The Strawstack Murders

by Dorothy Cameron Disney

  “You’re too late,” I said. “She’s in her bath. She’s hanged herself.”

  I am a little incoherent about what happened during the next half hour. I know that Inspector Chant rushed past me, and that the others went after him. The heavy draperies which hung between the enormous living room and the second room and bath had not been drawn before, but they closed swiftly now, and behind them the ordered confusion of police work instantly got under way. Certain sounds cling in my memory—voices muffled by the draperies, the continuous shrilling of the telephone, the bustle of urgent, hurried movement. Once again and with horror I heard the humming sound of running water, heard the sound break off. I remember that. I remember too that I desired to return to Broad Acres, and that District Attorney Graves would not permit it. He sent word downstairs that the children were to leave, seated me on Nancy Anderson’s day-bed and told me to stay there.

  Alvin Graves, although I disliked him and later on was to fear him greatly, was not a bad sort. He had been present at the recovery of Kirkland Anderson’s body, and was still pale and shaken by the scene. According to his own lights I suppose he treated me in the only way he could. It was not his fault that his job was to obtain convictions.

  From the district attorney’s lips, and in those unreal, fantastic circumstances, I heard my first account of the finding of Kirkland Anderson’s body, and Jane’s car. A censored, expurgated account, but I didn’t know that then. Such facts as I was given were these:

  The young interne and the car together had been recovered from the murky depths of the Potomac River, at a point not half a dozen blocks from Grosvenor Hospital. Simon and I had driven past the very spot two nights before on our way to Harold’s apartment. I recalled a dangerous, unguarded curve in the road, the gray, rain swept surge of the Potomac below. I shuddered, and lost part of the district attorney’s querulous regret that his own search for Kirkland Anderson had been conducted for a living man—a fugitive in a mustard-colored car. In consequence of this mistake the credit for the tragically belated revelation of what had happened to Kirkland Anderson went not to the police, but to a complete outsider. Early that morning it appeared that the youthful operator of a motor boat, a chap named Jackson, had gone along the Potomac for a sail. Shortly afterwards, and with some indignation, the boatman had reported the presence of a large and dangerous obstruction in the river channel. He had nearly lost his craft, and he wanted something done.

  An immediate investigation had made clear that the obstruction resting in the river bed was a car. The authorities realized at once what they had, but they didn’t realize until they went through the ghastly, awkward business of raising the car from its watery grave that Kirkland Anderson was not a suicide. That he had not driven himself into the river. They knew then.

  “He was shot just once,” said District Attorney Graves. “Through the back of the head. He was dead as mackerel when the mustard-colored car struck the Potomac and sank in twelve feet of water.”

  I had a sudden sickening vision of Jane’s jaunty little roadster—a dead man huddled in the seat—hurtling into the Potomac River and sinking out of sight. Someone else must have stood in the road above and watched and felt secure against discovery.

  Even then, in that numb, dazed hour and long before our story had played itself to a predetermined and inevitable end, I knew that I was not surprised that the explanation for the disappearance of Kirkland Anderson was his murder. When? Why? How did his death fit with Dorothy’s? How had she appeared at Grosvenor Hospital on Friday night, only to reappear in the strawstacks dead? Where was the explanation of the insurance adjuster’s tale? Questions thronged my mind. I wet my lips.

  “You’ve got no clues?”

  "No, Miss Tilbury,” said District Attorney Graves.

  He looked me in the eye, and lied. Lied deliberately. Within a few hours I was to learn that the gun which killed Kirkland Anderson had been found in the car. I was to learn of the damning presence of the water-sogged, shapeless garment which was to change completely our picture of the occurrences of Friday eight. Pinned into the lining of the ruined garment was a bundle of letters, indecipherable in part but still held together by a rubber band—letters which were to be carefully reconstructed to provide what District Attorney Graves was later on to call “the motive for these hideous crimes.”

  The district attorney left me. I sat there on the day-bed and I waited. In some dim way I realized that I was as much a prisoner as though I were behind the bars. A prisoner treated with the courtesy and consideration that denotes the iron hand in the velvet glove. Someone brought me coffee and I drank obediently. Dusk fell outside, darkness thickened at the windows, and someone else turned on the lamps so that the enormous, sparsely furnished living room sprang into light. The scatter rugs were islands on the polished floor; the coffee table still burdened with the two cocktail glasses and the cardboard carton which had once held ice seemed to float in space.

  Beyond the heavy draperies I heard the continued movements of the men who held me there. Inspector Chant, District Attorney Graves, and those others whom I had not met. I had been told too much; at the same time I had been told too little. My mind was empty as a drum, and I hardly wondered that the suicide of Nancy Anderson should call forth such activity.

  Other police came clumping up the stairs. To the uproar in which I played no part, except by my unwilling presence, was added the boom of flashlights. Once Inspector Chant, accompanied by a photographer, emerged from behind the curtains. He went quickly to the disordered coffee table where the cocktail glasses rested, and briefly studied the display. He called a quiet order to the photographer. A flashlight popped, and the air filled with the acrid smell of powder. Then, very carefully, the inspector lifted one of the glasses and disappeared behind the draperies. He did not explain or so much as glance at me. Later on from downstairs came the chipper little Dr. Halliday, now not chipper in the least. His arm was I firmly gripped by a policeman. The dentist gave me one frightened, appealing glance—as though to ask why he and I were there—and then passed on into the other room.

  My nerves approached their breaking point. I rose abruptly from the day-bed, just as Inspector Chant and District Attorney Graves came forth.

  “I’m sorry we kept you waiting,” the inspector said mechanically, “but we had to dispose of the preliminaries.”

  An instant later I had concrete evidence that the preliminary investigation was finished. The door into the hall was standing open, and Inspector Chant crossed and quickly closed it. But I had heard the confused and shuffling footsteps beyond, had heard something heavy bumping around the corner of the stairwell. I knew what that connoted—a group of men were carrying a stretcher down the stairs. Nancy Anderson was leaving home. Presently on the street below a motor throbbed and a siren shrilled and an ambulance—so much was unmistakable—roared off.

  “Please sit down, Miss Tilbury,” said Inspector Chant. “And you’d better have some brandy. We want to hear your story. Why did you come here this afternoon? Please try to remember all the circumstances.”

  He took a chair. The district attorney, darkly scowling, took another. I had an impression that the two men had discussed the form the interview was to take, and that Graves was not too pleased with the ultimate decision, that his own choice would have been to question me in quite a different fashion. He listened without interruption as I described the bathroom, and how I had stumbled upon Nancy Anderson’s body. But when I explained how the girl had summoned me to the appointment which she had kept in death, he broke in sharply. “Then your coming here was Nancy Anderson’s idea?”

  I nodded. “In a sense it was. Young Ted Breen had been attempting to bring the two of us together. He hoped Nancy Anderson might disclose to me information concerning the murder of Dorothy Fithian.”

  “Information she had kept from the police?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I assume that this information involved her unfortunate brother�
��s connection with Dorothy Fithian. Was that your own assumption?”

  “My impression was rather less clear-cut. I hoped she might explain the basis of a profound and puzzling dislike for me.”

  I had the satisfaction of observing that what I had said did not fit too well with some mental pattern he was forming. He frowned. I knew then, quite definitely, that I had not heard the whole story that lay behind the recovery in the Potomac River. The two men were withholding from me suspicions, facts, certainties. They were keeping me in ignorance, questioning me and from my answers building up a case. I felt a sense of panic, illogical but tangible. As I glanced toward Inspector Chant, my panic deepened. He looked in some odd way as though he pitied me.

  “What Miss Tilbury says is quite true, Graves. The girl did hate her actively,” and the inspector told of the strange meeting at the hospital.

  Graves wasn’t listening. “What time did you arrive this afternoon, Miss Tilbury?”

  “At half past four.”

  “Did you talk to anyone after you arrived?”

  “No one except the dentist downstairs. Then I came up and found the note on the door. So I came in and waited.”

  “Oh, yes, the note. May I see it, please?” I handed over the scrap of paper, and he examined it. “Doesn’t it strike you as odd that Nancy Anderson would leave a message like this, and then hang herself?”

  “Unless she intended that I should discover her body.”

  The district attorney continued to watch me in that disturbing way. “How many people were aware that you were coming here this afternoon? How many people, in other words, did you inform of Nancy Anderson’s sudden decision to talk with you?”

  “I can’t say offhand.”

  He leaned forward. “Your family was certainly aware that you were coming. Your niece and nephew drove you to the appointment.”

  “The family knew,” I said, “but I don’t quite grasp the importance of these questions.”

  “Did any of your relatives try to prevent your keeping the appointment? Suggest you stay away from Nancy Anderson?”

  “My family,” I said tartly, “knows me well enough to know I make my own decisions.”

  He didn’t smile. “I want to be quite frank with you, Miss Tilbury. I need your help. You spoke to Nancy Anderson over the telephone this morning. Did she mention the fact that she had a luncheon engagement?”

  “Certainly not. Ours wasn’t a friendly conversation.”

  “But you know that the girl went out to luncheon today with a male companion?”

  “Only from talking to Dr. Halliday.”

  “Then you can’t tell us who this man was? The man who called for Nancy Anderson at one o’clock, took her out to lunch and returned with her to this apartment at half past two?”

  “I’m not familiar with Nancy Anderson’s friends.”

  The district attorney smiled rather queerly. “I wouldn’t call this gentleman a friend.” He straightened as though with sudden decision. “But I’m interested in identifying him. Fortunately Dr. Halliday saw him in the hall below, and is able to provide a fairly adequate description. The gentleman in question was middle-aged, well-dressed, somewhat stout and slightly bald. Does that suggest anyone to you?”

  I gripped the sides of my chair, and held on tightly. The little dentist’s description might be only fairly adequate, but it summed up Fred Brierly to a T. I tried to tell myself that Washington must be filled with middle- aged men who were stout, well-dressed and slightly bald.

  To District Attorney Graves I said, “I’m sorry but that description might fit a dozen men of my acquaintance. In any event I cannot see how your questions bear on Nancy Anderson’s suicide. Unless—are you suggesting she learned at luncheon of her brother’s death, and it was that news which caused her to hang herself?”

  “Our discovery of Kirkland Anderson was not public property until four o’clock. Nancy Anderson died between half past two and three.” There was a subdued, triumphant gleam in his eye. “Luckily we have established the time of death quite definitely—despite adverse conditions.”

  “I don’t follow you.”

  “Surely you recall the running water? It might have happened,” said the district attorney slowly, and yet with hidden triumph in his tone, “that clouds of steaming water, filling a place so small, would have delayed considerably the onset of rigor mortis, and hopelessly confused the time of death. But in this case,” and again he smiled, “a lucky accident intervened. The hot water supply was exhausted shortly after the tap had started running, and so the effect of the subterfuge was lost.”

  “Are you saying that Nancy Anderson deliberately left the water running to confuse you?”

  “Someone did.”

  The district attorney rose and walked unhurriedly into the second room. The heavy curtains closed noiselessly behind him. His abrupt departure was unexpected, and terrifying. I looked at Inspector Chant, and hoped for enlightenment but none came. A moment, endless, unbearable in its tension passed, and then the draperies parted and District Attorney Graves returned. He carried a cord of tightly twisted silk, dark blue, and with a knotted fringe.

  “I don’t want to harrow you, Miss Tilbury, but I suppose you know what this is? And where you saw it last?”

  “Yes,” I said faintly.

  “What does it look like?”

  “I don’t quite understand.”

  “Doesn’t it look like the type of cord which belts a tailored dressing gown? You know the type of garment I mean.”

  “I suppose it does,” I said.

  “No such garment is to be found among Nancy Anderson’s clothing. I quite agree,” he cut in quickly before I could interrupt, “that the absence of a dressing gown in the dead girl’s wardrobe is meaningless in itself. She may once have owned such a garment, and retained the cord. But I hope,” said District Attorney Graves, “to prove that someone else brought the cord to the apartment.” He dropped the length of silk upon the coffee table, and I saw then that he was holding in sure, firm fingers the cocktail glass that Inspector Chant had carried off. Graves continued his silent, almost affectionate scrutiny of the silken cord.

  “This cord,” he said, “may lead me straight to Nancy Anderson’s murderer.”

  Somehow I found the strength to stand. “I thought she had committed suicide.”

  “Did you indeed?”

  “She left a note for me upon the door.”

  “She left the note before she went out to lunch. When she returned I imagine that she removed the note, and that her murderer thoughtfully replaced it as he departed.”

  “That sounds horrible beyond belief.”

  “It is horrible, Miss Tilbury. A clumsy attempt was made to turn a cowardly murder into a suicide.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “The girl was dead when she was carried into her bath and that cord was tied around her neck.”

  He balanced the cocktail glass on his knee. A sticky substance still adhered to the inside rim.

  “Do you recognize this glass, Miss Tilbury?”

  “Yes,” I said. “It was on the coffee table with the other glass when I arrived.”

  “This cocktail glass,” said District Attorney Graves, “is almost as important as the length of cord. Nancy Anderson died of a lethal dose of potassium cyanide administered in a cocktail. Unmistakable traces of potassium cyanide have been discovered in the sediment in the glass. Cyanide, as you probably know, results in almost instant death. It is impossible that anyone who swallowed it could walk into a bathroom and hang herself.”

  “But why?” I said. “Why?”

  “Ask yourself, Miss Tilbury. You’re too smart a woman not to know why that girl was poisoned.”

  I numbly shook my head.

  “She was poisoned,” said District Attorney Graves, “by someone determined to prevent her from telling you what she knew about Dorothy Fithian’s murder.”

  “Someone? Who?”

  T
here was no answer. There was only silence. And on the coffee table the length of dark blue silk. Fred Brierly’s dressing gown was dark blue. I had examined it two days before, and I remembered clearly the dark blue belt of twisted silk.

  19

  I have very little recollection of the return trip to Broad Acres except that I requested a taxi, and the request was courteously but emphatically refused. Inspector Chant drove 'me home. I wanted desperately to reach a telephone, but I didn’t dare express my wish. A gulf stretched between Inspector Chant and me, a gulf which had become impossible to bridge. Silence gripped us both. It was as though, during the scene in Nancy Anderson’s apartment, mysteriously, we had lost the power of communication. Occasionally in the darkness of the car a streetlight would flash across the inspector’s stern, unsmiling face, and once or twice I would fancy he was about to speak. I know now that there were many things he wanted to say. But in my preoccupation, in the frenzy of my planning, I hardly noticed.

  My thoughts had never left the cord of twisted silk. It had become almost an obsession that I should reach Broad Acres, go to Fred’s room, examine his dressing gown. How I was to manage I had no idea, but I was determined. In the end it proved easier than I had imagined.

  When we arrived at the house and pulled up beneath the porte-cochere, I sprang hurriedly from the car, avoiding the inspector’s hand, rushed inside and toward the kitchen. I tossed back some incoherent phrase about ordering coffee.

  “I’ll join you,” I said, “in the drawing room.”

  In order to reach the kitchen and the rear stairs to the upper floors I was compelled to pass the dining room. But it was nearly, ten o’clock, and the dining room was empty. In the front part of the house a confused, sudden babble broke forth, and I realized that the inspector must have entered the drawing room. I thought someone called my name, but I didn’t stop.

  There was no one in the kitchen, no one on the rear stairs, no one on the bedroom floor. Trembling, chilled and very near hysteria, I gained Fred’s room. I didn’t pause to turn on the light. I didn’t pause for anything. I went straight to Fred’s closet. I fumbled in the darkness until my fingers closed on his dressing gown.