Death Lights a Candle

by Phoebe Atwood Taylor

  “I don’t think,” Asey said softly, “that you will do anything at all. An’ right now, mister, you’ll do what I say you’ll do an’ nothin’ else. You seem pretty ready to put blame on top of other people. Maybe it wouldn’t of been so funny if you’d took that top pill yourself. Ever consider that?”

  Hobart looked startled. “Why, I——”

  “Yup. Just so. Just so. Now, s’pose, if you didn’t know all about this arsenic, you just thank the doc prettylike for savin’ you from an early grave.”

  “Why—uh——”

  “Thank him,” Asey repeated firmly, “an’ ’pologize to Miss Prue for actin’ like a fo’mast hand.”

  “I’m sorry, Miss Whitsby. Er—thank you, Doctor.”

  “Now,” Asey said serenely, “what was your business with Stires that you worried about so over?”

  “Why, it was—er——”

  “Don’t say it’s not important,” Denny James interrupted, “because you spent hours telling us how important it was when Stires didn’t turn up.”

  Asey looked at him. Denny subsided.

  “Well,” Hobart said, “if you must know all about it, I presume you must. I really don’t see that it has any bearing on anything that you’d need. Bert was the head of a shingle company, as you may know. I’m in the lumber business. In the course of the last twenty-odd years we have together put through several deals which were of mutual benefit. There was a company here in New England which I wanted to get control of. I knew it was pretty much on the rocks, and I knew, furthermore, that if it became known that I wanted it, there’d be a great deal of haggling about the price. Bert had had dealings with the concern and he thought that he could help me out. We were to talk over the final details Tuesday. I got in early that morning. Everything was practically arranged. Then this niece turned up and there was trouble at the factory. Bert called me at the Club and told me that he’d look after things and for me to come down with Denny in his car as had been planned. When he didn’t show up, I was naturally worried. As it turned out, though, he made a much better deal than I’d anticipated.”

  “When I suggested that he might of double-crossed you,” Asey said, “was I right? I mean, could he have got his finger in the pie?”

  “He could have, but he didn’t. He got hold of Newell, the head of the company, and Newell was so glad to have an offer that he snapped it up.”

  “Feller know Stires was actin’ for you?”

  “Yes. Bert told him that morning, but it didn’t seem to make any difference.”

  “I see.” Asey put a log on the fire. “Then you let Stires go ahead an’ do your business for you an’ you didn’t see him at all?”

  “Why——”

  “You must have seen him,” Denny broke in calmly. “Where’d you get all that list of stuff we bought on the way down if you didn’t see him?”

  “I didn’t say I didn’t,” Hobart retorted. “I wish, Denny, that you’d keep out of this. Asey, is there any need for him to be here?”

  “I sort of like to have him around,” Asey said. “So you saw Stires Tuesday mornin’?”

  “Yes. After he called me at the Club, I took a cab and went over to his house for a few minutes. He said he had a list of things he was intending to get, but that it might be better for me to get them when Denny and I came. We didn’t see each other very long. I just gave him my final figures and he gave me a list of things.”

  “What was this list?” Asey asked.

  Denny pulled a wallet from his inside pocket and gave Asey a slip of paper without answering.

  “Hm. Magazines, candy, cigarettes, lobsters, flashlights, candles, flowers, at greenhouse. I see. I s’pose, Mr. Hobart, that you can check up on all this business Stires did for you?”

  “Certainly. You could call Newell, of the Newell-Howard Company, or the manager of Stires’s factory.”

  “You forget that the phones ain’t workin’,” Asey said.

  Hobart shrugged. Denny took a pen from his pocket and wrote hurriedly on a piece of paper which he passed to me. I read it and smiled. It said, “Do you suppose Asey would let me speak?”

  “Denny wants to say something,” I told Asey.

  “Say away.”

  “Thank you. I only thought that probably Vic would know about that company. I don’t, because I don’t know much about business anyway, but Vic knows about everything in the way of business. Perhaps he could say offhand what that company was worth.”

  “Bound to do me little favors, aren’t you?” Hobart asked. “I don’t see, Mayo, why Vic should know about this company. It’s scarcely his field.”

  “Got ’ny objections to our askin’ him?”

  “Well, no.”

  “What was your final price?”

  Hobart looked at Denny, then rather deliberately took a card from his pocket and wrote some figures on it. Asey took the card and whistled softly.

  “Ho. Some money. Doc, will you get Blake?” Denny took back the scrap of paper he had given me. “What do you think of him?” he scrawled on it. “I think he’s guilty as hell.”

  “Remember,” I wrote back, “that if he says the pills he gave you were all right and that you substituted the arsenic ones, you’re in the same fix.”

  He made a face, but it was clear that the suggestion bothered him.

  “Now,” Asey said when Blake came back, “now, Mr. Blake, d’you know of a company called the— the Newell-Howard Company?”

  “Yes. Indeed yes. I own quite a bit of stock in it. So did Bert.”

  “What?” Hobart fairly leaped from his chair. “Bert was a shareholder?”

  “Yes, indeed. I’d say that between the two of us, we held thirty or forty per cent, of the stock. Why?”

  “See here, Vic. Did you know that he was planning to sell—or bargain for the company—for some one?”

  “Well, yes. In a way. I saw Newell a few weeks ago. He said that Bert had told him he’d got a buyer for the company and that if all went well, he and I would make up our losses. Why? You seem pretty excited.”

  “Excited! Good God, Vic, I’m the one who was taking over the company!”

  Blake smiled. “How much?”

  “Wait up.” Asey gave Blake a paper and a pencil. “This ain’t a game of questions an’ answers. You write down what you think that comp’ny was worth.”

  Blake thought a moment, then wrote. “That’s not accurate, Asey, but I don’t think that’s a bad offhand estimate. It’s about what Newell figured on.”

  Asey compared the paper with the one Hobart had given him.

  “Well?” Hobart demanded.

  “Just about two hundred thousand dollars’ dif’rence,” Asey said cheerfully. “Can you explain that, Mr. Hobart?”

  Hobart was too overcome to speak. I doubt if I’ve ever seen an angrier man. “Bert!” He exploded.

  “He—he was paying me back for——”

  “For what?”

  Hobart didn’t answer.

  “For that little affair about the Lassiter Company,” Blake said quietly, swinging his glasses. “I don’t think you have anything to say, Hobart. I think it’s about quits. But I don’t see why you, made such a mistake in the first place.”

  “I honestly didn’t know Bert was a shareholder. And I thought I had the thing lined up pretty well. I’d not gone into the matter myself. One of my men did.”

  “And you didn’t know about this last night?” Asey asked. “Stires didn’t tell you that he was doin’ a little payback after he told you the price? He didn’t let on that it was anything out of the ordinary?”

  “No.”

  “But if you’d found out then,” Asey went on, “what would of happened? Would you of got as mad as you just got? Would you have done anything about it? Would you of——”

  “Have killed him? Certainly not. I’d probably have been angry at the moment, but as Vic says, I suppose that I deserve it.”

  “Repentant all of a sudden,” Asey remar
ked. “Mr. Hobart, listen to me. You done Stires some dirt. Stires paid you back. You saw Stires after the rest of us saw him last night. To-day you give Denny James some pills. They’re arsenic. They’s another arsenic pill in the bottle that you got with you. Stires has double-crossed you in a nice business way, probably like you done him. Now, I ain’t aimin’ to accuse you, but it kind of seems to me like you was in a tough spot. You had a reason for killin’ Stires, Hobart. That’s more’n any one else has had so far. An’ you can’t say you didn’t have no poison, b’cause you got it. An’ you sure had every chance for usin’ it.”

  I shall make no attempt to reproduce Hobart’s tirade in reply to that.

  For one thing, I was brought up in the days when darn was considered violent and uncouth for a lady to use. Of course, after my niece’s first term in college, I became fairly well acquainted with a number of expressions whose place I had hitherto considered more or less confined to the stables and the dockyards. But Betsey and her contemporaries swore cheerfully and casually; they never meant much by it. Then, too, Hobart used words which I never knew existed. Their meaning, however, was painfully clear.

  Boiled down, in simple Anglo-Saxon, Hobart had no use for Asey, Asey’s family, Asey’s theories, Asey’s methods or his presence. He had, in fact, no use for any of us. The doctor was a liar, Denny was a double-crosser, Blake was another tool in the mammoth plot afoot to convict him, Hobart, of Adelbert’s murder.

  Denny made a motion toward him, but Asey shook his head. When Hobart glanced at me, however, Asey stopped him short.

  “That’ll be about all from you for one good while, mister.”

  “If I want to talk,” Hobart blustered, “I’ll talk. And no two-for-a-cent hayseed like you is going to stop me. I——”

  With a sudden motion Asey flipped a bandanna handkerchief out of his pocket, and before Hobart knew what he was doing Asey had gagged him very neatly.

  The doctor obligingly pinioned his hands.

  “There’s six-inch adhesive in my bag,” he suggested. “Do his hands up nicely.”

  Denny took out the long tin of tape, I helped him remove the covering, and Hobart’s wrists were presently lashed together with the stickiest tape I ever handled. Asey wound it around and around.

  “Now, Mr. Hobart,” he said cheerfully, “you brought this all on yourself. If you’d of learned to keep your mouth closed, you’d of been all right. After that little speech of yours, you deserve to be gagged, an’ to keep your gag in, we got to tie your hands. You can walk around, if you want to, but, by gorry, we won’t have none of your talk.”

  I have never seen an angry lion, but Hobart’s eyes approximated my idea of one.

  “Now,” Asey said, “we’ll——”

  The sound of shattering glass stopped him.

  We looked toward the window. The snow had drifted up to all but the top row of small panes. Some one was hurling snowballs at those.

  Asey ran to the window, undid the catch and started to force the top of the window down. The doctor picked up the coal shovel, and standing on a chair, scraped snow away until the window was half-open.

  “For mercy’s sakes,” Phrone’s voice howled shrilly, “for mercy’s sakes won’t some one let me in? Did you s’pose that I was goin’ to stay all soul alone in that house in a blizzard? Let me in!”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  AND STILL MORE ARSENIC

  IT WAS fifteen minutes before sufficient snow was scraped away for her to be hoisted throught the window. She was covered with snow and wringing wet. “How’d you get here?” Asey asked.

  “How’d you think I got here? I didn’t fly, that’s one sure thing! No, sir, I walked on my two feet, that’s how. I’ve been on my way for a good hour an’ a half. I don’t mind stayin’ alone, but I’m not goin’ to be snowed up alone. No, sir!”

  “But how’d you get through the drifts?”

  “Ain’t hardly no snow at all on the side of the hill from Miss Fible’s down here. Ain’t nowhere near so bad at her house as ’tis here. I been around to all your windows an’ hollered ’cept the back ones. They’re all drifted up like your doors. I went up to the second story at Miss Rena’s an’ took the glasses to see how the town was. The roads is all drifted, so far’s I could see, an’ I looked over to Lem Hill’s, where they keep the snow-plow an’ I couldn’t see’s they’d got it out. Seemed like ’twas snowed up. I think all the wires is down from the railroad tracks, too. Oh, Asey Mayo, you go git some rub’ boots an’ go out the window an’ you’ll find an oil can. I sort of figgered you’d run out of kerosene by now.”

  “You carried an oil can with you?”

  “Matter of fact, I didn’t carry it much. I rolled it down the hill. Rolled real easy, it did. Anyway, it’s most full an’ I guess you’ll need it.”

  “I guess we will. Thank you kindly, Phrone. Say, Miss Prue, hadn’t you better take her up an’ git her into some dry clothes?”

  “I certainly had,” I said. “Come along, Phrone.”

  “What’s the matter with that man?” She asked, pointing her angular forefinger toward Hobart. “What you got him all done up like that for?”

  “Come along,” I said, “and I’ll tell you.”

  Out in the hallway we met Rowena.

  “Phrone, you treasure! I’ve been wishing for you. Prue, now I can eat!”

  “What do you mean, you can eat?”

  “Phrone can cook for you and me—and the rest, for that matter. You will, won’t you, Phrone?”

  “Sure I’ll cook. But what’s the matter with Stires’s cook? What’s the matter around here anyway? An’ what’s Asey Mayo an’ the doctor doin’ here?”

  Briefly, Rowena told her. “For the rest, you’ll have to ask Miss Whitsby,” she concluded somewhat bitterly. “She’s in, as one of the Mantinis used to say, on the ground floor.”

  “Sakes alive,” Phrone said, “Stires killed? My goodness me! Wait until the town hears of this! They was countin’ on his bringin’ so much money from taxes that the rate’d go down. Who done it?”

  “We’re trying to find out,” I said. “Rena, I’ve got to go down-stairs. In the meantime, don’t for the love of heaven, take any medicine or pills or anything.”

  “So that’s the way it is,” Rowena said. “I begin to see. You needn’t worry, Prue. I wouldn’t even drink a glass of water. There isn’t any water anyway, I hear. What’s all this going-on with Hobart?”

  “I’ll tell you later,” I said, and went down-stairs. In the game-room June was blandly sitting guard over Hobart. Desire sat in a corner, aimlessly playing solitaire. Kent and Blake were at the chess table. “Where are the rest?” I asked June in a low voice. “Denny’s superintending William and Tom in the library. They’re trying to repair that broken window with cardboard and brown paper. Asey and the doctor are hunting the house for arsenic. Say, Snoodles,” he finished in a whisper, “what’s the matter with the girl?”

  “Why?”

  “She hasn’t spoken a word for hours. Can’t get her to talk. What happened?”

  “Lots of things. I’ll tell you later.”

  John looked up from the chess-board. “Hullo, Prue. Can’t we entertain you? How about some bridge?”

  I shook my head. “I couldn’t concentrate. How can you two play chess?”

  Blake looked at me and smiled. “I can’t. John, you’ve got me. See——” He pointed with his finger.

  “One, two, three. That’s enough of that. What do you think of Miss Fible’s work?” He nodded toward Rowena’s stand on which the plasteline was already beginning to take some form.

  “She’s progressing, isn’t she?”

  “The woman works like chain lightning. I’ve never seen anything to compare with it. D’you suppose I could take some of that stuff and play with it? I’ve always had a feeling that I’d like to model, myself.”

  “Every one does,” Rowena said, as she came down. “Even Mantini made elephants and cats while he watched me
work. Here,” she passed over a little roll of clay, “go ahead and play. It smells and it’ll get your finger-nails full of dirt, but it’s fun. Want some, John?”

  And soon we were all pinching and pulling little messes of clay.

  “See,” Blake said, holding up a triangular gob. “See. Isn’t that good?”

  “What is it?” June asked. “The eternal triangle?”

  “Nothing of the sort. It’s a giraffe.”

  Rowena laughed. “Go sit in your model’s chair, Epstein, and here—take his wire if you’re going in for giraffes. I’d say it looked more like an ostrich. Giraffes have four legs.”

  “So they do. John, come over here. I’ll do a head of you in the modern style.”

  “Bunch of kindergarteners,” June said. “What would the papers say of you now, Dad?”

  “I neither know nor care,” Blake replied cheerfully. “But I never had a better time.”

  “Come on and play games with me, Snoodles,” June urged. “I’m getting pretty tired of sitting still.”

  I shook my head. “No. I’ve just remembered Ginger. Does any one know where he is?”

  “Denny’s got him up-stairs.”

  In the library William and Tom had just finished patching up the broken window.

  “Isn’t that a fine job?” Denny asked proudly.

  “It would have been better,” I said, “if you’d taken out the whole pane instead of patching over it.”

  “And I thought,” Denny said mournfully, “that we were clever not to have taken it out. Shall we do it all over again?”

  “Don’t be silly. There’s still a draft, though; William, get some burlap or some old cloths and put over it. That should do the trick.”