“I’ll see you in your room in five minutes then,” Mark said. He walked briskly out.
Morey gave a low admiring whistle. “Who’s boss?” he murmured.
Stoneman smiled. “I am. And don’t forget that for an instant, my friend. I am. There was something else, too—ah, I remember now. Did you, by any chance, send those violets to Mrs. Lacey with my card? You did? Thoughtful of you, Jim, very thoughtful. I will do the same for you one day.” Still smiling, he trotted out of the room.
The Bear River operator, who also handled the Crestwood calls, told Mark that Miss Pond was not at home and that her messages were being cared for by Mr. Partridge at the station. She put him through to Amos.
Bessy and Beulah had spent the night at Mrs. Lacey’s, in company with other friends, Amos told him. They were still there. Could he do anything?
Mark told him to tell Beulah he would call on her in the late afternoon or evening. He tried to tell him about Florrie, but Amos knew all about that. The ubiquitous Ella May had a second cousin in Bear River who had seen the posse leave, and she had spread the news. Amos had persuaded Ella May to keep her lip buttoned, he said. He didn’t want Bessy and Beulah to know anything about it until Ruthie had been put to rest in a seemly manner with full prayers and eulogy. He felt that Bessy and Beulah, if they heard about Florrie at the wrong time, might desert the grave and join the posse.
Mark asked him to explain the Moreys’ absence to Mrs. Lacey’s friends and relatives, and hung up.
When he reached Stoneman’s room, Stoneman was already there, smiling, and pacing the floor. “Now what’s this interview all about?” he asked jovially. “One would think really, that our positions were reversed. Even Jim was amused.”
“Anything for a laugh,” Mark said wearily. “Now, listen. You can pay me a week’s salary and my fare to New York, or you can answer some questions. Straight answers this time. Which is it to be?”
“Don’t go.” Stoneman meant what he said.
“Then tell me this. Do you still say Mrs. Lacey’s death was accidental?”
“Two professional men, the coroner and the insurance adjuster, say it was. Absurd, don’t you think, for a man like myself to disagree?”
“Evading. What do you think about Florrie?”
“A dreadful little girl, but I don’t think she went off with a man. I suggested as much to Violet because with females of that class a shady little excursion is normal behaviour. I believe it is called living and is accompanied by giggles. I thought it would please Violet, and actually it did. She stopped crying. But I don’t think that’s what happened. I think Florrie’s sins found her out, but what they were, I don’t know.”
“Florrie has neither the manners nor the morals for sinning. Or enough blood. . . . Look, Mr. Stoneman, this thing smells, and you know it. Roll your memory back to our first interview, to your letter to me. I’m a private detective and you hired me for a secretary. You tried to make me believe it was all a mistake but you didn’t send me back to town; you clung like a leech. Now do you want to know what I think? I think you knew what you were doing all the time. You knew I was a detective and you knew I could do secretarial work in a pinch. So you hired me—for a bodyguard.”
Stoneman licked his lips. “Ridiculous. I’m disappointed in you, my boy.”
“No you’re not. I’m doing just what you hoped I’d do. One person in this house is suddenly and violently dead, and one is missing. But you are alive and kicking. That’s the way you wanted it, isn’t it?”
“No. No. I wanted you for my book. You’ve seen my notes, we’ve done some work. It’s quite legitimate. These other things are—accidents.”
“Fatal ones. And all of a sudden. Mr. Stoneman, if you’re withholding information that would prove these accidents were premeditated crimes, things are going to be tough for you. And for me too, because in a way I am the law. I’m on thin ice and I don’t feel so good. I think you hired me because you fear personal violence and you expect me to sit back and say nothing when violence strikes the person next to you. The Lacey business is all sewed up, thanks to a couple of good, clean-thinking guys, but if Florrie turns into a tragedy we’ll all be on the spot. We’ll be interviewed, and our pasts will be the well-known open book. You’ll have to answer questions then and the boys who ask them won’t be in your pay. They’ll hound you, brother, and me. What kind of a story can I tell?”
Stoneman stood with his hands in his pockets and his lips pursed. His thoughtful gaze never moved above Mark’s tie.
“Tell them you are my secretary. We have pages of notes to prove it. That is your story and it is also mine.”
“They’ll check my background. What story will I tell them?”
Stoneman shifted his gaze to the window and the leaden sky. A new storm was gathering; slowly and evenly it dropped its thick white curtain. “More snow,” he said. “I think we shall move on shortly. . . . You will tell them I am an eccentric. You may even call me a crackpot, if that will help your position. This whole conversation is absurd, of course, because there will be no questions of any sort. Your imagination is much too healthy, my boy, but I suppose you can’t help that. Still, it’s a bore.”
“Sorry. It’s not imagination. It’s—conscience.”
“Dear me. Well, if your conscience tells you to play watchdog, please confine your watching to me. I pay you, and I am your first and only consideration.”
“In other words, mind my own business.”
“Well—yes.”
Mark drew a long breath and spoke slowly and carefully. “Mr. Stoneman, you were a frightened man when I came here. You still are—I can see it in your eyes. If the thing you fear is behind these other things, I mean Lacey and Florrie, don’t you see how wrong your attitude is?”
“Do I really seem frightened?” He smiled and patted Mark’s shoulder with affection. “I’m not, really. I’m probably mad, like all men who dig in the past. And my attitude is undoubtedly wrong. It always has been. But that is my affair, not yours. Now I want you to promise me one thing, a very easy promise. Stay with me for at least another week. We can do wonders in a week. Then, if your conscience still gives you trouble, you may go back to your—legalized snooping. Will you do that?” He laughed gaily. “I’m really not being fair with you because in another week we may all leave.”
“All right,” Mark agreed.
“Done!” Stoneman clapped his hands like a child. “Now go back to the others and do what you can to help. And stop worrying. I shall stay here and work on the book. We’re coming on splendidly, aren’t we?”
CHAPTER SEVEN
MARK went downstairs with the feeling that he had been neatly gagged and bound. One more week, he reflected, and he’d know where he stood. Or, one more week and he might be lying in Beulah’s dream mausoleum with footprints going away from the door and none of them his. In the meantime, he had his own secret weapon, the other suitcase, hidden under the blankets. He might have to use it after all. If he did, somebody was going to get a surprise. But who?
He went out with Morey and Perrin and joined the men who were combing the mountain. They found nothing. Once he looked back and saw Laura Morey standing at her bedroom window. He wondered what she made of all this. Would they tell her the truth, if the truth were ugly? Or would they spin a pretty story? Probably the latter. She looked as if another tragedy would crack her up for good. He wondered, uncomfortably, if she’d had a premonition about this one. Would she come trailing into his room again and tell him someone was dead?
He was cold and miserable when they all went back to the house for lunch. It was a casual meal of canned soup and bread and cheese, with a tuna salad. Violet asked permission to feed assorted male relatives in the kitchen and was told to go ahead. She was also given permission to attend Mrs. Lacey’s funeral, in Mrs. Morey’s limousine, but her heart wasn’t in it, she said. She thanked them just the same but she didn’t even want to see her own pink cross.
According
to Morey, his wife had stirred from her lethargy and was talking about trains and trunks. “I’m sick of the place myself,” he said. “I think she’ll go south with the kids. I don’t care where I go just so it’s far, far from here.”
“Does Mrs. Morey know about Florrie?” Mark asked.
“Certainly not. There’s nothing to know. Why?”
“Just wondering. Mr. Stoneman said something about leaving too.” Stoneman had already left the table. “I didn’t know it was a general idea.”
“It wasn’t, until this morning. He must have been talking to Laura. When she gets an idea everybody works. She probably told him to start packing this afternoon.”
But nobody packed that afternoon and nobody went anywhere for some time. Mark was finishing his coffee and Morey was lighting a cigarette when the sheriff from Bear River, who hadn’t stopped for lunch, telephoned from the Crestwood station. He wanted to see Mr. Morey at once.
Amos, on one of his trips to the tool shed behind Mrs. Lacey’s house, had found Florrie. She was lying behind the door, on the concrete floor. She was frozen. But that wasn’t why she was dead. She’d been strangled.
Mark and Morey went down to Crestwood at once, leaving Perrin in charge of the house, with instructions to keep the news from everybody.
“We’ll handle that when we come back,” Morey said. “And I don’t look forward to it.”
There were closed cars parked at the station, their curtains drawn. A small boy in a red stocking cap, with signs of recent tears on his face, stood on the station steps and directed them to the shed. They walked up the path between heavy drifts and skirted the bare lilac bushes. Mark stopped short before Mrs. Lacey’s little house.
“Not here,” Morey said irritably; “it’s the shed, around at the back.” Then he saw Mark’s horrified face and followed his look. An icy streamer of lilies hung on Mrs. Lacey’s door.
“Good God, is she still there?” he gasped.
Mark shivered. “Yes,” he whispered. “The funeral’s at two. We’d better get off the path. . . . This is—this is laying it on thick.”
They crowded back into the bushes and stood bareheaded while the coffin was carried out.
“It looks too small,” Morey said mechanically. “Too small. She was so—so—”
“Not any more,” Mark said.
A straggling little group, dressed in black, followed the flower-covered box. Amos detached himself from the end of the line.
“Come on,” he said, “I can’t do no more here.” He led the way around to the shed.
“Bessy and Beulah?” Mark asked.
“They went over to the church early, to get things ready. Orphans going to sing.” He cleared his throat. “This other—this other happened after they left.”
A handful of heavily garbed men hung around the open door to the shed. They stood aside when Morey and Mark entered.
It was an ugly picture they had to view. Florrie was lying on her back, with her small mittened hands pressed over her eyes as if she couldn’t bear her last look at the world. Mark thought he knew why. Death had entered the shed in a familiar form, and like a child she had tried to blot it out. Those hands stayed stubbornly in place when the coroner’s men moved her. The weather had fixed them there. He winced at the sight of that little figure, perpetually rigid with horror, eternally refusing a second glance.
“How long?” asked Morey. “I mean, can you tell when?”
Dr. Cummings turned from the wicker basket and wiped his hands. “Not exactly. It’s too cold. I’ve talked to the men who were searching and we figure it must have been before twelve. You know yourself—prints. No marks around here except the ones Amos made.”
“You’re not thinking about Amos, for heaven’s sake!” Morey looked aghast. “That’s impossible!”
“No. Not Amos. Anyway, he’s alibied up to the neck. He sat up all night with Mrs. Lacey’s body. Got witnesses to prove it, too.”
“Which is more than the rest of you got,” Amos said quietly. “Don’t waste your time worrying about me.”
“What about marks on her throat?” Mark asked.
“None. That is, no fingermarks. He must have used a cloth, a scarf, or something.”
“Sheriff?” Morey turned to the lean little man who was whispering to Amos. “Have there been any strangers around here lately? Tramps, or transients coming in on the train? Partridge might know.”
“Nobody comes in here that I don’t know or know all about,” said Amos.
“Why do you think it was a stranger?” the sheriff asked.
Morey hesitated. “East, you remember Mr. Wilcox? Sheriff, Mr. East. Well, I can’t think of anyone else in such a connection. If she was killed in Crestwood it has to be a stranger. The only men in the place are the ones in my own household, and Partridge here. We can’t consider old man Bittner. He lives in a wheel chair.”
“He can get around in it, too,” Amos said sourly. “Ever see that ramp he’s got built from his sitting-room window to the side yard? Sails up and down it easier than I can walk.” Amos knew Bittner was innocent but he had to accuse somebody. He pointed the finger at Bittner because for the last half-hour he had seen that worthy wielding his binoculars in the kitchen window; and because he hated the buses. “If Bittner didn’t do something he seen something,” he concluded.
The others ignored him. “She might have been picked up by a car, driven off somewhere, killed, and brought back here,” Morey said. “There would have been time.”
“No,” said Wilcox. “Dr. Cummings says she was killed right here. He can tell from the position and condition of the body. He had a suicide once when he was a young fellow and the weather was like this. So he can tell. As for strangers—you’re a stranger around here yourself, Mr. Morey.” He turned and walked off.
Morey’s jaw dropped and he stared after Wilcox. “I don’t like that little man,” he whispered to Mark. “He was fine about Lacey, but he’s sore about this.”
“Maybe he thinks two is too much. Wait here—I’ll go over and see what’s going on.”
He spoke to Wilcox and Cummings and was back in a minute. “We’re to go home,” he said, “and wait for the law. Wilcox and his deputy, who, God be thanked, is Amos, are coming to give us a going-over. I’m to tell you this—we’re to say nothing about how Florrie died. Just say she’s dead, that’s all. He’s emphatic about it.”
“Right. I suppose he wants to break the news and watch for guilty reactions. I wouldn’t mind watching Joe’s face myself. He’s going to have a fit. As for Laura, if this thing starts her off again, or makes her change her mind about leaving, I’m going to go crazy. I don’t see why we can’t say Florrie went to the hospital with acute something or other. . . . I was afraid this might happen. I hoped to get her away before it broke.”
“You wouldn’t get as far as the corner. Wilcox is no dummy. Besides, I think Mrs. Morey knows—something. She was watching us from her window this morning.”
“Look.” Morey held back. “They’re taking the body away. What are they going to do with it.”
Mark took him by the arm and started off. “Buck up. It’s out of our hands now. Florrie will eventually come to rest in her father’s parlour and Violet can chip in again.”
The unpleasant task of informing Mrs. Morey of the sheriff’s interview fell to her husband. Mark wanted to do it himself; he didn’t know why, but he wanted to. He was ashamed of the eagerness he suddenly felt. He wanted to watch her hands. He offered his services to Morey, casually, and got a lifted eyebrow for an answer.
Stoneman was coming down the stairs as they entered the house. When Morey brushed by him he looked startled.
“East wants to see you,” Morey said shortly.
“Now what?” complained Stoneman. “Why did you all go off and leave me without a word? More man hunts, I suppose. Well, you won’t find anything and I think it’s extremely inconsiderate—”
“Quiet,” Mark said sharply. “Wait for
me in the library. I want to talk to you.”
He went on down to the kitchen and broke the news to Violet. When he came up ten minutes later he was feeling more dead than alive himself. There was one thing clear and certain in his mind. If this business was not satisfactorily solved by the end of the week he would stay on in the village and see it through himself. He wouldn’t take another job until he knew why Florrie had refused to look at her murderer.
Stoneman, pale and curious, was waiting for him in the hall. “Laura’s been screaming,” he said. “At times it’s quite audible.”
“Yes,” Mark said. “I can hear it, thank you.” He led Stoneman to the library. “I think I’ll give you a drink.”
Stoneman glowed. “Good of you, my boy, but I was going to help myself in any case. Yes, Laura is upset again. Jim is with her.”
Mark stared up at the ceiling. The screams had subsided into faint wailing. “Nice for the kids,” he said. “Where are they?”
“Perrin took them out some time ago. Come now, you’re trying to break something to me, aren’t you? What is it?”
“They’ve found her body,” Mark said briefly.
“Body?” Stoneman closed his eyes for a minute. “Dead?”
“Frozen,” Mark said truthfully. “There’s to be the usual inquest sort of thing, here, in a few minutes. You’re to be ready for questioning. I told you it might happen that way,” he added.
“Poor girl.” Stoneman made no move to touch the drink Mark had poured. “Do they have any idea what she was doing out in that storm? And at such an unseemly hour?”
“If they have, they didn’t tell me.” He noted gratefully that the wailing had stopped. “She’ll have to come down, you know. She’ll have to face this.”
“Yes. This time she’ll have to face it. . . . Wait. Do you hear anything?”
“Only a car on the drive. I suspect the inquisition is about to begin.”
Mark opened the door to Wilcox. Amos trailed along behind the sheriff, representing the law of Crestwood, and in that capacity he gave Mark a cold stare. It said plainly that friendship was in abeyance and everybody was guilty until proved innocent.
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