HE CAME BACK THE next day. Not alone. He had two New York detectives with him. They took a drawing room and sat up half the night, discussing the case. The alarm for Allen—he was still Allen to me—was out in earnest now. Once again radio and teletype were busy. There was an intensive search going on, this time with a grim determination and a dogged persistence that were new.
Only Russell Shand kept his head.
“Sure I want to find him,” he told Bullard. “I haven’t said yet I want to see him convicted; that’s all. And I’d hold onto Martin. A day or two more won’t hurt him.”
For as the facts became known, as such facts do become known, there was a rising demand that Fred Martin be released. The Clinton Paper had an editorial on the subject.
“We have the anomalous situation of one man being held for a murder, while an intensive search goes on for another individual suspected of the same crime; a man, moreover, who already has a conviction for manslaughter to his credit. Granting that Fred Martin had a possible motive, his past record is clean. He married a second time under a misapprehension, but there is nothing essentially criminal in such an act. On the other hand, the man Page—or Pell, as he called himself—was not only in the vicinity during all three murders. He had known Juliette Ransom well. He undoubtedly knew Helen Jordan, the second victim, and was afraid of what she might tell, and his fingerprints have been found on the murder car owned by Doctor Jamieson.
“Compared with all this, the case against Fred Martin becomes negligible.”
It was on the second day after his return that the sheriff brought one of the detectives to the house. Probably Bullard had been riding him hard, for he was grim and unsmiling.
“Sorry, Marcia,” he said. “This is Mr. Warren. He’s working with us. He wants to ask you some questions.”
I was trembling, but at least I kept my voice steady. There was a fire in the library, for the weather had turned cold, and the sheriff stood in front of it, not talking but watching me.
“Just tell him everything, Marcia,” he said. “We know most of it anyhow.”
I could not do that, but I went as far as I could.
I told of my first meeting with Allen, and of going to the trailer for tea; but when I explained the reason for going back to the camp the next night, the detective stopped me.
“What do you think he meant, that he would let no innocent man go to the chair?”
“I thought he knew something he had not told me.”
He looked significantly at the sheriff; but he was gazing serenely out a window.
“I see. And did he say why he wanted an alibi for your brother?”
“He didn’t think he was guilty.”
“Still, wasn’t that rather unusual? Unless he actually knew your brother was innocent?”
“How could he know that? He didn’t even know Arthur.”
“He might know who was guilty, Miss Lloyd.”
There was more, of course. Some of it I have forgotten. At last he came directly to the point.
“You don’t know where he is now? Pell, I mean.”
“No.”
“Just how often have you seen him?”
“I don’t know exactly. Five or six times.”
“When did you see him last?”
I did not mention the cruiser. I could not.
“I was giving a dinner. I went out onto the porch and he was there. I had only a minute to talk to him. People were arriving.”
“And the date?”
I gave it to him and he wrote it down. Then he leaned forward.
“What was that talk about, Miss Lloyd? Please be accurate. You may have to repeat this under oath.”
He looked surprised when I told him.
“He wanted you to leave the island? Did he say why?”
“He seemed to think I wasn’t safe here.”
Warren sat still, drumming with his fingers on the arm of his chair. The sheriff smiled for the first time.
“I told you, Warren,” he said. “Too many things don’t jibe. Why did he want Marcia to leave the island? So he wouldn’t kill her? Who put that hatchet I told you about in the room upstairs? Who in hades knocked Pell out and then carted him off to a hospital? And why didn’t he kill the doctor when he made that call on him, if he was going to kill him at all? They were out together in that same car.”
Warren was silent.
“What’s more,” the sheriff went on, “a man can kill people with his car and not be a killer. Look at that key ring! If the gardener here had found it a month or so ago it would have caused Arthur Lloyd a lot of trouble. But Arthur Lloyd was no killer. We’ve had one attack and one murder since, with a clear alibi for him in both cases. As it is—”
“What about the key ring?” I gasped.
The sheriff looked at me and smiled.
“It’s like this, Marcia. I expect it was Arthur who found that body up the creek. Just happened on it, most likely. Well, what would he be likely to do? He knew there was a good circumstantial case against him. What’s more, he was a lawyer and he knew that without a body there was no murder, in the eyes of the law. No corpus delicti.”
“You mean that he buried her?” I asked weakly.
“That’s about it. Mike had the keys to the toolshed that night, so he broke in and got a spade. It stood out like a sore thumb all along that whoever buried her did it decently. She wasn’t just tossed in and covered up. It was a fool thing to do, probably, but after all she’d been his wife. Then after he did it he found he’d lost his keys! Must have been a pretty tough situation for him, when you think about it.”
I could imagine that now. Poor Arthur! I found my lips trembling. The detective looked almost shocked.
“Took a good-sized chance, sheriff, didn’t you?” he said. “If you knew all that—”
The sheriff smiled.
“I know these people,” he said. “You don’t.”
The detective got up. It was apparent that he disapproved of all this. These were not the hard-boiled methods of a big city. All this nonsense about knowing people! Who knew anybody else when it came to murder?
He cleared his throat.
“We might look at those rooms, sheriff,” he said. “You’ve got that hatchet on your brain!”
I went up with them. It was a bright cold day, with the sun pouring in; and nothing could have been more normal than the hospital suite appeared, now set in order again. The wallpaper was as fresh as the day it had been put on, twenty-odd years ago. In the nurse’s room the cot was neatly made up, and the trunks and boxes were closed and in their places. The broken china had been removed, but the toys remained, and on top of a wardrobe Arthur’s old cage still stood, mute reminder of the white mice he had kept, and which had filled in his convalescence from everything, from whooping cough to mumps.
I stood there looking at it. It reminded me of something, but I could not think what it was. Mother had loathed the creatures, but I had liked them. It had been one of my virtues in Arthur’s eyes. Then what—
The men examined the other room carefully. I could hear them raising the window, and even turning back the rug. When they reappeared it was the sheriff who spoke.
“That night Maggie was hurt up here, Marcia,” he said. “She ever remember any more about it?”
“She thinks she was walking in her sleep. She has an idea she was in that room when she was struck.”
“What part of the room?”
“In the corner by the bed there.”
I went to the doorway and showed him, and he went back again and rapped on the wall. It was solid, and he looked baffled.
“What was she doing there?” he asked. “Or does she remember?”
“She thinks she was on her knees, as though she was looking for something. But she doesn’t know what it was.”
They went away soon after that, Mr. Warren looking faintly amused and mildly superior.
“There’s your hatchet!” he said, as they got into the sheriff’s car. “A sleepwalker! You’ll probably find that she carried it up there herself.”
“Might be,” said the sheriff. “Only trouble with that, she’s a peace-loving woman, and it’s kind of hard to think of her carrying it about here with her. Then, too, where did she get it? They don’t stock that kind in town.”
I was left, still trying to remember about Arthur’s mouse cage. That afternoon something happened which drove all thought of it out of my head. William, bringing me my tea in the morning room at five o’clock, told me about it. He put down the tray, lifted and replaced the sliced lemon, coughed apologetically, and said:
“I understand they have found the man they were looking for, miss.”
“What man?” I said, my heart sinking.
“The painter. Mr. Pell.”
I still do not know how he learned it. I never have known how our secrets, such as they are, are always known by our servants before we learn them. But I do know that I dropped the empty tea cup and broke it to pieces.
“Where did they find him?”
“Well, they didn’t exactly find him, miss.” He had stooped and was picking bits of china from the floor. “That’s one of the old Dresden cups. Your mother thought a lot of those cups,” he said, with reproach in his voice.
“What do you mean?” I said frantically. “Get up, William, and look at me. What is this story you are trying to tell me?”
He looked hurt.
“He wasn’t exactly found,” he repeated, straightening stiffly. “I understand he walked into the courthouse at Clinton and gave himself up, miss.”
I sat there, staring at him. I believe he brought a brush and pan and gathered up the scattered pieces of the cup. I think he spoke to me, and I answered. But I remember nothing until Maggie found me with my tea untouched and my face gray, and with William’s help got me upstairs and into my room. There she put me to bed, an electric pad at my feet—“They’re like ice, miss”—and brought me some whisky in a glass.
She asked no questions. She merely mothered me. When I was breathing better she stood over the bed and put a hand on my forehead, as she had done so often when I was a child.
“I expect he’s all right,” she said, in her expressionless voice. “That Russell Shand is no fool. They’d have arrested Arthur if it hadn’t been for him. There’s a lot of stuff nobody knows yet. When that comes out—”
“Oh, Maggie!” I said, and cried as I had not cried for years, with my head on her stiffly starched breast.
The details came in slowly. On that afternoon, at two o’clock, a man walked into the courthouse. The place was strange to him, and he asked for the sheriff’s office. The sheriff was out, and after some hesitation he inquired for Bullard. He was neat enough, but he looked tired and dusty; and the secretary in the District Attorney’s outer office looked at him askance.
“He’s busy,” she said. “He’s in conference.”
Allen smiled, as if something amused him.
“You might take in my name anyhow—or a stick of dynamite!” he said. “You’ll find the effect will be about the same.”
It was. Bullard was inside with a half dozen men: two deputy sheriffs, a reporter or two, a county detective, and one of the men from New York. The desk was littered, and in the resulting rush for the door papers were scattered all over the floor. The two deputies got out first and caught Allen by the arms. He stood perfectly still, and they looked a little foolish.
“I understand you are looking for me,” he said. “The name is Page. Langdon Page.”
“You dirty so-and-so!” said the New York man furiously. “What’s the idea anyhow? If you think you’re going to softsoap yourself out of this mess—”
“There’s a young lady in the room,” said Allen, grinning at him. “You might remember that. I suppose there is some place else to go?”
“And how!” said the New York detective derisively.