Window on the Square

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  “Exactly,” Andrew said. “The pistol Mr. Reid fired was cleverly substituted for the one Jeremy dropped.”

  “Uncle Brandon couldn’t have fired at all!” Jeremy protested. “I’d have known if the shot came from across the room where he stood. It came from where I was standing. Close to me. That’s why I began to think that I must have fired the pistol after all. Only I know now I didn’t. Someone standing behind me held that other pistol and pulled the trigger. Someone hidden from Uncle Brandon by the curtains shot my father. And I know who it was.”

  In startled silence we watched as the boy replaced the pistol on the table. Without fear he looked at each person in turn, all about the room, and I found myself following his eyes. I looked at Brandon, on whose face bewilderment struggled with disbelief. Than at Andrew with his yellowish pallor. And at Miss Garth, who looked strangest of all—as if some restricting hand had closed about her throat, cutting off her breath so that it came in a choking gasp.

  The captain reached for the pistol, turning it about in his hands, though his eyes did not leave Jeremy’s face.

  “It is best not to guess about a thing like murder,” he said. “If you name a name, you must be sure.”

  Jeremy hesitated. “I don’t know if I can be absolutely sure, sir. I didn’t see the person. I never looked behind me at all. But the pistols could have been changed while Uncle Brandon and I ran to my father.”

  Miss Garth managed a strangled cry. “No—you mustn’t listen to him! The boy is demented, unbalanced!”

  “He is neither,” said Andrew quickly. “But he is lying. He would do anything to save his uncle.”

  Jeremy flung a quick, scornful look at the tutor and leaned earnestly upon the desk, reaching a pleading hand toward the police officer.

  “I’m not the one who is lying, sir. There’s something I didn’t tell you. When I went looking for the pistol today, I had time to open the candlestick before Miss Garth came in. The pistol was there. I still have a piece of the paper that was wrapped around it. I was in a hurry, so I didn’t wrap it up again. I just dropped the pistol back in the cloth and screwed the top on the base. When I heard someone coming, I stuffed the paper in my pocket and hid under the bed. Here it is, sir.”

  From his pocket Jeremy drew a torn scrap of newspaper and handed it to the captain, who opened it on the desk before him.

  “Yes,” he said, “this might have been wrapped about the pistol. The date is here—the week of Dwight Reid’s death.” He looked at Andrew. “Have you anything to say about this, Mr. Beach? If the pistol was in the candlestick today, as Jeremy claims, then it must have been today that you had the stick in your hands.”

  Andrew said nothing at all. He stared at the pistol, the glazed look in his eyes again.

  Miss Garth made a sudden violent gesture and would have left her chair, but Brandon moved to stop her.

  “Wait,” he said. “Give him a chance.”

  The governess fell back in her chair and began to weep uncontrollably, her handkerchief to her eyes. All her earlier self-control had vanished.

  “A chance?” she moaned. “He gave my poor lady no chance!”

  Andrew seemed not to have seen her movement toward him, nor to hear her words. He stared at the pistol on the desk as though it held his attention above all else.

  “I never understood her vacillation about the pistol.” He spoke as if to himself. “One moment she would threaten to use it as evidence against Mr. Reid. The next, she would plead with me to get rid of it entirely. I took it to satisfy her. It’s true that she gave it to me today. She said it wasn’t strong enough evidence to use against Mr. Reid. But I thought she was wrong.”

  The captain would have spoken, but Andrew turned suddenly to Jeremy.

  “Who was it that stood behind you and fired a shot the night your father died?”

  The boy answered without hesitation. “It was my mother,” he said. “I know it was my mother because I caught the smell of her perfume. Like violets. That was the thing I kept trying to remember afterwards. But by the time it came back to me it didn’t make any sense, because I thought I’d fired the gun.”

  Andrew made a brushing gesture across his face, but he spoke to Jeremy again. “Garth often uses your mother’s perfume. How do you know it wasn’t Garth?”

  “Because her father was ill and she’d gone to be with him that night. She wasn’t even in the house when it happened.”

  “That’s true,” Miss Garth said brokenly. “I wasn’t there.”

  Captain Mathews fixed Andrew with his keen, steady gaze. “You are ready to admit that you were with Mrs. Reid this afternoon before she died?”

  “Of course he was!” Miss Garth shrilled. “I see it all now. He even tried to fool me, but it was he who beat her so cruelly and horribly.”

  “What have you to say, Beach?” the captain urged.

  Andrew shook his head as if he tried to clear his mind from some confusion of thought.

  “I didn’t kill her,” he said. “I’d never have laid a finger on her. I was the one who loved her.”

  “She’s dead,” Brandon said grimly.

  A long shivering sigh went through Andrew.

  “Send the boy away,” he said.

  I took Jeremy to the door of the library. “Go upstairs, dear, and get ready for bed. Make sure that Selina is all right. I’ll come to you when I can.”

  After he had gone, I closed the door and returned to my chair near Brandon.

  Andrew had not moved and he did not look at any of us. “You’re wrong in what you think,” he said dully. “If she couldn’t have what she wanted, she wouldn’t live. She died by her own hand.”

  The emotion had drained out of his voice, as though he had reached the limit of any ability to feel. No one spoke as his monotone continued.

  “After Megan brought Mrs. Reid home from the ceremony this morning, I stayed on in the schoolroom, pretending to work on the portrait. I pushed a note beneath Leslie’s door, saying I would come when I had a chance to slip in unnoticed. I wanted to know what had happened, and perhaps to comfort her. I didn’t get to her until sometime in the afternoon. When Garth brought her the candlestick, Leslie didn’t let her know anything was wrong. But she’d taken the laudanum even then. Enough to be sure of death. She told me when I went to her.

  “The death of Brandon’s father settled matters for her, I suppose. As long as he lived, her husband might stay with her to avoid scandal. But now she knew she couldn’t hold him, though she must have brought up the accusation of Dwight’s murder in a last desperate effort. Now I can understand why she always pretended devotion to Dwight, devotion to any cause that honored him. It was her own guilt she wanted to hide.”

  Miss Garth sobbed into her handkerchief. No one else made a sound.

  “There could have been no saving her,” Andrew went on. “At first I was wild with despair. I felt it was Reid who had killed her with his indifference and scorn. He was to blame for all her unhappiness. The drowsiness hadn’t come upon her yet. Her thoughts were clear, and she spoke to me quite rationally. She told me there was a way in which Brandon Reid could be made to pay for all he had done to her.

  “She sent me for a shirt from his room. He had already left the house by that time. She gave me the pistol and told me to get rid of it. Then she asked me to light the candle in the big stick on the hearth for the last time. I remember how she watched the flame while she talked to me.

  “She told me what she wanted me to do and how I must do it. I had to promise—There was no other way to let her go in peace. Besides, I felt that Reid was her murderer in actuality and I wanted to see him hang for what he had done to her. He had all I wanted, and he valued it so little.

  “She talked until the drug started to take effect. When her tongue began to slow, she told me to blow out the candle because she wanted it to be dark. I did as she told me and held her in my arms until she was gone. Afterwards I took up the candlestick.”

 
He bent his head and covered his face with his hands. Behind the guard of his fingers his voice went on.

  “After the first blow was struck, it wasn’t hard to do. I closed my eyes and struck at Reid with every blow. I could take satisfaction in that. Afterward I took off his shirt that I’d worn and hid it in his bureau. I washed my hands in his basin. I had carried some of my painting equipment as a blind in going in and out of Leslie’s room, lest I be seen, and I took it with me when I returned for my coat. I would have left the house if Kate hadn’t chosen that moment to come to the door with a tray for Mrs. Reid.”

  The final telling seemed to have given him strength, for now he put his hands down and there was something like relief in his eyes. When he stopped, there was total silence in the room. The heavy silence of mingled horror and disbelief. Yet we had to believe. There was no doubting Andrew now. The laudanum would be found and his words substantiated—though if he had not spoken, the coroner’s verdict would undoubtedly have been death from beating with the instrument of the candlestick.

  Brandon moved first. He got up and went out of the room as though he could not trust himself to stay. The weight of the story we had heard lay upon us all, though now I had only pity for Andrew because of the dreadful road he had followed. Pity for Andrew and a slow burgeoning of relief for Brandon, as full realization came home to me. I, too, could stay in this room no longer.

  “May I go to Jeremy?” I asked and when the captain nodded I went past Miss Garth, still sobbing into her handkerchief, past Andrew, who did not look at me, and out the door.

  Upstairs in his room Jeremy waited and I sat on the bed beside him, knowing that he must be told the truth. Not all the dreadful details, but enough so that he would understand that he was fully cleared and no one would ever point a finger of accusation at him again. He heard me through solemnly.

  “What will become of Selina and me now?” he asked when I had finished.

  It was Brandon who answered him from the doorway. “I’m going to send you and your sister upriver to your grandmother’s for a while, Jeremy. Would you like that?”

  The boy nodded, accepting the proposal with quiet satisfaction. I kissed him good night and went into the hallway with Brandon.

  “There’s a great deal to make up to him for,” he said sorrowfully. “I’ve been blind from the beginning, and a fool to believe the evidence I thought my own eyes had given me. Do you think the boy will ever forgive me?”

  “He won’t consider that there is anything to forgive,” I assured him. “Start with him as things are now. I think he’ll want only to go on from here and not look back.”

  Brandon held out a hand to me. “Come, Miss Megan,” he said, and led me into the empty schoolroom, where no fire burned, and sat me down in a chair.

  “There are some things that the captain and Andrew Beach don’t know,” he said. “And needn’t know. The true reason behind my marriage to Leslie, for instance.”

  “I know a little,” I broke in. “Miss Garth said it was true that you married her to buy her silence, but there’s no need for you to tell me more.”

  “There is need,” he said. “But first let me say that if Leslie shot Dwight—and we know now that she must have—it wasn’t because she wanted me. Not then. She had married him for his wealth and promising future. She had notions of flying high in governmental society. But after he managed to involve himself in a scandal of corruption that was about to break wide open, he had a change of heart and intended to make a complete confession. He sent for me to come home and stand by him while he faced what he had to face. Prison, perhaps, and certain disgrace. Leslie couldn’t accept that. I can see now that her motive for what she did was clear by her standards. She would never have lived willingly with disgrace, and Dwight told me she had pleaded with him not to throw the matter open. After his death I wanted only to hush the whole thing up and spare my father the truth. There was no point then in making a scapegoat of Dwight, who had been only a weak tool and could no longer speak for himself.”

  I was beginning to understand. “And later Leslie used that over your head?”

  He nodded unhappily. “With Dwight gone she had nothing to gain by secrecy. She could hurt my father cruelly if she spoke out—and all for nothing. If I married her she promised silence. So I bought her silence, but I bought it meaning to make her pay for it for the rest of her life. I did not dream of how heavily I was to pay as well.”

  He went abruptly to the window, where he stood with his back to me, staring down at the stables. I wanted to go to him, to put my arms about him, and offer the small comfort of my love. But he looked so stern and distant that I did not dare. Yet I must bring him back somehow to things as they were now—to a will to go on from here.

  I stepped to the mantelpiece and picked up the pointer Andrew had laid upon it. Lightly I traced its tip along the colored map that hung against the wall.

  “Show me,” I said—although I knew very well—“show me where Thebes is located.”

  He turned from the window, smiling gravely, and came to take the pointer from me. “Why do you want to know, Megan?”

  “Because you will be going there,” I said. “And I don’t want to be left here alone.” For the second time I spoke the words I had said to him downstairs. “Take me with you, Brandon.”

  “Do you think I’d go without you?” he said. “When will you marry me, Megan?”

  I knew there would be a great buzzing of gossip, but the children would be away with their grandmother and gossip eventually dies.

  “As soon as you like,” I told him.

  How tender he could be, how very gentle. How surely his arms belonged about me, and how strong was the beating of his heart.

  But we could not linger for our love now. He had to put me from him and go downstairs where his responsibilities as Leslie’s husband must still be met.

  When he left me I went into the hall and stood for a long moment, listening to the sound of his steps on the stairs. There were voices below, movement. As I stood in the shadows, Miss Garth mounted the steps slowly, mournfully, and went into her room. She did not see me, and I did not speak to her. I caught the whiff of violet scent in the hallway as she passed.

  On the table beside my door was a candle I had left burning and I went to extinguish it. Violets and candlelight—always I would remember those two. “Blow out the candle,” Leslie had said to Andrew.

  I snuffed the flame with my fingers and went into my room. The scarab pin lay among other trinkets in a bureau drawer, and I took it out to hold in my fingers. Thebes, with Brandon beside me! I would see for myself those great figures of the queen, and all the other wonders. I would be with Brandon under the hot sun of Egypt, where warmth would renew and restore him, where the slow healing would begin that now must come to him. Somewhere there would be a home for us—a place where Jeremy and Selina could come and know that they were loved and welcome.

  Though not in this house. Not ever again in this house on Washington Square.

  A Biography of Phyllis A. Whitney

  Phyllis Ayame Whitney (1903–2008) was a prolific author of seventy-six adult and children’s novels. Over fifty million copies of her books were sold worldwide during the course of her sixty-year writing career, establishing her as one of the most successful mystery and romantic suspense writers of the twentieth century. Whitney’s dedication to the craft and quality of writing earned her three lifetime achievement awards and the title “The Queen of the American Gothics.”

  Whitney was born in Yokohama, Japan, on September 9, 1903, to American parents, Mary Lillian (Lilly) Mandeville and Charles (Charlie) Whitney. Charles worked for an American shipping line. When Whitney was a child, her family moved to Manila in the Philippines, and eventually settled in Hankow, China.

  Whitney began writing stories as a teenager but focused most of her artistic attention on her other passion: dance. When her father passed away in China in 1918, Whitney and her mother took a ten-day journe
y across the Pacific Ocean to America, and they settled in Berkley, California. Later they moved to San Antonio, Texas. Lilly continued to be an avid supporter of Whitney’s dancing, creating beautiful costumes for her performances. While in high school, her mother passed away, and Whitney moved in with her aunt in Chicago, Illinois. After graduating from high school in 1924, Whitney turned her attention to writing, nabbing her first major publication in the Chicago Daily News. She made a small income from writing stories at the start of her career, and would eventually go on to publish around one hundred short stories in pulp magazines by the 1930s.

  In 1925, Whitney married George A. Garner, and nine years later gave birth to their daughter, Georgia. During this time, she also worked in the children’s room in the Chicago Public Library (1942–1946) and at the Philadelphia Inquirer (1947–1948).

  After the release of her first novel, A Place for Ann (1941), a career story for girls, Whitney turned her eye toward publishing full-time, taking a job as the children’s book editor at the Chicago Sun-Times and releasing three more novels in the next three years, including A Star for Ginny. She also began teaching juvenile fiction writing courses at Northwestern University. Whitney began her career writing young adult novels and first found success in the adult market with the 1943 publication of Red Is for Murder, also known by the alternative title The Red Carnelian.

  In 1946, Whitney moved to Staten Island, New York, and taught juvenile fiction writing at New York University. She divorced in 1948 and married her second husband, Lovell F. Jahnke, in 1950. They lived on Staten Island for twenty years before relocating to Northern New Jersey. Whitney traveled around the world, visiting every single setting of her novels, with the exception of Newport, Rhode Island, due to a health emergency. She would exhaustively research the land, culture, and history, making it a custom to write from the viewpoint of an American visiting these exotic locations for the first time. She imbued the cultural, physical, and emotional facets of each country to transport her readers to places they’ve never been.