by Zenith Brown
I went into the hall, leaving them all behind me out there. The door to the Bishops’ library was shut. I opened it and went into the big book-lined room and over to the desk. I sat down and pulled the telephone over to me. Outside I could hear them talking again. I took up the phone and said “Hello!”
“The Colonel ain’ home, Sergeant, suh,” I could hear Julius saying at my phone.
“This is Mrs. Latham, at the Bishops’, Sergeant,” I said. “Colonel Primrose is here. Would you like to speak to him?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Sergeant Buck said stiffly.
“Hold on. I’ll call him.”
I had just started to take the receiver from my ear when I heard a sound that suddenly struck the blood cold in my veins. It was the familiar tiny sound of the murderer’s clock. Tickety-tick, tickety-tock; tickety-tick, tickety-tock. I sat there for an instant frozen with dread. Then suddenly my heart gave a wild convulsive leap of joy. If I heard that terrible little sound now, with all the Goulds and all the Bishops out on the front porch not fifty feet from me, then it couldn’t be one of them! All, of course, except Andy Thorp . . . and somehow I didn’t care so much about Andy just then.
I opened my lips to call to Colonel Primrose, and stopped short, the words frozen in my throat. For I had taken the receiver away from my ear . . . and the sound of the murderer’s clock still went steadily on. I looked about, half dazed, and there it was, on the desk, not two feet from my elbow. It ticked away, unmistakable, sinister, dreadful: tickety-tick, tickety-tock.
I sat there, trembling from my head to my feet.
Then I laid the receiver carefully down on the desk and picked up the clock as silently as I could. I put it in the bottom drawer of the desk under some papers, closed the drawer and took the key out.
I went back to the porch and told Colonel Primrose his sergeant was on the phone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Lucy Lee watched Colonel Primrose until he had disappeared into the house. She stood up sharply as if the effort of waiting had been almost too much for her.
She came over to me and gripped my arm. “Who was it, Grace?” she demanded desperately.
My brain was still whirling and my veins icy cold at the discovery I’d made of that dreadful clock, ticking away there, monotonous and deadly, right on the Bishops’ desk not a yard from me as I’d answered the phone. I controlled my voice as well as I could manage.
“Sergeant Buck, Lucy Lee.”
She moistened her lips with a lightning flick of the tip of her tongue and pressed her cigarette out in the yellow bowl on the white table. We followed her to the screen door with disturbed eyes.
“I’m going home,” she said abruptly.
The words sounded like a strip of hard cloth being ripped violently apart. She ran down the steps and across the lawn. Not until she’d stumbled and caught herself for the second time did we really understand, I think, that she was ready to crack up completely. Jim Gould must have caught up with her just inside my grounds, because he was off the porch and running past the two great magnolias before his mother had said good-by to Rosemary and Rodman Bishop and left, following them too.
We heard Colonel Primrose close the library door. Nathan Kaufman cleared his throat and said it was so hot in New York you could have fried an egg on the library steps at Forty-second Street the afternoon before, and Rodman Bishop said it was cooler down here than he remembered August usually was at April Harbor.
Colonel Primrose in the door glanced at the Goulds’ empty chairs.
“They’re probably worried about Andy,” George said ingenuously, before Rodman Bishop could stop him.
A faintly amused light flickered in Colonel Primrose’s eyes.
“They probably thought it was dinnertime,” he said cheerfully. “Julius asked me to remind you, Mrs. Latham.”
I gathered Sergeant Buck had said something fairly important that demanded Colonel Primrose’s presence at once, for actually it was an hour before we ordinarily dined.
I got up promptly. We didn’t go home, however. Halfway to the house he said, “Can you drive me to the village?”
“I take it the Sergeant has unearthed vital information?” I said. I was still horribly shaken by what I’d found in the Bishops’ library.
He smiled.
“The last man that underestimated Sergeant Buck was electrocuted on June eighteenth at eight-four P.M., Mrs. Latham,” he said placidly.
“Oh, dear!” I said. We got into the car. I put my foot on the gas. We went past the Bishops’ place at fifty and crossed the bridge over April Harbor Narrows at considerably more.
“Where to?” I asked.
“Police station.” Colonel Primrose smiled. “I presume from the way you drive you know where it is.”
“We don’t enforce laws at April Harbor,” I said. Nevertheless, I stopped the car in front of the red brick building near the basement rear of the county courthouse, and pulled on the brake.
“Shall I wait?”
He looked around.
“This is too secluded a spot to leave anybody in who was murderously shot at less than twenty-four hours ago, Mrs. Latham,” he said. “You come along.”
We went into the bare damp room with its notices of wanted criminals and lost properties. There were spittoons on the dirty wood floor and a large white sign on the wall urging that they be used. To one side was the empty Magistrate’s Court, in the rear a row of cells with two drunken negroes snoring loudly. The officer on duty took his feet off the littered table, straightened his screeching swivel chair, and said, “Howdy, Colonel; howdy, miss.
“The Sergeant said to tell you he’d gone up,” he added. “There’s steps at the end, or you can drive round.”
“Where’s Officer Flint?”
“He’s up with the Sergeant, Colonel.”
I followed them into the Magistrate’s Court more bewildered than ever. The desk sergeant opened a door by the bench and we went up two flights of stairs. Colonel Primrose must have been in better shape than he looked because I was the one out of breath when we came up to the evil-smelling corridor at the top.
The next to the last of the frosted-glass doorways had “A. L Shryock, County Coroner” printed on it. Colonel Primrose opened the door and we went in. Sergeant Buck was standing by the window, with him a raw-boned young man in a uniform that didn’t fit or that he wasn’t used to yet. The coroner’s desk stood in a corner, behind it along the wall filing cabinets marked with the years and types of Mr. Shryock’s professional activities: homicide, drowning, suicide, and so on. Mr. Shryock himself, I was glad to see, was not present.
Sergeant Buck introduced Officer Flint.
“All right, Flint,” Colonel Primrose said briskly. “Let’s hear it.”
“I went on duty at midnight Saturday, Colonel. Around half past twelve I was at the White Lunch on account of a kid throwed a brick at his uncle and it landed in Teddy Pappas’s window, square in the middle of a rhubarb pie. He beat it down the street an’ I was chasin’ him. I caught him an’ brought him in, is why I was comin’ round Church Circle an’ happened to look over at Doc’s place. An’ all of a sudden I says ‘Jeez!’ ”
Mr. Flint looked from one of us to the other.
“I couldn’t figger it out. Certainly looked like Old Lady Potter, but What the hell, I says. So I came closer. I know her, all right, ’cause she sits in the window an’ yells at the kids to keep off the grass. Then she’s always callin’ a cop to pull in a stray dog. ’Course, old Doc’s a great guy.”
Maggie Potter, I gathered, was not going to be mourned by the local constabulary.
“So there’s no mistake about it?” Colonel Primrose said. “You’re sure it was Mrs. Potter?”
“Oh, sure, Colonel. I know her. But I couldn’t figger out what she was doin’. She came down the stairs, and first thing I know she’s headin’ off down the hill towards the dock. I got scared, Colonel—I thought she was goin’ to kill herself, or somethin’. So I followed her
.”
“You’d got rid of the boy?”
“Yeah, I’d turned him in. Well, halfway down, about in front of Maxie’s barbershop, the goin’ wasn’t so hot. I guess she was weak, not havin’ walked so long. Then she got down to the phone booth outside Toplady’s store an’ went in. Stayed so long I was beginning to get worried. It wasn’t till quarter past one she came out. Then she went over to the dock.”
Mr. Flint mopped his brow. Sergeant Buck was standing at somber attention in the corner. Colonel Primrose’s black eyes were resting steadily on the red face of the perspiring young policeman, and I suppose I must have been staring at him like a zany.
“I figgered now’s the time, but she didn’t try to jump in, she just sat there. Course it was a swell night, after the storm, but Jeez, you don’t just sit on the dock. Every once in a while she’d start back towards that phone booth and then she’d change her mind again an’ go back. I figgered she was off her nut an’ I’d call the Doc.
“So I sneaks over to the phone myself, but I couldn’t raise him, an’ Ella, she’s the night operator, she says he’s gone to Nag’s Head an’ he’s been tryin’ to raise his wife, an’ why don’t I go an’ see if there’s anythin’ the matter with the old cat.”
Mr. Flint grinned sheepishly.
“I says she ought to be ashamed of herself talkin’ about a lady like that. I didn’ tell her she was just out there settin’ on the dock. I figgered there wasn’t any call everybody in town knowin’ it. Anyways, she looked like somebody with a heap of trouble on her mind, so I just stuck around. Wasn’t anythin’ else go do anyways. Well, sir, long about half past three she made it to the phone booth an’ she stayed in there a long time. Then she headed home, pretty feeble, an’ went in the house.
“I ducked back to the phone an’ asked Ella who she was callin’. It was somebody at the Colony, Ella says, but she’d hung up again without talkin’ to ’em. That makes Ella sore.”
I didn’t know then that Ella was Mr. Flint’s sister. Not that it made any difference. The story sounded perfectly true, and he couldn’t possibly have been mistaken in a woman whom everybody in town had known for years. I sat there, thinking as best I could in an almost complete mental fog, while Colonel Primrose was asking a few questions, making sure, as a sort of formality, I supposed, that Flint was sure.
For Flint’s story was devastating. If Maggie potter was sitting at the foot of Church Street from a quarter to one or thereabouts until half past three in the morning—plus the time it took her to get home—all directly under the eye of the night police, then she was not quarreling with Sandra outside the Goulds’ garage. Neither was she being an eyewitness of a murder that had taken place at approximately one o’clock. Nor could she have been on the spot at all, or even seen anyone who was.
I looked at Colonel Primrose dumbly. He was nodding his head and biting his lower lip with his upper teeth.
And when Sergeant Buck had escorted Officer Flint out, and come back in, he was still sitting there nodding silently, as if in some curious way he either saw some light in the Stygian gloom or saw none whatsoever—I couldn’t tell which.
He looked over at me once. “She was confined to her house for a long time, wasn’t she?”
“Seven years,” I said. He nodded again and went on chewing his underlip.
Neither I nor the Sergeant spoke. We just watched him, Sergeant Buck with a sort of awed complacency. It was more than I felt. So far as I could see he was completely stymied. He had gone on the assumption that it was Maggie Potter that Hawkins and Andy had heard and seen respectively, and that her brutal, incredible murder in my own living room was the result of her having seen the killing of Sandra Gould and being seen by the murderer there outside the Goulds’ garage. And now all that was most definitely out.
Colonel Primrose suddenly snapped out of his nodding meditation, looked absently at me for a moment and then, to my surprise, turned to the rows of cabinet files behind Mr. Shryock’s desk. He looked at them for an instant, and turned back to me before I could ask what he expected to find there.
“I’ll come back with Buck, Mrs. Latham,” he said. “Don’t wait dinner for us.”
Sergeant Buck’s dead pan lit up like an arc light. I was glad to be dismissed, for that reason if for no other.
I was having coffee on the front veranda when Colonel Primrose came back, alone. I found myself wishing Sergeant Buck were with him—there was no telling what new and distinctly ominous discoveries he was out making.
Colonel Primrose pulled up a chair and sat down. I poured him a cup of coffee.
“One lump or two?”
“Straight, please.”
He took it from my hand and leaned back with it balanced precariously on his crossed knee. He looked tired. His mouth and chin had a grimness in repose that I hadn’t noticed before. Neither of us spoke. I’d been thinking too seriously about the possible implications of Sergeant Buck’s discovery to want to inquire into it until he indicated the direction it pointed. For just one thing, there was a woman at the garage Saturday night when Sandra Gould was murdered, and if it wasn’t Maggie Potter, then it plainly must have been someone else—someone much closer to me than Maggie had ever been.
Colonel Primrose finished a second cup of coffee before he leaned forward and looked at me intently.
“Mrs. Latham—will you tell me one thing, honestly . . . with no hedging?” he asked.
“Probably not,” I said.
“I know. This is quite serious for everybody.—Do you know who shot at you Sunday night?”
It was so plainly getting serious for everybody that in spite of my intentions I hardly hesitated.
“I don’t like to say, for the simple reason that it just seems so ridiculous in the cold light of day,” I began.
“It wouldn’t have been so ridiculous if he hadn’t missed you.”
“I suppose it wouldn’t. I thought it was Paul Dikranov. But I haven’t any real way of knowing. I thought I smelled those Turkish cigarettes he smokes. It seemed to me I’d have to have more than that to go on. A reason for his doing it, for example.”
“The reason’s plain enough,” he said shortly.
“You presumably saw what went on Saturday night in the Goulds’ garage.”
“Furthermore,” I said, “I smelled the cigarette smoke from the chairs on my lawn, and the empty case was way on the other side, by the hedge.”
He looked intently at me, I thought a little startled.
“What do you mean?”
“The brass shell—didn’t your men find it? It was there in the gap in the hedge when I went to the Goulds’ and gone when you and I came back through, just before we found Maggie here.”
Colonel Primrose stared at me, and drew a very deep breath. I imagine he was counting ten before he spoke, because when he did speak he was quite calm. In fact he managed a chuckle.
“I shall always remember you, Mrs. Latham,” he said, “—apart from being a charming hostess—as the person who helped me the most, in this case.—Listen, Mrs. Latham. Doesn’t the fact of that clock mean anything to you, under those circumstances?”
I swallowed the lump of sheer terror that rose in my throat.
“What do you mean?” I said.
“The clock, Mrs. Latham. The clock that you moved from the library desk at The Magnolias.”
I stared at him, dumfounded.
“You mustn’t think Buck and I are entirely devoid of senses,” he said with a polite smile. “He heard it, of course, when he was talking to you, and he didn’t hear it when he was talking to me. Well, there were only two possibilities; either someone was interested in your conversation and not in mine—which seemed rather pointless just at this time—or you’d done away with the clock. It was quite obvious where it had stood on the desk. Next time remember to scatter papers about, or you could dust the surface. Also don’t forget to lock the drawer above the one you hide anything in.”
He shook his
head at me severely.
“You nearly did a terrible thing, Mrs. Latham. That clock is back in its place. I want it to stay there . . . and nothing is to be said about it. Do you understand that . . . and why?”
I nodded meekly. I expect I did have it coming to me.
“I don’t seem to be able to make you see that we’re dealing with a perfectly cold-blooded murderer,” he went on, a little more kindly. “It’s sheer fool’s luck you aren’t dead and in your grave this moment. I wish you’d try to see that. If it had become known that you’d moved the clock, and knew all that it . . .”
He shook his head.
“There’s another thing. You understand now that the woman Sandra was heard quarreling with, just before she was killed, was not Mrs. Potter.”
I nodded.
“And consequently that it was someone else.”
“Then . . . why was Maggie killed?”
“Because she knew something that made her dangerous to a killer,” he said shortly.
“But . . . I don’t understand. If she wasn’t here—?”
“It’s curious,” he said, rather oddly. “It still doesn’t explain the attempt on your life.—Are you sure you didn’t see Sandra Gould hit over the head?”
“I really didn’t. I didn’t go out of the house till after three o’clock.”
“Did you let Jim Gould out—go out onto the porch with him?”
I shook my head. “No, he went too quickly, when he heard you coming. He didn’t want to be caught in front of my fire in my husband’s old dressing gown, I suppose.”
Colonel Primrose thought that over a minute.
“It’s got to be one of two things,” he said. “Either you do know something, or somebody’s made a mistake. The mistake could be either that you were the woman the murderer saw, Saturday night, and he thinks you saw him when you didn’t, or that Sunday night you were mistaken for that woman.”
He shook his head.
“I take it you really weren’t there,” he said slowly. “And with Mrs. Potter out . . . well, it leaves just one person. And when it gets out who she is, she may be in for trouble. Meaning that I’ve got to talk now to Lucy Lee.”