Death and the Maiden

by Q. Patrick

  And now this, the latest and possibly the least expected outcome of that crazy night—Steve Carteris telling me he was in love with me.

  If there had been just one thing less to jar on my emotions, I might still have been able to think coherently. As it was, only one fact stood out in my mind to demand immediate attention. Elaine was over at the Hudnutt’s house, probably alone, after the shock of her sister’s death. I had to go to her.

  I climbed to the dark landing and made my way to the door of my room. I noticed vaguely that it was half open. That clashed with some obscure memory of having shut it when I last left it. But I crossed the threshold. My fingers went mechanically to the switch, then they froze there because I had seen a vague shadow against the bare window pane.

  I could see it stooped intently over my bed with its back to me. It seemed incredible that he could not have heard me come in. And yet, for a few interminable seconds, he made no move.

  And then, slowly, the figure straightened. It swung around so that it was staring through the darkness toward me. It loomed nearer.

  I remember thinking: “He’s coming toward me. An unknown man is in my room and he’s coming toward me. I’m afraid.”

  But even then I didn’t feel anything. My fingers were still resting on the switch. Very deliberately, as if working on their own initiative, they pressed the switch down and the room was flooded with light.

  I laughed with a hoarse, queer laughter which rattled around the room, prolonged and pointless. I suppose it was relief that made me laugh.

  The man standing in front of me, tall and quiet, was Lieutenant Trant.

  He came up to me, gripping my arms roughly. He shook me. “Stop it, Lee.”

  I knew he was shaking me because I was hysterical. And, somehow, knowing that, I wasn’t hysterical any more.

  Trant was saying: “I was a fool. I forgot how bad all this would be for you. You’ve got to go to bed.”

  Suddenly I was fierce and stubborn. “I’m all right. You haven’t got to worry about me. I’m going over to the Hudnutts’ house to be with Elaine.”

  Then before I realized it his arms had slipped around me and I was burying my face against his shoulder, the tears streaming down my cheeks. He led me to the bed, pushing the galyak coat aside from the sprawled position where I’d left it.

  His hand was moving over my hair. It was extraordinarily gentle and light. “Poor kid, you’ve got such a hell of a lot of emotion to give away, haven’t you? And now the well’s running pretty dry. This case seems to have so much heartbreak in it and whatever happens I guess it’s going to be toughest for you. You’ve made yourself care for so many people. That’s a damn dangerous thing to do, you know.”

  I was steady again then. “It can’t ever be as bad for me as it is for Penelope and Robert—and Jerry.” I found a handkerchief somewhere and dabbed at my eyes. “Did you really mean that about Robert? That it was all some ghastly plan, that in spite of what he thought, he didn’t kill Grace?”

  Lieutenant Trant was smiling slightly. “No more leading questions tonight, Lee.”

  “But I’ve got to know. It’s so much worse to guess and be in the dark and worry.”

  Lieutenant Trant’s gray eyes played intently over my face. He said: “And you’re only going on twenty-one. Someone ought to stop writing about the effete younger generation. Okay, Lee Lovering. I’ll give you the works. I do not think Robert Hudnutt was responsible for Grace Hough’s death and I’m getting a fairly good slant on who was. Someone wrote Grace special delivery letters. Someone was to have met her at the quarry. That person turned up all right.”

  “And—and killed her?”

  Trant said very slowly: “I think so.”

  “But you don’t know who that person was—the person who killed Grace and Norma?”

  “I should have to answer yes and no to that. Yes, because I am practically certain I’m right. No, because Chief Jordan’s men have checked up on movements at the dance and have established a perfect alibi for the person I suspect, so far as Norma’s death is concerned.”

  He got up from the bed and started walking restlessly up and down the room. “I think the only way to break this case is to retrieve the clues. There are four clues of major importance. All four of them are letters and not one of them has ever reached the police. There’s the special delivery which Norma had tonight and for which she was killed. And there are the three letters Grace wrote at the theater and Carteris delivered at Wentworth. Norma tore up the one for Jerry. You and Miss Parrish between you disposed of the one for Mrs. Hudnutt. And the third is still missing. We know Grace wrote it—and that’s absolutely all we do know about it.”

  He paused, looking down at me. “Quite a few of you people have read quite a few of those letters. But I think there were probably clues of real importance in them which you overlooked. That’s why I want to reconstruct as many of them as possible.

  The special delivery has gone. The person who killed Norma has most certainly destroyed it. But David Lockwood, who glanced at the first page, established the fact that it was a love letter. Norma read two passages to Robert Hudnutt. One said rude things about Norma, the other referred to a quarrel and a date later in the evening. We also know that it was signed Robert and yet it wasn’t written by Dr. Hudnutt.” He paused, watching his thumbnail in that funny, absorbed way. “I don’t think we need the special delivery letter any more. Those few glimpses tell us all we need to know about it.”

  They told me nothing, of course. But I didn’t ask questions. I knew there was still a point beyond which Lieutenant Trant would not confide in me.

  “At the courthouse,” he continued, “Miss Parrish scribbled down the gist of Grace’s letter to Mrs. Hudnutt as she remembered it.” He took a piece of paper from his wallet and passed it to me. “Does that check with you?”

  In Marcia’s straight handwriting I read her shortened version of that venomous letter giving references to the California newspapers which had reported Robert’s trial for homicide and drunken driving. There was nothing about the Wheeler Sanitarium episode.

  “It was very much like that,” I said.

  Trant took the paper back, brought out a pencil and prepared to write on the other side of the sheet. “Now there’s the letter to Jerry that Norma tore up. Could you make a stab at reconstructing that?”

  I tried to concentrate on that morning in the infirmary when Jerry had shown me Grace’s letter which had come during the night. Slowly phrases formed themselves in my mind and I passed them on to Trant.

  “… I’ve got to warn you against Norma Sayler. She’s absolutely rotten … always humiliating me … that’s why she’s trying to make you fall in love with her … couldn’t love anyone but herself … she’ll make you unhappy … I couldn’t bear to have you suffer the way I’ve suffered …”

  Trant copied the phrases in silence. “Jerry tells me Grace wrote another letter earlier that Norma destroyed, too. Can you give me a slant on that?”

  I remember what Jerry had told me about it that evening at the fountain. With slight embarrassment, I said: “I think it was mostly about Jerry and me. Jerry could probably give you the details.”

  Trant nodded. “And Norma tore up both those letters at the infirmary. I wonder if there’s any chance she never destroyed the pieces.”

  “I’ve thought that too,” I said. “If only I’d asked her what she’d done with them.”

  “It would have helped me and it would have helped Jerry a lot with the insurance people if someone had traced those letters.” He put the piece of paper back in his pocket. “Anyway we’ve restored quite a bit of damage. Now for the third letter Grace wrote, the letter which I think may possibly give us the clue to the whole mystery.”

  I stared at him with astonishment. “You don’t mean you know where it is?”

  “I have a notion.” He was smiling again, that slow amused smile. “You never asked me what I was doing here in your room, breaking the law
by searching without a warrant.”

  “You can’t think the letter’s right here in this room.”

  “That’s my idea. I didn’t have time to put it to the test before you arrived.” Very calmly Trant dropped down on the bed next to me. His fingers smoothed out the galyak fur coat so that the expanse of beige lining stared upward.

  “Young Carteris told me something rather odd. Maybe he told you, too. When Grace gave him this coat to take back to you, she asked him to apologize because she had torn the lining. You told me once that Grace was very careful with borrowed clothes. It struck me as odd that she managed to tear the heavy lining of a fur coat.”

  “You mean…?”

  “I mean she might have wanted Steve to draw your attention to that tear for a very definite reason.”

  His fingers were moving carefully across the silk. “Here it is.”

  I gazed over his shoulder, feeling sudden apprehension. I saw a slit in the lining just by the bottom hem. It was a long, clean slit.

  “It’s almost as if …”

  “Grace deliberately cut it,” finished Trant. “Exactly. If she had wanted to get a letter to you without trusting to Steve, this would have made a very effective cache.”

  Leisurely, as if he was positive he would find what he wanted to find, Trant slipped his fingers through the slit in the lining of my galyak fur coat. They came out again with an envelope, a white familiar envelope. Without a word Trant held it up so that I could see the name scribbled on it in Grace’s large, sloping writing.

  That name was—Lee Lovering.

  The Lieutenant was still smiling but there was a subtle change in that smile now.

  He said: “The last and most vital letter in the case was meant for you.”

  Trant slit the envelope and took out a single sheet of paper. In complete silence he read it, his eyes going very grave.

  “Does it tell you anything?” I faltered.

  “I think it tells me,” said Lieutenant Trant, “who killed Grace Hough and who killed Norma Sayler.”

  That was rather staggering. My voice sounding faint and dry, I said: “And you’re going to let me read it? It’s addressed to me.”

  “Yes, it’s addressed to you. But I am not going to let you read it.”

  “So the clue was in my coat all the time,” I said weakly. Then a rather terrible thought came. “If Steve had brought me the coat that first day, if I had found the letter then, perhaps Norma wouldn’t ever have been killed.”

  Tram’s lips were rather pale. “If Carteris had brought you this coat on the first day, things would have been different, Lee Lovering. But in only one respect. You would probably have been murdered instead of Norma Sayler.”

  He took my hand suddenly. When he spoke the quiet earnestness in his voice was rather frightening. “Listen to me. We’ve a long way to go before we’re out of this wood. This letter I have here in my hand is dynamite. There’s nothing I can do yet because I can’t be sure. I have no evidence. But there’s one thing I can tell you. Someone knows, this letter was written to you. It must have been driving them crazy for days wondering if you’d found it. Now Norma is dead and they won’t be taking any chances.” He paused. “If they’re as desperate as I think they are, they’ll probably do their darndest to get you or the letter or both.”

  And I knew he meant it.

  “I’m telling you this as a policeman, but I’m also telling you because I’m a man and you’re a swell girl. You’ve done a lot of rash and dangerous things trying to protect people. From now on there’s one person to protect—Lee Lovering. You’re going to give all your time to that, see? You’re sleeping over at the Hudnutts’. That’s fine. And you’re going to stay there and never leave that house until I come tomorrow morning. Do you understand?”

  I said rather shakily, not meaning it at all: “I understand.”

  “All right.” His lips relaxed their tense, set line. “Now get your toothbrush. I’m escorting you to the Hudnutts’.”

  But I didn’t move for a second. I was standing there close to him. He was still holding Grace’s letter in his hand. And I had caught one word scrawled on the end of a line in Grace’s handwriting. That word was a name, a familiar name but one which seemed crazily out of place in that letter which meant so very much.

  The name was—Appel.

  XXV

  Lieutenant Trant walked with me to the Hudnutts’ house. Marcia Parrish let me in, looking tired and dispirited. As soon as the detective had gone, I asked: “Are the Hudnutts back?”

  “Not yet, but I think they will be soon.” She managed a faint smile. “At least there’s one good thing to be said for tonight. It looks as if it isn’t going to be too bad for Robert.”

  She took me upstairs. “I’m spending the night, too. Penelope wants you to be in with Elaine. I’ve given the poor kid something to help her sleep. Try not to wake her, won’t you?” She laid cool fingers on my arm. “And, Lee, what I told you about me and Robert—I want you to forget it. I’ve been damn jealous of Penelope.

  I admit that. I’ve almost hated her sometimes for being so exactly the right wife for Robert. But after what happened tonight—well, I think she acted in about as grand a way as any woman could act. And I realize there’s no more of Robert left over for me.”

  She squeezed my hand and moved away. I slipped into the darkened room and undressed without turning on the lights. From my bed I could see the outline of Elaine’s figure and could hear her soft, regular breathing. I knew she was asleep.

  The house was very still as I lay there between the cool sheets, too tired to sleep or think. Only once was the stillness broken when I heard the sound of the front door and then muted footsteps passing my room. Robert and Penelope were back and on their way to bed.

  And suddenly I wasn’t sleepy any more. My thoughts, sharp and vivid, started moving round and round in the old relentless circle. In my mind I saw the shadowy figure of Grace Hough making that last devious pilgrimage whose every step had been gone over and over again, but whose purpose was still shrouded in impenetrable mystery

  I think it was only then that the delayed shock of Norma’s death really made itself felt. All through the evening it had been something ghastly and impersonal that had pulled us deeper into chaos. Now, at last, I saw it from the direct, human viewpoint. Norma was dead. Norma who had so much to look forward to had been murdered before she was twenty-one.

  I saw her again as she had been that day in my room when I had accused her so shrilly of having murdered Grace. Norma in that smart brocaded housecoat; Norma so cool and poised with her final retort: “If you get Jerry Hough, it will he over my dead body….”

  How appallingly prophetic those words had turned out to be.

  My thoughts slid even farther back now to the first day after Grace’s disappearance, the day when I had been with Jerry in the infirmary and Norma had breezed in, so sure of herself and so devastatingly lovely looking. “Hello, darling, I’ve brought you the campus rag.…”

  I must have dozed off at exactly that point in my reflections, for when I regained consciousness some time later, I was still saying in my mind: “… the campus rag.”

  I sat up in bed, wide awake again. Norma had gone in to see Jerry with a copy of the Wentworth Clarion. While she was with him she had torn up those letters from Grace to Jerry because they said mean things about her. Later on, when I had gone back to the infirmary, I could not remember seeing a copy of the Clarion on Jerry’s bed table.

  But Norma had torn up those letters, and taken the pieces away with her. Wasn’t it … wasn’t it possible that she had dumped them in the college magazine and carried them out that way?

  And her car had been waiting outside because she was. going to the hairdresser’s. Wouldn’t she have thrown the magazine somewhere in the car? And Norma was the most casual of persons. It was more than probable that she had forgotten all about those letters of Grace’s when she came from the hairdresser’s. Suppose the Cl
arion had been left in the Sayler car?

  When I had told Lieutenant Trant it was possible the fragments of those two letters might still be in existence, I had not realized how strong that possibility had been. He wanted them as clues in the case; Jerry needed them in order to establish his claim to the insurance money.

  But, would not the police have searched Norma’s car already? I remembered how I had seen the maroon sedan that night still in its normal place in the garage when Steve and I had gone up to the third floor to park his car. At any rate they hadn’t taken it away, and they would have had no reason to look for those pieces of letters.

  And as I debated the question, another thought came to me. If those letters were important to Trant and to Jerry, might they not be important to the murderer, too?

  That decided me.

  I slipped out of bed and, having made sure Elaine was still asleep, I groped my way to my clothes. The excitement of Trant’s visit to my room in Pigot had made me forget to bring any outdoor things, but I found my black ball dress and got into it swiftly and quietly. Somehow I still felt that urgent desire for speed.

  It seems crazy to me now. But it was not until I had stolen out of the room into the passage that I remembered Lieutenant Trant’s warning. He had told me on no account to leave the house; he had warned me of danger for myself. For one instant in that still darkness I felt a twinge of apprehension. But I fought it back. If those letters were there at the garage, I had to get them quickly—before the murderer had a chance to destroy them.

  And I had thought of something which stopped me being afraid. There was no need to, go alone. I could call Jerry at Broome. He could go with me. With Jerry along nothing very terrible could happen.

  I knew there was an upstairs extension in the Hudnutts’ house. But it was in Penelope’s room. I would have to use the one in the hall. I started downstairs, my hand on the bannisters, easing myself down step by step.

  I could make out the telephone, dark and vague on a little side table. I had to switch on a lamp to dial, but I turned it off again and waited in the darkness with the receiver to my ear, listening to the insistent drone from Jerry’s floor in Broome.