IT WAS THAT NIGHT, Sunday, August the twenty-first, that Miss Emily Lancaster was shot to death on the grapevine walk.
Looking back over that day, I cannot help marveling at how peaceful it was, in view of all that was to come. Except for the background tragedy of Thursday, it differed in no particular from any other Sunday afternoon that I could remember.
As usual, Mother retired after our midday dinner for her rest, a device used by all the Crescent families to take care of the fried chicken and ice cream which is our summer Sunday meal, and which becomes roast beef and a fruit pie at the end of September. And also as usual Lydia Talbot stayed on after her self-effacing but tenacious fashion. She frequently came in on Sundays, and always remained until something or other finally forced her away.
But that afternoon she nearly drove me wild. We sat on the porch, and she insisted on discussing the crime and her various grievances connected with it.
“One would think,” she said in her flat monotonous voice, “that we would have been called in to help. After all, we are the only close relatives the girls have. But can you believe that neither Hester nor I has been in the house since it happened? And they can’t lay it to the police now; the police have gone.”
She was actually moist with indignation. One gray spit curl had straightened out and hung rakishly over an eye. High priestess of all our funerals as long as I could remember, I understood her resentment and did my best to soothe her.
“Of course they’re very upset, Miss Lydia.”
“You’d think that would be when they need their own family. I’m their full aunt, Louisa; but that makes no difference. When Emily gets into trouble she runs to us, as she did last night, but that’s all it amounts to.”
On that night alarm of Emily’s, however, she was rather reticent.
“How do I know what it was?” she said, in response to a question from me. “Or who ‘they’ are? Maybe she dreamed it, although George thinks not. But I can tell you this, Louisa; the minute I got her quiet she stopped talking. She always was a close-mouthed woman anyhow, but she shut up like a clam”
She changed the subject then as though she had said too much.
“I hear Helen Wellington has come back.”
“Yes.”
“I suppose she thinks Jim has all that money.”
That was almost too much for me. I suppose I was constrained and rather silent after it, for soon she got up, straightened the hat which Crescent-fashion sat high on her head, and picked up her old beaded bag.
“Well, I’ll move on,” she said in her flat voice. “I intend to try just once more to see Emily and Margaret. Then if they don’t let me in—well, I suppose I can take a hint as well as anybody!”
I watched from the porch as well as I could, seeing her absurd hat as it passed up the Lancaster walk and then losing it again. But apparently she did not have to take the hint, and I was really relieved when the hat did not reappear.
That was at half past three.
Usually Mother drives out at that time, but Holmes had secured the afternoon off and Mother was settled upstairs with a book and some essence of pepsin, and the remainder of the afternoon passed with intolerable slowness. Around five o’clock I walked idly toward the Crescent, to see Helen Wellington on the front porch, carefully dressed in white and yawning over a book. I dare say it was a case of any port in a storm, for she saw me and asked me to join her. I did not go up, but I did sit on the steps, to find her eyeing me curiously.
“Look here, Lou,” she said. “All this isn’t your funeral. You look terrible.”
“I’ve had a shock, of course,” I told her lamely. “I’m glad you’ve come back, Helen. Jim needed you.”
She laughed.
“Jim! He needs me about as much as he needs a cinder in his eye. Besides, I’m rather under the impression that he has had you to console him! Never mind that, Lou, I’m in a bad temper, that’s all. If you could see this house! And not an agency open until morning!”
I looked at her.
“I suppose it hasn’t occurred to you to do anything about it yourself,” I said drily.
“You would think of that! That’s what Bertie Dean says. I’ve just had a row with him. If he wants to masquerade here as a servant let him do the dishes! It’s idiotic anyhow. I dare say the Crescent hasn’t been fooled for a minute.”
“The Crescent,” I told her quietly, “has had other things to think about, Helen.”
I did not stay long. It developed that Herbert Dean, after she firmly refused to wash the lunch dishes, had mysteriously disappeared around noon, and that Jim was pretending to read the newspapers inside somewhere.
“He’s scared of course,” she said easily. “But also of course he didn’t do it. He hasn’t the brains, Lou; no matter what you think of his intellect. And he is no prestidigitator, no matter what the police may think.”
By which she referred to what has been called the substitution theory as to the money in the chest.
Since then I have seen a record of Mr. Lancaster’s early statement after the discovery that the chest had been looted. It runs much as follows:
Q. (by Inspector Briggs). “You are certain that nobody could have moved that gold in any quantity in a short space of time?”
A. “Practically certain, considering its weight.”
Q. “But you were not afraid that the attempt might be made?”
A. “I haven’t said that. I was not afraid in the daytime. The nights worried me, however. My wife often took an opiate at night to enable her to sleep.”
Q. “Then it is your considered opinion that the gold was not taken yesterday afternoon after her death?”
A. “I do not see how it could have been.”
Q. “Now, Mr. Lancaster, are you ready to state that this gold and so on actually went into the chest?”
A. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
Q. “I mean, are you certain that there was no substitution?”
A. “Substitution. Oh yes, I see what you mean. I think not. Once or twice I myself tied up the bags and placed them there. There was no substitution while I was present.”
Q. “In that case, have you any explanation of the fact that this money has disappeared? Of any possible method?”
A. “None whatever.”
Q. “Will you tell us the exact procedure which was followed when the gold arrived?”
A. “I was not always present, or even often, but I suppose it did not vary. Mr. Wellington brought the money in a small black bag. Usually it was gold, tied up in small canvas sacks with the necks wired and a lead seal on each one. He would cut the wire, and my wife would then count the money as it lay on her bed. Mr. Wellington would then enter the amount in the book and my wife would sign it.”
Q. “And after that?”
A. “It was simply a matter of putting the sacks—or the folder with the currency—into the chest. He would draw out the chest, my wife would give him her key, and he would then deposit the money and lock the chest again.”
Q. “Your wife could see all this?”
A. “I am not certain. She could at first. The box was taken out and placed on two chairs beside the bed. Later on it was too heavy, and was merely drawn out and opened.”
Q. “Then it would have been possible for a substitution to be effected later? That is, a second bag containing these lead weights might have been placed in the chest, and the bag with the gold have gone back into the valise? And so on?”
A. “I suppose it might be possible; yes. But I think it highly unlikely. I have known Mr. Wellington all his life,” etc., etc.
This was the theory to which Helen referred that afternoon, and her comment on it was characteristic.
“Now can anybody see poor Jim figuring all that out?” she said. “Jim, who remembers that a party needs gin after all the bootleggers have put on their dress clothes and gone to the opera! He’s a good sort, and he’s mine and so I like him—no matter what you may think, Lou; and not all the time either. But that’s neither here nor there.” And she added in her casual fashion: “I suppose Emily really did it. I know I would, in her case. She was a horrible old woman.”
With which I finally went back home, to a light supper and a heavy but disturbed sleep through which Helen Wellington moved gaily and irresponsibly; and our own Annie was writing an anonymous letter to the police—which is the only time in my life when a dream turned out to be true, as we learned after the case was over.
It was from this dream that I wakened early the next morning to the discovery of our second murder; that of Emily Lancaster herself.