Death, My Darling Daughters

by Jonathan Stagge

  I knew what had to be done, and I did it with a reasonable amount of efficiency. I locked the music room and took Vic back with me to the Lanchesters’. I didn’t awaken the household. There was trouble enough without that. I went to the phone and called Cobb. After what seemed like an interminable amount of time, he came. The district attorney was with him.

  I took them up to the barn. I made the still dazed Vic confirm my account of all that had happened. I played them the records. They spent hours, it seemed, fussing about the room, taking fingerprints, taking this and that for analysis. It would have been bad enough without the D.A. With the D.A., it was hell.

  A panicky realization of his own predicament made him vilify us. He said that Dr. Hilton had been murdered when Cobb and I might have saved him. He said that where Cobb and I should have solved the case, it had solved itself. Our whole handling of the affair, he said, had been one inexcusable blunder. Cobb was too proud to point out that Hilton and the D.A. himself had tied his hands after Nanny’s death; that there had been no way of saving Dr. Hilton; and that it had been only a matter of hours between that death and Janie’s suicide. Cobb was too proud. And I was too tired.

  Only one thing the district attorney said registered with me, and he said it over and over.

  The case was solved. It was finished. Everything would have to be done to minimize the publicity. But this was the end.

  That was all I cared about.

  A time came when the district attorney announced that the household would have to be awakened and told the news.

  That was too much for me. That was something I couldn’t face.

  I went home. I went to bed.

  And I slept.

  XIX

  I awoke next morning from a mild and pleasant dream in which Dr. Hilton had presented Janie with dozens and dozens of Scotties. My room was brilliant with summer sunshine. For one luxurious moment I lay motionless. Then the dream dissolved into unpleasant reality and I remembered that there was no longer a Dr. Hilton to give Scotties and no longer a Janie to receive them.

  I was late down to breakfast. Dawn, as removed from tragedy as a bird, was over in the barn practicing her violin. I could tell that from the faint, wabbling A naturals that trailed in through the open window. I was alone at the table with my thoughts.

  They did not make attractive company. I would have to go to Grovestown. There would be hours with the shrill, bullying D.A. There would be important calls from important people in Washington. There would be a full-fledged official attempt to suppress the story of the daydreaming little girl who had become a monster.

  It was strange how my own dream clung. Last night, when the spell of the confession had been fresh, I had found no difficulty in visualizing Janie Hilton as she must have been. But now, under the influence of my dream, Janie the double murderess seemed as unreal as a character in yesterday’s movie. I could think of Janie only as I had known her: a pretty, giggling girl under a sugar-maple tree; an unhappy, flustered girl in blue harlequin glasses panting on a tennis court.

  Harlequin glasses! My rambling reflections stopped there with a jolt. And, as one thought so often brings others, seemingly disconnected, in its wake, a memory of the small chime of the ormolu clock in the music room tinkled in my mind. The harlequin glasses—the clock. And, of course, the sound arm of the recording machine. Suddenly the meaning of those three things fused to confront me with a new, staggering truth.

  Its impact was so violent that I lost for a moment all consciousness of my own humdrum dining room, my own humdrum breakfast table. I had a wild impulse to race to the telephone, call Cobb and shout: “Glasses, clock, sound arm” to him, but remembrance of the D.A. had a sobering effect. Everything was different now, but I couldn’t go to Grovestown yet. There was somewhere else I had to go first.

  I never finished my breakfast. I hurried out of the house, passed my syringa hedge with its heavy summer sweetness and started off on foot to the Lanchesters’. It was Rosalind I had to see, Rosalind who was told so little but who always knew so much.

  Kenmore was at its loveliest that July morning. The bobolinks fluttered and chortled in the sunshine. Beyond the flowering meadows I could hear the cool music of the Konapic Brook. Everything was the same as it had always been in the days before the serene Hilton legend had become a true story of horror. A farmer I knew passed me in a truck loaded with empty milk churns. He waved at me. I waved back. It was a Kenmore day just like any other Kenmore day.

  Even the Lanchester house, when it came into view, seemed tranquil as it had ever been, lying sleepily in the sunshine, part of the summer.

  I went through the gate into the walled garden. Dr. Kenton-Oakes was there, a small somber figure in black gazing down abstractedly at a clump of Mrs. Lanchester’s salmon zinnias. The sight of him brought back yesterday’s darkness and the darkness to come. I would have to be careful with everyone—very careful.

  He saw me and came to me. He looked old and tired. “So, Dr. Westlake. You are just in time to say good-by.”

  “Good-by?”

  “The British Embassy has just communicated with me. Belle and I are to leave for Washington immediately. They are afraid of publicity, afraid that if I remain some news of the conference may leak out.”

  I said: “This is a hell of a way for the conference to end.”

  “It is indeed.” Dr. Kenton-Oakes turned his back on the zinnias. “As a man, Dr. Westlake, I am shocked and frightened.” He paused. “But as a doctor I am not frightened. Poor George’s death will not affect our work. There is still Vic. And Vic is enough.”

  I held out my hand. It was a strange, awkward parting, and I had liked him. “Good-by, Dr. Kenton-Oakes.”

  “I must say good-by for my wife too.” He took my hand in his own small, alive one. “Belle is upstairs packing.” A trace of the old mischief gleamed in his eyes. “I trust Emily will not miss anything when we are gone. Belle is a most eccentric packer. I remember one occasion, a week end at the Lascelles’—Princess Mary, you know. There was a pair of Ming vases that had particularly attracted Belle. I happened to enter our room while she was packing and—”

  The gleam in his eye and the anecdote faded. He had turned back to study the zinnias. I left him and went into the house through the sun porch.

  Vic and Dr. Stahl were in the living room. The shades were drawn, as if the sunshine had no place in this house. White and gaunt, Vic lounged in the most comfortable of Mrs. Lanchester’s uncomfortable chairs. Lisl Stahl, a cigarette hanging from her scarlet lips, stood at the mantel, staring at him.

  She turned when she saw me. There was a trace of horror in her eyes, but Dr. Stahl was not one to nurse tragedy for long. Already, I could see, her healthy vitality was reasserting itself.

  “Ah, Dr. Vestlake, and how are you today?”

  “Gloomy.”

  “Ah, you men.” She clattered her earrings. “It is alvays the same with men. A bad theeng come and men—oh, they get so sad. Everything is over. There is nothing left. Oh, oh, misery, woe!” She turned to Vic, her strange, sharp face softening into a tenderness I had never seen there before. “Thees Veek here. Vat can we do with heem? A seely leetle neurotic girl keels people. Eet ees ugly. But it has happened before and it vill happen again. But for Veek—oh, the stirrings of the soul! Eet ees heem who ees guilty. How can he live weeth thees guilt on his conscience? Guilt. Such vainness. As eef he ees important, as eef he ees anything but a symbol in Janie’s mind. Whether it’s Veek; whether eet’s some other preety man. Pouff, thees thing happens. It ees from Janie eet happens, not from Veek, not from any man.”

  She went to Vic and put a beringed hand on his passive shoulder. “Leesten, Veek.” Her voice was harsh and scolding. “To theenk yourself guilty ees eediot. Just as well might I theenk I am guilty because eet ees my compound vich is used, my compound that keels them. And do I get the stirrings of the soul? Pouff. All I say ees: Ah, so eet ees good advertisement. I write my next article and I say:
Thees compound, eet ees good; eet is very, very good, so very very deadly. Already eet prove eetself, already eet keel Dr. Heelton and hees old nanny.” She laughed and stared up at me. “Ees not thees true, Dr. Vestlake?”

  In a way, of course, it was. Vic was lucky to have so sane, if so unsentimental, a philosopher to see him through the days ahead. I looked at Dr. Stahl, with her messy slack suit, her gaudy make-up, and her keen, intelligent face. Yes, she was quite a woman. The bold man who married her would have an exciting life, I reflected.

  I also reflected that, in spite of Dawn, I was glad the bold man was not to be me.

  I did not ask for Rosalind. I did not want anyone to know why I had come. Luckily, on that disorganized morning, both of them seemed to take my presence as a matter of course. I strolled out of the dark living room into the melancholy hall and started, my pulses throbbing, up the stairs.

  Rosalind was not in her room. The whole second floor seemed deserted, as if the Lanchesters had never been there, as if it were already slipping back into its old familiar state of disuse. I thought of the attic. Somehow it was fitting that my last encounter with Rosalind should be in the attic.

  I found her there. The mud wasps’ window was open. Sunlight and warm summer air streamed in, bringing a false gaiety to the great piles of Hilton junk. A song sparrow was singing outside, and I could catch a glimpse of the late-flowering French lilac in the garden below.

  Rosalind sat on the floor by the window. Perdita was with her. They both sat with their legs curled up under them, small and dowdy in their faded cotton frocks.

  Rosalind turned when she saw me. She had a half-eaten apple in her hand. I was shocked by the pale bitterness in her face. This wasn’t just the daring pose, this was cruelly the real thing.

  She stared at me without smiling. “So you’ve come to look at the heiresses, Dr. Westlake. We should get Helena too. Three heiresses. And why not Mother and Aunt Belle? Five heiresses. All made in one night. All made by Janie. Wasn’t it kind of her? All she had to do for us was to murder two people and then kill herself.”

  Perdita’s hand went out to her sister’s arm. Her profile emerged from the dark wedges of hair, thin and peaked.

  “Rosalind, stop thinking that way. You’ll go crazy thinking that way.”

  “What other way is there to think?” Rosalind pushed herself to her feet and stared out of the window with her back to me. “Life so polite and elegant on the surface, so filthy and vicious underneath.” She was mocking herself savagely. “What a happy ending! We’ve got what we always wanted. Perdita and I can be free. We can buy all the dresses in the world. Go everywhere. Have all the men—”

  “Rosalind!” said Perdita sharply.

  “Oh, God!” Rosalind hurled the half-eaten apple out of the window. She spun round, facing me, her lips trembling. “If only Janie hadn’t killed herself, Dr. Westlake. If only she’d had the guts to live and say: ‘Look. I didn’t do this. Not really. It was the Hiltons. The Hiltons built this life and look what’s come of it.’”

  Perdita got up too, putting her hand on her sister’s shoulder. Rosalind twisted herself free.

  “That’s the truth, Dr. Westlake. We’ve all of us always lived in a stuffy, respectable hell. So we had to make Janie live in hell too. We drove her to this. Me, Perdita, Mother, Uncle George, Helena. Particularly Helena. Oh, Helena calling her those awful names last night! It’s Helena really. It’s all Helena. That awful girl.”

  I said quietly: “You can hardly blame Helena for what she did. After all, she loved her father.”

  “Loved him!” Rosalind laughed. “She hated him. She hated him worse than we hate Mother. She was worse than us in wanting to break away, to be rich, to grab. She just pretended to love Uncle George after the marriage to make Janie miserable. She hated them both because she was afraid they’d have children and gyp her out of some of the money that was coming to her.”

  A mud wasp boomed clumsily past her. She did not see it. She was staring straight at me.

  “Last night when that frightful man—that district attorney—woke us up and played us those records, it didn’t make me hate Janie. It made me hate us—all of us.”

  I said: “So you heard the records?”

  “Yes,” said Perdita from the window. “We all went to the barn. He played them to us.”

  This was the moment. My pulses were pounding now. “I came here to ask you something. It sounds silly, but I want to be sure. Janie was shortsighted, wasn’t she?”

  “Janie?” echoed Rosalind. “She was blind as a bat. Why?”

  “I thought so. I noticed she wore glasses playing tennis.”

  “That’s why Helena loved playing tennis with her. Janie hated people knowing she was so blind. Making her put on her glasses amused Helena.”

  Rosalind’s face was keyed up. Perdita was watching me too. I said: “Janie couldn’t read a book without glasses, for example?”

  “Of course she couldn’t.”

  “And she wasn’t the type that carried glasses around with her, the type that keeps putting them on and taking them off?”

  “No, no. She never—” Rosalind stopped. Understanding dawned on her face. She whirled to her sister, taking her hands. “Perdita, don’t you see? In those records, the important thing Janie said, the thing she said about being at Dr. Stahl’s and picking up that book and reading about killing people with silver polish. She never had her glasses with her, I know. She never could have read that book.” She turned to me. “That’s what you’re trying to find out, isn’t it?”

  Perdita’s green, distant eyes roamed to meet mine. “Is that it, Dr. Westlake?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “But what does it mean?” flared Rosalind. “Tell us.”

  “I wanted you to tell me that about Janie before I was sure,” I said. “I was almost sure anyway, because there was something else. If I’d realized what that other thing meant at the time, everything would have been different. But I only realized this morning. At the end of the second record, Janie said she’d drunk the poison; we heard the sound of her falling, dying. Now when Vic and I found the records, the first one had been put on the turntable to be played first, and the sound arm had been set on the edge of the record. How could Janie have done that if she’d died or at least collapsed before the second record was through? That’s one thing. But there’s something else. Just before Janie’s last words on the second record, the clock on the mantel chimed twelve times for twelve o’clock. Last night I happened to go to the barn. It was dark, but I talked to someone and someone answered me in Janie’s voice. But while she was talking, the clock on the mantel struck quarter past twelve.”

  “Then—”

  “If the records had been genuine,” I said, “Janie must have been dead for quarter of an hour when I talked to her. You see, the glasses prove that part at least of the confession was wrong. Janie couldn’t have picked up that book casually and read it. But this other thing proves that the whole confession is false. The person who talked to me in Janie’s voice at twelve-fifteen wasn’t Janie. Janie didn’t make the records. Janie didn’t murder Nanny and Dr. Hilton. When I went to the barn, Janie was lying there in the darkness—dead.”

  I looked at them both.

  “The person who talked to me was the person who had just killed Janie and faked the records. And I know who that person is.”

  XX

  Both the sisters stared at me whitely.

  Rosalind stammered: “But the voice—the voice on the records. It was Janie’s voice.”

  “You of all people,” I said, “should know there are people in this house who can imitate Janie.”

  “Helena!” Rosalind gasped the name in a flash of comprehension. “Helena imitated Janie all the time. Helena imitated her perfectly.”

  I was hating this. Softly I said: “Yes.”

  Perdita began: “But, Dr. Westlake, Helena—”

  “Helena!” cut in Rosalind. “Of course. Helena ha
ted Uncle George. Helena wanted to be rich, to get away. And she hated Janie. With Nanny and Uncle George, she wanted it to look like an accident, but it didn’t work. She realized a murder investigation was bound to come. And she hated Janie. So she did that—she killed Janie and made those records so we’d think it was Janie and we’d never suspect her.” She clutched my arm. “Tell me, tell me. Is that what you think?”

  “Just about,” I said. “It’s not quite that simple though.” I paused. “Before I do anything, I’ve got to talk to Vic.”

  “Vic!” echoed Perdita, her eyes dark with apprehension.

  “Yes,” said Rosalind. “Why Vic?”

  “It wasn’t done just for the money, you know. It was done for Vic too. It would have been clever, wouldn’t it, if Helena’s denunciation of Janie and Vic had been carefully planned? No one would have suspected that Helena and Vic were working together.”

  “No, no.” It was Perdita, and her voice was blazing with conviction. “You can’t think it was Vic too. You can’t. You can’t.”

  “This isn’t going to be pleasant,” I said. “God knows, it isn’t going to be pleasant.” I kept my eyes down, not looking at either of them. “But it’s got to be done. I don’t think Vic’ll be able to stand up against what I’ve got to say. I’ll go get him, unless—”

  “No,” broke in Rosalind. “No. I’ll go.”

  “No, I will.” Perdita, pale and insubstantial as a ghost, brushed past her sister and ran down the attic stairs.

  With Perdita gone, a stifling silence settled on the attic. Rosalind, her eyes blind to me, turned as if in a dream and moved to the old davenport, sitting down and gazing out into the July sunshine. I didn’t want to talk if she didn’t want to. I paced up and down through the dusty old trunks, the worn-out flotsam of Hiltonism, thinking of the Hiltons trapped in this suffocating tradition which had denied life and bowed down before the false gods of gentility and the Past, trapped, with no escape from the trap but murder.