Murder at Arroways

by Helen Reilly

  The cold was now intense. She found herself whimpering under its steady onslaught. It was intolerable. She couldn’t stand it. She had to get out of that place or die. She had to. Beating clenched fists on the cfoor she felt something odd. She had to use her nails to make sure. Scrape, and feel with numbed finger tips. It couldn’t be. It was. What she had touched was rime. Frost, a light coating of it, was beginning to cover die walls of her prison. Her arms fell to her sides, and she stood still, the deep shudders that shook her as though she were a tree in the wind, in momentary suspension. All at once she knew. The place into which she had been locked was a cold room, a freezing-chamber in the bowels of the house.

  A freezing-chamber. She wrestled with the idea until it began to lose its shape. She was growing very tired. Drowsiness weighed her eyelids. The salt of unbidden tears on her lashes was turning to ice on her icy face. Her thoughts were turgid. She knew dimly that unless she was released soon she would die, knew, too, that she would die if she fell asleep. But her body was too heavy, like wood, like stone, to keep moving around. It didn't seem worth while. Rest a little. Everybody had to have rest once in a while. She leaned against a frost-covered wall and didn’t pull back. The coldness was drawing off a little, wasn’t so important now. Slowly, scarcely conscious of what she was doing, she let her knees buckle and slid to the floor. There was support behind her. She put her head back and slept

  Chapter Nineteen

  Accomplished Killer

  Outside in the upper world day ended, and the first star came out. McKee saw it through the window of the filling-station five miles south of Eastwalk where he stopped to get gas and call Luttrell.

  He had talked to Miss Stewart. The nurse hadn't the slightest idea of who her assailant was—yet on the whole he considered the trip a success. Miss Stewart had been on duty in the Mont apartment when Maria Mont died. Although he knew there wasn't one chance in a million that Maria Mont's death was murder, he found himself returning to it. When he asked what Eleanor Mont had done that night, how she had borne herself, he got an instant reaction.

  The nurse had roused, saying in a stronger voice, “That’s what Anne wanted to know,” and, unexpectedly, “Anne was a tricky one. I knew she was up to something."

  As far as actual information went, however, Miss Stewart had very little to give. Eleanor Mont had been upset when she came home and found that her husband nad driven up to Arroways, upset when she heard that before he went he had called Damien Carey at Maria's request. She expressed no emotion when she heard that Damien hadn't talked to her grandmother, but Miss Stewart got the impression that she was pleased. Eleanor Mont had called her husband at Arroways at six o’clock. When she didn’t get any answer she had called Hiram St. George.

  The room in which she did the calling was next to Maria’s bedroom. Miss Stewart, busy with the patient, had lost track there. The only thing she could say with certainty was that when she went into the adjoining room, perhaps half an hour later, she had been shocked by Eleanor

  Mont's appearance. Mrs. Mont was worried sick about her husband, had said so. It was a dreadful night, rain and sleet, and he had a bad heart. Nothing then until Mrs. Mont called Randall hours later and told him that Maria was dead. He said he would be right down. Yes, Maria Mont had gone suddenly at the end.

  The pattern in McKee’s mind took another forward leap. It was only a pattern in his mind. He said, “Luttrell?” into the telephone, and Eastwalk’s town prosecutor said in a tone of relief, “That you, McKee? I tried to get you at the hospital.”

  Luttrell was worried about Damien Carey. She had telegraphed her cousin Miss Towle that she was returning to New York that day. There was a three-thirty bus out of Eastwalk, a three-forty-seven train. Apparently Miss Carey had taken neither bus nor train. Anyhow, she hadn’t reached home. Miss Towle had called him half an hour earlier to say so.

  Luttrell said, “It may be all right. But after the woman called I got to thinking—”

  McKee didn’t have to think. He knew, coldly and surely. His error. Well—there it was. He asked quick questions, heard that Damien was last seen walking away from Arroways at around three-fifteen that afternoon by Mrs. Cambell who had identified the distant figure by the cherry-colored coat, told Luttrell in a narrow voice to meet him at the gate at Arroways, dropped the instrument into its cradle as though it were red-hot, and walked out of the filling-station into the all but darkness of the October night.

  “My God—look! Over there! The dining-room window!” Luttrell pointed. McKee had picked him up at the gate. They were at the top of the Arroways driveway. McKee brought the car to a stop, and they were out of it and sprinting across the lawn. The huge gaping hole in the glass of the dining-room window, visible in the headlamps, had blackness behind it. McKee and Luttrell went through the opening. Across the dining-room and into the hall; there was a single light on there. McKee stayed Luttrell’s advance with an outthrust arm. A peculiar spectacle confronted them. Blocked against stretching gloom Bill Heyward was standing in the middle of the hall, his back to them, bent forward in a listening attitude. McKee and Luttrell heard the voice then, Oliver Mont’s voice. Echoing and re-echoing through the cavernous spaces it had an eerie quality to it.

  “There, now— There, now. You’re going to be all right. You’re going to be fine. You’ll—”

  The man himself emerged from shadow, his hair a pale flame above a desperate face. He was carrying a burden in his arms, a limp figure closely clasped.

  Heyward sprang forward. “Damn you, Mont. What have you—”

  “Out of the way, you fool.” Oliver Mont’s elbow struck Heyward, knocking him off balance.

  McKee moved.

  A doctor, blankets, whisky. Damien Carey was neither dead nor in danger of dying. Once certain of that, McKee gathered the threads into his hands, straightening them out, testing them for strength. He was due back in New York. Finish it up, for the record. No time like the present. He and Luttrell had entered Arroways at six twenty-five. Oliver Mont had found Damien locked into the freezing-chamber in the basement a couple of minutes earlier. The murderer had planned well. Another two or three hours and the girl, lightly clad, would have frozen to death. The thermostat outside the chamber had been pushed to coldest and the switch that started it, thrown. It was diat, so Oliver Mont said, the sight of the thermostat and the noise of the freezer, that had alerted him and made him open the heavy door. Heyward had entered the house on Mont's heels, bound on a like errand, a search for the missing girl. Both men professed the same motivation, worry about Damien Carey, disbelief in her return to New York, a conviction that, in spite of Mrs. Cambell’s statement, sHe hadn’t left the house.

  Even before Damien was found, before he reached Arroways, McKee had gone further. The girl had promised not to leave Eastwalk without getting in touch with him. There had been no word from her. She wasn’t at Miss Kendleton’s and she hadn’t returned to the city. He was convinced that someone wearing her cherry-colored coat, head concealed in the disguise of the scarf, had acted out the girl’s departure from Arroways for the benefit of the distant, curious, and always watchful Mrs. Cambell. Luttrell said, “A woman.” McKee didn’t say anything.

  The Scotsman was right. They found the coat and scarf hung innocuously in a hall closet. McKee used the telephone and called Centre Street. He wanted the best micro-scopist within reaching distance of Eastwalk. Five minutes later, wrapped in a large sheet of brown paper, the coat and scarf were borne out of the house by a state policeman.

  Damien Carey was in an upstairs room, surrounded by hot-water bottles and electric pads, sleeping. When the doctor first came and woke her from that other more sinister sleep, she had been able to say a few words. “The rings— Maria’s— The gambling-machine. I found the rings i^ it.” The pattern in McKee’s mind extended itself with a flourish, was almost complete.

  There were no rings anywhere in the vicinity of the gambling-machine. It was taken apart. Result, a single
small emerald that had fallen out of its setting, and two pennies. The perpetrator had removed the rings. They would have been dangerous to keep, had probably been disposed of, perhaps somewhere in the grounds. Individual statements had been taken by the state police; McKee reflected that the Monts hadn’t acted as individuals but as members of a clan—with one exception. At half past eight that night he faced part of the roster of the people who had been under scrutiny, in the Arroways living-room.

  Eleanor Mont could have refused to come; her physician would have backed her up. But she was there. Oliver Mont and Linda were with her. Bill Heyward was also there. He had said, “I’m not going to leave this house until I’m sure that Damien's out of danger." McKee had made no objection. The Hammonds had been sent for, and Hiram St. George was on the way.

  Lighted lamps, sheeted statuary. The furnace was going, but a chill that nothing could banish filled the long, ponderous, handsome room. In a chair near the empty earth, swept but not garnished, Eleanor Mont was a woman in plastic, cleverly fashioned, cleverly colored, devoid of outward emotion but animated by purpose. She said, as soon as she was seated, “I want to talk to you, Inspector."

  “No, Eleanor. No." It was Hiram St. George who spoke, coming hurriedly into the room and going quickly toward Eleanor Mont. She didn't look at him, kept her eyes on McKee.

  St. George drove at her. “Jancy's— Hammond doesn’t know where Jancy is. She's probably all right, but—"

  Jancy—St. George played on her name as though he were pushing an accordion stop. It got through to Eleanor Mont. Her air of purpose faltered. She looked suddenly exhausted. “Jancy," she murmured, a ring of grayness around her mouth, as if she had left her daughter out of her calculations and confronted with the fact had to start building again from the beginning. “I thought Taney was at the Inn with Roger, Hi."

  St. George shrugged. “She was. But she went out in the car in the middle of the afternoon and didn't come back for dinner. Roger's half frantic."

  Watching, McKee sighed. It couldn't go on. Eleanor Mont had to be made to talk. He plunged into it without preface.

  “Mrs. Mont, I believe that on the night on which Maria Mont died, some hours before she died, you called your husband here at this house, at six o’clock, to be precise. When you didn't get any answer you then called Mr. St. George."

  Hiram St. George was still as a rock, his arms folded. Eleanor Mont raised her eyes to McKee's. There was no surprise in them. She said quietly, “So you know."

  “I think so, but perhaps you'd better tell me. There are details I’m vague about.” They might have been casual acquaintances at a garden party engaged in idle conversation.

  Eleanor Mont bowed her head. Staring at her hands, flexing them, studying the almond-shaped nails, she began to speak. It was the simplest of tales. Maria Mont had never, as everyone had supposed, legally adopted Randall Mont. She had intended to do so but had let the actual formalities slip. That meant that if Randall Mont, to whom she had left her entire estate by will, predeceased her, she would have been considered to have died intestate, and Eleanor and her children wouldn’t have gotten a penny. The money would automatically have gone to her granddaughter as next of kin.

  At that point, Oliver Mont got up and went to one of the windows and stood there, looking out into darkness, his back rigid. Eleanor Mont didn’t turn. She went on in a flat monotone in which, mingled with pain, there was a sort of release. “No one,” she said, “could talk to Maria, urge her to make a new will—but Randall and I talked. What he feared for me, and for the children, happened. Ida Cambell saw Randall drive up to this house on that day last April—and saw nothing more. She didn’t see him fall dead on the doorstep before he could insert the key he had in his hand and open the front door. Someone else did see.

  “Anne Giles was in Eastwalk that day. She caught sight of Randall driving through town. Her car was in the garage being fixed. She was a curious woman. She came up here and found him. When I couldn’t get any answer from Randall I called Hiram. He came over. He didn’t see Anne Giles. She took care to keep out of sight. There was nothing Hiram could do. Randall was beyond help. Hiram came into the house and called me back. Anne Giles overheard that call. I—”

  “No.”

  St. George spoke at last, touching her shoulder. “I was the one who planned it.”

  At the window Oliver didn’t move. Heyward was staring with all his eyes. So was Linda, hands tight in her lap. Luttrell took swift notes.

  The rest of it then, briefly. Randall Mont was dead and Maria was still alive. She couldn't live long. It was a matter of hours. If Randall Mont’s death could be pushed forward, if it could be made to appear that he died after Maria, Eleanor and her children would inherit through him.

  St. George said calmly, “I thought it w'as worth a try.” He described unemotionally what he had done. He had carried Randall Mont’s body into the house, had turned up the heat and wrapped the body in blankets. He had put lights on and throughout the evening, had moved around behind curtains in such rooms as he calculated would be visible to Mrs. Cambell, who had assumed, as he thought she would, that he was the dead man. He had prepared food in the kitchen, putting Randall Mont’s finger tips on various objects, and had then waited for Eleanor’s call. It had come around half past twelve. Eleanor Mont had addressed him as if he were her husband over the phone, had called him by her husband’s name. After that St. George put the dead man in the car and drove down the road, where he got out, and sent the car and its passenger down into the ravine.

  They had succeeded in deceiving everyone—except Anne Giles, who had seen the earlier part of it, heard the plans. More than six months passed. Then, on the preceding Friday, after the estate had finally been settled, Anne Giles had told Eleanor Mont what she knew, in the little house beyond the tennis court, and had made her demands. She wanted five hundred thousand dollars and forty percent of Mont Fabrics.

  “I didn’t know what to do,” Eleanor Mont said with unconscious simplicity. “Anne demanded an immediate answer. I told her I’d come to her room at around twelve, when the house was quiet. I wanted time to consult Hiram. I couldn’t get hold of him until a little after eleven. He said he’d be over. But I was nervous. At half past eleven

  I went to Anne’s room to ask her to wait for an answer until morning—and found her lying dead on the floor. No one,” Eleanor Mont moistened dry lips, “no one in this house,” she went on with dull vehemence, “killed Anne. The front door was open. Anyone could have gotten in.”

  “Yes,” McKee murmured, his attention directed elsewhere. There was a sudden movement off on the right. He turned his head sharply. Linda St. George was on her feet. She was looking toward the doorway, her face dead-white under gold ringlets clinging to a damp forehead. “Jancy,” she cried.

  McKee swung. Jancy Hammond was standing in the doorway. She had a gun in her hand. She said in a clear ringing voice that had a mesmeric note in it, “I’m the one. I’m the one who—” and turned the muzzle toward her breast.

  Linda was the nearest to her by a good fifteen feet. “Jancy, Jancy—don't!” she screamed, and ran forward with the quickness of light.

  They were all up and moving, McKee in advance. He reached the struggling pair in the doorway. Legs, arms, bodies, twisting and turning this way and that, the gun appearing and disappearing; a wrong move could result in disaster. He grasped Jancy’s shoulder. She dragged herself free. The fury of the two contestants was amazing. Oliver Mont was trying to get hold of the weapon from the other side. Neither the Scotsman nor Oliver Mont succeeded.

  There was a sudden loud report. A smell of cordite filled the air. Jancy sagged back against the inner wall, a bewildered expression on her face. Linda had fallen to the floor. Blood welled from her left temple. McKee said, “Back, please,” and knelt. After a moment he rose. The fluttering heart under his hand had given a final lurch and was still.

  Jancy broke the stunned silence, saying in a bemused voice,
“She—Linda tried to kill me—”

  “Yes.” McKee spoke quietly. “She thought we might accept you as a murderess. She wasn’t sure you would go

  through with your attempt at suicide. So she decided to make sure. At the last moment, when she couldn’t achieve that, she decided to kill herself, quickly and competently, as she killed Anne Giles and Mike Jones."

  Chapter Twenty

  Inspector McKee Sums It Up

  Outside the wind blew. No trees shook. The house fronts across the way were solid, immovable. Damien stood at the window of the little living-room in the apartment on Ninth Street looking over the roofs. October was gone. It was the twelfth of November, and already, at four o’clock, the light was beginning to fade.

  Without Jane, who had gone South with a nurse the week before, the apartment felt empty, dead, full of the lonely sound of her own thoughts. She wandered about restlessly, waiting for the Inspector. He had phoned earlier to say he was coming to see her. She didn’t know why.

  Everything was over except her tangle with a bevy of Mont law7ers, who couldn’t or wouldn’t understand that she wanted only enough of the Mont money to adequately take care of Jane. No matter what Eleanor Mont had done she had spent more than half a lifetime in Maria’s service —and the laborer was worthy of his hire.