Time to Die

by Hilda Lawrence

  “You could be right,” Miss McKenna said thoughtfully. “Once a relative tried to knife the nurse on duty. He was sane, though. It was grief that made him do that. But what you say is certainly possible. . . . Mary felt that way too.”

  He took out his pen and book. “I’m going to make some notes. That’s all right with you, isn’t it?”

  She hesitated. “All right,” she said reluctantly. “I know you could get a court order and take the whole file away with you if you wanted to. But I feel as if—you know I’m doing this on my own responsibility. I ought to talk to the director first, but he’d hem and haw and keep you waiting for days. You can’t afford to wait, can you?”

  “No,” he said seriously. “I want to be back there by morning.”

  She turned away when he began to write. She didn’t want to see which folders he was using. He was humming as he pushed the pen rapidly across the paper, writing down the sad little secrets and mannerisms that would tell him how to recognize a murderer.

  “This is dreadful,” she whispered to the rain.

  She didn’t know she’d spoken out loud until he said, “No, it isn’t. It’s right.”

  Finally he looked up. “I put the three questionable folders back with the others. What you don’t know won’t hurt you. . . . You had a good psychiatrist on those cases.”

  “We always do,” she said proudly.

  “And thanks to him and to you I know the kind of person I’m looking for.” He picked up his hat. “I’ve got to leave you now and I can’t thank you enough. But perhaps you don’t want thanks. It isn’t often that an old friend has such a privilege.”

  He left her with that and was glad to see the quick tears spring to her eyes. She’d be all right after she had a good cry. He remembered to hold his breath when he passed the receptionist.

  He took a cab to his apartment. It was still raining and the fog was thick, and though it was only four-thirty the lamps were on along the Avenue.

  His heart was both heavy and light. Mary Cassidy had recognized a face, and the recognition had come slowly. Prosperity and poverty, as well as time, could bring changes. Or perhaps it wasn’t a face; perhaps it was a trick of speech or gesture, carefully guarded against for years and then forgotten in an off moment. But Mary Cassidy had seen it, and it had confused and frightened her. She’d begun to wonder if the recognition had been on both sides.

  She knew she had changed with the years herself; she was well-fed and well-clothed, and she had taken on the easy manners of her new environment. But she couldn’t be sure that this was enough. That was why she had destroyed her photographs. The snapshot in Buster’s window may have held a fugitive reflection of the girl she used to be. The camera sometimes caught that. And the one in Miss McKenna’s album, that one would be fatal. Her name was on it and she was wearing her uniform. Suppose somebody came to call on Miss McKenna, a friendly call beginning with—“I’ve often thought of you and wondered if you still were here.” Reminiscences might follow. It would be natural to ask for the album. It was reasonable to think that some of the patients and their relatives would know about it. It would be easy to say—“Whatever became of that little nurse, Miss Cassidy?”

  He looked out of the cab window. Almost there. . . . Mary Cassidy had known the black potentialities of the person she was dealing with. She also knew she’d be going back home with the Beachams at the end of the month. Had she planned to keep quiet until then? Or were the danger signals so disturbing that she planned to warn the authorities at once? Was her Nemesis an old patient who was unlawfully at large or was it a relative, as he thought? A mad relative with a sane face and a grudge that gnawed like a cancer.

  He paid his cab and ran across the wet sidewalk to the lobby. The switchboard girl hailed him before he reached the elevator.

  “Whoa!” she said. “Why don’t you tell me where you’re going? I’ve been trying to find you all day. Long distance has been talking my ear off!”

  He held his breath. “Who?”

  “Bear River called you four times, Sheriff Wilcox. You’re to—now wait, baby, wait, let mama do it!”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  HE recognized the Bear River operator at once. She was Maudie, Wilcox’s sister. She knew him too, as well she might; she’d figured in his calculations the winter before.

  “Mr. East?” she said. “Thank goodness! Perley’s out on the road somewhere and he told me to put you through to Miss Pond as soon as you called. Miss Pond’s at the Mountain House. Hold on.”

  “What happened?”

  “That’s not for me to say, Mr. East. Miss Pond will tell you. Here we go. . . . Mountain House? New York calling Miss Pond.”

  He waited. He was taking the call on the lobby phone because he was unwilling to lose even a few minutes. “Hello,” he shouted, “hello!”

  Beulah’s voice, clear and cross, answered. “It’s about time,” she said, “and you needn’t yell. Now let me do the talking. Last night Perley put his gun on the window sill in Beacham’s cottage, and somebody took it. He was asleep, but only for a little while. He couldn’t help it, and it could happen to anybody. Even Amos admits that, so don’t be too hard on the poor man. He and Amos searched all night but they couldn’t find it.”

  “I told him not to leave that cottage! It was a plant. Somebody wanted him out of the way. What happened?”

  “Wait. Nothing happened, that is, nothing too awful. So they searched and they didn’t find it. They didn’t see anybody or hear anything. It began to look like a practical joke and that’s what they thought it was, until this morning. This morning Joey couldn’t find Cassie’s puppy. She and Pee Wee tore the mountain apart and along about noon they found the poor little thing. Dead. Shot through the heart, just like it was human. And what do you suppose was lying beside it?”

  “Perley’s gun,” Mark said wearily. “And no fingerprints.”

  “Nothing. No footprints either, and it was sandy there. Everybody’s in a panic. It was such a small, mean thing to do. Just a fat little puppy that never hurt anybody. Perley says what’s the next move?”

  “There isn’t one. Sit tight. I’ll be in on the train that gets to Baldwin at six a.m. What are you doing at the hotel?”

  “Perley called me up. When I heard about the little dog I thought it was a part of the Cassidy cycle, so I came. I’ve got a room in the main building. I don’t like anything about this, Mark, but I’m not worrying about myself. I have a gun of my own, as you may remember, and there’s a modest legend about my shooting.”

  “Where’s Bessy?”

  “That brandy came. The Caldwell girls—wouldn’t you know it? She’s with them. What do you want me to do tonight?”

  “If you’re honestly not afraid, I wish you’d move into Roberta’s room. And stay awake! The return of Perley’s gun looks as if our pal wants us to think he’s satisfied. But I don’t know. Tell Perley and Amos to patrol the grounds and hotel. And if either of them takes a nap, it’ll be his last. Try to make it look like ordinary routine. Watch out for panic and step on it. I guess that’s all.”

  “Mark? I don’t want to say too much because there’s a steady procession walking by this booth, and how do I know somebody can’t read lips, but—did you get anything?”

  He thought quickly She was constant, faithful, and reliable, but she had one secret vice. She thought she was a lone wolf. If he gave her a hint she’d run away with it. She’d start asking what she believed were veiled questions, beginning with the chef and working up to old Sutton, and that would be too bad because she wouldn’t live to tell him who answered.

  “No,” he said. “That is to say, practically no.”

  “You’re lying,” she said without rancor.

  “Good-by,” he said. “Have Perley meet me in Baldwin.” He hung up before she could invite herself.

  He felt a little better when he went upstairs to his apartment. There was a lot to be said in favor of Beulah in the Mountain House. Nobody there kn
ew her too well. She was mildly rich, which would circumvent the snobs, and so respectable in appearance that she was sometimes painful to look at. And she wouldn’t miss a thing. He was even willing to bet that some unmerciful instinct would lead her directly to Franny Peck’s love letters. He felt a twinge of pity for Franny.

  He changed his clothes and went out again, this time on a shopping tour that took him through five upper bracket delicatessens and two gilded black markets. He finally found what he wanted and paid for it with tears in his eyes. He also visited a music store. Then, after a late supper, he took his train. At midnight he was rolling north with high hopes built on two inconspicuous parcels done up in brown paper. He took out his notes and read them.

  He had the names of three people who had been certified as incurably insane in nineteen-thirty, and the names meant nothing These three were presumably alive, as their records did not say otherwise. Two were men; one would be eighty-five, if living, and the other fifty-one. The third was a woman whose birth certificate had not been available Her age, as given by her brother, had been twenty-two at the time of her admission. She’d be thirty-six now.

  The older man had been removed by his daughter to a private sanitarium outside Philadelphia. Five years later the hospital had made a routine check; he had been moved again, and there his history ended.

  The younger man had been transferred to a state institution, and after two years of exemplary behavior had been allowed to go home to his family. Also, the institution admitted, his bed had been needed for a new patient. His home was in New York City. The final notation on the record said that the family had left town, address unknown.

  The woman, while incurable, was passably dangerous only to herself. Her brother had convinced the authorities that he was able to care for her. He had taken her to a small town in the west. Neither town nor state was identified.

  But here the obscurity ended and the psychiatrist entered. Nothing had escaped this man’s eyes, nothing had been too trivial for listing in black and white. It was almost as if he had known how desperately his diagnosis would be needed some day. He had shrewdly and sympathetically analyzed each case, and his findings had been taken down by Mary Cassidy.

  In each of the three cases there was one arresting similarity, the emotional conflict between patient and next of kin. In each one, a fanatical love or hate had met with indifference or antipathy.

  Mark remembered how those stories had looked, written down in Mary Cassidy’s neat, characterless script. He remembered the heavy underscoring. The man who had dictated those reports had wanted to call attention to the danger signals, and Mary Cassidy had drawn those heavy lines because she had been told to. And she’d never forgotten.

  The older man had hated his daughter, and she, in turn, had worshiped him. The younger man had hated his mother, who came to see him every day and who sat beside his bed and wept and prayed audibly. The woman, who was a young girl then, had groveled when her brother came into the ward. Once, when he was leaving and she was begging him to stay, she put her hand in one of his pockets and drew out two theater ticket stubs. She had nearly killed him then, and after that he’d been told to stay away. But he’d returned the next week with his own doctor, and they’d taken her home. Mary Cassidy had seen all of that and much more. And she’d worried.

  Mark closed the notebook with a feeling of dismay.

  It was already Friday, the day old Sutton had called the deadline. Mary Cassidy had disappeared the Friday before, and he, the seven-day wonder, was expected to deliver by midnight. He loosened his tie and rearranged the deadline. She’d been found on Sunday. He’d do his adding from that. And if he didn’t have a definite lead by Sunday midnight he’d take young Nick into protective custody. That would start something.

  His mind returned to the unfinished business in Bear River. There were other backgrounds to check; the Reverend Mr. Walters, the Moresbys, the Briggs pair. And Mabel Homesdale. Something might be dragged up from the bottom of Mabel’s cluttered little head. Mabel may have collected more than rumpled linen and silver foxes when she sauntered in and out of the Mountain House rooms. And Mabel’s sanitarium. Had Mary Cassidy gone there?

  Perley could handle all of that. He knew these people. They’d talk to him. And if there were any strait-jackets in the family closets he’d know who wore them and when. The Reverend Mr. Walters might give a little trouble, but the whole thing would keep Perley busy, if not happy.

  He knew he had to go easy with Perley. Perley was a holy terror with chicken thieves and illegal hunters, but the possibilities of this case would reduce him to a useless jelly. In his frightened innocence he would be a danger to himself. No, better keep the facts under cover and let Perley hound the probably harmless natives with a few mildly upsetting questions. It would be enough if he could put the fear of God into Miss Homesdale.

  Between cat naps and long drinks of judiciously flavored water he managed to get through the night.

  Perley was waiting on the platform at Baldwin. It was only six o’clock, but a burning red sun battled with low hanging clouds, and the wooden platform dripped with moisture. Perley’s clothes clung to his thin frame and he hadn’t shaved.

  “Am I glad to see you!” he groaned. “Get in the car.” He looked ready to cry. “What did you find out?”

  “Tell you later. Why haven’t we done something about Mabel’s sanitarium?”

  “Because the man we want don’t spend his life in bed, that’s why! They’re all half-dead out there. What are you getting at?”

  “I want to see the place. Now.”

  To Perley’s frenzied expostulations and demands to know more, he simply replied that the idea had come to him on the train. “It’s the only stone we haven’t turned over, that’s all. It’ll take you a little out of your way of course, but if you don’t want to drive me—”

  Perley swung the car around. “Consumptives,” he muttered. “Can’t even walk.” Then, “Maybe Miss Cassidy was a consumptive nurse? That it?”

  “You’re getting warm.”

  They drove through the tall iron gates and up to the front door. Mark asked to see the head resident. The doctor was out of town, he was told; would Matron do? He said she would, and she came almost at once. She made no attempt to conceal her curiosity and annoyance.

  Mark asked if she had heard about the Cassidy murder in Bear River. She said she had, and waited for him to go on. Had Miss Cassidy ever visited the sanitarium? She couldn’t say. Strangers sometimes came and walked about the grounds, but only relatives were allowed inside. She emphasized that. Only relatives, she repeated, at proper visiting hours. She looked at her watch, pointedly, and transferred her gaze to Perley’s unshaven chin. Mark decided that he didn’t like her.

  “Police business,” he said crisply. “Sheriff Wilcox and I would like to look the place over. Routine only. We’ll be quiet.”

  With elaborate courtesy she turned them over to an orderly and left them.

  There was nothing much to see and too much to hear. For ten long minutes they tiptoed up and down aseptic corridors, trying not to see the trays of white enamel basins, trying not to hear the intermittent silence that was louder than the faint, recurring sounds. They were glad to reach the stifling air outside.

  The orderly waited patiently.

  “What’s that?” Mark pointed to a row of bungalows in the rear, half hidden in shrubbery.

  “Special care,” grinned the orderly. “Special money.”

  They strolled over. “Only one occupied now,” the orderly went on. “Number four. You can’t go in. Treatment going on.”

  Mark looked in the window of number four. He saw white figures bending over a bed and heard a strangling cry. Perley plucked at his sleeve. “Come on,” he whispered. “Haven’t you got any heart?”

  They returned to the car and drove toward home.

  “Satisfied, I hope,” Perley said bitterly. “I feel sick myself. What do you want me to do next? Rob a grave?”<
br />
  Mark didn’t answer at once. Then, “No. The next job is right up your alley. I want the private histories of the Walters, Briggs, Moresby, and Homesdale families. Very hush-hush. You’re looking for somebody who went away from home for a long visit, about thirteen or fourteen years ago.”

  “Am I? How long did they stay away?”

  “A year. Maybe more, maybe less. I’ll give you an example. If somebody tells you papa’s youngest sister went to California in twenty-nine and stayed longer than she meant to, you make a note of it.”

  “You’re on the wrong track again, Mark. Nobody’s been to California. Only to Virginia, and he died.”

  “Unless you saw the body, don’t believe he’s dead. Now concentrate. We want somebody, man or woman, who had a little private trouble and went away to get rid of it. Somebody, let’s say, who had to take the cure on the q.t., or do a stretch in jail, or get out of marrying the girl. See?”

  Perley nodded. “Yep. I see. Somebody who’d feel disgraced if the truth got out. Nope. Not here. I’ve known these folks from the cradle up.”

  “How about Walters? He’s new.”

  “Walters!”

  “Why not? Where did he come from before he came here?”

  “Rhode Island. And if you think I’m going to talk like that to a man of God, you’re crazy. And don’t go quoting me the names of preachers who got hung!”

  “I’ll ask Amos to do it.”

  Perley looked offended. “All right. But how’m I going to go about it? With Walters, I mean. Walk right up to him after church on Sunday and say—‘Thanks for the lovely sermon and were any of your folks ever drunkards, jailbirds, or you-know-what?’”

  “Call up his Rhode Island church, confidentially. If he turns out innocent, it’ll only make him glamorous. If he’s guilty, everybody will love you for finding it out. And go after Mabel Homesdale, hard. She was around the hotel early in the summer, and although she wasn’t at the church supper she might have been on the outskirts, in the dark.” This was missionary work, pure and simple. He felt that George’s future would be happier if Miss Homesdale’s present took a slight beating. “Ask her what she’s been doing every night since Friday.”