Murder in the O.P.M.

by Leslie Ford

  “Where is he?”

  “Down there.”

  As she started forward, Sergeant Buck cleared his throat. When Sergeant Buck clears his throat, everybody stops. It sounds like a Panzer division going through a mountain ravine, and there’s a compelling note of authority in it that I, for one, would hesitate to disregard. We both stopped and turned. Sergeant Buck gets the color of tarnished brass when he’s embarrassed. He was that color now.

  “I just wanted to say I’d take care what I said, miss,” he said. “The colonel don’t mean any harm. But I’d watch my step all the same.”

  A look of alarm flashed across Diane’s face. She turned back to me, her lips parted. Boston, I gathered, had put Colonel Primrose one notch above the cherubim in what Sergeant Buck calls the “hy-rarchy”—though he uses the word only about the Administration setup—and she’d believed him.

  “Oh, dear,” she said. “I thought——”

  Sergeant Buck’s face went a shade more granite. “Don’t say nothing without due consideration,” he said.

  “He means that the police are here too,” I put in. “And reporters.”

  I knew that wasn’t what he meant in the least, and that what he meant was exactly what he’d said. What puzzled me was why he’d said it—for he must have known much more about what was in his colonel’s mind than I did. Perhaps it was just as well he did, for Diane didn’t rush down the path impulsively, as it seemed she was going to do at first. She went along quietly and stopped, looking at the colonel and Captain Lamb and the little tramp huddled there by the smoking embers.

  I introduced her.

  “I just came to say that you mustn’t believe them, Colonel Primrose, when they say my father . . . took his own life,” she said. “He wouldn’t do such a thing. He had contempt for . . . weakness of any sort.” She looked around her. “And he wouldn’t come out here to a place like this, if he was doing it! ” she cried suddenly. “Never! Never! You’ve got to find out who did it!”

  Captain Lamb spoke, “Did your father have any——”

  I’m sure he was going to say, “. . . enemies that you know of, miss?” It’s always his first question, and the answer is always “No,” but he keeps on asking it. He didn’t finish this time, for there was a sharp flurry in the underbrush just off the railroad tracks on the other side of the towing path. I could see my red setter’s tail waving, and hear her barking in sharp, excited little yelps. The next instant she was bounding across the tracks. In her mouth she had a dark gray object. The policeman made a dive at her as she came up, but she dodged him playfully and came over to me.

  “What’s that?” Captain Lamb asked.

  “It appears to be a man’s hat,” I said. I took it from her. It was one of those soft sport things that can be rolled up and poked out again without losing whateVer shape they had to begin with. I unrolled it and held it out gingerly. There was a dark, frozen bloodstain on the brim. I looked inside at the sweatband.

  “Your father’s, Miss Hilyard?” Captain Lamb said.

  Diane, standing beside me, was looking at the leather band too. I knew it without even glancing toward her. It was one of the most interminable fractions of a moment that I’ve ever spent. She put her hand out and took it.

  “Yes,” she said. “That’s my father’s. May I have it? You don’t need it, do you?”

  Captain Lamb nodded. “I guess it’s all right. Only I’d like to know how it got over there.”

  The little tramp spoke up, “I put it over there. It was layin’ here on the grass. I didn’t see how he’d be usin’ it any more.”

  Captain Lamb turned on him with some annoyance, I thought. “Anything else you got hidden around here?”

  I didn’t hear what else was said. The tumult in my mind was deafening. I was trying desperately to concentrate on being casual, so that Colonel Primrose wouldn’t know. Because the hat was not Lawrason Hilyard’s. The initials on the sweatband were “B.D.,” and the merchant’s label said COLLEGE TOGGERY. PASADENA, CALIFORNIA.

  Diane Hilyard had told a deliberate lie. And she’d done it so convincingly that not even Colonel Primrose suspected it. He was so concerned with the tramp that he hadn’t paid any attention to either of us.

  CHAPTER 7

  LAWRASON HILYARD HAD NOT BEEN BROUGHT back to the house in Prospect Street, but Death was there. He was at the closed door and at the shuttered windows. His sable shadow lay cold in the silent hall.

  I came back with Diane. I didn’t want to, and my heart sank as we came in. She held onto my hand.

  “Please don’t go,” she whispered. “You’ve got to help me. At least stay till they go.”

  She meant Colonel Primrose and Captain Lamb, coming along later. Sergeant Buck was taking Sheila home in my car. I listened. The sound of low voices was coming from the library, and from somewhere upstairs the sound of hysterical weeping.

  “What am I going to do with this?”

  Diane pulled the bloodstained hat out of her pocket. A chair moved in the library; the brass knob turned. She thrust the hat into my hand just as the door opened. The young man Pd seen at the cocktail party, Carey Eaton, her sister’s husband, came into the hall.

  “Where have you been all——”

  He saw me behind her in, the shadowy hall and stopped abruptly, his face flushing. I got the hat into my own pocket as he came towards us, his feet sharp on the waxed floor. He had every reason to object to my being there, of course, and I didn’t blame him. It did seem a little odd that he should have been speaking to Diane as he was.

  “Everybody’s been hunting you all over the place, Diane,” he said curtly. “I should think you’d at least have enough respect for your father’s——”

  “Oh, shut up!” Diane cried. She flared up for an instant like a rocket, and subsided as quickly. “I’m sorry, Carey, but please don’t go on like that. I can’t stand any more.”

  “All I’m saying is that your mother——”

  “I know. Please don’t. I shouldn’t have gone out. I’m sorry.”

  “And who is this you’ve brought here?” He gave me as cold a stare as I deserved. “I should think——”

  She cut him off abruptly. “This is Mrs. Latham . . . my brother-in-law, Mr. Eaton. She came because I asked her to. Because the police are on their way here now.”

  Carey Eaton took another step toward us. “The police?” he began angrily. “What have you been doing? Where——”

  The library door opened again. It was Mr. Bartlett Folger. He looked gray and at least ten years older than he had Monday night at dinner.

  “For God’s sake, Carey——” He stopped short, staring at me.

  “Diane’s brought the police here!” Carey Eaton said violently. “I told you all that was what she’d do! I’d like to——”

  Bartlett Folger stepped quickly across the hall and took him by the arm. “Be quiet, Carey,” he said sharply. His face was white with anger. “You’re acting like a fool.” He turned to me. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Latham. Lawrason’s death has upset everybody. Is there something——”

  “Mrs. Latham came because I asked her to, Uncle Bart,” Diane said calmly. “I had an idea that if there was a stranger in the house, the Eatons would behave like civilized white people. I also thought I’d like to have a friend.”

  I turned as another door opened and Mrs. Hilyard came into the hall. I’d thought it was she who was crying upstairs, but it wasn’t. She was by far the calmest and most self-possessed of the family. Her face above her unrelieved black dress was chalky white, and there were darkish circles under her eyes, but she was in complete command of herself and the situation thrust upon her. “Thank you for coming, Mrs. Latham,” she said quietly. “I appreciate it very deeply.”

  She held out her hand. I felt like a yellow dog. I wasn’t there in any sense of condolence or sympathy. I mumbled something or other, and she pressed my hand quickly.

  “I know it’s very hard to know what to say,” she
said. She turned to her daughter. “Go upstairs, Diane, and take off those wet shoes. And change into something a little more suitable, won’t you, please, dear?”

  Diane looked down at her muddy feet. The color rose to her cheeks. She shot a defiant glance at her brother-in-law and left.

  Her mother drew a deep, wavering breath and turned back to me. She was making a definite effort to keep her voice steady.

  “Will you come in and talk to me a minute? . . . And please, Carey, try to be more tactful with Diane. I can’t endure any more of this. . . . Bartlett, go up and talk to her, please. Try to do something with her.”

  She closed the library door behind us and stood leaning back against it for a moment with her eyes closed.

  “Diane doesn’t mean to make everything so difficult,” she said, coming over to me and sitting down. Then she said “Oh, dear!” and got up quickly.

  I hadn’t meant to stare, but I suppose I must have done so.

  An antique pearwood armchair that I’d heard Mrs. Ralston call one of her museum pieces was now in about fifteen pieces in the corner between the Chippendale kneehole desk and the corner windows.

  Mrs. Hilyard went to the fireplace and pulled the bell cord.

  “I didn’t want Mrs. Ralston to leave it here; it’s so old and fragile,” she said, looking down at the heap of old wood and needle point. “My brother sat on it and it literally came to pieces.”

  “It can be mended,” I said, though I didn’t see how anybody just sitting on it could break it that way. It looked much more as if it had been picked up and slammed down.

  “Put that chair in the hall closet, please, Boston,” Mrs. Hilyard said.

  “Mr. Folger, he tol’ me not to touch it, ma’am,” Boston said. “He say to leave it where it is.”

  She cut him off sharply. “I say to move it.” There were two dull spots of color in her cheeks that hadn’t been there before.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  He gathered the pieces hastily and got out. He hadn’t even glanced at me. He wasn’t very happy. His skin had that funny color they get—a sort of mixture of lampblack and white lead and yellow ocher.

  “I wish you would help me with Diane, Mrs. Latham,” Mrs. Hilyard said. She sat down beside me again. “I’m so worried about her that I’m almost out of my mind.”

  “I think she’s very sweet,” I said. “I gather she’s rather headstrong, but——”

  That was as far as we got on the subject of Diane. Boston was at the door again.

  “The police are coming, ma’am,” he said to Mrs. Hilyard breathlessly. “They’re getting out of the car.”

  “Show them in when they come, Boston. And ask Mr. Folger and the others to come down.”

  I heard that deeply drawn, wavering breath again. Otherwise she was calm enough, though I had the idea that she hadn’t planned it this way.

  “I hope you’ll forgive us, Mrs. Latham,” she said. “We’re all on the ragged edge.”

  And they were, though they did manage to pull themselves together when Colonel Primrose and Captain Lamb finally came in. Where those two had been from the time Boston announced their arrival until almost fifteen minutes later, when the doorbell rang and Bartlett Folger went to let them iri himself, I couldn’t imagine.

  It was an extraordinary situation. Mr. Folger had come down first, then Joan and Carey Eaton. Joan’s eyes were red and swollen, and the powder she’d hastily dabbed on to try to cover up the mottled tearstains on her cheeks had dried unevenly. Her husband sat down beside her—I thought as nervous as an ill-tempered cat. Bartlett Folger paced up and down. Finally Diane came down. She looked around.

  “I thought Carey said the police had come,” she said calmly.

  Her brother-in-law’s retort was cut shot by the peal of the doorbell. “There they are now,” he said. “For God’s sake, Diane——”

  “Be quiet, Carey,” Mrs. Hilyard said sharply. “If you’re going to act like this, I wish you’d go upstairs. You’re not the head of this house yet.”

  There was an abrupt tight silence when Mr. Folger introduced Colonel Primrose. I had the feeling—and it wasn’t the first time I’d had it in situations of the sort—that someone in the room hadn’t counted on anyone like him coming in. They had—one of them, or all of them, I couldn’t tell—expected a professional policeman like Captain Lamb; they had not expected anyone as completely at ease in the well-bred elegance of the Ralston library as they themselves were. Or rather more than they were just then, I thought, except for Diane, who already knew about him.

  “When I spoke to you this morning, captain,” Bartlett Folger said, rather abruptly, “I told you the idea of suicide was absurd. Since I’ve talked with my sister, I want to withdraw that.”

  Colonel Primrose looked over at Mrs. Hilyard. “Why do you think your husband might have taken his own life?” he asked.

  “He threatened to do so several times recently,” she said. “I’ve lived in constant dread of it.” Her voice was steady, but it seemed to take all the effort she was capable of to keep it that way. “He’s been horribly upset lately, and working much too hard. His stomach has been bothering him so that he’s been going to the doctor for the first time in his life. As soon as I found out that he hadn’t come home last night, I went to his desk drawer and saw that his gun was gone. I knew what had happened before my brother came to tell me.”

  “There was no other reason for his taking his gun?” Colonel Primrose asked. “He hadn’t been threatened?”

  Bartlett Folger glanced at me. “You’re referring to a remark of mine,” he said. “That was a mistake on my part. The young man I was talking about has become a very solid citizen. I misjudged him. I’m sorry; I didn’t know it at the time.”

  “I had something else in mind,” Colonel Primrose said. “Now that you’ve brought it up, when did you learn that Bowen Digges was in Mr. Hilyard’s office?”

  No one looked at Diane. She sat there as calmly as if she’d never heard the name before. I didn’t. Sitting as I was on the young man’s hat, my position was definitely uncomfortable.

  “I can probably answer that better than anyone else,” Mrs. Hilyard said. “Mrs. Eaton recognized him at a party and told me. I told my brother on Tuesday, at lunch. I didn’t tell Diane, because I didn’t want to upset her. She met him accidentally Monday night. I should have told her. All of this might have been avoided.”

  “Do you mean that if I hadn’t met Bowen, father wouldn’t have killed himself?” Diane asked. Her voice was small, but distinct and terribly clear.

  “If you hadn’t kicked up such a——”

  “Joan! Stop it!” Mrs. Hilyard turned sharply on her other daughter. “No, Diane. I didn’t mean that. But this had been preying on your father’s mind for weeks. He didn’t want us to come here, in the first place. And I don’t think, my dear, you made it any easier for him, if you’ll let me say so.”

  Diane seemed to shrink into a hard, tight little knot. I could feel her body quivering against mine on the sofa. I took hold of her hand and squeezed it hard between us on the cushion. Her hand was cold as ice, her pulse was pounding.

  “I wouldn’t be so hard on her, Mrs. Hilyard,” Captain Lamb said awkwardly. “She didn’t mean——”

  Diane flared up like a burning torch. “I did too!” she cried passionately. “I meant to be as cruel to them as they had been to me . . . and Bo, for years and years! I won’t be quiet! I don’t know why you all want people to think my father killed himself! He didn’t! And you all know he didn’t! Uncle Bart knew he didn’t until he came here and talked to you and Joan and Carey! I was going to say I thought so too. I don’t want a scandal any more than the Eatons do, or you do, but I won’t say it now! I won’t have you all saying I killed my father, because he—he lied to me about Bo. Because it wasn’t his fault. He’d never have done it alone! I’ve never believed it . . . and I don’t believe it now!”

  She collapsed in a sobbing heap on the sofa,
her head in my lap. Mrs. Hilyard sat with her eyes closed, her hands tightly folded, not making a move toward her daughter. How she could have stood it, no matter how “difficult” Diane had ever been, I couldn’t see. It was completely heartbreaking.

  “I loved him!” she sobbed. “Better than anybody else in the world!”

  Everybody sat there as if made of wood, except Colonel Primrose, and he had never been more suave.

  “I should like to go back a moment,” he said placidly. “I understand that a man has been loitering around the house, Mrs. Hilyard. That was what I had in mind about any threatening——”

  “That’s absurd, Colonel Primrose,” she said calmly. “There has been a beggar around—a crazy old man I gave a dollar to one day. He has kept coming back. You’ve been listening to the colored servants.”

  My heart sank. Poor Boston, I thought. I looked at Colonel Primrose. I didn’t think he’d let Lilac and me down like this, even if he didn’t care about Boston.

  “Not at all, Mrs. Hilyard,” he said with equal calm. I knew he was saying “Mrs. Latham,” actually. “I heard it from a woman across the street. She called headquarters this morning when the radio announced your husband’s death. She said a suspicious-looking man had been around for a week or more, watching your house. She thought he might have attacked your husband to rob him when he took the dog out.”

  “My husband never took the dog out, except Sunday mornings.”

  “He took him out last night,” Colonel Primrose said. “It would seem improbable to me that a man who left his house intending to do away with himself would take his dog along.”

  Mrs. Hilyard was silent a moment. “The dog may have followed him,” she said.

  I thought the first sign of doubt had crept into her voice.

  Captain Lamb spoke. “Did your husband have any business worries, Mrs. Hilyard?”

  “Not in the ordinary sense. The business has been enormously increased. The fact that he was unable to supply the demand for promethium had him almost beside himself. He felt the recent attack on him very keenly. Especially in view of the fact that the new use of promethium in naval communications would probably have saved the life of his son by his first marriage, a month ago. He went down on one of our ships at Pearl Harbor. I think that had more to do with my husband’s depression than anything else. All the attacks against him last week about the shortage of promethium added to it—to the point where he was mentally unsound.”