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“Still, wasn’t that rather unusual? Unless he actually knew your brother was innocent?”

“How could he know that? He didn’t even know Arthur.”

“He might know who
was
guilty, Miss Lloyd.”

There was more, of course. Some of it I have forgotten. At last he came directly to the point.

“You don’t know where he is now? Pell, I mean.”

“No.”

“Just how often have you seen him?”

“I don’t know exactly. Five or six times.”

“When did you see him last?”

I did not mention the cruiser. I could not.

“I was giving a dinner. I went out onto the porch and he was there. I had only a minute to talk to him. People were arriving.”

“And the date?”

I gave it to him and he wrote it down. Then he leaned forward.

“What was that talk about, Miss Lloyd? Please be accurate. You may have to repeat this under oath.”

He looked surprised when I told him.

“He wanted you to leave the island? Did he say why?”

“He seemed to think I wasn’t safe here.”

Warren sat still, drumming with his fingers on the arm of his chair. The sheriff smiled for the first time.

“I told you, Warren,” he said. “Too many things don’t jibe. Why did he want Marcia to leave the island? So he wouldn’t kill her? Who put that hatchet I told you about in the room upstairs? Who in hades knocked Pell out and then carted him off to a hospital? And why didn’t he kill the doctor when he made that call on him, if he was going to kill him at all? They were out together in that same car.”

Warren was silent.

“What’s more,” the sheriff went on, “a man can kill people with his car and not be a killer. Look at that key ring! If the gardener here had found it a month or so ago it would have caused Arthur Lloyd a lot of trouble. But Arthur Lloyd was no killer. We’ve had one attack and one murder since, with a clear alibi for him in both cases. As it is—”

“What about the key ring?” I gasped.

The sheriff looked at me and smiled.

“It’s like this, Marcia. I expect it was Arthur who found that body up the creek. Just happened on it, most likely. Well, what would he be likely to do? He knew there was a good circumstantial case against him. What’s more, he was a lawyer and he knew that without a body there was no murder, in the eyes of the law. No corpus delicti.”

“You mean that he buried her?” I asked weakly.

“That’s about it. Mike had the keys to the toolshed that night, so he broke in and got a spade. It stood out like a sore thumb all along that whoever buried her did it decently. She wasn’t just tossed in and covered up. It was a fool thing to do, probably, but after all she’d been his wife. Then after he did it he found he’d lost his keys! Must have been a pretty tough situation for him, when you think about it.”

I could imagine that now. Poor Arthur! I found my lips trembling. The detective looked almost shocked.

“Took a good-sized chance, sheriff, didn’t you?” he said. “If you knew all that—”

The sheriff smiled.

“I know these people,” he said. “You don’t.”

The detective got up. It was apparent that he disapproved of all this. These were not the hard-boiled methods of a big city. All this nonsense about knowing people! Who knew anybody else when it came to murder?

He cleared his throat.

“We might look at those rooms, sheriff,” he said. “You’ve got that hatchet on your brain!”

I went up with them. It was a bright cold day, with the sun pouring in; and nothing could have been more normal than the hospital suite appeared, now set in order again. The wallpaper was as fresh as the day it had been put on, twenty-odd years ago. In the nurse’s room the cot was neatly made up, and the trunks and boxes were closed and in their places. The broken china had been removed, but the toys remained, and on top of a wardrobe Arthur’s old cage still stood, mute reminder of the white mice he had kept, and which had filled in his convalescence from everything, from whooping cough to mumps.

I stood there looking at it. It reminded me of something, but I could not think what it was. Mother had loathed the creatures, but I had liked them. It had been one of my virtues in Arthur’s eyes. Then what—

The men examined the other room carefully. I could hear them raising the window, and even turning back the rug. When they reappeared it was the sheriff who spoke.

“That night Maggie was hurt up here, Marcia,” he said. “She ever remember any more about it?”

“She thinks she was walking in her sleep. She has an idea she was in that room when she was struck.”

“What part of the room?”

“In the corner by the bed there.”

I went to the doorway and showed him, and he went back again and rapped on the wall. It was solid, and he looked baffled.

“What was she doing there?” he asked. “Or does she remember?”

“She thinks she was on her knees, as though she was looking for something. But she doesn’t know what it was.”

They went away soon after that, Mr. Warren looking faintly amused and mildly superior.

“There’s your hatchet!” he said, as they got into the sheriff’s car. “A sleepwalker! You’ll probably find that she carried it up there herself.”

“Might be,” said the sheriff. “Only trouble with that, she’s a peace-loving woman, and it’s kind of hard to think of her carrying it about here with her. Then, too, where did she get it? They don’t stock that kind in town.”

I was left, still trying to remember about Arthur’s mouse cage. That afternoon something happened which drove all thought of it out of my head. William, bringing me my tea in the morning room at five o’clock, told me about it. He put down the tray, lifted and replaced the sliced lemon, coughed apologetically, and said:

“I understand they have found the man they were looking for, miss.”

“What man?” I said, my heart sinking.

“The painter. Mr. Pell.”

I still do not know how he learned it. I never have known how our secrets, such as they are, are always known by our servants before we learn them. But I do know that I dropped the empty tea cup and broke it to pieces.

“Where did they find him?”

“Well, they didn’t exactly find him, miss.” He had stooped and was picking bits of china from the floor. “That’s one of the old Dresden cups. Your mother thought a lot of those cups,” he said, with reproach in his voice.

“What do you mean?” I said frantically. “Get up, William, and look at me. What is this story you are trying to tell me?”

He looked hurt.

“He wasn’t exactly found,” he repeated, straightening stiffly. “I understand he walked into the courthouse at Clinton and gave himself up, miss.”

I sat there, staring at him. I believe he brought a brush and pan and gathered up the scattered pieces of the cup. I think he spoke to me, and I answered. But I remember nothing until Maggie found me with my tea untouched and my face gray, and with William’s help got me upstairs and into my room. There she put me to bed, an electric pad at my feet—“They’re like ice, miss”—and brought me some whisky in a glass.

She asked no questions. She merely mothered me. When I was breathing better she stood over the bed and put a hand on my forehead, as she had done so often when I was a child.

“I expect he’s all right,” she said, in her expressionless voice. “That Russell Shand is no fool. They’d have arrested Arthur if it hadn’t been for him. There’s a lot of stuff nobody knows yet. When that comes out—”

“Oh, Maggie!” I said, and cried as I had not cried for years, with my head on her stiffly starched breast.

The details came in slowly. On that afternoon, at two o’clock, a man walked into the courthouse. The place was strange to him, and he asked for the sheriff’s office. The sheriff was out, and after some hesitation he inquired for Bullard. He was neat enough, but he looked tired and dusty; and the secretary in the District Attorney’s outer office looked at him askance.

“He’s busy,” she said. “He’s in conference.”

Allen smiled, as if something amused him.

“You might take in my name anyhow—or a stick of dynamite!” he said. “You’ll find the effect will be about the same.”

It was. Bullard was inside with a half dozen men: two deputy sheriffs, a reporter or two, a county detective, and one of the men from New York. The desk was littered, and in the resulting rush for the door papers were scattered all over the floor. The two deputies got out first and caught Allen by the arms. He stood perfectly still, and they looked a little foolish.

“I understand you are looking for me,” he said. “The name is Page. Langdon Page.”

“You dirty so-and-so!” said the New York man furiously. “What’s the idea anyhow? If you think you’re going to softsoap yourself out of this mess—”

“There’s a young lady in the room,” said Allen, grinning at him. “You might remember that. I suppose there is some place else to go?”

“And how!” said the New York detective derisively.

I
DID NOT KNOW
all this at the time. Bad as things were, I did not believe for a moment that they could hold him for the murders. He had broken his parole, and now he had surrendered. He would be taken back; years would pass, and he might still be there in prison, locked up away from the open he had loved so much. Any dreams I might have had had died hard that night.

To make matters worse, the house was strange again. After a series of bright days a fog had come in, crawling along the surface of the water and gradually blotting out the islands. As always it brought in a raw dampness, and in spite of the electric heating pad I shivered in my bed.

I did not sleep much, but I dozed at intervals, rousing with the jerk which means tense nerves. It was only eleven o’clock when I heard Chu-Chu growling, and sat up in bed. The house was very still, the servants sleeping. As I sat up I realized that the bells were ringing again.

I still have no explanation. It was not late. Perhaps Samuel Dunne and that eerie circle of his was sitting that night, hearing from Verna, or Emily or Jean. Perhaps they even liberated some force which reached the house. Whatever that explanation may be I only know that, lying wide awake after the bells had stopped and the house was quiet once more, I remembered what I had forgotten about the mouse cage; and so took the first step toward solving our mystery.

It came to me suddenly, as a forgotten word will spring into the mind. I was a child again, lying in bed in the quarantine room. There was scarlet fever about, and I had a sore throat. As a result I had been banished upstairs, dragging my feet and carrying a doll.

“How long is it to be this time, mother?”

“Not long, if you’re a good girl.”

Even now the injustice of that rankles; as if being a good girl had anything to do with it! Mother had a sheet wrung out of carbolic solution hung over the doorway at the top of the stairs, and Arthur was severely banished. It turned out, however, to be merely a cold, and in due time I was restored to the family again. But in the interval something had occurred.

Arthur brought me his mice to amuse me. He crawled up the drain pipe one night, holding a string in his teeth. Once inside he carefully hauled up something I could not see, and at last it emerged triumphantly. It was the mouse cage.

“Thought you’d like to watch them,” he said, with feigned indifference. “They smell a bit, but they’re lively.”

It was a princely gesture from a big brother to a small sister. For hours that night I watched them. Then I decided to open the door and let them out. That was fatal. I got all back but one, and when Maggie came in the next morning she was furious. I could still see her on the floor, looking under the beds for the wandering one, and threatening to tell Mother.

It was late in the morning when I heard a faint scuffling, and saw the mouse appear from a large hole in the corner of the wall, above the old baseboard. Maggie caught it, and she never did tell Mother.

I knew now. That corner was where Maggie had knelt the night she was attacked. She may even in her sleep have gone back to that incident. But what I was remembering was not that. The hole was gone, the wall intact! I had not thought of it for years.

At daylight I put on a dressing gown and went upstairs again. The fog had come in in earnest, and the gray-white light was poor. I was nervous when I turned on the lights, but no bell rang, and everything was quiet. I stood staring at the corner, unable to believe my eyes. There was no hole. No mouse could have hidden behind the baseboard, and the wall was neatly papered with the old familiar wallpaper, which had been there for more than twenty years.

It seemed incredible. I had not imagined that incident. I could still see Maggie, with the little creature by the tail and her whole soul revolting.

“You’re a bad girl, Marcia. Just for this I’ll drown the creature. Dirty nuisances they are, anyhow.”

She had not drowned it, of course.

I went back to bed, but not to sleep; and it was then that I remembered Mrs. Curtis. At half past seven I called her up, and she seemed mildly surprised.

“Listen,” I said. “When was it that Mr. Curtis found a leak in the roof over the hospital suite?”

“Three years ago. It was in the spring. That whole corner by one of the beds was soaked.”

“What did you do about it?”

“Why, I told you at the time, Miss Marcia,” she said reproachfully. “You paid the bill. We had to have the plaster fixed. And I found a roll of the old wallpaper and had it put on.”

“Did they rip off the baseboard?”

“Rip off what?”

When she understood she was vague. She didn’t know. She thought the baseboard had been left as it was. Only the plaster was damaged. I hung up, and sat thinking. Three years ago someone had broken into the house through a cellar window. Mrs. Curtis had discovered it and sent for her husband, and in going over the house they had found the leak and later on the plaster had been repaired.

Where did that take me? Who had entered the house that spring? Had come in a car, broken through the cellar window, and yet taken nothing away?

Had it been Juliette? She knew the house. She knew the hospital suite. She had been ill there at one time, years ago. She might even then have known of that hole behind the baseboard and used it for her own purposes. I had seen her once coming down the stairs, stepping cautiously so no one would hear her.