by Leslie Ford
That had me stopped, frankly. The idea that Mrs. Hilyard might be a victim instead of an active agent hadn’t occurred to me. Nor had I thought Diane had the kind of faith in her mother that made her blind to all the implications of the scene on the terrace. But apparently she did, and it wasn’t my business to try to disillusion her. So, instead of saying, “I think your mother can look after herself very well, my dear,” I said, “I’d go back to bed, if I were you, and try to go to sleep again. She must know what she’s doing. Or come over and stay with me.”
I could almost see her shaking her head.
“I can’t leave her here alone,” she said. “She’d be upset. I’ll just wait.”
“If she doesn’t come back pretty soon, call me and we’ll do something,” I said.
I looked at the clock. It was quarter to two. And it was eight o’clock when I woke up again. Lilac was putting the papers on my bed. She went over to put down the windows.
Among her other functions, Lilac acts as a spiritual rheumatic joint. I can tell what the weather’s going to be in our household for the next day by those first few minutes in the morning. Cloudy, with the glass falling rapidly, was the barometric reading now, as she went out, got my tray and put it across my lap without so much as a moody mutter.
“That chair,” she said then, abruptly.
“What chair?”
“That chair she’s tryin’ to make pretense came apart when somebody set on it. Boston, he say that man broke it. He come out of there blood-mad, Boston say. Shoutin’ he come after some kind of pie, and ain’ nobody goin’ to keep him from gettin’ it.”
“What man, Lilac?” I asked patiently. I’ve never known whether she thinks I really know about all the people and things she’s talking about and am just trying to make pretense I’m being obtuse.
“The one that came first,” she said. “He come with another man, tryin’ to make pretense he’s a lawyer. Who ever heard of a lawyer goin’ roun’ people’s houses bus’in’ up the furniture? Wantin’ some kind of pie.”
I understood, vaguely. “Pierorities, maybe?” I said.
“Tha’s it. I ain’ never heard talk of it till jus’ recently.”
There didn’t seem to be any point trying to explain, so I let it go. I was much more interested in the headlines screaming up at me from the front pages anyway.
DEAD OPM CHIEF HAD RESIGNED, I read.
“That man come out in th’ hall blood-mad,” Lilac said. “The one that called hisself a lawyer tryin’ to hang on to his coattails. But he go back an’ slam the door shut, an’ that’s when the chair got smashed. Boston, he peekin’ ’round the staircase, don’ know what goin’ to happen next. People comin’ in an’ goin’ out, rarin’ around sayin’ they is an’ they ain’. Boston says he ain’ never worked for them kind of people in his life.”
“Well, I wouldn’t talk about it,” I said.
“Ah ain’ goin’ to talk ’bout it. Ah don’ want nothin’ to do with them kind of people.”
I poured a cup of coffee and picked up the paper:
It was revealed late last night that Lawrason Hilyard, whose body was found in the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal yesterday morning, had sent his resignation to the Office of Production Management. It was postmarked 10:30 and sent from a Georgetown branch of the post office. At OPM it was said that Mr. Hilyard’s reasons given were ill health and the pressure of private business. No further details were made public. It is believed, however, that the police regard the resignation as evidence to support the theory of suicide held by the family. When questioned about it at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Carey Eaton last night, Mrs. Hilyard refused to comment, except to say she had known for some time that her husband had intended to resign his OPM position. She did not know he had actually done so. He had no enemies, Mrs. Hilyard said. Her son-in-law, Carey Eaton, confirmed her statements. The family would leave Washington as soon as the necessary arrangements were made, he said.
The next column was headed, SEARCH FOR MYSTERY MAN CONTINUES. It said:
The police revealed late last night that the search for a man known to have been seen near the dead OPM branch chief’s mansion on Prospect Street was still being prosecuted. As descriptions of the man given by neighbors and by the servants in the Hilyard household vary considerably, the police are understood to be working out a composite picture similar to that constructed in the Bruno Hauptmann case, which will be issued shortly. It is believed the man may have followed the metal magnate when he left his Prospect Street residence to take his dog for a walk. He was last seen standing at the end of the Georgetown University campus wall across the street from the Hilyard house at about eight o’clock last night. He was found——
It went on with a rehash of yesterday’s details.
A bulletin in heavier type in the middle of the page caught my eye. It was headed POLICE QUESTION UNIDENTIFIED MAN. My heart chilled as I read it.
A man whose name was not revealed and whose identity the police are shielding for the present is known to have appeared at headquarters yesterday afternoon. (Continued on page thirteen.)
I turned the pages quickly.
It was learned that he had gone through a police line-up and had been identified by Joseph Bascombe, a waterman, as the person he had seen running along the towing path a little before midnight Tuesday. Mr. Hilyard, it has been authoritatively stated, died at about 11:35 that night. The police are trying to decide whether the bullet wound in his head was self-inflicted or whether he was a victim of violence.
Bascombe told reporters he was returning from getting a glass of beer on M Street. He had crossed the bridge and was going down to board his oyster boat when he heard someone running. He went up in time to see a man run up the steps of the canal bridge. The man wore a gray overcoat and no hat. It is assumed that this is the man whose hat the police were hunting for until a late hour yesterday. A hat found at the scene (see picture of dog, page ten) was tentatively identified at the time by Miss Diane Hilyard, daughter of the dead dollar-a-year man, but turned out not to be Lawrason Hilyard’s.
Bascombe stated that he identified the hatless man in the gray overcoat in the police line-up. Reporters were unable to learn his name. It is believed, however, that he was known to the dead metal king. Reporters questioning Bascombe were told that no one else was on the towing path at the assumed time of Mr. Hilyard’s death. Bascombe heard a car start, but made no effort to investigate. He went directly to the police when he learned that a body had been found. He had not seen the early papers, having slept until noon on his boat on the river.
I sat there, my coffee untouched, getting stone-cold, staring stupidly down at the blurred type. My eyes focused again gradually and I looked at the picture under the article. It was gaily headed, NEED A HAT? and it showed a grinning policeman standing beside an enormous pile of male headgear of every possible description. There must have been nearly a hundred of them. WHAT WASHINGTON DOES WITH ITS CAST-OFF LIDS, it said underneath.
Police combing the canal and its environs found all these. It’s an ill wind, as the old saying goes. They’re going to be cleaned, blocked and sold for the benefit of Bundles for Bluejackets. A well-known local cleaner and dyer offered his services free as his contribution. First they’ll be shown to Miss Diane Hilyard to see if she can identify the one she tossed out of her car window at the foot of Foxhall Road.
I turned the pages, glancing mechanically at the items I always read. At one of the gossip columns I stopped and looked again. It asked:
What’s happened to Stanley Woland, who gave up his title and changed his name to become a democratic American? Rumors connecting him with a lovely heiress fell flat yesterday, and other rumors cropped up all over the place. An early phone call revealed he’d left town for an extended sojourn. Later inquirers were told he hadn’t left town. Truth? Stanley has the mumps. Fate seems to be dogging the ex-glamour boy. It’s particularly unkind just now when Stanley’s well-known sympathetic manner might wel
l have turned the trick.
I put the paper down. That column seemed so unnecessarily cruel that it was almost indecent. I felt beastly sorry for Stanley. I didn’t want to see him marry Diane, but I didn’t want him ruined either. And of course he simply had to stay in.
However, I thought, if he was on a spot, it was a lot better than the spot Bowen Digges was on.
CHAPTER 13
I WAS GOING OVER ALL THAT IN MY mind when the telephone rang. For a moment I didn’t get the name of the man who was speaking. Then I understood it.
“Oh, good morning, Mr. Folger,” I said.
“Will you lunch with me, Mrs. Latham?” he asked.
“On the Samarkand? It’s my last party—I’m turning her over to the Navy next week.”
I hesitated. I could have told him I had a luncheon engagement, which was true, though I could beg off. I was awfully curious about various things, but still——
“My sister and the Eatons are going to be here,” he went on. “My niece, Joan Eaton, thinks you’ve got a pretty one-sided picture of the family from that little wildcat of ours. It’s all very quiet, of course, but it would be a great pleasure——”
“Thank you,” I said. “I’d like to. What time?”
“Could you make it about a quarter to one, or is that too early?”
I put down the phone. I suppose I did have a one-sided picture of the family, but I’d certainly got it pretty directly from themselves, not Diane alone. It would be interesting to see them when they weren’t in the same cage with their little wildcat. Maybe they were very nice people. Still, it was odd, it seemed to me, that they should have cared one way or the other about what kind of a picture of them I’d got. It wasn’t as if they were staying in town and would have to go on coping with me.
And it meant, of course, I was reflecting, that Mrs. Hilyard had got safely back from her two-o’clock pilgrimage.
I was just wondering what I was going to say to Colonel Primrose about the night before when Lilac came up.
“The colonel he’s downstairs,” she announced. She always does it, when there’s trouble around, as if he’d come in with the noose in his hand and was at that moment engaged in erecting a gibbet in the front hall.
“Tell him I’ll be down immediately,” I said.
It was probably the hat, I thought. But it wasn’t the hat that I was worrying about just then. I had a very real and intricate problem. I didn’t care about Mrs. Hilyard, but I did care about Diane and, in a way, about the so-called beggar. I could still see his face raised to the window, last Monday, when Mrs. Hilyard peremptorily motioned her husband to go on. The man might be cracked, I thought, but if more people’s religion gave them as sweet and other-worldly a light in their eyes as his gave him, maybe more people would be handling out tracts and fewer ordnance supplies.
Colonel Primrose was standing in front of the fire reading the paper. He plainly hadn’t had much sleep, and he also looked as if he wasn’t in a mood to put up with anybody’s being an obstructionist at that moment. He folded the paper and handed it to me.
“Have you seen this?”
It was the picture of all the hats. As I nodded I thought, It’s coming now.
“If that hat turns up,” he said, sitting down, “Mr. Bowen Digges’ goose is very browned.”
I didn’t say anything. Neither did he for a moment.
“If I knew where it was, I’d have to turn it over to Lamb,” he went on equably. “Fortunately, I don’t.”
I didn’t look at him. “Would you suppose it might have been destroyed?”
“I hope not,” he answered. “That would be damnably unfortunate. I expect that hat to be used in evidence, against Digges if he did murder Hilyard, or against whoever did do it.”
“You’re sure he was murdered?”
“I’ve never for an instant doubted it, my dear. There was no known reason for suicide. He had a mild peptic ulcer, but they tell me everybody in the Department of the Interior has that. They just attribute it to Mr. Ickes and go on a diet. Hilyard’s letter of resignation, written after he got home from OPM, made an appointment for a board meeting tomorrow morning. Furthermore, he was in a rage when he left the house to take his dog out. A man doesn’t start a suicidal depression that way.”
“Do you know what he was in a rage about?” I asked.
He nodded. “I think so. It was partly one Mr. Ira Colton accusing him of holding out on promethium and ruining him, which is firmly and erroneously fixed in Mr. Ira Colton’s mind. It was also partly his daughter Diane. According to Duncan Scott, the lawyer who was going to fix things for him, Colton lost his temper and told Hilyard a lot of things, including an item of gossip he’d picked up at a party.”
“Was it about Stanley?” I asked quickly.
“About the five thousand dollars Stanley borrowed. And Stanley and Diane walked in nearly five minutes later.”
“Oh, gosh,” I said. “I suppose that was the door that hit Stanley, after all. Could he have done it?”
Colonel Primrose nodded calmly. “Stanley’s life hasn’t been designed to keep him particularly fit.”
“So he was fibbing when he said Mr. Hilyard was pleased about having him for a son-in-law.”
He looked at me with mild surprise. “Of course, Mrs. Latham. The law doesn’t make a man give incriminating evidence against himself.”
“Look,” I said. “Is Bowen Digges really in such a mess?”
“I can think of one way it could be worse,” he said soberly. “He could have been seen, by a reliable witness, with a gun in his hand, just before and immediately after it was fired at Hilyard’s head.”
“That was he in the police line-up, then?”
He nodded. “He says he doesn’t remember running, but he was in a hurry and maybe he was. He won’t say where he was running to, or why he was in a hurry.”
He made a little gesture of impatience, as if Bowen Digges might have helped out with at least one explanation.
“And that’s not all. He had appointments all day Tuesday. People sat around ten deep. And he never showed up. Lamb sent a man to OPM to pick up the washroom gossip. It seems he wasn’t there, for one reason, because he’d gone somewhere the night before and got boiled to the eyebrows. Absolutely stinko.”
“After he ran into Diane!” I said.
He nodded.
“Then he’s still in love with her.”
He drew a long breath. “I … should have thought you’d realized that,” he said reproachfully. “Otherwise the fool would see the spot he’s on. Well, Hilyard called him up when he didn’t meet Duncan Scott and Colton for lunch and asked him to come to dinner before they came that night. He was all right by that time and said no, thanks, he’d be there at nine-twenty. He hung up the phone and said he might have to work with the hard-named old so-and-so, but he didn’t have to eat with him. That was told around OPM before they’d heard about Hilyard.”
“That was just dandy, wasn’t it?” I said.
“It was mortar for the bricks, certainly.” He got up and paced back and forth in front of the fire. “There are a lot of things I don’t understand about this. Either it’s the strangest series of coincidences or the young fellow is guilty. Lamb may be right, of course. He says I expect a person who’s murdered somebody to cover up, and he points out that Digges did cover up. He made it look like suicide, and, as a matter of fact, that would have held if I hadn’t happened to be interested in Hilyard before it happened.”
He came back and sat down again.
“Lamb thinks he may still get away with it, if Mrs. Hilyard and the family stick to their story of suicide. But will they stick? They don’t like Digges. If they realize the case against him, they may just quietly sign off and let him take it right on the chin.”
“Oh, no!” I protested. “They couldn’t do that.”
He shrugged. “It’s been done, Mrs. Latham. I don’t mean they’d perjure themselves.” He got up. “Digges’ thumbpr
int is on the metal foil of that twisted cigarette pack, incidentally. There’s a lot of circumstantial evidence about.” He started to the door, stopped and came back. “Does anybody know where that hat is?” he asked gravely.
“Only the person who hid it, I suppose,” I said. “Why?”
“Because I’d rather have Digges hanged, even if he’s as innocent as an angel, than have anybody I care about pretty deeply get hurt because she’s a quixotic, if very lovely, fool.”
“I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about, Colonel Primrose,” I said.
He smiled. “Don’t forget. I don’t want anything to happen to it ... or to you. Especially it.”
I followed him out into the hall.
“What about the beggar?” I asked. I felt I was being awfully casual about it.
He looked at me.
“The mystery man, as the papers call him.”
“What about him, my dear?” he asked placidly.
“I mean, has he been found yet?”
He shook his head. “We haven’t got hold of him. I’ll tell you about him later on.”
He opened the door. Behind us the great granite form of Sgt. Phineas T. Buck was coming up out of the kitchen. He avoided looking at either of us, but at least he didn’t spit.
I went back, got my coat and put on my galoshes to take Sheila for a walk to the market.
Lilac came heavily up the kitchen stairs. “The sergeant say the colonel ain’ never goin’ to solve no murders, nor nothin’, if he keep on wastin’ his time comin’ over here irregardless.”
I laughed. “You just tell the sergeant to mind his own business,” I said.
“ ’Deed Ah did. Ah tol’ him we wouldn’ give him or the colonel house room if you hadn’ gone crazy as a June bug.”
She normally used the more classical entomological phrase. I let it go at that and whistled for Sheila.
“When you goin’ to remember to see ’bout my chair?” Lilac demanded darkly.