It startled me, that blaze of light. The Dalton house is rather closer to ours than the Lancasters’, and as Mother has her cutting garden there, it is not obscured by trees. Ordinarily it is a dark house. The strange silent life which goes on there is not conducive to the gaiety of many lights, and never before had I seen it fully lighted.
Mrs. Dalton’s room at the front was brilliant, and also her dressing room behind it. Downstairs both drawing room and dining room were alight, and even the windows in the cellar. Nor was that all. Beyond the shrubbery at the rear there was a faint gleam as though the garage itself was lighted, although I could not see it.
At first all I saw was this blaze of light. Then I realized that someone was moving about in it, and at last that this moving figure was that of Mrs. Dalton. She appeared to be still fully dressed, and she was doing a peculiar thing. So far as I could make out, she was systematically searching her house!
She would enter a room, appear and reappear as though moving about it, end by examining the windows and the sills beyond them, and then turn out the light and go through the same process in the next room. Even from that distance that silent search of hers had something remorseless and determined about it.
She was in the dining room when I first saw her, and in Bryan Dalton’s den next. Then came a few minutes when I lost her, only to have her reappear in the basement. She was there for so long that I wondered if she had gone up again, when I saw her again at one of the windows, carefully peering out into the areaway beyond it.
To say that I was puzzled is rather to understate the situation. On a night when, shattered as to nerves and profoundly shaken as to its sense of security, the Crescent was presumably locked and bolted into its bedchambers, the most timid woman among us all was carefully and systematically making a search of her house. For what?
Odd memories wandered through my mind: Miss Lydia Talbot’s statement a year or so before that Laura Dalton was still madly in love with Bryan. Helen Wellington’s conviction that he, Bryan, had a wandering foot as well as a wandering eye, and that he was too good-looking to be let alone and too dangerous to trifle with.
“But he’s so old,” I had said to that.
“Old? At fifty-something? Don’t be the eternal ingénue, Lou. That’s not what I meant anyhow. When I say he’s dangerous I mean that she is. She’s insanely jealous of him.”
Up to that time when at last she put out the basement lights, then, I had not connected any of all this with our murder. If I had any coherent thoughts at all, they were that she was searching for something which might show that he was involved with another woman. For it was no casual search; even I could see that. She was carrying it on with too desperate an energy for that.
It was not until the light went up on the rear porch that I began to wonder, for Bryan suddenly appeared in the picture, towering over her—she barely reached to his shoulder—and to my utter amazement seemed to be protesting not by gestures but by words. Not only that, but she seemed to be making brief staccato replies. This complete reversal of all that I could remember was more than human nature could bear, and I started running back to my room for my dressing gown and slippers. I must have made some noise, for the next minute I had run full tilt into Holmes and scared him nearly to death.
“Oh, my God!” he gasped, and darting back into his room, closed and bolted the door.
Luckily Mother had not wakened, and I dragged on some things and went downstairs without further interruption.
Perhaps one should have been born and have lived along the Crescent to realize what any break in our routine means to us, or the avid curiosity which hides behind our calm assumption that each house is its family castle. Perhaps, too, I should invent here some excuse for what I meant to do, which was nothing less than to get as near to the Daltons’ as possible, and to see if the old deadlock actually had been broken; and if it had, why?
But there was more to it than that. I was remembering that neighborhood meeting downstairs only a few hours before, with Laura Dalton’s loquacity and her husband’s comparative silence. More than that, for I had happened to be looking at Mrs. Dalton when George Talbot said he had seen Bryan near the woodshed that morning, and I remembered that her eyes had narrowed and her lips tightened.
A dozen ideas were surging in my mind as I went down: reports that Mr. Dalton had been caught in the market and badly squeezed, stories that he had found consolation for the separation from his wife, pictures of him working over his car, his hands protected by old kid gloves and swearing sometimes at the top of his voice. A quick-tempered man he was, but I had thought him rather kindly. The feminine part of the Crescent had always blamed him rather less than his wife for their troubles.
And now something, something crucial, had driven him to speak to her, and to her to reply. What was it? Was she merely jealous, or was it in some way connected with the crime?
But I had no time for surmises. I had barely reached the kitchen door and let myself out onto the porch when I realized that the two of them, she in the lead and he following, had left the house and were coming quickly but quietly toward where I stood. They came through the darkness by the grapevine path, moving swiftly because of long familiarity, and so far as I know neither one spoke until they were immediately beneath me. Then he said, cautiously:
“It’s sheer madness, Laura. With all these policemen about!”
“What do I care about the police? The more the better!”
“I suppose you know what you are doing?”
“Didn’t you know what you were doing, all these months? And today?”
“For God’s sake, Laura! What do you mean?”
But she did not reply to that, and the next moment they had passed by our porch, going as nearly as I could determine toward the Lancaster house itself, and leaving me there on the porch with the solid foundations of the Crescent fairly rocking under my feet. What had driven them into speech together I had no idea, but from the cold fury in her voice and the fear in his I knew that it was something terrific, something beyond any knowledge of mine.
I had never doubted that they were on the way to the Lancaster house, now only dimly lighted. To my amazement, however, the next thing I saw was that the flash was being used in the woodshed. Mrs. Dalton was apparently examining it from roof to floor, and by going down to the end of our garden I saw that this was so.
It gave me a strange and eerie feeling, for now again they were not talking. He was standing in the open doorway, and she seemed to be moving about rapidly. Luckily for them, for she seemed beyond caution, the doorway opened in our direction and there were no windows. Also the rain had apparently driven the outside searchers within doors somewhere.
It had stopped raining by that time, but the grass and shrubbery were dripping, and I began to feel cold and uneasy. In the Lancaster house Margaret’s windows at the back, which had been dark, were suddenly lighted. Evidently she, too, could not sleep. And in the shed I heard Mr. Dalton’s voice, now cold and angry.
“Well, what have you found?”
“I know what I’m after. That’s something.”
“I think you’ve gone crazy.”
“Then what about you? Ask yourself that. And I’ll find them, don’t worry. You’re clever, Bryan, but I’m clever too. Wherever you put them I’ll find them.”
That broke his icy calm, for he went in suddenly and caught her by the shoulder.
“No, you won’t,” he said. “I’ll tell you that right now.” Then he released her and his voice softened somewhat.
“You’re a little thing to have so much hate in you,” he said. “If you’d been any sort of wife to me, Laura—”
“And whose fault was that?”
Sheer recklessness had carried them safely through all this. I know now that there was a policeman on the Lancaster back porch at the time, but as I have said the woodshed is at some distance, and is screened by shrubbery as well. Not that Mrs. Dalton cared, at that. She was in one of tho
se cold rages where she cared nothing for consequences. This was evident when she started back with the flash still going.
I had beat a hasty retreat, but I could hear him protesting.
“For God’s sake, Laura! Do you want us both arrested?”
“They couldn’t hold me. Not for a minute.”
But she put out the light, and as they passed our porch again they were only two shadowy figures once more, silent and unhappy. I had a feeling of tragedy about them that night, for their frustrated lives and their wasted years.
It was not until I was back in my room and in my bed that the full significance of that visit and that conversation began to dawn on me. Surely Laura Dalton could not suspect her husband of that ghastly murder. What possible motive could he have had? The money? But according to the Inspector, the money was still in the chest.
Chapter XI
MOTHER HAD ONE OF her headaches the next morning, and I was awakened late with the word that George Talbot wanted to see me downstairs.
I dressed as quickly as possible, and George came into the dining room while I ate my breakfast; the Crescent frowns on meals in bed except in case of illness. I sent Annie out as soon as possible, although I had an uneasy feeling that she was not far from the pantry door.
George looked tired and anxious.
“See here, Lou,” he said. “I suppose you know that Jim is in pretty bad with the police, although they’ve released him. And if you’ve seen the morning papers you know that they’ll have to arrest somebody, sooner or later. The town’s gone crazy. The middle of a bright afternoon, a house full of people, and a helpless old woman killed with an axe. It doesn’t make sense, but there it is!”
“So they pick on Jim, of all people!” I said bitterly.
“Jim’s all right so far. People don’t go to the chair simply because they are remembered in wills. It’s that infernal chest; they’re opening it this morning. That’s what the servants say. Lizzie was over there at the crack of dawn!”
Lizzie, as I may have said, is a sort of major domo at the Talbots’. She had been there for thirty years, first as George’s nurse and later on as an underpaid and overworked pensioner; a tall gaunt woman who, like Lydia, missed nothing of what happened to us. In fact, they were not unlike, and between them they formed a sort of machine, Lizzie collecting small items of interests and Miss Lydia disseminating them.
“You think it may be gone?” I asked weakly.
“I’m trying not to think that, Lou.”
“But listen, George, I saw Jim when he left that house. He hadn’t a thing in his hands.”
He shook himself impatiently.
“That’s not the point. If it’s gone the police may wonder—well, if he ever put it in the chest at all. Don’t look like that, Lou; we’ve got to face it. Why should Mr. Lancaster have sent for Jim yesterday, if he didn’t think something was wrong? It wouldn’t be so hard, under the circumstances. Just the two of them in that room and a little act of substitution. He carried it out in a bag, and if he had another bag ready, filled with silver dollars for instance—”
I was too horrified to speak, and George leaned over and touched my hand. I had known him all my life, and he had grown into a not unattractive man of the heavy-chested middle-height type, the sort that has to shave twice a day and still has a blue-black look about the jaw. But his eyes were still the eyes of the boy I used to play with, and now they were filled with pity.
“I’m sorry, Lou. I thought maybe we could work this out together, but I’ve only scared you to death. I know damned well he never killed her. But something queer has been going on around here for the last few weeks. And if you don’t believe it, look here.”
He reached into his pockets and pulled out a shining new twenty-dollar gold piece.
“I picked this up back in No Man’s Land, about ten days ago. I’d lost a ball, hooked it into the trees toward Euclid Street; and I turned over some grass and found this. Of course it may not mean anything, but there it is! Thank God I found it and not Dalton. It might as easily have been him.”
And then and there I told him about what I had seen the night before. It seemed to stun him as much as it had stunned me, and he sat thinking for some time. Then he said abruptly:
“I wouldn’t tell the police that Lou.”
“Why not? I don’t want to, but if they arrest Jim Wellington—”
“They won’t arrest him. Not yet anyhow. No, it looks to me as though—You saw Dalton last night when I said I’d seen him at the woodshed that morning, didn’t you? If you saw his face you know he was scared.”
“He’d never have taken the axe, at that hour.”
But he was not listening.
“Look here,” he said, “do you know why the Daltons broke off diplomatic relations?”
“I don’t know. I believe she was jealous, or something of the sort.”
“Exactly. Well, Bryan Dalton has been a pretty gay lad in his time, and he’s not so darned old now. What I’m wondering now is—What about this Peggy at the Lancasters’? She’s pretty and she’s nobody’s fool. She’d know about the chest, of course. She could have known also that Mr. Lancaster meant to make an inventory yesterday; the telephone’s in the hall. And she’d have several chances every week to get an impression of that lock. You know, wiping the floor, or dusting under the bed. You see what I mean. She could have let him in the house yesterday, too. Opened one of the lower windows, for instance, and fastened it later. Of course it’s horrible, but it’s all horrible anyhow.”
“And you think Mrs. Dalton suspects that, George?”
“How do I know? What was she looking for last night? What might be in the woodshed? The duplicate key maybe. Or perhaps we’re just crazy, and the money’s still there.”
“And we fall back on a lunatic!” I said, trying to smile. “What is there to do, George? I’ll go crazy sitting here.”
“Well, the police are opening the chest this morning, according to Lizzie. Apparently they tried it last night with an ice pick and failed.” Which shows I think not only the high efficiency of our grapevine telegraph, but the fact that all along we underrated the intelligence of our servants. “If the money’s gone, I wish you’d take a look around No Man’s Land. I have to work, or I’d do it.” He picked up a pencil and began to draw a crude sketch on the table cloth. We still use table cloths; the Crescent regards doilies as an attempt to evade laundering the heavy damask cloths we affect.
“Here’s the Crescent,” he said. “And here’s where I found the gold piece. If I were you I’d go in by way of Euclid Street, and examine that woodland. You see, the chances are that if the money is gone it’s been buried; and if it’s been buried it may be buried there.”
He looked at his watch and got up.
“Better rub that out,” he said as he rose. “God knows the servants have enough to talk about already. If you can get into the Lancasters’ and learn what the police discover I wish you’d call me up.”
I agreed, and I went with him to the door.
“I wonder if anyone has told Helen Wellington about Jim,” I said. “If she knows he is in trouble—”
“She’ll like it!”
“Still, there should be someone there. Even the servants have gone, George. He’s all alone.”
“If you’re asking me, he’s better alone than with Helen any time.” He patted me on the arm. “He’s able to take care of himself, Lou. He won’t mind a little dust in the house and he can get food, of course. We’ll begin to worry about him if that money’s missing, not before.”
“And if it is?”
“Then, as sure as God made little fishes, they’ll arrest him.”
When I went back to the dining room Annie was gazing with interest and disapproval at his drawing.
“It’s a pity he couldn’t use a piece of paper, Miss Louisa.”
“I’ll rub it out in the lavatory,” I said hastily, “and you will only have to press it.”
; She took away the dishes and I was gathering up the cloth when she came back and said: “Old Mr. Lancaster has taken to his bed, miss. He had only a cup of black coffee this morning. And Ellen is threatening to leave. She doesn’t like the way the police went through her clothes yesterday.”
I remember standing there, the table cloth in my arms, and feeling that she wanted me to ask her something, that her return had been solely for that purpose. But her face was carefully blank.
“Listen, Annie,” I said at last, “if you know anything, anything whatever that the police ought to know, you should tell it.”
I realized at once that I had made a mistake. At the word “police” she stiffened.
“I don’t know anything, miss.”
“Not the police, then. Is there anything you can tell me? Anything out of the ordinary? Someone has committed a terrible crime, Annie. Do you want them to get away with it?”
“Maybe there’s plenty out of the ordinary been happening,” she said darkly. “But it hasn’t anything to do with that murder.”
“How do you know that?”
“I know it all right.”
“Annie,” I said desperately. “You can tell me this at least. Has it anything to do with Peggy at the Lancasters’?”
But her astonishment was so evident that I hastened to add: “Or with any of the maids there?”
All of which was most unfortunate, for she froze immediately and departed for the pantry with her head in the air.
It was after nine when I went to the Lancasters’ to ask Margaret what I was to do with the glove. Mother was asleep, and I slipped out without saying anything. I had not told George about the glove, but it was one of those cool mornings in August which with us sometimes turn into downright cold, and I could not run the risk of our furnace being lighted. That meant water in the radiator pans and discovery.
Cool as the wind was, however, the sun had come out and everything looked fresh and green after the night’s rain. Even the Lancaster house, white and immaculate, looked cheerful, and the only strange note was the officer on guard in front of it, and a camera man on the Common, trying to find some spot where the trees did not hide it completely, for a picture.
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