Episode of the Wandering Knife

by Rinehart, Mary Roberts;

  The weary-looking officer at the desk looked up.

  “I’ve told you, madam. He is not in there.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  She got up suddenly and opened the door to the inner office. There was no sign of Larry, but Donald Scott was there—a Don I had never seen: his face unshaven, his eyes sunken in his head. He didn’t apparently notice that we were there.

  “That’s the truth, so help me God,” he was saying. “I couldn’t help her, but I never killed her. Or Alma Spencer either.”

  His voice broke, and Mother hastily closed the door.

  “They’re crazy,” she said. “They’re all crazy. As if he would murder the mother of his own child.”

  I suppose my jaw dropped, for she told me impatiently to close my mouth. But she had apparently abandoned her idea of rescuing Larry. She trotted down the stairs, her two odd shoes making clacking noises and her hat more crooked than ever. When I caught up with her, she was talking to herself. I took her arm and stopped her.

  “Don’t babble,” I said. “How long have you known about Isabel’s baby?”

  “Since before Larry married her, of course.”

  I got the story from her on the way home. She let me take her in my car, sending her own away. As she had no confidence whatever in me as a driver I think this shows her state of mind. She was lucid enough, however.

  She sat beside me in the car, that wild red hair of hers blowing in all directions, and told me the story.

  You have to hand it to the Lelands of this world after all. When Larry wanted to marry Isabel, Andrew Leland had come to Strathmore House—come stiffly, I gathered, in morning coat and striped trousers, but with two small spots of color on his cheeks. He had lost no time, either. He had not even sat down. He had stood—still stiffly—in front of the fireplace and said:

  “I understand your boy wants to marry my girl.”

  “And why not?” said Mother.

  “That’s what I came to talk about.”

  He told her the whole story. Isabel was determined not to tell Larry. She had threatened to kill herself if the affair came out On the other hand, in fairness to everybody … I suppose Mother surprised him then.

  “Listen to me, Andrew Leland,” she said. “It’s you who are ashamed of Isabel. I’m not.” And she had added maliciously: “There are some advantages of coming from below the tracks even a generation or two ago. Keep your mouth shut and let them alone.”

  It was settled between them finally. I believe he even condescended to take a glass of sherry before he left. But he would not let Isabel have a church wedding, or even a veil. The veil, he said gravely, was symbolic, and Isabel was no longer a virgin. Which was why, it appeared, I had cried all night when I learned that Larry was going to be married, and there were to be no bridesmaids. It’s a queer conventional world the Lelands and their kind make for themselves, and others.

  I got Mother home safely and persuaded her to go to bed. And that is the way things stood with us at ten o’clock on Monday morning. Isabel had been killed on Thursday night and Barnes early on Friday morning. Alma had been stabbed Sunday night. Donald Scott was probably still being interrogated, and we heard nothing whatever from Larry.

  Sarah disappeared at noon that day. The police had unlocked Alma’s rooms, and I had been helping her go through Alma’s things. We had no idea what to do with them. She had a stepbrother somewhere, but I could not find his name or address anywhere.

  We were still working when one of the men came to say Sarah was wanted on the telephone, and she went and didn’t come back. I waited a half hour. Then I tried to find her, but all I learned was that she had put on her hat and coat and simply walked out. In thirty years with Mother she had never done such a thing, and Mother was furious.

  “She must have lost her mind,” she snapped. “Not a word to me! What does the old fool mean by such a thing?”

  She was still in a bad temper when just after lunch—and still no Sarah—a message came from Headquarters. It was quite polite. Would Mother and I come to Inspector Welles’s office at three o’clock? I said with equal politeness that we would, and hung up, feeling that it had sounded like an invitation to tea. But I didn’t trust them, nor did Mother when I told her. But she agreed to go. She apparently intended to make up for her morning appearance, for warm as it was she put on her mink coat and all her pearls, and she walked into the Inspector’s office like a combination of the Queen of Sheba and a woman who has just had a severe chill.

  There were a number of people in the office. Andrew Leland got up when we entered. So did Don. And Larry came over and kissed Mother. Tony King nodded from the telephone. He looked as though he had been up all night again, but he smiled at me.

  I could not take my eyes from the Inspector’s desk. There was a queer collection on it: the shabby felt hat, Larry’s new opera one, none the better for its hours in the tree, a woman’s worn pocketbook, a slug from a gun and some magnified photographs of it, the platinum chain and tassel found under Isabel’s body when she was killed, and the blotter Tony had taken away from Alma’s desk.

  The knife was there too, its reindeer handle looking more moth-eaten than ever. I looked away quickly, and Mother went pale under her makeup.

  There was a silence in the room. Tony put down the receiver and looked at the Inspector.

  “Check,” he said.

  The Inspector nodded. He looked grave. He picked up the chain and looked at it, but it was a minute or two before he spoke.

  “I have asked you all to come here,” he said slowly, “because you are all vitally concerned. This has been a curious case, in that one or two of the people most concerned in it have hardly appeared at all. It also involves baring certain hitherto concealed facts. I regret that this is necessary, but as you all know them …”

  He put down the chain.

  “From the first,” he said, “we had only one or two clues. We had this chain, we had a man’s old felt hat, and we had the curious episode of Barnes, one of our own force, denying that he had seen the woman Anna Griffin who claimed to have spoken to him.

  “I am going to read you the statement made by Barnes’s wife as to that night.”

  He picked up a paper and put on his glasses.

  “Jim came home Thursday night after he had put up his horse at the police stable. It was about midnight. He did not act like himself. He said he had a headache and took some aspirin. Then he said he had a surprise for me. He reached in his pocket and took out fifty dollars, two twenties and a ten. ‘Go and buy yourself something pretty. That’s the way the rich do things.’ I couldn’t believe it. Now and then he gets five or ten dollars for work like that when he’s assigned to it, but never fifty.

  “I was a little worried. I asked him if it was clean money. He looked funny but he said it was.

  “He went to bed, but I don’t think he slept much. I wakened up when the bell rang. He leaned out the window and someone said there was trouble at the Shepard place, and to come along. He acted queer about that, too. He told me not to mention the money. Then he dressed in a hurry and went out. There was a car waiting for him.

  “He came back an hour or two later. He looked terribly worried. He said young Mrs. Shepard had been killed. Someone had stabbed her. But he did not know anything about it. Only he did not go back to bed. He stayed downstairs walking the floor. I did not understand it. Then before daylight I heard another car stop, and Jim went outside.

  “I heard him go out to the car and it drove off. That is all I know. Only he has not been back since, and I am almost crazy.”

  He put down the paper.

  “Now there are several curious things about that story,” he said. “Barnes gets fifty dollars for an ordinary routine job. That’s a lot of money for a police officer. But we know Barnes. He wouldn’t have been easy to bribe. If he had, and a murder was committed …

  “Let that go. He had a headache and he asked for aspirin, and later after we had qu
estioned him and he went home he was called out to a car and taken away. That, coupled with his confusion when we sent for him that night and his denial that the maid Anna Griffin had spoken to him, pointed to several things. Either he had not seen the Griffin woman, or he was lying for some reason of his own.

  “I think we know now that he was lying, and why. When he was found he had been shot. But there was also a bruise on his head. It had been there long enough before his death to be swollen and discolored.

  “That—in spite of a statement I shall read to the contrary—pointed to one thing. Barnes had been attacked and knocked unconscious before or during Mrs. Shepard’s murder. He wouldn’t admit it. No police officer likes to admit a thing like that. And he never had another chance to admit it. He was kidnapped a few hours later, probably at the point of a gun. Kidnaped and shot.

  “We don’t like things of that sort happening to our men.”

  He paused. There was not a stir in the room. Tony King was listening intently. Larry looked uncomfortable. Don seemed puzzled, and Andrew Leland had not moved.

  “Now we have to remember the circumstances at the Shepard place that night,” the Inspector went on. “Nobody could get in who didn’t show a card, both at the gate and at the door. The rear service gates were padlocked and watched. Even the house doors, with Barnes guarding the main entrance. Then why was Barnes knocked out? We felt it was because someone had to get either in or out of the house—or both—without being seen.”

  He gave a thin smile.

  “That is why we held Mr. Shepard,” he said. “He has however a completely clean slate.”

  I think Mother drew her first full breath in days, and he looked at her.

  “We had some excuse, of course,” he said. “The issue was confused by Mrs. Shepard, who found the knife and hid it. I am sure she meant well, but—”

  “You found it,” Mother said grimly. “You sent that plumber, didn’t you?”

  “I’m sorry to say we didn’t find it, Mrs. Shepard. That is part of what I am going to tell. I may say before I begin that fine work on the part of Captain King has helped us greatly; he deserves great credit, especially as he is still recovering from a wound received in Africa.”

  I suppose I jumped. I know I looked furiously at Tony. He didn’t give me a glance, however. He merely started ruffling through some papers in front of him, and it was the Inspector who smiled at me.

  “It was Captain King,” he went on blandly, “who first drew our attention to the statement in the autopsy that Mrs. Shepard had borne a child. He learned that Mr. Shepard was not—had not been—a father, and he found a significance in the chain which we had missed. He was also aware of certain movements of the knife which for reasons of his own he kept to himself for some time.

  “This case, as most of you now know, began with the elopement and marriage of Isabel Leland to Donald Scott. For reasons I need not go into, the marriage was ended by a secret divorce within a short time. It was not until after the divorce that Isabel Scott realized that she was to have a child.

  “She did not tell her mother. She went to her father, and he took her to California. The boy was born in a hospital there, and ten days later was handed over to a childless couple. The baby’s mother resented this. She wanted the child, but her father opposed the idea. What she did was to put this small chain around the baby’s neck, and to make with ink an ornament from something she was wearing—possibly a bed jacket—so that in the future she might at least identify him.

  “Her own identity had been carefully shielded. She was there under another name. But the unexpected happened. Someone in the hospital, a patient recovering from an appendicitis operation, had seen her door open and had recognized her. Isabel Scott, as she was at that time, did not know this; but it was not hard for the patient to learn why she was there—or that the whole affair was being kept secret.

  “What was learned also was that the doctor on the case was looking for a respectable family to take the child. Such a family was brought forward. The name was Armstrong and two or three years later, with the consent of Mr. Leland and the mother, who had since married Lawrence Shepard, adoption papers were taken out. The boy took the name Armstrong, that of his foster parents, but he remained his mother’s legal heir, and there was a considerable fortune involved.

  “All this time the Armstrongs remained in the West, with Mr. Leland still paying a monthly sum for the child. Then something happened. Mrs. Shepard’s second marriage had produced no children. She began to want her son. She talked to her husband about adopting a boy, and at the same time she heard from the Armstrongs. They were willing to give up the child, but for a large cash payment—fifty thousand dollars. With her estate in trust and her father completely opposed to any such action, she was pretty desperate. She had never told Donald Scott that he was a father. Now she thought of him. He had risen fast. He had made considerable money. She wrote him the facts, and she enclosed a snapshot of the Armstrong woman taken in California, with the boy one of a group of children.

  “But he called her up and told her he couldn’t help—not to that extent anyhow. He had lived well. He hadn’t saved a great deal. He sent the photograph back, asking her to destroy it.

  “Then the Armstrongs came East with the boy, whose first name is Scott, by the way. Mrs. Shepard had some meetings with Armstrong in the park. Her chauffeur has identified him. She also saw her son at least once. He is an attractive child and she became more anxious than ever.

  “However, the Armstrongs still held out for their fifty thousand. They even threatened to raise the ante. She explained her situation to them; she had only her income, no capital, but the boy Scott would have her entire estate on her death. That was her mistake. A terrible one, for now she was more valuable dead than alive.”

  I looked at Mother. Her poor chin was quivering. She could understand that pitiful story of Isabel’s, wanting her son, begging for him, seeing him and loving him, and then never getting him. Larry got out his handkerchief and blew his nose.

  The Inspector went on.

  “I must say here that Mrs. Armstrong was not a party to much that happened. She was willing to give up the boy if it meant a better life for him. Otherwise she refused to cooperate.”

  He looked at Andrew Leland, sitting with his head bowed.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Leland. I shall have to go into some details here. If you care to leave …?”

  “Go ahead,” Andrew said quietly.

  “In a sense,” the Inspector resumed, “Mrs. Shepard’s death goes back to the hat here. It belongs to Armstrong, who was the drunken waiter who was ejected before the dinner that night. He has identified it himself.

  “His drunkenness was an act. He was sober enough when he left. Perhaps I’d better read you his testimony. I shall read it as it was given. You will notice that he has refused to answer certain questions.”

  He took up several sheets of paper fastened by a clip and put on his glasses again. “It is in the form of question and answer, but I think it is clear.” He began to read:

  Question: What did you do when you were put out of the house?

  Answer: I was only playing drunk. One of the policemen at the back door took me a few yards. Then he let me go.

  Q. And after that?

  A. Well, I was in the evening clothes I had rented, and I had somebody’s top hat from the men’s room. I went to the officer on the horse and told him I’d give him fifty dollars to let me ride his horse around the place for a while. I suppose he thought I was a guest, and tight at that. He considered it a minute. Then he got off his horse. He said fifty dollars was worth a ride in any man’s money. I didn’t get on the horse. Not then anyhow. I hit him on the head with a rock I’d picked up. Not too hard. Just enough to put him to sleep.

  Q. What did you do with him?

  A. I dragged him away from the drive. It was pretty dark. I put on his cap and coat. Then I heard the woman coming—Anna Griffin is her name, I think. So I g
ot on the horse and when she spoke I answered.

  Q. Why was it necessary to knock out Barnes?

  A. Well, the place was full of cops, and we had business that night.

  Q. What sort of business? To kill Mrs. Shepard?

  A. I told you we never killed her.

  Q. Then why did you attack Barnes?

  The Inspector looked up.

  “I shall skip the next few questions and answers. We felt he was lying. He mumbled something about Mrs. Shepard’s being prepared to pay over the money that night, in exchange for an agreement to let her adopt the boy. But there was no money in the house when she was found. Barnes was a danger, of course, if murder was contemplated. Armstrong, however, has persisted that murder was never part of the plan.” Then he read:

  Q. You say “we.” Do you mean yourself and your wife?

  A. My wife wasn’t. in it Leave her out. She wasn’t near the place that night.

  Q. Then you did it yourself. You knocked Barnes out and then killed Mrs. Shepard.

  A. I never put a foot inside the house. That’s the truth, before God.

  He put down the paper.

  “He collapsed at that point,” he said quietly. “We got the rest of his testimony later. I think I should explain our own situation, as it was until the death of Alma Spencer last night.

  “You must remember that at this time none of us had ever heard of the Armstrongs. The autopsy had told us Mrs. Shepard had borne a child. King learned that she had not had a child by her present husband. He remembered the chauffeur’s story of her meeting a man in the park. And when Mrs. Armstrong was murdered by being thrown from a bridge, her bag was thrown with her. It contained not only Mr. Shepard’s knife; there was also a small piece of paper in it with the words ‘Strathmore House. Linden Avenue bus.’ That connected her definitely with the case.”

  “I thought she committed suicide,” I said, in a thin voice. “Do you mean her husband killed her?”

  “No,” he said gravely. “He did not kill her, Miss Shepard.”