It was a full ten minutes before the doctor straightened and gave me the towel. “I think she’ll do now,” he said. “Did anything happen to cause this, Mary?”
“I don’t know, doctor. She had been quiet enough. I had got her the paper and her reading glasses. Then I heard her give a quick breath, and let the paper drop. I called Hugo, and he called you.”
Doctor Stewart stayed until almost seven. By that time Miss Juliet was better, but far from being herself. Most of the time she lay with her eyes closed, not speaking, although she was perfectly conscious; and she refused to take any nourishment whatever. It was only when the doctor was about to leave that she opened her eyes and said a few words.
“I want to see Arthur Glenn.”
“Not tonight, Miss Juliet. Tomorrow will do, won’t it?”
She nodded and closed her eyes again.
I followed the doctor into the hall, and he stood for a few minutes, apparently thinking hard.
“I’m not quite satisfied with the look of things, Miss Adams,” he said. “It seems to me—did you notice the Eagle on the bed? I have an idea that what sent her off was an article stating that a young woman named Brent had been held for questioning by the police on this case.”
“I saw that,” I agreed cautiously.
“Well, that’s understandable. The girl’s grandfather had been a lover of Miss Juliet’s years ago. Of course he is dead now, but it must have been a shock. Quite aside from that, however, is the fact that the police are interrogating anybody, after the coroner’s verdict.”
“I suppose they are not satisfied, doctor.”
He eyed me impatiently. “That’s a mild way of putting it, anyhow! What the hell do you think I’m talking about? Of course they’re not satisfied. What I want you to do is to keep any suspicion of that away from the old lady. Let the police get themselves in the newspapers if they like. Miss Mitchell is an old woman with a bad heart. It may quit on her at any time. I don’t want any more shocks for her; that’s all.”
He turned to go down the stairs, then turned back again. “Has she said anything about making a will?”
“Not to me, doctor.”
“She may. She’s worth money now. There’s an old one somewhere, with legacies for Mary and Hugo in it. Pretty substantial ones, I imagine. But if the will question comes up, let me know, will you? I might get some money for St. Luke’s.”
Well, I suppose that was natural enough. He had got a good bit of money for St. Luke’s, one way and another. But I felt rather resentful as he went down the stairs. I made up my mind to keep my own counsel if the will question came up, and I was unusually tender with Miss Juliet that evening.
I was thoughtful, too. So there were already substantial legacies for the servants!
CHAPTER XII
I had plenty to think of as I prepared Miss Juliet for the night, straightening her bed and once more rubbing her thin old back. I settled her early, for I knew that the Inspector was coming. And it was while I was folding up that copy of the Eagle and putting it away for later reading that something came into my mind. I have had this happen before; I can puzzle over a thing until I am in a state of utter confusion, give it up, and then suddenly have the answer leap into my mind without any apparent reason.
Yet there was a connection, in a way, I dare say. I straighten Miss Juliet’s pillows, and remember that she had hidden something there. I put away the Eagle, and I remember that search in the library for what I was certain Mary had concealed there. And then I am reaching behind the books, finding a dirty scrap of newspaper and leaving it there.
My first impulse was to go down at once and look for it. Hugo, however, was still on the lower floor, and I decided to wait until the house was quiet; or perhaps until the Inspector arrived. One thing I have learned from the police, and that is never to take a risk by being in a hurry.
It was eight o’clock, and the Inspector had not yet arrived, when Miss Juliet roused from what I had hoped was a sleep, to ask me if I had telephoned to Mr. Glenn.
“Not yet,” I said. “Won’t the morning do?”
But she was insistent. He was to come in the morning, and to come prepared to take down something she had to say; so in the end I went down to the telephone and called him.
“What does she want?” he asked. “Have you any idea?”
“She’s going to make a statement of some sort. This affair of the Brent girl seems to have upset her.”
“A statement, eh? What on earth does she know that requires a statement? Have you any idea?”
“No. But she has had something on her mind ever since this thing happened. Something she thinks has a bearing on the case.”
“I’ll come around now,” he said. “I’m on my way to the theater, and I’ll stop in.”
That satisfied Miss Juliet when I told her. She was excited, I thought, and somehow I got the impression that she was frightened also; that she had determined to do something which she was afraid to do. I was standing at the window, watching for the lights of Mr. Glenn’s car, when she spoke to me.
“I used to know Paula Brent’s grandfather,” she said, in her flat voice. “Why should they question Paula? She couldn’t know anything about Herbert.”
“I wouldn’t let that bother you,” I said, as gently as I could while shouting at her. “They’ve questioned a lot of people.”
“Why? If they think it was an accident?”
“Well, you know how these things are. The insurance company wants to be certain. That’s all.”
“Certain of what?”
I hesitated, but I had gone too far. She was watching me, and to save my life I could not think of any evasion.
“Of course it’s nonsense, Miss Mitchell. They simply want to be certain that he—that it didn’t happen by design.”
“That he didn’t kill himself?”
“Yes.”
She closed her eyes, and although it was difficult to be sure in the dim light, I thought I saw tears oozing from beneath her wrinkled lids. But the next moment she apparently felt what I had not even heard, the vibration of Mr. Glenn’s heavy car in the drive, and she visibly braced herself.
“There is Arthur,” she said. “Will you tell him to come up? And then will you go out, my dear, so that I can talk to him?”
I did not go far; only into my room, which adjoined hers. But I could hear nothing after her first words. To tell the truth, I did not care to. Long ago I had made my position clear to the Inspector, that I was no eavesdropper, listening with my ear to a keyhole. I left them there, Mr. Glenn large and resplendent in dinner clothes, with two black pearl studs and a carefully tied black tie, and that frail old creature on the bed. Perhaps she did not realize that I had not yet closed the door when she spoke to him.
“Arthur,” she said. “I have connived at a great wickedness, and now I am going to save my soul.”
It was then that he followed me to the door and closed it behind me.
He must have been very late for the theater that night. The conference lasted about a half hour; if one can call a conference what sounded like expostulation from him, and a monotonous sort of insistence from that walnut bed. Whatever she wanted to do, he was opposed to it. Once or twice, indeed, he raised his voice so that I actually heard what he said.
“I don’t believe it,” he said. “I don’t care what he told you. I don’t believe it.”
And again: “You’ve had a bit of good fortune when you needed it. And if you’ll look back, you’ll see that it was coming to you.”
But I doubt if his arguments had any effect whatever on her. At something before nine he went downstairs and out to the kitchen, and I heard Hugo calling up the back stairs to Mary, telling her to come down. Evidently she refused, and soon after, I heard Mr. Glenn banging out of the front door and driving away in his car.
When I went back to Miss Juliet, she was looking tired, but happier than I had seen her since I came.
“I feel much bette
r, my dear,” she said quietly. “Now I think I shall sleep.”
And sleep she did, for at least part of a night which was to be filled with horror for me.
The Inspector did not arrive until half past nine, but I had no opportunity to get into the library during that interval. Hugo was prowling about the lower floor, now in the long parlor, now in the library. He looked disturbed and anxious, as well he might be if my idea of Miss Juliet’s talk with Mr. Glenn that night was correct. And as I sat in that dim room and checked it over, I myself could find no flaw in it.
I had a complete picture in my mind by that time; of Miss Juliet’s salvaging that copy of the News from wherever Kelly had left it, and of finding the scrap on the floor and placing it inside. Almost certainly the scrap had still been inside when Mary got it and hid it, but when the paper was next moved, it had dropped out behind the books, and it had not been missed.
Then, if that were true, there had been no murder. Herbert Wynne had killed himself, and Miss Juliet’s crime had consisted of withholding that knowledge. “I don’t care what he told you,” Mr. Glenn had said. What could that be but a reference to a possible method for making a suicide look like something else? And, although, as it turned out, I was entirely wrong in a good many things relating to this case, in that, at least, I was correct. Miss Juliet did know about that newspaper device.
At nine thirty the Inspector arrived, bringing a deputy inspector with him. I heard the three men, Hugo in the lead, going to the third floor, and after some considerable time I gathered that the deputy was on the roof of the rear wing, and that they were having trouble getting him off it.
I slipped into the hall and listened.
“All right, Evans,” the Inspector was calling. “We’ll get a ladder.”
I had only time to slip back when the Inspector and Hugo came down the stairs. The Inspector was talking.
“There must be one in the neighborhood. A pruning ladder would do.”
And Hugo’s voice, quiet and respectful: “I believe the Manchesters have one, sir. That’s quite a little distance, however.”
“I guess we can manage it.”
So Hugo knew of that ladder! I sat on the stairs and tried to think that out, until by the sounds outside I gathered that the two men had started for the Manchester place. Then, still confused, I slipped into the library. Confused, because once again the Inspector and I had shifted opinions on the case. That night, searching behind the books for that scrap of paper, I was as convinced as though I had been present that Herbert Wynne had shot himself; and at the same time the Inspector had veered once more to murder, and was out hunting a ladder to prove it.
So absorbed was I that I did not hear the men returning. I was having some difficulty in locating the scrap again; indeed, at first I was certain that it had been removed, and it was necessary to take out certain books and pile them on the floor before I found it. But at one glance I was satisfied. It was not only the proper size and shape, but it was scorched and stained with powder.
I had just tucked it into the waistband of my apron when I heard a sound in the hall, and turned to see Hugo in the doorway. His face gave me a very real shock, for if ever I have seen uncontrolled rage in a human countenance it was in his. He could not even speak for a perceptible time, and then it was an effort.
“What are you looking for, miss?”
“For a book to read,” I said shortly.
He had regained control of himself by that time, and his voice was more civil. “If you have found one, I’ll wait and put out the light.”
“This will do,” I said, and took one at random. It was only later on that I found it to be a highly technical discussion of ancient Greek art, and with it under my arm I marched out. I do not believe that his eyes left me for a second, from the time he discovered me until I turned the bend at the top of the stairs. Then, listening, I heard him go outside again, and I gathered that the unlucky deputy inspector was being rescued. Apparently he and Hugo returned the ladder, for the Inspector came back into the house and took advantage of that chance to talk to me.
“We’re right so far,” he said cheerfully. “Somebody got out of that window Monday night. Hung by his hands and swung over to the roof.”
“You mean that you found prints?” I asked incredulously.
“They’re there, but they’re not clearly readable. As he swung before he let go, he smeared them all over the place. Still, we’ve learned that much.”
But when I gave him the scrap of paper, he looked rather crestfallen.
“Powder stains, all right,” he commented. “Well, your guess is as good as mine on this case. And so’s my bootblack’s! Why would a killer shoot through a newspaper? What’s the idea? Unless you hit it the other day, when you said that a murder might be planned to look like a suicide. And who stood to gain in this case by a suicide?”
He stood turning the scrap of paper over in his hand. There was no reasonable doubt that it was the one shown in the picture, or that it was a corner of the Daily News; and his own idea was that it had not been on the floor when the Squad had gone over the room, that scorched and torn as it was, it had not dropped until possibly the concussion of the flashlight for the pictures had loosened it.
“Would it be possible,” I asked, “for someone to plan a murder so that it would look like an accident, or even suicide? But so that, in case he was suspected, he could produce this paper as a sort of alibi?”
“It would work, of course. But not if the paper is destroyed, young woman.”
And then I told him of the strained relations of the past day or two between Mary and Hugo. He listened gravely.
“And then what?”
“It’s clear, isn’t it? Miss Juliet gave Mary that paper, and she destroyed it. Now Hugo finds you still on the case, and his alibi is gone.”
He whistled, but the next minute he smiled. “And so it was Hugo who got out of the window? And Hugo for whom Paula Brent brought the ladder? It won’t wash, Miss Pinkerton! It won’t wash.”
He went on to say that he had decided to release Paula Brent after I had gone that day; and that a check-up on Mr. Brent as to Monday night showed that he had been out of the city.
“So that’s that. And now where are we?”
Then, without warning, a new element was introduced into the case.
CHAPTER XIII
The doorbell rang, and a little fussy man who gave his name as Henderson was at the door. He wanted to see the Inspector.
“I telephoned and learned that you were here,” he said. “I’d like to see you alone.” He eyed me.
“You can talk before this lady.”
“Well, it’s like this. I didn’t pick up the paper until about an hour ago, and I saw that you had been questioning Paula Brent. I live near the Brents, Inspector, and I may know something. I don’t know how important it is.”
“Everything’s important in this case,” the Inspector said.
Mr. Henderson’s story was brief and to the point. He lived behind the Brents, on the next street; that is, their back yards adjoined, or almost. There was an alley between, and so their garages were across from each other, with only about twenty-five feet, the width of the alley, between them. Next door to the Brent house was the residence of a man named Elliott, also with a garage.
On Monday night Mr. Henderson had taken his family to the theater, arriving home at eleven o’clock. He had put his sedan away and gone to the house when his wife discovered that she had left her purse in the car. Somewhat annoyed, he had gone back to the garage, entering it by the narrow door toward the house.
At that moment Paula Brent drove her coupé into the Brent garage, and stopped the engine. Mr. Henderson was groping in the dark for his wife’s bag, and she could have had no idea that he was there. But apparently someone had either been waiting for her in the garage or just outside of it, for the next moment he heard voices. One was hers; the other was that of Charlie Elliott, the son of the family in t
he next house. There was no doubt as to who it was, for she named him.
“Good heavens, Charlie Elliott! You scared me. What’s the idea?”
“You know the idea, all right. Look here, Paula, haven’t you made a fool of yourself long enough?”
“That’s my business.”
“And how about your people? What would they think if they knew what I do?”
“What do you know?”
Mr. Henderson was interested by that time, and rather thrilled, I gathered. But after that, their voices dropped. They were quarreling, he said, and he was sorry to hear it. Everybody in the neighborhood liked them both, and up to six months before they had been together most of the time.
“Looked like a real love affair,” Mr. Henderson said. “I kind of liked to see it, myself. Good-looking young people, you know, and all that.”
The quarrel was apparently a bitter one, for at last the Elliott boy had said that he was going to settle the matter once for all; see somebody and have it out with him.
“Not now!” Paula said.
“Right now!” was his reply, and he started down the alley. Mr. Henderson listened, and he was certain that Elliott did not go into his place at all, but went on down to the cross-street.
“But wait a minute,” he said. “I’ve got ahead of my story. Before he left, he took something from her. I heard a sort of scuffle, and she said sharply, ‘Give me that. Give me that, do you hear?’ ”
Mr. Henderson stopped to wipe his face with his handkerchief. “I came as a matter of duty, you understand,” he said, in a different tone. “I like them both, and I don’t believe that Charlie Elliott would kill anything. But I talked it over with my wife that night, and when she saw the paper this evening, she insisted that I see you.”
“What time was it when young Elliott started?”
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