The Classic Mystery Novel

by Dorothy Cameron Disney

  “All right,” Greenleaf agreed, his tone a little surly. “Your appointment to my force is O. K. I fixed that this afternoon. Good night.”

  “Good night—and don’t forget to send that stuff off to the Charlotte laboratory tonight. If we can find out who scratched somebody last night, if we can determine who had little bits of foreign skin under the finger nails today, we’ve got the answer to this murder mystery. That’s one thing sure.”

  Bristow turned off the lights in the living room and went to his dressing room to prepare for bed on the sleeping porch.

  “Money,” he was thinking as he undressed; “money and fifteen thousand dollars’ worth of jewelry. Where has it all gone? That’s the thing that will settle this case, and I think—I think I’ve a pretty good idea of what will be proved about it.”

  CHAPTER IX

  WOMEN’S NERVES

  Lucy Thomas in a cell in the Furmville jail sat on the edge of her cot at midnight, staring into inky darkness while she tried to remember the events of the night before. She was not of the slow-witted, stupid-looking type of negro women. The thing against which she struggled was not poverty of brain but the mist of forgetfulness with which the fumes of liquor had surrounded her.

  Questioned and requestioned by the police during the afternoon and early evening, she had been able to tell them only that she and Perry had been drinking together in her little two-room cabin. When he had left her, what he had said, whether he had returned—these points were as effectually covered up in her mind as if she had never had cognizance of them.

  She did remember, however, certain things which she had not imparted to the police. One was that at some time during the night there had been a struggle between herself and Perry. The other was that at some time, far into the night or very early in the morning, she had heard the clank-clank of the iron key falling on the floor of her house, a key which she had worn suspended on a ribbon round her neck.

  She rocked herself back and forth on the cot, her head throbbing, her mouth parched, tears in her eyes. To the white people, she thought, it did not matter much, but to her the fact that she and Perry had intended to get married was the biggest thing in her life.

  “I don’t know; I don’t know,” her thoughts ran bitterly. “Ef Perry tuk dat key away fum me, he mus’ done gawn to dat house—an’ he wuz full uv likker. Ef he ain’ done tuk dat key fum me an’ den later flung it back on de flo’ uv my house, who did do it?”

  She sobbed afresh.

  “He is one mean black when he gits too much likker in him. Ain’ nobody knows dat better’n I does. An’ he sayed somethin’ las’ night ’bout gittin’ a whole lot uv money. He—”

  She moaned and flung herself backward on the cot.

  “Gawd have mussy! Gawd have mussy! I done remembuhed. I done remembuhed. He done say somethin’ ’bout dat white woman’s gol’ an’ jewelery. Gawd! Dat’s whut he done. He done it! Dat’s why he wuz fightin’ me. He wuz tryin’ to git dat kitchen key. An’ he got it! He got it! Ef he done kilt dat woman, de white folks goin’ to git him sho’ly—sho’ly. An’ him an’ me ain’ nevuh gwine git married—nevuh. Dey’ll kill him or dey’ll sen’ him to dat pen. Aw, my Gawd! My Gawd!”

  She sat up again and began to think about Mrs. Withers, how well the slain woman had treated her, how kindly. From that, her thoughts went to ghosts. She fell to trembling and moaning in an audible key. It was not long before a warden, awakened by her cries of terror, had to visit her and threaten bodily punishment if she did not keep quiet.

  After a while, she relapsed into her quiet sobbing.

  “I think maybe he done tuk dat key. I knows he done lef’ me durin’ de night, an’ I b’lieve he done come back. But I ain’t gwine say nothin’. Maybe I don’ know. Maybe I is mistuk. De whole thing done got too mix’ up fuh me. Maybe he kilt her an’ maybe he ain’ been nigh de place. But I wish I coul’ know. My holy Lawd! I wish I done know all dat done happen.

  “Dat key fallin’ on de flo’. Who done drap it dar ef Perry ain’ drapped it? Dat’s whut I’d like to know. Ef he ain’ had dat key, ain’ nobody had it.”

  She lay down, weeping and sobbing from unhappiness and terror. Bristow and Greenleaf would have given much to have known her suspicions, suspicions which amounted to a moral certainty.

  On the sleeping porch of No. 5, Manniston Road, Maria Fulton lay awake a long time and tortured herself by reviewing again and again the thoughts that had crushed her during the day. Miss Kelly, on a cot at the foot of the girl’s bed, heard her stirring restlessly but could not know in the darkness how her long, slender fingers tore at the bed-covering, nor how her face was drawn with pain.

  “The overturning of that chair,”—her mind whirled the events before her—“the sound of that whisper, that man’s whisper, and the sight of that foot! He wore rubbers. I know he did. He always wears them when it’s even cloudy. It was he! It was he!”

  Her nails dug into her palms as she fought for something like self-control.

  “If it was not he? I would never have fainted—never. That’s what made me faint, the sickening, undeniable knowledge that that was who it was. And I loved him! But—but the rubber-shod foot, the size of it! Am I sure? Could it have been—”

  She groaned so that Miss Kelly lifted her head from her own pillow and listened intently, trying to determine whether the sufferer was asleep or awake.

  “He’s not stupid,” she swept on, closing mutinous lips against the repetition of sound. “He knew Enid could do nothing—nothing more. I don’t understand. Oh, I don’t understand! I wonder now why I said I heard nothing.

  “I wonder why I lay unconscious on the floor near the dining room door all those hours—until ten o’clock this morning. It was because the knowledge was too much for me to stand—just as it is too much now. And I can’t share it with anybody. I’ll never be able to get it off my conscience. If I did, they’d hang him—or the other one who—”

  At that thought, she screamed aloud, a wild, eerie sound that chilled the blood of even Miss Kelly, accustomed as she was to the cries of suffering and despair. The nurse was at the hysterical girl’s side in a moment, holding her quivering body in strong, capable arms.

  “What was it? What was it, Miss Fulton?” she asked soothingly.

  Maria brushed the back of her hand across her forehead, which was beaded with big, cold drops of perspiration.

  “Nothing, Miss Kelly; nothing,” she half-moaned. “A bad dream, a nightmare, I guess. Give me something to make me sleep.”

  She drank eagerly from a glass the nurse put to her lips.

  “If I begin to talk in my sleep, Miss Kelly, call me, wake me up, will you?” she begged, the fright still in her voice.

  “Yes, I will.” This reassuringly while Miss Kelly smoothed the pillows and readjusted the tumbled coverings.

  Maria grasped her arm in a grip that hurt.

  “But will you?” she demanded sharply. “Promise me!”

  “Yes; indeed, I will. I promise.”

  Miss Kelly meant what she said. She was not anxious to be the recipient of the sick girl’s confidences.

  CHAPTER X

  EYES OF ACCUSATION

  Bristow, at his early breakfast, devoted himself, between mouthfuls, to the front page of The Furmville Sentinel. It was given up entirely to the Withers murder.

  “Murder—murder horrible and mysterious—was committed early yesterday morning,” announced the paper in large black-face type, “when the beautiful and charming Mrs. Enid Fulton Withers, wife of George S. Withers, the well-known attorney of Atlanta, was choked to death in the parlour of her home at No. 5 Manniston Road. The most heinous crime that has ever stained the annals of Furmville,” etc.

  The article went on to recite that Chief Greenleaf of the Furmville police force had been fortunate in securing the assistance of a genius in running d
own the various clues that seemed to point to the guilty party. Mr. Lawrence Bristow, of Cincinnati, now in town for his health, had worked with him all day in unearthing many circumstances “which, although each of them seemed trivial, led when summed up to the almost irrefutable conviction that the murder was done by a drunken negro, Perry Carpenter,” etc.

  In spite of this, the paper continued, the dead woman’s husband, arriving unexpectedly on the scene, had employed by wire Samuel S. Braceway, the professional detective of Atlanta, who would reach Furmville early this morning and, probably, work with Chief Greenleaf, Mr. Bristow, and the plain-clothes squad in the effort to remove all doubts of the guilt of the accused negro.

  There followed a sketch of Braceway which was enough to convince the readers that in him Mr. Withers had called into the case the shrewdest man in the South, “very probably the shrewdest man in the entire country.”

  “Evidently,” Bristow was thinking when Greenleaf rang the door-bell, “while I’m a ‘genius,’ Braceway’s the man everybody relies on when it comes to catching the murderer.”

  The chief was in a hurry, and the two men, going out of Bristow’s back door, walked down to the corner of the sleeping porch of No. 7, the nurses’ home. The frail wire fences that had served to partition the back lots of Nos. 5, 7, and 9 had either fallen down or been carried away, but there was a tall five-board fence at the rear of the three lots. From this board fence, the hill sloped down toward the southeast, the direction in which the negro settlement containing the home of Lucy Thomas was located.

  Bristow, frankly bored by the belated search, let Greenleaf lead the way.

  “I went up to the sanitarium late last night,” the chief told him, “and had a long talk with Miss Hardesty. She says the man she saw night before last was right here, just a few yards from this Number Seven sleeping porch; and, it seemed to her, he made straight for the board fence. We’ll follow in his footsteps. That will take up to the fence in the middle of the rear line of Number Seven’s lot.”

  He was following this route as he talked, Bristow limping a few yards behind him.

  Greenleaf overlooked nothing. The lot had been cleared of last winter’s leaves, and the search was comparatively simple, but, if he saw even so much as a small stick on either side of him, he turned it over. They were soon at the fence, about twenty yards from the sleeping porch.

  “There’s not a trace—not a trace of anything, chief,” said Bristow, leaning one elbow on the top board of the fence.

  Greenleaf, however, was not to be discouraged. After he had walked around again and again in ever-widening circles, he stopped and thought.

  “If that man was running away and trying to make good time,” he exclaimed, suddenly inspired, “he didn’t jump the fence in the middle there, where you are. He took a line slanting down toward that negro settlement. The chances are he went over the fence down at that corner.”

  He pointed to the southeastern corner back of No. 5 and, with his eyes on the ground, began to work toward it.

  Barely a yard from the corner, he stooped down swiftly, picked up something and turned joyfully toward Bristow, who still leaned against the fence.

  “Look here! Look here, Mr. Bristow,” he called, hurrying across to him.

  Bristow examined the object Greenleaf had found. It consisted of six links of a gold chain, three of the links very small and of plain gold, the other alternating three links being larger and chased with a fine, exquisite design of laurel leaves, the leaves so small as to be barely distinguishable to the naked eye.

  The lame man shared the chief’s excitement.

  “By George! You’ve got something worth while. I should say so!”

  “What do you make of it?” asked Greenleaf, eager and pleased. “It must have belonged to Mrs. Withers, don’t you think?”

  “There’s one way to find out,” Bristow answered, looking at his watch. It was half-past eight o’clock. “Let’s go and ask Withers.”

  They went around to the front of No. 5.

  “One of the end links is broken,” Bristow said as they ascended the steps. “My guess is that this is a part of the necklace Mrs. Withers wore when she was killed. You remember the mark on the back of her neck. It might have been made by the jerk that would have been required to break these links.”

  Miss Kelly, answering their ring, told them Mr. Withers had gone to the railroad station to meet Mr. Braceway.

  “Then, too,” she added, “Miss Fulton’s father is due on the nine o’clock train. Mr. Withers may stop down town to meet him.”

  “I’d forgotten about that,” said Bristow. “We’ll have to ask your help.” He handed her the fragment of chain. “Will you be so kind as to take that back to Miss Fulton and ask her whether she recognizes it, whether she can identify it?”

  Miss Kelly complied with the request at once.

  She returned in a few moments.

  “Miss Fulton,” she reported, handing the links back to Bristow, “says this is a part of the chain Mrs. Withers wore round her neck night before last. She wore a lavalliere; it had two emeralds and eighteen rather small diamonds.”

  “Good!” exclaimed Greenleaf, glancing at the lame man. “I guess that fixes Perry.”

  “Undoubtedly,” Bristow assented; and spoke to Miss Kelly: “I beg your pardon, but is Miss Fulton up this morning, or will she be up later?”

  “She’s dressing now. She wants to be up to meet her father.”

  “In that case, I’ll wait until later. What I would like to have is a complete, detailed description of all of Mrs. Withers’ jewelry. I wish you’d mention that to her, will you?”

  Greenleaf was anxious to return to his office.

  “This last piece of evidence,” he said, “ought to go to the coroner’s jury. It clinches the case against Perry. Here’s the whole business in a nutshell: the buttons missing from his blouse, one found in Number Five, the other in your bungalow; Miss Hardesty’s having seen him the night of the murder; the ease with which he undoubtedly got the kitchen key from Lucy Thomas; the imprint of his rubber-soled shoe on the porch; the finding of this piece of gold chain; and his failure to establish an alibi. It’s more than enough to have him held for the grand jury—it’s murder in the first degree.”

  Bristow went back to his porch. Looking down to his left and through the trees, he commanded a view of Freeman Avenue.

  “When I see an automobile flash past that spot,” he decided, “I’ll hurry down to Number Five. I want to be there to witness the meeting between Miss Fulton and her father. It may be possible that, when this scandal—whatever it was—was about to break concerning Mrs. Withers, this family was lucky enough to have a negro hauled up as the murderer. In any event, it’s up to me to keep track of the relations between Fulton, his daughter, Withers, and Morley. The psychology of the situation now is as important as any material evidence.”

  He did not have long to wait. At a quarter past nine he caught a glimpse of a big car speeding out Freeman Avenue. He sprang to his feet, hurried down to No. 5, rang the bell, and was inside the living room by the time the machine had climbed up Manniston Road and deposited in front of the door its one passenger. He was a man of sixty-five or sixty-seven years of age, very white of hair, very erect of figure.

  Bristow did not have time or need to formulate an excuse for his presence before Mr. Fulton rushed up the steps to meet Maria. As she came from the direction of the bedrooms to greet him, her expression had in it reluctance, timidity even.

  The father and daughter met in the centre of the living room. Bristow, stationed near the corner by the door, could see their faces. He watched them with attention strained to the utmost.

  In the eyes of Maria there was a great fear mingled with a look of pleading. The old man’s face was deep-lined; under his eyes were dark pouches; and his lips were tightly compressed, as if he sou
ght to prevent his bursting into condemnation.

  With a little catch in her voice, Maria cried out, “Father!” and stood watching him.

  For a moment the old man’s eyes were dreary with accusation. Bristow had never seen an emotion mirrored so clearly, so indisputably, in anybody’s eyes. It was a speaking, thundering light, he thought.

  The father, without opening his mouth, plainly said to the girl:

  “At last, you’ve killed her! It’s all your fault. You’ve killed her.”

  Bristow read that as easily as if it had been held before him in printed words. So, apparently, did Miss Fulton. The pleading expression left her face, and, in place of it, was only a flourishing, lively fear.

  But Fulton put out his arms and gathered her into them, took hold of her mechanically, displaying neither fondness nor a desire to comfort and soothe.

  Bristow quietly left the room and returned to his porch.

  “Her father,” he analyzed what he had seen, “blames her for the tragedy—possibly believes her guilty of the actual murder. Why? This is a new angle—brand new.”

  He went in and called up Greenleaf, only to be told that the chief had left word he was to be found at the Brevord Hotel. Telephoning there, he got him on the wire.

  “Neither Withers nor Braceway came up here with old Mr. Fulton,” he began.

  “I know,” put in the chief. “I’m down here to meet Braceway now. He and Withers are in conference. Braceway doesn’t want to go to the inquest. I’m to take him by the undertaker’s to look at the body, and then he wants to run up to see you. Says he won’t learn anything important at the inquest; he’d rather talk to you.”

  “All right,” returned Bristow. “That suits me perfectly. When will he be here?”

  “In half an hour, I suppose. And I’ll run up as soon as the inquest is over.”

  “I wonder,” Bristow communed again with himself, “whether this Braceway is on the level, whether Withers is on the level. What’s their game—to find the real murderer or to shut up a family scandal?”