“Would you mind not sayin’ anything to ’em at the cottage about what we found out?” Asey asked as we sped along the beach road.
“Why on earth shouldn’t we?”
“Well, just for the princ’ple of the thing. You see, there ain’t really nothin’ to tell ’em anyways, an’ it’s kind of easier to make people tell things when they ain’t got no idee why they’re bein’ asked.”
“But you don’t for a minute suppose that any one at the cottage did it, do you?”
“Can’t tell. Might have. You got to admit nobody had a better location for it.”
He hopped out, let down the rope barrier, drove the car through and then set it up again.
Betsey jumped on the running-board before we drew up in front of the house.
“Tell us everything. What have you found out?”
“Nothin’ much. We seen Bill. He’s all right. An’ we sent some telegrams.”
“Sea clam! Come on and tell us.”
“Don’t tease,” I said, lying valiantly. “Asey has told you everything there is to tell. Bill is quite cheery, and he seems to be bearing up very well.”
We seated ourselves on the porch.
“Now,” said Asey, “I’d like to ask you some questions if you all don’t mind. Miss Prue, where was you durin’ the time the doc said this happened?”
I related the story of Olga and the silverware. “Then you was out in the kitchen all the time?”
“Yes.”
Asey’s eyes twinkled. “I ain’t askin’ you because I suspect you any but just for general information. You’re a sleuth same as me an’ I’ll exempt you from any more. Now,” he turned to Betsey, “where was you from four-thirty to five-fifteen?”
“Up-town, getting lemons.”
“An’ you was gone all that time? Stuff an’ nonsense, Betsey. It oughtn’t to take you fifteen minutes even in that pin-box of yours to go up an’ get a couple of lemons. What’d you do in the rest of the time?”
“Well, I didn’t really start till about twenty minutes of five because I remember asking Snoodles the time. From half past four till then I was out here with Dot.”
“That don’t help. You still got twenty minutes or so to explain.”
“Well, I spent about five minutes picking out lemons that were sufficiently succulent for Snoodles’ taste. The other ten or fifteen I spent talking to Mike Sullivan about the baseball team.”
“Can you remember what he said?”
“Clearly. He said the new pitcher was good but that he ‘wasn’t getting no s’pot.’ And if you really want to check up, you can go over to the cabin and ask him. He’s staying there now that Simpkins has taken the body away, seeing that no one ransacks the cabin.”
“How can I tell you ain’t primed him?”
Betsey grinned. “Prime Slough Sullivan’s son who thinks he’s greater than Philo Vance already just because he is Sullivan’s son? You ought to know better, Asey. Go get him to tell you.”
Asey ambled off and returned in a few minutes.
“He’s willin’ to swear he talked with you for anyways ten or twelve minutes. O. K., Betsey. That’s so much for the time. Did they watch you when you went off?”
“Yes; they saw me meet Bill at the foot of the lane.”
“An’ they knew where you was before that. What about cornin’ home? Couldn’t you have snuck over to the cabin then?”
“She couldn’t have,” Dot informed him. “I heard her car and she came in directly after. That’s why I talked about the sardines. I always kid her about them. Remember, Miss Prudence?”
I nodded. Dot seemed still to be suffering from her shock of the previous night. She did not accent her words in her usual affected fashion, and her entire stock of adjectives was apparently forgotten. She was, all in all, unusually subdued, and her color was ghastly.
“Well, I cal’late that lets you out, Betsey. Have any particular reason for killin’ him?”
“Don’t be a dolt. I’ve known him only since Wednesday.”
“No need to go bitin’ my head off, Betsey. You don’t need to know a person a lifetime to find out a reason for killin’ him. But I’ll give you a clean slate. Now, Mrs. Manton, where was you?”
“I went up-stairs a few seconds after Mr. Sanborn came, earlier in the afternoon. I stayed up in my room till I heard Betsey come back from town.”
“What were you doin’ all the while?”
“I was lying on my bed resting. Part of the time I read. The rest of the time I dozed.”
“Didn’t come downstairs or go out all of that time?”
“Don’t you think they would have heard me if I had?” She smiled wryly. “People usually hear me long before they see me coming.”
We all smiled. I remembered how she had clumped down those stairs a dozen times since she had arrived.
“An’ you didn’t know nothin’ of Sanborn before you came down here?”
“Of course I had heard of him and knew that he wrote books. I never read one of them, though, till Prudence gave me one yesterday. That was what I read while I was up in my room.”
“Well, Mrs. Manton, I guess we can let you down out of the witness stand, too. Now, Dot, you was on the porch?”
“Yes.”
“All the time?”
“Most of it.” The usually loquacious Dot was exceedingly taciturn.
“Did you go off it, or go indoors?”
“Both.”
“S’pose you tell us.” Asey suggested.
“Oh, I went inside to get a cigarette and then I strolled down by the tennis courts.”
“Be a little mite more exact, will you? Why’d you go down there?” Asey’s tone was sharper than it had been.
“To see a boat.”
“I should think you could of seen a boat better from up here on the hill.”
“Well,” Dot hesitated. “It had gone behind the wharf.”
“When did you go inside?”
“It was a minute or so after Miss Prudence left. I had seen the boat and I wanted the glasses. While I was inside I lighted a cigarette and hunted for the binoculars.”
“How long was you in there?”
“About five minutes.”
“Now, Bill must have left about then, ’cause he told the sheriff he wasn’t in the cabin more’n six or seven minutes. Didn’t you see him go?”
“No. He must have left when I was inside.”
“So you picked up the glasses and went walkin’ down to the tennis courts to see a boat? An’ you didn’t even notice Bill’s car goin’ up the beach road?”
“That’s right. I went down the lane. I didn’t notice the car. I was too intent on looking at the boat.”
“Kind of a boat was it?” Asey asked quickly. “Why—why, it was just a fishing boat.”
“Schooner? Smack? How many masts did it have? What was her name? You’d ought to seen that if you had even bird glasses.”
“I don’t know what kind of boat it was,” Dot answered sullenly. “I’m not acquainted with such things. It might have had one mast or a dozen. And I’m sure I don’t know the name.”
“Dot,” said Asey softly, “the first time you come down here I taught you about riggin’ myself. I got you so’s you could tell the dif’rence between a brig an’ a brigantine an’ a barque an’ a barkantine. An’ you got as good eyesight as any one I know of.”
Dot said nothing.
“Was there any one on the tennis courts when you was down there, Dot?”
“Yes, there were some people playing tennis.”
“Remember who they was or how many of ’em?”
“No. I don’t know who they were or how many.” Asey considered. “Humpf. You knew Sanborn before you come here, didn’t you?”
She nodded.
“How long’d you known him?”
Dot banged her fist with such force on the table that a vase of flowers bounced to the floor. “Miss Prudence, this man has absolutely no right to ask me any questions, and I’m not going to stand for any more of his probing. Just because I happen to have been the only person who can’t account for those forty minutes to a split second I’m not going to have you or any one else suspect that I committed the murder.” She ignored the expressions of surprise on all our faces. “And I can’t see one single reason why I should tell you about Dale Sanborn. He’d dead. I didn’t kill him. And that’s all you need to know.”
She scratched a match furiously and lighted a cigarette. No one said anything. I watched her hand tremble as she held up the match to blow it out.
“Very well.” Asey was calm, matter-of-fact. “Can I talk to that maid of yours, Miss Prue? If Dot wants to keep all she knows to herself there ain’t no reason I can see for me makin’ myself objectionable. If it don’t make no difference to her that Bill Porter’s arrested for a crime he never did while the one who did the murder sits twiddlin’ his thumbs, it’s all right with me. Nice friendly at’tude, Dot. But you ain’t the first person in hist’ry to backslide. It’s been done before. Popular in Bible days, ’twas, an’ the custom’s lingered.”
During his speech Dot’s face had grown whiter, but she made no attempt to speak. I don’t think five people have ever been much more uncomfortable.
At last Betsey spoke nervously. “I’ll go get Olga.”
“No,” said Dot wearily. “Don’t bother. Asey has made his point.” She crushed out her cigarette and lighted another. “I knew Dale Sanborn very well. As a matter of fact I was engaged to marry him though we hadn’t intended to announce it till this fall.” All of us felt certain that Dot and Dale knew each other better than their behavior indicated, but we had scarcely anticipated this announcement.
“We’d had a sort of quarrel,” Dot continued. “I had been going out with other men, and he didn’t like it. I hadn’t heard from him for two or three weeks before I came down. Some one said he was out on Long Island. That’s why I jumped at the chance to come and visit you. I wanted to show him that I could go away and leave him and not pay any attention to what he did at all.”
“You didn’t know he was here?” Asey asked.
“No. But when I found he was and apparently so intimate with all of you, of course I wasn’t going to be such a nitwit as to tell you anything about us. Much less after the way he acted when you remarked yesterday afternoon that you understood I knew him.”
I remembered his answer to that comment of mine, a listless “Dot did,” with a noticeable accent on the “did.”
“So,” Dot went on, “I thought I’d just sit tight and say nothing. I thought everything would come out all right. It always had before.”
“You’d had fights with him before?” Asey questioned. “Oh, yes. Lots of times. Dale wasn’t the easiest man in the world to get along with. They weren’t serious quarrels ever. Just misunderstandings. They always got themselves settled.”
She blew her nose violently. She seemed to be telling us the truth about her relationship with Sanborn even though her answers to Asey’s previous questions were as full of holes as the proverbial Swiss cheese. I recalled how red her face had been when she came out into the kitchen. Of course she might have been overheated from her trip up and down the hill. On the other hand, she might have run over to the cabin and back, too. I was more than dubious about Dot.
“Does, I mean, did Sanborn like sardines?” Asey asked abruptly. “Did you ever see him eat any?”
She looked at him wonderingly. “No. That is, I don’t think so. I’m sure of it. Once I ordered hors d’ouevres in a restaurant—” she stopped and looked inquiringly at Asey.
“Yup, I know what they are. Go on.”
“And I asked the waiter what they had in particular because I’m fond of salmon paste on caviarettes. The waiter said they had anchovy paste, and he started to say something about sardines when Dale stopped him short and said I’d have fruit cup. I didn’t want fruit cup and I said so. But Dale waved the waiter off and said that when he took me to dinner I’d have what he ordered. He didn’t talk like that as a rule, but he acted as though he were awfully peeved about something, so I didn’t press the point.”
“Didn’t tell you why he didn’t want you to have sardines, did he?”
“No.”
“Possibly,” Emma suggested, putting down her knitting for the first time that day, “he didn’t like sardines. Don’t you think that most people have some one thing they loathe in the line of food? What I mean is, there’s nothing so very mysterious about all this business, is there? I know that I grow quite ill at the sight of a prune. I hate to see people eat them. I had to eat a plate of stewed prunes every morning of my childhood till I finally rebelled at the age of ten. Your particular hatred is baked beans, isn’t it, Prudence?”
“Not baked beans. Lima beans.” I made a face. “And Betsey?”
“Onions in any form. Ugh!”
“Dot?”
“Cashew-nuts. I can’t stand them.”
“I see what you’re drivin’ at, Mrs. Manton. I don’t care over-much for cavi-air myself.”
We all looked at Asey, but he chose to take our astonishment for friendly interest.
“I was in Rooshia once an’ a chap there he give me a big hunk o that black bread all spread over with it. I thought it was some sort of jam. Hoped it was ras’bry.” A look of disgust came over his face. “Smelled more like old T wharf than anything I ever smelt since. And taste! Say, I remember that taste yet. Bill he buys the stuff an’ eats it, but when he does, I just have to get outside an’ wait till the air’s got freshed up. But, Dot, don’t you know nothin’ about his family?”
“Not a single thing, Asey.”
“You was goin’ to marry a man you didn’t know nothing about, not even where he come from?”
“He was born in New York. He told me his family were all dead.”
“These girls to-day!” Asey commented disparagingly. “Now when I was a boy a woman who married a man, she knew all about him. Knew about his family an’ who they was an’ how long they’d had money if they had it, an’ where they got it from an’ what his greatgrandmother’s maiden name was. I don’t mean anything about you, Dot, an’ you know I’m real sorry that anything happened to a feller you liked. But just the samey.” He shook his head.
“He said almost nothing about his family, but I got the impression that they had all died when he was young, and had left him rather badly off. I always had the idea, though he never said as much, that he had got to the place he was in to-day more or less by his own efforts.”
“I see.” Asey mused. “Then you just went into the living-room an’ down to the tennis courts an’ back again an’ then out into the kitchen? Can’t add anything to that?”
“No.” Dot bit her under lip till it looked as though it were going to bleed.
“An’ you didn’t know nothin’ about all this till you heard about it from Miss Prue?”
“No. And I fainted when she told me. It was a silly thing to do and I never have before. But it was a shock.”
I thought to myself that it might have been a shock or it might have been good acting. Of our household, Dot had more reason to kill Sanborn than Betsey or Emma. He was her fiance; they had had a quarrel which she declared to be innocent enough, but it had been sufficient to make him leave her temporarily. She had found him apparently preparing to spend the rest of the summer in fairly close proximity to another undeniably attractive girl; she had at least fifteen minutes about the time Sanborn was killed for which she could not or would not produce an alibi. I scribbled on a chart I had been making of how and where we all had spent Friday afternoon.
“Now, Dot, honest Injun, I don’t like to keep on askin’ you things like you was on a witness stand, but can’t you remember anything at all about Sanborn that might help us any? Little things like what subjects he got int’rested in an’ things like that?”
Dot thought a minute. “He was crazy about music and some of the modern painters like Tursky and Weiner and all that crowd who do those appalling portraits of Russian peasants and all such things.” She pointed to the magazine section of an old Sunday paper. “That had one of Lenin in it that he was awfully keen about. And he liked that play, I can’t remember the name, about prisons and capital punishment and all. And he used to get perfectly wrathy about those Italians every one seemed to get so excited about in Boston.” There was a gleam in Asey’s eyes that said more plainly than words, “This sounds more like Schonbrun than Sanborn.”
Aloud he said, “Did he, now? Did he ever get int’-rested in ec’nomics?”
“It’s funny that you should ask me that. He was. He talked on the subject as though he knew a lot about such things, though I am no judge. A man in New York heard him talking at a party one night about some strike in a coal mine down South, and he wanted Dale to write an article about it or speak at some forum. But Dale wouldn’t. He refused flatly. He said he wasn’t any authority on the subject and that it was just one of his hobbies.”
“Did he ever wear a mustache, Dot?”
“Not since I’ve known him. I said once that I wished men would go in for beards and mustaches and things like that now-a-days, and I asked him why he didn’t. He just laughed and said he’d worn a mustache when he was in college but it made him look like an I. W. W.”
“What an insane thing to ask,” Betsey remarked. “Really, Asey, you ought to ask about his enemies and evil-wishers and all that, not tonsorial details.”
Asey grinned. “You can’t tell from where you sit how the picture’s goin’ to look. I s’pose these things sound kind of crazy to you, but it ain’t so crazy as you think. Kind of important, ’twas. But maybe you could remember some one who didn’t like him so much, Dot.”
“Oh, no one in particular that I know about. There was some one who started a silly lawsuit against him, but it was only something about his books, he told me. I can’t think that that would throw any light on this. I don’t know who it was, even, but I know some lawyer friend of his got it stopped. As far as I know, he didn’t have any enemies at all.”
Olga appeared in the doorway. “Luncheon, Miss Whitsby.”
Asey rose from his chair with alacrity. “ ’F he didn’t have no enemies, he was one lucky man. We’ll ’journ for a while, Dot. It’s a case of ‘Down with your head an’ up with your paws an’ thank the good Lord for the use o’ your jaws,’ as the feller said.”