There is an eerie quality to this tale as the characters, one by one, disappear. But at the same time, Miriam is telling a classic detective story and the clues are there to point a finger at the villain.
Miss Harriet Faulkner never missed a Friday evening symphony concert. Riding home now in a taxi—only her brother Philip ever drove the roomy Faulkner car—she hummed a bit of Brahms to herself and reflected comfortably that really her life was as satisfactory a one as often falls to human lot. She had never missed love or marriage very much—both, she thought, are overrated; her parents had died so many years ago that now they were only a vague memory; she bad always been reasonably well off; she had her music, to which she was devoted; and she had dear Caroline and dear Philip.
There were things about Caroline, of course, that Harriet deplored; chiefly her insensitivity to music—some of the dreadful noises that Caroline permitted to pour from the radio made her sister dash to her own room in dismay. Caroline was so set in her ways, too—always the same habits at the same hours, hardly ever leaving the house, having no life or interests outside of her home and her family; really, she was an old woman at sixty, whereas Harriet, only a year younger, still felt quite brisk and youthful. But take it all in all, Caroline was a darling, and Harriet was very happy with her.
Philip, their junior by sixteen and seventeen years respectively, seemed more like a nephew than a brother. He had been one of those unexpected babies who sometimes arrive long after the family is considered complete. Their mother had paid for his birth with her life, and three years later their father had followed her. Caroline and Harriet had devoted their youth to raising their young brother. And they had made a good job of it, Harriet reflected.
It hadn’t been easy, in the early years. Philip had been a rebellious child, resenting discipline. And as a youth he had had wild ideas. That dreadful ambition to go on the stage, for example; and that awful episode during his college days with that impossible girl, Mary Dwight, he had wanted to marry! But they had been firm, and the money was all theirs till Philip came of age, so in the end they had won. They had made Philip into a lawyer, as they had always intended to do. As for the girl—
Harriet shuddered slightly as an unwelcome memory assailed her—the only time she and Caroline had seen the person who for nearly twenty years had been known to them only as “that woman.” Philip had dared to bring her home with him to meet his sisters. They had seen at once that she would never do. Tall, aggressive, brassy, with a strident voice—the last person in the world to take into their home—and of course they had never dreamt that Philip would leave the house. They had been so cool that the girl, for all her aplomb, had burst into tears, and Philip had taken her away. That night they had made him promise on their mother’s Bible that he would not see her again.
And then—why was she thinking of all those unpleasant things? The music must have stirred her more than she realized. Then, when Philip had been admitted to the bar, at twenty-five, be had floored them with the revelation that he had broken his solemn vow and married that woman—worse, that he had bought a house—in Woodacre, fortunately, not in the city—and intended to live there with her, and his sisters could like it or lump it
Things had finally adjusted themselves, of course. Blood is thicker than water, after all. Philip kept his old room, and after a few years he spent half his time at home, leaving that creature alone in Woodacre, whether she liked it or not. Her name was never mentioned in the Faulkner house on Pacific Avenue, and of course they had never seen her again. It was a silent compromise, with Philip forgiven on strict conditions.
Except for that one lapse, he was a model brother now, and most dependable. For years they had not even had to worry about investment of their property. Philip, whose legal practice took up little of his time—he accepted nothing but civil suits and was fussy about those—managed everything for all of them.
The money, quite a sizable fortune, though nothing stupendous, had been left by their father’s will to his three children equally. Until Caroline became twenty-one, a bank had been the trustee. Then Caroline had the management, with the bank’s guidance, for another year; after which Harriet came into her share, and they had managed Philip’s property jointly for sixteen years more. As soon as Philip had been admitted to the bar, the whole business had been put in his hands by his sisters, who were glad to be rid of the worry of it. Since bills were always paid and there was always plenty in their drawing-accounts, they had discouraged Philip from even making annual reports. What was the use, when it really belonged to all of them, and they all lived together?
Thinking idly of these matters, Harriet reached the big wooden gingerbread house on Pacific Avenue. Taxis drew up to the front door, of course; but when they used their own car, they drove it by the side-path to the rear garage, once a stable.
The house was an anomaly. Three stories, basement, and attic, with turrets and cupolas and stained-glass windows, it was in the best style of the 1880s and still stood in its own garden. The saplings dear father had planted were big shady trees now. On either side rose tall modernistic apartment houses. When the last Faulkner was gone, their house too would be torn down and another apartment house would take its place; but that would be a long time yet. Meanwhile, they were fortunate in still having their privacy. In both cases the sides of the apartment houses looking down upon them were pierced only by airshafts and narrow lead-glassed bathroom windows: they could pretend at least that they lived in their own exclusive world
The only difficulty nowadays was that servants balked at working in a house lacking so many modem improvements. But even so, they managed. They still had old William, who came daily to tend the garden and do the heavy work; and after a difficult interregnum they had Mamie back again. Mamie had come to them as cook after mother died. Then she had married. Caroline had offered to raise her pay to fantastic heights to dissuade her, but it had been useless. In the face of argument and prophecy, Mamie had insisted on abandoning them for her young policeman.
It was Harriet, worn out by an endless succession of surly and inefficient servants, who had traveled all the way to the Mission District and persuaded Mamie to come back to them. Caroline could never have accomplished it, Harriet sometimes thought smugly. When she was twenty-two, Harriet had been courted and proposed to. Her suitor had been rejected, of course; but since then Harriet had felt herself an authority on men. She had known, as Caroline would not have known, that Fred Mullins, not Mamie, was the stumbling-block. Mullins had just been promoted to the detective force, and he didn’t want his wife working in another woman’s kitchen. But he was a soft-hearted Irishman, and Harriet—small, fragile, and appealing for all her dignity—had won him over. Mamie could no longer ’’live in,” naturally—she arrived at eight and left after preparing their dinner—but figuratively Harriet bore her home in triumph; and she was still with them, even though Fred Mullins by now was a full-fledged inspector on the homicide squad—indeed, a senior inspector, and very near the retirement age.
Yes, they managed very well. They never had guests, they seldom went out, and there were rooms they never went near except to dust them. Of late years Philip was there more than he had been at first. Harriet and Caroline could not imagine what he did in that ridiculous cottage in Woodacre, especially on weekends. Surely that woman’s company could not be very entertaining. In college he had been something of an athlete, but though he was tall and strong still, he had never been one for hunting or fishing. Oh well, as long as he kept his two lives separate, and was there when his sisters wanted him, Harriet could not complain.
“After all—men!” she sighed philosophically as the taxi came to a stop.
She paid the driver crisply, carefully adding an exact ten percent tip, and as he drove away, reached into her handbag for the door key.
It was nearly half-past eleven, yet there were lights in the front windows, upstairs and down, as she could see well, even though the shades were drawn. Through the closed door she could hear a raucous female voice singing something horrible on Caroline’s radio. What on earth had got into her sister? Usually she was sound asleep by the time Harriet came back from the symphony.
Annoyed, Harriet inserted the key. It did not turn. She took it out and tried again. On an impulse, she turned the knob. It yielded: the door was unlocked, This was really too bad of Caroline—inexcusably careless.
Crossly, Harriet marched into the living room and snapped off the radio abruptly. In the sudden silence she called: “Caroline! Where are you, Caroline?” There was no answer.
Caroline’s favorite chair was drawn up to the fireplace, as usual; her interminable knitting lay on the little table beside it. A book she had been reading—Caroline could knit and read at the same time—lay face down on the seat of the chair. Harriet sniffed. Something was burning. She hurried out to the lighted kitchen. Smoke was coming from a saucepan on the stove. Hastily Harriet turned off the gas and with a holder carried the hot saucepan to the sink. It contained the scorched residue of milk—Caroline’s nightly boiled milk, which she drank every evening at nine-thirty.
Alarmed now, Harriet ran upstairs to her sister’s room. It too was brightly-lit. Caroline’s bed was turned down; her nightgown and dressing gown lay across it, her woolly slippers at its foot. But Caroline was not there.
A thought struck Harriet. She ran back to the kitchen. Flopsy’s bed was empty. Could Caroline have left the house to take Flopsy for his walk? It was Harriet’s nightly task, but this evening it had been hard to find a taxi, and she had been later than usual. But would Caroline have left the radio going and the milk cooking? Anyway, there was a faint yapping outside the kitchen door. Harriet opened it—it too was unlocked—and let in a cold and shivering poodle, quite alone.
Systematically, Harriet searched the house. Somewhere Caroline must be lying ill. But the unlocked doors? As she searched she called, but no answer came. She entered every room, opened every closet, forced herself to the attic, the basement, the garden, with a flashlight. Still no Caroline.
Panic-stricken, back in the living room, Harriet threw herself into a chair and tried to think. Had Caroline suddenly gone insane and rushed out of the house? Had robbers broken in and kidnapped her? She ran to the front door again and looked wildly up and down the street. It was after midnight by now, and neither pedestrian nor car was in sight. It was a foggy, windy night, and very dark. Harriet shuddered at the thought of running about those silent streets, not knowing where to go or what to do. For a moment she even meditated phoning the police. But that was only a sign of terror. If something dreadful had happened to one of the Faulkners, it must be kept strictly to the Faulkners. No Faulkner yet had ever provided entertainment for the public on the front page of a newspaper.
There was only one thing left to do. Thank heaven Philip had a telephone in that Godforsaken cottage of his. She hated waking him, and dreaded hearing that woman’s voice—she’d always been lucky so far on the few occasions when she had had to phone Philip there instead of at the office—but the time had come when even Harriet Faulkner could no longer cope with the situation. She needed a man.
The operator rang and rang, but there was no answer. Harriet nearly collapsed: had something happened to Philip too? And then, just as she was giving up in despair, his voice sounded.
“Who is it?” he demanded. “For heaven’s sake, Harriet! We were sound asleep! What’s the matter?’’
She was almost incoherent, but by making her stop and speak slowly in short sentences, Philip finally managed to get the story. At first he made light of it.
“Good Lord, Harriet, nothing’s wrong. There’s probably some simple explanation. Maybe Caroline took Flopsy out for an airing and met somebody she knew and was detained. She’ll be walking in any minute. What time is it, anyway? I went to bed early.”
Harriet told him the time, and explained about Flopsy.
“Well—are you sure she hasn’t fainted—isn’t lying under the couch or something?”
“I’ve been everywhere! I’ve looked in every corner—the garden too, and the garage. Oh, Philip, do you think I should call the police?”
Philip showed the instantaneous Faulkner reaction. “No—not yet, anyway. Wait—I tell you what, Harriet, I’ll get dressed and drive down. I can make it in a little over an hour.”
“I hate to have you do it, dear, but—” In spite of all her efforts, Harriet’s voice quavered.
“Okay, Harriet. Hold everything. Take a drink of that sherry of yours and keep calm. I’ll be there as fast as I can—and if I find Caroline sitting there safe and sound, I’ll tell her plenty! Chin up, Harriet; we’ll laugh about this, all three of us, in the morning.”
But they didn’t laugh about it in the morning. All three of them never laughed about anything again. For that was the last of Caroline Faulkner.
Harriet was prostrated, and glad to leave everything to Philip, who after all was a lawyer. Philip decided that this was not a matter for the police. Caroline, so far as they knew, had not been injured or killed; she had simply disappeared. Time enough for a public scandal if she should be found wandering somewhere, suffering from amnesia. The thing to do was to try to find her. He engaged a discreet agency, the Biggs Company, gave them all the data, and told them to spare no energy or cost. They worked hard and sent in a thumping bill; but after two months they had to give up the search. Some dozen wretched women, in no way resembling Caroline, had been tracked down and interviewed by Philip. Of Caroline herself there was no trace.
Time went on, and somehow Harriet and Philip adjusted themselves to existence without their sister. Old William, the handyman, had to be told, of course, and Mamie. But there were few acquaintances and no intimate family friends to worry about. Caroline had lived apart from even the small world of her sister, or the larger world of her brother. To the few casual inquiries, they answered vaguely that Caroline wasn’t very well, or that she was out of town for a rest. Gradually the impression arose among the three or four persons who knew of Caroline’s existence at all that she had probably lost her mind—you know how it is when those old families run to seed, my dear!—and was in a private home somewhere. Perhaps it would be more tactful not to mention her again. Nobody but Harriet and Philip really cared.
For a while, Philip spent most of his nights with Harriet in the city, presumably leaving that woman to fare for herself in Woodacre. It was Harriet who, in an effort to be fair, suggested that he resume the way of life to which he was accustomed. She herself went out more often now—to the theater and lectures and concerts and the opera—and she had not the slightest nervousness about coming home to an empty house, or spending the night alone in it. Tentatively Philip suggested a companion or secretary; but he might have known Harriet would pooh-pooh such an idea instantly. She wasn’t a helpless old woman! He even broached the idea of asking the Mullinses to give up their flat and move to the big half-used house; but Harriet, as he might have expected, was horrified.
“What! A stranger—a policeman—living here, in dear father’s house! Why, Philip!”
Philip made no further recommendations.
“I’m perfectly all right,” she said brightly over Friday breakfast, some six months later, “run along and come home soon again.”
Philip looked relieved, in spite of himself. “The place does need some work done on it,” he muttered. Harriet sniffed.
Since he was forbidden to mention “that woman,” he took refuge in describing the constant improvements he planned on his “estate.” Recently he had had a barbed wire fence put around his twenty acres, and had posted it with signs threatening trespassers. He wanted no hikers or hunters tearing down his bushes or trampling his undergrowth.
“Lucky to have had the wire for years—couldn’t get it now,” he explained to Harriet.
“Silly to bother,” she said ungraciously.
He smiled rather stiffly as he kissed her goodbye. He would take the car downtown and drive straight up from the office, he said. Now that gas was rationed, he used the car very little, keeping it in the garage most of the time. And with a thirty-five mile speed limit, it took longer to go and come than it used to.
But he wanted to get home before dark, to see to that fence. Harriet sniffed again.
This time it was Mamie who telephoned him, at eight o’clock on Saturday morning.
Except for changes arising from Harriet’s different habits, the story was repeated. Mamie had come to work as usual to find the front door unlocked and lights on behind drawn shades in the living room and Harriet’s bedroom. Harriet’s reading glasses lay in the open book of Double-Crostics on which she had been working, and beside it stood a half-finished glass of sherry. Her bed also had been turned down and her night attire laid on it, but it had not been slept in. Flopsy was whining and scratching at the unlocked kitchen door.
Harriet herself was gone.
This was no case for the Biggs Company. Disliking it very much, Philip had to go to the police.
“And nobody lower than a captain would do him, the desk sergeant told me,” Fred Mullins reported that night to his wife. “Tell your captain that Mr. Philip Faulkner wishes to speak to him,’ says he, high and mighty, to O’Rourke.”
“Oh, well now, Fred, it’s distracted the poor man is, with the queer things happening to both my poor ladies,” said Mamie pacifically. “And, after all, Mr. Philip’s a big lawyer, and the Faulkners is big people.”
“You and your Faulkners!” grumbled Fred. “I wonder I’ve let my wife work in someone’s kitchen so long. It was the little one got around me, that time. Don’t cry now, Mamie girl—I don’t blame you for feelin’ bad. I’m sorry meself, and if it turns out to be a matter for the squad, I’ll do everything I can to help.”
“For the homicide squad! What ever do you mean, Fred? Do you think poor Miss Harriet—and maybe Miss Caroline—was murdered?”
“And if not, where are they?” asked Mullins practically.
Which was practically the same thing Captain of Detectives Joyce had been saying to Philip earlier in the day.
The captain was considerably annoyed. “If you’d come to us six months ago—”
“I know, Captain. It’s what I should have done. I know it as an attorney, even though I’ve never had any dealing with criminal cases. But my sister—both my sisters—are very conventional in their ideas. The mere thought of the family name of our personal affairs—being made public—I guess.” He laughed apologetically. “We Faulkners are rather an old-fashioned lot. Our father, you know, was a pretty prominent man; he—”
“Yes, yes, I know,” said the captain brusquely. He dreaded, from sad experience, getting mixed up with any of what he called bitterly “that Pacific Heights crowd.”
“For the present,” he added stiffly, “it will be kept a matter for the police department only. The papers will not be given anything by us.”
“Thank you, Captain. After all, since no crime had been committed—”
“We don’t know whether one has or not. That’s what we’re going to find out. And if it has, Mr. Faulkner, I might as well tell you that it will be treated exactly as if it had happened down on Skid Road.”
“Oh, certainly—certainly,” said Philip quickly. “I leave the whole thing in your competent hands.”
But for all the department’s best efforts, and willing cooperation offered by Philip, the police were as baffled as the Biggs Company had been. They interviewed Philip and Mamie exhaustively; they analyzed the sherry; they fine-toothed the premises; they took fingerprints; they talked to everybody in both apartment houses next door. Not a single clue developed. It was simply a grotesque, bizarre happening, without explanation or meaning. Caroline and Harriet Faulkner, two commonplace elderly women, had vanished, six months apart. They were gone, and nobody could find out where or why.
For several weeks Philip spent every night in the house, with the lights on, as if to welcome either or both of his sisters if they should return. When a month passed without word of either of them, he came to a resolution.
“I’m closing up the house, Mamie,” he said. “You’ll be glad enough to stay at home, after all these years. William will have no trouble finding a job nowadays. I’ll take Flopsy with me.”
Worry had made Philip expansive. He went on, more to himself than to the old cook. “I never thought I’d give up the family home. But after what’s happened—it sounds superstitious, but it’s hard not to feel there’s a curse on this house.”
it is indeed, Mr. Philip. I feel the same way meself. What are you goin’ to do—rent the house?”
Philip shuddered. “I’m going to lock it up, just as it is, furniture and all, and let it stay that way. After all, Mamie, perhaps some day this—this mystery will be solved; Miss Caroline and Miss Harriet may come home again. If not—well, after the war I suppose it will have to be torn down. It’s the last one-family house in the block.” He made his plans to close the house the next Wednesday.
Until then, Mamie was to come daily as usual, while Philip stayed away from his office; and after a brief trip to Woodacre, he helped her pack his personal belongings and what few things he wanted to take with him, cover the furniture, and store Caroline’s and Harriet’s things in the attic.
“If you could get here a little early tomorrow morning, Mamie,” he suggested on Tuesday evening. “The water and gas and electricity and telephone will be turned off soon, and there will be a lot of last-minute things to do before I leave.”
“Sure, I’ll be here by seven, Mr. Philip. And I’ll make you a grand breakfast for the last one you eat in your own home. Curse or no curse, you must be sad to be going. I’m sad meself.”
Indeed, Mamie was almost in tears. It was the end of many years’ faithful service.
“That’s good of you, Mamie,” said Philip, touched. “And when you go, take everything from the pantry home with you. All I want is the basket we packed with the wine. And, Mamie—here’s a little something for all your extra work this week, and all the years you’ve been our mainstay here.”
“Oh, Mr. Philip!” Mamie took the envelope with a shaking hand. “God bless you, Mr. Philip! And if you want me to help out any time—”
“We’ll be seeing each other, Mamie, don’t worry. Run along now, and I’ll be looking forward to that special breakfast.”
“At seven sharp I’ll be here, Mr. Philip.”
Mamie hurried to catch her bus and get home before Fred came off duty. Philip looked with distaste at the living room, swathed in covers and no longer habitable. They had left the dining room and kitchen for the last. He ate the cold supper Mamie had left for him, put the dishes in the kitchen for her to wash in the morning, uncovered an armchair and dragged it in from the living room, and settled down by the dining-table. The secretary he shared with two other lawyers in a suite of offices downtown had telephoned him during the afternoon, and he had some notes to make and letters to write in connection with two or three pending cases.
Though ever since Harriet had vanished he had spent all his nights alone in what he had finally called a house with a curse on it, tonight it seemed emptier and gloomier than ever. Already it possessed the uneasy silence of an empty building. It was hard to put his mind to his work.
At last he got up and went to the basket he had mentioned to Mamie. Among the bottles of sherry and port and burgundy was an unopened pint of brandy. Philip Faulkner drank very little, but tonight brandy was just what he needed.
He opened the bottle, found a glass, drank a stiff jolt, and resolutely opened his briefcase and laid out the papers he needed. Flopsy was asleep in his bed in the kitchen.
It was poor Mamie again, hurrying in at seven, who found the doors unlocked, Flopsy in the garden, lights on in the empty living room, the dining room, and Philip’s bedroom, his bed turned down and his pajamas and slippers by it, the dining-table scattered with legal papers, Philip’s pen open on a half-finished note, the bottle and glass beside it—and no one in the chair. No one in the house but herself. Philip Faulkner had followed his sisters.
This time Mamie phoned her husband. And Fred, telling her to wait there till someone came, took the matter immediately to Captain Joyce.
As soon as Mamie’s story had been taken down, and she had gone home, weeping, with Flopsy in her arms, the house and grounds were searched thoroughly, and Philip’s office was visited. Then the investigation moved on to Woodacre. There was no longer any question of keeping the affair out of the newspapers. Three mysterious disappearances in a prominent family—no clues—police (as usual) baffled—it was a lulu of a story. In three out of the four daily papers it shared the first page with the war news. There were no pictures available of Caroline or Harriet, but one was dug up of Philip from his college annual, and another from a group at some Civilian Defense function; and the house was photographed from every angle. “Is There a Curse on This House?” asked The Morning Investigator under a view of the front door—much to the embarrassment of the residents of the exclusive apartment houses on both sides. People came to stand and gape at the Faulkner home, and paid no attention whatever to the indignant doormen who tried to shoo them away.
The next morning, with a deputy sheriff in tow, since this was another county, Fred Mullins cut the barbed wire and trampled through Philip’s cherished underbrush to his cottage. “What kind of woman is this wife of his?” he asked Deputy Davis.
Davis shook his head.
’’I’ve lived here, man and boy, all my life, and darned if I ever saw her. Once in a while, before he put this fence up, kids passing through would get a glimpse of a woman’s figure passing the window. He did all the shopping in the town—what he did; most of the stuff they used he brought from the city. When he was away, she never set foot out of the house—leastwise, if she did, nobody saw her. Wish I could have my wife trained like that!”
“He’s ashamed of her, that’s what I gather from what my wife’s told me—things she’s overheard all these years. Probably married her when she was young and pretty, and the veneer wore off. These high-up snobs, that’s the way they handle things, I guess.”
“Folks here always figured she was maybe kind of—funny, and he wouldn’t let her go out where people’d find it out.”
“Well, here’s where we find out. There’s smoke coming from that chimney.”
They banged on the door. After a few moments, steps crossed the floor and the door opened.
The woman who stood there, looking with bewilderment and consternation at the two men confronting her, was tall and gaunt. Obviously she was an urban product, from her too-golden hair to inappropriate high-heeled and open-toed shoes. Everything about her which would have gone unnoticed in a darkened cocktail bar—her hair, her lipstick, her mascara, her nail polish glared grotesquely in her surroundings. The one thing she did not look like was what she was—practically a hermit in the country for a score of years.
“What is it? What do you want? Who are you?” she asked in a rapid staccato. Her voice was low and husky—again a voice for a cocktail bar, not for a cottage in the woods.
“We’re the police, lady,” announced Fred Mullins bluntly. She was a type he disliked at sight. “You Mrs. Faulkner? We’re looking for your husband. Is he here?”
“Here? Philip? The police? What’s wrong?”
“He’s missin’, that’s what’s wrong. Just like his sisters. Dead, maybe, all of ’em, for all we know.”
She gave a little scream, and swayed on her high heels. The deputy sheriff pushed forward.
“We want to talk to you,” he said. “Let’s go in the house.”
“Why, I never—” murmured the woman. But she backed into the room and Davis and Fred followed her.
“Sit down,” Fred ordered. “We’ll talk to you in a minute. We want to look around first.”
The cottage contained only two rooms, with a kitchen alcove and a cubbyhole just big enough to hold a toilet and a shower. It needed only a glance to see that there was no one in it but the three of them.
The woman had dropped into a chair and sat there stiffly, staring at them dazedly, occasionally licking her dry, too red lips.
“Now, Mrs. Faulkner,” Fred finished his brief inspection of the house and planted himself in a chair facing her. “Tell us all about it.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said in that husky, rapid tone. ’’Where is Philip? What’s happened to him?”
“That’s what we want to know,” said Fred grimly. “You know what happened to his sisters, don’t you? Well, now it’s happened to him too.”
“You mean,” she whispered, “that he’s—disappeared?”
“They found the place yesterday, all open and lit up and just the way it was with the other two.”
“Oh!”
“When did you see him last?” Davis put in.
“Not for nearly a month, except for one night last week. He said he was going to stay down there till his sister Harriet turned up or he got things settled. He—he phoned me last night, though. He said he’d be up tonight And now you’ve come instead.”
“You were pretty sore at those sisters of his, weren’t you?” growled Fred Mullins. “You must have been pretty sore at him too, by this time, keeping you hidden like this—a woman like you.”
“What are you driving at?” The woman’s voice grew strident. “I never left this house—ask this man, if he’s from around here. Philip wouldn’t let me. He wouldn’t even let me answer the phone, even if he wasn’t here, unless he told me when he was going to call me himself. It wasn’t until last week that he left any money here for me—and that was for a special purpose. How could I have got away from here to—for anything?”
“You’re talking a lot, lady. I guess you’d better come along with us.”
“Oh, no!” she screamed. “Listen—I’ll tell the truth! I wasn’t ever going to, but if he’s disappeared, then I must.”
“Okay, talk. They’re all dead, ain’t they? Who killed them?”
Mrs. Faulkner struggled to regain her composure. “I never saw those sisters, except once, years ago, before we were married. They wouldn’t let me set foot again in that old cemetery vault they called a house—all I ever saw of it was the front parlor, and darned little of that. But I know they had Philip buffaloed—plenty. The only thing he ever did in his life against their will was to marry me. Unless you count taking all their money, of course,” she added calmly.
“What!”
“Oh, yes, I found that out long ago. He had charge of their property, you know. I don’t understand that kind of thing, my self, but one way or another he gradually got all their stocks or securities or whatever you call it into his hands. He’d say, ‘Sign this—I’m selling this to buy you something better,’ and old Caroline or Harriet would sign. He paid all their bills, and he kept money in the bank for them to draw on. If either of them had ever asked for an accounting, the whole game would have been up, but he knew they never would.
“The only thing was, being so much older than he was, one of them might die any time—and then he’d be in the soup. They’d both left their money to each other, if you know what I mean, and then to him. ‘After all, honey,’ he used to say to me, ‘it will all be mine some day—I’m just anticipating.’ But of course it wouldn’t have been as simple as that if one of them kicked the bucket
“So some time along last year, when his sister Caroline had a spell with her heart, and he was afraid she wasn’t going to get over it, he made up his mind he didn’t dare let either of them die a natural death. They had to disappear, for good, instead. Then in seven years, he figured, he could go to court and ask to have them declared legally dead, he said they call it.”
“You mean to say he told you all this?” Davis demanded. “Why should he put his own safety in your hands?”
“Why, I’m his wife—I couldn’t testify against him. He told me so.”
“I see. And you were livin’ on that money too, weren’t you?” said Fred. “Well, then, what else did you find out?”
Her eyes widened in surprise. “How he killed them, of course. And how he staged the disappearances.”
“And how did he kill them?” demanded Fred.
“With—with his hands,” she whispered. “His hands are awful strong. They thought he was up here, but he didn’t go, either time. He just drove around till dark and then drove home, around back to that garage they had. And then he went in the house, where his sister was alone—first Caroline, and then Harriet—and I guess he said something like ‘I didn’t go to Woodacre after all,’ and then suddenly he stepped behind her and put his thumbs on her neck and strangled her. They were little, both of them, you know.
“And then,” she went on, “he carried the—he carried his sister out back through the kitchen, and put her in the baggage compartment of the car, and drove up here. He’d dug a—a place out here in the woods, out where I couldn’t see from the house, and covered it up with leaves and stuff so it wouldn’t show, and he put her in it and put the earth back and fixed it up with plants on it so nobody could tell.
“The first time, he was out doing—that, when he heard the phone ring. He just got here in time before it stopped ringing—like I told you, he never let me answer it. I got a black eye once for just trying to.
“With Harriet, it was the next morning before your wife rang, so he had time for a good sleep first,” she concluded simply.
“Well, if you knew all this, even for a month,” Davis exploded, “why in the name of heaven didn’t you get out from under while he was away from here? Didn’t you figure you might be next? You couldn’t testify against him, but it certainly wouldn’t be healthy for him to have you around knowing all about it. Some time you might divorce him, and then where would he be? He must have been crazy in the first place to tell you, and you must have been crazy not to get out fast.”
“But I wouldn’t divorce him—why would I? I haven’t any money of my own, and he’d never give me any alimony, would he, if I said anything against him? Besides, he’s my husband—I love him.”
Davis snorted and stood up.
“Well,” he exclaimed, “I give up! I’ve heard everything now!”
“Sit down, Davis,” said Fred mildly. “The lady’s got more to tell us. Now, how about this disappearance of his? He staged that too, eh? What for, and where is he now?’’
Mrs. Faulkner fished a pink handkerchief from some subterranean hiding place and held it to her eyes. Her voice broke.
“That’s why I’m telling you,” she sobbed. “He’s dead. You’ll never find him. He’s at the bottom of the bay.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because he told me. Last week, when he was up here. You say you can’t understand why he told me all this. Why, mister, you’ve got to tell things! There’s got to be somebody you can tell! You couldn’t hold it all in—you’d go crazy. And who can you tell, if not your wife or husband?
“So he told me. And he was awful worried. He said, ‘Honey, I got away with it once, but can I do it twice? It’s all for you, honey,’ he said, ‘so we can be together always, and they can’t ever bother us again, and so there won’t ever be any trouble about the money my father meant for me to have anyway. In a few more years I can claim they’re dead and nobody will ever know there was anything wrong about the money.’ I remember every word. ‘I’ve always hated them,’ he said, ‘ever since I was a kid and they bossed me and wouldn’t let me go on the stage the way I wanted, and tried to take you away from me. But it was all or nothing. It was neither of them or both. And this time I had to take it to the police. I knew I’d have to, but I’m worried.
“‘They took it all right,’ he said, ‘but that captain I talked to might be smarter than he looked. And there’s a guy on the force I wish was retired from it; he knows the whole family, and I wish he didn’t. He’s old, and he’ll be out soon, but I couldn’t wait. If he gets on the case, he might smell a rat.
“‘So, honey,’ he said, ‘let’s put it this way. I think everything’s going to be all right. But if anything happens that makes me think there’s real danger, they’ll never catch me alive. If you ever hear I’ve disappeared, you’ll know what it means. I’ll stage the same act I did with them, to keep the family from shame,’ he said, ‘but I’ll go straight to the middle of the Golden Gate Bridge and jump off the way fifty people have done before me, where the current will take me out to sea, and they’ll never find me. And you go East and change your name,’ he said. That was when he gave me that money I said I had—enough to go East on.’’
“And what were you going to live on when you got there?” asked Fred curiously.
“It’s obvious, isn’t it?’’ Davis broke in angrily. “She’s not telling all she knows by a long sight. He’s transferred his money somewhere, and she knows where. And he’s not dead, either, by my guess—he’s waiting for her and she thinks she’s going to go scot-free after we’ve dug up the place here and found the bodies—if they are here. Well, she’s not. She’s an accessory after the fact, if nothing more, and since the murders were committed in your territory, you can have her.”
“No,” agreed Fred quietly, “he’s not dead. But she’s not an accessory.”
“Damn it, Mullins, I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”
“This,” said Fred. He looked thoughtfully at their witness. She was crying again, her face in her hands.
Fred leaned over, and almost gently, he handcuffed her right wrist to his left one.
She pulled away violently and yelled. Davis gaped.
“Come on, Davis,” said the detective calmly. “Didn’t you ever see anyone arrested for murder before?”
“Murder!” screamed Mrs. Faulkner. “Are you crazy? I never—”
“Tell me,” Mullins asked, “what was your name before you were married?”
“Mary Dwight. Why—”
“And where’s your marriage certificate?”
“How do I know? Somewhere.”
“Maybe. I guess you’re not a very good lawyer after all. Did you really think you could get away with this?”
“I’m not a lawyer at all—my husband is—was. Oh, what are you talking about? Let me go!”
“If you’re Mrs. Faulkner,” snapped Fred Mullins sternly, “and you’ve never been familiar with that house, how did you know the garage was in back, through the kitchen?’’
“He told me—he—”
“And if you never saw me before, and didn’t know my name, how did you know it was my wife who telephoned when Miss Harriet disappeared?”
“He—”
“Sure, there was a girl named Mary Dwight that Philip Faulkner went with. Maybe he married her—but if he did, I’ll bet she’s planted right here on this place with his sisters. My guess is he never married her.”
“But I’m—”
“You’re a good actor, Philip Faulkner: I give you that. But you’re a bum lawyer, and I think you must be crazy: and crazy or not, you’re a cold-blooded murderer. Better come quietly now. I’ll have your own clothes sent to you in jail.”