CHAPTER NINE

I went upstairs, but I didn’t go to see Cheryl—not then. I went into my own room and changed from a suit into a dress. Then I wrote a letter to Mr. McCrae. After that I stood at my window watching Perry Bassett. He was on his knees, weeding the enormous crescent-shaped bed of yellow and red and mauve and pink and white and mottled tulips just below my window. He was dressed in an old mud-stained pair of riding breeches and a tweed coat out at one elbow, and he had on an old brown bowler, and looked about as much as if he was in mourning for his murdered brother-in-law as Dr. Sartoris did in his jaunty white linens.

I was watching him move foot by foot along the edge of the tulip bed, thinking among other things that he certainly didn’t look like a man who had cast two fortunes into the Grand Canyon at the foot of Manhattan, when Aspasia came in.

“Major Ellicott wants to know if he can speak to you, Miss?”

Since I had already interviewed Mrs. Trent’s doctor and Mr. Trent’s lawyer, in various stages of undress, there was no reason for getting choicey (as Aspasia said later about something quite different).

I was a little surprised at his looks when he came in. I’d forgot that he was really a very attractive person, not particularly old—in fact, he looked much younger in a dark blue lounge suit than he had in dinner clothes. And he didn’t bother about closing the door, as my other callers had.

“Good morning, Miss Gather,” he said. “I hope you got a little rest last night, though I can hardly believe it. In fact I was going to suggest last night that if you moved a pillow onto the floor you’d find it more comfortable.”

I laughed.

“I’m quite a Spartan.”

“I believe it,” he returned seriously. “However, there’s no reason for your being involved any further in our troubles. I’ve talked it over with Mr. Doyle—knowing you’d want to get away. He agrees with me that there’s no earthly sense in your staying here any longer. I’ve arranged for a car to run you up to Baltimore in time for you to get the noon train to New York.”

Then he noticed my strapped bags.

“Oh. You’re packed?”

“Yes, I’m all packed, but Lieutenant Kelly said I was to stay.”

He smiled.

“Like a policeman,” he said. “Don’t let that worry you. Doyle said you were to go. I’ll have your things put in the car.”

“Thanks very much,” I said, and suppressed an insane desire to laugh boisterously.

He turned to go. Apparently, I thought, he wasn’t going to pay me to get me out of the way. For a moment my stock seemed pretty low. But I was wrong. He turned as if it were a second thought, and one that he didn’t quite like to discuss with a lady.

“As soon as Mrs. Trent recovers a little from the shock of last night’s tragedy, Miss Gather,” he said, “we hope you’ll accept a . . . a token of our appreciation for your kindness and understanding.”

He smiled ironically.

“I won’t say for the beastly lot of annoyance you’ve been put to.”

“That’s very nice of you,” I said.

After he’d closed the door I tried to figure out what all this was about, and what I really should do. If Mr. Doyle and the family were ordering me out, Lieutenant Kelly and my own increasing curiosity as to what it was all about didn’t seem enough, really, to keep me here. So far Agnes Hutton, Mrs. Trent, Dr. Sartoris, Mr. Archer and Major Ellicott had suggested my going. I thought it seemed a majority vote.

There was a discreet tap on my door, and I glanced around and said “Come.” Perry Bassett slipped in, and stood turning his musty brown bowler around in his hands, making a little shower of dried soil on the floor. He looked exactly like a frightened rabbit.

This time I did laugh. I couldn’t help it.

“Don’t tell me you’ve arranged to have a car for me in fifteen minutes, Mr. Bassett,” I said; and he looked very blank and said, “Oh, dear!”

“I’ve got three offers of transportation already,” Ï went on. “Unless you’re prepared with something pretty good I don’t think you can meet them.”

“I . . . I really don’t know what you mean,” he said nervously. “I just . . . just came to tell you my sister has asked me to say she’s very sorry about . . . everything, and she hopes very much you can stay on with us. On account of my niece, Miss Cather. She’s very lonesome, and I’m afraid she’s going to be very unhappy.”

“Oh,” I said. I looked at him intently, wondering if he was telling the truth about Mrs. Trent. If he was it made a lot of difference. That would mean that Dr. Sartoris had deliberately lied to get me away. But I didn’t believe it. Not that I put it past Dr. Sartoris. But he wouldn’t have done it that way if it had been his idea. He’d have done it the way Major Ellicott did, arranged to have me taken to Baltimore to the train, not dumped out at a trolley station by the road. However, there was something very honest and appealing in the rabbity little man in front of me.

“Did you know that your sister ordered a car for me this morning, to take me away at quarter of ten?” I asked gently.

He looked nervously down at his hands and put them behind him, and said “Oh, dear!” again. Then he looked at me and smiled like a child caught in a perfectly well-meant lie.

“You see, Miss Cather,” he said timidly, “my sister sometimes forgets what she ought to do, but she doesn’t really mean any harm by it. I’ll just speak to her. I think she really wants you to stay. You will, won’t you? “

“Yes, Mr. Bassett,” I said. “I think I will.”

I had a strong suspicion, from my few minutes’ talk with Lieutenant Kelly, that in spite of Mr. Doyle I didn’t have much chance of getting away. It seemed to me that other people around were rather underestimating Lieutenant Kelly—and that turned out to be very much truer than I thought at the time.

When Perry Bassett went out into the hall I caught a glimpse of Lieutenant Kelly and Mr. Doyle going into Michael Spur’s room. As they closed the door Perry Bassett said “Tch tch,” and shook his head. He went on downstairs. I was still standing there, thinking about all of it, when Dr. Sartoris came from the other end of the hall. I thought he looked rather surprised to see me still about, but he merely nodded and went into Michael’s room,

A few minutes later Aspasia came and told me Mrs. Trent would like to see me.

“Her room’s this way, miss,” she said, and I followed her toward the end of the hall from which Dr. Sartoris had come, and into a wide transverse hall corresponding to the one in the other wing except that there was no balcony here. There was, however, a knight in armor on the landing of the wide staircase. He looked very cocky and had on a plumed helmet. The plume was quite new.

A number of doors opened off the hall. I gathered that this wing contained the family apartments. Aspasia opened the last door at the end of the corridor nearest the bay, and I found myself looking into a large sunny room with pale coral walls and apple green woodwork and a deep mauve velvet carpet.

Mrs. Trent, excited and obviously upset, was pacing the floor in the empty space in front of the door. Cheryl was sitting, her chin on her hand, gazing unhappily out the window.

“Come in, Miss Mather.”

Cheryl looked slowly up at her mother, then shrugged her shoulders as if she knew it was hopeless, and turned away.

“I want you to tell me what they’re going to do,” Mrs. Trent demanded abruptly, and went on without waiting for me to answer. “I don’t understand Mr. Doyle. What is the matter with him? I’ve explained to him, and I’ve had Victor—Dr. Sartoris—explain to him. It seems to me he’s just making this as hard for me as he can. Why is he acting like this?”

“I’m afraid he can’t help it, Mrs. Trent,” I said, sitting down in an elaborate yellow satin Empire chair with swans’ necks for arms. I glanced around the room. If you’d known it was going to be French you could have guessed all of it before you went in, the profusion of trivial knick-knacks and the piles of lace and satin cushions and spindly-legged dolls in the yellow satin chaise longue in front of the fireplace. On the low table by it was an enormous pink satin box of chocolates, open, with empty little brown paper cups scattered untidily about. A movie magazine was turned face down beside it. It struck me as being utterly heartless, in some way, but very like Mrs. Trent. She acted as if her husband’s death was some sort of a tiresome interlude, the only purpose of which was to annoy her.

“He could certainly help it if he wanted to,” she snapped pettishly. “I’ll give him some money. He’ll do something about it.”

“Oh, mother!” said Cheryl in a low voice. Even knowing Mrs. Trent I was aghast.

“Well, I will. He’s a politician, isn’t he?”

She stopped her pacing and held out her hands in a gesture of impotence.

“But I can’t get any money!” she said. “That’s the whole trouble. Archer won’t give me any. I’ve asked him.”

“You don’t need any money, mother,” Cheryl said patiently.

Her mother picked up a paper from her desk and held it up. It was an announcement of the public auction of a property by court order to recover a mortgage, scheduled for Saturday at eleven o’clock at the courthouse steps in Annapolis.

“I’m going to buy this,” Mrs. Trent said. “That’s what I need money for. And I’m going to have it.”

Cheryl looked at the printed bill.

“It’s the Foster property up the river,” Mrs. Trent went on. “It’s just what Victor needs for his sanatorium. Fifty acres, a dairy, water front, twenty rooms. They’re selling it day after tomorrow, and I’m going to buy it for him.”

“Mother!” Cheryl said gently. “Didn’t Dad say you shouldn’t buy it—that we couldn’t afford it now?”

Mrs. Trent’s mouth closed tightly. She said nothing, but her manner said plainly, “Your father is dead. It’s none of his business.”

Cheryl bit her lip and turned toward the window. Mrs. Trent turned suddenly to me.

“You’ll bid it in for me, Miss Mather. That’s an idea. Go as high as you have to. It’s what Victor needs. And it’s so close—only a few miles away.”

The thought came to me suddenly that I was staring in astonishment at an insane woman.

“I’ll get the money, you needn’t worry about that,” she said firmly.

She pressed a bell in the wall and began moving about restlessly, absorbed in her new idea, until a colored maid came.

“Tell Mr. Archer I want to see him at once, Lucy,” she ordered, and began her pacing again, utterly oblivious of me sitting there or of her daughter, wan and unhappy, staring out the window.

Mr. Archer came. I was surprised at that; I thought he wouldn’t. And he looked at me in surprise; apparently he also thought I’d gone. He stood just inside the door, without saying a word, until his eyes fell on the bill of sale of the Foster property up the river. Then he gave a disgusted snort and glared at Mrs. Trent.

“As long as I’m in charge of Duncan’s estate, Emily,” he said, “you’re not going to throw his money away on this sort of thing.”

He tapped the bill sharply with a pudgy forefinger.

“It’s my money!” Mrs. Trent retorted defiantly. “You can’t keep it away from me!”

Mr. Archer glared at her a moment, then, like Cheryl, gave up.

“I haven’t looked at Duncan’s will recently, Emily,” he said quietly.

“He couldn’t cut me out of his will! I have a dower right, and that’s one-third of the estate at the very least!” Mr. Archer laughed a little.

“That’s true, Emily. But I don’t know how much one-third of the estate is going to be. Duncan lost a great deal of money in nineteen-twenty-nine.”

Mrs. Trent’s jaw dropped. She stared at him, breathing heavily.

“What do you mean?” she said at last.

“I mean that the estate has shrunk,” he said sharply. “Duncan’s death will make it shrink more. I don’t know that you can afford to keep Sartoris any longer. That’s what I mean.”

He got up and went to the door, and turned with his hand on the knob. He looked steadily at Mrs. Trent with barely concealed contempt, his face purple with suppressed anger.

“Doyle’s coming back after lunch,” he said curtly. “He’ll want to talk to you.”

She gaped stupidly.

“To me?”

“To you. Someone murdered your husband, Emily.”

Even Mrs. Trent winced at the devastating contempt in his voice.

“It was Michael Spur!” she cried. “It wasn’t . . . murder!”

“Do you know it was Michael Spur?” he said coldly.

She stared speechless at him. Then she faltered, “Why, yes, Tom! Everybody does! Dr. Sartoris . . . yew know it!”

“I don’t know it, Emily,” Mr, Archer said dryly. “What’s more, the police don’t seem to.”

He opened the door and slammed it behind him. The long crystals on the candlesticks on the mantel tinkled nervously under the impact.