In the dining-room at the Fairbanks house the inspector was eating a substantial Sunday morning breakfast of sausages and pancakes, and a long rangy captain of the homicide squad was trying to keep up with him. Hilda, unable to eat, eyed them resentfully. Men were like that, she thought. They did not project themselves into other people’s troubles as women did. All this was just a case, a case and a job. It did not matter that a family was being torn apart, or that some one member of it was probably headed for the chair.
William had brought in a fresh supply of pancakes when Amos came in. His small, sly eyes were gleaming.
“Fellow out in the yard says to tell you he’s got a footprint,” he said. “It’s under the big oak, and he’s got a soapbox over it.”
The captain got up, eyeing his last pancake ruefully.
“I guess you win, inspector,” he said. “Thirteen to my eleven. I suppose you’ll want a cast.”
He went out, and the inspector took a final sip of coffee and put down his napkin.
“I’m feeling stronger,” he announced. “Nothing like food to take the place of sleep.”
“I should think you could stay awake for the next month,” said Hilda tartly.
He got up and lit a cigarette.
“Don’t be crabbed,” he said. “It doesn’t suit you. You are the ministering angel, the lady who knits while people pour out their troubles to her. Which reminds me, how about the Garrison woman? I’ll have to see her. What do you think of her?”
“As a suspect? All I can say is that women don’t usually murder when they’re threatened with a miscarriage and under the influence of morphia.”
“Don’t they?” He eyed her with interest. “How much you know! But you’d be surprised, my Hilda. You’d be surprised at what some women can do.”
Eileen was still in her drugged sleep when Hilda, leaving him outside, went into her room. It was not easy to rouse her, and when she did waken she seemed not to know where she was. She sat up in bed, looking dazedly around her.
“How on earth did I get here?” she demanded, blinking in the light.
“You came last night. Don’t you remember?”
She stretched and yawned. Then she smiled maliciously.
“My God, do I remember!” she said. “Did you see their faces?”
But she was not smiling when the inspector came in. She sat up and drawing the bedclothing around her stared at him suspiciously.
“Who are you?” she said. “I don’t know you, do I?”
He looked down at her. A neurotic, he thought, and scared to death. Heaven keep him from neurotic women.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Garrison. I am a police officer. I want to ask you a few questions.”
But he did not ask her any questions just then. She seemed profoundly shocked as full recollection came back to her. She looked indeed as though she might faint again, and when at last she lay back, shivering under the bedclothes, she could tell him nothing at all.
“I remember Susie screaming. I got up and went to the door. Somebody said Mrs. Fairbanks was dead—murdered. I guess I fainted after that.”
“Did you hear anyone in this room last night? Before it happened.”
“I don’t know when it happened,” she said petulantly. “Ida was here, and the doctor. And the nurse, of course.”
“Did you unhook the window screen over there, for any purpose?”
She went pale.
“My screen?” she said. “Do you mean—”
“It was open. Miss Adams heard it banging. She came in and closed it.”
Suddenly she sat up in bed, wide-eyed and terrified.
“I want to get out of here,” she said. “I’m sick, and I don’t know anything about it. I wouldn’t have come if I’d had any other place to go. They’d pin this murder on me if they could. They all hate me.”
“Who hates you?”
“All of them,” she said wildly, and burst into loud hysterical crying.
It was some time before he could question her further. But she protested that she had not even heard the radio, and that Mrs. Fairbanks had been as usual when she talked to her.
“She didn’t seem nervous or apprehensive?”
“She seemed unpleasant. She never liked me. But she did promise to look after me when my—when my baby came.”
She made no objection when he asked to take her fingerprints. “Part of the routine,” he told her. She lay passive on her pillows while he rolled one finger after another on the card. But she did object when he asked her to stay in the house for a day or two longer.
“I’m better,” she said. “I’m all right. The doctor said—”
“I’ll let you go as soon as possible,” he told her, and went out.
It was in the hall outside her door that Hilda remembered about the figure at the top of the third floor stairs. The inspector was about to light a cigarette. He blew out the match and stared at her.
“Why in God’s name didn’t you tell me that before?” he demanded furiously.
She flushed. “You might remember that I’ve had a murder on my hands, and a lot of hysterical people. I just forgot it.”
He was still indignant, however. He went up the stairs, with Hilda following. But nothing was changed. The guest rooms with their drawn shades were as she had last seen them; the hall stretched back to the servants’ quarters, empty and undisturbed. A brief examination showed all the windows closed and locked, and the inspector, wiping his dusty hands, looked skeptical.
“Sure you didn’t dream it?”
“I came up and looked around. There wasn’t time for anyone to have gone back to the servants’ rooms. I thought it was Maggie or Ida, curious about Mrs. Garrison.”
“When was all this?”
“Before I went down to boil the water for the hypodermic. I was gone only a minute or two. I hardly left the top of the stairs.”
He was still ruffled as he went back along the hall. There were closets there, a cedar room, and a trunk room. All of them were neat and dustless, and none showed any signs of recent use as a hiding place. He lit matches, examined floors, and, still ignoring Hilda, went on back to the servants’ quarters. Compared with the rest of the house they were musty, with the closeness of such places even in June, the closed windows, the faint odor of cooking from below, of long-worn clothing, and unmade beds.
Two of the rooms were empty, but Ida was in hers. She was sitting by a window, her hands folded in her lap and a queer look on her long thin face as Hilda went in.
“I was nervous and Maggie sent me up,” she said. “But there’s no use of my going to bed. I couldn’t sleep.”
It was the appearance of the inspector which definitely terrified her, however. She went white to the lips. She tried to get up and then sank back in her chair.
“What is it?” she asked. “I don’t know anything. What do you want with me? Can’t I get a little rest?”
Hilda tried to quiet her.
“It hasn’t anything to do with Mrs. Fairbanks’s death, Ida,” she said. “I thought I saw someone in the upper hall last night, before—before it happened. If it was you it’s all right. We’re only checking up.”
Ida shook her head.
“It wasn’t me, miss.”
“Would it have been William? Or Maggie?”
She was quieter now.
“I wouldn’t know about that. They usually sleep like the dead.”
But Hilda was remembering something. She was seeing the household gather after Susie screamed, and seeing Maggie and William come along the back hall on the second floor, while Ida was standing still, looking down from the front stairs to the third floor. She did not mention it. Quite possibly, Ida as the housemaid used those stairs habitually. She tucked it away in her memory, however, to wonder later if she should have told it. If it would have changed anything, or altered the inevitable course of events.
Neither of them could change Ida’s story. She sat there, twisting her work-worn hand
s in her lap. She had been in bed. She had seen nobody, and she had liked the old lady. She had looked after her as well as she could. Tears welled in her eyes, and the inspector left her there and went out, muttering to himself.
“Damn all crying women,” he said. “I’m fed up with them.”
That was when he timed Hilda, making her leave her chair in the hall, go up, look around for a light switch, and come down again. He put his watch back in his pocket and looked at her. grimly.
“Three minutes,” he said. “A lot can happen in three minutes, my girl.”
He left at nine o’clock, driving away with his uniformed chauffeur. The men who had been scattered over the grounds had disappeared, but one officer was on duty on Huston Street beside the break in the fence. Another was holding back the crowd at the gate, and two still remained in the house. Hilda watched the difficulty with which the car made its way through the crowd.
“It’s disgusting,” she said to the tall young policeman on duty in the lower hall. “They ought to be ashamed.”
He smiled indulgently.
“They like a bit of excitement, miss.” He smiled. “There’s a lot of reporters out there, too. I caught one carrying in the milk bottles early this morning.”
As she went up the stairs she could still hear Carlton at the library phone.
“Hello, George. I’m trying to locate Marian. She’s out of town somewhere. I suppose you and Nell haven’t heard from her?”
Chapter 15
She was very tired. When she looked into Eileen’s room Ida was running a carpet sweeper over the floor. Eileen’s hair had been combed and fresh linen put on her bed. She looked better, although she was still pale.
“If you’re all right I’ll go to bed for an hour or two, Mrs. Garrison,” Hilda said. “I haven’t had much sleep lately.”
“I’m perfectly all right. I told that fool of a policeman, but he wouldn’t listen.”
Hilda went back toward her room. But she did not go to bed. Maggie was carrying a tray into Jan’s room, and she followed her. Jan was standing by a window, fully dressed. She looked at the tray and shook her head.
“I’m afraid I can’t eat,” she said. “Thanks, anyhow. I’ll have the coffee.”
Maggie put down the tray firmly.
“You’ll eat,” she said. “Somebody’s got to keep going around here.” Her voice softened. “Try it anyhow, dearie,” she said. “Just remember she was old. She hadn’t long anyhow.”
Jan’s chin quivered.
“She liked living.”
“Well, so do we all,” said Maggie, philosophically. “That don’t mean we can go on forever.”
She went out. Jan looked at Hilda.
“I’ve been trying to think. How are we to get word to Mother? I don’t suppose it is in the papers, is it?”
“I hardly think so. There wasn’t time.”
“And there are no evening papers today,” Jan said desperately. “She may not hear it until tomorrow. And she ought to be here. Uncle Carl’s no good at that sort of thing, and Susie’s asleep. I went in and she was dead to the world. I wanted to talk to her. I—”
Her voice trailed off. Her hands shook as she tried to pour the coffee. Hilda took the miniature pot from her and poured it for her.
“Why not waken her?” she said quietly. “After all, if it’s important—”
“Important!” Jan’s voice was bitter. “You’ve seen her. You’ve heard her. You know she hated Granny. She hated living in the house with her. Uncle Carl wanted a farm, and she adores him. They can have it now,” she added hopelessly. “They’ll have her money. First she tried to scare Granny to death, and when that wasn’t any good—”
“What do you mean by that?” Hilda demanded sharply. “Scaring her to death.”
“Those bats and things. You don’t think they got in by themselves!” Jan was scornful. “It was just the sort of thing she would think of. Scare Granny out of the house, or into a heart attack. What did she care?”
Hilda was thoughtful. In a way Jan was right. Susie was quite capable of it. It might even appeal to her macabre sense of humor. The murder, however, was different. She could not see Susie putting arsenic in the old lady’s sugar or driving a knife into her heart.
“She had the chance last night, too,” Jan went on. “She could have heard Courtney come back to talk to me while you were downstairs. She could have slipped through Uncle Carl’s room and around the screen. Nobody would have seen her.”
She stopped, looking startled. Susie was in the doorway, cigarette in hand and her sharp blue eyes blazing.
“So I did it!” she said. “You little idiot, didn’t I lie my head off last night for you?” She threw back the sleeve of her dressing-gown and showed her arm. “You know who did that, don’t you? Suppose I’d told the police your precious father was here in the grounds last night? And his wife inside the house with the screen over the porte-cochere open? Suppose I’d said that the whole thing was a plant to get Eileen into this house, so Frank Garrison could get in, too?”
Hilda watched them, her blue eyes shrewd. Neither of them seemed aware of her presence. She saw that Jan was on the verge of collapse.
“He wouldn’t kill Granny. Never. You know it. Deep down in your heart you know it.”
Susie eyed her. Then she shrugged.
“All right, kid,” she said. “I didn’t tell the police. I won’t, either, unless you go around yelling that I did it. Or Carlton.” Suddenly she sent a shocked look at Hilda. “Good, God, I forgot. You’re police yourself, aren’t you?”
“Not all the time. I’m a human being, too.” Hilda smiled faintly.
“Well, forget it,” said Susie. “I was just talking. The kid here made me mad. Maybe he thought Eileen was here. He might have come to find out.”
She went back to her room, and Jan caught Hilda by the arm.
“That’s why he came,” she said desperately. “I swear it is. I’ll swear it by anything holy. My window was up, and he called to me. He said, ‘Jan, do you know where Eileen has gone? She’s not in the apartment.’ When I told him she was here and—and sick, he seemed worried. But he wouldn’t come in. He went away again, in the rain. In the rain,” she repeated, as though the fact hurt her. “I can’t even telephone him,” she went on. “Uncle Carl’s still using it. And if the police find it out—”
“Why worry about that? He had no reason for wishing your grandmother—out of the way, had he?”
“Of course not.” She lit a cigarette and smoked it feverishly. “He was devoted to her. But he doesn’t know what’s happened. He ought to know. He ought to be able to protect himself. Look,” she said, putting down the cigarette, “would you be willing to tell him? To go there and tell him? It wouldn’t do any harm. He can’t run away. That’s all I want, for him to know.”
It was a long time before Hilda agreed, but the girl’s sick face and passionate anxiety finally decided her. Also she was curious. There was something behind all this, something more than a distracted husband trying in the middle of the night to locate a missing wife. Why had he not come in when he learned that Eileen was sick? Surely that would have been the normal thing to do.
She knew she had very little time. The police had the cast of the footprint under the oak. They would be working on it now. They would have examined the shoes of the men in the house, measured them, perhaps photographed them. And if Amos knew more than he had told—
She hurried to her room to dress. As she opened the door she had the feeling that something had moved rapidly across the floor. Whatever it was she could not find it, and she dressed rapidly and went down the stairs. Evidently the officer there had no orders to hold her, for he smiled and opened the door.
“Out for a walk?”
“I need some air,” she said blandly.
Under the porte-cochere, however, she stopped. The crowd was still on the pavement, held back by the guard, and a photographer was holding up his camera. She turned quick
ly toward the stable and the broken fence. Amos was not in sight, but the soapbox lay on its side under the oak tree, some fifty feet away. She hurried to the break in the fence, and straightened, to look into the lens of a camera. A grinning young man thanked her. She made a wild snatch at the camera, but he evaded it.
“Naughty, naughty,” he said. “Papa slap. Now, what’s your name, please?”
“I have no name,” she told him furiously.
“Must be a disadvantage at times. How do they get you? Say, ‘Here, you’?”
He took another flash of her indignant face before she could stop him, and she was moving rapidly toward the corner when she became aware that the crowd was coming toward her. It moved slowly but irresistibly, as though propelled by some unseen power from behind. A half-dozen small boys ran ahead of it.
“That’s the nurse!” one of them yelled. “She’s got her cap off, but I know her.”
“Hey, nurse! What’s happened in there?”
The reporters were in the lead now. In an instant she was surrounded by eager young faces. She could see her bus a block away, and she stood haughtily silent, like a small neat Pekinese among a throng of disorderly street dogs. “Have a heart, sister.” “Come on, how was the old lady killed?” “Has anyone been arrested?”
She was driven to speech, in sheer desperation.
“I have nothing to say,” she told them. “If you care to follow me while I get some fresh uniforms and look after my canary, that’s all the good it will do you.”
They laughed but persisted until the bus came and she got on. Looking back she could see them, returning discouraged to take up their stations again, to wait and hope for a break, to be able perhaps to get a new angle on the story and maybe a raise in salary. She felt unhappy and guilty, as though she had failed them. As, of course, she had.
She reached the Garrison apartment at ten o’clock. No one answered the bell, and at last she tried the door. It was unlocked, and she stepped inside, to find herself in a long gallery, paved with black-and-white marble, and with a fine old tapestry hung at the end. It surprised her, as did the drawing-room when she saw it; a handsome room carefully furnished, but with every sign of extreme neglect. The grand piano showed dust in the morning sun, the brocaded curtains were awry, the windows filthy, the rugs askew on the floor. Old magazines and papers lay about, and a vase of flowers on a table had been dead and dried for days.
The Haunted Lady Page 12