“I hope it’s unnecessary. But it hurts my reputation when clients get killed, so be a good girl and do what I tell you. Okay?”
“All right,” she said. “Good night.”
I waited outside the door until I heard the key turn in its lock.
Downstairs I found Warren Day and Lieutenant Hannegan munching cheese sandwiches and drinking black coffee.
“Where’s Mrs. Lawson?” I asked Day.
“Went for a breath of air.” The inspector gestured vaguely at the front door with his sandwich.
“Think I’ll try some, too,” I said, starting for the door.
“Let her alone,” he growled. “Can’t a woman go for a walk in the dark without you horning in? Always you got to chase every woman in sight.”
I looked at him, surprised. “Are you jealous?” I asked.
“Jealous!” he repeated, outraged at the thought.
Savagely he bit a piece from the unlighted cigar still in his left hand, looked startled, spat it out, and snapped fiercely at his cheese sandwich.
I gave him a sympathetic smile and went out into the dark.
There was no moon, but brilliant stars made for bare visibility, and once my eyes adjusted to the darkness I made my way around the house without difficulty. As I expected, Ann Lawson was at the bluff’s handrail, staring out over the river. But, as I had not expected, she already had a companion.
Until I neared to within fifteen feet I had thought the hazy silhouette against the slightly lighter degree of blackness beyond the bluff’s edge was Ann’s, so closely merged were the two of them. Only when I heard her voice say, “Please, dear, let’s go in,” did I realize a man had his arms around her.
I stopped, not with the intention of eavesdropping, but merely because I was too startled for the moment either to withdraw silently or make my presence known. The silhouette grew thinner and there came the unmistakable sigh of a woman being kissed. Then a man’s low chuckle was followed by Dr. Douglas Lawson’s equally low voice. “Still want to go in, darling?”
By now I had recovered from my startlement and could easily have either returned to the house or coughed loudly. My sole purpose in coming out had been the prospect of conversing with a beautiful woman by starlight, and the course the Marquis of Queensberry would have approved after finding the beautiful woman in another man’s arms would have been dignified retreat. But since everyone in the house was a suspect as the murder attempter, the opportunity to listen in on a private conversation between two of the suspects was more than my snoop-conditioned mind could resist. I remained silent and listened.
Ann’s voice said, “Please don’t call me that yet, Douglas. Even if I were sure, I don’t want to think about it till this is over. And it isn’t fair to Don.”
“Don, hell,” Douglas said roughly. “He’s been dead over a year.”
For a moment this left me entirely at sea, then I realized he was not referring to the corpse of that evening, but to Ann’s deceased husband, who apparently bore the same name as his son.
“Not that I’d want to hurt Don if he were still alive,” the doctor went on more gently. “You know how close we were, and if wishing would do any good, I’d wish him alive again even though it meant losing you. But nothing on earth can bring him back, and I can’t stand his ghost pushing between us.” His tone grew demanding. “Are you still in love with a dead man?”
“It’s not that, dear,” she said soothingly. “I don’t know that I ever loved him as—I mean—“
“As you love me,” he said flatly.
“No,” Ann protested. “I meant to say, as you want me to love you. I had respect for Don, and admiration, and had he lived that would have sufficed me the rest of my life. It was a calm, sure relationship, not all fire and ice like ours. And even though he’s been dead a year, I can’t bear to do something of which I think he’d disapprove.”
“Dammit!” the doctor said. “He was fifteen years older than you, and caught you at twenty-three, before you’d ever had a chance to be brought alive by a man. He had you eight years of life and one after death. What the hell does he want? Eternity?”
The silhouette broadened as Ann drew back from him.
“Don was a wonderful man,” she said coldly. “Let’s go in, please.”
I turned to start back toward the house, but before I had gone two careful steps, Douglas Lawson’s voice came to me once more. “I know how wonderful he was,” he said exasperatedly. “After all, he was my big brother and I knew him long before you did. He was virtually my father after Dad died. He put me through medical school, set me up in practice—You don’t have to tell me how wonderful he was.” His voice took on a high note. “But wonderful as he was, he’s deader than hell now.”
Ann’s reply was in a soothing tone, but I was then too far away to catch it.
Warren Day glanced at me sharply as I re-entered the drawing-room. I ran a cup of coffee from the silver urn sitting on a small table, added cream, sloshed it around by rotating the cup, and sipped it thoughtfully.
“Well?” Day growled.
“Well what?”
“Where’s Mrs. Lawson?”
“Out by the bluff.”
“So!” He guffawed. “Gave you the brush-off. Haw, haw, haw!”
“She didn’t even see me,” I said. “I told you I was just going out for the air.”
His grin faded, and he regarded me suspiciously. At that moment the door opened and Mrs. Lawson came in followed by the doctor. Day’s face registered first surprise, then understanding, then vindictive enjoyment. The last emotion was for my benefit.
“Are there enough sandwiches, Inspector?” Ann asked.
“Plenty,” he said hastily. “Plenty, thank you.”
All in the same evening I had heard Warren Day say please and thank you. For the first time in my life I regretted not keeping a diary.
“I believe I’ll go up, then,” Ann said. “If you want to stay the night, Maggie will show you your rooms. Breakfast is at eight-fifteen.”
“We won’t stay,” the inspector said. “We’ll come back again about nine in the morning. I have to ask that none of your guests or servants leave the house until we give clearance, though.”
“All right,” she said. “Good night.”
All except Dr. Lawson told her good night. Instead he told us good night and accompanied her up the stairs. As they left the room, Day watched the dapper doctor’s back broodingly, then glanced down at his own rumpled shirt.
“Hannegan!” he suddenly blared at the startled lieutenant, who sat two feet away from him. “Start bringing in the servants.”
Clamping his mutilated cigar between his teeth, he surged to his feet and stalked back to the library-den.
The first to appear was Maggie, who gave a repeat performance of her opinion of the inspector by standing directly before him with her hands clasped in front of her, and fixing him with glittering eyes in which there was no trace of subservience.
“Sit down,” Day rasped.
“No thanks,” Maggie said, her tone indicating she had no intention of staying long enough to make sitting worth while.
“Stand, then,” the inspector said petulantly. “What’s your name?”
“Margaret Sullivan. Better known as Maggie.”
“You’re the housekeeper?”
“Yep.”
“What do you know about all this?”
“Nothin'. Will that be all, mister?”
“Listen—” Day started to say, but I broke in.
“Mind if I ask a couple of questions, Inspector?”
Day glowered at me, turned his eyes back at the housekeeper, then shrugged. “Go ahead.”
I said, “Have a chair, Maggie, and make yourself comfortable.”
“Thanks, sir,” she said, sitting primly on the straight-back in front of the desk and snorting obliquely in Day’s direction. Deep behind the surface frostiness of her eyes I imagined the hint of a twinkle.
&n
bsp; The inspector’s long nose became pale on the tip, an infallible indication of anger. At headquarters Day’s nose was surreptitiously referred to as the “rage gauge,” for its relative paleness was an exact thermometer of his disposition. When it reached dead white, he became maniacal. Its present shade of paleness indicated only mild rage.
I said, “Maggie, you’ve been with the family a good many years, haven’t you?”
“Nineteen,” she said promptly. “Mr. Lawson hired me just after his missus died in childbirth, back when the family lived in the old house downtown.”
I said, “Sometimes a housekeeper knows more about her family than the family members do.”
Maggie nodded her head shrewdly. “I don’t know about other housekeepers, Mr. Moon, but I was never exactly just a servant. For ten years, until Miss Ann came along, I was the only woman in the house, and the nearest thing to a mother the kids had. Not that I ever been treated like another member of the family exactly, for Mr. Don was never one to ask hired help to sit at the same table, and my place remained in the kitchen, but I did have the care of the kids in a kind of governesslike way, you might say, and often they’d come to me about stuff they wouldn’t dare mention to their father. So if you mean do I know about young Don and Grace, I dare say I always knew more about what was going on in their minds than either Mr. Don or Miss Ann. I’ve no doubt what you’re getting at is was young Don the type of boy would commit suicide, so I’ll save time by telling you right out yes, which he did.”
She clamped her jaws after this remarkable dissertation and stared at me unwaveringly.
I said, “You’re a little ahead of me, Maggie, but go on. How was he the type?”
“He just was, that’s all. Understand, I wouldn’t say a word against young Don for the world. A fine boy inside he was, though a bit weak and terribly impulsive, which I blame mostly on his father. A child needs love, especially one with no mother, but Grace was Mr. Don’s favorite and there just wasn’t enough love in him left over for his son. Nor did his own sister understand the boy, or Miss Ann, either, for that matter, though I will say she made every attempt to get on with him, and young Don thought a lot of her. A moody boy he was, and easily hurt, and inclined to do crazy things on impulse, like the time he ran away and got married. You couldn’t get right inside his mind, for he was a deep one, and even me he never said a word to before he pulled that stunt.” She stared broodingly at her clasped hands, as though the memory of not being taken into his confidence still rankled.
“But what makes you think he was suicidal?”
“I don’t mean he was the type would go around thinking about it all the time, Mr. Moon. I mean he could have done it on impulse, if he got a nasty enough shock. Like the time his father had his marriage annulled, I saw him standing at the bluff looking down one day, and the expression on his face right scared me. For a week after that I kept my eye on him as sharp as possible, but nothing happened, so I thought it was just my fancying. But that spot was right about the one he must have finally jumped from.”
“What happened to the girl he married?” I asked.
Maggie shrugged. “None of us but Mr. Don ever saw her. Guess the mister bought her off and sent her packing.”
I asked abruptly, “Did you know someone was trying to kill Grace, Maggie?”
Her jaw dropped, and she gazed at me blankly.
“I guess you didn’t,” I decided.
“Here!” she said. “What’s this about Grace?”
“You’ll hear about it later,” I told her. “Any idea what could have made Don take his life?”
She nodded vigorously, but her expression was withdrawn and contemplative, her mind apparently still half on the question I had asked about Grace. “Woman trouble again. Who’s trying to kill Grace?”
“Never mind that now, Maggie. Who was the woman Don was troubled with?”
“Kate. I should have known better than to hire her in the first place, but young Don always could get around me, the young scamp. If I’d had any idea the way it would turn out, I’d never let him talk me into it. You can’t blame Kate, though, for she can’t help it young Don went so bad for her, and she never gave him too much encouragement that I could see.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Did Don bring Kate here?”
“That’s right. Where he met her, I don’t know, but she was out of work at the time and had good references, so when our other maid quit, he jumped me for the job before I could even phone the employment bureau. Plain nuts he was for her, and it’s my guess he jumped off the bluff because she wouldn’t have him.”
Suddenly the inspector came to life. “Send this Kate in,” he growled at Maggie.
She sniffed, ignoring him and continuing to look at me.
I said, “Thanks, Maggie. That’s all for now. Will you send in Kate?”
“Sure, and you’re welcome, Mr. Moon,” she said, rising. “But don’t you be harsh with Kate. She feels as bad about causing all this as the rest of us, and it’s not her fault any more than mine. Can’t expect a girl to marry a man she don’t love on the off chance he’ll commit suicide otherwise.”
“All right, Maggie,” I said. “We’ll be easy on her. Good night.”
“Good night, Mr. Moon.” At the door she turned and grinned acidly at Warren Day. “Good night to you, too, Sergeant.”
The inspector merely stared at her speechlessly. As the door closed, he whispered, “Why, that old harridan!”
VIII
KATE’S EXPRESSION was no longer sullen, but the change had not improved her appearance. She had the dazed look of a punch-drunk fighter, and her eyes were reddened from tears.
“Your name?” Day asked sourly.
“Kate Malone, sir.” I noticed she had developed the Sir habit since I last saw her. “Sit down, Miss Malone.”
The girl gingerly settled on the straight-backed chair in front of Day’s desk.
“What were your relations with the deceased?” the inspector asked abruptly.
Her eyes widened. “Why,” she said hesitantly, “I’m just a servant, and he was one of the family.”
The inspector waved this aside. “Let’s not beat about the bush, young lady. He got you your job here and has been chasing you fast and furious ever since you arrived. Were you lovers?”
She flushed crimson, and her eyes flashed fire. “I’m a nice girl, mister!”
Day seemed nonplused. His mouth opened; he closed it again, fished in the desk ash tray for the tattered cigar he had just dropped there, and clamped it between his teeth. When he raised his eyes again, they collided with Kate’s steady gaze, and he hastily averted them to me.
“You got any questions, Moon?” he mumbled.
I started to say, “No, Inspector,” on the principle that he ought to stew in his own juice, then thought better of it because the girl would have to stew along with him.
“The inspector didn’t mean that as it sounded, Kate. What he meant was were you and Don Lawson planning to be married?”
She gazed at me dumbly, shook her head negatively, changed her mind, and said, “I don’t know. Maybe sometime. He asked me.”
Suddenly, without any change in her expression, tears began streaming down her face. She made no attempt to mop them up, simply staring straight at me with numb eyes and letting salt water fall where it would.
Warren Day shot a piercing look at everything in the room except the girl’s face, growled like a trapped animal, and finally simply closed his eyes.
“Were you in love with him?” I asked gently.
“I don’t know. Sometimes. Somtimes not. If he hadn’t been such a weakling—” Her voice trailed off to nothing.
“Did he ever threaten suicide?”
As suddenly as they had begun, the tears stopped and her expression became uneasy. “Not since I’ve been here. Once a long time ago. I knew him before I came here, you see. We broke up once, and he said if we didn’t go back together, he’d kill himself, but w
e didn’t for a while and he never, so I thought it was just talk.”
“Did you know he’d been married?”
She nodded bitterly. “That’s why I say he was a weakling. He let his dad talk him out of that, and he’d of let his family talk him out of it this time, if I’d married him like he wanted.”
“Did he want you to elope?”
“Oh, no,” she said, surprised. “I don’t mean he wanted me to marry him right away. In two months he was twenty-one and got his half of the estate if he was still single. He wanted to get married right after that. But he’d of backed out as soon as his Uncle Doug and Miss Grace and Mrs. Lawson got at him about marrying beneath him—I knew him too well. And I wasn’t of a mind to get mixed up in that when there wasn’t a chance to win.”
I said, “Do you think he committed suicide?” “Of course.” “Over you?”
“Yes,” she said quietly. “I’m awfully sorry, but I think he did.”
“Did you know someone was trying to kill Grace Lawson?”
“What?” she asked, and her head jerked up.
“Did you know someone has been trying to kill Grace Lawson?” I repeated.
She shook her head slowly, wide-eyed and troubled.
“Just one or two more questions, then, Kate. Doctor Lawson says he was called out the night Don disappeared, and got back about seven-thirty in the morning, after the servants were up. Did you happen to see him?”
“Yes, sir. He’d forgotten a key, and I let him in.”
“Did he go right back to bed?”
“No, sir. He had early breakfast, then went up just as the others were coming down. He didn’t get much sleep though, because about a half hour later they discovered the note from Don.”
“What time was that?”
“About eight-thirty. You see, we serve breakfast at eight-fifteen, and when Don didn’t come down, Mrs. Lawson sent me to wake him up. He wasn’t in his room, and when I told Mrs. Lawson, she went up herself and found the note. Then everybody got so excited and there was such an uproar, Doctor Lawson got up again to see what was the matter.”
“Okay, Kate,” I said. “Anything to add, Inspector?”
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