Ludmilla had dinner on a tray in her own room and sent word by Carter that she was resting. Again they went to bed early, by tacit consent, dreading the next day. Calvin, however, locked and bolted the doors and even went around and looked after window fastenings.
“Better lock your door tonight, Search,” he said as they separated. “And call out if anything frightens you. I’ll hear it.”
She locked her door.
But so far as anyone knew then, the night was quiet, except that again Search dreamed of the cottage. This time, though, the dream was not so real as it was perplexing. For in her dream there was something wrong with the cottage; some object she was searching for and could not find. She awoke, troubled and uneasy—and after a while slept again.
Sometime toward dawn a little wind sprang up and the clouds cleared away. So it was sunny the next morning, with the sky blue and the lake dappled and sparkling with sunlight, when the big limousine swept up to the front steps with the chauffeur at the wheel.
At five minutes to ten exactly they arrived (herself, Ludmilla, Diana and Calvin) at the courthouse. The county courthouse it was, for Kentigern was the county seat. Sheriff Donny was waiting and cleared a path for them among reporters and cameras.
“It’s to be held in the coroner’s court,” he said. “This way.”
As they walked up the worn old stone steps—cameras clicking behind them, a crowd of loiterers watching with inquisitive but reserved eyes—Howland Stacy stepped forward from the dim recess of the hall and joined them. He tucked Search’s hand in the crook of his arm and smiled down at her.
“Remember?” he said softly. His eyes said: “Remember. A word from me will deliver Richard into the hands of these men.”
He walked beside her along the wide hall, smelling of sweeping compound, to a door with a frosted glass pane on which in black letters were the words Coroner’s Court.
Chapter 15
THE INQUEST WAS CROWDED, hot and mercifully brief. They sat together on a front rank of chairs and were all, probably, conscious of the faces behind them in the packed little room; villagers and summer residents, all with the same half-shrinking, half-avid look of curiosity.
On the table before the coroner was a gruesome little collection—the rope cut jaggedly into two and coiled like twin snakes around a large rusted iron hook, a faded lavender bathrobe cord, Calvin’s raincoat, an envelope which probably contained the scrap of Search’s dress. The sheriff sat near the coroner and leaned forward now and then to whisper to him.
It was obvious from the instant the court opened that the coroner and the sheriff knew exactly what they intended to do and proceeded from the first with expedition, holding strictly to the line of the inquiry, questioning their witnesses quickly and precisely and permitting no deviations.
The jury was chosen quickly—townspeople with one or two summer residents—and Dr Jerym himself told them briefly but exactly the findings of his post-mortem.
Eve Bohan had been overcome with chloroform; a postmortem showed it clearly on account of the effect of chloroform upon the blood vessels in the brain; she was then strangled by something thin and sharp, for there were marks on her neck. In his opinion she was already dead before she was hanged, apparently, to simulate suicide.
He then called the sheriff, who looked big and shambling and hot in the golden-oak armchair which was the witness stand, but who was, too, direct and precise.
He identified the raincoat and the two ends of rope and the iron hook; the bathrobe cord, he said, had been found under a shrub about fifty feet from the cottage. He told of the position of Eve’s body in the cottage when he first saw it: the rope had been cut just above her head and she was lying on the bed. He described the condition of the body and the circumstances, including a description of the cottage.
“Please tell the jury just how and where the rope was tied.”
“The other end of it was tied actually to a hook which was caught upon a rafter brace—not a rafter,” he said. “The brace at the point where the rope was tied measures exactly nine feet from the floor. The brace is horizontal between two opposite rafters. Thus the weight of the body wouldn’t have made the hook slip. Mrs Bohan’s height was five feet three inches. The length of the rope from the knot in the eye of the hook to the knot around her neck measures one foot nine inches. Therefore her feet must have been over two feet above the floor—two feet and about seven or eight inches. There was no chair, bench or footstool in the room. There was no article of furniture anywhere near her that she could have stood upon. It was physically impossible for her to have hanged herself.”
The jury looked impressed and sober. And the coroner proceeded quickly with the witnesses. Jonas was called and asked to identify the rope and hook, which he did after a fashion and sulkily, but in the end there was probably no doubt in anyone’s mind but that the rope that had hanged Eve Bohan and the hook had been removed from the Abbott tool shed.
Calvin was the first of the family to testify and he made a nervous and slightly belligerent witness, his sharp face a bright pink and his eyes snapping, but was forced to tell them first that the raincoat on the table was his property, second the length of time Eve and Richard together had been at the Abbott house that summer and the time of Eve’s departure and return, and third (after much maneuvering on his part and on the coroner’s) that Richard and his wife had not been on good terms.
It was shortly after that that an attempt was made to show that the chloroform, too, was linked with the Abbott house. For a young man, freckle-faced and a little apologetic, was called who proved to be the clerk in one of the town drugstores; he said, wriggling, that he had sold a can of chloroform early in the summer to Mrs Calvin Peale.
“Will you identify Mrs Peale?”
The boy looked at Diana and nodded. “That’s her. She said she wanted it for a sick dog, but I had to sell her a large-size can because that’s all we had.”
He was dismissed, and Diana, looking very cool in a thin green cotton dress and small-brimmed hat but a little angry too, was called. She replied briefly to the coroner’s questions, telling what time Richard had come to the house the night Eve was murdered, what he had said, whether or not he had mentioned murder (as he had not) and whether he had told her it was suicide, as he had. She replied with equal brevity (but unfortunate if unavoidable truth) to questions designed to bring out the facts of Richard’s separation with Eve and Eve’s subsequent unexpected return.
She was asked, too, about the chloroform. “I bought it—I don’t remember the date. I bought it in order to give it to a—a sick puppy.”
“Did you use all the chloroform for the dog?”
“No. There was some left. I don’t know how much.”
“What did you do with the remainder?”
“I put it on a shelf in the kitchen store closet. I haven’t seen it since.”
“Was it available to anyone in the house?”
“I suppose so. Yes.”
Diana was dismissed, and the sheriff’s assistant, Al, was called to describe Richard’s escape. And after him the caretaker at the Stacy place (a stocky gray-haired Scotsman with little angry eyes), who said Richard had come to the Stacy place at about six-thirty the night of the murder, arriving with Howland Stacy, and had gone into the house with him and, presumably after dinner, he had seen him leave the place, taking the lake path at about eight-thirty. He was alone and had gone in the direction of the Abbott place toward the south.
Howland was not called. Because he had been Richard’s lawyer. Search began to see about then, too, that they were avoiding the subject of the arsenic and the attacks upon Ludmilla and that there was no mention of the intruder of the previous night.
She was thinking that, when the coroner said briskly: “Will Miss Beatrice Walthers testify, please?”
They didn’t need Howland’s testimony even if, legally, they could have demanded it. For amid a little hum and buzz in the packed hot room Beatrice Walthe
rs came forward from somewhere at the other side of the room and proved to be the waitress. And twisting her fingers in the blue sports dress she had donned for the occasion, fastening her large light blue eyes upon the jury, she told them, almost word for word, of the talk between Eve and Search the morning before Eve was murdered.
Search heard it, frozen. The girl had been in the butler’s pantry, waiting to clear away breakfast. Miss Search Abbott had come into the breakfast room and then Miss Eve—that is, Mrs Bohan. And Mrs Bohan had told Miss Search she was not going to divorce Mr Bohan, although Mr Bohan had asked her to do so because he wanted to marry Miss Search.
Miss Search had defied Mrs Bohan; she had said she couldn’t keep them from marrying, that there were ways. And then Mrs Bohan had said—had said—the girl faltered then and dropped her head but finished. Mrs Bohan had said not so long as she lived.
She didn’t tell it that briefly but instead prolongedly, with an astonishingly good and clear memory, and it supplied motive and was unutterably damning.
When the girl was dismissed and Search at last heard her own name called she went quickly, scarcely aware of herself and of the whispers that accompanied her name. The other woman—well, she had been that. But it didn’t matter now; nothing mattered but Richard. She heard a click of a camera somewhere; and the arms of the chair were still warm from the pressure of Bea’s hot hands. She tightened her grip upon the chair arms; she must watch for traps; it would be a long bout of questioning.
It was not.
“Miss Abbott,” said Dr Jerym, “is it true that you went to the gardener’s cottage the night Mrs Bohan was murdered?”
“Yes. But she was already—”
“You went to keep an appointment with Richard Bohan?”
The sheriff knew the truth. “Yes,” she said, “but he didn’t murder her. There are other things—evidence that—”
The coroner leaned forward. “You have heard the testimony of the previous witness. Is it true that you and Richard Bohan intended to marry as soon as—or if—he could get a divorce from his wife, Eve Bohan?”
There was not a sound in the room.
She moistened her lips.
“That much is true, but it is not the whole truth. You have not heard all the evidence. Richard did not murder Eve. He—”
“That’s all, thank you. That’s all, Miss Abbott.”
It was not to check her testimony. For something was happening in the hall outside the door. She and everyone was aware of it. There was the buzz and murmur of voices and the sheriff was hurrying toward the door, thrusting his way through the cluster of reporters toward some nucleus of excitement in the hall.
She hesitated. Everyone was watching the doorway; she turned too. And Richard was there.
She could see the top of his head; she had a glimpse of his face as he replied to some question of the sheriff’s. Then she saw that they were leading him forward and he was looking swiftly along the ranks of spectators. She rose and he saw her.
Their eyes met in a swift deep look.
Then she realized that the coroner was pounding frantically for order, that he was dismissing her, that they were going to question Richard. She was back in her seat with Diana and Calvin and the others, and all at once the courtroom was quiet again. The sheriff leaned over to hold a whispered conversation with the coroner, who nodded, questioned the sheriff, nodded again and then cleared his throat and addressed the jury. “The next witness,” he said, “was found a short time ago hiding in the loft of the garage on the Abbott place. The sheriff’s deputy, Sam Willaker, found him. Mr Richard Bohan, will you take this chair, please.”
Howland leaned across to whisper to Calvin: “It’s all over now. They’ll get a verdict in ten minutes.”
Calvin nodded. And they were very nearly right.
They questioned Richard quickly and he answered as quickly. He did not seem unwilling or reluctant; he wore a flannel sports coat and gray slacks and did not look like a hunted and harried fugitive from the police. But his face was drawn and tired, and his replies were terse.
And there was almost at once a kind of excitement in the courtroom, so men shuffled their feet restlessly and glanced uneasily at their neighbors. It came from nowhere; it was invisible as the air—yet everyone in the courtroom, perhaps, was caught by it. Search felt it; perhaps there was something excited and urgent in the coroner’s voice, but she did not know then the real reason for it.
Richard at once admitted to having been at the cottage the night of the murder. He had dined with Howland Stacy and about eight-thirty had gone for a walk along the lake shore. He’d reached the cottage about ten.
“Not before that?” said the coroner, glancing at the jury.
“No.”
The coroner’s lips tightened. “Go on, please.”
Richard went on. There had been a light on in the cottage. He entered the living room and looked around and then went into the bedroom.
“Why?” said the coroner, interrupting again.
“Because—I thought someone was there,” said Richard. He said that, for the first time, a little huskily, with a tone of remembered horror in his voice, and someone behind Search gave a little gasp.
“And you found—”
“I found—Eve Bohan. She was already dead.”
“Describe it, please.”
“You mean—”
“How did you find her?”
There was a short pause. Then he told that too, quickly but with obvious strain in his voice. She was hanging by a rope from one of the rafters.
“Do you mean a rafter brace?” said the coroner, interrupting, and Richard stared at him for a second and then nodded and accepted the correction. Yes, he’d meant a brace.
He had gone to her and she was dead. He knew she was dead but, in a vain hope of reviving her, he went to the kitchen to get a knife and some whisky.
The coroner interrupted him then too.
“Why didn’t you take her down at once? Surely that would have been more likely to rescue her.”
“She—I knew then that she was dead,” he repeated. “I had to get a knife from the kitchen to—to cut the rope. I got that and some whisky from a cupboard in the kitchen. Then—”
“Miss Abbott said there were lights in the living room when she entered the cottage but not lights in the bedroom or in the kitchen.”
“Miss—” He checked himself. “Yes. Yes, I suppose that’s true.”
“Do you mean to say”—the coroner leaned toward him, pushing his spectacles up over his bald head with a savage motion—“do you mean to say you looked at your wife, you went to the kitchen, you hunted for a knife with which to cut the rope and a bottle of whisky in the cupboard, without turning on lights?”
There was a short pause. Then Richard said directly: “Well, yes, as a matter of fact I did exactly that. I don’t know why. It never occurred to me till now. It’s just one of the things a person does or fails to do in—in shock. It was a—a tremendous shock. To find her like that.”
“It wasn’t, then, because you didn’t want anyone to look through the windows of the bedroom?”
“It is exactly as I have told you,” said Richard. “Shall I go on?”
“Certainly.”
He went on; he knew that it was impossible to keep Search out of it and he didn’t make the mistake of trying to do so but told the whole story, briefly. She had come to the cottage; he had sent her back to the house; he had then cut the rope and taken Eve down. He knew it was no use but he tried to revive her and had had to give up. He then went back to the main house.
The coroner did not question him until he had finished.
“Where did you go when you escaped the police?”
“I—can’t tell you that,” said Richard.
“Can’t—” began the coroner explosively and stopped and said: “Why did you run away?”
Richard said slowly: “There was a reason that I—I can’t give you now.”
“I—believe she did have a sum of money. It belonged to her, and I know nothing about it.”
“Mr Bohan, isn’t it true that you are in particularly urgent need of money?”
Richard’s jaw was suddenly a hard white line. He said evenly, however: “Exactly what do you mean?”
“I think that ought to be clear enough. However—” The coroner glanced at the sheriff, seemed to receive a kind of telepathic command to hurry, looked back at Richard and said, stuttering a’ little, “You’ve been engaged in promoting a company to manufacture an airplane of your own design?”
“Yes,” said Richard guardedly.
“You induced the men forming this company to invest a considerable sum of money in building and experimenting with your airplane?”
“There was some money invested, naturally.”
“Our information is that your newly designed plane has to pass certain government tests before you can manufacture and sell it.”
“Yes, that’s true,” he said steadily but with a wary note in his voice.
“Did the plane you designed pass these tests?”
“Not—yet,” said Richard.
“Mr Bohan,” said the coroner and cleared his throat. “We have information to the effect that your airplane failed to pass the government tests not once but four times. And that the last failure, in May, left you without any cash to continue your experiments. We were informed also that you are very much in debt, that the men who have so far financed your undertaking have refused to give you any more money and that, in fact, they are pressing you to pay what you owe them. Is that true?”
There was, this time, a long pause. Search could have counted perhaps twenty. That was, then, what Richard had meant. Who had told them—Howland? Who knew so much of Richard’s affairs? Or had Diana told them enough to turn the investigation that way? A few telegrams, a telephone call or two, would have been enough. Yet Diana would have done nothing to harm Richard.
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