He told me about her then, speaking in a sort of drab monotone as if he was afraid to let any emotion come to the surface. He had been engaged to her. The thing had drifted along. Perhaps he was never in love with her, but he was fond of her. He had meant to carry on.
Then he met Juliette, a few months before the wedding. Emily was a quiet girl, rather shy; and there was Juliette, his own age or older, reckless and fascinating.
“I’m not excusing myself,” he said. “I went crazy about her.”
But it did not last. He began to see her, I gathered, as the cheap woman Mary Lou had called her. She was not in love with him, but he could give her ease and security, and she wanted both. When he told her he was through she was like a madwoman. She wouldn’t let him go, and toward the end she threatened to send his letters to Emily.
“I got tight that day,” he said. “I didn’t know what to do. And I guess you know what happened. She drove the car, and she killed Mrs. Dunne and her daughter.”
When he came to he was in the hospital. He had been identified, and Howard Brooks was sitting by the bed. He told Howard the facts, but later on thinking it over he decided to take the responsibility himself.
“I’d been drinking,” he said. “It was my fault she had had to drive that night. I wasn’t hiding behind her.”
Howard had thought he was a fool, but was sworn to secrecy.
He stood trial and went to the penitentiary. He didn’t care what happened to him by that time. The pen was not too bad. He worked in the library and tried painting in his leisure. After a time he got a few lessons. But life was over. He painted to keep sane. That was all.
Then after almost two years Emily shot herself. He had never dreamed of such a thing. It almost killed him. I gathered indeed that he almost killed himself. Not that he loved her. For the sheer tragedy of it. She had left a letter for her family, but none for him.
When his parole came it meant nothing to him.
“I had three deaths on my soul by that time,” he said, still in that flat monotonous voice. “I didn’t want to see anybody I knew. I wanted to lose myself, my name, my identity, everything. And I didn’t want to stay in any one place. I’d been shut away for a long time. I wanted the sky and—Well, you understand, don’t you?”
That was why he changed his name. His first name had been Allen anyhow, although it was never used; and he took Pell out of the telephone book. And that, too, was why he bought the trailer. At first he felt rather absurd. Later on he liked it. He was free. He would even sleep beside it on the ground, for the sheer relief of waking and seeing the stars overhead.
Then one day soon after he got it he saw a New York newspaper, and read that Juliette had come to the island.
He had not seen her since his release, but he gathered that his freedom had come as a shock to her.
“For more than one reason,” he said. “She’d gone to my apartment that night after the accident and had taken her letters to me. But she had taken something else, Marcia. Emily’s father was giving her some pearls as a wedding gift and had had the jeweler deliver them to me. She took them too.”
The other reason, he said, was that she was afraid of him. She had thought she had anywhere from five to eight years of security, but here he was, free again.
“She had a twisted sort of mind,” he said. “I’d gone to the pen instead of her, she had stolen Emily’s pearls, and now Emily was dead. She knew how she would feel under those circumstances, so she thought I would also. God knows all I wanted was never to see her again, but—”
She seems to have been genuinely alarmed. She had gone to Howard Brooks and told him she meant to leave the country, getting a lump sum from Arthur and also collecting on some love letters, Howard’s among others. I have always been sure, too, that she meant to recover and sell the pearls.
But there she was, on the island, and Allen followed her there.
“Why?” I asked, puzzled. “I don’t understand.”
“I was afraid she would be killed. I told her that,” he said, and went on.
He had met her on the bridle path one morning. He had tried to see her before, but he had failed. Maybe I remembered one night when I had looked out, and he was on the beach below. But this day they met face to face, and she looked ready to faint. She had even tried to ride past him, but he caught the bridle of her horse and stopped her.
“Don’t be foolish,” he told her. “I’ve got to talk to you. I’m not going to hurt you.”
She was quieter after that. She said all she asked was to be allowed to leave America and live abroad. And she mentioned the pearls, as a sort of bribe! She would return the pearls to him; she would do anything, if he would only let her alone.
“The pearls!” he told her roughly. “They are not mine. Return them where they belong.”
She gave him an amused half-smile. She was herself again by that time.
“I’ll have to get them first,” she told him. “Marcia Lloyd has them now, but she doesn’t know it!”
He let her go then, but before she left he gave her a warning; and this time she seemed impressed.
“I’m telling you,” he said contemptuously as he released the bridle. “You don’t have to leave America on my account; but you’d better leave it in your own.”
That was the last time he ever spoke to her. On the night before her death she had taken my car and driven up to the camp, perhaps to tell him that she was trying to get the pearls. He was not there. And when he saw her again she was lying dead on the bridle path, with Lucy’s golf club beside her, and her hat and gloves not far away, on the ground.
He glanced at me and then looked away again. His hands were clenching the arms of his chair.
“What was I to do?” he said. “There she was and nobody could bring her back to life. I wasn’t afraid for myself, but I knew what would happen if she was found there. So I—”
“You put her into the lake?” I said, horrified.
“I put her into the lake,” he said gravely.
I felt frozen. I must have made some movement, for he reached over and caught my hands.
“My poor darling,” he said. “I know how it sounds, but I didn’t kill her. You must believe that.”
He went on after that break. He had carried Lucy’s club up onto a hillside later on and buried it. The rains must have uncovered it. And he had had to tell Howard Brooks the story. Howard had been the first to see the danger.
“You damned fool!” he said bitterly. “If the story ever gets out, who will believe you didn’t murder her? I’m not so sure myself!”
But Howard had stood by. They belonged to the same yacht club; Allen had a boat of his own somewhere. Both Howard and Marjorie had known he was on the island, although Marjorie had complicated matters later. She had been both jealous and suspicious. She knew Howard had once been interested in Juliette, and they had not dared to tell her the whole story, for obvious reasons.
“The whole story!” I asked desperately. “But what is it, Allen? Why don’t you tell me? What is the story?”
He looked at me, his face stern and yet sad.
“I thought you knew,” he said simply. “Mansfield Dean was Emily’s stepfather.”
I can still remember the shock of that minute. Not Mansfield Dean! Not that big booming kindly man, whose dead wife still lay in his house. I must have gone very pale. I know I got up, for the next minute Allen’s arms were around me.
“My poor girl,” he said. “I thought you knew. I thought the sheriff had told you. And it’s all over now, darling. Try to remember that. It’s all over.”
I was crying unrestrainedly by that time. He still held me, but he seemed to be trying to explain something to me; that I must remember that Juliette’s death had been on impulse, and that Jordan might have fallen or been pushed onto the rocks. But I really understood very little until he came to Doctor Jamieson’s murder.
That, he said, had been cold and premeditated; and his voice hardened.
“I tried to warn him,” he said. “I told him; but he thought he could take care of himself.”
I looked at him in complete confusion.
“Told him what?” I asked.
“The truth,” he said grimly. “What he had guessed already. That Agnes Dean had been emotionally unbalanced since Emily’s death. And was dangerous.”
CHAPTER XL
SO AGNES DEAN WAS our killer. As I write this I am still filled with horror. I can see her in her black dress, with all the panoply of wealth about her, looking at me with tragic eyes.
“I think life ended for me then,” she had said.
But not only her life, and Emily’s. She had killed Juliette on that bridle path, picking up Lucy’s club and swinging it with the strength of a madwoman. Then quite calmly she had gone away, and Allen had found the body.
Whether she meant to murder that day nobody knows. She was unarmed. Of course she had known of Juliette’s part in the tragedy of Emily’s suicide. The whole pitiful story was in her daughter’s farewell note. Now, the sight of Juliette sitting on that log had driven her over the edge. There was Lucy’s golf club. So she used it.
She apparently felt no remorse whatever.
“She killed Emily,” she said, “and I killed her. An eye for an eye, Mansfield.”
And after the first shock he had taken her into his arms and promised to protect her.
During that interval Allen had found the body, and he knew at once what had happened. He and Mansfield Dean were friendly, and Mansfield had been afraid of what might happen ever since Agnes had learned Juliette was on the island. Together they had tried to keep a watch on her. But that day she had slipped away early in the morning. She had seen Juliette going out in her riding clothes, and had taken the short cut up the creek.
The two men were frantic with anxiety. She could not live long, and they wanted to save her the disgrace of discovery. Then, too, she seemed more normal after that. They thought it was over.
They retained their affectionate relations. Together they joined that ghastly search for Juliette’s body, and when at last it was discovered, buried, they could not understand it. Because Mansfield Dean was a sentimental man, deeply stricken, he had ordered those anonymous flowers for the cemetery. That was one of the things the sheriff had learned in New York. He had been more successful than I had.
“Confidential order, sir,” said a clerk. “Sorry.”
“You’ll be sorrier if you don’t tell me, son,” said the sheriff, and flashed his badge.
Then Jordan’s death came, like lightning out of a clear sky. Agnes had apparently not known the woman. But both her husband and Allen believed now that Jordan had telephoned her the night she left Eliza Edwards’s. Whether she accused Agnes of Juliette’s murder and attempted blackmail, I do not know. It seems more likely that she accused Allen, and Agnes knew he was not guilty.
“Helen Jordan knew the whole story,” he said. “Not only that Juliette had driven the car that night; but about Emily, and the Deans. I had warned Juliette about Mrs. Dean, but she said she wasn’t afraid. She could manage any woman! I suppose Jordan believed I had killed Juliette. Anyhow the inquest was to be the next day, and she probably threatened to tell what she knew. That was the end, for her.”
It was possible, though, he added, that Jordan’s death was not premeditated. She might have slipped or been pushed off the path onto the rocks below. All he knew was that Agnes Dean drove her car back to the house that night and walked calmly into the library there.
“I’ve killed the Jordan woman,” she said.
Mansfield had not believed her. There were intervals when she imagined things, and he had never heard of Helen Jordan.
“The Jordan woman? Who is she?” he asked.
“Juliette Ransom’s maid,” she said, and went on upstairs to her room.
He followed her. She was in bed by that time, with that photograph of Emily beside her, and he began to be uneasy.
“See here,” he said. “Is this true? Or did you imagine it?”
“Go and look on the rocks along the bay path,” she told him, and picked up a book.
No one will ever know what the next few hours cost him. He found Jordan where Agnes had said, and he drove wildly up to the camp to find Allen. He was hardly rational himself by that time.
“She’s killed another woman,” he said. “What in God’s name am I to do?”
Allen was stunned. His first thought was to make certain Jordan was dead and then leave her where she was. But Mansfield would not agree to it. He had been devoted to his wife, and he knew, too, that she had not long to live. He would confess himself, before he would let her suffer. In the meantime, he wanted to get rid of the body.
Allen wanted to tow it out to sea in his boat. He was accustomed to the water. Dean was stubborn about this.
“It’s my job,” he said. “Show me how to start the engine. That’s all I want. I’ll do the rest.”
In the end it was arranged that way, Allen staying at the Dean house to watch Agnes, now in a state where she might wander out at any time; and Mansfield Dean to that ghastly task he had set himself.
It must have been a hideous experience. He knew nothing of death and less of the ocean, and noise of the engine in the quiet probably rolled like thunder in his ears. I had heard it myself that night, as it left the foot of Cooper’s Lane.
But he did what he had set out to do. He found the body, but he could not beach the boat. He waded ashore and carried her out. She was dead and there was blood on her, and so he took the painter, knotted it around her neck and headed for the open sea, towing the body behind him. The whole experience was sickening, and there was one period of undiluted torture. That was after he had cut her loose, and the engine stopped.
He could not start it again. He worked over it, sweating profusely. And then something floated beside him, and he thought it was the body. He nearly went mad; and the thing stayed there, bobbing about within a few feet of him. When at last the engine started he was completely collapsed. He saw then that it had been a floating log, but he headed the boat toward shore and lay down in the bottom of it. He could not get his breath for a long time.
When he finally reached home Agnes was quietly sleeping in her bed.
He was never quite the same after that. All his effort was directed toward saving Agnes from herself. On the surface he had not changed. He carried on, but that vast vitality of his began to fail him. The day I met him on the Stony Creek path I had seen the change in him.
And then came another complication. Allen had fallen in love with me, and Arthur was in danger of being tried for murder. He did not know what to do. He left me at the path and turned to see Mansfield Dean, coming along in his car. Mansfield got out, and the two men walked together a few feet down the path. Allen had his hands in his pockets, and his head down.
“See here, Mr. Dean,” he said. “I’m going to be honest with you. I’ve just seen Marcia Lloyd, and I can’t let her brother go to trial.”
“What do you mean by that?” Mansfield Dean said thickly. “By God, Page, if you let me down now—”
“I’ll not let an innocent man go to the chair,” said Allen.
Then Dean hit him! He still had his hands in his pockets, and he hadn’t a chance. His head struck a stone, and he was out like a light.
Dean himself was horrified. He was fond of Allen, and although it was broad daylight, he could not leave him there. He might not be found for hours, if then.
“He did what he could,” Allen said. “Put yourself in his place! He hadn’t even meant to hit me. But now he had me on his hands, and he had to get rid of me somehow.”
He did pretty well, all things considered. He got Allen into the back of the car and started with him to the local hospital. But he was thinking, and part way there he turned back. If Allen died, he wanted none of the local police about, to hear any final statement. And he did not want him identified if he lived.
> “I was a pretty logical suspect for Juliette’s murder, if the story came out. And Dean is a fair man. He didn’t know what to do. I suppose he did the best he could. He hid his car—and me—on a wood road somewhere in the hills; and he took the key of the trailer out of my pocket and went back there that night. He cleaned it for fingerprints, locked it and went back to the car. It must have been a pretty wild night for him.”
Allen was still unconscious when Dean reached the hospital, a hundred miles or so away; and as he said, I knew the rest of the story. He put some money into Allen’s pocket, rang the night bell, and drove away as soon as the porter had gone for help.
“So there I was,” he said. “I couldn’t come back. How did I know he’d cleaned my prints off the trailer? All I knew was that the police were after me, probably for two murders. And I had to play against time. If Mrs. Dean died I could tell the truth. If not—”
He let that go. He had done the best thing he could think of, and sent a vagrant from the hospital with the note to me. But there was something else to be done. He had met me. He didn’t want to serve the rest of his term for manslaughter, and there was something that would help to clear that up: Juliette’s note to him that she would drive back to town with him from Long Island. She was dead now, and it could not hurt her.
“I suppose that’s what she went to get, the night I was hurt,” he said. “Even I had forgotten all this time that it couldn’t have been there. I had an idea it was hidden with the pearls—unless she had destroyed it—and she said you had them and didn’t know it.”
He had got in touch with a burglar he had known in the pen, and had him go over the house, especially Juliette’s former rooms. But there was nothing there; no letters, no pearls, and by that time there was a nation-wide search for him, and he expected to be picked up at any time.
It was then that he took to the sea again. He located the former captain of his yacht, told him as much as he dared, and through him bought a small secondhand cruiser. Howard Brooks had financed the deal. Allen was out of money, and did not dare to draw any. And he came back to the island.
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