Simon said sharply, “Then you aren’t referring to Fred Brierly? You have in mind that someone else is involved?”
The inspector didn’t answer. The frown deepened on his forehead and a look of trouble came on his face, as he turned to me. “You and I, Miss Tilbury, haven’t always seen things eye to eye, but I do wish you’d understand that all I’ve ever wanted was to arrest the guilty man. And I’m not quite sure,” he wound up almost absently, “that we’ve done it.”
Of course I pounced at that. But he only said evasively that there were “several points which needed clearing up.”
I thought of something. “Why did you ask me last night whether I had ever written a letter to Kirkland Anderson?”
“Because,” he said, “I wanted to know.”
I persisted. “Was that another of your points?”
He blandly changed the subject. He had glimpsed the paper in my hand and he asked me what it was. I showed him my list. He looked it over closely, nodded approvingly once or twice, and paid particular attention to the notes I had made about Dorothy’s final message, its destruction and the mysterious shifting of the typewriter.
“That incident,” I said firmly, “certainly points away from Fred.”
“The trouble is, Miss Tilbury, it points nowhere else. It doesn’t make sense that anyone would run an appalling risk merely to return the typewriter to your room. Maybe the risk was worthwhile to destroy the message, though damned if I can fathom what kind of message the girl would leave underneath her bed. But grant the message was destroyed, why not leave the typewriter where it was in the girl’s own room? Why double the chances of discovery?” His gaze was almost resentful. “You’re quite sure your bedroom was otherwise undisturbed, that everything was in order?”
“Quite sure,” I said.
“Your typewriter,” he said, still in those perplexed, resentful tones, “is in my car downstairs. I’ve brought it back.” And he admitted that none of his tests had brought up a single word of the mysterious message which Dorothy had tapped out immediately before she left the house.
With that Inspector Chant went away. I supposed he would leave the typewriter downstairs and depart for the village. I was surprised a few minutes later when he came back upstairs. He was carrying my typewriter. While I watched, in growing surprise, he strolled to a card table, set up the machine and removed the cover.
“I wonder, Miss Tilbury, if you’ll humor me in a rather odd request. I would like a sample of the typing of every member of your household—just a line or so. You first, please.”
Mystified, I seated myself and at his dictation, wrote “Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party.” I am a fumbling typist and in the sixteen-word sentence I managed to achieve the surprising total of seven errors. Simon, equally mystified, escaped with only two mistakes. I called Verity, and sent Thomas for the children. All three came in, and Ted Breen, insisting he was a family member in good standing, took the sample test along with the others. Jane had learned to type in school but Verity and the two young men produced results as stumbling as my own.
I summoned Marian and Harold from the library.
Harold, suspicious of any request he couldn’t understand, wasn’t disposed to lend himself to the experiment and was incredulous when I suggested that it might help Fred. But Marian compelled him to accede to the inspector’s wish.
In the end Inspector Chant had quite a sheaf of papers, each containing several meaningless lines of type, each labeled with a different name. He looked over the widely varying results, and then requested a sample of Dorothy Fithian’s typing. There, I thought that we must fail him. But Jane remembered a diet list which Dorothy had once typed off for Marian, and after a search of the kitchen drawers, eventually the list was located.
The inspector was satisfied. Simon and I followed him downstairs, both hopeful of some explanation. But we received none. The inspector merely folded the papers, placed them carefully in his pocket, and vaguely looked around for his hat.
“Oh, by the way,” he said quite casually, “I almost forgot to tell you. We’ve traced the dressing-gown cord.”
I’m sure he heard me gasp.
“Yes,” he repeated thoughtfully, “we traced the cord. The murderer must have picked it up in Nancy Anderson’s apartment, for it belonged to the girl’s own dressing gown. She’d sent the garment to the cleaner, and it only came back this morning.”
Simon and I stared at one another in dumb amazement. The inspector went on with devastating frankness. “The district attorney had hopes last night Fred Brierly’s dressing gown might lack a belt. I telephoned and a couple of deputies hopped out posthaste and searched all your closets. Brierly’s dressing gown was blue all right, but luckily for him the cord was with it.”
I leaned against the door, all strength gone. “Do you mean that your deputies made their search while I was still in Washington? That when they examined Fred’s dressing gown they saw the cord?”
He gave me a curious look. “Yes, Miss Tilbury. As a matter of fact, I understand the cord was sewed to the robe.”
My voice was shrill and thin. “Then who ripped the cord from Fred’s dressing gown and carried it away? For that cord was certainly gone when I reached home at ten o’clock.”
22
I told Inspector Chant how I had found Fred’s dressing gown, and what I had thought, and how I had destroyed the garment. He listened without interruption or comment.
But after I had finished he said grimly, “It might seem that someone—someone who had access to that closet—isn’t wholeheartedly interested in Fred Brierly’s acquittal! If Nancy Anderson’s dressing gown hadn’t turned up, and if the district attorney had discovered in Brierly’s closet a robe—an identical navy blue and lacking a belt— it wouldn’t have looked so good.”
“It would have been fatal,” Simon declared. He added energetically, “Nevertheless someone made a bad mistake last night. Someone, who was evidently afraid the case against Fred Brierly wasn’t strong enough, overshot the mark! Now you can go to the district attorney…”
“Can I?” The inspector gave me a queer look. “I’m very much afraid, Miss Tilbury, you, too, overshot the mark last night. You burned the dressing gown. How can I go to Graves with a tale indicating a possible attempt to frame Fred Brierly when my evidence has gone up in smoke?”
I was silent.
“Let me give you a piece of advice,” said the inspector. “If you people, all of you with Fred Brierly’s welfare at heart, would get together, tell everything you know, hold back nothing from each other, he might have a chance. Continue as you’ve done, working at cross purposes, keeping each other in the dark, and he will certainly hang. He may anyway. But there’s a good deal in what I say.”
With that cheering remark, the inspector left us. After his departure I went to my bedroom. I felt bewildered, cold and sick. That some member of my household, coldly and calculatingly, was working to harm Fred seemed horrible beyond belief. I went to my closet and started to fumble for the shoe box where I had stored the char and ashes of the dressing gown. I reached for the box, then straightened and stood very still. Someone had been in my closet. I knew it. Someone had opened the shoe box and examined the contents. The cardboard lid had been replaced but was not quite straight.
That evening, acting on the inspector’s advice, Harold called a consultation of the family. We gathered in the library shortly after dinner and shut the doors so the servants might be kept in ignorance of what we were about. Harold, a born parliamentarian, opened the proceedings with considerable formality. Indeed he made a speech.
“An important part of the defense in every criminal case depends upon complete cooperation among the interested parties. The time has passed when any of us can work separately; it’s vital that we pull together. The time has passed when any of us on his own authority, perhaps because he fears what he knows might work to Fred’s disadvantage, can hold back informatio
n. It’s imperative that I should know in advance of trial, anything and everything that can be brought against Fred.”
I saw that Jane was looking uneasy, but she listened quietly enough as Harold droned on. She rose abruptly, however, as he concluded.
“Before we begin this talk—before we begin to convince ourselves that Father is guilty—I’d like to say something. To me it seems even more important to bring out things to Father’s advantage.”
“Naturally,” said Harold testily. “What do you want to bring out?”
He always preferred to run everything himself, and I thought he looked displeased. But Jane, with no more introduction, had gone to the door and beckoned Ted Breen into the room.
Ted was obviously embarrassed by the formality of the occasion, and Jane herself was a little flushed, but very earnest.
“What Ted has to say may sound vague, and it isn’t exactly fact. But we feel that if any part of the case against Dad can be broken down, then the whole might collapse. Ted wants to say something about Kirkland Anderson.”
I had hopes that Ted could produce some tangible facts about Kirkland Anderson, or about his own short, unfruitful connection with Nancy Anderson. The best Ted could do was to attack with vehemence the theory that Kirkland Anderson was a blackmailer, or had been involved in a disreputable scheme of any kind.
“My father will come to Washington, take the stand, and swear to Anderson’s character. That seems an important point. Once we establish Kirkland Anderson was not a blackmailer, then Mr. Brierly’s motive for murdering him disappears.”
Said Harold gently, “Unfortunately, Ted, no man can swear to what might have been in another man’s mind or heart.”
Ted stood his ground. “There’s such a thing as common sense. Take Anderson’s career. He worked his way through medical school, he was scrupulously honest about his bills—I’ve made it my business to find that out. He was devoted to his work, he was one of the best known younger men in the field of bacteriology, he was on the threshold of a brilliant future. Why should such a man risk everything to get himself a few paltry dollars? The answer is he didn’t. Kirkland Anderson had some good reason for telephoning the house. Some object quite different from throwing a scare into a fellow blackmailer.”
I was impressed but Harold was not. “We can’t prove all the things, Ted, we may imagine we know. Can you suggest any other reason why Anderson might have telephoned?”
Ted reluctantly admitted that he could not, nor could he throw any light upon Nancy Anderson. “She was too hysterical and frightened to think things out straight. To talk when she should have talked. She was obsessed with the idea that anything she said would work against her brother.” Ted’s comment was wiser than he knew. Presently he went away and the interrupted proceedings were resumed.
I daresay Harold saw that Jane was disappointed. Perhaps because of this he undertook first of all to clear his own conscience of a fact which he had not disclosed to the authorities. On September 21st, a week before the murder of Dorothy Fithian, Fred had attempted to borrow from Harold the sum of ten thousand dollars.
“What importance has that?” demanded Marian sharply.
“It might be important,” Harold replied, “if the sum Dorothy Fithian demanded to return those letters was ten thousand dollars, and Fred was able to raise only five thousand.
“I see,” said Marian.
I saw, too, quite suddenly why Fred had attempted to arrange with Harold to sell the Elm Street properties. He must have hoped to use that money to pay off Dorothy. I felt, and this may seem strange, a sharp and personal regret, a feeling that I had my share of responsibility for Fred’s plight. He had not dared confide in me his need of money—perhaps I would not have demanded collateral, as Harold had, but I would certainly have demanded explanations.
Harold had turned to Verity. “Now you can explain to us those remarks you made when first we found Dorothy dead.”
My cousin, who disliked Harold heartily, addressed herself lo the room. “Death is not the worst evil,” said Verity, “but wickedness which lives in the eyes of loose women. I looked into Dorothy Fithian’s eyes, I saw wickedness there, and I rejoiced that death had come to be her portion!”
Harold helplessly flung up his hands.
I went over to my cousin. “You must speak plainly, Verity. We’ve had enough of parables. What did you know which made you hate Dorothy?”
Verity’s thin lips set.
“Go on,” my sister Marian said steadily. “Tell them the truth.”
“I knew,” said Verity sullenly, “that it wasn’t Kirkland Anderson who was meeting Dorothy in the stables. That it was Fred.”
Marian went very pale.
“I gave Fred a piece of my mind,” Verity went on, “and found out that he had long since sickened of the girl, and that she wouldn’t let him go. That she was determined to make him pay to get free of her honeyed clutches.”
Jane got blindly to her feet.
“Sit down, Jane,” said Marian, pale to the lips. “Sit down and tell us what you saw when you ran upstairs to get the fire extinguishers.”
Jane was silent a long time. Ames went over and stood beside her chair. But he made no attempt to touch her, and offered only the comfort of his nearness. At last Jane raised her head and looked around at us.
“I saw Father going into Dorothy’s room. I’d have thought nothing of it except that he stopped and looked up and down the hall to make sure he wasn’t observed. He didn’t see me standing on the stairs.”
“What happened next?” asked Harold sharply.
“I—I stood there on the stairs. A minute or so at least.” Jane did not describe her own emotions as she had watched Fred’s furtive reconnaissance and had seen him disappear, but I could guess the tumult in her mind and heart. She went on steadily. “With the strawstacks burning I could not understand why Father should go in Dorothy’s room. The fire extinguishers were in the hall. But it wasn’t my affair. I went on up the stairs and started toward the extinguishers. As I passed Aunt Margaret’s room, I heard the noise inside.”
“The noise that you can’t describe?”
Jane drew a long breath. “I can describe it, Harold. The noise I heard was someone opening the connecting door between Dorothy’s room and Aunt Margaret’s. That door squeaks when you open it quickly. I heard the squeak.” She smiled wanly. “I—this sounds silly—but I felt relieved. I thought in the excitement Father had mistaken Dorothy’s room for Aunt Margaret’s. I went at once into Aunt Margaret’s room. The lights were burning but I saw no one.”
“Well?”
“I was quite sure,” Jane said in a low, still voice, “about that door. I crossed the room and stepped into the alcove. I saw the typewriter on the highboy. I can’t explain but I had an impression that it had just been placed there by someone who had entered from the other room. I looked at the typewriter. I don’t know why but I started to lift the cover. There was a rustling behind me. My back was to the curtained place where Aunt Margaret hangs her heavy wraps, and I knew that someone was in that place. I couldn’t scream, I was too scared. I staged to turn around and that’s all that I remember.”
The silence was broken by Marian’s voice, “And on that evidence, Jane, you believed your father struck you on the head?”
“I don’t believe it now!”
Marian turned fiercely to Harold. “It’s plain enough what happened. Fred surprised someone in Dorothy’s room. That person retreated through the connecting door, carrying the typewriter. Fred had no reason for touching that machine. It’s madness to suppose he would set fire to the strawstacks merely to hunt for those letters.”
Harold sat fiddling uneasily with his watch chain, and did not reply.
Soon after, and on a very dismal note, our meeting broke up. Simon had not spoken but he lingered behind to exchange a word with Verity. I joined them on the stairs. “I was hoping, Simon, that you and Verity were working on some theory of your own.”<
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“The purpose of that gathering,” said Simon evasively, “was to gather facts. Neither Verity nor I withheld any facts.”
With that I had to be satisfied.
23
On Monday morning the grand jury met in hurried conference and indicted Fred for the murder of Dorothy Fithian. That cheerless Monday fell on October 4th. It was exactly one week after we had found Dorothy’s body in the strawstacks, but the press was clamoring for haste—making various editorial comments on “wealthy malefactors.”
In the afternoon at the county jail, Marian and I saw Fred for the first time since his arrest. Shortly before that painful meeting, however, an incident occurred which convinced me that my suspicions concerning Simon and Verity were correct. Marian was dressing and I had gone into the kitchen on some errand, when, glancing out toward the garage, I happened to see Verity draw a pail of water from our subsidiary well. Except in the spring, when on occasion our pressure is low, the well was never used. Then, as a precaution, and to conserve our precious supply, the servants with much grumbling would draw on the subsidiary well when any unusual amount of water was required. But September had been a rainy month, and I could not imagine why Verity would choose to haul water from a well in preference to letting it run from a tap.
In consequence I watched her. What she did next was very peculiar. She went into the garage and returned with an empty milk bottle. She filled the milk bottle with water from the pail, capped the bottle carefully an started quickly toward the house. Then she remembered the pail, retraced her steps and astounded me by meticulously pouring the remaining water back into the well. After which she rehung the pail.
I was waiting when she entered the kitchen. She attempted to hide the milk bottle beneath her apron, but I said firmly:
“What in the world are you going to do with that water?”
“Simon wants it,” said Verity.
“Whatever for?”
The Strawstack Murders Page 21
