Harold set his jaw. “Dorothy Fithian was a grasping, mercenary woman. Granting she was blackmailing Fred—certainly she would not take Kirkland Anderson into her confidence.”
“It wouldn’t be a matter of her confiding in Anderson,” said the inspector grimly. “Naturally it would be to her advantage to keep quiet. But Anderson had eyes—he was at the hospital and so was Dorothy. He could have observed those meetings between Fred Brierly and the girl, he could have threatened on his own to advise Mrs. Brierly of the situation unless he shared the booty. That attempted phone call of his to Mrs. Brierly might have been a warning to Dorothy, an effort to frighten her into compliance—an effort which the district attorney firmly believes was successful. We know Dorothy had a prearranged engagement with Anderson that evening. That meeting could have been planned so that she might hand over to Anderson his share of Brierly’s money. Consider the two in that light—both as blackmailers.” Again the inspector sighed. “That makes a pretty telling case against Brierly. When one blackmailer is murdered the other has to go.”
To my horror I saw that Harold was impressed. He sat quite silent, eyes narrowed, as though he were going over the case bit by bit in hopeless search for some flaw, some discrepancy.
“This sounds pretty circumstantial,” Simon said. “Long on guesswork and short on facts.”
Inspector Chant considered before he spoke, then said restlessly, “Any mysterious crime has an element of guesswork. Particularly is this true when the accused won’t speak. I haven’t seen Fred Brierly, but according to reports he hasn’t proved cooperative.”
Harold asked an indignant question, and the inspector said mildly, yet with underlying steel in his voice, “You can see your client in the morning, Mr. Hargreaves. Not until. My advice to you is to tell Fred Brierly to come clean on his story. If he’s innocent—which personally I seriously doubt—the truth might help him. If he’s guilty we’ve got him anyway.”
When Harold demanded to know where Fred could be found, the inspector declined to say. I suppose the inspector acted within his rights, but our ignorance of Fred’s whereabouts and what was happening to him was virtually unbearable. I know that my own great fear was of the third degree. As I was to learn afterwards the reality was far different, although no less agonizing. No physical torture was exerted upon my brother-in-law but that night he went through torture nevertheless.
The procedure, following Fred’s arrest, was extra-legal entirely. Fred was not taken to the jail at Winters Run; he was not even booked. Instead he was hurried secretly to a hotel room on an empty corridor, a hotel room where the telephone was disconnected and the door was locked. There were gathered District Attorney Graves and a handpicked crew of detectives, selected for their talents in wringing confessions from criminals too reticent or too terrified to commit themselves.
Even today I can visualize my brother-in-law, surrounded by that circle of inimical faces, repeating over and over hopeless denials that he had murdered Dorothy Fithian or anyone else. Occasionally one of the detectives would step from the room and another would take his place, but there was no rest, no surcease for Fred. Bright lights beat at his eyes, smoke swirled about his head, smoke from the policemen’s cigarettes. Fred’s cigars had been taken away from him. Questions repeated endlessly, and by constantly changing voices, beat at his weary brain. Threats, coercion, persuasion—he bore them all. What the policemen wanted, what they were determined to obtain, was a confession. All too clearly I can picture Fred, desperate, frightened, struggling against exhaustion, and the desire to sleep. Struggling, too, against the overpowering desire to say anything that the police suggested, and to get the torture over.
Meanwhile, helpless, we sat in the drawing room at Broad Acres. Meanwhile Inspector Chant was saying:
“In many ways, Miss Tilbury, our theory fits the facts. If Kirkland Anderson and Dorothy Fithian were jointly blackmailing your brother-in-law, it’s easy to understand what Nancy intended to discuss with you. Why she called you instead of us. She’d hardly want to tell us her brother was a blackmailer. Not while there was any likelihood Anderson himself was the killer. Then too—” he hesitated, “that would give Brierly all the reason he needed for poisoning Nancy Anderson. The desperate fear that she would reveal to you the situation which precipitated the two previous murders. You know, of course, that Fred Brierly took Nancy Anderson to lunch today, and returned with her to her apartment.”
For a moment no one spoke. Then Harold stood up. “It’s a pretty case you’ve made out, Inspector, but not good enough. According to you the crux of the matter is the letters. I say any man would be insane who behaved as you claim Fred Brierly did. Why did he leave the letters in the cape for you to find? Why didn’t he destroy the letters? Why did he leave the cape in the car? Why didn’t he fling the cape in the river? Why didn’t he get rid of the gun?”
The inspector frowned. “It was highly unlikely that the car would ever be recovered. Whoever sent it hurtling into the river must have felt safe against discovery.”
“When I saw those letters,” I said, “they were in Dorothy’s purse.”
“You could have alarmed her, Miss Tilbury, and she could have transferred them to a safer place. It’s the district attorney’s belief,” Inspector Chant went on, “that in the haste and horror of the murder Brierly overlooked the letters, failed to find them hidden in the cape. That would explain,” said the inspector, “the firing of the strawstacks. Brierly wanted an opportunity to search the house for those letters which he didn’t realize lay at the bottom of the Potomac River.”
With that remark Inspector Chant got up and walked out of the room. But I managed to follow him to the door. It had seemed to me that he had been subtly dissatisfied with the case as he had outlined it, and I daresay I wanted to test out my impression. The inspector must have guessed my purpose.
He said, suddenly, “I’m not like the district attorney, Miss Tilbury. I don’t need to be. I’d like to put a question to you. I want an honest answer.”
I waited.
He said, “Did you ever write a letter to Kirkland Anderson?”
“Certainly not!”
The question was unexpected and inexplicable. I awaited an explanation. None came. The inspector bade me a polite good night and vanished through the door. Puzzling as the little colloquy had been it strengthened my conviction that Inspector Chant was not entirely satisfied that he had obtained the truth. Else why the Question? What did it mean? In an oddly buoyant frame I returned to the drawing room. Once there the buoyancy left me. Neither Simon nor Harold appeared to put stock in my opinion. Indeed Harold said, “Chant’s hand in glove with Graves, Margaret, and Graves is out to get conviction.”
“Why did he ask that question?”
“My dear Margaret.” Harold placed his hands on my shoulders. “It’s a policeman’s job to ask unexpected questions, to lay little traps for you, to draw red herrings across the trail. Your best defense is silence. Never answer any question you cannot understand.” His face shadowed. “And it’s best for the three of us to face the truth. The inspector and the district attorney between them have got plenty of evidence to hang Fred now. We can only hope Fred’s own story will clear him.” With unaccustomed tenderness Harold leaned and kissed my cheek. “You can count on me, Margaret, to do everything that’s possible. Try not to worry. I’ll see Fred tomorrow, hear his story, and we’ll go to bat on this.”
Thus we separated for the night. I went to bed and to a drug-laden sleep. Toward morning I woke suddenly and sat bolt upright, tense and shivering. Disoriented in a world filled with confusion and with horror. I cannot explain, by any logic, that sudden and dreadful awakening. But the fact remains that I woke and sat up in bed at about the hour when Fred Brierly was taken to the jail at Winters Run, and was formally charged with murder.
21
Our house the following morning was like a house of death. Even the servants seemed to feel the pall and tiptoed about their
tasks and kept all the downstairs curtains drawn. Marian, sunk in despondency, came into my room around eleven o’clock.
“I suppose you’ve seen the newspapers, Margaret?”
I admitted that I had. I had thrust a great sheaf of newspapers under the chaise longue as my sister entered. They were bad enough in all conscience, those published accounts of Fred’s arrest, with clear in every line the general hostility toward him, the general belief in his guilt.
The authorities had released to the press such portions of Fred’s letters to Dorothy as they had been able to reconstruct, and lengthy paragraphs had been reproduced. It is quite futile for me to quote those paragraphs here. As Harold was to put it, “no middle-aged man with spring in his blood is a Sir John Suckling, but he always thinks he is.” It was fatally easy to understand that Fred would have gone to desperate lengths to keep the letters from Marian’s eyes.
To my shame I admit that I had no idea how my sister would react to the revelation of Fred’s folly. Marian was a jealous, possessive woman and she had her share of vanity. I expected hysterics or worse. Always sensitive to public opinion, mortally preoccupied with “what will people say,” Marian amazed me by exhibiting a total indifference to that side of the affair, and a humility of which I would never have dreamed her capable.
“It’s my fault, Margaret. If these horrible things are true—if Fred committed murder to suppress those letters—I can blame myself. Please don’t stop me, Margaret. It’s all quite true. Fred was cut out to be a faithful, loving husband—that was his role in life. Maybe it sounds stuffy and old-fashioned, but I didn’t do my part. Verity’s been telling me that I pushed him into a Jezebel’s embrace. And she’s quite right, too!”
My sister and I were weeping in each other’s arms. Marian wiped her watering eyes, and with a return of her old vigor said, “Fred never loved that girl, Margaret. Silly, isn’t it, but it’s a comfort to me now to realize the whole affair was just a piece of Fred’s getting into the foolish forties, and having a wife too busy to admire or flatter him. No wonder Fred sat down and took to poetry. Dorothy was exactly the type of scheming woman who would see that he committed himself on paper.”
I blew my nose, and agreed. All the world had to be set against Fred before my sister became conscious of how much he meant to her.
She returned to her own room, and packed a bag with shirts and underclothing, and prepared to drive into the village to storm the jail. Only a telephone call from Harold stopped her. The lawyer had seen Fred, and he rather cautiously suggested that Marian defer the visit, that Fred seemed exhausted.
Marian said shrilly, “Are they mistreating him?”
This Harold hurriedly denied. “But I think you’d better wait until he’s rested. Say tomorrow.”
Harold was rather evasive about the details of his own talk with Fred, and I gathered that Fred’s story of his movements had been bitterly disappointing to the lawyer.
“You’ll have to prepare yourself for a shock, Marian. Fred did drive to the strawstacks from the theater to meet Dorothy. He’s admitted it. But he says he didn’t see her. That he saw no one.”
“If Fred says he did not see Dorothy,” declared my sister, “then it’s true. And I want you to come out here, Harold. At once.”
To this Harold agreed, arriving soon after twelve o’clock. He and Marian disappeared immediately into the library, and shut the door, and began going over plans for Fred’s defense.
At loose ends, I wandered about the house. We had disconnected the telephone, and the isolation of Broad Acres somewhat protected us from the assaults of the press. But several times I heard Thomas engaged in vocal argument at the door, and realized that he was discouraging vociferous and determined reporters. They arrived in taxis, they cluttered up the driveway, and they lay in wait for anyone whom they could interview. They caught the grocer, just as earlier they had caught Harold who submitted blandly to an interview, evaded all their questions and told them only that he was a family friend.
Ted Breen, arriving slightly later, was less lucky. I was watching from an upper window and I wondered at Ted’s anger and confusion as the newspaper men and women surrounded him. My wonder was soon stilled. Ted managed to escape the gesticulating mob and to enter the house, but he must have departed almost immediately by the back door, for an instant later I spied him walking quickly along the path to the tennis court. Evidently he had a prearranged engagement there with Jane. I saw her appear, saw the two of them settle upon one of the benches and begin to talk. Even at the distance I could guess that Jane was crying, and that he was awkwardly offering comfort.
Later on I sat down at my desk, a blank sheet of paper before me, and attempted to make a note of such facts or questions as did not add up to Fred’s guilt. I have long since destroyed the list but I can remember today what I wrote.
(a) Why did Dorothy leave my typewriter under her bed? Assuming she left a typed message (contents unknown), it is impossible to assume the message was left for Fred or that he had knowledge of its existence.
(b) Nevertheless, someone removed a message from the typewriter, and returned the machine to my room. Why? Who was it?
(c) Nancy Anderson’s behavior needs some logical explanation. She would not hold a grudge against me, merely because her brother was attempting to blackmail Fred.
(d) Was Kirkland Anderson a blackmailer? Did he actually know that Fred had once been infatuated with Dorothy, and was that why he was telephoning Marian?
I That telephone call is queer. Dorothy’s manner indicated that Kirkland Anderson had been disappointed in previous efforts to complete his call. Why, supposing he expected to share money from the letters, call at all?
I studied that last notation.
I remembered Dorothy’s voice, her manner, the haste with which she had arisen to answer the telephone. She had expected that call; she had probably prepared the lie she told me before she had replaced the receiver. I wondered suddenly why Dorothy had been so interested in concealing the fact that Kirkland Anderson was calling, why she had found it advisable to say that Marian’s tailor was on the wire.
I found no answer to the puzzle, and didn’t realize that in the very question I had brushed the garment of the truth. All in all, however, I was proud of my list and I gathered up the paper and prepared to show it to Simon.
In the hall I encountered Ames, looking for Jane. I explained where she was and with whom.
“But I’d wait until they came into the house, my dear. Newspaper men are thick as huckleberries in the drive. And I hope Ted may be of some comfort to Jane.”
Ames looked abruptly miserable. “I suppose it’s selfish of me, Aunt Margaret, but I hate to think of anyone else being of help to her just now. I—I want to do it all.”
“That’s selfish indeed,” I said severely.
Ames considered my reproof, and rejected it. “Love is always selfish, Aunt Margaret. It—it has to be.” He hesitated before the gulf which yawns between one generation and another. His voice rose a little. “Jane means everything to me. Now that she’s in such trouble, I’ve found it out. Someday, when all this is over, when I’m entirely well, I’m going to marry Jane and take care of her forever.”
He went into his own room and closed the door.
I gazed for a moment at that closed door, disturbed and rather uncertain, and then I reflected that the deepest emotions of youth are likely to be transitory, and went on in search of Simon. My mind was preoccupied with my list. I walked into Simon’s bedroom after a casual knock, and I didn’t observe in the beginning that he was not alone.
Then I saw that Inspector Chant was standing beside the window. Simon, looking stiff and annoyed, was seated. I would have retreated, but I caught the word “potassium cyanide.”
“You can stay, Margaret,” said Simon. “I’ve been assuring Inspector Chant that I didn’t furnish Fred with potassium cyanide so that he could poison Nancy Anderson. I’m quite willing,” he said to the inspecto
r, “to send to Vermont for my records on the purchase of drugs.”
Inspector Chant turned from the window. “That isn’t necessary, Dr. Hargreaves. I wasn’t accusing you. I was merely asking. I believe, as a matter of fact, we’ve discovered the source of the cyanide.” The light from the outside shone on his face, and it struck me that he looked even more tired than he had looked the night before. He informed us that the grand jury was certain to indict Fred within the next few days, and, again, he did not seem triumphant.
“Three weeks ago,” he said then, “on the 7th of September, a large amount of cyanide disappeared from Grosvenor Hospital. It disappeared from Kirkland Anderson’s laboratory, and he reported its loss. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of that cyanide hadn’t been placed in Nancy Anderson’s cocktail. Of course, you understand that cyanide is difficult of access to the layman.”
“Are you claiming,” said Simon sharply, “that Fred Brierly stole the drug from the hospital?”
“That would be a foolish claim for me to make,” replied the inspector mildly, “because it wouldn’t be true. I’ve established that Fred Brierly hasn’t been at Grosvenor since last spring. No, someone else stole the poison.”
Simon was excited. “Have you told this to the district attorney?”
“I doubt,” said Inspector Chant, “that Graves would be particularly impressed. Frankly, his chief interest lies in solidifying his case against Fred Brierly. Naturally he isn’t in the humor to entertain discrepancies.”
I jumped into the conversation. “But who took the poison?”
“I don’t know.” The inspector hesitated. “I do know, however, that the cyanide could not have been removed from Grosvenor Hospital in contemplation of Nancy Anderson’s murder. The need to get rid of her could not have arisen until recently. Until she telephoned you, Miss Tilbury. It’s possible,” he said slowly, “that the possession of the cyanide might have suggested the means of murder to the killer.”
The Strawstack Murders Page 20
