Wall

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

  And that, as it turned out, was the fact. There had been a cursory inspection of the lower floors. Here and there drawers had been opened and not entirely closed. But the real search had been made in the rooms Arthur and Juliette had occupied after their marriage. They consisted of a double bedroom, a large sitting room and a bath, and when Arthur and Juliette took an apartment the rooms had been left as they were.

  Juliette had done them over, after her own flamboyant fashion, and that morning they bore a sort of family resemblance to her apartment the day the sheriff and I had seen it. I could only stare around me helplessly, with Maggie muttering and the young man—still nameless—practically wringing his hands.

  “I’m sure I don’t see how it happened,” he said. “The wires are all right, and the basement windows are barred. I’ve been down there. It’s—it’s most mysterious.”

  He was completely unnerved when I finally got rid of him and sent Maggie downstairs to make some coffee and open the windows. But left alone I had no solution of the mystery.

  The whole suite was filled with memories for me. Coming home from boarding school to hear Arthur and Juliette quarreling there. Arthur coming back there, after the break, and bringing such few personal possessions as a man salvages under such conditions; a few books, some papers, his pipes, his clothing. Juliette, looking into the place one day for some purpose or other, long after their separation, and laughing unpleasantly.

  “There’s the old wall safe,” she had said. “And I had nothing to put in it!”

  It was there now, open but empty.

  I examined the rooms as best I could. So far as I could tell, nothing had been taken. The safe—there was one in every bedroom—had been empty for years. A photograph of Juliette still hung on the wall, but Arthur’s books were gone long ago. The closets were empty, and the bathroom showed only the extra guest toothbrush in a cellophane holder, although someone had recently washed there. As for the rest, the dust sheets were off the furniture, the carpet had been lifted, the mattresses were off the beds and all the drawers stood open, with some left on the floor.

  I did not attempt to straighten the place. I went down to my own room and bathed and dressed again. Maggie had brought up coffee and toast by that time, as well as considerable indignation. But I left her as soon as I had eaten, her head tied up in a duster and her face still flushed with fury.

  Looking back, I think I had gone through the previous thirty-six hours in a sort of automatism. Now, however, my head was clear. I was thinking as coldly and clearly as a machine. All emotion seemed to have died in me.

  The next few hours I spent at the public library. The building was comparatively cool, but the search was a long and tiring one. I forgot lunch entirely. It seemed to me that for endless hours I had been going through newspaper files, filled with endless tragedies. But by four o’clock that afternoon I knew what I had gone there to learn.

  It was all there: the identity of Allen as Langdon Page—his full name was Allen Langdon Page—supported by many pictures, his antecedents, his college, his inherited wealth, and his ultimate catastrophe. But I still knew nothing whatever that would explain the murder of Juliette Ransom, or that of Helen Jordan, her companion and maid.

  The story was not an unusual one. I had lived the life of my day and generation, and no part of it was strange to me. But it was both sordid and tragic. Allen had been at a weekend party on Long Island, drinking heavily. On Sunday the party had moved to a country club, and the drinking had gone on. Then, at eight o’clock of a late spring night three years before, he had suddenly left in his car, heading toward New York.

  The result was horrifying. He had either gone to sleep at the wheel—he did not remember—or he had suddenly passed out. What was certain was that he had run through a traffic light, killed a woman and her grown daughter, and critically injured her husband. Not only that. He had not stopped his car! Two or three blocks farther along he had turned sharply into a side street, hit a lamppost, and was found unconscious lying on the cement roadway. He claimed to have no recollection of what had happened, in the hospital and later at the trial. But he had put up no defense.

  “If I did it I’ll take what’s coming to me,” he had said.

  His lawyers had fought for him. He had an excellent record. He was not normally a drinking man. He had inherited his father’s business and was a hard worker. They challenged the jury panel until the court’s patience ran out and the jurymen already selected were betting quarters on whether or not the next would be chosen. There was a vast array of counsel.

  His wealth was against him. The press pictured him as a typical playboy, throwing money right and left, and he never spoke for himself. He sat tight-lipped and silent throughout the trial. There was a photograph of him leaving the courtroom after the verdict. He looked as though all the vitality had been drained out of him. He had faced the camera steadily enough, but he must have felt, at twenty-eight, that life had ended for him.

  I had missed it all, had never even heard of it. That spring I had spent in England, and it was probably over when I came back. But it was a good thing that the story did not dawn on me suddenly. Even as I got it, bit by bit, I felt sick and my head throbbed wildly. Nothing that I had known of him suggested the reckless drunken man who had committed that crime, and received an eight-year sentence for manslaughter as a result. Nothing except what I now knew was the prison pallor under his tan, when I first saw him.

  Yet, sitting there in the library, with the noise of the streets coming in through the open windows, a number of things fell into line. He had served less than three years of his term. Then he was paroled. He had not seemed to be interested, however. He had stood by while the cameramen photographed him as he left the prison. After that he simply disappeared.

  I went back over the story again, but there was no mention of Juliette in it. The woman who had been killed was named Verna Dunne, and her daughter had died an hour or two later. According to the husband’s story, they had been on their way home from church on that Sunday night, and they never really saw the car that struck them. They were, I gathered, simple God-fearing people, and they had probably never heard of Langdon Page.

  “I don’t know what happened,” said the husband from his hospital bed. “We were all together, and Millie had her mother’s arm. The lights were with us. Then I heard Verna scream. That’s all I remember.”

  But there were some other facts that set me to wondering. The week-end party had included not only Marjorie Pendexter and Howard Brooks. Mrs. Walter Dennison had been there also. What did that mean? Or did it mean anything? It explained one thing, of course; that was Marjorie’s reluctance to identify Allen. She probably thought that he had killed Juliette. After all, when a woman drives a man to drink and then to prison—

  I found myself shivering in spite of the heat. After all, why not? He had been on the hill that morning. He knew horses; one of his activities had been polo. He could have ridden down to Eagle Rock, carrying the body. And he had loved her once, and might have buried her.

  I thought of that order for flowers at the cemetery, and held my head in my hands. Had he done it, after all? He had denied it; but he had said, too, that no innocent man would suffer for that crime. He might even have killed her and felt justified. Prison did strange things to men. But in my heart I did not believe it. I remembered his strength and gentleness, even his humor, and I did not believe it.

  Nevertheless, there would be a strong case against him the moment he was identified and his affair with Juliette known. I knew what the sheriff would say. What in different words he did say later on.

  “He was crazy about her, and I’ve known that kind of crazy love to turn to hate before this, Marcia. Now take Fred Martin. He had a way out. He could buy it. All she wanted from him was money. But this Pell or Page or whoever he is—he hadn’t any way out. It was over. Nobody could bring the dead woman back. It’s human nature to blame somebody else, when you can’t face the thing your
self.”

  “She’d have seen him somewhere when she was out riding, and she came home scared. She wasn’t scared of Fred. She told him what she wanted. But she might have been scared of Pell. More I think of it, the more I’ll bet she was scared of him.”

  But that bag—as he himself would have said—also left over too many odds and ends. If all this was true, then who had attacked and carried off Allen himself? Left him at a hospital with two hundred dollars in his pocket, and disappeared.

  For one wild moment I considered Samuel Dunne, the little plasterer, sitting in court and still bandaged. “I heard Verna scream. That’s all I remember.” Suppose, hearing that Allen was out on parole, he had followed him to the island, found him talking to Juliette and in his fury killed the wrong person? I dismissed him at once, however. There had been no vengeance in that meek testimony of his; only tragedy and quiet acceptance. Providence had sent him this to bear. It was God’s will.

  Nevertheless, I determined to see him. I took down his address, returned my papers, took a taxi and went home. It was late by that time, and Maggie, opening the door for me, was shocked at my appearance. Being a Scot, she is dour when things are going well, but the essence of emotional sympathy when there is trouble. So now she gave me one look and hustled me up the stairs.

  “You take a bath and get into bed,” she said, “and I’ll have a tray ready in a jiffy.”

  She started the bath water and left me. My bed was ready, and I began to undress. Then, what with heat and emotional exhaustion, I suddenly saw the floor rising to meet me and quietly fainted. When I came to I was still there, the bath water was overflowing the tub, and Maggie was in the doorway with the tray.

  CHAPTER XXX

  I WAS IN BED for two or three days. Our city doctor was away, and Maggie brought in a pleasant young man with a round vacuous face and a pair of intelligent eyes behind horn-rimmed spectacles. He knew about Arthur’s trouble, as who did not; and being a wise young man he let me talk.

  “Why not discuss it?” he said. “I have an idea that you have been bottled up too long. That’s why you blow off the lid.” I did talk. With certain reservations I told him everything, from the morning Doctor Jamieson and I sat waiting at the foot of the bridle path to Fred Martin’s arrest. Then rather sheepishly I told him something about the bells. He looked interested but not amused.

  “It would be idiotic,” he observed, “to think we know all about this universe of ours.” And he added as he got up: “I had an old grandmother once. She was as shrewd and keen as they make them; but if I had told her I could turn a dial and hear a man talking in an ordinary voice in Moscow, she would have sent for the preacher to pray over me.”

  He left me confused, but somewhat reassured.

  I improved rapidly. Maggie overfed and coddled me, and in the intervals put the house in some sort of order again. My mental state was better too. I was less emotional. Now that I saw the case in clearer perspective I was confident that Allen was innocent. Why would he kill her? Why, if he had, remain on the island? He could have escaped, but he had evidently not considered it.

  Arthur came in to see me at that time. He looked better, although he was still resentful of the trick Juliette had played on him. But the search of his rooms overhead puzzled him.

  “What were they after?” he asked. “There was nothing valuable around, was there?”

  “Not unless Juliette had put something there,” I said. “She could have, you know. She still came in now and then, and she had the run of the house.”

  “Put what there?”

  “Well, papers maybe.”

  He smiled.

  “Still the girl detective!” he said. “What do you mean by papers?”

  “Suppose she had divorced Fred, after all? She’d have something to show for it, wouldn’t she?”

  He looked unhappy, as he always did when he was asked about Juliette. But he did try to think, going painfully back into those almost-forgotten years of his life with her.

  “I’m not certain,” he said. “I seem to remember something of the sort. A flat tin box with a lock. I saw it only once or twice.”

  “Did she take it away with her?”

  “Probably. She took everything else!”

  “Then where is it, Arthur? She didn’t have it with her. It wasn’t in her apartment here in town; I’ve been all over it. It certainly isn’t here, although someone may have thought so.”

  “Who would want them?”

  “Fred Martin, for one.”

  “Why would Fred go around hunting for a thing like that? She was dead, Marcia. She wasn’t threatening him any more. He was safe, so far as he knew.”

  But the facts were there. He might smile wryly, as he did, over what he called “the papers” and my attempts at detection. He could not deny that someone unknown to us had been searching frantically for something, at Sunset, in Juliette’s apartment, and now at the house.

  “If there is anything at all,” he conceded, “it must be important. She’s gone, but it’s still important. I’m damned if I can think what it is.”

  It was an uneventful few days that I spent in that bare room of mine, with the rug in storage, the curtains down and the breeze, when there was a breeze, coming in hot from the canyons we call our streets. One thing happened, however, although the results were not what I had hoped.

  Mary Lou, back to see that Arthur was comfortable, came in and brought some roses; by way, I imagine, of apology for her past suspicions.

  “I’ve been such an idiot, Marcia,” she said, looking at me with tragic eyes. “I suppose I care too much. I’ve always adored him, and when that woman came back—He despised her, Marcia. I know that now.”

  “I wouldn’t say that to the police,” I warned her.

  But with her usual ability to surprise me she told me before she left that Jennifer Dennison was in town, at a hotel; and after she had gone I called her up. She seemed surprised and not too pleased when I gave her my name.

  “I thought that was all over,” she said. “Haven’t they arrested somebody?”

  “Yes. I’m not trying to involve you, Mrs. Dennison. I just want to clear up something, for myself.”

  “But I really don’t know anything,” she protested.

  Nor did she apparently, when I finally induced her to come. Maggie brought her up to my room, and she walked in, a small blonde woman in her late thirties, looking cool as only blondes can look in the heat.

  “I’m sorry you’re ill,” she said, shaking hands and eyeing me. “Of course I can’t think why you want me. But at least, here I am.”

  She sat down and took out a long holder—all Juliette’s woman friends seemed to use them—and carefully inserted a cigarette.

  “I suppose it’s still about Juliette Ransom?” she inquired.

  “It’s about Langdon Page, Mrs. Dennison, and the postscript to that letter of yours.” She looked uneasy, but she said nothing. “You knew him pretty well, didn’t you?”

  “How well does anybody know anybody else in this town? I saw him about. One does.”

  “He was fond of Juliette, wasn’t he?”

  “You can call it that. It was a crazy sort of infatuation. He wasn’t really a drinker, but they had a quarrel, I suppose. Anyhow that night—I suppose you know all about that too.”

  “I’ve read the papers. I came back to do that.”

  “Then you know as much as I do,” she said flatly.

  “Not entirely,” I retorted. “I’m rather interested to know why you warned her against him. You said, you remember, to be careful.”

  “Did I?”

  “You did. And you wouldn’t explain that to the police.”

  “Why should I?” she asked coolly. “I’d been through a lot. I didn’t want any more notoriety.”

  “Even if it sent someone to the chair?”

  She looked startled for a moment.

  “Don’t be theatrical,” she said rather sharply. “That’s absurd.
He might have been resentful. After all, she’d driven him to drink, and not treated him too well at that. But that’s all.”

  I did not believe her. It sounded as though she had rehearsed it. It was too smooth, too specious. As for the rest, she was willing enough to talk. I could not have looked very formidable, lying there in bed, and I had an idea that she was mildly curious, about me and about the house.

  It was the usual story of a spring week end in the country; the club a nucleus for the places around, golf or riding in the morning, lunch, and pretty steady drinking the rest of the day. Marjorie and Howard had been there, among a dozen others, in one house party. Langdon Page had not appeared until late on Saturday, having driven out. He had had a good bit to drink already, and he kept it up on Sunday. He was usually cheerful, but as the day wore on he grew silent and sullen. Someone at the club had asked him where Juliette was, and he had said he didn’t know and he didn’t care.

  “We liked him,” she said. “He wasn’t one of the regular crowd, if you know what I mean, but we’d seen a lot of him through Juliette. I remember Howard Brooks offered to drive him back to town that night. He was in no condition to do it himself. But he refused.”

  She got up to go, and I thought she was relieved.

  “There is just one more question,” I asked. “Who is Emily Forrester? Is she one of that crowd? Do you know her?”

  “Emily Forrester?” she said, and looked at me with real surprise. “I never heard of her. Is she mixed up in this too?”

  She left soon after that, putting her holder back in her bag and powdering her nose before my mirror. She is not important in this record. She was, I imagined, not very important anywhere. One of those negligible women who hang to the fringes of this group or that, buying a popularity of sorts; shrewd, a little hard, but incapable of rousing any stronger emotion than tolerance.

  I have never seen her since.

  But as I lay back on my pillows I wondered about some things she had told me. Howard Brooks was not only a member of the house party. He was a friend of Allen’s. It was odd how Howard’s name came up, again and again, Marjorie worried and suspicious, that cruise of the Sea Witch at a crucial time, and his visit to me. What had he wanted to discover that day? Did he know that Fred was innocent? Looking back, I felt quite certain that he did.