Kitabı oku: «The Girl at Central», sayfa 5

VIII

After the inquest there was no more question about who was suspected. It was as if every finger in Longwood was raised and pointed to Mapleshade. The cautious people didn't say it plain – especially the shop-keepers who were afraid of losing custom – but those who had nothing to gain by keeping still came out with it flatfooted.

It wasn't only that nobody liked the Doctor, or believed his story, it was because the people were wild at what had been done. They wanted to find the murderer and put him behind bars and seeing that things pointed more clearly to Dr. Fowler than to anybody else they pitched on him. All the gossip about the quarreling came out blacker than ever. The papers were full of it and the other worse stories, about Sylvia's allowance and the will of her father. There wasn't a bit of dirty linen in the Fowler household that wasn't washed and hung out on the line for the public to gape at, and some of it was dirtier when they'd got through washing than it had been before.

There were those who didn't scruple to say that the whole tragedy was a frame-up between Virginie Dupont and the Doctor. If you talked sensible to them and asked them how Virginie could have got word to him that Sylvia was running away, they'd just push that to one side, saying it could be explained some way, everything wasn't known yet – but one thing you could be sure of – the one person who knew the whereabouts of that French woman was Dr. Daniel Fowler.

I believe there were some days after the inquest when, if there'd been an anarchist or agitator to stand on the postoffice steps and yell that Dr. Fowler ought to be jailed, a crowd would have gathered, gone down to Mapleshade, and demanded him.

Fortunately there was no one of that kind around, and he stayed quiet in his home, not even coming to the village. Two days after the inquest I saw Anne and she said he and Mrs. Fowler hadn't been out of the house – that they were in a state of siege what with reporters and the police and morbid cranks who hung round the grounds looking up at the windows.

That same evening I stayed over time in the Exchange, lending a hand. The work was something awful, and Katie Reilly, the new girl, was most snowed under and on the way to lose her head. I wanted to see her through and I wanted the credit of the office kept up, but it's also true that I wanted to be on the job myself and hear all that was passing. Believe me, it was hard to quiet down in my bedroom at night after eight hours at the switchboard right in the thick of the excitement. Besides, I'd got to know the reporters pretty well and it was fun making them think I could give them leads and then guying them.

I liked Babbitts the best, but there were three others that weren't bad as men go. One was Jones, a tall thin chap like an actor, with long black hair hanging down to his collar, and Freddy Jasper, who was English and talked with an awful swell dialect, and a sallow-skinned, consumpted-looking guy called Yerrington who belonged on a paper as yellow as his face and always went round with a cigarette hanging from his lip like it was stuck on with glue.

It was nearly eight and work was slacking off when I started to go home. What with the jump I'd been on and listening to the gabbing round the door I'd forgotten my supper. It wasn't till I saw the Gilt Edge window with a nice pile of apples stacked up round a pumpkin, that I remembered I was hungry and walked over. There were only three people in the place, Florrie Stein, the waitress, and a woman with a kid in the corner.

I was just finishing my corn beef hash with a cup of coffee at my elbow and stewed prunes on the line of promotion when Soapy and Jones and Jasper came in and asked me if they could sit at my table. "Please yourself," said I, "and you'll please me," for politeness is one of the things I was bred up to, and they sat down, calling out their orders to Florrie Stein.

They naturally began talking about "the case" – it was all anybody talked about just then – and for all I knew so much about it, I generally picked up some new bits from them. So I went to the extravagance of three cents worth of jelly roll, not because I wanted it, but because I could crumb it up and eat it slow and not give away I was sitting on to listen.

"We can talk before you, Miss Morganthau," said Babbitts, "because while we all agree you're the belle of Longwood, we've found out by sad experience you're a belle without a tongue."

Florrie Stein, bringing the food then, they were silent till she'd set it out, and when she'd drawn off to the cashier's desk, they started in again. They were, so to speak, looking over Hines as a suspect.

"No, Hines won't fit," said Babbitts. "The presence of the jewelry on the body eliminates him. They've dug up his record and though the place he ran wasn't to be recommended for Sunday school picnics, the man himself seems to have been fairly decent."

"It's odd about the bag – the fitted bag and the jewelry gone from the room," said Jasper.

"The police have an idea that Virginie Dupont could tell something of them."

"Theft?"

"Theft on the side."

"Oh, pshaw!" said Jones, "what's the good of complicating things? If theft was committed it was a frame-up, part of a plot."

"You believe in this idea they've got in the village that Fowler and the French woman worked together?"

"I do – to my mind the murderer's marked as plain as Cain after he was branded on the brow or wherever it was."

Then Jasper spoke up. He's a nice quiet chap, not as fresh as the others. "Let's hear what you base that assertion on."

Jones forgot his supper and twisted round sideways in his chair, looking thoughtful up at the cornice:

"As I understand it, in a murder two things are necessary – a crime and a corpse; and in a murderer one, a motive. Now we have all three – the motive especially strong. If Miss Hesketh married, her stepfather lost his home and the money he had been living on, so he tried to stop her from marrying. Saturday night he heard that his efforts had failed. I fancy that on Sunday morning when he went for that auto drive he stopped at some village – not as yet located – and communicated with Virginie Dupont, who was in his pay. She, too, went out that morning, you may remember."

"There's a good deal of surmise about this," said Babbitts.

Jones gave him a scornful look.

"If the links in the chain were perfect Dr. Fowler'd be eating his dinner to-night in Bloomington Jail."

"How do you account for Miss Hesketh – presupposing it was she – being on the train instead of the turnpike?" said Jasper.

"A change of plans," Jones answered calmly, "also not yet satisfactorily cleared up. To continue: Sometime on Sunday the Doctor conceived the plan of ridding himself of all his cares – his troublesome stepdaughter, the disturbance of his home and his financial distress. How," he turned and looked solemnly at us, fate played so well into his hands I can't yet explain – the main point is that it did. He met Miss Hesketh at the Junction, either by threats, persuasion or coercion made her enter his auto and carried her up the road to the turnpike.

"And now," said Babbitts, leaning his arms on the table, "we come to her appearance in the Wayside Arbor."

"We do," Jones replied, nodding his head. "You may remember that both Hines and his servant said there were twigs and leaves on the edge of her skirt and that her boots were muddy. Traces of this were still visible in her clothes when they found her body. She did get out of the automobile, but not so far from the turnpike as he said. Either he and she had some fierce quarrel and she ran from him in rage or terror, or he may have told the truth and she slipped out at the turn from the Riven Rock Road without his knowledge. Anyway she got away from him and ran for the only light she saw. There she telephoned Reddy, withholding the main facts from him, perhaps merely to save time, but cautioning him against letting anyone know of the message. That, as I see it, was a natural feminine desire to guard against gossip. When she thought Reddy was due she started out to meet him – and instead met the Doctor."

"Who'd been hanging about for a half-hour on the roadside?"

"Precisely. He killed her, concealed the body, and went home."

"Just a minute," said Yerrington – "what did he kill her with? The weapon used is a disputed point. Many think it was a farm implement. Did he go across lots to Cresset's and arm himself with a convenient spade or rake for the fatherly purpose of slaying his stepdaughter?"

But you couldn't phase Jones, he said as calm as a May morning:

"He could have done that. But I don't think he did. He didn't need it. The tool box of the car was nearer to hand. A large-sized auto wrench is a pretty formidable weapon, and a tire wrench – did you ever see one? One well-aimed blow of that would crush in the head of a negro."

"Gentlemen, the evidence is all in," said Babbitts.

"Your case might hold water," said Jasper, "if it wasn't as full of holes as a sieve. Why, you can make out as good a one for almost anybody."

"Who, for example?" Jones asked.

"Well – take Reddy."

"Jack Reddy?" I said that, sitting up suddenly and staring at them with a piece of jelly roll halfway to my mouth.

"He's as good as another," said Jasper, and then he added sort of dreamy: "I believe I could work up quite a convincing case against Reddy, allowing for a hole here and there. But our illustrious friend here admits holes at this stage."

"Fire away," said Babbitts. "Give it to us, holes and all."

"Well – off the bat here it is. You may remember that no one saw him coming back from Maple Lane that night. There is no one, therefore, to deny that he may have had Miss Hesketh in the car with him. Instead of going back to Firehill, as he says he did, he followed his original plan of taking her by the turnpike."

"Right at the start I challenge that," said Babbitts. "She appeared at the Wayside Arbor at nine-thirty. The date in Maple Lane was for seven. Supposing she kept it and was on time – which is a stretch of the imagination – he would have had to travel one hundred and eighteen miles in two hours and a half."

"He could have done it."

"On a black, dark night? nearly forty-eight miles an hour?"

"You forget he knew the road and was driving a high-powered racing car. It's improbable but not impossible."

"I count that as a hole, but go on."

"Now in this hypothetical case we'll suppose that as that car flew over the miles the man and the woman in it had high words?"

"Hold on," said Jones, holding out his fork – "that's too big a hole. They were lovers eloping, not an old married couple."

"I'll explain that later. The high words inflamed and enraged the man to the point of murder and he conceived a horrible plan. As they neared the Wayside Arbor he told the woman something was wrong with the car and sent her to the place ostensibly to telephone, really to establish her presence there at a time when, had she been with him, she could hardly have got that far."

I jumped in there. I knew it was only fooling, but even so I didn't like hearing Mr. Reddy talked about that way.

"Who did he send her to telephone to, Mr. Jasper – himself?"

Babbitts laughed and jerked his head toward me.

"Listen to our little belle sounding the curfew on Jasper."

But Mr. Jasper was ready.

"He could have done that, knowing his house was empty. Hines, you remember, said she wasn't five minutes in the booth. We've only Reddy's word for that message. We don't even know if she got a connection. I telephoned out to the Corona operator Saturday and she answered that there was no record of the message and she herself remembered nothing about it."

"But Sylvia," I said – "she told Hines she was expecting someone to come for her."

"Sylvia was eloping. Mightn't she have told Hines – who was curious and intrusive – what wasn't true?"

A sort of hush fell on us all. Babbitts's face and Jones's, from being just amused, were intent and interested.

"Go ahead, Jasper," said Babbitts, "if this isn't buying the baby a frock it's good yarning."

Jasper went on.

"Her story of the broken automobile she believed to be true. But she didn't want Hines to know who she was or what she was up to, so she invented the person coming to take her home. Why she sat so long there talking is – I'll admit – a hole, but I said in the beginning there would be some. The end is just like the end of Jones's case. She went back to Reddy and he killed her with, as our friend has suggested, one of the auto tools. Very soon after it would have been as that Bohemian – what's her name? – heard the scream at ten-ten."

"That's all very well," said Jones, "but before we go further I'd like you to furnish us with a motive."

"Nothing easier – jealousy."

"Jealousy!" I said, sudden and sharp.

"Jealousy in its most violent form. The lady in this case was a peculiar type – a natural born siren. She had made the man jealous, furiously jealous. That was the reason of the high words in the motor."

"Who was he jealous of?" It was I again who asked that.

Jasper turned round and looked at me with a smile.

"Why, Miss Morganthau," he said, "you gave us the clue to that. He was jealous of the man who made the date you heard on the phone. Don't you see," he said, turning to the others, "that man kept his date and Reddy came and found him there."

I can't tell what it was that fell on us and made us sit so still for a minute. All of us knew it was just a joke, but – for me, anyway – it was as if a cloud had settled on the room. Babbitts sat smoking a cigarette and staring at the rings he was making with his eyes screwed up. Presently, when Jones spoke, his voice had a sound like his pride was taken down.

"A great deal better than I expected, but it's simply riddled with holes."

Before Jasper could answer the door opened and Yerrington came in. The cigarette was hanging off his lip and as he said "Good evening" to me it wobbled but clung on. Then he pulled out a chair, sat down and, looking at the other three with a gleam in his eye, said:

"A little while ago Dr. Fowler's chauffeur in dusting out his car found the gold mesh purse squeezed down between the back and the cushion."

IX

The finding of the gold purse established the fact that part, anyway, of the Doctor's story was true – the woman who had gone down to the junction and then disappeared had disappeared in his auto. Was she Sylvia Hesketh?

The general verdict was yes – Sylvia Hesketh, for some unknown reason, running away from her lover and her home. All the world knew now that she was wild and unstable, a girl that might take any whim into her head and act on the spur of the moment. There were theories to burn why she should have thrown down Reddy and slipped away alone, but those that knew her said she was a law unto herself and let it go at that.

The morning after that supper in the Gilt Edge, Anne came in to do the marketing and stopped at the Exchange. The room was empty but even so I had to whisper:

"Are they going to arrest the Doctor?"

"He's waiting," she whispered back.

"What do you make of it?"

"What I always have. I think the woman was Virginie. I think she took Sylvia's things and lit out on her own account."

"What does Mrs. Fowler say?"

"She's going to offer a reward for the murderer. That's her way of answering. This last seems to have roused her. She knows now it's going to be a fight for her husband's liberty, perhaps his life. She's employing Mills and some other detectives and she keeps in close touch with them."

The next day the reward was made public. It was in all the papers and nailed up at the depot and in the post office, the words printed in black, staring letters:

TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS REWARD!

TO ANYONE DISCOVERING THE MURDERER OF THE LATE SYLVIA HESKETH, THIS SUM WILL BE PAID BY HER MOTHER, CONSTANCE GREY FOWLER, MAPLESHADE, NEW JERSEY.

Late that afternoon Babbitts came into the office. He was staying at the Longwood Inn, but it was the first time that day I'd seen him and after our supper together I'd begun to feel real chummy with him. Contrary to his usual custom he was short and preoccupied, giving me a number without more words and then banging shut the door of the booth. It got me a little riled and seeing he wasn't wasting any manners I didn't see why I should, so I lifted the cam and quietly listened in. Not that I expected to hear anything very private. The number he'd given was his paper.

The chap at the other end had a way of grunting, "I got you," no matter what was said. I'd heard him before and he had a most unnatural sort of patience about him, as if his spirit was broken forever taking messages off a wire.

"Say," says Babbitts, "I got a new lead – up country near Hines' place. I been there all morning. There's a farm up that way. Cresset's" – he spelled the name and the other one did his usual stunt – "Good people, years on the soil, self-respecting, stand high. Their house is about half a mile across woods and fields from the Wayside Arbor, lonely with a bad bit of road leading up from the pike. Do you hear?"

"Get on," said the voice.

"I stopped in there and had a séance with Mrs. Cresset, nice woman, fat with a white apron. I said I was a tourist thirsting for a drink of milk."

The other one seemed to rouse up. "Did you thirst that bad?"

"For information – and I got it. She's been scared of the notoriety and has held back something which seems important. Her husband's been prying her up to the point of going to the District Attorney and she's agreed, but tried it on me first. Do you hear?"

"I got you."

"The night of the murder, about nine, a man knocked at her door saying he'd lost his way and wanting to know where he was, and how to get to the turnpike. She spoke to him from an upper window and couldn't see his face, the night being dark. All she could make out was that he was large and wore an overcoat. He told her his auto was in the road back of him and he'd got mixed up in the country lanes. The thing's funny, as there are very few roads that side of the pike."

"Hold on – what's that about pike?"

Babbitts repeated it and went on:

"Doesn't appear to have been in the least drunk – perfectly sober and spoke like a gentleman. She gave him the direction and here's what caught me – describes his voice as very deep, rich and pleasant, almost the same words the Longwood telephone girl used to describe the voice she overheard speaking to Miss Hesketh Saturday noon."

"Any more?"

"Impossible to identify man but says she'd know the voice again. He thanked her very politely – she couldn't lay enough stress on how good his manners were – and she heard him walk away, splashing through the mud."

There were a few ending-up sentences that gave me time to pull out a novel and settle down over it. I seemed so buried in it that when Babbitts put down his money I never raised my eyes, just swept the coin into the drawer and turned a page. He didn't move, leaning against the switchboard and not saying a word. With him standing there so close I got nervous and had to look up, and as soon as I did it he made a motion with his hand for me to lift my headpiece.

"If two heads are better than one," he said, "two ears must be; and the words I am about to utter should be fully heard to be appreciated."

Of course I thought he was going to tell me what he'd found out at Cresset's. It made me feel proud, being confided in by a newspaper man, and I pushed up my headpiece, all smiling and ready to be smart and helpful. He didn't smile back but looked and spoke as solemn as an undertaker.

"Miss Morganthau, yours is a very sedentary occupation."

Believe me I got a jolt.

"If you're asking me to violate the rules for that," I answered, "you're taking more upon yourself than I'll overlook from a child reporter with a head of hair like the Fair Circassian in Barnum & Bailey's."

"I speak only as one concerned for your health. A walk after business hours should be the invariable practice of those whose work forbids exercise."

"Thank you for your interest," says I, very haughty, "but it's well to look at home before we search abroad. The man who spends all his time riding in autos at the expense of the Press would be better employed exercising his own limbs than directing those of others. So start right along and walk quick."

He didn't budge, but says slow and thoughtful:

"Your remarks, Miss Morganthau, are always to the point. I'm going to take a walk this evening – say about seven-thirty."

"I hope you'll enjoy it," says I. "As for me, I'm going straight home to rest. I need it, what with my work and the ginks that stand round here taking up my time and running the risk of getting me fired" – the door handle clicked. I looked over my shoulder and saw a man coming in. "Which way?" I says in a whisper.

"Down Maple Lane," he whispers back, and I was in front of my board with my headpiece in place when the man came in.

We walked up and down Maple Lane for an hour, and it may amuse you to know that what that simple guy wanted was to tell me to listen to every voice on my wires.

I looked at him calm and pitiful. Me, that had been listening till, if your ears grow with exercise, mine ought to have been long enough to tie in a true lover's knot on top of my head!

There's a wonderful innocence about men in some ways. It makes you feel sorry for them, like they were helpless children.

Then he capped the climax by telling me about Mrs. Cresset that morning – hadn't thought I'd heard a word. And as he told it, believing so honest that I didn't know, I began to feel kind of cheap as if I'd lied to someone who couldn't have thought I'd do such a thing. I didn't tell him the truth – I was too ashamed – but I made a vow no matter how sly I was to the others I'd be on the square with Babbitts. And I'll say right here that I've made good resolutions and broken them, but that one I've kept.

There's a little hill part way along the Lane where the road slopes down toward the entrance of Mapleshade. We stopped here and looked back at the house lying long and dark among its dark trees. The sky was bright with stars and by their light you could see the black patches of the woods and here and there a paler stretch where the land was bare and open. It was all shadowy and gloomy except where the windows shone out in bright orange squares. I pointed out to Babbitts where Sylvia's windows were, not a light in them; and then, at the end of the wing, four or five in a row that belonged to Mrs. Fowler's suite. Her sitting-room was one of them where Anne had told me she and the Doctor always sat in the evenings.

"They're there now," I said. "What do you suppose they're doing?"

"Search me," said Babbitts, "I can't answer for another man, but if I was in the Doctor's shoes I'd be pacing up and down, with my Circassian Beauty hair turning white while you waited."

"Yes," I said, nodding. "I'll bet that's what he's doing. I can see them, surrounded by their riches, jumping every time there's a knock on the door, thinking that the summons has come."

And that shows you how you never can tell. For at that hour in that room the Doctor and Mrs. Fowler were talking to Walter Mills, who had just come from Philadelphia, bringing them the first ray of hope they'd had since the tragedy. It was in the form of a diamond and ruby lavalliere that he had found the day before in a pawn shop and that Mrs. Fowler had identified as Sylvia's.

Four days later a piece of news ran like wildfire through Longwood: Virginie Dupont had been arrested and brought to Bloomington.

They put her in jail there and it didn't take any third degree to get the truth out of her. She made a clean breast of it, for she was caught with the goods, all the lost jewelry being found in the place where she was hiding. It sent her to the penitentiary, and her lover, too, for whom – anyway she said so – she had robbed Sylvia's Hesketh's room on the night that Sylvia Hesketh disappeared.

If her story threw no light on the murder it exonerated the Doctor, for it fitted at every point with what he had said.

I'll write it down here, not in her words, but as I got it from the papers.

For some time she had been planning to rob Sylvia, but was waiting for a good opportunity. This came, when the Doctor, being out of the house, she discovered that an elopement was on foot. She had read Sylvia's letters, which were thrown carelessly about, and knew of the affair with Jack Reddy, and when on Sunday morning she was sent to the village to get a letter from Reddy she guessed what it was. Before giving it to Sylvia she went to her own room, opened the envelope with steam from a kettle, and read it. Then she knew that her chance had come.

When evening drew on she hung about the halls and saw Sylvia leave at a few minutes past six, carrying the fitted bag. The coast being clear, she went to her room, took an old black bag of her own and stole back. It was while she was getting this bag that the idea came to her of impersonating her mistress, as in that way she could steal some clothes. She secured the jewelry in a pocket hanging from her waist, took some false hair that Sylvia wore when the weather was damp, and covered her head with it, and selected a little automobile hat of which there were several, over all tying a figured black lace veil.

What she particularly wanted was a new Hudson seal coat that had been delivered a few days before. No one but herself and Miss Hesketh knew of this coat as there had been so much quarreling about Sylvia's extravagance, that the girl often bought clothes without telling. After putting it on she filled her bag with things from the bureau drawers, and just as she was leaving saw the gold mesh purse on the dresser and snatched it up.

All this was done like lightning and she thinks she left the house not more than twenty or twenty-five minutes after Sylvia. To catch the train she had to hurry and she ran up Maple Lane behind the hedge. She was nearing the village when she heard the whirr of an auto and through the hedge saw the two big headlights of a car, coming slowly down the Lane. For a moment she paused, peeking through the branches and made out that there was only one person in it, Jack Reddy.

She reached the station only a few minutes before the train came in. As she had a ticket, she stood at the dark end of the platform, not moving into the light till the engine was drawing near. Then Jim Donahue saw her and came up, addressing her as Miss Hesketh. She had often tried to imitate Sylvia's voice and accent which she thought very elegant, and she did so now, speaking carefully and seeing that Jim had no doubt of her identity. On the ride to the Junction she had only murmured "Good evening" to Sands, being afraid to say more.

At the Junction she was going to get off, take the branch line to Hazelmere and transfer there to the Philadelphia Express. In the women's waiting-room, which would probably be deserted at that hour, she intended taking off Sylvia's coat and hair and reappearing as the modest and insignificant lady's maid. She had thought this out in the afternoon, deciding that Sylvia would probably communicate with her mother in the morning and that the theft would then be discovered. Inquiries started for the woman who had been seen on the train would lead to nothing, as that woman would have dropped out of sight at the Junction.

Everything worked without a hitch. The waiting-room was empty and she had ample time to take off the hair and put it in the bag, hang the coat over her arm with the lining turned out, and even pinch the small, soft hat into another shape. No one would have thought the woman who went into the waiting-room was the woman who came out.

And then came the first mishap – as she opened the door she stepped almost into Dr. Fowler. She was terror stricken, but even then neither her luck nor her wits left her, for almost the first sentence he uttered showed her that he knew of the elopement and gave her a lead what to say. She must have been a pretty nervy woman the way she jumped at that lead. Right off the bat she invented the story about being sent by Sylvia to Philadelphia – to wait there at the Bellevue-Stratford.

The Doctor was furious and ordered her into his auto. There was nothing for it but to obey and in she got, sitting in the back. As she was stepping up, he close beside her, she remembered the gold mesh purse plain in her hand. Like a flash she bent forward and jammed it down between the back and seat.

The ride up the Riven Rock Road was just as the Doctor described it. It was after the lamp had been broken and he was back in the car starting it up, that she slipped out. She was determined to get away with all her loot and took the bag and coat with her, but between the hurry and fear of the moment forgot the purse.

She wandered through the woods till she saw a small scattering of lights which she took for one of the branch line stations. When the dawn came she had lost some of her nerve and felt it was too risky to carry the extra things. So she hid them at the root of a tree, took off the hat, tying the veil over her head, and walked across the fields to the station. As it was Monday morning there were a lot of laborers, men and women, on the platform. She mingled with them, looking like them in her muddy clothes and tied up head, and got away to Hazelmere without being noticed.

She was feeling safe in her furnished room in Philadelphia when she read of the murder in the papers. That scared her almost to death and she lay as close as a rabbit in a burrow, afraid to go out and cooking her food on a gas ring. It was the man she had stolen for who gave her away. When she refused to raise money on the jewels, he stole the lavalliere and pawned it.

Under the trees where she said she'd left them, the police found the coat and hat. Beside them was the bag stuffed full of lingerie, gloves and silk stockings, and with the false hair crowded down into the inside pocket.