The Door (10 page)

Dick had telephoned me during the day, when the identity of Florence Gunther had been given out by the police, and begged me to send Judy away.

“She’s not safe,” he said, worried. “Until we know what’s behind this nobody’s safe.”

I agreed to do what I could, and when he came in at six o’clock looking rather the worse for wear, he was more cheerful. I had kept the news of the murder from Judy until then, thinking she might hear it better from him, and she greeted him with a great coolness.

“Don’t come near me,” she said. “And don’t ask him to dinner, Elizabeth Jane. He walked out on me last night.”

“Listen to her! If I don’t work I don’t eat, my child. These millionaire’s daughters!” he said to me. “They think honest toil is cutting coupons. Money’s nothing to them.”

Then he remembered something, and put his hand in his pocket.

“Speaking of money,” he said, “hanged if I didn’t forget I’d had a windfall. Look what I found!”

He drew out of his pocket a blue beaded bag, and Judy snatched it from him.

“I suppose you’ve advertised it?” she said severely.

“Darling, I am this moment out of my bath. Of course I shall,” he added virtuously. “‘Found: bag.’ Vague but honest, eh what? It’s got ten dollars in it!”

“Where did you find it?”

“I just drove out from the Bell estate in my Rolls-Royce, and there it was.”

“On the street?”

“On the street. Right outside your gates, oh daughter of Eve. I said to myself: ‘What’s that?’ Then I replied: ‘It’s a pocketbook.’ Then I shouted ‘whoa,’ leaped from my trusty steed and—”

It was then that Judy found the typed slip and drew it out. “You won’t have to advertise. Here’s her name; Florence Gunther.”

“Florence Gunther?” I said. “My God!”

It was then that Dick told her of the murder the night before. He was as careful as he could be not to horrify her, but the bare facts were dreadful enough. She went very pale, but she watched him steadily, and somehow I got the impression that he was telling her more than appeared on the surface, that between them there was some understanding, some secret theory against which they were checking these new facts.

“On the Warrenville road? Then she was taken there in a car?”

“Presumably, yes.”

“Did anybody see the car?”

“The police are working on that. Apparently not.”

“And you’ve checked up on—things?”

“They seem all right. Absolutely O. K.”

Still with this mysterious bond between them they took me out to where Dick had found the bag, and standing there he pointed out where he had found it; not near the pavement, but almost in the center of the street. It had shown up plainly; at first he had thought it was a bird, and veered to avoid it. Then he saw what it was.

“You might figure it like this,” he said. “She’s coming again to see you. She suspects something, and she’s got to tell it. Now, there are two ways for that bag to have been where I found it. Either she saw somebody and ducked out into the street; or she was in a car already, was shot while in the car, and the bag dropped out. I think she was in a car. You see there’s no blood,” he ended awkwardly.

Judy looked a little sick, but she spoke practically enough.

“Couldn’t he have shot her there, dragged her quickly into the shrubbery, and then got a car? She must have been here at eight-thirty or so, and the body wasn’t found until after ten.”

Well, it was possible; but a careful search of the hedge, and the lilacs, forsythia and syringa bushes inside of it—some of them in leaf, for the spring had been early—revealed nothing whatever.

I find myself dwelling on that question of time, which Judy brought up. It puzzled the police for a long time, but now we know about it; the driving about, with that dead woman lolling on the seat; the decision to use the river, and the bridge crowded and no hope there; the purchase of oil at some remote spot, leaving the car and its grisly contents at a safe distance; and finally the Warrenville road and the sleeping farmhouse. And the sick cow.

The sick cow! Everything safe, another perfect crime. And then, of all possible mischances, a sick cow.

T
HAT WAS ON MONDAY.
Tuesday morning, Jim being still in bed and incommunicado by the doctor’s orders, the District Attorney sent again for Amos, Jim’s servant, and terrified him into a number of damaging statements. That early dinner of Jim’s, the fact that he had left the house immediately after it, and that he had carried the sword-stick, all of these came out. And finally the frightened wretch told that the stick had disappeared.

That was enough, more than enough. After that Jim was under surveillance day and night, one of those apparently casual affairs, but sufficient to report his movements. He made no movements, however. He lay in his bed, and if he knew the significance of the men who moved back and forward along Pine Street, or that his telephone and mail were both under espionage, he made no sign.

But, although suspicion was now directed at Jim, it was only suspicion.

On Tuesday night Inspector Harrison came again to see me. I was growing to like the man. He was to oppose me and all of us for a long time, but he was at least sturdily honest with me, and he was to try later on to be helpful.

He was very grave that night. He sent Judy away, to her annoyance, closed the library door, and then turned to me.

“I came here tonight with a purpose, Miss Bell,” he said at last. “I want you to think, and think hard. Is there anything at all, however remote—I don’t care how absurd—which would provide a motive for the killing of Sarah Gittings? For this second crime is subsidiary to that. That I know. Think, now; some remote family trouble, some secret she knew, even some scene at which she happened to be present.”

“We don’t have family scenes, Inspector.”

“Nonsense! Every family has them.”

“There is nothing, I assure you. Walter Somers doesn’t hit it off with his stepmother, but they don’t quarrel. They simply keep apart.”

“And Mr. Blake?”

“Why should he quarrel with them? They have been very good to him. I think Mrs. Somers even makes him a small allowance, and a man doesn’t quarrel with his bread and butter.”

“Tell me something about the Somers family. I know they are wealthy. What else?”

“Howard has been married twice. His first wife eloped with another man, and died in Europe many years ago. After her death he married my cousin, Katherine. They have one child, Judy, who is here. And they are very happy.”

“And that’s the whole story?”

“Yes, except that Howard Somers is in bad health. He has had at least one attack of angina pectoris. He had that here last year, while I was abroad with his family. He almost died, and I suppose the end is only a question of time.”

“I see. How old a man is he?”

“Almost sixty. Quite a handsome man.”

“Now, about this sick spell. When you say he was sick here, do you mean in this house?”

“No. The house was closed. He was at a hotel, the Imperial. Sarah Gittings came down to take care of him.”

“And Mr. Blake? Was he here at that time?”

“He was in Maine. He has a small cottage there.”

I believe now that certain of these interrogations were purely idle, designed to put me off my guard. For the next instant, in the same tone, he asked me a question so unexpected that it found me totally unprepared for it.

“And when did you give Mr. Blake the walking stick which belonged to your grandfather?”

I must have showed my agitation, for he smiled.

“Come, come,” he said. “You’re a poor witness for the defense, Miss Bell! I see Amos has told the truth. Show a darky a police badge and he’ll come clean. How long has Mr. Blake had that cane?”

“Since some time in the early spring. In March.”

“You have no idea where it is now?”

“Not the faintest. He certainly didn’t bring it back here.”

He bent toward me, wary and intent.

“Ah,” he said. “So you know it has disappeared! Now that’s interesting. I call that very interesting. Who told you that it had disappeared? Not Amos. He was warned. Mr. Blake himself, perhaps?”

“No. It was Walter Somers. Amos told him.”

He sat back.

“By and large,” he said, “we have too many detectives on these crimes. And the family seems to be curiously interested, doesn’t it? For a family with nothing to conceal. Now, I would like a description of that stick, if you don’t mind.”

There was nothing else to do. Much as I loathed the idea I was obliged to describe the thing, the heavy knob, the knife concealed in the shaft.

“This blade now, was it sharp?”

“Absolutely not. But I daresay Jim had it sharpened. He would have had to, if he had meant to commit a murder.”

But my sarcasm was a boomerang.

“It may interest you to know that he did just that, Miss Bell. About a week after he got it.”

He gave me little time to worry about that, however.

“There is something else I want to verify. On the night Sarah Gittings was murdered, Mr. Blake telephoned here, I believe; to Miss Judy. At what time was that?”

“Shortly after seven. A quarter past, possibly.”

“That was a message from Miss Judy’s mother, I gather?”

“Yes, but he—”

I checked myself, too late. He was bending forward again, watching me. “But what?”

“I have just remembered. He asked if Sarah was here; but that is in his favor, naturally. If he had known he need not have asked.”

“Or if he did know, and wished to give the impression that he did not.”

He sat there looking at me, and for the first time I realized that he was potentially dangerous to me and mine. His china blue eyes were cold and searching; under his bald head his face was determined, almost belligerent. And he was intelligent, shrewd and intelligent. Later on I was to try to circumvent him; to pit my own wits against his. Always he thwarted me, and often he frightened me. In his way, almost to the very end, he remained as mysterious as Sarah, as aloof as Florence Gunther, as implacable as fate itself.

Yet he treated me always with friendliness and often with deference, and now his voice was almost casual.

“Did he say where he was when he called up?”

“No. At home, probably.”

“Don’t you know better than that, Miss Bell?” he inquired pointedly. “If you don’t, let me tell you. On that night Jim Blake dined early, and left the house at seven, or a few minutes after. He did no telephoning before he left. We have a list of his calls out for that night. Wherever he was when he telephoned—and we are trying to locate that—he was not at home.”

And I felt again that this communicativeness of his was deliberate, that he was watching for its effect on me.

“But why? Why would Jim Blake kill Sarah?” I demanded. “What would be his motive?”

He was getting ready to go, and he stopped by the door.

“Now and then, in criminal work,” he said, “we find the criminal before we learn the motive. I make no accusation against Mr. Blake. I merely say that his movements that night require explanation, and that until he makes that explanation we have to use our own interpretation. If that’s unfavorable to him that’s his fault.”

One comfort at least we had at that time. The reporters, the camera men and the crowds of inquisitive sightseers had abandoned us, and out on the Warrenville road Hawkins had thriftily piled brush about the site of the crime, and was letting in the morbid minded at a price until the county police stopped him.

The cow had died.

But in my own household demoralization was almost complete. The women were in a state of hysteria, afraid to leave the house and almost as terrified to stay in it. On Tuesday morning the laundress had come upstairs pale and trembling, to say that the chair had been taken from the laundry again, and was once more in the room where the wood was stored. And on that night, at something after twelve o’clock, Clara ran down to my room, pounding on the door and shouting that there was a man under her bed.

It required Joseph with the revolver and myself with all my courage to discover Jock there, neatly curled up and asleep.

The matter of the chair, however, puzzled me. I took Judy and went down. It was a plain wooden chair, and it had been left where it was found. Judy mounted it and examined the joists above, for this portion of the basement is not ceiled. But there was nothing there except a large black spider, at which she got down in a hurry.

I don’t know what I had expected to find. The sword-stick, perhaps.

It was on Wednesday that I determined to see Jim. I had not seen him for over a week, not indeed since the day of Sarah’s funeral, and if Wallie’s state had bewildered me Jim’s frankly shocked me.

I had been fond of Jim, but with no particular approval. The very fact that he was still idling through his late forties; that he was content to live modestly because extravagance meant work; that he could still put in weeks of preparation on the Bachelors’ Ball, given each year for the débutantes; that his food and drink were important to him, and his clothes—all these things had annoyed me.

Nor had I ever quite believed in his feeble health; certainly he was a stronger man than Howard, who had always worked and who was still working in the very shadow of death. Certainly Jim was able to play golf, to sit up all night at bridge, to eat and drink what he wanted, and to dance with a young generation which liked his cocktails and the flowers he sent them.

But this was the surface of Jim Blake. Of the real man, buried under that slightly bulging waistline, that air of frivolity, those impeccable garments, I doubt if even Katherine knew anything. He went his way, apparently a cheerful idler, with his present assured, and his future undoubtedly cared for in the case of Howard’s death.

There was, however, nothing cheerful about the Jim I found on Wednesday night, lying in his handsome bed and nursed and valeted by Amos. I have often wondered since just what were his thoughts as he lay there day after day, watching Amos moving deftly about the room; Amos who knew so much and yet not enough.

The two watching each other, the black man and the white, and yet all serene between them on the surface.