“Nothing, Florrie,” he said. “Nothing but coffee. Black, please.”
“Headache, Dave?” asked my patient a bit too solicitously.
“Rather,” said Dave, looking at his plate. He did look ill, pale and tired, with heavy eyelids. On seeing the two men facing each other, I realized that their resemblance was largely a family matter of bone structure and coloring. Dave’s face was flabbier than his cousin’s, more passive, less hard. His mouth was not thin and predatory, it was indecisive and faintly sullen. He continued: “I promised Allen to go fishing with him this afternoon, and I suppose he’ll be along soon.”
“Fish aren’t biting today,” said Bayard. “Too hot.”
“They always bite in Thatcher Lake,” said Janice. I don’t know why I felt that both she and Adela had not expected Dave to appear and that for some reason his presence violently disturbed them. Perhaps it was in the eagerness with which they clutched at conversational openings. “That lake is full of fish. They all but jump at you.”
“Here is your coffee, dear,” said Adela anxiously. “I don’t think you ought to go today. It will be frightfully hot and close there around the lake. It won’t do your head any good.”
“Nothing will,” said Dave.
“So you’re going with Allen,” said Bayard. He was looking at Janice instead of Dave, whom he apparently addressed. His face wore that sardonic look I was beginning to know. “Well — don’t fall in.”
Janice’s dark eyes dropped, and there was for an instant a kind of pinched look about her mouth. Dave said without much interest:
“Oh, I can swim. Anyway, I shouldn’t think it would worry you, Bayard.”
“Naturally not,” Bayard was beginning, when Adela definitely and firmly interrupted.
“Janice, before you go will you be sure to tell Higby to mow the west lawn this afternoon. Emmeline will be out in the summer kitchen making jelly, and she can keep an eye on him. He’s apt to loiter, these warm days, if he isn’t watched. You’d better eat some lunch, Dave, if you’re going to the lake this afternoon. Allen will be along pretty soon, I imagine. Don’t let me forget to ask if Evelyn heard from the boys today. My two nephews,” she said to me. “My brother Hilary’s sons. Splendid boys — really fine boys. Both away at school now. At some sort of camp. But they are coming home soon for summer holidays. I’m sure they’ll enjoy the lake, Dave. Hilary said, by the way, he had bought that old sport roadster of Frank Whiting’s for them to use. I was against it; but if they just manage not to break their necks they’ll enjoy it, I suppose. Coffee, Miss Keate? Florrie, coffee for Miss Keate, please.”
All so bland, all so carefully elegant — curious that her hands, blunt and white below their snowy organdy ruffles, shook a little, and she moved a piece of flat silver beside her plate in a constant pattern. But I daresay she could have kept up that gentle little patter indefinitely while Bayard sat there sipping iced tea and looking at the slice of lemon floating in it and then at Janice with an impenetrable expression in his yellow-gray eyes, and Janice, white as the cloth, avoiding Bayard’s eyes and trying to help.
Fortunately lunch was soon over, and shortly after Allen Carick, driving a battered old roadster which I judged to be the one recently purchased for the boys, arrived and presently left again with Dave beside him. Dave’s hat was pulled low over his eyes to avoid the glare of the sun, although Allen had no hat at all, his lean brown face exposed as if he liked it, and his sun-bleached hair shining.
At the last moment the dog (whose name, by the way, was Pansy) decided to go along, and waddled fatly down the drive in their wake, her long ears flopping and her tongue lolling, and had to be called back and forcibly restrained by Janice. She was, it seemed, a creature of temperament — the dog, I mean — and as I helped my patient upstairs to his own room for a rest, I could hear her yapping angrily from the library, where Janice had incarcerated her, and scratching pettishly at the closed door in a way which, in a creature less favored, would have brought instant reproof from Adela. I think she relaxed her housekeeping vigilance only for Pansy. And, possibly, for Dave.
“And now,” said Bayard Thatcher, when he was once more lying rather wearily on the bed in his own room, “I’m going to take a nap, and I want to be alone.”
“But I don’t like to leave you,” I protested. “It doesn’t seem quite —” I hesitated, thinking of the peaceful household, but said — “quite safe.”
He laughed.
“Entirely safe, I assure you. Look here. At the east edge of the lawn — you can see it from the window there — is a sort of arbor with some very comfortable chairs. Chairs you can stretch out and sleep in. It’s cool, shady, and quiet. Why don’t you go down there and get fresh air and rest at the same time?”
Afterward I wondered a little at his solicitude. Even at the time something said faintly in the back of my mind: Is he trying to get you out of the house? Why? But the suggestion was extremely attractive.
“If you are sure —”
“Perfectly sure. Run along, Miss Keate.”
Well, I took a book from my bag just in case I couldn’t actually sleep, and went, although as a rule I suspect arbors, which are apt to be rather dank places with vines that are too heavy and unexpected spiders dropping on one’s head and worms promenading over one’s ankles. But this one proved to be merely a shaded place on the lawn’s edge, open and pleasant, with gayly cushioned chairs and an unobstructed view of the whole front and east side of the house.
I settled myself drowsily and yielded to the dreamy mood induced by staring lazily across a sun-drenched lawn, listening with half an ear to the sound of the birds and the soothing whir of a lawnmower somewhere out of sight, and digesting an excellent lunch. After all, my terrors of the night might have been mostly imaginative; nothing sinister or dreadful could possibly take place in that tranquil household on that tranquil summer afternoon.
About two-thirty I saw Florrie emerge from the corner back of the house, dressed no doubt in her best for her afternoon out. She walked rapidly down a side path and disappeared toward town. It was very quiet and very warm, with the scent of the flowers in the sun and the mown grass mingling with a faint odor of boiling grapejuice which drifted around the house from the summer kitchen — which, by the way, was built out from the house, entirely separated from it, with a laundry in one end.
I was almost asleep when the front door banged. It was Janice, crisp and dainty in white, with a small white hat over her dark hair. She carried an enormous brown wicker basket over each arm, stopped among the flowers to fill one of the baskets with roses and tall blue Delphiniums, and then walked briskly to the garage. Presently she backed out a small coupé with the most expert precision, turned and drove down the drive and away, the flowers nodding in the seat beside her.
With Janice’s departure silence came again, a drowsy, warm silence which was only broken about a quarter of an hour later when the front door banged again. This time it was the dog Pansy, who’d apparently managed to release herself from the library and was bolting across the lawn and into the shrubbery. I was faintly amused to note that she had all the earmarks of a dog who’s been recently punished: her tail tucked in, her ears hugging her head, her legs making their best speed. She looked, in fact, as if she’d been kicked, which was absurd, for only Adela and my patient were in the house, and my patient was resting in his own room.
And a few minutes later Adela herself came out on the porch, closing the screened door gently behind her and putting up her parasol before she ventured from the shady porch into the heat of the sun. Idly I watched her dignified progress along the turf path to the road and the sidewalk to town. She looked cool and pleasant in her favorite lavender dotted-swiss, with soft frills about the throat and wrists and her eyeglasses dangling on a ribbon.
It was exactly three o’clock when she turned onto the sidewalk leading to town, and the serenity of complete silence, save for the soft whir of the lawnmower, again lay all about me. T
he peal of the telephone, which rang about fifteen minutes after Adela left, seemed particularly loud and sharp and demanding against the drowsy stillness. The windows of the house were open, of course, and the sound of the telephone so shrill and imperious that I started to my feet. However, it broke off abruptly in the middle of one of its peals and did not ring again, so I relaxed against my pillows once more. The thought did cross my mind that my patient must have answered it, for Emmeline was deaf, and out in the summer kitchen besides, but if Bayard was up and wandering about the house it couldn’t hurt him, and I was too listless to care.
Afterward they asked me if I had slept, even for a few moments, during that quiet sunny afternoon, but I knew I hadn’t. I lay there quiet, soaking in the peace and tranquillity that enfolded me, looking lazily at that gracious old house. But I did not sleep. I’m sure of that and always was. It does seem curious that I didn’t, when I was so tired from a wakeful night: it’s possible that some inner restlessness, some hidden foreboding kept me a little uneasy. But if so it was an entirely unacknowledged premonition. I am a reasonable woman, and my reason told me that the house was quiet and empty save for my sleeping patient. Emmeline was making grape jelly in the summer kitchen, and Higby mowing the lawn steadily around on the west lawn, and all was well.
At four o’clock — I know it was then, for I glanced at my watch and marveled how fast the afternoon was flying — Hilary turned in from the street and walked quickly along the turf path to the house. He looked hot and rather flushed from his walk, and as he stepped up on the porch he took off his hat, passed his handkerchief over his head, and without pausing to ring, opened the door and disappeared in the cool depths of the house. Ten minutes later he emerged, settled his hat on his head, and walked briskly away. I remember thinking that if he’d come to see my patient their interview must have been brief and calm, for there was not, so far as I could see, a shadow of agitation about Hilary’s complacent pink face.
He had no more than gone, however, when, coming from the opposite direction in which he had disappeared, the yellow roadster turned smoothly into the drive and stopped at the side of the house. It was Evelyn again at the wheel. She did not see me, but walked directly across the lawn to the porch, her tall figure graceful and handsome in her light summer frock, and her smooth gold head bare. She went at once into the house but emerged in only a moment or two, got into the roadster, and backed with some of Janice’s expert exactness out of the drive. I did notice that, once in the road, she drove toward town instead of going in the direction from which she’d come.
Those were the only interruptions during that long, lazy afternoon. After Evelyn’s departure the place sank again into its somnolent silence, with Higby’s lawnmower still going smoothly and methodically, if a trifle languidly, and the smell of boiling grapejuice growing stronger and more pungent. Once I whistled for the dog, but she seemed to have gone to sleep in some thicket and did not appear.
The shadows were beginning to slant long on the greens of the lawn, and I was thinking of rousing myself and returning to duty when the coupé swung again into the drive, and Janice and Adela got out. Janice carried her two wicker baskets, heavy now, directly into the house, but Adela lingered along the garden, saw me, and approached.
“Did you have a good rest?” she asked pleasantly.
“Very nice indeed. It’s been such a lazy, pleasant afternoon.”
“I like it under the trees, here. Our home is quite nice in the summer, I think. How good Emmeline’s jelly smells! We must have some of it at dinner. Somehow, it always tastes better when it’s just made. No, no, don’t trouble to come in now. It’s a long time till dinner, and I’m sure a nurse needs all the rest she can get.”
I watched her walk quietly across the lawn. She had almost reached the step when a scream arose within the house. It rose short and sharp, stabbing the peace like a thin knife. It was followed swiftly by other screams — all of them high and jerky and sharp.
The door flew open. Emmeline ran out, still screaming. Her white apron was dabbled with purple stains. Her arms were bare to the elbow, and she lifted purple hands and waved them jerkily.
“Help!” she screamed. “Murder!”
Adela stopped dead still, as if she’d been struck. The whir of the lawnmower stopped. Every bird hushed, and in the shocked silence the woman shrieked again:
“Murder! Murder! He’s shot all to pieces!”
CHAPTER IV
It was Bayard. We found him in the library. We stopped our headlong rush at the door. He was lying on the floor near the table. He was on his face, his neck twisted so queerly that you knew at once he was dead. I knew the dressing gown and his hair.
Adela, a granite woman with a gray-white face, walked across the rug, knelt, and turned him over. His face was untouched, his mouth open a little, a lock of hair across his forehead, his yellow eyes closed, his arrogant nose sharper. I knew that there was nothing I could do.
Things wavered and seemed to rock about me. But I was aware that Janice was standing beside me, her fingers digging into my arm, her whole body quivering. And that Higby was in the doorway staring with bulging eyes. And that Adela was trying to speak to me.
“Call Dr. Bouligny,” she gasped through blue lips. “Call him. There’s a telephone there. In Dave’s study.” Her eyes were two blank blue stones set in a granite face. I saw them change, lose their blankness, and become aware.
“No, no,” she said with a sort of gasp. “I’ll telephone. Help me, Emmeline.”
Emmeline bent stiffly and laid Bayard back on the rug, and Adela got clumsily to her feet, as if her muscles were drugged. I followed her, for she looked very near collapse. I reached the door in the end of the long library in time to hear her gasp into the telephone:
“Dr. Bouligny. Yes. Dr. Bouligny. Call him — hurry.”
There was a pause. Adela clutched the telephone and looked with unseeing blue eyes out of the window. The room was small, furnished simply with a desk, some chairs, a leather-covered lounge, and a good rug. On the rug at Adela’s feet lay a small white something. I suppose I bent, and picked it up, and looked at it merely to give myself something to do. It had looked rather like a tightly folded note, but as I got it into my fingers I found it was only a piece of newspaper wadded up tightly as if to make a sort of wedge.
“Daniel — Daniel, is it you? Yes, yes. Come at once. It’s Bayard. He’s — been shot. Killed. Hurry, Daniel.” I could hear the click of the other telephone. It was quite distinct, and I knew Dr. Bouligny had rung off, but Adela continued: “Burglars. There were burglars,” before she put down the telephone.
“Now Hilary,” she said in a dazed way. “Now I must call Hilary. No, no — Daniel will stop for him — Hilary must know —”
“Adela.” Janice was standing in the doorway, her face strained and tight, without beauty or life. “Where is Dave?”
Adela didn’t drop into a chair, but she leaned slowly against the desk.
“I don’t know. I don’t know. Janice, Janice, what will people say?”
“But they were fishing. Dave and Allen. Where are they now? Where’s Dave?”
Adela made a visible and pathetic effort to pull herself together. That was one of the two occasions when I saw her falter. Her face was still like gray chalk, but somehow she managed to assume that impenetrable cloak of dignity.
“They are probably still fishing. They’ll be back together soon. I must call Hilary. I’m convinced —” and how bravely she said it through her blue lips — “I’m convinced it was burglary.”
“Burglary! Why, Adela — do you suppose — I never thought —” Janice’s tight face became momentarily animated. “Could it be that?”
“I’m convinced it was burglary. Bayard came upon the burglar and was shot. You read of that happening every day in the papers. That’s what happened. The safe’s just back of you, Janice. Isn’t it open?”
“Why, no — no, it’s closed.”
“B
ut it must have been burglary. I’ll open it. First I’ll call Hilary.”
There were voices in the library. Janice turned.
“Here is Hilary now. With Dr. Bouligny.”
Dr. Bouligny was kneeling. Hilary was at his side looking down, his plump face the color of ashes. In the doorway stood Evelyn, dreadfully pale under her tan. Higby had vanished, but Emmeline remained, twisting her purple hands and watching Dr. Bouligny’s mouth.
“Hilary —” said Adela.
“Good God, Adela, this is a terrible thing! How did it happen? Who did it? Who found him? Where is Dave?”
“Dave is fishing with Allen Carick. They aren’t back yet. Is there nothing you can do, Daniel?”
Dr. Bouligny got heavily to his feet. He was a fattish, dark man with a good-natured red face and clothes that always bagged. His face now looked mottled.
“There’s nothing to be done. He’s dead. Who did it?”
“How long has he been dead?” asked Hilary sharply.
“I don’t know. I can’t tell exactly.” The doctor paused thoughtfully and added: “You see, it’s so hot this afternoon.”
“Oh,” gasped Evelyn. She sank into a chair as if her knees refused to hold her and said in a small muffled voice: “What will people say?”
Dr. Bouligny glanced quickly at Hilary and then at Adela.
“It’s pretty bad. But I was afraid of this —”
“It’s a plain case of suicide,” interrupted Hilary quickly. His authoritative, slightly pompous manner was returning. “It’s a plain case of suicide, and no one can prove it isn’t.”
“Suicide?” said Dr. Bouligny doubtfully, his large head tipped a little to one side as he studied the tragic huddle at his feet. “Well —”
Evelyn rose suddenly, snatched a scarf from a divan, and laid it swiftly and carefully over Bayard.
“You ought to move him. It isn’t decent to just leave him there. Like that. On the floor. After all — it’s Bayard.”
“Wait. No. We’ll have to let the sheriff see him, too, just as we found him,” said Dr. Bouligny.
Murder by an Aristocrat Page 4