The Oldest Flame (7 page)

“Thank you for coming up, Sheriff,” said
Lansbury, shaking his hand. “I have something here which I think
you ought to know about. Mrs. Meade came to me earlier this evening
and confided to me a theory she had about the cause of our fire,
and asked my help in confirming it—and I think we may have done
so.” He glanced down at Mrs. Meade, and spoke to her in a slightly
lower voice, tinged with a note of respect. “Would you like to
explain it first?”

“It was something
you
said, in fact,
Andrew, that gave me the illumination,” said Mrs. Meade. “You
remarked quite off-hand during our conversation earlier that ‘where
there’s smoke, there’s fire,’ just as I was thinking over something
that puzzled me about what happened in the upstairs hall that
night. And suddenly it all flashed on me. I remember now that when
I stepped out of my room that night there was already a good deal
of smoke in the hallway. That did not seem strange to me, of
course, because I knew there was a fire in the house. But now I
recall clearly that when I turned and went along the hall to Miss
Parrish’s room—
away
from the top of the staircase, which led
down to where the fire was—the smoke actually grew thicker. That
was why I could not stay long by her door myself. And when I sent
Mark up to try and help her, he was nearly suffocated up there in
just a few minutes, while I, going down the stairs, found the smoke
grew lighter as I went down and it was easier to breathe.

“Do you see what I mean? Where there is
smoke, there must be fire. There was
another fire burning in
Miss Parrish’s room
, and it was from there that the smoke was
seeping into the hall.”

“You mean she
did
start it herself?”
blurted Royal.

Mrs. Meade shook her head. “You recall my
saying to you this afternoon,” she said, “that the solution to this
was something even worse than we had imagined. We have been
regarding Miss Parrish’s death as a tragic accident caused by
someone’s setting a fire for reasons of their own. But it was not.
It was murder.”

“Murder!” said Grey and Royal together.

“Yes. Do you know what I think?
Miss
Parrish was dead before the fire had even started
. The fire was
set expressly to hide the fact that she had been murdered—to
destroy that part of the house so no one would ever know she had
met her death in some other way. That also explains why her door
was locked, and why she did not answer any attempts to wake
her.

“I had guessed so far—but I still could not
understand
why
. It all centered on Miss Parrish—Miss Parrish
was the root of the entire mystery. Why Miss Parrish? What had Miss
Parrish ever done that someone wished to murder her?

“And do you know what the truth was? She had
married Steven Emery in California four years ago
.”

Royal stared. So did Grey, for a moment, and
then he looked up at Lansbury. “Is that true?” he said.

Lansbury nodded, and walked to the table,
where he picked up one of the papers lying there. “Mrs. Meade came
to us because she thought my wife might know the names of any
people or places with which Miss Parrish had been connected in
California. She had guessed at some connection between Emery and
Miss Parrish out there, and we were able, by sending some wires, to
confirm it. They
were
married, but he apparently left her
about a year afterwards.”

“Miss Parrish was a very proud woman, I
think,” said Mrs. Meade gently. “She resumed her maiden name when
she came back to Colorado to avoid the humiliation of admitting to
her friends here that she had had a husband who left her. It was a
strange chance that brought them together here as guests in the
same house.

“It explained, too, another thing that had
puzzled me before—why Miss Parrish seemed to so dislike your Rose.
I had put it down to mere resentment of another girl’s youth and
happiness, after the disappointment of the unhappy love affair Miss
Parrish was reputed to have had. But really it was simple
jealousy.

“I think Steven Emery seriously meant to
marry Rose if she would accept him—but he was not free, and most
likely knew his wife would never release him to marry another
woman, out of her own resentment and jealousy. That was what made
me guess at the relationship between them—what other reason would
he have for wanting her out of the way? He went to her room that
night—whether to make an appeal to her, or whether he had already
plotted murder, I don’t know. And he killed her. But he needed to
hide the fact—not just the fact of his guilt, but the fact that a
murder had been committed at all. For of course no one else in the
house had any reason to murder Miss Parrish. He set a fire in her
room and locked the door, to ensure that that part of the house
would be completely destroyed. Then, to get everyone else out of
the house and give his first fire time to burn, he went down and
started the fires in the library and drawing-room. Then he roused
the household. That was what woke Chalmers. In the confusion Mr.
Emery even had an opportunity to make an apparent attempt to save
Miss Parrish himself, which no doubt would disarm suspicion, and
which he could make sure did not succeed. He
had
to go
upstairs, in fact, to get Mark away from the door somehow before he
succeeded in breaking into Miss Parrish’s room, but the smoke in
the hall had already done the work for him. So, with bitter irony,
he ended up a hero for saving Mark.”

“Emery,” murmured Grey incredulously. He
added half to himself, “And we’d have let Rose…”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Meade, giving him a look of
understanding. She turned to Lansbury again. “He found out, you
know, that suspicion was attached to Mark, and came to me to find
out more about it. When I told him about that unlucky ‘trial by
fire’ remark of Mark’s, he was amazed—and he said something that
ought to have been very telling. He said it was a
coincidence
. From his point of view, it was! But if Mark
really had started the fire it wouldn’t have been a coincidence his
saying that; it would have been directly connected. Mr. Emery was
quite earnest in recommending that I repeat that remark to the
sheriff, by the way, unaware that I had already done so! And if I’m
not mistaken, when Sheriff Royal questioned him yesterday he
even—hinted a few things”—Mrs. Meade was treading delicately
here—“about other people who were in the house, to further cover
his own tracks.”

Mrs. Meade’s lips tightened into a decisive
line, and her voice became firm as it always did when she felt
strongly about something. “It was a very bad, cold-blooded,
selfish
crime, for he not only committed murder, he
endangered all our lives and destroyed his host’s home while he was
doing it.”

Andrew Royal seemed to have a throat too dry
for speech, but he made a gesture toward the table. Lansbury
understood him, and handed over the sheaf of telegrams.

“But can any of this be proved?” said
Grey.

“Well,” said Lansbury, “all there really is
against him is the fact of the marriage; all Mrs. Meade’s
deductions are still deductions only. Even Chalmers’ testimony
about the voice he heard upstairs won’t count if he can’t
positively identify it. But if Emery believes he’s safe—and if he
is confronted abruptly with the whole story, just as Mrs. Meade has
told it—he may give himself away.”

Andrew Royal looked up from the papers in his
hands, and his thick eyebrows were drawn so low in a threatening
scowl that they appeared to meet in the middle. “He’d better,” the
sheriff said.

* * *

George Grey shut the door behind him, and
stood a moment as if thinking something over. He glanced to his
right and left. The hotel was silent at this hour, its corridors
dim and empty. Grey moved away toward the staircase. Then a few
paces short of it he paused, and turned to his left down another
corridor. He stopped at a door and rapped on it, a mere low
knocking of knuckles on wood.

The door opened from within. Grey looked at
Steven Emery for a moment, and then without invitation moved past
him into the room. A single lamp was burning; curls of cigar smoke
wreathed upwards above it from where Emery had been sitting by the
table with a newspaper.

Steven Emery shut the door, his eyes
following the other man as Grey took a short half-turn about the
room, but he asked no question. He waited until Grey came to a
stop.

Grey faced him, and looked him over again
before he finally spoke. “They know everything,” he said. “I’ve
just heard it all.”

Emery tilted his head inquiringly. “Who
knows—what?” he said. “I don’t understand you.”

“They know that you killed the woman, and
that she was your wife.”

There was a pause. No reaction; at least none
that Grey had expected. Steven Emery lowered his head slightly, as
if giving thought to something. “Well, that alters things
somewhat,” he said.

Grey took a sharp step toward him, his
frustration boiling up in his voice. “Why in heaven’s name didn’t
you
tell
me?”

“It wasn’t at all necessary,” said Steven
Emery. “Our agreement was straightforward: that I should loan you a
substantial sum of money to cover certain of your
defalcations”—Grey winced palpably—“and in return, you would give
your consent to my marriage with your daughter. How I arranged my
own affairs in order to meet my side of the agreement was entirely
my problem to surmount.”

“And you always intended to—surmount it in
this fashion?” Grey’s voice might have held a tinge of accusation,
had he not been too conscious of his own doubtful position to dare
it.

“I was not about to marry your daughter
bigamously. My wife”—he pronounced the word with bitter
amusement—“would not have let it pass unchallenged, and there was
no question of a divorce.” He bent a faintly amused look upon his
companion. “You don’t believe we met at the Lansburys’ by chance,
do you? I heard through your wife who Mrs. Lansbury’s other guests
were to be, and so exerted my considerable influence with your
family and what I knew of the Lansburys to procure an invitation
for myself. It merely saved my having to go in search of the lady.”
He added, “But I did not see the need to confide any of this in
you.”

He scrutinized Grey with a sort of curiosity.
“For all your indignation, Grey, why did you come to warn me
tonight?”

Grey averted his face with a vague wave of
his hand brushing the question away. His voice was sharp. “Of
course I would warn you.”

Emery laughed. “Honor among thieves? Is that
it?”

“This is no time for joking!” said Grey,
coming back to him abruptly. “You have to leave here tonight. If
you will turn over any assets you can lay your hands on at short
notice to me—you know the other name and address—I’ll send you the
funds necessary for you to leave the country. It’s the best way to
keep all your property from being confiscated.”

“And
you
certainly would not want
that,” said Steven Emery. “You’ll do nearly anything for that money
now, won’t you? First your daughter—and now you’d make it the price
of your silence and abet a murder. But I’m never one to
refuse.”

“You asked me for my daughter’s hand,” said
Grey harshly, “and I laid conditions upon it. I was within my
rights to do that, surely.”

“Oh, surely. We understood each other’s lack
of scruples thoroughly enough by that time to make it
practicable.”

Grey bit his lip, and looked away. Emery,
with a slightly contemptuous half-smile, turned away from him and
took out a leather valise, which he began packing with a single
change of clothes. New valise, and new clothes—like the others, he
had lost all he had with him in the Lansbury fire. Sacrificed it
all, Grey thought as he watched him. Calculated, unthinking
destruction for gain, as Mrs. Meade had said. Well, there was one
thing of his own that could be salvaged from the ruins—the good
name and security which only Emery’s money could preserve. Even at
this price.

Grey said, “You do admit that my silence is
valuable to you?”

Emery waited a minute before answering,
without turning round. “Yes,” he said.

Grey stood with his hand in his trousers
pockets and watched him finish his packing, and nothing more was
said until Emery had put on his hat and turned round with the
valise in his hand. “Where can I communicate with you?” said
Grey.

Steven Emery shook his head. “You won’t,” he
said. “I’ll communicate with you when I feel it’s safe—and it will
be at that other name and address you mentioned. It’s in both our
interest that you not let that become known, incidentally.”

“You don’t trust me,” said Grey, “do
you.”

“Only just so far at a time,” said Steven
Emery, smiling slightly.

He stepped to the door and grasped the knob,
and pulled it open. Grey, looking at the floor again, waited to
hear him step out into the hall. But it did not happen. Realization
of the silence struck him, and he looked up—past Emery, who stood
transfixed in the doorway with his hand still on the knob, to where
Sheriff Andrew Royal stood waiting in the hall, grimly silent, his
craggy face thrown into grotesque shadow by the brim of his
battered hat. Lansbury stood behind him. And Lansbury was looking
not at Emery, but past him at his friend; and it was the disbelief
in his eyes, more than anything else that was crowded into that
moment, that at last made Grey look away.

* * *

“How did you know?” said Lansbury.

“I only guessed,” said Mrs. Meade with a
sigh. “It occurred to me, after we had established the connection
between Mr. Emery and Miss Parrish…Sheriff Royal, you may as well
know, was interested in the amount for which your house was insured
against fire—he investigated your financial standing with the
thought that perhaps the insurance money could have been useful to
you just now. Of course he was wrong—but he did elicit the fact
that Mr.
Grey
was in such difficulties. The burning of your
house would not benefit the Greys—but if a wealthy man were to
marry their daughter…” Mrs. Meade gave the slightly apologetic
half-smile with which she was wont to deprecate her own
accomplishments. “I thought perhaps it might be worthwhile to
observe where he went this evening.”