The Desert Lake Mystery

by Kay Cleaver Strahan

  “Ah,” Adam said. “A humorist enters. I see that we are now approaching the amusing aspects of the tragedies. Jeff, if this is your whimsical idea of a capital joke will you desist?”

  “It isn’t,” I said. “But I’d just as soon desist. I’d sooner.”

  “Go on.”

  “After Twill wrote the note, the poor boy took a shot at himself there in his cottage. But, as Rosemary thought, he didn’t want to kill himself. He didn’t want to at all. So it was easy for him to decide that he’d better fix things a little safer for Betty-Jean before he tried another shot.

  “He went to the community house and said he’d seen the Judge and his son just then, well after three o’clock. Betty-Jean had been in that room since before three, with the rest of you. She’d been getting along pretty well. So why, as Brigid said, should she wait until Twill had set her alibi for her and all, to get scared silly and go to pieces?”

  “Why indeed? You weren’t there. I was. My word should be as good as that——”

  I interrupted in a hurry. “What scared Betty-Jean was that she knew Twill couldn’t have seen both men. And she knew that he wasn’t putting on, either. That he was cold furious. Probably he’d just been sorry for her when she’d left him at the cottage. She went to pieces by insisting on leaving, then and there. Twill saved her once—pushed her by main force back into the room. After he’d gone you saved her by refusing to let her leave the house——”

  “This entire tale,” Adam said, “is not only false, it is also dangerous and bad.”

  “There is that,” I confessed, “about murders and the folks who do them, as a rule.”

  “And those who gossip about them, and make false accusations?”

  “That’s bad, too,” I said. “O’Dell thought that Betty-Jean’s saying all the time that Twill didn’t do it, and couldn’t on account of being a cripple, and so putting the idea of his doing it into all our minds, and starting us figuring how he could maybe have done it, was pretty mean. Poor judgment, too. Aiming at being very foxy and overshooting the mark.”

  “It takes a vicious imagination,” Adam stated, “to turn loyalty into a crime.”

  “That’s why O’Dell couldn’t find it in his heart to blame Brigid much, or Rosemary at all,” I said. “And of course the story that Rosemary finally told Miss MacDonald was true from start to finish as she knew it. She believed that she was telling the truth then, word for word.”

  “Granted,” Adam said. “But for any of this fantastic theory of O’Dell’s to be even slightly plausible, he should have to say that Betty-Jean’s death was a suicide. It was not.”

  “He knows that,” I said. “He knows she was killed.”

  “We have then another killer? A second one?”

  “Yes,” I said. “And almost another murder.”

  “There was but one murderer,” he said. “Go on.”

  “After you and Miss MacDonald left, that morning,” I told him, “I went back to Memaloose for another look around. Brigid went with me. In the Judge’s cottage she found that the one small grip we thought Clyde Shively had brought with him fitted with room to spare into the big Gladstone valise that the old gentleman—as we supposed—had brought with him. Fact is, she found the little one put inside the big one and thought that Miss MacDonald must have done it. Brigid didn’t know why. I thought nothing of it, when I put them back in the closet that way. O’Dell figured that his bringing one grip inside the other, and a dudish suit of clothes, certainly looked as if he’d planned to come to Memaloose as an old man and make his getaway as an able-bodied young fellow. Why should he bother with all that, unless he had something afoot?”

  “Why indeed?” Adam said. “That is, why should he bother with a third piece of luggage when he had the other two pieces?”

  “Those were supposed to belong to the old Judge. They’d been seen and were going to be left some place to be found. Besides, he brought a six gun with him. He’d probably been told that was the make of gun generally carried in these parts. Well, didn’t he come planning to kill somebody? Maybe, the young man you wrote and said that Betty-Jean was in love with? That is, supposing he was in love with her himself and pretty jealous? Or, maybe, you?”

  “Originally, I believe,” he said, “that was my own suggestion? I think I remember telling you that I should have been the victim.”

  “You were right, for once,” I said. “He’d have had a fine chance to make away with you, if you’d started driving him over to the train that night. Suppose he knew that you’d left Betty-Jean a nice piece of money?”

  “This makes a story,” Adam said. “That is, it does as you tell it, disregarding point after point that can’t be disregarded. For example, if Betty-Jean had been even slightly or unwillingly implicated in any of this, do you think that she would have urged me to get a criminologist on the case?”

  “O’Dell says that few people in times of danger are consistently dull. He said that Betty-Jean was pretty bright several times. One of them was when she wanted the detective. She thought that you wouldn’t engage a man from L. A. or a woman from anywhere. She was wrong about that. But she was right about thinking that you’d phone to the lawyer when she gave you his card.”

  “She did not give me the lawyer’s card or mention him to me, ever.”

  “O’Dell figured,” I said, “that when you and Miss MacDonald traced that telephone number in L. A., you’d find a vacant apartment and the janitor would tell you that a man moved in there for a few weeks but had moved out again, leaving no address.”

  “I’m sorry, Jeff,” Adam said. “I shouldn’t have allowed you to go on and on with this. My brief association with Lynn MacDonald must have infected me with a germ of her gruesome curiosity. This structure of O’Dell’s falls to pieces, doesn’t it, when I tell you that we found Judge Shively’s body in Pasadena and that he had been murdered?”

  “I’m sorry, too,” I said. “But you see O’Dell thought that this Clyde Shively, before he ever came up to Memaloose, had killed his father, and got away with it, and told around that the old gentleman had gone to Nevada. It wouldn’t have done to have the Judge living where folks might find him when they started hunting for him.”

  “The imagination of a pen-pusher!” Adam said, like he was grieving over it. “Go on, since you insist. If there should be even one small detail to which O’Dell confesses the least uncertainty, I should be particularly interested in hearing of it—for a change.”

  “The chief one is,” I said, “why in thunder Twill came back to camp. O’Dell thinks that the boy got cold feet, knowing how easy a cripple would be to trace. But he says that nobler motives—giving himself up and saving either Betty-Jean or Rosemary, or both if they happened to be in trouble, could be considered by those looking for sentiment. O’Dell says Twill’s coming back when only the two girls and Reggie were on the place seems to favor the fear theory.

  “If he’d been hiding in the boathouse across the lake, say, he’d have known when we all left that morning. Then he might have waited until noon, when he knew Reggie would be in some kitchen at the back of the camp, eating his lunch. Twill thought sure that the girls would help him. Maybe hide him on the place until they could get a car for him to leave in. Something like that. Like I told you, O’Dell couldn’t be positive.

  “But he was certain that Betty-Jean saw Twill coming in the canoe across the lake. She knew that Rosemary was out riding and that Reggie was eating somewhere. Maybe she thought that Reggie didn’t matter, because he was in love with her and wouldn’t tell on her. Or, maybe, she didn’t do much thinking. The shock of seeing Twill, when she really believed that Rosemary had killed him——”

  “Stop right there!” Adam ordered. “It can’t be possible that you are going on to accuse Betty-Jean of killing Twill—the boy she loved?”

  “Some of us wondered how much she loved him,” I was bound to say. “How much she could love anybody? We’re pretty sure that she didn’t trust him;
that she believed he’d tell on her to save himself, if he needed to, the same as she’d have told on anybody to save herself, if she could. O’Dell says that loving requires intelligence. He didn’t think Betty-Jean had much of that—none to spare. Her shooting Twill twice—believing that the second wound would make folks think that Rosemary had shot him, like she told us. And then, to cap the climax, sticking that gun away under him there in the canoe——”

  “Ah! The revolver. May I ask how Betty-Jean came into possession of it?”

  “Likely she met him on the shore and got into the canoe with him, begging him like everything to go away again. Likely he refused. Being sweethearts, she probably cuddled up while she was coaxing him to go. Maybe she felt the gun in his pocket. Maybe she swiped it. Twill was the one living person who knew her secret. Shooting is quicker than thinking and it is pretty certain she didn’t do much thinking. She shot, twice.

  “But, back in her cottage, she had plenty of time to realize what a foolhardy thing she’d done. Or, maybe, she didn’t realize it even then, until she peeked out of her front window and saw Brigid swimming to the canoe. Desperation and vanity—’the inviolable vanity of complete ignorance,’ O’Dell called it—explain what she did next.

  “Acrasia was in the shelter. Maybe Betty-Jean had seen Rosemary riding her in at one o’clock, bareback, as easy as sitting in a merry-go-round. If not, she’d seen her doing it time and again. Betty-Jean, knowing nothing whatever of horses, thought that if Rosemary could, why couldn’t she?”

  “Speaking of complete ignorance,” Adam said, “if O’Dell knew anything of that horse he’d know that Betty-Jean could never have bridled her. Even Kent and Rosemary had some difficulty in doing so.”

  “Yes. We thought that was the reason Rosemary left the bridle on her when she was planning to start for Hay Patch in an hour or so. But Acrasia was a little tamed to ladies, on account of Rosemary’s riding her so much, so by hook or crook, Betty-Jean managed to mount her. O’Dell thinks that Betty-Jean believed she could ride right down to California and get with her friends. He says the most remarkable thing is that the horse carried her even a quarter of a mile before throwing her.

  “Mac and Ernie showed O’Dell the exact place. There are mean rocks there, same as everywhere on these deserts. O’Dell though that Betty-Jean hit her head on a bad jutting one there, and rolled on down into the gully. Acrasia—the second killer—lit out for Memaloose and her shady shelter again.”

  “Where she removed her own bridle?”

  “Do you remember it being off her, when you came in?”

  “I do not. Of course I don’t. I was completely occupied with that——”

  “Neither do I remember about the bridle,” I confessed. “And neither did Brigid. But I do remember that when you stopped Kent and me, after we came in my car, Kent jumped right on Acrasia and rode down to Rosemary’s cottage. So the bridle had to be on then. And that means that Acrasia had it on when we came in.”

  “I don’t remember Kent’s riding down to Rosemary’s,” Adam said.

  “You were all excited. He did. And when he came to the community house after you’d phoned him, you reproved him for having his mind on horses. And that is a kind of excuse—the only one we can think of, for our being so dull that day. The boys, all of us, including even Joe and Doc Sprague knew horses—some. We couldn’t imagine even a tenderfoot trying to ride Acrasia bareback. She was the only horse on the place. Murder was heavy on all our minds. And lost bodies. So, when the boys found Betty-Jean out there all of us kept right on thinking of murder. I’ve wondered if I’d left Dollar on the place, instead of riding her off on Thursday, what might have happened then?”

  “Why do you wonder what might have happened,” Adam asked, “instead of wondering what did happen? Why do you cling to this fantastic story of O’Dell’s, forgetting what I told you at the outset of all this, with our friendship for a pledge? I told you the truth, Jeff, when I told you that my little daughter, Betty-Jean, was as innocent as a baby. I’ll add that she did not attempt to ride Acrasia. That she was not thrown from her. I’ll add that she is as guiltless as O’Dell’s own daughter, Brigid. Perhaps more so.

  Though I can’t see that Brigid’s behavior did any real harm, other than shortening my own lifetime by perhaps a score of years.”

  I thought of telling him that there was still another theory, more mine than O’Dell’s, only I thought that he was sick of theories. I knew I was, and of the sound of my own voice. For quite a while I’d been reminding myself of Mrs. Duefife. Still, I did keep on thinking of my own theory, very much surprised that I had been right and O’Dell wrong, until I noticed Adam counting on his fingers.

  “Kent and Rosemary,” he was saying. “The two O’Dells, you, myself——”

  “Reggie and Mrs. Duefife,” I helped him out. “But O’Dell was back East at the time.”

  “What I was wondering,” he said, “was whether a secret shared by half a dozen persons could remain a secret? At any rate, I cannot have you and the O’Dell’s accusing——”

  “Nobody is accusing,” I said.

  “You are accusing. Of course you are accusing. What is all this theorizing but direct accusation? But, strangely enough, despite the fact that O’Dell started from a false premise and so reached a false conclusion, some of his reasoning happens to be fairly exact.

  “When Lynn MacDonald came to Memaloose that night she had seen Clyde Shively’s body, at Joe’s, and she had noted the traces of recent disguise that you mentioned. She told no one but me—not even Joe—so how O’Dell got hold of the idea I can’t fathom. However, so far at least he was right.

  “This Clyde Shively was a rascal of the worst sort. Blackmailing backwash from Hollywood. He was older than we supposed—death made him look younger. He had been a no-good, wastrel son in the Shively household when my wife went to them and when little Betty-Jean was born. All these years, undoubtedly, he meant to use his knowledge as a means of getting money from me. He, and not the Judge, wrote the letters to me telling me of Betty-Jean. Had I decided to go to Pasadena, he certainly would have had arrangements made for greeting me in the old family home there. Hail and Farewell!

  “O’Dell happened to be right, also, about Clyde Shively’s murdering his father and telling the old man’s few remaining friends that he had gone to Nevada. The Judge had been blind and childish for years. It wasn’t hard, we presume, to remove all signs of identification and take the poor old man out in a small yacht at night and drown him in the bay there. Lynn MacDonald and I traced the body through the unidentified persons who had been brought to the morgue.

  “Clyde Shively himself, when he was pretending to be his father at Memaloose, gave me the lawyer’s card. The lawyer—that is, the supposed lawyer—was an accomplice. We found an empty apartment when we went to see him. We still hope to find him, though as yet we have been unsuccessful.

  “Lynn MacDonald thought that this prearrangement of a spurious lawyer definitely settled the fact that Shively intended to commit some crime at Memaloose and effect his escape by means of his disguises. That is—a decrepit old man would be missing, and sought. A dapper middle-aged man, somewhat on the youngish side, would be quietly going his way.

  “It would seem that I was, probably at least, the intended victim. What his exact plans were, we shall never know. He brought the Colt’s revolver with him. But the situation here shaped itself excellently for him. The Tumboldt Mountain Road, for example. Knock me in the head, change his clothes and run the car overboard. Then, walk a few miles to Ferras and take the train. An automobile accident, when and if found. Or, kill me and drop me over and proceed with the car——”

  “There’s your plot,” I said, or tried to say. But, “I’m talking now,” he said, and added, kind of worriedly, “Where was I?”

  I felt like saying, “At the bottom of Dead Man’s Hook,” but I didn’t. I knew that if I did, he’d accuse me of something; so I just said I didn’t know.


  “At any rate,” he said, “when Miss MacDonald came to Memaloose that night, after stopping at Joe’s in Ferras, she was all but convinced that Rosemary’s story was a lie. She reached this conclusion by an astonishingly simple method. It seems odd, now, that none of us thought of it. She merely premised that bodies could not disappear in a trice. Since they could not, they had not. So she believed that Twill had shot Clyde Shively—who she was certain was also Judge Shively—and had escaped; Twill that is, with Rosemary’s help. She had even asked Ernie—she took quite a liking to Ernie, by the way, for some reason—whether there was a dog, or a cat, or some small animal on the place.

  “Finding Twill’s body, recently murdered, changed her opinion as to Twill’s being the criminal. She chose to say that finding Twill’s body ‘simplified’ the entire affair. An affectation, of course. As was her way of repeating, ‘But what can’t be, isn’t.’ The childishness of that remark made it exceptionally irksome to me.”

  “Before we get clear off the subject,” I said, “if Miss MacDonald believed Rosemary’s story about killing the dog, why in thunder did she take the bloodstained things away with her to have them analyzed?”

  “A matter of strict routine, I was told,” he said. It gave me a queer, eerie feeling. As if an old ghost had come creeping up and pinned a medal on my chest.

  “Proof,” he was going right along, “was her pet obsession. By the way, she made out quite a case against Kent—supposing it had been possible for him to get out of jail—and, also, a case against our Reggie. Reggie, it seemed had no alibis and did have motives—of sorts. She did this—outlined the theoretical cases, that is—in order to show me what unproved evidence could be made to do.

  “In fairness, though, and I am a fair man, Jeff, I suppose I must grant that, though she took infinite pains to prove her evidence, her reasoning, step by step, paralleled O’Dell’s. Yes, to all intents and purposes, it was precisely the same as O’Dell’s. With the somewhat important exception that her reasoning led her to the right criminal.”