The Strawstack Murders

by Dorothy Cameron Disney

  Inspector Chant had suggested that I examine my will, but that document—even had I possessed a copy—would have been of no assistance in the hideous game of elimination which I played through the slow moving hours of the night. Since Father had left everything to me, I had, in drawing up my own will, attempted to equalize what I had felt to be an injustice to Simon and Verity as well as to Marian and Fred and the two children. Simon had been my father’s devoted physician for many years; while I had spent my youth caring for a crotchety invalid, Verity had spent the years of her maturity. I had split my fortune in six parts. Simon and Verity, Ames and Jane, Marian and Fred shared equally. I had made no bequest to Harold Hargreaves, but I had named him as my executor.

  Dorothy’s object—the possession of a slice of my money—could only have been achieved through one of the men. I saw that, and I eliminated the three women who benefited in my will. By no stretch of the imagination could I conceive Verity or Marian or Jane as conspiring with Dorothy to murder me. And I knew that the killer was a man. But which man?

  My tired brain turned and turned and I found no answer to the question. Back and forth in slippered feet I paced the floor. I had made a fortress of my bedroom, I had locked the windows, I had barred the doors. For it seemed to me that if someone had once desired to kill me, it could not be mercy which had changed the killer’s mind but expediency. In some way I perceived that my death, the death which Dorothy had planned for me, could not be made to fit into the pattern of the lethal evening. Thus the poisoned milk which Dorothy had placed on my bedside table had been flung out the window. Thus the note she had left on the typewriter—the note I still could not understand—had been ripped from the machine.

  I could not guess that within a few short hours all of my questions would be answered. I was in such a state that it seemed to me I must arrive at every answer by myself. A dozen times I examined the ruined leaf of the lilac bush. A dozen times I stared at the sprinkling of tiny holes. I didn’t know much about the qualities of poison, but I did know that potassium cyanide would destroy all living matter. Insects, plants, and human beings. I knew that on September 7th a quantity of potassium cyanide had disappeared from Grosvenor Hospital, and that immediately afterward Kirkland Anderson had begun his persistent efforts to get in touch with me. Had he known who had removed the poison from the hospital? Was it that knowledge which had reawakened his “suspicions”?

  My room, with all the windows closed, was stifling hot. The night was damp and humid, touched with the still flat calm that precedes a storm. It was impossible for me to lie in bed, but exhaustion finally forced me to sit. Exhaustion forced my whirling mind to rest. Bolt upright in a chair I fell asleep.

  Toward morning—it was almost dawn—I woke abruptly. The room was caught in the deceptive light which announces the break of day. Light that is gray, like sifted ashes. I was cramped and stiff from my unnatural position. I glanced confusedly toward the bed and then memory came rushing back and I recalled why I was there. The house was quiet as a grave, the whole world seemed caught in sultry, breathless silence.

  I rose from the chair. I stretched and yawned. Somewhere in my sub consciousness must have lingered an uneasiness, a vague wonder at my abrupt awakening. I glanced toward the locked door which opened upon the hall, and froze amid the yawn. I heard no sound but quite clearly, even in the gray deceptive light, I saw the doorknob describe a noiseless semicircle. Someone in the hall outside was fumbling at my door. For an instant I was paralyzed with terror.

  Then I padded across the room and laid my ear against the door. I fancied I could hear soft breathing on the other side. Again the doorknob turned slowly, tentatively. The key was on my side. I know now that I could have unlocked and opened the door and by so simple an act prevented our final catastrophe. I know that the intention to bring about my death had long since perished in the killer’s breast, and I firmly believe, despite Inspector Chant’s vehement skepticism, that the stealthy visit in the gray deceptive dawn resulted from a confused impulse toward atonement, or from a quite understandable and human desire to confess and to plead for mercy and for understanding.

  But I did not unlock the door. Instead I seized and held the doorknob, warning the intruder in the hall that I was there, aroused, inimical, too formidable to face. I thought I heard a gasp. The pressure on the knob ceased suddenly. I opened the door just too late.

  The night light at the head of the stairs burned steadily but the hall was empty. I looked down a row of black, closed doors. I locked my own door again.

  If there had been wavering in my mind, any desire to temporize, it disappeared with the incident at the door. I waited until eight o’clock and then I summoned Thomas, and ordered him to drive to the village and to bring back Inspector Chant. I took no one into my confidence. After the horrors of the night, I could not bear to face any member of my family. Not even Verity. When my cousin brought up a breakfast tray I refused to admit her.

  “But I want to talk to you, Margaret.”

  “Go away,” I said.

  She set down the tray in the hall with rather unnecessary vigor, and immediately departed. I had annoyed her, and she did not indicate in any way that what she had desired to say was important. Because of my own frazzled nerves, and because my cousin chose inopportunely to punish me, I did not learn that at about the time I had summoned Thomas, Verity had telephoned Ted Breen. She had telephoned Ted and requested him to pick up at the Washington airport someone who had traveled more than two thousand miles to reach Broad Acres. Someone who would be wearing a red carnation.

  Verity’s request was carried out. Ted Breen drove to the airport and readily found his passenger. My own quite definite order to Thomas met a different fate. As Thomas was preparing to start for the village, Jane heard him grumbling and offered to relieve him of the chore. She and Ames would do the daily marketing, would call for Inspector Chant and bring him to the house. Thomas, who considered it outrageous that I should send him on an errand at breakfast time, was agreeable to this suggestion.

  These things I might have discovered had I gone downstairs but I remained immured in my bedroom. Toward nine o’clock the sultry heat became unbearable, and my own bedroom so oppressive that I was compelled to leave it. I had sat like a watchdog over the rusted cap of the vacuum bottle, half expecting the thing to disappear. Now I joined the cap to the vacuum bottle, placed the shriveled, punctured lilac leaf in an envelope and locked the three exhibits in my wardrobe trunk. I dropped the trunk key in my pocket and started downstairs.

  On the stairs I encountered Thomas. He informed me in a tone of quiet satisfaction that he had passed on to Jane and Ames the responsibility of bringing Inspector Chant to Broad Acres. Before I could express my indignation, a car drove up outside and Thomas said:

  “That must be them now.”

  I went quickly outside. No presentiment of disaster sped my footsteps. I felt instead a sense of great relief, a desire to get through the talk with Inspector Chant, a hope that he would find an immediate solution to all my problems. As I reached the driveway a flash of lightning zigzagged across the lowering sky and a few drops of rain struck me in the face. The children had taken the station wagon, and the station wagon had pulled up beneath the porte-cochere. I heard Jane say:

  “We’ll have to hurry. The storm is coming.”

  Jane and Ames sat comfortably in the front seat of the station wagon, and they had packed Inspector Chant into the tonneau with the groceries. As I approached, the inspector began hurriedly handing out paper bags, and automatically I opened my arms to receive them. The inspector completed his task, leaped to the drive. Thunder was rolling in the west, rain was dashing against the house. Ames started his motor to make the run to the garage. Suddenly another car roared in from the road, circled the drive in front, and bore down upon us.

  I heard Jane say in surprise, “It’s Ted!”

  She attempted at once to alight, but the station wagon was already moving away and tow
ard the garage. I had turned as Jane spoke.

  I saw Ted, saw the passenger beside him and with dumb astonishment I recognized that Ted’s companion was Chal Enlow! Chal Enlow burned by the Mexican sun, badly in need of a shave, and from the appearance of his clothing in his usual need of a loan.

  Ames had not stopped and I called. I thought he hadn’t heard me. My arms were burdened but automatically, without thinking, I reached out toward the door of the still slowly moving station wagon.

  “It’s your father, Ames!”

  My fingers closed on the handle of the door. Inspector Chant, directly behind me, cried out sharply. What happened next happened with bewildering swiftness. Ames pressed his foot on the accelerator and the station wagon shot forward. Instantly my feet were jerked from under me, groceries showered through the air, and I had a horrid glimpse of spinning wheels. Simultaneously Inspector Chant leaped forward, managed to break my fall, and to snatch me back to safety. But Ames, with Jane beside him, had swept on into the pouring rain. I was stunned and shocked and only dimly conscious that Ted’s car had halted beside us, that Ted was pale as death, and that Chal was saying bewilderedly:

  “Has the lad gone crazy? Are you hurt, Margaret?”

  Inspector Chant, who alone among us seemed unsurprised, lifted me bodily, shoved me into Ted’s car and himself jumped in. I heard him yell: “Follow the station wagon!”

  Ted started in pursuit. I was totally confused. I was indeed clinging doggedly to a crushed carton of eggs. I still believed that an incredible accident had occurred, that Ames, intent on putting away the station wagon before the storm, had failed to realize either that I had tried to stop him, or that his father inexplicably had arrived from Mexico.

  The graveled drive descended steeply to the garage. The garage doors were open, and I retained some dim hope that Ames would rush into shelter. But Ames had already left the drive. He swept around the garage, circled us, and raced off across the open fields. He drove like a madman, over the burned and blackened patches where the strawstacks had been, past the stables and straight to a break in the barbed wire fence. He reached the road. Through the pouring rain we followed him.

  The rain was like a curtain. Dense and thick. Occasionally wild gusts of wind would split the curtain, lightning would illumine the vehicle we sought to overtake. Weaving and careening, the station wagon continued at a terrific rate of speed down the rutted country road. Ted, too, drove like one possessed. The distance between us and the station wagon never lessened. The inspector rolled down his window, leaned out, and began to shoot at the tires ahead.

  “Stop! Stop that! Jane’s in there with him!”

  “It’s our only chance!”

  Over the rushing wind and pounding rain we heard no sound from the car ahead. As we roared through Winters Run, Ted placed one hand on the horn and blew continuously. Astonished faces appeared at windows, shop doors opened. Many of the villagers saw the maroon sedan in pursuit of the speeding station wagon, and some of them reported indignantly to the authorities but the play was over and done long before the police caught up with us. I had no idea where Ames might be bound but I believe the inspector must have known. For he leaned forward and in a low voice spoke to Ted. I didn’t hear the inspector’s remark but I heard Ted’s reply.

  “He can’t hope to escape.”

  “The young devil can kill himself, and take the girl along.”

  I think I knew then where Ames was bound.

  Ordinarily we were a full thirty minutes from Washington. On that dreadful morning Ames reached the city in less than half that time. The storm had virtually emptied the streets but we sped through traffic lights and past enraged, gesticulating policemen. We passed through central Washington, and into the outskirts of the city. Grosvenor Hospital flashed past, dark and formidable in the downpour. Less than half a dozen blocks away was the Potomac River.

  The river road was quite deserted. The trees which lined it were rocking in the wind. Leaves were whirling everywhere. Below the level of the road, gray and sinister, obscured in beating rain, lay the Potomac. Ahead, and with horror in my heart, I saw the long dangerous curve where Kirkland Anderson had been sent hurtling to his burial. A safety cable fastened to two tightly imbedded pickets had been stretched across the spot.

  I don’t think Ames ever saw the heavy wire, or realized that even in the end he would meet defeat. He twisted his wheel as far as the wheel would go. The station wagon shot from the road and struck the cable with a humming sound which can haunt me yet. The wire snapped like a rubber band, but, operating as a giant sling shot, catapulted the station wagon back to the streaming pavement. It turned around twice and then, with a crash of metal and glass, went over. We skidded past, stopped. I shall never know how we got out of the car and back to the overturned station wagon. It must have taken us less than a minute but when we arrived Ames, blood running from his mouth, was free of the wreckage, and attempting frantically to drag Jane through a shattered door.

  Inspector Chant reached him first. “I arrest you—” he began.

  Ames, crazed and sobbing, whirled around. He was holding something in his hand. He had provided for the last emergency. The cyanide was in capsules—two of them—and he tried to swallow both. The inspector struck them to the ground.

  Ames took a wavering step toward me. It may be true that murder stamps its mark on the human countenance, but I saw no such signs on his chalk-white face. All I saw was that he had suffered mortal injuries. He tried to raise one hand, but the hand dropped limply to his side. “I wasn’t cut out to be a murderer,” he whispered. “Tell Jane that. Tell her I never really wanted to kill anyone.”

  Then he toppled to the pavement.

  Chal Enlow had not descended from Ted’s car but had sat there shaking and shivering and muttering hysterically of the peace and quiet of savage Mexico. Inspector Chant returned to Chal and hauled him forth.

  “I want you to see your son,” he said.

  Chal would have clung to the car. The inspector propelled him forward. My brother-in-law took one look at the huddled form collapsed in the street, and then spoke in slow and shocked surprise.

  “That’s not my son,” he said.

  “Who is it?”

  “That boy was my son’s roommate out in Arizona,” said Chal. “His name is Robert Fithian.” Suddenly Chal turned savagely on the inspector. “Where is my son?”

  “Your son,” replied the inspector, “was killed in an automobile accident on his way back east. Ames Enlow lies buried in Calvary Cemetery—and Dorothy Fithian lies beside him.”

  26

  Robert Fithian, whom we had known as Ames Enlow, lived eighteen hours in Grosvenor Hospital. None of us except Inspector Chant ever saw him again, and it was to the inspector that he gasped out the story of his impersonation, the explanation of that series of calamitous events which had made Broad Acres a place of horror and death.

  Ten days passed, ten days bright with sun, glorious with fall, before Inspector Chant called us together for the last time in the drawing room at Broad Acres. All of us. Fred had been released from jail on the day that Robert Fithian died, and when the inspector arrived he was seated at a window with Marian beside him. Ted Breen, who had hardly left Jane’s side since that morning on the banks of the Potomac, sat at a footstool at her feet. Harold Hargreaves stood near the fireplace, a briefcase beneath his arm. Verity had selected a chair calculated to put as much distance as possible between her and Harold. Chal Enlow, forlorn and rather pitiful in the loss of his only son, shared the sofa with Simon and me.

  “You will remember,” began Inspector Chant, “that I told you long ago that the killer in this case was an opportunist. To understand what happened, we must understand what sort of a person Robert Fithian was. First of all, he was a sick man—resentful of his condition, convinced that fate had cheated him of the advancement, the place, the applause that were his due. Second, he was a man of intellectual brilliance, unutterably handicapped by un
stable emotions. He was capable, at one and the same time, of callous brutality and almost hysterical sentimentality and tenderness.”

  The inspector paused a moment.

  “Let me tell you what I have found out about his beginnings. At seventeen, a very ill youngster, he met Dorothy Fithian. She was a much older woman and a determined one. There is no doubt that she was in love with him. Call it the maternal instinct or call it what you want to—she never ceased to love him. She married him and then sent him to Arizona to regain his health.”

  “In other words,” broke in Chal Enlow, “she supported him.”

  “She supported him,” said the inspector, “for five years. And that support bred anything but love and gratitude. As so often happens, Robert Fithian bitterly resented the weakness which compelled him to accept Dorothy’s largess. He resented her domination and control of his life, he resented her smothering love, he grew to hate her because she had placed him under an obligation that he could not repay.

  “And then three years ago he met Ames Enlow. They became intimate friends, shared a small apartment. Ames Enlow meant to Robert Fithian a glimpse of world that was warmer and more friendly and distinguished than his own. He encouraged Ames to talk about his family—, about you, Miss Tilbury, about you, Miss Jane. Of course, he learned that Ames had never seen any of you, but still you belonged to Ames. And he had no family at all. No. one except Dorothy.

  “And then came Ames’ summons east. Fithian was summoned, too. His wife, a nurse herself, had followed the course of his illness closely, and she had decided that he was well enough to return to Washington and resume a normal life. Ames and Fithian left Arizona in the same car. But Ames was coming to a brilliant future; Fithian was returning to a wife he hated and to whom he was inextricably bound.”