Miss Withers Regrets (13 page)

“I can imagine,” agreed the schoolteacher.

“Er—yes. It was very lucky for everyone concerned that the draft took the young man away.”

“For everyone except the young man, at any rate.”

Abbott didn’t smile. “It was unfortunate that he returned. You see, Helen is the sentimental feminine type. Not at all like Lawn.”

Miss Withers could agree with him there, at any rate. “Your daughters do seem rather unlike, for sisters,” she angled hopefully.

“Half-sisters,” he confessed in his sepulchral voice. “A minor poet who once visited our house said that Helen and Lawn typified the women of Eden. Eve and Lilith, you know. The wife and the mistress type.”

“Very poetic,” agreed Miss Withers. “But after all, it was Eve who got into trouble with the snake, wasn’t it? I never heard anything scandalous about Lilith, outside of her being an Assyrian demon, of course.”

Thurlow Abbott wasn’t listening; he was merely waiting for her to stop talking so that he could start again. “I do wish, Miss Withers,” he said, coming closer, “that you would take anything Lawn says to you with a big grain of salt. You see, Helen’s mother was a choir singer, a very sweet and gentle person. After her tragic death—she was the first woman to be killed in a motor car accident on Long Island—I traveled for a few seasons, and there in vaude—I mean, in concert, I fell in with a very fascinating wildcat of a woman. The Princess Zoraida, Egyptian mystic, she called herself. Her powers were, to tell the truth, unusual. She was Lawn’s mother.”

“Really! And she abandoned you with the babe in your arms? It sounds a little like
Way Down East
in reverse.”

“It was on Pan-time, in Seattle,” Abbott corrected her. “Of course the Princess and I had gone through a ceremony, but I had reason after she walked out on me to think that she already had a husband or two scattered throughout the theatrical profession.”

“How very unfortunate. It cannot be easy for a man to try to bring up two children.”

He bowed. “I had hoped, of course, that they would carry on the Abbott name in the theater, but it was not to be. Helen has the beauty but not the temperament. And Lawn—I’m afraid that the consciousness of her dark heritage has embittered her. She has never felt that she belonged, in spite of everything that I could do.” Thurlow Abbott sighed heavily. “You understand, of course.”

“I think I’m beginning to,” admitted Miss Withers, and took her departure.

H
AVING TAKEN HER DEPARTURE,
Miss Hildegarde Withers had to bring it back, ring the Cairns bell, and politely request permission to use the telephone in order to summon a taxi. As it turned out, she might as well have saved her breath, for the hotel desk informed her that both the local vehicles were out on calls.

There was nothing for it, then, but to march out upon the highway and head towards town. The schoolteacher had barely got into her stride when a small black coupe came rocking along behind her. She hastily made the universal gesture with her thumb, and the car slowed down.

It turned out to be Mame Boad at the wheel, headed for town to do her marketing and obviously pleased at having company. She was considerably less happy a few minutes later when Miss Withers reminded her of their previous meeting.

“I have been thinking a good deal lately,” the schoolteacher said, “about the call that you and Dr. Radebaugh and Commander Bennington paid upon me when I first came to Shoreham.”

“Oh, that!” answered Mrs. Boad. “Nothing of importance, really. We were all upset at the time, of course. But since then the situation has changed.”

“You mean, otherwise taken care of?” Miss Withers pressed wickedly.

Mame Boad did not answer, but twin spots of orange rouge flamed suddenly on her cheekbones. They rode on in silence for perhaps half a mile. “I’ve been thinking of dropping in on you for a chat one of these days,” Miss Withers continued. “You’re the Cairnses’ nearest neighbor, are you not?”

Mrs. Boad thought about it and then cautiously admitted that she guessed she was. “Huntley Cairns bought the place last year, and they lived in the old house until they started to tear it down to make room for the new one.”

“And Mrs. Cairns’s sister uses your stable?”

“We keep her horse, yes. Of course Cairns pays—or paid—half the wages of the groom who comes in by the day.”

“A very cooperative arrangement. I suppose that a wild, violent girl like Lawn is pretty hard on horseflesh, isn’t she?”

“What?” The little car jerked slightly. “Lord, no! That girl takes her big gelding out every day, and half the time instead of giving him a decent workout she’ll get off and let him graze, or just trot him along in the surf to strengthen his forelegs. Willy—that’s the groom—says that Lawn has never once brought that fellow in sweating. She likes to do most of the grooming, too, fixes him bran mashes and all that sort of thing. I think she likes horses better than people.”

“A point of view not too unreasonable, in view of the sort of world we live in. By the way, Mrs. Boad, curiosity has always been my besetting sin. I wonder if you’d tell me just what it was that you and your friends were so anxious to have me investigate some weeks ago. It needn’t go any further—”

Mame Boad sailed serenely through a boulevard stop. “But I’m afraid I can’t answer that question,” she said abruptly. “At least not now. Perhaps after I have the consent of the others involved … The matter was personal and very delicate, you see.”

“More delicate than murder? I wonder.” Miss Withers received no answer to that and had expected none. “By the way, if you are going in that direction, please drop me off at the police station. Or on second thought, right here on the corner. I believe there’s a bookstore—yes, there it is. Thank you so much.”

Even after she was inside the shop Miss Withers could see Mame Boad peering in at her from the black coupe as she drove slowly away. “Let her stew a little,” decided the schoolteacher calmly. A clerk approached her, and she asked for a copy of
Oriental Moments.

The young man tugged at his wisp of moustache for a moment and then gave it as his opinion that she wouldn’t be able to buy a copy in Shoreham. “It came out last year, I believe, but there wasn’t much call for it,” he told her. “It’s probably out of print now, but we could try ordering it for you.”

She shook her head slowly. The young man came closer and lowered his voice. “We do happen to have a copy of
The Chinese Room,
and
Trio,
and—”

“I beg your pardon!” Miss Withers shook her head emphatically. “Is
Oriental Moments
that sort of book?”

He smiled. “No, madam. But from the title, certain of our customers have thought so.”

She turned and headed out of the store, but in the doorway she heard him add: “I think there’s a copy in the rental library downstairs, if it isn’t out.”

There was, and it wasn’t. A moment later, at the price of library membership and upon her promise to pay three cents a day for its use, Miss Hildegarde Withers came into temporary possession of
Oriental Moments,
red jacket and all. Moreover, on a card stuck into the front of the book was a list of the names of previous renters. This she studied with great care, but the only one implicated in the Cairns case who was listed there turned out to be Adele Beale, and that had been more than six months ago.

The schoolteacher went out into the street with her nose buried in the volume, expecting the worst, in spite of what the clerk had said, because of the provocative Chinese damsel depicted undressed on the cover. But the book turned out to be a series of notes and impressions of life in Chungking by a State Department employee stranded there during the time it was the temporary wartime capital.

From the first few pages Miss Withers could see that the author, in typical State Department fashion, had been bored with his work, superior to the Chinese, jittery about the Russians, and consistently myopic about the actual forces and cross-purposes which had been surging all around him. There were pages and pages about receptions and cocktail parties, with detailed accounts of the extreme difficulty of getting Scotch flown in over the Hump from India, but what this had to do with the murder of Huntley Cairns, or anything else, Miss Withers was at the moment unable to tell.

She came down the street, still reading, and very nearly turned into the Elite Turkish Baths for Gentlemen Only instead of her proper destination. Crossing the street, she was about to enter the Shoreham police station when she heard a shrill whistle behind her and turned to face Lawn Abbott. The girl was wearing, in addition to open shirt, blue jeans, and jodhpur shoes, a very worried expression.

“Fancy meeting you here!” said Miss Withers.

“Wait, oh, please wait,” Lawn cried, “before you go in. Are you going to try to get permission to see Pat?”

“Among other things, yes.”

“I have to talk to you first. It’s very important.”

Miss Withers smiled and nodded. “Important to whom?”

“To—to Pat, of course. Listen, did my sister give you some old letters to return to him?”

“Some
what
?”

“Oh, don’t be like that at a time like this. I know she did. It would be just like her. I know where she kept them hidden, and they weren’t there, so I charged her with it. She denied it, but Helen can’t fool me. That’s why I rushed down here. You mustn’t return those to Pat!”

“And why not, child?”

“Read them,” Lawn said bitterly. “I have. I suppose you wouldn’t consider it strictly honorable, but I found them in an old cookbook, where she had them cached. Nobody ever looks into a cookbook, not in our house anyway. Don’t you see what I’m driving at? Those letters were mostly written to Helen after she was married. Pat was overseas and very bitter. He said a lot of things about Huntley and what he’d like to do to him, things that the police could twist—”

“But your sister didn’t say anything about my giving them to the police!”

“She thought perhaps you would, though. You’re supposed to be such friends with that inspector from New York. Or maybe she asked you to slip them to Pat in jail—where ten to one they’d be discovered and taken away from him. I have my own ideas about why Helen did it. It couldn’t be that she was just trying to get rid of the letters or she could have burned them.”

“At any rate,” Miss Withers decided firmly, “the letters can stay right where they are for the time being.” She patted her capacious pocketbook firmly. “At the moment I’m much more interested in something else. Have you ever seen this book before?”

Lawn stared blankly at
Oriental Moments.
Then she shook her head. “But why—”

“I don’t quite know why,” Miss Withers began, and broke off as the door beside them opened and Jed Nicolet came out, hurrying a little. He seemed about to plunge past them when Lawn turned and called. Surprised, he turned, recognized Lawn, and his sharp, vulpine face brightened.

“Hello-ello!” he said. “What’s up? Are you two hunting together now?”

“I was about to make an effort to see the prisoner,” Miss Withers admitted. “How is he taking it?”

The lawyer shrugged. “How should I know?”

“But I thought an attorney could always get in to see his client.”

“He is supposed to, according to the law. If he can find where said client is being held. I could even have had him out on a writ, I think, only—”

“Only the police have him hidden somewhere?” Miss Withers nodded slowly. The inspector was up to his old tricks.

“Nothing like that,” Jed Nicolet admitted. “Pat is upstairs all right, in one of the nice moldy cells that the county provides. Only it seems that he has decided that he doesn’t want a lawyer, and if he does have a lawyer he doesn’t want me.” Nicolet started to laugh a little nervously. Then he stopped laughing and choked.

“What’s the matter?” Lawn demanded.

“Nothing—nothing at all,” Nicolet said. His face, Miss Withers noticed, was gray. “See you later,” he called over his shoulder, and went hurrying down to the sidewalk.

“Whatever in the world!” gasped Miss Withers.

“Jed isn’t himself at all,” Lawn murmured softly. “Do you suppose—he seemed to be staring at that book in your hand.”

“I noticed that too.”

“But why should he turn white and run off as if somebody were after him?”

“It is just remotely possible,” observed the schoolteacher, “that somebody is!”

Lawn thought about that remark for a long moment. “I think I see what you mean,” the girl said. “That would change everything, wouldn’t it? I mean, if the triangle idea was all wrong and the police had to start looking—”

“For a hexagon? In my opinion this entire case is much more complicated than any figure in plane geometry. It’s trigonometry, at least. Well, I came down here to make an attempt to see Pat Montague. Do you want to come with me?”

Lawn hesitated. “I can’t bear to think of Pat behind bars. I can’t bear to think of anybody behind bars, for that matter. It isn’t humane to lock people up. I’ve been there myself, you see.”

“You have?”

“Oh, didn’t you know? Yes, I spent three days locked up when I was seventeen.” She laughed suddenly at Miss Withers’s expression. “Oh, it wasn’t anything so very criminal. It was just that I’d run away from home, and the Atlanta police held me until father could come down and lead me home in disgrace.”

“You’ve had quite a career, haven’t you?” Miss Withers’s voice was faintly envious.

“An unlucky one, at least so far,” Lawn admitted. “And right now I don’t think I’d have much luck with Pat Montague. Not that I wouldn’t like to …” She shook her head. “I guess I’ll run along.”

“Shall I give him a message?”

“Why …” Lawn thought. “Just tell him that I know he’s innocent and that it won’t be long before everybody else knows it too.” She pressed Miss Withers’s arm and turned back swiftly towards the curb and Helen’s light car, which she had parked there at an angle. “I’d better get this heap home before my sister gets more furious at me than she is already. Good night, and good luck.”

Miss Withers stared after her. “It’s the younger generation, knock-knock-knocking at the door,” she hummed to herself. She was suddenly glad that she had never tried bringing up anything more complicated than kittens, puppies, canaries, and tropical fish.