Time to Die

by Hilda Lawrence

  “You must have had yourself a time in New York,” Perley said admiringly. “Can’t you tell me a little more? I’ve been real patient so far.”

  “No.” Perley accepted this with so much humility that Mark weakened. “I mean I can’t tell you much. I’m sure the motive is buried in the past, and I’m pretty sure Miss Cassidy’s past is above reproach. That points to somebody around here who can’t show as clean a slate. I think Miss Cassidy caught on and was killed before she had a chance to spread the news.”

  “She wasn’t a gossipy woman, Mark.”

  “She didn’t have to be. The other person just wasn’t taking chances. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that the present Mrs. Briggs, when young and unmarried, went down to New York to have her appendix out. And suppose she turned up in the hospital where Miss Cassidy was a nurse. And suppose Miss Cassidy knew an appendix when she didn’t see one. We pause here for the passing of time. Then, years later, in the sleepy little town of Bear River, the now affluent Miss Cassidy runs into Mrs. Briggs for the second time and recognizes her under the layers of fat. And Mrs. Briggs knows Miss Cassidy, too. You see, Perley? It’s all a lie, of course, but you get the idea?”

  “You turn my stomach. . . . All right, I’ll start insulting people this morning. Mark, who took my gun and shot that little dog?”

  “Someone who hates Miss Cassidy even though she’s dead, and wants to wipe out everything she loved. Your gun was a piece of egoistic melodrama. I hope and think we’ll have more of it. No killing, just a bit of showing off. And one more dumb move like that and we’ve got him. . . . You went to sleep, didn’t you?”

  Perley admitted to a short nap, but he still couldn’t figure how the gun was taken. Amos had been awake and prowling, and he’d seen nothing and nobody. “There was an owl following him around though.”

  “A what?”

  “Owl.” He gave a graphic account. “Amos said it was human and durn if it didn’t sound like it. And”—he gave Mark an anxious look, eager to be believed—“and all the rest of the night I could feel somebody watching in the dark outside. Standing there, and watching in the dark.”

  Mark nodded. “Possible,” he admitted. He frowned. “Anything happen last night?”

  “Not a thing, except that everybody in the hotel was scared to death. But that didn’t last long. It was worse yesterday morning. Some folks were all for leaving, but I said they couldn’t. That was right, wasn’t it? We can’t have people walking out to the four winds, can we?”

  “We cannot. Who wanted to go?”

  “Mr. Kirby, some folks from Pittsburgh named Foote, and Miss Rayner. They claimed they were all going next week anyhow and tried to give me an argument. So I telephoned Miss Pond. I told her about the dog and all that, and she said leave it to her. So I did. She came right up and took a room, and in five minutes you wouldn’t have known the place. She carried on about the lovely air, in which you could have fried eggs, and taught everybody a game of solitaire that she said was called Idiot’s Delight. They stayed.”

  Mark swore softly. “Idiot’s Delight! Did anybody refuse to play?”

  “No. Why? You don’t look good.”

  “I don’t feel good. What’s the latest on Beacham and Miss Cassidy’s body?”

  “All settled. Undertaker’ll put it on the seven p.m. from Baldwin tonight. Beacham’s going down with it. He’s already made arrangements over the phone for cremation tomorrow. Then he says he’s coming back to pack up his family. You ought to hear him on death, but I guess you will.”

  “Got a new name for it?”

  “I wouldn’t say that. But he tells everybody how undignified it is and it beats me why he don’t drop dead from blasphemy. The Reverend Walters came up last night to talk to him, out of pure Christian kindness, and they tell me it was terrible. Miss Sheffield heard ’em. Do you know what that woman did?”

  “What?”

  “She gave Mr. Walters twenty-five dollars to have the well cleaned out, right in front of everybody. I kind of didn’t like that. Wouldn’t you say it showed a lack of feeling?”

  “No. Not from Cora. . . . Did Bittner call up?”

  “Not him. You still want that road watched?”

  “I certainly do! I wish I knew how much gas all these people have. Can you find out?”

  “I don’t have to find out,” Perley answered dryly. “I know. Nobody has any but Beacham.”

  Mark gave him a warning look. “All right, but don’t let your enthusiasm for a pinch run away with you. I don’t want Beacham questioned about a thing like that. Oil’s his business and I suppose he’s entitled to a little graft. If you want to be mean about it, wait until Sunday.”

  “Sunday? Why Sunday?”

  “Anniversary. If I haven’t got our ugly friend by Sunday midnight I’m going to lock up the first person who smiles at me.”

  Perley thought that over and gave it up. They rode along in silence. He took several sidelong looks at his companion and decided that the conversation was over.

  They entered Bear River. The town was still asleep except for a straggling line of mill workers heading for the bus to Baldwin. There were men and women in the line and they looked tired, dirty, and unnecessarily evil in the murky light.

  Mark watched the shambling gaits, the stooping shoulders, the vacant faces. I wish it was one of them, he said to himself. Then he said, “Stop at your house, will you, Perley? I want a bath and some sleep before I face the Mountain House. Nobody’ll be up there for hours.”

  Perley beamed. Hospitality was one thing he understood and enjoyed. “Pansy’ll give you a good breakfast. She’ll be glad to see you. And while you’re there, I’ll tackle her on Hazel. That’s Mrs. Moresby. Her own cousin. It’ll be a waste of time and it’ll make Pansy mad, but you asked for it.” His laughter was almost normal. “Hazel taught school down state for a while; she was away two years. But that was less than five years ago and she boarded with relatives. Still, it’s going to make Pansy mad. And Hazel’s folks have been dead a long time. She’s an orphan.”

  “Too many whole and half orphans in this case. What did the folks die of?”

  “Dunno. I’ll ask Pansy.”

  They parked at the front gate and went in the back way. Pansy was in the kitchen with her hair hanging in two neat braids.

  “Have you no shame?” she hissed at Perley. She grappled with the braids. “I’m a living sight. How are you, Mr. East? You look done in. Isn’t New York terrible? I’m glad you went yourself instead of sending Perley. Is it too hot for pancakes or would you rather have an omelet? Get along, an omelet’s no trouble.” She trotted to the icebox and brought out a bowl of eggs. “From Mama’s. Last night’s. You didn’t get eggs like this in New York. Perley and I went there on our honeymoon and I wouldn’t touch an egg the whole time because I couldn’t be sure.”

  Mark turned his back to Perley. “What year was your honeymoon, Pansy?”

  “Let’s see. Floyd’s thirteen. That makes it nineteen-thirty.”

  “I can account,” Perley said, “for every minute. Get on with your cooking, Pansy.” Then, casually, “By the way, Mark thinks Hazel Moresby is a lovely girl.”

  “And so she is,” Pansy agreed, cracking eggs. “But discontented.”

  “What did her parents die of?”

  “Die of?” She gave her husband a startled look. “Pneumonia. Everybody died of it then. What’s the matter with you?”

  “Nothing,” Perley said. “Mark was only wondering. Did they have a nurse?”

  “No they didn’t! Poor people couldn’t get nurses then. It was a long time ago. I think you’ve got a touch of the heat or else you’re making fun of my family “

  She cooked and served breakfast with a hurt expression that was very becoming. Several times she opened her mouth to say something and each time she closed it with a snap. Finally she said, “I’m not going to have my son follow in his father’s footsteps. It’s very coarsening, and I’ve already done somet
hing about it. The minute I heard about that little dog I sent Floyd out to Mama’s to stay. If somebody’s going around shooting animals then I say let it be some other mother’s son.” She made a dignified exit, marred only by two swinging pigtails.

  “Let her go,” Perley said. “I’ll fix it later.”

  It was nearly noon when Mark walked across the Mountain House lawn. Perley had driven him as far as the gates and then returned to town.

  The Mountain House was waiting for him and he wondered whose heart, if any, had beat a little faster when he’d failed to arrive at the expected hour. Once again the rocking chairs on the crowded veranda grew silent and the voices subsided. He sent a triumphant smile along the line of rigid figures and was rewarded with a single burst of sudden, shrill laughter.

  Cracking up? he wondered. Probably not. Some woman always laughed like that in the face of tragedy. Take a street accident, a bad one; some woman on the curb always laughed like that before she screamed.

  But the watchful crowd of unmoving figures disturbed him. Not one of them was on his list of suspects; still the old, uneasy feeling returned and he wondered again whether Mary Cassidy had left the church grounds and gone for a walk in town. And met someone.

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw two people hastily leave their chairs and go indoors. He recognized them as the self-styled Footes. Poor devils, he thought; they’re finding out the hard way that their particular pleasure is the world’s most overrated pastime. He’d give them a kind word later on, and maybe he’d drive them to the train himself.

  A page came running from the hotel to take his bag, but he sent him away and moved on. His own little crowd was out under the trees, grouped around old man Sutton and the attentive George. With the exception of Joey and Pee Wee, no one was missing, and there was an addition, obviously unwelcome, in the gaunt shape of Beulah. She sat erect, with a piece of snarled knitting in her hands, looking as if she held the keys to life and death. The ability to look like that at the drop of a hat was one of her less endearing accomplishments. He wondered why she hadn’t been killed for it. Sometimes he’d been tempted himself.

  There was an empty chair which George eagerly pushed forward. They greeted him with smiles and nods, all as false as penny masks. He had another thought, one that appalled him. They all looked guilty enough to be innocent.

  “New York was hot, too,” he said with complete safety. “But I like it. I don’t know why I ever left it in the first place.”

  “Miss Cassidy is probably wondering the same thing,” Beulah said piously.

  He would certainly kill her, he promised himself. The look he gave her said as much. That self-conscious, silly quip had hardly left her mouth when he saw and felt the tension change to patronizing amusement. And he didn’t want it that way. Suddenly, he was furious; with Beulah because she’d struck the wrong note, with the Beachams and the Pecks because they were too well-dressed, with Cora and Kirby because they acted as if they were slumming, with the two Suttons because they looked at him as if he ought to be under a glass bell, and with Miss Rayner because she was trying not to laugh. The only person he liked was George, and that was because George gave him a covert wink. He decided to fire one small shot, and if it went around the world that would be fine.

  “I talked to a friend of yours, George,” he said. “A kid in the bar at your place. About eighteen, with his hair in his eyes.”

  “Mike!” exploded George.

  Beacham turned an offended face and raised his eyebrows.

  “Mike,” George said again, turning a rich red. “I mean Mike is his name. It’s my friend’s name, Mike, this fellow in the bar.” He made a final, desperate attempt to straighten out the social order. “Mike is a common name,” he said earnestly, and returned to his role of valet with relief.

  Nick bent over his grandfather. “Mr. East is trying to tell us that he stopped at our house and asked questions,” he said distinctly.

  The old man, who was himself again, broke into a laugh that sounded like the rattle of dry bones. “I wonder why Ernescu didn’t throw you out?”

  “If that’s the manager, he tried to.” Mark smiled. “But he changed his mind.” He went on, “What’s the program for today? Riding, driving, golf?”

  Beacham cleared his throat. “The sky looks threatening. And frankly, most of us don’t feel up to the usual routine. We didn’t get much sleep last night. You’ve been informed of the—gun affair?”

  He’s frightened, Mark thought. He doesn’t talk like that ordinarily. These big shots always get pompous when they feel the ground giving way.

  “Yes, I heard about it,” he said. “It’s nothing to worry about. I’m sorry for Joey, though. She was fond of that pup.”

  “Nothing to worry about!” Beacham’s voice rose. “It was an exhibition of rank carelessness! You don’t see me leaving guns on window sills! If you go away again, East, I shall insist on more competent guards.”

  “I’m not going away again,” Mark said, “until I go for good. And Wilcox and Partridge weren’t careless. Ten guards armed to the teeth couldn’t have saved that puppy.”

  Miss Rayner nodded. “I know,” she said. “I found that so interesting. So very interesting that I gave myself the little chore of watching the fire escape. Last night.” She sent a faint smile around the circle; it deepened when it came to Beulah. “You had the same idea, didn’t you, Miss Pond? That was you I saw climbing in and out of a third floor window?”

  Beulah looked affronted “I didn’t see you,” she said sharply.

  “Naturally, my dear. I didn’t want to be seen.”

  “At your age,” Beulah said, “and with your leg.”

  Mark took the conversation into his own hands. “Where’s young Joey?” he asked Beacham.

  “I don’t know. I never know where she is any more. Where is she, Roberta?”

  “She and Pee Wee went off together. They didn’t say where they were going, and I didn’t ask.”

  Franny sighed. “Those two! Always whispering! I don’t like secrets. I don’t think they’re nice.”

  Cora Sheffield guffawed. “Whahoo!”

  This time Franny reddened. Archie gave Cora a thoughtful look, but he didn’t say anything. It was a long, appraising look that went from her grizzled blonde hair to her sturdy white oxfords. When he turned to Mark his eyes were blank. “What do you say to the Peck family going down with Beacham tonight?” he said quietly. “We can get ready. Franny’s shot to pieces.”

  Mark knew what his answer would be but he waited before he gave it. Franny did look shot to pieces, and the change had been almost instantaneous. The skin of that carefully treasured face had wrinkled like a bowl of thick cream.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “But I turned up a few things in New York that make that impossible. Much better for all of us if we stay here together.” He repeated, “All of us.”

  “You ought to tell us what you know,” Archie said. “You ought to warn us what to look for. Give us some kind of an idea. You could tell Mike, you ought to tell him. You act as if you expected something else to happen and if that’s true, why then we’ve got the right to know what it is. You can’t expose us to—to danger. I’m going to get me a lawyer!”

  “Don’t force Wilcox to hold you all as material witnesses,” Mark advised. “That will be worse than sitting under a tree all day. Mr. Beacham, will you come inside? I want to talk to you privately.”

  Beacham got up and walked to the cottage without replying. Once indoors, he turned on Mark furiously.

  “I told you to cross Peck off your list!” he said. “What are you trying to do, pin something on him? You’ll turn him into a nervous wreck and then he’ll be no use to me! We’ve got a deal coming up soon. I need him.”

  “I wasn’t thinking about Peck, or anybody in particular. I wish I were, but I haven’t reached that stage. Do you want to hear what I found out?”

  “Go on. You’ll only tell me about half, or a third. I kno
w you fellows. But go on.”

  “I’ll give you more than half. I know what Miss Cassidy went down to New York for. The caretaker business was only a small part of it. Actually she went down to check the records in her old hospital.” He told as much as he dared. “She went because she recognized somebody, suddenly. An old patient, or a member of the patient’s family. I don’t think physical resemblance had anything to do with it, I think it was a mannerism, or a trick of speech, that suddenly cropped out. You can hide those things for years, you know, and then—bang. Out in the open. I copied a lot of stuff from the records she was interested in. I’ve even memorized it.”

  Beacham was unimpressed and showed it. “Patients! Relatives! You’re crazy!”

  “Not me. That’s somebody else. She wasn’t always a baby nurse, you know. At one time she had a ward full of lunatics. Beginning to get the drift?”

  Beacham stopped his pacing. “She didn’t tell me that,” he said slowly. “She didn’t say a word about that. . . . I don’t believe you.”

  “I have the information in my pocket.”

  “Names?” There was something in Beacham’s voice that might have been reluctance.

  “Yes.” Mark reached in his pocket for the notebook, changed horses in midstream, and brought out a cigarette instead. Not even Miss McKenna knew those three disputed and apparently useless names, and he suddenly realized that they must stay as they were, unknown and hidden from general knowledge. True, Beacham might recognize one of them; he might be able to tear away the fog with a single word, uncover, in one minute, an original identity now lost in a shuffle of remarriage or adoption. And then again, he might not. He might know at once who had stalked Mary Cassidy with a toy in his hand, and say nothing. The killer might mean more to him than Mary Cassidy ever had. What did old Albert Shaw say about people keeping their mouths shut where crime was concerned? “Even respectable people, even when it would save a chap.” Shaw knew.