Album

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

  A. “Practically certain, considering its weight.”

  Q. “But you were not afraid that the attempt might be made?”

  A. “I haven’t said that. I was not afraid in the daytime. The nights worried me, however. My wife often took an opiate at night to enable her to sleep.”

  Q. “Then it is your considered opinion that the gold was not taken yesterday afternoon after her death?”

  A. “I do not see how it could have been.”

  Q. “Now, Mr. Lancaster, are you ready to state that this gold and so on actually went into the chest?”

  A. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

  Q. “I mean, are you certain that there was no substitution?”

  A. “Substitution. Oh yes, I see what you mean. I think not. Once or twice I myself tied up the bags and placed them there. There was no substitution while I was present.”

  Q. “In that case, have you any explanation of the fact that this money has disappeared? Of any possible method?”

  A. “None whatever.”

  Q. “Will you tell us the exact procedure which was followed when the gold arrived?”

  A. “I was not always present, or even often, but I suppose it did not vary. Mr. Wellington brought the money in a small black bag. Usually it was gold, tied up in small canvas sacks with the necks wired and a lead seal on each one. He would cut the wire, and my wife would then count the money as it lay on her bed. Mr. Wellington would then enter the amount in the book and my wife would sign it.”

  Q. “And after that?”

  A. “It was simply a matter of putting the sacks—or the folder with the currency—into the chest. He would draw out the chest, my wife would give him her key, and he would then deposit the money and lock the chest again.”

  Q. “Your wife could see all this?”

  A. “I am not certain. She could at first. The box was taken out and placed on two chairs beside the bed. Later on it was too heavy, and was merely drawn out and opened.”

  Q. “Then it would have been possible for a substitution to be effected later? That is, a second bag containing these lead weights might have been placed in the chest, and the bag with the gold have gone back into the valise? And so on?”

  A. “I suppose it might be possible; yes. But I think it highly unlikely. I have known Mr. Wellington all his life,” etc., etc.

  This was the theory to which Helen referred that afternoon, and her comment on it was characteristic.

  “Now can anybody see poor Jim figuring all that out?” she said. “Jim, who remembers that a party needs gin after all the bootleggers have put on their dress clothes and gone to the opera! He’s a good sort, and he’s mine and so I like him—no matter what you may think, Lou; and not all the time either. But that’s neither here nor there.” And she added in her casual fashion: “I suppose Emily really did it. I know I would, in her case. She was a horrible old woman.”

  With which I finally went back home, to a light supper and a heavy but disturbed sleep through which Helen Wellington moved gaily and irresponsibly; and our own Annie was writing an anonymous letter to the police—which is the only time in my life when a dream turned out to be true, as we learned after the case was over.

  It was from this dream that I wakened early the next morning to the discovery of our second murder; that of Emily Lancaster herself.

  Chapter XXII

  THE CIRCUMSTANCES WERE PECULIAR as well as tragic. Miss Emily, having slept most of the day, had apparently been wakeful that night and at one o’clock in the morning she had gone out to the kitchen porch. There she had evidently sat for a time, eating an apple, a portion of which with the knife for paring it was found on the table there later on. As the porch is an enclosed and locked one, this is understandable enough, although rather strange after the events of the night before.

  What followed was less so.

  For some reason then unknown she had left the porch, gone out onto the rear path and followed it toward the Talbots’. She was clad much as she had been the night before, for under her wrapper she still wore her nightdress, although she had put on her shoes and stockings and a petticoat.

  The path, familiar to her for many years, she had apparently followed without difficulty; although the night was dark and overcast. There were no prints on her flat-heeled shoes to show that she had left it at any time. But only thirty yards from the rear of the Talbot house that tragic walk of hers had ceased. Someone, perhaps hidden in the shrubbery, had shot at her and killed her.

  That is the brief story of our second murder as it was reconstructed at the time, and it is not the least dramatic part of it that George Talbot had not only heard the shot but had gone outside to investigate it; and that because she had fallen into the shrubbery he must have passed close by her body without seeing it.

  “I heard a shot,” he told the police, “and I got my gun at once. I knew it was not a car back-firing, for it came from the rear of the property and there is no road there.

  “Well, it’s pretty hard to get out of our house at night in a hurry, so I used an old kid trick of mine. I got out onto the roof of the summer kitchen, which is low, and dropped from there. I had no flashlight, but I took a pretty good look around and I saw nothing and nobody, although I thought once I heard some movement near our stable.

  “I gave it up then, and I had a hard time getting back into the house. But at last Mother came down to admit me. She had heard no shot, nor had my Aunt Lydia; but Lizzie, who has been with us for years, had heard it. She was awake with a toothache. That’s all I know about it. I went back and went to sleep. It was a quarter to two then. The shot was at half past one.”

  And that for some time was all anybody seemed to know about it.

  It was Eben who found her that Monday morning at seven-thirty, on his way to get the lawn mower from the Talbot garage. He saw what looked like a black cloth lying among the syringa bushes which bordered the path, and stooped to pick it up. It would not lift, however, and then he saw that he had uncovered a woman’s foot. It was after that that he yelled and the street cleaner, Daniels, who was in No Man’s Land with some débris from Euclid Street, heard him and came running. He seemed stricken when he saw the body, and neither he nor Eben had touched it when the Talbot’s Lizzie came on a run.

  When I reached the place practically all the servants from the Crescent were already there. As in the case of Mrs. Lancaster, they stood more or less together, a huddled silent group with the women silently and conventionally weeping. George Talbot had arrived and taken charge, sending Lizzie to telephone for the police; and Daniels, curiously enough, had taken off his cap.

  “Gone to her Maker, miss,” he said to me. Then, seeing that I looked white, he added: “It is as natural to die as to be born.”

  How was I to know that he was quoting from Bacon’s “Essay on Death”? He went away quietly soon afterwards, leaving word that he would be on Euclid Street when he was wanted. But he was not there. His brush and his rubbish cart was there, all the simple paraphernalia of his business, but it was late afternoon before he used them again. Then I saw him, and he said he had felt sick.

  “She’d been very kind to me,” he explained, as though that was the answer.

  Looking back I see him moving through all our troubles, an untidy white figure who came and went, hardly noticed; a mild-faced man with no particular characteristics save a slight limp and the thick glasses of a man who had been operated for cataract. At some time he had suffered a paralysis of one side of his face, which drooped. But he was cheerful and a steady worker. Who could have guessed that he was the key to so much that we could learn only slowly and painfully?

  He had drifted away before the siren of the police car sounded at the gates to the Crescent. By that time, some of them only casually attired, the Crescent families were appearing. George Talbot tried to wave his mother back, but she came on, and so did Miss Lydia. Mr. Dalton appeared in his dressing gown. Mother had arrived, and insisted that t
he body be removed at once into the Talbot house, regardless of police regulations. And almost before the police car had had time to stop I saw Helen Wellington, in pajamas and carrying a cigarette, walking toward the group and looking interested and nonchalant.

  All of this, of course, is only a picture, photographed on my mind; the background for Emily Lancaster, lying on her side on the warm summer earth and looking clumsy and heavy even in death.

  She had been shot through the head, a quick and merciful death, at least. But like the others I dare say, my stunned mind could comprehend only the murder itself. Or was it murder?

  The two policemen, having driven us all back, were searching for a weapon near the body in case of suicide, and being careful not to step on the ground beyond the path. There was no weapon in sight, however, and unless it lay under her they knew that a second crime had been committed within less than two hundred yards of the first.

  That was the situation when Margaret Lancaster came running down the steps of their kitchen porch; a wild-eyed and half-crazed woman. Ellen was the first to reach her and to try to get her back into the house, but she shook her off and came on toward us, dreadfully and determinedly.

  “I want to see her,” she said. “I must see her. Let go of me, Ellen. Let go, I say.”

  She went through us without seeing any of us, and she paid no attention whatever to the two policemen.

  “Please don’t touch her,” one of them said. “Sorry, miss, but that’s a regulation.”

  I doubt if she heard him. Moaning softly she got down on her knees and looked at her sister. Then something of the inevitability of the situation must have come to her, for when she rose again she seemed calmer.

  “I’ll go back now,” she said, to no one in particular. “I must tell my father.”

  Mother and Ellen went back with her along the path, but I heard later that she shut them both out and went in alone.

  “She was certainly not herself,” Mother told me later. “Anyone could smell Ellen’s oatmeal burning on the stove, but she simply slammed the door, and of course it has a spring lock. She was in no condition to break the news to anybody. No wonder he collapsed.”

  For that was the next news we had. It came while the Homicide Squad was still at work in the morning sun, and shortly after the body had been taken away, carefully covered, on a stretcher. Mr. Lancaster had had a stroke, and Doctor Armstrong’s car drove up just as the police ambulance was carrying Miss Emily away.

  It was the doctor, coming in later to give Mother her hypodermic of iron, who told us.

  “It’s not surprising,” he said. “He’s almost seventy, and he has been in very poor shape ever since his wife’s death. As a matter of fact, I believe he had his stroke in the night.”

  “In the night!” Mother said. “Then he doesn’t know about Emily?”

  “I doubt it. Margaret went in to tell him as best she could, poor woman. The room was still dark, and she sat down on the edge of the bed and took his hand. Apparently he opened his eyes, or at least she thinks so. She told him to be brave, and that she had some bad news for him, but he did not move. That did not alarm her. He was always pretty well-controlled. When she finally said what had happened and he was still quiet she was alarmed, and raised a window shade. Then she saw there was something wrong. I’ve sent for a nurse. She’s about ready to collapse herself.”

  He himself doubted if the old gentleman would be able to rally. Not only because of his age, but because he had neither eaten nor slept properly since the first murder.

  “Kept an iron hand on himself, but was boiling inside all the time,” was the way he put it.

  As to Emily’s death he had no theory whatever, except that it was an accident.

  “Where’s there a motive?” he asked. “A quiet peaceable middle-aged woman, a devoted daughter and a good neighbor. Who would want to do away with her? Trouble with all of us is that we’re trying to connect it with Mrs. Lancaster’s murder. Well, I’d say offhand that there’s no connection. There is no relation between the impulse that wielded that axe next door and this shooting. There was fury behind the axe.”

  “What sort of accident?” Mother demanded, refusing since nothing could bring Miss Emily back to be done out of a second crime. “If you’re talking about George Talbot’s idea that someone was shooting at a cat—!”

  “I didn’t say that, although it’s possible. But with the amount of crime there is today, and especially after what had happened here, almost anyone would feel justified in shooting at a figure moving along that path at something after one o’clock in the morning.”

  “But why was she moving along that path? Have you any idea? Was she running for shelter again, as she did before?”

  “Hardly. So far as we can make out she’d been sitting on the porch eating an apple, just before.” And then he turned abruptly to me and faced me into the sun.

  “See here,” he said, “don’t you let this get too far under your skin, Lou. You have your own life to live, you know.”

  And out of sheer tension and strain I spoke out as I had never spoken before.

  “Have I?” I said. “I wonder, doctor. I haven’t lived any of my own life yet. I’m like Miss Emily in that.”

  “Louisa!” said Mother sharply. “Control yourself.”

  “I’m sick and tired of controlling myself. What does it lead to? A bullet in the dark, and nothing to carry away with one. No life, no anything. I wanted to marry and I couldn’t and now—”

  Then of course I broke down, and Mother went out of the room and I did not see her again for hours. But I did not tell even Doctor Armstrong that the sight of Helen Wellington walking down nonchalantly in her gaudy pajamas to where poor Emily lay dead by the path had been the first strain. Not, I think, that I really cared for Jim, but because of sheer contrast.

  I do remember muttering that the path of duty led but to the grave, and that the doctor immediately sent for Annie and had me put to bed. But he understood rather more than I thought he did, for before he left he sat down beside me and took my hand.

  “There is only one safe way to carry on in this world, Lou,” he said gently. “That is to let the past take care of itself and to look ahead. No use looking back. What’s over is over, so bury it decently. But always look ahead. That’s the game.”

  “To what?”

  “Well, we may evolve some ideas about that later,” he said, and soon after he went away.

  That collapse of mine is the reason I can relate the events of that day, Monday the twenty-second, only at second hand.

  Chapter XXIII

  MISS EMILY HAD, IT developed, been shot from the right side, which if she had been on her way toward the Talbot house made it appear as though the bullet had come from No Man’s Land. But as she might have stopped and turned, particularly if she had heard a sound of some sort, this was only important in view of the lack of clues elsewhere. Thus the area between the Talbot and Lancaster houses, largely garden with soft flower beds, showed no footprints whatever.

  The idea had someone had fired from an upper window at a possible prowler was also not tenable. The post-mortem showed that the bullet had entered and left the head in an almost horizontal line. The time of her death was set at between one and two in the morning, due partly to George Talbot’s story of the shot, and partly to her sister Margaret’s statement that she had heard someone moving about in the upper hall at one o’clock.

  The story of that night, as it gradually drifted to the rest of the Crescent, was that on hearing Emily Margaret had called out, and that Emily had replied that she was going downstairs to get an apple.

  As Emily when unable to sleep often went downstairs at night for something to eat, this had not surprised her. Save for one thing, and that was the alarm which had driven her out the night before. She had thought it odd for Emily to be prowling about after that experience, and her first inclination had been to offer to go with her. She was very tired, however, and Emily knew her w
ay about. She was not surprised that she wanted food; she had eaten almost nothing since the Thursday before. But she was sorry now, tragically sorry; she had simply gone to sleep again and let her go alone.

  The evening, she said, had been quiet. Emily had slept most of the day, although late in the afternoon she had wakened and had agreed to see Lydia Talbot, who had been downstairs. Lydia had suggested nailing shut the two windows opening from Emily’s room onto the porch roof, and she and Ellen had done it together.

  The two women, Emily and Lydia, had talked for some time. Although aunt and niece, there was no great disparity in their ages, and Emily had never had Margaret’s dislike of the older woman. But after Miss Lydia’s departure Emily had been restless. She had got up and prowled around the house, especially on the second floor. When Margaret found her she said she was looking for her bird, which Lydia had missed, and Margaret had had to tell her that the bird was dead.

  Emily had taken the news very hard, but had become more quiet as the day wore on.

  She—Margaret—and Mr. Lancaster had spent the evening downstairs. Mr. Lewis had brought out a copy of her mother’s will, and had gone at nine o’clock. After that the two of them had sat in the library discussing it. Like every other value, Mrs. Lancaster’s estate had shrunk greatly during the depression. She had, however, left some three hundred thousand dollars, including the money in the chest, and fifty thousand of this was left without restriction to Jim Wellington.

  It was an old will made when the estate had been valued at more than a million dollars. Now that legacy to Jim loomed large and formidable, and Mr. Lancaster had seemed undisturbed.

  He had gone up to bed at eleven, although she herself had remained below until almost midnight. Since her mother’s death her stepfather had refused to enter her mother’s room, and had in fact locked it off from his own by the connecting bathroom. When he was ready for bed, therefore, he called down to her that it looked as though it might rain that night, and for her to close her mother’s windows. She had unlocked the door, gone in and closed them.