CHAPTER SIXTEEN

I won’t go into the details of the morning. Some of them were rather painful, especially the one dealing with the large raw spot on my heel where my riding boots, not used to two-mile hikes, had rubbed. While I was upstairs swabbing it with mercurochrome, Aspasia came in and told me that Lieutenant Kelly and Mr. Doyle and the other man—I supposed it was Sergeant Lynch—had got the key to Agnes Hutton’s room from Mrs. Trent and were in there. Also that they’d phoned for a lot of men from Baltimore and Heaven knows what more.

It wasn’t until almost eleven that they called on me to help them take everybody’s statement. Before that I’d seen Michael and Mrs. Trent.

Mrs. Trent, in fact, had sent Aspasia for me, and I hobbled down to her room in one shoe and one black satin mule. She opened the door for me and said, “Come in, Miss Mather, and sit down. I want you to do something for me. That’s a mighty cute dress you’ve got on. What an odd design!”

The design, which I noticed for the first time, was a large splotch of mercurochrome on the right knee of a simple white crêpe dress.

“I’ll be glad to, Mrs. Trent,” I said, “if I can.”

She looked blank. “Oh, it isn’t at all hard,” she said.

I sat down and waited.

“They’re going to have the funeral today,” she went on. The complacent tone of her voice was almost horrible. I don’t really believe that she had actually realized what she was saying or how it sounded to other people.

“You can go in town with us, and then step up to Mr. Murchison’s office and tell him I’ll pay anything that’s necessary to get the Foster place. Do you hear? Anything at all.”

“Don’t you think it would be better if Major Ellicott or Mr. Archer looked after that for you, Mrs. Trent?”

“Why, of all the impudence!” said Mrs. Trent. “I never in my life!”

Then, realizing, I suppose, that I was neither her servant nor her daughter, she immediately made an about-face.

“No, no,” she said, in a cajoling tone. “I’ll tell you. It’s this way. They don’t understand. You see, it’s to be a sanatorium for Dr. Sartoris, a gift from me and my late husband for the advancement of psychology. Victor doesn’t think it’s a good idea.”

I was a little surprised at that; I should have thought he would think it a fine idea.

“Why not? “I said.

“Well, he thinks it’s a little out of the way.”

She shifted her bulk against the multicolored cushions on the yellow satin chaise longue.

“He really wants to be in New York. I promised him a hundred and fifty thousand dollars to build himself a hospital, but of course if I can get the Foster place for about thirty or forty thousand, it’ll be that much to the good.”

“Naturally,” I said.

“And it’s near Ivy Hill.”

She was not cajoling now, or simpering; it was just a good practical scheme for keeping him near her.

“Of course Victor says that’s a very great inducement.”

Of course he did. I could hear him. I writhed a little, uneasily.

“But anyway, it’s best not to say anything about it to anybody—not even Victor—until it’s all ready, and I can have the deed all made over and put it on his breakfast tray some morning. Is that an idea?”

“It certainly is,” I said.

“Well, that’s all, then. You take care of it for me, and I’ll see you again before you go. Do you think I ought to arrange to give you power of attorney? “

“No,” I said flatly.

“Maybe it won’t be necessary.”

She started humming something gay.

I thought I’d make one last conscientious attempt to dissuade her before I did anything else about it. I said, “Have you thought, Mrs. Trent, that maybe Dr. Sartoris feels he’s too close to the Baltimore medical centers, and hence that this isn’t a good place for a sanatorium?”

“Nonsense!” she said quite tartly. “Victor will do as I say, and don’t you worry about that”

The only thing that did make me worry about it, a little, was Cheryl’s chance remark that her father had said they couldn’t afford it. It seemed a strange sort of business altogether. However, I supposed it was Mrs. Trent’s affair.

As I was going back to my room Mr. Doyle came out of Agnes’s room, and I stopped him.

“Do you know anything about the Foster property?” I asked.

He was obviously thinking about other things, but he managed a smile.

“Thinking of buying it?” he said. “Well don’t—because it’ll probably run up to thirty thousand, and it’ll cost you that much again to put it in shape. They call it Foster’s Folly, and they’re right.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“By the way,” he went on, “can you help us out again, in about an hour? “

“I’ll be glad to.”

He locked Agnes’s door and I went into my own room. At first I thought I’d got in the wrong place. Michael Spur was sitting there in front of the window, staring out.

“Hullo,” I said. “Anything wrong? “

“Haven’t you heard, for God’s sake?” he said.

“Plenty,” I replied. “I thought there might be something else.”

It was odd that I always found myself thinking of Michael as quite young—about Cheryl’s age—rather than almost as old as Dick Ellicott.

“Now look here, Louise Cather,” he said slowly. “Do I look crazy to you?”

“Not to me, Michael,” I said.

“Don’t be funny. I mean seriously.”

“I answered you seriously. I said you didn’t look crazy. But you act it sometimes—now, for instance. Why don’t you say what’s on your mind? “

He leaned forward and looked silently at me for a moment. Then he said, “What shall I do, Louise?”

“The first thing I’d do is get a good lawyer.”

“Archer’s a good lawyer.”

“You asked me, and I told you.”

“You don’t think he is?”

“I’d get a good lawyer who’s not connected with all this.” He looked at me silently again.

“What else?” he said.

“Well, I’d quit sticking in my room brooding about something you don’t know whether you did do or didn’t do, That’s second. Third, I’d go to Lieutenant Kelly and I’d tell him everything I knew from the beginning. That’s if you didn’t do it. If you did do it, you’d better keep away from him. Fourth . . . well, fourth, Michael, I think something’s got you down. I don’t know what it is, but you don’t seem to have any fight in you. You know? “

He pushed his hair back slowly and rubbed the back of his head. He looked, I imagine, as the Puritan fathers did when they were sore beset and sore perplexed.

“Look here,” he said abruptly. “I’m going to tell you something, and you can tell me what to do.”

“Shoot,” I said, and instantly wished I hadn’t. He looked a little hurt. “Sorry, Michael,” I said. “Go ahead.”

“Sunday night, after I sent that wire, I went to my hotel and went to bed,” he said, as abruptly as before. “And I . . .”

He hesitated, and then went on doggedly.

“I came to, running down the hall like a fool. Nobody was around, and I got back to my room all right. It’s the first time that’s happened to me for eleven years. Do you see now why I’m not sure?”

He stopped and looked at me uncertainly; and there was fear in his deep-set eyes.

“Why did you come here, Michael?” I said quietly.

“Because I was a fool,” he groaned. He got up and began to pace back and forth.

“Sit down,” I said. “You make me dizzy.”

He sat down again, ran his fingers through his hair and pressed the back of his neck as if there was some deep-seated pain there.

“I came because I got a letter from Agnes Hutton,” he said at last very slowly.

“Oh,” I said. I hadn’t intended prying into his private affairs.

“I used to be engaged to Agnes. I don’t know how it happened. I was going to France—I guess that was it. Well, I got back. I’d forgot all about it, and then when I was cracked up and got back here, well, it just died out. After my father’s death I went out West. I heard from Agnes once in a while. She managed to keep track of me, and one day she showed up in Arizona.”

“She told me that,” I said. “Lieutenant Kelly knew it too.”

He looked surprised.

“Well, she told me a lot of stuff about what was going on here. Trent was playing fast and loose with my share of the business. I got pretty sore. Then she left and I got to thinking it over. I decided to let it go. I didn’t want to come back, and I’d done well enough out there. So I didn’t do anything about it.”

He started to get up, and sat down again.

“Well, when I got to New York I wrote her I was going abroad, and I was signing over my interest in Trent and Spur to Cheryl. You see . . . well, I’m not in love with Cheryl, but she’s sort of a link between me and my father, and all that. I wanted her to have anything they’d left me. Well, I got a letter back saying that was fine—Cheryl was marrying Dick Ellicott in June, I owned all of Trent and Spur and it wasn’t worth a damn and Cheryl could probably use the stock to paper the summer house with. That made me sore.”

“I thought you didn’t care?”

“Well, I don’t care. But the idea of little Cheryl grown up enough to marry anybody sort of got me. It’s crazy, I suppose, but once I . . . nearly hurt her, pretty badly. She didn’t cry, and wasn’t afraid, and I never forgot it. Sometimes out in the desert in the deep blue nights I could close my eyes and remember the flannel of her pajama sleeve around my neck, and her cold little fingers on my cheek. I’d kept on thinking of her as a six-year-old still. I guess it was the idea of her being grown up made me want to come back.”

“Then you didn’t want money from Mr. Trent?”

He flushed.

“Where’d you hear that?”

“Lieutenant Kelly.”

“That’s it, is it?” he said angrily. This time he did pace the floor. He stopped abruptly and stared down into my face.

“Does Kelly think I murdered Trent in cold blood—and does he think I did that to Agnes Hutton?” he demanded.

“I think the first is a definite possibility,” I said. “And I’ve even heard the second mentioned.”

He sat down quietly in the chair by the fireplace.

I proceeded to tell him several things. That practically everyone in the house subscribed to one or the other of the theories about Mr. Trent’s murder—either he had done it walking in his libido, as Mrs. Trent put it, or he’d done it in cold blood, deliberately. Cheryl was the only person who was absolutely convinced he was innocent.

“Is that straight, Louise?” he demanded eagerly.

“So help me,” I said. “In fact that’s what she went into your room to tell you, the other day, and you practically threw her out.”

“How could I stand there and look at her, knowing I’d killed her father—don’t you see?”

“Yes, I see,” I said. “But I don’t think she did. Why don’t you come along with me, and let’s talk to her about it.”

He jumped up and went down to her room. She was lying on the sofa with a handkerchief folded over her eyes. She sat up and smiled a questioning, apprehensive little smile. I thought at first she’d been crying, but there was no trace of tears.

“Sit down,” she said.

I told her why we’d come, and that Michael denied having anything to do with either Mr. Trent’s death or Agnes’s, and that I thought the two of them ought to talk it over, and then we’d see what we could do.

But she seemed to have changed since I’d seen her last. She straightened quickly, and looked at me and Michael as if she’d met us somewhere, but couldn’t quite remember either where or why.

“I think Mr. Doyle and Lieutenant Kelly can manage very well,” she said coolly. “It’s very sweet of you both to come, but I don’t think there’s anything to be gained by . . . by our talking about it.”

I stared at her, absolutely dumfounded. What had happened to the child? Then I looked at Michael. A dull flush had mounted his face. He got up and bowed with a sort of awkward dignity.

“I’m sorry, Cheryl,” he said. “I misunderstood something Louise said.”

Cheryl sat still and erect and white, staring at the door he closed quietly behind him. I stared at her.

Suddenly her eyes widened.

“Oh, Michael!” she cried, with a heartbreaking sob. She dashed across the room and threw open the door. I heard her feet pounding lightly in the deep carpet.

“Michael!” she called. “Michael!”

After a few moments she came back, broken and dejected, and fell on the floor at my feet, and buried her yellow head in my lap, sobs racking her slim body.

“Oh, Louise! What have I done, what have I done?”

“Something pretty bad, Cheryl,” I said.