Murder by an Aristocrat

by Mignon G. Eberhart

  There wasn’t much choice: from a history of the Thatcher Family, a volume of Drummond’s sermons, and The Last of the Mohicans, I chose the latter as being livelier and reflected inwardly that whoever of the Thatchers had collected that splendid library downstairs it was not, in all probability, Adela.

  But the green and savage forest failed to charm, and though I read steadily and stubbornly onward I found my thoughts holding to the Thatcher problem to such a degree that once I read Janice instead of Alice and another time found I had skipped an entire page — and an important page, which left Cora at the river’s brim in very equivocal circumstances indeed. But Adela did not note my slight lapses; she lay there staring at the ceiling, pulling her turquoise beads through her fingers, thinking, I felt, rather desperately while I tried to retrieve my errors by reading with increased expression and feeling.

  Finally she said to me:

  “I’ve been thinking about Florrie, Miss Keate. You may stop reading; yes, thank you, that was very nice, I’m sure. Very soothing,” she said with a politeness which, I must say, left me a bit dashed; I have always felt that I read aloud rather well — particularly the more dramatic portions. “You see, there’s no telling what Florrie is apt to think about — about that hat. Janice’s hat, you know. And Florrie is a very stupid girl and a talkative one. If she gets some silly notion in her head, it will go straight to her mother, and the whole town will know it in half a day. I think I’d better speak to Florrie at once. Tell her — something; anything to hold her tongue. I shall rest better when I’ve done so. Would you call her, Miss Keate? I daresay everyone else has gone to bed. It’s been very quiet in the house for some time. Florrie is probably asleep by this time. But I think you’d better wake her.”

  “Very well.” I replaced the book on the shelf. It had grown very quiet as I read; the moonlight was white and still on the lawns outside the windows and the great trees hushed and black.

  “Where is her room?”

  “On the third floor. At the back of the hall is a stairway leading to the third floor. Her room is on the east side of the third-floor hall; the gable room. You can find it without any difficulty. Don’t be long, Miss Keate. I feel — a little nervous, somehow, uneasy. I’m sure I’ll feel better after I’ve talked to Florrie.”

  The wide hall was quiet, deserted. The night light only faintly illuminated its dim length. The rest of the household had apparently gone to sleep, for there was no sound of voices or motion in the whole house. The silence was so deep that, when I passed the stair well, I could actually hear the great clock ticking slowly and deliberately downstairs. I walked rather quickly down the hall, past all those closed doors. Sure enough, at its end, running up a few steps to a sharp landing at right angles to the hall, I found the stairway leading to the third floor. At the same angle were other stairs leading down to, presumably, the back part of the house; at the time the house was built a back stairway was almost of itself an evidence of gentility.

  Something about the sleeping house and the quiet shadowy hall made me, too, feel uneasy. And an unkind trick of memory brought to me suddenly a mental vision of Bayard Thatcher — Bayard Thatcher, shattered and dead on the library rug. The silent house knew and held the secret of his death.

  I settled my cap and went up the stairs, feeling my way along by clinging to the railing until I emerged upon a narrow passage at the top along which white fingers of moonlight stretched ghostly.

  I had no difficulty following Adela’s directions. The door that must be Florrie’s was closed, and I knocked and knocked again.

  There was no answer. The moonlight was white on the floor. The whole place was silent. There was not a breath of sound anywhere.

  I knocked once more; louder this time, and wishing myself back in Adela’s softly lit room. Or, better, my own room, with the door locked. With the door locked! Hadn’t Florrie said she always locked her door? She’d said other things, too. Silly things. Absurd things.

  “Florrie,” I called. My voice was not too steady. I said more clearly, “Florrie. Miss Thatcher wants you.”

  There was still no reply.

  I think it was the complete deathlike silence that frightened me, rather than the memory of her stolid, foolish voice saying, “murdered in my sleep — murdered in my sleep.” But whatever it was I was suddenly in a panic. She ought to answer. She ought to come to open the door. My last knock resounded in the still passage.

  All at once I was trembling. My hands were shaking as I tried the door, pushed against it, and rattled the doorknob. It was locked, and there was still no sound from the girl inside.

  Then, quite as if my body were acting of itself, involuntarily, without my consent or council, I was flying down that narrow stairway, groping for the railing, stumbling, whirling around the turn and down the long hall. I’m sure I didn’t cry out, but perhaps my footsteps roused the uneasy house. From some desire to save Adela I found myself at Janice’s door rather than at Adela’s, knocking and sobbing out something.

  She flung open the door, her face as white as her nightdress.

  “What is it? Miss Keate —”

  “The keys,” I said. “Florrie. Something’s wrong. We’ll need the key to her room.”

  She did not stop to question me. She snatched a negligee from a chair.

  “Adela’s got the keys. I’ll go —”

  We were in Adela’s room, meeting her shocked eyes, grasping the keys. We were running along the hall again. Hilary, in purple-striped pajamas, bounced out of a door as we passed, panted something I didn’t hear, and followed. I was vaguely conscious that Evelyn was there, too, for I remember her long yellow braids swinging beside me as Janice fitted the key in the lock. We had some trouble getting it to turn. Florrie’s key had been left in the other side, and it was Hilary who finally managed it. By that time Emmeline was in the hall, too: a bizarre figure in a bright Japanese crêpe kimono and her hair in curlers.

  But we did get the door unlocked. I was the first one through it.

  The moonlight streamed whitely into the room. It was so radiant and bright that the figure of the girl on the bed was very clear.

  There was a sort of hush back of me. Then Hilary said in a high, squeaky voice:

  “Oh, my God! Oh, my God! The girl’s dead!”

  Well, she wasn’t dead.

  She was and is still, so far as I know, alive. But she was as near death as are few people in this world who yet live. She was already in that vast shadowy borderland whence there are so few returns.

  We were barely in time.

  I did not, intentionally, play a heroic part in bringing Florrie back to life. But I was trained. I knew what to do. I knew what, after hunting for that feeble flicker that was her pulse, to look for. And I found it on the table beside her. The box of aspirin tablets I had given her stood there. It was open. But the tablets were not aspirin. I looked, tasted.

  “Make some strong black coffee as quick as you can. Call the doctor. Help me get her out of bed. On her feet. The girl’s nearly dead with veronal.”

  How we worked, Evelyn and Janice and I, with Hilary hurrying to the telephone, and Emmeline to the kitchen for coffee, and Adela panting upstairs to get us cold towels and watch us with blank blue eyes while we walked that inert burden up and down, up and down, holding her sliding weight somehow between us. Hilary was back soon, puffing from the climb, telling us to do what we were already doing and that Dr. Bouligny was on the way. And I remember how haggard and old he looked, huddled in a shabby old dressing gown, his hair rumpled and untidy; Hilary, whose finical tidiness often reminded me of a sleek cat.

  We worked furiously; well-nigh frantically. The night was warm and our faces glistened. It took supreme physical exertion to keep the girl moving. It was dreadfully difficult to force the coffee down her throat, and for a long time after that the aroma of strong black coffee made me feel ill and faint. I was only barely conscious of Dr. Bouligny’s arrival, and of the hidden horror back of Ad
ela’s bleak blue eyes when she told him as far as she could what had happened.

  But we did save the girl. Although I suppose only I and the doctor knew how narrowly we had saved her.

  It was approaching dawn when Dr. Bouligny said, “She’ll do now,” and sent Janice and Evelyn away to get some rest. Adela he had sent back to bed long ago, and Hilary had dropped dully into a chair in the corner of the room from which he watched us with weary, troubled eyes.

  “Miss Keate has worked harder than anybody,” said Janice. “I’m not tired. Let her go and get some sleep, and I’ll stay with Florrie.”

  “You’ll have to go to the funeral,” said Dr. Bouligny brusquely. “Miss Keate can rest later in the day. Go along, child, and try to sleep some. You look as if you’re about to drop. Now then, Miss Keate — you’d better stay a moment, Hilary — how did you happen to give this girl veronal?”

  “But I didn’t,” I said. “I didn’t have any veronal.”

  “This is the box you gave Florrie, isn’t it? Adela said it was. And it’s your handwriting on the label. It says aspirin, but —”

  “Oh, that’s the box I gave her,” I said sharply. “Of course it is. I always carry aspirin in a flat box like that. And there was aspirin in the box. I could not make such a mistake. There are a hundred ways I can prove it.”

  “But there are veronal tablets in it now,” persisted Dr. Bouligny. “Come, Miss Keate. If you made a mistake, I know it was an accident, and no one regrets it more than you. I also know that you don’t as a rule — in fact, I feel confident that you almost never make a mistake. And since we have saved the girl, there’s no irreparable harm done.”

  “But I tell you I did not put veronal tablets in that box!”

  “Now, Miss Keate,” said Hilary anxiously, “don’t get all upset about this. Nobody’s blaming you. But don’t you see the tablets — the veronal tablets, I mean — are in it now? When did you last open that pill box?”

  “The day before I came here. I filled it with aspirin tablets, labeled it and put it in my instrument bag. Nobody could ever confuse aspirin tablets and veronal tablets. And I didn’t touch it again until Florrie asked for aspirin last night and I took the box out and handed it to her. If veronal is there now instead of aspirin, as it is, somebody in this house put it there.”

  “Nonsense, Miss Keate! Why should anyone do that? I hope you aren’t suggesting that someone tried to — to kill Florrie. That isn’t reasonable. Aside from the fact that no one in the house — oh, it’s quite absurd even to consider it! — had any reason to kill Florrie, nobody could have known ahead of time that she would have a headache and wouldn’t be able to find as common a thing as aspirin anywhere in the house and would finally come to you for it and get the veronal instead. And that she would take enough of it to kill her. Really, Miss Keate, that’s going too far!” He ended with a sort of explosion, his face very pink and his eyes ugly.

  “Keep your temper, Hilary,” said Dr. Bouligny quickly. “Don’t get excited like that. Miss Keate doesn’t think anyone tried to kill Florrie with veronal. That would be altogether too far-fetched. But, Miss Keate, who has had access to your instrument bag?”

  “Everyone in the house, I imagine. I left it in the bathroom off Bayard Thatcher’s room until I was asked to care for Miss Thatcher, immediately after his death. Then I went into his room and got the bag and left it in the bathroom adjoining Miss Thatcher’s room.”

  “Was that entirely safe?” asked Hilary unpleasantly.

  “Safe! I don’t see why not! There’s nothing in it but dressings, bandage scissors, thermometers, a bottle of alcohol, a rubber sheet —”

  “There, there, now, Miss Keate. Mr. Thatcher isn’t accusing you of carelessness. Your own accusation that someone in this house removed the harmless aspirin in that box and substituted veronal is far more serious. Have you any real reason to suspect your instrument bag has been tampered with?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s that? What do you mean?” cried Hilary.

  “I — it was — well, I know someone — tampered with it.”

  “Who? How do you know?”

  “I found something in it. Something — unimportant. I restored it to its owner.”

  Hilary was leaning forward; his face faintly purple.

  “You’ll have to explain yourself, Miss Keate. You have said too much not to say more.”

  “I’ll do no such thing. That had nothing to do with the veronal. As a matter of fact, every single one of you had access to it. And your own sister suggested that I give Florrie aspirin.”

  “My sister! Janice?”

  “No.”

  “Adela! Good God, Miss Keate, you are out of your senses.” Hilary had leaped to his feet, a bizarre fat figure in agitated purple stripes. “Do you hear her, Dan? She’s out of her senses. She’s a dangerous woman. She ought to be removed. Put where she can’t do any damage. Adela! She says Adela gave Florrie veronal.”

  “I said nothing of the kind,” I cried, shocked. “I meant nothing of the kind. I said she suggested I give Florrie veronal — I mean, aspirin — and I did. I wanted you to understand that I didn’t offer it to her voluntarily. I had nothing at all to do with it. Somebody here put veronal in that box. I didn’t. And I’ll not be accused of it.”

  “There now, Miss Keate,” said Dr. Bouligny heavily. “Do cool down, Hilary. You ought not permit yourself to get in such rages.”

  “Not permit myself,” spluttered Hilary, quite beside himself. “When she sits and looks at me like that. I’ll not —” said Hilary — “be looked at.”

  “Well, I don’t see how you are going to help it,” said Dr. Bouligny rather wearily. “What was it you found in your instrument bag, Miss Keate? To whom did you return it?”

  That took the wind out of my sails; it is very difficult for a nurse of many years’ experience to refuse to answer a doctor’s question.

  I looked past the narrow bed where Florrie lay, her face more natural, her breath coming and going heavily, out through the gable window. Dawn was touching the treetops with gold, and I thought of the other two dawns I had seen in that house. A cool breath of morning air billowed the ruffled curtain and touched my hot, tired face. It had been a dreadful night, a night to sap one’s energies, to test one’s stamina, to try one’s courage to the utmost.

  Dr. Bouligny was watching me anxiously, his heavy hand rubbing his dark, unshaven chin. Hilary was breathing heavily, his face still flushed, and his eyes narrow and wary.

  “Come, Miss Keate,” urged Dr. Bouligny. “Who was it?”

  “What does it matter?” I said wearily. “We’ve saved the girl. That’s the main thing.”

  “What was it you found in your bag? Tell us at once.” Hilary’s voice was sharply commanding. It annoyed me.

  “I prefer,” I said loftily, “not to tell. It was nothing that could have any connection at all with this. I returned it to the owner, and even the owner does not know I saw — found it. I’m sorry I spoke of it. I only did so to prove that my instrument bag was quite accessible to other people besides myself. I refuse to say any more. If I were questioned in a court of law, of course —”

  Hilary’s face flushed darker.

  “You’d tell, then, I don’t doubt,” he said nastily. “Well, this isn’t going to get to a court of law. Not this trouble with Florrie. And as for anything else you may know about our family affairs, nurse, you aren’t going to have a chance to tell that in a court of law either. You can be sure of that.”

  “Hilary,” said Dr. Bouligny in some exasperation, “I’ll swear you go out of your way to be a plain damn fool. Your temper and your tongue are going to get you into bad trouble some day, if they haven’t already. Can’t you see that you are alienating —”

  I didn’t see that Dr. Bouligny was making matters any better. Perhaps it was fortunate that Janice interrupted just when she did. She said, “Hilary,” and we all turned and saw her in the doorway. I wondered how long s
he’d been standing there. I could tell nothing from her steady dark eyes and her white face.

  “Adela wants you,” she went on. “You, too, Dr. Dan. I’m afraid she’ll collapse if we don’t get her to sleep. She’s determined to go through with the funeral. It’s morning. You’d better go to her at once.”

  The two men pulled themselves to their feet. Dr. Bouligny murmured a direction or two about Florrie and said he’d be back later in the day, and not to let her get pneumonia. He did have the grace to add a sort of apology about overworking me and that it was fortunate I was there and had known what to do for the girl. Hilary said nothing. I could hear the muffled sound of their voices as they went down the narrow stairway, and I caught the words “dangerous enemy” in Hilary’s voice. I had no doubt he referred to me.

  Janice had walked to the window and was standing there, her back to me. There was a long moment of silence with the sound of the descending footsteps of the men growing fainter. It was a peaceful silence, with the cool summer dawn filling the room, dispelling the horror of the dreadful, hot night. Janice’s voice, when it came, was calm too, but it was the calm of great weariness and of final surrender. She said:

  “So you knew about the letter. My letter.”

  CHAPTER XI

  The unconscious girl on the bed moaned stupidly, and I went to her.

  Presently I said:

  “Yes.”

  “And you returned it to me? Placed it there on my desk?”

  “Yes.”

  “It was — you found it there in your instrument bag?”

  “Yes.”

  “And — read it?” There was pain in the reluctant question, pain and pride. Janice could always face things. She was standing quiet; her dark hair hung down her back like a child’s — it was not long and it ended in a soft, dark confusion of loose curls. The dressing gown she wore, the pale yellow chiffon in which I had first seen her, fell softly about her slender young figure. I longed to say I had not read the letter.