I could not see what it was.
CHAPTER XXIII
The reporters had barely gone, to the sound of considerable badinage from one or two cameramen in the drive, when the doorbell rang.
That was nothing new that afternoon. The neighbors, the Manchesters and the Bairds, had already heard our news, by that sort of grapevine telegraph which travels from kitchen to kitchen, and had called to offer condolences and help. Indeed, it had been all I could do to keep Mrs. Manchester from settling in the house that afternoon.
“There should be a woman around,” she said, looking at me with wide protruding eyes.
“I am here. And Mary.”
“Mary!” she said with a sniff.
So I expected a reporter, or a neighbor, when I opened the door. But it was Mr. Henderson who stood on the front porch. Apparently he had already learned of Miss Juliet’s death, for he had his hat in his hand, and he tiptoed in after the manner of most people in a house of death, and spoke with his voice decorously lowered.
“Is Inspector Patton here?” he half whispered. “I’ve been to Headquarters, and they said he was here.”
The Inspector emerged from the darkness of the rear hall.
“I’m here, Henderson. Want to see me?”
“I don’t like to intrude at a time like this, but my wife felt that I should see you. Perhaps if we could go outside and talk …”
“Speak right up. It’s all right.”
“Well, it’s like this.” He stood turning his hat in his hands and hesitating. “I don’t like to repeat gossip myself. Live and let live is my motto. But Mrs. Henderson has a way of receiving people’s confidence. You’d be surprised how much she hears. And lately she has learned something about Paula Brent. It seems that our cook is friendly with the Brent’s butler, and she has a sort of cock-and-bull story that my wife thinks you ought to know.”
Well, it was just one of those things that might be important, or might be simply backstairs talk. As the Inspector said after Henderson left, “I’ve got an idea that that henpecked little man, as well as his wife, has been holding an opera glass on those two houses across the alley ever since the murder.”
But stripped of his apologies and so on, it ran as follows:
According to this butler, about a month before, Paula Brent had gone to a house party. But something turned up over that weekend, and when her family called her by long distance, they found that she was not there. On Sunday night she came home, in her car, and according to the butler there was a terrific scene. Her father shouted and raved like a madman, and one of the things he said was overheard. He said, “If I find out who the man is, I’ll kill him.”
Paula was crying, and so was her mother; and apparently they locked her up that night in her own room. She was locked up for two days. The servants were told that she was ill, but no one entered her room but her mother, and she carried in Paula’s trays. She ate little or nothing, however. The trays went down practically as they went up.
“I didn’t much care about reporting this,” said the little man, “but as a decent citizen I suppose I should.” He seemed to draw a long breath. “Mr. Brent is a good friend and a good neighbor. We’re on the School Board together. Of course it is Mrs. Henderson’s idea that if Mr. Brent had anything to do with all this, he had justification. But she has just heard of Miss Juliet’s death, and what with Charlie Elliott locked up and all—”
The Inspector looked up sharply. “So that’s the talk, is it?”
Mr. Henderson spread his hands. “You can’t keep people from talking, Inspector. Mrs. Henderson heard that Miss Juliet was dead, and she called the Brent house. But it was Paula who came to the telephone, and my wife says she never said a word. Just hung up the receiver. My wife was pretty much upset about it.”
“What are they saying about Miss Juliet’s death?”
“I didn’t listen to it all. But Doctor Stewart called on Mrs. Brent this afternoon, and I believe the butler heard something.”
“Something? What?”
“Well, the doctor seemed to feel that the death wasn’t natural.”
“Oh, damn the doctor!” said the Inspector, with feeling. “And why in God’s name would Mr. Brent do away with Miss Juliet Mitchell?”
The little man cleared his throat. “It’s my wife’s idea that possibly—well, suppose the old lady found Paula Brent in that room that night, as well as Charlie Elliott?”
“And Paula’s father. Quite a crowd, wasn’t it?”
He spread his hands. “I don’t think that, Inspector. I’m only telling you the talk in our neighborhood.”
“Well, go home and tell them to shut up,” said the Inspector savagely. “I don’t need any help on this case; when I do, I’ll ask for it.”
The little man creaked out soon after that, and the Inspector remained thoughtful when he had shut the door behind him. He did not speak again until we were both in the library with the door closed, and he was methodically filling his pipe.
“Funny thing,” he said, “how the public clamors for a victim, isn’t it? Brent was out of town last Monday night; and I don’t mean maybe.”
He took a turn up and down the hall. “What do you make of all this?” he asked suddenly.
“I think,” I said dryly, “that when Miss Juliet died, the defense lost an important witness. And that somebody knew it.”
“A witness for the defense! Now that’s interesting. Why?”
“The old lady didn’t claim to have seen the shot fired, did she? All she saw was the boy in the room.”
“She saw him moving the body.”
“How do you know that? I’d give a good bit to know if she had taken time that night to put on her distance glasses! She couldn’t see across a room without them.”
He was watching me, with that unblinking gaze of his.
“And how about this gossip we’ve just listened to? Suppose young Elliott hadn’t known about that excursion a month ago, and just heard it, last Monday night?”
“Well,” I said stubbornly, “I don’t know anything about this young generation, and thank God I’m not its moral censor. But I’ll never believe Charlie Elliott is guilty of that murder.”
He had been moving uneasily about the room. Now he took his pipe from his mouth and grinned at me.
“You’re an obstinate young woman, Miss Pinkerton,” he said. “But you’ve got a certain amount of common sense, along with your weakness for blond youths! And I’ll admit that several things today have me out on a limb, and with no Paula Brent to come along with a ladder. That old woman was poisoned; I don’t need a laboratory report to tell me that.”
“You found the tablets?”
“I found one of them. That’s good enough. If it hadn’t been for your vindictive act with that ladder, I’d probably have both of them.”
“That ought to let Charlie Elliott out,” I said, with a certain relief. But he merely sucked at his pipe and followed his own line of thought.
“Now we have two murders. The first one is a case for the Grand Jury; no doubt about that. The D. A. has young Elliott in a barrel with the lid nailed on. He’s out for an indictment, and he’ll get it as sure as God made little fishes. But I want no miscarriage of justice, and there isn’t a doubt that if our little friend Henderson goes on the stand with his story of last Monday night in that alley, it’s a case of just too bad for Charlie Elliott. What he took from Paula Brent that night was probably her bag, with the keys to this house in it.
“But I’ve been lying awake at night over this whole affair, and it puzzles me. A furiously jealous man commits a crime of passion. He’s out to kill, and he does it. He’s not a calculating human being; he doesn’t fire a shot while holding a revolver in his handkerchief, and then set the stage to look like a suicide. For one thing, there isn’t time. A shot isn’t like a knife wound. It makes a devil of a lot of noise. Then, here’s this statement of Miss Juliet’s that he moved the body. Maybe you’re right, and she im
agined that. But it will send this boy to the chair just the same.”
“There is another thing, Inspector. How did he know that shot wouldn’t be heard? He probably knew that Miss Juliet was deaf, but what about the servants? I don’t believe he had ever been in this house before. Whoever fired that shot either took a long chance that it wouldn’t be heard, or—knew that it wouldn’t.”
“Meaning Hugo, I suppose?”
“Hugo knew about it. Or knows about it. I haven’t watched him all week for nothing.”
He nodded, and smoked in silence for some little time.
“Just what do you know about this Florence Lenz?” he asked.
“Nothing, except that she’s a hussy.”
He threw back his head and laughed. But he sobered almost at once. “Nevertheless, hussy or no hussy,” he said, “it might be important to find out, for example, if she knew by any chance that Paula Brent had married Herbert Wynne.”
“What?” I screeched. “Married him!”
“She did, indeed,” he said gravely. “She has kept her secret pretty well, but that accounts for that weekend excursion of hers. It’s a pity we can’t see the Henderson woman’s face when she learns it, isn’t it? Yes, she married him, and one of the things she has been trying to get from this house is her wedding certificate, poor child. I have a suspicion that she knew that marriage had been a mistake, even before he was killed. But that’s what she did, and—if it relieves your mind—that is why she carried those keys.”
“But why break in for that certificate? I don’t understand. Surely she didn’t need a certificate to prove the marriage?”
“I’ve been thinking it over, and the only explanation I have is that they were married at night, possibly in some remote place he had selected, and that she was excited or frightened, and didn’t even know where it was done.”
“Where did you find it? The certificate? I suppose you have found it?”
“I did, and by the way, I owe you a new pair of surgical scissors. It was behind the baseboard at the head of the bed. Herbert had ripped off the molding and dropped it there. I had the devil of a time fishing it out.”
“And there was no letter?” I asked.
“There was a letter, but it doesn’t tell us much. I’ll come to that in due time. Let’s keep on with this girl, Paula. Now, if she had done the normal thing, she’d have told that at the start. But few of us do the normal thing when we’re frightened, and she was pretty thoroughly scared. For one thing, while she didn’t believe young Elliott had killed Herbert Wynne, she wasn’t sure. She isn’t sure even now. She only has his word for it. And she was in dead wrong with her people. For whatever reason, Wynne wanted that marriage kept secret; the minute he died, she wanted that certificate to show her people. But it’s a curious bit of psychology that people in trouble always believe that the police are against them. We’d have turned up that preacher for her, but does she tell us? She does not.
“Let’s follow her a bit. She’s in trouble, all right. On Tuesday night she gets into this house and scares you into a fit. Scares herself, tool On Wednesday she tells Charlie Elliott the whole story, and he makes a try, but Florence runs him off the place. And on Thursday he finally makes the grade, and we get him. He may be guilty of the murder; guilty as hell. Or he may be as innocent as an unborn babe. But we’ve got him.”
“But the letter!” I said impatiently. “Doesn’t that tell anything?”
“It does and it doesn’t. I’m not going into that too far just now. But I’ll tell you this. The whole thing started as an insurance swindle, and nothing else. He—Herbert—was to take out a considerable sum of straight life insurance. It is cheap at his age; and the idea was to arrange a drowning; or rather a pseudodrowning. It was his own scheme at first. He wanted a lump sum for carrying it out; enough to get away, and a payment later to make a start somewhere else. He went to Hugo with it, and at first Hugo refused. Then he agreed, I suppose, for two reasons. It would provide for the old lady in her need, and it would ensure his legacy, and Mary’s.
“But here’s the devil of it. Hugo gave him the money for the premiums, either from his own savings or borrowed elsewhere. He didn’t know, and in the end it was Hugo this boy was afraid of. You see, he had held up the plan, and Hugo didn’t like it. Miss Juliet was about to lose her home.
“He had got his advance money, and he had gone into the market with it. But the market had gone down, and he didn’t want to ‘die’ until he could get his money out again, and a little more. For by that time he had met Paula Brent, and fallen in love with her. You can see how it was; the boy keeps postponing the date of his pretended death by drowning. The summer goes by, the obvious time for such a trick, and still he hasn’t done it. What’s more, he is apparently stalling. He’s fallen in love, and it looks as though he might quit the game. Hugo takes to watching him, and he knows that he’s out with this girl at night a good bit.
“What’s more, he may marry her! That is fatal to the scheme; his wife becomes his heir, and not the old lady. That’s why Herbert hid the certificate and swore Paula to secrecy, although I doubt if the girl knew anything about the plot. And no wonder he was rather cheery on that last night! He could pull that drowning as before, but Paula would get the money. They could ship off to Europe or South America, and live happily ever after. Only he waited a day or two too long.”
“And Hugo murdered him, after all?”
“I haven’t said that, have I?” he said. He got up and shook the ashes out of his pipe. “If Glenn gets here within an hour or so, tell him to call me up, will you? I’m taking Hugo with me. And here’s a last thought for you. Suppose the Lenz girl knew about this plot, and expected to marry him and share the profits? It’s an interesting idea, isn’t it?”
But I noticed that he had told me nothing about what those two reporters had found on the roof.
CHAPTER XXIV
When I went upstairs again, the morticians, as they call themselves now, had been at work for some time in Miss Juliet’s room, and soon after, they called me in to look at her. All traces of her sickness and trouble had disappeared, and she lay, like an old marble statue, in her wide walnut bed. They had put a little color on her face and arranged the lights, and when they called me in, I was almost startled. She had become the great lady again, majestic and almost beautiful. It was not hard to believe that she had once been a beauty, and that Paula Brent’s grandfather had been passionately in love with her.
Mr. Glenn did not arrive until five o’clock, and I gave him the Inspector’s message. He called up at once, and I heard him saying that something was in Miss Juliet’s box at the bank, and that he would locate it in the morning.
Hugo had not returned, and I was glad that there was someone in the house besides Mary, strangely set and brooding in her kitchen. For the afternoon papers had carried the notice of Miss Juliet’s death, and almost immediately people had commenced to arrive. They came in numbers and dignity, these elderly folk, some merely leaving their cards, others coming in. Some arrived in cars, but here and there was an ancient victoria, used only for ceremonial occasions, and driven by an equally ancient coachman in shabby livery. When they came in, it was with the careful movements and the lowered voices proper to such occasions. Old gentlemen leaning on sticks, elderly woman rustling after the fashion of years ago, they came and went, a little sad, a little alarmed; for the death of the aged was to most of them a warning that they themselves had not long to live, that soon the same decorous gathering would be for them.
Almost none of them asked to see the old lady.
I was rather surprised, however, to find Mr. Henderson among those who did so. Led by the doctor, he came up and stood by the bed, in silence at first.
“Knew her when I was a boy,” he said jerkily. “They say she grew hard, but she wasn’t hard then. Beautiful, she was.”
He tiptoed out on creaking shoes, but as he went, he gave a sharp look at the stairs to the third floor.
“It’s a pity she didn’t go before that happened,” he said.
I was surprised to see tears in his eyes as he creaked down the stairs again. I have often thought of him since, that little man; finding his bit of romance vicariously in the Miss Juliets and the Paula Brents, and living his drab suppressed existence with the woman he always referred to as “my wife.”
And we were not through with him. I was to see him once more before anonymity closed down on him, and that under strange and tragic circumstances.
Rather to my surprise Hugo was back and served the dinner that night. Mr. Glenn paid little attention to him, being apparently absorbed in his own thoughts. But once, when Hugo was out of the room, he spoke about him.
“Looks pretty well broken,” he said. “Aged, don’t you think?”
“Very much,” I agreed.
“What do the police want with him anyhow?” he said irritably. “I don’t suppose they think for a minute that he had anything to do with what happened here today. If anything did happen!”
“You don’t think it did?”
“I think Stewart is pretty excitable. After all, the old lady has had angina for a long time. She was due to go soon, in any event. And she was pretty feeble when I left about noon.”
Then Hugo returned, and nothing more was said.
Soon after that the telephone rang in the hall, and I answered it. It was Inspector Patton.
“Miss Adams?”
“Yes, doctor.”
“Nothing doing with the old man. He won’t talk. But I’ve got an idea that he’ll try to get word to somebody; he knows something, or suspects something. Or he may come back here. I rather think he will. And be on hand at eight thirty. I’m bringing Elliott up.”
“Very well, doctor,” I said. “I shall probably be free tomorrow.”
“And again you may not, Miss Pinkerton!” he said, almost blithely for him, and hung up the receiver.
We finished the meal in comparative silence. To tell the truth, it was an indifferent meal indifferently served, for the inevitable flowers had commenced to arrive, and there were long intervals while Hugo received boxes, signed for them and took them back to the pantry.
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