The Strawstack Murders

by Dorothy Cameron Disney

  Then I lighted the bedside lamp. Somehow, miraculously in advance of the police, I had managed to lay hands on that dark-blue dressing gown. I examined it. I felt sick.

  Bits of broken thread still clung to the back where the silken cord had been attached. The cord was missing.

  There might have been many explanations of that missing cord. I thought of only one. It did not occur to me to wonder at the surprising negligence of the police, or at my incredible luck in reaching Fred’s closet first. My actions were swift and automatic. I wadded the bulky garment, ran into my own room, and bolted the door. I listened a moment there. The confused babble below continued, and again and urgently I heard my own name called. Again I didn’t answer.

  I crossed the room and thrust the wadded heavy silk into the fireplace. I would destroy that dressing gown before Inspector Chant began his own search for it. Let the inspector establish, if he liked, that Fred had owned a dark blue dressing gown, that the garment had disappeared. That would certainly be less damning than to risk its appearance in court as State’s Exhibit A. District Attorney Graves, I was determined, should never show to an interested jury how exactly the cord of twisted silk matched the blue of Fred’s dressing gown.

  Thus my argument, and if, at this late date, it doesn’t seem too logical or wise, it seemed wise enough on that somber autumn night. I quickly discovered that a dressing gown is no easy thing to burn. I emptied the contents of my wastebasket into the fireplace, and fed the blaze with a bottle of rubbing alcohol. Blue flames shot up the chimney. Simultaneously someone began rapping at my door.

  “Who is it?”

  “It’s Simon, Margaret.”

  “Please go away.”

  “I must talk with you.”

  I did not reply.

  “What are you burning?” he called sharply. “Smoke is rolling underneath the door.”

  “Trash,” I said. “And for heaven’s sake keep quiet. Go back downstairs.”

  Again he rapped insistently. “Open the door, Margaret. Now. At once. Or I’ll force the lock.”

  That left me no choice. I opened the door. Simon stepped across the threshold, and I closed and bolted the door. He stared at the blazing fireplace, then at my smudged, perspiring and undoubtedly desperate face.

  “Have you gone crazy?”

  “I’m burning Fred’s dressing gown,” I said, and told him why and didn’t understand that he should suddenly look so stricken.

  “You can’t stop me now,” I said. “I’m beyond caring, Simon, about ethics or the proprieties. Fred shan’t face trial if I can help it.”

  “My dear, my dear.” Simon took me in his arms and I felt his cheek against my own. “I’m afraid it’s wasted effort.”

  I lifted my head. But Simon held me more closely. “Didn’t the inspector tell you? Don’t you know? Haven’t you seen the late editions of the evening papers?”

  “What’s happened now?” I asked, and wondered if I could bear to hear.

  “Fred was arrested at four o’clock this afternoon.”

  “At four o’clock this afternoon,” I whispered. “That can’t be, Simon. That isn’t possible. It wasn’t until half past four that the police arrived at Nancy Anderson’s apartment.”

  “They went to tell her, my dear, that they had arrested Fred on a charge of murdering Dorothy Fithian and Kirkland Anderson. Fred’s gun was found in Jane’s car. That gun killed Kirkland Anderson.”

  “But Dorothy carried off the gun.”

  “Apparently that doesn’t matter.”

  “But where’s the motive?”

  “It’s something to do with a bundle of letters. Do you know anything about a bundle of letters held with a rubber band?”

  “The letters Dorothy was going to mail?”

  “I don’t know, Margaret.”

  We were talking in fierce and urgent whispers—talking like two people lost and wandering through some dreadful dream. I clung to Simon, and he clung to me. I think the worst of it must have been the waiting, the not knowing. Simon knew only that Fred had been arrested at his office, he did not know where Fred was being held or what piled-up evidence sustained the charge. My heart was filled with bitterness against Inspector Chant.

  “Is he still downstairs?”

  “He’s driven to the village but he’s coming back.”

  “He knows what’s going on. He knows everything that’s happened. Why doesn’t he tell us?”

  Simon said wearily, “You can hardly blame a policeman for not tipping off his case. That’s his business.”

  I felt confused and lost, torn from the ordinary foundations of my thinking. Was it the inspector’s business to hang my brother-in-law? Was it mine to suppress any damning bit of evidence that came my way? I walked steadily to the fireplace. I stood there and watched the fire until every trace of the silk dressing gown had been reduced to feathery ash. Simon knelt beside me on the hearth. Together we raked out the bone buttons that would not burn and crushed them to a gritty powder. I swept the hearth and fireplace clean. Then I opened the window and started to empty a full dustpan into the night. A little wind was stirring, and the ivy rustled and complained. Creaked and whined. Below, standing in the dimly illumined drive, I saw a man looking up. I quickly closed the window.

  “Who’s that?”

  Simon peered. “One of the inspector’s deputies, I imagine. We’ve been overrun since early afternoon.”

  I felt a thrill of fear. “Why didn’t they find Fred’s dressing gown?”

  Again Simon didn’t know.

  Uneasy and uncertain, I looked through my closet, found an empty shoe box, poured into it the contents of the dustpan. Then I hid the shoe box in the darkest corner of the closet.

  It was eleven o’clock when Simon and I went downstairs. The house was hushed and quiet, as though a cyclone had struck and passed away. Simon had ordered Marian to bed, and Jane was with her mother. Verity had voluntarily retired, remarking characteristically that the darkest hour comes before the dawn. In the lower hall we encountered Ames.

  Suspense had worn on him as it had worn on the rest of us. His face was pale and drawn, and the boyish spattering of freckles stood clearly forth. He looked shockingly tired, almost ill, and I wanted him to go at once to bed. But he refused. Jane needed him, and he was going back to her. But he talked to us a moment in the hall.

  I remember that he was disposed to be exceedingly bitter with Ted Breen.

  “It’s Ted’s fault, Aunt Margaret, you ever went to see Nancy Anderson.”

  When I was silent Ames added miserably, “The police are bound to claim your going there precipitated her poisoning.”

  “That claim,” I said, “has been made already.” And I didn’t add that in my heart I knew the claim was true. Even today I can be racked by a feeling of responsibility whenever I think of Nancy Anderson. I have wondered futilely and so many times whether by keeping silent about her decision to talk with me I might have saved her life. If I had not spoken about her telephone call, if I had slipped off secretly to the appointment—but that way madness lies.

  I hadn’t realized that Harold Hargreaves was in the house, but we found him in the drawing room. The lawyer was so close a friend that like Simon he was almost bound to us by ties of blood. When we suffered he suffered too. But shattered as Harold seemed to be—he was so nervous he could scarcely light his cigarette—he was vehement in his denunciation of the police.

  “Star Chamber methods have no place in this day and age! I’m Fred’s lawyer, I’ve got a right to know where they’re holding him, and to be informed of their case.” Harold was not a criminal lawyer. He said candidly and often that defending criminals was a losing proposition, and his plain intention to undertake Fred’s defense was most uncharacteristic. I was touched, if slightly apprehensive as to his possible effect upon a jury. In the years of taking care of wealthy people’s money Harold had somewhat lost the common touch.

  “Sit down, Harold,” said Simon irri
tably. “And stop walking the floor. And tell us how you’re going to manage an acquittal.”

  “I’ll manage,” declared Harold confidently.

  I had to ask. “Then you think Fred’s innocent?”

  “Certainly.”

  The very vehemence in his tone, the belligerence of his attitude, alarmed me. Harold was quick, and very sensitive to other people’s impressions. He sat down beside me.

  “The police have no case, Margaret. Or maybe I should say there’s one vital flaw in it. Dorothy Fithian met Kirkland Anderson at Grosvenor Hospital at nine o’clock last Monday night, and drove away with him. Say Fred did meet them afterward. Say the prosecution can prove he did. No sane man would murder both, dump Kirkland Anderson into the Potomac River, and return to Broad Acres with Dorothy’s body.”

  A quiet voice spoke from the doorway. “Just a moment, Mr. Hargreaves. Hasn’t this occurred to you? Suppose we can establish it wasn’t Dorothy Fithian who drove off with Kirkland Anderson from the hospital. Suppose we can establish Dorothy Fithian went straight from the house to the strawstacks, and never left there.” We whirled around. Inspector Chant was standing in the doorway.

  20

  I had entertained many bitter thoughts of Inspector Chant. In all of them I had visualized him as vengeful and triumphant. I realized now that he was not triumphant in the least, that he seemed tired and rather sad. He came into the drawing room and sat down.

  He repeated, “It wasn’t Dorothy Fithian who picked up Kirkland Anderson at Grosvenor Hospital, and drove away with him.”

  “You forget,” said Harold sharply, “that Dorothy Fithian was seen by the telephone operator at the hospital. Sitting in Jane’s car, wearing the wine-colored cape and beret.”

  “The telephone operator,” replied Inspector Chant, “saw the cape and beret, but she didn’t see Dorothy Fithian. She saw Dorothy Fithian’s murderer, disguised in familiar garments. The night was dark and drizzling, the car was curtained. The telephone operator glanced through the window and made a natural mistake. She thought she saw a woman but she saw a man. Kirkland Anderson made the same mistake in identity when he stepped into the car.”

  “How can you know that?”

  “The wine-colored cape and beret,” said the inspector, “were found in the car, where they were discarded by the murderer.” He glanced at me. “There’s the explanation for the insurance adjuster’s story. His client glimpsed two men in the speeding car because two men were there—Kirkland Anderson, and the other man who shot and killed him. A man who had disguised himself in the clothes of a previous victim. A man who killed his second victim, ruthlessly, at once, and then momentarily lost his nerve and drove so wildly that two blocks from Grosvenor Hospital he crashed into another car and avoided capture by a hair’s breadth. By that time this double murderer had discarded the wine-colored cape, but he still wore the beret.”

  The inspector spoke calmly, but the violence and brutality implicit in that scene in Jane’s car made me shiver. Simon, too, was pale.

  Harold was still fighting. “Let me understand you, Inspector. Are you saying that Dorothy went first, that she was dead before nine o’clock?”

  “I’m saying that when Dorothy Fithian left this house at eight o’clock last Friday night she went straight to the strawstacks, and to her doom. Certainly she was strangled long before nine o’clock.”

  “But she didn’t die,” said Harold triumphantly, “until eleven o’clock. How do you explain that fact?”

  I saw Simon start. His eyes and the inspector’s met, and then Simon looked away.

  “It’s curious,” said the inspector, “how intelligent people will overlook the obvious. No one of us considered the fact that Dorothy Fithian might have died a lingering death. That the time when she was strangled and the time she died might not coincide. It was a surprising oversight on my part. On your part, too, Dr. Hargreaves. The evidence of a lingering death was there. We knew that Dorothy Fithian was alive after she was thrust into the strawstack because bits of straw were found in her lungs.” He nodded toward Simon. “Dr. Hargreaves can tell you better than I that suffocation and strangling as a cause of death are part and parcel of the self-same thing, an inability to fill the lungs with air. But I can tell you that Dorothy Fithian—unconscious, helpless and left for dead—lived a good two hours in the strawstack and slowly smothered there. I know that,” said Inspector Chant, “because I know now that she was out of the picture considerably before nine o’clock. A long enough time for her murderer to seize her cape and beret, drive eighteen miles to Grosvenor Hospital and pick up Kirkland Anderson. Dorothy Fithian would never have surrendered those clothes while she was conscious. Nor would she have given up the gun that was used to shoot Anderson.”

  Harold started to speak, and then didn’t. Of a sudden his face looked queer. In a flash of clairvoyance I realized what he was thinking. The altered hour of the murder in the strawstacks altered everything. In a twinkling all of us, except Jane and Marian, had lost our alibis. At eleven o’clock Harold and Simon and I had been playing cutthroat bridge, but Harold hadn’t arrived at the house until nearly ten o’clock. From Washington to Broad Acres was better than half an hour’s drive, but nothing in the physical circumstances prevented Harold from having made a previous trip.

  Simon had been upstairs packing until after ten o’clock. But could he prove that he had stayed there? Could he prove that he had not slipped from the house to the strawstacks, gone from there to town, and then returned? Could I prove my own presence in the drawing room? Jane and Marian had been safely together at the theater but Ames had not joined them until the second act. Jane had not telephoned the fraternity house until nearly ten o’clock. As for Fred…

  Harold cleared his throat. “What time, Margaret, did the theater party leave the house?”

  The inspector made my answer. “They arrived at the theater, Mr. Hargreaves, early enough to allow ample leeway for Fred Brierly to drive back to the strawstacks, strangle Dorothy Fithian, and then make that hurried trip to Grosvenor Hospital. Fred Brierly had the opportunity to commit those murders.”

  Harold said coldly, “You’ve been singularly reticent about his motive.”

  “Fred Brierly had a motive,” said the inspector somberly. He got up and walked across the room and stopped and looked down at me. “The motive, Miss Tilbury, goes back to the letters you glimpsed in Dorothy Fithian’s purse. We’ve recovered those letters, pinned into the lining of her wine-colored cape. Parts of the letters are legible but what we’ve reconstructed makes their nature most apparent. Fred Brierly wrote those letters to Dorothy Fithian, and we have every reason to believe she was blackmailing him because of their existence.”

  I understood Dorothy herself had written the letters,” I said. “She told me she was driving to the post office.”

  “She lied, Miss Tilbury.”

  “The—the letters were on household stationery.”

  “Naturally,” said the inspector almost gently, “the letters would be on household stationery. Fred Brierly wrote and sent them to the girl long before she entered the house. Sometime last spring.”

  I remembered the luncheons Fred had shared with Dorothy, the flowers he had sent her. I didn’t need to ask what kind of letters Fred had written Dorothy.

  It was Simon who said, “I—I suppose they are love letters.”

  “Exactly,” said the inspector and looked unhappily at me, and coughed a little. “Letters—if you will pardon me, Miss Tilbury—which any married man would have wanted to keep from the knowledge of his wife and j family. Silly kind of stuff, but deadly in these circumstances. We know how desperately Fred Brierly wanted to keep those letters under cover. We know that reason and that reason only took him from the theater. We know he drove from the theater to the strawstacks prepared to meet Dorothy Fithian and to pay her five thousand to obtain those letters.”

  “Then why didn’t he pay the money? Why should he have killed her?”


  “In such an explosive situation many things could have caused a fatal quarrel. Dorothy may have demanded a larger sum of money. Or Brierly may have feared, Miss Tilbury, that you would discover the absence of five thousand dollars from your joint account.” The inspector 1 hesitated. “I’ve always said that Dorothy’s murder had an impulsive, almost an unpremeditated look.”

  “Kirkland Anderson’s murder was not impulsive. And why,” I said stubbornly, “should Dorothy have left the house with Fred’s gun?”

  “The district attorney,” Chant said soberly, “intends to claim that Dorothy armed herself because she was afraid of Brierly.”

  Harold loosened his collar as though suddenly it had grown too tight. It was most apparent that he considered Dorothy’s possession of Fred’s gun, and the district attorney’s interpretation of the fact, a deadly point against my brother-in-law. But I had, oddly, the impression that Inspector Chant was voicing another’s belief, and that his own belief was quite different.

  His clear blue eyes were unrevealing. He resumed. “The district attorney intends to claim that after Brierly had strangled Dorothy he took the gun from her just as he took the cape and beret—so that he might expeditiously accomplish Anderson’s murder.”

  “But why should Fred murder Anderson?” Harold demanded angrily. Again it was evident that his rage was a cloak to hide accumulating fear. “I must say I don’t see how Anderson fits into your case! Where he figures!”

  The inspector walked once the length of the room. He returned, clasped his hands behind his back and stood and regarded the three of us with somber, thoughtful eyes.

  “It’s been evident from the first that Kirkland Anderson and Dorothy Fithian were joined together by some private matter. That matter could have been a joint attempt to blackmail Brierly. There seems little doubt that the original idea was Dorothy’s—it was she who had the letters—but Anderson could have declared himself a party to the scheme.”