The Clue of the Judas Tree

by Zenith Brown

  There was a long silence after that. We had left the dreary expanse of service stations and chicken coops, and were traveling swiftly through great banks of snowy-petaled dogwood.

  A little cry of joy broke from Cheryl’s smooth rouged lips.

  “Isn’t it lovely!”

  Just ahead was a sudden deep red slash in the snowy mass. I saw her looking at it at the same time that I did; and she gave an involuntary shudder.

  “What’s that red stuff?” I asked practically.

  “Judas Tree,” she said softly, “it looks like blood, in the snow.” Dr. Sartoris smiled at her.

  “I should say you are rather jumpy,” he said, and she laughed a little. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  She turned to the right, and in a few moments turned again, into a narrow dirt road marked only by a couple of cylinders, with the names of Baltimore papers painted on them, perched on posts that were stuck at crazy angles into the ground. In a quarter of a mile or so we turned again, through a pair of beautifully wrought but rather medieval iron gates, between two brick pillars.

  The unkempt dirt road had not prepared me for the gates—with a ducal crown worked in slender metal in the centers of them—nor for what was on the other side. Just ahead of us was a tiny lake, shimmering green and mauve and yellow in the setting sun. Three stately white swans moved idly across it to the shelter of a tall weeping willow with young green streamers gesturing gently in the dying breeze. Beyond stretched lawns and gardens and arbors and trees, and beyond them lay a silent bay opening into the broad waters of the Chesapeake. A slim white sail floated in the distance, and far beyond it a steamer with black smoke coming from its funnel moved down the Bay. From the car window I saw a screen of pollarded cedars, and beyond it a house. A very astonishing house.

  Just why I had assumed that Ivy Hill would be red brick and Georgian, I don’t know. I suppose it was because I hadn’t met Mrs. Trent. It wasn’t red brick, and it wasn’t Georgian. It was pink brick and tile, and it was frankly and appallingly Tudor Gothic, with high arched windows and flattened flying buttresses. It was an extraordinary building, and it must have cost tons of money.

  Dr. Sartoris turned back to me as we came up to it.

  “The Trents built this place before the present interest in the Early American,” he said. “The decorators scoured Europe to keep it in period, but fortunately Mrs. Trent has great independence of spirit.”

  Something like a plain grunt came from the girl at his side.

  I got the idea that they were preparing me for the worst.

  And in its way the house at Ivy Hill was as incredible as the things that happened in it. In fact, I suppose, it was the kind of house that strange things have to happen in, as a sort of ironic destiny. I didn’t, of course, know any of that when Cheryl Trent brought the big car to a stop in front of an elaborate oak studded door. A colored butler, white-haired, in plum-colored livery, greeted Cheryl with a broad grin.

  “Is yo’ back, Miss Cherry?” he squeaked in a pleased falsetto. Then he bowed to Dr. Sartoris.

  “We didn’ speck yo’, suh.”

  Dr. Sartoris smiled genially.

  “I came quite suddenly,” he said.

  “We’s always mighty glad to have yo suh.”

  “This is Miss Gather, Magothy,” said Cheryl.

  “Evenin’, miss.”

  I handed him Cheryl’s parcel and got out. I had a brief chance to look around while he was sorting my baggage from Dr. Sartoris’s. It was then that I decided it was an incredible place and that incredible things could easily happen there; in fact, a strange thing happened almost immediately. I was looking up at the tali narrow leaded windows when I saw a curtain just above us fall suddenly—not suddenly enough, however, to keep me from seeing a woman’s hand making elaborate signals to one of us there in the drive. I looked around. Cheryl was busy, with her back to the house; and as for Dr. Sartoris, his gray eyes and fine clear-cut features were as bland and innocent as you please. In fact, he was looking the other way too. I had a curious feeling of something out of the way going on; but Mag-othy’s high amused cackle at something Cheryl said to him seemed so innocent and friendly that I decided it was the large pink building with the queer leaded windows that was doing it. It was incongruous enough, Heaven knows, there by the clear smiling waters of the Chesapeake.

  “We dine at seventy-thirty, Miss Cather,” Cheryl Trent was saying to me. “Aspasia will be up there to show you the ropes, and I’ll be along before dinner.”

  I said “Thanks,” and followed Magothy inside, into an enormous high-ceilinged hall, paneled in dark mellow oak, with a wide staircase going up ahead of us and a balcony running around three sides of it. The staircase had three suits of armor, two holding spears, stationed on the landing. The balcony rail was hung for all the world like the chapel in Les Invalides, with tattered banners of faded blue and gold and red. The only thing missing was a tomb in the center of the floor below, and we got that before we were through with it. The whole place was dimly lighted through the high windows, but warmly lighted—there was a rose window over the landing.

  “Them armors is from Europe,” Magothy said, pointing to the mailed figures. “An’ that there window come out of a thedral, also in Europe.”

  “Really?” I said.

  “Yes, miss. In fac ebrything we got in the house come out of somewheres.”

  We were passing a series of elaborate carved linenfold chests and armoires in the upstairs hall. We turned right, and Magothy opened a stout oak door.

  “Here yo’ is, miss. Now I got to tell the Madam that there doctuh, he back.”

  I was inside a room that might have come out of a museum, and really ought to have been left in it. A high curtained bed, a prie-dieu with a rushlight on it, a carved oak chest, a carved oak bench in front of a high stone fireplace. The fireplace was a lovely paneled thing, and there was a cheery little blaze behind a pair of fine wrought-iron firedogs. I can’t say that even then the place was particularly homey, and there wasn’t anything to sit down on that had a cushion on it. And there was certainly nothing inviting about the heavily curtained bed except the steps you had to use to get into it.

  However, the bathroom adjoining, with polished rose quartz, inlaid jade and amber water lilies, more than made up for it. By the time I’d had a bath in the delicate aromatic stuff that gushed out of the concealed faucet, I was a new woman.

  Aspasia came, a neat mulatto in brown poplin, and put my things away. She said, “Is there anything else, miss?”

  I said, “Yes. One thing. Who is Michael Spur?”

  She said, “Michael Spur, miss? Is he white or colored?”

  He might have been Siamese, for all I knew, so I let the matter drop.

  I’d finished dressing when Cheryl Trent tapped at my door and came in, a slim, charming daffodil of a girl in sea green tulle with quaint puffed little sleeves and a long slim skirt flowering out into a billow of ruffles at her gold shod feet. The yellow curls still clustered at the back of her neck, but the rest of her head was set in sleek shining waves, with just a curl escaping here and there to prove she wasn’t too sleek and shining.

  “Ready?” she asked.

  “When I get a handkerchief. Now.”

  But she had sat down on the bench in front of the fire and was looking at me with two wide-set unsmiling blue eyes.

  “I didn’t mean to be so rude to you this afternoon,” she said seriously.

  I smiled.

  “I wasn’t, really. I mean, I was just surprised,” she went on. “I didn’t expect to see Dr. Sartoris, in the first place, and I didn’t know you knew him . . . and, well, I didn’t expect you to look like . . . I mean, I thought you’d be about forty, and maybe fat, or awfully thin, and wear glasses, and talk about your work. You know? “

  “Yes,” Ï said, “Í know.”

  There wasn’t any use telling her I was practically thirty, and that anyway forty wasn’t horribly old.

 
; “That’s what the women who write things that come to see Mother look like. They all give me a pain in the neck. When Dad said you were coming, and for me to meet you, I thought we were in for it again. Dad said you wouldn’t be so bad, because he knew McCrae wouldn’t send anybody terribly poisonous down.”

  She was talking quite as if she were speaking about somebody out in the garden. I gathered there was nothing personal intended, really.

  “How long have you known Dr. Sartoris?” she asked abruptly.

  “About six hours, roughly, I should say.”

  She looked at me with a surprised puzzled expression in her eyes.

  “Oh!” she said. “I mean, really? I don’t mind, you know.”

  I saw she hadn’t understood me.

  “I ran into him, literally,” I said, “at noon today, outside Mr. McCrae’s office. That’s the first time I ever laid eyes on him. Then he was on the train coming down, and we introduced ourselves and talked. You know how you do on trains.”

  As a matter of fact my only other experience of the sort had been with a very young missionary returning from China, and I talked with him from Seattle to New York.

  “I’ve never been in a train alone,” she said simply.

  “It’s fun,” I said. “You ought to try it some time.”

  She nodded.

  “Did he tell you anything about us?” she asked, as abruptly as before.

  “He said you were all terribly nice, except somebody. I’ve forgotten just now who it was.”

  “I guess it was Dad. Or maybe Dick—that’s Major Ellicott. Or maybe he meant Mr. Archer, Dad’s lawyer?”

  “I don’t remember,” I said.

  “Did he tell you about Michael Spur?”

  “No, he didn’t.”

  “And you really never knew him before? Not really?”

  “Never,” I said patiently.

  She traced the pattern in the Aubusson rug with her little gold shoe, and bit her under lip thoughtfully.

  “Then you wouldn’t know, would you,” she said, after a moment.

  “Know what?”

  “Whether he’d know.”

  It was too confusing for me. I sat down on the bed steps, hoping she’d explain just what she did mean.

  “I mean, if you never knew him before, you wouldn’t know whether he’d be apt to be right when he says Michael Spur will murder one of us when he comes.”

  “Good Lord,” I said, “what are you talking about? “

  She looked wide-eyed and surprised.

  “Of course,” she said; “I forgot. You don’t know about Michael, do you?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Well, you see, he murd-”

  There was a tap on the door. She stopped abruptly. I said “Come,” and Aspasia looked in.

  “Your father is waiting for you-all, miss,” she said.

  “All right,” Cheryl said. She got up. “Let’s go. I’ll tell you after dinner.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  I was anxious to meet Duncan Trent. There’s something romantic and appealing about a man who started life with nothing but determination and a pair of copper-toed boots and amassed a great fortune. I’d thought it was going to be fun to play ghost to such a man. He wasn’t too well known; he’d never had a press conference and passed out his views on agriculture, politics or dressmaking in the home. I don’t suppose he had any, actually—not that that seems to restrain most self-made millionaires. Anyway, I was definitely interested in the job of visiting his home and writing his autobiography. I didn’t know then that the time had already passed too far along for Mr. Duncan Trent’s autobiography ever to be written, or that my stay at Ivy Hill was going to be like a Grand Guignol, with midnight screams and murder and staring-eyed Death meeting you almost at every turn.

  Half-way down the wide staircase Cheryl, calm as a lily, said suddenly, “I’m glad you came. Don’t go right away, will you.”

  “I was asked for two weeks,” I said smiling.

  “I know. But you don’t know what it’s like here, yet. Promise me you’ll stay.”

  We were passing the last of the grotesque hollow iron-and-chain knights on the landing when she said that. Just as I started to say “All right—I promise,” the spear fell from his mailed fist and landed on the polished floor in front of us with a sharp clatter. It nearly scared the wits out of both of us.

  Cheryl drew her breath sharply, and bent down to pick it up.

  “Magothy says when things in a house fall like that it means somebody is going to die.”

  She was trying to speak lightly, as she stood the spear up in the corner back of the knight, but you could see she was forcing it. And I had a queer icy fluttering inside of me, in spite of myself. I looked up at the darkening rose window, and at the tattered flags hanging limply from the balcony. For a moment there seemed something almost ominous in the air. Then we heard a deep burst of laughter, and the clink of ice on crystal. There’s something practical and clear-headed about a cocktail, even if it’s just tomato juice.

  “It’s funny, isn’t it,” I said, “how contagious superstitions like that are?”

  “I guess it is,” she said.

  We went on down. When we went into the living room five men in dinner dress turned from the business of cocktails to greet us. Before the short plump little man with a white Vandyke beard and practically no hair on his head had crossed the room, I had seen that Dr. Sartoris was there, more impressive than ever in his dinner jacket, and that at the other end of the line there was a tall dark-haired man with a tiny mustache who was just as attractive. I think Dr. Sartoris must have seen my glance skip the short pink-gilled white-haired jovial person, and the little brown-eyed rabbit of a man, between him and the tall dark man who I naturally assumed was Major Ellicott. At least I caught an amused twinkle in his eyes while Cheryl was introducing me to her father.

  “Ah, there, Boswell,” said Mr. Trent genially, “it’s mighty nice to have you down here.”

  He shook my hand warmly, and looked me over—I felt a little like a horse—and pinched his daughter’s smooth cheek affectionately.

  “See, Cherry—I told you.”

  Then he led me across the room towards the great Florentine fireplace where they were standing.

  “My Boswell, gentlemen,” he said. “You know Dr. Sartoris? If he thinks you’re a ghost of any sort, he’ll throw you out. Don’t like ghosts. You call ’em something else, eh, doctor?”

  Dr. Sartoris smiled. It was rather pleasant, some way, having him on my side; and that’s exactly the impression his smile, and the little pressure on my fingers as we shook hands, conveyed.

  “This is Mr. Archer, Boswell. He’ll censor everything we write so we can’t be had up for libel. Watch him, Boswell.”

  Mr. Archer’s pink fat cheeks swelled like a Falstaffian sunfish. “’S a pleasure, Miss Gather,” he beamed. “We’ll have to get together. Duncan’s got too much of a past to let it all out, you know.”

  He shook with mirth, and the others laughed more or less politely. I didn’t make out whether it was funny because Mr. Trent did have a past or didn’t.

  “And this is my brother-in-law, Perry Bassett,” Mr. Trent said. “Don’t pick any flowers, and don’t walk on the grass—eh, Perry? He’ll be after you, Bos well with a pruning knife. Eh, Perry?”

  Perry Bassett—he was always just that, I learned later, never Mr.—looked at me like a dog who hopes you won’t kick him, and we shook hands. It was an odd sensation, after the smooth and well cared-for hands of Dr. Sartoris and Mr. Archer. Perry Bassett’s hands were like sandpaper.

  “I hope you’ll pick all the flowers you like, Miss Gather,” he said, in a low gentle voice. To this day almost the only things I can remember of Perry Bassett are those rough dirt-soiled hands, the gentle voice, the animal-like look in his brown eyes.

  “And this,” said Mr. Trent, “is my cousin Major Ellicott. If Cheryl can spare him he’ll show you the place—horses
, golf, boats, anything.”

  Major Ellicott bowed. I could quite understand how Cheryl might not be able to spare him, and so could he, I thought. He smiled at me, holding my hand a bare fraction of a second too long. His smile was politely faint and ironic—as if he knew all women found him irresistible.

  “I hope you’ll like us,” he said. There was something in his voice that said he’d be crushed if I didn’t like them, especially him, and I could believe it if I wanted to.

  I turned back to Mr. Trent and Cheryl, and took the thin-stemmed bubble of glass that Magothy offered me on the silver tray. I was saying how glad we were on the magazine that Mr. Trent had at last consented to let us use his story, which we all felt was so inspiring. Or something like that. Actually I was wondering how the deuce a household managed to get along with two men like Dr. Sartoris and Major Ellicott in it. They were so dreadfully alike, except that one was dark and the other light. I glanced at Cheryl, blonde and cool and lovely,

  Mr. Trent was saying, “Yes, Cheryl and Dick here”—he pointed with his glass at Major Ellicott—“are getting married in June, and then I’m taking a cruise around the world.”

  “Really?” I said, and glanced at Major Ellicott. I don’t know why I should have been so astonished. Cheryl was talking to Dr. Sartoris, her face lifted up, her eyes and lips laughing. He was telling her how I’d nearly knocked him down outside Mr. McCrae’s door. He was being sort of gentle and big-brotherly, and all the rest of it. It seemed strange, in some way. I hadn’t noticed before that Cheryl was wearing a large diamond solitaire.

  I was just thinking, while listening to Mr. Trent, that there were two more people in the household, and wondering vaguely about them, when we heard the sharp click of heavy heels on the stairs, and in a moment a large, well-corseted, henna-haired, heavily made-up woman in a red print dinner gown appeared in the doorway. For an instant she regarded us through her platinum lorgnette. Then she smiled archly.

  “Good evening, everybody!” she said brightly.