The Crooked Lane

by Frances Noyes Hart

  She answered, the white face a little whiter:

  “Not even remotely, of course. Unless you call being an accessory after the fact remotely. You can’t believe that I’d have dragged you into this ghastly business if I’d ever dreamed that I’d be even as remotely involved as that, can you, K?”

  “Since we seem to be putting some of the cards that we have been concealing up our sleeves out on the table where we can both look them over, that has most certainly been one of the possibilities that I have considered more than once. It struck me, you see, that a fairly astute young man with an excellent scientific equipment who was even casually following up a trail that had unexpectedly opened out before him might prove a rather dangerous person to have at large, and that the safest place to keep him might well be directly under your eyes, where you could see precisely what he was up to, and back-track and mislead him at every possible favorable opportunity. At any rate, you will hardly deny that that is obviously what Mallory decided to do when he offered to share these quarters with me. Was it with malice aforethought that you suggested the arrangement to him?”

  “I’ve already told you,” she answered, in a voice suddenly and inexplicably shaken by a low passion that she held well in leash, “that I hadn’t the remotest idea that Dion had anything to do with Fay’s death until you showed me that malachite backgammon marker. Of course I knew then that he’d been there, but until that moment I didn’t even dream that he’d laid eyes on her at any time that night—or it was morning before you left, wasn’t it? I remember that we were waiting for the dawn—and I believed that he was practically in New York. No matter what you think of me—and you have a right to think almost anything hateful—I can’t see how you could possibly imagine that I would be insane enough to drag you in to track down Dion as a murderer when the thing on the surface looked enough like suicide to satisfy Sherlock Holmes himself.”

  “That is true, I suppose. What happened afterwards was as much my fault as yours; I should never have permitted myself to touch the whole hateful affair with the best of rubber gloves and a ten-foot pole. And once involved, my poor Tess, what alternative had you save to trick and confuse me to the very best of your ability?”

  “I’m glad you see that,” she told him, the low voice small and desolate. “I’ve felt like such a despicable little beast, sitting there cheating and tricking and lying to you when it was my fault that you were there at all. I used to turn my face away, so that I couldn’t see that rhyme on the tile of the night-nursery mantel—you know, the one with the little boy sitting on the stile?

  “And after that, where?

  Straight down the crooked lane,

  And all round the square.

  That was where I was trying to lead you—or mislead you would be truer, I suppose. And you had been so kind to me—so dear to me—trying to help me all the time—”

  “Yes, that tile I remember very well.” He closed his tired eyes for a minute, and it rose once more before him, as gay and fresh and careless in its primrose yellows and water blues and leaf greens as spring itself.… He remembered how he had seen it first as he knelt on the hearth with the empty glass in his hand. “But it was not straight down even a crooked lane that you were trying to lead me, was it? Down a lane, yes—and all round the square most assuredly—but never straight. The straight way I had to find myself, and from beginning to end it has been a lonely and hateful business. Because you are quite right. All the time I wanted to help you—you who were still the little girl who so many years ago had been my brave enemy. I wanted it, I think, more than I have ever wanted anything in my life.… I still want it.”

  She said, in that small lost voice:

  “Life’s stupid, isn’t it? Even when I love it best I can see that. Don’t want it any more, please, darling. It’s no good.… Because now at last I can be honest.”

  “Do not, I beg, be too honest. That is what I was trying to tell you when I warned you that every word that you said now could be used against you or Mallory. Would you not, perhaps, rather that I waited and asked Mallory himself these questions—that I did not ask you anything more at all?”

  “No; I don’t think so.” She sat silent, twisting the ruby ring from side to side as though it were a little scale in which she was weighing her thoughts. “You wouldn’t use them, I believe, even if they would help you, and none of these things would really help you at all—except to understand. You’ve already patched all the little bits together that made up the murder itself into a neat enough picture to convince any jury, if you really want to convince one. These that I’m telling you are just—oh, what do they call them? The events that led up to the crime. That’s what you want to know now, isn’t it? And the special event that did finally precipitate things wasn’t a note at all; it was a telephone call from Fay from the Tappans’ Saturday evening at almost seven. That was the first time he realized that the whole thing was perfectly hopeless; that the game was up, once and for all. Fay had been drinking quite a lot—he could tell that even over the telephone—and by the time she’d finished talking he knew that he stood just about as much chance of shaking her in her purpose of marrying him as he stood of shaking the rock of Gibraltar.… So he decided to kill her.”

  “With no more than an hour to make all his plans? He works fast, your Mallory.”

  “Yes. This time he had to work very fast.… He realized, you see, that later he would have to work even faster.”

  “But just what made him realize, Tess, that there was not one single chance left of convincing her of her folly in trying to force him into a marriage that he did not desire? He had managed it before, I gather?”

  “Oh, yes, he’d managed it several times before. But she hadn’t known then who the girl that he really wanted to marry was. She hadn’t really been sure that there was another girl.”

  “I see. And when did she find out that this other girl was you?”

  She lifted the hand with the ring as though in protest, and then with an unhappy smile, let it drop.

  “Oh, I suppose you’re right; there isn’t any use in trying to keep up what’s simply a farcical pretense any longer. And I do want to be honest with you; poor K, I surely owe you all the honesty that I can drag out of my heart and brain, don’t I? … Fay found it out Wednesday night. It was all mixed up in that filthy row that we had when I cornered her on the Raoul Chevalier—X business. I was pretty frantic with rage myself, and I was going at her hammer and tongs when she saw the ring.”

  “This one that you are wearing now?”

  “Yes; this one. It’s Dion’s, of course—or rather, it was Dion’s mother’s. I didn’t know that Fay had ever laid eyes on it—neither did Dion. But it seems that she’d seen it—oh, months and months ago—when she got Timothy to let her in one afternoon to wait for Jerry. She came early, and she spent the time that Timothy was out with Susan fixing sandwiches and mint juleps, rummaging through Dion’s desk and dressing table, trying to find any nice incriminatory notes from devoted ladies that might be useful later on. She didn’t find them, but she did find the ring, stuck away in the back of one of the dressing-table drawers. And when she saw it again on my finger, I think that she literally went out of her head with rage and despair. She—she really always hated me, you know. It was Mother that she loved; she was awfully like her in a lot of ways, and when Dad made me take hold of things—afterwards—and try to take Mother’s place and manage her, I think that she nearly went crazy with hate and jealousy and resentment.… I probably made a horrible botch of things. I can see that now.” She smiled up at him, though her eyes and voice were suddenly thick with tears. “I make a fairly good job of managing myself most of the time, but anyone else—especially anyone as high-strung and hair-trigger as Fay—I’m just not sensible and well-balanced and old enough for that. No matter how much I try to pretend to Fay and you and Dion, K, I’m not really very old, you know.”

  No, he thought despairingly—not very old, poor child. Poor, de
sperate child.… After a moment he asked aloud:

  “But this ruby ring—it is the right hand that you wear it on, is it not? You are not actually engaged to Mallory?”

  “No—not really engaged. I told you that once, didn’t I? I knew that Dad would never in this world forgive us if we became actually engaged while he was off in some corner of Central America. As soon as he got back we intended to announce it formally; I didn’t see any reason why Dad should object. Dion wasn’t what he would consider a particularly brilliant parti, but after all he was well born and well bred, with a little money of his own and an awfully attractive old place in Ireland—and Dad’s always had a weak spot for the Diplomatic Corps. He likes the glitter that hangs around even a second secretary! So I didn’t see why there should be any particular trouble—until Fay saw the ring and told me.”

  “What did she tell you, Tess?”

  “That Dion belonged to her. That while I’d been away last winter they’d had—what’s the prettiest word for it, K?—an affair. That if I dared to even hint to anyone that we were engaged, she’d make a series of scenes that would rock our happy little household and the British embassy and the whole United Kingdom and the United States to their foundations.” She slipped the ring from her finger and sat frowning at it abstractedly as it lay glowing in the palm of her hand; then, with that same gesture—the gesture of a sleep walker, blind and precise—she returned it to her finger. “She was going to send anonymous letters to Dad and the ambassador and a whole series of ghastly little tidbits to X to use in his column.… She was perfectly willing to ruin herself and what was left of her reputation in the process, but she made it extremely clear that she had every intention of dragging me down with her when she went.”

  “Fay had weapons, then, that she could use against you, Tess? You, too, had been having an affair with Dion?”

  “I?” She looked at him blankly for a moment, not seeing him at all; seeing only the small, frantic, tortured creature whose frenzy had brought them all to this pass. “Oh, no; I don’t have affairs. But I imagine that she really could have dug up things that would have hurt me a good deal. I’ve been as indiscreet at one time and another as most people who think that they’re decent enough and honorable enough and—oh, well, fine enough to be as safe from suspicion as Caesar’s wife. I didn’t worry so much about that, though.… I worried about what she told me about herself and Dion.”

  “You had both known him well for some time? He told me at the Temples’, I think, that he had been here for three or four years.”

  “Yes, he had; but I never really knew him at all until this spring. We only came back here ourselves last year, and I’ve been away as much as possible; it’s been so simply hateful at home. I don’t believe that I did more than dance with him a few times, and talk to him once or twice at teas, until this last two months. All that about—about Fay happened while I was off on the South Seas cruise this winter; she only came out this fall, but apparently from the moment that she first laid eyes on him, she completely lost her head. I didn’t know it then—I doubt whether even he did—but I do think that part of it was true.”

  “There are other parts, apparently, that you think were not?”

  “About their having a really serious affair? No, I don’t believe that that was true. They had had a rather violent flirtation at one time, and there was one episode that was ugly enough to justify a good deal of what Fay implied, but he wasn’t ever really in love with her, I know that.”

  “He is fortunate in having your confidence so completely,” remarked Sheridan a little dryly. “I remember that you told me that at one time a number of people thought that they were engaged.”

  “Did I? Oh, yes. I remember—that was really just to throw you off the track about Dion and me. I thought that probably you would be more interested in helping me—more interested in me, really—if you believed that the field was quite clear, and I wanted to protect Dion by making you think that he was awfully fond of Fay. I can see now that that was horrid of me—and dreadfully cheap and unfair.”

  “Possibly. It was a remarkably accurate guess, however—which probably proves that I too am cheap and horrid. What was it that Fay and Mallory did that made you believe that it was impossible for you to marry him—that one ugly episode that you spoke of?”

  “Oh, that!” Her fingers were once more restless with the ring that had belonged to Dion’s mother. “It was the usual thing, except that she tricked him into it. No, you needn’t smile—she told me that herself. She was quite proud of it.… It happened in January, I think. Half a dozen of them had been up in Philadelphia for a house party, and Dion was motoring Fay back alone in his roadster. That was the time that they were having that flirtation that I was telling you about, you know, and he really was quite keen about her. About seven o’clock they stopped for dinner in a little hotel in Wilmington—a perfectly decent, respectable place, Dion said—and suddenly just when they were finishing their coffee and the landlady had come in to ask them if everything was perfectly satisfactory, Fay gave a clutch at Dion’s arm, and said that she had the most ghastly pain in her side and she simply couldn’t go on—that she was afraid that it was her appendix again, and could the landlady possibly give her and her husband a room for the night? The doctor had said that there wasn’t any danger at all if she lay down and kept perfectly quiet. Well, Dion was too staggered to say anything—he was too staggered even to think. After all, what could he say? There was Fay, with her bags and her appendix and a perfectly good room—and there was he.… Only after that, he wasn’t quite so crazy about her. She had to tell him that it wasn’t the first time that she’d made a fool out of a man—and whether he was right or wrong about it, he didn’t believe that it would be the last. So as far as he was concerned there weren’t any more ugly episodes—even Fay admitted that.… And in March I came back from the cruise.”

  “You came back from the cruise, and after that Fay did not count even one little bit. Is that what happened?”

  “Yes, that’s exactly what happened—until Wednesday night. After that she counted quite a lot.”

  “That little note that we found beside the empty bottle of hyoscine—the note that made it sound as though it was telling you that she was about to kill herself—that note was to Dion, was it not? Written from here with one of Hardy’s pencils, while she was waiting for Mallory to come in?”

  “You are clever, aren’t you, K? We wondered whether you’d worked that out, too. Yes—it was written here, Thursday night, sometime around ten o’clock. I sent Dion a note by special messenger, after the hideous quarrel that Fay and I had Wednesday, letting him know that she’d told me about Wilmington and everything else, and that we’d have to see each other Thursday night, and talk over—and talk over everything; but that in the meantime he absolutely must keep out of her way, no matter what she did to try and see him.”

  “She was in a dangerously excited state, you think?”

  “I think that she was insane, K.… All Wednesday night she sat up writing dozens and dozens of horrible little pieces of filth about Dion and me and herself that she apparently intended to distribute all over Washington—things like, ‘Why not ask the hospitable landlady of the Felton Inn at Wilmington what distinguished young diplomat with more than a touch of the brogue spent far too many hours there with a blonde and beautiful Washington debutante on the night of January fifth?’ She showed them all to me Thursday morning—that particular one was meant for X’s column, and you can imagine what it would have done to Dion’s career!”

  “Yes. That does not require much imagination.”

  “I couldn’t bear that,” she said, very simply and gently. “To watch Dion—Dion, who was born for happiness and brilliance and success—go down and down into the dirt of ugly scandal and failure—I couldn’t bear it, that’s all. I suppose that life’s made up of the things you can stand and the things you can’t; well, this was the one that I couldn’t. Dion sent word back to me
that he’d get out of town for the day—tell them at the embassy that he had to see Jerry, who was worse—and that we could meet and have dinner at a little farmhouse in Maryland that we’d been to several times before, and talk things over. That’s where we were while Fay was here, waiting for Dion.”

  “She realized that he was with you?”

  “Well, hardly. I’d simply told her that Freddy Parrish and I were going out in the country somewhere for dinner, and I borrowed Freddy’s car, and asked her if she would back me up if Fay tried to start anything. Freddy said she would, of course, like the trump she is.”

  “Freddy,” said the young man from Vienna, “is a lady that I would like very much to know better. You were going to tell me about that note that Fay left for Dion, were you not?”

  “Yes. She wrote it sometime between ten and eleven, apparently, because at a little after eleven Timothy came in and showed her a telegram from Dion, saying that he was spending the night in a Baltimore hotel and wouldn’t be back until morning. So she left the note and came back to the house. I was in bed with the door locked when she got in, and when she started rattling it, I told her that she could shake the house down if she wanted to, but that it was going to stay locked—I’d had enough—I was through. And I was, K. It had been rather a dreadful evening—Dion couldn’t see my point of view, and I couldn’t see his, and we both wanted to so badly. I thought that if we could only get a breathing space, we might be able to think straighter and decide what to do next—and when she told me next morning that she’d decided to go down to the Tappans’ for the week-end I felt—oh, I felt as idiotically light-hearted as that poor little lunatic Pippa who thought that God was in His heaven because the snail was on the thorn.… I didn’t know then that she’d telephoned to Dion before she left.”

  “That was last Friday morning?”

  “Yes—Friday.… You remember how you measured the scrap of note paper that Dion put beside the hyoscine bottle, and how you were sure that someone had cut off almost half an inch of it? Well, you were perfectly right, of course. She’d put on a postscript, telling him that if he didn’t telephone her by eleven the next morning, she’d simply go straight over to the embassy and tell them the whole story. So he telephoned, naturally. He kept the note because he wanted to show her what a crazy, reckless thing it was to leave a thing like that lying around on a desk where anyone could see it; and then Saturday night when he decided—when he decided that there was only one way out and that he could quite easily make it look like suicide, especially with that note left beside her on the table, he only had to snip off the telephone bit, because, of course, that would have given the whole thing away.”