The Balcony

by Dorothy Cameron Disney

  His warning, although phrased in different terms, was almost precisely the warning I had received from Great-aunt Patience. I wasn’t sure at all I wanted that particular kind of backing, nor was I sure I would receive it.

  VIII

  WHEN GLENN AND I RETURNED TO THE FOYER, the police party had arrived and was already in possession of the house. Dr. Raymond, the county coroner, was at work in the room upstairs. A tow-headed youth, who looked young to be a deputy, was busy with a camera. Another deputy stood beside the hat tree in the alcove, gazing thoughtfully at the door through which someone other than myself had departed the previous afternoon.

  Sheriff Glick was standing on the stairs. There was, at first glimpse, nothing frightening about Cordell Glick. He was a tall, thin man, past middle age, not remarkable in appearance except for his eyes. They were a pale, clear gray and sometimes, under provocation, they became flecked with green lights. They looked pale and sleepy now. And then I saw that even in his holiday clothes, topped by a rakish tie which he certainly had not chosen for himself, one would not have mistaken the tall man for any casual guest. In the very ease of his attitude was a subtle suggestion that he had come to stay. Cordell Glick had lived in Mount Hope all his life, he knew all of the Hieronomos except myself, and me he placed at once.

  “You must be Gavin’s daughter,” he said and flashed a friendly smile at me. “I used to play marbles with your father.” He shared the smile with Glenn. “This young man’s father, as I remember, used to beat us both.”

  It was a disarming way to meet a representative of the law, a shade too disarming, possibly. I wondered whether the Sheriff’s manner might not be a part of the Sheriff’s stock in trade.

  He sighed. “It’s a pity you youngsters have to be concerned with such a sorry business on a day like this. History repeats itself. Tragedy seems to seek out the Hieronomos on Thanksgiving Day.”

  “Shall—shall we go into the drawing room?” Glenn asked awkwardly.

  “Please,” said Sheriff Glick. “I’ll join you shortly,” and with that, he climbed the stairs and left us.

  Two hours elapsed before the Sheriff appeared in the drawing room. We had no hint of his activities, and if the delay was meant to try the nerves of the Hieronomos, it succeeded. At noon exactly—the foyer clock was striking—Patience, who had suggested at least a dozen times that one of the men go upstairs and tell the Sheriff we were waiting, made the suggestion once again.

  “He knows we’re waiting,” Glenn said, but nevertheless rose to go.

  At that point, the Sheriff entered the drawing room. He didn’t come down the stairs. He came through the great front door, and there was mud and snow upon his boots. He did not explain what errand had taken him outside the house. He merely sat down and said:

  “Shall we begin?”

  It is not easy to give a clear account of the colloquy which followed, of the questioning which involved every member of the family. For one thing, I was in such a state of personal anxiety and terror that I momentarily expected to be accused, arrested and marched forthwith to the village jail. That was, of course, ridiculous.

  Patience and Richard, although they might privately suspect me of complicity in a hideous crime—I was convinced they did—aligned themselves with the others to present a united front to Sheriff Glick. Glenn’s prediction was correct to a degree. The Hieronomos might differ among themselves, but once an outsider entered in, they became a fiercely loyal family.

  I wasn’t singled out. Indeed, in the beginning I wasn’t questioned. Patience deftly saw to that. It was she who bore the brunt of the interrogation. It was she who told of our fruitless search for Amanda the night before, of our forcible entry to her room, of our fatal decision to defer notifying the authorities until morning.

  “Since our discovery,” Patience said painfully, “that my sister entered Father’s room yesterday afternoon and —and did not come out again, it seems incredible we let a whole night pass before we found her. I must take the blame upon myself. Amanda was an independent and sometimes a secretive woman. I dare say you’ve heard we’re selling Hieronomo House. Amanda, through Verona Gay, had handled the negotiations. I—I thought some difficulty had come up which Amanda didn’t choose to mention. At any rate, I felt sure my sister wasn’t on * the place. The maid heard someone leave the house at quarter of five. If you care to speak to Wanda . . .”

  She gave Sheriff Glick an opportunity to explain that he had already talked to the servants. He overlooked it. He only said:

  “I’ll take your word for it, Miss Hieronomo.” And then he turned to Richard.

  “You must have thought your sister was in the house. You were concerned enough to break down her bedroom door.”

  “I couldn’t believe Amanda would leave almost at the moment of my arrival,” said Richard slowly. He glanced at his wife. Lucy, her small hands clasped, her small face gray and without a trace of rouge, was listening tensely. Richard cleared his throat. “I felt very strongly in the beginning that Amanda was in her own room, that she’d met with some sudden illness, that the locked door barred us from her. Besides . . .” The actor suddenly came to a dead stop, as though he had lost his lines.

  “You were saying, Mr. Hieronomo?”

  The silence lengthened.

  “Uncle Richard was about to say,” I broke in clearly, “that I heard some sound inside the room. The others didn’t hear it.”

  “There was a great deal of noise,” said Patience in a determined and breathless attempt to regain the control of the interview. “I’m not too sure I didn’t hear some sound myself. We—we’ve been quite unable to identify the sound. I doubt that it is important.”

  What she doubted, and I knew it, was that the sound had existed. Suddenly I could bear no more. Suddenly I thought that I would rather take a chance and tell the absolute and literal truth to Sheriff Glick than place my trust in any of my relatives. I got up from my chair. “There’s something else that you should know,” I said to Sheriff Glick. “My great-grandfather’s gun is missing. Or at any rate, we can’t find it.”

  “A gun!” The Sheriff actually started. “I’ve heard nothing about a missing gun.”

  “We’d had no chance to mention it,” said Richard, and broke the silence of consternation. “The gun is so old-fashioned I doubt one could fire it. It is an anachronism—hasn’t been loaded in my memory. So far as that goes, I’m not ready to concede it’s actually missing. In a house of this size, the weapon may turn up in any one of a dozen corners. There was no regular place for keeping it.”

  Another untruth, or something very close to it.

  “The gun,” I said, "was in the bolster of my greatgrandfather’s bed on Tuesday night. As it happens, I discovered it. But Aunt Amanda took it when she left the room.” And then I told the story my relatives had found incredible.

  If Sheriff Glick were skeptical, his expression didn’t show it. “What was the calibre, Miss Hieronomo?”

  I shook my head.

  Said Great-uncle Richard, “A forty-one. Father bought the gun more than fifty years ago. I doubt they make that type of weapon nowadays.”

  Sheriff Glick dropped the topic. I had briefly the curious impression that for reasons of his own he was deliberately skirting dangerous ground, avoiding dangerous questions. And that it was quite inadvertently that he made a remark which froze the group.

  "I understand that when you last saw Mrs. Silver— this would be yesterday afternoon at four o’clock—she was going upstairs to dress.” He glanced at Patience. “In that case, why would she go into her father’s room? Can you suggest any reason?”

  Patience carefully did not look at me. “I have no idea. None. Amanda only spoke of changing into dinner clothes. My brother and his wife were expected at half-past five.”

  “I gather,” said Glick almost absently, “that particular room hasn’t been occupied in some time.”

  That Patience would have left that false impression stand, I am certai
n. Her round face turned first white, then red. The Sheriff, caught by the intense silence of the room, was staring at her, a plump woman whose confusion was painfully apparent. Suddenly he frowned and turned to me.

  “By the way, Miss Hieronomo, how does it happen you were in that room on Tuesday night? When you saw the gun.”

  Glick was bound to learn the truth in time; it was absurd of Aunt Patience not to tell it. Far better that he should obtain his facts from me than from Wanda. But I hadn’t counted on the steadiness of his gaze.

  I said, “I slept in the room on Tuesday night—the night of my arrival. My clothes are there. But last night . . .”

  “Last night,” Patience interjected hurriedly, “I suggested that my niece come in with me. We were alarmed and nervous, we had spent an anxious evening . . .”

  “Please, Miss Hieronomo, don’t interrupt.”

  “I moved in with Aunt Patience,” I repeated. “I got my night things from—from Great-grandfather’s room, but if you imagine I went near that bed or that I knew Aunt Amanda was lying on the other side—I can only say you are mistaken.”

  “Why did you decide to move?”

  “I was frightened. The window on the balcony was open, and I hadn’t opened it. I saw footprints in the snow, Aunt Amanda’s footprints. They’re gone now, too. Someone swept the balcony.”

  “I see,” said Sheriff Glick. His eyes were very gray, with little flecks of green. “I suppose you’ve got no theory as to what took Mrs. Silver to your room?”

  There was nothing for it now except the truth. “She—she may have stepped in to find me. Before Aunt Amanda went upstairs, she spoke of my helping her hook up her gown.”

  “I understood she left you with the others in the drawing room!”

  “A few minutes after she went upstairs,” I said, with dry, stiff lips, “I followed. I rapped at Aunt Amanda’s door. I meant to hook her gown, you understand. But she didn’t answer so I came down again.”

  “But she’d just gone up to dress, Miss Hieronomo! Weren’t you surprised? Did you look elsewhere for your aunt?”

  It was impossible for me to explain that I had not been thinking of Aunt Amanda but of a tall, blond man who had promised to meet me at an ugly fence.

  “No,” I said slowly. “No. I didn’t look for her. I came downstairs again.”

  He was frowning. “Let’s get this straight. Did you go up, come down immediately and rejoin the others?”

  “I decided to take a walk.”

  Even to my own ears that stark and simple statement, robbed of other circumstances which I was determined not to mention, sounded incredible. The Sheriff made no comment. I could see him remembering how cold and dismal the day had been, how unsuited the weather to a stroll.

  “Did any of the others see you leave the house?”

  I didn’t wait for my relatives to resort to perjury. That perjury was on Glenn’s lips I was certain.

  I said, “I think that’s unlikely. As I came down the stairs, I saw them—Aunt Patience, Cousin Hoy and Glenn—sitting around the fire, finishing the bottle of champagne. But I don’t think they saw me. I didn’t cross the foyer. I left by the small side door in the alcove— out of sight from here.”

  I didn’t explain that I had departed surreptitiously. It was implicit in my words.

  “This was at what time, Miss Hieronomo?”

  “A few minutes after four o’clock. Ten minutes after at the latest. I—I had no watch.”

  “You’re quite sure it wasn’t as late as quarter of five?”

  “I’m quite sure,” I said. “It was only a little after four. I stayed upstairs five minutes at the most.”

  “Did you happen to see anyone during your walk, Miss Hieronomo?” His tone was casual.

  “No,” I said.

  “You were out how long?”

  “An hour and a half.” In some corner of my mind that was cool and impersonal, and removed from the fog of encroaching terror, I could comprehend the falsity of the picture I was drawing—the unlikelihood that on a freezing afternoon a sane young woman would desert a glowing fire, pleasant companionship and a magnum of champagne merely to set forth on a pointless promenade. I tried to fix that up. “I—I walked toward the fence outside. A small white dog came under it. I played a game of ball with him.”

  The statement fell into a well of silence. I knew suddenly that it had been an error to add that corroborating detail, or to mention Skipper. Patience was gazing at me with singular intentness. The other Hieronomos glanced restlessly at one another.

  “Does anyone recognize the dog?” asked Sheriff Glick. “Who are your neighbors beyond the fence?”

  Patience got up from her chair. She walked into the center of the room.

  “I’m sick and tired,” said she, “of beating around the bush. You’ve lived in Mount Hope all your life, Cordell Glick. You know who lives beyond that fence as well as I do. Maybe it isn’t orthodox for me to say so, but I always thought the purpose of a murder inquiry was to find the killer, and not to harry and harass the victim’s family.”

  “Please, Miss Hieronomo . . .”

  “You’re going to listen, Sheriff! Someone shot and

  killed my sister yesterday. Someone left this house at quarter of five—some outsider, obviously. I assure you it was none of us. Who was it then? Why don’t you find out? Why don’t you ask about Amanda’s enemies?”

  Again Glick made a restraining gesture, but Patience would not be halted.

  “You know very well that Amanda—like the rest of us—had an enemy. An enemy who hated every one of us, an enemy whose own father was responsible for my father’s ruin. Where was Dan Ayres yesterday afternoon? Who’s to say he didn’t enter the house and kill my sister? I’m not prepared to say it. I am prepared to suggest that you carry your investigation to the house next door!”

  Somehow I turned and faced her.

  “The point seems to be, Aunt Patience, where was I. I can’t prove I took a walk yesterday afternoon. I can’t prove I didn’t see Aunt Amanda upstairs. I can only say it. I haven’t got the vestige of an alibi.”

  “I haven’t either!” Glenn sprang to his feet, and stood beside me. “Suppose we drop ancient history, and stick to the present. Suppose we tell the Sheriff what he really wants to know, what he’s been hinting at all the time we’ve been playing boys and girls together.” He turned on Glick. “I’m quite serious. I’ve got an alibi. I left the house myself at a little after four. I went walking, too.”

  The Sheriff didn’t say a word. It was I who caught Glenn’s arm and cried, “Don’t lie.”

  “It’s quite true, Anne.” His smile was pale. “You pulled on your coat as you started up the stairs, and I had a hunch you were going out. Anyhow—it must have been only a few minutes later—I left the drawing room and went outside and looked for you. God knows I wish I’d found you.”

  “Since the subject has come up—and I’ll confess it’s So been in my mind,” said Sheriff Glick, “let’s thresh the matter out. What time did you people leave the drawing room?”

  “A few minutes after four,” Glenn said firmly.

  The Sheriff turned to Patience. His tone was dry. “I hope, Miss Hieronomo, you won’t object to explaining your whereabouts during the interval after you left the drawing room and until your brother’s arrival at half-past five. It is apparent—and the coroner bears me out in the opinion—that during that interval, your sister died.”

  “I reached my room at ten past four,” offered Patience, somewhat subdued. “I stayed there until Richard and Lucy arrived. I was dressing for dinner. It takes me,” she said with dignity, “quite a while to change.”

  Glick suppressed a smile. His own wife was built on ample lines, and he knew something about the difficulties involved in getting in and out of corsets. He turned to Cousin Hoy.

  Hoy was gazing distastefully at his son, and I fancied he was thinking that Glenn’s quixotic search for me had robbed the two of them of an a
libi. For when Hoy left the drawing room, he had gone directly to the room he shared with Glenn.

  “I unpacked both my son’s bag and my own,” Hoy said stiffly. “I shaved and changed my shirt, and laid out a shirt for Glenn. We’re on the first floor,” he made a point of adding, “some distance from the upper bedroom.”

  In other words, he definitely implied, the greatest physical distance from the room where Amanda had met her violent and shocking end.

  “And you?”

  Said Richard coldly, “You have heard that my wife and I arrived at half-past five. We took a taxi from the village. I did not kill my sister, but I should explain that I left the taxi on the road and walked up to the house alone. I dare say, by exercising speed, I, too, had what you people term the opportunity. I suppose I could have run inside and up the stairs, shot Amanda, and then rushed down and rung the doorbell.”

  He could have done nothing of the kind. There simply wasn’t time. I myself had heard the arriving taxi, and only an instant later had seen Richard on the front verandah.

  “I think,” said Glick dryly, “we can eliminate you and your wife if you took the taxi from the station. I suppose you got in from New York on the five o’clock?”

  “Yes,” said Lucy breathlessly. “My husband and I can speak for one another. We were together every minute.” Shortly afterwards, the Sheriff left us. Of the group, only Great-uncle Richard and his wife could lay claim to anything like an alibi. To reach her own room, Patience had actually passed her sister’s room and Greatgrandfather’s room as well, and this very shortly after my own fatal reconnaissance in the upper hall. I must have missed the scattering in the drawing room by a matter of seconds. Cousin Hoy, according to his own account, had unpacked two bags, had shaved and changed his shirt, but he had been alone. Glenn had evidently been wandering about the grounds.

  It seemed to me, however, that my explanation of where I had spent the time between four o’clock and half-past five was the flimsiest and most unconvincing of the lot, that, indeed, my own account of my activities was almost enough to jail me.