The Clue of the Judas Tree

by Zenith Brown

  “Well,” I said, getting up, “June’s a long way off. Why don’t you go talk to Michael? It might cheer him up to find out you don’t think he did it.”

  “Do you think he . . . wouldn’t mind?”

  I was surprised and I must have looked it, because she said, “You see, he always thought I was a terrible nuisance, always tagging along and getting in his way, scaring off the ducks or getting him stung with sea nettles or something. I wouldn’t want to bother him.”

  “I don’t think he’d mind,” I said, without even smiling. Ridiculous as it seemed, Cheryl still thought of Michael as twenty and herself as six. I suppose that’s why the idea of marrying Major Ellicott in June didn’t seem to bother her at all. The two things were wholly unrelated. I wondered if Major Ellicott and Michael would be able to see it that way.

  I left her at the door of Michael’s sitting room and went to my own room. About ten minutes later Magothy knocked at my door and said that Lieutenant Kelly and Mr. Doyle wanted to see me in the dining room.

  I went out and met Cheryl just closing Michael’s door behind her. She was white and stunned.

  “It’s terrible, Louise!” she whispered. “He just sat there with his head in his hands, and he told me to go away. I didn’t mind that, but the way he said it . . . as if he couldn’t bear the sight of me.”

  Before I could say anything Magothy appeared at the other end of the hall.

  “Miss Cherry,” he said, “they done takin’ pictures of yo’ fingers in the dinin’ room. Mistuh Doyle, he wants to know is yo’ comin’ down or is they comin’ up?”

  “I’ll come down,” she said.

  “Yes, miss—thank yo’, miss.”

  Major Ellicott met us at the foot of the stairs and took possession of Cheryl, rather sweetly, I thought. When she had placed first her right fingers and right thumb, then her left fingers and left thumb on the paper that one of Lieutenant Kelly’s men prepared for her, he went out with her. I heard her say, “It’s nice to be with you again, Dick. Where have you been? “

  “Next, miss,” said the man at the table—they called him “Skip” and it may have been his name. I stepped up and made my ten smudges that looked criminal on the face of them.

  “That’s the lot, sir,” he said. “Except the old lady. I’ll get her upstairs.”

  “O.K.,” said Lieutenant Kelly, “Get going.”

  He turned to me.

  “Know anything about shorthand?”

  “A little. I’m not very fast.”

  “You can help us out, then,” he said. “My man’s had a blow-out on the road.”

  “All right,” I said. “I’ll do my best.”

  “O.K. Skip, tell Lynch to bring young Spur down. Get going.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  That’s how I happened to hear as much of the testimony as I did. At that it’s rather disquieting to realize how very little I knew of what was actually going on behind the hard-bitten red countenance of the gentleman from the Baltimore Bureau of Detectives. There was a certain vague feeling of satisfaction in the fact that Mr. Doyle didn’t know it either.

  Sergeant Lynch came down with Michael. I was a little shocked at the change in him. He looked like a man who had gone through the seven circles of hell. His face was drawn and gray beneath the almost mahogany layer of sun tan; his eyes were dark haunted hollows. He kept moistening his lips feverishly and throwing away one half-smoked cigarette after another.

  “Sit down, Mr. Spur,” said Lieutenant Kelly. He watched Michael intently, without moving his head. I recalled then who it was that Lieutenant Kelly reminded me of. It was an old chimpanzee in the London Zoo; he had very intelligent gray eyes that followed you around through a stubby fringe of colorless lashes, and looked as old and wise as sin, and about as sympathetic. Otherwise the resemblance was not very strong. The chimpanzee’s hair was thin and rather ratty.

  On the whole, however, I thought Lieutenant Kelly was very considerate. He said he wanted to get to the bottom of things, and wanted to know what Michael had been doing and how he’d happened to come back to Ivy Hill, and what he had done that night.

  Michael said he had been with an engineering outfit building a dam in Arizona for the last six years. He’d got a degree in engineering from the University of California in 1925. The job was practically over, and he’d come to New York to see about tying up with a crowd of younger men who were doing some port construction in the Near East. That’s when he had decided to drop down to Baltimore and run out to see the Trents.

  Lieutenant Kelly asked him if the decision was very sudden, and he said no.

  Lieutenant Kelly produced a telegram and handed it to him.

  “You recognize this?”

  “Yes. I sent it.”

  “Why’d you send it at two A.M.?”

  Michael said he had been to a party, had taken a girl home, and happened to run across a telegraph office that was open, and sent it.

  “Were you tight?” Lieutenant Kelly asked.

  “Not very.”

  “But you didn’t just make up your mind on the spur of the moment to come down?”

  Michael hesitated. The door opened, and Mr. Archer came in. He was in a little better humor than the last time I’d seen him, but he had, it developed, strong ideas on the way Mr. Doyle was allowing things to be done.

  “If Spur is—as I understand he is—practically accused of murder,” he said, “this questioning is irregular to say the least.”

  There was some rather heated discussion between the two of them, during which Lieutenant Kelly looked calmly on through his white eyelashes. It was ended by Michael’s saying positively that he understood he didn’t have to make any statement but he wanted to get the thing cleared up; and Lieutenant Kelly went back to his last question, which I read from my notes.

  Michael answered promptly that he had been thinking of coming ever since he’d left the West Coast, but hadn’t made up his mind until that night.

  “You did come entirely of your own free will.”

  I thought Michael hesitated again, but maybe I was wrong. He said, “Oh, entirely.”

  Lieutenant Kelly explained that what he was getting at was this: was there any outside reason for his coming—was he summoned by anyone, or what?

  “No,” said Michael. “Not a bit.”

  “You ever think of coming back before?”

  “Often. But I was out West, and busy. I never got around to it before.”

  “Now then,” said Lieutenant Kelly. “When you decided to come down here, did the idea of it make you nervous? I mean, figuring this Dr. Sartoris is right, did you have any idea that coming back would be hard on you?”

  “Not if you mean did Í think I’d have another attack of my old . . . illness, if you can call it that. Fve not had any trouble for years. None that Fve known of. Fve always been careful not to keep a gun in my kit, but . . .”

  “Eh?” said Lieutenant Kelly, looking up. “What’s that?”

  “I mean that since I shot my father, Fve never had a gun in my possession.”

  “Did you know there was a gun in this house?”

  Michael hesitated.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Whereabouts?”

  “In the library, in the drawer of the table where Mr. Trent was sitting.”

  “How’d you know there was one there? “

  Michael pressed out his cigarette in the ashtray, his fingers as taut as steel springs.

  “I can’t answer that,” he said curtly.

  “But you did know it was there?”

  “Yes.”

  I saw Mr. Doyle and Mr. Archer exchange glances.

  “Now, then,” said Lieutenant Kelly. “When you got down here, how did everything strike you?”

  Michael laughed shortly. He shrugged his shoulders, thrust his hands deep in his trousers pockets, sank his chin down on his chest and slouched down on his spine with his legs stretched out.

  “It all seem
ed downright crazy,” he said thickly. “Not a damn thing was changed except that Aunt Emily had got fat and Cheryl had got tall. Everything else was just the same. Perry, and Dick Ellicott. Mr. Trent and Mr. Archer here. Even Agnes Hutton. And old Magothy and all the tin suits stuck around. It gave me a queer feeling that I’d just dreamed everything. I felt if I’d look up suddenly I’d see Dad coming in the room.”

  Mr. Doyle nodded at Mr. Archer with complete finality, but Lieutenant Kelly seemed unimpressed.

  “You tell anybody that, Mr. Spur?” he asked.

  “Yes. I told Mr. Trent, and Miss Cather.”

  Lieutenant Kelly looked at me. I nodded.

  “Anybody else?”

  “Dr. Sartoris, when he looked in before I went to bed.”

  “All right,” said Lieutenant Kelly. “Now, then. What time’d you get here?”

  “I got off the trolley in Annapolis about eight-thirty and got a taxi. About nine, I guess.”

  “What time’d you go to bed?”

  “I went upstairs about quarter to eleven and read a little. I don’t know when I went to sleep, I was dead on my feet. Perry Bassett gave me a couple of pills to make me sleep.”

  “You usually take pills to make you sleep?”

  He grinned suddenly.

  “Not out West on an engineering job. You slave in the sun all day and you don’t need ’em. I used to, when I was here.”

  “All right. Just tell us the rest of it.”

  Lieutenant Kelly crossed one carefully creased leg with a shiny yellow boot at the end of it.

  “That’s all there is,” Michael said simply. “I’d had a night cap with Mr. Trent, about a quarter to eleven, said good night to him and went to my room. Dr. Sartoris came in and said we might have a talk in the morning. Perry Bassett came in and brought the pills. I went to bed, read a while, had another drink, and went to sleep. I slept—as far as I know—until I heard the row outside in the hall and found out Mr. Trent was dead.”

  “To the best of your knowledge you weren’t out of your room after eleven o’clock?”

  “I wasn’t out of my room until I heard the noise in the hall.”

  “O.K.,” said Lieutenant Kelly. “Now, lady, if you can type that out I’d like Mr. Spur to sign it. Just read it off, will you?”

  I read it, rather haltingly.

  Michael nodded. “That’s right,” he said.

  “All right, then, Mr. Spur. I guess that’ll be all. Have ’em get the doctor fellow.”

  We waited—I looking over my notes and writing bits in before I forgot them, Lieutenant Kelly paring his nails with the gold knife on one end of the heavy gold chain he wore festooned across his stomach, Mr. Doyle shuffling papers impatiently—until there was a rap on the door. I looked up expecting to see Dr. Sartoris. Instead it was Sergeant Lynch.

  “The gun ain’t showed up, chief,” he said. “But I found something here.”

  He had a dark bundle in his hands, and he deposited it carefully on the end of the table.

  I tried to look around Mr. Doyle’s lank form to see what it was.

  “Yeh?” said Lieutenant Kelly. Ï could tell by his voice that he was interested.

  “It looks like blood, all right,” said Mr. Doyle. “Hold it up, Kelly. Is there any more?”

  “It’s just over the right sleeve,” said Sergeant Lynch.

  I stood up so I could see too, and sat down again abruptly.

  It was my dressing gown they were looking at.

  “Well, well,” said Lieutenant Kelly. “Where’d you find it?”

  “It was all folded up and packed in the bottom of a woman’s suitcase. I guess she was making a getaway. Maid says it belongs to Miss Louise Cather—she’s the New York woman.”

  Lieutenant Kelly and Mr. Doyle turned around and stared at me. Mr. Doyle seemed quite excited, and a rather ominous look came into his eyes, which were unpleasant enough anyway.

  “So that’s what’s up, is it?” he said.

  I hadn’t noticed that Dr. Sartoris had come in until he spoke up now and said, “Don’t be a damn fool, Doyle.” It was the first impolite thing I had heard him say. It was neither suave nor imposing. I stared at him through a fog of bewilderment.

  Mr. Doyle was very much annoyed, and Sergeant Lynch came to his defense.

  “Damn fool, is he?” he said coolly. “Well, what’s more, there’s blood all over the window sill in her room. Let’s see you laugh that off, big boy.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  I looked helplessly at Lieutenant Kelly. He was examining the sleeve of my gown quite calmly and without any apparent excitement. I didn’t know him well enough at that time to know that he never got excited, or that if he did there was never any evidence of it, or any change in his sober matter-of-fact habit of taking everything as it came and doing the best he could with it. I was so glad he was there that I could have cried, almost. It seemed to me that Mr. Doyle would be delighted to fix this affair on somebody outside the family circle. As a matter of fact, if I’d known what was in Lieutenant Kelly’s mind I’d have seen that I was just as good a suspect as anybody, for his purposes. As it was, of course I felt I couldn’t be seriously suspected.

  He handed me the dressing gown.

  “This yours?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “How long’s that been on there?”

  “I never saw it before in my life.”

  “How’d it get there?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t go near Mr. Trent, and I didn’t touch anything when I ran across the library. Anyway, that sleeve was on the outside—I mean it was away from the body—because I ran between the table and the fireplace.”

  He grunted.

  “We’ll just go up and have a look,” he said. “Excuse us a minute, doctor.”

  I glanced at Dr. Sartoris to let him know I was grateful to him for coming to my defense. But he was standing there in front of the fireplace, calmly blowing a long column of cigarette smoke ceilingward, as if the whole thing were an unconscionable bore. I didn’t know then that his belongings had been searched as thoroughly as mine had. As I learned later, two men had come from Baltimore shortly after ten o’clock, and having begun in the library, were searching the entire house. So far the only thing that had turned up was my blood-stained silk dressing gown.

  I went upstairs with the two policemen. Sergeant Lynch pointed with some personal satisfaction to the dark smear on my window sill.

  “Blood,” he said simply.

  Lieutenant Kelly nodded perfunctorily, and turned to me.

  “Know how that got there?” he said.

  “No. I don’t know.”

  “Did you lean out the window last night?”

  I tried to remember, but last night seemed years past, and even my own actions were confused.

  “I may have, when I came back upstairs after Mr. Doyle and the doctor left,” I said. “I don’t remember.”

  He grunted.

  “I want a picture of this,” he said to the sergeant.

  “O.K., chief.”

  “Now let’s have a look at these bags.”

  Sergeant Lynch put my luggage up on the bed and opened it. Lieutenant Kelly looked on while he removed the entire contents of both bags. They even opened an empty leather writing case that had got in by accident.

  I thought Lieutenant Kelly seemed more interested in it than seemed natural.

  “What’s that for?” he demanded.

  “It usually has small note paper in it,” I said. “It’s a writing case. My colored maid packed for me. I suppose she thought I might need it, and didn’t notice it was empty.”

  He nodded.

  “May I ask what you’re hunting for?” I said rather tartly.

  He looked rather queerly at me. Then he said, “We’d like to find a thirty-eight automatic revolver for one thing.” He winked at Sergeant Lynch.

  “You don’t mean the gun that killed Mr. Trent?”

  “That’s th
e one,” he answered amiably.

  “Do you mean you haven’t found it? “

  “That’s the idea. Seen it around any place?”

  He winked at the sergeant again.

  “Why, yes,” I said. “I saw it on the table, last night, in front of Mr. Trent.”

  The mirth disappeared instantly from Lieutenant Kelly’s eyes.

  “What’s that?” he said sharply.

  “I said I saw it last night on the table in front of Mr. Trent’s body.”

  “No kidding?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Yeh?” he said. “I guess I want to have a good long talk with you, lady. You just come with me. Keep at it, Bill. Where’s Norton?”

  “He’s doin’ the grounds and the garage, chief.”

  “O.K.”

  I went downstairs again with Lieutenant Kelly. He took a key out of his pocket and opened the door into the library. The heavy curtains had been pulled aside, but the room seemed cold and dreary. Ï didn’t know that they’d removed Mr. Trent’s body, and it was a little shock to see the chair at the table empty. I suppose it would have been a worse one if it had not been.

  “Sorry, lady,” he said gruffly. “But Doyle said there wasn’t any gun in sight last night. Sure you weren’t seein’ things?”

  “No indeed,” I said. “When the light went off, I was staring hard at the table and Mr. Trent. I still had an image of it in front of me after the light went off. There was a gun on the table—right here.”

  I pointed to a spot on the table. There were brown discolored patches where blood had spattered on the mahogany surface.

  Lieutenant Kelly took a small but very powerful electric torch out of his pocket and held the beam on the spot. I watched his face as he bent down and looked at it closely from all angles.

  “I guess you win, lady,” he said after a minute. “There’s a little trace of oil there. Lucky you saw that, now; we’d a never run on that by ourselves.”

  He straightened up and fixed me with a coldly impersonal eye.

  “What else do you know about this business, lady? You didn’t take that gun, by any chance, now, did you?” “No. I certainly didn’t.”

  “And you still think somebody turned out the light on you, do you?”