Time to Die

by Hilda Lawrence

  Mark shut the drawer. “She isn’t. I think I had her all wrong. But that’s not odd because I never saw the woman in my life. Black hair, blue eyes, weight one hundred and ten; that’s all anybody could tell me, and it’s so little it sounds phoney.” He paced the room, kicking at chairs. “I don’t know anything about her. I know she plays poker, but I don’t know what she reads.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about what she reads,” Archie said, his eyes on the closed drawer.

  Suddenly Mark wanted to protect the unknown Mary Cassidy from that loose-lipped grin. He didn’t ask himself why, or wonder what had changed him. He only knew that he wanted to find her, unhurt, and keep her that way. He wanted her back in that room with its big and little beds, and he wanted her to open the bottle of perfume and use it up.

  “Can’t you tell me anything about her life?” he asked. “What did she do, aside from looking after Joey?”

  “I’m beginning to wonder myself,” Archie said. “Those little bits of fluff and lace are giving me ideas.”

  “Me too, but not the same kind. Those bits of fluff are rather pathetic.”

  “They are?” Archie looked bewildered. “I don’t get it.”

  “They’ve never been worn. They’ve never been laundered. They’re still wrapped in the paper from the shop. I have a hunch she bought them because they’re something she always wanted and couldn’t afford until now. Bought them for the kick she got out of it. . . . She really was nice, wasn’t she?” He heard himself talking in the past tense and didn’t like it.

  “Sure, she was all right.” Archie was still confused. “Kind of quiet though. Played a good game of poker but—you know—kind of quiet. . . . Say!” He sat up straight and gave Mark a shrewd look. “You didn’t talk like this to Mike this morning! He was as sore as the devil when he came back from meeting you. He said you acted like it was a gag or something. What changed you, pal?”

  “I don’t know.” Mark went over to the closet and gave a quick glance at the rows of neat dresses, the trim little hats on the top shelf, the orderly line of shoes on the floor. He closed the door. “I don’t know,” he said again. He did know, but he wouldn’t admit it. “I think I’ll take this on if Beacham still wants me. I didn’t actually turn him down this morning, either. I told him I might change my mind. . . . I guess I’m sorry for Joey.” Not for anything would he admit, even to himself, that a little heap of hoarded finery had bound him fast.

  “Come along,” he said. “I’m through here. If Mrs. Peck still wants to give me a drink I’ll accept with pleasure.”

  “Sure.” Archie brightened at once. “We’ve got everything and Franny knows what to do with it.” He led the way back to his own cottage. “You name it and Franny’ll get it.”

  “I’ve had gin and beer,” Mark admitted.

  “Gin,” Archie decided. “Hon!” he yelled as they mounted the porch. “Gin for the Scotland Yard boys!”

  They sat around an iron table, under a tree. The Mountain House guests, properly awake at four o’clock, sat under other trees. A few starched children and clean, subdued dogs promenaded with nursemaids.

  “They call this place Little Switzerland,” Franny said. “And it is, isn’t it? They don’t take anybody, either. They’re very careful.”

  Mark saw Nick Sutton lead an old man to a cushioned seat on the veranda.

  “Grandfather?” he asked.

  “Yep. Copper mines.”

  “Nick’s a good catch,” Franny said earnestly. “But I’m glad Pee Wee isn’t a girl. You have to worry so.”

  The Beachams came back shortly before five, looking, Mark suspected, worse than they had when they started out. There were rings under Beacham’s eyes, and Roberta looked pale and drawn. Even Joey dragged her sandaled feet as she came across the grass and leaned wearily against Franny Peck’s chair.

  Beacham’s eyes asked Mark a question, and his shoulders slumped at the silent answer. He went into his own cottage, followed by Roberta.

  “I’ll tell him what I’ve done later,” Mark said to Archie. “I’ll talk to him alone.”

  Joey sank down on the grass. Her denim shorts were muddy, and her face was streaked with dust, but there was nobody to tell her to change. Franny Peck wasn’t interested.

  “Cassie’s puppy ate his breakfast like a little pig,” Joey said to Mark. “He’s too young to understand.”

  I wonder if you are, he thought. Out loud he said, “Why don’t you take a bath, Joey? You look like something the Child Labor Board dragged in.”

  “Later,” she said. “Mike and Roberta look worse than me.” She edged closer. “Did Mr. Wilcox work today, Mr. East? Did you work too?” She had tact and good manners, another entry on the right side of Mary Cassidy’s ledger.

  “Yes,” he said. “We’re getting on. Where did you go for your picnic?”

  She didn’t have time to answer. The Beachams’ door swung open and slammed shut and Roberta came running across the grass. Her face was twisted into an ugly scowl, and she went straight to Mark. He saw that she was frightened and he stood up quickly.

  “Easy. What is it?” He took her arm.

  She pulled away. “Of all the cockeyed things,” she said. “You’ve got to do something right away. Of all the crazy, cockeyed things.” The tears welled up and ran down her face. “You’d better come inside and see for yourself. Of all the idiotic, cockeyed things—”

  “What’s up?” He took her arm again and shook her gently. “What are you talking about?”

  “Crazy, crazy,” she whimpered. She put her hand to her head as if it ached. “Sorry,” she said, “but you’d better come and see. Somebody got in the house while we were away and cut Joey’s clothes to ribbons!”

  “What!” They all stared. Archie Peck laughed and slapped his knee.

  “That’s a good one,” he said.

  “It’s true, it’s true! Somebody went to the chest where we keep her everyday clothes and cut them to bits. Crazy, crazy, crazy.”

  “Wait.” Mark pulled up his chair. “Sit down. You needn’t go back there. Joey?”

  Joey was staring at her sister.

  “My clothes?” she demanded shrilly. “My clothes? Why?”

  Mark nodded to Franny Peck, whose eyes were as round a Joey’s. “You three stay right where you are,” he said. “Come on, Peck.” They crossed quickly to the cottage. Chairs creaked on the big veranda, heads turned and eyes followed, but no one asked what had happened. Perhaps no one had heard.

  Beacham met them inside. Nothing in the room was disturbed. It was exactly as they had left it, except for the smaller of the two chests. Two drawers had been pulled out.

  “Roberta opened those,” Beacham said. “She wanted to get some clean things for Joey.” He drew a deep, furious breath. “Have a look.”

  Someone had indeed cut Joey’s clothes to ribbons. Not the party clothes, the Sunday clothes, with their rows of lace and ribbon; they still hung primly in the closet, on padded hangers. But the small tailored shirts, the shorts, and the fishing pants had been methodically slashed into strips and squares and maliciously jumbled together. There were scraps of lint and thread on the floor in front of the chest.

  Beacham echoed Joey’s question. “Why?”

  For the second time that day Mark shivered in the heat. “Only one kind of person does that,” he said.

  Beacham’s voice was harsh. “What kind?”

  Mark walked to a door on the right side of the room and opened it. It led into another bedroom. “Who sleeps here?” he asked.

  “Roberta.” Beacham’s eyes narrowed. “The one on the left is the bath. Mine’s at the end, across the house, and you enter it from the hall. It has a door to the bath too. What are you looking for?”

  “An entrance.” The bathroom window overlooked the Peck cottage. So, presumably, did the window in Beacham’s room. “Got a back door?”

  “No. . . . Did some kid crawl in and do this out of pure devilment?”

&nbs
p; “No. No kid. . . . Look here, Beacham. I came up to see you this afternoon, thinking I might reconsider your offer. That, of course, was before this happened. Now I’m going to take it whether you want me or not. Take it on my own, for my own satisfaction.”

  Beacham relaxed. “I won’t pretend I’m not glad to hear that. What made you reconsider in the first place?”

  “Conscience. And the heat. I wanted to get back to town, but it looked too much like running away. Then, I came in here with Peck a while ago, to check over Miss Cassidy’s things. That’s routine, doesn’t mean a thing. While I was here I changed my mind about the case. No particular reason, just a—feeling. . . . I’m not sure now that she ran away. I’d put her down as a—well, as a possible neurotic. I think I was wrong. I mean that as an apology to you. I’ll make another to the lady when I see her.”

  “Thanks,” Beacham said shortly. “What do you want with that stuff?”

  Mark was scraping bits of thread and lint from the floor. “I didn’t notice this before, probably because I didn’t look in this chest. But it must have been here then. The Pecks and I have been outside, and no one came near the house, front or back.”

  “Hey!” Archie spoke in an awed voice. “Hey, East, remember? Franny said she heard somebody before you came! Remember?”

  He did remember. It was the siesta hour, when the rich people slept and the servants had the run of the place. Deserted grounds, trees and tall shrubbery; grass, soft and thick and soundless. A man in a white mess jacket, carrying a letter or a tray of glasses; a woman in a black dress and a white apron, with a bundle of laundry. They could walk in and out, unchallenged.

  “Shall I get Franny?” Archie was eager. “We could ask her what kind of a noise she heard. We might even make her remember what time it was. We could try, anyway.”

  Mark had a clear picture of Franny, dimpling and twisting her curls. “No good,” he said. “You told her she was dreaming and you can’t talk her out of that now.”

  “No,” Archie agreed.

  “Fingerprints on the chest?” Beacham suggested.

  “None that we want. Even Pee Wee could tell us that.” He lit a cigarette. “I want to stay here, do you mind? You can tell the girls I’m doing it to keep you company. You can move Roberta in here with Joey and I’ll take her room. If that’s inconvenient I’ll get a room in the main house.”

  Beacham looked terrified. “Do you think the girls—”

  “No. But we won’t find the answer to this down in Bear River. It’s here, right here.” He hesitated. “At least I think it is,” he added slowly. “What do you say? All right?”

  “You’ll stay, of course, in this cottage. I’ll send down for your things. What can I do for you? Do you need anything?”

  “Nothing, thanks. But keep this business about the clothes quiet. It was meant to be a sensation, so we’ll ignore it and see what happens. And”—he made his voice casual—“and if you get any ransom notes, don’t be a fool. Hand them over right away.”

  He saw Beacham’s face fall into new lines and heard Archie whistle. “Don’t worry,” he said, “and keep away from the other guests. I’ve got to return Wilcox’s car and I’ll have dinner down there with him. He’ll bring me back. . . . He may have turned up something at the camp.”

  He didn’t believe that but it eased the tension, and that was what he wanted. Beacham walked out with him to the car when he left.

  Perley was waiting for him and they sat long over supper.

  “That trip to the camp was wasted time,” Perley said. “I nearly got sunstroke, and that’s all. Ten boys had leave last night and I talked to each one, separate. I couldn’t find a lie in the lot. They went to the movies and had some beers. They didn’t see anybody to talk to except a couple of girls. I beat the girls’ names out of them, but that’s no help either. I’ve known every last one of those girls since the day they were born and I don’t mind telling you I’m kind of surprised. But I guess that’s the war.”

  “Stop picking on the poor war,” Pansy said. “If you ask me, it’s lack of family prayers. And I’ll thank you to change the subject. Remember Floyd.”

  Floyd gave Mark a worldly smile and did the changing himself. “What’s your theory about Joey’s clothes, Mr. East?”

  Mark had been keeping that for Perley. “Where did you pick that up?” he demanded. “That’s supposed to be very hush-hush.”

  “Pee Wee telephoned.”

  “Clothes?” Pansy brightened. “What’s wrong with clothes?”

  Mark told them. Perley spread his hands in a hopeless gesture. “In all my life,” he said, “I never heard of such a thing. I don’t mind telling you I don’t know where to begin.”

  “You can forget about the old quarry for one thing, Pop,” Floyd said. “There’s no bodies or nothing there. Me and some fellows dragged all one side today. We’re going to do the other tomorrow.”

  “On Sunday!” His mother gave him a look, and he quailed.

  Mark repacked his bag and sat on the porch with Perley until Roberta drove down for him. She’d telephoned to ask if she might. Perley, with his shoes off, had urged him to accept. “I need sleep,” he moaned. “She’s young and she wants to help.”

  They made quiet plans for the next day. “You can’t do much on Sunday,” Perley said. “Nothing ever happens on Sunday. We’ll just sit around and maybe interview a few folks.” He yawned. “You’ll like our Sundays here.”

  “Will I?” Mark looked dubious.

  CHAPTER THREE

  ACHURCH bell rang faintly in the valley and echoed in the hills. The guests of the Mountain House heard it, and paid tribute to the day by moving more slowly than usual and wearing a few more clothes. Card games came quietly to life in corners of the big veranda and on cottage porches. Sunday papers rustled and the smell of roasting beef drifted out from the service quarters at the rear. A few cars rolled sedately up to the portico, accepted groups of elderly women with prayer books and fans, and moved off down the mountain. Over in the parking lot by the gates a fat bay horse, hitched to a buggy, switched his shining tail and stamped his hoofs with controlled regularity. The sun was like brass.

  Mark sat at an iron table before the Beacham cottage, ostentatiously reading The New York Times. The Beachams and the Pecks were golfing three miles away. He’d insisted on that. Anything was better than the sight of the Beachams moving from chair to chair, from room to room, not talking, not looking at each other. They’d accepted his suggestion with relief. It was what they always did on Sunday morning. Even Franny, who’d started the day with a drooping mouth, had changed her clothes in ten minutes.

  Cora Sheffield and Henry Kirby had gone off in Kirby’s boyish roadster immediately after breakfast. There was, Cora had told the listening world, a little antique dump over near Baldwin where they had a cherry wood commode that might have come out of her own grandmother’s attic. It hadn’t, of course, but it looked like it.

  “And damn if I don’t tell everybody it did!” she screamed as they drove off.

  Mark wondered whether the sun would do anything to Kirby’s little black mustache.

  Nick Sutton came down the veranda steps with his grandfather. The old man was very old; he leaned heavily on the boy and looked as if he couldn’t stand alone. He was tall, and he had one of those faces sometimes seen in old Italian paintings of a saint confronted with a devil. He could be either. He ought to be in Maine, Mark told himself irritably, or in Canada; this heat will kill him.

  He watched while Nick put the old man in a comfortable chair under the trees and took a seat beside him. Nick looks like the devil too, he thought. What good does his money do him? He wondered if the boy’s back was painful and decided that it was; the thin face was white and unhappy.

  He was returning to his paper when Miss Rayner appeared at the top of the veranda steps and created a mild flurry. A dozen people ran forward to take her arm, but she waved them airily aside. She was in beaming possession of a walk
ing stick, man size, and Mark smiled for the first time in many hours. Miss Rayner was a proper sight in her small violet toque, her violet silk, and her fine white kid gloves.

  She hobbled from step to step, drew a deep and satisfied breath, and moved over to the Suttons’ chairs. There was one chair vacant, and she eased herself into it gently.

  “I’ve fooled that doctor,” she said to the Suttons. “I’m always doing that. He lent me this stick and said I wouldn’t be able to use it for a week.” She saw Mark and waved. “Come on over here,” she called. “I can’t remember if I thanked you nicely or not.”

  He took his chair and paper with him. Nick nodded curtly and said nothing.

  “Do you know Mr. Sutton?” Miss Rayner asked. “Mr. Sutton senior? Of course you know this dear boy. This is Mr. East. . . . Mr. East, is there anything about me in that paper?” She smiled archly. “Because if there is I shall be very angry.”

  “No,” he said soberly. “There isn’t anything about Miss Cassidy either. I think Mr. Beacham got hold of the right people.”

  Old Sutton, who had briefly nodded before, now gave Mark his full attention. “You’re working for Beacham, aren’t you?” he asked in a high, querulous voice.

  Mark said he was. He waited for the old man to go on, but nothing more was said. The sunken eyes gleamed under their heavy white brows; they could have been amused or malevolent. Nick moved closer to his grandfather and took his hand.

  “Want to go in?” he asked.

  “I’ve just come out. Leave me alone.” He sank down in his chair and gave his attention to the cloudless sky. He couldn’t have made a more definite exit if he had slammed a door behind him.

  Mark turned to Miss Rayner, who was making small, chirping sounds. She was digging about in the bottom of her violet silk bag; calling cards, handkerchief, and small purse lay in her lap. The handkerchief was scented with violet.

  “Aren’t you going to be late for church?” he asked.

  “I would be if I were going,” she smiled. “But I’m not. I did think of it, but it’s too hot, and I don’t feel equal to the ups and downs. And the building is smothered in ivy. Smothered, and I don’t like it.” She lowered her voice. “Have you ever heard that ivy dust is poison?”