by Leslie Ford
Bill’s face darkened.
“Because I figure this had all been planned for some little time,” John Crabtree said. “It was precipitated by the sudden announcement of Faith’s engagement to Seymour. You see—when Seymour made his second will he left about everything to Yardley Hall. He wrote to his cousin—there’s a copy of the letter in the files—tellin’ him, not exactly about the will, but that he’d have to cut down his monthly stipend.”
Mr. Talbot Seymour’s white teeth were set, his eyes fixed on John were bold and insolent.
“You’re not forgetting, Mr. Crabtree, that I didn’t leave my hotel room after I got to Williamsburg,” he said evenly.
“No, and I’m not forgettin’ it was your first visit to Williamsburg,” John Carter Crabtree said amicably. “—If you don’t count the three months you went to William and Mary College before you were flunked out. I guess that was so long ago you’d forgot about it. But that’s how you know your way around well enough to go over to your cousin’s house in the dark, wasn’t it, now? Only you didn’t know Miss Faith wasn’t goin’ to marry Mason. All you knew was if your cousin married, you’d be cut off, both now and when he died.”
Mr. Talbot Seymour was the color of old, badly made gravy.
“You didn’t know there was a second will, or had been a second will, and that even if Mason Seymour was dead you wouldn’t get a dime…that’s why you took the check for two thousand five hundred dollars that Mason Seymour had written for a faithful servant, wasn’t it, Mr. Seymour? Because you couldn’t bear to part with that amount, even to a man that had saved your cousin five times that much a year for the ten years he’d been with him?”
George Luton took a step forward, his face white, his eyes shining. “You’ve got my money!” He almost screamed it.
“You’ll get it all right, Mr. Luton,” John Crabtree said. “I wouldn’t worry, if I were you.”
Mr. Talbot Seymour’s expression was indescribable.
“But he was already dead when I took it!” he shouted. “I went to see him, to see if I couldn’t get some sort of settlement—but he was dead, I tell you—he was dead!”
“I know it,” the Commonwealth Attorney said calmly. “He wasn’t only dead, he’d been dead some time. Rigor mortis had begun to set in. You had to tear that check to get it out from under his arm. Blood had dried on it, and on the check under it.”
Faith beside me trembled violently.
“No, it wasn’t you that killed your cousin, Mr. Talbot. And it wasn’t Miss Lucy, or Mr. Haines. It wasn’t anybody out there on the terrace. It was somebody inside the house, somebody that had another weapon, not Miss Lucy’s shotgun, and that threw both of ’em away.”
He turned to Melusina Yardley.
“When did you have the well whitewashed last, Miss Melusina?”
CHAPTER 27
Melusina’s hands gripping each other in her lap were as old as time.
“Yesterday morning,” she said quietly.
The Commonwealth Attorney’s slow voice went on unchanged. “And you did that, Miss Melusina, because you’d seen that brown stain on the well board, and you were afraid…that somebody from Yardley Hall…?”
She looked at him for a long instant before her head bent slowly.
“And when did you bring this here”—he pulled the bell-mouthed pistol out from under the table and laid it in front of him—“out of the cellar?”
Her voice was perfectly controlled: “Last week.”
“And you took it over, as a present, to Mason Seymour, because you knew he was interested in old guns?”
Melusina closed her eyes and nodded her high-piled white head. The skin around her quivering nostrils was white and opaque as lard.
“The same day he made his will out?” John asked quietly.
She nodded again.
“That’s the day Mason Seymour signed his death warrant… and Marshall’s,” he said, slowly as water dripping.
“Well, it was very interestin’. At six feet, or thereabouts, the spread of buckshot from this pistol—and it’s old but it’s in good shape, it could stand bein’ fired a few times—looks just like the spread from Miss Lucy’s shotgun at twenty feet—or it would have if Captain Callowhill hadn’t had a look over things. Mason Seymour wasn’t shot from his terrace through the window. He was shot from just across his desk, while he was puttin’ his name to a check for a right tolerable amount. The person did it had already fired off a shotgun several times, out in the woods, to get the spread right, and collect a waddin’ he could drop on the terrace for us to find. Then this old piece was brought back to be planted at Yardley Hall…only it couldn’t be dropped in that well, it’d make a splash. So its trigger was balanced on the side of the bucket and lowered carefully, so when the bucket down there was moved again, it would slip off and be lost forever.
“Only it happened Miss Lucy saw somebody at the well, and blood on it next day. And Marshall, seein’ Miss Lucy there last night, started investigating’, and that’s why he was killed, so this pistol here couldn’t be found, and we’d still figure it was Miss Lucy’s gun, and that Mason Seymour was shot from twenty feet off, on his terrace, instead of six feet off across his desk—just as the train went by at half-past ten so the noise wouldn’t disturb anybody till mornin’.”
I looked at Bill Haines. His face was awful. Only Summers Baldwin’s arm on his shoulder was keeping him in any kind of control.
“That’s why the terrace window was open, so it’d look like the shot came from outside,” John Crabtree said. “That’s why ten pounds of bright pink cockroach powder was put down from one end of the place to the other—so it would appear nobody inside the house had gone out to shoot Mason Seymour from the terrace.—And nobody had.”
His eyes moved slowly around the room.
“Because Mr. Luton here had worked fifteen years for Mason Seymour, as a kind of servant, for a servant’s wages, when he wasn’t born a servant, knowin’ he was down in the will for a big amount if he was still in Seymour’s service when he died. And when Seymour was goin’ to get married he didn’t need Mr. Luton any more… and Mr. Luton made up his mind he wouldn’t be put off for a check and a fifty dollar a week job. Mr. Luton didn’t know either one of two things—one of ’em would have made the killin’ useless, and the other unnecessary: he didn’t know Seymour’d made a new will, not till he came across the rough draft in the safe, and he didn’t know the new will had been burned up. He didn’t know, that night at half-past ten, that he was shootin’ Seymour a couple of days too late…”
There wasn’t an instant’s quickening of the sleepy drawling pace of the Commonwealth Attorney’s slow voice. I stared at him, petrified, as we all did; and then, my heart cold with fright, I turned slowly, like every other person there, to look at the man in the window. George Luton stood there, helpless, white-faced, desperate-eyed, motionless for an instant except that his hands, not deft and discreet any longer, were shaking violently. And for an instant he just stood, his face a perfectly awful mask of horror and guilt, and then turned and tore frantically down the steps, out through the Dutch window. Even by that time I wasn’t seeing him any more—I was seeing the suddenly ghastly pale surprise in his face the moment before, when John Crabtree had put the old pistol abruptly on the table, and that hadn’t registered then on me, I’d been so appalled at Melusina’s face when she looked at it for the first time.
I heard Talbot Seymour say, in a choked voice, “Good God, that’s what he said I’d done!”
Sergeant Michael Priddy, standing by the door, hadn’t even moved, and I wasn’t surprised when I heard those frantic feet on the stone steps stop suddenly, and other feet outside there, and a sudden scuffle, and then silence.
I looked back from the door, my head reeling a little, at the white shocked faces around that room.
“That’s why he was
so upset about the check bein’ gone,” the Commonwealth Attorney’s slow voice said placidly. “It made character for him—nobody would suspect a person of shootin’ somebody just writin’ him a check for $2,500.00. And he took the shotgun—he got it when he left that card invitin’ you to supper, Miss Lucy; he knew it was there, Joe was cleanin’ it over at Seymour’s only a month ago—figurin’ it would make trouble for anybody but him. Either you, Miss Lucy, or one of the Yardleys. He hadn’t figured on Mr. Haines here takin’ up the slack instead. Well, he was a bad actor, and I’d guess there’s no doubt Seymour’d come to the conclusion he’d better get rid of him before it was too late. If Luton’d known about that second will bein’ destroyed…”
The Commonwealth Attorney shrugged. Then he looked without enthusiasm at Mr. Talbot Seymour, who had got abruptly to his feet.
“I guess you were just naturally born lucky, Mr. Seymour,” he said.
Mr. Talbot Seymour wiped the perspiration from his brow, and managed a smile, but it was not as brilliant as usual. “Then that will still holds,” he said. “Boy, oh boy—did you give me a turn for a minute! Come on, Ruth—I need a drink.”
Ruth Napier stood still for a moment, then she slipped over to Faith and held out her hand. Faith took it. The dark-haired girl bent forward quickly and kissed her cheek. Then she looked at Melusina and followed Mr. Talbot Seymour out of the room.
Hallie Taswell, still very white-faced, fanning herself with a palm-leaf fan in the window seat, was eyeing the papers in John Crabtree’s hand. Then she glanced at her husband across the room talking to Melusina, hesitated, and started toward him. As she came by me I gave her sprigged dimity panier a sharp yank.
“Your letters are at my house,” I whispered. “In the lace box up on my table.”
She gave a little gasp and caught herself, the blood rushing to her cheeks. “Hugh dear!” she called. “You won’t mind if I go on? I’ve got to be at the Capitol by noon.” She picked up her petticoats and scooted out of the room.
It sounds odd, I suppose, and rather casual, the way Luton’s cataclysm struck and was gone. It wasn’t really casual at all—it was just that every one of us, I was thinking just then, had been possessed by such dreadful fear… Doctor Yardley, who thought Melusina had done it; Melusina, who’d thought first it was Marshall and then her brother; Faith who in her heart had feared it was her father; myself terrified for Bill and Faith; Bill for Faith, Talbot Seymour for himself, Hallie Taswell for herself…so that each of us was too relieved to the depth of his soul to be more than simply glad it was over.
I got up. My eyes met Melusina’s and that same cold extraordinary smile of triumph, so that I had to steady myself against my chair for a moment to keep from collapsing back into it. Faith was gone. Bill, who for all I knew had been welcoming the electric chair as an escape from torment, came over to me.
“You remember Mr. Baldwin, don’t you, Miss Lucy?”
Melusina’s Great Sacrifice and I shook hands.
“Yes, indeed,” I said. “I’m afraid Bill hasn’t done much about architecture. I don’t think he’s even been in the Palace supper room.”
Then Melusina came over.
“That awful man,” she said. “It’s too dreadful… I hope it’s taught you a terrible lesson, Lucy.”
“If it hasn’t, nothing ever will,” I said, although I’m still not quite sure what she meant.
Doctor Yardley came over to us.
“You’ll stay and have a little lunch with us, won’t you, Summers?” Melusina said.
I picked up my bag.
“You’re staying too, Lucy, aren’t you?” Peyton Yardley said.
“No, thanks very much,” I said.
Melusina turned. Perhaps it was because her neck was encased in a high boned collar that she had to look a little down her nose to see me.
“Oh, do stay, Lucy. Never mind about your gown. You can freshen up a bit in my room.”
I suppose I did look wilted.
“No, thanks,” I said, and Bill picked up his hat and took my arm.
“Aren’t you staying, Mr. Haines?” Melusina exclaimed.
“No, I’m paying board over at Miss Lucy’s, and she’ll be making money on me if I miss any more meals,” Bill Haines said. “I’ll see you later, sir,” he added to Summers Baldwin. “Good-by.”
In the hall he looked up, hoping, I knew, to see Faith. She wasn’t anywhere. Maybe she’d be over this afternoon, I thought to myself. I was miserable too, not seeing her.
Bill and I went down the stairs.
“Why did you do that—not stay, I mean? I didn’t mind.”
“I don’t like that old werewolf,” he said. “I don’t want any part of her. I wish Luton had polished her off…instead of Marshall.”
“It’s wicked to talk like that.”
“I’m sorry.”
We walked on across the Court House Green.
“Why did you say you’d shot Mason Seymour?” I asked.
He was silent a moment. Then he said, “When I saw that pistol I thought she’d done it. I saw her in there with something like it in her hand.”
“That was the telephone!” I cried. It would look like that, from the terrace, and she’d stood there ever so long with it in her hand.
He groaned a little. “Oh, well, I’m just a ruddy fool anyway, I guess.”
We passed the Powder Horn.
“Bill, why didn’t you tell me you were Summers Baldwin’s ward?” I asked. I don’t know just what difference it would have made, but I had to upbraid him about something.
He grinned ruefully.
“I guess I wanted you to love me for myself alone. As a matter of fact that’s all there is. My dad took his money out of the automobile business and went broke on the Stock Exchange.”
He gave an odd mirthless snort. “I guess Miss Melusina’s put the K. O. on me, all right.”
“You’re not going to let Melusina bother you, are you, Bill? What about the Haineses always getting their girl?”
He laughed unhappily.
“I guess I was just bragging. As a matter of fact they all died bachelors.”
He gave my arm a little squeeze. “Don’t you mind me, Miss Lucy. I always go nuts the end of May.”
I nearly went nuts myself that afternoon. Bill sat on the ottoman, his elbows on his knees, utterly and unbearably dejected. I couldn’t get him to move off it. As much as I object to intemperance, I thought, if he’d only go out and get violently intoxicated… anything except just sitting there, every once in a while giving the mahogany veneer a kick to relieve his mind. He was still there at half-past three, when a big car stopped outside the door and Summers Baldwin came in.
“There’s a young lady out in the car,” he said.
My heart sank. Ruth Napier was with us again.
“I suggest we all drive out to the river and get a little change of air. Come along, Lucy—you look as if you need it too.”
I’d have gone anywhere, even with Ruth Napier, to get Bill out of the house. But when I got out to the car I could have cried with joy. It was Faith there. Bill’s face brightened, and fell again. He got behind the wheel, Faith beside him, and Summers Baldwin and I in the back like a couple of ancient watchdogs—but only too willing to be blind or deaf or both.
We crossed College Creek and then passed the pottery shed on the rickety bridge to the island where the first permanent English colonists in America landed over three hundred years before. My own memories crowded in so fast that I didn’t see when it was that Bill and Faith first looked at each other.
I know that when we’d got out of the car and gone through the turnstile and past the statue of Pocahontas under the English hackberry trees, Summers Baldwin and I stopped to look at the old ivy-covered ruin of the church, and they went on, Faith’s hand in Bill’s. I saw them
climb the little incline to the meadow beyond the old trees. My eyes were so dim that I thought I saw the slim golden girl at his side—as if she’d eaten the cakes from Alice in Wonderland and it wasn’t my memory doing it—shrink back, and climb at his side in her tight stiff little plaits and stodgy button shoes, her grave grey eyes too big for the freckled little nose.
I felt, then, something very strange, and I turned.
Summers Baldwin had taken hold of my hand.
“Don’t run away from me this time, Lucy,” he was saying, very gently.