Yellow Room

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

  He had driven or walked around most of them, with their neglected gardens and their blank closed windows. Now, returning to the X of his earlier equation, it occurred to him that someone could hide almost indefinitely in any of them. He did not admit even to himself that he preferred an unidentified criminal to Greg Spencer. It was merely a part of his system to explore all possibilities. He said nothing to Alex when he took his car that afternoon and drove around over the hill. Owing to the gasoline shortage, the roads back there were completely deserted, and the first two empty houses were closed so entirely that he gave them up after a brief examination. The third was different.

  It was also closed, of course. It was almost buried in vegetation, and no tire marks showed on the ragged drive. But a winter shutter was loose, and underneath it in the soft ground he found a footprint or two. He took his automatic from a compartment in the car, and going back to the building managed to raise the window.

  It creaked badly. He waited for a while; then, nothing happening, he put a leg over the sill and crawled inside.

  The building, shut in as it was, was almost entirely dark. It smelled moldy and dank. But it also smelled faintly of tobacco smoke. It was not fresh. It might have been there for a week or more. Nevertheless, someone had been in the house recently, and might still be there.

  The darkness bothered him. He had forgotten to bring a flashlight, and after he left the room by which he had entered only the hall showed a faint illumination from the window he had opened. Using matches he more or less felt his way along, until a blank space indicated a door.

  He stepped inside and almost fell over a pile of blankets. They were lying there, abandoned in a heap, as if they had been dropped casually. Otherwise the room was undisturbed. It had been a dining room and some of the old-fashioned furniture still remained. Outside of the two blankets, however, he found nothing. The kitchen, too, was neat and empty. Apparently no one had cooked there for years. But the few dishes in the closet he found remarkably clean, and he was whistling softly to himself as he lit a cigarette and went up the stairs. Here were the usual bedrooms, the beds with ancient mattresses on them and everything else of value gone.

  On one bed, however, was a pillow, somewhat indented as though it had been slept on. That the house had been occupied by someone, and that recently, he did not doubt. But he did not doubt either the care with which all evidence of each occupation had been eliminated. The blankets were a curious oversight. He puzzled over them, leaving the house as he had found it and drove slowly home.

  18

  CAROL SPENCER WAS NOT the same girl who only ten days or so before had kicked Greg’s golf clubs out of her way in the train and worried about opening Crestview. That sheltered, carefully set-up young woman had vanished. She was as neatly dressed as ever, her eyes as frank, her smile—when it came—as spontaneous. But there were lines of strain in her face, and she looked very tired. Maggie, coming in after Dane had gone that morning, surveyed her with disfavor.

  “Are you planning to stay up all day?” she inquired truculently. “What good will you be to anybody if you get sick?”

  “I don’t suppose I can sleep. What about the girls, Maggie?”

  “Scared of their shadows. That man who was going to help hasn’t showed up again, and I’m having to fix the furnace myself.”

  “That’s ridiculous. I’ll tell Greg to do it.” Carol got up, but Maggie caught her arm.

  “There’s that newspaper fellow snooping around,” she hissed. “Up with you, Miss Carol. I’ll tell him you’re sick. And sick you look,” she added. “I’ll bring you some coffee right off.”

  She whisked Carol up the stairs and stood by until she got into bed. For a second or so she paused indecisively by Don Richardson’s picture. Then she faced Carol, her honest Irish face troubled.

  “I’ve got something to tell you, Carol,” she said, reverting to years ago when Carol was a child, running in from play to ransack the refrigerator or to find sanctuary from her governess. “I don’t like to say it, especially just now, but you’ll have to know it sooner or later.”

  Carol smiled. Maggie’s troubles usually referred to her department of the house. This proved to be different, however.

  She had been out the night before, Maggie said. At the Daltons’ with the maids there playing hearts. She was surprised when she found how late it was. It was around one o’clock when she put on her galoshes and got her umbrella and started home, and before she reached the main road she heard a shot.

  “It could have been a backfire,” she said, “but I didn’t think it was. I didn’t hear any car. I just stood still, kinda scared. I guess I was there five minutes or so. It was raining cats and dogs. And then I heard somebody running. He was splashing down the lane, and—now mind, I don’t say he shot Miss Elinor; why would he?—but it was Colonel Richardson.”

  Carol sat upright in her bed, her face a mask of astonishment.

  “It couldn’t have been, Maggie. Not the colonel! He never—”

  “I seen him plain enough,” Maggie said stubbornly. “White hair and all. He looked as though he was wearing a bathrobe or something, and he went into his house and slammed the door as though the devil was after him. Believe me, I got up to the house fast by the short cut from the road. I was plenty scared.”

  Carol dismissed all this with a gesture.

  “He’s been queer lately,” she said. “And don’t tell me he’d leave the Wards’ in that storm and in what he was wearing. I been going over it in my mind ever since. Seems to me he’d had just time to come from the hill where they found Miss Elinor, but I didn’t see any gun. Why else was he running like that, with the heart he’s got?”

  “I’m sure there’s some perfectly ordinary explanation, Maggie.”

  “Well, it’s off my mind anyhow, miss.” Maggie returned with dignity to her role of cook to a respected family. “I’d rather you didn’t mention it to the police, if you please. I don’t want that Floyd poking around. The way he went up to the attic where he had no business to be, and carried away your grandmother’s washstand set…”

  This grievance being an old and safe one, Carol let her go on. After Maggie had gone, however, she lay back and thought with some anxiety over the story. Had the shot alarmed the colonel, so that he had run back to his house? Had he already told the police the story? And why had he been in the lane at all, unprotected from the rain? She came back to Maggie’s statement that he had been what she called queer. Outside of his obsession about Don, which was largely wishful thinking, he had seemed much as usual to her, courtly and kind.

  Greg came in to interrupt her thoughts. He had had breakfast and some sleep at the hospital, and although his handsome face looked weary the news he brought was good.

  “She’ll be all right,” he told her. “Lost a lot of blood, but it missed the big artery. She hasn’t any idea who did it. They won’t let her talk much, of course, but it’s a puzzler, isn’t it?”

  He wandered about the room, said he needed a bath and shave, and wondered if they could have lunch up there.

  “Think the staff will run to a couple of trays?” he asked boyishly.

  She thought it would, and they had cocktails and ate the usual Sunday dinner of chicken and ice cream together in her room. It was characteristic of Greg that he threw off Maggie’s story about the colonel as easily as he threw off everything which did not immediately concern him. She marveled at that ability of his. He was the old Greg, for all his war record, saying life was fun, even when he had a headache the morning after.

  “The Irish are an imaginative lot,” he said, amused. “The old boy runs to get out of the rain, so he’s mixed up in this mess. Or maybe Maggie shot Elinor herself and makes this up! She isn’t fond of Elinor, you know. Never was.”

  He clung to the theory that the shooting was the result of an accident. Carol found herself accepting it, as the simplest way out. But after he had gone, to bathe and shave and take a nap, she made a decision
. She took off Don’s engagement ring for the first time since he had put it on her finger, and put it away in her jewel case. She felt freer without it, as though she had finally laid a ghost.

  In the meantime Dane took his car and drove down to Floyd’s office. He had decided to tell the chief about the empty house. It would at least keep him busy, he thought derisively, and off his own neck. But Floyd was not alone when he got there; he was in angry consultation with Campbell. The district attorney was cold and unsmiling, chewing on an unlighted cigar, his hat on the floor beside him and his expression one of annoyance mixed with contempt.

  “What did you expect me to do?” Floyd was demanding savagely. “I’m here alone except for Mason and a traffic man. I can’t put guards around the whole town. I haven’t got them. If I ask for more help it raises the taxes, and watch the people howl.”

  “You knew Lucy Norton didn’t tell all she knew at the inquest,” Campbell said, scowling.

  “So what? So I’m to put an intern at the hospital outside her door as a guard? They’ve got more than they can manage there now. Look at this town, only one doctor left, no men available, no nothing. As for the Hilliard woman, if she wants to wander around at night in the rain and get shot that’s her business. I can’t keep her in her bed, can I?”

  Neither of them paid any attention at first to Dane. He walked to the desk and stood waiting until the argument ceased. Then:

  “I was driving around the back roads today,” he said to Floyd. “Know a place called Pine Hill?”

  “Been empty for years,” Floyd said sulkily. “What about it?”

  “I have an idea someone’s been sleeping there lately. Maybe a tramp, maybe not. Couple of blankets on the floor. Bed upstairs may have been used.”

  Floyd blew up.

  “That’s all I need,” he roared. “It’s an unknown now, is it? That saves your friends at Crestview, I suppose. I may be only a hick policeman, but I haven’t lost my senses.”

  “You might go up and look.” Dane’s voice was mild.

  “You bet I’ll go up and look, and if this is a plant, Dane—”

  “It’s not a plant.”

  Campbell spoke then.

  “What’s your idea, major? How did you happen on this house?”

  Dane sat down and got out a cigarette.

  “I don’t exactly know,” he admitted. “There are a good many imponderables in the case. You can’t leave out X, you know.”

  “Who’s X?” Floyd snorted.

  “It’s just a symbol I use for myself. Meaning the unknown factor, of course. Has Mrs. Hilliard talked yet?”

  “If you can call it talking! Says she doesn’t know who shot her. Says she wasn’t on the hill at all. Couldn’t sleep and went out as far as the dirt lane there. Knows she was shot and remembers falling. That’s all.”

  Dane was thoughtful. Elinor’s story did not hold water, of course, except that she had not been on the hill. That was true enough. He looked at Floyd.

  “Was the girl who was murdered wearing a wedding ring when you found her?”

  “What’s that got to do with it?” Floyd was still surly.

  “Well, was she?”

  Reluctantly Floyd opened the drawer of his desk and took out the box Carol had seen earlier. He shook its contents out onto the desk blotter. “The jury saw these,” he said resentfully. “I don’t know what right you have to look at them.”

  Dane surveyed them, the scorched imitation pearl earrings and a narrow gold band. He picked up the latter and weighted it in his hand, then he carried it to the window and examined it. There was a poorly engraved inscription inside it.

  “C to M,” the chief said grudgingly, “if that’s any help to you.”

  “Mind if I borrow it for five minutes?”

  “What for?”

  “Just an idea I have. Make it ten. I’ll be right back.”

  He did not wait for consent. As he left he heard the chief’s voice raised in protest, and Campbell’s milder one.

  “If he’s got any ideas we need them,” he was saying. “So far as I can see—”

  Dane was longer than ten minutes. It was a half hour before he had wakened the local jeweler from his Sunday nap, induced him to open his shop and produce his watchmaker’s glass. With this screwed in his eye, Dane examined the ring carefully. It was, as he had thought, of the light and inexpensive kind, but he focused his attention on the engraving.

  His face was sober as he thanked the watchmaker and returned the ring to Floyd. He made no comments as he put it back on the desk. Floyd was less truculent now. He put the ring back into the box, and the box into the drawer again.

  “Sorry if I’ve been kind of rough with you, major,” he mumbled. “Fact is this thing’s got me. I don’t sleep. I don’t eat. This is a resort town, and things like these in the papers don’t help any.”

  “Maybe we can clean up some of it.”

  Floyd eyed him.

  “If you’ve got anything you ought to tell me,” he said resentfully.

  “I’ve found Pine Hill.”

  “Still after X, are you?”

  “I think it’s worth looking into. You might find some prints, for one thing.”

  “And then what? I can’t fingerprint everybody in this town. Or any tramp who chooses to break into an empty house and sleep there.”

  Dane drove to the hospital after he left the police station. Elinor Hilliard was still allowed no visitors, but her husband had been located and was expected at any time. He had somehow managed to get a plane and was flying up.

  In spite of his new knowledge Dane found himself wondering about Hilliard. So far he had been only a name, but he could not afford to eliminate anybody. And this was corroborated when, on reaching Crestview, he found Carol still in bed and Marcia Dalton and Louise Stimson snugly settled in the library. They had walked up, they said, and finding Carol and Greg both asleep had come in for a rest and a drink.

  “How’s the sleuthing going?” Louise asked, her smile faintly impertinent.

  “Sleuthing? If you mean finding Mrs. Hilliard—”

  “The talk is that you were watching this house when you found her.”

  “Then you’ll have to admit I failed pretty completely,” he said gravely.

  It was obvious that they meant to stay, and he groaned inwardly. They gave him the local gossip, however. According to it, Greg was out. He would never shoot Elinor. And someone, coming home by the back road, had seen a car driving madly along the main road at two o’clock that morning. They had no authority for it. It was being told, that was all.

  “What sort of car?” he asked.

  “Not Elinor’s this time,” Marcia said. “A long dark one. I wish I knew how people get the gas they do. I can’t.”

  “It sounds like Elinor Hilliard’s husband,” Louis drawled. “They seem to have all they want, don’t they? And Howard always drove like the devil. Maybe the girl they found here was living with him, and Elinor put her out of the way. She might, you know. She’s a pretty cool proposition.”

  He got rid of them at last, and went back to the kitchen. Greg was still asleep, Maggie said, and the two girls, Freda and Nora, were upstairs packing to leave.

  “I can’t hold them,” she said. “Not any longer. They’re scared. So am I, but I’m staying. I can’t leave Miss Carol like this. Maybe I can get somebody from the village. Only the town’s scared too. It’s as much as I can do to get the groceries delivered.”

  “I might be able to locate the man Alex got you for a day or two. Tim Murphy, wasn’t it?”

  “A fat lot of good he’d be! He walked off without notice.”

  “He could wash the dishes.”

  In spite of what was waiting for him upstairs he smiled to himself. The thought of Tim washing the dishes and scouring pans was almost too much for him. But he needed a man in this house, and Tim had done worse things in his time.

  “I’ll try to find him,” he said. “He may have a perfec
tly valid reason for not showing up.”

  The two girls were lugging suitcases down the back staircase as he went toward the front of the house. One look at their determined faces showed him the uselessness of protest, and he went forward and up to Gregory Spencer’s room.

  Greg was awake. His shower was running, and he did not hear the knock at the door. When he came out of the bathroom, clad only in a pair of shorts, he found Dane settled in a chair calmly smoking, and stared at him in amazement.

  “Sorry,” Dane said. “I rapped, but you didn’t hear me. I had a question to ask, and it couldn’t wait.”

  “What sort of question?”

  The very fact that Greg’s face was suddenly wary convinced Dane he was right. At least he had to take a chance. He took it.

  “I was wondering,” he said quietly, “just when and where you married the girl who was killed in this house ten days ago.”

  19

  IF HE HAD DEPENDED ON surprise he succeeded. Greg did not even protest. He stood still, his fine big body moist from the shower, a bit of shaving lather on the lobe of one ear, and threw out his hands in a gesture of resignation.

  “I suppose it had to come out,” he said. “How did you know it?”

  “A number of things turned up. For one, she wore a wedding ring. It said ‘G to M’ inside it.”

  “A ring? I never gave her a ring.”

  It was Dane’s turn to be surprised.

  “She had it. Floyd has it now. His eyes aren’t too good. He thinks the G is a C. He may know better by this time.”

  But Greg was still bewildered.

  “I give you my word of honor, Dane, I never gave her a ring.” Then the full meaning of the situation began to dawn on him. He sat down abruptly on the edge of the bed. “I didn’t kill her, either,” he said heavily. “You probably don’t believe that, but it’s true.”

  “You must have wanted to get rid of her,” Dane said inexorably. “You were engaged to another girl. She was planning to marry you on this leave. And I’m telling you now, you haven’t an alibi worth a cent, unless you can prove you were in New York when it was done.”