False to Any Man

by Leslie Ford

  Judge Candler’s face tightened the way Sandy’s had when he first heard about the man’s calling up Jerry.

  “I . . . think you’ll understand that that’s entirely out of the question, Jeremy,” he said quietly. “Roger has betrayed his friends.”

  “Only to be loyal to his own father, sir,” Jerry said. I could see the fire kindling in her eyes. “He tried to persuade me to give Karen back her stock, the way you wanted me to.”

  Her eyes were flashing now, the color flaming in her cheeks. She started to rise, and settled back in her chair.

  “I’m sorry, Dad,” she said, controlling her tongue with perfectly superb determination. “But it just happens that I love Roger . . . and he loves me. It wouldn’t be fair to either of us . . .”

  Her voice broke a little.

  “You must see that . . . you must have loved somebody when you were young! Can’t you try to remember?”

  I caught my breath. I couldn’t for a moment understand the expression in her father’s eyes as she said that she loved Roger and he loved her. It couldn’t possibly, I thought, be that he was a man who couldn’t bear the thought of his only girl being in love; that didn’t make sense. And the expression was gone when she finished.

  “I remember very clearly, Jeremy. But there are other things in life.”

  “What are they?”

  “Honor is one of them. Decency another.”

  “And Roger has both!”

  “Roger has neither.”

  Judge Candler’s voice was cold as blue steel.

  “He couldn’t tell you he loved you—with Karen’s body not yet in its grave!”

  I stared open-mouthed at him as I realized what he’d said, and as he went on.

  “Roger murdered Karen. I’m as convinced of that as I am that you’re sitting in that chair. I haven’t spoken, because of someone else. It’s up to you whether I shall speak now.”

  She sat motionless, looking up at him, her lips parted, her face so pale that I thought her heart must have died.

  “Karen was afraid of Roger. He was with her, alone, last night after you all had left.”

  But Jerry hadn’t heard any more. Suddenly she flashed to her feet, her eyes blazing into her father’s, her head high.

  “I don’t believe it!” she cried. “I’ll call Colonel Primrose! You can tell him that, if you dare! He’ll know it isn’t true!”

  She thrust her chair back and ran to the door.

  “Jerry!” I cried. “Don’t—don’t!”

  And it was I who stopped her, not her father, towering with controlled anger at the end of the table. Roger Doyle’s black figure, watching, last night, from behind the tree while his father went through the little carriage house, room by room, burned in my brain.

  Her hand on the doorknob dropped to her side as she turned, her eyes dazed and aghast. “Grace” she whispered. “You don’t . . . not you?”

  “I don’t know, Jerry,” I answered breathlessly. “But wait a minute, please!”

  “Promise me you’ll not see Roger Doyle again, Jeremy,” her father said quietly. He’d not moved.

  She leaned back against the door and closed her eyes. Then she moistened her lips, opened her eyes slowly and looked back at him.

  “I’m going up to my room, Father. I’ll let you know.”

  The door opened and closed. I didn’t look at Judge Candler, but I knew he still hadn’t moved. Then he sat down suddenly and put his forehead in his hand, his elbow on the table. We just sat there silently for a minute. My hands, clasped tightly together in my lap, were like blocks of ice. I couldn’t have spoken even if I’d known anything to say. Then he raised his head.

  “He doesn’t love her, Mrs. Latham,” he said quietly. “He’s using her for his own protection.”

  All I could do was shake my head.

  “You don’t know the Doyles, Mrs. Latham.”

  His voice was controlled and even, and it had a dogged iron conviction in it that I knew I could never move or change.

  “If you . . . know Roger killed her, why don’t you tell Colonel Primrose?” I got out. “Surely you won’t become an accessory after the fact on Roger’s account, will you?”

  “Not on Roger’s, no,” he said. He looked down the long polished table, his eyes sombre, his face suddenly drawn and ill. “Jeremy asked if I remembered being in love,” he said, so quietly that I could hardly hear him. “I was very deeply in love with one woman, Mrs. Latham. She was not in love with me. I was devoted to the children’s mother, but I was not in love with her. I was hotheaded like Jeremy—I married to show I didn’t give a damn . . . That’s why I’d never denounce Roger Doyle except to save my own daughter.”

  I took another sip of icy coffee, nearly choking on it, completely mystified I may say. Yet I couldn’t very well ask him to explain. I had the feeling, anyway, that he wasn’t really talking to me. I said nothing and waited.

  “Karen knew she was in danger,” he said, after some time, his voice stern again. “I should have gone in.”

  “You——”

  “I went to my office from Karen’s to make out another transfer for Jeremy to sign before she changed her mind again,” he said. “When I came back the lights were still on. I thought the guests were still there, and thought I would go in again. As I passed the window I saw Roger sitting there, alone with her. She was asleep, Mrs. Latham—with a glass of milk in her hand, on the arm of the small sofa. I saw Roger take it from her and go out to the kitchen. I saw that everyone else was gone, so I came along home. As I was putting up my window I saw Roger go up the steps of his own house, look back, take out his watch and look at it, and go in, after looking back at the carriage house again.”

  I stared across the table at him, moistening my own dry lips.

  “In view of Karen’s expressed fear of him, and his determination to marry her, in spite of the fact she’d told him she was in love with another man, I think you’ll see the strength of my——”

  “But . . . it’s so appallingly circumstantial, Judge Candler!” I cried.

  “All evidence of murder is circumstantial, Mrs. Latham. The murderer seldom calls in eye-witnesses to his crime.”

  “I . . . I know,” I said. “But surely no jury——”

  “Very likely,” he interrupted. “—Not with his father defending him, at any rate, Mrs. Latham.” .

  He got up.

  “I know what my decision involves . . . and the effect of it on my own future. That is beside the point. You told me the other day that I didn’t deserve Jeremy. I would make any sacrifice to keep her from the step she wants to take. Some day she’ll fall in love with a man worthy of her.—I wish you’d go to her now. I know the struggle she’s having.”

  I got up too. I didn’t know anything to say. If it hadn’t been for the conversation I’d overheard between his own children, struggling in my own mind against what he’d told me of Roger, I might have been able to say something. There was still the picture of Roger, waiting out there to go inside after his father had gone upstairs in the dark. There was the picture of Philander Doyle moving from room to room. Did he suspect Roger? Was that why he’d crept over there in the shadow of the night, to still a doubt in his own mind? Or to affirm it?

  I suddenly remembered I was going to see him at lunch, and wondered what Judge Candler would think of that.

  “I’m lunching with Mr. Doyle today,” I said at the door. “I hope you don’t think I’m being disloyal to you and Jerry.”

  He looked at me, his face unmoved.

  “You are a free agent, Mrs. Latham.”

  It was certainly one way to put it. I went out and closed the door. William was hovering in the entry door as I started upstairs. He came padding out, looking around like the third conspirator in an old melodrama.

  “Mist’ Philander call up. Said would you min’ havin’ lunch to his house ’stead of down town, Mis’ Grace.”

  “Thanks, William,” I said. “And William
—about that——”

  He looked at me so blankly that I stopped.

  “ ’Deed an’ Ah don’ know what you goin’ t’say, Mis’ Grace . . . but Ah wouldn’t know what you was talkin’ ’bout if you did.”

  He padded off, and came back a few steps.

  “Ah jus’ nevah pay no ’tention to th’ Jedge when his stomach’s bad,” he said, and went away again.

  I went upstairs and into my room, and stopped. Jerry was there, sitting on the low stool in front of the fire. She didn’t look up. I closed the door, sat down beside her and patted her shoulder. After a long time she got up, went over to the mirror and brushed my feather puff over her face. She came back and sat down, looking at me silently.

  “Well?” I said. I was glad she wasn’t crying. She seemed superhumanly calm.

  “What would you do?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. Then I said, “Do you know any reason, absolutely and irrevocably, that he didn’t do it?”

  Her eyes, steadily on mine, didn’t change.

  “You mean do I know who did do it?” she asked.

  “Something of the sort.”

  She looked away. “No,” she said shortly.

  There was a knock at the door just then and William put his head in.

  “Mis’ Grace, Cunnel Primrose say he like to see you—whethuh you busy or not.—Soun’ like an invite-tation to th’ White House.”

  I thought, as I got up, that it might have been as mandatory but it wasn’t as agreeable by a long shot, not just then. Still I went downstairs. William stayed to talk with his mistress. I heard his soothing, “Chile, don’ you let ’em get you . . .” before I was out of earshot. I went on down, thinking he’d be a far better comforter than I was.

  The library door was open. The Judge was sitting in his chair, nothing in his face to indicate the scene in the dining room. Sandy was standing at the fireplace, not the least disturbed as far as I could see, and Colonel Primrose was sitting in the chair by the fire. He got up and shook hands with me.

  “How’s the arm?”

  “Fine, thanks.”

  Beyond having William change the bandages before breakfast I’d forgotten about it entirely,

  “I wanted you to hear the report Captain Fox got this morning,” he said. “I understand you’re lunching with Mr. Doyle. I thought he might want to know what was going on, and I shan’t have time to see him.”

  I doubt if he even thought he was fooling me. For an instant I did think he might just be gratifying the curiosity he knew I’d have, but I abandoned that, suspecting bitterly that I was merely being unobtrusively coached for my rôle of decoy duck again.

  “The gas company has figured from the last meter reading, which was four days ago, and the normal consumption over the last eight months, that the burner was on between four and five hours,” he went on. “I won’t go into the cubic feet involved. That would make it coming on between one and two o’clock, since it was turned off at the main by the fire department about a quarter to six. They don’t pretend it’s an accurate estimate. However, the post mortem puts Karen’s death roughly between four-thirty and five-thirty. The gas must have been going at full tilt, of course, for two or three hours before then.

  “We also have reason to believe,” he continued, “that it was never intended the circumstances of the crime should be discovered. The maid says the chronometer governing the oilburner was normally set for eleven in the morning. Karen Lunt seldom got up before noon, and the maid, who comes at 11:30, always complained that the house was cold when she arrived to close the windows. The chronometer yesterday morning, however, had been set for six o’clock—at which time Miss Lunt was dead and the house so full of gas that the flame of the burner, if it had gone on, would have sent it sky-high in a second.”

  I couldn’t bear to look at Judge Candler.

  “You can see, of course, that if Mrs. Latham hadn’t gone down when she did, nothing would ever have been discovered.”

  His black eyes moved from one of us to the other.

  “Miss Lunt had taken—was given, rather, we think—enough of an opiate to keep her soundly asleep for several hours. She was in the habit of drinking a half-pint of milk, sometimes more, before she went to bed. Although the glass she’d drunk from was in the sink and full of water, and the tap had been left dripping, traces of codeine were found in it. A number of fingerprints were found on the chromium-plated lever, one more distinct than the others. A milk bottle was found with the same print; there was a trace of it on the handle of the icebox, though it’s badly blurred by a succession of people apparently sampling the ham some time later.”

  “Do you . . . know whose fingerprints they are, Colonel Primrose?”

  I thought I could hear in Judge Candler’s voice the same dogged undercurrent I’d heard before.

  Colonel Primrose hesitated for the fraction of an instant.

  “That’s part of the usual police routine, Judge Candler,” he said. “You’ll all be asked to allow your fingerprints to be taken some time today.”

  He went on imperturbably.

  “Of course there is no evidence of robbery, or any similar tangible motive. It would seem, therefore, that the intangible motives—revenge, hate, love, fear, self-protection, perhaps the prevention, in this case, of some act on Miss Lunt’s part—are what we have to consider. It’s in the routine business of sifting those over that we’ve come across the aircraft stock at one time in Miss Lunt’s estate and now in Miss Candler’s trust.”

  Judge Candler spoke quietly. “I should like to explain——”

  “I shall ask you to, a little later,” Colonel Primrose interrupted suavely. “At the moment, I have two explanations that jibe in all details, and a young man at the Securities Commission is verifying the essential facts this morning. I’m more interested, at present, in . . . other things.

  “For instance: the key to the carriage house, which I understand normally hangs on the board in your office, sir. It is missing. Mr. Pepperday can’t account for it. He had no idea that it was gone, he says, until this morning.”

  He looked inquiringly at Judge Candler.

  “I can’t help you there, I’m afraid, sir. Mr. Pepperday called my attention to it last evening, when he came for the mail.”

  “You don’t recall seeing it, or not seeing it, at any time, recently?”

  Judge Candler shook his head. “No. I do not.”

  “But . . . if this was all set, and Karen given a drug in her milk, it was somebody who wouldn’t need a key?” Sandy put in.

  There was a flicker in Colonel Primrose’s eyes, deceptively innocent as a lamb’s.

  “You mean the murderer must have been at the party?”

  Sandy nodded.

  “Not necessarily. It’s true it was all carefully planned by someone who was very familiar with the working of Miss Lunt’s utilities . . . and her habits. The milk, however, comes in from the outside. She takes a pint and a half a day. The pint was used in the kitchen and for the cat, the half pint was always kept for her to drink before she went to bed.”

  His parrot eyes rested steadily on Sandy.

  “The milk was left on her front step around six o’clock in the morning, the company says. It doesn’t get light, nowadays, until eight, by which time it’s stood there two hours. It would be extremely simple for some one to exchange a doctored bottle for the one there and slip away unnoticed.—The idea of the drug, of course, was simply to make sure she’d sleep soundly when she went to bed. She apparently stayed up to let in the cat and dropped asleep on the sofa . . . the result being the same.”

  I kept my eyes steadfastly on the old carpet.

  “It’s interesting, too, in that connection,” Colonel Primrose continued calmly, “to notice that all the milk bottles around the place—the maid or Miss Lunt was careless about putting them out—are from the same distributor . . . with the exception of that last half-pint bottle. We know it’s the last because th
e maid identifies it and her prints on it are clearer.—Do you happen to know what dairy you use?”

  “If you’ll pull the bell there, Mrs. Latham,” Judge Candler said deliberately, “William can tell us.”

  “Never mind,” Colonel Primrose said. “We can check that later.”

  I think by this time I had a clear idea of what the victims of the Inquisition felt like with water dripping slowly, drop by drop, hour after hour, on the top of their skulls. Or even oil—because Colonel Primrose’s voice was suaver than water, even if it didn’t take him hour after hour to drop all those unbearable bits on our heads.

  “And just one other thing,” he went on politely, “and then I’ll have to go.—Did Miss Lunt’s cat spend much time here . . . normally?”

  The room was completely silent, for a long moment. Then, before anyone could speak, he got to his feet.

  “William probably knows more about that than you do,” he said calmly. He moved to the door.

  “I must get along. I’m afraid you’ll see me around a good deal, for a day or so. Good morning . . . and thank you, sir.”

  The three of us sat there when he’d gone—myself, at least, perfectly dumbfounded. Then Sandy shook himself and said everything there was to be said. He said, “Gosh!”

  20

  I went out, as soon as I could move, and Sandy followed me.

  “Where’s Jerry?” he asked as we went up the stairs.

  “I left her in my room,” I said.

  He looked at me inquiringly. “Dad doing the heavy father again?”

  “About Roger,” I answered.

  His jaw tightened. I stopped on the landing. “Look,” I said. “You make me sick.”

  “Not as sick as he makes me,” he retorted stubbornly.

  “Look, Sandy,” I said earnestly. “We ran into him last night . . . by the sheerest accident, believe me. He didn’t know anything about your Mr. Samuel Smith of the Broken Head.”

  “Yes?” he said. “Who’d he think he was—the Female Stranger?”

  I knew he was referring to the most romantic incident in old Alexandria’s glamorous past. A girl—a lady—was brought to Gatsby’s Tavern late one night, over a hundred years ago, from a ship that had just come in from the Indies. She was ill with typhoid fever. No one but the doctor and an old nurse and her husband saw her lovely face; and she died and was buried, no one but her husband knowing her name.