A Most Immoral Murder

by Harriette Ashbrook

  The town of Saugus by some strange miracle had escaped the depredations of summer vacationists and antique hunters, and had preserved much of the quiet, sleepy flavor that is one of the chief charms of very old and very small shore villages. There was still the white church that had been built in 1794, and the same shops that had lined its streets since the Civil War.

  It was into one of these that Spike strolled after he had moored his launch down at the rotting, green-lichened pier at the foot of Main Street.

  Milo Taylor, the proprietor, a rosy, graying, rotund fellow, sat behind a tall roll top desk in the rear.

  “So it’s stamps you’re after again,” he said when Spike had stated his business. “Well, I guess I still got some left—somewhere.” He started pawing about aimlessly in the roll top desk. “I recollect I bought quite a sight of ’em about two, three years ago from a salesman that come through. Nobody much has bought ’em, though, except you and the boy up to your brother’s place.”

  “I’m getting them for him,” Spike explained. “He has been sick. Mumps.”

  Milo tch-tched sympathetically and heaved himself from his chair. He wandered about the shop, peering under a length of cloth here, opening up an empty tin there. And like all disorderly people over whom some benign Providence watches, he finally found what he was looking for in a large and ornate vase made from clam shells embedded in pink cement.

  “Here they are,” and he shook them out onto the desk. “Always had a hankerin’ after stamps myself ever since I read an article about them in one of the New York papers, the time they had the big exhibition, back a spell.”

  The stamps were a miscellaneous lot, done up in little soiled, dusty cellophane envelopes. Spike selected several packets.

  “How much?”

  Milo pursed his lips uncertainly. Cost accounting had no place in his schemes of merchandising. “Oh— well—say about fifty, seventy-five cents.”

  He laughed as he pocketed the coins flipped across the counter. “You know this article I was tellin’ you about says they’s some stamps that are worth thousands of dollars. Thousands!”

  “Don’t tell Teddy about them. It would sort of take the edge off my seventy-five cents worth.”

  “Well, you never can tell. Now maybe unbeknownst to anybody there might be one of them real valuable ones in one of them there packets you got.” Milo seemed to regard the prospect of a fortune slipping through his fingers with his usual equanimity.

  “I recollect this article was tellin’ about a fellow that come across a bank that was movin’ from a place they’d been fifty, sixty years, and they was going to throw out a lot of old letters and stuff. And he give a hundred dollars for the lot, and what do you know if he didn’t find some of these valuable stamps, and sold ’em for seven, eight thousand dollars.

  “And they was tellin’ about one stamp—just one, mind you—that was worth twenty-five thousand-no, no, it was thirty-two thousand—”

  Reluctantly Spike tore himself away from Milo’s tall tales of stamp fortunes. He would have preferred to stay and listen to the store-keeper’s genial ramblings, but having pledged himself to good works, he felt that the sooner he got them over the better.

  The country place of R. Montgomery Tracy was imposing in an ugly, solid sort of way. As Spike drove his Cadillac roadster up the graveled driveway—he had picked up his car at the garage in Saugus—he searched the second-floor windows for a glimpse of Teddy’s face. He hoped he might slip in and see his nephew without encountering his sister-in-law. His brother he knew was in town. Hilda, he hoped, was in hell.

  But it just happened that Hilda was sitting on the side verandah. Hilda was a largish person—a bit taller, as a matter of fact, than her somewhat smallish husband—and she ran to resolute corseting, close-cropped gray hair, and large bone glasses. Much of her life was devoted to committees, and she had at one time or another been chairman of everything from a church mystery play to a county dog show. Her specialty, however, was child training, and Teddy was her guinea pig. It was a tribute to the inherent soundness of his constitution that he had survived successively Behaviorism, the Montessori Method, a progressive play school and Gestalt psychology.

  It was only the mumps that had saved him from newer and more scientific horrors. The interlude was temporary though. Already his mother was planning fresh experiments. Even as Spike mounted the steps she was engaged in reading a book, an astonishing new theory that conclusively proved that the time to get a child, to really mold his character and clinch his behavior pattern is in his twelfth year. He must be isolated, a creature apart during that crucial time. He must be kept from all peril both physical and moral. Bad company is as dangerous as germs. Association with people of light…

  Spike felt that his sister-in-law’s greeting was unusually cool. He was aware, of course, that her feelings toward him were never unduly tender, yet this afternoon he felt a new frigidity in the air.

  “Teddy,” she told him curtly, in reply to his inquiry, “is ill.”

  “I know. That’s why I came over. I brought him some stamps.”

  “Stamps!”

  The inference of her tone was that someone was about to present her son with a bunch of adders.

  “For his collection,” Spike explained.

  “He has no collection.”

  “Oh yes, he has. He was showing it to me just the other day.”

  “He has no collection. I ordered Perkins to burn it—this morning.”

  “Why you di—,” Spike caught himself just in time.

  “To burn it—this morning. I was reading a book only last week on various phases of the Oriental plague, and they have on record three cases over a period of twenty years which are directly traceable to stamps. The plague bacillus adheres to the glue of the stamp, forming—”

  Spike rose abruptly. “Where’s Teddy? I want to see him.”

  “Teddy can see no one.”

  “He’s not as sick as all that. The doctor said yesterday that he—”

  “For a period of six weeks Teddy will not be at home to anyone—anyone. I’m reading a book now, a marvelous book on an entirely new phase of child psychology which—”

  Spike jerked open the door of his car, turned the key and jammed in the clutch. The engine roared with quite unnecessary anger. It was just beyond the shrubbery that shut off the house from the road that a figure jumped from the bushes and gesticulated wildly. Spike put on squealing brakes.

  “Perkins, what the hell?”

  “It’s Master Teddy, Mr. Philip. He asked if I would give you this when I saw you instead of—of burning it. But you won’t, of course, say anything to Mrs. Tracy about it, will you?”

  Perkins was old and white-haired and his gentle, kindly eyes were appealing as he held out a clumsily done up package. Spike slipped the wrapping off. It was a grubby stamp album and inside was a letter in round little-boy writing.

  “Spike: Take care of this for me. They’re going to burn it on me. And if you find any good new Russian air mails save them.

  Teddy.

  P. S. Do you know a book that says that stamps are good for you? If you do will you please buy it and send it anonmusly to Mother and I will pay you bade twenty cents a week from my alouance.”

  CHAPTER III - The Beginning of a Beautiful Friendship

  “SING TO ME. Sing me that song you sang the night when first we met.”

  Pug looked disgusted. “If I didn’t know you, I’d say you was a pansy.”

  “Sing to me,” Spike persisted as he stretched himself on the davenport.

  The heat of the afternoon had given way before lowering clouds, and with darkness had come a storm that whipped the calm waters of the bay into tumbling waves. The wind was rising now, driving the rain against the window panes.

  Spike lit an after-dinner cigarette and raised his voice above the rattling of the shutters as he addressed Pug.

  “Sing ‘The Baggage Coach Ahead.’ ”

  “I
can’t. I ain’t drunk, and anyway, I gotta clear the table.” Pug went virtuously about his duties. “Mrs. Parsons wants to get home early.”

  But Spike would not be put off. “Sing ‘Why Did They Dig Ma’s Grave So Deep?’ ”

  “I ain’t got my music along.”

  “Sing ‘Somebody’s Grandpa’ and ‘The Fatal Wedding.’”

  The swinging door to the kitchen banged on Pug’s back as he retreated with a pile of dishes. Presently he returned with an empty tray. Spike eyed him sternly.

  “Chuck it,” he said, indicating the tray. Pug hesitated, then put the tray on the table.

  “Come here and sit down.” He indicated a chair in front of the davenport. Pug sat

  “Now tell me something. What the hell do you think I hired you for?”

  “I couldn’t rightly say,” said Pug complacently. “Neither could you. The both of us was too cockeyed that night to remember anything correct.”

  The stem lines of Spike’s face relaxed at the recollection of a certain night three months before when he had first made the acquaintance of Mr. Pug Beasley. The details were misted in an alcoholic haze, but the general outlines were there.

  It had been in the Garden. Nothing exciting, just the usual Thursday night card of second raters who might some day be champions, and second raters who had once been champions. There had been two light weights… stalling… stalling… round after round of heavy, dull evasion. The crowd had started to boo… “Wake me up when they start to fight”… “Don’t hit him, Clarence, you might hurt him.”… One of the fighters had gotten mad at the crowd. Words had been flung back and forth over the ropes. “All right, if you can do any better come on up here and do it, you little dried up prune.”

  A small, belligerent figure had crawled and swayed into the ring. Dead, roarin’ drunk. He had fought with his bare fists and both of the fighters at once. A gallant fight! A challenge I… Always stick up for the game fighter… Another figure had crawled and swayed into the ring… larger, clad in evening clothes… dead, roarin’ drunk, too. It was a grand four-cornered melee.

  Afterward on the way to the precinct station house in the patrol wagon, they had introduced themselves with the extreme formality of which only the very drunk are capable. “Mr. Pug Beasley, one of the bes’ bantam-weight fighters in the world ’til I got too fat, one of the bes’.”… “Mr. Spike Tracy, one of the bes’—no, no, one of the wors’—”

  They had spent the night together in the same cell and Mr. Beasley had revealed himself as a virtuoso of rare talent. “The Curse of An Aching Heart”… “Just Break the News to Mother”… unprintable verses of “Mademoiselle from Armentiers” and “Frankie and Johnnie”… “Throw Him Down, McClosky.”… The night had been alternately gay and lachrymose with song.

  In the morning the desk sergeant had been somewhat embarrassed to discover that one of his guests was the younger brother of the district attorney. He was all for letting him go quietly, but Spike refused unless he be allowed to take along a friend. The elastic procedure of the police department—where friends are concerned—could not be stretched quite that far, and Spike’s wallet had been lost in the fight the night before.

  In the end R. Montgomery Tracy had been forced to come down in person and put up the money for fines. He had not missed the opportunity to lecture his younger brother on the “thoroughly disreputable” nature of his conduct and his associate. It was, as Spike frequently pointed out, the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

  It’s only discordant feature was Pug’s insistence on doing a little work. He received a salary far in excess of his actual services, and occasionally his conscience smote him.

  “I hired you,” said Spike, drifting bade to the present, “to do what I tell you to do.”

  “Yes, sir. Very good, sir.”

  “I thought we settled all that this afternoon.”

  “We did, sir, but occasionally, sir, I like to get your goat, sir.”

  Spike grinned. “God, what a bloody fool you are, Pug. That’s why I like you. Light up.” He tossed him cigarettes and a lighter.

  “How’s the kid, Teddy?” Pug asked when he was settled comfortably, smoking.

  “Lousy.” Spike related the afternoon’s misadventures.

  “Ain’t I glad my old lady was a tart,” Pug commented complacently, “and left me on a doorstep? It’s fierce what kids with mothers has got to endure. I’ll bet—”

  The rest of his sentence was drowned in the roar of thunder and wind.

  “Tough night out,” Spike said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Milo Taylor says people pay thousands of dollars for just one stamp.”

  “He’s a liar or there’s more damn fools in the world than I thought.”

  “Yes, but aren’t they lucky?”

  “Who?”

  “The damn fools. At least they have—something.” Spike’s voice became weighted with pity and tragedy. “They have their stamps, their porcelains from the tenth Ming dynasty, their match box covers. But what have I? Nothing, nothing! My life is empty. My empty arms are—”

  “Shut up!” Pug sat up listening.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I thought I heard—”

  Spike listened. “So did I. Go to the door.”

  Pug crossed the room, shot back the heavy bolt, opened the door a crack. Wind and rain billowed into the room. He peered out into the darkness. The door was pushed wider. Then it crashed open with the weight against it.

  A woman, drenched, wild, haggard, fell across the threshold and lay there, moaning softly.

  “Get a load o’ this in your empty arms,” Pug said quietly.

  CHAPTER IV - Murder at Last!

  THE BREAKING waves dashed high on the low, sandy shore of Sark Island, and collapsed into frantic, boiling surf, cutting the tiny bit of land off from the mainland, enveloping it in storm and hurricane.

  At the eastern end of the island, the fantastic scroll work that surrounded the lookout porch at the top of the Huddleston’s old Victorian farm house was torn away and hurled crashing against the barn. Mrs. Parsons’ tiny, three-roomed cottage, low and compact, located midway along the north shore, escaped the storm’s fury, but her garden in all the lushness of mid-summer was trampled and ruined.

  At the Tracy place on the extreme western end, shutters were torn off, and at the tiny pier at the foot of the lawn the motor launch snapped its moorings, was picked up by the frenzied sea and hurled back against rocks, dashed into splinters.

  The pier itself with its landing platform used by the ferry that came across twice a day from Saugus to bring provisions and mail, stood firm. It was alone, however, in its pigmy defiance, for no ferry would risk the boiling, mountainous sea that separated Sark Island from the mainland.

  At the Tracy house the roaring outside only threw into greater relief the strange quiet of the upstairs room where the woman lay. A lamp burned fitfully on the dresser—there was no electricity on Sark Island—and the room was hung with shadows through which the white face on the pillow could be dimly seen.

  Spike and Pug stood at the foot of the bed, and Mrs. Parsons sat on a chair beside it, her large capable hands smoothing the tangled black hair, wiping rain and mud from the face, turning up the cuffs of the pajama coat that was much, much too long and large for the frail body within it.

  The woman tossed, muttered, babbled strange incoherencies. She seemed to strain, now in some agony of effort, now in some terror of recoil. A violent fit of shivering shook her.

  “Get a hot water bottle and fill it,” Mrs. Parsons said quietly to Pug.

  “We ain’t got any. What do you think—” But the words were suddenly stilled. Even Pug seemed to realize that it was not the time for his usual mode of retort.

  “Then go down cellar and get three of those bricks that are piled up against the fruit room and heat them in the oven and wrap them in towels and bring them up here.”

  When Pug left the roo
m, she turned to Spike.

  “She’s very ill, Mr. Tracy. She’s cold and yet I’m sure she has a fever.”

  Spike said nothing but went to the window and peered out into the frenzied night. She divined his purpose.

  “No use thinking about that,” she said.

  “She ought to have a doctor, though.”

  “I know, but how could you get one?”

  “I could take the launch,” he said, ignorant of the fact that even as he spoke it tossed in a million splinters on the boiling sea.

  She shook her head. “You couldn’t get beyond the breakers. You’d be smashed to pieces. When you’ve lived on Sark Island for twenty years like I have, Mr. Tracy, you’ll know better than even to think of it. We’re marooned. We are, every once in a while.”

  “Then there’s nothing to be done?”

  “Nothing, except to keep her warm and quiet if we can.”

  “You’ll stay tonight?”

  She nodded, and turned back to the woman moaning softly in delirium.

  Monday night… all day Tuesday… Tuesday night. The storm raged. Inside the quiet room the woman lay for long hours sunk in coma. Then she would rouse, try vainly to get up, cry out, sink back sobbing, babbling. Mrs. Parsons was with her constantly during the day, and slept in an adjoining room at night. Pug and Spike took turns sitting beside the bed during the night, three hours each, alternating like sailors on watch.

  It was in the early hours of Wednesday morning just as a murky grayness was beginning to creep into the room that the gale broke. Gradually Spike, sitting beside the bed, became aware that there was no roaring and pounding of wind and surf. He went to the window and peered out into the graying dawn. The storm was over.