It was a short-lived pleasure. A sudden grinding of brakes outside sent her scurrying to the front door. Mark came in, followed by Wilcox and Amos. She wasn’t surprised to see the first two, but she hadn’t expected Amos. In fact, she thought he had no business there at all. She gave him a cold stare as she stood back to let them pass. “The old fool,” she muttered. “Hanging around for a tip, I bet. Leaving the railroad to run itself, I bet. Who’s going to flag the six-o’clock train, I want to know? Some young kid for fifty cents. I got a good notion to report it.”
Then she noticed a movement beyond the terrace, between the shrubbery and the trees. Men. The snow was like a veil, but her sharp young eyes missed nothing. A lot of men. Moving and crouching. Then she remembered with horror that Amos was more than a stationmaster. He was also a deputy sheriff.
She backed away from the door with a terrified look at Mark and ran to the library. She snatched a dust cover from Stoneman’s old chair, pushed it up to the dying fire, and literally fell into it.
She heard Mark go upstairs. Very soon she heard him return, followed by the others. She knew those footsteps, all of them. Miss Petty, Miss Pond, Mr. and Mrs. Morey. At the same time Wilcox came from the opposite direction with Perrin. She sat on her hands and stared at the fire as if it were the only safe thing in the world.
They all came in. Mark went over to the windows and drew the curtains like a fussy housewife. He chattered mildly. “Just like a theatre, isn’t it?” He smiled at Beulah. “All the world’s a stage, and so on and so on. I think we’ll have a semicircle; it’s cosier. Mrs. Morey, will you take the sofa, please? No, the other one; the one with the flowered cover. Leave it just where it is. I want it there. Thank you. Miss Pond and Miss Petty, will you join Mrs. Morey? That’s perfect.”
Violet thawed visibly under this quiet barrage of manners and normality. She tilted her shabby beret to a new angle and folded her hands in her lap.
“Now let me see,” Mark went on thoughtfully. “Perrin, will you bring those two chairs over here and place one at each end of the sofa? That’s right. Mr. Morey, will you take one? You take the other, Perrin.”
Perrin stood stiffly.
“For Pete’s sake, sit down,” Morey said.
Perrin sat down.
Wilcox stood against the French window, shuffling his feet.
Violet began to squirm. They were sitting with their backs to her. She couldn’t see what was going on. If Mrs. Morey had one of her creeses, and her shoulders looked as if she might, she wanted to be where she could take it all in. Her mother loved to hear about Mrs. Morey’s creeses.
“Mr. East,” she piped. “I’m here.”
“So you are,” he said. “Stay there.”
Laura Morey turned to Beulah and whispered urgently.
“But of course I thought you or Violet had them!” Beulah’s voice was loud and astonished. She turned to stare at Violet.
“If you’re talking about the children,” Mark said quickly, “they’re all right. Believe me, they’re all right. . . . Now, if you please, Wilcox.”
He stepped back to the wall at Wilcox’s right. Amos stood against the opposite wall, to the left. Wilcox cleared his throat.
“I don’t want to keep you people here any longer than I have to,” he said. “I know you all want to get away. I do myself. But none of us can go until I clear something up. I have to do it. I’ve got something I want to say, and I expect I will say it later, but first I want you to listen to Mr. East here. I’ve got a sort of surprise for you, about Mr. East, I mean.”
Mark still leaned against the wall, hands in pockets, smile intact.
“Mr. East,” Wilcox went on, “was engaged by Mr. Stoneman to help him on a book. At first Mr. East thought Mr. Stoneman had made a mistake in hiring him, but later on it didn’t look that way. You see, Mr. East never was a secretary. He is and always was a private detective.”
Wilcox, facing his audience, avoided their eyes. Mark and Amos watched like hawks. There were only two reactions. Morey snapped his fingers and grinned. Violet, who had been hoarding her breath for a full minute, released it with a loud pop. At the same time there was an almost imperceptible change in the atmosphere; as if pulses quickened and minds began to race.
“So,” Wilcox continued, “Mr. East’s observations, as you might say, are kind of important. He was right here in the house and he couldn’t help noticing some things. I should say, he couldn’t help wondering about them. He came to me. Now I’m going to let Mr. East tell you what he told me, and what we did about it.” Wilcox stepped back clumsily and tangled with the red curtains. “Mr. East,” he murmured.
Mark took a step forward from the wall. “Very parliamentary,” he said. “All I need is a table with carafe and tumbler.” Beginning with Perrin, he looked long and directly into the eyes of each person before him.
“Most of what I’m going to tell you,” he said, “I can definitely prove. A few surrounding details are guesswork; but if you hear me to the end I think you’ll believe me.” Once more he scrutinized each face.
“First, and I’m starting with the present. Mr. Stoneman is not alive. He did not run out into the storm when that shot was fired and lose himself by accident or intent. He didn’t run away to New York. He was killed that night, in this very room, while we were hunting for him. . . . I see tears in one pair of eyes. He isn’t and never was worth that. I admit he fooled me too. Mr. Stoneman was a secondary but vital factor in the events that led to the deaths of Mrs. Lacey and Florrie. I mean, the murders of Mrs. Lacey and Florrie.”
“Mr. Stoneman?” Beulah’s voice was high and thin. “But how, how—!”
“If you don’t mind, no questions until I finish. . . . Mr. Stoneman, as some of you know, had a nearly fatal fall down the cellar steps. It wasn’t an accident. It was either an attempt to frighten him into submission, because he was getting restive, or it was meant to remove him permanently. You see, he’d served his purpose and was beginning to be a nuisance. But that little episode of the cellar steps, so carefully planned, wasn’t a complete success. It backfired. Stoneman was frightened, all right; that’s why he hired me. He thought a stranger in the house would save his own skin. He couldn’t afford to go to the police—that would spoil his own plans—so he used me as a bodyguard and said nothing. He didn’t care what happened as long as he came out of it alive. During this little reign of terror only one thing touched him. That was the rock business. He liked children, and that made him angry. That’s the only good thing that can be said for Stoneman. Mrs. Lacey, burned to death in her bed, was nothing. Too bad, but it had to be done. That’s how he looked at it, but he was wrong in more ways than one. Mrs. Lacey was the backfire I mentioned before.”
He lit a cigarette, and over his cupped hands his eyes looked far beyond the people in front of him. He knew it was a hammy gesture, but it gave him a chance to listen for sounds behind him. There were none, yet, and that was as it should be.
“Mrs. Lacey,” he went on, “knew who pushed Stoneman down the stairs. Now, someone in this room knows how dark that passage was. It was so dark that the poor woman could never have proved she saw a thing. If she’d talked about it, people would have laughed at her. Or tapped their heads. Everybody in Crestwood and Bear River knew she needed glasses and wouldn’t wear them. Everybody knew she was incurably romantic. They’d have put her story down as another tall tale. Then why was she killed? Why not let her talk? Because the murderer, who wasn’t a murderer yet, literally couldn’t afford the publicity. So her thermos jug was spiked with an overdose of her own medicine and, when she was unconscious she was drenched in kerosene and—lighted. . . . Violet?”
Violet opened her mouth, but no sound came out.
“Tell these people what you told me. Mrs. Lacey left her room that night for at least a half-hour, didn’t she?”
She nodded.
“You’ll have to say it, Violet. I want it heard.”
“Y-y-yes, sir.”
“No,” said Beulah. Her voice was thin and tired. No one else spoke.
Laura Morey’s eyes had never once left Mark’s face. She sat between Bessy and Beulah, drawn away from them, rigid. Perrin stared at the bare floor. He’d held that same position from the beginning, except for one brief moment. When Mark was talking about Florrie he had turned and looked over his shoulder at the empty hall behind him.
Morey sat spellbound. “Can you prove that about Stoneman? I mean, is it on the level or are you guessing?”
“No questions now,” Mark said coolly. “Ask me later or read Wilcox’s report. . . . Now, back to the clipping. It was a vague little piece about an accident. There were no names, no dates, and the chances for running it down were pretty slim. Also it looked normal and harmless. But we traced it, just to be sure we weren’t missing anything. We located its origin and, as a result, put in two telephone calls; one to a little town in Florida and the other to London.”
Wilcox, standing like a waxwork against the crimson curtains, shifted his weight. In spite of the icy air that crept across the floor, Mark wiped perspiration from his face. He saw Perrin’s hands open and shut. He didn’t look at anyone else.
“Those telephone calls turned up a story that is and always has been available to anybody curious enough to investigate. Unfortunately, nobody was curious. Probably because until now nothing showed above an apparently calm surface. But the waters parted, if you don’t mind a little rhetoric, and three bodies came to the top.”
He broke off deliberately and looked over at Violet, shivering in her chair by the dying fire. “Violet, do you want that fire built up?”
She shook her head.
“Well, I’ll make the rest of this as short as possible. I know some of you want to get away. I’m only going to give you a bare outline of that story. I wish I didn’t have to tell a word of it. If there were any way of clearing this up without bringing in the London end, I’d do it. Some of you know what I mean. Believe me, I’m as sorry as hell. . . . The story begins with the failure of a marriage. There was no open break, no gossip or scandal. Two people simply announced that they couldn’t get along with each other and the wife took her child and went away. The husband also dropped out of sight. Then, after several years, the woman met and fell in love with another man. She told him about her husband. She also told him her faith prohibited divorce. . . . Pretty dull so far, isn’t it? It gets better as it goes along.”
Bessy’s round eyes glowed in the shadow of her shawl. Her face began to twitch. Beulah took the cold plump hands in hers and rubbed them gently. She spoke in a soothing whisper. “Hush,” she said.
Mark went on. “It won’t be long now, Miss Bessy,” he said. “Yes, divorce was prohibited. But this was her first chance for happiness, so, after a long struggle with her conscience, she decided to go through with it. However, before she made her first move, some inkling of her intention found its way into print. I think some gossip writer got hold of the story. That’s a guess, but it must have happened like that. Or it may have been a magazine article, one of those pally chats about well-known people. The man she planned to marry was a big shot and anything that happened to him was news. Anyway, the divorce intention became known. Now I skip a chapter.
“The second marriage took place. The child, who had been kept in an obscure boarding school, hidden from its father, knew nothing about it. But the mother and the new husband made plans for a reunion as carefully as they planned their honeymoon. They told themselves they’d meet the child on their return and live happily ever after. It was a long honeymoon. I even know where they went. Cornwall and Scotland. Then, after six months, on their way to the south of France to pick up the child, they stopped over in Paris. The woman went to her bankers for mail and that was the last happy moment she knew. One of her letters told her she was a bigamist.”
The atmosphere in the room was thick. Breath turned to vapour and hung like small clouds. The dying fire sighed like a sick soul stirring in its last sleep. Mark droned on.
“Bigamy. A nasty little crime for nasty little people. A stupid, common, vulgar little crime, living on sex and the bankbooks of lonely women, ending in ridicule and laughter. But there’s nothing to laugh at here. This bigamy ended in three murders. Why? What happened? Something in this story doesn’t make sense. What is it? . . . Miss Pond looks as if she knew the answer, and I know what she’s thinking. She’s pretty sure she’s found the flaw. She wants to tell me that the woman couldn’t possibly be a bigamist because she was legally divorced. Think back a minute, Miss Pond. Did I actually tell you she was divorced? No. I said she’d considered it. You see, she didn’t go through with it after all. She didn’t think it was—” He stopped and turned slowly.
“Wilcox,” he said, “there’s something wrong.”
Wilcox stared back stonily.
“Is there anyone in this house, anyone who—shouldn’t be here?”
The air in the room was like moving ice. It creaked and crackled; it whispered in the corners and curled around the curtains at the window. Amos twisted his head on his thin neck and made a strangling sound.
No one stirred in that row of still, white faces. Only Bessy breathed heavily. Mark heard his own breath, like a dry rattle. He was frightened himself, now.
He flicked his hands across his eyes as if he were brushing cobwebs. “Maybe I’d better stop here,” he said. “Something’s gone wrong. I don’t like it. I feel as if—” He looked at Amos before he spoke again.
“I don’t believe in ghosts,” he said quietly, “but something is trying to enter this house. I must ask you not to move. . . . I wonder if the dead do return? Not to avenge or to accuse, but to—gloat? I wonder if—” He turned to Wilcox again.
“Who opened that window?”
Wilcox put his head behind the curtains. When he turned back to face Mark he was trembling. He didn’t speak.
“What is it?” Mark took a step forward and put his hand on the cord. “What is it?” he said again. “You look as if you’d seen a—” He pulled the cord and the curtains swung back.
The window was wide open to the stormy night. A faint blue glow hung over the edge of the terrace. It swayed in the wind like a living thing. As they watched with horrified eyes it rose in a column and rolled slowly forward until it was almost in the room. It hesitated and came over the sill. In its heart was a leering white figure.
A thin scream went up to the ceiling and hung there, quivering. A figure catapulted through the air and a knife flashed. A black wave of men surged in through the window and the hall. Amos flung himself at the light switch and the chandelier glared down on chaos.
The blue glow was gone and a plaster snowman lay on the floor, knifed into a hundred shards.
A
ring of men stood in close formation at the window. Wilcox snapped on the handcuffs. He mumbled the usual formula. Then, “I have to do this, Mr. Morey,” he said. He didn’t sound sorry.
Mark turned to Bessy and Beulah with a wan smile and pointed to all that remained of the Taits’ hasty sculpture. “I wasn’t showing off,” he said. “The original is Stoneman’s coffin.”
Morey wrenched himself erect. He looked beyond Mark. His red eyes burned, his mouth twisted. He raised his shackled hands in a slow, grim gesture.
“Who is that man!”
Mark answered with bland venom.
“You mean the gentleman with his arms around the lady? He’s a very distinguished Britisher, a surgeon. Dr. George Edward Perrin Oliver. And his wife, so help me, if I have to go through every court in the land!”
“You!” screamed Morey. He sent his guards crashing as he hurled himself at the man who had been a servant in his house.
“Knife!” shrilled Bessy. “Knife!”
A pistol barked. Morey lurched and went down on his knees; blood streamed from his right hand. He bounded back like a spring and threw one black look of hatred behind him as he ran for the stairs.
They were after him like a pack. All except Mark.
“I know what he’s going to try for,” he whispered to the woman who wept quietly and bitterly at his side. “I hope he gets away with it, but only because it will make things easier for you.” He looked up at the ceiling and listened. “One of the windows, over the ravine.” He pushed her gently into a chair.
They all sat without speaking, but the room was filled with sound. Running feet in the hall above, slamming doors, muffled shouts; a thin cracked voice that they recognized as Amos, crying, “This one! It’s this one!” Another door slammed. Silence. Then the running feet again, pounding down the upper hall, down the stairs, and a dark wave of men sweeping past the door.
Blood upon the Snow Page 24