Miss Withers Regrets

by Stuart Palmer

  The first was dated the day before D-Day, presumably from somewhere in England, and the rest had been written at various times across France and Belgium, and the final one somewhere east of the Rhine.

  They were love letters, strong, passionate love letters, and yet obviously letters written by a man who had not expected to live through the hell on Omaha Beach, the seesaw in Normandy, the Battle of the Bulge, and the final assault on the Rhine and the Fortress Europa. His very fatalism had made Pat Montague write as he would never and could never have written otherwise—certainly not to another man’s wife.

  They were strange, bitter letters, saying much but leaving more unsaid. Huntley Cairns was mentioned only once, and that when Pat wrote that early that morning he had mowed down three German engineers with a B.A.R., and that it had helped him to kill them to think that they were Cairns, each of them.

  “Oh, dear!” murmured Miss Withers. “What Oscar Piper—and the sheriff—could make of that!”

  She tied up the letters very carefully and put them back into her handbag.

  It seemed the safest place, next to the fire—and if they were to be destroyed, Pat Montague would have to do the destroying.

  Anyway, there were more immediate problems. She looked up an address in the classified section of the telephone book and then put on a hat which resembled an unkempt window-box, took up her umbrella, and set forth into the thick, muggy afternoon.

  She walked halfway across the town and turned into the doorway of a small, neatly whitewashed building which bore a large sign, “Small Pet Hospital,” and beneath that, “D. M. Harvey, Veterinary Surgeon.”

  Dr. Harvey turned out to be a thin, youngish man with sandy hair brushed so tightly back from his forehead that it seemed to pull his eyebrows up half an inch. He smelled of disinfectant and of dog. His eyebrows went up another notch when she told him what had brought her here.

  “Well, aren’t tropical fish small pets?” she demanded.

  The vet laughed. “I guess you got me there, all right. But I’m sorry to say that I haven’t had much practice with fish, except for a few trout that I manage to kill when I get away over to Jersey and find a nice handy little stream. Most of my business is clipping and defleaing cats and dogs, and half of that went blooie when they put out the new DDT sprays for animals.”

  Miss Withers was properly sympathetic. “But didn’t they teach you anything about fish when you studied veterinary medicine?”

  “Not much, I’m afraid.” Then he brightened. “But I’ve got a lot of reference books. Some of them might help us. Wait a minute.”

  Dr. Harvey left her and returned after a few minutes with a heavy tome. “There seems to be one chapter in Malden and Larrier that applies. Let’s see—here we are. ‘Fungus Diseases in the Small Aquarium. Parasites, Microscopic and Larger. Hazards of the Community Tank’—this is it.” His thick chemical-stained finger marked a page.

  Miss Withers read: “ ‘Not all tropical fishes can be successfully kept in a community tank, for it must be remembered that all fish are naturally cannibalistic. In most cases, however, the whole problem can be resolved to a matter of size, as fish do not ordinarily prey upon other fish, of whatever species, who are of approximately half their own bulk or more. However, even among the same species, fish will without hesitation eat or attempt to eat any other fish of less than half their size, even in most cases including their own young. Most tropical fish remain in their desired miniature size in an aquarium, one exception to this being the scalare or angelfish, which grow even under those conditions and which should be removed from the tank as soon as they reach the size of a half-dollar.’ ”

  She sniffed. “That doesn’t apply—my angelfish are only the size of quarters.” She read on: “ ‘Two male bettas, or Siamese fighting fish, will of course battle to the death if kept in the same tank, and the female betta has an unsavory reputation for attacking other females, and sometimes any other fish, probably out of pure jealousy. Likewise the red-bellied dace and the black-banded miniature sunfish have been known to transgress. It must further be remembered that any tropical fish other than the scavengers or soft-mouthed varieties may become a killer in a community tank, just as some dogs learn to kill sheep, and having once acquired the habit will continue until caught and eliminated. Only trial and error will assist the fish fancier in this matter.’ ”

  She closed the book. “It seems to boil down to this—that all fish, like mankind, were murderers in the wild state and have a tendency to revert.” Miss Withers consulted the gold watch which was pinned to her bosom.

  “Dear me, I had no idea that I had stayed so long. Forgive me, Doctor, I know you must have more important problems than mine.”

  He accepted a two-dollar fee with modest reluctance. “Oh, we’re not so busy now,” said Dr. Harvey pleasantly.

  “Not as busy as you were some months ago, then?”

  He blinked. “Oh, you know about that? I thought it had been pretty well hushed up—bad for the summer visitor trade, you know, and half Shoreham lives on that. People don’t want to come out here and have their pets curl up and die.”

  “Naturally not.”

  “Once a dog-poisoning epidemic starts, it’s hard to stop it. We lost forty-six dogs here in Shoreham, a pretty good percentage of the canine population.”

  “As many as that? I suppose, Doctor, that you performed autopsies on the poisoned animals? What was it, the usual strychnine?”

  He shook his head. “Arsenic, at first. Then carbon tetrachloride and pyridine. And finally, three or four of the dogs that I examined showed no trace of poison at all. The cause of death was really peritonitis—simple perforation of the peritoneum—”

  “By a sliver of bamboo?”

  Dr. Harvey backed away from her very quickly indeed. “Now, how did you find that out?” he demanded. “Either somebody has been talking that had no business to talk, or else—”

  “Oh, I get around,” Miss Withers told him, and hastily got out of the place.

  She went hurrying back down the street, feeling at the moment some of the confusion of a hound puppy let loose on a wood lot where the overlaid scents of rabbit, squirrel, partridge, and red fox crisscrossed everywhere. She had to take herself firmly in hand in order to resist a tendency to give tongue and blindly rush off in all directions at once.

  The particular avenue which opened up in front of her might be, she realized all too well, only a blind alley. But it was one of the smoothest, straightest alleys, and downhill all the way. Besides, it was better to be doing something than to be doing nothing.

  “Now’s the time,” Miss Withers said to herself, “to send a monkey to pull the chestnuts out of the fire.” Or was it the cat who burned its paws in the fabled operation? She had never got it quite straight. At any rate, she needed help in baiting a certain harmless little trap that she had worked out in her mind.

  She thought of several possibilities, discarding them almost at once. Then she looked again at the little red volume in her handbag and nodded slowly. A block or so along the street she saw one of the local taxicabs cruising slowly towards her, and on an impulse she hailed it and demanded to be hauled to the Beale residence.

  “Anywhere you say, lady,” said the driver. “Say, tell me something. Ain’t you the she-Hawkshaw from New York that’s supposed to be trying to figure out what happened to Huntley Cairns?”

  Miss Withers realized that there was no keeping of secrets in a town this size and reluctantly admitted her interest in the affair. “I don’t suppose that you have a theory about the case?” she asked.

  “Inside job,” he came back promptly.

  “I had considered that angle myself,” she admitted. “And so, I imagine, have the police.”

  “Don’t kid yourself the police will get anywhere with a tough one like this Cairns job,” he told her. “They’re handing out stuff to the papers about how they have a hot clue and an arrest is expected any minute. That’s a lot of bilge. Bef
ore I was in the service I might a fell for it, but not now. I seen too many official training films and read too many of Doug’s communiqués.”

  Miss Withers blinked and agreed that military service did alter the viewpoint and the gullibility of many young men. She wondered, as she rode along, just how much Pat Montague had altered. Perhaps the changes were deep within him and he was not entirely aware of them as yet.

  Otherwise why would he remain a nympholept, in love with a romantic dream girl who couldn’t ever have existed? He might not be in love with Helen at all—not the living, breathing girl. Maybe he was even falling in love with somebody else without knowing it yet.

  When they pulled up in front of the Beale residence she saw that no car was in the driveway, which meant that Midge Beale was still at work and that she could have a heart-to-heart talk with Adele. Asking the driver to wait, she marched stiffly up the steps to ring the bell. But even as her thumb hovered on the button Miss Withers caught her breath sharply. She saw two or three dull brownish stains on the cement step—pear-shaped spots, surrounded by satellites.

  Automatically the schoolteacher reached down to touch one and then studied the smear on the tip of her glove. “ ‘Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this?’ ” she murmured. For this was blood, there couldn’t be the slightest doubt in the world about that.

  The door, she noticed now, was not completely closed. She pushed at it very gently, and it swung inward. The little foyer and the living room behind it were empty and still. In spite of the heat of the thick, muggy afternoon the windows were all closed. She took one step inside, and then another. She sniffed and decided that the place smelled of stale tobacco and ashes in the trays, of gin and lemon peel and dust.

  Miss Withers took another step and saw a dark spot the size of a dime on the sand-colored broadloom carpet ahead of her—and another one beyond that. The trail led in the direction of the stairs, a line of bloodstains a foot or so apart.

  On she went—on, and up the steps. She hesitated once, when the first step creaked under her foot, but the taxicab waiting outside gave her some moral support, at any rate. Curiosity overruled prudence, and besides, the house was absolutely still. She tiptoed up the stairs.

  The carpet in the upper hall was of a darker, mulberry color, which made the trail much harder to follow. And the distance between the drops was greater. “Whoever left these stains,” Miss Withers decided, “was moving or being carried up the stairs and along the hall, because the stains are pear-shaped, with the larger end ahead.”

  She went on very slowly. Just then a mildly bewildered voice spoke up behind her. “What in hell goes on here?”

  “Hush!” scolded Miss Withers. “I’m trying to follow …” She whirled around to see Midge Beale, who looked sleepy, disheveled, and unshaven, clutching a dressing-gown around his knobby little body and peering at her as though he wasn’t quite sure that she was real. “If you must know, I’m following a trail of bloodstains, young man!” she told him ominously.

  “I know where it leads to,” Midge suggested helpfully.

  “I have no doubt that you do!” she came back. “Mr. Beale, under circumstances like this, trespassing in somebody else’s house is quite permissible. What have you done with your wife?”

  “The trail,” he repeated. “It leads to my nose.”

  “What?”

  “I get nosebleeds whenever I get excited or angry, which is one of the reasons I got 4-F rating in the draft. My nose bled all over the place, as you’re finding out.”

  “A likely story!” she shot back at him, moving at the same time in retreat towards the head of the stairs. But Midge followed her. “Stay where you are, young man!” she challenged, raising the umbrella. “Or I’ll call for help!”

  Midge stopped. “Women!” he said very bitterly. “I guess it is just asking too much to expect them to make any sense. But do you mind telling me what you’re here for?”

  “I came here to see your wife.”

  “Not in,” he said.

  “Really? Then I wonder if you would be kind enough to tell me where I could locate her. Could I telephone?”

  The young man snorted. “I told her where to go, but I don’t think they have telephone service there. Anyway, Adele grabbed the car keys and went leaping out of the door …” He stopped, grabbing futilely for a handkerchief in his dressing-gown pocket. “There it goes again!”

  He plunged into the bathroom, holding his head over the sink. Miss Withers, peering in the door, was forced to admit that he really did have a nosebleed.

  “Have you tried a wad of tissue paper under the upper lip?” she suggested helpfully.

  “We had an awful fight,” he said. “I suppose Adele is on her way to her mother’s, way to hell and gone up in Yonkers. For all of me, she can stay there.”

  “It must have been a very bitter misunderstanding,” Miss Withers suggested. “Have you tried putting cotton up your nostril? I found that when one of my pupils got a nosebleed—”

  “Bitter! I popped her one.”

  “Dear, dear!” Miss Withers wrung out a washcloth in cold water and applied it to the back of his neck.

  “Well, I didn’t like being made a fool of! Ever since I married her I’ve been bragging about what a household manager Adele was—she only had a small allowance and yet the place was always full of good food and liquor and she used to have money left over almost every week. And then today I found out that she’s been getting her money from another man—and a married man, to boot!”

  “You should have booted him, then,” Miss Withers suggested.

  Midge Beale watched the thick red gore splash on to the porcelain. “Twenty-five dollars every week!” he continued. “From Fatso Cairns, of all people. And Adele tried to tell me that it was just a business arrangement, or a sort of royalty. But she couldn’t show me a contract or anything. I wouldn’t even have found out about it, only she asked me for money when she’d already had her household allowance this week. No wonder she was such a whiz at making both ends meet. It’s clear enough that she had something on Cairns and was making him pay off. Maybe it was breach of promise when he dropped her to marry Helen.”

  “In that case,” Miss Withers argued reasonably, “he would hardly have continued the payments after Adele married you. And the smallness of the sum, plus the weekly regularity, would seem to argue against the blackmail theory. I’m sure there must be some explanation. Why don’t you have a nice quiet talk—”

  “You can’t have a nice quiet talk with a woman who always bursts into tears,” Midge objected. “No, thanks, I don’t need another cloth. It seems to have let up.”

  “Then I must be running along,” the schoolteacher said, “before I say anything that will get your nose started again. There was just one question, however. At the Cairns cocktail party, after your little session in the library—”

  “Don’t ask me for details about the rest of the party,” Midge begged. “About that time it got very, very drunk out. That was Helen’s fault, for stranding me with two martinis.”

  “I was only going to ask if you noticed the absence of anybody about that time—any of the people who had been in the library?”

  He shook his head. “The Benningtons were playing bridge with Jed Nicolet and Mame Boad,” he informed her. “Doc. Radebaugh and Trudy Boad cut in for one or two hands.”

  “Then any one of the five—I mean six, counting the dummy—could have been absent for a while without being noticed?”

  “Without being noticed by me, anyway,” Midge assured her.

  Miss Withers headed for the stairs. “I hope you’ll forgive me,” she apologized when she was at the door. “I mean, for my thoughts. But a trail of bloodstains—”

  Midge gasped. “I get it! You thought that—I mean, that Adele was—”

  “Well, wouldn’t anybody think that?”

  He was laughing. “Why, ma’am, I wouldn’t harm a hair of her head, even though I’d just love to wring he
r pretty neck. You understand?”

  “I suppose so,” agreed Miss Withers doubtfully. “Oh, I almost forgot. Have you ever seen this book before?” She waved Oriental Moments in front of him.

  “Huh?” he brightened. “I don’t know for sure—but it looks like the book that Nicolet made so much fuss over in Cairns’s library. It’s the right color, anyway.”

  “I thought it would be. Then you didn’t see the same book when your wife took it out of the rental library down town some months ago?”

  Midge looked blank. Then his face cleared. “Oh, that! Sure, I remember, especially the drawing on the cover. I kidded the life out of Adele. She picked up the book, thinking by the title and the naked girl on the cover that it was hot stuff, but it turned out to be too dull to read. Once you put it down you couldn’t pick it up.”

  “Really! Your wife kept it out for more than a week, I happen to know.”

  “You may know that, but you don’t know Adele. She never returned any book in less than a week, and some she never returned. That’s the way she’s made.”

  “Oh?” said the schoolteacher.

  “Just a coincidence,” Midge assured her.

  “I suppose so,” agreed Miss Withers thoughtfully, and made her adieus. She rode back to the hotel in a thoughtful silence. No matter which way she headed, she wound up against a stone wall. “My autobiography,” she said to herself, “ought to be titled My Life and Times in Blind Alleys.”

  Chapter Eleven

  THE PHONE RANG THREE times and then was answered by “Miz Cyains’s res’dence,” spoken in a soft, chocolate-syrupy voice. There was a brief pause, then a giggle, and Lawn Abbott dropped into her own voice. “Speaking,” she said. “Oh, don’t mind me, Miss Withers—I was only clowning. What’s up? Did you get into—I mean, did you see him?”

  “I did—”

  “Oh—please wait just a sec while I get comfortable with a cigarette and everything.” Lawn carried the telephone, its luxuriously overlength cord trailing out behind, over to a divan. She held a cigarette to a lighter built to resemble a flintlock pistol and then got comfortable, which to her consisted of lying on the back of her neck with her boot-clad legs in the air. “Now tell all!” she begged.