She shook her head. She went on dropping more scraps of paper into a heap where the little heart was carved on the wood.
“He’s probably quite a nice fellow when he’s normal,” said Mr. Pennyfeather. “Of course, he’s being a bit obnoxious now. I was, too, when I’d been jilted.”
She jerked her hand away from the little heap of paper. “Where did you run into him?”
“In a bar.”
She took a deep breath. “He’s going to get into trouble if he keeps drinking.”
“Speaking militarily—as one soldier of another—of course.”
She looked down quickly as if at her uniform, brushed at something which seemed tangled in her lashes. “Of course. He’s in the Army, just as I am. He mustn’t make a bust of everything.”
“Will you help me get in touch with him?”
“Now?”
“If he’s in town. If not—later.”
She looked at the watch strapped to her wrist. “He’s still here. I think we’ll catch him at the bus depot.” She stood up quickly.
Mr. Pennyfeather said: “Excuse me, please.” He reached to the heap of scrap paper and pushed it aside. “Did Freddy ever know about this?”
She wouldn’t look, though she must have known what he had uncovered. “I guess he didn’t know. I did it a long time ago, when we were in school together.”
They went out into the street, though Mr. Pennyfeather had begun to smell the odor of frying sausage and was decidedly hungry. Caroline walked very fast. There was a flush of color in her face, a look in her eyes as though she might be entertaining some uncomfortable thoughts. When they reached the bus depot and the crowd of waiting soldiers, she paused, turned with an air of indecision. “Perhaps you’d better look for him alone. I don’t know why I came along, really.”
“If you wish,” said Mr. Pennyfeather. He raised his hat to her and invaded the khaki-colored group. He had an impression of a lot of young, brisk faces, scrubbed ears, healthy yawns. He found Freddy at last, ogled him until Freddy growled a query, slid through the door to the shadows inside. The hotel across the street showed blank windows, empty porches; but he thought that his interview with Freddy might best be unobserved.
Freddy was leaner and wearier than Mr. Pennyfeather recalled. He wore an expression which Mr. Pennyfeather’s aunt Elizabeth would have called “spindling.” There was the dark suggestion of a bruise over one temple, as though Mama’s Place might have produced a fight. He said, tight-lipped: “What the hell do you want?”
Mr. Pennyfeather studied him worriedly. “You look dreadful.”
“Thanks. It’s none of your damned business,” said Freddy.
“No. But it might worry Caroline.”
Freddy laughed: at least, his lips did. His eyes did other things. “Caroline’s going to marry another guy. Haven’t you heard?”
“Other efforts than your own are intervening in that direction,” said Mr. Pennyfeather. “It’s about those efforts of yours—those notes you wrote—that I want to ask. Just this once, try not to act the bullheaded young nincompoop, and answer me decently.”
Freddy seemed about to stalk away. Then he said, “All right. Shoot.”
“I want to know if you got in touch with Tick’s aunt about his engagement to Caroline.”
“I didn’t know before the murder that he had an aunt.”
His answer had been quick. Very quick. “But you knew that he had been engaged to Glee Hazzard?”
“One of the guys at camp had dug up an old newspaper clipping about Tick Burrell and some fight he’d had in public when he and Miss Hazzard had been engaged. This fellow meant to use the clipping to kid Burrell along, perhaps do a bit of dirt by showing it to Caroline. I took the clipping away. I don’t know why.” He shrugged in disgust. “Later, when Caroline finally beat it through my thick skull that she and Burrell were serious, I dug the clipping out and got Miss Hazzard’s address off it.”
“And you didn’t,” said Mr. Pennyfeather slowly, “send a duplicate message to Mrs. Andler?”
“I’d never heard of her,” said Freddy.
From the door upstairs which let out upon the porch, Mr. Pennyfeather looked down at the crowd around the station.
Caroline’s brown hair under the WAC cap was bright in the early sun. Freddy made a towering shadow over her.
“I hope,” said Mr. Pennyfeather soundlessly, “that They’re keeping track of my good deeds somewhere. If They are, I’m certainly setting a score.”
He went away full of satisfaction to search for Tick. Tick wasn’t to be found. Stacey, having emerged from Mr. Johns’s office, was clumping about from the back hall to the cactus garden with a wise and ferocious expression on his face. He stopped when he saw Mr. Pennyfeather’s cautious figure. He stood quiet and watchful until Mr. Pennyfeather went back upstairs. There was something very peculiar and very ominous about his look.
Mr. Pennyfeather rapped at Glee’s door; heard her whisper: “Who is it?”
“Just me,” he answered. “I’m looking for Tick.”
“I think he caught a ride back to camp,” she said. “Shall I unlock the door?”
“No. Don’t bother.” He went to his own room a little more uneasy than before, the feeling of sharing Freddy’s hopeful joy a little washed away by apprehension and uncertainty.
The blinds were up in his room, though he had no memory of having raised them. Tick’s clothes were gone. There was a terse scribble pinned to his pillow:
DEAR Doc:
I’ve been horribly wrong about a lot of things. I’ll try to explain tonight.
TICK
He was still standing, holding the note in his fingers, when he heard Stacey’s hard step at the door. He turned. Stacey was grim, victorious, full of purpose. Behind him came Joe Jessop like a dog kicked in line by a hard boot.
Stacey opened a big hand to show Mr. Pennyfeather a silver rubble, crushed and twisted, some shreds of glass, a tiny light bulb. Mentally, Mr. Pennyfeather reconstructed a pencil-sized pocket flash. Then he caught a further detail. The shreds of glass which must have been a lens were blue.
The air of the room seemed to move with a burden of heat, of waiting, of the import of what Stacey was about to say. Mr. Pennyfeather looked at him blankly. Joe Jessop sniffled, wiped his mouth on a brown sleeve.
“Do you recognize this thing?” said Stacey.
“I haven’t seen it before,” said Mr. Pennyfeather.
“Do you know what it is?”
“It looks very much like the remains of a pocket flashlight.”
“Right,” said Stacey. He put the silver scrap and the glass back into a nest made of his handkerchief, and into his pocket. “Now you tell me how you happened to have it.”
“I didn’t.”
Jessop looked longingly at the door, and Stacey growled. Jessop stood still and looked at his feet.
“You were seen last evening tromping this here flashlight into the dirt in the alley,” said Stacey. “I want to know about that.”
Chapter Seventeen
Mr. Pennyfeather’s first instinct was to make a flat and vigorous denial. His second was to remember Professor Gelett’s rules for debate.
Professor Gelett had inveigled Mr. Pennyfeather into an argument about rose culture—informally, and in the faculty lounge—and he had blasted Aunt Elizabeth’s handed-down maxims about fertilizer and mulching so thoroughly (and, Mr. Pennyfeather suspected, without knowing half as much as Aunt Elizabeth) that Mr. Pennyfeather had decided to learn a few tricks about debating for himself.
Professor Gelett, pompous and generous in victory, had agreed to teach him. The first rule, he was astounded to learn, was not to pop off with the first idea which came into your head. It was much better to seem to agree, and while thus seeming and so lulling your opponent into a feeling that he had won the argument, you could be thinking up shattering reprisals.
Now was the occasion, if ever, to use Professor Gelett’s rules for verbal defense, and so Mr.
Pennyfeather looked earnestly at Sheriff Stacey and murmured: “I was seen?”
“By Joe Jessop,” Stacey thundered. Jessop nodded as though he were afraid Stacey might wag his head for him if he didn’t. “He hated to say anything, since you’re a close friend of Miss Carrie’s feeancy. But I got it out of him.”
“Hm-m-m-m,” said Mr. Pennyfeather. A lot of ideas ran through his head, not in the orderly manner in which Professor Gelett had promised, but more like a herd of panicked colts on a dark road.
“And he was in too much of a hurry at the time, too, and the alleys hereabouts aren’t the best place to stand and talk after sundown,” Stacey added. “So he just went on. Wouldn’t have mentioned it, I guess, if I hadn’t got after him.”
Mr. Pennyfeather discovered that the nervous colts were running themselves out and were being replaced by a more orderly breed of animal. He was getting the distinct idea, for instance, that Jessop hadn’t seen him at all, but Miss Comfort, in the alley.
“In what manner,” he inquired politely of Jessop, “did you identify me in the dark?”
“Your coat,” said Jessop; and stumbled. His mental processes could be seen, as fuzzy and aimless as bumblebees, behind his eyes. “Yeah,” he reassured himself. “That plaid overcoat of yours.”
“And this figure in the alley, wearing my coat, was crushing this pocket flash with its heel?”
“Sure,” said Jessop. He wore a suddenly startled look; he must be trying to account for Mr. Pennyfeather’s almost simultaneous appearance in his wife’s house, and coatless.
“You might,” Mr. Pennyfeather said gently to Stacey, “just have a glance at Miss Comfort’s shoes.”
Stacey’s jaw jumped as though he had bitten his tongue. He had a one-track mind, but he wasn’t stupid. He could add up Miss Comfort’s accident or attack last night, her wearing of a man’s coat, with this discovery of Jessop’s, and they didn’t spell Pennyfeather. He turned a murderous glare on Jessop.
“Why didn’t you tell me that all you recognized was the coat?”
“I didn’t want to say anything,” Jessop muttered. “But I knew you’d be a long time finding that flashlight in the dirt. I should have kept my big mouth shut.”
Stacey was already moving, racing down the hall toward Miss Comfort and her supply of white, sensible shoes. Mr. Pennyfeather sat down on the bed. He looked sorrowfully at Jessop, and Jessop scrubbed his hair line with an embarrassed thumb.
“I hope you won’t hold this against Carrie.”
“I certainly shall not,” said Mr. Pennyfeather. “By the way, what’s Caroline’s attitude toward Tick this morning? Still wavering?”
If ravishment may be said to have a shriek of its very own, it began to emerge from the room of Miss Comfort.
Jessop listened to the sound for a moment before answering Mr. Pennyfeather. “I think Carrie’ll be a little more reasonable in the future. I had a talk with her, a good serious talk.”
“And you pointed out—what?”
“Oh—such as Mr. Burrell being sort of young and impatient and maybe a trifle spoiled from having all that money, and how Carrie might make a few allowances.”
“And what did Carrie say?”
“She said she’d try to quit being so darned coolheaded and do a few of the things her heart dictated. Those were her words.” He scratched his jaw as if to remove any impression of unnatural refinement. “I’m glad she said it. She’s always been a fishy, quiet kind of kid. Old-fashioned, prissy.” He paused, and the bumblebees revolved about the strange defections of Caroline. “Now I’m hoping that Tick Burrell won’t have any more trouble with her.”
“I’m sure that he won’t be apt to.” Mr. Pennyfeather, grown a trifle dreamy, was remembering Freddy’s tall shadow and Caroline’s lifted face. Miss Comfort’s cries of rapine and rage were reaching a crescendo; Jessop was turning worried eyes at the open door; and there was suddenly a chatter of footsteps and the woman burst in at them.
She was terribly disheveled and, seeing the nurse’s cap awry and the white uniform wrinkled with struggle, sent a shock through Mr. Pennyfeather that he felt all the way to his toes.
“Just let me get my hands on you,” she screamed hoarsely, “and you’ll never lie again about a defenseless woman.”
Neither Mr. Pennyfeather nor Joe Jessop waited to learn which of them was wanted. They separated like quail at the feet of a hunter, dodging the long grapple she made with a big hand, scuttling past her to collide at the door. Stacey shouldered through, all elbows and ribs; there was an instant of heaving pressure, of cursing, of more shrieks from Miss Comfort; and then Mr. Pennyfeather found himself in the doubtful security of the hall.
Inside the room, Miss Comfort had seized a pair of shoes from Stacey and was trying to shunt them through a window. Stacey was grabbing for the shoes with hooked leathery fingers, his face hard with anger, his teeth clenched behind his tight lips. Jessop, limp and uncertain just inside the door, watched with his eyes bulging.
The noise drew curious heads into the hall: a deputy’s from Mrs. Blight’s room; Glee’s dark mop; finally Taffy. Taffy came out and shut her door behind her.
She had changed from the gray satin negligee to one of dull blue-lavender wool. The color found its echo in the thin veins of her eyelids, high-lighted the pallor of temple and cheek and throat. Her hair was a cloudy halo, and it alone held its old brightness. Taffy did indeed look ill.
She wore a big man’s ring on the third finger of her left hand. It was, incredibly, Tick’s senior-class ring.
She came and looked in past Mr. Pennyfeather’s shoulder at the scene inside his room.
Miss Comfort, having lost the shoes again to Stacey, was straightening her uniform in a silence more venomous than any shriek had been. Her eyes on the shrinking figure of Jessop were like a tiger’s. Stacey had taken out his handkerchief to mop his face. He was obviously as embarrassed as he had ever been in his life.
“Well,” began Miss Comfort icily, “you might tell me now why you’re taking off my clothes.”
Stacey tried not to flush. “I’m not taking anything off you, ma’am. I simply wanted a look at these shoes and you wouldn’t let me have it.”
“They’re my own personal, private property and you—”
Stacey had turned one of the low-heeled shoes over and with the tip of a thumbnail was loosening something tiny and glittering from the edge of the sole.
Miss Comfort shuddered. It was an odd reaction on her part, Mr. Pennyfeather thought, since she looked big and capable and there was no particular fear of Stacey in her face. “I was mistaken in denying to you that I hadn’t seen anything of a pencil flashlight. I did have one, and I did destroy it. In the alley, as Mr. Jessop says.”
Stacey let the speck of glass drop into his palm, handed the shoes to Miss Comfort, studied her with harsh speculation. “Go on.”
“I—You see, it’s a very handy sort of flashlight for a nurse. There is just enough light to see if the patient is getting along all right, yet not enough to disturb him.”
“I see. And yet you decided to get rid of it. Why?”
She looked back at him expressionlessly. “It was out of order.”
Stacey’s long upper lip drew down until he resembled a turtle: a desert turtle with a squint. He shook his head. “Nope. I don’t like that.”
She went on in a rush: “The flashlight was old, obsolete. There wasn’t any reasonably priced way it could be repaired. I just thought I’d buy a new one when I got back to Los Angeles.”
Stacey made a slow, lumbering circuit of the room. Finally he paused to look out through the door at Mr. Pennyfeather. “Would this have made the kind of light you saw in Mrs. Andler’s room just before she was murdered?”
“It would,” Mr. Pennyfeather decided. “Definitely.”
Miss Comfort gave him a hag-ridden stare. “When? At the time of the murder of Mrs. Andler? No, that couldn’t be!”
“You’re sure, then, where
the flashlight was at that time?” asked Stacey cunningly.
She saw the trap and attacked it without any hesitation. “No. That is, I thought when I looked for it that evening that I had mislaid it. Now I’m beginning to understand what must have happened. Someone stole it for some dreadful purpose in relation to the crime.”
“Odd,” murmured Mr. Pennyfeather.
“Eh?” said Stacey.
“That a murderer should go to such lengths to illuminate his activities.”
“But you’ve said right along,” Stacey pointed out, “that the blue light shone while Mrs. Andler was being murdered.”
Mr. Pennyfeather shook his head. “Then I must correct that impression. Mrs. Andler was killed while I stood down by the back door, putting in fuses and making a futile effort to think. But the blue light flickered in her room while Tick and I were crouched in the cactus, somewhat before the murder, I’m sure.” He bent a strange look on Miss Comfort.
Miss Comfort smoothed her white dress and opened her mouth to display her teeth in what she must have thought was a smile. As an indication of joy it had the approximate genuineness of a circus back drop and the ecstasy of a sphinx. She made Mr. Pennyfeather think of a mold of jello quivering at the edges. “It is very difficult to recall exactly what happened after what we’ve all been through.” Her tone included Taffy in the category of veterans.
But Stacy held a shade of doubt.
“It isn’t difficult at all,” Mr. Pennyfeather reassured them. “And I do remember when the blue light shone in Mrs. Andler’s room. By the way, Mr. Stacey, there isn’t any reason why someone in the upper hall shouldn’t have overheard us talking about it in the lobby yesterday.”
Stacey squinted as though at a whole row of horrid implications. “Right,” he grunted.
“I happened to have heard you,” Miss Comfort said in a gush of candor. She searched Mr. Pennyfeather and Stacey for a shred of faith in what she said. “That’s really what caused me to grow panicky and try to get rid of my little flashlight.”
“Hah!” cried Stacey. “You were eavesdropping.”
“Only accidentally.” She gave a second ghastly imitation of a smile. She looked past Mr. Pennyfeather at Taffy, wavering mistily on the perimeter of the scene, apparently not too acute about what was going on. “I think Miss Whittemore noticed my being upset at about that time. I’d looked in on her, trying to help.”
Bring the Bride a Shroud Page 14