Death and the Maiden

by Q. Patrick

  Without a word the detective snapped the clasp and slipped the bag into his pocket. I looked at him curiously.

  “So Grace was here at the quarry?”

  “It looks that way.”

  Lieutenant Trant swung down the bank and started along the overgrown driveway, deeper into the cutting, his eyes fixed intently on the ground. I hurried to catch up with him, but stopped dead when he said sharply:

  “Don’t move.”

  His voice echoed around those drab walls of stone so that it didn’t sound like a human voice. As I came to an abrupt halt, he dropped to his knees and peered intently at something. Without glancing up, he said:

  “Look.”

  I moved to his side, looked down and saw a queer regular pattern stamped on the bare patch of ground.

  “Tire tracks!”

  Lieutenant Trant did look up then. “Not just tire tracks. Something more than that—recent tire tracks. And made during or just after the last heavy rain. In other words, just about the time Grace was killed.”

  “You don’t mean you can tell when a tire track was made?”

  “For someone consistently bent on obstructing justice, Lee Lovering, you ought to learn more about modem police methods.” There was a trace of a smile in his eyes. “I happen to have checked up on the Wentworth weather. It’s been very dry here. Only one short heavy storm recently. That was around three-thirty last Wednesday night. Those tracks could only have been made about that time. With everything parched as it was, the ground would have been bone dry again an hour later.

  I said faintly: “And you—you can tell from a track whose car it was that made it?”

  “Ever hear of a moulage?” Trant’s voice was very quiet. “A plaster cast of these tracks—a check-up with local cars. It shouldn’t be difficult to find out who was here.”

  He started forward again, looking for more tracks. I followed around the curve of the driveway. He did find another set of marks, clearer and larger than the first. He began whistling softly.

  We were in the deepest part of the quarry now, right under the tall scarred rock face. To our left was a large pile of rubble and stones which had collected through the years. Trant moved toward it.

  I shall never know whether it was the detective or I who saw that particular jagged rock first. I really think we must both have seen it at the same moment because, just as I gave a little gasp, his high intoned whistle cut in the middle of a note and he dropped to his knees again in front of the pile.

  I stood by, twisting my gloves in my hand. I had barely looked at that stone, but I knew with cold certainty what it was we had found.

  Trant’s fingers were moving carefully over its surface. It was a large stone, but not so big that a man or woman could not easily have used it as a lethal weapon. The top part was gray and smooth. It was the lower part, the jagged base which had been half concealed behind the other stones—that was the part which was stained.

  Slowly Lieutenant Trant lowered the stone back into its place. He rose. We looked at each other.

  “Blood,” he said quietly.

  Of course, there might have been a thousand different explanations. But I knew there was only one. Trant knew it, too.

  “So we know now,” he said, “exactly where Grace Hough was killed.”

  XIV

  Before ever Lieutenant Trant and I went on that expedition, I should have been prepared for the shock of what we had just found. But I wasn’t. It came as a stunning blow to me to realize that it had actually been here, at the quarry, hardly a mile from the campus, that Grace had been killed.

  As I followed the detective’s slim figure through the gloom and out to his waiting car on the road, I couldn’t think of anything but that—of how someone must have come here … have lured Grace back, into the cavernous darkness of the quarry … have picked up that gray, jagged stone …

  It was quite warm in the car but my hands were numb. I tried to open my bag for a cigarette, but my fingers would not work.

  “Here.” Trant passed me a cigarette and then the glowing lighter from the dashboard. Heaven knows how he had guessed what I wanted.

  I found it easier to think now. From the beginning the detective had noted down in that terrifying little book of his how cars and their movements were of the most vital importance. And now he had found tire tracks which would almost certainly enable him to discover what car had been there to make them.

  The whole panorama of facts which I had kept back from the police flashed through my mind. Robert Hudnutt’s car, Marcia’s car, Penelope’s car … in spite of the overwhelmingly suspicious circumstances surrounding those three midnight drives, I had stubbornly persisted in maintaining, even to myself, the innocence of those three people. But would I be able to feel the same way if Lieutenant Trant did succeed in proving that one of those three cars had been in the quarry?

  I glanced sideways at the detective, trying to catch his face off guard. But he turned from the wheel, smiling his grave ironic smile.

  “Well, Lee Lovering, this makes it look bad for your Southern friend Carteris. It’ll look worse if those tracks are his.”

  In my worry about the Hudnutts and Marcia I had forgotten Steve. Now, with hurting anxiety, I realized how he, far more than anyone else, had been spotlighted by this latest discovery. If he persisted in refusing to tell where he had been during those long hours after leaving the Amber Club, his story, when the police heard it, would sound pitifully weak. Steve, who had left his own party to go on some unspecified mission; Steve, who had actually driven Grace to the quarry and had admitted to me that she was holding something over his head—something which might cause serious trouble to himself and his family.

  It was shockingly easy to think of Grace standing there at the mouth of the quarry, jeering at Steve, ready to ruin him just as she had been ready to ruin Robert Hudnutt and Marcia Parrish. A jagged stone … one blow struck half in fury, half in fear … it might so easily have happened that way.

  My cigarette suddenly tasted acrid, sour. I rolled down the window and tossed the half-finished stub out onto the road.

  We reached the college gates and turned into the campus. Ahead of us the academic buildings showed stern and impersonal in the lowering gray of the late afternoon.

  I had expected Lieutenant Trant to drive straight to Broome Hall to pick up Steve Carteris. But he headed the car toward Pigot and stopped in front of the entrance. He got out and opened the door for me.

  “You’re going to talk to Steve now?” I asked shakily.

  “I’m afraid not.” He held out his hand. “I’m just going to say good-by.”

  “Good-by?”

  “If you remember my notebook, Lee Lovering, one of the most vital questions on the left hand page was the actual locality in which the crime was committed. We know now, almost for certain, that Grace was killed in Wentworth. I may still be working on the New York end, but the murder of Grace Hough has become a problem for the Wentworth police.” His hand was still in mine as he added: “I hope they’ll find you as co-operative as I have.”

  “Then you won’t be coming to Wentworth any more?”

  “One never knows.” A smile played around the corners of his mouth. “Perhaps they’ll ask me to plant a tree. Or perhaps they’ll send me an invitation when they erect a monument to you for services rendered the college.”

  He got into his car. “Meanwhile, if you should happen to need a policeman in your life, you can always reach me through Centre Street, New York City.”

  That evening the President gave a short, oblique address in chapel urging students and faculty alike to “carry on through this darkest hour in Wentworth’s history.” It was all pretty grim. It was even grimmer when, just as Steve and I were out again on the campus, a detective from the county police stopped us with the news that Chief Jordan wanted to talk to him at the courthouse.

  After they had driven off together, I wandered aimlessly about, fighting back a feeling of acute
anxiety. I think I half expected that Steve would be arrested.

  That’s why it came as such a surprise when Steve returned in just over an hour. He looked very pale and there was a frozen, bewildered expression in his eyes. He told me Chief Jordan had merely asked him to corroborate the facts I had already passed on to Trant.

  Next morning life resumed routine. Marcia gave lectures, Robert Hudnutt gave lectures, I attended them, and Penelope was outwardly the same brisk, competent Dean of Women. But the normalcy was horribly skin deep. I know now how it must feel in the South Sea Islands during those few taut hours of stillness that herald the hurricane.

  I thought the hurricane had come when a car arrived that afternoon to drive me to the courthouse where they were holding a second inquest “In the County where the Deceased met her Death.” But that drab, formal session skirted carefully around all danger zones. I answered questions I had already answered before. Mr. Appel, Dean Appel’s father, gave what information was needed about Grace’s financial background.

  The jury again returned the verdict of murder at the hand of person or persons unknown.

  As I left the courtroom I was waylaid by a mild, gray-haired man who represented the insurance company which covered Grace’s policy. He kept me talking a long while in some dingy little room, suggesting with a great amount of delicate vagueness that, in spite of the jury’s verdict, Grace might have committed suicide. As Lieutenant Trant had prophesied, he stressed the importance of the letter Norma had torn up and hinted tactfully that it could have been a note from Grace informing her brother of her intention to take her own life. I assured him that I had read the letter and could swear to its having no implications of that sort whatsoever.

  That evening Jerry left the infirmary. Dr. Barker was rather doubtful about his walking on an ankle that was so recently healed, but Jerry refused stubbornly to stay in bed any longer and they let him go. I was with him when he left, a crutch under his right arm, his young face gaunt and very set.

  He’d heard about our discovery in the quarry, of course. By now everyone knew that Grace had almost certainly been killed at Wentworth. As I walked with him over to Broome, I felt an overwhelming desire to let him know all the other things I knew, to pour out to him the innumerable confidences that were sitting so uneasily on my conscience. But I managed to check myself.

  Just as I was leaving Jerry on the steps of Broome, he called me back and asked in a voice that was very quiet if I would go with him to the funeral tomorrow.

  At his urgent request it had been kept as secret as possible to prevent crowds of morbid sightseers. The press were kept out of it and no one at the college was asked to attend. Jerry and I drove alone to the local church, heard the brief service and saw the coffin lowered into the quickening spring earth.

  On the return journey Jerry and I sat in the back seat, close together and still. The warm sunlight sprayed through the window onto Jerry’s short blond hair and his profile with its square jaw and pale, firm lips.

  Suddenly, as we turned through the iron gates into the campus, he asked: “They think it was someone here at Wentworth who did it, don’t they?”

  It was horribly hard to know what to say. “It’s possible, Jerry.”

  As I spoke I noticed his hand lying on his knee. His strong fingers had curved inward, pressing fiercely into his palm.

  When the car dropped us at Broome Hall, I went up the few steps with him, my arm on his, helping him. He hesitated at the door, swinging round on the crutch so that he was facing me.

  “Lee, there’s something I want to ask you. Something I’ve been wanting to know for a long time.” His eyes, blue and searching, were fixed on mine. “Are you in love with Steve Carteris?”

  “In love with Steve!” The idea was so completely new to me that for a moment I couldn’t think of anything to say. “Why, Jerry, I’m terribly fond of him. But I’m—of course I’m not in love with him.”

  The anxious line of his mouth relaxed slightly. His blue eyes dropped from mine and he was staring at his own sleeve. “I’m glad about that. Steve and I had quite a spat, you know, and …”

  “It was about Grace, wasn’t it?”

  “In a way, I guess.” Jerry’s voice was different, awkward and rather reluctant. “She was quite keen about him for a while. She thought he felt the same way, too. He started confiding in her about girls he’d fooled around with in New York. Asked her whether she thought that sort of thing would stand in his way with a decent girl. Of course Grace thought he meant her, that it was a lead-up to telling her he’d fallen for her. Then it all came out that he just wanted her advice because it was another girl he was interested in.”

  He paused, adding suddenly, “That hurt Grace quite badly. I felt he’d kind of led her up the garden path myself. I told him so. That’s why we stopped rooming together.”

  So I knew now just what it was that had caused the rift between Steve and the Houghs.

  “That’s why I asked you how you felt about Steve,” Jerry went on jerkily. “Guess I didn’t want you to get led up any garden path.” A slight, rather bitter smile twisted his lips. “There’s so much damn unhappiness going around. I couldn’t stand it if you got caught up in it, too.”

  I shook my head. “No, Jerry, I won’t get caught up in it.”

  For a moment we stood there, looking at each other. Suddenly I found I could ask the question I had never been able to ask before.

  “And you, Jerry. Do—do you still feel the same way about Norma?”

  His eyes went very hard. “Did you see that photograph of her in the paper—the photograph and what she said about Grace?”

  I nodded.

  “And you ask me if I feel the same way about Norma Sayler.” He gripped my arm, drawing me a little closer. “Things like this,” he said roughly, “make you realize who the really important people are.”

  As he gazed at me his face lost its savagely guarded control. He looked like a little boy again, a helpless little boy, frightened and a long way from home. “Lee, I’ve been such a hell of a fool. I’ve got so horribly far away from the old days. Do you think you could help me to get back again?”

  XV

  The afternoon slipped by in a dream. Before I realized, it was evening and then the next day. For the first time Grace’s death and all its ghastly aftermath ceased to dominate my thoughts. It became something almost meaningless—just a remote series of events which by a miracle had brought Jerry back.

  And then Lieutenant Trant reappeared.

  He was waiting in his car by the entrance to the classrooms as I came out of one of Marcia’s lectures.

  “So they did ask you to plant a tree, after all?” I said.

  “No tree.” He shook his head very gravely. “As I told you when I saw you last, I’ve ceased to have any official connection with Wentworth College, its trees or its murders.”

  As a remark I held that highly suspect. “Then what are you doing here?”

  “I’ve been talking to your Dean of Women. She thinks I’m a wholesome influence for female students. She has given me permission to take you for a drive.”

  “Where do we drive to?” I asked doubtfully.

  He threw out his hands. “Anywhere you like—within reason.” He opened the door of his car. “Jump in.”

  I didn’t protest. I’d given up protesting when Trant suggested anything. He drove to Pigot and stopped.

  “Hat and coat,” he said.

  Meekly I hurried to the top floor and came down again in my outdoor things. He looked at me with eyes that were appraising and faintly amused.

  “Very nice,” he said. “Very nice indeed. No wonder you attract such charming friends. Jump in again.”

  I jumped in again. Although I was supposed to be choosing the route, Lieutenant Trant swung through the college gates and headed the car very purposefully toward New York.

  He glanced casually from the wheel. “I suppose the galyak fur coat hasn’t turned up, has it?”
>
  That question surprised me. It had never occurred to me that my fur coat could possibly reappear at Wentworth. But when I told him it hadn’t come back, he looked puzzled as if something hadn’t worked out quite as he had anticipated.

  “And how about your nice friends, Lee Lovering? Have they been going in for any more girlish confidences?”

  He was smiling. I smiled back. “Do you really expect me to answer that question?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t. You have a singular lack of respect for other people’s curiosity.” As if struck by a perfectly haphazard idea, he added: “How about taking in a matinee?”

  “That would be very nice,” I said politely. “But as a matter of interest, what’s the real reason for this unexpected outing?”

  “That can wait.”

  From then on he talked charmingly about nothing. Actually, I felt no new stirrings of suspicion until we turned off Broadway and Trant found a parking place almost immediately opposite the Cambridge Theater. Not ten feet away the canopied entrance to the Amber Club spanned the sidewalk. It brought back rather uncomfortable memories.

  As he guided me across the street which Elaine and I had navigated so perilously on the night of Grace’s death, I jumped to the conclusion that his devious mind was planning some reconstruction of the crazy happenings at Phèdre.

  But I was somewhat reassured when I saw that Roulane’s distinguished production had folded up and the Cambridge was dark and deserted. Lieutenant Trant had bought a paper and was gazing solemnly at the theater announcements. At length he said:

  “Care for Gilbert and Sullivan?”

  “I love it,” I said. “Back in Newhampton we once gave the Gondoliers as a Christmas treat for the Ladies’ Aid or something. I played Tessa.”

  “How nice for the Ladies’ Aid.” Trant took my arm and started past the Cambridge down the sidewalk. “They’re giving Pinafore this afternoon at the Vandolan.”

  As we entered the foyer of the Vandolan, the place seemed dimly familiar to me, but it was not until Lieutenant Trant had gone over to the box-office that I realized why. Elaine and I had arrived at the wrong theater in our hectic attempt to reach Phèdre for the first intermission. Now I recalled the black and red posters with their bold lettering which announced: H.M.S. PINAFORE followed by COX AND BOX.