by Q. Patrick
“I’ve told you once before that I don’t attach any importance to that face-at-the-window stuff. As for the barn, I don’t believe for a moment that it was done by the same person who did the other things.”
“That’s a change in policy, isn’t, it?” I took a long pull at my mint julep.
“Well, it’s like this, Dr. Swanson. Criminals are creatures of habit like you and me. In any chain of murders you usually find that the same little tricks crop up time and time again. It often happens that this repetition is the undoing of the man—like it was in the case of that English fellow who killed all his wives by drowning them in bathtubs. Anyhow, a man who stabs doesn’t often shoot—a professional burglar never kills except in self-defense. Our criminal has original ideas of murder. He’d never sink to anything so clean-cut as arson.”
“Very pretty, Bracegirdle, but who fired the barn then?”
“Between you and me, I think it was one of the villagers. When things go wrong in a community, the simple folk are very apt to blame it on the richest man in the place. Dumb and unreasoning, of course, but Mr. Alstone’s none too popular in these parts.”
“So you think they were just taking it out on him, eh?”
The deputy nodded.
“Well,” I continued, “you may or may not be right, but you haven’t yet brought forward a particle of real evidence to show that Toni was mixed up in all this.”
Bracegirdle rose to the fireplace and knocked out his pipe.
“I haven’t told you everything yet, Dr. Swanson, and when I’ve finished what I’m going to say, I’m sure you’ll agree that I have some grounds to go on. Let’s forget the Baineses for a while and confine ourselves to the night of the coonhunt, which, so we believe at present, was also the night that Gerald Alstone was murdered.”
“All right.”
“As you know, Dr. Conti did not go on the coon-hunt. The servants’ evidence showed that he stuck around the house for a while and then went out. My belief is that he returned to the Alstones’ just before Gerald came back from Grindle Meadow. You remember Hall heard the boy talking to someone and didn’t know whether or not he was telephoning? Well, we know he did not finish his call to the hospital, so he was probably interrupted by Dr. Conti. Perhaps they had a fight, and Gerald was shot. Dr. Conti carried him out to his car just before the others returned. Then he drove home. Yes, I’ve checked up on that, too. Your colored maid says he got back at about eleven-thirty—roughly the time Mrs. Baines saw that car go by.”
He paused, but I nodded to him to go on.
“Well, you can imagine how he felt when he put the car away and found the body missing. You yourself have told me that you have to twist and turn to get into that garage of yours. It was quite a logical place for the body to drop off. Remember it was snowing hard and the corpse would have sunk pretty deeply in the drift. He would have been unlikely to have seen it even though it was so close at hand. He couldn’t have guessed at what point in the ride home the rope got broken. Anyhow, he realizes he has to give himself an alibi, so he drives back to the Alstones’ house and parks his car where it had been before. By this time other cars are milling about and no one notices him.”
“But, what about Miss Middleton?” I asked. “She was in his car when I went to get mine.”
“I checked up on her movements, too. She stayed behind in the house for quite a while after the guests had gone. Then she went out and sat in the car, thinking quite naturally that it had been there all the time. It was a clever trick.”
“But where was he all the while she was waiting? Why didn’t he show up and take her home?”
“I think I can answer that, too. He was within a few feet of you both. He was doing something which one of my men caught him doing again this morning. He was looking about in the snow for the gun with which he shot Gerald Alstone and which he had either dropped or thrown away a short time earlier.”
“Good God! you mean that someone actually found him there this morning?”
“Yes, Dr. Swanson.” The deputy’s voice was grave. “And what is more, they found the gun within a few yards of where he had been looking for it—behind the stable where Dr. Conti’s car was parked that night.”
“The gun!”
“The.32 revolver that was missing from the rack in the gun-room. Mr. Alstone has identified it. Unless I am much mistaken, it is the gun with which Gerald was shot. You see, sir, it was imbedded in the snow and we might never have found it except for the thaw—and Dr. Conti!”
“It’s a plant, Bracegirdle. I can’t believe that Toni—there must be some mistake.”
“Well, Doctor, if he didn’t do the shooting, how did he know where to look for the gun? And that’s not all, either. The report of our finger-print man came through today, and he found Dr. Conti’s all over the gun-room.”
“That’s nothing. He probably found mine too—and yours.”
“He did.” Bracegirdle’s voice was very low. “But almost all the marks left by Dr. Conti happened to be bloodstained. Why, even on the door handle—”
I jumped from my chair and for a moment Bracegirdle and I looked each other in the eyes. Had it been any other man in the world, I think I might have said things which I would afterward have regretted. I did not—could not—believe that Toni was guilty, and yet, there was something about the deputy—his clear eyes, his calm, unruffled tone—that convinced me in spite of myself. Convinced me, that is, of the reasonableness of his theory. Common sense told me that the prognosis for Toni was decidedly poor. How much worse would it have been had Bracegirdle known about the piece of stained rope which Valerie had handed me that morning and which still seemed to burn a hole in my pocket!
“Well, Dr. Swanson, now you know all about it, what would you advise? Should I serve my warrant on Dr. Conti as the D.A. suggests?”
“Warrant! You’ve actually got one with you?”
“Yes, but I don’t need to serve it right away. If, for example, you, as a friend of mine, know anything that could prove me wrong, I’d trust you, Dr. Swanson. And I wouldn’t blame you if you’d been keeping back any information.”
My brain seemed to be reeling. I had been drinking pretty steadily before and since the deputy arrived, and any concrete idea that I might or might not have had was by this time spinning away in fumes of alcohol. One thing was certain, however. I must play for time.
“There’s nothing I can tell you now,” I said, “but, if you’ll give me twenty-four hours, I think—perhaps—there are several things that are worrying me, and I might be able to do something when my head’s clearer.”
Bracegirdle nodded soberly.
“Don’t serve that warrant,” I went on, “till tomorrow night—say, at ten o’clock. That gives me a whole day. And don’t question Dr. Conti any more than you can help. I know him pretty well and I’m sure there’s some reason why he’s not being frank. Leave him to me.”
“Well, Doctor, the district attorney is getting worried.”
“Oh, I’ll be responsible for Toni. You said you could trust me.”
“I’m not bothered about that, Dr. Swanson. He couldn’t get far.” Bracegirdle smiled a trifle grimly. “I’ve been having someone keep an eye on him for the past few days.”
He rose to his feet and held out his hand.
I took it—doubtfully.
Chapter XIII
After Bracegirdle had left, I sat alone in the living-room, wondering—a little drunkenly—what to do. I had twenty-four hours in which to disentangle the web of suspicion that chance had so insidiously wound about Toni. My task seemed as hopeless as it was melodramatic. During the past few weeks, I had let myself be swept along in the current of events without troubling to interpret or deduce. I found myself now left stranded with neither theory nor clue. In my talk with Bracegirdle I had told him there were several things that worried me about the case, but it was difficult to put my finger on any one event around which my suspicions could be crystallized. Apart from the piece of rop
e, there was only one fact I possessed which was unknown to Bracegirdle—our discovery of the parked automobile in which Roberta and her mysterious male friend—later presumed to be Seymour Alstone—had been quarreling.
This was as good a starting point as any other. Despite the mint juleps I found, strangely enough, that the snatches of overheard conversation came back to me with singular clearness—“He wouldn’t stop at anything if I told him. He’s jealous, vindictive” … “You know what’ll happen if you don’t. You’re a jelly-fish, a goddamn spineless jelly-fish!” … “Of course he’s crazy. That’s what makes him so dangerous!” It was difficult to make much sense out of these incoherent remarks, but they did have a tendency to prove that Roberta knew something which, so far, she had not divulged to the police. My best bet, I supposed drearily, was to have a little visit with the resplendent Mrs. Tailford-Jones next morning and tell her bluntly that her rendezvous in the wood had been observed. It was just possible that some sort of a confession could be frightened out of her. At any rate, there would be a certain piquancy in turning the tables upon a person who had been so unscrupulous in her accusations of others.
Though I was up early next morning, Toni was ahead of me. He had gone to Rhodes leaving a verbal message with Lucinda that he had important work to do at the hospital and was going to beg, borrow or steal a lift.
Glad, in a sense, that he was out of the way, I ate my Sunday breakfast alone and then went off along the dripping lanes in search of Roberta.
A disdainful maid showed me into the living-room where blasts of steam heat made the atmosphere both unwholesome and uncomfortable. She informed me that Mrs. Tailford-Jones was still dressing. If I would care to wait, however, her mistress would soon be down. I waited half an hour, at the end of which time my temper was none too good. The sight of Roberta herself in a flaming red peignoir did not improve matters. She was heavily made up, and her scarlet drooping mouth looked like a freshly opened incision.
She was obviously curious to know the reason for my visit. Her slightly proturberant eyes regarded me with a half hostile, half contemptuous stare.
“Well, Dr. Swanson,” she said, as she draped herself carefully across the settee, “and what can I do for you?”
“A lot,” I said tersely.
A look of suspicion crept into her eyes.
“Just what do you mean by that?”
“I mean that I think you know something and I want you to tell me what it is.”
“And since when have you been in a position to order me about?”
I passed a hand through my hair.
“Listen, Mrs. Tailford-Jones,” I began patiently, “things have got to the stage where innocent people are being accused of crimes they could not possibly have committed. I think that you as much as anyone—”
“If you’re referring to that half-wit friend of yours, Mark Baines,” she said acidly, “I’ll tell you right here and now that I think it’s an excellent thing for us all that he’s locked up and out of the way. It was a crying scandal that he was allowed about as long as he was.”
“I didn’t come here to pick a quarrel,” I said, trying to keep my temper. “I came here to ask your cooperation. It is of vital importance that we all get together and thrash this thing out. I think you know something—I may be wrong—but I ask you in all humility to rack your brains and tell me if you know anything that may have some bearing on this case—anything that hasn’t so far been brought to light.”
Roberta lifted her head and straightened the scarlet cushions. “A very pretty speech, Dr. Swanson! But I still don’t see what you’re driving at. If you’re trying to pump me, however, believe me, you won’t succeed.”
“I’m sorry you’re taking this attitude, Mrs. Tailford-Jones,” I said quietly. “You force me into being unpleasant.”
“I’ve never noticed that you need much forcing.”
“Well, that makes it easier, doesn’t it? It may interest you to know that I saw a car driving across the fields toward the disused road on the night that Mr. Alstone’s setter disappeared. I followed it to the crest of the hill.” Here I employed theory as fact. “And there I saw it parked in a small wood by the side of the disused road.”
Roberta picked up a cigarette.
“Well?”
“Lacking the finer feelings of a gentleman, I listened to a conversation that was going on in that car. I heard one voice only. It was yours.”
“Eavesdropping is just the sort of thing you’d expect from someone who spends his life torturing dumb animals,” she said with sudden ferocity.
“I hate to have to bring other people into this,” I continued, “but Dr. Conti happened to be listening, too. You were talking to a man. And you were having a quarrel. I don’t know what it was all about, but I do know that you were in one of the Alstones’ cars.”
Roberta was obviously becoming uncomfortable under this inquisition. I decided to adopt the well-worn tactics of trying to sting her into admission by some obvious improbability.
“I suspect,” I went on mendaciously, “that you were with Gerald that night. I suspect that something happened between you which may be of extreme importance in this case. Gerald was killed, you know, not long after. It would possibly interest the police if I told them what I heard.”
Roberta’s eyes were blazing. She rose to her feet, crushing the cigarette with a scarlet-nailed finger.
“Gerald! You think I was with Gerald? That little sissy? You insult me.”
“I insult you, as you so quaintly put it, because my room-mate happens to have a warrant out against him for that ‘tittle sissy’s’ murder!”
“You’re lying!” Roberta’s face was the color of a gravestone. “You’re absolutely crazy!”
“So that interests you, does it?” I said “Bracegirdle’s going to arrest him this evening unless we can produce evidence to prove he’s wrong.”
Roberta sank back on the settee, this time completely regardless of effect. In the five years of our acquaintance,
I hadn’t realized her capable of such emotion. I had certainly never suspected her of having any sentimental feeling for Toni. She had always been at her most alluring with him, but I had supposed the seductive glances and the hand-clingings to be nothing more than an instinctive Roberta reaction to six feet four of he-manhood.
“What have they got against him?” she asked quickly.
“Plenty,” I replied. “I can’t tell you the actual facts because Bracegirdle told me in confidence—but they’ve got enough to convict him unless we can find out something new. Now will you tell me why you were in that car?”
My question seemed to help her recover her poise. She drew herself up and gave me a scornful look.
“Gerald, indeed!” she snapped. “You fool, it was Franklin. That moron has been chasing after me for years. You must be a pretty bum detective if you didn’t realize that the Alstones have five cars.”
“What were you doing?”
She adopted an air of injured innocence.
“It’s no business of yours, but if it helps Toni any—we were having a private chat.”
“What about?”
“About—er—Queenie.”
“What about Queenie?”
She threw me a spiteful glance.
“If you really want to know, I was trying to get Franklin to make Seymour take the whole matter up with the hospital authorities. You know what I think about you, Dr. Swanson, and your habit of murdering animals—”
“Don’t let’s go into that now,” I interrupted. “What did Franklin say?”
“Oh, just what you’d expect. He’s too darned scared of old Alstone to do anything.”
“So just for that,” I said, laughing, “you called him a spineless jelly-fish!”
She shrugged her shoulders and pulled the red peignoir more tightly around her.
“And to whom did you refer, Mrs. Tailford-Jones, when you said: ‘He’s jealous, vindictive. He wouldn’t st
op at anything if I told him’?”
“If you can’t guess, you’re more of a fool than I thought you were.”
“Well, let’s leave it at that. Did you drive to the wood over the fields?”
“Why on earth should we when there’s a perfectly good road?”
“What time did you get there?”
“I don’t know, but it was quite early.”
“Before eleven-thirty?”
“Yes. Edgar left for Lampson at about nine. I guess we must have gotten there around ten.”
“Did you see or hear another car pass close by you at any time during the evening?”
“I don’t remember.”
“You didn’t hear an animal howling?”
“I did not”
“Sure?”
“Yes.”
“There’s another point,” I continued, suddenly remembering something Bracegirdle had told me. “You drove to the Alstones’ on the night the barn burned down. You didn’t go to the house. Where did you go?”
“To see Franklin.”
“Where?”
“In the carpenter’s shop.”
“About the same business?”
“More or less.”
“And that’s all you know?”
She turned, her eyes dark with anger.
“Listen, Dr. Swanson. I’ve stood enough impertinence from you. You come into my house; cross-question me in my own living-room; treat me as though I were a criminal. I won’t stand for it any longer, I tell you. You’ve heard all I know. Now, get out!”
But I did not rise.
“Are you sure that is all?” I said quietly. “Remember, if you’re holding anything back, you’re making it all the worse for Toni.”
She got up and started pacing about the room, puffing fiercely at a cigarette. The peignoir bellied out behind her like a scarlet spider-web. Her voice, when she spoke, was curiously low.
“I’ve always disliked you, Dr. Swanson. Don’t think I haven’t noticed how you’ve been trying to get Toni away from me and foist him on that moon-faced Middleton girl. You’ve been fighting pretty hard, haven’t you? Well, you won’t succeed. And, what’s more, you can’t blame me if I did a bit of fighting back.”
