Yellow Room (12 page)

“I don’t see why you leave the linen closet like that, Carol. Surely you can have it cleaned and painted. Those red seals on it make me sick. They look like blood.”

“The police want it that way.”

“And these sheets!” Elinor said crossly. “Why in the name of heaven sheets like these?”

Carol kept her temper, although she flushed.

“You might remember our own are scorched. I wouldn’t use them anyhow, Elinor. And I can’t buy sheets. There are none in town.”

She sent Freda out, for the house was still only partially livable, and did the rest of the unpacking herself under Elinor’s watchful eyes. But her heart sank when, on the toilet table, she saw a number of pale bobby pins, the color of Elinor’s hair. She finished however before she began to talk. Then she sat down on the edge of the bed and smiled at her sister.

“I wish you’d trust me, Elinor,” she said. “I don’t think you killed anybody. That would be idiotic. But if you were here that night—”

“What on earth would bring me here?”

“I haven’t an idea,” Carol said candidly. “But you see I found a bobby pin in the elevator, and it looks like yours.”

Elinor astonishment was real. She sat up in bed, staring. Then she laughed.

“A bobby pin! My God, Carol! And in the elevator! I haven’t been in it for years. I’d forgotten there was one.”

There was the ring of truth in her voice, and Carol drew a long breath. She felt a vast sense of relief. She was even able to laugh a little herself.

“Well, that’s that,” she said, and slid off the bed. “It had me scared, you know. Marcia was so certain.”

“Tell Marcia where she can go,” Elinor said vindictively. “And now get out and let me sleep. What time is this inquest? And why do I have to go?”

“It’s this afternoon. You don’t have to go. I just think you’d better.”

They were more amicable by that time. Elinor asked about Lucy Norton and if she could see her. But when she was told about the yellow room her expression changed.

“Will that have to come out at the inquest?” she asked.

“Why not? She was staying here.”

“And you don’t know why? What did she tell Lucy, Carol? She must have had some sort of story for Lucy to put her up here. What does Lucy say?”

“I don’t know. The police won’t let her see anybody.”

She was certain now that Elinor had learned something which had terrified her. Lying there in her bed, with no makeup on and her face heavily creamed, she looked white and drawn. Beyond asking to have the shades lowered and saying she would try to sleep she did not speak, however. Carol went downstairs, somewhat dazed and highly apprehensive.

Below, the house was gradually becoming livable again. The long drawing-room rug was down, the covers off the furniture, and as Carol went forward she saw a man carrying chairs and tables onto the terrace. He looked up and grinned at her.

“I’m the new man,” he said. “Tim Murphy. Just call me Tim. Major Dane said to go right ahead, and do anything I could.”

She smiled in return.

“We’re glad to have you, Tim. We needed help badly.”

“I’m no gardener, miss. I can cut the grass. That’s about as far as I go.”

“That’s about as far as you need to go.”

He nodded and went back to work, but Carol was aware that behind his grin he had inspected her sharply. She dismissed the thought, and getting her car drove into the village for supplies. Elinor had not brought her ration book, of course, and Carol, struggling over butter and bacon and buying the chickens she was beginning to loathe, wondered if her sister even knew about rationing. But she was more cheerful, now that she was out of the house. She had only imagined the fright in Elinor’s face, she thought, and this was borne out when she found Elinor downstairs on her return. She was as carefully dressed as usual, but she was looking perplexed.

“What’s wrong on the hill?” she inquired. “There’s a man wandering around up there. I saw him while I was dressing.”

“I didn’t see him. What did he look like?”

“I don’t know. He kept stooping over, as though he was looking for something.”

Carol put down her bag and confronted her.

“There are some things you ought to know, Elinor,” she said. “You know how they found the—how they found the body. She was in a nightdress and a dressing gown, with a fur jacket over them, and she had been sleeping in the yellow room. At least she’d gone to bed there. But we’ve never found her clothes. They have to be somewhere.”

“So they think they’re on the hill?”

“Maybe not on it. Buried in it.”

She repeated what Dane had told her, about the possibility of such a method, the digging of a hole and the replanting over it. But Elinor thought the idea farfetched.

“Why not burn them?” she said lightly. “Why go to all that trouble, if they had to be got rid of? And why are they so essential? After all, she’s dead.”

“They want to know who she was,” Carol said patiently. “It’s almost a week, and they still don’t know.”

Dane was gone—if it had been Dane—when she saw the hillside again. She viewed it from the servants’ dining room, with an upset Maggie at her elbow.

“I don’t mind Miss Elinor,” she said. “I know her ways. But if Freda’s to spend all her time with her I’ll have to have more help, Miss Carol.”

She conciliated Maggie as best she could, and she and Elinor ate lunch almost in silence. With Elinor there the days of trays was over, and lunch was served in the dining room, at a small table near the window. A Coast Guard boat was taking a practice run up the bay, and beyond one of the islands they could see the white sails of a yawl. Carol had always loved the view, but this day the approaching inquest hung heavy over her. Elinor, too, was absorbed and silent. She smoked steadily and only looked up once to ask a question.

“Do you think Lucy Norton will be able to testify?”

“I don’t know. I shouldn’t think so.”

But she was wrong. Lucy did testify that day.

The inquest was held at the town hall. Long before two o’clock the street was lined with cars, and half a dozen reporters and cameramen were on the pavement. Elinor faced them with stony calm, but Carol was less lucky. She sneezed just as one shutter clicked, and later she was to see that picture, her face contorted in agony.

“Miss Spencer showed great distress” was what it said beneath.

The hall was jammed. The coroner, Dr. Harrison, sat at a small table below and in front of the stage, with certain articles covered by a sheet; and the six jurymen sat at one side. They had been shown the body, and looked rather unhappy. Over all was the noise of chairs scraping and people moving and talking. Elinor looked around her distastefully.

“It sounds like the zoo at feeding time,” she said. “And smells worse.”

Nevertheless, she put on a good act, smiling and nodding to the people she knew, and ignoring the others. She had dressed carefully in a white sports suit and a small white hat, painfully reminiscent of the one which probably lay under the sheet on the table, and she looked calm and detached. Carol, watching her smile at Marcia Dalton, felt a reluctant admiration for her.

With the first thump of the gavel the noise subsided, and the silence was almost startling. The coroner’s voice was quiet when he began. There had been no identification of the body. Under the circumstances that had been impossible. Later they hoped to learn just who the young woman was who had been done to death in such a tragic manner. In the meantime an inquest was simply an inquiry, to get such information as they could. The witnesses would be under oath to tell the truth. Any failure to do so would be considered as perjury, and the person guilty under the law.

After that introduction came the report on the autopsy. The medical examiner from the county seat had conducted it, and he read his report. The body was one of a young woman, between twenty and thirty probably. There had been no assault. The internal organs were normal, and there were indications that she had borne a child.

The crowd stirred at this. Heretofore she had been merely a girl, dropping, so to speak, out of the blue to be killed mysteriously in the vicinity. Now she became a young mother, and suddenly pitiful.

The medical examiner went on. Deceased had eaten her last meal probably six hours before death, as the process of digestion was well established. Said deceased had been a blonde, and very little work had been done on the teeth. In spite of the situation in which she had been found she had been killed by a blow that had fractured her skull.

The fire which had burned her hair and clothing had been started after death. There was no smoke or soot in the lungs, or any indication from the effect of the burns that she had been dead for some time before the attempt had been made to incinerate the body.

He paused here, for the coroner’s questions.

“Would it be possible to state how long this interval might have been?”

“No. Except that death was already well established.”

Chief Floyd was the next witness. He told of Carol’s arrival at his office, and of going back with her to Crestview. He had found the body in the closet and had it removed after Dr. Harrison had examined it. No, he had taken no pictures. No one had a camera; or if they had, there were no films.

Asked about the position of the body, he said it was on the floor of the linen closet, with the head toward the rear, and what he called the limbs neatly arranged. Most of the clothing, he said, had been burned, but it was there in that bundle if the jury cared to see it.

The jury did care. It came forward solemnly and stared at what lay on the table. None of them touched anything, and they filed back, more sober than ever and somewhat shocked. Elinor Milliard, too, had lost some of her poise. She was pale and evidently shaken.

“It’s horrible,” she said suddenly. “I want to get out, Carol. I’m going to be sick.”

But Carol caught her arm.

“Be careful,” she said. “You have to stick it, Elinor. It will be over in a minute.”

Dane, standing at the rear of the hall, saw the bit of byplay; Elinor’s attempt to rise, and Carol restraining her. He had, as a matter of fact, been watching Elinor from the beginning. She knew something, he was convinced, but what or how much he was not sure. Now as the exhibits were re-covered he saw her relax, and puzzled over that too.

There followed an interval while a blueprint of the house was circulated among the jury, and this was still going on when there was some movement at the rear entrance doors. People were craning their heads, and to Carol’s surprise she saw that Lucy Norton was being brought in. She was in a wheel chair, and her leg in its cast was carefully propped in front of her. A nurse in uniform was pushing the chair, and Lucy was staring straight ahead, looking pale and nervous.

Her arrival, Dane saw, was a shock to Elinor. He could not see her face, but she sagged in her chair and Carol looked at her anxiously. The audience, however, did not notice this. It was absorbed in Lucy, in her wheel chair now beside the table, with the nurse bending over her.

They did not call her at once. Freda was the next witness, and a nervous one. She had gone upstairs to fix Miss Spencer’s room for her, and had gone to the linen closet for sheets. There were black smears all around the door, and she rubbed at one with her finger. “It came off like soot.” After that she opened the door and saw somebody lying on the floor inside. That was all she knew. She had run down the back stairs and fainted in the kitchen. “I was sick to my stomach,” she said.

They did not keep her long, nor Nora, nor Maggie, who followed them. Even Carol was asked only perfunctory questions, about verifying the fact and notifying the police. Asked if she knew the identity of the deceased she said she did not, nor had she any idea why she was in the house.

So far there had been no mention of the yellow room. Evidently that was waiting for Lucy. The bus driver testified as to the arrival at six-thirty on Friday morning of the week before of a young woman dressed as the deceased was supposed to have been dressed. Sam of the hamburger stand stated that such a young woman had had coffee in his place early that morning and looked at the telephone book, but did not call anybody. And some of the interval between arrival and that time was bridged by Mr. Allison of the Five-&-Ten. He told of seeing such a young woman sitting in the public park opposite his store.

“It was early, a little after seven o’clock,” he said, “and I’d just opened the place. She was on a bench by the bandstand, looking as though she was waiting. She wasn’t in any trouble that I could see. There was a squirrel there, and she was trying to coax it to her. Then I went away. When I looked again, about ten minutes later, she was gone.”

Lucy was better now. Dane saw that she was listening carefully. She was slightly deaf, and her chair had been wheeled well forward. But Carol, closer to her, saw her holding her hand behind one ear, and was certain that the hand was trembling.

When at last she was called, Dr. Harrison treated her with considerable gentleness.

“We appreciate the willingness of this witness to appear,” he said to the audience. “As you all know, she has had a serious injury. But her testimony is important. Now, Mrs. Norton—”

She took the oath without looking at the crowd. There was no noise now. Some of the people at the rear of the hall were standing up, to see or hear better. But the early part of her testimony was disappointing. The girl had arrived at Crestview about half past eight on Friday morning. She had asked for Miss Carol Spencer, and had seemed disappointed that she had not arrived.

“She kind of hung around for some time,” Lucy said. “She claimed to be a friend of Miss Spencer’s, and she said Miss Spencer was expecting her. I didn’t know what to do. I had plenty of work on my hands, but she didn’t go away. She just sat in the hall and waited. It was cold there, so I asked her back to the kitchen. I’d lit the stove.

“I told her nobody was coming until the first of the week, and I said she’d better go down to the village and telephone to Mrs. Hilliard’s at Newport, where Miss Carol was staying. But she said her feet hurt her, and couldn’t she at least clean up after the train trip. That’s how she came to be in the yellow room. I didn’t see any objection to that. She was well dressed and looked like a lady. But I thought she was kind of nervous.”