Time to Die

by Hilda Lawrence

  “Call me at the Mountain House. If I’m not there call Wilcox. Keep after us.” He looked at his watch. “All this has been very interesting and I’m sure I’m going to be grateful. But I’ve got to get hold of Wilcox.”

  Bittner’s chair flew over to block the door, nicking the table en route. “No,” he said. “No!” He backed hastily away from Mark’s look. “But you haven’t told me when you’re coming back!”

  “I can’t be definite. I’ll give you a ring.” He edged by the chair. Bittner’s hand shot out and held him fast. “You didn’t say anything about the autopsy,” he whispered. “You didn’t tell me what they—found.”

  “I haven’t heard myself. So long, I’ll see you later.” He got the door open, closed it behind him, and ran out into the sun.

  Beulah was talking to Ella May on the front porch. “Come on,” he said, “I’m late. Thank you, Mrs. Bittner.” He took Beulah’s gaunt arm and held it tightly as they walked up the lane. “You’re a beautiful woman, Beulah,” he said.

  “What’s the matter with you?”

  “Nothing . . . What did you tell Mrs. B.?”

  “I made up an autopsy report. She loves them.”

  He didn’t answer at once because he couldn’t. “So does he,” he said finally.

  “I know. He gives little boys ten cents for dead cats and dogs and then he cuts them up. To see what they died of, he says. . . . Mark, are you sick?”

  “Not yet,” he said.

  He refused lunch and drove back to Bear River, and even though he looked straight ahead when he swung out of Crestwood he could feel the augmented eyes of his late host following him.

  At the Bear River railway station he introduced himself to the sweating little man behind the ticket window. He needn’t have troubled. The man was Maisie Briggs’s father, and he said he’d had Mr. East on his mind for several days.

  “I was coming up to call,” he said. “This very evening I was coming up to call on business. My sister’s boy was going to drive me.” He removed his sleeve garters, rolled down his cuffs and buttoned them, and immediately became a man who says “See here!” instead of “Where to?”

  Mark’s modest hunt for information went into temporary eclipse before Mr. Briggs’s chirping onslaught.

  “I want to engage your services,” Mr. Briggs said. “I don’t care about the money and I’m willing to pay ten dollars. I want you to find out who shot my daughter.”

  Mark replied soberly. “But there’s no mystery about that, Mr. Briggs. It was an accident, and young Sutton apologized.”

  “I know he did and I don’t hold anything against the boy. But it was no accident. He says somebody pushed his arm and I believe him. Somebody pushed that innocent lad’s arm with the devilish intention of causing confusion, under the cover of which he could appropriate an arrow for his further nefarious purposes. Using my Maisie for bait!” The first part of his speech tripped off his tongue with the fluency that comes from paper work and rehearsal, but the last line catapulted from his heart. He removed his green eyeshade and gave Mark an unimpeded glare. “Using my Maisie for bait!”

  Mark was plainly impressed. “That’s an idea, Mr. Briggs. Thank you for calling my attention to it.”

  “Happy to oblige. You find out who was standing next to Nick Sutton that night and you’ll apprehend the monster. For monster he is. Concealing that arrow on his person and mingling with innocent women and children, waiting for a chance to strike. Do you want the ten now?”

  “No, no. I don’t want it at all. Mr. Beacham is retaining me, and that covers everything. Thanks, though.” He gave little Mr. Briggs a friendly smile. “You know you may have something there. I don’t suppose you were anywhere near Sutton yourself?”

  “Me?” Briggs returned the smile with wan gravity. “You forget I’m a railroad man. Fridays I’m here until eleven. It takes me that long to clear things up. Last Friday I left this office tired but content. I dragged myself through the sleeping streets, turned a corner, and met tragedy. There was my house, lit from top to bottom. A ‘death,’ I said to myself. I had to sit on the curbing.”

  Mark waited a suitable interval. “No strangers hanging around the station?”

  “No strangers,” Mr. Briggs insisted. Of course, he said, there was always a crowd for the Mountain House on Fridays. New people. But he never paid them any mind. The Mountain House auto collected them as soon as they got off the train. When and if it was on time. He never saw them himself except sometimes when they bought a return ticket. Half the time the Mountain House porter did that. A helpless, wasteful lot.

  The conversation had made a full swing and come back to the place where Mark had hoped to start it. He held it there.

  “Miss Cassidy always bought her own tickets, didn’t she?”

  “When she traveled, she did. Capable lady, she was, like one of ourselves, with her own way to make, not born with a spoon in her mouth.”

  “I’m glad to hear that,” Mark said. “You’re helping me enormously. When’s the last time she took a train out, do you remember? I’m just checking, you know. Routine.”

  “Being a devotee of crime literature,” Mr. Briggs said modestly, “I understand perfectly.” He covered the lower part of his face with an inky hand and stared upward. “Let me s-e-e-e. I got it! Two weeks ago or a little more. I can’t come closer than that. No record. Say two weeks.”

  “New York?”

  Admiration glowed in Mr. Briggs’s eyes. “You’ve hit it. Took the nine a.m. branch line to Baldwin, connecting with the ten a.m. Express.” He visibly swallowed the questions he wanted to ask.

  “That’s an awkward business, going north for a southbound train. Can’t you get it any other way?”

  “No sir, you cannot. Unless you drive to Albany, and nobody ever does. These summer folks seem to enjoy the inconvenience. Peculiar. Even Miss Cassidy now, she was laughing about it. She was saying that every time she took a train in or out of this place she felt like a chicken with its head cut off. . . . Almost was, too, or so I hear.” He looked expectant.

  Mark drove steadily on. “Was she alone when she left the last time?”

  “Oh no. The Beacham young ladies came down with her. And Mrs. Archie Peck. The young Beachams went back to the hotel, but Mrs. Peck rode as far as Baldwin to get some special brand of cigarette. I happened to overhear. She came back on a bus.” He could have been saying she came back a Lady Godiva.

  An elbow was unmistakably planted in Mark’s back. He looked over his shoulder and saw a straggling line of hot and hostile people. “Thanks,” he said hastily, and stepped aside. “I’ll see you again.”

  Mr. Briggs retrieved his eyeshade and sleeve garters and began saying, “Where to?”

  Mark walked out to the car. The sun nearly knocked him down. He sat forward on the blistering leather seat and drove to Perley’s.

  Pansy had gone to bed with a well-earned headache, and Perley was drinking iced tea in the damp little shed. He was a picture of dejection at ease, but he brightened when he saw Mark’s face. Mark looked worse than he felt.

  “Cheer up,” Perley said, rattling the pitcher invitingly. “It’s one of those days. You walk your legs off and nothing happens. But you better not let Beacham see you looking like this. He’ll get discouraged. What’s the matter? Lose your last friend?”

  “No. I made one. I’ll tell you about it when I get my old fire back.”

  “Sandwich?”

  “Not with my stomach in its present condition. I’ve been calling on Bittner.”

  “What’s Bittner got to do with your stomach?”

  “You’re a good fellow, Perley.”

  “Don’t talk to me like I was a dog. Why did you go to see Bittner? He hasn’t been out of the house for ten years.”

  “I thought we could use him. Also, I wanted to borrow his binoculars.” He told how he’d been wakened the night before. “It might have been a bat and it might have been a falling twig. But it certainly wa
s something. I went out to look but there was nothing in sight. Then I saw a light go on in one of the hotel windows. Up under the roof. Sutton had an attack during the night, so I suppose it was the valet’s room. But I longed for those binoculars. I still do.”

  “Wouldn’t let you have them?”

  “No. But I rechecked Peck’s alibi and asked if he’d seen anybody else. He hadn’t. Then I dangled what I’m afraid is my immortal soul before his eyes and got him to promise to watch the traffic to Baldwin.”

  “I don’t get it,” Perley confessed. “What’s Baldwin got to do with this?”

  “Maybe nothing, but it’s the only way to get out of here except by car. Forget it. I’ll tell you later if and when it looks good . . . Bittner’s safe, isn’t he? I mean he won’t talk about what he’s doing?”

  “Not him. He only talks about what other people are doing.”

  Mark sighed. “I noticed that. I saw Briggs too.”

  “Briggs! Now there’s a fellow with a real element of surprise in him. Crazy about girls. Women and so on. That little shrimp. You wouldn’t believe the complaints I’ve had. Once a week all summer long I have to go down to the station and shake my fist at him. Next time, I told him, I’ll go direct to the Missus.”

  Mark recalled Mrs. Briggs and shuddered. “Don’t,” he begged.

  “Scaring girls. Jumping out of bushes. No trouble with him in the winter because there’s no place to hide. What did you want Briggs for?”

  He told him what Joey had said. Beacham had sent for Cassie to come to New York about two weeks ago, to fire a caretaker, but there was no letter about it among her things. “A letter about the caretaker, yes, but nothing about coming to New York. She may have destroyed it, or it may never have existed. It could be a tale invented for young ears. Briggs says she took the train, all right. At least she took a train to Baldwin, ostensibly to catch the New York Express. Franny Peck went along as far as Baldwin to get her favorite cigarettes. Does that ring any bells?”

  “No. I had bad luck too. I can’t understand it. I must have talked to forty people this morning and nobody knows anything. Nobody saw anything either. Miss Cassidy could just as well have stayed home for all the attention she attracted.”

  Mark’s feet, resting on a soapbox, hit the floor. “Say that again!”

  Perley did. “Who claims to have seen her, except her own crowd? Even Pansy can’t remember when you pin her down, and I pinned her. Nobody even remembers seeing those people reading tombstones in the cemetery. I’d have thought Miss Sheffield would have been something outstanding in a graveyard, but no. Blank, blank, blank.”

  Mark returned his feet to the box. “For a minute I thought you had something there. But it won’t hold water. The man who drove the hotel bus saw her and talked to her. And Pansy’s own cousins, the Moresbys. Don’t forget them. They could have imagined everything but the sapphire ring. Mr. Moresby saw that, and Mrs. Moresby will never let him forget it. No, she was there.”

  “I know she was.” Perley’s mild face wore a sudden look of distress. “I hate autopsies!”

  Mark said nothing. He was comparing Perley with Bittner.

  “I went over to Cummings’s office,” Perley went on. “He was just finishing up. . . . She had her dinner all right.”

  “Go on, Perley.”

  “The arrow was the only damage. She died between one and two hours after she ate, and that’s all I know.”

  Mark looked thoughtful. “Between eight and ten. Did he say how long it took?”

  Perley poured himself another drink and spilled half of it. “Matter of fifteen minutes all told.”

  So it had been long. “Perley, I wonder if Miss Rayner was shot because she was in the way?”

  “Why not?” Perley brightened. “That sounds better somehow. I mean it’s better than having her shot out of pure spite. What time did we make that?”

  “Nine-fifteen, but it’s only a guess. It would fit, though. Miss Cassidy could have been lying a yard or so away. Rayner could have been walking straight at them. It fits, all right.”

  “How’d he know Miss Rayner wouldn’t holler and bring a crowd?”

  “Took a chance. Even if she had—hollered—and brought a crowd he was safe. He’d only have to mingle with the others and be as surprised as hell when Miss Cassidy was discovered.”

  “But,” said Perley, leaning forward, “don’t forget he had only one arrow. And he didn’t knock Miss Cassidy insensible first because Cummings says there isn’t another mark on her. What did he do? Stab her, then remove the arrow when he saw Miss Rayner coming? That would explain why the old lady thought she heard it. He was probably lying in the long grass, and what she heard was the swish of his arm. He had to work fast. You saw how Miss Cassidy’s throat was torn. He—he put it back.”

  “A signature, huh? Why?”

  “I don’t know. Mark, I’m so nervous about this thing that if I wasn’t a grown man with a family I’d cry.”

  “Go to bed early tonight. You need sleep. That’s what I’m going to get—if I can.” He yawned. “After I have a little talk with my employer. I want to know why he hasn’t told me himself about Cassie’s trip to New York. Something may have happened there, something that ties in with this.”

  Perley looked uncomfortable. “Cummings says Beacham was hanging around his office all morning, waiting for the report. He had to be very harsh with him. Made Mrs. Cummings nervous the way he talked about death. He thinks it’s undignified. . . . That could be natural distress, couldn’t it?”

  “Sure it could.”

  “And Beacham was over here too, about an hour ago. He wanted to know when he could have the body. I told him in a day or so. Said I couldn’t promise. He’s half crazy to get her buried. Well, sort of buried. It’s going to be cremation.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE following morning Mark sat on the porch of the Beacham cottage, studying birds. He’d even borrowed a bird book from Pee Wee, going into the Peck cottage to help Pee Wee find it. He’d managed to get his hands into every drawer in the living room and himself into several cupboards before Franny Peck complained and Pee Wee found the book where it had been all the time, under a chair cushion. Pee Wee couldn’t imagine how it had got there.

  The birds were plentiful and cooperative and the book was open on his lap, right side up. He flipped the pages over at precise intervals and followed each chirping flight with an unblinking stare. At the end of an hour he could still recognize a Central Park sparrow and a Public Library pigeon on their home grounds.

  His mind was not on birds. He was waiting for the morning to get under way, for the golfers, the riders, the fishermen to scatter themselves to the four corners of the mountain. He wanted to see them leave with his own eyes. Also, he was remembering his session with Beacham the night before.

  He’d come back from Bear River at seven and found Beacham alone. Roberta had gone off with Nick again, and Joey was dining with Pee Wee. Beacham had been haggard and peevish.

  He’d told Mark in an oddly thin voice that he wasn’t satisfied with the way things had gone and were going, and that Wilcox was a fool. He’d refused to release Cassie’s body. It was enough to make the poor girl come back and haunt the place. And what had Mark done? Why didn’t he have a report of some sort by this time? As far as he, Beacham, could see, Mark was running around the countryside, paying visits to old friends.

  “I want results,” he’d said. “That’s what I’m paying for. I can’t sleep for thinking.”

  “I haven’t done much sleeping myself,” Mark had said. “These interesting circles under my eyes are not make-up. Also, I’ve done some deep thinking on my own.”

  “What’s the result?”

  “A little something, very nebulous at present. . . . Why didn’t you tell me about Miss Cassidy’s trip to New York a short while ago?”

  He remembered how the dull red had crept up and spread under Beacham’s tan. “You didn’t ask me anything like that
. And she came back, didn’t she?”

  “Yes, she did that. Were you in New York at the same time?”

  “Of course I was. She came down because I asked her to. It was personal business.”

  “I’ll have to know more than that, Mr. Beacham,” he’d said. “I can’t afford to overlook anything. That trip may have started something that had to—end. What was the business?”

  Beacham had looked uneasy and faintly chagrined. “Domestic stuff. I wanted her to fire the caretaker and get a new man in. I don’t like to do those things myself. I—I lose my temper.”

  “I understand she was gone two days. Did the job take that long?”

  “No. She had some things of her own to do. Shopping, I suppose. I didn’t ask. I didn’t see much of her.” He’d suddenly looked defiant. “The house is closed. I stayed at one hotel and she at another, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Nothing to add to that? Nothing else you can tell me?”

  “Nothing. I can’t think of a thing. . . . Why can’t I go back to New York? Anything’s better than sitting around here, waiting! I asked Wilcox and he says no. Is that final?”

  “Yes, it is. You’ll have to stay. . . . Why do you want cremation?”

  Beacham had taken a long time to reply. “She wanted it herself. She asked me to promise. Don’t get any ideas about that, East. I mean about poison. You can tell your country doctor to do his damnedest. He won’t find any, or if he does, I didn’t give it.”

  Then Beacham had left, with an abrupt good night, and Mark had sat on alone, waiting for Joey and Roberta. He’d felt an almost ridiculous relief when Franny Peck brought Joey home at ten and Roberta came stalking in shortly after midnight. He’d tried to talk to Roberta, using what he hoped was his most disarming smile, but she’d walked into the cottage with a curt nod.

  He’d looked after her with appreciation. Viewed from the front she was decidedly haughty, with an I-sit-at-the-head-of-the-table-now look, but from the back she was a kid with drooping shoulders, expensive clothes, and a burden.

  He’d gone to bed himself after that, but it was no more than a gesture. He was fully dressed and alert to every falling twig and rustle outside the windows. And he’d fortified himself with a companion. Cassie’s puppy, at the foot of the bed, chased dream rabbits all night long.