the background like extra people on a moving picture set.

  Even the dojos and catfish and snails, at the very bottom of this social structure, went about their scavenging peacefully, stirring up muddy sand with their busy noses. It was a peace not entirely shared by Miss Withers, whose conscience was of the New England variety. Even though, as she kept assuring herself, she had done what was obviously the right and proper thing.

  However, she jerked to the alert like an old fire horse as the doorbell sounded. It turned out to be Jed Nicolet again, his sharp face smiling quizzically through the crack in the open door.

  “Sorry, ma’am,” he said. “I know how you feel, and all that. I don’t exactly blame you. But, anyway, I had to come back to tell you. Don’t forget to take that sick scalare out of the salt water or he’ll fold up again. Half an hour is plenty.”

  Surprised, Miss Withers turned back to the saucepan, where Gabriel was now swimming easily, his color restored. Nicolet watched as she dumped the tiny fish back into the tank, where it at once took up its place beside its cruising mate.

  “Good as new, isn’t he?” Nicolet observed. “Remember that trick if you have any more trouble, which you probably won’t, because most of your fish are hardy types.” Then he scowled suddenly as a magnificently iridescent fish swam out of the plant forest, trailing long blue-green plumes like some sort of marine peacock. Behind him, at a respectful distance, tagged a paler, more streamlined female. “Oh-oh! Lady, you may have trouble with those bettas in a community tank. That female—”

  “Nonsense!” Miss Withers shook her head firmly. “She’s the best-behaved fish in the aquarium. As a matter of fact, nobody but the angel fish ever chase the smaller fry.”

  “Female bettas have a bad name,” Jed Nicolet insisted. “I never had any trouble with them, but—”

  “Now, look here, young man,” the schoolteacher challenged. “You didn’t come back here to talk about fish. There’s something else on your mind. I suppose you think it was reasonable of me to call the police, don’t you? It was my obvious duty as a citizen, you know.”

  “I suppose so,” he agreed absently. “Otherwise you would have been technically an accessory after the fact, or at least guilty of harboring a fugitive from justice.” He looked up at her suddenly. “You really think that Montague is guilty, then?”

  “Why else would he tell such a whopping big lie?”

  Nicolet shrugged his shoulders. “I only met the fellow tonight, so I can’t say. He didn’t seem the type—”

  “The type to murder, or the type to lie? In my opinion, he is just a smart young man who realizes that if you look a person straight in the eye and have a firm handclasp you’ll get by with any story.” Miss Withers firmly replaced the cover on the fish tank. “And now I’m going to ask you something. Why have you taken such a great interest in helping him?”

  “Why, I was asked to.” Nicolet was looking at the wall, where there was nothing of interest except a framed portrait of the graduating class of 1916 at Teachers College.

  “You were asked by Mrs. Cairns or her sister?”

  He nodded. “But that isn’t quite all. I was pretty sure that somebody else killed Huntley Cairns.”

  “Who?” demanded the schoolteacher. “Not that it makes the slightest difference to me, you understand.”

  Nicolet hesitated, his face puzzled and thoughtful. There was a trace of some other emotion, perhaps it was relief. “Oh, nobody in particular,” he finally sidestepped. “It’s just that there didn’t seem motive enough for Pat to kill Cairns. I wouldn’t kill a man just because I was in love with his wife.”

  “Then just what,” queried Miss Withers grimly, “would you kill for?”

  If she had expected that to set him back on his heels she was sadly disappointed. “People kill,” he said, “to pay somebody back when things can’t be evened up any other way. Or to save their necks. Or for gain—cui bono, as we say.”

  “ ‘For whose advantage.’ ” The schoolteacher nodded.r />
  “That’s it. You saw Pat Montague. Could you honestly believe that he’d murder a man in a particularly cold-blooded manner five minutes after he’d met him?”

  “I can believe anything,” Miss Withers said firmly. “Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast, like the White Queen.”

  “Then all I can say is, I hope you’re not on the jury,” Jed Nicolet told her. “I guess I’ve been talking too much. Sorry I tried to drag you into this thing, but it seemed to be right up your alley.” The door closed behind him, very softly this time.

  Feeling strangely nettled for a lady who has just had her own way, scored a success and proved a point, Miss Hildegarde Withers went mechanically around the room emptying ashtrays and turning out lights. She paused before turning out the long fluorescent tube over the aquarium, watching for a moment the graceful parading of the angelfish, the florid strutting of the male betta back and forth before the little mirror she had fastened outside the tank to make him think he had a rival.

  “Men!” said Miss Withers. Behind the Betta splendens swam the worshipping female, her eyes filled with pride and admiration, seeing nothing in all the universe except her mate. All was serene in that little world. The fat black mollies nibbled at the fronds of the trailing plants like grazing sheep, the guppies circled and scattered and gathered again like sparrows in a barnyard, and the neon tetras—

  No, there was but one neon on display. The other had no doubt gone to bed somewhere in the shadows of the plant jungle. “Setting me an excellent example,” declared Miss Withers, and snapped the switch. Instantly the fairyland became only a big glass box full of water and weeds, and the jeweled fish were dull minnows.

  The schoolteacher brushed her hair the usual one hundred times and then sought her couch, but something—perhaps pride in her mild triumph of the evening—kept her tossing. She finally gave in and took a bromide, sinking after a while into a semi-slumber in which one nightmare followed another, overlapping like a montage.

  She was under the surface of the water in all of them, swimming frantically, with something vague and implacable following wherever she went.

  Then she woke up suddenly to hear her doorbell buzzing its angry, intermittent summons. According to the little red leather traveling clock which the inspector had given her once for Christmas—quite possibly as a hint she was getting into his hair—it was not quite ten in the morning. She climbed wearily into bathrobe and slippers. If this was that young lawyer again, she would send him off with his ears burning.

  But it was a girl who stood in the doorway, a girl in a white blouse over riotous tropical slacks. Her face was pale and striking, almost stark in fact, without color except for the lips. “Her mother must have been frightened by a Martha Graham dance group,” the schoolteacher decided.

  “I’m Lawn Abbott,” the girl announced in a low, husky contralto. “I must see you.”

  Miss Withers suddenly became very wide awake indeed. “You may come in, child,” she said. “But I tell you in advance that I won’t be able to help you.”

  The girl came into the room, sat down on the edge of the chair Miss Withers had indicated, and then immediately rose and started pacing up and down. She was acting rather like a cat in a strange place. There was something else of the cat about her too—a rather attractive something. She was no silky Persian, no alley cat on the defensive, but rather a Siamese or Burmese, thin and feminine and strong.

  Finally she spoke. “I didn’t come here to ask for your help. I came here to help you—to set you straight about something. You see, Jed Nicolet called up last night and told me all about being here and everything. Helen is completely prostrated, of course, and Father is no use at a time like this. I tried to see Pat, but they wouldn’t let me. They wouldn’t even let me talk to him on the phone. I suppose you know that Sheriff Vinge booked him for murder because of what you told the police. Miss Withers, have you seen the Sunday morning papers?”

  “Naturally not, my dear. You awakened me.”

  “Well, it’s time that somebody woke you up!” Lawn’s voice did not rise, but there was a thin, metallic ring to it now. “Because you don’t know that there was a ragged tear in the shorts that Huntley was wearing when he died! The police at first thought it must have been made by the rake which, according to their theory, held him under when he was drowning—”

  “I’m really not very interested.”

  “But you’ve got to be interested! Pat is innocent as a newborn babe; anybody with half an eye could see that. I knew it when I found him in that bathhouse. If I can prove it to you will you help me convince the police so they’ll let him go?”

  Miss Withers sniffed. “Unless my memory is failing, Pat Montague was supposed to have been an old beau of your sister’s. Just why are you entering the picture?”

  “Because …” Lawn bit her lip. “Never mind why. I’m mixed up in it too. The police were very nasty about my unlocking that door until good old Jed pointed out that I couldn’t have known who was inside. Naturally I want to prove Pat innocent. Will you help?”

  “I’m afraid it would take a good deal to convince the police that Pat Montague isn’t their man.”

  “Oh, nonsense and stuff! Only last night that fool of a sheriff was positive that he had it all pinned on poor old Searles. Tomorrow it may be somebody else—Jed, or father, or me. I just want Pat out of jail, that’s all.”

  “There would have to be some new evidence,” Miss Withers said.

  “How about this?” Lawn dramatically held up her right hand, showing that the fleshy part of the index finger had been covered with adhesive tape. Underneath was a deep, ragged cut. “They’re draining the pool this morning,” the girl continued. “But I didn’t wait for that. I sneaked out and went for a swim before daylight, and I dived down into the corner where they found Huntley’s body. I felt around down there until I caught my finger on a jagged bit of metal—part of the circular cap that goes around the outlet. It must have been damaged in putting it in. Anyway, what I’m trying to point out is this. If Huntley’s shorts were caught on that hook, wouldn’t his body have stayed at the bottom until somebody pulled it loose?”

  Miss Withers didn’t say anything.

  “It’s your move,” Lawn challenged. “You got Pat where he is. You can get him out.”

  “Come and sit down while I make a cup of coffee,” the schoolteacher conceded. “I’m afraid that it is possible, as you indicate, that I drew my conclusions on insufficient evidence.” She started to measure the coffee into the pot. “But I think what you really want isn’t just to get Pat Montague out of jail. You want him completely cleared, and that can’t happen until we find the real murderer. Are you sure that will make you happy?”

  Lawn hesitated.

  “These family affairs can be very difficult. You and your father have lived with your sister Helen ever since she married Cairns, haven’t you? Forgive my frankness, but he must have been very much in love with Helen to take on her whole family too.”

  “Or impressed with father. Father used to be famous, you know. He was on Broadway in The Red Mill and Graustark and The Chocolate Soldier, things like that.”

  “And was Helen very much in love with her husband?”

  “You’d better ask her that.”

  “I would, but she wouldn’t answer. Look, child, I’m only trying to get the background. I’m not just prying.”

  “Well, then,” Lawn admitted, “I’d say that Helen isn’t emotionally mature enough to love anybody except herself. The love affair between Helen and Helen should go down in history, like Romeo and Juliet. Oh, I’ll admit that she had a sort of crush on Pat long ago, just boy-and-girl stuff, but she was a good wife to Huntley. Helen was cut out to be a rich man’s wife, designed perfectly for the life he could give her. They fitted like—like a picture and a frame.”

  “You wanted your sister to marry Cairns, didn’t you? Was it because he had money?”

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nbsp; Lawn looked puzzled. “I certainly wasn’t opposed to it, not knowing Helen as I did, and do.”

  “According to what I have heard, you did your best to break up Pat’s romance with your sister so that she would fall into Huntley Cairns’s waiting arms.”

  The girl’s pale, mask-like face showed no expression. “Did Pat say that?”

  Miss Withers didn’t answer. “It must have been Pat,” Lawn decided. “Jed Nicolet wouldn’t have—he’s a good friend of mine.”

  “It is true, isn’t it?”

  Lawn suddenly put down the cup of coffee, which she had barely tasted. “Truth!” she exploded. Then she rose and turned towards the other room. She was not walking catlike now, but heavily and dully, as if all the starch and spring had gone out of her. “Please forget that I came here,” she said. “Just forget the whole thing.” And she went out, leaving the door open.

  “Well!” murmured Miss Hildegarde Withers. She closed the door, bringing back with her the New York morning papers. She could not resist turning to the somewhat meager stories about the Shoreham murder while she sipped her coffee. It would certainly do no harm to see what the papers said, especially since the choice had been made so easy for her. She wasn’t going to get mixed up in the case; everybody, including herself, seemed determined about that.

  There was a photograph of Huntley Cairns, evidently taken some years ago when he had been on a Defense Bond committee. He looked placid and pleased with himself. There was also a picture of what this particular paper at least had decided upon as the murder weapon, a garden rake held firmly in the hand of Officer Ray Lunney, in a somewhat smeary flashlight photo taken beside the Cairns swimming pool. There was another photograph of the strange, torn garment which the dead man had been wearing.