Harold Hargreaves leased a seven-room apartment in one of those suavely smart hotels for which the Capitol is famous. He kept three servants, and the perfection with which his ménage was run put mine to shame. I sometimes wondered how he managed to afford the upkeep, but at least twice a year, when I received his bill for services, that wonder was stilled.
Koku, a Japanese with whom I always felt on most uneasy terms, admitted us, relieved me of my cloak, managed to make me regret that it wasn’t ermine, and piloted us into the drawing room.
In the drawing room sat Harold, a most uncomfortable host, with both the Browns. Mrs. Brown was a small timid-looking woman, very quiet and repressed, and her daughter Lucy, who bore a striking resemblance to Dorothy, undoubtedly accounted for it. Both women were clad in deep mourning, both were obviously impressed by their surroundings, although Lucy attempted not to show it. She was weeping with considerable determination into a handkerchief which, like her costume, was entirely black.
Her tears dried, however, as Simon and I came in, and she began to tell me in detail of the great affection Dorothy had felt for me. “My poor sister turned down a better job to stay on with you, Miss Tilbury. She was always mentioning you in letters home.”
I detected a rather surprised expression on her mother’s face, and judged that the letters, like the affection, were a product of Lucy’s fertile imagination. I judged, too, that lodged in Lucy’s mind was a vague but definite hope of future gain. She went with rather unnecessary thoroughness into the extent of Dorothy’s contributions home. “Of course,” Lucy sighed, “my poor sister couldn’t send any substantial amount while she was paying for Robert’s funeral.”
Mrs. Brown brightened, and began to describe the “beautiful services for poor Robert.” The unfortunate Robert Fithian had apparently been the victim of an automobile accident, which had occurred somewhere in the Middle West—in Ohio, I believe—and we were treated in detail to the tragic circumstances surrounding the end of what I gathered to be a reasonably worthless life. My sole interest in the matter was Dorothy’s uncharacteristic devotion to some person other than herself.
The Browns, as Inspector Chant had previously discovered, had no clue whatever to Dorothy’s violent death. Harold quite early caught Lucy’s drift, and managed to hurry her from the room before I could commit myself to any financial settlement. He closed the door behind the last flutter of the two women’s funereal black, and wiped his forehead.
“Thank God that’s over.” He turned to me. “I was afraid, Margaret, you might commit yourself to supporting the Browns for life.”
“But if the mother is in need, and Dorothy was her sole support…”
Harold groaned. “Don’t be naive, Margaret! I’ve made it my business to find out that Dorothy hadn’t sent one penny to her family in the past five years. The last they saw her was at her husband’s funeral in the spring. But they rush in now and play the grieving family. It’s a shakedown, pure and simple, and you’re not to fall for it.”
“I’m afraid, Harold, I must act as I see fit. I will admit I found Lucy trying.”
Harold gave a short laugh. “You put it mildly, Margaret. That girl is dangerous. She’s got hold of the idea that Dorothy’s murder isn’t so simple as newspaper accounts have led her to believe. Pay her any substantial sum and see if she doesn’t assume it to be a polite form of blackmail.”
“That’s ridiculous!”
“Is it?” Harold came over and sat down. “Fred telephoned me this morning and asked me to represent him in case of trouble. I heard his story of his activities on Monday evening. All I can say is we can be very thankful for that nurse who saw Kirkland Anderson drive off with Dorothy.”
Then, quite calmly, he began to tell me of the funeral arrangements, and presently Simon insisted that we leave. Koku brought my cloak as Harold was summoned to the telephone. A few minutes later the lawyer returned looking considerably puzzled.
“You’ll have to wait a few minutes, I’m afraid. Ever heard of an insurance adjuster named Arthur Jenkins?’
“No,” I said.
‘Well, this Jenkins is downstairs. Called your house and they said you were here.” Harold smiled. “Jenkins sounds reasonably offensive. You haven’t hit and run lately, have you, Margaret?”
“I have not,” I said decidedly. “Is he interested in one of my cars?”
“Seems to be,” said Harold.
“Whatever this Jenkins wants,” said Simon irritably, “can wait. You’re going home.”
At that point there was a thundering knock on the door.
The entrance of Arthur Jenkins into our mystery was as unforeseen as anything else in our strange case. A red-faced, blue-eyed man, Arthur Jenkins made clear at once that he was an insurance adjuster accustomed to dealing with difficult and contentious people. He swaggered into the room as though he owned it. With considerable flourish he handed me a card introducing him as the representative of an insurance company of which I had never heard and which Harold did not recognize. “My company,” Jenkins announced, “is prepared to go to court if necessary but we’d always rather settle claims outside.”
“Suppose,” said Harold coldly, “you explain precisely what claim you think you have against Miss Tilbury.”
“It is a matter of a collision.” The young man gave me an unpleasant look. “There’s no use, madam, your trying to duck an honest debt. My client’s got your number. The car in question is listed in your name.”
So far as I was aware no member of the family had been involved in a collision. I saw Harold’s eyes narrow.
“When did this ‘accident’ occur? You might explain the circumstances.”
Young Jenkins fumbled in his pocket, produced a sheaf of papers, thumbed through and extricated a typed sheet which he waved beneath my nose. “The accident in question occurred at the corner of Vine and Cherry Streets at 9:10 P.M. on September 27th.” He pressed the paper in my hand. “Your car, a mustard-colored roadster with wire wheels, was traveling at an excessive rate of speed. It jumped the curb, ran into a driveway, smacked my client’s car and then made off.”
The night of September 27th was the night Dorothy Fithian had died. The mustard-colored roadster was Jane’s car. The corner of Vine and Cherry Streets was hardly two blocks from Grosvenor Hospital. Simon and Harold and I were amazed and silent.
“My client,” Jenkins went on, “calls on his girlfriend every Monday night at nine o’clock. He left his car in her drive. He had hardly got inside the house before both of them heard the crash and rushed outside. They saw the mustard roadster pull away and go shooting up the street.” He hesitated. “I read the newspapers, madam, and I kinda think you’d rather settle out of court. My client and his girlfriend saw the passengers in that car.”
“You mean they saw Dorothy Fithian and Anderson?”
“Oh, no!” Arthur Jenkins vigorously shook his head. “They didn’t see a woman at all. They saw,” he said distinctly, “two men.”
“Two men!”
“Yes ma’am. One man was blond, the other was wearing a beret, his hair was hidden and they saw him only from the rear, but it was a man all right. I don’t know,” said Jenkins pleasantly, “what happened to that Dorothy Fithian in the five minutes after the car left the hospital and arrived at Vine and Cherry, and I don’t much care. I’m not in the investigation business. I’m willing—” and he looked at me, “to advise my client to forget about the police, providing you’re willing to settle this claim out of court.”
I adjusted my wraps, and rose. “Come, Simon. Goodbye,” I said to the bewildered Arthur Jenkins. “You may inform your client that I will settle any honest claim in court. You may tell him also that I suggest he and his friend go at once to the police.”
Simon and I walked out. I was as bewildered as I have ever been. In the hall I turned to Simon.
“What does it mean?”
“I’m afraid to think, my dear,” he said to me.
17
I had sent the surprised and disgruntled Jenkins to the police, and I confidently expected that the morning would bring me word from the inspector. But he did not call, and preoccupied by Dorothy’s funeral, I neglected to get in touch with him. On that day, September 30th, and while all of us except the children were gathered at Calvary Cemetery, our drama took a different turn. Nancy Anderson telephoned the house.
She left no name, and Thomas, who took the call, had merely written on the pad, “Woman called Miss Tilbury at 2 p.m.” When questioned about the entry he had little to add except that the woman was crying. “She was kind of upset,” he put it. I guessed that my caller was Nancy Anderson and I debated ringing her. In the end, however, I did not. The following morning, while I was at breakfast, Nancy Anderson telephoned again. This time she wasn’t crying. She was curt and to the point. She said, “I called yesterday. You were out. I’ve decided to talk to you. Does four-thirty this afternoon suit you?”
It suited me as well as any other hour. But I felt the need of moral support and when I set forth that afternoon I took Jane and Ames along. Or rather they took me.
Ames drove his own car, an open roadster, and as I remember it I tied a veil about my hair and pretended that I enjoyed being blown by every wind, as we showered the countryside with song to announce our coming. Ames had equipped his car with a radio, and since he drove more comfortably when the instrument was going, I tried to contain my soul in peace.
Private dwellings converted into apartments and boarding houses lined both sides of the quiet, unfashionable street where Nancy Anderson resided. Dressmakers’ signs and music teachers’ signs blossomed from many of the windows along the block. A dentist who specialized in painless extraction had his office on the ground floor of the four-story building where Nancy Anderson made her home. We drew up beneath the windows which announced the dentist’s calling to the public. Much to Jane’s disgust I insisted that the children await me in the car.
Nancy Anderson and the dentist were the only occupants of a dwelling which had once been the residence of a famous western senator. It was a gloomy forbidding-looking building, done in Tudor style. It was not provided with separate bells, and when I rang, the dentist appeared. He was a mild-mannered little man, and it was obvious that he had just slipped into the fresh white coat, and was hopeful of finding a prospective patient on his doorstep.
“Nancy has the top floor,” he explained, resigned to disappointment, “and I’m almost sure she’s home. She went out to lunch at noon, but I think I heard them coming back when I was working on my drill. That would be around two o’clock.”
“Them?” I said. “I thought Miss Anderson lived alone.”
“She does,” Dr. Halliday looked arch. “But a gentleman friend took her out to lunch, and I think they came back together. I heard them talking as they went upstairs.”
“In that case,” I said, and looked around the hallway for a chair, “perhaps I’d better wait.”
“Oh no, that isn’t necessary.” The dentist approached the foot of the stairs and shouted up: “Nancy! Nancy! Company’s coming up.”
There was no answer from above.
“She must have closed her door,” said Dr. Halliday, and continued to urge me toward the stairs. “But I’m sure she’s there. Just keep on climbing and you can’t go wrong.”
My own reluctance to climb those many stairs was conquered by Dr. Halliday’s firm determination to get me started. He watched me begin the climb, waited until I reached the second floor and turned out of sight. Then I heard him go back into his office and close the door.
Tall blank doors, tightly shut, looked out upon the stairwell and testified to emptiness beyond. The Raye Street house, I remember thinking, was a lonely choice of residence for a girl of twenty.
In that silence thick as wool, I passed the second floor, approached the third. The stairs were steep and the exertion tired me. I paused to rest. Still except for my own labored breathing I heard no sound. The air was damp and cool, and I was shivering when I reached and paused at Nancy Anderson’s door.
I had raised my hand to knock when I observed thumb-tacked beside the knob a square of paper with my own name penciled across its face. I unloosed the thumbtack, unfolded the paper and read:
“I may be out, Miss Tilbury, when you arrive. I have left my door unlocked. If you choose to wait, please go on in.
NANCY ANDERSON”
I glanced at my watch. It was nearly half past four. Had Dr. Halliday been mistaken in his impression that Nancy Anderson had returned from lunch? Or had she gone out again without his hearing her? I disliked the idea of waiting an indefinite length of time in a strange apartment, but nevertheless I opened the door and stepped into the living room.
I can see it today exactly as I saw it then. A noble room with lofty ceilings and great windows on the street, a room so large that it swallowed the few makeshift bits of furniture scattered here and there. I selected a straight chair and sat in it. I looked around. I saw the narrow day-bed disguised in piles of cushions where Nancy Anderson slept, and the chest of drawers where she kept her clothes. I saw an enameled coffee table, obviously cut down from a dining table, and thus brought arbitrarily and a little pathetically into the mode. On the table was a cardboard carton of melting ice, a cocktail shaker and two sticky glasses, both with a residue of liquor in the bottom. Why that display should have made me feel uneasy I can’t say, unless it was because the litter of the table was a jarring note in the order elsewhere.
Beyond, cut off by a vaulted arch, was another room of equal vastness but shadowy and windowless. In one corner a desk and chair were visible, and suddenly, with a sense of shock, I perceived that upon the chair lay a dark green coat, a small quilled hat, gloves and a purse. I believe it must have been then that I became aware of the humming sound that faintly troubled the stillness of those double rooms. A sound like running water.
I rose abruptly. I hadn’t been two minutes in the apartment, but absurdly enough I felt I could not stay. I went to the windows, looked down on the street. Jane and Ames were seated in the car, and without surprise I observed that the helpful Dr. Halliday had joined them. He was standing on the curb, and it was he who heard my vigorous rapping on the windowpane four floors above. I made plain that I was coming down.
I would leave a note, and I would go. I opened my purse and found a calling card but my fountain pen was empty. There would be ink on Nancy Anderson’s desk. I started briskly toward that other room. But I was conscious as I advanced upon the desk that the humming sound increased. It became quite definitely the sound of running water.
Before I reached the desk I espied the door which led to a bath, directly adjoining the dusky, shadowy second room. The door was half ajar. A section of tiled floor was visible, and on the tile was the shine of water. I had solved the mystery of the humming sound. An unseen tap was running, and the bowl had overflowed. Instincts bred by thirty years of housekeeping overcame all else, and without an instant’s hesitation I went straight into the bathroom, past a tub to the overflowing bowl. The hot water tap was flowing steadily, and a washcloth had clogged the drain. I turned off the tap, recovered the washcloth, wrung it dry. There was half an inch of water on the floor.
I turned to find a towel, and gaily printed shower curtains struck my eye. Suspended from a metal rod they were closely drawn. But the queer thing, the thing that caused my heart to begin a painful pounding was this: the shower curtains didn’t hang quite straight. Their outline was singularly irregular—as though behind them, and concealed by patterns of birds and flowers, was something solid. I began to back toward the door. My eyes, without my own volition, lifted to the shower rod. It was then that I slipped on the inundated tiles and fell against the shower curtains. They parted, and I saw the limp body of Nancy Anderson.
She was dead. She was hanging to her own shower rod. A woven length of dark blue cord was knotted about her neck.
The sound of my own thin scre
am was loud in my ears. But louder still was the sudden sound of footsteps running up the stairs. I had one thought, and one thought only. Somehow I managed to leave the inundated bathroom, to reach the living room, to open the door.
“Jane, Ames, you can’t come in…”
But it wasn’t Jane and Ames who stood in the hall. Inspector Chant was there, and with him a group of stern-faced men. The inspector caught my arm.
‘Miss Tilbury! Where is Nancy Anderson?”
I couldn’t speak.
“We’ve found her .brother,” the inspector said.
“Found him!” I looked wildly about the group. “Do you mean Kirkland Anderson is here?”
“No, Miss Tilbury. We found Kirkland Anderson in the Potomac River with a bullet in his head.”
18
I came very close to utter collapse in that moment when I stared out at Inspector Chant, and took in the significance of his news. That picture has photographed itself indelibly upon my brain. The inspector’s troubled, worried face, the faces of his silent, unspeaking companions. The district attorney of Winters Run stood at Chant’s elbow. I didn’t wonder why Alvin Graves was there, or why an ordinarily noisy, blustering individual should be so quiet. I didn’t wonder at anything.
My knees were buckling, and I was swaying in the doorway. Inspector Chant stepped toward me. He caught my arm and almost physically pulled me back from the black and swirling fog which threatened to engulf me.
“Miss Tilbury! Where is Nancy Anderson? We hope that she will talk now.”
The Strawstack Murders Page 17
