Murder by an Aristocrat

by Mignon G. Eberhart

  Ignoring Janice’s clasp on my arm and the unconscious appeal in her dark eyes, I left the two in the garden, crossed the quiet green lawn where the shadows were growing longer as sunset approached, and entered the cool polished hall. From the little morning room I caught the steady boom of Mrs. Whiting’s voice, and as I went to the stairway Hilary came out of the library, saw me, gave me what I thought was an unreasonably annoyed look — after all, I could scarcely help being some place, and the stairway was certainly an inoffensive spot — and backed into the library again.

  No one was about upstairs. The letter was still where I had replaced it, tucked carefully out of sight in my instrument bag. I slipped it into my pocket and went into the hall again. Down toward the back, Florrie, formal now in her afternoon black, whisked out of a door with a stack of towels over one arm. I approached her, disregarding the far from flattering gesture with which she flung the arm with the towels on it in front of her like a shield.

  “Where,” I said with dignity, “is Miss Janice’s room?”

  Florrie stepped sidewise into a convenient doorway.

  “East side front. Second door from the windows,” she said with brevity, and vanished, closing the door firmly behind her.

  East side front. Second door from the windows.

  After a moment during which I rather felt that Florrie was listening from the other side of the door for my retreating footsteps, I walked slowly and thoughtfully toward the front of the hall — past my former patient’s door, past the stair well, past the long mirror. It had been Janice, then — Janice who had watched me, Janice who must have tried to enter Bayard’s room that strange night.

  Well, I would return the letter.

  Cautiously, feeling guilty in spite of my honorable errand, I reached the door, opened it, and entered. I glanced backward down the hall as I did so and was a little disconcerted to see a white cap flash out of sight around a doorway, but continued.

  I did not stop to look about me, though one brief glance gave me a picture of the pleasant room, wide and cool and somehow, in its lack of over-adornment, a bit austere and the more beautiful thereby. I went directly to the desk. On its darkly gleaming surface was a vase, some kind of gray-white pottery it was, filled with an enormous cluster of the deep crimson roses I had seen Janice caress there in the garden. I lifted the vase a bit and slipped the letter barely under its edge; it could not be blown off the desk by any stray current of air and it was very prominent against the dark wood. Then I left.

  The whole thing had taken scarcely a moment.

  Once in my own room I left the door ajar so I could see Janice pass on her way to her room. When I had seen her enter her room I should feel that the letter was safe in her hands again.

  But in a moment or two Florrie went past. Vaguely uneasy, I started toward the door. If she entered the room — if she found and looked at Janice’s letter — I was on the very point of returning to Janice’s room, if need be to rescue the letter, when there were light footsteps along the hall, and Janice at last passed. I caught just a glimpse of her light green frock and her dark hair.

  I stepped into the hall in time to see her enter her room. If Florrie had not preceded her all would be well.

  But Florrie had. There were voices, not loud but audible in the quiet of the hall. I walked slowly along the hall. And I heard Janice say distinctly:

  “Put that down at once. You will regret this, Florrie.”

  And Florrie said, “I didn’t read a word. I didn’t know — it was here — I was tidying up the — I thought —”

  “You may go.”

  To escape Florrie I retired somewhat hastily to Adela’s room, the door of which stood conveniently open behind me. Unfortunately Florrie followed me into the room, and I was obliged further to retreat to the bathroom, where I sat on the edge of the tub and listened to the girl moving about the adjoining room. I became so lost in thought of Janice that I did not note her departure. It was with a decided shock that I was suddenly aware that with her exit someone else had entered Adela’s room. That the door to the hall was closed with decision. And that someone was saying:

  “… and get him away before someone finds out he shot Bayard.”

  CHAPTER IX

  It was Evelyn’s voice.

  I sat down again on the bathtub.

  No one answered her for a moment. There was a sound of motion, as if someone sat down on a chair, and I heard a window shade being pulled. Then a man — it was Hilary — spoke.

  “What do you think, Adela?”

  Adela and Evelyn and Hilary. A confidential family conference, and I was sitting on the bathtub hearing every word of it. I started to make my presence known. And Adela said:

  “It’s the nurse. She’s our danger.”

  “That’s right. If we can silence her — We ought never to have got her here, in the first place.”

  “I know it now,” said Adela. “But at the time I thought it was the best thing to do. After what happened. I thought she would stand between them, in a sense. Bayard refused to leave; I couldn’t send him away sick — after that.”

  “But I don’t like her,” said Hilary in a peevish way. “She makes me nervous. Always about where you don’t expect her.”

  There was a short pause during which I wondered what Hilary would do if he knew where I was at that moment; then he continued, still rather fretfully:

  “Why didn’t you let her leave right away after he was killed? I don’t understand you, Adela. She’s right here among us, seeing our every move. How long do you think we can keep her thinking it was a burglar shot him?”

  “But it was a burglar who shot him,” said Adela stubbornly. “And think, Hilary, how mad it would have been to send her away unconvinced. I can see doubt in her eyes. I could see it yesterday afternoon, there in the library. We’ve got to keep her here. Where we can watch her.”

  “Indefinitely?” asked Hilary unpleasantly.

  “Don’t talk that way, Hilary,” said Evelyn sharply. “Adela’s quite right about it. You can manage the sheriff, and Adela can manage Dan Bouligny, and all of us together can face down the talk in the county. It’s that nurse who is our problem. It’s she who threatens us. But I don’t know what we are going to do about it. Of course, we can’t keep her here forever. She keeps saying she must go; I think she suspects. You’ll have to think up things for her to do, Adela, to keep her busy.”

  “Don’t you see, Hilary,” said Adela. “If we can convince her that it was done by a burglar somebody — anybody but one of the family, we will have nothing further to fear. If we can keep her here somehow and manage to prove to her that no one in the family had — had anything to do with Bayard’s death, we have, practically speaking, convinced the world.”

  “It won’t be easy,” said Hilary. “She’s got the sharpest eyes I ever saw. But you may be right. I didn’t exactly like the way she looked at me this morning. Do you realize that if she hadn’t been sitting in that confounded arbor all yesterday afternoon we wouldn’t have a thing to worry about? Nobody else knew I was here; nobody would have known Evelyn was here; a burglar could have entered by the front door. Oh, it’s that damn nurse that’s got everything in a snarl.” He paused and after a moment added, “As it is, I expect any moment to hear somebody’s been saying I killed him. Everybody knows we never liked each other.”

  There was another pause, and then Adela said in a still way:

  “Hilary — you and Bayard hadn’t had any particular trouble about anything, had you?”

  “No,” he said explosively. “Good God, no! What do you mean, Adela?”

  “I don’t mean anything, Hilary. I only want to be sure you had had no trouble. You see, even if everyone does know you were not friendly, still, they can have nothing definite to say. No definite cause, I mean, for you — for you —”

  “For me to have shot him, I suppose you mean, Adela,” blurted Hilary disagreeably. Evelyn murmured warningly: “Now, Hilary — now, be c
areful,” and Hilary went on, “Well, get this into your head, Adela. I didn’t shoot him. I always hated him, and you know why. And he hated me. But I didn’t shoot him.”

  “Look out, Hilary,” said Adela coolly. “Your face is terribly red. Remember your blood pressure.”

  “Blood pressure, hell,” said Hilary. “Do you think I’m going to sit here and let even you accuse me of murdering a man? There are limits, Adela —”

  “Hilary!” said Evelyn sharply. “You are forgetting yourself. Adela’s the best friend you’ve got, and you know it. And anyway — maybe there was a burglar. There are the diamonds, you know.”

  “The diamonds!” cried Hilary. “Yes, and where are they? That’s another thing I don’t understand about this. Dave says he knows nothing of them. They undoubtedly were gone from the safe when Adela opened it there right after the murder. Those diamonds are worth a lot. We’ve got to get hold of them.”

  “To my notion,” said Evelyn bluntly, “the disappearance of the diamonds is the only hopeful aspect of the whole situation. I don’t want to know what’s happened to them. And the nurse was there and saw with her own eyes that they were actually gone. I think, like Adela, that it’s worth the price.”

  “You women,” said Hilary hopelessly, “are crazy. Sometimes I think I’m crazy too. You insist that there was a burglar and that he stole the diamonds and that you’re glad of it. In the next breath you practically accuse me of killing Bayard, and then you —”

  “Hilary.” It was Adela, her voice lower than usual and very quiet, and so stripped of its usual affectation that it seemed indecently bare and significant. “Hilary, what did you and Bayard talk of when you came here yesterday afternoon?”

  “Why, I — that is, we — we talked of — I don’t know exactly.” He stopped, floundering, cleared his throat, and said, “Why do you want to know, Adela?”

  “Because,” said Adela slowly, “that’s what people will want to know. Are you quite sure, Hilary, that you —” she paused, and it was very silent before she continued — “that you talked to him at all?”

  I could hear him spring to his feet and his quick footsteps on the floor.

  “What do you mean by that, Adela? I swear I didn’t shoot him. I didn’t kill him. I had no reason to kill him. You — you are driving me mad!” His voice was shaking with rage and a kind of fright.

  “Are you sure,” said Adela, “that you had no reason?”

  “Adela, you are driving me out of my senses. You make it sound as if I’d sneaked into the house and shot him dead before he could call for help or defend himself. And I didn’t. I tell you, I didn’t!” His voice had lifted as if he were approaching hysteria.

  “Now then, Hilary, you must learn to control yourself.” It was Evelyn, speaking with the infuriating coolness of a long-married wife. “You’ll have a stroke if you keep on like this. Look at your face there in the mirror. For heaven’s sake, cool down a little. Adela hasn’t accused you of anything. She only asked you to tell her what you talked about. That ought to be easy.”

  “What did he say over the phone to you, Adela?” asked Hilary.

  “Scarcely a word,” said Adela. “Just ‘yes’ and ‘all right.’ You didn’t even speak to him, Evelyn, when you stopped for Hilary?”

  “Not a word,” said Evelyn steadily.

  “Didn’t he even hear you come to the door?”

  “No,” said Evelyn. “No. He didn’t hear me. I saw Hilary had gone, so I didn’t linger.”

  “Oh, Evelyn,” cried Adela, suddenly losing her customary deliberation of manner and speaking with a sort of burst, “why don’t you tell me the truth? There is something you and Hilary are keeping from me. I know it. I feel it. You must tell me. We can only save ourselves by knowing everything. If you saw anything — know anything —”

  “Nothing, Adela. Nothing,” said Evelyn. “You are nervous. You —”

  “Nervous, nothing!” cried Adela with a sharp fury of which I shouldn’t have believed her capable. “You treat me like an old woman. And it’s my house. And my family. And I’ve got to know.”

  “Get her a drink of water, Evelyn,” said Hilary. “Now — now, Adela —”

  I lost the rest of his admonition. “Get her a drink of water.” Evelyn would be at the bathroom door in another moment. A purely primitive terror gripped me. They had said I was a danger. They were implacable. What would they do to me if they discovered I had heard every damning word they’d said!

  Then common sense returned, and I realized they couldn’t do anything. And yet — couldn’t they? There was Bayard.

  My eyes were going frantically about the small room and discovering that a flea would have had difficulty hiding for long in the glittering expanse of porcelain and white walls, let alone a woman of not inconsiderable height and a weight that — well, never mind my weight. Even the shower was caged in shining glass. And the door began to open.

  It opened several inches. I cannot describe my feeling as I watched it.

  And in the very nick of time Hilary, from the bedroom, said:

  “No, Evelyn, here’s some sherry. That will be better. Here, Adela, drink this. You ought not to overtax your heart like that.”

  Evelyn moved away from the door; I could feel rather than hear her withdrawal. And the door, left to itself, swung gently and slowly to its original position. But my heart was pounding so heavily that for a moment or two I actually could not hear what they were saying in the next room.

  “… all nervous and upset, and no wonder,” Hilary was saying when I regained my senses. “We know damn well that somebody in the family killed him. And it’s not a nice thing to know. Ours is not a big family. But all this talk’s doing no good. We’ve got to get Dave away from here. Before the nurse gets onto things.”

  “What’s your plan about the nurse?” asked Evelyn. “You do feel better, don’t you, Adela?”

  “I don’t feel ill at all,” said Adela crisply. “And I don’t want Dave to leave just now. He’s not well, and I think he’s terribly depressed over Bayard’s death. But about the nurse. I think I can manage her. You see, if I can prove to her that it must have been the burglar — as, of course, it was,” she interpolated hurriedly — “that no one of the family killed him, then we’ll be safe. No troublesome witness to bob up later against us. And I think I can.”

  “It won’t be easy,” said Hilary thoughtfully. “I wonder if Bayard told her anything before he died. Do you suppose he did? I wonder —” he paused and went on finally — “I wonder if she knows who shot him.”

  “I’ve wondered that, too,” said Evelyn. “It seems to me she’s got a sort of knowing look. You weren’t too careful what you said at breakfast about the inquest.”

  “But we didn’t mention him.”

  “I wasn’t there,” said Adela. “What was it?”

  “Nothing at all,” said Hilary in a blustering way, as if he had been called to account and felt guilty.

  “Only enough to let her know that you were managing the inquest to suit yourself. The veriest child would have known you were trying to hide something. You and Dr. Dan. Where were you this morning, Adela? I thought you were asleep until I came up here after breakfast, and you had gone. Poor old Pansy looked like she’d lost her last friend.”

  “I had just gone for a little walk,” said Adela blandly. “I needed some fresh air. I woke up feeling stuffy. What about Dave, now? I don’t really like him to leave just now.”

  “He’s got to leave,” said Hilary. “He’ll give himself away.”

  “Hilary!” said Adela sharply. “You don’t think Dave killed Bayard?”

  There was a long silence. Then Hilary said with difficulty:

  “No, Adela. No. But we all know he tried to kill him the other night. It wasn’t his fault Bayard dodged and the bullet caught him in the shoulder. Dave would have shot again and killed him then and there if you hadn’t interfered. It’s lucky you heard and got there in time to grab Dave’s han
d. Talk him out of it. I think Dave must have been out of his senses.”

  “But he didn’t kill him that night,” said Adela. She spoke with accentuated care and slowness, as if her mouth were stiff. “And yesterday, when Bayard was actually killed, Dave and Allen were together all afternoon. That proves it wasn’t Dave, Hilary. That proves it. You dare not call your own brother a murderer. And I won’t have him sent away.”

  There was a knock at the door, and without waiting for answer someone opened it.

  “There are ways,” Evelyn was saying. “People have been silenced —” when her voice broke off sharply. I could feel the sudden silence and restraint in the room beyond. Then someone moved and Adela said with a sort of relief in her voice:

  “Oh, it’s you, Emmeline. What is it?”

  “Some newspaper men from the city, ma’am. They want to take some pictures and ask you some questions.”

  “Send them away at once. Tell them I can’t see them.”

  “Wait, Adela. You are making a mistake. We can’t afford to antagonize the press,” said Hilary heavily. “Tell the gentlemen, Emmeline, that we’ll see them. Can you bear it, Adela?”

  “You are quite right, Hilary,” said Adela. “Just let me look at myself in the mirror. Do you want some powder, Evelyn? Your eyes are rather red. Better touch them with water.”

  “Hurry up,” said Hilary impatiently. “But, for heaven’s sake, be careful what you say. Better let me do the talking.”

  “My dear Hilary,” said Adela somewhat waspishly. “Nothing would suit me better. Come, Evelyn.”

  I heard them leave. I heard the diminishing murmur of voices, the rustle of footsteps on rugs and of Adela’s skirts.

  Even then it was a moment or two before I dared peer through the crack of the door. The room was empty.

  I rose and did not draw a free breath until I was safe in my own room.