Episode of the Wandering Knife

 

I

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.

 

II

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.

 

III

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.

 

IV

Alma and I ate a silent lunch together, or pretended to. One of the tragedies of an establishment like ours is that there is always food. It comes and goes, whether it is wanted or not, and we go through the forms of eating it or pushing it away. Alma was in black, ready for the Lelands. She looked better, but she didn’t eat.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with your mother,” she said before she left. “She won’t even allow me in her room. It isn’t like her.”

“She was fond of Isabel.”

“That’s no reason,” she said tartly. “Somebody has to run this house. It doesn’t run itself.”

I watched her go. She was not really handsome, but she was always smartly dressed. Isabel had always given her clothes she was tired of or which didn’t suit her, and she did miracles with them. She must have been thirty-five—we never did know her exact age—and Larry always maintained she still had the first dollar she ever earned. But we couldn’t have done without her, and she knew it.

After she left I wandered up to see Mother. She was sitting in bed, surrounded by pillows, and I could see that she was still keeping an eye on the tank in her bathroom. Sarah was there, putting iodine on her leg, and looking disapproving and slightly suspicious.

“That’s enough,” Mother snapped. “Now get out of here and call the doctor. And I don’t want to wait all day for him.”

I waited until Sarah had gone. Then I went over and sat down on the bed.

“Why the doctor?” I asked. “That’s only a scratch.”

She gave me a cold look.

“Because I’m in a state of collapse,” she said morosely. “I’m in a state of collapse until I can take my eyes off that sickening tank. That ought to keep the police out, too.”

I advised her to remove some of her makeup if she meant to impress the doctor, and I told her it was silly to keep Alma out of the room.

“If you want her to suspect you, you’re doing all right,” I said. “And I’ll tell you this. A man named King was here this morning. He suspects you of having the knife. In fact he’s damned sure you have it.”

“I do wish you wouldn’t swear, Judy,” she said. “What does he know anyhow? How could he know anything?”

“He examined the stair carpet last night. I don’t think he has told the police yet. He wants you to go to them yourself.”

But she was completely and utterly stubborn. She was saving Larry. All they needed for a case against him was that wretched knife, and she would guard it with her life. “I could talk myself black in the face,” she said. “The police would never get it.”

Then she looked pleading.

“Be a good girl, Judy,” she said, “and get rid of it for me. I’m cross-eyed from watching it It can’t stay here.”

“It will as far as I’m concerned,” I said bitterly. “Don’t bring me into it. And don’t go pathetic on me, Mother. Here you are, all nicely tucked up in bed, while I have to tell all the lies, and maybe get arrested in the end.”

“Of course you won’t be arrested. Don’t be silly, Judy,” she said absently. “I’ve thought it all out. You can take it tonight and bury it in the grounds. Someplace where the gardeners aren’t working,” she added vaguely.

“And where would that be?”

“Good heavens! With all this ground! You can look around this afternoon and pick a place. Then tonight, when everyone else is in bed—”

“Little Judy will be in bed, too, Mother darling,” I said firmly.

But of course she knew she had me. I’m fond of her, and when she tried to light a cigarette she was trembling so she almost set the bed on fire.

“All right,” I told her. “Just remember when I’m arrested that my fingerprints will be all over it.”

“You could wear gloves,” she said hopefully.

I laughed.

“I’d like to try explaining why I’m wearing gloves in the rose garden at two A.M.”

When I went downstairs there was a young woman waiting to see me. Patrick had put her in the red room, where he places visitors he is uncertain about. He said in a whisper that she had been crying, and he was right. She had not only been crying. She was still crying. She was a pretty young woman, rather nicely dressed, and she looked as if she had not slept for a week.

She stopped weeping when she saw me, however. In fact, she looked at me as if I were something to step on.

“You’re Miss Shepard?” she asked.

I said I was, and waited. She was standing, and she remained standing.

“I want to know what they’ve done with Jim,” she said. “I don’t care what they say. They’ve got him locked up somewhere. As if he would kill anybody! Or even know about it! He’s the kindest man I ever knew. As for your sister-in-law, he didn’t even know her. He may have seen her driving about, but that’s all.”

“Who on earth is Jim?” I said puzzled.

“Jim Barnes.”

“Barnes!” I said incredulously. “Do you mean he hasn’t been home?”

“Oh, he came home all right,” she said. “They took him away around half-past three this morning, and he came back before five. But he didn’t sleep. He didn’t even come up to bed. He looked like death. Then at six they came for him again. He hasn’t been back since.

“I wouldn’t worry too much,” I said, as comfortingly as I could. “Nobody thinks he had anything to do with my sister-in-law’s death. But after all it is a murder.”

“Why are they holding him, then?”

I hesitated. She was a pathetic figure, her eyes swollen, the hands pulling at the gloves she held showing hard work. I remembered, too, the children the police captain had mentioned, and that Barnes had been what he called a decent sort.

“It’s rather hard to tell you,” I said uncomfortably. “The fact is—well, I’m afraid they think he hasn’t told quite all he knew about last night.”

She was indignant. She flushed.

“He told all he knew,” she said stubbornly. “It’s easy enough for you to try to put something on him, to protect your brother. But all your money won’t save him, if he did it.”

I suppose that made me angry. Anyhow I told her the whole story, about his denying he had seen Anna on the drive, and Anna’s insisting that he had. I even told her that he had said “to hell with the Mayor.”

She looked shocked when I finished. Shocked and frightened. “That’s ridiculous,” she said. “No officer would say a thing like that. Not Jim, anyhow.”

“Somebody said it,” I told her. “Why would Anna Griffin invent such a thing? I felt like saying it myself last night, but not even I …”

She didn’t wait for me to finish. She started for the door, and she was crying again. When I got to her and touched her arm she shook me off.

“You think it’s a sort of game, don’t you?” she said. “Well, it isn’t. It’s more than Jim’s job that’s at stake. It might be his life. I suppose you would laugh your silly head off if anything happened to him.”

I didn’t feel funny, however. I felt pretty sick, and it was not helped by finding Mother awake when I went upstairs. She was covered with a sort of whitewash. I suppose to make the doctor realize that she was pale and needed to stay in bed. It wouldn’t have fooled anybody but a man with double cataracts, of course, but it was no use saying anything. She had fixed on the sunken garden as the place to bury the knife, which didn’t help any.

I wandered down to the other house after that, more to see how the servants were getting along than for any other reason. The reporters had gone from the main gate on Linden Avenue, but one lone man in plain clothes was still working through the trees and shrubbery nearby, and a uniformed officer was on duty at the front door. He didn’t know me, but he let me in when Mary, the parlormaid, identified me.

“Only don’t disturb anything, miss,” he said. “That’s orders.”

The house felt ghostly. There was a thin film of fingerprint powder on the stair rail as I went up, and a chalk outline where Isabel’s body had lain on the landing. I shivered as I stepped over it. But her room was as she had left it: her bed turned down as she had slipped out of it, even the magazine she had been reading still on the silk blanket cover.

I still don’t know why I lifted it. I hadn’t meant to touch anything. But lift it I did, and a small snapshot fell out. It was the side view of a woman near a palm tree. She wore a plain white dress, and her profile was rather unusual: a short aquiline nose and a slightly retreating chin. Behind her and somewhat out of focus a group of children were playing in some sand.

It meant nothing to me. I carefully replaced it and put the magazine where I had found it.

The servants were huddled together in the kitchen when I went downstairs. They looked lost and unhappy, as they always do when something upsets their routine. Anna was there, sulky and resentful. She insisted that she had spoken to Barnes, and that he had said what she claimed he had.

“He was kind of laughing,” she said. “I thought maybe he’d had a drink or two. Those chauffeurs out on the avenue had a bottle.” She gave me a sly look. “That hunting knife of Mr. Shepard’s is missing, Miss Judy. Mary saw it in the closet yesterday. It’s gone.”

“And I suppose you couldn’t wait to report that to the police?”

“Well, what were we to do?” she said defensively. “They were out here, counting the kitchen knives. Anyhow it was Mary who told it. I didn’t.”

I looked them over: the cook preparing a tray of tea and fresh doughnuts for the officer at the door, the others watching me with furtive curiosity. In their own way they were enjoying it, I thought bitterly: the excitement, the pictures in the newspapers, even Larry’s probable arrest. It was a change from the dull routine of their lives.

And now the knife. I knew then that we would have to get rid of it. It was too late to go to the police with Mother’s story. I thought of the river. If I could get out that night and drop it from a bridge …

I was still planning what to do when the plainclothesman backed out of the shrubbery. When he straightened and turned I saw that he held something in his hand. It was a man’s opera hat. I knew without looking again that it was Larry’s …

 

V

To my amazement Larry came home that night. Alma was still at the Lelands’, and I had had dinner on a tray in Mother’s room. He came in, looking exhausted, but Mother smiled like the angel she really is when she saw him. Her chin was trembling, though.

“So they had the sense to let you go,” she said. “I thought perhaps the fools would try to hold you. Oh Larry, my own boy …”

Like me in the morning she burst into tears then, and Larry held her poor face against his coat and got covered with whitewash.

“Of course they didn’t hold me, old girl,” he said. “Of course not.”

“I’ve been so scared, son.”

“I loved her, Mother. They know that.”

She pulled herself together after that, and looked at the smear on his coat.

“Wipe him off, Judy,” she said. “It’s some of my night cream.” Which of course was a shameless lie.

I waited for her to tell him about the knife, but of course it was too much to hope for. He knew about the hat, however. It puzzled him.

“It was mine,” he said. “Only who would deliberately take it from here and hide it in a tree?” He smiled faintly. “I think that’s why they let me go. They couldn’t figure it out.”

The tree, it appeared, was why it had not been found sooner. It was in the center of one of our big evergreens, and it hadn’t been thrown there. It had been deliberately hidden. I wondered—as I am sure Larry did—whether that was how Isabel’s killer had got up the stairs to her—in an overcoat like his, perhaps, with the hall light dim and Larry’s dark hat on his head.

I went with him to his old sitting room where Patrick had sent him a tray. But he wasn’t hungry. He took some soup and pushed the tray away.

“What’s the matter with Mother?” he asked. “She can’t think I had anything to do with it.”

“She didn’t hear from you all day,” I told him. “I think it upset her.”

It seemed to satisfy him. At least he told me what he had been doing, talking in a queer detached voice, as though he had deliberately wiped away all feeling. The autopsy, he said, showed that Isabel had been killed between nine and ten o’clock the night before. It also showed that she had been stabbed twice. The first blow had apparently knocked her down. The second had been delivered from above, while she lay there helpless.

It was so cold-blooded that I shivered, and Larry looked sick.

“Why didn’t she scream?” I said. “After all there must have been a second or two, Larry, when she saw whoever it was. With all those women in the house—”

“That’s what the police are asking me,” he said thinly. “It’s the old story of why didn’t the dog bark?”

“But that policeman, Barnes, knows you didn’t go down to your house.”

“Barnes is missing,” he said. I nodded, and he went on. “I’ve been wondering—Judy, did Isabel know Barnes? She had been meeting somebody in the park in town. We don’t know who.”

“His wife says he didn’t know her. Even if he did …”

I sat still, thinking of his young wife that afternoon. “The kindest man she ever knew,” she had said. And yet he had had the chance. He had been alone in the drive, and he had not seen Larry when he went out to smoke a cigarette and escape the noise.

Larry was pacing the floor by that time. He walked and talked, as though he were thinking out loud. He was free, he said, because of two things, his hat’s being found where it was, and the man Isabel had been meeting in the park.

It seemed that MacIntyre, Isabel’s chauffeur, had told about the man.

When he arrived that morning—he was a family man and slept at home—he had learned of the murder for the first time. Mac is a Scot, dour and uncommunicative. He listened to the excited women, and then went out in the garage and worked on Isabel’s limousine as usual. After that he put on the soft hat he wears when off duty to show he is a man like other men, and drove his old Ford down to Police Headquarters. For a long time no one paid any attention to him. He sat on a bench outside the homicide officer for what he considered a proper length of time. Then he simply got up, opened the door and walked in.

Larry had been taken out for a belated breakfast, but the Mayor was there, the Commissioner of Police, the District Attorney and half a dozen others. They stared at Mac.

“I’ve got something more to say,” Mac announced bluntly. “I’m Mrs. Shepard’s chauffeur.”

His story was pretty incredible. Isabel had been meeting a man in the park downtown, a shabby sort of man. For the past month once or twice a week she had had Mac drive to one of the entrances and had gone into the park—for a walk, she said.

“But she was never one to walk much,” Mac said, “so one day I left the car and took a walk myself. She was. on a bench, talking to this fellow. They seemed to be arguing about something.”

“Would you know the man again?”

Mac shook his head.

“I wasn’t anywhere near,” he told them. “I never did get anywhere near. But she met him often. Five or six times that I know of.”

It was a break for Larry, of course. Mac was of the opinion that she was quarreling with the man, and once at least he thought she had been crying when she came back to the car. Larry looked crushed when he told me. “They seem to think it might be blackmail,” he said. “But who in God’s name would try to blackmail Isabel?”‘

Some bright soul among them finally thought of Barnes. They sent for a photograph of him and showed it to Mac.

He shook his head. “Not the same guy,” he said. “Other one was older and thinner.”

So there they were: Isabel dead, Barnes missing, and some man meeting Isabel in the park and making her cry. An Isabel wrapped in furs on a park bench with a strange man in shabby clothes—not once, but five or six times. No wonder they thought of blackmail.

That was Friday night. The murder had been twenty-four hours before. Barnes was still missing, Mother and I were both going to attend the inquest the next morning, there were two hats in the safe at Headquarters, somewhere Don was probably puzzling over the platinum chain he had given Isabel, and I still had the knife to hide.

I hadn’t told Larry that it was missing, or that we had it. The police were probably keeping it as an ace in the hole, and he had enough to bear as it was. I did make an attempt to, however. He had insisted on sleeping in his own house, and I went downstairs with him. There was no one in the hall, and as he opened the door I stopped him.

I remember trying to light a cigarette, but my hands were not so good.

“Look, Larry,” I said, “have they told you your knife is missing?”

“What knife?”

“Your old hunting knife.”

He didn’t say anything for a minute. He stood looking out into the darkness, his face stiff.

“I suppose that settles it,” he said. “No. They didn’t tell me.” He turned suddenly and faced me. “See here, Judy, did you or Mother find it? Is that what’s wrong with her? Because if she did it’s bad business. It’s about all they need.”

“I don’t see why.”

“For God’s sake!” he said roughly. “If my own people think I did it and hid the weapon—”

I had recovered, however.

“Nonsense,” I told him lightly. “I never saw the thing. As for Mother, don’t be silly. What would she have done with it? How could she had got it out of the house? She was in a low-cut dress, and that means low.”

He let it go at that. Probably the picture of Mother in one of her evening gowns convinced him, Mother considering there is nothing shameful about good substantial human flesh. I couldn’t tell him the truth, of course. I knew what he would do. He would take it straight to the police.

“I didn’t kill my wife,” he would say, “but here’s the weapon. It belongs to me.”

He didn’t go at once. He stood there, staring out at the grounds, dark and sinister in the dimout, and at the black hulk of his house.

“Who would kill her, Judy?” he said. “Why would she put on a dressing gown and stand there while her murderer came up the stairs? Why didn’t she scream? Why didn’t she run back to her room and lock the door?”

“She’d have let a policeman come in,” I said. “They’re not supposed to be human. Suppose Barnes came in, saying he’d found the kitchen door unlocked, and that he’d better look around to see if anyone had got in?”

“Why on earth would Barnes kill her?”

“I don’t know,” I said, deflated. “Only his being missing, and all that … But there are such people as homicidal maniacs. I suppose that’s rather fantastic, isn’t it? And there’s the hat, too. Patrick thinks it may have belonged to the drunken waiter he had to throw out. If you could find that waiter … After all he was inside the gates. Nobody else was.”

“She wouldn’t have let a waiter up the stairs.”

“He was in full dress. She mightn’t have known who he was. And Anna had left the kitchen door open. He could have put on your hat, and Isabel would have thought it was you.”

He considered that, still gazing out.

“Possible, but not probable,” he said. He sighed. “Look, Judy. Who was to know that Anna was to decide to see the party, and leave the kitchen door open? What outsider would know about my knife, or where I kept it? It won’t wash, my dear.”

I let him go at last. I had a queer feeling that as he walked down the drive, somebody leaped back into the trees. So I was not going to be able to get out and drop Larry’s knife in the river. The police were still on the job.

Mother was reading in bed when I got upstairs. She had taken off the whitewash and put on her night cream and her chin strap, and now that Larry was back she looked so darned complacent that I wanted to scream. I went over to the bed and stood looking down at her.

“Look,” I said, “they know that knife is missing. They probably know you have it. But they aren’t going to search this house. They might as well try to search the British Museum. And if you think I’m going out in the middle of the night to dig a hole for that wretched thing …”

She put down her book and stared at me.

“I suppose you’d like to see Larry going to the chair,” she said. “Your own brother! I can stay here in bed for days watching it, but you won’t even lift a hand to help him.”

Well, of course it was silly. She had had a perfectly good rest, and slept at least part of it I was just about to tell her so when she moved to get out of bed.

“Very well,” she said. “I’m not so old that I can’t walk out in my own grounds and do it myself. Get me my dressing gown.”

She knew she had me, of course. I couldn’t let her go wandering around in the dark. She would sprain her ankle or do some other fool thing. I didn’t trust her, either. She would probably use a flashlight, and after seeing that movement down the drive I had an idea that the police were still keeping an eye on the place. The police around, and Mother working her way through the shrubbery giving a fine imitation of a bull elephant on the loose. It made me shudder.

So I stalked into her bathroom, got the knife out of the tank, dried it, and was stalking out again when she spoke.

“Do show some sense, Judy,” she said. “Wrap it in a handkerchief or something. Do you want it covered with your prints?”

“I thought the idea was that nobody would find it.”

Nevertheless I took a handkerchief from an upper drawer and wrapped the thing in it. I hated to touch it, and I wasn’t comforted when, as I closed the door, I heard Mother put out her reading lamp and knew she was going to sleep. I felt deserted, as though I were alone in a dark and dangerous world, and I wasn’t so far wrong at that.

I didn’t go at once. I had to wait for Alma to settle down, for one thing. I slipped on a dark dress with a coat over it, and thank heaven I put on my tennis shoes. Then I tried a crossword puzzle and waited. I’ve seen that puzzle since. I must have been out of my mind when I did it. At one o’clock I gave it up and went downstairs.

There is something rather dreadful in a house the size of ours at night, with all the lights off. Especially downstairs, with arches here and there instead of doors—Mother likes vistas, as she calls them—and every small sound echoing all through the place. I had always loathed the house anyhow, and I disliked it more than ever that night. Even the fountain in the hall sounded like a cataract, and when the kitchen cat—which is supposed to catch mice, but spends most of its nights trying for the goldfish in the pool—when the fool cat ran over my feet I almost dropped the knife.

I felt a little better when I got outside. Even with the dimout there was a faint glow over the city, enough to let me see the drive after my eyes got used to the darkness. I kept an eye out for any policeman who might be about, and I am certain I made no noise whatever. But one thing was sure. If the knife was ever found it would have to be where a murderer in a hurry to escape could have hidden it.

So I struck toward the gates on Linden Avenue and the trees and shrubbery inside them.

Larry’s house on the other side of the drive was dark. For that matter everything was dark, and once under the trees I had to feel my way. I had decided on one of the hemlocks, as the branches grew close to the ground, and when I reached the place, I slipped the knife from under my coat and began digging a hole with it.

I never finished it.

There was a sudden flash of white light that almost blinded me, and immediately after a man’s voice spoke, from close beside me.

“I’ll take that, sister,” it said.

 

VI

I was too shocked even to straighten. The light was gone, and I could see only his outline. Believe me, I was shaking.

“What do you mean?” I managed to say.

But he didn’t reply. He took a step toward me, and with that my spinal cord—not my brain, never my brain—took automatic control of my legs, and I was running. I can run, thanks to tennis and golf and miles of dancing. Also I had an advantage over him. I knew the grounds. Not that he didn’t make a darned good try. He pounded after me and almost got me, but for once I thanked heaven for Mother’s sunken garden. Either he didn’t know it was there, or he hadn’t expected it so soon. He fell into it with a crash, and I made the front door and locked it.

I simply sat down on the cold floor inside and tried to get some air into my lungs. When I did I heard myself using language even I had not known I possessed. It was a trick, all of it Because I knew who the man was. It was Tony King. He had laid a trap that morning, and calmly waited for me to fall into it, waited for me with a camera and a flashbulb. He didn’t have the knife, but I was willing to bet that the picture showed me burrowing like a dog with a bone, and using the wretched thing to do it with.

After a while I managed to get up the stairs. Mother’s room was dark, but she was not asleep. She stirred when I went in.

“Everything all right?” she asked.

I turned on the lights and walked over to her bathroom door.

“I’ve just been chased by an expert,” I said. “Either by the police or by the man who killed Isabel.”

“Oh, Judy!” she wailed. “Don’t tell me—”

“Right the first time,” I said. “We’ve still got the damned thing and in an hour or so the police will know it too.”

I dropped it back in the tank. Mother was looking ghastly, but her mind was all right.

“Don’t put the handkerchief in there,” she said. “It will block the pipe. Didn’t you see whoever it was?”

I didn’t answer. I had just remembered. I had taken the handkerchief off to dig the hole, meaning to use it later to wipe off my fingerprints. And I had left it there. I didn’t need to tell Mother. She saw it in my face.

“Of all the idiotic things!” she said. “With my monogram on it, too. What on earth are we to do!”

“One thing we’re not going to do,” I said shortly. “We’re not going back to get it. If the police find it there tell them I make it a habit to blow my nose under a hemlock in the middle of the night. Also that I never use a handkerchief twice, like Queen Victoria and the blankets. Also that I have a complex about digging holes. Also—”

She stopped me with a gesture.

“You’re hysterical,” she said, which was about the truth. “I know you’ve had a bad time, but no use making it worse. Go to bed and let me think this over.”

I don’t think either of us slept that night. I was angry, as well as scared. I had a vague hope that the King man had killed himself when he fell, and after I had darkened the room I looked out. A late moon showed the garden clearly, but it was empty.

I must have dozed toward morning. Not much, for Mother sent for me as soon as she had had her early tea. Sarah brought the message, looking glum as usual.

“It’s about the inquest,” she said. “Mr. Lawrence says the police insist that you both go. He says as you found the body—”

“Larry found it,” I said. “Get out and let me dress, Sarah. Mother can’t go, of course.”

However, it seemed that she had to go. I found her up in a chair, looking fit to be tied. Sarah had followed me in, but she sent her out.

“We’ve got to do it, Judy,” she said in a hollow voice. “I think Larry has lost his mind. And I’ve called that fool doctor. He says I’m all right. He’s told the police so too.”

Well, there we were. The tank in the bathroom might as well have whistled and rung a bell, so conscious of it were we both. And to make things worse, while Mother was dressing Alma came in with the morning mail. I think she had overheard some of Mother’s protests, for she looked oddly at us both. Mother waved the mail away, but Alma didn’t go. She stood there, watching us.

“I think I ought to tell you, Mrs. Shepard,” she said, “there was something queer going on outside the house last night.”

“There has been plenty queer going on,” Mother said shortly. “Get my pearls, Sarah.”

Alma didn’t move.

“Two people were running,” she said. “I saw them distinctly. One of them fell into the sunken garden. And one came into the house. I think you ought to know.”

I take my hat off to Mother. She never blinked an eye.

“Don’t be a nuisance, Alma,” she said shortly. “If some of the servants choose to play cops and robbers in the middle of the night, it’s their business. It’s hard enough to get servants today.”

Alma saw that she was beaten. She gave a small shrug and went out.

The inquest was not too bad. Luckily it was a private one, held in a room in the City-County Building. Except for a few reporters in the hall outside there was no crowd. Mother went in on Larry’s arm, and as nobody notices me when she is around, I merely trailed behind like the tail of a kite. Don was there, as Larry’s lawyer, looking not quite his usual debonair self. The real thrill was gone, so far as I was concerned. After all, as somebody had said, I was a big girl now.

Nevertheless, I watched him, and after a while I realized what was wrong. He was uneasy and I couldn’t imagine why. He wasn’t called, of course. In fact, I felt as things went on that the inquest was a pure formality. The police were not giving anything away.

It went smoothly enough at first. Isabel’s body had been identified, part of the autopsy report was read—only a part as we were to learn later—and then poor Larry, looking sick, had to tell about finding her.

“You did not touch the deceased?”

“I bent over and spoke to her. I may have touched her. I didn’t move her, if that’s what you mean.”

“Following that, what did you do?”

“I ran back to my mother’s house.”

“Did you at any time see the weapon which was used?”

“I didn’t look for it. I never thought about it.”

“Then when you went back to the other house, you did not carry the weapon with you?”

Larry lifted his handsome head.

“Certainly not. I never saw it.”

I shot a look at Mother. Even in her black clothes that dyed hair of hers managed to look flamboyant, but she was gazing ahead of her, as if all this was merely inevitable but annoying. She was as calm as a May morning when Larry came back and they called her. Yes, she had gone at once to Larry’s house. She told how she had found Isabel, and that she had touched her and realized she had been dead for sometime. “No, there was no weapon by the body.”

“Does that mean that you saw no weapon at all?”

“There are what you call weapons all over that house,” said Mother. “How would I know which one killed her, if any of them did?”

“Do you know that a hunting knife belonging to your son is missing?”

“I believe his servants say so. It may have been gone for weeks. They’re a careless lot.”

I couldn’t believe it when they let her go. There had been a few more questions, about the party, how the house and grounds were guarded, if Isabel had had any enemies, and if there had been to Mother’s knowledge any incident in her past which might have led to her death. To this last Mother lifted her flaming head, much as Larry had done earlier.

“I would like to remind you that my daughter-in-law was a Leland. I think that answers the question.”

All in all she gave a magnificent performance. I didn’t do so well. I expected that awful picture of me to be shown. I was looking for Mother’s handkerchief to be waved at me in a sort of Chataugua salute, and all in all my knees almost gave way under me as I stood up. Here it comes, I thought, and went forward. For some reason however the coroner only asked me one or two questions. Had I been with Mother when we found the deceased? Had I seen a weapon of any sort?

“I saw no weapon whatever,” I said truthfully.

“Did you know your brother’s knife?”

“I gave it to him, years ago.”

“You didn’t remove it from his house?”

“Positively no.”

That was about all. There were one or two questions about how Isabel was lying, had we moved her at all, and so on. But even I realized by that time that they didn’t expect to learn anything from us that morning. Half a hundred policemen might be working on the case and probably were; but this was a polite farce. There was no mention of the chain found with the body, and Anna Griffin merely told of leaving the house to go up to Mother’s “to see the party.”

“You left the kitchen door unlocked?”

“Yes. The place was full of policemen. I thought she was safe.”

She had found the door as she had left it, she said. Nothing had been disturbed. She had gone up to her room by a back staircase, and when Isabel’s bell did not ring she had gone to bed.

But Mary, the parlormaid, was sure about Larry’s knife. It had been there the day before the murder. It had a reindeer handle, and she had looked at it to see if the moths had got at it.

Rather to my surprise Patrick was called. I had not seen him. He was somewhere in the back of the room, and he came forward unwillingly. He testified to hearing Larry come back and to Alma’s rushing back for brandy for him. Then they came to the waiter who had been put out.

“At what time was that?”

“Dinner was to be at half-past eight, but we were still serving cocktails at ten minutes to nine. I realized his condition at that time. He was intoxicated and dropped a tray. He was out of the house before nine.

“How was that done?”

“One of the men and myself took him to the service entrance. There was a police guard there. He helped him for a few yards. Then I believe he let him go.”

“Did you know this man?”

“No, sir. He was an extra. We had employed a caterer, for extra tables, waiters, and so on. There was some trouble getting men, with things as they are. Mrs. Shepard’s secretary borrowed a few butlers from families she knew, and also from different employment agencies.”

But nothing really developed. One of the guards had seen the man leave by the main gate. He had let him go. Their orders, he said, were only to watch the people and cars coming in. He was uncertain at what time the man had gone.

“I wondered, because I didn’t think the dinner was over,” he said. “He was pretty tight. He was singing as he came down the drive. He hadn’t any hat on. I said: ‘What’s the matter? Lost your hat?’ He put his hand to his head and said by God he had. He seemed pretty cheerful.”

But the light had been bad. Nobody could describe him except Patrick, who has needed glasses for years, and who had merely said he was tall and thin. I gathered that they were still checking on the men who had been at the house that night, but I was confident their interest was largely academic.

I hadn’t expected Don to be called. But he was. The coroner held up the chain which had been under Isabel’s body, and asked him about it. Evidently he had already told about it, but he looked uneasy.

“You recognize this chain, Mr. Scott?”

“I do. I gave it to Mrs. Shepard some years ago.”

“Have you seen it since?”

“Not since—not since we broke our engagement.”

“Have you any idea of the significance of this ornament on it?”

“Not the remotest.”

“Did you see Mrs. Shepard the night of her death?”

“No. I have never been in her house, that night or any other.”

“Have you any idea why it was found by her body?”

“I can’t imagine. I had no idea she still had it.”

I watched him. I hadn’t been in love with him for years without knowing him, and I thought he was telling the truth. But not all of it. Back somewhere in that ambitious shrewd mind of his were things he had no intention of telling. But it did something to me. Not that I suspected him of killing Isabel. But it made me watch him. I think I felt then that he would protect himself and his ambitions at any cost. Anyhow I felt a little cold.

The verdict was what was expected, murder by person or persons unknown, and I helped Mother into her coat, picked her bag from the floor as usual, and followed her out into the hall. But that is as far as I got. A long arm reached out from the crowd of reporters and photographers in the hall and pushed me into a corner.

“You and I are due for a talk, Judy Shepard,” said a voice. I looked up, and Tony King was grinning down at me.

 

VII

I stopped dead. The others had moved on. He was even taller than I had remembered, and he had a piece of white adhesive on his chin. I must have looked fairly shocked, for he reached out and caught me.

“Look,” he said. “Can’t we talk somewhere? I’ve got a lot to say.”

“I hoped you’d broken your neck,” I managed to gasp.

“Now is that friendly? After keeping my mouth shut just now? Anyhow, if it’s any comfort to you, I broke a tooth.”

He grinned again, and he had. Broken a tooth, I mean. It gave him a quizzical look, and I stopped shaking and pulled away.

“What is this? Blackmail?” I asked.

“What a nasty mind you have!” he said mockingly. “What’s a dentist bill between friends? Does it mean nothing to you that I damn near broke my jaw last night? It still hurts me to talk.”

“You must like to suffer,” I said. “I suppose you gave that picture to the police.”

“Not yet,” he said calmly. “Now listen, Miss Judy. You look like a nice kid, and you’re in a devil of a jam. How about a quiet bar somewhere and a little talk? Know the Bent Elbow?”

He sounded friendly, and heaven knew he held all of us in the hollow of his big hand. I nodded, and we started off. Mother and Larry had gone when we reached the street, and nobody noticed us. He had a small shabby car, and I climbed into it. He was smiling again when he took the wheel.

“I’ll bet you didn’t wear heels like that last night,” he said. “Boy, how you can run!”

“Why on earth did you chase me?” I said sourly. “You had the picture, didn’t you? You knew I had the knife. You could go to the police any time.”

“The answer to that is I haven’t. Not yet anyhow.”

“Why not? You’re working for them, aren’t you?”

“Not necessarily,” he said coolly. “I just happened to be around that night. I’m curious, that’s all. A lot of things don’t fit in the story. Maybe you are in it, maybe it’s the jolly little mother, maybe it’s big brother. Or maybe it’s somebody else. I don’t care much for the Leland crowd,” he added conversationally. “Come the revolution I’m for hanging Andy to the nearest pole.”

Somehow I felt better after that. Once he reached down and patted my hand.

“That camera of mine lies,” he said. “You’re a damned good-looking girl.”

I loathe whisky, but I took some Scotch neat that morning, while he looked on approvingly. And then, in a corner booth with no one near, I simply told him the whole story. I even went back to the party, and Larry’s hat being gone, and his finding the one which had been used to dip the fish out of the fountain. He stopped me there.

“What kind of a party was this?” he said. “Is that your usual home life?”

“Not really. It got out of hand.”

“I should hope so,” he said grimly. “Although the idea of your living in that kind of an environment makes me sick. Those parties of yours …”

“I like them,” I said defiantly. “Anyhow, if they amuse Mother …”

“There’s nothing amusing about murder. All right. Don’t mind me. Go on.”

I had to trust him. He knew too much already. So I told him about Larry’s going home and then running back, sick and collapsed, and Mother’s having her slippers off, and going in her stockings to find Isabel dead and the chain under her.

“What about this chain? Was Scott telling the truth about it?”

“I imagine so. None of us had ever seen it.”

“Fond of Scott, aren’t you?” he said, eyeing me.

“I used to be. Why?”

“I saw you looking at him.”

I suppose I colored, for he let it go. He listened carefully while I told him about Mother’s finding the knife under the stair carpet and knowing it was Larry’s, and I think he wanted to laugh when I told him about her putting it in her stocking, and then pretending to be faint so she could get home with it. But he was serious enough when I finished.

“Where is it now?” he asked.

“In the tank of the toilet in Mother’s bathroom.”

He grunted and looked disgusted.

“A house the size of yours, and that’s all you could think of!” he said. “They’ll find it, sure as shooting.”

“Why? Wouldn’t they have to have a warrant to look for it?”

“They won’t work that way, my girl. Not in this case. You’ll get a window washer in on Monday, and he’ll do more than wash windows. Or a nice young man will take one of the maids to the movies tonight. For ways that are dark and tricks that are vain …”

“But they don’t know we have it,” I protested.

He leaned over the table.

“Don’t underestimate them,” he said. “They know your brother’s knife is missing. They need only to look at your mother to know that she never fainted in her life. They let her get away with those half truths of hers this morning because they’re not ready to jump.

“Look,” he went on. “I was damned sure you people had that knife and would try to get rid of it. But that’s not why I was there last night. I had a fool idea that whoever hid your brother’s hat in that tree you were digging under might come back to get it and put it in a better place.”

“Was that the tree?” I asked appalled.

“It was. And I was right, too. He did come. Only that flash of mine scared him off. I heard him. I didn’t see him. He ran like hell.”

I felt slightly dizzy, what with no food to speak of and the Scotch and trying to understand what was going on.

“Why on earth did he want Larry’s hat?” I asked, feeling completely stupid.

“Look,” he said, leaning forward. “Be reasonable, girl. Would your brother hide his hat in a tree? And don’t forget this. Somebody is pretty anxious to pin this murder on him. The knife, left where the police would ordinarily be sure to find it—why was that done? But nobody but Balaam’s ass would believe that Larry Shepard had any reason for hiding his own hat. What does it prove? Nothing.”

“I see,” I said slowly. “If someone else wore it, pretending to be Larry …”

He straightened and smiled.

“A gleam at last!” he said. “Two minds that click as one.”

He finished his drink while I watched him. He puzzled me. I had a feeling that under his flippancy he was pretty serious, that he was trying to talk what he thought was my language. And he didn’t look too well. Under what had once been a terrific sunburn, he lacked color.

“I think I ought to tell you,” I said. “Mother’s secretary heard you fall last night And I’m sorry about the tooth.”

He fingered the broken edge ruefully. Then he smiled.

“Forget it,” he said. “There’s something else on my mind. Has it occurred to you that whoever left the knife where your mother found it knows darned well she has it? Or you?”

“What does that mean?”

“That somebody besides the police might want it found. In that case—well, you might try locking a few doors at night.” And seeing my face he went on: “It’s like this, Miss Shepard. People will go a long way to cover up after a murder. It’s the first killing that’s the hardest. Nobody likes to kill. But after the first time the bars are down. You can’t go to the chair—or hell—more than once. Just be careful. That’s all.”

If it hurt him to talk that day, he certainly suffered plenty. He wanted to know all about Isabel, her character, her life. “Because that’s the real story, isn’t it? Why was she killed? Murder is an end, not a beginning. It’s what goes before that counts.”

But my recital of poor Isabel’s short and simple annals disappointed him. She had gone to boarding school. She had made the usual debut in the Leland house, with her bouquets on a screen behind her and all over the big double parlors. She had gone to the usual dances, and had been neither more nor less popular than the other girls.

“What about Scott?” he asked.

“I think he was her one real love affair. Only he was nobody then. The Lelands wouldn’t have it.”

“So she married Lawrence. Big wedding, of course. Red carpets, white orchids and a dozen bridesmaids. I’d like to have seen you that day, Judy Shepard. You must have been something.”

“I wasn’t a bridesmaid. There weren’t any. It was very quiet. She didn’t even wear a veil.”

He laughed.

“I’ll bet Mother hated that,” he said, and got up.

He insisted on taking me home. We rattled and banged along in his wreck of a car, but he didn’t talk much. He seemed to be thinking? I wasn’t very cheerful myself. All the talk about Isabel, as well as the inquest, had brought her back to me. Not the woman lying dead at the top of the stairs, but the living Isabel, sitting behind her tea table, coming up on Christmas Eve with her arms full of ribbon-tied bundles, tactfully giving Alma her beautiful clothes, and being lovely to Mother while she disapproved of so much she did.

That was when I remembered Mac’s story about the man in the park, and told him. He whistled.

“Sounds like blackmail,” he said. “Only as a rule blackmailers don’t kill the golden goose. Any idea who it was? Somebody out of her past?”

“She didn’t have any past. I’ve just told you that.”

“Everybody has a past.”

He was still apparently thinking that over when we reached the house. I asked him to come in when we got there, but he refused. As I got out I saw him eyeing that hideous pile of ours with disapproval written all over him.

“Gives me the pip just to look at it,” he said. Then to my intense surprise he reached into his pocket and brought out something, carefully folded.

“With love, to Mother,” he said, and drove away.

It was the monogrammed handkerchief I had left when he chased me.

 

VIII

When I went in it was clear that something had happened. Mother was standing at the foot of the stairs with stark desperation written all over her. She still wore her hat, and Alma beside her was making some sort of soothing noises. Sarah was on the balcony above, wiping her eyes, and Patrick and one of the footmen looked as if they were getting ready to duck behind chairs.

Mother shoved Alma away as I went in, and if Alma hadn’t been a perfect lady she would probably have shoved back. She kept her temper, however.

“Don’t maul me,” Mother shouted. “Someone was in my room and took it.”

“You wore it yourself this morning,” Sarah wailed from the gallery. “I saw you. You had trouble getting your glove over it.

“What in the world’s the trouble?” I asked. “What’s lost?”

No one paid any attention to me. Alma seemed as puzzled as I was. She had evidently just come in. And then Mother turned a glittering eye on Patrick, who immediately began to shake.

“What’s the matter with you?” she demanded. “I asked a perfectly simple question. Have you lost your voice? Who was in my part of the house this morning? And speak up so I can hear you.”

I felt a cold shiver go down my spine. But there was something wrong with the picture. I couldn’t imagine Mother’s standing there with her hat crooked and shouting to all and sundry that someone had taken Larry’s knife from the tank in her bathroom. And what on earth did Sarah mean that Mother had worn it and had trouble getting her glove on over it?

Patrick however had recovered his voice. He clicked his false teeth into place and stated that a number of people had been all over the house. The upholsterer who was doing over one of Mother’s boudoir chairs had delivered it and carried it up. There had been a man to read the meters, but he hadn’t been out of the cellars. And Sarah broke in to say that she had been in Mother’s bedroom all the time while the plumber had repaired the tank in her bathroom.

Mother sat down suddenly.

“What about my bathroom?” she said in a dreadful voice.

“It wouldn’t work,” Sarah piped hysterically from the gallery. “I couldn’t let you come home and find it—”

“Never mind about that,” Mother said hastily. “Why wouldn’t it work?”

“The plumber said there was something disconnected. He was only there ten minutes. I never left the room. He hadn’t a chance to take it. Anyhow you wore it out. I saw you.”

Like Patrick I had found my voice by that time.

“Take what, Sarah?” I asked.

“The madam’s star sapphire ring,” she wailed. “He never took it. I’ll swear to that.”

“Did you know the plumber, Sarah?”

“No, Miss Judy. It was a new man. All the plumbers have gone to the war, although why an army needs plumbers when all they have is—”

She stopped there and burst into fresh tears. As for me, I could feel my legs wobbling. So Tony King had been right. Only it hadn’t been a window washer. It had been a plumber. But the police hadn’t sent him. We had sent for him ourselves. It didn’t make sense, unless they had our telephone wires tapped.

“Who sent for him?” Mother asked.

“I did,” said Alma stiffly. “I was on my way out when Sarah told me. It’s Saturday, and it was hard to get anyone.”

Mother got up. She looked utterly defeated. I remember Alma’s asking what flowers we wanted sent to the Lelands, and Mother not even hearing her. She went into the library and closed the door. All the life had gone out of her.

“It’s gone, Judy,” she said bleakly. “The knife. That plumber took it.”

“What about your ring?”

“I had to find out who had been upstairs. Judy, if the police have it what on earth are we to do?”

All at once she was crying. She cried like a baby, with her poor face crinkled and her mascara running down her cheeks. I put my arms around her.

“We don’t know that yet,” I said. “Perhaps he just found it and gave it to one of the servants. After all, he might not know.”

“With every newspaper in town howling about it!” she said. But the idea cheered her. She got up. She still looked pretty well shot to pieces, but her mind was working again.

“Go on upstairs and pretend to find my ring,” she said. “I don’t want Sarah to cut her throat. It’s inside the radiator by my chaise longue. I’ll try to think of something.”

I went up. Sarah was on her knees turning back the edges of the carpet. I saved her throat by finding the ring, and later on we made a pretense of eating lunch. Alma was fairly cheerful, but Mother and I both knew we were about at the end of things. There was nothing to do about it, either. If the police had the knife, Larry was for it. And if either the plumber or one of the servants had it, we didn’t dare to inquire.

None of us ate much lunch. Mother pushed away her plate warily.

“I suppose cooks have to get a percentage,” she said. “But someday I am going to order tea and toast, and get tea and toast.”

There was no word from Larry. We learned later that they had grilled him most of the afternoon. Had he any reason to believe that Isabel had—well, been friendly with anyone else? Had he known she was meeting a man in the park? Had he known her long before they were married? Had he himself any idea why she had been killed?

Perhaps the thing that annoyed him most was the question of Isabel’s will. Who inherited the money she had received from Eliza Leland’s trust? It would normally have gone to her children, wouldn’t it? Larry said coldly that money did not enter into it. He had adequate means of his own. He knew nothing about the trust fund, and as to a will, she had never mentioned one.

What really shocked him, however, was what followed all this. The Inspector leaned back in his chair and stared hard at him.

“Now about this weapon. It was almost certainly your own knife,” he said. “Have you any reason to believe that some member of your family found it on the scene of the crime, and has since concealed it?”

“For God’s sake, no,” said poor Larry. “Why on earth would any one do such a thing?”

“There is such a thing as mother love, Mr. Shepard. If she thought she was protecting you—”

“Bosh!” said Larry roughly. “There was no weapon there when my mother and sister arrived. I’ll swear to that. You heard my mother this morning at the inquest.”

“I did,” said the Inspector drily. “I’ll read it to you.” He picked up a paper from his desk and put on his glasses. “She said: ‘No, there was no weapon by the body’ Then asked if she saw no weapon at all, she replied: ‘There are what you call weapons all over the house. How would I know which one killed her? If any one of them did.’ Is that your idea of a straightforward answer, Mr. Shepard?”

“Perhaps not,” said Larry. “It’s my mother’s idea of my reply to any straightforward question, however.”

He even smiled a little, and the subject was dropped for the time. They had, the Inspector said, gone over the entire list of the guests at the dinner. Comparatively few of them even knew Isabel, and none of them had left the house. They were now checking on the extra waiters and the orchestra. Then, without pausing for breath, he shot a question at Larry.

“And now, Mr. Shepard, why did you give the officer, Barnes, fifty dollars that night?”

Larry must have looked stunned.

“Fifty dollars!” he said. “For what?”

“That’s what I want to know.”

“I never gave him anything. I never saw him except in the dark on the drive until you brought him back yesterday morning.”

The Inspector picked up another paper.

“I’ll read you this,” he said. “It is his wife’s statement, made here an hour or two ago.

“Jim came home Thursday night after he had put up his horse at the police stable. It was about midnight. He didn’t act like himself. He said he had a headache and took some aspirin. Then he said he had a surprise for me. He reached in his pocket and took out fifty dollars, two twenties and a ten. He said: ‘Go and buy yourself something pretty. That’s the way the rich do things.’ I couldn’t believe it. Now and then he gets five or ten dollars for work like that when he’s assigned to it, but never fifty.

“I was a little worried. I asked him if it was clean money. He looked funny but he said it was.

“He went to bed, but he didn’t go to sleep. We were still both awake when the bell rang. He leaned out the window and someone said there was trouble at the Shepard place, and to come along. He acted queer about that, too. He told me not to mention the money. Then he dressed in a hurry and went out. There was a car waiting for him.

“He came back an hour or two later. He looked terribly worried. He said young Mrs. Shepard had been killed. Someone had stabbed her. But he did not know anything about it. Only he did not go back to bed. He stayed downstairs walking the floor. I did not understand it. Then before daylight I heard another car stop, and Jim went outside.

“I heard him go out to the car and it drove off. That is all I know. Only he has not been back since, and I am almost crazy.”

Larry had listened, I gather, with his jaw dropped.

“What have you to say to that, Mr. Shepard?”

“What am I to say? You don’t think I would do away with my only alibi, do you?”

“If Barnes was an alibi,” said the Inspector drily. “Where were you that night, after we left your house?”

“At my mother’s. In bed.”

“Can you prove that?”

“Two of the men put me there. I wasn’t in very good shape. What do you think I did?”

“I’m asking the questions. I want to know if later on toward morning you took a car out of your garage, or out of your mother’s?”

“Certainly not. If you mean, was I the person who picked up Barnes? Certainly not.”

“Your garage is on a grade. It would be possible, wouldn’t it, to get a car out without using the engine?”

But Larry had had all he could take. He blew up at that. After all he is not Mother’s son for nothing. He told them quite a few things, mostly unpleasant, in what amounts to hysterics in a man. And he had just jammed on his hat and was leaving, willy-nilly, when the telephone rang. The Inspector shouted at him to wait. Then he picked up the receiver and listened. When he put it down he eyed him.

“They have found Barnes, Mr. Shepard,” he said somberly. “He has been shot and killed.”