Murder by an Aristocrat

by Mignon G. Eberhart

  “Yes I read it.”

  “But you didn’t tell. You didn’t tell.”

  “No. I’ve never felt that duty demands a free tongue.”

  “Then you don’t think — you don’t think I’m —” She stopped. It was a moment before I realized she was trying to keep back sobs. The night we had had was enough to break even Janice’s steel-like self-control; I did not think the less of her.

  “No,” I said. “No, I don’t think anything, you poor child!”

  She turned then, very slowly, tears in her dark eyes and on her soft cheeks.

  I squirmed. I don’t like tears, and besides, there was a lump in my throat that hurt. I said:

  “We are both exhausted after such a night. Sit down and we’ll talk quietly. I’ve had enough of emotions for one night.”

  She gave me a long look.

  “No,” she said. “I’ve said enough. One reaches a point where one must talk. It was good of you not to tell. I’m trying, you see, to do what I think is right. But I’d better tell you. You see, I had written that letter to explain to Allen how I felt. It was so difficult to tell him. And Bayard found the letter. Took the letter, rather; saw me place it in the pocket of Allen’s coat and deliberately took it. Somehow, though, he had managed to get only the second sheet of it — but that was enough. And Bayard — I wonder what you know of Bayard, Miss Keate. He was — he was —”

  “Predatory,” I said out of my memory. She looked at me with surprise.

  “I don’t know how you knew that,” she said, “but it is true. Terribly true. You see, Bayard — it’s hard to tell it, Miss Keate.”

  “Blackmailed you, I suppose. Or tried to.”

  “Yes,” she said faintly. “Yes. He threatened to tell Dave. Adela. Evelyn and Hilary. By that time everyone would have known it. Oh — I can’t tell you how awful it would have been.” She covered her face with her hands.

  “I can imagine it would have been very bad,” I said.

  “It would have broken Adela’s heart.”

  “Then I suppose Bayard put that letter in my bag?”

  “I suppose so.” She looked at me with wide eyes. “We wouldn’t give him what he wanted. I couldn’t. I have no money of my own. Allen wouldn’t. He said Bayard had been bleeding this family for years. He told me not to worry. That he’d find a way out of it. That he wasn’t afraid of Bayard. But — it’s been terrible, Miss Keate. Bayard goaded us. Hinted at things. I was always conscious of it. He wouldn’t let me forget for a moment. He — it’s horrible to say it but —” her voice sank to a whisper — “I’m glad he’s dead. I am. I’m glad he’s dead.”

  So that was why Allen had searched the dead man’s pockets so feverishly. But did Janice realize what she was telling me? That she and Allen both had the strongest of motives for wishing Bayard Thatcher out of the way? But Allen had an alibi; he had been with Dave the entire afternoon.

  “Yes,” she said thoughtfully. “I suppose Bayard hid the letter in your bag. He’d have thought there was no danger of its being found. He knew, of course, that Allen and I would do our utmost to recover it. He must have been afraid Allen would search his things while he was ill.”

  “My dear,” I said gently. “Why did Dave shoot Bayard?”

  She shrank back against the window.

  “Shoot Bayard! Then you knew?”

  “Yes. And that the bullet wounded Bayard’s shoulder and that Adela heard and got there in time to keep Dave from shooting again.”

  The color came slowly back to her lips.

  “I don’t know,” she said soberly. “I’m not sure. But it had nothing to do with my letter; I’m sure of that. Dave would have told me; confronted me with it. Dave’s been terribly depressed since Bayard’s death — and before that. He isn’t like himself at all since he’s been sick so much.”

  “Janice.” It was Evelyn from the doorway. “Oh, there you are. Emmeline has made some coffee for us. You’d better come down and drink some and then try to rest. We’ve got so much to do today. Miss Keate, I’ll send some coffee up here to you.”

  “No,” I said hurriedly. “Let me have a glass of warm milk. I don’t want coffee.” I shuddered as I glanced at Florrie’s pale face on the pillow — her loose mouth.

  “Of course,” said Evelyn, blissfully matter-of-fact. “Come, Janice. You look dreadfully tired.”

  At the door Janice hesitated, and as Evelyn preceded her into the passage she came back, paused beside me, and said, “Thank you,” in a low voice and was gone. I knew she was not thanking me for concealing the matter of the letter.

  But the sound of their light footsteps had not more than died away before I was in a very turmoil of conflicting emotions and desires again. Why had I not asked her about all those things which gave such hideous witness against her? Why had I not at least asked her about the bloodstained hat?

  Florrie moved, and I went to take her pulse. Feeling for the throb, I thought impatiently that after all I could have done no more than I did. It is extraordinarily difficult — indeed, it is quite impossible to approach a lovely young woman and say to her, “My dear young lady, this is all very well, but did you murder the man?”

  No, I couldn’t have done that. But I felt rather sick as I thought of the accumulating evidence against her.

  And then there was the inexplicable matter of the veronal tablets. The box was still there on the table, and I looked at it, considering. The whole affair seemed an extraordinarily purposeless thing. It was against reason to think that Florrie had been the victim of a real and intentionally murderous attack; as Hilary had pointed out, no one could have known in advance that she would have a headache, want aspirin, and be unable to secure any of it anywhere else in the house and would come to me. I believe I felt from the first that the veronal had been placed in that box for quite another purpose — what it was I couldn’t guess — and that Florrie’s taking it and coming so near death was only an unlucky and nearly fatal accident. The significant thing was the fact of the veronal having been brought to the house by someone and that curious matter of the substitution. I know now that it should have given me a clue to the whole situation, and I suppose it did, after a fashion. But aftersight is always better than foresight.

  Veronal, I might add, is not from a nurse’s viewpoint exactly a dangerous drug. It may, of course, be taken to excess, when it is promptly fatal. It is a hypnotic, used a great deal for insomnia. It is true that once in a while some poor soul becomes an addict to the drug, takes it as a habit, becomes firmly and terribly attached to it, but even this may be taken in time and cured. In many states the sale of veronal except by doctor’s prescription is prohibited, and this being the case in our own state increased the complexity of the matter. Someone in that house evidently had access to fairly large quantities of the drug.

  It is needless to say that I revolved the matter at length in my mind, and that by noon I had, I daresay, a hundred explanations, none of which satisfied me.

  It was a long, quiet day, that Sunday, with the slow, melodious sound of church bells coming clearly and frequently to my ears. C — is not a large town, but it has five churches. Sunday, I learned, is a favorite day for funerals, owing to the farmers and shopkeepers being at leisure; not, in other words, having anything else to do and rather welcoming the diversion. Thus burying Bayard on that day was considered in all quarters the proper and fitting thing to do and did not in the least savor of unseemly and suspicious haste.

  I spent most of the day in the small room with Florrie, the open gable window letting in the soft summer air and sunlight and sound of church bells and the girl slowly recovering. I saw little of the funeral, for which I was not sorry. Only a few subdued sounds of people arriving and the heavy scents of flowers and the murmur of a hymn or two reached us there on the third floor.

  And when I slipped downstairs about eleven o’clock I found they were already back from the cemetery, and the only reminders of what had taken place were the stacks of ch
airs folded on the porch and waiting to be taken away, the heavy, cloying odor of flowers, and the heap of cards from the flowers with their white ribbons still clinging to them which was on Adela’s desk. Janice and Evelyn were rearranging furniture which had been pushed out of place in the wide drawing rooms, and Adela was conferring with Emmeline in the morning room.

  It always rather pleased me, somehow, to note how competent all the Thatcher women were about managing a house. They seemed to know certain things by instinct and the machinery ran smoothly and unobtrusively. There were always generosity and solid plenty, but never lavishness and waste. After all, there is a certain dignity about thrift and the caring for things, of which we see too little, and there is an extremely pleasant and fine dignity about a well cared for house.

  There were even, I learned, certain traditions: several times I heard echoes of “Evelyn’s fudge cake” or “Adela’s quince pickles,” and it appeared that only Adela could mend lace or table linen and that Janice could make flowers grow. “Roses,” I have heard Adela say in her bland, assured way, “either grow for you or don’t grow. But they grow for Janice. She has a magic touch with flowers.”

  All graces of which one hears very little now; still, they are lovely and serene.

  To my disappointment my box of fresh uniforms had still not arrived, and I was obliged to continue wearing the limp and wrinkled white dress which had seen me through that hot night. I wrote a hurried note to the hospital, sealed and stamped it, and left it with some other outgoing mail on the hall table.

  At lunch I caught a glimpse of the family, although it was an unusually hurried meal, with Hilary arriving with the city newspapers — which, since nothing had happened that summer but a drought, were inclined to play up the story of the burglar and the missing diamonds and the death of Bayard Thatcher — “of the Thatcher County Thatchers,” said the newspaper I saw, “the prominent pioneer family of a name which has long been of importance in the state” — and Jim Strove, the sheriff, and Dr. Bouligny arriving before the meal was quite over. Strove came to say apologetically that he had three suspects in the county jail and would Hilary come down and question them; he asked Adela to forgive him for troubling them on Sunday, seemed a little discouraged and doubtful, but did not have the air of a conspirator; from which I judged that Hilary had dealt with him rather adroitly. And Dr. Bouligny came to see how our patient was progressing.

  I accompanied him, of course, to Florrie’s room. As we passed the hall table, something about my note, which lay face downward on top, caught my eye. I don’t yet know exactly what it was, but I picked up the note and looked sharply at it. I have good eyes and a good nose; it took only a moment to discover that the envelope had been opened and then pasted down again with library paste.

  It chilled me. There was nothing in the note that anyone might not read, but it was difficult to associate letter-opening with the Thatchers.

  Looking back, I can see that with Florrie’s unlucky accident the net of suave surveillance to which I was subjected became really definite and tight. But it was drawn so deftly that it actually seemed that the Thatcher family had only become very graciously and cordially disposed toward me. If I had a letter to post, someone offered to post it for me; if I had an errand to town, someone offered to do it for me; if I went for a walk, someone either offered to go along or turned up somewhere along my way. They were friendly, bland, and unrelenting.

  Florrie was much better; her recovery was only a matter of time and care in order to avoid veronal pneumonia. That day she was well enough to permit me to nap on a small day bed which Emmeline, gaunt and uncommunicative, and Hilary, red and puffing and reluctant, carried up the narrow stairway and placed in Florrie’s room for me. I think Hilary would as soon I’d have gone without that small attention.

  But the day was quiet. I suppose the Thatchers thought I was quite safe.

  Evelyn came up about five to say she would stay with Florrie while I got some fresh air. It was like Evelyn to think of that, even in the midst of her grave anxiety, and I accepted her offer readily. She looked tired, of course, with the strain of the ghastly night and trying day — tired and anxious. Her color was bad, sallow and dark, and there were brown hollows around her eyes. She would lie on the day bed and rest, she said, and told me not to hurry.

  As I left I glanced at the table to see that everything was there that Florrie might need. I’m sure the box which held the veronal tablets was on the table then, for the thought flashed through my mind that Dr. Bouligny ought to have taken them away with him, and that I must remind him the next call he made. The thought of the tablets’ being a danger did not, I’m sure, after all that had happened, occur to me; if it had, I would have taken them in my own charge.

  It was accident, as much as anything, that took me to the family cemetery. I’m sure it was accident that permitted me to leave the house unobserved and unaccompanied; perhaps Evelyn had not told the others that she intended to relieve me.

  I walked first through the garden, then along a path back of the house and past a large vegetable garden. This was enclosed at the back by a high lattice fence, painted green, with a door through which I walked and found a well defined path leading across a meadow, over a small bridge, up and across a low, rolling hill, plentifully wooded with old oak trees, and thence, before I knew it, to the cemetery itself.

  It was, of course, the family burial plot which had existed earlier, I imagine, than the town itself, and where, by some manipulating probably of property lines and county politics, the Thatchers were still buried. It was not a large place, with its old iron fence and gate, its black cedars, its small old headstones and neatly tended graves. I wandered about for some time looking at the quaint epitaphs on some of the older stones, and finally brought up back of a thick cluster of cedars at the new grave. I was standing there, staring at the wilting wreaths of flowers and thinking of Bayard’s death and feeling, I must admit, extremely depressed and uneasy, when I heard the click of the gate. I looked through the thick cedar boughs, not realizing that, even in my white dress, I was likely quite invisible to the person entering the gate.

  The person was Dave.

  Dave in a light suit that made him look thin, and his hat pulled low over his eyes. He fastened the latch of the gate and walked slowly and with a curiously uncertain gait, as if his muscles did not coördinate perfectly, toward me. Or rather toward the cedars behind which I stood.

  Was he coming to mourn at the grave of the man he had so nearly killed?

  I don’t know exactly what impulse impelled me rather hurriedly away from those wilting flowers and toward another grave, an old one just opposite. But I went, and in another moment met Dave face to face.

  And he looked startled and frightened as he rounded the clump of cedars and saw me.

  “Why — it’s you, Miss Keate!” His voice was not very steady. He took off his hat and passed his hand across his forehead and said, “I didn’t see you at first — your white dress — you gave me rather a shock. I’ve been having a little trouble with my eyes. Silly of me —”

  “I was walking,” I said. “And I happened to walk this way. What an interesting old place this is! It’s very old, isn’t it?”

  “I believe so. Did you read some of the epitaphs? The Thatchers all seemed very sure of going to their rewards. The family has always kept the place up. It’s one of the spots of historical interest in the state. At least, frenzied females with notebooks and cameras come every so often to look at it. Adela gives them tea and shows them the family portraits and thoroughly enjoys herself.”

  “Indeed,” I said, and found myself reading the words on the headstone beside us. “Nita Thatcher” was distinctly carved on the old stone.

  Nita Thatcher. In a fraction of an instant I had traced its familiarity. Bayard had said in his sleep, “Nita’s grave.”

  The thought flashed through my mind that here at last I might have stumbled on the solution to the puzzle. I was sure Bayar
d had said, “Nita’s grave.” Was there here some buried story, buried but not well enough; some not forgotten tragedy? Lost loves, revenge, even contested wills surged swiftly and rather wildly through my mind, and I bent forward to look at the stone. Below the name were dates, and they were rather conclusive: 1839-1881. She had died, had Nita Thatcher, long before Bayard or Dave was born. In some bewilderment I drew back. And became aware of the sudden dark suspicion in Dave’s face.

  “What are you doing here?” he demanded in such sudden and sullen fury that I was struck quite dumb with astonishment. “Why have you come here? See here, Nurse — you’ll be wise not to interfere with things that are no concern of yours. Remember that.”

  He turned and walked away and was out the gate and disappearing over the brow of the hill before I struggled out of the fog of a bewilderment induced as much by his sudden and irrational rage as by that singular matter of Nita Thatcher’s grave. For it had certainly been Nita’s grave Bayard had mentioned, and Dave had certainly walked directly to that grave as if it were his destination and purpose in coming to the cemetery.

  I went very thoughtfully back to the house.

  Evelyn inquired politely about my walk, made a few obvious comments about the weather and about Florrie, and left. It did not improve my spirits to discover that she had taken the box of remaining veronal tablets away with her. At least, when I went to hand Florrie a glass of water from the table, the box was indisputably gone. Florrie, on being questioned, said she’d been drowsy but was sure only Miss Evelyn had been in the room during my absence. Well, if the veronal was safe anywhere it was safe with Evelyn, I told myself, but a nagging little worry persisted in the back of my mind, and it began to seem to me that I’d been criminally careless about the tablets. And yet — veronal is not like poison or some really dangerous drug.