When she reached me she said: “I couldn’t tell where you were, and I got to thinking about snakes and I was scared and lonesome.” Then she found my shoulder and put her head on it and cried, and I had a little feeling of my own that it was not being afraid so much as being lonesome that had done it. I got out my handkerchief for her and she blew her nose and then we stumbled our way down the road together maybe three-fourths of a mile. When we found the State Highway, dawn had still not yet begun to break.
42 A powerful, dynamic tune by Sir Arthur Sullivan, written in 1877 and still performed in the twenty-first century.
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We had about as much chance to catch a ride as a pair of mangy Pomeranians with worms. Claudette Colbert could have pulled up her dress and exhibited her legs like in It Happened One Night43 but for the first twenty minutes she wouldn’t have stopped any cars because there weren’t any. Then a car with a Michigan license came along and the driver started to slow down, but when he got a good look at me in the headlights, he put his foot on the floor and shot past like a rocket. An old lady with white hair took a look at me out of the back window and screamed. I must have looked like something out of the zoo but I was too mad to worry about it.
It had been raining continuously and the water didn’t even bother to slow down when it hit my clothes. It was running over my skin and down into my shoes. In about five minutes a Model T touring car with curtains, vintage probably 1922, came along and stopped. The back seat was full of a lot of baskets of vegetables but I will guarantee that I could have found a place to sit if I had been given the chance. The driver was a farmer in overalls and he seemed willing enough, but his wife was a sharp-nosed old bitch and between the vegetables and her new seat covers she had just made with her own hands, there wasn’t a chance. The driver looked apologetic and opened his mouth as if to remonstrate but she gave him the kind of look that kind of woman can give and he closed his mouth so fast it almost made a popping sound.
We had better luck the next time, or worse luck, depending on your point of view. An old truck came wheezing along and squealed to a stop twenty yards down the road. Two men were in the cab. The body was one of these things something like a bathtub and had been used for hauling tar ever since Hoover defeated Al Smith. We were in no position to look down our noses, so Janet got in the cab and thoroughly wet one of the men before he could get out of the way. I suppose you could say the tar container was empty, but even when a tar container is empty it has got more tar in it than you would want your children to play with. I stood up just back of the cab and didn’t touch anything I could avoid, but the first time I tried to move, I knew that my shoes were there to stay. I called down to Janet and she mooched a cigarette off of one of the men, lit it and handed it out to me. By making a tent out of my hands, I was able to get a few drags before it got wet and fizzled out on me.
Harpersville was about twelve miles but it took us thirty minutes. Janet got them to put us out in front of her place. I had to unlace my shoes and leave them and when I started to crawl out, I thought for a minute I would have to leave my pants too. I had visions of double lobar pneumonia with the most insidious complications. Janet thanked them without a great deal of enthusiasm.
The house had lights everywhere and there were plenty of official-looking cars crowded on the drive. I took off my socks and walked in the grass since it was more comfortable that way. The house was two stories and above that the roof went this way and that way in the best country type of years ago, with two or three dormer windows in various places. There was a light in one of them and someone was moving back and forth. I pointed and said:
“Who would be up there?”
Janet glanced up and said:
“That’s Miss Knight’s room. She spends most of her time with Mother but technically that’s her place and she is at liberty to hang out up there when she isn’t needed.”
“That’s fine. She seems to be there now and a conference between the two of us is long overdue.” Then I added without looking at Janet: “I assume you have noticed that something is up.”
She said: “Yes, and I’m scared to death. It must be Mother.” She broke into a run and I trotted along behind her, stepping on sharp objects at almost every stride. There was a guard at the door wearing a big black raincoat. He looked slightly miserable. Janet ran up the steps, made a motion toward the parked cars and said anxiously: “What’s all this? What’s happened? Is it Mother?”
The guard was excited when he saw her. He threw open the front door, stuck his head inside and yelled:
“Joe! Joe! Tell the chief Miss Harper and the little fat guy have showed up. Step on it!” Then he turned around. “What’s happened started out being you. In comes a call from out at Sheely’s about some kind of ruckus going on outside and there’s your car with some blood on the running board on the driver’s side and where are you? The chief gets out of bed in his nightshirt and everybody in God’s world goes charging around the county and the city trying to find you. Then on top of that Mrs. Harper has herself an attack maybe an hour ago. Mr. Jolley has come in before that with his arm in a sling and the motor boiling over and he don’t know nothing about this part of the country and don’t know where he came from so off goes a bunch of squad cars—”
A door came open with a bang and the chief of police ran down the hall and grabbed Janet as if he were afraid she would fly away.
“Miss Janet!” he said, with considerable relief, “thank heaven! Are you all right?”
“I’m all right, but what about my Mother? Mr. Dudley says she had an attack. I see the doctor’s car. What does he say?”
“He says it’s pretty bad. We had an awful time getting him and he’s been working on her ever since he got here. Won’t let me in but sent out a message it was plenty tough.”
“I’m going in,” Janet said abruptly, pulling away from him. She went over and walked into Mrs. Harper’s room without knocking.
The chief looked at me and whistled shrilly through his teeth. “Damn!” he said, “what happened to you?”
“I haven’t taken inventory. Where’s Jolley?”
The chief jerked his thumb toward the dining room. “In there, answering questions. Says somebody clapped a blanket over his head, like they done to Ruth McClure, and dragged him out in the country somewhere and then there’s some scuffling around and another drive up into some hilly country and it turns out it was Miles and here he is with you and Miss Janet. Says he got loose and shot it out in the dark with Miles but probably missed him and thought he had better come for help when he ran into a car parked on the road. Seems to have fallen and hit his arm on a rock somewhere because he got it in a sling and says it hurts like hell. We’ll be through with him in a few minutes. Stick around. You’re next.”
I sat down on a fancy chair in the living room and ruined it. As soon as the chief closed the dining-room door behind him I walked up to the third floor and knocked on Miss Knight’s door. Before I knocked I could hear her moving around but afterwards the room got perfectly still and nobody told me to come in. I tried the knob and the door wasn’t locked so I threw it open and stepped in. Miss Knight was flattened against the wall by the door and she had a pewter candlestick in her hand and she recognized me just in time to keep from fracturing my skull.
“Oh, it’s you,” she said. She looked scared to death.
I said: “Yes, it’s me. Who were you expecting?”
“I don’t know. That’s the trouble.”
I looked around the room. There were a couple of suitcases on the bed and clothing was lying around in neat piles, part of it already packed. I nodded in that direction and said: “Taking a little vacation?”
“Permanent. There’s too much going on in this house. I’m frightened.”
“Too much such as what?”
“Too much murder. First Mr. Harper and now Mrs.…” She clapped the
back of her hand against her mouth and didn’t finish.
“What do you mean? They said it was a heart attack.”
“That’s what they say.”
“What do you say?”
“I don’t say anything. I don’t know anything.”
“Were you there?”
“Yes. It was just a heart attack, like they say. If you don’t mind, I think I’ll go on with my packing. I want to catch the first train out of this town in any direction.”
“What made you say it was murder?”
“I didn’t say it. How could it be murder? She isn’t even dead, is she? You can’t have murder until somebody is dead.”
She went over to the bed and took some of the things out of the suitcase and put some other things in and then took those things out again and put the others back. Her fingers were trembling and she didn’t have the faintest idea what she was doing.
I said: “Who else was there when it happened?”
“Nobody. Nobody but me. She just took this medicine and pretty soon she had a heart attack. It could happen like that any time. You don’t have any warning and they can come whether its morning, noon or night or even in your sleep.”
“What kind of medicine?”
“Just regular medicine. She gets it when she has a bad night and doesn’t sleep so well.”
“Pills out of a box?”
“No, it’s a liquid. She gets it in warm milk.”
“And where does the milk come from? She doesn’t have it there in the room with her, does she?”
“What difference does it make? What’s milk got to do with it? She had a heart attack just like I said.”
“I know. Where did you say the milk came from?”
She didn’t answer me for a long time and then she suddenly said: “Who are you?”
“I might ask you the same thing.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Just what it sounds like, Miss Phoebe Murdoch.”
The color drained out of her face like water running out of a bathtub. She took on a kind of mottled look and gave a funny gasp and felt out with her hand blindly until it hit the foot of the bed. She stood unsteadily for a moment and then sat down by the suitcase and said in a very small distant voice: “What did you say?”
“Shall I repeat it?”
She shook her head dumbly, pulled herself up with an effort, walked over, closed the door, turned the key in the lock and leaned back against it as if she were exhausted. She looked at me with something like desperation in her eyes and then she went over to the dresser, pulled open a little drawer and faced me with a .22 automatic that she held in both hands. She said:
“I think I’m going to kill you.”
I didn’t like the way she said it. I didn’t like what she said either. Compared to me, the Sphinx and the pyramids are moving objects. I said:
“You don’t want to kill me. I’m the only one around here who’s even halfway smart and I’m so stupid I ought to be disbarred. If you kill me, what’ll it get you?”
“Who else knows about me?”
“Just you and me. If you kill me everybody will know. I think you owe your life to the fact that one person or maybe two people don’t know it. Stop and think.”
I knew then that she wasn’t going to shoot me. The only time she could have done it was when she was scared and the idea was fresh. Now she was perilously close to folding up into a little puddle on the floor but the effort to concentrate on what I was saying was holding her up.
“What should I think about?”
“Let’s think about the eighth day of May, 1915. Probably in Louisville. You were there and your sister Catherine was there and William Jasper Harper and Alice Harper and John McClure. Maybe John’s wife was there too. Any more?”
“No, that was all.”
“Think some more. Let’s check them off. Ruth McClure died some years ago. It was probably a perfectly natural death. John McClure went out two or three weeks ago. It wasn’t natural at all. Then comes William Jasper Harper and the same night Miss Katie. Now something has happened to Mrs. Harper. Who does that leave?”
“I know. Me.”
I could hardly hear her. The last word was whispered. I knew why she had waited for me with a pewter candlestick raised over her head.
I said: “Was it in writing?”
She nodded.
“Then that’s the trouble. It’s an outsider who’s been guessing. He couldn’t tell whether it was written or not and he didn’t know how to find out. He searched the McClure home twice and then he tried to get into a lockbox up in the city but he didn’t have any luck. I guess he thought he had a good plan to begin with but when it didn’t work so smoothly he got panicky and thought he could kill everybody in the world. He did some pretty good guessing at that. Who had the written instrument?”
“John McClure.”
“Then it’s probably in the lockbox after all. That’s what comes of going off halfcocked when you don’t know what you’re doing. Murderers aren’t so smart. I’ll bet this one never even heard of Phoebe Murdoch and didn’t know that Catherine was Miss Katie. I’ll bet he doesn’t know it yet. I’ll bet he never thought of doing anything to Miss Katie but had to because he got caught.”
“You seem to know a lot. Who is it?”
“I think I know but it took me too long to find out even when I had the pieces in my mind. No use worrying now. It’s too late. You stay up here and keep your door locked and don’t go out even to the bathroom. Don’t go out for anybody. Understand?”
The revolver I had picked up out in the hills was stuck in the waistband of my trousers. I thought about swapping it for the little .22 automatic but I didn’t do it. It occurred to me that anytime I got in such shape that I would need a gun, I wouldn’t want any toy pistol. Phoebe Murdoch let me out of her room and locked the door behind her.
43 The 1934 “Best Picture” Oscar®-winning film starring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert. In the film, Gable attempts to demonstrate his prowess at hitchhiking by waving his thumb in a flashy manner. After he fails to get a car to stop, Colbert hikes up her skirt and achieves immediate success in attracting the attention of a passing car.
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I went about halfway down the stairs to the second floor and sat down on the steps to think things over. Now that I had all the strings in my hands and was ready to tie a knot in them I suddenly felt weary and exhausted almost to the point of collapse. I had spent several days stumbling around to the best of my ability but instead of being proud or elated over impending success, I was disgusted at the length of time it had taken me and especially over the fact that I had not learned the truth in time to prevent the perfection of the murderer’s plan. All I could do was to deprive the guilty person of the fruits of the carnage. Despite the fact that the murderer had more than earned anything that might be coming, I could not look forward with any degree of pleasure or satisfaction to the immediate future. The whole thing was so distasteful to me that I actually toyed for a moment with the thought of walking out on the whole thing. The days when I lived a life like other people, worked at sane peaceful pursuits within reasonably certain hours, ate, drank and slept in a more or less normal way, were remembered more as dreams of early childhood than as actualities of a week ago. If I had rested my head against the wall beside me, I think I could have slept until Labor Day.
I sat there only long enough to make sure the story seemed logical and connected and that the chapter I was reading was the last chapter in the book. Then I got up, stretched my aching body and walked on down to the first floor. I didn’t exactly know what was coming but the palms of my hand were perspiring freely and my stomach was drawn up in a nervous knot.
I went into the dining room without knocking. The sheriff and the chief were both there. Jim Mead had appeared from somewhere
and was looking smooth and urbane and neat even at that hour of the morning. Hillman Jolley had apparently been questioned sufficiently and was sitting in a chair by the door with his right arm in a sling. Janet Harper was sitting by the window looking all in with her wet hair straggling around her face and tearstains on her dirty cheeks.
I went over and sat down across the table from the law in what had been used as the witness chair during the last few days. I said: “You said you wanted to question me.”
The chief cleared his throat and looked at some notes he had taken in a little black book. “Miss Harper says you were getting into the car out at Sheely’s Tavern and somebody gave it to you in the back of the head.”
“That’s right.”
“Who?”
“I didn’t see. I think it was Miles. Has he showed up?”
“No. He apparently exchanged some shots with Jolley and then got scared. Jolley took the car and came for help and Miss Harper says Miles didn’t come back to the cabin so he must be loose on foot up in the hills somewhere. Does that check?”
“I guess so.”
“Miss Harper didn’t see the man either. She says it was dark and she heard a thud and thought you must have tripped and fallen. She slid across under the wheel to see what had happened and someone opened the door on the other side of the car, grabbed her and put a hand over her mouth before she could even scream. Then she was gagged and tied up and put on the back seat and something—probably you—was put on the floor next to her and this bird drove up to the cabin. I believe you know the rest. If it was Miles, how did he know you were at Sheely’s?”
I said: “He was standing right by me when Janet and I discussed where we were going.” I was also thinking about the length of time Janet had been away from the table and I was thinking about the fact that the telephone was near the ladies’ rest room, but I didn’t look at Janet.
The Rat Began to Gnaw the Rope Page 21