Hasty Wedding (16 page)

He took her hands. “Dorcas, what happened?”

She tried to tell him. Sophie passed below them along the hall, her green satin swishing gently, and disappeared in the little powder room below the stairway. When she came out she had rubbed off the cold cream and her face, up to now grotesque with smears of white cream, looked indecently bare and actually ghastly. She saw them on the stairway and came to join them.

“Jevan was with me,” said Willy without being asked. “There was something we wanted to talk about and he phoned me and I met him at the corner drugstore.”

“That’s neat,” said Sophie, looking at her hands, pink and moist as if she had just finished scrubbing them in hot water. “You have an alibi and so has Jevan.”

“Yes,” said Willy and then caught himself up shortly. “What do you mean,
I
have an alibi? I don’t need an alibi.”

“Oh, don’t you,” said Sophie. “Well, that’s lucky for you. The rest of us, I think, are in for a bad time.” She looked at her hands again and said with curious obliquity: “Dorcas, were you in the little powder room tonight? At any time?”

“No. Why?”

“Nothing,” said Sophie and then they saw that Wait was at the bottom of the steps. Willy cleared his throat and got up hesitantly.

“Do you—do you want something?” he said.

“Yes. You.”

Willy looked down at Dorcas with troubled, pale blue eyes and then back at Wait. “Oh, all right. But I don’t know what you want to question me for. I don’t know anything about this.”

He leaned over to pat Dorcas’ hand and went down to join Wait. They turned into the drawing room and still Jevan did not emerge.

Events telescoped. People came and went and reporters were met at the door and the telephone rang a good deal. Once when the door opened Cary’s doctor came into the hall and Sophie looked and exclaimed: “Mamie must have called him. Then Cary knows,” and went to meet him. He was curious, darting quick glances everywhere, but was also embarrassed as if he might be somehow and distastefully involved in the thing. He scarcely spoke to Dorcas as he passed her.

At nine o’clock Wait sent for her.

He was by that time in her father’s study, sitting on a corner of the long mahogany table. Some policemen were there, one with a notebook. Someone had been smoking—the air was full of smoke; Jevan wasn’t there, nor Willy, and over a policeman’s broad blue shoulder peered Bench’s face, pale and distressed.

A chair was pushed to her.

“Tell me,” said Wait, “exactly how and where you found the body.”

She did so.

Did so, in fact, not once but many times, all at once conscious of fantastically weak points of her story. A man murdered, his throat not very neatly cut, not more than twenty-five feet from where she sat, and she had known nothing of it.

Not only Wait questioned her; all of them took a hand in it. One of them, a big man in plain clothes, kept asking her about the knife. Where was it? Hadn’t she seen it? She must have seen it. Had she moved it? Had she touched it? And, at last, had she hidden it?

“No, no,” cried Dorcas. “There was no knife.”

The lights were terribly bright. She was terribly tired—so tired that their faces seemed to move, circling around her. She never knew how long it was before the plain-clothes man who kept asking about the knife had his answer.

The answer, however, did not come from her.

There was all at once a commotion in the corridor, a woman’s voice, high and thin and excited, heavy footsteps of men. Everyone looked as the core of sounds reached the door and it was the second girl, Ethel Stone, with a policeman at each side. She was excited and there were two bright pink streaks in her cheeks.

“This girl says she knows,” began a policeman but the girl broke in.

Ethel Stone: living obscurely an obscure life. Now for one startling, meteorlike moment she emerged into drama. Her very body was shaken and trembling with it and she gave Dorcas a glazed look which did not perceive.

“The knife,” she said gaspingly, “wasn’t there. And when I went to put out the butter balls there it was again! And there’s a wet towel in the powder room.”

Bench, in the background, came to life.

“Don’t believe her,” he cried. “Don’t believe a word she says. She doesn’t know a thing.”

T
HE GIRL’S EYES, STILL
glazed with excitement, found and fastened upon Wait. She twisted her thin fingers in her apron and cried: “The steak knife. The pantry. I’m telling you the truth.” And told her queer little story and played her small but intensely important role.

Unfortunately the grisly little story had the stamp of truth; she couldn’t possibly have made it up. Bench, called upon to do so, confirmed it, albeit reluctantly and with a look of cold hatred at the girl.

Bench had got out the silver for dinner as it was his duty to do. They were having steak and among other things he had got out a steak knife and fork; the knife was small and, always, extremely sharp.

“I sharpened it,” he said with a smothered gulp. “And put it down on the serving shelf in the butler’s pantry.”

He had then returned to the kitchen.

“What time was that?” asked Wait.

“I’m not sure. About six, I think.”

“Go on.”

While he was in the kitchen Ethel had come into the pantry and proceeded on into the dining room to lay the cloth for dinner and to arrange the flowers.

“Roses. Pink ones, they was. And the knife was gone. Everything else was there but the knife was gone.”

“Are you sure?”

“Oh yes, Mr Wait. I looked for it. I thought Mr Bench had forgotten it. Everything else we would need was there on the tray but not the steak knife. I looked in the silver drawers for it and didn’t find it so I decided that Mr Bench was sharpening it in the kitchen.”

“Did you ask Bench about the knife?”

“No sir. I finished the table and went back to the kitchen and started making butter balls. I forgot about the knife. I was busy in the kitchen for—oh, quite a while.”

“How long?”

“I don’t know exactly. Twenty minutes, I expect. But when I finished the butter balls and put them in a dish with ice and took them to the pantry serving shelf there—there was the knife again. Beside the fork. Bright and shining with its edge freshly sharpened——”

“Get the knife,” said Wait. There was a slight stir as the policeman went away. Wait looked at Ethel again.

“Did you touch the knife?”

“Oh no, sir. I just now remembered it and went to look to be sure the knife was still there and the policeman asked me what I was looking for and I pointed at the knife and told him and he——”

“‘Did
you
touch the knife?” Wait asked Bench.

“Not after I got it out and sharpened it, sir. I didn’t know it was gone—I don’t think it
was
gone. Ethel’s trying to make out that somebody took the knife and killed Mr Pett with it and then brought it back again.”

Ethel blinked once and said, somehow clinchingly, “And there’s a wet towel in the powder room.”

It was the second time she had talked of a wet towel. Wait said: “What about it? What do you mean?”

“Well, I mean it’s all wet. Soaked in water and wrung out. It’s not just damp and spotty and crumpled as if somebody had dried their hands on it. There’s several towels in the room; I put out fresh ones in the evening and in the morning. Unless we’re having company, when I’m supposed to change them during dinner. Well, I looked in the powder room just now and there’s a wet towel there and I think it had blood on it and the blood was washed out. Cold water,” said Ethel with those feverish streaks of color burning in her cheeks, “takes out bloodstains.”

Someone else that night, thought Dorcas, had talked of the powder room. Someone—Sophie, of course. She had asked her, Dorcas, if she’d been in the powder room that night. Sophie, then, had seen the wet towel, too, had grasped its implications.

A steak knife and a small linen towel. Dorcas knew the steak knife; short, extremely sharp, with a shining, razorlike edge, sturdy and strong as a dagger. A wound such as that one made in Marcus’ throat had to be made by something extremely sturdy and strong, something terribly sharp. And even then there would have to be a certain amount of force behind it.

Who would know of the steak knife? The answer, of course, was: someone in the house. Someone who had seen the knife before. Someone who knew where to find it. Yet—yet couldn’t someone who had entered the house—as the murderer of Marcus Pett
must
have done, cried something desperate and frightened in her heart—couldn’t some stranger, wanting a knife, have thought of the pantry? Yes, certainly; and he could have watched his chance to enter and there found, obligingly laid out for him by a coincidence that was, really, no coincidence, the very weapon. Short, strong, sharp.

The policeman returned with the knife, holding it gingerly with a scrap of tissue paper. The knife caught a wicked, swift gleam of light.

Wait took it lightly in his fingers and looked at it. Everyone in the room looked, too, as if the thing might speak to them. It was to Dorcas poignantly familiar. How many times had Marcus sat at their table and idly watched the use of that knife! Had he never had a premonition, had he never felt the smallest, faintest chill when that thin blade turned and cut and glittered?

“There’s no blood on it,” said Wait. “Unless there’s some around the handle or in the initial. Might be. Take it to the laboratory, McGill, and get a report as soon as you can.”

Everyone watched as the policeman’s big hand took the knife. He went out of the room and Wait followed him.

No one knew quite what to do. They waited in unearthly stiffness and stillness until finally Wait returned.

“Bench.”

“Yes—yes sir.”

Wait looked at Dorcas and said to Bench: “You say that when Pett arrived tonight you opened the door for him?”

“Yes sir.”

“What did he say?”

“He came into the house and gave me his hat and coat and stick and——”

“What did he say?”

“Well, he—he said he came to see Madam and I started toward the stairs to announce him when he said not to announce him; that he’d go right up.”

“Was this customary?”

“Well, yes and no. Madam often receives her friends in her own drawing room on the second floor——”

“I mean, was it customary not to announce him?”

“No sir. But Mr Pett being almost a member of the family, I thought nothing of it and did as I was told.”

“And that was?”

“I put his coat and hat and stick in the closet beside the door and asked if he wished a scotch and soda. He looked very tired and it was his favorite drink. He was in the drawing room at that point, warming his hands over the fire. He said no. Said it sharply and looked annoyed and I went back to the dining room.”

“What time was this?”

“I don’t know exactly. A little after six, I would say.”

“Before or after you had put out the silver for dinner?”

Bench went green around the mouth.

“After.”

“What did you do then?”

“I went to the kitchen and went on about my work.”

“Was the steak knife on the shelf where you had placed it at the time you went through the butler’s pantry?”

“I—I don’t know. I don’t know, Mr Wait. I didn’t notice and that’s the truth.”

“So the last you saw of Pett, he was standing in the drawing room beside the fire, warming his hands?”

“Yes sir. That’s right. Until Miss Dorcas screamed.”

“Get Mrs Whipple down here——”

A policeman started toward the door before Wait had finished.

Dorcas cried: “Oh no, please. My mother is ill.”

“I’ll go up there. I must question her, Mrs Locke. I’ll do so in the presence of her doctor, and you, too, if you insist. Look here, Bench; did Mr Pett arrive before or after Mr Locke had gone?”

“After,” cried Bench earnestly. “After. I can swear to that. Mr Locke was out of the house and gone fully a quarter of an hour before Mr Pett arrived. And Mr Devany had gone at least two hours——”

“Devany! Was he here this afternoon?”

“Only for a moment, sir. He asked for Miss Whipple—that is, Mrs Locke—and when I told him she was out he said he’d only called to see how she was; that it was nothing important. He went away then.”

“Are you sure he went away?”

“Mr Devany?” said Bench in surprise. “Oh yes, sir. His car was waiting and he was driving himself. I saw him get into it and go slowly up the street. It was the woman in the checked coat who didn’t——” Light broke in Bench’s pale face and he cried eagerly:
“She
didn’t leave, sir! At least no one saw her leave! She said she’d wait for Miss Dorcas and then she didn’t and——”

“What woman?” snapped Wait and listened to the vague and inconclusive story of the woman in the checked coat. The blond woman in the green hat and scarf who had not waited.

“And you don’t know who it was?”

“No.”

“And no one saw her leave?”

“She just vanished, sir,” said Bench eagerly.

“She’s not in the house now, Mr Wait,” said the sergeant. “There’s nobody at all in the house but the members of the household. We’ve searched every inch. Shall I put a man on it?”

“Yes, at once. You’re got her description…Now then, Mrs Locke, Pett managed your business affairs, didn’t he?”

“Yes. Up to now. His trusteeship ended automatically with my marriage.”

“Yes, I know. Had he already turned over your property to you?”

“Yes. That is, he had brought all his reports; they are here now. We haven’t had time to do anything about his reports yet and we asked him to take care of things until we—until I return from my wedding trip.”

“I’d better take those reports. Had you ever had any reason to suppose that Pett was not altogether honest?”

“None. My mother and I would have trusted him with anything we possessed.”

“You can’t take those reports,” said Jevan from the doorway. “You have no right to.”

Wait whirled around. “Didn’t I tell you to keep him out?”

“I couldn’t help it, Mr Wait,” said a policeman breathlessly. “He wouldn’t stay and short of knocking him out——”