“So I’m to consider the motion passed as read” I said. “Is that the idea?”
He nodded. It was characteristic of him, I thought, to put me aside and get back to his job again without even a break.
“Passed as read,” he agreed, and dropped down heavily in his big chair. “Now, what goes on out here? Not last night. I know about that. What have they been doing to you? You look as though you haven’t been sleeping for weeks. Has Fowler been bothering you?”
“Only now and then. Of course, he is quite sure either Phil or I killed Mrs. Benjamin. He’s looking for a motive now. And your clippings and the photograph are gone, just in case you’re looking for them.”
He was not worried, I saw. Hardly even interested.
“Police take them?” he asked.
“No. Somebody last night. He escaped through the kitchen window while I was bringing Phil to see them.”
“Likes windows, doesn’t he?” he commented. “Two the same night. Although I can’t imagine—” He broke off then, as though he was thinking. “What good are they to anyone? Even the bankbooks. I’ve got the facts on them.”
“Not all of them,” I said rather smugly. “I don’t suppose you know Ridgely Chandler gave Mother fifty thousand dollars in cash about the time Walter Benjamin made that deposit. Or do you know that, too?”
“I knew it,” he said briefly. “At least I knew he’d made a large withdrawal about that time. Did he come out flat-footed and tell you?”
“Not flat-footed. No Chandler is ever flat-footed. He told me, yes.”
“Why? Not why did he pay your mother. That’s pretty clear. He wanted your sister. But why tell you?”
“I think he was annoyed. Judith had tried to kill herself, and he’d been busy keeping it out of the papers. I think he regretted it later. But maybe a psychiatrist would say it was a part of his buildup; that he had an inferiority complex about his height and this showed him big and generous.”
He grinned over his pipe.
“I’ll be getting a smart wife someday, God willing,” he said. “With a head like that pretty one of yours we could go places. I suppose you know by this time that Dawson was Benjamin.”
I gaped at him.
“You knew it all along, didn’t you?”
“Well, I had a theory, and I was lucky. I managed to trace him. You see, we’re getting along, aren’t we?”
“If you mean back to Flaherty—”
“Precisely,” he said. “Back to Flaherty is right. It wasn’t very long after your father’s death that Flaherty was killed. And two weeks later an impecunious butler named Dawson went to a downtown savings bank and made deposits of thirty thousand dollars there.”
I got up. All the peace was gone from the cottage, or for that matter all that held us together.
“Are you saying,” I asked furiously, “that my own mother had Flaherty murdered?”
“I haven’t said anything of the sort,” he said patiently. “I think your mother was blackmailed out of fifty thousand dollars. Dawson spent some of it. He bought a tobacco business, remember, and he still had thirty thousand left. That was a sizable sum for those days, my dear. For any days, for that matter.”
Slowly it dawned on me what he meant.
“The Preston girl!” I said. “You can’t think any of us were involved in that, unless you think my father knew a little cheap East Side prostitute and murdered her.”
“Dawson murdered her.”
“Dawson!”
“He was in love with her. We never had enough to take to a jury. But Flaherty was sure the Henry woman was lying about young Johnny Shannon. They both disappeared before the trial, and Flaherty was trying to trace them when he was shot.”
“You mean,” I said incredulously, “someone paid him to kill Flaherty?”
“He was paid for something. Maybe to keep his mouth shut.”
“And Mother paid him?”
“I think she did, yes.”
“But why?” I said bleakly. “What had she done? She had her faults, but she was never the sort to run around. She had a family, too. We were only kids, except Anne, and she kept a sharp watch on us. Oh, I forgot, our friend the prowler was here again last night.”
He looked annoyed rather than surprised.
“How do you know it was Morrison?” he asked sharply.
“Because he was at Judith’s door in the upper hall when I saw him. He knocked me down trying to escape.”
If I expected him to leap from his chair in any wild expression of sympathy I was certainly disappointed. He only looked tired and angry.
“The damned fool!” he said. “Did you get a good look at him?”
“I wasn’t in any position to inspect him,” I said. “I was flat on the floor when he leaped over me. And I was good and sick afterward, if that means anything to you.”
I was still getting no pity, however.
“You must have some idea about him,” he said thoughtfully. “Was he big or little, young or old? And what was he doing at your sister’s door?”
“I didn’t inquire,” I said. “We merely met, so to speak, and parted.”
He came over then and put his good arm around me.
“I’m sorry, my poor darling,” he said softly. “I’d hoped he wouldn’t come back.”
“But why?” I said. “What does he want? Why is he trying to kill Judith?”
“I’m not sure he is,” he said slowly. “I told you once I might be off on the wrong foot in this case. I still wonder. What does Mrs. Chandler say about all this?”
“He was a burglar after her jewelry. Period.”
“Not the tea set in the dining-room?”
“Definitely not the tea set. And don’t try to be funny. I have a bump on the back of my head so I couldn’t wear a hat, if I ever wore one. You know who this man is. Why don’t you turn him in? Or don’t you think he killed Selina Benjamin? Maybe you suspect one of us, as Fowler does.”
“Don’t forget that’s still a possibility, my darling,” he said. “A woman with a golf club can be pretty formidable, and Judith’s attempt at suicide hasn’t helped matters any. As a matter of fact, we may find it was Judith Chandler who took the golf club to the pool that night. Whether she used it or not is another question. But Selina was there to meet someone, and I think it was your sister.”
I sat back and closed my eyes.
“I don’t believe it,” I said huskily. “Why would she?”
“Look, my dear,” he said gently. “A long time ago someone paid Walter Benjamin—or Dawson, if you like—fifty thousand dollars for some purpose. Maybe to kill Flaherty, maybe not. But Selina Benjamin knows about it. She marries the man, and may have had twenty years of hell with him. Then he dies—he is dead, I’ve verified that—and she is free. So one of several things may happen. Perhaps her conscience bothers her. Perhaps she sees a chance for more blackmail. Or perhaps, if she wrote the anonymous letter I got, she intends to warn Mrs. Chandler she is in danger.”
“So she has to be silenced?”
“She had to be killed.”
I got up dizzily.
“I can’t bear it,” I said. “Judith never killed anybody.”
“No,” he said, to my surprise. “I don’t think she did. Only it’s going to be hard to prove.”
He let me go then. It was the policeman, not the lover, who showed me out the door of the cottage, and I went home in a bad humor and a mental state of chaos.
I had another sleepless night after that, and at two in the morning I got the pad from my table and tried to make some sort of outline of what I knew. As I kept it, along with the drawing of the cat, I copy it here to show my mental confusion at the time.
The murder of Selina Benjamin.
My visit to her house cat
bankbooks clippings
The inquest and Phil’s golf club.
The story of Flaherty.
The rock through Judith’s window. Was there a note?<
br />
The man who dumped me in the pool.
Bill’s fight with him, or someone, and his breaking into the house.
The shooting of O’Brien.
The theft of the clippings and so on from the cottage.
Helga and Dawson’s picture. What does she know?
Judith’s attempt at suicide.
They made no sense, of course. There were even none of the clues Sara Winters always sprinkles about, no lost buttons or cufflinks, no handy fragments of cloth or fingerprints. Nothing much except Selina’s necklace, which only proved she had been at the pool—a fact we certainly knew anyhow—and the golf club, which might have been missing for days without anyone’s noticing it.
If I dreamed about O’Brien that night I do not remember it. But I did realize that I was in love with two men; one was big, gentle, and loving; the other was a policeman—and I wondered drearily if the two ever met.
Chapter 27
I PACKED JUDITH’S TRUNKS in town the next day. She was up and about that morning, and determined to leave The Birches as soon as possible. She even went down to the telephone and tried to make a reservation at the Plaza for the next day. They could not take her until the day after, which infuriated her, and when I left for the city she was calling the various travel agencies. So far as I could hear, the news was still bad. All they could offer was a possible cancellation at the last minute, and she looked rather daunted as she dropped into a hall chair.
“Get my trunks packed, anyhow, will you, Lois?” she said feverishly. “They can be forwarded abroad to me if I get a ship.”
She sat there, her color bad, but her mouth set determinedly. She was not able to travel. She was not even fit to be where she was, out of bed and downstairs. But there was a sort of desperation about her that morning which left me without protest.
I lunched at the Waldorf with Ridge that day. He had the keys to the apartment and to the various closets there, and he had located Clarice, who agreed to help me. He himself was not going back.
“I’ve turned that particular page,” he said, his face set. “I don’t want to reopen it.”
He did not look well. He was nervous, too, although a couple of martinis relaxed him. He listened to my story of what Judith maintained was a burglar after her jewels, and said she was a fool not to keep them in the bank. But he thought The Birches was no place for her, and said so.
Not until the meal was over and his demitasse was in front of him did he refer to our last meeting and then, I felt, unwillingly.
“About the money I gave your mother,” he said, “that was strictly between us, Lois. No need of having it talked about.”
“It’s nothing I’m very proud of, Ridge. I still can’t imagine Mother getting into a jam. Didn’t she tell you what it was?”
“I gathered it was serious. That’s all I know.”
I was tempted to tell him about Dawson, and I have wondered since if things would have been different if I had. But he had paid the check and was ready to go, so I said nothing.
He dropped me at the apartment on Fifth Avenue, but he did not go in. Clarice was waiting in the foyer, and we went up in the elevator together. Her face was alive with curiosity, although she said nothing until we had raised the shades and opened the windows. The huge apartment smelled of moth preventives. It had the moldy odor of places shut up for a long time, and with the furniture and even the paintings covered it was dismal and dark.
Clarice called the houseman to bring up the trunks from the basement, and while we waited for them and I lit a cigarette, she eyed me.
“Mr. Chandler says the madam is going abroad,” she said. “Surely she’s not going alone?”
“If you mean a maid, she is having enough trouble getting passage for herself.”
She sighed.
“I have missed her,” she said. “I have a lady now, of course, but she is old and ugly. It was a pleasure to dress Mrs. Chandler. She was always a picture. And such lovely clothes! I do not understand it,” she went on when I said nothing. “So gay she was, and then all at once everything is wrong. She does not go out, she has no parties, even some days she stays in bed. In bed all day,” she added. “Not even eating! And Mr. Chandler is bewildered, poor man. Why not?”
“She hasn’t been well, Clarice. Perhaps that explains it.”
She tossed her head.
“She was not sick, Miss Maynard. I have thought—perhaps Mr. Chandler has a pretty lady somewhere and she finds it out. But then I think that is silly. Mr. Chandler is not that sort of man. He is too well-bred.”
I might have enlightened her on what Bill would have called the capers of some well-bred people I knew, but the trunks arrived just then and we set to work.
Even I had not realized the breadth and depth of Judith’s wardrobe as Clarice lovingly took dress after dress out of their protective bags. She lingered over the ermine evening wrap.
“I always thought that was the reason she had the row the first night she wore it,” she said. “It had just come home, and it must have cost a fortune. Not that he said anything when she showed it to him, except that she looked fine in it. I was there, so he couldn’t. But after she came home—wow! He must have given her hell.”
“I think we won’t discuss Mrs. Chandler,” I said briefly. “Let’s get on with this packing.”
She turned sulky after that, but I paid no attention. I was trying to reconcile Ridge’s story about that night with what I had just heard. Somehow it made better sense if they had quarreled, Judith’s taking out her jewels and more or less appraising them, and her decision to leave him. He must have said some unforgivable thing. Perhaps that she had been bought and paid for with the money he gave Mother and, as he had told me, he felt there had been no value received.
I let Clarice finish the packing and went into the drawing-room and stood looking out at the park. Small boys were sailing yachts on the lake almost under the window and, as I watched, one of them turned over and sank. I could hear the boy’s wails from where I stood. It made me think of Judith, whose small craft had so nearly sunk.
Her bags were in the hall when I got home that afternoon, so I gathered she really meant to leave us. I found her in bed, however, looking exhausted.
“Well,” I said cheerfully, “your trunks are packed and ready. Ridge let me in and Clarice helped me.”
“That snoop!” she said. “Are you sure you got everything? She’s quite capable of holding out something she liked.”
“She didn’t hold out your ermine and sable coat, although she drooled over it. It looks as though it had never been worn.”
“I only wore it once,” she said. “Do you mind sending me a tray? I’m weaker than I realized.”
Obviously the coat was out, as were so many things. If she and Ridge quarreled over it she had no intention of telling me. I saw too that her jewel case was beside the bed, and the safe was open and empty.
“Aren’t you afraid of our burglar again?” I said. “What’s the idea, Jude? They were all right where they were.”
“I’ll need them, if I get a late cancellation on the Queen Mary. There’s a chance I may, at the last minute.”
I told Phil at the dinner table that night that she was really leaving, and he drew a long breath.
“It’s about time,” he said pushing aside the junket Jennie had served him. “She’s my sister, but look at the record! She married a good guy who let her run wild for years. Too much drinking, too late hours, and a lot of parasites around her, picking up the crumbs. Then she leaves him. No reason. Just shucked him like an ear of corn.”
“So she tries to kill herself,” I said. “That’s silly, Phil.”
“Well, she’s at an uncertain age,” he said. “She’s been a beauty, too. Now she’s fading, and knows it. That’s probably the reason.”
“Why did she marry Ridge, Phil? She wasn’t in love with him. He isn’t even attractive.”
“Money,” he said tersely. “Ten millions of i
t. I’m not mercenary, but I’d marry a girl with two heads for less than that.”
He got up, after giving the junket a look of pure loathing, and lit a cigarette.
“Think I’ll go down and see our cop,” he said. “The damn fool ought to be in bed. Maybe I can get him there.”
Bill was out, so I was alone after he left, and when the phone rang I thought rather hopefully it would be a travel agency with a room for Judith. To my astonishment it was Doctor Townsend.
“I wonder if you will do an errand for me tomorrow?” he said. “It may be a considerable job, but I’ve been thinking over that last talk of ours. After all, a still youngish beautiful woman doesn’t try to kill herself without good reason. And the impulse may still be there.”
“She’s leaving here the day after tomorrow,” I told him.
“For where?”
“The Plaza first, Europe eventually. What do you want me to do, Doctor?”
What he wanted was rather curious. He sounded apologetic as he explained. Briefly, and if I was willing, I was to go the next morning to the public library, where the various newspapers kept their back files, and look over the winter of 1929–30.
“Look for any mention of your family,” he said. “Your father’s death, if you don’t mind and the society pages, too. It will give you a date or two, anyhow. And see if any of you were involved in any trouble at that time. Outside of the panic, of course. Just see what you can pick up.”
I don’t think he liked the idea himself. The ethics of it must have bothered him. On the other hand, he was trying to help Judith in the only way he knew, and I understood.
“I’ll do anything you think will be useful,” I told him. “But I doubt if the society news will be helpful. We were in mourning, you know.”
“When did your father die?”
“In January, 1930.”
“Why not look before that? In November or December. I think what happened to Mrs. Chandler happened that winter. That’s what she blocks off, if you know what I mean.”
As a result I went in to the city with Phil the next morning. He was not curious, fortunately. He read the paper all the way, and accepted my statement about needing stockings with no comment whatever.
The Swimming Pool Page 25
