The Balcony

by Dorothy Cameron Disney

  “I haven’t the least idea.” I didn’t understand his chatty, friendly attitude, but it didn’t reassure me. “Surely you own an interest.”

  “I never discussed the matter with Aunt Amanda. I only understood that the sale had been arranged, that the house was to become an inn.”

  “To save me the trouble of looking up John Hieronomo’s will, exactly what is your interest in the place?”

  “My father’s share. One-fifth of the whole,” I began, and stopped abruptly. Aunt Amanda had left no children. I, in consequence, must be one of her heirs. Greatgrandfather’s will had provided that if one of his heirs died before the property was put up for sale, the share of the decedent went to the other blood survivors. I said, “My interest may be one-fourth now, but if you imagine . . .”

  “I’m not suggesting that your aunt was murdered for a one-fifth interest in a large but dilapidated property. The story behind her death, in my opinion, is much more involved than that.” For a moment his expression was very grim. “I don’t mind admitting, Miss Hieronomo, that I’ve already encountered various contradictions and discrepancies in this case. We need not discuss them now. What we can do, I think, is build up a picture of certain things which must have happened yesterday afternoon. Suppose we start with why Amanda Silver came to this room. That strikes me as a simple problem. Particularly when we remember that a woman who normally didn’t give a hoot about appearances, excused herself from a lively party with the palpably false excuse that she needed an hour and a half to change her clothes.”

  I only looked at him.

  “Isn’t it obvious, Miss Hieronomo? Amanda Silver had an appointment in this room—an appointment that she didn’t want the group downstairs to know about.” He looked thoughtfully about the room. “She could hardly choose a better spot to transact a piece of private business, or to conduct a secret interview.”

  “If you think that she was meeting me . . .”

  “I’m discussing a matter more important to Mrs. Silver than the hooking of a dress,” replied the Sheriff innocently. “And you’ve said, I believe, that when you followed your aunt upstairs you came nowhere near this room . . .”

  “And that’s the truth!”

  “Have I questioned it, Miss Hieronomo? But won’t you agree that Mrs. Silver expected to meet someone here?”

  “It does seem logical,” I admitted, and wondered at the rising terror in my heart.

  “Going on from there,” continued the even, pleasant voice, “we can find an explanation for the footprints you saw on the snowy balcony, even though we cannot explain why they vanished. I’d like you to look.”

  He got up and crossed to the tall narrow window. He drew back the draperies, stepped out upon the balcony, beckoned me out. The balcony was long and narrow, perhaps four feet wide by eighteen or twenty feet in length. The columns which began at the unseen entrance below and continued to the roof cradled it like an eagle’s nest. The portico and the front of the house had been painted the preceding spring, in anticipation of the sale, but the job had been cheap and hurried. Through the thickly daubed, uneven paint one could perceive the junctures of the wood that composed the strength and beauty of the massive columns. The Sheriff touched my arm.

  “Stand just here, Miss Hieronomo. Watch out that column doesn’t cut your view. Now, look down. What do you see?”

  Like a wintry postcard picture lay the grounds below, the frosted avenue of trees, the broad white path that abruptly ended at the magnificent entrance to the house.

  “Isn’t it quite possible,” suggested Sheriff Glick, “that Mrs. Silver stepped out on this balcony, stood where we are standing and called to someone walking up that path and toward the house? Someone whom she was awaiting and expecting. When we remember the secrecy she desired, we can even guess what she called. She couldn’t have this visitor approach by that front door, pass through the foyer in direct view of the group gathered in the drawing room. She hadn’t counted on the gathering in the drawing room or prepared for it. But she could mend the omission by calling down that her visitor was to walk around the house and enter on the side. And I am convinced that’s what she did. When we identify that visitor, we may be getting somewhere.”

  With that the Sheriff courteously assisted me back into the bedroom, and closed the window. When he turned around he opened an entirely different topic. It was very disconcerting.

  “Now, Miss Hieronomo, I’d like to ask about your great-grandfather’s gun. You’re sure—like your Great-uncle Richard—that it wasn’t loaded?”

  “Aunt Amanda herself showed me that it wasn’t loaded.”

  He looked at me reflectively. “I want you to think a bit. Think back to Tuesday night. When your aunt left the bedroom with the gun, what was her manner? How did she seem? Did you get an impression she was worried?”

  “Worried?”

  “Worried,” he said, “about some situation, some person in particular. Did she seem frightened or disturbed? She must have had some reason for removing the gun, after making a pretense of leaving it here. An unloaded weapon is of no use to anyone. Did Mrs. Silver speak of loading the gun? Or even hint that she might load it?”

  “She did not,” I said.

  “Still,” said Sheriff Glick, “that custom of locking her bedroom door might suggest uneasiness. Or even terror. Don’t you agree? I’m wondering, you understand, whether we can’t pull some loose ends together. Suppose we tie up the gun—Mrs. Silver’s taking it—with the secret interview which she planned to hold in this very room. If she came to her appointment armed—” He paused and asked anxiously, “Do you follow me?”

  I followed him, all right. I couldn’t understand, or perhaps I would not admit even to myself, why I found his logic terrifying.

  “You’ve no suggestions to offer that might be pertinent to your great-aunt’s interview? You’ve no ideas about the identity of her visitor?”

  “None.”

  “Doesn’t it strike you as significant that Amanda Silver twice telephoned to Dan Ayres yesterday?”

  “Significant?” I stammered. “In—what way?”

  “See here, Miss Hieronomo,” said Sheriff Glick. “Suppose you and I stop quibbling. You can help me in this case. You can help Dan Ayres too. Suggest to him,” said Glick in calm, unhurried tones, “that he come clean on his story. Your influence with the young man, I am convinced, will weigh much more than mine.”

  I sat down because my legs would not support me.

  “I know that Dan Ayres is a friend of yours,” said the Sheriff gently. “Never mind how I know—just accept the fact. If you have his interests at heart, Miss Hieronomo, talk to him. Tell him how foolish it is to hide from us information that we are bound to find out in the end. Mrs. Silver telephoned him yesterday, and he got that call.”

  “If he says he didn’t . . .”

  “He got that call,” the Sheriff repeated. “I’m determined to find out why it was made. Ayres can only harm himself by denying what obviously is true. I suggest in all friendliness you tell him that. I might go further and suggest”—here he hesitated—“something on your own account. It’s foolish—not to say dangerous in the circumstances—to conceal from your relatives your own rather different feelings toward Dan Ayres. This is a small town, Miss Hieronomo. What I found out they can easily learn!”

  XI

  I HARDLY THINK THE SHERIFF expected me to walk straight downstairs, and discover that the deputy who should have been in charge in the alcove had stepped into the kitchen to eat a turkey sandwich. I left the house at once, and without notifying anybody of my plans. A moment later I was on the public road below.

  The physical distance between Hieronomo House and the colonial cottage where Dan Ayres resided with his widowed mother was very short. In five minutes I traversed a distance that a quarter of a century had not been great enough for a Hieronomo to bridge. But as I turned off the road and started toward a modest clapboard cottage—so at variance with the mammoth bu
lk beyond the high dividing fence—the trip became not simple in the least. What was I to do? What was I to say?

  I might have lost my courage and retreated, if it hadn’t been for Skipper. As I was hesitating I glimpsed the dog in the snowy distance beyond and behind the cottage. I watched him trot purposefully toward a shingled structure that once upon a time had been a carriage house, and vanish in the dusky fir trees that encircled it. Some one was in the carriage house. A plume of smoke rose from the chimney.

  I followed Skipper.

  In my haste I hadn’t bothered with a hat or coat. I was shivering as I pressed through the dusky, ice-encrusted trees and approached the silent building. Skipper’s footprints led me to a door. I raised my hand to knock, and then I didn’t knock.

  Beside the door was an uncurtained window. The window looked into a confused and crowded room—a kind of storage place—lit by a blazing fire. Crumpled papers fed the fire, and threw out a fierce yellow light. Skipper was already basking on the hearth.

  Dan stood in a far corner of the place. Between us were items as incongruous as a canoe upended on a wooden cradle, a dilapidated sofa, a ping-pong table, a collection of seatless chairs. Dan’s back was to the window. He stood before an old iron safe, and he was stooped over slightly as though he were placing something inside. I didn’t mean to spy on him. I craned my neck involuntarily. I saw beyond the angle of the open door, saw the jumbled interior of the safe. I saw the pistol in Dan’s hand.

  I made no move whatever. I made no sound. Suddenly Skipper must have sensed the watching presence. He threw up his head and barked. Dan whirled around.

  For a wordless moment, through the uncurtained window, we stared at one another. Then Dan rushed across the room and, almost immediately, was pulling me inside.

  “Anne, thank God, it’s you. You’re like an answer to a prayer. I didn’t dare to phone. I couldn’t storm your house. I was just this minute starting to the fence on the crazy chance I’d find you there.”

  I sat down on the springless sofa. Dan’s hand was empty, indeed was gripping mine. I looked toward the safe. The iron door was tightly closed.

  “What’s in the safe?” I said.

  “What’s in the safe?” Dan frowned. He had seated himself beside me. He slowly released my hand. “My father’s papers,” he said a little stiffly, “were kept in the safe. I’ve been going through the lot this afternoon, burning stuff that should have been burned years ago.”

  Evidently he saw nothing strange in the impulse which had led him to the deserted storage room, and prompted him to destroy papers that hadn’t seen the light in years.

  “You were putting something in the safe just now,” I said. “I saw you through the window.”

  He said patiently, “No, Anne. I was emptying the safe. I’d finished with it. I told you I was starting out to make a hunt for you. I—I’ve been nearly crazy since I heard what happened . . .”

  “I saw,” I said, “what you had in your hand.”

  Abruptly Dan understood. His face changed expression. He got up from the sofa. He reached into his pocket and brought out the pistol I thought he had hidden in the safe. I drew a long, deep breath. At close range the pistol bore no resemblance whatever to the large, clumsy weapon which John S. Hieronomo once had kept beneath his pillow. It was wicked-looking enough but it wasn’t the gun that, for one dreadful moment, I had imagined it to be.

  “Are you satisfied?” asked Dan. His tone was polite and colorless. All life had died from it. “Don’t you want a closer look? It’s my father’s gun, if you’re interested. John Hieronomo, who it seems had an unfortunate penchant for firearms, gave it to him years ago. It’s been in the safe since my father’s death. Glick knows that.”

  “You mustn’t think ...” I stammered.

  “I think the truth,” Dan said evenly. “You believed, didn’t you, you’d caught me hiding the gun that killed Amanda Silver. Well, that gun isn’t here. I haven’t got it. Ask Sheriff Glick. He’s been here. He looked around and didn’t find the missing gun. I tell you, it isn’t here! Or do you prefer to make a search yourself?”

  I knew that I had hurt him. The interview hadn’t gone at all as I had hoped that it would go. Dan was like a stranger. I could hardly blame him. Nevertheless I felt a surge of pure exasperation.

  “We haven’t time,” I said, “to quarrel. And I don’t like guns. Please put that thing back where it belongs.”

  “No,” said Dan. His smile was strained and odd. “I want you to take it. I insist you do. I meant the gun for you all along. That’s why I took it from the safe.”

  “You meant the gun for me!”

  “I tried,” said Dan savagely, “to make you leave Hieronomo House. You wouldn’t leave. Obviously, you can’t leave now. But you can take this gun and protect yourself.”

  He held out the weapon.

  Under other circumstances the situation might have been ridiculous. I could no more have fired that gun than I could have fired a cannon. There was nothing humorous, however, about Dan’s expression. Nor did I find it humorous when he said:

  “Believe me, Anne, you may need a gun. There’s a killer in Hieronomo House.”

  It was his tone that sent a shiver down my spine. I eyed him steadily.

  “Can you prove that, Dan?”

  “Not yet,” said he. “But before this thing is over I’ll find out who killed Amanda Silver. I’ve got to find out —and fast.” He leaned toward me. “I’m not so stupid that I fail to realize my own position in this affair. I know the Hieronomos, and probably yon included, are hell bent to hang me. I’m by no means sure the Sheriff wouldn’t like to do the same. You can go back and tell your family that I’m working too—but on a distinctly different premise from their own.”

  I saw then that he was frightened. Beneath the bravado and defiance of his manner was an apprehension that was very real. I gazed at him helplessly.

  “Listen, Dan. I wish you’d believe that I’m not your enemy. Else I wouldn’t be here. I’m not speaking for the Hieronomos. I’m speaking for myself. Why don’t you tell the truth to Sheriff Glick?”

  “I’ve done that already.”

  “You didn’t tell him how you spent yesterday afternoon. Where were you between four o’clock and half-past five?”

  “I took a walk with Skipper,” said Dan.

  For a moment I felt actually sick. Dan wouldn’t look at me. He was as remote and distant as though we were worlds apart. Skipper heard his name and rose and padded over, and laid his head against his master’s knee. Dan kept his eyes fixedly upon the dog. At last I found my voice.

  “Is that what you told Sheriff Glick?”

  “Something of the sort.”

  “Then it’s lucky,” I said, “Skipper can’t speak up for himself. Or maybe it isn’t lucky after all. It just happens I told Sheriff Glick that Skipper was with me.”

  “Anne!” Dan looked up at that. He tried to interrupt.

  But I could not be halted.

  “Skipper came to the fence,” I said. “I played a game of ball with him. You never came at all. I waited until half-past five.”

  “You went to the fence!” he cried. His face was white as chalk. “I never dreamed . . .”

  “We had a date.”

  “I thought the date was off.”

  “How possibly could you think that?”

  “I—I had a darned good reason,” he said uncertainly. He still seemed dazed and bewildered. “Someone told me so.”

  “Who?”

  Dan, mysteriously, had ceased to be a hard-eyed stranger, and only seemed to be as confused and lost as I felt myself. Suddenly he made up his mind to something. He squared his shoulders.

  “Amanda Silver broke our date,” he said.

  “Aunt Amanda!” I gasped. In my own astonishment I didn’t grasp all the implications of his statement. I said stupidly, “But she didn’t know that we were meeting at the fence.”

  “I mentioned it to her. And she exp
lained that you were busy with arriving relatives, and had asked to be excused. It did not occur to me to doubt her.”

  “But Dan . . .”

  Questions thronged upon me so thick and fast that I couldn’t get them in coherent order. I only sputtered. Dan smiled a little wryly.

  “You’re thunderstruck, I see. Well, so was I. Suppose I tell the story that I—I refrained from telling Sheriff Glick,” he said slowly, “and get your slant on it. Amanda Silver did telephone the bank yesterday. She reached me while Miss Smead was out at lunch.”

  “Surely she didn’t call just to break our engagement.”

  “No,” said Dan. “No. That was incidental. Or so she led me to believe. She called because she wanted to reopen her account. Amanda Silver wanted to reopen an account,” he said deliberately, “that she closed six months ago on the day that I was hired. She said—get this, Anne—she was anxious that I receive the credit for new business.”

  I was open-mouthed and silent.

  “What do you imagine,” Dan inquired, “would be the general reaction to that story? Your great-aunt didn’t go into any explanations. She was as friendly and casual as though our families dined together once a week. She just said she’d thought it over and decided to reopen her account.”