He didn’t explain, and Judith chose that minute to arrive, with Phil holding her arm to steady her. It was typical that routed from her bed, with her hair flying, without makeup, and clad only in a dressing-gown, Judith should look as lovely as ever. Somehow it irritated me, with that dead woman lying there. Partly, of course, it was relief, for I, too, had thought at first it was she in the pool.
“Who is it?” Phil said. “I always claimed that pool was a deathtrap at night.”
Unluckily he had released Judith’s arm, and she took only one look at the body and crumpled up. It was a real faint. Her nose looked white and pinched, and her lips had no color whatever. All my resentment faded. She looked pitiful and forlorn lying there, and I sat down on the ground and put her head in my lap. Phil was all for throwing water on her, but I stopped him.
“Just let her alone,” I said. “She used to do this, years ago, when she was excited. She’ll come out of it all right.”
She did, of course. She moaned a little and opened her eyes. Then she tried to sit up.
“Get me up to the house,” she said. “I don’t want to see that—that thing. It’s dreadful.”
Well, it wasn’t nice, of course, so when she could walk, young Bill and I took her home. She still looked pretty awful, but we poured coffee laced with brandy into her until she could climb the stairs. We got her into her room and I tried to put her to bed. But she wouldn’t have it. She waited until we went out and then locked the door behind us. Young Bill stared at me.
“What goes?” he said. “What the hell does that mean?”
“I don’t know. She always does it,” I told him. “She’s afraid of something or somebody. I don’t know who.”
“Not old Ridge, by any chance?”
“I think she’d like us to think so. I don’t believe it.”
Breakfast was late that morning. Both Helga and Jennie were on the fringes of the crowd that had gathered down by the pool. O’Brien had been right. The state troopers were there as well as the chief of police and a half-dozen men, uniformed police and detectives. And as I stood on the porch I saw them giving way to Doctor Christy, the medical examiner for the county.
The public was being kept out, but the main road was lined with the cars of passers-by who had stopped to see what the excitement was about, and not until an ambulance had carried the body away did the crowd disperse and our household staff return.
They were in a state of wild excitement, having been asked if they could identify the body.
“We told them no,” Helga said, “but it might be someone from the summer places around. One or two are opened this year. Maybe she just walked across and never seen the pool. Looks like it. No hat. No bag.”
Chief Fowler came up while Bill and I were eating a belated breakfast. Phil had already gone to his train, so I gave the chief ham and eggs and coffee. He seemed grateful, but rather uneasy.
“Hate to ask you, Miss Maynard,” he said, “but I’ve got to drain that pool of yours. Way it rained a couple of days ago we can’t see into it, and there may be something of hers there.”
“Of course. Go ahead,” I told him. “Only what could be there?”
“Nothing probably, if she came from around here. Point is, nobody seems to know her. So if she came from a distance it stands to reason she’d have a bag. A hat, too, at her age. She must be forty or so. But we’ve looked around the place. No signs of them.”
“We would have to get a man from town to open the gate at the lower end,” I said. “It’s old and pretty rusty. As the pool is fed all the time, we don’t have to clean it. We only empty it for the winter.”
He nodded and looked at Bill, young and fresh faced in a bathrobe over his trunks.
“Tell me again about it, son,” he said. “You didn’t see her before you went in?”
“Well, I did and I didn’t,” Bill said. “Not from the side of the pool, no. But when I climbed the rickety old diving-platform I saw something dark. I didn’t think it was—well, what it was. It might have been mud from the creek. When I got down, though, I knew.”
“And then?”
“I was kind of scared.” Bill grinned. “I came up for air and to see if there was anybody around to help. There wasn’t, so I went down again and got hold of her. I dropped her once. I guess I was pretty nervous. But I got her to the steps and left her there.”
Fowler nodded and prepared to go.
“Thanks for the breakfast,” he said. “I needed it. And I’m sorry about your sister. Kind of a shock, of course. But soon as she’s better I want her to look at the body. We need an identification, and she may have seen her somewhere. You’re sure you haven’t?”
I said I was sure, but there was something in my mind which kept escaping it. Then, just as he was leaving, I remembered.
“There’s one thing,” I said. “I’m pretty sure I heard Ed Brown’s taxi on the main road last night. It seemed to go as far as the Adrian drive next to ours, then turn around and go back.”
“Ed’s taxi! What time was it?”
“I haven’t an idea. It was hot and I was restless. It sounded like Ed’s the way it rattled. That’s all I know.”
“Sure the Adrian family hasn’t decided to move out from town?”
“The maids here say they haven’t. You can’t see the house from here. It’s not near, and there’s all that shrubbery. But the gardener’s been working there now and then, as he does for us. He may know the woman, if she works for them.”
“Doesn’t seem as though she worked very hard for anyone,” he said. “Hands don’t look like it. Of course, the way folks work today that don’t mean much.”
I watched him head down the drive in his car. There was a state trooper by the pool, and after he stopped and spoke to him, the trooper took off through the woods to where the distant sound of a mower showed the gardener at work. The chief himself turned toward town, and without apparent purpose Bill sauntered down the drive.
I knew what he meant to do, but he was just too late. The moment the trooper disappeared, O’Brien in a pair of bathing trunks made for the pool and dived in. I was curious. It was only too obvious that he had been waiting for the chance, and for some reason I could not understand. I only knew that when at last he reappeared on the surface he was clutching something, and that he looked completely disgusted when he saw Bill there, and me not far behind him.
He forced a grin, however, as he crawled out.
“Got her bag,” he said. “Now if you pair of ghouls can keep your mouths shut maybe we’ll learn something.”
Bill, whose jaw had dropped managed to close it.
“You’re being damned nosy about all this, aren’t you?” he said. “The police will want that.”
“The police will have it. Don’t worry, son. You’ll give it to the chief and tell him you found it. I think her hat’s in there, too. Better try and find it.”
There was a moment when I thought Bill would revolt, but there was something authoritative about O’Brien’s voice and his big muscular body. He turned to the pool.
“Keep an eye on that guy, Lois,” he said and dived in.
O’Brien opened the bag and shook its contents out on the grass. It was made of some sort of fabric, and the contents were soaked. There was nothing exciting that I could see: the usual compact and lipstick, a small money purse with five or six dollars in it, a handkerchief, and a scrap of yellow paper. Then he examined the bag itself. There was a zipper pocket which he opened only to pull out a water-soaked “newspaper clipping, yellow either from the pool or with age, and now a sodden mass. Even I could see that it was barely decipherable, and I was surprised when he tucked it into the belt of his trunks.
“That trooper’s coming,” he said. “Put the stuff back in the bag, will you? I’ll have to dry this scrap.”
I suppose I was distracted at the moment, for Bill appeared with the soaked remains of what had been a woman’s hat. It was of black straw, with a wreath of bright b
ut now woebegone flowers around the crown, and it looked forlorn and pitiable. But it looked more than that. It looked vaguely familiar.
Bill scrambled out with it, to hear the trooper bellowing at him.
“What are you doing there?” he yelled. “You know goddam well you were told to keep away from here.”
“Oh, drop dead!” Bill said. “I got her hat, didn’t I? That’s more than you did, fancy britches! And this is my family’s pool. Try to keep me out of it!”
The trooper leaped the narrow stream at the head of the pool and made for Bill with at least mayhem in his face. Then he saw me, and I gave him as sweet a smile as I could muster at the moment.
“Bill has been fine, Lieutenant,” I said. “He got her bag, too. The chief said he wanted them found.”
Either the smile or the rank I gave him mollified him, or the mention of the chief did. At least he laid no hands on Bill.
“Sergeant,” he said. “I suppose you’ve looked through that bag,” he added disagreeably.
“Certainly not,” I said virtuously, and prepared to empty it on the ground again. He yelped in anguish.
“Don’t do that,” he said. “There may be fingerprints, all sorts of things.” He looked completely discouraged. “See here,” he said. “Thanks for finding the stuff. Now I’d be obliged if you’d both just go back to the house and let well enough alone. Go back and take a nice rest. I’ll manage by myself for a while, and I’ll do all right. Don’t worry.”
We did not go at once, however. I stood staring at the hat, and fighting the feeling I had seen it before. After all, there were probably one million black hats with wreaths in circulation in and around New York. And O’Brien had not reappeared. I could not ask him about it
We were still there when a loud thumping and rattling announced the arrival of Ed Brown’s taxi, and it was followed by the chief’s car. Both of them passed our gate and went on a short distance. Then we heard them coming back, and they turned in at our drive.
The chief got out, but Ed remained in his car. He has always claimed arthritis in his legs, which prevents him from carrying suitcases or even golf clubs, or helping women under any circumstances. Just now he looked surly.
“How do I know she came here?” he said “I let her out at the other drive. She paid me for it. That’s all I know. As for getting a man out of his bed at this hour, I ain’t standing for it, police or no police.”
The chief eyed him coldly.
“Didn’t she say anything? Weren’t you to come back and pick her up again?”
“No. Looks like she meant to stay. She said to take her to the first drive beyond the Maynards’. That’s what I did.”
“Kind of late for you to be out, wasn’t it?”
“I seen some folks off on a train to the city. They’d been out to dinner. So she comes up at the station and says am I a taxi, and I says yes.”
“Did she get off the train going toward town?”
“I wouldn’t know. She just came up like I said.”
“Did she have a suitcase, or anything of the sort? Like she was staying somewhere?”
“I didn’t see any. I got this trouble in my legs. Folks handle their own bags.”
The first car with a couple of reporters and cameraman arrived just then, and Bill and I beat it. O’Brien had still not shown himself, and I had an idea he wouldn’t, with the press around. But Bill was grinning to himself.
‘“Maynard Mansion Scene of Mystery Death,’” he said. “Picture of swimming pool, center of many gaieties, where body was found. Social Register family bewildered. Say, O’Brien ain’t so old, is he?”
“I haven’t an idea,” I said coldly.
He looked at me.
“He was watching for somebody last night when he shot out at my car. Think it was that woman?”
“If you think he murdered her, I’d think again, Bill.”
“So you like him, eh? All I can say is that one good push from those arms of his and she’s gone. And what’s the idea, his getting the bag? He was damned anxious about it, if you ask me.”
Chapter 10
ANNE WAS ON THE phone from Boston when we got back to the house. She said the operation was over and Martha seemed all right. She’d like to stay a few days, however, if we could keep Bill.
“Try and get me away!” Bill said. “Home’s nothing like this. Let me talk to her, Lois.”
The last I heard as I went upstairs to dress he was telling Anne we were finding bodies all over the place, that he was under suspicion of murder, and that he’d call her from the jail, if and when. I let it ride. If Anne didn’t know her own son by that time she never would.
To my shocked surprise, as I reached the upper hall, I saw a suitcase standing outside Judith’s door, and heard her moving rapidly around inside the room. As I had left her in a virtual state of collapse, I was bewildered. I lifted the bag, and it was evidently packed. It looked as though she was leaving, and leaving in a hurry.
As usual her door was locked, and when I knocked all sounds ceased. But when she spoke it was from close by.
“Who is it?” she asked.
“It’s Lois. What’s all this nonsense out here?”
“Are you alone? Is anyone near you?”
“I’m alone,” I said with such patience as I could summon. “Don’t be a fool. Open the door and let me in.”
Her room was a mess, clothes all over it, on the bed and the chairs. Even the floor. And Judith herself wasn’t much better, her hair in all directions and her face without makeup. She was almost as white as she had been at the pool, and her eyes looked almost demented.
“I’m getting out,” she said. “I thought I’d be safe here, but I’m not.”
“Safe from what, for heaven’s sake?”
“Never mind that, I’m leaving. That’s all.”
“Look, Judith,” I said. “Let’s get at this thing sensibly. Did you know that woman who came here last night?”
“No, of course not. How should I?”
There was a ring of truth in that. Judith could lie, and do it well, when she wanted to, but I was sure she was telling the truth now.
“You fainted when you saw her,” I said. “If you didn’t know her, why pass out like that? It looks darned funny to me.”
She sat down then, as though the strength of desperation had suddenly abandoned her.
“Why wouldn’t I faint?” she said. “She was horrible, dreadful. I don’t write crime books. I’m not used to dead bodies, or murdered ones.”
I eyed her.
“So you think she was murdered? You don’t know who she is. You never saw her before, and even the police don’t say it was murder. You’d better get a better story than that, Judith, before they begin to question you.”
She did not answer at once. She tried to light a cigarette with shaking hands, and when she finally succeeded she took a long puff before she spoke.
“You saw her,” she said. “Her hair is like mine, and she’s almost my build. I think she was killed because she was mistaken for me.”
“Don’t be ridiculous! Who on earth wants to kill you? If you think it’s Ridgely you’re crazy.”
“It’s not Ridge. I can’t talk about it. Let me alone, can’t you? I’m not staying here, that’s all.”
“Now listen, Judith,” I said impatiently. “If you’re in real trouble you need police protection. I’ll get the chief up here and you can tell him all about it. Or tell me, if you’d rather. Maybe you’re wrong. Maybe you’re just scaring yourself. In any case let’s find out.”
She gave me a quite dreadful look.
“If you bring the police into this I’ll kill myself,” she said. “I mean it. I’ll do just that.”
I eyed her. Erratic as she was she did mean it, and I knew it.
“But there has to be a reason for all this,” I argued. “What have you done? Have you killed someone? What else am I to think except that you’ve committed some sort of crime and now i
t’s catching up with you? That’s what it looks like. And don’t blame me for thinking so, Judith. It’s all you allow me to think. And I’m calling Phil on the phone. He’d better come out and talk some sense into you.”
“Phil won’t change me, unless you both want me murdered.”
She got up determinedly, and I had started for the door when a belated thought stopped me.
“Anyhow,” I said, “you can’t leave yet. The police have a body. Whether they think she was murdered or not, we’ll all be interrogated. There will be an inquest, and we’ll have to be there. You can’t just get on a plane or a ship, and you know it. And what are you going to tell them? That she was killed in mistake for you? They’ll want to know why.”
Nothing, however, was more obvious than that she had no intention of telling anybody anything. I made one more attempt, though.
“What about Doctor Townsend?” I said. “Can’t you tell him what’s wrong? That’s his business, isn’t it? Or does he know already?”
“It has nothing to do with him,” she said, her face tight. “I don’t want him involved.”
I left her after that, feeling pretty hopeless. It was lunchtime, and Bill and I ate hash and his favorite popovers. But he was rather quiet, for him. When Jennie had slammed the pantry door for the last time, he looked up from his coffee.
“Think all this has anything to do with Aunt Judith?” he asked.
I tried to look merely interested.
“Judith?” I said. “Where on earth did you get that idea?”
“Oh, Jennie talks,” he said. “And all this locking herself in looks queer as hell. If she’s in a mess, why not tell somebody, get help, get the police?”
“I’ve tried that, Bill. She won’t talk about it.”
“Not Chandler, is it?”
“Your guess is as good as mine. He had twenty years to kill her, if that’s your idea. Why wait until now?”
“I’ll bet he pays her a cracking good alimony.”
“I never heard of alimony as a reason for murder.”
“Well, if he could get away with it,” he said and lapsed into thoughtful silence, as though the idea of Ridgely Chandler threatening Judith because of alimony was not unpleasant.
The Swimming Pool Page 9
