I looked again. There were flowers on Juliette’s grave also. They were fresh, and they looked expensive. They puzzled me, and I stopped in at the local florist’s that morning and asked about them. He knew as little as I did.
“It was a telegraph order from New York,” he said. “It’s to go on every week until discontinued. No name given.”
It was mysterious. Or was it? I stood in the shop, with its roses and carnations behind glass doors and its garden flowers and potted plants about me, and considered that. Someone out of Juliette’s immediate past had loved her, or grieved for her. Did that mean anything? It did not sound like that crowd of hers, hard and unsentimental and interested only in living, not in dying.
Someone who had loved her? But did women like Juliette inspire love? I thought not. They inspired passion, wild reckless infatuation; but the spiritual overtones would be lacking. As for lasting sentiment—
I got the name of the New York florist, not without difficulty, and that night when I took the train for New York it was in my bag.
The train rattled on. Somewhere was the baggage car, with those trunks and bags of Juliette’s; and somewhere, probably in a day coach—he was thrifty New England always—was Russell Shand. He had decided to go with me after all. But lying in my compartment I could not sleep.
I had met Tony Rutherford on the village street that day, and there was a brown button missing from his knitted golf coat. When I pointed it out he smiled.
“I need a wife, Marcia,” he said. “The darned thing’s been gone for weeks.”
“Bring it up and I’ll sew it on,” I told him. “I think I found it, in the garden.”
It was a moment before that registered. He looked suddenly acutely uncomfortable.
“Thanks,” he said. “I’ll hold you to that.” Then he was off.
I lay in my compartment on that rattling train and wondered. Tony in the garden. Tony climbing the trellis, and Arthur above him at the window. It was fantastic; and yet everything about our murders had been fantastic.
CHAPTER XVIII
IT WAS NOT EASY TO enter Juliette’s apartment the next day. Probably we made a queer combination, the sheriff looking as though he had slept in his clothes, as he doubtless had, and I myself certainly tired and not too tidy. Around us, in that impressive lobby, were Juliette’s bags, and her trunks were on the way by truck.
The superintendent eyed us with suspicion.
“But I’m her sister-in-law,” I protested.
“So you say.”
“But I am,” I said crossly. “How on earth could I have all this stuff otherwise?”
“Listen,” he said. “I’m not saying you are, and I’m not saying you’re not. But I’ve had a dozen cousins of hers here already, and about as many brothers. Reporters,” he added, seeing that I looked bewildered. “Sob sisters. From the press.”
The sheriff was enjoying himself hugely, but I was furious.
“What about these bags of hers? They have to go somewhere.”
This left the man unmoved.
“She’s got a storeroom in the basement. Or had,” he added. “They can go there.”
But the truth finally came out. Arthur had been right. After her death Juliette’s effects were in the hands of her creditors, and her apartment was closed and locked. It was only when the sheriff took a hand that the man weakened.
“There’s some pretty valuable stuff in these bags, and more coming,” he said. “I don’t suppose these creditors will object to that, will they? And you can come along if you like. Then you’ll see we don’t aim to take anything.”
That was the way we finally got into the apartment, with a scowling superintendent watching our every move. The rooms were hot and musty, and while he was raising a window the sheriff had a chance to speak to me.
“Take your time,” he said. “He’s just showing how important he is. He’ll get over it.”
But with the shades raised and the window opened the superintendent promptly forgot us, and I did not blame him. The place was in terrific disorder. Russell Shand gave one look at the desk drawers open and papers strewn over the floor, and into the bedroom beyond, where the mattress from the bed lay on the floor.
“Looks as though you’re a little late in being careful,” he said. “Or did these creditors of hers do this?”
The superintendent looked stunned.
“It’s those reporters,” he said at last. “I’ll swear I locked the place up and kept it locked. What’s more I gave orders—”
He gulped and looked appealingly at the sheriff, but that gentleman was unmoved.
“Well, a five-dollar bill will go a long ways these days,” he said, “unless you want to buy a meal with it. Looks like somebody in the building sold you out.”
I glanced at him, but he was imperturbable. I knew then that he was less astonished than I was, and when the superintendent had fussily departed to find the guilty individual, he admitted it.
“It’s like this,” he said. “All along I’ve thought she had something somebody wanted, and wanted bad. Either she took it with her or she left it here. That is, unless she had a box at some bank. We’ll have to find that out.”
I shall never forget the next few hours. The apartment was typically Juliette. A large living room was done in modern fashion, with much chromium and glass. A small room adjacent, and evidently meant to be a library, contained no books whatever. Instead, there was a built-in bar at one end, fully stocked and complete even to a brass rail. Her bedroom was different. It was typically feminine, having a canopied bed, the head and foot covered with quilted satin, and an enormous toilet table which was really a shelf of glass with the entire wall behind it a huge mirror bordered with lights. There was a rose-colored chaise longue, piled high with pillows, and the tub and other fittings of the bathroom were of the same color.
Over the tub was another mirror, painted with birds around the borders, and the sheriff eyed it with disapproval.
“Looks as though she kind of liked herself,” he said, and turned away.
He wandered about for some time before he let me put the place to rights.
“Now if I was one of these smart New York dicks,” he said, “I’d have the fingerprint outfit here in no time, and I’d end up just about where I began. Outside of that—Well, I’d say somebody whose prints aren’t recorded anywhere has been here, because he didn’t wear gloves; that he had plenty of time, that if there was anything here he wanted he got it, that he didn’t wear gloves because he had to wash his hands before he left, and that they were plenty dirty at that. And I don’t think he was any reporter. Too thorough for that. But that’s as far as I go.”
He brought a cake of soap from the bathroom washstand and took it to a window.
“Not so long since he was here, either,” he went on. “I’m no soap expert, but—”
He took an enormous penknife from his pocket and dug into the cake.
“If I was guessing, and I am guessing, I’d say under a week,” he commented. “Dry outside, but pretty soft just under the surface. Now if the storybooks are true we’ll find part of a railroad ticket somewhere about, and know that somebody came here from the island within the last few days. Only things don’t work out like that. Not for me anyhow.”
He moved rapidly about the place, with the light tread of so many heavy men. The superintendent had not come back, and at last he turned to me and grinned.
“All right,” he said. “You aren’t your mother’s daughter for nothing, so if you want to straighten up I’ll put that mattress back on the bed.”
I did the best I could, which wasn’t much, and some time later I found him at the desk in the living room. He had picked up the letters and papers from the floor and was carefully going over them.
“Funny thing,” he said. “You get a pretty good idea of any human creature from his desk, or hers. Far as I can see, it didn’t worry her a mite that she owed bills everywhere. She just went on, and she seems
to have moved pretty fast at that. One day out of this calendar of hers would put me in bed for a week.”
I saw then that he had what I called the Jennifer letter in his hand, and that he was carefully comparing its large square writing with various letters which lay before him.
“Can’t seem to get it out of my head,” he observed, mopping a red and dirty face. “Why did the Jordan woman leave everything else of Juliette’s when she went to Eliza Edwards’s, and then take this? What’s important about the darned thing? Unless it’s the postscript. And who the hell is Jennifer? That’s a name for you! Jennifer!”
“We might find it. She may have a private telephone directory somewhere.”
“What’s that?”
“A book or something, where she kept the numbers she used most.”
There was one, and that as it happened was the first real lead we got, although it led us to a dead end. The name was scrawled in, merely “Jen” and a Regent number; but an operator said that the telephone was temporarily disconnected, and with a shrug of his broad shoulders the sheriff hung up the receiver.
“Getting nowhere pretty fast,” he said resignedly. “Look here, we’d better eat. I think better on a full stomach.”
The heat was terrific when we went out onto the street. I called a taxicab and directed it to a hotel. Russell Shand, who at home drives like something fired out of a gun, swore all the way and braced himself for catastrophe. Over the meal he relaxed, although the grand manner of the head-waiter rather daunted him.
“Looked as though he didn’t think much of me,” he chuckled as he sat down. “Maybe I’m spoiled. What would he do if I flashed a badge on him?”
“He’d be more impressed if it was a dollar bill.”
The menu bothered him, and I finally did the ordering. It was while we waited for the food that he drew out of a pocket a brief newspaper clipping and, putting on his spectacles, read it out loud:
“The marriage of Miss Emily Forrester to Mr. Langdon Page has been indefinitely postponed.’ Ever hear of either of them?”
“Never.”
He examined it carefully, rear and front.
“Found it in the Jordan woman’s room,” he said. “Under the bed. May mean something, may not. No date, no place. Probably New York, but maybe not. Still, it’s likely to be a big city somewhere. If Nellie Morgan was writing that up home she’d say: ‘The Star is sorry, but it looks as though Lang Page and Emily Forrester are not getting married this year. Bad luck, folks.’”
Which, while partially true, is a libel on as neat a small-town newspaper as I have ever seen.
He turned it over, with a twinkle in his eye.
“Now if I was a real detective,” he said, “I’d learn a lot about it from the fact that a woman on the other side of it is advertising Pekingese pups for sale, with only a post-office box number. But being what I am—”
We went back to the apartment after lunch. Juliette’s trunks had arrived, and in view of the claim against them, I left them as they were. The sheriff, though, was painstakingly going through the address books and calling numbers. With the exception of a florist and her liquor dealer, it was soon apparent that Juliette’s familiars did not spend the summer months in New York; and before three o’clock the sheriff went to her bank, to return rather chagrined.
“Funny thing,” he said. “At home I could walk into the bank and Ed Howe would tell me anything he knew on a case like this. Those fellows downtown acted as if I was out to rob the place. Maybe I could have got it from the police at Centre Street, but we’ve pulled a pretty fast one today. And anyhow”—he grinned—“I’m just a hick country sheriff to them, mussing up two good murders, and I’d as soon not let them know I’m in town.”
One piece of information he had received. Juliette did not have a box at that particular bank. Nor, he imagined, a balance.
The clipping continued to interest him. He took it out again and examined it.
“Maybe it’s a clue, maybe it isn’t,” he said. “One thing’s sure. Either Juliette or Jordan thought enough of it to cut it out and keep it. And there’s this to say for it. The Page fellow’s first name begins with an ‘L,’ and I’ve got that Jennifer letter on my mind. Looks like they were society people, too. Who else bothers about putting that formal sort of notice into a newspaper when there’s a fuss and a wedding is called off?”
There was a copy of the Social Register about, and I got it. He was surprised and interested when I showed it to him, but no Emily Forrester or Langdon Page was listed.
The sheriff took it and glanced through it.
“Don’t it beat the devil?” he inquired. “Here we are in America, where everybody’s supposed to be free and equal. But a handful of people get into a book like that, and all at once they’re different!”
He made a final round of the apartment before we left. Aside from two servants’ rooms, the dining room, library and living room, there were three or four guest rooms, and the whole layout seemed to puzzle him.
“How did she do it?” he inquired. “Even if she didn’t pay her bills, she had to pay some of them. And this apartment cost her six thousand a year. I got that from the elevator man, for fifty cents! Now, with no reflection on her, was she doing that alone or was someone helping her?”
“You mean, was someone keeping her? I wouldn’t know that, naturally.”
He looked uncomfortable. He still has an idea that I know nothing of the facts of life.
“Well, something of the sort,” he said. “My own guess would be no. Women of her sort usually want marriage, with plenty of money. They play around, but the real idea is safety, with some man legally providing for them. I’ve been seeing a lot of them in the summer for forty years, and that’s the way it looks to me.”
“What you mean is that, if she was spending more than she had, where did it come from,” I said.
He ran his hand over his head in what was becoming a familiar gesture to me.
“Well, that’s what I’m asking myself,” he said slowly. “Maybe she had something on somebody, if you know what I mean.”
“It sounds like blackmail.”
“With a woman like Juliette Ransom you can’t leave that out, Marcia.”
He was silent for a time. He lit his pipe and moved about the room.
“There’s something else too,” he said. “Where did she come from, Marcia? Who were her people? You don’t know, and as far as this place is concerned she might have come out of an egg.”
I was dirty and tired before we finished that day. I managed to get in a shampoo and manicure; and with the brutal frankness of all beauty parlors, Andre came in and suggested that I needed a facial.
“You ’aven’t been sick?” he inquired. “Sickness, it is bad for the face.”
But I told him I would leave my face as twenty-nine years had made it, and he left me, looking disgruntled.
One thing more I did that day. I saw the florist who had received the weekly order for flowers for Juliette’s grave. After I had explained he went back and examined his books, only to return with a blank look on his face.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “The order is confidential.”
I didn’t tell the sheriff about my visit to the florist. Its implications were too frightening.
I slept badly on the train that night. Except for the discovery that someone had been there ahead of us, the trip seemed to me to have been entirely futile. As a result I found myself bitterly and resentfully going back over the past six years, years of struggle for Arthur and deprivation of a sort for me, while Juliette had lived her extravagant carefree days.
For it had been a struggle. Poverty is a relative matter. We were not poor, in the ordinary sense of the word. I had been able to keep the servants, and save them from going on relief. So far I had kept up my taxes and retained my property. But the demands on both Arthur and me were heavy, and lying in my hot berth that night I wondered.
Had Arthur known and resented
that riotous life of hers, lived largely at his expense? He must have. The people she played with were constantly in the newspapers. They staged the first treasure hunt in Manhattan. They took prizes, sometimes largely unclothed, at some of the less reputable costume balls. During prohibition days they patronized the best speakeasies. During the Harlem vogue they were there. They preferred Miami to Palm Beach, but were photographed in scanty bathing clothes anywhere from Nassau to Bermuda. During the racing season they went to the tracks. During the hunting season some of them followed hounds, usually on horses belonging to other people. They went to bed at dawn and rose at noon, they kept going on a diet largely of cocktails, highballs and champagne, and they succeeded pretty successfully in copying a half-world which probably never existed outside fiction and the movies.
I faced the problem squarely that night. Either Arthur had known all this, and in desperation ended it; or it was in that pleasure-seeking life of Juliette’s that the key lay to her death. I did not think that it lay on the island. The life there was too quiet for her particular crowd, and I remembered something she had said to Arthur when she was preparing to leave. “Well, thank God I’ll never have to go to Sunset again.”
But she had been killed on the island. Then why, and by whom?
I dozed off while puzzling over this, and wakened to dress and to find William, white of face and shaken, waiting on the platform when the train pulled in the next morning.
“I’m sorry to have bad news, miss,” he said. “There’s been a little trouble at the house.”
“What sort of trouble?” I asked apprehensively.
“It’s Maggie,” he said. “Either she fell down the stairs from the hospital rooms or somebody hit her on the head.”
CHAPTER XIX
IT WAS ALMOST TWENTY-FOUR hours before Maggie was fully conscious. Even then she had no explanation. I thought she had probably been walking in her sleep again, for the door to the hospital suite had been found open and the key still in it. However she got there, she remembered nothing, except that when she wakened she was in her bed, with an icecap on her head, a trained nurse in the room, and Doctor Jamieson sitting beside her.
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