He took out his handkerchief and wiped his face.
“Too much good food and drink in this place,” he observed, more cheerfully. “No place for a man who has to watch his blood pressure.” Then, as though I might take that amiss: “Fine people, though. They’ve been splendid to Agnes. Everybody’s called. I tell her she’ll have to keep books on her visits.”
I thought he looked tired, as though his wife’s condition had worried him. Perhaps, as Mrs. Pendexter said, he was a self-made man and proud of the job; but he was a simple and natural person. Kindly too. He started to move on, then hesitated.
“I understand those fools of policemen have shown some sense at last,” he said, with some embarrassment. “It’s a pity your brother has been bothered. I’m sorry.”
“They have to do their duty, I suppose.”
Long weeks later I was to remember how he looked that day, his big muscular legs bulging in their golf stockings, his coat over his arm, and his eyes filled with a sort of shy friendliness. I watched him as he went on up the path, his head again bent, and I felt he had already forgotten me.
I sat on a rock beside the path, and looked down to where, far below, I could see the roof of Sunset among the trees. It had been a happy house for many years, until Juliette came into it. Now she was dead, and for days she had lain in that shallow grave somewhere above me on the hill. Why? What had actually happened, that day when Lucy Hutchinson had talked to her, and looking back at a turn of the path had seen her still there, as though she was waiting for somebody.
Had she been followed to the island and killed? And was Jordan’s death merely secondary to that first crime? Certainly the arrival of the two women had set loose a number of forces, still mysterious and certainly deadly.
It was late in July now, but it seemed a long time since the day I had first come to Sunset, and looking out from the porch had had my first view of the bay; the gulls soaring to drop and break their clams on the rocks below; and Maggie gazing down at the three crows, and saying that they meant bad luck. A long time since the postman’s double whistle had meant the small excitement of the day, and a boy on a bicycle with a telegram, a large one. A long time and another life since Arthur had combed the pool at low tide, and I had followed him like a small and reverential satellite.
It was late when I got home. The local caterer’s wagon was driving into the Hutchinson place loaded with the gilt chairs which with us mean a party. It was probably Lucy’s method of holding her chin up, but I resented it that day; and when I found Mary Lou on the veranda and mentioned it, she was fiercely indignant.
“It’s outrageous,” she said. “After all, Bob was crazy about Juliette. Everybody knows it.”
“That was years ago. I don’t suppose he has seen her since.”
“He saw her six months ago.”
I could only stare at her. There were times when she seemed incredible to me. All the problems, the careful balancing of this against that, motivations, human relationships, and she had not thought that fact worth the mentioning.
“You saw them? Together?”
“Certainly they were together. They were lunching at that French place on Sixty-third Street.”
I could have shaken her, but Mary Lou was Mary Lou, and Arthur loved her.
“Why haven’t you said so before?”
“I’m no scandalmonger,” she said virtuously. “I certainly don’t go about telling tales on Arthur’s first wife. Besides,” she added more humanly, “I like Lucy. I like Bob too, for that matter, if he is a fool about women.”
Queer, that mixture of childishness and astuteness which was—and is—Mary Lou. I had never thought that Bob Hutchinson was a fool about women. He was big, active and not too intelligent. For all their bickering he had always seemed to be in love with Lucy. Yet as time went on we were to learn that Mary Lou, who knew him hardly at all, knew instinctively what we had never guessed.
“Did they see you?” I asked.
“No. They left soon after I went in.”
“Did they seem friendly?”
She thought for a moment.
“He looked pretty serious. She was smiling. She was wearing a lot of orchids. Why, Marcia? Surely you don’t think Bob did that awful thing?”
“I think he is as likely a suspect as your own husband,” I retorted indignantly, and left her.
But I thought that over after I had gone up to dress for dinner. Juliette seldom left things as she found them. She could go into any peaceful community and set it by the ears. She was not deliberately malicious. She never gossiped, for the reason, I dare say, that the affairs of other people were of no importance to her. But two days anywhere, and the men were gathered around her, while the women formed a sort of tacit mutual defense society against her, somewhere else.
Now, though dead, she was still leaving discord and suspicion behind her.
But Bob Hutchinson! It seemed incredible. He had a quick temper. I had seen him break a golf club and throw it away, in a fit of anger. He had certainly been infatuated with Juliette at one time. But he had seen her recently. He had even taken her to lunch.
Bob was still in my mind when we went in to dinner that night, and unfortunately I tried to speak of him to Arthur.
“That man you chased from the roof that night, Arthur,” I said. “You must have some idea what he was like. At least you could tell whether he was large or small, couldn’t you?”
He put down his fork and spoon and shoved his chair back.
“I wish to God,” he said violently, “that I could eat one meal in peace. No, I haven’t any idea what he looked like. I’ve said that before. I’ve said it over and over. If I knew who it was I’d go out and get him. I suppose that hasn’t occurred to anybody!”
He slammed out of the room. Mary Lou, who had stayed to dinner, looked frightened, and William disappeared abruptly into the pantry.
“I told you,” said Mary Lou. “He’s not like himself at all. It scares me, Marcia.”
Small as this is, I have related it here not only because it shows our general nervous condition. It shows what Russell Shand was later to state in other words, that we were dealing with people rather than clues; with people and their interrelations, their reactions and their emotions. Indeed up to that time we had virtually no clues, or none that seemed to mean anything. I had found a button in the garden, Jordan for some reason or other had carried away the Jennifer letter but left all the rest of Juliette’s mail, Mary Lou’s car had left tire marks on the shoulder of the road, Lucy Hutchinson had dropped a rouge-tipped cigarette and left the print of a heel on the hill, somebody unknown had buried her golf club, and somebody equally unknown had broken the lock of our toolshed.
But also somebody, still unidentified, had killed two women and had tried to dispose of their bodies. And what about Maggie, and the attack on her?
The one new element, as I saw it that night, was Bob Hutchinson’s possible recent relationship with Juliette.
Mary Lou went upstairs directly after dinner. She went slowly, as though hoping that Arthur would call her back. He did not. He sat in the library with his untouched coffee beside him, and when I found him there later he was looking at the framed photographs of his wife and Junior on the table.
“At least,” he said harshly, “with that dammed alimony out of the way, they’ll have enough to live on.”
I shivered.
“I wish you wouldn’t say such things, Arthur.”
“Why not? This thing’s closing in on me. Even Shand knows it. They’ll arrest me sooner or later. If they don’t, the newspapers will try the case and force them to. Either way I’m through.”
I felt entirely desperate that night. By ten o’clock Mary Lou had not come downstairs again, and Arthur was simply holding a book, not reading it. I threw on a coat and went outside for some air, and it was then that I decided to see Bob Hutchinson and talk to him; that night if I could.
But the party was still going on, and so
I walked up and down the driveway until it was over. It was a dark night and cool, and I had reached the gates again when I was suddenly aware of a man close at hand. He was hardly more than a shadow, standing beside a tree and looking toward our lighted windows. I must have startled him, for he hesitated a second and then plunged headlong down the bank toward the pond.
Had we not had so many reporters I might have been alarmed. As it was I was merely astonished. I stood still and listened as he reached the pond, circled it and climbed the bank on the other side. The sounds were distinct, and it was a long time—weeks, in fact—before I realized that only someone familiar with the place could have made that escape in the dark.
It was not quite eleven o’clock when the cars began to leave the Hutchinson driveway, by which I gathered that it had been a dinner for the older group, without bridge. This was borne out when I saw Mrs. Pendexter’s old Rolls emerge, followed by the Deans’ vast limousine, and the coupe from the rectory.
There were other cars too. Evidently Lucy, under a cloud of sorts since the inquest, had been solidifying her position. There must have been most of the older substantial members of the summer colony there that night. In a way it was a triumph for her. They had come, rallying around her, her mother’s daughter and Bob’s wife, and therefore one of them.
But I felt bitter as I saw them go. They had not rallied about Arthur. They had never entirely forgiven him for marrying Juliette. Now, if they secretly applauded him for getting rid of her, by divorce and perhaps by something much worse, they were openly resentful of the scandal. The tradition of their privacy still obtained.
“Give you a list for my dinner?” they said to the press. “Certainly not. How do you know I am giving a dinner?”
And I was Arthur’s sister. I realized that with Juliette’s murder something of the taboo had been extended even to me. We had both broken the law and made the front page of the newspapers.
As a result I was in a fighting mood as the last car turned into the road. I had no plan, unless it was to confront both Bob and Lucy, complacent after their party, and ask them some questions. Why had Bob met Juliette in New York? What actually happened at that spot near the jumps where Lucy sat and waited, smoking her cigarette and with her golf club beside her? And was it Bob who had tried to get into the hospital rooms the night Arthur saw somebody there? Bob, who knew that route by trellis and drain pipe as well as I did.
The light under the porte-cochere blinked out as I approached the house; but the lower floor was still brilliant, and I stopped outside one of the drawing room windows and looked in.
It was a large room. Now it was like a stage setting with two characters behind the footlights. Bob and Lucy were both here, Lucy in black with scarlet slippers and a scarlet belt; smoking a cigarette by the fireplace; Bob in tails standing by a table. The French door was open and I was about to go in when I was stopped by Bob himself.
He had picked up a highball glass, and holding it, stared over it at Lucy.
“Well, thank God that farce is over,” he said.
Lucy stiffened.
“So what?” she said coldly.
“You’ve proved your innocence up to the hilt, haven’t you? Poor Lucy, such a rotten position to be in. But carrying on. That was the idea, wasn’t it? Always carrying on.”
She threw away her cigarette.
“I think you’ve had too much to drink,” she said bluntly.
He surveyed her, from head to toe.
“The brave girl!” he said. “We must go to her dinner. After all, we knew her people. We must rally round the flag. So they rallied, and to hell with them!”
He put down his glass suddenly and flung out onto the terrace. It was so unexpected that he almost touched me. But he did not see me. He went down to the edge of the beach and dropped onto a bench there. I followed him, and when he saw me he looked startled and uneasy.
“Oh, it’s you, Marcia. Pity you didn’t come three minutes sooner. You’d have heard a little exchange of pleasantries,” he said.
“I heard it, I didn’t know what it meant.”
“It sounded fairly obvious, didn’t it? She thinks I killed Juliette Ransom, and I’m not so damned sure she didn’t. There you are. And if you think,” he added savagely, “that we are the only people who feel that way, I’m here to tell you that every woman on the island whose husband ever said a decent word to Juliette is wondering the same thing.”
“But perhaps with less reason, Bob,” I said.
He glanced at me and then looked away. Inside the house the butler and second man were putting out the lights. There was no sign of Lucy, and he drew a long breath. He got out his cigarette case, offered me one and took one himself before he spoke again.
“All right,” he said. “Let’s have this out. What are you talking about, Marcia? You’ve got something on your mind.”
I told him, rather cautiously at first. He had been seen with Juliette, lunching with her, six months before. That didn’t amount to much. Anyone could do that. But he had been crazy about her years ago, and I had a right to know if he had been seeing her in the interval. We knew nothing about her life, or her friends. If he was one of them—
“See here,” he said roughly. “Cut out the preliminaries. Do you think I killed her?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea,” I said honestly. “I only know Arthur didn’t.”
He laughed shortly.
“Get this,” he said. “I know Arthur’s in a jam and I’m damned sorry. But until that day six months ago I hadn’t seen Juliette Ransom since her divorce. That’s hard to prove, but it’s a fact.”
“You saw her then, anyhow.”
“I did. I met her on the street and asked her to lunch. Why not? Knowing Lucy, I didn’t tell her about it. That’s all there is to it.”
And that was literally all there was to it, apparently. He knew none of Juliette’s friends, he had never seen Helen Jordan, and—I was to believe it or not—he had never been in Juliette’s apartment.
When at last he got up he flung his cigarette away savagely.
“I wish to God I’d never laid eyes on her,” he said.
He took me back to the house, leading the way through the short cut in the hedge. He was silent and not too friendly, but once at the door he spoke again.
“Are you going to tell Lucy?”
“Not unless I have to, Bob.”
“Things are going pretty haywire with us just now. No need of making them worse. How about the police?”
“I haven’t decided yet. If what you say is true—”
“Listen,” he said gravely. “I didn’t kill her. I don’t know who did. That’s the truth. You’ll have to believe me.”
Then he was gone, and I was in the house again, with only a night light burning in the lower hall, and Arthur sound asleep in his chair.
CHAPTER XXI
I WENT DOWNSTAIRS THE next morning to find the sheriff on the front veranda, looking out over the bay. He smiled when he saw me.
“Always did say this was the best view anywhere around, Marcia,” he said. “I came out here so I could smoke my pipe.” His eyes twinkled. “Never forget the time the silver was stolen here—that’s why the safe was put in—and I lit it in the library. Your mother just about took my head off.”
He became serious after that. He didn’t like the way things looked. Of course he was only a country law enforcement officer, and he supposed a man with real brains would have had somebody behind the bars before now. Himself, he wasn’t so sure. No use hurrying things anyhow.
I listened, rather puzzled.
“Are you trying to say that you think Arthur is innocent?” I asked hopefully.
But he shook his head.
“Don’t go too fast,” he said. “I’m saying that this thing’s a lot deeper than it seems on the surface; that’s all. We’ve got two crimes, both different. One’s a crime of passion. Maybe nobody went up that hill to kill Juliette Ransom. Maybe nobody me
ant to kill her at all. I’ve been mad enough myself to cut a fellow’s throat if I’d had a razor in my hand at the minute. But the Jordan case is different. That looks cold and premeditated. Somebody arranged to meet her and put her out of the way. She knew too much. I’d give a good bit to know what she did know, at that.”
After that he seemed to be thinking out loud, rather than talking to me. Granting Arthur hadn’t done it, who on the island would have hated Juliette enough to have struck her that murderous blow with the club? A discarded lover? A jealous woman? He glanced at me when he said that.
“I’m not thinking of Arthur’s wife,” he said dryly. “Not that she couldn’t have done it. You take these small home-loving women and they will fight like tigers when they’re roused. But she is out of the Jordan business. I’ve checked that. She was here in the house the night the Jordan woman disappeared. You and she played Russian bank. Remember that?”
I nodded. It was my first realization of the pitiless publicity in which we had become involved. Our every act was known, and even my own servants, faithful for years, had evidently told all they knew.
The sheriff tapped his pipe on the railing and watched the ashes fall into the water.
“Not that I think a woman did it,” he went on. “Both look like jobs for a man, and a pretty strong one at that. But about Arthur now—it’s six years or more since Juliette Ransom left him. Seems to me that’s a long time for anyone to hold a grudge, especially a murderous one.”
“Why think it was someone who belongs here? She could have been followed, couldn’t she?”
“Maybe, maybe not. Whoever did it knew the island pretty well. That’s as far as I go. Knew where Juliette was going to ride, and when. Knew Loon Lake. Knew that toolshed of yours. Knew this house too, if he got in and hurt Maggie. And whoever killed the Jordan woman knew more than that. He knew where to lay his hands on a boat, and how to run it when he got it. What outsider would know all that? No. I come right back to the summer people every time.”
It was true, and I knew it. Our colony is like similar ones everywhere. Its members come from as far west as Chicago and St. Louis, and as far south as Baltimore and Washington. It meets and then separates for the rest of the year, unless to meet casually at Palm Beach or the Riviera. But the island is a part of its life. It has a proprietary interest in it, and it knows it as well as the natives.
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