Alibi for Isabel: And Other Stories

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

  “Are you sure?” he asked. “About the grandson, I mean. Sometimes men are reported lost when they are really prisoners. What service was he in?”

  “Aviation, a sergeant or something. I learned of his death only today. Apparently he was reported missing two months ago. Four weeks later he was reported dead.” She stopped and looked up again at the portrait. “I suppose you know certain things, Mr. Negley. I resented my son’s marriage. I never saw his wife. He could have married anybody. Anybody,” she repeated. “But he chose a girl I had never heard of. A nobody. Some cheap little chit from a cheap little town. He married shortly before he sailed, and he never came back,” she ended flatly.

  God damn it, Negley thought, why doesn’t she show some feeling, if she’s got it? That flat voice of hers—

  “I must say this,” she went on. “I did not know John’s wife had died. I never knew there was a son. I didn’t know it until he came here, almost a year ago. Apparently the mother did not want me to know.”

  Negley had forgotten his need of a cigarette. He was staring at her in astonishment.

  “He came here?” he said. “That’s rather curious, after all this time.”

  “He came here because he was his father’s son,” she said bitterly. “He was going to the war, and he had married only a few weeks before. He had said good-bye to his wife, he told me, but he wanted to feel that I would look after her, if anything happened to him.”

  “That was natural, wasn’t it?”

  “Why? He had married her. I hadn’t. No money, no future, and married! He wasn’t even an officer.”

  “Plenty of good men are not officers,” Negley said drily.

  She did not answer. She got up, and Negley, rising when she did, watched her take a small parcel from the drawer of the big desk.

  “There is a photograph in it, and a letter,” she said. “I want you to look at them both.”

  Negley opened the package. In a small leather case was the snapshot of a girl. She was smiling, and she looked young and gay. Underneath it was written: “Always think of me like this, Johnny. I shall be waiting for you.”

  He was deeply touched. The eyes of the picture were brave and steady, the whole pose one of valiant youth. Henerietta was watching him.

  “This is the wife?”

  “Yes. I think you’d better read the letter.”

  He disliked doing it. It was not addressed to him. It was addressed to Sergeant John Stafford, Junior, and written in a clear young hand. But under Henrietta’s cold gaze he did so.

  “Dearest,” it said, “how wonderful of your grandmother to have been so kind to you! I can’t get over it, and of course I shall get in touch with her if I need to. So don’t worry. Never worry about me, only I miss you so dreadfully. All I do is wait, until this war is over and you are home again. Oh Johnny, how much I love you. I—”

  He put down the letter. It seemed indecent to read further. He looked at Henrietta’s frozen face.

  “How did you get these?”

  “An officer left them this afternoon. Mosely talked to him. He had tried to find her at the address given on the letter, but she wasn’t there. Nobody knew where she had gone. He looked in the telephone directory and saw my name, so he came here.”

  “I see,” Negley said. “And now you want me to locate the wife. Well, that shouldn’t be too hard. And at least, according to that letter, you made young Johnny happy before he left. That must be a comfort to you now, Mrs. Stafford.”

  She was sitting again, her hands with the old-fashioned dinner ring clasped in her lap. It was a moment before she spoke.

  “That letter is a lie,” she said.

  He glanced at her, thinking he had not heard her correctly. She was looking at him defiantly, a spot of color on each cheek.

  “I said,” she repeated, “that that letter is a lie. I never promised anything. I couldn’t even look at him. I told him he was a fool like his father, and when he tried to talk to me about his wife I ordered him out of this house. You needn’t look like that, Mr. Negley. I have had twenty-five years of heartbreak. I couldn’t bear any more.”

  Negley did not say anything. He could see the boy standing, probably in this same room; a boy in an ill-fitting uniform. Scared, perhaps, daunted by the big house and the hard old woman who was his grandmother, yet making his plea for the girl he was leaving behind him. And being rejected, going out into the street again, bewildered and hurt. But not telling his wife. Never telling his wife. Writing a lie to make her happier.

  He felt a slow anger rising in him. He was afraid to speak, but Henrietta looked relieved, as though the worst was over.

  “You will hardly believe it,” she said, “but I almost lost Mosely that night. After thirty years! He came into this room and told me he couldn’t live in the house with a woman who could do a thing like that. He didn’t go, of course,” she added grimly. “Who wants an old man today? And how many people want a butler?”

  Suddenly Negley loathed her. He tried to pull himself together.

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand. Are you saying you have had a change of heart? And that now you want to find this girl?”

  She stiffened, if that was possible.

  “I may be unnatural, as Mosely said. The boy was nothing to me, but he died for his country. I am at least a good American, Mr. Negley.”

  “And you think that’s enough?”

  “What else do you expect?” she said sharply. “This boy had ignored me all his life. His mother took good care of that. I could have done everything for him, sent him to school and college, raised him as John’s son should have been raised. Instead—” She made a small tired gesture. “Give me some credit,” she said. “When Mosely gave me the letter I went to that address. It was a cheap boarding house, and the woman there said she had been gone for a month. She had no idea where she was.”

  Negley glanced again at the letter. It looked as though it had been read over and over. He felt his throat contracting.

  “Just what do you intend, in case I find her?”

  “I shall give her adequate support. I don’t want to see her. Why should I?”

  Negley controlled himself and got up.

  “It looks rather difficult,” he said. “I suppose if everything else fails we can advertise for her.”

  She looked so horrified that he almost smiled.

  “Advertise?” she said. “Advertise! Have you lost your mind?”

  “Well,” he said reasonably, “you want to find her, don’t you? What’s so wrong about that?”

  “I intend to do my duty. I do not intend to expose my family problems to the world.”

  Suddenly Negley lost his temper. He got up and looked down at her, so complacent in her pearls, her solid background, and her pride.

  “What do you suppose the world cares about you or your problems just now?” he demanded. “It has other things to think about. Boys and men are dying. Women and children are starving. Have you ever thought about that, Mrs. Stafford? I felt guilty at your table tonight. I’ve felt damned guilty for you ever since you told me this story. That boy’s writing to his wife, tried to show you to her in a decent light. Only you don’t care about that, do you? What you really want is to hide this skeleton in your closet. I’ll try to find this girl, but I’m damned if I’ll do it for you.”

  She stared at him incredulously.

  “I am not accustomed to being spoken to in that manner, Mr. Negley.”

  But he was completely out of control by that time. He was astonished to find his voice unsteady.

  “Then it’s time you were,” he said roughly. “You have shut yourself away long enough. You’ve nourished a grudge for twenty-five years, and all that time you’ve had everything. You’ve had luxury. You’ve had money. You’ve had your butler, because he can’t go anywhere else. And in case you might forget your grudge against the world you’ve had that portrait over the mantel. Only I’m damned if I see how you can bear to look at it.” />
  He was still savagely angry when he slammed the library door behind him. He stopped on the stairs to light a cigarette, and found that he was shaking. He began to feel ashamed. All this fury about a boy and a girl he had never seen, he thought, and to a woman almost seventy. There had been something in her face as he went out that had been more than shock. It had been surprise. Well, to hell with her. Let her be surprised. Let her see herself as others saw her for once in her life. It would do her good.

  Mosely was waiting with his overcoat in the lower hall. Negley looked at him with a wry grin.

  “Afraid I lost my temper,” he said.

  “Yes, sir,” said Mosely. “She is not a happy woman, Mr. Negley.”

  “Who is?” said Negley roughly. “With the whole world shot to pieces. Nobody has a right to be happy. She’s made her own life. If she doesn’t like it—”

  Mosely said nothing. Negley had an idea that he wanted to speak, that there was something on his mind. Whatever it was he evidently decided against it. As he opened the door Negley stopped.

  “What about that officer today? He say anything about where he was staying?”

  “At the Savoy-Plaza. His name is Jamieson, Captain Jamieson. Quite a nice person, sir.”

  “So I imagine,” Negley said drily. “That’s the sort who are doing our fighting for us.”

  He looked at his watch as he left the house. It was only ten o’clock; not a good time to find any man just home from the war. Nevertheless he decided to try it. He still felt irritated with himself. He had lost his temper, and he had certainly lost a good client. And for what? Because of a girl’s brave eyes and a boy who had written a lie about the old woman who had disowned him. Out in the cold of the winter night he wondered what had happened to him. He was not usually sentimental. Perhaps it was because the war was being fought without him. Young Johnny Stafford had at least had his chance, but nobody wanted a middle-aged lawyer except behind a desk.

  To his surprise he found Captain Jamieson in his room. He was in a dressing gown and slippers, a tall rangy young man who looked older than he probably was. He had apparently been lying down, and Negley apologized.

  “It’s all right,” Jamieson said. “Come in and sit down. I’m sorry about the bed. I’m catching up on my sleep.”

  Negley introduced himself and sat down. He felt awkward. He offered the other man a cigarette and took one himself.

  “I thought you might be out. You’re just back, aren’t you?”

  Jamieson nodded.

  “I’ve done the requisite number of jobs. I’m to do some instructing now. It will be a change.”

  He smiled. He had an attractive smile.

  “Had some bad times over there, I imagine,” Negley said tentatively.

  But Jamieson did not want to discuss the war.

  “A bit rugged now and then, of course,” he said. “I suppose you want to know about Johnny. He was the hell of a good kid. I’m sorry.”

  “Then there’s no hope? That he’s a prisoner, or something like that?”

  Jamieson shook his head.

  “Not after all this time,” he said. “He was on a mission, and the plane must have got lost. The last we heard it was out of gas somewhere over the North Sea. There were ten good men in it. Well, that’s war.”

  He yawned, and Negley got up.

  “I wondered about the stuff you brought,” he said. “I thought the service took care of things like that.”

  “They do, but this picture was something special. He always carried it. You know, a sort of mascot. Only that day he didn’t. There wasn’t time to get it. The letter kind of puzzled me. It had got slipped into the case somehow. He’d never mentioned a grandmother.”

  “I see,” Negley said.

  “But he was crazy about his wife. I thought she might like to have the picture, seeing he’d always carried it. I couldn’t find her, so I took a chance the grandmother might have the same name. Apparently it worked.”

  He went on. The British had been fine. Everybody had been fine. But of course it was no dice. He would like to have seen Johnny’s wife, to tell her what a good soldier he was. He’d been due for a decoration, too. She would like that. But he yawned again, and Negley finally left.

  Outside the hotel he found it was after eleven o’clock, but he knew it was no use to go home and try to sleep. He decided to go to the address the girl had written in her letter, and he took a taxi there. It was on the West Side, a tall dingy house, but there was a light in the basement and he rang the bell. A sharp-eyed woman opened the door. She looked at him suspiciously.

  “I’m inquiring about a Mrs. John Stafford,” he said. “I believe she lived here at one time.”

  “So you’re after her too!” she said. “What’s she done? What’s all the excitement about? First an officer in a uniform asks for her. Then a hard-faced old woman in a mink coat. And now you.”

  “I thought you might tell me something about her.”

  “Just what I told the others, mister. She just walked out the day she got word her husband was dead, and never came back. Owing me two weeks’ rent too.”

  Negley reached for his wallet, but she shook her head.

  “The old lady took care of that,” she said. “You’d better come inside. It’s cold.”

  He went in. The hall was dingy but clean. Nevertheless it was strange to compare it to Henrietta’s, its marble floor, its old French consoles and mirrors. The woman seemed glad to talk.

  “She was a nice girl,” she said. “They hadn’t been married long, and they were crazy about each other. When he was moved near here she came East too. She got a job in a war plant, and she was doing all right. Only when the word came he was missing she gave it up. Funny thing, mister, she kept saying he was alive, that she would know if he was dead. Then this letter came from the War Department, and she just walked out.”

  “What about her things?” Negley said, puzzled. “Did she take them with her?”

  “That’s what worried me. I didn’t tell that snooty old girl this afternoon, but they’re still here. She didn’t take nothing, and that’s a month ago.”

  Negley did not sleep much that night. He was afraid there might be another sin on Henrietta’s proud old soul. It was useless to remind himself that all over the world women were standing up to just such catastrophes. This girl was young, too young to have learned fortitude. There had been courage in that picture of her. It had been a brave young face, determinedly smiling, but it might be the courage which it took to leap off a bridge, or to end a life somehow.

  He had learned other things from the woman where she had lived.

  “She gave up her job for fear some word would come about him and she wouldn’t be here. She never left the house after that. She just sat and waited. She didn’t even eat.”

  He wakened early the next morning. Some of the night’s anxiety had gone, and he felt rather sheepish when he called the Morgue. Nevertheless he was relieved when he was told that nobody answering the girl’s description had been brought in during the last month. But he had reached a dead end. She seemed to have had no family, no roots anywhere. He didn’t even know from what town she had come, or where she had been working.

  He saw his partner that morning before he went to his own office.

  “I’m afraid I lost us a client last night,” he said.

  “Not Henrietta!”

  “Henrietta. I told her some unpleasant facts. She didn’t like them.”

  Mr. Forbes grunted.

  “I suppose it was coming to her,” he said resignedly. “How’d it happen?”

  Negley told him, feeling rather like a bad boy as he did so. But Forbes was philosophic.

  “She may get over it,” he said. “She’s not a bad sort, gives a lot to charity and all that. Of course she gets it deducted from her income tax.” He grinned wryly. “We’d better try the Bureau of Missing Persons,” he said. “At least that won’t get Henrietta in the papers, and I’d like to
find that girl. If she’s to be found,” he added.

  It was a busy day. No word came from the Stafford house. Evidently Henrietta was still nursing her wrath. Negley had called the Bureau of Missing Persons, and an investigator had come around. He seemed disappointed at the lack of information, but he was a cheerful soul.

  “We generally find them,” he said. “You’d be surprised how hard it is to lose yourself these days.”

  At least he had done all he could, Negley thought. He went through the rest of the day’s routine as usual, and he was signing his mail late in the afternoon when Mosely was announced. When he came in he looked profoundly shaken. He stood in front of the desk, fingering a shabby hat. Negley remembered that he had never seen him in ordinary clothing before.

  “What’s wrong, Mosely?” he asked. “Anything new?”

  Mosely’s face twitched.

  “I thought I’d better tell you, Mr. Negley,” he said. “Mrs. Stafford has dismissed me.”

  Negley put down his pen.

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “It’s true, sir. I’m but of a job, after thirty years.”

  Negley swore under his breath.

  “Sit down,” he said. “Sit down and tell me about it. What happened? Why did she do it? Was it because I—?

  Mosely sat down, putting his hat carefully on the floor beside him.

  “No, sir,” he said. “It’s nothing to do with you.” He cleared his throat. “I believe the technical charge is theft, sir.”

  “Theft!”

  Mosely attempted a smile.

  “I’ve been an honest man all my life. I’ve served Mrs. Stafford well for a long time. I’ve been her friend. Sometimes I’ve thought I was her only friend. When her boy was killed years ago she cried on my shoulder.”

  Negley squared himself in his chair.

  “But theft, Mosely. What do you mean?”

  Mosely looked embarrassed.

  “It’s true, in a way. It wasn’t much. A little here and there for the last few weeks. But we have a new cook. The old one would have understood. You see, she’s been very sick, sir. She needed the little extra I couldn’t give her.”