The Swimming Pool

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

  I had no difficulty at the library, but it was a tough job. The back issues were kept on microfilm, and looking at them through a viewer was troublesome. Also, except for an account of Father’s death, which I did not read, and a brief notice that Mother and Judith had gone to Tucson early in February, there was no mention of the family. But purely by chance I happened on the story of the Preston girl’s murder.

  The story, when I read it, was about the trial. The date was February, 1930. A boy named Shannon, a student at Columbia at the time, had been on friendly terms with a girl of indifferent reputation who worked in one of the five-and-ten-cent stores. She lived in a tenement on the East Side, and one evening in November, 1929, she was heard quarreling with Shannon. Late that night her strangled body was found in her room. Shannon had been arrested, and in February went on trial.

  He protested his innocence, but the evidence was all against him. One of the witnesses who identified him before the grand jury was a young woman whose picture was shown.

  I sat back and studied it. Given almost twenty-one years and the blankness of a dead face, it was Selina Benjamin. It was her testimony before the grand jury that indicted Shannon, and, although she had disappeared by that time, had helped convict him. Flaherty had believed she was lying, had probably traced her to the town up the Hudson, and been killed before he had seen her.

  None of this related to my own family, of course, except for Dawson, whose name was never mentioned. But apparently the jury recognized Shannon’s youth, for on its recommendation he was given life instead of the chair.

  I found a picture of him after he had been sentenced, but he had turned his face away as if to avoid the camera. All I could see was a well-built youth with heavy hair and broad shoulders. And the young uniformed man beside him and manacled to him, according to the caption underneath, was one Sergeant O’Brien.

  I called the doctor, reporting I had found nothing, and later I lunched with Anne. She had a maid again, so we ate, as she said, like Christians. But I did not tell her what I had been doing. Instead I asked her if she had ever heard of a Mollie Preston or a Johnny Shannon. She only looked blank.

  “Who are they? I never heard of them.”

  “I only wondered if they were friends of Judith’s years ago. I came across the names somewhere.”

  “Oh, Judith! If they were a part of the gang around the swimming pool every summer, I wouldn’t know them. The amount of riffraff she collected!”

  She said Ridgely was selling the apartment and had offered her Judith’s huge grand piano.

  “As if I had room for it,” she said sourly. “Martha wants it, but I. told her if she brought it in, her father and I would have to move out on the street.”

  Her real interest, however, was in the fact that Judith was leaving The Birches for the Plaza, and the reason she gave for it.

  “A burglar,” she said, “and in the house! What on earth did you do?”

  “I lost my dinner, for one thing.”

  I had to explain it, of course, and she looked appalled.

  “I suppose he was after that jewelry of hers,” she said. “She’s acting like a fool about it. Why not put it in the bank? Ridge says it’s actually dangerous to carry it about as she does.”

  I left her soon after, but I did not want to go home. Call it intuition. Call it a hunch if you like, but I was depressed and not a little sad. I could still see O’Brien handcuffed to Johnny Shannon. He had been looking straight at the camera, and there was nothing in his face to show that the boy beside him was going to something worse than death. He looked like a man doing his duty. Nothing more.

  Was that what it meant to be a policeman, I thought. To be in Homicide, sending people to the chair or up for life. To build cases against them, stubbornly and doggedly, to grow hard in so doing, and yet to care for some woman, love her, and marry her. Even have children and love them, too.

  Because O’Brien could be hard, and I knew it, I did not want to see him that day. Instead I went to a double-feature movie which I hardly saw, ate a hamburger supper, and took a late train home. As both Phil and Bill were out to dinner, nobody met me.

  The only taxi at the station was Ed Brown’s, and he drove me to The Birches that night. He sat grumpily in the front seat of the rattletrap he called his car, and at the entrance to our drive he stopped.

  “Guess you can walk the rest of the way,” he said. “I got to get home. Missed my supper already.”

  “It won’t take you two minutes to go on, Ed. I’m tired. Go ahead. Don’t be stubborn.”

  He turned around in the seat and glared at me.

  “Too many bullets flying around this place,” he said. “Too much sudden death, if you ask me. Either you walk or you stay in the car and I’ll take you back to the station. All the same to me.”

  I was furious, but I knew Ed. I got out grumbling and I did not tip him, which made him clash his gears with indignation. But I need not have worried about seeing O’Brien. The cottage was dark and his car gone.

  I was hardly in the house when the telephone rang, and a man’s voice asked for Judith. She must have been listening, for she was down the stairs in a hurry. As I stood by I could see she was wildly excited.

  “Of course I can make it,” she said. “I’ll make it if I have to walk. Oh, you’re sending a car for me? That’s splendid. We have none here. My brother is out to dinner somewhere, and so is my nephew. Another passenger, you say? Where do I pick him up?”

  Later on, with police all around, I tried to tell them of her real excitement, her real happiness that night. She was not acting. She was almost the young Judith I had admired and loved years ago. But they did not believe me.

  She turned to me from the telephone, her eyes shining.

  “What incredible luck!” she said. “A really good cabin on the Queen Mary. It’s a late cancellation. They’re sending a car out to pick up someone or other, so they are having it come for me first, and I’ll pick the man up on my way in.” She was already halfway up the stairs. “We’ll have to hurry,” she said. “The ship’s sailing at midnight, and I have to get there in time. It’s lucky I’m partly packed. You’ll have to send my trunks later, Lois. I’ll cable you where.”

  She shot up to her room and I followed her. It was after nine by that time, and the two maids were in bed. I did not wake them. While Judith started to dress, I finished her packing, and carried the bags down the stairs. After that there was a considerable wait, with Judith consulting her wristwatch every five minutes. When at last we heard the car grinding up the drive, I was in what might be called a state. It was almost ten by that time, a starless, moonless night, and I remember piling the bags into the big black car without any attempt at order.

  Then Judith was kissing me good-by, and with her jewel case on her lap was waving as the car started.

  Chapter 28

  I WAITED UNTIL THE car reached the main road, then with a curious sense of deflation I went back into the house. She was gone, and I realized unexpectedly that I was going to miss her. I went up to her room, which was a chaos of tissue paper, discarded stockings, and all sorts of odds and ends, and for something to do set to work to put it at least partly in order.

  There was no need any longer of the bolts on her door or on her bathroom, I thought as I worked. The terror, whatever it had been, was gone. Or was it? The big quiet house seemed full of ghosts: of Mother dying in the walnut bed beside me, of Judith unconscious in it, of the unknown man lurking outside in the hall. I felt somewhat better when, an hour or so later, I saw the lights come on in the cottage and knew O’Brien had come back.

  I needed to see him. Not only to tell him Judith had gone, so he no longer felt he had to watch the place at night, but for reasons of my own. I had been badly shaken that day, and my confidence had not yet returned. I needed to see him, not as the man shackled to Johnny Shannon but as the O’Brien I knew, the big kindly man who tolerated Henrietta and even built a roost for her in the kitchen, t
he man who liked his girls and said he loved me.

  The house was still empty when I left it. Neither Phil nor Bill had come back, although it was after one o’clock. And the darkness was appalling. Well as I knew the drive I had more or less to feel my way. Yet darkness meant safety, I thought, in case our intruder was still about. He might not know that Judith was gone, and in fact it was only when I was near the pool that I heard any sound at all.

  Someone was in the shrubbery. Whoever it was was moving slowly, as if with a cool deliberation which was worse than any sort of haste. It sent me running madly for the cottage and safety, and fortunately O’Brien heard me coming. He opened the door for me, and it was at that instant a shot rang out. It struck the wall of the cottage beside me as he dragged me inside and shoved me down on the floor as he slammed the door.

  “For God’s sake!” he said. “What are you doing here?”

  He didn’t wait for an answer. He left me there and shut off the lights, but not before I had seen his face. He was all policeman at that moment. What’s more, he was furious at me.

  “Don’t move,” he said sharply. “He may try again. Where is he?”

  “Where he always is,” I said hysterically. “Near the pool.”

  I could hear him getting his gun, and the next moment he was quietly opening the door. It was more than I could bear. Probably I screamed. I know I begged him not to go out, that the intruder was still there.

  “He’ll kill you!” I yelled. “He’s tried once. He’ll try again.”

  “Not now he won’t,” he said grimly. “That voice of yours was a warning all right. He’s gone.”

  It was some time before I let him go out. I was still crying like a fool, and I knew he was furiously impatient with me when at last he took his gun and a flashlight and went out. I was sitting up drying my eyes when he came back.

  “You certainly have a faculty for spilling the beans,” he said coldly. “Can’t you ever learn to keep your pretty mouth shut?”

  Somehow I managed to get on my feet.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t want you shot again. That’s all. And I don’t like policemen. They’re hard. They’re not like other people. They have no feelings.”

  And then I was sobbing on his breast, and his arms were around me, sling and all.

  “It isn’t cruel to try to get a killer,” he said. “It makes the world a better place to live in, mavourneen.”

  He let me cry it out, my fright and shock, and when I was quieter he offered me a large, very clean white handkerchief. Then he put me into his own chair, and drew up one for himself.

  “Let’s have this out,” he said. “If you ever marry me I’ll still be a cop, my darling. It’s all I know to be. It’s in me, as it was in Flaherty. But I’ll be on the side of the law. That ought to mean something.”

  He was wearing his other face now, the one I knew and loved, and when Henrietta came in, eyeing us in her crooked manner, he put down a hand and stroked her absently.

  “Something’s happened to you,” he said. “You’ve known all along what my job is. What is it?”

  “I saw your picture today,” I told him. “It was an old one. You were taking the Shannon boy to prison for life, and you didn’t seem to care.”

  “I cared all right,” he said. “What did you expect me to do? Burst into tears?” And when I only shook my head he went on. “Maybe I’d better tell you about Johnny,” he said. “Perhaps I should have done it sooner. You see, he was by way of being a friend of mine. I visited him all the time he was shut away and last winter I got him out. He wasn’t even on parole. He was free.”

  “You did that?”

  “Don’t give me too much credit. He’d been a model prisoner, and the case had been purely circumstantial, anyhow. But there he was, free, and with no place to go. You’ll have to know his problem, Lois, to understand him. It’s not easy to get work for a man like that. He was forty, and his hair had turned white, so he looked even older.

  “He lived with me for a while. He was fine. He knew a lot, too. He’d read about everything in the prison library. He was the librarian for a long time but he had one obsession. He hadn’t killed the Preston girl, and he wanted his name cleared.

  “I think he located the Benjamin woman about that time, although he never told me. Possibly he scared her, too, for she and her husband closed the shop and went away, ostensibly to visit her sister, and Walter Benjamin died there.

  “But Selina had to come back eventually. There was the estate to settle, the shop to sell. She must have been afraid at first, but as time went on and Johnny let her alone she gained confidence. There was something else, too. She had joined the church, and her conscience was bothering her badly. I think, too, she began to worry about your sister.”

  “Judith!” I said, bewildered. “What had she to do with him?”

  “I’m coming to her, my dear. She knew Johnny was free. The papers played it up when he was released, and it was she, far more than Selina Benjamin, who had let him go up for life. No wonder she was terrified, or wanted to get out of the country.”

  “Are you saying Judith killed the Preston girl? That’s crazy. It’s insane. Judith at eighteen! How could she even know her? Mother watched over her day and night.”

  “That’s as it may be, my dear. Let’s say after Reno, Shannon meant to see her, and had a reason for it. Perhaps he wasn’t normal. The big house does things to men, and he’d been there a long time. I began to worry about him, so I wrote to a friend of mine, the police chief in Reno, and told him the facts. He arranged for Johnny to get a license there to drive a taxicab, under the name of Alec Morrison. He did pretty well out there. Reno is a free-and-easy town. But when I read in the papers that Judith Chandler had gone there to divorce her husband, I didn’t like it. I got some leave and went out. Johnny was all right. Apparently he didn’t even know she was there, and I didn’t tell him.

  “He seemed contented, now that he had a job. He even had a girl, although he said he wouldn’t marry her until he was cleared of the murder charge. Then, on the day you were leaving, he saw Mrs. Chandler on the train, and she saw him. He hadn’t changed much, except for his hair, and his cap hid that. But I didn’t like the way he stared at her. There were twenty years of pure hatred in it. She saw it, too, and fainted.”

  My lips were dry and my whole face felt tight.

  “Why did she faint?” I said. “You know, don’t you? You knew all the time, didn’t you? It was no accident you were on that train.”

  “No, it was no accident.” He reached over and took both my hands. “Look, Lois, this isn’t going to be easy. I hate like hell to do it, but just bear with me, that’s all. I’m going to begin with your mother. I’m Irish, and the Irish love their children but, as Doctor Townsend would say, we’re not cannibals. We don’t eat them alive.

  “In a way, that is what your mother did with your sister Judith. It’s hard to understand why a cat will pick one out of a litter of kittens to prefer, or a hen a chicken. It happens. I’ve seen it happen. In this case your mother picked on Judith. Why? She had other children, but for one thing Judith was the beauty of the outfit. She had great hopes for her. She was to make a wonderful marriage and restore the family fortunes, and eventually she did make what looked like a good one. To see that happen, your mother was willing to go to any lengths outside of murder.

  “But Judith herself almost ruined her prospects. Young as she was, Ridgely Chandler was deeply in love with her, but she wasn’t in love with him. I don’t think she ever had been. In fact, she had a sort of adolescent crush on a good-looking boy who used to come out here to the pool on Saturdays.

  “The boy was Johnny Shannon.”

  I didn’t speak. I couldn’t.

  “I think Dawson knew about it. He probably let her in when she came back. But one night she went to Johnny’s room in Morningside Heights and was there until almost morning. That was the night the Preston girl was murdered. He had seen Mollie e
arlier, to tell her he was through, but when she was killed he was with Judith Maynard as she was then.

  “You see how it was, darling. She was his alibi, and his only one. Apparently no one else had seen him. But he told Flaherty, and Flaherty went to see her. Your mother was there, and Flaherty called in Dawson. They both lied. So did Judith. She sat there in your big city house, Flaherty told me, looking like an angel, and lied her head off. He had left me outside, I was his sergeant, and he came out swearing. ‘She was in Shannon’s room all right,’ he said ‘but she’s afraid to admit it. She sat there, knowing that boy may go to the chair, and as much as sent him there.’

  “Johnny didn’t get the chair. He was young and the evidence was circumstantial. He got twenty years to life. But Judith Maynard knew what she had done. In a way, I suppose that accounts for the life she led after she married Chandler. She was safe, as safe as churches, but there must have been times when she remembered the man up the river, with the best years of his life gone. It killed Johnny’s mother, too, but she may not have known that.

  “It was some time until the case came up for trial, and before it did, your mother whisked Judith off to Arizona. And Kate Henry disappeared. So did Dawson. But other people had seen Johnny go to the Preston girl’s place. I’ve always thought there was malice in their testimony. He wasn’t a part of them. They called him Mollie’s dude, just as they protected Dawson, who was raised among them.

  “Flaherty got all that, and something more which came from your Helga. She knew Dawson was crazy about Mollie, and she thought he was the one who strangled her. She only thought, which is no good in a murder trial, and before Kate Henry disappeared, the police got a deposition from her. It wasn’t used at the trial, but it existed and the district attorney’s office knew about it.

  “Only Flaherty thought she was lying. She was in love with Dawson, it stood out all over her. And somehow he got on her trail. One evening he told me he was sure he had located her, in a small town up the Hudson. He said he was going there the next day, and if he was right, Johnny would go free. But he wouldn’t tell me what he knew, or even the name of the town, and that night he was shot and killed.