by Rufus King
“No, I naturally went up to see whether everything was in order, Mr. Heffernan.
“Was this after Parne came?”
“Yes. It was after Sheffield had taken Mr. Parne’s bags upstairs. While they were both putting the ear into the garage. I thought it better to check on towels, linen, the usual things. It’s so long since we have used the rooms in the north wing.” Lily smiled brightly. “I believe I even became a porter for an instant and moved Mr. Parne’s bags from the floor to the luggage stand.”
“Yes.”
(So it had been the bags. He knew that: that she had touched them.)
He said after a moment, “That would have been shortly after four o’clock in the afternoon. Did you return to the room later on, Mrs. Elser?”
“Later? Why?”
“I should like to know.”
“There was no occasion to, Mr. Heffernan.”
“Then you want us to understand that the next time you were there was after Hangaway had told you about finding Parne dead?”
“Yes.”
“Would you mind details?”
“No, of course not.”
“Tell me what you did that time.”
“Why I just looked in, then I telephoned to Doctor Starr and the police.”
“No—please—more in detail, please.”
“But how?”
“I want to know where you stood, how far into the room you walked, how close you went to Parne. That’s what I want, Mrs. Elser.”
Lily was deeply puzzled and clammy with fright. That was all she had done: just stood in the doorway and looked at Parne, briefly renewing her impression of the picture which she knew so well. But it was obvious that Mr. Heffernan felt that some further move had occurred, something on which he seemed to be placing a wealth of importance. Well, at least with this instance she could stick rigidly to the truth.
“I did not go into the room at all, Mr. Heffernan. I stood in the doorway, as I say, and went no further.”
He looked at her with a curious mixture of contempt and pity. There was a dash of horror, too, of the fascinated sort, when suddenly in a lovely garden you observe the placid sunning of a pretty snake. He stood up and for an instant seemed embarrassed.
“Well, thank you, Mrs. Elser. And good night.”
“Good night, Mr. Heffernan.”
* * * *
Ida Forrest heard the faint sound of the telephone bell and was instantly awake. There was only one instrument in the house, downstairs in what had been her husband’s (Jason’s) study and which was now Gene’s, except that Gene never used it. This always faintly irked Ida because she had an orderly mind and liked activities, as well as things, to be in their proper niches.
The telephone went on ringing.
Ida hoped that Gene would not hear it. Normally he would not, as he slept like a log, but Dr. Starr’s dinner party had been upsetting emotionally, because of its dark undercurrents, and Gene might easily be spending a restless sleepless night.
It continued to ring.
Ida knew it would be connected in some fashion with the Elsers. The hour was after three, which automatically divorced the call from ordinary social or business matters and shoved it into the perquisites of drama.
The bell stopped on the seventh ring.
Either they had hung up or Gene was downstairs answering it, because the regular number of rings was ten. Ida sat upright, in the strictest of nightgowns, and listened more intently. Her hearing was remarkably acute, and soon she caught a faint and remote rumble of Gene’s voice. She got out of bed and put on crocheted slippers and a woolen bathrobe and went out into the cold hall.
Ida’s eyes were sharp and frosty with concern, and she said as he came hurrying up the stairs, “What was it, Gene?”
“Lorrimer Keith, Mother.”
“At this hour?” (It was strange, but then it wasn’t really. Besides being an executor of her estate, Lorrimer’s sheep’s eyes at Lily during dinner had been obvious enough: the connection with high drama still held.) “What does he want?”
“He’s at the Elsers’.”
Ida stepped back to let him join her on the landing and said impatiently, “Of course he is, but what does he want with you?”
“He thinks I ought to be there.”
“Why?”
“Mr. Keith said he was worried about the situation.”
“What situation? Why is he there at this hour anyway?”
“The dope fiend got loose and broke in.”
“Mercy!”
“Yes.”
“Mercy!”
“He only knocked the cop out. It isn’t that.”
“What isn’t?”
“It’s business, Mother.”
“Well, what business?”
“Mr. Keith thinks I ought to be on hand in case they need advice.”
“I do wish you’d make sense, Gene. You’re not Lorrimer’s lawyer, and you certainly aren’t the Elsers’.”
“I know it. That’s just why.”
“Why haven’t you got your bathrobe on? And no slippers. Why is it just why?”
“Because Mr. Keith thinks I could be there as a friend, just pretend that I came because I was worried about what happened to them and still be handy to give them legal advice. He doesn’t want to bring old Wellburn into it because it would be too obvious—show that they were scared.”
“What did happen, Gene?”
“Nothing, as I told you, Mother, but Mr. Keith is a little uneasy about the district attorney’s attitude.”
“Mercy! Then there was—then she did—”
“No there wasn’t and she didn’t. It’s just an attitude. I’ve got to dress, Mother.”
“Gene, I don’t want you to go’”
“No, I figured you wouldn’t. But I’m going, Mother.”
“Then I’m going with you.”
“No.”
Ida permitted the line to run out a little.
“But it will be perfectly all right, Gene. I shall simply be doing what I can for Lily Elser. Her friends must stand by her at a time like this.”
“Mrs. Elser is asleep.”
“I’ll be ready by the time you get the car around, dear.”
“I’m not taking you, Mother. This is business.”
* * * *
Starr watched Keith set the scene. He liked Keith and enjoyed him: liked his substantial, fine qualities and was amused by his foibles. He considered Keith’s habit of dramatizing his several selves as a good thing, as an excellent safety valve against repressions: the banker president, the suave clubman, the modest (but still par) golfer and—right now—the old boy, standing by.
Standing by Lily Elser.
He thanked Keith for replenishing his brandy and soda and watched Keith replenish his own and then return his buttocks for further toasting before the logs. The stage at last seemed right: intimate, slightly conspiratorial, very man to man.
Starr wondered just how far by Lily Elser Keith would stand. He would see her through, of course. There was no doubt about that. But what then? What about after the bitter sequences which seemed inevitable? The arrest, the arraignment, the grand jury with its indictment, the waiting weeks in jail, the trial?
Then the verdict.
Starr held no illusions about Heffernan’s opinion or Heffernan’s purpose: all of the sordid sequences were intended to occur. The case against Lily Elser was closed with the exception of some single link. Undoubtedly there lay in Heffernan’s possession the most damning of evidence and clues, painstakingly documented and weighed and ready to strike her down with like a club on the moment when that last link should be obtained.
It was a bond, Starr believed, which would tie her understandably to Parne, one without which the state’s case was li
kely to collapse, because in that bond must be the motive for the crime.
Keith started his obliques.
“How frequently, Colin, you can paraphrase Hamlet.”
“To talk or not to talk? That is her problem?”
“Yes, and I’m afraid we must consider that it truly is. I honestly don’t know what to advise Lily to do. I’m sure we both agree that Heffernan is a very sound, a very intelligent man.”
“Also an open-minded and a just one.”
“Yes, and it’s quite obvious that he is simply waiting, just marking time.”
“For the link? You feel that too?”
“For whatever it is that connects Lily with those men. We’ve got to face that, of course—the fact that neither Parne nor Hangaway came to this house through any chance.”
“Why specifically Mrs. Elser, Lorrimer? Have you thought of the possibility that the tie-up might lie through her daughter?”
“Nan? Absurd. She’s a child.”
“No, not any longer. Up to the time when she left for Detroit, if you wish. She’s a woman now.”
“Oh, come, she’s only nineteen.”
“That was Mrs. Elser’s age when Nan was born.”
“Well, you’re right. It had never occurred to me.”
Keith reviewed his private images and did not want them changed: Lily had to remain a gracious, lovable woman with whom, side by side, he would spend his remaining years, and Nan had to remain a charming daughter already fully grown.
Desperately, above all else, Keith wanted no link to exist between either of them and Parne, even if the crime were to remain forever vague. At any costs he wanted no dirty brush to smear its grime on Lily. He wanted the past from where such a brush would naturally arise to stay battened down and dead.
He said to Starr, “We may need your help. I don’t mean medically; I mean in the way you’ve handled those other criminal cases around town.”
“Gladly, Lorrimer.”
“Thank you, Colin. Although I don’t know what under the sun you could do.”
“I don’t myself. The medico-legal angles of Parne’s death were childishly obvious.” Starr added uncomfortably, “They lacked the most elementary professional touch.”
“I know what you mean. But we’ll fight up to the last. And even then.”
“Of course.”
“Does nothing strike you? Nothing at all?”
Starr said again, “Only Nan.”
“No, I can’t. I won’t believe it.”
“And I cannot eliminate the thought. It persists in nagging me. Look here, you play chess, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Well, then think of your pawns.”
It was then that they heard the scream.
* * * *
He, too, as Parne had been, was freshly dead.
He was a well-built man in his late forties, conservatively, expensively dressed, with a stubble of beard on his chin and a dusty, rumpled look about his clothing. He lay on his back just as Parne had lain, and his eyelids were slightly opened, showing crescents of an oyster white. A black hole in his temple oozed blood. He was not lying, as Parne had been, across the bathroom sill but was stretched at length between the bed and one of the windows.
Blankets and sheets lay in a heap on the floor. The mattress had been slit in a dozen places from which its stuffings had been explored and pulled. The pillows were half empty of their feathers.
There were two guns. One was gripped in the dead man’s hand. The other was in Nan’s.
Only the bed lamp burned.
Lily reached the room first, the room which for a single night had been Mr. Parne’s. She had caught the sound of footsteps pounding up the broad curved stairs as she had run past the landing. She would have one instant of grace out of eternity, while they determined where to look for the source of the scream.
Lily took the gun out of Nan’s hand and held it in her own. It’s metal felt warm to the touch, and cordite still was a slight and acrid tang in the air. She opened a window swiftly and threw the gun far out into the banks of snow, then closed the window and gathered Nan tightly into her arms. She murmured incoherently, “Be still, darling. Say nothing. Be still, my dear—be still—”
Gene’s shout brought the other two men, brought Sheffield but not (the thought struck Lily briefly) Delilah. It was a stilted scene which revolved around and before Lily slowly in a stunned sort of confusion. Starr on a knee by the body, examining, pronouncing the man dead. Gene and Lorrimer looking blankly stricken. And only Sheffield looking dispassionate and tired.
Starr stood up and said gravely, “Do you know who this is, Mrs. Elser?”
Lily hadn’t looked. She went closer to the body, and Nan still clung to her, moving the few steps as she moved, clinging to her in a torment of intermittent shaking. Lily looked. It was funny to be able to stand there quietly and look not at the man so much as through him and, through that filter, backward and further backward through the years. Heavier solider, more flesh about the jowls but, yes, she knew him.
“He is Nan’s father, Doctor.”
So, Starr thought, the link.
Chapter 4
Well, then, here was the end.
All of the swing through the past nineteen years was over, and there Lily felt herself right back at the start. With Robert. Plumper, jowlier, less excitingly feral and dead, but still Robert. She reflected on its cruelty and deep injustice: that a biological trap which so many years ago had sprung and inflicted its scars should have the power once more to reopen them.
Lily thanked Starr for the tablet, for the glass of water, and leaned back with a lassitude of dead indifference on the chaise-lounge in her upstairs living room, her face pallid and oddly serene against a champagne-toned French corduroy. Starr drew a chair up close. He offered Lily a cigarette for which she thanked him and refused.
“Our time may be brief, Mrs. Elser.”
“I know that, Doctor.”
“I have told Lorrimer that I will do everything I can.”
Lily was vaguely glad that he should want to and that Lorrimer should have asked him. It was terribly difficult to try and concentrate.
“Doctor Starr, do you believe in fate?”
“Yes.”
“You do? You, a physician, believe in it?”
“Fate is a term,” he said, “that scientists hold in a bondage of disrepute, simply for the protection of their precious formulas and equations. They insist on the inflexible rule. It’s their mental as well as their physical bread and butter.”
“Physicians also?”
“Yes, to a lesser degree. I’m sometimes inclined to wonder whether the alchemists and the Magians didn’t pull off a sounder job than we do, by kissing the occult on both cheeks whereas we only peck at one of them—but for heaven’s sake, don’t quote me.”
Lily smiled faintly.
“I shan’t. Well, I am a victim of it.”
“I felt so obscurely. As I say, we’ve little time. There are many confusions.” Starr added earnestly, “Won’t you clear them for me, Mrs. Elser?”
“I think you ought to know that I did not tell a literal lie when I came here. There was a basis of probability of reason.”
“When you came to Laurel Falls?”
“Yes, sixteen years ago. I called myself a widow. I had begun to hope, in fact, to feel an assurance by that time that I was one.”
Starr thought: She’s getting at it. I still can’t press her or she’ll dry up. We’ve only ten or fifteen minutes at the best.
“You believed that your husband, that Robert Warden was dead?”
“It was kinder to. Much kinder.”
“Why, Mrs. Elser?”
“He left me on the night that Nan was born. He said, ‘You’re certainly sweating,
Lily,’ and he said to the woman who was helping out, ‘Isn’t she? Enough to float a ship.’ And he went out, slamming the door. He always slammed the door.”
“Yes, Mrs. Elser.”
“This will seem funny to you, Doctor, but I never realized until then how much I must have loved him. I knew it because his going hurt, even more than the other.”
“And he?”
“Oh, Robert never loved me at all. That’s obvious, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know. There are so many aspects. Any number of things can dam up love temporarily, and still it will flow again if it gets a chance. I’ve known of cases at childbirth where a man has hated his wife because he was hating himself for what she was going through. Sort of a defense-complex thing. Did you never hear from him?”
“Nothing.”
He left her sinking for a moment in this torment of the past and reflected how pointedly Robert Warden’s death would motivate Heffernan’s case: bigamy—the scandal of it reflected no matter how innocently on Lily and on Nan—no district attorney could want a better handle.
“Did you accept his death as a fact, Mrs. Elser, or did you take any steps to try and prove it?”
“I had a little money, Doctor. Too little for any exhaustive and expensive search. I think that even if I had had a great deal of money I would have been ashamed to use it in that way. I waited for five years and then got a divorce on the grounds of desertion. Naturally the case was uncontested. I waited two more years. Doctor, and then arranged that he be declared legally dead. That was in nineteen twenty-nine, four years before my marriage with Milton.”
Starr felt profound relief.
“But, Mrs. Elser, that’s splendid. Don’t you see? There goes the mainstay of Heffernan’s case.”
Lily thought: Oh no, it doesn’t. It isn’t as simple as that. It’s as complicated as Parne, as Hangaway, as Detroit, as Robert’s dead body, as the three of them all converging out of Detroit and into this house.
As Nan.
“I wish, Doctor, that it could be so.”
She was right, of course, and Starr felt his exhilaration draining away, because motives for any murder could be legion whereas authenticated proofs were rare as truth, and Heffernan must hold a lot of them in his hand. He studied Lily’s limp indifference toward the deadly urgency of her position.