Death’s Old Sweet Song

by Jonathan Stagge

  I didn’t answer. Her hand came out quickly, taking my sleeve.

  “Hugh, as a doctor, you don’t really believe that, do you? I mean that just because they have a maternal grandmother who—”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t hold much store by heredity from maternal grandmothers.”

  Her whole little face brightened. “You really mean that?”

  “I really mean it.”

  “Then … then who…?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I just don’t know.”

  I got up, moved to the fire, and kicked the smoldering logs into flame.

  “There’s only one thing in my brain right now—one goddam, frightening phrase.”

  “What’s that?” asked Phoebe.

  “‘Five for the symbols at your door.’”

  CHAPTER XIV

  While we were talking, the windows framed by their faded rose drapes had paled from black through gray into opalescence. I had dimly noticed the approach of dawn, but the first feeble ray of sunshine splashing across the carpet took me by surprise. The nightmare Sunday had slipped imperceptibly into a Monday of doubtful promise.

  I had spent too much time at the Stones’. Cobb would have arrived at the church and would be looking for me. Later there would be the inquest on the White twins. Probably the inquest on George Raynor too. I had a morning ahead of me all right.

  I was promising Phoebe that I would keep her posted when Lorie came in. Ernesta’s daughter was wearing a smoky-blue suit with a white blouse. Like all the clothes her mother insisted on her wearing, it belonged with the sort of country scenes fashion photographers build in studios rather than with the rough-and-tumble reality of Skipton. Her hair, pale as the morning sunlight, fell softly to her shoulders. Her delicately angled face was pale too and unapproachable.

  She darted me a quick glance and murmured a low good morning. Then she said to Phoebe: “I don’t think Caleb slept at all. His light’s still on.”

  Phoebe said: “You’re up rather early yourself, aren’t you, dear?”

  “I’ve got to get home.” Lorie’s lips tightened with determination, as if she knew what she was going to say would be challenged and was preparing herself for attack. “Mother’s coming back today. I’ll have to get everything ready.”

  “You’ve got three servants up there, dear. I should imagine they can get everything ready. At least you can stay for breakfast.”

  “No, thank you, Aunt Phoebe.” The determination was stubbornness now. “You know Mother. She’s driving up. She may arrive any time. I’ve got to be there to let her know what’s—what’s happened. She can’t just hear it from anyone.”

  Almost crossly Phoebe said: “You should have done what I suggested and called her last night. At least she would have been prepared.”

  “I told you. It would only have worried her. There wasn’t anything she could have done.”

  I was surprised to hear it had been Phoebe who had suggested calling Ernesta and Lorie who had vetoed it. Normally the positions would have been reversed, Lorie, with her fanatical dependence on Ernesta, mad keen to call her mother, and Phoebe calming her down.

  Lorie dropped into a wicker chair, stretching her thin hands out to the fire. The light from the flames emphasized the geometric planes of her face. I thought I could see a kind of creeping dread in her eyes. It was understandable enough. The poor kid had more than her share of horror to contend with.

  Without looking at me, she asked: “Why did the church bell ring, Dr. Westlake? Was it the signal for the second shift of the patrol?”

  Phoebe glanced at me quickly. I shrugged. The shrug was meant to convey that Lorie might as well hear from me as wait a couple of minutes and hear a garbled version from the servants in Ernesta’s house.

  I said: “It was worse than that, Lorie.”

  “Worse?” Her hands, still stretched to the flames, were shaking, but she still didn’t look up. In a very small voice, she said: “You mean it did happen, don’t you? That’s what I’ve been thinking about, lying upstairs in bed. It did happen—to Dr. Jessup?”

  “It happened,” I said.

  “The gospel maker.” Her voice was dry as ashes now. “The lily-white boys, the rivals, the gospel maker.”

  Suddenly she dropped her face into her hands. If she had sobbed it would have been better. She didn’t. She just sat hunched there, absolutely still, as if she were made of wood.

  I went to her and put my hand on her rigid shoulder.

  “It’s tough for all of us. It’s no worse for you.”

  Phoebe, absurdly but humanly practical, said: “You’d better stop for breakfast now, dear.”

  Lorie didn’t seem to hear either of us. After a moment she dropped her hands to her sides. She got up like an automaton. In a prim, little-girl tone, she said:

  “I shall have to go now, Aunt Phoebe. Thank you for letting me spend the night.”

  I said: “I’ll walk you up to the house.”

  She didn’t pay any attention.

  Phoebe said: “You’re sure you’ll be all right?”

  “Yes, thank you, Aunt.”

  She started for the door. Phoebe said: “Go with her, Hugh.”

  I nodded and followed Lorie out into the hall. She flipped the chain out of its socket, opened the door, and stepped out into the August morning sunshine.

  Ernesta’s drive went right up the mountain to our left. We did not have to go into the main street, so I could not tell whether the patrol was still on duty. For a few moments we walked side by side in complete isolation from each other.

  It was painful to see Lorie walking as if her heart were frozen. She worried me more than Caleb did. Caleb at least let his hatred and disgust for himself burst out in bitter self-accusation. Lorie was the little Spartan girl with the fox gnawing at her vitals.

  Trying to jolt my way through to her, I said: “Phoebe told me about your grandmother. It has to come out now, you know. The inspector will have to be told.”

  “I expect he will,” said Lorie.

  “I wouldn’t worry too much about it. With one generation skipped, any hereditary taint is fairly remote. Your mother takes it much too seriously. You mustn’t let her scare you.”

  Lorie shuddered. It was as if she had trodden on a snake. “Mother?” she said.

  “Phoebe told me why Ernesta let you know about your grandmother. If you ask me, that’s a lot of hooey. You’re not crazy and you’re not going to have crazy children—even if you do marry Caleb.”

  It was a pretty drastic thing to say, and I was all too conscious of the fact that I was meddling in affairs that did not concern me, but, as a doctor, I knew that icy film of fear had to be broken somehow.

  I did get an emotional reaction, but it wasn’t the one I expected. She started to tremble. In a little choking voice she said:

  “Leave me alone, will you? Just leave me alone.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about Caleb, either. He loves you. If he hasn’t been showing it, it’s because he’s as much of a coward as you are. He has his little pet fears locked up in a private little box with red velvet lining just the way you do. But I hope and pray he’s going to have enough guts to unlock the box. And, as for his feeble pretense with Avril Lane—”

  “Shut up.” She swung around on me savagely. Her eyes were blazing with a desperation that seemed rooted in some horror deeper even than the horrors I knew about. “You don’t have to tell me how Caleb feels. You don’t have to tell me whether I’m crazy or not. You don’t have to tell me about Mother and—”

  She broke off. Plunging forward on her too fancy shoes, she started to run away from me up the drive to the house.

  I didn’t follow her. For better or worse, I had fulfilled my function. But I didn’t understand, either, and, because I didn’t understand, I worried.

  I was too tired and distracted to worry for long, however. The responsibilities of the morning started to pour in on me. Cobb—I would have to find Cobb. I
hurried down the Bray drive and out onto the main road.

  The patrol was still on duty. At least those of the men who did not have early morning farm chores to attend to. On my way to the church I passed two men, sleepily and glumly walking their beat. It must have been a thankless task, patrolling when already the patrol had been found to be so pitifully inadequate.

  Cobb was in the church. Dr. Jessup’s body had been taken away. No one was with the inspector except Dan Leaf, who looked half dead in his tracks from lack of sleep.

  “No fingerprints in the Raynor kitchen,” the inspector grunted. “Nothing on the knife. No clues here. Just like the murderer was a ghost.”

  “Don’t let it get you down, Cobb.”

  “Down? Couldn’t be downer than I was to begin with, Westlake. What in the name of glory happened to young Stone?”

  “I’ll tell you that later. Right now you’d better come over to my house and get some breakfast. There’s nothing more to do here, is there?

  “Guess not. Maybe. I could do with a bite to eat at that. Dan needs something too.”

  I said: “Dan looks right now as if it’s a bed he wants. There’s plenty of them at my house, Dan.”

  He grinned weakly. “Thanks, Doc. But I’ll be okay after some coffee.”

  The three of us moved out of the church and down the steps to the street. As we did so, I saw Dawn, accompanied by a large, defiant-looking Rebecca, going up the street in the direction of our house. Both of them clutched a bottle of milk to their bosoms.

  Dawn saw us and ran excitedly across the street to us.

  “Hello, Daddy. Hello, Inspector. Hello, Mr. Leaf. I had it all planned to get up terribly early and fix breakfast for Rebecca like I said I would, only Rebecca happened to be sleeping in my room too and she won’t tell me why except to say she was lonely, which is funny because she was never lonely in Kenmore and anyway she woke up too and we found the Heaths hadn’t delivered the milk so we went and got it and …”

  The sentence collapsed through lack of breath.

  Cobb grinned at her and said: “Well, you’re going to have company. Dan and me’s been invited to breakfast.”

  My daughter said politely: “Oh, that will be very nice.” And then: “I was going to make hot cakes but, I mean—well, maybe Rebecca makes them better than I do and …”

  We crossed the street to join Rebecca, who had been standing massively still like a large black monolith.

  “Mornin’, Mr. Cobb,” she said.

  “Morning, Rebecca.”

  Rebecca darkly indicated Dawn, who was running unconcernedly ahead. “She don’ know nothin’, Mr. Cobb. So don’t you open up with any fancy talk in front of the child.”

  “Okay,” said Cobb.

  Dawn came running back then and trotted at my side, chattering, as the five of us made our way toward our house. I was too busy with my thoughts to pay her much attention.

  As we reached our garden gate, I was vaguely conscious of her saying: “And she’ll be madder’n a hornet when she finds out. You know how she always is, so fussy, polishing things and dusting things all the time.”

  “I guess she is,” I answered automatically.

  Dawn looked up at me. “Then you saw them too, Daddy?”

  “Saw what?”

  “What I’ve been talking about,” said my daughter, faintly pained.

  “What have you been talking about?”

  “About the things on Miss Drummond’s front door.”

  “What things?”

  “The things—the sort of drawings.”

  I stopped dead. So did Cobb and Dan Leaf. We all three stared at her.

  “What sort of drawings, Dawn?”

  Now that she had so obviously attracted our attention, Dawn seemed bored with the whole thing.

  “Oh, just some silly old scribbles. Sort of signs and things. Scribbled all over her front door in chalk. You can see for yourself. Some kids, probably. …”

  I glanced at Cobb, a shiver going down my back. Trying to sound calm, I said: “You run in the house with Rebecca, Dawn, and start getting breakfast. We’ll be back in a minute.”

  “But, Daddy—”

  “Come on, child.” Rebecca took her firmly by the arm and started to pull her up the garden path. “Don’t you know enough to do what your daddy tells you?”

  Once the two of them had disappeared into the house, Cobb, Leaf, and I crossed the street and hurried toward Love’s cottage, which stood next to the rectory, white and smugly neat in the early sunshine. I reached the gate in the picket fence first and, pushing through it, started between the prim borders of rosemary and myrtle to the door.

  The warm, herbal scent of the rosemary impregnated the morning air. The wistaria, flopping over the porch, was hung with long purple blossoms. The pilgrim lantern gave a cozy, welcoming touch. The very gentleness and blandness of the scene was like a thorn under my nail.

  I had seen what was on Love’s door before I had turned out of the street. No one could have missed them, for they were scrawled in scarlet chalk. But, as Cobb and Leaf hurried silently after me to the porch, I could see them in every detail.

  Swastikas, crosses, meaningless hieroglyphics, scrawled with bold, scarlet crudeness over the smooth, white panels.

  In the first despairing moments, as I stared, I could only think absurdly: I thought it would be Phoebe. I thought it would happen at Phoebe’s house.

  “What the heck?” asked Dan Leaf. He didn’t know the song. “What in heck does it mean?”

  It was Cobb who said it and, spoken in his flat New England accent, that cryptic phrase brought a peculiar frisson.

  “‘Five for the symbols at your door.’”

  I rang the bell. Love had one of those bells that ring with a soft, musical chime. I heard the lilt of it echo from the kitchen and fade. I rang again. I knew it was useless, but I rang. There was absolute silence. Then, faint at first but growing nearer, I heard the thin, forlorn miaow of a cat.

  Almost out of control, I started to throw myself at the door.

  “Stop, Westlake.” Cobb’s voice was almost a shout.

  “The window. Dan, you got a knife? Break the lock.”

  Dan Leaf ran to the nearest window. I heard the screen rip and the dry scrape of his knife at the lock. Then he pushed the window up. He scrambled through the window. Cobb and I followed. Even then it didn’t seem right, breaking Love’s screen and clambering with our dirty shoes through her window into her dining room.

  There was nothing in the dining room. Nothing wrong. I knew the house. I ran out into the hall and through the open door into the living room.

  Love’s fat gray cat was ahead of me. It padded to the ottoman under the window and, with a tiny, bewildered miaow, jumped up onto it. It sat there, curling its bushy tail under it, staring at me from flat, yellow eyes.

  But I didn’t look at the cat. There were other things to look at. The little table beside the couch had been tilted over. A porcelain vase, shaped like a Victorian garden basket full of rosebuds, lay broken in two on the carpet. And by its side lay a heavy bronze candlestick. …

  It was the ottoman itself, however, that kept my gaze hypnotized. There was something on it, something concealed beneath the multicolored afghan on which the cat was sitting. Cobb and Dan Leaf hovered behind me. I went to the ottoman. I pulled the afghan away, sending the cat scurrying to safety under the love seat.

  Love Drummond lay there. She was wearing the same gray suit she had worn the night before at the Bray house. Her arms were folded across her breast. The gray skirt was wrinkled up, revealing an expanse of cotton stocking.

  A white, crocheted antimacassar had been wrapped tightly around her face.

  I picked it up. It was sodden wet.

  Wet wool over the mouth and nostrils can asphyxiate in a matter of minutes.

  I looked down at Love’s face. Then I looked away. I’d had enough horror. I couldn’t take any more.

  “Dead?” Cobb’s v
oice came to me in a query that had no hope. “Westlake, is she dead?”

  “Westlake, is she dead-O?” I echoed. “Green grow the rushes-O.”

  5: SIX FOR THE SIX PROUD WALKERS

  CHAPTER XV

  The police ritual, so disastrously familiar now, started once again. Cobb called Grovestown. We searched Love’s cottage from its immaculate attic to its equally immaculate cellar. We found nothing helpful. Love had followed Cobb’s safety instructions to the letter. Every door and window was locked. It was pitifully obvious what had happened. The murderer was someone in whom Love had such complete confidence that she herself had let him or her in through the front door.

  The bronze candlestick had been disastrously handy.

  From my preliminary examination, I gauged that she had died around four o’clock. With a daring the contemplation of which chilled the blood, the murderer must have exploited Dr. Jessup’s murder to commit another. He had known the church bell next door would awaken Love. When she heard a knock on her door and recognized the voice of her visitor, she would have assumed that he too had been awakened by the bell and was probably bringing her news of what had happened. This ruse had given him the opportunity not only to kill Love but also to hide in a place of complete safety from the aroused patrol.

  Grim as it was, however, this information told us nothing new. It only confirmed what the stabbing of Dr. Jessup with Ernesta’s paper knife had already clinched. The murderer belonged to Love’s small circle of good friends. Or, putting it another way, the murderer was one of the Saturday evening picnic party.

  This fifth murder, coming on the heels of the fourth, had plunged both Cobb and myself into a mood of frustrated despair. The more precautions we took, the more wholesale the slaughter became. A carload of Cobb’s men arrived from Grovestown. Eventually an ambulance took the body away. Cobb left one of his assistants in charge, and he, Dan Leaf, and I drove to Grovestown.

  Something had to be done about Love’s cat. It couldn’t be abandoned. I stopped off with it at my house and explained to Rebecca why we had once again failed to show up for the meal she prepared. The arrival of the cat would make Dawn curious, I knew. But I had given up all hope of being able to keep her in the dark any longer. She would have to know the truth now.