Читать книгу Murder in Stained Glass - Armstrong Margaret - Страница 5

The fact was seen at once by you,

In casual conversation, O!

Which is most creditable to

Your powers of observation, O!

W. S. GILBERT.

LEO’S car was standing in the drive. We snatched our coats and hats as we dashed through the hall. Within five minutes we were running up the path to the glass shop.

The door was open; dim light filtered out into the dusk. We stepped inside and for a moment stood looking down in puzzled silence at a heap of ashes and clinkers scattered on the cement floor in front of the kiln. The stuff looked harmless enough. I couldn’t understand Clarence’s excitement as he dropped on his knees and pointed to several whitish fragments heaped together at one side.

But Leo stooped with a muttered exclamation, picked up a small object from among the ashes, straightened himself, and stared at us with horror in his face.

“What’s happened?” Phyllis cried. “Why do you look so frightened, Leo? What does it all mean?”

He shook his head, slipped that small something into his pocket, and turned to Clarence:

“When did you rake out the ashes, Clarence?”

“ ’Bout half hour ago.”

“You were alone? The men had gone home?”

“Gone home! What you thinking of, Mr. Leo? It’s Sunday. Shop’s been closed since Saturday noon.”

“Of course. Why did you come then?”

“Peter told me to. He said he was firing first thing tomorrow, and the kiln must be ready.”

“I see. Well then?”

“So I come and I started to shake down and the ashes didn’t shake good and I poked and the grate was sort of clogged up and I poked some more, and them bones come out and I put my hand in the oven and it was warm, Mr. Leo, and I knew there’d been some monkey business and then I saw that, Mr. Leo!” He picked up a fragment, curved like a clam shell, thin and white. “When I saw that I was scared and I ran for you lickety-split!”

His hand shook. He dropped the white fragment. It shivered into dust.

“Look out!” Leo said. “We ought to leave everything just as it is for the present.”

Clarence stumbled to his feet.

“What do we do, Mr. Leo? Will I go get Sam Beers?”

“Sam Beers? The traffic cop?”

“He’s the only cop we got.”

“Any good?”

“Well, Sam won’t ever set the river afire, Mr. Leo.”

“There must be a sheriff somewhere in the neighborhood,” I suggested. “Or a coroner.”

Clarence meditated.

“I don’t guess there’s a sheriff or a coroner nearer than Banbury, that’s the county town. Judge Cornell, he’s the coroner, is awful old, most ninety. I don’t guess he’d come ’way out here in winter time, and Mr. Pepper, he’s the sheriff, was took sick last week. They say it’s appendicitis. I guess we better begin with Sam, anyway.”

“I’ll call him up.” Leo turned to me. “You and Phyllis had better go home, Miss Trumbull. Take my car.”

“But Leo!” Phyllis caught his arm. “What’s it all about? Why do you care? Just some old bones, a dog or something like that. Why do you have to send for Sam Beers?”

“Because I’m not sure. These bones may be human bones. The piece Clarence broke just now looked to me like part of a skull.”

“A doctor would know,” I suggested. “Why not send Clarence for a doctor? That is, if you have a doctor in the village, and he isn’t too old or too sick to come.”

Clarence looked hurt.

“Of course we got a doctor,” he said. “Doc Greely. And he ain’t sick or old, and he lives right near here. Will I go get him, Mr. Leo?”

“Yes. Tell him to come as quick as he can. I’ll go and call Sam Beers.”

Leo went upstairs to the telephone. Clarence departed on a run. Phyllis and I looked at each other, moved to an inconspicuous corner of the cellar and sat down on a pile of boards.

“Human bones!” Phyllis whispered. “But how could human bones have got into the kiln?”

I hesitated. I had seen what Leo had seen, the small object he had picked up and slipped into his pocket, and I thought I knew what it was. But I wasn’t sure, and until I was sure I didn’t want to talk. Before I had to answer, the door opened; Clarence hurried in with the doctor, a fat bald-headed little man very out of breath.

Leo came downstairs at once, and began explaining the situation. But the doctor seemed dazed. He hesitated, and before he could grasp what was expected of him the door opened again.

Two men peeped in and then entered timidly. Others followed less timidly. In five minutes the place was crowded. When the doctor finally turned reluctantly to the furnace and knelt down on the dusty floor, he was hemmed in by a double ring of excited spectators, getting as close as they could and watching eagerly as he began his examination.

Most of this throng, men, women and children, were strangers to me, of course. But I recognized three of Mr. Ullathorne’s workmen; the village postmistress, Mrs. Flack, small and thin; Mr. Merritt, who kept the general store, stout and pompous; and Sam Beers, the “traffic cop,” a red-cheeked boy of eighteen or so, in a blue uniform with an old-fashioned policeman’s helmet perched on the back of his head.

Sam tried to look competent and important. He told everybody to stand back and give the doctor more room. No one listened to him. More and more people kept coming in. They crowded closer to the kiln, elbowing each other, whispering, giggling and asking questions.

Phyllis and I caught the contagion. We joined the circle and shoved and tiptoed and stared at the doctor kneeling in the ashes, examining the fragments in what seemed to me a perfunctory manner. Was he incompetent. I wondered. Or merely bewildered? He would pick up a bit of bone, squint at it uncertainly through his spectacles, lay it aside and pick up another, as if he had never seen a bone before. But I felt sorry for the man, though I didn’t like his face. It reminded me of the stuffed fox in Charlotte’s spare room. Obviously he realized he was in for something unpleasant, disliked being involved, and hated the responsibility.

Clarence stood beside him brandishing an electric torch; the cellar was lighted only by one small bulb in the ceiling. He flashed the torch back and forth, brightening the ashes, the furnace, the doctor’s anxious face, now and then letting it rest inadvertently on some one face in the audience, with an effect so like that of a spotlight on the stage that I lost all sense of reality and became a spectator at a rather queer sort of show. I think that was the way everybody felt. Ghoulish of us? Well, I suppose it was. But by that time none of us—not even I—really believed those whitish fragments could be human bones. We expected Dr. Greely to bring the comedy to an end with a laugh:

“Bones?” he would say, grinning and dusting off his hands. “They’re bones all right. A dog’s bones. Someone been getting off a joke on Clarence, I guess.”

And we would all laugh, and the crowd would melt away, and Phyllis and Leo and I would go home to supper.

Well, that wasn’t what happened. Dr. Greely did stand up at last, and he did dust off his hands; but he didn’t laugh. Far from it. His watery blue eyes were blinking nervously behind his glasses, his flabby face had lost every vestige of color. He was, in fact, the picture of misery as he stood hesitating, pinching his lower lip between his thumb and forefinger, while we all leaned towards him waiting in a strange hush.

Sam broke it.

“What’s the verdict, Doc?” he said hoarsely. “Is them bones human?”

The doctor started to speak, thought better of it, caught Sam by the arm and whispered.

Sam nodded and turned with a traffic gesture.

“Doc says clear the room. Get out everybody. Shoo, I tell you! Shoo!”

He spread out his arms, advanced on the spectators. They fell back, protesting and arguing. Sam rounded them up, got them outside and slammed the door in their indignant faces. Only Leo and Phyllis and I, Mr. Merritt and Clarence were left staring at the doctor.

“What about it?” Sam said again. “Is them bones human?”

“They—they appear to be.”

“You mean you ain’t sure?”

“How can I be sure?” the doctor snapped. “They’re burned to bits.”

“You wouldn’t like to give a guess?”

“Well, that fragment,” he pointed, “might be a portion of a human skull, and those,” he pointed again, “are probably ribs and the remains of a collarbone.”

I felt a little sick. Leo turned away and sat down on the lowest step of the stairs and buried his face in his hands. Phyllis clutched my arm. Mr. Merritt shook his head solemnly.

“Well, well!” he sighed. “Human? That’s quite a surprise, Doctor. Quite a surprise. You wouldn’t go so far as to say what sort of human? Man, woman or child—or maybe, baby?”

“Good God, Merritt! That’s a fool question.” He turned to Clarence. “Go get me a box, boy. A good stout box with a cover to it. I’ve got to take all this stuff to my office. I haven’t got the proper apparatus here.”

Clarence ran upstairs and returned with a cardboard box and a ball of twine.

The doctor stooped, gathered up the largest bits of bone and some of the ashes, placed them carefully in the box and fitted on the lid. Clarence wound a length of twine around it and knotted it tight. The doctor took the box under his arm and paused, glancing at Leo who still sat hunched on the stairs and at Sam’s round face, then addressed himself to Mr. Merritt.

“You’d better take charge here, Merritt,” he said. “See that everything is locked up securely. I’ll send my report to you, first thing in the morning.” And with a nod in the direction of Phyllis and me, he moved to the door, opened it and immediately slammed it shut again.

“Sam!” he called over his shoulder. Sam stepped up. “Go ahead of me, clear off all those damn fools out there.”

Sam obeyed. The doctor walked, rather shakily, I thought, down the path and out into the darkness. Sam rejoined us.

Mr. Merritt looked at his watch.

“Supper time,” he said briskly. “No more to do here for the present. What do you say, Sam? Shall we go home?”

“I guess so. But it’s up to you, Mr. Merritt. This business is too big for me to handle. You better take charge like Doc said. Tell me what to do and I’ll do it.”

“Well, first off, you got to lock up here good and tight so’s the curiosity seekers and the souvenir hunters don’t get in and mess things up, destroy clues and what not. And I’ll undertake to notify the authorities at Banbury. Just as soon, that is, as I get Doctor’s report. He might change his mind when he puts the microscope onto those bones, and Banbury would have the laugh on us if we brought their high muckamucks over here and the deceased turned out to be a dog or a calf.”

“They sure would,” Sam grinned. “Mr. Leo, can I have the keys?”

“Keys?” Leo stood up. “Keys? Have we got a key to the front door, Clarence?”

“Never’s been one in my time, Mr. Leo. Mr. Ullathorne, he might have a key.”

“Mr. Ullathorne?” Mr. Merritt said. “Where is Mr. Ullathorne, by the way?”

“In New York,” Clarence answered. “Went last week and ain’t back yet.”

“He’d ought to be here,” Mr. Merritt went on. “Will you call your father up, Mr. Leo? Or shall I?”

“I—I’d rather you did.”

“All right.” Mr. Merritt looked surprised. “What’s his address?”

“Five hundred and ten Park Avenue. The telephone number is Regent 5-5478.”

“O.K.” Mr. Merritt nodded and wrote the number on his cuff. “Now about locking up here. You say there’s no key to the front door. Don’t you lock it at night?”

“No, we don’t. The door at the head of the stairs is usually locked, but there’s nothing of any value down here.”

“I see. So anyone could get in here who had a mind to?”

“Of course.”

“But not upstairs?”

“Well, as a matter of fact, we’re not very careful about the workroom door either. The door of my—my father’s studio is the only one he—he was particular about. That door has two keys. My—my father and I each have one.”

“Who was responsible for locking the door at the top of the stairs?”

“Whoever was here last, Clarence usually. We have several keys.”

“How many?”

“Three or four. My—my father and I each have one, of course, and Clarence, and Jake Murphy—he’s our head man. That’s all, I think.”

“Seems sort of careless to me. However, upstairs don’t matter now. Sam, you go get a couple of stout boards and nail ’em across the front door and tomorrow we’ll see about a key. That all right with you, Mr. Leo?”

“Yes. You’ll let me know what the doctor says?”

“Of course. What say we all meet here ‘bout eight tomorrow, and get things sort of straightened out in our minds before the Banbury folks comes nosing in?”

“All right.”

“Sam, you be here too, and Clarence. And tell any of Mr. Ullathorne’s men, and anybody else seems like they’d know anything, to come along. Better bring a boy to keep snoopers out. You get me? Well, guess that’s all for tonight. Supper time, folks. Let’s go.”