Murder by an Aristocrat

by Mignon G. Eberhart

  “On a visit? I thought you lived here.”

  “Not by a long shot,” he said. There was an acrid undertone in his voice. “I’m a sort of cousin. What is known as a connection. A connection but still a Thatcher, which is why Adela took me on when I was left without resource at a tender age. She tried to bring me up along with her two brothers. It didn’t go so well,” he added in a musing way. “Dave and Hilary were even then particularly nasty little snobs, and I was never anything to —”

  “You really must try to go to sleep,” I interrupted hurriedly. At the moment I had no wish to be told the inner politics of the Thatcher family. Later I was to wish I had overcome my scruples and listened avidly to every word he might say in the hope of discovering in retrospect some hint, some word, that would give us a clue to the dark mystery that was so soon to involve us.

  This time he closed his eyes.

  “My shoulder’s beginning to throb. Can you shift the bandage a little? The adhesive pulls like hell!”

  I bent over him, endeavoring to arrange the dressing less tightly. The wound was in his right shoulder, a flesh wound and not serious but apt to be painful. An odd place, I thought idly, accidentally to shoot one’s self.

  “Still,” said my patient, his light eyes so close to mine faintly mocking, as if he’d read my thoughts, “still, it can be done. By holding the revolver with my left hand, pointing it at my right shoulder, and pulling the trigger. Always assuming it was loaded.”

  This time I definitely disliked his laugh.

  “That’s better, isn’t it?” I said. “Now, do try to sleep.”

  I pulled the sheet straight, and as he closed his eyes again, sought my chair.

  Probably we both dozed for some time, although I was not as comfortable as I had expected to be in the cushioned chaise longue, feeling, indeed, a little restless and uneasy and retaining an impression of not having closed an eye. But I roused at length to a sudden realization that the lawn was bright with sunshine, vividly green and cool-looking, the birds singing blithely; that the fragrance of coffee and broiling bacon was somewhere about, and that a car was racing furiously up the drive.

  I got rather stiffly to my feet, straightened my cap, went to the long window, and stepped through it onto a sort of balcony, vine twined. Down below me ran a graveled drive coming in from the road straight past the house and probably to a garage which I couldn’t see. The car, a long yellow roadster, had stopped with a swish of gravel directly under the balcony, and a man was getting out of it. Even allowing for the foreshortening of my view of him, I judged him to be considerably stouter than a man of his age — which was probably in the early forties — should be. I caught only a glimpse of a smooth pinkish face, rather pompous, and thin darkish hair, as he tossed his hat into the seat of the car and ran around the corner of the house.

  “That,” said my patient’s voice back of me, “will be Hilary.”

  “I thought you were asleep,” I said.

  He frowned.

  “Really, Miss Keate, I can’t have this. You seem to have some complex about sleep. It’s all you can talk of. Go quietly out into the hall and lean over the staircase and see if you can hear what Adela’s telling him.”

  “I’ll do no such thing. The very idea. I —”

  “Never mind. Never mind. I didn’t think you would. All the same, I would like to know. But he’ll be up in a moment. Miss Keate, you are about to meet Hilary Thatcher, an ornament to the banking profession, the family, and the county. A man of the bluest of blood and proud of it. In short, a small-town aristocrat, than which there is nothing more aristocratic. Nothing more assured. Nothing more blissfully contented. Nothing,” he said, with a curious note of truth, “so effortlessly real. Well —” his voice lost its momentary sincerity — “I do hope you are sensible of the pleasure you are about to have and — Oh, hello there, Hilary!”

  Hilary Thatcher stood in the doorway. He was fleshy, as I had seen, pink, a bit pompous, and nearly bald. His face was freshly shaved, his tie gray-blue like his eyes, and he was too well groomed. There wasn’t a thing awry about him, but something in his wary eyes and quick breathing made me feel that he was distinctly alarmed, really violently disturbed, and doing his best to conceal it. There was, however, so far as I could see, not one shade of affectionate concern in his expression.

  “Adela tells me you’ve — had an accident,” he said, closing the door. He had looked only at Bayard on the bed, and as I moved to pull down a window shade against the sun he turned with a little start to me. “Oh — is this the nurse? How do you do? Do you mind stepping out of the room for a moment, please?”

  He spoke in a nice enough way, and I was about to comply with his request when my patient spoke sharply:

  “Stay exactly where you are, Miss Keate.”

  “But I —”

  “Stay here! Now, Hilary. Won’t you sit down?”

  “Thanks, I — can’t stop. I just heard that you were — hurt. Adela phoned my wife. Evelyn — sent me right over. I — Adela says it isn’t serious.”

  Curious that there should be such anxiety in his voice and yet no affection.

  “No,” said my patient. “It isn’t serious. A little painful, but that’s all. I shall be well again in a very few days. Odd how I get involved in accidents when I’m here. Do you remember the last time? I got a cramp while we were swimming out on Thatcher lake and couldn’t —” he paused to shift the pillow under his head — “couldn’t make you hear me call for help.”

  A bar of sunlight striking Hilary’s face made it look paler. He said in a nonchalant way:

  “You’ll curtail your visits if this keeps up.”

  “It does begin to seem a sort of fatality,” said Bayard. “But I won’t stay away. No, I couldn’t do that.”

  “Anything I can do for you?” asked Hilary.

  “Nothing, thanks, Hilary. I’m doing very well. Nice of you to stop and inquire.”

  Hilary’s plump pink hand with its wide seal ring closed rather tightly on the doorknob. He opened his mouth as if about to say something further, gave me an annoyed look, hesitated, said, “Well, so long,” and left.

  My patient laughed softly. His light eyes were narrow and fastened on the closed door with a look that was not friendly, not cousinly.

  “It’s after seven o’clock,” I said, glancing at my watch. “Shall I have your Emmeline bring you up some coffee?”

  “Not now. I believe I can sleep some more. You might give me a drink of water.”

  I brought the water and held his head so he could drink it.

  “And, by the way, Miss Keate,” he said, leaning back on the pillow with a sort of sigh, “don’t let any of the family bring that revolver back into the room. You see,” he added, closing his eyes, “the next time it might be a success. The shooting, I mean.”

  It took an appalled moment or two to discover my voice.

  “You don’t mean someone — you don’t think someone shot you — on purpose?”

  “I know damn well somebody did,” he said.

  CHAPTER II

  And as I stood there aghast, entirely unable to credit my own ears, he looked up and said:

  “I wish you wouldn’t talk so much. You won’t let me sleep. Breakfast is at eight. You might go down, now. There’s a key to the door. Lock it after you and keep the key to yourself. I don’t wish to be — disturbed.”

  “You can’t possibly mean what you’ve just said!”

  “Can’t I? It’s true.”

  “It can’t be true! You are — it’s that opiate Dr. Bouligny gave you. You’re talking nonsense. Why, you are in the midst of your family. People who love you. People who —”

  “As Hilary loves me?”

  Well, it was true that Hilary didn’t seem especially fond of my patient. But an ambitious and prosperous young banker, such as one felt Hilary to be, does not shoot a man simply because he has no love for him. Besides, there was Miss Adela Thatcher with her elegant voi
ce and her lavender silks and her well bred face. And there was the air of the house: that indescribable quality of dignity and simplicity and honesty and — I hesitated and finally used Bayard’s bitter word — of aristocracy. No, I could not reconcile Bayard’s accusation with what I had seen of the Thatchers. I said:

  “You don’t know what you are saying.”

  “My dear nurse,” said Bayard Thatcher, “I don’t care whether you believe me or not. It doesn’t matter in the least. Now, do go away and let me sleep.”

  “Who,” I asked, “shot you?”

  “I don’t intend to tell you,” he said, smiling again. “Run along and get your breakfast.”

  With which he closed his eyes firmly and disregarded a further question or two, and when I emerged from freshening myself up with the aid of the mirror in the bathroom, he was apparently sound asleep. I drew the shades further down to keep the room cool, put a glass of fresh water on the table beside his bed, and tiptoed to the door. I remember the key in the lock caught my eye, and finally, feeling rather silly and ashamed, I locked the door behind me and put the key in my pocket.

  I felt sillier when I glanced along that wide, pleasant hall with its windows opening upon a placid summer morning, its worn old rugs, its open doors which gave glimpses of airy bedrooms, fresh and lovely in their delicate chintzes and crisp curtains. Along the wall opposite was a mirror, beautifully polished, and here and there were bookshelves laden with worn books which I learned later were the overflow from the generous library downstairs. No, decidedly it was not the kind of place where the thing Bayard had suggested could possibly occur.

  On the landing of the stairs I came upon a housemaid in fresh green chambray and snowy apron. She was on her knees polishing the steps and looked up to say a pleasant good-morning. Apparently she knew of my presence and my mission, for she showed no trace of surprise and told me breakfast would be served in a quarter of an hour. She was a rather plain girl, solid and very neat: exactly the housemaid one would expect Adela Thatcher to select. Her name was Florrie.

  After a placid breakfast with Miss Adela and Janice — Adela looking a bit more austere in gold-rimmed eyeglasses and crisp white linen, and Janice unbelievably lovely above the pink roses she brought to the breakfast table — during which the conversation was politely and blandly held to gardens without a word of Bayard or revolvers or wounds or doctors, I returned to my patient’s room.

  That day, which was Thursday, July seventh, I spent in his room or out on the small balcony. He slept most of the day, and I watched the various comings and goings of the household and thought of his incredible suggestion — statement, in fact — that someone in the family had tried to murder him. I decided against it. It was true that the accident had certain peculiar aspects, but none of them was exactly convincing. It occurred to me, too, that it was a little odd that Hilary had not asked a single question about the accident; he had not asked how it happened, or when it happened, or with what revolver, or didn’t Bayard know it was loaded, or made any of the obvious comments. But Miss Adela had already told him of the affair, and, at any rate, it was a trivial matter.

  The small balcony overlooked the rose gardens and part of the lawn, and as I lounged in the long steamer chair with which it was equipped I caught various glimpses of the household. A trellis ran up to the balcony, and the vines were laden with roses, and the whole place was almost unbearably fragrant. To this day when I smell sun-warmed roses I think of the Thatcher case — which is, when I come to think of it, a rather strange anomaly.

  Janice, slim and very lovely in pale green dimity with the sunlight on her warm dark hair, worked in the garden for some time, digging around the tall gladioluses, which were beginning to bloom, with competent, ungloved hands and directing, with a certain cool efficiency which I liked, a man who appeared to be a sort of gardener and handy-man and whose name I later found was Higby. Once Adela, followed by an old and too well fed bird dog, joined her, and the two talked for some time in what I thought was a rather agitated manner.

  And once during the morning the yellow roadster again sped up the drive. There were two occupants this time, a woman whom I surmised to be the Evelyn I had heard mentioned, Hilary’s wife, and a young man. They too talked to Janice for some time, and I had an opportunity to observe them lengthily, if not very closely. Evelyn was a tall, remarkably handsome woman of around forty, with smooth gold hair done in a simple knot on her neck, a brown face, a fine profile, and eyes that I found later were very dark blue. She too had a look of race; the well poised simplicity of manner, innately dignified yet simple and gracious and direct, which characterized the other Thatcher women. I found myself employing that ill-used and outdated word aristocrat again: it was the only word to describe the Thatchers.

  The young man who accompanied her and who lingered to talk to Janice when Evelyn Thatcher went into the house, bore such a striking resemblance to Evelyn that I thought at first he might be her son. As I looked closer, however, I saw that he was too old for that, and came to what was also a correct conclusion, that he was her brother. Later I knew his name was Allen — Allen Carick — and that he was on a visit in the Hilary Thatcher household up on the hill. If I had guessed what an important part he was to play in the strange and terrible drama that was even then, unknown to me, unfolding, I would have paid more attention to him. As it was I only noted him casually, although it did strike me that once when Janice scratched her hand on a thorn of the roses she was then cutting, he caught her hand and examined the scratch with rather more anxiety than the occasion demanded. And I was quite sure a bit of color came into Janice’s face, though it may have been due only to the heat of the sun.

  Dave Thatcher — who, of course, was Janice’s husband and younger brother to Adela and Hilary — did not appear at either lunch or dinner. At lunch I heard Emmeline tell Miss Adela that he had gone to the cemetery, which somehow increased the little mystery that was beginning to surround him. Especially when something Janice said told me that the cemetery referred to was the family burial plot and only a quarter of a mile or so from the house. Not exactly an all-day pilgrimage.

  And I must not forget Emmeline, who brought fresh linen to my patient’s room about noon. She was a dark, tall, unbelievably spare woman with iron-gray hair combed tightly back with old-fashioned side combs and a way of watching your mouth instead of your eyes which was quite comprehensible in view of her deafness but was not exactly nice. Not nice either was a curious way she had of twisting and working her hands, rasping her fingers eagerly and constantly against her palms, while otherwise standing rigidly still.

  She asked Bayard how he felt in the oddly harsh and inflectionless voice of the very deaf, nodded briefly as he shouted “Better,” gave me an extremely sharp look, and left, looking from the back rather like a remarkably tall black clothes-pin with a cap on its head.

  It was altogether, so far as I knew, a drowsy, pleasant day. The doctor paid us a brief visit shortly after lunch; Bayard had got over his garrulous spell and lapsed into a taciturn silence, and I napped in the steamer chair on the balcony most of the lazy, warm afternoon.

  Hilary came in for a moment after dinner, but made my patient only the briefest call; it began to rain about nine-thirty and at ten I prepared my patient for the night and, at his curt request, locked the door to the hall and settled myself again on the chaise longue. I felt decidedly resentful about that: he didn’t need night care at all, and I had anticipated an undisturbed rest in the cool bedroom next door.

  But after more years of nursing than I care to acknowledge I have grown accustomed to the whims of my patients. I made myself as comfortable as might be among the chintz-covered pillows. I had turned out all the lights in the bedroom and the adjoining bathroom, my patient appeared to be sound asleep, and the house, quiet all day, had sunk into a heavier, more poignant silence. Almost, I thought drowsily to myself, as if it were holding its breath.

  The balcony window was open, and I could hear
the soft sound of the falling rain, and the sweet fragrance of the roses filled the room. Through the misty darkness I could see the outline of the window, a long, faintly lighter rectangle. From some water spout rain dripped with soothing, dully beating monotony. An ideal night for sleep.

  But I couldn’t sleep.

  I turned and twisted. I took off my cap, and the hairpins out of my hair, but the cushion under my head was just as hard. I was too cool and fumbled for and drew over my feet a soft eiderdown. I was too warm and tossed it off again. I was thirsty and tiptoed to the bathroom, turning on the faucet with care so as not to wake my patient, but the drink did not satisfy me. I tried counting sheep, I tried making my vision a blank. I tried thinking of the virtues of my family, as someone advised me to do as a cure for insomnia. The latter expedient was almost my undoing. My accumulating rage reached a small climax with the thought of my cousin’s gift to me last Christmas — six pairs of gray woolen bed socks, knitted and inexpressibly spinsterish — and I found myself farther from sleep than ever. I became calmer, however, thinking of some of the more entertaining surgical operations at which I had assisted, and was pleasantly drifting off to sleep at last when a clock somewhere downstairs struck twelve in a deep muffled boom and roused me, and I stared at the window again and listened to the rain.

  It was some time after that that I became gradually aware that the balcony window was no longer a perfect rectangle, faintly lighter than the room. I had not heard a sound, but there was certainly a blacker shadow in it.

  I was sitting upright, leaning forward, straining my eyes and ears. It seemed to me the shadow moved and that I heard a faint sound. Someone was outside on the balcony, cautiously attempting to enter the room.