The night it happened Mother was giving a dinner party for the Mayor. I had no idea why she was giving a party for the Mayor. So far as I knew she had never even seen the man. But I knew what nobody else did that night. It was what you might call her last fling. Although the news wasn’t out, she had offered the place to the government for a convalescent home, and after six months it had been accepted.
Mother is just Mother, and my brother Larry and I let it go at that. She has her own idea of how to amuse herself. Once I remember she brought out a part of the circus for a charity benefit, and it took three years to repair the lawns.
I must say the farewell party was quite in character. We managed to seat two hundred people hither and yon, and when a mounted policeman took his place in the driveway and the Mayor drove up with a screaming escort of motorcycle officers, there was a whole battery of photographers outside the gates. They had not been allowed inside, and from a distance it looked like summer lightning, all flash and no noise.
That was the point of the whole business. Nobody was allowed inside the grounds without being identified, and Alma Spencer, Mother’s friend, companion, secretary and general watchdog, checked the guests off her lists as they entered the house. It appeared that the Mayor had been threatened with assassination or something of the sort, and he was making the most of it. The result was a policeman at all the doors except the front one, and the mounted policeman was to keep an eye on that.
Not that the Mayor was assassinated. He is still alive and running for office again. But I just want to point out that the house was a fortress that night.
Well, the party ended, as everything must eventually. I had loathed it from start to finish. Larry had been frankly bored, and only Mother seemed her usual self. I can still see her, standing in the wreck of the house after the sirens had shrieked away and the last guest had gone. It was a warmish October night, and she was in the marble rotunda which the architect playfully called our hall. Someone had had the idea of dipping the goldfish out of the basin around the fountain with a soft hat and putting them in a champagne bucket. I remember rescuing them, torpid from the melted ice but still alive.
Mother had stepped out of her slippers, which let her down to her normal five feet two inches, and she had taken off her diamond collar, which has been too tight for the last ten years, and was holding it in her hand.
“I think it went pretty well,” she said complacently.
Alma was beside her. She had the usual pad in her hand, and she looked exhausted. Somewhere the caterer’s men were folding up tables and extra chairs, and she jumped at every bang. Larry was in the men’s room, looking for his hat.
“There has been some breakage,” Alma said. “That drunken waiter dropped a tray of cocktails. But the silver is all here.”
“What on earth did you expect?” Mother inquired sharply. “I don’t invite people who steal spoons.”
Alma raised her eyebrows. She had rather handsome eyebrows. And I remember I laughed. Matters were not helped either by Larry, who came back scowling from the men’s room. He hadn’t found his hat, and he pounced on the one by the fountain.
“Well, for God’s sake!” he said. “If that’s mine …”
It wasn’t, however. He picked it up and looked at it. It was a dreadful hat. It had been a poor thing even before it had been wet. It had no sweatband in it, and now it smelled of fish. Larry put it down distastefully. But Mother wasn’t interested in hats at the moment.
“Where was Isabel tonight, Larry?” she said.
Larry grinned at her. “You know she never comes to your brawls, Mother.”
Mother stiffened. “I resent that word,” she told him indignantly.
But she is never really angry with Larry. He is tall and very good-looking, especially in full evening dress as he was then.
He stooped over and kissed her. “Sorry,” he said. “She didn’t feel well. I told Alma in plenty of time. Isabel hasn’t been up to much for the last week or two.”
Mother glanced at him hopefully. She has always thought she would like a grandchild to dandle on her knee, but personally I thought she would be bored to death with one. Larry however was not looking at her. He went back to look for his hat again, and Mother sat down. The house was quieter by that time. As it is about the size of the White House in Washington there was a lot of it to be quiet. I watched the goldfish. They were beginning to recover.
“I do think Isabel might have made an effort,” Mother said rather plaintively. “After all I’ve done for her and Larry.”
Well, of course it hadn’t been necessary for her to do anything for either of them. Isabel had a lot of money of her own, and so had Larry. I have always thought that the reason she built them a house on our grounds was to keep Larry close at hand. But she had built the house, and that is the story. Not that she was jealous of Isabel. Deep in her heart she was proud of her. It was not only that she was lovely to look at. I had disappointed Mother in that, having only the usual assortment of features. But Isabel had been a Leland, and to be a Leland meant something.
It meant belonging to the conservative group in town, the people who lived elegantly but quietly in their hideous old redbrick houses, exchanged calls, gave stuffy dinners with wonderful food and—at least until the war—drove about in ancient high limousines.
Not that Mother wasn’t wellborn. She was, but our money had come from trade, and to the Lelands trade was simply out. Not even Strathmore House, built on the edge of town on what once had been my grandfather’s country place before the city grew up around it, had wiped out the smell of wholesale groceries years ago. It was just as well—Mother would rather have died than be conventional.
Larry did not find his hat, and came back scowling.
“Nice crowd you had here,” he said. “Somebody traded in my new opera hat for that thing on the floor.”
Alma looked unhappy.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I suppose it’s my fault. I found it on the floor in a back hall and sent it to the men’s room. It wasn’t wet then, of course.”
Larry picked it up gingerly.
“You owe me for a hat,” he said to Mother. “I’ll take this home to remind you of it. And to show Isabel what she missed!”
Mother yawned.
“She missed a good dinner,” she said.
She had relaxed by that time. She put out her feet and inspected them. They looked small and swollen, and vaguely pathetic. Larry saw them, and leaning over patted her bare shoulder.
“All right, old girl,” he said. “Forget it. Go to bed and get some sleep.”
I went out with him. The driveway was empty now, and the early fall air felt cool. It was dark, because of the dimout. The only light was from the open door behind us. I remember leaning against a pillar, and Larry’s putting an arm around me.
“Pretty bad, wasn’t it?” he said.
“Awful.”
“Don didn’t come?”
“No. He’s like Isabel. He doesn’t like our brawls.”
No use telling him I had called Donald Scott myself and asked him. No use telling him the night had been a total loss for me because Don had refused. Politely, of course. Don is always polite. Anyhow, Larry wasn’t interested. He stood looking down toward his house, which stood not far from the gate at the foot of the lawn.
“Look, Judy,” he said. “You and Isabel get along pretty well, don’t you?”
“I like her. I don’t know how well she likes me. She’s not demonstrative.”
“Still, you do go around together.”
“Oh, that. Yes. She likes Alma better, you know.”
He seemed embarrassed. He got out a cigarette and gave me one.
“Have you noticed any change in her lately?” he asked. “I’ve thought she was looking tired. She doesn’t say anything. You know the Lelands. They don’t talk about themselves. But there’s something wrong.”
“She’s thinner. I’ve noticed that. I’m like Mother. I wondered if she was going to have a baby.”
He shook his head.
“It’s not that,” he said. “I wish to God she’d talk to me if anything is bothering her.”
He went off down the drive and I went inside. Patrick, the butler, was reporting when I got back. He looked old, tired, and disapproving. He said there was a hole burned in the Aubusson carpet in the Reynolds room, and someone had spilled a cocktail in the piano. Luckily he had got rid of the drunken waiter without trouble. What he meant, I gathered, was that he hadn’t been so lucky with some of the guests.
Like Alma, he seemed exhausted. After all he has been with Mother for thirty years, from birth to brawl, as Larry put it, and he was fully seventy. But his dignity was unimpaired. He looked around at the wreckage of the big drawing room, much as Williams, the head gardener, had looked at his lawns after the circus, and he said much the same thing.
“After all, madam, with a crowd of people like that …”
Only Williams had said animals.
I sat down on the edge of the pool. I was a casualty too. Someone had stepped on the skirt of my white chiffon and torn it. But I didn’t mention it. What was the use? For months I had been trying to get into the WAACS or the WAVES and I was expecting to be called anytime. I supposed there would be hell to pay, but at least I was through with evening clothes. I looked at Mother. She was tired, but she somehow seemed even more complacent than usual. After Patrick had gone she spoke to me.
“I have something to tell you, Judy,” she said. “And Alma too. I hope you agree with me. I think you will. The fact is—”
She never finished that sentence. Patrick had left the front door open to air the hall, and we all heard someone running up the drive. It was Larry. When he got to the top of the steps he was staggering, and had to clutch the side of the doorway for support. He looked at us as if he had never seen us before.
“What is it, Larry?” Mother said. “Is something wrong?”
“Isabel!” he said. “She’s dead.”
Mother stood still. She was quite white under the liquid powder and rouge she insists on using, but her voice was calm.
“I’m sure you’re wrong,” she said. “She may have fainted. Get him a chair, Judy. And Alma, bring some brandy.”
She asked no questions. She simply stood by Larry and waited until he had had the brandy. Even then she was calm, except that her plump small body was quivering. Then she said, “Can you tell me about it, son?”
“She’s dead. That’s all I can tell you.” He got up, and looked around himself wildly. “I’ve got to call the police.”
“The police?”
“She’s been murdered,” he said, and staggered toward the library.
I thought I had seen Mother in action before. The time the boxing kangaroo she had brought for a children’s party got excited and began knocking the kids over one by one, for instance. I was one of the kids, so I remember. Before I could speak she told Alma to look after him. Then she was out the front door and running down the driveway in her stocking feet. She almost beat me to Larry’s house. I caught up to her finally and yelped at her to remember her blood pressure, and we entered the house together.
It is a pretty house. Mother’s taste in people may be catholic, but in houses and furnishings she knows her stuff. And except that Larry had left the front door standing open it looked as quiet and orderly as ever. Mother gave one look around and then climbed the stairs. That is, she got almost up and stopped.
Isabel was lying on the landing, and there was no doubt that she was dead. She lay on her back, her arms outstretched, and except that one of her bedroom mules was off there was no sign of any struggle. Her lovely dark hair was spread over the carpet, making a frame for her face, and one arm was out of her dressing gown, as though she had been putting it on when she met her murderer.
Not that I noticed that then. All I could see was the small spot of blood on the front of her silk nightgown.
Mother stood very still, looking down at her. Then she reached down and touched the hand nearest to her. She drew back, and I knew Isabel really was dead. Neither of us said anything. Then Mother sank down on the stairs, as if she felt faint, and when Larry came pounding back she was still there. She wouldn’t move to let him pass.
“There is nothing you can do,” she said. “Go down and call the police. I’m here.”
I went down to the porch with Larry. Alma was standing there, looking like death, and a few moments later I heard the siren. A police car swung in on two wheels and stopped with the engine still going. Two uniformed men leaped out. One of them touched his cap.
“I understand you’ve had some trouble here,” he said.
Larry braced himself.
“We have. My wife …” He choked and did not finish.
They pushed past us and into the house, to see Mother sitting on the stairs. She was holding that wretched diamond collar. In her glittering gold-brocade dress and with her bright red hair she completely stopped them. They stood gazing up at her. “My daughter-in-law is here,” she said. “I’m afraid somebody has stabbed her.”
“Is she badly hurt?”
“She is dead.”
She let them pass then, but she stayed where she was. Behind me I heard Larry groan, and I turned and went back to him. I got him into the library, although he would not sit down. He paced the floor, looking like a wild man and saying over and over: “Who would do it? She had no enemies. Who would do it?” I think he didn’t even know he was speaking, or that I was there.
It was only a minute or so before one of the officers came down the stairs to the telephone. He hung up and looked at Larry.
“Who found her?” he asked.
Larry tried to explain, but he made so bad a job of it that I took it over. I told about the party for the Mayor, the two hundred people, the orchestra, the forty extra waiters, even the Mayor’s screaming escort. And I told about Larry’s coming home to find Isabel dead. He looked bewildered.
“What you’re saying, miss, is that close to three hundred people were in and out of this property tonight. That right?”
“That’s right.”
“They all drove in at the gate out there?”
“That’s the only way they could get in.”
But the knowledge that the Mayor had been among them made him treat us both with more marked consideration.
“Anything missing in the house?” he inquired. “It might have been a burglar. If she woke up and was raising an alarm … Anything valuable around?”
The idea of a burglar at least gave Larry something to hold to. He said Isabel’s jewels were in the house. In the safe in her room. He even listed them, while the officer wrote them down: her diamond and other earrings, her bracelets, her clips and her pearls—although pearls are worth a dime a dozen nowadays. But when the officer came back again he said the safe was closed and locked.
“Maybe if you’d come up and open it …” he suggested.
Larry however had taken all he could. He shook his head.
Mother was still on the stairs when the homicide squad arrived. They had to push past her. The Inspector came first, with his car jammed with detectives and a uniformed stenographer. Following him came another car with a photographer and fingerprint men, and soon after the captain of our local precinct, a youngish man who said he had been at a fire somewhere and been delayed. The hall and stairs were jammed, but Mother refused to move.
“She was my son’s wife,” she said. “I was fond of her. And some woman has to stand by her now. She’s—helpless.”
I had to take my hat off to her, tired as she was. She still had no slippers on her feet; she still hung on to her choker. But she never gave an inch, although she looked pretty sick.
“What I want,” she said, “is to know who did this to her. And why?”
That was at half-past twelve on Thursday, the 15th of last October, or rather the early morning of the 16th. There were police all over the house by that time, and to add to the confusion I had a half-dozen hysterical women on my hands. The sirens had wakened the maids, and one or two of them fainted when they heard what had happened. The rest were crying, and I would have given a lot to have slapped some sense into them. As it was, all I could do was force the cook to stop wailing and make coffee, and I took some myself. I was pretty jittery by that time. I was drinking it in the pantry when the photographer came and asked for a cup.
He was a tall, thin young man. He looked tired, and I gave him the coffee quickly. I hardly noticed him, which seems queer now; but he eyed me with interest.
“So you’re Judy Shepard,” he said.
“Judith,” I said. “My mother’s answer to my father’s wish that I be named for his sister Henrietta.”
He gave me a pale sort of grin, as if he understood why I had to talk or go into shrieking hysterics.
“I’m Anthony King,” he said. “Generally known as Tony.” He seemed to think I might know the name. I didn’t.
“Any ideas about this thing?” he asked. “See any weapon when you got here? Anybody hate your sister-in-law? No. Then do you mind if I sit down? I’m just getting over a spell in the hospital.”
He sat down rather abruptly and drank his coffee. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a fine platinum chain with a small white silk tassel hung on it. I stared at it.
“Ever see it before?”
“Never”
“It was under the—under Mrs. Shepard. Kind of funny, isn’t it? I mean, do women hang tassels on chains?”
He let me take it and look at it. I suppose because there could be no fingerprints on a thing like that. The chain was the usual sort, but the tassel was not. It was ordinary enough in itself, but on the small solid top someone had made a cross in ink.
The King man had his eyes on me.
“Curious, isn’t it?” he said.
I gave it back to him.
“I can’t imagine her having a thing like that,” I told him. “You’d better show it to the police.”
“They know I have it,” he said cryptically, and got up. “I’m just asking around.”
He stopped in the doorway however and looked back at me.
“Look here,” he said, “you can’t do anything, you know. Why not get out, for a while anyhow? Go home and get some rest. You may not know it, but you have a bad case of shock.”
Well, I suppose I had, for the next thing I realized was that I was in a chair and he was pushing my head down between my knees.
“Take it easy,” he was saying. “You’re a big girl now, and big girls don’t faint.”
He didn’t leave me until the pantry shelves had stopped whirling, dishes and all. Then he wandered back to see the women in the kitchen, and I carried coffee to Mother. She was still on the stairs, looking defiantly at the police as they trampled over and around her. I thought she wanted to say something to me, but there was no chance.
She never moved until at two o’clock the police ambulance came to take Isabel away. Larry was in the library with the Inspector, whose name turned out to be Welles, and a half-dozen detectives. Alma had been sent up to the house for the guest list of the dinner, and it was being checked over in the sun parlor. Other policemen were searching inside and out for the weapon, which the medical examiner had said was a knife. But they had not found it when the ambulance came.
Mother got up then. It was the first time she had moved since she saw the body. She came downstairs stiffly, to close the library door so that Larry would not see that awful basket being carried out. She looked very queer. Not shocked, exactly. If anything, she looked stealthy.
It seems queer, but it was not until then that we remembered the Lelands, and Larry finally roused enough to call them. As I have said, their house is still in the heart of town, one of those survivors of a past age before cars came and most people either evacuated the city or moved into apartments. It is a big square red-brick affair which has never compromised with the last quarter century. The Lelands were like that too. They belonged to the no-surrender group. The old lady, Isabel’s grandmother, used a handsome pair of horses and a carriage for her daily outing until she died. Her spinster daughter, Eliza, had lived up to the family tradition, devoted herself to her mother and good works, and left Isabel a fortune in trust when she passed on, the Leland words for dying. Isabel’s father, Andrew—always Andrew, never Andy—still wore a small imperial and a stiff winged collar. He was a precise, dapper little man usually, but there was nothing precise about him when, at three that morning, he stormed into Larry’s house.
The first thing he saw however was Mother, and he stopped dead.
“What is all this?” he demanded. “What has happened? Where’s Isabel?”
“I’m sorry, Andrew,” Mother said. She had called him by his first name since the day Larry and Isabel were married, and he hated it. “I didn’t think Larry was being clear. It’s true.”
“You mean that Isabel—”
“They’ve taken her away. The police, I mean. I tried to stop them, but—Andrew, this will be a shock. She didn’t just die. She was—somebody killed her.”
He took it very well. You have to say that for the Lelands of this world. They can take it. Pride or simply restraint, they can take it. And Andrew Leland, save that he sat down suddenly on one of the hall chairs, kept himself well in control. He shook his head when I brought him some brandy.
“Just a moment,” he said. “I—I’m afraid I … It’s a great shock.” And after a minute: “Where is Lawrence? What does he know about this?”
“He found her,” said Mother. “That’s all he knows. He loved her and he found her. Just remember that, Andrew.”
She looked almost dangerous. They can talk all they like about a lioness protecting her young, but a lioness has nothing on a woman like Mother protecting her beloved son. She glared down at Andrew Leland, and he buried his face in his hands and groaned.
“God knows how I’m to tell Emily,” he said, and got up. “Where is Lawrence?” he inquired, more steadily.
“In the library. The police are there.”
He went in, not bothering to knock. The Inspector looked up, annoyed. Then he saw who it was and came forward.
“Very sorry about this, Mr. Leland,” he said. “Very sorry indeed.”
Andrew, however, was not looking at the Inspector. He was staring at Larry, sunk in a chair and looking collapsed. “I would like to speak to Mr. Shepard alone,” he said.
The Inspector did not like it.
“Perhaps I’d better tell you first all we know,” he said. “If you’d care to sit down …”
I don’t believe he would have, but Mother was beside him. She gave him a shove, and looking very surprised he found himself in a chair. The Inspector seemed gratified. I even thought he looked amused.
“These are the facts so far as we know them, Mr. Leland,” he said. “At eight o’clock Mr. Shepard left this house for a dinner at his mother’s. His wife had intended to go, but at the last moment complained of not feeling well, and Mr. Shepard suggested that she go to bed instead. This she did. Her personal maid reports that she was in bed at eight-thirty. She seemed nervous and upset.
“Between nine and ten the other servants all went to bed. But the personal maid, Anna Griffin, left the house by the kitchen door at nine o’clock and walked to Strathmore House. According to her story she was gone about an hour, leaving the kitchen door unlocked. She stopped and explained who she was to the mounted officer on duty in the driveway, and then went on to the house.
“She stayed there outside a window, looking in and listening to the music, for approximately one hour. Then she came back to this house and went to bed. She did not enter this part of the building at all. There was a bell from your daughter’s room to her own, and the parlormaid, who was still awake and reading, reports that it did not ring.
“At eleven-thirty Mr. Shepard left his mother’s house and came home. The front door was locked. He used his key to get in, and he found the lower hall dark. This, he says, surprised him, as a light is always left on until he comes in. He did not bother to turn it on, and so”—here his voice became almost human—“he had the unfortunate experience of stumbling over his wife at the top of the stairs.
“I suppose we must make some allowance for the resulting delay. He did not call us at once. Instead he ran back to his mother’s house and collapsed there. His mother and sister came here and he followed them almost immediately. He then notified us.”
Andrew Leland looked up.
“That’s his story,” he said. “He could have left his mother’s house earlier, couldn’t he? There was a crowd of people. I understand half the undesirables in town were there.”
“Don’t be a fool, Andrew!” Mother snapped. “Just because you don’t like me is no reason to accuse Larry. And if you want to know, the people I had tonight—”
The Inspector looked tired.
“Just what reason have you, Mr. Leland, for intimating that your son-in-law did this thing?”
“I said he could have. When did she … When did it happen?”
“Probably between nine and ten. The medical examiner may be able to set the time closer.”
“We didn’t finish dinner until almost ten,” Mother broke in triumphantly.
But nobody was listening. Not even Larry. All this time he had not spoken. It was as though everything was unimportant except for the single fact that Isabel was dead. I think he hadn’t even heard Mr. Leland’s accusation. He stirred now, however. “Why?” he said, out of a clear sky. “Why would anyone want to kill her? She never hurt anybody in her life.”
The Inspector looked at him.
“I suppose you can account for your time, Mr. Shepard?”
“Not exactly. I didn’t look at my watch.”
“Did you leave the house at all during the evening? Your mother’s house?”
Larry shrugged.
“I went outside after dinner was over,” he said indifferently. “To get away from the noise. I lit a cigarette and walked down the drive a few yards. That’s all.”
“Did anyone see you?”
“I don’t know. It was pretty dark. I heard the policeman’s horse. I’m not sure he was on it. If he was he could have seen me. The outside lights were off on account of the dimout, but I left the hall door open.
“You didn’t come down to your own house?”
“I wish to God I had.”
“What about cars? Were there no chauffeurs around?”
“There were a few parked cars, but their lights were off too. The cars with chauffeurs had been told to stay outside in Linden Avenue until they were called.”
The Inspector abandoned Larry for the minute. He picked up the platinum chain with its tassel and held it out.
“Do you recognize this, Mr. Leland?” he inquired.
Andrew Leland looked uncertain.
“I don’t remember it. What about it?”
The Inspector explained, but Andrew shook his head.
“I wouldn’t know. Perhaps Emily—perhaps my wife will remember.”
The thought of his wife seemed to overwhelm him. He got out a handkerchief and wiped his forehead, and I glanced at Mother. All at once I felt there was something queer about her. She nodded her head to me, but I couldn’t understand what she meant. The Inspector was talking. There had been no robbery. Isabel’s pearls were on her dressing table, as was her huge square-cut diamond engagement ring. Larry had given the police the combination of Isabel’s safe, but her bracelets and other jewels were still there.
“That is not conclusive, of course,” he said. “The man might have been scared off, perhaps by the maid’s return. And we have not been able to find the weapon. It may have been thrown into the shrubbery, and we will find it in the morning. Mr. Shepard states that he saw no weapon by the body, and so does his mother.”
“I wouldn’t believe either one of them on oath,” said Andrew Leland, and gave Larry a look of pure hatred.
That was when Mother did something she had never done before. She simply put her head back in her chair, closed her eyes, and sagged. Larry was on his feet in a second, yelling for water. But by the time he reached her she was over whatever it was. She looked up pathetically.
“I’m so tired, Larry,” she said. “I’m too old for this sort of thing. Can’t I go home and go to bed?”
I knew then that it was an act. In all her life Mother has never admitted age, and she has never wanted to go to bed until there was nothing left to stay up for. For some reason she wanted to get out of the house.
I played it up as well as I could. “She’s had a frightful day,” I said. “And of course she is getting on, as she says.” She gave me a nasty look from under her eyelids. “I can take her home, if you like. That is, if she can walk.”
They wouldn’t let her walk, however. They took her in one of the police cars, and one of my most vivid memories of that awful night is Mother padding out in her stocking feet, holding to an officer’s arm and giving everyone in the room but Andrew Leland a faint but winsome farewell nod.
I followed her out. I knew she wanted me to go with her, but I couldn’t leave Larry. A man in the hall was sprinkling powder on the light switch there. He blew on it and then examined it with a magnifying glass. The man called Tony King was on his knees inspecting the stair carpet. When I looked out Mother was getting into the police car, and she was still putting on an act, crawling in as if she was too feeble to lift her legs.
Only it was not an act, as I learned later.
It must have been about four in the morning before the mounted policeman was brought in. Without his mount, of course. He was a tall young man, and he looked scared to death. Evidently he had been in bed, for his hair was still rumpled. He had put on his uniform, however, and he blinked in the light as he stood in the doorway.
The Inspector eyed him coldly.
“Officer Barnes?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You were on duty here tonight?”
“Not here, sir. I was ordered to report outside the big house up the drive, to watch the traffic. The Mayor—”
“We know all that. Did you leave your post at any time during the evening?”
“No, sir. That is …”
He looked at me.
“Well, did you?” snapped the Inspector.
He gulped.
“Only once, sir. A call of nature. I …”
“All right,” said the Inspector, rather hastily. “What I want to know is this. You were within sixty feet or so of the house. Did you see anyone leave that house at any time during the evening? Before the party broke up?”
“No, sir. I didn’t.”
Larry leaped to his feet, but the Inspector motioned for him to sit down again. He turned to Barnes, standing still and unhappy in front of him.
“Did you see a woman go up the drive and stand on the side terrace, looking in?”
Barnes looked more scared than ever, as if he wanted to bolt and run. He glanced around the room. Andrew Leland was watching him, as were all the others, including Larry, who was looking bewildered.
“If I could know what it’s all about, sir,” he began uneasily.
“Answer the question,” the Inspector roared. “Did you or did you not see a woman go up the drive and onto the terrace?”
“Not that I remember,” he mumbled. “She might have. I’m not saying she didn’t. I was pretty tired, sir. I may have dozed a bit.” He looked as though the idea had just occurred to him. He was sheepish but reassured. He even grinned a little. “I guess that’s it, sir. I may have shut my eyes for a minute.”
The Inspector looked back through his notes. He picked one out and examined it.
“I see. And in your sleep, when this woman told you she was going to look in a window and try to see the Mayor, you then replied: ‘Atta girl, and to hell with him.’”
Barnes looked shocked and then absolutely terrified. It was some time before he even spoke. Then his voice was shaking.
“I never said anything of the sort. She’s—she’s lying.”
“One of you is lying, that’s certain,” said the Inspector, and sent him out to another room under guard. When the door had closed behind them he looked at the captain of the local precinct.
“What about him?” he said. “What’s scared him?”
“I don’t know, sir. He’s a decent sort. Has a wife and two children. Lives not far away. I don’t get it.”
I have often wondered since what would have happened had Barnes told his story that night. As it was they only confused and alarmed him. Perhaps he knew they would not have believed him. There was that fifty dollars to account for, and he had already given it to his wife. But they let him go eventually, on orders to report at the Inspector’s office the next morning, and I took Larry home to get what sleep he could. Mr. Leland protested about their letting him go, but the Inspector was firm.
“We don’t arrest on opportunity alone,” he said, “and we have yet to find that there was even opportunity.”
“That policeman was bribed. It stuck out all over him.”
Even this resort to the vernacular, coming from a Leland as it did, failed to impress the Inspector. It merely annoyed him.
“You can leave that to me, sir,” he said gruffly, and drove away.
Larry and I walked up to the house. There was no incentive to talk, even if we had wanted to, as one of the detectives went with us. He said good night quite civilly, however, when we got there, and, turning, went briskly down the drive. When we went in Patrick and James, the footman who valets Larry, were waiting. Alma had had a hysterical attack and gone to bed.
Larry fairly reeled when we got into the house, but the two men took charge of him. I waited until his door closed; then I went in to see Mother. The lights were all on, and it was evident she had sent her maid, Sarah, away and undressed herself. Her clothes were all over the room. She was sitting upright in bed, and she looked at me with an expression which was a nice mixture of grief and triumph.
“I just made it,” she said. “That damned stocking of mine tore. Right in front of all those policemen too. That’s why I fainted.”
I eyed her.
“You didn’t faint,” I said. “I watched you.”
“Of course not, but with you being completely dumb what could I do? I had to get away before it fell out.”
I hope I was patient. She says now that I exhibited all my father’s vicious temper plus the worst traits of Aunt Henrietta, who was the family harridan. But at last I got it out of her.
She had had the knife all along.
“What do you suppose kept me on the stairs?” she demanded. “There it was stuck under the edge of the carpet. What could I do but sit on it?”
“You might have given it to the police,” I suggested.
“To the police? Larry’s knife! Are you crazy?”
I could feel myself going cold all over. And it was Larry’s knife. She had known it by the part of the handle she could see: the moth-eaten hairy handle of the old hunting knife that he had carted around with him on hunting trips for years. After he married he still kept it, in the room he called his gun room, downstairs in his own house. “Anyone could have got at it, of course. The glass doors of the closet were never locked. Just the same …”
“Don’t be an idiot,” Mother said sharply. “He didn’t kill her. If he had, would he have used his own knife and left it there? That knife was meant to be found, and by the police. Anyhow, why should he? He liked her.”
“Look, Mother,” I said, lowering my voice, “what have you done with it?”
“I’ve hidden it,” she said craftily.
“And how long will it stay hidden?” I inquired. “With servants all over the place, and as much privacy for us as canary birds.”
Mother smirked. There is no other word for it.
“It’s entirely safe,” she said. “It’s in the tank of the toilet in my bathroom.”
“Look, Mother,” I said patiently, “you never read crime books. You never read any books, for that matter. But toilet tanks are the universal hiding places for all lethal weapons. If they ever search this house—”
“Why on earth would they search this house?” she demanded indignantly. “Who do they think did it? We all have alibis. I sat beside that idiot of a Mayor for hours. Anyhow, who would come up here to my bathroom? If anyone needed …”
I didn’t say anything. What was the use? I went into her bathroom and lifted the porcelain top of the tank. The knife was there, and it was Larry’s all right. I didn’t touch it. I just put the lid back on. I felt dizzy.
“Nobody will find it there,” Mother said, “and tomorrow we will get rid of it.”
I don’t remember saying anything. I had just seen Mother’s stockings. They were lying on the floor, and one of them was torn to ribbons. I picked it up. There was a little blood on it from the knife—not much, but enough to make me shiver.
I knew right off that I had to do something about it. It looked simple enough, on the surface—just wash it out and let it go. But you have to remember the way we lived. It was almost five in the morning, and Mother’s early tea was brought in by Sarah at eight-thirty, no matter when she had gone to bed. I could see Sarah, whose life is entirely vicarious—meaning that our affairs are hers and hers are her own—picking up that torn wet stocking and holding it up.
“Whoever washed this stocking, madam? And torn as it is, too!”
I stood holding it and trying to think. There were no fires going, except in the furnaces in the cellar, and, anyway, Sarah knew every stitch of Mother’s wardrobe. “Surely, madam,” she’d say, “you couldn’t have lost it. You can’t lose a stocking.” I couldn’t fool her with one of mine, either. My feet are half again as big as Mother’s. So I did the only thing I could think of. I picked up a nail file from the toilet table and before Mother could open her mouth I had jerked down the covers and scratched her leg with it just above the knee.
She let out a howl and grabbed her leg.
“Are you crazy?” she yelped. “My own child! What on earth do you mean, attacking me like that?”
There was a drop of blood, fortunately, and I wiped it with the stocking. These days of tests for typing blood and so on certainly make it difficult even for the innocent. Then I explained to Mother, and to my relief she listened.
“All right,” she said. “Only how am I to tell Sarah I got that scratch?”
I left her to work that out and went to my room across the hall. It was still dark, but I could see pinpricks of light through the grounds where the police were continuing their search for that wretched knife. I knew there was only one thing to do—go to them with it and tell the truth. After all nobody but a lunatic would leave the murder weapon—especially his own—where it would be certain to be found.
But I knew too that Mother would never agree. I couldn’t even slip it out of her room, for she had locked the door behind me. Finally I went to bed, to lie in the dark and see Isabel lying dead at the foot of the stairs, and the King man on his knees examining the carpet. It was broad daylight when I finally dozed off.
At noon Alma wakened me, looking apologetic.
“I’m sorry, Judy,” she said. “But there’s a man downstairs to see your mother, and she won’t see him. I’m afraid he’s from the police.”
I sat up in bed. In the strong light she looked devastated, and I remembered that she had really been closer to poor Isabel than any of us except Larry. She was older than Isabel, but from the time they first met they had been good friends.
She sat down while I took a shower and got into some clothes, and when she tried to light a cigarette I saw she was shaking.
“Emily Leland has sent for me,” she said. “I suppose it’s about the funeral. I don’t know what to do.”
“Better go,” I told her. “You can’t do anything here, Alma.”
“I’ve tried to see your mother. She won’t let me in.
“I wouldn’t worry about that. She’s had a dreadful shock. Where’s Larry?”
“Downtown. And there are reporters swarming all over the place.” She rose and, going to my dressing table, surveyed herself in the glass. “I look like the devil,” she said. Then she turned. “Judy, what on earth are they looking for in the grounds? The police, I mean.”
“They didn’t find the knife—if it was a knife.”
She went white. She was a good-looking woman, tall and slim, but under her makeup she was ghastly.
“I’m sorry,” she gasped. “I’m afraid I’m going to be sick.”
She rushed out of the room, leaving me uncertain whether to follow her or to leave her alone.
In the end I left her alone. I dressed and went downstairs, to find the King man in the lower hall. He was watching the fish in the pool, and this time he had no camera. James was watching him, and he looked annoyed. He didn’t even say good morning.
“So people do live like this, in this day and age,” he said.
“Until they’re liquidated. What would you suggest?”
He shrugged and grinned.
“All right, sister,” he said. “Is there a spot anywhere to talk, or do I whisper here?”
“We have a few odd corners,” I told him.
Of course the house is outrageous, as I have said. The hall is circular, and is two stories high, with a gallery along the back of it. The big drawing room is the size of a ballroom, but thank heaven there are half a dozen other rooms where one can sit. I took Tony King to the library.
“Now,” I said, when I had closed the door. “What do the police want with me? Isn’t it enough they have my brother?”
“I don’t belong to the police.”
“You did last night.”
He gave me a curious look.
“I just happened to be with the Inspector when the word came.”
“You took pictures, didn’t you?”
“The official photographer wasn’t around. And I take pretty good pictures.”
He offered me a cigarette and took one himself. I sat down. He didn’t. He took a turn or two around the room before he spoke again. When he did I almost fell out of my chair.
“Look here,” he said, “what have you done with it?”
“With what?”
“The knife.” He was impatient. “That trick of your mother’s didn’t fool me any. She had sat for hours on the stairs and never blinked an eye. Then she gets into a good chair and faints, just when things were getting hot.”
I pulled myself together as well as I could.
“I don’t know what you are talking about. If you don’t belong to the police you have no right to be here at all.”
“Don’t be a little fool,” he said rudely. “You’re on the spot, and your mother too. I examined that stair carpet. How long do you think it will be before they begin to wonder about your mother sitting there for all that time? If she has the knife do the right thing and turn it in. The truth never hurt anybody.”
I knew that too. I knew perfectly well that the thing to do was to go upstairs, choke Mother into insensibility, get the knife and give it to the police. I looked at Tony King, who apparently had been up all night and certainly needed a shave, and knew that he was right. But I never had a chance to answer him.
The door opened, and Donald Scott came in, looking immaculate and well-tailored and with just the right degree of sympathy on his handsome face.
I saw the King man give him a long hard look.
“My poor girl!” Don said, holding out both hands. “I came as soon as I could.”
Maybe I was just excited. Maybe I thought Tony King could stand seeing that not everybody thought I was a little fool, and conniving at murder at that. I remember screeching, “Darling!” and throwing myself into Don’s arms, and the King man grinning as he more or less oozed out. And then, to my own astonishment, I was crying.
And not just crying. Practically shrieking. I suppose I had been more shocked by Isabel’s death than I knew—that, and Mother sitting up in her bed keeping a watch on that wretched tank in her bathroom, and Larry downtown being interrogated, and the men in the grounds outside. As far as Don was concerned the dam had burst all over him, and he didn’t like it any too well. He held me off until the flood was over. Then he patted me on the back and gave me his handkerchief. After which he took it back and carefully dried the lapel of his coat.
“I’m terribly sorry, Judy,” he said. “Maybe I’d better come back later.”
But I wasn’t letting him go. Not until I knew why he was there, and not when I hadn’t seen him for weeks. I suppose it happens sometimes that a bad case of calf love carries over even when people are old enough to know better. Anyhow it had been that way with me. But the very way he had wiped his coat when I had cried all over it should have taught me something. It didn’t, of course.
I sat down and grinned feebly at him.
“It’s all over,” I said. “I suppose I had to burst on somebody, and it happened to be you. But the idea of anybody’s thinking Larry did it!”
“Who thinks that?” he asked, eyeing me.
“They have him downtown.”
“They have a lot of people,” he said. “See here, Judy, are you afraid he did it, after all? Is that why you are scared?”
“I’m not scared, damn it,” I said, shaking all over again. “He adored her. Ask Mother. No, don’t ask Mother,” I added hastily. “She’s in no shape to be questioned. But it’s true. They were really happy. You can ask the servants. You can ask …”
I suppose I would have babbled on indefinitely if I had not suddenly noticed his face. He looked shocked, like a man who had had a blow. I knew why, too. Six or seven years ago, when he was only a struggling young lawyer, he had been crazy about Isabel. I was at boarding school when I heard it, and I cried all night.
I looked at him that morning and felt as sick as he looked.
“I’m trying to help Larry,” he said. “If it comes to that. Probably it won’t.” He walked over to the window and stood looking out. I remember the sun on his hair, and wanting just once to touch it. But when he turned I realized he didn’t really see me. He had been seeing Isabel instead, lying dead at the top of the stairs in her house. He lit a cigarette and sat down. His face was under control again.
“I want to ask you something, Judy,” he said. “Did you see the chain they found under her?”
“Yes. That man who just went out showed it to me last night. Why, Don?”
“Did she—did you ever see it before?”
“Never. But then she had a lot of things I never saw.”
He drew a long breath.
“Look, Judy,” he said. “I’ve got to tell you something, although God knows …” He stopped. “I gave her that chain, years ago,” he said. “I saw it this morning at Headquarters. I had no idea she still had it.”
I suppose I gasped, for he looked angry.
“Don’t be an idiot,” he said. “I didn’t kill her. Everything between us was over long ago. But I’d given her a ring, and she wasn’t allowed to wear it. The chain was to hang it on.”
I managed to breathe again.
“Have you told them about it?” I asked.
“Not yet. What good would it do? But look, Judy, what about the thing that was strung on it. What is it? You’re a woman. Haven’t you any idea?”
I shook my head.
“Nobody wears things like that nowadays, Don.”
“It must have meant something.”
“Yes,” I said dully. “It must have meant something. I don’t know what.”
He had a whiskey and soda before he left, and he began to look almost human. He even took the time to say that I looked like the wrath of God.
“Why don’t you go to bed and get some rest?” he said.
“I would,” I told him, “only Mother had the idea first.” For the first time that day he smiled, and I smiled back at him. I suppose he was just a nice blond young man who had pulled himself up by his bootstraps, but I had cherished him for a long time, and the smile simply broke me up.
“Poor Judy,” he said. “It’s just too damned bad, isn’t it?”
For one idiotic moment I thought he meant to kiss me. He didn’t, of course, and with the slam of his car door I had a queer feeling that he was going out of my life for good. Or that he had never been in it.
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