The Swimming Pool

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

  Someone—the auctioneer probably—followed her, protesting.

  “But, madam, those chairs are a part of the assets of the estate. I have no right to let you keep them.”

  “They are mine, not my husband’s. I bought them myself.”

  And willy-nilly a van had come and taken them away.

  After that she went to Arizona. Phil returned to college, the servants with the exception of Helga disappeared, and one day Anne appeared and drove Helga and me out to The Birches. It was still cold. The damp mustiness of the place was disheartening, and the furniture from the town house had been merely stacked in the hall and left. I think Anne got help from the village eventually, but that first night Helga and I had curled up together in Mother’s big walnut bed, and I had cried myself to sleep.

  It was late spring when Mother and Judith returned, Mother in deep black and looking harassed, and Judith blooming and beautiful. There were no more picnics around the pool, but Ridgely Chandler Was there a great deal. One day I saw the huge square-cut solitaire on Judith’s finger, and was told she was engaged to him.

  They were married in the fall in the small local church. There were no attendants, and as I may have said Anne found Judith crying bitterly before she put on her white satin dress. I overheard her, but when I went to Helga about it she told me to hush up.

  “All brides cry,” she said. “Just be glad she’s getting a man. Maybe now she’ll settle down.”

  Only she never had. I suppose Doctor Townsend would say the extravagance of her life after the marriage was pure escapism. And of course, behind her locked doors, she was still escaping.

  I wondered if in those more prosperous days before the crash the drowned woman had been employed at The Birches. In that case she should have known the pool, however, and Judith might have remembered her. She had not, I was sure of that. Nor had Helga, who seldom forgot a face.

  Only three of us went to the inquest the next day, Phil, Bill, and myself. For Judith was sick. She had worked herself into a fever, I suppose because she always hated the idea of death. And O’Brien’s cottage was closed and his car gone.

  Before the inquest they asked Bill and me to identify the body as the one we had found in the pool, and I stood for a minute or so, looking down at the woman. It seemed utterly sad to me that she could lie there among strangers. For someone she must have worn that flower-trimmed hat and bleached her hair. And at one time she must have been a pretty girl. Even now she was not wholly unattractive. They say drowning is an easy death. I don’t know. I don’t want to know, but her face was peaceful.

  But, as we waited for the inquest to begin, I wondered about her. Why had she carried that clipping in her bag? What connection could she have had with the murder more than twenty years ago of a prostitute in the New York slums? She must have been young then herself. She was not much over forty now. If she was Kate Henry, she had evidently known this Mollie Preston. There must have been some reason for her keeping the account of that murder all this time, and having it with her when she died.

  And why had she disappeared for all those years? What did she know? Or why again had O’Brien been trying to find her?

  At the inquest later it was evident that considerable local interest had been aroused. The room was crowded, and Phil leaned over and told me the district attorney for the county was present.

  “They’re not sure,” he said. “Maybe a murder, but they’ve got to prove it.”

  It took a little time to get organized, and to call the proceedings to order. But I was still calm, merely interested, until my own turn came. Doctor Christy was presiding, and there was some medical evidence by one of his assistants about the nature of the wound in the back of the woman’s head. It had been inflicted with a sharpish instrument, but probably not a hatchet or anything of that sort.

  “What do you mean by not a hatchet, Doctor?”

  “I only used the word in a general sense. For instance, a hatchet makes a sharp clean cut. The edges of this injury are contused, broken down. The deceased had a thick skull, or there would probably have been a fracture. Considerable force was used.”

  “Could it have been self-inflicted? Or caused by a fall?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “You cannot state the weapon used?”

  “Not of my own knowledge.”

  “Was it the blow that killed her, Doctor?”

  “No. There was no fracture. She died in the pool, but she was almost certainly unconscious, or semiconscious, when she hit the water. Actually she died by drowning.”

  “Can you give an estimate as to the time of the death?”

  “I can only say some hours before the body was discovered.”

  “But approximately?”

  “The water in the pool was pretty cool. I would guess five or six hours. It’s purely a guess. Rigor was well established.”

  But it was Bill who was the star witness, and I think he rather enjoyed it. He identified photographs of the pool and the old diving-platform at the deep end from which he had seen the body.

  “Not that I thought it was a body then,” he said. “It was just something dark. But when I got down to it, I knew what it was.”

  “What did you do then, Mr. Harrison?” Doctor Christy inquired.

  “I got up for air as fast as I could. Then I yelled for help. I thought she might still be alive. But there was nobody around. So I went in again and pulled her to the shallow end of the pool, so her head was out of the water. Then I ran up to the house and wakened my aunt Lois Maynard.”

  “You still thought she might be alive?”

  “Well, no,” Bill admitted. “But I couldn’t just leave her there and go swimming, could I?”

  “It didn’t occur to you to call the police?”

  “I guess I was pretty excited. By the time we got back, the man who lives in the old gardener’s cottage came running over. His name’s O’Brien. He sent me to telephone the chief of police.”

  Doctor Christy looked around the room.

  “Is Mr. O’Brien present?” he asked.

  Fowler, the Chief of Police, stood up.

  “Mr. O’Brien was called away,” he said. “I have his deposition here. The body was already found when he reached the pool. He dived in and recovered the deceased’s bag, but that’s all.”

  Ed Brown came next. He limped to the chair and sat down with the air of a martyr.

  “All I did was take her out from town,” he said, looking outraged. “That’s my job. I never seen her before, and she didn’t talk. Some folks rattle on as if I had nothing to do but listen to them. Only time she spoke was to ask if I was a taxi, and when she got out how much she owed me. I said did she want me to wait and she said no. When I turned around she was still standing there by the road to the Adrian place, like she sort of wanted me out of the way.”

  He didn’t know whether she had got out of the train or not. It was his bedtime. He didn’t like to work late. He had bad arthritis. But as soon as she knew he had a taxi she was inside the car.

  “You mean she got in in a hurry?”

  “I’ll say she did.”

  “As though perhaps she did not want to be seen?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  I had no idea I was going to be called until, after the usual preliminaries, I heard my name and saw that wretched bag on the table.

  “You were present, I believe, Miss Maynard, when this bag was taken out of the pool.”

  “Yes. I watched Mr. O’Brien take it out.”

  “Did you by any chance happen to open it?”

  “No,” I said. “Why should I?”

  He looked at me.

  “It would be natural, wouldn’t it?” he said. “After all, you might want to find out who she was, provided you didn’t know her.”

  “But I didn’t open it,” I insisted. It was the truth, of course. O’Brien had done it. But the medical examiner leaned forward and, picking up the awful thing, opened it and dumped i
ts contents on the table.

  “This may be a case of accident or suicide, Miss Maynard. Or it may be one of murder. I want you to be careful what you say. This woman got off a local train here late at night. She is unknown in the town. She did not bring anything with her to indicate she meant to stay. Now what would that indicate?”

  “I haven’t an idea,” I said truthfully enough.

  “Isn’t it possible she would have a return-trip ticket with her?”

  The question was unexpected, and it left me practically paralyzed. What had happened to that yellow scrap I had seen on the grass? Did O’Brien have it, too? And if so, was that why I was not to say he had opened the bag? I couldn’t speak. I could only hear Doctor Christy’s voice, cold and severe.

  “As a matter of fact,” he said “the conductor of the train believes she did have a return-trip ticket. In that case it has disappeared. Perhaps I’d better rephrase the question. Did you at any time touch the contents of the bag? For example, the compact?”

  “I—I may have,” I said, feeling like an utter fool. “The thing fell open and the stuff spilled out on the grounds. I put it all back.”

  “Then that would account for your fingerprints on the compact?”

  I wanted to sink through the floor, and a small titter showed the crowd was amused. I was not. But the doctor banged on the table with a gavel and went on inexorably.

  “During this—er—accident,” he said “did you or did you not see the return-trip half of a railroad ticket?”

  “There might have been one. I don’t remember.”

  It must have sounded honest, or at least moronic, for at last they excused me. Not without reservations, I realize now, but the inquest was not over. There was a stir in the back of the room as a newcomer entered and someone announced that a Mr. Kirk had arrived.

  I had never seen him before. He was a tall sandy-haired man with spectacles, and Doctor Christy got up and shook hands with him. He apologized for being late and took the witness chair. The doctor turned to the jury.

  “In view of certain developments in this case,” he said, “I took the liberty of asking for assistance from the New York Police Laboratory, which is better equipped than the one in this county. Now, Mr. Kirk, will you state just what you received from us?”

  “One item was an envelope, marked as containing scrapings from under the deceased’s nails. The other was a small scrap of soft leather found, I believe, beside the pool where the body was discovered.”

  There was a stir through the room. This was what they had come for. Doctor Christy rapped for order.

  “You examined these?” he inquired.

  “Yes. Under the microscope. There was a filament of this same leather in the envelope containing the scrapings.”

  “Will you tell us what you then did?”

  “I compared both with various types of the leather used for gloves, as they showed salt from human perspiration. In view of the nature of the wound I considered other possibilities.”

  “Such as?”

  “The grip of a golf club was one. A golf club is an excellent weapon, and on investigation I found that the leather so used corresponded with the sample I had.”

  “Would you say that a golf club was used?”

  “I cannot answer that. It is a possibility, of course.”

  Phil had the nerve to grin and punch me with his elbow, and I knew what he meant. His own clubs stood in their bag in the main hall of The Birches, and had done so for years.

  “Good-by, Lois,” he said. “Write me now and then, won’t you? And a bottle of Scotch would come in handy.”

  “Oh, shut up,” I said savagely.

  To my surprise the inquest was adjourned almost immediately, but only after the district attorney had a low-voiced colloquy with Doctor Christy.

  Phil looked serious as we left.

  “I’m afraid it’s murder,” he said. “The police must want more time. What the hell made you say you didn’t open that bag?”

  “I didn’t,” I said indignantly. “O’Brien did. He dumped the stuff out on the grass. All I did was to put it back.”

  “Why on earth didn’t you say so?”

  “He asked me not to, but if I ever lay hands on him he’ll be sorry. He made a fool out of me, and I fell for it.”

  “I told you he was a cop,” Phil said smugly.

  I was in a cold fury by that time, and Bill suggested a Coke at the drugstore nearby.

  “You look as though you need something,” he observed. “So O’Brien’s still a cop. Hot diggety dog! Ain’t that something? And don’t let that deposition stuff get you. They knew darned well where he was, and why. Only what about that clipping he snitched? Did he give it to Fowler?”

  “Why don’t you ask him?” I said bitterly. “I never want to see the man again. He got me into this mess, and he can damn well get me out of it.”

  “Such language! And I thought you’d fallen for the guy!”

  Phil had not come in with us, so I sat there at a small table with a lot of schoolkids shouting and the usual drugstore smell of scented soaps, drugs, and soda fountain around me, and tried to think. Bill had wandered off to the jukebox and, of course, had somehow picked up a pretty girl on the way. But I was worried as well as angry. Not about the dead woman. After all, I could not see how she concerned me, except that I had made a fool of myself at the inquest. But about the clipping O’Brien had taken. What had a murder twenty years old to do with us? Phil had been away at college at that time, Anne was already married, and Judith not yet even eighteen.

  Yet somehow it did concern us. Angry as I was at O’Brien he had been sure the presence of the dead woman had something to do with us. Actually, of course, with Judith. He had said she might be in danger, and there was no question her terror was real. She had been deadly afraid since Reno. Now she insisted the woman had been mistaken for her and deliberately drowned, and while I knew she was a good actress, there had been no acting when she packed her bags and tried to leave that day. She had been as near desperation as no matter.

  Bill was still at the jukebox when I went to the telephone booth and looked up Doctor Townsend’s number in New York. His nurse answered. She said the doctor was out and who was speaking.

  “It’s Lois Maynard,” I said. “Mrs. Chandler’s sister. Could I see the doctor sometime tomorrow?”

  “Mrs. Chandler has her regular appointment tomorrow.”

  “I don’t think she’ll be coming. She’s not well.”

  “Just a moment. I’ll look at the book.”

  She came back in a minute or two, said I could come at eleven-thirty, and seemed relieved when I said I didn’t want Judith to know about it. She said she thought the doctor would be glad to see me, and hung up as though she had said too much.

  I don’t know how Phil felt when we got home that day, but I drew a long breath of relief when I saw his golf bag in the hall. The clubs were all there. I counted them.

  Chapter 12

  AS USUAL I MADE my publisher the excuse for going into town the next morning, although I had practically abandoned work. As no one in the house ever considered me seriously as a writer this brought no comment from Phil. But Bill spoke up briskly.

  “How about taking me along?” he asked. “I’ll tell him you’re a prime suspect in a murder case. That ought to be good publicity. ‘Novelist Detained in Mysterious Death. Writer of Crime Fiction Involved in Murder Herself.’ How’s that?”

  “I’m not involved and it isn’t funny. You’re not coming.”

  He was persistent, however. He needed new bathing trunks. Did I want to see his derriere through the old ones? I retorted that as I had watched diapers put on him as a baby he was no treat to me. But his Janey, whoever she was, saved the day for me. She called him up and asked him to lunch, so I was able to draw a free breath again.

  I saw Judith before I left. As usual she was locked in her room, but after some grumbling she admitted me. I saw at once something had ha
ppened. She looked worse than the day before, if possible, and her hands shook as she crawled back into bed and tried to light a cigarette.

  “You’ll burn yourself to death someday doing that,” I told her. “How are you? Fever gone?”

  She did not answer. She took a puff and then put down the cigarette.

  “What’s this Jennie tells me?” she said. “About a man at the pool with a gun?”

  I could have strangled Jennie at that moment, but I was in for it, and I knew it.

  “Apparently some tramp wandered in, but he had no gun,” I said as cheerfully as I could. “That’s pure imagination on Jennie’s part.”

  “How do you know it was imagination?”

  “Well, look, Jude. It doesn’t make sense. Jennie waiting for boyfriend on bench. Man appears across pool, points gun, and disappears. Jennie screams and runs. The end.”

  “What do you mean, the end?” she asked peevishly. “She saw someone, didn’t she? And Phil found the place all trampled. I wish you’d stop treating me like a child or a lunatic. I’m neither.”

  I did not argue with her. I had a train to catch, but it only struck me later that she had not asked about the inquest. However, for once she had a morning paper, so perhaps she had read about it.

  On the way out I saw that O’Brien’s cottage door was still closed and his car gone. Not only that, but his girls were raising a terrific racket, as though they needed feeding. I made a mental note to do so when I came back, but personally I never wanted to see him again. Whatever he had meant by vitally important, he had gone away and left me literally holding the bag, and I was fed up to the teeth.

  The train was crowded, but I got a seat, and sat there thinking about a number of things. The newspaper clipping, for example. It was dated 1929, and I tried to remember that period. I had learned some things about it as I grew up, that it was the time of the boyish form, of rolled stockings, and I think the Charleston. Of the short skirt, too. The photograph of Anne on a table in the living room showed her in her wedding dress, the skirt to her knees showing her rather sturdy legs, the waistline down around her hips, and the long satin train which only made the whole outfit grotesque.