The Clue of the Judas Tree

by Zenith Brown

  Mrs. Trent breathed heavily and got to her feet. We all got up except Mr. Trent. He remained seated at the head of the table, staring at some point far beyond the crystal goblet in front of him.

  “Well,” Mrs. Trent said, with a sort of vague bitterness, and without so much as a glance in his direction, “I hope we aren’t murdered in our beds. That’s all I can say. It’s well enough for you to scoff at things you don’t understand. I for one believe in psychology.”

  She sailed out of the room like a large red battleship, her daughter and I following, Agnes Hutton bringing up the rear.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The rich heady odor of Mr. Trent’s Havanas and the sound of men’s voices followed us out across the hall, and died away as the old butler closed the door. Mrs. Trent settled herself fretfully behind the coffee tray in front of the fifteenth century Florentine fireplace. From the determined lines of her mouth I thought we were in for a lecture on psychology. It was logical enough, considering her, and what they had been talking about. I had never seen any of these people, of course, before I’d left New York, but a newspaper woman sees too many Mrs. Trents in the course of a year not to recognize the type at once. If she hadn’t believed in psychology she’d have believed in something else, and in another six months she’d have “done” psychology and would be getting around to “doing” the Technocrats—though I doubt if you’d find a Technocrat as good-looking as Dr. Sartoris.

  But I was wrong—about Mrs. Trent, not the Technocrats. I was just beginning to learn that Mrs. Trent never talked, when she could help it—not even about psychology—when her husband’s secretary was around, unless Dr. Sartoris happened to be there too. She had been so imposing when we left the dining room that it was a shock to see her deflate, as if her confidence in herself and psychology were seeping out of her like air out of a big red balloon.

  Agnes Hutton, cool and aloof, sat at one side of the fireplace in a high-backed Jacobean chair, smiling what struck me as an irritatingly superior Mona Lisa smile, her large blue eyes half-veiled under heavily shaded lids. She apparently never spoke, I thought; but when Mrs. Trent put too much coffee in the little gold Lennox cup so that it slopped over, she moved her body ever so slightly, as if she’d had a sudden pain somewhere. She was quite maddening. Personally, I thought, I should have thrown something at her. I imagine Mrs, Trent must have wanted to many times.

  The odd thing was that she really hardly ever said anything, so that one scarcely had a chance to be rude to her. Ï think the only time she really disturbed her smile to speak was when, just after she had murmured “No sugar, please, Mrs. Trent,” Mrs. Trent, vapid and preoccupied, promptly dropped two lumps in the small cup. Agnes Hutton’s delicately arched brows raised, and the smile deepened at one corner of her mouth. She turned a little toward me.

  “That’s psychology, isn’t it?” she said. “Dr. Sartoris would say Mrs. Trent really wanted me to get fat.”

  Cheryl Trent, who had been restlessly fiddling with the radio at the other end of the room, caught her lower lip between her teeth and gave the dial an angry twist that filled the room with a savage blast of sound. She turned it down again and sauntered over to her mother.

  “We don’t have to worry about our figures, do we, darling?” she said, kissing her lightly on the top of the head. “It’s a gorgeous night, Miss Cather. Let’s go outside.”

  “All right,” I said.

  Mrs. Trent hastily put down her coffee cup and pushed back the tray. It was plain that she had no intention of being left alone with Agnes Hutton. Miss Hutton watched her coolly with that maddening smile. As Cheryl and I stepped through the long window onto the tiled terrace, we heard Mrs. Trent’s high sharp heels strike the uncarpeted hardwood floor of the hall.

  Outside I took a deep breath. It was like a sharp sudden relief from pain to get out of that house into the cool sane night. In front of us stretched a long moon-drenched garden; at the end of it, between two tall perfectly matched poplars, lay the Ivy Hill bay, and out beyond the Chesapeake. On both sides of the garden was a high thick wall of closely clipped box. Its faintly exotic perfume was lost in the warm odor of the great crescent-shaped bed of blue and red and pink and white tulips just beyond the low terrace that led down to the long garden.

  Cheryl, standing beside me, pointed to the white marble bench gleaming faintly in the moonlight a little way down.

  “That’s where it happened,” she said quietly. “The blood stain is still on the bench. Mother was upstairs. She’d wanted Michael sent away to a sanatorium, and his father and Dad and Major Ellicott were in the library talking with Dr. O’Brien from Annapolis about it. He was shellshocked, and did all sorts of funny things, but only at night when he was supposed to be asleep.”

  She hesitated. Then she said, ‘Tve never told Mother this. One night I was supposed to be asleep, but I sneaked downstairs to get a bar of chocolate Major Ellicott had given me. I’d hid it from the governess—I was only six, you see. It was dark, but I got the bar, and I was going back upstairs when I saw somebody on the landing. 1 was scared stiff. I got behind one of Mother’s chairs in the hall and hid. I was dreadfully frightened. It was Michael. He came down the stairs and stood looking up at Mother’s rose window, his eyes wide open and staring and wild. He kept saying something like ‘They’ve taken my gun, but I’ll get him.’ His voice was horrible. Then all of a sudden he reached out and took the spear out of the knight’s hand, and crept on down the stairs. He was coming straight at me. I could see him because it was bright moonlight, just like tonight. And I had on white pajamas, so he could see me too. He got closer and closer, and the spear raised in his hand, and I knew he was going to kill me, but I couldn’t scream or do anything. I just waited. And I saw his arms go back—he had it in both hands, like a bayonet—and the spear came slowly at me; and then suddenly his arms relaxed and he dropped the spear on the rug. Then he rubbed his hand over his eyes and pushed back his hair, the way he always did, and he knelt down beside me and picked me up in his arms and held me tight. He said ‘Cherry, honey, I’m sorry, did I scare you?’ He was so sweet, and I said, ‘No, Mikey.’ He said Til take you upstairs. Will you forgive me, Cherry?’ and I said I would. Next day I got spanked for getting chocolate all over my pajamas, but I never told on him. And it was the next night he shot his father. Then they took him away.”

  Inside someone had turned the radio on. Outside the only sound was the croaking of the frogs in the distance.

  “But you see, don’t you?” Cheryl asked.

  “See what?” I said.

  “I mean, he must have wanted to kill his father, or he would have stopped before he did it. The way he did with me that night. I didn’t tell Dr. Sartoris, but I sort of made up a case, and he said that such a person would always stop before he did anything he didn’t really will to do. He said nobody could make a hypnotized person do anything against his own deep-grained convictions. I mean you can’t hypnotize a person and make him commit murder unless he really wants to do it.”

  “Listen, Cheryl,” I said. “Don’t you see what’s happened to all you people? You’ve been thinking about this thing till you’ve all got the jitters. You forget that Michael Spur has been away fourteen years. He’s probably cured, in the first place. And even if he isn’t, and even if he wanted to kill his father, you don’t suppose he’s going to want to kill everybody else here, do you?”

  She shook her head reluctantly.

  “He’ll probably walk in a successful bond salesman, or something, and you’ll all be ashamed of yourselves for letting a . . .”

  I started to say “a charlatan” but changed it quickly.

  “. . . for letting Dr. Sartoris get you in this state.”

  “It isn’t only Sartoris. It’s Agnes Hutton too.”

  “What’s she got to do with it?”

  “Michael used to be engaged to her. Oh, that’s not really it, but you know how you get worried about things.”

  I started to s
ay something more when suddenly her hand closed tightly on my arm. I looked at her quickly. She was staring down the garden, her eyes wide, her breath coming in quick short gasps. I followed her eyes.

  A tall dark figure was moving out of the deep shadow of the box, slowly, like a man in pain. His head was bare. He came forward with slow heavy steps until he stood by the marble bench. I saw him raise his hand to his head and brush back his hair like a man in a dream. Suddenly he knelt down and touched the bench.

  We stood there breathless, watching him. There was a noise behind us. I looked back. It was Agnes Hutton. She was looking down there too, a lighted cigarette arrested midway to her lips. I felt Cheryl’s body stiffen. Miss Hutton looked at her; her cigarette completed the graceful arc to her mouth. She took a deep puff, exhaled it slowly, then, with her onaddening smile flicked the cigarette into the tulip bed. She turned without a word and went back into the house.

  “God, how I hate that woman,” Cheryl whispered savagely.

  “Let’s go in,” I said. She held my arm.

  “Wait,” she whispered. I looked back down the garden.

  Michael Spur had risen, and was coming toward us, slowly. On the other side of the flower bed he looked up, and saw us standing there. Between us the thin blue line of smoke from Agnes Hutton’s cigarette coiled into the air.

  Michael Spur reached down and picked it up.

  “Perry doesn’t like cigarette butts in the flower beds, Cherry,” he said with a smile. “Hello!”

  “Hello, Michael!”

  He came round the tulips and looked down at her.

  “You’ve grown up, haven’t you, Cherry.”

  She nodded. A tear caught in her long silky lashes, glistened a moment there, and fell.

  “Yes,” she said. “Didn’t you know?”

  “Yes, I knew. That’s why I came back.”

  Cheryl Trent caught her breath in something like a little sob.

  “Michael—this is Louise Gather.”

  “Hello, Louise,” he said, with a grin.

  “Hello, Michael,” I said, and we shook hands.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I didn’t go inside with Cheryl and Michael Spur. Somehow the atmosphere in there was too overcharged for comfort. But I couldn’t help hearing Mrs. Trent’s stifled scream just as the window closed and blotted out everything but the croaking frogs and the lapping waves on the shore. And because I didn’t want to just stand there, I wandered along the path in front of the house until I came to a stone bench under a lilac bush, sat down, closed my eyes and listened to the odd night noises. I shivered involuntarily, and found myself wishing for the reassuring rattle and dash of the Third Avenue L. I think I was rather frightened. So I said to myself, “My girl, this will never do.” I got a cigarette out of my case, but I didn’t have a match. I just sat there, trying to make up my mind that this wasn’t a madhouse and that everything would be swell in the morning.

  I had almost convinced myself of it when I heard a voice not far from me. It was Agnes Hutton. She was behind the lilac bush, so that I couldn’t see her. I realized also that my dress, one of those lace things with a tricky jacket you can pack and unpack and wear most any time, was dark, and that she couldn’t see me. I was about to speak to let her know I was there; but I heard her soft husky voice saying “If she’s half as smart as she thinks she is, you’ve got to be careful. Swell time to have a stranger here. No . . . no . . . please; stop it! Don’t make love to me. That’s not the point. Anyway, we’d better go in.”

  I heard a subdued male voice, but although by this time I was listening as hard as I could, I couldn’t catch what he was saying or who he was. I sat perfectly still until they’d gone. Then I got up and slipped quickly back along the grass and through the long window into the living room.

  It was empty, and I sat down quietly in a corner of the sofa in front of the fireplace and picked up a magazine. Just then I heard someone behind me.

  “Oh, here you are.”

  It was Agnes Hutton. I looked around. She was standing in the door, smiling.

  “I’ve been looking everywhere for you. Cheryl said you were outside.”

  I smiled at the absurdity of such an idea.

  “Have you been here long?”

  “Not very. Why?”

  “Mr. Trent wants to see you. I told him you were probably frightfully tired and didn’t want to listen to anything tonight. Not even his childhood.”

  “I’m not really tired at all,” I said. “If he’s not . . . too busy.”

  “You mean about Michael Spur? That’s all Mrs. Trent’s nonsense. Don’t let it worry you. Mr. Trent doesn’t, you know. He’s used to it.”

  “To what?”

  I wondered if Michael Spur or some similar person returned every week or so.

  “Oh, I mean to Mrs. Trent’s fads and fears. This psychology is just the latest. A little over a year ago she turned nudist and made poor Perry Bassett go round the place in shorts and a pair of sandals. It was very funny, because Perry insisted on wearing his old brown hat too. Then the high priest of the cult ran off with her French maid, so it didn’t last. Then she met Dr. Sartoris at a tea in Baltimore, and took up psychology. Oh, it’s a great place,” she added with a delicately stifled yawn. “Never a dull moment. You won’t forget to drop in the library to see Mr. Trent before you go to bed? They’re all having a powwow in there now. Good night.”

  I must have looked a little surprised. After all, it wasn’t ten o’clock yet. She laughed a soft gurgling little laugh that was rather attractive, mostly because it didn’t sound at all like her silky Mona Lisa smile.

  “Yes—I’m getting out of the way,” she said. “You’ll always find it best when there’s a family conclave. Always ends in a frightful row.”

  She was quite right. It wasn’t five minutes before I heard a door slam violently and Mrs. Trent came storming across the hall into the living room, almost beside herself. Her brother and Dr. Sartoris were following her. I didn’t quite get what had happened. I learned later that Mr. Trent had ordered Dr. Sartoris out of the house and Mrs. Trent had threatened to go with him, and Mr. Trent had told her to go ahead and good riddance.

  “He wants to get me out of here so he can have that woman in my place,” she cried hysterically. “Ill never go now. I’ll just show him!”

  “Now, my dear Emily,” said Dr. Sartoris firmly. “You’re not quite yourself. Sit down and be calm a moment—do you hear me?”

  I’d got out by that time.

  The library door was ajar. I pushed it open and stepped inside. It was a high paneled room lined with mellow old calf volumes that looked as if nothing had disturbed a single one of them for centuries.

  Mr. Trent and his lawyer Mr. Archer and Michael Spur were sitting around the large table, talking earnestly. I backed out, but Mr. Trent caught sight of me.

  “Come in, Miss Gather,” he said, getting up with a smile. “Have you met Michael Spur? “

  “Yes, we’ve met.”

  “That’s fine. Well, Archer, we’ll look into the business tomorrow. I want to talk to my Boswell a while and just get our bearings.”

  Mr. Archer smiled genially, and he and Michael Spur got up.

  “What about a rubber of bridge, Michael?” he said. “How’s your game?”

  “Just fair, sir.”

  “Fine. Just what I like.”

  “Be careful of him, Michael,” said Mr. Trent. “He’ll get your shirt.”

  “That’s about all I’ve got, sir,” Michael Spur grinned.

  I was almost startled to see the change that had come over Mr. Trent. His face was tired and drawn, and he sat down heavily when the two of them had gone, as if the business of keeping up a genial front had suddenly got to be too much for him.

  “Well, that’s that,” he said. “Sit down over here, Miss Cather. I want to talk to you.”

  I took the chair Michael Spur had been sitting in and faced him across the table. There was an amber-silk
-shaded lamp between us. He pushed it aside and leaned forward, his hands folded in front of him.

  “Have you ever thought what a shingle that’s caught in an eddy in the tide feels like?” he said. I shook my head.

  “Well, that’s just what I feel like,” he went on. “My ideas about this autobiography of mine have changed a good deal since McCrae first talked to me about it.”

  “You don’t mean we’re not going to write it?”

  He laughed what the old melodrama called a mirthless laugh. I felt distinctly not at ease,

  “Yes, we’re going to write it,” he said. “But it’s going to be different.”

  He seemed lost in thought for a moment. Then he said, “But that can wait”—as it turned out, a profoundly and tragically untrue statement. “There’s something else I want to talk to you about first. Cheryl says you know this fellow Sartoris. What kind of a bird is he?”

  “Cheryl’s wrong, Mr. Trent,” I said. “I don’t know him at all. I met him today for the first time.”

  “That straight?” he demanded quickly. Through the thick lenses of his horn-rimmed spectacles his eyes stared coldly at me.

  “That’s straight, Mr. Trent,” I replied.

  “Then he’s not a famous New York doctor?”

  “He may be. I just don’t happen to have heard of him.”

  I suppose I might have told him that Dr. Sartoris had been in our office to see McCrae that morning, but I didn’t. It’s always hard to know what to tell people and what not to. I usually manage to do just the wrong thing.

  “Well,” he said abruptly, “what do you think of this nonsense about young Spur? “

  “You mean that he may kill someone else because he killed his father here?”