LILAC PUT THE WEDNESDAY MORNING papers on my bed and went over to close the windows. I knew by the way she slammed them down that something was wrong. I looked at the clock on the table. It was twenty-five minutes past seven. As I have breakfast at eight, that meant something was very wrong indeed; but since I’m well used to the kind of things that make Lilac revert practically to the jungle, I just took a deep breath, sat up and waited. She came back to the foot of the bed.
“Did you read what it says in there?” she demanded. I could almost hear the tom-toms beat in the tone of her voice.
I picked the paper up. All I saw was war and more war.
“Down at th’ bottom,” she said.
I glanced down at an item in a box at the lower-left-hand corner. The type was heavy, indicating that it was last-minute news.
“Well-dressed man believed suicide,” it said. “The body of a well-dressed man was removed from the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal early this morning. The man was five feet, eleven and one half inches tall, had graying hair, wore a gray suit with a gray striped shirt and a green-figured tie bought at a Washington store. No identifying papers were found. The body was removed to the morgue at Gallinger Hospital pending police investigation.”
I looked up at Lilac blankly.
“That’s him, all right,” she said.
“Who?” I demanded. “What on earth are you talking about?”
“Mist’ Hilyer,” she said flatly. “Boston, he’s downstairs right this minute. He says it’s Mist’ Hilyer. He says he ain’ goin’ back to that house. Ain’ nobody goin’ to make him go back neither.”
I forced myself to be a lot calmer than I was.
“What makes Boston think it’s Mr. Hilyard?”
“Boston don’ think, he. know,” she said angrily. “Mist’ Hilyer ain’ come home at all las’ night. He come in jus’ ’fore eleven an’ started raisin’ time’ cause Boston he wouldn’ go out in the dark with that dog they got. He had somebody in his study, an’ they took th’ dog out theirselves. Th’ dog come back wringin’ wet, but Mist’ Hilyer he never come, an’ he ain’ come yet. Boston ain’ goin’ back neither. An’ Ah don’ blame him.”
I just sat there staring at her for an instant. “Does Mrs. Hilyard know it?” I asked then.
“Boston ain’ said nothin’. He ain’ seen her. He got th’ paper an’ he come straight over here. It don’ surprise him none.”
“All right, Lilac,” I said. “Now just be quiet and put my breakfast on a tray downstairs. I’ll get up.”
I waited until I heard her going down the stairs, and then I reached over and dialed Colonel Primrose’s number. He answered the phone himself.
“This is Grace Latham, colonel,” I said quickly. “They found a man’s body in the canal this morning; it’s in the paper. Boston say it’s Mr. Hilyard.”
I caught a kind of sharpened silence at the other end of the line.
“He’s their butler. He’s over here now with Lilac.”
“What makes him think it’s Hilyard?” Colonel Primrose asked calmly. It’s wonderful never to be jolted out of the even tenor of your way.
“The description,” I said. Having asked the same question myself, I suppose it was silly of me to be irritated by Colonel Primrose’s asking it. “Plus the fact that Mr. Hilyard didn’t come home last night. The body’s at the morgue. I gather Mrs. Hilyard doesn’t even know he’s not home. You might do something about it.”
“I will, at once,” he said imperturbably. “Thanks for calling. I’ll let you know about it as soon as I can.”
I took a shower and got dressed quickly. I was really much more upset about it than actually I had any cause to be, or than I would have been if Diane hadn’t dried her shoes in front of my fire, or if the young man at the cocktail party hadn’t turned out to be Bowen Digges, After all, people have to die, and if they choose to commit suicide, it’s their own business. The idea that it was murder didn’t enter my head.
All the time I was dressing I kept seeing Mr. Hilyard standing in the door under the fanlight, looking first at his daughter stumbling along the hall and then back at Bowen Digges standing there on the sidewalk in the glare of my headlights, and I kept hearing Bowen Digges say, “That was a girl I used to know.” And it was all very puzzling. Hilyard had known for three months that the man they’d said he’d paid to get rid of was there in Washington, sitting in the same office with him. He must have realized that sooner or later he and Diane couldn’t help but meet. Washington has got awfully big, but it’s not that big yet. And then it struck me suddenly. Maybe that was why he was going to resign—if his wife had been telling me the truth. But if that was the reason, he would never have let Diane come on in the first place. It didn’t make sense, I thought.
Agnes Philips had said that Lawrason Hilyard was a ruthless man. Ruthless men don’t resign major jobs just because old beaus of their daughters unexpectedly turn up in responsible positions owning dinner jackets. And they certainly don’t kill themselves for that reason.
Nevertheless, I thought, I’d like to have known what went on in the Hilyard household the day after Diane met and recognized Bowen Digges. She had come over, as a matter of fact, when I was out, and stayed a couple of hours. I managed to phone her before I went out to dinner, but she was out then, so that I hadn’t even talked to her since the street scene of Monday night. I regretted it now much more than I had before.
I sat down at my breakfast tray, picked up the paper again, and settled down to wait for Colonel Primrose’s call. I glanced at the item at the bottom of the front page, and turned to the inside. RUMORS OF OPM SHAKE-UP was the first thing that caught my eye. I read through the story carefully.
“As a result of recent airings of the promethium situation in the House of Representatives, the corridors of the Social Security Building are rife with speculation as to a possible shift in control,” it said. “The best bet as to a likely successor to Lawrason Hilyard, present branch chief, is Bowen Digges, now assistant to Mr. Hilyard. He is regarded as an exceptionally able addition to the younger ranks of the Office of Production Management, and also considered highly acceptable to the congressional bloc that has been a thorn in the side of the dollar-a-year men. Digges came directly from the California Institute of Technology and has a broad knowledge of war needs and the available supply of the critical so-called ‘magic metal.’ Only twenty-eight years old, he has had experience in the practical as well as the academic and theoretical field of metallurgy. He is energetic and likable, is given much of the credit for the speed with which the limited supply of promethium has found its way into military essentials, and is said to have been responsible for the vigorous curtailment of nondefense use of the metal and a generous absence of red tape and delay. If a shake-up comes, his appointment will meet with enthusiasm, especially in Army and Navy procurement circles.”
I went through it a second time. It seemed to me one of the most ironic commentaries I’d ever read. The man that Lawrason Hilyard didn’t think was good enough to marry his daughter was being credited with the success of her father’s job and spoken of as his successor. The fact that his mother had run a roadside store and service station was a factor of no importance.
I put the paper down. What if—but that didn’t make sense. Lawrason Hilyard wouldn’t conceivably go out and kill himself because Bowen Digges was going to supersede him. It might be hard to take, but not that hard.
I glanced on through the paper until I came to the pictures on the back page. SOCIETY DANCES FOR SAVE THE CHILDREN, I read. The middle picture showed Diane Hilyard in a white lace ballerina frock and silver-fox jacket, laughing up at Stanley Woland, resplendent in white tie and tails with a topper in his hand. Under it was the head, WEDDING BELLS?
“Neither the former Count Stanislaus Wolanski, who recently dropped his title, nor the glamorous newcomer to Capitol society, Diane Hilyard, would deny or confirm it,” it went on. “They are seen here arriving at the ball. Miss Hilyard is the younger daughter of Lawrason Hilyard, OPM executive.”
I looked intently at Diane’s radiant face, incredibly lovely even in the startling flare of the flashlight photograph. There was nothing in it by which I could recognize the stunned stricken child who had stumbled past her father into the hall on Monday night. Certainly not the dazzling laughter in it, I thought, and arriving at benefit balls in Washington hotels isn’t that much fun—not with a man you aren’t in love with, anyway.
I put the paper down and finished my cold coffee and toast. Sheila, my Irish setter, raised her head from her paws and growled just then, just before the doorbell rang and Lilac came padding up the steps to answer it. In a moment Colonel Primrose came in.
I saw at once, from the look on his face, that there wasn’t any doubt the man they’d found in the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal was Lawrason Hilyard. Boston was right.
Colonel Primrose nodded. “Bartlett Folger identified him.”
“Was it suicide?”
“It looks that way. Folger doesn’t believe it. He chucked his weight about a good deal. Hilyard wasn’t the sort to do away with himself, in the first place, and if he’d decided to shoot himself——”
“Shoot himself?” I said. “My paper didn’t——”
“I know. The police phoned the papers. There weren’t any reporters around when he was brought in. But shot he was. Folger thinks if he was going to shoot himself he’d have done it at home, or in a hotel room, not tramp two miles to do it in the snow on the bank of a canal. There’s something in it.”
“Then he thinks——”
I stopped. After the conversation at dinner Monday night, it was fairly obvious what Mr. Bartlett Folger must have thought.
“He hasn’t said it in so many words—the implication is clear enough,” Colonel Primrose answered. “And it’s going to be hard to prove, with half of Precinct Seven tramping over the ground. They found his gun there by the body.”
“Will the police do anything about it?”
He smiled wryly. “Very much so. Folger made it perfectly plain. It has to be thoroughly cleared up or else.”
“Or else what?”
“He’d get somebody down from New York on his own. After all the missiles the police have had thrown at them the last six months, they’ll do all they can. You remember Lamb, don’t you?”
I nodded. I remembered Captain Lamb very well. He is chief of the Homicide Squad, and an able man.
“He was on hand this morning. I phoned him as soon as you called. He’s gone down to the canal now, and I’m joining him. If you’d like to come along——”
I suppose I shouldn’t have jumped up as eagerly as I did, because he gave me a sardonic smile.
“What’s your interest in this, Mrs. Latham?” he inquired placidly. “I think you’d better tell me about your call Monday afternoon. I tried to get hold of you all day yesterday.”
“They were coming to dinner Friday,” I said. “All of them. I’ll go get my coat.”
“You’d better change your shoes too. We’re going to do some walking. It’s a couple of miles from the Thirty-sixth Street Bridge.”
I put on some heavy walking shoes and wool socks and came downstairs again. Sheila, spotting my shoes and knowing that meant she was going for a walk, went to the front door and began to paw it impatiently.
“You can’t go, miss,” I said.
Her face fell. She looked up at Colonel Primrose.
“Why don’t we take her?” he said. “She can have a good run before we get there.”
She was out with a bound, when I opened the door, and over to the car.
“Where’s Sergeant Buck?” I asked. The icy bricks of the sidewalk must have reminded me of him.
“Down there with Lamb,” Colonel Primrose said. “I wish you two got along better.”
“If you’d just explain to him that I’m not trying to marry you, we’d get along fine,” I said.
“But think what a blow that would be to my ego.”
“Then let’s skip it, by all means. Did you hear about the man who’s been hanging around the Hilyards’ house?”
He shook his head. “Tell me.”
“I’ll tell you if you’ll find out about it yourself, without involving me in it,” I said.
“Considering that I’ve wasted the greater part of the last few years trying to keep you from involving yourself in trouble of various kinds,” Colonel Primrose said blandly, “it’s a pleasure to have you have such an idea. Go on. I want the whole thing, Mrs. Latham.”