The Crooked Lane

by Frances Noyes Hart

  “Old Rarity whiskey—and not more than two drinks at most left in the bottle. Three bottles of White Rock, quite empty. Hyoscine hydrobromide—100 tablets—1/100 of a grain. Cleaned out.” He paused, balancing the brown bottle in his hand as he asked, carefully casual, “You will have more to tell me of this hyoscine hyrobromide, will you not, Tess?”

  “Oh, yes,” she assured him, gravely and docilely. “I’ll have quite a good deal more to tell you.”

  “Thirteen—no, fourteen cigarette butts—all gold-tipped and initialed F.S. They are Fay’s?”

  “Yes. She had them especially blended and made up that way.”

  “Fourteen.… That is a good many cigarettes, don’t you think? Was Fay a heavy smoker?”

  “I don’t know.” Her voice was abruptly and unfeignedly weary. “Thirty cigarettes a day—forty—what do you call a heavy smoker, K?”

  “You are right—that is a difficult question, as most stupid questions are. Like that small boy who asked his father how high an elephant jumped on the average. Let us then abandon these cigarettes to temporary oblivion. And that leaves us—what? That leaves us, it seems, an open book and an empty glass.”

  “One empty glass,” said Tess softly.

  “Exactly. Which would imply, would it not, that there was no one here to share this whiskey and soda with her?”

  “Is that what it implies to you?” inquired Tess more softly still. “To me it implies quite distinctly that someone was here who didn’t want us to know about it. Someone who didn’t dare let us know about it.… Fay drank several hundred times more than was good for her, but I doubt whether even she would have consumed three quart bottles of White Rock and nearly a quart of whiskey in solitary state. The bottle was full this morning, and she didn’t get home until ten.”

  Sheridan gave her a long, level glance and bent forward, his eyes carefully averted from the small, glimmering heap. His finger still scrupulously marked the place, as he flicked the book’s cover.

  “Halfway through. And it is called—it is called Death in the Afternoon. Death—” He halted, stared, and swung to confront the girl in the chair, a curious ring in his voice. “Tess, did you not tell me that death was the one word that Fay could neither read nor hear?”

  Tess Stuart was already on her feet.

  “Oh, but, K, it’s my book! It’s the book that I told you about—the one I came back to find. Fay wouldn’t have touched it in a thousand years. Don’t you see, it proves it! It proves what I’ve said all the time.”

  “What is it that it proves?”

  “Oh,” she cried imperiously, “now it’s you who are being stupid. It proves that someone put it there to make it look as though Fay had been reading it—and she couldn’t have been reading—not that book—not possibly. She must have been doing something entirely different, that he doesn’t want us to know about.… It proves, surely, that someone else was here—and that he didn’t want us to know that he was here.… Why didn’t he want us to know, K?”

  “You think that it is because he murdered her, do you not, Tess?” he asked, quietly. “I wish that I, too, could be so little exacting of proof. But I fear that the fact that the book was yours would not weigh heavily in the eyes of twelve good men and true.… That leaves us, then, the glass.”

  He stood looking down at it moodily, following the thin brown trickle to the very edge of the blue and green tiles.… And suddenly he felt her hand on his arm.

  “Mightn’t the glass weigh heavier, Karl?”

  “The glass?”

  “Yes. Don’t juries like fingerprints? In books they always like fingerprints.”

  “I see. You think this glass might have more than Fay’s fingerprints on it?”

  “If someone else had mixed the drink for her, it would be quite sure to, wouldn’t it?” she asked gently, wide eyes lifted to his for confirmation.

  “In those books that you all read so earnestly, do they no longer consider gloves de rigueur, if fingermarks are to be avoided?”

  “Oh, he could hardly wear gloves without attracting attention while he was mixing a drink for her, do you think? After all—indoors—in May—in the twentieth century! Though I’ll remember what you thought about it if there aren’t any marks but Fay’s on the glass. Because then it would simply mean that he’d been wearing gloves, wouldn’t it? Or that he didn’t drink.”

  “And if there were other marks,” Sheridan pointed out to her evenly, “it might simply mean that someone had come in here before she decided to kill herself, and had helped to mix her a drink.”

  Tess cried passionately:

  “You don’t believe that. You don’t believe it for one minute. It’s only because you don’t really want to help me that you even say it. But, K, I’m going to hold you to your promise.… Didn’t you say that there was something in that bag that could develop fingerprints?”

  “There is gray powder and an insufflator—yes.”

  “That’s a little bulb, isn’t it? I saw it right there, in the corner. Wait, I’ll get it for you.”

  She was swifter than light, but the face that he turned to her was very dark indeed.

  “Tess, this thing that we are doing now—this thing, you understand, it is outside the law.”

  “And what he did to Fay—wasn’t that outside the law, K?”

  He did not look at her as he knelt beside the hearth, lifting the empty glass carefully between thumb and finger, twirling it mechanically so that every inch of the surface caught the fine gray mist of powder.… Curious—those hearth tiles weren’t Persian at all. They were pictures of children, done in the freshest, most enchanting blues and greens and creams, with rhymes like wreaths about their edges.

  Here on his right sat a small girl, terrified and sedate. The tile sang:

  Little Miss Muffet,

  Sat on a tuffet,

  Eating her curds and whey.

  There came a big spider,

  And sat down beside her …

  There on the left wandered a strange little creature, wide-eyed in a peaked cap, with a candle clutched fast in its hand.…

  How many miles to Babylon?

  Threescore mile and ten.

  Can I get there by candlelight?

  Yes, and back again!

  And there, straight before him, a small lad swung his legs over a stile, pointing invisible directions with a minute finger to a bent and aged gnome.…

  And after that, where?

  Straight down the crooked lane,

  And all round the square!

  The old tiles from the Stuart babies’ night nursery, of course … gayer and fresher than they had been nearly twenty years ago.

  He bent his head, blew carefully, and knelt there motionless—staring, as though it were Medusa’s head that confronted him, instead of an empty glass. After a moment he rose, slowly, and Tess Stuart, waiting, saw once again on his face that look that she had seen earlier in the evening, a hundred years ago. The look of a hunter, listening for the far-off baying of the hounds.

  “You are quite right,” he said. “It’s murder.… There are no marks at all on the glass.”

  III

  Party for an Unknown

  For a long moment Karl Sheridan stood staring down grimly at the fragile, shining thing that had held death for one and now might well hold it for two. And even while he looked, his eyes contracted in a curious concentration—the vague intentness of those other magicians who gaze deep into crystal and see something strange and bewildering beyond its clear candor.… He took a linen handkerchief from his pocket and turned the glass in his hand slowly, polishing away the last traces of the fine gray dust.

  Tess, her eyes, too, on the glass, said softly and distinctly:

  “It must have been someone very stupid who did that, shouldn’t you say?”

  “Or someone, perhaps, so clever that he was willing to have us think so.”

  His eyes were still intent on something that was neither dust nor crystal.


  “Though after all, Tess, what could he do? As you pointed out, he could hardly wear gloves while pouring Fay those drinks, and still less could he remove his own fingerprints and retain hers. No, I imagine that in all probability he reasoned that the coroner and the police would leap gratefully to the obvious and plausible conclusion of suicide—and that if by any highly improbable chance they did not, it would be considerably safer to leave behind him this anonymous confession of murder, rather than a confession signed by his own hand.… Believe me, before we are through we are going to discover that the person who did this thing was very far indeed from stupid.”

  “Are we?” she asked, docile and attentive. “Well, then, Dion darling, we must be very careful not to be stupid ourselves, mustn’t we?”

  “As you say, very careful.”

  He could feel his heart sicken and twist within him.… Darling. Dion darling.… And she had not even realized that she had said it.… He returned the handkerchief to his pocket with meticulous care and stood surveying the glass in his hand with bitter distaste.

  “You realize what I am doing, Tess? What I have already done? I have made myself an accessory after the fact, with a bit of linen and a pinch of dust. That, believe me, is a hard and ugly and quite incredible fact to face. It is active treachery and disloyalty to all that I have been taught to honor most. I have been taught, you see, that cooperation in the effort to combat crime is the foremost duty of every member of the police force.… Tess, I am a member of the police force.”

  She said evenly:

  “Are you asking me to release you from your promise? I distinctly remember your telling me that for these next few days you were on leave and not attached to any police force in the world.”

  “That is true. But, Tess, how will I look, how will I seem, when at the end of those few days I go to your police with the evidence I have collected here? Even if it is evidence that will put handcuffs on a man, even if it is evidence that will put a rope around his neck, it will look as though I were a self-centered, conceited, fatuous young fool, eaten up by ambition and pride in my own ability. I do not greatly care for that picture.”

  “K, you promised.”

  “I was mad when I promised,” he said, quietly and bitterly. “Very well, I am still at your service, as you remind me. Though I warn you that it is entirely possible that all my trickery may prove as useless as it is detestable.”

  “Useless? Why?”

  “Do you think that your police are fools? I can assure you that they are not, from all that I have heard. If the slightest suspicion is aroused, they will be down on that glass like a pack of wolves, and it is quite needless to say that they will discover precisely what I discovered.”

  “But, K, you said that it was practically impossible that murder would occur to anyone—you said that it looked like an absolutely open-and-shut case of suicide. You wouldn’t even believe yourself that it was murder. Why should they pay the slightest attention to the wretched glass?”

  “There is not one chance in a hundred that they will,” said Sheridan somberly, his eyes turning back to the inscrutable cylinder in his fingers. “But it is that hundredth chance that has hung many a poor devil and made the fame of many a lucky detective. Who can tell what they might stumble on here that would point straight down the path marked Murder? … Not I, Tess, and not you! But I can tell you this: if they ever find that path, the first place that they will turn to for further directions will be this glass that I hold in my hand.”

  “You’re sure?” She came a quick step towards him. “No, no, they mustn’t do that. Wipe it again, K—wipe it carefully. Mightn’t your own fingerprints be on it?”

  “Hardly.” He smiled faintly, but his eyes were still grim. “A glass held as I hold it, this way, between thumb and finger, would have no mark of any kind.”

  She watched, wide-eyed, the deft twirl that he gave it.

  “Wouldn’t it really? Between your finger and thumb, you mean? This way?”

  Her hand reached towards him swift as lightning, thumb and finger conscientiously extended. For a moment it hung poised, and then, above her startled exclamation, a small splintering crash rang out and Karl Sheridan stood staring down at the shining ruins of what would have undoubtedly been the state’s star exhibit.

  “Oh, but, K, how clumsy of me—how dreadful!” The low voice was raised just a fraction to the proper pitch of contrite consternation. “It’s because my fingers aren’t as long as yours—but how could I have been so hideously careless?”

  The young gentleman from Vienna abruptly recovered his voice and a smile that was even less encouraging than his narrowed eyes.

  “I share your doubts as to its possibility,” he assured her pleasantly. “You think quickly, Tess—more quickly than I, apparently.”

  Tess’s eyes wandered mechanically to the glass bucket where the partly melted cubes swam majestic as miniature icebergs.

  “But it will just look as though it had slipped out of her hand, won’t it?”

  “Not to anyone gifted with the possession of two eyes in his head,” he commented dryly. “Her hand does not swing over the hearth—not by eight good inches.”

  “Doesn’t it?”

  But her eyes were not on the small limp hand; they had not once rested on it since she had crossed the threshold. Her eyes were on the little bucket, just at the point where the carved monogram glittered deep in the cold frostiness, clouding the surrounding crystal. “Then we’ll have to move the love seats, won’t we? … D’you know, K, I don’t believe that either of us has been thinking particularly clearly.”

  “No?” he inquired politely, eyebrows slightly raised.

  “No; we’ve been drawing all these damning and definite conclusions from that glass, and I don’t believe that there would have been any finger marks on it anyway—not even if he had mixed it for her—not even if she did take it from him.”

  “And may I ask upon what theory you base that extremely interesting conclusion?”

  “Oh, I’d tell you even if you didn’t ask! Look, this is what made me think of it: See how wet and frosty that bucket is, even now? And the reason that people leave fingerprints is that the tips of their fingers are a little oily, isn’t it? Well then, K, if you touched a glass all fogged with moisture, how could the oil in your fingertips leave an impression? And this one must have been awfully damp, because it was so thin and Fay always takes dozens of ice cubes. Wouldn’t the police, if they’re as clever as you say they are, know all this and not bother about whether there were fingerprints on it or not?”

  “If they suspected murder and did not turn to the glass to confirm their suspicions, they would hardly be as clever as I think,” replied Sheridan, still ominously agreeable. “You are proving now, Tess, how very dangerous indeed is that little knowledge that our copy books sighed over! Even on a damp surface such as this, fragments of fingerprints might be discovered, sufficiently characteristic to make identification possible; and if the glass had been handled before this moisture developed—as it undoubtedly was—excellent prints could be discovered and developed within any reasonable period of time after the moisture had evaporated.”

  “Oh, K!” Her face, instead of bearing, as it most certainly should have, marks of disconcerted apology, lifted swiftly to his, flooded from brow to throat with a wave of pure relief. “Oh, K, I’m so glad.”

  “Glad? And why, then, are you glad?”

  “Because you were right and I was wrong. Because you do think faster than I do, and you’re a hundred times more intelligent, and—”

  “I see. Your faith was shaken as to my qualifications for the task to which you have done me the honor to assign me? Well, you are probably quite right. Once again, will you permit me to resign it?”

  “No, no. I can’t, truly. You mustn’t ask me to let you off. You promised to help me. I simply won’t have all those clever police of yours tramping around here prying out everything about Fay, and I won’t eve
r—I won’t ever, ever stop until I find out who did this.” She halted abruptly, the flashing and imperious energy that vibrated through every note of her voice checked by the watchful irony in the dark eyes fixed on hers. After a moment she went swiftly towards him, placing her hand on his wrist. “K, what is it? I don’t understand, truly. Only a few minutes ago you were my old playmate, my new friend, who wanted to help me, even though it cost you a good deal to do it. I felt as though I’d known you all my life. And now—now—”

  Sheridan dropped his eyes to the white fingers lying on his dark hand. He dropped them quickly, before she could hear those eyes saying more clearly than any voice, No, no, you are mistaken. A few minutes ago I was your lover. But his voice said quite evenly:

  “And now, Tess, do you think that the charms that you cast will bind me faster than the promise that I gave?”

  She took her hand away swiftly, the gray eyes bright with resentment.

  “And now you aren’t my friend, are you? You’re a stranger, and a thousand miles away, and tight shut up inside yourself—and hard.”

  “You are right, I think. As you say, I am hard.”

  “No, no, you can’t make me believe it—not really—not underneath.… Something that I’ve said has made you angry, hasn’t it? Or something that I’ve done? Was it because I broke the glass? Because you thought I’d done it on purpose?”

  She paused, waiting for an answer, and when none came, she said with a small grave smile:

  “But, truly, I think that it’s I who should be angry about that. You aren’t being very fair to me, are you? You have no reason in the world to think that about me.”

  Sheridan remarked, with considerable formality:

  “Possibly my memory is at fault, but I assure you I have no recollection of saying that you broke the glass on purpose.”

  “Oh, there wasn’t any necessity for you to say it. You probably have a vision of yourself as a strong, silent man, but I can assure you that you have an extremely expressive countenance. I didn’t like the look on it a bit.”

  “That is unfortunate—especially since the broken glass is entirely unimportant.… It does not happen to be the glass that the murderer used.”