by Helen Reilly
Mr. Luttrell hadn’t gone back to the village. The town prosecutor had stopped his car in front of the house next door. Damien could see him clearly through the leafless trees. Eleanor Mont had said that a Mrs. Cambell lived there. Luttrell was talking to a woman who was probably Mrs. Cambell at the edge of the lawn. It wasn’t Luttrell’s lingering that startled her, or his conversation piece with a neighbor of the Monts. It was what Luttrell was doing. He was down on one knee, snapping his fingers at a large yellow cat stalking toward him across the lawn. The cat rolled over at his feet, and Luttrell picked it up and began to stroke it.
Damien felt suddenly cold. She moved away from the window with a shiver. Linda’s attempt to cover for Jancy, account for the scratch on her hand, hadn’t gone down with the mild Mr. Luttrell. He was suspicious, or he wouldn’t have stopped at the Cambell woman’s.
Eleanor Mont and Roger Hammond had gone upstairs after Jancy, and Linda and Oliver and St. George and Damien were still in the hall, when the front doorbell rang. It rang loudly. The peal held them suspended in a small whirlpool of sound. Oliver said, his head at an angle, “I’d better see who it is,” and went to the front door and pulled it wide.
A state trooper was standing on the broad step outside, big and soldierly in his dark uniform and black polished boots. “Mr. Mont?” he asked, and when Oliver nodded, the trooper said, “Sergeant sent me, Mr. Mont. Crowd’s beginning to gather over at the Giles cottage. Kids, too— boys. We’re through with it, anyhow,” he waved a hand, “and the sergeant thought it would be safer over here.”
Damien looked where Oliver and the trooper were looking, and the fear that had been in the others earlier was suddenly in her, crawling, deadly, as she examined detail after detail. It couldn’t be. It was. There was no doubt about it. The car the trooper had brought back from Anne Giles’s cottage was the car in which Oliver had driven a woman away from the Mont house last night. She had been mistaken. The woman with him hadn’t been Jancy. It had been Anne Giles. Oliver was the man who had been with Anne Giles over in the cottage in which she had been killed.
Chapter Five
Telltale Fingerprints
"Four hundred and sixty-nine yards in a northerly direction, easterly, nine hundred and eighty-two feet— A very nice property, Miss Carey, very nice indeed." In his office at the bank the lawyer, Mr. Silver, complacently tapped papers on the desk in front of him.
Damien dragged her thoughts back into the room, tried to give her attention to what Mr. Silver was saying. It was after two o'clock in the afternoon, and she hadn’t yet had a chance to speak to Oliver Mont. As soon as the trooper who brought Anne Giles's car back was gone Oliver had taken Linda home, concerned for her, saying to her tenderly, “You've got to get some rest, baby. You’re not as strong as you think. You’re dead on your feet. Come on, I'll walk you over." After that he had disappeared. So had the others. Damien hadn’t talked to any of the Monts before she had called a cab and driven into town.
The darkness of Arroways had followed her here into the bare, cheerful office. She couldn’t escape it. A woman had been killed. Her death was murder. The police—Luttrell—said that the man with Anne Giles in her cottage the night before was in all probability her murderer. Oliver Mont had been with Anne Giles, and she knew it. It was her responsibility. Damien smoothed blue suede gloves against a taut knee, the mellifluous murmur of the lawyer's voice empty in her ears. Why did she hesitate? Why not go to Mr. Luttrell when she left the bank and tell him what she knew? She had no obligation to the Monts, any of them. She had an obligation not to conceal vital knowledge. And yet the role of informer was a revolting one. But she would have to do something. She would talk to Oliver Mont first, see what he had to say, give him his chance—and then decide? Yes, that was the thing to do.
Meanwhile she had her own affairs to attend to. They were pressing. She thought of Jane, cooped up in the dark little New York apartment, of the light and air Jane needed. The doctors had been emphatic about that. “Get Miss Towle out of the city, preferably into a warmer climate, for the winter." But warmth and sunshine cost money, and she had none, and the heritage to which she had pinned her hopes wasn’t going to provide her with any. Far from it.
Damien had been with Mr. Silver for almost three tiresome hours. Wrapped up in labyrinthian verbiage a good deal of what he said went past her, but she gathered that Arroways was free and clear. All at once she said, startling him by the suddenness of her question, “I don't know anything about such things, Mr. Silver, but—mortgages. I mean, if there isn’t any, couldn’t I get one?”
“Well, now, let me see." Mr. Silver peered at her over his glasses. She was a striking girl. Fine eyes. Looked a bit like her mother as he remembered Susan Mont. Flighty, though, couldn’t keep her mind on business. Ought to be married, girl like that, and not working at a job in New York City. Horrible place. “You’re in need of ready cash, Miss Carey?’’
“Very,’’ Damien said dryly, softening trenchancy with, “I have a cousin who lives with me. She kept house for my father while he was alive, and she needs doctors and a change of air. And my job doesn't pay much, and everything is so high—’’
Mr. Silver signified benignly that he understood. He had already told her, somewhat shocked by her hurry to get rid of a place that had been in her family for generations, that as far as the chances of a quick sale of Arroways went, they were slight. Houses of tnat size were very sel* dom in demand. A mortgage was different. “How long are you going to be in Eastwalk, Miss Carey?”
“I had planned to go back to New York today.”
“I see. If you could wait until—say, Tuesday, yes, Tuesday. There’s a meeting of the bank’s board of directors on Monday afternoon and I think a mortgage might possibly be arranged.”
Damien hesitated. The Black Horse Inn was full, and she hated the thought of remaining on in the Mont house, but it would only be for one more night. By tomorrow, Sunday, the hunters would begin to shove off, and she could probably get a room there. And it would be nice to go back home with a check in her wallet, nice to have money again. “Yes,” she said, “I can wait.”
Out in the town streets under cold gray skies her momentary flicker of cheerfulness died. People everywhere were talking of Anne Giles, in knots on the pavement, in the stationery store where she bought cigarettes and a couple of reprints, on the bridge. “Yop, got her throat cut,” a man blocking Damien’s path said with relish. She stepped ostentatiously into the gutter with an angry glance. Vultures feeding greedily at the trough of sensation, she thought. But it wasn’t actually that. They weren’t close to it, it was like an exciting movie sequence, without reality. She had a cup of coffee and a sandwich at a beanery on Main Street and then walked back to Arroways instead of taking a cab. Her own name had been mentioned in the little restaurant. “The Mont house has changed hands, did you hear? . . . Don’t tell me . .. Sure thing. The granddaughter got it. Name’s Carey. The Monts must be furious. I guess old Maria softened up at the end, before she kicked off.”
The Monts must be furious— They had shown no sign of it, Damien decided, swinging up the hill at a fast pace— but then they had shown very little sign of anything. She might have been a week-end guest whom they didn’t know too well. Dry leaves swirled across the path. Marshal facts before she faced Oliver Mont, do a little straight thinking. Had there or had there not been anything between Oliver and Anne Giles? She thought again, coldly and objectively, of the glimpse of them she had caught in her grandmother’s apartment more than six months ago. Had Anne Giles perhaps been comforting Oliver, trying to assuage his grief at the approaching death of the woman he had been taught to think of as his grandmother? It was scarcely likely. Anne Giles was not what one would call a woman who dispensed comfort, nor for the matter of that was Oliver a man who would accept that sort of solace. He was too individual, too strong. If he had to suffer he would do it alone—and, anyhow, from what she had gath« ered, he hadn’t been too wrapped up in Mari
a. He had refused to enter Mont Fabrics, had gone into business for himself early. There had apparently been ructions. All right, then. Suppose he had been in love with Anne Giles, although he was engaged to Linda. He might have tired of the older woman— Damien gave her head a shake. Murder was a rather drastic way of ending a distasteful relationship.
All too soon Arroways loomed up in front of her on top of the ridge, planted solidly in its gardens as though it had grown there out of its strength, massive and towering and secretive, like some great prehistoric beast that might suddenly move, sluggishly and devouringly, of its own volition. Walking up the drive and continuing to think over the things that had happened yesterday, she recognized that there had been strong emotional undercut rents for which there was no adequate explanation; Eleanor Mont’s covert life-and-death air all evening, for instance—Mary Queen of Scots on the way to the scaffold— Jancy’s hatred of the dead woman, not dislike, hatred, a white heat of it—
She let herself in quietly through the big front door, and at once the dark air was around her, air that had some principle of darkness in itself and wasn't like the air outside, in other houses. Oliver was there. So were Eleanor and Hiram St. George. They were in the library, talking in low voices. The talk stopped abruptly as she appeared on the threshold. The sudden silence was a door shut in the face of an intruder. Damien said with stupid vivacity, “I walked back from town. It's getting colder out," and three new faces, ones that hadn’t been there before, polite, inquiring, were turned toward her.
“Come in and sit down,” Oliver moved a chair courteously. “Finished your business at the bank?”
Damien said yes to the question, no to the proffered chair. “I think I'll go up to my room and write some letters." She was embarrassed, uncomfortable, turned quickly away.
Upstairs in the big bedroom on the second floor she wandered aimlessly around, hating the house, hating her position in it, angry at the necessity that made her force herself on Oliver Mont, at the way she had babbled like a schoolgirl down there in the library. Why had they stopped talking so suddenly when they saw her? She stared soberly at her reflection in a long mirror, went to the dressing-table, and used her compact. She had to talk to Oliver. She also had to tell Eleanor Mont that she was going to have to stay on in the house for another night. Oak leaves tapped at the north window. She swung nervously, looked through the window, and saw Oliver Mont. He was strolling across the lawns in the direction of the stables. He was alone. This was her opportunity.
Damien threw on her coat and went downstairs. Hiram St. George and Oliver’s mother were still in the library. She heard St. George give that cough of his and the murmur of Eleanor Mont’s voice. The door was closed now. There was a man close to it. It was Roger Hammond, Jancy's husband. He turned, saw her, and came forward. Hammond had been standing quite close to the shut library door. Had he by any chance been listening to what went on inside? No, Damien thought, I mustn't. Vm beginning to be suspicious of everyone and everything. Roger Hammond greeted her cordially, shaking her hand and saying, “We were all in such a stew this morning, I' didn't have a chance to say how do you do, Miss Carey. I'm glad to meet you. I hope you’re going to enjoy Arroways as much as we have."
His fine eyes were like eyes on a dish, compelling your attention out of their context, perhaps because they were so fine, so shapely and liquid and clear. His other features were like that, too, his nose, his mouth, each perfect in its way. The over-all impression was a sort of nullity. Damien thanked him and asked, with some inner hesitation, how Jancy was. Hammond said, “Feeling much better, thanks,” and she said she was glad and let herself out.
There was no sign of Oliver in the vicinity of the stables. She walked on. Then she saw him, beyond the tennis court, walking slowly and glancing around him, his head bare, his hands thrust into the pockets of a tan gabardine raincoat.
“Mr. Monti” At the sound of her voice Oliver turned, quickly, as though she had startled, interrupted, him.
“Oh, Miss Carey. What is it? Can I do something for you?” He put a smile over—had it been discomfiture? It took the bleakness out of his face, made him look younger, more approachable.
Damien said, “I've got to talk to you,” and his smile vanished. He gave her a long considering look, and nodded.
“I thought you might,” he said quietly. “Let’s go inside.”
He led the way past the pear tree with the ladder propped against it, into the little house on the rise above the tennis court, closed the door. It was chilly in the pretty living-room with chintz draperies at the windows and flowered chairs and silky old Orientals scattered over a milky lavender-blue floor. There was a dart board on the wall opposite the fireplace. Bushes obscured the windows to the west so that the light was dim. Oliver switched on lamps. ,
Damien took a rush at it, looking past, rather than at him. Now that the moment had come, she dreaded it. “Mr. Mont, I was at my window last night at around half past twelve. I saw you driving away with a woman. I knew, from Miss St. George, that your sister wasn’t in her room, thought it was your sister who was with you, that you had found her and were taking her over to the sanitarium. It wasn’t your sister, was it? And it wasn’t your car. It was Miss Giles’s car, and Miss Giles was in it. You drove Miss Giles over to that cottage of hers last night, didn’t you?”
Oliver had listened contemplatively, his eyes steady on hers. He sighed. Twisting a ladder-back chair around he sat down facing her above arms folded along the back.
“I was afraid of this," he said, offering her a cigarette and when she refused, lighting one himself. “Yes, I thought I saw someone at one of the upstairs windows. You’re right, Miss Carey. I did drive Anne over to her cottage last night.”
And that seemed to be all. He kept on looking at Damien equably. She was completely and utterly astounded at his calm assumption that all he had to do was to say yes to such a charge and that that was the end of it, that no further questions need be asked. He might be able to handle his mother and Linda like that; she certainly wasn’t going to permit it.
She said, keeping anger at bay, “Why didn’t you tell Mr. Luttrell this morning that you drove Miss Giles over to her cottage last night? The police are looking for the man who was with her there—or didn't you think they’d be interested?"
Her mockery had no effect on Oliver Mont. He was watching her attentively and yet with a detached air, almost as though he were a portrait painter and she were a sitter he was studying, weighing gesture, light and shade, essence. He flicked ash to the floor and got up and came close to her. Voice and manner changed abruptly. He was warm again and human and reachable, like the man she had known three years ago for a brief period.
“You have me wrong," he said. “Don’t be angry, Damien, I’ll tell you what happened. Over and above the fact that Jancy's my sister, I like her, a lot. But she can get herself into more scrapes than you can shake a stick at—always could. Last night Linda came in and told me that Jancy had gotten away from her and was on the loose somewhere. I made Linda go back to bed and started to hunt for Jancy. She wasn’t anywhere in the house. While I was having a look around the grounds I met Anne Giles. She was on her way to her car. I asked where she was going and she said over to her cottage to pick up some papers."
Damien’s brows rose.
Oliver nodded. “Thin, very thin. I agree—but mine not to reason why. Anyway I didn’t give a damn, then. I was too worried about Jancy, and afraid that my mother would wake up and find Jancy gone. Not being familiar with our local customs, you wouldn’t know about Muffit. Muffit sells liquor after hours. He has a farm down the road from Anne’s place. I thought Jancy might have gone over to Muffit’s, so I drove over with Anne to her cottage, left her there, and went on, on foot, to Muffit’s place. The last I saw of Anne she was unlocking her door and going into the house.”
Damien said slowly, “And did you find Jancy at this Muffit’s?’’
“I did not.” Oliver began
to walk around restlessly, touching objects at random. His height and restrained vigor made the sizable room seem smaller, confining. “Jancy wasn’t at Muffit’s. She wasn’t on the road there. She wasn’t here at home when I finally got back. I kept on looking for her until it began to get light. Then I decided to get a couple of hours’ sleep. I knew she wouldn’t come to any real harm. She’s got friends in the neighborhood. And, anyhow, she’s done this sort of thing several times before. I was right. Jancy spent the night in the old harness room in the stables.”
“But you can see,” he paused in front of Damien, “why I didn’t want to tell this to Luttrell. Or perhaps you can’t see all of it. Jancy didn’t like Anne Giles. I don’t know exactly what the trouble between them was. It doesn’t matter now. The thing that does matter is that Jancy didn’t make any secret about how she felt toward Anne.” He grinned wryly. “In fact, she practically shouted it from the housetops. So,” he shrugged, “I thought the best thing to do was to keep my mouth shut—until the police find out who killed Anne. Jancy’s all sound and fury, she wouldn’t kill anyone, but she’s gotten herself nicely balled up. She heard me searching for her last night and deliberately gave me the slip because she was in a royal rage and couldn’t make herself sleep under the same roof with Anne Giles. She admitted it freely. It’s not an admission that would go down very well with the police.”
Damien could see that. She could also see that the Monts wouldn't want Jancy's condition bruited about, which was what would inevitably happen if the truth were told. There were other things to be considered. Oliver spoke with assurance of Jancy's innocence. Perhaps he was right, perhaps not. He was waiting for her to speak. She hesitated. Hard to tell a man that you thought his sister might be a murderess, that there was no accurate proof to the contrary.