“Then what was Perrin looking for?”
“Money, maybe. These folks could have mislaid a large sum of money and thought they dropped it in the trash. Naturally they’d speak sharply to her, asking if she found anything. They found it later themselves and forgot to say anything about it. As for her being followed and killed—” He scratched his head thoughtfully. “It could have been a tramp. It could have been—anybody. This is a lonesome kind of place.”
“Do you think a tramp pushed Stoneman downstairs and murdered Lacey because she saw him do it? Did a tramp throw that rock through the nursery window? Did a tramp make off with Stoneman to-night?”
“Anybody could get in this house,” Wilcox said helplessly. “There’s an old coal chute in the cellar.”
“Fine time to be telling me that. Who knows about it?”
“Everybody.”
“I’m going crazy,” Amos said flatly.
“Better not,” Mark said. “I’m going to work on the crazy angle in a minute. Do either of you know Colonel Davenport?”
“I do,” said Amos. “Perley don’t know him at all. He’s tall, white hair, about fifty-five, and kind of gay. Married money but has plenty of his own. Inherited this place from his wife, who was older’n him. Don’t spend much time here, runs around with swells. Over in London now for the government.”
“Mrs. Davenport have any relatives who might be sore about the will?”
“Nope. None that I ever heard of.”
“Has he ever rented this place before?”
“Nope. And he ain’t renting it now. The Moreys are invited guests. Perrin come along here late in August with a note to Ruthie from the Colonel. He asked her to help out these friends of his that he was lending the place to. Then the freight boxes come along and Perrin got things in order. The family come later. Just like that.”
“Has Davenport written to Ruthie or the Moreys since then?”
“Nope. . . . Now this here is going to kill you, Mark. Nobody writes to the Moreys or to Stoneman either. The only mail they ever got was the letters you wrote Stoneman. And some bills from New York stores that come for Perrin. Bills for fancy food and flowers. He does all the ordering. The Moreys don’t even write to stores.”
Mark whistled softly.” Wilcox, did you know Perrin had a gun?”
“Yes, but nobody’s been shot yet that I know of. He showed it to me last night, very frank and open. I said he could keep it. . . . I don’t like this.”
“I don’t like it either. I feel cold in my bones and I can’t warm up to your tramp. How does this sound to you? Suppose somebody wants these people out of the house? Don’t ask me why, just suppose that’s the case. We’ll call it a campaign of terrorism. Would that explain the rock through the nursery window and Stoneman’s attack on the stairs?”
“Yes. But it won’t explain Florrie and Lacey. People who go around scaring other people are likely to stop short with scaring. They haven’t got the guts, excuse me, to murder.”
“Wait. Suppose our terrifying friend got frightened himself? Suppose Mrs. Lacey got wise to him and he knew it. Suppose he also knew that if she gave him away it would mean—the asylum. Wouldn’t that be a motive for murder?”
Wilcox brightened. “Can you tie that up with Florrie and her clipping?”
“How’s this. Suppose that clipping hides a sordid little crime that got by in a small town but wouldn’t bear scrutiny by wiser eyes? The hit-and-run business being one of our ugly friend’s little jokes. I’ve already said it apparently clicked somewhere with Florrie. I don’t think she had any positive information, but I do think she had a strong suspicion—not of an individual, but of a situation. Suppose, before she went to Miss Pond’s that night, she confided in someone, here in this house? The wrong someone. Suppose she telephoned a friend, the wrong friend? She had to be stopped.”
“Stoneman’s disappearance,” Wilcox said. “Fit that in.”
“Maybe he got wise too, and ran away. Or was put away. He was smart. He could spot a—looney.”
“I know I’m going crazy,” Amos said.
“Stop that!” snapped Wilcox. “You make me nervous. I’m beginning to see things. . . . Where do we go from here, Mr. East?”
“How do the neighbours measure up in the way of—nerves? Has anybody got a queer relation living in the attic? You know, the kind you carry trays to and never mention. Any old men who have to be watched? Widows who’ve never stopped crying? Peculiar bachelors? Lovelorn spinsters?”
“Amos, you take that one.” Wilcox gave Mark an apologetic look. “My family came from downstate. We’ve only been here thirty-five years.”
“Bessy is a lovelorn spinster,” Amos said. “She writes to Jimmy Cagney every week and Beulah tears the letters up. Beulah’d cut your heart out and laugh while she was doing it.”
“If you’re right about that we’re likely to finish this case on the other side of Jordan. What about the others?”
“Nobody here now but the Bittners. They’re crazy all right, but not enough for the asylum. The Canes, man and wife, normal, went to Florida. The three Caldwell girls, believed to be drinkers, went to Florida with the Canes. The Tait twins, plain lunatics, are in Bear River with their sister. There used to be some horse thieves over by Baldwin, but they died. That’s all.”
“Tell me more about the Taits.”
“Seventy-five years old, sculptors. They used to go to Europe every year. They got a studio back of their house. Looks like a stable until you peek inside and then, oh, my. Everybody laughs at ’em. . . . Who got Bessy and Beulah in this house?”
“Mrs. Morey asked them. I think it’s all right. I’ve even put Beulah in charge of a dictograph.”
“God have mercy, nobody else will.”
“Don’t pay any attention to him,” Wilcox said. “He’s been fighting with her for years. . . . Dictograph. I don’t think they’re decent, if you don’t mind my saying so. Like looking in keyholes. . . . Did you hear anything?”
“No. It’s only been operating a few hours, but I’m hoping. It was on for an hour or so before that rock business, but nothing came over.” He didn’t say where it was.
“That rock business. Very peculiar. You looked at me kind of funny when I was working on that. I figured you knew something and meant to ask you about it.”
“It wasn’t much. Just that Stoneman was the only person in the room who acted as if he were—surprised.”
“Was he surprised to-night when he heard that shot?”
“Dropped his glass, and it was a full one, too. But he was in a bad way shortly before that. I’d been working on him.” He held up the clipping. “Now we stop guessing and start detecting.”
He told them how he’d located Citrus City in Florida and how he’d tried it out on Stoneman. “I think I touched a sore spot but I can’t be sure. Every time I got to a crucial point, somebody walked in. He ended up shaking like a leaf, but that could have been nerves. He has them.”
Wilcox frowned. “So that thing came from a Florida paper.”
“Florida.” Amos said bitterly. “Everybody’s in Florida this minute. Everybody’s been going to Florida for years. Davenport used to go himself. Fishing. Preachers go and priests go and I bet even nuns. Florida! If I was you I’d forget about Florida before I made a fool of myself—or worse.”
Wilcox continued smoothly, “What do you plan to do, Mr. East?”
“I’m not going to do anything. You are. I haven’t the authority. I want you to get the Citrus City sheriff on the ’phone and have him dig up this accident. If he doesn’t have the records himself he can get all we need from the newspaper. I don’t know its name but there’s probably only one. I’d say this clipping is about two years old, maybe three. Ask him to mail you a copy, he can get it from the back files, and—this is important—telephone the details as soon as he has them. I want the date and the names of the dead man and the friend who identified him.”
Amos had been struggling
and now he emitted a bleat. “Long distance to Florida? Who’s going to pay for that? The county won’t like it. And what are you going to do when them names turn out to be John Jones and Bill Smith, respectable people with nice families? You can’t trace no Jones or Smith, anyway. The county’s going to be mad!”
“If the county gets sordid about a little money I’ll pay the charge myself. Put that call through the first thing in the morning and ask the sheriff to call you back when he has the dope. Make him understand it’s important. Tell him to call after nine p.m. I want to be in on it. Now, what ’phone can we use? Bear River’s too far. And we want to avoid a party line. Amos—what about the ’phone in your office?”
“Help yourself. I can’t stop you. It ain’t no party line, but it’s got Lola.”
“Lola,” explained Wilcox, “is the day operator and she writes social items for the Bear River Examiner. Sometimes people read in the paper that they’re asked to a party before they get their invitations. I expect I’ll have to threaten Lola with arrest. Been wanting to do it for some time.”
“What about the night operator on the return calls? She’s the important one. Is she reliable?”
“She’s my own sister. She wouldn’t listen to Churchill. She’ll do what I tell her and go on with her knitting. Well, that’s that.”
Mark stirred uneasily and avoided Amos’ eye. “Not quite,” he admitted. “There’s another call. The same procedure as the first. Call back after nine. . . . Get Washington and arrange to talk to Davenport at the American Embassy in London.”
Amos stifled a shriek and buried his head in his hands.
“I don’t care if it is a week end,” Mark went on. “Get him. Tell them it’s a matter of life and death. And when you get him I’ll talk to him myself.”
“I think I’ll send Lola for a long walk because she looks pale and work the board myself,” Wilcox said heavily. “What are you going to say to Davenport?”
“I,” began Mark, and held up his hand for silence. “Somebody’s outside the door,” he mouthed soundlessly.
They stiffened and sat without moving. The kitchen clock ticked on. Then Mark rose and walked softly to the door and jerked it back. Beulah stood blinking in the strong light.
She rushed at Mark and seized his hand. “It’s happened,” she babbled. “It’s happened.” Her uppers gave a warning clack and dropped spitefully to her lower lip. She parried with a savage thumb.
“What’s happened?” Mark asked.
“Somebody talked, but I don’t know who it was! I couldn’t hear him speak!”
Amos watched her coldly.
“Begin at the beginning, Beulah,” Mark said.
She collapsed in a chair and leaned heavily on the table. “It was like this. Mr. Morey came up quite a while ago. I heard him say good night to her, and he said there wasn’t any news of Stoneman but she wasn’t to worry. And she said she wasn’t worrying at all. Then he went back to his room. I heard the door shut. Then, maybe half an hour later, she began to talk again. It was the most awful thing. I couldn’t see into that room and I couldn’t hear any voice but hers, but I knew she wasn’t talking to herself. I can’t explain it but I could feel—feel somebody else, standing there, with his fingers on his lips.”
“What did she say?”
“She said—I memorized it—she said, ‘We’ve got to get to Willie Foster. That’s our only chance. We’ve got to get to Willie Foster. You’ve got to do it. Right away. Right away.’”
“And then?”
“And then the other person must have left. But I didn’t hear any doors shut. When Mr. Morey was there he banged the door just like he always does. . . . This one—this one came in and out like a—like air.”
Mark turned to the others. “Ever hear of Willie Foster?”
Wilcox looked blank. Amos grinned from ear to ear.
“Sure,” he said. “Three times.” He put back his head and shook with silent laughter.
“Amos!” Wilcox said sharply. “Get on with it!”
“Willie Foster,” said Amos, “is the name of an old sailing vessel. It’s the name of a town too, down on the eastern shore of Maryland. The town was named after the boat. The boat was named after a girl. Miss Wilhelmina Foster, dead about a hundred years. It’s a small place, Willie Foster is, mostly fishermen and crabbers live there now. But it’s got one prominent native son. Name of Colonel Davenport.”
Mark turned to Wilcox with a long sigh. “You started to ask me what I was going to say to Colonel Davenport. Well, I was, and still am, going to ask him what he knows about his neighbours in Crestwood. And what he knows about Stoneman. But chiefly, I want to find out if he’s really—there.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
FAT lazy flakes sifted out of a dull sky and clung to the dining-room windows. Mark and Beulah loitered over breakfast. They had the room to themselves.
“I don’t mind saying this is one thing I’m going to miss,” Beulah said, rattling the silver covers on the dishes. “Just like those movies of English country life.”
Mark watched the gathering storm. “Florrie’s grave was hard to dig too, but nobody seems to care.”
“Want to see me act like a duchess?” Beulah asked.
“No.”
“I’m going to, anyway.” She pranced painfully across the room with her nose pointed to the ceiling and a sausage impaled on a fork. An arch backward look told her he wasn’t watching. She returned and sat down. “I thought you’d laugh,” she said quietly. “I don’t know what a duchess looks like, but I wanted to make you laugh.”
He stretched his face into a grin.
“Don’t,” she said. “That’s worse. You thought I was listening at the door last night, didn’t you? I was, but not because I wanted to hear anything. I only wanted to know who was with you. . . . Mark, you could have used the ’phone in my house for those calls. You could have made a fire and been comfortable while you waited.”
“Party line,” he said. “Ella May. Beulah, are you going to Florrie’s funeral?”
“No. I won’t leave Bessy and she can’t go out in this weather with her face. . . . Where are you going?”
“Out to watch the men. They’re working in that ravine under our windows, the one Violet calls the precipice. Looking for Stoneman.”
“Then I’ll go up and pack,” she said. “We’re starting with the children’s things.”
She went with him as far as the door and helped him into his coat. He didn’t even notice what she was doing.
Morey stood at the edge of the ravine, scowling down at a group of men toiling with shovel and pick-axe. He greeted Mark with relish.
“They wanted to know if there’s a reward,” he said, pointing a scornful finger. “That’s the backbone of America down there; the flower of democracy, the lad with the hoe. He tills his own few acres and asks nothing of any man. Except a reward.”
“Do you think they’ll find him there?”
“No. But Wilcox wants to try it. I don’t care what they do. Too bad Joe can’t supervise the job himself. He’d love to tell them they were unscientific.”
Mark looked up at the windows; from where he stood they seemed to overhang that deep and rocky trench, “Who put those spikes in the sills?” he asked idly.
“They were there when we came. One of Davenport’s little whimseys, I suppose. Don’t ask me what the original purpose was. I don’t know. But they’re too high to fall over.”
“Not too high to jump over, though.”
“Jump! Joe? Joe wouldn’t jump over a mud puddle. He might fall in and drown. No, he loves himself too much to deprive himself of his own company.”
“You talk as if he were alive.”
“He’s got to be. How can he be anything else? He isn’t in the house. We’d have seen him if he’d tried to follow us. I don’t know how he did it, but he simply—got out. He always was a slick one.”
“Well, suppose he did get out. How did he do it and why? There w
eren’t any trains at that hour, and if he’d hidden and waited for one Amos would have seen him.”
“Amos didn’t see you,” Morey reminded him. He kicked at the snow. “Joe got the wind up over Mrs. Lacey and Florrie. Every time anybody died, Joe always thought the dark angel was aiming at him and muffed the shot. If they had a tidal wave in South America Joe would pitch a tent for himself on Pike’s Peak. No, Joe was scared, wanted to get away, and was ashamed to admit it. I gave him a little money the other day, not much. I have a hunch he hit out for New York.”
“But I thought you said his clothes were all there?”
“I’ve been thinking it over. He could have had some cached away. Then when those blasted kids popped off with their gun and everybody ran around howling, our Joe seized the opportunity. He said he was going to New York, didn’t he?”
“Yes. In a vague sort of way.”
“You can bet that’s where he is. Spending his money on equipment and talking big. Then when he’s broke he’ll come back with a sad story. It’s happened before. He knew I’d stop him, that’s why he skipped. I’m through.”
“Will this business hold up your own departure?”
“No. Wilcox is a decent guy. Says all I have to do is leave my new address. . . . Well! Who told you to come out here?”
“Nobody. I wanted some fresh air. It’s snowing harder and harder. Will the snow stop the trains?”
“Nothing can stop the trains. How’s your packing?”
“Miss Pond and Miss Petty are doing it. Miss Petty says we have too many clothes.”
“She’s right—for once. Which reminds me, I’ve got to nail up crates for Perrin. He seems to be afraid he’ll smash his lily-white fingers. See you later.” He moved off toward the house.
“I’m going down to look at the snowman,” Mark said to Anne. “Some boys put a bullet through his hat last night, or say they did. I don’t believe them. Want to come along?”
Blood upon the Snow Page 20