MOTHER HAD ONE OF her headaches the next morning, and I was awakened late with the word that George Talbot wanted to see me downstairs.
I dressed as quickly as possible, and George came into the dining room while I ate my breakfast; the Crescent frowns on meals in bed except in case of illness. I sent Annie out as soon as possible, although I had an uneasy feeling that she was not far from the pantry door.
George looked tired and anxious.
“See here, Lou,” he said. “I suppose you know that Jim is in pretty bad with the police, although they’ve released him. And if you’ve seen the morning papers you know that they’ll have to arrest somebody, sooner or later. The town’s gone crazy. The middle of a bright afternoon, a house full of people, and a helpless old woman killed with an axe. It doesn’t make sense, but there it is!”
“So they pick on Jim, of all people!” I said bitterly.
“Jim’s all right so far. People don’t go to the chair simply because they are remembered in wills. It’s that infernal chest; they’re opening it this morning. That’s what the servants say. Lizzie was over there at the crack of dawn!”
Lizzie, as I may have said, is a sort of major domo at the Talbots’. She had been there for thirty years, first as George’s nurse and later on as an underpaid and overworked pensioner; a tall gaunt woman who, like Lydia, missed nothing of what happened to us. In fact, they were not unlike, and between them they formed a sort of machine, Lizzie collecting small items of interests and Miss Lydia disseminating them.
“You think it may be gone?” I asked weakly.
“I’m trying not to think that, Lou.”
“But listen, George, I saw Jim when he left that house. He hadn’t a thing in his hands.”
He shook himself impatiently.
“That’s not the point. If it’s gone the police may wonder—well, if he ever put it in the chest at all. Don’t look like that, Lou; we’ve got to face it. Why should Mr. Lancaster have sent for Jim yesterday, if he didn’t think something was wrong? It wouldn’t be so hard, under the circumstances. Just the two of them in that room and a little act of substitution. He carried it out in a bag, and if he had another bag ready, filled with silver dollars for instance—”
I was too horrified to speak, and George leaned over and touched my hand. I had known him all my life, and he had grown into a not unattractive man of the heavy-chested middle-height type, the sort that has to shave twice a day and still has a blue-black look about the jaw. But his eyes were still the eyes of the boy I used to play with, and now they were filled with pity.
“I’m sorry, Lou. I thought maybe we could work this out together, but I’ve only scared you to death. I know damned well he never killed her. But something queer has been going on around here for the last few weeks. And if you don’t believe it, look here.”
He reached into his pockets and pulled out a shining new twenty-dollar gold piece.
“I picked this up back in No Man’s Land, about ten days ago. I’d lost a ball, hooked it into the trees toward Euclid Street; and I turned over some grass and found this. Of course it may not mean anything, but there it is! Thank God I found it and not Dalton. It might as easily have been him.”
And then and there I told him about what I had seen the night before. It seemed to stun him as much as it had stunned me, and he sat thinking for some time. Then he said abruptly:
“I wouldn’t tell the police that Lou.”
“Why not? I don’t want to, but if they arrest Jim Wellington—”
“They won’t arrest him. Not yet anyhow. No, it looks to me as though—You saw Dalton last night when I said I’d seen him at the woodshed that morning, didn’t you? If you saw his face you know he was scared.”
“He’d never have taken the axe, at that hour.”
But he was not listening.
“Look here,” he said, “do you know why the Daltons broke off diplomatic relations?”
“I don’t know. I believe she was jealous, or something of the sort.”
“Exactly. Well, Bryan Dalton has been a pretty gay lad in his time, and he’s not so darned old now. What I’m wondering now is—What about this Peggy at the Lancasters’? She’s pretty and she’s nobody’s fool. She’d know about the chest, of course. She could have known also that Mr. Lancaster meant to make an inventory yesterday; the telephone’s in the hall. And she’d have several chances every week to get an impression of that lock. You know, wiping the floor, or dusting under the bed. You see what I mean. She could have let him in the house yesterday, too. Opened one of the lower windows, for instance, and fastened it later. Of course it’s horrible, but it’s all horrible anyhow.”
“And you think Mrs. Dalton suspects that, George?”
“How do I know? What was she looking for last night? What might be in the woodshed? The duplicate key maybe. Or perhaps we’re just crazy, and the money’s still there.”
“And we fall back on a lunatic!” I said, trying to smile. “What is there to do, George? I’ll go crazy sitting here.”
“Well, the police are opening the chest this morning, according to Lizzie. Apparently they tried it last night with an ice pick and failed.” Which shows I think not only the high efficiency of our grapevine telegraph, but the fact that all along we underrated the intelligence of our servants. “If the money’s gone, I wish you’d take a look around No Man’s Land. I have to work, or I’d do it.” He picked up a pencil and began to draw a crude sketch on the table cloth. We still use table cloths; the Crescent regards doilies as an attempt to evade laundering the heavy damask cloths we affect.
“Here’s the Crescent,” he said. “And here’s where I found the gold piece. If I were you I’d go in by way of Euclid Street, and examine that woodland. You see, the chances are that if the money is gone it’s been buried; and if it’s been buried it may be buried there.”
He looked at his watch and got up.
“Better rub that out,” he said as he rose. “God knows the servants have enough to talk about already. If you can get into the Lancasters’ and learn what the police discover I wish you’d call me up.”
I agreed, and I went with him to the door.
“I wonder if anyone has told Helen Wellington about Jim,” I said. “If she knows he is in trouble—”
“She’ll like it!”
“Still, there should be someone there. Even the servants have gone, George. He’s all alone.”
“If you’re asking me, he’s better alone than with Helen any time.” He patted me on the arm. “He’s able to take care of himself, Lou. He won’t mind a little dust in the house and he can get food, of course. We’ll begin to worry about him if that money’s missing, not before.”
“And if it is?”
“Then, as sure as God made little fishes, they’ll arrest him.”
When I went back to the dining room Annie was gazing with interest and disapproval at his drawing.
“It’s a pity he couldn’t use a piece of paper, Miss Louisa.”
“I’ll rub it out in the lavatory,” I said hastily, “and you will only have to press it.”
She took away the dishes and I was gathering up the cloth when she came back and said: “Old Mr. Lancaster has taken to his bed, miss. He had only a cup of black coffee this morning. And Ellen is threatening to leave. She doesn’t like the way the police went through her clothes yesterday.”
I remember standing there, the table cloth in my arms, and feeling that she wanted me to ask her something, that her return had been solely for that purpose. But her face was carefully blank.
“Listen, Annie,” I said at last, “if you know anything, anything whatever that the police ought to know, you should tell it.”
I realized at once that I had made a mistake. At the word “police” she stiffened.
“I don’t know anything, miss.”
“Not the police, then. Is there anything you can tell me? Anything out of the ordinary? Someone has committed a terrible crime, Annie. Do you want them to get away with it?”
“Maybe there’s plenty out of the ordinary been happening,” she said darkly. “But it hasn’t anything to do with that murder.”
“How do you know that?”
“I know it all right.”
“Annie,” I said desperately. “You can tell me this at least. Has it anything to do with Peggy at the Lancasters’?”
But her astonishment was so evident that I hastened to add: “Or with any of the maids there?”
All of which was most unfortunate, for she froze immediately and departed for the pantry with her head in the air.
It was after nine when I went to the Lancasters’ to ask Margaret what I was to do with the glove. Mother was asleep, and I slipped out without saying anything. I had not told George about the glove, but it was one of those cool mornings in August which with us sometimes turn into downright cold, and I could not run the risk of our furnace being lighted. That meant water in the radiator pans and discovery.
Cool as the wind was, however, the sun had come out and everything looked fresh and green after the night’s rain. Even the Lancaster house, white and immaculate, looked cheerful, and the only strange note was the officer on guard in front of it, and a camera man on the Common, trying to find some spot where the trees did not hide it completely, for a picture.
I met Mrs. Talbot at the walk, and I was shocked to see that she looked almost ravaged. For all her eccentricity she was in the main a cheerful woman, but even her voice had lost its vigor.
“I’m taking over some beef tea,” she said, “Mr. Lancaster is ill.”
We went in together; or rather I went in. She merely gave the jar of beef tea to Jennie and went away. Jennie admitted me without speech, and I saw a group of men in the library, to the left of the front door, as I entered the hall.
“I want to see Miss Margaret.”
“She’s in the morning room, miss.”
Margaret was there, fully and as usual carefully dressed, except that now she wore deep black. She did not hear me at first. She was sitting in front of her desk and staring at the wall above it, without moving. For the first time it occurred to me that morning that Margaret Lancaster was a handsome woman. I had known her so long that I dare say I had never considered her before. She had been like any familiar thing which, after years of familiarity, one does not see at all until some shock or change forces it on one’s attention.
Looking back as now I can, I realize that to a woman like Margaret Lancaster, good-looking, intelligent and restless, those years in that house must have been nothing less than a long martyrdom. She had never given up, as had Emily. She still dressed beautifully, and had her hair marcelled. I can remember that there was an almost fresh wave in it that morning and that her hands, spread out before her on the desk, were well kept and carefully manicured.
But she was also thoroughly poised. When at last she realized that it was I who had entered the room she turned quietly and looked at me.
“Close the door, Louisa. I want to talk to you.”
When I came back she indicated a chair close by her, and she lowered her voice.
“What did you do with it?”
I told her and she nodded.
“That ought to do, for a day or two. Later it will have to be burned, of course. I want you to burn it without opening the envelope, Louisa.”
“It opened itself.”
“Then you know what is in it?” She sat erect and stared at me, and two deep spots of color came into her cheeks.
I explained and she listened. But the explanation was plainly less important to her than the fact that I knew and had seen the glove. There was a long silence when I had finished. Then she made up her mind and turning to me put a hand on my knee.
“First of all,” she said. “I wanted that glove out of the house because it was Jim Wellington’s. I give you my word that that is true. And I give you my word that I found it here in the house, after he had gone. But I don’t believe for a minute that he—that he killed Mother. But he left the pair here two or three months ago, in the spring, and I dropped them into a table drawer in the hall. I always meant to tell him they were here, but I forgot. And I’m pretty sure he had no idea himself where he lost them. I had to get rid of that one last night; that’s all.”
It was my turn to sit silent for a time.
“Then anybody in the house might have known it was there?” I said finally.
She made a gesture.
“Anybody. And I can’t find the mate to it. I’m sure there were two.”
I got up, with an uneasy feeling that she had not told me all she knew.
“Very well,” I said. “Ill burn it. I’ll have to do it at night in the furnace.”
She nodded, and then leaned forward and put a hand on my arm. “I can only say this, Louisa,” she said in a low voice. “I believe that glove was deliberately planted where I found it, and that it was the most cruel and diabolical thing I have ever known.”