“But,” said Ted Breen, “I’ve never had appendicitis.”
Somehow I wasn’t in the least surprised. I realized that I had sensed all along a certain fraudulence in Dorothy Fithian and in those tales about the Breens. I was calm enough when Ted explained that Dorothy was a stranger to him and his family.
But Marian was both astounded and angry. It developed that Dorothy’s account of her acquaintanceship with the Breens had been detailed and circumstantial and, to Marian, utterly convincing. Nobody likes being taken in, and my sister liked it less than most. With a characteristic lack of logic, she began to take out her chagrin on Ted himself.
“I must say,” she said warmly, “it seems odd to me Dorothy knew so much about your family. She gave me to understand your mother was an intimate friend.”
Ted replied with unexpected spirit. “If my appendicitis is a sample of Miss Fithian’s information about my family, it couldn’t have been very accurate. I can’t understand why she chose our name as a reference!”
“That’s easy,” said Jane outrageously. “She picked ‘Breen’ to impress you, Mother.”
Luckily for Jane, Ames, who had been listening intently, created a sudden diversion. He turned excitedly to Ted. “I see now,” he exclaimed, “why Dorothy decided to walk out on the 27th. She must have known that you were coming to Washington, Ted, and that you would blow up those manufactured references. But how did she find out you’d left Bermuda?”
“She found out,” said Jane, equally excited,, “by listening in on the telephone. Ted wirelessed me the morning of the 27th, and Dorothy listened in. She packed that very morning.”
The youngsters were triumphant, and as we were to learn afterwards they had reason for triumph. Dorothy had acted for just that reason. Ted’s imminent arrival had moved her to instant decision. She had listened in when Jane received Ted’s wireless and within a hurried hour her bags were packed and she was ready to quit Broad Acres. Unfortunately this information, at first glance so important, only touched the surface of Dorothy’s activities and told us nothing of certain devious and complicated plans which lay behind her swift departure.
Ted, as I remember it, seemed reluctant to admit that even an innocent act of his had precipitated the tragedy.
“You’re quite sure,” he said to Jane, “she overheard you take my wireless from the boat.”
“I’m positive,” my niece replied.
Just then Fred came in to announce that Harold had arrived and was waiting downstairs. Still flustered, Marian rose. But Jane halted her.
“Wait a minute, Mother. Ted hasn’t finished. He intends to tell you why he is in Washington.”
Ted looked about at us, at Ames, at Marian, at Fred who was standing in the doorway, at everyone except Jane. “I don’t know,” he said nervously, “how you people feel, or what you’ve decided from reading the papers, but personally I haven’t decided anything. I’ve never met Kirkland Anderson, I only met his sister today. But my father,” said Ted and glanced uneasily at Jane, “was on the board that selected Kirk Anderson for Grosvenor. He got to know him very well. Dad thinks something flukey has happened. Regardless of appearances Dad refuses to believe that Anderson is guilty.”
For a moment I had a queer illusion, and I’m sure Ted felt it, too, that as he stood in that pleasant bedroom he was ringed in by enemies. For a moment not a word was said. Then in a tight little voice Jane spoke. “And what about Nancy Anderson?”
“She thinks, too,” he said dodging the implication, “that her brother is in the clear.”
Two spots of color burned in Jane’s face. Ted had presented a contingency that Jane and the rest of us were loath to credit. The guilty truth is that we all wanted to believe that Anderson had committed the crime. For if Anderson hadn’t...
Ted Breen didn’t stay to dinner. He invented some excuse and drove back to Washington, and I for one did not blame him. In the end we left Jane to her solitary bed tray and went downstairs.
Dinner was not a successful meal.
Harold, who always anticipated future contingencies to such a degree that I had once accused him of arranging to collect fire insurance upon a house before the house was built, came prepared to coach us upon our behavior at the inquest. The date for the inquest had not yet been announced, and I saw no reason for a rehashing of the tragedy at my dinner table.
My efforts at diversion were futile. Harold never dropped a topic until he had thoroughly finished with it. An autopsy had been performed that afternoon, and Harold had been able to obtain a copy of the medical report. The report contained all the painful details of Dorothy’s death, and Harold acquainted us with them. We learned that Dorothy Fithian had been thrust alive into the strawstack, that in the strawstack she had drawn her dying breaths. Microscopic bits of straw and chaff had been discovered in her lungs. Harold read us every word of the report. Then he laid the document on the table—this came with coffee and dessert—and consulted various notations which he had made upon the margin.
“This is vital, Margaret,” he said to me, “and I want you to fix it in your mind.” With which he began to read off facts which I knew as well as he. “You saw Dorothy Fithian for the last time at exactly eight o’clock—you’re certain because the clock struck as she left the house. At nine o’clock she was seen in Washington with Kirkland Anderson. At approximately half past two we discovered the body.” He tapped the report. “According to this, it has been conclusively decided that Dorothy died about three hours before we found her, say, at eleven-thirty.” Suddenly he leaned forward. “Where were you at eleven-thirty last night?”
“Playing bridge with you and Simon,” I replied indignantly, “as you are perfectly aware. Fred and Marian were at the theater with the children and Verity was in bed and I think this is pretty silly!”
“And I agree,” chimed in Fred unexpectedly. “What are you suggesting, Harold? That we’re in need of alibis?”
A few drops of Fred’s coffee spilled over on the table.
Marian said quickly, “Let’s drop this, Harold. I’m sick of talk. None of us is under suspicion. We don’t need alibis.”
Harold continued to worry his point. “It isn’t a question of alibis. It’s a question of what they’ll ask us at the inquest. They hammer away at little things.” He turned to Ames. “For instance, I didn’t know that you expected to attend the theater.”
“I didn’t,” Ames said curtly, “but I changed my mind.”
Marian interrupted in a breathless way. “We phoned the fraternity house during the first act intermission and Ames joined us during die second act. It was my own idea. I can’t see anything curious, Harold, in a last minute change of plans.”
Even impulsive people seldom invite an additional guest to the theater after the play has begun and, as for Marian, her plans once made had the resiliency of concrete. There was an uncomfortable pause.
Then Harold said dryly, “Well, if you say so, Marian, but it seems a little strange. I’m rather surprised, in fact, that you were able to buy an extra ticket so late in the day. Wasn’t the play a sell-out?”
“I was fortunate enough,” my sister said, “to have bought an extra ticket in advance.”
I knew then that she was lying. For it was I who had reserved those tickets—and I reserved tickets for her and Fred and one for Jane. I had reserved three tickets, and Marian was saying that four people had attended the play.
12
That same evening another incident occurred which did nothing to add to my peace of mind. After dinner the men retired to the game room and Marian went to bed, and I stopped in the kitchen to see if Verity had done the next day’s ordering. She had not, and Thomas and I made out the list together. I believe that I suggested a beef and kidney pie, and that Thomas advised a more simple dish.
“Cook’s wanting to quit,” he informed me. “Now don’t you go to worrying, Miss Tilbury. I done fixed it so she’s willing to stay.” He cackled. “I told that woman, ‘Go ahead and quit and se
e how fast Inspector Chant locks you up.’”
I hadn’t supposed the day would come when I would approve of intimidating a reluctant servant, but my virtuous little speech died on my lips. I couldn’t face a cook-less household along with everything else. My praise, however, was somewhat restrained, and Thomas may have felt its lack, for he changed the subject.
“Did you speak about my lard cans, Miss Tilbury?” Thomas was loyal, but I didn’t desire to press his loyalty too far and I didn’t want him talking. I said evasively that I would supply him with the money to buy new tins.
“It ain’t that,” Thomas said suddenly. “In a way, Miss Tilbury, you can’t blame Cook. There’s something funny going on around here. In this house, I mean. It ain’t just my lard cans that’s missing. Someone,” he finished impressively, “has been meddling in the tool-room.”
My heart sank as I looked at him. Could Thomas have guessed that we had been in the tool-room, and why we had been there?
“Someone,” said Thomas firmly, “has been at my tools. I always lock the tool-box and keep the key behind the washtub in the kitchen. But someone has opened that box since yesterday, and made off with the shears I use to clip the hedges.”
“What are you saying?” I couldn’t credit my ears. “Are you saying that your shears are missing?”
He was pleased at my reception of his news. “Those shears are gone, Miss Tilbury. Gone since yesterday. I sharpened them at dinner time last night.”
I couldn’t believe him. But I had to believe him when he escorted me to the tool-room, and opened the box and showed me the empty niche in which I had seen Harold gingerly place those shears not twenty-four hours earlier. I was badly frightened but I think I hid it successfully from Thomas. Indeed, the calmness of my manner set him casting about for some natural explanation, and he decided that one of the other servants must be responsible. They were, he said, a trifling lot.
I knew that no servant was responsible, but I was happy to leave Thomas with that conclusion. I went upstairs and prepared for bed. I was still pondering the disappearance of the hedge shears, and trying to convince myself that it wasn’t important when there was a rap on the door and Marian came in. She said she could not sleep.
A vacuum bottle of warm milk was placed every night beside my bed, and I poured out a glass for Marian.
Marian insists that milk is deleterious to the figure, but that night she accepted and drained the glass. I could see that she was in a highly nervous state, and I lay back and waited. Suddenly my sister dropped her head into her hands and began to weep.
“Oh, God, Margaret,” she wailed, “what am I to do?”
I stroked her shoulder, touched by her uncommon humility. Presently Marian rallied herself and raised her head to show a ravaged face.
“Margaret, I don’t know what I’m going to do. Ames was with Jane and me at the theater last night. He had Fred’s seat.”
“He had Fred’s seat!” I echoed. “Then, where was Fred?”
“I don’t know, Margaret. That’s what’s killing me. I don’t know where he was from eight o’clock until after midnight.”
Marian’s story, once she told it, was appallingly simple. They had arrived at the theater before curtain time, and Fred had seated her and Jane and returned to the lobby ostensibly to finish a cigar. Marian had been more annoyed than anxious when the curtain went up and Fred had not returned. After minutes slipped by she sent Jane into the lobby to summon her father. Fred was not there; none of the various attendants could remember having seen him leave the theater. By the time the first act had elapsed, both women were very frightened, and toward the end of the intermission Jane had telephoned to Ames, who had come at once from his fraternity house. It was Ames who had thought of going to the parking lot, where he discovered that Fred had taken the car and driven off.
“We knew then,” said Marian dully, “that it wasn’t a sudden attack of illness, that there was no use calling the hospitals. I—I thought Fred would explain when he came back:”
“When did he come back?”
“Not until half past twelve. We—we waited on the sidewalk outside the theater after the show was over, and then finally Fred drove up.” Marian laughed half hysterically. “He—he apologized for keeping us waiting.”
“He must have offered some explanation.”
“Oh, he did! He said he hadn’t wanted to see the play and, on sudden impulse, had driven down to Haines Point, parked there and lost track of time. Fred,” said Marian bitterly, “is the poorest liar on earth.”
“But where,” I asked and tried to hide my fear, “where could he have gone?”
“All day long,” said Marian, “I’ve been afraid to guess.” She leaned over and clutched my arm with icy fingers. “Why did Fred take along his gun last night?”
My lips were stiff.
“What do you mean, Marian?”
“I mean,” my sister said, “that Fred carried a gun last night. The gun he keeps in the bureau drawer. It’s not there now.”
With that remark she left me.
I did not go to sleep. I lay in my bed and thought of Fred Brierly, whom I had known for years and did not know at all. A secret life for Fred would have been too incredible to contemplate twenty-four hours earlier.
A high chill wind blew outside, and the smell of rain came in. The trees were in a dudgeon, tapping their branches against the house. Somewhere a loose shutter banged. I shivered beneath summer blankets, and finally, just as the rain began, I rose to get a comforter. A few cold drops of water blew gustily into the room. I paused to lower my window and then observed that from an adjoining window lace curtains were blowing in and out. The adjoining window had been Dorothy’s, and it was wide open. Just as she herself had left it before she quit my house forever.
I started to go back to bed, but that open window, those flapping curtains, were on my conscience. A fresh gust of rain decided me. I turned on my overhead light, and that gave me courage. I marched boldly across the room, stepped into the alcove, unlocked and opened the connecting door. The door squeaked a little, and I remember thinking I must remind Thomas to oil the hinges. I went on into the room to which Dorothy would not return. The light from behind me dimly illumined the place—I could make out the outlines of the narrow bed, the ghostly fluttering length of the curtains which billowed wildly to and fro across the footboard.
The shadows in the furthest corners of the room were, I must confess, intimidating. I pressed the light switch. No light came, and I had decided with disproportionate dismay that the bulb had burned out when something occurred which even now can turn me cold with horror. Wind swooped around the house, a mighty blast blew through the open window, and the door which I had left carefully ajar banged shut. Instantly the room was plunged into darkness.
I lost all interest in the curtains and started immediately toward that door, or toward where I thought it was. In the center of the room I stumbled across a piece of furniture which had no business being there—a chair, which promptly overturned. The crash was followed by a terrifying roll of thunder. With that I lost my head completely, and any sense of direction I had promptly vanished.
A grim determination to get out of there, to regain my warm bed, the comfort and safety of my bedside lamp, carried me on. I stumbled again, failed to recognize the footboard of Dorothy’s bed, failed to realize that I had blundered to the far side of the room and had reached the open window. Something came whirling through the bustling darkness, straight at me, something soft and damp clutched at my face, wrapped enveloping folds about my head.
I gasped and struggled. The curtains tore before I understood where I was, and that my invisible enemy was merely a soggy length of lace. That sobered me. All at once I was oriented and my panic drained away. Beside the bed somewhere was a table and on that table was a lamp. I touched the table. In the darkness I fumbled for the lamp.
It was then it happened. My hand came down on a human hand. My fingers closed on
human fingers, and were seized and held there—at the base of the lamp.
I prepared myself for death. I tried to scream, and no sound came.
We must have faced each other in the darkness, the unknown and I, but I could feel no stir of breath and hear no sound. It was like a nightmare. Only the hard beat of the rain outside was real, and the frantic thudding of my own heart, and that pressure on my fingers. Then, fantastically, I felt my hand lifted from the table by that stronger grasp; and slowly, deliberately released so that it dropped limp and nerveless to my side.
Not a word was spoken. But, half fainting, I understood that I was not to light the lamp. The unseen hands caught my shoulders. Deliberately, insistently, I was pressed back from the table and toward the wall, and toward the rush of rain at the open window. I tried to brace myself for a final struggle before I went hurtling through the window to the ground below. I dug my nails into the sill. My breath was laboring in my lungs. Sweat was pouring down my forehead, my strength was ebbing fast.
Then, abruptly, the hands left my shoulders, some heavy garment rustled in the darkness and brushed past, and the other visitor to Dorothy’s bedroom was no longer there.
13
I couldn’t believe that I was unharmed, uninjured—alone beside the open window. It seemed to me that never again would I be able to move or make a sound, but that I must remain there always, with my fingers clamped to the window sill, the whirling rain at my back, the blackness of the bedroom pressing at my eyeballs, the silence of it ringing in my ears. I didn’t move until, very faintly, I heard the squeak of an opening door. I turned then, turned sharply. But the connecting door between Dorothy’s room and mine was already closing swiftly and the intruder was on the other side of it. In the fan-shaped wedge of light something small flipped quickly out of sight. Something which looked like a tassel attached to a length of cord.
I screamed with all my force. Almost at once I heard other doors opening along the hall, excited voices, the rush of footsteps. Light gushed in from the hall, and people were streaming in, surrounding me, exclaiming. I believe that it was Fred who reached me first, and I know that within the space of seconds they were all there—Marian was, and Simon and Ames, and Verity in her flannel nightgown. Even Jane was there, white and shaken from exertion.
The Strawstack Murders Page 13