Episode of the Wandering Knife

by Rinehart, Mary Roberts;

  “It worried me at the time,” Miss Rowland said. “I laid in to what had happened, but she wouldn’t talk about the attack or even about the islands. Nina did. She loved Honolulu. But Tony, the daughter, would get up and leave the room if it was even mentioned.”

  “She gave no reason, I suppose?”

  “No, and she got over it in time. She became entirely normal. She went to boarding school and made friends there. She was very popular, I believe. When she graduated she came back, and a year ago I had an informal tea and gave her as much of a debut as I could in wartime. She’s been home ever since. Nina’s rather delicate, but we all got along splendidly. Or did. Then about two months ago Tony—her name is really Antoinette, after my mother—Tony began to change.”

  “Just how? What did you notice?”

  Alice Rowland looked distressed.

  “It’s hard to put into words,” she said. “She was sick for a day or two, but she got over that. I thought it was because something had happened and she broke her engagement. Maybe that was part of it, but it was the other change in her.”

  “What sort of change?”

  “Well, she began to watch her mother. Nina’s always been in bed a good bit—she likes being coddled—and Tony’s room is across the hall. Then she practically stopped going out and she kept her door open all the time. Whenever I went in to see her mother she went in too. I got the idea she didn’t want me to see her. Not alone anyhow. And she never let her go out of the house if she could help it. I began to wonder …”

  She hesitated, coloring faintly.

  “You see,” she explained, “my sister-in-law is a really beautiful woman. She’s always had a great deal of admiration. And Tony worships her father. I—well, I thought there might be someone in love with her and Tony knew it. But nobody calls her up, so far as I know, and I don’t see her mail. As a matter of fact”—she looked embarrassed—“I don’t even know if she sees all of it. Tony watches for the postman and gets it first.”

  She came to a full stop. Her hands were moist with nervousness, and she got a handkerchief from her bag and wiped them.

  “I hate doing this,” she said. “It—this part of it really isn’t a police matter. I just need advice. But one of my friends wrote asking Nina to lunch and bridge. She got a telephoned regret from Tony. Later I spoke to Nina about it I thought she looked very queer, as if she hadn’t known about it.”

  “But she accepts all this—attention?”

  “She’s used to being looked after. My brother spoiled her. If she and Tony disagree I wouldn’t know about it. Since the accident with the car Nina’s been in bed a good bit. Dr. Wynant says it’s merely shock, but she has some neuritis too. In her arms.”

  “When did this shooting take place?”

  “Two months ago. I really do think Tony was walking in her sleep then. She was very unhappy. She’d broken her engagement, just when everything was ready for the wedding. That was probably the reason.” She wiped her hands again. “Such a nice boy, too. Johnny Hayes. He’s a lieutenant in the Army. I suppose he’s gone now, or on his way.”

  “Did Mrs. Rowland object to the marriage?”

  “No. She was delighted. We all were.”

  “Did Tony ever say why she broke her engagement?”

  “No. She simply said it was all off. She was quite definite about it. She sent back the presents and took her trousseau chest to a closet on the third floor. It’s still there—her wedding dress and everything.”

  “About the shooting, did she say she’d been walking in her sleep?”

  “She didn’t say anything. She never has, since. But the gun was under some clothes in a drawer in Nina’s room. Charles had given it to them after the attack. It was loaded, and none of us knew how to unload it.”

  “Can you remember that night, Miss Rowland? You heard the shots, I suppose. What then?”

  “I ran in, in my nightdress. Nina’s room is behind mine and Tony’s is across the hall. I found Tony on the floor just inside her mother’s door, with the gun beside her. She had fainted, and Nina was trying to get out of bed. She didn’t seem to know what had happened.”

  “She wasn’t hurt? Your sister-in-law, I mean.”

  “No, but she was badly shocked. It was late at night, and with the house being detached only the servants heard the shots. They ran down and helped put Tony to bed. Nina wasn’t any use. She never is in an emergency. But she said Tony had often walked in her sleep as a child, especially if she was worried.”

  “And Tony? How did she react?”

  “She seemed dazed. When we put her to bed she just laid there. I tried to find her pulse, but she had hardly any. I called Dr. Wynant, and he gave her a hypodermic of some sort. I told him a little. I didn’t say she’d fired at her mother, but she had, Inspector. I found one bullet in the head of the bed. The other must have gone out the window. It was open.”

  “This was two months ago?”

  “Yes. She was in bed for a week or so. But I’m very anxious. You see, she fired twice. That’s the part I don’t understand. You’d think, if she were really asleep, one shot would have awakened her.”

  About the car accident she was more vague. She had not been there, and Nina had said something had gone wrong with the steering gear. After all the car was old, and few mechanics were available. What she couldn’t understand was where it had happened.

  “We have very little gas,” she said. “I can’t imagine Tony going out in the country at all with things as they are, or Nina going with her. Yet she did, and it happened on a remote road. Only Tony was the one who was injured. She hurt her arm, and it’s still stiff. Nina isn’t much good in an emergency, but Tony walked a mile or two, holding her arm and not making any fuss about it. Nina says she was very pale but quite calm.”

  “Then all this has been in the last two months? Things were normal before that.”

  “Yes.”

  “Was there anything else to worry her, outside of breaking her engagement?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know why she broke it. And Nina doesn’t either.”

  “Didn’t she explain at all?”

  “I don’t know what she told Johnny. She merely told her mother the bare fact, as she did me. But she’s very unhappy. She doesn’t sleep or eat. She’s dreadfully thin.”

  “Have you talked to young Hayes?”

  “Once. He’s bewildered like the rest of us. He doesn’t know what it’s all about. He had to go back to camp of course. We haven’t seen him since. He’ll be going to the Pacific any time now.”

  Fuller was thoughtful.

  “Of course I’m no psychiatrist,” he said, “but certainly there’s an emotional upset there. Some sort of mental conflict, I imagine. If we knew why she broke off with young Hayes … You’re sure there was nothing else?”

  “I can’t think of anything to worry her. In fact, there was good news. My brother wrote that he was probably coming back on some military business.”

  “Was this before or after she broke her engagement?”

  “After. Why would that affect her anyhow, Inspector? She worships her father. But even that’s rather strange. She …”

  She hesitated, as if unwilling to go on.

  “Yes?” he prompted her.

  “Well, ordinarily I’d have expected her to be pleased, or at least excited. She hasn’t seen him in more than three years. She wasn’t. She acted—well, as though she didn’t want him to come. It worried Nina. She couldn’t understand it either.”

  She got up and laid a package on the table.

  “I brought the gun,” she explained. “None of us knows anything about guns, and it seemed better to have it out of the house. You know how Honolulu was after the attack, with so many Japanese around. Charles gave it to them—Nina and Tony—and told them how to take the safety catch off. But we were afraid to unload it.”

  He opened the parcel. The automatic was lying in a bed of cotton in what looked like a shoe box, and
he took it out and examined it. It was a heavy Colt automatic, which had been fired and not cleaned.

  “There were two shots fired?”

  “Yes.”

  “Close together?”

  “I think so. Yes.”

  “How far from her mother’s door was she when she fired? How many feet?”

  “I don’t know. The bed is at the side of the room. Perhaps ten or twelve feet. Maybe more. Our rooms are large.”

  “That’s pretty close. How could she miss?”

  But Alice Rowland did not know. She stood there, nervously clutching her bag, not relaxing until he had emptied the magazine and put the gun down. Then she opened the bag. “I brought one of the bullets,” she said. “I dug it out of the bed. I don’t know whether you want it or not.”

  She produced it, wrapped neatly in tissue paper, and laid it in front of him.

  “I do hope you understand.” Her voice was unsteady. “I don’t want Tony to suffer. I don’t want the police around. What I need is advice. What am I to do, Inspector? I can’t talk to Nina about it. She is convinced Tony was walking in her sleep.”

  “And you are not?”

  “I don’t know what to think,” she said evasively.

  She was preparing to go, but Fuller pushed a pad and pencil across the desk to her.

  “Suppose you draw a rough sketch of Mrs. Rowland’s room,” he suggested. “Make it of the second floor, showing the general layout. I’ll get you a chair.”

  He had done so, and Alice had drawn a shaky outline. It showed four main bedrooms, with a center hall, her own room at the front, her sister-in-law’s behind it, a guest room—also at the front of the house—across from hers, and a wing extending beyond Nina Rowland’s room, containing a room she called the sewing room, a servants’ staircase, and some storage closets. Nina’s bed was to the right of the door from the hall, and there was no window beside it. The two windows shown were opposite the door.

  Fuller examined it carefully.

  “If the second shot went out the open window she was pretty far off the mark,” he observed. “You’re sure it’s not in the room?”

  Alice was positive. She had examined every part of the room carefully. The screens had been taken out, and the window was wide open. There had been two shots and only one bullet. Therefore …

  It was after this that Fuller had suggested the psychiatrist, and the family doctor, Wynant, had agreed. It had not been easy. Tony had at first refused entirely. She hadn’t walked in her sleep for years. If they were afraid of her they could lock her in her room at night. In the end however she had gone, only to remain stubbornly noncooperative.

  “I never even chipped the surface,” the psychiatrist had reported to Fuller. “It was like working on a china nest egg. She was polite enough, but she simply wouldn’t talk. However she’s got something in her mind, Fuller, and I’d say it isn’t healthy. She’s—well, she’s unnatural for a girl of twenty. Too quiet, for one thing. I had an idea she was hating me like the devil all the time.”

  “Maybe she was afraid of you.”

  “She’s afraid of something. That’s certain.”

  But he had noticed one reaction. Her hands began to shake when he mentioned Honolulu.

  “I don’t like guessing,” he said, “but I’d say something happened to her there. They got out after the attack, didn’t they?”

  “Yes,” Fuller said. “And why wait almost four years for it to send her off?”

  The psychiatrist shrugged.

  “The mind’s a curious thing. The more I work with it the less I seem to know! But I’d say she’s heading for trouble.”

  Alice Rowland’s story had stuck in the Inspector’s mind. One day he went around to the garage where the car had been taken after Tony wrecked it. It was still there, waiting the delivery of some new parts. He looked it over carefully.

  “Got quite a bump,” the garage man said. “Smashed the radiator, for one thing. It’s a wonder the gal and her mother didn’t go out through the windshield.”

  “How did it happen?”

  “Well, you know how some women drive. Turn their heads to talk to the person with them and socko, they’re off the road.”

  “Then it wasn’t the steering gear?”

  The garage man stared at him.

  “Is that the girl’s story?” he inquired. “Well, take it from me she’s lying. The insurance people were here almost as soon as the car was. They know what happened.”

  That was as much as Fuller knew. He had had one other talk with Alice Rowland. She had been frightened both for and about Tony, but any suggestion to her mother that a rest in one of the institutions for nervous cases would help had only met with furious resentment. However, nothing had happened and Fuller had stopped wondering about the case and devoted himself to a crime wave near one of the Army camps. Then, the morning of the day he saw Hilda Adams, Dr. Wynant had called him up.

  “I have a message for you, Inspector,” he said. “Alice Rowland fell down the stairs today and cracked some ribs. It’s all right, according to her. Purely accidental. There was no one near her at the time. But she asked me to tell you.”

  “Tony’s not involved?”

  “So Alice thinks, but I wondered if that nurse you use sometimes is available. What is it you call her?”

  “Miss Pinkerton. Her name’s Adams, of course.”

  “Well nurses are scarce, and I think Alice is uneasy. She’s going to be flat in bed for a few days. Pretty helpless too.”

  “You mean she’s afraid of the girl?”

  “I don’t know. But her sister-in-law isn’t much good in a sickroom. As a matter of fact she’s laid up herself. Don’t ask me what’s wrong. She won’t see me. Seems I offended her after the automobile accident. I asked her if she thought it was deliberate and she blew up. I suppose it’s a combination of her old neuritis, plus shock and resentment. Tony’s looking after both of them now.”

  “It’s all right, I suppose. Safe, I mean?”

  “Tony’s never shown any animus against Alice, but that’s as far as I go.”

  Which was the state of affairs when Fuller mixed himself another drink that night after his appeal to Hilda and went to bed. He slept rather badly however, and was awake at six when his telephone rang. He was not surprised to find Hilda on the wire.

  “I’ve been thinking about that girl,” she said. “What’s all this about desperation? Can’t she be manic-depressive or dementia praecox or something simple like that?”

  “Could be.”

  “Well what do you think?” she asked impatiently.

  He yawned.

  “I’m not at my best at this hour,” he said. “I think she’s in trouble. I don’t think she wants her mother to know, and that it’s bad enough for murder and suicide—in her own mind anyhow.”

  “You think she meant to kill herself too?”

  “Why try to wreck a car and hope to escape yourself? I thought you were going to raise chickens. The market’s good these days.”

  She ignored that.

  “Where’s the house, and who’s the doctor?”

  “Wynant. You know him.”

  “All right. I’ll call him,” she said and rang off, leaving Fuller smiling to himself.

  III

  It was half after seven that morning when Hilda got into her taxi and perched her small suitcase on the seat beside her. She looked washed and ironed, as Fuller always said, but also she looked slightly starched. Her childlike face was rather set Jim, the local taxi driver who usually drove her on her cases, took a quick glance at her in his rearview mirror.

  “Thought you were going to the war,” he said. “My wife said she’d be glad to take your canary if you did.”

  Hilda’s face stiffened still more.

  “I’m too old, and I’ve got a bad heart,” she said sourly. “I can work my legs off here at home, but I can’t do the same thing overseas.”

  “Bad heart! You sure look well enoug
h.”

  “I am well. If I’d dyed my hair I dare say I could have made it.”

  He helped her out with the suitcase when they reached the address she had given. The Rowland house stood by itself, a large four-square brick structure with handsomely curtained windows and an air of complete dignity and self-respect. It was a civilized house, Hilda thought, eyeing it as she went up the cement walk to the porch across its front; the sort of building which implied wealth and security rather than—what was Fuller’s word? Desperation. That what had been a handsome lawn around the building showed neglect meant nothing. Men were scarce, as indeed was all sorts of help.

  This was borne out when an elderly maid admitted her. She looked as though she had dressed hastily and she was still tying a white apron around her heavy waist. Hilda stepped into the hall and put down her bag.

  “I’m Miss Adams,” she said. “Dr. Wynant sent me. If you’ll show me where to put on my uniform …”

  “I’m surely glad you’ve come,” the woman said. “My name is Aggie, miss. I’ll take your bag up. Would you like some breakfast?”

  “I’ve had mine, thanks.”

  “We’re short of help,” Aggie said, picking up the bag. “The chambermaid’s gone, and the butler left for a war job two years ago. Of course Miss Tony helps all she can.”

  Hilda said nothing. She was surveying the long hall, with its heavy carpet, its mirrors and consoles, and the big square rooms opening off it. The effect was handsome but gloomy. The stillness too was startling, as though nothing lived or moved in the house save the heavy figure of Aggie noiselessly mounting the stairs. The stairs, she thought, down which Alice Rowland had either fallen or been thrown the day before. She had a feeling of surprise too. A Tony who helped with the housework was hard to reconcile with a neurotic or possibly insane girl who had twice tried to kill her mother.

  Her surprise was augmented when she met Tony in the upper hall, a slender girl in a skirt and pullover sweater, with shining dark hair loose over her shoulders, and looking about sixteen. What was even more important, a friendly girl, with a charming sensitive face and a sweet but unsmiling mouth.