I was alone with the Hieronomos.
XXVIII
I DON’T KNOW HOW LONG I stood there in the foyer, and the emotions that assailed me are impossible to recapture now. I think ft must have felt bewilderment and incredulity mostly. Until I saw it happen I had been incapable of believing that I would ever watch Dan Ayres go off, in manacles—under arrest as a murderer.
In the library I had felt a flicker of hope—a dim awareness that something of which I was ignorant was in progress, a feeling that in the Sheriff’s mind was some plan or scheme which miraculously would guide us to the truth. The faint hope died. The closing door had been too coldly final. The heaped-up luggage was too mutely eloquent of the general exodus which would take place on the morrow.
The Hieronomos had behaved as though they feared Sheriff Glick might reverse himself and decide to hold them in the village after all. They hadn’t wasted a minute. They were packed and ready. Gazing at the luggage I felt as lost, bewildered and deserted as one could feel. I had little justification, I suppose. I had abandoned the family long ago, and it was only logical they should abandon me. Nevertheless, I felt appallingly alone.
I turned at last to mount the stairs, and saw Great-aunt Patience coming down. She was dressed for bed, and she clutched the scarlet, patterned robe around her. She seemed uncertain, insecure—not at all her usual self.
“They’re gone?” she asked. It was less a question than a statement.
“Yes,” I said.
“Did Glick go through with the arrest?”
“Yes,” I said, and realized that she knew that too, must have been watching from above.
Yet she didn’t look triumphant. She didn’t even seem to be relieved. She slowly came on down the stairs.
“I’m sorry, Anne. Truly sorry. It may be difficult for you to believe. Certainly I never knew I’d feel any sympathy for Dan Ayres. Perhaps I don’t. Perhaps it's only that I—I know what you are suffering. I’ve suffered too, my dear. But it’s better surely to have it over, done with, finished.”
“Dan is innocent,” said I.
“I wish,” said Patience slowly, “I could stay on with you. I wish that I could share the hard time that’s ahead of you. The—the trial and all the rest. Unfortunately, schoolteachers can’t choose. I must get back to Baltimore. Anyway, I wanted to tell you how I felt . . .” Then, as though she excused herself from any charge of undue sentiment, she murmured that she had stupidly packed the very blouse she needed. She knelt, unstrapped a piece of luggage and began fumbling through the contents. “Do go up, dear. You look exhausted.”
Before I could move she spoke again. Her head was bent over the open bag, and her voice was strained.
“Daisy Witherspoon is in Mount Hope, isn’t she?”
“I think you know that, Aunt Patience,” said I. “Haven’t you known since you saw the pitch pipe?”
She looked up at that.
“It—it seemed too incredible,” she stammered. “Amanda would never have entertained Daisy unless . . .”
“Daisy didn’t get Great-grandfather’s money,” said I.
“I’d begun to believe she hadn’t,” said Patience. “For some time I’ve thought—well, never mind—I suppose if Daisy actually spent a week with Amanda she must know . . .”
“Know what?”
“Do go up, dear,” said Patience in a toneless way. “I’ll be with you in a moment. Now I’m all unpacked, apparently my blouse is in the other bag.”
It seemed strange that she hadn’t been more curious about Great-grandfather’s fortune. Usually she was alert enough where money was concerned. Nor had Patience cared to question me about what had happened in the library, or what had happened in Great-grandfather’s cave. She had come downstairs ostensibly to offer sympathy, and had managed nevertheless to speak of Daisy Witherspoon.
The cot upstairs was prepared for me. I had hardly entered the room and sunk numbly to a chair when someone knocked. .
I thought I recognized Glenn’s sure, quick rap. I rose at once, and went to the door. Glenn and his father, so unlike physically, had in common many little personal mannerisms—certain intonations of the voice, a handshake almost identical, a similar grin. It was Cousin Hoy who stood in the hall outside. The side light gleamed on his pink, bald skull. He was smiling tentatively, but seemed as uncertain and ill at ease as had Aunt Patience.
“I—I thought you were Glenn,” said I, and tried to be polite and hide my disappointment.
“You’ll probably see him in the morning,” muttered Hoy, and turned very red.
I gathered easily that Glenn had refused to come, that Cousin Hoy had appeared to represent the Boston branch of the family. I remembered how suddenly stricken Glenn’s face had been when I got up from the couch and defended Dan. Human nature being what it is—and assuming Glenn believed Dan to be a murderer—it was not to be expected that he would accept the situation and my reaction to it with equanimity. Dan was not his friend.
Even so, I was hurt. Glenn’s help, apparently, and as had happened on occasion in the past, was to be given only when he chose—in the circumstances that he chose.
It struck me that Cousin Hoy himself was making purely a duty call, with no real warmth behind it. I didn’t doubt that, in point of actual fact, Hoy was secretly delighted with the turn of events that—as he very probably would phrase it—had “brought Glenn to his senses.” Always, in his own quiet way, Hoy had disapproved of his son’s partisanship, his feeling for me. We both knew that.
Unlike Patience, Hoy seemed to have no curiosity whatever about the Sheriff’s latest move. His tact was so noticeable as to be embarrassing. Without mentioning either Dan or my own position in the case, he contrived to say circuitously that it was a pity one of the family couldn’t linger in the village and see me through. He didn’t suggest that he might stay. Nor was Glenn's name brought up. Instead I heard of Hoy’s business difficulties, heard that his Boston company was most anxious to have their star salesman back in harness. I wondered why my cousin didn’t leave.
But Hoy came on into the room, and sat down. He took out a handkerchief and wound it back and forth between his fingers. He cleared his throat.
“Daisy Witherspoon is in the village, isn’t she?” Cousin Hoy had few small subtleties of speech or manner. Patience, who had asked the identical question, had at least achieved her object with more suavity. Suddenly I was angry with all of the Hieronomos, angry to the point of outright rudeness.
“Daisy is in town,” said I, “but if she knows the location of Great-grandfather’s money, she hasn’t told the Sheriff yet. You might inform Aunt Patience and Uncle Richard and . . .”
“My dear child . . .” Hoy was on his feet.
But I had started and I couldn’t stop.
“You were here Thanksgiving Day twenty-five years ago, weren’t you? At the time of Great-grandfather’s death. Did it never occur to you, then or later, that there was something odd about the accident?”
“Odd in what way?”
“Was it ever suggested among the family that Greatgrandfather’s death was not an accident?”
Hoy’s face went quite white. He turned hurriedly toward the door. I think at first he meant to depart at once, and then he hesitated.
“What exactly do you mean?”
“Was there any talk of murder?”
He didn’t pretend now that he didn’t understand me. He said jerkily:
“Such a thing was never considered in the family. Never for an instant. The village talked a certain amount, of course. There’s always talk when any supposedly rich man dies, on the eve of a marriage not too welcome to his family. But when it developed Grandfather wasn’t rich after all,” he added naively, “people—those few people who were—were curious—decided no motive for foul play existed. But if the money does reappear—well—it might alter the situation, I suppose, though after the passage of so long a time . . .”
His sentence came to that inconclusive t
ermination, and he was silent. He gazed at me hungrily, and I was well aware that I had at last aroused his sharp curiosity. But that old instinct of his to shield himself from other people’s problems, that maddening reserve inherent in all the Hieronomos, must have risen in him. He asked no questions.
“I mustn’t keep you any longer,” he said abruptly. “Uncle Richard wants to see you. In a manner of speaking, I’m his emissary here . . .”
“Great-uncle Richard wants to see me!”
I would have supposed—indeed I did suppose—that the last thing Richard Hieronomo desired was any kind of interview with me.
Said Hoy, voluble and nervous, “Uncle Richard is a great one to make much out of little. He’s been that way all his life—the acting temperament maybe. Anyway, he seemed to feel I should pave the way for him, find out whether you’d be willing to receive him. I assured him he had only to step across the hall, and knock at your door . . .”
“You were quite right,” said I.
Cousin Hoy departed nimbly, and with evident relief. Nevertheless, it seemed to me that Hoy, like Aunt Patience, wasn’t really satisfied that the case was solved with Dan’s arrest. When Sheriff Glick seemingly could be so positive, one would have supposed the Hieronomos themselves would be doubly sure, particularly when they had what they wanted—a solution that did not involve the family, the arrest of an outsider.
I sat down to await Great-uncle Richard, and began to rehearse the phrases with which I meant to confront him. The figure whom I addressed was, as usual, the formidable Great-uncle Richard who existed only in my mind—the gaunt and sinister figure my imagination painted.
The Richard Hieronomo who walked in my door was a tired old man. He had dressed for the occasion. He wore his favorite suit, already some ten years old, and in the first place cut for someone ten years younger. His tie and socks and handkerchief matched. His hair and brows were fiercely black, but no amount of artifice could conceal the fatal fact that there was gray beneath the dye.
Great-uncle Richard looked fraudulent from head to toe, and old and futile. His mind was usually upon the impression he was making, and he seemed doubtful of his audience. Despite a marked effort at easiness, he sank heavily into a chair. He coughed a little, and then gazed at me from bleak and sombre eyes. There was no menace in his gaze, nor, I realized with shock, had there ever been. At last he spoke.
“You’re wretched, child.” And then he quoted from his favorite poet. “ ‘Give your sorrow words. Then grief that does not speak, whispers the o’er-fraught heart and bids it break.’ ”
He actually sounded as though he were truly sympathetic, or meant to be, if only he could drop the poses worn so long they clothed him like a suit of mail. Or had he also called to speak of Daisy Witherspoon and of his father’s money?
Again he quoted:
“ ‘Truth will come to sight, murder cannot be hid long.’ ”
I started.
Said Uncle Richard, “If your young man is innocent—and from what I hear, it well may be he is—they will never walk him to the gallows. But let’s get to the meat of the matter, child.” He leaned forward, and again he fixed me with his great, dark eyes. “For some time I’ve had a definite feeling that you—well—suppose we deal in straight facts, unpalatable and painful as they may be. I have felt that you suspect I killed my sister. Am I correct?”
Thus boldly did he say the words that for days I had lacked the courage to utter. I sat frozen in my chair. Finally, I got my breath.
“You—you have no alibi, though you . . .” I faltered, stopped, and added weakly, “You’ve never told your own story of last Wednesday.”
“I told it to Sheriff Glick,” said Richard Hieronomo.
“I know, Uncle Richard, that you arrived in Mount Hope very early Wednesday morning. That—that you didn’t come to the house in the cab with Aunt Lucy.”
“No,” said he. “No, I wasn’t in the cab with Lucy. I was on the place already. I spent the day at Hieronomo House.”
I was speechless. Great-uncle Richard’s emotion seemed to be embarrassment. Another man might have colored or run his fingers around his collar. Richard didn’t flush, and his long, prehensile fingers were folded in his lap.
“I can realize,” said he, “how suspicious that circumstance may seem. But I did not see my sister Amanda. I—as it happens—I was eager to avoid her. She was not expecting me until evening. I felt reasonably secure in consequence. I had taken steps—ill advised, as it developed afterwards—to conceal my presence in Mount Hope.”
“But why?”
“I had certain private business with Eliot.”
Richard Hieronomo seemed at a loss for words. I found words. Who exactly was Eliot Frawley? He was no ordinary butler, I announced, nor was the sullen Wanda an ordinary housemaid.
“Eliot,” said Great-uncle Richard, “is an actor, a Thespian like myself—or such is his occupation when he can obtain parts to play. Wanda dances, or would dance, and very badly too, at the slightest encouragement, which, fortunately, she has not received.” He snorted. “The girl is the rankest sort of amateur. One season in a trumpery, starveling cabaret, and she assumes the airs and graces of a Pavlova—actually calls herself a professional!”
“Do you mean to say Aunt Amanda would employ as household servants an actor and a dancer?”
“Not knowingly, I imagine.” Uncle Richard’s forehead became damp and dewy. “She may have suspected later. But I—ah—suggested, indeed requested strongly, that the pair keep their professional background to themselves when I sent them to Mount Hope.”
He thought a moment, frowned, said querulously, “Amanda was behaving in a damned peculiar way. I wanted to find out why. It seemed to me Eliot might be helpful in the situation. That he might watch Amanda and report to me. I dare say it’s not the sporting thing to set a spy upon your sister, however good your reasons. Lucy opposed the whole idea, but I felt justified for once in going against her wishes. I seldom do,” said he humbly. “I like to please my wife; she’s—well, Lucy—is all I have. But I hit upon a ruse. Eliot and I agreed that Lucy was to be kept in blissful ignorance. She wasn’t acquainted with Wanda, but . . .”
“But,” said I, “she would recognize Eliot, so Eliot took to his bed when you and Aunt Lucy entered the house.”
“That’s about the size of it.” Richard took out his handkerchief and mopped his forehead dry. “As it turned out, I should have heeded my wife’s objections, and realized the practical difficulties inherent in my—my plan. Eliot, in certain minor roles, may be an adequate Shakespearean. Otherwise, I can assure you, he’s a dolt. In three solid months, serving as Amanda’s butler, he discovered nothing. Indeed, I’m not too sure Amanda didn’t suspect his purpose, and my own part in it, and behave in a manner deliberately mystifying. Amanda, when she chose, could be most malicious. It would be like her,” said Richard meditatively, “to thwart me in just that fashion.”
I attempted to interrupt this amazing farrago, but he waved me to silence.
“Eliot’s position in the household, as it turned out, was to place me in a most unfortunate—not to say dangerous situation. With Amanda murdered, it was highly awkward to explain that I had been skulking about the house the livelong day, avoiding her and others present, and conferring with a servant whom I had arranged should play the craven role of a spy. Aside from the risk I might not be believed, there was my own dignity to consider.”
He spoke in sober earnest. That astounding rigmarole, that plot which Amanda Silver must have fathomed instantly, was typical of Richard Hieronomo. Pure theatre, the crude stuff of melodrama conceived in a melodramatic brain, and he saw nothing particularly unusual in his behavior. He could pause and think of his dignity.
Said I, “But you haven’t explained why you wanted Aunt Amanda watched.”
He hitched his chair toward me, and spoke in a piercing whisper:
“I had reason to consider it necessary. Six months ago Amanda requested me t
o enter into negotiations with a responsible New York detective agency. She herself knew none. She appealed to me—her brother. Amanda desired—and cost was no object—to locate Daisy Witherspoon.”
I gasped.
“That surprises you,” said Richard, not without a certain satisfaction. “Well, then you may well imagine my own amazement. My confusion. My chagrin when my own sister declined to enter into any explanations. I was entitled to know what was on her mind. Amanda stubbornly refused her confidence, said only that at the proper time—she mentioned Thanksgiving Day—I would understand. She treated me like a child, she . . .”
“But you did hire the detective firm.”
“I did indeed.”
“And they traced Daisy Witherspoon.”
“So I’m given to understand,” said Great-uncle Richard bitterly. “But I didn’t hear until today. The agency sent its reports straight to Amanda. An outrage! It was I who paid the bills.”
“You paid the bills!”
I suppose the comment was not too flattering. But he didn’t notice. Again he hitched his chair. He was so close now that his breath stirred my hair.
“Amanda entrusted me with a sum of money for the purpose. The money was in gold. In coins. In coins dated 1913. I knew six months ago that my sister had stumbled on Father’s fortune.”
“Did you tell the others?” I asked dazedly.
“That,” said Richard Hieronomo, “did not occur to me.”
XXIX
BREAKFAST WITH THE HIERONOMOS WAS, as I had anticipated, an ordeal. No family could be blinder when it chose than my own, no group could so effectively—and with no beforehand collusion—set up such an elaborate pretense that everything was normal when nothing was. The Hieronomos behaved as though we were parting for a little while and after an ordinary visit.
The Balcony Page 25
