Death and the Maiden

by Q. Patrick

  She gave me a queer complex look as if she felt she had maybe told me more than she had intended. But I was too confused to get any more than the gist of what she had said.

  Marcia moved away from me, lighting another cigarette. As she did so, the door was pushed open. Lieutenant Trant was there, watching us from quiet, wary eyes.

  “So you’re still here, Lee Lovering,” he said. “That’s very efficient of you. Did you guess I’d be needing you again?”

  VIII

  Obediently I followed Lieutenant Trant out onto the campus. There were already gray hints of evening in the sky. The broad plane trees threw quiet shadows across the neatly trimmed lawns, the formal beds of tulips glowed yellow, pink and white.

  But, as we got into the car and turned up the narrow drive from the Hudnutts’ to the center of the campus, the illusion of academic peace was completely shattered. The little knots of students were even mòre numerous, more excited than before, and I noticed an utterly unfamiliar sight, newsboys with sheaves of papers under their arms, scurrying from group to group.

  Trant did not speak until we were right up to the Administration Building. Then he asked: “Which way for the infirmary?”

  I had known, of course, that he would have to see Jerry, but as I gave the directions, I could hardly bear the thought of how Jerry’s face would look when we broke the news.

  When we drew up outside the infirmary I laid my hand on Trant’s arm. “Please let me have a moment with him first,” I begged. “It would be such a shock to have to hear from the police.”

  The detective looked down at me, a faintly amused smile in his eyes, almost as if he had guessed the way I felt about Jerry.

  “Of course you can see him first, Miss Lovering. That’s why I brought you along.”

  Jerry was lying back against the pillows, the bedclothes raised in a mound by the plaster cast on his foot. There was something pathetic about the helplessness of his strong young body. And in his face was the resignation of someone already prepared for the worst.

  “Lee!” He swung forward and clutched my hand with a grip that hurt my fingers. “Have they found her?”

  I sat down on the edge of the bed, and told him. I had wanted so desperately to say something that might comfort him. But there was nothing but the bitter fact of Grace’s death.

  He didn’t say a word until I had blurted out the whole story. We just sat close together in silence. His fingers were cold in mine.

  At last he spoke, his voice hardly more than a whisper. “Who did it? Who do they think did it?”

  “The naval officer hasn’t—hasn’t come forward yet to explain.” With sudden uneasiness I remembered Lieutenant Trant waiting in the building. “Jerry, the detective from New York is here. He’s going to want to see your letter from Grace.”

  His fingers slipped from mine. His blue eyes flickered. “He can’t see it.”

  “But, Jerry, you’ve got to show it to him. You can’t hold it back just because it says things about Norma.”

  “It’s not that.” A slight flush darkened his cheeks. “I can’t show him that letter because I don’t have it any more. I felt I ought to let Norma see it. There was another one, too, that Grace wrote me last week when we were in quarantine here. It was more or less on the same subject. Norma read them this morning. She—she tore them both up.”

  “Tore them up!”

  “Please, Lee—” his voice was hoarse, pleading—“don’t let him know she did it. She was crazy but she didn’t realize that last letter was important. She couldn’t have known Grace was dead. If he asks about it I’m going to say I destroyed it myself.”

  “But he’ll want to see the pieces.”

  “Then I’ll say I burnt them.”

  “But, Jerry, it’s one of the last letters Grace wrote. Lieutenant Trant’s going to think it said something important about—about the case. He’ll know you couldn’t have got out of bed to burn it. He’ll think you are lying because …”

  “I don’t give a damn what he thinks,” broke in Jerry savagely. “I’m not going to have Norma—”

  He stopped very quickly. We both of us turned to face the door as it opened on Lieutenant Trant.

  He stood there, smiling that quiet, sympathetic smile of his. Then he came right over and sat on the other side of the bed. The whole thing couldn’t have been less formal when he started to question Jerry. He covered more or less the same ground he had covered with me; the naval officer, the hectic correspondence, the state of mind that might have led up to Grace’s unaccountable behavior the night before. Jerry, of course, had to answer as I had done. Although Grace had visited him almost every day before the infirmary had been quarantined, she had confided in him no more than she had in me.

  “There’s a point you may be able to help with, Mr. Hough,” said Trant eventually. “Have you any idea where Grace could have met this naval officer?”

  “There’s only one place I can think of. Grace often spent her vacations with some old friends of Dad’s—Dr. and Mrs. Wheeler in Baltimore. She was there last Christmas. It was just after that when the letters first started coming.”

  Trant nodded and made a note of the Baltimore address. He hesitated before his next question, his eyes fixed gravely On Jerry’s pale face. “It’s sort of tough bringing this up, but I’ve been talking to Dean Appel. He tells me your sister had a life insurance policy. I understand it’s quite large.”

  Jerry nodded tersely. “We both had policies. Father took them out just six months before he died. When—when we lost our money, the court ruled my policy forfeit to the bankrupt estate since I was under twenty-one.”

  “But Grace was over twenty-one at the time?”

  “Yes. She kept hers.”

  “And the amount?”

  “My policy was for $150,000. I think Grace’s was the same.”

  “That’s a lot of money.” Trant’s eyes were oddly abstracted. “Has it occurred to you, Mr. Hough, that your sister may have been persuaded into making out a will in favor of some interested party? If that were so—” he shrugged—“it would give a very strong motive.”

  “It’s not possible. Grace wouldn’t ever have made a will without telling me. Besides, our lawyer, Dean Appel’s father, advised her to surrender the policy when it fell due next month. We couldn’t keep up the payments.” His lips tightened as if he were making a desperate effort to keep himself steady. “She wanted me to have the cash value so I could take a post-graduate course in electrical engineering.”

  “I see,” Lieutenant Trant was murmuring. “In that case, I presume you stand to benefit now by the insurance policy?”

  “I suppose so.”

  Without the slightest warning, Trant added: “I would like to see that letter your sister had delivered here last night.”

  Instinctively I laid my hand on Jerry’s sleeve. I could feel his arm tense beneath the white cotton. He looked straight at Trant. “I’m afraid it’s destroyed. When it came I didn’t know anyone would want to see it. I tore it up.”

  “You tore it up?” Lieutenant Trant repeated that last sentence, weighing each word as if they all had some special significance to him. “In that case you’d better tell me what she said.”

  Jerry’s fingers tightened on the coverlet. “It had no possible bearing—on what’s happened.”

  “It was delivered mysteriously in the middle of the night and yet it had no possible bearing on what’s happened?”

  “That is what I said.”

  “I see.” Once again Lieutenant Trant seemed to slip into some harmless day-dream of his own. “You understand, of course, that the insurance company may want to know what was in that letter before they pay on the policy. Since it was taken out less than two years ago the usual suicide clause is probably still valid. If they know you are suppressing a letter, in spite of the circumstances of death, they may charge that it was a note expressing intention to commit suicide. As you know, in the case of suicide, they are not
bound to pay.”

  He said this so casually that its implication didn’t make itself clear to me right away. It wasn’t until I saw the quick color flood Jerry’s cheeks that I realized the detective was deliberately using shock tactics to force him into telling the contents of the letter.

  I said heatedly: “What Jerry says is true. I read the letter this morning and it had absolutely nothing to do with the case. Grace was just writing about one of the girls hejæ, a girl she didn’t like and Jerry did. She said some rather—rather nasty things about her.”

  “And the name of this girl?” asked Trant.

  Jerry broke in sharply: “There’s no need for you to know her name.”

  “But I would like to know what prompted your sister to write about that particular girl last night.”

  Jerry hesitated and I said impulsively: “She had a reason for thinking last night that Jerry was falling in love with her and she was sure the girl didn’t love him. Grace was terribly fond of Jerry and she’d been unhappily in love herself. She said she didn’t want him to suffer the way she’d suffered.”

  I hadn’t meant to say it quite that way. It was only after I’d spoken that I realized I had taken an unwarranted slam at Norma.

  Lieutenant Trant was watching us both. “So Grace implied she’d had an unfortunate love affair which had made her suffer. I suppose neithe# of you would know to whom she was referring?”

  Jerry shook his head. I ventured: “Perhaps the naval officer?”

  “Or Dr. Hudnutt?” added Lieutenant Trant. “Or Steven Carteris?”

  I wondered uneasily just what was in Trant’s mind. But he gave me no clue. He merely rose abruptly and crossed to the door.

  “Once again, Mr. Hough, I want you to know just how sorry I am about all this. Good-by.”

  When I made no move to follow, he added: “I’d like you to come with me, Miss Lovering.”

  I had time only to smile at Jerry and to catch his answering smile, faint and very tired.

  As the detective and I moved down the white corridor of the infirmary I had the very distinct sensation that he had not wanted me to stay behind.

  IX

  I felt utterly exhausted as we stepped into the dusk of the campus and stood together under a tall clump, of rhododendrons near which the Lieutenant had parked his car. Trant lit a cigarette, glancing at me above the pale flare of the struck match.

  “Well, it’s been a tough day for you, Lee Lovering. But you’ve got what it takes.”

  I didn’t reply. I was thinking how queer it was that I could like this young man, admire him, and yet be scared to death of him.

  He tossed the burning match into the bushes and added suddenly: “If you felt like it, you could make me an invaluable ally.”

  “An ally?”

  This embarrassed me because I had already allied myself with Marcia and the Hudnutts—against him, if necessary. And I had the uncomfortable feeling, too, that he was aware of the fact.

  “I’m not going to ask you to snoop into private lives.” His eyes, faintly amused, were watching me through the dusk. “I was just wondering whether you would keep your eyes open—wide open.”

  I knew Lieutenant Trant never made a gesture unless he had a very sound reason for making it. This request was some obscure kind of challenge. It was in that spirit I accepted it.

  “All right,” I said. “I’ll keep my eyes open.” Then, impulsively, I added: “But you don’t really—I mean you can’t think anyone here at Wentworth killed Grace?”

  “A policeman has very unwholesome thoughts, Lee Lovering. But a wise policeman keeps them to himself.” He took a small notebook from his breast pocket. “When I’m working on a case I always have this book with me. On the left hand side of the page I put down what I know. On the right hand side I put down what I don’t know, but what I’d give a great deal to find out. It’s a hangover from my methodical days at Princeton.” To my complete surprise he added: “It might interest you to see the record to date.” He opened the book and handed it to me. There was just light enough for me to make out his neat writing.

  On the left hand side of the page I read this single entry.

  FACTS KNOWN

  The murderer either owns or has access to a car which was used to take the body from (?) to the river. Suspect all cars out after 2 P.M.

  As I stared at those words my thoughts were uneasily full of the two automobiles I had seen dashing across the campus last night; the automobiles about which I had no intention of telling Trant.

  The right hand side of the page was almost full. As I read it I realized that here were crystallized all the most vital issues in the ghastly puzzle of my roommate’s death.

  FACTS TO BE FOUND

  WHO

  (1) Owned the red slicker (N. B. a woman’s)?

  (2) Delivered Grace’s three letters?

  (3) Received the two not yet accounted for?

  (4) Wrote Grace those numerous special deliveries?

  WHERE

  (1) Was Grace actually killed?

  (2) Is L. L.’s galyak fur coat?

  (3) Is Grace’s pocketbook?

  (4) Was the naval officer’s hat?

  (5) Did Hudnutt get the scar on forehead?

  I handed the book back without a word. As I did so a sound caught my attention which set every nerve in my body on edge.

  A faint rustling behind us as if someone were creeping through the rhododendrons and moving very slowly and stealthily toward us.

  The, sound stopped almost as soon as it had started, but I glanced quickly at Trant to see whether he had noticed it too. His face, as usual, was inscrutable. With a cheerful nod, he stepped into his car and switched on the headlights so that they pointed straight into the rhododendrons.

  Then, turning on the ignition, he leaned out of the window. “I’ve got a job for you already, Lee Lovering. Root around in those bushes, find your friend Steve Carteris and ask him just what part of our conversation it was that interested him most.”

  With that he was gone.

  I stared at the patch of rhododendrons. The branches were moving now and, almost at once, a tall dark figure was at my side.

  “Steve!”

  Steve Carteris gripped my arm. He was staring after Trant’s disappearing automobile. He said, “The papers said that fellow was the smartest detective on the New York force. They ought to have seen him pull that little trick.”

  A bunch of students appeared around a corner of the drive and his grip on my arm tightened.

  “I’ve got tò see you alone, Lee,” he whispered urgently. “I’ve been trying to get you all afternoon. Where can we go?”

  I suggested the ornamental garden by the gym, one of the few places on the campus where a male and female student had a fair chance of being undisturbed. We reached it by a short cut through the bushes.

  It was a charming, spot, with a fountain playing into a marble pool. In the gathering twilight it looked particularly lovely. A late flowering forsythia drooped canary yellow close to the brim of the pool, there was an all-pervading fragrance of narcissus, and brooding over the lily-pads stood a little German figurine of wrought-iron, a bearded dwarf with a red cap and a wise, solemn face.

  Steve and I sat on the stone bench by the pool. For a moment or two we did not speak. Steve was staring down between his knees at the intricate mosaic of the paving.

  “Why, oh why was I such a fool?” he muttered, more to himself than to me. “Lord, what a mess!”

  I was terribly fond of Steve and I felt terribly sorry for him now. I put out my hand and touched his shoulder. He raised his head, and his face in the half light was haggard and grim.

  “I want you to know how badly I feel about all this, Lee,” he said quietly. “You were fond of Grace, weren’t you? I’d like Jerry to know how sorry I am, too. I feel pretty low about that dust-up he and I had. It was about Grace and …”

  He broke off, adding with a hard, rather savage laugh, “I ought to
apologize, too, for walking out on my party last night. Heaven knows I stepped with both feet out of the frying pan into the fire.”

  I knew, of course, that Steve had not returned to the dormitory until four o’clock in the morning, but this seemed a fragile link in the chain of mysterious circumstances, and one only distantly connected with the major tragedy of Grace’s death.

  “I simply had to leave the Amber Club when I did,” Steve insisted, taking my hands and pulling me round to face him. “And I had to go somewhere and do something that simply had to be done. I’m not telling anyone about that. But later on something happened which someone must tell the police.”

  “You mean you’d like them to know the second half of the story without having to tell them exactly why you left the Amber Club.” I smiled at him a little frostily. “I suppose it was something to do with a girl?”

  “Yes, there’s a girl in it, indirectly—and directly.” He looked up at me and I caught a glimpse of the old twinkle in his eyes. “I thought you’d have guessed, Lee. I’ve got it badly this time. Haven’t you noticed how I’ve given up running around and raising hell like I used to? Of course I’ve had to reform some since Dad decided to run for President, but that wasn’t the only reason.”

  I said “Oh” rather limply. Sitting there in the early spring darkness with Steve’s fingers warm on mine, his eyes bright and eager on my face, I felt a vague stirring of jealousy for this unknown girl.

  He moved a shade closer, and perhaps for the first time I was conscious of how dangerously attractive he was. “I thought you’d guessed I was in love, Lee, because you’re in love, too, aren’t you?”