Wall

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

  “I’ve had the measles,” he said proudly. “I was all over spots.”

  I felt better when I left. The cottage was attractive, and Mary Lou had her car to get about in. It was arranged that on Juliette’s departure they would come to stay with me, and in the interval Arthur was putting his small sloop into commission and might sail it up later on.

  I motored home in a happier mood. The sea was still and blue, and when I crossed the bridge to the island I saw the head of one of my seals, sleek and dog-like. The farmhouses I passed were neat and white, with porch boxes and borders filled with flowers, and the aromatic scent of the pines was familiar and very dear. I took the short cut across through the hills, and looking down saw Loon Lake, small and exquisite in its green setting.

  A young man was painting it from beside the road, with the red of the sunset in it, and I stopped the car to look. He was a big young man, in a pair of gray slacks and a sweater, rather shabby. And he gave me a nice smile and asked if I thought he was catching it.

  “I like it,” I said. “Do you mind if I watch?”

  “Not a bit. I was fed up with myself.”

  How casual it all seems as I write it! Loon Lake below us, the painter working with broad vigorous strokes, his soft hat shading his eyes, and just around the corner sheer tragedy waiting to involve us both.

  I sat down on the running board of the car to let the peace of late afternoon relax me. After a time he put down his brush and taking a package of cigarettes from his pocket offered me one and took one himself. Thus seen, he was older than I had thought at first. In his thirties, probably. But he was certainly attractive and undeniably amused.

  “One of the summer crowd, I suppose?” he said, idly scrutinizing me. “New York fall and spring and Palm Beach in winter. Is that a good guess?”

  I was somewhat annoyed.

  “Not any more,” I said briefly.

  “Dear, dear! Don’t tell me the depression has hit the island. That’s bad for my business, isn’t it?”

  “How can I tell? What is your business?” I inquired.

  He looked extremely hurt.

  “Great Scott,” he said. “Why do you think I spend hours on that outrageous camp stool, painting rotten water colors? Because I like it?”

  “I thought that might be the general idea,” I said meekly.

  He grinned.

  “Sorry. The human animal has to be fed, you know. That’s not quite true,” he added quickly. “It amuses me, and most people don’t know painting when they see it anyhow. I don’t myself,” he added, in a burst of candor.

  He interested me. He was even bigger than I had thought, with broad shoulders and long muscular hands. But looking at him closely I thought he had probably been ill. When he whipped off his hat his forehead was pale, and his clothes hung on him loosely. But he was cheerful, even gay. It turned out that he was stopping at the tourist camp on Pine Hill, not far away, and that he lived, of all unexpected things, in a trailer.

  “Ever try one?” he inquired. “Rather fun, when you get used to it; and it has its advantages. No taxes, no permanent domicile, and no neighbors to let their chickens into your garden. Plenty of democracy too, only you probably wouldn’t like that. Pretty decent lot, on the whole.”

  In the end I learned that he had not been well, and that open air had been recommended. He traveled and painted. “Pretty bad pictures, but I don’t pretend they’re good.” And he liked being outdoors. I suspected that he was the usual depression victim, but he was certainly asking for no sympathy.

  I summoned enough courage at last to ask if I might buy the Loon Lake picture when it was finished.

  “I really like it,” I said. “It’s not—”

  “Not charity,” he finished for me, grinning. “Well, I rather hoped you would, as a matter of fact. It’s bad, but it’s the best I’ve done yet. I’d like you to have it. If you’ll give me your name—”

  I did, and I thought he looked at me quickly. But he was quite composed as he wrote it down.

  “Let’s see,” he said. “I think I know your house. Big one on the sea wall, isn’t it?”

  “That sounds like it.”

  “And you live there all alone?”

  “Usually. I have a guest now.”

  He shot another glance at me, but he made no comment. Soon after that—and with some reluctance—I went away.

  He helped me into the car, and I had an odd idea that there was something he wanted to say. He did not, though, and I left him there, standing bareheaded in the sunlight and looking strangely undecided.

  It was some time before I remembered that I did not know his name.

  I felt excited as I drove home. Never had the hills looked so green or the farmhouses so white and neat. As a matter of fact I was so abstracted that I drove half a mile past Sunset before I realized it, and had to turn back. I kept on seeing my unknown painter, with his attractive smile, and remembering the idiotic impulse I had had when he took off his hat, of wanting to smooth down his hair where it was ruffled at the back!

  I even dreamed of him that night, as I remembered sheepishly in the clear light of the next morning. But in the dream he was not smiling. His face looked strained and hard, and I realized with some perturbation that it probably could look just like that.

  One thing that episode did for me. It made Juliette easier to endure that day. For she was not easy to live with by that time. She had been there six days, and the insolent composure of her manner the day she came was entirely gone. She was irritable and worried. I noticed, too, that she avoided the town. When she rode it was into the hills, and her infrequent walks were in the opposite direction, toward the golf club.

  “You might as well know that I am staying until something is settled,” she said nastily.

  “That’s up to you,” I said. “You are my guest. I can’t very well turn you out.”

  “Always the pattern of all the virtues, including hospitality!” she said, and left me.

  CHAPTER V

  THE DAYS SINCE JULIETTE’S arrival had seen a good many new arrivals. The heat was driving people early to the island, and the estates around us were gradually being opened and occupied. Marjorie Pendexter had arrived, and Howard Brooks, her fiancé, was on the way in his yacht, the Sea Witch. The Deans had opened the Burton place. Tony Rutherford had taken his usual rooms at the Broxton House, and little by little the village was beginning to look like a small metropolis.

  The last of the seals had gone, the local shipyard was rushing boats into the water, and already one of the sightseeing cruisers was making its tours along the waterfront; and I could hear a blatant voice through its megaphones as I was having tea on the upper porch: “The white house is Sunset, property of Miss Marcia Lloyd of New York. There’s Miss Lloyd now on the porch roof, having her supper.”

  But I found myself rather alone in the excitement. Word that Juliette was with me had evidently been passed around to the newcomers, and either delicacy or prudence kept them away. I did not like it much. Usually Sunset is gay all summer, but now it was as though a plague, in the shape of Juliette, had settled over it.

  One day I learned that Bob and Lucy Hutchinson, who had The Lodge, the next property to Sunset, had arrived; and that afternoon Lucy came in to see me. I was upstairs with the electrician, who was going over the bells, and when I went down I found her in the library, restlessly moving about. She gave me only a perfunctory greeting.

  “See here, Marcia,” she said abruptly. “Is it true that Juliette is here?”

  “For a few days. At least I hope that’s all.”

  “You poor sap,” she said venomously. “You know what she is. Once let her get a foothold here and where are you? Where are any of us, for that matter?”

  I looked at her. Lucy was the really smart member of the summer colony. The older women watched her clothes and copied them when they could; but what with her slenderness, her bright red hair and the long earrings she affected, the results on s
ome of them were not so good. Only Juliette had ever done it successfully, and there had been one summer when her success had been too obvious. She nearly got Bob Hutchinson himself.

  That was in Lucy’s mind that day, for she said: “Tell her to keep away from me; that’s all.”

  “I suppose you think I like it!” I retorted.

  “Well, get her out of here,” she said bluntly. “I mean it, Marcia. By the grace of God I saved Bob, but she cost you Tony Rutherford, and you damn’ well know it. If you think that’s funny I’m going home.”

  And go she did, slamming out the front door, meeting Juliette in the driveway and cutting her dead, as I learned afterwards.

  I was not too happy when she had gone. Juliette had cost me Tony. I suppose that flirtation with her was never serious, and we had still been engaged when she left Arthur; but the hard times hit just then and Tony’s firm went under.

  “When I’m able to afford a wife I’ll come back,” he said. “Not before.”

  Nothing moved him; and of course as time went on the usual thing happened. He drifted off. He did not marry. He found a position and managed to get along. But his letters came less and less often. When they did they were more affectionate than loving, and now and then when he came up from Philadelphia to New York our meetings became a sort of desperate attempt to bridge the gulf opening between us. One day I told him it was all over, whether we knew it or not. He looked surprised rather than hurt.

  “As you want it, my dear,” he said. “I’ll always think you the sweetest girl I’ve ever known. If things had been different—”

  Juliette came down to dinner that night in a vicious temper.

  “If Lucy Hutchinson thinks she can cut me,” she said, “she’d better think again. I could make a lot of trouble around here if I wanted to.”

  “You’d better keep your hands off Bob,” I warned her. “Lucy is on the warpath.”

  But she seemed pleased at that, and after dinner, I put on a wrap and went outside. I felt as though five minutes more of her would send me into shrieking hysterics.

  It was a beautiful night, and certainly no evening to be alone. I found myself thinking of the painter on the hill, and wondering if I would ever see him again. After all, with a trailer, he might already have moved on. But I dismissed him from my mind. I was no romantic child, at twenty-nine.

  On impulse I made a call on the Deans that night, Chu-Chu at my heels. I did not want to go back to Juliette, and across the road and above me I could see the huge mass of the house and that it was fully lighted. Anything was better than another evening with Juliette; I crossed the road, went up the steep driveway and rang the bell.

  A footman admitted me, looking surprised, and a butler hovered in the background. I began to feel rather silly, but when I found Mrs. Dean, alone by a fire in the vast formal drawing room, I was glad I had come. She had evidently been lonely, for she was almost enthusiastic in her greeting.

  “How nice of you,” she said cordially. “Mansfield will be pleased too. You see, we know nobody yet.”

  “I am your nearest neighbor,” I told her. “Marcia Lloyd. And when I saw your lights—”

  “Neighbor!” she said. “What a pleasant word that is. It’s a long time since I have heard it.”

  And I wondered, as I have wondered since, if that is not one of the penalties of wealth. There was certainly nothing arrogant about Agnes Dean, however. She picked up Chu-Chu and held her in her lap, a thing the dog detests; and I could see then that she was thin and haggard, and definitely middle-aged, although in the soft light she showed the remnants of great beauty. She was dressed in deep black, and she looked down at it with an apologetic air.

  “We lost a daughter a year ago,” she said quietly. “That is why we came here. My husband thought I needed to see new people. We have a summer place on Lake Michigan, but it is very quiet.”

  It was pleasant to sit by the fire and chat about nothing in particular. I did not mention that I had an unwelcome house guest but the Deans had probably heard some of the neighborhood gossip about Juliette.

  I gathered that Mrs. Dean was dreading the summer. She had never cared for society and we were credited with being very gay. She had liked her home, and of course when her daughter was living—She broke off, and her chin quivered.

  For her sake I was glad when Mr. Dean appeared. I can still see Mansfield Dean as he looked that night, a heavy man with broad shoulders, the beginning of a paunch, and a voice that resounded all over the place. He shouted for a highball, gave his wife an amiable pat that was like a blow, and bellowed that he was delighted to see me.

  “I want Agnes to have friends here,” he boomed like a church bell. “No use sitting about and fretting.” His voice softened. “What’s done is done, and people help. I hope they’ll come,” he added, rather pathetically. “Of course we’re new, but there’s a lot of room. And later on we can give a dinner or two.”

  He fascinated me, so sure of himself, of his money and its power; and yet with a certain gentleness about him. He had a pleasant smile, showing big white teeth, and I think he knew that evening that he was a trifle ridiculous and did not mind it. One thing was certain. He dominated his wife, as he probably dominated everyone around him; but he was devoted to her.

  “We have had our troubles,” he said, “but we have to get along somehow. And we’re going to, aren’t we, mother?”

  His openness disconcerted me. I had a sudden feeling that I did not belong there; as though I was intruding on a tragedy. Agnes Dean sat silent, her eyes fixed on the fire, and after his entrance she said very little. Whatever the tragedy was, it was hers, not his. He could live his man’s life, attend to business, play golf, drink his highballs, go to his clubs. But she had no such refuge. She sat there alone with her grief.

  That was my introduction to the Deans; but my first impression of Agnes Dean has always remained with me, a small grief-stricken woman in a black dress, with a vast house and the panoply of wealth all about her, and none of it meaning anything to her.

  Mr. Dean walked back to Sunset with me when I left. Alone he ceased to boom, and I have wondered since how much of that heartiness of his before his wife was sheer acting.

  “I hope you’ll come again,” he said. “She needs friends. She needs some nice women to talk to. She doesn’t talk much any more.”

  He left me at my gate and for a moment I had a strange feeling that there was a light in the hospital suite. It went out just then, if it had ever been there at all. But, in view of that, it was disconcerting on my return to find William waiting for me with a long face.

  “Sorry to tell you, miss. The bells are ringing again.”

  “Good heavens,” I said peevishly, “that man today said the wiring was all right.”

  “That may be,” he said somberly. “Perhaps it has nothing to do with the wiring.”

  Nevertheless, just to be certain, before I went to bed I went up the stairs to look around. The door was still locked, and soon after I was asleep.

  I wakened late the next morning to a bright sun and Maggie with my breakfast tray and an expression which should have soured the cream for my coffee.

  “When you’re up and dressed,” she said, “I’ll trouble you to look at something.”

  “What is it? And where?”

  “In the hospital suite,” she said, and proceeded methodically to get out my clothing for the day. I looked at her stiff figure with exasperation.

  “Why on earth are you so mysterious?” I said peevishly. “What’s wrong with the hospital suite?”

  “When you’re up and dressed I’ll show you,” she said in a low voice, and lapsed into a dour silence.

  “Where is Mrs. Ransom? Is she awake?” I inquired finally.

  “She’s up. She took the car and went to the village for a wave. That Jordan went with her.”

  “Then why on earth do you have to whisper?”

  She made no reply, and as soon as I was dressed I found myself
going once more up the steep stairs, I ahead and Maggie following. The outer door was locked as usual, but that was all that was as usual. I opened the door onto chaos. In the anteroom the trunks had been opened and their contents strewn over the floor. Even the mattress on the cot had been taken off, and every box and chest had been searched.

  Maggie had followed me in and waited until I caught my breath.

  “You were still asleep when Mike wanted one of the screens for a cellar window this morning,” she said, “so I got the key and brought him up here. That’s what we found. And when I went into the other room, that was there.”

  She led me to the door into the quarantine room proper. At first it looked to me much as I had left it. Then I saw where she was pointing. There was a hatchet lying on one of the beds. It looked quite ordinary as it lay there, but I could not repress a shudder. It was sharp and dangerous.

  “Are you certain Mike didn’t bring it up?”

  “He never put foot in this room.”

  “Does it belong in the house?”

  “No, miss. I’ve asked downstairs. The old hatchet’s in the woodshed, where it belongs.”

  Save that one of the beds had been slightly moved, the room itself was as I had seen it last. The window was closed, and if anyone had entered by Arthur’s old method, via trellis and roof, there was no sign of it.

  I saw in Maggie’s face a reflection of my own suspicions.

  “If you’re asking me,” she said, “it’s that Jordan. She’s always snooping around. Only—what did she want, miss?”

  I surveyed the two rooms helplessly.

  “I haven’t any idea, Maggie,” I said. “And don’t tell the other people in the house. I have trouble enough already.”

  Everybody was too busy to straighten the place that day, but I did two things before I went downstairs again. I sent Maggie for some nails, and using the blunt edge of the hatchet fastened the window so it could not be opened; and I stood by while William and Mike, the gardener, together put a padlock on the outer door.