The Clue of the Judas Tree

by Zenith Brown

  “I certainly do.”

  He shook his head.

  “The fuse blew out, lady. That’s what happened.” I looked quickly at him.

  “Then there wasn’t anybody behind me?”

  “Nope.”

  He pointed to the connection on the floor under the table into which the lamp was plugged, it was covered with a thick brownish stain.

  “When Ellicott and Bassett came down,” he said, “they couldn’t turn on the lights until they’d got a new fuse in. There’s blood in the socket. Made a short. We’ve got the blown fuse.”

  “Well,” I admitted, “I didn’t hear anyone, but I could have sworn I heard the click of the switch, not the sort of noise a blown fuse makes.”

  He seemed to think about it, but he shook his head. “Hard to tell the difference when you’re excited,” he said.

  “Then you don’t think there was a gun here either?”

  “I wouldn’t, if there wasn’t that oil there, lady, and that’s a fact. And I’m blamed if I see what’s the big idea. Both Ellicott and Bassett say there wasn’t any here, and they came on the scene at the same time, and a fuse was blown.”

  He scratched his head.

  “It’s sure got me beat,” he said.

  “Do you think, lieutenant,” I said with some hesitation, “that somebody else here might be trying to put the blame on Michael Spur? “

  He just looked at me.

  “You think this is a movie?” he said.

  “Well,” I replied, “Mr. Trent told me, just a few hours before he was shot, that it was a swell layout for someone if they wanted to use it.”

  I didn’t like the way he’d looked at me, and I replied with some heatedness.

  “He did, did he?”

  “Yes, he did.”

  He thought about that for a moment. Then he said, “He didn’t just happen to say who’d want to use it, did he?”

  “No, he didn’t. But I shouldn’t think it would be so hard to find out.”

  I tried to use the same rather scornful tone of voice that he’d used.

  “For example, he and Mr. Archer were having a knockdown dragout about this life story of his I was supposed to begin today. And he and Mrs. Trent and Dr. Sartoris were having a set-to earlier in the evening.”

  At first he listened to me in spite of himself. Then he shook his head.

  “It’s that red head of yours that’s got you going, lady,” he said with a grin, and Í flushed. My temper is pretty short, and my hair is rather red, although Î prefer having it called Titian.

  “And what’s more,” he went on, lighting another of his poisonous cigars, “what’d you think if I told you Michael Spur came down here to get money to finance this business of making ports in the Near East? And the old man wouldn’t give it to him?”

  “Who told you that?” I remanded. I was genuinely alarmed.

  “That’s for me to know, lady,” he said, exasperatingly matter-of-fact. “No, all I’m telling you is just keep your shirt on and it’ll all come out sooner or later.”

  He grinned amiably. “No kiddin’, now, about that gun? That’s straight? “

  “Yes.”

  “O.K. We’ll find it, Don’t you worry. Now let’s go back and find out what the rest of these birds got to say for themselves.”

  I was a little dampened by all this. I could have sworn I’d heard the click of a switch when that light went off, and I sort of felt somebody in the room. I couldn’t expect Lieutenant Kelly, of course, to take much stock in anything as vague as all that, so I let it go.

  “There’s one other thing I wanted to ask you,” he said as we went out. “How come you didn’t pipe up and tell Spur you saw him over there outside the window at twelve?”

  “Oh, dear!” I said. “I forgot.”

  “Yeah? Well, Mr. Doyle’s going to think you never saw him, or you wouldn’t have forgot, I’m just telling you, lady—watch your step around here until you find out what it’s all about. In fact, I got an idea.”

  We stopped outside the dining room door.

  “You just tell everybody you’re thinking of leaving tomorrow—that I said it was O.K. see?”

  He slapped his thigh and chuckled heartily.

  “I’ll explain later,” he added.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Dr. Sartoris was talking to Mr. Doyle when Lieutenant Kelly and I went back into the dining room.

  “I don’t want to be misunderstood,” he was saying. “This is undoubtedly support of the theory of recurring psychosis, which I advanced. At the same time, Mr. Doyle, I don’t want it understood that I predicted this occurrence. I didn’t. In fact, if I’d thought of Spur’s coming back here at the time the subject first came up, I’d never have mentioned it. I was using it as an illustration of the kind of thing that’s possible with so-called mental cases.”

  Lieutenant Kelly broke in.

  “You seen Spur today, doctor?” he inquired. “What do you think of him as a mental case now? “

  “I talked with him a few minutes last night. I’ve seen him just casually today. I’m going up shortly to see him.”

  “All right. Just give us your own statement, then.”

  Dr. Sartoris, it seemed, had gone upstairs at Mrs. Trent’s request to see Michael at eleven o’clock. He had then gone to his room, written a few pages of a lecture he was to give in New York shortly, and had gone to bed and was asleep by midnight, or perhaps a little after. He had heard nothing until he was awakened at two or thereabouts. He knew no reason for anyone’s desiring Mr. Trent’s death. He had seen the body shortly before Mr. Doyle arrived, in company with Major Ellicott and Perry Bassett. There had been some delay on account of the blown fuse, but the room was orderly, and he agreed with Dr. O’Brien that death had been instantaneous, and was caused by a bullet at very close range. He was, of course, a qualified and practicing doctor of medicine.

  After he left ùs, Perry Bassett was ushered in. I took it that his sister had objected to the brown hat and the old gardening clothes—he was dressed in a dark gray suit and had on a stiff white collar. He looked very respectable and extremely uncomfortable and ill at ease. His story, however, was quite simple. He had gone to bed shortly after eleven, and had been waked by the commotion in the hall. He had given Michael Spur a couple of tablets of phénobarbital, which he himself always took before going to bed, or he’d never get any sleep. Perry Bassett fidgeted and squirmed and tugged at his collar, making the most agonized faces, and finally Lieutenant Kelly let him go.

  Agnes Hutton was next. It was the first time I’d seen her all day. She had a large calf-bound edition of the Contes Drolatiques under her arm and put it on the table with her handkerchief and a pair of horn-rimmed reading glasses, as if she would like to get back to it as soon as convenient.

  She had gone to bed about 11.30. She’d stayed downstairs to talk to Mr. Trent a few moments about some business details, and went directly upstairs when she left him. She had read—she tapped the Droll Tales with her forefinger—for a few minutes, and had gone to sleep until she’d heard a noise out in the hall. She thought it was most unfortunate for Michael Spur—in fact she blamed herself definitely, because Mrs. Trent had remarked in Michael’s presence at the bridge table that she hoped the gun in the library table wasn’t loaded, and she had told Michael she would move it somewhere else. When she went to the library Mr. Trent had told her to get some papers and go over them with him, and the other matter had slipped her mind.

  “As a matter of fact, though,” she said, “I wasn’t much worried about it. I thought it was a lot of nonsense. Michael looked better than I’d ever seen him.”

  Major Ellicott had gone upstairs shortly after eleven. He was manager of the estate, and also had an interest in the business of Trent and Spur. The day’s bills were always left on his desk, and he filed them himself at night before he went to bed. Last night he was dog-tired, and he’d taken a stiff shot of whiskey and gone to bed. He had slept until
wakened at two. He assumed the reason he hadn’t heard the shot was that his room was across the corridor over the dining room, while Miss Gather’s, who had heard it, was directly over the library itself.

  Cheryl was next, and she had nothing to add, except that she didn’t think Michael had anything to do with it. I waited for her to say Agnes Hutton did it, but she didn’t. I was very glad when she got out of the room.

  Mr. Doyle left for town a little later, and Lieutenant Kelly said he wouldn’t need me any longer. He was going to have a talk with the servants.

  “Remember to tell ’em I said you could go tomorrow,” he said.

  So I announced it quite casually, I thought, at lunch, to which everybody showed up except Mrs. Trent, Cheryl and Michael Spur.

  Agnes Hutton wanted to know how I’d worked it, and Major Ellicott shook his head at her.

  “You aren’t going to run out on us, Agnes, are you?” he protested. “There’s an awful lot of work to be done around here, and you’re the only person that knows very much about it.”

  Agnes smiled her mocking smile.

  “I’ve been most definitely asked to leave,” she said silkily. “Mrs. Trent very clearly said the sooner the better. You know, I don’t think she likes me very much.”

  “You’re not just finding that out, Agnes?” Mr. Archer inquired, his blue eyes twinkling unexpectedly. “I imagine if we all left because Emily doesn’t like us, there’d have been a traffic congestion at the gate this morning. In fact, Sartoris here is about the only one who’d have stayed on.”

  Dr. Sartoris smiled tolerantly. He apparently didn’t mind being twitted about Mrs. Trent. Perry Bassett seemed to be the only one who did mind it, but he concentrated on the crisp brown crab cakes in front of him, and said nothing.

  After lunch he asked me if I’d like to see the place. He seemed to be hunting for an excuse to get out of the house.

  “My sister feels it’s disrespectful of me to work outside just now,” he explained once, when he glanced behind him and surreptitiously dived after a tiny weed that had sprung up in a strawberry forcing bed we were looking at.

  We wandered through an elaborate series of formal gardens off to one side of the house until we came to a long row of Lombardy poplars just coming into greenish yellow leaf. At the end of the poplar walk there was a terrace, and beyond it, as far as the eye could reach, there was a sloping wilderness of white waxy dogwood in glorious bloom. And in and out of it were great patches of magenta Judas Tree. It was so lovely it fairly took my breath away.

  “Duncan planted all that,” he said simply. “But Emily doesn’t like it. Do you ride?”

  I said yes, and he said, “You must get Cheryl to take you out in the morning. I hope you won’t go away. In fact, I don’t think it’s true that you are going. Did that man tell you to say you were going just to see what would happen?”

  I tried not to look as flabbergasted as I felt,

  “What makes you think that?” I asked.

  “That’s what I would do if I were in his place,” he replied. “There’s twenty-five miles of bridle path through the dogwood. It goes down to an inlet. That’s where we swim.”

  For the remainder of our walk Perry Bassett adroitly sidestepped my rather fumbling attempts to get him to tell what he really thought about Michael Spur and the gruesome business of the previous night. I did learn quite a lot about the best kind of fertilizer for Maryland soil, but I’ve forgotten it all now. I had the idea several times that this mild pleasant old fellow, who came just to my nose, was making it all up as he went along. But I wasn’t sure.

  When we came back to the house Lieutenant Kelly was standing on the other side of Perry’s flaming crescent of varicolored tulips, looking up at the window. I noticed with a start that Sergeant Lynch was leaning out of the window in my room.

  I glanced at Perry Bassett. He had seen them too.

  “I wish he’d walk around things,” he said, when Lieutenant Kelly sprang across one end of the crescent in what seemed to me a very creditable standing broad jump. He appeared to be in a hurry to meet the uniformed messenger boy whom old Magothy was conducting through the door into the garden. We saw him open several envelopes and skim hastily through the messages. When he saw us he folded them all up and put them in his coat pocket, and beckoned to us.

  “Oh, dear!” said Perry Bassett, looking around him for a way out. “You tell him to excuse me. I’ve got to see a . . . a man.”

  “About a dog, I suppose,” I said.

  “No, no. It’s about something else.”

  Lieutenant Kelly grinned at me. He seemed in rather better spirits than he had been before lunch. I was wondering if he’d got something important out of the servants, but he settled that at once.

  “Only four of ’em live in the house,” he said, “and the old fellow heard the shot and locked all the doors of the servants’ quarters until Bassett routed him out hunting for a fuse.”

  I told him what Perry Bassett had so calmly said about my leaving. He got quite sober, and said “Too bad.”

  Sergeant Lynch was still looking out of my window, but Lieutenant Kelly didn’t seem to feel any explanation was necessary. He merely nodded to the sergeant and came in the house with me.

  “I’d like a talk with you if you’ve got time,” he said. We went into the dining room and he closed the door. “Sit down,” he said.

  He took three telegrams out of his pocket and looked them over. Then he handed one to me. I gasped a little when I saw it was signed by one Harvey McCrea.

  LOUISE GATHER COMMISSIONED TO WRITE LIFE STORY OF DUNCAN TRENT STOP LEFT NEW YORK MONDAY 2.10 STOP WEARING BROWN TWEED SUIT BROWN HAT BROWN SHOES STOP RED HAIR YELLOW GREENISH EYES TWENTY EIGHT YEARS OLD STOP HAS WHISKEY CONTRALTO VOICE STOP SMOKES CONSTANTLY STOP WILL FURNISH BAIL IF NECESSARY

  I read it a second time. Lieutenant Kelly was watching me through his white eyelashes, grinning.

  “Guess you’re all right,” he said.

  “Did you doubt it? “

  “Always doubt everything,” he said, handing me a second telegram. It was from Santa Rey, Arizona.

  MICHAEL SPUR EMPLOYED ASSISTANT CHIEF ENGINEER SANTA REY CONSTRUCTION COMPANY LEFT APRIL SEVENTEENTH DESTINATION NEW YORK NO RECORD UNUSUAL ILLNESS WHILE HERE STOP RESIDENCE SANTA REY HOTEL SIX YEARS MANAGER REPORTS SPUR QUIET AND SOBER STOP NO RECORD OF SLEEPWALKING STOP LOCAL DOCTOR TREATED SPUR FOR SNAKE BITE 1928 ALSO COLD 1929 STOP NO FRIENDS KNOWN OUTSIDE CONSTRUCTION COMPANY STOP YOUNG DARK WOMAN VISITED SANTA REY DECEMBER STOP SPUR ACCOMPANIED HER LOS ANGELES STOP GONE ONE WEEK STOP NO CORRESPONDENCE RECEIVED HERE STOP COMPANY KNOWS NOTHING ABOUT PREVIOUS LIFE STOP EMPLOYED AS DRAUGHTSMAN ON RECOMMENDATION DEPARTMENT OF ENGINEERING UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SEPTEMBER 1927 PROMOTED ASSISTANT CHIEF 1929 STOP PRESENT ADDRESS HOTEL VANDERBILT NEW YORK CITY

  It was signed “Moxon, Chief of Police, Santa Rey.”

  “Am I supposed to be the dark woman,” I asked, “who took him to Los Angeles?”

  Lieutenant Kelly ignored my question and handed me a third telegram. It was from the dean of the college of engineering at the U. of C.

  MICHAEL SPUR SPLENDID RECORD HERE NINETEEN TWENTYONE TO TWENTYFIVE NO RECORD OF NERVOUS DISTURBANCE STOP INFIRMARY RECORD SHOW ADMISSION MAY NINETEEN TWENTY TWO STOP TREATED FOR SPRAINED BACK STOP ROWED THREE VARSITY CREW STOP NO RECORD OF SLEEPWALKING STOP

  I handed it back to Lieutenant Kelly.

  “Well,” I said, “where does that get us?”

  He put it with a fourth message that he hadn’t shown me, and put the lot of them back in his pocket.

  “Well,” he said, “now, it practically lets you out of it.”

  “No!” I said.

  “Yeh. And it puts the last crimp in somebody’s bright idea about a psychosis, or whatever they call ’em. Old man Trent was murdered, lady, and he was murdered in cold blood, what’s more. When I came down here I thought I knew what for. I ain’t so sure just now. There’s something funny going on rou
nd here.”

  “I’ve missed it, if there is,” I said. “Do you still want me to pack and pretend I’m leaving?”

  “You might as well. Tomorrow after lunch’s the time,” he said. “I got a man working in Baltimore, and I guess I’d be glad if you’d keep an eye peeled and let me know if you find out anything around here. I’d appreciate it.”

  “I’ve found out several things, Lieutenant Kelly,” I said. “But I don’t know how much I ought to tell you.”

  He nodded.

  “Yeh, I know. But I’m going to find it all out sooner or later. It don’t do no good holdin’ out on me.”

  “Then I’ll tell you something about the first night I was here,” I said. It was hard to realize that “the first night I was here” was just last night.

  I told him about seeing Michael come and stop down at the bench where his father had dropped, dead, when he was shot. I told him about hearing Agnes Hutton saying that if I was as smart as I thought I was it was a rotten time to have me around.

  He was much more interested in that than he was in Michael’s actions.

  “You don’t know who she was talkin’ to?”

  “No. I didn’t hear him speak, really. I just heard a sort of mumble. But I heard Agnes say he needn’t make love to her.”

  He thought about that a moment. Then he asked me why I’d happened to come to Ivy Hill—who’d suggested Mr. Trent as a subject for the magazine, who’d made the arrangements, and so on. I told him I didn’t know, but I thought McCrae had met Mr. Trent at a dinner at the Maryland Club.

  “I guess I can find out about all that,” he said.

  He pulled out a bilious-colored gold-mounted fountain pen and began jotting things down.

  “I guess it boils down to this, lady,” he said meditatively. “Either Spur’s off his nut and did it without knowing it, or he did it premeditated, or somebody else did it and’s tryin’ to make Spur take the rap. Now, we’ll just call them one, two and three. And we’ll just let Number One go.”

  He screwed the top back on his fountain pen. I thought it was obvious that he didn’t feel particularly at home on paper. He thrust his hands in his trousers pockets and slouched down in his chair.