It is probable that nothing more than surveillance of our movements was intended. But Dick altered his course, recognition was imminent, and the reaction was quick and violent.
Chapter Twenty-two
WITH THE SURPRISING RECUPERATIVE power of youth Dick was out again in a few days. But although preparations for Jim’s trial were going on rapidly, that attack had not only completely undermined the morale of my household, it was causing Inspector Harrison some sleepless nights also.
He had examined the hillside again but without result. The weather had been dry as well as warm, and there were no footprints. He was completely baffled, and he did not hesitate to say so.
“I don’t want any miscarriage of justice,” he said. “I’m not like the District Attorney. I do my work and my job goes on, convictions or no convictions; and I don’t give a particular damn for the press. What I want is the guilty man. And I’m not so sure we’ve got him.”
Dick had been hurt the twenty-seventh of May, Friday. On Monday morning I came downstairs to find the Inspector having a comfortable cup of coffee in the pantry. He was not at all abashed, put down the kitchen clock which he had been examining, said briefly that it needed cleaning, and followed me into the front hall.
After his habit, he stopped at the lavatory and looked inside.
“Has it ever occurred to you,” he said, “that that pencil Walter Somers produced was not what he found in that airshaft?”
“I think Judy—”
“Ha!” he said. “Trust Miss Judy. She knows. Well, it wasn’t. Now, here are the facts about that pencil, Miss Bell. In the first place, I believe that it was yours; to be truthful about it, we found your fingerprints on it. Yours and Walter Somers’. No others. In the second place, I believe it was taken from your desk that night, and deliberately placed on that skylight. I have not said that it was taken for that purpose, although it might have been. Do you recall Walter Somers using a pencil that night? Before he started the investigation?”
“I don’t think he did. He may have.”
“He didn’t look into the skylight, get down and go on some errand into the library?”
“He went in for some matches.”
“Matches, eh? Well, he’s a smoker, and the average cigarette smoker carries them. I think he got that pencil, and let’s see if I’m right. We have to remember, of course, that Walter Somers knows something he’s not telling. Now, he looks down that airshaft, and he sees something there which he recognizes; a key, maybe; or a watch charm, or a fountain pen, or a false tooth! Anyhow, something that he knows at sight, or suspects. He comes down, goes into the library for matches and picks up a pencil and slips it in his pocket. He climbs the ladder, gets this object, shows you the pencil instead, and there you are.
“Being afraid of nothing, he seals it up for the police. Clever, wasn’t it? Only it was a bit too clever.”
“He fooled us all, then.”
“Not quite all of us,” said the Inspector cheerfully. “You’re not a smoker, I take it?”
“I don’t smoke. No.”
“Don’t carry pencils around in your pockets?”
“Women have no pockets nowadays.”
“All right. And what sort of clothing did Walter Somers wear that night?”
“His dinner jacket.”
“Black. Now here’s what the microscope showed, Miss Bell. That pencil had been carried in the pocket of a black suit; in the side pocket, where a man often carries a package of cigarettes. There were bits of tobacco from cigarettes caught around the eraser, along with black filaments from the pocket. Now, I’ve watched Walter Somers. He doesn’t use a cigarette case; he carries his cigarettes in a paper packet in his right hand coat pocket. And I don’t mind telling you that I’ve had that coat, and that this pocket bears out the facts. He had that pencil there before he climbed that ladder.”
“Walter!” I gasped. “But I thought you said—”
“Not so fast,” he warned me. “No, he didn’t kill Sarah Gittings, if your alibi for him is correct. Although alibis are tricky things. Still, three alibis are good and sufficient for anybody. But look at the case against him!
“He gets his father to change his will in his favor. The news leaks out, and he’s afraid it will get to Mrs. Somers and the good work will be undone. So he kills Sarah Gittings for fear she’ll talk, and Florence Gunther because she’s trying to see you and tell you what she knows. Then, later on—”
“He would never have lifted a hand against his father.”
“No? Well, I daresay not. Anyhow, he didn’t. We have him checked for that night too. But it’s a pity. It’s a perfect case otherwise. But to get back to this pencil. We have only two guesses; either he had had it in his pocket for some time, and substituted it for what he found on the skylight. Or he already suspected or knew what was there, took the pencil from your desk, and used the ladder to remove something which was damaging.”
“To him?”
“Not necessarily; but to some one.” He sat back, thoughtfully. “I’ve already said that this is a family matter, Miss Bell. I’ve never seen a family more apparently united to frustrate justice and protect a criminal! It’s disunited every other way, but when it comes to these murders it turns a solid front to the world. Now, what was the purpose of that little drama on the hillside the other night?”
“To see if poor Jim Blake could have recognized somebody there,” I said defiantly.
“Precisely! And Jim Blake keeping his mouth shut and ready to take what comes! Who is he protecting? Who is Joseph protecting? He helps somebody out of that shaft, or at least to get out of the house. He finishes your job in the cellar and burns the carpet, and later on he gets knocked on the head for his trouble. How far can the police go, in a case like that?”
They had not found Mary Martin. That is strange, when I think back over it. She was not trying to hide; not then, at least. She was indeed, as the Inspector was to admit disgustedly later on, “under their noses.”
Nor were any of us seeing much of Wallie. Judy suggested that he was trying, like the police, to locate Mary.
“But why?”
“Because he’s crazy about her.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“Don’t you? I found her in his arms the day he came to New York, after father died. He had gone out, but he came back.”
“Judy!”
“Well, I did. She was crying, and he was smoothing her hair and whispering to her. I just backed out and let them be miserable.”
“She may have broken down, and he was trying to quiet her.”
But she only smiled, as from the depths of some secret knowledge which she knew well enough I did not possess.
I thought over that after Judy had gone. I thought back to the night of Sarah’s death, and Mary’s sudden pause in the drive when she learned that Sarah was still out. Wallie had been nervous too, I seemed to remember. At some time in the evening he had asked about Sarah.
“And where was Sarah, while all this was going on?”
“She was out.”
“And she’s still out?”
“Yes.”
It seemed to me now that he had looked slightly surprised and rather thoughtful; but how much of this impression was due to what had followed I was not certain.
But what did Mary Martin know? What possible business could she have had with Howard? A business so furtive that she must wait until Sarah was out, and so urgent that she had gone as white as a sheet when she was stopped.
She had not gone to Walter. Her errand—providing there was an errand—was one she was apparently concealing from Walter. It was a part of that same motive which had lain behind that strange procedure of hers when she had walked into Katherine’s New York apartment and by sheer audacity superseded poor Maude Palmer.
According to Katherine she had not wanted me to know that she was there.
“Why?” Katherine had asked.
“She would think I had us
ed what I know, to my own advantage.”
Frightened, beyond a doubt; pale, as she had been pale that day at the hotel. But quietly determined. Hiding herself away in a little room downtown, going out at night to throw something into the river, and then—going to bed and “sleeping well.” As though some weight was off her mind, as though now at last all was well, and safe. Poor Mary!
I had had my talk with the Inspector on Monday morning, and on Tuesday he asked permission to go over the house once more. Never have I seen a more exhausting search, or less result from it, unless I except the bewildered indignation of the servants. But at the last I did a thing I shall regret to the end of my life. I locked the ormolu cabinet and put the key away.
Simmons was in charge, and he came to me about it. But I explained that it had been examined, and that my mother’s Chelsea figures inside were very precious and not to be handled. He was satisfied, and so it was not opened.
Nothing else escaped them; the chair and sofa cushions, the mattresses, even the kitchen utensils and the washing machine in the laundry were closely examined; and the unfortunate Simmons spent some warm hours in the wood cellar, carefully moving the wood. But they found no papers, nor anything resembling a clock dial save on the clocks themselves.
The mere fact of the search, however, had greatly unnerved both Clara and Norah, and had a result beyond any of our expectations.
Norah asked that night to be allowed to keep Jock in her room, and Clara took Isabel. The total result of which was that I was awakened at three o’clock in the morning by a most horrible scream. It seemed to come from the back of the house, and was both prolonged and agonized.
I leaped out of bed and threw open my door. Joseph had similarly opened his, and I heard his voice.
“Who is it? What is wrong?”
There was a moan, and turning on the lights Joseph and I ran to the back stairs. Norah in her night dress was crouched there on the landing, her hands over her eyes.
“I’ve seen her!” she wailed. “I’ve seen her!”
“Stop that noise,” said Joseph sternly. “You’re scaring the whole neighborhood. Who have you seen?”
“Miss Sarah. I saw her, right at the foot of those stairs. She was standing there looking at me. In her uniform, too. All white.”
And to this absurd story she adhered with the dogged persistency of her type.
It appeared that Jock had wakened and had demanded to be taken out. He had whimpered and scratched at the door, and at last, none too happily, Norah had started down with him.
At the top of the back stairs, however, he had stopped and given a low growl. Norah had looked down. There is a lamp on the garage, and since our trouble I had ordered it left burning all night. Through the pantry window it sends a moderate amount of light into the pantry, and in that doorway Norah claimed to have seen her figure.
“And after that, what?” I demanded.
“I don’t know. I shut my eyes.”
Only one thing struck me as curious in all this. So far as I know, Elise, terrified by Judy’s dire threats, had said nothing of the figure in the attic and was now at a safe and discreet distance.
The next day I went over the house again with Joseph. New locks had been placed wherever possible and bolts supplemented them at the doors, and in the basement I had had placed over the windows gratings of stout iron well set into the bricks.
“What is it, Joseph?” I asked. “Do these women imagine these things? Or is somebody getting into the house?”
“They’re very nervous, madam. And nothing has been taken.”
I looked at him. It seemed to me that he stood not so erect as formerly; that he looked older and very tired. And lately I had noticed that he was less certain in his movements, slightly inco-ordinate. I put my hand on his arm.
“This is wearing on you, Joseph,” I said. “Would you like a vacation? I daresay we could manage.”
But he shook his head.
“Thank you, madam, but I’d prefer to stay. I’ve been a bit shaken since the attack; that’s all.”
“And you still have no idea who struck you?”
I thought that he hesitated. Certainly the arm under my hand perceptibly tightened. But although I know now that Joseph knew perfectly well who had struck him and that his very soul was seething with anger, it shows the almost incredible self-control of the man that his voice was as impassive as ever.
“Not the slightest, madam.”
He must have been intensely curious. That searching of the house by the police, what did it mean? But he said nothing, asked no questions. A perfect upper servant, Joseph. A very perfect servant.
The incident did not add to my peace of mind. I would lie in my bed at night and imagine that I heard stealthy movements, faint stirrings. Nor were these limited to the lower floor; sometimes they were over my head, and once indeed in my very boudoir, next to my bedroom. When I called out sharply they ceased and were not renewed.
It was on the second day after Norah’s experience, and sitting alone in my study that evening, that I decided to spy on my house; to lock myself securely in my room and listen to it. And this was less difficult than may appear.
The old speaking tubes in the house are simple of operation. To use them one opens them and drawing a long breath, expels it into the tube. The result is a wail of no mean calibre, wherever the tube may lead. But, once opened, these tubes are excellent conductors of sound, and as during a long invalidism my dear mother had managed her household from her bedroom, some four of these tubes led to the chamber which I now occupy, practically forgotten but still serviceable.
Joseph was out, but Clara was in the pantry. I shall never forget her face when I told her to go to the wood cellar and to bring me a small piece of wood to the library.
“And a knife, Clara. A very sharp knife.”
“A knife, ma’am? A butcher knife?”
“The sharpest one you can find, Clara.”
She was still staring at me as I turned and went out, and it shows the state of nerves in the household that after she had brought me the knife she turned and ran like a scared rabbit.
I cut my wood—and also my finger—and in the end I managed to prop open all the tubes except that in the pantry. After I had sent Clara to bed I opened that one also, and by midnight I was safely locked in my room with the lights out, and ready for my vigil.
For the first hour nothing happened. I heard Joseph come in the back door, apparently pick up the knife, mutter something and put it away. I heard the sound of the refrigerator opening and closing, and gathered that he was taking a little refreshment up to bed with him. And then, until one o’clock, there was a complete silence.
At that time I began to hear a faint sound. It came from the drawing room, and was too far away to identify, but it was unmistakable. Now and then it stopped, only to resume again. It was a stealthy scraping, rather like that of a mouse nibbling at a board. And indeed, as it went on interminably, I believed that that was what it was. The tube ran through the old walls, and we are liable to onsets of mice, as are all old houses.
I do not know how long it lasted, or when it ceased. It stopped abruptly, and although I listened intently there was nothing further. No stealthy footsteps followed it. The silence was complete.
I was up early the next morning, a trifle ashamed of the whole proceeding, to remove the strips of wood. The drawing room was undisturbed, as was the rest of the lower floor.
But Joseph was to interpret those sounds for me that very morning, and with my breakfast tray.
“I think we will not be troubled again, madam.”
“Troubled?”
“At night. I have found the means by which the person entered.”
And so indeed he had. According to his story he had gone into the drawing room to open it, and had set the rear door open. On the upper step he noticed some bits of putty, and on examining it he found that it was soft.
The device had apparently been a simple on
e. The old putty around one of the panes had been carefully dug out and fresh soft putty substituted. To gain access to the house it was only necessary to remove this, a matter of a moment, and with some adhesive material fastened to the pane, to draw it carefully out.
Inspector Harrison, examining the pane, decided that adhesive tape had been used for this purpose.
As there is no path there, the steps leading directly onto the grass, there were no footprints. But as a result of this discovery the Inspector himself that day placed a heavy iron bar across the door, and personally examined the doors and windows.
He was not entirely satisfied, however.
“That bolt on the door,” he said to me, “it’s beyond a normal man’s reach from that pane. Now it’s conceivable that Joseph might forget that bolt once, and on the night that somebody had planned to get in. But twice, or a half dozen times! I don’t believe it.”
“He might have pushed it back with something. The man outside, I mean.”
“Well, he might,” he admitted grudgingly.
Chapter Twenty-three
THE IMMEDIATE RESULT OF that discovery was my decision to tell Katherine all I knew. Partly to save her in her trouble and partly because I did not trust her discretion at that time, I had never told her about the missing sheets from Sarah’s records.
She listened attentively while I told her of that excursion of Judy’s and mine to Florence Gunther’s room, and of what we had found there, and I showed her Sarah’s record of the eleventh of August.
“Have you told Godfrey Lowell that?”
“Not yet. I’ve been trying to locate the missing pages.”
She got up, rang the bell and ordered the car.
“It is hard to forgive you for this, Elizabeth,” she said. “To hold that back, with Jim’s very life hanging on it!”
“I don’t see how it helps Jim.”
“Don’t you? Don’t you know what was on those records? That Howard never made a will at all, or that he was drugged when he did it. One of those two things.”
She had not waited for Elise. She was dragging out her outdoor garments, hurrying about—strange to see Katherine hurry—with two purplish spots of excitement high on her cheeks. Judy came in and stood by helplessly.
The Door Page 21