The Crooked Lane

by Frances Noyes Hart

  Inside it was dark, but this time he knew just how many steps lay between the door and the stairway; he crossed the space, silent and alert, and in a moment felt the cold length of the stair rail uncoiling slowly under his fingers.

  On the fourth-story landing, the light that he had extinguished the night before was burning, clear and impersonal, but all three doors were fast closed. The “Do Not Disturb” sign that had swung from the knob of the central one had disappeared, and so had the grave and shining young goddess who had so valiantly stood guardian before it. .…

  He stood for a moment, listening, to make sure that no voice was raised within; then, feeling the little muscle in the lean curve of his cheek tighten like a racked nerve, he lifted his hand and rapped once, lightly, on the sitting-room door. And immediately, as though it were responding to an incantation in a fairy tale, it swung noiselessly open, and once again he was standing before her.

  So she really looked like that, did she? He had not dreamed it? That pearly whiteness, the hair, pale and shining as candle flame, the wide-spaced eyes, hardly more deeply tinted than moonstones under the feathery sweep of her lashes—and the faint rose of the generously curved young mouth, that had foresworn its lacquer-red sophistication as her sole concession to the mourning that she should be wearing for the lost Fay. Because, obviously, Tess Stuart was wearing neither her heart nor a crape band on her sleeve.

  The shining tea gown of silvered chiffon that floated back from her shoulders and curled and broke in waves about her bare narrow feet in their braided silver sandals looked as though a bride or an angel might have worn it, but never a mourner. The ruby was still gone from her finger, but through the knot of freesias that she wore where the silver ribbons crossed her breast she had thrust a spray of emerald leaves frosted with diamonds.

  She came towards him, both hands held out, but not until they were safe in his did she lift to him her undefeated smile.

  “K—oh, this is better! I’m so glad you’re here.”

  “And I, Tess, am more glad than I can say that you, too, are here.… You look rested. The day was not too hard, then?”

  “Hard enough.” She released her long, cool hands gently, her eyes still on his. “But now it’s behind me, and that makes me rested. Sit down here and wait just a minute. I have some things for you.”

  The love seats that had flanked the old fireplace with its tiles that sang of nursery rhymes in water blue and apple green were gone, and a long, deep sofa of creamy satin had taken their place. Tess made a motion towards it, and Sheridan seated himself obediently in the far corner.

  The little boy perched on the stile stared back at him with round eyes of forget-me-not blue, guileless and inscrutable.

  And after that, where?

  Straight down the crooked lane

  And all round the square.

  How long, how long it seemed since he had knelt on that hearth, turning an empty glass in his hands and hearing the dancing words jingling through some empty corner of his brain not yet flooded by murder and horror, and lanes that led only deeper into darkness.…

  Straight down the crooked lane—but by what compass would the luckless traveler move? Was there more than innocence in those round eyes? … All round the square.… Would he find the three corners of that square at Abby Stirling’s, at Joan Lindsay’s, in this quiet room? Had he already found the fourth at Cara Temple’s? He had the strangest, the most penetrating conviction that there, at that flowered table, all unknowing, all unaware of what lay ahead, he had for a moment held the threads of Fay Stuart’s death in his idle fingers—above all, that scarlet thread that would have led him straight and sure down the tortuous lane. And now it was lost.…

  Tess’s voice said at his side:

  “Here they are; I found them in the cushions after—afterwards. It’s the book that she was reading—she must have hidden it—and the backgammon markers. Oh, and here’s the note that was on the table. It all happened just the way you thought it would, K. They—the two officers who came with the coroner—let me have it without any trouble. They didn’t raise any question at all about it’s being suicide. Will the note really help, do you think?”

  She thrust the little packet into his hands, her eyes lifted to his, eager and trustful.

  “It will help a great deal—though already, I think, I know just what it has to tell us. This is the actual book that she was reading then? Now why, I wonder, did she hide it?”

  He glanced down at the flimsy yellow paper covers, the ugly gray pulp pages, and the line between his slate-colored eyes contracted sharply. He had seen it before. An admirably written little book—an incredibly filthy little book. Distinctly a little book to be hidden behind cushions.… He ruffled through the pages, casual and contemptuous—and came to an abrupt halt. Halfway through it a note lay caught in the pages.

  He picked it up, staring down at it curiously. Blue-gray paper, thick and exactly right. Miss Faith Stuart, 2213 Massachusetts Avenue, Washington, D. C., very black and concentrated, with small, severely distinguished Greek E’s—Washington, D. C., May 27th, 10 a. m., clear and sharp-cut in the discreet post-office circle. A scarlet stamp like a flag in the right-hand corner.

  “Red?” he asked absently. “I thought that now your stamps were violet.”

  “But it’s sent from Washington to Washington.” She drew an explanatory finger under the address. “Local stamps are still red. The hardest thing that I have to remember, K, is that you don’t really belong here—”

  “No,” he said quietly. “That is hard for me to remember, too. Saturday, May 27th. Today is Sunday.… Have you any idea from whom this note comes, Tess?”

  “Oh, more than an idea. It’s from Dion.”

  “Mallory? I see. You have read it?”

  “I didn’t have to read it. I’m perfectly familiar with his handwriting.”

  “Yes—naturally. You did not read it, then?”

  “Of course not. Why should I read it? It’s addressed to Fay.”

  “Still,” he said quietly, “it was addressed to her on the day that she died. Will you read it now?”

  Tess, looking at him with the cool and disdainful amazement of the princess in the fairy tale confronted with toads instead of pearls, said clearly:

  “I shouldn’t dream of reading it. I don’t read other people’s letters.”

  “You leave that to the unworthy police?” He smiled, ironic and imperturbable. “You will permit me, then? That regrettable ruling passion—” He did not wait for her permission; the sleek, dark head was already bent above its capture in as deep absorption as though the frozen princess were not there. After a moment he put it down, transferring the level concentration of his glance to the girl, deep in the cushions at the other end of the sofa.

  “It seems, unfortunately, of no importance whatever. Just a few lines to tell her that he had the tickets for some race next Tuesday.” He flipped the note back to its first page, and read it through, his voice deliberately cool and impersonal.

  FAY ASTHORE:

  This will greet you on your return Monday. I have the race tickets for Tuesday—and very nice ones they are, too. The Chevaliers are coming with us, and it sounds like a grand party. What a rotten shame that you can’t make the Temples’ dance tonight! I hope that the Warrenton excursion will prove successful enough to compensate for its loss. But you will surely be with us at the Lindsays’ on Monday night, won’t you? Though that seems very far away! I kiss your hand, mademoiselle.

  DION.

  May 27th, 10 a. m.

  He returned it to its envelope and sat balancing it thoughtfully in his hand.

  “Saturday, 10 a.m. Now why, I wonder, did he not send it to Warrenton? Evidently she was waiting to hear about the tickets.”

  Tess, smoothing out a piece of yellow paper on her knee, said absently:

  “There’s no delivery that would have reached her at the Tappans’ before Monday.”

  “That would explain it, n
aturally. And you had not told Mallory that she had telephoned you Friday night that she expected to return to Washington Saturday?”

  “No. I hadn’t told him—I wasn’t even sure that she was actually going to.”

  “I see. I wonder why he did not have it delivered here by hand?”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea. Possibly he was busy. Why don’t you ask him?”

  “That, too, is an idea. I am looking forward to finally catching up with him at the Stirlings’. So far we have played in bad luck, though he did manage to reach me on the phone at the hotel. I sent my bags over to the house, and we are to return together after the party tonight. You have seen him?”

  “Just for a moment. He didn’t get into Washington till almost four, and then he came straight over here to find out whether I could tell him how to get in touch with you. He hadn’t heard anything about Fay, and when the butler told him, it was naturally a ghastly shock. He came straight up here to me to find out whether there was anything that he could do. But there wasn’t. I’d already cabled Dad, and Dr. Dole was here, tending to all the—arrangements. The funeral is to be Tuesday, and Dad can’t get here for at least ten days. So I sent Dion home.”

  “Mallory knew Fay well?”

  “He knew her better than anyone else in the world, I think. Better, I know, than I ever did. Last winter there were all kinds of rumors that they were engaged.”

  “And were they?”

  “I doubt it. I was off on that South Seas cruise, and I hadn’t even known Dion particularly well until this spring; but when I came back, everyone told me that they had been seeing each other constantly.”

  “Still, that hardly constitutes an engagement, should you think?”

  “Hardly. And of course Jerry Hardy has been desperately in love with Fay for two years, and that made everything wretchedly complicated. Dion really loves Jerry.”

  “Jerry? Oh, yes, that is the housemate whose place I am so fortunate to be taking, is it not? … Do you know, I should not have called this the note of one deeply enamored.”

  “No—it isn’t, is it? But perhaps he suspected our diligent and devoted servants. I’ve had a few quite deeply enamored notes steamed open and nicely glued back again.”

  “Do you expect me to believe, Tess, that it was Fay that Dion was interested in, not you? That all that I saw and heard last night was pure mirage and delusion?”

  She said, her eyes steady on his and her lips curved a little at the corners:

  “I don’t expect you to believe anything. You seem to have attained an almost professional degree of incredulity.”

  Karl Sheridan said with great distinctness:

  “On the contrary. I am only too anxious to believe what, for some reason, you are only too anxious to tell me These are the backgammon markers, you say?”

  “Yes; they’re a special kind that I have made for presents. A little Frenchman in New York does them for me, out of all kinds of semiprecious stones, and I’ve given away quite a lot of them.”

  K twisted off the round leather top of the case with its delicate golden traceries and sat surveying its contents critically.

  “They are quite charming—the recipients must be grateful. Half malachite and half lapis lazuli, are they not? And are all the sets of that same combination?”

  “Oh, no—they’re all kinds of combinations. Gray agate and rose quartz—onyx and coral—amethyst and crystal—white jade and turquoise—half a dozen others. I gave away eight or ten at Christmas. Freddy Parrish has a set, and Joan Lindsay—and Dion and Jerry Hardy—and Vicki and Cara Temple, and probably some others that I’ve forgotten. I could check them up if you want me to.”

  “No, no—that’s quite unnecessary.… You did not find any pencil that might have been used to write Fay’s note?”

  “No, and we looked everywhere; I’m sure that it isn’t in any of these rooms. I always use a fountain pen, and except for a very hard-leaded small pencil in the telephone pad by Fay’s bed, neither the maids nor I could find a single one. She had a lovely little platinum thing that she used to carry in her bag, but she lost it a week or so ago at the races. She loses every mortal thing that she possesses; the insurance people simply refused to renew her policy this year.”

  “She was unusually careless, then?”

  “She was incredibly careless.”

  “Yes; I can believe that. She must have been, I think, incredibly reckless, as well.… Well, then, so much for our pencil and so much for Fay’s note. It is quite clear that it was not written here—and it is entirely possible that, as you just suspected, it was not written to you.” He slipped the tiny page with its velvet-black printing into the envelope of Dion Mallory’s note and put it into his own pocket, with an inquiring lift of his brows in Tess’s direction. “You permit me? And may I borrow these markers for a day or so? It is not at all likely that the container will yield anything whatever in the way of prints, but I do not like to overlook the remotest possibility.”

  Her eyes met his unwaveringly, and for a moment it seemed to him that they looked larger and clearer than he remembered, touched by the candid curiosity of a child at the inexplicable antics of its elders and betters.

  “Is that why you want Dion’s note? You can take any earthly thing that you want, of course. Would you care for the French novel, too?”

  “Thanks, no. Mallory’s envelope protects the writing on that little piece of paper; I don’t wish it either blurred or crumpled.” Through the half-open door that led to Fay’s room the silver chime of her clock rang sharply, once, and he glanced up quickly. “Eleven-thirty already! How late is it possible for me to make an appearance at this party, Tess?”

  “Oh, as late as you please. No matter how late you are, you’ll be in time for breakfast. It’s that kind of a party. It’s in full swing now, of course; and if you’ve learned everything here that I can help about, you’ll probably find it a great deal more amusing at Abby’s. Don’t think that you have to bother about me, my dear. I’m perfectly all right now, and I do realize that I’m not a particularly enlivening companion.”

  She gave him a small, unhappy smile, and he sat quite still for a moment, trying to decide what it was that the desperate child behind the gray eyes was calling to him.… Was she begging him to go, or to stay? … Well, for a little while, until the voice called out so sharply and clearly that he could not mistake its bidding, he would stay.

  “You are wrong twice,” he said. “There are still, I think, many things that you could tell me; and of all the companions that I have ever known, you are the best. I have no doubt that the party at the Stirlings’ will be amusing, but it is not to be amused that I am going. Have you forgotten that it is to be my first battlefield? And that it is because I fear that my enemies may not be so generous as my friend with their hoarded information that I dare not arrive so late as I desire to?”

  “Enemies?” The inquiring eyebrows underlined the word.

  “Perhaps I exaggerate. But the friend of my enemy is my enemy, surely? And is it not possible that among those who are at the Stirlings’ there might be one who, if he knew my purpose in being there, would be in all good truth my enemy?”

  “Quite possible. It’s going to be a very mixed-up party, Dion says—all their special newspaper crowd, and a lot of people coming in after the embassy reception for that French aviator, and some of the Baltimore lot—almost anyone might be there.”

  “Jerry Hardy, for instance?”

  She glanced up swiftly from the yellow paper that she was pleating mechanically into a neat little fan.

  “Jerry? Oh, not possibly—didn’t Dion tell you he was desperately ill? What on earth made you think of him?”

  “I was just realizing that, though I have heard Hardy’s name half a dozen times, I do not know one solitary single thing about him except that once he loved Fay—and that once Mallory loved him—and that in all probability I shall be occupying his room sometime before dawn.… No, Mallory did not
tell me that he was ill.”

  She looked at him steadily for a moment, her lip caught between her teeth. Like a very good attentive child—perplexed but resigned.

  “Let me have a cigarette, will you? They’re on the end of that table.”

  He cupped his hand to shelter the blue spurt of the match flame, his eyes moving from the gold tip of Fay’s special cigarette to the shining, honey-colored head bent over his dark hand. Last night she had not worn her hair like that, coiled in those shells of gold at either side of the clear white face. It made her look like one of Fra Angelico’s saints—that young, young one, looking out from the pale gold burnished background, with lips folded softly as flowers and wide untroubled eyes.… Last night she had not looked like that. Last night …

  “You do not often smoke, do you, Tess?”

  “No—ridiculously little. I hate them, really, but sometimes they help me to concentrate. Take one yourself, won’t you? I was trying to think just what things about Jerry would particularly interest you.”

  “Almost anything, I assure you.”

  “You believe that he had something to do with this? I don’t see how it’s humanly possible—but anything that’s human is possible, I suppose! Jerry’s the most charming and tragic person that I’ve ever known, I think; there’s something awfully appealing and touching about him, like a little boy who’s been punished and doesn’t quite understand why. He’s not a little boy at all, of course; he must be well into the thirties. I know that he was only seventeen when he joined the Royal Flying Corps, because Dion told me that he lied about his age.”

  “Hardy, too, is English?”

  “No, no; he’s from New England. He joined up in Canada, I think, but for a while he was with Dion’s outfit, and they never really got out of touch with each other after that. And when Dion was sent over here from England, Jerry promptly threw up the job that he had, doing art work with some big advertising firm in New York, and came down here to take a house with Dion.”