It came to me suddenly, as a forgotten word will spring into the mind. I was a child again, lying in bed in the quarantine room. There was scarlet fever about, and I had a sore throat. As a result I had been banished upstairs, dragging my feet and carrying a doll.
“How long is it to be this time, mother?”
“Not long, if you’re a good girl.”
Even now the injustice of that rankles; as if being a good girl had anything to do with it! Mother had a sheet wrung out of carbolic solution hung over the doorway at the top of the stairs, and Arthur was severely banished. It turned out, however, to be merely a cold, and in due time I was restored to the family again. But in the interval something had occurred.
Arthur brought me his mice to amuse me. He crawled up the drain pipe one night, holding a string in his teeth. Once inside he carefully hauled up something I could not see, and at last it emerged triumphantly. It was the mouse cage.
“Thought you’d like to watch them,” he said, with feigned indifference. “They smell a bit, but they’re lively.”
It was a princely gesture from a big brother to a small sister. For hours that night I watched them. Then I decided to open the door and let them out. That was fatal. I got all back but one, and when Maggie came in the next morning she was furious. I could still see her on the floor, looking under the beds for the wandering one, and threatening to tell Mother.
It was late in the morning when I heard a faint scuffling, and saw the mouse appear from a large hole in the corner of the wall, above the old baseboard. Maggie caught it, and she never did tell Mother.
I knew now. That corner was where Maggie had knelt the night she was attacked. She may even in her sleep have gone back to that incident. But what I was remembering was not that. The hole was gone, the wall intact! I had not thought of it for years.
At daylight I put on a dressing gown and went upstairs again. The fog had come in in earnest, and the gray-white light was poor. I was nervous when I turned on the lights, but no bell rang, and everything was quiet. I stood staring at the corner, unable to believe my eyes. There was no hole. No mouse could have hidden behind the baseboard, and the wall was neatly papered with the old familiar wallpaper, which had been there for more than twenty years.
It seemed incredible. I had not imagined that incident. I could still see Maggie, with the little creature by the tail and her whole soul revolting.
“You’re a bad girl, Marcia. Just for this I’ll drown the creature. Dirty nuisances they are, anyhow.”
She had not drowned it, of course.
I went back to bed, but not to sleep; and it was then that I remembered Mrs. Curtis. At half past seven I called her up, and she seemed mildly surprised.
“Listen,” I said. “When was it that Mr. Curtis found a leak in the roof over the hospital suite?”
“Three years ago. It was in the spring. That whole corner by one of the beds was soaked.”
“What did you do about it?”
“Why, I told you at the time, Miss Marcia,” she said reproachfully. “You paid the bill. We had to have the plaster fixed. And I found a roll of the old wallpaper and had it put on.”
“Did they rip off the baseboard?”
“Rip off what?”
When she understood she was vague. She didn’t know. She thought the baseboard had been left as it was. Only the plaster was damaged. I hung up, and sat thinking. Three years ago someone had broken into the house through a cellar window. Mrs. Curtis had discovered it and sent for her husband, and in going over the house they had found the leak and later on the plaster had been repaired.
Where did that take me? Who had entered the house that spring? Had come in a car, broken through the cellar window, and yet taken nothing away?
Had it been Juliette? She knew the house. She knew the hospital suite. She had been ill there at one time, years ago. She might even then have known of that hole behind the baseboard and used it for her own purposes. I had seen her once coming down the stairs, stepping cautiously so no one would hear her.
“Juliette! What on earth were you doing up there?”
She had looked uneasy.
“I was looking for something,” she said querulously. “Good gracious, Marcia, do I have to report everything I do?”
It was suddenly clear to me. Juliette, remembering that old hiding hole of hers and coming back, three years ago. Almost certainly Jordan with her, perhaps stopping in the village to buy provisions, where Eliza Edwards had seen her. The house cold and damp, the two women shivering, but at last something found, or something hidden. Hidden, of course, or why had she come back this summer?
How long had they stayed during that earlier visit? Not long, I thought. Perhaps only the night, with a breakfast of sorts; some coffee bought when Eliza saw Jordan, some bread and butter. Juliette’s car could not be concealed for any length of time. So far possibly the rain had favored them, but the estates all about were probably being put in order, with gardeners at work. They had got away, as secretly as they had come.
I could see more, too. I could see that return of Juliette’s this year, and the discovery that the wall had been repaired. It must have been a shock. They had brought a hatchet to pry out the baseboard and secure whatever was there. But they had to face a disturbing fact: that whatever was there might already have been found. Perhaps they asked some judicious questions. Indeed later I found they had done so. The result must have been comforting. If anything had been discovered the household knew nothing about it.
But they were not certain. The workmen might have found it and Mrs. Curtis have put it, with the other odds and ends, in the next room. She might have thought it unimportant; something left over from our childhood, like the mouse cage. What was it? Arthur had said that Juliette had owned a tin box and kept it locked. Perhaps—just perhaps—that was it.
Box or not, some things were easy to explain. Jordan had made a preliminary survey the day they came, finding the key where I had left it. I had seen her move the curtain. Then she had carried down the bad news to Juliette, lying waiting in her bed.
“There’s no hole there, Julia. They’ve plastered it up.”
“Good God! Do you suppose they found it?”
And Jordan looking at her with shrewd appraising eyes.
“You’d have heard about it if they had. You can bet on that.”
They must have watched and waited afterwards, waiting for a chance to get back. When it came they were ready. They hadn’t much time. They tore the place to pieces, one of them probably working, the other on guard. They found nothing, and in the end that search was their undoing. After it the room was padlocked, and they could not get in again.
I was in a fever of impatience that morning. My first impulse was to call Mike with a pickax and have him tear the wall open at once. Sober second thought made me change that. Whatever was there, it might be a part of the mystery. It might even explain our crimes. In the end I decided to get the sheriff and tell him what I knew.
I did not get him. Not for hours. He had gone home to get some sleep after that all day and night session and the telephone receiver had been left off the hook.
I know something now of that session. The other men coming and going, but Allen still in that chair, and Billiard shouting at him.
“She saw you on that path and recognized you. You had broken your parole, and she could send you back to the pen. Maybe you hated her anyhow. So you killed her.”
“I did not kill her. I never killed any of those people.”
“She told the Jordan woman about you, and the Jordan woman went to the police for protection. She was scared too. She carried away the letter that referred to you. Why did she do that, unless she was afraid of you?”
“Why should she be afraid of me? I never even saw her.”
“I’m doing the questioning, not you, Page. And don’t lie. We’ve got you, and you know it. You killed her and took that launch you’d rented and towed her out to sea.”
“And then put a rope around her neck and towed herself! Why did you shoot Doctor Jamieson?”
“I didn’t shoot him. I’ve never had a gun since I came to the island.”
“What did he know, that he had to be put out of the way? What happened, the night you saw him, to make you decide to kill him?”
“We had a talk. I’m not going to discuss it. It was entirely friendly. He got out of his car and drove me to where I’d left my boat. He watched me while I rowed out to the cruiser. That’s the last I saw of him.”
“So he knew you were on a boat! He could turn you in whenever he wanted, so that ended him.”
Now and then the sheriff put in a question. Compared with Bullard’s fighting face, his was quiet.
“Tell me something, Page,” he said. “What brought you here, anyhow, in that trailer thing of yours? This was the last place you’d naturally come, isn’t it? You’d be likely to see someone you knew at any time?”
“That was the chance I—” He checked himself. “I had certain reasons. I don’t like to hold out on you, sheriff. You’ve been damned decent to me. Let’s say it was a personal matter.”
“Better tell us, son.”
He shook his head.
“Sorry,” he said laconically.
He was frank enough about some things, his release from prison and his desire to escape publicity. “I needed time to readjust,” he said. He explained also the stay in Boston and the purchase of the trailer there; and he even smiled faintly about his pictures.
“I’d always liked to dabble with paint,” he said, and let it go at that. Those were the lighter moments. They hammered at him, their faces grim and sweating. The New York men protested when at eight o’clock in the evening the sheriff sent out for food for him, and a package of cigarettes. At midnight Bullard retreated, exhausted, and the other men took over. But Russell Shand remained, watchful and alert.
“Why did you advise Marcia Lloyd to leave the island, Page?” he asked.
“It was no place for a woman, alone in that big house. I understood someone had broken into it.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s all.”
“Who took you to the hospital, and left you there?”
He hesitated at that, looked undecided.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I must have fallen and been knocked out. As for who picked me up—” He shrugged. “How could I know? I was unconscious. I don’t remember anything for the next few days.”
“Part of that’s true, son; and part of it is a pretty poor lie. It was broad daylight, and you hit the back of your head. You know who did it. What was it? A fight?”
There was no answer to that. Shand went on:
“I’ll grant that somebody picked you up. Even that’s queer, though. There was a hospital right there in town, but what did he do? He took you a hundred miles, left you and then ran away? Think it over, Page. We don’t like to convict innocent men in this state.”
And then for a minute Page broke.
“Good God,” he said. “Don’t you suppose that I have thought it over?”
It went on and on. Asked why he had hidden since his recovery he was stubbornly silent. The same thing was true about breaking his parole. The room was bright with light and thick with smoke. He grew dizzy. Once or twice he dozed in his hard chair and they shook him awake. The New York men would have gone further, but Russell Shand was still there, and it was his case. If Shand waived extradition, they could take him back to the penitentiary, but that was probably all they could do. They sat or stood around, disapproval on their faces; and at four that morning he was put in a cell and they went back to their hotel to sleep.
“They’d have had him confessing everything from mayhem to arson if they’d had their way,” the sheriff said later. “We were just a lot of softhearted hicks who’d never heard of a rubber hose!”
He was still asleep that day when at last I reached the sheriff by telephone and asked him to come over. He was still asleep when I told the sheriff that story, and when Mike put his garden pick through the wall. And he was still asleep when, after five minutes or so of noise and plaster dust, Russell Shand put his hand down inside the baseboard and withdrew a locked tin box. He stood with it in his hands, lightly blowing the dirt from it.
“Smart girl, Marcia,” he said, and grinned at me.
He did not open it there. To my wild disappointment he carried it away with him.
“Want the fingerprints, if any,” he explained, “and a good locksmith to open it. You’ll hear as soon as I can get here, after that. It’s property, I suppose.”
He warned us all to secrecy before he departed. Then I was left to face the endless day. The town was in a turmoil over Allen’s surrender. People came and went. There was, it was said, a move to quash the indictment against Fred Martin at once, and Dorothy was out on the porch of her cottage, holding her baby and starry-eyed with relief.
It was no surprise when Mrs. Pendexter came in again that afternoon, her old eyes snapping.
“I had to get out of my house,” she said. “Give me some tea, Marcia. Howard Brooks is having a fit, and Marjorie is locked in her room and won’t speak to anybody. Didn’t even know they knew the fellow. What did the idiot mean by giving himself up?”
“I don’t know,” I said drearily. “I suppose he knew they’d find him eventually.”
She gave me a long hard look.
“See here,” she said. “Ever think of Tony Rutherford in this case? He was wild about Juliette. I don’t suppose that hurts you now, but he was straight off his head at one time.”
I leaned back and laughed hysterically.
“Tony and Bob and Howard,” I said. “Not to mention Arthur and Fred! Maybe they all got together and formed a syndicate to get rid of her. Maybe—”
“Stop it,” she said sharply. “This is no time to get hysterical, Marcia. You’ve done pretty well so far, for a girl your age. I suppose Howard Brooks was crazy about her too, eh? Well, that doesn’t surprise me any. He’s a fool about a lot of things. But according to him this Page is innocent. He’d sooner believe I did it! I’m not so sure he doesn’t at that. Knew I detested her.”
She was less indignant after she had had her tea. She told William his hair needed redyeing, which sent him out in misery, and talked to give me time to control myself. Agnes Dean was worse. She had a couple of nurses, and the doctor from Clinton was spending most of his time there. “And a nice bill that will be!” People were leaving as fast as they could get ready, Conrad and all the shops in town were losing money because of the season, shortened by the murders. And she herself would like to buy Page’s trailer and start off in it.
“I’m getting on,” she said, “and I’ve had a taste of excitement this summer. It’s going to be hard to settle down.”
It was just before she left that she came to what I think was the real object of her call. She jabbed furiously with one of her hatpins at the creation on top of her head.
“I remember that Page case,” she said. “Papers were full of it. Seems to me I heard he was engaged to somebody at the time. Who was it?”
“I think her name was Emily Forrester.”
“Never heard of her,” she said, with a final jab. “But if I were you I’d have it looked into. Whoever she is, she wouldn’t be too fond of Juliette, I imagine.”
The remainder of the afternoon I sat under the sun umbrella in the garden. The fog had lifted, and save for the overflow from the pond and the rustle of fallen leaves, it was very quiet. The fish in the pool came up hopefully when they saw me, and then seeing my empty hands went about their own affairs.
I could not read, I could not even think. From where I sat I could see Pine Hill, already touched with yellow and red, and the Dean house above the road, almost hidden in its trees, where Agnes Dean was fighting for a life which meant little or nothing to her. A
bove, along the creek valley was the empty grave where my poor Arthur had buried the woman who had been his wife, and covered her face with leaves; and farther up in the hills was Loon Lake, where she had drifted, undiscovered, until the flood waters had carried her on.
None of our murders, not even that of Doctor Jamieson, had come so close as that one. She had been one of us. It was from that room upstairs, with the rose sheets on the bed and all her extravagant possessions about her, that she had gone out to her death. And somehow I felt guilty.
She had been in fear of her life. I knew that now. All that feverish talk with Arthur, her demand for a lump sum of money so that she could leave the country, had had terror behind it. If we could have done what she wanted we might have saved her, and perhaps the others. Should we have done it? We might have. The Deans might have bought the house. They had liked it. And Mother’s pearls was still valuable, even in these days of cultured ones. If she had only been frank! But she never had been frank.
CHAPTER XXXVI
I WAS STILL THINKING about her when Russell Shand came back that day. He came straight to me in the garden, looking sober, and pulled a paper out of his pocket. Before he opened it however he sat down and regarded me gravely.
“Just how fond of this Page are you, Marcia?” he said. “I’ve got an idea you’ve kind of fallen for him. That so?”
“I like him very much. I—I’m fond of him,” I said.
I probably colored, for he glanced away. He filled his pipe before he spoke again.
“There was a string of pearls in that box,” he said unexpectedly. “Among other things. I’ve had the jeweler in town look at them. He says they’re worth a lot of money. Did she have anything of that sort?”
I was surprised. Whatever I had expected, it was not the anticlimax of hidden jewels.
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