Death, My Darling Daughters
Page 24
He crossed to pour himself a drink. George Raynor, his dark handsome face heavy with anxiety, moved instinctively to his wife. Avril cracked then. The opportunity for being the fragile wife comforted by her big, strong husband must have been too much for her. She ran to him, threw her little arms up to his shoulders and wailed:
“Dr. Westlake found them. They’re dead.”
Renton Forbes swung from the table, the liquid splashing out of his highball. Panic creeping into her black gypsy eyes, Phoebe stared straight at me.
“It’s not true, is it, Doctor? It’s just that horrible woman making a scene?”
No one in Skipton had ever been rude enough before to call Avril a horrible woman to her face. Already the new regime was starting. Phoebe’s face was so expressive that I could read her thoughts, as easily as if she were speaking them: Something’s happened. Ernesta’s away. In a way I’m responsible. I chose the picnic ground.
“Where’s Love?” I asked.
“She’s coming with Dr. Jessup. They must be right …”
There were footsteps on the terrace again. It wasn’t fair, I felt, to have Love hear what had happened to her nephews in front of the others. I hurried out of the french windows. Love Drummond and the Reverend Jessup were moving toward me.
I said to Love: “Stay there. Please. Please don’t move till we come back.”
I took the Reverend Jessup by the elbow and guided him down the terrace out of earshot. He was Love’s oldest friend in the neighborhood. I knew that. While he listened in apparently dazed silence, I told him the bare facts of what had happened to the twins. That is, I told him most of the facts. I told him they were dead, that I had found them in the duckpond, drowned. I said nothing about the blows on the back of their heads.
I said: “I’m going to tell the others now. Take Love somewhere—anywhere. Break it to her.”
The old guy was quite wonderful. Years of faithful if plodding service to his God seemed to have given him a certain spiritual fortitude. Asking no more questions, he moved back along the terrace and put his hand on Love’s arm.
Rather irritably, she snapped: “What on earth is all this whispering in corners?”
“Come, my dear,” Dr. Jessup’s voice was steady, reassuring. “I only hope that God will give us strength.”
He led her firmly down the terrace toward the french windows which opened into the library. I watched them move away—the old, rain-soaked priest and the tall, ungainly spinster with the heavy hips. I went back into the living room.
Avril was curled up on a couch, whimpering. Her husband sat next to her holding her hand. Phoebe, Renton, Caleb, and Lorie stood in a phalanx, watching me.
I said: “I’ve called Inspector Cobb. He’ll be out soon.”
“The police!” said Phoebe.
“What happened?” Caleb’s face now was dark with exasperation. “For God’s sake, what happened?”
There was no point in beating about the bush. “I found them in the duckpond,” I said. “They were dead. I can’t tell yet whether they were drowned or not. But if they were drowned, it was still murder, because they were both hit on the back of the head—hit hard enough to have stunned them before they were thrown in the pond.”
The brutality of those facts and the familiar, shining luxury of Ernesta’s living room were hopelessly at war. What I had said was too much for them. It took them several moments to adjust to it.
Phoebe was the first to speak. With a natural, feminine pity which, under the circumstances, sounded almost silly, she whispered:
“Poor little things.”
It was Avril Lane who said the thing that I knew would have to come. For all her silly affectations, her mind moved more quickly than the others’. Pushing herself up on the couch, she stared at me, half horrified, half accusing.
“You and your little daughter,” she breathed. “Your little daughter singing: ‘Hit them on the head and throw them in the pond.’”
“I know,” I said. I added wearily: “Someone must have heard Dawn. Maybe it gave them the idea.”
Renton Forbes cut in quickly: “You mean you think someone on the picnic did—did it?”
“What I think,” I said, “isn’t any more important than what anyone else thinks.”
“No, no, it isn’t possible. It isn’t possible.” Phoebe had clutched her son’s arm as if to steady herself. “You know it can’t be one of us. Someone from the village … someone must have overheard Dawn or … or it’s all a coincidence. It could be a coincidence.”
“It’ll be easy to check on the village people,” I said. “Most of them will have been at the square dance and will be able to alibi each other.”
Lorie had been standing alone, very straight, her arms stiff at her sides. Her eyes, drained by horror of all expression, met mine.
“But why, Doctor? Tell me why? Why should anyone kill those—those babies?”
“It’s a crazy person,” broke in Caleb gruffly. “Some crazy person, escaped maybe from an institution or …”
“But why did it happen like the song? Why?”
I said grimly: “That’ll come later. We can all do one thing right now. We can give an account of our movements coming down the mountain. Cobb will ask. We might as well get ready.”
A door at the back of the room opened and Dr. Jessup came in. Everyone turned to look at him. He crossed to me.
“Love Drummond is a very brave woman, Dr. Westlake. She wanted to come in with the rest of us, but I persuaded her to remain in the library, and soon I shall take her home.”
Phoebe went to him and took his arm silently. They were old friends. Dr. Jessup patted her hand and turned to me with a faint, gentle smile.
“Love has told me all she knows. She came down the mountain alone. She thought the children were with me and did not worry. It was a tragic misunderstanding. I thought they were safely with her.” He paused, watching my face. “I have been thinking. You have held back some of the truth from me, have you not? That duckpond is not deep. It is almost inconceivable to me that the children could have stumbled into it accidentally and—”
“They were hit on the head, Hilary,” breathed Phoebe. “Dr. Westlake has told us. They were hit on the head and thrown—”
She broke off with a shiver. Dr. Jessup patted her hand again.
“We must be strong, my dear. We can combat the works of darkness only if we have strength.”
I said: “I was telling the others, Dr. Jessup, that we would have to account for our movements coming down the mountain from the picnic ground. Perhaps you’d be good enough to begin.”
“Of course, although I am afraid I have little to tell. It was dark, confusing. I lost my way and came down through the scrub as best I might. I met no one on the journey—no one at all.”
“Neither did I,” said Phoebe. “I heard people around me, of course. But I didn’t actually see anyone or talk to anyone.”
“I didn’t either,” said George Raynor.
I glanced at Renton Forbes. “You met up with Avril, didn’t you?”
He glanced at George’s wife. “Only at the end. We didn’t meet until we were almost at the house.”
“That is correct.” Avril was very firm and precise now. “Earlier, someone ran past me—running very fast. I could not tell who it was. Otherwise I met no one until I encountered Renton.”
Caleb had flushed crimson. “I guess the person running was me. I caught up with Dr. Westlake and Dawn halfway to the house. The three of us came in together.”
“You saw no one before me?” I asked, although I knew the answer. Caleb, with his morbid dread of the dark, would have attached himself to the first person he met.
Caleb shook his head.
I turned to Lorie. “There’s only you left,” I said quietly.
Above the delicate shell pink of her suit, Lorie’s face was very pale. One hand went up to the shining, silvery hair.
“I saw no one. No one at all.”
Her lips were trembling. She moved suddenly, running to her aunt and burying her face against Phoebe’s shoulder.
“It’s all my fault,” she sobbed. “I was giving the picnic. I should have taken care of the twins.”
The sobs rose, racking her thin body.
“Oh, if only Mother had been here. This would never have happened if Mother had been here.”
I wondered if there was anyone in the room who didn’t agree with her.
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About the Author
Patrick Quentin, Q. Patrick, and Jonathan Stagge were pen names under which Hugh Callingham Wheeler (1912–1987), Richard Wilson Webb (1901–1966), Martha Mott Kelley (1906–2005), and Mary Louise White Aswell (1902–1984) wrote detective fiction. Most of the stories were written together by Webb and Wheeler, or by Wheeler alone. Their best-known creation is amateur sleuth Peter Duluth. In 1963, the story collection The Ordeal of Mrs. Snow was given a Special Edgar Award by the Mystery Writers of America.
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 © 1945 by Doubleday, Dorian & Company, Inc.
Cover design by Ian Koviak
ISBN: 978-1-5040-5158-3
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