“Gen’ral r’c’nciliation,” Asey remarked.
“Yes. That’s about all, except that I suppose when she saw the brick and the emeralds, she was overcome with remorse for the way that she had crawled into this party, and for her ideas of revenge, and all that sort of thing. Rowena’s a much more sensitive person than most people will admit.” Crump raised his eyebrows. “She is, Steve. She felt this murder a great deal more than she pretended to. The rest of us did our best to hide our feelings, so she did too. I suppose this was more or less the last straw. Why do you think Bert left those things to her?”
“The brick, so that she’d know that he never forgot that episode till his dying day; and the emeralds are— er—coals of fire.” Crump smiled at his own wit.
“Nonsense I He didn’t mean anything of the sort, Steve. He told her the other night that he’d always wanted to apologize for the things he’d said about her, but he’d never known how to go about it. This is simply his way of apologizing. In fact,” I continued, “I always thought that he was rather sweet on Rena. She’d deny it, of course, but if Bert didn’t leave her those stones as a sort of apology, then it was sentiment, pure and simple. The more I think it over, the more certain I am that it was just sentiment.”
“If you are so sure that it was sentiment,” Crump returned, “why’d you ask me? It’s possible, of course, that you are right, but there’s another side to it. You might even say that Stires suspected that she might attempt some revenge for the names he called her, and left her the brick and the jewels just for that reason.”
“Steve! Are you crazy? Why, you’re practically accusing her of killing Bert! Asey, you don’t believe that, do you?”
Asey avoided my eyes. “Well,” he drawled, “I dunno’s I’d go as far as to say that, but you can’t most always tell. Miss Prue, what did she come down here for anyway?”
“She’d been modeling a fountain for a gangster and she wanted to get the household out of her mind. She’d had to use the gangster’s children as models and from all she’s said, I judge that they were pretty nasty. And she wanted to paint her house.”
The two men smiled. For the first time it occurred to me that it was an awfully weak-sounding reason for a trip to the Cape.
“Goin’ to paint her house in March?” Asey commented. “An’ she come here to bother Stires an’ changed her mind b’cause he looked so sad when he was drippin’ wet?”
“You make me perfectly furious I” I announced.
“Really, Prue,” Crump said, “look at this teeth business in another light, and you’ll see what we’re driving at. Every one remembers about it. Probably no one has ever ceased to remind her of that brick. I used to greet her myself by asking if she’d hurled any bricks lately. Now, if she’s as sensitive as you say, can’t you see where it would have worn on her nerves to an extent where she’d do anything to stop the cause of it?”
“I do not,” I replied firmly. “For one thing, it would only bring the story into circulation again. I can see where she has undoubtedly got tired of hearing about it all, but I can’t see a woman like Rowena Fible killing poor Bert Stires for such a reason.”
“You must remember, Prue, that the Fibles are an unusual family. They have remarkable brains, and I shouldn’t underestimate ’em. The late Governor was one of the most remarkable men I have ever encountered. I was with him at a banquet once when he silenced a dull after-dinner speaker by the simple expedient of ordering a soft boiled egg and tossing it into the electric fan over the man’s head. Rowena’s mind is every bit as unusual as her father’s.”
“But, Steve, you certainly can’t accuse Rowena of murdering Bert because her family threw soft-boiled eggs around!”
‘‘Did she ever see much of Stires?” Asey wanted to know.
I shook my head. “She told me she’d never seen him or spoken to him since that day. But she saw a lot of him before then.”
“But you don’t know,” Stephen said, “that she hasn’t seen him recently. You couldn’t prove it that she hasn’t.”
“None of us,” I answered wearily, “can prove that the moon is or is not made of green cheese, Stephen. But we can be reasonably certain of it. We just happen to feel that it isn’t. And I feel that you’re just barking up the wrong tree.”
“Does Miss Fible like jewelry?” Asey asked. “Did she know about Stires’s em’ralds?”
“All Boston does. And Rowena’s got her mother’s pearls. They’re as famous as Bert’s stones. Rena’s got all of the Fible jewelry. She wears it a lot, and she’s fond of it. I—er—I——”
“What?”
“I was just thinking,” I said lamely, “of what she said about Betsey’s engagement ring.” I didn’t want to tell them what I was thinking in the least, but with a gimlet-eyed lawyer and a man like Asey Mayo determinedly cross-examining, one has very little choice.
“That ring,” Asey mused, “was a square-cut em’rald. I seen it even before Bill give it to Betsey. What’d Miss Fible say?”
“She liked it. She, well, she just liked it. That’s all.”
“An’ she wished,” Asey carried on, “that she had one like it?”
I nodded.
“An’,” Asey continued, “she had ev’ry chance to git candles from Mary Gross. More chances’n any one else, b’cause she was in town almost all of last summer. An’ when you an’ me started out for the cellar, she knew we was goin’ after something. If she’d put that key in the bowl, she’d of known just where, too. She was the last one we saw when we started out on that journey.”
“Which reminds me,” I interrupted, “that you have never found out how that key got out of Stires’s possession, since William said that not even he or his wife had one of them. Now, if you’re going to say that a key’d be easy to get, you must admit that it would be easier for one of the men than for Rowena, since she never saw him.”
“On the other hand,” Stephen said gently, “we don’t know that she didn’t see him.”
I sighed. There was a knock on the door and Denny came in.
“Any news?” Asey asked.
“No. But the night operator says that we won’t get any more phoned telegrams to-night, and that she’ll take any calls that come in an’ phone ’em over in the morning,”
“Did you ask her to do it,” Asey’s eyes twinkled, “or did she suggest it?”
“She—er—she suggested it. Very amiable girl. But really, Asey, there’s not been a call for hours and hours, and I’m sick of sitting.”
Asey pulled out his old-fashioned silver watch. “Well,” he said, “that was to be broadcast again at nine, an’ it’s near ’leven-thirty. I guess if we ain’t got results now, we never will. Okay, Mr. James.”
“Thank heaven.” He turned to me. “Prue, how about some bridge?”
“She’s busy,” Asey said quickly before I could answer.
Denny looked at me and raised his eyebrows. “Oh, very well. Getting any forrader?”
“Sort of. Say, do you remember when we was in the closet? Who suggested starting at the top of the house an’ workin’ down?”
“I don’t really remember, Asey. I rather think it was Rena. She’d seen you last and I think she was under the impression that you’d gone up and not down.” He chuckled. “Sounds Biblical, doesn’t it?”
“You remember if any one sort of held up the hunt?”
“Rowena made us look into every nook and cranny and closet,” Denny said. “The rest of us insisted that you couldn’t possibly be on the second floor, but she forced us to spend hours there. Or so it seemed. It was a pretty dreary business, that hunt. We were all at our wit’s end.”
Asey nodded, and Denny went out.
“But Rowena told us that he—that he was the one that did all the delaying,” I gasped.
“So,” Asey agreed gravely, “so she did. Kind of funny, ain’t it? Not funny ha-ha, but plain funny peculiar. Sort of d’vides itself into two schools of thought, this does. You c
an b’lieve Miss Fible, or you can b’lieve Denny James. Now I come to think of it, Miss Prue, the doc didn’t c’mit himself the other day. He told us to ask some one else, b’cause he couldn’t remember on account of bein’ excited about Mary. So Miss Fible was the only person that told us about Denny. I s’pose that we could ask some one else an’ sort of get a line on which was tellin’ us the truth.”
“Ask them,” Crump suggested, “and have them write their answers on a piece of paper with their names underneath. It may not prove anything, but it might.” Asey got up and went out. In a few minutes he returned.
“Mr. Kent,” he announced sardonically, “says Miss Fible. So does Mr. Blake. June and Hobart stick out for Denny. The girl doesn’t remember which.”
“Why don’t you try the servants?” I asked.
“B’cause I’d be willin’ to wager right now that they’d be just as muddled up as these folks is. Mr. Crump, you may have been wonderin’ why I ain’t got no results. Well, here’s a good example of what’s been happenin’ right along. You get a little somethin’ on some one, an’ wheel It goes an’ hitches itself over to some one else. At least, by gorry, we got two people with sort of motives, an’ they ain’t been no one yet ’cept Miss Prue that ain’t had a little s’picion on ’em. I wisht I’d gone to B’muda like Bill wanted me to this winter. I wisht I’d gone to Kal’mazoo.” He got up out of his chair and began to pace back and forth across the room. “I wish—what’s the matter, Phrone?”
Breathlessly, Phrone told him. “It’s Miss Rena. Just after Miss Whitsby went down-stairs, she commenced to cry. She’s been cryin’ ever since. Her eyes is swelled all up an’ her pillow’s soakin’. I can’t seem to git her quieted down.”
“Why for?” Asey asked.
“I can’t,” Phrone shook her head, “make head nor tail of what it’s all about ’cept that she’s sorry for somethin’ she did to Mr. Stires, an’ she keeps mutterin’ something about candles.”
Asey and Stephen dashed from the room, and Phrone and I followed them up-stairs.
Phrone had not exaggerated when she said that Rowena’s eyes were swollen. They fairly bulged from her head. Her face was tear-stained and drawn, and all in all, she seemed to have worked herself into what my modern niece would have called a “crying jag.”
Cold cloths and an ice-bag and a drink of whisky seemed to restore her to some semblance of normalcy. Asey fidgeted around, and I knew that he was anxious to ask her why she was “sorry for Stires” and just what the candles had to do with the case, but hesitated for fear of starting her off again.
“I’m sorry to be such a nuisance,” she said weakly at last. “Phrone shouldn’t have bothered you all. Prue, you’d better get Mrs. Boles to find you another room. I’ll probably keep you awake if you stay in here.”
I protested.
“Don’t be foolish. Really, I don’t know what started me off like this. I don’t. Except that the combination of that brick and the emeralds was too much for me, after all the goings-on. Really, I’ve never felt so much a criminal, as when I saw those emeralds, I mean. Do you think that I should keep them, Stephen?”
“They’re yours,” he told her, “to do as your fancy dictates.”
“I’ve always wanted emeralds,” she said, and I tried to catch her eye and signal for her to stop talking about them. “Always. Bert knew how I admired them when his mother used to wear them. But I’m sure that I’ll never feel happy about these now. Steve, you don’t know how I’ve disliked Bert all these years. The whole thing makes me feel ashamed of myself.”
“Don’t be silly,” I said, “you and he forgave and forgot that whole tooth affair the other night. That made up for everything.”
“But it doesn’t, Prue. I didn’t tell you about the candles.”
I groaned.
“What candles?” Asey asked casually.
“Well, I’d got some candles from Mary Gross last summer, after much fussing around. She wouldn’t make candles for every one, and it took considerable persuasion. When I heard that she was dead, I knew I’d never get any others, and I’d been wanting two more to go in some new holders I’ve just bought. So I—really, this is disgraceful, but I suppose that the sooner I tell some one and get it off my mind, the better I’ll feel about it——”
“Are you sure,” I asked hurriedly, “that you don’t want to go to sleep? I mean, after all this, you must be terribly tired.”
“I am. But I’ve got to tell all of you about this, or I’ll never go to sleep in this world. I went up-stairs and actually stole two candles this afternoon, from one of the spare rooms. I didn’t think that they’d ever be missed at all, and I did want them terribly. And in the face of my doing a rotten thing like that, Bert goes and leaves me his emeralds.”
I drew a sigh of relief. She had, consciously or unconsciously, explained the incriminating statements which Phrone had passed on. But after looking at the expressions on Asey’s and Steve’s faces, I understood that her explanations meant little, as far as those two were concerned.
“Have you got those candles here?” Asey wanted to know.
“In my dressing-table drawer,” she said. “Get them for him, will you, Prue? And do, for mercy’s sakes, put them back up-stairs. I shan’t feel quite so much like a thief when I know that they’re back.”
I took the candles as she directed and gave them to Asey.
“I’ll be back later,” I said, “and do go to sleep.”
“Where’s the doctor?” Phrone asked. “Didn’t some one phone for him?”
“Denny did a long while ago,” I said, “but he’s probably been delayed on the way.”
“I’ll look after her all right,” Phrone said, “an’ I’ll get a room fixed up for you an’ put your things in it.”
Slowly, I went down-stairs behind the two men.
An hour before, I had been convinced that Rowena was as innocent as I was myself. Now, in spite of her explanations, I was beginning to have very great doubts. It is impossible to believe that a life-long friend is a murderess,—yet I couldn’t help remembering that another life-long friend had seemed equally as innocent to me on a similar occasion, and had not been.
I nearly bumped into Denny on the bottom step. “Anything wrong with Rena?” he demanded.
“Oh, Denny,” I sighed, “Stephen Crump has some notion that she killed Bert, and now Asey’s beginning to believe him, and she’s gone and said things that would make any one believe it, and then there are those teeth!”
“Teeth?” Denny repeated blankly. “Oh! Those teeth she knocked out. What do they think, that she missed getting him then, and has finally got him? But that’s silly. Of course she didn’t kill Stires. Hobart did. It’s written all over the man. I don’t see why Asey hasn’t done something about him before now. Prue, you look tired and forlorn. Why don’t you leave those two Sherlocks and go to bed?”
“I can’t,” I said. “They’re going to sit there and convict Rowena, and I’ve got to stick my oar in and convince them that they’re all wrong.”
“Prue. Will you promise me something?”
“I’ve promised you that I won’t open a bomb or play with a loaded gun or anything like that.”
“Yes, but, Prue, when all this mess is over, providing that Hobart doesn’t feed me any more pills, and you don’t go wandering into any more closets, and we’re both alive, won’t you promise that you’ll——”
The knocker on the front door sounded, and without waiting for the door to be opened, Doctor Walker strode in. He was followed by Lyddy Howes. Both were breathless, and in the manner of all people who have something important to say, they began at once, stopped for the other to go on, began again at the same time, until at last Asey came to the rescue.
“Heave away, Doc,” he commanded.
“It’s Mrs. Howes,” he said. She’s——”
“In the cook-book,” Mrs. Howes interrupted. “ ’Twas in that cook-book. The Universalist Ladies’ Cook-Book
that I borrowed from her about two months ago to see if it had Tamsin Cole’s recipe for makin’ watermelon pickle. She made about the best pickle——”
“Borrowed from who?” Asey asked.
“From Mary Gross, of course. Who else? I couldn’t remember just how much sugar she used in her sirup—not that I was makin’ any watermelon pickle this time of year, but I wanted it for that Mrs. Hopkins, the Brown’s Neck one——”
“An’ what?”
“Land’s sakes, Asey Mayo, won’t you give a body a chance? I’m gittin’ there just’s quick’s I know how. I couldn’t find my own book, an’ then I remembered I’d lost it an’ borrowed Mary’s. An’ that was how I found the letter, b’cause I just thought I’d hunt it up b’fore I went to bed. It was on my mind like——”
“You found a letter? To who? From who?”
“To Mary, of course. Who’d you think? It was right next to Effie Follette’s recipe for makin’ soap. She always made the best soap of any one I ever knew. Better than the kind you buy now——”
“Who was it from?” Asey used his quarterdeck voice, but it did not startle Mrs. Howes.
“It’s signed by that butler person. Williairt——”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
A LETTER AND A SCRAP-BOOK
ASEY dragged Mrs. Howes and the doctor into the library, and somewhat bewildered, I followed.
“Let’s see the letter,” Asey demanded. “Where is it?”
“I got it right here with me. Found it just as the doctor was startin’ out, an’ if I didn’t have a time tryin’ to get him back!” She reached into the pocket of her tweed coat. “It’s right here. No, ’tain’t neither. Doctor, you don’t s’pose I left it at home, do you?”
“I hope not. Try the other pocket.”
She brought out a driving license and a small-change purse, a key, a package of soap dye, and finally she produced the letter.
“Here ’tis,” she said with a sigh of satisfaction. “I certainly almost thought for a second that I’d gone an’ forgot it. I was so excited about findin’ it that I was liable to of done most anything.”
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