The Classic Mystery Novel

by Dorothy Cameron Disney

  “Mr. Crown,” the old man answered, “there’s no proof that anybody here killed that woman.”

  “Just what I thought,” Mr. Crown applauded himself. “Glad you agree with me. It’ll turn out a simple case. Wish it wouldn’t. Nominating primary’s coming on in less than a month. I’d get a lot more votes if I ran down a mysterious fellow, solved a tough problem.”

  He strode down the porch steps and out to his car—for the ten-mile run into Washington. Hastings was strongly tempted to accompany him, even without being invited; it would mean much to be present when the mother first heard of her daughter’s death.

  But he had other and, he thought, more important work to do. Moving so quietly that his footsteps made no sound, he gained the staircase in the hall and made his way to the second floor. If anybody had seen him and inquired what he intended to do, he would have explained that he was on his way to get his own coat in place of the one which young Webster had, with striking thoughtfulness, thrown over him.

  As a matter of fact, his real purpose was to search Webster’s room.

  But experience had long since imbued him with contempt for the obvious. Secure from interruption, since his fellow-guests were still in the library, he did not content himself with his hawk-like scrutiny of the one room; he explored the back stairway which had been Webster’s exit to the lawn, Judge Wilton’s room, and his own.

  In the last stage of the search he encountered his greatest surprise. Looking under his own bed by the light of a pocket torch, he found that one of the six slats had been removed from its place and laid cross-ways upon the other five. The reason for this was apparent; it had been shortened by between four and five inches.

  “Cut off with a pocket-knife,” the old man mused; “crude work, like the shaping of the handle of that dagger—downstairs; same wood, too. And in my room, from my bed—

  “I wonder—”

  With a low whistle, expressive of incredulity, he put that new theory from him and went down to the library.

  V

  THE INTERVIEW WITH MRS. BRACE

  Gratified, and yet puzzled, by the results of his search of the upstairs rooms, Hastings was fully awake to the necessity of his interviewing Mrs. Brace as soon as possible. Lally, the chauffeur, drove him back to Washington early that Sunday morning. It was characteristic of the old man that, as they went down the driveway, he looked back at Sloanehurst and felt keenly the sufferings of the people under its roof.

  He was particularly drawn to Lucille Sloane, with whom he had had a second brief conference. While waiting for his coffee—nobody in the house had felt like breakfast—he had taken a chair at the southeast end of the front porch and, pulling a piece of soft wood and a knife from his Gargantuan coat-pockets, had fallen to whittling and thinking.—Whittling, he often said, enabled him to think clearly; it was to him what tobacco was to other men.

  Thus absorbed, he suddenly heard Lucille’s voice, low and tense:

  “We’ll have to leave it as it was be—”

  Berne Webster interrupted her, a grain of bitterness in his words:

  “Rather an unusual request, don‘t you think?”

  “I wanted to tell you this after the talk in the library,” she continued, “but there—”

  They had approached Hastings from the south side of the house and, hidden from him by the verandah railing, were upon him before he could make his presence known. Now, however, he did so, warning them by standing up with a clamorous scraping of his feet on the floor. Instinctively, he had recoiled from overhearing their discussion of what was, he thought, a love-affair topic.

  Lucille hurried to him, not that she had additional information to give him, but to renew her courage. Having called upon him for aid, she had in the usual feminine way decided to make her reliance upon him complete. And, under the influence of his reassuring kindliness, her hesitance and misgivings disappeared.

  He had judged her feelings correctly during their conference in the parlour. At dinner, she had seen in him merely a pleasant, quiet-spoken old man, a typical “hick” farmer, who wore baggy, absurdly large clothing—“for the sake of his circulation,” he said—and whose appearance in no way corresponded to his reputation as a learned psychologist and investigator of crime. Now, however, she responded warmly to his charm, felt the sincerity of his sympathy.

  Seeing that she looked up to him, he enjoyed encouraging her, was bound more firmly to her interests.

  “I think your fears are unfounded,” he told her.

  But he did not reveal his knowledge that she suspected her father of some connection with the murder. In fact, he could not decide what her suspicion was exactly, whether it was that he had been guilty of the crime or that he had guilty knowledge of it.

  A little anxious, she had asked him to promise that he would be back by ten o’clock, for the inquest. He thought he could do that, although he had persuaded the coroner that his evidence would not be necessary—the judge and Webster had found the body; their stories would establish the essential facts.

  “Why do you want me here then?” he asked, not comprehending her uneasiness.

  “For one thing,” she said, “I want you to talk to father—before the inquest. I wish you could now, but he isn’t up.”

  It was eight o’clock when Miss Davis, telephone operator in the cheap apartment house on Fourteenth street known as The Walman, took the old man’s card and read the inscription, over the wire:

  “‘Mr. Jefferson Hastings.’”

  After a brief pause, she told him:

  “She wants to know if you are a detective.”

  “Tell her I am.”

  “You may go up,” the girl reported. “It’s Number Forty-three, fourth floor—no elevator.”

  After ascending the three flights of stairs, he sat down on the top step, to get his breath. Mr. Hastings was stout, not to say sebaceous—and he proposed to begin the interview unhandicapped.

  Mrs. Brace answered his ring. There was nobody else in the apartment. The moment he looked into her restless, remarkably brilliant black eyes, he catalogued her as cold and repellent.

  “One of the swift-eyed kind,” he thought; “heart as hard as her head. No blood in her—but smart. Smart!”

  He relied, without question, on his ability to “size up” people at first glance. It was a gift with him, like the intuition of women; and to it, he thought, he owed his best work as a detective.

  Mrs. Brace, without speaking, without acknowledging his quiet “Mrs. Brace, I believe?” led him into the living room after waiting for him to close the entrance door. This room was unusually large, out of proportion to the rest of the apartment which included, in addition to the narrow entry, a bedroom, kitchen and bath—all, so far as his observation went, sparsely and cheaply furnished.

  They sat down, and still she did not speak, but studied his face. He got the impression that she considered all men her enemies and sought some intimation of what his hostility would be like.

  “I’m sorry to trouble you at such a time,” he began. “I shall be as brief as possible.”

  Her black eyebrows moved upward, in curious interrogation. They were almost mephistophelian, and unpleasantly noticeable, drawn thus nearer to the wide wave of her white hair.

  “You wanted to see me—about my daughter?”

  Her voice was harsh, metallic, free of emotion. There was nothing about her indicative of grief. She did not look as if she had been weeping. He could learn nothing from her manner; it was extremely matter-of-fact, and chilly. Only, in her eyes he saw suspicion—perhaps, he reflected, suspicion was always in her eyes.

  Her composure amazed him.

  “Yes,” he replied gently; “if I don’t distress you—”

  “What is it?”

  She suddenly lowered her eyebrows, drew them together until they were a straight li
ne at the bottom of her forehead.

  Her cold self-possession made it easy, in fact necessary, for him to deal with facts directly. Apparently, she resented his intimated condolence. He could fling any statement, however sensational, against the wall of her indifference. She was, he decided, as free of feeling as she was inscrutable. She would be surprised by emotion into nothing. It was his brain against hers.

  “I want to say first,” he continued, “that my only concern, outside of my natural and very real sympathy with such a loss as yours must be, is to find the man who killed her.”

  She moved slowly to and fro on the armless, low-backed rocker, watching him intently.

  “Will you help me?”

  “If I can.”

  “Thank you,” he said, smiling encouragement from force of habit, not because he expected to arouse any spirit of cooperation in her. “I may ask you a few questions then?”

  “Certainly.”

  Her thin nostrils dilated once, quickly, and somehow their motion suggested the beginning of a ridiculing smile. He went seriously to work.

  “Have you any idea, Mrs. Brace, as to who killed your daughter—or could have wanted to kill her?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who?”

  She got up, without the least change of expression, without a word, and, as she crossed the room, paused at the little table against the farther wall to arrange more symmetrically a pile of finger-worn periodicals. She went through the communicating door into the bedroom, and, from where he sat, he could see her go through another door—into the bathroom, he guessed. In a moment, he heard a glass clink against a faucet. She had gone for a drink of water, to moisten her throat, like an orator preparing to deliver an address.

  She came back, unhurried, imperturbable, and sat down again in the armless rocker before she answered his question. So far as her manner might indicate, there had been no interruption of the conversation.

  He swept her with wondering eyes. She was not playing a part, not concealing sorrow. The straight, hard lines of her lean figure were a complement to her gleaming, unrevealing eyes. There was hardness about her, and in her, everywhere.

  A slow, warm breeze brought through the curtainless window a disagreeable odour, sour and fetid. The apartment was at the back of the building; the odour came from a littered courtyard, a conglomeration of wet ashes, neglected garbage, little filthy pools, warmed into activity by the sun, high enough now to touch them. He could see the picture without looking—and that odour struck him as excruciatingly appropriate to this woman’s soul.

  “Berne Webster killed my daughter,” she said evenly, hands moveless in her lap. “There are several reasons for my saying so. Mildred was his stenographer for eight months, and he fell in love with her—that was the way he described his feeling, and intention, toward her. The usual thing happened; he discharged her two weeks ago.

  “He wants to marry money. You know about that, I take it—Miss Sloane, daughter of A. B. Sloane, Sloanehurst, where she was murdered. They’re engaged. At least, that is—was Mildred’s information, although the engagement hasn’t been announced, formally. Fact is, he has to marry the Sloane girl.”

  Her thin, mobile lips curled upward at the ends and looked a little thicker, giving an exaggerated impression of wetness. Hastings thought of some small, feline animal, creeping, anticipating prey—a sort of calculating ferocity.

  She talked like a person bent on making every statement perfectly clear and understandable. There was no intimation that she was so communicative because she thought she was obliged to talk. On the contrary, she welcomed the chance to give him the story.

  “Have you told all this to that sheriff, Mr. Crown?” he inquired.

  “Yes; but he seemed to attach no importance to it.”

  She coloured her words with feeling at last—it was contempt—putting the sheriff beyond the pale of further consideration.

  “You were saying Mr. Webster had to marry Miss Sloane. What do you mean by that, Mrs. Brace?”

  “Money reasons. He had to have money. His bank balance is never more than a thousand dollars. He’s got to produce sixty-five thousand dollars by the seventh of next September. This is the sixteenth of July. Where is he to get all that? He’s got to marry it.”

  Hastings put more intensity into his scrutiny of her smooth, untroubled face. It showed no sudden access of hatred, no unreasoning venom, except that the general cast of her features spoke generally of vindictiveness. She was, unmistakably, sure of what she said.

  “How do you know that?” he asked, hiding his surprise.

  “Mildred knew it—naturally, from working in his office.”

  “Let me be exact, Mrs. Brace. Your charge is just what?”

  He felt the need of keen thought. He reached for his knife and piece of wood. Entirely unconsciously, he began to whittle, letting little shavings fall on the bare floor. She made no sign of seeing his new occupation.

  “It’s plain enough, Mr.—I don’t recall your name.”

  “Hastings—Jefferson Hastings.”

  “It’s plain and direct, Mr. Hastings. He threw her over, threw Mildred over. She refused to be dealt with in that way. He wouldn’t listen to her side, her arguments, her protests, her pleas. She pursued him; and last night he killed her. I understand—Mr. Crown told me—he was found bending over the body—it seemed to me, caught in the very commission of the crime.”

  A fleeting contortion, like mirthless ridicule, touched her lips as she saw him, with head lowered, cut more savagely into the piece of wood. She noticed, and enjoyed, his dismay.

  “That isn’t quite accurate,” he said, without lifting his head. “He and another man, Judge Wilton, stumbled—came upon your daughter’s body at the same moment.”

  “Was that it?” she retorted, unbelieving.

  When he looked up, she was regarding him thoughtfully, the black brows elevated, interrogative. The old man felt the stirrings of physical nausea within him. But he waited for her to elaborate her story.

  “Do you care to ask anything more?” she inquired, impersonal as ashes.

  “If I may.”

  “Why, certainly.”

  He paused in his whittling, brought forth a huge handkerchief, passed it across his forehead, was aware for a moment that he was working hard against the woman’s unnatural calmness, and feeling the heat intensely. She was untouched by it. He whittled again, asking her:

  “You a native of Washington?”

  “No.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  “About nine months. We came from Chicago.”

  “Any friends here—have you any friends here?”

  “Neither here nor elsewhere.” She made that bleak declaration simply, as if he had suggested her possession of green diamonds. Her tone made friendship a myth.

  He felt again utterly free of the restraints and little hesitancies usual in situations of this nature.

  “And your means, resources. Any, Mrs. Brace?”

  “None—except my daughter’s.”

  He was unaccountably restless. Putting the knife into his pocket, he stood up, went to the window. His guess had been correct. The courtyard below was as he had pictured it. He stood there at least a full minute.

  Turning suddenly in the hope of catching some new expression on her face, he found her gazing steadily, as if in revery, at the opposite wall.

  “One thing more, Mrs. Brace: did you know your daughter intended to go to Sloanehurst last night?”

  “No.”

  “Were you uneasy when she failed to come in—last night?”

  “Yes; but what could I do?”

  “Had she written to Mr. Webster recently?”

  “Yes; I think so.”

  “You think so?”

  “Yes; she went out to mail a le
tter night before last. I recall that she said it was important, had to be in the box for the midnight collection, to reach its destination yesterday afternoon—late. I’m sure it was to Webster.”

  “Did you see the address on it?”

  “I didn’t try to.”

  He stepped from the window, to throw the full glare of the morning sky on her face, which was upturned, toward him.

  “Was it in a grey envelope?”

  “Yes; an oblong, grey envelope,” she said, the impassive, unwrinkled face unmoved to either curiosity or reticence.

  With surprising swiftness he took a triangular piece of paper from his breast pocket and held it before her.

  “Might that be the flap of that grey envelope?”

  She inspected it, while he kept hold of it.

  “Very possibly.”

  Without leaving her chair, she turned and put back the lid of a rickety little desk in the corner immediately behind her. There, she showed him, was a bundle of grey envelopes, the corresponding paper beside it. He compared the envelope flaps with the one he had brought. They were identical.

  Here was support of her assertion that Berne Webster had been pursued by her daughter as late as yesterday afternoon—and, therefore, might have been provoked into desperate action. He had found that scrap of grey paper at Sloanehurst, in Webster’s room.

  VI

  ACTION BY THE SHERIFF

  Mrs. Brace did not ask Hastings where he had got the fragment of grey envelope. She made no comment whatever.

  He reversed the flap in his hand and showed her the inner side on which were, at first sight, meaningless lines and little smears. He explained that the letter must have been put into the envelope when the ink was still undried on the part of it that came in contact with the flap, and, the paper being of that rough-finish, spongy kind frequently affected by women, the flap had absorbed the undried ink pressed against it.

  “Have you a hand-mirror?” he asked, breaking a long pause.

  She brought one from the bedroom. Holding it before the envelope flap, he showed her the marks thus made legible. They were, on the first line: “—edly de—,” with the first loop or curve of an “n” or an “m” following the “de”; and on the second line the one word “Pursuit!” the whole reproduction being this: