“I thought you were the damned police again,” he said. “Come in. I’ve sent the servants to bed. They’re all pretty well shot.”
We went into the library. It looked as if it hadn’t been dusted for a month. Elinor’s house had always looked that way; full of people and cigarette smoke and used highball glasses. But at least it had looked alive. Now—well, now it didn’t. So it was a surprise to see her bag lying on the table. Fred saw me looking it.
“Police returned it today,” he said. “Want a drink?”
“I’ll have some White Rock. May I look inside, it, Fred?”
“Go to it,” he said dully. “There’s nothing there that doesn’t belong. No note, if that’s what you mean.”
I opened the bag. It was crammed as usual: compact, rouge, coin purse, a zipper compartment with some bills in it, a small memorandum book, a handkerchief smeared with lipstick, a tiny perfume vial, and some samples of dress material with a card pinned to them, “Match slippers to these.” Fred was watching me over his glass, his eyes red and sunken. “I told you. Nothing.”
I searched the bag again, but I could not find the one thing which should have been there. I closed the bag and put it back on the table. But he wasn’t paying any attention to me anyhow. He was staring at a photograph of Elinor in a silver frame, on the desk.
“All this police stuff,” he said. “Why can’t they just let her rest? She’s asleep now, and she never got enough sleep. She was beautiful, wasn’t she, Lou?”
“She was indeed,” I said honestly.
“People said things. Margaret thought she was foolish and extravagant.” He glanced at the desk in the corner, piled high with what looked alike unopened bills. “Maybe she was, but what the hell did I care?”
He seemed to expect some comment, watching me out of haggard eyes. So I said:
“You didn’t have to buy her, Fred. You had her. She was devoted to you.”
He gave me a faint smile, like a frightened small boy who had been reassured.
“She was, you know, Lou,” he said. “I wasn’t only her husband. I was her father too. She told me everything. Why she had to go to that damned doctor—”
“Didn’t you know she was going, Fred?”
“Not until I found a bill from him,” he said grimly. “I told her I could prescribe a rest for her, instead of her sitting for hours with that young puppy. But she only laughed.”
He talked, on, as if he was glad of an audience. He had made her happy. She went her own way sometimes, but she always came back to him. He considered the coroner’s verdict an outrage. “She fell. She was always reckless about heights.” And he had made no plans, except that Margaret was coming to stay until he closed the place. And as if the mere mention of her had summoned her, at that minute Margaret walked in.
I had never liked Margaret Hammond. She was a tall angular woman, older than Fred, and she merely nodded to me.
“I decided to come tonight,” she said. “I don’t like your being alone. And tomorrow I want to inventory the house. I’d like to have father’s portrait, Fred.”
He winced at that. There had been a long quarrel about old Joe Hammond’s portrait ever since Fred’s marriage. Not that Elinor had cared about it, but because Margaret had always wanted it she had held onto it. I looked at Margaret. Perhaps she was the nearest to a real enemy Elinor had ever had. She had hated the marriage, had resented Elinor’s easy-going extravagant life. Even now she could not help looking at the desk, piled high with bills.
“I’d rather straighten that for you,” she said. “We’ll have to find out how you stand.”
“I know how I stand.”
He got up and they confronted each other, Fred with his back to the desk, as if even then he was protecting Elinor from Margaret’s prying eyes.
She shrugged and let it go. Yet as I left the house I was fairly confident she would spend the night at that desk. Fred asleep, the exhausted sleep of fatigue and escape, and Margaret creeping down to the desk, perhaps finding that bill of Doctor Barclay’s and showing it to him in the morning.
“So that’s how she put in her time! And you pay for it!”
It was warm that night. I walked slowly home, hoping the bridge game was not over. But it seemed my night for unexpected encounters, for I had gone nearly half the way when I realized I was being followed. That is, someone was walking softly behind me. I felt the hair rising on my scalp as I stopped and turned. But it was only a girl. When I stopped she stopped too. Then she came on, and spoke my name.
“You’re Miss Baring, aren’t you?”
“Yes. You scared me half to death.”
“I’m sorry. I saw you coming out of the inquest today, and a reporter told me your name. You’ve been to the Hammonds’, haven’t you?”
“Yes. What about it?”
She seemed uncertain. She stood still, fiddling with her handbag. She was quite young, and definitely uneasy.
“Were you a friend of Mrs. Hammond’s?” she inquired.
“She was my cousin. Why?”
She seemed to make a decision, although she took her time to do it. She opened her bag, got out a cigarette and lit it before she answered.
“Because I think she was pushed out that window,” she said, defiantly. “I’m in an office across the street, and I was looking out. I didn’t know who she was, of course.”
“Do you mean that you saw it happen?” I said incredulously.
“No. But I saw her at the window, just before it happened, and she was using a lipstick. When I looked out again she was—she was on the pavement.” She shivered, and threw away the cigarette. “I don’t think a woman would use a lipstick just before she was going to do a thing like that, do you?”
“No,” I said. “How long was it between that and when you saw her, down below?”
“Hardly a minute.”
“You’re sure it was Mrs. Hammond?”
“Yes. She had on a green dress, and I had noticed her hair. She didn’t have a hat on. I—well, I went back tonight to see it the lipstick was somewhere on the pavement. I couldn’t find it. The street was crowded. Anyhow someone may have picked it up. It’s three days ago. But I’m pretty sure she still had it when she fell.”
That was what I had not told Fred, that Elinor’s gold lipstick was missing from her bag.
I looked at my watch. It was only eleven o’clock, and mother was good for another hour.
“We might go and look again,” I said. “Do you mind?”
She didn’t mind. She was a quiet-spoken girl, certain that Elinor had not killed herself. But she didn’t want her name used. In fact, she would not tell me her name.
“Just call me Smith,” she said. “I don’t want any part of this. I’ve got a job to hold.”
I never saw her again, and unless she reads this she will probably never know that she took the first step that solved the case. Because I found the lipstick that night. It was in the gutter, and a dozen cars must have run over it. It was crushed flat, but after I had wiped the mud of Elinor’s monogram was perfectly readable.
Miss Smith saw it and gasped.
“So I was right,” she said.
The next minute she had hailed a bus and got on it, and as I say I have never seen her since.
I slept badly that night. I heard the party below breaking up and the cars driving away. When mother came upstairs she opened my door, but I turned off the light and closed my eyes, which was the only escape I knew of. I knew then that I had a murder to consider, and it seemed unimportant whether she had won two dollars or lost it that evening. But I got up after she had settled down for the night, and hid that battered lipstick in the lining of my hatbox.
It was late when I got to Doctor Barclay’s office the next morning. The reception room door was unlocked and I walked in. The room was empty, so I went to the window and looked down. I tried to think that I was going to jump, and whether I would use a lipstick or not if I were. It only made me dizzy and we
ak in the knees, however, and when the nurse came in I felt like holding on to her.
If she recognized me she gave no sign of it.
“I don’t think you have an appointment, have you?” she inquired.
“No, I’m sorry. Should I?”
She looked as though I had committed lèse majesté, no less; and when I gave my name she seemed even more suspicious. She agreed, however, to tell Doctor Barclay I was there, and after a short wait she took me back to the consulting room.
The doctor got up when he saw me, and I merely put Elinor’s lipstick on the desk in front of him and sat down.
“I don’t think I understand,” he said, staring at it.
“Mrs. Hammond was at the window in your reception room, using that lipstick, only a minute before she fell.”
“I see.” He looked at it again. “I suppose you mean it fell with her.”
“I mean that she never killed herself, doctor. Do you think a woman would rouge her mouth just before she meant to do—what we’re supposed to think she did?”
He smiled, wryly.
“My dear girl,” he said, “if you saw as much of human nature as I do that wouldn’t surprise you.”
“So Elinor Hammond jumped out your window with a lipstick in her hand, and you watch the Hammond house last night and then make a bolt for it when I appear. If that makes sense—”
It shocked him. He hadn’t recognized me before. He leaned back in his chair and looked at me as if he was seeing me for the first time.
“I see,” he said. “So it was you in the driveway.”
“It was indeed.”
He seemed to come to a decision then. He leaned forward in his chair.
“I suppose I’d better tell you, and trust you to keep it to yourself. I hadn’t liked the way Mr. Hammond looked at the inquest. That sort of thing is my business. I was afraid he might—well, put a bullet through his head.”
“You couldn’t stop it, standing in the driveway,” I said skeptically.
He laughed a little at that. It made him look less professional, more like a human being. Then he sobered.
“I see,” he said. “Well, Miss Baring, whatever happened to Mrs. Hammond, I assure you I didn’t do it. As for being outside the house, I’ve told you the truth. I was wondering how to get in when you came. His sister had called me up. She was worried.”
“I wouldn’t rely too much on what Margaret Hammond says. She hated Elinor like poison.”
I got up on that and retrieved the lipstick. He got up too, and surveyed me unsmilingly.
“You’re a very young and attractive woman, Miss Baring. Why don’t you let this drop? After all you can’t bring her back. You know that.”
“I know she never killed herself,” I said stubbornly, and went out.
I was less surprised than I might have been to find Margaret in the reception room when I reached it. She was standing close to the open window from which Elinor had fallen, and for one awful minute I thought she was going to jump herself.
“Margaret!” I said sharply.
She jerked and turned. She never used makeup, and her face was a dead white. But I was surprised to find her looking absolutely terrified when she saw me. She pulled herself together, however.
“Oh, it’s you, Louise,” she said. “You frightened me.” She sat down abruptly and wiped her face with her handkerchief. “She must have slipped, Lou. It would be easy. Try it yourself.”
But I shook my head. I had no intention of leaning out that window. Not with Margaret behind me. She said she had come to pay Fred’s bill for Elinor, and I let it go at that. Nevertheless there was something queer about her that day, and I felt shivery as I went down in the elevator. Women at her time of life sometimes go off-balance to the point of insanity.
I had some trouble in starting my car, which is how I happened to see her when she came out of the building. And then she did something that made me stop and watch her. There was no question about it. She was looking over the pavement and in the gutter. So she knew Elinor’s lipstick had fallen with her. Either that or she had missed it out of the bag.
She didn’t see me. She hailed a taxi and got into it, her tall figure in its deep mourning conspicuous in that summer crowd of thin light dresses. To this day I don’t know why I followed her, except that she was the only suspect I had. Not that I really believed then that she had killed Elinor. All I knew was that someone had done it.
I did follow her, however. The taxi went on and on. I began to feel rather silly as it passed through the business section and into the residential part of town. Here the traffic was lighter and I had to fall back. But on thinly settled street the taxi stopped and Margaret got out. She did not see me or my car. She was looking at a frame house, set back from the street, and with a narrow porch in front of it, and as I watched her she climbed the steps and rang the bell.
She was there, inside the house, for almost an hour. I began to feel more idiotic than even. There were so many possible reasons for her being there; reasons which had nothing to do with Elinor. But when she finally came out I sat up in amazement.
The woman seeing her off on the porch was the Mrs. Thompson of the inquest.
I stooped to fix my shoe as the taxi passed me, but I don’t believe Margaret even saw the car. Nor did Mrs. Thompson. She didn’t go into the house at once. Instead she sat down on the porch and fanned herself with her apron, and she was still there when I went up the steps.
She looked surprised rather than apprehensive. I don’t suppose she had seen me at the inquest. She didn’t move.
“I hope you’re not selling anything,” she said, not unpleasantly. “If you are you needn’t waste your time.”
It was impossible to connect her with crime. Any crime. By the time a woman has reached fifty what she is is written indelibly on her. Not only on her face. On her hands, on the clothes she wears and the way she wears them. She was the sort who got up in the morning and cooked breakfast for a large family. Probably did her own washing, too. Her knuckles were large and the skin on them red, as if they were too much in hot water. But her eyes were shrewd as she surveyed me.
“I’m not selling anything.” I said. “May I sit down and talk to you?”
“What about?” She was suspicious now. “I’ve got lunch to get. The children will be coming home from school.”
She got up, and I saw I would have to be quick.
“It’s about a murder,” I said shortly. “There’s such a thing as being accessory after the fact, and I think you know something you didn’t tell at the Hammond inquest.”
Her florid color faded somewhat.
“It wasn’t a murder,” she said. “The verdict—”
“I know all about that. Nevertheless I think it was a murder. What was Mrs. Hammond’s sister-in-law doing here if it wasn’t?”
She looked startled, but she recovered quickly.
“I never saw her before,” she said. “She came to thank me for my testimony. Because it showed the poor thing did it herself.”
“And to pay you for it, I suppose?”
She flushed angrily.
“Nobody paid me anything,” she said. “And now I think you’d better go. If you think anybody can bribe me to lie you’re wrong. That’s all.”
She went in and slammed the door, and I drove back to town, puzzled over the whole business. Was she telling the truth? Or had there been something she had not told at the inquest? Certainly I believed that the doctor had known more than he had told. But why conceal anything? I began to feel as though there was a sort of conspiracy around me, and it was rather frightening.
I was late for lunch that day, and mother was indignant.
“I can’t imagine why, with nothing to do, you are always late for meals,” she said.
“I’ve had plenty to do, mother,” I told her. “I’ve been working on Elinor’s murder.”
She gave a small ladylike squeal.
“Murder?” she said. “Of c
ourse she wasn’t murdered. Who would do such a thing?”
“Well, Margaret for one. She always loathed her.”
“Women in Margaret’s position in life do not commit crimes,” she said pontifically. “Really I don’t know what has happened to you, Louise. The idea of suspecting your friends—”
“She is no friend of mine. And Elinor was.”
“So you’ll stir up all sorts of scandal. Murder indeed! I warn you, Louise, if you keep on with this idiotic idea you will find yourself spread all over the newspapers. And I shall definitely stop your allowance.”
With this dire threat she departed, and I spent the afternoon wondering what Doctor Barclay and the Thompson woman either knew or suspected, and in getting a shampoo and wave at Elinor’s hairdresser’s.
The girls there were more than willing to talk about her, and the one who set my hair told me something I hadn’t known.
“Here I was, waiting for her,” she said. “And she was always so prompt. Of course she never came, and—”
“You mean you expected her here, the day it happened?”
“That’s right,” she agreed. “She had an appointment for four o’clock. When I got the paper on my way home I simply couldn’t believe it. She’d always been so gay. Of course the last few weeks she hadn’t been quite the same, but naturally I never dreamed—”
“How long since you noticed a change in her?” I asked.
“Well, let me see. About Easter, I think. I remember I liked a new hat she had, and she gave it to me then and there! Walked out in her bare head. I ran after her with it, but she wouldn’t take it back. She said a funny thing, now I think of it. She said sometimes new hats were dangerous!”
I may have looked better when I left the shop, but what I call my mind was doing pinwheels. Why were new hats dangerous? And why had Elinor changed since Easter?
Fred had dinner with us that evening. At least he sat at the table and pushed his food around with a fork. Margaret hadn’t come. He said she was in bed with a headache, and he spent most of the time talking about Elinor.
Alibi for Isabel: And Other Stories Page 17
