The Strawstack Murders

by Dorothy Cameron Disney

  He said, “Margaret, I’m a friend of yours, and as a friend I’m giving you some sound advice. Tell the police what you’ve just told Ames, and every one of us will be clapped in jail. Or if not in jail at least we’ll be made damned uncomfortable. My advice to you, as a lawyer and as a friend, is to pick up those shears, replace them in the tool-box, and forget you ever saw them.”

  I said with such dignity as I could muster, “It’s not my habit, to go about suppressing evidence.”

  “To hell with your habits!” he retorted violently. “Do you want us all behind the bars? Maybe I’d better put it this way. Do you think any member of your household—including your guests and servants—is responsible for cutting your telephone wire, and, inferentially, responsible for that murder in the strawstacks?”

  “No,” I said and added, “but I won’t be put in any false position. What you’re suggesting is criminal. I’m surprised at you, Harold Hargreaves. I will do this: I won’t mention to the police that I saw Thomas put away the shears, and lock the box.”

  “But Thomas will mention it! He may be loyal—I have no doubt he is—but the police don’t use kid gloves on Negroes. Where does he keep the key to his tool-box?”

  “He hides it,” I said weakly, “behind a washtub in the kitchen.”

  “My God,” Harold said. In spite of the chill of the night there was sweat upon his forehead. “Margaret,” he said gently, “I insist you listen to me. It’s conceivable you’re mistaken in what you think you saw, it’s conceivable Thomas used the shears after dinner and left them lying about outside, it’s conceivable he mislaid his key. The point is we can’t question Thomas. Or—can we?”

  “No,” I whispered through dry lips.

  “It’s even possible,” said Harold abruptly, and in a calmer tone, “that the person who cut the wire didn’t commit that murder. We haven’t the time to establish it. The police won’t attempt to. Let me tell you how they’ll react. They .will fasten on the fact that the key to the tool-box was hidden in a place known only to members of your household—and from that they’ll leap instantly to the conclusion that one of us is a murderer.” He leaned forward in the darkness, and looked full into my face. He said softly and deliberately, “You’ve just left Jane. Do you think that kid’s in any physical condition to face a cross-examination?”

  Frightened, worried, in desperate conflict within myself, I was far beyond the point of reasoning coherently or logically. I turned to Ames. “What do you think?” Without an instant’s hesitation he stooped to pick up the shears. Harold uttered a cry of warning. He roughly pushed Ames aside, whipped out a handkerchief, muffled his hand against the danger of betraying fingerprints and gingerly picked up the tool. Thus, the two of them assisted me to an action which I was bitterly to regret. Men are bolder in emergencies than woman, less inclined to borrow trouble, which, as I was to discover, is not necessarily a proof of superior intelligence.

  At the last moment Harold remembered to flash his light around, and to examine the hardened ground for any possible evidence of our presence. He thanked God I wore the flat heels of my generation. He was also duly thankful that the deutzia bushes grew on the side of the house opposite the strawstacks, and out of sight of them.

  “Now,” he whispered urgently, “let’s get this done. The police will be here any minute.”

  Ames and I followed him swiftly, surreptitiously, around the house and into the tool-room. The tool-room was a small, poorly lighted, unheated place, a lean-to off the kitchen which in the old slave days had been called the buttery. A screen door which opened on the steep back stairs was seldom locked, and then only with a simple catch. After the servants had cleared up the dinner things and left the kitchen, the tool-room could have been entered without their knowledge. It was possible, I stubbornly told myself, that it had been entered, that some outsider had stumbled on that pregnable place, spied the tool-box, smashed the lock and filched the shears. When we reached the tool-room that vague, wild hope of mine abruptly vanished.

  The tool-box, shoved neatly beneath Thomas’ carpenter bench, was quite in order and securely locked. The key hung in its customary place behind the washtub in the kitchen. If someone had crept into the kitchen, taken the key, unlocked the tool-box and removed the shears, that person had not only re-locked the box but had returned the key to its proper place. I wondered with sudden bitterness why such a daring unknown had not also replaced the shears when he had done with them. I unhooked the tool-box key.

  Harold, thorough, efficient and calm, took it from my shaking hand. Then quickly he placed the shears in their niche in the box, firmly locked the box, strode back into the kitchen and hung the key on the nail behind the washtub. He drew a breath of satisfaction.

  “Haven’t you forgotten something?” I couldn’t resist, saying “Don’t you intend to sharpen the shears?”

  Harold and Ames stared.

  “Isn’t it possible Thomas will notice the shears are dull? And start wondering about that cut in the wire?” Harold was a humorless soul. For a moment I swear he took me literally. Then he said, “One can’t be too careful, Margaret, in the commission of a felony.”

  After that. I held my tongue.

  6

  Ten minutes later, exactly as a criminal must approach his execution, I walked toward the drawing room to meet the police force of Winters Run. In the foyer I paused before the mirror to gain a little time, and to wait for my heart to stop its knocking. Strange as it may sound, my appearance was quite as usual. The Tilbury face is plain, but it has an honest look. My own reflection braced me. What that blessed mirror plainly showed was a stoutish woman of uncertain age, who looked as though she contributed regularly to the collection plate and had never received a parking ticket in her life.

  Jeremy Chant rose as I entered the drawing room. Two goggle-eyed deputies, placed strategically near the liquor cart, also scrambled to their feet. I hadn’t expected much in the way of intelligence from a small-town policeman, and I was surprised by the man who headed Winters Run’s law-enforcing unfit. Jeremy Chant was an Irishman of about fifty, short, stocky, indefinably different from his companions. He lacked a certain sleepy shiftless air to which Maryland had accustomed me. He was more alert than his deputies and at the same time better mannered. My family wasn’t popular in Winters Run—Marian was a little too inclined to consider the villagers quaint—and I detected a covert satisfaction in the attitude of Mr. Green , and Mr. Cleet. As though the truth about “those rich Vermonters” had come out at last.

  But I found nothing to complain about in Jeremy Chant. He was polite, and almost casual. As I was to learn later, the Irishman was not a native of Maryland. Indeed he had had a rather distinguished career in police work in New York City before he bought a tiny run-down chicken farm near Winters Run, and settled down to spend the remainder of his life in a community where as he was to say “he could let his nerves relax.” Jeremy Chant had been an Inspector of Detectives in New York City and my understanding is that he accepted a position as police chief of the village partly as insurance against a bad poultry year, and partly because he disliked the condescending attitude adopted by the wealthy residents toward local laws. Until we called Chant in, his policing talents had been chiefly exercised in capturing speeders, throwing the fear of God into drinking drivers, and making himself unpopular with the racing set. “Uncooperative” was a word used widely to describe him.

  I was prepared to like Jeremy Chant. I could hardly anticipate the time when I was to wish that he was less intelligent and discerning, and I appreciated his calm and courteous manner without in the least comprehending the practical considerations behind it. Jeremy Chant believed that more flies are to be caught with sugar than with vinegar, and that more truth is to be had from people off guard and at ease than from people who are alarmed and intimidated.

  He greeted me politely, and suggested to his deputies that they leave us “for a little talk together.”

  “You, Clee
t,” he said, “go back to the stables, and wait for the coroner’s report.” To the other man he said, “Green, I wish you’d get after the telephone, find out what’s wrong, and fix it up. I judge the wire’s been cut. When you locate the trouble let me know.”

  Perhaps it was only accident, but the inspector’s eye turned in my direction. My heart began knocking. I almost fancied he could hear it. Then and there I determined to tell as much of the truth as possible. I said, “I believe I can give you a little assistance. You’re quite right. The telephone wire has been cut at the corner of the house. Behind a clump of deutzia bushes. The cut piece is lying on the grass.”

  Chant listened without surprise. “You discovered the break, Miss Tilbury?”

  “My nephew and I together about fifteen minutes ago.” In a firm, unwavering tone I told my lie. “Of course, we took care not to disturb the place.”

  “That’s fine,” he said absently. “Though with the ground in its present condition I doubt we’ll discover anything of value. Get going, boys.”

  The deputies pried themselves from the liquor cart. Chant selected a comfortable chair for me, settled himself in an equally comfortable spot. Gradually I found myself relaxing.

  “Now,” he said in a brisk, yet kindly voice, “suppose we dispense with the usual formalities. I’ll try to make it easy for you, you be explicit for me. What can you tell me about Dorothy Fithian?”

  “Very little, I’m afraid,” I said. “I suppose you know that Dorothy nursed me through typhoid fever, and that she came from Grosvenor Hospital. She was a widow, and I understand was quite alone in the world. She never spoke of a family, or of friends.”

  He looked disappointed. “Then I suppose she didn’t speak of any enemies?”

  “Never,” I said firmly.

  “Have you any theory, no matter how fantastic, which might explain what happened tonight?”

  “I have no theory whatever.” I looked at him. “You’ve talked to my servants. I daresay they’ve informed you that I saw Miss Fithian at eight o’clock, that she told me she was going to town to mail some letters. Actually, what she evidently planned to do was to leave my service, without informing me of the fact. She took away her bags in my niece’s car.”

  “I knew that.” The inspector pondered. “And you’ve no idea why Miss Fithian came to such a sudden decision? Did you notice any change in her attitude during the past few days? Any change tonight?”

  I shook my head. “Dorothy seemed quite as usual. Quiet, a little standoffish perhaps, but then that wasn’t uncommon. As for the secrecy about her going, it was both unnecessary and foolish. I owed her ninety dollars, a full month’s salary.”

  “Which means only,” said Chant, “that the need for haste and secrecy was more important to her than ninety dollars.” He hesitated. “I understand Mr. Hargreaves originally believed her object was to steal your niece’s car.

  I said impatiently, “Harold’s a lawyer, and you know what lawyers are. It was only by chance Dorothy happened to take the car. Jane expected to use the machine herself, and then changed her mind.”

  “So Miss Fithian couldn’t have planned in advance to take the car. That’s interesting.” Chant mused a moment. “I should warn you, Miss Tilbury. Your cook has a taste for drama. She spoke of a secret lover. An elopement!” He eyed me sharply, and went on:

  “If it were; a question of an elopement, however, one would think Miss Fithian would need to be sure of her arrangements.”

  “There has been talk of a possible elopement,” I said slowly, “with very little in the way of evidence. Until this evening I would have said that Dorothy had no men friends whatever.”

  “And this evening?”

  I told him, as I had told Harold, of that talk with Jane, of the evening when my niece and nephew encountered Dorothy in the company of a tall blond stranger, an evening when that young .woman had led us to believe she was attending a strictly feminine dinner in another part of Washington.

  Chant was interested. “It might be significant that Miss Fithian saw fit to lie.”

  “It might be significant,” I said wearily, “except for the fact that lies came easily to Dorothy. More easily, I sometimes thought, than the truth.”

  “You said your niece and nephew didn’t meet this man?”

  “No, although Jane did hear Dorothy call him by name. It was a rather unusual one, and Jane remembered it. Kirk was the name my niece overheard. Presumably Kirk is the young man’s given name.”

  “You can’t suggest who Kirk may be?”

  “I cannot.”

  He abruptly abandoned that line of questioning. “Those letters Miss Fithian spoke of mailing—I suppose they didn’t exist.”

  I straightened in my chair. “Indeed they did! I saw them in Dorothy’s purse, half a dozen letters held by a rubber band. I said something about her catching up on her correspondence, and immediately she asked Jane to lend her the car.”

  “You saw letters in her purse!” Excitement gleamed in the inspector’s eye.

  I nodded. My mind returned to that moment when Dorothy had opened a calfskin purse, and removed a vanity case. Once again I saw the untidy interior of the purse, saw the girl catch my glance, saw her close the purse. I said, “At first I fancied Dorothy was annoyed at my curiosity, then she laughed, explained, and called upstairs to Jane.”

  “This is the purse?” Chant tossed on the table a smart envelope bag, gray now with dirt and dust. Slowly he unfastened a small brass clasp to disclose the jumbled interior. The vanity, the cigarettes, the thermometer, the aspirin were there. The letters were gone.

  I said, “Then this must mean Dorothy went to Washington, mailed her letters and returned.”

  “It may, Miss Tilbury. Or possibly it opens up another field. Say .the murderer wanted those letters…

  I said irritably, “Why, for heavens’ sake? Nothing that Dorothy could have written would have been worth such an appalling risk. Remember, I knew her over a period of several months.”

  He smiled at that. “It’s sometimes surprising, Miss Tilbury, how little we know of the people whom we see every day. They do odd things. For instance. Why on a cold, bleak night did Miss Fithian go to such a lonely place as the strawstacks? Can you tell me?”

  “No,” I said slowly. “No. I’ve been deeply puzzled. Unless perhaps she planned to meet someone...”

  “Exactly. Miss Fithian must have planned to meet someone without the knowledge of the household.” He hesitated. “Was it the tall blond Kirk? Or someone else? Who was it, Miss Tilbury?”

  “How can I say?”

  He didn’t press me. Again he changed the topic.

  “I believe there is a small apartment over the stables— indeed I’ve seen it. A sitting room and bedroom and bath.”

  I nodded.

  “Who,” he asked, “occupies this place?”

  “No one at present,” I said, surprised. “Six weeks ago we let the groom go, and since then it’s been vacant.” Suddenly the implication struck me. I felt my color rise. But the apartment is closed and locked, and if you’re imagining that Dorothy…”

  He did not reply. He poured the contents of the calfskin purse into his lap. From the mélange he selected a key ring; he loosened the ring and tossed a key to me. “There,” he said, “is the key to the apartment over the stables.”

  I was at once dismayed and shocked. Jane and Ames had educated me in the mores of the modern young. I had accustomed myself to the indiscriminate use of cocktails and cigarettes, to language which would have horrified my mother, but tolerance stops somewhere. I saw no valid reason why Dorothy should need a key to the groom’s apartment when my living room was open to her always.

  “Now,” said Chant swiftly, “let’s return to your cook. Rosa tells me she swept and cleaned the groom’s apartment before she closed it. Nevertheless it has been occupied within the past few days. Occupied by Miss Fithian and someone else. Someone,” he said grimly, “who smoked moderately
expensive cigars.” He fixed his eyes upon me and I was abruptly conscious they were not blue at all, but gray and hard like slate. “Who was that man, Miss Tilbury?”

  I dare say I looked the guiltiest wretch unhung. I was still so appalled by what I considered a flagrant abuse of hospitality that I couldn’t get my thoughts in order. It was only after a most suspicious pause that I weakly managed to speak. “Believe me, Mr. Chant, I haven’t the least idea. Your information… startles and shocks me more than I can say. I know that young people nowadays are inclined to be reckless and indiscreet but I can’t help feeling that I personally failed in my duty to a young employee.”

  A kindlier expression came on his face. I added painfully, “Dorothy held me at arm’s length always; I dare say I am brusque at times. She was closer to my sister. Indeed,” I contrived a smile, “Marian feels that Dorothy could not possibly have conducted a love affair without requesting her advice and help. I haven’t spoken to my sister of the night-club incident—and of course she knows nothing of the groom’s apartment. It might be wise to question her.”

  “I’d like to talk to Mrs. Brierly.” Chant added curiously, “Where is she, by the way? Where are the other members of your party?”

  I felt myself on treacherous ground. The other members of my party were all with Jane. I said, “Upstairs, I believe,” and rang the bell. Thomas, who had returned earlier from the village, came in and I gave my order. He was leaving when the inspector said: “Please ask Miss Jane to come down also.”

  Even my Methodist mother, who hated lies like poison, used to find recourse in evasion. I sent the inspector what I hoped was a candid glance. “I’m sorry, but I’m afraid you’ll have to question my niece tomorrow. Dr. Hargreaves prescribed a sedative for her. By now she should be fast asleep.”

  “A sedative!” His eyebrows climbed.

  Evasion, alas, is likely to lead to outright lying. I had lied once before that evening. If I hadn’t conspired with Ames to hide the hedge shears, possibly I wouldn’t have replied as I did. At any rate what I said, almost without my own volition, and quite calmly, was, “Jane is a young girl, excitable and not quite strong. The child was fond of Dorothy and after we returned to the house from the strawstacks she completely went to pieces. Simon ordered her to bed.”