The Classic Mystery Novel

by Dorothy Cameron Disney

  Aided by his volunteer assistant, the police chief searched every cranny of the basement, first and second floor. Unobtrusively I tagged along. My presence was unofficial, and I took no part in the search. Standish himself was handicapped, slowed down because he didn’t know exactly what he was hunting for. He opened drawers, chests, looked into bookcases and wastebaskets, crouched on his haunches to peer under beds and bureaus. He found mouse droppings, dust. Of Laura Twining’s missing traveling bags there was not the slightest sign.

  Gaining Mrs. Coatesnash’s third-floor bedroom, Standish flung back rusty, velvet draperies, pushed the shutters wide and let the fast-fading sunlight in. A canopied four-poster bed, with the mattress rolled and tied, bedding folded on a chair. A flowered carpet, gray with lack of sweeping, a chaise-longue, outlines blurred beneath a wrinkled sheet, a bureau top decked in tarnished bottles. Obviously the room had not been used for weeks. Or entered.

  Standish attacked the bureau drawers, the dresser drawers, plowed methodically through the contents of a painted chest. He fingered yellowed linen, patchwork quilts, smelled lavender and musk. He closed the chest, crossed to close the shutters. A gleaming metal sliver buried in the carpet caught the sunshine and his eye. He stooped. His expression grew startled, incredulous. In his hand he held a broken hypodermic needle. Silas stood very still. I hardly breathed. Standish turned.

  “Do you know what this is?”

  “It belongs to Mrs. Coatesnash. She said it was for medicine—medicine for her heart.”

  “Medicine, eh?”

  “Yes, sir. I saw her use it once, stick it in her arm. She got mad at me, and made me promise not to talk about it. I never did.”

  Like the genii in the bottle, Luella Coatesnash seemed to materialize in her dusty bedroom. Was the old lady a drug addict? Had she filled an empty life and soothed an ancient sorrow with cocaine dreams? Did the explanation for a ten years’ avoidance of society, a taste for being left alone, lie in this gleaming broken needle?

  Standish was an experienced policeman. He had considerable knowledge of the psychology of the warped, drug-laden brain. He knew what drugs did to people, how they bred suspicions, sharpened dislikes into hatreds, magnified the petty slight into the unbearable injury. I watched him, and from his unhappy face could almost read the workings of his mind. If Mrs. Coatesnash were indeed a drug addict, then anything was possible. But he pocketed the tell-tale metal sliver without a word.

  Silas preceded us into the storeroom. He gave me a malevolent glance, but since Standish made no objection I slid inside. The police chief worked patiently through the confusion and the clutter. He poked at chair cushions, shook the couch, opened the trunks, bringing forth ballroom dresses of the fifties and feathered hats. He had expected the evidences of wrongdoing to be vague, but here was nothing at all. Nothing except an old house, overrun with the debris of penny-pinching generations, shut up while its mistress was away.

  Rubbing grime from his hands, Standish groaned and stood still. “I’m done.”

  “There’s still the attic,” said Silas.

  The attic was reached by a ladder at the foot of the corridor. Standish looked at the ladder, started to mount toward the trap door at the top, suddenly changed his mind. It was past seven o’clock; he had spent three exhausting hours in the house, and he was hungry. He decided to delay further investigation until he received a report from Dr. Rand. Did I fancy it? Or did Silas look disappointed? I myself had a queer desire that Standish complete the search and enter the attic, but of course could not suggest it. As later events were to prove, my desire was well founded. The decision of a hungry, discouraged man cost at least one other life.

  Standish and I returned in silence to the cottage. Jack and Harkway had settled down to cocktails, and I invited both policemen to supper. As I was starting for the kitchen, Standish stepped to the telephone, requested the long-distance operator and put in a call to Paris, France. I stopped in my tracks, and I must confess my first thought was of our telephone bill. I suppose I showed my feelings, for Standish cupped his hand over the mouthpiece to say: “This one’s on the town, Mrs. Storm. I thought you young folks had earned the right to listen.”

  In the end, however, the call was not completed. Luella Coatesnash could not be reached. She was, according to an exasperated operator, safely in the Hotel St. Clair but in bed, sleeping under the effects of sedatives prescribed by a French physician who refused to let her answer the phone. The operator relayed the information that Mrs. Coatesnash was suffering from a heavy cold.

  “A heavy cold!” said Harkway with a short laugh. “Well, maybe. But my own guess is that there are nerves on more than one side of the Atlantic.”

  “At that,” said Standish philosophically, “it will probably be as well to talk to Mrs. Coatesnash after Dr. Rand reports on the bone. Doc should complete his analysis some time this evening. Don’t look so disappointed, Mrs. Storm. You can sit in on the call when it’s finally made. Let’s say at the station, after we finish that meal you’ve promised us.”

  “But,” I said, alarmed, “now you’ve warned her, Mrs. Coatesnash may awake, get up, walk out of the hotel and simply vanish.”

  Said Standish with a somber look at me, “No. Mrs. Coatesnash won’t vanish. I haven’t been so stupid and prejudiced as you’ve imagined, young lady, though the Lord knows I’ve been plenty stupid. A guard is posted at the Hotel St. Clair. Mrs. Coatesnash may not realize it, but she has been under observation some days. Since the day,” he finished grimly, “I discovered Franklyn Elliott was staying here in Crockford.”

  On this note we sat down to supper. The sun fell in the west and outside the windows darkness gathered. I drew the shades. No one had much to say. Standish, who had admired and respected Mrs. Coatesnash, continued in his melancholy mood. Even Harkway seemed subdued. After the hectic day, the inaction, the sense of waiting, was hard to bear. At length I broke the silence.

  “It isn’t my place to make suggestions, but anyhow I’d like to ask a question.” I looked at Standish. “Don’t you believe it was Silas who filled in the hole in the rock garden, and changed the lock and swept out the furnace? Don’t you believe he knows exactly who was on the hill last night?”

  “I’m convinced of it.”

  “Then why,” Jack interposed, “don’t you take Silas down to jail?”

  Standish smiled. “On the theory, I suppose, that jail would loosen the Scotchman’s tongue?” Jack nodded. I must admit the theory seemed sound to me, and Lester Harkway, I believe, was of the same opinion. He listened in marked dissatisfaction as the senior officer developed his own idea.

  “Jail,” said Standish, “might make some men talk. But it would be a man of a different type from Silas. Intimidation won’t work with him. You, Mrs. Storm, saw how much he talked just now. I could trump up some charge to hold him—remember, we haven’t a particle of real evidence—but I won’t.” Standish hesitated. “If Lester feels he wants to take the responsibility for an arrest…” The sentence was ended with a shrug.

  Harkway also hesitated. “You’re in charge of the case,” he said at last, a shade ungraciously. “The final decision is up to you.

  “Then,” said Standish with vigor, “we’ll leave the situation as it is. Why, I believe Silas almost wants to go to jail. He practically suggested it himself.”

  “But…”

  “There’s no ‘but’ about it,” said Standish testily. “I’ve had enough experience to know something about human nature. I’ve known Silas for years, I can read him like a book. He’s scared now. You saw that, Mrs. Storm. Why make him mad, why bring out that stubborn streak in him? Once behind bars—mark my words—Silas would get and nurse a persecution complex, and rot before he’d speak. But out of jail,” the policeman went on soberly, “well, that hill’s a pretty lonesome place to sit, with nothing to keep you company but a guilty conscience. Let Silas’s own f
ears and nerves and worries work on him. They’re working now. Bringing him closer and closer to the breaking point—to that point when he must talk. When that time comes—and if I’m any judge, it’s coming soon—we’ll learn from Silas’s own lips who killed Hiram Darnley and why, and the why of everything that happened last night.”

  “But Silas himself,” I said sharply, “might have killed Hiram Darnley. In that event…”

  “No,” said Standish slowly. “No. It wasn’t Silas who shot Hiram Darnley in the back. He has an iron-clad alibi. Ordinarily I don’t put too much stock in alibis, but Silas has an alibi that can’t be cracked. He was at band practice the night that Darnley came to Crockford, Mrs. Storm. Silas was at Fred Tompkins’ barn from five o’clock until after nine. Eight members of the band swear he never left the place, and eight unimpeachable witnesses are enough for me.”

  “Who, then,” I inquired, “do you think murdered Laura Twining?”

  “When you’ve been a policeman as long as I have, Mrs. Storm, you’ll learn it isn’t wise to leap in the dark. How can I say who murdered Laura Twining? How, for that matter, can I prove she’s not alive? One small fragment of bone is a good long way from the body of a specific murdered woman.” He smiled at my disappointed face, and then said somberly, “Not that I’ve any doubt what we’ll prove. And I’ve no doubt, none at all, that Silas is a leading member of our conspiracy.”

  I thought for a moment his aggravating caution—that caution of the policeman who fears to tip his hand—would bring the conversation to a close. He surprised me by saying abruptly, “I’ll tell you one thing I do think—one thing I believe is safe to think. Do you remember that glass I picked up on the lawn after the attack on your husband? The glass from the broken cellar window?”

  “Very well indeed. I’ve always wondered why you took it.”

  “I took it to remind myself I’d found it underneath the window on the lawn. You’re a smart girl, Mrs. Storm. Doesn’t that tell you anything?”

  “I’m afraid it doesn’t.”

  “That glass told me,” said Standish, “that the window was broken from inside the cottage. Not from outside, as you imagined. Which is an important difference.”

  “Important,” Harkway now said quietly, “because the broken window was only a blind. The black-faced man in the closet didn’t need to break a window to enter the cottage. He had keys. He was Silas Elkins.”

  “That annoying alibi,” said Standish, “expired at nine o’clock. You didn’t encounter your ‘burglar’ until very late that night. So, you see, it fits.”

  The two policemen seemed equally triumphant. Out of a welter of impalpabilities, suspicion and conjecture they had arrived at something tangible. Jack and I exchanged a glance. I almost hated to speak, but I finally said:

  “The black-faced man wasn’t Silas. It isn’t possible.”

  They stared at me.

  I repeated, “It simply isn’t possible. It wasn’t more than a couple of minutes after I saw Jack run into the woods before I was talking to Silas on the phone. Silas couldn’t have got to the Lodge from the woods, in that length of time, with wings.”

  “Mrs. Storm,” said Standish with real dismay, “can’t you be mistaken in your time? You were under a strain, you…”

  I shook my head. “I thought Jack was being killed, and I moved fast. I fairly shot into the house—and when I telephoned I reached Silas very quickly. The woods must be a full mile from the Lodge.”

  “There,” said Standish, wryly, “goes an idea I’ve had for days! Everything seemed to fit so nicely. That, Mrs. Storm, is what happens when a cop who ought to know better decides to leap in the dark.”

  He pushed back his napkin and rose disgustedly from the table. After I cleared away the supper things, refusing masculine assistance, we returned to the police station, prepared to await Dr. Rand’s report. But the physician had preceded us there and was seated in the ante-room. With him was a breezy individual whom he introduced as Dr. Harvey Griggstaff, a New Haven osteologist.

  “In view of my report,” said Dr. Rand to Standish, “I thought you would like a second opinion. Dr. Griggstaff, at my request, has made an independent analysis.”

  Standish didn’t notice the curious tone. “Nonsense. Your opinion is good enough for me.” He opened the door to his private office. We all trooped in. The police chief turned around. “Well, let’s hear that report on the bone.”

  Dr. Rand was silent.

  “Go on,” said Standish irritably. “Let’s have that report. I realize the fragment was comparatively small. We don’t expect too much. But could you determine the sex?”

  “We determined,” said the doctor very slowly, “the origin of the bone.” Again he hesitated. “I’m afraid this is going to be a shock. John, that bone is not of human origin. It’s a fragment broken from the femur of a good-sized dog. There’s no question of it.”

  “None at all,” said Dr. Harvey Griggstaff.

  There was, in the room, a breathless, unbelieving silence. The events which had taken place in the rock garden, mysterious enough before, became incomprehensible.

  Why had the unknown acted with such swift and reckless violence to prevent us from digging up the body of a dead dog? Why had the dog’s body been burned in the furnace? It made no sense at all.

  Standish began to roar. “Where’s Laura Twining then? What became of her? Where’s the explanation for what went on last night?”

  “I couldn’t say,” said Dr. Rand. There was a glint of satisfaction in the glance he shot at Jack and me. “Our conversation this afternoon looks like nonsense, doesn’t it? Also it looks as though you youngsters might as well have stayed in bed.”

  The telephone on Standish’s desk started ringing. It rang on and on. Several minutes passed before the police chief snatched the receiver from its hook and spoke. The state of his emotions probably made it difficult for him to understand what was being said. We heard him shout indignant questions. And then, finally, he understood.

  John Standish had experienced one tremendous shock, and apparently he wasn’t temperamentally equipped to experience another. He quietly hung up the receiver, and replaced the telephone on the desk.

  And in the quietest voice I’ve ever heard he said, “That was our Paris call. Apparently I won’t talk to Luella Coatesnash after all”

  “You mean she’s still asleep?”

  “She shot and killed herself fifteen minutes ago.”

  Any recital of what we thought and said, the questions we asked ourselves during the ensuing hours would be futile here. No theory which we advanced to explain the happenings on the hill or to explain the Paris suicide even touched upon the truth.

  I was most mistaken of all. For I believed that Jack and I were done with tragedy. I doubted that the mystery would ever be fully solved, but of one thing I felt sure. Mrs. Coatesnash was responsible for drawing us into the affair, and with her shocking death I was convinced that Jack and I were out of it. Even now, as an exercise in logic, that thinking of mine seems passable, but of course it was wrong.

  That very night, and for the second time, someone surreptitiously entered the cottage.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The Short, Stout Fellow

  Jack and I left the police station at eleven o’clock. There was nothing we could do, and I was too tired to stay. During the ensuing hours New York police attempted without success to discover what had happened to Laura Twining. They traced her to the Hotel Wickmore—she and Mrs. Coatesnash had registered on the afternoon of February 17th—but no one in the hotel remembered the two women, or anything of their activities.

  And all the shipping company knew was that Mrs. Coatesnash had come aboard alone, limped to the purser’s office—a steward recalled the gold-headed cane—and canceled Laura’s passage. In Paris no further information was available. The French authori
ties packed Mrs. Coatesnash’s effects and prepared to ship the body back to Crockford.

  I woke up in the morning in such a physically exhausted state that I remained in bed. I remember suggesting to Jack that I was catching cold.

  “Nonsense! You always think you’re catching cold when you’re overtired. You’ll feel better after breakfast.”

  After which he gallantly served me his own idea of what the invalid might like to eat. We didn’t discuss the case, or even read the papers. We were, to tell the truth, surfeited with mystery. Two dangerous criminals—the actual murderer of Hiram Darnley, and the man who had hidden in our closet—were still unnamed and still at large. We might have thought of that. But we did not. That false sense of security, that belief that we had been eliminated from the baffling drama, imbued us both. Only because of a very trivial circumstance did we discover our mistake.

  Two weeks previously we had ordered coal and this coal was delivered at noon. Against express and often repeated orders, Mr. Brown drove his heavy truck into the yard. I was out of bed and stirring in the kitchen, and the noise took me indignantly outside.

  The culprit greeted me cheerfully. “Where do you want your coal? In the usual place?”

  I nodded sourly. “How do you expect us to grow a lawn if you persist in driving your truck across the yard? You’ve cut the ground to ribbons.”

  “It slipped my mind, ma’am. I’ll do better next time.”

  . “Let’s hope so.”

  I gave him the cellar keys, returned to my dishwashing. Sunlight poured in and I hummed as I stacked and scraped and splashed. Over this housewifely clatter rose the sound of the falling coal. A steady clunk, clunk, clunk. Not exactly pleasant perhaps, but normal, commonplace, and satisfying.