Death and the Maiden

by Q. Patrick

  I glanced over the columns. There was nothing I didn’t know already. The naval officer had not yet come forward; the police were still entertaining the possibility of a hit-and-run driver or an unknown prowler who had murdered Grace for the fur coat and her pocketbook. I detected the influence of Lieutenant Trant in that conservative statement.

  Jerry and I came in for our share of publicity. Grace’s brother was portrayed as an embryonic Edison in the field of electrical engineering and Wentworth’s most popular athlete. I was loathsomely referred to as an elegant socialite and credited with knowing dark secrets about Grace which could not at the present time be revealed.

  I had just thrown the paper on the floor when Elaine burst in again carrying my breakfast tray. I could tell from the upward tilt of her eyebrows and the compression of her lips that something had happened.

  “Lord, now let me depart in peace,” she exclaimed irreverently, “for I have just seen with my own jaundiced eyes the most magnificent spectacle of all time.” She put down the tray and fanned herself with my napkin. “Darling, Penelope walked into Commons just now and—right there in front of everyone—she laid our Norma so low that a worm would have towered over her like the Chrysler Building.”

  “What on earth are you talking about?” I asked, taking a gulp of black coffee.

  “Lookit here.” Elaine snatched up a tabloid from my bed and turned the pages with excited fingers. “There’s my sweet sister for you!”

  She pointed to a picture of Norma standing by the running board of her car with the Administration Building distinctly visible in the background. Even more visible in the foreground were the celebrated Sayler legs. Norma’s blonde mane was tossed back and she was gazing down at the place where Jerry’s fraternity pin should have been on her lapel.

  Beneath the picture I read the headlines:

  WAS STORK HOVERING?

  “I shouldn’t be surprised if Grace Hough did get into a mess,” said Norma Sayler, Wentworth’s Blonde Campus Queen. “But I shan’t let Jerry down, even so. Nothing will make any difference….”

  “Isn’t it divine?” Elaine crooned. “And doesn’t it just serve Norma right? Having her picture bang slap under the hovering stork and with those maternity chins and her skirt all rucked up in front. And doesn’t she look exactly like something a sophomore picks up in a Jersey roadhouse on the way back from the Swarthmore game?”

  I said wearily: “I don’t think it’s funny, darling. I think it’s unpardonable.”

  “My dear, that’s exactly the word Penelope used when she marched into Commons like Brunhilde on the war path. I fairly shook in my shoes when she said: ‘Miss Sayler, stand up.’ And there Norma had to stand like a high school kid while Penelope gave her the biggest lambasting you ever heard. She told her she was a disgrace to her sex and to her college and accused her of vulgarity exploiting a terrible tragedy. I never liked Penelope before, but I had to hand it to her. I suppose I’ve got to hand it to Norma, too. She just gave one of her famous Mae West shrugs and walked out of the room as nonchalantly as a Saks mannequin.”

  Elaine walked to the door, only to stop dramatically on the threshold. “My dear, you couldn’t hint to your Lieutenant Trant that I’m just bursting with vital information, could you?”

  She bounced out of the room, and bounced back in again.

  “And I don’t mind telling you, that if he doesn’t interview me on this murder, he’ll have to on the next, as sister of the murderess. Because Norma is out for Penelope’s blood just as sure as the Lord made little gourds and gooseberries.”

  I felt inclined to agree with her. Indeed, as I finished my breakfast-lunch and started to dress, I couldn’t help wondering what Norma would have done if she, instead of myself, had known how deeply Penelope Hudnutt and her husband were involved in the murder of Grace.

  When at last I emerged, the campus was comparatively peaceful. There were no signs of newspaper men; no excited little groups of boys and girls. Nevertheless, students I hardly knew by name greeted me as a bosom friend in the hopes of luring me into confidences. Paradoxically, the only place in which I felt safe from questions was in class.

  It was a relief to feel the impersonal touch of a wooden desk again and to listen to harmless little Mlle. Pervanche holding forth on Middle French Semantics.

  As soon as class was over I went to the infirmary, hoping to see Jerry. But the nurse wouldn’t let me in. Dean Appel was with him, she said, and old Mr. Appel, the Dean’s father, who had flown down from Newhampton for an important legal conference. The nurse did have one piece of good news, however. Dr. Barker was delighted with the progress of Jerry’s ankle and hoped to have him out and about that night or the next day.

  But the prospects for the immediate future were far from comforting. Sooner or later I would have to see Lieutenant Trant and I was rather dreading that interview.

  I thought of those cool, observant eyes. It wasn’t going to be easy to keep anything back from Lieutenant Trant.

  In preparation for the ordeal I decided it was essential to get things worked out in my mind. I chose the library as sanctuary and parked myself in the most remote corner of the stacks under a NO TALKING notice.

  As I sat there, feeling thoroughly inadequate and nervous, I started thinking of Tram’s little notebook and his concise, rather frightening method of keeping the salient points straight. It seemed ideally suited for my purpose. I took a piece of paper and divided it in two and, after much pencil chewing, I wrote on the right hand side:

  WHAT I MUST TELL LIEUTENANT TRANT

  (1) The naval officer left Grace at the service station.

  (2) Grace was driven to the quarry and left there.

  (3) Grace had a date with someone at the quarry.

  The entries on the left hand side of the page were far more numerous:

  WHAT I CAN’T TELL LIEUTENANT TRANT

  (1) That Grace telephoned the Hudnutts from the service station.

  (2) That it was Steve who drove her to the quarry.

  (3) That it was Steve who delivered the letters at the infirmary and at the Hudnutts’.

  (4) That the second of those three letters was addressed to the Dean of Women but intercepted by Marcia Parrish and ultimately burnt by me.

  (5) That Robert’s, Penelope’s, and Marcia’s cars were all out at approximately the time of the crime.

  (6) Where Robert Hudnutt got his scar. Then very reluctantly, and only for Jerry’s sake, I added

  (7) That it was Norma Sayler who tore up the letter Grace wrote to Jerry.

  Staring up at me in my own handwriting, that congregation of facts was rather appalling. I was reading them through uneasily when a quiet voice at my elbow said:

  “How about starting on some of the things that you can tell Lieutenant Trant. This is as good a time as any.”

  I snatched up the paper and spun round. The detective was standing in front of the dusty stacks of books. His hands were thrust in his pockets and his mouth curved in an ironic smile. “I’m glad you found my little trick useful, Lee Lovering.” Before I could answer he pointed to the NO TALKING sign, took my arm and led me through the stacks into a small room which belonged to one of the librarians.

  The piece of paper which contained so much damning information was still in my hand. With a sinking heart I waited for him to demand it. But he didn’t. He seemed to have forgotten its existence.

  When he did speak his question seemed utterly irrelevant. He said: “Did you ever lend things to Grace before the fur coat?” “Why, yes. That is—Grace always hated borrowing.” My relief was making me unnecessarily loquacious. “She was awfully sensitive because she had been so rich in the old days.”

  He glanced up from the magazine, his gray eyes very intent. “You might like to hear what I’ve unearthed since I saw you last. Grace was seen in the lounge of the Cambridge Theater during the second act—writing letters. That was an odd thing for a girl to be doing at a theater. But the more we find o
ut about Grace’s behavior that night, the more peculiar it becomes. Presumably she was writing the three letters whose later career is so nebulous. She was also seen leaving the theater with the red-headed naval officer.”

  He paused, adding slowly: “That mysterious naval officer couldn’t have been an Annapolis cadet, could he?”

  I shook my head. “He was too old and there was too much gold braid. He was quite high up in the service.”

  “Strange,” mused Lieutenant Trant, his expression deceptively ingenuous. “I’ve talked to the navy yard in New York and in Philadelphia. We’re checking up with every naval station from Boston to Norfolk, and with every ship in these waters. From what we’ve discovered to date, it seems extremely improbable that there was any red-haired naval officer answering to. your description in New York the night before last.”

  “But there must have been,” I insisted feebly. “I saw him.” I thought a moment. “Couldn’t you trace him somehow through the post office and the special delivery letters?”

  “I’ve been to the Wentworth post office. They do happen to remember those letters for Grace Hough because there were so many of them. They think most of them were mailed right here in Wentworth.”

  I stared at him in amazement. “You mean he had been hanging around the college?”

  Trant did not answer that question. “I called the people Grace stayed with in Baltimore. Dr. Wheeler told me that Grace hadn’t been any too well while she was with them and had gone out very little. He was positive that she hadn’t met any naval officer there—with or without red hair.” He turned abruptly toward me. “Where did Grace meet the man? Where and how? Tell me that.”

  I couldn’t, of course.

  He moved suddenly nearer, alert and tense. “Forget the naval officer, Lee Lovering. Do you know anyone right here in Wentworth who could have been writing those letters to Grace?”

  “No,” I said decidedly.

  “Not Dr. Hudnutt, for example? Or that student—what’s his name—Steve Carteris?”

  “No, no, that’s absurd.”

  “Suppose the naval officer was just a chance acquaintance—someone Grace picked up at the theater—doesn’t that make more sense? That she was murdered by someone right here in Wentworth?”

  “But he wasn’t just a chance acquaintance,” I said heatedly. “I talked to him. Grace introduced him as her friend.”

  “Even so, there’s nothing to prove he drove her home, that he ever came within miles of Wentworth.”

  “But there is. He did drive her to Wentworth. He was seen at the service station just outside the village.”

  I had blurted it out because I was confused and angry.

  Instantly Lieutenant Trant was his old casual self again. There was an inscrutable smile in his eyes as he stared down at the piece of paper which I still held crunched in my hand.

  “You’ve given me a most important piece of information, Lee Lovering. I’d be interested to know if it was among the items which you can tell Lieutenant Trant or one of those you can’t.”

  My smile probably looked pretty sick. “I suppose it’s one of the things I can tell you.”

  “Excellent.”

  I described what had happened at the service station, about the naval officer’s disappearance and Grace’s amazing drive to the quarry. I didn’t mention Steve’s name, of course, or the telephone call to the Hudnutts or the letter to the Dean of Women.

  “And who told you all this?” he asked quietly.

  I shook my head. “I’m afraid that’s on the other side of. the page.”

  He grinned then. But he made no attempt to press me. “So this person whose name you refuse to divulge drove Grace from the service station to the quarry?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then he was the last person to see her alive?”

  “No, he wasn’t. Grace told him she was meeting someone else at the quarry.”

  “We have nothing but your friend’s word for that.”

  “He’s telling the truth,” I said stubbornly. “If he had had anything to do with the murder, he—he wouldn’t have been such a fool as to ask me to tell you all this. You’re just trying to make me mad again in the hopes of getting me to admit things I don’t want to admit.”

  He was looking at me in a very queer way. “You fooled me, Lee Lovering. I was naïve enough to think you’d want to help the police find out who murdered your roommate.”

  “Of course I want to help the police,” I said, “when they don’t try to insinuate beastly things about—about people who couldn’t possibly be guilty.”

  “And who couldn’t possibly be acting more guiltily,” added Lieutenant Trant, without smiling. “In other words, you’ll help the police so long as the police are obliging enough to look for the murderer outside your own particular circle of friends.”

  I think I blushed a bit. “Then our partnership is washed up?”

  He didn’t speak for a moment. When he did, his voice was almost affectionate. “On the contrary, I’m rather glad you’re a cagey little liar with a point of view of your own. In the long run a policeman finds out most from a person who’s trying to hold things back on him.”

  He looked me straight in the eyes. “But just one word of advice, Lee Lovering. A first murder is often followed by a second murder. And the second victim is usually the person who finds out too much and out of misguided loyalty to friends either keeps it to herself or tells it to the wrong people.” He showed white teeth in a smile. “Don’t go and make a foolish mistake like that just as I’m getting fond of you.”

  Of course, I thought he had just said that to scare me. I had no means of telling then how prophetic his warnings would be.

  Trant’s eyes dropped once again to that piece of paper which was still clutched, utterly defenseless, in my hand.

  “So you won’t tell me the name of this person who drove Grace Hough to the quarry?”

  I shook my head. “And I’ll probably fight like a demon to keep you from getting this piece of paper.”

  “Okay.”

  Lieutenant Trant was watching his own thumbnail with that bland concentration which I had learned to suspect. “Apparently I’m all balled up on your love life, too. I thought Jerry Hough was the lucky guy, but judging from the way you’ve been protecting him, I guess I should have plumped for Steve Carteris.”

  “What makes you think it was Steve?”

  Trant shrugged. “Oh, I’ve known that all along. I checked up at the college garage. I knew Carteris’ car didn’t get in till after four in the morning.”

  “All right. I admit it was Steve.”

  “I suppose you realize this is by far the most important thing that’s come out to date?”

  “What does it matter what I realize?” I asked wearily. “Talk it over with Steve. That’s what you’re going to do anyhow, isn’t it?”

  “It is,” he said quietly. “But there’s something else first. I want you to come with me to that quarry—to see what we can see.”

  He took a sudden step toward me. Before I was prepared for it, he had tugged my precious piece of paper out of my fingers. For a second he stood with it crumpled in his hand. Then, very deliberately, he tore it into tiny pieces and gave them back to me.

  “In future, Lee Lovering, I’d advise you to keep all your information in your head. That makes it so much harder for the detective—and for the murderer. And you never know who will fasten on odd bits of paper like this.”

  Nothing Lieutenant Trant could do or say startled me anymore. But there seemed only one reason why he should deliberately have passed up a chance to find out so much.

  Lieutenant Trant must have known far more than he pretended. He must also have known that there was real danger for me.

  And that the danger was right there at Wentworth.

  XIII

  Trant was very quiet as we drove away from the campus and headed down the narrow, almost private road which connected Wentworth with the New Yo
rk highway. We did not speak until the ribbon of macadam ahead of us took a sharp curve to the right.

  “Somewhere near here, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” I said shakily. “It’s just beyond the bend.”

  He drew the car up at the roadside. We got out and walked the twenty or so yards to the bend in the road where the mouth of the quarry loomed, dark and desolate.•

  We turned into it. The quarry itself was set back about thirty yards and the highly banked drive that opened it up went around in a horseshoe bend so that anyone actually inside would be invisible from the road. They had got stone from it years ago when the college had first been built. Now it was completely neglected.

  As soon as we left the road we stepped into an eerie half-darkness caused by the rocky banks at our sides and the tangle of overhead vegetation. Trant seemed strangely disembodied, like a tall shadow. Still he did not speak. That was one of the most unnerving things about him. When you wanted him to say something, he was always lost in that withdrawn silence of his. He had come to an abrupt halt about six feet from the mouth of the quarry and was halfway up the bank, his eyes moving to left and right, searching….

  I didn’t know what he was looking for. That made me even more jittery. I hated the shadowy half-light; I hated the dank smell of cold stone and weeds.

  Suddenly Trant bent and picked up something.

  “Lee Lovering.”

  I scrambled up the few feet of bank to his side. There was a grim but satisfied smile in his eyes. He was holding toward me a small black pocketbook with a rhinestone clasp. He didn’t have to ask the question. That pocketbook was only too familiar.

  With a twinge of apprehension I said: “Yes, that’s Grace’s.”

  Carefully Lieutenant Trant pushed open the clasp. I stood at his elbow, gazing down into the bag. I saw Grace’s small pink handkerchief, her cheap fountain pen, two theater stubs and some small change. There was also a folded sheet of notepaper. Trant pulled it out and opened it. I think that he, like myself, had expected that piece of paper to tell us something. But it didn’t. It was a single sheet of college stationery, absolutely blank.