by Unknown
“Are you hurt, Leon?”
“I—wouldn’t know. There’s—all blood—on my face.”
Charleroy recognized the note of hysteria. No matter how he felt, he had to take charge. “Have you a flashlight?” he asked. “Let’s have it.”
There was no answer. He got up from his knees, with a grunt, and put on his hat, which had fallen off; he opened the door of the cab and got out. The headlights of the taxi were out and he could not see Leon.
“Where are you?” he asked.
“Here,” said Leon, and a flashlight shone in his eyes. He took it, and turned it on Leon, and there was a smear of blood on his cheek.
“Anyone that parks without lights ought to be hung,” said Leon.
“Let’s see what damage we did,” said Charleroy, and turned the flashlight on the other car.
“Good heavens!” he cried. “There’s someone in it!”
There was someone in the driver’s seat, leaning back behind the wheel, his arms at his side, his hair glistening.
Charleroy walked forward and opened the door of the other car, to touch the driver’s hand. “I think he’s dead,” he said, in great wonder.
“We couldn’t of killed him!” Leon cried. “I wasn’t going fast—”
“He’s—cold,” Charleroy said. “He must have been dead before we came.”
“Dead!” said Leon. “And just sitting there like that?”
“We’ll have to notify the police,” said Charleroy. “Will your cab run, Leon?”
Leon got into the taxi and backed away. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, she runs. But my lights are busted. I wouldn’t dare drive without no lights.”
“I’ll hold the flashlight,” said Charleroy. “There’s a filling station a little way ahead, where we can telephone.”
He sat in the taxi, resting the flashlight steady on the open window, so that it threw a narrow beam of light on the road before them. Leon drove slowly, past the car where the dead man sat. “Poor devil’s right outside my own place,” Charleroy thought.
He would not have admitted it, but he was happy. He liked this riding cautiously along the dark road, holding the flashlight; he liked the idea of notifying the police, of being the one who had discovered the body. “I reached into the car,” he would say. “Felt the poor devil’s hand. He must have been dead for some time. Heart attack, I suppose.” . . .
• • •
He did say all this, over the telephone, in the filling station.
“Well,” he was told, “you return to the scene of the accident, and we’ll be along.”
They left Leon’s taxi at the filling station, for an overhaul, and hired another one, Leon sitting in the back as a passenger. When they reached the lane, two cars were already there, their headlights illuminating the road in both directions. As they stopped, a motorcycle policeman came up to them.
“Your name Mr. Charley?”
“Charleroy.”
“You the one reported this here accident?”
“Yes.”
“You’ll have to come along to the station and give a full report,” said the cop in a tone which greatly annoyed Charleroy.
“Certainly!” he said. “I’ll be glad to see someone in authority.”
“You will,” said the cop, and they set off, the motorcycle cop riding beside the taxi.
They turned into a deserted village street, where two green lights burned before a neat red-brick building, and here they stopped. They got out, and followed the motorcycle cop into a bare room fitted with benches, where another policeman sat at a high desk like a pulpit; they went through this room and along a short hall, to an open door.
“Here they are, sir,” said the motorcycle cop, and left them.
A man sitting at a desk rose, a very tall young man in uniform, with big ears and melancholy dark eyes. “Mr. Charley?” he asked politely.
“Charleroy.”
“Mr. Charleroy. I’m Lieutenant Levy, in charge here. And you—?”
“Leon Perez, sir.”
“Sit down,” said Levy. “And smoke, if you like.”
Charleroy lit a cigar. “Light up, Leon,” he said.
“I haven’t got no more cigarettes, sir.”
“Here!” said Charleroy. “Have a cigar.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Leon, his face growing bright.
“Now—” said Levy. “Who’s the owner of the car you were driving?”
“Me, sir,” said Leon.
“I’d like to see your license,” said Levy, and Leon sprang up and handed it to him. “A taxi?” Levy said, surprised. “You’re quite a long way from New York.”
“I’ve been using Perez’s taxi for three or four years,” said Charleroy. “I can vouch for it that he’s an excellent driver. Great confidence in him. I had to come out to my place, Meadowsweet, and I naturally thought of Perez.”
“I see. Is your family here, Mr. Charleroy?”
• • •
Charleroy did not like this, but he could not avoid answering. “My daughter’s out here,” he said stiffly.
“I see,” said Levy. “Is your daughter alone here, Mr. Charleroy?”
“No!” said Charleroy sternly. His daughter was never alone. “The Bradys are there, a couple, caretakers, so on. And she has Miss Ewing with her.”
“Miss Ewing is a friend?”
“Yes. Friend of the family. Very fine woman.”
“I see. If you have a place here, Mr. Charleroy, I suppose you know a good many of the local people?”
“Well—” said Charleroy. He could not, at the moment, think of any local people known to him. His wife, or Mrs. Brady, were the ones who dealt with the tradespeople; when he came for week ends, he walked into the house and everything was there, even the New York newspaper he preferred.
“Do you know anyone by the name of Leonard Winter, Mr. Charleroy?”
“Winter? Leonard Winter?” said Charleroy. Then he felt that his tone and his look of vast bewilderment were overdone. “Why, no,” he said thoughtfully. “No. Not that I can remember.”
“He’s the man you found in the car, Mr. Charleroy.”
“He was, eh? Poor devil! Heart attack, I suppose?”
“No, sir, it wasn’t,” said Levy.
Charleroy frowned, and stirred uneasily. There was something wrong here, something he did not understand.
“I don’t know what you’re getting at,” he said. “But here are the facts. The car was parked there, without any lights, and we ran into it, head on. But we were going slowly, around the curve. I don’t believe we could have caused him any serious injury. What’s more, when I felt the poor devil’s hand, it was cold.” He paused. “Nobody would sit there in a parked car without lights unless he was very ill. Or unconscious,” he said.
“Winter was shot through the heart,” said Levy.
There was a moment’s silence.
“Indeed?” said Charleroy coldly. He wished to believe that he was annoyed. But what he felt was a vague and cold dread.
The bare and brightly lit room was quiet.
“Suicide?” said Charleroy.
“We haven’t found any weapon in the vicinity,” said Levy.
“You haven’t had time to look properly.”
“We’ve had time enough to search all the likely places, Mr. Charleroy.”
“Very well,” said Charleroy. “Then the thing was a murder. A holdup.”
“That’s possible,” said Levy.
“Very well,” said Charleroy, again. “Perez and I can’t help you there. We simply ran into the fellow’s car. We didn’t hear any shots, didn’t see any suspicious characters, anything of that sort. We’ve given you all the information we can.”
“I see,” said Levy, in his polite and patient way. “Is y
our daughter expecting you, Mr. Charleroy?”
“No,” said Charleroy curtly.
“Do you think that anyone in the house is likely to be up now, sir?”
Charleroy glanced at his watch. “It’s nearly midnight,” he said. “No. I certainly don’t think anyone’s likely to be up now.”
“Then I won’t detain you any longer, Mr. Charleroy,” said Levy, rising. “I’ll be around in the morning.”
This unexpected dismissal was, somehow, more annoying than the questions. Charleroy waited a moment; then he rose, and Leon with him. “Very unfortunate affair,” he said.
“Very,” said Levy.
The taxi took them back to Meadowsweet. Charleroy mounted the steps and rang the doorbell.
A window opened upstairs, and Miss Ewing’s voice called, sharply, “Who’s there?”
“It’s me, Miss Ewing. Charleroy.”
“Oh!” she cried. “Oh, dear! Oh, I’ll be right down!”
“Where are the Bradys?” he thought. They had a room on the ground floor, and the doorbell rang in it. “What’s the matter with them?” He stood waiting, with the wind blowing his overcoat against his legs, and his irritability grew and grew.
A light sprang up in the hall, warmly yellow behind the fanlight; he heard the chain rattle back, and Miss Ewing opened the door.
“Oh, Mr. Charleroy!” she said. “Is she worse?”
“Who?” he asked, trying not to look at Miss Ewing.
“Mrs. Charleroy. Oh, I’m so worried.”
“No, no,” he said, frowning. “She’s better. I happened to have a little time to spare and I thought I’d run down and see Julia.”
“She’s asleep now, Mr. Charleroy.”
“Yes,” he said. “Come in, Leon, and close the door.”
• • •
There they all stood, in the wide hall with the polished floor, and the graceful stairway rising from it, so empty, so still.
“I want to put Leon up overnight,” he said. “What’s happened to the Bradys?”
“They went to Danbury to see their daughter’s new baby,” said Miss Ewing. “They’ll be back in the morning.”
“They had no right to go away!” said Charleroy. “They shouldn’t leave you and Julia alone in the house!”
“Julia’s safe with me, Mr. Charleroy,” said Miss Ewing quietly.
He had to look at her then. “Sure of that,” he said.
She was wearing green-and-white flowered pajamas and over them that tweed coat; her hair was again in curlers. “Julia’ll have to buy the woman a wrapper, negligee, whatever you call them,” he thought. “Little present. She shouldn’t go around like this.”
“Thing is, what rooms are ready?” he asked.
“Well, we’ll see,” said Miss Ewing gaily.
“The Bradys shouldn’t have gone away,” he said. “They’re supposed to keep the place going, ready at any time.”
“But they do, Mr. Charleroy! Everything was in apple-pie order when we got here. But their daughter’s just had a baby, you know, so we let them go, just for one night. Nobody imagined you’d be coming.”
“No, of course not,” he said, trying to be reasonable.
But he was unreasonably disappointed not to find the Bradys here, the house alive.
“Julia— ?” he asked.
“She went to bed early,” said Miss Ewing. “We stopped at Dr. Pugh’s office, you know, and he said to use an ice bag for her poor little eye. She said it made her much more comfy.”
“What else did he say?”
“What else? Why, nothing, Mr. Charleroy. Now I’ll pop upstairs and see what rooms are all ready.”
• • •
He went upstairs with her, and he mounted with an unusually heavy tread; when he reached the upper hall he spoke more loudly than usual. He wanted Julia to wake. “This is the room I use,” he said, opening a door and turning on the switch. Everything was in order.
“Now, about Leon,” said Miss Ewing. “If you’ll just glance at the other rooms and see—I’ll get things ready for you here, Mr. Charleroy.”
“Everything’s all right here, thanks.”
“Just give me five seconds here!” she cried. “And you’ll be surprised.”
“Thank you, no!” he said, and stood holding the door until she went past him into the hall.
There were six bedrooms, each with twin beds, so that guests could be put up at any time. That, he thought, was the way you wanted a house to be, always ready, so that you could come into it whenever you pleased, bring along anyone you pleased. Julia was in the room she had always occupied; Miss Ewing had taken the room next to hers. Charleroy opened a door at the end of the hall, and the room there seemed quite in order. He went to the head of the stairs and called down to Leon.
“Here you are!” he called. “Here you are, señor!”
And Julia must surely hear this, directly outside her door.
“This way!” he said to Leon. “Here you are!”
“Which bed will I sleep in, Mr. Charleroy?” Leon asked.
“Both of ’em!” said Charleroy, with a laugh.
But the little joke fell flat; Leon did not laugh; he looked more forlorn than ever, standing in the neat, brightly lit room.
Charleroy caught sight of Miss Ewing then, going along the hall. “Good night!” he said hastily to Leon, and went after her; he stopped her as she was about to enter his room. “Don’t need anything at all, thank you,” he said. “I can look after myself. Old campaigner, y’know.”
“Well, if you’re sure, Mr. Charleroy—?”
She gave him a merry smile and went away, and he closed his door. Rain came rattling against the front windows; he opened a side window, to get rid of the faint, musty smell in the room, and stood looking out over the wide, flat lawn. “It’s a wonder Julia didn’t hear me,” he thought. “It’s a great wonder.”
He lit a cigar and walked about the room, the floor creaking under his portly tread. He had never before seen this room without Helen’s things in it; there was nothing at all now on the chest of drawers, nothing on the dressing table. “If Helen was here,” he thought, “she’d have some ideas.”
“I want a look at Julia,” he thought. “She can sleep all day tomorrow, if she likes, but I want to see her now.” He opened his door, and the hall was in darkness, which was wrong. He pressed the switch in the wall, and a little overhead bulb came on, shedding a feeble light. He knocked at Julia’s door, gently. He waited, then he knocked a little louder. Miss Ewing’s door opened.
“Sleeping the sleep of the just, Mr. Charleroy,” she whispered.
“She’s all right, I suppose?” he asked, not at all in a whisper.
“Oh, perfectly!” said Miss Ewing. “We cooked ourselves a nice little supper—Mr. Charleroy! I never thought! Would you like some of my famous scrambled eggs?”
“No, thank you,” he said, and went back into his room.
“I’ll give the woman half an hour to get to sleep,” he thought, “and then I’ll try again. She’s a fine woman, very fine woman, but I wish she’d go to sleep and let me alone. I want to see Julia. . . . Maybe she was awake,” he thought, “and didn’t want to come out. No! She wouldn’t do that. At the very least, she’d put her head out of the door and say hello.”
He looked at his watch, and sat down in a basket chair. “Winter,” he thought. “Sitting there in his car dead. Poor devil! But it’s not the worst way to go. Quick, anyhow.” . . .
“Well, I might as well be comfortable,” he thought, with a sigh. “There ought to be an old dressing gown here in the closet; it was always left here.” He rose and opened the closet door, and he was pleased to see the familiar object, a rather shabby robe of gray with a silver thread, a cord with tarnished silver tassels.
• • •
He put on the dressing gown and started to sit down in the basket chair again. But something bothered him. You couldn’t imagine Tim Brady throwing his things around like that.
He went back to the closet and picked up the topcoat again. There was something in the breast pocket, and he took it out. It was a wallet with a cellophane-faced compartment for a driving license. In it was a driving license made out for Leonard Winter.
He replaced the wallet in the jacket pocket and looked around the room; then he opened his suitcase and put the coat and hat into it.
“I’ll finish this cigar,” he told himself, “and then I’ll go to bed and to sleep.” And he knew that he would be able to sleep. He had done all the thinking he intended to do, if some horrible shrouded thing stirred in the back of his mind, he did not intend to examine it. Not now. . . .
The moment he waked he looked at his watch; it was after eight. The wind had died down; the rain fell steadily; the room was very cold. “I want to see Julia,” he thought. “As soon as possible.” He could make no plans, no arrangements, in a way he had to put off thinking, until he had seen her.
He went into the icy bathroom and washed; he dressed in haste, but with all his usual care. He was standing before the mirror brushing his mustache when the doorbell rang; as he stepped out into the hall it rang again. Miss Ewing was just coming out of her room, dressed in a tweed skirt and a green sweater.
“I’ll go!” she cried, and went running down the stairs.
He heard her unlock the door; he heard her say “Yes?” in bright inquiry.
“I’m Lieutenant Levy, madam, from the Horton County Police. Sorry to disturb you so early, but I’d like to ask a few questions. May I see Miss Charleroy?”
“I’m afraid she’s still asleep,” said Miss Ewing. “She hasn’t been feeling very well. Wouldn’t I do? I’m staying here with her. Ewing, my name is, Katrinka Ewing.”
“Thank you, Miss Ewing. I daresay you’ll be able to help us. But I’d like to see Miss Charleroy later.”