“He was on his way home when it happened. He had driven his car into the garage beside his house when he got it. His wife was waiting for him. She was having a steak for him. People could buy steak in 1930. Steak and onions. When I got there you could smell onions all over the place.
“She didn’t last long after his death. Just didn’t want to live. But I promised her I’d find his killer if it took me a lifetime, and for twenty years I’ve carried the bullet that killed him.”
He looked at my frozen face.
“I’m sorry, darling, but now you understand what Judith was afraid of. It was Shannon. I don’t think he meant to hurt her. He was no killer. But he did want the alibi she could give him. The worst of it was I had lost him after he left Reno. Even his girl didn’t know where he was, or if he had changed his name. I suspected he had come to New York and taken a chauffeur’s job, or managed to get a license to drive a taxi. It’s not easy, but his Reno license would help. But I was sure of one thing. He would try to see your sister. That’s why I took this place.
“He did try. You know that. He picked you up, thinking you were Judith Chandler, and remember what he said. You were to talk. That’s all he wanted, for Judith to talk and clear him. He threw a note tied to a rock through her window. He even broke into the house and got upstairs.”
“He shot you, didn’t he?” I said. “And he fired at you or me tonight. If that’s not being a killer, what is?”
He shook his head.
“Maybe he’s changed,” he admitted. “But look at my position. When Selina Benjamin was killed here at your pool I was frantic. She as well as Judith was responsible for those lost twenty years. And I couldn’t catch him. He was as slippery as an eel, and I began to think—after I was shot—the hell of a lot more dangerous. That’s why I asked you to put those ads in the papers, so he would know I was watching him.
“Then, a day or so ago, I had a glimmer of the sense God gave me. I went over to the Adrian house and broke in. He hadn’t been living there all the time. He must have had some sort of job. But there was a cot in the kitchen and some canned food, and behind the garage there was an oil slick, where he had hidden his car.”
He released my hands, picked up Henrietta gently, and carried her to her roost. When he came back he bent down and kissed me. I must have been unresponsive, for he straightened.
“I’m a cop, Lois,” he said. “And once a cop, always a cop. Johnny didn’t kill Flaherty. He was locked away by that time. And Dawson is dead and beyond my reach. I verified it. But someone has tried twice to kill me. That shot tonight was for me, not you. I mean to get him, or her, whoever it was.”
Yes, I thought drearily, he would never change. He was wearing his policeman’s face again, standing there on the hearth, and when I saw it I looked away.
“How can you say he’s not a killer?” I protested. “He murdered Selina Benjamin, and threw her into the pool.”
“Why?” he said. “Why would he, Lois? He must have been counting on her to help him. Why kill her?”
There was no time for more. Bill’s Ark roared and rattled into the drive, and the next minute he was pounding on the door.
“Hiya,” he said when O’Brien opened it. “You people know what time it is? What will Judith say?”
“Judith won’t say anything, Bill. She’s gone.”
He grinned.
“What sort of gone? Departed this life or merely The Birches? In any case I shall be brave. I shall bear it like a man.”
What with the shot and O’Brien’s story, I suddenly realized I had forgotten to tell O’Brien. He stared at me incredulously.
“You mean she’s left The Birches?” he said. “Don’t you think you might have told me?”
“There was nothing really to tell. At the last minute one of her travel agencies got a cancellation on the Queen Mary and sent a car for her.”
“You’re sure of that?”
“What else could it be?” I said. “After all, she’s been hoping for weeks to get such a break.”
Perhaps it is hindsight, but I thought O’Brien looked worried. However, at Bill’s suggestion—it appeared that Janey’s family was opposed to the demon rum—he mixed highballs for all of us, and it was with glasses in our hands and a general appearance of revelry that Phil found us.
He stood in the doorway in his dinner clothes, unsmiling and indignant.
“What the hell goes on here?” he said. “Do you know what time it is?”
“We’re celebrating the fact that our dear Judith is now on her way to England,” Bill explained. “She’s gone, lock, stock, and barrel, with the emphasis on the lock.”
Phil relaxed after I told him what had happened. He sat down, explaining that he had won three dollars at bridge that night, and that something should be done about people who didn’t watch their partner’s discards. But he did not stay. He said firmly that he was not leaving his sister to any orgy, and insisted on driving me home.
He asked a question or two about Judith’s departure, and I sensed considerable relief in him.
“I’m fond of her,” he said. “At least I suppose so. But she could certainly raise hell around a house. You can have Mother’s room again, too. You’ll like that.”
I have written this and then reread it. For the plain truth is that I never moved into Mother’s room at all. I couldn’t face it.
Not until I was in the house did I realize how carefully O’Brien had avoided telling Phil or Bill about the shot that night. It had been deliberate, I knew. But why? Frank as he had been about Johnny Shannon I knew I had heard only part of the story: that Flaherty’s murder was still in it, and Dawson; Judith, too, and perhaps even Mother.
It was hours before I slept. I was back in the drawing-room of the city house, with its Aubusson carpet and its petit-point chairs. It must have been gloomy, that winter day, with Judith crouched in a chair, looking like an angel and lying her head off. And Mother lying, too.
She must have known the truth. She had paid Dawson an enormous sum to keep quiet. But with Flaherty there that day she was seeing all her hopes for Judith gone; Judith on the witness stand, admitting she had spent at least part of the night in Johnny Shannon’s room, a soiled angel indeed. And Flaherty watching them, all three, for Shannon claimed Dawson had let Judith out and waited for her to come home.
They must have been terrified, all three of them, have known Flaherty did not believe them. I could almost see him there, the law personified.
“I hope you realize what you are doing. You are sending this boy to the chair, or to life in prison. It’s the end of everything for him.”
And silence. No one speaking, and at last Flaherty grabbing his hat and going out to the young sergeant who was driving his car, swearing.
“She was in Shannon’s room all right, O’Brien, but she’s afraid to admit it. She sat there, knowing that boy may go to the chair, and as good as sent him there.”
Had Father known about it? I wondered. Had Mother gone to him the day of the dinner party and asked for his help, for money to keep Dawson quiet or to get Judith out of town? He must have been in torture that night, honorable man that he was, faced with the dilemma of ruining his daughter’s reputation or letting an innocent boy possibly die. Things were bad for him, anyhow. He was bankrupt. He may have played with the idea of suicide before, but this was more than he could take.
So he left that strange note about his conscience for Mother. Perhaps he hoped it would influence her, his last message before his death. But she never saw it, and she was beyond influence by that time.
For the first time that night I wondered about Helga. All along she had known something. Perhaps she had been awake and seen or heard Judith coming home. Perhaps Dawson’s sudden affluence had set her to thinking. It was even possible she knew about the tobacco shop and told Flaherty where it was, only to have him shot before he could act on the knowledge.
She must have blamed herself for his death. Certainly it
frightened her. I thought bleakly that she had probably been frightened for twenty years.
Chapter 29
IT SEEMED TO ME I had hardly got asleep when Jennie brought me the news that Helga’s arthritis was bad and I would have to help with the breakfast. So it happened that I was resignedly fighting the huge old coal range when the boy came with the milk. He put down the bottles and stood goggle-eyed in the doorway.
“Haven’t heard the news, have you?” he inquired.
“What news, Tommy?”
“Man killed last night,” he said importantly. “Nobody knows who he is. His car’s down in the valley beside the road only a mile or so from your gate. I seen it.”
“Killed!” I said. “How dreadful. What happened?”
But before he could answer, Phil yelled for his breakfast, and when I came back from the dining-room Tommy was gone. Phil raised his eyebrows when I placed his bacon and eggs in front of him.
“Oh, no! Not eggs again!” he said.
“You’d better thank God for O’Brien and his girls,” I said indignantly. “And if it interests you, the milk boy says a man’s been killed down the road.”
“There should be a special place in hell for the man who invented wheels,” he observed. “And another for the man who added an engine to them. Also for eggs,” he added sourly. “Isn’t there such a thing as sausage to be had?”
Which shows neither of us doubted it was the usual car accident. We had one every now and then during the summer. It was hours before we learned the dreadful truth.
Bill slept late that morning, so I fed Phil and took him to the train. O’Brien’s car was gone, and at the scene of the accident there was a small crowd in the road. Down below it in the valley both the local police and the state men were busy, but Phil would not let me stay to look. Someone said the body had already been taken away, which was all we knew at the time.
It was still, of course, a matter of purely academic interest to us. Our roads are often tricky, winding around the hills as they do, and when I drove back from the station the police had cleared the place, and down in the valley only the chief, a uniformed man or two, and a half-dozen state troopers were there, as well as a photographer from town.
I stopped the car, and Fowler saw me and laboriously climbed the slope.
“Funny thing,” he said. “That car down there has half a dozen bags in it. You wouldn’t know anything about it, would you?”
I gasped.
“Bags?” I said. “What sort of bags?”
“Good-looking. Expensive, I’d say. Your sister’s initials are on them. Was she sending them anywhere?”
I looked down at the overturned car. It was on its side, but it was almost certainly the one that had called for Judith the night before. I must have turned pale, for Fowler hastened to reassure me.
“Nobody in it but the driver,” he said. “Were you afraid there was someone else?”
“I thought it might be Mrs. Chandler,” I told him bleakly. “She took a car like that one to go to New York last night. She was sailing on the Queen Mary.”
“Maybe someone picked her up after it happened.”
“She’d never have left her luggage,” I said. “Only, where is she? I don’t understand.”
“Well, she’d had a pretty bad shock if she was in the car when it left the road. Turned over a couple of times. Might just have wandered off somewhere. Maybe you’d better come down and take a look. It’s not bad,” he added, seeing my face. “The fellow’s gone. Not much blood, either. Head wounds don’t bleed much.”
I followed him down the hill, my legs shaking and my head dizzy. The men stood aside to let me see the car, but it was not necessary. Judith’s bags sat beside it on the grass, and her purse was with them, the big handsome one she always carried.
“It’s the car,” I said shakily. “It picked her up around half past eleven last night, and I put the bags in it myself.”
“Didn’t notice the driver, did you?”
“Only vaguely. I know he wore a chauffeur’s cap, but we were in a hurry. I don’t think he even got out. Only I don’t see her jewel case. She had it when she left.”
He stood rubbing his chin, which had missed its morning shave, and eyeing the luggage.
“Sure of that, are you?”
“Positive. She had it on her lap.”
“Well, you never can tell,” he said. “Those boys over there found the car. They were going fishing. One of them might have snitched it.”
I had not noticed the boys before. There were four of them sitting on the hillside, and he called them over.
“Now listen, kids,” he said sternly. “There’s a small bag missing from this lot. Any of you take it?”
They disclaimed it immediately and loudly. They hadn’t even touched anything. They had come across it at six o’clock or thereabouts, and they had hailed the first car that passed.
“Anybody else in the car or near it?” Fowler persisted. “A lady, for instance?”
They looked dazed. They hadn’t seen anyone but the chauffeur, and he was dead. Fowler let them go, and stood surveying the wreckage.
“This jewel case,” he said. “It sort of changes things, doesn’t it? Who knew she had it?”
“She always took it with her.”
“Might be a case of assault and robbery,” he said thoughtfully. “Maybe kidnaping, too. Knock the driver out, grab the case, and take Mrs. Chandler along to gain some time. It wouldn’t be hard to send the car over the edge. Road’s narrow here.”
It had been a stolen car, he said. The owner had missed it when he left the theater the night before, and reported it. As the thief had worn a chauffeur’s uniform, no one noticed him.
I must have driven home, although I don’t remember doing so. That blessed automatism which I believe comes from the spinal cord at least took me there and into the house. Jennie was taking up Judith’s breakfast tray when I got back. I told her not to bother, that Mrs. Chandler had gone to the city, but I did not explain, for O’Brien was limping up the porch steps. He looked exhausted.
“Any extra coffee floating around?” he inquired. “I haven’t had time for breakfast.”
Still dazed I got Judith’s tray and set it before him. He drank only a cup of black coffee, however.
“You saw the bags, I suppose?” he asked.
“Yes. They were hers.”
“I’m afraid I have some bad news for you,” he said quietly. “For you only,” he added. “I’ve been to the mortuary. The dead man was Johnny Shannon, Lois. And he was murdered poor guy. Shot.”
“Shot!” I said weakly.
“Shot in the back of the head.”
In the back of the head! I knew what he was thinking: Judith behind Johnny and learning who he was. Maybe his telling her, and she realizing how all she had built for twenty years was about to be destroyed.
“Hold it!” O’Brien said. “Put your head down.”
I tried it, but it was no good. I simply fell forward on the porch floor and passed out.
When I came to I was in my own bed with Helga beside me. She wouldn’t let me talk at first. Finally, however, she broke down. Judith, she said, was still missing, and they were beating the woods for her. Phil had come back from the city, and he and Bill had joined the searching parties. Also Anne was downstairs having hysterics, and—she said this with a certain unction—Jennie had put a bottle of household ammonia under her nose and nearly strangled her.
I had been out, it appeared, for several hours.
Anne was allowed to see me after lunch. She came in like a whirlwind. Judith had been kidnaped and probably killed, she said, and her jewel case was still missing. Also Ridge had called up, suggesting he send out a Homicide detective from New York, and the newspapers had the story. All sorts of reporters had been on the phone, and one of them had asked her if Judith shot the driver. And if so, why?
“A chauffeur?” she wailed. “Why would she kill a man like that? What’s
happened to this family? It isn’t enough that you fall in love with a policeman. Now Judith kills a cabdriver!”
I let that pass.
“How could she kill anybody?” I said. “She had no gun. I know. I helped her pack. I think they’re all demented.”
There was no question, however, that Judith had disappeared. Whatever had happened she had been able to leave the car. Anne was sure she had been kidnaped, and insisted on walking down to the mailbox to see if a ransom letter had arrived. But when Phil came in, late in the afternoon, dirty and utterly weary, he said they were sure she had gone on her own two feet. They found her high-heel marks on the soft shoulder of the road, not far from where the car had gone over.
I was downstairs by that time, to Helga’s disgust, and I brought him a drink and some food on the porch. He had had no lunch, and while he ate he said they had got out the Boy Scouts, and were sending for a helicopter.
“She may be dazed and wandering anywhere,” he said. “That’s pretty wild country. Of course, she may be dead. Whoever shot the driver may have shot her, too. Only he didn’t kill her. She got away. But where she got to is anybody’s guess.”
He had some real information, however. The telephone call had been a phony. The Queen Mary had sailed while Judith was still on the road. Moreover, there had been no last-minute cancellations, and none of the travel agencies had called her.
“Most of them close at six o’clock, anyhow,” he said.
But the police knew the identity of the dead man. I held my breath, but he went on calmly enough.
“New York driver’s license in the name of Alec Morrison,” he said. “How on earth did she get him? Was he a phony, too?”
I told him that during the message about the Queen Mary whoever it was had offered to send a car for her. It was to stop for another passenger, a man, I thought. The car was to come first to The Birches and then pick him up.
“Very neat,” he said. “A holdup, of course. The other passenger was the one who shot Morrison, and took the jewel case. Only where the hell is she? Did he take her with him?”
The Swimming Pool Page 27
