The Crooked Lane

by Frances Noyes Hart

  “Rather.… And what did he say to her in that telephone conversation Friday morning?”

  “He promised to have dinner with her Monday when she came back from the Tappans’. I think he tried to make her believe that I’d—that I’d exaggerated what he felt about me a good deal—and I know he told her that I was just wearing the ring for a week because of a bet that I’d won at the races.” The bravely tinted lips trembled for a moment, piteously, but her eyes were as clear and steady as ever as she explained carefully, “He was perfectly right to make her think that, of course; we’d decided Thursday night that he’d have to do something like that to keep her quiet until we found space to turn around in—but I did hate it—I did hate it when she told me about the ring over the telephone Friday evening.”

  “Friday evening?”

  “Yes—you remember—when she called me up to ask for that invitation to Temples’ party, and I wouldn’t get it for her? I told you about that a long time ago, didn’t I? And I told you that maybe if I’d gotten it for her, none of these things would have happened?” She did not stir, but he saw the irises of her eyes turn to jet black again.

  “K, doesn’t that seem frightful? If she hadn’t laughed when she told me that he’d only loaned me the ruby ring for a week because he’d lost a racing bet, we might all be sitting here laughing and talking, and you could see for yourself that Fay still had hair like yellow flowers, and eyes like blue flowers, just like the ones that you remembered sixteen years ago.”

  “Tess, about that you must not torture yourself. Once before I told you that, and I tell you so again. These things would have happened, no matter what you said to Fay on the telephone this last Friday night. The roots of disaster ran even deeper than sixteen years, I think.… After Fay had spoken to you you said that she called Mallory, I think. Do you know what she said in that message?”

  “She said—” Tess halted, her eyes searching his face as though it would tell her things that he himself might hold secret from her forever. “K, it isn’t that I mind telling you—I know that I owe you all the truth in the world, and the least that I can do is to try and pay my debts—but why do you want to know all this? All that you have to know, professionally, is how he murdered her, and that you’ve worked out for yourself—why he did it doesn’t make any difference, does it?”

  “Perhaps not. You are as good a judge of that as I am. Premeditated murder, you see, is apt to prejudice either a policeman or a juryman, Tess; and while in the eyes of the law premeditation may consist of no greater space of time than will allow a knife to rise and fall, in the eyes of the men and women who may be called upon to pronounce sentence on Mallory, it would make a vast difference, I believe, if they were convinced that he had not planned the whole thing carefully beforehand.”

  “You mean you want to help him?”

  “I mean that I want to be entirely fair to him. You are the best judge as to whether any assistance that I could render would now be of the slightest use.”

  She said, her voice suddenly mortally weary:

  “Oh, I suppose it doesn’t make much difference either way—about those men and women on the jury, I mean—but I do really want you to understand that Dion simply couldn’t do that kind of thing in cold blood. I do think you two would have been such awfully good friends. I thought so from the very first minute that I saw you that night at the Temples’.… All right, I’ll tell you all of it, then. Where was I when I stopped? Oh, yes, about her calling him Friday night on the telephone.… She caught him just before he was starting out for the theater with me and the Chevaliers—and she said that what she wanted to do was to beg him to have one last party Saturday night, just as soon as he could get away from the Temples’ dinner dance. He said that she really sounded awfully gentle and pathetic—talked about understanding things much better now, and that this really would be a kind of a farewell party—that they could just have a few drinks, and play some backgammon, and then they’d both have it for a happy memory always, instead of all the ghastly squabbles that they’d been going through lately. Oh, yes—and he was to bring his backgammon markers, because she’d lost hers that afternoon shooting craps with Nell Tappan. And he must write her a note the next morning, playing their old stamp game, so that she’d get it when she arrived home from the Tappans’, and would really and truly be sure that he was coming. He fell for the whole thing—though he did hate the stamp part—and he never told me a word about it until—afterwards. He didn’t want to worry me. That has its funny points, if you have a sense of humor. Personally, I doubt whether I have much of a one myself.”

  “There I believe that you underrate yourself—and I am quite sure that you are the only woman in the world who would admit it, even on the rack. But this secret writing on the stamps, Tess, you did not know about that?”

  “Do you think I’d have handed you over his note if I’d even dreamed of it? No, that was a little trick that some man who’d been in the Secret Service showed her a long time ago. She used to get around the servants’ attractive habit of tampering with her mail that way, and apparently she showed it to all of her most favored admirers. Dion said they used it quite a lot this November and December.… But I hadn’t even seen the red glass until it fell out of her bag that night.”

  “I should have guessed that. And between that telephone call Friday and her final call Saturday evening, nothing of any importance happened?”

  “Nothing that you could measure or put your finger on. We went back to the house after the theater, and Dion helped me get the supper ready in the kitchenette—that’s where he noticed the eggs and things, and it gave him the idea for the pick-me-up, he said—no; Saturday here must have been peaceful enough to suit anyone. But something must have happened at the Tappans’ to start Fay off. Heaven knows what it was, but by Saturday night she was insane enough to qualify for any padded cell in the land; she’d apparently decided that we were going to try to get married while she was out of town, or something like that—at any rate, when she called up Dion around seven Saturday, she carried on like a raving maniac and told him that if he didn’t take her to the Temples’ dance and tell the whole world that they were engaged, she’d go herself and do it for him. And he believed her. I would have believed her, too. She was nothing more nor less than a maniac when she lashed herself into one of those states.… He still had a vague, faint hope that he might be able to talk her out of it … but it was then that he began to make his plans.”

  “Around seven. Did the forgotten attaché case of the distinguished tariff expert drop like manna a little before eight in order to provide him with an alibi, or was he counting on an alibi as a part of his scheme?”

  “Oh, as a matter of fact, Dion found that case around five behind the sofa in the embassy guest room—just where he said he found it at eight o’clock when he told you the story—but he promptly dropped it back again, partly because he detested old Harrington, and partly because he thought it might come in very handy as another kind of an alibi.”

  “Another kind?”

  “Yes—he thought that perhaps Fay might let him off the party with her if he told her that he had to run up to New York on business with official papers. He planned from the first to rediscover them on a final hunt around eight—too late to catch the last train to New York, and to call her up at our house when she got in between nine and ten and explain the situation—but when she called up half out of her head with hysterics at seven o’clock, he saw that there wasn’t a chance of even trying to persuade her but that it might—it might work in extraordinarily well as a real alibi.”

  “As it did. Very ingenious indeed.” He did not want to meet those eyes that were waiting bravely for his, lost in some region far beyond weakness or terror. “So then what, Tess?”

  “So then—so then you’ve guessed most of the rest of it, haven’t you, K? Most of it you guessed aloud to me, and some of it—quite a lot of it—I helped you with before I realized what I was doing. He went
straight from the Temples’ dance to the house; he didn’t dare change his clothes first, naturally, but he knew that he would have a chance to—afterwards, when he came back to get the attaché case here. He’d already worked everything out about the airplane at Crawford Field, in case—in case he had to use it—and he had the note that Fay had left on his desk Thursday and Jerry’s two bottles of hyoscine in his pocket. He knew that I had some that I’d got for Fay—I’d told him that I kept it in my bathroom cabinet because I was afraid of the effect on her heart, but he wasn’t sure that mine would be enough. He had to have quite a lot, so that it would work quickly, you see. He’d already decided that he would give it to her in a pick-me-up, because that was the only way that he could be sure of hiding the bitterness in a huge dose.… You see, he knew the way she felt about taking bitter things.”

  “And then?”

  “The door was on the latch when he got to our house just a little after eleven, and Fay was waiting for him in the night nursery—she had the backgammon board ready for him, and even though she’d been drinking a frightful lot, she was still perfectly sober enough to realize what was happening, and absolutely adamant about going on later to the party at the Temples’ and announcing their engagement to the assembled company. She even had her dress and cloak and slippers all laid out in her bedroom ready to put on, all white and silver—like a bride.… He had to put them away, afterwards. That’s one of the things that took him so long—but he thought if we found them there, it wouldn’t look so much like suicide.… He was right about that, don’t you think?”

  “Quite right. And then, Tess?”

  “And then—and then they played six games of backgammon.… And he told her that he didn’t dare to take her on to Cara Temple’s unless she would take something to pull herself together. And she suggested the pick-me-up herself.… And he went into the kitchenette and ground up two grains of the hyoscine—over a teaspoonful—and floated it in between the brandy and the egg yolk—and brought it back to her—and she drank it. He says—he said, that he couldn’t be sure, but that it looked as though she died before she even drew another breath.… Do I have to tell any more, K?”

  Something in her voice made him glance up swiftly, and he saw that the sleep walker had awakened, and that the serene white oval of her face had frozen into a mask of horror.

  “Forgive me, my Tess. I should not have allowed you to tell me this much, even. No more, you can be sure.”

  “It’s stupid of me,” she whispered through stiff lips, “to be afraid now—when there’s so little more to tell—and nothing more to be afraid of.… He did everything just as you worked it out, except that I don’t remember that you thought of the cigarette butts. He smoked about twenty or thirty of his own brand—Gulaks, you know—he said he’d made a special effort to call your attention to them at the Temples’ dinner.… He kept them all in one ashtray, and when he left the house he took them, and the eggshell, and the two smashed-up hyoscine bottles that he’d already washed the labels off of, and the hyoscine pills that were left over from Fay’s bottle that he got out of the bathroom cabinet and some from Jerry’s, and threw them all into a public burning dump between here and Baltimore.… You knew that he motored as far as Baltimore, didn’t you?

  “Yes. That I was almost sure of.”

  “He wondered—did you telephone Johns Hopkins to find out whether anyone had actually taken any serum to Hasbrouck Heights?”

  “Not until too late tonight to obtain actual proof.… Before tonight, you see, I was by no means sure enough of my case to warrant such a call—and, as you have already guessed, I did not want to be sure. But when Mrs. Tappan literally thrust the proof into my hands, I did consider it my duty to close the case, and I tried to reach the proper authorities at Johns Hopkins to verify my suspicions. I tried from the cigar store on my way in from Joan Lindsay’s, the same cigar store through which I also endeavored to reach this house and yours. In all three cases I was both unsuccessful—and unregretful.”

  “You didn’t want it to be Dion, did you, K?”

  “No,” he said evenly, “I did not want it to be Dion. There was only one person in all the world that I wanted it less to be. Though since now we know that it is Dion, there are several things that I will still need somehow to clear up. But not tonight, poor child. Tonight—well, suppose that now, tonight, I see that you get safely home, and wait until tomorrow morning before we even think of any more questions? Mallory’s car is only halfway down the block outside; we could use that—or if you prefer, I could call a taxi.”

  “I’d rather not do either, if you don’t mind. All things being equal, it would be a good deal pleasanter if no one did know that I’d been here tonight. I rented one of those Drive-Your-Own cars yesterday for a week, and paid the money in advance. I’m afraid that I didn’t use my own name—and I did use a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles and murmured something about being here from Virginia on business with the International Teachers’ Association, and what a lovely place Washington was in the spring. You see, you don’t have to have a driver’s license in Virginia, and I was afraid that they might want me to show one.” She smiled wanly at the memory, and Sheridan caught himself forgetting everything else and wondering whether even horn-rimmed spectacles could make her look like an International Teacher. “I thought that if I couldn’t find some way of getting around this town without having half of the reporters in America trotting along at my heels I’d literally go mad. And now with a judicious use of back doors and Washington’s engaging habit of using its streets as all-year-round open-air garages I’m practically a free woman again. It’s sitting around the corner this very minute looking as small and dark blue and harmless as nine tenths of the cars in Washington, thank goodness. So you see that I can get home perfectly by myself.… What were those other questions that could wait till tomorrow, K? … Perhaps I could answer them now.”

  “There is no need for you to answer them, either now or tomorrow,” he told her gently. “If Dion prefers to say nothing—and that might be wisest—I can undoubtedly check with the airplane company and the steamer line on which Mr. Harrington sailed.”

  “You mean about how he got to New York—how long it took, and that kind of thing? Oh, I can tell you that perfectly; he explained it all to me, because I couldn’t understand it either. He gave Fay—” She halted, looking around her with lost eyes, as though somewhere in the tranquil room she could find something to cling to that would bring her even a second of steadiness and comfort.… But after a moment her eyes returned to the ruby ring, and she continued as quietly as though she were telling him an old, half-forgotten story: “He gave Fay the pick-me-up at a little before twelve, but he didn’t get out of the house until after twelve-thirty; there were quite a lot of things to do, and he spent almost ten minutes looking for the note—he knew that that stamp would be dangerous if it and the red glass ever fell into the hands of the police. It was actually down under the cushions behind Fay’s back in that horrible book that she was reading—and the red glass was stuck into the compact in her bag. We mightn’t ever have found it if it hadn’t fallen onto the floor. K, doesn’t it seem incredible that what really ruined him was a little piece of red paper and a stick of green stone no bigger than a match—and me?”

  “You, Tess?”

  “Yes—oh, yes. Don’t you see, if I hadn’t given you that note with the red stamp and my own box of backgammon markers, you mightn’t ever have thought again about its being Dion?” She wrung her hands together desperately, not moving her eyes from them. “I thought that the note would prove how innocent—how innocent and friendly their relations were—and how he wasn’t planning to see her until today; and I thought that if I gave you the backgammon markers that matched the one you’d found, you’d stop thinking about what had happened to the ones that you couldn’t find. Only I forgot to take out that extra one that shouldn’t have been there at all—the one that wouldn’t fit in and that made fifty-one instead of fif
ty. How could I have forgotten? How could I? … If the one you found had fitted in, you wouldn’t have counted them, would you? And if you hadn’t counted them—” She lifted her head and looked straight at him, saying in a small voice, terrifying in its remoteness, “I really—I really murdered him then, didn’t I? As much as he murdered Fay.… Dion.… And all that I wanted in the world was to save him.”

  Sheridan said, in a voice almost as remote as hers:

  “No, no—you are quite wrong, believe me. It was he who was unable to find the note, you remember—and he who was so careless as to leave the marker behind.… And you must believe me again when I tell you that without either, I would have found out that it was Mallory. A little sooner or a little later, perhaps—but in the end it would have come to the same thing. You must have confidence enough in me to believe that, Tess, for both our sakes.”

  She whispered:

  “For both our sakes—I’d forgotten how kind you were, K—I’ll try to believe it.… Well, when he got back here, he still had to hurry; he had to change his clothes, and he found an old Burberry of Jerry’s in the closet that had a black band on one sleeve—Jerry wore it after his uncle died last fall. He took some glasses of his own, too, that he’d had to wear when he had trouble with his eyes a year or so ago. It was all a simply hideous rush, because in order to make that alibi absolutely unshakable, he had to be in New York in between five to six hours after he left the Temples’, which, if he’d done what he was pretending to do, would have just barely given him time to collect the attaché case, change into day clothes here, and break every record for slightly decrepit cars getting to New York. If he had left this house at eleven-thirty, and made the trip in, say, five hours and a half, he’d have arrived at the docks at about five o’clock Standard time—and that wouldn’t have left even ten minutes to spare for a murder that must have taken at the very least an hour to carry out. What he actually did, of course, was to get away from here a little after one, and, as it turned out, he made such good time by plane and the taxi between Hasbrouck Heights and New York that he had to kill almost half an hour, before he finally went on the boat at five, to make the automobile proposition seem even possible. He actually arrived there at about half-past four, you see, and he didn’t send the telegram until after he’d seen old Harrington and delivered the papers—that’s why it was stamped six twenty-five daylight-saving time.… If no one had thought of airplanes, it really would have been one of those impregnable alibis, wouldn’t it? And he hoped he’d managed even that part by using Crawford Field at Baltimore and the little field near Hasbrouck Heights instead of Washington and Newark. Afterwards he did realize that the old gentleman with the accent and the limp and the glasses was almost too good to be true—but then it was too late.”