“Why didn’t you say anything about the gravestone then?” he demanded.
“Hayward, I’d only met you fifteen minutes before! How did I know you weren’t the one who did it? The whole thing was rather creepy, you know.”
“Ayuh,” said Devine. “What happened to the rubbing?”
“That’s what I’d like to know. When I went to look for it the next day, it was gone, and when I returned to the graveyard to do another, the date had been chipped right off the stone.”
“I’ll be gum-swizzled! Say, Miss, you sure you ain’t—”
“Yes, I’m sure,” Lavinia snapped, “and I think I can prove it to you, unless somebody has been fishing around in the pocket of my old golf skirt. I put that scrap of paper with the second rubbing of the date there, and completely forgot about it till it popped into my head a moment ago.”
“Did Peter see what you did with it?”
“No, I don’t believe he knew anything about the second rubbing. He’d wandered off by then.”
“Prob’ly wouldn’t remember, anyway,” grunted the constable. “What makes you so sure the first one was stolen? Couldn’t you have mislaid it?”
“Hayward can tell you what a finicky old maid I am. I’m not in the habit of mislaying things. I knew precisely where I’d left it, and since I’m supposed to take care of my own room at the summer house, there was no reason why anybody should have been in there moving things around. Furthermore, I searched everywhere I could possibly think of, because I just couldn’t believe it was gone. It seemed such a ridiculous thing for anybody to steal.”
“Who knew about the rubbing? That you’d done one, I mean.”
“Hayward did, and Roland, because they were visiting when I got back to the house and I had to explain why I was in such a grubby state. And of course my guardian and her companion.”
“Did you show it to ’em?”
“I showed Tetsy and Zilpha later, all but the bottom part. I kept that rolled up on the pretext that it was too badly done. I also let Mrs. Smith see it. She comes down after dinner to do the washing-up. She thought the whole idea pretty silly and may have joked about it to the workmen the next day. There are swarms of them around the place, and I daresay the word got about.”
“It generally does,” Devine agreed. “Criminey, this is a poser. That carving, now. I can see some smart aleck doin’ it for a joke, maybe, but goin’ into a woman’s bedroom and takin’ somethin’, even if it’s only a piece of paper, now that’s no laughing matter. Don’t s’pose you gave any thought to reportin’ the robbery, Miss?”
“Oh, Constable! If I’d come rushing to you with a complaint that somebody had stolen my precious, precious scribble of an old gravestone, you’d have told my guardian to lock up the carving knives and keep a sharp eye on me. Own up. Wouldn’t you?”
“I might have then, but I wouldn’t now, not when I’ve just sent off a cigar box full of old man Jenks to the county sheriff. Think you’re up to tellin’ me exactly what you found in the mill? How come you went prowling around that place, anyway? Didn’t they tell you it wasn’t safe?”
“Oh, yes, everyone had been warning me about rats and rotted floor boards ever since I got to Dalby. That was why I had to wait until the others had gone away. You see, after what happened Friday night—”
“What was that?” both men demanded together.
“Somebody pushed me into the millpond.”
“What?” yelled Clinton.
“Hayward, don’t shout at me like that. My head still aches. If you don’t believe me, you can ask Roland. He thinks it was a goat.”
“How do you know it wasn’t?” said Devine. “Go on, give us the whole story.”
“Well, my guardian had invited Roland to eat dinner with us. He’s some kind of distant relative, as it turns out,” she put in, hoping to soothe Hayward’s feelings.
“What you might call a kissing cousin, I suppose,” Clinton grunted.
“You might call him that, but I don’t,” she retorted. “Anyway, afterward Zilpha and Tetsy wanted their little postprandial snooze, so they chased Roland and me out for a walk.”
“I’ll bet they did.”
“Will you please quit making snide remarks?”
“Look, you two, I’m goin’ to hear enough jawin’ when I get home,” Devine interrupted wearily. “Keep talkin’, Lavinia.”
“It was a lovely moonlit night and I’d never seen the pond, so we decided to go there. All the way up the hill, I kept having a strange feeling that we were being followed. I mentioned it to Roland finally, and he thought it was probably a deer.”
“You said a goat before.”
“Hay, if you don’t shut up and let her tell her story, I’m goin’ to clap the handcuffs on you,” snapped the constable. “Did you turn around and look, Lavinia?”
“Yes, several times. I couldn’t see anything, even though the moon was very bright.”
“It would be,” muttered Clinton.
The others ignored him.
“We got to the pond, and Roland was explaining how the sluice gates worked. He told me there was a place where we could get a good view of the hollow and stepped ahead to help me climb up. Then I felt myself being shoved from behind. It was slippery, and my feet went out from under me. I skidded straight into the pond. Luckily, I managed to grab hold of some rushes and pull myself out while Roland was still trying to figure out what happened. You know what a slow mover he is, Hayward.”
“Depends on the direction he’s moving in.”
“Well, he certainly wasn’t showing much speed that night. I tried to make him understand that somebody had tried to drown me, but he wouldn’t believe it. He insisted that a deer must have butted me and made me lose my balance. I said that was silly, so he decided it must have been an old stray billy goat. I didn’t hear any goat galloping toward me, and I didn’t smell one, and I’ve been shoved around enough at boarding school to know what a person’s hands in the small of your back feel like. You’d be surprised what goes on in a young ladies’ field hockey game.”
“Were they big hands or small ones?” Devine wanted to know.
“Honestly, I can’t say. Just medium, I suppose. I’d probably have noticed if they’d been very much one way or the other.”
“I expect likely,” he conceded. “What happened after you got yourself out of the water?”
“I tried to get Roland to help me hunt for tracks along the bank, but he didn’t have any matches and we couldn’t see well enough with no light, so we went along home and pretended I’d simply lost my balance and fallen in. I planned to go back and have a look around Saturday morning after my hair was dry, but I don’t suppose it’s any use now.”
“Not a particle,” said the constable. “Barnum’s elephants might as well have been tramping the banks, for all we could tell after the flood.”
“Have you any idea at all how it happened? Those gates looked solid enough Friday night. I was asking Roland about them.”
“That’s probably why you got shoved into the pond,” said Clinton. “I’ll bet I know what happened. Ath was trying to coax you back to the house, and you kept pestering him to show you how the sluices worked.”
“I suppose I was,” Lavinia admitted.
“Well, for your information, young woman, that flood was no accident. However, I think it was originally intended to look like one. That person who followed you up the hill must have been planning to damage the piles or loosen the blocks enough so that they’d let go from what seemed to be natural causes. Then you came nosing around asking questions and spoiled everything. I honestly don’t think you were meant to drown. Anybody who’s familiar enough with the pond to tinker with the sluices would realize the water’s not more than a foot or so deep around the edges at this time of year, because it spreads up over the banks. They just wanted to keep you from finding out too much and figured a ducking was the best way to get you away from there fast.”
“I must
say it was,” said Lavinia.
“What surprises me is that you had nerve enough after that experience to go poking around the mill next morning,” said the constable. “Didn’t it ever cross your mind that it might have been a tramp who pushed you in the water, and that he might be hiding in the mill?”
“No, I can’t say it did.” Lavinia couldn’t bring herself to tell him she’d been sure the attacker was Tetsy up to that time. “Anyway, I’m not afraid of tramps.”
“Godfrey mighty, Hay, you’ve got your hands full with this one. So you waltzed yourself into that old death trap, Lavinia. What did you find?”
“Junk, mostly. There was some furniture that wasn’t too bad. I began hunting for things that might serve to fix up a room for myself.”
“I thought you said you’ve got a room.”
“I don’t mean a bedroom in Zilpha’s house, I mean a place of my own, that I’m going to pay for out of my wages if Hayward doesn’t fire me for softening of the brain.”
Clinton took a tighter grip on her arm. “Don’t you fret yourself about that, kiddo. Go on, tell him about the sack and get it over.”
“Well,” Lavinia began rather falteringly, “I went upstairs and kept poking around. Over in the far corner I saw a big old sack hanging from the rafters. I thought it must be an old featherbed full of mice, so I wasn’t going to bother with it. Then I happened to bump against it and it felt surprisingly heavy, so I poked at it, and the cloth started to rip. A lot of horsehair stuffing began falling out. I went to shove it back and—”
“Want a drink of water?”
“Yes, please.”
Lavinia took her time sipping from the tumbler Hayward was holding to her lips, drawing reassurance from his supporting arm.
“Thank you. I do apologize for being such ages explaining this, constable. I’m not usually a hysterical female. It’s just that when I put my hand into the bag I found myself actually touching him.”
“Glory mighty! Guess I’d have gone hysterical myself, if it happened to me. Did you actually get a look at him?”
“I saw the fingers.”
She was glad Hayward hadn’t taken his arm away. “They looked like little yellow sticks. They were still—with the skin on them, all together, not b-bits and pieces.”
“Must o’ dried up like a mummy instead of—I dunno,” said Devine. “One thing sure, he never crawled into that bag on purpose. Was that all you saw, just the fingers?”
“I wish it were! The bag kept tearing, and the whole hand came out, then the arm, and then it seemed as if he was jumping out at me!”
She swallowed hard. “That was when I lost my head. All I could think of was getting out of there and sending for the police. I didn’t watch where I was going, and the step broke, and I expect you know the rest of it better than I do.”
“You seen the whole arm?” Devine persisted. “Was it bare?”
“Oh, no. There was a shirt sleeve. I think it was black-and-white striped cotton with just the band, no cuff. And I’m sure he was wearing a black coat.”
“What kind of coat? You meant an ulster?”
“No, not an outdoor coat. Not a real suit coat either, I should say. It was an odd sort of material. All I can think of is velvet with most of the nap rubbed off.”
“That’s just what it would have been,” cried Hayward, “that threadbare old smoking jacket of his father’s. He always wore it around the house. Cripes, I can see him now.”
“So can I.” Lavinia shuddered.
“You poor baby.” He hugged her closer. “When I think of those two old blisters shoving you out of the house—”
“Seems to me they done her a favor,” said the constable. “She’s a darn sight safer here than she would be up there.”
“Safer?” gasped Lavinia. “Why ever do you say that?”
“Well, Miss, you been handin’ us quite a line of goods here: a gravestone that gets defaced twice over, somebody duckin’ you in the millpond, old Jenks’s body turnin’ up, and the mill gettin’ washed away just in time to keep us from takin’ it as evidence.”
“I see what you mean. But surely nobody would want to hurt me now that it’s all over. I’m not that important, am I?”
“Yes.”
The ginger cat’s growl ended in a sneeze. Devine stood up and stretched his arms.
“Guess I better be moseyin’ along. You take care of that cold, Hay. Better take care of this young woman of yours, too. You know what rotten luck you’ve had findin’ good office help.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“Hayward, you’d better go, too,” Lavinia urged although she didn’t want to. “With that cold, you should have been in bed hours ago.”
“I’m all right,” he insisted, then went into a fit of sneezing that brought the night nurse charging to the attack.
“The very idea! Bringing your nasty diseases into my clean infirmary!”
“Isn’t that what the place is for?”
“Don’t give me any sauce, young man. You march yourself out of here this minute, and get to bed where you belong.”
“Please, Hayward,” Lavinia pleaded, “do as the nurse tells you. I’ll be all right.”
“Will you keep an eye on her?” he appealed blearily to the avenging fury in the white cap.
“That’s what I’m here for, isn’t it? You better get Mrs. Grieder to fix you a bucket of mustard water and stick your feet in it.”
“All right, I know when I’m licked.”
The weary man dragged himself to his feet. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Lavinia.”
“It’s already tomorrow, and you ought to be ashamed of yourself for keeping my patient awake so late.”
The nurse scolded him out the door. Lavinia drifted back to sleep. When she woke, the sun was shining, a different nurse was in the room, and Dr. LaFronde was with her. He poked here and there, checked her hands, which were now miraculously free of all but a few patches of gauze and sticking plaster, stared into her eyeballs, and said she could go home.
“I’m sorry to put you out, Miss Tabard, but we need the room. Between the flood up at your aunt’s place Saturday night and spoiled macaroni salad at the Sunday school picnic yesterday, half of Dalby’s either bunged up or caved in. I’ve got one patient bedded down on the living room sofa and another who’s a darn sight sicker than you are stretched out on the dining room table. My wife’s fit to be tied, and I can’t say I blame her. Joe Devine’s got some notion I ought to keep you here for your own protection, but I just can’t do it.”
“Of course you can’t, and there’s no earthly reason why you should,” said Lavinia. “I need never have been brought here in the first place, if people had used their heads. The only thing wrong was that I’d eaten too much after having had nothing for a long time, and so I got sick to my stomach when I remembered what had frightened me into falling and getting hurt. I must admit I’m having a few qualms right now, talking about it, but that’s normal enough, isn’t it?”
Dr. LaFronde nodded. “Wouldn’t be normal if you didn’t. I don’t mind telling you my own stomach turned over once or twice when young Clinton and Joe Devine brought me in that cigar box full of bones.”
“Could you tell if it really was Mr. Jenks?”
“Not if I had to take a Bible oath on it, I couldn’t. From what I could see, the bones had been comparatively long and thin, and the joints bunged up with chalk. Jenks was tall and slim-built and had arthritis pretty bad. If it wasn’t him, I don’t know who else it could have been. More than that, I can’t say, unless they come up with some bigger pieces.”
“Is there any chance they will?”
“Not a particle, I’d say. The corpse was so dried out that I expect most of it just fell to powder when they blasted. Strange, the way those sluice gates let go just when the body turned up, almost as if somebody wanted to wash it away. Well, that’s none of my business, thank the Lord. I’m surprised Clinton managed to turn up as much evidence as he d
id, but I understand he got Joe to deputize every able-bodied man he could round up, and bullied them into keeping at it till they’d looked over every last chip and splinter that hadn’t got washed downstream and out to sea. Driving young hellion, isn’t he? Elvira, you go telephone to Miss Tabard’s folks and then come back and help her get dressed.”
He was gone before Lavinia could protest that she was perfectly capable of dressing herself, and the nurse with him. A few minutes later, the woman came back alone.
“Your aunt says they’ll be down to get you in the automobile, soon as they can. I’m supposed to get you ready.”
“You’ll be glad to get rid of me,” Lavinia tried to joke.
“I daresay Dr. LaFronde will,” said the nurse with an enigmatic smile.
“Yes, he needs the room.”
“That’s one way of putting it. Say, wasn’t that something about you finding old Jenks upstairs in the mill? I knew all along it would turn out to be something like that. Crawled into the loft looking for a lost nickel and froze to death, if you want my opinion. Well, it’s not very nice to speak ill of the dead, but it looks to me as though he got no more than was coming to him, after the mean way he treated everybody. That old devil seemed to think he was a king or something.”
“King devil,” Lavinia said without thinking.
The woman was amused. “That’s nothing to what his son Charlie used to call him. Charlie came sparking once or twice when we were young things together, but my folks put a stop to it. Charlie was always kind of a wild one, I have to admit, but who wouldn’t have been with a father that was tight as wet rawhide and colder than a mackerel? Mabel tells me it was Roland Athelney brought you in yesterday. That must have given Janine another bad night.”
“Janine who?”
The woman, who was clearly out for mischief, put on a look of wide-eyed innocence. “Oh, haven’t you met her? I forgot you haven’t been in Dalby more than a week or so. The way you’ve managed to set the place by the heels, it seems a lot longer. Janine LaFronde, I’m talking about, though I suppose I shouldn’t, seeing she’s Doctor’s own daughter. Mabel says she’s cried herself to sleep every night since you showed up at the band concert with Roland, wearing that velvet gown with the fancy fur. Janine thought she’d got that young fellow just about where she wanted him, till you came into the picture. Janine’s a sweet girl, but anybody with half an eye can see he’s out for more than—there I go, putting my foot in my mouth again. All set now? You might as well go sit in the front hall till they come for you. I’ve got to make this bed. Want me to walk out with you?”
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