“When did you start to work for Henrietta?” I asked, trying to sound casual.
“I started a few days after you moved in here.”
“Did you apply for the job?”
He shook his head, busily spreading the wax over the roof of the car. “She phoned me, said she needed a chauffeur and caretaker. I was living in Brighton, working on the docks.”
“She knew you? I never heard her mention you.”
“She knew my father quite well, I understand. She kept in touch with him until he died, and she remembered me. Sent me a birthday card now and then. She even came to visit me once when I was at Oxford—eight years or so ago. We lost touch after that.”
“You went to Oxford—and you were working on the docks?”
“I dropped out after the first year. Too stuffy for me, too many books and not enough action. Green lawns, bells tolling, dignified old buildings, not my sort of thing. I joined the navy, and after that I just bummed around.”
“Surely you could have found a good job?”
“Surely. I could have put on a suit and a tie and a tight collar and worked in a nice, calm office. There were plenty of my father’s old classmates who were willing to hire me, but that wasn’t my sort of thing. I was too restless—so I just knocked about.”
“What did you do?”
“You really want to know? I worked as a bouncer in a Marseilles clip joint for a while, and I went to Kimberley and worked in the mines hoping to get hold of a few diamonds myself. Worked as a waiter in Cannes, and on the crew of a rich man’s yacht, came back to London, delivered groceries for a restaurant firm—you name it, I did it. I finally came to Brighton and became a stevedore—”
It was very romantic, exactly the kind of history Billie would have furnished for him. I wondered how much of it were true, if any. Perhaps I was not being fair to him. Perhaps he had done all the things he claimed to have done. It was a little too much like slick magazine fiction to convince me. Working as a chauffeur for a rich, temperamental old woman would fit perfectly into the pattern. I simply couldn’t imagine a man wasting himself like that, but then I didn’t have Billie’s romantic idealism. I was far too realistic to find any of this attractive.
“You found the body, didn’t you?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he replied casually. “I’d been in Brighton drinking with some buddies. She always let me take the car when I wanted to go out for a bit. I stayed at the bar, drinking, throwing darts, talking to the girls, and it was a lot later than I thought. I came home about three and found her. Called the police immediately. They asked me where I’d been of course, and I told them. They checked with my buddies. They asked me if I had any idea who did it, and of course I told them about Reed.”
“She had been quarreling with him, hadn’t she?”
“She made him stop building that extra room. He was plenty mad about that. He threatened to kill her. He was in a dive drinking away and talking about her and calling her names, and he said he’d get even if it was the last thing he did. The police arrested him immediately. Open and shut case, even before they found the axe.”
“It must have been terrible for you, finding her that way.”
“I’ve seen some ugly things in my time,” he said grimly, “but never anything to match that.”
“And you stayed on here? I don’t see how you could have.”
“They needed someone. For a couple of weeks the place was swarming with people—reporters, police, but most of all curiosity seekers. They all came to look at the place, came right up on the porch and peered into the windows, looked for souvenirs. If I hadn’t been here they’d have torn the place apart. I was stationed out front with a shotgun for the first couple of weeks—had to drive them away.”
“Did anyone to try to break in?” I asked.
“Plenty tried. I kept them all away.”
“And after it all died down? After the newspapers dropped it? Did people still come?”
“A few. People have a morbid curiosity. They were mostly youngsters, come to look at the bloodstains, come to be frightened. No one’s been about for weeks now, though. New sensations take the place of old ones.”
He had applied wax all over the car now, and he stood back to let it dry. It turned hard and flaky as it dried, a streaked pink powder covering the glittering dove gray. Boyd jammed the rag in his pocket and stuck his hands in his hip pockets, leaning back against the car. It was warming up now, the chilly breeze gone, the sun rising high. There were a few beads of perspiration on his forehead.
“Are you familiar with the house—the rooms?” I asked.
He nodded. “Sure,” he said.
“Which room did Mrs. Stern stay in?”
“On the second floor, right hand side, third from the front. It’s all done up in blue and gray, I believe.”
“Is there anything particular about the room?”
“How do you mean?”
“Anything that looks unusual.”
“Not that I know of.” He paused. “Come to think of it, there’s a stuffed eagle on the wardrobe. She was an eccentric old dame, as you well know. I suppose she thought it amusing to have an eagle watching over her as she slept.”
“Did the police search the house after the crime?”
“They went through it pretty thoroughly, thinking they might find some kind of evidence. Not that they needed any. There was no question about who did it.”
“They searched her room?”
“I suppose so. They were here for about three days, going over everything.”
That explained the shredded wallpaper and the torn chair, I thought. I might have imagined everything else about last night, but I hadn’t imagined that the room had been searched. That was the one thing I had been sure of. The police searched the room, looking for evidence. It had been searched months ago. Why had I imagined someone had just left it? Why had I felt the paper had just been shredded, the stuffing pulled out of the chair just a few minutes before I entered the room? The feeling had been there, but I had imagined it. The police pulled the furniture out. The police left the room untidy. Another mystery explained.
“Did Gordon Stuart come to the house?” I inquired.
“Yes, about three weeks after it happened. The will was being held in court at the time, although it was pretty certain Stuart would inherit the place. I had orders to let no one in, and no one meant Stuart as well. He was pretty angry when I refused to let him look over the place, threatened to have me discharged, but Mrs. Stern’s lawyers had given me the job and I knew they were the ones who’d have to fire me. He went away in a fury. As far as I know he never came back. Wait a minute—” He frowned, his eyes turned inward, reflecting on something he remembered.
“No,” he muttered to himself, “that wasn’t Stuart—”
“What is it?” I asked.
“One night I thought I heard something around at the side of the house and went to investigate. There are six French windows in the parlor, you know. They all open directly on the veranda. That was where the noise had come from. The windows were all closed, apparently locked, but I noticed one of them was loose. I pulled on the handle and it came right open. The fasteners were all old, of course, rusty, but this one looked like it had been tampered with. The window might have been forced open, someone might have explored the house and then tried to fix the window back so that it would seem locked. I went through the house. There was no sign of anyone’s having been there, but I had a feeling—just the funny kind of feeling you get sometimes. I had the feeling someone had been looking around, though I couldn’t prove it.”
“You thought it might have been Gordon?”
“At first. He swore the house was his and that he’d get in, no matter what I said. At first I thought it might have been Stuart, then I changed my mind.”
“Why? Did you see someone else?”
“Not then. I hung around outside, and after a while I saw someone on the beach, walking along in the
moonlight. It was Reed—George Reed. He was walking back towards his cottage, that damn dog of his following him. He could have just been restless, unable to sleep, taking a stroll, but it was the middle of the night and a little too coincidental to suit me. I was suspicious.”
“Of George Reed? Why?”
“I’d had a couple of run-ins with him before about his trying to get into the house. We had words more than once. I almost slugged him one night. I was on the veranda and saw him sneaking around and told him to get off the property. He challenged me. We almost fought.”
“Why did he want to get into the house?”
“He said he wanted to find proof that his father didn’t kill her. He’s been making a nuisance of himself ever since it happened. He says he knows his old man didn’t do it and claims he’s going to prove it. People around here are getting pretty tired of him.”
“I suppose his reaction is normal,” I remarked. “No child would like to believe anything like that about one of their parents.” I shook my head. “I guess it’ll be hard on him when—when I remember. I’ll have to make a report to the police, of course, and when I tell them what I saw he won’t be able to cling to any more illlusions about his father.”
Boyd Devlon stared at me for a long moment without speaking. He seemed to be pondering something very serious, his brows creased, his mouth tight and turned down at one corner.
“Emmalynn,” he said, his voice heavy, “you stay away from Reed. You hear?”
“Why—whatever do you mean?”
“Stay away from him,” he repeated.
Something in his tone caused me to shiver. His eyes were hard, and he was frowning. He reached up to brush a bleached lock of hair from his forehead. He looked suddenly formidable, almost dangerous.
“I can’t think of any reason why I should have dealings with him,” I said, “but why should I stay away from him?”
“I don’t like him. I don’t like him at all.”
“Is that any reason why I should feel the same way?” I asked lightly.
Boyd looked at me sharply. His hands were clenched into tight fists. He looked as though he wanted to knock someone down, sturdy, bull-like, his anger temporarily banishing the casual confident young man who was poised and relaxed. He was a different person now, and I was alarmed.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
He sighed deeply. He relaxed. He took the rag out of his pocket and began to rub the hardened wax off the car.
“Nothing—” he said, his voice casual once more. “Forget it. I have no right to bring it up—”
“Bring what up?”
“Reed—George Reed. Look—promise me you’ll avoid him.”
“Very well—but why?”
He put the rag down and faced me. He was calm now, but that steel-like anger was still there, carefully controlled.
“When Henrietta had her lawyer stop old Reed from building he was mad, like I said, and he threatened to kill her, and everyone assumed he did. I don’t doubt it myself. But if they hadn’t found the axe and if it hadn’t had the old man’s fingerprints on it, I’d have sworn George Reed did it instead of hs father. “Old Reed was angry, and he talked a lot when he’d been drinking, but talk like that is usually just an outlet. Whoever killed Henrietta had to be unbalanced—insane. I can’t feature an old man like Reed committing such a crime, but I can see his son doing it.”
“What makes you say that?”
“The father was a loud mouthed old cuss, but he was simple, doing his work, drinking too much, never bothering anyone. His son is one of these angry young men you’re always reading about—hard, intolerant always trying to stir things up. He’s smart, got a lot of schooling behind him, and he was always writing editorials about the rights of the people and the injustices of the rich and that sort of thing. When Henrietta put his father down like she did he was seething mad. Not loud and outspoken about it like his old man, but seething. It was just another example of injustice as far as he was concerned, and you could see his anger, tight lips, cold eyes, belligerent attitude. I’d have put my money on him for the murderer right away.”
“But you didn’t say anything about this to the police?”
“It was just a feeling I had. I saw her body and I thought he’s done it, he’s killed her. And then when they asked me about it I knew it was just my own feeling and I couldn’t very well explain it. The old man had threatened her. That was something definite to go on. As it turned out he was guilty after all and it was just as well I didn’t mention the other. I hadn’t been able to shake the thought, though. I saw the body, and immediately I thought of George Reed.”
He heaved his shoulders and turned back to the car. He rubbed the wax from the surface, revealing patches of gleaming dove gray beneath the pink chalk. “Reed’s up to no good,” he said. “He’s a troublemaker. I don’t want anything to happen to you.” He said this last lightly, looking at me with smiling eyes. “I want you to get well. I want you to remember.”
I nodded briskly and turned to leave. I didn’t want to start back on that particular line of conversation.
“Will you want a drive this afternoon?” he asked.
“I—I have to go for groceries. You can drive me to the store. Shall we say one o’clock?”
“I’ll have the car around in front, waiting.”
I hurried away. Boyd Devlon went back to waxing the car. The sun was sparkling now, bright yellow. I circled the drive around to the front of the house. The water was blue-white, sweeping in large waves over the sand. I paused for a moment, looking at it, and then I strolled down the shaggy green lawn towards the boathouse, walking slowly, thinking about the things Boyd Devlon had told me. I wondered how much of it was true. I wondered how much I should trust a man who was so obviously after something, and I wondered just exactly what it was he was after.
CHAPTER SEVEN
IT SURPRISED ME that the boathouse hadn’t been torn down. It was merely an eyesore now, the old roof rotting, the window panes broken and the paint long since peeled off the sides. The water slapped against it. Barnacles clung to the boards near the water level and dried salt crusted the wood in glittering particles. It was large enough to hold several boats. I doubted that it had been used in years. An old row boat was overturned in the sand near the boathouse, a gaping hole in its bottom. A rotten fishing net hung on poles beside it, and coils of old rope hung on nails beside the door. I stepped through the door, curious to see what the inside of the boathouse looked like.
Sunlight came through the broken windows but it was immediately transformed into an aqueous green light that wavered on the walls. A ray touched the water and sent shimmering silver reflections on the ceiling. The smell was overwhelming, moss and water and dead fish and rotting rope. There was a wooden walkway around three sides of the place, a railing protecting it, and the rest was water that slapped gently against the wood. To my surprise there was a boat tied up to the railing, a sixteen foot motor boat with a tiny cabin. The motor was crusted with rust, and the red and white paint on the body hung in dry shreds. Some old cushions were piled in back of the boat beside a rusted anchor and a coil of rope.
There was something eerie about the place. I couldn’t discern exactly what it was, but it was there, almost tangible. The horrible smell, the water slapping against the wood, the greenish light, the ruined boat: all combined to give me a feeling of uneasiness. Outside there was sunshine and fresh air, but here there was only decay. I shuddered, standing at the railing and looking down at the murky water. The silver reflections shimmered, the water slapped, the boat bobbed on the water, its prow scraping against the wood. I heard something rustling, and the sound startled me. It did not belong. Rats? Not so near the water. I leaned forward, listening, trying to identify the sound.
My fingers gripped the rotting railing. I looked down at the water. I heard the rustling sound again, and then I felt a chill stealing over me. Someone was watching me. The sensation was acute, real, as
real as the horrible odor, as real as the noise. I could feel a pair of eyes staring at me. I whirled around. The door I had come through hung half open, but no one was there. Sunlight sifted through the windows with their jagged edges of glass, and no shadow fell across them, yet even as I searched I felt the eyes on me. Then I heard a giggle.
It was a soft sound, but unmistakably a giggle, half smothered by a hand held over the mouth. My knees felt weak. I gripped the railing, terrified. I wanted to tear out of the boathouse, but I was too frightened to move. The sound came from the boat. I peered at it, and through the dirt streaked windshield I could see a shadowy face, a pair of eyes watching me. The rustling noise came again, followed by another giggle. I remembered the soft laughter I had heard—or thought I heard—last night on the stairs. The boat rocked. Someone was climbing out of it. I was petrified.
I closed my eyes. My heart was pounding violently, and I was breathing heavily. There was another giggle. I remembered a television show I had seen where the homicidal maniac giggled before plunging a butcher knife into his victim’s throat. I could see the fuzzy black and white picture in my mind, flickering on the tiny screen, and I thought I would pass out. I felt my knees buckle a little, and I gripped the railing to keep from falling. This was it, I thought. Burt Reed didn’t do it after all—the killer is here, coming towards me. Open your eyes. Look.
“Scared-ja, didn’t I?”
A child scampered over the prow of the boat and swung over the railing to land on the walkway a few feet from me. I backed against the wall, my heart still pounding. I looked at the tiny creature with the grin smeared across her dirty face. Relief came in great waves, and anger came with it. I wiped a strand of hair from my temple. My hand trembled visibly.
“Who are you?” I whispered hoarsely.
“Betty’s th’ name, Betty Murphy, I scared-ja, didn’t I?”
“You’re a wretched little girl!”
“I know. Ain’t it awful? Everyone says that. I’m a terrible pest and a horrid child, sure, but I don’t give a slip about what all them flippin’ people say.”
When Emmalynn Remembers Page 7