by Helen Reilly
Outside in the windy darkness, Bill settled her destination. He put a quick arm around her shoulders. “Good girl—that was telling them. It’s time someone put the Monts in their place. Frances will be delighted to have you, and glad to hear it. Queer about Miss Stewart’s going into Eleanor Mont's room—”
“Yes.” Damien drew away from Bill's arm. Perversely, rshe wished he wouldn’t talk about it. She had done what she had to do, wanted to lick her wounds in solitude. Her ambition was meager; it was difficult to attain. When they arrived at the Kendleton house on the edge of the village she was subjected to a barrage of questions from Miss Kendleton. They were well meant, but every word was a wound. Then Mr. Silver telephoned. The bank had finally approved her mortgage. He said that if she would come down tomorrow and bring the deed of Arroways with her it would take only a short time to complete the necessary arrangements. Damien said she would.
Miss Kendleton and Bill were pleased for her. The former was full of plans. Jimmy Cramer was just the man for Damien, if she could get him. He was a marvelous architect—and cheap. Damien said yes and no, scarcely listening, and went early to bed, pleading a headache. It was a long while before she slept. When she woke the next morning the small pretty room was full of sunlight. She looked around, orienting herself in strangeness, remembered what had happened the night before, and threw an arm over her eyes to shut out the sunlight and turned her face to the wall.
At eleven a.m. on the same morning sunlight was all around McKee and Luttrell when they left the cleared space surrounded by laurel and rhododendron bushes where the nurse had been attacked. Blood stained the grass in one spot. Beyond that there was nothing informative under the most elaborate scrutiny. In the hospital in Danbury Miss Stewart was still unconscious, and not in good shape.
The day was cool, frosty, spacious. There was light everywhere. At the top of the driveway, with the bulk of the house in front and to the left, McKee paused and gazed over the descending roll of cropped green lawns from which leafless trees rose and across the tennis court to the neat little house in which Eleanor Mont had had what appeared to have been a devastating interview with Anne Giles, a short few hours before Anne Giles was strangled. To the right, propped against a pear tree, was the ladder with which Anne Giles’s room had been entered on Sunday night. He strolled on down the slope, thinking of the two attacks on the blue room, one from the inside on Saturday, one from the outside a little over twenty-four hours later, of the bit of necklace that had finally turned up—and of the rings that had been removed from Randall Mont's body, rings destined for Damien Carey. At the moment the broken bit of necklace bothered him most. It had no apparent meaning. Why the killer had removed it from the living-room in the Giles cottage remained a profound mystery. There had to be an answer. He reached the ladder, paused beside it.
The top of it rested against a black ring of creosote painted on the bark of the pear tree to repel ants, or other vermin—McKee was no horticulturist. He lifted the ladder away from the tree, hefted it. It was strong but light. Just as he and Luttrell had re-enacted the nurse's journey from the front door to the spot where she had been attacked, he proceeded to re-enact the entrance of the blue room in which Anne Giles’s bags had been slashed open on Sunday night.
Carrying the ladder, he advanced over the lawn toward the house. Yes, he decided, looking across a wide stretch of well-cared-for turf, from his position behind the oak, Mike Jones would have seen the killer doing the same thing he was doing now—which was why Jones had died. Reaching the house, McKee propped the ladder against the blue room sill and mounted. He was still visible, or would have been visible, from the oak. He glanced down absently at the window sill, at the marks on it, black marks—and his glance suddenly sharpened. He moved the ladder a little. Dry now, the paint from the pear tree—on the uprights and on the top rung of the ladder—left no smear on the white ledge. But there were smears there. He descended so rapidly that he bumped into Luttrell who had no time to get out of the way.
“These people keep a gardener, Fred?”
Luttrell stared. “Not a regular gardener—not now. But I think Big Joe Dodge comes here once a week. He lives just down the road.”
“Get him,” McKee said, and didn’t say any more.
Luttrell hurried off. Five minutes later the Scotsman had the information he wanted, and the puzzle of the broken bit of necklace, and its strange peregrinations, and why it was so important, was a puzzle no longer.
Joe Dodge came to Arroways on Thursdays and sometimes Fridays. The black ring had been painted on the pear tree and the lower branches of the pear tree pruned, on the previous Friday morning before he left at noon. Creosote, the base of the insect-repelling ring, took twenty-four hours to dry because of the stuff with which it was mixed. “To be safe,” Joe Dodge said, “if you do it like one morning, it’ll be hard as rock the next morning.” Yes, he agreed, the paint would have been a little tacky Friday night, but by Saturday noon it would have been okay. A lady could handle it with white gloves.
Joe Dodge was dismissed. When he was gone McKee said aloud, “Friday night the black ring on the pear tree was a little tacky. Yes, definitely,” and looked past Luttrell. They were no longer alone. On the right Oliver Mont was rounding the corner of the house, and off to the left the Carey girl was walking up the drive. McKee devoted his entire attention to Oliver Mont, but Damien, coming on, was close enough to hear that calm, deadly, point-blank accusation.
“Mr. Mont,” McKee said, “Anne Giles wasn’t killed over there in the living-room of her cottage, she was killed here at Arroways. She was killed upstairs in that blue room, and after she was dead her body was removed to the house on the river.”
Chapter Seventeen
Too Many Natural Deaths
Oliver stood still and stared at the Inspector in an attitude of arrested motion, his hands in his pockets, his head a little bent.
His tall figure, outlined against the sky, bore an odd resemblance to a statue in bronze, fair hair glinting in the sun, the sharply modeled planes of his face taut under a deeply tanned skin above the paler tan of his gabardine raincoat, an army shirt, an old pair of officer's pinks, and brown cordovan shoes.
Oliver’s going to deny it, Damien told herself. He’s going to laugh, in a moment—of course he is. The Inspector’s just testing him. The whole thing is absurd. Oliver wouldn’t— *
He spoke, and she leaned hard on inner recoil so as to break the force of the blow. Fishing a cigarette from the i pocket of the gabardine coat, Oliver lit it and said quietly, I “How did you find out, Inspector?”
“The marks on the window sill up there,” McKee waved. “There was black paint on the top of the ladder on Friday night, black paint from the pear tree. There’s black paint in the proper places on that window sill up there. The paint on the ladder was wet Friday night, dry before Saturday noon. Therefore the ladder was placed against the window sill on Friday night. You were the one who moved the body, Mr. Mont?”
“Yes.”
“You killed Anne Giles?”
“No.”
“I see.” The Inspector was easy, almost genial. He was completely terrifying. A deep shudder went through Damien. She wanted to flee, put the horror behind her. If she had attempted to move she would have fallen. Oliver went on talking in short curt phrases. “At half past eleven that night, Friday night, it might have been a little earlier, it might have been a little later, I was out here in the grounds, strolling around. I looked up and saw my mother through the hall window. She was leaning against the banister, was bent over it, holding onto the railing for support. I thought she was ill, about to faint. By the time I got inside and upstairs my mother was in her room. She was in a state of collapse. She told me what had happened. Before going to bed she had gone in to speak to Anne. She found her lying dead on the floor. Anne was dead when my mother entered the blue room."
“Why did you move the body, Mr. Mont?”
“Oliver didn't do t
hat originally. I did."
It was Hiram St. George who spoke, coming from behind the kitchen wing in a sport coat and slacks, a white shirt open at his sturdy throat. St. George was outwardly calm but there were leaden pouches under his eyes, and his expression was stern. The real force in him seemed to have come out from under blankets.
Oliver turned on St. George angrily. “Why don't you keep out of this, Hi?"
“I'm not going to let you take the onus of what was done. It was my idea. I did the planning and most of the work."
“Oh, come," McKee said pleasantly, “share the credit between you. Thats the way it was, wasn’t it?"
That was the way it had been. Bit by bit he drew the story from the two men. Coming over to see whether Linda wanted to go home, St. George had entered the house with Oliver at around half past eleven. When they were sure that Anne Giles was dead and that nothing could be done for her, Oliver got the ladder from the pear tree and propped it against the wall, and St. George lifted the dead woman and gave her to him. They couldn't risk carrying her down through the house. Miss Carey was there, and Linda and Jancy. “I think not your sister, Mr. Mont,” McKee said, “but proceed." Oliver had gone down the ladder, carrying Anne Giles’s lifeless body. He put her in the car and then drove over to the cottage.
“And when you got to the cottage," McKee said softly, “you pressed Anne Giles’s fingers on the knob of her front door, then placed the body in much the same position as it had been in the room upstairs and took her purse to make the crime look like robbery.”
Oliver started to speak. St. George cut across him. “Everything that was done was my suggestion. I knew we had to be careful.”
“Why?”
That was the gist, that bald why.
“Hell,” Oliver said harshly, showing signs of the strain he was under for the first time. He didn’t look at the Inspector, or at Damien standing some ten feet away, held there against her will, deprived of the power of motion, but straight ahead of him. “I should think that would be self-evident. My mother was almost out of her mind. She’s not a well woman. My sister was on the loose—you know that. Jancy had had too much to drink, she disliked Anne Giles and she had had a run-in with Anne earlier in the day. We knew what the police would think if they found Anne dead here—just what you’re thinking now. But you’re wrong. Jancy didn’t kill Anne. My mother didn’t kill her. But are you going to believe that?”
McKee said evenly, “We have your word for it, have we? Considering the amount of truth you’ve handed out to us so far, all of you, I’m afraid your word’s not quite good enough. No, not quite. Mr. Mont, I want this in detail and in writing from you, and from you, Mr. St. George. And I want to talk to your sister, Mr. Mont, and to your mother.”
Jancy was at the Black Horse Inn; the Inspector would find her there. He couldn’t talk to Eleanor Mont. Both Oliver and St. George said that. Early that morning while she was dressing, Oliver’s mother had fainted. The maid, Agnes, had found her lying across her bed partially dressed. They had revived her and had managed to get her over to the St. George house. She appeared to have conceived a hatred of Arroways because of what had happened there. When he had come at six that morning, the doctor, Dr. Marsh from the sanitarium, said it was a complete nervous breakdown. He had given Eleanor Mont a sedative and left orders that she was not to be disturbed, or he wouldn’t answer for the consequences.
“You can check with Marsh, Inspector,” St. George said.
McKee nodded. “I will.” Then and only then, did he recognize Damien’s presence. He turned toward her. “You knew something of this, Miss Carey, this confession we’ve just heard?”
Before Damien could answer, Oliver interposed swiftly. “Miss Carey knew nothing about Anne’s having been killed here. She did know that my sister had given Linda the slip that night, that Jancy wasn’t in her room.”
He looked at the Inspector, not at her. The gulf between them was wider than any sea; pain struck at Damien. In the middle of it she had a sudden sensation of danger, just such a reaction as she might have had if, walking across a long trestle, she had heard the distant whistle of an on-rushing train. The feeling was very strong. There was no apparent cause for it. There was nothing and no one alarming in view, nothing that threatened her. The windows of the great empty house looking down on them were blank, shining. McKee didn’t appear to be interested in her; he and Luttrell and Oliver were starting across the lawn toward the front door. Hiram St. George lingered, saying kindly, “Is there anything I can do for you, Miss Carey?”
Damien said no, that she had come to get her bag and the deed for Arroways, and St. George joined the other three men, and she followed them inside, a walking automaton, and went slowly upstairs to her room.
It took only a minute or two to pack her things. She put the Arroways deed in her purse. Standing at a window trying to digest what she had heard outside she struggled with a feeling of mortal sickness. She touched the window seat in front of her with brushing finger tips. Seated on it last Friday night she had seen Oliver put, not a live, but a dead woman into the car beneath the pine tree, tuck in her skirts, and drive off. The horror of it was suffocating. And yet, an alcoholic sister who hated Anne Giles, a mother who had found the body—yes, the provocation had been extreme—if Oliver was innocent, rle was. He was. She turned with a violent movement, picked up her bag, and went downstairs. In the library McKee was questioning Oliver and Hiram St. George ibout the piece of necklace found in Miss Stewart’s hand. The library door was open. Damien sank into a chair in shadow near it. What further damaging admissions was Oliver going to make? She had to know.
Oliver and Hiram St. George could, or so they said, tell the Inspector nothing. They hadn’t known that the necklace had snapped, its work done. It was St. George who had straightened up the blue room after Oliver drove off with his burden. St. George hadn’t seen the two silver squares, but then he hadn’t looked. No, there was no sign of the weapon with which Anne Giles had been struck before she was choked with the neqklace and her last breath stopped.
“What about the others in the house on Friday night?” McKee asked. “Roger Hammond, Miss St George, your sister—did they know what had happened, what you did?”
Oliver and his mother and St. George were the only ones who knew. Linda had given her father and Oliver a couple of bad moments on Friday night. She wasn’t aware that her father was in the house at all and she had knocked on Oliver’s door when he and Hiram St. George were in conference. Oliver had stepped out into the corridor. It (was then that Linda told him about her struggle with Jancy, that Jancy had gotten away. Oliver had said he would handle Jancy and had sent Linda back to bed. “My sister was out of the house before Anne was killed. I’m sure of it” He described her flight to the harness room in the stable where she had spent the night As for Roger Hammond, neither man knew what time he arrived at Arroways.
“But why concentrate on this house looking for the killer?” Oliver asked tiredly. “The doors were all open.
We seldom, if ever, lock them. Anyone could have gotten in, gotten up to Anne’s room, gotten out again safely, without being seen. Aren't you forgetting Maria’s rings, Inspector? After all, Anne’s room was broken into on Sunday night. Someone used the ladder—”
“For the second time, Mr. Mont.”
“Yes, for the second time.”
That, Damien thought, was why Oliver had worn that astounded expression when he looked out and saw the ladder below the blue-room window after the crash. .
“Until you find out what became of Maria’s rings,” Oliver went on, “find out who removed them from my father’s body, and who entered Anne’s room on Sunday night and slashed her bags open—”
McKee said in a smooth, cutting-off voice, “Quite, Mr. Mont.” Luttrell said formally, “If you will both sign—” Paper rustled. Damien got up and started along the hall. She didn't want to see Oliver again. It hurt too much. She was at the front door when McKee came ou
t of the library.
“Oh, Miss Carey— Where can I find you later, if I need you?”
Damien stared past him at light falling across a red leather chair in the well of the staircase. So the discovery that Anne Giles had died here and not over in her cottage was not an end, it was another beginning. But her heart leaped. If the Inspector was convinced that Oliver had killed Anne Giles surely the case would be at an end. She said, “I'm going to meet the architect, Mr. Cramer, here at three o’clock this afternoon to go into the question of remodeling the house, or making it over into apartments, see whether or not it can be done. After that, when I’m through, I want to go back to New York—late this afternoon if I can.”
McKee nodded. “Better get in touch with me before you leave Eastwalk, Miss Carey.” Damien said she would and let herself out.
Five minutes later, when Oliver Mont and St. George had gone—and they couldn't go far, they, too, had been warned to keep themselves readily available—McKee stood with Luttrell beside the flower border on the west lawn, looking down at a stretch of'freshly disturbed earth between clumped chrysanthemums and fading marigolds. It was at this spot that Eleanor Mont had been gardening yesterday afternoon, taking up bulbs. He said musingly, “I think so. I think that Mrs. Mont found those two silver squares from the broken necklace somewhere in the blue room yesterday afternoon. Coming back from the cottage Miss Stewart told her they were missing. Miss Stewart saw Eleanor Mont find and conceal the links. She looked for them first in Mrs. Mont’s room. Later she watched Mrs. Mont burying them here and dug them up herself, intending to bring them to us.”
Luttrell was profoundly shocked. “Then you think it was Mrs. Mont who—”
McKee stopped him. “All of them, any of them, including our friend Mr. Heyward could have killed Anne Giles. We don't know the whole motive back of her death yet.” “Maria Mont’s rings, McKee?”