Yellow Room (23 page)

“Can you imagine Elinor burying them in the middle of the night? She could have got rid of them in a hundred places on her way to New York.” Greg was openly defiant now. “She has her faults, but she’s not an idiot.”

Dane nodded, still imperturbable.

“Precisely. That’s where I stop. I’ve been stopped there for ten days; bridges, rivers, empty fields, and those clothes buried up on the hill! Unless she had help, of course.”

There was another silence. Greg broke it.

“Who claims to have seen her car?”

“Old Mrs. Ward, for one. She was out looking for her husband. It seems he sleeps badly. She told it quite innocently. But the Dalton girl saw it too. She was out with her dog.”

He had commenced to dress. Dane watched him idly, his mind busy with what he had learned. He roused as Greg shrugged into his blouse.

“What about your alibi when your wife was murdered?” he asked. “You left Washington on Thursday of that week, I know that. You’d better be sure you can fill in that interval, Spencer, and don’t tell me you don’t remember. You’ll have to remember.”

Greg laughed, unexpectedly and without mirth.

“All right,” he said. “I registered at the Gotham on Thursday. You can check that. And I called Elinor at Newport that day. You can check that too. You can check that I got my car out of storage also, to drive to Newport to see Virginia and the rest of the family. But you can’t check me for Friday or most of Saturday, because I can’t check myself. I’d got that letter from Marguerite, and I told you how I was,” he added dryly. “I can drink like any other man most of the time. Then when things get too strong for me I drink myself blind. I came to somewhere in lower New York. I’d been slipped a Micky Finn and robbed. That was at noon on Saturday, and you can ask the hotel how I looked when I got back.”

“That’s no alibi, and you know it,” Dane said sharply. “What was too strong for you? Not that letter, was it? What did Mrs. Hilliard tell you over the long-distance telephone on Thursday? That was it, wasn’t it? And who do you think your sister thought she was protecting when she got here that Friday night? You, wasn’t it?”

There was another long silence. Greg was obviously trying to think the thing out. When he spoke he did not answer Dane’s questions.

“I can’t see Elinor in it at all,” he said. “I can’t see her killing anyone or—you know, digging a hole and burying those clothes. I’ve done my share of digging since the war began. So have you probably. It isn’t easy.”

“No,” Dane agreed. “And the ground was hard that night. No rain for a long time. How did she know the girl was coming here, Spencer? She did know, didn’t she?”

But here again Greg was evasive. He hadn’t known it himself, he said. She might have learned it some other way. Dane realized that he was on guard now and got up, looking tired.

“All right, Spencer,” he said wearily. “You’ve got the story now. Where do we go from here?”

“To see Elinor,” Greg replied gruffly. “Damn it, Dane, she’ll have to talk now, or I’ll find myself at the end of a rope.”

E
LINOR DID NOT TALK
that day, however, or for several days thereafter. She had developed a fever, and no visitors were allowed, not even her family.

Hilliard arrived on Monday, bringing extra nurses and a consulting surgeon on the plane with him. Dane saw him at the hospital, a heavy florid man, on the shortish side, inclined to be pompous, and to regard Elinor’s shooting both as an accident and a personal affront.

“These damned hunters!” he said, red with indignation. “Shooting deer out of season, of course. When a woman like my wife can’t even leave her house safely—!”

He succeeded in isolating Elinor completely, although the consulting surgeon seemed undisturbed about her.

“She’s all right,” he said privately to Dr. Harrison. “A little fever, that’s all.” He smiled faintly. “Three nurses,” he said, “and the country short of them! Well, she’s his wife. If he’s willing to pay for it, I suppose it’s not my business.” He glanced at Harrison. “What’s she afraid of, anyhow?”

Dr. Harrison looked surprised.

“Afraid? What makes you think she is?”

“Looks it. Acts it. Jumps every time the door’s opened. Probably causes her temperature too. Does she know who shot her? Think that’s it?”

“I haven’t an idea. She doesn’t talk about it.”

“Maybe she’d better,” said the consultant, and took off his mask and white coat. “Well, I guess that’s all, doctor. Congratulations and thanks.”

Tim had arrived the day of Greg’s confession, but he brought little or nothing Dane did not already know, which annoyed him greatly.

“For God’s sake,” he said, “why send me all over the country risking my neck when you know it all?”

Nor had he discovered much from the suitcase. It had revealed underwear and a dress or two, all of good quality, and a snapshot of a baby a few weeks old.

“You know the sort,” Tim said. “No clothes. Legs in air. Kind of a nice kid. Boy.”

“She’d had a child.”

“Had, eh? Well, that explains it.”

Tim’s good humor died quickly, however, when he learned that his next assignment was to watch Carol at the Spencer house, and to help Maggie, now alone there. He stalked back to Alex in the kitchen.

“What’s wrong with him?” he demanded, indicating Dane in the front of the house. “Is he crazy? Or is he just crazy about that girl next door? It’ll cost him the hell of a lot to pay me for washing dishes.”

“Money don’t worry him,” Alex said calmly. “Got plenty, or his old lady has. Father was a senator.”

Which ambiguous statement kept Tim silent for a moment. Then:

“What’s this about the Hilliard woman getting shot? Papers are full of it. Somebody after deer?”

“Sure,” Alex said, patting a hamburger neatly into shape. “In June, on a rainy night at one
A.M.
”

Tim whistled.

“Another, eh?” he said. “Well, maybe Dane’s right about the girl friend. How about lending me one of those pretty aprons you wear? If I’m to wash dishes all day and stay up all night I won’t need anything to sleep in.”

Dane himself was at a loose end, with Elinor shut away and no possibility of seeing her. He was confident now that she had not been alone the night Marguerite was killed. Yet his telegram from Washington saying the answer was no, had left him without any specific suspect. And Floyd was still digging. In spite of his skepticism he had investigated Pine Hill. He might already know that the letter inside the wedding ring was a G and be keeping the wires hot about a possible marriage. And in the center of the mystery was Carol, growing thinner and more confused each day.

He went over his notes the day of Tim’s return, changing and elaborating them, and after his custom numbering them.

(1) The body in the closet. Laid out carefully, and with the fur jacket not fully on. It had covered only one arm. Had this been done after death?

(2) The wedding ring on body. In spite of the engraving, Greg claimed he had never seen it. (Can probably be checked in Los Angeles.)

(3) Fire in closet. Set sometime after death. In that case improbable either Greg or Elinor had set it. Lucy Norton’s statement at inquest. No smoke or odor of burning that night.

(4) The bobby pin found by Carol. Someone not strong enough to carry the body had taken it up in the elevator. Hair obviously bleached, indicating it belonged to dead girl.

(5) The curious discovery in the tool house. Not only the spade, but the Lowestoft tea set, and so on.

(6) Burning of hillside. Pitcher taken from Crestview attic. Almost certainly done by Elinor Hilliard to cover evidence.

(7) Strange death of Lucy Norton.

He sat for some time over that. Someone had climbed the fire escape and found Lucy in her room. She had been sufficiently alarmed to get out of her bed, and to fall dead with a heart attack. Would she have been murdered otherwise? Had only the noise of her fall driven the intruder away? But why? He was convinced now that what she had learned from the dead girl had been that she was Greg’s wife. But she had not told it at the inquest. After some thought he put an X after that entry and went on.

(8) Shooting of Elinor Hilliard and moving of her body from the lane. Why had she dressed and gone out in the rain? To meet someone, and if so, who was it? Another X here.

(9) Why had Mr. Ward stealthily retrieved shell from mud in lane? Where did the Wards figure in the mystery? The grandson, Terry?

(10) Attempt, the night Elinor was shot, to discover and probably remove girl’s clothing if buried on hillside. Elinor? X?

(11) Search of yellow room same night, while entire Spencer family at hospital. X again?

(12) Deserted house, Pine Hill. Who had been staying there? Blankets left after all other clues carefully removed. Probably overlooked in darkness and forgotten. X?

After some thought he added another note, thinking grimly that it was the thirteenth.

(13) Terry Ward expected back on leave. Did not apparently arrive.

He put away his notes and began to check the movements of the murdered girl. She had reached New York on Wednesday, June fourteenth, and gone to a hotel. On Thursday, shortly after Carol and Mrs. Spencer had left, she had inquired for them at their apartment house. That left her plenty of time to go to Boston and take the night train for Maine, arriving at the village by bus the next morning.

He sat for some time gazing at this last item. He had missed something here. Boston was only five hours from New York, but suppose she had not gone directly to Boston? Suppose she had stopped off at Newport and seen Elinor Hilliard?

The more he considered it the more certain he was she had done exactly that. If she intended blackmail she would naturally go to Elinor. He leaned back and closed his eyes. He could almost see what happened. The girl, pretty in a common way, in the fur jacket and white hat. Admitted under protests, unless she had said she was Mrs. Spencer. And Elinor sweeping into the room.

“Mrs. Spencer? Which Mrs. Spencer?”

“I’m Greg’s wife.”

Elinor staring at her, dazed and incredulous.

“I don’t believe you. And you’re getting out of this house. At once.”

“You can put me out right enough. But you can’t change things, you know. I’ve got my certificate.”

“I wouldn’t believe it if I saw it.”

“You’re not going to see it. I’m taking care of that. All right, Mrs. Hilliard. If you feel this way about it, maybe your mother and sister won’t. I’ve looked them up. In Maine, aren’t they?”

Leaving, and Elinor rushing to the telephone, telling Greg what had happened, and Greg unable to face it and taking the usual way out. Going to New York, on his way to Newport, and starting to drink himself blind on the way.

It had to be something like that, if Greg’s story was true and if Elinor had been at Crestview the night of the murder. Why had she come? To buy the girl off, to urge a divorce and promise some considerable sum in return? Or to kill her? Everything else aside, she was capable of going to almost any length to avoid scandal and to save her social position. Even Hilliard would not have taken it well. But if she had killed Marguerite Spencer he was certain she had not done it alone.

He realized that he was going stale on the case, and that afternoon he asked Carol to go for a drive.

“I need exercise,” he told her. “Why not leave the car somewhere and do a bit of climbing?”

“I’d love it. How about your leg?”

“I’ve forgotten I have it!”

They had a happy afternoon. From the top of a low mountain they could see the open ocean, and the bay sprinkled with its low green islands, like emeralds set in blue. Far below, the women on the golf course were bright bits of color, and the town itself picturesque and gay.

Sitting on a rock there he told her a little about himself; about his enlistment in the army, about his having been detached to a special job, and his anxiety to get back to it.

“It takes me around a lot,” he said casually. “Trouble is, a man in my position has no business having ties. My mother worries as it is.”

“All women have to accept it, don’t they? I mean, almost everyone has somebody.”

He reached out and took her hand.

“Look, darling,” he said, “I’m pretty badly in love with you. I’ve been fighting it for days, but you might as well know it. I know you still remember Don Richardson, for one thing. The other is—” He threw away his cigarette. “How does any man know he’s coming back these days? Or he won’t be mutilated, or blind?”

“Would that matter so much?” she asked quietly. “If the woman cared—”

“It would,” he said fiercely, and got up. “It would matter my dear. All right. Let’s go.”

He flew to Washington that night. With Elinor still shut off he felt he had reached a dead end, but there were things he could learn there he could not learn elsewhere. He was not too happy. He had done an idiotic thing, he felt. He had told Carol he was in love with her and in the same breath had said he had no intention of marrying her. Only a damned fool would do a thing like that, he reflected, as the plane roared south.

He did not go to a hotel. He had kept a small apartment there, and he admitted himself, mixing a good strong drink before he turned in. But he slept badly. He bathed and shaved, dressed, got some breakfast at a restaurant, and then reported to an office tucked away among the innumerable War Department buildings. He was not limping at all as he went in, and the man behind the desk surveyed him with a smile as he thrust out his hand.

“Hello, Dane,” he said. “How’s the Eagle Scout?”

Dane grinned.

“I’m fine. Hard luck, missing the invasion.”

“Well, you’ve had plenty—Dieppe, Africa, Sicily, Anzio beachhead, Cassino. That’s a record for any man.”

Dane shrugged and sat down.

“I’m reporting for duty,” he said, “but I’d like a few days first. Maybe a couple of weeks. There’s a case in Maine I’d like to look into.”

“That murder at Bayside?”

“Yes.” He grinned. “I see you read the papers.”

“Greg Spencer’s apparently mixed up in it somehow. That puts it up to us in a way. Not our business, of course, but after all a fellow with a record like his—Better tell me what it’s about, Dane.”