Ava came back at her, for once. “Look here, haven’t you got eyes? They’re all thick as thieves. If Roger isn’t with them, Carol is. You don’t think Pat will admit he’s taking money from Roger, do you? Pat’s smart.”
Aunt Rita said, “You spent some time with the Abbotts yourself this afternoon, Ava.”
“They snared me! I was trying to tell you that. They got me up there and tried to pump me. They tried to make me admit all sorts of things that weren’t so. Just because they hate Toby they...”
“What did you admit?” Aunt Rita’s voice was quick and sharp.
“Let it ride, Ava!” Toby muttered.
Aunt Rita turned on me. “What did you mean when you said Toby had grass on his shoes, Mrs. Abbott?”
I squirmed. I looked at Patrick. He faintly nodded his head.
“Well, I think it was odd that he had grass on his shoes last night. You don’t get grass on your shoes going between here and the Good Angel, Miss Clary. There is grass in private gardens and in Jackson Square, and that’s about all in the Old Quarter. If he was so busy, where did he get his shoes damp, with grass sticking to them?”
“Toby, where did you get the grass on your shoes?” Aunt Rita demanded.
“Such a silly fuss!” Ava began. “Such bunk!”
“Answer me, Toby!” Aunt Rita said. He just looked at her, his eyes cringing, imploring. She turned to me. “You are sure?”
“Yes, I am. It was a damp evening, earlier, and his shoes were damp, with grass on them. I—I thought he had been in the garden when—when Helen was murdered.”
“That’s a goddamned lie!” Toby yelled.
The stenographer took it all down.
Patrick said, “It isn’t a lie that there was grass on your shoes, Wick. But I’ve got a different idea about where you got it. I say you followed Carol when she left your place and saw her meet Roger near the Cathedral. Then you slipped around and entered the Square by another gate and hid behind a bush to listen to what they said.” Now everybody, even Dr. Postgate, was gaping at Patrick. “What’s more, I say you informed the police that they met, Wick.”
Toby had shrunk back. “A woman called the police.”
“How do you know?”
“They said so,” Toby said, but he was not convincing.
Aunt Rita’s hands were working. Aunt Dollie began to cry. Ava, attempting to set down her teacup, dropped it on the hearth. It broke into many pieces, and Paulette, rushing over to pick it up, started scolding Ava roundly in her soft, powerful African voice.
Patrick’s temper was up. He said to Roger, “There is one question you have refused to answer. Did anyone in this house know what time you would be home last night?”
Roger said stubbornly, “I told you that I was expected here between twelve and one, and that Victorine was to go home—that is, to her room, when I got in.”
“I’m not referring to that. You stayed out later than you planned. You took a walk, remember, after you expected to be home. Did you let anyone here at the house know that you would be away longer than you had originally expected?”
Roger said nothing. Jonas was right about these Creoles.
Patrick spoke to the others, “Did anyone answer a phone after midnight any time? Maybe I should say did anyone hear the phone ring?”
No one said a word. Jonas is darn right, I decided, and regardless, I liked them for it. They were a clan. They would stick tight, go up or down together. Even the three black ones, even outspoken Paulette, was a tomb of silence.
XVIII
CAPTAIN JONAS returned and walked from the door to his table with one eye on the time. The Sèvres clock on the mantelpiece was about to strike seven. The little bell sounded in a silver tone as elegant as Aunt Rita’s voice just as Captain Jonas seated himself and resumed charge of the questioning. I wondered what he would think later when he read the secretary’s notes.
He was about to speak when Ava said, contritely, with her eyes all liquid penitence, “Captain Jonas, I’ve got a confession to make. I told the Abbotts a lie.”
He focused on her, inquisitively.
“You know when they asked me to come up for a drink? When I was with you this afternoon on our gallery? Well, I told them something that wasn’t so. They started sort of fishing and I got worried for Uncle George and I told them that I went out last night about two o’clock and that I saw the nurse come back to this house. After Uncle George saw her leave, I mean. Well, it wasn’t so. I did leave the house, but I didn’t see the nurse. I lied when I said I saw her come back. I did it for Uncle George. I knew he had a bad heart and I knew you were sort of worrying him so I told the Abbotts a lie, for his sake. I thought they would pass it on to you.”
“You said you saw the nurse come back?” Jonas asked. Ava nodded slowly. “But you didn’t really?” Ava shook her head. “I see. You shouldn’t have done that, Miss Ava.”
“I know.”
“This sort of thing is hard enough when everybody tells the truth, Miss Ava.”
“I’m so sorry.”
Aunt Rita asked, “Where did you go when you left the house at that hour, Ava?”
“I didn’t leave the house, Aunt Rita.”
“That’s true,” Aunt Dollie piped up. “George said she wasn’t in her room at the time we found Helen but you yourself said she was. Don’t you remember, Rita?”
“I myself,” Aunt Rita said, and for the first time it looked as if this Creole ring was starting to crack. “I myself told a lie, Dollie. Ava was not in her room at that time. Shortly after three I noticed that she was in bed. I didn’t hear her come in.”
“I took a little walk.” Ava’s lovely face was full of self-reproach.
“Darling!” cried Aunt Dollie. “It wasn’t safe!”
“I know that. It was crazy. But Toby and I had quarreled, and I worried. I thought I would go over and tell him so but after I got outside I knew he would be furious at me for walking through the streets at that hour alone, specially on a Saturday night, so I walked around nearby a little while and came back in.”
Captain Jonas consulted his watch.
“All right,” he said. “If there is no one to corroborate Mr. Sears’ story that the nurse left this house shortly after two o’clock well have to strike it off the record and assume that she never left the house.” Ava gave him flattering attention. “I reckon no one will try to deny that she was killed in the house?” No one said anything. “It could happen that she was killed outside and brought back here, but why would anybody do that? I think we must assume that the nurse was killed somewhere near the place she was found this afternoon and concealed some place or other till moved to the chest in that hall. Is there such a place in this house?”
Nobody answered. All the Clarys looked at Captain Jonas in what, had their eyes been a different shape, might be called wide-eyed innocence.
“Okay,” he said flatly. “Suit yourselves. But I’m going to give you a piece of advice. Either you tell me where that body was kept or this old house is going to be taken apart, and I mean taken apart, and I doubt if you’ll find enough people to put it back together for some time.”
He got no answers.
All at once he pounded on the old satinwood table.
“Where was that body kept?” he shouted.
My nerves tingled. Roger Clary looked down. Aunt Dollie squeaked, and Aunt Rita’s eyebrows jumped as if the violence of his voice had physically hurt her. Carol sat up very straight and Toby Wick tried to sneer, which was funny, on his swollen face.
But nobody made any reply.
Jonas licked his lips, looked at his watch, cast a side-wise glance at the stenographer, and said, “Okay. The place will be razed if need be. Remember, you asked for it.”
Aunt Rita spoke up.
“We have already had a sample of your vandalism today, Captain Jonas. A mild prelude, I take it, to what might happen. So, for the sake of my house, I am going to tell you a secret which has been passed along from one h
ead of our family to the next ever since this house was built. There is a secret vault in the house.”
Captain Jonas looked pleased.
“Now we’re getting places.”
Aunt Rita said, “Considering the exigencies, I will take you to the place and show you the vault, Captain Jonas. Provided you will agree to keep it a secret.”
“Why, I can’t do that, Miss Clary. This is a murder case. I can’t hold back evidence like that.”
Aunt Rita looked stubborn.
“Then I won’t tell you,” said she.
Now Jonas looked annoyed. He gave his head a shake. He flapped his hands.
“How many of you people know about this vault?” he demanded. Nobody answered. “Come on, speak up!”
Patrick said, “I am sorry to be the one to speak, Miss Clary, but I know about the vault.” Aunt Rita did not believe him. “You’ll find it in our hall, Captain Jonas, between the big mirror facing the stairs and another mirror something like it in Wick’s living room.”
Aunt Rita started trembling all over.
She said, “I seem to be a very stupid old woman, Captain Jonas. What Lieutenant Abbott tells you is true.” Her voice faltered. “How did you find out?” she asked Patrick.
Patrick gave Toby a lazy glance.
“I got it from Mr. Wick.”
“That’s a goddamned lie!” Toby flung out.
“It is not a lie,” Patrick said.
“You knew it before I told you,” Toby said. “You’re trying to pretend you didn’t snoop around and...”
“I didn’t know it,” Patrick said. His voice was low and his eyes were leveled on Toby Wick. “I guessed that the crypt, or vault as you call it, had to be there, and you confirmed my guess. The body had to be hidden somewhere near that chest. Major Clary’s rooms had been searched by the police, probably very thoroughly. Since the hall has nothing in it except the mirror and the chest, not even a stairs closet, and since your living room was once an office where the head of the family transacted his business, and since you yourself had kept only that mirror of all the antiques which must have furnished your place, I guessed why. I could have been wrong.”
Ava said, “Don’t let him trick you into saying anything, Toby. Be careful. That’s the sort of thing they did to me this afternoon. I outsmarted them and told them a tale about seeing the nurse come back....”
Patrick said, “You did see the nurse come back, Ava.”
“I—I did not.”
“But you did! And you weren’t out on the street. You were in Wick’s apartment and you saw her as she passed his windows on her way back to the house.”
Aunt Rita broke in.
“Toby, is it true that you told Lieutenant Abbott about the vault?”
“He got it out of me, Aunt Rita.”
“Don’t call me Aunt Rita, Toby. Please. Why didn’t you tell me you knew about the vault? I could have warned you then that it was a family secret. It isn’t important now, as a hiding place, but it was pleasant to think that the secret had been kept. You have not behaved honorably in a number of ways, Toby. I insist that you move out of my house. I insist that you resume your correct name and face your past...”
Toby whined, “Past? I told you I was framed in Chicago. They never proved anything else. The drunk was hanging round and I led him to the door and gave him a shove and he fell and cracked his skull on the sidewalk. His father was a big guy in politics. I never had a chance. I was lucky to come out of it as well as I did. I...”
“I insist that you resume your true name and face life like a man,” Aunt Rita said. “I wish to hear no more about it. But since you have deceived me about the vault and—and in other ways, you must leave my house.”
Toby sniffed. “Do you think I would have let that goddamned ugly mirror stay in my place a single day except that it made another way out of that apartment?”
Jonas said, “That did mean there was an exit there. You did have direct access to the house itself. You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Wick? You wouldn’t like to live in a place that had only one way out.”
“Gang up on me, why don’t you!” Toby snarled. He fumbled for his cigarettes. Ava started to defend him, but Aunt Rita held up a hand, and said, in a resigned tone, to the detective, “It’s true. The vault is between the two mirrors.” She looked at Patrick. “You are very clever, young man,” she said drily.
Jonas said, “And nobody knew about this vault except you and Toby Wick, as he calls himself? Well, that makes our work look very easy, Miss Clary.”
Roger spoke out. “I knew about the vault, Aunt Rita. I’m sorry—I knew you cherished the secret, but I have always known about the vault. My father knew about it, you see.”
He was lying. I was sure.
“I see,” Aunt Rita said. She added in French, “Well, it’s not important.”
Jonas laughed. “It is important. Okay, let’s get on with it. The nurse was murdered. Where? Presumably in one of Roger Clary’s rooms. The body was then hidden in the vault. Why was it removed from the vault? I’ll tell you. The police had searched the house and the murderer felt safe. So he moved the body to the chest and it doesn’t take much imagination to foresee that the chest would soon be removed from the house and the body conveniently dumped. Maybe he planned to salt it down and keep it awhile in the storehouse?” He glared around. “Now, how many of you knew about the vault?” Nobody said anything. Jonas looked at his watch. “Come clean! Speak up! Or I’ll have the whole lot of you taken into custody.”
There was no answer.
“I’ve got no time to waste,” Jonas said. “I’ve half a mind to throw the lot of you in the clink.”
“Clink?” Aunt Rita said.
“Jail, dear,” said Aunt Dollie.
Patrick said, “Captain Jonas, if that body was in the vault around three o’clock this morning somebody has been withholding important evidence. It is quite possible that one person murdered the nurse, and that another became an accessory after the fact because he withheld from the authorities his knowledge that the body of the nurse was hidden in the vault.”
“What makes you say that?” Jonas asked.
“Someone came through the vault about three o’clock this morning and slipped upstairs and came into this part of the house by way of our apartment,” Patrick said.
XIX
ONCE AGAIN I seemed to hear the key turn in our Yale lock, the door open. I saw the lamp go out, heard fingers fumbling at the latch on the shutters, footsteps whispering softly along our gallery.
Patrick said, “I was not present. Jean was in the next room, and awake, when our front door was opened with a key and somebody turned out the lamp—probably to avoid being seen from the other wing—opened the shutters, and walked along the gallery. If circumstances were favorable, this person could descend unseen by the outside stairs, slip into the garden and along to the other wing.”
“Who would want to do that?” Ava asked.
“Who?” Patrick answered.
Ava laid a cool ash on the receiver and said, “There they go again, Captain Jonas. Don’t you believe a word they say. They’ll do anything for money.”
Patrick said, “It had to be you, Ava. Everybody else is accounted for during that time.” Ava paid him no notice. “You had a key to Wick’s apartment and another to ours. It isn’t the first time you’ve used our apartment as a means of entrance to the house. I am sorry, for Miss Clary’s sake, to make this public, but I think you’d better admit it, or prove that I’m wrong.”
Ava’s dark eyes appealed to the detective. This time it didn’t work. His gaze was hard and clear.
She said, “He’s lying.”
“Did you come through the apartment, or didn’t you?” Jonas asked her bluntly.
“Ava!” said Aunt Rita.
She tossed her head. But she gave in. “Yes, I did. I had the house keys. I slipped out and took the keys with me because by coming home from Chartres Street and slipping through
Toby’s place and then through the Abbotts’ place and down into the garden I could finally get to my room without Aunt Rita knowing how late I stayed out. She’s such an old—she’s so set in her ways.”
Captain Jonas looked stunned.
“You came through there last night? Past that body?”
Ava was annoyed. “There wasn’t a body there. How could there have been? The space isn’t big enough to conceal a body and still let a person get through. Why—why, I would simply have died, too. How can you even think such a thing?”
“Then it wasn’t there at three o’clock this morning?”
“It certainly was not.”
“Maybe it never was there, Lieutenant,” the detective said. “Maybe...”
“Just a minute, Captain Jonas,” Patrick said. He said to Ava, “You did see the nurse come back to the house?”
Ava shrugged.
“Well, yes, I did.”
Captain Jonas set his chin and leaned forward to frown hard at Ava.
Patrick said, “Why not assume for the moment that Miss Graham is speaking the truth about the vault, Captain Jonas? Perhaps the body was in the chest when she used the vault to come into the house.”
Jonas’s lips spread out. “Hey! The body couldn’t flit here and there at will, Lieutenant Abbott. It wasn’t in the chest when the men searched the house this morning.”
“Did you look in the chest last night?”
“No. We didn’t know the nurse was dead last night. We thought she had left the house. We took Sears’ word for the truth.”
“He spoke the truth,” Patrick said, and Aunt Dollie flashed him a grateful glance. “The nurse left the house approximately at the time Mr. Sears said. But she came back. Why did she come back?” There were no opinions. “Perhaps she returned for some herbs. When we found her this afternoon she held clutched in one hand a sprig of withered basil. Perhaps she did go into the garden at half-past twelve, when Jean heard footsteps, in order to help herself to the basil when Paulette was asleep. Perhaps she kept the basil fresh in water till she left the house shortly after two o’clock, but on going away she forgot it, and came back for it.” Nobody spoke. “Only, if that is the case, why did she slip back to the house from the Chartres Street direction? She did slip back, didn’t she, Ava?”
The Indigo Necklace Page 17