The Classic Mystery Novel

by Dorothy Cameron Disney

  This approximated my own stumbling theory. But Annabelle appeared to forget me. Her next words were uttered in the musing fashion of one who thinks aloud. “That would explain many things.”

  “For instance?”

  “It might clear up Laura’s interest in the annual, mightn’t it? Also it would clarify the missing newspapers.”

  “Are you being entirely frank?”

  The slow exasperating smile emerged. “Compared to you, I’m transparent as a pane of glass. You’re a queer little person, Lola Storm. You sit at my table, stiff as a poker, wary, suspicious, expecting the worst from me. Always the worst.”

  I seized the opening. “You puzzle me. Miss Bayne. Enormously.”

  “Nonsense. I’m very simple.”

  “You weren’t simple yesterday. Why did you say you had never met Franklyn Elliott?” Her expression did not vary, but I fancied she was embarrassed. I cast discretion to the winds. “Thursday night, about eleven o’clock, he came here. I was on the beach. I saw him.”

  She flushed, was confused. She recovered herself. “I won’t for a minute deny you’re right. But really I had to lie. Let me explain. It was the day of the inquest; Elliott didn’t wish to testify; he asked me to keep quiet about his being in the village. I promised and I do keep my promises.” She laughed ruefully. “When I can.”

  She annoyed me, but I almost liked her. She was one of those dangerous people who readily admit to their faults, and by doing so force you to accept them. I lighted a cigarette. “Would you mind saying what he wanted?”

  “Not at all. I am probably Mrs. Coatesnash’s closest friend, and she is his client. We discussed her and nothing else. It was a purely formal interview, quite short. If you had been in the room, you would have been immensely bored.” She sipped stone-cold coffee. “It was my first meeting with Elliott. He’s dull, but we got on fairly well. We had a common interest. I am distressed that Mrs. Coatesnash has been drawn into the Darnley case. So was he.”

  I stopped liking her. “Exactly. You are like everyone else in town—watching out for her and letting Jack and me watch out for ourselves.”

  She adopted the older-woman attitude. She sighed. “You are young, excitable and—mistaken. No one is persecuting you. Certainly I am not. You deceive yourself and refuse me when I try to help.”

  Her words seemed strained, pretentious, artificial. I looked her straight in the eye. “I’m not a child, Miss Bayne. You help only when it suits your own purposes. I daresay you still deny you saw the light. Just as you denied it yesterday.”

  “The light?”

  “The light in Hilltop House last night. I can assure you there was a light.”

  “There was!” Her fingers—strong fingers for a woman—closed about my wrist. “Tell me how you know.”

  I declined to answer, and blundered seriously. As I was to discover long afterward, I told her too little or too much. I might have altered the course of our later tragedies, saved one life certainly and possibly two, had I completed the confidence or failed to make it. She shook me.

  “I insist you explain about the light.”

  I had my small revenge. “I’m awfully sorry, but I gave my information to the police. They asked me not to talk. I promised, and I keep my promises.”

  She dropped her hand. Her eyes were filled with unspoken questions, but she uttered no further protest. She assisted me with my wrap and accompanied me to the door. To the end she clung to the fiction that we were in friendly accord, working together toward the same objective. I didn’t know what to make of Annabelle Bayne.

  As I walked down the steps, I glanced back and saw her in the foyer. She picked up the telephone, rang the Tally-ho Inn and requested Franklyn Elliott. We know now the tenor of her conversation. She repeated to the New York lawyer everything which had occurred during the meeting at the library and luncheon at the house. Consequently when Franklyn Elliott was interviewed by the police later on that afternoon, the lawyer was prepared.

  The luncheon, pregnant with its clouded inferences, occupied less than an hour. Through the fresh, sweet-smelling day I strolled on to Dr. Rand’s offices. His home and office were combined in a large, comfortable, rambling house somewhat in need of paint. Jack, Harkway and the physician were parting on the porch as I arrived. Jack waved at me.

  “Sorry to hold you up, Lola. We were longer than we expected.”

  “It’s all right. I was sufficiently diverted.”

  Harkway gave me a quick look, tipped his cap, asked Dr. Rand to phone him when he finished his report, and strode off toward the station. The physician followed us down a crocus-lined sidewalk to the car.

  “You folks in a hurry?”

  I said we weren’t.

  “Can you spare me several minutes?”

  We could. He took us through a waiting room, in its way as revealing of personality as Annabelle’s living room had been. It had glassed-in bookcases and graceful Windsor chairs. Bound volumes of The Stage and copies of Variety were mixed with medical journals and reports, and patients could take their choice. A reproduction of Rembrandt’s Consultation hung from one wall, but on the opposite wall an inscribed photograph of Lillian Russell showed a majestic bust and gleaming teeth. The actress had visited Crockford in 1901, and village gossips still reported that the physician had been her host at supper.

  We entered the consultation room. Dr. Rand closed the door, sat down and looked at us. Then in a voice so impersonal I hardly recognized it, he said:

  “Take chairs, you two. I think it’s time we had a talk.”

  We sat down and waited. Swinging to his untidy desk, Dr. Rand selected a labeled envelope and shook from it a charred splinter of bone. “I perceive,” he began, “that my good advice met the usual fate of good advice. I deliver a spirited lecture on the evils of curiosity and today you bring me this. Not content with ordinary prying, Mr. Storm, you indulge in housebreaking—a serious crime—run violent hazards, expose your wife to the gravest danger. You’re fortunate you didn’t get her killed. And for what, I ask? For this!”

  There was no adequate answer to his disgust and disapproval. We made none. He replaced the bone in its envelope. He continued to glare at Jack.

  “Are you without reason? Without common sense? Does your life mean nothing to you? Your wife’s life? Must you satisfy your unwarranted curiosity at any cost? Haven’t you learned at your age to mind your own business? I say it’s time you should.”

  Jack valued the other man’s opinion. He looked very young and taken aback as a guilty schoolboy, when he said defensively, “Probably last night’s performance was foolish and dangerous. I know I wouldn’t repeat it. But as things turned out, it was lucky we went up the hill.”

  “Lucky!” The exclamation came in quieter tones. The physician was silent a moment before he spoke again. “Hiram Darnley is dead, murdered. Someone else may also be dead. We can’t bring them back to life. I grant a policeman’s right to concern himself in such affairs. It’s his business, just as it’s mine to heal the sick, and yours to paint, and your wife’s to write. It’s not your business and it isn’t mine, to go through the world as a Peeping Tom. You’ve heard of the Elwell mystery? The Hall-Mills case? Murderers, my dear young man, can go unhung and the world remain a pleasant place.” He looked out his office window to the garden underneath, where early jonquils were opening to the sun. He looked back at us. “What do you two kids know about people? About human trials and tribulations? What do you know about suffering? Only the young and callous would try so hard to trap an old, half-mad woman and get her hauled up for murder.”

  “In other words,” Jack said slowly, “you believe Mrs. Coatesnash is a murderess?”

  Dr. Rand drummed thin, white fingers on his desk. “You’ve got detective blood. Personally, I haven’t.”

  “That’s hardly fair.”

  “I suppo
se it isn’t.” The physician hesitated. “I would like to find in your heart, assuming you have a heart, a little honest sympathy. I’m half inclined to bargain. If I say what I think, will you promise to go back to painting? And keep what I say in confidence? The police will find out soon enough.”

  Jack said gravely, “I’ll do only what I am required by law to do. Unless—” He, too, hesitated. “—unless I am positive that either Lola or myself is in actual danger. Of course, anything you say is between us two. Is that enough?”

  After deliberation, Dr. Rand inclined his head. “Very well. Since the identification, I’ve believed that Mrs. Coatesnash was the moving force behind Hiram Darnley’s death.”

  “She’s three thousand miles away in Paris.”

  “She could leave confederates.”

  “And her motive?”

  Dr. Rand went into a long reverie. Finally he started off on a tangent. “Bachelors,” he said slowly, “often develop soft spots. Comes from no responsibilities, irregular hours and restaurant cooking. My own soft spot is families. Family life. I like seeing fathers with their sons, whooping it up at baseball games, like seeing mothers shopping with their daughters, like the vigor and noise of crowded households. Kids going off to school, rushing home to spend vacations.” He paused again. “If Luella Coatesnash conspired to murder Hiram Darnley, she had the best motive a grief-crazed mother ever had. Her only child. Her daughter Jane.”

  I leaned forward. “Dr. Rand, has it ever occurred to you that Jane Coatesnash may be alive?”

  “It never has,” said the doctor brusquely, “because it isn’t true. The identification was unquestionable. The girl is dead.” Again I interrupted. He ignored me. A second time he said harshly, “Jane Coatesnash is dead. I know. The poor child killed herself. She killed herself for love of a worthless scoundrel. I knew she would. I couldn’t stop her. She was just nineteen and the man was married.”

  “The man was…”

  Dr. Rand took the words from Jack’s mouth. “The man was Hiram Darnley.”

  The cheeping of robins came loudly into the quiet office, and sun splashed the faded carpet. White hair rumpled, blue eyes lacking the usual gleaming light, Dr. Rand sat and looked at us.

  “Aren’t you two willing to let up on the old lady? Wouldn’t you say she’s had her share of trouble?”

  Jack stirred and sighed. “Why did Mrs. Coatesnash wait fifteen years?”

  “Wait!” Dr. Rand expelled a breath. “You don’t imagine she knew the situation at the time! No one knew—no one except myself. I learned only because the girl appealed to me as a physician, an old family friend. She came to this office, sat in that very chair and calmly asked for poison. She wanted a deadly poison, quick, painless, not disfiguring. Poor heartbroken youngster, she favored a pretty death.” His eyes seemed to look down the corridor of the years. “We had a talk, Jane and I; she cried but I got the story out. A heartless, threadbare tale—conventional enough. Darnley was a thoroughgoing rascal, the type of man who feeds his vanity on conquest and on youth. Little Jane, just nineteen, was probably his easiest victim. I tried to talk iron into the girl, good hard sense; thought I’d succeeded, though obviously she still adored the man.”

  “Then you didn’t tell the mother?”

  “Certainly not! I didn’t guess I had failed until Jane disappeared from college. I knew then. It was too late. Three weeks too late. Three weeks after coming here she killed herself.”

  “Then you were the only person who had an inkling of the truth?”

  “Unquestionably I was. Jane was a reserved kid, no chatterbox.”

  “Then how,” inquired Jack, “would Mrs. Coatesnash stumble on the facts after fifteen years? She trusted Hiram Darnley with the very search for Jane. Until two weeks ago he handled all her business.”

  Scraps of information began to fit together in my mind like pieces in a jig-saw puzzle. Laura Twining had exhibited a surprising interest in the Coatesnash girl. Suppose she had discovered not that the girl was alive, but that she was a suicide. A forgotten letter might have put her on the right track, a diary—could Jane have kept a diary?—or a phrase of idle gossip. Such an impetus might clarify her visit to the library.

  I jumped into the conversation. “Perhaps Laura Twining found out and told Mrs. Coatesnash.”

  “Why should she?” said Jack. “She would have felt as the doctor did. That the dead past should stay dead.”

  Unexpectedly Dr. Rand came to my assistance. “Don’t be so glib, young man. Human beings are the product of their brain cells, their hormones and their experience. They vary, they progress, they disintegrate. Experience changed Laura, or in my opinion it did. She was a good fool when first she came to Crockford, pious, eager to please, humble, meek, a collection of the drearier virtues. But she had years of a damn tough life, and worms turn; fools change their coats.

  “Women in Laura’s position—paid companions, living in an atmosphere of wealth without a penny to bless themselves—often go to pieces, morally, spiritually, any way you choose. They lead unnatural, servile, hemmed-in lives; they breed neuroses, envies, gnawing jealousies. For a decade Laura got kicked around, grinned and bore it. People sometimes turn the other cheek, but they seldom love the person who makes them turn it. Say Laura did learn about Jane. Would she remain a Christian? I doubt it. Would she keep her mouth shut when by breaking the news in some subtle feminine way she could do Mrs. Coatesnash a mortal injury and even the score of years?”

  I saw Laura in a new and blinding light. It made me uncomfortable and—sad. Jack stared at the physician. “Sheer malice sounds rather weak. Laura needed her job. Mrs. Coatesnash would probably refuse to credit the story and Laura would be out on the street.”

  “Assuming Laura did find out and did tell, we can assume she had a better motive than malice. Jane Coatesnash is still a vivid conversational topic in Crockford. How’s this? Laura threatened to broadcast the news unless …” Dr. Rand shrugged. “Mrs. Coatesnash is wealthy. The companion hadn’t a dime. Maybe the poor soul thought she saw a chance to secure the independent old age she often talked about. And then discovered,” the doctor finished grimly, “that blackmailers sometimes have no old age to worry about.” With that he stood up from his desk. “I haven’t talked so much in a month. I’ve said things I shouldn’t have said. But anyhow you’ve heard my facts and my opinions.”

  Jack rose, too. “Of course, there are a good many unanswered questions. Why, for instance, did Hiram Darnley carry that bagful of money? On what pretext did Mrs. Coatesnash lure him here? You probably know that Franklyn Elliott is in the village, has been since the day of the inquest. What’s his purpose? Do you think he’s implicated in his partner’s murder? Could Elliott explain what happened to Laura?”

  Dr. Rand would not be drawn. “I don’t,” he said, “propose to work out the convolutions of the mystery. I wouldn’t if I could. And you’ll remember, please, that you two promised to abandon any independent activities. Go home and give your brains a rest. Though,” he concluded meditatively, “it might not be a bad idea to keep an eye on Silas.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  A Telltale Piece of Glass

  At three o’clock that April afternoon John Standish returned to Crockford from Osage, New York. He had seen Hiram Darnley’s widow in her mountain sanitarium; he had found her a languid, willing, non-productive witness. A woman well past middle age, crippled with arthritis, Abigail Darnley had lived for so long in a world of pain that her husband’s murder had little significance except as it affected her. Since the early period of an ill-starred marriage, their interests had been diverse and separate; she had concerned herself with the petty routine of the invalid and Darnley had paid the bills.

  “I hadn’t seen him in months, Inspector. He hated hospitals.”

  “Can you tell me why, on the night of March twentieth, he thought it necessary to use an
alias?”

  She said in querulous bitterness, “I can’t imagine, unless he was planning to visit some girl. He was your careful sort.” Standish was old-fashioned enough to wince. “The money your husband transported in his satchel, a hundred and eight thousand dollars, has been traced to his account. It almost wiped him out. A sizeable business transaction must have been involved to demand such an amount of cash. Wouldn’t you know about his business?”

  “I didn’t,” she said fretfully. “That was like Hiram—to keep me in the dark.” Then she said in sudden alarm, “The money reverts to me, of course. When will you turn it back?”

  “Very soon, madam. We would prefer, however, for you to collect the money after we arrest your husband’s murderer.”

  This, then, was in Standish’s mind as he turned into the village police station. Jack and I, weary as we were, awaited him there. We had wanted to go home to bed, but Harkway had insisted upon our presence. After Standish summarized the sparse results of his interview with Darnley’s widow, we outlined the Crockford situation. We told of our expedition to Hilltop House, of the garden grave, of Laura Twining’s vanished luggage. We told of the charred bone fragment, of the transformed house and grounds. Only one thing was omitted from our account, and that was the story which had been related by Dr. Rand.

  But the account was telling enough. That was patent from John Standish’s shocked and sober face. For the first time Jack and I managed to shake him in his allegiance to Mrs. Coatesnash. Unwilling as he was, he could not fail to see the implications of her lengthy silence on the subject of her companion. Luella Coatesnash might be a member of an old and honorable Connecticut family, but here was proof of a continued lack of candor.

  “That lawyer of hers,” said Standish, “has been aiding and abetting her. He told me he went down to the Burgoyne to see the women off to Europe. He volunteered the statement. I didn’t ask.”