“With the other end of the twine at the bottom of the stairs, perhaps,” said Beevens, and stopped significantly.
Nugent’s green eyes were narrow. Craig said, “You mean somebody placed it there and hung the string down the stairway and then gave it a jerk at the right time from below.”
“It would fall, I believe,” said Beevens, “in a series of thuds upon the treads which would sound extremely loud at night. It broke, perhaps at the bottom of the service stairs-which accounts for the crash the nurse mentions and which I myself heard. However, the pieces of the vase must have been picked up at once and hidden,” He looked a little bleak. “I don’t know who could have done it. But it was a very heavy vase.”
Craig turned to Nugent. “Why? Why would anyone…”
“To get Miss Cable-or Miss Keate or both of them out of the library, of course.” Nugent’s green eyes were intent. “So whoever was waiting to dispose of the poisoned brandy could do so. But who picked up the pieces and hid them before we got here? There was nothing there when we looked, and whoever changed the brandy had to work fast. It’s impossible for anybody to be in two places at once.”
“Yes, sir,” said Beevens respectfully and stubbornly. “You might look at the pieces of the vase for fingerprints, sir.”
“Well, naturally,” said Nugent. “The wrapping paper, too. Although I doubt… Where was the vase, as a rule?”
“On a table at the south end of the corridor, sir.”
“South. Then anyone carrying it to the back stairs would have to pass this door. H’m-the back stairs and the front stairs are not far from each other; both in the middle part of the house. Well,” Nugent looked at me. “You heard something bump against the door shortly before Drue Cable screamed. When, presumably, the murderer realized that there would have to be a sure-fire device to get her out of the library before anyone came in order to change the brandy. Was it the vase?”
“It could have been. Yes. It must have been an accident…”
“Naturally. But when you opened the door you really saw no one?”
“But I’ve told you that. There wasn’t anyone.”
“Did you go to the door immediately?”
“Yes,” I said. “That is, no. I mean I was a little surprised. I waited for a few seconds and then went…”
“You waited long enough for whoever was there to have time to get away?”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
He didn’t say “What a help you are” but he looked it. “No more rabbit hunting in your vicinity lately?”
“No,” I said. But thought nevertheless of the sense of threat that had crept like a live thing, like a wolf prowling and secretly waiting for prey, into every corner and every shadow and every empty room of that ill-fated house.
Well. Nugent sent for Nicky then and Peter. Peter came first and when he heard of the hypothesis of the broken vase, said he thought it very likely. I watched him closely, for by that time I suspected everybody, but his boyish, blunt face looked merely worried and sorry and perplexed.
“But I didn’t see anyone,” he said. “I glanced down the back stairway, too, and all along the corridors in the back of the house. I thought a window had been broken, from the sound.”
“Did you see any pieces of the vase?” asked Nugent.
“No. But I wasn’t looking for that. I was looking for a person.”
“Pete,” said Craig suddenly, “did you see Nicky anywhere? I mean, in the corridor, on the stairs-anywhere?”
“No. But I kept thinking there was a thief or some kind of intruder. I opened a couple of windows and hung out each one trying to see someone but didn’t. It’s the dark of the moon and was cloudy. Finally I heard voices and came back downstairs. Everybody was very upset. Maud was crying at the telephone. Nicky was in the library when I got downstairs again.”
Nicky, when questioned, again simply denied knowing anything of vase, stairway or twine. “Why would I do anything like that?” he said calmly. “I didn’t murder Conrad. I know nothing about it. I didn’t fix up anything like that to get Drue and Miss Keate out of the library. Why should I? I was sound asleep when the sound that you say was the vase rolling downstairs and breaking awakened me. Have you any news of Drue?”
And of course there was none.
I got up and made another fruitless trip around the house-to her room, up and down the stairs, into the library. I don’t know what I was doing, really. When I got back Peter and Nicky were gone and Craig had given Nugent the Frederic Miller checks. I don’t know why he hadn’t given them to him sooner, unless it was because all that day Craig was fighting a queer kind of battle inside himself. He was like a man groping in the dark for a formless thing he had never seen, whose presence he could only surmise. And whose existence, even if he proved it, was still not evidence of murder.
But he told Nugent everything he dared to tell him.
“I didn’t know this till last night,” he said, their heads close together over the endorsed, canceled checks made out to Frederic Miller. “But I think I know what they are. And I think it may have something to do with my father’s death.”
Nugent’s eyes glittered green fire. Craig said wearily, “I didn’t at first connect it with my father’s death. I can’t really connect it now-except the checks ought not to have been found where they were found.”
“Where ought they to be?”
“In his desk, of course,” said Craig. “He kept all cancelled checks for five years. He kept them together, by the month and year, in one of the big drawers of his desk. Obviously they were removed. He may have removed them himself. Or Alexia may have done so. Certainly she must have known they were there, below the suede jewel case.”
Nugent looked at me. “Exactly how and where did you find them?” he asked, although Craig had already covered the main points of my discovery. I told him, however, in detail. When I’d finished he looked for a long time at the checks.
“Do you know the handwriting?” he asked Craig.
“No. So far as I know, I’ve never seen it before. Of course, one doesn’t remember handwriting accurately. But I’ve been thinking of that, too.”
“We can investigate; we will.” He turned the checks over again to look at the cancellation. “They’ve been cashed at different banks.”
“Yes, I noticed that,” said Craig. “Two in New York City and one in Newark. Presumably this Frederic Miller was well enough known at each bank to cash the checks. Obviously he either had accounts in these banks or some other means of identification.”
“M’m,” said Nugent, which was not illuminating. With me the thought of time was uppermost. Time and Drue. I said, “By the time you investigate those checks and, if luck is with you, identify and locate Frederic Miller-well, anything could happen. You can’t do it in a day.”
“No,” said Nugent slowly. “But almost in a day. The F.B.I. are always ready to help with anything like this, and they have a vast system of records.”
“What’s in your mind, Nugent?” asked Craig suddenly.
“I’m not sure that anything is there,” said Nugent. His words were candid but his look evasive. Craig said, “Do you think this Miller has got involved with the law at some time?”
“It’s always possible,” said Nugent.
“But…” began Craig and then stopped, and Nugent said, “What were you going to say, Brent?”
“Well, it’s-it’s nothing really. Except I’ve had all night to think about it, you see, and to wonder why those particular checks were removed from the others, yet not destroyed. And why they were found just there. If Alexia knows, she may tell and she may not tell. I don’t see how she could help knowing that they were there; it’s possible that she put them there. But why?”
“Exactly. Why? I’ll talk to her. But in the meantime, there’s something you want to say, Brent. Isn’t there? Better get it out.”
“All right,” said Craig slowly. “It’s not very pleasant. But it was only a-a
prejudice on his part. It didn’t last long. It’s comprehensible. And I know that after the war began he had an abrupt change of heart. He still didn’t-well, didn’t really want me to go into the air force; that is, he used my wish to do so as a lever for something else he wanted…”Craig glanced briefly at me, and Nugent said nothing. Craig went on, “But the fact is for-oh, for years he has been-or rather had been-well…”
“Germanic in sympathy,” said Nugent quietly.
“Yes,” said Craig as quietly. “How did you know?”
“Obvious,” said Nugent. “Coat of arms in his study was of early German origin. I looked it up in a history of Heraldry. There are numerous books about genealogy in his study, too. I questioned the servants in detail. He was very proud of his family line and of his descent.”
“Yes,” said Craig, “but it didn’t mean anything, really. It was only a kind of hobby with him. He read German history, you know; loved it when some early robber baron, or later statesman, or title was connected with his family. He was always like that. During the First World War though, he swerved instantly around; he was all on the side of the Allies and against Germany. I knew he would do the same thing when this war came and he did.”
“But in the interstice?” said Nugent.
“In the interstice,” said Craig, “he lined up with Germany again. It was mere theory on his part. Merely a hobby. He was very proud of family, you see. And, as I say, had made a kind of study of German history and legend. When Hitler began his rise to power, my father was very taken with the ideas of encouraging the youth movements, bringing back the old German ideas of family life, that kind of thing. It was purely theoretical on my father’s part. He had no faint idea of the real brutality and ruthlessness which lay behind all their talk. He wouldn’t believe it for a time, even when it was increasingly evident to everybody else in the world. He was like that, you know; once he took a stand he-well, he clung to it. Blindly.”
Nugent said nothing; I thought of my early impression of Conrad Brent and the obstinacy I had suspected resulted from an inner and ashamed weakness. Craig said, “He had changed. Believe me, Nugent. As soon as the war began he knew where his real sympathies lay. The other was merely a notion; nothing that really meant anything to him. He was patriotic and sincere. It was. only that it was hard for my father to retreat publicly from a stand he had taken.”
“Do you mean,” said Nugent, “that these checks were somehow connected with sabotage or anything of the kind?”
“Good God, no,” cried Craig. “He’d never have done that.”
“What then?”
“I tell you I don’t know. But that night-the night he died-you remember the clipping.”
“The clipping that was in his desk and that Mrs. Brent went and got for him, during the bridge game? Certainly. It”-Nugent’s eyes were bright, dark slits-“it was about, the arrest of some Bund members.”
“Right,” said Craig looking very tired. “Alexia might know where the clipping is now. What happened to it, I mean.”
“Your idea then, briefly, is that before the war began your father may have donated this money to some branch of the Bund, here in the United States.”
“I don’t know,” said Craig. “But it would have been like him. He had money; he was curiously idealistic and curiously blind to reality until something happened to-well, give him a jolt. Make him see the truth. I don’t know whether that actually happened or not. But I don’t know of anybody by the name of Frederic Miller. I can’t think of any reason for my father to give anybody such substantial sums of money. It seems to me that it must have been quite outside his business affairs.”
“You must have some definite reason for connecting the checks with the Bund.”
“No,” said Craig. “I don’t have. I knew nothing of it. I can’t remember hearing him talk of the Bund-in any special way, I mean. Everybody at some time or other has commented pretty strongly and adversely about it. It was only the existence of that clipping and the mystery of these checks that started me thinking and putting them together with my father’s previous-and lately altogether changed-views. The dates on the checks, too, would have corresponded with the period during which my father was theoretically favorable to the announced German plan. That was the year before the war; he never believed there would be a war. He swallowed everything the Germans then claimed, false though their claims were. It was when war actually began that abruptly again he came out in his true colors. He was honestly patriotic; the sympathy he thought he had for Germany was a completely unreal and assumed sympathy. When it came to the pinch he realized it himself.”
“But you think that before the war he gave these checks to the Bund and that Frederic Miller was a Bund member.”
“I don’t know,” said Craig. “I was only trying to think of some explanation for the checks. There may be a completely different explanation. I may be shooting very wide of the mark. But the clipping had some special interest for him. He wouldn’t have kept it otherwise. And somebody said-I think Pete told me-that it was about the arrest of some Bund members.”
“That’s all you know?” said Nugent.
“I don’t know that,” said Craig. “It’s only a guess.”
“It’s one I can easily check up,” said Nugent. “I’ll get on the telephone right away. And I’ll send these checks in for investigation right away, too. And since it’s fairly safe to assume that somebody in the household removed these checks from the desk, the next thing to do is to inquire about that. If you’re right in your theory, Brent.
“It’s not a theory exactly,” interposed Craig. “It’s just the only thing I could think of to account for them.”
“So you said. If you are right, then someone in the household knew of it. And blackmail is the answer to that. Could your father have been blackmailed in that way?”
“I’m not sure. Yes, I think he could have been. If most men had made a mistake like that, they’d have no compunction about it later. I mean they would be ashamed of it, and probably wouldn’t want it known. Still, they wouldn’t permit themselves to be blackmailed on the strength of it; they’d prefer making a clean breast of it, and trying to make amends for their mistake. But not my father. He was very proud. Yes,” said Craig slowly, “I think he might have let himself be blackmailed. Up to a point, that is.”
“A point that stopped short of murder?” asked Nugent.
“Certainly,” said Craig. “But it was my father who was murdered. So that doesn’t square with the blackmail theory. I mean, he was of no value to a blackmailer dead. That’s the brutal truth of it.”
“M’m,” said Nugent aggravatingly. And just then in the corridor outside I heard heavy, quick footsteps and knew it was another report and, as always that dreadful day when someone came to speak to Nugent, my heart got up into my throat. Craig’s did, too, I think, for his head jerked toward the door. But again it was only a trooper to say they were searching the north meadow and there was nothing to report except a rifle.
“Rifle?”
“Yes, sir.” It was an old rifle which had belonged to the handyman; he’d used it now and then for shooting squirrels or rats, but he hadn’t used it for over a year, he’d told them, and he’d left it, he was sure, in the old loft over the garage. It had been found in some brush in the meadow, as if it had been tossed there. There were no shells in it; but they believed it had recently been fired.
Nugent gave brief orders about it (they were to go over it for fingerprints; he would talk to the handyman), then he looked at me. “Your hunter,” he said.
And then Nugent sent for Alexia and she, too, came as the others had done and sat there-composed and calm but with a face so pinched about the nostrils, so curiously hard about the mouth and eyes that she looked ill and not at all beautiful. And she said flatly (as flatly as Nicky had made his own denials about the vase) that she knew nothing of the checks. Said it straight out, promptly, and looked as if she were going to die then and there. Whic
h struck me as singular; it was the first time I had seen Alexia look as if any of it really affected her.
Nugent persisted. “Did you ever see these checks before?”
“No.”
“Do you know what they were for?”
“No.”
“Fifteen thousand dollars is a substantial sum of money.”
“Yes. But I knew nothing of Conrad’s affairs. Besides, as you see, these were written in 1938. Before my marriage.”
“Mrs. Brent, are you willing to swear that you did not take these checks from your husband’s desk and put them in the cupboard of your room?”
“Certainly,” said Alexia quickly.
“When did you last open the cupboard?”
There was a short pause. Then Alexia, her eyes shadowed and secretive, said she didn’t know. “Perhaps several days ago. I really can’t remember. Except that if the checks had been there when I last looked, I would have seen them.”
“Do you know Frederic Miller?” asked Nugent pointblank.
“No,” said Alexia.
19
AND THEY COULD GET nothing else out of her. Anybody in the house, she said, could have known of the little cupboard. She gave me a long, bright look when she was told that I had found the checks and there was something in her look that actually started a kind of chill up my back. Anybody could have put the checks there, just as anybody-again she looked at me fixedly and brightly-could have taken them. Conrad’s desk was never locked. And when questioned about Conrad’s former sympathy for the German cause she said that, of course, everyone knew where his sympathies had lain.
“Had he ever been interested in the various Bund organizations?” asked Nugent.
“I don’t know.”
“Do you remember the clipping you said you took from his desk? At the time you said you saw the box of medicine.”
“Yes. Certainly.”
“Did you read it?”
“Yes. I read it aloud. He asked me to.”
“Can you remember what it was about?”
Wolf in Man’s Clothing Page 21
