His expression was as smug as the cat who has swallowed the last of the cream. “I warned you, Miss Tilbury, of the danger of keeping your information to yourself, and building to false conclusions. I could have relieved your mind on what happened to the gun if I’d dreamed of your concern.”
“Did Fred tell you Dorothy had taken his gun?”
The inspector chuckled. “No, Miss Tilbury. I might have been a shade doubtful of such a source. My source is unimpeachable. Your upstairs maid, a rather stolid but certainly truthful damsel, saw Dorothy take the gun shortly before she went downstairs on Friday. Philomena kept quiet for the usual African reasons—she didn’t want to mix herself in white folks’ doings.”
I repressed my fury with the innocent Philomena. “What did Dorothy want with the gun?”
“Nothing pleasant, I imagine,” said the inspector in a tone which closed the discussion.
I had gone through a variety of emotions, and the oddest of all must have been the dismay with which I saw him rise and pick up his hat. I tried to hold him.
“Did Fred tell you where he had gone when he left the theater?”
“He told me,” said the Inspector, “a tale which wouldn’t have convinced a child of ten.”
That was chilling enough. I didn’t dare ask whether Fred had described to the inspector, as he had described to Marian, the solitary drive, the lonely hours on the banks of the Potomac. Inspector Chant was eyeing me thoughtfully.
“I’ve a last bit of advice, Miss Tilbury. If you have any influence with your brother-in-law—and I think you have—talk to him. Maybe you can get the truth from him. Then,” and his smile was touched with malice, “at the very least, you’ll be better equipped—if the need arrives—to pit your wits against mine.”
That, as he doubtless intended, left me with nothing in the way of a response. He went on toward the door, and then he hesitated. “Oh, by the way, I’d like to know. Was it Dr. Hargreaves or was it your cousin who suggested that you lock yourself into your bedroom at night?”
“Dr. Hargreaves,” I said, surprised.
But the door had closed behind Inspector Chant. My knees were weak as water but I was about to rise when the door reopened and again, and briefly, I saw Inspector Chant.
“If you do talk to your brother-in-law, Miss Tilbury, you might ask him this. Ask him what he knows about those letters you glimpsed in Miss Fithian’s purse.”
This time Inspector Chant was gone. Two things had not been discussed during that exhausting and bewildering interview. No suggestion had been made as to any motive on Fred’s part for murdering Dorothy Fithian. No mention had been made of the missing Kirkland Anderson.
The inspector’s advice was good but I’m not sure that I would have taken it and sought out Fred. I had nothing—except my own common sense—with which to disprove the story he had told to Marian. That is, nothing tangible. I was still debating my decision when something happened which forced my hand.
The Riggson National Bank telephoned the house. My relations with my banking house were close, closer than I sometimes wished. Mr. Clary, the particular assistant cashier who handled all of our accounts, took a tremendous interest in the doings of depositors, and had elected himself a warm and almost fatherly adviser of mine. Frequently, when returning a bundle of canceled checks, he would look them over, shake his head and inform me that I should spend less on living expenses, and more on my various annuity policies. “With the country in its present condition, one can’t be too careful.”
I often wanted to point out that it was my money and my family, but I never did, and I always politely thanked him for his advice on “budgeting the larger income,” and threw away the little booklets he handed me.
It was Mr. Clary who called me that day from the Riggson Bank. It was his melancholy duty, he rather circuitously announced, to inform me that the checking account I shared with Fred and Marian was overdrawn.
I remember my own flat statement. “But that’s impossible, Mr. Clary. I made a large deposit just last week.”
“Then Mr. Brierly hasn’t had a chance to tell you,” said Mr. Clary, still sounding sad. “I was saying just this morning that with all your other troubles the matter had probably slipped his mind.”
“What matter, Mr. Clary? Please be explicit. I’m sure you’ll find there’s some mistake. My check stubs show a sufficient balance to cover my outstanding checks.”
Mr. Clary was hurt. “You didn’t let me finish, Miss Tilbury. Mr. Brierly can explain about the account. He made a large withdrawal Monday afternoon.”
“Large? How large?”
“Five thousand dollars,” said Mr. Clary resignedly. “He came in just at closing time, he was in a hurry and he didn’t have a chance to tell me why he needed such a sum.”
Fred apparently had had no chance to tell me either. Two days had passed since Monday afternoon, and he had not mentioned cashing such a check. He had withdrawn five thousand dollars at three o’clock on Monday afternoon, some five hours before Dorothy left my house forever.
With that telephone call from friendly little Mr. Clary I came into possession of a piece of information that was not only tangible and real, but that was, in its implications, appalling. I went downstairs immediately and asked Thomas to bring the car around.
16
It was late afternoon when I arrived in Washington at the government building where Fred had gone as usual that morning. The office was located on Pennsylvania Avenue near the Treasury Building, and, as even cabinet members know, it is virtually impossible to discover a parking place within blocks of there. I left Thomas and the car, and walked.
The sidewalks were already filling with home-going stenographers and clerks, and although I hurried my steps I found myself trapped in that vast hegira of government workers which is a daily phenomenon in Washington. The Treasury emptied itself of its hundreds; the other departments poured forth their thousands; the streets, the sidewalks swam with humanity. I bobbed along like a cork in that pressing, hurrying mass desperate with its urgency to escape monotony and the prison of confining walls. It was only by a miracle that I found Fred, or rather that he espied me, seized my elbow and piloted me into the comparative calm of the doorway which swallowed him six mornings out of seven. He seemed pleased at the prospect of company on the homeward trip. And quite unsuspicious.
“Are you caught without transportation, Margaret?”
“No,” I said when I could get my breath. “Thomas drove me in. I came particularly to see you, Fred.”
The smile faded from his face.
Presently, quite silently, he guided me around the corner to the little candle-lighted restaurant where he ate his luncheons. Fred’s tastes were inexpensive; he disliked the smart hotels which were the breath of life to Marian, and had I been in a different mood I might have read into his choice of eating-place something of a repressed and wistful side of his personality, an urge toward a carelessness and informality which could not long exist in my sister’s presence. The little restaurant was gay, brightly colored and undeniably bohemian.
In the flickering light I quickly abandoned any effort to decipher a somewhat spotted menu. Fred ordered tea and toast for both of us, and settled back, and attempted to contrive an air of jauntiness and ease. He listened quietly enough as I told the story of the inspector’s, visit, and of the inspector’s advice to me and, inferentially, to him. He listened as though I were discussing someone else.
“You must realize,” I said sharply, “how important this is. Inspector Chant suspects you, Fred.”
“How can I help that?” my brother-in-law demanded. “The whole thing’s rubbish anyhow. It’s obvious that Kirkland Anderson killed Dorothy. What do you want me to do? Make up some tale to satisfy Inspector Chant that I had some hand in it?”
His defiance was artificial. Unreal and unconvincing. He spoke like a man who had planned his reactions in advance, perhaps from the very moment he had looked into my face, and guesse
d my mission.
“No one,” I said quietly, “expects you to make up any story. All I do ask is that you explain your absence from the theater. Surely that should not be difficult.”
“I’ve explained already.”
“Did you tell Inspector Chant,” I asked, “that when you left the theater you simply took a drive?”
“No,” he said sullenly. He gave me an uneasy glance. “Though, in a sense, that’s what I did. I didn’t drive to Haines Point. I drove from the theater to the Union Station. I—I didn’t feel like mentioning it before. Marian is so infernally jealous…”
I was confused. “What has Marian’s jealousy to do with your going to the railroad station? Why hide the fact at all? Why go there?”
“That’s just it!” Fred said bitterly. “I went to the station at Dorothy Fithian’s request. She talked to me Monday morning, said that she was leaving, and asked me to meet her that evening with the ninety dollars of her last month’s salary. The railroad station was her idea.”
My heart sank. Fred was watching me as though he wondered how much conviction was carried by his words. I couldn’t look at him. I said, “Why didn’t Dorothy ask me for her money? Why put you to such inconvenience? I’d have been glad to pay her what I owed.”
“I don’t know,” he said angrily, “why she didn’t ask you. Possibly because she thought you’d pester her with questions. I thought she was being damned mysterious, but that her business was her own. I didn’t question her at all!”
“You didn’t ask why she was leaving in such haste?”
“I did not.”
“It might have been better if you’d been a shade more curious.”
“Good God, Margaret, why remind me of the obvious? It’s going to be difficult enough to prove that I went to the station, that I waited, that Dorothy did not appear.”
“I daresay it is,” I said. I looked at him. “I suppose then that’s why you found it necessary to draw that check on Monday afternoon. You needed cash to pay Dorothy her last month’s salary.”
“What check? What check do you mean?”
“I talked to Mr. Clary today. He tells me that on Monday, just at closing time, you cashed a check for five thousand dollars. You might explain, Fred, why you started out to meet Dorothy Fithian not with ninety dollars, but with five thousand dollars in your pocket.” A drop of wax slid down the candle on the table, and hissed and sputtered. The little yellow flame flickered and cast an odd light on Fred’s face. I had hoped to shock him. Perhaps I had, but in those long and anxious hours of anticipating every possible contingency, Fred must have prepared himself for that question, too.
He managed an uncertain smile. “I don’t wonder, Margaret, you were surprised. I've been meaning to speak of that withdrawal, but it had simply slipped my mind. On—on Monday I decided to transfer our joint account.”
Gaining confidence perhaps from my silence, Fred went on to say that certain rumors, source not specified, had convinced him that the Riggson National Bank, a financial rock for seventy years, had made what he termed “a series of highly speculative investments.”
“You wouldn’t understand,” he said, “but anyhow I had reason to feel the institution was no longer sound. On Monday I decided to close out our account and shift over to American Trust.”
To back up this tale he exhibited, a brand new bank book which showed a single deposit of five thousand dollars. Fred had withdrawn five thousand dollars on the day of Dorothy’s death, and had re-deposited in another bank the following morning. His eyes defied me to point out the ugly juxtaposition of circumstances, or to ask him why, if his worry had been valid, he hadn’t spoken first to me, or gone to Harold for advice. Harold would have been the first to know if the Riggson Bank were in difficulties.
I saw the uselessness of any further attempt to obtain the truth from Fred. He was either too terrified or too involved to tell it. I didn’t wonder that the inspector had described his tale as one which would have been unconvincing to a child of ten. Fred may have read from my expression what I was thinking. He leaned across the shaky little table. He spoke in much gentler tones.
“Tell me this, Margaret. What had I to gain from Dorothy’s death? What possible motive would I have for killing her?”
Suddenly the inspector’s odd suggestion returned to me. My own words came almost without reflection. “Fred, do you know anything about those letters I saw in Dorothy’s purse?”
This time I got beneath the protective armor in which he had encased himself. He gasped as though from the impact of a blow, and attempted to cover it by complaining of the closeness of the air. But he would tell me nothing.
“No,” he said. “I know nothing of the letters.”
I pressed him. “You don’t know whether Dorothy mailed them?”
Obscurely my question seemed to afford him a measure of relief. “How could I know?” he demanded with a return of that earlier anger. “How many times must I say I didn’t see Dorothy after she left the house on Monday night? I wish to God, Margaret, that you would remember that it was Kirkland Anderson—and not I—who drove off with Dorothy from the hospital. That it’s he who’s wanted by the police. If you’ve energy to spare, you might spend it finding out what’s become of Anderson.”
Fred was still talking in that vein when we left the smoky little restaurant. Together, like two strangers, we returned to Broad Acres. A dismal rain was falling, drumming on the streets, dripping from the trees, promising a worse day on the morrow. And the next day would be September 30th, and in the afternoon at Calvary Cemetery on the outskirts of Washington, we would bury Dorothy Fithian. I didn’t mention that to Fred.
When we reached the house, I climbed straight to my room. Simon, displeased by my trip to town, had arranged in advance, and without consulting me, that I dine in bed in solitary state. Verity brought up my tray, and informed me that she had personally prepared the coddled eggs, a dish which I detest, and that she meant to remain until I swallowed every healthful mouthful. The others were dining on a roast of beef, and I gathered that even Jane had gone down, and that Ted Breen was a guest.
Indeed Ted came up as I was finishing the last of the coddled eggs. He came in and he closed the door, and he looked uncertainly at Verity, who looked back at him and did not budge.
“Did you want to speak to me, Ted?”
“Yes,” he said, glanced again at Verity, and then resigned himself to the inevitable. “It—it’s about Nancy Anderson. I suppose you know Jane wants to talk to her. Wants me to arrange a meeting.”
“And you don’t approve. Is that it, Ted?”
“Not exactly.” He hesitated. “But Nancy isn’t exactly a stable personality, and she feels so bitter toward the family that I think Jane should stay away from her.”
I delivered myself of a sententious remark. “One isn’t likely to be logical when one is in a state of terror and suspense.”
Ted nodded unhappily. Then unexpectedly, he added, “I’ve spent a good bit of time with Nancy Anderson. I believe her animus springs from something more—more concrete. She’s about as talkative as a clam, but one thing’s clear. Most of her bitterness is directed against you, Miss Tilbury. You in particular.”
I remembered uncomfortably the girl’s blazing eyes, my own sensation that, inexplicably, I was the object of a stranger’s hatred. And that stranger a young, a desperately distressed and troubled girl. Ted was looking at me.
“I hate to say this, Miss Tilbury. But if you thought, thought very hard, could you think of any way in which you might have injured Kirkland Anderson? It might be very remote—but real to Nancy. This sounds absurd, but she seems to blame you personally for everything that has happened.” He planted himself before me as though he had reached a resolution. “Anyhow I think the matter should be straightened out. That you should do it. That you, not Jane, should go and talk to Nancy Anderson, providing I can manage an appointment.”
Ted’s earnestness alone compelled my acc
eptance. Unlike Jane, I could not visualize such an interview as anything but harrowing and futile. I felt strongly that Nancy Anderson’s aversion to me was irrational and nothing else, and could not convince myself that it might impinge upon our mystery, or that, if she chose, the girl could throw a ray of light where all was darkness. But that hysterical and frightened child, sitting alone in the cheaply furnished apartment which I was to visit under tragic circumstances, held the key to the mystery. She had built up the crime almost exactly as the police were to see it, with one important difference. Ironically enough, that difference—that mistake in her calculations—kept her silent when she should have spoken.
But I hadn’t much time to ponder Nancy Anderson. Directly after dinner Harold telephoned, and my mind was taken up with the plans for Dorothy’s funeral. I had not been willing that Dorothy should be buried without the presence of her kin, and I had delegated to Harold the task of bringing her mother and sister from the little Maryland town where they resided. The funeral arrangements also had been placed in Harold’s hands. Dorothy’s closest kin had been quite agreeable that an utter stranger should shoulder the entire responsibility, although I believe the sister did suggest the choice of cemetery. Dorothy was to be laid beside her husband in the plot which she herself had purchased in the spring.
On that rainy evening Harold telephoned to say that the Browns, mother and daughter, had arrived and to request that I appear at his apartment and meet them. He was weary and he was disgusted.
“You won’t like the Browns,” he warned me, “but come anyway. Those two, I want you to remember, are your responsibility.”
I wasn’t overly inclined to make the trip. I, too, was exhausted, but Simon wandered in and managed to rouse my opposition by insisting that I defer the meeting and stay in bed. In consequence I left the house half an hour later. Simon, highly disapproving, drove me to the city. The family was also disapproving but they managed to load us down with the usual household errands. We returned a circulating-library book for Marian, we stopped at Ames’ fraternity house and picked up a suit of clothes for him. Rain was now falling heavily, leaves were whipping from the trees and piling on the slippery pavement. Our way from the fraternity house to Harold’s led straight past Grosvenor Hospital—a brilliant spot in the storming darkness. Simon did not speak of it, but pressed his foot on the accelerator and hurried us by.
The Strawstack Murders Page 16
