I felt very strange. Not Tony! Not gay irresponsible Tony, with the flower in his lapel and his carefully tied black tie! My lips felt stiff.
“Are you trying to say—”
“I’m trying to say I knew Arthur didn’t kill Juliette Ransom. I saw him get into that car when he left the island. I even got the number of the car. You see, I didn’t know it was Arthur. To me it was just somebody who’d dropped on me out of a window, and damn’ near got me at that.”
It had been Tony on the roof!
He sat down then, and told me the story. It went back to that last night of Juliette’s life, when I had left them together and gone outside. Juliette had not lost a minute. She had hidden a box in the attic, she told him, and now she couldn’t get at it. The wall had been plastered.
“She had told me where it was, and asked me to get it; and like a fool I said I’d try. You see”—he looked at me unhappily—“I’d written her some letters years ago, and she’d kept them. She offered to give them back if I got the box, and I—well, I fell for it.”
Apparently he had refused at first. He knew the old route by the trellis and up to the window, but he was no housebreaker. He didn’t like the idea. But she was desperate, he said. She began to implore him. She was frightened about something. Her idea was to get the box, which had something in it she wanted, and then to get out of the country. And while he did not trust her, he saw she was in deadly earnest.
When he went out to call me that night he took a turn toward the garden first and looked up. He could still get up there, he saw; and the rest seemed easy. How could he know that Arthur was coming back that night? Was probably even then somewhere about the place? He went home and changed his clothes. Then he got a tire tool from his car and came back. Juliette had said she’d left a hatchet in the room. But he had an alarm. There was a light in the quarantine room, and he was uncertain what to do.
He wandered about for an hour or two. Then, maybe at three o’clock and feeling like all kinds of a lunatic, he climbed the trellis. The next minute somebody looked out and then began to get out of the window overhead.
“I was scared,” he said. “Scared out of my wits. I ran and dodged, but the fellow kept after me. I was all in when he lost me.”
He had hidden in the shrubbery at the foot of the Dean place, he said. He heard Arthur still moving around, he did not know who he was. It seems to have occurred to Tony then that the whole situation was on the off side, as he put it; that whoever it was had had no more business in the house than he had. So far as he knew, the only man in the house was old William, and William could never have run like that.
In the end, as it turned out, he had reversed the previous state of affairs.
“He’d been after me,” he said. “Then when he gave up I followed him along the road. I had worn tennis sneakers, so he never heard me. Anyhow he never looked back. When that car came along and he hailed it I thought maybe the driver was an accomplice. So I took his number. I still have it.”
I sat very still. How simple it sounded! All that long agony, and Tony with the flower in his lapel as he told me; leaving the island the next day, going back to his work and his clubs, his dinners and dances, the whole frivolous structure of his life.
“You have nearly ruined us, Tony,” I said.
“I’d never have let Arthur be convicted.”
“You have already let him suffer intolerably. Why didn’t you speak up at the time? That’s what I can’t forgive.”
He looked uncomfortable.
“See here, Marcia,” he said. “It wasn’t a question only of myself. If I had testified I would have had to mention that infernal box of hers. And she told me there were other letters in it. Some from married men up here, that she meant to collect on. It’s been straight hell, Marcia.”
“Yes. It has been straight hell for everybody,” I agreed. “And it’s still straight hell for some of us.”
He came over to where I sat, and stood looking down at me.
“I suppose it’s no use, Marcia? It’s all over, isn’t it? Between you and me?”
“Yes,” I said steadily. “I’m sorry, Tony. It’s all over.”
It was more nearly over than I knew.
The storm came that night: one of those autumnal disturbances which drive in from the open sea, bringing a heavy surf on the outer rocks and a swell in the bay which broke on our beach in miniature rollers. I remember that it washed in an empty gasoline drum, which at high tide beat against the wall until Mike in rubber boots waded out and salvaged it.
Another of the crows was dead on the porch the next morning. It may have struck one of the windows. Maggie said bad cess to it, but I felt rather grieved. It had had a sort of cocky impudence to it which had amused me, if anything could have amused me that summer.
But there had been a real tragedy also that night before, and one which left me chocked and grieved.
Agnes Dean had died. The night nurse had gone down for her late supper, and when she came back Agnes was dead. She had died alone, her face turned toward the photograph of her daughter, which always sat on the table beside her bed. Her thin tired face looked quite peaceful.
The nurse was young and excitable. She ran downstairs, finding Mansfield Dean in the library. It was late, but he had not gone to bed. He was sitting in front of a fire, his head bent, all his vitality drained out of him. At first she thought he was asleep. She went over and put a hand on his arm.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Dean. I—”
She began to cry, and he looked up at her.
“My wife?” he said thickly.
“Yes. Just now. Very quietly.”
She was shaking, and he got up and put a big arm around her to steady her.
“It’s all right, my dear,” he said. “She would have wanted it like that.”
He told her to stay downstairs for a while, and went up himself. She heard him close the door into Agnes’s room, and then a silence. She began to grow frightened. It was uncanny, that silence; no servants called, no sending for a doctor, none of the usual quiet movement of a house after a death. She went up again and opened the door.
Mansfield Dean was on his knees beside the bed, and he held a revolver in his hand.
Her courage came back at once. She spoke sharply.
“Don’t do that, Mr. Dean. That’s cowardly.”
He looked at her strangely. Then he got up, moving slowly and with a quiet deliberation.
“Yes,” he said. “Don’t worry, my dear. I’ll not add to your troubles.”
He went out then, still carrying the gun. But before he left he broke it and emptied it, as if to reassure her.
I did not know this then. All I knew was that Agnes Dean was dead. It was not unexpected, but the Deans had been a part of us, for a time at least. His big booming voice and his hearty hospitality had been a cheerful addition to the summer crowd. I had seen him on the golf links, playing execrable golf, but always pleasant, even humorous.
“How’s that, Miss Lloyd? A little more twist to it and it would have gone back to the clubhouse!”
I had not known Agnes as well. She was much older than I, of course; and there were times when she stayed quietly at home and let him go out alone.
“My wife’s not well,” he would explain, looking worried. “I thought she’d better rest.”
He had been gregarious. He had liked people. And now he was alone, with the aloneness of a man in trouble. He had plenty of friends but no intimates. With a woman I would have gone up to the house at once. A man was different.
The news came as usual with my breakfast tray, and I felt oppressed and sad. I had had a devastating night, what with Tony’s story and the one thought that never left me: of Allen in that cell at Clinton. Once, too, I thought one of the bells rang, just before midnight. Although the day started badly, it was to be a red-letter one on my calendar, and will be one for the rest of my life.
For it was that day that the sheriff solved our murders.
He had known the answer since the long-distance call when he put Mamie off the telephone. “Get off the wire, Mamie. This is private,” he had said; and listened gravely. But he had really known the answer before that; when he had made that last trip to New York with Howard Brooks.
He had stayed late at the courthouse the night before. Mamie was gone, the building empty. A cleaning woman came with her pail, and he sent her away. “The place is all right,” he said. “If you have to earn your money go and clean up the office of our distinguished Districk Attorney. It needs it!”
On the desk in front of him was a rough transcription of the long-distance call, the statement of a New York jeweler, the medical magazine taken from Doctor Jamieson’s office, and a map of the island. The map had four crosses on it; one for each of the murders, and one for the place where Allen had been attacked at the top of the path up Stony Creek. There was one thing more, and the sheriff concentrated on that. It was the note from the doctor’s wastebasket: “I find myself in an impossible pos—”
He sat for a long time with that in his hand.
He had a few questions written down in front of him, and some of them he checked off. He knew the answers. Even before Mamie got the letter about the Pekingese pup he had known where the clipping came from. He had learned that in New York, at the storage warehouse. But he still had one or two.
Who had taken Jordan’s body out to sea?
Why had Lucy met Juliette the morning she was killed?
Who had attacked Maggie?
Who had ransacked Juliette’s apartment, and our New York house?
He sat over these for some time. Then—about midnight—he jammed on his hat and went to the jail. When he left he had the answers to two of them.
It was a wild night. He got five or six hours’ sleep. Then early the next morning he put on his oilskins and a pair of rubber boots, and drove to the island again.
His case was ready.
At ten o’clock of that day he was waiting in his office, that sheet of paper in front of him, and Mamie keeping off the drifters who otherwise would have wandered in. He was still there when three men came into the room. They came sheepishly, Tony Rutherford, Howard Brooks and Bob Hutchinson. They had not come together, and they eyed each other with suspicion. The sheriff, however, was calm.
“Sit down, gentlemen,” he said. “We’ll make this as painless as possible. I may say that in that safe over there I have some letters that will interest all of you, but nobody knows the combination but myself.”
He smiled at their unhappy faces.
“Live and let live,” he said. “I’m not saying some of you haven’t run pretty close to the edge of the law. I know it, but Bullard doesn’t. So let’s get this over and done with. Now, Mr. Brooks—”
CHAPTER XXXVIII
I WAS AT HOME that morning. The wind was driving the rain horizontally against the house, and I stood at a window, feeling that my life was as dreary and as hopeless as the weather outside. I was no child. Even if Allen cared for me there were probably years of imprisonment ahead of him; if indeed he escaped something worse.
At eleven o’clock Lucy Hutchinson came plodding once more through the rain. Her nonchalance was gone. She looked tired and almost dowdy.
“I had to come,” she said. “I couldn’t stay by myself any longer. They’ve sent for Bob, Marcia.”
“Who?”
“The police. The sheriff.”
I was stunned, but I tried to be helpful.
“That doesn’t necessarily mean anything,” I told her.
She did not relax.
“This damned rain!” she said. “Marcia, I knew Juliette had some letters from Bob. I met her that day to try to get them from her. If that comes out—”
I was nervous, and I turned on her rather sharply.
“Are you saying that you killed her?” I asked.
She stared at me.
“Good God, no,” she said.
It was a bad morning. Lucy stayed, smoking incessantly. The surf continued to break against the wall, coming in thunderously, so that the house itself seemed to shake. Cars came and went along the Dean driveway on the hill, and at noon Mary Lou called up from New York. She seemed badly frightened, and said that Arthur had had a telegram and had taken the late train the night before for Clinton.
“It’s too silly,” she said, with her voice quavering. “They’ve got the man who did it, haven’t they? And Arthur’s busy, Marcia. He’s got a lot of business just now. If it’s about that idiotic box you found—”
I kept my temper, although I was alarmed.
“They may want a statement about something from him,” I told her.
She would not ring off. A statement about what? And what about the box anyhow? The papers were full of it. Was it really true, or just a newspaper story? How on earth did I know it was there? Had I seen what was in it? And what about the pearls? Were they there or not, and if so could I keep them? Why not? They were found in my house.
I hung up, feeling slightly stunned. Things must be happening in the courthouse at Clinton. Confident as I was that the sheriff believed Allen innocent, I knew nothing of what had happened since he found the box. Nor were matters improved when Marjorie Pendexter telephoned.
“Marcia,” she said excitedly. “Why on earth have they called Howard to Clinton? On a day like this?
“I didn’t know they had.”
“He went off early this morning, Marcia; you don’t think he’s mixed up in anything, do you?”
“I don’t see how he could be.”
“Let me know if you hear anything, will you?”
I promised I would; but I was badly shaken when, shortly before lunch, I heard the sheriff’s voice on the wire.
“I don’t like to ask you on a day like this, Marcia,” he said. “But if you’ll come over this afternoon I think we can clear this thing up.”
“Clear it up! Then who—who’s guilty?”
I could hear him chuckle over the telephone.
“Way my office looks now you’d think it was a corporation,” he said. “How about three o’clock? If I’m not there just wait for me.”
I drove over. Shall I ever forget it! The storm was worse, if possible. Near the bridge a tree had been blown down, and I had to turn back and make a long detour. Even at that I was early. I sat for an hour in that cluttered office of his, with the safe locked and Mamie typing in the outer room, before he came in; and when he did there was no buoyancy in his step. He walked like a tired man. He nodded at me, took off his hat, sat down and lit his old pipe before he spoke at all.
“Well, Marcia,” he said at last, “I guess we’ve finally got to the bottom of it.”
I could only look at him.
“Maybe we’d better get at it from the start,” he said, turning his swivel chair and looking out the window. “It’s not a pretty story, but maybe it’s understandable. A woman like Juliette Ransom can pretty well play hell with people’s lives. There were some queer things too; like Arthur finding and burying the body. And we had a coincidence or two that balled things up for a while; Fred Martin being on the island, for instance. That fooled me at first, but—” he smiled for the first time—“it fooled Bullard too.”
Then he began the story.
“I suppose I never did believe Arthur did it. Not after the first few days. You get to know a man after thirty-odd years, and he wasn’t the type. Then I had to think. If he hadn’t, who else around here would want to get rid of her? Plenty didn’t like her, but that’s different. Then, too, you’ve got to remember how she was killed. Nobody lay in wait for her with a gun. If Lucy Hutchinson hadn’t left that golf club up there on the path maybe she wouldn’t have been killed at all. In other words, it wasn’t premeditated murder. Somebody just hit her!
“But they meant to kill her. Don’t forget that.”
He turned his office chair and looked at me.
“Well, there she was. She was dead. Maybe who
ever did it was sorry, but it was too late. It was daylight, and she had to be got rid of. That fooled me for a long time. I’ve only just got it straight. She was no lightweight; and it took a pretty strong man to get her on that horse and get her down to the lake. If there had been a good prize fighter on the island I’d have arrested him as like as not, for that thing alone.
“Anyhow, there she was, and sometime during the search Arthur, who knew the lake and the creek, found her and buried her. That fooled me too, for a while. You see, I knew he was a lawyer, and that he’d know that if there was no body it would be pretty difficult to prove a murder.
“The Jordan matter didn’t help any either. She was scared. She’d come to me and said she wanted to get out of your house. That sounded like Arthur too. I’d found the hat, you remember, and it didn’t look too good. But the night Helen Jordan went to Eliza Edward’s she left after her supper, locked her room, and telephoned somebody.
“I went over every pay call made in the town that night, but I couldn’t find it. Here she was, a stranger in town. Outside of the hairdresser she hadn’t spoken to a soul. Then who was it she had called?
“It stumped me. She went out and she didn’t come back. It was clear as water that she’d arranged to meet somebody on the bay path somewhere, but who was it? It was almost certainly a man. I couldn’t see a woman killing her and then putting that rope around her neck and dragging her out to sea at night, or any other time. But here again was somebody not ready for a murder, and not used to it either. He didn’t even know enough to put a weight on her body!
“Well, you know about that. Her bag was found, and later she was. The one thing I couldn’t see was why she had carried off that Jennifer letter. It was back in her room, locked in her suitcase, and her room was locked too. The letter wasn’t important, but the postscript bothered me. ‘Have just heard about L—. Do please be careful, Julie. You know what I mean.’
“Who was this L—, and why was Mrs. Ransom to be careful? What did this Jennifer woman know? Well, you know about that too. We found her finally, but she wasn’t talking. She’ll talk now,” he added grimly. “If she doesn’t I’ll lock her up.”
Wall Page 32
