It was thus that Annabelle found us. She instantly took charge, rushed me to a couch, demanded and got brandy. But when finally we resumed our trip to the cottage—every minute passed like an hour—I had determined to take charge myself.
Once we were in the cottage, I permitted Annabelle to make me comfortable. She was a solicitous nurse; she shoved a footstool forward, adjusted a pillow beneath my head. Then she removed her hat and gloves, and settled down to stay indefinitely. As feebly as I dared, I announced that bed was the place for me. Annabelle was gratified but suspicious. She followed me into the bedroom. She watched me kick off my shoes. I peeled off my dress.
I said faintly, “My nightgown is in the closet. Would you bring it to me?”
She stepped to the closet where Silas had hidden. I arrived there simultaneously with her. I shoved her forward. I slammed the door. There was a key in the lock. I turned it. I must credit her with a certain amount of sporting blood. Aside from a gasp of surprise she made no outcry, and immediately, imperatively she rapped at the locked door.
“Are you delirious?”
“I’m as sane as you are.”
“Where are you going?”
“That doesn’t matter. I’ll be back soon. Make yourself at home. I hope you can find the light. I’m sorry I can’t leave you a magazine.”
The closet exploded into protest. I paid no attention. It took me only a minute to dress. It took me several minutes to locate Harkway’s gun. I didn’t think I would need it, but it seemed best to go prepared. I thought I could eavesdrop on the interview at the Lodge without being seen, and I sincerely hoped so.
The afternoon was very clear. The sky showed an almost painful blue. I rapidly left the cottage, crossed the road, slipped through the gate and began a hurried ascent of the pasture path. Looking up the steeply climbing hill beyond the Lodge, I could see Hilltop House, the cupola and the elaborate porte-cochere. A yellow roadster—Franklyn Elliott’s car—was parked beneath the porte-cochere.
My heart sank as I realized that my speed had not been great enough. The lawyer had preceded me. I had thought I had plenty of time. And then suddenly it was borne upon me that I had no time at all. My errand was useless. The meeting was over. Even as I glimpsed it the yellow car throbbed, moved forward, gathered momentum, sped around the house and out of sight.
Why I began to run I can’t say even now, but I did run. Breathless and trembling, I gained the Lodge. The door stood ajar. Reuben was inside. He barked wildly, and then was quiet. I knocked.
“Silas! Silas!”
There was no answer. Silas had to be there, I thought. Or could he have accompanied the other man in the yellow car? I had not glimpsed its passengers. The open door decided me. Silas set too high a value upon his possessions to go away and leave an unlocked door.
I knocked, and again called. Reuben emitted another whimpering moan, subsided. The whole world seemed still. The sun shone down with a brassy brilliance, and the motionless trees and shrubs seemed cut from cardboard. Like a stage set. Silence gripped the Lodge, deep and utter. Something pulled me away from the door, and something stronger drove me toward it. I pushed inside.
I entered a small living room. From the adjoining kitchen where he was imprisoned, Reuben set up a renewed clamor. I looked around. The living room was in dreadful disorder. Furniture was broken and overturned. Smashed crockery was scattered about. Dark red splotches stained the floor and walls. I saw that the splotches were blood. I saw Silas.
He lay at the far end of the devastated room, his skull crushed, his eyes wide open, and beside him were the remnants of a broken chair.
Things began getting black. I didn’t faint. I staggered to the only uninjured piece of furniture on the place—Silas’s bed—lay down and closed my eyes.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The Forgotten Purse
After a long while I got up. The sun was setting and its last red rays made everything around me sharp and mercilessly clear. The upset furniture, all those signs of dreadful sanguinary battle, the dead man. My nerves screamed violent protest, and I started backing toward escape. I trod upon something soft—a bakery cookie. Half a dozen other cookies lay scattered on the floor. I noticed them with the tense consciousness that accompanies shock, and noticed also the upended table, the coffee pot, the two smashed cups. Two cups.
I said out loud, “They had been eating before they fought.”
Reuben had quieted. He heard me now, scratched at the kitchen door, and whimpered like a child. Perhaps the bravest thing I ever did was to cross the room to let him out. I walked unsteadily. I stumbled against a pail of water. A scrubbing brush floated in the pail, and sunk to the bottom was a bit of stained rag. An area of the floor was freshly scrubbed, a section of the wall was smeared where a damp cloth had been drawn over it, and I knew my arrival had interrupted a hurried attempt to clean up the place.
I opened the kitchen door. Reuben shot forth, jumped wildly up and down, licked my hands and then rushed to the spot where Silas sprawled.
I looked into the kitchen. Pans of milk were setting about, and the dog had turned one over. I saw the print of a man’s foot in the spilled milk, and I saw how the killer could have fled from the Lodge and reached the yellow car, without my glimpsing him as I approached. A back door led from the kitchen to a covered porch—a sort of utility room equipped with an ice box and cream separator—and beyond the porch was a back path. Someone had run along the path. Deep footprints showed in it.
I closed the kitchen door, and then remembered that I shouldn’t touch anything. Reuben crouched beside Silas’s body. I called to him. He lifted his head and howled. The sound rose and kept on rising. I ran outside, and Reuben followed.
I staggered down the hill to the cottage. Jack and Standish had finally returned from the city. The police chief’s car was parked in the yard. I went into the house. The men had freed Annabelle from the closet. I could hear their voices in the living room. I heard her voice. She was insisting that she didn’t know where I had gone. I entered the living room. They all turned around. Jack jumped to his feet.
“Lola! Where have you been?”
“At the Lodge.”
“But what“…”
I said, “Silas is dead. Franklyn Elliott killed him. Beat him to death with a chair.”
Annabelle stood up. “That’s preposterous. It’s a lie. A cruel, wicked lie.”
“It’s the truth. I overheard Elliott and Silas talking on the phone; Elliott was angry; he made threats; Silas was terrified. They made an appointment. I got to the Lodge too late to do Silas any good. I wasn’t too late to see Elliott’s car leave.”
The men rushed for me. Annabelle stood quite alone. She was the color of chalk. She turned, moved swiftly toward the door, ran outside to her car. Standish caught her as she reached it, and brought her back inside. He shoved her into a chair.
“You sit there till we get this straightened out!” He turned to me. “Is that all the story?”
“No. Silas came here this morning to talk to Jack. About Darnley’s murder. He was going to tell everything he knew. I believe Elliott found it out. I believe that is why he returned from New York. I believe that is why he murdered Silas.”
“That’s fantastic,” said Annabelle, and thereafter said nothing more whatever.
Standish tried to make her talk. He failed entirely. She ignored the simplest inquiry, and behaved as though she had lost her hearing. He gave up, stepped to the telephone, called the Tally-ho Inn. Elliott wasn’t there. Standish hadn’t expected him to be. In rapid succession he called a series of numbers and notified every police station in the vicinity to watch out for Elliott’s car. He gave them the description; he gave them the number. The telephoning occupied some minutes. In the meantime, Blair, who had been missing from the station when I sadly needed him, rushed out from the village. He took it upon himself to guard Annabelle. He kept a gun on his lap, and pulled his chair so close to hers that his breath blew down
her neck.
Jack and Standish left the three of us together and went up the hill.
I lay upon the couch. Annabelle sat straight as an arrow, lighting one cigarette on the stub of another. She didn’t say a word. My head ached wretchedly, and I had not eaten since morning. Time blurred, slid by. At length I glanced at Annabelle.
“You still don’t want to talk.”
“I can see,” she said bitterly, “you do. Very well I’ll give you something to think about.” She paused and then made a curious remark. “Did it ever occur to you that a hundred and eight thousand dollars splits three ways?”
“Three ways?”
“One third of a hundred and eight thousand dollars is thirty-six thousand. I believe three different people expected to share in Darnley’s money and conspired to murder him for it.” She studied space. “Thirty-six thousand dollars looks like a colossal sum to some people.”
“It would to Silas.”
She nodded. “Of course.”
“But Mrs. Coatesnash…”
Again she nodded, and I fancied she was dimly pleased. “The Coatesnash estate is upward of two million dollars.”
I caught the drift of her oblique defense of the missing man and though I wasn’t at all convinced, I kept on playing. “Franklyn Elliott…”
“…could make thirty-six thousand dollars on a single case.” Unfortunately, at this point, an interruption occurred. Dr. Rand came in and said that Jack had phoned him to stop by on his way to the Lodge. He took my pulse, pursed his lips, and ordered me to bed. Annabelle lighted another cigarette. Her hands trembled. She looked ghastly. Irresolutely the physician turned to her.
“Would you like a sedative?”
“I would prefer a drink.”
I said, “There’s brandy in the kitchen.”
She achieved instant vehemence. “No, thank you. I have imposed sufficiently upon your hospitality.”
Embarrassed, Dr. Rand offered his own flask. She accepted it, and drank neat, as a man would. A little color returned to her face. Dr. Rand helped me into bed. Annabelle and the ubiquitous Blair remained in the living room. After the physician went away I heard her turning the pages of a magazine which I knew she was not reading. Perhaps fifteen minutes later Harkway entered the cottage, paused and spoke to her. She didn’t answer and I summoned him into the bedroom. His face was drawn and tired, and he explained that he had driven over 200 miles since two p.m. On his return from Elliott’s mountain camp, he added wearily, he had received the shocking news of our latest tragedy. He told me he had not been to the Lodge as yet, and he seemed disposed to be bitter over the whole affair.
“If I had been in complete charge of the case, Silas would have been alive. In jail—and alive.”
A similar thought had occurred to me, and a shade uncomfortably I changed the subject. “Did you discover anything at Elliott’s camp?”
“I talked to his guide—a dumb Canuck. Spoke French mostly and I had a hell of a time making him understand me. I finally penetrated. Elliott lied to us.”
“About his alibi?”
“He has no alibi for the twentieth, Mrs. Storm. Maybe he hunted that day,” said Harkway with a certain gallows humor, “but he wasn’t hunting rabbits. He went out with the guide on the nineteenth, but not on the twentieth. The Canuck remembered perfectly. His sister’s child was christened that day, and he knocked off work and stood up with it.”
“Then Elliott could have been in Crockford at the time Darnley was shot?”
“He could have been,” said Harkway, “and I believe he was.”
The door into the living room was open. The rustle of the magazine ceased. There was no sound. Annabelle had heard everything we said, as I believe Harkway intended she should. He stepped into the other room and shot rapid questions at her. He met the same blank wall. Silence.
The useless interrogation continued until Jack and Standish returned from the Lodge, and then the police escorted Annabelle home. She bade me a contained goodbye, but she wasn’t as composed as she seemed, for although she carefully adjusted her hat and pulled on her gloves she neglected to take her purse. I remember her as she looked that night, a taut, pale, contemptuous woman with a policeman on either side. I remember her scornful smile as she glanced from one to the other.
“My bodyguard,” she said.
The door slammed. They drove off. When they reached the Bayne home I believe Annabelle roused her maid and ordered coffee. “Since it appears you gentlemen plan to stay.” They stayed on and on, drank quarts of coffee, spilled ashes on her carpets and bombarded her with questions which she answered with a shake of the head.
“I am sorry. I do not know where Franklyn Elliott is, why he went or when he will return. If I did know I would not say.”
They pointed out that Elliott’s flight and her silence indicated his guilt. At this, Standish told us later, she whitened. “I won’t be drawn into any discussion of the matter. I have nothing to tell you. Elliott will return and explain the things which I cannot explain.”
Her resolution was inflexible, and in the end she wore them out. When dawn streaked the windows they permitted her to go to bed.
Contiguous with this futile questioning the relentless search for Franklyn Elliott and the yellow car moved along the Atlantic seaboard. Town by town the search advanced as the midnight hours wore away. Roads were patrolled, hotels were notified, and many a policeman missed his rest. To no purpose. Car and driver seemingly had dropped into a void.
The morning newspapers raged and raved and demanded action. The Darnley case revived with a bang. One of the more sensational papers editorially linked up the disappearance of Laura Twining with that of Franklyn Elliott and asked its readers if the two might not be in hiding together. A love nest was hinted at. Which was as far north as any of the suggestions went.
I spent the morning in bed. My cold was in the handkerchief stage. I used them by the dozens, but admitted I would survive. Jack and I read the papers and awaited news. The police were busy elsewhere.
We guessed their activities at the Lodge, and since there was a clear view up the hill from the bedroom windows we shamelessly drew back the curtains and watched. Men strode purposefully in and out the building. Various bulky objects—the distance prevented identification—were removed, and Jack hazarded that some of the damaged furniture was being conveyed to the station. Blair trotted about the pasture, rounded up Mrs. Coatesnash’s three blooded cows and drove them off. An ambulance arrived, lumbered almost to the door and carried away a sheeted, silent figure. Reuben was lying on my lap. He stirred and whined, and I’ve always half imagined that he knew.
Toward four o’clock Harkway came down from the Lodge, caught us at the window, smiled and dropped into a chair. He said at once, “Tell me, Mrs. Storm. How long was it after you heard Silas and Elliott quarreling over the phone before you went to the Lodge?”
“About half an hour.”
“No longer?”
“Hardly as long.”
“You are sure they were angry?”
“Elliott was in a towering rage.”
“Then,” said Harkway, “I cannot understand why immediately he arrived the two men sat down together to drink coffee and eat cake. As the broken crockery indicates they did. You saw the two smashed cups on the floor, the two plates, the two overturned chairs. And they are an important part of the pattern we have built up.”
“What is that pattern?”
In brief, terse sentences he sketched out the bloody crime as the police recapitulated it. Silas had been on the verge of confessing to the truth about Hiram Darnley’s murder. Elliott knew it. He phoned Silas, and by appointment proceeded to the Lodge. The two men seated themselves, and the lawyer attempted to dissuade the other from his purpose. After failing by argument, he resorted to violence. Thus, if the recapitulation were correct, the interview which had ended in an appalling battle had begun on an amicable note.
I had been too shocked during th
ose frightful minutes at the Lodge to draw logical conclusions. But now the picture struck, me wrong. In the first place, when I had heard Elliott talking on the telephone he had been in no coffee-drinking, conciliatory humor. In the second place, it seemed to me the lawyer had barely time enough to rush to the Lodge, wreck the room and kill Silas before I got there. Add the hurried attempt at order—the pail of water, the partially scrubbed floor—and he had no time left.
“Let’s drop the crockery,” said Jack impatiently. “Maybe Elliott did arrive in a rage. Maybe Silas prepared the food in advance and laid the table in the hope of creating a friendly atmosphere. I saw those cups last night—or the fragments of them. You couldn’t tell they had both been used.”
“Both had been filled,” said Harkway quietly. “It seems unlikely Silas would pour in advance of his guest.”
However, the coffee cups seemed a small mystery in the maze of mysteries, and since no one, offered any better explanation, I concluded Jack was probably right. Harkway reached restlessly for another cigarette and then said there was another facet of the case which he regarded as still more puzzling. It was the flight itself.
“An ordinary citizen—you, for instance, Storm—might kill a man and run off out of sheer funk. But Elliott isn’t an ordinary citizen. He is a lawyer. If he had stuck around he could have put up a damn good defense for himself. There were no witnesses to the battle. And the scrap was not one-sided. So far as any physical evidence goes, Elliott could have claimed that Silas struck the first blow.”
I said promptly, “But he had made threats. I heard him on the phone.”
“A thing which Elliott couldn’t know. And even though he made threats I honestly doubt he went to the Lodge with murder in his mind.”
“How can you say that?”
“So clumsy a murder could not have been premeditated. Think it over, Mrs. Storm, and you will agree. A murderer goes prepared. He carries a weapon. A gun, a knife, a dirk. He doesn’t count on using a kitchen chair! Silas died of a fractured skull. In addition, he had a broken collar bone, a broken wrist, three fractured ribs and nineteen separate bruises and contusions The seat of the chair was cracked, one leg was loose and a rung was out at the back. You remember the blood-splashed room and the upset furniture. It all points to fury, and again fury seldom accompanies a premeditated murder.”
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