Yellow Room (11 page)

“I wonder what you’re worrying about,” he said. “You know this is part of that dead woman’s outfit. You know her clothes are somewhere about, or at least you did this morning. What happened since? What are you afraid of? Your sister?”

He didn’t wait for an answer. He stalked to the window and stood there, looking out.

“Nice view from here,” he said, in a different voice. “Better than mine, I think.” He turned then, came back, and picked up the gadget from the couch. “I’ll let you rest now. I have to bathe and shave. I’m dining out tonight.”

She was definitely uneasy now. If he was dining out, he must have a reason. But she tried to make her voice light.

“Don’t tell me you’ve succumbed at last. Who succeeded in getting you?”

“Miss Dalton. She likes to talk, I gather, and I need some information. This working in the dark—” He saw her expression, and his voice changed. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve hurt my leg again, and this thing’s getting me down. Don’t mind if I’m rough. I’ve been living a rough life.”

He was ready to leave when he saw Don’s picture. He went over and looked at it, the helmet, the haggard eyes, the boyish face.

“This is not your brother.”

“No. It’s Donald Richardson. He was lost more than a year ago, in the Pacific. I—was engaged to him.”

“Sorry,” he said. “A lot of fine fellows gone.”

He went soon after, telling her before he left that Alex had found a man to cut the grass for her. “Not a gardener,” he said, “but a useful person to have around. Name’s Tim. Tim Murphy, I think. If you like he can sleep in the house. You’ll be less nervous with a man around. And so will I.”

T
HE COLONEL LOOKED BETTER
that night. He wore the dinner clothes without which he was never seen after six o’clock, alone or not, and for once he did not talk about Don immediately.

He made her a cocktail, admired her summer evening dress, and served her an excellent small dinner, with some fine old claret. He did not even discuss the murder, except to say that he hoped the police were not troubling her. He rambled on. Old Nathaniel Ward was not looking well. There was a barmaid at the club, doing nicely too. This idea that women couldn’t mix drinks—

He came at last and deviously to Elinor.

“She hasn’t been here lately, I suppose?”

“She doesn’t like it. No. She’s at Newport.”

“And you were with her last week?”

She felt herself stiffening. There was something coming, she knew. It came, almost immediately.

“I was quite sure of that, of course,” he said, in his courtly manner. “It just happens that Mrs. Ward said something about somebody seeing a car like Elinor’s here one night last week. I’m glad you can say where she was.”

She took a hasty sip of claret.

“There are a number of cars like Elinor’s in the country,” she managed to say. “Of course it’s absurd. What night was it?”

“I think it was Friday. Don’t worry about it, Carol. You know how stories spread here.”

He did talk of Don after dinner, and she found it for once a relief. Not that he said much. There was a map pinned on the wall, but he did not refer to it. However, she sensed in him a concealed resentment and fear of Dane.

“Who is the fellow anyhow?” he asked. “Just because the Burtons loaned him their house doesn’t mean anything. I’ve looked him up in the
Army and Navy register.
He’s not there.”

“I suppose, with all the new officers…”

“I’d be just a little careful, my dear. All sorts in the service now, and he’s a bit of a mystery. I remember in the last war we got a lot of good men, but we got a lot of bounders too.”

She had walked down, and he took her back home up the hill. Neither of them saw Alex, on guard among the trees and burning a hole in his pocket with the cigarette he had hastily stuffed there.

He remained on duty until two o’clock, when Dane relieved him, a Dane in a dark outfit and with a revolver in his pocket. They wasted no words.

“Okay?”

“Okay.”

Then Alex went home, and Dane began his cautious circuit of the house. Nothing happened, and at dawn he disappeared. But not to sleep. What he had learned from Marcia Dalton that night looked as though Carol’s family was involved in the murder, and he did not like the idea.

He had driven down to the Dalton place. Two or three cars were already parked in the drive, and he cursed himself for letting down the bar he had so carefully erected. But he had at least a chance to see a dozen or so of the summer people, the Wards, the Peter Crowells, Louise Stimson, a few others. He stood, stiff in his uniform, through several rounds of cocktails, watching and listening, but he learned nothing from any of them except the prospects of the approaching election and the cost of living. Then at the table Marcia, beside him, had abruptly turned to him.

“You’re interested in our murder, aren’t you?” she asked, her sharp eyes on his.

“Merely as an observer,” he said lightly.

“Well, I don’t think Carol Spencer ought to be alone in the house. She’s a nice child. Where’s her family?”

“I understand her sister is coming.”

Marcia looked surprised.

“Elinor!”

“Why?”

She gave him a long look, then turned abruptly to speak to Peter Crowell on her left. She talked to him through the lobster and up to the saddle of mutton. Then, as though she had made up her mind, she turned back.

“I’m going to tell you something I’ve promised not to tell,” she said in a low voice. “I’ve known Elinor Hilliard all my life. I don’t like her much. I know her car. It’s a foreign job you can’t mistake, and I’m pretty sure I saw it the night that girl was killed.”

He duly registered surprise.

“That’s hard to believe,” he said.

“Carol doesn’t believe it. I told her, and she said Elinor couldn’t have been here. But there’s nothing wrong with my eyes, and if you’re interested you ought to know. I haven’t told anyone else,” she added. “And don’t let Carol know I spoke to you, will you? I’m fond of her, and I think she’s in a jam.”

He played a rubber or two of bridge after dinner. His mind was not on the game, but he won ten dollars from Peter Crowell and that gentleman was not pleased. He got out his wallet and eyed the scratch on Dane’s face.

“Saw you on the hill above the Spencer place this afternoon,” he said. “What are you looking for? More bodies?”

“You never know your luck,” Dane replied indifferently, and was to remember that later with what amounted to horror.

He had gone home, relieved Alex, and was in bed at six o’clock the next morning when a highly disreputable-looking individual with a battered suitcase got off the train ten miles away. He looked around, saw a car at a distance, and after the crowd dispersed moved casually toward it. Once inside he grinned.

“What goes on?” he inquired. “Don’t tell me he’s on the old job again. I don’t believe it. Not in this neck of the woods.”

Alex shrugged as he started the car.

“He’ll tell you himself,” he said, his one eye on the road.

“I thought he was resting that leg of his.”

“Not him,” Alex said disgustedly. “He’s been working his head off to get well so he can go back. Bored stiff, too. He was fit to be tied until this happened. Now his leg—”

“Well, what happened, for God’s sake? Why the fingerprint stuff? Is it this Spencer murder?”

“I’d rather the major told you himself.”

It was Tim’s turn to stare. Then he burst into raucous laughter.

“The major!” he said. “When did he get to be a major?”

“They move them up fast these days,” Alex said imperturbably.

“Yeah, but they don’t move them from a sergeant in the army to a majority in six months. The last time I saw him he was lugging a pack, and don’t think I’m fooling. What are you doing? Kidding me? He’s in some special branch of intelligence, isn’t he?”

Alex slowed the car for a curve. His one eye was wary.

“Look, Tim,” he said. “A lot of fellows got queer jobs in this man’s army. Now they’re there, now they’re here. Maybe they’re in Japan or the Philippines. Then before you know it they’re somewhere else. He was a major when he got shot in Italy. I was there.”

“That where you lost your eye?”

“I got off easy,” Alex said comfortably.

Tim was silent. He was a typical Brooklyn Irishman who had fought his way from the police force to a business of his own, and just now his expression was one of amusement.

“Okay,” he said. “So he’s a major, and what am I? A tramp?”

“I imagine you’re to be a gardener.”

Tim stared.

“Well, I’ll be God-damned,” he said, suddenly sour. “A gardener! What the hell does that mean? I never saw a blade of grass until I was thirty.”

“You can run a lawn mower,” Alex said, enjoying himself hugely. “You know. You just push the thing. It cuts the grass. Then you rake it up.”

Indignation kept Tim quiet for a time, but his curiosity was too much for him.

“All right. I cut somebody’s grass. Then what?”

“I expect you’re to keep an eye on the Spencer girl. The major thinks she may be in danger.”

It was Tim’s turn to enjoy himself.

“So he’s fallen for a girl at last,” he said. “Always said he’d fall hard when he did. What’s she like?”

“Just a girl. You’ll be seeing her when you’re digging in the garden.”

“I’m doing no digging,” Tim said firmly, and relapsed again into silence.

He cheered over his breakfast, however, and he was loading his camera when Dane appeared at noon. Tim grinned.

“Morning, major,” he said. “Hear you’ve been promoted.”

“Temporarily, Tim. Don’t bother about the rank stuff unless there are people around.” He glanced at the camera. “I see you’re ready.”

“All set.”

For the next hour or so they worked, as they had worked together before. They ate lunch while Tim’s films were being developed, and inspected them later. There were prints on all the china, and on the photograph frame as well. Tim looked up.

“Looks like a dame’s,” he said. “Kind of long and tapering. You take a man’s, even if he’s got a small hand, the prints are broader.”

Dane nodded. He had no longer any doubt that they were Elinor Hilliard’s, and the whole picture looked clear. She had been in Bayside the night of the murder, and she had somehow managed to save her mother’s treasures before she set fire to the house. He halted there. She had not set fire to the house. That had been done later, Saturday or Sunday night. So what?

But it was the spade that added to the confusion. There were smudged prints on the handle, but one or two were clear enough to prove that they did not resemble the others. They were not large, but Tim was confident they were a man’s. Without much hope Dane sent them to Washington, using the post office at the railroad for reasons of his, and going to the hospital that afternoon.

He did not ask for Lucy. He found George Smith sitting up in bed, and took a chair beside him.

“Doing all right, are you?” he inquired.

“Be better when they take me off this pap they’re feeding me,” George said sullenly. He surveyed Dane’s uniform. “You’re the fellow at the Burton place, aren’t you?”

“Yes. I thought I’d better see you. I can get a man to do your work until you’re able to carry on, if that’s all right with you.”

“Sure is,” George said more cheerfully. “All I got done was a bit of mowing. Then this pain hit me.”

“You hadn’t done any work in the garden, I suppose?”

“Nothing but the grass, and not much of that. You tell the other fellow he’ll find everything nice and tidy in the tool house, and to keep it that way. I’m particular about my tools.”

Before he left Dane resorted to the old device of offering George his cigarette case, and carried away with him excellent impression of five large and calloused fingers. He did not even need to compare them with the ones on the spade handle.

Tim spent an hour or two that afternoon sauntering over the hillside. To any observer he was merely hunting a dog, whistling now and then, and occasionally calling an imaginary Roger. But he covered considerable ground and found nothing. He spent the evening with Dane going over the case, but in the end he gave it up.

“Sounds like the sister,” he said. “Only she didn’t work it alone. Who helped her?”

“That’s what I’d like to know,” Dane said soberly, and went back over his notes again.

E
LINOR ARRIVED EARLY THE
morning of the inquest, Thursday. She came by taxi, surrounded by luggage and irritable at the hour, the trip, at Carol’s insistence that she come at all, that she had had to abandon her dinner party, and been obliged to leave her maid behind.

If there was anything else, her manner did not show it. She went up to Carol’s room and surveyed her as she lay in bed.

“You look like the wrath of God,” she said. “Don’t tell me the story now. I’ve read it in the papers. That’s a hellish train. I need a bath and some food.”

But she did not bathe at once. When Carol had dressed and gone downstairs she found her in the library, her breakfast tray almost untouched and she herself with a cigarette, staring down through the French door at the harbor.

“I can’t see why you wanted me,” she said fretfully. “As to that car business, there are hundreds of cars like mine. Marcia only wants to make trouble. She’s always hated me. I don’t have to testify today, do I?”

“Not unless you know something. If you do, I advise you to tell it.”

Carol’s voice was dry, and Elinor looked at her sharply. Then she laughed.

“It was you she asked for in New York, not me,” she said.

She went upstairs after that, and Carol heard her bell ringing in the pantry. She knew what that meant. Without her own maid Freda would be pressed into service, to draw her bath, to press her clothes, to help her dress and fix her hair. But Elinor had had to come, if only to confront Marcia if necessary.

When she herself went up later it was to find Elinor in bed, with the odor of bath salts heavy in the air and Freda opening a half dozen bags. An elaborate traveling toilet set was already on the dressing table, and Freda was looking sulky. Elinor’s voice was sharp when she saw her.