Ill Met by Moonlight

by Zenith Brown

  I looked up. The window of Hawkins’s room over the garage was open, and I could hear his voice.

  I went on up. Colonel Primrose cocked his head down and glanced around at me as severely as Sergeant Buck had done. Then he smiled.

  “This is my assistant, Parran,” he said. “Sit down, Mrs. Latham. Now then. Go on, Hawkins. What time was it when you heard them?”

  “It was jus’ twelve o’clock, suh.”

  “Sure of that?”

  “Absolutely, Cunnel. Ah’m sure of that, ’cause Ah heared the clock strike. Ah heared Mr. Jim say, ‘It’s exactly midnight,’ an’ then Ah heared the clock strike twelve times. Ain’ no doubt in mah min’, an’ that’s one consolation. Ah knows Mr. Jim’s voice when Ah hears it. He was right over there under mah bed, his voice come up right through the flo’.”

  Mr. Parran listened, nodding.

  “They’s always goin’ on, Sa’dy night. Ah don’ mind the young folks, but it seems to me married folks ain’ no call to go gallivantin’ all night way into Sunday mornin’. The Lawd floods an’ the Lawd sends fire, the Lawd ain’t got no more patience with foreigners. Ah tol’ Mr. Jim that.”

  Hawkins is a preacher in Baltimore during the winter. In the summer he’s the Goulds’ butler and chauffeur, and a man of prominence at April Harbor.

  Mr. Parran got up. “Well, you see they don’t try to make you change your story, Hawkins,” he said.

  “Ain’ nobody make me change mah story. Ah don’ get no sleep to speak of in the firs’ place, Ah got a bad heart, Ah don’ like this business of bein’ kep’ up all night. Ah tol’ Miss Alice that this mornin’.”

  “All right, Hawkins,” Colonel Primrose said. “You can go back to the house now. You won’t mind, I suppose, if we use your room for headquarters?”

  “No, suh.”

  The old darkey shambled down the stairs, his white starched coat glistening in the sun. Mr. Parran spat out of the window.

  “Well,” he said, in his dry nasal accent, “we’ll just see what Mr. Bishop’s fancy New York lawyer makes with that.”

  I hadn’t meant to take him in on it, but I was annoyed at that.

  “He’ll make plenty of it,” I said.

  Both of them looked at me. Colonel Primrose smiled. Mr. Parran didn’t. I don’t think he liked me any more then than he did later.

  “Jim Gould was at my house at twelve o’clock Saturday night,” I said. “He got there at quarter to twelve. Your sergeant saw him come in with me. And he left just as you came in, Colonel Primrose—at ten minutes to one.”

  Colonel Primrose cocked his eye down at me.

  “You’re sure about those times?” he said soberly.

  “Absolutely. There’s no possible doubt of it. And furthermore . . . you probably haven’t heard that Sandra Gould was hit on the head by the jib when her mast cracked and the boat capsized. George Barrol held her up until she came to enough to hang on to the boat. That’s why he was so exhausted when they brought him in, and why she didn’t swim in herself.”

  Mr. Parran stared at me with his eyes first wide open and then narrowed angrily. Then he looked a little doubtfully at the Colonel.

  Colonel Primrose took off his panama and wiped his forehead.

  “She was?” he said.

  He nodded slowly. “It might do it. In any case, Parran, I should think Gould’s fairly well cleared, if Mrs. Latham is certain of her times and Hawkins is certain of his. He could mistake the voice easier than the words.—Get him back here, Parran.”

  The old man had not got very far.

  “Yas, suh,” he said. “It was exactly midnight. There ain’ no doubt in mah min’.”

  He shook his snowy kinky head, looking squarely at the State’s Attorney through his gold-rimmed spectacles.

  “Ah came down here at ten o’clock, an’ Ah read mah Sunday-school lesson twice over, an’ Ah went to bed. An’ Ah woke up. Ah heared Mis’ Gould quarrelin’, sayin’ she was goin’ to see anybody what she wanted to, an’ it weren’t none of nobody’s business. She was talkin’ loud an’ Ah understood what she said, which Ah don’t gen’ally do.”

  “You’re quite sure it was Mrs. Sandra Gould?”

  “Yas, suh, Ah’m sure. She was talkin’ to a lady an’ she was mad as a hornet.”

  The torn velvet petals flashed into my mind. I turned away, because Colonel Primrose was looking at me with that uncanny X-ray stare of his, and I knew I’d have to explain what had struck me then as soon as I was alone with him.

  “Ah thought they was gone then, ’cause Ah heared the do’ run to an’ screech lak a baby owl, the way it does jus’ ’fore it goes plumb to ’cause they ain’ enough grease on it. Then Ah didn’ hear no mo’ soun’ till Ah heared Mis’ Gould laugh an’ start singin’ one of them songs she got. Then Ah didn’ hear no mo’ till Ah heared ’em in the cah. Ah prayed de Lawd, an’ then they was talkin’ under they breath, an’ mighty soon Ah heared Mr. Jim—‘It’s exactly midnight’—an’ the clock. Then Ah heared the do’ of the garage screech again, lak it was closin’ or openin’, but they must have changed they min’s, ’cause the cah didn’ go out.”

  “You, heard the engine?”

  “Not fo’ very long Ah didn’. Ah didn’ hear nothin’ else till ’bout three o’clock.”

  “You probably dropped off to sleep?” Colonel Primrose asked.

  “ ’Deed ’n’ Ah didn’, suh. Ah ain’ got a wink o’ sleep all night.”

  We stood in the tiny little chamber over the garage, listening to him. Below I could hear the men moving about and the deadened tones of their voices through the carpeted floor. I couldn’t have distinguished a voice through there for the life of me, unless I knew it awfully well. But, of course, Hawkins did know Jim’s voice very well indeed. He’s been with them for years.

  Colonel Primrose stood there for some time after Hawkins had gone, looking at me with a puzzled expression on his face, blowing his breath between his lips in perplexed little puffs.

  “Are you sure he was at your place at twelve?” he said at last.

  “Quite sure, Colonel Primrose.”

  He nodded and turned to the State’s Attorney.

  “In that case, Parran, we’ll have to look a little further.”

  Mr. Parran shook his head dubiously. “If that letter is O.K., Colonel,” he said dryly, “and she did get hit on the head with the jib, I don’t see that we’ve got much of a case.”

  Colonel Primrose nodded thoughtfully. “I haven’t examined the note,” he said. “I’ll get at it this evening. Well, we’ve got to find out who the man was who was down there at twelve o’clock, and who the woman was that Mrs. Gould was quarreling with.”

  He put his panama on the back of his head in an extremely unmilitary fashion and put his hand on the door.

  “It may be suicide, Parran. I may be just a nosy old man. But if you don’t mind I’ll keep looking around.”

  Mr. Parran nodded his assent. “I’d be much obliged if you can help clear up whatever it is,” he said. “I guess I won’t need this, however.”

  He took an official-looking paper out of his pocket and started to tear it in two.

  “You might just keep it awhile,” Colonel Primrose said. “Look in this evening if you have time.”

  We went downstairs and stood a moment in the garage doorway. Sergeant Buck joined us, or at least took up his accustomed position directly behind the Colonel. One of the men had turned on the radio in Andy Thorp’s car and was having a bit of music as he worked.

  “They’ve fingerprinted the car, sir, but it’s not much use. Too many people been getting in and out. About all we’ll find is the coroner’s jury.”

  Sergeant Buck obviously did not think much of the way any of this affair was being conducted.

  “Found anything?” Colonel Primrose asked.

  “I haven’t had a chance to look. I’m waiting till these babies go home to dinner, sir.”

  We headed towards the Goulds’ cottage
, and found Andy at home, which was odd. He spends Sunday morning playing golf and Sunday afternoon sailing, and Sunday evening he goes back to New York. I don’t suppose Lucy Lee or the kids see more than five minutes of him the whole week end.

  He was lying on the sofa in the cozy chintz-hung living room of the cottage. There were three empty cigarette packages and a great quantity of butts and ashes all around the glass ash tray on the floor beside the sofa. Andy’s jaw was slightly bruised—which I hoped Colonel Primrose wouldn’t notice.

  Andy was sullen and looked pretty ghastly. Colonel Primrose seemed to ignore both his looks and his manner.

  “Thorp,” he said, “I’m trying to settle the time that Sandra Gould got here, last night. Could you help me out?”

  “I’ve told you all I know,” Andy said curtly. “I brought her and George Barrol home. We were all soaking wet, and getting cold. None of us were doing much sitting around. We went on out and got in the car, left Barrol at The Magnolias, came on home and put the car in the garage. And that’s all.”

  “When did you leave the club?”

  “Right after Grace and Jim. Sandra wouldn’t come home at first, and then when one of the colored boys came in and said Jim and a lady had left, she decided she wanted to go. I guess it was about half past eleven.”

  “And when did you leave the garage, after you’d put the car in?”

  Andy flushed a dull bronze that made his bruised jaw look positively purple.

  “Oh, it was about five minutes to twelve. She didn’t want to stick around. She was sort of crazy wild. Not like herself. She wouldn’t let me go back to the garage with her.”

  “Why not? Did she say?”

  Andy Thorp shook his head.

  “What did you think?”

  “I didn’t think anything—see?” Andy shouted suddenly. He glared at us across the room. “Anything she wanted to do was all right with me. I don’t believe in nagging the daylights out of people.”

  “And you came directly here to the cottage,” Colonel Primrose said imperturbably.

  Andy moistened his lips and fished about for another pack of cigarettes.

  “What’s that got to do with it?” he said sullenly.

  “Sandra Gould was heard quarreling with another woman a few minutes after she left the garage the first time,” Colonel Primrose said quietly. I saw his bright black eyes resting on Andy’s purplish chin. “I thought that if you’d happened to have stayed out for a last smoke—say—you might have seen who it was.”

  “Yes?” Andy said. “Well, I didn’t stay out, and I didn’t see anybody in the second place.”

  Colonel Primrose’s eyes twinkled. “And you wouldn’t admit it in the third. Am I right?”

  “You are—right the first time.”

  Colonel Primrose nodded good-humoredly.

  “Is Mrs. Thorp at home?”

  “No, she’s not. She’s gone to the other end of the beach to get the kids away from all this damn business.”

  “You know, Thorp,” Colonel Primrose said as he got up, “I’m interested in how it happened that you gave Sandra Gould your car keys. She hadn’t planned going anywhere, had she?”

  “I told you she’d left something in the car.”

  “I remember you did. I wondered if you wanted to change your story?”

  “I don’t. And if you wouldn’t mind getting the hell out of here . . .”

  CHAPTER NINE

  We went out. Not precipitately . . . but I don’t think that either of us was sorry to go. I didn’t wonder now that Lucy Lee was so upset.

  “I take it Mr. Thorp was pretty much under Sandra’s spell,” Colonel Primrose said as he went along the crape-myrtle-grown path to the big house where Sandra and Jim had lived with Alice Gould.

  I don’t know whether Colonel Primrose was surprised at seeing all the Bishop family there in Alice Gould’s long cool living room or not. I was. Not to see Rodman Bishop and George so much, because Rodman and Alice had been very good friends—there’d even been some romantic gossip about them when I was young, after Rosemary and Chapin’s mother died. But it was strange seeing Rosemary and the tall dark man she was going to marry there. He wasn’t saying much, it appeared, but I don’t think he was missing much either. He did not seem actually to be watching either Jim or Rosemary, but I noticed that every time Jim reached for a cigarette, even if his back was turned Paul Dikranov seemed to be there with his lighter. Rosemary dropped a snapshot Alice Gould was showing her, and he retrieved it, though I should have said he was entirely engrossed in the story of my life. I was only telling it to him to give Rosemary and Jim a chance to look at each other for a moment in the cold light of day. They must have looked rather different to each other those years ago under an Oriental moon.

  Rodman Bishop was annoyed at me, I think, for bringing the Colonel there. He kept beetling at me, regarding it, I suppose, as a form of fence-sitting on my part. But he looked definitely relieved, I thought, when Colonel Primrose got George Barrol off in a corner and started plying him with questions.

  I’m afraid my attention kept wandering, although Paul Dikranov was intelligent and widely traveled and was certainly putting himself out to be entertaining, now that it was his turn. Nevertheless the conversation died—in all parts of the room—and we found ourselves listening intently to what George was saying.

  “It hit her squarely on the back of the head. She tried to catch herself. I’m not much good, you know, at that sort of thing, but I caught hold of her. It was a job, I’ll tell you, because she was heavy, and I was . . . I was pretty scared. I couldn’t have hung on to her much longer, so it was lucky she came to. In fact—I don’t really mind admitting it—just as she caught hold of the side of the boat I collapsed, rather, and she grabbed me. I don’t remember anything else until I came to on the dock.”

  “But she was quite all right after that?”

  “After she’d got on shore and had a couple of stiff drinks in her,” George said. “She was a little wild. I mean, sort of singing and kicking up her heels. But of course I didn’t know her well enough to know whether that’s the sort of thing she’s likely to do.”

  Colonel Primrose nodded. “Would you have thought it likely that she was planning to take her own life?”

  George cast a sideways glance at Rodman Bishop.

  “Well . . . I wouldn’t like to be awfully positive about it. I . . . I wouldn’t be particularly surprised. Not at anything, really.”

  Colonel Primrose smiled. So did Rosemary. I think it was the first time they had actually looked at each other.

  “When they left you at The Magnolias, Mr. Barrol, did Sandra Gould and Mr. Thorp seem to be on good terms?”

  George was a little perturbed.

  “I wouldn’t like to say anything that might be misleading—but I did gather that she wanted to go somewhere or do something that he didn’t like, or didn’t approve of, or something. I’m not clear about it. You see, they’d given me quite a lot of straight whisky, after I’d got up the hill, and I was awfully sleepy. I wouldn’t say I was intoxicated—”

  “Nonsense, you were potted when I saw you,” Rosemary said.

  George flushed.

  “I just tripped on the stair rug,” he said. “Anyway, you had no business snooping about in the dark.”

  He said it very stiffly. A sudden startled hush fell on the room for just an instant. Fortunately Colonel Primrose did not know the people there well enough to recognize a storm warning when one was hoisted. He turned to Jim Gould, who was standing there, his face drawn in white ridges, his eyes bloodshot from no sleep and too many cigarettes.

  “I think you ought to know, Mr. Gould,” he said gently, “that there is still some question about your wife’s death. If I might venture a piece of advice, I should like to say that for everyone’s peace of mind you ought to let it be definitely settled . . . and permanently settled.”

  “We want it settled, Colonel Primrose,” Jim said quietly. “
We haven’t any other idea.”

  “In that case I suggest that each one of you here give me a brief statement of his whereabouts from half past eleven last night until half past twelve. It seems to be fairly definite that Sandra Gould went into the garage at midnight and did not come out again.”

  Jim’s face contorted in a spasm of distress. He turned away and stood a moment with his back to us, pressing out his cigarette against the fireplace.

  “I was with Grace Latham, at her house, until a little before one,” he said.

  Colonel Primrose nodded. “And when you left her—you went directly home?”

  “Yes.”

  “You didn’t hear the engine running in the garage as you passed?”

  “No.”

  We had all been looking at Jim, but as I glanced away my eye caught Rosemary’s. I don’t even now know what it was in her face that made me all at once infinitely more uneasy than I’d ever been in my life. I felt curiously as if all these people here that I’d known so well and so many years had become utterly strange to me—even Rosemary and Jim. Alice Gould, of course, I could never hope to understand intimately, or Rodman Bishop. I felt too, just then, some kind of terrible undercurrent of fear, and something more ghastly than fear—a sense of something present that was suavely pleasant and at the same time selfishly, callously cruel.

  Perhaps it doesn’t make sense now, but it did to me then. After all, I didn’t know Dikranov—what he felt about Jim, or about Sandra, or about anything, really. And even the rest of them . . . I knew, of course, that no one there would take the last piece of cake on the plate; but if it was bread and the last piece in the world—what then? That was nearer to what we were facing. Dikranov wouldn’t push me out of his way on the sidewalk—but if I were so seriously in his way that it became his life or mine . . . ? I caught myself from shaking my head abruptly.

  A great black and yellow bumblebee buzzed against the copper screen and buzzed away again in the lazy flower-scented afternoon. It was hot and still. From the outside April Harbor would appear as it always had done, lying green and lovely, girdled with blue water where sails nestled gaily like white butterflies in a field of cornflowers. And there was murder here, stealing like a black patch of tar across a white sandy road.