Crime is Murder

by Nielsen, Helen

  “But I’ve always loved this house. We were so sorry to lose the Mastersons when they decided to live in Europe. They were always so charming—”

  “And cooperative,” Tod added. “You could always count on Will and Lois to pitch in on any community affair.”

  Lisa poured the tea carefully. She didn’t ask questions. A man like Tod Graham would get to the purpose of his visit soon enough.

  “And Freddie, too, before he went into the Army.”

  “Freddie?”

  Lisa did ask a question, almost before she realized it was done.

  “The son,” Tod explained. “Only child. Darling of his mother’s eye. That’s why they’ve decided to live abroad now that Freddie’s married a Fraulein.”

  “So that’s what happened to Freddie,” Lisa mused. Then she looked up from the teapot, smiling. “I’ve been poking around the house. There’s an old playroom upstairs.”

  “And we do love family histories,” Johnny urged, “particularly families with big old houses, like that one that sits up on the hill.”

  “Bell Mansion?”

  There was no ice on Tod’s wife now. Her eyes sparkled. The spadework was about to begin, and Johnny took the first spadeful.

  “The house of death,” she said ominously.

  “Then you’ve heard—”

  “We have a wonderful housekeeper who eats nothing but roots and berries.”

  “Not Carrie! Why, she’s practically an institution in Bellville.”

  “An institution for the dissemination of baseless gossip,” Tod remarked. But with the big thaw now in progress, Tod was superfluous.

  “Oh, I don’t know that it’s so baseless. Some of the things that have happened in that house! Really, Miss Bancroft, you could write a book!”

  “I’m sure Miss Bancroft is capable of choosing her own fictional subjects. Besides, she’s come to Bellville for rest and relaxation.”

  This time Tod wasn’t superfluous; he was adamant. Apparently gossip about Bell Mansion didn’t come under the heading of “Boost Bellville.” There was no mistaking the silencing glare he gave his wife. And then the smile returned, the nice, shiny, pearly-teeth smile that went so nicely with the waves in his hair.

  “And we didn’t come to disturb that rest,” he added, “but to make it more pleasurable. We like to welcome our distinguished residents, Miss Bancroft. We like to make them feel right at home.”

  “Oh, I feel quite at home,” Lisa said.

  “And we like to include them in our activities, make them a part of things. The very day you came by the office for the key and I took you up to this house, I got a marvellous idea. Told my wife about it that very night, didn’t I, honey? ‘Ruth,’ I said, ‘that Lisa Bancroft’s a woman of culture and taste. She’s just the one to fill out our committee for the award this year.”

  Lisa was following as well as she could, but some things needed clarification.

  “Award?” she echoed.

  “The Martin Cornish Memorial Award.”

  “Tod is chairman of the planning committee,” Ruth explained.

  “And maybe you don’t think that’s a job!” Tod added. “Last year we had over 15,000 visitors during Memorial Week. Had to turn them away in droves the night of the award performance.”

  “Fifteen thousand visitors in Bellville?” Johnny echoed incredulously.

  “In Bellville. Every hotel, motel, and rooming house was filled to capacity. Every restaurant and sandwich stand had line-ups three times a day.”

  “I’ll bet the people even heard a little music,” Johnny suggested, but Tod was too deep in his subject to get the point.

  “Had the high school athletic field filled to capacity every night it didn’t rain, and that field holds nearly 10,000. Bellville Township embraces a good deal more than what you see here on The Bluffs and downtown, you know. We have one of the largest high schools in the state, and three consecutive conference championships for football.”

  Boost Bellville. Tod Graham’s tea was getting cold, but not his enthusiasm. Lisa rather enjoyed it except for one important detail.

  “I’m very flattered,” she said, “but I’m afraid I wouldn’t be of much use to you. I know very little about music.”

  “Oh, that doesn’t matter. You don’t have to know anything.” Tod paused to temper his words with a little discretion. “About music,” he added. “That’s all taken care of. We’re getting Sir Anthony Sutton to do the judging. You’ve heard of him, I suppose?”

  Lisa smiled. “Oh, yes, I’ve heard of him.”

  “And that means a lot more people than last year. We need people on the committee who realize the importance of these things and will go along with progress. Our leading citizens are already on it: Dr. Hazlitt, Stanley Watts, the banker—you’ve probably met Stanley, by the way.”

  “Briefly,” Lisa acknowledged.

  “Curran Dawes—”

  “Professor Dawes?” Suddenly Lisa was interested. Across the room she caught Johnny’s eye.

  “—and, of course, Nydia.”

  Lisa was still thinking of the professor. It required a few seconds to assimilate this last bit of information.

  “Nydia Cornish? Is she on the committee, too?”

  Ruth Graham smiled tightly. “Nydia Bell Cornish is the committee,” she said.

  “Now, Ruth.” Tod looked unhappy again. “Nydia’s not so difficult if you know how to handle her. After all, she is Cornish’s widow. Her position’s purely honorary, Miss Bancroft.”

  “As mine would be?” Lisa suggested.

  “Well, no—”

  “Purely honorary!” Ruth Graham had little hands. They placed an empty teacup down on the serving table and then folded primly in her lap. She didn’t pursue the subject, but there was an obvious difference of opinion between her and Tod on the matter of Nydia Cornish’s position.

  “And Marta Cornish is preparing an entry for the award,” Lisa said thoughtfully.

  Tod seemed interested. “You’ve met Miss Cornish?”

  “Very briefly. We met down in town yesterday.”

  “A talented girl. It’ll be a great thing for the festival if she takes that award this year. Just imagine—Martin Cornish’s daughter following in her father’s footsteps.”

  Tod Graham might have been reading a news photo caption. His wife had other ideas.

  “In more ways than one,” she muttered. “And she’ll never do it, Tod. You know that as well as I do. This is the third year she’s been going to try for that award, but she never does. She just never finishes anything.”

  “Never finishes?”

  Lisa fell silent. Wasn’t that what had happened last night? A fragment of a theme, hauntingly beautiful, and then nothing more but discord and silence.

  “Too many irons in the fire, probably,” Ruth added. “It’s the Cornish curse.”

  “Ruth!”

  Tod Graham came to his feet. For a moment he stood there holding a teacup rather foolishly before him. Johnny came to the rescue and left his hands free. But he didn’t use them. Only his eyes threatened his wife into silence. And then the silence had to be covered up, like putting a napkin over a soiled spot on the dinner cloth.

  “You’ll think we’re a colony of superstitious fools, Miss Bancroft. Cornish curse! Just because there’ve been a few unfortunate incidents.” Ruth’s mouth started to open, but she thought better of it. Tod still looked a bit white about the mouth. “I’ll give you an example of what Carrie means when she calls Bell Mansion a house of death,” he added. “Ten years ago when I took over Nydia’s legal affairs—or was it eleven?”

  “Ten this coming September,” Ruth interposed. “It was Marta’s birthday, her eleventh.”

  “That’s right, ten years ago. Nydia still had the old family retainer from Walden’s day, an old codger of at least eighty. He had a bad heart to boot. Well, on Marta’s birthday he drove up to give her a present, had a heart attack, and died in the front parlor. D
o you know that there are still people who try to make something of that?”

  “The house of death,” Johnny said again.

  “Exactly. Old Alistair Hubbard died a perfectly natural death, but because he died in that house instead of his own there’s been gossip about it ever since. Human nature, Miss Bancroft. People like to associate mystery with Martin Cornish. Just human nature.”

  Tod Graham sounded so logical, it was possible to forget, for a moment, what Professor Dawes had said in the tearoom. It was even possible, when Lisa did remember, to think of it as just more “human nature.” But it wasn’t possible to keep Ruth Graham silent for long. She stopped biting her lip and said, “Of course, they did find the old man’s heart medicine in Marta’s room after he was dead. And after searching so frantically for it when he had the attack, too.”

  “That’s hearsay!” Tod snapped.

  Ruth didn’t answer, but her smile might have been cut with a saber.

  “And wholly irrelevant.”

  But Tod wasn’t addressing a jury. He turned back to Lisa.

  “I don’t want to bore you with old wives’ tales. The important thing is the committee. I’m sure you’ll find it interesting if you accept.”

  “Indubitably,” Johnny said.

  “And I would like to get the announcement out to the press as soon as possible. There’s not much time.”

  Rest and relaxation. The thought crossed Lisa’s mind like the ghost of something not quite born. At least now she knew what Tod Graham wanted. Not a donation, not a bequest. And he was waiting for an answer as if that icy bombshell with her hands in her lap might go off again at any moment.

  “I suppose it’s all right,” she said, “as long as it’s just honorary.”

  “Splendid. I’ll get the word out to the wire services right away.”

  And I’ll get my wife out of this house before she opens her mouth again. Action didn’t need words, and Tod Graham was a man of action. The hasty thank-yous and hurried good-byes were mostly for the hallway as Johnny saw them to the door, but when they were gone there was time and silence for reflection. At least one person in Bellville didn’t seem to want Lisa to be interested in the story of Martin Cornish. This was an intriguing switch.

  Johnny returned to find Lisa staring out of the French windows.

  “Well, was I right about Frau Graham and the dirt?”

  Lisa didn’t answer. The brightness of the day was too good to last. A scrap of cloud had wandered over the sun, and the room suddenly seemed empty and cold.

  “Lisa—”

  She turned around. Johnny’s eyes were troubled.

  “You can still get out of this thing.”

  But by this time even Johnny knew that she was wrong.

  CHAPTER 5

  Events moved swiftly in Bellville. Within two weeks after taking up residence at Masterson House, Lisa was a part of the community’s most exciting event. This was unpremeditated and a little bewildering, but there didn’t seem to be any stopping place any more than there seemed to have been a beginning.

  “If I didn’t know better, I’d swear you planned it this way,” Johnny said. “I don’t understand. If we came here for some big project, why not let me in on it? I’m not exactly a stranger.”

  “No, you’re not,” Lisa admitted. “I am.”

  Statements like that infuriated Johnny. Sometimes Lisa suspected that was why she made them. They were driving down to town. It meant an extra spurt of speed from the station wagon, an extra screech of brakes on the curves. It was June. The May rains had given way to a warm mugginess that might erupt into a thunderstorm without warning; but today the sky was clear and the lake, that bright blue patch that appeared intermittently through the pines, was dotted with the handkerchief-white sails of small pleasure boats taking advantage of the weather. Johnny planned to take advantage of the weather herself. She was wearing a swim suit under her terry-cloth robe, and had announced a firm intention of trying to trade a coat of mildew for a coat of tan. For Lisa the journey was more dutiful. She was bound for her first meeting with the Cornish award committee.

  The meeting was being held in the Cornish Museum. Both Lisa and Johnny knew the place by sight. It was housed in one of the finest specimens on wrought-iron row—a huge, two-story house with enough porches, balconies, and cupolas to delight the most ardent Victorian. The street was wide, tree-shaded, and virtually empty when they arrived. One small sedan was parked at the curbing; nothing in the long, curving drive.

  “We must be early,” Johnny said. “Want me to wait so you can sit in the car?”

  “No, you run along to the beach. I’ll just look about a bit.”

  Lisa was rather glad to be left alone. She left the gravel path and started toward the front steps. A cast-iron groom offered a hitching ring for the horse she didn’t have, and a large lilac bush still retained a few random blooms of whatever the rains had left. The house looked deserted until she ascended the steps and started toward the door.

  “Miss Bancroft? Miss Lisa Bancroft?”

  She couldn’t be startled by the sound of her name—not when it came in such a small, forced voice. She was only surprised. She turned about to see a young girl—no more than eighteen, surely, with a rather tense face, a pony-tail hairdo, and a sweater and skirt ensemble. She had a notebook in her hand and an expectant expression on her face.

  “I’m from the Times Review,” she said. “I heard you were going to be on the Cornish committee.”

  “That’s what I heard, too,” Lisa answered.

  “And I thought—that is, my editor thought you might give me an interview.”

  “Now?”

  Lisa asked the question with too little thought. The girl wilted. She couldn’t have that.

  “Maybe later. After the meeting. All right?”

  It had to be all right. The door was already opening into a large entrance hall walled in gleaming white tile, and Lisa went inside quickly, closing the door after her. In a few minutes the others would be coming. She wanted those few moments to herself.

  But she wasn’t completely alone. A mousy little woman in a tight shirtwaist and skirt hovered over a small desk at the end of the hallway. She greeted Lisa with a long-practiced smile.

  “I’m afraid Mr. Graham and the others aren’t here yet, but the board room is unlocked.”

  She sounded so apologetic Lisa was almost prompted to offer condolences.

  “But if you’d care to look through the museum …”

  “I’d love to look through the museum,” Lisa said. “I’m sure it’s very interesting.”

  “Oh, it is. And particularly for you if you’re planning to do a book.”

  Lisa didn’t argue any more. Bellville had made up its collective mind—with one exception—and perhaps it was just as well. Curiosity had a cover.

  And that was why she was here, wasn’t it? What other reason? Lisa could ask herself the question; she couldn’t answer. By this time she had crossed the threshold into a huge room—two rooms, perhaps, with the original partition removed. A row of tall windows, curtained and draped in the ornate period of the house, faced the street side of the room; and down its center ran twin rows of glass cases in which were displayed various items associated with Martin Cornish: old photographs, original manuscripts, medals and awards. Lisa walked between the rows, seeing and not seeing. It was so incomplete. It was so dead. One might almost have expected to find Martin Cornish embalmed and laid out in one of those cases, except, of course, that Martin Cornish had been burned by fire. The death of heroes … and heretics.

  At the end of the rows stood the piano, carefully roped from careless hands. Carefully roped, but not immune from trespass. A huge gray cat was sleeping on the covered keys. She opened her eyes and scrutinized Lisa with solemn eyes, then yawned and closed her eyes again. Let sleeping cats lie, Lisa thought.

  She turned back. The museum depressed her. The manuscripts in those cases were yellowed with years. Dead
years. It was the living she cared about, not the dead. But on the opposite wall from the windows stood a wide mantel, and above the mantel, separated from its mate by a bronze plaque inscribed with names and dates, was the portrait. The portrait wasn’t dead. The portrait held Lisa—held her with eyes, deep and brooding, held her with hands, long and slender, held her with lips, full, almost feminine, that seemed still warm, still on the verge of speech. No, the portrait wasn’t dead. The portrait was Martin Cornish, and the years were swept away.

  But Martin Cornish wasn’t free even here. The bronze plaque was between them, and Nydia, like a proud possessor, was nearby. Old. This was the word Lisa thought as she looked at the other portrait. Old and unlovely. And yet she couldn’t have been so old when the portrait was painted. Probably no more than Cornish’s age when he died. The narrow nostrils, the tight mouth, the hard eyes—they were ageless. They had never known youth. Or am I seeing what I want to see? Lisa backed away from the mantel. With other eyes, in another light, the woman might look regal, strong. Eyes were always deceiving. Eyes see what the mind thinks.

  I’m falling into a trap, Lisa thought. I’m having my mind made up for me before I’ve even started to learn.

  And then her gaze fell away from the portraits and dropped to the mantel itself. There was something printed on a small, framed card below the plaque.

  This house donated to the Martin

  Cornish Memorial Society by the

  will of Alistair Hubbard

  1865-1946

  Alistair Hubbard. This name had meaning after Ruth Graham’s remarks. This name belonged to an old man who couldn’t find his heart medicine in time. Or was this more gossip? Lisa barely glanced at the names on the plaque—former award winners of past years. The room was full of death again. For a moment she wanted to beg off from the whole thing, leave the museum and let the committee struggle along with what distinguished citizens it already had; but it was too late. The instant she turned back toward the doorway, she knew that it was much too late. A portrait had come to life. Nydia Bell Cornish was staring at her from across the room.

  Was the recognition mutual? Lisa hung onto the silence, reluctant to let go. Nydia, no doubt of that. The same face, the same eyes. Old. Still old, yet hardly older. She wasn’t a tall woman, and yet she seemed to stand taller than she was. Tall, straight-backed, proud. She wore a dark linen suit that was rather defiantly disdainful of style, and a wide-brimmed Leghorn straw of black that partially shadowed her face. Lisa hung onto the silence. A queen spoke first.