“You two and Rowley Shore,” said Wait. “Brewer—Archie Shore. All out the door near midnight. Good God, it looks as if you’d have needed traffic signals to keep from running over each other. You still say you saw nobody? Heard nothing?”
“Nobody,” said Dennis. And Daphne said, “Except on the path to the springhouse. I thought there was somebody moving.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know. Not on the path ahead. Somewhere among the firs. I couldn’t tell exactly—the snow muffled sounds.”
“But you did think you heard someone moving?”
“Yes.”
They couldn’t tell whether he believed the things they had said or not.
“What about the wedding ring?” he said.
Dennis said, feeling again, as they had both felt, that the whole story sounded false and rehearsed, “I don’t know anything about the wedding ring.”
“Rowley was to be best man,” said Daphne. Her voice was small and tired. She twisted her hands together and strove to speak calmly, with clearness, so it would convince. “Ben had the ring before dinner. He showed it to me then. I think he gave it to Rowley to keep until the wedding. Because Rowley was to be best man. Ben was—oh, efficient. Orderly. It would have been like him to do it.”
“He had the ring, then, after he’d dressed for dinner?”
“Yes.”
“And he didn’t have it when you found him in the springhouse?”
Dennis saw it was a trap and said quickly, “We didn’t look in his pockets at all. We didn’t think of it. There was nothing in his waistcoat pocket unless—well, Rowley was to dispose of it—he might have got it then.”
“In fact,” said Wait, letting a tinge of melancholy enter his voice—“in fact, you are both determined to put the possession of the ring upon Rowley. Why would he go out of his way to involve you, Haviland? Any particular source of enmity between you?”
“No.”
“Oh,” said Wait. “You just knock him down from sheer cousinly affection.”
Dennis reddened. “That,” he said, “Rowley deserved. Gertrude—” He swallowed and decided to tell that, too. “You see Gertrude—Mrs Shore—is not too—too—”
“Bright,” said Wait. “I gathered that. Well, what’s she trying to do? Make a match for sonny?”
“Yes,” said Dennis.
“And proposes to do it by—well, how?”
“She knew we had planned to—to go away. Daphne and I. She said—”
“Said she’d tell if you didn’t agree to her demands. Nice family,” murmured Wait. “Murderers—extortionists—”
Dennis said, “It’s the money—”
“Not entirely,” observed Jacob Wait with truth. “After all, money can be anything you make it. Natural depravity is something else.”
Dennis, who didn’t expect the detective to moralize, especially with such simple sincerity, was surprised. It was fleeting surprise, however. There was too much to think of that was more important.
“So you think Rowley Shore had the wedding ring and put it in Haviland’s dress coat to frame him?” said the detective to Daphne.
“I thought so. Yes,” said Daphne. “I don’t know, of course, I didn’t see him do it.”
“You would accuse him of it, though, in order to shift the thing from Haviland?”
She didn’t, curiously, feel anger. She replied honestly, “Yes, if I thought it was right. It’s like Rowley somehow—and he didn’t deny it when I told him what I thought. And he did come to the springhouse that night.”
For a moment the detective did not speak. Tillinghouse shifted his position and sneezed, and the lamp made a bright circle on the table and around the stained gold slippers. Dennis looked at them and thought, in an underlayer of his mind, Why didn’t I tell her to do something about her slippers? I cleaned my own shoes—I brushed the snow off my clothes—I looked over everything for fear there was blood—I ought to have told her.
Then Wait said obliquely, “Rowley’s alibi is also his father’s alibi.” And while Dennis looked at him, struck by the possibilities of interpreting it, Wait turned to Schmidt. “Get Mrs Shore down here. And young Shore.” Gertrude. Daphne’s hopes, which had risen a little as the detective questioned and seemed to listen, sank again. Gertrude in a rage, Gertrude getting over one of her nervous headaches, Gertrude baffled and furious with opposition. Any evidence she could give would not be friendly. And suppose Rowley stuck to his story. Maintained that he had not gone to the springhouse. But he couldn’t do that; surely her word and Dennis’ would more than balance Rowley’s; it would be at least two against one. But there was a thing called collusion. There was prejudice. And even if Rowley told the truth, as she knew it, it would still constitute the strongest evidence against her and against Dennis, for he had found them leaning over Ben—Ben so shortly dead.
She understood then; Dennis had been right to tell the whole story. For, since she had openly defied Gertrude and Rowley, it was only a question of time before Wait was told how deeply she and Dennis were involved in the thing. Dennis had been right to tell the story first; before Rowley could tell it. Before Gertrude could tell it.
She looked at Dennis, and he rose and came to her and put his hand upon her own.
“Look here, Haviland,” said Wait. “You say you didn’t look in Brewer’s pockets at all?”
“I didn’t.”
“During that business of getting him down the path from the springhouse, do you think anything could have slipped from his pocket and become lost in the snow without your knowing it?”
“I suppose so. Yes. But it doesn’t seem likely. After all, you don’t carry much in the pockets of a dress coat. And things don’t fall easily from trouser pockets. And it wasn’t so—so rough-and-tumble as it sounds. We made a sort of hammock of my coat.”
“And you stayed entirely on the path?”
“Yes.”
“You were not at any time beyond the firs—out in the shrubbery beyond the path?”
“No. I’m certain of that.”
“You went to Brewer’s room once—twice?”
“Yes. Twice.”
“You took nothing from the room?”
“A bathrobe. Nothing else.”
“And you would be willing to swear that you took nothing from Brewer’s room or from his pockets?”
“Certainly. I am ready to swear to everything I’ve said just now.”
“Well,” said Wait rather grimly, “you’ll have a chance to.”
“Is Miss—Are we still under arrest?”
“Why not?”
“Because she didn’t murder Ben. And I didn’t,” said Dennis. And held Daphne’s hand tightly, but would not look at her. In the silence the drip of the thaw beat an inexpressibly dismal tattoo on the window sill.
Jacob Wait got up and went to the table and leaned against it, facing them with his hands in his pockets.
“Did Brewer know you were leaving together?”
“I don’t know. Mrs Shore says he did.”
“You don’t know. See here, Haviland, suppose he did know. Suppose he went to the springhouse. Suppose he found you there and tried to stop you—what would you have done?”
“I don’t know,” said Dennis, white to the lips, and his eyes two sparks of light under those peaked black eyebrows.
“Your revolver was there. Suppose he had tried to use force. He was by all counts something of a bully. He was a big man—accustomed to having his own way—had an ugly temper. What would you have done, say, if he had laid hands on the girl? What,” said Wait slowly, “did you do?”
“Nothing like that happened.” Dennis was white and taut. “Nothing like that happened. But if it had, it would have concerned only me. Not Daphne.”
Wait made again that curiously impatient gesture with one of his small, mobile hands and shoved it back into his pocket.
“There was nothing to prevent your arriving at the springhouse before Miss Ha
viland—meeting Brewer—killing him—”
“Would I have left my revolver there to be found? Would I have kept the thumbprint? Would I—”
“I’m asking you,” said Wait, and there was a flurry and commotion at the door, and Gertrude swept in, green silk and the pungent smell of cologne swirling around her, and Schmidt a cautious three feet behind. Braley, forgotten in the corner, stepped forward as if he felt he might be needed. For Gertrude was plainly in a rage. Her face was red, her light fine hair violently askew, and her eyes snapping dangerously.
“You!” she cried and waved the cologne-scented handkerchief and put it with exaggerated flourish to her brow. “You—dragging me from a bed of pain—”
Rowley entered. He, too, was angry, but you had to know him as Daphne and as Dennis knew him to perceive that anger, for he looked merely pale and sullen. There was a smudged reddish spot on his jaw. He said crossly, “Oh, do hush, Mother.”
“Even my son,” cried Gertrude, “turns against me,” and kicked the train of her house gown aside and sat down in a swirl of green silk and glared at the detective and then at Dennis and Daphne. She looked as if she might unsheathe claws and spring at any instant, and Wait got down off the table and approached her rather wryly. Braley, somewhat reluctantly, followed his superior and stood behind him.
Wait said directly, “Did Brewer know that Miss Haviland and Dennis Haviland were to meet at the springhouse the night of his murder?”
It startled Gertrude. She floundered, darted one look at Rowley and another at Daphne. “Well, he—that is—yes. Yes,” she said with a kind of defiance. “Yes, he knew it.” She waved her handkerchief, and Wait stepped back a little away from the aura of cologne, and she cried, her eyes flashing and snapping as if venomous little tongues were leaping out, “He knew it. He went to stop them. And they killed him. Dennis and Daphne. Killed him.”
“How do you know Brewer knew it?”
“How do I know?” cried Gertrude. “Why, because I told him.”
Chapter 20
“YOU TOLD HIM?” said Wait, and Gertrude touched her brow with her handkerchief and said, “Certainly. I agreed that he ought to know. Somebody ought to know, anyway, and stop the elopement, and Ben was better able to do so than any of the rest of us.” She shot a look at Daphne. “After all, Daphne, you ought to have decided sooner that you didn’t want to marry Ben. Why, even the wedding presents had come. Or most of them,” said Gertrude. “We hadn’t heard anything from the Wileys yet. Or the Andersons. Funny, how lax people are growing.”
Wait moved a step nearer, and Gertrude stopped abruptly. He said, “So you wanted your nice to marry Brewer?”
“Oh,” said Gertrude. “Yes and no.”
“You didn’t want anything to happen to stop the wedding?”
“Well, I couldn’t stand Ben Brewer. Never could. But, after all, we’d invited people to the wedding. You can’t do things like that—I mean not have a wedding after—”
Rowley said savagely, “For God’s sake, Mother—”
Wait said, “So you told Brewer—just what did you tell him?”
“Why, I told him that Daphne was in love with Dennis and was going to elope with him. He didn’t seem to like it. In fact he went absolutely scarlet, and I thought he was going to—have a stroke or something. I told him not to worry, that girls often felt like that just before a wedding—reluctant, you know. But that I thought he ought to do something about it. He seemed to think so, too,” said Gertrude. “At least, he swore quite a lot and went to the springhouse.”
“Where were you at the time?”
“When I told him, you mean? Why, I went to his room After we’d all gone upstairs that night. He—well, really he all but pushed me out of the way and went right downstairs. Didn’t even stop for a coat, and it was snowing. However, I still think I was right.”
“But you admitted you were glad he died.”
“Certainly I was glad. Thankful he was out of the way. And as to the wedding, well, you can’t have a wedding if anybody dies, everybody understands that. But an elopement is different. Besides,” said Gertrude with an effect of candor, “if Daphne was going to marry one of the two men, I thought it was better to marry Ben, much as I hated him. At least, we would keep him in the family—him and the company.”
“I see. Now, Mrs Shore, how did you know about this—elopement?”
“She saw us,” said Dennis. “She listened at the library door. She—”
“I did no such thing,” said Gertrude. “Johnny told me.”
“Johnny!”
“Certainly. My brother.”
Wait turned to Dennis slowly. “So that’s why whoever it was that opened the library door didn’t tell me. It had to be someone who wouldn’t put that evidence against you in my hands. It—” He stopped short as if he’d been thinking aloud. “Get Haviland—John Haviland—down here,” he said shortly to Schmidt, who went to the door, spoke to a policeman and came back into the room. Wait had turned again to Gertrude. “Johnny told you. Why?”
“Why!” cried Gertrude. “Because he was terribly upset, and who wouldn’t be! Do you realize what Ben Brewer could have done to us if Daphne had done that to him?”
“But I—I wasn’t going away. I knew when I’d had time to think that I couldn’t—I couldn’t—” Daphne’s small voice stopped, and no one seemed to have heard it. Gertrude was talking on: “… what retaliation—what revenge he could have taken upon us. Not that Johnny talked much of that. Johnny isn’t farsighted as I am. Johnny isn’t at all like his father—he simply doesn’t see a crisis when it’s under his nose. He—”
“Suppose you tell me just what happened. From the beginning. When did your brother tell you this?”
“Oh, after we’d gone upstairs. The men came up only a little later, and Johnny came to me, and I saw at once that he was worried. Somehow I can always see these things. So I asked what was wrong. He didn’t want to tell me, but I insisted and got it out of him. He said finally that he’d opened the library door, not knowing even that Dennis had come back, and that there was Dennis holding Daphne in his arms and that Dennis was saying—oh, I don’t know what exactly; a lot of love-making, I suppose.” Her eyes snapped once viciously at Dennis and went back to the detective. “Anyway, that he said, ‘We’ll meet at the springhouse, then, at eleven-thirty. We’ll go away together’ and that she needn’t marry Ben, that he wouldn’t let her—all that. Johnny was very upset, didn’t know what to do, and just closed the door quietly and went away. Of course, I was horrified. I said, ‘But you ought to stop it, Johnny. This is dreadful. All the wedding presents have come. They can’t elope.’ He said he knew he ought to. But he wouldn’t go and just sat there and said finally that he wished he had the force that Ben had. And of course I saw that the thing to do was to go to Ben. So I did. Right away.”
“That was about what time?”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” said Gertrude helpfully. “But Ben hadn’t started to undress yet. I told him and, as I told you, he was really quite enraged and just flung himself past me and down the stairs. I decided perhaps it was best and went back to my room.”
“Was Johnny there waiting for you?”
“Yes,” said Gertrude. “Sitting there looking sort of sick and chewing his mustache. Johnny’s always been a baby about things. I told him what I’d done and that Ben had gone out to the springhouse. He was very upset—I think, really, he’d had too much to drink, and he’s never had a head for liquor. Anyway, he walked up and down in my room for an hour or so.”
“An hour?”
“Well, he didn’t leave till after the clock struck twelve-thirty. I remember that. We kept talking. I thought I had taken the wisest course, and I thought things would be perfectly all right. Ben would meet them, bring Daphne back and kick Dennis out. Which I thought he richly deserved. Johnny kept saying he ought to go down, he didn’t want Daphne to be worried. I kept telling him not to go—that it was best to let them settl
e things themselves. Of course,” said Gertrude, “I never thought of Dennis’ murdering Ben. But I must say it didn’t seem a bad idea.”
“Mother!” said Rowley. “You’ll talk yourself into the electric chair yet.”
“Oh no, I won’t,” said Gertrude. “I have an alibi. Johnny was there with me the whole time Ben was being murdered. Ben went down the stairway, and I went straight into my room, and Johnny was there and we talked at least an hour. I figured it out later. I didn’t tell you,” she said blandly to Jacob Wait, quite forgetting her rage in the satisfaction of taking the center of the stage, “because I’m naturally close-mouthed about things. Like my father.”
“You didn’t tell because you’d thought of a way to use what you knew,” said Wait. “You may have an alibi, Mrs Shore, but you have deliberately obstructed the progress of the law, and I’m not sure you are not in the position of an accessory after the fact.”
“A what?” said Gertrude.
Wait turned to Rowley. He said, “All right, now, Shore. Let’s hear your story.”
“You’ve heard it,” began Rowley.
“I mean the real one. You came to the springhouse—helped Haviland move the body—let’s have it in your own words.”
“Oh,” said Rowley, giving Daphne an ugly look, “so they’ve told! Well, did they tell that I found them actually leaning over the body of the man they’d just killed?”
“Yes,” said Wait. “Why did you go to the springhouse?”
“To investigate the shot.”
“What time was that?”
“I don’t know exactly.”
“Miss Haviland, you say it was close to twelve when you let yourself out the front door?”
“Yes.”
“You would have heard the shot if it had been fired when you were outside?”
“Yes. I think so.”
“Then, say, it was a little before twelve. You, Mrs Shore, sent Brewer to the springhouse at about—”
“Sent him to the springhouse!” cried Gertrude. “I did not. I merely told him—”
“You say he went downstairs a little before eleven-thirty?”
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