Death and the Maiden

by Q. Patrick

  It was as if a window had been half opened onto daylight and then drawn shut again. I found it horribly tantalizing. Grace had shown this complete stranger one of the letters which she had guarded so zealously from me.

  Lieutenant Trant started moving bottles and pots on the dressing-table in an absent-minded game of checkers.

  “From what you read and from what Grace said, did you form any idea, however shadowy, of the personality of this man?”

  “Too bad I’m not more inquisitive.” Lockwood gave a sickly grin. “I didn’t get the slightest angle on him except that presumably there had been some kind of a quarrel which they’d patched up. And—well, I had the sort of feeling the affair was pretty clandestine. But I didn’t bother much about it then, for as soon as Grace got the letter back, she finished her drink, put on her coat again and said she was ready to leave. That was swell by me. Just as I was breathing a fervent sigh of relief, she burst another bombshell. She told me she had a date that night in Wentworth. The last train was gone, she announced. I—I was to drive her out there to her date!”

  Some of David Lockwood’s old theatrical flourish had returned. He flung out both arms like a dying Pagliacci. “Imagine that! Grace had drunk my liquor; she’d ruined my evening; she’d just made use of my apartment as a place to stay in until the time came for her date. And then she expected me to drive her thirty miles in the middle of the night! That was too much.”

  He gave a loud, ringing laugh and gestured at me. “Heaven forbid I should ever meet up with another Wentworth girl. If they’re all like Grace Hough, that place must be a congregation of female vipers. Guess what that creature did? She stared at me without batting an eyelid; and she said: ‘You are going to drive me back to Wentworth. And if you refuse, I shall start to scream. And when the other people in the hotel come running in here, I’m going to tell them you asked me to a non-existent party and then you—you forced your attentions on me.’”

  David Lockwood snatched up a comb and ran it distractedly through his hair. “What was I to do? I took that girl by the shoulders and I said: ‘Listen to me, young woman, I’ll take you to that date of yours. And do you know what I hope. I hope your date will take you by the throat and choke every particle of breath out of your body.’”

  Trant said very evenly: “Did you ask who her date was with?”

  “I certainly did. While I was driving her back, I said: ‘I suppose this crazy date is with that crazy boy friend of yours?’”

  “And she said?”

  “Can you imagine Grace Hough ever saying anything with a what or a when or a who in it?” snapped Lockwood. “She just smirked and said wouldn’t I like to know? All the same, I had a pretty strong hunch it was the boy friend. Otherwise she wouldn’t have been so het-up and sort of tense. She was on edge all the time.”

  I noticed a rather odd expression in Lieutenant Trant’s eyes. Then he said simply: “Go on, Mr. Lockwood.”

  “We were on the outskirts of Wentworth when I ran low on gas. Luckily there was a service station. We stopped. The place was closing up….”

  Until then I had been carried away by the story, thinking of Grace and Grace only. Now, as David Lockwood approached the crucial point of the whole narration, I started feeling afraid again. I thought of what Marcia had told me about the telephone call, of what Steve had confessed about his part of the episode at the service station. I was horribly afraid this actor would say something that conflicted with the stories I had heard from Steve and Marcia, something that might shake my stubborn belief in their innocence.

  Lieutenant Trant said suddenly: “At the service station, Mr. Lockwood, Grace made a telephone call, didn’t she?”

  I stared at him in astonishment, wondering how he had unearthed that fact which I had tried so very hard to keep from him. He returned my stare with a grin. “That wasn’t very difficult, Lee Lovering. All I had to do was to talk to the attendant at the service station.” He turned back to Lockwood. “Did Grace tell you whom she was calling? Or why?”

  “Didn’t tell me a thing, not a darn thing. I just took it for granted she was calling that impossible date of hers. But I must have been wrong, because just as she was phoning, her date arrived.”

  “What do you mean by that, Mr. Lockwood?” Trant asked.

  “Just that her date atrived. A car swung up to the service station. A young man was in it—a dark, good-looking chap. Grace came right out from phoning and went to his car. She said something or other to him, then hurried over to me. She poked her head into the window and said: ‘It’s all right, Mr. Lockwood, I shan’t need you to take me any farther.’”

  Lockwood was pacing the threadbare carpet once more. “Needless to say, I didn’t do much hanging around. Fate had delivered me from Grace Hough. As soon as I got filled up, I shoved off and drove back to New York like a spirit released from purgatory.”

  “Do you have anything more definite than your own hunch that the man in the other car was the person Grace had been planning to meet?” Trant queried mildly.

  Suddenly I couldn’t stand it any more, couldn’t bear to hear this man accusing Steve of something when Steve wasn’t there to defend himself.

  “It isn’t true,” I broke in unsteadily. “You’ve no right even to hint that Grace had an appointment with this—this man. Steve couldn’t have written those special delivery letters. He—he wasn’t in love with Grace. He …”

  “If he wasn’t in love with Grace,” said Lockwood coolly, “I must say he was surprisingly solicitous. It had started to rain just as I quit the service station. Grace was standing by this guy’s car. They were talking. Then …”

  Lieutenant Trant had turned to face me. There was a curious expression in his eyes. In a quick moment of clairvoyance I knew what David Lockwood was going to say next and I felt the blood draining from my cheeks.

  “Then?” prompted Trant quietly, his eyes still on me.

  “It was the last I ever saw of Grace Hough.” Lockwood tossed back his head. “This tall young fellow had helped her off with her fur coat and was holding out a raincoat which had been lying in the back of his car. It was a red raincoat—a bright red slicker.”

  XVII

  From the start the case against Steve had been frighteningly strong. Now that he was known to have had that unidentified girl’s slicker in his possession, to have taken the galyak fur coat, it was infinitely stronger. But for me the shock went deeper than that. Steve had sworn he had told me everything he knew about Grace Hough and yet he had kept back that most vital fact. Steve, whom I had always thought of as the straightest person at Wentworth, had deliberately lied to me.

  At first that seemed to point only one way and it was a way I couldn’t force myself to accept. Then another idea struggled up through the chaos of suspicion and fear in my mind. Steve was in love with someone, someone he wouldn’t tell me about. Suppose the slicker belonged to that girl; suppose, somehow, that she too had been involved, that it was for her sake he had been so desperately eager to hold back….

  “Mr. Lockwood, you would, of course, be ready to swear you saw Mr. Carteris with the red slicker?”

  Lieutenant Trant’s words cut into my thoughts. They brought home to me violently just what was going to happen next. I saw then why the Wentworth police had never questioned Steve’s story although they knew just how threadbare it was. Lieutenant Trant had suspected about the red slicker from the beginning. He had made them wait until the trump card was in their possession. Now they were ready.

  That’s what made up my mind for me. I didn’t try to measure the way I felt against any logical yardstick. I only knew that somehow I had to warn Steve before Lieutenant Trant could pass the news on to the local police.

  With a cunning born of desperation I said: “If Mr. Lockwood’s coming to Wentworth with us, he’ll have to change out of that naval uniform. Hadn’t I better wait outside?”

  Lieutenant Trant glanced over his shoulder and murmured: “Good idea.”

>   I made a dive for the door. Somewhere backstage in a theater there must be a telephone. I started along the dingy passage; it came to a dead-end by a gray, unplastered wall. I hurried back and down the iron steps to the lower level. Then I saw a phone booth right beside me. I hurried into it, sliding the door shut after me.

  I was just fumbling in my pocketbook for a quarter when someone tapped on the glass panel of the door. I spun round. A boy with a pale, curious face was staring at me—a call-boy, I supposed.

  I swung back the door.

  “Miss Lovering?” he asked.

  I nodded. To my utter surprise he handed me a quarter. “The man in Mr. Lockwood’s dressing room told me to give you this, and to say it would just about cover your telephone call to Mr. Carteris.”

  While I was gazing in utter bewilderment the boy consulted a piece of paper in his hand. “The man also says this. He says when you talk to Mr. Carteris you better tell him the police know who the red slicker belongs to and isn’t it time he came clean about the fur coat?”

  The boy scurried away.

  Of all Lieutenant Trant’s exhibitions of wizardry, that hit the top. For a moment I was too completely dazed to do anything. Then stubbornly I slid the quarter into the slot and dialed long distance.

  At last I got through to Steve. I blurted out to him everything Lockwood had said about the red slicker.

  “And Lieutenant Trant knows who the raincoat belongs to,” I concluded urgently.

  He didn’t speak right away. When he did his voice was husky, very tired. “Thanks, Lee. It’s swell of you to let me know.”

  “But what are you going to do? They’re coming to question you. Steve, you’ve got to tell them the real reason why you left the Amber Club, and all the things you didn’t tell me. It’s the only way.”

  “The only way!” He gave a rather desperate laugh. “I wish it was. There are so many only ways. That’s the hell of it.”

  “And my fur çoat, Steve…?” I began.

  But I never finished the sentence, for the door of the booth was pushed open and Lieutenant Trant was standing there with David Lockwood at his side.

  As I dropped the receiver back on the hook, the detective smiled that quiet, maddening smile of his.

  The three of us drove back to Wentworth together. At the courthouse David Lockwood stalked complainingly away with a detective to make his statement, while Lieutenant Trant disappeared into Chief Jordan’s office. I was left alone in the drab waiting-room.

  In about ten minutes Trant’s cool voice from Chief Jordan’s office called: “Lee Lovering.” I went. Chief Jordan himself, looking very gray and woebegone, sat behind the desk.

  Lieutenant Trant was standing by the window. In his hand he held a queer-looking object made out of plaster of paris. He glanced up when I entered, his face very grave.

  “Remember those tire tracks we found in the quarry, Lee Lovering?”

  Did I remember the tire tracks! Those faint, regular patterns on the bare ground which meant so horribly much to someone!

  “Thought it might amuse you to see this.” Lieutenant Trant held the thing toward me. I saw the little ridges and pits symmetrically stamped on the whitish substance. I knew then, of course, what it was. A plaster cast.

  “Turned out very well,” commented Lieutenant Trant, his eyes still on mine. “Very clear. In 1931 a guy called Heindl published a swell book on the classification of tire patterns. Since then police work checking up on tracks has been one hundred per cent more efficient.”

  Chief Jordan cleared his throat uneasily. I prepared myself for the shock of hearing that the tracks in the quarry had been identified. But it didn’t come. With a sudden smile Trant put the plaster cast down on the table and said to Chief Jordan: “Okay, I’ll do that for you right away.” He took my arm and led me out of the courthouse to his waiting car.

  As we started toward the college, I asked wearily: “I suppose you’re going to pick up Steve?”

  “That’s what Chief Jordan asked me to do,” replied Trant.

  “You—you haven’t counted Lockwood out altogether, have you?” I said hesitantly. “I mean, just because he says he left Grace at the service station that doesn’t mean he couldn’t have come back again and met her at the quarry, does it?”

  “I am inclined to count Mr. Lockwood out. Largely because he has an alibi.”

  “An alibi?”

  “I happened to check up on his movements before I took you to the theater. The doorman at his apartment house saw him leave with a girl in a light fur coat at two-thirty. He saw him return alone just about half-past four. It’s a good hour’s drive from his place to the service station at Wentworth. Greyville is more than thirty miles out of his way. He couldn’t possibly have taken Grace there to the river and got back in New York at half-past four.”

  That, of course, was one of those remorselessly hard facts that no one could get around. Feeling rather numb, I began: “Then …”

  “Exactly,” cut in Trant. “There’s only one place now to look for the murderer of Grace Hough. And that’s on the Wentworth campus.”

  We turned through the gates as he spoke. I was far too wrapped up in my own gloomy thoughts to notice Dean Appel striding down the drive toward us. I started when Trant stopped the car with a sudden jolt and called out of the window:

  “Dean Appel, have you any idea where Steve Carteris should be at this time of day?”

  The Big Appel blustered up to the car and stood by the running board. “Carteris? Afraid you’ve just missed him. The poor boy.’s been called away very suddenly. Sickness in the family.”

  The Dean of Men produced a crumpled telegram from the pocket of his tweed jacket and handed it to the detective with a cluck. “The news came in about an hour ago. Mrs. Carteris, the Governor’s wife, has been taken ill. Of course I gave Carteris permission to leave immediately. He went off in his car about three quarters of an hour ago.”

  Lieutenant Trant was fingering the telegram. Very solemnly he said: “I can relieve any anxiety you may feel with regard to Mrs. Carteris’ health, Dean. This wire was sent in Wentworth.”

  “In Wentworth?” The Big Appel snatched the telegram back, an indignant furrow on his brow. “You mean Carteris wrote it himself, that he has been deliberately hoodwinking me?” He paused.

  “But this is disgraceful. I mean—do the police want him for some reason?”

  “At the moment,” said Trant, “all the police want is a telephone.”

  “The Administration Building,” I said.

  We left the Dean of Men and drove to the Administration Building; Trant didn’t say anything, but I caught the quiet twinkle in his eyes and it dawned on me with sudden exasperation that he had guessed this would happen from the very beginning. For some devious reason of his own he had deliberately let me telephone Steve in order to force him into doing—just what he had done.

  The detective came out from the Administration Building almost immediately. He got back into the car. “Well?” I asked. “Have you called out the bloodhounds?”

  Lieutenant Trant smiled. As the car slid forward, he added: “But I’d stop worrying about Steve Carteris for the time being if I were you. You’re going to need all your emotion for something else.”

  “Something else?”

  “I’ve promised Chief Jordan I’d do some dirty work for him,” continued Lieutenant Trant. “He’s kind of friendly with the people around here and he’s not too keen on having to do this particular job himself. That’s why he roped me in.”

  I had the horrible feeling that I wasn’t going to be able to stand much more.

  “And what is this particular job?” I faltered.

  Lieutenant Trant glanced at me without altering his expression. “You saw that plaster cast at the station. I forgot to tell you that the tracks in the quarry have been identified. They were left by one of the college cars.”

  He paused and added briskly: “By a car belonging to one of your many best f
riends, Lee Lovering.”

  XVIII

  Lieutenant Trant swung down a narrow drive which led only one way. I might have guessed it. We stopped outside the quiet stone façade of the Hudnutts’ house.

  “I want you to come in, too.” The detective took my arm and led me down the flagged path with its border of pink and white tulips to the front door.

  A maid showed us into the wide living room. Penelope and Robert were standing together by the mantel with spindly cocktail glasses in their hands. Marcia Parrish was there, too, leaning back in a chair, her eyes fixed on a huge vase of snow white freesia.

  Penelope took a brisk step toward us. Her straight gaze fixed on Lieutenant Trant. “Miss Lovering has identified this man—this actor in naval uniform?”

  “She has, Mrs. Hudnutt. The police have his complete story.”

  Penelope’s voice, very clipped and English, asked: “And he has confessed?”

  I saw Robert Hudnutt’s slim shoulders tense. Marcia stood up, a dark, slender shadow against the gold parchment of the wallpaper.

  “I think,” murmured Lieutenant Trant, “that for the moment at least we can count David Lockwood out as the murderer of Grace Hough.”

  The silence that followed that remark was far too alive. Robert moved to a low table and poured cocktails from a silver shaker. With the faintest hint of irony in his voice, he asked: “And what did this actor have to say that was so convincingly innocent?”

  “The most innocent thing about him is a very good alibi, Dr. Hudnutt. The other most innocent thing about him is the fact that he probably never saw Grace Hough before the night of the murder and almost certainly never wrote her those special delivery letters. He was guilty, of course, of holding back important evidence from the police. But I’m afraid he isn’t the only person who’s been doing that.”

  Lieutenant Trant had caught the subtle pulsing in the atmosphere and was deliberately sustaining it. When Hudnutt brought him a cocktail, he moved with it to a chair from which he watched the little group at the mantel with an interest which wasn’t at all obvious and yet was terrifyingly acute.