Yellow Room (16 page)

The bobby pin had belonged to her. He knew that, if Carol did not. The hair caught in it had been bleached and showed dark at the root, whereas Elinor Hilliard was a natural blonde.

All right. Go on from there. Greg would not have used the elevator, even allowing for Lucy’s slight deafness. He had investigated it after Carol had given him the bobby pin, and it made an unmistakable rumbling sound. But Elinor Hilliard could have, taking the desperate chance it must have been.

He considered that carefully. She had presumably been seen that night, or her car had. Also no sooner had she arrived yesterday than the hillside had been burned that night. There was a resemblance here too, he thought. In both cases fires had been set. But once again he found himself up against Lucy’s definite and, he believed, truthful statement that there had been no fire while she was still in the house.

He lit another cigarette and straightened his leg.

Was it possible, he wondered, that the girl had not been killed on Friday night, after all? That she had stayed on for another day, living in the yellow room and eating what she could find? He thought it unlikely. Not only had the postmortem fixed the approximate time as Friday. There was also Lucy’s story of the hand reaching out from the closet door. That had been real enough for her to break a leg, trying to escape from it.

He got up rather drearily and limped home. There was no news from Tim, but he had not expected any. Tim had only had time to reach St. Louis. But Alex found him irritable and without appetite that night.

“For a man who’s trying to get back in this war,” Alex said somberly, “you act like you never heard of a kraut. You eat that custard. It’s good for you—sir.”

He did not eat the custard. He pushed it away and lit a cigarette.

“The police think Carol Spencer set the fire last night, Alex.”

“That girl? I don’t believe it, sir.”

“Nor do I. Just the same she’s in real trouble. A little more and they’ll arrest her for arson, and possibly for concealing evidence of a crime.”

Alex fixed his one eye on the view.

“I’ve been thinking, sir,” he said. “Maybe somebody chased that girl outside.”

“In a fur coat?”

“We don’t know she had it on, do we? It was easy enough to put it on later. As I get it, the idea was to make it look as though she was killed in the house.”

“Why?”

“Well, to let the murderer get away. The Norton woman mightn’t have found her right off. She had a lot to do before she made the beds. Take her two or three days, likely, before she needed to get into the linen closet.”

“And how would you get in the house?”

Alex was thoughtful. His big body tensed with the effort of thinking.

“Well, if you didn’t have a game leg you could shinny up the pillars of that little porch off the kitchen. You can break the lock of a window easy enough, and maybe nobody would notice it up there.”

“Any other way you can think of? As I recall, one window in the yellow room was open when I saw it. That’s where the girl was staying. How about a ladder?”

“There’s a pruning ladder down by the stable. I seen it myself. It’s close up. You don’t notice it unless you’re going by. I use that way for a short cut.”

“You might look at it sometime and see if it’s been moved.”

He sat still for a long time, smoking one cigarette after another. It was useless to try to see Lucy Norton, who was, he was confident, holding in her stubborn head the key to the mystery. He knew, too, that it was possible Carol Spencer had set the fire after all. She would so if she was trying to protect someone. But whom was she trying to protect? Elinor Hilliard? Her brother? Then again he gave her credit for too much intelligence to have left the pitcher where it was found. It would have been easy to bring it back to the house, wash it and return it to the attic.

Or would it? The fire must have caught fast, and the drive been brilliantly lighted almost at once. Had she found herself more or less cut off, unable to get back with the incriminating pitcher in her hand? He considered that. An air warden on his rounds had seen the blaze and run to the Wards’ to telephone. He would have used the path that led to the Spencer place. In that case she could have been cut off, have heard the warden running, taken refuge in the Ward property, and in panic had dropped the thing where it had been found.

The same applied to Elinor, of course. Either one of them could have hidden until the warden had entered the Ward house and then by way of the lower garden and the trees have worked her way back. Gregory was eliminated. It was unlikely that he had known what was in the attic. Unlikely, too, that his surprise when he saw what Mason had carried down could have been assumed.

He looked at his watch. It was almost nine. If Marcia Dalton was at home she would have finished her dinner, and it was time he had a further talk with her.

He said nothing to Alex, except that he was to keep an eye on the Spencer place until he got back, and he did not take his car. He walked down the drive and toward the beach to the Dalton house. A big dog came running at him, but let him alone when spoken to. And he found Marcia alone, playing solitaire in the living room. Her long face lighted when she saw him.

“Well!” she said. “Don’t tell me this is a dinner call. I don’t believe it.”

She was obviously flustered. She insisted on getting him the highball he did not want, informed him that the servants had gone to the movies, and ordered him into a comfortable chair without giving him a chance to speak. Then she sat down, eying him shrewdly.

“So you’re not asked to the party either!”

He looked surprised.

“What party?”

“Elinor Hilliard’s giving one at the club. She left me out too. I suppose Carol told her I’d seen her car, so here I am,
sur le branche.
I can’t say I mind. I’m a Nurse’s Aide and I’ve been at the hospital all day.” She gave him a sharp glance. “Still on the trail, major?”

His lean face did not change.

“On what trail, Miss Dalton?”

She made an impatient gesture.

“I’m not an idiot. Maybe you’re in love with Carol, I wouldn’t know. But you’re interested in this case. You won’t get far with it, of course.”

“That’s rather an interesting statement.”

“Sure it is. I mean it, too. We’re pretty much of a clan here. We stick together. We have our differences, but when it comes to trouble—You’ll find Carol and Greg Spencer are part of us. Not Elinor.”

“So, granting that I am puzzled by this, I can expect no help. Is that it?”

She did not answer directly.

“You’re up against something more than that,” she told him. “Greg and Elinor will stick together through wind and high water. They’re like twins, only she’s bossed him for years. If Greg set that fire last night, Elinor knows about it. I think he did.”

“I see. And the murder?”

“I never claimed to see anybody in Elinor’s car that night. All I know is that the car was here. I’ll swear to that on a stack of Bibles. But go down to the club some morning and watch them there. I haven’t told them anything, but someone else has. If Elinor was here that night, Greg was with her. At least some man was. He comes back this time, and the hill is burned. Think about that, Major Dane. If this Barbour girl’s clothes were hidden there—”

“Who saw Greg in the car?”

“I didn’t say it was Greg. That’s not only what I think, but what a lot of other people think too.”

“All right,” he said patiently. “Who saw this man in the car?”

“Old Mrs. Ward. Mr. Ward’s a bad sleeper. He walks around sometimes at night, and this night he was gone so long she got worried. She went after him, but she didn’t find him. She saw a car that looked like Elinor’s going down the drive at Crestview, only there was a man in it. He wasn’t driving it. Somebody else was, and that puzzled her. There hadn’t been a murder then, so far as anybody knew, and she happened to speak about it to someone the next day. She thought if it was Greg it was odd he hadn’t stopped to see them. He was a friend of Terry, their grandson.”

Dane sat upright in his chair, staring at her.

“Good God!” he said. “Are you telling me that this summer colony knows a thing like that and won’t tell it?”

“I warned you,” she said comfortably. “We stick together. I’m furious at Elinor tonight, or I’d probably still not be sticking my neck out. Then of course old Mrs. Ward doesn’t see very well. There’s one school that believes she was mistaken. The other school thinks Greg was here; but he’s the local hero, so what the hell?”

He was still astounded. He got up and took a turn or two around the room before he spoke.

“I wonder why you’re telling me this, Miss Dalton. It’s not just because you’re left out of the party.”

For a minute her mask dropped.

“No,” she said. “It’s because Greg needs a friend. I’m fond of him, you see. I never had a chance, of course. But this crowd has got him tried and convicted, and someday Floyd and his bunch will hear it. Maybe Greg did it, I don’t know. But he never planned to do it. He’s not that sort. Only remember this. Lucy Norton had a better reason to let that girl stay in the house than she told at the inquest. And Greg likes women. I guess he’s had his share of them.”

Dane looked undecided. He looked at his watch.

“Maybe I’d better see Mr. Ward,” he said. “If he’s a bad sleeper he may still be up.”

But, although he found Mr. Ward awake and reading in his library, he left at the end of a half hour completely baffled. Mr. Ward was courteous, even affable. He offered a chair and a drink, only the first of which Dane accepted, and he brought up at once the matter of the fire.

“Bad thing,” he said. “I always liked that hill. Of course we’re all a little overgrown. Too much enthusiastic planting in the early days. But a fire…”

When Dane broached the murder however he became reticent.

“Horrible thing,” he said. “Terrible for Carol Spencer, too. I’m glad some of the family are with her. It was no place for her to stay alone.”

That gave Dane his opening. He was quick to take it.

“I understand your wife saw a car leaving the Spencer place the night of the murder. Can you tell me anything about it?”

Mr. Ward frowned.

“I see you’ve heard that story,” he said. “There’s nothing to it. Absolutely. She saw a car, certainly, but it may have backed into the drive to turn around. That’s all I know, sir, or my wife either. The amount of gossip here in the summer is outrageous.”

“She didn’t see who was in it?” Dane persisted.

“She thought it was a man, but she can’t even be sure of that. Her eyes are not what they were, and it was a dark night.”

He rose, and Dane saw he was expected to go. He waited a moment, however.

“You yourself didn’t see this car, Mr. Ward?”

“Certainly not,” the old gentleman said testily.

But Dane persisted.

“The police might like to know all this, Mr. Ward.”

“Neither my wife nor I run to the police with all the tittle-tattle of a place like this. As for the car, it was a car. It might have been anybody’s.”

He himself showed Dane out, but he did not offer to shake hands. He stood in the doorway, small and wiry and watchful, until he could no longer hear Dane’s footsteps on the drive. After that he locked the door, put out the lights and went upstairs to his wife.

“I wish to God,” he said, “that you’d learn to curb your tongue. They’ve learned about Elinor Hilliard’s car. Major Dane has just been here.”

Mrs. Ward sat up in bed. She had lost color, and she wrung her thin old hands.

“Oh, Nat,” she said. “What are we to do? What
can
we do?”

He was still upset, but he went over and patted her on the shoulder.

“I’ll have to go out,” he said. “Try and sleep, my dear. I’ll not be long.”

She protested almost wildly, but he did not listen. His small neat body was erect and purposeful as he left her, and he stopped long enough in his dressing room to slip a revolver into his pocket.

L
UCY NORTON DIED THAT
same night.

It happened either during or some time after Elinor Hilliard’s dinner at the club. Characteristically, Elinor’s reaction to Floyd’s visit had been to insist on going on with the party. Greg had protested.

“Don’t be a jackass,” he said. “Whom are you trying to fool? The police? What do they care? If it’s the summer people, I imagine there’s plenty of talk already without your trying to show you don’t give a damn. Call it off. Have a headache. You’ve done that before when it suited you.”

“And let everybody know something new has happened? Let me alone, Greg. We’ve got to carry on.”

Carol felt helpless between the two of them. When Greg appealed to her, however, she sided with Elinor.

“I don’t see what else we can do,” she said. “You can’t ask twenty people to dinner, let their cooks have the evening off and then tell them to eat scrambled eggs at home. What about that pitcher? It got out of the house somehow. It didn’t have legs.”

“Why worry?” Elinor said lightly, and looked at her watch. “Good gracious, I have to get my hair done. I’m taking your car, Carol. Greg’s going to the barber. He needs his.”

“Why can’t you walk? If I’m to fix your tables and take the champagne—”

“I’ll be back in plenty of time.”

She was not, of course. Carol dressed early, putting on a white dress which made her look gayer than she felt, and getting to the club just in time to place the cards on the table before the first guest arrived. It was Colonel Richardson, imposing as ever in dinner clothes, and bringing his own contribution of a bottle of old brandy.

“Nothing in the club like it,” he told her, handing it over carefully. “I laid up some for Don years ago, but there’s plenty left. You’re looking very lovely, my dear.”

He wanted to talk about the fire.

“Most puzzling,” he said. “Of course the weather is dry, but to spread as fast as it did! Who raised the alarm?”

“One of the air wardens saw it first.”

“I was wondering,” he said. “I saw that man of Dane’s around your place late last night. You remember I stayed at the Wards’, playing chess. I certainly saw him—Alex, I think they call him. Rather odd, don’t you think? Being out at that hour?”