Miss Withers Regrets

by Stuart Palmer

  That was all the press had been able to uncover, or else the Sunday edition had been put to bed too early for any more of the gory details.

  Miss Withers pushed aside the newspapers without even reading the comics. Not even Dick Tracy or Barnaby’s fairy godfather could inspire her now. But she had given up detecting, she reminded herself, and by a determined effort set her mind back upon the proper track. Crossing the room, she turned on the light over the aquarium. Gabriel, the angelfish, was fine and well this morning. She dumped some powdered food into the feeding triangle, watched it cascade down as the fish wildly gobbled at it. There was still only one neon tetra in evidence, and try as she might, Miss Withers could nowhere catch a glimpse of the flash of glowing, living light which should have been in its mate. Perhaps it was sulking.

  Then with a start of horror she caught sight of a spot of grisly activity in the rear of the tank behind the red rock. A midget skeleton moved erratically on the sand, whirling end over end.

  Two busy Japanese snails and a spotted eel-like king dojo were fulfilling their ghoulish task of cleaning up the tank. The dead fish was disposed of, all except skull and spine. As Miss Withers turned away, feeling faintly ill, the doorbell summoned her once more.

  “Botheration!” muttered the schoolteacher. She thought that she might just let it go on ringing. But curiosity was her besetting sin, and she could no more have refrained from seeing who this visitor was than she could have stopped breathing.

  This time a womanish girl in black stood in the doorway, a full-bosomed girl with soft brown hair and deep aquamarine eyes, soot-bordered now from sleeplessness. Behind her, fidgeting slightly and out of breath, was a much older man. He reminded Miss Withers of the “men of distinction” in the whiskey advertisements, and smelled as she imagined they would smell.

  “Are you Miss Hildegarde Withers?” Thurlow Abbott began, his voice a harsh, croaking whisper.

  “That is I,” answered the schoolteacher.

  “We owe you an apology for breaking in on you like this—”

  “Oh, stop it, Father!” The girl in black was coldly angry. “We want to know what my sister has been saying to you! What lies has she been telling now? Don’t try to deny it; we know that Lawn was just here.” She subsided, on the verge of hysteria.

  “You must be Helen Cairns,” Miss Withers said. “Please come in and sit down.”

  Helen shook her head. “My father and I can’t stop. We have to get back. But we want to know what Lawn said to you.”

  “I’m very sorry, Mrs. Cairns, but—”

  “As if we didn’t know already!” Helen exploded. “She wanted to make my husband’s death look like murder, didn’t she? She’s got the idea that you have some sort of connection with the police, and she’s trying to frame poor Pat, who never hurt any one in his whole life! Can’t you see?”

  “You don’t know me, Mrs. Cairns,” Miss Withers said, with a sniff, “but I am not a person easily used. Tell me, why should your sister Lawn try to do all these things?”

  Father and daughter exchanged a long look. “My daughter Lawn’s motives have always been a complete mystery to me,” Thurlow Abbott said hoarsely. “This will sound strange to you, coming from a father, but sometimes I have thought that, just as some girls have a vocation for the Church, Lawn has a vocation for evil!”

  The schoolteacher’s eyebrows went up. Then she turned back to Helen. “Mrs. Cairns, did you know that Pat Montague telephoned you twice last week from the separation center at Camp Nivens?”

  Helen shook her head slowly. “I didn’t know until last night that Pat was within two thousand miles of here. Lawn must have answered the phone, because Beulah would have taken a message or at least told me that someone called.”

  “But couldn’t Mr. Montague have told the difference between the maid’s voice and your sister’s?”

  Helen shook her head wearily. “Not if Lawn answered the phone in a stage colored accent, the way she does sometimes, with a ‘Mistah Cyains’s res’dence.’ ”

  “Lawn has a most peculiar sense of humor at times,” Thurlow Abbott explained.

  Miss Withers frowned. “Suppose we leave, just for a moment, the subject of the Wicked Sister,” she said. “Just who, Mrs. Cairns, do you think killed your husband—if it wasn’t Pat Montague?”

  There was nothing but silence in answer to that shot, so the schoolteacher went blithely on: “You’re not, of course, trying to suggest that Lawn herself might have done it?”

  Helen Cairns suddenly broke into laughter, thin, clear, mirthless laughter. “Lawn? Lawn murder Huntley? Don’t be ridiculous. She never liked him much, though she enjoyed the allowance he gave her and the nice soft life she had with us. But do you imagine for a minute that she would kill him—and leave me free, with Pat coming back?”

  “You see,” Abbott put in, “my daughter has a theory that Lawn has been secretly in love with Pat Montague since she was sixteen.”

  “She used to tag around after Pat and me like a—like a shadow,” Helen went on. “She had a schoolgirl crush on Pat, and she clung for years to a silly toy monkey that he’d bought her when we were all at a night club. She’s been waiting like a harpy to pounce on him when he got back out of the Army, because she thought that with me married and out of the way she’d have clear sailing.”

  Miss Withers thought that over. “Well, eliminating Mr. Montague, and your sister, and the gardener, and everybody else—then who did kill Huntley Cairns? Am I correct in supposing that you are here to ask me to try to find out?”

  “Why, yes,” Thurlow Abbott began. “In a way I mean—because they say you have had experience in such affairs—”

  “But on second thought,” Helen said very firmly, with a look at her father, “it might be better after all to let the regular police handle it. Now that you understand about my sister and all—”

  “I don’t understand,” Miss Withers said shortly. “With one breath you accuse her of trying to frame Pat Montague, and with the next you say that she is in love with him.”

  Helen was silent, confused.

  “Perhaps my daughter was simply suggesting that ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,’ ” Abbott pronounced. “Lawn is a very strange girl.”

  “I said more than I meant to say,” Helen chimed in suddenly. “Besides, there can’t be much doubt but that Huntley was swimming in the pool and got caught on a bit of metal so that he drowned accidentally.” She turned to go.

  “Can’t there, though!” murmured Miss Withers as she leaned from her front window and watched them drive away in a long, sleek sedan. “This is murder, if I ever saw it. I’m very much afraid that in spite of all my good resolutions and my promises I am going to have to exercise a woman’s privilege and change my mind.” But first there was something to get straight. She put in a long-distance call to Inspector Oscar Piper at his home but found that he was not in. He had been called down to Centre Street a little while ago. Mrs. McFeeters, his fumbling elderly housekeeper, wanted to know if there was any message.

  Miss Withers thought not. This would be easier to handle in person, anyway, and after the peace and quiet of the country she had a sudden nostalgic longing for the smells of Manhattan, the hum of its activity. Besides, there were a number of errands she could do in town, even though it was a Sunday.

  Downtown in the grim environs of Centre Street, Inspector Oscar Piper sat at his battered oak desk in the inner office of the homicide bureau, deep in official papers. Only a skeleton staff was on duty, so Miss Withers was able to barge in upon him with a minimum of delay. He immediately put aside an extremely grisly photograph of some deceased citizen reclining upon a marble slab and laid aside the gnawed butt of his cigar.

  “Go right ahead and smoke,” she said. “I don’t mind.”

  The grizzled little Irishman stared at her. “What’s come over you?” he demanded. “Must be that the simple life agrees with you. How’s the goldfish?”

  Miss Withers lo
oked upon her old friend and sparring partner with a sudden flash of her gray-blue eyes. “They are not goldfish!”

  “Okay, tropical fish, then. As long as they keep you out of my hair—”

  “I could ask, ‘What hair?’ but I won’t. Because, Oscar, I want you to relieve me of a promise I made you some time ago.”

  “Oh-oh! You’re weakening already, huh?”

  “It’s not quite like that. I want to meddle in this particular case because so many people have made it clear that they don’t want me to. And especially because a young man appealed to me for help last night and I let him down. But don’t look so long-faced, Oscar. It’s that swimming-pool murder out at Shoreham, so it won’t be in your territory and I won’t be in your way.”

  The wiry little Irishman stood up suddenly, turning to address a large photograph of ex-Mayor La Guardia which somebody had forgotten to remove from the wall. “She says she won’t be getting in my way!” he cried. “This I have got to see!”

  “Now, Oscar!”

  “Don’t you now-Oscar me! For your information, I just got word from the commissioner. Sheriff Vinge, out at Shoreham, feels that he is getting a little over his depth and has requested help from the department. Guess who is the lucky boy?”

  “Oh, dear!” murmured Miss Hildegarde Withers. Then an elfish smile illuminated her long, horsy face. “Hold on to your hat, Oscar. Here we go again!”

  Chapter Six

  “WHEN I MAKE A mistake,” remarked Miss Hildegarde Withers to the blurred panorama of Long Island’s ash dumps which flitted past her train window, “I make a beaut!”

  A mile or so farther along the way she added: “But after all, it’s the murderer who can’t afford to make a mistake. He has only to be wrong once for us to succeed—we have only to be right once.”

  And as she left the train at Shoreham Station and waited for a taxicab she concluded: “However, I’ve certainly proved to myself once more that a little information, like a little learning, is a dangerous thing. I must find out what really happened at that cocktail party.”

  But where, exactly, to begin? The schoolteacher knew that a direct frontal attack, today at least, was out of the question. The Cairns house would be by now completely taken over by the police. The inspector, together with the car and driver supplied him by the department, would be there by now, and he was not in a mood to put up with her being underfoot.

  Besides, he knew his business. The machine was unimaginative but thorough. There would be no clues passed over, no statements unchecked. It would be her problem to milk the inspector dry of whatever information he dug up, but that could come later. In the meantime …

  “Go roundabout!” had been Peer Gynt’s counsel from the Boyg. Miss Withers was not at all sure what a Boyg was, but the advice seemed sound. She would sneak up on this murder from the side. At this point in her reveries one of the town’s two taxicabs arrived, emblazoned with the “Busted Duck” insignia of the honorably discharged veteran, and she told the driver approximately where she wanted to go.

  He brightened on learning that it was to be a rather longer haul than usual. At the end of the ride he leaned back to open the door, indicating the second house from the corner. “That’s it,” he advised her. “One of Mame Boad’s old firetraps. Richest woman in this town. I used to work for her before I got drafted—she keeps her dog kennels in fine shape, but her tenants can make their own repairs.”

  Miss Withers agreed that there should be a special level of hell’s hottest corner reserved for the nation’s landlords and asked the young man to wait. As she went up the walk she noticed that the lawn needed cutting and saw that there was a small convertible parked in the driveway with one front wheel in a bed of nasturtiums.

  Upstairs in the front bedroom Adele Beale lay snoring, with her face buried deep in a down pillow. A familiar, insistent voice tugged her back to life.

  “Wake up, will you? Wa-a-a-ake up!”

  The pillow was forcibly removed, and Midge Beale stared down critically at the wife of his bosom, who had retired last night without removing her war paint or doing up her hair and who now looked like something special in the way of hags. “Go away and let me die in peace,” she moaned. “I can’t stand the thought of breakfast.”

  “Never mind breakfast, I didn’t make any. But wake up!”

  She opened one eye. “Midge! It isn’t even light yet!”

  “It’s getting dusk, you mean. Come on.”

  “Midge, listen. I had the damnedest nightmare—”

  Midge Beale had long since lost interest in Adele’s dreams, though she loved to tell them in detail. “Anyway,” he cut in, “it was no nightmare about Huntley Cairns. It happened, all right. Snap out of it. Remember, they kept us up there until all hours, and when we finally got home we killed a bottle?” He shook her shoulder. “Come on downstairs, we got company.”

  Adele sat up suddenly, pushing the hair back from her eyes. “Reporters?”

  He shook his head. “No reporters, so stop primping. It’s a funny old battleaxe in a hat that looks like a fruit salad. She’s trying to dig up some evidence to get Pat Montague out of jail. She says she’s an old aunt of his or something.”

  “Tie a can to her! Tell her—”

  “I tried to, and I couldn’t make it stick.”

  “I don’t think I can stand up,” Adele complained. “And I must look like a perfect fright.”

  Midge nodded. “How much would you charge to haunt a house?”

  “How many rooms?” Adele countered, unsmiling. She ran a comb through her hair, stuck on another mouth over the old one, and slipped into a shapeless pink garment trimmed with maribou. Then, clinging to the banister, she made her way slowly down the stairs. She stopped halfway. “Now don’t tell her anything!” she whispered fiercely.

  “Perish the thought,” Midge agreed.

  In the living room Miss Hildegarde Withers was sitting on one of the wicker chairs, her feet firmly planted on a Navajo rug. “Forgive me, Mrs. Beale, for getting you up at this hour,” she began. “But when murder strikes in a little town like this we are all involved until it’s settled.”

  “If murder did have to strike, it was just as well it landed on Huntley Cairns, who is so easily spared,” Midge said.

  “That’s your opinion!” Adele snapped. “If you knew as much as you think you know …” She caught herself. “Anyway, in my opinion, it was only an accident anyhow, and I’m sure that Midge and I know nothing about it. I don’t see why you came to us, anyway—”

  “That, my dear, was because you two are almost the only ones on the list of sus—the list of material witnesses that I had not had the pleasure of meeting previously.”

  “You’re wasting your time, I’m afraid,” Adele said wearily.

  “Perhaps I am. I have plenty to waste. I’m quite sure that neither of you had anything to do with the murder. But could we please start at the beginning? Did you have any business dealings with Mr. Cairns?”

  The schoolteacher was speaking to Midge Beale, but Adele answered quickly, her eyes flashing. “No, of course not! Why should I—I mean we?”

  “I’m just a test pilot,” Midge went on. “Right now I’m flying a T-square, though. I only knew Cairns to speak to, but Adele—”

  “I knew him slightly years ago. But Helen is one of my nearest and dearest friends.”

  The schoolteacher nodded. “I see. Does either of you, by the way, think that Pat Montague could have murdered Cairns?”

  “Nope!” Midge said quickly.

  “Yes!” cried his wife. “Because if he didn’t, then who did? Oh, I guess that isn’t a very nice thing to say to one of his relatives, but it’s what I think.”

  Miss Withers hesitated. “I’m afraid I should admit to you that I am an aunt to Pat Montague only pro tem and by adoption. But I had to get in to talk to you somehow. Never mind that, Mrs. Beale. You say that you think Pat did it, and a moment ago you said you thought Cairns died by accident.”


  “I only meant—”

  “Never mind. If it was murder, Pat Montague may be guilty, but not for the reasons I thought last night. That is why, since I was responsible for his being dragged away to jail, I am now trying to get him out. Or at least sworn to get to the bottom of this mystery.” She beamed at them. “Come now, can’t either of you suggest a reason why somebody would want to kill Huntley Cairns?”

  Adele shook her head. “It’s early in the evening for me to play guessing games.”

  “I know from nothing,” Midge said. “I wouldn’t even have gone to that party if I hadn’t been dragged by the scruff of the neck.”

  “Well, you enjoyed it after you got there, I noticed! I saw you dancing with Helen, and if you’d had a sandwich in your pocket it would have been on toast in two minutes!”

  Midge blinked. “Okay! I’ll bet your only reason for insisting that we go to the party was so that you could see Huntley Cairns again! Why don’t you tell the lady why you once crowned him with a plate, darling? That was before we were married, when you were going around with him. Weren’t you even making a pitch to marry him?”

  Miss Withers sank deeper and deeper into her chair, trying to look as if she weren’t there. The Beales’ hangovers made them seem inclined to play truth and consequences.

  “That was years and years ago! If you think I’m still carrying a torch for Huntley …” Adele whirled on the schoolteacher. “Just so you won’t get any wrong ideas from my loudmouthed husband, it all happened one night when we were out at the Sands Point Country Club. Huntley had been drinking boilermakers—”

  “What?” Miss Withers interrupted blankly.

  “Whiskey with a beer chaser. Anyway, he got a little tight—”

  “Stinko!” corrected Midge. “I was there.”

  “So I broke our engagement, that’s all,” she concluded.

  “You broke the engagement and the chicken-sandwich plate and all over his head because he suddenly went on the prowl for Helen Abbott,” Midge reminded her, his voice a little louder than was necessary. “Helen was at the next table—she’d come as usual with Pat, and Lawn was tagging along. Pat decided to give kid sister a thrill by waltzing with her—that was the time when her teeth were still in gold bands—and Huntley noticed that Helen was sitting all alone and looking very luscious in one of those strapless evening gowns. I was across the room with the Baldwins and the little Harper girl—”