The inspector repeated, “Robert had to get to Broad Acres. He needed transportation. His car was parked at his fraternity house, a comparatively short distance from the Potomac. Fithian ran most of the way, arrived at the fraternity house shortly before ten o’clock, and was about to leave when Miss Jane telephoned from the theater.” Inspector Chant turned to Jane. “Your father had disappeared, and you requested that your ‘cousin’ join you. Robert turned that appeal of yours to his own advantage. He seized the chance to let you and your mother help him build up a sort of alibi. And with you he could ride openly to Broad Acres, and accomplish his mission there. Or so he figured. But you will remember the situation when finally the theater party reached here.”
I am sure we all remembered. The theater party had arrived long after midnight. Marian had discovered Dorothy’s absence at once. Harold had wanted to notify the police that Dorothy had stolen Jane’s car. Fred had wanted to call all the hospitals.
“As for Robert,” said the inspector, “what he wanted to do was go upstairs, enter Dorothy’s bedroom, obtain and destroy the ‘suicide’ note, and return the typewriter. Above all he wanted to pour out the poisoned milk. But with the search for Dorothy in full swing he couldn’t get a moment to himself. Actually he was not alone until the men of the party streamed from the house. Unfortunately for Robert the women remained inside. Somehow, unseen, he had to manage to get upstairs. At that point Robert thought of a way to empty the house. A desperate way, but he felt sure that it would work. Fithian slipped away from the other men and set fire to the strawstacks.” We didn’t need to be reminded of the spectacle of strawstacks blazing against the sky, but we saw again the lurid light against the sky as the inspector described Robert’s actions in detail. He told us how the boy had drained the cars of gasoline, soaked the strawstacks, touched them off. How Robert had cut the telephone wire to delay our calling the police. How Robert had reentered the house, and awaited our discovery of the fire. And how, in the confusion following that discovery, Robert had run upstairs, entered Dorothy’s bedroom and seized the typewriter just as Fred Brierly blundered in.
“Fithian,” said the inspector, “retreated through the connecting door into Miss Tilbury’s room. More bad luck awaited him. Miss Jane came in. He had barely time I to slip behind the curtains in the alcove. Unfortunately, I he had left the typewriter on the highboy, and as yet had had no opportunity to remove the note. Miss Jane came into the alcove. She saw the typewriter, she started to lift the cover. It was a terrible moment for Robert Fithian. This double killer knew that unless he acted, and acted fast, his whole evening’s work would be undone—and by the girl he loved. Perhaps he hesitated, but at any rate you know what happened. Robert struck down Miss Jane, completed his work in the bedroom, left the unconscious girl lying in the alcove, and went to the burning strawstacks.”
For a long time no one spoke. The inspector did not mention one other thing that I recalled about the evening of September 27th. He didn’t speak of Robert Fithian’s anxious solicitude at Jane’s injuries. In some dim way I understood that Robert Fithian’s emotion, as he knelt beside Jane’s bed, had been genuine and real and quite in keeping with his character. Robert Fithian had not wanted to harm her, and there beside her bed, he must have felt a deep agony that he, the man who loved her, should cause her pain.
At last Inspector Chant looked around the silent room. His voice sounded tired. “And now I’ve covered the evening of September 27th. I’ve covered Dorothy Fithian’s plan, and the plan the killer superimposed upon it. Robert Fithian went to bed that night convinced that he was safe. He had paid a high price to rid himself of Dorothy, and to escape forever from his past. He believed that he was through with murder. Then—four days later—Nancy Anderson telephoned to you, Miss Tilbury.
“Until Nancy Anderson telephoned, Robert Fithian was convinced no living person knew of the attempt upon your life. Once that hidden fact was brought to light, his precious new identity was bound to be questioned. If he was ever questioned he was lost. Robert Fithian went to Nancy Anderson’s apartment and poisoned her.”
“Actually,” I asked, “what did she know?”
“It is impossible to say exactly. Such information as I have given you came from Robert Fithian, and Nancy Anderson stubbornly refused to talk to him when he called. But she was drinking, and he managed to drop cyanide into her glass. Unquestionably, Miss Tilbury, the girl knew of the plot to murder you, and hated you because she considered you personally responsible for refusing to receive her brother and hear his story. We know that whatever Kirkland Anderson confided to his sister he asked her to keep in strict confidence. We know that she obeyed her brother, at the cost of her own life.”
Inspector Chant started to rise from his chair. He hesitated, glanced at Fred.
“As for the disappearance of your bathrobe cord, Mr. Brierly, that’s easily explained. It was another bit of opportunism on the part of the opportunist. Another, and really rather foolish, attempt to tie you closer, ever closer, to the crimes.”
Inspector Chant was on his feet. He picked up his hat and coat, and then turned around and paused at Simon’s chair.
“I’ve been wondering, Dr. Hargreaves. What made you suspect Miss Tilbury’s typhoid fever was deliberately induced?”
“You’ll have to ask Verity,” said Simon.
Verity was delighted to obtain an audience. “No one can deny,” she began firmly, “that I mistrusted Dorothy Fithian from the first. I knew she was a wicked, money-loving Jezebel. I knew Margaret had substance. I knew that until she got typhoid fever, Margaret was as healthy I as a drayman’s horse.” My cousin made an airy gesture to indicate that the real explanation lay in her own unusual powers at reading human nature, and arriving at correct conclusions.
Chal Enlow spoke, “But what made you telegraph me, Verity? What made you think Robert Fithian was not my son?”
“I didn’t think it,” admitted Verity reluctantly. “It never crossed my mind. Robert Fithian was smooth as a serpent, as hypocritical as a Pharisee. He took me in.”
“Then why,” demanded Chal, perplexed, “did you telegraph me?”
Verity was fond of my brother-in-law—with reservations. She surveyed him calmly. “Well, Chal Enlow,” she said, “artist or no artist, I knew that you liked money, too. Other people’s money. I didn’t know but what you were mentioned in Margaret’s will.”
“What’s that got to do with it?”
“I wanted to make sure,” announced Verity flatly, “that you were actually in Mexico!”
There was a paralyzed silence, and then the tension snapped. Even Jane and Marian laughed. Chal himself, after a first injured glance at Verity, managed to join in the laughter, too. When I heard that blessed sound, I knew that the cloud which had lain on Broad Acres had passed away. It was as though my family and my friends had come back to me. My eyes filled up with tears.
Inspector Chant slipped quietly from the drawing room.
I went into the hall to watch him down the drive. Simon followed me and put his arm around my shoulders. “When do you leave Broad Acres, Margaret?”
“Tomorrow,” I said.
Well, it was then that Simon Hargreaves asked me the question I had waited more than twenty years to hear. I made the answer I had waited more than twenty years to give. But I had long since passed the age of impulsive action, and I asked for time.
As I said in the beginning of this account I live alone again. But I don’t expect to live alone much longer. I came down from Vermont to New York just last week to buy myself a trousseau. Simon arrives this afternoon. Jane—now three months a wife—arrives with Ted and assorted Breens this evening. Fred and Marian are already here, and stopping in the same hotel.
Some of my neighbors in Vermont are chattering among themselves, saying that I’ve gone high-hat in refusing the friendliness of a home-town wedding. I think that Simon was a bit surprised when I suggested New York. But I believe that every bride should
have one choice anyway. And I’ve always wanted to be married at the Little Church Around the Corner. Furthermore I intend to rouge my cheeks. I understand a lot of actresses have been married there.
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The Strawstack Murders Page 26
