Episode of the Wandering Knife

by Rinehart, Mary Roberts;

  “Are you certain of that? Suppose I describe this woman? She was small. She had an aquiline nose and rather a receding chin. She was probably forty, maybe less. Does that mean anything to you?”

  “Nothing at all,” Mr. Leland said coldly. “I know of no such woman. If this concerns my daughter’s death I still have not changed my opinion. She was killed by her husband.”

  But Tony King was relentless. He bent forward, his face set and intent.

  “Why would Larry Shepard kill his wife, Mr. Leland? Because he learned she had borne a child before he married her?”

  The effect was more than shocking. Andrew Leland suddenly crumpled, as if without his pride he was nothing—just a little elderly man who had fought a long battle and lost it.

  “For God’s sake, don’t tell her mother,” he said, with stiff lips. “It would kill her.”

  “It may not be necessary,” Tony said, more gently. “Is the child alive?”

  “So far as I know, yes.”

  “You haven’t seen it?”

  “I never saw it,” he said fiercely. “But I wish to make this statement: the boy was legitimate; my daughter had married the father and divorced him.”

  “The father was Donald Scott?”

  He nodded. The room was going around me in circles, but they paid no attention to me. The hardness was gone from Tony’s face. He drew a long breath.

  “I’m sorry to bring this up,” he said. “I know it is painful. Do you know where the boy is now?”

  “He was adopted by a family in the West. I suppose he is still there. At least I still—”

  “You are still paying them for keeping him?”

  “I send them a little every month,” he said carefully. “What has all this to do with my daughter’s death?”

  “Just this. Unless your daughter left a will to the contrary, the boy is her heir.”

  He looked startled. Then he merely shrugged his shoulders.

  “He was born under another name. The people who adopted him don’t know who he is. I have never sent them checks. The money was sent indirectly.”

  “Nevertheless by law he is her heir in this state,” Tony persisted. “You are a lawyer. You know that, Mr. Leland. And those people may know it too. Suppose they have discovered or always knew the child’s identity. They have adopted him. They are his legal guardians and he will have a considerable fortune on the mother’s death. That’s as good a motive as I know for murder.”

  “How could they have known it? Even the father didn’t know he had a child. I took Isabel away as soon as she told me.

  He went on. It had been a most unsuitable marriage. He had traced them and found them, and Isabel had come home willingly enough. It had been an impulse, which she regretted. There had been a bad time with Scott, but in the end he let her get a divorce in Reno. They managed to keep it a secret. The boy was born later in a hospital in California.

  Tony King listened attentively.

  “What do you know about the people who adopted the boy?” he asked. “Surely you had them investigated.”

  “The doctor guaranteed them. I saw the woman myself. She”—he drew a long breath—“she impressed me very favorably. A quiet self-respecting sort. I never saw the husband.”

  “And the name?”

  “It was Armstrong, John P. Armstrong.”

  Tony got up.

  “I think we will find it was Mrs. Armstrong who jumped off a bridge here last night. If you’ll give me the address in California, I can find out tonight. She had a knife in her bag. You probably know what knife I mean.”

  XIV

  I don’t remember how we got out of the house. I know we left Mr. Leland still sunk in his chair, and that I felt I had outraged every bit of decency left in me. We had torn away his pride, laid bare the secret he had fought so long to keep, and exposed poor Isabel’s tragic story. I must have shown how I felt, for Tony took one look at me and shoved me away from the wheel of my car.

  “Pretty grim story,” he said. “It hurts, doesn’t it? I sort of gather you’ve been crazy about Scott for a long time.”

  I stared ahead. Had I ever really cared for Don? Or had I simply held on to an adolescent dream?

  “That’s over,” I said honestly. “I suppose really it was because there was nobody else.”

  “No candidates?” He raised his eyebrows.

  “That’s not what I said. But Don never killed Isabel. Why should he?”

  “Maybe not. But he’s in this up to his neck.”

  At Police Headquarters he got out and gave me the wheel.

  “I’ll discuss the matter of candidates with you later,” he said. “In the meantime, for God’s sake, relax. Big brother may be out before you know it. And another thing.” He jerked his hat down over one eye. “Go home and stay there. I may like you—and Mother, of course—but I also like my little bed. I’d like at least one night in it.”

  Well, he was right on one thing. Larry was released that same evening. But Tony King did not get that night in bed. Nor did the rest of us.

  I shall never forget Mother’s face when Larry came in. She put her arms around him and held on to him, without speaking. He leaned over and kissed the top of that dreadful hennaed hair of hers, his eyes tender.

  “Poor old girl,” he said. “It’s going to be all right, my dear. It’s going to be all right.”

  She let go of him suddenly.

  “What do you mean, going to be? They’ve let you go, haven’t they?”

  “They still don’t know who did it, Mother.”

  “They know you didn’t,” she said valiantly.

  She wouldn’t let him go, not even back to his house for the bath and extra suit he wanted. She made him sit by the bed, holding tight to his hand, and she rang for someone to go down to bring him what he needed. However, most of the men were having their Sunday out, and in the end it was Alma who volunteered to go. Larry protested, but it was no use. She went to get a coat, and I stayed to hear his story.

  What with ordering a tray supper for him, and finally telling my own story of the woman in the hospital and the knife, the next hour passed without our noticing it. The knife bewildered Larry. I had to begin with Mother’s finding it under the stair carpet and go on from there. He asked again about the plumber.

  “How did he know it was there?”

  “All he had to do was look,” Mother said. “After all, the papers were full of it.”

  “So he took it away, gave it to this woman who returned it, and she gets it out of the fountain and jumps into the river. Why?”

  When Patrick came in for the tray, Larry asked him to send Sarah down. Her gloomy face lightened when she saw him, although all she said was that she was glad to see him back. It’s a queer thing but in a family of women like ours it’s the man who gets all the adoration. But when he asked Sarah about the tank, she blushed with embarrassment.

  “There was something broken in it,” she said. “It—it wouldn’t flush.”

  “How long had it been that way?”

  “It was all right in the morning. Nellie, who does the bathrooms, told me about it.”

  “And who called the plumber?”

  “I think it was Miss Alma. She usually does.”

  Sarah, like Patrick, hadn’t noticed the plumber much. She had stayed in Mother’s bedroom while he was there. She thought she had never seen him before, but these days, with workmen a good deal more scarce than diamonds, we took what we could get and were glad to get them. He was a tall man, about forty or more, but he hadn’t taken off his cap. No, he hadn’t mentioned finding the knife. He was there only about ten minutes.

  After Sarah had gone, we began to wonder why Alma had not come back. Then one of the women servants knocked at the door.

  I opened it. She was leaning against it, and she almost fell into the room. She was dressed in her street clothes, her hat awry and her face chalk white.

  “It’s Miss Alma,” she gasped. “She’s lying
in the driveway with a knife in her back.”

  That was how Larry’s knife came back for the last time.

  We couldn’t believe it. Why would anybody kill Alma? She was a part of the family, and Mother at least had loved her. We could not believe it even when we reached the drive and somebody turned on the lights. But it was true. She was lying facedown, with the things she had brought for Larry scattered all around her.

  We had a dreadful time with Mother at first, while the police were on the way. She wouldn’t leave, and at last I sent for a fur coat for her, and made her put it on. Then the police arrived, and it was the same thing as Isabel’s death all over again: the same squad car, the same homicide outfit roaring up later, and the same reporters, some still trying to get over the fence after the gates were closed. Larry looked fairly haunted. The servants were huddled around the front door. Flashbulbs went off as photographs were taken, a car was driven up and its headlights turned on the body.

  There was hardly time to realize what had happened. The drive was jammed with men with flashlights, men with cameras, men with pencils writing busily on yellow paper, men inside using the telephone and men trying to keep other men out. Once I thought of Tony King, but he disappeared, in the crowd.

  The night was cold, and it seemed to me that they left Alma lying there for hours.

  We stayed until the body had been taken away, and Inspector Welles and Larry went into the house. I didn’t like the look on the Inspector’s face. I knew no alibi Mother and I could give Larry was worth anything. For once there had been no servants to check who had left the house, and there was something diabolic about the whole thing—that Larry had been released, to have another murder within an hour or so of his homecoming.

  Not that I was worrying about alibis just then. I was worrying about Mother. She had followed Larry and the Inspector into the library, and she had looked so stricken that I went into the dining room to get her some brandy.

  I was pouring it when there was a tap at the window. It startled me so I nearly dropped the decanter. When I looked, I saw it was Tony. I raised the window and he crawled in.

  “Quick,” he said. “Can you get me to her rooms without anybody’s seeing me?”

  “Whose rooms?” I said stupidly.

  “The Spencer woman’s. I want to get there before the mob gets in. Where are they?”

  “Look,” I said, “do you know why she was killed? If you do, tell me. I think I’m slowly going crazy.”

  “There’s usually a reason,” he said. “Do I go up or don’t I?”

  He went up, of course. There was a small staircase leading almost directly to Alma’s rooms, and nobody saw us. The lights were off, and he drew the shades before he turned on the lamps in her bedroom and he looked around. The room was as neat as Alma herself had been.

  “Lived pretty comfortably, didn’t she?” he said.

  “The sitting room was her office,” I told him. “She had plenty to do.”

  “Liked her, did you? Nice woman and all that? How about your brother? Fond of her?”

  “I don’t think he really noticed whether she was around or not. Certainly he didn’t kill her. He hadn’t left Mother’s room since he got home. And I was with him, too.”

  I told him all I knew, about Larry’s needing another suit and Alma’s insisting on getting it. But he hardly listened. He was going over the room, opening the closets, looking in the dresser drawers. It was her office, however, to which he paid the most careful attention. It was as orderly as the rest of the place: her typewriter covered on the table by a window, a row of steel files in a corner, and the big desk in the center of the room practically bare.

  There was a fresh blotter on it, and something had been blotted on it not long before. He took her hand mirror and tried to read it. The only word that stood out clearly was “worrying.” He tore out the blotter and rolling it up put it under his arm.

  “Something bothering her,” he said. “Any idea what it was?”

  “Not the slightest.”

  “If she wrote it where is it?”

  He began going over the room again, moving quietly for so big a man, but there was no sign of what she had written. I stood it as long as I could.

  “Do you have to do all this?” I said, when he started for the files. “I don’t think I can bear much more.”

  He turned and looked at me. Then he came over quickly and put both hands on my shoulders.

  “Look, Judy,” he said. “There’s been another murder, and we have to get after it fast. I don’t like your being here. It’s no place for you.” He leaned down unexpectedly and kissed me. “Somebody ought to come along pretty soon and marry you, to get you away.”

  And tired and half-sick as I was, I tried to smile up at him.

  “Is that a proposal?”

  “God, no,” he said, looking shocked. “Whatever put that in your head?”

  He went back to the search, and I wandered out to the hall. Behind me I could hear drawers opening and shutting, and the metallic squeak of the files as he drew them out and pushed them back. He was still busy when I heard Mother’s voice below. I went to the gallery and looked down. There was no sign of Larry, and Mother was raging at the Inspector.

  “I assure you,” she was saying, “that if necessary I shall carry this case to the Supreme Court. To say that my son—”

  And the Inspector, exasperated but keeping his temper: “My dear Mrs. Shepard, I have not said that your son did this thing. I am not placing him under arrest. I would like to talk to him where we are not disturbed. That’s all.”

  “Talk to him? You’ve done nothing else for the last three days.”

  He looked down at her, small as she was, defiant, and blazing with fury. Evidently he decided she could take it.

  “Suppose I ask you what I have already asked him,” he said. “Why did you or your son give the mounted officer Barnes fifty dollars the night of your party for the Mayor?”

  Mother fairly squealed.

  “Fifty dollars! Don’t be ridiculous. I didn’t give him anything. And Larry hadn’t any money at all that night. He had forgotten to go to the bank. I gave him ten dollars myself that afternoon.”

  Some detectives came in just then and he sent them up to Alma’s rooms. I warned Tony in time to escape, but although he looked rather smug he told me nothing. He got out as he had come in. Astride the windowsill he said he would probably be at Headquarters all night, and when he saw me again we could discuss my future. After which he simply disappeared, and as no shouts followed I gathered that no one had seen him.

  I felt rather blank after he had gone. Larry and the Inspector had driven off, and Mother had gone to her room and locked the door.

  I took the drink I had poured for Mother. It put some starch in my knees, and I went out into the hall. One of the uniformed men was standing by the fountain. He had a cup of coffee and a roll in his hand, and he was dropping crumbs for the fish.

  “They don’t know it’s night,” he said disconsolately. “Same as me. I’ve forgotten what a good bed looks like.”

  I don’t know why looking at the fish made me think of Donald Scott, unless it was because one pop-eyed little black Japanese one was fighting the others off and getting all the crumbs. Anyhow I did.

  Tony King had said Don was in something or other up to the neck. I wondered if Alma had known about the child. She had an uncanny way of learning things. Suppose she was blackmailing him? She might have. She liked money, and no man would want it known that after a week or so of marriage his wife had divorced him. But it wasn’t Don who had taken the knife from the hospital that morning. It had been a thin, shabby-looking man.

  I was getting excited by that time, what with the brandy and sheer nervous exhaustion. The policeman had tired of feeding the fish. He wandered off and stood looking out at the men still working in the grounds. And once again I heard Don’s voice, asking me about the tassel on the chain they had found under Isabel’s body.
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br />   I was sure I knew about that now. Isabel had given up her baby, but not entirely. She had slipped the chain around its neck, and on the chain she had hung one of the tassels from her bed jacket It had to be that way. She had even marked a cross on it with ink. She might have hoped to claim the boy someday. She might only have been protecting herself against having another child substituted for her own. But that was what she had done.

  I went up to bed finally, so tired that I was staggering. Mother’s light was out, and I didn’t go in. Down the hall the police had locked and sealed Alma’s rooms for further examination. My bedside clock said three when I went in, and I sat down on the bed, too exhausted even to undress.

  That was the state I was in when I saw the note on my dressing table. It was in Alma’s neat handwriting, and she had evidently left it before she had started down for Larry’s clothes. “Dear Judy,” it said, “my conscience is worrying me about the car I saw the other night. Can you come in later and discuss it?”

  I sat there, turning it over in my hands. So Alma had intended trying a spot of blackmail on me after all. And the police had the blotter, with that message on it.

  XV

  I sat up in bed for hours, smoking endless cigarettes. At four in the morning I picked up the telephone and called Tony King. He was there, but the operator said he was using the long-distance phone. I tried at intervals for an hour. Then at last I gave up and went unexpectedly to sleep.

  I wakened at nine, dressed in a hurry and drank a cup of coffee. The maid who brought my tray said Larry had not come home, and that Mother had dressed and gone downtown without even calling Sarah. I knew something had happened, but no one knew what it was. I was still in a state of helpless anxiety when I got my car and drove to Headquarters.

  Mother was sitting in the waiting room outside the Inspector’s office. She was in what Sarah would have called a state, her hat crooked and unmatched shoes on her feet.

  “Why, Mother!” I said. “What on earth—”

  “I’ve come to take Larry home,” she said. “I don’t budge from this spot until those”—here she used a most impolite word—“until those —s let him go.”