“Maybe he took your part against Gloria?”
She flushed. “Yes, he did,” she said, then added quickly, “But it wasn’t because he had fallen in love with me, as Gloria thought. It wasn’t that at all. He just-just... She really was rotten to me!” she finished passionately.
“Jeff knows it; so do Allan and Lila. Anybody in the family can tell you how Gloria loved to torment things, animals and-and people, anything she could make suffer.”
“You all hated her?” I ventured.
“Yes!” she cried. “How could we help it? We were her poor relations and she loved to humiliate us. She liked nothing better than to goad us into a fury. It amused her because we were so helpless.”
“Helpless?” I repeated. “It seems to me there were numbers of things you might have done.”
She shook her head. “No,” she said, “we were quite helpless.”
“You might have appealed to your aunt,” I suggested.
“Gloria could always make Aunt Dora think that black was white.”
“Or your uncle?” I persisted.
She shook her head again. “It was no use going to Uncle Thomas with your troubles. You might as well have tried to get sympathy or understanding out of an adding machine.”
“You could always have left the house,” I said shortly.
“But I told you,” she protested. “We hadn’t any money, except what Uncle Thomas chose to give us.”
“You might have got a job. Other people with rich relatives have,” I pointed out with some irritation.
“Don’t you think we tried?” she cried. “Every one of us tried. Patrick loathes being an auditor in Uncle Thomas’ company. Patrick has no head for figures. He wanted to go in for aviation, and I think he’d have been quite good at it, but Uncle Thomas was determined to make an accountant of him. That was the only kind of schooling he’d pay for, so Patrick flunked and flunked before he finally got through college and he’s gone on flunking ever since, although he’s a vice-president. He says he isn’t worth a grain of salt in the office and he has quit several times, but you know how hard it’s been to get jobs since the depression and, after all, Uncle Thomas was a rich man. When Patrick tried to get on somewhere else people told him his uncle ought to give him a job. They told Allan that too.” She smiled crookedly. “Did you know you couldn’t even get on relief nowadays if somebody in your family has money enough to feed you?”
“I seem to have heard something to that effect,” I admitted.
“Allan hates being a figurehead in Uncle’s office; he hates it as much as Patrick does, maybe more,” said Judy. “Allan wanted to write. He even ran off once and started a novel, but he blundered into an epidemic of scarlet fever. Allan has always been unlucky. He was very ill and they notified Uncle, and of course he had Allan brought home and Gloria found the novel and burned it, but not before she had memorized parts of it. She used to recite them to people and die laughing. They were pretty amateurish, or she made them sound so. Anyway it finished Allan’s attempt to be a writer, and then of course he met Lila and she married him for Uncle’s money and after that he had to stick.”
I stared over her head. Allan Atwood and his wife were just coming into the dining room. He was very pale and there were dark circles under his eyes, but the beautiful Lila was the freshest-looking person I had seen that morning.
I frowned. “It seems to me a little farfetched for Lila Atwood to have married your cousin for his uncle’s money. As near as I can make out, the money goes to your aunt. There is no certainty that Allan will get a lot of it. At the time of the marriage, with Gloria Canby still alive, there must have been even less chance of Allan Atwood’s coming into his uncle’s fortune.”
“Oh, but didn’t you know?” asked Judy as if it were common knowledge, as no doubt it was in their circle. “Lila’s family was quite dreadfully hard up. Her father had signed a note or something and couldn’t pay. He was in very serious trouble. I think he might even have gone to jail. Uncle Thomas paid the note.”
I stared at her aghast. “You mean he practically bought Lila for his nephew.”
“That-that girl told the truth last night,” said Judy in a smothered voice. “Uncle Thomas did like to play the god, but he was terribly poor when he was a boy. He told me once that he had nothing to eat one whole week except raw turnips. I suppose it was then he got the idea that nothing matters except money. At any rate that’s why he paid the note for Lila’s father. You see, with all Uncle’s millions we had never cut any figure in society. You know what a dud Aunt Dora is at that sort of thing, and Gloria was expelled from three exclusive finishing schools. Once for lashing a thoroughbred horse until he bled when they were trying to teach her to ride. Once for doing something horrible, I never knew what, to a poor little French teacher who tried to discipline her for sneaking obscene words into her translations. Anyway, although Uncle spent a fortune on her debut party, Gloria didn’t click with the best social groups, so Lila was a godsend.”
“You mean she had the proper social entrée?”
“Yes,” said Judy. “After she married Allan the best people called on us and asked us places, so I suppose in a way Uncle Thomas was right. It does seem that all things are possible if you have enough money.”
She smiled bitterly and I leaned a little forward in my chair.
“Sheila Kelly was right about something else last night, wasn’t she?” I asked.
Judy’s small hand tightened on the edge of the table. “What do you mean?”
“You all hated Thomas Canby,” I said.
Every particle of colour drained out of her face. “Yes,” she said at last, “we all hated him like sin.”
9
It was perfectly apparent, when Sheriff Latham had herded us into that dreary parlour on the first floor at Lebeau Inn, that to him at least the inquest was a mere formality. The folding doors for the first time in my memory were closed, so that we were spared the sight of Thomas Canby’s dead body stretched out on a red sofa in one corner of the second room, although the jury filed in and viewed the corpse at the opening of the proceedings and filed back to their seats, looking a little seasick. I think all of us drew a deeper breath when Butch, the deputy, pushed the folding doors to again.
The coroner, a withered little old man named Timmons, Dr Riley Timmons, had been put to considerable trouble to collect a jury, what with the bridge being out. However, there was a gaunt old man who, it seemed, hunted and trapped on the mountain and lived the year around in a shack back of the inn, and a young fellow who ran a filling station in connection with the hotel, and a couple of guests of the house, elderly men who plainly wished themselves elsewhere, and Captain Bill French himself.
“ ’Tain’t as if this was more than a matter of form,” explained Sheriff Latham.
Coroner Timmons nodded, and Chet Keith and I exchanged a frown. It was obvious to both of us that the coroner was the sheriff’s echo.
“All you got to do,” Sheriff Latham informed the jury, “is decide to the best of your knowledge how this man come to his death and who in your opinion done it. Then it is up to the grand jury to indict.”
Nobody on the jury looked any the happier for this admonition, especially after Sheila Kelly entered with Mart Butler. She must have been conscious of everybody staring at her, but she did not lift her head as the deputy led her to a chair beside the table at which the coroner sat with Sheriff Latham at his right hand. Despair was in every line of the girl’s drooping figure. Not so the professor, who was escorted into the room by the deputy Butch. The night before I could have sworn that Professor Thaddeus Matthews was on the verge of collapse, but he appeared to have taken a new lease on life. He was positively chipper, and the glance he bent upon us all lacked no assurance. It was, in fact, next door to insolence.
“Why should he be so blooming?” I muttered to Chet Keith, who was sitting directly behind me.
“If we could guess that one we’d be a lot closer to the truth,” he sai
d.
Both of us leaned a little forward, the better to see Dora Canby, who at that moment entered the room upon Judy’s arm. I do not know exactly what I expected, but it was startling how well Thomas Canby’s widow looked that morning — almost as if she, too, had taken a new lease upon life. Although her nephew Patrick hurried after her with a pillow and a grey knitted shawl, and her other nephew Allan made as if to steady her arm, she walked quite firmly to her seat beside Lila Atwood, and if Mrs Canby had shed any tears the night before for her husband the effects were not apparent.
“I had to be carried to poor Theo’s funeral,” said Fannie Parrish in a sibilant whisper, “but then, she couldn’t have cared for Thomas Canby; nobody could.”
Ella, sitting between Fannie and me, compressed her lips. “It’s a pity shrouds don’t have pockets, so he could carry all that money with him.”
Although I agreed with her sentiment I said nothing. I was watching Dora Canby trying to smile at Sheila Kelly. I think Mrs Canby would have gone over to the girl and spoken to her, but Lila Atwood laid her hand on the older woman’s arm.
“I wouldn’t, Aunt Dora,” she said softly. “Can’t you see she is at the breaking point?”
“Gloria could never be intimidated, Lila,” protested Dora Canby.
Nevertheless she settled back into her chair, and behind her Jeff Wayne drew a shaking hand across his brow. I noticed how careful Judy was not to look at him and what pains he took never to meet her eyes, as much pains as Allan Atwood went to in order to avoid his wife’s glance. Hogan Brewster, on the other hand, pulled his chair nearer to Lila’s and whispered something to her, something flippant, I suppose, for he was smiling, but she did not answer.
The coroner rapped, rather indecisively, to signify that the meeting was about to open and, looking very nervous and ill at ease, called Sheriff Latham to the stand. The sheriff, more forcefully than grammatically, related the circumstances of his being summoned to Lebeau Inn by the dead man. He said that Thomas Canby had been most insistent upon seeing the officers that very night.
“He was all set to get rid of that shyster and the gal,” explained Sheriff Latham with a dark glance which the professor met with complete aplomb.
“Just a moment,” interposed Chet Keith. “Did Mr Canby tell you that he required your presence for the purpose of arresting Professor Matthews and Miss Kelly?”
Sheriff Latham beetled his brows at the interrupter with, so far as I could see, no visible effect upon the young man.
“You ain’t on the witness stand,” he said, “and you ain’t got no right butting in like that.”
I sat up very straight in my chair. “I was under the impression, Sheriff Latham,” I said in my most critical accents, “that this is strictly an informal hearing. If you are going to insist upon being technical there are several matters which I might call to your attention.”
“Attagirl,” whispered Chet Keith behind me.
Coroner Timmons cleared his throat nervously. “I reckon we ain’t trying to enforce a lot of red tape.”
“But you want the truth,” I snapped, “or don’t you?”
I looked sharply at Sheriff Latham, who rose to the fly.
“Certainly we want the truth,” he declared belligerently.
“All right,” murmured Chet Keith, “suppose you answer my question.”
The sheriff’s florid face wore a nettled expression. He did not relish the manner in which the situation was threatening to slide out of his hands, but he did not know quite how to prevent it. It was true, as I had pointed out to his annoyance, that if he chose to put the investigation upon a technical basis there were several points at which he had slipped up.
“I don’t know that Mr Canby said in so many words that he wanted me to come up here and arrest Professor Matthews and Miss Kelly,” he admitted, “but it’s sort of self-evident, in the light of what’s happened.”
“As a matter of fact,” said Chet Keith, “isn’t it true that Thomas Canby didn’t tell you what he wanted with you?”
The sheriff squirmed uncomfortably. “Well, not in so many words.”
I saw Miss Maurine Smith, who was sitting as close to Chet Keith as possible, draw a breath of relief. I suppose she had been afraid of being called upon to testify to the telephone conversation which she had overheard, if not eavesdropped upon, and, contrary to orders, repeated to Chet Keith.
“You have merely jumped to the conclusion, Sheriff Latham, in the light of what happened later, that Thomas Canby wanted you to remove the professor and Miss Kelly from the inn,” I said severely.
The sheriff scowled at me. “If that wasn’t what he wanted, what was it?” he demanded, giving every evidence of exasperation.
Chet Keith grinned. I got the idea that he was not particularly interested in the question which he had raised. It struck me that he had wanted to badger the sheriff into a position where it would be possible to take a hand in the investigation. If that was the object, between us it had been successful. In the face of the sheriff’s attitude I was delighted to pursue the advantage.
“Isn’t it possible that Mr Canby wanted to see you about the attempt which was made upon his life yesterday afternoon?” I asked. “Or have you heard about that attempt?”
“Sure, I heard about it,” said the sheriff testily. “I ain’t deaf, and I guess there ain’t nothing happened up here in the past month I ain’t heard about.”
He glanced pointedly at Fannie Parrish, and I remembered that she had buttonholed him for quite a while the night before and again that morning.
“Then for all you know,” I said, “your summons may not have had to do with Professor Matthews and Miss Kelly at all.”
My tone was purposely argumentative but, although I could see that Sheriff Latham was tempted by it, he managed to recall with a visible effort that he was upon the witness stand in the middle, supposedly, of giving testimony.
“This ain’t the place to argue this and that, lady,” he said with a scowl. “As I was saying, Canby sent for me, and I and my two deputies came.”
He then proceeded to give a somewhat verbose but accurate enough account of his arrival at the inn, with the discovery of the tragedy.
“It was plain enough what happened,” he said with truculence.
“The gal killed Canby. She had his wife wrapped around her finger and Canby was going to put a stop to it, so she cut his throat.”
“If we were being technical, Sheriff Latham,” I murmured in an urbane voice, “I’d be forced to remind you that it is not your duty to give the jury the benefit of your opinion in this matter but to produce evidence to substantiate it.”
The sheriff looked at me as if I were a bee which he had suddenly discovered under his shirt. “I’ll produce the evidence all right!” he growled, reseating himself beside the coroner and proceeding to manipulate the little man as if he were a marionette to which Sheriff Latham possessed the only strings.
Although it seemed unnecessary to me, everyone who had been present at the fatal séance was required to give his testimony as to what had occurred. The accounts were strikingly alike. None of them differed in salient points.
“A pure waste of time,” I muttered.
“Certainly,” admitted Chet Keith, “but the sheriff is no fool. He knows the value of cumulative evidence.”
He glanced significantly at the jury and then at the girl in the cheap black dress, sitting there with bowed, dejected head, her hands locked in her lap. I sighed. There was no question but that each of us who took the stand made the picture darker for Sheila Kelly. After all, what could we do except say over and over that she had, allegedly in the character of his dead daughter, threatened Thomas Canby with violence before the light was extinguished and when it came on again he was done to death?
Although the coroner had not questioned him about it, it was Chet Keith, during his stay upon the stand, who brought up the matter of the parlour lamp. “I suppose the sheriff has checked up o
n how it came to go out at the strategic moment,” he said.
The flush upon Sheriff Latham’s swarthy face was ample proof that he had done nothing of the sort. “I don’t see what difference it makes why the lamp went out,” he protested.
“I should think it made a great deal of difference,” I said promptly, being constitutionally unable to concur with any opinion expressed by that gentleman.
Chet Keith nodded. “The cord was jerked out of the socket, as of course you noticed when you examined it, Sheriff.”
Sheriff Latham’s expression showed that he had not noticed.
“The lamp was attached by a long extension cord to a socket clear across the room,” continued the newspaperman. “The plug does not fit tightly. The slightest tug is sufficient to pull it away from the socket. I think you’ll bear me out in this, Professor.”
Professor Matthews started and plucked nervously at his black string tie. “What is that?” he inquired.
“I was saying,” murmured Chet Keith, “that the lamp on the table, which you connected before the séance started, was attached to a floor socket clear across the room by a plug which fitted quite loosely.”
The professor swallowed twice before answering. “To the best of my recollection, yes,” he said.
“What’s the difference?” demanded the sheriff again. “As I remember the setup, the cord was in easy reach of both the professor and the girl. Either of them could have kicked the cord loose with one foot.”
“Either of them or anybody else on the right side of the circle,” amended Chet Keith smoothly.
I gave a slight start. I remembered during Sheila Kelly’s tirade the night before feeling something crawling across my ankle and looking down to perceive that it was only the light cord.
“On the right side of the circle?” repeated the sheriff with a frown.
“The cord stretched inside the circle from the right side of the table clear across the room,” said Chet Keith.
“But we were all on that side!” exclaimed Judy Oliver, then closed her lips tightly, her eyes widening in her stricken face.
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