Yellow Room (5 page)

The chief remembered his manners.

“Miss Spencer, meet Major Jerry Dane,” he said. “The major had some trouble with the krauts a while ago in Italy, and he’s here getting over it.” He looked at the man again. “Miss Spencer’s had some trouble too,” he added. “Maybe you’d like to come along. She says there’s a dead body in the house up here.”

The major looked interested rather than astonished.

“A body?” he said. “Whose is it?”

He glanced at Carol.

“I have no idea,” she said coldly. “If you want to discuss it I’ll go on, if you don’t mind.”

“If it’s dead there’s no great hurry, is there?”

He was deliberately baiting her, and she felt her color rise. He saw it and grinned, showing excellent teeth in a sunburned face.

“Sorry,” he said. “I’ll hang onto the running board. Get going, Floyd. Let’s see this corpse.”

It was obvious that he did not believe her, and none of them spoke as the car climbed the rest of the hill. Carol promptly forgot Dane and braced herself for what was to come. And Dane himself simply lit a cigarette and from his precarious hold on the running board eyed her quizzically. Plenty of spunk, he thought, if what she said was true. Only—a body in the house! Whose body? Good God, he had walked up this hill daily for two weeks, and except for the Norton woman’s accident the place had been merely an ostentatious survival of an era that was finished. In a way it had annoyed him, sitting smug on its hill while the rest of the world blazed and died.

He was relieved when Carol let them go upstairs alone, and he saw now why the house had looked so huge. The court around which it was built might be a lovely thing when it had been put in order, but was now neglected and ugly. But once upstairs he forgot the house. He was accustomed to death, as a man in his particular job knew death. But not the death of a woman. And what lay on the closet floor had been a woman.

It lay relaxed and face up, with the hands and arms close to the body, and the legs neatly outstretched toward the door. When Floyd tried to step inside Dane held him back.

“Better wait,” he said. “Let’s see what we can first. She wasn’t burned to death of course. Look at the way she’s lying. If she’d been burned—”

“I don’t get it,” Floyd said thickly. “Why kill her and then try to burn her?”

“That’s a very nice question.” Dane looked about him. “When was the Norton woman hurt?”

“Friday night. Saturday morning, maybe.”

Dane began whistling softly to himself.

“No fingerprint people around, I suppose?” he asked, after a pause.

“Why would we be needing a fingerprint outfit?” the chief demanded belligerently. “We haven’t had a crime here since one of the waiters at the hotel stole a watch, and that’s twelve years ago.”

Dane went back to his whistling, but his eyes were busy. The doorknobs were no good. Whoever had found the body had smeared them badly, both outside and in, and a thick layer of soot lay along the shelves and along the piles of neatly stacked scorched linen.

“Ever see her before?” he asked finally.

“How can I tell? Even her own mother—There’s no local girl missing. That’s all I know.”

“How about a camera? There ought to be some pictures before she’s moved.”

Floyd’s patience was rapidly going.

“Listen, son,” he said. “There’s a war on. I haven’t seen a roll of film for the last year. And I don’t own a camera anyhow. What do you think this is? The FBI in Washington?”

Dane did not reply. The doctor’s car had chugged up the hill and now he was coming up the stairs, with Jim Mason, Floyd’s assistant, at his heels. He stopped outside the closet and stared in.

“Good Godamighty!” he said. “How did this happen?”

“Maybe you can tell us,” Dane said with his slightly sardonic smile. “I wouldn’t touch anything but the body, doctor. Not that I think there’s anything there. Just the usual procedure.”

Floyd gave him a cold stare.

“We’ll attend to that, Dane,” he said. “Go ahead, doc. The major here says she was dead before the fire. How about it?”

The doctor went inside the closet and stooped over the body. He was there a couple of minutes before he backed out. He looked rather white.

“Hit on the head,” he said. “Bad frontal fracture. Probably dead two or three days. No way to tell. Certainly dead before the fire.”

“Then why any fire at all?” Floyd persisted.

The doctor was lighting a cigarette by the open window.

“How do I know?” he said irritably. “Maybe somebody didn’t like her. Maybe somebody didn’t want her recognized. Or maybe it was just a fire-bug. Remember the Elks’ Club?” He sucked at his cigarette. “Better get her out of here,” he said. “I want to look her over.”

Dane left them then. He went downstairs, to find Carol in the library. She was curled up in a big chair by the fire, looking young and stricken. There was a tray with coffee on a small table beside her, but she had not touched it. His quick eyes took in the room before he spoke.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” he said, “but have you got a camera in the house?”

“A camera?”

“They want to take her away, but I think there should be a picture or two first.”

“My brother’s camera is here. There are no films in it.”

He shrugged his lean shoulders.

“Well, I suppose that’s that,” he said. “None in the town either, I understand. No telephone, I suppose?”

“No. They’re all gone. Who is it up there, major? I mean—in the closet. Does anyone know her?”

He shook his head.

“Not yet. We’ll find out later, of course. They don’t think she’s one of the local people. That’s as far as they go.”

She shivered, and he went to the tray and poured a cup of coffee. Her hand shook as she took it, but she tried to smile.

“The cook’s cure for everything,” she said. “I’ve been having it ever since I came. I have practically a coffee jag. Not to mention Floyd’s whisky.” She glanced up at him, standing beside her. Aside from his slight limp he appeared to be a strong, well-muscled man in his early thirties, and his face as he looked down at her was now friendly and smiling.

“Don’t take this too hard,” he said. “It has happened in this house, but it has nothing to do with you. A little paint and a little time, and you can forget it, Miss Spencer.”

“I’ll never forget it. Do you think it was this—this woman who scared Lucy Norton the night she fell?”

“Might be,” he said lightly, and turned to go.

But she did not want him to go. She could not be alone again. Not then, with only the servants in the house and that horror upstairs.

“Would you like some coffee?” she asked, almost desperately.

“Is it strong?”

“It would float an egg.”

“I’ll be back for some in a minute.”

He was longer than a minute. Mason had disappeared when he went back. He left Floyd and Dr. Harrison in the hall and went into the closet. There he stooped for some time over the body, touching nothing but inspecting everything. When he came out again his face was set.

“She was a young woman,” he said. “And I don’t think she was killed here. That’s not certain, of course, but it doesn’t look like it. The autopsy will tell a good bit more, probably. She wasn’t wearing much when it happened. Apparently she’d slipped a fur jacket over not much else. Any girl around here have a silver fox coat?”

The chief snorted.

“A few, but mostly we leave them to the summer people. I’ll ask around, of course. Taking a lot of interest, aren’t you, Dane? Sure you didn’t know her yourself?”

“Don’t be a fool, Floyd. You brought me here. Why don’t you get busy and look around for her clothes? If she didn’t belong here she didn’t arrive in what she’s got on.”

“I’ll find them, all right.”

But Dane was aware as he went down the stairs again that the chief’s eyes, hard and suspicious, were following him.

H
E FOUND CAROL AS HE
had left her. An extra cup and a pot of fresh coffee were waiting for him, and he sat down for the first time.

He nodded approval over the coffee.

“First real stuff I’ve had since I got here,” he said. “Maybe I’d better explain myself. I know the Burtons well, and when I needed to fix up this leg before I went to France they offered me their house just along the hill from here. But of course you know it. And I’ve got a good man to look after me. He nurses me like a baby, but he can’t make coffee.”

He talked on quietly, about Alex, the man he had referred to, and who had lost an eye in Italy, about the war and his anxiety to get back into it.

“I’ve missed the invasion,” he said with suppressed bitterness, “but there’s still plenty to do. I want like hell to get back. I will too, if Alex and two hands like hams can fix me up.”

He was lighting a cigarette for her when the screaming of a siren announced the arrival of the ambulance, and he was still talking against the sounds as the stretcher was carried down the stairs and cut of the house and the other cars started their motors.

But she rebelled at last.

“I’m not a child, Major Dane,” she said. “I’m twenty-four years old, and I’m perfectly strong. I want to talk about this murder. It is murder, isn’t it?”

“Don’t you think you’d better forget it? What’s the use of discussing it? It’s over.”

“Over!” she said indignantly. “It has only started, and you know it. I suppose you’ve heard Lucy Norton’s story. Everybody seems to know it. It was that closet she went to to get an extra blanket, and it was someone in that closet who rushed out and knocked her down. That’s right, isn’t it?”

“That’s the story. I haven’t seen Mrs. Norton.”

“Do you think it was this—was this woman?”

He hesitated, but she had asked for it, he thought grimly.

“I think it unlikely, Miss Spencer. It is more likely to have been whoever killed her.”

“Then it was murder?”

“It was murder. Yes. I don’t need to tell you that a fire was set, after the crime. She wasn’t burned to death.”

“I don’t understand it. The fire, I mean. When we came in this morning we all smelled something. If the house had burned it might have killed Lucy too. It’s—horrible.”

“That’s one curious thing,” he said thoughtfully. “Between Alex and myself I suppose we’ve heard every variation of the Norton story. She has not apparently mentioned any fire, or even smoke. I wonder—” He did not finish. “There may not have been much. By shutting the door the oxygen was cut off. Still, if you noticed it after two or three days she should have. It’s curious. I’ve been around here every day. I watched the winter shutters being taken down, and on Friday morning I knew someone was working in the house. Mrs. Norton, of course. As a matter of fact—”

“Don’t start and stop like that. What was a matter of fact?”

He smiled.

“Probably a mistake. I made a regular round, you see; up the drive, back to the house and over the grounds to that fountain of yours. From there I take the path through the woods to the Burtons’. That takes me past the kitchen. On Friday morning I thought I heard Mrs. Norton talking to someone.”

“You didn’t see anyone?”

“No. Nobody.”

“It might have been William. He was taking down the shutters.”

“Very likely. I just remembered it. It’s probably not important. Mrs. Norton was late, wasn’t she? I mean in opening the house.”

“She got here only Friday morning. You see, we hadn’t intended to come at all. Then my brother Gregory received thirty days’ leave—he’s been flying in the Pacific—and Mother thought he’d like to be cool.” She smiled faintly. “He won’t, you know. He will want New York and Newport. His fiancée is in Newport now.”

He was thoughtful. The fire had burned down, and he got up and put a log on it.

“Let’s reconstruct this thing,” he said. “Just what would Mrs. Norton do when she got here Friday morning? She was alone, I suppose. That’s the story as I get it.”

“Yes. She couldn’t get any help, and George Smith wasn’t here. He’d had his appendix out. I suppose she’d light the furnace first. She’d probably light the stove in the kitchen too. After that—well, I think she came in here, so I would have a place to sit. I haven’t been up in my room, but with so little time she probably did something there.”

“Such as?”

“She would make the bed, I imagine. Or at least get out the sheets to air them. Oh, I see what you mean.”

“Exactly,” he said soberly. “The linen closet was probably all right then, on Friday morning.”

Nora came in for the tray just then. She looked better, but she was still pale, and Dane smiled at her.

“Thanks for the coffee,” he said. “And do you know if Miss Spencer’s room is ready for her? She looks tired.”

“The bed’s made up, Freda says. That’s about all, sir.”

“So you see,” he said when she had gone. “The linen closet
was
all right on Friday. Maybe someone was in the house talking to Mrs. Norton, maybe not. But there was no murder until that night.”

He took up his cup and wandered about the room. The tissue paper had been taken off a jumble of vases, a plaster cast of one of her father’s mares when people still kept horses, a Russian ikon, a Buddha or two, and the photograph of Elinor in her finery when she made her debut. But there was another photograph there, one of Gregory Spencer in uniform, and he stopped before it.

“Your brother, I suppose?”

“Yes. Can you see what I mean when I say he’d prefer New York?”

Dane inspected it carefully. A playboy, he thought, until war had sobered him. Or had it?

“Fine-looking chap,” he said. “No wonder you’re proud of him.”

Carol did not answer. She was looking around the room, apparently puzzled.

“That’s queer,” she said. “I don’t see my father’s picture. It’s always here. Mother wouldn’t ship it to New York last fall, for fear something would happen to it. I wrapped it up myself and left it on top of that bookcase.”

She got up and moved anxiously about the room. When she reached the desk she stopped.

“I’ve just remembered something else too,” she said. “This morning I found a cigarette here, in this ash tray. It had lipstick on it. Lucy doesn’t smoke, and as for lipstick—”