Episode of the Wandering Knife

by Rinehart, Mary Roberts;

  What was all this about? Hilda thought resentfully. She’s a ‘child, and a nice child. Before she knew it she was shaking hands, and Tony was saying, “I’m so glad you could come. I can do housework, but I’m not much good with sick people. Would you like to see your room? It’s old-fashioned, but comfortable.”

  It was both, the large guest room Alice had shown on her diagram, and facing the street. The furniture was obviously of the nineties or earlier, but some hasty attempt had been made to prepare it for her: a bunch of flowers on the bureau, a magazine on the table. It had its own bathroom, too, and Hilda heaved a sigh of relief.

  The whole layout looked better than she had expected, and the hard core of anxiety which had brought her there began to relax. Then she got her first real look at Tony herself. The hall had been dark. Now in the bright morning light of the bedroom she had to revise her first impression of the girl. She was certainly young and attractive. But the friendliness had been forced, and the lines around her mouth were too tight. Also she looked tired, tired to the point of exhaustion, as though she had not slept for many nights, and there was a silk sling around her neck, although she was not using it.

  Aggie had brought in the bag and gone out, and rather unexpectedly Tony closed the door behind her.

  “I hope you don’t mind,” she said, her eyes anxiously searching Hilda’s face. “My mother isn’t very well. She’s nervous, and she likes me to look after her. Anyhow, I expect Aunt Alice will take all your time.”

  Hilda took off her neat black hat and placed it on the closet shelf. Casually as it had been done, she had been warned off Mrs. Rowland, and she knew it. Her face was bland as she turned.

  “I suppose your aunt’s accident has been a shock, too,” she said. “Just how did it happen?”

  “We don’t know. She doesn’t know herself. It might have been the cat. She lies on the stairs sometimes, and she’s dark like the carpet. She’s hard to see.”

  “Does Miss Rowland think that?”

  She was aware that the girl was watching her, as if she were suddenly suspicious.

  “It doesn’t really matter, does it?” she said coolly. “She fell. That’s bad enough. If you’ll come in when you’re ready—it’s the room across—I’ll give you the doctor’s orders.”

  She went out, her slim body held rather stiffly, and Hilda felt she had made a bad start. Yet after seeing Tony Rowland the whole story lost credibility. She thought again of Fuller and his statement about desperation as a motive for crime. There was something unusual about the girl, of course—that statement that she would herself look after her mother, for one thing. But she did not look like a psychopathic case, and on the other hand the house, Aggie, even Tony herself in her short skirt and pullover sweater and with her hair sweeping over her shoulders, seemed the very antithesis of tragedy. Only the girl’s eyes …

  She got into her uniform, pinning her cap securely to the top of her head. One of the first things she observed to Fuller when she took her first case for him was about her cap. “I don’t want it like a barrel about to go over Niagara Falls,” she said. “I wear it where it belongs.” It was where it belonged as she crossed the hall to her patient’s room.

  Alice Rowland lay in the big double bed where she had almost certainly been born. She was only a name and some cracked ribs to Hilda at this point, and she surveyed her without emotion. She saw a thin middle-aged woman with a long nose and a fretful mouth, now forcing a smile.

  “Good morning,” Hilda said briskly. “Have you had your breakfast?”

  “Yes, thanks. I wasn’t hungry. So stupid of me to fall downstairs, wasn’t it? I’ve gone down those stairs all my life. To be helpless just now …”

  She didn’t complete the sentence, and Hilda wondered if she suspected her identity. Apparently she did not, for she lay back looking more relaxed.

  “I don’t remember having had a nurse for years,” she said. “But two of us were really too much for the servants.”

  “Two of you?”

  “My sister-in-law is not very well. Nerves, largely. She’s in bed a good bit of the time. They were all in Honolulu during the raid, and she hasn’t got over it yet. Then of course she worries about her husband, my brother Charles. He’s a colonel in the regular Army. He’s in the Pacific somewhere.”

  So that was to be the story, Hilda reflected as she got out her old-fashioned watch and took her patient’s pulse. Everything was to be laid to the war. Mrs. Rowland was worried about her husband and still suffering from Pearl Harbor, after almost four years. Her daughter had shot at her twice and tried to kill her in a car, but the trouble was still to be the Japs.

  “Tony looks after her,” Alice said, as Hilda put her watch—it had been her mother’s, an old-fashioned open-case one with a large second hand—back in her bag on the bureau. “He left Nina in her care.” She looked sharply at Hilda. “I suppose she warned you off, didn’t she? She’s a jealous child, you know. She was frightfully upset when I told her you were coming.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” Hilda said brusquely. “Why should she mind?”

  “I wish I knew,” Alice said, and submitted to having a bed bath and to having her linen changed. She did not revert to Tony, and Hilda, moving her skillfully, saw that her adhesive strapped body was thin and angular. She was a spinsterish fifty, certainly unattractive and as certainly worried. But she was evidently not going to discuss her niece.

  “How did you happen to fall?” she inquired, as she drew the last sheet in place.

  “I caught my heel near the top and stumbled. It was awkward of me, wasn’t it?”

  “Were you alone when it happened?”

  “Quite alone,” Alice said rather sharply. “Why? I’d have fallen just the same.”

  “I asked because I noticed your niece had hurt her arm. I thought perhaps—”

  “That was some time ago. She bruised it.”

  As this was evidently all Alice intended to say Hilda went on with her work. She finished the bed, brushed her patient’s thin hair, and then carried out the soiled linen. The hall was empty, the door into Nina Rowland’s room closed and no one in sight. On her way back she went to the staircase and starting at the top examined it carefully. There was always the possibility that some trap had been laid—a string stretched across to catch a heel perhaps. She found no sign of anything of the sort however, and she was still stooping over, her back to the lower hall, when she heard Tony’s voice behind her.

  “What on earth are you doing?” she asked.

  Hilda was startled out of her usual composure.

  “I dropped my class pin,” she said, rather too hastily. “It’s all right. I’ve got it.”

  Tony stood watching her as she went back to Alice’s room but Hilda felt a wave of almost palpable suspicion and distrust. And she had made a mistake. Since she had been on the stairs, she should have gone on down, to see the cook about the patient’s diet, to use the telephone, almost anything but her ignominious retreat.

  The case was already getting on her nerves, she realized. Of the two women she had seen, Alice Rowland seemed far more the neurotic type than the girl. She began to question whatever story Fuller had heard. After all people did walk in their sleep. There were automobile accidents too without any implication of murder and suicide. Yet the girl’s face haunted her.

  She saw her only at a distance after that until lunchtime. Once, glancing out, she saw her meet the postman on the front walk and take the mail from him. The other time she was dressed for the street, returning later with what looked like the morning marketing. She looked older, for she had rolled her hair back and had used lipstick and rouge. But she walked slowly, as though she dreaded coming back to the house again.

  At noon Hilda went downstairs to the kitchen to discuss Alice’s lunch. The cook was there alone, a thin little woman who said her name was Stella, and who seemed to carry a perpetual grouch.

  “I’ve got a chop for Miss Alice,” she said uns
milingly.

  “You’ll have to eat fish, like the rest of us.”

  Hilda was accustomed to dealing with obstreperous cooks. She did so now.

  “I don’t care for fish. You can boil me an egg. Four minutes, please.”

  Stella stared at her and Hilda stared back. But Stella had met her match. Her eyes dropped first.

  “All right, miss,” she said. “Four minutes.”

  This being settled Hilda went to the kitchen door. There was a brick walk outside, leading a hundred feet or so to a garage and an alley. The next houses stood some distance away, the grounds separated by low privet hedges. Behind her she could hear Stella banging pans about. She turned and looked at her, and the noise ceased.

  “Been here long?” she inquired pleasantly.

  “Thirty years.”

  “Always have a cat?”

  Stella glanced at her.

  “What’s the cat got to do with it?”

  “Miss Rowland thinks her aunt tripped over it.”

  “That cat was right here when she fell. I’ve told Miss Tony that. Miss Alice don’t like cats. She says they carry germs. She’s fussy about things like that. Anyhow it’s my cat. It stays with me.”

  And as if to answer a black cat emerged, stretching from behind the range. Hilda stooped and stroked it, and Stella’s face softened.

  “That fall was an accident,” she said. “Don’t you go thinking anything else.”

  “Why should I?” Hilda asked, simulating surprise. “Of course it was an accident.”

  Stella however had tightened her mouth and said nothing more.

  Alice was dozing when she went back to her, so she ate her lunch alone with Tony in the big square dining room with its sideboard crowded with old-fashioned silver. The girl had evidently abandoned her suspicions. She even made an effort to talk about the difficulty of buying food with two invalids to care for. Her mother was not sick, of course, but she was very nervous. She didn’t like to see people, and she slept badly.

  She ate very little, Hilda noticed. She smoked through the meal, taking only a puff or two of a cigarette and then crushing it out on an ash tray, while Aggie agitatedly hung over her.

  “Just a bite of this, Miss Tony. It’s caramel custard. You always liked it.”

  And Tony taking a little and pushing it around on her plate but only tasting it.

  It was toward the end of the meal that she put down her third cigarette and asked Hilda a question, her eyes curiously intent.

  “How long have you been nursing?”

  “Twenty-odd years.”

  “You must have had all sorts of cases in that time.”

  “I have indeed. Everything from delirium tremens to small-pox and nervous breakdowns.”

  Tony’s eyes were still fixed on her, but if she meant to say more Aggie’s entrance stopped her. Was she about to ask about somnambulism? she wondered.

  She was puzzled as she carried Alice’s lunch tray up to her. It had been Fuller’s custom when she took a case for him more or less to lay the situation before her, with all its various angles. The night before however she had cut him off before he could really discuss it with her and her own decision to come had been sudden. So now she wondered what Tony had not said, and at the look of anxiety in her eyes.

  She was twenty or so, Hilda thought. Then she must have been not more than seventeen, probably less, when she left the islands. Too young for a love affair, very likely, certainly for one to last so long. And what would that have had to do with two attempts to kill her mother? If indeed she had made such attempts at all.

  She was to be increasingly bewildered as she passed Mrs. Rowland’s door. A plaintive voice beyond it was speaking.

  “Tony,” it called. “Is that you, Tony?”

  Hilda stopped.

  “It’s Miss Rowland’s nurse,” she said. “Can I get you something?”

  She shifted the tray to one hand and put the other on the doorknob. To her astonishment the door did not open. It was locked. She stared at it.

  “I’m afraid it’s locked,” she called.

  There was a short silence. Then the woman inside laughed lightly.

  “Good gracious,” she said. “The catch must have slipped. Don’t bother. I only wanted to tell Tony I’d have tea instead of coffee.”

  Hilda became aware then that Tony had come up the stairs with her mother’s tray. She had stopped abruptly when she saw Hilda, and this time there was no mistake about it. She was frightened. She whirled and set the tray on a hall table.

  “I forgot something,” she gasped, and ran down the stairs again.

  Hilda was baffled. Why did Mrs. Rowland lock herself in her room? Was she afraid of something in the house? Whoever it was, certainly it was not Tony. Then who, or what? When she went back to her patient she found her watching the door.

  “I thought I heard Nina calling,” she said. “Is—is everything all right?”

  “Tony forgot something for her mother’s tray,” Hilda said placidly. “I could have carried it up for her if I’d known. With her arm …”

  “There are still two servants in the house,” Alice said shortly. “It’s perfectly silly for her to do it.”

  IV

  If Hilda had hoped that Alice Rowland would talk to her that day she was mistaken. Beyond saying that her sister-in-law was what she called delicate she did not refer to the family again. But there was certainly tension in the house. That evening, when Hilda prepared for her usual walk before settling down for the night, it became obvious that Alice did not intend to be left alone and helpless in her bed.

  “I have some things to talk over with Aggie,” she said. “She’s been here for years. In a way she’s more of a housekeeper than anything else. Do you mind asking her to come up?”

  So Aggie was there when Hilda left, and she was still there, with the door into the hall closed, when she came back.

  She came back, as a matter of fact, rather shaken.

  She was in the corner drugstore when it happened. She had been in the booth trying to locate Inspector Fuller, and coming out she saw a good-looking young man in uniform with a first lieutenant’s insignia staring at her over the Coke he held in his hand. She had thrown her cape over her white nurse’s uniform, and at first she thought this was what had interested him. As she started out however she saw him paying hastily for his drink. He was on her heels when she reached the street, and he spoke to her before she had gone a dozen feet.

  “I’m sorry to bother you,” he said, “but I saw you coming out of the Rowland house. Is anything wrong there?”

  There was a sort of sick anxiety in his voice. Hilda halted and looked up at him. He was a tall young man, and just then with the pleading eyes of a whipped dog.

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  “I’m John Hayes. I’m—I used to be a friend of Tony Rowland’s. She’s not ill, is she?”

  “She’s perfectly all right. Her aunt fell downstairs and hurt herself yesterday. That’s why I’m here. It’s not serious.”

  It was not like Hilda to explain, but she felt confident she knew who the boy was. Also she liked what she could see of him. He was not too handsome, for one thing. She had a vague suspicion of all handsome men. And his uniform entitled him to consideration.

  He did not leave her. He walked along beside her, trying to fit his long steps to her short ones and then abandoning the idea. At first he did not speak, nor did she, When at last he did it was to surprise her.

  “Why have they kicked me out?” he inquired. “Do you know? Have they said anything?”

  “I only got there this morning. No one mentioned you—unless you are the man Tony Rowland was to marry.”

  “That’s right,” he said morosely.

  “I’m afraid I don’t know anything about it, except that the wedding was postponed.”

  “Postponed!” His voice was incredulous. “So that’s what they say. Postponed! Tony gave me the complete brush-off two months a
go, without any warning. I’d got leave, the plans were all made, I’d …” His voice broke. “She sent back her engagement ring. We’d even got the license. And then—goodbye and be a good boy and take it nicely. Hell,” he said thickly, “I don’t know why I’m still hanging around.”

  “Well, why are you?” Hilda asked.

  He took this literally. He seemed to be a literal young man.

  “I got the measles,” he said. “Missed my outfit when it sailed. I’ll be going soon, of course.”

  This seeming slightly anticlimactic, Hilda smiled in the darkness.

  “What explanation did she give?” she asked.

  “Said she’d changed her mind. Said it was all over. Said she didn’t care for me as she’d thought she did, which was a damned dirty lie.” He stopped and shakily lit a cigarette, offering Hilda one which she refused. “It’s her mother,” he said sullenly. “Her mother or that aunt of hers. I’ve got a mother too. She thinks I’m good enough. Plenty. What’s the matter with them?”

  “What about Tony herself?” Hilda said. “Young girls do queer things sometimes. They are neurotic, or they get odd ideas.”

  He laughed without mirth.

  “Tony’s twenty,” he said. “She’s no neurotic kid, Miss …”

  “Adams is my name.”

  “Well, if she’s neurotic she got it pretty suddenly, Miss Adams. She was as normal as any girl I ever saw. She visited my sister Nancy, and the whole family fell for her. They still can’t understand it. They think I must have done something.”

  “When was all this?”

  “A year ago last summer. That’s when I met her. I had thirty days’ leave. We have a summer place in Massachusetts, and if she was having any queer ideas she darned well hid them. She swam and sailed and danced—” He stopped abruptly and stood still. “I suppose I’m making a fool of myself,” he said. “Thanks a lot, Miss Adams. Good night.”

  He gave her a stiff-armed salute, wheeled and left her standing in the darkness, rather openmouthed with astonishment.

  She did not see Fuller until the next night. Nothing had happened in the interval, and on the surface everything was normal in the Rowland household. Alice, still strapped with adhesive, was fretful but comfortable. Dr. Wynant paid a hasty visit, said she would be up in a few days and hurried away. Tony seemed to have accepted Hilda, with reservations. The house ran smoothly, With Tony doing the marketing and helping with the housework.