The Crooked Lane

by Frances Noyes Hart

  “I am glad, too, my poor Tess. And if, after that, the poor small Fay was not always as good a little girl as she should have been, it is not hard to understand, is it?”

  “Not for me. That’s why, these last few years, I’ve put up with things—oh, you don’t know what things! But when she was worst, I’d always see that poor frantic scrap lying there in the dark room with her hands over her ears and her curls all snarled up in a dreadful tangle, just moving her head from side to side when we tried to make her eat—or drink—or sleep.… You see, she was like Father in lots of ways, and then she inherited the only bad things that Mother had; even though I was only eleven, and worshiped the ground that Mother walked on, I knew perfectly well that she was too quick and unstable and high-strung—laughing one moment and crying the next, and scolding us and spoiling us and flirting with us until we never knew whether we were standing on our heads or our heels. And when you add Dad’s ruthlessness to all that emotional instability, you had about as bad a combination as you’d find this side of a lunatic asylum or a chain gang, it seems to me.”

  “To me, too. Poor wretched lost little child! You are so sure, Tess, that this way was perhaps not best—and that Fay, too, thought it so?”

  “No, no—never.” Her low voice was shaken and passionate in its denial. “You haven’t been listening to me—you simply haven’t understood anything at all. I tell you that fear of death was so stamped into her body and into her soul that nothing, nothing, nothing would have made her even consider it for a second. Someone murdered her, and she was too little to die, and too afraid. I want that person to die, too. I’ll spend the rest of my life making sure that he does.”

  “He? You are so sure, then, that it was a man?”

  “I’m not sure of anything, except that she was murdered, and that I’m going to find the murderer.… But I don’t know how to begin—I don’t know how to go on. K, aren’t you going—aren’t you going to help me?”

  “You make it very difficult for me not to,” he said, and suddenly he looked very young and weary. “But, Tess, how can I help you? Surely you must see that it is to your own police that you must tell this story; if what you believe is true, it is most definitely their affair.”

  “Tell them what story?” she cried scornfully, fire dancing under the snow of her skin. “That I believe that Fay was murdered because a governess whipped her when she was six, and she found my mother dead when she was eight? Why, you don’t even believe it yourself! They’d laugh in my face.”

  “I doubt whether they would do that,” he said quietly. “I think that you doubt it, too. Are you quite sure that you have no other reasons for believing that Fay was murdered?”

  She said, very softly:

  “Oh, fifty reasons.”

  “Fifty?”

  “Yes. Of course, I’m undoubtedly understating it. But I could give you the names of at least fifty good men and true who will be very glad indeed to know that Fay is dead.”

  He said, slowly:

  “I see.”

  “Do you, Karl? Do you really? I wonder!” There was a strange little flicker like fever playing behind the silvery gray eyes, but she did not lift her voice a fraction above the low perfection of its ordinary level. “You should, of course, because you’re so frightfully clever; you told me how clever you were with all your laboratories, and little black bags; and your psychology and chemistry—and that party where you were just going to sit with your knees crossed and your arms folded, and smile and smile until you caught the villain. And without any fuss or noise or trouble to anyone, you were simply going to hand me his head on a silver platter. Don’t you remember—you promised?”

  “I had not meant, believe me, to sound so boastful.”

  “Hadn’t you? That’s rather a pity—because I believed you, you see. And when I—and when I found Fay, I thought how lucky it was going to be for me.… No hateful nonsense about inquisitive policemen running around three deep and pawing through everything in the house—no disgusting headlines four inches high shrieking about all the ghastly things she’d done, and all the horrible things she was—nothing at all but peace and quiet and calm, and a perfectly good head on a perfectly good platter—”

  “Tess, Tess, I beg of you—”

  “Well, but what’s the matter, K? You did say that all you needed was a murder and a party, didn’t you? And here I am presenting you with a perfectly beautiful murder in my very own house, and a perfectly beautiful party at Green Gardens—oh, and I can fix another one for you at the Stirlings’ tomorrow night. I can’t say that I think it’s very sporting of you to back out after all the trouble I’m taking—”

  “Tess, you cannot—you simply cannot know what you are saying. If you knew, indeed, indeed you would cut out your tongue rather than say it.”

  She stood staring at him for a moment, the back of her hand against her lips, fighting her way back to control with an effort that drained her of the last drop of color. When she spoke again, her voice was as gentle and careful as a good little girl’s:

  “That’s true, K. I’ve been going a little crazy, haven’t I? Thank you for stopping me. But, you see, it’s because I was so sure that you were going to help me, and then when you wouldn’t, I kept feeling something straining and snapping inside of my head. It hurts. And I don’t know what to do.… I don’t, honestly.”

  “But, my poor Tess, that is what is so clear and simple. Look, you will call up your doctor—you have a doctor, surely?—and he will make an examination, and then notify the police as to what he finds, and then this horror will no longer be in your hands—where, surely, it should never have been. There will be a verdict of suicide, undoubtedly; it is what they call an open-and-shut case, and the police, I most honestly believe, will not so much as consider questioning the coroner’s decision.”

  She said, in a small, despairing voice:

  “Oh—oh, what a fool I’ve been! … Very well, then—there isn’t anything to say but good-night, is there? And that I’m sorry to have been so much trouble to you.… Good-night, K.”

  “Tess, we two must not part like this. I would cut off my hand if I believed that it would help you; it is strange to me that you do not know this without my saying so. But if things are as you think, then surely you must see that it is to your own police that you should turn—that it is my barest and simplest duty to tell you to turn to them, not to me.”

  “No, no, I don’t see it!” she cried, her voice, never yet off the leash of her control, shaken and deepened by her vehemence. “What duty or loyalty do you owe to the police or any other organization yet? Oh, I know that you don’t owe me any, either, but I did think that you might help me—I did think so, K.”

  She turned her face away swiftly, but not before he saw the tears drench it, suddenly and terrifyingly. She was weeping, like the lost War Baby, motionless, soundless, undefeated; like the lost War Baby, who, sixteen years ago, had faced him just so, piteous and undaunted, weeping because all her snowballs were gone, and not one had even touched him.… He came close to her, bent his head over her linked hands, and with a long sigh, placed wisdom and duty far from him.

  “Do not cry,” he said gently. “Do not cry, Tess. You were quite right to think that I would help you—no, to know so. It is I who was stupid to have thought even for a moment that my way was best. Will you sit down for a moment—here, in this chair with your back to the sofa—and talk things over quietly, like old friends? We are old friends now, are we not?”

  “Very old friends,” she said docilely, seated in the deep chair that he had pulled towards her, her hands clasped in her lap, her face, disdainful of the tears already drying on it, lifted to his.

  “Then, though perhaps it is not good manners to make bargains between old friends, let us make a bargain, you and I.… If I can make you believe before I leave this house tonight, Tess, that Fay was not murdered, will you then notify your doctor and proceed as you would have done—normally, shall we say? Is t
hat agreed?”

  She said, with the faintest smile edging her pale lips:

  “Oh, yes, it’s agreed. But that’s not a very good bargain for you, I’m afraid.”

  “Oh, as for me, that is of no importance. Second—and last—if within the space of time between tonight and the day that I shall formally become attached to the Division of Investigation I do not discover the murderer of Fay, you will permit me to turn over to the police all the clues that I may have discovered up to that time, and to continue to work side by side with them until the case is solved. You will agree to that, too? You can count on me to see that it is done with all possible discretion.”

  “Yes. Yes, I can count on that.… Very well, K, I agree to that, too. But it’s only fair to tell you, isn’t it, that I’m agreeing because I am very sure indeed that long before you are attached to the Division of Investigation you will have made our second bargain quite unnecessary?”

  “No, you should not tell me that.” He smiled at her—a rather twisted smile. “If you say such things to me, you might make me vain, and vanity just now I should find a heavy handicap. It is needless to say that if I should be fortunate enough to be of real service to you, I should at once turn over the murderer to the police.”

  “Oh, quite needless to say,” she assured him, with that terrible gentleness. “If you did not, I should. Is that all that I need promise, K?”

  “That is all.”

  “Then—what next?”

  “Ah, that is it. What next indeed?” He sat motionless for a long minute, elbows on knees, knuckles hard driven into weary eyes. “The note! … Let us begin with the note. I think that you are right; there is something wrong with it. But I have only my eyes to tell me that, and before we are through, we shall need more than eyes here.” He rose, crossing to the table. “You do not mind now if I touch it, Tess? I am afraid that if we are to find out anything about it, it will be essential.”

  “No, no; I don’t mind now. Poor K, I’m sorry I’ve been such a dreadful little fool. I’ll be good now—and I’ll help you, I promise. Wait and see.”

  “It is not necessary to promise. Already you have been braver than any other woman that I have ever known in my life; yes, or than any man—and I know better than you that you will not fail me. Now then, let us see what this note will tell us.”

  He held it carefully between two fingers, his eyes riveted in so fierce a concentration that for a moment they gave the curious effect of blindness.

  It was a slip of fine, creamy paper, evidently torn from a pad of some kind, as a minute line of perforations ran neatly across its upper border. The tiny, penciled words stood out startlingly black, for all their feathery delicacy, and he stood frowning down at them for a full minute, before he crossed back to the girl in the deep chair, holding the page closer for her inspection.

  “You see? It is too black.”

  “Too black? The writing, you mean?” She, too, frowned in her effort at concentration. “You think that there’s something unusual about the pencil?”

  “I am quite sure that there is something unusual about the pencil.”

  “Yes—I see; there’s a curious quality like plush or velvet, isn’t it? Could it be indelible?”

  “Oh, never. With an indelible pencil it would be quite a hard, thin gray; and then, see, a drop of water has fallen on it—here, on the word ‘Ever.’ If it had been an indelible pencil, that word would now be violet.”

  “Well, but then, K, what kind of a pencil was it?”

  “I think—no, I am quite sure—that it was a pencil of pure graphite, with no alloy; a pencil such as is used only by artists. Did Fay draw—sketch—do any work of that kind?”

  “No. She simply hated doing anything with her hands. She was very bad at it, and she detested anything that she was bad at.”

  “Nor you? Nor anyone in the household?”

  “Nor I. I’m not sure about the servants, of course, but I’ll make inquiries, if you want me to.”

  “That might be wisest. If she wrote that note tonight, as it certainly implies, the pencil must be close at hand. Will you have a thorough search made in the morning? I should very much like that pencil—and the note, too, if you are permitted to retain it. There is still something that I have to show you about this note. It is not the pencil that my eyes were warning me of, you see, though that, too, I find strange. But now you shall see for yourself—look, I will put the page here on this black table, where it will stand out quite clear. There now—you see?”

  She bent forward, eager and intent, only to look up at him with an impatient shake of her head.

  “I told you that I was stupid. I don’t see anything—not anything at all that I didn’t see before, I mean. What is it that I ought to see so clearly?”

  “You cannot see that this line here is not quite straight?”

  He drew his finger lightly and swiftly across the foot of the little page, sharply defined against the shining black surface.

  “Yes, now that you show me—oh, but even now I couldn’t swear. You’re sure?”

  “Absolutely sure. I could very easily swear—and would.”

  “But, K, it’s such a tiny difference.”

  “Not so tiny, I think—quite an honest, appreciable difference. A tenth of an inch, perhaps even an eighth. Wait, I will show you.”

  He crossed to the end of the love seat, where he had left the black bag, scowled down at its sinister, competent trimness, and turned back, swinging it impatiently onto the table in front of the pale girl, her eyes still fixed on the piece of paper. When he looked up again the old friend was gone—the pleasant, courteous stranger was gone—the lover who had lurked behind the noncommittal eyes was gone. In their place stood the physician with his scalpel, the chemist with his scales. In their place stood Karl Sheridan of the Criminalistic Institute of Vienna, with a steel tape measure in his hands.

  “Now there will be no more question of guessing or of swearing,” he said quietly. “See, here across the top it measures three inches, exactly. And here down the right side it is exactly four inches and one tenth. And on the left—yes, that is as I thought. On the left it is four inches and two tenths.”

  “You were quite right,” she said. “It seems to be a favorite trick of yours. And if you will wait just a moment, I think that I can tell you what you’ve been trying to show me.… Someone trimmed something off the end of that paper, didn’t he? Something that he didn’t want anyone to see? Someone who was in a hurry, and whose hand wasn’t quite steady?”

  “Oh, as for that, one might have a hand as steady as mine—or as yours—and miss that fraction of an inch if there were no line to guide him! As a matter of fact, it might well have been Fay herself who did it. The only indisputable fact is that the paper has been slashed.”

  “There wouldn’t be a possibility of finding any fingerprints on it—any besides Fay’s, I mean?”

  “No. If it had a glazed surface, perhaps—though even then, I doubt it. It has been very carefully handled; the pencil marks are so soft that they would blur quickly if they were smudged, you see—and except for that one little drop of water, they are quite clear. This paper here is very fine and dull, almost like a vellum. You would not have any idea where it might have come from?”

  “Yes. I think I know exactly where it came from. I think that it came from Fay’s own notebook.”

  “Her notebook? And do you know where she would keep her notebook?”

  “I imagine that it’s in the bag; the bag on the sofa. She carried it with her everywhere, because she had such a dreadful memory.”

  He was back with it in his hands almost before the words were off her lips.

  “In this?” He shook the contents impatiently onto the table, pushing aside the black bag to make space for it. “Ah, here! This is the one?”

  Tess bestowed on the charming, luxurious small object, all shimmering blue and green brocade and diamond corners, the briefest of glances—but the eyes th
at she turned away from it were haunted.

  “That’s it.”

  He turned back the cover with impatient fingers and paused, looking at it strangely for a moment before he detached the leaf confronting him.

  “That, most undoubtedly, is it. Let us find now just how it measures with our note.”

  The steel measure sprang sharply to attention, and the dark head and the shining pale one bent forward to read its message.

  “A liberal four and a half inches; that means, then, that close on a half inch is missing. And that, I think, is all that our note will tell us at present. But for so small and innocent a messenger, it has not proved unloquacious. Now, next, Tess—next!”

  He put down the sea-colored notebook and turned impatiently to the table at the end of the love seat, inventorying its contents with a practised eye.