“Shucks, boy, don’t go leaping at conclusions. This’s Santa Felice County, not Chicago! We never had but one murder, and that was done by a greaser full of marijuana smoke. So far as I can see this case here is just a sad accident, that’s all.” He turned to Mildred. “Now, ma’am, just a couple of questions and we’ll be through. Don’t look so jumpy, I don’t bite!”
Mildred took a deep breath, and faced him. “I—I’m ready!” she gasped, looking the very picture of guilty apprehension. In answer to his first question she confessed everything—she had got up in the night to get a book—no, not to get a book but to get something to smoke—no, she hadn’t seen anybody or anything out of the way—
“Nor hear anything, any shots or the like of that?”
She shook her head. “Nothing—only there was a faint noise in the kitchen, a sort of rattling of the pans, as I came down the hall,” Mildred concluded. “I was scared for a minute.”
“Say, the mice grow big as rats in this country,” the sheriff put in jovially. Suddenly there was the sound of an auto horn outside. “There’s the boys now,” cried the sheriff, rushing to the window.
But it was only another carload of sight-seers, piling out in the yard and gaping at the ruins of the garage until Sheriff Bates sent them on their way. All the rest of the afternoon it was the same story, Packards and Chevrolets, long sleek foreign cars and rattletrap flivvers with trailers filled with children and goats—all streaming up the driveway. Once again I was reminded of the most typically Californian trait—a desire to gape. To gape at anything, no matter what.
Finally the sheriff’s men arrived, and he set a guard at the foot of the hill to shut off the crush of spectators. The assembled family heaved a sigh of relief as he began to supervise operations in the ruins of the garage.
“Nice of you,” Dorothy told Todd Cameron, “to point out how we all had a motive to do the dirty on Uncle Joel.”
“Technique,” Todd Cameron said. “I learned that years ago. Say what the other man is thinking and say it first. Then he begins to wonder if he isn’t wrong.”
Dorothy and Todd wandered away, leaving me to comfort little Mildred, who was positive that she had incriminated herself beyond hope during the questioning. “I’ve read all about those things,” she was saying. “They take down what you say and use it against you later—at the trial!”
I put my hand on her shoulder. “Trial! Don’t be a fool. There won’t be any trial. Why, they haven’t even found a body yet!”
“They will!” Mildred declared. “I—I just know it!”
“Stop it!” I told her. “I have a hunch that Uncle Joel isn’t even dead. We may see him walking in here…”
There was a quick, frightened gasp from Mildred. “Well, stranger things have happened,” I went on. “It would be just like him to think it funny to keep us worrying for a few hours.”
“Maybe,” she admitted.
“Of course!” I sailed blithely on. “Anyway, what have we to fear? You and Dorothy are out because you wouldn’t have strength enough to raise that ladder from which Uncle Joel was shot—if he was shot. Todd wasn’t even here yet and I—well, I know I didn’t commit a murder last night. So if the four of us can only stick together…”
Mildred seemed to like that idea. “The four musketeers, huh? One for all and all for one?”
“Certainly!” I assured her. “Trust us.”
Her face lighted up. “Todd knows everything, doesn’t he? I never met a man like Todd before, Alan. He isn’t afraid of anything or anybody, and he doesn’t care about anybody. I mean”—she corrected—“about whose toes he steps on.” She stared over my shoulder. “Alan,” she said, “are those South Sea native girls so very wonderful?”
I said I wouldn’t know, and we went in search of the others.
It was the four of us joined against—or at least in variance to—the other six. Largely, I suppose, the division was a matter of age, with Mabel just too old and Eustace just too young. As a matter of fact, Mabel was no older than I, but her nursing experience and her lack of personal charms made her seem beyond her years.
The guests of Prospice—owners now, I suppose—settled down that afternoon to a sort of watchful waiting. Ely Waldron seemed to stand it least well, wandering around like a lost sheep. From time to time he came and stood within earshot of some group, waiting to be talked at. But nobody wanted him for an audience except his wife, and Fay at the moment was too busy bragging about Sidney to Mabel, Uncle Alger and Eustace, who slept in his chair.
Dorothy and Mildred surrounded Todd on the big divan in the drawing room, deep in one of their interminable discussions of childhood memories. “That was the day you wore a blue dress and got strawberry all over it… no, it must have been Thursday, because Wednesday was the day Aunt Hester made popcorn balls….” That sort of thing, with the two girls talking a mile a minute and Todd putting in his oar once in awhile.
Then a taxi drove up to the door of Prospice, tooted its horn, waited.
Almost immediately Sheriff Bates pounded on the front door, came hurrying in. “Who came here in that cab?” he demanded.
“Nobody,” we told him.
“What’s it here for, then?”
I explained that Evelyn Cameron was leaving us.
“Is she, then?” said the sheriff. He looked older, more worn. Just then Aunt Evelyn came down the stairs, dressed in a tweed traveling suit, and with Oviedo behind laden with suitcases.
The sheriff stepped in front of the door. “Where do you think you’re going, ma’am?”
“I’m sick and tired of this place,” Aunt Evelyn told him. “I’m going home—back to Santa Barbara.”
We all dropped what we were doing, gathered in a silent, awed circle.
“Nobody is going nowhere,” said Sheriff Bates. “If anybody tries to leave this house before I tell ’em to, I’ll put them in the hoosegow so fast—”
“Really!” Aunt Evelyn was smiling.
“Yes, ma’am! I’m saying who goes and who stays.”
“Sheriff,” said Evelyn kindly, “you are a fool. You’ve been reading about the G-men, and seeing too many movies. You can’t keep me or anybody else here unless you want to risk an arrest, and I promise you a suit for false arrest if you do.”
The sheriff said something vague about material witnesses.
“I’ll have bond posted in twenty minutes,” she informed him, “if you try that. I’m either under arrest or not—and the moment you interfere with me in any way, even to blocking a door—that is arrest!” Aunt Evelyn was very excited. “You ought to know that you have no such powers as you assume, my man.”
“I know it,” the sheriff admitted, almost sheepishly. “But I didn’t know you did.” He moved away from the door, mopped his face with a blue cotton handkerchief.
But if badges and brass buttons could not keep Aunt Evelyn in, curiosity could. She paused in the doorway when she heard the sheriff ask the location of the telephone. “I got to get the coroner out here again,” he said.
“What?” cried Aunt Evelyn. “You’ve found Joel?”
Sheriff Bates nodded slowly. “Just now found him,” he said.
“And his—the condition of the body?” Evelyn pressed on. “Was it—?”
Sheriff Bates looked harried, sorrowful. “His condition, ma’am, was fierce,” he exploded. “You could bury him in a cigar box!”
V
CURIOUS HOW SHE TRIED the window,—
Odd, the way she tries the door,—
Wonder just what sort of people
Could have had this house before….
—EDNA ST VINCENT MILLAY
ALL THE REST OF that Christmas afternoon men worked in the ashes of the garage, under the direction of the sheriff and the coroner. From the windows we could catch occasional glimpses of them, blackened as coal miners, about their grim pursuits. My aunt Evelyn, her suitcases still waiting by the front door, seemed more interested than any of the rest
of us in what was going on outside.
“If it is Joel they’ve found,” she said thoughtfully, “I suppose I ought to wait here until the funeral, at least.” She brightened perceptibly. “Someone will have to take charge and arrange about the funeral and the announcements and the flowers. But I don’t see how they can be sure!”
The sheriff, when he knocked at the door and demanded all the old newspapers and twine that the house afforded, seemed to share her uncertainty. “We found something, sure enough,” he admitted. “But whether it’s Cameron I can’t say. Anyway, we found the locks of the doors burned off. The door to that room had the key on the inside locked tight—and there was a chain fastener set besides.”
“Which proves,” Todd put in, “that Uncle Joel did not escape.”
“Maybe,” said the Sheriff uncertainly. “Takes a mighty hot fire to consume a human body, though. We didn’t find as much of the—the late lamented as you’d have reason to expect.”
“Of course,” Todd advised him, “you’re taking into consideration the oil that was stored in the garage.”
Sheriff Bates blinked. “You know about that? Yeah, seems that your uncle did keep gasoline for the car and crude oil for the house furnace on the second floor of the garage. Four or five barrels of each. Saved a few cents a gallon by buying wholesale. We found the crumpled remains of the barrels, all blown out of shape. Maybe the oil would explain why the fire was so blame hot, but…”
“But what?” I demanded.
“But nothing,” the sheriff corrected. “I got to get back—”
“One moment,” Todd said. “If it was murder, Sheriff—and ten will get you thirty that it was—do you think the killer knew the oil was there and counted on it to destroy evidence of the crime?”
“I’m making me no theories,” the sheriff said solemnly, “until I get me some facts. Now I got to get back to work.”
He hurried away with his armful of newspapers and string. “All the same,” Todd told me, “it is theories, not facts, that will get to the bottom of this mess.”
I wanted to know “What theories?”
“Any old theories,” Todd advised me. “All roads lead to Rome—in this case, the death by murder of our esteemed uncle. Me for a hypodermic needle, a calabash full of navy cut, and an evening with my violin.”
“Violin?” I gasped.
“I use the word in a strictly Sherlockian sense,” Todd said kindly. He disappeared in the direction of our room—my room that was.
Well, if he intended to play Sherlock Holmes that left me with the role of Watson. As I remembered the classic tales, Watson made frequent but futile attempts at solving the mysteries himself. “And perhaps this time,” I said determinedly to myself, “the worm will turn and the despised Dr Watson will bring home the bacon.” The metaphor was mangled, but the idea was clear in my mind. I was going to solve the mystery of Uncle Joel’s disappearance. I say “disappearance” because at that time I was not at all willing to admit that the old man was dead.
When they found and identified his body, that would be time enough to show polite sorrow, order flowers and marble tombstones, and serve up the funeral baked meats. Until then…
I found Uncle Alger at the card table with his interminable game of solitaire. He was mournful enough for us both. “I just lost seven thousand and forty dollars to myself!” he declared. “Speaking of money, Alan, just when do you suppose we will get the first installment of the trust fund my poor dear sister left?”
I told him a little stiffly that I supposed that was up to the trust company, who would probably send an official down tomorrow. “Will that be soon enough, or shall I lend you ten dollars?”
Uncle Alger said he needed more than ten dollars. “Appointments to West Point come high,” he informed me. “Besides, the congressman who’s selling them didn’t get re-elected, so I got to hurry if I want to make something of that boy of mine!”
He leaned over his cards again, and I went on toward the library where I heard the sound of voices. I was vaguely looking for Dorothy, but when I came to the doorway I saw that she was not here. Judging by her taste in literature I knew that she would avoid Uncle Joel’s library at any time, and especially so now, for little Mildred in a cute red woolen dress was curled up in one corner of the divan—where we had found Aunt Evelyn only last night—reading aloud from a somewhat passionately bound book of poetry!
She read with considerable unction, her low voice throbbing in a key that reminded me faintly of Miss Katherine Hepburn on the screen.
Her audience was Eustace Ely, her gangling young cousin, who was sprawled out on the rug with his hands clasped at the back of his neck and a peaceful, dreamy expression on his faintly blotchy face.
Mildred, if I remember correctly, intoned that she was but a broken boat, content for an hour to something float on the something river of love’s delights, between two nights. I tiptoed away.
The sewing circle was holding forth in the drawing room, with Mabel’s needle interminably flying back and forth, over a piece of faintly yellow linen. Fay Waldron was writing a voluminous letter on a magazine propped in her lap, and Aunt Evelyn stalked up and down like a caged animal.
She looked up as I entered. “Ah, Alan! If you’d make a fourth we could have some bridge.”
I said I was looking for Dorothy. “I don’t know where she is,” Mabel spoke from her chair by the window, “but there’s a hearse outside.”
Sure enough, there was. Two men got out, carrying a wicker basket. They started for the garage, but immediately turned around and came back, with the basket obviously empty. The hearse departed.
Then some of the men came from the garage, bearing a large number of neatly tied newspaper packages which were heaped into the back of the coroner’s car.
The room fell silent again. “We could play ‘Ghosts,’” Aunt Evelyn suggested. “Somebody starts a word with a letter, and the next person has to add one.”
Nobody wanted to play games. Fay went on with her letter, intently concentrating. Slowly the daylight faded outside. Then Ely Waldron came hurrying into the room, his face alight.
“What do you think I” he cried. “It’s going to clear up. I just saw a streak of red in the sky to the west. If the wind doesn’t change…”
“Ely!” his wife cut him short. “You should have been a sailor, not a retail druggist. Now go upstairs and get those pictures out of the suitcase, will you?”
Obediently the big man turned and went up the stairs. In a few minutes he was back, with a photograph which Fay proceeded to show all around the circle. It showed the thin pale face of a mama’s boy. The forehead was overlarge, the eyes bright, but there was something faintly vacant, something not quite repellent, in the expression. He looked an unhappy child, I thought.
“That’s our Sidney!” said the proud mother. “Smart as a whip.”
She passed around an armful of Sidney’s sketches in pencil and pen, mostly of trees and ferns with every leaf, every frond, drawn out in the most painstakingly naturalistic fashion.
“Nice, aren’t they?” Mabel agreed, putting down her sewing.
That seemed to please Fay. “I hope you’ll be having some of your own one of these days, Mabel,” she sailed on. “When is it to be?”
At last she had noticed the chip diamond on Mabel’s finger. “I don’t know,” the other admitted, smiling faintly. “Soon, maybe.”
“You want to be sure he’s Mr Right!” Fay chirped. “So many rush into it…”
“We’ve been engaged going on seven years,” Mabel told her quietly. “He’s got a mother and sister to take care of, and the garage business at Barstow hasn’t been very good lately.”
“Never marry ’em when they’re broke,” Aunt Evelyn put in. “I tried love in a cottage once, doing my own housework. But love doesn’t thrive in an odor of cooking vegetables. Don’t you try it, girl.”
Cousin Mabel smiled slowly, as if with a deep inward satisfaction. “I won�
�t have to—now!” she said evenly. Her teeth clicked as she bit off the thread.
The same thought coursed through our minds, all of us. A golden flood, dammed so long, had been released by the death of Joel Cameron. It was only human to think so—even I could not help realizing that from now on I could allow myself the ineffable luxury of paying my bills on the first of the month, of engaging assistants to help in the research work to which I have devoted my life, of traveling to foreign libraries…
Yes, there was something amazingly fateful in the choice of Christmas presents which Uncle Joel had made this year.
I went to the front door, stood outside a moment breathing the wet fresh air. The sheriff and his men were still at the garage, although the twilight was darkening. They had wheeled his car so that the headlights illumined their work, two yellow eyes in the dark.
Then I saw Dorothy, in wet shoes and overcoat, hurrying toward me. Her cheeks were red as cherries, and so was her nose. She came up the steps, caught my arm. “Well, where have you been?” I asked.
“I went for a walk,” she said quickly. “Down through the subdivision. A cheery place, this. I went as far as I could one way and struck the gully with the stranded house in the middle. Then I cut across what Uncle Joel thought would be a town, and I hit the cemetery. Quaint idea, giving a cemetery plot with every lot in the subdivision.”
“Wasn’t it?” I agreed.
She wasn’t listening to me, hardly seemed to hear the sound of her own voice. Something had happened to disturb Dorothy, I could see.
“Alan,” she said, “you really ought to take a stroll to the cemetery tomorrow. The tomb Joel built for Aunt Hester looks just like an Egyptian pyramid, only it has a Greek cross on top. The whole place is grown up to weeds and brush, and it was all I could do to get through.”
Omit Flowers Page 7
