Ill Met by Moonlight

by Zenith Brown

  I stared at them while he looked calmly at me.

  “Sit down, Mrs. Latham,” he said. “I want to ask you some questions.”

  As he spoke he reached for a leather envelope and pulled the zipper around to open it. I sat down with a pretty sickening sense that he was putting it up to me, and that I’d have to decide quite definitely whether I was hunting with the hounds or running with the foxes.

  He reached into the leather case and brought out the gray sheet of note paper that Alice Gould had found on Sandra’s dressing table, and laid it carefully on the table by the blue petals. He took another piece of paper, folded oblong in a narrow strip, and put it on the table too. Then he looked at me and said, surprisingly, “I want you to tell me about your telephone.”

  “My telephone?”

  He nodded soberly.

  “Well, it’s a rural phone, with a bell attachment,” I said. “There are a dozen or so of us on the line. In fact there’s only one single-party line in the place, and that’s at the club. It’s arranged so the men can have a private wire for business. The other system’s always been here, and we get along with it. You complain a lot when you can’t ever get the line, and when you know somebody like Elsie Carter’s listening in. But that’s the country phone. Why?”

  He looked at me for an instant, his black eyes gleaming a little.

  “It’s just that that interests me,” he said slowly. “The listening in. There’s somebody on your line that listens in nearly every time I answer your phone. I want to know who it is.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know how you’ll find out, Colonel Primrose,” I said. “The operator in the village doesn’t get a signal unless you crank.”

  He nodded.

  “I guessed that,” he said. “No, I can’t find out But you can find out for me—if you will. Will you?”

  I hesitated.

  “You’re afraid, aren’t you? Afraid of—”

  “Afraid of spying on my friends? Yes. I suppose I am. After all, Sandra Gould caused enough trouble when she was alive—”

  He shook his head again, looking at me queerly.

  “Hasn’t it occurred to you, Mrs. Latham, that the person who murdered Sandra Gould may just conceivably not be a friend of yours?”

  “What do you mean?” I said.

  He chuckled suddenly. “The determination with which all you people calmly assume that whoever killed her was one of you is a little . . . amusing. However, I’ve got to have some inside help.”

  He stopped, thinking intently a moment.

  “Let’s put it this way, Mrs. Latham. You get me the information I want. If it involves someone you don’t want involved, then you can keep it to yourself—on the condition that you do keep it to yourself. That you don’t, in that case, give me away either. Will you do that?”

  I nodded—not very happily; and he nodded with some satisfaction.

  “All right then. There’s one other point about your phone, Mrs. Latham.”

  His eyes were fastened on mine in a sharpened sort of calculation, as if he was trying to decide whether to trust me a little further. I moved uneasily. All things being equal, I’d just as soon he didn’t.

  “You haven’t been as close to your phone as Lilac and I have the last few days.”

  I looked rather surprised, I suppose. He went on.

  “Someone has been calling you up, and then hanging up without speaking. Now, whether they’ve expected you to answer and didn’t care to talk to me or your cook, and have rung off for that reason, I don’t know. It might simply be that.”

  “You mean that after you answer the phone they hang up without speaking?”

  He nodded.

  “It’s happened a number of times. Once while you were out earlier today, and three times while you and Rosemary were down at the lane this evening.”

  “While Dr. Potter was here?” I asked—rather craftily, I thought. He shot me a quick glance.

  “And after he left,” he said calmly. “But what interests me most is that they called last night about 3:15, when you were out of the house. That’s what woke me up, and that’s how I knew you were out Because I waited quite a while before I answered it.”

  “But you were sure they’d not hung up—because you did wait so long?”

  He shook his head.

  “No, I traced that call. This morning, after I had breakfasted with your undertaker.”

  I waited for him to go on, quite unconsciously holding my breath.

  “It came from the pay box at the foot of Church Street in the village. The operator didn’t know whether it was a man or a woman.”

  “In the village . . . at a quarter past three?” I demanded. “That’s ridiculous!”

  “Why?”

  “Well, I mean people don’t go about calling you up at quarter past three and hanging up Not unless they’re very tight.”

  “Or are under a great strain, Mrs. Latham. The strain of having murdered somebody, for instance. Or of thinking perhaps that they know who did murder somebody.”

  All this left me completely in the fog “You mean, that the murderer is calling me up?”

  Colonel Primrose hesitated. “I’ve also traced this afternoon’s calls,” he said.

  “Where do they come from?”

  “The operator can’t tell me definitely It’s a two-party line. One of the parties is the vestry room of St. John’s Church in the village. I suppose that’s a semi-public phone.”

  “I wouldn’t know about that.”

  He nodded.

  “You see, Mrs. Latham, this is a fairly common psychological phenomenon. Someone has something weighing on his mind. He’s projecting himself by means of the telephone into the heart of this wretched business for a number of possible reasons. He might want to talk and decide to talk, then back down when he gets his party. He might just want to see that we’re still here; he might be keeping tab on you. However, that’s not the point.”

  “What is it, then?” I said meekly.

  “It’s this. Every time this phone of yours rings—whether it’s a genuine call or your mysterious caller who hangs up immediately I answer—someone is listening in. The presumption is that it’s not our shy friend at any time—for a reason that I’m about to tell you. It’s some one of your neighbors, in other words, Mrs. Latham. Now . . . will you find out which one?”

  “My dear man,” I said, “don’t be silly! How can I?”

  He chuckled, and then became instantly serious.

  “I’ll tell you,” he said. “It’s quite simple. The person who’s listening in betrays himself, unconsciously, every time he does it. He has a clock, close to his phone and quite audible.”

  I thought quickly of all my neighbors’ telephones. The Goulds’ clock is on the mantel, their downstairs phone in the hall, the upstairs one in Alice Gould’s room by her bed.

  It’s odd how perfectly simple things escape you. I couldn’t possibly remember, try as I would, where Lucy Lee’s phone was or whether there was a clock by it.

  “It isn’t unusual for a clock to be by the phone,” I said. “A dozen people could have one there.”

  Colonel Primrose nodded. “I know. This is a rather special clock. It has a very odd little hippity-hop in the tick. You’ll notice it the first thing. Furthermore, it’s not a big clock, I should think. Not likely to be in the living room or the hall.”

  He looked at me steadily. “Suggest anything to you already?”

  “No,” I said. “It doesn’t. And you mean you’d like me to go snooping about people’s bedrooms listening to the ticking of their clocks.”

  He nodded calmly.

  “Something of the sort. And remembering always, if you want to, that if you find out something, and find you can’t tell me, that you won’t tell anybody else.”

  He looked at me with a queer little chuckle.

  “Well, that’s settled, then. Now—about this.”

  He picked up the piece of gray note paper that
Alice Gould had got from Sandra’s dressing table and handed it to me. I took it, trying to keep my hand from trembling as I did.

  “Mrs. Latham,” he said, very earnestly. “Are you sure, beyond any doubt, that that’s Sandra Gould’s writing?”

  I couldn’t trust myself to speak, so I nodded as calmly as I could.

  He took it back, laid it carefully down on the table in front of him and looked down at it with a puzzled scowl.

  “This mystifies me,” he said. “I can’t understand it. I was sure this was a forgery. Because this woman was murdered, Mrs. Latham—and what’s more, there’s not one of you here that has the least doubt of it. And yet—she’d just written a plain, definite suicide note.”

  He shook his head, staring down at the little gray oblong.

  “Is this at all like Mrs. Gould’s writing, Mrs. Latham?”

  I smiled, thinking of Alice’s delicate precise little script, and the naïve childish flamboyant scrawl in front of him.

  “Not in the least, Colonel Primrose, I should say. No, I’m certain that’s Sandra’s writing.”

  His sparkling black eyes, shrewd and sharp and bright as an old parrot’s, looked steadily into mine.

  “It’s absurd, isn’t it,” he said slowly, “to think for a minute that that woman, in such a situation, would be so obliging as to kill herself—or even that the idea of threatening to would enter her mind. Especially just before she was murdered.”

  “Are you sure she was murdered, Colonel Primrose?”

  “Very sure, Mrs. Latham. So are you. So is everybody here.”

  “You don’t think she was hit over the head by the jib?”

  He nodded. “Probably. Also by Mr. Jim Gould’s monkey wrench.”

  He hesitated a moment, and added—quite unnecessarily, I thought, “Which has your fingerprints all over it.”

  I probably flushed a little. “I told you I picked it up when I stumbled over it on the garage floor.”

  He nodded absently. “I know.”

  We were silent for a moment. “Do you think she knew Paul Dikranov?” I asked.

  “Certainly.”

  “Does he admit it?”

  “No. But he’s a very shrewd fellow.”

  “That’s just what he said about you, a few minutes ago,” I said.

  Colonel Primrose’s eyes brightened humorously.

  “That’s bad. I was just going to add that shrewd fellows often come pretty hard croppers.”

  “He also told Rosemary he didn’t know Sandra.”

  “I know. His story is that she’s a common type in the East—which is quite true, of course.”

  “Where does he come from?”

  “He’s a Georgian. Money from oil concessions—and also, I take it, from supplying arms to natives in one place and another.”

  “Has he explained what he was doing barging about in my garden at three o’clock in the morning?”

  Colonel Primrose cocked his head down and gave me an amused sideways glance.

  “Can you have any possible doubt, Mrs. Latham, that he was interviewing—or planning to interview—the late Mrs. Gould?”

  I stared at him. “Do you believe that?”

  “I don’t know, Mrs. Latham. Besides, I thought it was more important to get explanations from all the people who were barging about the Goulds’ garage at one o’clock.”

  “Oh. And did you?”

  “Not very satisfactory ones,” he admitted cheerfully. “No. For instance—I still don’t know who the woman was that Hawkins heard quarreling with Sandra. Whether it was Rosemary—”

  He paused an instant. I tried mightily not to look at the blue petals on the table. They loomed up at me as big as a peony.

  “Or Lucy Lee. Jealousy is one of the most powerful irritants. Or—”

  He looked at me steadily a second before he added, “—Mrs. Alice Gould.”

  “I suppose,” I said, “there was a woman there? Hawkins didn’t just make it all up?”

  Colonel Primrose nodded. “That’ll be the defense stand, certainly. However, so far there’s no reason to believe Hawkins has misled us.”

  “Are you sure?” I said. “He hated Sandra. Like everybody else he was convinced she ruined Jim’s life. He always called her a foreign devil. Anyway, couldn’t he have heard a quarrel over the radio, the way he did Jim announcing the time?”

  “Are you the official Devil’s Advocate, Mrs. Latham?” Colonel Primrose asked with a chuckle.

  “I’d just like to save you from making a mistake. I understand from your sergeant that so far you’ve never been known to make one.”

  He laughed.

  “I believe in Hawkins’s woman, myself. You know, of course, that the whole business looks definitely on the womanish side.”

  I looked at him aghast at that.

  “It was all easy for a woman to do. Nothing mannish required. The spilt whisky, the crack on the head with the wrench—a slight blow, Mrs. Latham; you’d have thought a strong person would have struck harder than that. Then this telephone nonsense. Also the motive. From the so-called a priori evidence, I should say more women would have cause to hate Sandra Gould than men—always excepting her husband.”

  “You mean you haven’t excepted him?”

  “We examine all sides of the business, Mrs. Latham—with a view to forestalling Nathan Kaufman when he comes tomorrow. He’s a good criminal lawyer—”

  Colonel Primrose stopped a little suddenly.

  “But . . .” I said.

  “But people don’t usually hire him unless they’re guilty as the devil, Mrs. Latham.”

  “Jim Gould didn’t hire him.”

  Colonel Primrose smiled so that his black eyes were lost for an instant in a network of humorous wrinkles.

  “No—but Rodman Bishop did.”

  For a moment I didn’t get the possible significance of that—and when I did the chance had passed.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Suddenly my telephone jangled, eerily in the silent house. One long ring, three short, sounding in every house in our end of the estate. I looked at Colonel Primrose. There was something definitely ominous about it—about going to the phone and finding no one there . . . no sound but a ticking clock.

  He nodded to me. I got up slowly.

  “You’ll listen for the clock, won’t you,” he said quietly.

  Suddenly I wanted to scream, and say no, no, I wouldn’t, I couldn’t—but his eyes were fixed on me steadily, and there was something horribly like a command under the suave reminder. I went towards the door. The telephone jangled again. It’s strange, I thought, how an inanimate object can take on a sudden startling malevolence. My hands were icy cold as I took down the receiver and held it to my ear, listening a moment before I said “Hello.”

  Colonel Primrose was right. It was there; I could hear it distinctly. Tickety-tick, tickety-tock; tickety-tick, tickety-tock.

  “Hello,” I said, making my voice sound as natural as I could.

  Instantly there came a frantic, perfectly familiar voice.

  “Oh, Grace, they’ve stopped Andy, on the plane up. They wouldn’t let him go! What are they doing? Grace, you’ve got to find out for me!”

  It was Lucy Lee’s voice . . . and beyond it the tickety-tick, tickety-tock.

  “I’ll ask Colonel Primrose, darling,” I said, a great deal more calmly than I felt with that tickety-tick, tickety-tock beating in my ears—barely perceptible actually if I hadn’t been so morbidly aware of it. “They probably wanted him to be here tomorrow just in case they open the inquest again.”

  And then I did something that made me feel like a snake in the grass.

  I said, “Where are you, Lucy?”

  It suddenly came to me that I had to know where that tickety-tick, tickety-tock came from.

  “I’m at home—at Mother’s. But, Grace—tell Colonel Primrose Andy was in the house at twelve, last night! He was, Grace, really!”

  “I’ll tell him, Lucy
Lee. You go to bed. It’ll be all right.”

  Tickety-tick, tickety-tock; tickety-tick, tickety-tock.

  I could hear it sounding in my ears when Lucy hung up, and after I hung up. I tried to get it out before I went back into the living room to Colonel Primrose. The idea came to me at first that I couldn’t let him know I’d heard it too. But he knew it without my telling him, although he didn’t mention it.

  “Why have they stopped Andy?”

  He glanced up inquiringly.

  “Was it Lucy Lee?”

  I nodded.

  “He was boarding the plane.”

  He looked blank. I explained that a lot of the men at April Harbor had jobs in Philadelphia and New York and chartered a plane every summer. It picked them up Saturday noon or Friday night sometimes and debouched them in the landing field that was actually the first hole of the golf course, and picked them up again Sunday at midnight.

  “I gather Andy was boarding it to go back to New York when Parran’s men stopped him,” I said. “Don’t say you didn’t know anything about it.”

  “I knew they had an eye on him. I shouldn’t have supposed he would have gone back.”

  “I don’t suppose Andy’s boss takes much interest in his family affairs,” I said.

  Colonel Primrose got up and went to the door. I think he was rather more disturbed than he cared to have seen. He started abruptly when the phone rang again. One long, three short. We looked at each other, I suppose both wondering whether there would be anybody there or not.

  “If you hear that clock again, and anybody answers you,” he said, “will you please say that I’ve left April Harbor on the night plane?”

  I looked blank myself. The phone rang again.

  “Theirs not to reason why,” said Colonel Primrose politely.

  “Sorry,” I said. I went through the swinging door to the inner hall. If I had known he’d cut up to my room and was listening in himself, I should have been pretty sore. But I didn’t. I had not yet realized what the business of having a detective in the home was actually like.

  I took down the phone. It was Jim Gould.

  “Grace,” he said hurriedly. “Listen!”