The Grindle Nightmare

by Q. Patrick

  “Well, Dr. Swanson,” he concluded, “if I can’t get in touch with you before, look for me around eight o’clock by the Mill Pool.”

  “All right, Baines. Eight o’clock—eight o’clock tomorrow morning at the Mill Pool. I’ll be there.”

  I dismissed the class and went down to get my car.

  Toni and I had both been invited to dinner and bridge with Seymour Alstone that night, but my roommate who rarely played bridge and who objected on principle to evenings where_ one could neither smoke nor drink, had refused on some flimsy excuse. Secretly I was very glad of his refusal because it meant that Valerie would be invited in his place.

  And very lovely she looked when I entered Seymour Alstone’s enormous living-room at seven o’clock that evening. In this gloomy house she was youth and vitality itself. She was charming even to her “wicked uncle” and, although cocktails were not served, her very presence was sufficient to put my senses into a state of pleasant intoxication. Franklin was there, too, boney and bald, but no one paid any attention to him.

  Seymour Alstone himself was always at his best when acting the host, and there was something almost benign about his fine old grizzled head as he took his place at the top of the dinner table. Indeed, the party was normally gay and lively as long as Gerald and Peter Foote were there. It was Peter who was largely responsible for this liveliness, for he wisecracked in front of the old man just as though he were a human being instead of the traditional tyrant of the valley. Several times during dinner Seymour actually broke into a hearty chuckle.

  It was not until the two boys left and we settled down to bridge that the familiar sobriety always associated with the Alstone household, descended on the party.

  By some strange anomaly in his character, Seymour Alstone, while forbidding cigarettes and alcohol in his house, had no objection to playing bridge for money. By some even stranger kink in his nature, he seemed particularly to enjoy playing for fairly high stakes with the girl whose father he had ruined. Of course, since Valerie had not a penny of her own, he was obliged to carry her as his partner, defraying her losses and allowing her to keep her winnings. But he did not make such a bad investment at that. She was an extremely good player—far better than my partner, the timid Franklin, who always underbid his hand and seemed terrified of setting his father or even of making a contract against him.

  The evening wore tediously on. At eleven o’clock Valerie decided it was time to go home. I paid my losses and went to get my coat. We were all assembled in the hall when Gerald came in by himself. He blinked at us a moment and then said casually:

  “Oh, Dr. Swanson, I just met Mark down the road. By the way, I believe his father’s been looking for you. Have you seen him yet?”

  “No.” I answered with some curtness, annoyed that my private appointment with Baines had thus been made common knowledge.

  Old Seymour, who was not included in this conversation, looked from his grandson to me with a suspicious frown.

  “What’s this about Baines?” he asked gruffly.

  Reluctantly I was forced to explain how the gardener had called me that afternoon on purely personal business, and urged him to consider the matter as confidential. I was not very convincing, but I hoped that Seymour would suppose the interview to have some connection with Mrs. Baines’ state. of health.

  “Oh, I’m sorry.” Gerald’s face fell as he listened. “I heard you talking to him over the ’phone in your laboratory this afternoon. I didn’t know it was private.”

  “Well, Gerald,” I commented mildly, “you’re going to be a doctor yourself and you ought to realize that physicians never discuss professional affairs. It doesn’t matter this time just so long as you don’t let it go any further.”

  The boy flushed and looked down shamefacedly. “I’m afraid I’ve already told the Tailford-Joneses,” he faltered. “Peter and I met them in the road just after dinner and that woman asked so many questions that before I knew where I was—”

  “If you’ve told Roberta,” I broke in, smiling a little grimly, “that means the whole village knows about it by now. But I suppose it can’t be helped.”

  “It can indeed!” The expression on Seymour Alstone’s face reminded me of one of the Old Testament prophets. “How many times, Gerald, must I tell you not to gossip about affairs that do not concern you? If you spent more of your time studying instead of wasting it in idle chatter, you wouldn’t be such a disappointment to your father and me.”

  Franklin, who had been standing a little apart from the rest of us, nodded his head vaguely as if to show that the old man’s words had his full approbation.

  Gerald looked up at his father and grandfather, and, for an instant, his eyes revealed an expression of long pent antagonism and resentment.

  “Mrs. Tailford-Jones kept asking me questions,” he said sullenly. “I had to be polite.”

  “Polite!” Seymour gave a scornful laugh. “Politeness is only another name for weakness. When are you going to learn to have a will of your own?”

  “Oh, let it go,” I murmured, anxious to cut short this family scene so that I might take Valerie home.

  “Will of my own!” echoed Gerald, peering closely at his grandfather and speaking with far more spirit than I had ever heard before. “Whose fault is it if I haven’t one? Who bosses me about all the time; tells me what I must do and what I mustn’t; when I can go out; when I must work; who I shall see and who I shan’t? What else can you expect, I’d like to know?”

  He broke off suddenly, catching his breath as if surprised at the temerity of his own outburst.

  Both Franklin and Seymour had been listening in blank amazement. All three Alstones appeared utterly to have forgotten Valerie and myself. Gerald was staring at his grandfather, pale and breathing rather hard. Gradually the excitement drained out of his face and he seemed to give way to an emotional collapse. Pushing the hair from his forehead in a small helpless gesture, he slipped away down the corridor.

  Valerie and I left almost without saying goodnight to our host. As we passed through the front door, I heard Seymour say to Franklin:

  “Very unpredictable, your boy.” His tone seemed to include his own middle-aged son in the accusation. “Very unpredictable, indeed! He’s beginning to take after his mother.”

  “You’ve certainly got a queer lot of relatives, Valerie,” I remarked as I helped her into the car.

  “Poor Gerald,” she said softly. “I’d do anything to help him, but it’s hopeless. He’s so suspicious of everything and everybody. Peter Foote seems to be the only person in this world that he trusts.”

  As she spoke, the dining-room window was flooded with light. From our position outside we could see two people enter, shutting the door cautiously behind them. They were Peter and Gerald. Peter had produced something from his pocket and was handing it to his friend. I noticed to my amused surprise that it was a hip-flask.

  “If Seymour saw that,” I said, laughing, “it would be the end of Peter Foote.”

  As usual Valerie and I talked about Toni on the drive home. Some strange fascination always impelled me to bring up the subject for fear, perhaps, she would broach it first. I had hoped for a tête à tête upon arrival, but there was a light in the living room—a sure sign that Mrs. Middleton had waited up, as she always did when Valerie was spending the evening with her neighboring relatives. She had, she was wont to explain grimly, lost one of her family through the machinations of Seymour Alstone and she was not going to lose another if she could help it.

  Mrs. Middleton, though normally a kind-hearted woman with a turn for pessimism, led the field in her bitterness against the Alstones. Time and time again—privately and in public—she bit the hand that was feeding her. It was embarrassing for all parties concerned, especially for Valerie. I could see now that she did not want me to come in and meet her mother who would probably be in one of her worst moods. Reluctantly I said goodnight from the car, watching her eyes shine in the headlights as she
turned to smile at me.

  Her parting words were: “Give my love to Toni.”

  But I was not able to deliver her message, for on my return I found that my room-mate was not at home. I had no idea where he was. We had tacitly adopted the principle of not prying into one another’s affairs.

  As I slammed the front door, I noticed an envelope lying on the mat. It contained a note from Baines which read:

  “Please don’t forget about tomorrow. I will be there.

  Respectfully,

  Jo Baines.”

  For some reason or other I felt a vague sensation of uneasiness as I undressed and went to bed.

  It had, however, completely vanished next morning when, after a good night’s rest, I walked over to the Goschens’ stable and, taking advantage of a standing invitation, saddled my favorite mare, Esmeralda.

  It was seven o’clock as we set out, and a slight frost during the night had sprinkled the fields and the roadside with a powdering of white. A pearly mist was rising from Grindle Creek. The whole world was fresh and newly awakened.

  After a brisk ride I turned my horse toward the Old Mill Pond where I was to meet Baines. As I galloped onward I started, for the first time, to wonder about the significance of his strange call—of his feverish anxiety to see me. If he had news of his daughter why had he not gone direct to Bracegirdle? Could there be anything shameful in the life of this simple, hard-working man—something that must be kept from the authorities? Or, had it been fear that had sealed his lips to all except me? And, if so—fear of what?

  I dismounted at the Old Mill Pool and, being a little before my time, lit a cigarette. Esmeralda started to chew the grass that grew green by the edge of the creek. Idly I watched the sparse waterfall that trickled over the dam. There was no sign of Baines.

  Esmeralda, her head down, was moving along the bank. Suddenly she started and backed away from the water. For a moment I saw the whites of her frightened eyes. Quickly I sprang forward to calm her and fastened the reins about a stunted tree. She still shot uneasy glances toward the pool. My eyes followed hers. Close by the bank was what looked like an old sack, bobbing up and down with the lapping of the waters. I looked again. After all, was it a sack? There was something about the shape of that curve which made me wonder whether it was air and water alone which caused this piece of fabric to move so rhythmically. I took a step toward the bank and leaned forward. Not being able to reach without getting my feet wet, I broke off a stick from a nearby tree and started to pull the object to me. It was heavy and resistant. As it moved, something else came to the surface of the shallow water—something which made me drop my stick in excitement. It was the dark back of a human head. Forgetting about wet feet, I waded in and clutched at the hair until, at last, sprawled on the bank, face downward, lay the dead body of a man.

  He was fully dressed, and his hands still dragged behind him in the water. Although exerting all my strength, I could not budge the body another inch. Involuntarily I looked down to discover the cause of the impediment and, as I did so, I saw something that made me think I must have returned to some primitive age of civilization where blood and iron ruled. Beneath the wrists there dangled chains. I pulled at them and the hands appeared. Each one was firmly clasped in a spring trap such as they set on the banks of streams for muskrats or minks. The body had been lying face down in about two feet of water, the hands manacled and helpless.

  I lifted the drooping head and saw the face of a man freshly drowned; the bloated, purple skin, the staring eyes, the lips parted in a foolish, sagging smile. As I looked, the clock on the village church across the valley chimed eight times.

  Jo Baines had kept his appointment ….

  Chapter IV

  Leaving the body where it lay, I grabbed Esmeralda’s reins, jumped on her back and galloped home. The first thing I did was to telephone Bracegirdle. Then I dragged Toni out of bed, got out the car and, handing Esmeralda over to the astonished Lucinda, drove like mad back to the Mill Pool. Toni, who was too sleepy to take in what had happened, protested all the way.

  “You and your bloody corpses,” he kept muttering.

  But as soon as he saw Baines sprawled on the bank of Grindle Creek he became alert.

  “Looks as though he were drowned!” he exclaimed. “But, I don’t see how he could in that puddle.”

  He examined the swollen wrists, still held fast in the steel traps.

  “I imagine the poor devil must have been trying to eke out his livelihood by catching muskrats and selling the hides.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Yes, but—exactly!” Toni paused and pulled at his dark chin. “And we are supposed to believe that he came here to examine his traps, slipped on the bank, caught his right hand in one and threshed about until he obligingly caught his left in another—and drowned. Doesn’t quite gee, does it, Doug?”

  “It certainly does not.”

  Toni had pulled back the wet hair from the dead man’s forehead.

  “Hey, I wouldn’t touch anything till Bracegirdle comes.”

  “It looks,” he reflected, “almost as if someone had tried to skin him first, poor devil. See that patch there—the outer layer of epidermis has completely gone.”

  My professional interest was now thoroughly aroused.

  “Those are the kind of marks you’d get if you were dragged along behind some moving vehicle—say, a car.”

  Toni interrupted with a low whistle.

  “You don’t believe, Doug …”

  “I’ve got to the stage when I’d believe anything. I wouldn’t bet one penny on Polly Baines being alive now.”

  Bracegirdle arrived from Rhodes in record time. Toni and I were sitting together on the bank, smoking, when a car jolted to a stop and several men hurried out. For the next half hour everything was very business-like. The coroner inspected the body and had it photographed from every possible angle. The bank was searched exhaustively for clues. When the district attorney arrived a little later, I told my story of the telephone call, the note, and the finding of the corpse. After that the coroner, whom we both knew, called Toni and me into a conference as to how long the man had been dead. None of us, however, was willing to hazard a guess, though from superficial observation it looked as though he had met his death by drowning.

  “Well,” remarked the coroner with a final glance at the corpse, “we’d better let Dr. Brooks have a look at him. He does our work on this kind of case.”

  “Mind if I come along?” Toni’s voice was eager. “Brooks is a pal of mine.”

  “Glad to have you, Dr. Conti.” The coroner buttoned up his coat. “Glad I’m sure.”

  I turned to Bracegirdle who was gazing abstractedly over the unruffled waters of the creek.

  “The whole thing beats me,” he said, his voice flat and toneless. “No motive, no clue; no rhyme, no reason. I’ve gone into the history of the Baines family in view of Polly’s disappearance. There’s nothing that you might call suspicious or off-color about them. Poor hard-working people. Baines has been Mr. Alstone’s gardener for years. Never had a cent or a secret in his life.” He broke off and turned to one of his men. “Hey, Bill, pull up them stakes and bring the traps along, too.”

  The two heavy spring traps, still attached to the dead man’s wrists, were pulled out and the body was loaded into the undertaker’s car which had by this time arrived from Rhodes. Toni, haggard and unshaved, jumped up with the driver, and they all went off.

  I returned to the house slowly, took a hot bath and ate a belated breakfast. The Baines affair was so inconsistent that I could not yet get it into proper perspective. I was tired of trying to puzzle everything out. Besides, there were definite things to do. As yet Toni and I were the only people in the neighborhood to know of the latest tragedy. I must go and break the news to those most directly concerned.

  Mark was working in the garden when I reached the Baines’ cottage. He listened to my story with stoical indifference, though his large, anima
l eyes never left my face while I was talking. When I had done, he turned again to his flowers.

  “I’d been looking for something of this sort,” he muttered, “and there’s more to come.”

  That was the only remark I could get out of him. Whether he was moved or unmoved at the news of his father’s violent death it would have been impossible to tell.

  A sister of Mrs. Baines had come over from Rhodes to keep house for her until the delivery was over. She was shocked and horrified at my tale, urging me to do all I could to keep the news from Minnie, who was in a bad enough way already, poor critter, what wth Polly bein’ lost and the new one coming any minute now, God save us. I did not see Mrs. Baines herself.

  My next self-imposed task was to carry the news to Seymour Alstone. He was surprisingly decent about the whole business. The family certainly should not be turned out until suitable arrangements had been made. Baines’ wages would be continued indefinitely. The old man’s concern seemed genuine enough though a trifle labored.

  On the way home, an incident occurred which seemed almost like a humorous anti-climax to my shocking discovery of earlier in the morning. I happened to pass Bill Strong, an old man who lived in a dilapidated cottage near the Mill Pool and who supported himself on about an acre of land and a little poultry. He was cranking up a Ford as I went by, and uttering a stream of language which would have done credit to Roberta or William Faulkner.

  “Hello, Bill! What’s up?”

  Almost incoherent with rage, the old man pointed a withered finger to a dead gosling which lay on the front seat.

  “Found that there thrown up on the back porch this morning,” he spluttered. “Takin’ her in to the sheriff, right now.”

  I murmured something foolish about a fox.

  “Fox!” He spat disgustedly. “No fox killed that bird. You’re a doc. Look at her yerself.”