Time to Die

by Hilda Lawrence

  He opened the bedroom closets and fell back before their contents. The first was devoted to tweeds, and the devotion ran close to infatuation. He was in that room on serious business, and his mind was filled with a black foreboding, but he took time out to finger the material lovingly and visualize it in pants. It was all too good for Cora.

  The second closet held the chiffons and all that went with them. They were far from clean, and the trailing, bedraggled hems showed signs of heavy travel through dew, dust, and a brier patch. They also looked as if they’d been bought blindfolded in a sub-basement. He went from the closets to the bureau and chest.

  In that quarter, Cora was unexpectedly like Mary Cassidy, tailored and immaculate. But there was no secret cache of silk and fine lace. Cora wore her weakness openly, on the outside, every evening from six o’clock on. As for her toilet articles, she had a hairbrush and a comb.

  In the small sitting room he found a desk, disarmingly open and discouragingly neat. With one exception, her mail was a small stack of feed bills, paid, and a dozen painfully correct letters from her stable man. The exception was a personal note: “I’m sorry, dear. Hank.”

  He went over both rooms again, turning the rugs and lifting the mattress. He didn’t know what he was looking for and he found nothing. If Cora was a killer she had a foolproof front. There were no drugs in her bathroom; she disdained even aspirin. She had a ten cent cake of soap, two toothbrushes, a can of tooth powder, and a case of whisky. He moved on.

  Hank Kirby was irreproachably bedded two doors down the hall on the other side. It was a smaller suite, with only one closet in the bedroom. His clothes were magnificent, but few. The bureau and chest of drawers yielded nothing. A clothes brush, used, a whisk-broom, used, and a pair of military brushes, pathetically unused, stood on top of the bureau. There was one tin of aggressively masculine talcum in the bathroom. The sitting room was as bare as a cell and not much larger. Hank had no bills of any kind, and no correspondence, but a box of fine stationery stood open on the otherwise empty desk. Dedicated, no doubt, to the simple ballads that fluttered two doors up the hall and across.

  He stood in the center of the bedroom and scanned every visible inch. Something was missing. It had to be there. He went over to the bed and lifted the valance, revealing a large, square leather box. He dragged it out and opened it. It held bottles, jars, boxes, tubes, and tins; tiny brushes, cakes of dye, mascara pencils. There were three wigs, perfectly groomed. One of them was a shade more perfect than the other, having a high gloss and a discreet wave. For the opera?

  He started to light a cigarette and remembered that Hank didn’t smoke. He left the room with relief.

  The elevator shaft was next door, and he saw that the cage was standing empty at the first floor. He didn’t want it anyway; all he wanted was not to meet it in transit. The main stairway wound up beside the shaft. He took the steps two at a time.

  Miss Rayner lived on the fourth, at the rear end of the hall. Above the fourth was the servants’ floor. She couldn’t have had a less desirable location. There was probably a sound monetary reason behind her reluctance to tip.

  It was a tiny, single room, with running water concealed behind a stained and faded screen. The bed was narrow and hard, no valance there, and the floor beneath was clean and bare. A spotless dustcloth, hanging from a corner of the screen, indicated that she took care of the room herself. A flimsy, built-in wardrobe showed rows of pleasant, old-fashioned dresses, small hats, slippers with low heels and pointed toes; the plain pine bureau held bottles of violet, verbena, and rose geranium toilet water, and a toilet set of well-worn and carefully polished silver. Miss Rayner’s efficient little hands had almost buffed the fat cupids and their repoussé garlands out of existence. There was also a hotel plate filled with lumps of sugar, each one wrapped in a square of clean cheesecloth.

  He opened the drawers and surveyed their contents with one quick look. Underwear, plain. There was a small trunk behind the door, and he stood before it while he belabored his conscience. It was one thing to unearth Hank Kirby’s beauty secrets and Cora’s feed bills, even to read Franny Peck’s love letters, but Miss Rayner’s little round-topped trunk had a sacred look. And it was uncomfortably like the picture of Pandora’s box.

  He raised the lid and stepped back to make way for the scrabbling troop of human ills he half expected to see come swarming over the sides. Nothing happened. There was not even a creak. The trunk was an old lady’s storeroom, filled with prudent preparations for a change in weather. There were galoshes, rubber sandals and rubbers, bed socks, extra blankets, and an old plaid cape with a hood. In a small top compartment that had a Turner landscape pasted on its lid, he found extra handkerchiefs and heavy stockings, brochures in praise of English watering places, and a yellowing envelope containing something that felt like cardboard. He opened this with commendable shame.

  The cardboard was a photograph of a baby with its curling hair severely and wetly combed into a Thames Tunnel. It was not a pretty baby, but someone had thought so once. A line of faded ink on the back said—“My darling, age 6 mos.”

  He put it away in its envelope, returned it to the compartment, and closed the trunk. Then he went to the single, small window and stood looking down into the back yard four floors below. The chef had returned to his hammock, and a few cats grubbed around a garbage can. A man wearing a bloody apron came out of the poultry shed with a basket of dead chickens. Their limp heads hung over the sides. It wasn’t a pretty view.

  Perley sat between Joey and Pee Wee, replete with frozen custard, peanuts, and potato chips. The streak of custard on his neat serge sleeve had been applied by Pee Wee in an excess of emotion brought on by the overture to Wilhelm Tell. Pee Wee had accepted the overture as a personal tribute, fostered by some aesthete who had seen his own performance with the lemon. The band had burst into the first notes as he walked down the makeshift aisle to take his seat.

  There was shade for the band but none for the audience. Perley tipped his stiff straw hat over his eyes. In spite of his fears he was having a good time. He liked children and didn’t care what they did to his clothes, and he liked the kind of music he was hearing. The Stars and Stripes Forever was a fine piece. You couldn’t have too much of that kind of thing these days. The Tell piece was good too, but he thought he must have heard it somewhere before. So far there had been no gems from The Prince of Pilsen but they’d had gems from The Student Prince. One of the latter gems had words, and was sung by a quartet of manly looking young fellows. He wished Pansy could see them. They could sing fine, too. “The golden ha-a-aze of student da-a-ays,” he hummed under his breath. And there they were, happy as larks, with no time to finish their own educations, and a bad time ahead.

  He craned his neck unobtrusively and counted the familiar hats three rows ahead. Still all there.

  The band gave itself an intermission and a major made an inaudible speech.

  “It isn’t over, is it?” whispered Joey. “They’re going to play again, aren’t they?”

  “Yes indeed,” Perley whispered back. “Two or three pieces, I expect. Then they’ll finish with The Star-Spangled Banner.”

  He hoped they rolled the drums good and loud in that one. So many bands didn’t. A good, long, loud roll. Gave you the chills and made you want to poke somebody. A half-forgotten memory stirred at the back of his mind and nagged him into reminiscence, and after several tries he finally traced it to a movie he’d once seen.

  “What are you thinking about, Mr. Wilcox?” Joey asked solicitously.

  “Nothing much,” he told her.

  Yes, that was it, he said to himself. A movie. They’d rolled the drums in it. A beautiful roll. He could hear and see it all as plain as day. One of those movies about aristocrats in the French Revolution. They’d rolled the drums when a high class fellow walked up the steps to that big knife and got his head chopped off in a basket.

  Mark went into Beacham’s room and made what he knew would be
a fruitless search. He felt that it was a waste of time, but he was afraid not to cover everything. He found a few Pullman stubs in the bottom of a drawer and took them.

  He had gone over Roberta’s original room the first night he slept in it, and he knew nothing had been changed since then. She had moved all her things into the room formerly shared by Joey and Cassie. He went there, as a matter of routine. Roberta’s clothes were in Cassie’s closet and bureau, and Cassie’s were gone.

  He covered the entire cottage before he found them. They were crammed into a chest in the bathroom and stowed away on the top shelf of the hall closet. Roberta’s work?

  Roberta had a large correspondence tied in bundles like Franny’s, but there was no further resemblance. The letters were from girls, ecstatic when not despairing, hopeful when not crushed to earth. They hated or loved their parents’ idea of a vacation and had met absolutely nobody, or somebody. There was an album of snapshots on the table, and he went through this slowly and carefully. Names and dates were written in white ink under each picture. There were none of Cassie. Not even an empty, telltale space. He turned the pages a second time to make sure.

  He went back to the porch and stared thoughtfully at the hotel. Old Sutton was still in his suite; at least he hadn’t appeared for his afternoon air. George, if he wasn’t with the old man, was up under the roof in his own cubicle. He probably shared it with a chauffeur or a waiter. No chance to get in there; too risky at all hours. Employees were always sneaking up for a smoke.

  He looked at his watch. Four-thirty. He took a shower, put on fresh clothes, and went out to the trees to wait.

  At six o’clock the Folly roared up the hill, and behind it came Wilcox and the children. Roberta’s guests dragged themselves into the hotel like a defeated army. Perley, frankly happy and with a child clinging to each hand, crossed to Mark’s chair.

  “Very enjoyable,” he commented. “I’m glad I went.” He lowered his voice. “But we’re right where we started from. Nothing done, nothing said. Nothing at all.”

  “Beat it,” Mark said to Pee Wee and Joey. “And wash whatever that is off your face,” he told Joey. “Otherwise you look so good that I may ask you to dine with me tonight.”

  Perley settled in a chair. “Nobody made a move after we got there. Not even to go to the water cooler. I got the feeling they knew they were expected to do something, and didn’t do it on purpose. Except the Haskells. They were bowing right and left like it was a sociable. They had a real good time. Nobody even said anything when I took the children in my car. I thought there’d be an argument. Would you say that was good or bad?”

  “Neither. Everybody’s nervous. If you walked behind that crowd and clapped your hands together, you’d have to pick the whole lot of them up.”

  “Oh!” Perley struck his forehead. “I nearly forgot. Briggs hollered at me as I came by and said the telegraph office had a wire for you. Asked me to bring it along. Here.”

  Mark took it. It was the reply to his telephoned instructions to New York. It said, briefly, that the watch-dogs had found nothing to bark at.

  “You’ll be relieved to know that Beacham’s been behaving himself,” he said. “Let’s hope he keeps it up.” He eyed Perley’s best serge, not overlooking the custard. “Are you prepared to spend the night here?”

  “As much as I’ll ever be. Pansy keeps asking when I’m coming home.”

  “Tomorrow. After the party.”

  Perley fanned himself with his hat. “Pansy heard about the party. She says you showed good sense when you didn’t invite her. She says she wouldn’t come if you got down on your knees and crawled. She remembers the one you gave last year.”

  “Does she know the Moresbys are coming?”

  “She does. Hazel called her up. Pansy made out like she was going herself, to calm Hazel down. She’s no fool, Pansy.”

  “No.”

  “What are you sitting out here for? What kind of afternoon did you have?”

  “I’m waiting for dinner because I didn’t have much lunch and I had a beautiful afternoon, thanks.”

  “Okay, okay,” said Perley. They sat on without talking.

  Old man Sutton and George appeared at the top of the veranda steps. The old man lowered his head between his shoulders like a charging bull and glared in all directions; when he saw Mark and Perley under the trees, he spoke to George in a rapid undertone, and they both turned and went back into the lobby.

  Perley coughed gently. “Any luck in that direction?”

  “Couldn’t get in. There was too much risk.”

  A few minutes later Nick and Roberta came out and crossed to the parking lot. Mark raised an arm. “Nick!” he called. The boy turned. “Come here a minute, will you?” Then, “Did you people get your invitations to my party?”

  “We did. Thank you.”

  “Coming?”

  Nick laughed. “What do you think?” He was still laughing when he joined Roberta.

  Mark watched them climb into the car and drive off.

  “No,” he said in answer to Perley’s look. “They won’t run away. They’d like to, but they can’t.” He twisted and turned in his chair, stared at the sky, and got up to walk to the cottage; halfway there he turned back and resumed his seat. Perley lit his pipe and smoked stolidly.

  When the dinner gong rang Mark was on his feet before the reverberations had died away. “Joey!” he shouted. Heads turned in his direction and he looked sheepish. “Joey,” he called again in a reasonable octave. She came running. “I’m hungry,” he said. “Let’s eat now. You stay here,” he said to Perley. “Right where you are. You can take my place inside when I’ve finished.”

  Dinner was long, poorly cooked, and badly served; the upper class jitters had spread to the kitchen. Joey, however, found nothing to complain of. Old Sutton was apparently dining in his room. He didn’t appear. The Pecks came in with Cora and Kirby and the Haskells, the latter looking as if they’d made the social register. Miss Rayner, walking primly to her own table, stopped to talk, and Mark thought there was more than civility behind her bright smile. He learned almost at once that he was right.

  “Such a nice drive,” she said. “But I’m afraid Miss Pond has a headache. She’s having a tray upstairs, so wise. I gave her some aspirins. She came all the way up to my little room to ask for them.”

  “Did she?” Mark said vacantly.

  “Yes.” Miss Rayner’s smile deepened. “And she wasn’t my only caller, either. The other one was less considerate. He came while I was out.” She patted Joey’s beribboned topknot, and moved on.

  “What does she mean?” Joey asked.

  “I’d give a lot to know,” he said truthfully. “Stop that!” She was reaching for a bowl of pickles.

  Twice during dinner he was called to the phone. The first time it was Bittner. His chartered driver had turned in receipts and report. He had known all of the passengers, had carried them before. Nobody had tried to beat the hotel bill, and nobody had talked secrets. All of the talking had been good and loud, so a person could hear.

  Bittner cleared his throat pitifully after making this statement; when he continued, he sounded as if he were fighting back tears. “I’m so out of things. I might as well be dead and nobody would care. . . . Would they?”

  “Is that all?” Mark asked.

  “That’s all I can think of. I may call you later tonight. Saturday’s a big night. You ought to see the—”

  “I have. Listen. Don’t call me for a light blue roadster carrying Nick Sutton and Roberta Beacham. I know all about it. They’re simply taking a little air.”

  “Oh, Oh, all right.” He coughed again. “Ella May says you’re inviting people to eat tomorrow night. I couldn’t come anyway but I hope you enjoy yourself.”

  Mark hung up. When he got back to the table Joey had ordered ice cream with chocolate sauce for both of them. “Business?” she asked soberly.

  “No. Bittner just wanted to thank Roberta for hiring hi
s bus. I took the message for her.” He hesitated. “Do you know where Roberta and Nick went?”

  “They went to eat Chinese food. She’s going to ask him to marry her.”

  “What!”

  “She says she has to ask him. It’s a secret, but I’ll tell you how it turns out. She’s old enough, isn’t she?”

  “Yes, she’s old enough.”

  The second call came while he was having coffee and Joey was finishing his dessert. This time it was Beacham. Mark was not surprised.

  Beacham was full of hearty apologies. “I’m calling from my office,” he said. “I dropped in here to look things over and found a few snarls. Right now it looks as if I won’t be able to make the train tonight. You don’t need me, do you?”

  “You can answer that as well as I can,” Mark said.

  “No trouble up there?”

  “All serene.”

  “That’s good.” Beacham dropped his voice to a confidential tone. “Know something, East? I think it’s going to stay that way. I’ve been running things over in my mind and I’m pretty sure the whole affair was an accident, a dreadful accident. I honestly think we’re on the wrong track when we try to bring in any other element. Why don’t we let Wilcox handle it his way? It’s his territory, after all.”

  “Accident?” Mark repeated softly. “Did you say accident?”

  “Yes. Give Wilcox time and he’ll clean it up. I’m convinced that he, or one of his men, will eventually tie it to some crazy kid who was cutting up and lost his head.”

  “Lost whose head?” Mark queried gently.

  “You know what I mean. You know how dark it was. I mean somebody killed Cassie by accident and hid her body in the nearest place. Panic. Sheer panic.”

  “Sure I know what you mean. Sheer panic. I call it that too. So I’m fired?”

  “Don’t put it that way. I have every confidence in you but I think this is out of your class and mine.”