“You didn’t need to,” Maria said tensely. “In fact, you have found out just what I expected you would. I’ll contact you again through Mr. Three-Shot when I want you. Good-bye.”
She hung up, rubbed her slender hands slowly. The one thing she was waiting for now was the afternoon....
* * * *
It was towards mid-afternoon when the party began to gather. As they arrived Walters conducted them to the library, until at last every requested guest was present. With her usual weakness for a dramatic entrance Maria arrived last, motioned Walters and Lucy the housemaid inside the room, then closed the door. With a sedate step she walked to the desk, sat down, and interlocked her fingers. Her cold blue eyes looked at each of the faces in turn, from lawyer Johnson’s pince-nezed visage to Alice’s troubled features.
“Each one of you, in some way or other—with the exception of Mr. Johnson here—has been the victim of my rather inquisitive activities recently,” Maria said in a quiet voice. “For that reason each one of you is entitled to an explanation. That is why you are here....”
She got up, began to pace slowly up and down while she tugged at her watch-chain.
“I have been singularly impressed throughout my whole search by the fact that my brother Ralph was a most disliked man. It seems more than obvious, now that I have heard it from so many sources, that he was a tyrant—a ruthless businessman with little or no regard for anything save his own advancement and standing. Of all of you gathered here, you, Janet, seemed the least bitter—and you, Alice, threw me off the scent for a long time with your professed love for Ralph. I realize now that you had no such love—that you did it for another reason. But Patricia—honest, outspoken, headstrong, said outright on the first day I came here that she hated her father. Had you all been so frank in your condemnation I might have been saved a lot of trouble.... Patricia is a girl of sterling decency.”
The assembly glanced at each other. Then Alice cleared her throat.
“Yes, Maria dear, you are right. Ralph was not all—all a husband should have been....”
“On the night I found you in this library,” Maria resumed, her eyes fixed on Alice, “you were not here for the purpose of recalling past events and memories—even though you had cleverly built up to that impression in your earlier conversation as a safeguard against being caught in the library later. So, I found you in here, searching for one thing only—a spring! You had realized I was determined to solve the mystery of Ralph’s death—and only the finding of that spring, which had originally graced some kind of mechanism, possibly a typewriter—could throw a spanner in the works from the start. I do not presume it was the first time you had looked for it, but I do realize—and did—that it suddenly became a matter of extreme urgency when you saw how determined I was.... You did not find it, but I did, lodging in a crevice.... You, Alice, have known from the very start who killed my brother!”
She sat in silence, her lips tight.
“Isn’t that a dangerous accusation?” Janet demanded hotly. “After all—”
“Sit down!” Maria commanded, as the girl half rose. “I will come to you later....” She looked round again on the faces. “Excluding Mr. Johnson, who is here solely to see and hear my explanation of the mystery, it is clear that each one of you have known from the very start who killed my brother! Only one was absent from this circle of crime, and that one was Patricia, who at first I was inclined to suspect more than any of you. Yes, you have protected each other by common assent, believing my brother was worthy of death.”
The silence fell again. Johnson adjusted his glasses and breathed a little more quickly.
Maria turned. “First, Mr. Wade, I will come to you. You hated my brother because he found out by subtle methods that you and Janet were as good as engaged; and had he wished to do so my brother could have done to you what he did to Arthur Salter—but he didn’t. He died before he had the chance.”
“He deserved to die, Miss Black!” Wade retorted. “But I give you my solemn word that I did not kill him.”
“I know you didn’t kill him,” Maria replied. “But you know who did, through Janet. I believe that had you not been forestalled, you would have killed my brother one day. As it is, you are innocent, and your alibi checks exactly. When my brother died you knew—as you did too, Janet—that the chance of him crushing either or both of you was gone for good. You, Janet, felt free to go on with your own career and pursue your romance in your leisure moments, defeating Montagu by a simple disguise. Your father, fanatically determined to maintain his high social standing at all costs, was dead....”
“I had different views to father, Aunt,” Janet said seriously. “Peter and I were afraid of dad jumping on us in the way he had jumped on Pat’s boy friend, just because he didn’t like her associating with somebody whom he thought to be of a lower social standing.”
“But Patricia has much of her father in her,” Maria mused. “She refused to obey his dictatorial methods and married her young man just the same, secretly. When he was sent to prison, she even got him out of that and worked desperately to try and clear his name. Patricia, who had the most real cause to loathe her father, was the one who did not think of personal retaliation—and because of her frank, honest outlook you left her out of your council of crime—though it was her misadventures that fired the lot of you into action. You knew that the blows her father had struck at her might just as easily strike at any of you. You realized that over this family there hung a shadow—a rod of iron from which only sudden death or murder could release you.... The power of my brother extended not only over his family but to all the branches beyond it...to Mr. Wade, to Miss Conway, to Hugo Ransome.... Never has Patricia known who really killed her father, nor I fancy does her husband. Her antipathy towards me when I first came was purely because she thought I might find out about her efforts connected with her husband’s escape from the prison farm.”
Maria turned and walked over to where Mary, Janet’s maid, was seated.
“Mary, you are another victim of my brother’s activities. At one time you and your parents had a prosperous hardware business in Columbus, Ohio, had you not?”
She looked surprised. “Why, yes. But—but Mr. Black opened up a store there. He bought out my father and mother, failed to give the full amount of compensation, and— Well, I guess they died from hardship and disappointments,” she added grimly. “I made up my mind to kill Black. I made everything tend that way! When Miss Black came on a singing tour I asked her for the job of maid, and got it, having heard of it through a friend of mine. I got the job, but I did it with the sole intention of furthering my way to smashing Black if I could ever get near enough.”
“Until you found that Miss Black had as much a grievance against her father as you had?” Maria demanded.
Mary nodded slowly. “I had far more of a grievance than her. But how do you know all this?
“I remembered Janet telling me where she had first met you, and I also remembered her telling me that your parents were dead. I pieced the whole thing together with a little outside aid....” Maria pondered a moment. “Tell me, Mary, how did you know exactly what was wrong with Miss Black’s typewriter? You knew for instance that it had a missing spring. How did you know it was the spring?”
“Oh, I—I just knew, that’s all.” The girl looked rather startled. “From my earlier business life I know a bit about machines, and when I looked at the typewriter I saw what was wrong. I told that to the typewriter people—” She broke off. “Listen, I know what you’re thinking! But I didn’t do it! Honest I didn’t!”
“But you do know that the spring from that machine was the self-same one instrumental in murdering my brother!” Maria snapped. “And I will go further.... When in the dressing room at the theater the other night I mentioned to your mistress that her voice could smash a wine glass, what did you do? You became agitated, dropped the hairbrush. You were, to use your own expression, ‘all thumbs’! That little display of e
motion convinced me you fitted into the pattern somewhere— But you, Janet”—Maria swung to her—“never lost your nerve. Not that I expected you to. Your composure is a marvelous quality, my dear.”
“Are you implying—?” Janet began, but Maria cut her short.
“I am not implying, Janet; I am telling you that you have always known your voice could do tricks! You knew because you had been told so long before I found it out.... You, Janet, as surely murdered your father as though you had stuck the gun at his head! You loaned your voice in order that he might die! When you reached high C your father’s .38 automatic was fired by the snapping of a taut wire, while a typewriter spring pulled the trigger....” Maria shrugged, her face like granite. “But I have no need to detail the method used: you know all about it, every one of you in the family!”
“Supposing I did use my voice to kill him?” Janet cried bitterly. “He had to die, I tell you! He tyrannized us all! He was merciless.... But I didn’t kill him!” she shouted. “I did not kill him, you hear?”
“But you knew that when you reached high C you had provided the means of killing him!” Maria snapped back. She stood for a moment glaring down on the girl, then she relaxed a little and added coldly, “No, Janet, you did not plan the murder, I know that. That was your work, Miss Conway!”
Jean Conway looked surprised, then her brightly intelligent face became strained. “I? But how could I have—”
“I repeat, you planned it! You found a plot for a play, and in finding it you also found the perfect way of disposing of my brother; even more so when you knew his daughter was a singer with a high C voice. You met Richard and fell in love with him.... But first things first, Miss Conway. You told me the other afternoon that your brother Alfred had taken up a position with Edward Layton and Associates of England, the big steel people....”
“Right!” Jean nodded.
“It is not right!” Maria retorted. “The directory assures me—even as I thought at first from my own knowledge of England—that there is no such firm as Edward Layton and Associates in England. Again, no English firm ever uses the term ‘Associates,’ that is exclusively American. I suspected that you were flying away from the truth the moment you mentioned the ‘Associates.’ For that you have your lack of English knowledge to thank....Your brother died, Miss Conway! That is the only solution. And that vengeance which you said you had retracted still smoldered inside you. Am I right?”
As the girl remained silent, biting her lip, Maria went on:
“You were torn between two things, as I see it. On the one hand you loved Richard sincerely, and on the other you wanted to destroy his father—”
“Right, I did!” Jean said defiantly, flinging up her head. “And when I saw the way to do it—when I knew how he had ruled this whole family with such despotic power—I too felt it was right that he should die. And he did die! I planned it! I came to see Dick on the day of the ‘suicide,’ if you remember. I sent up a needless note to him and then came into this library and fixed up the gun and taut wire. Only I could do it, knowing the science of sound.”
“You fixed the gun, the wire, the spring—everything?” Maria asked quietly.
“Everything! By the time Walters came back I was in the hall again and nobody was any the wiser.”
“And, I believe you said, you heard the typewriter clicking in the lounge?”
“Quite clearly. I’ve told you that before.”
“I know,” Maria said calmly, “and that is where your story fell to pieces. Janet was using Patricia’s machine on that day, and that machine is noiseless!”
“Noiseless!” The color ebbed from Jean’s cheeks. “But—but I—”
“You did not hear it, and you did not enter this library,” Maria stated implacably. “I have satisfied myself that it would be quite impossible to fix up that gun in anything under half an hour at least, not to make a thorough job of it. You had only ten minutes at the most. No, Miss Conway, you realized the other day that I was looking into things. You realized that there was a slim chance that you might be able to take the blame on yourself by turning your quite legitimate call on Richard that afternoon to account. It was not a needless note you sent up to him: the whole thing was quite normal. But you have tried to turn it to account to save another.... You did plan it out, however. I pieced the whole thing together when you let slip the comment about a ‘taut wire’ the other afternoon. Obviously it was uppermost in your mind, and you had said it before you realized it. Your sudden change of subject did not throw me off, Miss Conway.”
She made a helpless little gesture. “Yes—yes, I guess it did slip out.... I’m afraid you are too smart for me, Miss Black.”
“The one who fixed the gun is, in a sense, no more of a murderer than any of you—and yet in a point of law might be considered the real culprit. You—Richard! I’m afraid Jean’s efforts to shield you have proved unavailing.”
“Me?” He sat up with a start; then he looked contemptuous. “Don’t be absurd, Aunt! Don’t you think this farce has gone far enough?”
“Probably you hope it has,” she answered, unsmiling. “Do you recall that upon the day Jean called and sent up a note to you concerning your joint play, you told Walters to fetch you a book from the library; then on second thought decided to get it for yourself?”
His expression began to change. “Yes—sure,” he said slowly. “I suppose Walters told you?”
“He did. You came down here later for the book, I suppose?”
“Yes.”
“It was Electrical Reactions, was it not?”
“Yes,” he said shortly. “But I don’t see—”
“But I did when I read that book!” Maria retorted. “You and Jean both withheld the title from me—but you had mentioned it to Walters, Richard, so I made it my business to read it. There, set out perfectly, was the more technical side of sound, explaining in detail how a taut wire can be snapped by a sound wave. It even gave the caliber of the wire—all the details. I realized then that you and Jean had worked together from this textbook and hatched your plot. It seemed to me that the point you wanted to correct—in the note Jean had sent up to you—demanded this book. It was too obvious a clue to miss. You told Walters unthinkingly to get the book. Then you thought better of it— However, you did finally get the book, and then what did you do?”
“I gave it to Jean,” he said quickly.
“Then she still has it?”
“Er—yes, I guess so.”
“You have a bad memory, Richard, or else are a poor liar. I have just told you I read it myself. It is there on the shelf!”
He gestured impatiently. “So what? I’d forgotten to— No, I remember now. Jean brought it back.”
“When?” Maria asked coldly.
“I don’t remember exactly. It was—”
“Maybe I can save you the trouble of further invention, Richard. You did not lend the book to Jean at all. You no doubt checked up on the point at issue and then told her personally. That does not concern me. What does concern me is that you gave the story of the book to Walters in order to provide yourself with a pretext for entering the library for some time during the afternoon. You made a mistake in mentioning the title of the book, though, for it got back to me— Though Walters, as you imagined, would think no more of it. You came in here later on in the afternoon and fixed the gun, arranged every detail. You needed a chair and a cushion to stand on....”
Dick opened his mouth to speak, then shut it again.
“You tried to confuse your trail where you could—for that matter all of you have done so.” Maria looked round slowly on the set faces. “You, Richard, outdid yourself when you thought I was getting dangerously close. You tried to switch things over to Patricia by producing a carbon copy of the plot presumably found among her papers. I realized that that was a hasty move on your part because, had you reflected, you would have remembered that on the day of the ‘suicide’ Patricia was helping her husband to escape
from Jamestown.... You tried to pin the guilt on her at the last moment because you knew that with her out of the way in prison I was not in a position to question her! It was a despicable thing to do—even though I suppose you had some other plan for detaching her from the main issue later on when she was freed from the law.”
Dick drummed on the arms of his chair for a moment. Then he said shortly:
“And you think that I would have sent for you, that I would even say it was murder, if I had had a hand in it? Be reasonable, Aunt!”
“I’ll tell you why you did that,” Maria replied. “You realized—all of you realized—from Mr. Johnson’s remarks when the will was read that he would state it as his private opinion that my brother was murdered. You knew, probably because my brother had often mentioned the fact, that I have a penchant for criminology. You knew I might look into it! You took the offensive by coming right out into the open with the admission that it was murder, thereby hoping to take me off my guard right at the start. From then on all of you followed a prearranged plan, each one of you confusing the others’ trail in the hope that I would finally lose myself in a blind alley. I cannot believe that you devised all this for my especial benefit, however. The obvious solution is that you planned it that way in case the police questioned the suicide theory.... And indeed, all would have gone well for you had you been able to find that missing spring. I would probably never have got started. But I did find the spring, and moved right through the maze you had all so cunningly prepared in advance for a possible police enquiry. Even Janet invented a reporter who never existed in the hope of tripping me up. She too, used the ‘Patricia’ angle—giving her mythical reporter thick glasses in order to hint at the fact that said reporter was Patricia in disguise, using the thick glasses to hide her rather rare shade of eyes....
“But that did not ring true to me, Janet, because I had long since convinced myself that of all the people in on this—this council of death, Patricia alone was an absentee. Your studied efforts to throw guilt on to her was the main hole in the defense.... As I had hoped, my move of putting her in police custody made two of you—you, Janet, and you, Richard—try and pin blame on her because she was out of my reach. And since it was not part of your original plan, it was hasty in both cases and did a good deal to let you down....”
Black Maria, M. A.: A Classic Crime Novel Page 23