The Oxford Book of American Det (62 page)

With this dire threat she departed, and I spent the afternoon wondering what Dr.

Barclay and the Thompson woman knew or suspected, and in getting a wave at Elinor’s hairdresser’s.

The girl who set my hair told me something I hadn’t known. “Here I was, waiting for her,” she said. “She was always prompt. Of course she never came, and—“

“You mean you expected her here, the day it happened?”

“That’s right,” she agreed. “She had an appointment for four o’clock. When I got the paper on my way home I simply couldn’t believe it. She’d always been so gay. Of course the last few weeks she hadn’t been quite the same, but—“

“How long since you noticed a change in her?” I asked.

“Well, let me see. About Easter, I think. I remember I liked a new hat she had, and she gave it to me then and there! She said a funny thing, too. She said sometimes new hats were dangerous!”

I may have looked better when I left the shop, but my mind was doing pin wheels.

Why were new hats dangerous? And why had Elinor changed since Easter?

Fred had dinner with us that evening. At last, he sat at the table and pushed his food around with a fork. Margaret hadn’t come. He said she was in bed with a headache, and he spent most of the time talking about Elinor.

It was ghastly, of course. Even Mother looked unhappy. “I wish you’d eat something, Fred,” she said. “Try to forget the whole thing. You made her very happy. Always remember that.”

I asked him if anything had upset Elinor since Easter. He stared at me.

“I don’t remember anything, Lou. Except that she started going to that damned psychiatrist then.”

“Why did she go to him, Fred?” Mother inquired. “If she had any inhibitions I never noticed them.”

If there was a barb in this, he wasn’t aware of it. “You saw him,” he said. “He is a good-looking devil. Maybe she liked to look at him. It would be a change from looking at me.”

He went home soon after that. In spite of his previous protests, I thought he had resented the doctor’s good looks and Elinor’s visits to him. And I wondered if he was trying to build up a defence against her in his own mind; to remember her as less than perfect in order to ease his tragic sense of loss.

I slept badly, so I was late for breakfast the next morning. Mother had finished the paper, and I took it.

Tucked away on a back page was an item reporting that Mrs. Thompson had been shot the night before!

I read and reread it. She was not dead, but her condition was critical. All the police had been able to learn from the family was that she had been sitting alone on the front porch when it happened. Nobody had even heard the shot. She had been found by her husband when he came home from a lodge meeting at eleven o’clock. She was unconscious, and the hospital reported her as being still too low to make a statement.

So she had known something, poor thing. Something that made her dangerous. And again I remembered Margaret going up the steps of the little house on Charles Street; Margaret searching for Elinor’s lipstick in the street. Margaret, who had hated Elinor and who was now in possession of Fred, of old Joe Hammond’s portrait, of Elinor’s silk sheets, and—I suddenly remembered—of Fred’s automatic, which had lain in his desk drawer for years.

I think it was the automatic which finally decided me.

Anyhow, I went to our local precinct stationhouse that afternoon and told a man behind a high desk that I wanted to see the person in charge. “He’s busy,” the man said, eying me indifferently.

“All right,” I said. “If he’s too busy to look into a murder, then I’ll go downtown to Headquarters.”

“Who’s been murdered?”

“I’ll tell
him
that.”

There was an officer passing, and the man called him. “Young lady here’s got a murder on her mind,” he said. “Might see if the captain’s busy.” The captain was not busy, but he wasn’t interested either. When I told him it was about Elinor Hammond, he said he understood the case was closed, and anyhow, it hadn’t happened in his district. As Mrs. Thompson was not in his district either, and as he plainly thought I was either out of my mind or looking for publicity, I finally gave up.

The man behind the desk grinned at me as I went out. “Want us to call for the corpse?” he inquired.

“I wouldn’t ask you to call for a dead dog,” I told him bitterly.

But there was a result, after all. I drove around the rest of the afternoon trying to decide what to do. When I got home I found Mother in the hall.

“There’s a policeman here to see you,” she hissed. “What have you done?” I said, “I haven’t done anything. It’s about Elinor. I want to see this man alone, Mother.”

“I think you’re crazy,” she said furiously. “It’s all over. She got into trouble and killed herself. She was always headed for trouble. The first thing you know you’ll be arrested yourself.”

She followed me into the living room, and before I could speak to the detective there she told him I had been acting strangely for days and she was going to call a doctor and put me to bed.

“Suppose we let her talk for herself,” he said. “Now, Miss Baring, what’s all this about a murder?”

So I told him: about Elinor and the lipstick; about her appointment at the hairdresser’s for shortly after the time she was lying dead on the pavement; about my conviction that Mrs. Thompson knew something she hadn’t told.

“I gather you think Mrs. Hammond didn’t kill herself. Is that it?”

“Does it look like it?” I demanded.

“Then who did it?”

“I think it was her sister-in-law.”

Mother almost had a fit at that. She got up saying that I was hysterical.

But the detective did not move. “Let her alone,” he said gruffly. “What about this sister-in-law?”

“I found her in Dr. Barclay’s office yesterday,” I said. “She insisted that Elinor had fallen out the window. Maybe it sounds silly, but she knew about the lipstick. She tried to find it in the street. I think she was in the office the day Elinor was killed. I think the Thompson woman knew it. And I think Margaret Hammond shot her.”

“Shot her?” he said sharply. “Is that the woman out on Charles Street?”

“Yes.”

He eyed me steadily. “Why do you think Miss Hammond shot her?”

“Because she went there yesterday morning to talk to her. I followed her.” Mother started again. She couldn’t understand my behaviour. Margaret had been in bed last night with a headache. It would be easy to verify that. The servants...

The detective waited patiently and then got up. “I have a little advice for you, Miss Baring,” he said. “Leave this to us. If you’re right and there’s been a murder and a try at another one, that’s our job.”

It was Mother who went to bed that afternoon, while I waited at the telephone. And when the detective finally called me, the news left me exactly where I had been before.

Mrs. Thompson had recovered consciousness and made a statement. She did not know who shot her or why, but she insisted that Margaret had visited her merely to thank her for her testimony, which had shown definitely that Elinor had either fallen or jumped out the window. She had neither been offered nor given any money.

There was more to it, however. It appeared that Mrs. Thompson had been worried since the inquest and had telephoned Margaret to ask her if what bothered her was important. As a matter of fact, someone had entered the doctor’s office while she was in the hall.

“But it was natural enough,” the detective said. “It was the one individual nobody ever really notices. The postman.”

“The postman?” I said weakly.

“Exactly. I’ve talked to him. He saw Mrs. Hammond in the office that morning. He remembers her. She had her hat off, and she was reading a magazine.”

“Did he see Mrs. Thompson?”

“He didn’t notice her, but she saw him.”

“So he shot her last night!”

The detective laughed. “He took his family to the movies last night. And remember this, Miss Baring: that shot may have been an accident. Plenty of people carry guns now who never did before.”

It was all very cheerio. Elinor had committed suicide, and Mrs. Thompson had been shot by someone who was practicing for Hitler. Only I just didn’t believe it. I believed it even less after I had a visit from Dr. Barclay that night.

Mother was still in bed refusing to see me, and I was listening to the radio when the maid showed him in.

“I’m sorry to butt in like this,” he said. “I won’t take much of your time.”

“Then it’s not a professional call?”

He looked surprised. “Certainly not. Why?”

“Because my mother thinks I’m losing my mind,” I said rather wildly. “Elinor Hammond is dead, so let her lie. Mrs. Thompson is shot, but why worry? Remember the papers! Remember the family name! No scandal, please!”

“You’re in bad shape, aren’t you? How about going to bed? I’ll talk to you later.”

“So I’m to go to bed!” I said nastily. “That would be nice and easy, wouldn’t it?

Somebody is getting away with murder. Maybe two murders. And everybody tries to hush me up. Even the police!”

That jolted him. “You’ve been to the police?”

“Why not? Why shouldn’t the police be told? Just because you don’t want it known that someone was pushed out of your office window—“ He was angry, but he tried to control himself. “See here,” he said. “You’re dealing with things you don’t understand. Why can’t you stay out of this case?”

“There wasn’t any case until I made one,” I said furiously. “Why is everybody warning me off? How do I know you didn’t do it yourself? You could have. Either you or the postman. And he was at the movies!”

“The postman!” he said, staring. “What do you mean, the postman?” I suppose it was his astonished face which made me laugh. I laughed and laughed. I couldn’t stop. Then I was crying too. I couldn’t stop that either. Without warning he slapped my face.

It jerked my head back, but it stopped me. “That’s the girl,” he said. “You’d have had the neighbours in in another minute. You’d better go up to bed, and I’ll send you some sleeping stuff from the drugstore.”

“I wouldn’t take anything you sent me on a bet.”

He ignored that. “Believe it or not,” he said, “I didn’t come here to attack you! I came to ask you not to go out alone at night until I tell you that you may. I mean what I’m saying,” he added. “Don’t go out of this house alone at night, Miss Baring—any night.”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” I said, still raging. “Why shouldn’t I go out at night?”

“Because it may be dangerous,” he said shortly. “I particularly want you to keep away from the Hammond house.”

He banged the front door when he went out, and I spent the next half hour hating him like poison. I was still angry when the phone rang. It was Margaret!

“I suppose we have you to thank for the police coming here tonight,” she said. “Why can’t you leave us alone? We’re in trouble enough, without you making things worse.”

“All right,” I said recklessly. “Now I’ll ask you one. Why did you visit Mrs. Thompson yesterday morning? And who shot her last night?”

She gasped and hung up the receiver.

It was a half hour later when the druggist’s boy brought the sleeping tablets. I took them to the kitchen and dropped them in the coal range, while Annie watched me with amazement. She was fixing Mother’s hot milk, I remember, and she told me that Clara, the Hammonds’ cook, had been over.

“She says things are queer over there,” she reported. “Somebody started the furnace last night, and the house was so hot this morning you couldn’t live in it.” I didn’t pay much attention. I was still shaken. Then I saw Annie look up, and Fred was standing on the kitchen porch.

“May I come in?” he asked. “I was taking a walk and I saw the light.” He looked better, I thought. He said Margaret was in bed, and the house was lonely.

Then he asked if Annie would make him a cup of coffee.

“I don’t sleep much, anyhow,” he said. “It’s hard to get adjusted. And the house is hot.

I’ve been getting rid of a lot of stuff. Burning it.” So that explained the furnace.

I walked out with him when he left and watched him as he started home. Then I turned up the driveway again. I was near the house when it happened. I remember the shrubbery rustling, but I never heard the shot. Something hit me on the head. I fell, and after that there was a complete blackout until I heard Mother’s voice. I was in my own bed with a bandage around my head and an ache in it that made me dizzy.

“The idea of her going out when you told her not to!” Mother was saying.

“I did my best,” said a masculine voice. “But you have a very stubborn daughter.” It was Dr. Barclay. He was standing beside the bed when I opened my eyes. I remember saying, “You slapped me.”

“And a lot of good it did,” he retorted. “Now look where you are!” I could see him better by that time, he looked very queer. One of his eyes was almost shut, and his collar was a wilted mess. I stared at him. “What happened?” I asked.

“You’ve been in a fight.”

“More or less.”

“And what’s this thing on my head?”

“That is what you get for disobeying orders.”

I began to remember then—the scuffling in the bushes, and something knocking me down. He reached over and took my pulse.

“You’ve got a very pretty bullet graze on the side of your head,” he said. “Also, I’ve had to shave off quite a bit of your hair.” I suppose I wailed at that, for he shifted from my pulse to my hand. “Don’t worry about that. It was very pretty hair, but it will grow again. At least, thank God, you’re here!”

“Who did it? Who shot at me?”

“The postman, of course,” he said, and to my fury went out of the room.

I slept after that. I suppose he had given me something. Anyhow, it was the next morning before I heard the rest of the story. Mother had fallen for Dr. Barclay completely, and she wouldn’t let him see me until my best silk blanket cover was on the bed. Even then in a hand mirror I looked dreadful, with my head bandaged and my skin yellowish-gray. The doctor didn’t seem to mind, however. He came in, big and smiling, with his right eye completely closed, and told me I looked like the wrath of heaven.

“You’re not looking your best yourself,” I said.