OFTEN DESCRIBED as the Mary Higgins Clark of her day, Mignon Good Eberhart (1899-1996) was once one of America’s most successful and beloved mystery writers. She enjoyed a career that spanned six decades and produced sixty books, beginning with The Patient in Room 18 (1929) and concluding with Three Days for Emeralds (1988).
Her first five books featured Sarah Keate, a middle-aged spinster, nurse, and amateur detective who works closely with Lance O’Leary, a promising young police detective in an unnamed Midwestern city. This unlikely duo functions effectively, despite Keate’s penchant for stumbling into dangerous situations from which she must be rescued. She is inquisitive and supplies O’Leary with valuable information.
Equally unlikely is the fact that five films featuring Nurse Keate and O’Leary were filmed over a three-year period in the 1930s. While the Patient Slept (1935) featured Aline MacMahon as Nurse Keate and Guy Kibbee as O’Leary. The Murder of Dr. Harrigan (1936) starred Kay Linaker in the lead role, renamed Nurse Sally Keating and now much younger. Murder by an Aristocrat (1936) has Marguerite Churchill as Keating, and The Great Hospital Mystery (1937) features a much older Jane Darwell, before Warner Brothers-First National decided to go younger again with a lovely Ann Sheridan starring in both The Patient in Room 18 (1938) and Mystery House (1938).
Eberhart’s other series detective is Susan Dare who, like her creator, is a mystery writer. Young, attractive charming, romantic, and gushily emotional, she has a habit of stumbling into real-life murders.
“Postiche” was originally published in the August 1935 issue of The Delineator.
By Mignon G. Eberhart
Postiche: A pretentious imitation, particularly used of an inartistic addition to an otherwise perfect work of art.—Encyclopædia Britannica.
THE WIGGENHORN house could never have been a pleasant place: its slate roof was too heavy and dark; its turrets too many, its windows too high and too narrow. It was still less so on the cold, windy March afternoon when Susan Dare dismissed the taxi that had brought her from the train, and put her hand upon the gate.
Susan pressed the bell and thought of Jim’s words to her over the telephone. “Go ahead, if you must, Susie,” he’d said. “But if it looks like trouble, you get out. You take too many chances, my girl.” He’d paused there, and then said in an offhand way: “Where’d you say the place is? Just outside Warrington? And what’s the name of the people?” She’d told him, and had an impression that he’d written it.
The door opened. A plump little maid took Susan’s bag and invited her to enter.
The interior of the house was exactly what one would expect. There was a great deal of heavy, darkly upholstered furniture; stiff curtains which looked dusty and a musty smell tinged with camphor.
She had only a glimpse of the hall, however, for she was ushered at once into a hideous drawing-room and from a jungle of armchairs a woman arose. She was a large woman, very fat, with a jolly smile, several chins, eyes that were almost hidden in folds of flesh and lightish, untidy hair. There was an open box of chocolates on the table beside her.
“Miss Dare, I suppose,” she said in an asthmatic voice. “I was expecting you. I am Miss Wiggenhorn. Miriam Wiggenhorn. Do sit down. Will you have tea?”
There was no tea in sight, so Susan said no, and thought Miss Wiggenhorn looked disappointed. “Now then, Miss Dare, I daresay you want to know exactly why I asked you to come here. I heard of you, you see, from John Van Dusen, our family lawyer. I believe he is acquainted with a woman for whom you did—er—something of the kind. A Mrs. Lasher.” She picked up some embroidery hoops and then paused to glance quickly at Susan over them. Or at least, so Susan thought.
“Yes.”
“Yes. Well, at any rate, when things—owing to the confusion—to my own wish rather”—she floundered, threading a needle with care, and said: “So John said call in Miss Dare. Let her look around.”
“Perhaps you’d better tell me just what it is about. I have only your note asking me to come. I ought to tell you that I’m not a detective, but a writer of mystery stories. And that I’m not at all sure of being able to help you.”
“I think that’s quite sufficient. I mean—Mrs. Lasher—Mr. Van Dusen—you see, Miss Dare, this is the trouble.” She made a careful and intricate stitch, took a breath and said: “My uncle, Keller Wiggenhorn, died a few days ago. He was buried yesterday. And I want to make sure he—died a natural death.”
“You mean you think he was murdered?”
“Oh, dear, no.”
“Then what do you mean?”
Mirian Wiggenhorn ate a chocolate cream thoughtfully. Then she said: “I think I’d better tell you the whole story. I’ll tell it briefly.”
And denuded of Miss Wiggenhorn’s panting breaths and hesitation it was certainly a brief enough story. Keller Wiggenhorn had been ailing for some time, owing to a serious heart weakness. Had been so ill in fact that for some three months he’d been obliged to have the care of a trained nurse. He had died suddenly, when alone. The doctor was not surprised; it was to be expected, he said. The nurse was not surprised although she regretted that she had not been with her patient when he was taken with the last and fatal attack. No one had known it even, although it had happened during the daytime. But the nurse had been out in the garden, taking her rightful air and exercise. Durrie had been in town (“Durrie?” said Susan. “My brother,” said Miss Wiggenhorn. “Younger than I. We have lived with my uncle for many years.”)—Durrie had been in town; the cook busy in the kitchen, and Miss Wiggenhorn herself had been in the kitchen. “Putting up pickled peaches,” said Miss Wiggenhorn. “Uncle was very fond of them.”
Only the maid might have known of his fatal attack, and she had not. For he had apparently merely felt faint at first and had called to the girl as she passed his door to hand him his bottle of smelling salts. The girl had done so, had asked if he wanted anything else, had been assured that he didn’t. He was lying, she’d said, on a sort of couch, drawn up to the windows so he could read. He had made no complaint, seemed no worse than usual. The girl had gone on about her work downstairs.
There were no sounds. He hadn’t rung the bell on the table beside him.
It was perhaps an hour after that that the maid returned and found he was dead.
Miss Wiggenhorn paused again and Susan waited. There was nothing, certainly, in the recital so far to suggest the thing that Miss Wiggenhorn had implied and then denied.
“But you see,” said Miriam Wiggenhorn. “He died in great pain and struggle.”
“Struggle!” said Susan sharply.
“The pillows were tossed about, his clothing disheveled, there were—marks on his throat.”
It was very still. In the stillness someone walked heavily across the floor above and stopped.
“The doctor said it was all right. That with that particular trouble he was likely to gasp for breath at the last. He signed a certificate at once. Mind you, Miss Dare, I’m not saying there was murder done.”
“Whom do you suspect?” said Susan bluntly.
Miriam Wiggenhorn did not reply directly. Instead she put down her embroidery with an air of decision and turned to face Susan.
“I only want you to stay here for a few days. To consider the thing. I want him to have died naturally, of course. But I cannot forget the—look of things. The marks on his throat. The doctor says he made them himself—clutching—you see?—for air. I don’t suspect anyone. There is no one to suspect. Durrie and I. A cook who has been with us for years. A maid who is—too stupid in the first place; and has no motive.”
“The nurse?”
“The nurse was devoted to her patient. And he to her. She is a sweet, charming young woman. As you will see.”
“Did anyone profit directly by your uncle’s death?”
“You mean money and property? Yes, of course. He left his property and money—all his possessions, equally divided between Durrie and me. We were like children to him. He was only a moderately wealthy man. His will permits us to live on in exactly the same manner. There’s no motive at all.”
“But still you feel he was murdered?”
“I feel that I want to be sure he was not. That is all.”
There were footsteps overhead again and then someone was running down the stairway in the hall beyond. Miss Wiggenhorn said: “There’s Durrie now.”
“Do they—your family—know why I am here?” asked Susan.
“Oh, yes,” said Miriam Wiggenhorn readily, and Durrie entered the room.
He was certainly much younger than his sister; young and slender with light-brown hair that had a crisp wave which any woman might have envied, light gray-blue eyes and a handsome profile which just escaped being pretty. He looked Susan over from under thick blond eyelashes and said, “How do you do,” shortly.
“Rosina’s out for a walk,” said Miriam. “Were you looking for her?”
“No,” he said quickly. “Not at all. That is—have you seen the book I was reading?”
“What book?” asked Miriam. In the midst of the little distraction of explaining and searching Durrie looked up. “You write, don’t you, Miss Dare?”
“Yes,” said Susan prepared to be modest. It wasn’t necessary. He said “Humph” with definite disfavor, took up a book from another table and went away.
“Dinner’s at seven,” said Miss Wiggenhorn. “I’ll take you to your room.”
Left to herself in an unaired guest room, Susan sat down and surveyed the worn red roses of a Brussels carpet blankly.
Marks on a dead man’s throat. A doctor’s certificate. No motives. No murder. Yet she was there.
She rose and went to the window. Nottingham lace curtains did not obscure the depressing view of a bare, cold March garden. As she looked, however, a woman came into view, walking with her head bent against the wind. She wore a dark cape which, when the wind blew, showed glimpses of a scarlet lining, and paused at a fountain as if waiting for something—paused and looked up suddenly at the house. Despite the gathering gloom Susan could see the outline of her face; a darkly beautiful face with a rich, full mouth. Rosina that would be. The nurse. A sweet and charming young woman, Miriam had said.
Quite suddenly another figure was beside the nurse, coming swiftly from some shrub-masked path. It was Durrie, with no hat on and the collar of his coat turned up around his ears. He spoke to the woman briefly, they both turned to look directly upward at Susan’s window and almost immediately moved away. They couldn’t have seen her, of course; there was no light in her room. She pulled down the shade, and rang briskly for the maid.
Miss Wiggenhorn had said, leaving her, to question and explore as she liked.
And the little maid, Susan thought, had been prepared, for she answered her questions directly and fully and eyed her with a timorous look.
It was all exactly as Miss Wiggenhorn had already told her. The maid had heard Mr. Wiggenhorn call her, had entered the room and handed him his smelling salts.
“But didn’t you think that perhaps he was having or about to have an attack?”
The maid hadn’t. “He always liked to have things near him; his books, his spectacles; a glass of water; his smelling salts. I never thought anything about it.”
“What did you do then?”
“I asked if there was anything else. The water glass was empty and he said to fill it and I did.”
“Who found him? I mean after he was dead.”
The girl’s face paled a little but her eyes did not blink.
“I did. Dreadful, he looked. Everything was tossed about. Glass on the floor. Books—bottle with all the smelling salts spilled out of it. It looked as if he’d grabbed hold of the table cover and just jerked the whole thing off at once. He must have struggled—for a moment or two. I didn’t hear anything at all. But then we’d shut the doors everywhere.”
“Why? Was that customary?”
“I mean the doors to the back part of the house. Miss Miriam was making pickled peaches in the kitchen and the smell was all over the house. You know—vinegar and spices. So strong it was sort of sickening. The nurse said to shut the door of his bedroom.”
“The nurse? What is her name?”
“Miss Hunt. Miss Rosina Hunt.”
There was certainly something the girl wanted to tell—her plump face was bursting with it.
“I suppose Miss Hunt will be leaving soon?”
“She can’t leave too soon,” said the girl. “Not that she’s not treated me well enough. But she’s too bossy.”
“Bossy?”
“Snappy—as if she owned the place. And stubborn! Even with Miss Miriam. After all, it’s Miss Miriam’s house. Hers and Mr. Durrie’s.”
“Mr. Durrie is not married?”
“No, ma’am. Not him. Though he was engaged to be married once. But it didn’t last long.”
Susan said abruptly: “Will you show me the room in which Mr. Wiggenhorn died, please.”
But at the end of a good half hour spent in that chilly, huge bedroom Susan was little wiser than when she had entered it.
In the hall she met Miriam Wiggenhorn.
“Oh, you’ve been in his room?”
“Yes.”
“That was right—John Van Dusen will be here to dinner. If there’s anything—”
“There’s nothing,” said Susan, “yet.”
Dinner. So she was to see the lawyer who had suggested sending for her. And the nurse would be there too. Rosina.
Miriam, now in cherry silk, was in the drawing-room when, half an hour later, Susan went down. With her was the lawyer, John Van Dusen, a spare, gray little man of fifty or so, who lifted his eyebrows, bowed to Susan and looked as if he were stuffed with sawdust.
And almost immediately Durrie came into the room, and then the nurse. And if the lawyer looked as if he were stuffed with sawdust, then the nurse looked as if she were charged with some high explosive. But she kept her beautiful dark eyes lowered and her red, rich mouth silent.
The dining room was dimly lighted. The food was very rich and very heavy and there was no conversation. The lawyer talked a little of politics and lifted his eyebrows a great deal; Durrie said nothing and looked at the nurse; the nurse looked at the table cloth and Miriam looked at nobody and ate steadily.
After dinner Susan had vaguely expected a talk with the lawyer. Instead they played Parcheesi. Played it till ten o’clock.
There was somewhere in the house a clock which struck on a gasping, breathless note not unlike Miriam’s panting voice. When it struck ten John Van Dusen rose, the Parcheesi board disappeared, the nurse murmured and vanished.
“Good night, Miriam. Good night, Durrie. A pleasant evening. Good night, Miss Dare.” The little lawyer paused and looked at Susan as if he had just become conscious of her presence. “Oh, yes,” he said. “Miss Dare. So good of you to come. Not of course that there’s any—er—reason for it. It really is absurd—the whole idea. Miriam is aware of my feeling, but she insisted—”
“Now, John,” panted Miriam good-naturedly, “don’t blame me for this. And don’t trip on the step—it’s likely to be slippery. Go with him to his car, Durrie.”
Durrie obeyed.
Miriam looked at Susan.
“Well, my dear,” she said expectantly. “How is it going? What did you think of John? He’s a dear old fellow. But timid. Very timid. Wouldn’t admit a murder if he saw it with his own eyes.”
“Why is the nurse still here?” asked Susan.
“Rosina? Oh, I asked her to stay on for a little. During Uncle’s long illness and her extreme devotion to him we became very fond of her.”
The hall door opened and closed again and they could hear Durrie locking it.
“Well—how about some cake or sandwiches before you go to sleep. No? Very well. Just ring the bell if you do want anything.”
Susan was still shuddering when she reached her room; her hostess’s interest in food was, to say the least, inordinate.
And it was ubiquitous. Susan tossed and turned and between times dreamed of enormous boxes of chocolate creams pursuing her. Once, quite late, a sound of some kind in the hall roused her so thoroughly that she rose and opened her door cautiously and peered into the shadows of the night-lighted hall. There was, however, nothing there.
But she was still wide awake and tense when she heard it again. Or at least she heard a faint sound which was very like the creaking of the steps of a stairway. This time she reached the door softly and managed to open it without, she thought, being detected. And her care had its reward for she saw, coming very quietly from the landing of the stairs, the nurse. Rosina. She was wearing something long and dark and her face was hidden so that Susan saw only her thick, smooth black hair. But as she passed under the light she turned suddenly and cast a sharp strange look at Miriam Wiggenhorn’s door. A look so strange and pale and fiery, so full of malevolence, that Susan felt queer and shaken long after the nurse had glided away.
But there was no reason to suspect murder. She told Miriam Wiggenhorn that the next morning.
She did not add that there was something hidden, something secret and ugly, going on in the house. She said merely that she had thus far found no reason to suspect murder.
Miss Wiggenhorn took it with bland detachment and asked her, still blandly, to stay on a few days. She would welcome proof of Keller Wiggenhorn’s death being natural; she wanted Susan to have plenty of time. Susan said in that case she would like to see both the lawyer and the doctor and forestalled an offer on Miriam’s part to have them summoned. She would go to their offices, said Susan firmly, and Miriam embroidered a flower and then said Durrie would take her in his car.
It was then that Susan risked a direct question about the nurse. “I saw her last night coming very quietly up the stairway. What would she be doing on the first floor so late? Do you know?”
“How late?”
“I don’t know exactly. I suppose only around midnight.”
Miriam Wiggenhorn pondered very briefly and offered a—to her—sound explanation.
“I suppose she had gone down to the kitchen for a glass of milk,” she said. “Or for something to eat. I hope you aren’t going to involve little Rosina in this, Miss Dare.”
“But there’s only you and your brother and Rosina who had the opportunity,” said Susan brutally. “That is, if you except the cook and housemaid.”
“I suppose so,” said Miriam Wiggenhorn. “Well—I’ll ask Durrie to take you to see John. And the doctor.”
She did so. Durrie looked sullen but consented, and said, during the six-mile drive into Warrington, not one word.
And neither the doctor nor the lawyer yielded anything to Susan’s inquiries. Except that the lawyer again rather nervously put the responsibility for calling Susan upon Miriam’s plump shoulders.
In the end Susan, still with a silent and sullen Durrie, returned to the Wiggenhorn house no wiser than when she had left. They approached it this time along an old drive leading to a porte-cochère at a side door. Through the shrubs Susan caught glimpses of the garden, and, once, of a kind of summer-house, except that it was much more substantial than most summer-houses are. Durrie caught her look and said: “My studio.”
“Studio? Oh, you paint, then?”
“Well, yes and no. I sort of dabble around at this and that.” He hesitated and then said suddenly: “Look here, Miss Dare, I don’t know what on earth’s got into Miriam. Uncle wasn’t murdered. Why, there’s no one who would want to murder Uncle. It’s a perfectly senseless notion. I wish—I wish you’d tell her so and leave.”
“And there was no outsiders in the house, anyway,” said Susan. “Except the nurse and—”
“Rosina don’t do it! That’s impossible. Why, she—she—I tell you she couldn’t have done it. She thought the world of Uncle. And he of her.”
“Will Rosina be leaving soon?”
“I suppose so. Just for a time. Until we can be married.”
“Oh—”
“Yes.”
“Did your uncle approve of your engagement?” asked Susan after a moment.
The reply was not what she expected.
“Yes,” said Durrie. “He thought it was fine. Here you are, Miss Dare.”
He opened the door for her. She lingered to watch as he walked around the car which he left standing in the drive and disappeared in the direction the summer-house.
Susan went thoughtfully into the hideous drawing-room. Rosina, immaculate in her white uniform, was there reading, and she lifted her fine eyes to give Susan one long, smoldering look. She was not disposed to be communicative.
Yes, she had liked Mr. Wiggenhorn very much. Yes, it was too bad he died alone; she felt very badly about that.
“But it takes them that way. It can’t be helped. But it wasn’t murder,” she added with sudden, vehement scorn. “If he was murdered, it was an absolutely perfect crime. So perfect that it fooled me and the doctor, and I’m not easily fooled.”
Susan was very thoughtful during a dreary, silent lunch. But it was not until late afternoon that, during a solitary, slow walk up and down the damp garden paths, one small phrase out of all the things that had been said to her began to emphasize itself. Was dispelled and returned. Began to assume rather curious proportions. Under its insistency she finally let her fancy go and built up, with that as a premise, a curious fabric of murder. Or rather it built itself up, queerly, almost instantly, with the most terrifying logic.
It couldn’t be. There were reasons why it couldn’t be.
Yet—well, who would know? No one. Who could tell her what she must know? Come now, Susie, she could hear Jim saying: let’s get down to brass tacks. How could it have been done?
The house was still quiet when at length she returned to it. She summoned the little housemaid to her own room again. “I want you to tell me again, exactly how you found Mr. Wiggenhorn.”
The girl shut her eyes and twisted her white apron.
“Well, he was there on the couch. That’s the first thing I saw, because he was all twisted—looked so queer, you know. Somehow I knew right away he was dead. I screamed and everybody—that is, Miss Wiggenhorn and cook and then the nurse—came running.”
“And he had pulled off the cover of the table—”
“Oh, yes, and everything was spilled. Glass and water and—”
“Did you straighten the room?”
“Yes, ma’am. Right away. While Miss Wiggenhorn was telephoning for the doctor.”
“What did you pick up?”
The girl’s eyes opened widely. “Why, the—empty water glass. The bottle of smelling salts—”
“Was it open? I mean had Mr. Wiggenhorn used it?”
“Oh, yes, the stopped was out and it had fallen on its side.”
“Then you gathered up the crystals of salts that had fallen out?”
“No, ma’am,” said the girl. “The bottle must have been empty. There wasn’t anything in it at all. Except a sort of mist—”
“Mist!” said Susan violently.
“Well—steam. As if it had had hot water in it—you know. Only the bottle was empty.”
“I see,” said Susan after a moment. “What did you do with it?”
“Why, I—I put it on the table. And straightened up the table and wiped up the water that had spilled from the glass—”
“Wait. There was nothing in the glass?”
“No, ma’am. It had fallen on its side too. I took it and washed it and put it back on the table.”
She waited for further questions. Finally Susan said: “Was there any unusual odor in the room?”
The girl thought and then shook her head decisively. “No, ma’am. I didn’t notice anything. Not even smelling salts—but then, the bottle was empty. But we were all excited—everybody running around—putting up windows.”
“Opening windows? Who?”
But she didn’t know exactly. “Besides,” she said, “the smell of the vinegar and spices was all over the house. Suffocating, it was.”
“It must have been. Did you replace the stopper in the smelling-salts bottle?”
She was dubious. Then remembered: “Yes. When I cleaned the room the next day. It had rolled under the couch.”
“Do you clean Mr. Durrie’s studio?” asked Susan abruptly.
“Oh, no,” said the girl. “He’s got bottles and glass things in there. And he won’t let me clean it. Miss Miriam does it. Only Miss Miriam and the nurse are allowed to go into the studio. And if you want smells,” she added with vehemence, “that’s the place to get them. He says it’s chemical experiments. Me and the cook think it’s dreadful.”
“Oh,” said Susan. I’ve got to go, thought Susan, blindly. I’ve got to leave. I’ve got to get out of here now. At once. Will they try to stop me? And I have no proof.
The girl was looking worried.
“What’s the matter, miss? Have I done anything wrong?”
“No, no,” said Susan sharply. “It’s all right. Do your parents live near here?”
“Two miles away.”
“You’d better go to them at once. Walk. Make some excuse. Don’t tell anyone you have talked to me. But go.”
“G-go”—stammered the girl looking frightened. “Now?”
Somehow, tersely, Susan convinced her and watched her scuttle anxiously downstairs. (Besides she would be a valuable witness.) And still there was no proof. And no time to be lost.
The house was silent all around her. The hall empty, but shadowy and narrow. Which was Rosina’s room?
She found it after opening doors to several cold, darkened bedrooms. The nurse’s red-lined cape was across a chair. Her books on a table: powder and creams and bottles quite evidently belonging to the nurse and not to Miriam, on the dressing table. In an adjoining bathroom were other things: a bathing cap, bath salts, sponge, tooth paste. She was exploring a large jar of bath powder with a cautious forefinger when there was a small rustle and Rosina herself stood in the doorway, eyes blazing.
“What are you doing in my things?”
“Searching,” said Susan with false airiness.
“Searching! What for? I’ve nothing to conceal. I wish you’d get out of here.”
“Nothing,” said Susan, “would suit me better. Look here, when are you planning to be married?”
Rosina blinked.
“I don’t know. Next summer. Why?”
“Why not immediately?”
“Why, I—we haven’t—”
“Is there anything to prevent an immediate marriage?”
“Why—no! Certainly not!”
“Could you be married next week?”
“Y-yes. Yes, of course.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Yes.”
Susan permitted herself to look incredulous. “Are you sure?” she said very softly.
For a long moment the nurse’s fine black eyes blazed into Susan’s. Then she said furiously:
“Certainly. It’s no affair of yours, but you might like to know, since you are so officious, that that is exactly what I’m going to do. I shall be married, Miss Snoopy Dare, tomorrow.”
They stepped out into the hall and Rosina banged her door and, furious, went downstairs. Susan waited and then returned once more to the same room.
She looked around it again. There were remarkably few places of concealment. None, indeed, except the old-fashioned mahogany wardrobe. She looked at it with disfavor, but finally opened one of the heavy mirrored doors and stepped up into it. The few dresses offered little concealment. And there was only one way out. And Jim had said something about danger. But she didn’t think of all that until she had settled herself to wait.
Not an easy wait. For the space was narrow and cramped, the air not too good in spite of the small opening she had left to enable her to see into the room, and a sense of danger, like a small red signal, became more and more marked. Danger in that muffled, orderly house. Danger—danger.
Minutes dragged on and Susan’s muscles were numb and cramped. Suppose no one came. Suppose Rosina had decided on another course. But she wouldn’t. And they knew, too, that Susan’s own departure was imminent. Susan’s eyes were blurred from staring too long and too fixedly at that crack of light. She closed them wearily.
And it was then that someone entered the room. Entered it so stealthily, so furtively that Susan felt only the faint jar of footsteps on the old floor.
Her heart pounded in her throat and her eyes were glued again to that crack.
And too late she realized that the wardrobe itself might be the objective.
Suppose the door should suddenly, silently open—suppose the very torrent of her thoughts betrayed, telepathically, her hiding place. Suppose—something passed across Susan’s range of vision and obscured for an instant that crack of light.
Obscured it. And then was gone as silently, as swiftly, as it had come. But not too swiftly for recognition.
It was a long ten minutes before Susan dared move and open the door and, cautiously, emerge from her hiding place.
It was not difficult to find what she sought. The pungent odor of bath salts guided her. The jar was closed again, but it had been opened and disturbed.
She was cautious, too, in returning to her own room.
Now then, to get away. At once. Without fail.
Would they let her leave? She tossed her things in her bag and closed it; put on her coat. Knotted a yellow scarf with trembling hands and pulled her small brown hat at a jaunty angle over her light-brown hair. She looked pale and frightened. And was. But they had told her to go; at least Durrie had.
On the stairway she could hear their voices coming from the drawing-room.
Susan braced herself and entered.
And she need not have brace herself for it was all very simple and easy. They agreed that if Miss Dare felt that she could do no more and wished to go, she must go. They were very grateful to her. Her advice had relieved them greatly (this only from Miriam).
It was all very easy and very simple. Except that she didn’t leave.
For something was wrong with the car.
“Wrong with the car?” panted Miriam. “Why, you were driving it only this morning.”
“I know,” said Durrie sulkily. “The thing won’t start. I don’t know what’s wrong. You’ll have to wait till morning, I guess, Miss Dare. There’s only one night train in to Chicago. It leaves at six.”
“A taxi”—said Susan with stiff lips.
“Too late,” said Durrie, looking at his watch. “It’s five-thirty now and the roads are a fright. You can’t possibly make it.”
Miriam looked up from her embroidery hoops. “It looks as if you’ll have to spend another night with us, Miss Dare. We are very happy, indeed, to have you.”
Susan’s bag dropped and her heart with it. She had a sudden, sharp pang of longing for Jim. “Very well,” she said after a moment. “But—a theater engagement—I’ll telephone—”
There was an instant of complete silence. Then Miriam said, panting: “Show her the telephone, Durrie. It’s there in the hall, Miss Dare.”
They were listening, all of them, while she called Chicago and then a familiar number. But Jim was not there. “Will you give him a message, please,” Susan said. “Tell him Miss Dare can’t keep her engagement for the theater tonight. That she’s”—she hesitated and then made curious use of a conventional phrase. “Tell him,” she said, “that she’s unavoidably detained.”
But if they thought the use curious they did not say so.
Jim would understand her message; they had had no theater engagement. But there was no way of knowing when he would return and find it.
Was there anything really wrong with the car? And what would they say when they discovered that the little housemaid had gone home?
They said nothing of it. Nothing at all. The cook, enormous in a white apron, served the meal. What did they know? Somehow Susan managed to get food past a stricture in her throat.
Later they played parcheesi again.
“Tired, Miss Dare?” said Rosina once when Susan had glanced surreptitiously at her watch. And Miriam, holding dice in her fat, ringed hand, said:
“Are you perfectly sure you have nothing to tell us, Miss Dare? Your view of Uncle’s death, I mean? Does it coincide in every way with what we know of it?”
Susan had to speak without hesitation. “I’m afraid I’ve discovered nothing that wasn’t already known. But I’ll think it over carefully; sometimes it takes a little while for things to become clear in one’s mind.”
Miriam tossed the dice and Durrie took his turn. He said calmly: “Is that why you sent the girl away?”
The question fell into absolute silence. Long afterward Susan was to remember the way Rosina’s strong, wide, white hand closed upon the dice and held them rigidly. And her own swift, queer recollection of the empty room upstairs. The room where a kind old man had been cruelly murdered.
She couldn’t have spoken. And Durrie, all at once white and strange, cried: “You thought you’d fasten it on Rosina. But she didn’t kill him. She—”
“Durrie,” said Miriam. “Don’t you know that only Rosina could have done it.”
Durrie leaped to his feet. Rosina did not move and neither did Miriam.
And in the silence they all heard the sudden squealing of the brakes of an automobile at the side of the house.
“Jim,” thought Susan. “Oh, let it be Jim—”
It was. Durrie went to the door and let him in. He gave one look at Susan and said very pleasantly that he’d come to take her home.
There was a bad moment when Miriam Wiggenhorn raised an objection.
“But you have only begun the investigation, Miss Dare. This is most distressing—most inconclusive—”
Jim said crisply: “Miss Dare will put any evidence she has into your hands in due form—”
It puzzled them a little. And in the instant of perplexity Jim thrust Susan out the door and closed it smartly behind them.
The engine of his car was running. Thirty seconds later they had turned into the public road and the Wiggenhorn house was a dark, brooding bulk behind them. “J-Jim,” said Susan shakily.
“Scared?”
“Terrified—”
His profile looked forbidding. He said grimly: “I got your message. Drove like hell. What have you been stirring up?”
“Oh,” said Susan. “A man was murdered, and I know who killed him. Can you remember chemistry?”
The car swerved, recovered, and Jim muttered. Susan went on:
“What was the name of that gas that’s so dangerous? To breathe, I mean. It’s heavier than air and if left open passes into the air. And when you transfer it from one container to another you have to be so careful not to breathe it—it burns the lungs or something.”
“Wait a minute. Let me pull myself together.” He lighted a cigarette and thought for a moment. “I know—you can see the fumes above the test tube. Otherwise you can’t detect its presence except by smell. And if the tube is on its side all the gas escapes into the air. I’ll remember it in a minute—hydrogen—”
“Hydrogen chloride,” said Susan.
“Somebody die of it?”
“I think so,” said Susan. “I’m sure—but somebody else can do the proving. I won’t. They’ll have to start with an autopsy.”
Jim said: “Begin at the beginning.”
Susan did. It took a long time and Jim said nothing till she had finished.
Then he said: “I begin to see the outline. Rich old man subject to heart attacks, likely to die of one, but doesn’t. Somebody wants him to die at once. Hydrogen chloride is introduced into a smelling-salts bottle; bottle is green and thus no one is likely to perceive its apparent emptiness or its actual content. Maid hands man smelling salts, when he is alone. He gets a good big sniff of it before he can stop himself—that’s bad, Susan. Think of the horrible pain—the shock—he dies really of the shock; his heart can’t stand it. Ordinarily I think a person might live for some hours, or even days, and be conscious. But the murderer counted on that bad heart and won. It looks like a natural death. Anyway it is a successful murder. Durrie has a studio where he seems to do chemical experiments. The nurse would know something of chemistry. But the murder would have been perfect if Miriam hadn’t suspected something. Which one did it?”
“It’s funny,” said Susan, “that you used the word a perfect murder. That very word is what started me thinking. Perfect. Too perfect!”
“Huh,” said Jim with vehemence.
“Too perfect. No one suspected it was murder. And that was the motive, you see. Murder had to be suspected.”
“Murder had to be—sorry, Susie, but I don’t see.”
“All right. Look at this. Durrie is in love with the nurse; wants to marry her. His uncle didn’t object. And there was no motive at all, remember, for murder—no money motive. No question of thwarted love. No motive at all except—m except that Rosina was a very willful young woman—and Miriam, no less willful, hated her.”
“But Miriam approved the marriage.”
“Oh, did she!” said Susan. “Then why were Rosina and Durrie obliged to steal meetings. In the garden at dusk. At midnight.”
“How do you know Rosina had gone downstairs to see Durrie?”
“I didn’t. But it’s a good reason. Name a better one.”
“Suppose she did,” conceded Jim. “What then?”
“Miriam had ruled that house and Durrie in the smallest detail for years. She loved her rule—a previous engagement of Durrie’s had been mysteriously broken off. The uncle was about to die anyway; here was a perfect plan to get rid of Rosina.”
“Do you mean Miriam murdered the old man? But that doesn’t make sense. She didn’t gain by it.”
“She did, Jim, if she could make Durrie think, in his heart, that it was murder. And that the newcomer, the nurse, was the only one who could have done it.”
“You can’t prove this, Susan, it’s mere theory. How do you know it was Miriam?”
“You’ve said it yourself, Jim—there’s a French term, postiche. It means a counterfeit, an inartistic addition to an otherwise perfect work of art. Well, the murder was perfect. It was too perfect. No one suspected it was murder. So Miriam had failed. Had failed unless she could get someone—someone without official standing—like me—to look into it; perhaps to discover some little thing, not too much (she was very sure of herself); but enough to make Durrie think it might have been murder. And that if it was murder, only Rosina could have done it. She didn’t know exactly how much she could trust me to see or not to see. I think she meant to watch—to—to—gauge—me. If necessary to introduce a little evidence against the nurse, as she did. It’s queer; her very words of praise for Rosina made me suspect the nurse. At first. She’s very clever—Miriam Wiggenhorn.”
“Then the housemaid was in danger from her—”
“The housemaid is a very valuable witness. And Miriam might have discovered that I had something of the true story from her. The real story. It wasn’t just accident that Miriam was pickling peaches that afternoon, filling the house with a smell of vinegar that would mask any other smell. This isn’t the season for putting up fruit. She had to pickle canned fruit. Besides there was the inartistic addition—”
“You mean her calling you and talking of murder when nobody had suspected it was murder shows that she thought of murder when, if she were innocent, she would have had no reason to suspect it. And that for some reason she was determined to suggest that it was murder.”
“To suggest it anyway. The perfect murder, except for the inartistic addition. Postiche. And I,” said Susan, “am it.”
“But”—Jim paused and said in a helpless way: “All this is very nice. But angel, it’s only theory. It isn’t a bad idea, you know, to have proof.”
“Oh, yes—proof. It’s in my bag. Wrapped in a handkerchief and mixed with bath salts. But identifiable.”
“What!”
“Smelling salts. When she emptied the bottle she kept the salts in case her investigation should need a little steering. Rosina, you see, has a fine temper. When I hinted there was something preventing their marriage as if I were suspicious about it, she flounced down to tell Durrie and Miriam that she wanted it to take place at once. Durrie agreed, of course. Rosina had much the stronger will. Miriam agreed, too—and came straight upstairs to plant the clue. Nobody in the house ever used smelling salts but Keller Wiggenhorn.”
“Framing her.”
“Exactly. I suppose she would have tried something more open, given time.”
“How did you know it was Miriam?”
“Saw her.”
“From where?” demanded Jim.
“N-never mind,” said Susan in a small voice.
Jim stopped the car and looked at her intently. But when he spoke it was with an air of preoccupation. “There’s guilt in your voice,” he said absently. “But we’ll skip it. Do you know, I have a queer sort of impulse. I’d like to—”
“To what?”
“To kiss you,” said Jim unexpectedly, and did so.