by Rufus King
Kent took the bracelet and identification tag from her hand. Mrs. Giles caught the faint, sharp constriction of the muscles about his lips. She saw his eyes move swiftly, searching the sidewalk crowd. She saw, again, Miss Ashley.
“Thanks, Dawn,” Kent said.
But he wasn’t saying it to Dawn Davis. Mrs. Giles knew. He was saying it to that woman back in the throng, attributing to Miss Ashley the swift wit of having recovered that circumstantially threatening clue and of having shifted it to where it could be harmlessly found.
The brougham moved. The sun shone very brightly. Noise dimmed and, except for the clopping of the roached black mare, shortly the world was still.
CHAPTER 13
Kent shoved the bracelet and identification tag into a trouser pocket. “Must get the catch fixed,” he said. Then a little of the tension left him and he relaxed back against the cushion. “This is very good. I’ve thought of this many times. Used to dream about driving along again with you, Grand’Mere.”
Madame Lecloche, his French governess, had taught him to call her that. He had always done so, rolling the first r a little as Madame Lecloche had told him to.
“For how long will it be, dear?”
“Until Friday. I get that thing pinned on me then. Afterward they put me in a glass case and exhibit me around the country at the different plane plants. Buy a bond and you get a look. I don’t know. It’s good to be home.”
“You’re tired.”
“Very.”
“You’ll find things changed. So many of them.”
“Naturally. I gathered from your letters that none of the old crowd is left. Only palsied zanies and the lollipop set.” Mrs. Giles smiled warmly. Surely during the brief quarter of an hour of the drive to the house she could force herself to impound all things within her hidden mind except for the blessing that Kent was beside her.
“Well, at least you gathered something,” she said. “I got nothing whatever from your last note beyond the frightening assurance that you no longer could speak English. What are boon dockers?”
Kent’s laugh was sudden and fresh. It cracked the strange hard glaze of his face entirely, making him look young again. “They’re field shoes.”
“And a gizmo?”
“A machine gun usually, otherwise it’s anything you can’t think the name of. What else?”
“Happily, dear, I have forgotten the others.”
But it was no use. Mrs. Giles checked herself from going on. How could she keep her voice quite normal and tell him, as she had been on the point of telling him, of the changes at River Rest, of the defense workers whom he would find installed?
How could she break this news naturally when she knew it would come as no news at all? That he already knew. That Miss Ashley, during their fateful rendezvous last night, had told Kent how things were? And still, if this wall of pretense were to be kept up, this assumption of ignorance which curtained a heart-wrenching barrier between them, she would have to tell him before further minutes passed. It was about as hard a job as Mrs. Giles had ever had to face.
“Oh, Kent dear”—she said it brightly—“I’ve gone completely insane according to both Hopkins and Ella.”
“Good. What brand? Is it the Mary-Queen-of-Scots complex or do you just see things?”
“No, dear. Either of those would be simple. I’ve rented our four guest rooms to defense workers.”
(How surely only yesterday she had felt that Kent would understand her gesture, so much better than Papa ever could have. That he would receive this news, which now was not news, with enthusiasm, and what fun they would have in talking it over. How dead, how ash-like the words had become. )
Kent’s astonishment was very forced.
“Tell me about it.”
So Mrs. Giles did. She forced her way through the whole hollow story. It carried them to the gates.
“Lord, what a mess,” Kent said, eyeing the uncut lawns.
“I know. Joel did make a try at keeping them mowed, but it was far too much. He’s very old. It’s so good of him to do anything at all.”
Kent stuck his head out of a lowered window.
“The house looks fine. That hasn’t changed.”
Mrs. Giles could see nothing but the nape of his neck with its close-cropped, blue-black hair. Were his eyes flicking the shrubbery? Would that dear, bronzed hand gripping his knee ever relax again?
Kent pulled his head back in.
“Your night-shift roomer must be loose,” he said. “I thought you told me his daytimes were for sleep? Anyhow, there’s a fine specimen for a Grade-A chiller parked in a bathrobe on the porch.”
“Oh dear. It must be Mr. Parling.”
“Better get Hopkins to frisk him every time he enters or leaves the house.”
The brougham stopped.
Kent helped her down, and Mrs. Giles’s eyes traveled from leather bedroom slippers up along a Jacquard dressing gown to the man’s completely (how certain she had been that it would be!) dead-pan face. Kent declined Hopkins’ offer to take his kit bag in, and the brougham rolled off to the stables. The man took a slender cigar from a pocket and bit its end off cleanly with dazzling teeth.
“Mrs. Giles? Your maid fixed me up with a room this morning. I’m Parling.”
“This is my grandson, Mr. Parling. Lieutenant Giles.” Parling shook hands.
“Better help your grandmother inside, Lieutenant,” he said. “The county prosecutor is in the parlor. They found a dead man under that bush.”
Mrs. Giles did not have to call on artifice in order to blanch. Neither, she noted desperately, did Kent. The rich bronze tones of his cheeks were fading. She slipped a hand firmly under his arm, not for support but from an invincible desire to protect him. And from this wanting of hers to give him strength she found strength of her own.
She looked at Mr. Parling unflinchingly.
“Would you tell me, please, what happened?”
Parling lighted the cigar.
“Someone who came here looking for a room shoved his bicycle back a ways into the bushes and almost parked it on the body. He yelled like hell and it woke me up. This was around ten o’clock.” Parling looked at a wrist watch. “Just two hours ago. I called the police.”
“Who was it?” Kent asked.
“The stiff? Nobody knows. They dope it out as a simple case of mugging. There is plenty of that stuff going on around town, Lieutenant. You want to watch out if you’re alone at night. Fat pay checks, fat pockets. Result, muggings. Bound to be. Have a cigar?”
“No, thanks.”
“Nice place you’ve got here, Mrs. Giles. Nice view.”
“Thank you, Mr. Parling. Papa chose the site because of that vista of the river. Naturally the town has encroached on us greatly since the days when Papa built.”
“I think,” Kent suggested, “that if the county prosecutor is waiting?”
“Of course, dear.”
Parling flicked his cigar.
“He was talking things over with that maid of yours when I came out onto the porch.”
“Oh dear! Leila?”
“Yes. She strikes me as something of a character. Is she all there?”
“Most of her is. She is my gardener’s niece and—well, just a little vague.”
“I see. Hard to anchor her.”
“Coming in with us, Mr. Parling?” Kent asked.
“No, he’s finished with me. There was nothing I could tell him. I’ll just do a job on this cigar out here and then run up to bed again.”
CHAPTER 14
Kent and Mrs. Giles went inside.
She could almost touch this wall which was solidifying between them with its texture of secret knowledge. She found herself unable to say a thing. She could neither marshal nor force out any of the normal comments which a woman, beneath whose azalea shrubs the corpse of a stranger had recently been found, would of a certainty make. But, then, neither could Kent.
In this stillness which was str
ange to the point of being almost a mutual admission Kent set his kit bag down in the hall and then followed his grandmother into the long, cool drawing room.
A man stood alone before a window at the room’s southern end, looking out upon what had once been a charming rose garden. He turned and faced them. He was a well-built, large man in his early forties, with dark russet hair and with a general aura of almost rocklike reserve and imperturbability. Mrs. Giles felt instantly that he would be dependable.
“I’m Russell Stedman, Mrs. Giles. The county prosecutor.”
Mrs. Giles held out her hand. She hoped that its tremors would be put down by Mr. Stedman to the reputed palsies which people so unpleasantly took for granted with women of her years.
“This is my grandson, Mr. Stedman. Lieutenant Giles.”
Stedman shook hands with Kent.
“Sorry you had to have such a home-coming,” he said.
“Thank you, Mr. Stedman. Just what did happen? Mr. Parling tells us the police thought it a mugging.”
Stedman’s smile was pleasant, but it held no humor.
“We think it best to let it ride for a while at that. Possibly for good. We tried to clear the decks as much as we could before you reached the house.”
“That’s very kind of you, but why?”
“The town is proud of you, and we want your leave with us to be a happy one. Don’t worry about publicity. It won’t rate even an item with any of the press services, and the Gazette will hold it down to a line or two on an inner page. The reception for you tomorrow will take over the front one.” This, Mrs. Giles thought, is all too easy. It doesn’t ring true. Under their surface glossing they’ll be working. A glossing not because they are stupid or willing in any sense to ignore their duties toward a murder, but for Kent’s sake, and Washington, for the service, for the governor’s presence at tomorrow’s reception, so many important things.
“You’ll probably want to freshen up a bit,” Mr. Stedman was saying to Kent. “I always do after a train trip. I’ll just chat with your grandmother while you’re doing it. Then we can all run down and take a look at the body. I’m sorry it’s necessary, Mrs. Giles, but that’s one thing we have to do, find out whether you or anyone in the house can recognize it.”
“I understand perfectly, Mr. Stedman.”
“Your cook and maid and Mr. Parling saw it here before they took it away. None of them knew the man. The boys are getting in touch with Smith and Wade and Miss Ashley out at the works. We’ll probably run into them down at the morgue.” Stedman smiled again at Kent. “Take as long as you like, Lieutenant. No hurry at all.”
Mrs. Giles waited until Kent had gone. She had observed his hesitation, his feeling that he should stay there with her, but she had smiled at him serenely and conjured up the insistence that he could do with a shave.
“Do sit down, Mr. Stedman.”
Mrs. Giles selected an armchair with her back to the light.
Her favorite novels had well taught her the tactical advantages of this. She held no illusions about the coming chat with the county prosecutor. She sensed, as he took a chair facing her, that his imperturbability was simply an effect to mask his sharp interest while he obliquely fished his way through whatever streams he might decide she offered.
“There are a few confusing things, Mrs. Giles. Tell me, did you hear anything during the night?”
“No.” Then she remembered her unhappy predicament in Miss Ashley’s room. Miss Ashley, when questioned, might surely refer to it. “That is, not outside the house, Mr. Stedman. Inside, yes. A sound as though something had fallen in the hallway.”
“You were in bed at the time?”
“Yes, it would have been around midnight. I went down the hall and knocked on Miss Ashley’s door, thinking she might have stumbled, being unfamiliar with the house, but she was in bed.”
“Did you find that anything had fallen?”
“No, everything seemed perfectly all right. I realized after returning to my room that it was nothing unusual. Frequently there are sounds. This is such an old house.”
“Yes, I know the houses of this vintage. I referred of course to sounds outside, specifically down on the driveway. There are two ways of looking at it, you see. Three, really.”
“I’m afraid I don’t.”
“No, naturally. One is that the man was stabbed out on the public road near the gate and that he ran in here to get help. He got as far as the shrubbery and then tumbled back into it and died.”
“And the other possibilities, Mr. Stedman?”
“They both involve his having been stabbed while he was inside the grounds, probably close to where he fell. Possibly he realized he was being followed and ran in here to escape his assailant and, again, just got as far as the azaleas. I don’t like that very much.”
“No?”
“No, because I think in that case he would have yelled for help when he felt his assailant closing in on him. You would have heard the yell.”
“Easily.”
Mr. Stedman looked down at his thumbs.
“The third possibility involves a woman.”
Mrs. Giles controlled her voice admirably.
“Woman?”
“Yes. The police feel there may have been a woman with him. There were certain indications which make them think so. They figure that the two of them may have strolled into your grounds last night, and some thug who had been following them stabbed the man, and that the woman then ran out on him in panic. Just left him there to die.”
“Do they—might they not believe that this woman herself could have stabbed him?”
“They’re not overlooking that. But they prefer the other. They like it better as a mugging. Maybe they’ll catch up with the woman in time. They can tell about things better then.” Stedman smiled suddenly and became very human. “I wonder whether you realize quite what a chance you took?”
Shock for a moment held Mrs. Giles rigid.
“Chance, Mr. Stedman? In what way?”
“By plunging into renting your rooms like this. In an ordinary house it wouldn’t matter, or to a woman who is experienced and knows what she’s up against. You don’t. Really, the things I could tell you. You haven’t any idea.”
“No, I suppose I haven’t.”
“Your four roomers being in defense plants is a break, of course. Even to get their jobs they needed birth certificates and a clean dossier practically from the cradle on up. The police are looking into them out at the shops. If there is anything irregular they will let you know.”
“That is most thoughtful.”
Stedman stood up. He moved to the window and again looked out upon the rose garden.
“One of the reasons they think a woman was with him is a small shred of pale blue silk. They think it was torn from the sleeve or some part of a woman’s dress which caught on the azalea bush. They argued for a while about its perhaps having been hooked there this morning when that mob showed up looking for rooms.”
Stedman left the window and came back to Mrs. Giles.
“That bunch all had bicycles. I can’t picture a woman wearing a pale blue silk dress on a bicycle. I look at it as the sort of dress a woman would wear at night,” he said.
CHAPTER 15
Leila sifted through the doorway and toward them, while Mrs. Giles caught the touch of resignation which settled on Mr. Stedman’s face.
“Yes, Leila?”
“Ella says you’re to go right in and have your breakfast and that Mr. Kent is to have his too.” Leila swerved mystic eyes toward Stedman. “Don’t you dare try to stop them.”
Stedman mentally mopped his brow.
“I won’t. By all means have breakfast, Mrs. Giles.”
“You will join us?”
Mrs. Giles sent Leila up for Kent. She took off her jacket and gloves. She led Mr. Stedman into the dining room, and Kent joined them as Leila brought in an omelet and broiled kidneys.
She gave but token attention t
o the talk between Kent and Mr. Stedman. It revolved largely around the war and the political aspects of postwar days. She was feverishly busied with the personal problem raised by the scrap of pale blue silk.
Mrs. Giles had no doubt but the scrap had been torn from the wrapper she had worn last night. The wrapper would have to be disposed of. In the furnace? Mrs. Giles had never started a furnace fire in her life, but she imagined there would be nothing difficult about doing so, any more than there was to applying a match to the kindling of a grate. But burning cloth smelled. Would its odors permeate the house and cause dangerous inquiries? Wouldn’t burying the wrapper be best, in some ragged bed of the no-longer-cared-for gardens?
On the whole Mrs. Giles thought that such interment would prove the wiser course and decided to attend to it that night. She permitted the discussion to continue between Kent and Mr. Stedman without comment or interruption while they finished eating.
She went upstairs, ostensibly to put on her jacket and gloves. Actually she wanted to determine whether it really was her wrapper from which the scrap of silk had been torn. She thought how fortunate it was that the scrap’s discovery must have been made almost within the hour, before suspicion would have been directed within the house and before Mr. Stedman or his associates would have made any search.
The wrapper was on its hanger where she had placed it last night. She took it from the wardrobe. Yes, in the right sleeve a bit had been torn out. Where to leave it between now and its later burial? That splendid story of Poe’s occurred to her: The Letter. Or was it Gaboriau? It didn’t matter. Swiftly Mrs. Giles got out basting thread and a needle, then she basted the incriminating wrapper inside of a long evening dress and hung it back on the rack.
Satisfied, she returned downstairs.
The postwar political discussion between Kent and Mr. Stedman ran on unabated after they were seated in Mr. Stedman’s car, which he had parked by the stables, and were en route to the morgue.
The thought of visiting the town’s mortuary held distaste for Mrs. Giles but no terrors or revulsions. She viewed the facade of a plain cement building as the car drew up to the curb.
