“What d’you mean, alibied?” Asey asked.
“Why, you see, Mayo, we were in groups, there at the auction. The Madisons came together and sat together near me. Dorking came with a minister, and sat with him. Mrs. Turnover came with another fat lady – I think it was her landlady – and sat with her. I was watching for Alden, and kept him in my sight from the moment he came. I know we were all in our seats some time before the auction began – Sharp made a couple of false starts before he actually got going. And—”
“Tell me,” Asey interrupted, “did you happen to see either Gardner Alden or Al Dorking near the sea chest before the sale?”
“Yes, I was going to mention that. I got the impression that Dorking was trying to make Gardner bite at that chest – it’s an old technique, you know, pretending you’re terribly interested in something to get someone else steamed up into buying it. I do it. Solatia was wonderful at it,” Harmsworth said. “She’s even caught me. Well, I was curious enough to go take a look inside that chest myself. Nothing in it but books, though. Just books.”
“You don’t remember just what kind of books, do you?” Asey inquired casually.
“What kind? They were just books, old books. Books aren’t my line, you know. I wouldn’t have known if they were valuable or not. Now,” Harmsworth said, “this is the way the thing hit me last night as I went up the Inn steps. Eunice’s tyre and phone work would keep Solatia from driving to the auction in her beach-wagon, or phoning for help. So she probably walked – she was a walker, too. She could walk my legs off me any day in the week. Always used to remind me,” he added reminiscently, “of those pictures you used to see of Englishwomen in the country. You know, tweeds, and stout shoes, and a stick. Brisk and wiry. Now, I know how she could walk, and I know she’d have got to John’s long before the intermission. You begin to see my point?”
“Dimly,” Asey said. “Go on.”
“Say that she got there before the intermission. Now, everyone who might have been involved with her murder was in their seats,” Harmsworth said, “from long before the start of the auction, until the intermission. Everyone, that is, but Quinton Sharp, and Chris Bede. Sharp was all over the place – a couple of times he had one of his men take over while he went to hunt up certain things. Bede was all over the place, helping Sharp’s men. See? Now, in books—” he hesitated.
“In books what happens?” Asey said.
“Well, in books,” Harmsworth said, “the young girl always does crazy things to shield her fiance, if she thinks he may be suspected. I wondered if Polly Madison wasn’t trying to get rid of those Harper’s because she thought they might incriminate Bede in some way – after all. Mayo, she couldn’t be shielding her mother. She and her mother never stirred from their seats!”
But Polly had stirred, Asey thought to himself. Not very long before the intermission, to judge the timing from Gardner Alden’s hand-washing episode, Polly had driven clear around the pond to throw away two hampers full of books.
“So,” Harmsworth went on, “after thinking that out, I walked down the Inn steps, got into the car, and drove to the Bedes’ house. It’s on Main Street, two doors below John’s, you know. He’d pointed it out to me.”
“What was your idea in goin’ there?”
“Oh, I had some wild plan of rousing Chris Bede, and shouting accusations at him quickly – funny how that’s the first method that occurs to you! I see the fallacy of it now, after Hanson. It’s like blitzing with cardboard tanks.”
“What time was all this?” Asey asked, more from a sense of duty than because he really cared a great deal about Harmsworth’s adventures in detecting.
“Just before dawn. And what d’you know, Mayo? As I drove up the street, I saw Bede’s roadster turning into the drive-way! Then I watched and saw a light go on – it was one of the ground-floor windows that looks out on the open side porch. I wondered what he’d been up to, and why he was creeping home at that hour, so I sneaked up on the porch and peeked in. He was taking out some papers that he’d apparently buttoned inside his shirt. He put them on the bureau, and then went to bed. After he got to sleep, I made a long reach from the porch to the bureau – I never went in for that sort of thing before, but I know now that I’d make a dandy burglar – and took the papers. Here.”
With quiet pride, he drew a sheaf of envelopes from his pocket, and held them out to Asey.
“All those letters in the grey envelopes,” he continued, “are acrimonious ration board items from Mrs. Madison to Solatia, and I don’t think they amount to any more than Eunice’s bickerings. But that white letter on the bottom is very interesting, and I think it’s worth all my effort. Take a look at it. It’s a written order from Chris Bede to Solatia, asking her to buy for him at any price John’s fish knife – he says she knows the one he means – because he expects he has to report to an Army doctor on the afternoon of the auction, and so won’t be able to bid on it himself. He wants the knife in memory of John, with whom he spent so many pleasant days fishing, and whom he loved so much, and all that.”
Asey read the letter thoughtfully.
“Huh!” he said. “More pink sea shells! But Bede didn’t have to report yesterday afternoon, an’ so he was at the auction in person. But he didn’t bid on the lot that had the knife – Al Dorking or Jennie or someone’d remembered it, if he had. Yup, I wonder if maybe he didn’t just swipe that fish knife in memory of his old fishin’ companion, before the sale begun.”
“That’s what I decided he’d done,” Harmsworth said. “The motive stuck me for a time, I’ll admit.”
“Motive?”
“Bede’s motive for killing her. Then I decided if you were a penniless second-lieutenant marrying into the Madison family, you might want a little cash on hand to hold up your end at the start. And there was John Alden’s money, kicking around somewhere. And Solatia was a good friend of John’s – and she told me yesterday,” Harmsworth said, “that half the world had found an excuse to drop in and ask her if she didn’t know where John kept that money. She actually didn’t know, so she truthfully couldn’t tell anyone. But people felt sure she did know, and it irritated them profoundly when she said she didn’t.”
“When you think it over,” Asey said reflectively, “there seems to be a lot more people who wanted that money of John’s than people who actually wanted to kill her, don’t there? Huh!” he started walking slowly back toward the house, and Harmsworth fell into step beside him. “Tell me, when Solatia didn’t come to the auction, why didn’t you go after her?”
Harmsworth seemed taken aback by the question. “Why, I kept expecting that she’d come, of course!”
“But,” Asey persisted, “if you thought that Gardner Alden or anyone else might be tryin’ to keep her away from the auction, an’ if she never came, why didn’t you go look into the matter? Why didn’t you investigate the situation?”
“Remember that I was taking an active interest in that auction, too!” Harmsworth told him. “I was buying things! I had to be there!”
“Uh-huh,” Asey said gently, “that’s what I was drivin’ at.”
“But see here, Mayo! Gardner was the man I worried about in connection with her, and he was there in front of my eyes! And – look, you’re not insinuating anything about me, are you?”
Asey paused by Solatia’s beachwagon, and surveyed it for a moment before answering.
“I’m only thinkin’,” he leaned over and looked at the milk bottle and the pair of white pumps in the front seat, “that you worried about what Alden might do, an’ he claims he worried about what you might do, an’ Sharp was worryin’ about pretty near everything under the sun, before the auction started. You was all worryin’ about Solatia. But none of you cared enough or worried enough to leave, an’ go find out what’d become of her, did you, now?”
“All right, I’ll admit it!” Harmsworth said. “What d’you think I’m staying in this God-forsaken town for, when I have a million things to do othe
r places? It’s because I’m so bitterly ashamed that I didn’t go find out what Eunice had done to this beachwagon, and bring Solatia to the auction myself! And seeing this thing through is the only way I can salve my conscience!! Look,” he went on as Asey started toward the house, “your mentioning Sharp reminds me – Solatia said he’d driven her crazy, asking her where John’s money was hidden. And he was funny about that chest, Mayo! He didn’t want to sell it. He looked furious when it was brought out, and I think he’d have refused Gardner’s bid, if he’d dared.”
“The price,” Asey said, “would’ve been enough to make anyone look funny. I dare say I’d have looked a little odd myself, if I’d been there.”
“But even before Gardner bid, he looked queer – by the way, d’you believe that yarn about Gardner’s grandmother? You know,” Harmsworth said, “that nearly threw me, when Hanson said that! I’ve seen Gardner kicking around auctions and sales and dealers’ rooms for years, and I’d say that far from feeling any sentiment for his grandmother, he probably stole her cough medicine, regularly.”
“I think I’m beginnin’ to be convinced,” Asey said, “that the old lady kept pink shells in the chest, at least, an’ maybe—”
He broke off as he opened the front door of Solatia’s house, and found Gardner Alden, Eunice Pitkin, and Hanson, all crowded into the tiny front hall.
“It’s really old Canton,” Eunice was saying, “and the glaze – oh, Mr. Mayo, can you squeeze in? Hello, Paul – that umbrella stand is an unusual piece, isn’t it? And then that lovely carved teak piece to make the division for canes and umbrellas! Isn’t that interesting, Captain Hanson?”
“Yeah,” Hanson said. “Yeah, sure is – Asey, what’re you going to do now? You’re not going!”
“I want to make a few calls,” Asey told him. “I’ll see you over at my house later. Okay? So long, everybody.”
He heard Harmsworth’s caustic comment as he strode down the walk toward his roadster.
“Very perfunctory, isn’t he?”
“Oh, be gets these ideas,” Hanson answered. “He sees something nobody else notices, and off he goes! Sometimes I think he’s bats. But the hell of it is, he gets there—”
Hanson was overestimating him, Asey thought with a grin as he drove away.
He hadn’t any brilliant and inspired ideas at all.
He simply wanted to see Quinton Sharp!
“I’d ought to have phoned an’ seen if he was home yet,” Asey murmured. “Oh, but if he was out all mornin’, he must be home at his place now!”
But Sharp wasn’t at his house, and a brief inspection of his bungalow showed that his bed hadn’t been slept in either.
“Huh!” Asey left the bedroom and returned to look more closely at the disordered mess of papers he’d noticed on the dining-room table.
Then he laughed aloud.
Nothing very fatal could have happened to Sharp, he decided, noting that the morning paper was there in the clutter, and that Sharp had taken time out to do the crossword puzzle!
He poked curiously around the rest of the litter. In addition to Sharp’s morning mail, it consisted of a list of John Alden’s auction sales, and an insurance inventory, dated several months before, of the contents of John Alden’s house.
“Wa-el,” Asey said philosophically to himself, “I had the readin’ of all this comin’ to me sooner or later, an’ who knows, maybe it might anyway prove I’m bats, like Hanson seems to think!”
An hour later, having read through both lists four times each, he marched back out to his roadster with a springy step.
The minister next, he decided.
“Maybe books’ll be enough in his line,” he murmured, “so’s if he seen ‘em in the sea chest, he’ll remember what they were!”
Ellen’s extra tin of gas gave him such a sense of security that he recklessly took back roads, and wove around the outskirts of the town instead of cutting through to the centre by way of the highway and Main Street.
At a turn in one of the lanes, he braked quickly to avoid crashing into a car parked in the ruts directly ahead of him.
He started to lean out and hail the driver, realized the car was empty, and then he jumped out of the roadster and hurried over to the man standing on the edge of a clearing in the pines.
Quinton Sharp, white-faced and trembling, turned and looked at him.
“I knew I couldn’t ever get away with it – here!” he thrust into Asey’s hand the round coffee tin for which he had apparently been digging a little grave. “Take it!”
“What is it?” Asey demanded.
“John’s money,” Sharp said wearily.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“JOHN’S money – you mean, John Alden’s money?” Asey demanded.
Sharp nodded, and for a moment, Asey thought the man was going to burst into tears.
“Where’d you find it?”
“I didn’t find it! John gave it to me! The week before he died,” Sharp said. “He called me in and gave it to me! But you won’t believe me. Nobody will. John told me to take it to the bank and deposit it at once, and I didn’t. Now if I do, you and the rest’ll say I found out from Solatia Spry where his hoard was, and then killed her after she told me! And I didn’t tell anyone about it because John said not to. And I wish,” he concluded unhappily, “I was dead!”
Asey took him by the arm.
“Come over to the car an’ sit down, an’ pull yourself together, an’ let’s get to the root of this. Now,” he shoved Sharp into the roadster, “why did John give you this money?”
“He said not to tell.”
“When he said that, he didn’t know that Solatia would be killed, an’ that it would matter,” Asey said. “Why’d he give it to you?”
“Well, it was really that I shouldn’t tell anyone about him,” Sharp said. “He told me he’d had a couple of heart attacks, and it was senseless to think you’d live forever, and he’d made his will and knew my brother – he’s executor – would carry out his wishes about selling everything, and since I’d probably be the one to auction off the things, he wanted me to promise to do it fair and square.”
“What’d he mean by that?”
“John said he thought maybe his brother or his sister, or maybe some dealers or collectors, would try to bribe me – Gardner did, too. I told you about that. He offered me a lot more than the five hundred in this tin, Asey,” Sharp said. “He offered me a thousand, and would’ve raised it, too. But I’d told John I’d have an honest auction, and get as much as I could for the Hospital Fund, and I did!”
Asey nodded. “Tell me,” he twisted the lid off the coffee tin, and peered curiously at the bills inside. “Huh – wrapped in cellophane! Tell me, when did the possession of this hit you in the face, as you might say?”
“Two seconds after you opened that sea chest yesterday afternoon!” Sharp told him. “It was all I could think of. John’s money over in my desk drawer! Honest, I hardly knew what you and that cop asked me! The minute I came home, I wrapped the bills in that cellophane, put ‘em in the tin, and took it to the beach and buried it near my fish shack. You know what happened, Asey? Before my back was hardly turned, two little kids came running up and said ‘Mister, did you leave this?’ ”
Asey chuckled.
“I decided,” Sharp went on, “to wait till dark before trying to hide it again. About nine o’clock, I went down to the shore again, started to bury it – up came the Coast Guard with one of those guard dogs they have! I damn near lost a leg.”
“Ever think of the old dodge,” Asey said, “of mailin’ it to yourself, day in an’ day out?”
“If you mailed a package to yourself more than once in this town, old Walters’d sic Doc Cummings on you!” Sharp said. “Well, then I took the tin home and put it in the bottom of a trunk in my attic. And at ten-thirty last night, out of clear sky, over comes my brother’s wife for a piece of old black lace she needs in a rush for something – and up she goes, straight to t
hat trunk! If you could’ve seen me, trying to keep her from seeing that tin! Because she’d have grabbed it and opened it before you could say Jack Robinson. She’s the kind that has to know what’s in everything!”
“Wa-el, they claim lightning never strikes twice—”
“That’s what I thought!” Sharp said. “After she left, I put the tin back into the trunk. I was a happy man. At eleven-thirty, she’s back – she takes the trunk!”
“Why?” Asey asked weakly.
“Says this costume she’s making for her little girl’s dancing-class recital needs lots of other things from that trunk, and she can’t be bothered making more trips, and the costume has to be finished by noon. I couldn’t head her off, Asey!” Sharp said. “I told her I was too tired from the auction to move trunks – so she took it down herself! I couldn’t stop her!”
“So,” Asey said, “you trailed her home, an’ spent the night keepin’ guard over the trunk!”
“How’d you know? That’s just what I did! I guess she was tired herself, because she left the trunk in the car – it was like a steamer trunk – and then she locked the car! And I sat out by their garage till my brother came around seven this morning, unlocked the car, put the trunk on the garage floor, and drove off. And did I get that tin out in a hurry – and I felt awful, Asey, sneaking about with it!”
“An’ then you brought it here?”
Sharp shook his head. “I buried it over at the far side of town in a field I own. I went up to town and got the mail and the paper—”
“An’ brought ‘em home,” Asey said, “an’ done the crossword while you had some coffee. I know, I been to your house. Then what?”
“I set out to see you – Asey, you know what was happening in that field when I passed by? The Army’d come, and men were digging fox holes and slit trenches – I’d said they could, but it was so long ago, I’d forgot!”
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