Wall (14 page)

He was striding along the road, bareheaded, with his hands in his trousers pockets and his head bent; and I thought he looked startled when I stopped the car beside him. He smiled, however, when he saw me. I noticed that even his forehead was now deeply tanned.

“I’ve been looking for you for hours,” I told him.

“You haven’t a thing on me. I’ve been thinking of you for days,” he said. “What do I do now? Get into the car, or will you get out?”

“I’ll get out,” I said, and proceeded to do so. “I want to talk and I can’t do it when I’m driving.”

“It would be a good thing if more young women knew that,” he said lightly.

But he was definitely uneasy. When we found a rock and sat down on it, he seemed rather at a loss.

“Look here,” he said. “I’m more sorry than I can say about what’s happened. But I can’t tell you anything about it.”

“You knew her. That’s something.”

He did not say anything for a brief time. Then he turned and faced me.

“Yes, I knew her,” he said. “I was crazy about her, if you want the truth. But that was a long time ago. Don’t hold it against me now.”

“It doesn’t really concern me, does it?”

“Doesn’t it? Well, I suppose that was too much to hope. What did you want to ask me?”

For just a minute I had been absurdly happy, but his question brought me back with a jerk.

“You knew her crowd. Whom she played around with, who liked her and who didn’t. Are any of them here, on the island?”

“My dear girl, I haven’t seen that crowd of hers for more than two years. I wanted to forget the whole damned lot, if you want the truth. And her too. And don’t take what I said too seriously. I lost my head for a while. That’s all. I got over it in a hurry.”

“I hadn’t the slightest idea of taking it seriously,” I told him. But he laughed and picking up my hand, kissed the palm of it lightly.

“Let’s forget her,” he said. “We can’t help her, and here’s a day of days, and you are here. That’s enough for me.”

It was late when I got home. Mary Lou was pouring tea in the library, and Arthur looked more relaxed than he had been for days. But when I went up to take off my hat I saw William outside Jordan’s door with a small tray, and heard her ask who it was.

“The cook’s sent up some tea for you,” said William stiffly.

“Then put it on the floor. I’ll get it.”

I was in the hall at the time, and if there was any humor in the situation it was in William’s face as he passed me.

“She’s gone off her head, miss,” he said. “If she thinks I want to get inside that room—”

I was puzzled myself, but I did not think the woman was crazy. I waited until, having heard William’s steps recede, she unlocked and opened her door. She inspected the hall carefully in both directions before she picked up her tray; and I knew then that she was not sulking, or even necessarily grieving. She was in a state of acute terror.

T
HE NEXT DAY THE
case developed, and in amazing fashion. The first surprise came in the morning, and concerned Helen Jordan again. After breakfast she called a village taxicab, and went out in it. She returned for lunch, but late in the afternoon she appeared in my doorway, with her suitcase in her hand.

“I’m leaving, Miss Lloyd,” she said, in her flat voice. “I want to thank you for letting me stay. You’ve been very good to me.”

“Leaving, Jordan? There’s no train at this time of day.”

“No, miss,” she said. “I’m not leaving town. I’ve taken a room in the town.

She gave no explanation, and I did not like to ask for one. But before she left I asked her if she had sufficient money, and she thanked me and said rather obscurely that that was being taken care of. Then she went stiffly down the stairs, and I felt a sense of relief, as though something unfriendly and even sinister had gone out of the house.

Our real surprise, however, came shortly before noon that day.

The season was well under way by that time; the streets of the village crowded with cars, the shops busy, and the Shore Club opened, with its gay parasols over tables on the terrace, and the braver spirits among us already bathing in the pool. But the tourist camp on Pine Hill was filling up also, and on that Monday morning a woman from it drove in to Conrad’s for meat.

I was not there, but I now know the story. Dorothy Martin was there at the time, and she and Conrad were talking about the case.

“So Fred saw this woman,” said Conrad, scrupulously weighing the order.

“He saw somebody,” said Dorothy. “He didn’t recognize her. She was too far away. But he thinks she wore a yellow sweater and carried something. A stick of some sort.”

“Funny she hasn’t spoken up, whoever she is,” said Mr. Conrad, eying the scales. “Everybody knows they’re looking for her. Not that I think she did it,” he added. “It looks like a man-size job to me. But she might have seen something.”

It was then that the woman from the tourist camp spoke up.

“If it’s a woman in a yellow sweater you’re talking about, I saw her myself,” she said. “Close by, too. I was out gathering wood that day when she went past. She didn’t see me.”

As a result of which five minutes later Conrad had shed his apron, put on his hat, and was leading her to the police station, where the sheriff had set up a temporary office. He was there, smoking his pipe and studying a contour map of the island, when Conrad led the woman in and explained.

“You saw her?” he said. “Would you know her again?”

“I certainly would. She was walking fast and carrying a golf club. She was smoking a cigarette too. I don’t hold with women smoking,” she added virtuously.

Shand looked grave, but nothing shook her testimony. She hadn’t been forty feet away. Kind of tall and good-looking; thirty maybe, maybe more. Had red hair and her mouth painted, she said. She had a woman’s memory for her clothing too. She wore the sweater, a soft hat and a dark plaid skirt.

It took both Conrad and the sheriff about one minute to identify Lucy Hutchinson, and I believe they went into a panic at first.

They put the woman from the tourist camp in another room, over her protest. Then the sheriff called in the village police chief and a deputy or two, and including Conrad they went into a huddle.

“No proof she did it,” said Shand. “But if she was up there that morning she’s got a right to tell about it, summer folks or no summer folks.” Meaning that as the main business of the island was the people who spent the hot weather there, as a rule they could do no wrong.

“You’ll have to be careful, Shand,” said Mr. Conrad, mopping his face. “They’re good people and good customers. Not only to me. All over town.”

“I’ll be careful, all right.”

The sheriff outlined his plan of campaign then. The police station is on the main street of the village, and any day from ten to eleven one may see most of the women of the summer colony there doing their buying. For that tradition survives among us. Other resorts may telephone for their supplies; most of us go and get them. Tradition dies hard in us. As our forebears did, so do we, although I loathe it. I can still remember my mother, with a groom in livery behind her carrying a huge basket on his arm, testing the tenderness and youth of chickens by lifting a wing to see if the skin broke.

They put the woman—her name was Cutten, I remember—into a window overlooking the street, and the sheriff gave her his instructions. It was eleven o’clock by that time, and still early.

“Just tell me if you see her, Mrs. Cutten,” he said. “That’s all. And sit back a little. No need for any excitement.”

Less than an hour later Lucy, having parked her car, came along the street on her way to the lending library. She did not wear the yellow sweater, and she had an entirely peaceable book or two under her arm. But Mrs. Cutten knew her at once.

“There she is,” she said. “I’d know her anywhere.”

She was rather surprised when the sheriff made no move.

“Sure of it?”

“Absolutely.”

“All right,” he said. “Go on back to the camp and the family. And don’t talk, Mrs. Cutten. You’ll have plenty of chance later.”

He put in, I believe, an hour or two of good hard thinking after she had gone. Then he got up and smashed his hat down on his head.

“I may have to fight Wall Street, the government and a few foreign nations before I’m through with this,” he said to a deputy standing by, “but I’m on my way.”

He had no illusions about what it meant as he started out. Both Lucy’s family and the Hutchinsons had owned estates on the island for years. They paid high taxes, and were in the forefront of all the village movements. Bob himself had built a new wing for the local hospital. To find then that Lucy had been near by when Juliette disappeared and had concealed the fact was more than a shock. It struck deep into the very roots of the town’s life. Nevertheless, he did it, walking in on Lucy when she returned for lunch at one o’clock.

He said later that he did not need to ask a question after he saw her. She looked at him and turned white, though she managed to smile.

“Is the law after me, Mr. Shand?” she said.

“I wouldn’t say that, Mrs. Hutchinson.”

“Then what would you say?”

She sat down but he still stood, looking down at her.

“I’d say that if people didn’t get scared and hide things, life would be a lot easier.”

“I suppose that means I’m hiding something?”

“I know damn’ well you are.”

She still tried to evade it.

“What am I hiding?” she inquired. “I suppose I killed Juliette Ransom and then lifted her on a horse and put her in the lake. What an athlete you must think I am.”

But he was not having any persiflage. He took the cigarette from her hand and looked at it.

“Why didn’t you tell me you went up into the hills that morning?” he said gravely. “You’ve been identified by a woman who saw you close by. It was your cigarette we found by that log, and your heel that made the print we’ve got. Let’s not argue about it. That’s only losing time.”

“You’re guessing,” she told him, and got up abruptly. At first he thought she was about to walk out on him, but she merely closed the door and came back. “You’re guessing, and I’ll fight you from here to the Supreme Court, Russell Shand, before I’ll let you get away with it.”

“All right,” he said, picking up his hat. “I thought maybe you and I could have it out all nice and quiet; but if you take this attitude I’ll have to go further.”

Long weeks later when he told me of that conversation I was to be grateful to her for that day, and for what she did not tell. She must have been tempted. All she had to say was that Arthur had been on the island the night of the murder, and he would have walked over to us and confronted us. She did not say it. She sat there, cornered and desperate, and finally looked up at him.

“You win,” she said, quietly. “Where do we go from here? To the jail?”

“Not necessarily, unless—You didn’t kill her, did you?”

“No.”

“Well, let’s change the question. Did you see her that morning?”

She hesitated, and her silence was his answer.

“You saw her. Did you talk to her?”

“That’s what I went for. But I give you my word of honor that when I left she was still there, safe and sound.”

On one thing she was firm. She would not tell why she had met Juliette that morning. It was a private matter between them and did not involve anyone else. She had wanted to talk to her, and when that morning she saw her starting off in riding clothes, she had got out her coupe and followed her.

“I left the car near the club, and cut across the course,” she said. “I knew I could head her off by a short cut. As a matter of fact, I was well ahead of her. I had time to smoke a cigarette before she came. But I’m no fool,” she added. “Do you suppose I’d have left the stub there if I had meant, to kill her?”

She did say one thing, though. When she started back Juliette was still off her horse and making no move to go.

I knew nothing of this until Tony Rutherford wandered in that afternoon, for a highball and a talk. Now that he felt safe with me he frequently did that! But that day he was being tactful. He approached the matter by indirection, giving me first the small gossip of the colony. Bob Hutchinson had had too much to drink the night before and had quarreled with Howard Brooks. Mrs. Dean was not well and Doctor Jamieson was attending her, the assemblymen were talking about lowering taxes on house property, which did not mean anything, and did I want an Airedale pup.

All lighthearted enough. I listened absently, my mind elsewhere, until he said the thing that made me sit up in my chair.

“What do you think of Lucy being our latest suspect?”

“Lucy? Lucy Hutchinson?”

He nodded, grinning.

“Apparently she was the lady in the yellow sweater after all. Been identified! Here! Hold on there! What’s the matter?”

I pulled myself together.

“It’s absurd, that’s all.”

“Why absurd? Why shouldn’t Lucy take a morning tramp in the hills? She often does it.”

He went on. The story was that the sheriff had not only got her identified. He had gone to see her. “But she’s still free, white and thirty-one,” he said. “You needn’t look like that, my dear. Trust little Lucy to take care of herself.”

He did not stay long. I dare say I was not an absorbing companion, for I knew well enough that, whether she had already told about Arthur or not, if driven to a corner she would have to tell. I was relieved when Tony finally got up to go.

“Don’t take it too hard, old girl,” he said. “Better Lucy than Arthur any day, isn’t it?”

With which dubious comfort he went away.

But that identification of Lucy was to have an unexpected result the same night.

That evening after dinner Arthur took one of his aimless drives while Mary Lou and I played Russian bank. I had won two dollars from her before she yawned and went up to bed, and when Arthur came back—somewhere around ten o’clock—I was about to call it a day myself.

There was a change in Arthur that night. He looked like a man who had come to a decision; and I found that he had. He ordered a drink and with it in his hand stood in front of the fire, staring at it thoughtfully.