Wall

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

  He was interested but not suspicious. He opened it, sitting down comfortably to do it. Inside was the usual lipstick, a few dollars in money, a key or two, a fresh handkerchief and a partly used package of cheap cigarettes. But there was a slip of paper also, and Sutton opened and read it. It began without salutation:

  I would like to have a talk with you, but not here. The quietest place would be the path along the sea wall after dinner tonight about nine o’clock. Let me know if you care to do this, and if you need funds. A.C.L.

  Sutton was no fool. He recognized the initials, and as soon as he was dressed he went to the police station. The sheriff happened to be there. He took the bag and read the note, and later on he had Sutton show him where the bag was found. When he sent for Arthur late that afternoon he was sitting behind the shabby desk, with the bag in front of him.

  “Did you ever see that pocketbook, Arthur?” he asked.

  Arthur stared at it.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Well, I have,” said Russell Shand. “The last time I saw it a woman was sitting where you are now, holding it. And she said: ‘I am afraid. I guess I know too much. I want to get out of that house.’”

  Arthur was pale but composed.

  He admitted the note immediately, but said that it had been written a day or two before Jordan disappeared. He had gone to the sea wall, but she had not come. As for the reason for the note, he had felt all along that she held the key to the mystery of Juliette’s death; but it was difficult to talk to her at the house. That key, he was certain, lay in the past few years after Juliette had left him. He absolutely denied any knowledge of Jordan’s disappearance; or of her death, if she was dead.

  “Why should I kill her?” he demanded. “If she knew anything incriminating about me she had had plenty of time to tell it.”

  “Had she made any demand on you for money?”

  “Blackmail, I suppose you mean. No.”

  The sheriff was hard and truculent that day. Until then he had believed Arthur innocent, but now he was not so sure.

  “You say you were out for a drive the night the Jordan woman disappeared. Where did you go?”

  “Back into the hills. I had no objective.”

  “Did you get out of your car at any time?”

  “No.”

  “Were you near the bay path at any time?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “How well did you know this woman, Arthur? The Jordan woman,”

  “I had never seen her until I came here, after my—after Juliette had disappeared. I never exchanged a word with her.”

  “But you admit that you wrote this note.”

  “I did. I have explained that.”

  The sheriff blew up then.

  “You’ve got to get a better story than that,” he said. “By the great horn spoon, Arthur, I’ve stuck by you as long as I can. But you’re coming clean now. Why didn’t she meet you? Did she ever explain that? And why write to her at all! Couldn’t you have talked to her? Not deaf and dumb, was she?”

  “I don’t know why she didn’t meet me,” said Arthur unhappily. “She stayed in her room, with the door locked. As for the note—” he colored—“I slipped it under her door. Good God, sheriff, I had to see her somehow. She knew who killed Juliette. I’m certain of it.”

  But there was no murder still, at least not officially, and he came home to dinner, to say nothing about the bag, to refuse food, and to prowl around the house until late that night. Once I remember he came to my room, where I had in despair gone to bed, and asked what had happened to the house bells. They were ringing in the pantry from empty rooms.

  “Why don’t you have them looked after?” he demanded irritably.

  “I have,” I told him.

  “Well, it’s a damned nuisance,” he said, and went off again.

  It was the next morning that Jordan’s murder became an established fact. She had been missing for two weeks by that time, and it was a fisherman, out all night with his nets, who found her on his way home at daybreak.

  He was a practical man, not unused to the tragedies of the sea. He saw the body floating, face down, and with a gaff he managed to hold it until he could get a rope around it. Then, still practical, he merely towed it to the town dock and called up to a man fishing there.

  “Get somebody to telephone the police station,” he said. “I’ve got a body here.”

  He was smoking his pipe quietly when the chief of police arrived. A crowd had formed on the dock overhead, the intent silent crowd of such occasions. The chief drove them back, and in due time the body was taken out of the water and to the mortuary. There was no question of identification. The underclothing was marked with indelible ink and she still wore the suit she had worn in the sheriff’s office.

  It took no lengthy examination to discover the hole in the back of her skull, or that there was a piece of rope around her neck.

  CHAPTER XVI

  IT WAS EVIDENT THAT she had been murdered. Doctor Jamieson, straightening from the preliminary examination, merely shrugged his shoulders.

  “Back of the head bashed in,” he said. “Then towed out to sea.”

  He believed she had been dead before she was put into the water. The rope around the neck was too loose for strangulation. As for the rope itself, it looked like part of a boat’s painter. It had been cut with a sharp knife, and the knot was an ordinary double one. But the weapon had not been the one which had killed Juliette. This wound looked as though it had been made with a rock.

  I was fairly dazed by the situation. Arthur had been sent for at once, and came home looking sick.

  “I’m in for it now,” he said. “I wish you’d go over to Mary Lou. Tell her about Jordan, but let the rest wait. I’d better not leave the island.”

  He told me as much as he knew, and that he was to be interrogated that night. Bullard was away for the day, and wouldn’t be back until late.

  I went to Millbank, and to my surprise Mary Lou took the news better than I had expected.

  “Jordan!” she said. “Why, he didn’t know her. It’s all ridiculous.” And she added, with that occasional shrewdness of hers, “I suppose they have to have a scapegoat, and Arthur happens to be it. But it may help him, Marcia. He couldn’t have killed them both.”

  I spent the day there, and felt the better for it, building sand castles for Junior on the beach, and later talking idly with Mary Lou as she knitted on the veranda of the cottage. But it seemed strange, as I drove myself home that night, to think that life was going on much as usual. There was a dance at the Shore Club that night, and from the house I could see the colored lights around the pool, and even imagine I heard the band.

  People dancing, or gathering in the bar, the women dressed in bright clothes, the men in conventional black and white.

  “Hear they found that woman’s body.”

  “Yes. Queer story, isn’t it?”

  Life going on, and Arthur in that shabby office at the police station, sitting in a hard chair and confronting Bullard, like a red-faced bulldog, across the desk. The sheriff was there, and the local police chief, as well as two or three detectives. But it was Bullard who did the talking; looking pompous and grim. It went on, I learned later, for hours, as if they meant to wear him down, or to trap him.

  “You say you never saw her that night. What explanation did she give for not keeping the appointment?”

  “None. I didn’t see her. She stayed in her room. I began to wonder if she had found the note.”

  “How did you give it to her?”

  “I’ve already explained that. I couldn’t get near her, so I slipped it under her door.”

  Coloring unhappily, but keeping his head up. “I was convinced that she knew something. My first wife—Mrs. Ransom—often talked to her maid, whoever it might be. As a matter of fact”—he hesitated—“I was aware that during our life together she frequently received mail addressed to her personal maid.”

  “
Letters from men?”

  “Some of them. I found one or two she had overlooked after she left me.”

  “Then, if I get your meaning, you thought that this woman, Helen Jordan, might know of some man who had reason for making an attack on Mrs. Ransom?”

  “That was my idea. I wasn’t sure, of course.”

  “That night you waited on the bay path and she did not come—did you see anybody, Mr. Lloyd?”

  “No, I believe it was bank night at the movies.”

  “How long did you wait?”

  “From eight to almost ten.”

  “And she did not come?”

  “No.”

  Bullard with the note in his hand, glaring across the desk; and Arthur still quiet, still composed.

  “What did you mean by what you say here? About her possible need of money?”

  “I should think that explains itself. She was no longer employed, and she had been sick. After all, Mrs. Ransom had brought her to my sister’s house. I felt I ought at least to see that she got back to New York, and be looked after until she got another position.”

  “Very kind of you,” said Bullard. “It’s unfortunate she didn’t see things that way. She told the sheriff once that she wasn’t safe in your house. What did that mean?”

  “I have no idea,” he told them. “Unless she referred to one or possibly more attempts to break into the place. I didn’t think she knew about them. She may have, of course. Or,” he added, “she may have heard from the servants that the house is queer.” He smiled faintly. “Something went wrong with the bells some time ago, and they claim it is haunted.”

  But he had no alibi whatever for the night of her disappearance. He said he had driven aimlessly about through the hills, and so far as he knew had not been seen. He had not stopped for gasoline. He had not stopped anywhere.

  They were not inhumane. At some time during the evening someone sent across the street for some coffee, and he drank it. But as time went on even the sheriff looked grave. Somebody asked him if he carried a pocketknife, and he produced it. It was sharp, and one of the detectives tried it on the rope; that rope which had been around Jordan’s neck. Arthur watched, pale with fatigue, and Bullard’s eyes full of hard suspicion.

  “It does it, eh?”

  “Does it, all right.”

  But they did not arrest him that night. They knew as well as he did the weakness of the case against him. He could run a motorboat, of course. They had seen him doing it for years. But he knew the sea, and so did they.

  “Why should I have killed her?” he demanded. “If she had had any knowledge dangerous to me, is it reasonable to think that I would have given her all that time to disclose it? As it stands, I never spoke to her. I didn’t even know her name until my sister told me.” And he added: “Suppose I had killed her and wanted to dispose of the body. Would anybody but a lunatic—somebody who didn’t know the currents here—have put that body into the water without a weight tied to it?”

  “There might have been a weight, at that,” said Bullard.

  But Arthur looked at the rope and smiled.

  “There’s no knot in it,” he said.

  They could understand that sort of talk, the local men at least. More or less they all knew the sea and its way in such matters. And there was Arthur, straight and handsome, facing them with a half-smile and clear direct eyes.

  “Whoever towed that body out and cut it loose didn’t know much about the tides around here,” he said, and sat quiet.

  Strange, all of it, it must have been: the shabby room filled with drama, the reporters on the street smoking and grumbling, that body forever still in the mortuary, and at the club people dancing or sitting out under the stars.

  “Hear they found that woman’s body.”

  “Yes. Queer story, isn’t it?”

  Except for what Arthur had told me, I knew nothing of all this that night. I did know that with the discovery of the body we would be deluged again with reporters, and so I had the gates closed and locked after Arthur left and put Mike on guard there, with orders to keep everybody out.

  Arthur had left at six o’clock, and I had hoped that he would get back for dinner. But he did not come, so I ate alone, with a depressed William moving in and out of the shadows.

  “The soufflé is spoiled, miss. Lizzie says she can send in some fruit.”

  “I’m not hungry, William. Have you heard anything?”

  “Nothing, miss. Not since this morning.”

  It was still faintly twilight when I finished, and calling Chu-Chu went out into the garden. The sun had set in a blaze of rose and green, the tide was low and the gulls were feeding clamorously. The usual starfish and sea urchins littered the beach, and among them stalked those wretched crows. I was eying them with resentment when to my surprise a dark head lifted itself from the water, some distance out from the shore.

  It was late for seals. I watched it curiously, and when it rose again nearer the land I saw that it was not a seal. It was a man; and a man who was fully at home in the water. Most of the time he swam under the surface, with hardly a ripple on top; but now and then he rose for air and looked toward me. When he came closer I saw that it was Allen Pell!

  He was like an answer to prayer that night. I had missed him more than I cared to acknowledge, and I found my heart beating fast when I recognized him. I was even trembling when I made my way along the dock to the float, to find him still in the water, but smiling up at me.

  “Sorry to be so informal,” he said. “D’you mind standing as if you were merely looking at the landscape? I’ve gone to the hell of a lot of trouble to pretend I’m an amphibian.”

  He pulled himself up onto the float, and I saw that he wore only a pair of bathing trunks. But for all his smile, he was shivering and his lips were blue.

  “Not up to my usual form, I’m afraid,” he said apologetically. “Listen, I’ve got to talk to you, and I can’t keep my teeth still. How about some brandy and a blanket? I’ll hang around here until you get them. I tried the drive,” he added, “but the gates were closed, and a gentleman with a shotgun seemed suspicious. So I went back to a boat I’ve hired and—”

  “Good heavens! Has Mike got a shotgun?”

  “It looked like one to me, lovely lady; and I’ve seen a lot of them in my time.”

  I ran back to the house then, with Chu-Chu thinking it a game and yapping at my heels. Nevertheless I was gone longer than I had meant to be. I found Arthur’s flask, mercifully full, and a towel and a warm dressing gown; but with them under a blanket over my arm I met Maggie in the upper hall, and she stared at me.

  “And where,” she said, “are you taking that, miss?”

  “I’m going to sit outside, Maggie. It’s a lovely night.”

  “Then I am going with you,” she said firmly. “You don’t go out of this house alone at night. Not with murder all around.”

  It took both time and effort to get away from her, and I was fairly desperate when she followed me down the stairs and even out into the garden. The air was chilly, however, and at last she went grumbling back into the house. I was, I think, just in time. Allen Pell was having a fairly substantial chill when I reached him.

  He shook like a man with ague for some time, and I was beginning to be frightened when at last the brandy and the warm dressing gown and blanket began to have their effect.

  “Sorry,” he said. “Devil of a way to visit a lady, isn’t it?” And he added: “You’re a pretty fine girl, Marcia Lloyd. Blood tells, doesn’t it? I’d like to have known your mother.”

  That upset me. I had a quick memory of the old peaceful days, with Arthur and myself on that very beach, and Mother in her garden in her wide sun hat, showing her delphiniums. Suddenly I felt that I was going to cry.

  “Don’t,” I said, “or I’ll howl like a wolf.”

  He reached over and put a cold hand on mine.

  “Sorry again,” he said. “You’ve been pretty heroic so far. It won’t hu
rt you to cry. But for God’s sake don’t howl. I don’t want to be found here.”

  When I was calmer he told me how and why he had come. He had been in the water for an hour, swimming far out to escape observation, and most of the way it had been against the tide.

  “But I’m here,” he said, “and that was the general idea. Now, what about your brother? They can’t tie this on him, can they?”

  “They’re trying to. He’s there now. At the police station.”

  I told him how things stood. Indeed I told him all I knew, and he was very attentive. He sat with his arms hugging his knees, gazing out over the water and listening.

  “Will they arrest him?” I asked. “Do you think they have a case?”

  “God knows,” he said roughly. “There is this in his favor. They’ll hold off if they can. The sheriff’s a decent chap, and you’ve got to remember that the summer people can do no wrong. But I gather that this Bullard is a swine.” He stirred and faced me. “See here,” he said. “Look back a little, will you? Was Mrs. Ransom here any time since her divorce? Or—I’ll change that—any time in the last three years?”

  “No. I saw her now and then, but only in town.”

  There was a longish silence.

  “These rooms of yours, what you call the hospital suite. You think she was looking for something there?”

  “Somebody was, apparently.”

  “Maybe you’ve got it wrong. Maybe she was hiding something.”

  “I don’t know what it could have been. I’ve searched the place. So have the police.”

  “Any loose floor boards? That hatchet looks like something of the sort, if she put it there.”

  “The police have been over it. They’ve even lifted some of the floor. There was nothing.”

  He made a gesture.

  “Then that’s that,” he said, and lapsed into silence again.

  It was no time for romance that night, with Arthur in trouble as he was. But it was a comfort to have him there, close at hand; even if he did look slightly absurd, rolled in blankets and clutching the flask.

  “I wish you would tell me something,” I said. “How did you know Juliette? She doesn’t seem the sort of woman you would know, somehow.”