Album

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

  Except for those opened windows and what they suggested, the Crescent had resumed its normal appearance. The curious crowd had gone from the gate; hereafter it would follow our story in the newspapers and not on its feet. Reporters no longer lay in wait to trap us as we entered or left our houses. Even the guards were gone, and either the police were taking a Sunday holiday or the search in No Man’s Land had been abandoned.

  But if the front of the Crescent was quiet, the rear was not. The moment the cars had all departed it bloomed into life and activity. The maids sang or laughed, and after a time there was a gradual emergence from the houses, and a conversation apparently on the kitchen porch of the Dalton house, where I gathered that tea, and probably cake, was being served. Ellen from the Lancasters’ was the first to go, followed by our Mary, Annie being out that day. And before long the austere black-robed figure of Lizzie from the Talbots’ came into view along the path, and she too joined the party.

  The thing interested me. It was the first time I had seen our grapevine telegraph in full operation, and I watched it from the rear window of the upper hall. What did they talk about together, these servants of ours, so many of whom had lived with us for many years? What did they think? What did they know? For I was certain that they knew something, perhaps many things.

  What, for instance, did Mrs. Talbot’s Lizzie know about that strange locking up? Or the Daltons’ Joseph of that search a few nights before? Or about the quarrel which long ago had separated master and mistress?

  All this was running through my mind when I saw Mr. Dean emerge from across No Man’s Land, casually following the path and looking in his dark clothes very much indeed like a gentleman’s gentleman returning from a Sunday ramble. I saw him glance toward the Dalton porch and then look away; and I saw him finally reach our garage, well shielded from that porch, try the door to the staircase which leads to Holmes’s living quarters, find it locked, and then—sheltered from any but my observation by the shrubbery—take a key book from his pocket and carefully experiment with the lock. It was less than a minute until the door opened and he disappeared inside.

  St. Mark’s is well downtown, and I was confident that he had an hour at the least before Holmes would return. Nevertheless, I was relieved when in some ten minutes Mr. Dean reappeared, cautiously closed the door, which has a snap lock, and then entered the garage below. But all this was more than any anxiety could bear, so I snatched up my garden scissors and a basket and was in time to come almost face to face with him as he emerged. He touched his cap and greeted me cheerfully.

  “What! Not at church?”

  “I had a headache. Or a cold. I forget which.”

  He laughed at that, and glanced quickly toward the Dalton house.

  “Better cut some flowers,” he said, “and I’ll stand at a respectful distance. I don’t think they can see us, but they might. Your man Holmes is a pretty clever rascal, Miss Lou.”

  “Then it was a crime book?”

  “It was; it had to be. He has no other sort! By the way, you haven’t missed any glue from the house lately, have you?”

  I almost dropped the scissors.

  “We have indeed,” I told him. “Mary keeps some in the pantry, and she said yesterday it was gone.”

  He nodded, without surprise.

  “You have no idea when, I suppose?”

  “Some time in the last week.”

  But apparently he had no intention of explaining what he meant, and his next question surprised me.

  “This Daniels, the street cleaner,” he said. “He seems to have had a place back here where he burned his leaves, when he had too many of them. What about him? Pretty observant sort of chap?”

  “I don’t know. The servants say he is queer. I’ve thought of him already, Mr. Dean. But the police have looked him up; his uniform too, for stains. They couldn’t find anything. Anyhow, Holmes burned the pages of that book in the garage, on the cement floor. I saw the ashes this morning.”

  He showed no signs of disappointment, but he was clearly surprised when I told him about Miss Emily’s experience of the night before. He listened in his usual intent manner.

  “They’re after me,’” he repeated. “What did she mean by that, do you know?”

  “Not unless she thinks all this is the work of a gang of some sort.”

  “Nonsense! What sort of a gang?” he demanded. “No gang did this job.” Then he glanced toward the noise at the Daltons’.

  “How long is that likely to last?”

  “I don’t know. Probably until twelve. They’ll start then to cook the dinners.”

  He looked at his watch and nodded.

  “See here,” he said. “I’d like to get into the Lancaster house. I have Jim’s key and I’ve forty-five minutes. Who do you suppose is still there? Emily, of course. What servants?”

  “No servants. Peggy is out for the day and Jennie is off for church. Only Emily, and she’s’ probably asleep.”

  He looked at me with admiration.

  “Just like that!” he said. “The more I see of you all, the more I am filled with wonder at our criminal. Everything known to the smallest private detail, and yet—! Well, are you ready to chance it? I shall need a lookout, you know.”

  “I’ll come, of course. But if you are working with the police, why not do it openly, Mr. Dean? Suppose Emily is awake?”

  “I’ll take care of Emily. And I’m not working openly with the police, I can do more under cover, and they know it.”

  I was uneasy, but the thing turned out to be simplicity itself. On any indication that the meeting at the Daltons’ was over I was to ring the front doorbell as a warning. Then before Ellen had had time to return Mr. Dean would be out of the house. In the meantime I was to wander about the rear of the Lancaster property, ready to give the alarm.

  It worked perfectly. No sounds of excitement came from within the house. I wandered about, first in the garden, then gradually reaching the kitchen porch. There I finally settled myself on the doorstep, curled up like a cat in the warm sun. I heard a window raised above my head, and as cautiously lowered, but Emily evidently still slept and no one emerged along the grapevine path to indicate that the gathering at the Daltons’ was breaking up.

  Then, idly following an insect of some sort as it crawled along the edge of the house wall, my eyes fell on a smallish round object underneath the dining room window, and I found myself staring at it. It lay in a wash of sand and gravel from Thursday night’s heavy rain, and it looked not unlike a bit of rock itself, half buried as it was.

  I got up and was stooping over it when Mr. Dean spoke, just beside me.

  “So you’ve found it,” he said calmly. “Well, don’t touch it. Can you get me a trowel of some sort and a box? And we have only ten minutes, maybe less.”

  I took the hint and hurried back home. I dare say I was back in five minutes or so, but I was just in time. Louder voices from the Daltons’ told me that that unofficial investigation over tea and cake was over, and indeed Mr. Dean had just time to shovel up the glove and drop it earth and all into the box when I heard Ellen and Lizzie on the path. When they came into view, however, he had disappeared around the far corner of the house, and I was knocking vigorously at the kitchen door.

  Ellen came on a run.

  “I just slipped out for a minute, miss,” she panted. “Is there anything you want?”

  “Only to ask for Miss Emily. If she’s asleep I’ll not bother her.”

  That was at twelve o’clock, and I went back home to find a rather irritated Inspector Briggs ringing our doorbell.

  “Just began to think the whole Crescent had gone to church for absolution!” he said when he saw me. “I’d like to have a talk with you, Miss Hall. Something has come up, and I think maybe you’ll know.”

  I took him into Mother’s downstairs sitting room, which corresponds to the Lancasters’ morning room, and put him in a large chair. But he did not sit back in it. He sat on the edge, fumble
d in his breast pocket and brought out a letter.

  “Of course,” he said, “in a case of this kind we get anonymous letters. Everybody’s got an opinion and wants us to have it without getting mixed up in it. This is different. It comes from around here. It was mailed from the Liberty Avenue branch post office, for one thing; and—well, read it first.”

  I took it. It was printed in pencil on a ruled slip of paper such as comes in tablet form; not unlike the sort we keep about the house for menus and dinner lists, and it read as follows:

  “If you want to know who killed Mrs. Lancaster, ask her daughter Margaret. Ask her too who she has been meeting for the last few weeks at night near the woodshed. She has played a dirty game and ought to get caught. He has got the money, but she took it.”

  I put it down and stared at the Inspector, who was pinching his lip.

  “Well?” he said.

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. I’ll bank that she didn’t kill her mother; unless she’s even smarter than I think she is. We found no blood and no bloody clothes in that house. But Dalton’s different.”

  “Dalton!”

  “Sure. Dalton and she have been pretty thick for some little time. The back of the Crescent knew it if you didn’t. That letter probably came from one of the servants. Maybe one of yours! Remember, I’m not saying there was anything wrong about these meetings, but there you are. Now, if we suppose this Margaret was getting out the gold as fast as it went in, and notified Dalton that last day Wellington was coming for a sort of general audit, you get the idea.”

  “But her own mother!” I gasped.

  “Worse things in this business than that,” he observed. “Or as bad, anyhow. Every now and then some loving daughter blows up and there’s trouble. I’m not saying it’s true, and I have a pretty shrewd idea that you’re close-mouthed or I wouldn’t have told you. But you live here. You may know something. You may even have written that letter! Did you?”

  “No,” I said, feeling slightly dizzy. “Then that night after the murder Mrs. Dalton—”

  “Sure,” he agreed. “She’d got wind of something, and was on the hunt. For letters, very likely, and maybe for something else.”

  He got up.

  “That’s only theory, of course,” he said. “But don’t underestimate the passions of older people, young lady. They go to queer lengths sometimes, although you may not believe it. Funny thing,” he added, “how two intelligent people like that think they can carry on an affair and not have at least a dozen people know all about it. We got our first hint from this gardener, Eben; but I expect most of the servants about here know what’s been going on.”

  He went soon after that. I had said nothing about the finding of the glove, leaving that for Mr. Dean, and I gathered that the police were still at a loose end, especially as to the gold.

  “For most of that money was in gold,” he said. “A hundred and fifty pounds of it anyhow. Maybe two hundred. That took some carrying and some hiding, believe me.”

  And he assured me, as he went out the door, that the murder of Mrs. Lancaster had been, in spite of all appearances, no crime either of insanity or of sudden passion; but one long planned and skillfully carried out.

  “Only thing I can say is that if she was killed because of that money, it’s as sly and cunning a piece of work as I ever saw. If she wasn’t, then we’ve got a lunatic loose somewhere and we’ve got to get him.”

  When Mother came home from church that day she found me locked in my room, and as close to hysteria as the Crescent traditions permit to any young woman. For I no longer doubted that Margaret Lancaster had killed her mother, either directly or with Bryan Dalton’s help, and with the connivance of Holmes. And I nearly burst into shrieks at the dinner table when, Lydia Talbot coming in to talk over Emily Lancaster’s strange experience of the night before, Mother at once decreed that Holmes was to sleep in the house again that night.

  “Not Holmes, mother!” I said, while Miss Lydia stared at me curiously.

  “Why not Holmes?” Mother said irritably. “He can at least make a noise.”

  Which is one reason why Holmes was never accused of our second crime, which was committed that night. For so strenuously did he object that Mother was finally obliged to order him to obey, and later on after he was asleep to send me to take the key out of his door and to lock him in! A confession which later brought a smile even to the faces of the police.

  Chapter XXI

  IT WAS THAT NIGHT, Sunday, August the twenty-first, that Miss Emily Lancaster was shot to death on the grapevine walk.

  Looking back over that day, I cannot help marveling at how peaceful it was, in view of all that was to come. Except for the background tragedy of Thursday, it differed in no particular from any other Sunday afternoon that I could remember.

  As usual, Mother retired after our midday dinner for her rest, a device used by all the Crescent families to take care of the fried chicken and ice cream which is our summer Sunday meal, and which becomes roast beef and a fruit pie at the end of September. And also as usual Lydia Talbot stayed on after her self-effacing but tenacious fashion. She frequently came in on Sundays, and always remained until something or other finally forced her away.

  But that afternoon she nearly drove me wild. We sat on the porch, and she insisted on discussing the crime and her various grievances connected with it.

  “One would think,” she said in her flat monotonous voice, “that we would have been called in to help. After all, we are the only close relatives the girls have. But can you believe that neither Hester nor I has been in the house since it happened? And they can’t lay it to the police now; the police have gone.”

  She was actually moist with indignation. One gray spit curl had straightened out and hung rakishly over an eye. High priestess of all our funerals as long as I could remember, I understood her resentment and did my best to soothe her.

  “Of course they’re very upset, Miss Lydia.”

  “You’d think that would be when they need their own family. I’m their full aunt, Louisa; but that makes no difference. When Emily gets into trouble she runs to us, as she did last night, but that’s all it amounts to.”

  On that night alarm of Emily’s, however, she was rather reticent.

  “How do I know what it was?” she said, in response to a question from me. “Or who ‘they’ are? Maybe she dreamed it, although George thinks not. But I can tell you this, Louisa; the minute I got her quiet she stopped talking. She always was a close-mouthed woman anyhow, but she shut up like a clam”

  She changed the subject then as though she had said too much.

  “I hear Helen Wellington has come back.”

  “Yes.”

  “I suppose she thinks Jim has all that money.”

  That was almost too much for me. I suppose I was constrained and rather silent after it, for soon she got up, straightened the hat which Crescent-fashion sat high on her head, and picked up her old beaded bag.

  “Well, I’ll move on,” she said in her flat voice. “I intend to try just once more to see Emily and Margaret. Then if they don’t let me in—well, I suppose I can take a hint as well as anybody!”

  I watched from the porch as well as I could, seeing her absurd hat as it passed up the Lancaster walk and then losing it again. But apparently she did not have to take the hint, and I was really relieved when the hat did not reappear.

  That was at half past three.

  Usually Mother drives out at that time, but Holmes had secured the afternoon off and Mother was settled upstairs with a book and some essence of pepsin, and the remainder of the afternoon passed with intolerable slowness. Around five o’clock I walked idly toward the Crescent, to see Helen Wellington on the front porch, carefully dressed in white and yawning over a book. I dare say it was a case of any port in a storm, for she saw me and asked me to join her. I did not go up, but I did sit on the steps, to find her eyeing me curiously.

  “
Look here, Lou,” she said. “All this isn’t your funeral. You look terrible.”

  “I’ve had a shock, of course,” I told her lamely. “I’m glad you’ve come back, Helen. Jim needed you.”

  She laughed.

  “Jim! He needs me about as much as he needs a cinder in his eye. Besides, I’m rather under the impression that he has had you to console him! Never mind that, Lou, I’m in a bad temper, that’s all. If you could see this house! And not an agency open until morning!”

  I looked at her.

  “I suppose it hasn’t occurred to you to do anything about it yourself,” I said drily.

  “You would think of that! That’s what Bertie Dean says. I’ve just had a row with him. If he wants to masquerade here as a servant let him do the dishes! It’s idiotic anyhow. I dare say the Crescent hasn’t been fooled for a minute.”

  “The Crescent,” I told her quietly, “has had other things to think about, Helen.”

  I did not stay long. It developed that Herbert Dean, after she firmly refused to wash the lunch dishes, had mysteriously disappeared around noon, and that Jim was pretending to read the newspapers inside somewhere.

  “He’s scared of course,” she said easily. “But also of course he didn’t do it. He hasn’t the brains, Lou; no matter what you think of his intellect. And he is no prestidigitator, no matter what the police may think.”

  By which she referred to what has been called the substitution theory as to the money in the chest.

  Since then I have seen a record of Mr. Lancaster’s early statement after the discovery that the chest had been looted. It runs much as follows:

  Q. (by Inspector Briggs). “You are certain that nobody could have moved that gold in any quantity in a short space of time?”