I had not seen him since the day he took the place, although a huge roll of chicken wire had come, and some lumber I supposed was to turn the shed into an adequate chicken house. I had finished my work and was locking the door when he arrived, and my first impulse was to laugh. His car was loaded to the roof with what I gathered were his lares and penates, as well as with cases of provisions; and on top of everything else was a crate with six bedraggled hens in it.
He grinned as he got out.
“Got to get the girls out of there,” he said. “They’ve raised hell all the way.”
Then and thereafter those hens were “the girls” to him, and in time I found myself calling them that. He took the crate out and set it tenderly on the ground.
“Now behave yourselves,” he admonished them. “Tomorrow you can run all you like. Only remember you have a job to do.”
He wanted no help unloading the rest of the car, but he did allow me to arrange his provisions in the kitchen. He seemed to be delighted with the place. Also it was evident he did not mean to starve.
“Someday,” he said, “when the girls get going, you must have breakfast with me. I learned to make griddle cakes at Childs’ when I was working myself into and out of college, and I like fried ham and cream gravy. I hope you do.”
I did, and said so. But when the car was about empty and he was picking up a few last things, I saw him take a gun out of the glove compartment and drop it in his pocket. He didn’t think I saw him, but it gave me an uneasy feeling. After all, what did I know of the man? I had not asked him for any references. I was not even certain that he had been hunting for a country place. So far as I knew he might have been the man Jennie saw at the pool, and for a panicky moment I wondered if he was a part of Judith’s terror.
On the other hand, she had not really recognized him. As a matter of fact, she had practically ignored him. But Helga had been suspicious, and I wondered why.
The gun was out of sight when I went back into the house, and O’Brien himself was busily laying out a half-dozen bottles. When he saw me he held one up.
“I was thinking of a drink to celebrate,” he said. “Does the lady of the manor drink with her tenants? This is all new to me, Miss Maynard. How about it?”
I suppose it was his smile again. Somehow I could not associate it with anything evil. So I sat down in the midst of all the confusion and let him put a drink in my hand. Possibly it was the highball, or possibly it was because I felt I had misjudged him, for before long I was telling him about the early days at The Birches, and about Father. He liked the idea of the wild-flower garden.
“You’ll have to show it to me someday,” he said. “He must have been quite a man.”
Perhaps it was the glass in my hand. Perhaps I could not talk any more about Father. But I remembered then the glass he had taken to the city with him, and asked about it. At first he affected not to know what I referred to, then he remembered.
“Oh, that!” he said. “Prints all right, but none on record.”
I did not think he lied easily, but I was sure he was lying then. He changed the subject too quickly
“I’ve been learning a little about your sister,” he said. “I hope you don’t mind, but with things the way they are—Of course, you know she’s been pretty well-known around the night spots for years. Nothing against her,” he added rather quickly, “but she was meat and drink to the society editors. Isn’t it possible she’s tied up with someone in her old crowd?”
“Her husband says not.”
“Oh! So you’ve talked to Chandler about it?”
“He gave me a thousand dollars to go to Reno with her. That’s partly how I paid for the pool. That, and a check for a story I sold.”
He looked surprised. Then he grunted.
“Thank God for Ridgely Chandler,” he said. “And in case you’re interested, I bought the trunks. To a guy who learned to swim in the East River that pool is pure temptation.”
I was rather thoughtful as I went back to the house. I had installed a policeman at The Birches and told no one I was doing so. Now I was a little frightened. Perhaps the sight of the gun had done it. Certainly I felt guilty, and when I saw Judith’s door open, I went in. She might feel safer if she knew about him, or again—
She was sitting at my toilet table, the one I had substituted for Mother’s big walnut bureau. It was littered now with elaborate bottles of perfumes, with her gold-backed brushes and mirrors, and the innumerable jars of creams and cosmetics she used. At the moment she was painting her fingernails, and she looked up at me unsmilingly.
“So your chicken man has come!” she said. “I tell you here and now, if he has a rooster to wake me in the mornings, I’ll kill the creature.”
“No roosters,” I said. “Half a dozen hens is all.”
“Who on earth is he, Lois?” she asked. “I hope he has references.”
“The agent in town attended to that. He’s a veteran. He was wounded in the South Pacific. That’s good enough for me.”
“The war’s been over out there for five years. He’s had plenty of time to get well.”
Luckily for me she dropped the subject. She sat waving her hands in the air to dry her nails, and wondered if it was true that Paris was wearing shorter skirts. If Jennie could sew, she could turn up some hems for her. It was useless to tell her that Jennie had plenty to do without that, or even that her own chances of getting to Paris that summer were negligible.
One thing, however, was clear. She was no longer the terrorized woman she had been not long before, and that day, working on her face after her nails had dried, she told me she was seeing Doctor Townsend again.
“I’m glad, Judith,” I said. “Do you think he’s helping you?”
She gave me an odd little half-smile.
“I don’t need his kind of help,” she said. “But he’s a darned good-looking man.”
“So what? He’s married, isn’t he?”
She laughed. “What’s that got to do with it? Don’t be naïve, Lois. Anyhow there is such a thing as divorce.”
“You ought to know!” I said, and left her.
Phil stopped in to see our new tenant that evening on his way home. He had used Ed Brown’s taxi, as he did occasionally, and when he came to the house he was grinning broadly.
“Nice fellow, your new tenant,” he said. “But have you seen his girls?”
“Only in the crate. Why?”
“He’s got six different breeds of chickens, including a White Leghorn that won’t stay out of the house. He calls her Henrietta, for God’s sake! I’ve asked him up for a cocktail. Get the stuff out, will you, while I wash?”
I knew I should have told him who O’Brien really was. After all, Phil was the understanding sort. But the dove of a new peace had apparently settled down on us just then, and who was to know that it was really a vulture?
Chapter 9
THE ALFRESCO COCKTAIL PARTY was a success, and after it for a few days everything was quiet. As it turned out, O’Brien played bridge, and once or twice in that time he made a fourth and easily won from all of us.
Otherwise he seemed to have settled down comfortably, although the occasional sound of a hammer showed that he was being active. I imagine he used the pool, too, although I never met him there. He had no visitors, except that one day looking up from my typewriter, I saw a woman knocking at his door. She wore a black hat with what looked like a wreath of bright flowers on it. After a time she gave up, and I thought she was dispirited when she left. She stood for a time on the road, evidently hoping to thumb a ride, and someone must eventually have picked her up, for she disappeared.
It was not until after O’Brien had been installed for some time that he asked us all down to supper at the cottage, and gave us a thick steak done to a turn, French fried potatoes, and peas, and peaches with what he called a Russian sauce of whipped cream, eggs, and brandy.
The cottage was immaculate. Even the bed where we left our wraps had t
he corners squared, I suppose military fashion. But to our amusement the little white hen refused to go to roost with the other chickens. She trailed him around the kitchen with alert bright eyes, and he scolded her for getting under his feet.
“You’re a nuisance, Henrietta,” he would say. “Get out of here. Go where you belong.”
In the end he had to pick her up squawking and take her out to the roost with the others. He came back looking apologetic.
“Must have been some kid’s pet,” he said. “Darned if I know what to do with her.”
But I had an idea that he had a good many lonely hours there in the cottage, and that Henrietta at least allowed him to hear his own voice. By tacit agreement I had made no effort to see him, and for that brief period there seemed no reason to do so. There were no more intruders. Judith still locked herself away at night, but she was much less restless, and down at the cottage I gathered that O’Brien had finished his chicken house and now had a dozen girls and boasted of the eggs they produced. He must have been catching up with his reading, too, for at night from my old nursery in the wing of the house I could see his light on until all hours.
My book, too, was moving, slowly but surely, and I had settled down to work and what proved to be a factitious peace, broken only by an occasional swim in the pool. Then one day toward the end of the month Anne called up. She was in a state bordering on tears.
“I’m in a jam,” she said. “Martha has been visiting in Boston since school ended, and now she has appendicitis. I’m going there tonight to be near her in the hospital. They’re operating in the morning. And Bill’s home from college and at a loose end. Can you possibly take care of him for a few days? I have no maid as usual, and while Martin can go to the club, I can’t leave Bill here alone.”
Of course, I was glad to do it. I liked Bill, who had steadfastly refused to believe I was his aunt and had called me Lois since he could talk. He was a tall rangy boy of nineteen, too thin for his height and still given to pimples, but with a cheerful grin and an enormous appetite.
I went back to the kitchen and told Helga, who smiled and looked cheerful for the first time since Judith’s arrival.
“We’d better lay in a good stock of food” she said. “That boy’s hollow all the way down. And maybe I’ll make some gingerbread. Keep him from raiding the ice-box at night.”
He arrived late that evening during a heavy summer storm, and in a thing on wheels he called the Ark, because he said it pitched within and without. I heard it rattling up the drive, and the next moment he was in the hall.
“Hello!” he shouted. “Bill’s here! Come arunning, one and all.”
I ran down to meet him, and he grabbed me and lifted me up in the air.
“Getting skinny, aren’t you, kid?” he said. “Or maybe I just don’t know my own strength. Anything around to eat? I missed my supper.”
I took him to the kitchen and watched with sheer amazement while he finished a cold roast of lamb, cold potatoes, some cold string beans, and a whole square of gingerbread. Then, replete for the time, he leaned back and surveyed me.
“Who’s the gent at the gatehouse?” he inquired.
“That’s our tenant. He’s taken the place for the summer, and he’s nice, Bill. We all like him very much. Do be nice to him.”
“Like that, is it?” he said. “Maybe you can contemplate him with equanimity. I can’t. Gray hair and spectacles! I’ll bet he’s forty if he’s a day! You ought to do better, even at your age.”
As I was only nine years older than Bill, I treated this with the scorn it deserved, but I was curious to know when he had seen O’Brien. He snorted.
“Seen him!” he said. “I damned near ran over him. As I turned into the drive he shot out his door as if the fiends of hell were after him. He had a flashlight, and he turned it on me before he’d budge out of the way. Then he said, ‘Sorry, old man,’ and beat it back to his house. I think he had a gun, too. It looks crazy to me.”
But Bill’s statement kept me awake for some time that night after I settled him in the guest room, with another shot of gingerbread in case he got hungry in the night. It looked as though O’Brien was indeed watching us, or watching over us. And I wondered if he still felt he had to protect us.
I was positive he knew something about Judith which he had not told me. He had certainly lied about the fingerprints on the glass, and the night we dined with him I had seen him watching her, as though she puzzled him. He had seen me observing him, and when she and Phil had started home, he tried to explain it as he picked up my light summer coat.
“Amazingly beautiful woman, your sister,” he said.
I was annoyed, for no particular reason.
“Yes,” I said. “She got all the looks in the family.”
He looked astonished.
“I don’t agree with you, Miss Maynard,” he said. “Not for a moment.”
Which, I was to learn, was as near to a sentimental speech as he usually came.
There in bed that night I lit a cigarette and lay thinking. What sort of danger threatened Judith, if any? And how did he come into the picture? That he had fully meant to take the cottage, I already knew, and I had a brief thought he might be the man Ridgely Chandler had employed to check on her. I abandoned that, however. Ridge had said that was over, and he thought she was only dramatizing herself anyhow by her locks and bolts.
It was unseasonably hot that night. There was a breeze of sorts, but it was from the south and only made things worse. At one time I thought I heard someone on the stairs, but the old house always creaks and groans in a wind. And still later I heard Ed Brown’s ancient village taxi go by the road and a minute or two later pass again on the way to town.
I wondered drowsily if the Adrians had at last decided to open their place to escape the heat of the city. Not, of course, that they would have escaped much, but there is a pleasant theory that the country is always cooler than New York. When finally I went to sleep, it must have been three o’clock. I must have practically passed out, for I felt as though someone had been shaking me for some time before I wakened.
To my astonishment it was Bill. He was in bathing trunks and dripping wet, and his young face looked pale.
“For God’s sake wake up, Lois,” he said as I sat up. “Something horrible’s happened. There’s a woman’s body in the pool.”
“A body!” I said, shocked. “Whose body, Bill? You don’t mean—It couldn’t be Judith, could it?”
“It’s not Judith. I never saw her before. And Judith’s locked away. I tried her door first. It was nearer. Get up, will you? I have to wake Phil.”
I got into a pair of slacks and a sweater as being the quickest things I could find, and ran down the stairs. Bill had left the front door open, and it must have been half past six by that time, for the birds were singing and the sun well up. But as nothing rouses either Helga or Jennie until seven, there was no sign of life from the service wing.
It took me a couple of minutes’ hard running to get to the pool, and Bill caught up with me as I reached it. I could only stand and stare, for there was a woman there, or a woman’s body, anyhow. Bill grabbed me by the arm.
“Don’t you go and faint on me,” he said hollowly. “I dived in on top of her. She was at the deep end. I dragged her where she is before I knew she was gone.”
Where she was was on the near side at the shallow end of the pool, where the little brook flows in. There were three cement steps there, and the woman was on them. She was still half in the water, with her back toward us. She had no hat, and her black dress and blond hair eddied in the stream in a horrible parody of life and movement.
I never heard O’Brien until he was there. He was in his bare feet, and he had only a bathrobe over his pajamas. But he looked shocked, if that is the word. Incredulous is better. “Good God!” he said. “Who is it?” He did not wait for an answer. He was down beside her in a few seconds. Then he was raising her head, and I can only say there was pure r
elief in his face.
He straightened and looked across at us.
“Anybody know who she is?” he called.
“I haven’t seen her face yet,” I said feebly.
“Don’t try just now,” he said. “Go back to the house and get some coffee. She can wait. She’s not in a hurry.”
“But you can’t leave her like that,” I protested. “Half of her is in the water! It’s beastly.”
He came back then, moving more deliberately.
“Look, my dear,” he said. “She can’t be moved yet. Either she fell in, and that’s police business, or she was thrown in, and that’s the same thing.” He looked at Bill. “Suppose you use my phone. It’s nearest. And call the chief of police in town. This is county stuff, but the sheriff’s on a vacation. The chief’s name is Fowler. He’s in the local book. Just tell him what happened. Don’t trim it any. I’ll stay here.”
Bill looked injured, but he did as he was told, and O’Brien turned to me.
“I suppose you’d better have a look at her,” he said dubiously. “You may recognize her. After that go up to the house. If I know Fowler, he’ll be here soon, with some of his outfit. And the state police will be sure to horn in. There will be a photographer, too. You don’t need your picture in this.”
I could only nod, and I held my breath while he turned the dead face for me to see. But I did not know her. The face was singularly peaceful, as though indeed she had gone to sleep where she was. She was not very old, I thought. Perhaps in her forties, rather small and slight, and with her hair bleached a golden yellow.
“Where’s her hat?” I said, vaguely feeling she was the sort to wear one.
“It may be in the pool. Her bag, too. Look here, Miss Maynard, are you sure you don’t know her? She must have had some reason to be here.”
“Maybe she meant to kill herself, and the pool was handy. You thought it was someone else, didn’t you?”
“I thought it was your sister,” he said soberly.
The Swimming Pool Page 8