Her tidy soul revolted. No wonder men left women who surrounded themselves with dirt and disorder. But there was no sign of Frank Garrison. The place was quiet and apparently empty. Not until she had investigated most of the apartment did she locate him, in a small room at the far end of the gallery. He was in a deep chair, and he was sound asleep.
Whatever she had expected it was not this. She inspected him carefully. He was in pajamas and bathrobe, and the Sunday papers were scattered around him. A cluttered ash tray and an empty coffee cup were beside him, and he had the exhausted, unshaven look of a man who had slept little or not at all the night before.
When she touched him on the shoulder he jerked awake. Not fully, however.
“Sorry,” he mumbled. “Guess I dozed off.” He looked up at her and blinked.
“Thought you were my wife,” he said. “My apologies.” He got up slowly, his big body still clumsy with sleep. Then he recognized her. He looked alarmed.
“Miss Adams! Has anything happened? Is Jan—”
“Jan’s all right.” She sat down. “I have other news for you, Mr. Garrison, unless you already know it. Jan wanted me to tell you. Mrs. Fairbanks is dead.”
He looked surprised.
“Dead!” he said. “Just like that! Jan will take it hard. Still, I suppose it was to be expected.” He looked down at his pajamas. “I’d better dress and go over. I didn’t expect a visitor. What was it? Heart, I suppose.”
“No,” said Hilda.
“No? Then what—”
“She was murdered, Mr. Garrison.”
He stared at her. He had been in the act of picking up a cigarette. Now his hand hung frozen over the box. The incredulity in his face gave way to sick horror.
“Murdered!” he said hoarsely. “I don’t understand. Not poison again?”
“She was stabbed. With a knife.”
He seemed still unable to take it in.
“I don’t understand,” he repeated. “Who would kill her? She hadn’t very long to live. And nobody hated her. Even the servants—”
He did not finish. He got up and went to the window.
“Is Jan all right?” he asked without turning.
“She’s worried, Mr. Garrison.”
He swung around.
“Worried! What do you mean, worried?”
“You were outside the house last night, and Mrs. Carlton Fairbanks knows it.”
“Susie! So it was Susie!” he said, and gave a short laugh. “She scared the insides out of me.”
“Jan thought you ought to know,” Hilda said patiently. “There may be trouble. The police have found a footprint. I imagine it’s yours. I promised to tell you before they got here—if they come at all. Susie won’t talk, but Amos might. He looked out the window. He may have recognized you.”
He began to see the seriousness of his situation. Yet his story was coherent and straightforward. He had had what he called a difference with Eileen, on Wednesday night. He had packed a bag and gone to his club, and on Saturday morning he had taken a plane to Washington.
“Things haven’t been very good,” he said. “I needed a job, and I thought with all this government housing I might get something. I happen to be an architect. But it was a Saturday, and summer”—he smiled—“the government doesn’t work on June week-ends.”
He had got back to the apartment late the night before to find Eileen gone and her suitcase missing. They had had to let the maid go, and he didn’t know what had happened to Eileen.
“I thought Jan might know,” he said. “But I didn’t want to telephone her and rouse the house. So I went over. It was one o’clock when I left there. I’ve done that before, talked to Jan at night, I mean. Her window was up, although it was raining cats and dogs, and I called to her. She said my wife was there, so I came back here.”
“Meeting Susie on the way?”
“Meeting Susie on the way,” he said, and smiled again. “She yelled like an Indian.”
She considered that. It might be true. She had an idea, however, that it was not all the truth.
“You didn’t go back again? To the house?” He looked at her oddly.
“See here,” he said. “What’s all this about? They don’t think I killed the old lady, do they?”
“Somebody killed her,” Hilda said dryly, and got up.
He saw her out, apologizing for the dust, the evident disorder. He owned the place. He couldn’t sell it, worse luck. Nobody could sell anything nowadays, even a tapestry. But she felt that behind all this, his confident manner, the composure on his good-looking face, his mind was far away, working hard and fast.
She was on a corner waiting for a bus when she saw the inspector’s car drive up to the door of the apartment building and two or three men get out. So Amos had talked, after all.
She was not surprised, on her return to the Fairbanks house, to learn from William that the police had taken away the window screen from Eileen’s room. But she was rather astonished to find Carlton, in a morning coat and striped trousers, and wearing a black tie, wandering around upstairs and carrying a hammer and an old cigar box filled with nails.
“Thought I’d nail up the other screens,” he said vaguely. “Can’t have people getting in and out of the house. Not safe.”
He went into Eileen’s room, a dapper, incongruous figure, and Hilda followed him. Eileen was sitting up in bed. She looked better, although she was still pale; and she managed an ironical smile when Carlton told her what he was doing.
“You’re a little late with that, aren’t you?” she said.
“Some of us still want to live, Eileen.”
“You can do that now, can’t you?” she said maliciously. “Live the way you like, get your Susie safe on a farm away from other men, raise pigs, do anything you damn well please.”
He stiffened.
“That was entirely uncalled for. If you were not a sick woman—”
“If I were not a sick woman I wouldn’t be here.”
He finished his hammering, and later Hilda, remembering that day, was to hear the noise as he moved from room to room, and even to smell the putty and white paint with which he neatly covered the signs of his labors.
He finished at eleven-thirty, which was almost exactly the time Fuller and his henchmen were leaving Frank Garrison. He had told a straight story, but the inspector was not satisfied. He stood in the long marble-floored gallery and put his hat on with a jerk.
“I’ll ask you not to leave town,” he said. “Outside of that, of course, you’re free. I suppose you have no idea where your first wife is? We’d like to locate her.”
“I am not in her confidence,” he said stiffly. “I would be the last person to know.”
Chapter 16
POLICE DEPARTMENT
From: Commanding Officer, 17th Precinct
To: Medical Examiner
Subject: Death of Eliza Douglas Fairbanks, of Ten Grove Avenue.
1. On June 15, 1941, at 2:15 a.m. a report was received from Inspector Harlan Fuller that a Mrs. Eliza Douglas Fairbanks, aged 72 years, had been found dead in her bed as a result of a stab wound in the chest.
2. Case was reported at once by Inspector Fuller and usual steps taken. Inspector Fuller and Captain Henderson of homicide squad were assigned to case.
The inspector had this document in front of him that noon. In such brief fashion, he thought, were the tragedies of life reported. Men and women died of violence. Tragedy wrecked homes. Hatred and greed and revenge took their toll. And each of them could be officially recorded in less than a hundred words.
Nor was the report of the autopsy more human. An old woman had died, cruelly and unnecessarily. Died in a closed room, with access to it almost impossible. And the autopsy, after recording her pathetic age, her shrunken weight, and the entirely useless examination of her head, abdomen, and thorax, merely reported the cause of death as an incised wound with a tract of two and one-half inches, which on being carefully dissected was s
hown to have reached the heart. And that the approximate time of death had been between twelve-thirty and one-thirty in the morning.
He put it down. After all, murder was an inhuman business, he thought, and began again to look over the reports and his own memoranda which had accumulated on the desk. Considering that the day was Sunday they covered considerable ground.
The house: No sign of entrance by roof of porte-cochere. Blurred prints on window screen, one identified as belonging to Miss Adams, nurse. Three ladders on property, none showing signs of having been out in the rain. No indication pillars had been climbed. All doors and windows on lower floor closed and locked. No phonograph or remote control for radio found. Knife not belonging to kitchen. (Evidence of one Margaret O’Neil, cook.) At seat of crime fingerprints only of dead woman, servants and family, including those of Mrs. Eileen Garrison on back of chair. None of Mrs. Carlton Fairbanks. Prints of Carlton Fairbanks on foot of bed and closet door. Prints of dead woman on safe. No others.
On the people in the house at the time of the crime his notes were brief, mostly written in his own hand.
Carlton Fairbanks: Son of deceased. Member of prosperous brokerage house until 1930. Business gradually declined until 1938, when it was liquidated. Married in 1930 to Susan Mary Kelly. Came to live with mother in 1938. Wife disliked by Mrs. Fairbanks and daughter Marian. Both Carlton Fairbanks and wife anxious to leave and buy farm. Is supposed to inherit, along with sister and niece, Janice Garrison, under will. Admits entering room at or about 1:15 to turn off radio.
Susan Mary Fairbanks: See above. Reason for visit to stable-garage that night not known. Did not enter, as encountered Garrison and was scared away. No cigarettes in her car, although given as reason for night excursion. Does not conceal dislike of mother-in-law. Father contractor in small way. Family lives at 140 South Street in plain but respectable neighborhood. On good terms with them. Probably does not inherit under will but would share husband’s portion.
Marion Garrison: Quarreled with mother and left home last Wednesday evening, June eleventh. Present address unknown. Thirty-eight years of age, thin, dark, usually dressed in black. Taxicab which called for her took her to Pennsylvania Station. No further information. According to servants, bitterly resentful over husband’s second marriage. Has lived at Grove Avenue house since marriage in 1921, as mother refused to be left alone. Divorced in 1934 at Reno, Nevada.
Janice Garrison: Age 19. Probably inherits under will. Friendly with father and second wife. Apparently devoted to grandmother. No motive, unless money. Is supposed to be interested in Dr. Courtney Brooke.
Courtney Allen Brooke, M.D.: Age 28. Office and house at 13 Huston Street. Graduate Harvard Medical School. Interned two years Mount Hope Hospital. In private work one year. Small practice, barely earning expenses. First called to attend deceased March tenth, when treatment was given for arsenic poisoning. Has attended deceased at intervals since. Apparently in house during time of crime, in attendance on Mrs. Eileen Garrison, who was threatened with abortion. Alibi given by nurse Hilda Adams: the dead woman turned on her radio before his departure.
Eileen Garrison: Age 35. Married in 1934 to Francis J. Garrison, following divorce. Formerly governess to Janice Garrison. Small, blond, nervous temperament. Born on farm near Templeton, thirty miles from city, where parents still live. Not liked by Fairbanks family, although Janice Garrison remained friendly. Could expect nothing under will. In house at time of crime, but sick and under influence of morphine administered at or about one o’clock.
Francis Jarvis Garrison: Well-known architect. Age 42. Inherited money. Supposed to be wealthy until 1929. Since then heavy losses. Pays ex-wife ten thousand a year alimony, tax free. Owns large apartment, but behind on maintenance charges. Divorced in 1934. Married daughter’s governess soon after. Produces ticket stub to prove plane trip to Washington Saturday. Admits being in grounds night of crime and says he talked to daughter, to learn his wife’s whereabouts. Uncertain of time. Thinks between 1:30 and 2:00 a.m. Encounter with Mrs. Fairbanks, Jr. purely accidental. Admits footprint his. Expects nothing under will.
There were brief reports on the servants, but he glanced at them casually. Only Ida’s he picked up and examined.
* * *
Ida Miller: Country girl born in Lafayette County. Age 40. Ten years in Fairbanks house. Hysterical since murder. Possibly not telling all she knows.
He was still looking at it when the commissioner came in. The commissioner had expected to play golf, and he was in a bad humor. The inspector offered him a chair, which he took, and a cigar, which he refused.
“Never smoke them,” he said. “What’s all this, anyhow? I thought you’d put that woman of yours to watch the Fairbanks house.”
“Not the house,” said the inspector politely. “Mrs. Fairbanks herself.”
“So she lets her be killed! It’s the hell of a note, Fuller. I may be new to this job, but when you guarantee to protect a woman—and a prominent woman at that—I want to know why the devil she wasn’t protected.”
“She was, as a matter of fact. It couldn’t have happened. Only it did.”
“Don’t give me double talk,” said the commissioner, the veins in his forehead swelling. “She’s dead, isn’t she?”
It was some time before the inspector could tell the story. He went back to the attempt to poison Mrs. Fairbanks, and to the mystery of the bats and so on in the room.
“They got in somehow,” he said. “I’ve been over the place. I don’t see how it was done. But it was.”
“Carried in,” said the commissioner. “That’s easy. Carried in while she was out and left there. Room wasn’t locked, was it?”
“Not during the day.”
“All right. Get on with it.”
He sat with his eyes closed while the inspector got on with it, reading now and then from his notes. At the end he sat up, eyeing the inspector with unexpected shrewdness.
“You’ve got only two suspects, Fuller. Frank Garrison’s out. Why would he kill the old woman? He had nothing to gain. Anyhow, I know him. He’s a damned decent fellow.”
“I’ve known—”
“All right. Who have you got? This young doc and Carlton Fairbanks. The doctor’s out. So Carlton’s left. Know him, too. Always thought he was a stuffed shirt.”
“That wouldn’t go far with a jury.” Fuller smiled unhappily. “Anyhow, he doesn’t seem to me the type. Of course—”
“Type? Type! Any type will kill for a half of three million dollars. That’s what old Henry Fairbanks left his widow when he died. In bonds, Fuller! No hanky-panky, no cats and dogs, no common stocks. Bonds!”
“It sounds like a lot of money,” said the inspector. “Maybe you’d like to talk to Fairbanks yourself.”
The commissioner got up hastily. “Not at all,” he said. “I’ve got an engagement. And I guess you have your own methods. Better than mine, probably!”
With that he departed, and the inspector felt that he was left virtually with a rubber hose in his hand.
Back at the Fairbanks house Hilda had not gone to bed. She took off her shoes and rubbed her tired feet, but she was not sleepy. The sense of failure was bitter in her. Yet what had she done? She had left the door to go up to the third floor, a matter of three minutes or so. She had been fifteen minutes, maybe twenty, in the kitchen, but the doctor had agreed to stand guard. And Mrs. Fairbanks had been alive then. She had turned on the radio after that, turned it on loudly, as if the movements in the hall outside the door had exasperated her.
What else? She had taken her tray back, and later on Susie had stepped in it. She had gone back and found her there. How long had that taken?
She got up, and to the astonishment of the officer in the hall, paced it off in her stocking feet, carrying her watch in her hand. She could hardly believe it when the second hand showed only a minute and a half. Then what? She and Susie had sat in the hall, until the slamming screen in Eileen’s room had taken her in t
o it. Eileen had been asleep, and she had closed and hooked the screen. And after that she had found Mrs. Fairbanks dead, and her hands were already cool.
It was Carlton, then, after all. It had to be Carlton.
She went back to her room and stood looking out the window. Amos, in his best clothes and with a smug look on his face, was coming toward his Sunday dinner. Birds were busy on the grass after the rain the night before. The crowd outside had diminished somewhat as the meal hour arrived, but it was still there.
Carlton, she thought wretchedly. She could see him now, dressed in his striped trousers and black coat and wearing a mourning tie, trying to fill in the time with a hammer and an old cigar box filled with nails. Did men kill their mothers and then go puttering around fastening screens? Decent, quiet little men who liked the country and growing things?
The unreality grew when she sat at the midday dinner table, watching him carve a roast of beef into delicate slices.
“Well done or rare, Miss Adams?”
“Medium, please.”
Not Carlton, she thought, looking around the table. Not any of them. Not Susie, in a black dress with little or no make-up, and for once not smoking. Not Jan. Oh, certainly not Jan, looking young and tragic and not eating. Not even young Brooke, watching Jan and making such talk as there was. Certainly not Eileen, sick and hysterical in her room upstairs. Not William, his head still shaking as he passed the food. Not Ida, pale but efficient. Not any of them, she thought drearily. Then who?
The guards were taken out of the house that afternoon, but Mrs. Fairbanks’s room was left locked and sealed. There was still no news of Marian, and Jan, after a talk with her father on the telephone, had at last gone to bed and to sleep.
It was three o’clock in the afternoon when Carlton was taken to police headquarters for questioning.
The Haunted Lady Page 13