by Helen Reilly
Walking behind her under the trees, the two men conferred in low voices. It was always possible that there had been no third visitor to Davidson’s compartment, that Daniel Font had killed Davidson for the jewels, and that they had been removed from his person when he was knocked out down there beside the lake.
It hadn’t happened that way. Whoever had attacked Daniel Font got nothing for his pains and the search for the jewels had continued. After the attack, and after Rose accompanied Todhunter over to the Font cottage, she had had a caller. Her cry, when she went in the side door and across the porch to her bedroom, brought Duvette and Todhunter back fast.
Bureau and dressing-table drawers had been opened, and closed hastily and inefficiently, and the suitcase that had held Font’s bloodstained jacket was lying spread-eagled on the floor, the key that Font had returned to the dressing-table drawer in the lock. The search had been conducted within the last twenty minutes.
Duvette said, “Don’t touch anything more than you have to, Miss O'Hara. There may be prints. We’ll try for them tomorrow,” and the two men hurried through the Questing gates into the grounds of the Chalet and downhill in darkness to the Frenchwoman's cottage.
NINE
“Quelle horreur! The poor Mr. Font, with the so chic wife. Non, non, non, him I do not see in the wood. Him I see. Him” Madame waggled an accusing forefinger at Todhunter.
She was in bed when they knocked, called “Entrez.” Reclining comfortably against pillows, she had listened with close attention to the constable’s account of what had happened to Daniel Font and Duvette’s charge that she had been out there in those woods at the time.
She had gone for a walk, but yes, her holiday was short, everything here cost so much— “Terrible”—and she wanted to see the lake and the mountains by moonlight. M. Davidson, the handsome man of the train had been killed for jewels he was carrying? And the jewels had been stolen? Terrible . . . Terrible . . . “—with the exception,” Duvette said, “of this ring, Madame,” and showed it to her. The ring had been given to Mrs. Daniel Font by Davidson before he was killed.
Madame denied having attacked Font, denied, emphatically, having entered Rose O’Hara’s room in the Questing lodge.
“You think I am the one, that I do these things tonight?”
She threw the covers aside, sat up and put her bare feet on the rug. “You wish to search me, this place? Qui. Qui.” She smiled. “I am not the doe, Monsieurs, I have marry three times. Three husbands and alas, they all die, and I am alone . .
She made an alarming movement with her hands, as though she were about to pull the short and w'ispy nightdress over her head, looked at the constable. There was a dancing light in the round dark eyes. Madame was enjoying herself.
Duvette said hastily—the gown was more than revealing—“No, no. We can see you have nothing on you,” and flushed brick red.
Madame laughed and waved a hand. “The room then, my luggage. Proceed. March."
The search was thorough. There were no jewels anywhere in the cottage. Todhunter hadn’t expected it. If Davidson had been killed for the rich cargo he carried, and it looked very much like it, possession of the gems would be proof of murder. They would have been tucked away in some hiding hole within easy reach in anticipation of exactly what had happened. When the hue and cry over the attack on Font had died down they could be retrieved.
Madame Flavelle, in a black silk kimono and slippers, was [jutting things neatly away as the constable finished. There was a contentment about her, a high degree of it. . . . She knew something they didn’t know, and was pleased with her knowledge, and had no intention of parting with it.
Duvette warned her to lock her door and they left the cottage. Directly below the tree-shadowed veranda lay the water shining and soundless. The night was still. There was no wind. Not a leaf stirred. The two men descended steps at the far end of the veranda. Behind them the lights were switched out. At once it was very dark in under the trees.
As they moved on more slowly Duvette said, “What do you think?” and Todhunter shrugged. “I don’t know. Anyhow, now that she knows you have the ring there shouldn’t be any more trouble. You could have that pliafilm cape of Miss O’Hara’s tried for prints. There won’t be any in her room but whoever bashed Font and searched him and the bundle wras in a hurry and might not have had time to be too careful.”
Duvette said he'd run down to Field and get after it as soon as he had deposited the ring in the safe in the Chalet. “$50,000 to $80,000—it's hard to believe . . . the thief must have felt pretty sold when it wasn’t in Davidson’s camera case—and Davidson must have been a very rich man to give such a ring away like that.” To this Todhunter said nothing. They moved uphill in darkness, past tiny houses that, although they were close, were so buried in greenery, bushes and trees and outcroppings of rock, that they were invisible to each other. He was uneasy, apprehensive. It had been bad enough on the train, it was worse here. He was anxious to get in touch with the inspector, but first take a look around.
He left Duvette. The Questing gates were closed. He went through them in the grounds. Elizabeth Questing’s lodge was darkened. So was the cottage occupied by Nils Gantry and the Colonel. There were lights on in the Font cottage behind drawn blinds which were scarcely needed, the shrubbery was so thick. Everything was quiet. Todhunter had turned away and started to mount when he caught sight, out of the corner of his eye, of a tiny arc of light. It was the tip of a burning cigarette being raised. A puff, the glow brightened. It faded. The hand holding the cigarette was lowered.
Someone was standing directly behind and a little above the Font cottage, looking down at it. It was a long survey. Nils Gantry, Colonel Eden, Belding, the houseman, out for a last breath of cool air with a bite to it? It was none of these. As motionless as the watcher, Todhunter reached for his torch and stepped into the middle of the path. A twig crackled under his foot as he switched the torch on. The watcher was a man. He was fast. The cone of brilliance picked up a twisting figure plunging into the bushes. The man’s face was averted. One arm was outflung. There was something wrong with the hand. The third finger was missing.
Todhunter moved rapidly himself. He encountered nothing but bushes and trees and darkness. Three fingers was gone. He remained in the general vicinity of the Questing lodge and its guest houses for some time. The interloper might have been a curious guest from the Chalet who had strayed into the Questing grounds and didn’t want to be seen; his uneasiness didn’t go away. But with that much territory to cover what could one man do? And what was there to fear? The killer had the main haul of gems, with the exception of the ring, and Duvette had that . . .
The lights were all out, including the Fonts’s. There was no sign of any disturbance, no clash of voices, no outcry. At five minutes past twelve Todhunter gave it up and started for the Chalet. A quarter of an hour later he was on the phone to Inspector Christopher McKee.
It was twenty minutes after midnight at Amethyst Lake, it was 3:20 a.m. in the small brightly lighted office 4,000 miles to the south and east where McKee sat and listened and took down voluminous notes that included a careful description of Madame Flavelle and the ring Davidson had bestowed on Mrs. Daniel Font.
The inspector said, “We’ve had a man on Davidson. I ought to be able to give you more tomorrow.” The woman who had been killed in the courtyard of Elizabeth Questing’s house on Murray Hill was still unidentified. “It'll come, Todhunter, we’ll have to make a wider cast. Now I’ll get after your ring."
British Columbia kept early hours. People were tired after a long day in the open, on hikes, on horseback up into the mountains, on motor trips to Banff and Lake Louise and Jasper. The lobby of the Chalet was dim and there was no one about except the clerk behind the desk, dozing over the Toronto Star at the switchboard, his feet propped on a pillow of magazines. Todhunter started to move towards the veranda, shrugged, turned on his heel and went upstairs to bed.
In New York, McKee
did get after the ring Davidson had so carelessly bestowed on Mrs. Daniel Font. The story was complicated and had ramifications. It was 10:10 Pacific Daylight-Saving Time on the following morning when he called Todhunter back.
The ring Davidson had given Candy Font with a royal gesture was part of a collection of jewels that had been stolen from a Mrs. Godfrey Graham of 32A East Sixty-seventh Street in New York City on the second of January of that year. Besides the ring, valued at $84,000, other gems included in the theft were a diamond necklace valued at $82,000, a $4,000 pearl necklace and a ruby apd diamond clip worth $2,600.
The jewels had been insured with the company Davidson was with. No trace of them had been found, nor any clue to the thief. On the night the robbery occurred Mrs. Graham had gone to the theatre with a woman friend. Returning to her suite in the apartment hotel at around midnight she found the gems gone. A bedroom window was open. Entry had apparently been by way of the roof and a balcony outside the suite, which was on the top floor. The claim had been paid in April. In June, Davidson left the firm.
McKee had interviewed Mrs. Graham. The news of Davidson’s death had been a shock to her. She thought him a very charming young man, in fact she had accepted invitations from him several times, for the theatre and dinner. Her husband traveled a great deal and she had time on her hands.
Listening to the inspector, Todhunter contemplated a piece of snow-clad mountain and a segment of jade-green water through the glass of the booth door; on the other side of the continent, McKee sweltered and watched a large horsefly buzz around the ceiling. The two men might as well have been in the same room.
Todhunter said, “The old story, I suppose? Davidson was the woman friend who was with her the night of the robbery? Same old game?” and the Scotsman said, “Looks like it.”
“Any previous history on Davidson’s part, Inspector?”
“Not a smell. It seems to have been his one and onlv job. Sman lad.”
Previous to the theft, Davidson had rented a safe-deposit box. The day before he left New York on the Montrealer he went to the bank and down to his box. In addition, he bought some Traveler’s Checks and the clerk remembered the camera slung over his shoulder. Davidson remarked that he was off on a trip.
“Here’s the item I think will interest you most,” McKee said. “Mrs. Graham not only lost her jewels, but on the following day she lost an excellent personal maid. The maid was French, a woman in her early forties, whose name was Claire Lucien, a shortish plump woman with dark eyes and blond hair.
“Ah.” Todhunter sighed gently. “Our Madame Flayelle, with a. bottle of hair dye?”
“I'll buy it,” McKee said, and the little detective went on to tell his news. The constable had arrived just as the inspector's call came through. Madame Flavelle had lied around the clock. She was the one who had attacked Daniel Font in the woods the night before and, failing to find the ring she was in search of, in all probability she had afterwards ransacked Rose O'Hara’s room in the Questing lodge. Her prints were all over the pliafilm cape in which Font’s blood-stained jacket was wrapped.
While he talked, Todhunter had been looking absently through die glass in the upper half of the phone booth door. The booth was at the back of the lobby and opposite the front doors. They were wide open on the veranda, on a stretch of turf, on flowers brilliantly massed against smooth jade-green water. Guests milled about waiting for their horses to be brought, for cars and buses to take them on various expeditions. Voices were a vague blur. All at once they rose in key . . . Todhunter broke off.
Heads were turning and people were standing abruptly still. They were all staring in one direction. A young woman gave a cry and buried her fare on her bridegroom’s shoulder. Someone shouted, "A doc tor. Get a doctor—”
Todhuntcr turned back to the phone. lie said, “Hold it, Inspector, will you? I think maybe there’s something wrong,” and slid out of the booth and across the lobby.
TEN
“Get those horses up, and get the cars, never mind the buses, tell them to send private cars. We’ve got to get these people out of here . . .” The manager of the Amethyst Lake Chalet finished giving low-toned orders to the huddled staff and began to circulate among his guests.
A drowning? Well, it didn’t do not to look on the bright side now, did it? A Frenchwoman, yes. A Madame Flavelle . . . The doctor was with the poor lady now . . . They must hope for the best ... A lovely day, wasn’t it? “You will have a nice trip, Mrs. Burgoyne. You’re afraid your horse will shy?” The manager laughed indulgently. “You can have perfect confidence in your guide. Ah, Mr. Prendergast. Lake Tyrrell, I see. Give my regards to Jimmy Fox up there. Now, Miss Simmons, what I advise when you get to Jasper is . . .”
Rose couldn’t stop shaking. In spite of the warmth, she was standing in full sunlight at the foot of the steps, she didn’t seem to be able to. She had gotten the full impact of that terrible blanket-covered figure when it was carried past by four men on an improvised stretcher, water dripping from it. Nils came hurrying up to her. “Rose.” He put an arm around her shoulders and led her to a bench. “Sit down. Wait here. I’ll go and find out what happened. Shall I?” Rose nodded wordlessly.
After Nils was gone she sat and looked at the white ribbon of a glacier in the distance. Order was being restored. The guests were dispersing. Holiday, merrymaking, honeymooning—and that sodden mound . . . She felt sick. Presently Nils came back. It was the Frenchwoman of the train and she was dead. Artificial respiration was no good. She had been dead some time. Her floating body had been discovered near her cottage, which was directly above the lake, by a man out in a boat. They thought she had gone for an early swim and drowned. The water was cold, she had either gotten a cramp or had dived in and hit her head.
“Rose.” Nils frowned down at her. “Don’t . . . You didn’t know her.”
Rose thought, And you don’t know what I know . . . She was sorry for Madame Flavelle, reading a menu with gusto, ordering her meals with care, but it wasn’t only that. She had pinned her hopes on the Frenchwoman, that she would be made to speak and that the nightmare would be over, that particular nightmare. Before she slept last night she had told the whole story of what had happened on board the Commonwealth, and the follow-up here at the lake, to Elizabeth and Colonel Eden. They had come to her door just as the constable and the little gray man started for the Frenchwoman’s cottage.
Both the Colonel and Elizabeth were deeply troubled by the risk she had run. “Rose, Rose,” Elizabeth said, her eyes soft. “You shouldn’t go out on a limb like that for anyone. Not that I don’t feel sorry for Daniel Font. I do. Married to Candy . . .” Her lips thinned. “A daughter of the horse leech . . .”
She refused absolutely to believe the ring Davidson had given Candy was worth any such sum as had been quoted. Davidson’s mother had had some jewels, but nothing like that, and in any case he would have sold them long since.
Eden was impressed with the fact that Candy Font was the woman who had been with Davidson shortly before he died. “So she was the one ... I can understand Font covering up for his wife, Rose, but not you.”
Rose said she couldn’t care less what happened to Candy Font, but she knew Daniel hadn’t killed Davidson. It just wasn’t that sort of setup. Candy had wanted a divorce three months after she and Daniel were married and Daniel had agreed to give her one, and then she changed her mind. “Unlucky fellow,” Elizabeth murmured. Colonel Eden was worried about what the police might do to Rose, felt she ought to have legal advice.
“You forget, Hugh, that Dave Tomlinson will be here tomorrow night,” Elizabeth reminded him.
Tomlinson was her lawyer. Eden said, “Yes, that’s right . . and after that he and Elizabeth looked at each other, talked to each other with their eyes. Rose thought of the conversation between them she had heard earlier in the evening. ... In addition there was the unanswered question of why her cousin had invited the Fonts and Loretta Pilgrim to Amethyst Lake. Elizabeth made no secr
et of her dislike of Candy Font. For Loretta she seemed to have a contemptuous pity, “She's a fool—always was and always will be,” —which was where Rose didn’t agree with her.
She had been too tired, too beaten, to cope with the problem then, she said good night and went to bed. It was the first thing she thought of when she woke. Now, sitting there on the bench gazing numbly at her hands, she sent a soundless prayer into the blue. Make it, all this, not have anything to do with Elizabeth and the change in her—and surprised herself by bursting into tears.
Nils couldn’t have been kinder, gentler. His usual crispness, sometimes with a sting in its tail, was in abeyance. “Go ahead and cry, it’ll do you good.” Presently Rose wiped her eyes and got up and they started back to the lodge. The morning was exquisite, a scene painted on silk, the sky deep blue, the lake polished blue-green without shadows. All around the mountains thrust gleaming white-capped shapes into the dustless air, with regiment on regiment of pines like legions of soldiers mounting their rocky shapes in vast irregular formations.
If Nils was still sore, disgruntled, he didn’t show it. Perhaps he no longer cared. Rose didn’t care either. For the moment she was in an emotional vacuum, glad simply to rest, if only for a little while. They didn’t talk. The silence between them, not filled with harsh words, was comforting, healing. Candy Font broke it up.
They met Candy under the trees in front of the lodge. She was in jodhpurs and a tweed jacket with a ribbon through her hair. Horses were tethered in under a tree.
“Nils,” Candy exclaimed, “you wretch. You’re late. I thought we were going riding to the Notch at ten, and it’s almost half-past now . . . Oh, hello, Rose. How are you?”