Crime is Murder

by Nielsen, Helen

  “A teacher of literature,” he added, “and yonder are some of my prize students. A few of them can even read.”

  “They look healthy,” Lisa said. “They’ll probably outgrow it.”

  “Very likely.”

  Curran Dawes sighed and took a sip of his tea. When he looked up from the cup again, the levity in his eyes had given way to cautious curiosity.

  “And how are you enjoying your house?” he asked.

  “It’s not my house, Professor. I’m merely renting.”

  “But Tod has hopes that you may buy.”

  “My secretary has fears of the same thing.”

  “And the town is rampant with rumors.”

  “Rumors?”

  There was nothing like a good rumor to brighten up a dull day. The melancholy that Johnny’s discomfort had helped to engender was all but gone now. Lisa’s interest was genuine.

  “It’s only natural, isn’t it? A well-known novelist comes to Bellville on the eve, one might say, of the Cornish Festival. It’s the talk of the town that you’ve come to do a novel on our local patron saint.”

  “Saint?” Lisa queried.

  Curran Dawes smiled again.

  “Then you are interested in Martin Cornish.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  The tea was hot. Lisa tried to bury her face behind the cup for a moment. It was annoying to have a stranger—a whole community of strangers, in fact—telling her what she was going to do next. Buy a house. Write a novel on Martin Cornish. Did there have to be a reason for everything?

  “Maybe I’ve just come for the festival,” she said. “I do things like that. Edinburgh. Salzburg. Why not Bellville?”

  It was a weak explanation, but she didn’t get an argument at the moment because of something interesting that suddenly started happening in the shop. The door opened and a woman came in—a girl, actually. Quite a lovely girl. Her entrance not only drew the professor’s attention, and Lisa’s; it seemed to draw the attention of everyone at the fountain as well. The steady murmur of voices and occasional bursts of laughter gave way to momentary silence as she posed there—small, dark, and dramatic. Her eyes were large, her skin fair, and her hair, freed in one careless toss from the hood of a scarlet raincoat, was glistening black in the shop light. She looked like a very self-conscious ingénue trying to make a much too casual entrance.

  And she seemed to be looking for someone. The dark eyes glanced hurriedly over the faces at the fountain and then sought the tables beyond. Then she came forward, frowning.

  “Professor Dawes—” hands in her pockets, the girl ignored Lisa—”Have you seen Joel?”

  Her voice was as lovely as her face. Soft, melodious, but disturbed. Lisa had no idea who Joel might be, but the name had been spoken in a rather special way.

  “Not today,” the professor answered. “He’d already left for work when I got up this morning. Have you tried the construction office?”

  “He’s not there,” the girl said. The frown was growing deeper with a full-lipped pout for accompaniment. “And it’s raining. They can’t be building things out in the rain.”

  Lisa had leaned forward. The brooding eyes, the pouting lips—Something about that face was stirring up recognition. But before the answer came, the girl swung about and stared hard at her. She seemed to be aware of another presence for the first time.

  “You’re Lisa Bancroft,” she said abruptly.

  It was more of an accusation than an introduction.

  “Yes, I am,” Lisa admitted.

  “I know. I read in the paper that you’d taken over the Mastersons’ house. I guess that makes us neighbors. I’m Marta Cornish.”

  Marta Cornish. Now Lisa understood. And the girl, with her unfaltering stare, read every thought she was thinking.

  “I look like my father,” she said. “At least, that’s what everybody tells me. Did you know him?”

  Lisa hesitated. “I know of him,” she said, “and I’ve seen the portrait.”

  “Of course, the portrait.” Marta’s pout gave way to a brief, almost bitter, smile. “Everyone knows of my father; but no one I’ve ever met seems to have actually known him. I guess he didn’t have many friends.”

  She looked back toward the gathering at the soda fountain. There may have been no relation between the words and the gesture, but Lisa felt there was. For a moment she sensed an intense loneliness in this girl. It was only natural. The daughter of a legend would have difficulty assimilating in any society, and Bellville, particularly.

  “How’s the concerto coming?” the professor asked.

  Marta had started to turn away. She hesitated a moment longer, her long fingers working nervously at the buttons of her raincoat. “All right, I guess,” she said. “Some days it seems all right and some days it doesn’t. Some days it just doesn’t matter.”

  “Now, Marta—”

  “No, not you, Professor! Leave the scolding to Joel and Mother. I won’t take it from you!”

  This was anger. Lisa had sensed it, too, but not quite so near the surface. Not quite so near to tears. And then Marta Cornish, like a small girl reluctantly remembering her manners, turned back to the table one last time.

  “I’m happy to have met you, Miss Bancroft,” she said, “but if you’re going to do a book on my father, leave me out of it. Please leave me out!”

  This time she left the shop without turning back.

  “Well,” the professor said, “I guess that makes it unanimous. About the rumor, I mean.”

  Lisa heard him. She heard other things, too. The voices at the fountain were busy again. It was as if a tension had eased as soon as Marta Cornish left the shop. She wanted to think about that awhile, but the professor was waiting with an annoying half-smile on his face.

  “Do you want to know the truth?” she said. “Do you want to know why I really came to Bellville?”

  He didn’t answer. He wasn’t supposed to answer.

  “I was bored. I was sitting in my apartment one rainy day, thumbing through a magazine. In it I saw an ad describing this beautiful old home in the bluffs above Bellville. The owners had moved to Europe; the house was for rent or for sale. There was a photgograph—”

  Lisa stopped. The professor was still smiling, quite unconvinced.

  “How much do you know about Martin Cornish?” he asked.

  Lisa hesitated. “I know his music,” she said, “his genius.”

  “You admire his music, then?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  The professor didn’t smile any more. He had become very thoughtful. “Of course, I’m not a musician,” he said, “but it does seem to me that Cornish is erratic, moody. Tormented, perhaps. But then, genius, I suppose, is a form of torment.”

  “Don’t look at me,” Lisa protested. “I wouldn’t know.”

  “Or even a form of madness. You know how he died, I suppose?”

  Lisa didn’t answer.

  “It was a fire in his studio. The studio was quite close to the house you’ve taken, by the way. I’m sure the ruins must still be there.”

  “Yes, I know,” Lisa murmured.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  Lisa raised her head. She’d been talking to her teacup.

  “I’ve read about the fire. It was a tragic thing. He was so young.”

  “Yes, only thirty-six. Young, handsome, and at the height of his productivity and success. I’m not a native of Bellville, Miss Bancroft, but when I came here from the university a few years ago I acquired a natural curiosity about the town’s only illustrious son—unless, of course, you include old Walden Bell, who founded our community, or his son, Walden II. And you do have to include them in the Cornish story, because it was Walden the younger who discovered Cornish’s talent when Martin was just a lad working in the lumber mill. Bell must have thought quite a lot of his protégé for he sent him off to Paris to study—”

  “I know that part of the story,” Lisa said.

  “
I’m sure you do, but there’s more than you can get out of those little biographical pamphlets at the museum. Martin Cornish became almost one of the family—a son, you might say. I rather imagine Walden Bell wanted a son. He had only one child, Nydia, and from what I’ve seen of her she wouldn’t have done much to delight a paternal heart.”

  Now Lisa was interested. “Nydia’s still alive, then?”

  “Oh yes, very much so. As you just heard Marta say, you’re neighbors now. But, to make the story as brief as possible, Martin Cornish married Nydia Bell in her father’s bedroom the day of the old man’s death. That was twenty-seven years ago. Martin Cornish was twenty-six, handsome, and beginning to gain recognition. His wife was twenty-eight, unhandsome, and the sole heir to the Bell fortune.”

  “Music is an expensive career,” Lisa observed.

  The professor smiled briefly. “You have heard the story. Certainly, from Martin Cornish’s work during the ensuing ten years one can conclude this was no love match. Although, oddly enough, he had written some very haunting love themes prior to this event, and one does find an occasional lyric from his more somber years. Then, too, there’s the manner of his untimely death.”

  Outside, the rain had stopped. The crowd began to break up at the soda fountain, taking with it the noise. Only a few glasses were clinking in the washbasin, and Curran Dawes’s voice sounded strangely hollow against the quiet.

  “Martin Cornish became a father in the seventh year of his marriage,” he continued. “Perhaps the cries of little Marta disturbed the genius at work because, I’ve been told, that’s when he built the studio as far as possible from Bell Mansion without leaving the property. There, one night when he was working late and apparently fell asleep while smoking, occurred the tragic fire that snuffed out his life. But he didn’t die alone, Miss Bancroft. This is what you won’t read in those pamphlets, but it’s all here in Bellville just waiting for someone to ask.” The professor paused to let his disclosure sink home. “In the smoldering ruins of the studio two bodies were found. One was that of a woman, later identified as Stella Larkin, a maid in the employ of the neighboring Mastersons.”

  Lisa knew she was meant to make some comment. “My house,” she said.

  “Your house, Miss Bancroft. So, you see, you’ve moved in on an unwritten romance—and an unfinished one. To this day no one really knows how that fire was started.”

  The professor had put a lot into the telling of this tale. He was waiting for more comment.

  “I’ve always heard that it was an accident,” Lisa said.

  “Of course you have,” he responded, “and you’ve probably heard, too, that the Mastersons had merely sent their maid to the studio to deliver a dinner invitation. But rumor has it otherwise. I’ve heard it said that the fire wasn’t an accident at all, that Martin Cornish was desperately in love with the maid, but couldn’t marry her because of his dependence on Nydia’s wealth. This version has it that the lovers made a suicide pact and built themselves a funeral pyre. How does that sound to you, Miss Bancroft?”

  “Frightfully Wagnerian,” Lisa said, “but quite un-Cornish.”

  “And yet a possibility if the man was mad.”

  The professor insisted on referring to madness. The tearoom was quite deserted now, except for the help and the two customers lingering at the rear table. Although the rain had stopped, no tardy sun emerged to brighten the gray sky beyond the windows. The day seemed much farther spent than it actually was. All of these things contributed to the spell of the story he’d just told.

  But Lisa was fighting it. Her fingers worked restlessly with her spoon.

  “Professor Dawes,” she said, quite abruptly, “have you read any of my books?”

  He wasn’t prepared for the question. He seemed embarrassed.

  “As a matter of fact, no,” he admitted. “I really don’t have time—”

  “You needn’t apologize. I’m not sensitive on the subject. I’m a middle-aged woman with a physical handicap who’s found a comparatively convenient way to earn a living—not a literary prima donna. I only asked the question because the answer was so obvious. You’ve told me an intriguing, romantic story, Professor, but I’m not a romantic writer. I’m a realist. I’m interested in the living, not the dead.”

  She said it too brusquely and the professor looked troubled. She didn’t want to be rude. The professor was too nice a man, too intense, too easily wounded. Lisa was as annoyed with herself as she was with all of Bellville for thinking it knew more about her mind than she did. She tried to lighten the impact of her words.

  “If there’s a story in Bellville, and I’m not admitting there is, it’s in that girl.”

  “Marta?”

  “Exactly. I was intrigued by her the moment she stepped into the shop. She’s different. The sudden silence at the fountain told me that. And other things. That overdone belligerence, for example. That’s what I mean, Professor. Marta Cornish has the makings of a story. She’s alive and troubled. She’s today, not yesterday.”

  But now the professor was beginning to smile. A soft, knowing smile. He hadn’t told his story in vain.

  “But without yesterday there would be no today,” he said. “That’s why I told you the ‘romantic story’; that’s why it intrigues me. Marta Cornish had a father who might have been insane, and insanity can be hereditary.”

  So quietly he said it, so quietly and with the smile, that Lisa was totally unprepared.

  “That child?” she echoed.

  “She’s not a child, Miss Bancroft. Marta is twenty, twenty-one this September. And she is very like her father. Sensitive, high strung—”

  “—and talented,” Lisa added. “You mentioned a concerto.”

  “Yes, Marta’s entry in this year’s contest. You’re familiar with the Cornish Award, I suppose.”

  “Vaguely,” Lisa said.

  “It’s the crowning event of the festival, you know. A prize of five thousand dollars or a year of study in Europe. As the contest is open to any young composer up to the age of thirty-six, Cornish’s age at the time of his death, Marta is as eligible as anyone.”

  Lisa listened carefully. Some things were becoming clear. That sudden silence at the fountain, Marta’s troubled manner. This girl not only had a legend for a father, she had the burden of her own talent as well. And she was the daughter of wealth and prestige on her mother’s side—a Bell as well as a Cornish. No wonder she was a target for jealousy and rumor. Her heritage was multiple.

  But insanity? The idea seemed preposterous.

  “I still say let Martin Cornish rest in his ashes,” she said. “Marta has her own troubles, and I don’t think we have to dig through the past to find the source. Who is this Joel, Professor? He sounded rather special from the way she spoke his name.”

  It was easy to dispel a mood if one really tried. The gray day, the deserted tearoom, the quiet seriousness of this timid intruder’s story—all of these things could work like a magnet toward remembrance of things past if the mind wasn’t alert and determined. But reason was still reason. Speak the name of truth and it had to answer. The professor’s face answered even before his words.

  “As a matter of fact, he is rather special,” he admitted, “both to Marta and to me. Joel Warren is my nephew, Miss Bancroft. He may not be the greatest catch in the world, but he’s all the family I’ve had for some years, and I’m rather fond of the boy.”

  “And he’s fond of Marta?”

  “He thinks he is. I’m not positive, but I believe they are engaged to be married.”

  It was all so simple. The professor sounded so troubled, so very much like a doting mother afraid her boy will throw away his life on a hussy that Lisa had to fight back the impulse to laughter. But one didn’t laugh in the face of Curran Dawes. He was much too serious.

  Quietly she asked, “And do you disapprove of this marriage, Professor?”

  The question was simple enough; it was the answer that seemed to be difficult.<
br />
  “Not exactly,” he said, at last. “That is to say, it’s not so much a matter of disapproval as of apprehension. Joel isn’t the girl’s first fiancé, you see. As a matter of fact, he’s her third in as many years.”

  “Her third?” And then Lisa did smile. She had to go that far. “Is that all? I should think a girl as attractive as Marta Cornish would have been engaged half-a-dozen times, at least—and may be engaged half-a-dozen times more before she makes up her mind. That should please you, Professor. Your nephew may be only a passing fancy.”

  She was only trying to cheer up the man. He didn’t have to look morose about it. Lisa was beginning to think this was her day for saying the wrong thing, but this time she didn’t know why. And then the professor glanced at his wrist watch.

  “Oh dear, I had no idea it was getting so late,” he said. “I’m afraid I’ll have to tear myself away. I have a five o’clock appointment with the principal—”

  But he paused again, hat in hand, once he’d come to his feet.

  “Forgive me if I’ve bored you, Miss Bancroft, but I had heard that you were planning a book on Martin Cornish. I was quite enthusiastic about the idea. As a writer you would be free to make certain inquiries I cannot make. There’s one thing about Marta’s two former suitors that bothers me, you see. They’re both dead now.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Both dead now. The professor’s last words kept echoing in Lisa’s mind like three small gongs. There’d been no opportunity to demand an explanation. It was almost as if his abrupt departure was a kind of punishment for her failure to be properly aroused by his story sooner.

  “Or a gimmick,” Johnny suggested. “You know, a come-on. The old boy’s a teacher of literature, isn’t he? He must know a few tricks of the trade.”

  Johnny had been aroused immediately. Lisa had gotten no farther than the fire-in-the-studio bit before she was scowling over the top of the steering wheel and bearing down on the accelerator in a way that made the curves of the Pineview Road reminiscent of a carnival ride.

  “I should have known there was a reason for taking that house,” she moaned. “A book on Cornish could take all year!”