The Classic Mystery Novel

by Dorothy Cameron Disney

  Hastings, thoroughly absorbed in the work before him, went about it swiftly, with now and then brief, murmured comment on what he did and saw. Although his ample night-shirt, stuffed into his equally baggy trousers, contributed nothing but comicality to his appearance, the others submitted without question to his domination. There was about him suddenly an atmosphere of power that impressed even the little group of awe-struck servants who stood a few feet away.

  “Stabbed,” he said, after he had run his hands over the woman’s figure; “died instantly—must have. Got her heart.—Young—not over twenty-five, would you say?—Not dead long.—Anybody call a doctor?”

  “I told Lally to stop by Dr. Garnet’s house and send him—at once,” Webster said, his voice low, and broken. “He’s the coroner, too.”

  Hastings continued his examination. The brief pause that ensued was broken by a woman’s voice:

  “Pauline! Pauline!”

  The call came from one of the upstairs windows. Hearing it, a woman in the servant group hurried into the house.

  Webster groaned: “My God!”

  “Frantic fiends! It gets worse and worse!” Sloane objected shrilly. “My nerves! And Lucille’s annoyed—shocked!”

  He held the smelling bottle to his nose, breathing deeply.

  “Here! Take this!” Hastings directed, and put up his hand abruptly.

  Sloane had so gone to pieces that the movement frightened him. He stepped back in such obvious terror that a hoarse guffaw of involuntary ridicule escaped one of the servants. The detective, finding that his kneeling posture made it difficult to put his handkerchief back into his trousers pocket, had thrust it toward Sloane. That gentleman having so suddenly removed himself out of reach, Hastings stuck the handkerchief into Judge Wilton’s coat-pocket.

  Arthur Sloane, the detective said later, never forgave him that unexpected wave of the handkerchief—and the servant’s ridiculing laugh.

  Hastings looked up to Wilton.

  “Did you find any weapon?”

  “I didn’t look—didn’t take time.”

  “Neither did I,” young Webster added.

  Hastings, disregarding the wet grass, was on his hands and knees, searching. He accomplished a complete circuit of the body, his round-shouldered, stooping figure making grotesque, elephantine shadows under the light of the torch as he moved about slowly, not trusting his eyes, but feeling with his hands every inch of the smallest, half-lit spaces.

  Nobody else took part in the search. Having accepted his leadership from the outset, they seemed to take it for granted that he needed no help. Mentally benumbed by the horror of the tragedy, they stood there in the quiet, summer night, barren of ideas. They were like children, waiting to be instructed.

  Hastings stood erect, pulling and hauling at his trousers.

  “Can’t find a knife or anything,” he said. “Glad I can’t. Hope he took it with him.”

  “Why?” asked Sloane, through chattering teeth.

  “May help us to find him—may be a clue in the end.”

  He was silent a moment, squinting under the rims of his spectacles, looking down at the figure of the dead woman. He had already covered the face with the hat she had worn, a black straw sailor; but neither he nor the others found it easy to forget the peculiar and forbidding expression the features wore, even in death. It was partly fear, partly defiance—as if her last conscious thought had been a flitting look into the future, an exulting recognition of the certain consequences of the blow that had struck her down.

  Put into words, it might have been: “You’ve murdered me, but you’ll pay for it—terribly!”

  A servant handed Hastings the blanket he had ordered. He looked toward the sky.

  “I don’t think it will rain any more,” he said. “And it’s best to leave things as they are until the coroner arrives.—He’ll be here soon?”

  “Should get here in half an hour or so,” Judge Wilton informed him.

  The detective arranged the blanket so that it covered the prone form completely, leaving the hat over the face as he had first placed it. With the exception of the hat, he had disturbed no part of the apparel. Even the folds of the raincoat, which fell away from the body and showed the rain-soaked black skirt, he left as he had found them. The white shirtwaist, also partly exposed now, was dry.

  “Anybody move her hat before I came out?” he asked; “you, judge; or you, Mr. Webster?”

  They had not touched it, they said; it was on the grass, beside her head, when they discovered the body, and they had left it there.

  Again he was silent, brows drawn together as he stood over the murdered woman. Finally, he raised his head swiftly and, taking each in turn, searched sharply the countenances of the three men before him.

  “Does—didn’t anybody here know this woman?” he asked.

  Berne Webster left his place at the opposite side of the body and came close to Hastings.

  “I know who she is,” he said, his voice lower even than before, as if he wished to keep that information from the servants.

  Hastings’ keen scrutiny had in it no intimation of surprise. Waiting for Webster to continue, he was addressed by the shivering Mr. Sloane:

  “Mr. Hast—Mr. Hastings, take charge of—of things. Will you? You know about these things.”

  The detective accepted the suggestion.

  “Suppose we get at what we know about it—what we all know. Let’s go inside.” He turned to the servants: “Stay here until you’re called. See that nothing is disturbed, nothing touched.”

  He led the way into the house. Sloane, near collapse, clung to one of Judge Wilton’s broad shoulders. It was young Webster who, as the little procession passed the hatrack in the front hall, caught up a raincoat and threw it over the half-clad Hastings.

  III

  THE UNEXPECTED WITNESS

  In the library Hastings turned first to Judge Wilton for a description of the discovery of the body. The judge was in better condition than the others for connected narrative, Arthur Sloane had sunk into a morris chair, where he sighed audibly and plied himself by fits and starts with the aroma from the bottle of smelling salts. Young Webster, still breathing as if he had been through exhausting physical endeavour, stood near the table in the centre of the room, mechanically shifting his weight from foot to foot.

  Wilton, seated half-across the room from Hastings, drew, absently, on a dead cigar-stump. A certain rasping note in his voice was his only remaining symptom of shock. He had the stern calmness of expression that is often seen in the broad, irregularly-featured face in early middle age.

  “I can tell you in very few words,” he said, addressing the detective directly. “We all left this room, you’ll remember, at eleven o’clock. I found my bedroom uncomfortable, too warm. Besides, it had stopped raining. When I noticed that, I decided to go out and smoke my good-night cigar. This is what’s left of it.”

  He put a finger to the unlighted stump still between his lips.

  “What time did you go out?” asked Hastings.

  “Probably, a quarter of an hour after I’d gone upstairs—fifteen or twenty minutes past eleven, I should guess.”

  “How did you go out—by what door?”

  “The front door. I left it unlocked, but not open. At first I paced up and down, on the south side of the house, under the trees. It was reasonably light there then—that is to say, the clouds had thinned a little, and, after my eyes had got accustomed to it, I had no trouble in avoiding the trees and shrubbery.

  “Then a cloud heavier than the others came up, I suppose. Anyway, it was much darker. There wasn’t a light in the house, except in my room and Berne Webster’s. Yours was out, I remember. I passed by the front of the house then, and went around to the north side. It was darker there, I thought, than it had been under the trees on the south side.”


  “How long had you been out then, altogether?”

  “Thirty or forty minutes.” He looked at his watch. “It’s a quarter past twelve now. Let me see. I found the body a few minutes after I changed over to the north side. I guess I found it about five minutes before midnight—certainly not more than twenty minutes ago.”

  Hastings betrayed his impatience only by squinting under his spectacles and down the line of his nose, eying Wilton closely.

  “All right, judge! Let’s have it.”

  “I was going along slowly, very slowly, not doing much more than feeling my way with my feet on the close-shaven grass. It was the darkest night I ever saw. Literally, I couldn’t have seen my hand in front of me.

  “I had decided to turn about and go indoors when I was conscious of some movement, or slight sound, directly in front of me, and downward, at my feet. I got that impression.”

  “What movement? You mean the sound of a fall?”

  “No; not that exactly.”

  “A footstep?”

  “No. I hadn’t any definite idea what sort of noise it was. I did think that, perhaps, it was a dog or a cat. Just then my foot came in contact with something soft. I stooped down instinctively, immediately.

  “At that moment, that very second, a light flashed on in Arthur’s bedroom. That’s between this room and the big ballroom—on this floor, of course. That light threw a long, illuminating shaft into the murky darkness, the end of it coming just far enough to touch me and—what I found—the woman’s body. I saw it by that light before I had time to touch it with my hand.”

  The judge stopped and drew heavily on his dead cigar.

  “All right. See anything else?” Hastings urged.

  “Yes; I saw Berne Webster. He had made the noise which attracted my attention.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “He must have. He was stooping down, too, on the other side of the body, facing me, when the light went on—”

  Sloane, twisting nervously in his chair, cut into Wilton’s narrative.

  “I can put this much straight,” he said in shrill complaint: “I turned on the light you’re talking about. I hadn’t been able to sleep.”

  “Let’s have this, one at a time, if you don’t mind, Mr. Sloane,” the detective suggested, watching Webster.

  The young man, staring with fascinated intensity at Judge Wilton, seemed to experience some new horror as he listened.

  “He was on the other side of it,” the judge continued, “and practically in the same position that I was. We faced each other across the body. I think that describes the discovery, as you call it. We immediately examined the woman, looking for the wound, and found it. When we saw she was dead, we came in to wake you—and try to get a doctor. I told Berne to do that.”

  During the last few sentences Hastings had been walking slowly from his chair to the library door and back, his hands gouged deep into his trouser-pockets, folds of his night-shirt protruding from and falling over the waistband of the trousers, the raincoat hanging baggily from his shoulders. Ludicrous as the costume was, however, the old man so dominated them still that none of them, not even Wilton, questioned his authority.

  And yet, the thing he was doing should have appealed to them as noteworthy. A man of less power could not have accomplished it. Coming from a sound sleep to the scene of a murder, he had literally picked up these men who had discovered it and who must be closely touched by it, had overcome their agitation, had herded them into the house and, with amazing promptness, had set about the task of getting from them the stories of what they knew and what they had done.

  Appreciating his opportunity, he had determined to bring to light at once everything they knew. He devoted sudden attention now to Webster, whom he knew by reputation—a lawyer thirty years of age, brilliant in the criminal courts, and at present striving for a foothold in the more remunerative ranks of civil practice. He had never been introduced to him, however, before meeting him at Sloanehurst.

  “Who touched that body first—Mr. Webster?” he demanded, his slow promenade uninterrupted as he kept his eyes on the lawyer’s.

  “Judge—I don’t know, I believe,” Webster replied uncertainly. “Who did, judge?”

  “I want your recollection,” Hastings insisted, kindly in spite of the unmistakable command of his tone. “That’s why I asked you.”

  “Why?”

  “For one thing, it might go far toward showing who was really first on the scene.”

  “I see; but I really don’t remember. I’m not sure that either of us touched the body—just then. I think we both drew back, instinctively, when the light flashed on. Afterwards, of course, we both touched her—looking for signs of life.”

  The detective came to a standstill in front of Webster.

  “Who reached the body first? Can you say?”

  “No. I don’t think either was first. We got there together.”

  “Simultaneously?”

  “Yes.”

  “But I’m overlooking something. How did you happen to be there?”

  “That’s simple enough,” Webster said, his brows drawn together, his eyes toward the floor, evidently making great effort to omit no detail of what had occurred. “I went to my room when we broke up here, at eleven. I read for a while. I got tired of that—it was close and hot. Besides, I never go to bed before one in the morning—that is, practically never. And I wasn’t sleepy.

  “I looked at my watch. It was a quarter to twelve. Like the judge, I noticed that it had stopped raining. I thought I’d have a better night’s sleep if I got out and cooled off thoroughly. My room, the one I have this time, is close to the back stairway. I went down that, and out the door on the north side.”

  “Were you smoking?” Hastings put the query sharply, as if to test the narrator’s nerves.

  Webster’s frown deepened.

  “No. But I had cigarettes and matches with me. I intended to smoke—and walk about.”

  “But what happened?”

  “It was so much darker than I had thought that I groped along with my feet, much as Judge Wilton did. I was making my way toward the front verandah. I went on, sliding my feet on the wet grass.”

  “Any reason for doing that, do you remember? Are there any obstructions there, anything but smooth, open lawn?”

  “No. It was merely an instinctive act—in pitch dark, you know.”

  Webster, his eyes still toward the floor, waited for another question. Not getting it, he resumed:

  “My foot struck something soft. I thought it was a wet cloak, something of that sort, left out in the rain. I hadn’t heard a thing. And I had no premonition of anything wrong. I bent over, with nothing more than sheer idle curiosity, to put my hand on whatever the thing was. And just then the light went on in Mr. Sloane’s bedroom. The judge and I were looking at each other across somebody lying on the ground, face upward.”

  “Either of you cry out?”

  “No.”

  “Say anything?”

  “Not much.”

  “Well, what?”

  “I remember the judge said, ‘Is she dead?’ I said, ‘How is she hurt?’ We didn’t say much while we were looking for the wound.”

  “Did you tell Judge Wilton you knew her?”

  “No. There wasn’t time for any explanation—specially.”

  “But you do know her?”

  “I told you that, sir, outside—just now.”

  “All right. Who is she?” Hastings put that query carelessly, in a way which might have meant that he had heard the most important part of the young lawyer’s story. That impression was heightened by his beginning again to pace the floor.

  “Her name’s Mildred Brace,” replied Webster, moistening his lips with his tongue. “She was my stenographer for eight months.”
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  The detective drew up sharply.

  “When?”

  “Until two weeks ago.”

  “She resign?”

  “Yes. No—I discharged her.”

  “What for?”

  “Incompetence.”

  “I don’t understand that exactly. You mean you employed her eight months although she was incompetent?”

  “That’s pretty bald,” Webster objected. “Her incompetence came, rather, from temperament. She was, toward the last, too nervous, excitable. She was more trouble than she was worth.”

  “Ah, that’s different,” Hastings said, with a significance that was clear. “People might have thought,” he elaborated, “if you had fired her for other reasons, this tragedy tonight would have put you in an unenviable position—to say the least.”

  He had given words to the vague feeling which had depressed them all, ever since the discovery of the murder; that here was something vastly greater than the accidental finding of a person killed by an outsider, that the crime touched Sloanehurst personally. The foreboding had been patent—almost, it seemed, a tangible thing—but, until this moment, each had steered clear of it, in speech.

  Webster’s response was bitter.

  “They’ll want to say it anyway, I guess.” To that he added, in frank resentment: “And I might as well enter a denial here: I had nothing to do with the—this whole lamentable affair!”

  The silence in which he and Hastings regarded each other was broken by Arthur Sloane’s querulous words:

  “Why—why, in the name of all the inscrutable saints, this thing should have happened at Sloanehurst, is more than I can say! Jumping angels! Now, let me tell you what I—”

  He stopped, hearing light footfalls coming down the hall. There was the swish of silk, a little outcry half-repressed, and Lucille Sloane stood in the doorway. One hand was at her breast, the other against the door-frame, to steady her tall, slightly swaying figure. Her hair, a pyramid on her head, as if the black, heavy masses of it had been done by hurrying fingers, gave to her unusual beauty now an added suggestion of dignity.