Yellow Room

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

  “I think it was Friday. Don’t worry about it, Carol. You know how stories spread here.”

  He did talk of Don after dinner, and she found it for once a relief. Not that he said much. There was a map pinned on the wall, but he did not refer to it. However, she sensed in him a concealed resentment and fear of Dane.

  “Who is the fellow anyhow?” he asked. “Just because the Burtons loaned him their house doesn’t mean anything. I’ve looked him up in the Army and Navy register. He’s not there.”

  “I suppose, with all the new officers…”

  “I’d be just a little careful, my dear. All sorts in the service now, and he’s a bit of a mystery. I remember in the last war we got a lot of good men, but we got a lot of bounders too.”

  She had walked down, and he took her back home up the hill. Neither of them saw Alex, on guard among the trees and burning a hole in his pocket with the cigarette he had hastily stuffed there.

  He remained on duty until two o’clock, when Dane relieved him, a Dane in a dark outfit and with a revolver in his pocket. They wasted no words.

  “Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Then Alex went home, and Dane began his cautious circuit of the house. Nothing happened, and at dawn he disappeared. But not to sleep. What he had learned from Marcia Dalton that night looked as though Carol’s family was involved in the murder, and he did not like the idea.

  He had driven down to the Dalton place. Two or three cars were already parked in the drive, and he cursed himself for letting down the bar he had so carefully erected. But he had at least a chance to see a dozen or so of the summer people, the Wards, the Peter Crowells, Louise Stimson, a few others. He stood, stiff in his uniform, through several rounds of cocktails, watching and listening, but he learned nothing from any of them except the prospects of the approaching election and the cost of living. Then at the table Marcia, beside him, had abruptly turned to him.

  “You’re interested in our murder, aren’t you?” she asked, her sharp eyes on his.

  “Merely as an observer,” he said lightly.

  “Well, I don’t think Carol Spencer ought to be alone in the house. She’s a nice child. Where’s her family?”

  “I understand her sister is coming.”

  Marcia looked surprised.

  “Elinor!”

  “Why?”

  She gave him a long look, then turned abruptly to speak to Peter Crowell on her left. She talked to him through the lobster and up to the saddle of mutton. Then, as though she had made up her mind, she turned back.

  “I’m going to tell you something I’ve promised not to tell,” she said in a low voice. “I’ve known Elinor Hilliard all my life. I don’t like her much. I know her car. It’s a foreign job you can’t mistake, and I’m pretty sure I saw it the night that girl was killed.”

  He duly registered surprise.

  “That’s hard to believe,” he said.

  “Carol doesn’t believe it. I told her, and she said Elinor couldn’t have been here. But there’s nothing wrong with my eyes, and if you’re interested you ought to know. I haven’t told anyone else,” she added. “And don’t let Carol know I spoke to you, will you? I’m fond of her, and I think she’s in a jam.”

  He played a rubber or two of bridge after dinner. His mind was not on the game, but he won ten dollars from Peter Crowell and that gentleman was not pleased. He got out his wallet and eyed the scratch on Dane’s face.

  “Saw you on the hill above the Spencer place this afternoon,” he said. “What are you looking for? More bodies?”

  “You never know your luck,” Dane replied indifferently, and was to remember that later with what amounted to horror.

  He had gone home, relieved Alex, and was in bed at six o’clock the next morning when a highly disreputable-looking individual with a battered suitcase got off the train ten miles away. He looked around, saw a car at a distance, and after the crowd dispersed moved casually toward it. Once inside he grinned.

  “What goes on?” he inquired. “Don’t tell me he’s on the old job again. I don’t believe it. Not in this neck of the woods.”

  Alex shrugged as he started the car.

  “He’ll tell you himself,” he said, his one eye on the road.

  “I thought he was resting that leg of his.”

  “Not him,” Alex said disgustedly. “He’s been working his head off to get well so he can go back. Bored stiff, too. He was fit to be tied until this happened. Now his leg—”

  “Well, what happened, for God’s sake? Why the fingerprint stuff? Is it this Spencer murder?”

  “I’d rather the major told you himself.”

  It was Tim’s turn to stare. Then he burst into raucous laughter.

  “The major!” he said. “When did he get to be a major?”

  “They move them up fast these days,” Alex said imperturbably.

  “Yeah, but they don’t move them from a sergeant in the army to a majority in six months. The last time I saw him he was lugging a pack, and don’t think I’m fooling. What are you doing? Kidding me? He’s in some special branch of intelligence, isn’t he?”

  Alex slowed the car for a curve. His one eye was wary.

  “Look, Tim,” he said. “A lot of fellows got queer jobs in this man’s army. Now they’re there, now they’re here. Maybe they’re in Japan or the Philippines. Then before you know it they’re somewhere else. He was a major when he got shot in Italy. I was there.”

  “That where you lost your eye?”

  “I got off easy,” Alex said comfortably.

  Tim was silent. He was a typical Brooklyn Irishman who had fought his way from the police force to a business of his own, and just now his expression was one of amusement.

  “Okay,” he said. “So he’s a major, and what am I? A tramp?”

  “I imagine you’re to be a gardener.”

  Tim stared.

  “Well, I’ll be God-damned,” he said, suddenly sour. “A gardener! What the hell does that mean? I never saw a blade of grass until I was thirty.”

  “You can run a lawn mower,” Alex said, enjoying himself hugely. “You know. You just push the thing. It cuts the grass. Then you rake it up.”

  Indignation kept Tim quiet for a time, but his curiosity was too much for him.

  “All right. I cut somebody’s grass. Then what?”

  “I expect you’re to keep an eye on the Spencer girl. The major thinks she may be in danger.”

  It was Tim’s turn to enjoy himself.

  “So he’s fallen for a girl at last,” he said. “Always said he’d fall hard when he did. What’s she like?”

  “Just a girl. You’ll be seeing her when you’re digging in the garden.”

  “I’m doing no digging,” Tim said firmly, and relapsed again into silence.

  He cheered over his breakfast, however, and he was loading his camera when Dane appeared at noon. Tim grinned.

  “Morning, major,” he said. “Hear you’ve been promoted.”

  “Temporarily, Tim. Don’t bother about the rank stuff unless there are people around.” He glanced at the camera. “I see you’re ready.”

  “All set.”

  For the next hour or so they worked, as they had worked together before. They ate lunch while Tim’s films were being developed, and inspected them later. There were prints on all the china, and on the photograph frame as well. Tim looked up.

  “Looks like a dame’s,” he said. “Kind of long and tapering. You take a man’s, even if he’s got a small hand, the prints are broader.”

  Dane nodded. He had no longer any doubt that they were Elinor Hilliard’s, and the whole picture looked clear. She had been in Bayside the night of the murder, and she had somehow managed to save her mother’s treasures before she set fire to the house. He halted there. She had not set fire to the house. That had been done later, Saturday or Sunday night. So what?

  But it was the spade that added to the confusion. There were smudged prints on t
he handle, but one or two were clear enough to prove that they did not resemble the others. They were not large, but Tim was confident they were a man’s. Without much hope Dane sent them to Washington, using the post office at the railroad for reasons of his, and going to the hospital that afternoon.

  He did not ask for Lucy. He found George Smith sitting up in bed, and took a chair beside him.

  “Doing all right, are you?” he inquired.

  “Be better when they take me off this pap they’re feeding me,” George said sullenly. He surveyed Dane’s uniform. “You’re the fellow at the Burton place, aren’t you?”

  “Yes. I thought I’d better see you. I can get a man to do your work until you’re able to carry on, if that’s all right with you.”

  “Sure is,” George said more cheerfully. “All I got done was a bit of mowing. Then this pain hit me.”

  “You hadn’t done any work in the garden, I suppose?”

  “Nothing but the grass, and not much of that. You tell the other fellow he’ll find everything nice and tidy in the tool house, and to keep it that way. I’m particular about my tools.”

  Before he left Dane resorted to the old device of offering George his cigarette case, and carried away with him excellent impression of five large and calloused fingers. He did not even need to compare them with the ones on the spade handle.

  Tim spent an hour or two that afternoon sauntering over the hillside. To any observer he was merely hunting a dog, whistling now and then, and occasionally calling an imaginary Roger. But he covered considerable ground and found nothing. He spent the evening with Dane going over the case, but in the end he gave it up.

  “Sounds like the sister,” he said. “Only she didn’t work it alone. Who helped her?”

  “That’s what I’d like to know,” Dane said soberly, and went back over his notes again.

  10

  ELINOR ARRIVED EARLY THE morning of the inquest, Thursday. She came by taxi, surrounded by luggage and irritable at the hour, the trip, at Carol’s insistence that she come at all, that she had had to abandon her dinner party, and been obliged to leave her maid behind.

  If there was anything else, her manner did not show it. She went up to Carol’s room and surveyed her as she lay in bed.

  “You look like the wrath of God,” she said. “Don’t tell me the story now. I’ve read it in the papers. That’s a hellish train. I need a bath and some food.”

  But she did not bathe at once. When Carol had dressed and gone downstairs she found her in the library, her breakfast tray almost untouched and she herself with a cigarette, staring down through the French door at the harbor.

  “I can’t see why you wanted me,” she said fretfully. “As to that car business, there are hundreds of cars like mine. Marcia only wants to make trouble. She’s always hated me. I don’t have to testify today, do I?”

  “Not unless you know something. If you do, I advise you to tell it.”

  Carol’s voice was dry, and Elinor looked at her sharply. Then she laughed.

  “It was you she asked for in New York, not me,” she said.

  She went upstairs after that, and Carol heard her bell ringing in the pantry. She knew what that meant. Without her own maid Freda would be pressed into service, to draw her bath, to press her clothes, to help her dress and fix her hair. But Elinor had had to come, if only to confront Marcia if necessary.

  When she herself went up later it was to find Elinor in bed, with the odor of bath salts heavy in the air and Freda opening a half dozen bags. An elaborate traveling toilet set was already on the dressing table, and Freda was looking sulky. Elinor’s voice was sharp when she saw her.

  “I don’t see why you leave the linen closet like that, Carol. Surely you can have it cleaned and painted. Those red seals on it make me sick. They look like blood.”

  “The police want it that way.”

  “And these sheets!” Elinor said crossly. “Why in the name of heaven sheets like these?”

  Carol kept her temper, although she flushed.

  “You might remember our own are scorched. I wouldn’t use them anyhow, Elinor. And I can’t buy sheets. There are none in town.”

  She sent Freda out, for the house was still only partially livable, and did the rest of the unpacking herself under Elinor’s watchful eyes. But her heart sank when, on the toilet table, she saw a number of pale bobby pins, the color of Elinor’s hair. She finished however before she began to talk. Then she sat down on the edge of the bed and smiled at her sister.

  “I wish you’d trust me, Elinor,” she said. “I don’t think you killed anybody. That would be idiotic. But if you were here that night—”

  “What on earth would bring me here?”

  “I haven’t an idea,” Carol said candidly. “But you see I found a bobby pin in the elevator, and it looks like yours.”

  Elinor astonishment was real. She sat up in bed, staring. Then she laughed.

  “A bobby pin! My God, Carol! And in the elevator! I haven’t been in it for years. I’d forgotten there was one.”

  There was the ring of truth in her voice, and Carol drew a long breath. She felt a vast sense of relief. She was even able to laugh a little herself.

  “Well, that’s that,” she said, and slid off the bed. “It had me scared, you know. Marcia was so certain.”

  “Tell Marcia where she can go,” Elinor said vindictively. “And now get out and let me sleep. What time is this inquest? And why do I have to go?”

  “It’s this afternoon. You don’t have to go. I just think you’d better.”

  They were more amicable by that time. Elinor asked about Lucy Norton and if she could see her. But when she was told about the yellow room her expression changed.

  “Will that have to come out at the inquest?” she asked.

  “Why not? She was staying here.”

  “And you don’t know why? What did she tell Lucy, Carol? She must have had some sort of story for Lucy to put her up here. What does Lucy say?”

  “I don’t know. The police won’t let her see anybody.”

  She was certain now that Elinor had learned something which had terrified her. Lying there in her bed, with no makeup on and her face heavily creamed, she looked white and drawn. Beyond asking to have the shades lowered and saying she would try to sleep she did not speak, however. Carol went downstairs, somewhat dazed and highly apprehensive.

  Below, the house was gradually becoming livable again. The long drawing-room rug was down, the covers off the furniture, and as Carol went forward she saw a man carrying chairs and tables onto the terrace. He looked up and grinned at her.

  “I’m the new man,” he said. “Tim Murphy. Just call me Tim. Major Dane said to go right ahead, and do anything I could.”

  She smiled in return.

  “We’re glad to have you, Tim. We needed help badly.”

  “I’m no gardener, miss. I can cut the grass. That’s about as far as I go.”

  “That’s about as far as you need to go.”

  He nodded and went back to work, but Carol was aware that behind his grin he had inspected her sharply. She dismissed the thought, and getting her car drove into the village for supplies. Elinor had not brought her ration book, of course, and Carol, struggling over butter and bacon and buying the chickens she was beginning to loathe, wondered if her sister even knew about rationing. But she was more cheerful, now that she was out of the house. She had only imagined the fright in Elinor’s face, she thought, and this was borne out when she found Elinor downstairs on her return. She was as carefully dressed as usual, but she was looking perplexed.

  “What’s wrong on the hill?” she inquired. “There’s a man wandering around up there. I saw him while I was dressing.”

  “I didn’t see him. What did he look like?”

  “I don’t know. He kept stooping over, as though he was looking for something.”

  Carol put down her bag and confronted her.

  “There are some things you o
ught to know, Elinor,” she said. “You know how they found the—how they found the body. She was in a nightdress and a dressing gown, with a fur jacket over them, and she had been sleeping in the yellow room. At least she’d gone to bed there. But we’ve never found her clothes. They have to be somewhere.”

  “So they think they’re on the hill?”

  “Maybe not on it. Buried in it.”

  She repeated what Dane had told her, about the possibility of such a method, the digging of a hole and the replanting over it. But Elinor thought the idea farfetched.

  “Why not burn them?” she said lightly. “Why go to all that trouble, if they had to be got rid of? And why are they so essential? After all, she’s dead.”

  “They want to know who she was,” Carol said patiently. “It’s almost a week, and they still don’t know.”

  Dane was gone—if it had been Dane—when she saw the hillside again. She viewed it from the servants’ dining room, with an upset Maggie at her elbow.

  “I don’t mind Miss Elinor,” she said. “I know her ways. But if Freda’s to spend all her time with her I’ll have to have more help, Miss Carol.”

  She conciliated Maggie as best she could, and she and Elinor ate lunch almost in silence. With Elinor there the days of trays was over, and lunch was served in the dining room, at a small table near the window. A Coast Guard boat was taking a practice run up the bay, and beyond one of the islands they could see the white sails of a yawl. Carol had always loved the view, but this day the approaching inquest hung heavy over her. Elinor, too, was absorbed and silent. She smoked steadily and only looked up once to ask a question.

  “Do you think Lucy Norton will be able to testify?”

  “I don’t know. I shouldn’t think so.”

  But she was wrong. Lucy did testify that day.

  The inquest was held at the town hall. Long before two o’clock the street was lined with cars, and half a dozen reporters and cameramen were on the pavement. Elinor faced them with stony calm, but Carol was less lucky. She sneezed just as one shutter clicked, and later she was to see that picture, her face contorted in agony.