IT SEEMED INCREDIBLE. EVERYBODY knew Fred and liked him. Liked Dorothy too. It was almost time for her baby to come, and at least a dozen women I knew were knitting an afghan for it. Not Fred. There must be some mistake. He had been at the club for five years or so, and his sturdy figure and old cap were as familiar to us as the water hazard at the eighth hole, or as the very greens he watched so carefully.
Tony Rutherford brought me the news. He had been at the club when it happened, and he looked more indignant than I had ever seen him.
“It’s an outrage,” he said. “These county policemen! What do they know? Why on earth pick on Fred? I doubt if he ever saw Juliette, and as for the Jordan woman—”
He merely voiced the resentment of the entire colony. Yet it had its advantages, that arrest of Fred Martin; at least so far as we were concerned. It was obvious that if Fred was guilty Arthur was innocent, and the result was that almost the entire summer colony, by ones and twos, dropped in for tea that afternoon.
That shift in public opinion could have amused me once, but now it did not seem to matter. What started as an informal gathering turned rapidly into an indignation meeting. People continued to come, and I remember that we ran out of cake almost at once, and that William was dodging about frantically, carrying cinnamon toast and anything else Lizzie could fix in a hurry.
It was entirely futile, of course. Nobody knew precisely why Fred had been detained, except that it had to do with our murders. Even that was partly surmise, based on Dorothy’s hysterical statement that he had nothing to do with them. Mansfield Dean, driving past Fred’s house, had heard someone hysterically crying, and had stopped his car. He found Dorothy alone, face down on her bed, wailing that Fred was innocent, and that the police had come and taken him away while he was eating his lunch.
He told that story himself, standing with a teacup in his hand and looking unhappy at the recollection. Part of it we knew. Fred spent his winters at a Florida club and his summers with us. The club provided a small house, and he earned a fair amount by giving lessons. He was a natural golf player, starting as a caddy years before in some Middle Western state. Then in Florida about two years before he had met Dorothy. She had been a schoolteacher, young and a bit above him in some ways, but devoted to him.
The rest of the story came from Dorothy herself, sobbed out to Mr. Dean as she lay on her bed.
According to her, Fred had been the same as usual that summer. Maybe a little more silent—he was a cheerful man ordinarily—but she had laid that to the trouble on the island. He did not like to leave her alone at night. When he joined the searchers he had made her lock herself in.
But, still according to her, Fred was as bewildered as everybody else at the mystery. She would see him sometimes in the evening, apparently trying to puzzle the thing out. Now and then he spoke of it.
“Do you think he had ever known Mrs. Ransom?” Mansfield Dean had asked her.
She shook her head. No. How could he? She had been gone before he came to the club. Possibly he had seen her in Florida, but what could that mean? She, Juliette, wouldn’t know him. She might have met him on the golf course, but she didn’t play golf, did she?
It was pitiable, but it answered no questions. True, Fred could easily reach the bridle path from the club. True also, he liked to hike and was often seen on free afternoons up in the hills. But there it ended. It was incredible that he had murdered Juliette and disposed of her body in Loon Lake. It was equally incredible that he had killed Helen Jordan on the bay path, got a boat, tied a rope around her neck and towed her out to sea. Not Fred, giving his patient lessons, standing cheerfully with his hands in his pockets and saying:
“See what you did? Lifted that shoulder again!”
I left them there, and went to the telephone. Dorothy said he had not come back, and I knew she was still crying. I called Mrs. Curtis and asked her to go there and look after things, and when I returned it was to hear our amateur detectives still arguing back and forth, and Mrs. Pendexter’s high thin voice.
“I’m no murderer,” she said. “Not but what I’d like to be now and then. But whoever disposed of the Jordan woman was a fool.”
“Why?”
“That boat had an anchor in it, didn’t it? Why didn’t he tie it to the body? Even I would know enough to do that, if I’d killed a woman.”
“Are you sure you didn’t?” somebody asked; and in the laughter that followed the party broke up.
Mansfield Dean was the last to go. He had waited deliberately, and with his car at the door he asked me if I would go up to dinner at the house with him.
“Just as you are,” he said. “We’re not fashionable, Miss Lloyd. We dine early when we’re alone. Agnes is better, and I don’t like to think of you here by yourself. After all,” he added, “you should celebrate a little. Whatever is behind this Fred Martin affair, it doesn’t hurt your brother’s case.”
I went, waiting only to brush back my hair and wash a bit. After my old car, his big limousine was luxuriously soft, and I leaned back and shut my eyes.
“That’s right,” he said. “Try to forget it. We won’t talk about it tonight.”
He lived up to that; a fine man, I thought, Mansfield Dean, with all his money; and a comforting one. Not a very happy one though. When I opened my eyes as we swung into the driveway I saw him as I had seen him the day I met him on the path above his house; with his head bent and his face a mask of sadness.
It altered as soon as I sat up.
“Here we are,” he said. “A cocktail will make you feel better.” He put a large friendly hand over mine. “Remember, no mysteries tonight. Just a little gossip, eh?”
As a result, for three hours or so that night I listened to his big voice booming, ate delicious food at a bright table in a bright room, and tried to forget my troubles.
Agnes Dean was quiet. Now and then her husband tried to draw her into the conversation, but it was as though she had to bring herself back from a far distance. He found occasion to tell me when she left the room after dinner that Doctor Jamieson was seriously worried about her, and I sensed tragedy in his voice.
“I don’t think he is very hopeful,” he said. “A man builds a life, works and gets somewhere; and then all at once he knows it doesn’t matter. There are other things…”
His voice trailed off, and the next minute he was bellowing for hot water. “This coffee’s like ink.” And Agnes Dean was back in the room again.
He walked home with me that night. He was not sorry for himself. I could see that. But he talked about his wife. They had come to the island because of the stimulating air, he said; but her condition was partly mental. She should have been kept in bed, but inactivity depressed her. “I suppose I ought not to be telling you my troubles,” he added apologetically. “You have enough of your own.”
It was one of our rare warm summer evenings. Usually sunset sees a chill in the air, but that night was lovely. He stopped once, I remember, and looked up at the stars.
“Queer,” he said, “but a sky like that always makes me feel that there is a God after all.”
I knew what he meant. He was facing the death of his wife, and was trying to comfort himself; an unimaginative man, given to having his own way in life, and now confronting something he could not control.
There was a message from Mrs. Curtis waiting for me when I got back. The police were still holding Fred, a detective had come over with a warrant and searched the house, and Dorothy was sick. Mrs. Curtis had sent for the doctor.
I took the car and went out at once. It did not require much experience to know what was happening, and I sent for a nurse from the hospital immediately. I stayed throughout the night, and just at dawn Dorothy’s baby was born, a son.
I remember Dorothy’s expression when we told her. It was almost defiant.
“I’m calling him Fred,” she said, “after his father.”
It was some days before I learned the full details of that arrest. They had taken Fred at noon. Russell Shand and a deputy had gone for him, calling him away from the lunch table.
“We want to ask you a few questions, Fred,” the sheriff said. “No use bothering your wife. Better come along quietly.”
Fred had not seemed surprised.
“Does this mean that I’m under arrest?” he asked.
“Not unless you won’t come otherwise.”
He had gone back for his cap, and Dorothy saw him.
“I’ll be back in an hour or two, honey,” he said.
She protested.
“What is it?” she asked. “You haven’t finished your lunch.”
He told her he was not hungry, but she followed him to the door. The two men were on the porch, and she saw them. She knew them both, and she faced them gallantly, her distorted body rigid.
“What do you want him for?” she demanded. “He hasn’t done anything.”
“Nothing to be excited about, Mrs. Martin,” said the sheriff gently. “Just want to have a little talk with him.”
But she looked at Fred, and was suddenly terrified. He was like a man going to his execution; stiff, and as if he did not really see her, or indeed see anything at all.
“You’re arresting him! How dare you? How dare you come to this house and do a thing like that? Everybody knows him. Knows he’s incapable of anything wrong.”
Fred turned to her then and put his arms around her.
“It’s all right, honey,” he said huskily. “Don’t get excited. Remember the kid.”
That was his good-bye to her. He turned around and waved to her from the car. She did not wave back; she stood gazing after him, as though she would never see him again.
They took him to Clinton, and to the courthouse there. They were all silent on the way over. Once Fred asked to stop and buy some cigarettes, and the deputy went into the store with him. At the courthouse he was taken to the sheriff’s office. Bullard and a couple of detectives were waiting, but so far as I can learn it was Russell Shand who asked that first amazing question.
“Just answer this straight, Fred,” he said. “When and where did you marry Julia Bates?”
He must have known all along that it was coming; that long-dead past of his, rising now to confront him. Nevertheless, it was some time before he answered.
“In nineteen-twenty-three,” he said thickly. “We ran away.”
“How long did you stay together?”
“Less than a year. I was traveling then, selling sporting goods, and playing some golf on the side. I didn’t like the way she carried on while I was on the road.”
“So you left her?”
“It was about an even split. We were both satisfied.”
“Was there a divorce?”
“She wrote me she’d got one. In Reno.”
“But that’s all. You got no papers?”
“Well, I was on the road a good bit. Things get lost. No. I never got any.”
“When and why did you change your name?”
He looked surprised at that.
“I didn’t change it. It was Theodore, but everybody called me Fred. I don’t know why. Guess my mother started it. She didn’t—” he gulped—“she didn’t like the other.”
Then they pulled their trump card. Bullard did it, leaning forward, his plump face vindictive.
“Isn’t it a fact,” he said, “that you afterwards learned there had been no divorce? And that you learned it from Mrs. Ransom herself?”
He was silent for a long time. The room was still, except for the ticking of a wall clock. Then he shrugged his shoulders.
“That’s right,” he said. “I didn’t know it until she came here this summer.”
“You were married by that time. Your wife was going to have a child. Then Mrs. Ransom saw you, and told you. Your wife was not your wife. Your child would be illegitimate. And so you killed her.”
He jumped to his feet.
“It’s a lie,” he shouted. “I wanted to kill her. God knows she deserved it. I could hardly keep my hands off her. But as God is my witness, I never touched her.”
That was Bullard. When the sheriff took up the interrogation he was less brutal.
“Why did she tell you, Fred?” he inquired. “She was sitting pretty, the way I see it. As the divorced wife of Arthur Lloyd she was drawing a fat alimony. If it came out that the marriage to Arthur Lloyd wasn’t legal she stood to lose it, didn’t she?”
“She knew I wouldn’t talk. How could I?”
“That wasn’t the question. Why did she tell you?”
“She wanted money,” he said sullenly.
“Did she come to the island for that purpose?”
“No. She didn’t know I was here. I just happened to meet her. I’d been walking. She was riding, and I nearly dropped dead when I saw her.”
Bullard leaned forward again.
“Where was that? That meeting?”
“Up in the hills,” said Fred defiantly. “I’d hiked up there, and we met. I think she was scared at first. She looked that way. She didn’t have much to say either. Just ‘Hello, Fred. What are you doing here?’ But she must have thought it over. She called me at the club the next day, and I met her later on. That was when she told me about the divorce.”
“And asked for money?”
“She’d talked to somebody. Mr. Rutherford, maybe. He knew I’d saved a bit. I’d asked him what to do with it. I didn’t know about her alimony then. I didn’t even know she’d married Mr. Lloyd. I didn’t know anything about her at all. What I wanted was to keep her quiet, until—”
“And you did keep her quiet,” said Bullard roughly.
They went over and over that part of the story. Juliette had not followed him to the island. She hadn’t known he was there. The idea of getting money from him must have been a secondary one. After all, the little he had wouldn’t amount to much. But he had thought she looked worried. She had said something about getting all she could lay her hands on and then leaving the country. He hadn’t paid much attention to that. She had always threatened to go somewhere else when things did not suit her.
It was then that they switched to Helen Jordan.
“Did you know her?”
“No. That is, there was a girl in Julia’s town by that name, or something like it. I never knew her.”
“Did you know she was here with Mrs. Ransom?”
“No. Not until she disappeared.”
“Ever see her?”
“Never.”
“But it would be natural, if Mrs. Ransom saw you, that she would mention it to this Jordan woman?”
“How do I know? I tell you I hadn’t seen her for years.” His voice rose. “She’d changed her name to Juliette Ransom, and that didn’t mean a thing to me.”
They switched again. Had he a telephone? On the night Helen Jordan disappeared had she called him up? Did he meet her that same night on the bay path? Could he run a motor launch?
He must have grown dizzy with that interrogation, going on as it did for hours. They let him smoke, but he had had no lunch. When they brought in two or three other men and lined him up with them he was unsteady on his feet. And he was apparently utterly bewildered when they brought in a man from the camp on Pine Hill and asked him to look them over.
“Size and build,” said the sheriff. “We’re not asking for a positive identification.”
The man was cautious. He eyed them all, even asked them to turn around. In the end he nodded and was taken out of the room. Not until long after did Fred know that he had selected him as having the general proportions of the mysterious visitor to Allen Pell’s trailer, the day he disappeared.
They held him. Even the sheriff knew the motive was there. They put him in a cell that night, and at least they saw that he had a decent meal. But he did not eat it. He sat with his head in his hands, wondering about Dorothy, wondering how to get out of the trouble he was in. It had hit him suddenly, whereas the authorities had had several days to prepare; ever since the sheriff’s return, in fact. For in one of Jordan’s letters which he had not shown me was the name of Fred Martin.
“Things have certainly changed,” Jordan had written, “since the time when she ran away with Fred Martin. You’d think, to see her, that she had never heard of him! Or of Reno.”
They had had time to look up the records too; time enough to have the records at Reno checked, and to discover that no such divorce was recorded there; time to check over Fred’s activities also. He told them that on the night of Jordan’s murder he was at home with Dorothy, and that on the morning Juliette disappeared he gave a golf lesson at nine-thirty.
But it was not far from the club to the bridle path. He would have had time to do what was done, and be back for the lesson. And so far as Allen Pell was concerned, he admitted that he had been in the hills that afternoon.
He maintained, however, that he had not gone near the camp, nor had he even seen the trailer. And as far as going there that night, he denied it absolutely.
“Why would I go there?” he asked. “I’d seen the Pell fellow around, but I’d never talked to him. I didn’t even know his name until there was all this fuss about him.”
It was some weeks before I saw that record, taken down in shorthand by a clerk from Bullard’s office and later transcribed. It seemed rather pitiful to me. Bullard was exultant. After Fred had been taken away he leaned back in his chair and grinned at the sheriff.
“There’s the case!” he said. “Sewed up in a bag.”
The sheriff lit his pipe before he answered.
“Maybe,” he said. “Fellow looks guilty as hell. But it seems to me the bag isn’t big enough, Bullard.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Doesn’t hold it all. Too many odds and ends left over. What about that letter Helen Jordan carried away and locked up in her suitcase? You can’t get an ‘L’ out of either Theodore or Fred Martin. And what’s the idea of wiping the fingerprints off that trailer? Who got away with Pell anyhow? Martin didn’t even know him. And to go way back, who tried to get into the Lloyd house, and did get in? Got in more than once, maybe; once to tear up the place, and the second time to throw Marcia Lloyd’s maid down the stairs—or whatever happened to her. Who broke into that apartment in New York and went over the Ransom woman’s effects?”
That last was a mistake. Bullard laughed.
“I thought you said Fred Martin was in New York that week. Sure he would go there. He’d killed her. He had to be sure there were no other letters out of that past of his, no marriage certificate. He’d done the job. Now he had to mop up after it.”