Suddenly Dan was silent. He made a little hopeless gesture with his hands. A bar of sunshine fell aslant the luncheon table, touched the pottery bowl, danced across the fine old damask cloth.
“Dan, your—your fingerprints. You must have left fingerprints on the gun.”
“God, haven’t I thought of that!”
“Why doesn’t Glick speak out? If he knows your fingerprints are on that gun—he must know, Dan—why doesn’t he ask for an explanation?”
And then, abruptly, and even before Dan spoke, I understood.
“I warned you about Sheriff Glick,” said Dan. “My fingerprints are the keystone of his case. He can afford to play a waiting game until he rounds up the evidence that will complete that case of his. He’s working now to place me in Hieronomo House. Once he does—you can be sure he’ll swear out his warrant. And he’ll have a case that will convince any jury. What he wants is a sure conviction.”
It was a chilling thought. Had the Sheriff blustered and thundered and accused, had he faced us with his damning knowledge, we would at least have known exactly where we stood. To have him working in the dark, moving with stealth and secrecy, was infinitely more terrifying. How much else did the Sheriff know? What exactly was in the mind of the friendly, smiling man who was no friend at all, and whose slow smile hid so well his thoughts and his intentions? Where and how would Sheriff Glick strike next?
Any notion I ever had that the Sheriff was a friend of mine vanished then and there. I saw my hostess wet her lips. She said nothing more about Dan’s going to the Sheriff.
She said instead, “There’s only one thing for us to do. While the Sheriff works, we must work. It’s up to us to find out who murdered Amanda Silver. We should start an investigation of our own. Now! At once! We can’t afford to lose a minute.”
XXI
HERMINE AYRES’ SUGGESTION WAS BORN of innocence and a vast and naive ignorance. How were we, without legal authority and with pitifully little information, to trap a murderer when Sheriff Glick himself had failed? Although I dare say the Sheriff personally took a more optimistic view of his own progress. He was stalking Dan. But that was better not to think about.
Our own most likely starting point in any amateur investigation seemed to be Great-aunt Amanda’s possession of a bag of yellow coins dated 1913. Amid the inconsistencies and puzzling features that studded the last day of Amanda Silver’s life, the little bag of gold shone like a tiny golden beacon—a solid, tangible fact. Bewildering as was the bag of gold, and mystifying as were its implications, we were grateful for any fact.
“Of course,” said Dan, “Amanda’s possession of the fifteen hundred dollars is not clear proof that she’d stumbled on the balance of the fortune. Fifteen hundred dollars is a long way from half a million. And the house and grounds were searched exhaustively years ago.”
I had thought of that.
“Of one thing I am sure,” Dan said very positively.
“Amanda had found out what happened to the money. And, in my belief, it was something different from what had ever been supposed.”
“In other words,” said I, “Daisy Witherspoon didn’t walk away with it.”
“Nor did Stanley and I bring Daisy to Mount Hope to marry her off,” cried his mother. She began indignantly, and then her blue eyes misted over.
“No one ever really thought that, Mama,” Dan said gently. “And we’ve got work to do. What we’re trying to figure out is where and how Amanda Silver got hold of fifteen hundred dollars of old John’s much-disputed money. This investigation is partly your own idea, dear. You’ve got to help.”
That steadied her. In many ways she was really like a child, suddenly grown gray and with a little puckered face. Dry-eyed and a trifle defiant, she gazed at us.
“Sometimes I find I’m lacking in true Christian spirit. It is hard to forgive your enemies, whatever the Good Book says. Amanda Silver,” she added bitterly, “did so much harm to me and mine that I’d like to accuse her of being a thief herself—of robbing her brother and sister, her young nephews, of their heritage. What I’d like to do is suggest it was Amanda herself who contrived to get possession of old John’s fortune twenty-five years ago. Unfortunately, I can’t suggest it.”
“Why not?” Suddenly Dan was tense and excited. In Dan Ayres was no meekness and no resignation either, no soft forgiveness of his enemies. “Maybe you’ve got hold of something, Mama. Maybe that’s the answer to Amanda’s attitude—perhaps the wrong she was amending was her own. Suppose the old man entrusted his dear eldest daughter with his money as he withdrew it from the bank—for—for some reason we don’t know. Suppose after the accident at the railroad station, Amanda Silver saw a chance to defraud the others, to keep the fortune for herself. Suppose . . .”
“Suppose,” said I, “we continue to face the facts. Great-aunt Amanda lived in extreme poverty for more than fifteen years. Her husband, whom she adored, might have lived if she could have afforded better medical care. After his death she received a pension and things were slightly easier, but . . .”
“Anne is right, son.” Hermine Ayres made the admission with real regret. “One thing is beyond dispute. The young Hieronomos—twenty-five years ago we thought of them as young—were left really poor. Richard and Lucy, Patience, Amanda, Hoy and Gavin got no legacies whatever. Legal or illegal. The possession of an illicit fortune could not be concealed from a town like Mount Hope for a period of twenty-five years.”
“Then how do you explain the money which Amanda Silver most certainly had in her possession on Wednesday afternoon?”
“I don’t explain it,” his mother replied serenely. “I leave the logic to you children. I don’t pretend to orderly thought; I find it boring. All I can do is provide you with the background. And a scattering of facts. I know, for instance, that John Hieronomo would not have trusted Amanda or any member of his family with the keeping of his money. I never thought he’d trust Daisy either.”
My attention was caught by a certain intonation in her usually mild and sometimes rather colorless voice.
“You didn’t like Great-grandfather,” I said.
“Stanley loved John Hieronomo,” my hostess replied evasively. “Loved him dearly and admired him beyond all reason. He was as doting, I do believe, as poor old Amos.”
“Why did you dislike him?”
She hesitated, then smiled faintly. “John Hieronomo wasn’t exactly—modest. He loved making speeches about the magnificent part he played in assisting fleeing slaves through Mount Hope and on to Canada, and I must admit I frequently grew tired of listening. The Civil War—in the early 1900’s—seemed reasonably remote. Then, too . . .”
“Out with it, Mama.”
A delicate flush stained her cheeks. “I—I’m afraid I had a certain personal bias. John Hieronomo was no great shakes as a banker. Whatever people say, he had not been educated or trained in finance. I suppose you might call him a self-taught man, and not too well taught at that. He had no formal schooling, and no native ability in handling money.”
“He was,” I pointed out, “president of the Mount Hope Bank. He founded it.”
Again she smiled a little. “It’s quite true, my dear, that your great-grandfather founded the Mount Hope Bank, and made himself the president. It’s also true that other men—my own Stanley included—kept the institution going and made it prosper. Being feminine and human, I used to hate to have the old man strut about and reap the glory, while my own dear husband did the work.”
I felt a sharp stir of surprise. Since my arrival in Mount Hope my own conception of John S. Hieronomo, the great man of my family, had slowly but surely altered. The full-blooded, vital, fascinating man, who had held his children and grandchildren by the force of personal charm and magnetism, had vanished. That man had no existence or reality. He had been merely an illusion of my own. The young Hieronomos had been bound to the family great man, not by ties of love, but by sheer necessity, by the hope of personal gain. And now
to hear that Great-grandfather’s financial talents had also been non-existent . . .
I said, “Wait a bit. Great-grandfather made his fortune in the bank.”
“No, my dear,” said Hermine Ayres. “You’ve got it backwards. Because he had a fortune, John Hieronomo was able to found a bank. He furnished the capital, and other men the brains. He was a rich man first, a banker afterwards.”
“Then where did he make his money?”
“I’m sure,” she said vaguely, “I don’t know. It was all so long ago. John Hieronomo was wealthy long before my time, and I never thought. I must have supposed that he inherited money.”
“He was a foundling. Whatever he owned he must have earned.”
“It was easy,” said Dan impatiently, “to make money in the inflationary days before and during the Civil War. How old John earned his money is not important. What we need to discover is what became of it. And if that’s too tough . . .”
“I’m afraid it is,” said I, discouraged.
Dan looked discouraged, too. We had shifted from the luncheon table, and returned to the living room. Hermine Ayres and I were seated, but Dan was on his feet, too nervous to sit still. He walked over to a window, and gazed out upon a dreary waste of slush and snow. Sullen clouds had gathered to shut out the sun. The late afternoon was dull and gray.
“Perhaps,” he said restlessly, “we should revert to Amanda, and attempt to figure out how she meant to amend the past. But that seems difficult, too.”
It was difficult indeed. Aunt Amanda had assured Dan that “everything” would be satisfactorily explained on Thanksgiving afternoon. What had she anticipated would happen overnight to alter the situation? I wondered whether Amanda Silver had expected another visitor to Great-grandfather’s room, after Dan’s departure.
“I’ve no idea,” Dan admitted wearily, “what she was expecting. She was quite evidently expecting—something. After I loaded the gun for her and—and—took the gold, she seemed anxious to be rid of me. Not in any obvious way—she glanced at her watch I remember, and spoke again of my calling on Thanksgiving Day. Well, I had no desire to linger. I left her sitting at the big mahogany desk. The desk that overlooks the long front windows and the balcony. Now I think back to her sitting there, she looked worn and quite tired, but confident, too. Not uneasy or afraid. She was staring at her watch. It was exactly a quarter of five when I closed the door—and saw her last.”
I could not restrain an involuntary shiver. At a quarter of five on Wednesday afternoon Aunt Amanda had been seated at her father’s desk, alive and well. She had been gazing at a watch which was counting off the minutes of her life. Within three-quarters of an hour, some time before half past five, Aunt Amanda had been dead—murdered by the very gun which she herself had caused to be loaded.
“Where was the gun?”
“She had it in her hand, Anne.”
“But Dan! If she were nervous enough to want a loaded gun—she wouldn’t lay it down. Not for an instant. She’d hang on to it.”
“I think I said she wasn’t nervous. Anyway, a strong, determined man could best a woman.”
“No struggle occurred, Dan. None at all. The bedroom was in perfect order. The—the coroner says that Aunt Amanda faced her killer, as she died. Where’s the sense in that? Why would Aunt Amanda permit someone else to get possession of the gun?”
“God knows, Anne. She certainly had the gun when I closed the bedroom door.”
“Did you go downstairs at once?”
“At once,” said Dan. “I was anxious to get away. Wanda Frawley must have heard me going through the alcove. I suppose I’m lucky she didn’t leave the kitchen to investigate.”
“You saw no one yourself, Dan?”
“No one. By this time the drawing room was emptied. The house was quiet as a tomb.” Suddenly, with recollection, Dan looked a little sick. So soon after he passed through the quiet foyer, and glanced into the empty drawing room, was Hieronomo House to become a tomb. The scene was set, the victim sat looking at a watch, and waited.
“But she didn’t seem a victim,” said Dan. “She seemed—this may sound absurd—but Amanda Silver seemed victorious. Calm, determined and very sure of what she was about.”
His words plucked a chord in my memory—they were so like other words that I had heard and very recently. I was once again reminded of the woman with the brassy hair. She, too, had described Aunt Amanda as calm, determined, sure of herself and of her wisdom. And in an agitated fashion the stranger—the false Verona Gay— had spoken of Great-grandfather’s gold. I plunged into that story but Dan said:
“Let’s take things in order, Anne. Otherwise we’ll be hopelessly confused. When you’ve got a complicated puzzle you need to fit the bits together, one by one. Our bits are people. Shall we start by enumerating all the people who are hiding something?”
“Ourselves excluded?”
“Right,” said he, and smiled a little. The smile faded. “Shall we start, Anne, with Richard Hieronomo?” Abruptly our investigation was not a game. Glenn and I had discovered earlier that considering the possibilities in a murder case can be unpleasant. Once again I was assailed by a sense of shrinking, complicated by confused and warring loyalties. Dan was watching me. “Do you want to call quits, Anne?”
His voice was queerly urgent. Something in his eyes informed me that he was asking me to make a certain choice—to stand by him or to stand with the Hieronomos. In an odd and breathless instant, I discovered that my choice was made, had been made when I left Hieronomo House with Dan.
“Let’s go ahead,” I said. And very steadily I asked, “Have you learned why Uncle Richard came to Mount Hope early Wednesday morning?”
“Thank you, Anne,” Dan said gravely.
He leaned over and picked up my hand and pressed a fleeting kiss into the palm. His mother sighed, and smiled. A moment later we were hard at work again.
Dan had learned no more about Richard. In any investigation, and Dan had made cautious inquiries around the village, he was handicapped by his own untenable position. Except for the stationmaster he had discovered no one who had seen Richard Hieronomo. Great-uncle Richard’s day from six A.M. until five-thirty in the afternoon—the moment of his dramatic arrival on the portico of Hieronomo House—was still unaccounted for.
“Glick may know the story,” Dan said rather hopelessly. “It’s possible that Richard has already explained everything to him.”
“Possible,” said I, “but highly improbable. The Hieronomos are a close-mouthed group of people. Hoy Hieronomo, for instance. I know Cousin Hoy didn’t tell the Sheriff that someone took his car from the barn on Thursday night. Someone drove it thirty-eight miles—quite far enough to reach the road where the gun was found . . .”
In the pleasant living room was a brief silence. Dusk was gathering fast. Dan leaned over and switched on a light.
“There’s Amos, too. Who could seem more honest? Yet he must know something or—or at least suspect. Why didn’t he want to catch me last night? It was almost as though he were as anxious as myself that the gold turn up.”
Inevitably Great-aunt Patience had come into my mind. Like the many others we had mentioned—from Sheriff Glick to the ancient Negro, Amos—she was hiding something, or so I suspected. I remembered her reaction to Glenn’s and my discovery of the whistle— the little gold-plated whistle that had been lying in the hot-air register of Aunt Amanda’s bedroom. I remembered how we had postulated a secret guest who had dropped the little whistle and had fled. The theory had seemed very credible to me, but I had yet to reach any understanding of how it might fit into the puzzle. I related the tale of the experiment.
A shadowy suspicion, the dimmest sort of surmise, stirred in my brain as I spoke. Perhaps I hoped that Dan would pull the threads together. His face, however, had become increasingly perplexed.
“A whistle, Anne? You say a whistle? You believe that, without the knowledge of the household, Amanda Silver was keeping in her
room a guest who owned this—this whistle?”
“Yes,” said I, a bit put out by his dubious attitude. “It was a curious-looking whistle—a kind of ornament, long and slender and pierced with a row of tiny holes. Furthermore, I think Aunt Patience recognized it.”
“I’ve no doubt she did,” said Hermine Ayres.
Dan jumped, and I whirled around. For some time Hermine Ayres had let us carry the conversation. Now she spoke very quietly. She sat quietly in her chair, but in her eyes burned excitement and conviction.
“I don’t believe it was a whistle, dear,” said she. “It was a pitch pipe. Wasn’t it a gold-plated pitch pipe, suspended on a fine gold chain?”
“A pitch pipe?”
“Music teachers use pitch pipes when they teach their students to run the scales,” said Dan, and all at once was startled and incredulous.
I knew then, of course—though I had never taken music lessons and, like Glenn, had been so uninformed as to mistake a pitch pipe for a curious and different kind of whistle. But Hermine Ayres rose from her chair and went into another room and returned with a photograph album.
The Hieronomos clung slavishly to mementos of the past; the great house was crowded with souvenirs, with faded pictures. The past they clung to was the past they wanted to remember. No photograph of Daisy Witherspoon existed in Hieronomo House, no record of the brief and fiery swath she had cut across the fabric of the family. Hermine Ayres thumbed through the pages of her album, and found the photograph she sought.
“This is Daisy, dear,” said she, and handed me the heavy book.
It was a studio portrait, stiff, old-fashioned and painfully conventional. Daisy Witherspoon, wrapped in Grecian draperies, clutched a classic plaster column and gazed straight into the camera. The figure, against the absurd and antique background, was slender, almost childish. The eyes of the portrait were young and frightened, but the small head was tilted proudly to support a coronet of dark and shining braids. Around the slender neck, caught sharply by the lens, lay a fine gold chain and depending from the chain was the pitch pipe.
The Balcony Page 19
