The Door (34 page)

“Was he? I didn’t know that.”

“Well, he was. I picked him off the street. Dick was at the telephone, and I ran down to the gate to see if I could find a policeman. He was passing by in his car then.”

“Well, that was fortunate, wasn’t it?”

“That depends,” she said slowly. “Look back a little, Elizabeth Jane. He takes care of father when he is sick here; and he knows about the will; he knows us all, and all about us. And when you think about it, he’s always around, isn’t he? Somebody throws Joseph down the back stairs, and where is Doctor Simonds? He’s apparently waiting in his office to be called. I get hurt in the garage, and he’s at home sitting by the telephone! Joseph gets shot, and he’s passing by the house.”

“Really, Judy!”

“I’m going to get rid of this if it kills me. Uncle Jim gets sick, and who is in and out of his house day and night? Simonds. It’s like that nursery rhyme about the warm cot, only the answer isn’t mother. It’s Doctor Simonds. He could get into the garage and put that oil on the carpet of the car, and so bring Uncle Jim into it. And he’s got a car of his own and drives like the devil.

“How do we know he didn’t go to New York that night and see father? And he’s tall and rather thin, and he’s got evening clothes and wears them. What I’d like to know,” she went on, her voice raised and her color high, “is where Doctor Simonds comes in in all this. We’ve been taking his word right along, but how do we know he isn’t lying?”

“A reputable doctor—” I began.

“Oh, I’m sick of reputable doctors and reputable lawyers. I don’t trust any one any more. How do we know those two didn’t get together, Mr. Waite and Doctor Simonds, and cook this thing up with Wallie? Doctor Simonds dopes father, and Mr. Waite draws the will. And Sarah’s suspicious. She puts on the record that father was queer that day.”

“And so your Uncle Jim saw him that night on the hillside after he had killed poor Sarah, and is willing to be tried for his life to protect him? Don’t be silly. Are you intimating also that Doctor Simonds did away with Wallie and shot Joseph?”

“Why not?” she said more calmly. “Wallie was coming out with the whole story on the stand, so he had to be got out of the way. And Joseph knew something, or suspected somebody, so he was shot. And don’t forget this. He meant to kill Joseph. That was the big idea.”

“I don’t believe it. Doctor Simonds has attended me for years, and—”

She made an impatient gesture.

“Why is it,” she demanded, “that all women over a certain age have a soft spot for their doctors? Doctors are human. I’m asking you to think, not to be sentimental. Wallie knows the question will come up of undue influence, or of father not being capable of making a will. So what do they do? Doctor Simonds writes him a note, that father is perfectly capable of making a will. And whose word have we that the two were as reconciled during that sickness as Wallie pretends? Doctor Simonds again! You never heard Sarah say so, did you?”

“She never talked. And she didn’t like Wallie.”

“Then again, come down to the night Joseph was shot. Who could walk into this house without suspicion? Suppose we’d happened in before he got Joseph? Would we have suspected him of anything? No! He’d have said he saw the door open and dropped in, or that he wanted to use the telephone, and you’d have given him a glass of the sherry he likes so much and thought nothing of it.”

“Why would he have come in the back door?”

“How do we know he came in the back door? Why didn’t he come in the front, take a glass of wine, and then wander back. Maybe he hadn’t planned to kill Joseph just then, but there was the chance, and he took it.”

I think that was on Wednesday, and Joseph had been shot on Sunday night.

It is hardly surprising that I could not sleep that night, although everything was safe enough now that crime had at last entered my very house. From the night of the shooting an officer had patrolled the grounds in the daytime, keeping out the curious crowds which would otherwise have overrun us, and another one had stayed downstairs in the house at night.

The maids left him a night supper in the pantry, and a coffee pot on the range. About two in the morning there would steal through the house the aroma of boiling coffee, and although I had begun to suffer from a chronic insomnia, that homely and domestic odor acted on me like a narcotic. Downstairs was the law, armed and substantial, and awake. I would go to sleep then.

But that night I did not. I lay in my hot bed and listened to the far-off movements below, and that theory of Judy’s grew until it became a nightmare. At last I got up, put on a dressing gown and slippers, and went down the stairs.

The pantry looked very comfortable, bright with lights and with that solid square blue figure drawn up to the table before the cold roast beef, the salad, the bread and cheese and coffee which were to stay it until morning.

But the officer was taking no chances in that pantry. The shades were closely drawn, and a chair was placed against the swinging door into the kitchen.

I must have moved very silently, for when I spoke he leaped to his feet and whirled on me; none the less impressive because the only weapon in his hand was a silver fork.

“I’ve come for some coffee,” I said.

“Come in, ma’am. Come in,” he said heartily. And I gathered from the zeal with which he served me that he too had found the night long and not a little dreary.

So we sat there, the two of us, companionably supping. He recommended mustard for the cold beef and so I took mustard, which I happen to despise. All the time he carried on a running fire of conversation, like a man who is relieved to hear the sound of any voice, even his own. And when my complaisance regarding the mustard brought tears to my eyes, he even leaned over and patted my arm.

“You get that coffee down, ma’am,” he said, “and you’ll feel better. I guess you’ve been through plenty.”

Here, however, he delicately decided to change the subject.

“What’s happened to the red-haired girl who was here the night of the—the night you sent for us? I haven’t seen her since.”

“That was my niece, Judy Somers. She does not live here. But she is not red-haired.”

“I don’t mean Miss Somers. This girl was red-headed all right. She was running up the drive just ahead of me. When she heard me, she stopped.”

I sat perfectly still. Fortunately he was busy with his coffee, into which he was putting lump after lump of sugar. I managed to steady my voice.

“A red-haired girl?” I said slowly. “Did she speak to you?”

“I’ll say she did. Caught me by the arm and wanted to know what was wrong in the house. I said: ‘What business is that of yours?’ and she said she worked here. She had a right to know. The rest had gone on, and I was in a hurry myself, but she hung onto me, and I saw that she looked sort of sick. ‘Somebody been hurt,’ I said, and with that she let me go.”

“You didn’t see her again?”

He looked at me and smiled.

“I’ve been watching for her here. She was a right good looking girl. But I haven’t seen her. You know who it is, I suppose?”

“Yes. But she is not in my employ any longer.”

I thought he looked disappointed, but certainly not suspicious. He had however little more to tell. The precinct men had arrived before. He had come from headquarters in the side car of a motorcycle which had dropped him at the street, so that he was afoot when he overtook her.

I slept not at all that night. I was remembering a conversation I had had with the Inspector the morning after Joseph was shot, and following that examination he had made of the hillside.

“Just what do you know about Joseph, Miss Bell? His private life, I mean.”

“I don’t believe he had any.”

“He’d never seemed in any fear, had he? For himself, I mean.”

“Not that I know of.”

“Never took any precautions, I suppose? Didn’t act like a man with anything hanging over him?”

“Not at all. He had looked very tired lately, and I had asked him if he wanted to go away. I have never seen him show any fear, except that last night as we went through the pantry he had the windows all closed. I spoke about it, and he said it was ‘safer.’ Or he felt safer.”

“What about women? I suppose you wouldn’t know about that?”

“I am sure there was nothing of the sort.”

“Well, I’m not. I’ll come to that later. But there are some things about this shooting that make it just a little different from the others. In the first place, the method’s different. There’s no attempt to camouflage the crime, and no attempt at even ordinary care against detection. In the others care was taken. I’ll go further and say that I’ve never seen a case where such steps were taken, during and later, to cover every possible trail.

“But look at this. You’re around the corner, only fifty feet away. You’ve got a dog, two dogs. Except for the fact that you held the terrier that night he’d have made a row that would have awakened the neighborhood. The house is fully lighted. Joseph is awake, or was until a moment or so before the shot. If he was asleep the criminal can’t know it. The shades are drawn.

“Then again, why shoot him in the house? He must have been in and out. He goes to the garage sometimes, he is not always shut up at night. Since Walter’s disappearance he’s been out at all hours and in all sorts of places.

“But he’s shot right here, in a bright light. The psychology’s different, that’s all. Look at this: I’ve just shot Joseph back there. I’ve got the revolver in my pocket, and so far I’ve got away with it. I’ve been watching the place, so I know you three are outside and may come in at any moment. The front door is open; the hall is brightly lighted. You may come in that way, walk right in on me. What’s my normal procedure?”

“I should think you’d get out as fast as possible.”

“Absolutely. But I don’t. I saunter into that library, in a full light, pour myself a glass of sherry, put down the glass and then take my departure. And if you didn’t use cut glass sherry glasses I’d leave a decent fingerprint instead of what we have. It’s too reckless to be normal! Unless it’s a woman.”

At four o’clock that morning, unwilling to disturb the Inspector until later, I called Dick and asked him what he thought of it. He was drowsy and only half awake.

“She was running up the drive, toward the house,” I said. “And she didn’t know what had happened. She asked the officer.”

But I could hear him yawning over the telephone.

“Sorry,” he said. “The old bean isn’t working very well. Probably she knew a lot more than she was admitting. Maybe she was running out, and when she heard your policeman she reversed the process. It’s an old dodge, you know.”

I sat on the side of my bed, the telephone on my knee, and tried to think. If that casual hypothesis of Dick’s was correct, then Mary Martin had shot Joseph. It would have been easy enough. She knew the house and the habits of all of us; that the two maids retired early, that Joseph sat reading until late in the pantry; if she had seen Judy and Dick and myself go out into the grounds, she knew that the lower floor outside of the pantry was unoccupied. She had only to enter by the kitchen, fire her shot, and go forward, in order to escape.

But she had not escaped. In the ten, perhaps fifteen minutes between my finding Joseph and the arrival of the police, she had had plenty of time, but she had not gone.

Had she been upstairs during that interval, on some mysterious errand of her own? In Sarah’s room, perhaps, or Joseph’s, and then later on in the upper hall, peering over the banister and watching that influx of blue coats and muscular bodies; still later on stealing down the stairs, step by step. Sounds from the pantry, men talking, and Mary looking over her shoulder. Then the still open front door, a run for freedom, and the sound of a motorcycle stopping and escape cut off.

Had she turned in a panic, and started back toward the house? Or had she already planned the maneuver in case of necessity? To believe that last was to believe her old in crime, infinitely cunning and desperate.

I had worked myself into a condition bordering on hysteria by seven in the morning, when I called up Inspector Harrison, but his very voice quieted me. He was angry enough, however, when I had told him the story.

“The damned blockhead!” he exploded, referring to the policeman. “I’ll break him for this.”

“He didn’t know. She said she worked here.”

“She did, did she? She’s a quick thinker. But what
was
she doing there?”

“You don’t think she shot Joseph?”

“Well, I don’t think she’s the temperament to shoot Joseph and then go in and take a glass of wine. No.”

I felt relieved. I was not fond of Mary, but the picture I had drawn for myself during the night had revolted me.

“Then I’m glad I talked to you. And by the way, Mrs. Bassett is dead.”

I told him of Lily Sanderson’s message, and he was silent for so long when I had finished that I thought we might have been disconnected.

“Hello,” I said. “Central, I’ve—”

“I’m still here, Miss Bell, I’m sitting on a chair thinking what a damned fool I’ve been. I don’t belong on the force. I ought to be a paperhanger!”

And with that he hung up the receiver.

W
E KNOW NOW OF
that frantic rush he made, within ten minutes of my calling, to the Halkett Street house, and of that frenzied search he made later on that day, along the highways and particularly the by-ways of the Warrenville road. Some time after midnight he found what he was after, and not too late.

That had been in his mind all that day; the fear that he would be too late. And in the meantime he had set his guards. There was to be no escape this time, not even by death.

Even then he did not know the story, of course. But he knew the criminal and his incredible cunning. Let all go on as usual. Confide in no one. Disarm him, throw him off the track, and then into that fancied security of his thrust the long arm of the law. That was his method, he has said since, and that it answered is shown by the fact that for ten days apparently nothing happened.

Ten hot July days, with Godfrey working on the appeal; with Jim growing weak from heat and strain; with Joseph in the hospital, receiving our visits with great dignity, but refusing to alter his original story that he had been asleep and had not seen his assailant; with no word whatever of Wallie, or of Mary Martin; with the flowers on Mrs. Bassett’s grave shriveled in the sun, and the policemen still on duty in my house and grounds, and with Katherine still in the house on Pine Street, stubbornly refusing to accept the repudiation of her which she considered Howard’s second will to be.