“I’m glad I told you. It’s been plain hell,” she said, and drew her cape around her. “You know you can count on me, Marcia.”
She went soon after, and I saw her out, to the landaulet which she used for parties, and waited until the chauffeur had tucked her in under a rug and slammed the door. But it seemed rather dreadful, as I watched her go, to think that Arthur’s safety might lie in her well-cared-for hands.
It was that evening that I found what turned out to be a clue. It looked small and unimportant then, but I have wondered since how much death and downright agony of soul could have been prevented had we known its secret at the time. It sounds absurd, I know, to say that a brown coat button could have solved our crimes, or prevented two of them. Yet in a way it is true. Had we known who lost it, and why—
I had gone out after dinner, a dinner which neither of us had really eaten. The garden has always spelled peace to me, with its fountain splashing down into a little pool with its lotus and water lilies, and with the small goggle-eyed fish which remind me of Chu-Chu. In the center was the green circle of hard-rolled lawn where we serve tea on warm days, with a brilliant umbrella over the table and chairs around it; and against the wall was the rose trellis, now covered with opening buds, but still an adequate ladder in case of necessity.
It showed some damage. Here and there branches were broken, and the peonies at the base were badly crushed. It was there that I found the button. It lay half embedded in the earth, and except that it was brown and that Arthur had worn a gray suit when he followed the unknown intruder, it told exactly nothing.
Nevertheless, I kept it. It might belong to Mike, although he works in overalls. On the other hand, it might explain the man with the flashlight. If he had missed it he might have come back to search for it. I carried it into the library and put in an envelope in my desk, where long weeks later Russell Shand was to refer to it.
“I’m not much up on murder,” he said, “and here we had not only no motive, so far as I could see. We didn’t even have a clue. Now you take that button you found in the garden. What did it tell us? Only that somebody had tried to get into the house, and we had Arthur’s story about that anyhow.” And he added:
“Take it from me, Marcia, there’s one kind of murder that all the crime laboratories in the world don’t help with. That’s when the killer just up and kills. No premeditation, no alibi, no nothing. He or she just sees the chance and takes it; and what are you going to do about it?”
CHAPTER IX
IT WAS MORE THAN a week before they found Juliette’s body.
More than a week of reporters, photographers and long lines of cars containing the merely curious. In the end the sheriff closed the gates and placed a deputy there; but this merely drove the newspapermen to the water. They hired boats, took pictures when any of us appeared, and generally placed us in a state of siege.
The real center of interest, however, was Loon Lake and the surrounding country. For days the search went on there, only to be abandoned when darkness fell. But they did not find her.
One afternoon I went downstairs at teatime to find Mrs. Pendexter settled in the drawing room. She did not so much as greet me.
“I’ve sent for Juliette’s maid, Marcia,” she said. “If you want to know anything about a woman, get her personal maid. I’ve had mine for forty years, and when I want to know my bank balance I just ask her. Has Russell Shand talked to her?”
“Only about Juliette’s jewelery, I think.”
“Like a man,” she sniffed. “What does he know about Juliette’s past the last six or seven years? What money did she have? How much did she spend? Who were her lovers, if any? What letters did she get and what was in them? Who hated her? Who was afraid of her? Good gracious, Marcia, I never know I need a liver pill until my Celeste suggests it!”
But it was not easy to get Jordan out of that fastness of hers where she remained locked away; and when she came she proved more than a match for the old lady staring at her through her lorgnette.
“So you’re the maid,” said Mrs. Pendexter. “How long have you been with Mrs. Ransom?”
“Three years, madam.”
“That’s long enough to have learned plenty. Who did this? You ought to know.”
Jordan merely spread her hands.
“Answer me when I speak to you.”
“I have no idea, madam. If anything has happened to her I would say—”
“Say what?”
“One would not have to go far to find people who didn’t like her.”
“Didn’t like her!” echoed the old lady. “Someone kills her and throws her into a lake because he or she doesn’t like her! Talk sense, girl. Who hated her enough to do away with her?”
“She was very popular, madam. Wherever we went she was popular. She had only friends.”
“Nonsense and rubbish. Get along with you,” said Mrs. Pendexter, and put away her lorgnette with dignity.
I was almost entirely shut away. I had not seen Allen Pell again, and I gathered that he was among the searchers. But the season had commenced in earnest. Day after day trucks laden with trunks rumbled along the highway, station wagons passed loaded with servants, and there was the usual procession of cars with liveried chauffeurs.
In town the shop windows showed fresh merchandise, the traffic lights were turned on, a policeman directed the traffic at the intersection of our two business streets; and the local police station was the center of a new and unwonted activity.
Arthur was out all day and every day, coming home late, dirty and exhausted. To add to the general discomfort the town had had several heavy rains and the search had had to be temporarily abandoned. Then one day he told me that he had sent to New Bedford for a diver. “No good dragging any more,” he said. “The lake’s full of sunken logs and rocks.”
That was on the Monday following Juliette’s disappearance, and by Wednesday evening the diver, named Oleson, had covered practically the entire bottom of the lake without result. He worked from a flatboat with two assistants, coming up now and then for rest and to get warm, for Loon Lake is icy cold. Owing to the rains it was deeper than usual, and there was more current than under ordinary conditions. Toward the end of the day he concentrated on the outlet into Stony Creek, and there at last he found something.
It was the small leather case Juliette had carried in her riding coat pocket, with her initials in gold on the corner. It was still filled with cigarettes, and case and contents were sodden, as though they had been in the water for a long time.
I identified it that night at the sheriff’s office, taking Jordan with me. She eyed it stonily, but a minute later she swayed and we only caught her in time to lay her flat on the floor. I was feeling sick myself. When she came to she tried to sit up, and I had to hold her down.
“Lie back,” I said. “You’ll be all right soon. Let the blood get into your head.”
She stared up at me as if she did not see me. “Dead!” she said thickly. “He got her after all, the dirty murdering devil!”
“Who got her?”
She would not say anything more. The sheriff had gone for water, and when he came back she had her eyes closed and was obstinately mute. Nor did I press her until we were in the car on the way home. Then I asked her, but she merely looked at me in apparent surprise.
“I don’t remember saying anything, miss,” she replied listlessly.
One thing was certain. The finding of the cigarette case had put new energy into the search. Here was proof that Juliette had faked no crime, staged no disappearance. Obviously its discovery was pure accident and luck. As a result the work went on all night and into the next morning, with practically every able-bodied man on the island joining in it. But now the search had left the lake and with flares and lights of all kinds followed Stony Creek down to our pond. Normally the creek is shallow, but here and there are deep pools, and these they investigated carefully, the theory being that the flood waters after the rain might have
carried her for a considerable distance.
They were still searching at dawn. Arthur was with them, as were also most of the men of the village and of the summer colony, including Tony, Mansfield Dean and Bob Hutchinson. I had not gone to bed at all, and at daylight some twenty of them came into the house and I gave them sandwiches and coffee. They were a tired and dirty lot, crowding into the dining room around Mother’s old carved table, and Arthur brought in whisky while I cut bread and ham.
It was when I brought in the sandwiches that I saw Allen Pell. Like the others he was muddy and weary. Arthur had poured him a drink, and he held it in his hand. When I found him he was off by himself, looking at his little painting of Loon Lake, and he made a gesture toward it.
“I’d better change that for something else,” he said. “You won’t want it now.”
I gathered that he had been with the searchers during the entire search so far; but he was with them, not of them. Even that morning he seemed rather detached. I found him later out on the porch, apparently watching the sunrise and eating a sandwich at the same time.
He greeted me with a grin.
“People are queer, aren’t they?” he said, apropos of nothing. “After all, why fear death? It’s a pleasant road that leads somewhere or other. I’ve forgotten the rest. Anyhow, the idea is that either we sleep or we wake up to something that must be pretty interesting.”
“We don’t know which. And she wanted to live.”
He was silent for a minute or two. Then he said:
“There are worse things than death. I can think of a number of them.”
His tone was so bitter that I stared at him; but Howard Brooks came out just then. And Arthur was asking for more sandwiches. I did not see him again alone that morning.
It was a sombre sort of gathering that early morning. None of the men had much to say, and they all looked weary and dispirited. I gathered that they had found no further clue of any sort; and that they thought it unlikely that the body could have been swept through the culvert under the road and into the pond. Nevertheless, Oleson went down there later that day. This time he wore only a diving helmet and a bathing suit, but it was a strange thing to see him there on the bank among the late irises and peonies, a grotesque figure with an enormous swollen head.
He found nothing at all. Our driveway was still shut off, but the servants from the various houses near by had gathered in small whispering groups, and when he came up for the last time empty-handed there was an almost audible sigh of relief mixed with disappointment. I was at the window, and I saw the sheriff take his hat off and mop his head, although the day was cool. Then as though unable to believe that this was all, that this was the end, he cast an eye along the beach below the dam.
Immediately after that he did a curious thing.
He climbed down the rocks a foot or two, and picking up some small object, examined it carefully. He put it into his wallet, and then proceeded to examine the rocks, both above high-water mark and below. The tide was out, and with his head down he walked along the stony beach until he was out of sight from where I stood.
It was almost an hour later when he rang the doorbell and asked for me.
Arthur had taken Oleson to the train and was motoring on to Millbank, so I was alone. And the sheriff was very grave when I found him in the library.
“I’ve played fair with you, Marcia,” he said. “Now I want you to play fair with me. Do you know anything about this?”
He pulled a dark-brown bundle from his pocket, and I felt my heart stop. It was the remains of Arthur’s hat.
He took one look at me and went on: “I’m laying out all the cards. I’ve got the initial ‘A’ from a man’s hatband in my pocket, and part of this hat has been cut off. I found one piece, and I’ll likely find others. I may find the other initials too. Now, how about it?”
“How about what?” I remember saying. “A hat? Anybody can throw a hat away.”
“Not anybody cuts it up first. Somebody who finds a hat and wants to get rid of it—that’s the person to look for, isn’t it?”
“It’s preposterous. Who would do such a thing?”
He eyed me.
“What about that bareheaded man running around with a hatchet?” He inquired. “Maybe old Lizzie had a nightmare, and again maybe she hadn’t. Those lights on the driveway are pretty strong.”
So he knew that too. I was nervous and confused.
“It may have been washing about for a month,” I said, with dry lips. “Maybe a year.”
He shook his head, and prodded the felt.
“I’d say it’s been in the water off and on for a week,” he said. “The tide’s like the Lord, Marcia. It giveth and it taketh away. That stuff’s been in and out offshore right here for the past several days.”
I said nothing. He went on:
“Life’s a funny thing,” he said. “If somebody had just thrown that hat away I wouldn’t have looked at it. Anybody’s likely to lose one in the bay. But it’s been cut to pieces. Then again, that initial was above high-water mark. That’s queer too. Maybe it fell somewhere and a bird picked it up. One of those crows out there; he’d see it in a minute. Or maybe it never went into the water at all. Say it was dropped out of one of your windows, or from that upstairs porch of yours. You might think that over.”
I had always liked Russell Shand, with his clear blue eyes and his stocky muscular body. He had the reputation of being beyond political bribery, and of sticking to a case until he solved it. But that day I hated him.
“Where is Arthur?” he inquired.
“He has gone to see his wife. And if you think he killed Juliette you’re a lunatic,” I said angrily.
He remained calm, however.
He asked to see Jordan, and there was a long interval before I heard him coming back.
“Well, Marcia,” he said heavily. “I guess I was right. That maid of Juliette’s saw you cutting up the hat, and she says you dropped the scissors. She found them on the beach, and she’s got them in her room.”
He waited for a while, but there was nothing I could say. All my defenses had crumbled. When he left soon afterwards I went upstairs and took two bromides before I crawled into bed, and I did not get up the rest of the day. I lay there, too tired and too weak to move; as though the very foundation of my life had been taken from under me and a gesture would have meant collapse. But once I got up, and I saw a detective on the beach below the house, carefully searching it.
Arthur came back from Millbank that afternoon to get some fresh linen. Before he left to go back to Mary Lou, he told me about that journey of his to see Juliette. He had tried to keep the visit secret; but it had been Mary Lou he was worried about, not the police.
“She hated her,” he said, as if Juliette was already in the past tense. “I couldn’t tell her I was coming here to see Juliette.”
What he had done had seemed simple enough at the time. He still had the old sloop, weather-beaten but serviceable, and it had already been put in commission, so on Wednesday he had merely stuck a cap in his pocket and gone out to the yacht club. The boat was anchored well out from the shore, and after he and the man from the shipyard had gone over it he bought some provisions in the town and went aboard again. He left word at the club that he might be away for a couple of nights, and as these solitary trips of his were nothing unusual it excited no comment.
He ran under sail for an hour or so, and then started the engine. He did not go up the Sound, however. He turned toward a bay near one of the Long Island flying fields. He was trailing a dinghy, and after he had anchored he rowed himself ashore.
There he chartered a plane, and at dusk it had set him down neatly on the island emergency field. He had got a lift part of the way. The rest of the way he had come on foot.
“It was the hell of a walk,” was his comment.
He swore that he had not seen Juliette after that scene in the library.
“Not after she went up the stairs,” he sai
d. “I didn’t want to see her. All I wanted was to forget her. I’ve built my life. Why should I let her destroy it?”
I was exhausted when he left me. What with excitement and loss of sleep I must have dozed off just after Maggie had put me to bed. But like most people under strain I slept deeply for an hour or two and then wakened. Chu-Chu was snoring loudly, but outside of that the house was silent. I lay there, wide awake in the darkness. The tide was making small regular sounds, a bit of splash, silence, then splash again. It was some time before I realized that it was not the tide at all.
Someone was rowing a boat just off the shore.
I sat up in bed and listened. The night was very still, and there was no mistaking the faint thud when the boat struck the float, or the muffled sound of someone landing and tying it up. I slid out of bed in my nightgown and went out onto the upper veranda; and it was not difficult to make out the dark outline of the boat, nor—as my eyes grew accustomed to the starlight—the figure of a man moving along on the dock below me.
He saw me too, for he stopped suddenly and looked up. But his next action was certainly unusual. He did not go back. Instead he stood still, turned on a flashlight and, leaning on the rail of the dock, seemed to be writing something. After that he went down on the shore, and a few minutes later I heard a sharp ping as something dropped beside me.
Chu-Chu was still sleeping as I went inside and turned on the light. What I held was a note wrapped around a bit of shell from the beach. “Please come down, I must talk to you.”
The signature was merely Pell.
It never occurred to me not to go. I remember how excited I was as I threw on some clothes, including a tennis dress and sneakers. That confidence of mine seems strange now, for I knew nothing whatever about him. For all I knew he might have been the man Arthur had followed. He might have been the man with the flashlight. But I never hesitated.
When, somewhat breathless, I finally crept down the stairs and out onto the front porch, I found him waiting there, where I had last seen him at daylight that morning. He was not much more than a shadow, but his first words were reassuring.
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