Still, back in his mind was that idea that somebody could have entered the house, locked as it was, and hidden away until the moment came; that moment which to anyone who knew the family habits was the one time in the day when the thing could be done.
“There were a number of such places,” he says. “Any room in the guest wing would have answered. But I happened to find something in the housemaid’s closet on the second floor which made me fairly jump. The key was on the inside of the door! That was absurd on the face of it. Why lock such a place at all? And especially why lock one’s self in it?”
He had spent all the rest of his time there. It had two smallish windows; one opening onto the roof of the kitchen porch, and a larger one which overlooked No Man’s Land and a flower border beneath. He opened the first one, and found the opening to the drain pipe just below it. Then he examined the closet itself.
It was clean, with no bloodstains whatever. The walls and floor were of white tile, and he switched on the light and went over them carefully. Also he examined the sponge and cleaning cloths, as well as Mr. Lancaster’s boot-box, but they suggested nothing. However, he slipped the sponge into his pocket before he left, and analysis of it later on showed faint traces of human blood.
Just before he left he looked up, and he saw tied to a water pipe a short length of heavy cord. It had been cut, as if time had been too short to untie its knots, and when he left the Lancaster house that morning he was certain, not only that Lydia Talbot had committed the crime, but that he knew how she had brought the axe into the house.
Chapter XLIX
WHAT I FIGURED WAS that she had previously—the night before, perhaps—hidden the axe in that flower border. If it was found it might be mysterious, but nothing more. The rest was easy too. Here was Margaret in her room and Emily and Mrs. Talbot with the old lady. She had the run of the house for some time, and even if she were discovered in it nobody would have questioned it.
“But she wasn’t discovered. What she did before she went down and out the kitchen door was to drop that string of hers down the outside wall, beside the drain pipe. Then after she was outside—in case anyone was looking—she could tie the end of it to the axe, and seem only to be looking at the flowers. That’s what she did anyhow. Maybe she picked one or two as an excuse, for she had to pass the kitchen porch again to get around the other end of the house. Eben was at the end next to you. She did pass that porch again, for both the girls there saw here. They thought nothing of it, naturally.”
When, that Sunday morning, I had found the second glove, he felt that he had everything against her save actual proof. He was confident that she had locked herself in that closet, knowing the housemaid was out that day; that she had there taken off her hat and dress; that she had with infinite caution drawn up the axe, assisted by the chatter and noise below; that at the last moment she had seen Mr. Lancaster’s gloves in his shoe-box and had put them on; and that having committed her furious crime she had returned there, locked herself in and safely and systematically washed, cleaned the closet, redressed and finally escaped by way of the back stairs and the deserted porch after Bryan Dalton had gone.
Unfortunately, other things had happened, or began to happen. There was Emily’s wild flight to the Talbots, and her cry that “they” were after her. There was the undoubted fact that someone had climbed a porch pillar and tried to enter Emily’s room, and as Herbert says:
“Not by the wildest flight of my imagination could I see Lydia Talbot doing that—unless she had wings.”
And then on that Sunday night there came the shooting of Emily, and following that the mix-up about two identical makes of automatics. His theory did not fit any of all that, nor did the death of Holmes. It was a Chinese puzzle, and he began all over again, this time on Margaret. By that time he was openly working with the police, and he had seen Annie’s anonymous letter.
He could not fit either Margaret or Dalton into the picture, however. It is true that he began to suspect some outside assistance, and he knew before long that Bryan Dalton had stood by the woodshed that afternoon, and had burned his overalls that night and something else as well. But why should Margaret have used the closet when her own room offered a safer refuge? Or why should she have brought the axe in by that method when she could have carried it in at night, any night?
What deceived him too for a time was Lydia Talbot’s own demeanor. She was moving much as usual around her narrow orbit; neither overacting nor underacting her part.
The reason for Emily being out that Sunday night also worried him. Every inch of No Man’s Land had been gone over, but neither the police nor he had missed the possible significance of that spade. It had been his theory that Emily had secreted the money elsewhere, possibly in a rented room not far away. But no keys to such a room had been found, nor was there any trace in the house of the book which she had almost certainly used as a receptacle for it.
It was my own story of the lost bird cage which gave him his first clue to the whereabouts of the keys, and as we know the police themselves prevented his finding them in time. “If I’d got Talbot that night I’d have had the story,” he adds.
Then came the attack on me, apparently purposeless, and shortly after that the MacMullen woman’s story and the death of Holmes. Also Herbert had made that night examination of Mrs. Lancaster’s room, and was convinced that she had been out of bed when at least the first blow was struck. In that case she might well have known that the money was gone and been killed to gain time until it could be placed somewhere in safety.
The discovery of Emily’s hidden room did only one thing to help solve the murder. A photographic enlargement of the blotter found there enabled Herbert to read on it the address of the house behind the library, and to enable him to examine the family history for a possible connection with the man Daniels.
“The only real brain-storm I had was right there,” he says. “There could be no logical connection between the two of them, on the facts. But she had written to him, and more than once. It was then that this story Jim had told about John Talbot popped into my mind. I got the details from Jim, but it was your Aunt Caroline, my darling, who remembered the date and the name under which he had been convicted. Which was not Daniels, by the way. After that I sent for old files of the newspapers where it had happened, and—”
“Aunt Caroline! Whatever made you go to her?”
“Because, O light of my life, your mother would not talk! Aunt Caroline, thank God, did not live on the Crescent.”
It was then that, being fairly sure of his ground, he went to see Daniels, or Talbot rather. But in the interval Lydia had disappeared, and Talbot’s room was empty. And Talbot was Lydia’s brother. Herbert found himself back once more to Lydia as the killer; although there was a chance that Talbot himself was guilty. If she could admit herself to the Lancaster house, she could have admitted him also.
Then came Lydia’s disappearance. Herbert had never for a moment believed that Lydia had been killed. To him it was a plain case of escape, and escape with sufficient money to last her the rest of her life. But how had she escaped? He says:
“There was that old bead bag of hers, found over on Euclid Street; and there was that damned butterfly from her hatpin. Why a hatpin if she wore no hat? I didn’t believe she left without a hat. She would be too conspicuous. I suspected that she had a flat hat of some sort in that box along with the veil, and maybe a transformation too. And on Saturday morning I asked Lizzie Cromwell to see if all of Mrs. Talbot’s transformations were in the house. They were not. One was missing, and Lizzie knew as well as I did what that meant.
“She told Mrs. Talbot and wanted the police notified. But you know your Crescent! She absolutely refused, and so that afternoon Lizzie simply packed her valise, put George’s automatic into it, and went after Lydia herself.”
No one will ever know, I dare say, how Lizzie knew about that house at Hollytree. But know she did, poor creature; just as she knew from Amanda on th
e Monday morning before that someone had washed clothing in the laundry the night before.
And she found Lydia in the house when she got there. She knew her danger, and she followed Lydia’s flight to that upper bathroom with George’s automatic in her hand. When the bathroom door would not lock things must have looked quite simple to her. She walked in, and Lydia probably hit her at once with a chair.
However that may be, the one thing we do know is that in some such manner Lydia got the automatic from her and shot her dead. And that when her brother came back from burying the money that is what he found.
“What could he do,” Herbert says, “except to give her a chance to escape? He helped her with the undressing, and to put her own clothing on the body. And it was he who took the drawers out of the trunk. Right there, however, I got my clue.
“For you see, my dear, that trunk, once the drawers were out, was large enough to hold the body. There was no real necessity for—well, for amputating that head. The only real reason I could see for such an act was to conceal the identity of the dead woman. The trunk was certain to be found, but with Lydia Talbot apparently inside of it she was safe. I tried to tell Briggs that, but he wouldn’t even listen.
“The rest is easy. While they were looking for a black-haired Lizzie, I was looking for Lydia Talbot, gray-headed and flat-voiced. But I couldn’t find her, and so I sat down and tried to think what I would do if I were Lydia Talbot, waiting to make my escape when the time came and with leisure now to worry about any clues lying around.
“It seemed to me that the album was still the danger point, if as Lydia believed my fingerprints were smeared all over it. Suppose on her disappearance her prints had been found in her room at the Talbot house, and then some day—long after she had made her escape—someone opened that album? Can’t you see it? And not only that, but let them be found and identified, and that desperate expedient of the body in the trunk would fail of its object. Let her once be identified as the killer, and she saw the body exhumed and a world-wide search made for her.”
So he believed that she would, sooner or later, make her third attempt to get at the album. But not even Herbert until the last few hours suspected her of the audacious method she had used, both to get it and to hide herself from the police. For what she had done on that Sunday night was to slip back inside the Crescent itself, enter by a basement door to which she had hidden the key, confront her sister-in-law and tell her the truth.
She knew the Crescent. Best of all, she knew her sister-in-law: her horror of scandal, and the fact that she had already learned from Lizzie Cromwell that Lydia was guilty. She went to Mrs. Talbot, and demanded sanctuary!
From that night until the night of her capture she had been hidden in the Talbot house, in that bedroom of hers which had been locked after her departure. Not even George suspected, or the servants. What her thoughts were during those long hours no one can know. She must have seen again and again the horror on her brother’s face when, looking up from that awful bathtub, she had said:
“I had to do it, John. She knew.”
“Knew what, for God’s sake?”
Some things, however, we do know about her; for Mrs. Talbot’s statement to the police says that during all the time she was hidden in the house she was obsessed by only one thing.
“She neither ate nor slept,” she said. “When I went with food at night she would be sitting by a window in the dark, and all she would talk about was the album.
“I wanted to get her away, but she refused until she had it. So that last day I sent George for it. It wasn’t to be found, but later that night Lou Hall telephoned that it was there, and I told her.
“She slipped out soon after that, but George must have seen her and followed her. I had not told him she was in the house, but he may have suspected it. He may have suspected all the rest, too. I know he and Lizzie Cromwell had a talk on Saturday, before she left.
“That is all I know, except that my son has stayed at his club since that night, and he seems to feel that I am guilty of something, I hardly know what. I protected him from her for many years, and I consider that he is most ungrateful. Especially since she learned from him when he was a boy that trick of blackening her face.”
For that, as it turned out, had been the secret of her uncanny ability to get about at night during the three attempts she made to get the album. With her black clothing and a pair of black gloves she would be almost invisible on any dark night. Certainly her face was blackened the night of her capture, and I can understand the taxi driver’s statement later on:
“I got a look at her with a lightning flash when I caught her. And I was so scared that I pretty nearly let go!”
Now and then we go back to the Crescent. The Lancaster house is closed, and Margaret lives in Europe; somewhere in Southern Germany. We hear that she is about to be married. Jim and Helen are still there, however, getting along rather better than before, but every now and then the Daltons’ Joseph gravely announces that “Mrs. Wellington has gone again, sir.”
The Daltons are the best of friends, and probably rather more than that. Mother has Aunt Caroline staying with her, and Annie and Mary are back. They all seem to manage quite well together, and Mother is thinking of wearing a little mauve this year. But she has never quite forgiven me my marriage and she left the room abruptly one day when Doctor Armstrong, tapping cheerfully on his black bag, asked me if I wouldn’t soon want him to bring a baby in it.
Although we have buried most of our tragedies, there is still one which survives. In the last house by the gate Mrs. Talbot sits alone; although George goes out dutifully to the Sunday midday dinner, fried chicken and ice cream in summer and roast beef and a fruit pie the rest of the year. He and his father share an apartment downtown, and as an act of pure justice Margaret has turned over to Mr. Talbot the money recovered from under the willow trees.
Otherwise the life goes on much as before. On any summer day Eben’s lawn mower can be heard; children are still taboo on No Man’s Land, Mr. Dalton still practices short golf shots there, and what Helen called its smug and deteriorating peace has again settled down on the Crescent.
Nothing has changed, and it is Herbert’s contention that people really learn nothing after a certain age.
Perhaps that is true. It is certainly a fact that during our last visit there something went wrong with the gas stove, and that he experimented with it after his customary fashion. There was a tremendous report, and Herbert himself was hurled out onto the back porch, almost at my feet.
“Are you hurt?” I asked.
He broke off in the middle of a flow of really awful language to look up at me.
“Hurt?” he shouted. “I’ve damned near broken my leg.”
Then he saw that I was laughing, and he grinned boyishly.
“Let’s go home, Lou darling,” he said. “Let’s go where Monday doesn’t have to be wash-day, and nobody ever saw a hatpin, and we can use our newspapers to start a fire and sit by it, and not to roll the doilies on. Let’s go!”
And so we went.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1933 by Mary Roberts Rinehart. Copyright © 1961 by Stanley M. Rinehart Jr., Frederick R. Rinehart and Alan G. Rinehart.
Cover design by Kathleen Lynch
978-1-4804-3652-7
This 2013 edition distributed by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
345 Hudson Street
New York, NY 10014
www.mysteriouspress.com<
br />
www.openroadmedia.com
EBOOKS BY
MARY ROBERTS RINEHART
FROM MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM
FROM OPEN ROAD MEDIA
Available wherever ebooks are sold
Otto Penzler, owner of the Mysterious Bookshop in Manhattan, founded the Mysterious Press in 1975. Penzler quickly became known for his outstanding selection of mystery, crime, and suspense books, both from his imprint and in his store. The imprint was devoted to printing the best books in these genres, using fine paper and top dust-jacket artists, as well as offering many limited, signed editions.
Now the Mysterious Press has gone digital, publishing ebooks through MysteriousPress.com.
MysteriousPress.com offers readers essential noir and suspense fiction, hard-boiled crime novels, and the latest thrillers from both debut authors and mystery masters. Discover classics and new voices, all from one legendary source.
FIND OUT MORE AT
WWW.MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM
FOLLOW US:
@emysteries and Facebook.com/MysteriousPressCom
MysteriousPress.com is one of a select group of publishing partners of Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
Open Road Integrated Media is a digital publisher and multimedia content company. Open Road creates connections between authors and their audiences by marketing its ebooks through a new proprietary online platform, which uses premium video content and social media.
Videos, Archival Documents, and New Releases
Sign up for the Open Road Media newsletter and get news delivered straight to your inbox.
Sign up now at
www.openroadmedia.com/newsletters
FIND OUT MORE AT
WWW.OPENROADMEDIA.COM
FOLLOW US:
Album Page 35