Miss Withers Regrets
Page 10
They came into the kitchen, where Beulah, her face darker than usual, was cleaning up the table on which Searles had left the makings of his sandwich. She was mumbling something about “trash” but looked up blankly at Miss Withers’s opening question.
“Yassum,” she said. “I hanged out Miss’ Cairns’s suit. It sho’ woulda mildewed fast, tucked down into her laundry bag all wet like she left it.”
“When,” asked Miss Withers softly, turning to Lawn, “just when was the last time your sister wore that suit that you know of?”
Lawn shrugged. “I don’t know. She may have tried the pool out Friday, the day before the party. They’d filled it then.”
“I see. I thought for a moment…” Miss Withers shook her head. “By the way, I wonder how long it would take a man to remove his coat and shirt and then whisk them on again after he had done—well, whatever it was.”
Lawn’s eyes narrowed. “Still aiming at Pat? A man, I know, has lots of buttons on his shirt, and then there’s a necktie and all that. Of course Searles doesn’t wear a tie, but he wears a sweater under that foul old jacket, and probably long underwear under that. But—but a woman! It would be easy enough for a woman, because women usually wear loose sleeves that could roll to the shoulder in a jiffy”
“You mean, darling, sleeves like the ones on the dress I wore at the party?” They both looked up with a start to see Helen, a symphony in black, standing in the door of the dining room. Behind her was Thurlow Abbott, looking older and tireder.
The two sisters faced each other, and for a moment Miss Withers could see a resemblance between them, which flickered and was gone. “Why, yes,” Lawn said slowly. “Helen, I want to talk to you.”
“Surely not now!” Helen said. “It wouldn’t be any use. You see, I know what you’re up to. You’ve failed to pin this mess on to Pat, and so you’ve decided on me.”
There was a long silence. “You’re so beautiful,” Lawn told her. “And so good. It’s a shame that you couldn’t have been just a little brighter!” The girl turned towards Miss Withers. “Please excuse me, it’s getting very, very stuffy in here. I’m going to change my clothes and then go down and have a long talk with the horses in Mame Boad’s stable.” She ran out of the room.
“My daughter Lawn,” said Thurlow Abbott in his croaking voice, “gets more difficult every day. By the way, Miss Withers, may I ask just what it was you wanted?”
“To find out how and why your son-in-law was murdered, and who did it!”
“But it wasn’t murder!” Helen cut in. “Didn’t you know? The police are being awfully slow and stupid about it all, but I thought you would see. When they drained the pool yesterday they found Huntley’s wristwatch at the bottom. He must have missed it when he was dressing after his swim and rushed out just as he was. In trying to reach it, he fell in and was drowned.”
“Huntley was, I’m afraid, a very week swimmer,” Thurlow Abbott chimed in. “Not the athletic type at all, you know.”
“And that watch was his pride and joy,” Helen added. “Huntley loved gadgety things like that. He’d have gone almost out of his mind if he’d looked at his wrist and seen that it was missing.”
“Was he so proud of it,” Miss Withers probed gently, “that he’d have gone swimming without noticing that he’d left it on?”
Helen thought he might. “You see, except in the tub, he never took it off, not even when he slept. It was waterproof and shockproof and everything proof.”
The schoolteacher stilled an impulse to ask if the watch had been equipped with an outboard motor too—so that it could travel from the shallow end of the pool, where a poor swimmer like Cairns would presumably have been disporting himself, down to the deep end, fifty feet or more away. But for the moment that could wait. She smiled at Helen Cairns and then asked, “There is just one other thing I must ask you now. Where did your late husband hide things?”
The beautiful face went blank. “Hide things? But he didn’t. He wasn’t the hiding type. Why, he even told me what I was getting for my birthdays and Christmases weeks before the day.”
“I wasn’t thinking of presents,” Miss Withers went on. “I was wondering whatever became of the book—the book with the red jacket. Oriental Moments was the title, I believe.”
She had great hopes of that shot in the dark, but it fizzled out like a wet firecracker. Either Helen and her father had never heard of the book, or else they were far better actors than she had given them credit for. And long experience with the little hellions of her third-grade classes back at Jefferson School had taught her a number of ways to tell when any one is lying. She shrugged. “Well, perhaps it will turn up when we least expect it. Like your white bathing suit.”
Helen froze. “My what?”
“Your white bathing suit that your maid found in your laundry bag in grave danger of mildew.”
“I don’t understand.” Helen was frowning, but she looked a little pale. “I used the suit Friday, but—I’m sure I left it in the dressing room.”
“Did you really? Well, thank you very much, anyway. I’m on my way down to the jail now, in hopes of seeing the proper authorities and getting young Montague released. He couldn’t have drowned your husband, Mrs. Cairns. The rake wasn’t long enough. Would you have any message for Pat, in case I get in to see him?”
Helen looked quickly at her father, who still hovered nervously in the background. “Why, no. Of course not.” But she walked with Miss Withers through the house, almost to the front door. Making sure that they were alone, she produced from her breast a thin packet of letters tied neatly with red string. “Just give these back to him, will you, before the police find them. Tell him—oh, there’s nothing I can say to Pat now!” Helen turned and went back towards the stairs, half-running, and with a handkerchief pressed to her mouth.
Miss Withers stood stock-still, looking after her. Then she saw Thurlow Abbott coming towards her, his face strained and drawn. “I hope you’ll make allowances for my daughter Helen,” he said. “She is very distrait. An old, forgotten love popping up suddenly out of the past, reviving old memories—”
“Forgotten?” Miss Withers echoed doubtfully.
“Helen fancied herself in love with young Montague many years ago,” Abbott told her. “It was nothing but a boy-and-girl affair, really. They were not suited to each other in any way. I tried of course to advise her, but it is difficult for a father to be a mother.”
“I can imagine,” agreed the schoolteacher.
“Er—yes. It was very lucky for everyone concerned that the draft took the young man away.”
“For everyone except the young man, at any rate.”
Abbott didn’t smile. “It was unfortunate that he returned. You see, Helen is the sentimental feminine type. Not at all like Lawn.”
Miss Withers could agree with him there, at any rate. “Your daughters do seem rather unlike, for sisters,” she angled hopefully.
“Half-sisters,” he confessed in his sepulchral voice. “A minor poet who once visited our house said that Helen and Lawn typified the women of Eden. Eve and Lilith, you know. The wife and the mistress type.”
“Very poetic,” agreed Miss Withers. “But after all, it was Eve who got into trouble with the snake, wasn’t it? I never heard anything scandalous about Lilith, outside of her being an Assyrian demon, of course.”
Thurlow Abbott wasn’t listening; he was merely waiting for her to stop talking so that he could start again. “I do wish, Miss Withers,” he said, coming closer, “that you would take anything Lawn says to you with a big grain of salt. You see, Helen’s mother was a choir singer, a very sweet and gentle person. After her tragic death—she was the first woman to be killed in a motor car accident on Long Island—I traveled for a few seasons, and there in vaude—I mean, in concert, I fell in with a very fascinating wildcat of a woman. The Princess Zoraida, Egyptian mystic, she called herself. Her powers were, to tell the truth, unusual. She was Lawn’s mother.”
“It was on Pan-time, in Seattle,” Abbott corrected her. “Of course the Princess and I had gone through a ceremony, but I had reason after she walked out on me to think that she already had a husband or two scattered throughout the theatrical profession.”
“How very unfortunate. It cannot be easy for a man to try to bring up two children.”
He bowed. “I had hoped, of course, that they would carry on the Abbott name in the theater, but it was not to be. Helen has the beauty but not the temperament. And Lawn—I’m afraid that the consciousness of her dark heritage has embittered her. She has never felt that she belonged, in spite of everything that I could do.” Thurlow Abbott sighed heavily. “You understand, of course.”
“I think I’m beginning to,” admitted Miss Withers, and took her departure.
Chapter Nine
HAVING TAKEN HER DEPARTURE, Miss Hildegarde Withers had to bring it back, ring the Cairns bell, and politely request permission to use the telephone in order to summon a taxi. As it turned out, she might as well have saved her breath, for the hotel desk informed her that both the local vehicles were out on calls.
There was nothing for it, then, but to march out upon the highway and head towards town. The schoolteacher had barely got into her stride when a small black coupe came rocking along behind her. She hastily made the universal gesture with her thumb, and the car slowed down.
It turned out to be Mame Boad at the wheel, headed for town to do her marketing and obviously pleased at having company. She was considerably less happy a few minutes later when Miss Withers reminded her of their previous meeting.
“I have been thinking a good deal lately,” the schoolteacher said, “about the call that you and Dr. Radebaugh and Commander Bennington paid upon me when I first came to Shoreham.”
“Oh, that!” answered Mrs. Boad. “Nothing of importance, really. We were all upset at the time, of course. But since then the situation has changed.”
“You mean, otherwise taken care of?” Miss Withers pressed wickedly.
Mame Boad did not answer, but twin spots of orange rouge flamed suddenly on her cheekbones. They rode on in silence for perhaps half a mile. “I’ve been thinking of dropping in on you for a chat one of these days,” Miss Withers continued. “You’re the Cairnses’ nearest neighbor, are you not?”
Mrs. Boad thought about it and then cautiously admitted that she guessed she was. “Huntley Cairns bought the place last year, and they lived in the old house until they started to tear it down to make room for the new one.”
“And Mrs. Cairns’s sister uses your stable?”
“We keep her horse, yes. Of course Cairns pays—or paid—half the wages of the groom who comes in by the day.”
“A very cooperative arrangement. I suppose that a wild, violent girl like Lawn is pretty hard on horseflesh, isn’t she?”
“What?” The little car jerked slightly. “Lord, no! That girl takes her big gelding out every day, and half the time instead of giving him a decent workout she’ll get off and let him graze, or just trot him along in the surf to strengthen his forelegs. Willy—that’s the groom—says that Lawn has never once brought that fellow in sweating. She likes to do most of the grooming, too, fixes him bran mashes and all that sort of thing. I think she likes horses better than people.”
“A point of view not too unreasonable, in view of the sort of world we live in. By the way, Mrs. Boad, curiosity has always been my besetting sin. I wonder if you’d tell me just what it was that you and your friends were so anxious to have me investigate some weeks ago. It needn’t go any further—”
Mame Boad sailed serenely through a boulevard stop. “But I’m afraid I can’t answer that question,” she said abruptly. “At least not now. Perhaps after I have the consent of the others involved … The matter was personal and very delicate, you see.”
“More delicate than murder? I wonder.” Miss Withers received no answer to that and had expected none. “By the way, if you are going in that direction, please drop me off at the police station. Or on second thought, right here on the corner. I believe there’s a bookstore—yes, there it is. Thank you so much.”
Even after she was inside the shop Miss Withers could see Mame Boad peering in at her from the black coupe as she drove slowly away. “Let her stew a little,” decided the schoolteacher calmly. A clerk approached her, and she asked for a copy of Oriental Moments.
The young man tugged at his wisp of moustache for a moment and then gave it as his opinion that she wouldn’t be able to buy a copy in Shoreham. “It came out last year, I believe, but there wasn’t much call for it,” he told her. “It’s probably out of print now, but we could try ordering it for you.”
She shook her head slowly. The young man came closer and lowered his voice. “We do happen to have a copy of The Chinese Room, and Trio, and—”
“I beg your pardon!” Miss Withers shook her head emphatically. “Is Oriental Moments that sort of book?”
He smiled. “No, madam. But from the title, certain of our customers have thought so.”
She turned and headed out of the store, but in the doorway she heard him add: “I think there’s a copy in the rental library downstairs, if it isn’t out.”
There was, and it wasn’t. A moment later, at the price of library membership and upon her promise to pay three cents a day for its use, Miss Hildegarde Withers came into temporary possession of Oriental Moments, red jacket and all. Moreover, on a card stuck into the front of the book was a list of the names of previous renters. This she studied with great care, but the only one implicated in the Cairns case who was listed there turned out to be Adele Beale, and that had been more than six months ago.
The schoolteacher went out into the street with her nose buried in the volume, expecting the worst, in spite of what the clerk had said, because of the provocative Chinese damsel depicted undressed on the cover. But the book turned out to be a series of notes and impressions of life in Chungking by a State Department employee stranded there during the time it was the temporary wartime capital.
From the first few pages Miss Withers could see that the author, in typical State Department fashion, had been bored with his work, superior to the Chinese, jittery about the Russians, and consistently myopic about the actual forces and cross-purposes which had been surging all around him. There were pages and pages about receptions and cocktail parties, with detailed accounts of the extreme difficulty of getting Scotch flown in over the Hump from India, but what this had to do with the murder of Huntley Cairns, or anything else, Miss Withers was at the moment unable to tell.
She came down the street, still reading, and very nearly turned into the Elite Turkish Baths for Gentlemen Only instead of her proper destination. Crossing the street, she was about to enter the Shoreham police station when she heard a shrill whistle behind her and turned to face Lawn Abbott. The girl was wearing, in addition to open shirt, blue jeans, and jodhpur shoes, a very worried expression.
“Fancy meeting you here!” said Miss Withers.
“Wait, oh, please wait,” Lawn cried, “before you go in. Are you going to try to get permission to see Pat?”
“Among other things, yes.”
“I have to talk to you first. It’s very important.”
Miss Withers smiled and nodded. “Important to whom?”
“To—to Pat, of course. Listen, did my sister give you some old letters to return to him?”
“Some what?”
“Oh, don’t be like that at a time like this. I know she did. It would be just like her. I know where she kept them hidden, and they weren’t there, so I charged her with it. She denied it, but Helen can’t fool me. That’s why I rushed down here. You mustn’t return those to Pat!”
“And why not, child?”
“Read them,” Lawn said bitterly. “I have. I suppose you wouldn’t consider it strictly honor
able, but I found them in an old cookbook, where she had them cached. Nobody ever looks into a cookbook, not in our house anyway. Don’t you see what I’m driving at? Those letters were mostly written to Helen after she was married. Pat was overseas and very bitter. He said a lot of things about Huntley and what he’d like to do to him, things that the police could twist—”
“But your sister didn’t say anything about my giving them to the police!”
“She thought perhaps you would, though. You’re supposed to be such friends with that inspector from New York. Or maybe she asked you to slip them to Pat in jail—where ten to one they’d be discovered and taken away from him. I have my own ideas about why Helen did it. It couldn’t be that she was just trying to get rid of the letters or she could have burned them.”
“At any rate,” Miss Withers decided firmly, “the letters can stay right where they are for the time being.” She patted her capacious pocketbook firmly. “At the moment I’m much more interested in something else. Have you ever seen this book before?”
Lawn stared blankly at Oriental Moments. Then she shook her head. “But why—”
“I don’t quite know why,” Miss Withers began, and broke off as the door beside them opened and Jed Nicolet came out, hurrying a little. He seemed about to plunge past them when Lawn turned and called. Surprised, he turned, recognized Lawn, and his sharp, vulpine face brightened.
“Hello-ello!” he said. “What’s up? Are you two hunting together now?”
“I was about to make an effort to see the prisoner,” Miss Withers admitted. “How is he taking it?”
The lawyer shrugged. “How should I know?”
“But I thought an attorney could always get in to see his client.”
“He is supposed to, according to the law. If he can find where said client is being held. I could even have had him out on a writ, I think, only—”
“Only the police have him hidden somewhere?” Miss Withers nodded slowly. The inspector was up to his old tricks.