It was at breakfast the next morning that I asked Phil if he had any idea from what employment agency Mother had got her household servants. He gave me his usual morning glare—of wanting to read his paper, of to hell with commuting, and of resentment that anybody could expect him to speak until after his second cup of coffee.
“How the devil would I know?” he said sourly. “And why should you care?”
Bill, however, looked up from a four-inch pile of hot cakes soaked with butter and syrup.
“Ludwig’s,” he said.
“Ludwig’s what?”
“Grandmother always went to Ludwig’s, according to Mother. So does Mother herself, for all the good it does her.”
I went into New York late that morning, but as I sat in the train I became more and more uncertain. I had a lot of unrelated facts and some guesses. What had Ridge Chandler’s fifty thousand dollars to do with Dawson, alias Benjamin? Could a man, say of fifty and not too honest, have accumulated the sum he had deposited in the bank so long ago? Or had he been the “jam” Ridge had spoken about? In that case what did he know in order to blackmail Mother?
She hadn’t killed Father, of course. There was the note he left, and the dinner party was still going on when it happened. Also Judith was only in her teens in those days, not even allowed to drive a car. Not allowed to do much of anything, for that matter. She had not even made her debut, that winter of 1929–30 and if she was involved Dawson had apparently let many years lapse, years when he probably knew she had married well, without bothering her.
It was not Dawson then—or Benjamin, if it was he—who had sent her scurrying to Reno, and I felt rather foolish when I located the Ludwig Employment Agency on a second floor on Madison Avenue. It was a shabby place which showed its age. Old Mrs. Ludwig was dead the girl at the desk told me, but her daughter was running the business. She was out to lunch, but would be back soon. I sat down to wait in the depressing atmosphere of all such places: the line of women in the adjoining room, the detached young woman at the desk, and the occasional telephone calls.
“I sent her over. Didn’t she come?” Or: “Well, I’m sorry. Her references are fine. Maybe if you try her a little longer.”
I longed for a cigarette or even a sandwich. I had not stopped to eat. And I could feel the eyes of the women on me, suspicious or hopeful as it might be; hope that I might offer a summer place, cool and with grass. Suspicion because all employers were suspect. They made me feel like an interloper. Things picked up, however, when Miss Ludwig appeared. She was a brisk middle-aged woman, neatly dressed and as she took off her hat she asked me what she could do for me.
“I’m afraid I’m here under false pretenses,” I said. “I don’t want to employ anyone. I’m really after information, although after all this time—”
She listened while I explained. I was trying to trace a butler my mother, Mrs. James Maynard had employed a good many years ago. He was dead now, but his widow had died too, not long ago and there was some money involved. Rather a large sum, in fact. His name had been Arthur Dawson.
She shook her head. The name meant nothing to her. But she said they still had her mother’s old ledgers. She herself used a card index system, but the ledgers were around somewhere.
“If Dawson was on her list, Mother would have it,” she said. “She was most particular.”
She got the approximate date from me, raised her eyebrows, and then disappeared into a third room which from the glimpse I had of it was used largely for the storage of broken chairs and a chest or two. When she came back some minutes later she had two dusty volumes in her arms and a smudge of dirt across her nose.
“Mother had her own methods,” she said, placing them on the desk. “She had one for what she called, the ladies, and I’m glad some of them never saw those books! The other is for the applicants. If you’ll give me your mother’s name again I’ll take her first.”
She found it, and she looked at me with some respect.
“I see you kept eight servants for a good many years,” she said. “And—I hope you don’t mind this—your mother is listed as hard to suit but fair. She paid well and expected a good bit.”
I didn’t mind, so she turned to the other ledger. Dawson was there. At the age of forty he had been in a good many situations apparently, but there was no entry for him after Mother had employed him. Not even the date he had left. She closed the book and glanced at me.
“I’m afraid that’s not very useful,” she said. “But you have to remember the times. Most people cut down because of the crash, and very few continued to keep butlers, or indeed much help at all. You were too young to remember, I suppose.”
I said I was, thanked her, and left. All I had was a sort of negative proof that Dawson had not used the Ludwig agency after he left us. He might have been anywhere, doing anything. The one thing I was sure of was that he was too old to have dumped me into the pool or banged poor Bill into unconsciousness.
Chapter 24
IT WAS RATHER A shock to find Chief Fowler on the porch when I got home. I had come out with Phil, and Bill met us at the train. Phil groaned when he saw Fowler.
“Well, here it comes,” he said. “Two to one I go first, Lois.”
Apparently, however, no one was to be arrested. It was a hectic day, and the chief had made himself comfortable. His collar and part of his shirt were open, and his Panama hat lay beside him on the chair. Beside him, too, on a table was a pitcher of lemonade and a glass. He got up as we climbed the steps, looking rather embarrassed.
“I took the liberty of asking for something cool,” he said. “Hope you don’t mind.”
“Just so you don’t pull out a pair of handcuffs,” Phil said.
The chief laughed merrily, or so Phil maintained later.
“Now, now, Mr. Maynard,” he said. “You will have your little joke.”
“Even in the shadow of the gallows,” Phil said. “It is a far, far better thing I do, and so forth.”
The chief looked mystified, having never apparently heard of Charles Dickens and Sydney Carton, and Phil turned sour.
“Just what’s the idea of the visit?” he said. “Unless you’ve decided I shot O’Brien.”
“O’Brien’s a cop,” Fowler said comfortably. “A fellow like that makes enemies, and he knows it. He sends them up the river, and when they get out sometimes they go for him. He’s had narrow escapes before this.”
So that was O’Brien’s story! I almost smiled, but Phil was still irritable.
“Are you here because some gun-happy punk shot O’Brien?” he demanded. “If so, I want a bath and a highball. Then I want my dinner. Unless there is something urgent—”
“Well, I don’t know whether you would call it urgent or not,” Fowler said complacently. “But we haven’t forgotten a little matter of murder here, Mr. Maynard, And since the state boys have pulled out—”
“Oh, so they’ve pulled out, have they?”
“I guess they got word from Albany to quit playing. Or maybe they’ve decided somebody dreamed up this fellow you all talked about.”
Phil snorted.
“You can look at Bill’s face here if you want a sign. He’d have a hard time dreaming that up.”
Fowler, however, was still in high good humor.
“Funny thing,” he said. “These state fellows think they’re the cat’s whiskers, but now and then they slip up. Take it like this, Mr. Maynard. This Benjamin woman wasn’t expecting trouble when she came here that night. Not a bit of it. She was sitting nice and comfortable on that bench down there, waiting for somebody. Smoking a cigarette, too. You didn’t know that, did you?”
Phil grinned.
“I don’t think it would have interested me,” he said. “Not to the point of murder, anyhow.”
Fowler’s smile faded.
“Well, that’s as may be,” he said. “At least let’s say I have eyes and know how to use them.”
He reached into his pocket and pulle
d out a thin old-fashioned gold chain, with a black-and-white locket as a pendant, and held it out for us to see.
“As I said, those state guys are all right for traffic. Give them a bunch of parking-tickets and they’re happy. But they missed this, and how! It’s hers, all right. The Hunnewell woman says she knows it well. Now guess where I found it.”
I was not guessing, nor was Phil. We did not even touch the thing.
“All right,” Phil said impatiently. “You found it and it’s hers. So what?”
The chief was slightly deflated, but not much, and he refused to be hurried. He had not been satisfied, he said, with the idea that the blow had stunned the Benjamin woman and she had tumbled into the pool.
“It looked more deliberate to me,” he said. “That blow she got didn’t knock her out. There was no fracture. Made her head ache maybe, maybe not. But she knew the pool was there. So how did she get into it?”
Nobody said anything, and he went on. He had come back to The Birches that morning and gone over the neighborhood of the pool. He had examined the diving-platform, with no results, and at first, too, the old bench offered nothing. Finally, however, he turned it over and shook it, and the locket dropped out from between the boards.
“You get the idea,” he said, returning it carefully to his pocket. “She’s sitting there peaceably, and waiting for someone she’s expecting. It’s a long trip, but she’s made it. Maybe she’s tired. Maybe she even dozes off. She was a little hard of hearing, too. So she doesn’t even know there’s someone near her until it’s too late. Then wham! She gets hit on the head.
“But it doesn’t knock her out. She puts up some sort of fight, not much but enough to break the necklace. Maybe she tries to scream. Maybe she does scream. The inside of one of her lips was cut, as though whoever it was tried to gag her with a hand. But she still isn’t dead. So she’s picked up and thrown into the pool. No woman did all that, Mr. Maynard.”
“Look,” Phil said. “If you lived in a house full of women, as I do for my sins, you’d know there’s very little they can’t do. They can move pianos and lift carpets. They break things, too; watch crystals, chains, eggbeaters, toasters, even chairs, by God!”
I glared at him.
“Just in case my brother is suggesting the wham came from me,” I said, “I had a similar experience myself one night not long ago. A man picked me up and threw me into the pool. If you don’t believe me you can ask O’Brien at the hospital. He dried me out.”
Fowler looked astonished. Then he smiled.
“Didn’t just dive in yourself, did you?” he said. “I gather you are a fine little swimmer.”
“If you think I did it to throw you off the track,” I said angrily, “you’re even more of an idiot than I think you are, and that’s plenty. Over and over we have told you about this man, but you still think we’ve made him up out of whole cloth. Who shot O’Brien? Who threw a rock through my sister’s window, or don’t you know about that? Who frightened Jennie into hysterics? Who knocked Bill here senseless? And who dumped me into the pool? I say it’s the same man who killed Mrs. Benjamin, and if we didn’t have a lot of lame-brained police he’d be in jail this minute.”
Fowler got up. He even managed to achieve a certain amount of dignity.
“Maybe not,” he said. “But lame-brained or not, that golf club came from here. Just remember that, Miss Maynard. You talk a lot. So does your brother. But you don’t say very much. And don’t think I’m through. Maybe for the shadow of the gallows—whatever that means—you might substitute chair, and not one of those your brother mentioned, either.”
He left us then, driving away with a look of determination on his face. Bill grinned.
“Made a nice comeback, the blabbermouth, didn’t he?” he said cheerfully. “But the big hunk of cheese doesn’t know which end of him is up.”
“I wouldn’t bet on that,” Phil said. Then he turned on me. “For God’s sake, Lois, what goes on around here?” He stood stiffly, eyeing me with something less than brotherly affection.
“What is O’Brien’s game?” he inquired. “And why did you go to him anyway, as you so nicely put it, to dry you out?”
“His place was nearer, Phil. Anyhow it was over. The man was gone, and I didn’t see what I could do.”
“That’s a fine state of mind!” he said bitterly. “We have a maniac about this place. He throws all sorts of capers, and he even probably commits a murder. But I’m not to know. It’s supposed to take brains to be a lawyer, but no. A tuppenny policeman named O’Brien calls the shots.”
“O’Brien tried to catch him that night, but he got away. He’s after Judith, Phil. Not me. That’s why O’Brien was here. To protect her.”
“That I don’t believe,” he said, and turning abruptly went into the house.
Dinner that night was a quiet one. Phil was taciturn. He didn’t even bother to look with distaste at the dried apricots which were Helga’s attempt to economize while Bill was out. And when it was over he carried his coffee into the library, closing the door behind him, which was his signal to keep out.
Nevertheless, I followed him soon after. He was at his desk, but he had not started to work. He had not even touched his coffee. He was holding his head in his hands, and the face he turned to me was without expression.
“I’m sorry to bother you, Phil,” I said. “But it’s time we had a talk. I’ve been holding out on you, but with things as they are—”
“Without O’Brien, you mean.”
“Partly that. Not all.”
“So now I’m to be let into the arcanum! Thanks. Many thanks,” he said. “I began to gather that quite a lot’s been going on without my knowing it. O’Brien turns out to be a Homicide man. Bill gets his comeuppance. Somebody throws you in that damned pool of yours. Judith tries to kill herself. Just possibly you or I or both of us are about to be arrested for murder, and God knows what else. What do you think I am? A moron?”
“You’re always so tired Phil. Besides, I don’t really know anything. I’m as mystified as you are.”
He laughed cynically.
“So you accidentally take a ride, see a black cat in a window, discover the Benjamin house, make a liar out of yourself at the inquest, and get dumped—I believe that’s your word—into the pool. What else?”
“Do you want me to tell you? Or are you going to think the whole thing’s funny? It’s damned unfunny, Phil.”
He drew a long breath.
“Go ahead,” he said. “I’ll try to control my sense of humor.”
Sitting there, with Phil at the desk and me in a chair, I began with the death of Flaherty, and went on to the train at Reno and O’Brien. I ended with Helga and the picture of Walter Benjamin. Some of it he knew, some of it he did not. He remembered Dawson, but he saw nothing unusual in his disappearance, even if he had changed his name.
“They wander about, these fellows,” he said. “Change places often, and if they lack good references they may change their names. Some of them make quite a bit on the side, too, tips from guests, commissions on liquor bills, and so on. If that was his picture you showed me the other night he’s changed a lot. Of course, twenty years—”
“And thirty thousand dollars,” I reminded him. “Phil, do you think Mother gave it to him?”
He stared at me.
“Mother?” he said. “By the time the estate was settled she didn’t have thirty thousand cents. What do you mean? Even if she had it, why give it to Dawson?”
“If he was Walter Benjamin he got it somewhere. She wasn’t in trouble of some sort, was she?”
“We were all in trouble,” he said shortly. “I was back in college, shoveling snow and washing dishes to finish my last year, and Anne was trying to find a place where she and Harrison could starve to death.”
“Yet Mother took Judith and went to Arizona, Phil. I think she was running away from something. Could she have owed a lot of money you didn’t know about?”
“Sh
e owed plenty,” he said, his face grim. “The executors had to stop her credit everywhere. She never had any money sense. It was just something to spend. But real money, no.”
I might have told him then about Ridge’s fifty thousand dollars. I wish now I had. But he reverted to my story as if he did not care to discuss Mother’s lack of financial acumen. He has a clear legal mind, and as he sat back with a cigarette he reviewed briefly what I had told him.
It looked to him, he said, as though I was confusing two different things. One, he said, didn’t concern us. That was the murder of Flaherty.
“That’s O’Brien’s business,” he said shortly, “and if you ask me it’s a trifle sentimental after all this time. But the other is Judith’s, and knowing her capacity for getting herself in a mess it might be anything from mayhem to bigamy.”
“I’ve thought of that, Phil. Could she have run away and married someone before she married Ridge?”
“And the groom has kept his mouth shut ever since? Talk sense, Lois. How about these clippings? You say they’re still in the cottage? I might have a look at them.”
It was still twilight as we started down the drive. Phil was silent, apparently thinking over our talk and not liking much of it. But when we were fifty feet or so away I heard Henrietta give a loud squawk and flutter her wings wildly.
“That chicken still roost in the cottage, Lois?” Phil asked.
“I think Helga puts her there at night. She sounds frightened.”
She was frightened. The cottage door was wide open and she was on her way out when we reached it. It took only a glance to see that someone had been there before us. The place had been pretty thoroughly ransacked. The table drawer was open and empty, and the books had been moved about on the shelves. There was no great confusion, however. It had been done in an orderly way, as if someone had hoped it would go unnoticed.
It took only a moment to see all this, and I shot into the kitchen, with that ridiculous chicken practically under my feet. The window there was open, although it had been kept closed and locked since O’Brien had left. I called to Phil.
The Swimming Pool Page 23
