The Frightened Fianc?e

by George Harmon Coxe

  “You found her like that, huh?” Brand said. “When?”

  Holland glanced at his watch. He kept his eyes averted lest they stray to Pierroni. He said he thought it was about seven-fifteen.

  “What’s your name?”

  Holland told him, gave his address.

  “She a friend of yours?”

  “Yes.”

  Brand nodded again. He did not seem much impressed or even very interested. He asked a few more casual questions and then told Holland to sit down in a corner chair.

  “Until the boys from downtown get here,” he said. “It won’t be long.”

  The influx started in less than a minute. Holland did not know who they all were, but he found out later that there were two detectives from the homicide squad, a captain from the precinct, technicians of one sort or another, a young assistant district attorney whose misfortune it was to be on this particular twenty-four-hour call. This one’s name was Carney, a slender, thin-faced man with thick-rimmed glasses, and when the room got too crowded he took Holland back to the bedroom and told him to wait.

  “When we get straightened out in there,” he said, “we’ll want you to go over to the precinct station. We can get the details from you a little better over there.”

  The bedroom door was left open, and in a little while Holland looked down the hall and saw Sam Crombie talking to some of the others. After a while Crombie came down the hall with one of the homicide men.

  “Harry, here,” Crombie said, indicating his blunt-jawed companion, “was wondering why you called me. I told him I was working for you.”

  “That so, Mr. Holland?” the other asked. “And you think there’s a tie-in between this and that killing in Connecticut?”

  Holland said he was sure of it and after a brief discussion Harry went back to the other room. Crombie squeezed his bulky frame into a boudoir chair, grunting with the effort and looking a bit uncomfortable. He let his shrewd little eyes inspect the room and finally brought them back to Holland.

  “Lucky I happened to know a couple of the boys out there,” he said. “I think it’s going to be a while before you get out to Hawk’s Point.”

  Holland made no reply. Reaction had begun to sap his strength. He felt weary and depressed, and through it all there ran an undercurrent of hopelessness when he tried to view this murder in terms of what it might mean to Tracy—and to him. He had no fear at the moment that he would be arrested, but deep down some of the sickness remained because in his imagination the picture of Nadine was vivid and ineradicable. He remembered, too, the way she had been that afternoon and he could not get the thought from his mind that she might still be alive if he had gone to the police instead of seeking her co-operation first.

  “What?” he said, aware that Crombie had spoken.

  “I said quit worryin’.” The bright, intelligent eyes were prying, speculative. “If you’re blaming yourself for this, forget it.”

  “She knew who killed Drake.”

  “Sure. And she must have known what she was doing—or thought she did. Maybe you should have told Lieutenant Pilgrim in the beginning about seeing her come in that Friday night. You didn’t. You know why? Because you’re a nice guy and you don’t want to make trouble, especially for a woman. You put it off until today and then you gave her a few hours to make up her mind. You threw a scare into her. She probably got in touch with whoever it was she was covering up for and—”

  “She called Connecticut.”

  Crombie sat up. “What?”

  Holland explained how he had secured the catch on the door and overheard Nadine place the long-distance call. He told how he had gone to the station and what he had seen and done.

  “What I want to know,” he said, “is should I tell the police I saw Baldwin?”

  Crombie took a while to come up with an answer. He massaged a beefy jowl, squinted one eye, examined the ceiling with both. Finally he said, “You don’t know if he came here or not. You can say you saw him in the station around seven and he can say you didn’t. Either way the cops’ll have to prove it.” He hesitated, made up his mind. “It’s up to you, but I’d say if they ask you, tell them. If not you can think it over. They’re going to know Baldwin was engaged to her. They’re going to look him up and question him.”

  “What I can’t get through my head is this,” Holland said. “The one who killed Drake must have killed Nadine. How could it be Baldwin? He was in love with her.”

  “Was he?”

  “He was going to marry her.”

  “There could be angles to that, too.” Crombie sighed and twisted in his chair. “We can go into that later. When they get you over to the precinct house, stick to facts. They probably won’t let me in on the session, but I’ll wait for you.”

  The questioning that John Holland went through in that office on the second floor of the precinct station sometime later was a revelation to him in many ways. For some reason he had expected that the captain, being the senior officer, would take charge of the interview; instead it was the young assistant district attorney who put most of the questions. The room itself was not unlike the sets used in certain motion pictures he had seen, but the procedure, though strenuous and continuing, at no time became threatening, coercive, or out of hand.

  He had information and they wanted it. The questions were succinctly put, sometimes repeated, sometimes rephrased after other questions had been answered. Occasionally one of the homicide men would get on a subject, carry it a while and toss it back to the district attorney’s man. When they discovered that there might be a connection between this murder and the one on Friday night there were telephone calls to Connecticut. But no one screamed at him or pounded the desk or spoke of an arrest. For these were terse, tough-talking men, treating him with matter-of-fact directness that indicated no particular deference or respect but, on the other hand, suggested in no way that they yet thought he was a criminal.

  They found out why he had called on Nadine that afternoon, what he had said. They wanted to know why he hadn’t told the Connecticut State Police what he knew in the first place, showing some impatience and disgust at his answers but going on to his movements, actions, reasoning, and general conduct since that time.

  This went on for a solid two hours and when they finished with him Holland felt mentally bruised and physically spent. His throat was dry, his nerves ragged. There was a stiffness in his muscles as he pulled himself out of the chair once he realized that they were dismissing him for the present. Yet for all of that he was impressed by the talent and intelligence they contributed to the task at hand, and he was grateful indeed that he was able to answer honestly most of their questions. In the end they gave no indication that they considered him suspect, though he realized that this might be an impression created for his benefit while parts of his story were checked.

  There were, however, certain compensations for his ordeal. In getting their information they also gave some. They told him that Nadine had been shot as she sat in the chair, because the bullet that passed through her body had been recovered from the upholstered back. They told him that, according to the medical examiner’s best estimate, the woman had probably been dead not more than an hour when examined, putting the time of death sometime after six-thirty.

  He gave this information to Sam Crombie when he came down the worn wooden steps and found the barrel-shaped detective waiting near the desk. Crombie listened thoughtfully as they stood in the vestibule, his face expressionless.

  “Did they say it was okay for you to drive to Hawk’s Point tonight?” he asked.

  “I didn’t tell them I was going to.”

  “You’d better be back tomorrow.”

  “I intend to.”

  They went down the steps and started toward Crombie’s coupé parked some distance away. As they did so a police car swung in to the curb opposite the entrance and two men got out. The one who had been driving was a. plainly dressed, competent-looking fellow; the other was Keith
Erskine.

  Holland stopped. So did Crombie.

  Erskine waited near the curb while his companion came around the car. Apparently he did not see Holland or Crombie and he glanced neither to the right or left as he crossed the sidewalk. There was still a singular elegance about his faultless dress, the neatly combed hair, the way he held himself. But the light was good here, and Holland’ saw that the good-looking face was strangely pale and harassed.

  “Well,” he said when the pair disappeared, “what do you know about that?”

  “Why not?” Crombie grunted. “They must’ve got a tie-in someplace. He knew Nadine, didn’t he? He had a motive on the Drake thing. Also,” he said when they stopped by the coupé, “I talked on the phone to Lieutenant Pilgrim this afternoon. Pilgrim hasn’t made his move yet, but he knows that Erskine didn’t drive back here from the Allenby place at eleven o’clock Friday night like he said he was going to.”

  Holland, who had been listening with but a part of his mind, was instantly attentive. “Where was he?”

  “In a gin mill on the Post Road. His convertible was seen outside the joint at one-thirty Saturday morning.”

  He gave Holland the keys to the car. “Take it easy,” he said. “This ain’t one of those hot-rods. Call me the first thing in the morning,” he said. “I’m damned if I know why you’re going up there at all. I just hope you do.”

  nineteen

  IT WAS ten minutes of two when John Holland braked Crombie’s coupé on the edge of the circular drive and cut his lights and motor. There had been no rain on the trip up but the night was gusty and he could hear the wind sing its fitful song in the treetops as he got out and glanced up at the lighted windows which over looked the drive from the second-floor hall. There was no other light that he could see from where he stood so he went quietly up the steps and along the darkened main hall to the stairs. As he neared the top he could see the reflected light in the alcove on his right, and when he moved that way Fanny Allenby called to him.

  “Is that you, Johnnie?”

  He went into a room darkly shadowed around the edges and illuminated by a single lamp which burned on the bedside table. Outlined in its feeble glow Fanny Allenby sat propped up in the center of the heavy four-poster, her yellowish-white hair trapped in a coarse net, a quilted bed jacket around her shoulders. She had some knitting in front of her, an unfinished Argyle sock, but it stayed there unnoticed after she saw him.

  “Bring your chair up here,” she said. “I can’t see you.”

  He did as she asked, moving into the circle of light, and now there came to him a sense of uneasiness, an almost eerie quality which seemed to be a part of the shadowed room and the ancient furniture and the wrinkled gray-faced matriarch who watched him so intently with her bright, obscured eyes.

  “Tell me about Nadine.”

  He did so as briefly as he could and then went on because of the things in his mind that had to be answered before he could know what to do.

  “Do the police know who did it?” she asked.

  “Not yet,” he said. “Did you tell the others?”

  “Yes.”

  “Mr. Baldwin, too?”

  “Arthur? Certainly.”

  “When?”

  “When he came in tonight. He had to go to New Haven. There was a phone call for him this afternoon. Some business matter. He said he would have dinner with this man, whoever he was, and come back on the State of Maine.”

  “That would get in at eleven thirty-five. That’s the train that leaves New York at nine. What did he do when you told him?”

  “He scared me.” She reached behind her to adjust a pillow. “I heard him come and called to him and he said good night. He said he was tired and wanted to go right to bed, but I made him come in. I told him that I had bad news. ‘You’d better sit down, Arthur,’ I said. ‘It’s about Nadine.’ Then I told him what you had said.”

  She twisted the gold band on her finger and her gaze wandered. “I thought he had a heart attack. You know how healthy he looks, the tanned face? It was like putty. He collapsed in that chair.” She pointed off into the darkness. “Collapsed, I tell you.”

  She continued in the same leaden tones, explaining how she had gone from her bed to help him and how, when Baldwin could speak, he protested that it could not be true. Holland let her finish, hearing her tell how Baldwin had wanted to drive immediately to New York and how she had made him take two sleeping-pills before she would allow him to leave the room.

  “There was no point in his going tonight,” she said. “Tomorrow would do as well and he finally saw that I was right.”

  “Who else was away today?” Holland asked.

  “Frances went out this afternoon. Some friend of hers had her over for cocktails. At Black Point, I believe.”

  “When did she come back.”

  “At seven-thirty. And a little tight, I thought.”

  “What about Eric Carver?”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea.” The shadowed eyes were watching him again and she said, “Though I did hear a car come in just before Arthur arrived and later I saw Eric’s lights on. Why do you ask?”

  “Keith was in town.”

  “Naturally.”

  “The police were questioning him when I left.”

  “Keith? But what on earth—”

  “I don’t know,” Holland cut in. “But I do know that Mr. Baldwin didn’t go to New Haven. He went to New York. He was in New York when Nadine was killed.”

  He spoke quickly, quietly, seeing the blue-veined hands tighten on the unfinished socks, the sudden stiffening of her shoulders. Her voice when she spoke was blunter than before; too blunt, he thought.

  “What nonsense is this?” she scoffed. “Arthur in New York? Don’t be absurd, Johnnie.”

  He waited. Inside the room was suddenly still and there was no sound but the soft moaning of wind and the rattle of a shutter somewhere outside. He saw the hands relax on the socks, the movement of the bed jacket as she took a breath. He waited, still not saying anything, his face grimly composed and somber glints in his hazel eyes. For long seconds it was as if both listened to the wind, the shutter, the whisper of a branch as it brushed the side of the house. Neither moved, but Holland felt the tension, his own and hers. Finally she broke the spell.

  “What are you getting at, Johnnie?”

  He stood up then, moving away from the light and having his say as he watched her.

  “How long can you keep pretending?” he asked. “You know that Drake was not killed by any outsider. You were scared the other day; you’re scared now. You’re wondering, aren’t you? Wondering if Nadine would be alive now if you told all you know or suspected? Sure, it was her own fault for trying to hold back the truth. But do you also know the truth?”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” she said, and now there was no bluntness in her voice, or asperity, or even defiance. There was only weakness and indecision, as if somehow the spark which had glowed inside her for so long was being slowly extinguished. The eyes he could not see, but the gray face was slack and deeply wrinkled, a stranger’s face that had suddenly aged beyond its years.

  “You didn’t care about Roger Drake,” he said. “Or Nadine.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “But can it end there?” he said, paying no attention. “Hasn’t it occurred to you that it could happen to someone you love?”

  Her breathing had become difficult. She put out one hand tentatively, as if to stop him, but no words came.

  “Good night,” he said. “I’m sorry I have to talk like this but I think you should know how I feel. From now on I don’t care who gets hurt—so long as it isn’t Tracy. I intend to make sure that the same thing doesn’t happen to her.”

  He stopped at the door. He asked her if she wanted him to close it but she did not seem to hear him. When she continued to sit there staring straight ahead, he shut the door behind him and went quietly down the stairs.

  Once i
n the darkened drawing-room he stopped to let his thoughts turn back to that Friday night when he had left the gun in the table drawer out there in the hall, only to come back to find it gone. He could not recapture all the thoughts that had come to him then, for he had been too nerved-up and distraught to reason properly, but some of the impressions remained and he examined them now.

  Instinct had told him that he had not been alone that night. This became an obvious conclusion when analyzed, because if he had been alone no one could have known about the gun. Someone did. Someone had seen him. Someone had taken it.

  Where?

  Not upstairs, of that he was sure. He was equally sure that the gun had been hidden somewhere on this floor and the only sounds he had heard that night seemed to have come from the drawing-room. It had been empty when he glanced about it a minute or so later but before that, when he stood awed and dumbfounded, wondering what had happened, he thought he had heard some faint sound, like the furtive rasp of metal on stone.

  Stone meant the fireplace or hearth, for there was no other stone in the room that he could remember, and now as he moved in that direction he knew he would need some light. Nothing bright that might be noticeable from upstairs, but some little illumination to guide him. Perhaps one of the small, ornamental bulbs that stood in the brass sconces on either side of the stone fireplace above the lintel and were vaguely visible now that his eyes had adjusted themselves to the darkness.

  He reached toward the one on the right, examining its surface until he located the small switch on the underside. When he turned this, light came from the frosted, tapering bulb, an ineffectual glow in the vast-ness of the room, but sufficient for his purpose.

  Beginning at once, he dropped to one knee and examined the bricks in the broad hearth, looking for loose joints and systematically exploring one row at a time. In the end he found nothing that even warranted a second look so he stood up, dusting his knee and regarding the fireplace proper. This was constructed of quartered native stone in various shapes and sizes and extended above the lintel in a receding angle clear to the ceiling, all of it looking very permanent and solid.