Murder on Wheels (18 page)

“That’s a French drip machine,” volunteered the cook. “Mrs. Stait is very fussy about her coffee. So is the whole family, except Mr. Lew, of course. Until last night he never drank a cup in his life, willingly.”

Miss Withers had her lead. “Yes? Then Mr. Lew’s tastes have changed since the—the accident to his brother?”

Mrs. Hoff nodded. “Ja, in a way. Mr. Laurie never drank coffee, either, though. You see, as boys both the twins used to have to take their castor oil in coffee, and they always said that the two tasted just alike to them after they got grown up.”

“Oh.” Miss Withers was disappointed. “But you said that Mr. Lew drank some last night?”

Mrs. Hoff nodded. “Strange it wass for him. But marriage changes everybody, I guess. Last night late he and his new wife send down twice for coffee, each time two cups. And they say I don’t make it strong enough.” The cook’s fat face widened into a Rabelaisian smile. “When I was first married I didn’t need coffee at night to keep from going to sleep, let me tell you! But these young people today”

“Yes, yes, of course.” Miss Withers changed the subject. “Do you think the young couple are happy, Mrs. Hoff?”

“Happy? Why not? They are young, they should be happy.”

“But do you think they’re in love? It wasn’t usual for them to marry the way they did just after what happened to Mr. Lew’s twin brother.”

Mrs. Hoff frowned. “I wonder about that, too. Maybe Mr. Lew was lonesome after his brother die, and he was not able to stand it alone. Anyway, they act like a couple of lovers, I know that. Sad and happy all at the same time. When I bring up the coffee last night, they are both excited, and she is crying. But they hold hands, all the same.”

Miss Withers filed that away for future reference. “Do you notice any other change in Mr. Lew since he got married?”

“Change? No, I don’t see any change. He’s not eat much these days, but that is not so strange. Mr. Hubert is the only one of the family who has his appetite these dark days. And the aunt, of course, when she remembers to come to the table. She is so absent-minded that she gets reading a book or a magazine and she doesn’t know the passing of time.”

Mrs. Hoff sighed and shook her head at the idea of anyone missing a meal from forgetfulness.

“I haf to get the breakfast now,” she reminded her caller. “Mrs. Stait will want her tray in a minute. And the rest of them come down soon.”

“Tell me,” said Miss Withers. “Do all the members of the family eat together? Is everything friendly? Have they accepted Dana, Mr. Lew’s new wife?”

The cook nodded. “Of course. Miss Dana has been a guest here for many a meal, and they’ve been engaged for a long time. All members of the family eat together, except this morning I think Mr. Lew goes out early …” A bell buzzed dully above the cabinet, and Mrs. Hoff leaped out of her chair. “There,” she announced triumphantly, “I knew it! Mrs. Stait wants her tray, and it isn’t ready.”

Bacon sizzled into a frying pan, and then a bell down the hall tinkled alarmingly. “That’s the family in the dining room,” wailed Mrs. Hoff. “I shall lose my job for this!”

“Say nothing about it,” warned Miss Withers, and she strode out into the hall. She ran into Gretchen, who was lurking outside the open door of the dining room.

The girl looked at her with wide, angry eyes. “Don’t let her tell you that Mr. Lew hasn’t changed,” whispered Gretchen. “He’s not the same at all, and I ought to know. He’s stiff and formal and different since he married that … that girl. He’s not his old free, cheery self at all!”

Miss Withers nodded. “Tell me, Gretchen, are all the family in there?” She pointed to the dining room.

“Everybody that’s coming down, yes mam. Mrs. Stait never comes down stairs, you know, and Mr. Lew went out early without his breakfast. Shall I show you into the living room until they get through?”

“Gretchen!” Mrs. Hoff’s voice, low but insistent, sounded from the kitchen. “Gretchen, carry in the coffee!”

“Never mind announcing me,” Miss Withers decided. “I’ll find my way by myself.” Gretchen ran toward the kitchen, and Miss Withers tiptoed up the hall.

She paused just outside the dining room door. There was much rattling of newspapers inside, but very little conversation, and that little was strained. Hubert clinked his coffee cup, and mumbled something, probably to Dana. Whatever it was that Miss Withers had hoped to hear, she did not hear it.

She drew a deep breath, and stepped quickly past the doorway, catching a quick glimpse of the three who sat at one end of the long refectory table. Hubert and Aunt Abbie were deep in the
Times,
and the girl who had been Dana Waverly was tracing a design on the table cloth with her fork. Even at this ungodly hour Dana was good looking, there was no denying that. Very much like her picture, the picture that the Inspector and Miss Withers had discovered hidden away beneath a bureau in the upstairs room, only with an added touch of emotional strain that was not hard to understand.

The hall was dark, and as Miss Withers had hoped, no one recognized her, although Aunt Abbie called petulantly … “Gretchen, whatever is keeping you?” after her.

But she did not wait in the living room, after all. With a cautious glance behind her, she turned and went up the stairs.

This time Miss Withers wasted no precious seconds in a survey of Aunt Abbie’s room, nor in the bath which opened into the hall. She went quickly to the large room at the rear of the house—the room which had been shared by the twins, and which now was quite evidently shared by Lew Stait and his bride. It was a strange, almost terrible, setting for a honeymoon, and Miss Withers was not surprised that the young couple needed coffee at midnight.

The atmosphere of this room had been subtly and femininely changed, somehow, overnight. She noticed that the saddle and spurs had been taken down from the wall. But the bookcase was still there. Miss Withers thumbed the titles for a moment, and at last found what she was seeking, and tucked it, without a qualm, inside her dress. It was only a small, tan volume with a crude drawing of a boy and a monkey on the cover, but it was suddenly important to her.

The position of sneak thief was abhorrent to Miss Withers, and she turned to leave the room as quickly as she had come. But something caught her eye.

It was not the incongruously feminine pajamas of cerise silk which had been flung across the footboard of the bed that Laurie Stait would never sleep in again. The room was littered with such garments. But on the mirror was a square of white paper. Miss Withers decided that she wanted to know what it meant.

She soon found out. It was a rough scrawl in pencil—“Dearest darlingest Dana,” it began. “I’ve got an idea, and I don’t want to wake you, so I’m slipping out early. I’ll be back in about an hour with the ring and things you left at the apartment downtown in the Village—if the police find them it means trouble. Eleven million kisses—” It was signed with a scrawled letter “L.”

Miss Withers stared at it as if she meant to commit it to memory, every line, and then suddenly tucked it away inside the pages of the book she had taken from the case. A suspicion which had been worming its way around the corners of her mind suddenly widened into a hunch, and Miss Withers believed in playing her hunches.

“I’ll be in a fine kettle of fish if anyone finds me here,” she said to herself softly.

Someone did. At that moment the alarm was sounded shrilly behind her.

“Thieves! Thieves! Robbers! Get a gun, get a gun. Sic ’em, sic ’em!”

She whirled, her hand at her throat, to see the loathsome white body of the naked parrot, Skipper, in the doorway. He waddled forward a step or two, waving his featherless wings, and then burst into a flood of the foulest profanity that Miss Withers had ever heard, ending up with a word positively Chaucerian.

“I’d like to wash out your mouth with soap,” Miss Withers told him bitterly.

But Skipper only leered at her. “Birdseed, boys, birdseed! Hell and damnation!” He flopped closer, his beak snapping unpleasantly like the jaws of a trap. To Miss Withers he looked like a weird Hebrew penguin.

“Don’t you come near me, you filthy beast,” she implored, and then suddenly turned and ran past him out of the room and down the stairs.

Skipper hopped after her as far as the landing and said unprintable things. He was in reality only annoyed because he, like the rest of the inmates of the house, had been unreasonably delayed in breakfasting, but Skipper was cursed with an unfortunate upbringing spent at sea, and a physical appearance which made him look like a witch’s familiar spirit.

Miss Withers was barely in the living room, perched in the shadow of a high-backed chair, when she heard the outer door open and someone come in. She caught a flash of Lew Stait’s face, white and drawn, as he passed toward the dining room, and as always Miss Withers had the momentary and revulsive sensation that here was a dead man walking. For she had first seen that face blackened and twisted above a noose of hemp …

Miss Withers remained alone with her thoughts for only a few moments, and then Aunt Abbie, pale and fluttering, hastened into the room, followed by Hubert Stait.

“Oh, how do you do?” Aunt Abbie wanted to know. “Gretchen just told me you were here, or we wouldn’t have kept you waiting. You’re the lady from the Police, aren’t you?”

Miss Withers laid claim to a somewhat remote connection with officialdom. “I came here this morning to ask you if by any chance you had remembered anything which might shed light on the murder of your nephew,” she explained. “Sometimes there are details which come out only after a day or two’s thinking.”

Aunt Abbie nodded. “Yes, yes, of course. But I’m sure I don’t remember anything, do you, Hubert? I think it’s terrible that the police haven’t been able to make an arrest in all this time. What are we paying taxes for, I’d like to know? I’m sure we’ve given all the help we can, and the police ought to be able to find out who Laurie’s enemies were. Of course, the poor dear boy was his own worst enemy, that’s what I’ve always said …”

Aunt Abbie walked up and down the room nervously. “I’m sure that if I remember anything which might have a bearing on the case I’ll telephone the police at once. You’ll excuse me now—I must go in to breakfast.”

“But Aunt Abbie,” Hubert interposed. “You’ve just come from breakfast, don’t you remember?”

Aunt Abbie stopped short. “Breakfast? Have I, really? Yes, yes, of course. The terrible events of the past few days have quite upset me, I’m sure. I believe I’ll go to my room and lie down. I really don’t feel like any more of this.”

Neither did Miss Withers, and she let the fluttery lady go without protest. Hubert remained, staring at Miss Withers through his thick-lensed glasses.

“Tell me,” he said suddenly. “Are the police getting anywhere? Have they got any idea who killed Laurie?”

“I think so,” Miss Withers informed him. “I think we’re on the track of the murderer, all right. It’s only a question of time.”

Hubert came closer. “I’m glad of that. I was afraid that this was one of those perfect crimes we read about. Of course you know about the cowboy who was threatening Laurie all week. Is it he whom you suspect? I won’t feel safe until I know that the killer is behind bars where he belongs. Is it the cowboy?”

“Perhaps,” Miss Withers told him. “And perhaps it’s someone else.”

“Who else?” Hubert didn’t look very surprised. But before Miss Withers could answer his question there were voices in the hall, and Lew Stait, followed by Dana, entered the room. They kept very close together.

Perhaps Miss Withers imagined it, but she thought that Lew’s eyes caught Hubert’s in a quick, questioning glance. The latter spoke, quickly.

“As you know, Miss Withers, I’ll do anything in my power to aid the police in any way,” he assured her. “I only want to see this terrible business settled before it ruins all our lives.” He turned to the newcomers. “Dana, this is Miss Withers, who is making an investigation of the case for the police. Have you two met?”

Miss Withers got her first good look at the girl who had been Dana Waverly, and who was now Mrs. Lewis Stait by the grace of God and the authority of the State of Connecticut.

The wide eyes met hers without wavering, and their smoky depths betrayed no secrets. “How do you do?” said Dana softly, as if the answer to her question was quite immaterial. Miss Withers did not answer it.

“I’ll be running along, because I know you have some questions to ask,” Hubert said meaningly. He stopped in the doorway to flash Miss Withers a somewhat hunted smile, and then climbed sedately up the stair.

Lew Stait faced the school-teacher. “I don’t see why we can’t be let alone,” he said bitterly. “I suppose it seems strange to you that we—that we got married when we did?”

Dana’s hand reached for his, and caught it.

Miss Withers shook her head. “It isn’t any of my business,” she said.

“I wish the newspapers felt that way about us,” Lew said. “They’ve been raising a most terrible hullabaloo. But we love each other, and I wanted to be where I could protect Dana from this unpleasantness as much as possible.”

“I see,” said Miss Withers. “You must forgive me if I seem impertinent. But the only chance we have of solving the murder of your brother is to ask a lot of questions and follow up every clue. Tell me, who do you think killed Laurie Stait?”

Lew sank into a chair, and his young wife planted herself on the arm, with her hand on his shoulder.

“I know who killed my brother.” He said the words dully. “It was that roughneck Keeley, who ran the ranch where Laurie spent the summer. The police must know by now that he came here threatening Laurie, and that my brother was killed with one of Keeley’s ropes.”

“And why would Buck Keeley want to kill your brother? Was it because of the condition his sister is in?”

She realized that she had said the wrong thing—the very wrong thing.

“It is not!” Lew half rose in his chair. “The man is crazy, I tell you. He’s a homicidal maniac. Because I know that nothing happened at that ranch which Laurie should have been ashamed of. That girl meant nothing to him, I tell you, and never did. He never laid a hand on her …”