Death and the Maiden

by Q. Patrick

  At last the moment arrived. I Said: “When the time came for the first intermission Elaine and I went back to the theater. We …”

  “You saw Grace?” That was the first interruption Lieutenant Trant had made. It was exactly as if some uncanny intuition had prompted him.

  “Yes,” I said, “we saw Grace. At least I did.”

  The impervious gray eyes were on mine. “And she was alone?”

  “No,” I said, “she wasn’t alone. She was with Dr. Hudnutt.” There was an interminable pause. Then I found myself adding: “They were talking about the play.”

  I don’t know why I told that deliberate lie for the second time. Probably I was just obeying the natural if unethical impulse which prompts you, when something as fundamentally shocking as murder has been committed, instinctively to side with people you know against the impersonal force of the law.

  If he had noticed the slight wavering in my voice, Lieutenant Trant gave no sign of it. He lapsed back into his intent silence as I told of my strange introduction to “David,” of Grace’s half-hearted attempt to give me the three letters, and her final disappearance into the crowd with the naval officer.

  Lieutenant Trant looked up from his notes, his face quite inscrutable. “From your infinite store of information, Miss Lovering, you couldn’t tell me who those three letters were for?”

  “I only saw one. It was addressed to her brother. And he got it. It arrived at the infirmary last night.”

  “Thank you, Miss Lovering.” He stopped looking at me. “In spite of certain discrepancies, the disappearance of the fur coat, for example, the discovery of the body so far away either from New York or Wentworth, and Grace’s behavior with regard to those letters, this case looks pretty straightforward, doesn’t it?”

  This question was addressed to the room at large, and I suspected it. It was just a little too bland. I had the feeling that he was letting out a baited hook.

  And it was the Dean of Women who rose to the bait. “Exactly,” she said. “I regret more than I can say that the matter of those frequent special delivery letters was not brought to my attention. If I had known anything of that sort had been going on …”

  “So that’s the way you see it, Mrs. Hudnutt,” broke in the detective thoughtfully. “An ardent love affair by correspondence, probably secret meetings with the mysterious, unidentified naval officer and some embarrassing relationship growing up which had to be severed—drastically.” He looked at one of the knife-edged creases in his pants. “In other words, you believe Grace was murdered by the naval officer?”

  Penelope flushed. “Of course I wouldn’t dream of accusing anyone at the present time. But this man was to have driven her home to college. She never returned. He has not yet come forward to give an account of himself. I feel it is of vital importance for the police to locate him.”

  “So do I.” Lieutenant Trant gave a sudden smile. I’m sure I don’t know what could have amused him. “I telephoned from Greyville to headquarters. They are working hard to locate him.”

  For a moment he sat in complete silence, then in a voice that was quite different, he added: “There is one very important point about those special delivery letters your roommate received, Miss Lovering. Do you happen to know if she was in the habit of keeping them?”

  “No. I think she destroyed them as soon as she’d read them.” Suddenly there came back to me the recollection of a trivial action of Grace’s which had slipped my memory. “No, she didn’t destroy the one that came last night. I saw her put it in the pocket of the coat she borrowed from me.”

  “The coat which has vanished into thin air.” Trant’s gray eyes moved away from me, resting on the little group of faculty members. “How about the rest of you? You were all at the theater last night. Have you anything to offer?”

  Penelope said stiffly, “I saw neither Grace nor this man—this naval officer. I never left my seat during the performance.”

  “I saw Grace—several times.” Marcia Parrish had crossed to the mantel and was standing there, her face etched in white relief against the gold parchment of the wallpaper. “Our seats were in the first row of the balcony and I happened to look down from time to time. It might interest you to know that she was alone for the first two acts. I’m almost sure the naval officer didn’t appear until just before the start of the third act.”

  It was impossible to tell whether Lieutenant Trant was interested or not. “Why did you happen to be so interested in Grace Hough, Miss Parrish?”

  There was something insolently goading in that question, and Marcia reacted instantly. “Obviously, I happened to notice her because in a theater full of strangers, she was someone I knew; because she is a student here, because it puzzled me that the other girls were not with her, because…”

  Trant’s quiet, “I see” interrupted her edged voice. He looked at his notebook again, then his gaze settled on the Dean of Men.

  “Did you see Grace, Dean Appel?”

  The Big Appel’s pink cheeks went a little pinker. “No, indeed. I never saw Miss Hough at the theater at all.” He cleared his throat and glanced uneasily at Hudnutt. “Of course, Dr. Hudnutt and I did meet the girl yesterday in rather—ah—embarrassing circumstances. But I think Hudnutt is better qualified to talk about it than I.”

  Trant’s voice was very quiet as he said: “Well, Dr. Hudnutt?”

  Penelope’s husband shifted his balance from one foot to another. There were the gaunt shreds of a smile in his eyes. “Since Appel has seen fit to refer to that incident I’d prefer to have him tell the story in his own way.”

  “Very good.” The Dean of Men sounded rather nettled. “Hudnutt and I are on a College Building Committee in charge of erecting a new laboratory. It had occurred to us both that we might save the Board of Trustees money by making use of an old stone quarry just about a mile away on the New York road. Yesterday after lunch I was taking my constitutional in that direction and ran into Hudnutt. He said he’d just been there to look the place over. Am I right, Hudnutt?”

  As Robert Hudnutt nodded, I had a quick stab of uneasiness. Last night during that fierce scene at the theater Dr. Hudnutt had mentioned the quarry to Grace.

  Harold Appel continued: “It seemed to me like a good chance to make up our minds about it so I asked Hudnutt to go back with me. That’s when we saw Miss Hough. She was there in the quarry, sitting on a pile of rocks. Very odd state she seemed to be in, crying her eyes out. Apparently she’d been talking to Hudnutt earlier and her …”

  “I think Lieutenant Trant will get a more accurate impression if I take the story up at this juncture,” cut in Hudnutt with thinly veiled sarcasm. “Dean Appel has painted a very colorful picture. But he is right in essence. Grace Hough was crying and, in a way, I was responsible.”

  “Am I to understand that you had an appointment in this quarry with Grace Hough?” asked Trant.

  “Very definitely not.” Hudnutt’s ascetic mouth tightened. “When I wish to talk to my students, I have a perfectly adequate office for that purpose. Miss Hough followed me to the quarry on her own initiative. I can only presume that the nearness of graduation examinations had made her a trifle unstable. Certainly what she had to say was distinctly neurotic.” I noticed that his eyes moved to his wife’s. They never left them all the while he was speaking. “She had brought with her the last two papers she had done for me on both of which I had given her an F. At one time Grace Hough had been a promising student. But recently her work had gone off very markedly. That’s what she came to speak to me about. She demanded to know why I had given her low grades; she accused me of discriminating against her.”

  He passed a hand wearily across the streak of gray hair at his temple. “I do not find it easy to cope with young girls in an overwrought condition. I did my best to assure her that low grades were merely the result of the poor quality of her work. I was sorry for the girl but when I realized that my presence seemed only to aggravate her—er—hysteria, I left her.�
�� He paused. “That is why she was crying when Dean Appel and I returned to the quarry.”

  The next question Trant asked was completely unexpected: “Did Grace Hough know you were going to be at the theater last night?”

  “I may have mentioned the fact to her. I really couldn’t say.”

  “But you did speak to her during that first act intermission?”

  That, of course, whether or not Lieutenant Trant was aware of it, was the climax to the whole interrogation. Robert Hudnutt’s eyes moved to mine. Marcia crossed a little too aimlessly to the window.

  To me the tension was obvious. I didn’t see how Lieutenant Trant could fail to notice it.

  “Yes,” Hudnutt’s tone was curiously empty of expression. “I did speak to Grace Hough in the first intermission.”

  “And she continued the scene she had started at the quarry?” offered Trant.

  “She did not.” Hudnutt’s tongue came out to moisten his lips. “As Miss Lovering told you, we talked of the play. I think she asked me to translate a certain line into idiomatic English.”

  I knew then, of course, that he was lying. The urgent words I had overheard him say were still in my memory. “I told you this aftèrnoon in the quarry. It’s all a ghastly mistake. Don’t you see you’re senselessly destroying your own chance of happiness and mine?” Even if I had not seen Phèdre, I had read it. It was only too obvioµs that those agonized sentences had not been quoted from Racine.

  With what seemed like complete irrelevancy, Trant said: “Just as a matter of interest, Dr. Hudnutt, what was the line she asked you to translate?”

  “I—that is, I’m afraid I do not recall. My memory for such things is not at all retentive.” Hudnutt looked really rattled until his eyes met mine. Then he said: “I think Miss Lovering overheard our conversation. Perhaps she can tell you.”

  I felt as nervous as a kid of sixteen. I guessed of course why he had said that. He knew I was aware of the fact that he was not telling the truth. He was taking a desperate chance on my backing him up and had thrown the ball to me.

  Curiously enough I didn’t have to think twice about what course I would take. Immediately I started wracking my tired brain, trying to remember a line, any line from Phèdre. And then, a sudden gift from the Gods, one of the most famous passages in the play flashed across my memory, and I heard my own voice in a very un-Gallic accent quoting:

  “C’est Venus toute entiere a sa proie attachee.”

  Hudnutt’s face lightened instantly, like a dark field on which the sun had shone.

  Lieutenant Trant watched both of us. “I’m afraid, Miss Lovering, you’ll have to take pity on an ignorant policeman and tell me what that means in English.”

  I was sure he knew perfectly well what it meant, but I faltered: “I suppose the idea is: Venus clinging like grim death to her quarry.”

  I realized that I had not given a particularly adroit translation. I realized too that the play on the word quarry might have embarrassing associations. But I was amazed at the change in Dr. Hudnutt’s expression when he heard me say that. The smile drained out of his eyes completely. For the second time in twenty-four hours I saw the scar spring into incandescence on his left temple, and once again I saw on his face the strained look which had tortured his face last night.

  It was a horrible moment because, to me at least, it was so completely baffling. The room was dangerously quiet. I could sense the violent, inexplicable under-currents of emotion which connected those three—Robert, Penelope and Marcia—in a bond of common anxiety.

  The silence seemed unbearable now. For one second longer Lieutenant Trant held it. Then, almost lazily, he unbent long legs and pushed himself up out of the chair.

  His eyes, faintly sardonic now, moved slowly from Robert, to Penelope, to Marcia and finally to the Dean of Men.

  “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you very much indeed. You have all been extremely helpful.”

  VII

  The interview was at an end. Lieutenant Trant seemed suddenly an ordinary, almost respectful police officer again. He turned to Dean Appel and said: “I believe your father is the Houghs’ lawyer, isn’t he? I’d be very grateful if you could give me any details of the family’s financial set-up.”

  The Big Appel looked rather flustered. “I’m—that is, I’m afraid I don’t know a great deal.”

  “But you may be able to help. Perhaps Dr. Hudnutt will let us move to his study?”

  Hudnutt murmured: “Of course.” And Trant left the room followed meekly by the Dean of Men. Almost immediately Penelope got up, saying she had to report to the President, and I was left alone with Dr. Hudnutt and Marcia Parrish.

  For several minutes the three of us sat there, not saying anything and very carefully not looking at each other. Then Marcia glanced at Hudnutt, her eyebrow tilted questioningly upward. He nodded and, with too obvious casualness, strolled out of the room.

  I started to leave, too, but Marcia said quickly:

  “Don’t go yet, Lee.” She took an onyx cigarette case and offered it to me with a tired smile. “You must be worn out, my dear. It’s been ghastly for us all. But it’s worse for you.”

  “It has been hard,” I agreed. “And I suppose the hardest part of all has been telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”

  I hadn’t really meant that as a challenge. But she took it that way.

  “It’s even harder to know when telling the truth is helpful and when it’s hideously misleading.” Her eyes, dark and intent, fixed my face. “It would have been hideously misleading if Lieutenant Trant had been told what Robert really said to Grace at the theater last night. I want to thank you for keeping back something which has nothing whatever to do with Grace’s death.”

  It was difficult to think of anything to say. Marcia’s fingers were twisting the cigarette uncertainly.

  “I know what you’re thinking, Lee. You know we were lying just now and … I’m sure Robert would rather I told you the truth.” She hesitated. “You know, of course, the way Grace felt about him?”

  I nodded. “I knew she used to have a sort of crush on him. But—well, obviously it was all on her side. I never imagined Dr. Hudnutt was even aware of her existence.”

  “I don’t think he was. Robert’s an awfully vague person. His students are really just grades in a mark-book to him. That’s why yesterday afternoon at the quarry she took him so completely off his guard. You can imagine how he felt. This girl suddenly appeared at his side in the quarry. He didn’t even recognize her at first. And then she started hurling all those accusations at him. He has lost sympathy with her work. Things used to be so different when he tried to understand her—before he started to discriminate against her. She worked herself up into a state bordering on hysterics. She threatened to go to the Dean of Women—Robert’s own wife—and complain that he was treating her unfairly”

  Marcia broke off, rising and starting to pace slowly up and down that long, quiet room. “Robert couldn’t cope with a situation like that, Lee. He hasn’t the slightest idea how a young girl’s mind works. He probably said all the worst possible things. I know he told her he was going to Phèdre. I think he had some blurred idea that if she knew she would see him again that evening she might leave him alone then. All he wanted was to get rid of her.”

  “But I don’t understand,” I insisted. “Surely Grace wouldn’t have thrown that scene and then the one in the theater just because Dr. Hudnutt had given her low grades.”

  “Of course you don’t understand. Grace wasn’t at all an easy person to understand.” I was startled at the suppressed vehemence in Marcia’s voice. “I’d been worried about her for some time. So had Penelope. She’d started to do something we’re all tempted to do at times—especially after any violent upheaval in life. She had started to grab at things just because she felt she had a right to them. When a woman begins doing that, she’s apt to be desperate and—dangerous.”

  She came over to me. “Las
t night at the theater—you remember I asked you to send Grace to me—well, I had a hunch she was going to be difficult. Robert had told me about the scene in the quarry. I didn’t want it to happen all over again at the theater in front of Penelope. I was too late, of course. Penelope didn’t feel very well in the first intermission. I stayed with her a few minutes. When I got out into the foyet, Grace had already cornered Robert.”

  I was watching her intently, remembering those violent words I had heard Dr. Hudnutt saying.

  “It was unpardonable what Grace did,” Marcia was saying slowly. “I hate to talk this way about her now she’s dead. But she was morbidly interested in other people’s lives. Perhaps you never realized that. But she had found out something from Robert’s past, something terrible which only he and I here at Wentworth knew and which he’s been trying so pathetically hard to forget. Grace brought that up at the theater last night. She threw it in his face, threatened to make it public.”

  She gripped my shoulders, her face drawn and desperate. “That’s why he was so completely shaken when you saw him. For some devious reason Grace was threatening to ruin his career here at Wentworth. Now you can see why he had to try to keep all that from the police.”

  There was something fierce, insistent in her voice. I had the feeling it was desperately important for her to convince me of something—that it was only by doing so perhaps that she could convince herself.

  “I can’t tell you any more, Lee. But I’ve got to ask you one thing. We stand to lose everything, Robert and Penny and I, if the police hear the wrong things. It sounds shocking, I know—a faculty member asking a student to join a conspiracy. But what concerns us has absolutely no bearing on Grace’s death. I swear it. Will you stand by us?”

  I looked at her; at her pale, drawn cheeks and the almost tortured anxiety in her eyes. Almost before I realized what I was saying, I murmured:

  “Of course I’ll stand by you.”

  “Thank you.” She leaned forward impulsively and kissed me. “That means a lot to me, Lee—a hell of a lot.” There was a ghost of a smile in her eyes. “I suppose you’re wondering why I’m getting so exercised by Robert’s problems. Maybe you think I’m just being noble. It’s not that. I was engaged to Robert once. You know that, don’t you? I’m terribly fond of him and Penelope is my oldest and best friend. She was swell to me at Oxford when I was just another long-legged American who wore quite the wrong clothes and who couldn’t play hockey. It was I who moved heaven and earth to get her over here. I feel responsible for her.” There was a brittle laugh. “Even though she did walk off with the only attractive man on the campus.”