Blood upon the Snow

by Hilda Lawrence

  “She’s with her mother,” Morey answered, staring hard at Perrin. “She’s all right. We’ll wait for Cummings.”

  Perrin hesitated. “I’d like to see her,” he repeated. “But you must use your own judgment.”

  Violet came to the door, still breathing hard. “He’s coming, the doctor’s coming,” she said. “As fast as he can. He’s bringing Mr. Wilcox with him. He says he’s got to bring Mr. Wilcox, no matter what anybody says.”

  Perrin sent her away once more, this time to find tweezers. He asked Mark to take over the sterilizing.

  Morey sat on the edge of the tub. “You give orders almost as well as you take them,” he said to Perrin. If Perrin heard, he gave no sign. He bent over Ivy again and talked to her softly while he sponged her face and hands.

  Cummings and Wilcox came screaming up the mountain in a police car. Wilcox later apologized for the siren. “Sometimes people stampede when they hear it,” he said. “Or so I’ve been told. It sounds like hell broke loose and the guilty ones are supposed to do something foolish to give themselves away.”

  But nobody gave anything away that night. They all might have been deaf. In spite of himself Mark thought of Ella May, running from window to window with Bittner’s binoculars.

  Little by little order was achieved. Bessy’s cheek required eight stitches; Anne had escaped with a shallow cut, under her hair. Ivy’s face and arms were peppered with glass, and Cummings clucked angrily while he worked. He said he believed in miracles. He had to. Nothing else could have turned the glass away from those eyes.

  He worked on the children in their mother’s room, while Wilcox faced the household gathered in the nursery.

  “I’ve sent for some men,” Wilcox said dryly. “Two for the outside and two for the inside. This place is giving the county a bad name. Miss Petty, are you able to talk?”

  “I’d love to,” quavered Bessy.

  “Well, what happened?”

  “I don’t know. I was standing by that window and the children were leaning up against it, on the window seat, you know. And then that rock came through. It was just a bang and a crash, and that’s all.”

  “Did you see anyone outside? No, of course you didn’t.”

  “Then why ask?” observed Beulah.

  Wilcox went on calmly,” I talked to the older child and she didn’t see anyone either. It was pitch-black. I’ve been out there myself and there’s no prints. It’s all paved terrace and the wind blows the snow off as fast as it falls. And you’ve all got alibis, too. I don’t know as any sheriff in the world ever came face to face with such plain alibis. You’re all dressed up for it, like a lot of actors.”

  Mark felt his worries slip away. This was no yokel.

  “Miss Pond,” Wilcox continued, “Miss Pond tells me you all arrived on the scene at the same time, which was as soon as possible. That’s fine. And each one of you was interrupted at some innocent private business. I ask you to observe Mr. Morey. Mr. Morey says he was mixing drinks in the library and he brings along his shaker to prove it. Mr. Stoneman was dressing for dinner, and if you don’t believe it, look at him. Mr. East was next door to Mr. Stoneman, tying his shoes. One of them is still untied. Mr. Perrin was in the pantry, setting out the plates for dinner. He dropped one when Miss Pond, or it may have been Miss Petty, screamed. A ten-dollar plate, he says. I saw the remains. Mrs. Morey says she was lying down, and that’s one of the stories we can’t prove. They straightened up the bed when they put the baby on it. We can’t prove anything about Violet either. She was a mite late getting on the scene, maybe that’s because she had farther to come.”

  “Mr. Wilcox,” wailed Violet, “if you’re insinuating that I—”

  “I’ve known you since you were born, Violet. It makes you sick to help your mother kill a chicken. But you’d better tell us what you were doing.”

  “Nothing I can prove. I was just sitting. I heard that scream, though, and then I heard the plate fall on the floor right after. I ran as fast as I could, but I fell down twice on the stairs.”

  “That’s too bad. Now you’ve all heard these stories. Does anybody want to call anybody else a liar?”

  “What are you getting at?” demanded Morey.

  “Nothing. I have to ask that.”

  Nobody spoke. He went on. “I forgot to say that Miss Pond is clear. She was in that little room, mending and napping. She couldn’t get out and back. Miss Petty says so, and so does the little girl.” He waited. Still nobody spoke. “Well, do you want to know what I think? I think it looks too much like an outside job. Much too much. What do you think, Miss Pond?”

  “I haven’t decided,” said Beulah.

  “Miss Petty?”

  “Bad boys,” said Bessy. “But I’m sure they didn’t mean any harm. Just bad boys, throwing rocks for fun.”

  “And where would they come from, Miss Petty? No boys of any kind in Crestwood. Bear River? Do you think they’d come all the way from Bear River to heave a rock? Plenty of windows to break and kids to scare closer to home.”

  “Kids to kill,” Beulah corrected fiercely. “You’re not going to write this off as a prank, Perley Wilcox! It’s more than that! Coming on top of the other—” She dabbed angrily at her eyes.

  “Now, now,” said Wilcox. “Nothing to cry about. Everything’s well in hand. You’ll be guarded night and day—if Mr. Morey doesn’t object.”

  “Object! I’m all for it!” Morey sent a reassuring smile across the room to his wife. She was sitting outside the circle with Stoneman. Following their first brief statements, neither of them had said a word. It was hard to tell if Laura Morey had even been listening.

  “And now,” said Wilcox, “there’s nothing left for me to do but come to the point. Mr. Morey, I want to warn you. One of your servants has been burned to death; I’m doubting now that it was an accident. Another was strangled. And to-day someone has made a malicious attack on members of your own family. All in less than a week. Who hates you like that?”

  Laura Morey moaned softly.

  “Nobody.” Morey looked blank. “I don’t know more than six people by sight in the whole neighbourhood.”

  “Mrs. Morey?” He made his voice gentle for the woman huddled in her chair.

  “I don’t know. We’ll have to go away. This can’t go on. We’ll go away to-morrow. I can’t bear it, I can’t bear it, Jim!”

  “You can take her back to her room,” Wilcox said to Morey. “But explain to her that she can’t go away just now. In a few days, maybe. After the Simmons case is closed.”

  Morey and his wife left together.

  “That’s all for now,” Wilcox said. “You’re all free to do as you like, but if you leave the house it’s at your own risk. You can make me take the guards off too, but I don’t advise it. Mr. Stoneman, will you ask Mr. Morey to meet me in my office to-morrow morning? At his convenience. Thank you.” He touched Bessy’s cheek with a sympathetic finger, pinched Violet’s, and bowed gravely to Beulah. Then he went out, followed by Perrin.

  They sat where he left them, each one eyeing the other. Stoneman spoke first, furiously. His rage was directed at Morey, who crept back into the room like a comedy burglar, finger on lips.

  “You fool!” he shouted. “You congenital idiot! I wish that man Wilcox could see you now! You’ve handled this whole thing like an imbecile! . . . Why did you let him talk like that? Ridiculing perfectly innocent people! I refuse to be involved in such an asinine proceeding. Suspecting me—me—of assaulting nurseries! I tell you I was dressing for dinner; I can prove it by East.”

  “What did you want me to do, Joe?” Morey asked mildly. “Throw him out? I could have, but he’d have thrown me straight back—into the pokey.”

  “I’m sure nobody suspects Mr. Stoneman,” Bessy said. “I don’t think he’s the criminal type.”

  “You hear that, Joe? What are you worrying for? You’re safe.”

  “I can vouch for him too,” Mark said. “I heard him cussing his col
lar. I hope he can do the same for me.” He looked down at his shoe. “Well, I’ll be,” he said, stooping to tie the lace.

  Perrin came to the door and asked about dinner.

  “Wait a minute,” Morey said. “Perrin, I’m beginning to think I’m in trouble. I don’t like the way people are looking at me. Now just suppose I were the kind of guy who would sneak out in the dark and half kill his own kids; would you say I’d had the opportunity?”

  Perrin flushed.

  “That’s not fair,” Beulah objected. “I’ll answer. You’re the only one in this house who could have done it. That French window. You could have done it easily.”

  Morey’s jaw dropped. “But I was making an ungodly racket! Shaking cocktails—I even dropped the shaker. Look.” He held it up. “A new dent. In fact, the only dent. And I dropped the fire shovel too. Come on now, Perrin, you know you heard me. Didn’t you?”

  “No, sir,” Perrin said painfully.

  “What a pal you turned out to be,” moaned Morey. “But I don’t harbour grudges. I heard you in the pantry. I know you didn’t do it. . . . By the way, Cummings says that was a first-class job you did on Ivy.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Get along now and find us something to eat. Cummings wants broth for the children and something light for Mrs. Morey and Miss Petty. You send it up and I’ll feed them.”

  Violet, who had seen and heard enough to keep her in conversation for the rest of her life, trailed after Perrin. The others went to their rooms. Stoneman, lagging behind, paused at the table by the door.

  “What happened to the rock?” he asked Mark.

  “Wilcox palmed it. But he won’t get any prints. It’s too rough.”

  Beulah shared a tray upstairs with Bessy. Cummings joined the men in the library for coffee. He left with assurances that all three patients were comfortable and would probably sleep until noon the next day. “Sedatives,” he said. “I believe in them.” Bessy, he said, would be marked for life, but Ivy had youth on her side. Any scars she bore would be on her mind.

  “A nasty idea,” observed Mark. “In short, a nasty business.”

  Cummings shrugged, and departed.

  Stoneman went to bed at ten o’clock and before he locked himself in he gave Mark two weeks’ salary. “I may go to New York for a few days.” he said briefly. “You’ll need this to go on with. Christmas, you know.”

  “What about Wilcox?”

  “I expect no trouble from Wilcox. . . . Don’t discuss my plans with anyone, please. I don’t want them generally known. It’s—private business.”

  ‘‘Sure,’’ agreed Mark. “You’ll leave some work for me?’’

  “I will,” Stoneman said with a wintry smile.

  Before Mark went to bed himself he tapped on Beulah’s door. She joined him in the hall.

  “I expected you,” she whispered. “I thought you might want to give me a pat on the back for remembering to turn off that gadget when the trouble started.”

  He gave it. “I’m sorry, Beulah. I didn’t know the fireworks would start so soon or that they would be so bad.”

  “Somebody wants Bessy and me out of the house, eh? Trying to scare us off?”

  “I think so. Any guesses?”

  “No. But I noticed something funny. It was the way everybody acted. They acted like the people in London did, when there was a blitz. They all poured into the room and began doing the right things, giving orders, taking charge, calling the doctor. They acted as if they knew all about it, before. Not a single, solitary person asked what had happened.”

  “That bothered me too,” Mark said. “You’re smart. Nobody asked anything—except Stoneman. Do you remember what it was Stoneman said? ‘What the hell!’”

  CHAPTER NINE

  WHEN Beulah came down the next morning and found three used plates and scraps of cold toast littering the breakfast table she deduced that three people had already eaten and that Perrin and Violet were taking advantage. She also found a note addressed to herself.

  It was from Mark; he said he was glad she was alive, as she must be if her eyes met this, and suggested that she take things easy, preferably in that quiet little sewing room. She folded the note and slipped it into her petticoat pocket, an old-fashioned refinement that made her seamstress weep every spring and fall. There were other things in the pocket and she patted them with grim satisfaction.

  She investigated the two hot dishes on the sideboard and helped herself largely to kidney stew and scrambled eggs. Her spirits were low and her head ached, but she was ravenous. If they have to do an autopsy on me, she said to herself, I’ll make them work. She took second portions.

  Eventually the time came when she couldn’t swallow another mouthful, so she stacked the dishes and carried them out to the pantry dumbwaiter. It was a thoughtful gesture and had almost nothing to do with snooping. When she slid the plates on to the shelf, she had her reward. Somebody was talking to Violet in the kitchen. Her conscience had a brief and unsuccessful skirmish with her baser instincts; she put her head into the shaft and listened. Violet’s voice carried nicely.

  “He says the lipstick looks funny,” she was saying. “He showed it to me and it did. All squinched down on one side. It ought to be in a point, like.”

  A man’s voice whispered something, urgently.

  “Where?” quavered Violet. “You mean at the dumb waiter?”

  Beulah ducked and scuttled back to the dining room. She waited there, fussing with the hot dishes, until she felt safe from investigation. Then she relieved her feelings by snuffing out the alcohol flames, insuring disappointment to anyone looking for a second breakfast or a cup of hot coffee. This raised her spirits.

  She walked briskly into the library, running an experimental finger over everything she passed, looking for dust. Why was Violet so awed about a lipstick? Whose lipstick? Squinched when it ought to be in a point? Why didn’t people tell her these things? And who was that man, careful not to speak above a whisper? One of Wilcox’s guards, probably, who had no business in the kitchen and knew it. Trust Violet?

  She went over to the French window and looked out. No, they were all there, all four of them. Smoking and laughing, undoubtedly at some coarse joke. It didn’t help to open the window a crack; she couldn’t hear a thing. She felt frustrated. Nobody was behaving properly.

  By rights, she should have been the household pet this morning, with a rose beside her breakfast plate. Instead, she was being ignored. And after all she’d done, too. She wandered over to the desk, wondering if the Moreys were careless in the matter of leaving mail about, and found a pile of cream notepaper, neatly stacked. At once she was reminded of a duty unperformed, a duty that was both pleasant and unpleasant; pleasant to herself and unpleasant to certain people who might be surprised to find themselves thrown out on their ears. She sat down promptly and, selecting the best pen, wrote a note to Colonel Davenport.

  She told him that he couldn’t be more surprised than she was herself to be writing him from his own house. She was sure that dear Mr. Scott had already informed him about the fire—and wasn’t that the most terrible thing?—but there was nothing like a personal note from someone he’d known for so many lovely years. She and Bessy—he remembered Bessy Petty?—were doing the best they could to help his good friends and even though Bessy would carry the scars to her grave, they hoped, etc., etc. And to think that poor little Florrie as well as that fine Christian, Ruth Lacey, and so on, and so on. It did seem as if someone had been rather careless, but then we mustn’t judge, must we? If he wanted anything done, or any changes made, he had only to command; she was cordially his, Beulah Pond.

  The pleasure she normally derived from licking the envelope of such a letter was slightly dampened when she remembered Mark. Perhaps she should have asked him first. If he’d been around she would have asked; but he wasn’t around. She read it over, decided she couldn’t be held responsible for the Colonel’s interpretation, and addressed it in care
of the American Embassy in London. Then she laid plans for mailing it secretly in Crestwood. If anyone challenged her on the way out she’d say she was going home for fresh handkerchiefs. That had a nice plausible sound, considering the blood and tears of the night before.

  She checked the dictograph in the sewing room and as an added precaution hung a few of her more intimate garments in its vicinity. Then she had a look at Bessy, still sleeping soundly, and at Mrs. Morey and the children, who were in the same condition. She hesitated at Mark’s door and put her ear to the keyhole. Nothing but silence there. She wrote a note, featuring her need for handkerchiefs, and put it on the hall table. Then, dressed for scaling the Matterhorn, she descended into Crestwood. She ignored the guards and they reciprocated.

  Mark, at a kitchen window, watched her weaving down the drive.

  “I feel better,” he said to Violet. “Sure’s you’re born, that was our Beulah at the dumbwaiter. I can tell by the set of her shoulders. Or else,” he added darkly, “she’s up to no good this minute. I wonder if she’s running out on me?”

  “The things you have to put up with,” Violet sighed.

  “I wonder why Wilcox didn’t come to me with that lipstick business? I had an idea he and I were going to be buddies.”

  “He came awfully early, while you was still asleep. When I asked him about Florrie he showed me that lipstick he took out of her purse. He said maybe another girl would know what made it look like that.”

  “Did you know?”

  “No, sir. Everything was all right but that. Her money was there and all.”

  “Nobody ever thought it was robbery, Violet. Now, enough of that. I like your Lacey-Stoneman story better. If you and Florrie had only waggled your tongues a little sooner and a little more! Why didn’t you tell me the day Mrs. Lacey died?”

  “We didn’t know you so well then. And she made us promise on the Bible. She said if we told anybody something terrible might happen. She said she was going to try to fix it so nothing would. But now that Florrie’s gone, I don’t care.”

  “That’s the spirit. And if it’ll make you feel better, Florrie told me some of it herself. You’re just filling in the bare spots. Now, let’s see if I’ve got it straight. About a week before I came, Mr. Stoneman fell down the cellar steps. It was late at night. He told Mrs. Lacey the next day that he’d been going for a bottle of Scotch. Right?”