Hangman's Whip

by Mignon G. Eberhart

  She stared at it. Lavender—a bathrobe cord.

  “It’s Miss Ludmilla Abbott’s, isn’t it?” he said and watched her. “Never mind answering.”

  “What—”

  “Eve Bohan was strangled. The rope that went up to the rafter came from the tool shed; Jonas recognized it. Do you remember how the rope was fastened?”

  “No.”

  “It was fastened actually to a rafter brace, not a rafter. And it wasn’t tied to the brace; it was tied to the eye of an iron hook—big enough to go over the two-by-four. Anybody, short or tall, could have flung that hook over the brace. Anybody could have stood on one of the chairs in the cottage, dragged Eve’s body up and knotted that rope around her neck. It wasn’t easy; her body was heavy. But anybody could have done it. The fatal mistake, in that moment of crazy relief when once it was done, was in removing the chair. Replacing it—in another room; instinctively trying to remove traces and removing the wrong thing. But that hook, Miss Search, came from the tool shed too. Jonas recognized it. And she was first strangled with something smaller and sharper than the rope, something that left marks. This?”

  She had an impulse to cover her face with her hands. “I don’t know.”

  He looked at the bathrobe cord thoughtfully, weighing the soft lavender folds in his big hand. It had been wet too.

  “We found it,” he said, “in the woods. Hidden.” Someone came to the door, and the sheriff turned quickly. “Well, what is it, Jonas?”

  Jonas came in. Cook followed him; she was a big fresh-faced woman, nervous so her eyes went from the sheriff to Search and back again swiftly. Her taffy-blond hair was screwed in a tight knot on her head; her pink clean fingers worked with a fold of her white apron.

  “She says the scraps she gave Miss Search to feed the kitten came from Miss Abbott’s tray. Something she didn’t eat.”

  “Steak,” said Cook nervously. “I took it right off the tray last night and put it in the refrigerator; she hadn’t touched it, so I didn’t throw it out. I—sometimes I can use up scraps like that.”

  “Did you see Miss Search feed the kitten?”

  “Well,” she hesitated, “no, I didn’t see it. She took the kitten to the back porch. But I’m sure she didn’t put poison in it.”

  If Search had had doubts of Ludmilla’s story they vanished then. Someone had attempted to poison Ludmilla; Eve had been murdered. If there was a connection between the two, that might go toward clearing Richard. She turned quickly to the sheriff.

  “I didn’t poison the kitten. There’s something—you must see Aunt Ludmilla; there’s something she can tell you.”

  “I intend to see her as soon as she’s up,” said Pete Donny, glancing at the lavender bathrobe cord.

  “But she knows—” Search stopped, thinking of Jonas and Cook. “It’s important.”

  “All right,” said the sheriff. “That’s all now, Miss Search.”

  On the way to the door she heard Jonas say: “The poison wasn’t intended, then, for the kitten. You ought to see that, Pete Donny. The cat hadn’t been in the house over twenty minutes—”

  She would warn Ludmilla; she would tell her why she must tell the sheriff the truth. Besides, the dead kitten was not fancy. Ludmilla was really in danger.

  But Howland came out of the small formal drawing room opposite.

  “I was waiting for you,” he said quickly. “I tried to hear what was said in the library but I couldn’t. I hope you told the sheriff the truth.”

  She looked at him thoughtfully. His eyes were smiling and warm; he looked tired, as all of them did after the night’s vigil, but his black hair was shining and smooth, his short dark face freshly shaven; he had on slacks and a yellow sweater under his loose-fitting tweed jacket. His eyes wavered briefly as she said nothing. Then he caught at her hands, still smiling.

  “You’re not angry with me, Search? Richard did it; he as good as confessed it when he ran away. They’ll get him within forty-eight hours. Nobody can escape for long these days. You’d better tell them the truth.”

  “Did you tell the sheriff that he came to the cottage to meet me? You told him the other things. You admitted he wanted a divorce; you told them Eve wouldn’t give it to him.”

  “I did nothing of the kind. The sheriff drew his own conclusions.”

  “He drew them from what you said. You—”

  “Listen, darling, and believe me, I’m your friend and Richard’s friend too. It’s to his best interest to plead guilty. He’s guilty and—”

  “You hate him, don’t you, Howie? I never knew that before.”

  “I—” His opaque soft brown eyes did not move or change. He said, “I love you, Search.”

  For a moment she did not speak. Voices, muffled, came from the library. In the dining room at the end of the hall a dish clattered thinly. Someone walked quickly along the up stairs hall and closed a door. If there had been any spark of feeling, any change of expression at all, in his eyes she would have appealed then to his generosity. But it was exactly as if she were looking into the turgid brown waters of a pool, so turgid and so still that there was no possible way of judging the depth.

  “You are Richard’s lawyer,” she said, “and you pretended to be his friend. He trusted you.” She pulled her hands away from him. “I can’t.”

  He kept on smiling, but his upper lip twitched a little backward. After a moment he said almost caressingly, it was so quiet: “You’ll regret this, Search.”

  Chapter 11

  IT WOULD BE BETTER not to anger him further; she did realize that then. Besides, she must see Ludmilla at once. She turned abruptly away from him and went upstairs, but Howland, in the hall below, waited a moment and then crossed toward, she thought, the library.

  A breakfast tray which looked untouched was on the table outside Ludmilla’s door. Ludmilla was at the window, staring out at the gray lake; she looked pale and old. Her china-blue eyes darkened when she heard of the kitten. But she said only. “You were quite right. I understand. I’ll tell the sheriff everything. Go now and eat your breakfast.”

  Search went slowly downstairs again. She had reached the dining room when she remembered the lavender bathrobe cord. Calvin’s raincoat, Ludmilla’s bathrobe cord; there was only one certain fact, and that was that either was accessible not alone to Richard but to anyone in the house.

  Breakfast was cold, but the coffee, in its electric heater, was still hot. She found some cereal and fruit.

  She had finished when Calvin, whistling gently between his teeth, came quickly into the room. “Hello, Search,” he said. “God, I’ve got a headache. Is there coffee there?”

  He poured himself some and came to sit opposite her.

  “Well, this is a fine how-do-you-do,” he said.

  “Calvin, is there any news of him?”

  He shook his head. “None. But they’ll get him. I can’t imagine why he did it.”

  “You were at the cottage last night with the sheriff and the others. What did they do?”

  He swallowed a mouthful of coffee and made a grimace as its heat struck his throat.

  “Looked at her. Looked around the cottage. Looked at everything. While Doc Jerym was looking at Eve the sheriff made a kind of round of the cottage and the grounds outside. Wouldn’t let the little fellow, Al, or me or Richard or Howie go with him. I don’t know what, if anything, he found outside, but he came back looking a little smug and asked Richard who’d been in the cottage besides Eve. Richard said nobody, but he never lies very well.”

  “How did the sheriff know I was there?”

  Calvin gulped more coffee and put his hand to his head. “I don’t know. Unless he saw something outside—heelprints maybe. Guessed it was a woman; popped on you because Ludmilla and Diana had alibis and you were the only woman left. I expect Dick’s anxiety to keep the women out of the thing suggested something to the sheriff; I don’t know.”

  “Who told him Richard and I had planned to meet at the cottage?�
��

  “That was true, then? I was afraid of it, the way you looked. I don’t know. Wait a minute—I think he walked part of the way back with Howland—at least Richard and I came on ahead then; Al and, I think, Howland and the sheriff came last. It was dark except for the flashlights—I’m not too sure. Doctor Jerym stayed in the cottage till the men came to take the—the body away. You …” He hesitated. “Can’t you think of something that’s proof that he didn’t do it—outside your feeling about it, I mean?”

  “But that’s the convincing thing. He felt exactly as I felt, except he tried to do something for her and sent me away. Don’t you see?”

  He nodded and stared at the table.

  “He oughtn’t to have tried to escape, then. Well, we’ll hope for the best. The sheriff just went upstairs to talk to Ludmilla; the sheriff’s wonderful. I’m exhausted, and he’s sticking doggedly at it after having been up all night.”

  He went to pour himself more coffee and, coming back, told her of the reporters and photographers.

  “Howland says I mustn’t antagonize the press,” he said. “I told them what he said was safe to tell them.”

  Howland. She remembered that when she saw how, in all the papers, Richard Bohan was blazoned forth as the prime suspect for the brutal, cunning murder of his wife, Eve Bohan.

  That was, however, the following day. That day, Thursday, was mainly concerned with news of Richard. Or rather, as the hours went on, lack of news.

  For he had apparently dropped completely out of sight. Richard and the old gray roadster. Yet an automobile—needing gas and oil, needing highways to travel upon—cannot be lost for long. Or a man.

  Whenever the telephone rang (and that was frequent), whenever a police car came along the winding drive to the door, that was the first thing they thought. News of Richard?

  Twice there were reports that he had been found, once in Milwaukee and once in Chicago; both were speedily proved false. Both, for the time being, were agonizing in their anxiety and suspense. Search wanted Richard to return and, somehow, prove his innocence—yet if he did return, or if he was found, he would be charged with murder. She began to see more and more clearly the weight of the evidence against him.

  There were, however, in the course of the day certain occurrences. Shortly before lunch Dr Jerym telephoned and confirmed officially his first report. Eve had been “chloroformed; she had then been strangled by something thinner and sharper than the rope which, after her death, had been arranged to simulate suicide. A bathrobe cord? Yes, he said doubtfully, perhaps. They all knew of the lavender bathrobe cord, but Sheriff Donny kept his own counsel about whatever Ludmilla told him of the previous attempts to poison her.

  But he questioned them all again, thoroughly, each one alone. There was no way for Search to know what he asked the others except that there were many questions about Richard and about Eve. How had they lived, where, what were their present circumstances?—mainly, were there friends near by who might have given Richard a refuge? Well, then, were there any hunting shacks or cabins in the woods north of Lake Kentigern, or along any of the numerous small lakes of the region, where he might have gone?

  They talked of those questions, Diana and Calvin and Ludmilla and even Howland, who was about the place all that day. But it seemed to Search, listening, that there were certain reservations in the things they told of those interviews. And it seemed to her, too, that there was a kind of growing uneasiness, a tendency to avoid each others eyes.

  Yet obviously Richard, when found, would be charged with Eve’s murder.

  Early in the afternoon they were all fingerprinted. The sheriff himself officiated at that rather unnerving little ceremony—using what looked like a hitherto unused outfit and following printed directions closely and conscientiously. He fingerprinted the servants, too, and Howland. None of them objected except Jonas, from principle.

  It was after that that Search went with the sheriff to the cottage; went unwillingly, dreading it, retracing, because he made her do it, her steps of the night before. Through the wet woods again, with the sheriffs big boots slugging along the wet path behind her.

  It was cold with blue-gray mists masking the distant vistas so the woods looked unreal, like a stage drop. But it was colder in the cottage. She pulled her raincoat closer around her and had to force herself to cross the ill-omened step into the little living room.

  The electric line had been repaired early that morning; the sheriff turned on lights in the three tiny rooms.

  Where had she stood? Here? Where was Richard then?

  Oh, she didn’t know. Had he answered when she called him? No? What had she done then?

  “Then I—I went to the bedroom door.”

  “Show me.”

  She had to cross the tiny sparsely furnished room; she stood again at the bedroom door: Seeing a dark sagging figure that was not there at all.

  “You saw her then? Clearly?”

  “No. The room was dark. And then—then there was lightning and I saw her. And the lights went out and—and Richard came from the kitchen.”

  “Was he surprised to see you?”

  “No. I’ve told you. He was expecting me.”

  “So soon? Were you early?”

  “No.” She said it quickly and eagerly. “I was late. I’d lost my way in the woods.”

  “I see. Well, then what did you do? Show me.”

  Again in the little living room, bright now with lights, for the day outside was so dark. Again in the kitchen which last night had been a black pit and now was a room with cupboards and a cooking stove.

  “Is anything changed in the cottage? Is everything as you remember it?” the sheriff asked at last. She looked around, forcing herself to picture a scene she longed to forget forever.

  “Everything is the same,” she said. “The light was on in the living room; there were those two glasses—the rope—”

  “Nothing for her to stand on?”

  “Nothing,” she said faintly and wished the ghostly odor of chloroform did not seem to linger sickeningly about the place.

  Perhaps the sheriff saw something of that weariness in her face, for he pressed her then about Richard.

  “You saw him do it, didn’t you?”

  “No—”

  “Did he tell you what he had done?”

  “No. No—”

  Eventually they left the cottage, going out the kitchen door again as she had done the night before, following the line of the shrubs.

  “Where was the man you claim you saw?”

  “There …” She pointed. The small cottage with its overhanging roof looked dark and quiet, as if it were keeping the secret it knew for some grim and secret reason of its own. The cleared space around it was grassy and wet; mist shrouded the line of woods opposite them.

  “Who was it?”

  “I don’t know. I tell you I don’t know.”

  But on the way to the lake path the sheriff vouchsafed one bit of information which was not really information. “Here’s where I found the shred of your dress,” he said, pointing to a barberry thicket. “Then Miss Diana told me, when I asked her, that you had changed your dress.” So it had been Diana, as she had guessed. “And there were heelprints here too,” he added. “I saw those last night. Careful here, it’s slippery.”

  “Mr Donny, Richard wouldn’t have reported it if he had murdered her. Don’t you see … ?”

  He paused to look at her from under the low brim of his hat. He was unshaven and haggard; he’d had little if any sleep during the past twenty-four hours, and he was indefatigable. He said: “Perhaps he didn’t intend to report it. Perhaps he intended to stop you before you reached the cottage. Perhaps if you hadn’t seen Eve, where and when you saw her, he wouldn’t have reported it.”

  That, then, was what they believed.

  After that she said no more.

  When they reached the house again the sheriff went at once to Ludmilla’s room, where all that day she had rema
ined —sitting on the chaise longue with the door open. Listening. Thinking. Knowing so much but not enough.

  In a few moments he came down again, a small rectangular package wrapped in newspaper under his arm. And went away.

  There was nothing more he could do there, he told Howland as he met him on the porch. Not just then.

  But if Ludmilla had told him of the arsenic, then he must see, thought Search, that there was some ugly undercurrent, something more than the simple and plain case that had built itself up against Richard. Unless—unless he thought Richard had done that too.

  Howland stayed to dinner; it was a quiet and a rather dreadful meal. Last night Eve had been there, smiling, with a queer look of triumph in her blue eyes.

  She thought the others were thinking that too, for Diana hurried the meal, pressing the table bell as soon after each brief course as it was decently possible. There was little talk, but once when the telephone rang sharply it startled them all so they sat stiff and taut, waiting while Calvin hurried to answer it.

  But it was nothing, he said, returning; someone wanting the sheriff. No news of Richard.

  “It’s been nearly twenty-four hours,” said Calvin. “It can’t be much longer.”

  “By the way,” said Howland, “how’d she happen to take your raincoat, Calvin? Eve, I mean?”

  Calvin looked a little green around the mouth.

  “I don’t know. It was in the hall closet; anybody could have taken it. But I—I wish I had an alibi just the same. You and Ludmilla are lucky,” he said to Diana.

  None of them that day (except Diana) had questioned Search. Staring down at her unfinished dessert, she thought she ought to be grateful for that. And then she thought of the first dinner they’d had in that room; herself and Richard and Diana. And how, quite suddenly and unexpectedly, a feeling of change and strangeness had caught at her, as if a prophetic sense inherited from ages past had tried to warn her.

  Twenty-four hours. But if they did find him would they give him a chance to prove he had not murdered Eve?

  Fingerbowls came and they left the table, and Howland almost at once went away. He said nothing directly to Search before he left, but his eyes lingered upon her when he spoke to Diana.