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Death and the Maiden

Page 16

by Q. Patrick


  Dean Appel gave a nervous little cough. “You can count me out too, Lieutenant. At the time of your arrival, I happened to be dancing with the President’s wife. I saw you come in with Mrs. Hudnutt. I remained with the President’s wife chatting until the news of the tragedy was brought to us.”

  Marcia said softly: “I saw you come in, too, Lieutenant. I was dancing with Dr. Hudnutt. After that we went upstairs to supper. We were still up there together when the music stopped and everyone started hurrying out.”

  Trant’s eyes widened very slightly. “In that case, it seems that everyone in this room will be able to establish a definite alibi.” He paused, his gaze traveling to Penelope. “Except you, Mrs. Hudnutt. Or can you produce one of these excellent alibis too?”

  Penelope returned his stare steadily. “As a matter of fact I cannot, Lieutenant. At the time to which you are referring, I went out alone to the formal garden.”

  It was rather frightening the way that one remark concentrated every atom of attention on Penelope. Robert half rose, his eyes dark with anxiety.

  Only Penelope herself was calm.

  “I had a very definite reason for going there. I had been worried about Norma ever since Marcia told me of her talk with her. Although you had arrived, Lieutenant, you had gone off with Steven Carteris. Neither you nor the local police seemed to be paying any attention to Norma.” I thought I detected a faintly challenging tone in her cool voice. “As Dean of Women I felt it my duty to make sure she was safe. I went up to the gallery where we had seen her. She was no longer there. I found Elaine Sayler up there but she didn’t know where her sister was, either. Since I couldn’t locate her on the dance floor, there was only one other place to look. That is why I went to the formal garden.”

  “And…?” asked Trant very softly.

  Penelope lit a cigarette, watching him over the spurting match flame. “She wasn’t there. So far as I could see, no one was there.”

  “The spotlight was on or off, Mrs. Hudnutt?”

  “I really couldn’t say. I have the impression that it was quite dark. Yes, I think the spotlight was off.”

  For a moment the Lieutenant did not speak. He was looking at Penelope thoughtfully. “You realize, of course, that what you’ve told us puts you on the scene just about the time we suppose the murder was committed?”

  “I do,” said Penelope.

  The detective stirred slightly in his chair. “There are several points which I would like to take up with you, Mrs. Hudnutt. I would mention them now, but I expect you would rather wait until we are alone.”

  “On the contrary,” said Penelope, “if you have anything to ask me I would prefer to have you ask it in front of these people.”

  “Very well,” said Trant. If Penelope noticed the subtle undertone of menace in his voice, she gave no sign of it. “You agree, of course, Mrs. Hudnutt, that what happened tonight is the direct result of what happened to Grace Hough. I’d like to go back to that other night for a moment. Mr. Carteris has just told me with extreme reluctance that he delivered a letter at this house shortly before the time Grace must have been killed. That letter was from Grace Hough and addressed to you. You never mentioned a letter to me.”

  For the first time Penelope was unsure of herself. “Letter?” she echoed. “What letter do you? …”

  “I must take the blame for that,” cut in Marcia, her dark eyes meeting mine. “Mrs. Hudnutt doesn’t know about that letter. I found it in the mail-box. I read it and deliberately kept it back from her.”

  “That’s true,” I added. “Miss Parrish showed it to me. And I—I burnt it. Mrs. Hudnutt never saw it.”

  “Neither did the police.” One of Trant’s eyebrows moved slightly upward but he made no other comment. “Well, that covers one point, Mrs. Hudnutt. Now I wonder if you would be good enough to refresh my memory on your actual movements that night. After you returned from the theater with your husband and Miss Parrish, I believe you went straight to bed, didn’t you?”

  Penelope nodded. “I did.”

  “There’s a telephone extension in your room, isn’t there?”

  “There is.”

  “Then it’s perfectly possible that you could have overheard Grace’s call to your husband from the service station?”

  “I disconnected the extension before I went to sleep. But you have only my own word for that. Go on.”

  Trant’s voice was extremely polite. “If at any time you had moved to the head of the stairs, you could have overheard the conversation which was going on in this room between your husband and Miss Parrish about Grace Hough. You could have heard them discussing the fact that she had threatened to expose a very serious …”

  “There is no need to be tactful, Lieutenant.” Penelope’s tone was brisk, rather impatient. “Robert has told me about—a certain incident that happened to him in California. The only reason he didn’t mention it to me months ago was that it is a subject he has extreme reluctance in talking about. But, when Grace Hough was killed, I knew absolutely nothing about the California episode or the fact that Grace had some silly notion of bringing it to light again.”

  “But you could have heard about it if you had listened at the upstairs landing,” persisted Trant almost sadly. “If you had, you would have overheard something which would have made you bitterly angry with Grace Hough. You would also have known where she could be found alone that night. Miss Lovering has established the fact that your yellow sedan did leave the college before Miss Parrish’s—just about the time of the murder. Someone must have been driving it. Do you still deny going out that night to meet Grace Hough?”

  Penelope’s lips were tight. “I most certainly do.”

  “And yet, the very next day, you sent your yellow sedan away to New York to be repainted and re-upholstered. Isn’t that a curious coincidence?”

  “It may be. But that is what happened.”

  Lieutenant Trant was looking at his left thumbnail. I knew that of old as the most ominous of all his mannerisms. “I’ve already told you the case took on a new development this afternoon. We had your car taken from the place where it was being repaired, Mrs. Hudnutt. Men from the police laboratories have given it a thorough examination. It was the result of that examination which brought Chief Jordan here tonight and made him devote his time to searching your garage when he might possibly have saved Norma Sayler’s life.”

  His voice stopped. I didn’t know what he was going to say next, I didn’t have the slightest idea. But I could tell from the faint curl of his lip that Lieutenant Trant had found the exact moment to play his trump card.

  “Yes,” he said, “the men at the laboratory have examined your car, Mrs. Hudnutt. On the upholstery of the back seat they have discovered several small stains. Those stains have been analyzed and proved to be blood—human blood of the same type as Grace Hough’s. I think there is absolutely no doubt now that yours was the car which drove Grace’s body to Greyville.”

  For one long drawn moment there was absolutely no reaction from anyone. Then slowly I could see the different expressions sliding into the faces around me—Jerry and Steve, their eyes going grim, guarded; Dean Appel’s mouth dropping open, registering incredulity and outraged decorum; Marcia with the color draining from her cheeks.

  But it was Penelope, of course, who was submitted to the acid test.

  Her gaze never once faltered as it fixed Lieutenant Trant.

  “You are accusing me then, Lieutenant Trant, of having murdered Grace Hough?”

  The detective’s fingers played slowly over the arm of his chair. “I am afraid it looks very much that way, Mrs. Hudnutt.”

  I don’t remember having noticed Robert until then. He was suddenly there in the center of my consciousness, moving across the room to his wife’s side. His shoulders were stooped as if there was some invisible burden, far too heavy for him to carry, which was weighing them down. He took Penelope’s hand and held it a moment without speaking. Then very slowly he turned t
o Lieutenant Trant.

  And I saw his face.

  It was very still with the arid stillness of a man who has suffered too much to be able to feel anything any more.

  “It is fantastic to continue with this accusation, Lieutenant. I know you do not suspect my wife. I know this is just another attempt to force me into saying what you have been trying to make me say for days. It will come to you, of course, as a pitiful anticlimax. But I am ready to admit it at last.”

  He gave a slight, weary gesture with his hand.

  “I killed Grace Hough.”

  XXII

  I had reached a stage now where nothing could really shock me any more. My mind just went on working mechanically, listing facts like an automatic adding machine. It was all over now. We were going to hear the tragic riddle of Grace’s death and Norma’s.

  “Thank you, Dr. Hudnutt. I am glad to hear you say that at last.”

  Trant’s voice was quiet and oddly respectful. For the first time since the beginning of that harrowing session I was relieved to hear him speak.

  I looked up, expecting to see on Robert’s face the expression of gaunt, tortured suffering which I had caught there the very first day when he heard the news of Grace’s death. Instead, I saw him standing there by his wife, his eyes rather wistfully on her face, and looking absurdly boyish despite the gray hair at his temples and the dark shadows beneath his eyes.

  “I’m sorry, dear,” he said, speaking to Penelope in a low, intimate voice which seemed to shut the rest of us out entirely. “I should have told you. But I hadn’t the courage to ask you to share this thing with me. You see, it was I who took your car that night. Simply because mine wouldn’t start.”

  His tired eyes turned to Marcia, who was watching him with a sort of desperate blankness. “I should have told you, too, Marcia. I meant to that very next morning. But I’m afraid you tempted me. You took it for granted I had gone to pick Grace up in my own car and then you told me you saw my car in the garage when you got back from your trip to the filling station. And so you gave me an almost perfect alibi. You would have been able to swear—without perjuring yourself—that there would have been no time for me to have taken that ghastly trip to Greyville.”

  “But, Robert!” Marcia’s hand moved slowly to her throat. “You can’t …”

  “I’m afraid I can and—must. I was a fool even to think there was any other way out of this ghastly maze.” Robert turned to Trant, a bitter smile twitching the corners of his mouth. “You probably don’t set a great deal of score by my word of honor, Lieutenant. But I want to tell you this. I admit that I did kill Grace Hough but, as God is my witness, I did so unintentionally and without either malice or premeditation.”

  Trant broke in there. His voice was strangely different as he suggested rather than warned that Robert was under no obligation to admit to anything that he might regret.

  “Thank you, Lieutenant.” Robert’s voice was very firm now. “But I would prefer everyone in this room to hear what I have to say. I have caused them all needless suffering by my vacillation.

  “You probably all know the circumstances that led up to this tragedy. Grace’s childish feeling for me that turned so suddenly to malice; that scene in the quarry; that later scene at the theater; and finally the telephone call from the service station.

  “I went to the service station alone to pick Grace up, partly because there seemed no other alternative, partly because she had asked me to.” Robert gave an imperceptible shrug. “I was upset and nervous and I couldn’t start my car. That’s why I took my wife’s. I drove along the road that leads from the college to the New York highway. I wasn’t speeding, but I was going fairly fast. It had started to rain, a slight drizzle it was then—only enough to make the surface of the road skiddy.”

  He passed one of his finely shaped hands across his forehead.

  “I suppose I slowed up when I got to the curve by the quarry. But I don’t remember much about those moments. I only know that I had put out a hand to turn on my windshield wiper. The rain had misted the glass quite considerably. That’s why I didn’t see exactly what happened—why I didn’t know anything until I felt that violent jolt. I knew then that I had hit something just as I rounded the corner. I stopped the car. I got out.”

  Once again his hand went to his forehead, covering his face as if to shut out some horrible memory.

  “I saw at once what it was I had struck. There was a girl lying by the side of the road, her head flung back against the stones at the mouth of the quarry—a girl in a red raincoat. Grace Hough …”

  In the vibrant silence that followed I was dimly aware of the muted tapping of the wistaria against the window pane.

  An automobile accident—a hit-and-run driver! After so much suspicion had been cast on so many of us, Grace’s death had been an accident. Vague fragments from the medical report at that first inquest at Greyville drifted into my mind. The doctor hadn’t thought it could have been an automobile that killed Grace … the wound had been at the back of the head … not the type usually caused by a car. Then, in my memory I was back again in that cold, dank quarry with Lieutenant Trant as he picked up that jagged stone from the heap beneath the face of the rock. I began to see.

  If Grace had fallen backward, if she had struck her head on a rock at the edge of the road, a rock which someone had later carried into the quarry…!

  I clung to the thought that it might have been that way—an accident. It should have brought relief with it. But it didn’t. What if Robert could prove Grace’s death had been accidental? There was Norma to think of now. Norma had been murdered. No one could possibly deny that.

  Robert Hudnutt’s voice had shattered the porcelain silence.

  “For a moment I didn’t move. I just stood there, staring at her—at that hunched, limp body in the red raincoat. Then I saw a rock, a small, jagged rock about a foot away from her head. I picked it up. The light from the headlights showed there was blood on it—wet blood, gleaming. I dropped it. I remember that clearly, the stone and the blood and the thin, driving rain.”

  He was staring at Trant and through him with those dark remote eyes. “I was in another car accident once before. I have never really gotten over the shock of that. And then this! Perhaps that will explain a little why I acted as I did. It was all like a nightmare, something from the grave of memory. I bent over Grace. I felt her pulse. I did all those things mechanically, and I knew that there was no life left.”

  Hudnutt paused a moment. “It was only gradually that I began to realize just how appalling my position was. For the second time in my life, I had killed a girl. That was terrible enough in itself. But it was far worse than that. I had killed Grace Hough who had had an absurd—I suppose you would call it a fixation—on me; who had pestered me, threatened that very night to expose the one thing I had been trying to forget. Miss Lovering had been a witness to part of the pleasant little scene which she made at the theater. I could not know exactly how much she had overheard. Miss Parrish knew that Grace was a menace to my position here and to my domestic happiness. She knew I had insisted on driving out alone to meet her. Both of them would be forced to admit I had every motive, every opportunity to murder Grace Hough. And there she was—dead by the side of my car.”

  “One moment, please, Dr. Hudnutt,” broke in Trant, his voice still very soft. “I want you to tell me if you saw Grace there in the road before your car struck her.”

  “No. As I said, I was just turning on the windshield wiper. I didn’t see anything, didn’t know anything except that my car had struck some object.” Hudnutt slipped back again into that quiet, spell-binding story. “I remembered that first accident with its ghastly consequences. I just knew that I couldn’t ever let anyone know what had happened. I lifted Grace into my car. Her clothes were damp from the rain. I wrapped a rug round her. I remembered the stone. That couldn’t be left there. I picked it up again. Even then I realized the rain would wash away whatever—whatever traces
might be on it. I drove into the quarry as far as I could go from the road. I put the stone among a pile of other stones.

  I went back to my car and Grace. Then I heard a faint droning from the road and I knew another car was coming. I switched off my headlights.”

  He had half turned toward Marcia. “I know it sounds completely inconsistent, but I had a sudden revulsion from what I was doing—an overwhelming desire to get to that car, to stop it and have everything over and done with. I hurried to the mouth of the quarry on foot. I saw that car coming from the direction of the college. I was just about to step out and stop it when I recognized it as Miss Parrish’s car. I checked myself just in time. I couldn’t bring her into it; couldn’t shift any of the ghastly responsibility on to her. It wouldn’t have been fair.

  “When her car went by, my last chance went with it. I guessed Miss Parrish would be going to the service station. She might perhaps look into the quarry on the way back. I had to get away before then. I drove out of the quarry. The dim idea came to me that I should take Grace to the college infirmary, but somehow I couldn’t do that. And I couldn’t drive toward New York without meeting Miss Parrish. I remembered there was a hospital at Greyville. I knew a doctor there. It was a quiet side road.

  “It was only when I reached the bridge outside the town that I began to realize exactly what I was doing. I was driving a dead girl to a hospital more than twenty miles away from the place where she had been killed. How could I possibly explain that away? People would ask why on earth I hadn’t taken her to Wentworth Hospital or the college infirmary. They would think perhaps that Grace had not been killed instantaneously in that accident—that her life might have been saved if I had rushed her to the nearest doctor. But I had brought her all the way to Greyville and she was dead. No one could possibly believe I was innocent of deliberate murder. I saw in a flash what it would mean to my wife—to our positions here at Wentworth.”

  His tongue came out to moisten his lips. “I stopped the car and got out. Then I looked at Grace once more. I felt her pulse again.” His eyes turned to Jerry. “You must believe me, Mr. Hough, that if there had been the slightest flickering of life, I would have taken her to the hospital. I am not excusing myself for what I did to your sister, nor can I ask you to forgive me. I can only say that I took the foolish cowardly path, because there seemed no tolerable alternative. I lifted Grace from the car. I carried her to the water’s edge. I … I don’t think you will want to hear any more, Mr. Hough….”

 

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