The Case of the Crumpled Knave

by Anthony Boucher

  “Because, if I’m thinking straight, that’s why she’s leaving here. She’s thought of something that we haven’t, and she’s afraid her reactions might give her away if she stays on here. She gave me her address expressly so that I could come and learn what her suspicion is. You see, she’s read too many of these novels where the person who Knows Too Much is the second victim.”

  “That, sir, leads me directly to my second question. I seem to remember hearing you announce, through the haze of pain and confusion which I at first took for a hangover, that you knew there would be no more murders. How can you be so sure? I know that we were both very definite yesterday, for Kay’s benefit, but this is between us.”

  “All right, Colonel. Look. This murderer had two objects. One was Garnett’s death. The other, and just as important, was Vinton’s execution for that death. Everything points that way—the telegram, the fingerprints, and the jack of diamonds—unless something comes of your Hector discovery. If he goes on to another murder in Vinton’s absence, he’ll draw official suspicion away from his victim. No, Colonel Rand, we’re safe enough here until Vinton gets bailed out.”

  “And then?” There was a note of apprehension in Rand’s voice. Involuntarily his hand touched his bandaged head. Last night’s adventure had not been a good augury for peace and quiet in the household. Although he had escaped in safety, he knew instinctively that there was vicious danger in the man with whom he had fought.

  “Then? Oh, I see what you mean. Yes, that would be perfect, wouldn’t it? Our ingenious murderer waits patiently until Vinton is released and then boom!—another murder. Case against Vinton completely cinched. Nice and neat. Not a pleasant thought. But unless I’m terribly wrong, Colonel, that won’t happen. I know it sounds plausible—terrifyingly plausible—but it won’t happen.” The young Irishman’s voice was earnest and somehow convincing.

  Rand rose, half-satisfied. “And now we interview Hector Prynne.”

  Fergus walked as far as the door without speaking. Then he turned. “Look. This isn’t right. I’m a louse. I’m holding out on you, and you shouldn’t ever treat a Watson like that. How would you like to see a confession of murder?”

  Rand started. “A confession? What do you mean, sir?”

  “Remember all of us sitting around in the study last night? You were playing chess with Harding, and I was talking about cards with Warriner. And of course Arthur Willowe was off in a corner playing solitaire. Then all of a sudden he gets an idea. He stops his patience and goes over to the desk and begins writing.

  “Well, I was curious—the dominant O’Breen trait cropping out again. Remind me to tell you about the time my father was curious as to how a deck could hold five aces. So later I looked at the blotter. It wasn’t too much help. I envy these detectives in books who find nice long pointed messages on blotters. Really all people ever blot is the last line on the page. This must have been a three-page note—there are three lines in Willowe’s hand on the blotter, sort of crossing over each other in the midst of a lot of figures and stuff that must have been Garnett’s. It’s not too clear, but I think you can make it out. Here.”

  He took from his breast pocket a folded piece of blotting paper and handed it to the Colonel. “There’s a mirror over there. I don’t think there’s much question as to what the lines say, though we might work up a little argument about what they mean. And now, my mustachioed generalissimo, let us off and learn the details of the second Hector.”

  But Colonel Rand stood still before the mirror, reading those three damning lines in Willowe’s precise old hand.

  The first read:

  But now that the reality of death has come upon us, I The second, sprawled in wider spacing:

  fore, since I know myself to be a murderer,

  And the third was the signature:

  Forgive me!

  Arthur Willowe

  XVI

  Fergus Goes Rowing

  The next five minutes were far too confused for Colonel Rand to do any straight thinking or even to be quite sure of just what was happening. It all started when they reached the foot of the staircase. Rand had often used the expression, “An idea struck him”; but he had never realized how literal it could be. Now he saw the young Irishman struck by an idea, and the result was astounding. First he stopped dead with his foot on the bottom stair, as though he were playing Living Statues. Then he groaned like something chained under a castle and muttered, “It couldn’t. No, it couldn’t. By Saint Columbkill, if it has …!” And with a hasty “Wait there!” he had dashed alone up the stairs.

  Then, before Rand could even try to grasp the situation, Fergus was back, and the old soldier was being hurried out the front door and into the O’Breen roadster (which matched the polo shirt).

  The classical ride in the taxicab had been a placid pleasure trip compared to this. For one thing, this was downhill. For another, no bored professional could equal an Irish amateur at reckless driving. Not until the traffic on Vermont had forced them to a quieter pace did Rand have any time for questions.

  “What in the name of seven gods is this all about, young man?” he demanded, with bristles on every syllable.

  “Gone,” Fergus said briefly.

  “Willowe?”

  “Yes.”

  “But why are we—?”

  “Taking it on the lam? I want to talk with the Sallice wench before she knows about it. I was wrong-holy Saint Malachi, how wrong I was! I never saw this possibility, and it was staring me square in the face, while I blithered on about—Oh, the poor foolish old man!”

  “But surely that message on the blotter—If you knew that last night, you could have—”

  “I’m so damned cocksure. It could have meant that too, couldn’t it? And maybe it did at that. I still don’t think so, but here’s this fact for us. Oh, I’m off to a honey of a start, I am.”

  “Come, sir,” Rand smiled. “Where’s your blithe Irish self-confidence now?”

  Fergus was silent as he executed a tricky left turn through traffic. Then he spoke slowly. “Look,” he said. “I’m going to let down my hair. I don’t know why, but you seem a hell of a swell guy, Colonel, and it’s easy to talk to you. You think I’m brash and conceited and cocky, don’t you?”

  “No,” Rand said thoughtfully. “I think you’re a rather sensitive young man who’s been frightened by life into a spectacular performance.”

  “The worst of that is, sir, that I think you’re right. There’s a family tradition that there’s bardic blood in the O’Breens. I don’t know how true that is; but if there is, it came out in me. I used to want to be a poet; I still turn out some God-awful tripe for my own pleasure, but you’re the first person who’s ever known it. I took a hell of a ribbing for a while, and then I got the feeling of, ‘Well, I’ll show them.’ I was too light for football, but I was, to speak with characteristic modesty, the basketball sensation that Loyola has ever known. People began to play up to me, and I took it in my stride. I put on this cocky act for the hell of it, and found it was the perfect bulletproof vest. But they’re making better bullets now. …”

  His voice sank. Rand was not quite sure what those better bullets might be, but he had a shrewd idea.

  “You see, sir,” Fergus went on, “I’ve got the fine Gaelic capacity for getting low as all hell; and I’ve got to keep myself high as heaven the rest of the time to make up for it. Maureen got roped into a psychology section at her club once and began Studying me with a capital S. She played around in her own quaint jargon and decided that I was quote an introspective extrovert with manic-depressive tendencies unquote. If that makes any sense, you’re welcome to it. And that’s that, Colonel. The hair-letting-down is over.”

  Rand’s sense of duty had by now reasserted itself. “But Willowe?” he asked. “How about the police?”

  “Don’t worry. They’ll be notified all right. That isn’t my place. Remember: We don’t know a thing about it.”

  As far as he himself
was concerned, Rand thought, that was certainly true enough. He settled back in his seat and resolutely diverted his mind from Fergus’ naïf self-analysis to the case before them. Willowe was gone. Then did that mean—? His enforced preoccupation with this problem blinded him even to the dangers of the peculiarly personal O’Breen style of driving.

  The hotel was opposite Westlake Park. It was a vast, old place—quiet and a little dank. Rand didn’t like the looks of the tenants in the lobby; they were mostly superannuated dowagers or arty young men. The hotel was in fact a haven of refuge, where the weary old and the ivory-towerish young alike sought refuge from the modern world.

  “Have you got a Miss Sallice registered here?” Fergus asked the room clerk.

  “How do you spell that? Let me see. … No, sir, I’m sorry. No one of that name here.”

  Fergus turned away puzzled. Rand snorted. “That’s two of them gone! And you believed her little story? Yes, she’d be apt to run off and leave you her address! Why, at this very minute—”

  At this very minute Camilla Sallice walked in the door of the hotel. A cabdriver followed with her suitcase. She stopped abruptly on seeing the two men, then hastened toward them.

  “So you got here even before I could!” she exclaimed. “I am glad. I wanted to talk to you, and I couldn’t—there. Just a moment till I register and then—”

  “Register nothing.” Fergus took her arm with polite authority. “We’re going out in the park where it’s a little more cheery and have a nice long talk. And then you’ll be driving back to Garnett’s with me. Here you are, Mac.” He handed three bills to the driver and took up the suitcase. “That ought to cover it.”

  Camilla gently freed her arm. “I can at least pay my own bills, Mr. O’Breen.”

  “That goes on my expense account. I have to have some expenses, don’t I? Come on.”

  The O’Breen vigor was even more noticeable in the open air. Swinging the suitcase lightly and whistling fantastic variations on his father’s best-loved jig, he swept the other two unresisting into the park.

  “Now, Miss Sallice,” he began, pausing in front of a bench and waving her to sit down.

  She looked about apprehensively and caught sight of a policeman strolling near by. “Please,” she objected. “Not here. It’s too—too public.”

  “As though a public place wasn’t the surest secrecy for private conversations.”

  “No. I just can’t. Let’s go back to the hotel.”

  “That foul hole? Come on again.”

  He led her off once more. Rand followed, feeling somewhat like a highly astonished ocean liner carried along in the wake of a motorboat.

  In two minutes the three of them were in the center of the pond which is called West Lake. Fergus had scorned the put-puts which were offered him and chosen a dilapidated rowboat. “You see,” he explained, “rowing’s the next best thing to pacing.”

  He rowed in good long smooth strokes. The lake was still and glistered in the bright winter sun. Blares of bad radio bands came from the miniature motorboats which scooted around them.

  “Now,” Fergus resumed, feathering the oars deftly. “Let’s have it, Miss Sallice. We’re alone enough here, the saints know. Now you can tell us why you’ve been hiding the fact that you’re Kay’s half-sister. Look out,” he added; “these boats rock.”

  XVII

  Camilla Sallice Tells Two Secrets

  Colonel rand stared at the girl. The shot had gone home; there was no doubting that. “You mean,” he spluttered impotently, “you’re Garnett’s daughter?”

  She shook her dark head heavily. “No,” she said. “Not Uncle Humphrey’s—Alicia’s.”

  The Colonel laid his hand gently on hers. It was hot and tense. “Alicia was married before—and I never knew it?”

  Her deep voice was almost inaudible. “No, Colonel Rand. Not married.”

  He looked at her silently and tightened his clasp on her hand.

  “I hate to tell you this … Theo,” she faltered. (He understood now how she knew that name.) “But you do have a—a sort of right to know. You remember—so many years ago—when you decided to—well, to be a gentleman and leave the field clear to Uncle Humphrey?”

  Rand nodded. He knew words would choke him if he tried to speak.

  “What you never knew,” she went on, “was that he did the same thing. He left Mother then too. She didn’t understand. It hurt her. Both of you. … She—she went a little wild for a while. She never told me who my father was. Whoever it was, he deserted her; she never saw him again after he knew I was going to be born. Her family took me away and put me in an orphanage. When Uncle Humphrey came back and proposed to her, of course they tried to keep me a secret. And while Mother was on her honeymoon, they had me moved to another place. They hated me; I was a blot on the family. And Mother never knew where I was.”

  The whole story was pouring out in soft low tones, scarcely to be heard above the blasts of the radios, but rapidly and forcefully as though it did her good to be rid of her secret at last. Rand patted her taut hand. “Go on.”

  “I ran away from the orphanage. I had a frightful life for a while. … But I’ll spare you all that. Then, when I was over eighteen and I knew they couldn’t make me go back any more, I went to the orphanage to find out who my people were. Then I went to Mother’s home town. I slung hash there for a while—me, the granddaughter of the respectable Willowes—and I found out enough to know that my grandparents weren’t the kind of people I could go to see. But I did learn Uncle Humphrey’s address in Washington, and I wrote to Mother. They were just leaving for California. I saw her in one stolen visit and oh—she was dear.”

  Rand blew his nose viciously. “She was indeed, my child.”

  “But she didn’t ever dare tell Uncle Humphrey about me; she loved him, but she was afraid of him too. She used to write to me all the time and talk, to me about everything—that’s how I knew about Theo and how much he meant to her. And she sent me money, but it wasn’t always enough. And anyhow I’d started off wrong; it wasn’t so easy to stop. Then I didn’t get any more letters from her. And one day a man in the dive asked for me and said he was Humphrey Garnett.

  “I was scared. I didn’t know what he wanted. Then it seemed he’d found my letters to Mother after her death, and he’d traced me down. He’d learned from those letters what he’d never suspected—that sometimes he was too harsh with Mother. And he wanted to make it up to her through me. He did, and I loved him for it.” Her story was finished, and the tears she had struggled so hard to keep back now overpowered her. Rand tried clumsily to console her; she was part of Alicia.

  Fergus rested on his oars. “Thank you, Miss Sallice.” His natural brashness sounded a bit dimmed. “I’m sorry as hell to have caused you this pain; but you can see that we have to know everything.” He paused a moment. “But look here. Isn’t anybody going to say, ‘But how on earth did you know that?’”

  Camilla smiled through her tears. “Dear Mr. O’Breen. You’re so self-effacing, aren’t you?” Fergus had the grace to look uncomfortable. “All right. I was surprised, and it all came over me so I couldn’t even think. But how on earth did you know?”

  “Thanks. It’s no earthly use being a detective unless you can explain how good you are. I simply put together four things: The quarrel over your mother, Colonel Rand’s reticence about the name ‘Theo,’ the sudden change in Arthur Willowe’s attitude toward you, and the fact that once upon a time I took botany.”

  “Botany?” Rand echoed.

  “The willow is of the genus Salix. When a mysterious girl with a phony-sounding name like Sallice is tangled up with a family named Willowe, it looks like more than a coincidence.”

  “You are clever, Mr. O’Breen. I changed my name because it sounded better in night clubs—they like things a little phony—and besides they always called me ‘Willowe’ at the orphanage until I was sick of the sound of it.”

  Fergus was rowing hard again. “I s
uppose all this is what you told Arthur Willowe last night?”

  “Yes.”

  “When did you see him last?”

  “Then.”

  “You didn’t see him this morning?”

  “No. I told him last night that I was leaving. I didn’t get up this morning until just before you saw me. I knew he’d be taking his nap by then, so I didn’t say good-by.”

  “Right. And now, what’s all this Hector Prynne business?”

  Camilla Sallice frowned. (It was an attractive frown, Rand thought. Everything about her seemed more attractive since he had learned the truth. It was partly the association with Alicia which transfigured her in his eyes; but it seemed too as though her somber, almost sinister quality had been purged by her confession.) “I—I don’t think I ought to tell you that, Mr. O’Breen. I know I shouldn’t like it if Mr. Willowe—if Uncle Arthur, I suppose I can say now, were to tell you my secret without my permission.”

  “But look, Miss Sallice. It’s something we’ve got to know.”

  “Then why not ask him?”

  Fergus feathered the oars again, which seemed to fascinate a swan drifting by. “Let me assure you, there are grave reasons why we cannot ask him.”

  Rand looked as perplexed as the swan. He regarded Camilla closely. The sun was bright and warm, but she shuddered. “Oh,” she gasped. “Then he did do it!”

  “He did kill Garnett, you mean?”

  “No. Of course not. That’s foolish. He couldn’t have, not after the way he—Unless …” She grew less confident and hesitated a little. “He could have been just—just playing with me last night, couldn’t he? The note and everything—it could have been all a story to fool me so I wouldn’t tell it to the police.”

  “Tell what to the police?”

  “What I thought last night—what I wouldn’t tell you—what I thought you had come here to ask. me until we began talking about—about me.”

  “You mean this notion you had of a possible motive?”

  She nodded reluctantly. “Yes. It struck me all of a sudden last night. That’s why I had to talk to Uncle Arthur and tell him all about me. I thought if that was true he’d show it when he learned the real truth and saw how terribly wrong he’d been. And now you—”