Wall

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

  That was not until the next day. Arthur, uneasy and alarmed, had sent Mary Lou back to Millbank, and had spent much of the time since either with Maggie—he had always been devoted to her—or with one of the county detectives in examining the scene of the attack.

  When she was able to talk he was there, holding her hand and looking more weary and desperate than ever.

  “Try to remember, Maggie. What took you up there, in the middle of the night?”

  “I don’t know,” she said dully. “I must have been dreaming.” Which is her own euphemism for her occasional sleepwalking.

  “You didn’t see anybody?”

  “I didn’t even know I was there.”

  That was all we could get out of her, but it was evident that she had been there. Not only was the key in the door. Beside a bed in the far room they had found one of the long hairpins she used, and it had a bit of blood on it. Not only that. The window over the drain pipe had been opened with a jimmy, or some such tool.

  But the whole affair was puzzling. Maggie had been struck down in that room; but when Ellen found her early the next morning, still unconscious, she had been rather neatly laid out on the hall floor at the foot of the stairs. And there was a pillow from Jordan’s room under her head!

  That day Arthur urged me to leave the island and go back to the New York house.

  “I want you out of this devilish business,” he said. “I’ve got enough to do to worry about myself. If this keeps on—” He smiled faintly. “If Bullard could do it, he would pin this last thing on me too. Maggie knows too much, so I try to get rid of her by banging her on the head.”

  I refused to go; but I told him then about that trip to the city, and of the condition of Juliette’s apartment. He dismissed it with a shrug.

  “Probably reporters,” he said. “They get in everywhere. Like termites!”

  As for the rest, he had never heard of Langdon Page or of Emily Forrester. He knew no one, on the island or off, who had been an intimate part of Juliette’s life after their separation; he vaguely remembered a Jennifer, called “Jen,” but had forgotten her last name.

  Maggie’s trouble, however, had shaken him. For the first time since Juliette’s death we went back that day to our old friendly intimacy. He knew nothing of Juliette’s death. “There must have been a lot of people who wanted her out of the way.” But why kill the Jordan woman? She had seemed inoffensive enough, what little he had seen of her.

  “But why write that note?” I said. “Why on earth not have seen her here?”

  “I had a fat chance, didn’t I?” he said dryly. “I tried to once, and she slammed the door on me.”

  But he had felt responsible for her, and also, he said, she had worried him.

  “The way she acted wasn’t normal,” he said. “She was afraid, and I knew darned well it wasn’t of me.”

  “Are you sure of that, Arthur?”

  “Good God, yes,” he said impatiently. “Are you beginning to wonder, like the rest of them?”

  Nevertheless, it was good to be together again, in our old frank companionship. We were on the upper porch at the time, smoking, with Arthur as usual on the rail, and the gulls circling about noisily over the water. But there was one question I had to ask him, and I did it then.

  “Arthur, could it have been Tony Rutherford you saw on the roof that night, and followed?”

  He stared at me in amazement.

  “Tony? Great Scott, no! What on earth would he be doing there?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But I think I found a button from his golf coat below the trellis, in the garden.”

  He laughed at that. I had caught the detective fever, he said. Somebody always left a cuff link or a button about for the police to find. And if I knew what was good for me I’d take a nap and leave the matter to the authorities.

  Nevertheless, his face, when he left and went into the house, was thoughtful.

  I did not take a nap. I swam off the float that afternoon, and afterwards sat in the sun and thought of Allen Pell. It was hard to fit him into that life of Juliette’s as her apartment had revealed it. Yet he must have been a part of it, have stood at that bar of hers—or behind it—mixing drinks, laughing, talking. There must have been other times, too, when the crowd had gone and only the two of them had been there together. But I did not want to think of them. I went up to the house and dressed for dinner, feeling considerably depressed.

  It was that night that I began to wonder if Arthur had a part in the mystery after all.

  I had been in and out of Maggie’s room all day, and at midnight I relieved the nurse so she could go down to her supper. Lizzie had left a thermos of coffee and a tray for her in the dining room, and I told her not to hurry.

  “Please don’t leave her, Miss Lloyd,” the nurse said as she went out. “She seems to be asleep, but now and then she tries to get out of bed.”

  She went on down, and I sat beside Maggie’s bed for some time. It was strange to see her there, asleep, her work-roughened hands still, her hair in two long braids on the pillow. I had forgotten that she had such pretty hair. It was a long time since the days when, waking in the morning, I had watched her hurriedly combing it.

  “Now just be patient, Marcia. I’ve got to get some clothes on, haven’t I?”

  “Well, you don’t have to comb your hair forever.”

  She was sleeping quietly now, and I was in the bathroom, putting fresh ice in the icecap when I glanced out and saw someone with a flashlight near the shrubbery. As I watched, the light moved toward the toolshed, and focused on the lock there.

  I was frightened. I remember standing still, staring out, and in the silence I could hear the nurse clattering china and silver below. Then I dropped the icecap and ran to Arthur’s room.

  He was not there. He had not even gone to bed. I stood in the doorway, gazing in. There was his book. On the table was a still smoking cigarette. But he was gone.

  When I went back to the head of the stairs he was coming in by the front door. The hall was dark, but I could see the vague outline of his body, and hear him quietly closing the door. I slipped away then, but standing in the door of Maggie’s room I heard him come stealthily up the stairs, and shortly after his door closed.

  When I went back to Maggie I found that she had one foot out of the bed, and was trying to get up. I put her down again, and when the nurse came up I left them. But as I got into bed that night I knew that, for all his frankness that day, Arthur had still not told me all he knew.

  I slept soundly that night. I suppose the mind reaches a point where sleep is pure escape. When I wakened the sun was shining into my room, and Arthur’s shower was running. There was a comforting odor of coffee and bacon from below, a fisherman’s boat was on its way in, loaded with cod, and the most impudent of the crows was on my table outside, busily throwing away one cigarette after another.

  It was all normal, even to the huge red jellyfish drifting about. But when I went out to drive away the crow I saw that there was something else there, only partially submerged and drifting in with each wave, to recede before the next one. It looked like a man’s handkerchief, rather gaudy in color, and I had a sickening feeling that I knew it.

  One thing was certain. I had to get it. Looking back, I am not sure why I felt that this was necessary. I did, however, and after dressing hastily I went downstairs. The old fishing tackle was still in a hall closet, its lines moldering, its hooks rusty. The rods, though, were in good condition, and I took one and went out onto the veranda. It was not so easy as I had thought. The thing slipped away, came back, and was lost again; and William’s face was a study when he finally found me there, still making frantic jabs for it. He was imperturbable when at last, somewhat flushed, I brought it in.

  “I saw it floating,” I said unnecessarily. “I think it belongs to Mr. Arthur.”

  “Yes, miss,” he said. “Your tray has gone up, miss.”

  He knew it was not Arthur’s. It was not
only gaudy in color. It was smeared with paint, and I was certain I had seen it before. I dried it and hid it, but it was to worry me for some time to come.

  I remember the rest of the day chiefly for certain things which seemed comparatively unimportant at the moment. One was the sheriff, calling up from the county seat.

  “Here’s something to chew over, Marcia,” he said. “About that New York business. Pretty nearly every man on the island’s gone back by train at one time or another; but in the last week or so not so many. Fred Martin from the golf club, to see a sick mother. I’ve talked to Dorothy, and the mother’s a fact. Mr. Dean, probably to pick up another million or so. And young Rutherford and Bob Hutchinson together for one day, to order some cups for the golf tournament. That’s about the list from your neighborhood.”

  “It’s an impossible list,” I said uncomfortably.

  “Well, it is and it isn’t. At least two of them knew her.”

  That was all he had to say, except that the Page-Forrester matter was still on his mind.

  “You might ask if anybody knows those names,” he said. “People have a way of knowing other folks in the same walk of life. You know what I mean. They meet here and there. Anyhow it won’t hurt.”

  It seemed a thin thread to me, but as Russell Shand said later, by that time—so far as our crimes were concerned—he had sunk for the third time and a straw looked as big as a log to him.

  But that day should have been marked in red ink on my calendar, for it was then that Mrs. Curtis told me something which neither she nor I recognized as having any bearing on the case; but which was to loom large before we reached the end.

  She had been repairing some curtains, and after she had been paid she did not go. She stood, looking at me uncertainly.

  “I don’t suppose it means anything, Miss Marcia,” she said, pulling nervously at her cotton gloves. “But I told Mr. Curtis at the time, and he says now I’d better tell you. It was three years ago last spring, when I came to open the house. Maybe you remember. There was a bill for glass in a cellar window.”

  “I don’t remember, but that’s not important.”

  “Well, the first thing I always do is light the furnace. The house is damp, and it takes a good while to dry out. So I went down into the cellar, and that window was broken. The boards had been taken off and put back again, loose; and there was glass on the cellar floor.”

  “You mean somebody had broken into the house?”

  “That’s what it looked like. I told Mr. Curtis that night, and the next day he came up and went all over the place. There was nothing wrong that we could find. Nothing missing either. There had been a leak in the roof over those hospital rooms, but that was all we found—except that Mr. Curtis thought a car had been driven in not long before. Of course, that’s not unusual. People drive in sometimes to see the bay. The view’s good from here.”

  Weeks afterwards I was to remember that conversation; to see Mrs. Curtis standing uneasily by the door, and to know that she had told me something that day which was vitally important. But it was too late then. The thing was done.

  I was showing her out when the postman whistled, and I promptly forgot her. Not entirely. I told Russell Shand about it when I next saw him. But the fact that someone had sought shelter in the house more than three years ago did not seem important to him either.

  CHAPTER XX

  THE DAY SEEMED INTERMINABLE. But Maggie had improved greatly. She even remembered something of what had happened.

  “I guess I was walking in my sleep,” she said sheepishly. “Anyhow, when I woke up I was in the dark corner of a room somewhere. On my knees too, as if I was looking for something. I was pretty scared, it being dark and everything. I know I got up, and—Well, that’s all I do know.”

  “You don’t remember hearing anything? Any sound? Anybody moving?”

  She merely shook her head and then clutched at it.

  “It still hurts,” she said. “No, miss. That’s all.”

  Outside of Maggie’s statement, that day was remarkable for only one thing.

  I had a visit from Marjorie Pendexter. She came shortly after lunch. A tall girl, taller than I, I remember her sprawled in a chair, with the drink she had asked for at her elbow, and looking at me with eyes that were haunted.

  “I’ve got to talk to someone or go crazy, Marcia,” she said feverishly. “It’s about Howard. He knew Juliette, and—Well, at one time he liked her. You know what I mean. He’d met her about, at house parties, and so on, and you know how men fell for her.”

  I stared at her incredulously. She was wearing her engagement ring, a square-cut diamond, and she kept twisting it about her finger.

  “Well, really, Marjorie!” I said. “If you’re going to worry about all the men who liked her you’ll have to worry about half the males on this island.”

  She did not smile. She lit a cigarette, inhaled and exhaled deeply before she spoke again.

  “I suppose it does sound idiotic,” she said. “But he’s not like himself, Marcia. He’s worried about something, and he keeps putting off a cruise we were going to take. He meant to take the Sea Witch to Newfoundland, but now I don’t know when we’re going. Marcia, do you think she was blackmailing him? Juliette, I mean. You knew her better than I did.”

  “I wouldn’t know a thing like that,” I said. “He has a lot of money. It’s possible. But I don’t think he killed her, and you don’t think so either,”

  “No,” she admitted. “But you know what she did to men. There was one poor devil—” She let that go. “He has a frightful temper, Marcia. It’s over in a minute, but it’s there. If he met her that morning on the path—”

  “Well, the probability is that he wasn’t within miles of her,” I said briskly. “What about this poor devil you mentioned?”

  “Went crazy about her,” she said. “Took to drinking and killed some people with his car.” She got up. “She deserved what she got,” she said viciously. “I’m not sorry for her. But somebody’s going to the chair for doing his good deed for the day, that morning up on Pine Hill; and I’m plain scared.”

  She swore me to secrecy before she left, and when she got into her roadster I thought she looked better, as though talking it out had done her good. But as I watched her go I realized what a change had come over all of us.

  It was not only the police and the reporters, both still overrunning the island. It was suspicion and fear. People eyed each other with an unspoken question in their eyes. Bob and Lucy Hutchinson next door were reported as being at daggers’ points, and it had even interfered with the usual informal summer distractions, bathing parties on remote beaches, picnics and the long hikes which were always a part of the life.

  In a way, the island at that time was divided into three schools of thought, as old Mrs. Pendexter put it: those who believed Arthur guilty of the murders, those who suspected Lucy, and those who never had an idea in their heads anyhow.

  Unfortunately for the Arthur group Lucy’s golf club was found about that time, and quite a number shifted. It was found half buried on a hillside, and the excitement began all over again. It had no fingerprints on it, but there was certain grisly evidence that it had been the weapon in at least one of our deaths.

  Fortunately the bells were quiet during that brief interval. That fact at least prevented the servants from leaving in a body. I had my hands full, what with Arthur sitting for hours gazing at nothing, and Mary Lou in and out of the house. She would not bring Junior to Sunset, especially after Maggie was hurt, but she drove back and forth. Alternately gentle and loving to Arthur, and again retiring into a remoteness that made me want to slap her.

  One day she said:

  “I’m standing by, Marcia. Whether he did these things or not. You know that.”

  “You can’t possibly still believe—”

  “Oh yes, I can,” she said, with an unnatural composure. “You haven’t known how things have been with us. I hated Juliette myself. I wanted
her dead. If I had seen her that morning and there had been a golf club lying by I don’t know what I would have done. Maybe he felt that way too.”

  “He detested her, Mary Lou. I heard him talking to her here. He said: ‘You’re fastened on me like a leech, and, by heaven, I can’t get rid of you.’ If that’s love—”

  She had turned rather white, but she was still calm.

  “It’s not very far from love to hate,” she said in a flat voice. “And somebody got rid of her. Remember that.”

  I had no reply to that. I was seeing Arthur at the toolshed, and his stealthy re-entrance into the house.

  It seems extraordinary now that life went on more or less as usual during that brief interval of what I call peace, for lack of a better word: I played tennis at the club, lunched out, dined out, and generally tried to be normal in a strange new world. Maggie was up and about. Morning after morning Lizzie demanded the day’s menus, and I had to face the thought of food. But Arthur himself was eating little or nothing, although for a time the police were letting him alone.

  One day, needing exercise, I climbed the path beside Stony Creek. There was no sign of that shallow grave where Juliette had been buried, but at one place the ground was trampled, and there were broken branches all about. I shuddered as I passed it.

  It was on the way down that I heard heavy footsteps on the path, and saw Mansfield Dean coming up. He had not seen me. He was striding along with his head bent, like a man lost in deep and not too pleasant thought. So far lost that when he finally saw me he looked almost shocked.

  He recovered in a moment, however, and was his own hearty self again.

  “Well!” he said. “Is this your walk too? I thought it was mine!”

  “It used to be,” I told him.

  He nodded understandingly.

  “Of course. Not so pleasant now. Still—” He drew a long breath. “That’s all over now. We can’t bring them back, and maybe sometimes we wouldn’t want to.”