I followed her out. I knew she wanted me to go with her, but I couldn’t leave Larry. A man in the hall was sprinkling powder on the light switch there. He blew on it and then examined it with a magnifying glass. The man called Tony King was on his knees inspecting the stair carpet. When I looked out Mother was getting into the police car, and she was still putting on an act, crawling in as if she was too feeble to lift her legs.
Only it was not an act, as I learned later.
III
It must have been about four in the morning before the mounted policeman was brought in. Without his mount, of course. He was a tall young man, and he looked scared to death. Evidently he had been in bed, for his hair was still rumpled. He had put on his uniform, however, and he blinked in the light as he stood in the doorway.
The Inspector eyed him coldly.
“Officer Barnes?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You were on duty here tonight?”
“Not here, sir. I was ordered to report outside the big house up the drive, to watch the traffic. The Mayor—”
“We know all that. Did you leave your post at any time during the evening?”
“No, sir. That is …”
He looked at me.
“Well, did you?” snapped the Inspector.
He gulped.
“Only once, sir. A call of nature. I …”
“All right,” said the Inspector, rather hastily. “What I want to know is this. You were within sixty feet or so of the house. Did you see anyone leave that house at any time during the evening? Before the party broke up?”
“No, sir. I didn’t.”
Larry leaped to his feet, but the Inspector motioned for him to sit down again. He turned to Barnes, standing still and unhappy in front of him.
“Did you see a woman go up the drive and stand on the side terrace, looking in?”
Barnes looked more scared than ever, as if he wanted to bolt and run. He glanced around the room. Andrew Leland was watching him, as were all the others, including Larry, who was looking bewildered.
“If I could know what it’s all about, sir,” he began uneasily.
“Answer the question,” the Inspector roared. “Did you or did you not see a woman go up the drive and onto the terrace?”
“Not that I remember,” he mumbled. “She might have. I’m not saying she didn’t. I was pretty tired, sir. I may have dozed a bit.” He looked as though the idea had just occurred to him. He was sheepish but reassured. He even grinned a little. “I guess that’s it, sir. I may have shut my eyes for a minute.”
The Inspector looked back through his notes. He picked one out and examined it.
“I see. And in your sleep, when this woman told you she was going to look in a window and try to see the Mayor, you then replied: ‘Atta girl, and to hell with him.’”
Barnes looked shocked and then absolutely terrified. It was some time before he even spoke. Then his voice was shaking.
“I never said anything of the sort. She’s—she’s lying.”
“One of you is lying, that’s certain,” said the Inspector, and sent him out to another room under guard. When the door had closed behind them he looked at the captain of the local precinct.
“What about him?” he said. “What’s scared him?”
“I don’t know, sir. He’s a decent sort. Has a wife and two children. Lives not far away. I don’t get it.”
I have often wondered since what would have happened had Barnes told his story that night. As it was they only confused and alarmed him. Perhaps he knew they would not have believed him. There was that fifty dollars to account for, and he had already given it to his wife. But they let him go eventually, on orders to report at the Inspector’s office the next morning, and I took Larry home to get what sleep he could. Mr. Leland protested about their letting him go, but the Inspector was firm.
“We don’t arrest on opportunity alone,” he said, “and we have yet to find that there was even opportunity.”
“That policeman was bribed. It stuck out all over him.”
Even this resort to the vernacular, coming from a Leland as it did, failed to impress the Inspector. It merely annoyed him.
“You can leave that to me, sir,” he said gruffly, and drove away.
Larry and I walked up to the house. There was no incentive to talk, even if we had wanted to, as one of the detectives went with us. He said good night quite civilly, however, when we got there, and, turning, went briskly down the drive. When we went in Patrick and James, the footman who valets Larry, were waiting. Alma had had a hysterical attack and gone to bed.
Larry fairly reeled when we got into the house, but the two men took charge of him. I waited until his door closed; then I went in to see Mother. The lights were all on, and it was evident she had sent her maid, Sarah, away and undressed herself. Her clothes were all over the room. She was sitting upright in bed, and she looked at me with an expression which was a nice mixture of grief and triumph.
“I just made it,” she said. “That damned stocking of mine tore. Right in front of all those policemen too. That’s why I fainted.”
I eyed her.
“You didn’t faint,” I said. “I watched you.”
“Of course not, but with you being completely dumb what could I do? I had to get away before it fell out.”
I hope I was patient. She says now that I exhibited all my father’s vicious temper plus the worst traits of Aunt Henrietta, who was the family harridan. But at last I got it out of her.
She had had the knife all along.
“What do you suppose kept me on the stairs?” she demanded. “There it was stuck under the edge of the carpet. What could I do but sit on it?”
“You might have given it to the police,” I suggested.
“To the police? Larry’s knife! Are you crazy?”
I could feel myself going cold all over. And it was Larry’s knife. She had known it by the part of the handle she could see: the moth-eaten hairy handle of the old hunting knife that he had carted around with him on hunting trips for years. After he married he still kept it, in the room he called his gun room, downstairs in his own house. “Anyone could have got at it, of course. The glass doors of the closet were never locked. Just the same …”
“Don’t be an idiot,” Mother said sharply. “He didn’t kill her. If he had, would he have used his own knife and left it there? That knife was meant to be found, and by the police. Anyhow, why should he? He liked her.”
“Look, Mother,” I said, lowering my voice, “what have you done with it?”
“I’ve hidden it,” she said craftily.
“And how long will it stay hidden?” I inquired. “With servants all over the place, and as much privacy for us as canary birds.”
Mother smirked. There is no other word for it.
“It’s entirely safe,” she said. “It’s in the tank of the toilet in my bathroom.”
“Look, Mother,” I said patiently, “you never read crime books. You never read any books, for that matter. But toilet tanks are the universal hiding places for all lethal weapons. If they ever search this house—”
“Why on earth would they search this house?” she demanded indignantly. “Who do they think did it? We all have alibis. I sat beside that idiot of a Mayor for hours. Anyhow, who would come up here to my bathroom? If anyone needed …”
I didn’t say anything. What was the use? I went into her bathroom and lifted the porcelain top of the tank. The knife was there, and it was Larry’s all right. I didn’t touch it. I just put the lid back on. I felt dizzy.
“Nobody will find it there,” Mother said, “and tomorrow we will get rid of it.”
I don’t remember saying anything. I had just seen Mother’s stockings. They were lying on the floor, and one of them was torn to ribbons. I picked it up. There was a little blood on it from the knife—not much, but enough to make me shiver.
I knew right off that I had to do something about it. It l
ooked simple enough, on the surface—just wash it out and let it go. But you have to remember the way we lived. It was almost five in the morning, and Mother’s early tea was brought in by Sarah at eight-thirty, no matter when she had gone to bed. I could see Sarah, whose life is entirely vicarious—meaning that our affairs are hers and hers are her own—picking up that torn wet stocking and holding it up.
“Whoever washed this stocking, madam? And torn as it is, too!”
I stood holding it and trying to think. There were no fires going, except in the furnaces in the cellar, and, anyway, Sarah knew every stitch of Mother’s wardrobe. “Surely, madam,” she’d say, “you couldn’t have lost it. You can’t lose a stocking.” I couldn’t fool her with one of mine, either. My feet are half again as big as Mother’s. So I did the only thing I could think of. I picked up a nail file from the toilet table and before Mother could open her mouth I had jerked down the covers and scratched her leg with it just above the knee.
She let out a howl and grabbed her leg.
“Are you crazy?” she yelped. “My own child! What on earth do you mean, attacking me like that?”
There was a drop of blood, fortunately, and I wiped it with the stocking. These days of tests for typing blood and so on certainly make it difficult even for the innocent. Then I explained to Mother, and to my relief she listened.
“All right,” she said. “Only how am I to tell Sarah I got that scratch?”
I left her to work that out and went to my room across the hall. It was still dark, but I could see pinpricks of light through the grounds where the police were continuing their search for that wretched knife. I knew there was only one thing to do—go to them with it and tell the truth. After all nobody but a lunatic would leave the murder weapon—especially his own—where it would be certain to be found.
But I knew too that Mother would never agree. I couldn’t even slip it out of her room, for she had locked the door behind me. Finally I went to bed, to lie in the dark and see Isabel lying dead at the foot of the stairs, and the King man on his knees examining the carpet. It was broad daylight when I finally dozed off.
At noon Alma wakened me, looking apologetic.
“I’m sorry, Judy,” she said. “But there’s a man downstairs to see your mother, and she won’t see him. I’m afraid he’s from the police.”
I sat up in bed. In the strong light she looked devastated, and I remembered that she had really been closer to poor Isabel than any of us except Larry. She was older than Isabel, but from the time they first met they had been good friends.
She sat down while I took a shower and got into some clothes, and when she tried to light a cigarette I saw she was shaking.
“Emily Leland has sent for me,” she said. “I suppose it’s about the funeral. I don’t know what to do.”
“Better go,” I told her. “You can’t do anything here, Alma.”
“I’ve tried to see your mother. She won’t let me in.
“I wouldn’t worry about that. She’s had a dreadful shock. Where’s Larry?”
“Downtown. And there are reporters swarming all over the place.” She rose and, going to my dressing table, surveyed herself in the glass. “I look like the devil,” she said. Then she turned. “Judy, what on earth are they looking for in the grounds? The police, I mean.”
“They didn’t find the knife—if it was a knife.”
She went white. She was a good-looking woman, tall and slim, but under her makeup she was ghastly.
“I’m sorry,” she gasped. “I’m afraid I’m going to be sick.”
She rushed out of the room, leaving me uncertain whether to follow her or to leave her alone.
In the end I left her alone. I dressed and went downstairs, to find the King man in the lower hall. He was watching the fish in the pool, and this time he had no camera. James was watching him, and he looked annoyed. He didn’t even say good morning.
“So people do live like this, in this day and age,” he said.
“Until they’re liquidated. What would you suggest?”
He shrugged and grinned.
“All right, sister,” he said. “Is there a spot anywhere to talk, or do I whisper here?”
“We have a few odd corners,” I told him.
Of course the house is outrageous, as I have said. The hall is circular, and is two stories high, with a gallery along the back of it. The big drawing room is the size of a ballroom, but thank heaven there are half a dozen other rooms where one can sit. I took Tony King to the library.
“Now,” I said, when I had closed the door. “What do the police want with me? Isn’t it enough they have my brother?”
“I don’t belong to the police.”
“You did last night.”
He gave me a curious look.
“I just happened to be with the Inspector when the word came.”
“You took pictures, didn’t you?”
“The official photographer wasn’t around. And I take pretty good pictures.”
He offered me a cigarette and took one himself. I sat down. He didn’t. He took a turn or two around the room before he spoke again. When he did I almost fell out of my chair.
“Look here,” he said, “what have you done with it?”
“With what?”
“The knife.” He was impatient. “That trick of your mother’s didn’t fool me any. She had sat for hours on the stairs and never blinked an eye. Then she gets into a good chair and faints, just when things were getting hot.”
I pulled myself together as well as I could.
“I don’t know what you are talking about. If you don’t belong to the police you have no right to be here at all.”
“Don’t be a little fool,” he said rudely. “You’re on the spot, and your mother too. I examined that stair carpet. How long do you think it will be before they begin to wonder about your mother sitting there for all that time? If she has the knife do the right thing and turn it in. The truth never hurt anybody.”
I knew that too. I knew perfectly well that the thing to do was to go upstairs, choke Mother into insensibility, get the knife and give it to the police. I looked at Tony King, who apparently had been up all night and certainly needed a shave, and knew that he was right. But I never had a chance to answer him.
The door opened, and Donald Scott came in, looking immaculate and well-tailored and with just the right degree of sympathy on his handsome face.
I saw the King man give him a long hard look.
“My poor girl!” Don said, holding out both hands. “I came as soon as I could.”
Maybe I was just excited. Maybe I thought Tony King could stand seeing that not everybody thought I was a little fool, and conniving at murder at that. I remember screeching, “Darling!” and throwing myself into Don’s arms, and the King man grinning as he more or less oozed out. And then, to my own astonishment, I was crying.
And not just crying. Practically shrieking. I suppose I had been more shocked by Isabel’s death than I knew—that, and Mother sitting up in her bed keeping a watch on that wretched tank in her bathroom, and Larry downtown being interrogated, and the men in the grounds outside. As far as Don was concerned the dam had burst all over him, and he didn’t like it any too well. He held me off until the flood was over. Then he patted me on the back and gave me his handkerchief. After which he took it back and carefully dried the lapel of his coat.
“I’m terribly sorry, Judy,” he said. “Maybe I’d better come back later.”
But I wasn’t letting him go. Not until I knew why he was there, and not when I hadn’t seen him for weeks. I suppose it happens sometimes that a bad case of calf love carries over even when people are old enough to know better. Anyhow it had been that way with me. But the very way he had wiped his coat when I had cried all over it should have taught me something. It didn’t, of course.
I sat down and grinned feebly at him.
“It’s all over,” I said. “I suppose I had to burst on somebody, and
it happened to be you. But the idea of anybody’s thinking Larry did it!”
“Who thinks that?” he asked, eyeing me.
“They have him downtown.”
“They have a lot of people,” he said. “See here, Judy, are you afraid he did it, after all? Is that why you are scared?”
“I’m not scared, damn it,” I said, shaking all over again. “He adored her. Ask Mother. No, don’t ask Mother,” I added hastily. “She’s in no shape to be questioned. But it’s true. They were really happy. You can ask the servants. You can ask …”
I suppose I would have babbled on indefinitely if I had not suddenly noticed his face. He looked shocked, like a man who had had a blow. I knew why, too. Six or seven years ago, when he was only a struggling young lawyer, he had been crazy about Isabel. I was at boarding school when I heard it, and I cried all night.
I looked at him that morning and felt as sick as he looked.
“I’m trying to help Larry,” he said. “If it comes to that. Probably it won’t.” He walked over to the window and stood looking out. I remember the sun on his hair, and wanting just once to touch it. But when he turned I realized he didn’t really see me. He had been seeing Isabel instead, lying dead at the top of the stairs in her house. He lit a cigarette and sat down. His face was under control again.
“I want to ask you something, Judy,” he said. “Did you see the chain they found under her?”
“Yes. That man who just went out showed it to me last night. Why, Don?”
“Did she—did you ever see it before?”
“Never. But then she had a lot of things I never saw.”
He drew a long breath.
“Look, Judy,” he said. “I’ve got to tell you something, although God knows …” He stopped. “I gave her that chain, years ago,” he said. “I saw it this morning at Headquarters. I had no idea she still had it.”
I suppose I gasped, for he looked angry.
“Don’t be an idiot,” he said. “I didn’t kill her. Everything between us was over long ago. But I’d given her a ring, and she wasn’t allowed to wear it. The chain was to hang it on.”
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