Читать книгу The Door - Mary Roberts Rinehart - Страница 7

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The vast majority of crimes, I believe, are never solved by any single method or any single individual. Complex crimes, I mean, without distinct clues and obvious motives.

Certainly in the case of Sarah Gittings, and in those which followed it, the final solution was a combination of luck and—curiously enough—the temporary physical disability of one individual.

And I am filled with shuddering horror when I think where we all might be but for this last.

That day, Tuesday, dragged on interminably. I could do no work on the biography, and Mary Martin was shut up in her room with a novel. The servants were uneasy and even the dogs seemed dejected; Joseph puttered about, looking aged and careworn, and the maids seemed to drink endless tea in the kitchen and to be reluctant to go upstairs.

At three o’clock, Jim not having arrived and Judy being out with the dogs, I decided to call Katherine once more. It seemed to me that she might have a clue of some sort. She knew Sarah better than any of us, and I felt that at least she should be told.

But all I obtained from her was a thorough scolding for harboring Judy.

“Well!” she said when she heard my voice. “It’s about time! You tell Judy to come right home. It’s outrageous, Elizabeth.”

“What is outrageous?” I asked.

“Her chasing that idiotic youth. Now listen, Elizabeth; I want you to keep him out of the house. It’s the very least you can do, if she won’t come home.”

“I haven’t seen any youth yet,” I explained mildly. “And I’m not worrying about Judy. I have something else to worry about.”

Her voice was shrill when I told her.

“Missing?” she said. “Sarah missing! Haven’t you any idea where she is?”

“None, except that I’m afraid it’s serious. The police are working on it.”

“Maybe I’d better come down.”

I checked that at once. Katherine is an intense, repressed woman, who can be exceedingly charming, but who can also be exceedingly stubborn at times. As that stubbornness of hers was to work for us later on I must not decry it, but I did not want her then.

“You can’t do anything,” I said. “And Howard probably needs you. Judy says he’s not so well.”

“No,” she said slowly. “No. He’s not as well as he ought to be.”

She said nothing more about coming down, but insisted that I see Jim at once.

“He was fond of Sarah,” she said, “and he really has such a good mind. I know he will help you.”

She had no other suggestions to make, however. Sarah had no family, she was certain of that. Her great fear seemed to be that she had been struck by an automobile, and as that was mild compared with what I was beginning to think I allowed it to rest at that.

I had made no promise as to Judy, which was as well, for when she came back she was accompanied by a cheerful looking blond youth who was evidently the one in question, and who was presented to me only as Dick.

“This is Dick,” was what Judy said. “And he is a nice person, of poor but honest parents.”

Dick merely grinned at that; he seemed to know Judy, and almost before I knew it he and I were standing in the lower hall, and Judy was dropping lead pencils down the air shaft.

“Does that sound like it, Elizabeth Jane?” she would call to me at the top of her voice. “Or this?”

To save my life I could not tell. They seemed to be less sharp, less distinct, but I was not certain. Indeed, when Mr. Carter, for that turned out to be the youth’s family name, tapped with his penknife on the marble mantel in the drawing room, the effect seemed rather more like what I had heard.

“That for Wallie!” said Judy, coming down. “That pencil’s probably been there for ages. I’d like to see his face when he finds six more there! And now let’s have tea.”

I liked the boy. Indeed, I wondered what Katherine could have against him. Poverty, perhaps; but then Judy would have enough and to spare when Howard died. And Howard had already had one attack of angina pectoris that I knew of, and others possibly which he had concealed.

Judy was clearly very much in love. Indeed, I felt that she could hardly keep her hands off the boy; that she wanted to touch his sleeve or rumple his hair; and that he, more shyly, less sure of himself, was quite desperately in love with her.

But he was business-like enough about the case. He wanted the story, or such part of it as he might have.

“It will leak out somehow,” he said. “Probably Harrison will give it out himself; they’ll give out something, anyhow. Somebody may have seen her, you know. A lot of missing people are turned up that way.”

We were still arguing the matter, Judy taking Dick’s side of it, of course, when Jim Blake came in.

I can recall that scene now; the tap-tap of the glazier’s hammer as he repaired the broken pane in the drawing room, the lowered voices of Judy and Dick from the music room, whither they had retired with alacrity after Judy had dutifully kissed her uncle, and Jim Blake himself, sitting neatly in his chair, pale gray spats, gray tie, gray bordered silk handkerchief, and hair brushed neatly over his bald spot, explaining that he had felt ill that morning or he would have come earlier.

“Just the old trouble,” he said, and I noticed that he mopped his forehead. “This wet weather——”

Some years ago he had been thrown from a borrowed hunter and had sprained his back. Judy had always maintained that his frequent retirements to his bed as a result were what she called “too much food and drink.” But that day he looked really ill.

“Tell me about Sarah,” he said, and lighted a cigar with hands that I thought were none too steady. He did not interrupt me until I had finished.

“You’ve had the police, you say?”

“I have indeed. What else could I do?”

“Katherine doesn’t want it to get into the newspapers.”

“Why not? There’s no family disgrace in it, is there? That’s idiotic.”

He took out his handkerchief and mopped his forehead again.

“It’s queer, any way you take it. You say Wallie was here last night? What does he think?”

“He seems to think it’s mighty important to find her. As of course it is.”

“And she’d tied the dogs to a tree? That’s curious. Just where did you say they were?”

He sat silent for some time after that. Judy was banging the piano in the next room, and the noise seemed to bother him.

“Infernal din!” he said querulously. And after a pause: “How is Howard? What does Judy think about him?”

“I don’t believe she knows very much. He’s a secretive person; Katherine is worried, I know that.”

He seemed to ponder that, turning his cigar in his long, well-kept fingers.

“This girl who telephoned, this Florence, she hasn’t been identified yet? They haven’t traced the call?”

“Not so far as I know.”

Asked later on to recall Jim Blake’s attitude that day, if it was that of an uneasy man, I was obliged to say that it was. Yet at the time it did not occur to me. He was an orderly soul, his life tidily and comfortably arranged, and what I felt then was that this thing with its potentialities of evil had disturbed him, his small plans, possibly for that very afternoon, the cheerful routine of his days.

“I suppose they’ve searched the lot next door, and the park?”

“Inspector Harrison has been over it.”

He sat for some time after that, apparently thoughtful. I realize now that he was carefully framing his next question.

“Elizabeth,” he said, “when was Howard here last? Has he been here recently?”

“Howard? Not for months.”

“You’re sure of that, I suppose?”

“He hasn’t been able to get about, Jim. You know that.”

He looked at me with eyes that even then seemed sunken, and drew a long breath.

“I suppose that’s so,” he said, and lapsed again into silence.

There was, at the time, only one result to that visit of Jim Blake’s. I called Dick in and told him and Judy Katherine’s desire for secrecy.

“Trust mother!” said Judy. “Keep in the society columns and out of the news!”

But the story was suppressed. Not until Sarah’s body was found, four days later, was there any publicity.

The discovery of the body was one of those sheer chances to which I have referred. Without any possible motive for her killing, the police still believed it possible that she had deliberately disappeared. But, as Judy pointed out, there was as little known reason for such a disappearance as for her murder.

And then on the Saturday of that week she was found, poor soul.

I have no distinct memories of those four days of nightmare, save of the increasing certainty of disaster, of Katherine’s and Laura’s frenzied suggestions by telephone and wire, of Judy’s forced cheerfulness, and a queer sort of desperation in Wallie which I could not understand.

He had joined the police in the search, visited the Morgue, gone through her effects to find a photograph to be sent to other cities. During those days he seemed neither to eat nor sleep, and he grew perceptibly thinner. All his old nonchalance had left him, and at least once in that four-day interval he came in somewhat the worse for liquor.

It was that night—I do not remember which one—that he told me he had written me a letter and put it in his box at the bank.

“So you’ll understand,” he said, his tongue slightly thick. “So if anything happens to me you’ll understand.”

Judy looked up at him.

“You’re lit,” she stated coldly. “Lit and mawkish. What’s going to happen to you?”

“You’ll see,” he said somberly. “Plenty may happen to me. If you don’t believe it, look at me!”

“You’re not much to look at just now,” she told him. “You’d better order him some black coffee, Elizabeth Jane.”

She told me later that she did not believe he had written me any letter. But he had indeed. Months later we found it where he said it would be, in his box at the bank. But by that time we needed no explanation.

The finding of Sarah’s body was as extraordinary as was everything else in this strange case.

Judy had taken the dogs for their usual walk in the park, and somewhere there she met Dick, certainly not by chance. It appears that for purposes of their own they had left the main park and walked through that narrow ravine which is behind my own property, and through which a bridle path follows the wanderings of a small stream. As this ravine lies close to the lot where the dogs had been found, there had been a search of sorts. The two young people, then, were not searching. They were walking along, intent on their own affairs. In front of them a man on a gray horse was ambling quietly along.

Suddenly and without warning the horse shied violently, and the rider went off. He was not hurt, and Dick caught the horse and led it back to him.

“Not hurt, are you?” Judy asked.

“Only surprised,” he told her. “Surprised and irritated! That’s the second time this beast has shied at that sewer, or whatever it is. Twice this week. Yet he’s seen it a hundred times.”

Well, he got on again, having led the animal past the obstacle, and Judy and Dick looked at it. At some time it had evidently been intended to raise the road level there, and what they saw was a brick sewer entrance, circular, and standing about seven feet above the ground.

“Funny,” said Judy. “What’s happened to that thing this week?”

Dick laughed at her. Neither of them, I am sure, was thinking of poor Sarah. It was a bright cool spring day, made for lovers, and he teased her. It was a part of the game.

“I suppose that horse can see things we can’t see!” he said.

“Why not? Dogs can.”

And at that moment Jock, beside the base of the structure, suddenly raised his head and let out a long wail.

They were rather incoherent about what happened after that. It was Dick who finally got to the top and looked down. At first he could see nothing. Then he made out what looked like a bundle of clothing below, and Judy knew by his face.

Even then of course they were not certain it was Sarah. They did not come home; they got the park police at once, and Dick did not let Judy wait after that. He brought her back, whimpering, and I put her to bed and waited.

It was Sarah.

They never let me see her, and I was glad of that.

She had been murdered. There were indications of a heavy blow on the back of the head, not necessarily fatal; but the actual cause of death, poor creature, was two stab wounds in the chest. One had penetrated to the right ventricle of the heart, and she had died very quickly.

Only later on was I to have the full picture of that tragic discovery; the evidence that the body had been dragged along beside the bridle path for almost a quarter of a mile, a herculean task; the inexplicable fact that the shoes had been removed and thrown in after the body; the difficulty of explaining how that inert figure had been lifted seven feet in the air to the top of the sewer to be dropped as it was found, head down, into that pipe-like orifice; and strangest and most dreadful of all to me, that the very rope with which the dogs had been tied when I found them, had been fastened under her arms and used to drag the body.

The homicide squad, I believe, was early on the scene, a cordon of police thrown out, and the path closed from the Larimer lot to a point beyond the sewer. But the heavy rain and the fact that the path had been used had obliterated all traces save those broken branches down the hillside which apparently proved that Sarah had been killed on or near the Larimer property.

The body had been found at three o’clock, and the medical examination took place as soon as it could be removed. The crime detection unit, a group of specialists, had been notified before that removal, but of the seven only one found anything to do there, and that was the photographer. And a gruesome enough exhibit those pictures made; the waiting ambulance, the mounted men holding back the curious who attempted to break the line, and close-up photographs of that poor body in its incredible resting place.

Inspector Harrison, sitting gravely in my library that night, was puzzled and restless.

“It’s a curious case,” he said. “Apparently motiveless. She was not robbed; the purse was found with the body, although—you say she carried a key to this house?”

“Yes. Inspector, I have been wondering if she did leave her bedroom door unlocked that night when she went out. If that man on the stairs hadn’t already killed her and taken both keys.”

“I think not. And I’ll tell you why. Now the time when you saw that figure on the stairs was at seven-thirty-five, approximately. You’d finished a seven o’clock dinner and had got to your coffee. That’s near enough, anyhow. But Sarah Gittings did not die until around ten o’clock.”

“I don’t understand. How do you know that?”

“By the food in the stomach. It had been in the stomach for approximately four hours before she died. The autopsy showed us that. But it does not show us where Sarah Gittings was between seven o’clock and ten. Three hours between the time she left this house and the time of her death. Where was she? What was she doing during that three hours? Once we learn that, and the identity of this Florence, we will have somewhere to go.”

“I have wondered if a maniac, a homicidal maniac——”

“On account of the shoes? No, I think not, although there may have been an endeavor to make us think that. No. Why did Sarah Gittings take a chair from the laundry and place it in the wood cellar? Why did she agree to take the dogs, and at the same time take a rope with which to tie them? What was in her room that would justify breaking into this house to secure it? Those are the questions we have to ask ourselves, Miss Bell.”

“About this rope,” he went on thoughtfully. “You left it when you untied the dogs and went back for Joseph?”

“I left it by the tree.”

“And when you got back it was not there?”

“No. We searched for it as well as we could. But a rope doesn’t move itself, and it was not where I left it, or anywhere nearby.”

He got up to go, and standing in the hallway stared back at the lavatory door.

“This Florence,” he said, “she may try to get in touch with you. She reads the papers, and God knows they are full of it today. If she does, don’t scare her off. Find out something. Coax her here if you can, and notify me.”

He went back into the lavatory and stood looking up at the ceiling.

“A strong man,” he said, “or a desperate one if he got himself out of that shaft, and he may have; and it took strength to put that body where we found it.”

As an afterthought, on his way out, he turned and said:

“Strange thing. Both those stab wounds were exactly the same depth, four and a quarter inches.”

Wallie and Jim had made the necessary identification, and the coroner’s jury brought in the only verdict possible. After that and pending the funeral we had a brief respite, although hardly to be called a peace. Reporters rang the bell day and night, and the press published sensational stories, including photographs of the house. Camera men even lurked in the shrubbery, trying for snapshots of any of us. One they did get, of Judy.

They had caught her unawares with a cigarette in her hand, and to prevent the picture she had made a really shocking face at the camera. They published it, nevertheless, and Katherine was outraged.

Katherine came down to the funeral. She was shocked and incredulous over the whole affair.

“But why?” she repeated over and over, when we got back from the service. “She had no enemies. She really had nobody, but us.”

“Is there anything phoney about any of us?” Judy inquired. “Some family secret, or something she knew?”

“Judy!” said Katherine indignantly.

“But I mean it, mother. If we’re all she’s had for twenty years——”

Fortunately for Judy, Jim Blake came in just then, and I sent upstairs for Mary Martin, who had been left to herself for several days, and ordered tea. It seemed to me that we needed it.

We were five, then, that afternoon after Sarah’s funeral when we gathered around the tea table; Katherine in her handsome black, the large square emerald which was Howard’s latest gift to her on one white slim hand, saddened but controlled; Judy, with her boyish head and her girlish body; Mary, red-headed, pretty, not too sure of herself and resentful of it—it was clear that Katherine rather daunted her; Jim, well valeted and showing in relaxation some slight evidence of too many dinners and too many cocktails; and myself.

Katherine inspected Jim critically as he came in.

“You look tired, Jim.”

“Well, it’s been an uneasy week,” he said evasively.

But she could not let it rest at that. Everything attached to Sarah had grown enormous in her eyes; already she was exalting Sarah in her mind, her virtues, her grievances.

“I didn’t suppose you’d bother much. You never liked her.”

“My dear girl! I hardly knew her.”

“You never liked her, Jim. That’s all I said. Although why you should dislike the poor dear I don’t know.”

It seemed to me that Jim looked annoyed. More than annoyed, indeed; alarmed. Also that Mary was staring at him with a rather singular intentness, and that Judy had noticed this. There was no particular sympathy between the two girls. Judy, assured, humorous and unself-conscious, was downright and frank to the shocking point, and her small artifices were as open as herself. But there was nothing open about Mary Martin and very little that was natural, save the color of her hair.

“Her mind’s always on herself,” Judy had complained once. “She poses her very fingers, if you know what I mean. She’s self-conscious every minute.”

And if there is one crime in the bright lexicon of modern youth it is to be self-conscious.

Katherine, upset and nervous, was gnawing on her grievance like a dog on a bone.

“But you thought Howard was foolish to remember her in his will, Jim.”

“Nonsense, Katherine. Howard’s money is his, to leave where he likes. Anyhow, let’s hope he doesn’t leave it at all for a good many years.”

That silenced her. She sat very still, with her eyes slightly dilated, facing the issue she had herself brought up; Howard gone and herself alone. The years going on and she alone. And into that silence Mary Martin’s voice broke, quiet but very clear.

“I have always meant to ask you, Mr. Blake. Did you receive the letter Miss Gittings wrote you on Sunday, the day before the—the thing happened?”

“A letter?” said Jim. “She wrote me a letter?”

But he was shocked. A child could have seen it. His teacup shook in his hand, and he was obliged to rest it on his knee. I saw Judy’s eyes narrow.

“She did indeed. I went in while she was writing it.”

“A letter?” Katherine asked. “Did you get it, Jim?”

“I received no letter.” He had recovered somewhat, however, and now he turned on Mary sharply. “How did you know it was to me? Did she say so?”

“No. She was addressing the envelope, and she put her arm over it so I could not see. That is how I know.”

“Do speak up,” Judy said irritably. “What’s the sense in being mysterious? God knows we’ve got enough of that.”

“Her uniform is still hanging in the closet, and Mr. Blake’s name is quite clear on the sleeve. Of course you have to take a mirror to read it.”

I do not think any one of us doubted that she had told the truth, unless it was Katherine. And Mary sat there, pleased at being the center of attention, the picture however of demureness, her eyes on her well-manicured hands, which were as Judy had said, carelessly but beautifully posed in her lap.

“I don’t believe it,” Katherine said suddenly. “Please bring it down, Miss Martin.”

I saw the girl stiffen and glance at me. She was taking no orders, said her attitude, except from me.

“Will you, Mary? Please.”

She went out then, leaving the four of us in a rather strained silence. Jim was staring into his teacup. Judy was watching Jim, and Katherine had put her head back and closed her eyes.

“I don’t like that girl,” she said. “She is malicious.”

“There’s nothing malicious in her giving us a clue if she’s got one,” said Judy, with determined firmness. “We don’t know that she sent the letter, but if she wrote one——”

“Well?”

“It looks as if she had had something to say to Uncle Jim which she didn’t care to telephone, doesn’t it?”

Mary came back then, and I daresay all of us felt rather sick when we saw Sarah’s white uniform once more. There is something about the clothing of those who have died which is terribly pathetic; the familiarity, the small wrinkles left by a once warm body. And in Sarah’s case the uniform spelled to most of us long years of loyal service. Katherine I know was silently crying.

Judy was the first to take the garment and examine it. I noticed that Jim did not touch it. Mary had brought a mirror, and I saw that Joseph—who was gathering the teacups—was politely dissembling an interest as keen as ours. Judy however did not help him any. She looked at the ink marks on the cuff which Mary had indicated, and then silently passed both mirror and garment to me.

There was no question of what was there. Somewhat smeared but still readable was the word “Blake,” and while the house number was illegible, the street, Pine Street, was quite distinct.

No one spoke until Joseph went out. Then Jim cleared his throat and said:

“I don’t care what’s there. I never got a letter from her.”

“She put a stamp on it,” said Mary.

Judy turned on her.

“That doesn’t prove that she mailed it.”

But Mary shrugged her shoulders. I thought then, and I still think, that at that moment at least she was sincere enough, and also that she was enjoying the situation she had forced. For once the attention was on her and not on Katherine and Judy, with their solid place in the world, their unconscious assumption of superiority.

“You knew her,” she said laconically. “She wouldn’t waste a two-cent stamp.”

She was unwilling to give up the center of the stage, however. She said that the uniform might or might not have importance, but that she felt the police should see it. If looks could have killed her she would never have left that room, but she had put the issue up to us and what could we do?

“Certainly,” said Judy shrewishly. “You might put on your things now and take it, Mary!”

And with all eyes on her Mary merely looked at her watch and said that it was too late.

When a half hour or so later Inspector Harrison came in he found us all sitting there, manufacturing talk to cover our discomfort, and Mary blandly smiling.

We had to give the uniform to him. But from that time on there was not one of us who did not believe that Mary Martin was a potential enemy, and potentially dangerous; nor one of at least four of us who did not believe that Jim had actually received a letter from Sarah and was choosing to suppress the fact.