Murder by an Aristocrat

by Mignon G. Eberhart

  I was equally reluctant to suspect Higby; it was barely possible that he had arranged some highly unusual and ingenuous method by which to keep the lawnmower running while he crawled into the library windows, entered Dave’s study, and shot Bayard with Dave’s revolver — the only revolver in the house, hadn’t Janice said? — but since the diamonds had not been stolen at all, what could have been Higby’s purpose? With the memory of that monotonous whir of the lawnmower in my mind I did not think it a likely solution. Besides, the little I had seen of Higby did not lead me to believe that he could, by any stretch of the imagination, accomplish any undertaking which involved much use of brain cells.

  But by excluding Florrie, Higby, and Emmeline, and granting which was only supposition, after all that the telephone incident was as I reasoned it to be, only Adela and Janice were left as possible suspects. And while I could readily have believed that Adela would undertake almost any subterfuge in order to turn suspicion from her family, or any task to protect and further their interests, still I could scarcely suspect her of out-and-out murder. And Janice, to me at least, was equally inculpable.

  But what, exactly, had been done with that tightly folded piece of paper and why? The trick of breaking the connection from the other end could have been accomplished without plugging the slot of the telephone hook. Perhaps Adela had wanted to leave the telephone there, with the receiver off the hook as if Bayard was in the very act of telephoning when he was killed; yes, that might easily have been the way of it. If Bayard was actually dead before Adela left the house, and she knew it and wished it to look as though he’d been killed after every member of her family was safely out of the house, she might have done exactly that. Then her story of the telephone conversation (which, no doubt, she had taken care the druggist should hear) would be even more convincing if Bayard were found with the telephone as if he had been talking through it. It would be, in fact, all but conclusive as an alibi for her family.

  But Bayard had not been found there on the rug in the study with the receiver off the hook of the telephone and the instrument perhaps near his hand. He had been found in the library, sprawled hideously on the floor. Janice had moved him. Janice, her slender muscles pulling with all their strength, her white hands reddened by their grisly task, had pulled that shattered body across the library floor. And Evelyn had seen Bayard dead in the study. And, if my surmise was correct, Hilary, too, had been in Dave’s study while Bayard lay dead on the rug. Any of them might have picked up that telephone and replaced it.

  And the train of supposition which I had built from that tiny wad of paper might be entirely wrong.

  I sighed wearily and took the paper in my fingers and looked at it again and at that very instant heard a rustle back of me.

  I find I cannot adequately describe my feelings as I sat there in that small study, my back to the dark door of the cavernous library, and realized that someone stood in that doorway watching me. Had been watching me perhaps while I fitted that damning piece of paper into the telephone slot. Two men had already come to their deaths in that small room. One death had been a murder. The other death had been so nearly induced by that sad and tragic train of circumstances that in its fundamentals it was murder, too.

  Deaths go in threes. Deaths go in threes. It is an old superstition and an unreasonable one. But it has more than a little element of truth in it. I have seen it happen more times in my nursing career than I cared, at that moment, to recall.

  Who stood there behind me? I could not turn. I could not breathe.

  Was it Adela, Hilary, Evelyn, Janice? Might it be, even, Allen? Or Emmeline?

  It was strange that, though I felt no fear of any one of those people, at the same time I felt a very definite and terrifying fear of whoever it was in the doorway. I suppose that paralyzing feeling of terror was owing to some sixth sense; some deeply primitive warning of danger.

  Then there was another sound of motion. And a voice said:

  “Don’t move. I’ll shoot.”

  It was Hilary’s voice. But a Hilary I had not known before.

  Perhaps it is unnecessary to state that I did not move. Indeed, I sat so still that the very beating of my heart seemed for the moment suspended. And it is as well that I did so. For Hilary advanced from behind me and stepped just in the circle of light cast by the green-shaded desk lamp, and I saw that he held a revolver in his hand. And his hand was not very steady. And the revolver was aimed directly at me.

  His hair was disheveled, his eyes red and bloodshot, his face pale and puffy, and he wore a dark dressing gown. I never knew how long he had watched me, nor how he had happened to follow me to the study. His voice too, was unnatural; husky and threatening.

  “What are you doing here, when the whole household is asleep?”

  I did not like the way his nervous hands caressed the revolver.

  “Nothing,” I said. “Nothing.”

  “Answer me! You had some purpose here.”

  The bit of folded paper rolled from my numb fingers, and his quick eyes caught it. I decided rapidly on a half truth.

  “I found that piece of folded paper here on the rug just after Bayard’s death,” I said rather weakly. “I came to try to discover whether or not it was a clue to the murderer.”

  His eyes wavered. I felt sure he had not seen the paper before and had no idea as to its possible significance.

  “And what did you discover?” he asked in an unpleasant way.

  “Nothing.” And as I thought he looked faintly undecided as to whether or not to believe me, I added nervously, “Don’t you want to put the revolver down? Is it Dave’s gun?”

  He glanced then at the revolver, as if he had forgotten he was holding it, and back at me.

  “I don’t believe you,” he said. “But if you’ll keep quiet I won’t shoot.”

  As a matter of fact, I am inclined to think I was rather nearer an abrupt and complete end than is exactly pleasant to recall, much less experience, during those few moments while Hilary’s unsteady fingers touched that revolver. He did not, I am sure, think that it would better conditions to dispose of me in such a manner; he couldn’t have meant cold-bloodedly to shoot; but he was in a frame of mind not to know exactly what he was doing. Perhaps my rather obvious and certainly acute discomfort recalled him to himself. He put down the revolver, looked at it rather strangely, said in an absent way, “Yes, it’s Dave’s gun. It’s the only one in the house,” and then went on with an abrupt change of tone:

  “Look here, Miss Keate. I don’t know what you know of this affair of Bayard’s murder, or what you don’t know. But I’m going to put my cards flat on the table, face up. I’m not by any means a rich man. But I’ll give you ten thousand dollars in cash to leave this house tomorrow morning and forget you’ve ever been here.”

  Afterward I was glad the interruption came before I could find my voice. Otherwise I would have said far too much, and the revolver was still conveniently near Hilary’s right hand. It was Evelyn who interrupted: she must have heard the whole thing. She said crisply:

  “Hilary, you are a fool. Go away. Take that revolver with you.” And when he’d gone — and somehow it was not an ignominious departure; there were threat and menace in the solid lines of his shoulders and his thick red neck — she said to me, “Miss Keate, if you have any kind and generous womanly instincts you will forget this — this extraordinary scene.” And then she too was gone, and I could hear her firm footsteps crossing the library.

  Well, somehow I reached my own room. Somehow I spent the night, imagining every whisper of sound I heard was Hilary trying to get into my room, with Dave’s revolver, which Adela must have given into his keeping, in his unsteady pink hand. It seemed to me that Evelyn was asking rather too much of womanly instincts.

  After a night of restless dreams and wakeful hours I resolved to see the druggist in the morning and get his impression of Adela’s telephone conversation with Bayard. But if it was, as I thought it might well be, a f
iction on Adela’s part, then Hilary could not have killed Bayard.

  When morning came, however, I did not immediately have an opportunity to leave the house, and it soon developed there was to be no need for the druggist’s testimony. Shortly after breakfast Adela summoned us into the library again. She had had only the night to survey the situation, and that had been spent for the most part in drugged slumber. But like any keen-sighted general, she knew what her next move would be; she knew that in trying to extricate Dave she had placed her other brother under suspicion.

  We were all there except Dr. Bouligny; all of us tired and hollow-eyed and ill at ease. I think we all knew something was coming. Her first words, however, were such as to shock us into strained attention. For she said calmly:

  “The Thatchers appear to have taken to lies. Evelyn did not tell the truth when she said she found Bayard alive. Hilary did not tell the truth when he said he found Bayard alive. And I did not tell the truth.” She faltered a little there but resumed, her blue eyes daring us to doubt, her face gray and stern. “I lied when I said I talked to Bayard over the telephone. I did not. He was dead before I left the house.”

  Hilary was the only one who dared speak. He started forward with a smothered exclamation. Adela silenced him with an imperious motion of her wide white hand.

  “Wait, Hilary. Let me tell it. I came downstairs and found Bayard dead in the study. I was afraid Dave would be blamed for shooting him. We all knew Dave had made one attempt upon his life. I was frightened. I knew I must hurry and plan something to draw any possible suspicion from Dave. I thought if I telephoned from town and seemed to talk to Bayard from a place where people could hear me, that might make it appear that Bayard had actually been shot after the time I telephoned, which would be, of course, after the members of the family were out of the house. I even —” she faltered briefly here again, smoothing the white ruffle on one wrist and looking at it with unseeing eyes — “I even arranged the telephone so it would ring with the receiver actually off the hook —” I suppose I made some gesture there, for Evelyn glanced sharply at me and then back to Adela — “and placed the receiver near Bayard’s — Bayard’s hand as if he had been using it. I hoped it would look as if he’d been killed after I talked to him and this after everyone who might be thought to be concerned in his death was away from the house.”

  She stopped, looked at us coldly, and finished: “I went to the drug store and telephoned. I let it ring just once, and at the beginning of another peal I broke the connection. No one could see my left arm, but I leaned against the telephone and talked so Mr. Lelly could hear me. Then I thanked him and went to the Aid Society.”

  There was a complete silence. Then Hilary said jerkily:

  “Adela, you are trying to shield me. I was going to stick to what I’d said in the first place. But it’s true. Bayard was dead when I came.”

  I leaned forward.

  “Where was the gun?” I asked.

  Adela looked at me in a perplexed way.

  “I don’t know,” she said slowly. “I don’t remember the gun.”

  I turned to Hilary.

  “When you entered the study and found Bayard dead, did you see the revolver? What did you do with it?”

  “I didn’t have it. I didn’t see it. There was no gun.” He had answered quickly with an air of defense as if I had accused him of something. He turned to Evelyn. “There was no gun, was there, Evelyn?”

  “No,” she said at once and very decisively. “I’m sure there was no revolver there. I feel sure Dave’s gun was not —” Perhaps the look on my face stopped her.

  Janice had hidden the gun in the egg basket. She had had the egg basket over her arm while she had her last brief words with Bayard. She had told us she hid the revolver on her return to the house late in the afternoon. That she had found Bayard dead then and had hidden Dave’s revolver in the basket and carried it to the kitchen in order to protect Dave.

  But only a few moments after Janice had left the house with the presumably empty baskets, Adela had found Bayard. Had found Bayard dead. And she had seen no revolver.

  Hilary had seen no revolver. Evelyn had seen no revolver. And it had been found late that night in the egg basket.

  Too late I saw how dreadfully my injudicious questions had involved Janice. Hilary saw, too, and Allen.

  “I refuse to permit Janice to be questioned until she has seen a lawyer,” said Allen. He was standing at the side of Janice’s chair. He put his firm brown hand on her arm. “Been advised by someone, I mean,” added Allen, “who is not a member of this family.”

  CHAPTER XVIII

  It took Hilary an incredulous moment or two to comprehend the full enormity of Allen’s suggestion. It was rather alarming to watch his face grow slowly purple with rage. But instead of venting it on Allen, as one might justly have expected, he whirled to me, pointing a forefinger that was literally trembling with anger.

  “This is your doing, Nurse,” he all but shouted. “If it wasn’t for you we wouldn’t have got into this damn fix.”

  “Hilary —” warned Evelyn.

  He gave his wife a look of fury, but stopped, and Janice said rather sadly:

  “But I don’t need a lawyer, Allen. I’m perfectly willing to tell the whole truth about the thing. I have already told the truth. I told Miss Keate last night.”

  “I’m not sure,” said Adela slowly, “that any of you have been telling the truth. But I didn’t mean — I didn’t realize — I had no intention of bringing suspicion upon Janice. Janice had nothing to do with Bayard’s death. That is not to be thought of.”

  “Look here,” said Allen. “That’s what’s the trouble. That’s why we are so frightfully entangled. We’ve all been trying to shield each other. Or rather to shield Dave. Suppose Dave did kill Bayard. He’s gone now, and the truth can’t hurt him. Why don’t we all tell exactly the truth about Bayard’s death? If we prove that Dave killed him, it can’t hurt —”

  “No, no!” cried Janice. “I don’t want to know. I don’t want you to prove that Dave killed him.”

  “You are all so determined that it was Dave,” said Adela coldly. “Why not Allen? Or Hilary? Or any of you, as well as Dave?”

  Hilary had barely subsided, and the mention of his name as a possible suspect was like a match to gunpowder.

  “I’m not afraid of the truth,” he cried. “I’ve admitted that I found Bayard dead. You all probably know why I said he was alive when I saw him last. It was because I knew people might blame me for his death. Might say I killed him. I thought Dave had killed him, and I still think so. I think Dave’s death is an admission that he killed Bayard.”

  “Dave was not a suicide,” said Adela. “I will not let you say that.”

  Hilary shrugged.

  “Call it what you will, Adela. We know he took that veronal. No one else could have given it to him. He knew it for what it was; took it as a habit. Dan explained all that. What easier than for Dave to take the overdose intentionally? Especially since he could readily have overheard our conversation in the library by merely opening the door of the study a trifle — the inquiry you insisted upon, Adela — and would have known that we all realized he must have killed Bayard. But I think, too, that it might be better to forget the whole business.”

  “That is like you, Hilary,” said Adela. “You never like to face anything disagreeable. But I will finish what I’ve begun. Miss Keate has brought up the question of the gun. I think any questions she wishes to ask ought to be answered. Miss Keate —?”

  Her voice was lifted in inquiry. There was a complete silence in the library. The long room was cool and shady. Someone had removed the pale green heap of bath salts and had rearranged the table, and there were fresh crimson roses in the bowl. Dr. Bouligny was not there, nor Emmeline. But there was Adela, stately in her high-backed chair; Evelyn, cool and matter-of-fact; Janice, very quiet and grave but with a certain anxious, tight-drawn look erased from her lovely face. Allen was s
tanding near her, watchful; it was rather curious to note the slight but very definite difference the night had brought to Allen. Yesterday his bearing toward Janice had been removed, careful, withdrawn; today, while he was exactly as unobtrusive, there was a certainty about him, a kind of authority. It was as if he felt, as I suppose he did, that he had a right to protect Janice openly and frankly.

  Hilary stirred impatiently and I realized that they were still waiting for me to speak.

  “Was Dave’s revolver the only one in the house?” I asked.

  “Yes,” said Adela definitely. “We all know that. Even Hilary has no revolver now.”

  Evelyn smiled faintly. “Not since the boys left for school this last term,” she explained. “They appropriated Hilary’s revolver. He didn’t replace it. We have no use for revolvers in C—.”

  I repressed a desire to say that they seemed to have discovered a use for them, and said instead:

  “It seems to me, then, that the possession of the revolver is a rather important part of the evidence.”

  I suppose no one liked to say, “Janice, explain. Explain where the gun was when Adela found Bayard dead. Where it was when Evelyn and Hilary saw that shattered body. When did you put the gun in the egg basket?” But they all looked at her. Even I, who felt so certain that she was innocent of Bayard’s murder — so certain that I dared inquire further about the revolver when, if I had left it to the Thatchers, it would probably have never been mentioned again — even I felt a qualm of doubt as we waited for her to speak. And it was just then, to add to my anxiety, that I recalled what she’d said when she told me of the quarrel between Dave and Bayard when Bayard was wounded, and she and Adela had interfered in time to save Bayard’s life.

  Janice had said, “I managed to get the revolver away from him and out of sight.” Had it remained, then, in her possession?