Yellow Room (17 page)

Her nerves were none too good. She put down the last place card and looked at him.

“If you mean he set the fire, I think you’re wrong, colonel. Both he and Major Dane worked hard to put it out.”

But Henry Richardson had something to say, and proceeded to say it.

“I’ve been coming here for a good many years,” he said with dignity. “We’ve never had anything worse than a burglary, and that was by a waiter at the hotel. Then this Dane arrives, with a servant who looks like a thug, and we have both a murder with an attempted fire—in your house, my dear—and another fire last night.”

Carol flushed.

“Isn’t that rather ridiculous? After all, he’s an officer in the army. Even if you can’t find his record.”

“There have been bad hats in the services as well as everywhere else.”

Good gracious, she thought wildly, I’m quarreling with Don’s father, and Don is dead. She forced a smile.

“I’m sorry,” she told him. “I haven’t had much sleep lately, and I’m certainly not interested in Major Dane. Now do go and help receive the people. Elinor’s late, as usual.”

He was not entirely reassured, however. He put his hand on her arm before he left.

“Just don’t see too much of this fellow,” he said. “He’s hard, my dear. Not the sort I like to see with you.”

The party was a success, at least at first. Elinor’s parties always were. She had skimmed the cream of the bridge-playing crowd, the food was good, the drinks plentiful. The noise rose over the cocktails until Carol felt her head buzzing. She drank two herself, and Greg had more than were good for him. But looking around the table Carol wondered why Marcia Dalton was not there. Pete Crowell was being the life of the party, so far as noise was concerned. Louise Stimson was wearing all her pearls over a black dress that was a trifle low for wartime, and watching that Greg’s wineglass was kept full. But Marcia was not there.

It was a deliberate affront, she realized, because Marcia had claimed to have seen Elinor’s car the night of the murder. It was stupid of Elinor, she thought. Marcia had a bitter tongue.

She was roused by seeing Greg, his voice slightly thick, lifting his glass. She tried desperately to catch his eye, but he did not look at her. He was on his feet, his eyes slightly glazed, but with his usual beaming cheerfulness.

“To Floyd, our remarkable chief of police!” he said. “Who suspects the Spencer family of both arson and murder!”

There was an appalled silence, but there was nothing to do about it. Elinor had heard him, and was forcing a smile.

“Don’t try to be funny, Greg,” she said, across the round table. “People might misunderstand you.”

He shut up then. But the damage had been done, and those who had not heard him were being informed by the ones who had. Perhaps Carol imagined it, but the gaiety seemed to have gone out of the party. There was low-voiced conversation, a hint of caution, and now and then a face turned curiously toward herself. She was relieved when Elinor got up, and the men drifted into the smoking room for cigars and brandy. Carol herself managed to get away from the women, and outside to the pool.

There was a fog coming in. It crept along like thick white fingers among the islands, bringing a chill with it, and already the village lights had practically disappeared. She heard a car starting up somewhere close by, but paid no attention. It was twenty minutes later when Elinor called sharply from the porch of the club.

“Greg! Where are you, Greg?”

“He’s not here,” Carol answered. “Perhaps he’s gone home.”

She went back into the club. Elinor was almost in tears with rage.

“It wasn’t enough for him to get tight and say what he did,” she said furiously. “He’s walked out on a bridge game. You’ll have to take his place, Carol.”

Afterwards she remembered that night with horror: Greg gone in the fog, herself at the bridge table, bidding, doubling, winning or being set; and sometime, perhaps as she sat there, Lucy mysteriously dying on the floor of her hospital room.

That was where they found her, on the floor and without a mark on her. She had gone to sleep around ten o’clock, a hysterical nurse reported the next morning, and she had been all right then. She had been nervous since the inquest, and she had taken a sleeping tablet at nine.

“I didn’t look in after that,” the nurse said, sniffling. “I was busy, and she wasn’t sick. Then when I carried in the basin to wash her for breakfast—She would never have tried to get out of bed. Never.”

Floyd and Dr. Harrison reached the room almost simultaneously. There was nothing to be done, of course. The doctor said she had been dead for hours. Rigor had already set in. And Floyd looked infuriated.

“Mark or no mark,” he said, “she’s been murdered. She knew something she wasn’t telling, so this is what she got.”

The doctor got up from his knees.

“Looks like heart, Floyd.”

“Heart! With her on the floor like that?”

Both men surveyed the body. It lay beside the bed, in its cotton nightgown, the small face relaxed and peaceful. On the bed itself the covers had been thrown back, as if Lucy herself had done it. The only indication that anything was wrong was that the cord of the pushbutton, which had been fastened to the lower sheet with a safety pin, had been torn away and lay on the floor. Floyd pointed to it.

“Who did that?” he demanded, his face red with anger.

“It happens,” the doctor said, still calm. “It slipped and when she felt the heart attack coming on she got out of bed to get it. You’ve got murder on the brain.”

Floyd was still suspicious. He went out into the hall, where an uneasy intern was waiting.

“Any way anybody could have got in here last night?”

“The doors are locked at ten o’clock, chief, when the watchman takes over. She—wasn’t killed, was she?”

“That remains to be seen,” Floyd said loftily. “Any empty rooms around here?”

“Eleven. Patient went out late yesterday afternoon.”

The chief grunted and looked around. Eleven was across the hall. He strode in there and looked around him. The bed had been stripped and not yet made up, and a window was open. The intern had followed.

“Who was in here?”

“The Crowells’ little girl. She had her tonsils out a couple of day ago.”

Floyd examined the window. The fire escape was just outside, and he grunted again. There were scratches on the rusty edge of the ladderlike steps, and some of the paint had been scraped off.

“Come in here,” he said, almost cheerfully. “Bring the doc over, will you?”

But the doctor was not convinced. Someone might have come in. He didn’t dispute that. Lucy however had not been killed. “She might have been frightened,” he said. “Nobody laid a hand on her, Floyd. Take it or leave it.”

“What about these Crowells? Know anything?”

“They’re all right, so far as I know. I operated on the girl. I don’t know much about them. Get her down to the mortuary, Floyd. I’d better do a post-mortem.”

It was the doctor who notified Joe Norton, Lucy’s husband, and after a brief hesitation called Carol Spencer. She did not understand at first.

“Dead?” she said. “Lucy! But she was all right yesterday. She was getting better.”

“She died suddenly.”

“You mean her heart?”

“I think so. She tried to get out of bed alone.”

“But she’d never do that,” Carol protested. “I can’t believe it.”

She put down the receiver and wondered what to do. It was still early. The servants had had their breakfast, but Elinor and Greg were not yet awake. She decided to drive to the hospital, and found Joe Norton already there when she arrived. He was sitting on a bench in the lower hall, his face in his hands and his whole attitude one of hopeless grief. She sat down beside him and put a hand on his knee.

“I’m sorry, Joe. Terribly sorry.”

He raised his head and looked at her with red-rimmed eyes.

“They say it was her heart,” he said bitterly. “Wasn’t anything wrong with her heart. That’s their way of getting out of it.”

“Getting out of what?”

“They killed her. That’s what. Somebody gave her the wrong medicine. Or maybe she knew something she wasn’t meant to tell.”

She had not seen Lucy, and she supposed they were making a post-mortem examination. She herself still felt stunned, and to add to the tension Joe suddenly decided to locate Lucy and was restrained only with difficulty. She quieted him finally. She even succeeded at last in taking him back to Crestview, where he sat in the kitchen, not talking, while a horrified Maggie fried him some eggs and forced him to eat. When Carol went back, however, he had gone.

So great had been her own surprise that it was not until she was in her own room after his departure that she began to wonder why Lucy had been found on the floor, or if heart trouble was really the answer. There had been something in the doctor’s voice which puzzled her.

The doctor, to tell the truth, also was puzzled. There was no question that Lucy had died because her heart had stopped, abruptly and finally. But it should not have stopped at all. It was a fairly sound and healthy organ, as was all the rest of what had been Lucy Norton. Shock, he thought, as he put down his scalpel. Shock and fright? He wondered. He reported to Floyd, who was content to take his post-mortem
in absentia.

“Nothing,” he said. “Slight bruise on elbow as she fell. Nothing else, inside or out.”

“Maybe
she
climbed that fire escape?” Floyd jeered. “Look again, doc. Maybe poison.”

“The laboratory’s doing that now. I think it unlikely.”

It was more than unlikely. It was impossible. The lab reported that Lucy had eaten a light hospital supper of creamed chicken and gelatine at five-thirty, and that she had died sometime after midnight, the process of digestion being far along.

Carol knew nothing of all this. She was grieved for Lucy, and slightly annoyed when at eleven o’clock she looked across the patio to see Elinor getting into a taxi on her way to the club. Freda had certainly told her about Lucy, but she was going anyhow, to sit poised and smiling and slightly defiant under one of the big umbrellas by the pool, to gather around her such men as were available, and to drink her before-lunch cocktail as though she had never heard of the death.

It was not normal behavior, even for Elinor. Carol found herself recalling Marcia’s story about the car, and the fire which had happened so opportunely. For the first time she began to suspect that her sister was involved, not in Lucy’s death but in what had preceded it.

She had to know. It was no use drifting along, with murder and sudden death all around them; with Elinor at the club and Greg still asleep. She had to find out.

Elinor’s room was already cleaned when she got there. Freda had gone, and the bottles and jars of cosmetics were in neat rows on the toilet table. The elaborate comb and brushes and mirror without which Elinor never traveled were in place, as well as her jewel case on a small stand beside her bed. Carol only glanced at them, however. She closed the door to the hall and went to the closet

Considering that she had come merely for the inquest, Elinor had brought a surprising amount of clothes. There were floor-length dinner dresses, high-necked in deference to the war. There were elaborate negligees and sports dresses. On the shelf above, carefully placed on trees, was a row of hats, one of them small and white, and her shoes and slippers were neatly treed on the slanting shelf near the floor.

She examined them all, feeling guilty as she did so. Once Freda alarmed her. She came into the room, saw the closet door ajar and closed it without seeing her. Not until she had been gone for some time did Carol resume her search, moving the dresses along the rod that supported the hangers and inspecting them one by one. She paid particular attention to the dinner gown Elinor had worn to the Wards’ the night of the fire, but it told her nothing. She had almost finished when she saw the warm woolen dressing gown hung on a hook behind the rest.

She had not seen it before. It was a practical tailored affair, dark blue, with neat pockets and a cord to fasten around Elinor’s slim waist, and she took it down and examined it, her heart pounding in her ears.

It was not only dusty around the hem. There were two or three sandburs caught in it. She stood still, holding it, and trying not to see the picture it painted: Elinor in the attic, getting Granny’s old pitcher, Elinor on the drive, siphoning gasoline from the car, and Elinor setting fire to the hillside and then coming back to the house and hanging up the garment, as casually as she did everything else.

When she heard Greg’s voice speaking to Freda, she hurriedly replaced the dressing gown where she had found it. But Greg did not come in. She was relieved, although she knew it was only a respite. She had to go on. She found nothing more, however. Among the shoes were bedroom slippers to match the negligees and one practical pair of soft tan leather. Except that these last showed a scratch or two, there was no indication that they had been outside the house.

Greg was on the terrace when she went downstairs. He was staring out at the bay, smoking and depressed.

“I’m sorry about last night, Carol,” he said. “Made a fool of myself, of course. What’s this about Lucy Norton?”

She lit a cigarette before she could trust herself to speak.

“She’s dead, Greg. That’s all I know.”

“Queer,” he said moodily. “Always thought she was a sturdy little thing. Heart, Maggie says. It will be hard on Joe.” He put out his cigarette. “I just talked to Virginia on the phone. She’s pretty badly upset. Everything’s ready, church engaged, bridesmaids ready, presents coming in, and here I sit.
I
didn’t set that fire.”

She summoned all her courage.

“Are you sure you don’t know why it was set, Greg?”

He stared at her incredulously.

“Why it was set? Good God, Carol, I don’t understand you. Why should I know a thing like that?”

“I’m not sure,” she said wearily. “I only know it was started from this house. There’s no other explanation. And at some time or other Elinor has been outside in the grounds at night. I found some sandburs in the hem of her dressing gown. She knew about that pitcher too, and my car was there. She could have got the gasoline from it.”